This is not your typical reading list of sport psychology books. At Headstrong Mindset, I want to start by acknowledging that there are a ton of fantastic books out there on mental toughness, navigating pressure, and overcoming mental obstacles for athletes in sports. The problem is that most of them are written by men about male professional athletes. As a former professional and collegiate athlete who has spent a lifetime competing and working in women’s sports, I don’t find most sport psychology books relatable to my athletic career.

I have always enjoyed reading the books of Hall of Fame level coaches such as John Wooden’s A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and Pete Carroll’s Win Forever . There are also fantastic books by sport psychology giants such as George Mumford’s The Mindful Athlete and Timothy Galloway’s classic The Inner Game of Tennis. I have deep respect for these sports legends. However, the experiences they describe in the books often feel otherworldly to female high school and collegiate athletes or coaches who don’t have access to the same level of resources or privilege.

Therefore I have compiled a list of books that are mostly written by women for everyone. These books seek to support the whole athlete and coach. These are the books I share with my current college and elite athletes and coaches. These are the books I wish I had when I was playing.

*Please note that some of the links on this page are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase a book through my link — at no additional cost to you. I only recommend books I have personally read and genuinely believe in.

Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three

Coach Dawn Staley’s memoir is as much a story about mental toughness, perseverance and values-driven leadership as it is about basketball. The legendary USC head coach and two-time Olympic gold medalist reflects on the core values — discipline, loyalty, community, and faith — that carried her from growing up in North Philadelphia to the pinnacle of the sport. This is a must-read for any athlete or coach who wants to understand how a clear sense of identity and purpose translates into sustained excellence on and off the court.

Wolfpack: How to come together, unleash our power, and change the game.

If you are looking for a fun, engaging and inspiring book to read with your entire team during the season, than look no further than Abby Wambach’s Wolfpack. The two-time Olympic Gold Medalist & FIFA World Cup Champion shares pearls of wisdom about leadership, teamwork, and balancing athletic identity. My favorite quote: “I’ve never scored a goal in my life without getting a pass from someone else.” We all have something to learn from Abby in this feminist athlete call to arms. There is also a version of Wolfpack adapted for young readers.

Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life

This book by Dr. Colleen Hacker and Mallery Mann is my absolutely go-to favorite Sport Psychology book. Dr. Colleen Hacker was the U.S. National Team Mental Skills coach for Team USA when they won 1999 Women’s World Cup. She’s also a 6x member of the Olympic coaching staff. It’s a fantastic read for players, coaches, sport psychologists and mental performance consultants. In her book she identifies self-awareness and self-regulation as two of the most important mental skills that impact athlete performance. If you like learning from Dr. Hacker, I highly recommend listening to her conversation with Julie Foudy on ESPN’s Laughter Permitted podcast.

Dear Coach

Full disclaimer – I am a super fan of Dr. Erdner’s book because I had the great privilege of being mentored by Dr. Erdner throughout my doctorate program and CMPC certification process for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. I cannot say enough about how the athlete’s vulnerable letters in this book resonated with my personal experience as a former NCAA athlete and collegiate volleyball player. This is required reading for any coach that works with me. This book combines evidence-based research with athletes real life stories about their collegiate athletic experience to address systemic communication issues in college athletics.

In this book, Dr. Erdner asks all the athletes one single question: What do you wish you could have told your coach but, for whatever reason, never did?  It’s a must read book for college coaches. The answers will change the way you see your athletes and transform your relationships with them.

Rebound: Train your mind to bounce back from sport injuries

Rebound is the book I wish I had read when I was recovering from wrist surgery and trying to find my way back into the starting lineup of my college volleyball team. In this book Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma created a guide to support injured athletes with building the psychological resilience needed to recover from injury and return to sport stronger than before. They walk you through the emotional and mental stages of injury recovery — from the initial shock and grief of being sidelined to rebuilding confidence and trust in your body as you return to competition. What I love most about this book is that it validates the psychological toll that injury takes on athletes, which is so often overlooked in traditional sports medicine and rehabilitation settings. They also have an inspiring podcast for injured athletes called The Injured Athlete Club.

Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sport

If you are a coach who wants to explore an athlete’s resistance to change and learn how to navigate team conflict, this is the book for you. The authors take this person-centered approach to evaluating intrinsic motivation and apply it directly to athletes in sport. I use motivational interviewing all the time with my athletes and highly recommend this book to coaches and sport psychologists.

Instead of telling athletes what to do and how to do it, motivational interviewing teaches coaches to ask better questions — and then truly listen to the answers. It’s a communication approach rooted in respect, curiosity, and the belief that athletes already have the answers inside them. This book goes beyond coaching… it teaches a philosophy of curiosity and human empathy. It’s particularly valuable for coaches working with athletes who are struggling with motivation, burnout, identity issues, or the transition out of sport. It’s guaranteed to make you a better coach, a better communicator, and honestly, a better human being.

Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance

This is the sport psychology textbook that I return to again and again. I consider this book to be the “bible” of sport psychology techniques. It was required for me in grad school and I find myself continuing to reference the teachings, activities and techniques shared in this book by Dr. Jean Williams and Dr. Vikki Krane. Warning: it’s not a quick and easy read, but it covers a broad variety of topics and performance concerns that athletes and coaches experience, so you can jump to the chapter on the theme you need support around. Dr. Krane is one of my favorite sport psychology authors and researchers. Dr. Krane also published a brilliant research article on Sex, Gender, & Sexuality in Sport that is definitely worth a read.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

This book isn’t exactly a Sport Psychology per se, but the principles in this book are absolutely transferrable to coaches and athletes. In her book, Dare to Lead, Brené Brown (researcher, social worker &  New York Times bestselling author) answers this critical question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?

Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of skills and practices that are 100 percent teachable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.”

If you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, add her book to the top of your reading list. My personal favorite of hers is: Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.

The ATHMINDSET Workbook: Training your mind for optimal mental health in sport and in life.

This workbook was created by Lisa Bonta Sumii, who is a Licensed Social Worker and Certified Mental Performance Consultant. I’m a huge fan of Lisa’s podcast Athlete Mindset.

What I love about this workbook is that it bridges the gap between mental health and mental performance in a way that very few resources do. So much of the sport psychology content out there focuses exclusively on performance optimization — getting in the zone, managing competition nerves, building confidence. Lisa’s workbook goes deeper than that. It addresses the whole athlete: their identity, their emotional wellbeing, their relationships, and their life beyond sport.

The format is incredibly accessible and practical. Rather than just reading about mental skills, athletes are actively guided through exercises and reflections that help them apply the concepts directly to their own experience. This makes it an ideal resource for athletes who want to do the inner work but aren’t sure where to start. The ATHMINDSET podcast and the workbook are full of gold nuggets for players, coaches, and parents supporting the mental performance and wellbeing of athletes and teams. I frequently recommend both to my athletes as companion resources to our work together.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, psychologist Angela Duckworth makes the case that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.” Her research is groundbreaking, accessible, and directly applicable to the world of sport.

Duckworth’s research found that grit — the combination of passion and perseverance — is a stronger predictor of high achievement than intelligence, talent, or other personality traits. For athletes who have ever been told they aren’t talented enough, this book is the antidote.

The book includes Duckworth’s Grit Scale — a self- assessment that measures grit’s two key components: passion and perseverance. I use the Grit Scale assessment with my college teams at the start of the season as a powerful tool for self-awareness and team building. The conversations it sparks are always revealing. If you prefer to learn visually, Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk on grit has been viewed over 30 million times and is a great place to start before diving into the book.

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Ask most elite athletes what their goals are and they’ll tell you without hesitation: earn or maintain a starting spot, win a conference title or championship, break a personal record, earn a scholarship or get drafted to go pro. Goals drive us and they matter. But ask those same athletes about their core values — what they stand for when no one is watching, what guides their decision-making and how they approach conflict-resolution among teammates or coaches when the pressure is on — and most will pause. Yet for athletes and coaches at every level, having clear core values is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools in sport.

That pause is telling.

In my work as a mental performance consultant and sports counselor in Colorado, I’ve come to believe that values clarity is one of the most impactful and underutilized performance tools in sport. Athletes and coaches spend countless hours developing physical strength, honing tactical skills, watching film, and getting reps. Far fewer invest time in getting clear on the internal compass that guides all of it.

The research — and the results of some of the most successful coaches in sports today — suggest that’s a significant missed opportunity.

What Are Core Values, and Why Do They Matter in Sport?

Core values for athletes and coaches are the principles and beliefs that guide how you think, behave, make decisions, and show up — in competition, in practice, and in life. They aren’t goals or aspirations. Your values define what is most important to you as a person and a competitor. They are the non-negotiables: the qualities you refuse to compromise on, even when it’s hard.

Researcher and author Dr. Brené Brown, whose work on courage and leadership has influenced millions, defines a value as “a way of being or believing that we hold most important.” In her book Dare to Lead, Brown challenges people to narrow their list of potential values down to just two core ones — because, as she puts it, if everything is important, nothing truly drives you.

I often use her list of values as a starting point when working with athletes, teams and coaches. You can access Brené Brown’s core values list here.

The list includes values like authenticity, perseverance, loyalty, growth, integrity, and passion — those are a few of my own core values. The challenge isn’t finding values that sound good. It’s doing the harder work of narrowing your list down to the two or three that are truly yours — the ones that show up consistently in how you compete, how you respond to adversity, and who you are as a teammate, leader, and friend.

What Happens When Athletes Lack Values Clarity

Without clear core values for athletes, navigating the inevitable challenges of sport — losses, slumps, criticism, identity crises — becomes nearly impossible without a compass. Their sense of self becomes tethered to performance outcomes: wins and losses, playing time, rankings, external validation.

This is one of the most common patterns I see in my work with athletes. When identity is built entirely around performance outcomes, every setback becomes a threat. A bad game doesn’t feel like a bad game — it feels like an existential crisis. A slump or loss doesn’t feel like a temporary dip — it feels like a loss of self.

Values-clear athletes experience adversity differently. They still feel the sting of a tough loss or a poor performance. But because their identity is rooted in how they show up — in their commitment, their work ethic, their integrity and their relationships — rather than exclusively in outcomes, they have something solid to return to. Their confidence has a foundation that outcomes alone can’t erode.

For coaches, the same principle applies. Values-clear coaches make more consistent decisions, build more psychologically safe team environments, and earn deeper trust from their athletes — because their players know what to expect. Consistency of character rooted in core values is one of the most powerful leadership tools a coach can have.

What Elite Coaches Know About Values

Some of the most successful coaches in sports history have built championship programs not primarily on talent — but on values. And none did it more deliberately — or more successfully — than John Wooden.

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA men’s basketball coach and winner of 10 NCAA championships in 12 years, spent more than a decade developing what became one of the most well-known frameworks for values-based success in the history of sport: the Pyramid of Success.

Wooden’s Pyramid contains 15 building blocks organized into five interconnected levels, beginning with a foundational base and culminating at the top with what he called Competitive Greatness. The two cornerstones of the entire structure are Industriousness and Enthusiasm — hard work ignited by genuine passion. From there, the pyramid builds through values including loyalty, cooperation, self-control, intentness, condition, skill, and team spirit.

Wooden defined success not as winning, but as “peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” That definition — rooted entirely in values and effort rather than outcomes — produced 10 national championships and influenced generations of coaches and athletes long after his retirement.

Crucially, Wooden believed character came before performance. As Cori Close — who was mentored by Wooden for 15 years — has reflected: “Coach Wooden talked about how the least of his concerns were a championship trophy and a banner. Those were the byproducts of being a great teacher of life and lessons about things that will live on long after the ball goes flat.”

That legacy of values-first coaching lives on in today’s most successful women’s basketball programs.

Cori Close, who led the UCLA Bruins to their first-ever NCAA women’s basketball national championship in 2026, has built one of the most values-driven programs in college basketball. Close is explicit about the three core values at the heart of her program: a growth mindset, gratitude, and being what she calls “lifestyle givers” — athletes who contribute to the people around them beyond just what they produce on the court.

Close recruits as much on these values as she does on talent. And the results speak for themselves.

Perhaps most powerfully, Close has described the ultimate purpose of her program this way: “Banners hang in gyms and rings collect dust, but who you become and who you impact in these four years, you get to keep forever.”

That is a values statement. And it’s one that has shaped an entire culture — and produced a national championship.

Dawn Staley, head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team and three-time NCAA national champion, has spoken and written extensively about the values that have shaped her both as a competitor and as a coach. In her instant New York Times bestselling memoir Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three (2025), Staley reflects on how her upbringing in the North Philadelphia housing projects instilled in her the core values that have guided her entire career — discipline, community, faith, hope, and respect for the power of habits.

Those values didn’t just shape Staley as a person — they became the foundation of how she coaches. Her program is known for its demanding standards, deep player relationships, and culture of accountability. In her memoir, Staley talks about the importance and cost of living and competing in alignment with one’s core values. She says, “values and virtues are cheap until you have to pay for them, then they get really expensive.”

How to Identify Your Core Values

Whether you’re an athlete or a coach, the process of identifying your core values is the same: it requires honest reflection, and it takes more time than most people expect.

Here’s a process I use with athletes and coaches I work with:

Step 1: Start with Brené Brown’s list. Download or view the full values list here. Read through it slowly and circle every value that resonates with you — don’t edit yourself yet. Most people end up with 10–20 values circled.

Step 2: Group related values together. Look at your circled values and notice which ones cluster together. For example, you might have circled honesty, integrity, and authenticity — those are related. What’s the root value underneath all three? That root value is likely one of your core values.

Step 3: Narrow to your top two or three. This is the hardest part. Brown’s research shows that the athletes and leaders who live most intentionally tether their behavior to one or two values — not ten. Ask yourself: when I train or perform my best, which values are always present? When I’ve felt most out of alignment — most unlike myself — which values were being compromised? Are there some areas or domains of your life, that your core values feel more aligned with your actions and relationships?

Step 4: Write them down and define them in your own words. A value isn’t useful if it’s just a word on a list. Write a sentence or two about what each of your core values means to you, in the context of your sport and your life. What does “integrity” look like in practice during training and competition? How do your values show up in the face of setbacks or the most difficult moments of your season?

Step 5: Use them as a decision-making filter. The real test of values clarity comes in moments of pressure, conflict or uncertainty. When you face a hard decision or a relational conflict — whether to speak up, whether to let it go and push through, whether to make a change — ask yourself: What would the most values-aligned version of me do right now?Or how would your core-value respond to this situation?

Values for Coaches: Building a Values-Driven Team Culture

For coaches, establishing core values for athletes and teams is only the beginning. The next step is building a team culture that is explicitly grounded in those shared values.

This doesn’t mean imposing your values on your athletes. It means creating a process — at the beginning of each season or in preseason — where your team collectively identifies the values that will guide how they compete, how they treat each other, and how they respond to adversity.

When team values are co-created rather than handed down, athletes have a deeper sense of ownership and accountability. They are more likely to buy-in. They’re not following a coach’s rules — they’re honoring commitments they made to themselves and to one another as teammates.

A few practices that support values-driven team culture:

• Start each pre-season with a values identification exercise. Have each athlete identify their personal top two values and share them with the team. Hold space for hearing about why each team-member select their top values.
• Refer to team values explicitly during difficult moments — not as a lecture, but as a reminder: “We said we value resilience. What does that look like right now? If I watch you train or compete, will your core values be visible? What do your core values look like in the competition arena and in your relationships?”
• Recognize and celebrate athletes when athletes demonstrate values-aligned behavior — not just when they perform well.
• As a coach, model your own values publicly and consistently. Talk about what your values are and how they guide your decisions. Athletes notice.

The Bottom Line

Talent and hard work will only take you so far. But in the moments that matter most — when the pressure is highest, when outcomes are uncertain or out of your control, when career burnout starts take root — it’s your core values that will support your relationships and shape your legacy.

John Wooden didn’t win 10 national championships by focusing on trophies. Dawn Staley didn’t build three titles on talent alone. Cori Close didn’t win UCLA’s first-ever women’s basketball championship by focusing on banners. They built cultures grounded in clear, explicit, deeply held values — and those cultures produced champions.

The good news is that core values for athletes and coaches are available to everyone, at every level. It doesn’t require special talent or ideal circumstances. It doesn’t even cost money. It requires honesty, reflection, and the willingness to do the difficult inner work.

If you’re ready to start that process, Brené Brown’s values list is a powerful place to begin.

And if you’d like support identifying your core values and integrating them into your performance, leadership and life. I’d love to help. Book a free 15-minute consultation here.

Dr. Brooke Rundle at Headstrong Mindset combines evidence-based research with applied sport psychology strategies to help you reach your optimal potential, enjoy competing more and ultimately elongate your athletic career.

References

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work, tough conversations, whole hearts. Random House.

Staley, D. (2025). Uncommon favor: Basketball, North Philly, my mother, and the life lessons I learned from all three. Atria/Black Privilege Publishing.

Wooden, J., & Jamison, S. (2005). Wooden on leadership. McGraw-Hill.

Wooden, J. (n.d.). Pyramid of success. The Official Site of Coach Wooden. https://coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-success

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press.

Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2019). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (7th ed.). Human Kinetics.

Wilson, K. G., & Murrell, A. R. (2004). Values work in acceptance and commitment therapy. In S. C. Hayes, V. M. Follette, & M. M. Linehan (Eds.), Mindfulness and acceptance: Expanding the cognitive-behavioral tradition (pp. 120–151). Guilford Press.

The post Core Values for Athletes and Coaches: Why They Matter and How to Find Yours appeared first on Headstrong Mindset LLC.

Every coach has experienced it: a roster full of talented athletes who, for whatever reason, just can’t seem to gel as a team. Conflicts simmer beneath the surface and go unresolved. Cliques form. Communication breaks down. And no matter how much talent is in the gym, the team consistently underperforms and falls short. What’s missing is team cohesion — and in sport, it’s the difference between a group of individuals and a genuine team.

They lack cohesion.

On the flip side, most coaches have also experienced the opposite — a team that maybe doesn’t have the most talented roster on paper, but competes with such unity, trust, and collective purpose that they consistently outperform expectations. Athletes communicate clearly. They hold each other accountable with compassion rather than criticism. They laugh together. They cry together. And when adversity hits — and it always does — they lean in rather than fall apart.

That’s what team cohesion feels like.  And in my work as a mental performance consultant working with collegiate and elite athletic programs, building team cohesion is one of the most impactful things a coaching staff can invest in — because cohesion is what transforms a group of individual athletes into a genuine team.

Here’s what the research tells us about team cohesion in sport, what threatens it in today’s landscape, and how coaches can intentionally build it.

What Is Team Cohesion in Sport?

Carron, Brawley, and Widmeyer (1998) define team cohesion as:

“A dynamic process reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs.”

Instrumental objectives are the task-related goals the team is working toward together. Thinkcommitment to the game plan, team roles and goals for the season. Basically, instrumental objectives are about winning games and titles.

On the other hand, affective needs are the emotional and social needs of the people in your program. The human need for a sense of belonging, feeling valued, connected and supported. It’s the “how we feel being part of this team” side.

Team cohesion isn’t just about teammates liking each other or being best friends on and off the court. It’s a dynamic process — something that shifts and evolves over the course of a season — and it serves two distinct purposes: pursuing shared goals and meeting the emotional and relational needs of individual members. Both matter.

The Stages of Team Development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning

Understanding cohesion also means understanding that it develops over time — it doesn’t happen overnight. Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development, first proposed in 1965, describes the phases that are all necessary and inevitable in order for a team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, and deliver results. In 1977, Tuckman and Mary Ann Jensen added a fifth stage — adjourning — which involves completing the task and breaking up the team.

Here’s what each stage looks like in a collegiate sport context:

Forming — This is the beginning of the season or a new roster cycle. Athletes are getting to know each other, testing boundaries, and figuring out where they fit. There’s often excitement mixed with worry about acceptance and changing roles.

Storming — This is when things get uncomfortable. Members tend to experience competitiveness towards one another rather than the opponents as starting line-ups are being selected. Conflict over roles and between clashing personalities start to become visible. New leadership is being tested. These patterns often surface during preseason when there’s heightened competition for starting spots, early season losses, or when new team members are integrated into an established roster. Many teams get stuck here.

Norming — Now the team starts to find its rhythm and develop its unique culture. Members get to know each other more deeply, agree on norms, communication styles and conflict resolution strategies are established. Players accept their team roles, trust begins to solidify between teammates and coaches, and both task and social cohesion start to rise. This is when the group starts to feel like a team.

Performing — The team operates at a high level of efficiency, recognizing each member’s strengths and maintaining a strong commitment to shared goals. This is the stage every coach is trying to reach — and maintain — by the time conference play or postseason arrives. Cohesion is high, team leadership is clear, communication is efficient, and the team can self-regulate without coach intervention.

Adjourning — Every season must end. The group disbands, often eliciting mixed and complex emotions of disappointment, sadness, relief and joy. Coaches who acknowledge and honor this stage help athletes process transitions in healthy ways, which matters both for athlete well-being and athletic career endings for those athletes retiring. It also helps prepare those athletes who are staying for the next season.

One critical insight from Tuckman’s model: it is possible for a team to revert back to the storming stage when faced with obstacles such as injury, lineup or roster changes, or other season setbacks. This is why athlete transfers, injuries to key players, or significant coaching changes can feel like starting over — because in some ways, they are.

Task Cohesion vs. Social Cohesion in Sport

One of the most important distinctions in understanding team cohesion in sport is the difference between task cohesion and social cohesion. In my presentation at the NCAA WeCoach Women Coaches Academy on connectivity and communication, I laid out these two dimensions side by side — and the contrast is instructive.

Task cohesion is reflected in how unified a team is around its performance objectives. Task-cohesive teams share these characteristics:

• Committed to collective goals
• Role clarity, acceptance, and execution
• Willingness to sacrifice self for the team
• Trust in teammates’ ability

That third point deserves special attention. A willingness to sacrifice individual recognition, playing time, or personal playing time for the good of the team is one of the most powerful expressions of task cohesion — and one of the hardest to build. It requires athletes to genuinely trust both their teammates and their coaching staff.

Social cohesion reflects the quality of interpersonal relationships and the sense of community within the team:

• Genuine trust in teammates
• Enjoyment of being together & friendships within the team
• Participation in social activities
• A shared sense of belonging

Both types of cohesion matter — and they’re related, but they are not the same thing. Research suggests that task cohesion is more consistently linked to performance outcomes, while social cohesion tends to have a stronger impact on athlete satisfaction, well-being, and retention. The most resilient, high-performing teams tend to have both.

It’s also worth noting that the relationship between cohesion and inclusion matters deeply. Research by Mullin (2016) found that heterosexist attitudes within women’s collegiate athletic teams were negatively associated with team cohesion — meaning that teams where LGBTQ+ athletes feel unwelcome or unsupported experience measurably lower cohesion. Creating an affirming, inclusive team environment isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a cohesion strategy.

The Reality: Modern Threats to Team Cohesion in Sport

Understanding what cohesion is matters. But coaches today are navigating a landscape that makes building and maintaining team cohesion more challenging than ever. The two biggest structural threats to cohesion in collegiate sport right now are the transfer portal and NIL.

The Transfer Portal has fundamentally changed roster stability in college athletics. As Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin put it memorably: “The portal giveth and the portal taketh away.” In the 2026 offseason alone, eight Tennessee women’s basketball players transferred — with none returning. Roster turnover is no longer an occasional disruption — it’s an annual event. Coaches who once had three or four years to build cohesion with a stable core group are now rebuilding from scratch every offseason. This is the new NCAA landscape.

From a cohesion standpoint, this creates a significant challenge. Cohesion is built over time — through shared experience, vulnerable conversations, and the kind of trust that develops when teammates have trained and battled together. When roster turnover is significant every offseason, coaching staffs are essentially rebuilding cohesion from scratch each year. Tuckman’s model helps explain why this is so disruptive: every significant roster change risks sending a team back to the forming — or even storming — stage, regardless of how far along they were.

NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) has introduced another layer of complexity. As NPR has reported, NIL contracts are changing the landscape of all collegiate sports — and with the NCAA’s new era of revenue sharing, the financial stakes have never been higher.

The Sports Conflict Institute has described this as the “NIL paradox”: the same financial opportunities that can help attract and retain athletes can also create internal tension when teammates have significantly different NIL deals, or when an athlete’s financial considerations compete with team loyalty.

The NCAA’s accelerating shift toward a professional model of sport means that athletes are now developing and managing personal brands — and those personal brands can quietly compete with team identity for an athlete’s primary allegiance. When an athlete’s NIL deal, social media following, or individual marketability becomes more central to their sense of self than their role within the team, the foundation of task cohesion begins to crack.

Perhaps most critically, the timeline for building cohesion has compressed dramatically. Where coaches once had years to develop trust, shared identity, and genuine team unity, many are now being asked to build meaningful cohesion in weeks or months. The biological and psychological processes that underpin trust and belonging haven’t changed — but the time available to develop them has shrunk significantly.

This means that intentional team-building at the start of a new season is more critical than ever before — because the landscape has changed.

Signs Your Team Has Strong Cohesion — and Signs It’s Breaking Down

Cohesion isn’t always easy to see directly, but its presence — or absence — shows up clearly in how a team behaves.

Signs of strong cohesion:

• Athletes communicate openly and constructively, both on and off the field
• Players hold each other accountable without it becoming personal or divisive
• The team responds to adversity — a bad loss, an injury, a tough stretch of the season — by pulling together rather than fragmenting
• Athletes celebrate each other’s successes genuinely
• There is a clear sense of shared purpose and collective identity
• Athletes report feeling valued, respected, and connected to their teammates

Signs cohesion is breaking down:

• Cliques are forming and hardening within the roster
• Communication between certain players has become strained or avoidant
• Athletes are disengaged in team settings but energized individually
• Frustration or blame is directed at teammates after poor performances
• Athletes are unclear about or resentful of their roles
• There is a growing gap between starters and the rest of the roster in terms of connection and investment

If you’re seeing multiple signs from that second list, it’s worth addressing proactively — because cohesion problems rarely resolve themselves, and they tend to compound under competitive pressure.

How Coaches Can Build Team Cohesion Intentionally

Cohesion doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built through deliberate choices about culture, communication, and leadership. Research by Kwon (2024), in a meta-analysis of team-building interventions in sport, confirms that structured team-building activities have a meaningful positive effect on cohesion — which means this isn’t just intuition. It’s evidence-based practice.

1. Start with Role Clarity

One of the most common sources of cohesion breakdown is role ambiguity. Coaches who invest time at the beginning of each season in clearly defining, communicating, and affirming each athlete’s role create the conditions for task cohesion to develop. Every athlete needs to understand not just what their role is, but why it matters to the team’s success. Establish and communicate clear role expectations for each team member. The athletes need to accept their roles and buy-in. Coaches should recognize and celebrate athletes who are performing their role responsibilities successfully   

2. Build Shared Values and Team Identity

Cohesive teams have a clear sense of who they are and what they stand for. Invest time at the start of the season in a team values clarification process. What qualities do we want to be known for? How do we want to compete? How do we want to treat each other when things get hard? When team values are co-created rather than handed down, athletes feel a deeper sense of ownership and accountability. Read my past article to learn more about how to create individual and team core values.

3. Prioritize Trust-Building Experiences

Trust is the foundation of cohesion, and it’s built through consistent experiences of vulnerability, honesty, and follow-through. Team-building activities — done well — can accelerate this process. The key is choosing experiences that require genuine collaboration and communication, not just fun activities that keep athletes on the surface. At times this means you’re going to need to lean into hard conversations and people are going to disagree. That’s okay. We can agree to disagree, but we need to show respect to one another and maintain a sense of curiosity about each other’s lives.

4. Address Conflict Directly and Early

Conflict is inevitable on every team — and as Tuckman’s model reminds us, storming is a normal and necessary stage. What separates cohesive teams from fragmented ones isn’t the absence of conflict — it’s how conflict is handled. Don’t shy away from this step. Relational conflicts are normal for teams. Normalizing conflict and learning how to repair relationship ruptures within the team early in the season can pay huge dividends when it comes time for playoffs.  

5. Create an Inclusive Team Environment

Research is clear that exclusion undermines cohesion. Coaches who actively work to create psychologically safe, affirming environments where every athlete feels a genuine sense of belonging are building the social cohesion foundation that high performance rests on. There’s an important distinction worth naming here: there’s a difference between a team culture of fitting in and a team culture of belonging. A fitting-in culture pressures sameness and social compatibility — athletes feel they have to hide or suppress parts of their identity to be accepted. A belonging culture is one where athletes can bring their authentic selves to practice and competition, and feel valued for their unique contributions to the team. I wrote about this in more depth in my article for the Junior Volleyball Association: 3 Ways to Cultivate a Culture of Belonging.

Assessments I Use to Evaluate Team Cohesion in Sport

When I work with athletic programs on team cohesion in sport, I use validated assessment tools to get an objective picture of where the team stands. Two of the most useful are:

The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) — developed by Widmeyer, Brawley, and Carron (1985), the GEQ measures both task and social cohesion across group integration and individual attraction dimensions.

The Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire (ASQ) — developed by Riemer and Chelladurai (1998), the ASQ evaluates athlete satisfaction across multiple dimensions including training, personal treatment, team performance, and individual performance.

The Team Psychological Safety Scale (TPS-7) — developed by Amy Edmondson (1999), Harvard Business School professor and leading researcher on team effectiveness, the TPS-7 is a 7-item self-report measure that assesses whether athletes feel safe to take interpersonal risks within the team environment — things like asking questions, admitting mistakes, raising concerns, or challenging the status quo without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or punishment.

I use the TPS-7 alongside the GEQ and ASQ to give coaching staffs a three-dimensional picture of team health: how cohesive the team is around goals and roles, how satisfied individual athletes are, and how safe athletes feel to show up fully and honestly within the team environment. Together, these tools give me — and the coaching staff — a much clearer picture of where cohesion is strong and where it needs attention.

The Leadership Connection: Cohesion Alone Isn’t Enough

One of the most important things to understand about team cohesion in sport is that it’s necessary but not sufficient for optimal performance. A team can have high cohesion — strong bonds, genuine trust, a real sense of unity — and still underperform if they lack direction, motivation, or effective leadership.

Think of it this way: cohesion is the fuel, but leadership is the engine. Without strong leadership — both from coaches and from peer leaders within the roster — even the most cohesive team can lack the direction and accountability structures needed to translate that unity into results.

The most successful programs I’ve worked with have both: a genuine sense of team cohesion built on trust and shared values, and clear, effective leadership that channels that cohesion toward collective performance goals.

The Bottom Line

Team cohesion in sport is one of the most powerful performance variables in athletics. It doesn’t show up in a stat line or a scouting report, but its presence or absence if felt and it shapes everything from how a team responds to a tough loss to how athletes perform under pressure late in a season.

In today’s collegiate landscape — with transfer portal volatility, NIL complexity, and rosters that can look dramatically different year over year — building cohesion intentionally isn’t optional. It’s one of the most important things a coaching staff can do.

The investment pays dividends: in performance, in athlete well-being, in retention, and in the kind of team culture that athletes carry with them long after their playing days are over.

If you’d like support assessing and building cohesion within your program, I’d love to connect. Book a free 15-minute consultation here.

If you’re a coach who wants to be intentional about building culture from day one of preseason, I’d love to work with your program. Find out more about team mental performance workshops here.

Headstrong Mindset combines evidence-based research with applied sport psychology strategies to help you reach your optimal potential, enjoy competing more, and ultimately elongate your athletic career.

References

Carron, A. V., Brawley, L. R., & Widmeyer, W. N. (1998). The measurement of cohesion in sport and exercise: Some practical considerations. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology.

Carron, A. V., & Hausenblas, H. A. (1998). Group dynamics in sport (2nd ed.). Fitness Information Technology.

Aoyagi, M., Cox, R., & McGuire, R. (2008). Organizational citizenship behavior in sport: Relationships with leadership, team cohesion, and athlete satisfaction. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20(1), 25–41.

Burke, S. M., Davies, K., & Carron, A. V. (2014). Group cohesion in sport and exercise settings. In M. R. Beauchamp & M. A. Eys (Eds.), Group dynamics in exercise and sport psychology (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Fransen, K., McEwan, D., & Sarkar, M. (2020). The impact of identity leadership on team functioning and well-being in team sport: Is psychological safety the missing link? Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 51, Article 101763.

Gardner, D. E., Shields, D. L. L., Bredemeier, B. J. L., & Bostro, A. (1996). The relationship between perceived coaching behaviors and team cohesion among baseball and softball players. The Sport Psychologist, 10, 367–381.

Kwon, S. H. (2024). Analyzing the impact of team-building interventions on team cohesion in sports teams: A meta-analysis study. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1353944. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1353944

Mullin, E. M. (2016). Heterosexist attitudes and team cohesion in women’s collegiate athletics. Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, 9(1), 90–105. https://doi.org/10.1123/jis.2015-0009

Riemer, H. A., & Chelladurai, P. (1998). Development of the Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire (ASQ). Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 20(2), 127–156.

Shapiro, A., Fuller, J., & Mehta, J. (2022, March 28). NIL contracts are changing the landscape of all collegiate sports. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1089311065/nil-contracts-are-changing-the-landscape-of-all-collegiate-sports

Sports Conflict Institute. (2025, November 7). The NIL paradox: How financial opportunity tests team cohesion in college sport. https://sportsconflict.org/the-nil-paradox-how-financial-opportunity-tests-team-cohesion-in-college-sport/

Taylor, R. (2026, April 29). “The portal giveth and the portal taketh away”: Coach Yo speaks on women’s basketball transfers. The Daily Mississippian. https://thedmonline.com/the-portal-giveth-and-the-portal-taketh-away-coach-yo-speaks-on-womens-basketball-transfers/

The Washington Post. (2025, August 21). In NCAA’s new era of revenue sharing, smaller schools try to keep up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/08/21/ncaa-revenue-sharing-morgan-state/

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399.

Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419–427.

Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2019). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (7th ed.). Human Kinetics.

Widmeyer, W. N., Brawley, L. R., & Carron, A. V. (1985). The measurement of cohesion in sport teams: The Group Environment Questionnaire. Sports Dynamics.

The post Team Cohesion in Sport: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Build It appeared first on Headstrong Mindset LLC.

The impact of gratitude in sport is often overlooked by players and coaches. Gratitude is so much more than just a temporary feel-good emotion in response to counting your blessings. Gratitude has the potential to be a consistent character trait developed with intentionality over the course of a season or a lifetime.

The term gratitude comes from the Latin word “gratia” which means thankfulness or gratefulness . “The gratitude muscle is like any other muscle, in that it must be flexed periodically to remain strong”. The key takeaway here is that you can cultivate gratitude and become a more grateful person, athlete, and teammate by treating gratitude like a skill you train in your sport. In other words, the more you practice gratitude, the more naturally and consistently it will come to you.

The Benefits of Gratitude

The benefits of gratitude in sport are countless. Research shows that practicing gratitude promotes mental and physical health, improves relationships, leads to more social connections, increases self-esteem, enhances mental resilience, improves sleep, and reduces student athlete burnout. Gratitude is also considered a natural antidepressant and has been shown to reduce toxic emotions such as feelings of envy, resentment, frustration, and regret that be harmful disruptors to team-cohesion and accessing a flow state of mind for optimal performance. Cultivating gratitude helps athletes shift focus from what’s lacking or stressful to what’s available and motivating.

What happens in the brain?

Expressing positive emotions such as gratitude and thankfulness can actually change the neural pathways in your brain. Researchers have found that expressing gratitude produces higher levels of activity in the hypothalamus which influences your metabolism and stress levels. Expressing gratitude also releases dopamine and serotonin in the brain causing people to feel happier, less depressed, and less stressed out.

Expressing and receiving gratitude can immediately improve a persons’ mood, but it can also have a lasting impact on your relationships. In the context of team sports, gratitude can significantly improve the interpersonal relationships within your team. In sum, grateful players make better teammates and team leaders. They will also enjoy their sport more, be more mentally tough, and less likely to burnout.

3 Tips to strengthen your gratitude muscle

When getting starting with a gratitude routine for sports, keep these simple tips in mind to set yourself up for success.

1. Express gratitude towards the people in your support system including coaches, teammates, athletic trainers, sport psychologists, opponents, parents, etc.
2. Reflect on your past achievements and growth over the course of your season and your playing career. Focus on more than just wins, consider how you have improved and what you have learned.
3. Be specific! Specificity matters.

5 Exercises to cultivate gratitude

Integrating gratitude into daily routines doesn’t require much time or effort, but the effects can be profound. Here are 5 strategies for athletes:

1. Write a hand-written letter thanking a person who has impacted your athletic career and explain why you are thankful they are in your life.
2. Keep a gratitude journal writing down 2-3 things a day that you are thankful for related to your sport such as qualities in your teammates and coaches, or what you love about playing the game.
3. Take a gratitude walk either before or after trainings and competitions to reflect on why you are thankful to play your sport.
4. Do a daily mindfulness exercise bringing to mind all the things you are grateful in your sport.
5. Write gratitude sticky notes and leave them on your teammates lockers or on their bags to communicate your teammates (and coaches) that you appreciate them.

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A fixed mindset focuses on how good you are right now instead of your potential. A fixed mindset takes feedback personally and gets defensive. A fixed mindset avoids working on your weakest skills and does not believe that improvement is possible. A growth mindset focuses on measuring improvement and learns from a tough loss. A growth mindset accepts feedback and views criticism as constructive. A growth mindset targets your weakest skills in training and truly believes improvement is the reward of a hard work ethic.

Having belief in your ability to improve with practice is essential to succeeding throughout your career.  It is critical you trust in the potential of your ability to improve and your teammates ability to get better during the course of a season.  Here’s 4 key reminders about having a growth mindset.

1. Accept that mistakes are part of the learning process.

Mistakes show you how you can improve and what you need to practice. The frustration that comes around making mistakes is what pushes you to become a better a player. Karch Kiraly, a 3-time Olympic gold medalist and the USA Women’s Volleyball National Team coach, encourages players to “work to the edge of your abilities by taking more risks and not fearing mistakes.” Learning how to let go of mistakes quickly in competition and refocus on the next point is critical to having a growth mindset. There’s never enough time during competition to dwell on past mistakes. Beating yourself up over mistakes during competition is distracting and it damages your confidence in the moment. If you can not learn to let go of mistakes quickly, then they could end up costing you the whole game!

2. Be patient.

We have become so accustomed to getting instant results in other areas of life, that most of us don’t even realize when we are feeling impatient or frustrated in practice. Becoming aware of the frustration is oftentimes the first step to sustaining growth. Frustration can be a powerful motivator, but it helps to remember that improvement is typically not a straight line forward. In fact, oftentimes improvement is two steps forward, and one step back. You can’t just flip a switch to become the level athlete that you want to be, you’ve got to plant the seeds and wait for them grow.  In other words, you have got to put in the work, make mistakes, and learn to be patient. There is no such thing as instant improvement in sports. Those players you look up to playing in the Olympics and the Pro Leagues all put in the time and did the hard work. That’s how you improve and grow as a player. No elite athlete gets out of working hard and there’s no such thing as instant improvement in sports.

3. Celebrate growth wherever you see it.

Eventually a time will come in practice or in competition when you suddenly realize that significant improvement has been made. When you have those ah-hah moments and recognize growth in yourself or in your teammates, you need to stop and celebrate them. It’s very hard to recognize change and improvement in yourself.  It’s much easier to see change in your teammates. However, oftentimes we don’t take the time to point out and celebrate the growth and improvement in our teammates when we recognize it. Always take time to celebrate moments of growth in yourself and in your teammates.

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What does the Stanford women’s volleyball team do for mindset training? 

We do a lot of stuff that we work on individually. We see what the needs are of the individuals. We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. The other things that we talk about (are) mindfulness and finding your center. We talk about breathing. We do some meditation training. The thing that we talk directly about as far as competing on the floor is; being aware of where your thoughts in competition, being aware of where your thoughts are in practice and if they are negative thoughts, replacing those thoughts. We talk a lot about thought replacement and being aware of (what) you’re thinking. Replace the thought “I can’t do this” with – “I can do this. I am strong. I am powerful. I got this.” We talk a lot about that thought replacement.

We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. 

What type of strategies do you use to help players rebound when they have a crisis of confidence?

To me that’s very individualized and it depends on the athlete. For some of them I feel like we try to get ahead of it a little bit. One of our athletes last year was new to us and she was struggling with confidence early on. I think she was trying to decide if she could fit in the team or not. She was struggling to learn our system and all that. One of the things we talked about is how do you earn the confidence first and understand that there’s going to be this learning curve. That’s the 1st piece, giving her perspective. You’re learning a whole new system, you’re playing with new players and you’re trying to figure all this out. Just take a deep breath and be committed to the process.

I feel like my athletes are very pragmatic, they over analyze, and so if we can find the things that are necessary for them to compete and they attack those things in practice or with a little bit of extra time then usually that takes care of a lot of it.  She was a middle blocker, so for her (it looked like) getting extra footwork reps, a few more slide reps, or working on a shot.

And having a conversation – this is how it looks like this team is going to defend you, or this is how they defended you last time. We’ve done that same strategy with passers that have struggled or setters that have struggled. Instead of just saying you should have confidence, get those reps because then they feel like they’re earning the confidence. By mitigating their feelings and just saying what you’re feeling is wrong doesn’t really help them. Let’s try to give them perspective first and then let’s see if we can earn that confidence.

That’s worked out for most of our athletes actually. It’s like if they want to get an A in the class, then they’re going to study and put the time in. That’s how they’re going to have confidence on their tests. We try to draw those parallels. The challenge for all of them is trying to find that perspective. It’s the perspective that it’s okay to make mistakes right now. This is part of the process. We only care about being good in December. 

When you have a team that is very diverse and full of different personalities, how do you approach team building and leadership? 

I do my best to try to recognize leadership. Everyone talks about developing leadership, but I feel like we recognize leadership. We have to recognize who the leaders are first. We don’t have a captain on our team. We have a floor captain. We just say whoever is setting is our captain, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily our leader. We try to figure out what things we value as a group and what are our goals as a group. As you start to have those conversations the vocal leadership starts to emerge. I pay attention to that and identify the leaders. Once I identify who the (natural) leaders are, then I try to put as much on those guys to help drive the culture and the cohesiveness as much as possible because I feel like it’s always stronger when it’s coming from the athletes.

My leadership style as a head coach, even with my staff, is to identify what people are really good at. I’m going to give you the freedom to explore those things as a recruiter, as a coach, as the competitive leader, as the task leader or as the social leader. Let’s identify what you are. Let me be a resource to help you be the best version of that leader possible and what this group needs from you. And then empower you and amplify the message. As a teacher I need to teach our athletes what it means to be a leader, empower them to develop into successful leaders and to lead the way that we need them to and in the way the group is looking for them to lead.

How do you teach communication on your team?

The most important part of communication from me and from my athletes is we’ve got to listen. When freshman come in, they don’t listen to anybody unless you scream and yell. They just want to communicate. The first step for us is we have to listen to each other. But also, if you want people to listen to you, you have to know how to communicate concisely so you don’t lose them in the conversation. And so we talk pretty openly about that. We say – be direct, be on point, be on topic and be concise with that communication in every single way. As the person that’s communicated to, let’s make sure we listen and acknowledge. Just that, (learning to) listen and acknowledge, makes us better communicators in every single way. That goes for if it’s a text I send to the group, they all acknowledge it, they all send a little thumbs up emoji or a got it, or whatever. We give them the freedom to create their own language but with these rules, you’re going to communicate concisely and receive the communication. In this world where we communicate so much through text messages, I think the acknowledgement piece and the listening piece are lost.

What type of pre-game routine do you have in your program?

I leave that up to the athletes. I would not say that we have a routine. I would say that finding a routine that works for each individual is absolutely important. You need to figure out how to prepare yourself physically, mentally and emotionally so you can play in the national championship. And then also you need to figure out how to get your head right for each match. It’s going to take practice and you gotta figure that out. And so we’d talk about that as a group. How do you get yourself ready for competition? How do you eliminate everything that’s around you and get yourself in this moment right now?Different teams have had different strategies. One group shut everything down, turned their phones off, and (found) a quiet place to meditate or breathe, but with my team last year it was like dance party. Goofiness got them in the right place because that helped them let go of everything else.

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A culture of belonging starts with belief that every member of the team has an essential role to play. Finding and utilizing the unique assets of each player on your team will optimize your team’s potential. A culture of belonging celebrates each player’s uniqueness.

A fitting in culture on a team ostracizes players who are different than the majority and forces assimilation.  Assimilation is the process in which a minority group comes to resemble or assume the values and behaviors of the dominant group. The consequence of assimilation is a loss of identity for the minority.

In her book Braving the Wilderness, PhD research professor Brené Brown describes an interview that she did with NFL Coach Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks. Coach Carroll said, “there’s no question that it’s easier to manage a fitting culture. You set standards and rules. You lead by put up or shut up, but you miss real opportunities, especially helping your team members find their purpose. When you push a fitting in culture, you miss the opportunity to help people find their personal drive, what’s coming from their hearts. Leading for true belonging is about creating a culture that celebrates uniqueness. What serves leaders best is understanding your players best efforts. My job as a leader is to identify their unique gift or contribution. A strong leader pulls players toward a deep belief in themselves.”

Inclusion doesn’t just feel good for team culture, it also impacts the performance and stamina of marginalized athletes on the team.  When players experience exclusion within a team, they tend to demonstrate lower levels of confidence, team spirit and motivation, which ultimately results in burnout.  Building a team culture of inclusion is the best way to retain your talent. 

How does it feel when you know your teammates have your back no matter what?  Do you play better or worse?

Now consider how it feels when you don’t trust teammates or when your teammates don’t trust you?

Can you see how cultivating a culture of belonging on your team is better for your performance on the volleyball court?

Building and shaping your team into a culture of belonging that embraces diversity is one of the most powerful lessons you can take away from playing volleyball.  Learning how to do this will serve you long after your playing days are over.  You don’t need to be everyone’s best friend, but if you can learn to celebrate the differences in your teammates and affirm their identities, you will be setting yourself up for success in life.

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