GB Womans Hockey and Leicester City FC - Expect the Unexpected
Ask any 'expert' and they will describe the Leicester City Premiership title winning season as ' great brilliant amazing' but within the tone of the words you sense an underlying feeling of disbelief and freakishness associated with the sentiment. It is usually followed up by ' of course it can never happen again' and the defeat by Hull City in the first game of their title defense was seized upon as proof that the Foxes success was going to be short lived.
Similar feelings of amazing disbelief were expressed over the gold medal winning performance of the GB Woman’s hockey side.
However, untethered from the excessive shielding from the press that surrounds Premier League Footballers the revelations of the winning GB team reveals eye opening similarities into the beliefs of the two squads,
In many ways instead of being seen as unbelievable their success will provide new templates that can and will be followed by many other teams seeking success against or with the odds in their favour.
What stands out amongst many comparisons between the two groups was the unquestionable togetherness of the squads inclusive of staff and players.
This togetherness created a resilience that no matter who they were playing even though they may be technically far superior it did not mean they had the willpower to overcome the collective strength of the underdogs. As such both GB Hockey and Leicester City were able to find a way to win, games when everything apparently was against them and rescue success from the jaws of defeat.
What became apparent from the interviews of the hockey team was this collective spirit was not just down to chance it had been planned and developed over a two-year period.
The training sessions every week called 'thinking Thursday's' were established to build resilience and a winning mentality. The acceptance and benefits of psychological processes, so often mentioned in whispers in the world of football, here were given just reward.
When in one interview the benefits of visualisation techniques in preparing for penalty shoot outs was mocked by the interviewer the technique was defended to the hilt and the work of the psychologist given its true value. The success of the GB hockey team in the final penalty shoot out was described as almost being almost inevitable. Possibly for the first time a penalty shoot out saga was managed to take away the pressure from the individual and was truly undertaken as a team responsibility.
Comments such as 'we knew if we scored two we would win" and it was important we reacted the same way when 'we scored or missed' highlighted the shared, level of 'team emotional intelligence' that proved greater than the far superior technical ability of their opponents.
Victories by underdogs is now more, not less likely to be seen, following the Leicester City and GB Hockey success. As technology drives the physiological requirements to become common objective standards that have to reached as a rule, not as a fact of nature, success will be achieved by teams with a collective mental strength.
Willpower resilience and a collective spirit without the burden of excuses or ego's will become key critical.
‘Expect the unexpected’ as the egocentric teams more often succumb to the minnows producing 'unbelievable victories'
Russell Grocott
Russell has co-founded GFG Education Ltd with Malcolm Frame lead psychologist at Southampton FC and former International swimmer Julie Gibson.
GFG Impact is an online programme designed to help people cope with the pressures of the digital world by building awareness of how our individual brains react in everyday situations.
It also meets the Ofsted PDBW requirements as stipulated under the September 2015 Common Inspection Framework.
For further details www.gfgeducation.com