The larger the dream, the more important the floorball team. A leader will never get greater results than the team will deliver.
“My history as a manager cannot be compared with Frank Rijkaard’s history. He has zero trophies and I have a lot of them…” /Mourinho
Usually you only see the hard results, your score in the football game, your position in the league and so on. Many times you forget to see the progress and results in the “soft” parts, like working together (teamwork), better communication, team spirit etc. The majority of coaches are judged purely on results and in many cases, purely on immediate success rather on their performance level connected to the pre-requisites.
Even if it’s the hard results that will count in floorball, but the soft results will make the right prerequisites for the hard results!
It’s easy to sacrifice relationships, when you are only hunting for results, the same goes for conflict handling.
On the Y-scale you have relationship and on the X-scale the performance. Depending on the size of the conflict or if you value relationship or performance higher there are some different ways to solve a conflict.
Avoidance – If there is a minor conflict, your players will forget it soon and it will not affect the performance nor the relationship.
Adjust/accept – You value the relationship higher than the performance and accept to adjust and give the other part right.
Compromise – Lose – Lose situation, none of the parts in the conflict will get their wanted solution and need to give up something. Example. A wants A as a solution B wants D as a solution, but you end up with C…
Bulldozer – You value the performance/results higher and are ready to sacrifice the relationship, you decide!
Consensus – Win-Win discussion, was it a misunderstanding from the beginning? Find a way to a win-win situation through guiding the dialogue.
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.
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.
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.
A consequence of bad listening is conflicts. Did you know that over 90% of all conflicts starts from a misunderstanding, we did not listen to the sender careful enough, or the opposite, and we did not secure that we had the same picture with some questions, have I understood you correctly if I interpret what you said like this… We can still have different opinions about the issue, but at least we know that.
Think of 1-2-2 set up in floorball, how would you describe it? Depending on your age, geographical location, values, competence, experience and so on you will describe it in a certain way. Do you think you and I would have the same picture? What if you were on a seminar with 100 floorball coaches, you probably could find someone with same thinking, but otherwise you would get many different views of 1-2-2, everything from extremely defensive set up to extremely offensive and everything in between. So if you would attend at seminar like this, and got the opportunity to talk about 1-2-2 with everyone, you would need to be really present in your listening and check with questions that you have understood correctly. What great learning experience or source for conflicts (same topic, but different pictures = misunderstanding = conflict)
Think of following situation. You have been signed to lead a football team and explain for the team that you want to use the 2-2-1 set up, and immediately get the response, “good we know that system, it’s the same as our previous coach used”. This could be a major pitfall, if you think you and your players and the previous floorball coach had the same picture of how to play 2-2-1. Instead you could start asking questions to understand how they did play in general, offensive, defensive, you might find similarities to your thinking, but you would also find differences in both why, what and how.
Another part that will affect our communication is, how you perceive things around you. By seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting or smelling?How do you perceive things? If you don’t have the answer, you can think of, how you say good bye, or end up a phone call, or you are maybe only sending text messages (sms and e-mail). I myself usually end up with “bye, see you” (even if it’s a phone call or I know that the next meeting will be a phone call as well). I want to see and hear things. So why am I writing about this, because it’s a very important part in communication and reaching your players with your message. I usually talk in pictures, I try to create an image of my message at least in my leadership role, risking therefore to lose some of my audience, who don’t primarily perceive things visually, therefore it’s important to try to mix your message (See – hear – feel – taste – smell) if it’s a large team/group you are talking to or try to adjust your message to the individual receiver, to be able to do that you need of course to know your floorball players well.