Directing emotions
A long time passed since the last entry in my blog and I almost forgot about it at all when an interesting topic came to my mind...
Since January 2009 I am teaching Crucial Conversations as a certified instructor at Sun, a training from Vital Smarts. I love teaching the class because the outcome of understanding the content and applying the skills learned can change your life.
In general as an instructor but especially for this training it is very important to come up with good stories which help the participants to make connections to real-life personal or professional situations where a discussed skill was used or could have been helpful to better understand the content.
Let me try to do a balancing act between "Crucial Conversations" and Sports Psychology:
Next to my Employee Learning Manager job at Sun I am a Curling Coach. In Curling tons of mental processes are happening all the time. On the one hand there is the shot-making (playing the Curling stone) and on the other hand there is strategy and decision making, as an individual (Skip), as a Backend (Skip and Third), and sometimes as a whole team (incl. Second and Lead).
Are there crucial conversations taking place on the ice, during a game? Well, to a certain degree. E.g. whenever the Skip is close to come up with a decision where you as a player are sure there is a better option you need to speak up. This kind of "veto" can have a huge influence on the outcome of the game but it as well can turn back at you if it goes wrong. It can become a Crucial Conversation as stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.
It should not! You cannot have an intense conversation during a game. But this needs to be part of your agreed and practiced on-ice communication otherwise it can disrupt your game.
Strong emotions can destroy established procedures in your team. Therefore it is important to have well balanced players in your team as they will perform better, will find it easier to focus on what they really want and with that will not become emotional so quickly. Here comes the coach into play:
a) He gives his best effort to make sure the team has as little distractions before and during a competition/game as possible.
b) He prepares the team for difficult situations and builds them into the practice routine.
c) He asks for good fitness.
d) He makes sure basic needs are satisfied (e.g. nutrition/sleep).
e) He shares the commitment towards goals and expectations of the team.
Psychology in sports like Curling, can make the difference of winning or losing for high performance athletes. (If you have a hard time understanding what is going on in Curling then imagine Golf as an other perfect example.) In other sports emotions can support your performance as e.g. the adrenaline will provide extra power but in Curling they could make you lose. If you for example have to make the final and decisive shot in Curling (or putt in Golf) then your focus needs to be on your routine and the steps (set-up/anticipation/execution) on how to make it happen. Often described as "being in the zone". The higher the stakes the easier you will fail following the routine, not getting in the zone. When you start thinking about what happens if you make the shot or don't, or you start remembering a similar situation where you missed the shot, you create emotions like anxiety or excitement. You would need to re-focus, step out of your routine and start it again. Here is the difficult part: Recognizing that you lost your focus and to actually re-start your routine.
In "Crucial Conversations" it is called "telling yourself a different story". Re-direct your emotions, commit to corrective action by asking yourself: "What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?". You cannot suppress or control emotions but there is a chance to develop different emotions that will make it easier to achieve the desired result!
Be your own coach and try to do your best effort to make sure your way to achieve what you really want does not have too many traps! In sports, in your profession, and your personal life.
Posted at 02:11PM Jul 10, 2009 by Oliver Axnick in Personal | Comments[0]