The Losing Locker Room

The use of sports metaphors in business is a common and established practice. And it’s natural in the parallel contexts of competitive teams vying against one another for supremacy.

Though the metaphor can be taken too far, there are in fact a number of appropriate analogies where businesspeople can get operational ideas and lessons from the sports world.

Managers can learn from coaches how to bounce back from defeat, how to stay on top, how to maximize limited resources, and how best to communicate with their teams, to name just four.

In that light, what can we learn from coaches as to the appropriate leadership communications in the context of failure? Suppose your operation loses a major client due to fumbled service. Or your fourth quarter results mean your unit didn’t make its annual budget.

Maybe your “superstar” sales team didn’t hit its numbers, or a competitor’s new product rollout caught you off-guard and they overtook your market share lead. Sure, the competition was tough. It usually is. Perhaps you faced a weak market, or a struggling economy.

If you’re the one in charge, what’s the right message to your people, through what means, and when?

Football may provide some valuable insights for this challenge.

The National Football League holds its playoffs in January, on the way to the Super Bowl in early February. The playoffs start with 16 teams and end with one champion. What about the 15 other teams? How does a losing coach deal with that, and what does he say to his team after a disappointing defeat abruptly ends their once promising season?

On the heels of an embarrassing rout in the first round of the NFL playoffs, I wondered about the locker room atmosphere of my favorite team, the New England Patriots. More to the point, what did Coach Bill Belichick (left) tell his team after an unexpected lop-sided loss to the underdog Baltimore Ravens?

This is the same team that won three Super Bowls in the past 10 years. Even in those years when they didn’t go all the way, they've always been highly competitive.

What a losing coach may say to the media after the loss can reveal some of his attitude and approach in the locker room. After his team’s second-round 34-3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said that it felt "like an elevator falling all the way from the top."

That simile is accurate and revealing. As a team, the Cowboys had an on-and-off season this year. But at the end, they rode the elevator nearly to the top, only to get routed in the divisional playoff game.

It’s a cliché to hear “you have nothing to be ashamed of,” and other such attempts at encouragement and solace. So what’s the most constructive thing a coach or business leader can say to the team? What words and messages will salve wounded egos and encourage recommitment to the longer term?

The losing locker room is not the time or location for blame placing or recriminations. Instead, effective coaches recall the good work that had been done that season, the effort that got the team as far as it did. They cite the outstanding individual performances, but don’t dwell on the errors and miscues of the loss. They save that for later, for the one-on-one private conversations that must take place between the coach and those players that need encouragement and corrective guidance.

The loser’s locker room immediately after the loss is the time and place for finding the good on which you can build a foundation and begin motivating the team for future greatness. The immediacy of the moment right after the loss is the right time and place to deliver such messages.

The team whose coach is able to comfort and encourage his dispirited players is the team that’s more likely to return to the playoffs again next year with players that quickly regain their self-confidence and sense of excellence.

My guess is that Bill Belichick excels at this challenge. Reticent and cranky in his post-game press conferences, this is a leader who, behind the scenes, quietly encourages and motivates his players year after year. It shows, too, in the Patriots’ post-season record. In his 10 seasons as the Patriots’ head coach, the team has appeared in the Super Bowl four times, won three, and missed the playoffs only twice.

That’s a record any business manager should envy.