Team Culture – Define before Selection
Much has been written about culture in the world of business. In our sporting world, culture is gaining more acceptance as one of the most important factors to “get right” if we are to enjoy a successful season.
A successful season from our perspective means your athletes perform to their best ability and play in games or race as well as their best training sessions; there is wonderful team chemistry; the off-field behaviour of your athletes is “role model status”; and each athlete on the team genuinely is making a positive contribution to society. Note that by our measure, a successful season is not a measurement of the win-loss record. Whether you win or not is only partly in your control. What you can control entirely is your approach to the game (and your sport) and honouring it with your best efforts 100% of the time.
Culture is a measure of the behaviours your team and organization promotes and accepts. Ultimately culture is best defined simply as “the way we do things (behave) around here”. What are your team’s standards? What is and is not acceptable behaviour on and off the field? Once you understand the type of culture you have and the type of culture you want, then you are in a position to begin to select athletes who you trust can add value to this culture. There may also be some more challenging decisions to be made as the selection criteria are not only on their ‘sporting ability’. This may actually result in an athlete who is an excellent player, not become part of your team because they do not add value or “fit” with the culture you either have or want to have.
The type of culture you are to strive for is also determined by the quality of the results on and off the field, your team is hoping to achieve. In practice, if your team and organization’s expectations are to be the best in the competition, then how you behave in every aspect of your sport must reflect this goal.
If you don’t spend time upfront identifying exactly what you want for the team you may risk ending up with a group of athletes who aren’t able or aren’t willing to deliver what you are aiming for. In a way, it is like goal setting. Unless you set your own goals, you will end up part of someone else’s goals.
When you articulate exactly what you want, you have deliberate and considered criteria against which to select athletes. This puts you in the driver’s seat. The criteria you develop includes the very important technical aspects of positions on the team as well as values, behaviours, how others will view (and talk about) you and what is important to your sporting organization.
Putting this together on a one page summary is also useful. You can use it as your own guide during selection as a reminder of the ultimate goal, you can use it to share your vision with potential athletes and it can even be a ‘sales document’ to attract the best athletes. It also provides a consistent message to share within your coaching team, club, sporting organization or college.
As a coach, you are to create the initial vision of the type of culture you want your team to have. Once you have defined this, then you are in a position to select athletes who are more likely to be able to behave in accordance to this.
Bo Hanson is 4x Olympian, Coaching Consultant & Director of Athlete Assessments. To learn about Team Development Strategies, please visit http://www.athleteassessments.com/
Processing your request, Please wait....
