What if your team’s greatest untapped strength wasn’t talent, but trust?

Rikard Grönborg has coached at nearly every level of the game, from international powerhouses to professional clubs, and he’s learned that success in a high-performance environment doesn’t start with systems or structure. It starts with communication.

Grönborg opened his session by highlighting something simple but powerful: Be curious. As a coach and leader, he’s spent years reading, researching, and exploring how people communicate—and how communication creates culture. “Culture starts with how organizations communicate internally,” he said. “If your players don’t understand your process, then it’s not really a process.”

He laid out a framework for understanding how teams evolve over a season: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Coaches often know where their team is in that cycle, but it’s just as important to help players understand it too.

“Leadership comes at a price. You can’t just talk about commitment—you have to give your time and energy.”

For Grönborg, communication is about more than talking—it’s about trust, ownership, and selflessness. He described several foundational tools coaches need to lead effectively:

• Clear, direct communication

• Trust built through consistent actions

• Decoding your “gut” decisions and explaining them

• Giving players ownership by understanding their unique roles

Drawing on Simon Sinek’s work, Grönborg emphasized that leadership means understanding individual skillsets and how each one benefits the group. “High-trust, low-performing players are more valuable than low-trust, high-performing players,” he said. In other words: Culture beats talent when trust is on the line.

Different Groups, Different Messages

Grönborg also broke down how coaches can tailor their communication depending on group size.

In Team Settings:

• Limit meetings to 15 minutes max—especially on game days.

• Keep presentations clear and focused.

• Spread out meetings throughout the day to help players retain key information.

• After games, he often sits down with players at eye level, encouraging open discussion and connection.

In Small Groups:

• Add more detail, more tactics, more specificity.

• These are ideal for discussing positional concepts or scouting.

In 1-on-1 Meetings:

• Anything goes. These can be structured in an office, informal chats on the bench, or even while doing shoulder-to-shoulder laps at practice.

• Grönborg sees these as “coaches’ meetings,” where real development and trust can be built.

“Stick up for your players. It matters.”

Coaching Takeaways

• Communication is the foundation of trust, and trust is the foundation of team success.

• Short, clear, and consistent messaging helps players retain and apply information.

• Build ownership into your culture—let players participate in shaping the team.

• Know when to talk to the whole team, a small group, or one-on-one.

• Leadership isn’t loud. It’s relational, thoughtful, and generous.

Coaching Challenge

This week, assess how much of your communication is one-way vs. two-way.
Try holding one meeting at eye level with your team, shoulder-to-shoulder with a player, or in a way that gives ownership back to your group. Are you building trust—or just talking?

Noteworthy timestamps:

• 0:25 Academic background
• 2:50 What is “the Process?”
• 6:00 Consistent process tools
• 9:00 Leadership thoughts
• 10:05 Trust vs performance/structure
• 13:10 Retaining info
• 14:15 Communication - Team
• 19:20 Communication - Smaller groups/individual
• 25:40 Shoulder to shoulder 
• 28:45 Special assignments
• 37:40 Conclusion