traction Is, As Baseball Teams Say, A Matter Of One Back, OneGoal

It's early August when your first major league baseball season begins. Top off your first full month of play, you're still in your instructional coaching league with your first team, a small group of fellow coaches, and were just getting your season started.

You are running hard, getting fast in your runs, mixing up the guys after your small morning work, and at the end of the month you are still running hard and getting fast, so you are getting accustomed to it. Next month it's another month all together.

And then the other day it's been decided that you need to play on a bigger team that you are going to be on for the next several years. You have heard about the "big league" team that you are going to be on for the next few years, and you have tried to initiate conversations with other players that you know who are members of the team. While conversing with a few, one particular member of the team, is going to hit a golf ball with a ball, you realize that all of a sudden you need to remove your golf ball from your sand bag and let it fly for the entire game. You not only consider yourself a player who can manage it with the best of your skill, but you also realize that your ability to cover the entire field is going to be critical to the professional game. So you take on the task with incredible finisher, because you are good at what you do.

How does this same scenario play out for a business? This small company is preparing for growth, and the other trainers who will be joining, have been surveyed after their initial orientation differs from the overall impact by 9/10 for the overall business. The others were satisfied with the training, but the one who had a larger group of associates, were more likely to feel that their training regimen was more effective than the overall training program as a whole.

Now consider the thousands of employees who attend an orientation program. The training they receive, whether or not they stay with the company or move on is inconsistent. The reason for this variance is never discussed when a new employee leaves an orientation program. And those who move on either leave their business ( Experiment rebuilding, expansion, downsizing, etc) prior to the end of their "poker88," or after their training. Then they are not being fully trained, and are never "on their game."

What were the specific things that helped the new members of their team get "on their game" more quickly? First and above all, they started out as teammates. They worked together, sharing leads, sharing information, and when the guys on the band saw each other contributing, they ended up working cooperatively as a team. There was synergy.

Secondly, being teammates raised the bar on "teamwork and leadership." Anytime something was to be achieved, everyone had to pull together and do whatever it took to pass the baton so that the music would be played. It was interwoven into the team that everyone with the responsibility needed to know that he or she had the utmost respect of everyone else on the team. Everyone is aware that everyone needs to be on the same page in order to make things happen.

There is a lot of time spent during orientation programs that is anything but a constructive experience. Often, it is hard to believe that any standards could exist without each person having individual goals and responsibilities. But unfortunately, there really are no standards. This is because nothing is specifically written down at any one time. Therefore, after a staff meeting, you will invariably bring into focus what you have discussed and that will be said over and over again.