As a result, something special is needed. Players need a mindset that can withstand the pressure and can manage the uniqueness of the grand final lead-up and atmosphere without getting carried away or overawed by the enormity of the occasion. A ‘big moment’ mindset is not exclusive to grand finals as it’s also required in high pressure, high stakes situations such as tournaments, qualifying rounds, big presentations and Olympic or Paralympic Games.

Here are the key attributes of a ‘big moment’ mindset:

Emotional control. No matter what is happening or how they are feeling, big moment performers are able to keep their mind and body relaxed under pressure during preparation and the performance. Staying calm helps them to engage the rational and logical part of the brain instead of letting the stress-response take over, which can lead to poor decision-making or choking.

Keep it simple. There are often a lot of external distractions prior to ‘big moment’ events, making it easy to feel overwhelmed. The performers who are most successful in these situations limit their focus to 2 or 3 simple processes to implement instead of overthinking the situation and trying to do everything at once. Their mental preparation for a big moment is consistent with their usual preparation and they keep their focus on the present and play moment by moment without getting too far ahead of themselves.

Good decision-making. Staying calm under pressure and reducing mental noise by keeping things simple help to make this attribute possible. Good decision-making includes choosing to move on after mistakes and sticking to the game plan.

Do what works. Big moment performers remember what makes them great and what strengths have led to this big moment opportunity. They keep doing what works for them and playing their game, instead of completely changing their plan for the big moment or trying to be like other performers. Sometimes the game plan doesn’t work so they have to adapt.

Trust. Big moment performers trust themselves, their coach, their teammates, and their ability to do what works for them under pressure. They also trust their ability to bounce back from mistakes so don’t panic when things go wrong.

Let us know your review of the players’ big moment performance once the final whistle is blown!

The post The ‘Big Moment’ Mindset appeared first on Mental Notes.

This is not a new piece of advice nor is it particularly sexy, but it has merit when it comes to getting your brain ready to perform when it counts.

However, training your brain is something to avoid getting blazé about given the increasing body of knowledge about our brain’s neuroplasticity.

Whilst there are numerous psychological skills and strategies that we teach and loads of variety in the application of these skills, the basics still stick.

Basics in any field are worth remembering, and more importantly, fostering.  The basics apply for athletes of all levels, particularly if you are an athlete embarking on a career in elite sport.

Before getting into the basics there is a required mindset to your psychology which means that you ‘must’…

• Treat your performance psychology as a trainable skill.
• Take personal responsibility for working on your mental approach and the psychological skills to make you your best…in the same way you do for every other skill required to be a world class athlete.
• Take charge of your psychological skills and the training of these skills.
• View training as the most important part of becoming capable of being able to compete when it counts.

Given you’re on-board with the above mindset, do you…?

• Set personal goals.  Set your intentions and the behaviours required in training and competition to achieve with a strong focus on how to win.
• Train to win.  Train under pressure with intent and engagement.
• Know your competitive mindset.  Know how you need to think/feel/behave to compete at your best.
• Know how you react under pressure/stress and have self-regulation strategies to compete when it counts.
• Train your competitive mindset in every training session.  Become efficient at getting yourself ‘ready’ to compete.
• Incorporate pre-competition routine into your training schedule.
• Set goals for each training session.  Be proactive and find out from the coaches they’re not clear before the session starts.
• Review each training session to ensure optimal learning and progress.
• Include simulations of competition day into your training schedule.
• Set time aside in your schedule each week for the psychological skills such as breathing, meditation, or mental rehearsal, if these are skills that you find helpful for performance.
• Respect each of your teammates’ strategies.  Trust that they will do what they need to for their own and the team’s performance.
• Engage in effective communication practices between fellow athletes and coaches.

I’ve used versions of the above basic skill set as a ‘checklist’ of sorts outlining a set of standard behaviours that are important to achieve when training your brain for competing when it counts.

The behaviours in the ‘checklist’ are within your control.  Irrespective of everything and everyone else in your training and competitive environment, these are behaviours you can do all of the time by choosing to be disciplined and committed to the pursuit of being professional about your sport.

Just like the basics for hydration is drinking water, for nutrition is eating real food, for exercise is movement, and for sleep is 7-9 hours per night, there are basics for performance psychology that we cannot deny help athletes to perform when it counts.

The basics can be considered as knowing the things that work and putting them in place for your psychological preparation and performance.

Do you know your basics?

Andrea Furst PhD | Sport & Exercise Psychologist CPsychol HCPC Registered
Get in contact with Andrea – andrea@mentalnotesconsulting.com.  Andrea is based in London and provides both face-to-face and virtual sport psychology services to athletes worldwide.

The post Train Your Brain Like You Train Your Body appeared first on Mental Notes.

The development of leadership skills is one area that is often neglected until crisis is reached.  Everyone has the opportunity to be a leader, in sport, at work, at home, in their field of business…

The key to intentionally being a successful leader is self-awareness, recognising your preferred style and being able to adapt to changing environments and situations.

Daniel Goleman describes six types of leadership styles that are often seen in sport and business contexts.

The coercive style demands immediate obedience and comes naturally to those who are driven to achieve, take initiative and have self-control. This style is best used in crisis situations because it instils confidence and can shock people into action.  However, it inspires a passive response from followers and may lessen their motivation.

The authoritative style is characterised by a clear vision that comes from the leader who then inspires his or her followers to catch the vision and come along on the journey to fulfilling the vision.  Leaders strong in this style tend to be self-confident and good at communicating empathy.  It is best used in cases where clear direction is needed, for example, with inexperienced followers, however, more experienced people may feel restricted under this leadership style.

The affiliative leadership style puts people first and leaders strong in this style value relationships, empathy and clear communication.  This style can be used to bring teams together, particularly after a period of conflict, however, it tends to focus on strengths and ignore weaknesses and poor behaviour, leading to possible anarchy.

The democratic style encourages collaboration between all members of the team and increases motivation as all have a chance to buy into the group’s ideas.  The weakness of this style is that it lacks firm leadership and may be ineffective if there is a lack of expertise in the group.  Leaders who are driven to achieve and like to work hard and fast tend to use a pacesetting style and can get fast results from their team.  However, their leadership style may be resented as they have a tendency to take over and micromanage their teams.

Finally, the coaching style focuses on developing the team’s skills for the future, and is the natural tendency of leaders who value developing others, empathy and are self-aware.  This style is effective in supporting long-term development but is not effective when team members are resistant to change.

If all six styles have strengths and weaknesses, which style is best?  The answer may surprise you.  In the short-term, all styles are effective.  Long-term, the pace-setting and coercive styles produce negative outcomes, whilst the others produce positive outcomes.  While no one style is correct, self-awareness and self-development is key.  Effective leaders learn how to use different styles in different situations based on what is needed from their team, not what comes naturally.  The wider the variety of styles a leader is able to utilise, the more able he or she is to motivate those they work with and alongside.

The final skill good leaders need to be effective, both on and off the sporting field, is effective recovery.  When athletes do strength training to get bigger and stronger, their training causes small tears in their muscles.  During recovery after training, the body works hard to repair these tears, causing creation of new muscle fibres to compensate for the damage.  Therefore, most growth happens during the recovery phase.  Similarly, recovery is necessary for effective personal growth and development.  Recovery involves taking time off to get away from the office or work environment and switching off work-related thoughts (and switching off all devices!) and doing something enjoyable such as exercise, socialising or a hobby, to give your brain something different to think about.

Be intentional, be aware, be successful!

Book an appointment to build your leadership skills at Queensland Sports Medicine Centre or Allsports Physiotherapy & Sports Medicine.

The post Leading from the Front: Leadership tips from the sporting field appeared first on Mental Notes.

How do you train your brain?
Think of your brain like a muscle.  Neurons are like the muscle fibres of the brain and create pathways that contribute to thinking patterns and behaviours.  Pathways are developed over time through practice and experience.

Muscles need repetitive strain to build strength and power.  In the same way, repetition and practice is required to create new neural pathways.  Established neural pathways are like highways that are easy to travel on.  These behaviours and thinking patterns seem to come naturally as they are well trained and the path is easy to travel along.  Creating new thinking patterns and new behaviours are more challenging; like forming a new path in the bush.  Increasing traffic flow down that pathway through practice of desired behaviours leads to a clear path that eventually becomes a highway.  Deliberate practice of behaviour and thinking patterns such as optimistic or resilient thought patterns changes your brain!

Different focuses of physical training lead to different results in your body.  If you want to build muscle size rather than power, you will have a different training regime.  Bodybuilders have different goals and body requirements to marathon runners and therefore their training looks different.  In the same way, brain training needs to be targeted and goal-oriented.

To gain maximum results from training you need to have good technique.  There is nothing to be gained by changing a behaviour or thinking pattern without knowing what you want to change it to.  Have a clear plan of what you want, rather than what you don’t want, and how to get it.

Muscles need consistent training for lasting results.  So does your brain!  Practice, practice, practice!  Sport psychology sessions lay a great platform for change but lasting change only happens when people keep training their brains outside of sessions on a regular basis.

Physical growth happens when you lift heavy weights (in safe conditions).  Every difficult situation that you face, every failure, every challenge is an opportunity to grow stronger and develop resilience.  When athletes want to build muscle, they often go through a phase of ‘training to failure’, which means lifting a weight that pushes them just over the limit of their strength.  In that moment, tiny tears occur in the muscle fibres that cause them to get help to build more muscle to cope with a heavier load than it could before.  Similarly, adverse situations create an opportunity to build resources and strength and experience to increase your capacity to cope.  You do not have to seek difficult situations, however, this analogy can help you to bring an optimistic outlook to challenging circumstances and failures.

Is it time to train your brain?

Book an appointment to train your brain with our sport psychologists in Brisbane at Queensland Sports Medicine Centre or on the Gold Coast at Allsports Physiotherapy & Sports Medicine.

The post Train Your Brain appeared first on Mental Notes.

Whilst there is definitely not a ‘one size fits all approach’ it’s worth debating the use and relevance of psychological measures for sport performance.  There are a variety of measures that you can use.  If you’re a coach or high performance director in a sporting organisation, here are five categories that you may consider asking your sport psychologist to use with your athletes.

Personality measures such as Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Insights, or Lumina Spark are the personality measures that most often get used in teams.  These provide an indication of people’s general personality tendencies, which can be helpful to accelerate the learning about people working together for optimum team dynamics and results.

Positive psychology measures such as Realise2, Virtues in Action Survey of Character Strengths, Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire, BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory, and Grit Survey are measures typically used for individual awareness and skill training.  These provide a snap shot of psychological skills and characteristics that focus on the promotion of strengths and the development of psychological skills to maximise personal growth and performance.

Mental health and well-being measures such as Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), Satisfaction With Life Scale, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale are measures used to assess mental health and well-being indicators.  These can be used as screening tools at the beginning of the season and potentially throughout the year if relevant for some athletes.

Performance skills measures that either measure levels of skills such as Sport Confidence Inventory and Athlete Coping Skills Inventory or usage of psychological skills in sport such as Test of Performance Strategies are measures used to get an understanding of current level and/or usage for psychological skills training to match the mental demands of their specific sport’s requirements.  These are a great way to introduce psychological skills training into sports performance.

All of the above-mentioned measures are self-report questionnaires with the aim of quantifying aspects of an athlete’s psychological traits and states, so of course they involve people assessing and rating their perception of themselves.  However, questionnaires are not the only way to evaluate psychological skills…

Observable behaviours can also play a valuable role in developing a common language and monitoring of psychological skills in individuals and teams.  One of the most difficult things in creating consistent standards of elite performance, particularly when it comes to psychology, is measuring… However in the case of behaviours that we want to see around here, it simply means we need to articulate the types of behaviours through a qualification process (as opposed to typical quantification processes).  Qualification measurement is different to quoting numbers, but it is relatively simple to define the behaviours you want to see.  For example, if we want to define whether people are bouncing back from mistakes on the football pitch, we can describe the types of actions we would see if people are doing this successfully.

Another effective skill training method we’ve used has been the integration of psychophysiological measures such as heart rate variability.  There are many options available – we’ve used HeartMath which has been relatively successful for some individual athletes who want to understand their current level of emotional management using their breath.  HeartMath enables athletes to track their progress over time with associated figures to support the behaviour change.

Questionnaires rely on perception whereas observable behaviours and psychophysiological measures are closer to ‘black and white’.

Measurement and monitoring is useful and provides guidance to progress, however it’s vital that the goal of the measurement is determined upfront.  All of these six categories of measures have their place in individual and team sport performance and can be used with great validity by professionals who understand how to administer, interpret, and utilise as a tool to assist athletes to perform to their potential.

If you’d like to talk more about the value of psychological measurement to assist your sport performance get in contact with one of the team.

Andrea Furst PhD | Sport & Exercise Psychologist CPsychol HCPC Registered
Get in contact with Andrea – andrea@mentalnotesconsulting.com.   Andrea is based in London and provides both face-to-face and virtual sport psychology services to high performing teams worldwide.

The post To Measure or Not to Measure: Using psychological assessment in sport appeared first on Mental Notes.

Many of the attendees and content presenters were members of the ‘team behind the team’ across elite sporting clubs and organisations from around the world.  One of the themes was how leaders get their teams to work together to create successful performance.  It was not only a consistent theme, but also one with consistent messages that were shared by the professionals leading high performing teams.

There were professionals from a variety of performance domains – sport, hospitality, military, aviation, and performing arts.  Despite the obvious differences between these industries there was an overwhelming common approach to creating high performing teams.  Values and the associated behaviours were the starting point in the pursuit of excellence for all types of team performance.

Simply put, teams need to decide on the values that are important to them in delivering performance, and then decide on the specific behaviours that will bring these values to life.  This means that the behaviours are described so that all concerned are clear what these behaviours look like, such that the team knows if people are or are not displaying these behaviours.

Each of the elite leaders that shared their approach to embedding the values and behaviours highlighted that their team members needed to own and drive these behaviours.  In the sport context, the values are player-driven not coach-driven.  Players set them, live, and refer to them on a constant basis such that everyone is kept accountable to these behaviours.

Further to these points, Arsène Wenger talked about how the game must always be put above personal ego… I understood this to mean that teams must always respect the game and serve the game as the higher purpose rather than solely having personal goals that meet their own purposes.  It’s easy to see how professional athletes, particularly in a sport such as football, can be built up to a level that competes with the status of the game.  However, in each of the leaders’ addresses it quite clear that this was detrimental to team performance.

When working with teams in setting values and behaviours the articulation of the behaviours is crucial if these are going to be easy to recognise.  There is no doubt that this can be a rather pedantic and microscopic aspect of our work with athletes however it when done thoroughly at the start of a team’s season then it makes for clarity throughout the season and contributes to successful on and off pitch performance.

A question I often ask is, “What behaviours would I see you doing if I was to follow you around or video you during your week?”  This helps to get superb clarification of the real behaviours rather than concepts or words that are vague and difficult to know if they are actually happening.

Consistent behaviours breed habits and these habits form the lifeline of a team when pursuing a common goal.

Andrea Furst PhD | Sport & Exercise Psychologist CPsychol HCPC Registered
Get in contact with Andrea – andrea@mentalnotesconsulting.com – to develop your teams value-driven behaviours.   Andrea is based in London and provides both face-to-face and virtual sport psychology services to high performing teams worldwide.

The post Articulate Value-Driven Behaviours for Elite Team Performance appeared first on Mental Notes.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase, which is literally translated as “Who will guard the guards themselves?”.  It is frequently associated with the political philosophy of Plato and the problem of political corruption, however it has just has much application to the world of sport where multiple support systems are required for ultimate success.

Support is required for the people supporting the athlete.  How do we make sure this support is provided and how do we monitor the quality of the support they are receiving?  By support, I do not just mean the coaching and medical support staff, I include family, partners, friends, and colleagues.

Coaches are almost always under enormous pressure to make athletes perform.  They are constantly under media, owner, and governing body scrutiny.  In addition to the sports science and sports medicine personnel that attend to athletes’ top to toe needs, family members are often unsure of what to say and do to best support their athletic offspring.  Partners can find the role of the unconditional supportive spouse extremely straining on their relationship.  Friends often lead very ‘normal’ lives and struggle to understand the demands of life as a professional or full-time elite sports person, whilst colleagues sharing similar ambitions have their own performances to consider but can be the richest source of support.

For those who know me and have worked with me this will be no surprise, we all need to work together.

Multidisciplinary work is vital for athletic success as performers and as people, for performance and health.  Egos – of which there are no shortage of in elite sport – sometimes need to be ‘left at the door’ when working out how to win a premiership, how to make history with defending a title, or simply how to make a living in this industry that we are all so passionate about.  Whether it’s the team around an individual athlete (e.g., tennis, golf, triathlon, athletics) or the team around another team (e.g., football, hockey, rugby), each supportive role will be amplified in their support when a common goal is always front of mind.  People who provide supporting roles as sports science and sports medicine professionals are typically very intelligent specialists and so it’s normal for some (or many!) differences of opinion, however the key is that the individual or the team hears one voice from their support team.

I am a true believer that the support around an athlete is one is the biggest indicators of success… This belief means that the support around athletes and the team that the support personnel creates is vital in playing a pivotal role in the likelihood of athlete success.  True multidisciplinary work is nowhere near where it could be – it’s the case that the collective is stronger than the individual parts.  We as support teams encourage athletes to work this way but in my soon to be 15 years working with elite sport there is still too much of a single discipline approach to working with athletes.

I have the luxury of working with individuals in an environment where we really get to know what works and what doesn’t, and part of that process is encouraging communication with all that are a support to that individual.  To-date the best success stories are those where the team is committed to one goal so that whatever turn life takes we unite with that goal in mind, with our egos at the door.

Andrea Furst PhD | Sport & Exercise Psychologist CPsychol
Get in contact with Andrea – andrea@mentalnotesconsulting.com – to embrace multidisciplinary teamwork.   Andrea is based in London and provides both face-to-face and virtual sport psychology services to athletes and their support teams worldwide.

The post Support Required! appeared first on Mental Notes.

What drives these performers to push human limits and overcome pain and fatigue barriers to achieve extraordinary results?

According to Angela Lee Duckworth, the answer is a simple four-letter word, grit.  Duckworth describes grit as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, in other words, successful high achievers keep going and going and going…because their goal is so important to them that they will stop at nothing to overcome any obstacle in their way and achieve their goal.  Duckworth has conducted a number of studies on success, looking at who is successful and why they are successful, and she found grit to be a key predictor of success.

How do you develop grit and become extraordinarily successful?

1. Find out what you’re passionate about and pursue it.  At the recent World Scientific Congress of Golf that both Andrea and I attended on the Gold Coast, Philip DiBella, CEO of DiBella Coffee, used the phrase, passion equals sacrifice.  If you are passionate about something, it will be difficult for you to give up and easier for you to sacrifice other things to ensure you can see it/do it/achieve it.  For example, if you are passionate about swimming you will be more likely to get up when everyone else is sleeping and follow the black line up and down the pool for hours a day.  This may seem like a mundane task to some, but when it is backed by passion it is worth it.
2. Set goals based on your passion so you have a direction and a purpose behind your actions.  If you have a goal of being a pro golfer one day, you can rationalise giving up other things you enjoy to make more time to practice as well as choosing to spend your money on coaching and equipment.  These sacrifices are more difficult if you have no goal you are aiming towards.
3. Visualise your goal and you achieving your goal.  If you can see it and clearly define it, you increase the chances that you can have it.  Visualisation will stir up and support your passion.
4. Maintain a growth mindset.  Carol Dweck has written a great book called Mindset in which she describes the difference between growth mindset and fixed mindset.  Growth mindset relates to the belief that you can improve your intelligence or abilities in any area through hard work and learning, regardless of where you begin.  Fixed mindset is the belief that you are born with fixed intelligence and abilities and cannot change with learning and hard work.  Fixed mindset leads to restricted learning and promotes fear of failure.  Dweck found that when children with a growth mindset understood about the brain and how it grows with challenge, they were more likely to accept failure and have an increased drive to embrace adversity as important for learning and as a result, and were more likely to succeed.

At Mental Notes we work with athletes to assist with developing grit and base our practice on growth mindset – if you can train your body, you can also train your brain!

For more information on Grit, watch Duckworth’s TED talk.

Book an appointment to develop grit and make the most of your mindset with our Gold Coast sport psychologist at Allsports Physiotherapy & Sports Medicine.

The post Lasting the Distance appeared first on Mental Notes.

But what about failure?  Does this principle mean that if you fail you are doomed to a never-ending cycle of failure leading to dented confidence, increased anxiety, and underperforming under pressure?

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.  Here are three ways to turn failure into success and short-circuit the cycle of failure before it becomes a habit:

1. Be optimistic
Optimistic people view failure as an opportunity to learn, like they are determined to drain every last drop of positivity out of what might seem like a bleak situation.  For example, an athlete who fails to gain selection for the Commonwealth Games may identify that this gives them more time to prepare for their next competition that their competitors may not have, providing drive and motivation to work hard and increase their chances of selection for the next big event.  Being optimistic does not mean lying to yourself or pretending that you are not disappointed.  The key is, what are you going to do about it?  According to Barbara Fredrikson, optimism broadens your perspective which increases your options and your coping resources, ultimately contributing to improved performances.  In contrast, pessimism narrows your perspective, leading to reduced options and increased likelihood of being trapped in the cycle of failure.  For more information on this viewpoint, read her book Positivity.

2. Balance
Remember that it’s who you are, not what you do, that defines you.  Even though your performance on or off the field may be important and something that you have worked hard for, make sure that you have a safe place outside of your sport/performance that you can go to where you are not judged by your performance.  You may enjoy going for a walk with a loved one, playing with your kids, going for a picnic, watching movies/TV series, listening to music or grabbing coffee with friends.  All of these things can help you to feel grounded and provide balance especially when it feels like everything else is out of control.  In one of my research projects when I interviewed a coach about what it takes to be an elite athlete stated, “to be a professional sportsperson you’ve got to have a bit of an outlet that takes you away from that single focused desire because it will increase that desire to succeed.”

3. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
When you are building muscle in the gym, strength coaches will encourage you to load your muscles with weight that is slightly more than what you can lift to reach a ‘failure’ point.  It is at this point that the magic happens and your muscles grow in response to the increased demand that is required of them.  In the same way, tough situations such as injury, increased pressure and failure, stretch your mental capacity, and provide an opportunity for you to develop your mental muscle, proving to yourself that you can cope with more than you thought you could previously (resulting in increased confidence).

While you do not want to expect failure or set yourself up for failure, reducing the threat of failure by following the above steps will help you to make the most of difficult situations, leading to increased mental muscle and resilience.

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan

Book an appointment to make success out of failure with our Brisbane sport psychologists at Queensland Sports Medicine Centre.

The post How to Make Success out of Failure appeared first on Mental Notes.

Team Unity
All teams can establish this kind of unity if they go about it the right way.  Team unity starts with solid foundations of team identity and culture.  The following tips can help facilitate the process of developing team identity and culture to ultimately achieve unity and success.

Establish group values
By agreeing on team values (e.g., professionalism, loyalty, support) you develop expectations of the group.  Everyone has a shared responsibility to adhere to these values on and off the park.
•    Try to agree on no more than 2-3 values to keep it simple and avoid confusion.
•    The entire group should be included in the decision-making process, including coaching and support staff. This will help to re-enforce accountability amongst the entire group.  Do not limit this decision making process to the players.

Establish expectations
It is important everyone understands HOW to adhere to these values.  For example, if the team has agreed on ‘professionalism’ as a group value.  It is no good to simply say we are going to be professional.  What does ‘being professional’ entail?  How do we know when we are being professional?   You might break it down to simple behaviours such as, being on time for training and matches, or wearing the correct attire before and after matches.
•    Agree on the expectations associated with the team values.
•    Know and understand HOW to adhere to the values and what to expect from each other.

Reinforce expectations
Perhaps the most important step.  Too often I hear of teams establishing what they want to be as a playing group, only to have them break down as the season goes on making expectations irrelevant and meaningless, and occasionally leading to conflict within the group.  It is the responsibility of EVERYONE to reinforce these expectations (even when times are tough).
•    Discuss and agree on ways in which individuals within the team can reinforce expectations.
•    Review as often as possible: find time (i.e., at least once per week) to discuss with the playing group if they are adhering to expectations.  This may only take 5 minutes, however can be a vital step to help reinforce and engage the group.
•    Reward those that demonstrate team values, as agreed on by the group.

Be critical
It is okay to criticise a member of the group for not adhering to expectations, it is not okay to criticise if they make an attempt and are unsuccessful.  Understand the difference.  This is not so relevant to values such as professionalism.   A more relevant value might be the team value of ‘cooperation’.  Expectations here might be percentage play.  In the event of an opportunity to pass to someone in a better position and they fail to do so, it is okay to be critical. If the person makes an attempt and is unsuccessful it is not okay to be critical.  The way in which individuals criticise is also important.  Letting frustrations boil over may be counter-productive, explaining to the player where they went wrong and looking at how they might improve next time is a better way to respond to the situation.

Celebrate!
Celebrating your successes as a team can help to unite the group and provide motivation to continue.  Cheering, hi-fives, singing a team song, or organising social gatherings can be effective ways to acknowledge and recognise your successes.

One final point: Always remember in a group setting, it is almost impossible to avoid conflict at one time or another.  There will be ups and downs, it is how these are managed that is important.

For further information on the development of team identity and culture get in contact with one of the Mental Notes Consulting sport psychologists.  We have sport psychologists located in Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Singapore, and London!

The post Unite in the Quest for Success! appeared first on Mental Notes.