Triple H on Instilling a Team Mindset in NXT, Comparing NXT’s Goals to the Kliq’s

– On the latest After the Bell, Triple H talked about how he’s tried to instill a team mindset at NXT and how the result has been similar (in a good way) to what the Kliq tried to do. The Game and Shawn Michaels spoke with Corey Graves about developing the talent in NXT and Triple H discussed how the mindset of the brand thinking as a unit came from the duo’s days in the infamous backstage group.

Highlights from the discussion, and the full podcast, are below:

On instilling a team mindset into the NXT roster: “I think it’s something — when I first started it with NXT, I wanted to make something, you have to have that in order for people to engage in it. If they’re just there to get someplace else or if they’re not fully invested. It’s like going to college. You kind of want to have that team spirit and that team pride in your college, and your brand, and your ‘all those things.'”

On comparing NXT to The Kliq: “”To have them want to participate together — I always found it funny that there were a lot of people in the business that felt like stuff was ‘anti.’ ‘What’s in it for me?’ And the funny thing is, when people talk about the Kliq, they talk a lot of times about, ‘Oh, a group of selfish guys,’ or whatever. And the truth couldn’t be any more the opposite of that. We all were together for the same reasons, because we loved to talk about the business. We’d all sit in a car and that’s all we talked about forever. But half — maybe more than half of the conversation were about other people’s stuff, and other people’s ideas and storylines and angles. And then we were going and pitching that to Vince or whoever, and trying to move things forward. It was about the overall product working together.

“And I think that’s been the biggest thing of trying to instill in these kids down there that this is a team effort. One person’s gonna be on top or whatever, but everybody’s gonna move around. But you’re all participating in the success of this, the success or the failure of it. And having that all be bound together by that pride of that kind of unit, the NXT unit so to speak, and having that all intertwined. And then also having the people that came from there leave but still feel like they’re a part of it, so they’ll want to come back and give to it. And not just go move onto the thing and go ‘Oh, I hope I never have to go back there again.’ You want them to be a part of it and want to contribute. So it was a conscious thing to try and bind that together and make it be something more.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE’s After the Bell with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.