Holistic Athlete Weekly Newsletter

Utilizing Zoom Calls for Team Building

Whether it’s your offseason or dealing with practices and games being cancelled due to weather, opportunities exist to get your team together in a purposeful, efficient way. Regularly scheduled Zoom calls that have an itinerary can serve several purposes:

1) Opportunity to focus on program values and important talking points in a different, more relaxed setting.

2) Showing the team videos or sharing your screen for a presentation can hit on different styles of learning and communication that in-person speeches or meetings may not accomplish for some.

3) Giving your leaders the opportunity to lead. Zoom calls that I’ve held for teams often lead to captains leading breakout rooms to discuss the topic of the call or posed questions to discuss and then report back to the larger group at the end. Sometimes I randomize who goes to what group to give the captains a chance to lead and build relationships with everyone (and so that everyone can be led at some point by each captain), but there is also an opportunity to select who is in each room if you’re looking to explore certain social dynamics on the team.

4) Team building activities such as ice breakers, room tours, scavenger hunts, etc. can help players get to know each other better outside of school/the sport in ways that regular practices and meetings can’t. For example, last winter I was working with a baseball team and I had them get the “most interesting item” in their house and bring it to the Zoom call. I divided the team into 3 breakout rooms (led by each of the 3 captains) and where each player shared their item and the story behind it. The group then nominated the top item from each group and had that player share with their whole team at the end of the call. Coincidentally, the three representatives from the group were all sophomores — which gave younger players in the program an opportunity to speak and be heard in a light-hearted setting that would be difficult to replicate in person in standard meeting formats.

If you’d like more examples of team-building activities for Zoom calls, let me know!

Overcoming Leadership Challenges

Each leader’s situation both externally (the people they’re tasked with leading) and internally (their personal characteristics and skillset as a leader) are different. But many struggle with common challenges such as opposition from within, dealing with pre-conceived norms of the group, and difficult taking care of themselves due to the responsibility and focus on others. Here’s a quick article hitting on these points and more.

Holistic Athlete Services

If you haven’t done so already, sign up for the 11 module Coaches Education Course! Contact me for a discount code

Also if you haven’t already, please sign up for a Zoom call for you and your staff to discuss the specific needs of your team, to asses what services may benefit you, to review content from the course, and to discuss any challenges with athlete’s you’re experiencing.