iTeam: Putting the “I” Back into Team

5. Challenge 3: Selecting Team Members for Specific Roles

Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz employed an especially effective technique to illustrate to his team the importance of each player’s fulfilling his assigned role. If, for example, a lineman assigned to protect the quarterback didn’t exert himself at practice—perhaps because he considered himself, as one of eleven defensive players, to be only a minor part of the team—Coach Holtz removed that player from the line without replacing him, leaving a defensive line that was missing one player to try to protect the quarterback. When Coach Holtz resumed the practice session, the quarterback invariably would get immediately sacked, and would get sacked on each subsequent play. Coach ...