How long does it take to build a great culture in your gym? 

I think we first need to define the goal. A great gym culture probably looks a bit like this: 

  1. Parents who never complain. 
  2. Staff who never complains.
  3. Athletes who never complain.

Right? 

Wrong. Here’s what it looks like to me: 

  1. Parents who know you have an open-door policy and are always interested in answering their questions or addressing their concerns no matter how trivial they may seem.
  2. Staff who have all the resources they need to be successful in their job (training, equipment, time, etc.) and look forward to working most days.
  3. Athletes who call the gym their second home. They look to coaches for advice when things get hard at home or school, and they spend a lot of time bonding with teammates outside of the gym. They work hard and while they may not love it when you say, “Full out”, they understand it’s part of the plan to achieve their goals.

If you’ve got the stuff I listed above, help me gather some data for other gym owners, would you? How did you get there, and how long did it take? 

If you WANT to have the culture like I listed above, I’ll tell you this. It took a long time. I wish I knew on the day we opened our doors how important it was to focus on parents. I wish I realized that hiring slowly and focusing on the “why” would make such a huge difference with staff. I wish we had done more goal-setting with our athletes in the early years rather than letting the placement at a competition dictate our goals.

Once I started REALLY focusing on culture, it took about 4 years to really turn things around from a poor culture to an amazing culture. That meant not every coach or parent fit the bill. Some had to learn how to adapt to the culture shift, and others refused and had to find a new gym that better suited them. If you’re frustrated at times with a negative culture in your gym, don’t be afraid of the work and time ahead of you. 

We saw a dramatic difference in the first year by setting our gym’s core values and starting to teach athletes, parents and staff how they apply to each of them. We also started offering more opportunities for staff and parent feedback (I HATE surveys and find them more frustrating than anything, so we used focus groups to get more quality feedback). We did not just offer the opportunity, but we actively recruited kids from our rec program whose parents were amazing team players.

To date, this is the best, most exciting culture we’ve had in our gym. In fact, I put out about two hours ago that we’re going to do a parent exhibition team. (I haven’t done this in 9 years because I didn’t have enough positive, excited parents to do it for a few years there.) I posted it to Band 2 hours ago and have 14 parents signed up already! They are SO EXCITED. That’s not something I would ever be willing to do if we still had that negative culture in our gym.

So, let me ask you a few questions today so you can reflect: 

  1. What is my current attitude about the gym? Am I excited to spend time with my athletes? What about my staff? Gym parents? 
  2. Is there a clear process for parents to provide feedback and ask questions? Do you welcome feedback and make changes in your program if they have helpful feedback?
  3. Would you say your staff is truly excited to come to work most days? I’m sure they love the kids, but are they on-board with vacuuming and taking out the trash too?

I’d love to hear your answers on this. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the #1 way I get our parent feedback each season and what I do with that feedback to ensure parents feel heard.