“The most important thing in coaching is communication. It’s not what you say as much as what they absorb.” Red Auerbach
How much information is your team actually absorbing on a daily basis? Between emails and text messages, bulletin board postings and team meetings, important information can easily fall through the cracks. Read on to find five ways you can clean up your team communication today and start seeing results tomorrow.
1. Be Transparent
Having open lines of communication and transparency among all members of the team is essential in improving team communication. A great way to improve this is by having everyone share their individual and team goals openly. When all members of a team feel valued and comfortable enough to share their goals and aspirations, overall team communication and accountability improves from top to bottom.
2. Empower Your Team Leaders
It’s imperative that your team leaders feel empowered to set the standard for all members of the team. Feeling confident in communicating standards, culture and expectations is vital to that empowerment. Each decision should be in the best interest of the team. Once it’s clear that leaders put the team above themselves, a powerful sense of trust is developed. That enables your captains to feel comfortable holding everyone accountable which makes buy-in to the culture much easier.
3. Make It Personal
Your team is made of up dozens of different personalities. Each individual offers a range of physical and mental skills and approach to their sport. As a coach, your role in connecting and communicating with athletes is vital to the success of your team. Being able to connect on a one-on-one level and assess how each individual is doing, and being able to track this feedback, can seem impossible. But when done properly, it leads to a more engaged team, one that is set up for success on and off the field. Connect with your team one-on-one with DRIVN today.
4. Keep An Open Door Policy
The most valuable way to improve team communication is through face-to-face interactions. Athletes need to feel they can engage with their coaches directly to build trust and loyalty. Throughout a long, grueling season, issues come up and limits are pushed. Whether sport-related or personal, it’s vital that athletes feel they can go to a member of the coaching staff to have open dialogue and discussions around issues, questions, or feedback. Student-athletes have many commitments away from athletics, always having the door open takes the pressure off and allows them to come to you when they are ready.
5. Centralize Team Communication
With the rise in sports technology, teams are now able to find focus in a single app for all of their schedules, itineraries, coaching content, practice plans, video, lineups, data-tracking and more. With information and communication all in one place, coaches can easily interact with their athletes, staff are able of effectively execute their roles and athletes are focused on their job of performing.
Ready to clean up your team communication? Let DRIVN help you consolidate all of your emails, text messages, whiteboards, calendars and more into one, easy to use, platform. Our platform is fully mobile and always on. Everyone has access – your entire coaching staff and every player. It streamlines communication and helps your program get stronger and your team win more often.