We’ve all seen and heard about it, where a player is lambasted in front of his team-mates by his coach for making a mistake that he has made on the pitch which cost the team a vital win or draw. The player feels terrible and now he feels a lot worse, he’s embarrassed and ashamed too. This is classic command style coaching.
Thankfully, those days aren’t so common now, though certainly do exist, especially at the top end of the professional level when the stakes are very high. Modern coaching principles encourage players to put themselves in positions to express themselves and make mistakes. These coaches then back off and try to allow the player to process the error and work out the best way to move on for themselves.
You don’t need to tell a player or athlete when they have made a mistake when they get to a high level. By continuing to point out mistakes, the big emotions that come with the error (shame, embarrassment) become bigger and are stored more easily in the brain therefore by taking this approach, in effect what you are doing is punishing the player, which in turn then leads to fear of failure or choking.
Fear of failure I come across often, especially with highly motivated athletes who have perfectionist tendencies. Athletes who end up fearing failure or choking can be spotted a mile away as they are characterised by low confidence, they may also look anxious and tense. The likelihood too is that they have an obsession with the scoreboard and outcomes. As a result, they’ll do their best to avoid mistakes and failure, perhaps hiding in the background not taking responsibility. They may even avoid playing competitively too or fake injuries.
As a coach how can I reduce the fear of failure?
What should I avoid doing as a coach?
Two things I’d encourage you as a coach to NOT do is to praise ‘natural ability’. This is only going to create a fixed mindset and will backfire further down the line where athletes may struggle accepting defeat and dealing with failure. Also, discussions about winning or the score line are not helpful too as this just adds extra pressure to those individuals who worry themselves with making mistakes and makes the “fear of failure” worse.
FOCUSING ON THE PROCESS is the way ahead as backed up by the following quotes.
Thomas Edison – “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
Sebastien Coe – “A great fallacy in sport and other walks of life is that people think it’s only when you win that you succeed. They think failure is automatically linked with losing, and it’s not. I learnt more in finishing third in that one race than I learnt in the 10 or 12 years leading up to it.”
Michael Jordan – “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.”
Rory McIlroy – “You can’t be afraid of failure – I learnt a lot from 2011”
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