The Mental Side of Building Culture: A Collaboration Between A Sports Performance Coach and A Mental Game Coach
The Mental Side of Building Culture: A Collaboration Between A Sports Performance Coach and A Mental Game Coach
By Jon Williams MS ATC CSCS CES and Riley Fitzgerald, Ed.M
*Normal Font Jon's comments *Bold Font Riley's Comments
In the athletic world we often hear a lot about team culture. When a team is successful they are thought to have great culture, when a team fails the assumption is made that something was missing from their culture. The strength and conditioning and sports performance setting is often where the foundation of culture begins. There are countless books that relate to team building that explain the importance strong values, and building an environment of success. Recently I have found myself diverging into books such as Conscious Coaching, The Power of Habit, The Energy Bus, Legacy, and Leaders Eat Last to name a few. All of these books are filled with culture building tactics from successful authors and businessmen. However, taking these ideas and applying them to the strength and conditioning setting was not quite as simple as I thought it would be. In a perfect world every athlete buys in, but the world is far from perfect. I began to ask myself what parts of culture are important to me? What parts of culture are important to the athletes? And most importantly how do we get every athlete to reach his or her greatest potential? This led to me seeking out help from Riley Fitzgerald, a Sport Psychology Doctoral Student at Boston University and high-performance consultant. In addition to serving as a coach-educator for USA Hockey, Riley provides mental game services for both Endicott College and Boston University student-athletes with one-on-one sessions and team workshops. Working with Riley has had a huge impact on my communication and coaching style.
We constantly hear about the values that underlie successful teams and organizations. It's no secret as to why we're compelled to learn about the cultural climate of high performing groups. The intuitive link between optimal culture and sustainable, consistent play is backed by the numerous anecdotal examples that we come across daily as well as a plethora of empirical studies within pertinent domains such as sport psychology and organizational psychology. The biggest questions raised by coaches and administrators, in my experience, rarely center on the value of culture development itself, but rather on what culture actually means and how to develop an organizational identity that actively promotes athletic development and excellence.
As a strength and conditioning coach I have always known that culture is important. I believed that there was a way to define the culture you wanted by outlining what the athletes should do that fall into the norms and behaviors you want. Essentially, laying out expectations and expecting results. Some examples are: show up on time, be positive, pay attention to details, give 100% effort. I felt if we could constantly remind our team to do these over and over again they would become habits, and the habits would lead to sustainable culture year to year. As it turned out, this only worked to an extent. There were some years the team bought in 100%, others where only some bought in and others didn't see the point. The first easy answer would be to discipline those who do not align with the rest of the team. However, I felt there must be a better way to get the message across. After having discussions with Riley Fitzgerald I began to understand that aside from giving the athletes expectations, I needed to put value behind the message and allow the athletes to understand why these things are important in promoting team success.
Not to sound overly cliche, but culture is truly dynamic. Effective organizations utilize a collaborative approach in developing guiding standards and expectations as well as accompanying strategies for maximizing accountability. As coaches, it's important to identify and differentiate rigid “hard-line” rules and beliefs versus those that are more flexible. Protocols for safety, for instance, often benefit from a more traditional top-down approach in order to minimize unnecessary hazards and injuries. With that said, acting as the sole creator and decision-maker for how a team operates within the weight room can be problematic. Values that originate from and are entirely operationalized by those in authority positions risk the creation of a divide between organizational culture and athlete motivation. While there are certainly instances where coaches need to be the drivers of rules and expectations, the more global goal should be embracing the role of facilitator.
Creating an environment that is inclusive of our athletes' experiences, beliefs, values, and motivations ultimately promotes higher levels of performance and more sustainable effort. Engaging in ongoing dialogue surrounding the goals that each athlete and team has, how they perceive the value of strength and conditioning to their play on the ice, and the core values that they believe to be important in succeeding in the weight room allows us to better understand both the overlap and gaps that exist between ourselves and our players. The most effective team cultures are the result of a deliberate alignment of organizational values with those of the athletes themselves.
There are certainly some hard-line rules and guidelines that require a more top-down approach, as mentioned previously. Protocols for maximizing safety aren't always flexible, nor should they be. With that said, we should avoid being prescriptive and rigid with our rules and expectations whenever possible. Practice plans for team lifts are well-thought out and highly deliberate to fit a group's specific needs. But coaches should be cognizant of a few things. For one, just because we understand why something is important doesn't mean that our athletes inherently do.
I think an important question is, who is in charge of building the culture? Is it the coaching staff, the strength and conditioning staff, the upperclassmen, or everyone? The answer might vary from place to place but at Endicott I try and allow the team to dictate what they want the culture to be. This starts by passing out a survey and asking the team what their offseason and in season goals are. The responses range from sign a pro contract and win a championship, to feel less tired in the 3rd period of a game, and to simply be a more close-knit team. After hearing the responses I decided to begin the workout sessions with discussion on how the team could accomplish their goals. Instead of saying give 100% effort, I said if your goal is to win a championship and sign a pro contract and you don't give 100% effort you're just selling yourself short. I also began explaining the “why” behind our programming. I explained why we are doing the exercise selection of that day and how it can help the team reach the goals they stated in their responses. That seemed to put meaning behind what I was saying and buy-in began to occur. The focus was now on the process and not the outcome. The important part to this is the team came up with what they felt was important, and I was there to help guide them to where they wanted to go. An example of this was in our 300-meter shuttles which we did on the ice this year. For those who are unaware doing a 300 meter shuttle test at 100% effort makes for a particularly grueling bout of exercise. I explained to the team that research shows speed can drop up to 10% from the 1st period to the 3rd period, and that this test will help us evaluate each players anaerobic power to allow me to create plans going forward to give us an edge in the 3rd period. I told them the best way to do the test is to skate as hard as you can from the start. Every player completed two trials of the test. They all appeared to be giving 100% effort and no one complained. The test went great and I was happy with the results. For me, it was the first time a conditioning test went so smoothly.
Creating intentional time and space to walk your athletes through the connections between the expectations in place and the exercises that we have them do with the tangible on-ice outcomes that guide our approach is essential. This involves sharing our insights and perspectives, but also listening to and incorporating athlete goals and performance expectations, as well. "Those exercises that you all roll your eyes at when you see them on the whiteboard? We're doing those because they benefit your ability to keep playing at a high tempo in the third period, which you mentioned yourself was a struggle last season. I know that this isn't the most fun or enjoyable lift that we do, and that it's a challenging one. But the more we put in now, the more explosive our legs are going to be in the third period of that 1-1 game where one play can make all of the difference.” Acknowledge when our athletes are struggling. Empathize with the challenges and barriers that might be getting in the way. Connect with the value of putting in the work.
An important first step that we can take as coaches involves a critical look at the values and expectations that are currently in place. Which components are hard-lines and inflexible, whether stemming from an organizational level or our role and expertise? Which are essential, but can be appropriately shaped or influenced by our athletes? And finally, what are some areas where our athletes can take the wheel and either create, modify, or implement autonomously? It can be extremely valuable to identify the purposes of the values and expectations that we implement, especially if we can separate objective reasoning from subjective. Rigid rules rooted in our own personal beliefs and anecdotal experiences can be counterproductive, especially if these expectations do not align with the values and experiences of our athletes. To illustrate the difference between objective and subjective rules, Jon and I have explored the “no hats in the gym” rule on a number of occasions.
The “not hats in the gym” rule is common in the strength and conditioning setting for various reasons. I have always got a lot of push back on it so I decided to discuss with Riley and get his viewpoint. After the discussion we decided we would do a trial and see if not bringing it up would change anything. Interestingly enough it did. After a few weeks most players were no longer wearing hats and it had nothing to do with anything I said to them. It turned out that the “hat” wasn't really that important after all. What was important was that they felt like it was their choice. On the contrary, I do have an example where the athletes do not have a choice and that is cleaning the weight room at the end of each session. We ask that all of our teams clean their spaces and put our dumbbells and plates away with the logos up. The reason behind this is to take pride in the space we have and to keep it looking nice. I have never gotten push back from any athlete on this. Why? Well consider if you are the athlete what your response would be to these two remarks: (1). “Thanks for not wearing your hat, I appreciate that you follow the rules” vs (2). “Thank you for putting the weights back with the logos up, they look great. I can tell you take pride in your work and that's going to take you far in life.” I would argue that the second would lead to much greater positive reinforcement.
An essential component of sustainable motivation is a perceived sense of autonomy. When athlete's don't feel like they have control and direct influence over their development or believe that their time in the weight room doesn't align with their goals or needs, they simply stop caring. Effort and engagement drop dramatically as the value of the time they spend with us becomes less evident to the athlete. Subsequently, competing demands within the athletic environment (as well as outside of) can become viewed as more important and worthwhile of the time and effort that an athlete invests.
Every team that we work with will bring unique personalities, goals, strengths, needs, and experiences with them when they step into the gym. As a result, it's imperative to avoid a copy-and-paste approach where the underlying assumption is that what worked to motivate and engage one group will inherently work for another. This mindset hinders our ability to accurately assess what's underlying both the successes and struggles of the team and/or individual athlete in front of us. Just like we expect our athletes to adapt and embrace new behaviors, coaches should also take time to habitually reflect on what changes in approach may be necessary to best support a given team.
Creating a personal framework for our coaching that builds on our past successes with other teams and athletes while simultaneously remaining flexible and open to incorporating novel ideas is undoubtedly challenging. Whether they are organization-wide or specific to the gym, it's important to consider how we communicate with our athletes about the values and expectations that guide our work. Though it sounds simple, creating intentional spaces for two-way dialogue where athletes are an active part of the conversation can make a world of difference. Doing so helps get everyone on the same page surrounding what each expectation/value actually looks like in action and our reasoning for why standards are in place. Further, we can elicit athlete insight and feedback which allows us to either make necessary adjustments or have deliberate conversations for why a suggested idea isn't doable. We can't accommodate all athlete ideas and input. But we can work to ensure that our athletes feel heard and are an active, invaluable player in the culture-building process. The goal is for our athletes to take responsibility for their effort and commitment in the gym. Recognize when it's time to move into the passenger's seat and let them take the wheel.
At Endicott all students take part in internships as part of the college's education model. In some respects being an athlete means that you are essentially balancing a full-time job with college athletics. As staff members want to see them excel at both. In today's day and age people like to use the term “grinding” The phrase “back to the grind” is something I hear a lot. But the question becomes if you are constantly “grinding” at what point does that become a detriment to your performance? I am not talking about mental toughness though. In fact, mental toughness is not a phrase we use at all. I am simply talking about learning to frame thoughts in a way that allows the athlete to put the last shift behind them and perform their best on the next shift. There is where I believe working with Riley comes into play. It is often times believed that performance sits between work ethic and ability. However, from my experiences and from hearing Riley's perspective, I would argue that it really sits in the middle of work ethic, ability and mentality.
