Creating Team Trust

Originally Published in: Thinking Volleyball

Provided by: Human Kinetics

Creating Team Trust

The trusting person does the right thing even when no one is watching. Trust means doing what you are supposed to do even when you don't want to do it. Underneath the search for trust in team sports lies a nucleus of trust-enabling behaviors.

Each time you act in a trusting way, two good things happen. First, you exercise the trust muscle, and it gradually becomes stronger. Second, you invest in the same things your teammates are investing in. When you invest in a group, you achieve ownership. When you achieve ownership, you develop a passion for the group and its goals.

Creating individual and team trust ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. It is more about embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.

Said in another way, trust is to an athlete what scales are to a musician. Mastering the scales is what allows the musician to perform music. Mastering the skills of trust is what enables a team to play with great chemistry.

What exactly is trust? I am going to enlist the help of Patrick Lencioni and his thought-provoking book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. His concise and articulate treatment of the concept of trust is essential to understanding its role in my approach to building a team.

The kind of trust that is characteristic of a great team...requires team members to make themselves vulnerable to one another, and be confident that their vulnerabilities will not be used against them...It is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. It is a challenge for [team members] to turn those selfish instincts off for the good of the team, but that is exactly what is required.*

When everyone in the program can rise above the fray, when everyone accepts that contributing to a winning team is more important than protecting personal turf, only then can a team can be in a position to succeed.

My way of making sure that we never lose sight of this process is to conduct regular artery check-ups. It might occur before or after practice, before or after competition, on a bus, in an airport lobby, or at a hotel meeting. I provide ample opportunities for players and staff to identify any blockages that might prevent those arteries from pumping valuable life to every corner of our team environment. If we find a blockage, we examine it, suggest a strategy for treating it, and work hard to make sure that the blockage is minimized, keeping the arteries clear. This has become a staple in my list of coaching principles.

I once had a team that was cruising along quite well. We were winning at a high level. But beneath the surface, an issue was percolating that would soon begin to clog the team's artery system. The issue had its roots in the simple notion of communication on the court. All coaches are keenly aware of the need for team wide verbal communication during practice and competition. This communication is vital to the team's ability to clarify uncertain situations, declare intentions, elevate confidence levels, provide positive reinforcement to each other, rescue a player who makes a mistake, and so on.

Producing consistent and relevant communication requires energy. Some players are naturally better at it, or perhaps work harder at it. Some players are naturally quiet and rely on the more outgoing players to supply all the energy. These players are either naturally quiet, or they are less confident of their verbal skills than their physical skills. They exist on every roster.

Even though we were winning, only two players consistently provided the energy required for an adequate verbal communication system. The other four players were selfishly relying on the two energy-providers to shoulder the entire burden. This worked for a while, but about six weeks into the season, the signs of frustration were beginning to appear. The energy-providers were becoming more and more impatient when a serve would drop between two of the silent types. Even worse, the energy-providers were beginning to resent the fact that they had to carry the communication load. Their own performances were beginning to suffer, and they wanted help.

Left unchecked, this issue would turn a potentially successful season into an underachieving one. It was clear that something had to be done.

* Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 195-196.