Team Building

Previously I have talked about many things that can affect the concept of Team Building. In my mind team building begins during the recruiting process as we as coaches go out to try to find and convince young women to join us here at the University of Utah. If you are going to do a good job of team building you must recruit young women who have the skills necessary to thrive in a team environment. Some coaches feel very strong about doing a lot of team building activities....I am not a huge advocate of that....However I am very much an advocate of putting all the challenges to team unity on the table and dealing with them in an open matter.....What might some of those be? Selfishness (Big in a wealthy persons sport like tennis!), "In your face" competitiveness (I love it, so they have to deal with that cause I am not going to make it go away), passive aggressive behavior (Get it out in the open and deal with it!), Oh and one of my favorites: female stereotypes regarding open dialogue, recently I had a player defend this by saying "you know coach we are girls!" to which I replied no you are not you are Young Women and I expect adult like behavior and that things get dealt with in a "grown up" manner.

In it's simplest form team building involves respecting and getting along with others.....If I want to like you I can focus on the things about you I really like about you and easily find common ground.....If I don't to like you I can focus in on what annoys me about you and easily not like you and have "good" reason not to.

In closing I once said winning is the "magic bullet" the van ride shorter after a win, the food tastes better after a win, the person next to you smells less after a win etc.....but the real challenges to team unity come after a loss. I say judge me on how I handle adversity that is my true measure and I hope by handling it with dignity my team learns from me.....I also know that if they see how much I care about each one of them they will care about each other! As a coach you must take responsibility for team building and sometimes taking responsibility is making the team accountable in this area!