Coaches: Creating a Culture

This is not easy to do, but it is the thing that will best serve your team and swimmers. I've read about how we are suppose to change a culture that is limiting a teams success. Many times it is the culture that is the underlying problem. They all say how hard it is to change culture, and with any kind of change; it takes time. The thing they don't tell you is what possibly is going to happen when you change a culture. Do they talk about how many people get upset with the way you are now doing things? Do they tell you that swimmers who aren't made out to be part of what you are trying to sell are going to quit your team? Or how those who quit your team may go to another team? Some mention it, but really don't go into detail.

My experience, I tried to change a culture. Only to have it thrown back into my face. It was done passively, but it was done nonetheless. The deep rooted culture defeated me, and I basically just resorted to figuring out how to change it slowly, and create a grassroots system to try to create the culture earlier. I didn't stick around to see what would happen, as I had fought upstream for so long that I got tired even though I was making ground in changing the culture.

Now, I joined a team that the culture change had already begun. It was going into the hard times though. We battled with trying to convince people of what we wanted in our athletes, and there was some resistance. We lost some very good and talented swimmers. Now we are going into the third season, and we are still losing swimmers who have a hard time fitting into what we expect, but the team is becoming more and more filled with swimmers with the mentality that we want. I preach to my group about things all the time. I preach about the things that I have seen that will allow them to succeed in our program. We talk about swimmers needing to be persistent, but as a coach we need to stay persistent as well. I feel like I might have made the mistake before in hopes of getting more numbers, when I truly should have been persistent in changing the culture.

As it is the year of the Olympic Bump (numbers for most teams rise), it is a great time to creating the culture as so many are new. You weed out a few who feel like your crazy, or you don't know what you are doing, but you end up with the core group that will be the core of your team for the next 3 - 4 years. These kids develop that culture, and you hope they can portray it well enough, that they wear off on other new swimmers in the future. In 2008, I didn't do a good enough job of this, as I was so busy trying to reconfigure the business side of the club, that I allowed the summer league culture to continue.

Again, I say to the coaches out there. Good Luck.