Culture — Wins. For a team to perform at an elite level…
By: Jat Thompson
Tags: Culture, Coaching, Player Development, Leadership

Culture — Wins

For a team to perform at an elite level the members must be collectively talented. This alone, however, is not enough. The team must also consistently compete as a cohesive unit, and to do so requires a relationship of mutual understanding and trust in one another.

I know my role and you know yours and we both trust that we will perform our part at the highest level.

What is important for leaders to appreciate is that the team’s culture will either enhance or impede mutual understanding and trust, which in turn will impact team cohesion and performance. This is why culture is so important to elite teams.

Culture can be defined as a pattern of basic values, assumptions, expectations, experiences, beliefs, and interpretations that a given group (i.e. the team) has learned to use to interact with one another, to express oneself, solve problems, make decisions, and integrate new members.

The culture (or unwritten rules) within elite teams drive deeply ingrained attitudes and behavior (i.e. norms) that facilitate member understanding, trust, and commitment. When members lack understanding, trust, and/or commitment then leaders must first address their team culture before anything else. It doesn’t matter if you have an amazing staff with limitless resources and a brilliant strategy — you will not be able to consistently perform at the highest level if you are competing against the team culture. As Peter Drucker once stated,

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

So how do you “fix” a culture?…You don’t.

Instead, you identify and correct targeted behaviors. In other words, to change a culture you must first identify the patterns of behavior (i.e., norms) that are reinforcing your strategy and the ones that are competing against it. Where possible, leverage the behaviors that are promoting and reinforcing your strategy and correct the impeding behaviors. In short, if you want to change a culture then focus on changing targeted behavior.

However, targeting behavioral change does not necessarily lead to cultural change. First, the behavior must be directly linked to your desired outcome or strategy. For example, if you want to increase player commitment then make sure you identify the true behavior that is inhibiting player commitment. You may spend enormous amounts of money on new facilities, better food, cool gear, big-screen TVs with video games and leather couches that the players will love but it will not, necessarily, lead to player commitment. Instead, the real behavior change may be the time coaches spend with their athletes. If this is the behavior you identified that directly links to player commitment then you will need to hold your coaches accountable to building in time in their schedule to get to know their players on a deeper level and helping them with their personal goals. The point is, identify the targeted behavioral change that will directly impact your desired outcome and then enforce that behavior.

Second, leaders may enforce a new behavior that changes the team “climate” but may not change the culture. Climates can be short-lived whereas a cultural change is more lasting. For example, you may force athletes to show up early to every team meeting but that doesn’t mean they are committed to this new requirement. In these instances you have changed the climate but not the culture. For a true cultural change to occur members of the team must experience the changed behavior and collectively agree that this behavioral change is a better way of doing things. It then will become the new norm.

To summarize, if you want to build and sustain an elite team then you cannot ignore your culture. Your culture will facilitate mutual understanding and trust between team members that are essential for team cohesion and high performance. To build the “right” culture for your team, you must clearly identify the norms that are enhancing and impeding your strategy. Leverage the aligned behaviors and target specific behavioral change that directly impacts the desired outcome. If the shared experience and learning that occurs from the behavioral change is viewed as a better way of doing things then you will have changed the team culture to more closely align with your desired strategy.