The morning sun bounces a cool blue off the mahogany conference room table inside the LSU Athletics building. Lights stand at attention, pointing to an empty chair near a darkened corner of the sixth-floor room.
It is blissfully quiet when he arrives, buttoning his sharp linen suit jacket as he strides into the room.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” says Joe Alleva, the university’s Athletic Director. “I hope you can find my good side. Not sure I have one.”
Alleva is not verbose this day, but he is upfront, and he’s unassuming. As the flashbulbs fire and 225 photographer Collin Richie goes to work, Alleva has a lot of jokes about his appearance, too. They’re the kind that only a handsome all-star athlete can get away with.
Most of all, Alleva looks and sounds like a man who loves his team—the legion of coaches, players and support staff he leads and in whom he has complete comfort and confidence.
“It’s about chemistry,” says the former quarterback and finance specialist, as he explains why he’s excited about the purple and gold battalion gearing up for this upcoming football season.
Chemistry. This chemistry is not a science. It’s a mood. It’s how we describe the relationship between team members—that immeasurable but instantly recognizable feeling of rightness.
And yet, too often its importance is overlooked in favor of data or obligation or the fear of the unknown.
America is nothing today if not a modern individualistic society, and one by-product of that is a greater cultural focus on the bullheaded mavericks, the lone geniuses and the ultra-talented outliers. Though it is perhaps more essential, the synergy and efficiency of teamwork just isn’t as sexy as the marvel of a supreme superstar.
LeBron James will always get more magazines, TV specials and endorsement deals than the entire starting lineup of the Spurs, even though the latter just beat the former like a drum.
“To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless,” said Mike Krzyzewski, the renowned “Coack K” who led the Blue Devils to success on the basketball court by preaching teamwork, all the while working for Alleva at Duke University.
Whether in sports, business or life, there always is the hope that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that if those pieces are orchestrated just right, a glorious synergy strikes. When that happens, there’s an undeniably productive power of creative tension and release between partners who are meant to be. When the rebellious chaos of John Lennon met the charming order of Paul McCartney, pop music changed forever.
I don’t know if Alleva and his staff conduct team-building exercises, but recently, 225 and our sister publications, Business Report and inRegister, did. We ate a ton of crawfish, then took to the field for some kickball—like true players.
At times it was a blast, it was ridiculous, and it was thrilling. But in the end, every clumsy lunge in the air for the ball, every swing of the leg that aimed for a homer but struck more like a bunt, every amateur bout of trash talk bonded us because it revealed character—and a measure of vulnerability, too. And admitting weakness is an essential part of teamwork.
“The only way to [build trust],” writes teamwork specialist Patrick Lencioni, “is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
