The importance of team building within your sports association

There’s nothing duller than going to work and having nothing to talk about with your colleagues! It’s a well-known fact that happiness at work helps to improve productivity and communication within the association. Team cohesion is one of the key factors contributing to well-being at work and to employee and volunteer loyalty.

How to develop team cohesion?

Organizing a team-building activity or a 5 à 7 is a great way to get to know each other. The activity will enable your members to build a collective memory and develop a social life within the group.

The start of the season is an ideal time to bring together all your association’s member trainers (salaried and volunteers). You can also invite other association members to join you. The aim is to have fun together and get to know each other more personally, so as to create a good working atmosphere.

The activity will enable you to share the organization’s values with which its members can identify. This sense of belonging will enable you to work together towards a common goal.

Lead by example

If you want to build team cohesion within your sports association, as the organization’s leader you’re going to have to set an example. This can be as simple as engaging in professional or personal conversations with others.

Of course, not everything rests on the leader. Each and every member of the organization needs to invest in the team by interacting with others. This spirit must flow from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Learning takes place largely by observation, so the members of your association will tend to reproduce your behaviors.

Improving organizational performance

Cohesion within a group of people improves group efficiency and encourages mutual support. The two examples below will help you understand why team cohesion has an influence on group performance.

Example of a close-knit club

Two coaches from the same club bump into each other on the pitch between practices. One of them says hello to the other and asks him how his practice went, since they met at the beginning of the season. During the activity, a bond is created between them and they are more inclined to exchange and help each other when needed.

Example of a fragmented club

Two coaches from the same club bump into each other on the pitch between practices. They can see that they work for the same club, since they’re wearing club jerseys, but they don’t really see any point in trading with each other. They simply exchange shy smiles. If one of them has a problem or needs advice, he’s not likely to ask his colleague for help.

A close-knit team is more likely to be successful than a fragmented one, since the way members interact together influences the achievement and quality of results.

Sharing knowledge, information and ideas between coaches can greatly improve team performance, and in the end, it’s your club that comes out on top!

Contributing to the well-being of team members

Team cohesion contributes to the development of social life within the association, which is one of the factors associated with well-being. Members will tend to want to work for your club, since from the outside a certain unity will be felt.

Club members will enjoy working for your organization, even those who do so on a voluntary basis. They’ll tend to want to get involved and repeat the experience in subsequent years.

For members to work together, there must be a sense of belonging to the club. This sense of belonging is developed through team-building activities.

Club spirit isn’t the job of one or two people: it’s the responsibility of every member!

Every member of the association has a duty to get involved so that the organization achieves good results. It’s the rule of one for all and all for one. An association is a bit like a family, helping and supporting each other in times of pleasure and victory as well as in times of difficulty and defeat.

MonClubSportif is a platform that facilitates communication between members of an organization. It can be used to plan the next practice or to ask for advice.