What is team culture?
“The culture is how it feels to be involved with the team,” says Mark Lawton, a longtime teacher and coach who has led numerous teams to the championship level.
“How the team feels about and interacts with the coach. Do you want the culture to be one that is serious and goal-oriented or do you want it to be more upbeat and fun?”
When it comes to creating a team culture, numerous questions can arise about fairness, styles of play and how athletes dress;It’s important to create a team culture that actively supports kids’ mental game, he says.
To accomplish this, coaches could actively talk about mistakes and run drills specifically meant to encourage kids to make mistakes and move through them. They should enlist the parents to help them instill this idea in sports kids.
He stresses that while it’s important to create a culture at the start, it is equally important to be consistent about it.
“You have to be clear with your expectations and then you need to be clear in your implementation of that. A lot of coaches may lay down their expectations but not stick to them, which doesn’t help cultivate culture at all.”
Listen to our interview with Lawton here:
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- Helping Young Athletes Let Go of Mistakes
- How Emotions Affect Sports Kids
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