The “On the Court/ Off the Court” Mentality

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Getting things done in an organization where people have personal relationships is tricky; in the course of action, toes get stepped on, which stings a little no matter how tactfully done.  If you spend a lot of time with people, you have a personal relationship. Entrepreneurs deal with this a lot in startups, especially if they’re working with friends.  If you claim you don’t have a personal relationship with the people you work with, you’re probably an ass that no one can stand.

The absolute best way I’ve found to deal with this is to develop an “On the Court, Off the Court” mentality.

If you’re an athlete (let’s say you’re a basketball player), you’re friends with at least most of your teammates.  You spend a lot of time together at meals, sitting in the locker room, on the bus to the game.  If you aren’t friends with them, there is a much higher chance you’ll quit the team. And despite being friends, when you’re on the court at basketball practice, you’re focused on getting better and performance.  This will inevitably include getting a little rough with your friends/teammates.  You’re there playing hard, and you need to be.  You’ve got to get better and so do your teammates.

However, when you’re off the court, you’re back to being friends again.  The arena is a separate place.

I haven’t always been able to pull this off.  But the “On the Court/ Off the Court” mentality (and integrating that into organizational processes) allows people to better delineate when it’s game time and when it’s friend time, when you’re the boss at work and when you’re a colleague, when you’re the fraternity Officer and when you’re just another brother trying to have fun in school.  If people don’t understand rules of the relationship, or have uncertainty in how they should act,  things will start to fester, more things get unnecessarily taken personally, and things can quickly take a bad turn.

-Kevin
5.3.2010