Failing Faster - Strategies for Moving Through Stressful Situations
In an episode of his "Finding Mastery" podcast from winter 2016, high performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais mentions that there are three stages that we move through in stressful situations:
Mental
Emotional
Craft/Skill
I would consider most situations in which failure occurs to be stressful so I think we should examine what it means to move through Gervais’ stages in those situations. I interpret this simply as:
Mental: Recognizing/being aware of things not going as I had intended
Emotional: "Well, crap. That was wrong/bad/ugly. I suck."
Craft/Skill: Noticing specifically what it was that went wrong, making adjustments
There are plenty of variations of what that progression looks and sounds like; some are faster or slower, harder or easier to navigate. What those thoughts sound like in our heads and the frequency and/or intensity of those thoughts have some influence over how long this process can take.
I believe that perhaps the most important thing I do as a coach is free athletes up to compete at their best. If I want to free athletes to execute at their best then I should do three things:
Give them tools to manage their thoughts and progression through Gervais’ three stages
Be aware of how they are managing themselves and progressing through the stages
Give feedback that is appropriate in timing and content with respect to those stages
While an untrained athlete can make it through the three stages on their own, I can help athletes to accelerate the process. To do so, I must provide them with tools to move through each stage in order to free them up to either move on to execute a skill or to hear and effectively apply feedback. The tools I use for accelerating are a proactive thought cycle and mindfulness in the manner of Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis (more about the book here). The short version of a proactive thought cycle is that if we spend time prior to skill execution planning how we will execute, we can minimize dissonant or jarring thoughts and feelings because our thoughts are already in a more positive voice. This dovetails with mindfulness during execution, which encourages us to notice how we are executing without judging. Together, these two tools allow athletes to be aware of what is happening as it is happening as well as to dampen any emotional response. These actions can streamline an athlete’s movement through the first two stages (mental, emotional). It is easier for them to work on what they are thinking (skill execution) if they are already in control of how they are thinking (self talk).
If I want to help coach athletes through their mental progression, I need to learn what they look like and sound like when they fail (or when they think they have failed). If I watch them, they will show some physical/audible signs of their thoughts. I can use those signs as starting points for conversations about how they are processing what they are doing. (I shape these conversations in a motivational interviewing style.) I like to say things like, "I noticed you doing/saying X after that play. Can you help me understand what I saw/heard? What was going through your mind?" I then make mental notes about how each athlete tends to respond so I can watch/listen for those signs in the future. When I see those signs then I understand which stage an athlete is in. If I see an athlete get stuck in a particular stage, I want to give them an opportunity to move themselves through that stage before exposing them to more feedback. I want to give them the opportunity to manage themselves before I choose to step in.
If I see them get stuck in particular stage, I can intervene and remind them how to use their tools to more effectively move on from the previous play. Part of this intervention is accurately diagnosing which stage they are in. I want to give them feedback that is appropriate for that stage so that what I say is timely and helpful for what they are going through. I should recognize that if an athlete is still processing what happened mentally or emotionally and I am giving them skill feedback, they likely won’t be able to assimilate the feedback very well because their mind is in a different thinking mode. The same would be true if I give them feedback about a stage that they have already moved through. If they are thinking emotionally and I ask them about what just happened (mental stage), I better have a good reason for doing so because I am forcing them to change mental directions. This goes back to my desire to free them up to perform at their best. I should be aware of what my feedback is asking them to process and what it is setting them up to do next.
We can’t (and shouldn’t) prevent athletes from failing but we should teach them how to fail and how to fail faster. The faster and more effectively they can fail, the sooner they will be ready to succeed.