Staying on the same page! Why effective communication is the key to a successful club.

In order for any club to move forward toward a sustainable future, communication is thoroughly required across all parties (volunteers/coaches/players/members). If communication is kept to a minimum, nobody has any idea what is going on, minimal work gets done, which then sets your club back. This is just one of many reasons why communication is crucial, and we will speak about some of the other reasons below.

Results

Let’s face it, every club wants to win, and to win, your goals and expectations need to be thoroughly clear so everybody is on the same page. This starts with the committee communicating with the coaching staff, to then which the coaches speak with the players and lay the foundation for the season ahead. If any form of communication is missed between any of these 2 parties, it can create major confusion among everyone which then translates to goals potentially not being met.

In the modern world, there are many ways to keep up to date with everything through the likes of a club website and social media pages, and this must be exploited by your club to ensure that everybody that has any investment in the club knows what the objectives are, and how to reach them.

For on field goals to be met, discussions need to be frequent between the committee, coaches and the leadership group. Due to everyone having their own busy lives, it can be difficult to all decide on a specific date and time to consistently meet up. This is where the likes of social media come into play. By creating a group chat and having all required members part of it, discussions can happen at any time and anything that is discussed on the group chat can always be brought forward at the next in person meeting between the parties.

Planning for Revenue Raising Events

Post-Match events are often where every local club gets the bulk of its profit from, and this cannot happen without everyone that works behind the scenes to plan and organise these functions. This clearly requires constant communication amongst everybody that plays a part in planning these events. It takes a team of many to successfully run an event and if any 1 person thinks they can do it all on their own, tell em they’re dreamin! Part of having so many people all with different roles is that every individual needs to know where everyone else is at, and that necessitates frequent communication.

If events aren’t organised to their full potential, then people can start to get disinterested in attending functions in the future, making it vital that the committee go into every event with the goal of making it bigger and better than the last. This can be simply completed by assigning every planning member their roles early on so they all have time to complete everything and go above and beyond in generating a positive event and atmosphere for the club and community.

Communicating in the right way

While communication is key to any club being successful, the communication still needs to be handled correctly. There are many ways to ensure ongoing communication amongst players and members, whether it be through a simple messaging app like messenger, or a Club Management App which allows everything to be on the 1 platform for all people in the club group to see, such as scheduled events, trainings and games, a chat room for any questions or queries, photo galleries, among many other essentials to help your club run smoothly.

These apps allow teammates, along with the coaches to message each other with anything that may involve the team such as training times, scheduling team meetings, which provides that unification that every team needs, and allows coaches and players to build relationships outside of training and match hours. It also ensures that anyone involved in the club group responds to events that are happening, which lets the planners know exact numbers and how much to cater for. While these things can be done on other platforms such as social media, using a Club Management app is highly recommended as it means that every essential required for a club to run is on the 1 app.

Having a Club Management app also means that the clubs social media pages can be left to Marketing and Advertising posts mainly, and other posts that are beneficial for all members of the club and community. Having everything congested onto 1 page can do more harm than good for a Club that Markets itself, and is trying to attract new members via Social Media.

Problem Solving

Problems occur at every club, and if they aren’t dealt with properly, they can be a potential detriment to whether or not your club succeeds. Problems need to be reported through to the committee, so they can deal with it as they see fit, but communication always needs to be rigorous so the problem can be dealt with in a manner that pleases all parties. Leaving one individual or group unhappy with how somethings been dealt with can lead to major repercussions.

The Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries from the Government of Western Australia provides a guide for clubs in terms of problem solving, with the 3 methods discussed in the article being Brainstorming, Discussion groups, and Working groups (Problem solving – A guide for clubs, 2022), all of which require thorough communication in order to prove successful. It also discusses the roles of the leader (in most clubs this is the president), along with each individual participant that may play a part in solving whatever problem occurs.

A club that knows how to solve its problems maturely is a happy club, and that takes constant communication between all parties at any given time as stated previously.

Ideas and Execution

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Having ideas and sharing them is one thing, but it is another thing to put them into action and this cannot be done by just 1 or 2 people, it takes an entire club working and communicating together for any improvements and new resources to be made that will help out all members in the long run.

For any idea to potentially be put into action it needs to first be brought to the committee, and they can take it to a vote as to whether or not the idea goes forward. This ensures that communication must always be thorough between all club members and people that hold positions on the committee. Your idea may be denied by the committee, and that leaves you with 2 choices: Either accept it and move on, or keep communicating with them and try to convince them to get your idea accepted if you believe it is beneficial enough. If the club decides to accept your idea and execute it going forward, communication must stay intact between everybody as anything can happen in the time span between a suggestion being accepted, and the execution being established. Once communication stops, everything stops.

These are five reasons as to why constant communication is the key to any successful sporting club, and we hope you use these methods going into your next season and beyond in order to help you and your club achieve the highest possible success for years to come!