There are tons of books on personal and team motivation.
You can find them by legendary coaches, marketing leaders, and business executives.
But, have you heard of dedication games to motivate your team?
Coach Bob Startkey talks about dedication games in his article Who’s Your 68?
During my tenure at LSU we had something each year we referred to as the “Dedication Game.” We would pick a game each year, usually late in the season, and have our team individually dedicate that game to someone. It was a very emotional event. We would sit in a circle in the locker room and each person in the circle would tell the team who they were dedicating the game to and more importantly why. Each answer was very unique and personal. Tears always flowed. Not only did we have a powerful motivational force for our next opponent but more importantly, we learned something deep about each member of our team. As we are doing this, we would pass a basketball around and you had toautograph the name of the individual that you were dedicating your effort to –also that night, you had to write a letter to that person explaining that you had selected them and why. As you can imagine, this was a special process to go through. Often the person would be deceased — yet the letter would be written. The autographed basketball went with us everywhere. If were on the road a player had to carry it. It went to pre-game meals, was center of the locker room floor for pre-game speeches and even had a seat on the bench with us. We always played with great emotion for those games.
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