Does talent outweigh a negative attitude? Can you justify keeping a talented player that causes trouble and brings the team down?

This post is from Coach Dawn Writes

By Dawn Redd-Kelley, head volleyball coach at Beloit College

Ideally, our best players are our best leaders.  They work hard, they motivate their teammates, and they communicate well with the coaches.  But what happens when a strong talent is an energy suck?  What if they only bring negative energy?  Does the good (their talent) outweigh the bad (their attitude)?

Not according to experts.

Will Felps is an Australian collegiate professor who focuses on the negative effects of bad apple teammates among other things. Felps “estimates that teams with just one deadbeat or downer suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples.”

30-40%????!!  How many close games or races did your team lose this year?  Could it be because of your bad apple?

I’d say this is a pretty solid argument for being aware of, trying to manage, or ultimately getting rid of the bad apples on your team.

I tweaked this list from a post over at Leadership Freak’s blog

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.

About the Author of this Post

Dawn Redd-Kelly is the head volleyball coach at Beloit College.  Her volleyball teams have earned the best winning percentage in school history.  She has coached at the high school, club, Division I and III levels…taking her first collegiate head coaching job at age 24 with the University of Rochester.  She played volleyball at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Coach Dawn Says: “I believe in the power of sport to teach winning and losing with grace, to inspire its participants to excel, and to create a common goal for the greater good.”

A coaches job is to get players to do their jobs well.  But just exactly what is a player’s job description.

Here is a link to the original article (You can also access other coaching articles on her blog) A Player’s Job Description

By Dawn Redd-Kelly, Head Volleyball Coach at Beloit College.

Editor’s Note from Brian: This post is provided as food for thought for your program. Not everyone coaches the same gender, level, or sport. But, this can give you some ideas to create your own list to help your program.

 

On the surface it seems simple (work hard, be enthusiastic about your sport, be good), but there’s more to it than those three things…though we need those things!  The foundation of every team is built upon those principles, but as our players grow up in our programs, they should:

• Add energy to every practice and competition,
• Manage the locker room,
• Come in early,
• Stay late,
• Treat newbies better than they expect,
• Offer to help teammates before they ask,
• Make dinner with the team,
• Leave the team better than you found it,
• Invent a moment of silliness,
• Highlight good work from your teammates,
• Help with recruiting,
• Get smarter at your sport by watching film,
• Encourage newbies to speak up,
• Push teammates to do the hard thing,
• Talk to coach,
• Tell a joke at no one’s expense,
• Celebrate the team’s success.

I tweaked this list from a post over at Seth Godin’s blog.

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.

This article was provided by Inner Drive, a mental skills training company

The post is written from the perspective of a soccer coach, but the lessons on developing a winning culture are applicable for all coaches regardless of the sport you coach.

Why do some teams outperform others? Why does the sum total equal more than the parts? For many, the answer refers to the ‘team culture’. But what exactly does this mean? And more importantly, how can you best develop it within your team?

A BAND OF BROTHERS

This year has been described by many as the year of ‘the underdogs’ (think Leicester City, Iceland and Walespunching well above their weight). Many have attributed their success to their team culture, often describing the players as a ‘band of brothers’. But what drives individuals to come together as a team?

Leading researchers explain organisational culture as ‘shared values, beliefs, expectations, and practices across the members a group’. Culture is defined as something everyone feels, but cannot see; existing as an unspoken understanding of ‘how we do things around here’. Sport specific studies and reviews show this can include traditions, rituals or symbols unique to the specific team.

It is shown that the adaptive qualities of being open to new learning and flexible to change prevent performance stagnation. Conflict, which inevitably happens, can be managed to enhance growth and creativity, problem solving and have positive effects on team effectiveness.

THE SECRET TO DEVELOPING A SUCCESSFUL CULTURE

If teams can encourage a culture that is adaptable and open to conflict as a form of innovation and new learning, they could expect to see more optimal and improved performance.  Through my research I suggest 6 tips to encourage a better team culture:

1. Have awareness of your team own culture

Take time as a team to consider what your culture is. What are the important values, beliefs, behaviours and the vision you encourage and work towards?

What kind of performance do you usually see (e.g. positive or negative) and what does it do (e.g. does it grow or is it stagnant / promote new thinking or not)? How does your team handle setbacks, conflict or challenges? In order to improve or change a culture, you must first understand how you operate as a team

2. Encourage team responsibility for the creation of your team culture

Culture is not rigid and neither will it necessarily always stay positive or negative. It becomes dependent on mindset (growth or fixed) and psychological momentum of everyone in your team.

They say positivity or negativity is infectious – the same is true of culture. Everyone holds responsibility for how they want the team to be, and they need to know this.

If you really want your team to buy into a particular culture, then they need to be the ones to take ownership, generate it and put it into practice.

3. Encourage team experiences together

The way majority of athletes said their teams learnt to be adaptable was to experience different things together. These experiences are completely dependent on the priorities of the team. However, what became clear was that if a team learns to deal with challenges together, they will learn to overcome them together (as noted by Wales captain Ashley Williams below).  This is more effective than them learning in separation; it keeps them cohesive and promotes confidence and reliability in one another, which all favour better performance.

4. Recognize team conflict as a natural and necessary occurrence

Do not prevent conflict from happening – it shows to be a very constructive way of resolving unspoken doubts or concerns within the team. It encourages individuals to think of alternative ways of solving a problem or overcoming challenges. Remember, conflict works when it is managed effectively – constructive criticism and discussions are the more positive ways of dealing with conflict.

This approach is one of the cornerstones of the successful New Zealand Rugby Team. Being able to talk openly, honestly and constructively, without taking personal offence is an important part of the process. (You can read more about how The All Blacks develop their team culture, in our blog here, ‘Why Are New Zealand So Good at Rugby’).

5. Encourage athletes to contribute ideas and opinions to group discussions

This links into using conflict effectively. Involving the whole team (e.g. athletes & coach) in the decision process not only encourages adaptability, it helps build team cohesion and can empower your athletes through the opportunity to make decisions. A healthy team discussion about which direction to take and why can help squash doubts and make sure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

6. Include everyone in the culture (make sure the team knows who the ‘team’ is).

As has already been mentioned, culture is everyone’s responsibility – it does not just stop at the athletic team. Whilst leaders or coaches have a big role to play in setting the expectations, visions and morals, especially for younger teams, you need other members of the team to help you spread the message.

For many this involves the welfare and support staff. All the other individuals that work to optimize the athletes’ performance need to buy into the same culture, led by the same expectations, in order for it to truly become alive. A great example of this was seen by the many different component parts at Leicester City coming together to work towards a single goals.

FINAL THOUGHT

Developing an effective team culture is difficult. Getting players to sacrifice the ‘me’ for the ‘we’ can be challenging. However, the rewards are worth it. As Aristotle, and later Gestalt psychologists noted, ‘the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts’.

If you’re a parent trying to best support your child, check out our blog How to Help Your Child in Sport.

We would like to thank Alex for writing this blog. For more information about her research, you can contact her on 

[email protected]. 

This post was contributed by Youth Ice Hockey Coach Karl Norton.

These are Coach Norton’s comments:

We will also be combining this (His 3 on ice objectives for his team) with our culture and compete objectives that we will ask the players to develop. I attended a coaching conference in June hosted by The Way of Champions and Changing the Game Project. There were about 60 coaches involved with a wide range of experience. This was one of my biggest take-aways and I’m looking forward to combining these ideas with my focused goals. The other element is the inclusion of the parents in the team culture so that they know what to support and encourage. This will be quite a challenge!

The intent of the process is to end up with 3 main points for Culture and Compete. A lot of words and phrases are synonymous so they will lend themselves to grouping of key ideas. The really big point is that it comes from the players!

I want to acknowledge where the underlying ideas come from. James Leath, Dr. Jerry Lynch, John O’Sullivan, and Reed Maltbie, as well as many others have been a major influence on my thought process. My own thoughts have melded with those who have ideas that I am attracted to!

Team Culture

At the start of the season, when we have all the players together, I would like to start working with the them on developing their Team Culture and their goals for competition.  What is important to them?  How do they want to play?

Objective #1: Players establish a set of team values.  What is important for your team?  What do you want to be known for?

Divide the players into 2 groups and ask each group to list 5-10 specific things that are important to how they want their team to be.  Combine the groups, discuss the ideas, and establish their team values.

Core values should be inspiring, believable, hold everyone accountable, things that will be rewarded daily in practices and games.

Words that describe great teammates and culture:

Grateful
Team player
Caring
Giving – what can I give for the team effort
Encouraging
Helpful
Good Sportsmanship
Supportive
Respectful
Great attitude
Fearless
Communicator
Positive
Focused
Kind
Gives all-out effort
Loyal
Listener
Trusting
Never gives up
Never loses confidence
Is never defeated – the other team cannot take away their mission

 

 Objective #2: Players define what it means to Compete.

Establish a Warrior Culture

Internal focus – not immediate outcomes
Process driven
Self-less attitude
All effort
Every day excellence
“When you compete, you’re difficult to beat.”

Divide the players into 2 groups and ask each group to list 5-10 specific ways that, when executed, demonstrate what it means to compete.  Don’t focus on winning, focus on competing “like crazy with your hair on fire!”  Combine the groups, discuss the ideas, and establish how they wish to compete.  This is their Mission.  The “exceptional execution of extraordinary excellence”.

For example:

Scrap for puck
Sprint hard on back checks
Play In-Your-Face tenacious defense
Be “present” on defense
Defend together
Attack together
Identify your man
Head up, feet moving
Communicate
Reaction to mistakes – move on quickly
Work hard
 

All tasks that are controllable, doable and easy to accomplish.

Combine groups and create a master list “This is how we will compete!”

Show up to compete!

Focus on competition – do the little things brilliantly

Controllable
Calm, Relaxed
Focused
Extraordinary performance

 

 

 

These articles were written and contributed by Scott Rosberg

Standards and Goals (Post 5 of 5)

This is the final post in this short series on “Individual vs. Team.” If you missed those first four posts, go to the “Blog” page of the Coach with Character website – www.coachwithcharacter.com – and scroll down to the posts – “Individual vs. Team, “Individual Goals vs. Team Goals,” “Aligning Individual & Team Goals,” and “Process & Habits for Achieving Goals.” Although the original intention of what became this series of posts was to focus on the concept of the struggle for team members to maintain their individuality and uniqueness while being focused on their team, the recent posts veered into some thoughts on goals and goal-setting. Today, I will finish up on a thought that I started in the last post on the idea of burning your goals.

Now I am not advocating that people don’t have goals. In the last post, I echoed some thoughts from Joshua Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert from their book Burn Your Goals in which they talk about focusing on the commitment to daily habits that will help you achieve your goal, rather than focusing on the outcome of the goal. Today I want to talk about the importance of focusing on committing to your standards even more so than committing to your goals.

Present or Future?

Don’t get me wrong. Goals are important to have, and they give people something to shoot for in the future. But that is where goals live – in the future. Standards live in the here and now. Committing to living by your standards is committing to doing things every day that are focused on the moment.

When we commit to a standard, we are saying we stand for something, and so these are the actions that people will see from us as we live our standards.  We are not saying that we are committed to something in the future (goal), and we hope to be able to achieve it. We are saying that this is how we are going to live our life right now (standards) because this is what we believe is the best way achieve the goals we seek.

Behavioral Standards Lead to Success

Standards and goals can work together to help teams achieve what they seek. Most teams have a goal to win some type of championship. How do they keep the goal in front of their teams in a positive, meaningful way that doesn’t get old, but that also doesn’t put too much pressure on them?

One way is to focus less on the championship itself and more on the behaviors that will lead them to the championship. This is where standards come into play. Teams need to discuss what behaviors and standards they must exhibit that will lead to the success they seek and then decide which ones are most important to their success. When they live by those standards, they have a better chance at achieving their goals.

While they are not placing all of their focus on winning a championship, by focusing on living by their standards, they have a much better chance of achieving that goal. So while it is good for teams to have goals because they give them something to shoot for, it is even more important for teams to have standards because they are guidelines for how they need to live in order to achieve their goals.

If you like the ideas in here on focusing on your standards more than on your goals, I have a couple of “must-reads” and “must-sees” for you. Go to the Proactive Coaching website and pick up Bruce Brown’s booklet “First Steps to Creating a Successful Team ” and his books Teaching Character through Sport and Proactive Leadership. Also, pick up the DVD Captains & Coaches’ Workshop to see the workshop that helps teams start the process of developing their culture by creating their standards. Click on any of the blue titles above to be taken right to that page on the Proactive Coaching website. Better yet, schedule one of us to come out and do a presentation or the workshop for your team/school in person. You and your teams will be glad you did, and you will be on your way to creating the culture you seek.

Thanks so much for reading this short series on individual vs. team. What started as an idea to talk about the difficulties of balancing individuality with team spirit, branched out into some really important ideas on goals, commitments, habits, and standards. I hope you enjoyed reading these posts as much as I enjoyed exploring each of the topics within them.

If you like these types of posts, I have many more like them on “Blog” page of the Coach with Character website that I think you will like, too. I send them out once a week to all the people who have signed up to receive them. When the red box pops up on the site, just enter your name and email address, and you will start receiving them each week in your Inbox.