Team Culture Building – How and Why

Team Culture is one of the most important things that every team has going for or against it. Team culture defines how players act towards each other, how they compete, the effort they put it, their attitude, their energy, and so much more. As a leader it is on you to to guide your team members toward the culture that you want. This article defines team culture and suggests some ideas how to develop the culture you want for your team.

Quick callout: The topic of creating team culture is relevant to both coaches and players. Players can often be the driver to help create the culture they want to operate in and often having the buy in of a few key players will go a long way towards making a culture change stick.

What is Team Culture

The culture of a team is sometimes hard describe. I tend to think of team culture as team version of player intangibles. According to ESPN (Bill Conley) “Player intangibles are the attributes an athlete possesses or the behavior he exhibits that require absolutely no physical talent but are crucial to success. These intangibles are sometimes difficult to measure, but any college coach will tell you they are worth their weight in gold.” Most people normally think of these things as player related such as “Oh he brings such good energy” or “she is so vocal and such a good leader”.

Team intangibles are things like “look how well they communicate”, “they have each other’s back”, and “everyone is giving maximum effort”. Team intangibles also include team dynamics. All of these intangibles are what we are talking about (plus more) when we talk about team culture. A few other things that make up team culture are things like inside jokes, language, communication style.

Importance of Culture

Team culture sets the default direction that your team will go in any situation that they encounter. It is the norms that define your team. Due to the theory of conformity the members of team will all hold each other accountable because there are norms and expectations based on the culture. This makes the culture extremely important and valuable because winning behaviors lead to winning games.

With a proper culture, by default, players will work at 100% because it’s in their culture – not just because you’re riding them extra hard that day. With the right culture, players have each other’s back because that’s expected and every one of them knows they’re never alone and they will be fearless. They can communicate on defense because no one is embarrassed or thinks its weird – it’s just what they do. They’ll dive for loose balls because that’s what they do. And when they get the jump ball or turnover they pat and high five one another because they know their teammate would do the same for them.

All of the examples given above were player specific. But team culture must be adhered to by coaching staff as well. If part of the culture is being on time and coming prepared / knowing the plays then that same thing applies to coaches. Players need to know that their coaches are in it just as much as they are.

There is, to be frank, no such thing as no team culture. Failure to define a team culture is a leadership let down as it can only lead to a team that disorganized and mostly without purpose or direction. In the best case this leads to unnecessary friction on the team for a prolonged time as players try to figure out some way to work together and communicate. In the worst case, the team never figures it out and flounders away the season with some players angry that other players aren’t as devoted to the game, that the coach doesn’t treat everyone equally, and more.

A Little More on Conformity Theory and Culture

To create the team culture we want will take a little bit of work, but once the ball is rolling it the culture will replicate itself in new members due to the conformity rules previously mentioned. Here are some examples of the law of conformity at work.

“If you hang out with 9 recreational drug users, you’ll most likely become the tenth”.
“If you hang out with 9 positive people who look at life through the lens of how we can instead of why we can’t, who hold up a mirror for each others greatness, to be midwives to each others dreams instead of stealing them, you’re likely going to become the 10th”

Ted Talk: How to Eliminate Self Doubt Forever & the Power of Your unconscious mind

The same is true when it comes to mental behaviors. If you are in an environment that is full of downers and selfish people then you will be affected and slip that way. If you are in an environment that lifts up, then you will be lifted and you will lift.

This is why intentionally defining culture is so important. You don’t want to leave it to chance!

Ideas for Improving Team Culture

A team’s culture is the environment that team members live in. Just like our physical environment the culture is not static. Both can be changed by a sufficiently strong force. Sometimes that force is immediate acting (a hurricane, tornado, flood) and sometimes it is a little more slow acting due to constant pressure. Either way, without sufficient force over a long enough time the environment will not change. So if you want to change your teams culture you’ll need to be prepared to apply the right forces in the right places. Too much force may cause temporary breaks, but too little force will mean change does not happen fast enough.

Still, a bad culture or “no culture” is probably close to the worst case so don’t hesitate to begin working towards implementing your desired culture once you’ve defined it.

So how can we do go about changing team culture and what might we want to include? Here’s some starting ideas:

• Show you care about your players / teammates
  • Team culture is about being in it together. If someone cares about you then you’re more likely to care about them. And that relationship makes you more willing to do what feels “extra” at first. Eventually what feels extra becomes natural.
  • Also, if a player doesn’t feel like you care about them they’re not going to care what you want them to know either.
• Come up with a credo / mission statement and have the team memorize it.
• Set up some basic “expected behaviors” that solidifies the “in this together” nature of things
  • eg. All players stand and give high fives to any player exiting a game
  • eg. All passes for scores are rewarded with a point at the assister from scorer
  • eg. A “five” is given for an made or missed freethrow (these show “I’m here with you no matter what”)
  • eg. Maximum effort is required in all things
  • eg. If a player falls they should be helped up by at least 1 if not two teammates
  • eg. Ceremony behaviors (a certain chant in the huddle and tunnel before games,
  • eg. prior to a first ft by either team, have a little huddle in the lane (what to discuss)
• Set expectations that the following items are fundamental requirements
  • Always Give 100%
  • No Shortcuts
  • Compete at all Times
  • Working beyond practice (though can be open gym related)
• Enforce a “no excuses” policy – some players have an excuse for everything or need to explain a reason for everything they do that they know isn’t quite right. Consider penalties to stop the excuses. You MUST be patient here. You want your players to ask questions when they need advice. Sometimes an excuse is MEANT to be that question… but often an excuse is simply a way for them to cover the mistakes. And your need to coach them out of that!
• Encourage discussion – allowing players to share their thoughts on what is happening on the court is important. You can teach them how to change something from an excuse to a discussion point here as well!
• Make team rules and associated consequences clear, then be fair in applying. Not being fair is a quick way to alienate players who feel they are being targeted or treated unfairly.
  • Also, be careful here. Making rules regarding things your players cannot control will be hard to enforce and failure to enforce will send mixed signals. Examples are things like being late on a middle school team that practices before school. If a player is late it might not be in their control because they can’t drive themselves!
• Provide guides for players to help them improve and expect that they read / follow them. They need not be long guides… even just small passages worth thinking about to improve their attitudes, thoughts, etc.

Those are a few ideas and some ideas and might even be all the items you can get done in a single season. But if your team goes from displaying none of those qualities to displaying most of them then you can be certain that it will vastly affect the performance of your team now and the direction of your team in the future.

Wrap Up

As a coach, a primary objectives should be to make the environment exactly what you want your players to adapt to and grow into. In the sports world we usually talk about this as the culture of the team. This includes things like “being grateful for each other”, “being supportive”, “being accountable”, “competing”, “working hard”, “looking out for each other”, “belief in each other”, etc. If you can create a culture that has all of these attributes you are well on your way to having a winning season – by every definition of the word winning. To create that culture out of nothing, or worse to turn one around, you’ll need to be deliberate, patient, and persistent. But it will all be worth it in the end! Good luck!