By Dr. Wade Gilbert, Professor
California State University at Fresno
Creating a Winning Team Culture
One of the biggest challenges for coaches is to figure out how to share their coaching purpose and teach core values to a different group of athletes every season. Although some athletes will likely return, rarely will a team have exactly the same group of athletes from one season to the next. Furthermore, at some point in your career you may find yourself in the position of taking over an existing team from another coach.
When taking over a team, coaches frequently talk about changing the culture as the first step toward instilling their coaching purpose and core values. Team culture has been defined as a pattern of shared assumptions that guides behavior. Culture comprises both the obvious artifacts of the team, such as team documents, basic operating procedures, and the physical arrangement of team facilities, and the less obvious norms and rituals.
Three-time national college football championship coach Urban Meyer shares a compelling example of how he built a winning team culture founded on three core values in the preseason of the year that the Ohio State Buckeyes won the first College Football Playoff championship in 2014. They started the preseason by creating a blueprint for communicating the core values with absolute clarity.
The core values were described as “what we believe,” and the core value action statements were described as “how we behave.” Besides listing the core value and an associated core value behavior, Coach Meyer and his staff also listed the expected outcome that would result from living the core value and core value behaviors on a daily basis. Collectively, these components become known as the Ohio State University Football Culture Blueprint.
You will notice in Coach Meyer’s example that the core value behavior for relentless effort is “Go as hard as you can, four to six seconds, point A to point B.” This guideline is in reference to the duration of a typical play in football (four to six seconds) and the fact that athletes need to be ready to push themselves with maximum effort in whatever direction required (forward, backward, sideways—A to B). This example shows how a core value can be translated into a meaningful and observable behavior guideline for athletes in practice and in competition.
One of the more remarkable team culture turnarounds orchestrated by a coach is the transformation of the British cycling team by Sir Dave Brailsford. When Coach Brailsford inherited the team, they were ranked 17th in the world and had won just two bronze medals at the 1996 Olympics. Coach Brailsford immediately began by creating a wide range of strategies for teaching athletes the core values that aligned with his coaching purpose.
The core values were summarized in the CORE acronym—commitment + ownership + responsibility = excellence. A team charter representing the core values was printed on all gear and on every bike. Coach Brailsford and cycling observers cite the British cycling team’s rise all the way to number one in the world and 12 medals at the 2012 Olympics as clear evidence that investing time and energy into coaching purpose and core values activities is well worth the effort.
Experienced coaches with decades of success are a great source of wisdom for learning how to use your coaching purpose and core values to build team culture. When asked about the keys to his success, J.T. Curtis Jr., American high school football coaching legend and 2012 National Coach of the Year, alluded to complete adoption across the program of a common purpose and shared values. Although coaching strategies, rules of the game, and athletes have regularly changed across his 40-year coaching career, he attributes his national-record 26 state titles largely to his timeless coaching purpose and core values. His coaching purpose is grounded in a deep concern for developing his players not only into great athletes but also into great people. Nonnegotiable core values include work ethic, positive attitude, and commitment to team.
Pioneering American swim coach James “Doc” Counsilman, also with more than 40 years of coaching experience, is another prime example of a coach who was extremely successful at building team culture every season. Renowned for his ability to coach athletes to championships and records—at one point his swimmers held the world record in every single swimming event—he is perhaps equally well known for his scientific approach to coaching. He repeatedly described his why for coaching as existing to help athletes meet their basic, individual psychological needs. He listed the need for love and affection, recognition, and a sense of belonging as common needs for athletes at any age and competitive level. Much like other championship coaches, he viewed his coaching purpose as a people builder.
Although few formal studies exist on how coaches instill their purpose and core values to build team culture, two examples can shed light on this difficult process. In the first example, researchers examined 10 American collegiate coaches who had all been hired to lead unsuccessful teams and who then coached those same teams to championships within five years. All 10 were quick to attribute their rapid success to the instillation of a team culture clearly aligned with a purpose and core values.
Coaches referred to the team culture as a mind-set and “the way we do things around here.” Instilling a team culture began with clearly communicating a small set of core values specific to their team and their environment. Although specific core values varied among the coaches, they could be regrouped into three types of core values: relationships (building trust), behavioral (daily actions), and strategic (skills and tactics fundamental to achieving success). Adoption of the new team culture typically took up to three years.
Coaches used four tactics to instill the core values that served as the foundation for the desired culture.
Defining and repeatedly articulating the desired values: This goal was accomplished through improving regular and formal communication channels, such as an increase in the number of meetings with individual athletes and sharing of a wide range of performance statistics.
Creating teaching tools to help athletes understand the core values: Role modeling behaviors by all members of the coaching staff that exemplify the core values was considered the most effective teaching tool. Other effective teaching tools included regular assignments that distributed leadership across the team and inclusion of lectures, guest speakers, and sharing of anecdotes and stories.
Designing specific recruiting and scouting techniques to secure players who held the same core values: This approach starts with defining the desirable attributes sought in potential team members (e.g., passionate, mature, coachable). Coaches were unwilling to let talent override personal attributes when selecting a recruit. The best way to determine whether a recruit possesses the desirable attributes is to observe the athlete in challenging or crisis situations in competition. Recruits must also be vetted by the current team members to determine potential fit with the team culture. Finally, coaches were extremely patient recruiters, always willing to wait if needed to find the recruit with the profile that matched the desired core values and culture.
Implementing reward and punishment systems to reinforce the core values: Common rewards and punishments were used, such as playing time and symbolic rewards (e.g., helmet stickers, special shirts). Regardless of the exact reward or punishment, to be effective it must clearly reinforce the core values. For example, if core values are responsibility and respect and a coach notices that the team left a locker room full of litter, then the coach may require them to complete a trash collection activity the following day.
The second example comes from a study of college coaches in Canada who were renowned for their ability to rebuild losing programs into conference and national champions. Four common themes were found: (1) a focus on individual athlete growth, (2) strong coach organizational skills, (3) a lifelong commitment to learning, and (4) a strong vision for where and how they wanted to build their programs. Their coaching purpose could be summed up as holistic development of athletes. Their coaching was driven by their vision of themselves as builders—builders of athletes, builders of people, builders of programs.
To lend further credence to this builder purpose for coaching, the lead author of the study, Chantal Valleé, adopted the coaching purpose and values she learned through her research after she became a college head coach. The results of her coaching journey are truly remarkable. She has transformed the culture of a college basketball program from worst in the country to an unprecedented five consecutive national championships.
Creating a team culture that represents and reinforces your coaching purpose and core values takes years and requires an aggressive, disciplined, and systematic approach. Constant repetition of multiple coaching strategies that recognize behaviors consistent with the desired team culture, combined with recruitment of athletes who embody the core values, are effective strategies for building and sustaining your team culture.
A common theme among the most revered coaches is a core purpose grounded in the view that quality coaches are people builders. It should come as no surprise then that Graham Henry and Wayne Smith, coaches of the world’s most successful sport team, the New Zealand All Blacks, created the mantra “Better people make better All Blacks” to serve as a constant reminder of this core purpose. Similarly, championship college soccer and lacrosse coach Jay Martin, whose teams never had a losing season in his 38 years of coaching at Ohio Wesleyan University, used the following creed as his guide: “Great people . . . Great teams . . . Great results.” Quality coaches know that adopting people building as the foundation of their core purpose directly contributes to improved performance on the field because development of people skills, such as communication and decision making, makes for better athletes.
Championship collegiate basketball coach Dawn Staley, who is renowned for building team culture, summed it up well when she explained, “This isn’t just about the four years they spend with me. This is about their whole lives.” Coach Staley models this people-builder purpose by coaching with discipline and passion and by providing her athletes with opportunities to learn life skills by being mentored by successful women in other fields.
Wrap-Up
The world’s most successful coaches always start by asking themselves why they coach. A clear understanding of your purpose and core values serves as the compass that provides the stable guidance needed to navigate your coaching journey each season. Everything else in your coaching world will be in a constant state of change. You will have to adapt your coaching strategies constantly to keep pace with these changes, but the rituals, traditions, and symbols you and your athletes create to embody your purpose and core values should remain relatively fixed. Although all coaches will need to find the purpose and core values that fit best with their style and the profile of their athletes, the vision of a sport coach as a people builder is a common theme found among the most successful coaches. In the words of distinguished championship basketball coach Don Meyer, “Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.”
This excerpt is taken from Coaching Better Every Season: A Year-Round System for Athlete Development and Program Success by Wade Gilbert and reprinted with permission from Human Kinetics, Inc.
To order a copy of the book Coaching Better Every Season, visit the Human Kinetics website at www.HumanKinetics.com or call toll-free at 800-747-4457.