Building Trust In Your Baseball Team

Building trust in your baseball team is the number one fundamental skill any quality program must have in my opinion. Without trust your program will never reach it's full potential. You can teach throwing, hitting, and catching till the cows come home but, if you haven't built trust in your program you are never going to sustain consistency. Without trust, adversity will rip your ball club apart at every seam.

On the flip side, once trust is instill in your program you will be able to handle the bad times in your season. You will have the power to play a bad stretch of baseball (which happens to everyone) and have a team that will continue to play hard. A team that will not start pointing fingers and making excuses.

Instead, you will find young kids showing character well beyond their years. They will stay together. They will believe in each other and the program. The will know that the ship will right itself. This belief is what actually makes or breaks your season. It is not just about having good players.

Most teams play a schedule that consists of a few teams that they are better then and a few teams they are not as talented as. But the majority of the schedule is against opponents that are very similar in ability. Trust is what separates those teams over the course of a season.

Trust is also what allows you to beat better ball clubs who don't possess the necessary resolve it takes to compete everyday. When things get tough and it's late in the game players are either going to trust in what they are doing or they are not. The more the pressure builds the more it will show. What do you want your players thinking?

Obviously, this is a very important mindset to me as a coach. It is the first thing I talk about on the first day of practice. I make sure that we are talking and working on it everyday throughout the season. I believe it is what we did best in our program but we didn't leave it to chance. We lived it everyday!

What is TRUST?

To me TRUST as it relates to a baseball teams is broken down into 3 areas:

1) Player to Player
2) Player To Coach
3) Coach to Player

Building these 3 trust areas is critical to a programs success. They are all areas which you can teach and give opportunities to your guys to grow as a player, teammate, and person.

Most people hear the word trust and they think about if you can tell someone a secret and they won't tell anyone. Or their boyfriend or girlfriend won't cheat on them. Part of our trust definition is exactly that, but it does go much deeper.

Trust to us also means that we trust you will be there everyday. You are not going to miss practice. You are not going to get in trouble off the field. That you are going to pay attention to the details when coach is talking. Bottom line that you are going to handle your responsibility like a professional and we don't ever have to worry about you.

I am like most coaches. I have a few rules and truth is they are the same rules that every coach probably uses.

1. Be on time

2. Make eye contact

3. Maximum effort

4. Represent our team on and off the field in a positive manner

5. Take care of business in the classroom: Both behavior and schoolwork

Nothing earth shattering here with the rules. A big part of our trust package relates around these rules. The difference between programs is not the rules they have but rather the enforcement of these rules. I always wanted our players to do those five things not because they were rules, but because it was the right way to do things.

Rules are made to be broken so maybe we would all be better using the "Law of Attraction" and calling them "Rights" instead. I didn't want them thinking, "don't do this because it is against the rules and I will get in trouble." I wanted them thinking, "do this because it's the right way to do it!"

Teaching kids is more effective in the long run then punishing kids but sometimes the line between the two is blurry. Always work to teach them the right approach to the game and life. But when all else fails disciplining your players to help ingrain the right way is a must!

The Rules For Building The 3 Trust Areas

Rule #1: Talk A Good Game

I believe the first stage of building anything starts with talk. I know the old saying, "Talk is cheap." I actually say that quite a bit when I am coaching. But, if you are going to build something you need to have a clear picture of what it is you want build.

More importantly then that, you have to be able to be a wordsmith and paint a picture for your players. They need to understand, just as well as you do, what you want to build and how you will go about building it. Just throwing out a coaching cliche like, "We have to trust one another!" won't get it done.

You need to explain to them how trust helps them as a player and a team. How trusting yourself will allow you to reach peak performance and then teach them how to do. How trust builds confidence and allows you to overcome adversity and win games when your down.

Rule #2: Same Rules

Once, you have painted that picture of what you are building you need to back it up. If players are going to trust you and one another, then they all must follow the same set of rules. Whether it is a starter or the last kid on the bench the same rules apply.

If you are gonna bust an average player for not running out a pop up then you better be busting your star for the same thing! If you bench your 9 hitter because he was a problem in school then you better bench your number 1 pitcher if he does the same thing.

If you allow players to follow different rules then you are creating a situation where players will begin to build animosity towards you and more importantly one another. Clicks will then begin to form and your season is lost! Trust is formed when everything in your program is consistent.

Rule #3: Know The Game

If you want to build trust between players and coaches then you need to know the game. You have to be able to speak confidently and have answers for everything. You have to be a coach that the players respect(whether they like you or not) because you are in control. Even when you don't have answers you need to seem like you've got it all figured out.

You are organized. You understand techniques and team play. You can motivate and keep everyone going in the same direction. You have a infrastructure inside the program that the players lean on. If the players have confidence in you as a coach their trust level goes way up. If not, they have no trust in the team.

Rule #4: Live It Everyday

Come up with ideas that foster the idea of trust. I am not talking about a guy falling backwards with another playing catching him. Their are a lot of trust game ideas like that. I am not saying they don't work, I just don't think it has any lasting effect and plus I really don't think they work!

I have always used the same 3 tools because they have always worked for me. These are actual physical ideas that they live every day. Be creative here! I am sure there are a lot of cool ideas you can come up with to hammer home the point of trust.

The first thing I always do is come up with a saying that I think is important for the team that season. Not something general like Play Hard. Something specific for that team. Once I have decided what the saying will be, I will break it down to three letters.

For example: One season we used the letters S.S.B. which stood for Steadiness in Small Bites. I felt it was important that season to take that attitude so that's what I used. Another year I used O.N.E. which stood for Ownership Not Excuses. It has to be a message that you want to hammer home to that years team.

In 2002 we won a State Championship. In 2003 we returned almost every member of the 02 team. My biggest fear was that success would go to our head and we would lose sight of what got us a state championship. That season I used the letters A.M.F. which stood for Assumption is the Mother of all Failure. I wanted a daily reminder to them to not assume anything.

Once I settle on the saying and the letters I would tell the team what it meant and why it was important. Then they would be instructed that no one outside of our program was allowed to know what the letters meant until our season was over. These letters were special to us and I wanted them to trust each other that no one would give them away.

I guess it is like a little secret society type deal but our kids took pride in it. I took these letters and put them on the back of a T-shirt that every player wore under their uniforms. When we took infield and outfield we took the field in those T-Shirts. Everywhere we went on a daily basis our players were being asked what the letters stood for. Our players had to tell them we can't tell you it's for us.

Every player on our team was asked over and over. Opposing players, coaches, umpires, fans, and the media. Our local paper wrote stories about it. The kids were not allowed to tell parents, relatives, girlfriends, nobody! It grew into such a special thing for these players. Everyone would spend all season trying to guess what they were.

I went to scout a rival team and a number of my players were at the game as well. While their team was playing on the field against another school their student section sitting in the bleachers began chanting the letters on the back of our shirts across the field. None of our players had the shirt on. They knew what the initials were and they weren't even players!

The first year I did this at the high school level was 2002. We had just won the State Championship. We ran out piled up on the mound, received the trophy, talked to the media, hugged and kissed family, I mean it took some time. Finally when I gathered all my stuff and walk out behind the dugout towards the bus there was all of our fans, players parents, and family. I mean a crowd of people who weren't about to let me leave until I told them what the letters stood for since our season was over. The cool thing is we won 4 State Championships in 5 years and every year the fans and media waited for me to come out and tell them.

The second thing I will do is write every players name down on a 3 x 5 card and put it in their locker. I tell them this is your name. Then I put a box by the door they walk out to head to the field. On the box are the words "check your name at the door".

This done because I teach them you must set aside your ego and play for the team. This is a way to physically remind them of this concept everyday. However, this is also another trust building exercise. The reason being they must all put their name in the box and they must all pick them up after practice and put them back into their locker.

If at the end of the night when I close up any names are left in the box the team will run. I don't mean a little running I mean a lot. Something they absolutely do not want to do. Here's why. You go out and practice for three hours or more. Your tired when you come in, maybe your in a hurry that day and you run out and forget your name. So the next day we run and run and run.

Here's what begins to happen however. Players begin checking the box before they leave to see if any player has left his name tag in there. If a player has left and their name tag is still in the box the other players would take it and put it in their locker for them. They always did this so I wouldn't know. I knew! And it is exactly what I wanted. Players looking out for one another and building trust.

Yes I know taking out the name tag saves your own backside but to the player who left it your a godsend. We ran one time and haven't run since. Players began focusing on these little details and trust was building. I listened to a conversation between two players who didn't know I was there. The first player said "did you know you forgot to put your name tag back in your locker." The second player said "yes". The first player responded "you must have been worried!" The second player said, "Nah, I knew someone would get it for me". That's the trust factor I was looking for!

The final thing I believe in is disciplining everyone for one players mistakes. If we have a player let's say who gets in trouble in school we all run for it. I do this for a specific reason. One, it puts pressure on the players to think of the team before themselves because their mistakes affect everyone.

Think about it this way. If I mess up and have to run that's one thing. But, if I mess up and everyone has to run for it that's another. I need to think about my choices and how they affect the team. I mean that's the exact attitude you are trying to build on the field.

It is not the only thing I am trying to build with it however. I have run teams quite a bit when needed because of players breaking rules or because the team's effort is sub par. The attitude and atmosphere I am trying to build is different then most however.

I put the team through the ringer so to speak and so the team begins to build trust with another by not messing up number 1. But also I want our players to back the player who messed up. I will always tell the players your out here running you mind as well make it as enjoyable as you can. There is no point in being mad because it isn't going to change the fact that you are running.

I am easily angered but once you have paid your debt we move forward no grudges. I wanted the players to stay together and trust everyone had each others back even if it was against me. I didn't want them falling apart at the seams because something bad happened. If it happens in practice it will show up on the field. If you know the teams got your back then you can make a mistake during the game and bounce right back. Your team will trust each other and handle adversity. That's what champions are made from.

In Conclusion

Trust is the foundation from which all successful programs are build on. You must as a coach take time everyday to work on it. Even if it is just a little thing here or there. Constantly teach it and come up with creative ways to illustrate your message. If you can build a team that trusts you will be successful.