Building a Strong Team

Whether it is your athletic team, your staff, your ministry or your business, you want to have the strongest team possible. The simple key to building a strong organization of any kind is to put the right people in the right place---build to your strengths. Too often we focus on where our team is weak, and we pound away trying to overcome that weakness. What we need to do instead, is play to our strength.

Let's assume you coach a basketball team. Your team is blessed with excellent height, but you only have one player who can handle the ball, and you have little to no team speed. This means your team is weak at running the fast break...so what do you do? Do you spend countless hours of practice time running the break to get better at it? No, you play to your strength. You run a structured offense designed to create opportunities to exploit your strength---your height and dominance inside, close to the basket. You build on your strengths and become excellent.

Within your organization, do you have workers who are being asked to do things totally outside their area of talent and comfort? How good do you expect them to be? How will that affect your organization? Are you trying to do it all yourself? Find the right people for the right job and you will strengthen your organization.

Don't call a plumber to paint your house. Let the plumber plumb, the painter paint. Let the teacher teach and the administrator administrate. Let the pitcher pitch and the rightfielder play rightfield.

Play to your strengths.

Identity

If you are running an athletic program for a Christian school, the first question you need to consider is, "Who are we?" In most cases, your school will have already answered that for you, but that isn't always the case. I spent several years at a school that is over ten years old and they still haven't established their identity. If your school is taking the shotgun approach to education--a scattered philosophy and trying something new every year-- and just can't figure out who they are, your task will be more difficult.

Is athletics primarily an outreach program? Is it for the sake of creating teenage evangelists? Is its purpose to extol the virtues of competition and aid young men and women in establishing their identity? Is it a tool to increase enrollment? Is it a vital part of capturing school spirit? Is it an intramural time so that kids have another option for after-school activities? You need to know the answer before you can be successful--and success will most certainly be defined within the confines of your philosophy and identity.

If you want to be competitive, attract new students to your school, and have an excellent athletics program, your approach is going to be a lot different than if your main goal is to create a social gathering for kids seeking something to do after school.

Identity. Know who you are.

Kickoff, January 5, 2011

Welcome to my blog focusing on Christian School athletics. I pretty much assume I will just be writing to myself for awhile, but that's okay.

Today's blog is just to say hello and to allow me to see how well this works. Over the course of time, I will be blogging about current issues in Christian School sports, how to build an athletic program in Christian schools, and the myriad topics that relate to Christian School athletics. I also plan to touch on the topic of church sports ministry.

So, if you are one of my first readers, thanks for checking me out. I'm looking forward to kicking things off.