Knowing your teammate’s little brother’s name will do more for your team than another speech.

Learning the small details of someone’s life does something no amount of motivational talk can. It tells them you think of them as a whole person rather than as a role on a team sheet, and people work differently for someone who has that view of them. Knowing a brother’s name, a job, a bad week, that is the whole technique. It is not a tactic, though it does work like one.

Ask one teammate a real question this week and remember the answer. Bring it up again later, which is the part that counts.