THE GROWTH MINDSET
A Sport Psychology Blog for Coaches
How Coaches can improve their teams culture by understanding the impact of psychological safety.
During my time coaching I have come to realize that the culture of my team is probably a great deal more important than the talent of my team. Teams that rely on a great culture often overachieve while those that rely on talent underachieve. I certainly have more fun coaching the teams with a great culture. Yet, I have found it to be seldom the focus of coach education. One component of culture I have recently started exploring has a powerful impact on our teams and is rarely discussed when exploring culture in sport, psychological safety. At the foundation of successful teams and cultures is the creation of a feeling of psychological safety. The need for psychological safety goes back to early man where being excluded from the group often meant starvation and death. Humans are hardwired to look for acceptance and approval from the groups they are involved in. Sports teams are no different. As humans we are constantly looking around to assess our safety in the group. Athletes are no different. “Are those people talking about me?” “Why doesn’t coach trust me?” “I just made a mistake how are my teammates reacting?” are all the type of questions our athletes are asking themselves sometimes without even realizing it. They like all humans are also looking for non-verbal cues that show if their position within the team is safe. This shows up in body language and facial expressions. Athletes who are worried about being “safe” within the group are going to dedicate energy and attention to assessing their place in the group. This is energy that they could spend focused on becoming better players in practice or on execution in game situations. Because the need for psychological safety is hardwired the real problem is that it cannot be turned off. If an athlete feels unsafe their brain will be constantly paying attention to their position within the team.
Psychological safety occurs when there is a feeling of safety, trust and comfort for members of the group. When psychological safety is present there are some real tangible benefits that extend beyond your players ability to focus on the task at hand. Athletes who feel safe within the team will be wiling to take risks and try new skills in practice and in games. They will be far more likely to share ideas and feelings because they do not fear judgement or ridicule. Most importantly they will not fear failure. Lots of athletes will not put themselves in a position to fail because failure draws attention to themselves and can erode their standing on the team. How a team and its coach respond to failure is an extremely important indicator of how much psychological safety exists on a team.
Knowing about psychological safety is one thing but how do we know how safe our athletes feel in the team? Here are a few ways that you can assess the level of psychological safety felt by your athletes.
1. Do they tell you what they think or do your athletes tell you what they think you want to hear?
When you ask an athlete a question their answer tells you a lot about how they feel about their position in the group. If they are always giving you the answer that they think you want to hear your athlete is not feeling safe. When discussing things as a team do athletes feel safe stating their own opinion? A great exercise to use with a team to test and develop safety is the Agree Build Challenge (ABC) questioning technique which I first saw employed in sport by Canada Basketball’s Mike McKay. When Coach McKay receives an answer to a question from a player he will ask the rest of the team to use the ABC method. Players can agree with the statement, build on it or challenge it. This is a great test of the level of psychological safety of your team. How comfortable are your players in using this process? If they do not feel safe they will likely just agree. It takes a level of safety to challenge their teammates and a whole different level of safety for them to challenges a coaches position on a topic. You can also get a clear view of the hierarchy of your team by who is willing to challenge whom. If you have a rookie willing to challenge the answer of a seasoned veteran you have a pretty solid and safe culture. This is a great technique, but it does take awhile for players to feel comfortable using it so don’t make quick judgements on the safety of your team if players are slow to challenge or build on answers.
2. How do players respond to their own mistakes?
This is a huge indicator of the level of psychological safety within your team. We have all coached the athlete who looks to the bench immediately following every mistake to see how you are responding. That is an athlete that does not feel safe. They may be worried that you will pull them from the game. When psychological safety exists athletes feel comfortable making mistakes.
3. How does the team respond to mistakes by individual players?
If you are a NBA fan or a NBA Twitter fan you have seen this photo (and all memes). JR Smith had just committed a crucial mental mistake that was about to cost the Cavs game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals. Lebron’s reaction was understandable considering the stakes of the moment. It would not however improved Smith’s feeling of safety within the team. This is life as a professional athlete, his level of safety would also have been impacted by the media spotlight of the NBA Finals in being the focal point of the new cycle. Most of our athletes don’t play under this kind of a spotlight but often deal with teammates who act like it is the NBA finals. Part of this is them copying their favourite players, another factor is the win at all cost mentality that is pervasive in youth sports. What happens on your team when an athlete misses a game winning free throw or drop the ball in the end zone late in a key game? Do they embrace the teammate or draw attention to the mistake with their actions and body language. Players who feel safe to fail are less likely to.
It is important to understand and acknowledge that there are lots of factors that occur outside of your team that impact the feelings of psychological safety for our athletes. They all show up with lots of things in their backpacks. Some of them are good things like supportive, loving families, or a positive optimistic outlook on life. Others have the experience of parents who are overbearing and placing a lot of pressure on the athlete in their backpack. In some case there is trauma and pain in the athletes’ backpack and that will make it much harder for them to trust or feel safe in any environment.
Over the next few weeks I will be unpacking the importance of psychological safety and how coaches can make this an important component of their teams culture. Next week I will look at some strategies coaches can incorporate to increase safety on their teams.
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