New psychology and sports

Professional sports organizations are always seeking an edge, something to push them ahead of the competition. With the amount of money being poured into teams in terms of sponsorships, endorsements, television revenue and merchandising, finding a key research or technology can have a tremendous impact on their performance, and hence, their bottom line. In the NFL, some teams have even tried ballet to balance their players’ issues with their masculinity. In the NBA, teams try different training techniques from Olympic-style visualization to various teambuilding workshops.

In the past, motivation was always thought to be external. You get paid more, you get more results. You fought for rewards and to avoid reprimands and other punishment. It took decades and even inuring new scientific data before people realized that this only produced short-term gains. Look at it this way. When you study hard and get good grades, you either coast the rest of the way or get exempted from exams. In the work environment, that means your output stops once you’ve reached a goal. The same goes for sports teams. That’s why teams with oversized salaries are not guaranteed continuous success. Reward and punishment come from outside, not within the individual.

Recently, the work of Drs. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester were brought to light as uncovering and explaining what they called the three psychological needs, or the sources of internal motivation. Basically, these are the sources of what drives us as people. Writer Daniel Pink, who released a new book entitled “To Sell Is Human” earlier this year, updated their research in his previous book, “Drive”. He elaborated and gave modern examples to what Deci and Ryan hypothesized.

Competence is the need to feel valued as knowledgeable, skilled and experienced, not a deadweight or weak link in the team or organization. People have a strong need to show capability either in the technical aspect of their job, or even in interpersonal relationships with team members, or even in the way they demonstrate leadership. Basically, people have a non-material need to be acknowledged as being good at what they do, at something. 

Relatedness is the need to feel part of something, of collaborating. Studies have shown that this need is actually stronger than the need to have a big bonus or other material reward. Being able to work well with others and jointly produce results has been discovered to be more important than previously thought, reinforcing the cliché “There is no ‘I’ in team”.

Autonomy is the need for a certain amount of freedom, to regulate one’s self within reasonable guidelines, to achieve the group’s goals. People have a need to express themselves in how they get their work done and contribute to the cause, without being spoon-fed or micromanaged. Of course, this means following the rules and other previous agreements in going for the set targets.

As you can see, with these three psychological needs, gone are the drill-sergeant days of coaching, when yelling and screaming and threatening were the only ways of squeezing performance out of an athlete. As Phil Jackson has shown in the NBA, you have to know who you’re talking to. Some people don’t mind being yelled at, some people do. In Asia in particular, being embarrassed and having your mistakes showcased for the benefit of the group can prove to be counterproductive.

In a team setting, though, the balance between an individual’s needs and the team goals can be a fine line, or a blurred one. The way one team member sees himself may not match what the team needs, if everyone wanted the basketball in the fourth quarter, their team would never win. If a boxer kept slugging it out against someone who was faster and stronger, his career would be over quickly. In the film “Moneyball”, Brad Pitt as Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s only had one goal in trading for players: raising their RBIs. Everything else was secondary. If a player didn’t go along with the gameplan, he was traded away. The Boston Red Sox copied this strategy of his and won their first World Series in generations.

The hallmarks of competence, relatedness and autonomy are found in everyone in different degrees. The question is how they use their three psychological needs to achieve success within their team. To a certain extent, it may mean subjugating some of their personal goals (scoring leader, MVP, etc.) so the team can achieve its own. But there are many ways to show leadership. With this new research, the way is easier to find.