You have to admit, even the best coach doesn’t make an athlete a success. Neither does any leader make their team a success. In all cases, the leader makes the environment where people can be a success.

A large part of success comes from what you focus on. Since the leader sets the vision for achieving the purpose of the team, they also determine where the team will be focused.

Bruce Lee once said, “What you habitually think largely determines what you ultimately become.”

I remember first learning this concept, and it’s application to business, in graduate school. We were studying the beginning of the gas station/food mart stores that are now common practice. We read about the first company that launched these combo stores. In their first year of operation more then half of the stores exceeded exceptions, the rest fell short.

The company assigned a team to analyze the results. They produced a list of all the reasons that the underperforming stores didn’t succeed. For the next year, the company focused on not doing the things on the underperforming store list. At the end of the second year, more then half of the stores fell short of expectations. What happened? Why didn’t they improve?

They didn’t improve because the focus of the company was on avoiding failure instead of achieving success. There were no celebrations of past success, only reprimands when past mistakes were repeated.

Successful teams live in an environment of success. Your job as a leader is to create that environment of success. Make it a habit to celebrate success, remind your team of the activities that brought success, and encourage successful behavior and attitudes through public and private recognition.