02/24/2002 - Updated 11:31 PM ET

Olympic coaches know how to help stars thrive

Many companies have concluded that success rides on the shoulders of a handful of top employees. Retired CEO Jack Welch calls such star performers the lifeblood of General Electric and says they should be "loved, nurtured and rewarded in the soul and wallet" because they make the magic happen. The challenge is creating an atmosphere in which stars will thrive. They are the Olympians of the business world, so USA TODAY management reporter Del Jones turned to two Olympic coaches to find out how they manage the world's best athletes. The coaches: Ryan Davenport, whose athletes surprised the sledding world with two golds and a silver in skeleton, and Ben Smith, whose women's hockey team took silver after winning the gold in 1998. In separate interviews, both confirm stars are unique and present a management challenge.

Q: How do you motivate the star performer to keep getting better?

Smith: I'm fortunate to be in a position where I'm dealing with 20 of the best athletes. They didn't fall off a turnip truck. They're motivated or they wouldn't be here.

Davenport: An idealistic coach might like to think that people are working out of a sense of purpose or duty, but I'm sure that most athletes are putting in the effort in order to get the reward. Motivation is something that I believe has to come from within. I question the drive of athletes that can only perform if somebody else says, "Go, go, go."

Q: Surely, coaches and managers contribute something?

Davenport: We can improve their base skills so that their average every day is better than it used to be. When skills advance to the point where you can always expect a strong performance, you don't need to depend on peaks. The goal isn't to build peaks. The goal is to build plateaus. If they're not hitting a peak, they should be coming close.

Smith: It's important for them to know that I know what they're giving to the team. Only a few people are going to get credit publicly for a win, but they have to know that I know what they've contributed.

Q: In business, a star performer can be a lone wolf. How do you get star athletes to work as a team?

Smith: The puck is faster than any of the skaters. While people are going individually at full speed, they inherently know that teamwork is important. It's a real generalization, but sometimes I think women are more receptive to team play. I coached men's hockey for 30 years. Coaching men is like coaching capitalists, and coaching women is like coaching socialists. Women respond to team play.

Davenport: In an individual sport like skeleton, the athletes are in direct competition with their teammates, and they will often look out strictly for their own interests. If they help one of their teammates, it will drop their own position. Our video review sessions after training are done as a group. That allows athletes to pick up pointers on each other's errors or successes. The same data and analyses are given to all of the athletes.

We feed as much information as possible to everybody. At the same time, there must be incentives for athletes to prove they are better than their teammates. Everything in limited supply is handed out according to rank. We face continual complaints from the lower-ranked athletes who seek to restrict the progress of the top people in order to keep from falling further behind. I refuse to submit to such pressures and have little tolerance for such weak-willed efforts.

Q: What is your praise/criticism ratio when coaching?

Davenport: I hand out surprisingly little of either. I am brutally numeric, and I pay far more attention to the numbers on the clock than to emotions. I tell the athletes to make notes immediately after their training runs so that they can capture it while it's fresh in their minds. I encourage them to note, not only their mistakes, but also the parts of the track that they did correctly. There is always some small thing to improve. But if you only stress the errors, you can lose the benefit of reinforcing what you did correctly.

Smith: Constant correcting is critical. How you do it, whether in a positive manner or negative manner, is the key. There are some days I can be pretty stern and a little heavy-handed. As I've gotten to be a more mature coach, I've tried to keep it positive. Screaming doesn't help the performance.

Q: Stars certainly come with egos. How do you handle the prima donna?

Smith: You build it into the selection process. You get players who are mature. I don't know how professional coaches handle players when they can't fire them. It must be difficult when the tail wags the dog.

Davenport: With frustration. Although I only retired a few years ago, I came from a different era. In my day, top athletes, including myself, would pay for everything themselves and organize plane tickets, hotels and rental cars. Nowadays, athletes seem to expect to be waited on hand and foot. I was pretty low maintenance, and I have extreme difficulty dealing with the trends toward greed and arrogance.

Q: How do you handle the star performer whose opinions about how to do the job contradict yours?

Davenport: In some realms I have a great amount of experience, but I cannot feel the same things that the athlete on the track can feel. Athletes can often pick out small details while on the sled that we cannot see from the outside, and they should follow what they learn if it turns out to work better. In other areas, the athletes' input is almost always geared at what's best for them as individuals rather than what's best for the program. In such cases, we follow what we think is right, regardless of how upset the athletes might get.

Smith: I like it when athletes keep questions and comments in the confines of the group. I don't want them making comments and suggestions on the side.

Q: How do you handle personality conflicts between two star performers?

Smith: When I feel a brush fire coming on, I try to make sure it doesn't escalate. I pull the athletes aside and address it. I think quick correction is always a good policy. I tell them we're only going to be as strong as our weakest link.

Davenport: That's one of the toughest problems we face. The clock could care less about problems among the athletes, but these problems resonate. We hear continual complaints from athletes about their teammates, and although they seem to be able to put it aside when sliding, it must take up time and energy away from the track that would be better spent on figuring out how to go faster. It's nearly impossible to mold personalities at this stage. As an individual sport, skeleton often attracts strong personalities. We end up with a combination of stubbornness and individuality.

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