Leading Teams Partner, Martine Harkin, has been working with the U21 Victorian State Netball Team in the lead up to National Netball Championships. The main focus of the Leading Teams program has been the development of their Trademark.
At Leading Teams, we ask teams to identify their purpose, and then create a Trademark, which is a set of behaviours – how they want to conduct themselves. Each team member has an input into developing this agreed behavioural framework, and is reviewed against it regularly.
Victorian head coach Kristy Keppich-Birrell said the side had worked with Leading Teams to develop a trademark that helped them become high performing. Kristy understood the value of an environment of open and honest dialogue between her players whilst on court in a pressurised situation.
“We have been working with Leading Teams and the idea is to develop a trademark which you can measure your performance by and the one thing they [the team] wanted to work towards was being intimidating, in a positive way, by being relentless, united and professional,” Keppich-Birrell said.
Leading Teams Partner Martine said, “The girls engaged really quickly with the process of establishing a trademark that allowed us to give each other feedback in relation to training and their performance during games.
It’s so important to have [head coach] Kristy involved in the process and she was on board straight away. In order for our program to be successful, we need buy in from the key centres of influence. Kristy drove the program in all parts of the lead up; from training, match play and everything in between.
One of the things we addressed was not necessarily having any ‘big stars’ – we have a group of talented individuals who are all willing to work together to achieve success”.
“I think having the honesty with each other, it’s the old adage of will a champion team beat a team of champions. You look at it on paper and we don’t have the ANZ Championship players, or those who have played 21s for five years that others may have. We are looking to achieve success using the power of team” said Keppich-Birrell.
Keppich-Birrell said a big factor for the team was identifying themselves when changes need to happen on court and taking responsibility for their own actions.
“It’s about communicating what needs to get done during a game. One of the main things for the team is for the athletes to take responsibility for their performance whilst it’s happening, rather than waiting for the break for things to get changed. I feel like this group are very focused as a team and know what they want.”
The team proved that they were a high performing one when they were runners up at the recent National Netball Championships. Leading Teams continues to assist the team achieve success and is working with Victorian National League teams, Vic Fury and Vic Flames for the 2014 season.
