RIDING MIND®

Equestrian Psychology

Copyright Lisa Stevens 2008

GROUP RESILIENCE

As a social being individual resilience can be increased or decreased depending on the response of those around us to stressors. Other humans can be biological allies and help us to reduce our stress levels; alternatively the response of those around us can escalate stress levels. This process begins from birth when, as a child, the response of our parents has a direct relationship to our stress levels. The more calm and containing a parent’s reaction, the calmer the child. This process continues throughout our development and continues to operate when we are adults. Take for example a work place where the manager is a ‘stress head’. The consequence is that people that person manages will experience more stress. A calm manager instills confidence in those he or she manages and regardless of the stressors in the environment, the group experiences less anxiety.

Research consistently shows that humans are programmed to look to those around for cues to help assess situations as safe or dangerous. The more those around us react negatively, the more likely it is that our system will ramp up and we will experience anxiety. Alternatively, the less response from those around us, the less the majority of people will perceive there to be a threat.

Coaches need to be aware of their stress levels when working with athletes so that they do not ‘overcook’ their athletes in pressure situations. As a sport psychologist, I frequently work with coaches to help play the role of calm leader under pressure. When we identify that a coach is unable to control their own stress we work to increase the athletes’ resilience under coach pressure so that their performance does not suffer. It would be better if the coach takes responsibility for their own emotions, BUT in the real world this is not always possible.

Parents and significant others also need to be aware of the signals they may be inadvertently sending. If the individual perceives that their parents or significant others are overly invested in winning or losing, the individual will perceive the outcome of their performance as critical and thus experience more anxiety and generally a decrease in performance.

GROUP CONFIDENCE – the ‘good enough’ principle. Good physical and mental health increases our resilience and poor physical and mental health challenges our resilience. The health of a society, family, team, or any other relationship is directly related to the level of confidence each member of the group has that his or her needs and expectations will be met ‘well enough’. When the needs of an individual are met well enough they can then focus on performing duties and tasks with a reasonable degree of confidence that the group will continue.

When needs and expectations are not well enough met, a considerable amount of energy will then be expended on this task alone. An effective group leader can influence this process significantly by making explicit the expectations of the group and the individuals in that group, monitoring that these expectations are indeed being met well enough. Such effective leadership allows team or group members to perform their specific tasks within the group rather than being worried about the group itself.

Take for example the simple expectation that when we are driving, other road users will stop at a red light. If we did not have ‘good enough’ confidence that that is how other road users will behave we would need to stop at every intersection to see what was going to happen. Anxiety would rise on approach to an intersection as we checked the environment to see if we could proceed safely and driving would be far more taxing on every road user.

In a team situation, resilience is greater when the ‘good enough’ principle is in play, team resilience and performance suffers when this is not the case. As a social animal, we generally have expectations that if we behave a certain way there will be predictable consequences and in this way we feel some control over our interactions with others. A loss of ‘good enough’ predictability causes stress and anxiety. This premise relates to the need for enough certainty to do things rather than being on high alert monitoring the behaviours of the group member/s. In chaotic groups a lot of energy is spent trying to read the state of play between group members and working out which responses are most likely to avoid negative repercussions.

In sport this can be seen at many levels. For example, when the athlete is more worried about what reaction the coach, mum, dad, or team mates will have than he or she is on the task he or she will be more likely to make errors. Being consistent and calm helps the group members to be task focused.

A team can consist of ‘biological allies’ when the needs and expectations of individuals in that group are made known to the rest of the group. In elite sporting teams time is spent on working out common codes of conduct that all members are comfortable with. In addition athletes communicate what they need from each other in certain situations. A simple example may be, one athlete says, ‘I like to be left alone before I compete so that I can get ready calmly’, and another may say, ‘I like to chat a lot before competition so I get my energy up but do not switch on too soon.’ When the needs of the group are in conflict with the needs of an individual a compromise needs to be negotiated, thereby avoiding issues of misunderstanding. Knowing what is expected of you and knowing what to expect from the group gives rise to greater resilience of the group.

By understanding these group dynamics, many problems can be averted, group confidence can be increased and anxiety minimised. It is worth developing and implementing strategies that take these factors into consideration to increase the resilience of groups and in modern sport it is seen as a necessary part of preparation both in training and before entering pressure situations.