Stacy Danley Talks About Building a Team Culture for Athletic Success

Team culture implies to the team’s goals, attitudes and values about teamwork, competition and sports. It determines whether, for instance, if focus of the team is on fun, improvement, or winning, or if the team is geared towards both individual accomplishment and team success. As Stacy Danley says, team culture is extremely important as it directly influences several areas of team functioning and performance.

Stacy Danley provides insight into the impact and influence of a sports team’s culture 

It is a widely held belief in the world of sports that team culture majorly impacts the way how players of the team act both on and off the field, as well as the type of attitude they maintain. How the team members behave, perform, feel and think, are impacted by the environment in which they practice and compete. For instance, a “downer” team will be permeated with negativity, unhealthy competition, and conflict. No person would truly want to be a part of such a team and its members will not be encouraged to give their best.

The culture establishes the norms of acceptable behavior in a team. It either explicitly or implicitly conveys to the members what is allowed and what is not. Such norms can dictate to the team members how to cooperate, communicate, behave and deal with conflict. When norms are clearly established, every player on the team is more likely to abide by them.

The team culture also creates the ambiance or atmosphere that underlines every aspect of a team’s experience. The type of culture maintained by a team has real implications on how its members get along, how the athletes on the team perform, as well as how productive and successful they are both individually and together. If a team has a well defined culture that is well understood and accepted by all of its members, they feel an implicit pressure) to support that culture. The goal of a coach should be to cultivate a culture that nurtures growth, success, and fun.

As Stacy Danley says, values, attitudes, and goals are the three essential pillars on which a team culture is built.

• Values imply to the standards or principals of behavior. They guide the decisions and choices made by both coaches and athletes. Values essentially include principles on which a team devotes their time, effort, and energy.
• Attitudes guide how athletes think, feel, and act toward their sport.
• Goals can be defined as the object of a person’s ambition or effort. They are important to keep athletes motivated and direct their efforts.

Coaches can allow the culture of their team to develop in two ways. In the first case, the culture can ideally emerge naturally as an expression of its individual members.  Due to the organic development of team culture, the players feel a sense of ownership towards it. The second approach, on the other hand, requires coaches to take an active role in the creation of a team culture through their leadership and open discussions with team members.