ABSTRACT
Team culture is a prominent feature of the athlete-centred coaching approach and as a popular term-du-jour has become firmly established in the coaching lexicon. Recognised as the product of a complex series of social interactions influencing team beliefs and subsequent behaviour, team culture has been associated with not only positive learning environments but also on-field success. This chapter explores the characteristics, concepts and socio-cultural processes that have come to define team culture along with the role the (athlete-centred) coach can play in leading and facilitating it. Drawing on perspectives from organisation science and sociology, team culture is positioned as a highly complex, socially located phenomenon that is rooted in context. With the potential for team culture to be leveraged as a behaviour shaping tool, the reality of team culture for the athlete-centred coach is problematised and positioned as a contested concept imbued with dialectic tension. Sensitising concepts of sense-making and sense-giving are offered as an alternative to traditional views of team culture and foreground the complex social relationships and central agency of all actors in a culture. To conclude, an argument is subsequently made for cultural literacy – cultural, social and interpersonal knowledge and skills – as a key consideration for the athlete-centred coach.
