Have your best season ever! Building a winning team through excellence in leadership, coaching and team-building.

• Author: Goughnour, Roberta C.

As a hockey parent, I was excited that I was going to have the opportunity to hear Davis Payne, head coach for the Alaska Aces hockey team, speak at the state conference for the Alaska Society for Human Resource Management. His first remarks were not really a surprise. He expressed some trepidation about finding words of wisdom for a group of HR professionals. However, after his initial remarks, he went on to give us HR folks a well-developed plan for building wining teams. By the time he was finished, he had clearly illustrated how combining a good leader with great coaching skill, who understands how to build a winning team, can lead to excellent results.

During his presentation, Coach Payne discussed his philosophy on coaching, gave us seven points on how to build a winning team and told us how the Aces successfully integrated a star player into their team last season. In listening to his presentation, it was clear why the strategies he used helped lead the team to its most successful season in the history of the organization. So, what were the words of wisdom offered by Coach Payne? Before we get there, let's look at the components necessary to build a successful team.

Building a winning team requires three components: a good leader with good coaching skills who understands how to maximize the productivity of team members. We have developed Illustration 1 to show how each of these components interrelates. The illustration shows how excellence in leadership, coaching and team-building interrelate. The intersection of each of these components in the center shows how all three components must be present to achieve excellence in performance. When there is a component missing, it will be difficult for a team reach its goal of excellent results. To help understand how each of these components fit together, let's first take a look at each one individually.

LEADERSHIP

According to the Harvard Business Review, a good leader possesses certain qualities. These qualities include: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. A leader who possesses these qualities is aware of what drives him or her and how to influence others to achieve excellent results. These qualities can be broken into two groups self-management and the ability to relate to others.

Serf-Management skills are those of self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation. These are internal skills. These skills center on a leader's ability to candidly assess...