At the height of Skip Hall’s coaching career, he helped lead the Washington Huskies to three Rose Bowl appearances.

At one of the lowest points, Hall abruptly resigned as Boise State University’s head football coach in 1992 after a 62-16 rout by the University of Idaho in the season closer.

Experiences he gathered through 30 years of coaching and 15 years in business have made their way into The Hall Group, a consulting firm he recently began that helps businesses and organizations get the best out of their people.

Hall employs three other people, including Ian Johnson, the former Boise State football star.

Q: What is the goal here?

A: Our desire is to help businesses — maybe some of them are startups — to really build their teams and grow them from the inside out.

Q: What transfers from 30 years of coaching to building teams in business?

A: When they see the work and the effort and the designing that goes into building a football program, starting with recruiting, well, you do the same thing in business. And let’s face it, people are attracted to athletics.

Q: What are things you look for in a good football player that you look for in a recruit in business?

A: It all starts with character. A strong drive to succeed. From there, once you ... get them on the team, then the training and the coaching set in. We used to say our program is pretty simple. It’s all about great recruiting. We’ve got a whole presentation. I call it “From the Locker Room to the Board Room.”

Q: What do you bring to this?

A: What separates us is the 30 years in the athletic world. We’ve got that background of having been at the highest level of recruiting, which is college.

Q: What are the lessons you learned from those 30 years in football and 15 years in business that you bring to this?

A: The most important thing I have learned for the 45 years is the capacity to care. By that I mean people want to be a part of something special. They want to be a part of something that is winning. They also want to feel they bring value to what you are doing. The capacity to care is so important to building a team.

Q: How do you bring that up against the tough competitive world that businesses find themselves in?

A: Coach them up, not down. In other words, if you give people encouragement, that is coaching them up. When you take courage away, that is discouragement. That is just beating them down to the point they are not effective. My belief is we are much more effective by coaching people up and lifting them up and helping them along the way with transformational leadership.

Q: This goes back to what I imagine was a dark time for you, your leaving of Boise State University. After the loss to U of I, you resigned. I am interested in why you made that decision, and having gone through that, what have you learned that you can bring to people today?

A: Just like you know when it’s time to go into a place, you also need to know when it is time to leave. Maybe it’s best for all parties concerned. We had a young team that year, and they struggled at times. I had been [at Boise State] six years. That was my feeling. Sometimes coaches and business people hang on way too long.

Q: Carry the lesson you learned about that time to what you teach people today.

A: The first lesson is you need to be aware of the time. We had great success. Our record was good. We went to the national semifinals.

The average stay is about four years. The thing to remember about business is the same as athletics — there are going to be some ups, some downs, some peaks, some valleys. The key is to maintain a consistency through it all.

Q: When you go in and look at companies, what are the biggest mistakes they make?

A: Communication. Communication is the breakfast of champions. Oftentimes there are very poor communications. That leads to a lot of insecurity.

Q: What do you tell them?

A: I really believe a coach, if he doesn’t know what is going on and being said in the locker room sooner than later, that program is going to be on a downward spiral, because the coach isn’t aware of what the feelings are of the people on the team. So feedback is a huge factor.

Bill Roberts: 377-6408, Twitter: @IDS_BillRoberts