Two Ways to Get Your Team to Be More ______

It’s a question I get often: How do I get my team to be more resilient? More selfless? More positive? More accountable? To be better leaders? The answer is simple, but the work is not easy.

Recently, in a call with a coach I work with, we discussed the upcoming season. The stress was mounting for her—the long hours, a few poor player attitudes, a complaining parent, an unsupportive administrator, and a young, inexperienced team with a strong chance of a losing season.

It’s not an uncommon situation.

Who do you want your team to be and become through it all? Resilient, positive, selfless, accountable, grateful.

What do you want them to experience? Joy, care, and growth in the process.

It’s easy to articulate answers to those questions. And it’s become more and more common for teams to gather to craft mission and vision statements, core values, and team standards to answer those questions prior to a season.

And yet, from experience, we know that when the rubber meets the road, those values often don’t hold up. Win three games in a row or lose three games in a row, and players can go negative—they blame, complain, and make excuses. They start to focus more on themselves and fail to step up and lead. Team drama comes up.

What’s the solution?

#1 Become More __________

If we want our team to become more resilient—we need to stay committed, confident, and consistent when we hit adversity.

If we want our team to become more selfless—we need to see others’ needs, challenges, and desires as legitimate as our own.

If we want our team to become more accountable—we need to step into 100% responsibility for the circumstances we have created in our lives, as well as our own physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

If we want our team to become more positive—we need to find something positive in every situation and assume positive intent in everyone we meet.

If we want our team to become more grateful—we need to be grateful for the opportunity we get to coach them every day and thank our players (and their parents) for allowing you to coach them.

If we want our team to become better leaders—we need to identify our blind spots and areas of growth and work at those every single day.

In her book on parenting, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, Dr. Becky Kennedy discusses how research has established that, oftentimes, when kids are struggling, it is not therapy for the child but coaching or therapy for the parent that leads to the most significant changes in the child.

It’s the same for us as leaders—it’s one thing to stand up in front of a room and talk about core values and slap them on a t-shirt or wall—it’s a totally different thing to become our core values.

We complain our athletes aren’t resilient—and yet we abandon our principles when we take a few hard losses.

We complain our athletes are so negative—and yet we are being negative about them.

I don’t think I need to go on with more examples; you get the idea and the irony, right?

When discussing his Pyramid of Success (core values), the legendary basketball coach John Wooden said, “Handouts and discussion were meaningless unless team members could see lots of evidence of the pyramid in my own behavior as a leader and a coach. Your own personal example is one of the most powerful leadership tools you possess. Put it to good use: Be what you want your team to become.”

#2 Systematize Your Values

It’s important to early on communicate your core values or co-create those values with your team and then define those values by getting clear on the behavioral standards on which to live those out.

But doing this usually fails to bring those values to life, because leaders fail to make them an EVERY day thing.

If you want to truly actualize your values—to give your team and those individuals a new identity, your core values have to be a thing every single every day.

Here are some ways you can start to make your core values an everyday thing:

Say one of your core values is selflessness.

1. When you start practice—you could ask your team to get into small groups and ask them to identify one behavior or intention they can have to be more selfless in that session.
   
   
2. When you practice as a team—when a player does something selfless, you should blow the whistle, stop the team, and praise a player for demonstrating selflessness.
   
   
3. When you finish practice as a team—you could ask players to shout out a teammate for a moment they demonstrated selflessness.
   
   
4. When you watch film—you could be highlighting selfless plays and behaviors you see in the film.
   
   
5. When you meet weekly as a team—you could choose selflessness or another core value to highlight and discuss, asking players to talk about what it means to them.
   
   
6. When you send out a practice plan, email, text message, or any piece of communication, you could put your core values at the header of that communication.
   
   
7. When you talk to your team, you could be intentional in talking less about how they are doing (performing) and talk more about who they are becoming (more selfless or another core value).
   
   
8. When you set a success criteria for a game, instead of just focusing on technical or tactical criteria, you could always have one that focuses on a core value—like a selfless behavior of “making the extra pass.”
   
   
9. When you do player reviews or recruiting, you could assess players not just on technical or tactical skills, but on how they demonstrate or fail to demonstrate your core values (selflessness).
   
   
10. When you have any chance to share with your team you could share stories of selflessness. Share podcasts, YouTube videos, films, book chapters, and tell your own stories of players that have come before them who have demonstrated selflessness.

Never stop talking about your values. If your players aren’t making fun of you or tired of hearing you talk about those values, then you aren’t doing enough.