Fixed and Growth Mindset [Part 2]

This article is guest blogged by Lee Ness, a UKA qualified Event Group Coach for Sprints and Hurdles, the Head Coach/Sprint Coach at City of Salisbury Athletics, and Running Club and Track and Field Team Manager for Wiltshire Athletics Association.

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Mindset Part 2 – Coaching Growth Mindset

In my previous article (Part 1), I explained Carole Dweck’s mindset model and how fixed, and growth mindsets are developed. I also covered how certain triggers create these two mindsets and the characteristics of each. As coaches, our aim is to create better athletes, and it is clear from the mindset model that all athletes need a growth mindset.

How to Give Praise

We all want to support our athletes and give them lots of praises because we believe this is encouraging. In a short term view, this is correct. However, praise can do more harm than good if done incorrectly as we saw in part 1. So how do you give appropriate praise that ensures athletes have no fear of failure and encourage an improvement philosophy.

First, praise should not be biased to their results. Praise must focus on effort and the process that they are adopting. Obviously, progress is measured by results, but this needs to be managed carefully. The messages here are critical to the development. All coaches know that a kid who wins races with sheer brute force, and no technique will eventually get beaten by a superior technique as the athletes develop and then will never recover the gap. We know this, so it is clear that the end does not justify the means. I’m sure all of us have explained and accepted a dip in performance with an athlete while we correct something for a longer term gain. There is no difference in what I am proposing here. The process is key, not the result. The result will inevitably follow.

Praising results or talent can turn athletes off to improving. They will choose easier tasks to reinforce the label they are given. Beating people and coming first becomes more important to them than improvement and growth. This was a revelation for me and yet with hindsight I can see where it has happened. I have had athletes that are so ingrained in results that they have chosen lower level competitions over national level ones just because they wouldn’t win. Or others who have simply not entered a high-level competition that they qualified for because they knew they couldn’t win. The experience meant nothing to them.

In the study, praising results is a retrograde capability which in our case would result in a lowering of performance when returning from a hard race that involves some failure, back to an easier race that would previously have been successful. Fear of failure then creates failure.

If a child hears that you think, they are brilliant and talented they start to believe that is why you admire or are proud of them. “I better not do anything to disprove your evaluation”. As a result, they enter a fixed mindset, and they play it safe in the future and limit the growth of their talent.

As coaches, we must focus on the strategies they use and encourage them to stretch themselves into taking on hard tasks or praising the intense practise they are doing. Those are the kinds of things that say to a child or athlete that it is about the process of growth. If I don’t take on hard things and stick to them, I’m not going to grow, and the coach is not going to praise me.

An Aside

I write in my book about handling anxiety. There is no physiological difference between anxiety and excitement; the only difference is the emotional perspective we apply. Telling someone to ‘calm down’ when they are anxious is completely ineffective, as you are trying to completely change their excited mental state without changing the stimulus. In our case, if they are nervous over a big competition, the only way they are going to calm down is if they are not in that competition. That would obviously be counter-productive. So how do you handle anxiety?

The trick is to apply a different emotion to the mental state. This is called Reversal Theory and the switch from anxiety to excitement requires no change in the stimulus, it is merely looking at the situation from a different angle. So how is this done?

Here is an extract from my book on handling anxiety:

1. Focus on the process. Try not to think about what happens later, think about what you are doing now, the process you are going through. Focus on how you perform not what you achieve.
2. Focus on the positives of similar experiences you have had already, even if you were nervous at the time, and what you learned from them.
3. Modify your language. When you talk about the situation that makes you nervous, such as a particular event, then consciously talk about how you’ll compete, not about how it will end or what you will achieve. Focus on the process when you speak, not the outcome. Use humour to talk about what you are about to do.

The extract above is based on completely different research around Reversal Theory and yet the synergy with the mindset model is compelling.

Taken to the next logical step, you can see how someone in a fixed mindset will become more anxious than someone with a growth mindset, which will create a vicious downward performance spiral.

The most important word in the coach’s dictionary.

Use the word ‘YET.’

Failure is binary. Win/Lose. Success/Failure. Yes/No.

In contrast, “Not yet” means you haven’t finished. If your athlete makes a binary statement, then add the word YET to it.

I’m not good at………{add yet}
I can’t do ……..{add yet}
I tried ………….but it didn’t work {add yet}

Taking it further

Once this mindset is embedded for you, it needs to be extended further. First, it is not enough for you to use that language with an athlete with a fixed mindset to change them. You must do it with all your athletes. Further, you must do it when you talk about other athletes. Praise the way they train, how hard they work and link their performance to that. Whether it is talking about someone else in the group or Kirani James, the language has to be consistent. Secondly, as important as we coaches are, we are rarely the most important person in the athlete’s life. Parents need to adopt the same language and methods of praise. Parents of athletes that aren’t at the top of their sport, or their event do this naturally. If they aren’t winning then what else is there? They have to praise the effort. Often kids who achieve brilliant results early and receive amazing plaudits and praise for how talented they are, will fade away later. The average kids suddenly start to break through and put in high performances. The link is obvious.

Dealing with poor performance

With a growth mindset approach, each race is an opportunity for growth, a way to learn. The athlete will be more focused on competing against people better than them, so “poor” performances will not be about winning or losing. They will only be about failing to execute effectively. However, with a growth mindset the emphasis is on learning and therefore, unless the athlete fails to learn from their experience, whether they were unable to execute effectively or not, there can be no failure.

You can see that once you have managed to adopt this mindset (as a coach and with your athlete), simply focusing on the learning points will be a sufficient way to manage poor performance.

Summary

For all the work we put in as coaches in training and developing the athlete, if they are unable to perform when it counts or to grow and improve because they are holding themselves back mentally; we are merely spinning our wheels.

Whether you completely agree with Dweck’s Mindset model or not, ask yourself this question. It could be correct, so if I implemented it anyway, what is the downside?

Need more? Follow this link from Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code.
How to Overcome Fear of Mistakes: One Coach’s Story

Get Coyle’s term “Positive Errors” or Eric Thomas’ “Fail Forward” into your vocabulary and unleash your fearless athletes on this world!

About the Author

My name is Lee Ness. I am a UKA qualified Event Group Coach for Sprints and Hurdles, the Head Coach/Sprint Coach at City of Salisbury Athletics and Running Club and Track and Field Team Manager for Wiltshire Athletics Association. I’ve been coaching track and filed for around 7 years. I coach all the sprints, from 60m to 400m plus the long and sprint hurdles. In my sprint group I have 36 sprinters and 10 hurdlers of various ages, starting from 13. In my group I have three athletes in the UK top 10 rankings for their event.

I write about sports performance in general and have written a book called The Sports Motivation Masterplan which will be released on September 1, 2014 by December House. The book is a support guide for athletes and parents, helping them with the role of mentor through their journey from young aspiring athlete, to elite performer.