Performance and Trust

This one is for the tennis team players out there. Mostly, we train as individuals, but I think there are enough high school, college, and adult league players out there to make this relevant.

Once a week, I let myself dive into Reels on Instagram. I have all kinds of qualms about spending any time doing this, but every now and then, in between soccer clips and parkour highlights, something interesting pops up and I have to rewatch it. I didn’t catch the source at first, but found it later, and it’s just over two minutes (one salty word in the video):

Here’s the gist, from Simon Sinek, a guy who has talked to Navy Seals about who they choose for their most elite team: everyone wants to have the highest performing, most trust-worthy people on their team but there aren’t a lot of them. Given that, the Seals have seen that maximum trustworthiness with slightly lower performance is more valuable than maximum performance with low trustworthiness. Sinek lables the “High-Performer Low-Trust” person a “Toxic Leader,” which will negatively affect others.

This is a great system for thinking about all kinds of teams and other organizations. I have seen and interacted with lots of tennis teams over the years. Luckily, most of the teams I have actually coached have had a minimal amount of toxicity, but I have seen it happen. Coaches don’t always know who they are recruiting or how they will react to certain situations, and sometimes, they don’t have much choice. In one of my early coaching jobs, we were short on players and were always just trying to get bodies out on the court, but as soon as we had enough players, I started cutting people who were toxic. Coaches need to encourage and require trustworthiness, especially in themselves and at the top of the line-up, in order for the team culture to be strong. Strong culture inspires better performance and helps in recruiting better players.

What are the actions that define trust on a team? It depends on the environment and the expectations, but places to start are simple…be on time, communicate if you can’t be on time, have energy, be kind, be open to learning and coaching, give good effort, call out other peoples’ great ideas and behaviors, figure out how to call out peoples’ bad behaviors without making it personal, cheer for others when you aren’t playing, pay attention to other players’ matches, offer to help, read the room. What else have you seen that promotes or destroys trust? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.