How I Prevent Team Drama in Just 15 Minutes Per Week (Every Coach Needs This)

Team drama isn't about bad attitudes, it's about missing systems. I'm sharing the a simple framework that prevents it. Grab more coaching tips → https://coachfreetraining.com 

In this episode, I'm breaking down the exact system I use to reduce drama and handle playing time issues without adding hours to my week.  

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre - a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion. 

This is the framework I've used with all four championship teams. It takes 15 minutes per week total, and it prevents hours of drama management. 

What You'll Learn:

• The real reason team drama keeps happening (even after team dinners and bonding activities)
• How to structure five-minute athlete check-ins that actually prevent conflict
• The three questions I ask every athlete every other week that build trust and clarity 
• How Player Impact Plans eliminate playing time drama before it starts
• Why mental training and individual confidence building is your best team culture strategy 

🕓 Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction: The Real Problem with Team Drama
01:09 Weekly Check-Ins: The Simple System That Works
04:21 The Three Questions Framework
05:54 Building Confidence Through Mental Training
08:37 Player Impact Plans: Setting Clear Expectations
10:10 Championship Culture Membership
11:53 Recap: Systems Over People Problems

💬 Coaches - comment below: What's the biggest source of drama on your team right now?

📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
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P.S. A few stats worth knowing:

• Athletes who receive regular individual feedback from coaches show 32% improvement in self-efficacy and confidence compared to those who receive only team-level feedback (Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 2019)
• Teams with structured communication systems and role clarity experience 45% fewer interpersonal conflicts during competitive seasons (International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2021)
• Student-athletes who understand their specific role on a team report 28% higher satisfaction and 35% lower anxiety related to playing time uncertainty (Journal of Sport Behavior, 2018) 

The Coach Her Game podcast is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

Alright, coaches, let's talk about team drama. You've tried everything, right? Team dinners, long talks after practice, open door policies, or maybe even a no judgment if you've done the ropes course, I've done that too, but the drama is still there. And here's what nobody's telling you. Team drama usually isn't just a people problem. It's also a systems problem. And today I'm breaking down the exact system that I've used to reduce drama and handle playing time issues and keep your team actually connected without adding a ton of hours to your week.'cause let's be honest, we don't have that. And if I haven't already met you, I'm Coach Bri. I'm a high school volleyball coach. Four time state champ, coach, and also a certified mental performance coach. So I help teams and coaches on the mental side of the game and the culture, all the things they don't teach you when you become a coach. Right? And look, I've been exactly where you are. In fact, I just wrapped up my season and I was surprised in my end of season meetings to hear that there was some drama bubbling under the service that I didn't even know about. So I totally get it, and it's. Frustrating to kind of feel like you're always putting out fires, even though you're probably doing a lot to try to kind of minimize it. But I wanna break down one of the systems that I use this season. I've been actually using it for several seasons to prevent some of the drama. It's very simple check-ins on a weekly basis with your individual players. And if this sounds like a lot, stick around because I'm gonna show you exactly how I do it. And again, it doesn't take a lot of time outta my schedule. And it actually adds a lot more value to my program, to my team. And in my end of season meetings, this was actually something that came up over and over from athletes as something that they really liked. Okay, so let's get into it. Here's, uh, here's the truth. When you're athletes actually are insecure, so some of this like. Deeper reason why this drama happens is that when your athletes are insecure, they don't trust themselves and mistakes, send them spiraling or you know, just kind of looking to blame other people for things. They're way more likely to cause drama on your team by pulling people down. We know that hurt people, hurt people. We know this to be true, but I want you to think about maybe the people who are causing some drama on your team and nine times outta 10, it's probably the ones that are the least confident. They're not necessarily the least talented. They just do not trust themselves or they're insecure about their role, or they don't really know where they stand. They're feeling disconnected from you or from other people. And then that's when the gossip starts happening. She kind of stirs things up and creates chaos because she feels chaos. Okay? And that feels better than. You know, being vulnerable. So here's where most coaches go wrong. They try and fix the drama with more team bonding, like dinners or motivational talks, or we are a family of speeches, but here's what actually works to fix team drama by building individual confidence and creating structured connections. So those two things have really made a difference, like individual confidence in players, and I'm gonna talk about how to do that. And then consistent touch points with the players on your team because when they feel confident in themselves. They stop tearing down other people, and when they have clear communication with you, they stop making up stories about where they stand. So how do you actually do that without adding more to your artery overflowing plate? Well, let's break it down. Okay. Here's the framework. It's very simple. And it works every other week. I meet with each one of my athletes, but only for five minutes at a time. I ask them the same three questions every time. I have 12 players on my varsity team. I know that some of you have more, some of you have less, and I dedicate five minutes per player. On a every other week basis. So I meet with six players on the first week, let's say it's like week number one. I meet with three of them on a Tuesday and three of them on a Thursday. And when I do it is before the varsity game. So the JVNC team play before the varsity plays. I take 15 minutes where I come off the bench from the JV or the C team. I have a J JV coach, I have a C team coach. They're coaching their games and I meet with. The dedicated players for that day. So I just go in number order one through 12. All right. 1, 2, 3. You're meeting with me for five minutes each, um, individually. Okay. So player number one, I ask them the same three questions every week. What's going well? Where do you feel like you need to improve? Any questions for me? Okay. Again, so simple, but it's the time, it's the touch point. So over the course of a season, I meet individually with each athlete that turns out to be about five times. So they know that they have a dedicated time that they can come. It's where I can make sure that I touch. With like where they stand on the team at the beginning of the season, we do a longer, um, meeting where I tell them their player impact plan. So these are plans that, um, there's a little bit of input from the player, but I tell them what their role in the team is, how much playing time is associated with that role. I share it with their parents, so you know, we know what we're working on and where each individual athlete stands. So I'm constantly checking in on that. Anything that needs to come up, I find that in every other week basis is really. Great for sustainability. And again, it takes 15 minutes total. Um, every time I do it because I meet with three, three pairs at once. Okay. And that's it. Give them feedback, tell'em what I'm seeing, connect it back to their player impact plan. They get a chance to ask any questions that they have and they know it's coming, so they don't have to like train, figure out, Hey, can I like meet with you after practice? They always know that they have a standing meeting with me. And again, these are teenage girls. Even though you say you have an open door policy, they're not just gonna walk up to you and say, Hey coach, can we talk about my role? Like some of them might, but most don't. And, um, you know, it, it just is a little bit overwhelming for them. So just this consistent structure where they feel seen and heard and, you know, I get, they get my full attention is, is really great. And it's also a time for you as a coach to make sure that you're pouring into them and telling them the good things that you see. Because I know as a coach, like. It's sometimes hard to find time, not find time, but we're so inclined to point out what's going wrong, right? And so really taking a moment to, to tell'em what's going right, and this is one of the ways that we really have been able to prevent drama before it starts. Not only like interpersonal drama, but. Um, you know, drama around playing time or where they stand and things like that. Like all of that gets kind of cleared up with this meeting cadence. And I also get to check in with my captains and kind of get a pulse for the team as well. Two, this whole thing that I talked about around confidence and mental game, because this is really where it ties together. There's two big things that I did this year, and one of them were those individual meetings. And so when you combine those structured check-ins with mental training, that's where you're not just. Managing drama, you're actually actively preventing it. So you include those check-ins, but I'm also reinforcing mental skills that we're working on as a team in those check-ins as well. So things like their snapback routine for bouncing back from mistakes like we're evaluating how fast are you coming back from a mistake? How's your body language, um, visualization. We lead them through visualizations before games and also before practice, um, as a part of our daily mindset routine called the 3, 2, 1 break. So I check in with them. On what their goals are. They have three affirmations that they write down at the start of every practice. They determine those at the beginning of the season. So I check in with those, like, are we getting closer to that? How are those, you know, how are those coming along? And when we actually can build an athlete's confidence in this way by working on her mental game. Here's what really happens. Athletes are confident and when they can trust themselves, they have a system for handling pressure and how to come back for mistakes. They actually stop creating so much drama. They don't have to blame other people for their mistakes. They're checking in on their body language. They're not lashing out on teammates because they're insecure. They're not gossiping because they feel disconnected. They're not melting down overplaying time because they know exactly where they stand. So connection plus confidence equals. Less drama. Okay. So if you want to work on the mental side of things, which again, these two things made a big difference, the mental and then consistent checking in. Um, if you wanna know how I train the mental side of the game with my team, head to our free training. It's at coach free training.com. It's free. I teach you the three things that I do over the course of the season to really, um, actually train the mental side of the game. You know, they say. That the mindset and the mental game is 90% of the sport, and you're like, well, I don't know how to do that. Right? You know how important it is, like how to come back from mistakes, deal with pressure, not let up at the end of the game. Like all of those things come back to the mental game. So I make it very simple for you. So head to coach free training.com, uh, to find how to do this simply with your team. I take five minutes outta practice a day. To do this and you can too. So coach free training.com is where that is. Okay. Now for the every other week check-ins, I talked about how I connect it back to the player impact plans. And I wanna hit on that again because if I didn't do a player impact plan and these meetings, I think would still be semi effective, but not as effective as they could be because athletes don't know where they stand. When athletes know where they stand, what their role is, how much playing time is associated with that role, and their parents are looped into it too. That's where the confusion can go away a little bit more. All right, and so the player impact plan, here's kind of how it works before the season starts. I have an athlete fill out just a very simple intakes survey, like a few questions that I wanna know about them, like their goals for the season, what role they think they want, where they need to improve, things like that. I take that information and combine with what I see, and I usually do this after the first week and a half of practice after like a jamboree or tournament, so I can kind of see, all right, here's potentially what their role is going to be. I fill out this one page template. Um, with all that information, what their role is, what they need to work on, what their strengths are as a team, what playing time is associated with that role. So they know what to expect, what this role means. I sit down with them one-on-one. I go over it with them. I also email it to their parents. And so that's where there's like no confusion because a lot of times you'll have a conversation with an athlete on like what your role is, and then they say something different to their parents or like they don't remember what the conversation is. And then the parent's all confused. So. Anyways, you can kind of eliminate the, like, why is the sprint playing more than me? So it's all laid out. And then throughout the season when we do those check-ins, we actually have that player impact plan that we can refer back to. So we're tracking progress, we're adjusting as needed, we're staying connected. And so at this point you might be thinking like, this also sounds great, but I don't have time to build any of this from scratch. And guess what? I'm excited to let you in on a little secret. So if creating systems like this, like a player impact plan, a weekly meeting cadence for your one-on-ones, um. If that sounds hard, that's because it is hard and probably because you're doing it alone. And I spent way too long struggling with trying to figure out the systems to make my program, you know, function the way I want to function. And also so that I can actually coach my girls without having to put out fires in all these other places around like their mental game and team drama and the fundraising thing, and the team dinners that we have to organize and all of that. And the problem with a lot of coaching resources out there right now is that you get a lot of information thrown at you. Without a lot of strategy to know how to implement it. So you have all these ideas, but then you don't have time to actually build the thing, and that's why we've created. A brand new membership for coaches called the Championship Culture Membership. It is a done with you program, not done for you, but done with you. And here's what it means. You get all my copy and paste templates for things like the Player Impact plans, the check-in frameworks, leadership development systems. All of these things that I've developed over the past 14 years in four state championships, you get copy and paste templates that you can use, but you're not just getting like a bunch of information. You're getting like actually something useful. And then every week we jump on a call together and we take one of those templates and we build it together. So like in January, we're building your player impact. Plan. So like how you can actually put it into, um, into practice. In February, we are coming up with your leadership council plan, so we're setting the systems that help your, your program run smoothly and to reduce all of these other things that are byproduct of not having the right systems. Team drama, um, parent concerns, you know, team, all the things, you know, like players being mad about their playing time, all of that. So if you wanna do that with me, be a part of this membership. We are opening it right now. The link is in the description to join at a very special founder's rate. So it's a really great way to not just like get information, but. Get it done. Like actually build the thing using systems and tools that are vetted and are proven. Okay? Now here's what I want you to remember. Team drama is not necessarily a people problem. It's a systems problem, and if you come at it with the approach of what are the systems that I have in place to support the athletes in my program, then you're gonna go a lot further than just like, oh, this person is just a problem on the team. Once they're gone, everything will be better. No, if you don't have the systems to help support the culture that you want, then you'll always just kind of have the same problems popping up. Okay. Now, if you wanna know exactly how I start my first week of practice to kind of lay the foundation for team connectivity, these player impact plans, all the things, I actually break down my very first week of practice in this next video that I'm linking to, and you can see exactly what I do. This is really useful for you if you're like. Starting your season with the next couple of months, then you can have a plan to help you with it as well. So I will see you in the next video. Okay.