Does your team have a culture?

Remember, it’s a trick question. And the answer is yes.

Whether in sports, in business or even in your family, your group has a culture.

It may be weak or it may be strong, but it’s a culture.

It may be positive or it may be negative, but it’s a culture.

And, as this article on the Fast Company blog points out, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture beats rules, it beats x’s and o’s. Culture may be the most important aspect of your team.

“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale,” said football legend Vince Lombardi.

Writes Shawn Parr on the Fast Company blog, “Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation.”

My friend and co-author Gary Pritchard devote a chapter to team culture in our book “Ten Things Great Coaches Know.” We define it as “the way things are done around here.”

Parr lists the benefits that come from the right kind of culture: focus, motivation, connection, cohesion and spirit.

He also offers the following four tips for building a positive culture.

1. Dynamic and engaging leadership
2. Living values
3. Responsibility and accountability
4. Celebrating successes and failures (that’s right, celebrating failures as well as successes).

Any leader seeking peak performance from a group, or in real team-building, should check the culture.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Sometime they’re the wrong goals. And other times the way in which they’re being pursued is the wrong way.

In the case of Prince Fielder and the Detroit Tigers, the second case could be true. Fielder and the Tigers just agreed on a nine-year, $214 million deal, because team owner Mike Ilitch desperately wants to add a World Series title to the Stanley Cups his Detroit Red Wings have won.

The question is: Was signing Fielder the right way to pursue that dream?

Fielder is 27 years old and approaching his prime. He weighs 275 pounds, more than 75 pounds over an ideal weight for a man his age and height. That is, pardon the pun, huge.

At the same time, Fielder has been one of the most durable players in the major leagues, having never played fewer than 157 games. Will that durability continue, or have all those games taken a toll? In short, right now Fielder looks like a good bet, but where will he be three years from now? Remember, the contract is for nine years.

Then there’s the question of lineup chemistry. Will Fielder add $214 million of value to a team that won a series in the playoffs last year? Hard to say, even harder to measure. Baseball is filled with unproven articles of faith. One of them is that adding a great hitter to a lineup makes the other hitters even better. This may well be true, but there is no way to test it. You can’t have a controlled study, with Fielder in one lineup and not in another.

Finally comes the intangible team factor. Adding Fielder assures the players that the team is willing to spend for success. That could help motivation, energy and focus in the clubhouse.

Try to imagine 2020, when Fielder’s contract would expire. What factors would help you decide if the deal was worth it? If the Tigers won even one World Series, you’d have to say yes. Two titles would make it a no-brainer.

But suppose Fielder can’t win a World Series? Would a near-miss make it all worth it? Or would the Tigers have to point to increased revenues, and yearly status as a contender?

I wish Fielder and the Tigers luck. I think their contract is better than the one the Angels gave Albert Pujols, or even than the one the Marlins gave Jose Reyes, but I believe there were better ways to pursue the goal of a World Series title.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

“For you,” said the pig, “bacon and eggs are a donation. For me, it’s a full commitment.”

As the AFC and NFC conference title games unfold today, coaches, fans and teammates will be able to separate the pigs from the chickens. Some players will offer total commitment, while others will make a donation now and then.

“If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking,” said former college and NFL coach Lou Holtz.

It’s one thing to enter the game with commitment. It’s another thing to hold onto it when you’ve been drilled with an NFL-style hit, say, from Ray Lewis.

It reminds you of what ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson said about strategy in the ring. “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”

The San Francisco 49ers can take a punch. They are in the NFC game because they stayed committed even after the New Orleans Saints stunned them with a go-ahead touchdown with just 97 seconds left.

They will face the New York Giants, who showed some commitment of their own by going to Green Bay and dominating the NCF’s top seed.

In the AFC, the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots will find their resolve tested as well. Whether on the line or in the open field, they will be tested in ways that would make other people walk away.

Whoever survives will get a chance to test their commitment one more time, two weeks from now in the Super Bowl. There they will play for the Lombardi trophy, named after a man who knew a little about commitment.

No matter what your interest or life pursuit, it will turn out better if you are the pig, not the chicken.

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor,” said Vince Lombardi, who coached the packers to victory in the first two Super Bowls.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.

“Great leaders do not aim for the easily achievable,” says the article, written by Matthew Swyers. That’s what he means by “aspire.”

The more lofty your goal, however, the more you need to do the other three things: plan, inspire and execute.

“Aspiration without a plan is simply a dream,” says Swyer.

As for inspiration, you must give those around you a sense of what they can achieve if they follow the plan. You must get them to see the opportunity. You must motivate.

Finally, you must execute. Hockey coach Pierre Page once said, “You can chop wood all you want. Sooner or later, someone has to build the house.”

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Now billionaire sports owner Mark Cuban is echoing Pritchard. In this article from Business Insider, Cuban, owner of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, discusses controlling your own effort.

What really caught my eye was the reference to fooling yourself. We can always fool ourselves about how hard we are working. I’m going to use Cuban’s article to push and motivate me in the New Year.

Here are three things that coaches can do to make sure they are working as hard as they can.

Plan practices. It’s often not easy. Tired after practice, you’re in no condition to plan the next one. Then, when you get home, you get bogged down by a variety of tasks and distractions. It’s best to get into a habit.

Measure. If your don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The best coaches keep stats so they can learn more about their athletes and how the practice went. If you don’t like the normal stats in your sport, invent your own. Penn State volleyball coach Russ Rose, for example, doesn’t measure things that happen. He measures things that should have happened but didn’t.

Feedback. More and more athletes are telling me they can’t feel themselves doing the things I’m telling them they do. They don’t have body awareness. So you’ve got to give consistent, meaningful feedback. It can get boring saying the same things over and over, but your team needs it.

So if you plan your practices, measure what’s going on, and provide strong feedback, you will be working harder than ever, and your teams will improve. You’ll be working smart as well as hard.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

It involves Middlebury athletes picking up Richard Varno, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, and bringing him to games.

And as you can see in the video, the whole tradition began with one person — one — noticing that two people needed help and deciding to pitch in.

This is not a new story, but it’s a refreshing one at this time of year and in a climate where schools need to look at their values.

It’s a reminder that one person can make a difference.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

Maybe one of these tips will resonate with you and turn into a New Year’s Resolution. It could help make for a better 2012!

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836.

Temple basketball coach Fran Dunphy underlined the need for teamwork by taking his team for a workout with the crew squad. His players got a first-hand look at chemistry.

Give this coach high marks for understanding that the game goes well beyond X’s and O’s It’s about teamwork and creating a sense of mission.

And, by the way, are there any athletes tougher and more dedicated than crew athletes?

“Classic French dish,” she said, “is code for lots and lots of butter.”

Wow! That really made me think. I’ve heard the phrase “classic French dish” many times, but I never attached the same meaning to it that the cook did.

It really made me think about coaching. Do your players know what you’re talking about? Do your words mean the same thing to them as they mean to you?

It reminds me of the Bill Cosby routine where God instructs Noah on building the ark. “Make it 50 cubits long, 10 cubits wide, and 15 cubits high.”

“Just one question,” Noah said. “What’s a cubit?”

There are at least two elements to the words you say. There is the meaning you intend, and the meaning that others receive. If you want to coach correctly, you better make sure those two meanings are as close together as possible.

If you want to improve at instruction, motivation, correction, inspiration, team-building and leading, make your language as precise as possible.

You don’t want to people to be saying, “I thought you meant …” You don’t want to be talking about cubits when others are hearing “classic French dish.”