The Importance of Building Trust

Reference: What Drives Winning by Brett Ledbetter

The value of winning a championship comes in understanding that anything in life that's worth achieving cannot be done on your own.

- Billy Donovan 

Having the message is one thing - what is important is how you deliver it and even more important- how the players receive and act on the message.

Great team's are built on great relationships, and great relationships are built on trust.  Trust is built when trustwilling meets trustworthy.

Trust is built every day and every day that we practice, we prove to our teammates and coaches that we are worthy of their trust.

Everybody has been on team's where some of the players aren't always on the same page.  You have to pour energy into putting them in shared experiences where they have to learn to depend on each other.

The key to gaining trust is being consistent and matching your actions with your words.  

One way to help build trust is seeing a playing struggling as an opportunity to build trust.  A lot of coaches find value in fixing problems.  Instead of the coach fixing every problems, teach and empower teammates to fix problems.  The player struggling has to be trustwilling to accept the information from their teammate, and the teammate teaching has to prove that her or she is trustworthy by delivering good information.

Teach your players how to look for opportunities to build trust when teammates are struggling by investing in helping them.

Alternating Shots

If you have two players that aren't completely getting along, before each player can leave practice they have to hit 6 3-pointers in a roe taking turns alternating shots.  

A tennis coach could have two players do ralley-share - give them a certain number of consecutive rallies they have to complete (like 150) in order before they can leave practice.

Drills that create codependency - or what some call peer pressure drills - force teammates to achieve a certain goal in a certain amount of time and put them in situations where they learn how to work together and to build trust in eachother.