Janet and John were watching the winter Olympics on the telly, live from Vancouver.
“These guys are pretty good” said John, “but I reckon my footy team could be just as good if we had the chance”
Not to be outdone, Janet said “well my hockey team are pretty special and I reckon that we could do better than you”
The inevitable debate followed on whose team was the best. There was never going to be a winner of that argument, so Janet suddenly threw down the gauntlet; “I’ll tell you how we are going to resolve this, the team that wins the most matches in their next 6 fixtures will be declared the best” she announced, “and the loser, which will be you, will have to watch every one of my matches next season”.
“You’re on” said John.
Silence. Janet and John were both deep in thought working out how they could get their teams to win all of their next 6 matches.
Over the next few days John hatched a plan. He was the captain and he knew all of his team’s strong points and all their not-so-strong points. He knew that he had to fix the not-so-strong points, and that if he did he would be the winner.
So John made a list of the team’s not-so-strong points:
- Fitness
- ball skills
- commitment
- teamwork
and decided to go and tell them what they had to do.
Janet happened to be captain of her hockey team and was also busy plotting. Janet came up with the same conclusion about fixing her team’s not-so-strong points and, by coincidence, came up with the same list:
- Fitness
- ball skills
- commitment
- teamwork
But this is where the 2 plans differed. Instead of going to tell her team, Janet decided to ask them what they needed to do to get better in each of these areas.
Off went Janet and John, both quietly confident that they were going to win their little bet.
John got his team together, explained his little plan and then proceeded to tell them what to do. Some heads nodded but others didn’t seem to get it. “Why should we all have to go through the same steps when we are all different?” they asked.
“Because I’m the captain, I lead this team and I know what we have to do” said John.
Grumble, grumble, but they did (sort of) give it a go.
Meanwhile, Janet was talking with her team. She explained her little plan and then proceeded to ask them what they thought they needed to do.
“Since we are all different and have different levels of fitness, ball control, commitment etc, we each need to work on our own weaknesses” they said.
“OK” said Janet, “but how are you going to do that?”
“Well, we can work out amongst ourselves what each of us needs to do, and we can then help each other to do it”.
“Fine” said Janet, to a happy and enthused team.
The following weekend Janet and John both had fixtures, Janet’s team won, John’s team lost. The same happened the weekend after that, and by the time they had both played 6 fixtures, Janet’s team had won 5 and drawn 1, and John’s team had won 1 and lost 5.
John came second.
“I can’t understand it” said John, “we both came up with the same plan and both of us knew that we needed to work on fitness, ball skills, commitment and teamwork; so how come your team got so much better and I ended up with no improvement and a disgruntled bunch of mates?”
“I don’t know” said Janet, “we are both leaders and both fed our teams with the same information for the same reason, and had the same things in mind”.
“I know” said John, “and I told them time and time again what to do and how to go about it, but they just got grumpier and grumpier”.
“Ahh!” said Janet, “that’s the difference, after telling them what we needed to work on and why, I left my girls to work out how to go about it. They realised that it was in their own interest, not just mine. They got quite excited and worked really hard, and as they noticed their own improvement they became even more excited and worked even harder”.
“So” said Janet, “it seems that my way of getting the team to change and improve works better than yours. I guess it proves that top-led; bottom-fed is the answer” said Janet, “see you at all of my matches next season; loser!”
