Want to Build a Better Team Culture? Sharpen Your Mental Game.
- Julie Jones
- Jun 2
- 4 min read
Game Changers: Athlete Edition Podcast iHeartRadio ApplePodcasts Youtube Podbean Spotify
On a recent episode of Game Changers: Athlete Edition, we had the privilege of talking with JP Nerbun, author of The Culture System, about a topic that lives at the heart of every great team: culture.
Like everything else, I looked at our conversation through a mental performance lens. Our discussion this week focused on how athletes can contribute to culture. JP said that although we don’t control the whole culture, we can always contribute to it. As Elise Gould from the Salt River Project says “Culture isn’t what you put on the wall. It’s what happens in the hall.”
It’s also what happens before the “in the hall” behaviors! Thoughts - Emotions - Behaviors!
So often we don’t connect the mental side of the game to culture…but those mental tools we learn aren’t just for us as individuals, they’re tools that shape our team’s culture, too!
We often talk about focus, composure, resilience, and self-talk as performance enhancers. AND THEY ARE!!But they’re also culture enhancers.
Why? Because how we handle pressure, failure, conflict and success doesn’t just impact us—it influences everyone around us.
Culture and mental performance are two sides of the same coin!
Let’s break it down.
For starters, emotional regulation = psychological safety!
Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety shows that teams perform best when members feel safe to take risks, speak up, and be themselves.
But how do we create that environment? It starts with individuals who can manage their own emotions, who don’t explode under stress, lash out after mistakes or disappear when pressure mounts!
Our mental tools like deep breathing, physiological sighs, rapid relaxation techniques and self-talk reframing help us regulate emotions in real-time. That makes the environment more stable, more supportive and more productive for everyone.
It’s all about Power Move #3: If you’re not managing your state, you’re unintentionally shaping the
team’s state.
Next, resilience is a relationship builder!
Think about what happens after a tough loss or a missed play. Do we hang your heads? Blame others? Isolate?
Or do we bounce back, own our moment and encourage the next person? I just watched Oregon’s pitcher take full accountability after a huge home run against Oklahoma yesterday. She hung a pitch. Oklahoma sent it deep…and the pitcher told her teammates “That’s on me” and moved on!
This is where mental performance shows up as cultural leadership. Teams thrive when people can own their stuff and support others doing the same. JP reminded us in our episode that vulnerability fuels connection, and that starts with being open about mistakes and moving forward together.
Tools like reset routines, visualization for recovery and a fact-checking perspective help athletes process failure and support teammates in doing the same.
The next one: we know words are tools…and self-talk affects our communication culture!
What we say to ourselves becomes how we talk to our team.
Coyle calls it “belonging cues”—the way we signal unity or disconnection. A sarcastic comment or negative body language after a teammate’s mistake does more than express frustration. It subtly erodes trust.
By using mental tools to manage our internal dialogue, we learn to speak life into others. As JP says, what we celebrate gets repeated and how we talk to everyone in the program, whether it be the starting pitcher or team manager matters.
But what matters most, is how we talk to ourselves. We should never talk to ourselves in a way we wouldn’t talk to our friends. Because if we talked to our friends the way we talk to ourselves, we wouldn’t have any 😊!
When we use our words—internally and externally—to celebrate growth, effort, and resilience, our culture flourishes!
Next, pressure management allows for a performance culture!
Teams with poor pressure management implode under adversity. Teams with strong pressure tools stay connected, composed and competitive.
And that starts with individual reps, breathing through stress, visualizing the moment, narrowing attention and learning how to shift states quickly.
The better we are at staying composed under pressure, the better our culture is under pressure. And as we’ve said before: how you practice under pressure becomes how you perform under pressure.
Finally, do we spend time complaining or contributing? This is the cultural crossroad!
JP was clear in our conversation: complaining isn’t just unhelpful, it’s corrosive.
From a mental performance perspective, it's a cue that someone is struggling with emotion regulation, perspective-taking or ownership. Unproductive complaining is often an attempt to release frustration, but it does so at the expense of team energy and trust.
We teach athletes to recognize → release → refocus as a refocus strategy. Why not use it for team communication too?
Here’s a cultural filter: If it doesn’t help you reset, reframe, or refocus the team, it’s not helping.
Culture isn’t what’s written in the team manual. It’s what’s repeated under pressure.
And if you want a stronger culture, it starts by strengthening the minds of the people in it.
When we can breathe through stress, refocus after mistakes, speak to ourselves like we would a teammate or trusted colleague and show up with presence and perspective…we don’t just perform better. We make everyone better.
So, if we're trying to build culture, we don't need to start with slogans. We should start with skill sets. Because when we give those we lead the mental tools they need to manage the moment, we're also giving them the tools to lead the culture.
As JP likes to say, culture doesn’t change from the top down. It changes from the middle out.
And I’ll add, that it changes from the inside out, starting with our mindset.
Manage the moments!
Julie
P.S. Thinking about next year? Let’s work together. Shoot me an email or text – juliej@ssbperformance.com or 234-206-0946 We can build a program that fits your team!
Julie Jones
Mental Performance Coach
SSB Performance
juliej@ssbperformance.com • 234-206-0946
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