Motiviation, effort… how to coax it from the players?

As a Berkeley grad, I’m not a big fan of Stanford, but sometimes they do good work . Below is a snippet of an article about learning and motivation that I find very interesting. As a soccer coach study  the game continuously, but the biggest challenge I’ve found is in motivating players to work hard in practice and to work on their own. I’ve coached girls and boys and find a huge difference between the two when it comes to their natural tendency to give 100% in practice. I’ve found girls give 100% in games, but when it comes to practice they don’t. If you can practice at game speed as much as possible, you will improve faster because the limits of skill are being pushed and that is where the most growth happens. So, in an effort to figure out ways to find the holy grail of female practice motivation, I read a lot of sports psychology articles and find this one to be very interesting … for boys and girls and not just for soccer, but life. I’ve bolded the things I think are big takeaways as it pertains to soccer coaching and soccer parenting.

This is from Stanford Magazine and written by Marina Krakovsky:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html

A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck’s expertise—and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success—bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck’s work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company’s talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation (see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck’s work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company’s talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation (see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck’s work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD ’75, Tufts University’s dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. “If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you’ll never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: ‘I have to make sure I don’t screw up.’”

We have to embrace the bold and visionary moves of children. Too often I hear parents yelling at their young players to “kick” the ball, “pass” the ball and “shoot” the ball. The parent’s think this is cheering, but I’d rather they cheer when the player gives great effort, whether it be a dribble, pass, or shot.