Floorball – Team Spirit inside the team

The size of the floorball team will have a great impact on the team spirit, it’s harder to get a good team spirit within larger teams. In floorball teams with good team spirit the team members also tend to take greater responsibility of the negative results.

Hockey vs Floorball and team size

The team spirit will also most likely increase if your floorball players make great efforts or sacrifices during a floorball game. Increased team spirit will end up in greater attendance on floorball practices and more sacrifices from the players for the team during games, they will also more easily respect the team norms, like coming in time.

The level of team spirit will also affect the demand on leader behavior, task oriented (low team spirit) or relation oriented (high team spirit).  High team spirit is most of the times connected to more democratic leadership.

Players in the starting formation tend to feel higher team spirit than substitutes in a losing team, but in a successful team difference is less visible between substitutes and starting formation.

In addition for clear common goals, communication and roles within the team, there are some additional things to consider regarding building up team spirit.
– Pride for the team and what the team is doing
– Team identity which will start from the game jerseys

Avoid sub-groups within the floorball team, make all of your players to know each other, this can be done through solving tasks together or with regularly meetings with the team and teambuilding activities.

Floorball victory

When you genuinely help or support others they will do the same for you. When your players are there fully for each other, they will support each other, no matter what. One of the players supporting another will next time receive genuine support back. It’s somehow build into our system, if you get support or get something, you want to give something back. You show respect and you get respect back. You show appreciation and you get appreciation.

This is of course why shops have their demonstrations of food for example, you taste, and you feel immediately you need to do something back (at least most of us), buy the product.  Try to transfer this thinking and acting into your team. You can go back and look for the Champions League games Inter played during 2010 when they won. They were there for each other all the time, and of course not only on the football field.

Extra ordinary relationships will give extra ordinary results.

Floorball – Barcelona is the enemy outside the team?

The team spirit within the team will most of the times increase when you have another team to compete against or a common “enemy” outside the team.
This is something Mourinho is using many times, creating enemies outside the team to make the team stronger inside. I think Mourinho has already couple of scenarios ready, Barcelona is the favorite to win the La Liga in everybody’s eyes and the referees will give advantage to Barcelona… (this was written before the season started) Try to Google some of those sentences and see if you get any hits.

“I knew this would happen long ago, but I do not care. I know because I know who controls the game, and if you look at their statements, then you understand why they have made this decision. I worry about playing on a Saturday night at 22:00 then on a Tuesday in the Champions League. Barcelona [does] not want to play on the Saturday because they play on the Wednesday before, and because of this we need to play on a Monday.”

Floorball 2 on 1 practices and drills

As a leader you need to take responsibility for the extreme we and them situations that might occur in sports. A common fight against an “enemy” outside the team will strengthen the team spirit, but might in the long run create an unhealthy hostility against other teams or groups and it should not be necessary to do this in youth teams. You should focus on the challenge or compete against the situation rather than an enemy outside the team.