Teamwork

As part of our off season program we offer a team development workshop. All potential varsity players and JV players, if numbers allow, participate. The concepts of trust, common purpose, connection and integrity are covered. The facilitators combine education, dialogue and experiential activities, like The Pipeline, to illustrate the benefits of team play and allow the group to see where they are and where they need to grow to become a more effective team.

Basketball is a team sport. It is best played when individuals combine their skills in pursuit of a common goal. This might mean sacrificing your personal interests for the interests of the team. Research on highly effective teams (The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach….) shows us that they typically organize their efforts around a common purpose. The best teams are relatively small in size. They bring their complementary skills together to meet the common goal. When team members fail to commit to the team’s common purpose the team members hold that person accountable.

With many youth teams the struggle to become a team centers around either failing to find common purpose or failing to hold teammates accountable to their commitment to that purpose. Common purpose is often threatened by mixed agendas. For example, a situation where most team members sacrifice personal gain for the team, but one team member is motivated by personal achievements. Holding our peers accountable is not easy. Young people are strongly influenced by their peers. Speaking up to a peer who plays selfishly can be difficult. It takes confidence and courage.

In Dream Teams, Shane Snow cautions that harmony is overrated. If we strive for harmony we tend to avoid the issues that affect team performance – like conflicting goals, or failing to work towards a common purpose. The best teams seek cognitive diversity – embracing different ideas and viewpoints. A diversity of ideas and viewpoints can create tension, or cognitive friction. The best teams handle the conflict and the resulting tension. They are able to have the difficult conversations because they truly care about their teammates and the best interests of the team. Highly skilled teams can underperform when they fail to work as a team.

We see team development as an important set of skills to be developed, just like dribbling and shooting. The life lessons here are plentiful. We work with groups to share our thoughts on teams and team skills. Our goals are aspirational. Our expectations are tempered by our knowledge of adolescent development. We know it can be difficult. Nonetheless, we set our standards around respect for others, and team play. We hope to lay a foundation for the future where players grow, over time, to become team players in the workplace and the community.