Monthly Archive for September, 2022

Page 2 of 4

Is it true that we learn from our experiences? (2)

It is of no use to speak in general terms about experiences; it is essential to understand what the demands of situations are that bring about significant changes in a person’s professional life. It is possible to identify them by distributing experiences into different categories.

Experiences that have a strong personal impact have at their base a struggle against adversity. These experiences force individuals to do something different than what they had been doing up to that point. They also push one to perceive oneself and situations in a way that is always different from the past, requiring one to give one’s best in that situation, which can never be identical to a previous one. It is clear, however, that it is through these adverse situations that the manager or sportsman may choose whether or not to take illegal shortcuts to satisfy their need for success and power.

Experiences with a character of exceptionality. For this reason, even an experienced person may say, “Such a situation I have never faced before.” Shooting a penalty kick at the World Cup final is a unique experience, and it is not enough to be good and to have handled this kind of stress well in the past, now you are watched by more than a billion people, you are a champion but it is not enough to score a goal. It was an experience that had never even happened to Roberto Baggio before he missed it in the final with Brazil. The most significant experiences have the trait of uniqueness not so much in relation to the content of the activity (e.g., the penalty kick is an action that belongs to the professional baggage of every soccer player) but in relation to the value they take on in a given circumstance (shooting it during the World Cup final).

Experiences that require the development of new skills to cope with new situations. Creativity and innovation are pathways increasingly practiced by leaders who must consciously serve as innovative role models to their staff. They represent real learning situations. Knowing how to grasp one’s moments of uncertainty and doubt is a good criterion for establishing that one does not know how to reason only by established practices but that a part of oneself is available in regard to the new.

Experience and awareness of one’s own sense of belonging. This last category is particularly important because it relates the situations to be faced to the experience of personal belonging. An individual is not ascribable to a single activity or group but can be defined, without thereby feeling any contradiction, through the facet of his activities as a manager and as a member of different groups. He can be a cook, a music lover, a runner, a lover of vacations taken in nature, a father, a husband, an Italian, a college graduate, a resident of a metropolis, and much more. Each of these aspects participates in forming the identity in which one recognizes oneself, and all of them together determine how one acts. Staying aware of this plurality of affiliations can be a first step toward curbing any illegal behavior. A manager or an athlete might think based on the idea that the end justifies the means that it does not matter in what way one achieves success. Well thinking that one is also a parent or citizen with responsibilities to others may slow down the establishment of this attitude.

Is it true that we learn from our experiences? (1)

Every person has heard his or her teachers argue thousands of times that one learns to make the right choices through experience, but this statement is far too general; it may be analogous to stating that one grows because one is nourished or that one is alive because one breathes or, more cynically, one puts it in the bill that one who does not learn to swim drowns and onward another.

Knowing that we live immersed in our daily experience, in the experience of others, and in an ever-changing environment is certainly not much more helpful. Every moment of a person’s life is part of the experiences he or she is having small or large, one has experiences from the moment of birth, for example, one learned to walk because as a child one stubbornly wanted to gain autonomy, and to do this one needs to move around. Therefore, all children make regular and continuous efforts to reach a standing position and move expeditiously. But this effort toward change does not end at an early age; it continues at every age.

A company executive told me that his problems began when he came to lead a group; before he had only to think about himself and selling, and this he had learned to do well, until he became the best. At that point he was leading a team that under his leadership should have multiplied results, instead initially it was a disaster because he terrorized his collaborators by telling them they were good-for-nothings. Having reached this point he was forced to change and learn how to manage the team or else his business would fail.

This story, which is quite common with many others that occur daily everywhere, highlights how it is of no use to speak in general terms about experiences; it is essential to understand what the demands of situations are that bring about significant changes in a person’s professional life.

Oratory closes for too many swear words

Broken nets, garbage abandoned inside but above all profanity and swearing spoiled the atmosphere of the oratory. For this reason Don Franz Vicentini, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Cocciano, one of Frascati’s (Roma) most populous neighborhoods, closed the oratory. Parents liked the decision; I wonder if it was only other people’s children who manifested these behaviors.

What are the role models for these young people? The soccer players who constantly complain to referees or the coaches who use their role to express themselves violently? Or the bully friends?

Young people are responsible for their actions. Who, however, are their teachers? Who provides them with the standard behaviors to act ethically?

Coaches violent because of their wounded narcissism

I have long been convinced of the narcissistic evolution of the personality of soccer coaches. There are no studies on these aspects in the world of soccer, however, it seems to me that the violent and aggressive outbursts of coaches already in these first two months of the championship, confirm this idea.

Today we get angry immediately, but above all this is associated with unacceptable behaviors made of shouting on the field at someone, gestures and chairs taken as if they were a club. These are manifestations of human frailty. They are experienced by coaches as an expression of their legitimate right to protest, true, but the form expresses an injury suffered.

Moreover, there is no negative effect brought about by these behaviors. They may be ejected and receive disqualification days, but they are not useful deterrents to abandon this way of being. The only way to motivate them to change would be solely social disapproval but this is not there in soccer. Being condemned and taken back by one’s social sporting environment would represent an opportunity for change, in its absence they will continue as now.

“We should not deny our ambitions, our desire to dominate, our desire to shine and our aspiration to merge with omnipotent figures, but instead we should learn to recognize the legitimacy of these narcissistic forces [...]. We will then be able [...] to transform our archaic grandiosity and exhibitionism into realistic self-esteem and pleasure with ourselves [...] adaptive and joyful capacity to be enthusiastic and to admire the great upon whose life, deeds and personality we can afford to model ourselves” (Kohut, 1982).

Kohut reminds us that the desire to dominate is legitimate but must be geared toward building realistic self-esteem. It seems to me, however, that it is precisely this adaptive work that is lacking in coaches, who thus become dominated by their grandiose thoughts, which if unacknowledged trigger these moments of irrationality in them.

Inter e Juve crisis

A team’s crisis occurs when problems with play and a reduced collective cohesion between players and coach weld together. This resulted in yet another bad performance by Juventus against Monza and Inter’s third defeat in the league.

If the game is negatively influenced by injuries, the inclusion of new signings, the tarnished state of form of some starters the team cannot produce the game it would like to. In these situations what must sustain the team is cohesion, unity of purpose, and collective work. In practice, players must interact on the field for the purpose of showing unity and confidence in their team skills even if they are not optimal at that stage. Napoleon was accustomed to say that he also won his battles with the dreams of his soldiers, and this phrase is an effective metaphor for what should be meant by collective effectiveness.

This mentality must be fostered by the behaviors and statements of the coach, who aware of the limitations of the game, must act to arouse the psychological strength of the players as a team. As Al Pacino says so well in the movie “Every Damn Sunday” in the role of the coach of a team in crisis, “So … either we rise up now, as a collective, or we will be annihilated individually.”

My impression is that Allegri and Inzaghi think too much about the schemes, the game and less about making individuals and the team proactive. The motivation to help each other, to get out of difficult situations and to want to move forward together, comes before the game. One cannot hide behind the thought that because players are very well-paid professionals they should always express themselves to the fullest or know how to behave in moments of nervousness or depression. One cannot say as Allegri said in relation to the Champions route that the decisive game would be the home match with Benfica, it means throwing sand in the delicate gears of a team. Or to remain puzzled, as Inzaghi said, after the Udinese game. They seem to have lost awareness of the psychological condition of the team and individuals. It is not the game forms per se that make a team great but how these are played. As with an actor, it is not enough to have learned the part by heart; his success will depend on how he plays his role. Performing implies a strong psychological involvement. This is what coaches need to work on, and perhaps they might even realize that working with a sports psychologist might help them.

Words reveal coach’s idea of athlete

Too often coaches have only a biomechanical conception of the athlete and think they can teleguide them.

It is common to hear phrases like:

  • Athletes must be motivated.
  • Training must go to improving athletes’ skills
  • It’s clear that this one goes down immediately
  • Stimulating them makes them mentally engaged
  • When I go to have my athlete visualized

They reveal:

  • Coach conception as some kind of magician who changes people.
  • Passive conception of athletes changing in reaction to stimulus (the coach’s words) and not as they are active agents of their own improvement.
  • Conception that one must react and the coach is the trainer of people, who without such guidance cannot improve.

Feeling ready to play a match

The variation of activation levels during matches is influenced by many situations and individual characteristics, among them the most important are:

  1. Sports experience – the greater the experience playing high-level matches, the greater the ability to know how to enter the match at the optimal activation level.
  2. Anxiety - the greater the degree of insecurity regarding one’s role on the field, the greater will be the level of activation, which if not reduced may prevent the player from playing at his or her best.
  3. Fatigue - the greater the physical and mental fatigue, the greater the likelihood of manifesting levels of activation and agonism that are too low and therefore inadequate.
  4. Impulsiveness - the greater the footballer’s impulsiveness, the greater the likelihood that his activation level will be too high at times of increased competitive tension and his play will become foul.
  5. Control of thoughts - the better personal self-control during the game, the lower the likelihood of acting without thinking.
  6. Motivation - the lower the motivation to play at one’s best, the lower the commitment and attention and the lower the level of physical and mental activation.
  7. Tenacity - the greater the conviction that one knows how to deal with any competitive situation with determination, the more effective the level of activation the footballer will be able to put himself in before the match.
  8. The role on the field - the clearer and more specific the role on the field is for the kicker, the more easily he will know what to pay attention to, how to mentally charge himself before the start of the match and how to maintain this condition during the course of the match.
  9. The phases of the match - Everything that happens during the match influences and is influenced by the activation levels of players and teams in a process of constant and mutual interaction. Important and decisive matches or friendly matches, early or late stages of the match, result for or against, playing in 10 rather than 11 are situations that affect the intensity of the competitive charge, which corresponds to the level of activation of the collective.
  10. The team - paraphrasing the saying that the champion team is made up of the players who amalgamate in the best way, it can be said that the champion team is made up of those players from whose global activation releases the agonistic charge necessary to express their game.

The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology

Natalie Durand-Bush et al. The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology (GMP-SP). Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Published online  April, 2022

The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology (GMP-SP) is a comprehensive, evidence-informed framework integrating mental performance competencies underpinning the athletic performances of Canadian athletes capable of stepping onto the Para/Olympic Podium. The GMP-SP was established to guide Mental Performance Consultants (MPCs) and National Sport Organizations (NSOs) in their design, delivery, tracking, and evaluation of mental skills programs in the Canadian high performance sport system. A Participatory Action Research approach involving a 2-year cyclical process of planning, action, reflection, and evaluation informed the collaborative work of six experienced Canadian MPCs (four men, two women). The group, whose lived experience was integral to the relevance and impact of the inquiry collectively had over 125 years of experience conducting research and consulting in high performance sport. A review of the scientific literature combined with the experts’ professional practice led to the creation of the GMP-SP, which includes 11 mental performance competencies grouped under three broad categories: (a) fundamental competencies (motivation, confidence, resilience), (b) self-regulation competencies (self-awareness, stress management, emotion, and arousal regulation, attentional control), and (c) interpersonal competencies (athlete-coach relationship, leadership, teamwork, communication). Mental health was also included as an overarching construct influencing the achievement of mental and athletic performance. The GMP-SP fulfills an important gap given the current lack of models, methods, and tools to guide the operationalization of mental performance systems in high performance sport that include both intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies.

Lay summary: The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology (GMP-SP) is a framework integrating 11 mental performance competencies underpinning podium success in Canadian high performance sport, with attention to mental health. The GMP-SP is intended to guide practitioners and sport leaders in their sport psychology programming and resource allocation to support athletes in their quest for excellence.

  • IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
  • Mental Performance Consultants (MPCs) can use the Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology (GMP-SP) for the assessment, periodization, and implementation of mental skills training programs in high performance sport.
  • The GMP-SP can be used to educate athletes, coaches, and staff about the importance of mental performance skills to achieve success in high performance sport. The GMP-SP uniquely highlights intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies and the interplay between mental performance and mental health.
  • The analogy of gold, silver, and bronze in the GMP-SP can help practitioners, scholars, and sport leaders to plan, test, and allocate adequate resources and funding for the development of mental competencies.

Sport in Florence with the City Olympic and Paralympic Games

Sport, sport, sport. There is a lot of talk about it in Italy, but the numbers tell a different reality: just 27 percent of the population over the age of 18 plays sports and one in two is over 45. We talked about this with Alberto Cei, sports psychologist and professor at the Universities of Tor Vergata and San Raffaele.

Interview by Alessandro Bartolini for the press office of the Olympics and Paralympics of the Metropolitan City of Florence sent with newsletter of UISP Florence

What are the reasons for this move away from sports at a very young age?

“The peak of activity is at age 12 for boys and 11 for girls, from there the descent begins. There are many reasons: first of all, school organization does not consistently provide for motor activity, then there is a significant lack of facilities, which certainly does not help. Growing up then increases the commitment with study and consequently also the difficulties, because teachers do not always recognize the value of these activities, there is not adequate attention. Finally, there is another aspect related to family needs: it is always parents or at any rate relatives who have to accompany the younger ones to sports, not everyone has this possibility and it is a further limitation.”

The pandemic has dealt a further blow: according to Istat data, once again the worst numbers are in the youth groups, with a double-digit decrease: from 66 to 48.9 percent for elementary school children, from 68 to 54.8% for middle school children.

“Undoubtedly the pandemic has weighed heavily; at that age it is unnatural to be locked inside the house. Instead, they were urged to lead sedentary lives, and eventually the use of technological tools, starting with smartphones, became an alternative to socializing in presence, since they still allow them to maintain relationships. Those who already had little motivation to play sports or did so occasionally, having to stay locked in their apartments, got used to it and gave up. Of course, it is not a homogeneous situation, maybe those who live in big cities suffered more than those who live in small towns where it is easier to be in contact with nature.”

We were talking earlier about the somewhat complicated relationship between sports and schools. How much work needs to be done to strengthen this synergy?

“Unfortunately, schools do not consider sports activity as a central element in the education of girls and boys; there is also an underestimation of the role of teachers specialized in this area. Significantly, many schools either do not have gymnasiums or these facilities are unusable for years. We saw, for example, what happened during the pandemic: gymnasiums often became the repository for unused rolling desks or for stacking old ones. It is a problem of mentality that comes from a long time ago; in the last 30-40 years not much has changed. There have been and there are projects, but it’s one thing to reach 10,000 or 20,000 students, it’s another to involve everyone and make sports a decisive activity for youth development.”

In this perspective, how much can events such as the Metropolitan City Olympics and Paralympics “serve”?

“Any sports event is certainly welcome, all the more so if, as in this case, it is an entire territory, one of the largest and most important provinces in Italy, moving in the same direction. It is a strong signal to be able to change the culture, and it is crucial that these do not remain isolated events, but serve as a stimulus for others so as to trigger a virtuous circle.”

Paralimpic athletes’ mindset