Sports Team Culture

Articles and Videos

If you work with or in a team, this section is a must. We cover pre-season preparation, the development of teams, team selection, the secrets of great teams as well as all things related to building strong athlete engagement from team loyalty to building athlete responsibility. You may find our sections for our most recent articles, resources and materials, latest newsletters, or 5 Minutes with Bo Hanson video series valuable too.

Directing Team Culture

Fundamentally, coaches need to be involved in directing team culture to ensure that the culture surrounding their athletes or program supports the level of performance and behavior that athletes need to succeed.

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5 Minutes with Bo Hanson: Talking Toughness

Does your program breed toughness in your team? In this concise video, Hanson simplifies the dialogue around toughness in sport by providing a short definition of what we mean when we talk toughness. He describes what tough athletes look like, and the ways in which this attribute can separate and elevate performance. Hanson also presents effective strategies for athletes to utilize when they need to rely on their toughness and how to perform at their best when it matters the most. The video also covers techniques for coaches to facilitate toughness development with the current generation in an era that doesn’t make it easy.

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5 Minutes with Bo Hanson: Talking Team Culture

Every team has a culture, some cultures support high-performance while others simply grow around dominant personalities in the team. In this video, Hanson simplifies the dialogue around culture in sport with a succinct definition of the term. He describes what culture looks like, and how to identify it in the sporting context. Together, Hanson and Antoniolli talk about a Coach’s role in guiding team culture. They question whether the team or its individual players’ level of skill and experience has a bearing on team culture. Hanson examines the fundamental components of a successful culture and explains what can happen when a team culture is left to develop on its own.

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Accountability Key to Championship Form

After a stellar playing career that included 4 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, Kristi Stefanoni, Head Coach of the UMass Softball Program, has solidified her position as a stellar coach with another successful year and being rewarded with the title of 2018 Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year.

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Athlete Assessments’ Team Day

Every team needs to set aside time to re-connect, review goals and revisit values. Athlete Assessments is no different. We have four Team Days a year and the first one for 2019 saw us rock climbing, getting to know each other a little better from a DISC perspective and making some tough “Decisions” over a lunch menu!

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6 CRUCIAL Steps to Success in Taking Over a Program

Congratulations! You’ve just been recruited as the new Head Coach. Whatever circumstances led to your appointment, the fact remains; you need to turn this team around – fast. You’ve got to get important elements of the team on side and develop what’s left of the team culture into a culture that you want. A culture that develops growth and delivers performance. There are six non-negotiable elements to success in this situation.

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Energize your Team like a Rock Star

Rock bands follow a formula for managing their audience’s energy. When you think about any of the live gigs you’ve been to, they follow a pretty predictable pattern. Predictable but effective. In this short video Bo Hanson shows you how to apply that formula to coaching sessions.

It’s unrealistic to expect athletes to be energized 100% of the time over the course of a training session which may be 2-3 hours long. Instead, it is our job as coaches to manage their energy in an effective way, taking into account physical development, skill acquisition and importantly, enjoyment.

It’s enjoyment and satisfaction that keeps athletes coming back.

It’s essential that most needed, least enjoyable and favorite drills are scheduled in an order that manages your athletes’ energy, ensures they make the most of every session and come back for more.

Watch this video as Bo Hanson explains:

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Strategies to Develop Team Culture

Strategies that drive the development of team culture are universal and they include establishing a team’s; goals, roles, values and behaviors   By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer – Athlete Assessments In our early article on ‘Getting

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Getting Clear on Team Culture

Team culture – a definition, an explanation of what it looks like in a sporting context and a guide as to how Coaches can identify what their team culture is.   By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer

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Looking Beyond Skill and Talent

The movement towards “looking beyond skill and talent” must be backed by all Coaches who want to develop a concrete set of behavioral and non-technical criteria that support their team while they reach for their goals. Each Coach looks for something different in their athletes and in this article we look at the advice Mel Downer of Basketball Queensland, Australia gives to emerging athletes.

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Roadblocks to Accountability

In a revealing interview with Dr. Jen Fraser, for End Bullying & Abuse in Sports Summit, Bo Hanson 3 x Olympic medalist and 4 x Olympian explains why a Coach’s bullying tactics will not create a pathway for personal growth, long-term results, mental skills or mental toughness.

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Footballing Bible FourFourTwo Investigates Team Chemistry

When the world’s biggest football magazine, FourFourTwo, took a look at team chemistry, writer Ben Welch spoke to premiership winning players, like Crystal Palace midfielder Yohan Cabaye and Celtic’s Musso Dembele for their insight into the unbreakable bonds that build team chemistry. He also spoke to Arsenal’s premiership winning Coach,

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Athlete Assessments Team Day: We Walk Our Talk

Athlete Assessments’ Senior Coaching Consultant, Bo Hanson, walks his talk at the organization’s Team Day. In this article we give you exclusive access to our Team Day, a day we set aside to review our internal scoreboard, establish goals for the coming year, assess our achievements, spend time with new team members and revisit our purpose.

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Elise Ray – Phenomenal First Year as Head Coach

It’s a big deal to turn a team around as a first year Head Coach. It’s an even bigger deal to do this and get your team to the National Championships. And when it’s the first time that team has reached the NCAA Nationals since 1998, well you don’t get much better than that.

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Coach Roland Thornqvist: Winning Coaches Never Stop Learning

Have you ever wondered what successful Coaches do differently? How they manage to amass title after title and build a team culture athletes want to be part of?

The first thing we noticed with winning Coaches is that they never sit back and become complacent. Instead, the fact that they don’t is what sets them apart from the rest. Winning Coaches are always learning, always striving for the 0.1% and this set them up for success game after game, year after year.

And that’s exactly what University of Florida’s Head Women’s Tennis Coach Roland Thornqvist has done.

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Solving a TOUGH Problem in Sport

The book GRIT made it onto many coaches reading lists over the summer (including ours) and there has been significant media coverage on the topic too. The interest is well founded as more than ever before, Coaches are unanimous in saying that their athletes are lacking resilience, they aren’t as ‘tough’ as their teams in previous times have been. And not just physically tough, mentally tough. But is ‘grit’ really the solution needed? Has the word ‘grit’ become too interchangeable that the real definition has been lost?

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Strategies for Athlete Accountability in Sport

Accountability in sport is doing what you say you’re going to do and executing the task to the best of your ability. Then being able to put your hand up and say ‘this is what I need to do better’ if you don’t get it right. Being accountable is not making excuses, not blaming others or whinging and complaining. Accountability in sport is taking ownership of something and making sure you ‘know your job and do your job’ 100% of the time.

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Being the Best Player for the Team

Athletes and coaches understand the importance of each individual player performing at their personal best and to striving to be the best player they can be. But what does it mean to be the “best player for the team”?

During preparation for the 2004 Olympics, Athlete Assessments Bo Hanson was selected in the Men’s Eight Rowing team for Australia. He was performing at his personal best and for a period, was ranked as the number 1 athlete in Australia.

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How to Break a Losing Streak

As a coach, nothing is more demoralizing than a losing streak that just won’t break. While we do our absolute best to avoid losing streaks, performance slumps, or even the prospect of our team underachieving it doesn’t mean we can avoid the topic, it’s too important.

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Create the Right Sports Team Culture: 10 Critical Factors

Culture is being discussed in sporting circles now more than ever. Why? Because it is a significant performance factor. If you have the “right” culture, your team is more likely to achieve sustainable success – not always winning, but always being in the hunt. If you have the “wrong” culture, your chances of any success, even fleeting success are almost zero. So how do you create the right sports team culture? In this article we discuss 10 Factors that Define Successful Sports Team Cultures.

What is culture? In its simplest and most useful description culture is the “way we behave on this team”. Behavior is a reflection of values. Recruiting and developing a common set of values helps create success.

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ONE Element

With Athlete Assessments we have now worked with over 22,000 individuals from over 40 different sports. This work has given me a unique vantage point to see the recurring patterns or themes that create success. When I see these patterns consistently creating success, year after year, the evidence certainly mounts. With this in mind, here is one of those concepts I have seen create consistent success. I believe it is critical for any coach and all teams to clearly understand and apply this concept to improve performance.

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Bo Hanson

Senior Consultant & Director

Bo Hanson’s career within the sport and the business sector spans over 25 years, delivering leadership, management, and coach development. In addition to his own athletic career comprising of four Olympic appearances and including three Olympic medals, Bo has worked for many years with coaches and athletes from over 40 different sports across the globe. Bo was also the winner of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) 2023 Award for L&D Professional of the Year, for his dedication to L&D and transformational work across various industries.

After a successful career in sport including four Olympics and three Olympic Medals, Bo co-founded and developed Athlete Assessments in 2007. Bo now focuses on working with clients to achieve their own success on and off ‘the field’, and has attained an unmatched track-record in doing exactly this.

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BoRowing-Atlanta Olympics

Now, watch us interrupt him for a round of quick fire questions.