Building Team Unity

Last week a friend and colleague of mine, Johnny Shelton from Virginia Tech University, called me and we discussed the problem of division among players on certain teams. There were apparent divisions between the white and black players on a team and we were looking for solutions, how to develop unity where division exists.

As we talked I reflected on how we have done that with Saluki Football and how I’ve heard others attempting to do it. A brief summary follows.

For our football program, we approached it relationally. We reasoned that for a championship team we needed players to be committed to each other, but people won’t commit to those whom they do not trust and they certainly don’t trust people they don’t know. We knew we must start at the “who are you?” level and work our way up. Our process looks like this:

Facilitate a discussion with the whole team, broken into small groups of around 8, introducing about 1/8 of the team per session.
Ask questions of the player about facts – name, uniform number, home town, field of study, etc…
Ask questions of the player about the sport – anything which can evoke the player’s passion for the sport.
Ask questions of the player about his or her heart – anything which can reveal the person’s core values, most important influences, etc…

The fact questions help us know who the player is – Who are you?
The sport questions help us begin to trust the player on the field of competition – Can I trust you?
The heart oriented questions help us begin to commit to the player – Can I commit to you?

This sort of relational “team building” activities have helped us bridge wide gulfs of division related to race, socio-economic barriers, class, region, etc… They have helped us reach unparalleled success on and off the field of competition. We’ll discuss in the future some other strategies employed by other coaching staffs for overcoming division and for building team unity.