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What Coaches Can Do to Create a Positive Team Culture

April 6, 2020 by

From the Hudl blog

By Lindsay Peterson

Team cul­ture takes the com­bined effort of coach­es and play­ers. In this blog, vol­ley­ball coach Lindsay Peterson explains how coach­es can start build­ing the right traditions.

I’ll nev­er for­get my first col­le­giate vol­ley­ball game. It was the first time I’d been through the actu­al warm-up with the team. We did all the nor­mal things; warm up our arms, pep­per, work on team defense, etc. 

Then right before our time was done, the seniors pulled us into the hud­dle and told us there was a chant we always did before every match. A cheer that start­ed off just a whis­per and end­ed as a scream by the end. A cheer that in few words described just how good we thought we were. 

This chant was a rit­u­al — it nev­er changed. Game after game, we spoke those words. It was exhil­a­rat­ing, it made my blood pump, my heart race, and let me know that we were all in this together.

I look back at the moment and real­ize the com­plex­i­ty of that sim­ple cheer. It was tied to every game in the years I was in that pro­gram, includ­ing a Division II nation­al title, count­less wins and bro­ken records. It’s impor­tant to have these pos­i­tive tra­di­tions in your pro­gram, whether it’s cheers, chants, dirty sock rit­u­als or the thou­sands of oth­er things your team could do to get excit­ed about games. I’m a firm believ­er in pos­i­tive tra­di­tions + pos­i­tive lead­er­ship = pos­i­tive team culture.

There are two sides to my team’s cul­ture: how the coach and staff build tra­di­tions to facil­i­tate pos­i­tive cul­ture, and how team lead­ers help estab­lish that cul­ture. In this first blog, I’ll focus on the coach­es’ side. 

Pre-Season

I had a coach tell me once to always work play­ers extreme­ly hard in your first prac­tice of the year, then at the end of that prac­tice ask them what they want to be known for. I tried it and the results were great. 

Kids are eager to tell you what they think. Now for us, win­ning and los­ing isn’t who we are. The things we stand for and how hard we’re will­ing to work, that’s who we are. Having my play­ers estab­lish ​“who we are,” and what we want to be known for, is imper­a­tive for us to begin our season. 

Most of my teams agree on some­thing close to the same thing every year: tena­cious, relent­less, com­pet­i­tive, a nev­er-give-up atti­tude, hard-work­ing, hard to defend, sup­port­ive, etc. Every year will be dif­fer­ent because each year’s team is dif­fer­ent. Even your lead­er­ship might change. But you can sus­tain team cul­ture in your gym by estab­lish­ing who you are. 

During the Season

As the sea­son begins and then pro­gress­es, make sure you’re estab­lish­ing con­sis­ten­cies. For instance, before every home match, my team comes in ear­ly and sets up the nets. Then they spend the next 30 min­utes serv­ing and passing. 

It’s also a tra­di­tion for the team to gath­er at my house twice a year for ​“prac­tice.” We play games, eat snacks and watch moti­va­tion­al movies. Other tra­di­tions could be team din­ners, team-build­ing days, themed prac­tices, pro­gram game days. There’s a pletho­ra of inex­pen­sive, or even free, activ­i­ties for your play­ers to par­tic­i­pate in that are ben­e­fi­cial for your team culture. 

Make these activ­i­ties sus­tain­able and worth­while, and plan them in advance so it’s easy to stick to them.

Post-Season 

The end of the year is almost as impor­tant as the begin­ning. To make sure the cul­ture you’ve been build­ing all year will car­ry on, use your ban­quet to remind your play­ers of all the things they accom­plished through­out the year. You could even use awards to empha­size what’s most impor­tant for a pos­i­tive culture. 

At Millard North, we give out the Mustang Award to the play­er who has put in the work and nev­er gave up dur­ing hard­ships. The best part of this award is that it usu­al­ly winds up being a kid who doesn’t always get the ​“clout.” 

For exam­ple, one year it was a mid­dle who start­ed in the first 25 match­es of the year. She replaced an injured Division I hit­ter, worked incred­i­bly hard, and we went unde­feat­ed dur­ing the time she start­ed. When it was time for the injured play­er to come back, she didn’t give up. She con­tin­ued to give it her all, became a leader on the prac­tice side, and pushed us to be the best we could be. She gave her­self com­plete­ly and didn’t com­plain one time! That’s why this award is so impor­tant to me and to my pro­gram culture. 

Positive team cul­ture is a direct reflec­tion of the lead­er­ship pro­vid­ed by your coach­ing staff. Find ways to pro­mote cul­ture on your court and in your pro­gram. The long-last­ing ben­e­fits will be worth all your time and effort.

 


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