Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher 111: Craig Ahrens Believes No Team Is a Bad Team
What can we learn about our businesses through sports and the way coaches coach? Today’s discussion is all about how no team is a bad team and how you can be a better coach to your team and business!
Craig Ahrens is a speaker, author, and consultant as well as the Founding Partner for Fungo, a consulting firm designed for coaches to practice fundamentals with their teams.
Craig was first introduced to this field through his children’s sports leagues. He started out as a passionate spectator and then later as an assistant coach, head coach, and board member. He noticed that the people who were coaches were also small business owners, mid-level managers, and senior-level executives. It gave him the opportunity to watch different leadership styles on the field.
During the seasons, Craig noticed a correlation between successful youth teams and successful businesses. Regardless of the sport, successful coaches had a certain mindset that would help the team win games through and through.
Bill reflects on why two of his own children never really got into sports. It boiled down to how the coaches treated them. Craig believes a good coach is able to close the gaps. They are able to recognize grumblings, apathy, and other weak links and quickly address them.
Coaches need to know their short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Coaches also need to be able to get feedback from their team to develop buy-in as well as accountability for those goals. When people understand the ‘why’ behind the goals, they are able to work efficiently towards them.
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