PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum

I thought this would be quite interesting to most here. I know its long winded but would relate to Football and our club. I believe these 3 aspects has been truly laking at the Tigers and has been for 25 years.

The only time it could have been building was when Northey was our coach for that brief period.

Culture

8 Steps to building a successful culture.

1. Clarify requirements and definitions

• Be sure culture change is what’s needed. Find out what’sdriving the requirement – you might be able to solve theproblem more easily by changing something specificthat doesn’t need people to change their underlyingvalues and beliefs.
• Be specific about definitions. Think about using one ofthe models in this report as a starting point. Make sureeveryone involved means the same thing when they say“culture.”
• Make sure managers know what they’re lettingthemselves in for. Organizational culture is complex,deep-rooted, and will take considerable time and energyto change.
• Be sure there’s commitment from the top.

2. Set realistic objectives• Don’t try and boil the ocean. Think in terms of modifyingaspects of the existing culture rather than trying tochange it completely.

• Allow realistic timeframes. Culture is based on years ofhistory and woven into every aspect of the organization.
• Remember, it’s impossible to control culture completely,but you can influence it.

3. Establish a partnership approach

• Agree how you’ll work together with other functionssuch as HR, marketing, operations and strategy.

• Consider setting up a specific team or working group.

4. Understand your existing culture

• Use a cultural audit to understand what’s drivingpeople’s behaviors.
• Make sure you’re assessing culture (long term, hard tochange) not climate (short term, influenced by recentevents)
• Use techniques designed to get underneath what’shappening “today” and understand the underlying rules guiding behavior.
• Use results to establish those aspects of the culture youwant to modify or re-emphasize. 5. Get leaders on board
• Help leaders understand what needs to change and workthrough what this means in practical terms forthemselves and their teams.
• Be clear about their responsibility for communicationand make them accountable for it.
• Provide training and materials to support them withcommunication.
• Make sure they back up words with action.

6. Help teams interpret what values mean for them

• Culture is about behaviors. Get beyond high-level statements and help people understand how you want them to behave differently by being clear about what values mean for them in practical terms.
• Use interactive sessions and exercises to help employees work through how they will apply the values to real scenarios from day to day.• Make sure values are consistent with your strategy and brand, so people don’t get confused about what’s required of them
.• Recognize and celebrate successes. Build up a body of stories to help people understand what are seen as helpful and un helpful behaviors.

7. Consider the needs of sub-cultures

• National and regional cultures may interpret valuesdifferently and use systems and infrastructures indifferent ways.
• Provide core messages and partner with business unitsto communicate them in ways that are relevant andappropriate for their teams.
• Be clear about the extent to which you want toencourage aspects of a global culture or emphaszeidentification with specific sub-cultures.

7 Go the distance

• Culture change is systemic and takes time – you’ll needpatience and perseverance!
• Use periodic focus groups, interviews or surveys to review progress and understand where you need to do things differently.


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Helen Coley-Smith, Change Communication expert for The Hub EIGHT STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL CULTURE CHANGE:An eight-step model for successful culture

Mental Toughness

By

Dr. Smt. Jolly Ray


Mental toughness is the ability to consistently sustain one’s ideal performance state during adversities in competition. Performing to one's potential requires good technique and mental skills. Ups and downs in performance are often directly traceable to psychological ups and downs. Players who create a special atmosphere within them perform consistently. Mental toughness is learnt, not inherited. The ultimate measure of mental toughness is consistency.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL TOUGHNESS

The mentally tough competitor is self-motivated and self directed. He/she does not need to be pushed from outside as he is controlled from within. The player is in total control of his emotions. He is positive and realistic about his goals and success. The individual is generally calm and relaxed under pressure situations. The person is also mentally alert, focussed, confident and responsible for his actions. He is ready for action, usually energetic and determined.

Fundamental areas of mental toughness are:

Self-Confidence
Self-Motivation
Negative Energy Control
Positive Energy Control
Attention Control
Visual/Imagery Control
Attitude Control


Self-Confidence: It is a way of feeling. One can develop self-confidence with practice. The key ingredient is belief in self. You develop self-confidence by elevation of self-image, learning to stay calm, goal setting, positive thinking, self discipline and reviewing performance.

Self-Motivation: It is a source of positive energy. It helps to endure pain, discomfort and self-sacrifice. To overcome low self-motivation, set meaningful long-term goals, commit the goals on a training book, keep a daily record, associate with self-motivated players, enjoy the activity.

Negative Energy Control: Controlling negative emotions like fear, anger, envy, frustration and temper. Performing with negative energy results in inconsistency. To overcome negative energy, increase awareness, psycho, regulation, physical exercise and stimulate competitive situations.

Positive Energy Control: It is the ability to become energized with joy, determination and team spirit. It helps players to maintain the required arousal level to achieve peak performance. To overcome low positive energy control, increase awareness, develop enthusiasm, start feeling good and ensure physical fitness.

Attention Control: It is the ability to tune what is important and what is not important (i. e., to disassociate from what is irrelevant). Improve calming and quieting skills, time awareness, get the positive energy flowing and concentration training.

Visual/Imagery Skills: It is process of creating pictures or images in mind (i. e., thinking in pictures) This is one of the most powerful techniques to develop mental toughness as it is the connecting link between the mind and body. To overcome low visual/imagery skills- practice visualization with all the senses, ensure internal calmness, use photographs and start rehearsing mentally in advance.

Attitude Control: It is a reflection of the player's habits of thoughts. The right attitude produces emotional control and right flow of energy. To overcome low attitude control, identify positive and negative attitudes. Positive affirmation reinforces positive attitude, keep records and have a vision or commitment.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

Acquiring new modes of behavior by assimilating varied changes is a continuous process that occurs throughout the life. In sports the ultimate aim of achieving fine motor skills is to enhance one’s performance. Therefore, to bring in this desirable effect, certain principles are to be borne in mind.

Reinforcement – is any event or response which serves to increase the frequency of the behaviors that preceded its presentation. Positive or negative reinforcement helps or avoids repeating a desirable performance or stopping an undesirable performance. Delayed reinforcements are often less productive.

Motivation – is a process by which an individual is inspired to do something? Motivated condition is essential for effective learning. A need is to be created within the individual.

Feedback – is the knowledge of result which helps to check the performance and make the necessary modification after a self-evaluation.

Individual Differences – pertaining to physical, psychological and socio-cultural differences can affect the learning and performance.

Emotional Arousal – if in optimum level, is the most desirable for performance. Different games require different levels of arousal.

Insight – means sensing intuitively the inner nature of something. In a game situation, it may perceive the situations in a new way, and applying new tactics and strategy.

Information Processing – is collecting the right information that may be any idea, image, fact, knowledge etc. and putting these together for interpreting and responding to incoming stimuli.

Transfer of Training – indicates that an earlier habit influences the performance of later habit. Bilateral transfer occurs when one part of the body facilitates learning by another. Positive effect occurs when similarity in skills is established. Negative effect occurs if the skills have been mastered and if major changes are attempted.

Level of Aspiration – is the level to which one aspires, a standard set by a person by which success or failure can be personally gauged. In sports, choosing a realistic level as a strong motivator makes the learning effective.

Plateau – is a transition stage, which is only a temporary stagnation phase where the rate of improvement in learning is at the minimum. With appropriate corrective measures, this stage can be overcome. The duration of plateau stage varies from person to person.

Mental Practice – with physical activity results in early learning and aids in better performance by chalking out appropriate game strategies.

Self Confidence

The majestic self-confidence of Jonny Wilkinson - or how expectations can make or break your performance

The image of Jonny Wilkinson majestically kicking his way into the history books during last November’s Rugby World Cup final will live long in the memories of English rugby fans. The decisive drop-goal, scored with just seconds of extra time remaining, demonstrated not just immense skill but the confidence of a winner.

It is easy to forget that Wilkinson had failed with three previous attempted drop-goals up to this point in the match. These failures might have dented the confidence of a player with a more brittle temperament, resulting in more tentative and indecisive future actions. But in an interview following the final whistle Wilkinson revealed that, having missed the previous three attempts, he felt he was going to make the fourth one count. The rest, as they say, is history.

This one example encapsulates the importance of confidence and self-belief to the sports performer.

Of course, having high levels of self-confidence is no guarantee of success and will not compensate for lack of skill, but in situations where competitors are evenly matched it can be the crucial determinant.

In research, confidence has been shown to consistently distinguish between highly successful and less successful athletes. Although many people mistakenly assume that confidence reflects performance – ie we become confident once we have performed consistently well – it is becoming increasingly evident that confidence can be established beforehand.

Sport psychologists define self-confidence as the belief that you can successfully perform a desired behaviour

Confident athletes expect success and have a high level of self-belief that appears crucial in determining how far they strive towards their goals. It is largely confidence that determines whether people give up or remain committed to their goals following a series of setbacks.

For the sake of simplicity, we may consider self-confidence as conceptually opposite to cognitive anxiety (negative beliefs and performance worries). Both are related to our beliefs and both, ultimately, influence our performance.

Coaches can often see fluctuations in the balance between these two opposing states reflected in the behaviour of their athletes. While confident athletes are not afraid of making mistakes, often taking calculated risks in order to take charge of a situation, self-doubters often avoid responsibility, becoming over-conservative and paralysed by fear of failure. Think of the football striker who has not scored for a number of successive matches and is riddled with self-doubt. When presented with a half-chance which would usually result in a snap-shot, he may elect to avoid responsibility and pass to a team mate.

According to psychologist Albert Bandura, performers’ situational-specific confidence, or ‘self-efficacy’, is based on four primary sources of information.

The first and most important factor is past performance accomplishments. What we have achieved in training and competition forms the basis of future expectations of success or failure. Repeated success naturally leads to positive expectations of further success, higher motivation and enhanced self-belief.

Unfortunately, the flip side of this principle is that repeated failures can give rise to a downward performance spiral and a ‘snowball effect’ whereby a performer starts to believe that success is unattainable. Of course, such an athlete does not mysteriously lose his or her physical skills and talents, but without confidence in these abilities high-level performance is rarely achieved.

A third way for coaches to help build confidence is through verbal persuasion. By means of careful reasoning, athletes can be shown that other people (ie the coach) have confidence in their abilities and believe they can achieve set goals. Coaches may even use deception to persuade their athletes that goals can be achieved – of which more later. Verbal persuasion can also take the form of ‘self-talk’, whereby the athlete convinces himself that success will follow.


Clearly, confidence is enhanced by good preparation, planning and a sense of optimism. Conversely, negative thinking and pessimism can undermine performance and limit progress. By expecting failure, we set our belief system to a negative channel and start favouring information that is consistent with these beliefs.

During a training session we may have done some things well and struggled with others. When we have a negative mind-set we tend to focus only on the things that went badly, leading to what psychologists call negative self-fulfilling prophecies and psychological barriers.


The fact that expectations influence performance has been demonstrated in controlled experiments and case studies. In medical settings, giving patients a sugar pill (placebo) and telling them it is morphine has been found, in some cases, to produce as much pain relief as the real thing (1).

Deception has been used in similar ways in sporting studies. In one, 24 participants had their arms strength-tested and were then asked to arm-wrestle an opponent (5). Before each match, the researchers deceived both participants into believing that the objectively weaker participant was actually the stronger – and in 10 out of 12 contests, the ‘weakest link’ actually won! Clearly, the outcomes were not predicted by physical strength but by belief.

So how can coaches and athletes use this information to expect success and build confidence? I am not suggesting that coaches should deceive their athletes in pursuit of this goal, as this can backfire and damage trust, but Bandura’s model (see Figure 1) does provide many other answers to this question. Nothing breeds confidence like success (performance accomplishments), so coaches must nurture their athletes by ensuring success in training and competition, which in some cases may mean redefining success or making it more achievable.

Success can be defined in two ways: in relation to others or in relation to an athlete’s own past performance. If a marathon runner, for example, measures success only in terms of objective outcome, coming third may be perceived as failure and so damage confidence. But if the same runner measures success in relation to his own performance and notes that his finish time was over a minute faster than his PB, the perception is quite different. Athletes have more control over performance goals than outcome goals.

During training, coaches may need to work with their athletes on perceived weaknesses. To ensure success and build confidence they might simplify the skill or skills in question. Think about a person who decides she cannot do press-ups after a negative circuit training experience. To build confidence, the instructor may show the participant a simpler form of the activity (eg press-ups on knees) and allow strength (and success) to be built up over the next few weeks. As the athlete gains confidence, the instructor can work towards introducing the full press-up into the circuit. As a series of goals are steadily accomplished, performance and confidence are built.

Simulated practice conditions can also be used to boost confidence by exposing the participant to performance conditions. In this way an athlete can develop confidence from the knowledge that he has overcome problems in practice. Mental preparation via competitive situation imagery is a particularly useful technique.

It is vital for athletes to know that their coaches believe in them. Although coaching often involves correcting mistakes and giving constructive criticism, it is important to give positive feedback and praise where appropriate in order to create a positive pre-competition environment.

Confidence does not always mean you will perform at your best, but it certainly increases the likelihood of reaching your potential. Remember that confidence can be nurtured. Outstanding performers like Jonny Wilkinson are not simply born with confidence; they develop it through hard work and effective training. The start point is challenging yourself to think confidently. If you believe you can win, you become a very difficult person to beat.

Lee Crust- This article was taken from the "Peak Performance newsletter "


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