Coaches are often seen scouring the land looking for tips to improve their programs. Yet, we tend to forget the insightful, readily available source of great coaching advice – our athletes! If our end users are our athletes, are our programs “user friendly”?

I just spent the weekend with 16 amazing “teachers” at Positive Coaching Alliance’s 2nd annual Student Athlete Leadership Conference held at Stanford.  This incredible group of young women and men serve on PCA’s National Student Athlete Advisory Board to identify and address key issues facing high school athletes.

After delivering a 90 minute presentation on my new book, “Get Your Game Face On!”, I met 1-on-1 with each student-athlete for a coaching session. At the end of each session I asked each athlete to offer their top 2 pieces of advice for coaches looking to build an effective team culture. Here are their insights:

1. Spend time as a team away from the sport, this helps build friendships among players. Favorite activities include team dinners at coaches house, ice cream or Jamba Juice runs, movies, pizza night, attending the school play and bowling. [Note: this idea was mentioned by 14 of the 16 student-athletes]
2. Take the time to get to know and care about your players as people as well as athletes.
3. Gain the respect of your team first by establishing your authority before trying to be their “friend” – especially important for young coaches.
4. Build a team with a balanced selection talented players AND good teammates.
5. Personalize your coaching, workouts and instruction. Make them specific to each individual and their needs.
6. Treat every team member the same.
7. Captains are important – don’t take this choice likely. The captain often makes or breaks the team. Involve your players in the selection.
8. Find out what your players consider to be their strengths and work with them from there.

As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories—of success or failure, of power or victimhood—stories that last an hour, a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about our families, our sport, our relationships, and our health, as well as about what we want and what we are capable of achieving. The stories we tell ourselves profoundly affect how others see us and how we see ourselves. Ultimately, the stories we tell (especially to ourselves) determine our destiny.

In his latest work, The Power of Story, world-renowned sport psychologist’s, Dr. Jim Loehr’s, talks about how our stories impact our lives. And why do we tell ourselves stories? They help us navigate our way through life by providing structure and direction. They impose meaning into chaos; they organize and give context to our experiences.

Unfortunately, too many of the stories we tell ourselves are dysfunctional and in need of serious editing. For example, a coach might “run a story” in her mind that she inherited “two wise guys” who are going to impact the success of the team. For a player, a story might be that “I just don’t dribble with my left hand.” It’s important then to let go of these stories in order to create new versions that serve your goal and the team’s goals. To edit a dysfunctional story, you must first identify it. To do that, you must answer the question:

In which important areas of my life is it clear that I cannot achieve my goals with the story I’ve got?

Spend some time pondering and writing about this question. The results are not necessarily fun yet they are powerful.

Now shift your focus to your role as a coach. Take some time and write out your thoughtful answers to the two questions below. Your answers will shape the upcoming season.

ASSIGNMENT

1. What are the old stories on this team that will limit our success? If you are new to coaching the team, please write about the stories you’ve heard regarding the team.

2. What is the new team story that will drive our greatest success possible?

NOTE: this is also a great exercise for your players to complete at the beginning of the season. I used it last fall with a team and the players really connected to the idea of story in their lives.

Good or bad – every team is known for something. Every team, in fact every school has a reputation. Your team’s reputation is a reflection of your team culture.  As a trainer for Positive Coaching Alliance I learned an awesome definition of “culture”.  PCA defines culture very simply as “the way WE do things HERE.”  I believe that shaping the culture of your program is your most important job. Effective coaches are thoughtful about their culture and they intentionally create and manage that culture.

 My question for you is – “What’s your team (and program) known for?”  If I were to ask your competitors to describe your program and the teams you’ve coached, what would they say?  (You know they’re saying something.)  Is your program known for what you’d like it to be known for?  Is your reputation as a coach in alignment with your philosophy? 

Unfortunately, most coaches (schools and leagues) are haphazard and sloppy when it comes to cultivating a culture.  If you developing a strong culture and creating the reputation you want is important to you, you MUST be proactive about it.  If you don’t intentionally create the culture you want, you will most likely end up with whatever baggage your athletes bring with them.  They will bring stuff from other teams they’ve been on, stuff from home and all the wonderful things they see on ESPN. So, unless you proactively create a different culture, one that puts your philosophy at the forefront, you’ll end up with a hodgepodge from your current players.

I’d like to share a powerful culture-shaping tool known as a Signature Statement.  A signature statement answers the question “what do we want to be known for as a team”?  Humans are verbal creatures. Creating and using a signature statement (or slogan) shapes the way a team thinks of itself. 

Here’s how I recently implemented this tool with a team I’m consulting with.  I asked the players to think about what they’d like their legacy to be as a team.  Specifically, they were to brainstorm the following question:  “Aside from results, what do you want folks to say about you and this team 20 years from now?”  I let them think about it for roughly 5 minutes and then had them write down their words or phrases on big (4×6) note cards. 

Next, I set up the following non-alcoholic “cocktail party”.  We had access to a fairly large room and the players were to mix and mingle with each other.  They had 3 minutes total to introduce themselves and discuss what they written on their card.  I called time after three minutes and the athletes moved on to mingle with another teammate. 

After everyone “met’ and shared notes we gathered back as a group.  Now the fun started.  The team had to come up with a minimum of three and a maximum of five words to represent the legacy they wanted to leave.  The initial list consisted of twelve words and a few hours later we narrowed it to four.  I framed the discussion with my favorite Cheri Huber quote, “How you do anything is how you do everything”.  

The team exhibited many classic group behaviors including:  friendly chit chat, heated debate, the same people always speaking up, quiet freshman, folks checking out when the conversation dragged on, giving in on a point just to make everyone happy to name a few.  Not only did the exercise generate a signature statement the athletes created (and thus bought into) it provided the perfect experiment to observe how these players dealt with adversity and frustration.

Here’s the signature statement they created:  The xyz team of 2008/2009 is a united, competitive team who represents our school in a world-class manner.

Finally, I wanted to tie the team’s statement back to the idea of culture and “the way we do things here.”  Culture is about action. It’s about doing.  I wanted to provide the team an opportunity to practice “walking their talk”.  Here’s what happened. 

I divided the team into two groups.  I sent one group out in the hall and then set up the remaining athletes in the room as observers.  Next, I met with the group in the hall.  I instructed them to go back in the room and role-play the worst, most half-assed way to conduct a team meeting. Needless to say the actors went for the Oscar.  It was a riot.  At the end, we debriefed and the observers shared what they saw.

Following the first performance, I switched the groups.  The original observers were now the actors.  Their job was to go in and role-play a “world-class” team meeting. I gave them a few minutes to plan their performance.  The second group also gave an award winning performance. 

But wait, we weren’t done.  I wanted to give the first group of actors a chance redeem themselves.  We switched groups again and now the actor’s were to take it up a notch.  The instructions were to act out an even greater world-class team meeting. The actors dug in, got creative and delivered a top-notch performance. 

The exercise was a huge success.  I didn’t have to lecture. The athletes generated all the content and had a great time doing it.  They verbally and visually defined the legacy they wanted to leave using their own words and actions.

NOTE – we also had the team go through the skit process demonstrating what a world-class training session (vs half-ass) would look like.