“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

Sure, winning is important, but so is your players’ well-being. Just like positive teams are more productive in the workforce, they’re also more successful on the field or court. A good culture can develop naturally, but it’s up to coaches to create an encouraging environment. These three small steps can make a big impact on your team.

Measure Success beyond Ws and Ls

Whether or not your team has a winning season, it’s important for coaches to acknowledge the little wins, like your team executing certain plays better, or improving in a set of stats, along the way.

Individual improvement is another way to assess how far your team has come—like if the player who racked up the most penalties or fouls in your earliest games has cut that number in half by the end of the season.

Stats that align with your coaching philosophy are a good way to measure progress, but success can also be measured by your players’ individual and team efforts.

Involve the Entire Team

One of the key things students learn from high school athletics is the value of participation and teamwork. It’s easy to focus on your top performers, but great coaches find ways to make even their least skilled players feel like MVPs.

Be consistent in your interactions with players and find ways to involve your entire team (including the non-starters) in practices, workouts and game prep. Consider an exercise where players take turns discussing what each member brings to the team. This can reassure everyone that their contributions are key to the team’s success, no matter if it’s points scored or morale boosted.

Reinforce Good Behavior

On the team or individual level, positive reinforcement is generally more effective than punishment when it comes to changing behavior—and it creates a more constructive atmosphere on your team.

Players learn from your example. If they see you praising their teammates for good behavior rather than coming down on them for poor performance, they’re likely to do the same (even when you’re not around).

Take a few minutes in each review session to go over highlights—ideally before you begin the physical part of practice so the team is energized. Letting your players access game video helps them share these moments with their parents and friends, and giving them the opportunity to do this on their own will ensure you don’t need to devote too much important practice time to it.

For more ways to engage your athletes, check out our guide to building your coaching philosophy.

Whether it’s a program that’s open to all students, or only used as a training program for your captains and team leaders, the benefits of a leadership program can be huge for your athletic department.

I’ve had the opportunity to start and also participate in many leadership programs during my career. Some I started myself, others were team efforts with members of the coaching staff or our league. Every one has been different, with their own strengths and challenges, but the overall result has always been the same—we gave student-athletes valuable lessons in leadership and skills for the future.

There’s no right or wrong way to create a leadership program for your athletes. Every high school in the country is different, with all of us having unique communities. It’s important to make sure the program you create is geared towards your student-athletes and addresses the issues you all face as a community.

Ask yourself these questions as you get started:

• What makes your community and school unique? What programs can you tap into?
• What area does your community and school need to improve?
• What can your student-athletes benefit from knowing?

Here’s how we set it up.

This year, at Falmouth High School (Maine), we’re conducting our second cohort of the Casco Bay Leadership Institute. It’s a terrific leadership program that fits our student-athletes well.

The roots for this program were actually growing before I came to the school. One of our head coaches was interested in doing his own leadership program for his student-athletes and had started planning it out. He had a long career in the Maine Community College System and used that experience (and his contacts) to recruit some highly qualified guest lecturers and teachers for the program.

During the interview process for my current position, I talked about wanting to start a leadership council. After starting at the school, this head coach learned about my interest and approached me with his proposal. I was blown away by what he had created.

We sought funding through a grant from a local bank and were able to open the first cohort last year to fifty student-athletes.

Here’s how it works.

We have four main components that make up our program.

• Seminars—we cover the essential building blocks of effective leadership.
• Self-discovery—instruction on how to find your leadership style and how it translates into leading others.
• Group lectures—proven leaders, from a variety of professions and backgrounds, share and discuss their experiences.
• Service learning projects—gives students a chance to demonstrate their leadership skills.

We run our program over two consecutive Saturdays. The seminars account for seven hours of classroom time, and include:

• Core Principles of Leadership
• Leading Groups Effectively
• Identifying and Understanding Personal Leadership Styles
• Leading with Ethics and Values

Once the seminars are completed, students participate in an eleven hour community service project. They can immediately use the leadership skills they learned in the classroom.

The service learning department is one of the strongest components of our program. Our staff does an incredible job of reaching out to community partners in the greater Portland area to give our students the opportunity to perform hundreds of hours of community service each year.

Make your program work for you.

Our students are very driven academically. We send kids to the best colleges in the country year after year. It’s a high-performing district with students who want to be well-rounded and are focused on their own achievements. I know this isn’t the case for every high school, but that can just be another reason to implement a leadership program—to motivate the unmotivated student-athletes.

This type of program fits our school and student-athletes well, but it’s important to remember this certainly isn’t the only way to conduct a leadership program. We used the resources we had to benefit our student-athletes in a way that helps us.

If you concentrate on your community’s resources, and finding the right fit for your student-athletes, the benefits will be worth the effort.

James Coffey attend­ed Endicott College in Beverly, MA where he got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Sport Management. He has spend the last four­teen years as an ath­let­ic direc­tor at three dif­fer­ent high schools. Coffey was named the Massachusetts Secondary School District A Athletic Director of the Year in 2012. He has also spoke about the pos­i­tive effects of social media on ath­let­ics at sev­er­al New England conferences.