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5 Keys To Building A Winning Baseball Team! During the Championship Match, at any level, coaches, parents and athletes, gather around to see the two best teams fight tooth and nail for each run on the field. While the excitement, hard work, and talent are showcased and honored that day, the coaches are well aware that what they are watching, is the result of months, if not years of hard work and training. While what most people see is the size, strength, speed, and natural talent of these teams, there is a common thread behind all successful teams that is hard to see, but just as important as the physical traits. Key #1: Power of Team Belief When I work with athletes and coaches. I hear coaches say to their players, "you just have to believe in yourself." While this is true, this same player will go home and tell their parents, "I just need to believe in myself more." So, what may seem obvious to both you as the coach, and your players, does not mean they now understand how to believe in themselves more. Here are a few ideas that you may consider using with your own team. My goal here is to go beyond theory and show you how to covertly and overtly create a positive, empowering belief system within your team. First, what are beliefs? Simply put: Beliefs are learned feelings of certainty, based on past experiences, references, or what someone told you. For example, if you believe you are a good coach. The only way you know that, is because you have some references in your past that validate your belief. Someone may have told you, "You're a good coach". Or you've seen the look on your athletes' face when they learn something from you. People pat you on the back, or you have won championships or awards. Whatever the past experience is, doesn't matter, just know that this is the way you believe things.Second, what do beliefs do, and why are they so critical? It's been said that we have over millions of bits of information coming at us at every moment, and our brain filters out the information so that we stay sane. George A. Miller said that we can only take in 7 +/- 2 chunks of information at once. Your beliefs are a major part in filtering what information you focus on, and what information pay more attention to. For example, don't you have players on your team who think they can learn any skill pretty quickly, and are ready to just go for it? Or get excited to be up to bat in pressure situations, because they believe they are a clutch player. At the same time, there are players on your team who may be sitting there and complaining about how they are going to struggle at this same exact time, aren't there? What's the difference? The difference is that the players who are more willing to just get after it, and give it their best shot have different belief systems than the ones that hesitate, find excuses, and complain. Now, there are more things that go into this obviously. For example, a player's self-talk, self-image, and a few other things, but if you change some of their beliefs, you'll see the others aspects change as well. How to Instill Empowering Beliefs In Your Team! One of the things that I do is look at ways to get my players to believe positive and empowering things about themselves, their team as a unit, and their capabilities. While I do not necessarily do these techniques or strategies in a step by step format, my goal here is to give you some outline to begin with. After you start doing it, then you can be creative and spontaneous with more experience. Here is a step by step way of approaching this: 1. Set up a positive environment where they trust you, and are willing to grow and learn 2. Identify limiting team beliefs and individual beliefs on your team 3. Create counter-examples to their belief, so it creates a new belief 4. Create opportunities to reinforce new beliefs, and past positive ones 5. Evaluate your progress, and go back to step Creating an Environment Where Failure Doesn't Exist In this article, we will look at the first step. The first step in teaching your players how to have a positive belief in oneself and their teammates starts with the head coach and filters down. One of the main things the coach can control is the environment he/she sets up, and whether it's okay to make mistakes or not. For example, one of the beliefs that you may consider adopting is "Anything worth being good at, is worth doing poorly at first." The point behind this belief is to allow athletes to make a ton of mistakes early on, and encourage them to do so. But you must be giving them specific, positive feedback and teach them how to do it correctly. Think about it this way for a moment. How many times have you been watching one of your games and one of your players keeps striking out, because he/she can't seem to hit a curve ball. However, he athlete and yourself did not realize that he/she was struggling that much at the skill. Why? Because most likely they haven't had enough opportunities to make these mistakes in practice, get specific positive feedback from you, and then keep re-adjusting while they improve.
So, this player would be best off facing hundreds of curve balls in practice and fail time and time again in order to get his/her timing down, until finally he/she is able to do it successfully in a live situation. The teams and players who are willing to make the most mistakes early on in a season, and believe that they can learn from them, will have a faster improvement rate than any of their competitors.
If you teach your players this approach to learning, they will have much more self-confidence and be able to take that skill into any area of their lives. Plus, your team will be more likely to win the "big game" or come through in the clutch, with this approach than with any other. Back to Beliefs If the environment is set up so that your team makes mistakes fast, learns from them faster, and adjusts quicker than any other team, then the beliefs they will have are:
To implement Step 1, simply look at the environment that you as a coach have created. Are your players happy and excited to be there? Do they respond well to you without or with very little complaint? Are they willing to make mistakes, and eager to learn from them? If the answer to all these things are "yes", then congratulations. You are doing a lot of great things. If not, then you may consider asking yourself what kind of beliefs you want your players to have, and then look at the environment, as just one way of influencing your players behavior and performance. Here are 4 quick ways to make a more positive, empowering environment. 1. Smile more. As coaches, sometime we get so intense that we may forget to smile. While there is a time and place for everything. One thing that researchers have proven, people learn best when they are enjoying learning. Smiling more will let your players know it's okay to have fun and enjoy themselves, even if you are competing at a super high level. 2. Have motivational signs in the locker room, and/or have your players make them for their team booklets. This interrupts and conditions their thinking in a positive way! 3. Have team meetings where you ask the questions: "What is good about our team?" "Why are we unique?" "What makes us a great team?" "What can be even better?" 4. Celebrate small successes! That's right! Ask yourself, "How can I support my team even more for the small things they are doing well?" Or, "Who haven't I complimented enough lately?" You may find that you spend more time with a select few, because you enjoy talking to them more. See if you can take a moment to say something or ask a question to a player you haven't spent as much time with lately. Trust me, they'll appreciate it, even if it doesn't show right away!
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