Sports Playbook Team Culture Model

Is your team’s culture creating an environment consistent with your organization’s mission, values, goals, and objectives? Does your team culture support competitive success? Team culture is fundamental and yet not easily understood. Often, an unhealthy culture can go unnoticed and the behaviors can be anywhere from unproductive to downright shocking.
What core competencies are common to the most successful teams? How best to maximize the talent on the field through off-field activities? How do you ensure peak performance for your team?

Core Competencies

SCI has established and identified core competencies consistently found in the most successful organizations and teams. SCI can work with your organization or team to understand a current baseline of competencies and develop a specific strategic plan for to mature your organization or team to ensure optimal performance.

LEVEL 1 – CHAOS

For short periods of time, a team can win while in chaos. Talent is always a major factor in team success and if you throw enough of it together it will stick, from time to time, without having to align the team in ways apparent at both the Repeatable and Peak Performance levels. However, this represents a major gamble and one that will ultimately result in sub-optimal performance. It’s also an incredibly stressful experience for many administrators, coaches, and athletes to be part of a team in Chaos. Even where there is short-term success on the field, there is often the opposite occurring in other facets of the team. The teams with continued reputation for success on and off the field do not operate in Chaos.

LEVEL 2 – REPEATABLE

Repeatable is a good place to be for a team and represents a marked improvement over Chaos. At this level, there tends to be a clear culture and way of doing things for the team. Roles, rules, expectations are all clear. Where teams fall short at this level is in identifying specific characteristics of their athletes and tailoring in nuanced, but important ways to truly achieve Peak Performance given the specific individuals in the tea,

LEVEL 3 – PEAK PERFORMANCE

True success, on and off the field, comes from organizational and team competencies that maximize talent in all roles. This is about establishing a team culture with clear values and ways but also identifies purposeful variation in how things are done to leverage the characteristics of the individuals involved. SCI has a full scale assessment instrument to identify gaps and assist in laying the foundation for success.

The Sports Playbook

Based off the key concepts outlined in The Sports Playbook: Building Teams that Outperform, Year after Year, SCI works closely with your organization to establish a high performance culture that maximizes your talent.

How does Team Culture Develop?

Team Culture forms as a result of shared customs, rituals, beliefs, knowledge, and practices that become common to team members over time. These common cultural elements are usually passed down from the older team members to the younger team members and are reinforced by existing team leadership.

Roles

Each successful sports team has to apply specific team roles for each member of the team, ideally those that are aligned with individual competencies. Optimizing performance is possible only when the team is well balanced by having a:

Captain– to communicate and bridge the team members with coaches, and sometimes make tactical decisions on behalf of the coach.
Leader – to lead the team to reach a goal by identifying and communicating strategies and leading by personal example. This role is important during critical moments of the competition or even during practice, in order to achieve specific goals outlined by the coach.
Superstar – to do something that seems impossible or to shine. A Super Star may have concern for the team but their primary focus is on themselves and their individual performance and recognition. Superstars may also set standards, which motivate those less talented to excel further. Many healthy teams have no more than one person of this caliber as team dynamics become more complicated and performance can suffer with too many.
Team Members – to execute directions from the captain and the leader, and to support the Super Star in achieving individual results and hereby improve team performance.

Assignment of team roles must consider the character of individual athletes (e.g. one person cannot be a Team Member and a Super Star simultaneously because these roles require a completely different type of character). It is important for athletes and the coaches to understand their natural predisposition to perform in the right role. Trying to change the team’s natural division of roles (or working against character) creates conflict and chaos that lead to team or individual frustration and consequently performance may be affected.

It is important for a team to have complementary characters where the weaknesses of some individuals are offset by the strengths of others. For example, when a coach wants to set up a defence line, he may want to choose players with high tolerance as a character trait, because they will easily more easily accept the tactic and strategy of the opponent and develop a counter strategy, which may help the team to win the game. Low tolerance players are more inclined to reject the other team’s strategy rather than understand it.

The most successful tactics and strategies are those applied based on the athlete’s character strengths in the case of individual sports, and those based on the team members’ complementary strengths for team sports.

Understanding Team Culture is Critical

It is critical to understand your team culture. Even the most concerned leaders may struggle to gain accurate insight as to what behaviors happen outside of their purview. Team culture is complicated and develops both organically and through dynamics that may not easily be observed from within.

Team Process

SCI conducts process improvement events called, Kaizen (改善), Japanese for “improvement”, or “change for the better” which refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in management. SCI brings this practice to sports management to facilitate rapid improvement and leaning of critical management processes.

A key element of Kaizen is to ensure all relevant stakeholder, not just leaders, are involved in this intensive process improvement process. It is ideally suited for the sports industry where inefficiency equals competitive disadvantage and those that adapt most rapidly achieve their goals.

Basically, we can make things a lot better in one or two days!

Dispute Systems Design

How are disputes handled on your team or in your athletic department or sports business organization? Is the process fair and transparent? Is it cost-effective? Does it identify issues early and create a clear path to resolution?

What methods will be used to prevent and resolve conflict? How does the system interact with other systems (e.g., the NCAA and the formal legal system)? What are the advantages and disadvantages to participation in the system?

Who should be involved in system design? Whose interests does it represent (e.g., coaches, players, fans, administrators, etc.)? The more stakeholders included in the dispute system design, the more likely that it will gain the credibility necessary to endure over time. The overall cost of any conflict is dispersed among a number of stakeholders. In sport situations, these groups could be roughly divided into the following categories: administrators, coaches, athletes, and supporters.

Does the system have adequate financial and human resources to meet its goals? Are there enough trained neutrals? Is there sufficient access to conflict prevention and resolution education? Are the available procedures appropriate to prevent and resolve the disputes that occur? The investment should be cost-beneficial and should reflect the level and frequency of the organization’s experience with destructive conflict. The system should not introduce a new cost burden; in the end, it should help the organization save money and other valuable resources.

What is the level of transparency? Consistency? Is the system able to meet its intended goals? How is the system evaluated? By whom? How do the system implementers utilize evaluation to continuously improve the system? The structure of the system will determine its level of success. If the assessment identifies the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, the stated goals specifically address those weaknesses, and stakeholders at all levels feel they have been afforded an opportunity to shape the system, it will have a good chance of success. A detailed system design also serves as a template from which to act and establishes a consistent method to address particular instances of conflict.

SCI can help you find answers in creating a culture that proactively addresses its issues and has a dispute system in place.

Conflict Management Skills

Do you, an an athlete, coach, or administrator handle conflict as effectively as you need to? Do you understand your conflict style and how to best interact with others of different styles? Do you have effective tool for understanding a particular situation and planning an effective path forward?

Communication skills do not equate to effective sports conflict management skills. Much like the specific skills we learn in sports, we must engage in the theory and then use deliberate practice to develop and improve our skills for being able to minimize the negative impact of destructive conflict and to work toward being able to effectively use incidents of conflict as a catalyst for growth and change.

SCI Play-By-Play™ Model

SCI has developed a highly effective conflict model, Play-By-Play™, to provide a useful framework in quickly understanding and navigating conflict as it occurs. It is meant to be a highly accessible model that can quickly be learned and recalled in heated moments that require quick decision making.

In an era of twitter, facebook, instagram, etc., there is little room for error in how any of us deal with conflict. It is how we respond to those moments that often determine successes or problems ahead.

SCI uses a number of scenarios to explain the model and to make it come alive as an effective framework that can easily be used to understand, prevent, and resolve conflict in sports.

Outside the Box / Inside the Ring®

The Outside the Box / Inside the Ring® conflict resolution curriculum was originally developed by SCI Founder, Joshua Gordon, and Joseph Morrissey while graduate students at the University of Massachusetts Boston Graduate Program on Dispute Resolution in the late 1990s. It was extremely well-received and offered as an open-source curriculum used in over 30 countries.

The curriculum has adapted over time and is now a cutting-edge, experiential curriculum introducing basic conflict resolution skills in sports through the Sports Conflict Institute.

Conflict skills need to be learned and practiced as they are not inherently individual development. Like any skill in sports, it must be taught through deliberate practice and is not something that can simply be read and absorbed. With the virtual extinction of sandlot sports, the need to explicitly introduce these skills at all levels of sport is greater than ever.

Lessons

Fair Factor
What’s Up?
Do You Speak Conflict?
Dudes, Whose Shoes?
Say What?
How Can You Win When I Win?
Be A Leader!

The foundational materials can be adapted to address the specific sports-conflict related problems encountered most in your sports organization.

A Neutral Perspective

A neutral, skilled, external perspective is often necessary to understand and develop a clear path forward. SCI has deep experience in working with teams and organizations on team and organizational culture and ensuring that individual experience is what it should be. Furthermore, this understanding is the foundation for a high performing team or organization.

SCI has developed a number of sports and sports business specific training approaches and provides customized sports conflict management skills training for sports organizations and teams to address the types of problems most likely to be encountered in your sport and your level.

Sports Conflict Academy™

The purpose of this program is to combine a study of the business of sports with a deeply informed understanding of how sports relates to understand, resolve, and prevent the costly conflicts that inevitably arise both on and off the playing field. Both indirect and direct costs are critical to understand to fully embrace the importance of managing conflict in this $70B industry. This knowledge and skill set represents core competencies necessary to succeed in the sports industry.

It is critical that the classroom connects closely to real-world application to ensure that theory is understood both in the abstract and in its relevance today. The combination of sports management and sport and society through the lens of conflict management provides a strong interdisciplinary experience that impacts an under-served area of the sports industry. Every day, there is a sports conflict issue that makes national headlines. The untold stories and destructive costs to the business of sport far exceed those that constitute the tip of the iceberg.

The program prepares and educates those from a number of jobs where a unique background in sports studies, and especially conflict management, would give them an edge in performing their role.

Athlete Development Specialist
Sports Ombuds Mediators
Coaching
General Manager/Assistant GM
Chief Financial Officer
Ticket Manager
Sports Marketing & Branding
Public Relations
Community Outreach Specialist/ Community Programs Manager
Community & Player Relations Coordinator
Client Relations Specialist
Customer Service Manager
Human Resources Manager
Athlete Wellness Specialist
Athletic Director/Assistant AD/Women’s AD & Assistant
NCAA Compliance
University Athletes’ Academic Affairs Coordinator
Youth Sports Program Director
Regulatory Organization Manager, e g., state high school governing bodies
Union Management
Facilities Management
Sports Attorney
Agent
Sports Psychologist
Many more…

Courses:

Philosophy of Sports
Sports Conflict Management
Negotiation in Sports
Organization & Team Dynamics
Sports Law & Policy
Sports & Educational Theory
History & Culture of Sports
Mediation & Consensus Building in Sports
Sports Ombuds
Sports & An Angry Public
Sports Philanthropy
Olympics and International Sports – Values and Issues
Custom Courses

Contact SCI to discuss your organization’s executive educational sports conflict management needs. Courses can be delivered as individual titles or as an intensive series combining any number of courses selected to meet your staff’s needs. Additionally, they can be delivered in a variety of time formats tailored to align with your organization’s culture and availability.

Research and Evaluation

What changes are needed for your sports team or organization? How effective are your policies and procedures at ensuring performance on and off the field? What questions need to be answered to provide a clear direction and ensure resources are being invested in the best manner possible?

Experience

SCI has significant expertise research and evaluation in sports and sports business. Our engagements begin with an assessment of your organization or team’s specific goals and needs and then you are presented with a research plan with a timeline and specific outputs.

Validity and Reliability

SCI Team Members have deep background in research design to ensure validity and reliability in data collection and analysis.

Methods and Scope

Research may include:

Descriptive and prescriptive evaluations
Data collection, including interviews, surveys, focus groups, bench-marking, expert reviews, document reviews, process observations, and more
Qualitative and quantitative data analysis

Designed to Preserve Relationship and Ensure Information Flow

SCI is especially adept at designing research methods that ensure information flow without leaving individuals vulnerable to retaliation. Typically, we design our efforts to ensure that data is collected in an aggregate, non-attributable manner so that organizational decision can be made while protecting individuals who might otherwise be reluctant to share key information.

Actionable Answers

Our team is capable of expertly handling research and evaluation challenges large and small and pride ourselves in carefully customizing and tailoring all data collection instruments to ensure they effectively answer the question, clearly report findings, and prescribe actionable next steps.

Bullying and Hazing

Do you have concerns about possible bullying or hazing behavior on your sports team or organization? Are you concerned about whether certain “traditions” cross a line of health and safety?

Bullying and hazing are major issues and require expertise in working to understand whether a situation has crossed a line into a potential health and safety issue. Historically, many have seen hazing as part of a set of rituals to help build team cohesiveness. There is a greater awareness today that these activities do not serve teams well in establishing positive team dynamics.

Bullying are a set of activities designed to exclude an individual from a team. The inappropriate behavior can be perpetrated by an individual or by a group but the target of the aggression is most often singled out. The aggression can be any combination of physical or verbal acts of intimidation, threats, rumors, teasing, taunting, name-calling, or ridicule.

Hazing is any action by a team with the intent to produce mental, emotional, or physical discomfort, embarrassment, or ridicule among for prospective or newer team members. Hazing often involves the entire time, unlike bullying that tends to involve a portion of the team.

Some of the forms that hazing can take include:

making victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
force victims to eat disgusting things
swear and yell insults at victims
physically hit team members
forced excessive drinking
sexually inappropriate behavior or assault

Student-Athlete Experience

Is student-athlete experience in your athletic department consistent with the mission of the university? Are best practices identified and shared across teams? Do you have clear insights from student-athletes about expectations and where those expectations are met, exceeded, or need to be addressed? Do you understand why student-athletes transfer out of your program?

Now more than ever, the importance of engaging students athletes in confidential and impartial experience assessments is critical. Administrators need to better understand if the student athlete experience adequately reflects the mission of the institution as a whole.

With the complexity of intercollegiate athletics, it is challenging for administrators and coaches to know, with confidence, that student-athlete experience across all teams is what it should be. Mission statements, goals, and objectives provide a starting framework but the true test is neutral assessment of teams and the athletic department to safely identify necessary information for athletic department and university administrators to have confidence in staying the course or to successfully adapt, where needed.

A primary challenge for all major athletic departments is appropriately gauging student-athlete engagement in the university and academic community and their perception of their respective athletic experiences. The vast majority of institutions do not conduct appropriate reviews of their student-athlete bodies.

Student-Athlete Experience & Engagement Review (EER)

The benefits of effectively executing a student-athlete experience and engagement protocol include:

Data around athlete’s perceptions of the athletic department
Data related to how coaches and administrators are interacting with their athletes
Data related to how athletes are interacting with the rest of the university community

Moreover, a properly executed student athlete experience and engagement protocol can provide university leadership with:

Early warning data related to potential student athlete/program/coach issues
Data designed to help identify those athletes most likely to acclimatize to their universities culture

The power of an Experience and Engagement Review lies in allowing universities to proactively manage their athletes and coaching staffs. It also promotes the alignment of academic and athletic principles based on real data.

Carefully designed assessment is a necessity to:

Identify best practices
Identify problem areas
Align resources to areas of greatest need and impact

The Key is Quality Data

The quality of the data collected by an Experience and Engagement Review is directly related to the following data collection principles:

Confidential (athlete’s cannot be identified based on their comment/feedback)
Impartial (not related to the Athletic Department)
Independent (not related to the University)
Multi-modal data collection (e.g. qualitative, quantitative)

Cost-Effective

Assessment is cost effective and an important step in preventing the types of issues that keep administrators and coaches up at night. Universities are renowned for only responding to issues instigated by a crisis. Crisis can be valuable. However, they are extremely expensive both in terms of actual dollars but also in staff morale and brand impact. Moreover, athletic department administration acting on real data, can typically proactively preempt many issues before they explode.

Alignment is Critical

Once an assessment is done, SCI works closely with you to identify an effective path for ensuring best practices are protected and areas of concern are addressed. SCI partners with internal resources to ensure that all policies, practices, and procedures align and are consistent in supporting a superior student-athlete experience.

Assessment vs. Investigation?

Where there are Title IX or other similar concerns, SCI works closely with any investigation teams, counsel, or other involved resources. SCI’s focus is about creating a deep understanding and a clear path forward whereas an investigation may be seeking culpability and liability. Both are important but different perspectives depending on the depth of the concerns involved. Often, the temptation is to focus on stopping the impermissible behavior (rightly) but it is also important to help re-establish a new set of traditions and team culture that replaces the impermissible bullying and hazing behavior.

Begin With A Question

All good research and assessment begins with a good question. SCI has deep experience in dealing with challenging, sensitive issues. Typically, we begin with an assessment to understand what behavior may be of concern and then prescribe a clear path for addressing any issues discovered that get at the route of the problem and not just the symptoms that may have first drawn your concern.

Strategic Planning

Does your sports team or organization have a clearly defined mission with a vision supported by measurable goals and objectives? Is there clear alignment throughout the organization around these? Is it time to revisit and ensure that you have a established a clear path to success?

Experienced Strategic Planners

SCI has significant experience in designing and facilitating Strategic Planning Processes for sports teams and organizations.

Successful Process

A successful process addresses the following questions:

Where are we?
What do we have to work with?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?

Customized to Meet Specific Needs

This can be a quick process or longer depending on the number of stakeholders and size of your team or organization.

Clear Goals

All engagements begin with a clear definition of goals for the strategic planning process with the convener and key stakeholders.

Planned But Nimble

Although this strategic planning process appears systematic and rational, it is often iterative and evolves substantially over time. The first step in the strategic planning process is to address the questions “Where are we?” and “What do we have to work with?” Examination of recent history and changing contexts (both internal and external) of the team or organization allows participants to assess current positions. Answering the question of what we have to work with involves consideration of strengths and weaknesses and determination of how to capitalize on strengths.

Clear Vision

The next step in the process is answering “Where do we want to be?” As the articulated vision stems from the values of those involved in the process, it is essential that this step involve all of those who will have a stake in the achieving the vision. The vision is then translated into a mission statement: a broad, comprehensive statement of the purpose of the team or organization.

Goals

The next step in the planning process is the articulation of goals. Desired long-range conditions of success for the team or organization.

Strategies

After articulating the vision and determining goals, planners must address means of reaching their goals. This step involves articulating strategies for achieving results. Strategies should reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the team or organization engaged in the planning. Recognition of relative strengths and weaknesses is helpful in identifying promising strategies.

Mediation

Do you need an experienced mediator to assist with your sports related issue? Hoping to avoid costly litigation? Do you want to keep the impact of the conflict to a minimum? Are you looking for sports mediation services?

Sports Mediation

SCI acts as a neutral, third-party to help solve sports and sports business related problems. Our mediators are highly-skilled, experienced, and capable of assisting with even the most challenging of conflicts.

Fair and Effective Process

SCI mediators are responsible for ensuring a fair and effective process throughout while the parties are responsible for the outcomes.

Benefits of Sports Mediation

The benefits of mediation include:

Cost

While a mediator may charge a fee comparable to that of an attorney, the mediation process generally takes much less time than moving a case through standard legal channels. While a case in the hands of a lawyer or a court may take months or years to resolve, mediation usually achieves a resolution in a matter of hours. Taking less time means expending less money on hourly fees and costs.

Confidentiality

While court hearings are public, sports mediation remains strictly confidential. No one but the parties to the dispute and the mediator(s) know what happened. Confidentiality in mediation has such importance that in most cases the legal system cannot force a mediator to testify in court as to the content or progress of mediation. Many mediators destroy their notes taken during a mediation once that mediation has finished. The only exceptions to such strict confidentiality usually involve child abuse or actual or threatened criminal acts.

Control

Sports mediation increases the control the parties have over the resolution. In a court case, the parties obtain a resolution, but control resides with the judge or jury. Often, a judge or jury cannot legally provide solutions that emerge in mediation. Thus, mediation is more likely to produce a result that is mutually agreeable for the parties.

Compliance

Because the result is attained by the parties working together and is mutually agreeable, compliance with the mediated agreement is usually high. This further reduces costs, because the parties do not have to employ an attorney to force compliance with the agreement. The mediated agreement is, however, fully enforceable in a court of law.

Mutuality

Parties to a mediation are typically ready to work mutually toward a resolution. In most circumstances the mere fact that parties are willing to mediate means that they are ready to “move” their position. The parties thus are more amenable to understanding the other party’s side and work on underlying issues to the dispute. This has the added benefit of often preserving the relationship the parties had before the dispute.

Support

Mediators are trained in working with difficult situations. The mediator acts as a neutral facilitator and guides the parties through the process. The mediator helps the parties think “outside of the box” for possible solutions to the dispute, broadening the range of possible solutions.

Team Facilitation

Are team meetings run effectively? Is communication clear and inclusive of all team members? Are you having the difficult conversations necessary to ensure optimal performance on and off the field of play? How do you handle conflict on your sports team? How do you keep it from spiraling into a large, public dispute? How do you keep conflict from destroying a season? What support is available for an immediate problem? How can you minimize the downside of your sports conflict situations and maximize the upside? How can you ensure issues are resolved with the least amount of negative impact on your team relationships? How can you mitigate risk and optimize performance? How is sports conflict coaching valuable to your sports team or organization?

Comprehensive and Time Tested

SCI uses a comprehensive and time-tested facilitation process to assist groups in developing and agreeing on workable, realistic plans or solutions to issues or challenges facing your sports team or organization. We help clients achieve open communication, clear direction, and decisive action.

Team Facilitation

Even the most effective teams and organizations can benefit from an outside facilitator who can masterfully and neutrally manage the meeting agenda, work through team dynamics, and help the team achieve its desired outcomes. This is especially important in minimizing distractions early before they become destructive conflict and to get the grit out of the team’s machine as early as possible. A neutral facilitator focused on effective process and open communication can save a season and help ensure optimal performance.

Team Collaboration

Teams can find themselves mired in what feels like difficult, immovable situations. When collaboration seems like it is a challenge, our expert facilitators leverage their skills and experience to help teams begin to manage team dynamics to elicit the most effective collaborative approaches.

Team Communication

Communicating well within a team is one of the most difficult tasks a team faces. SCI helps teams work through individual, interpersonal, and team communication dynamics to uncover unspoken words, surface “the elephant in the room,” and find collaborative ways to once-again work together toward building a winning atmosphere.

Conflict Management Is Important

Conflict management is a key competency area with skills that are difficult to master in the abstract or through reading and classroom alone. Coaches, Administrators, Team Captains, Athletes, and others learn best when in a situation that requires some guidance and support from a conflict management expert.

Key to a Healthy Team

Effective conflict management is key to a constructive locker room culture. Serious conflicts can cost your team in terms of performance on and off the field. It can also open the door to unnecessary escalations that, at their worst, involve legal action, investigations, terminations and departures, and lost seasons and careers.

Sports Conflict Coaching is Effective

Sports conflict coaching is effective. In essence, it is training for one and provides a better way to understand conflict and how to effectively manage it. Most importantly, it allows focus to remain on critical activities necessary to prepare to perform optimally within the sport itself. By addressing key sources of negative stress, energy is preserved for the demands of the sport itself.

Process Consultation

Team process consultation consists of activities designed to increase team awareness and understanding, so that the team or organization can take steps to improve the way that its members work together.

Observation and Assessment

The consultant observes and assesses the interactions between members of the team or organization in the normal flow of practices, meetings, and games. The consultant then provides feedback to members of the organization or team to help them in resolving team conflict and learning to identify the attitudes and behaviors that help or hinder the team’s success, and to take steps to improve the way the team functions.

Consensus Building

Many sports conflicts are public in nature and involve numerous, diverse stakeholders. Conflicts may center around stadium funding, fan treatment and behavior, neighborhood relations, intra-university disputes about the role of athletics, proposed rule changes. These are complicated and require experienced support to ensure better outcomes.

SCI uses a proven methodology, based around consensus-building, to facilitate constructive dialogue around your most critical issues. Calling a meeting and allowing everyone speak their mind is probably not going to be sufficient; addressing complicated, volatile disputes requires careful, systematic planning.

Larry Susskind and his colleagues have detailed the basic approach to Consensus Building that SCI follows.

About

The Sports Conflict Institute (SCI) supports competitive goals in athletics through assessing, preventing, and resolving destructive conflict inside and outside the lines. We specialize in risk management and performance optimization.

SCI serves as a resource center and provides a range of services to help manage risk and optimize performance in sports.

Conflict is inevitable. Our responses to it are what determine whether opportunity can follow or whether we simply incur the steep costs of a poor response.

This program supports organizational and individual goals through education, research, and service focusing in sports conflict. It is critical that the classroom connects closely to real world application to ensure that theory is understood both in the abstract and in its relevance today. The combination of sports management and sport and society through the lens of conflict management provides a strong interdisciplinary experience that impacts an underserved area of the sports industry. Every day, there is a sports conflict issue that makes national headlines. The untold stories and destructive costs to the business of sport far exceed those that constitute the tip of the iceberg.

SCI’s Founder, Joshua Gordon was previously the Director of the Competition Not Conflict (CNC project at the University of Oregon. In this capacity, the need and importance of a specialized practice in sports conflict become evident. The mission of optimizing performance on and off the field in sports through understanding, preventing, and resolving conflict is based on a number of high-impact projects and research at the youth, intercollegiate and professional levels.

Sport has been an important element of societies worldwide for centuries. It facilitates a space for communities to come together across divisions of race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Sport imparts valuable skills and meaningful experience for everyone involved. The current climate of competitive sport is also riddled with costs. Destructive conflict has grown so commonplace that many athletes and supporters are willing to accept it as part of the game. We confuse competition with conflict, and many games are reduced from a societal benefit to an ego-driven fight to avoid defeat at all costs.

Sports conflict, at times, is part of the narrative that makes sports appealing. This unscripted drama can be the essence of sports, however, when destructive conflict occurs the legal, business, and performance costs it imposes upon administrators, coaches, athletes and supporters can be significant and counterproductive to the core mission of the organization.

It is important to understand the cost of a single episode of conflict in relationship to winning, dollars, career development, etc. The overall cost is dispersed among a number of stakeholders.

The cost to each stakeholder group may include (but is not limited to):

Administrators: Loss of revenue streams, loss of good will, brand damage, time, stress, liability, reputational damage, job termination
Coaches: Team losses, financial losses, job termination, damage to future career opportunities, reputational damage
Athletes: Sub-optimal on-field performance, suspension, premature end to athletic career, loss of scholarship, defamation, damage to future professional opportunities, damage to personal life, loss of product endorsements, criminal sentence
Supporters: Loss of good will, dignity and spirit in connection with “their” team’s performance or personal behavior; reputational damage

SCI’s core efforts, to date, include education, research, and service. This unique emphasis has received national attention from youth through professional sports organizations, as the destructive costs of conflict become better understood in the thriving sports industry. Whether it’s labor disputes, team dynamics, athlete behavior, fan misconduct, or any number of issues that arise, conflict management has become an essential core competency for ensuring success in this industry.

What is SCI’s consulting process?

A. In general terms, SCI follows a FIND -> FIX -> SUSTAIN approach to all of its engagements. This typically involves six stages:

1. Alignment on objectives, scope of work, and nature of working relationship.

Define confidentiality
Discussion of specific issues, problems, or opportunities (review of preliminary materials for consultant review).
Understanding of urgency of the engagement – is this an immediate risk to performance or reputation?
What would success look like at the end of our work together?
What would a bad outcome look like?
What risks there surrounding this engagement?
What are the deliverables for this engagement?
Define scope with specificity.
What is the time frame for this work?
What challenges have you had in addressing these issues before?
What is the big picture view of the organization and where is it going?
Who are the key stakeholders?
Who are the decision makers and sponsors?
What type of budget parameters are we working with?
What does the decision-making process for a Go / No Go decision look like?

2. Engagement Agreements

Formal proposal process
Agree on scope and approach
Agree on work products, work activities, and work relationship
Agree on time frames and identify constraints
Address issues of access to information and individuals
Specify roles – who will do what
Agree on confidentiality for this engagement
Agree on attribution and levels of anonymity
Agree on fees and expenses
Execute written agreement

3. Assessment – Data Collection and Analysis

Executive the assessment plan
Gather and analyze data (interviews, surveys, document review, assessment instruments)
Present and discuss results of assessment with stakeholders

4. Report Review

Review draft report with stakeholders
Produce final report
Recommend specific interventions
Identify best practices

5. Intervention

Implement agreed upon activities to address problems or needs
Assist in evaluating internal options for implementation
Assist in locating and evaluating other external providers for implementation

6. Sustainment and Evaluation

Ensure structures, processes, training are on place for sustainment of implementation
Evaluate the consulting engagement and working relationship
Review the effectiveness of the interventions