Culture is Winning

Many times you will hear coaches talk about culture. The environment in which your players, team, and coaches interact with each other and the process you do on a daily basis. To put it simple culture is the environment surrounding all that you do. Its how you think, act, and the mindset you utilize to approach everything you do. Culture is the most important thing you create as a coach.

“If a flower doesn’t bloom, change its environment, not the flower.”

I’m sure many of you have heard this quote or something very similar over the years. Its an important idea to remember when coaching a team. When players fail to improve or when your team isn’t progressing like you had hoped, look first at the environment in which you are expecting growth to occur. Many of us can be quick to place blame on a players attitude, dedication, or worth ethic. We blame their lack of mental focus. But how often to we look into why a player has these negative attributes? How often do we think, how can I help change the players mentality to overcome their deficiencies. The easy path is to accept these deficiencies in our players and hope they change. The hard path is to determine whether or not we are building an environment around the player which is allowing them to grow and change. Have we created a culture where a player can’t build in themselves the positive mental mindset which will allow them to reach their own potential?

The culture of a team will make or break a season. The culture of a program will determine if we are successful or not. The culture is winning, not the score. When we approach success in terms of what we have built, versus wins and losses, we begin to develop a long lasting effect on not only our players, but also on ourselves. And in youth sports, we help build character that will serve our players long after they are done playing. And did I mention, the culture we build is winning. Not just in philosophical terms either, a strong culture will lead to wins on the court.

The first step to understanding your culture is to figure out how is success defined? And then working out the pathway to achieve success. For me, success is defined by not wins and losses, or championships, but success is defined by how we approached each day. The process we went through to strive for excellence. If I can look back on a practice or season and see that we did what was necessary each day to achieve success, and I can see the forward progress made by the team or by individuals, then we have been successful. Don’t get me wrong, I want to win and be champions as much as anyone. And the goal of the team is to win the games, and ultimately win championships, but I do not tie the achievement or failure of reaching those goals to the success of the team, the players, or the program. I believe that winning comes AFTER the team has achieved success, not that success is the result of winning.

I like to think of culture as a non linear path we take as a team where we build defining characteristics, which ultimately leads to excellence. Achieving excellence, gives us an advantage, which leads to success. Only when we are successful will winning follow.

“The sooner you realize it’s not about you, it’s about you helping your team win, the sooner you’ll be able to play with confidence.” – Steve Springer

This quote might be one of my favorites which highlights for me, the defining characteristic of my teams culture; Teamwork. Ultimately, I want to build on environment where everyone feels together and a part of something much larger than themselves. I want them to feel able to support their teammates and I want them able to feel supported when they are down. A season will flow up and down, for players, coaches and the team. I strive to build the mindset that I will be there to lift up my teammates as they will be there to lift me up. This is the attitude I want all my coaches and players having each and every day. I am there for you as you are for me. We build each other up, not tear each other down.

Once I defined for myself the pinnacle characteristic of my culture, I had to start to think about what are the personalities and characteristics I want to build in myself and my players to help create this environment of teamwork. So I started to write down traits that I find positive: Courage, Concentration, Desire, Attitude, Focus, Giving, Love, Belief, Commitment, Motivation, and Praise. As I wrote these down I began to think about how can I use these and build them up in my players to ultimately arrive and a culture of true teamwork, which in my definition would allow us to arrive a excellence, which gives us an advantage and ultimately leads to success. ( I think you can sense a theme here. Striving for excellence, in this case excellence in teamwork, gives us an advantage which leads to success, which will result in winning.) In short; Work to Excellence –> Success –> Winning.

I soon realized that while these traits are related, they are far from linear. There is no single path that flows from on trait to another, but the traits certainly can be used to help create another trait. I as the coach needed to understand, what does a player(s) lack and how can I help build that within them. For example, lets say I have a player who when around does good things, but they lack commitment. I need to figure out how to best build commitment in that player. How can I help them be more committed? I have already decided that the 11 traits above are the characteristics I want to see in my players and in my team. I believe that having all of those present will lead to the teamwork I desire, which will allow us to be successful and then we can win. I know that I have to buy in 100% to having these traits myself and can not model something different that what I an expecting from my players. I could run the player, or punish them for being late, or missing practices. But ask yourself, what are people committed to? They are committed to something they love to do. Something that gives them purpose. Maybe punishing a player is actually pushing them further away from being committed? (Remember, there is nothing wrong with being hard on a player, or demanding discipline. There’s nothing wrong with making them run when they are late.) But ask yourself what you want; do you want a player that will show up on time or a player that is committed to show up on time? In my experience, punishing a player for poor behavior works best with a player that is already committed and one you have already built up trust with. They know you care, as I have talked about before. So what do I do with this uncommitted player? I use another trait, love. I let them know they are wanted and needed. That they are valuable to the team. I make sure they feel welcome and a part of what we are doing. And I emphasize the importance of them being present and how it helps the team.

Basically, I will always try to build a missing trait by using another of the traits on my list. If a player doesn’t believe in themselves, I make sure I praise them, if they lack motivation, I help them build courage, if they are not concentrating, I use commitment to help them learn to concentrate, etc. It’s not a perfect, this leads to that, but all these traits are connected and each of us can find our our way to use within ourselves certain traits to help build others. When the whole team takes this approach, that is when some amazing things begin to happen. That is when you see real teamwork off on the court and in the locker room, not just with running your plays. Teamwork becomes an attitude built on the foundation of many positive traits and together they all lead to excellence. Excellence then leads to success and success will lead you to winning.