Andy Longley

Coach Profile

Andy is a team performance expert with a background in psychology & applied neuroscience, who will over
the coming months share insights ground the art and neuroscience of high-performance coaching. Each article will share a little of the latest applied neuroscience plus give simple tips on how to practically bring it to life in your own coaching.

Hi again team. In my last article we took a look at stretch learning and how to use this idea to help our athletes grow optimally. Today we’re going to look at another part of the coachup model of high-performance teams and coaches, which you can see below.

Together let’s explore the power of role models, how they work, why their behaviours are contagious and how as a coach you are one whether you like it or not!

As a coach it’s arguably your primary role to establish a high- performance team culture amongst your athletes. However, when we hear the word ‘culture’, we often don’t all share the same definition or have a clear understanding of what makes up a ‘culture’. So how can we be expected to create one when we don’t really know what one is? The definition

of a culture I use is ‘the cumulative experiences we have in a group based on the everyday actions and behaviours we both observe and experience’.We feel culture, we don’t think culture. So, the only way to create a ‘high-performing culture’ is to ensure the everyday language, actions, and behaviours of every single person

in the group or team are what we’re seeking. And I believe the most powerful ways to spread language, actions or behaviours is through the power of role modelling. Afterall, as babies we’re hard wired to mimic the behaviours of our parents and whānau. It’s directly how we learn and form our social norms. This doesn’t stop once we’re no longer babies, it’s with us forever.

So as a coach you’re the ultimate role model and shaper of behaviours and culture for your athletes. What you do,
as the coach, will outweigh what you advise. Additionally, those persons we perceive as having ‘high social status’
will automatically trigger us to mimic them more than those we perceive as having ‘lower social status’. Therefore, as
the coach and (likely) person with the most social status in the group you are literally contagious. So, what you say and how you act will create the culture of your team – so you better make sure it’s what you’re seeking! This contagious behaviour of those with perceived ‘higher social status’ will be just as true for the leaders and social influencers in your team. We experience more social learning when we have less power in a group, and less when we have high power.

To bring this to life with some poignant research, Nikos • Christakis is the Yale University epidemiologist whose role
it was to keep university staff and students healthy. He discovered that the key social influencers in a group were the real nodes of viral infection and that, if he could vaccinate

these people, then it prevented the spread of disease. In experiments, his team found that targeting social influencers within communities could significantly boost participation in public health behaviors like vaccination. (Connected: The • Surprising Power of Social Networks. Christakis, 2015). Let’s reverse this idea and bring it into sports. Can you identify the real influencers in your team beyond yourself, because if they role model the behaviors and principles you need for team performance, they will help those behaviours and habits • spread across the team.
So how does this contagious behaviour happen?

So, how does this contagious behaviour happen?

it’s down to mirror neurons. Let’s say you’re walking through the changing rooms when, out of nowhere, the teammate
in front of you accidentally walks straight into a glass door as they are on their phone. Automatically, you recoil in sympathy with their pain. Or you’re watching a player cover their mouth and wrinkle their nose when they smell something bad in the club rooms and suddenly, your own stomach turns at the thought of the meal. These are the work of mirror neurons and mirror systems that allow us to immediately and instinctively understand others’ feelings and thoughts. Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that responds when either we perform an action or when we witness someone else perform the same action. In essence we are trying on their experience for size to understand it and (ideally) empathise with them. The strength of our mirrored response modulates to the degree of power (perceived social status) we have in the group.

Why do we mimic the behaviour of social influencers?

It is due to three connected reasons:

The desire to belong and be accepted. When we emulate the behaviours of those around us, especially those with ‘power’, we feel part of the group, accepted and in turn ‘safe’.
Social proof. When we see others, especially respected figures, adopt certain behaviors it makes us more likely to believe those behaviors are correct or beneficial to us.
Perceived authority. Those we perceive as having authority (like a coach) and being influential (like
a respected captain) often appear trustworthy, knowledgeable and credible to us, which is why we mimic their actions.

Now that we know the how and why of the power of role modelling, let’s look at some practical steps you can take to use role models to create your own high-performance culture.

As a coach:

Think about the behaviours you are demonstrating at all times (even when you don’t think the team is watching) and act in line with the behaviours you’re seeking for your team culture. E.g. How you treat every athlete, how you engage with referees / umpires.
Think about the language you are using at all times (even when you are stressed, reacting to a loss or incident, or talking with fellow coaches ) and ensure it’s creating the mindset and norms you’re seeking. E.g. What language do you use when talking about a mistake? Or the likelihood of success versus the competition leaders? Or your chances of success with your best player out injured?
Think about the habits you have and ask yourself whether these are the habits you want to spread contagiously across the team. E.g. Working long hours all of the time, your nutrition in front of your athletes.
Identify those athletes who you believe to have the most ‘social status’ amongst the team and partner with them to co-create the rights behaviours for team culture. Help them to share some accountability for the team culture. This does not have to be the team’s captain necessarily. Sometimes those with the most social influence are not our best athletes or chosen captains.
Call out positive team behaviours. When we publicly recognize the desired team behaviours, this increased their likelihood of broader adoption. E.g. Recognising an athlete who didn’t give up when behind in a match, putts in the extra effort outside of planned trainings, helps a teammate improve their skills if they’re struggling.

So, there we have a little of the applied neuroscience behind role models and their contagious nature. As a coach you’re the most powerful role model for shaping team culture, and when you partner with key social influencers in your team(s) it’s a match made in high-performance heaven.

The twelfth and final article in this series will focus on experimentation and how to ensure your athletes are innovating and learning through their experiences. Stay tuned.

Social Links:

www.coachup.academy
coachup’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/coachup. academy/
Andy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-longley- psychio-and-coachup/
coachup’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ coachup.academy/?viewAsMember=true