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HOW TO MOTIVATE PEOPLE - INTRODUCTION


           In over a quarter of a century of playing football, I had a lot of people - coaches, teammates, friends - try to get me "up" for a particular game or stretch of games.  There was one person who did that better than anybody else - Bud Grant.  Bud was the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, for whom I quarterbacked for much of my professional career, and he was successful in getting the best out of his people because he understood one fundamental rule of human nature:  If you want somebody to do something for you, the one thing you cannot do, ever, is BS him.          

           Not once in all my years of playing for Bud did I ever see him hand a player a bill of goods.  From the very first day that you walked into a Vikings practice, you knew that this man was telling it like it was.  You didn't get any phony rah-rah pep talks and you didn't get any of that "We're number one" garbage, and you didn't get him threatening, or cajoling, or insulting you into better performance.  With Bud Grant you knew right off that there were certain things that were going to be expected of you.  You knew you'd have to deliver those things if you wanted to stay with the Vikings.  And you knew that if you didn't deliver, you'd soon be back picking watermelons in rural Georgia.  

           I don't mean he said, "Here it is, shape up now or scram."  He'd tell you just what he wanted, and if you didn't do it right the first time, he‘d work with you, he'd explain what you were doing wrong so you could improve.  He was demanding, yes, but never impatient.  Bud was a man who knew exactly what he wanted and who knew how to tell you what that was without making you feel used, or intimidated, or had.

                      He carried the "No bull" philosophy into every game we had coming.  If we were going up against a team that we could beat with our shoelaces tied together, he'd say so - and he'd tell us exactly what to watch out for so we didn't get too cocky and blow it.  If we were going up against a team that was better than we were, he'd tell us that too - and what we could do to beat the odds.  

           I remember one afternoon when Bud told us that the other team was better.  "These guys have got more than you do," he said, straight out.  "But you can still kick their tails if you play smarter than they do.  And here's how you're going to do that."  

           And he proceeded to layout all the precise, particular things we were going to have to do to play that smarter ball game.  This is what I want you to do.  One, two, three.  And if you do these things, you're going to win the ball game.  To a new player in Bud's system, who was used to the usual inspirational stuff about winning one for the Gipper and not letting your family down, it was a revelation.  And it got him results.

            But Grant's system of getting the best out of his players only began with what he said to us before the game.  He always followed up afterward - after we had kicked some better team's tail, or blown a sure thing by ignoring his instructions.  I might have felt turned on in the middle of a certain second quarter, and overthrown a pass because my mechanics were wrong.  Grant would take me aside after the game and say, "Francis, you threw to the right receiver, but you overthrew him because your stride was too long."  Those after-the-game lessons were what really counted.  

           You know the old expression about Nature abhorring a vacuum.  It's true of human nature, too.  Human nature will not abide an empty promise.  And people find out real quick whose promises are empty and whose will carry the freight.  You might be able to BS me into running through a brick wall once by telling me I "owe it to the team."  But once I brush off the brick dust and get my shoulder out of the cast, you'd better be there telling me how I did and thanking me for my participation - or that wall will never be threatened again.

            I don't guess that the Viking teams I played on were the best all-round athletes, or the best trained, or the highest paid players of their time.  But I'll tell you one thing:  we loved our work.  We were up for those games.  And, as a result, we performed, we gave our best.  For a simple reason.  We were responding, from the first game of every season, to Grant's extraordinary combination of clear, crisp directions before the game and clear, crisp directions before the game and clear, crisp feedback afterward.  

           Like every good coach - and like every good manager of people, no matter what the business - Grant didn't concentrate on making his people stronger or faster or more coordinated.  He just enabled them to put their natural strength, and speed, and coordination together better by adding a mental component that, over and over, made all the difference.

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