Lessons from Elite Sporting All Stars - competing outside their comfort zones

Last week I provided some observations from the Director’s Chair on episode 7 of the XVenture Family Challenge TV series brought to you by ecostore. This was the final of the Family Challenge. The episodes aired on the Ten network in Australia and Three in New Zealand every Sunday afternoon for the last 8 weeks.

As a reminder, here’s a quick overview of the series. Hosted by Kate Freebairn and Jason Kerrison, we took sixteen families from across Australia and New Zealand and set them a range of fun and engaging challenges recording each for the TV show. Each week, four teams competed over three very different challenges testing out teamwork, adaptability, cohesion and resilience. The two teams that performed the best went through to the semi-finals, leading to a final where one team won the overall title and $25,000.

Throughout the program, the families had no idea what challenges they would be facing so making it difficult to plan. Teams and their individual members have an option: take on a performance improvement mindset (PIMS) or focus attention and time on frustration and disappointment (FAND). The families who performed really well throughout, had all their team members buying into a PIMS.

Before the program was recorded all team members undertook a diagnostic to obtain a reading on their emotional agility, resilience and leadership. (EARL). All the families in this episode recorded solid EARL scores prior to the program commencing with the average being 64.9%, which is not dissimilar to many other successful teams we have measured over the last twelve months. 

This week I turn to the special All Stars Celebrity which featured two teams of sports stars made up of four individuals from Australia and four from New Zealand both competing to win $10,000 for their chosen Charity (Cure Kids NZ and Fight Cancer Foundation). As an extra dimension, the winners of the family challenge, Team Samuel-Murray were split up and appointed as coaches to both the sports star teams. All part of the fun! The sports stars represented six sporting codes: basketball; netball; soccer; cricket; AFL and kayaking made up of five women and three men. Representing New Zealand: @BrendonPongia, Caitlin Ryan, Jimmy Neesham, Phoenix Karaka. Representing Australia: @GavinRobertson, Eliza Hynes, Emma Checker and Kristiana Manu’a (pictured in header).

As per the Family Challenge episodes, the sports stars arrived into Eagles Nest in the Bay of Islands not knowing what was in store. A unique situation for them as each are typically highly prepared used before they go into their own sporting competitions. 

Given that the individuals did not know each other too well, we gave them some “get to know” time to develop some team cohesion. They had several hours together before they joined us on set.  This made a big difference.  Noticeably the atmosphere was light and fun oriented which remained for the duration of the TV shoot, although once a challenge started: down to business!!

The first challenge faced was called Best of Three on Heat. This was an adaptation of the challenge we set teams in episode four. In theory this giant fuzzball challenge seemed easy as all teams needed to do was get the ball in the opposing team’s net three times! However, when you’re restricted by being tied to a bar which only moves from side to side, inter team communication has to be at it’s very best. As obvious as it seems, this doesn’t often happen even at elite level! Add an additional level of complexity to all this by blindfolding the goalkeeper in one round then in a following round add another blindfold to an “outfield” player. The communication gets harder; the trust gets greater. Now teams have got to carefully consider skills -who is going to score the goals and who is comfortable about letting go of control! 

All teams threw themselves into this tricky situation, one that they’ve certainly not experienced before. True to expectations, both teams were exceptional with strong on-field communication skills with a blend of reasonable technical skills, and excellent levels of focus and energy.  However, the extra dimension? As a comparison to the Family teams in episode four, the two sports teams were extremely competitive. Winning is just second nature! Niceties and plenty of smiles of course, but a definite commitment to beat the other team at all costs! Each of the three rounds they undertook were much longer than the family rounds as this first challenge set the tone for all three challenges, resulting in an epic battle which created great viewing for the live audience and for TV.

The second challenge was another spin on the challenge created for episode four: The Observatory. Teams again had several layers of adaptation to deal with. Firstly, dealing with a challenge they know nothing about. Secondly being put in a large air locked see through dome, then being put into a virtual reality World with each team member given their first taste of virtual reality glasses whilst having to “observe” what was happening in this virtual world and gaining agreement on that! 

Two individuals in the team had one view of a room and the other two, the same but with some random items added to the room. The team members had to discuss the differences and note them down, within a time limit.

Again, the human species is incredible. Within a few seconds all teams were using all their skills and talents to find the solution. Removing the fear of the unknown by encouragement, touch and clear conversation played out just as it did when the families undertook this challenge.  All individuals were on a level playing field as no one had experienced this before. A couple of the team members were definitely out of their comfort zone. Perhaps it was not understanding, not having experience or perhaps a fear of being judged.  When this happens we can typically tune into our own discomfort which can affect individual concentration and performance and then distract other team members. I see this often in the work I undertake in elite sport. Whatever the case, both teams in general were calm and supportive of each other and embraced the experience.

By day two, team members were already forming solid relationships, but we provided them with an extra opportunity of building team cohesion by giving them a small food-based challenge we called Platter Time. Against the clock, teams were given a large set of organic ingredients provided by Huckleberry and they had to choose which to use to include in a platter which was then judged by the General Manager of Eagles Nest. Sounds easy, but little time provided and not enough utensils would beg the question, do too many cooks spoil the broth? As was seen in the first two challenges, it is fascinating to see how groups of people can work out the roles that best suit them, providing they know what the goal is; have a clear identity and established ground rules and have all a genuine commitment to understand each other. 

The final challenge ensured that we took advantage of the unique opportunity of observing elite sports stars competing in an intense, out of the comfort zone experience. By this stage, the Australian team were just ahead so the New Zealand team had to win to square the Challenge. Using the challenge from episode six, Pool Sweep, teams were being significantly challenged on their patterns of communication. It doesn’t matter what the context is: businesses, schools, elite sports or a tv show; water challenges always seem to destabilize some members of a team. Remove the typical method we have of communication (ie. eyesight) and people have to find other ways of communicating. Throw in another element – lots of noise and this can affect our ability to hear effectively. This time we added even more obstacles with the pool entry down a slide and it’s a very tricky situation to cope with and manage.  This challenge threw all these layers at the teams! 

One person in each team acted as coach on the sideline whilst the other three members of the team were in the water.  We added further distraction with the Team Samuel-Murray throwing instructions, all combined to create as much chaos for the teams as possible. With the assistance of their team coach, the teams needed to get as many of their coloured balls floating in the water into their team net as they could, all against the clock. Plenty of calling, shouting, gesticulating and general confusion made this challenge a great visual spectacle. Team members trying their best to understand their coaches found this challenge extremely difficult and at times frustrating. Some adapted better than others, with one seemingly very comfortable although perhaps because she spends much of her life around water (Caitlin Ryan).

We made it an added difficulty that each team now had three coaches who were shouting instructions at the same time. (One team member and two family members from Team Samuel-Murray per team) At times, the hosts also got involved, barracking for their respective nations!

Similar to episode six, once coaches began to notice what worked and didn’t they started to change methods of communication to suit the conditions, the teams started to perform much more effectively. Add that simple but often forgotten dimension of encouragement and positive reinforcement, all teams began to get the hang of it. Afterwards, the reflection time proved that valuable lesson had been learned. Not least that the “NO” command can have a significant impact on emotions!

On completion of the Challenge, with the results in on all the Challenges, both teams achieved a final tally of the same number of points. A draw! Typically not the result sports stars like or aim for but in this instance, this enabled both to provide some funds to their respective charities.

By way of a final reflection on episode 8, rarely does it happen that sports people compete in something other than their chosen sport. From a production viewpoint it was tricky to create challenges that would be fun and engaging, bring out this competitive nature yet be really safe for all participating.  Each individual embraced the experience fully, enjoyed it and against the backdrop of the EARL model all learned something of themselves and others from each of the codes. Important as anything, was not taking oneself too seriously. What was also significant was their respect and warmth towards the Samuel-Murray Family, who became an important part of each of the teams. 

One of the most interesting observational opportunities in this episode was to notice if there were any differences noticed between the way the sports stars and families performed in the challenges that were set. Whilst it is difficult to undertake a “like for like” comparison as the families in the TV series knew each other well and there were minors involved, it’s fair to say that in general, the sports stars appeared to be a little quicker in understanding and responding to tasks. In elite sport, fast decision-making is critical. Research undertaken at University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience would suggest this would be the case too.

"When some decisions can be the difference between success and failure, it is perhaps unsurprising that the study showed that athletes were consistently several seconds faster when performing their tasks.”

"A few seconds or a few per cent may not sound much but this is a long time in sport and is the difference between winning and losing." (Prof. Vincent Walsh)

 (For those interested there are behind the scenes/funny moments digital clips available at: https://www.xventurefamilychallenge.com/behind-the-scenes)

If you missed some of the episodes, you can watch them on TenPlay (Australia) and ThreeNow (New Zealand).

www.xventurefamilychallenge.com