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Six Ways to Self-Reflect for Better Team Culture

TrueSport

June 17, 2024 | 3 minutes, 7 seconds read

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As a coach, you play a large role in the creation of your team culture. While athletes make a difference, you are ultimately the leader who will set the tone for the team each season as athletes come and go. It's easy to fall into certain patterns and skip self-reflection, especially if you've been coaching for a long time. However, self-reflection is one of the most important things you can do to create a positive team culture for your athletes!

Here, TrueSport Expert Betsy Butterick, a coach and communication specialist, explains the simple steps you can take as a coach to improve your self-reflection both during interactions with athletes and when addressing team culture overall.

1. Understand your role in creating a team culture

Simply put, a team's culture is the environment that the team has created. Team culture is the team's agreement on how they treat each other, what rules they follow, and how they behave on and off the field. Hopefully, the environment is safe and positive, and athletes feel as though they have plenty of room to grow.

In school sports, culture can be complicated: Every year the team dynamics will shift and change as some players graduate and others join the team. Because of that, as the coach, you're constantly helping to create and reinvent team culture with a mix of new and returning athletes.

2. Self-reflection and evaluation are no longer optional

"Unfortunately, often people are only willing to contemplate change when they're in pain," says Butterick. "But the coaching landscape is changing significantly, and coaches need to change with it. There is much more exposure to a coach and their program and team culture than ever before, thanks in large part to technology. Some of the challenges that have surfaced in coaching over the last several years are forcing coaches to become more self-reflective, because those who don't are often out of a job."

"Self-reflection is a healthy practice, and the coaches with the healthiest cultures are reflecting proactively and frequently," she adds. "They're doing things like talking to their athletes and listening to their experiences being coached, asking others about their perception of the program, soliciting feedback from parents, and talking to fellow coaches."

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