Building a team culture is not an easy thing to do. Typically, most people will say winning cures everything, but in my mind, you have to build a good team culture first before you can win consistently.
Team culture is made up of the values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a team. It’s how people work together towards a common goal and how they treat each other. This leads to buy-in and a family-type atmosphere.
But to do that, you may need a little coaching yourself. So, let’s look at a couple of ways you can start to build a team culture with a little positive psychology.
What Is Positive Psychology Coaching?
Positive Psychology Coaching is an approach typically used by life coaches. It’s a scientifically-proven way to help you increase well-being, enhance and apply your strengths, and ultimately improve performance, and achieve your goals—both personally or professionally.
Life coaching offers support and guidance to those who feel they are at a crossroads. They may be in need of some extra help to move their life forward in positive and constructive ways. This could be for professional or personal reasons.
How To Use Positive Psychology While Coaching
Positive psychology focuses on strength development and an athlete’s well-being. The focus is on building resilience and optimism in athletes by re-framing the way you (the coach) deliver feedback. You’ll also incorporate a greater focus on strength development.
If you’re using positive psychology as a part of your coaching method, you’re trained to identify and develop your player’s strengths while learning to overcome your negative bias. By training your brain to see the good things your athletes are doing. This will help you to give more balanced appreciative feedback. By continuously using this framework you’ll be able to ensure a consistent approach even in stressful game situations.
Focus On Your Team’s Strengths
Basketball coaches are often focused on fixing weaknesses and problems. This is called deficit-based coaching. Comments like “you need to do this more”, and “in this situation, you need to be doing this” typically fill post-game and post-season evaluations.
But research shows that it’s easier to promote a strength than it is to improve weaknesses and that a player’s greatest potential comes from their greatest strengths. This is not to say don’t focus on your weaknesses, but the best results (wins) will come when you are also working on your strengths.
How often do you come off the field at halftime and say “this is what we need to change because we’re not doing it right.” Strengths-based coaching, on the other hand, is about identifying, enhancing, and exploiting athletes’ and teams’ strengths and focusing on what we do well.
If you’re using your team’s strengths your players are more likely to have higher levels of confidence, vitality, and energy. They’ll also be more resilient, have higher self-esteem, and to perform better.
If you’d like to learn more about building team culture through positive psychology, listen to the “Courtside Culture Podcast.”