Core Covenants - Building Great Teams

The steps to building great teams are consistent and predictable, regardless of age or sport. Leadership has the ability and the responsibility to create a positive culture within their teams. I believe that most coaches have a vision in their mind of what they want their team to resemble, but most coaches do not take the intentional steps necessary to build that team.

As a coach and builder of teams, I want to encourage you to not focus on winning games, but on building great teams, and then let the outcome speak for itself. The scoreboard does not determine good teams — you can win and not have a real team, and you can lose on the scoreboard and have a great team.

The best term I have come up with to describe guiding principles for an athletic team is "core covenant." A covenant is a strong word — it is more than a promise. A promise is a statement made with every intention of seeing it through sometime in the future. A covenant goes far beyond a promise or having a "slogan" or "theme" for the season. The word covenant has two parts to its meaning: a binding agreement, and an agreement where action is physically visible. Part one talks about an agreement made in advance that holds you together in good times and in bad — something you can rely on or fall back on to ground you and hold you to preset standards. The descriptive words used to define the covenants create a vision that teams can hold onto — to ground them, to keep them together — that your team can voluntarily commit to. The second part of the definition is what gives the word "covenant" real power: your actions are visible. This takes the agreement beyond words to an actual vision of performance. It says, "This is what we believe, so therefore, this is what you will see."