5 Tips for Building Team Morale with Your Players

Have you recently found yourself in a coaching position of a sports team? Or have you already been coaching a team for a while?

If you said yes to either question, you know the importance of creating a healthy team morale in your players.

As a coach, your players look to you as their morale-compass. If you have a negative attitude toward your team, your players will know it.

So, what can you do about building team morale? We've put together a list of five easily implementable tools to create a healthy team morale.

Read on to learn more!

1. Create Space for Compliments

As a coach, your words carry more weight than you might be aware of.

During practices and games, use your words in an encouraging way. This doesn't mean you can't provide guidance and corrections if necessary. Just be mindful of the tone you use and who around you can hear.

After each game, have the team sit around in a circle and go around one-by-one. Ask other players say what they think the player being highlighted did really well. This leaves each player feeling supported by their team--even if they just suffered a loss.

Another way to create space for compliments is to have a poll at the end of the season. This poll can have several awards or trophies, and each player will decide who should get the specified award.

2. Confront Confrontations

In any team atmosphere, it's normal for people to experience frustration sometimes.

If you notice a player dealing with frustrations, take them aside and ask what's bothering them. What is the confrontation they're dealing with--or not dealing with?

This is best done privately, with no one else around. This will show the player and others watching that you're an attentive and compassionate coach. It will also show the team that you genuinely care about each of them and what they have to say.

3. Make It a Democracy

No matter the age group you're coaching, people like to feel that they have some sense of autonomy.

So if you have a decision to make, bring it to the team! Have them weigh in on it and see what the general consensus is.

This will give the players the feeling that they have control and can affect what they're doing. Even if you still make the final decision, it's encouraging when someone asks for your opinion.

4. Go for the Goals

If you're on a team, having goals is crucial to success.

Gather your team to decide on realistic goals and how you plan to achieve them. Having the team recognize this goal together will create a spirit of harmony and like-mindedness.

If you're all on the same page, then you'll work your hardest and encourage each other to go for the bigger picture. Score!

5. Outside of the Game

A constant theme among these tips is to create safety and harmony among the players.

A perfect way to do that is to host and organize some team-bonding activities outside of practice and games. The more emotionally invested in each other the players are, the more they'll harmonize on the court or field.

Whether it's sharing dinner, seeing a movie, or going to a professional game, this will be great to create cohesiveness in the team.

Final Thoughts on Building Team Morale

There you have it! Five easily attainable tips to building team morale.

If you have suggestions and comments on how to further team morale, let us know! We'd love to chat with you about your experiences and how to be better coaches.

With all these tips, your team will hit a winning streak in no time!