This blog post was written back in late 2018, hence the reference to Pooh bear! > Yesterday I watched a film. Not an ultra cool film, a film with many hidden messages for the grown ups watching, but something struck me when Pooh bear said
Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.
Well most of the day is taken up with emails, phone calls, admin and delivery. Actually maybe for a small amount of time each week we should focus on nothing. Today in my bit of ‘nothing’ time I thought about ‘something’. Being the first day of our academy season here at ProFormance I thought about motivation.
The word is easy to define, put simply motivation is our reason for doing something, or nothing. But it’s a real challenge to define what motivates us.
This half term we focus on our goal setting, helping young players set targets, and this we hope will give them the ‘motivation’ to focus their efforts to develop their footballing ability, their skill, or take the chance to step to the next level in the football pyramid.
But we are not all motivated in the same way. Some people are motivated easily by external factors, you can think of this like a carrot on a stick, leading an animal to move. Maybe a treat or financial reward for every goal scored? But there are also internal motivators, doing things for yourself and these are certainly harder to assess.
As coaches we assess our players, or a parents our children, and it can be confusing to understand what the core factors in motivation are. Doing well in school or life is not associated totally to IQ, actually grit has been shown to be a better indicator of long term success. This can be related to football, is skill really the deciding factor in long term success (i.e. making it) or is it the passion and perseverance (grit) that will help players make it.
Using external factors to motivate can get short term gains. I kind of think of it like the Mourinho factor, we have seen him have huge success in short blasts at different clubs, but maybe his motivational techniques are shot term. Similarly when we offer a carrot to an animal to walk, when we take the carrot away, the animal stops. If we offer a pound a goal, when we take the money away, can the player still perform?
We want to try to insure that players have the desire to succeed and not the fear of failure. To achieve this long term we need to move away from external motivators. A way to help players achieve this internal motivation is to help them understand skill can be developed. To help players understand that the ability to learn is not fixed, development doesn’t stop. This is known as a ‘growth mindset’. When talent is multiplied by effort, skill development will occur, when a player believes there is no end to their potential, optimal internal motivation can occur.
So while we continue in our academy plan, to set aims and goals, we will take on board the players own (internal) aims, to try and align these values and hopefully gain an understanding of each players motivations.
If we can understand the internal motivators, try not to lean towards the external factors, and harness this motivation towards passion and perseverance, we will be helping our players achieve their goals and long term success.
Perhaps the next question is, how do we teach grit? (see other blog posts for the answer!)