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.

5 Minutes With Bo Hanson The Circle of Safety in Sport

The Circle of Safety in Sport

At Athlete Assessments when we work with clients one of the really critical models we refer to is the Circle of Safety. The Circle of Safety is not a concept we developed ourselves, it is taken from models such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and it is also taken from a lot of the work Simon Sinek has been doing, and the book that he wrote Leaders Eat Last.

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Team-Debrief

What Coaches need to know about their Team’s Culture

In previous articles, we have discussed at length why a productive team culture is vital for sports teams to be successful. But how do you actually know what kind of culture exists in your sports team and whether it is productive or effective, or if it needs development? In this article we discuss the four DISC Culture Styles which are mapped to the four elements of the Competing Values Framework.

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Why a Sports Team’s Culture Matters

Culture is a buzz word in sport. Coaches often attribute their success or failure to this ambiguous word. But at the crux of it why should you care about your sports team’s culture? The short answer

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Team Culture and Identity in Sport

Getting the culture right in your team and organization is crucial for success on any level. So how do you ensure that your culture gives your athletes the opportunity to achieve their fullest potential? In this 7-part video presentation, Bo Hanson discusses the importance of team culture, and how effectively utilizing the GRIP Model during your season can go a long way to ensuring your team’s culture starts on, and stays on, the right track.

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rugby-team-lineup

The Real Factor for high-performance in Sport

While it’s nice to have new buildings and equipment, is this the investment that will deliver the best return to your sporting success? At Athlete Assessments, we have been fortunate enough to have worked with more than 100,000 coaches, athletes, and sports administrators since our founding in 2007. This work has spanned over 40 different sports across the globe.

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Synergy in Sport Teams: Creating high-performance Teams

In sports teams such as football, synergy can become tricky when one player is outperforming the team’s result. In a situation where one of your athletes has achieved great individual statistics but at the end of the game your team has lost, your team has not achieved synergy. Your team is allowing the athlete to operate at a more individual level without the additional support of the team, and this is undermining the potential for synergy.

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team life cycle

Team Life Cycles

Combining the Stages of Team Development, Conflict and the GRIP Model   By Bo Hanson – 4x Olympian, Coaching Consultant & Director of Athlete Assessments In coaching there are often many models to understand, and it

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Demystifying Sport Team Culture

What’s critical in driving sport team culture?   Culture is a buzz word in sport. Coaches often attribute their success or failure on this ambiguous word. Every team has a culture and even if you do

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college sports recruiting

Destructive Sport Team Roles

By Bo Hanson – 4x Olympian, Coaching Consultant & Director of Athlete Assessments In previous articles we have discussed the importance of ensuring each of your athletes play a specific non-technical role on the team (and

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The Holy Grail in Sport – Selecting Athletes for the Best Team

Ask any successful business person or entrepreneur what makes their business so powerful and most respond with some variation of the theme, ‘selection of their people’. Even ask couples with enduring and loving relationships, what makes them so happy together and they often say ‘tremendous selection’! Sport is no different. Ask any of the coaching greats what makes the most successful team and almost without exception their immediate response is ‘selection’. Selection is the fabric or building block to exceptional results on and off the field.

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Your Athlete’s Value Beyond their ‘Position’

When you look at the athletes in your squad or team, what do you see? Do you just see the number on their back? Do you see their technical ability, and how this translates into their performance? Is there anything an athlete can contribute beyond their technical contribution? Have you ever thought about the impact certain players have on the rest of their team, especially when they are not there?

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Coach giving orders

Blame the Coach in Sport?

As sure as death and taxes, in every sports season there are winners and losers. More specifically, there is only one winner and then all the rest. For the teams who don’t win, everyone (fans, players, administrative staff, coaches, the list goes on…) has an opinion on why ‘their’ team was not successful this season.

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Athlete Engagement in Sport – Do Your Athletes Care?

Athlete Engagement is a critical concept for all sports coaches to understand. ‘Engagement’ is a borrowed term from the business world. There, it is a measurement of the degree to which an employee’s heart and mind is committed to their role, leader and company. It is so important in business because engagement has a direct and significant link to profitability. Research shows engaged individuals deliver an additional 30% in discretionary effort compared to disengaged individuals.

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Coach-Athlete Relationships: Bond Athletes to their Coach, Team and Club

As a coach ensuring your athlete is always striving to gain a 1% improvement in their performance can be one of the hardest parts of your job. At Athlete Assessments, we often speak about the importance of a quality coach-athlete relationship, and how this can be used to improve athlete performance. This article discusses how to improve emotional bonds and engagement, and how understanding these factors improves your athlete’s performance.

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Sports Team Culture Case Study

Here in Australia, sport is part of the fabric of our society. Growing up, few achievements are more significant than to be part of a championship high school sports team. The relative glory this brings from the accolades of the past students who relive their experiences through to the younger generation of champions, to the proud parents, whose children must have inherited their wonderful athletic genes – everyone loves a winner. As part of my high school rowing team, I dreamt each year as I progressed through the age groups, about the opportunity to win the championship race, aptly named the ‘Head of the River’. What made the dream even more poignant was the fact that in my senior years of school, I was hoping to be part of the crew who would break the losing drought for our school. Not since 1948, when the race was contested in four man boats, had my school won the prestigious event. In 1955, the event was contested in eight man boats and this was the race I now found myself a part of.

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Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development in Sport

Every high-performance sports team goes through the four main stages of team development. As a Coach you should understand the Stages of Team Development your team will be working through and how to help them achieve their best during each stage.

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Learn how to master the people side of sport using DISC Profiling...

What We Do

We specialize in helping our clients create and sustain winning results...

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See who we work with and read what they say about us...

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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.