Team Culture

Team culture is described as a “social and psychological environment that maximizes a team’s ability to achieve success.” So while traits like team cohesion, leadership, communication and motivation are important to the success of a team, the team culture is what makes that group of individuals think alike, act alike and really come together as a team. A strong team culture is vital for any successful sporting team!

When trying to develop team culture, don’t try to force values or you won’t get anywhere. You need to have a player led culture, which makes the players more accountable for their actions and those of their teammates. The main thing, regardless of what sort of team culture that you want to create, is that the players need to band together and that they need to believe that anything is possible.  

To begin creating the culture, ensure that you explain what you are trying to achieve and the importance of the culture. As a team, hold a meeting and come up with team rules, expectations and responsibilities. While you are setting these in place be sure to discuss punishments and stress to players that any rules broken will be punished regardless of excuses. The players need to make themselves and their teammates accountable, and by having them create it, there is no excuse not to.

As a coach, you must watch out for those that are destructive to team culture and target it straight away. If it is not dealt with early i can lead to many further problems. Once the team see’s that the coach is letting things slide that should be punished, they will realise that they can get away with breaking team rules and the culture can break down. If it is stopped early, the team members will see how strong the team culture can be and will continue to enforce it themselves. A major problem is what these players are the better ones. When it stems from the top, it is even harder to get a buy-in from all players and to enforce. For example, if you have a team rule that no one can miss more than one training a week, and your star forward is only turning up to training once every few weeks but you still play them, the other players will take note of this and then begin to wonder if there is any point in them turning up. The team culture then falls into a heap, when instead, if something was done the first time to enforce the rules, the players would have learnt.

The first team that comes into my mind when I think about a strong team culture is the Geelong premiership teams of 2009 and 2011. Whilst I have no idea of what Mark Thompson and Chris Scott instilled in their players, the culture around that club must have been very strong because you could see the belief that each and every player had, not only in themselves but in the roles they played and their teammates. From all reports of players from that team, those players shared something that not every team can, and in the end resulted in a premiership for them. Not to mention coming from being behind in all breaks to win in the 2009 grand final.

So whatever the style of team culture that you and your team choose to adapt, if you ensure that you won’t let it be broken and you can get a buy-in from all players, your team will be able to do amazing things with the strength and belief that it creates.