Communication Within Your Program

In our game today, we hear “me” and lot more than “we” even though we play and coach a team sport. As coaches we spend a tremendous amount of time recruiting future players, watching film of our current team, developing skill of our current team, but do we spend enough time building our current team’s chemistry and forcing team communication? How does your team chemistry reveal itself during the game? When a team is down by eight points with five minutes to play and a turnover occurs a teammate will lose trust and point a finger or he will encourage his teammate to get a stop and make the next play. All games have adversity and the culture, chemistry, and trust between coaches and players will be revealed during those times. All coaches and players have the disease of competition, but at what point do we lose our belief and trust as a unit because of our lack of competitive discipline?

If you go and watch a hundred different practices at the high school, college, and even NBA level, ninety-nine of its coaches will tell you at the end of practice we must “talk more” or “communicate better.” We work on shooting, defense, passing, but do we work on and force communication? In addition, staff chemistry is just as important as team chemistry. Asking our teams to huddle on dead-ball situations and before free-throws is no different than a staff meetings preparing for practice. Staff meetings forces communication and serve as “huddles” for the coaches just like we ask our teams to do. Forcing communication is hard, but our entire society is mainly driven by texting and staring at their phones. It’s convenient, easy, and provides us with never a dull moment as we await the next text, tweet, or email to arrive. Make no mistake, text, email, twitter, face-book, are all great ways to communicate, but looking someone else in the eyes and talking is always healthy and a life-skill that is not being taught enough.

Here are some ways to improve and force communication within your program off the court, which will lead to your team communicating more on the court.

• BIO NIGHT –Assign each player a partner carefully so you can get two certain players to connect and get to know each other better. Each partner has to present to the team their partner’s bio in a power-point presentation. It will not have an impact unless they sit down together and get to know each other’s background, siblings, family history, interests, and goals. During the recruiting process, we spend a lot of time talking about our current school and know a lot about the recruits, but this event will reveal a lot of new information about your players for the coaches too. In the end, there will be a lot of laughter and possibly even some tears.

• AMAZING RACE –Awesome for foreign tours, but can even be done around your own campus. Divide up into teams and give each team a checklist of things they must do, people to see, even take pictures just like the show “Amazing Race.” There is no clear order to complete all of the tasks so the teams will start in different directions, but what will be guaranteed is each team will be communicating and problem solving. Inadvertently, a leader will emerge from each group, but most importantly your team will be learning to think fast and adapt quickly together, just like a game.

• ACADEMIC CHALLENGE –Have your seniors or captains conduct a draft to make three or four academic teams. Each team will graded on random class checks, location of seat in class, turning progress reports in, office hours with professors, and penalized for lack of communication, tardiness, location of seat in class, and overall grade performance. The team that wins can get out of some sprints or conditioning workout, reduced study hall hours, etc., but once again a leader will emerge and the forced communication will create peer pressure along with accountability.

• CELL PHONES AT DINNERS AND ROOM CHECKS –We have all found ourselves on road trips with our team at restaurants looking around and everyone’s heads are down. Everyone is looking at their phone and no one is talking. Every player has had their roommate texting and arguing with their girlfriend at 1am the night before a big road game. Who does a player need to talk to from 11pm to 9am the night before a game besides their roommate? There will be a difference and forced communication at dinners and in the hotels if the cell phone is removed from the equation.

• TEAM MEALS DURING WINTER BREAK –We all experience the winter months when the cafeteria is closed and we give our players money to eat on their own. If you once again divide the team up into small groups and for a few different nights, those small teams get the entire group’s meal money to organize a team meal. They might have it catered, delivered, or even go buy food and cook it for the team. Whatever occurs, that team will be forced to communicate and feel the pressure to provide a nice meal to their teammates and will be a fun experience.

• OFF-SEASON READING ASSIGNMENT –Reading is a habit of many coaches and it helps us learn and makes us think. Players rarely read, but a reading assignment can help a team bond and communicate about a particular topic. Three to four meetings after the assigned reading can really create healthy and open discussions within a team.

Lastly, I would like to thank Coach Raveling for the invitation to write and share some thoughts. Coach Raveling is a mentor, friend, and coach to me. His moral compass is great for the game of basketball.