Team Building Process

Since 2003 I have been leading Southern Illinois University’s Football Salukis in some sessions we’ve called “Team Building.” They are primarily discussions aimed at building the culture of the program by developing community among the players and by instilling the values which we want to characterize the program. These ideas have also been employed with Saluki Women’s Basketball and Women’s Volleyball in past seasons as well as with a few high school sports teams of various sorts in my area. In addition, several other college football chaplains and coaching staffs around the USA have called to discuss how to employ these methods with their teams and many are doing them today.

Some teams elsewhere do similarly, but they use a number of activities like ropes courses, group problem solving exercises, etc. I have found these to be unnecessary as sports teams already have an activity – the sport itself. What they don’t have is something which can more directly help them to build community and to instill values. We who serve teams as sport chaplains or sport mentors are uniquely qualified to assist them through team development.

 

The whole process can be boiled down to a rather simple process. It follows.

Community + Values = Culture

Goals:

• Build community within the team by facilitating the growth of trust and commitment.

• Build the culture of the program by communicating its core values and expectations.

Socratic Process:

• Ask questions for discussion which accomplish your goals.

• Facilitate discussion in small and large groups.

1. Community: Identity --> Trust --> Commitment

Identity:

• Tell us your name, your home town, the position you play, and your uniform number.

Trust:

• What is there you have yet to achieve in football that is very much a goal for this year?

• Tell us about a significant sacrifice you have made to be a Saluki Football player.

Commitment:

• If you could trade places for two weeks with anyone on the planet, whom would you choose and why?

• Tell us about one of the most influential people in your life. How has that person impacted your life?

• If you could have a three hour lunch with any living person, whom would you choose and why?

2. Values:

• What do you want to characterize your football program?

• What do you value most highly?

 

Example: Sunday August 16, 2009

Championship Teams: Develop strong leadership.

• Tell us about one of the best team leaders with whom you have played.

• What are some of the qualities you respect in team leaders?

• How would you grade your personal leadership with this team? (A – F)

• What do you see as important parts of the process of developing leaders?

Session 3 – Sophomores

• Tell us your name, your home town, the position you play, and your uniform number.

• Tell us about an instance when your leadership was instrumental in your team’s success. (Any team, any time, any sport)

• Tell us about one of the most influential people in your life. How has that person impacted your life?

 

We have conducted these sessions with all the players being involved (90). In order to do that in a secularized environment like our university, I have purposely led them without overtly “religious” language. While most of the values taught come directly from scriptural principles, for these sessions we don’t quote the scripture references. This removes the tension from the coaching staff and allows me to build relationships with the players within their culture. It also deepens the level of trust I have with all the players and when I later conduct team chapels I am afforded a greater level of communication with directly spiritual language because I’m “inside” the program.

 

Ideally, the values which shape the program and which are instilled through these sessions are genuinely held, demonstrated and communicated by the coaching staff. At times we have asked the staff to outline such values and we have built our sessions from their listed set of values. This gives us the best chance at integration of ethos and pathos within the program.

To further integrate sport and Christian values, I use the team building themes for weekly points of emphasis throughout the season. In team chapels I will speak on the theme and will illustrate from scripture. Often the scripture will be a narrative, sometimes a didactic passage or even occasionally from Psalms or Proverbs. The point is to have the players and coaches to hear the truth of scripture related through the same themes which we have discussed throughout the season. In this way they hear the Lord Jesus speaking to them in their culture of sport.

 

If you would like to discuss how to employ this strategy with your team I would love to talk with you about it. Please contact me via email at lipe@earthlink.net or call me at 618-559-2735 and we can talk about how to adapt these methods to your sport, team and coaching staff.