Have you ever faced rejection in your football carrier? Don’t blame others-start doing something about it!
Developing Resilience
Winning an Olympic gold medal ?is universally recognized as the pinnacle of sporting achievement and arguably the most demanding challenge an athlete can pursue. In a fascinating book about the personal qualities of Olympic champions, Michael Johnson explores the sporting journeys of over a dozen Olympic legends who between them have won 50 gold medals during the past four decades. A common theme throughout the book is the ability of champions to overcome various obstacles and challenges en route to their medal winning performance.
Two stories are particularly noteworthy: Ian Thorpe broke his ankle just ten months before the 2000 Sydney Games but he found ways to use his strengths in order to enhance his training, and the International Olympic Committee removed Chris Hoy’s event from the Olympic programme after the 2004 Athens Games but he subsequently took up new cycling events to continue his Olympic ambition. Why is it that such sport performers are able to withstand the pressures associated with the Olympics and attain peak performances whereas others succumb to the demands and under-perform?
We aimed to address this question in a recent study by interviewing twelve Olympic champions from a range of sports regarding their experiences of withstanding pressure during their sporting careers. We found that the world’s best athletes shared a unique mental resilience characterized by a number of key psychological attributes (relating to a positive focus, and perceived social support) that provides support to the development of Lane4’s personal resilience framework (see below). Of our study, using quotes from the gold medalists, to show how individuals can enhance their own personal resilience for sustained high performance.
DEVELOP A POSITIVE PERSONALITY
Olympic gold medalists possessed numerous positive personality characteristics, including openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, optimism, competitiveness, and proactivity. The following quote illustrates how one champion evaluated missing out on selection for a major international competition in a positive manner, due to his optimistic and proactive nature:
“There was four of us challenging told I was on the reserve list. And at the time it was devastating but it’s one of those things; if you don’t take a ticket in the raffle, you’re never going to win a prize. So you have to take the ticket… that’s part of life and it just makes you think ‘well, what can I do differently to make sure I do get success’?”
OPTIMISE MOTIVATION
Olympic gold medalists had multiple internal (e.g., achieving personally referenced goals) and external (e.g., proving their worth to others) motives for competing at the highest level. Particularly important in the context of developing resilience, the world’s best athletes recognized that they actively chose to engage with challenging situations, such as balancing work and sport, as the following quote highlights:
“We all worked. But in terms of the build up to the Olympics, we didn’t bat an eyelid in doing it… it was our choice to do it. I don’t like the word last resort and there’s no alternative – that’s rubbish. We made a choice to do that and I think that choice in what we did we highly valued and I think that inspired us, motivated us to perform on the pitch and as a group.”
STRENGTHEN CONFIDENCE
Particularly important factor for the resilience of Olympic champions. Relevant to the world’s best athletes, including preparation, experience, self-awareness, visualization, coaching, and teammates. The following quote illustrates how team positively affected a gold medalist’s evaluation of pressure:
“We were playing against (country) in our last game… and I looked at my opposite number and I thought ‘I’m going to give you a hard time today kid’… Now if I had that internal thought 18 months ago, I would have thought I was being schizophrenic or something, because if you’re going to lose to anybody it’s (country), but my team’s ability.”
MAINTAIN FOCUS
The ability to focus was an important aspect of resilience for the world’s able to focus on themselves, not be distracted by others, focus on the process rather than the outcomes of events, and were able to switch their sport focus on and off to suit the demands they faced. One Olympic champion recalled how his single-minded focus on himself and the team resulted in him being almost unaware of the pressures around him:
“It’s funny, in a way I was kind of oblivious to pressures because? I think in some ways you just? go so into yourself… well, it’s a concentrating on yourself and this in each other’s pockets.”
RECOGNISE THE AVAILABILITY OF SOCIAL SUPPORT
Olympic champions perceived that high quality social support was available to them, including support from family, coaches, teammates, and support staff. According to one gold medalist, his parents helped to protect him from the pressures of elite sport by giving him the opportunity to air his grievances:
“I’ve got injured, I’ve not got selected, all those sort of things where it’s not gone right… But… they (one’s parents) talk it through with you. My mum especially would talk it through and say ‘What are you going to do about this?’ They didn’t judge me and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong’ or ‘you’re doing that right’, they just provided me with the support that you need and a sounding board to express myself.”
FINAL THOUGHTS
According to the Olympic champions, an integral aspect of their resilience was their ability mix’ of characteristics to withstand the pressures they encountered. Provide some top tips on how to develop resilience for sustained high performance. In view of the close link between performance excellence in sport and business, organizations should seek to develop the aforementioned psychological factors (i.e., positive personality, and perceived social support) that employees can use to build their own personal resilience. Resilience has a critical role to play in achieving success, as illustrated in the following extract from the Harvard Business Review:
“More than education, more than experience, more than training, ?a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics and it’s true in the boardroom.”
Top Tips On Developing Resilience For Sustained High Performance
1. View setbacks as an opportunity for mastery and growth. During a commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs credited his early dismissal from Apple in 1985 as the key to his subsequent achievements:
Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
2. Be proactive in your personal development. For example, you could update your skills, expand your core competencies, and engage in career planning
3. Be sensitive to different types of motivation? (e.g., internal and external) and consider the decisions you make as active choices
4. Build your confidence from multiple sources ?(e.g., performance accomplishments, experience, and colleagues) rather than focusing on one particular source
5. Focus on what you can control, on processes, the present, positives, and staying composed
6. Take specific steps to obtain the support that you need. Possible options may include seeking suitable mentors, building cohesive teams, and hiring competent staff
Leave a Reply