Alternately raising or lowering his voice, sometimes directly addressing a member of the audience, Michael “Pinball” Clemons moves up and down the aisle created by two sections of folding chairs set up in the Toronto Argonauts’ surprisingly spartan locker room at the Rogers Centre.

“Generally, when you’re trying to build a team, it means you don’t have a team to begin with,” he says.

The Argonauts’ charismatic head coach doesn’t need a microphone or a stage. He has the full attention of about 50 business people and fans who have gathered to hear him deliver the keynote address of a one-day team-building seminar held by the
football club last month.

“Something has happened; something has gone wrong. And it’s more than a single event or a simple speech that will rally the troops,” he adds.

Such was the situation the Argos found themselves in three years ago, Clemons notes, when the Canadian Football League team had lost its way.

“In 2002, we were a team in turmoil,” says Clemons, now age 40, who enjoyed a stellar 12-year career as a running back with the Argos before becoming head coach, first in 2000 and then again in 2002 after a one-year term as Argos president. “There were questions of ownership, the stadium, the lack of fans, the lack of success on the field, the lack of leadership and direction.

“We were in a mess, [being criticized] every
day in the media.”

But Clemons and the Argos pulled themselves out the depths. And Clemons has developed a seven-step program for building a team, drawing on the football club’s experience.

The first step, he says, is knowing who you are. This involves identifying the common beliefs and elements that define a team.
With the Argos, Clemons instilled in a group of players from diverse backgrounds a sense pride in the team’s 132-year history and its importance to the community.

“I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard,” Clemons says. “Countless people have told me they’ve buried a loved one with an Argonaut jersey. The other day a guy came up to me to let me know that in the 1930s, before meeting his dad, his mother dated an Argo. She’s now 91 years old. He found great joy in expressing that story to me.”

Clemons also emphasizes to his players the importance of the CFL and the Grey Cup as Canadian cultural institutions, and the role the Argos play in charitable causes in the community. Over time, his players develop a sense of themselves as a team and pride in one another.

His second step is to outline an internal vision for the team — a purpose, a direction.

Clemons draws on the example of his mother, a single woman who gave birth to him when she was 18. She took courses to improve her situation and landed a job as a receptionist with the City of Dunedin, Fla.
Thirteen years later, she ran that office.

To Clemons, vision is an ability to see beyond present circumstances, however dispiriting, to a goal. “If you know who you are and where you want to go, what’s happening today won’t interrupt you,” he says. “And, as leaders, it’s your job to paint that picture.”

For the Argos, that meant establishing concrete goals of what the team wanted to accomplish. Although the Grey Cup is every team’s ultimate goal, last year the Argos focused on getting past the Montreal Alouettes, who had beaten them in the two previous Eastern Division finals. Last year, the Argos succeeded in dispatching their nemeses.

Culture of competency

The third step is creating a culture of competency in the organization. Clemons chooses the word “competency,” rather than “excellence.” He believes excellence comes from consistently doing a competent job.

“Excellence isn’t the game-saving tackle,” he says. “It’s making average plays throughout the game. When you do, you know you have the right people in the right places. You’re not getting to the point at which you have to make those complex decisions.

“In fact, a great play can camouflage deeper problems in the team.”

The goal of achieving an ethos of competency, making the right play every time, can lead to an oppressive blandness.
To counter that, the leader must ignite a passion for performance in team members (Step 4).