Teams that have negative cultures surrounding them sap the energy out of everyone involved–most importantly, the players. Teams that have positive cultures add energy to everyone’s tank. Being an “energy giver” is a conscious decision that coaches, players, and parents can make that will make the experience of being a part of the team more enjoyable for everyone. In this article, I will focus on some ways that coaches, can promote a positive culture for their program.

A positive culture doesn’t just happen on its own, it is a cooperative effort between coaches, players, and parents. A good way to set the tone is to have a parent meeting for coaches to clearly communicate their expectations for both players and parents. Coaches and parents will not always agree, but in the most positive team cultures there will be a mutual respect between coaches and parents for the difficult job that each group has.

Put it in writing. For coaches, put your expectations on paper and make sure that each player and each player’s parents have a copy of what those are. It also makes a big difference when players are involved in creating the expectations that they will be held accountable for. Make a list together of no more than a dozen expectations (for youth teams three to five is a good number) that your players agree to be held accountable for. This is not a goals list, it is a written vision for what the players are like in a team with a positive culture.

Examples are: Only positive body language, no excuses, only positive comments to teammates, and 100% effort expected at all times. Those are just a few positive behaviors to get you and your players started on creating your team’s list.

Players on a positive culture team enthusiastically support and follow the expectations that have been established. There are times when players must put what is best for the team ahead of their own desires. That is one of the great lessons taught by basketball!

The number one goal for our coaching staff is to develop a life long relationship with each participant that can never be broken. That motto is the first thing our coaches see when they open their staff notebooks. We operate with that thought in mind during all of our interactions with our players. Our coaches are the leaders for our program, but we can still treat our players as adults and with respect. It also means that we take the time to get to know our players as individuals and not just basketball players. I take a couple of minutes as they are warming up to make sure that I acknowledge each player every day and ask how their days have been so far.

You can be demanding without being demeaning. Developing a positive team culture does not mean that you ignore mistakes, or that you do not coach and correct your players. It means that you make corrections in a way that allows the player to keep his dignity. It has been my experience that players want you to be demanding in order to bring out the best in them. It can be done in a way that doesn’t create animosity.

As an example, one year our players and coaches developed as a part of our expectations that we would practice with the intensity of a state championship team. Certainly a demanding goal. Rather than yelling at our team when our intensity was down, I would simply ask, is that the Winamac (the school I was coaching at) Way that we agreed upon? Then it isn’t personal. It isn’t me picking on them. It is the coach holding the team to the standard that they set for themselves. I encourage you to find similar ways that you can be demanding in positive way with your team.

Teach the Improvement Process. There are really only three ways to improve: Develop a new skill, perform a previously acquired skill more quickly, or perform a skill with better technique. To achieve any of those performance goals, players must push out of their current ability level and comfort zone. When they do that, they will make mistakes. If you as a coach criticize or chastise your players for the mistakes they make that are a part of the improvement process, you are not going to see much improvement.

Coaches must set the tone in practice where your players understand why mistakes are an accepted and expected process of getting better. Mistakes will be viewed as stepping stones toward growth, or sources of frustration depending on how you frame them to your team. If your culture sees mistakes , you will see marked improvement in your players.

I believe that young people thrive in an environment where they feel comfortable. I also believe that they can both feel comfortable and be held accountable at the same time. The bottom line for school and youth teams is for the participants to have a rewarding experience. I would define rewarding as an opportunity to grow as a person and provide the fun that goes with participating in a team sport that enjoy playing. The more positive you can make the team culture, the more rewarding it will be for the players.

Coach Zak Boisvert has put together some notes on the coaching philosophy of Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban. I hope the notes can have a positive impact on your program. All coaches can learn something, regardless of what sport we coach.

PROCESS

“We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish, we’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.”

“We don’t talk about winning championships, we talk about being champions.”

-“I’m tired of hearing all this talk from people who don’t understand the process of hard work—like little kids in the back seat asking ‘Are we there yet?’ Get where you’re going 1 mile-marker at a time.”

-“The scoreboard has nothing to do with the process. Each possession you look across at the opponent and commit yourself to dominate that person. It’s about individuals dominating the individuals they’re playing against. If you can do this…if you can focus on the one possession and wipe out the distractions…then you will be satisfied with the result.”

-“He says ‘the grind’ a lot. The things you have to do so you can do what you want to do. Like play for the national championship. All the workouts. Spring ball. All the practices, summer workouts, and things like that.” –Alabama LB E. Anders

-“Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own.”

-“Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.”

-There’s no mention of titles. Instead, his message has been that the way to win a championship is to concentrate on what you’re doing today, and try to build on that tomorrow.

-“It’s not the end result. Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment.

That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

-“If you don’t get result-oriented with the kids, you can focus on the things in the process that are important to them being successful.”

DARE TO BE GREAT:

-“Being the absolute best isn’t natural. You must bend your entire life around being great. Beat the urge to rest after you’ve achieved a taste of success.”

-“Once you get good, you need a total disposition about being better than good. Now the challenge is to be the best and that’s a never-ending process.”

CULTURE:

“We don’t have one individual on our team that can make our team great, but we can have one individual who could destroy the team chemistry by making bad decisions and destroy all the things we’re talking about.”

-“Team chemistry begins to surface in the summer. True leaders start to emerge. You start to see the core buy-in that everybody has in terms of how they go about what they do. For the first time, the responsibility becomes theirs instead of somebody else’s. You start to see what the team might be.”

-“He does an outstanding job of getting everybody on the same page and making sure that they understand ‘Look, you’re going to buy in or you’re going to become irrelevant.”

-“You’ve got to be responsible and accountable and be able to do your job. There’s a way you have to do it in terms of the effort, the toughness and the intangibles and dependability you have and discipline you have in carrying out your responsibility. And I, quite frankly, think when you have a critical mass of players on your team that think like that, they don’t really want other guys that don’t think that way to be out there with them.”

Five Day-to-Day Goals

1) Respect and trust your teammates
2) Have a positive impact on someone else
3) Dominate your opponent
4) Be responsible
5) Act like a champion

PARABLES:

“If I put a 2-by-4 on the ground and asked you to walk across it, how many of you guys could do that? You could all do it, because you’d focus on the board. But what if I took the same 2-by-4 and it put it 10 stories up, stretched between 2 buildings? Then it’s hard to focus on the board, because you’re focused on your fear of falling. Focus on your goals. Don’t be distracted by your fears. Concentrate on the 2-by-4 and we’ll get it done.”

“Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.”

Four Components of Leadership

Engage: You HAVE to make it about them because they don’t see it like we do. Get over it, youth have changed.

Inspire: Why does every coach think that everyone wants to be great? Human condition is to survive, to be average. IT IS SPECIAL TO WANT TO BE GREAT. You cannot expect your kids to want to be great. We’ve had success here at Alabama because we don’t assume people want to be great and we’ve put a system in place that makes it uncomfortable unless they’re choosing the path that will make them great. We don’t assume they will do it on their own. It’s up to us to inspire/put a system in place to make people want it.

Influence: Thoughts, Habits, Priorities. Influence these 3 (IN THAT ORDER!)

Impact: How do we impact them? How do they impact each other? Peer intervention + peer pressure.

“Nick has unique ability to make everyone in the building single-minded in purpose. There’s nobody in there that isn’t doing something to try to win.” –Bill Belichick

“Everything for us goes back to trust and respect. Trust and respect the principles of organization, trust and respect each other.”

“He puts a structure in place that covers all areas from ankle-wrappers to play-callers. Everyone is held accountable. It’s a system where people know there’s a standard, an expectation that you’re there to meet.” –Major Applewhite

“You have to challenge people to do things a certain way and it may be more than what they expect from themselves. You have to re-enforce positive performance when they do it, but you also have to confront them to do it correctly if they don’t do it that way. And there’s a balance in there.”

SELF-DISCIPLINE:

“Everything you do, everything you have, everything you become is ultimately the result of the choices you have made. You have the power to direct your life. How will you use it? What’s your choice?”

You have to have discipline to do things on your own. There’s not always going to be someone to make you do it. You have to have discipline to do it yourself.”

MOTIVATION

“I don’t care what you did yesterday. If you’re happy with that, you have bigger problems.”

MENTAL TOUGHNESS

“Mental toughness is a perseverance that you have when you can make yourself do something that you really don’t feel like doing. You don’t really feel like getting up, but you get up. You don’t feel like practicing today, but you practice. And, even in difficult circumstances and difficult surroundings, you can stay focused on what you need to stay focused on. So it really is a mental discipline to be able to
stick within whatever circumstance you are in and continue to persevere at a high level and not let other circumstance affect how you perform.”

“I will not allow my players to put their hand on their knees or show in their faces they are tired going into the fourth quarter. If they do, they are going to get their butts whipped. If they do that, they are showing the other team they can be beat.”

“The mental toughness training was geared toward showing players that their minds were as important to football success as their bodies.”

“Every day you come to practice, you get better or you get worse. You’re not going to stay the same and it’s all going to start with how you think. How you think will determine the mental intensity you play with. Without that mental intensity, we cannot improve.

“There are 3 intangibles that take no athletic ability that aids a player in being responsible for his own self-determination. Those 3 intangibles take the most time in coaching in my opinion. Those intangibles are effort, toughness, and assignment.”

“I think the things that it takes to be successful are the same regardless, whether it’s passion, commitment, hard work, investing your time in the right things, perseverance, pride in performance, how you think in a positive and negative way, the discipline you have personally—you have to make choices in your decisions.”

MISCELLANEOUS:

“He doesn’t obsess over national championships, he obsesses over trying to push people to be better. He thinks if he can do that, the wins will come.”

“You don’t dominate someone the first play, you do it the 70th play. You need to sustain.”

“Make all your decisions based on winning.” (#1 thing Saban learned from Chuck Knoll)

Locker room sign: “Don’t Come Back Until You’ve Improved”

“Be relentless in the pursuit of your goal and resilient in the face of bad luck and adversity.”

“The one thing our program is based upon is finishing. Finish games. Finish your reps. Finish your running. Finish practice strong. Finish the fourth quarter.” –Alabama OL Will Vlachos

“Don’t look at the scoreboard. Whether you’re ahead or behind shouldn’t affect how you participate.”

“Teaching is the ability to inspire learning.”

These articles were written by Alan Stein on his Stronger Team Blog.

Assistant Coaches’ Code:

1. Your #1 job is to make your head coach’s job easier. Be a servant leader. Find what your head coach needs you to do and do it!
2. Act as if it is your team. You will have your own team one day. Act like it now.
3. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. No excuses.
4. Add value to everything you do, every single day… on and off the court.
5. Enforce the team’s culture and standards at all times. Protect the locker room.
6. When you find a problem… find a solution. Your head coach has enough problems as it is.
7. Be professional. Period.
8. Encourage and motivate everyone in your program to buy in to what the head coach wants – from players, to managers to other assistants.
9. Bring energy, enthusiasm and effort every day.
10. When asked for your input, speak honestly. Don’t be a ‘yes’ man (or woman).

Coaching Absolutes:

1. 1. Don’t focus on winning (outcome); focus on preparation, effort and execution (process).
   2. Winning is a result of:
      The execution of the fundamentals
      The ability of all players to work in unison… all the time.
   3. A team can only reach it’s true potential if:
      The most talented player is also the hardest worker
      Everyone in the program buys in to the ‘We > Me’ concept
      Each player is in peak physical condition
   4. You either accept it or you correct it.
   5. You play the way you practice.

Alan Stein

ABCs of Success

Here are the ABC’s of success:

A – Adapting, Asking

B – Believing

C – Caring, Challenging, Creating

D – Dreaming, Defusing

E – Engaging, Envisioning, Evaluating, Evolving, Educating

F – Failing, Focusing

G – Growing, Grinding

H – Helping

I – Innovating, Inspiring

J – Juking, Juggling

K – Knowing

L – Leading, Learning, Listening, Loving

M – Mentoring, Mending

N – Networking

O – Objecting, Outworking, Observing

P – Preparing, Pursuing, Pushing

Q – Questioning

R – Reaching, Reading, Resolving

S – Searching, Seeking, Serving, Sharing, Simplifying, Striving, Smiling

T – Thinking, Tweaking

U – Understanding

V – Viewing, Voicing, Valuing, Varying

W – Working

X – Xeroxing (‘copying’ – couldn’t leave X out!)

Y – Yearning

Z – Zigging and Zagging

Now you know your ABC’s… I hope you’ll do these things with me!

Hardwood Hustle Blog
http://www.About.me/AlanStein

I received this from Steve Smiley. The values are from The North Carolina women’s soccer program. They have won 21 NCAA National Championships since 1982. So, even if your sport is not soccer, there is definitely something you can use to develop your program’s culture.

The University of North Carolina Women’s Soccer Team’s Core Values 2012

People who make a living from studying what makes organizations excellent usually boil their consistent success down to the group living a powerful set of core values. So if you were to read “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies” (by Tom Peters et. Al) or “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies” (by Collins & Porras) or “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (Collins) or even “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People (Covey) or “The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management” (Smith), and these might be the best of the books by the brightest minds, . . . what these people are trying to teach us is this: there are certain principles of behavior that produce extraordinary results.

Every year when I meet with the rising seniors each week in the spring our discussions center around our core values and what they can do to live them and how they can help drive everyone within the culture to live them as well. Human nature being what it is, some leaders embrace the personal and public challenge of our discussions and some don’t; just like some people within the culture live the core values and some just don’t have the strength.

What we are trying to do now is collect our core values under an umbrella of quotes that are meaningful to us (coaches and rising seniors). Obviously since I have been reflecting on this longer and with a better understanding of what kind of behavior will positively effect our culture (because I have seen quite a bit in coaching the past 36 years) much of what you are going to digest are ideas that have inspired me.

Still every rising senior has made contributions or is sold on these ideas because we ask them to review them in the spring. We need them to embrace and live what we have collected below because our culture and core values are only as strong as our leaders and what they endorse and drive as acceptable behavior.
So over the past 33 years, since our program began in 1979, what are the best elements of our tradition? What are our core values?

The Core Values

I. Let’s begin with this, we don’t whine. This tough individual can handle any situation and never complains about anything on or off the field. (“The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” George Bernard Shaw).

TOUGH – from Nordic wheel cross signifying thunder, power, and energy

II. The truly extraordinary do something every day. This individual has remarkable self-discipline, does the summer workout sheets from beginning to end without omission or substitution, and every day has a plan to do something to get better. (“Roosevelt, more than any other man living within the range of notoriety showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter, the quality that medieval theology assigned to God: ‘he was pure act’.” Henry Adams Theodore Rex – Desmond Morris).

DISCIPLINED – from “careful” cycle on washing machine

III. And we want these four years of college to be rich, valuable and deep. This is that focused individual that is here for the “right reason” to get an education. She leads her life here with the proper balance and an orientation towards her intellectual growth, and against the highest public standards and most noble universal ideals, she makes good choices to best represent herself, her team, and her university. (“College is about books. And by the word books, the proposition means this: College is about the best available tools—books, computers, lab equipment—for broadening your mastery of one or more important subjects that will go on deepening your understanding of the world, yourself and the people around you.

This will almost certainly be the last time in your life when other people bear the expense of awarding you four years of financially unburdened time. If you use the years primarily for mastering the skills of social life—as though those skills shouldn’t already have been acquired by the end of middle school—or if you use these years for testing the degree to which your vulnerable brain and body can bear the strains of the alcoholism with which a number of students depart campus, or the sexual excess that can seem so rewarding (to name only two of the lurking maelstroms), then you may ultimately leave this vast table of nutriment as the one more prematurely burnt-out case.” Reynolds Price).

FOCUSED – from camera focus button

IV. We work hard. This individual embodies the “indefatigable human spirit” and never stops pushing herself. She is absolutely relentless in training and in the match. (“The difference between one person and another, between the weak and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy – invisible determination . . . This quality will do anything that has to be done in the world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make you a great person without it.” Thomas Buxton – Philanthropist).

RELENTLESS – from the symbol for Saturn: god of “relentless natural forces”

V. We don’t freak out over ridiculous issues or live in fragile states of emotional catharsis or create crises where none should exist. The best example is the even-keeled stoic that is forever unflappable and resilient. The worst example is the “over-bred dog,” that high maintenance, overly sensitive “flower” that becomes unstable or volatile over nothing significant. (“What an extraordinary place of liberties the West really is . . . exempt from many of the relentless physical and social obligations necessary for a traditional life for survival, they become spoiled and fragile like over bred dogs; neurotic and prone to a host of emotional crises elsewhere.” Jason Elliot An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan).

RESILIENT – nautical buoy symbol which rises and falls with the water, always staying upright.

VI. We choose to be positive. Nothing can depress or upset this powerful and positive life force – no mood swings, not even negative circumstances can affect this “rock”. (“ . . . everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance . . . in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person (you are is) the result of an inner decision . . . therefore, any man can . . . decide . . . that (this) last inner freedom cannot be lost.” Viktor E. Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning).

POSITIVE

VII. We treat everyone with respect. This is that classy angel that goes out of her way to never separate herself from anyone or make anyone feel beneath her. “Class is the graceful way you treat someone even when they can do nothing for you.” Doug Smith, Mgr (’86))

CLASSY – British hobo symbol for “here live generous people”

VIII. We care about each other as teammates and as human beings. This is that non-judgmental, caring and inclusive friend that never says a negative thing about anyone and embraces everyone because of their humanity, with no elitist separation by academic class, social class, race, religious preference, or sexual orientation. (“No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne For Whom the Bell Tolls).

CARING

IX. When we don’t play as much as we would like we are noble and still support the team and its mission. This remarkably noble, self sacrificing, generous human being always places the team before herself. (“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.” Viktor E. Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning).

NOBLE – Hittite sign for king

X. We play for each other. This is the kind of player that works herself to death covering for all of her teammates in the toughest games. Her effort and care (her verbal encouragement) make her a pleasure to play with and her selflessness on and off the field helps everyone around her. (“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Note given to me by Rakel Karvelsson (UNC ’98))

SELFLESS – from combination of ancient symbols for “not” and “relating to self”

XI. We are well led. This is the verbal leader on the field that is less concerned about her popularity and more concerned about holding everyone to their highest standards and driving her teammates to their potential. This galvanizing person competes all the time and demands that everyone else do as well! (“Not long ago, to ‘believe in yourself’ meant taking a principled, and often lonely, stand when it appeared difficult or dangerous to do so. Now it means accepting one’s own desires and inclinations, whatever they may be, and taking whatever steps that may be necessary to advance them.” William Damon Greater Expectations).

(“Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.” Carl Sandburg about Abraham Lincoln)

GALVANIZING – international symbol for pushbutton or switch

XII. We want our lives (and not just in soccer) to be never ending ascensions but for that to happen properly our fundamental attitude about life and our appreciation for it is critical. This is that humble, gracious high-achiever that is grateful for everything that she has been given in life, and has a contagious generosity and optimism that lights up a room just by walking into it. (“Finally there is the question of whether we have a duty to feel grateful. Hundreds of generations who came before us lived dire, short lives, in deprivation or hunger, in ignorance or under oppression or during war, and did so partly motivated by the dream that someday there would be men and women who lived long lives in liberty with plenty to eat and without fear of an approaching storm.

Suffering through privation, those who came before us accumulated the knowledge that makes our lives favored; fought the battles that made our lives free; physically built much of what we rely on for our prosperity; and, most important, shaped the ideals of liberty. For all the myriad problems of modern society, we now live in the world our forebears would have wished for us—in many ways, a better place than they dared imagine. For us not to feel grateful is treacherous selfishness.

Failing to feel grateful to those who came before is such a corrosive notion, it must account at some level for part of our bad feelings about the present. The solution—a rebirth of thankfulness—is in our self-interest”. Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox.)

GRATEFUL – Gordian knot indicating person is “bound” by debt of thanks

These are some notes from NFL Hall of Fame Coach Bill Walsh’s book on leadership entitled “The Score takes care of itself.” I think they are very worthy of consideration as you assemble and teach the standards that you expect for your team.

When Walsh arrived with the 49ers, he didn’t have a timetable for a championship. He had an urgent timetable and agenda for installing specific behavioral norms for everyone’s attitudes and actions. He implemented what he called his standard of performance—a way of doing things and a leadership philosophy having to do with core values, principles and ideals. It has more to do with the mental than with the physical.

His belief is that organizational ethics are crucial to the ultimate and ongoing success of a team. “Good talent with bad attitude equals bad talent.”

The dictates of the leader’s personal beliefs should become the characteristics of the team. His or her philosophy is the single most important point on a leadership compass. It is a blueprint for what should be done, when it should be done, and why it should be done. These are the basic characteristic of attitude and action that Bill wanted to instill:

Bill Walsh’s Standard of Performance:

1. Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed toward continual improvement.
2. Demonstrate respect for each person in the organization and the work he or she does.
3. Be deeply committed to learning and teaching which means increasing our own expertise.
4. Be fair.
5. Demonstrate character.
6. Honor the direct connection between details and improvement.
7. Relentlessly seek improvement.
8. Show self control especially when it counts most—under pressure.
9. Demonstrate and prize loyalty.
10. Use positive language and have a positive attitude.
11. Take pride in my effort as an entity separate from the results of that effort.
12. Be willing to go the extra distance for the organization.
13. Deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation.
14. Promote internal communication that is both open and substantive (especially under stress).
15. Seek poise in myself and those I lead.
16. Put the team’s welfare and priorities ahead of my own.
17. Maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high.
18. Make sacrifice and commitment the organization’s trademark.
19. The leader must exhibit the principles, code of conduct, and behavior that he is asking others to emulate.

You can read through a part of the book by clicking on the image of the cover