While sports clichés abound in the workplace, those who've played team sports say lessons learned really have mattered to success, WALLACE IMMEN finds

WALLACE IMMEN

Lorne Braithwaite still recalls the shock he felt when, in his rookie season with the Junior A Edmonton Oil Kings (now the Portland Winter Hawks), he was named assistant captain of the hockey team-- ahead of other more skilled and experienced players.

Why? It was because he had a quality far more important to leadership: He was so supportive of other players, he had earned the respect of his team.

"I learned if you are not prepared to commit yourself to get to know the rest of the team and inspire them, you won't be seen as a leader and won't have the support and success you would like to have."

It's just one of many lessons he carried from his youthful years on the ice to his later years in the corner office, 23 of them as chief executive officer of Cambridge Shopping Centres Ltd. and now chairman of Dubai-based mall developer MLF Investments.

Success at the helm, he says, has come at least in part from "the integrity, consistency and communication skills I learned in hockey."

Mr. Braithwaite -- whose hockey stripes include being on the 1966 Allan Cup-winning Drumheller Miners and who declined the offer of a professional contract with the Detroit Red Wings to earn an MBA -- is hardly alone in his praise of sports playing grounds as preparation for career success.

While sports clichés about wanting to win, staying focused and digging deep to make the big score abound in the workplace, those with the experience argue that those who have actually played team sports can make these kinds of things happen more consistently, to the benefit of their careers.

"I can point out almost immediately executives who were individual sports enthusiasts versus those who played team sports. And from what I've seen, team players make better, more consistently successful leaders," contends Paul Cartwright, president of Sports Celebrity Marketing Inc. of Georgetown, Ont., which represents former athletes on the speaking circuit.

Team players learn you need assistance of other people to achieve your goals, and that even the weakest player on the team has to be understood and encouraged, he says.

"But runners or mountain climbers really don't understand that. When it comes to the crunch, they revert back to me as opposed to we."

In sports, as in a career, strength is theoretical and success depends on consistently creating the attitude and execution to win, say athletes who have been there.

Here are some of the big career and leadership lessons they took away from their sports experience:

Respect each person as an individual. "You don't treat everyone equally, but you must treat everyone fairly," says Chuck Ealey, a former Toronto Argonaut and Hamilton Tiger-Cat, who says he owes his rise to regional director of Investors Group Inc. to lessons he learned on directing and motivating teams during his days as a quarterback.

As on a football team, he has selected each person on his team because they have specific skills needed to win. And he understands they all have specific needs for support to perform at their best.

Enforce your authority. "Whether you are liked or not for it, you have to impose your authority. As a manager, it is your call and you bear the responsibility for the results and you want people to be playing the game the way you called it," Mr. Ealey says.

Respect the competition. The brutal fact of hockey as well as a career is that you face tough competitors, says Ryan Walter, a veteran of 15 years in the National Hockey League playing for Washington, Montreal and Vancouver, who then had a career as an entrepreneur and is now president of Heads-Up Communications in Langley, B.C., which gives leadership seminars.

Mr. Walter says years of hockey fights taught him it's important not to get drawn into an unnecessary brawl that can leave bruises on both sides. That means respecting the opponent and having enough belief in yourself that you don't have to prove it with brute force.

Be ready for action. "One of the things you learn in hockey is, when an opportunity presents itself to score a goal or make a defensive check, you better take advantage of it or it will disappear and someone else will get the advantage," Mr. Braithwaite says.

Be resilient. "If you lose a game or didn't play as well as you would have liked, there is always a new game tomorrow. So it is a matter of taking the lessons you learned from the loss and preparing for the next one without dwelling on the failure," Mr. Walter says.

Communicate clearly. You can have the title of leader but not get respect and attention unless you always communicate concisely and truthfully what's expected of everyone on the team and, that no matter how peripheral their role, it is important to achieving the result, Mr. Ealey says.

He's seen teams self-destruct because players didn't get enough information and felt left out of the play.

You should always give a clear, valid explanation of why you have made a call; otherwise team members will harbour doubts that will keep them from performing effectively, he says.

Hold your vision in adversity. Just as every hockey player dreams of hoisting the Stanley Cup over his head, career success depends on having a clear goal and maintaining the vision of celebrating when you reach it, Mr. Walter says.

Share the glory . When you win, remember it is the team that got you there, Mr. Walter says. High scorers should always give credit to those who gave them assists if they expect help in the future. The way to maintain job satisfaction and motivation of each player is to thank everyone and remind them that "we did this together."

Pace yourself. Years of juggling playing Junior A hockey with full-time commerce courses at the University of Alberta taught Mr. Braithwaite that, when it is time to focus on the job you have to pay full attention. And, in between, "you have to find ways to relax and let the pressure off and enjoy yourself," otherwise tension and fatigue will defeat you, he says.

There is no room for complacency. Winning depends on developing a gut feeling for what option has the best chance of success and, while focused on the goal, still being able to change course and stay flexible to take advantage of openings, Mr. Ealey says.

Aim ever higher. "The hardest thing to do in sports or in business is to win and win again consistently," says Mr. Walter, who was on the Montreal Canadiens' Stanley Cup champion team in 1986 that couldn't repeat in 1987.

"You can have the same players and the same team that click one year and the next year they can lose that spirit. Sometimes, when you win, the chemistry of the team changes or people ease back and start to think they are better than they are," Mr. Walter says.

"That means a consistent team and its leadership can never be satisfied with the status quo. It's about always moving to a new level and coming up with new strategies to keep the edge against the competition. If you don't, they will just roll over you."

Leaders have to develop leaders. On a hockey team, coaches will choose a captain who delivers the coach's calls but good coaches will build a leadership team, four or five people who can be counted on to be carriers of the messages.

A coach or leader's most vulnerable time comes after delivering the message of what the team is expected to do, Mr. Walter says. The message will be forgotten or misinterpreted unless there are carriers who understand it and can continue to communicate it accurately. "The more people you have to carry and take charge of seeing the plan executed, the more likelihood your team will succeed," he says.

And in the end it comes down to what seems like a cliché but is a truism, Mr. Braithwaite says.

"To create a winning team, you have to make sure everyone realizes they have an important part to play and, while there are no guarantees, they can succeed if they play their best and stay committed," he says. "You either learn that, or you're not going to reach your goal."

Clichés to win by

They may be clichés but the phrases that successful coaches use to motivate teams can inspire career success as well, says former NHL player Ryan Walter. Here are some of his favourites:

Stay hungry. Someone hungry for victory is always looking for better ways to do things more effectively, and come up with a winning strategy to beat the competition.

Let's not beat ourselves up. Most competitions are won because opponents lost the will to perform their best. It's vital to keep focusing forward and not on things that have gone wrong in the past.

Let's not just talk about it; let's do it. Bold talk in the dressing room or board room has to be matched with action. Teams succeed when individuals are personally accountable for making what they think and say reality.

Learn from that and don't let it happen again. Rather than laying blame on someone for a costly miscue, hold the person responsible for making sure that it doesn't happen again.

Just find a way to win. Much of winning is about who wants to succeed more and how much effort they are willing to put in to achieve it.