Creating a High-Performance Culture

How do elite military special operations consistently produce highly skilled teams who successfully execute in extreme environments? It starts with selecting the right people and contrary to what many would expect, talent is low on the list of selection criteria. 

Hiring impactful staff members is challenging for any organization. In the world of elite sports, it’s even harder; the markets are small, and the margins between success and failure are even smaller. Professional and NCAA sports teams depend on mission-critical performance departments to keep players healthy and prepared to perform optimally in every competition. The construction of a best-in-class performance department can amount to a competitive advantage when done well, but that is rare. So, how does it happen? 

When building a performance department – or simply hiring staff – it is natural to want to target talent or skill as your top quality in a successful candidate. While talent is valuable, it should not be the most important factor. The construction of an impactful performance staff is not as simple as assembling a group of talented people to execute tasks in their own domain. How many times have we seen sports teams loaded with talent fail to meet expectations? It doesn’t work in elite sports performance because athletic development does not happen in isolation. 

In a performance department, you are ultimately creating a culture and an environment that produces performance solutions. All performance staff members have overlapping responsibilities that impact player health and readiness. Simple example: strength and conditioning coaches are not the only ones who influence strength development. The muscle tissue quality that supports optimal functioning is impacted by athletic trainers, physical therapists, and massage therapists. Nutritionists determine optimal fueling strategies, recovery nutrition, and amounts of muscle mass needed to support the intended performance outputs. Sports scientists collaborate with the analytics staff to help determine how much force is necessary and what type of force characteristics are most applicable to the player’s position and sport. This information then drives the programming that is created by the strength and conditioning coaches and delivered to the athletes. 

Performance development should be a well-thought-out and executed plan that creates a synergistic effect from the integration and collaboration of all staff members. In elite sports, the performance solutions are much more complex than simply increasing strength. So, an integrated, solution-oriented culture is critical to driving player and team success. 

Elite special operations don’t search for the most talented people because the results they are seeking do not lie in the individual, they lie in the culture. Culture is never risked for skill. It’s not worth it, as the return on skill would eventually be mitigated by negative impacts on the positive environment. With the right people and optimal culture, you bring out the best in everyone, and the collective skill expressed is much greater than the sum of the individual skill sets.

Impactful performance departments are a competitive advantage, but creating them is nuanced and highly challenging. Many professional and NCAA sports teams are still trying to crack the code. At Integro, we have identified the character traits along with the talent profile each staff member needs to create a highly effective player health and performance system with exponential growth potential. We are able to build these systems in any sports environment and customize them to your organization’s unique needs. 

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3 Reasons Your Performance Systems Are Limiting Your Team’s Success - Part 1