What it takes to create winning teams - part 2 (HHPEs)

What it really takes to develop winning teams- part 2

 By Mark Gittins PhD & Jonny Zneimer

Over the years we have worked with a number of elite sports teams and business teams, supporting them to develop, improve and ultimately to win. The work has been rewarding and also highly challenging at times. In this article we share our learning and what we have seen work. We specifically refer to our work with sports teams but there are lessons for all teams seeking to develop, improve and win.

 In part one of this article we discussed the role of the head coach and our focus on encouraging them to get out of the detail and look strategically at the whole environment. We also shared four psychological needs (see below) as critical components of a high performance environment, and looked at how to provide a sense of autonomy.

 Figure 1. Critical components of high performance environments[1]

In part 2 of this article we explore how to develop the other three components.

Sense of Belonging: building team togetherness

 Team togetherness is a critical ingredient of high performance. When team members feel that they ‘are all in it together’ they are ‘prepared to run through a brick wall for the person next to them’. The aim is a sense of camaraderie- defined as ‘mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together’. This is the glue that bonds and binds together a team.

 There are two ways of developing team togetherness- you can bond people around a common goal such as winning a tournament or competition, or you can focus on developing strong relationships between people. Both clearly play their part in developing team togetherness. However, for players and athletes the most obvious barrier to team togetherness is competition for places. In a squad of high achievers, it can be difficult for players and athletes not selected to deal with seeing their roommate ecstatic at making the team.

 To encourage players/athletes and staff to put the team before themselves we have supported them to:

 ·        develop a ‘charter’ of team behaviours. These are the ground rules that the team signs up to and lives by. This needs to be re-visited as new members come and go

 ·        develop an exciting shared vision, discuss what it will take for them to achieve it, and review together how they are progressing against it. We noticed how this became an opportunity to experience team togetherness

 ·        use psychometrics (e.g. Insights Discovery[2]) to help them better understand their personality preferences and how to work most effectively with each other

 ·        build relationships through fun team activities such as bowling, golf-putting, driving simulators, indoor baseball, and quiz nights. Staff and players can do these activities together to dissolve any sense of divide or hierarchy

 Sense of Meaning: what would it mean for us to win?

 Even with a sense of involvement and team togetherness, a team still needs a compelling vision to strive towards. We have noticed that many coaches avoid starting conversations about what it would mean to win. They may assume that winning alone is inspirational enough and leave it as an implicit outcome. Alternatively, they may feel that talking about winning builds pressure, removes focus from the ‘controllables’ or even might ‘jinx’ the team’s chances. These reasons are understandable but we believe they result in a missed opportunity.

 Facilitated skilfully and at the right time, talking about ‘why you are here’ and what winning would mean for you, can be the ‘turbo charge’ that propels an already strong team to the next level. Visualising success is the fuel that carries players and athletes through the monotony of weeks away from home and allows them to persist through injuries and de-selection. It also provides the intensity required to win in the heat of battle. We have worked with teams to ‘dare’ share the excitement of winning in the future. We often state to our clients that we are ‘on the side’ of the successful teams they could and will become!

 Over the years we have:

 ·        encouraged conversations and story-telling about what it means to play for the team and what winning would be like.

 ·        we have showed the players video clips recorded by their families talking of how proud they were of them. Watching these as a group was special and you could feel an emotional shift in the room.

 Sense of Competence: choosing to win

There are number of ways of helping team members to feel a sense of competence. These include:

 ·        encouraging people to focus on their strengths and how to maximize them

·        encouraging a focus on mastering tasks

·        providing both motivational and developmental feedback along the way.

 Our experience of teams is that while these approaches are common knowledge, they are not always common practice.

 Competent learners

We also believe that we should help players and athletes to feel competent as learners as well as competent as sportspeople. For this reason, we are fans of a ‘blended learning’ approach to ensure that different learning preferences are met. By this we mean combining input, group discussion, individual reflection, and video footage in meetings. This encourages participation from players and athletes who are less comfortable to speak up in front of the whole group.

 Alignment of goals- the ‘goal tree’

Coaches can also build a sense of competence through being bold in the performance expectations that they set. We are always surprised when we hear coaches telling their teams that if they work really hard then they might just come 3rd, or reach the quarter finals. We are yet to meet many athletes who are inspired by coming 3rd! The coach may think they are being realistic and downplaying expectations but they are also reducing the team’s level of belief and therefore their level of performance.

 On the other end of the scale we have also worked with coaches who weren’t shy in talking about winning. For these teams we ensure that the goal is broken down into achievable and controllable chunks, to build belief and a sense of control. One effective way of doing this is to support players and coaches to co-create a ‘goal tree’.

 A goal tree is a diagram on a single page showing all of the teams goals and how they link together. For example, at the top of the tree might be the team vision and an outcome goal e.g. of winning a competition. Below would be a number of branches and sub-branches showing the games needed to win to achieve this, and below that the key areas of focus for the team (e.g. tactical, technical, social, psychological). The result is a clear line of sight from basic day-to-day habits to wining tournaments. By showing that preparation and inputs are world class it generates belief that winning is a probable outcome.

 Once the goal tree is developed it is critical that it is continually re-visited. It is possibly one of the most powerful techniques for developing successful teams as it provides all four of the psychological needs simultaneously. The process of creating the goal tree involves the athletes and so gives them a sense of autonomy and togetherness. The end product provides inspiration and meaning. Finally, continually reviewing the goal tree and ‘ticking off’ the sub-goals when they are achieved develops a sense of competence.

A framework for continued success

To conclude, when it comes to winning matches and competitions we are not naive enough to dismiss the primary importance of getting the best players and athletes on the pitch. However, there are plenty of teams with gifted players who have underachieved. Creating the right performance environment can be the differentiator between teams which have similar ability and resources.

 We think the four psychological needs provide a simple lens through which coaches can view their performance environments. This doesn’t however make it easy to create such an environment. Coaches may need to give up deeply-held beliefs and habits, as well as the illusion that they are fully in control. They will have to embrace the risk and uncertainty of facilitating player involvement and ownership. This could involve tempering their enthusiasm to always have the answer for their players.

 Now is a perfect time for coaches and leaders to reflect on the environments they are creating. At the moment many of our sporting organisations in the UK are under fire for prioritizing medals over athlete and player welfare. There have been accusations of oppressive environments, bullying and cultures of fear. All of this has no doubt been justified by a belief that hard and unrelenting environments are required for success. We believe that this philosophy has been grossly overplayed. Of course high performance environments promote high standards and a relentless work ethic. Importantly they can also provide care, compassion and support. The challenge for our leaders and coaches is to embrace the paradox and find a way to provide support and challenge together.

 This will only happen if coaches focus firstly on getting the performance environment right. By this we mean Healthy High Performance Environments (HHPE’s) rather than just High Performance Environments (HPE’s). We hope this article provides a framework for achieving this. Leadership does not have to be directive and dictatorial; it is not something you do to people but is something you do with people. For teams to reach their potential we need to create environments so supportive and fulfilling that winning becomes inevitable.

  [1] Adapted from Deci & Ryan (2000) and Thomas, K.W. (2009)

 [2] https://www.insights.com