Teams are inherently paradoxical. They have nested inside them persistent and mutually defined opposites that set up inescapable dissonance or internal tensions. These include:
Individual and collective
Cohesion and dissent
Freedom and control
Similarity and difference
Competition and cooperation
Stability and adaptation
Trust and accountability
Predictability and novelty
These paradoxes are constantly asking the players, via their interactions, to mediate these internal tensions. This helps explain why coherent, stable, and predictable behavior is not the default team setting. Teams need mechanisms that actively harmonize these contesting forces in ways that minimize coordination friction and maximize collective potential.
The paradoxes aren't theoretical. All coaches have to deal with the practical subtleties of how this plays out:
Two talented players competing for the same starting position
A gifted newcomer unsettling the established pecking order
The whisper network undermining agreed-to changes
The star afforded latitude on standards, effort, or timekeeping that others are not
Views being withheld in support of false harmony
Encouraging genuine friendships and subgroups to form without those relationships fragmenting the wider team
Ground rules are behavioral guiderails or orienting tools that help forge a common-enough set of mental models that facilitate the mediation of these paradoxes. Ground rules aren't rules for eliminating one side of the paradox; rather, they are mechanisms for allowing both sides to coexist productively. Importantly, they are not hard rules centrally imposed by the coach and are typically not aimed at policing bad behavior. Ground rules are less "rules" than adopted behavioral conventions. Rules tend to imply hard boundaries between right and wrong. Ground rules provide shared guidance for navigating situations where the appropriate response is often contextual and ambiguous. They act as "both-and" mechanisms, and their job is to reduce behavioral ambiguity and promote accountability.
While coaches may help facilitate their development, they are equally likely to be spawned by the players themselves. In this case, they are bottom-up heuristics that informally emerge and are the product of the dynamics themselves. Think of them as self-imposed socio-normative grounding mechanisms that the team uses to grapple with paradoxes. Ironically, they may reflect how the team is trying to circumvent hard, coach-based rules.
Ground rules are themselves paradoxical. They are voluntary norms, encourage predictability without removing autonomy, are central to, but unobtrusive in, action, and promote self-discipline across a collective.
Ground rule examples include:
Raise concerns with the person involved before discussing them with other teammates.
After a mistake, give the next useful instruction rather than assigning blame.
Ask whether a teammate wants feedback before giving detailed advice.
No one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once.
If you are struggling physically or mentally, tell someone early enough for the team to adjust.
When a teammate comes off the field frustrated, give them a moment, then check in.
Players on the bench stay engaged and pass on what they notice to players in the game.
We celebrate the scorer and acknowledge the teammates who created it.
Ground rules are thus embedded ways of behaving and coordinating action. Their capacity or effectiveness depends on the nature of the problem they are trying to mediate, group connectedness, relational quality, urgency, and group understanding. A ground rule works when players recognize the tension it addresses, find the agreement useful, and reinforce it in their everyday interactions.
The role of the coach is to help the team notice and own the tension and facilitate, preferably, a player-driven response to the challenge. Bottom-up, player-driven ground rules encourage ownership through internal choice rather than external imposition. Lastly, keep the ground rules limited to what is necessary at the time. Long lists become background noise, losing their guiding efficacy. If a ground rule is no longer serving the team, let it go.
Circle-In gets teams to perform closer to their potential by making team behavior more visible: who is connected to whom, the quality of their relationships, what players are thinking and feeling, together with the collective behavioral state this affords, at any point in the season. We make players more intentional, coaches more informed and the team collectively smarter.
1 This article drew on ideas and examples expressed in – Team ground rules: their functions. Miguel Pina e Cunha, Arménio Rego, Ace Volkmann Simpson1
