1, Include your leaders with a meeting before the standards meeting
Before your standards meeting with your entire team, I highly recommend you sit down with your key leaders to discuss their thoughts and insights on the process. You want to all be on the same page going into the meeting so that you understand each other.
2, Involve Instead of Impose
As with your vision and core values, be sure to involve your team when establishing your standards of behavior. It will value their perspective and help garner their commitment. As leadership author Stephen Covey once said, “No involvement equals no commitment.”
Similarly, Coach K says, “In putting together your standards, remember that it is essential to involve your entire team. Standards are not rules issued by the boss; they are a collective identity.”
3, Create and clarify your standards in writing
It is important to put your Standards in writing to help clarify and codify them for the short and long term. Unwritten standards are easily forgotten and can become an easy excuse when someone breaks them because they can say they weren’t clear about them.
While establishing your standards on the front end is a critical part of developing a Championship Culture, the key part is sustaining the standard throughout the course of the season. Many teams talk about the standard at the start of the season but don’t meticulously maintain them throughout the course of the season.
“It all starts with everyone buying into the same principles and values… If you don’t define the expectation for everybody in the organization and the standard, what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to do it, then how can you know whether someone is mediocre or a high achiever… We clearly define personally, academically, athletically what the expectation is for every player and they have to be accountable to it.” –Nick Saban
