By Frankie the Fan

Many times, when Frankie writes his articles he uses experiences from his own life, whether or not in the past or present, and tries to talk about them in the conrtext of the point that he is trying to get across. Today’s topic of conversation is various types of leadership skills in sports and life in general.

There are two main ways you can motivate people. One is by fear and the other is with love. I think Bill Parcels was a master at this. He would take guys with big egos like Lawrence Taylor and try to knock them down a peg or 2, and other players who were kind of quiet he would use positive reinforcement to bring them all to the “middle” where they can perform at their best level.

So basically, if a guy is very hard to coach you might have to scream and yell at him to get him to behave in the way that you see fit. Vince Lombardi was another perfect example of this approach. Before he came to Green Bay things were a mess, but he quickly took a bunch of mostly older “losers” and made them perform to their maximum ability, by basically using a drill sergeant type of approach that is used in the military.

The other side of the coin is using praise to make people work harder for you. Personally, I think this is a very tricky proposition, because the fact remains in my opinion that at times when you treat people well, they treat you bad, and when you treat them badly they treat you good.

The reason I bring this up is because I recently started a new business and my employees are getting tired of me losing my cool and yelling all the time. This is the way I was brought up, but in different cultures things are different, and I am finding out that after a certain point, the yelling falls on “deaf ears” and I can accomplish more by treating them with love. Personally, this is for children, but most of my employees are female and very young so screaming and yelling is not the most effective way to get them to listen to you. It’s difficult however when they make the same mistakes repeatedly.

I saw Greg Popovich screaming at Pau Gasol the other day when he screwed up the last shot before overtime in game 5 vs. the Rockets. It’s hard for a coach to keep his cool when mental errors are made. It’s the same as what I’m going thru. If someone breaks a bottle that is physical error, but if beer explodes in the freezer cuz they were left there all night that is a totally different story.

The point is that although there are different ways to motivate people, sometimes you cannot use the same motivational techniques on all your employees or players. This is a betting website and however and whenever we are placing our bets at America’s Bookie, we are always betting on the “Hard Nosed” teams with coaches like Belichik, Popovich, Bill Parcels or Vince Lombardi, not teams that have coaches that are not strict disciplinarians. That’s just our personal opinion, take care guys.