JP Nerbun: What does culture mean for you?

The word ’culture’ is used frequently in conversations about coaching. But what does it actually mean? How do we go about creating and maintaining a culture?

Scott Mowberry, from the Soccer Coaching Podcast, spoke about this with JP Nerbun, a culture consultant, mentor, speaker, author, and founder of TOC Culture Consulting. 

Originally a college basketball player, JP cut his teeth in coaching in Limerick, Ireland.While coaching at a high school in the US, he hit rock bottom as a coach.

"The weight of coaching was exhausting," he said. "It wasn’t fulfilling, the relationships struggled, my culture struggled."

JP now works with coaches across various sports to make sure this doesn’t happen to them, He shares some of his tips with Scott...

SM: What are we talking about in your terms when you’re talking about a team culture?

JPN: "We look at two main things. We like to measure culture by the strength of the relationships. How connected are people? Are they connected around a common goal? Do they feel safe? Is there trust?

"The other thing would be the standards, the behaviors. Not the things you say on the wall, like ’love’, ’toughness’ or whatever. But how do you actually do things? How do you do things when the leader isn’t there?

"How do you do things when stuff goes bad? When you go down three goals in the first half, how do you respond as a team on the pitch? How do you show up? 

“Who’s driving that - Is it just the leader? Is it the head coach and captain? Great teams need to have strong relationships and high standards - but to drive that, and to go really far with that, you need more of a player-led approach. It can’t be just you. 

“I was talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the former New Zealand rugby captain, and he said in the best teams he captained, there was a group of them that drove the culture."

SM: You speak about transformational leadership. Can you tell us a bit more about how that looks, and how a grassroots volunteer coach might be able to use some of the techniques to look at themselves?

JPN: "You’re really just trying to talk about why you coach. What does success look like for you? What’s the vision for your team? Have a clear picture of that and maybe a few ways you might measure that.

“It’s deciding what’s really important - who are you as an individual, your values.But that’s a hard thing to do. It’s not something you figure out over a morning coffee.

"How do you do things when stuff goes bad? How do you respond as a team on the pitch...?"

“If you want to be a transformational leader, find things you can do to reflect on your coaching and to continuously fill your head with things that will stretch you, challenge you, and help you move towards those things you say are really important. 

"The great coaches, the great leaders, are very introspective. They take time, they have these disciplines in their life to grow.

"They don’t spend their days just scrolling Twitter for the latest drill. They’re deep in learning about new things, new ways to approach things, better ways of doing things. That growth mindset is at the core of it. 

“You may not have a mission statement, you may not have core values, but at least identify a couple of things you can do to start slowly growing as a coach."

SM: Would you suggest that, as coaches, we focus on the process rather than the outcomes?

JPN: "One of the things I encourage coaches to do is to find measures of success.

"Society measures success on achievement, ability and acknowledgement. How many games have you won? Did you win the championship? For a player, what’s his ability? And acknowledgement - ’that guy’s got lots of followers, he’s got a lot of respect, people talk about him’. That’s what society tells us is success. 

“I try to think about a vision for a team. What are your new measures of success? It comes down to the experience. What they will remember is a big component of that. Secondly, who are they becoming through that process? 

"Those are two really important measures we should have clear in our head. What are they going to remember? Who are they becoming? My third thing [is] how do you want it to feel for you and your players? 

"Those are the things I would focus around in our process - what does it feel like? What will they remember? And who are they becoming?"