Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Two – Dealing With Performance Mistakes
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game, the podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who want to do it smarter. Brain in the Game is a practical look at the mental battlefield that is elite sport and I am your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode we are going to tackle the big question: “What do we do when things go wrong?”. This is something that needs to be addressed in the early stages of the communication model with you and your athletes. It’s like learning to drive a car for the first time; you need to know how to stop before the vehicle takes off. So this is what we’re going to deal with today, we’re going to look at what happens, what the process is when things just don’t go right.
So what do coaches normally do when things go wayward? Unfortunately most coaches don’t handle it exceptionally well. Some coaches choose to shout at their athletes, hurling abuse at them, embarrassing them, often because they feel embarrassed themselves that the athlete shouldn’t have made that mistake. Some coaches just ignore the mistake or, even worse, ignore the athlete; move along like nothing has ever happened; they put their head in the sand – this is the head in the sand strategy. Some coaches just go on and on and on about the mistake, this can go on for weeks, sometimes even months, nagging the athlete – the nagging strategy. Some coaches choose to discuss the mistake with the athlete’s peers, this ostracises them socially amongst their group. None of these strategies really get to the heart of dealing with the mistake and the consequences of that mistake.
So as a coach we need a better strategy, we need a better way of managing the ups and the downs for our athletes. There are some unique ways out there I’ve seen over the years, of when I was an elite coach, of coaches managing the mistakes. I once watched a coach in the middle of a gymnastics competition absolutely berate their athlete to the point that it made them cry. It completely destroyed that athlete and they were only halfway through the competition, so you can imagine how that athlete went for the rest of the competition; it was a complete write off for them. That athlete could have gone on to complete the competition and qualify for the next round, but instead chose to give up and walk away and didn’t even try for the rest of the apparatus.
As a former elite coach I get it, I get we are emotionally charged. We’re invested in the outcome; we’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months, even years sometimes, prepping for that one event and the athlete goes and buggers it up. I was one of those elite coaches too. Essentially my wage was based on the results I got, so every mistake could have impacted on how I fed my family. What traditionally coaches, athletes and, by the way, most parents do is focus on the negatives, on the mistake itself and what it cost them. This just raises the emotional baggage that comes with that event or that mistake and that athlete impregnates that into their brain as a neurological point of reference; the blueprint, if you like. So the next time that athlete goes to compete or do that skill, the most vivid memory they have is of the mistake, is what they’ve focused on when things don’t go right because they had this emotional barrage that came with it. If we focus on something we travel towards it and if that something is negative, guess where we’re going?
So what should happen when we make mistakes, as we all make mistakes? Coaches make mistakes, parents make mistakes and, of course, athletes make mistakes. If we instil into our athletes that mistakes are an opportunity to do things better next time by learning from the mistake, it bypasses much of the negativity, much of the emotional association to what could be lost. So what I’ve done is I’ve created this exercise, this exercise that is designed specifically to not focus on the mistake but to get a learning from the mistake and be able to move on. This exercise is for the coach and the athlete to work through together and the whole concept is to look at things compartmentally.
The first stage of this exercise focuses on what worked because not everything within the mistake, within the routine that didn’t work, within the competition that didn’t go the way you wanted it to, would be a mistake. There would be things within that that worked exceptionally well, things that we want to do next time. If we focus on a mistake and everything that went with that mistake, every part of that routine, every part of that skill, or even every part of that competition, essentially what we’re doing is we’re missing out on opportunities to replicate something that’s working. So we need to first identify what works. What this also does is raise the emotions, makes us feel like we have achieved something, there was some positivity around that event. And taking the time to look at what worked enables us to cross-platform, that process, that strategy, into the area that didn’t work necessarily.
So the first stage of the debrief: list five things that worked, whether it be the preparation; whether it be the set up for the skill; whether it be the mental way that you prepared for the competition; whatever that aspect is needs to be recognised and rewarded. So we write down what we did exceptionally well and we reward ourselves that by acknowledgement. We’ve already spoken in previous episodes about how important that acknowledgment process is to us.
We would then look at what didn’t work, but rather than looking at the emotional aspect of what it cost us we take one step back and we become slightly disassociated and we look at the mistake clinically, identify specifically what didn’t work. Did I not set the skill up correctly? Did I not lift my chest? Did I dive too far into the pool? Did I not come up early enough to start my stroke? Whatever the technical aspect of what didn’t work needs to be recognised.
The next stage is the most vital stage: what do I need to do different? What this is looking for, it’s looking for solutions. Once we take the focus away from what didn’t work, what the mistake was, and we move into the realms of making the solution for that for the next time, we’re lowering the emotional baggage that comes with that. It becomes a lesson for us, it becomes an opportunity to grow and do something better next time. So the focal point needs to move directly into problem solving where we look at what didn’t work and then we look at, hopefully, what we need to do differently next time. By addressing the specifics, by looking at actual strategies to bypass the possibility of next time having the same mistake, it enables us to move on much quicker; to get momentum again; to get back into the game.
The fourth stage to the debrief matrix is how do I replicate it? What process do I need to put into place to make sure that the new differences, the new approach gets taken up every single time?
So those four steps, those four key steps:
1. What worked;
2. What didn’t work;
3. What do I need to do different; and
4. How do I replicate that?
This shift in our mental process, in our mental evaluation, enables us to almost bypass the emotional angst that comes with the mistake. We get the opportunity to move through that stage much faster and much more efficiently.
So if you think back to the last time you made a mistake that you believed cost you a competition, cost you a place in a team, or something that had a negative outcome for you, and you think back and think “Right, what worked? What did I do at that competition, during that skill, during that meet, that I did exceptionally well? That I should really be able to replicate next time, that I should be able to enjoy that I did it right and reward myself”. Then focus on what didn’t work, what specifics, what key aspects didn’t work and why? “Was it because I just didn’t focus enough or was there something wrong with the skill mechanism? Was there something technical that I could have done better?” and then move straight into “What do I need to do to do it differently?”. If it’s a technical thing then what I can do is change the technical mechanics to that. If it’s something that I didn’t do then I add it. If it’s something that I did do then I take it away. Already what we’re doing is just moving straight through that process and lowering the emotional anxiety. And obviously by being able to replicate that we’re setting up triggers, we’re setting up the opportunity to fire it off each and every time.
So already when you think about that past mistake, once you’ve moved through this process of what worked, what didn’t work, what do I need to do differently, and how do I replicate that, the emotional weight would have dissipated. Already you will be seeing that event, that past mistake differently. It won’t be so big. It won’t be so overwhelming. It will be something that you’ve learnt from; it wasn’t what you wanted but you’ve moved on from that and you now have a new set of skills, a new skillset to manage something similar to that. We have these neurological points of reference, these blueprints in our brain. These blueprints are our choices, our options that when we go to do something that we’ve done before or similar to what we’ve done before, our brain goes through its rolodex, it zips through our options and goes “Right, have I been here before? Have I done this skill, this event, this competition, this venue before?” and if it has it brings up all those emotions that are associated to that event.
If we think about a memory, a memory is a one-dimensional image that is surrounded by an emotion. This emotion enables our brain to categorise and catalogue events. These emotions then signify how we deal with or manage the next event, the one we’re approaching that’s similar to the past event. So if we have a negative association to a competition or a competition venue, the next time we step into that venue and our brain selects that old neurological point of reference with that negative emotion, we’re already going in there behind the eight ball. Our emotions are making us anxious; they’re raising the anxiety level. No longer are we focused, we’re disassociating ourselves from what our possibilities are and associating to the past. This process is human, it’s what we all do, it’s how we all manage, it’s how we store our memories and it’s how we learn. It’s how our brain is efficient; it’s very good at being efficient and copying what it’s done in the past. If we want to bypass that old negative emotion we need to change the emotion associated to the past event, and we do that through this process, through this debriefing mechanism that enables us to learn from the mistake. It enables us to change the emotion, the emotional tag that we’ve placed over that past event.
If you listen to commentators, and I suggest you only do it once, what you’ll hear is them talking about statistics, talking about past events. They will tell you all the statistics around that competition; how that athlete has never won at this event; or this team has never beaten that team; or the last time these two teams competed against each other one was flogged. What that’s doing is raising the emotional awareness in our brains. So if you’re an athlete and you’re listening to that commentator tell you that the last time you were here you bombed out, or the last time you were here you made this massive mistake and it cost you the competition; where’s your focus? Where is your objectivity around what you can and you know you can achieve? It’s the emotion that tints everything that we see from that point forward, so it’s vital that we remove that tint, that change in our perspective, so that we can actually perform the way we know we can perform.
So how do we initiate this change in the way we deal with mistakes?
The first thing I would suggest is initiating this process into your training venue, into the way that you deal with learning in your sporting organisation, in your sporting venue. So when you’re coaching your athletes or you’re getting your parents involved, by using this four-stage process, by changing the way that they handle mistakes, by the way they process their mistakes, you’ll start to see a difference in the way they communicate; you’ll start to see a difference in the way they process and deal with mistakes. No longer will they be something that they run from, rather that it’s going to be part and parcel of learning. Yes, we’re all going to make mistakes and what is going to happen from that mistake is I’m going to get a new skillset. So if you change them in your venue, if you change them in your communication, the language that you use, you’ll not only see a change in your athletes, in your coaching staff, in your parents support group, but also in the way that you process; the way that you are able to learn new skills; the way you’re able to teach new skills, because the emotional association to what may happen won’t be as debilitating as in the past.
Another aspect to the feedback mechanism for these athletes, for your learning and your communication style is understanding how that athlete is going to receive the information, is going to receive the way that you now process and analyse their learning. Are they internally or externally referenced? Now, this is something that is vital when you’re learning about your athlete and you’re learning about how to get them to respond in a positive way to your feedback.
So when we talk about internal or external referencing; when we’re talking about an internally referenced person or athlete, are they judged by their own benchmarks? Are they internally assessing their performance and happy with their own internal assessment of that? So when they’re learning something or when they’re processing something that they’ve done, do they turn round and go “You know what, I’ve done a really good job here. I’m happy with what I’ve done and I don’t really care what other people think” because if your athlete is that internally referenced then the way that you deliver your feedback needs to be tailored to that. So when you talk to them, you turn round to them and say “You should be proud of what you’ve done” or “You should think about doing it this way” or “You could internally think about this process. If you apply this internally for you, these are the results you will get”.
If your athlete is externally referenced that means they place far more importance on the people on the outside, on the people who assess and evaluate them externally. So these kind of athletes really do look for “Well, what do you think? How do you think I went? Do you think that was the right way to deal with that situation?”.
Both these processes, internal and external referencing, have benefits and negatives that go with that, but that’s part and parcel of your athletes and the way that they’re learning, the way they process. If they’re young athletes then they might transition between internal and external over short periods of time. So it pays to keep an eye on them, it pays to listen to the way that they’re processing and that’s how we assess if they are internal or external, by listening to the way that they talk, the communication they use. Do they talk about “we” or do they talk about “I”? Do they talk about “I’m doing this” or “We’re doing that”? Understanding your athlete, understanding the way they process this information makes it much easier for you as a coach to deliver your message in a way that they’re going to accept and process.
So if we recap on what we’ve covered in this episode. We’ve talked about the way to process mistakes; the four-step debrief process: what worked, what didn’t work, what do I do different and how do I replicate that? We’ve spoken about how we make our memories and the emotional tags that go with that so that we can categorise and catalogue. This impacts on how we process future information and our neurological points of reference. And we’ve also talked about the internal or external referencing, how do we get the information to the athletes in a format that they’re more likely to accept through specific language patterns?
And this brings us to the end of another episode of Brain in the Game. I hope this has given you a fresh aspect of how you manage mistakes with your athletes; how they learn and how they process the emotion associated to that; and the skillset change that you can implicate into your coaching and into your clubs. I will put the link to download the mental debrief exercise on the show notes and you can always go over to our website www.braininthegame.com.au where all these links and all the show notes will be available. So until our next training session, train smart and enjoy the ride.
My name’s Dave Diggle and I’m the Mind Coach.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com
