Start of the Season
Mental Metrix provides measurable, objective, personality, communication, and leadership data on players and coaches to more efficiently establish and work within a culture of high performance.
Since the moment last season ended, teams have been focused on building the best roster possible to be competitive in the upcoming football season.
Not all the work to get there happens on the field though. With the shuffling of players and rosters, each year teams have to build around new personalities. The start of the season is not just about showcasing who can play football at the highest level. The start of the season is when coaches showcase their talents at bringing and leading 55 highly talented, motivated players from all backgrounds together around a single mission: winning as a team.
With the movement of coaches and veteran players and the addition of this year’s rookies, team dynamics inevitably shift.
Industrial/Organizational and Sport Psychology research suggests that building a new team can take up to two years to develop the baseline cohesion necessary for high performance.
One of the obstacles in forming new teams and team cultures is understanding the roles individuals play within the group dynamics. Another is in learning how others communicate. This inevitably leads to conflict. It is important to note that not all conflict is bad. The challenge teams have to face is moving through the conflict quickly to get to a resolution that drives cohesion and performance.
In sport there are a few key individuals designated as team leaders, like a team captain. But there are other roles teams need to identify and fill within the group, too. Whether officially or unofficially, someone has to fill the role of ‘hype man’ bringing the energy necessary for competition. Someone has to be the peacekeeper that allows for cooler tempers to prevail at the height of competition. Someone drives accountability — holding teammates to the highest standard of performance.
Beyond identifying and fulfilling those roles, there are communication quirks to learn and work with. Individuals are motivated differently — understanding individual differences and how to leverage those differences takes time.
The good news is there are tools to accelerate that transition.
Mental Metrix provides measurable, objective, personality, communication, and leadership data on players and coaches to more efficiently establish and work within a culture of high performance. Our data accelerates the time it takes for integrating new players and coaches by outlining the strengths of personality, the nuances of communication, and the style of leadership each individual brings to the team.
One of the Mental Metrix frameworks provides data for understanding personality.
Personality is one of those words that we all know and use in conversation. How Psychologists and Mental Performance experts understand personality is a bit more sophisticated. To start, here are a few key understandings:
Personality can be measured. We don’t have to depend on observation or the perception of others to understand the individuals on a team.
Personalities are measured across five spectra. We all fall somewhere on each scale.
There’s lots of personality structures — and they all bring value.
Understanding personality measures allows coaches to maximize the performance of individuals. With an understanding of traits like impulsivity, resilience, stress propensity, and motivators, coaches have the cheat codes to drive increased performance.
NOTE: Without the data, it’s hard to know exactly how to work with an individual. The data makes it so a coach can know exactly what tool in his arsenal to use for different players. Recognizing that we’re speaking in general terms, outlined are critical personality traits that may accelerate or impede the impact of cohesion and performance throughout the season: Motivation & Emotion and Openness to Change.
Motivation & Emotion
Some folks are motivated by negative emotion, some are motivated by positive emotion. Understanding simple motivators allows leaders to flex within their own personality, adapting to the needs of their athletes. If you don’t have the data, start paying attention to the type of responses you get from your athletes and adjust accordingly.
Case Study: Athletes A & B and Their Playing Style
Athlete A is driven by the fierceness of competition - winning and losing, aggression, and defeating obstacles.
Athlete B sees the game as an opportunity to show off his competitive cunning and relate positively to others.
These two athletes are motivated to compete by different emotional dispositions. It’s important to note that how a player communicates does not mean they are a positive or negative person per se. As a coach or leader, understanding the significance of the words your athletes use allows you to flex the way you communicate with your athlete in return. Think of it this way, you know Athlete A is driven by the fierceness of competition — naturally you would emphasize that athlete’s desire to compete. By contrast, Athlete B is driven by the community of sport. Aligning your own coaching communication to their motivation allows for maximized performance from the athlete because you’re speaking in the exact terms that motivate them respectively.
Openness to Change
Year after year, professional and collegiate teams bring in new talent. Players are either moving up a league or they’re transferring through the portal or free agency. The composition of teams is always changing. A healthy organization should already have an established culture and values, so integrating new players should not completely alter the state of the organization. Just because a culture may be pre-established, though, doesn’t guarantee individual athletes come with a predisposition to adopt and adapt to that culture.
Openness to Change has tentacles through all parts of a sporting organization. It impacts willingness to adopt a new style of play, ability to receive feedback in a new way, and form new relationships. All of this is happening against the backdrop of a new city. The fact of the matter is team culture is simply one part of joining a new organization.The host city plays an important role in individual comforts, as well.
All of this impacts the time it takes to integrate to a club and subsequently perform.
Case Studies
Case Study #1
Mental Metrix Founder, Chris Spencer
Chris Spencer, made several huge transitions in his professional career. Don’t be fooled by the fact they're both in Mississippi. If you’re familiar with Mississippi, you know that the transition from Flora, Mississippi, to Oxford, Mississippi is huge.
Making the leap from NCAA in Mississippi to the NFL in Seattle was another huge transition for Spencer. Learning a new team culture, adjusting to new coaching styles, and adopting a new city with a very different pace of life and climate, all impact the onboarding process.
These kinds of transitions can have a huge impact on an individual. When the athlete moving also moves with a family, those stressors can be compounded. Understanding the athlete’s openness to change allows teams to anticipate where the integration and onboarding process may create internal stressors.
Case Study #2
NCAA and the Transfer Portal
With the advent of the Transfer Portal, identifying and retaining the right talent has created new challenges to coaches and educational institutions, alike. We’ve seen it with several of our clients. When athletes are less open to change, teams may experience a decreased time to performance. Some even experience larger turnover through the Portal as athletes struggle to make their new city feel like home.
The transition from high school senior to college freshman is a huge transition. This transition may mean the athlete doesn’t have the same playing time, which can impact an athlete’s identity. Doing all of that in a new city adds to the transition even more so.
When athletes are less open to change, teams may experience a delay, or even a failure, in reaching maximal performance. Understanding the degree to which these changes may impact the individual allows for teams and leaders to prepare targeted onboarding and integration plans for new players.
Motivation, Emotionality, and Openness to Change are three of 35 measurable personality traits. Understanding the polarities that your players may represent allows coaches to more effectively bring together a group of individuals to perform as a unit.
With Impact Reports, coaches and leaders have the data they need to identify, develop, and retain talent to accelerate the time to effectiveness and drive high performance.
