Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch - Part 1

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch - Part 1 - Team first

Published: Fri, 06/17/16

Yes!! You're one of the elite parents and coaches who is making winning the right way a habit!

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

I'm so excited to launch this new series on Culture. Every team environment has a culture, so you can either let it happen by accident or you can intentionally create the culture you desire. We'll break the series up into 10 parts as follows:

Team first
Team Cornerstones
Positive Environment
Recognition & Rewards
Captains
Parents
Building Trust
Seek First to Understand
Coaching your own kid
Perspective & Giving Back

Part 1 - Team First

Casting the vision for what the team is going to accomplish and getting buy-in is critical and what will drive your goals and practices. And the first step in building a winning culture is to create a team first mentality. Here are some best practices to get this done:

Ken Stuursma tells his kids every practice: They have to come to practice for somebody else. He states that selfish attitudes are garbage and selfish behavior is the first and most important thing to eliminate.
John Doss' teams have helmet stickers with 3 chain links. In their pre-game talk they link arms and talk about how strong a chain is and how they are there to play for the person on their right and left.
As a coach - make sure you ALWAYS do what’s best for the players, not what’s best for your win/loss record. Also, as a coach - do you say ‘My team’ or ‘Our team’?
Some coaches have only one rule: ‘Don’t let your teammates down.’ This one seems particularly pertinent with regards to Draymond Green's behavior in the NBA playoffs.
Jon Gordon in his book The Energy Bus talks about having to eliminate ‘energy vampires.’ Lee Miller uses the analogy of every player and coach being either a proton or an electron – they are either bringing positive energy or negative energy.
Colby Patnode's teams have 3 rules:
1. Protect the team
2. Protect the brand/game
3. Do your best

One of the hardest things to do as a leader is to get individuals to buy-in to doing something that involves the team's needs being greater than the individuals. But when you do get this buy-in, that's when something magical and transformative happens.

Next week we'll talk about one of my favorite parts of culture, creating team cornerstones.

I'm really excited for the upcoming Way of Champions Coaching Conference in July. Registration is now closed, but I'll be doing some livestreaming on Facebook Live throughout the conference, stay tuned for more details to follow along.

NEW WYC PODCASTS

WYC 082 – Youth Football – Greg Robinson talks offseason skill development & iYouthFootball

Greg Robinson has spent 6 years developing a non-contact system to train athletes ages 3 to 11 to catch, throw, and kick footballs. In 2015 he helped launch iYouthFootball to do just that. iYouthFootball is a system that can be brought to any town and can be taught by anyone regardless of their level of football experience. In this episode we discuss this system as well as other secrets to teaching kids skills.

Go to Podcast Episode

I love hearing your stories and experiences, both the positive ones and frustrations you're having - just reply to this email and it goes straight to my inbox.

Make winning the right way your habit starting today,
Craig

Craig Haworth is the founder of Winning Youth Coaching, a site dedicated to helping coaches and parents make youth sports an awesome experience for the youth and the parents. He interviews coaches from around the world and posts them on his podcast, which currently has over 80 interviews and has been downloaded over 75,000 times. He writes a weekly note to coaches and parents. He is married to his high-school sweetheart and they share the blessing of 3 children and live in Franklin, TN. You can sign-up for his weekly note here, find him on twitter at @craighaworth1, or visit his website winningyouthcoaching.com.

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men"

- Frederick Douglass