October 07, 2022   |   Tagged Coaching

How to create more team unity

NBC Basketball Camps

If you want a strong team or family then you need to cultivate unity. Pursuing unity should be as an intentional discipline as pursuing success. Success without unity is bitterness, division, and strife. All the money in the world is not worth a troubled and unhappy home. Unity is extremely important to build and protect. Take time to become wise at building and protecting team unity.

How to Create Team Unity

Love is the perfect bond of unity. Where there is love there will be unity. When a team loves the game, loves the coach, and loves each other—this is the perfect bond. So how do you have this kind of trifecta for perfect unity?

Love for the game
Love is really about decisions. Many people play basketball who don’t love it. They love the idea of basketball. They love the idea of themselves in connection with basketball. They love the commotion and recognition of basketball but they don’t really love the game. f you love the game, you will study it, you will watch it, will dream about it, will work to improve, and do all you can to be your best. Often disunity on a basketball team comes from the simple divide between those who love the game and those who merely like the game.

How to generate more love for the game:

• Love is contagious. Get around enthusiastic people who can inspire you to love the game.
• Buy in-Most athletes don’t love it because there has been no sacrifice on their part.
• You don’t have to love basketball to play it well or to have a great season but anything that has obligation without love is a recipe for mediocrity or worse. If your team is only there at practice because they must be or they aren’t working out hard this summer, it’s going to be a long season next year.

Love for the Coach
There is nothing better than to play for a coach who believes in you and would do anything to help you be your best. When players love their coach and vice versa, an incredible bond begins to form.

So what do you do if you don’t love your coach?

There are two reasons you don’t love your coach. 1. Your coach is tough to love. 2. You don’t know how to love and most likely it’s a combination of both. Learning to love someone who is tough to love is one of the missions of any great leader. Check out Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Layli Long Soldier, Dietrich Bonhoeffer for examples of people who have learned to navigate people who are tough to love.

Avoid what kills love:

Speaking poorly about people. When you tell stories and paint images of how terrible someone is or how they have wronged you, you not only look foolish, you are digging a pit that will be difficult to transcend.

Negative Sentiment Override means that you are in a space to view everything about this person in a negative light. No matter what they do, you can’t stand it. Every action they take will be viewed by you in a critical way.

Lack of courage to say what you need to say. Most people fear the true and meaningful conversations that require bravery and strength. Instead, people say nothing or worse talk about it negatively with others. If you have a struggle with someone, be brave enough to talk about it without excessive emotion or accusing tonality. Lay out the facts and come to a good plan together.

Love for Teammates
One of the greatest opportunities in life is to play on a team with people you care about. There is a deep love that forms when you are working day in and day out for a common mission. Love for teammates deepens when there is a common mission, an atmosphere of encouragement and goodwill, and a good plan to resolve conflict in a way that builds you closer to each other.

The best teams know how to:

• Encourage when life gets tough
• Navigate disagreement
• Handle conflict in a way that makes for strength not division
• Help each person have power and the ability to voice their needs appropriately
• Inspire each member to develop the will to do the work necessary to be an effective team
• Eliminate ego
• Succeed on the court and off the court
• Win the game and win the moment

Unity is strength, division is weakness.-Swahili Proverb

About NBC Camps

If you like this kind of information, then you will like NBC Camps. NBC Camps are devoted to the education of the heart and the mind. Basketball is a great sport and worth playing to the best of our ability. Our participation in basketball should help elevate us to our best selves and that comes through intensive self-reflection and self-discipline and a commitment to values higher than mere win/loss records or money. NBC Camps are committed to the promotion of higher values and the focus on intrinsic excellence not just extrinsic. For more information about NBC Camps visit www.nbccamps.com or call 1800-406-3926.