Managing the home crowds' energy

Insightful comment from Northeastern hockey coach Greg Cronin, whose team is ranked fourth in the nation, behind only Boston, Notre Dame, and Michigan.

With every win, NU's home crowds have grown. According to this article, "the noise is constant."

Coach Cronin (pictured here) claims that while it's true that the Huskies' "arena has been a real special place this season," the best part is how his players can use the fans' enthusiasm to their advantage:

"Our players have the opportunity to manage the energy in the building."

Confidence is as significant as anything in performance

A person's confidence, while making a presentation in front of a group of businesspeople or playing basketball, has a clear influence on how he performs, regardless of the situation.

"Confidence, I think, is as significant as anything in performance," said UNLV coach Lon Kruger recently. "People who play with confidence, who perform with confidence, feel good about what they’re doing. It’s hard for people to be confident if you’re tearing them down all the time. So we’re just trying to build them up to promote confidence, to promote enthusiasm. It all ties together."

According to Coach Kruger, whose Rebels are 20-8 with two regular season games left, building confidence doesn't necessarily mean going soft.

"Some individuals may need to get after it a little harder, in a constructive way,” Kruger said. "Even when you’re getting after people, that’s not a negative. That can be constructive when it’s intended the right way."

An enthusiastic person tends to inspire enthusiasm in others

After writing this post this morning, I went looking for a book I'd read by John Adair, a former soldier in the British Army who had a long career as a management professor and leadership consultant.

In 2004, Adair published a book titled "The Inspirational Leader," in which he explains why enthusiasm is often necessary to lead.

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An enthusiastic person tends to inspire enthusiasm in others. At times we all need encouragement.

"There is a point with me," wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins, "in matters of any size when I must absolutely have encouragement as much as crops need rain."

The effect of a change of leader -- an enthusiastic one in place of one lacking any powers of inspiring others -- can seem quite magical, even where the work in question is drudgery or toil.

Xenophon (pictured above), a Greek general, gives us two examples. His first comes from his observations of life aboard the Greek war galleys known as triremes, with three tiers of rowers drawn from the lowest class in Athens.

To get the best out of these oarsmen... called for the kind of uplifting yet demanding leadership that produces enthusiastic teamwork resulting in great performance. Xenophon writes of the rowing-masters who could do it as if they were conductors of a winning chorus:

On a warship, when the ship is on the high seas, and the rowers must toil all day to reach port, some rowing-masters can say and do the right thing to sharpen the men's spirits and make them work with a will. Other rowing-masters are so lacking in intelligence that it takes them more than twice the time to finish the same voyage. Here they land bathed in sweat, with mutual congratulations, rowing-master and oarsmen. There they arrive with dry skin; they hate their master and he hates them.

In the words of [conductor] Sir Georg Solti, "In my enthusiasm and intensity I will often push people to the limits of their capabilities -- and that must entail a certain degree of risk. The great thing is that the risk pays off when that person suddenly finds something in themselves they didn't know was there."