trademark behaviours

I have been working with a leading sports team recently, where I had an opportunity to use a simple - but effective - lesson in teamwork, which was originally used by one of my sporting heroes, Pat Riley.

When Riley moved from the championship-winning Los Angeles Lakers to the New York Knicks, he found a team battling against itself. Team cohesion had broken down and the players operated either alone or in small groups.

When the players arrived for their first meeting with Riley, he had organised the room into a number of chairs representing the players' friendship groups. Each player was directed to a specific chair and then the coach asked the players to look around the room. He explained that a team divided cannot win, and then explained he was going to leave the room for fifteen minutes and allow them to consider their options.

When he returned, the players had reformed the room into a semi-circle of chairs with one left for the coach. "In just one meeting," Riley later recounted, "we had moved the players from a 'me' to a 'we’ culture and begun the process of building team cohesion and winning."

How can you use your every day environment to emphasise your trademark behaviours?