The HEART of Culture

As the summer starts many coaches begin the process of investing in the culture of their team for the upcoming season. Today I want to share with you how we think about culture at FREE2COMPETE. 

The world culture comes from the Latin word "cultus" which means "CARE".  If culture is about CARE, what should we CARE about?  In an athletic setting I think we can boil that down to two things:

1. Our PROCESS that opens the door to the results we want to achieve individually and as a team.

2. The PEOPLE who are by our side in this journey. Those who support us, challenge us, and make us better on a daily basis.  This includes teammates and coaches, as well as supporters of our team like your parents, athletic trainers, bus drivers, etc.

Great teams CARE deeply about their PROCESS and their PEOPLE!  

I've been fortunate to be around a lot of great teams in my coaching career.  Here is what I see when it comes to CARING about the PROCESS and the PEOPLE:

• PROCESS:

  • Athletes putting in high levels of effort in practice with great focus

  • Athletes pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones

  • Athletes taking the coaching they are receiving to heart and making necessary adjustments

• PEOPLE:

  • Athletes supporting each other at practice and competitions

  • Athletes laughing and having a good time together

  • Athletes picking a teammate up when they seem down

If you want to get a sense of where your team feels the culture is at in your program, consider asking them these questions:

• How would you grade (A, B, C, D, F) our team right now in terms of its CARE for the PROCESS?  Explain.

• How would you grade (A, B, C, D, F) our team right now in terms of its CARE for our PEOPLE?  Explain.

• What is one thing you can do this week to help grow/protect our team's CARE for the PROCESS?

• What is one thing you can do this week to help grow/protect our team's CARE for our PEOPLE?

As coaches we also need to understand how we impact the culture of our program, and it again comes back to the word CARE. I’ve observed that coaches who are able to maintain a strong, healthy culture through multiple classes of students coming through their programs seem to balance the tension between EXPECTATIONS and SUPPORT. Let’s think of those two words this way:

• EXPECTATIONS: How a coach shows CARE for and protects their PROCESS.

• SUPPORT: How a coach shows CARE for and protects their PEOPLE.

If we use those two words to form a scale, we can create four types of coaching styles based on whether you have HIGH or LOW EXPECTATIONS (CARE for their PROCESS) and HIGH or LOW SUPPORT (CARE for their PEOPLE).

In David Yeager’s book “10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People” he describes four types of leaders using a scale similar to above. I think his terms are helpful as a coach considers how they are influencing the culture of their program. So let’s lay those out using our four quadrants above.

• The Apathetic Coach: Low Expectations & Low Support. If you find yourself in this quadrant, it might be time to step away from coaching while you reset.

• The Protector Coach: Low Expectations & High Support.

• The Enforcer Coach: High Expectations & Low Support

• The Wise Mentor Coach: High Expectations & High Support. Most of us probably got into coaching because we experienced a coach in our life who provided EXPECTATIONS and SUPPORT in our life and we wanted to do the same for others.

If we think of EXPECTATIONS and SUPPORT in the terms of two levers we can pull as we attempt to motivate our athletes, I believe we each naturally lean towards one. To reach that Wise Mentor Coach quadrant and have the healthiest impact on our program’s culture, we have to learn how to pull the lever that doesn’t come naturally to us. The lever we tend not to pull is the area where we need to grow our CARE.

For me personally, I naturally gravitate towards pulling the EXPECTATIONS lever. The younger version of me as a coach would pull that lever hard and it created some self imposed challenges as we were building our cross country program at Papillion La Vista South. As I studied coaches who seemed to sustain high levels of success I learned that while they did pull that lever hard it was balanced through also pulling the SUPPORT lever. This is what started me down the path of having our athletes journal, it became a part of our process that ensured that I pulled the SUPPORT level on a daily basis in our program. Pulling the EXPECTATIONS lever came naturally, I had to work hard at developing the skill of using the SUPPORT lever. The experience and performance levels of our athletes has improved as I’ve learned to pull both levers together. Part of the motivation behind starting FREE2COMPETE was to support coaches in learning how to pull both levers at the same time. If you look back at the resources we’ve provided I hope you can see the themes of EXPECTATIONS and SUPPORT threaded throughout them.

So coach, which lever do you naturally pull in your program?

How can you be more intentional about pulling the other lever within your program?

WE ARE READY TO WORK WITH YOUR TEAM!

Would you like to have our FREE2COMPETE team come work your athletes this summer? Please contact Coach H at [email protected] to line up a free zoom meeting to discuss how we could serve your team! We still have room in our summer schedule for you!

HAVE AN ATHLETE WHO WANTS TO GROW THEIR MENTAL GAME?

Do you have an athlete who seems to struggle getting their mental game to match to their physical ability? We have openings for athletes interested in working on their mental game through our 1-on-1 sessions. Have them contact Coach H at [email protected] for more details.