I spoke to a team that was visiting the Boston area yesterday on the topic of “The Ingredients of a Championship Team.” The Head Coach asked me an interesting question, “How much did trust factor into the success of the Celtics last year?”

Since I didn’t cover that in my talk to the team, my answer was that since it was such a big part of our team’s culture I often took it for granted — and therefore didn’t even mention it. In fact, trust permeated all of the important relationships and positions of our organization. Let me address team specific trust and not get into the trust from staff to management (which is very important on the professional level). I might add that we were very fortunate to have the ultimate trust from management to ownership and that we gave it right back!

In a team setting (corporate or athletic) there are four relationships we have to continually analyze to see where we are in those relationships and if we stand a chance to have success. In each of these relationships I strongly feel that you have to have a trust, a respect, and a “like” in order to reach the most difficult of your goals — with trust probably the most important.

The four relationships are:

• The players have to trust, respect, and like the other players,
• The players have to trust, respect, and like the coaches,
• The coaches have to trust, respect, and like the players, and
• The coaches have to trust, respect, and like the other coaches.

We probably could have been successful without the “like” part of this equation, but I will say that I felt it was a big factor for us as we are together every day for such a long season in the NBA. So the “like” factor actually helped us eliminate some petty situations that I know happen between players in other programs at all levels.

If we had to choose one factor as the most critical one, it would be trust. Without trust there is doubt. With doubt there is uncertainty. With uncertainty there is hesitation. With hesitation you are always one step behind. And without trust there is the ultimate sin in team sports……selfishness (without being able to trust your teammates or coaches, human nature says to take care of yourself first).

For us, trust was the foundation upon which we were able to successfully implement all facets of our total program — on and off the floor. The players and coaches truly trusted the total system.

I encourage you to analyze these relationships in your own programs or corporate settings. We were fortunate in that all four of these relationships were healthy and included trust, respect, and a liking of each other. Without these, I can tell you emphatically, we would not have won an NBA Championship!