What Would Lance Armstrong Do

I got this arti­cle from BNET. Some­times, we think that lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples are only found in books. There are a lot of things we could learn about man­age­ment and life in sports. In sports, the best and worst of man, his poten­tials and his psy­chosis become even more appar­ent than any­where else.

Man­agers can line their shelves with books on col­lab­o­ra­tion and not get as much action­able infor­ma­tion on team­work as they would from watch­ing one week of com­pet­i­tive cycling’s annual gaunt­let of pain, Le Tour de France.

Foot­ball, base­ball and bas­ket­ball have always been fer­tile ground for team-building chest­nuts — but none of those pur­suits hold a laser pointer to the Tour, one of the most strik­ing dis­plays of team­work in all of sports. Here are just a few of the ways that the almost two-dozen nine-man teams that com­pete in the twenty-day July race are an exem­plar of collaboration.

You’re Never Too Big To Carry Water — If there could only be one thing that you hear about team dynam­ics in the Tour, it should be this: Even the team’s best rider will be seen head­ing back to the team cars to carry water bot­tles back to his sup­port­ing rid­ers, or domes­tiques. A step beyond buy­ing some Iso­ton­ers for your offen­sive line­men, I’d say.

Busi­ness Behav­ior: There’s very lit­tle gen­uine evi­dence of this kind of behav­ior in the cor­po­rate world. If you’re the boss, don’t just go pick them up some ice cream sand­wiches to soften the blow of dec­i­mat­ing the health insur­ance plan, a la The Office’s mis­guided hon­cho Michael Scott. Do some­thing when you don’t need to. Check in on team mem­bers when they are espe­cially busy and see if there’s any­thing you can do to make their day a lit­tle eas­ier. Pick them up lunch, drop some­thing in the mail, anything.

Take Turns Shoul­der­ing the Hard Work — Rid­ers will take turns ped­al­ing into the wind and let­ting their team­mates sit in their slip­stream. They will often do this for a team leader, sprinter or climber so they can con­serve energy until the time comes to take on their task, to make their push.

Busi­ness Behav­ior: Some­times being there for the team means know­ing you are work­ing harder than the rest of the team at a given time, but trust­ing that they will take their turn in the ham­ster wheel when the time comes. If this kind of trust and respect exists within a team, it is prob­a­bly well on its way to achiev­ing its goals. And if you know that your team­mate is going to have an espe­cially rough go at the end of the month, maybe you can do what you can to pitch in and keep him from being over­worked in the beginning.

Get the Lead Out – It’s a low-profile job for one of the quicker rid­ers on a given team to lead his faster team­mate out of the front of the pack a cou­ple hun­dred meters before the fin­ish with a burst of speed, then allow­ing his team­mate to ride in his slip­stream, con­serve a bit of energy, and then kick out his bike to one side and put in a strong fin­ish­ing burst for the win. The lead-out man is left to fin­ish out of the glory, but in well with his team­mate and the rest of the squad.

Busi­ness Behav­ior: It’s a fact of busi­ness life that cer­tain jobs bring all the glory and oth­ers are des­tined to play out behind the scenes. Sales­peo­ple close because of the dili­gent research and cor­re­spon­dence of their coor­di­na­tors. Ana­lysts deliver excel­lent reports because of the num­ber crunch­ing and atten­tion to detail of the met­rics staff. As a man­ager, you should rec­og­nize everyone’s role in these vic­to­ries by sur­pris­ing that coor­di­na­tor with the details of their work that brought the account home.