The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
Babe Ruth, known as the best baseball player in history
How come that some coaches succeed in shaping a team in which players would always go that extra mile for each other, while other coaches have various world star players, but do not succeed in joining their forces? After year-long research, various studies pointed in the same direction: creating a sense of 'we' and 'us' in the team seems to be a characteristic attribute of successful leaders (both coaches and athlete leaders within the team).
Good leaders thus succeed in making the players think, feel, and behave as members of one team (as 'we' and 'us'), rather than as a group of individuals (as 'me' and 'you'). This sense of 'we' and 'us', in scientific terms referred to as a joint social identity, leads players to go the extra mile for each other as their team's success feels as a personal success. As a result, the bench player in basketball will still celebrate with the others when winning the game, although he didn't play himself. Likewise, the soccer player will rather give a pass to one of his teammates who is better positioned to score, rather than forcing an own shot for goal. Moreover, by cultivating this team identity, both coaches and athlete leaders create a leverage to foster teamwork, boost team confidence, improve the team's resilience and performance, but also enhance athletes' health and well-being.
To guide coaches and athlete leaders in cultivating and strengthening this joint team identity, we developed two programs; the 5R Program solely focuses on the cultivation on this joint team identity, whereas our all-in 5RS Program starts with implementing a structure of shared leadership and then combines the strengths of both the coach and the athlete leaders within the team to strengthen a sense of 'we' and 'us'.
On the pages below you find more information on each of these programs: