Everyone has traits that create a positive atmosphere and every person has corrosive traits that bring morale down.

The key to building a strong cricket team is understanding everyone and their multiple traits that contribute to the environment and atmosphere.

Just because someone has some corrosive traits doesn’t make them bad team people, because they will have traits that other don’t. What you have to do as a coach is manage them to make sure that these traits are not at the forefront of the person they are within the team.

For example, there maybe the older experienced player who does not always agree with the young captain. The young captain may not be the best man manager at times.

What cannot be accepted is that older player moaning and visibly throwing tantrums on the field. Your role as a coach involves speaking to that player, helping him understand how they can be helpful, how if they are upbeat and behind the captain the whole team will be. This way a mutual respect is built and there is no uneasy feeling with words behind one another's back.

Similarly, there is the young player who is incredibly talented but rubs people up the wrong way. The team needs to be built around them for the next decade

Rather than sideline them, give them responsibility, help them understand to get others to do things you need to treat them well. This doesn’t have to be cricket related; organising a team building day and giving the young players the chance to lead a team in raft building tasks will make the player realise the way they act is paramount to the performance of the team.

Preventing cliques

If you let a clique form it will run the dressing room.

You cannot force people to like one another, but within a team you can guide them towards learning what other peoples qualities are. From personal experience, focus groups have worked wonders. The coaching group have identified players who don't always mix with one another and created groups of three or four and got them together for an open discussion. The discussion has nothing to do with cricket, but about life situations in general. The coaches sit back and let the players dominate conversation, and just chip in when conversation gets thin.

By getting the players talking about everyday life you are allowing them to understand one another, allowing them to see a different side of each other that normally they would not see. This is creating a friendship and an understanding that would never have been created should they not have been put together in a small group. The key however is not to tell them this is the purpose, not to tell them who is in the group, just tell each individual a time and a place to meet.

The other thing that coaches can do is use examples of successful teams within sport. There are always that group of older players expecting the junior players to join because they are the newbies. It creates a "them and us" mentality.

To break a situation like this up use the All Blacks as your example. Every player helps unload the bus, every player helps clean the changing rooms and every player helps collect equipment. Explain how there is no exception. Explain that if it is good enough for the best in the world it is good enough for your team.

Understand that everyone can be managed. Your role as a coach is to guide the team to success by allowing everyone's helpful qualities to be at the forefront of creating success, because that is how positive environments are created.

Jordan Finney is a cricket coach and sport psychology degree student.