{"id":963,"date":"2020-01-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/five-tips-to-help-improve-your-teams-performance-under-pressure\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:23","slug":"five-tips-to-help-improve-your-teams-performance-under-pressure","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/five-tips-to-help-improve-your-teams-performance-under-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Tips to Help Improve Your Team\u2019s Performance Under Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Jan 16, 2020 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Five Tips to Help Improve Your Team\u2019s Performance Under Pressure<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/five-tips-to-help-improve-your-teams-performance-under-pressure\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n
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How do you prepare your team for those clutch moments? We ask worlds as diverse as the NFL, rugby, performing arts and healthcare.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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Every team needs its \u2018clutch\u2019 players and there are steps any can make to optimise their performance at crucial moments.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

Pressure, whether it is psychological, physical or time-based, can take numerous forms.<\/p>\n

Here, we scan the Leaders Performance Institute archives to bring you five tips to consider, both from sport and beyond, when trying to develop your athlete\u2019s ability to perform under intense pressure.<\/p>\n

1. Be holistic in assessing decision-making processes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clutch players are often denoted by their ability to make the right decision at the right time. The wrong decision might cost you the game or even a championship but, in the world of medicine, it may cost someone their life. The industry\u2019s assessments of decision-marking are necessarily holistic.<\/p>\n

At the 2017 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, we heard from Shehan Hettiaratchy<\/a>, the trauma lead and Lead Surgeon at the Imperial College Healthcare Trust.<\/p>\n

He later told the Leaders Performance Institute that any review of a decision-making process needs to look beyond the individual<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re looking at systems delivered by individual, human decisions, it\u2019s very easy to blame the decision-maker,\u201d said Hettiaratchy, who was on duty at St Mary\u2019s when the hospital admitted casualties in the aftermath of the Westminster terrorist attack on 22 March that year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality,\u201d he continued, \u201cpeople don\u2019t go around trying to make bad decisions \u2013 bad decisions arrive because of incomplete information or a lack of appreciation of the pressures or a lack of appreciation of one of the elements that would have contributed to making the right decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always very difficult to analyse your own performance because inherently in this profession is a lot of self-criticism. I do try and objectify that in terms of asking, \u2018what was the output that we delivered? Was that output the output I would have wanted?\u2019 And if it\u2019s come short I would wind back through that timeline, minute by minute, event by event, decision by decision, to the start of where the whole process, to when the patient first came in. Then I try to work out \u2018OK, this was the intended trajectory, where did we start deviating and why was that? What was the decision-making process? Why did we make those decisions? What were the factors that influenced the behaviours that led to those decisions?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s very important to understand the context the decision was made in, not just the decision. It\u2019s difficult to get a holistic view but it\u2019s important to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Foster a collective accountability that transcends the team hierarchy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coaches can act to mitigate the inherent pressure found in elite sport by creating training environments that encourage open and constructive analysis. By permitting \u2018safe failure\u2019, leaders can improve skill development and, ultimately, execution when the crucial moments come again.<\/p>\n

Alex Goode<\/a>, whose career at Saracens has coincided with the club\u2019s establishment as one of the most successful in English rugby, told the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance summit that he and his teammates will take steps on the field to redress immediate errors but, longer-term it is the squad\u2019s sense of collective accountability, a sense that transcends notions of seniority, that prepares them for when the going gets tough.<\/p>\n

Goode said: \u201cIt\u2019s being comfortable in the group, that you know each other well enough, that you have the confidence to say to each other \u2018you made that mistake, perhaps you should have done this\u2019 or \u2018perhaps we could have done it that way\u2019. If you\u2019re in an environment where people are whispering in corridors or quietly behind our backs then nothing ever gets done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have that ability that the youngest guy on the team can say something to the oldest guy; you need to do this or you should have made that tackle; there\u2019s confidence in the group and you have to have relationships for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he explains, the process is not dissimilar from the holistic approach promoted above by Hettiaratchy. \u201cYou look at it not as just what went wrong but why it went wrong; the best coaches I\u2019ve come across are good at making it realistic. It might be that we knocked the ball on, a player knocked the ball on, but why was he in that position, why was he given that task, why was there pressure coming on? It\u2019s breaking it down into why we got ourselves into this position and how we can be better at delivering that.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Promote self-appraisal \u2013 at a distance<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to athlete self-appraisal, coaches could take a leaf out of the Royal College of Music\u2019s book. The RCM accepts that its students, like athletes, are often perfectionist, passionate and ambitious; while such traits have driven them to become elite, they can also hinder adequate self-reflection.<\/p>\n

At the 2019 Leaders Meet: Wellbeing event in Manchester, Aaron Williamon<\/a>, Director of Performance Science at the RCM, noted that with student musicians, it is incumbent on the college to counter their own instant, negative reactions to mistakes. It begins with encouraging time and distance from any self-appraisal of any performance.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe like to develop ways in which we get our musicians to reflect back in a level and systematic way about how they\u2019ve performed, that gets them out of the bad habits that perfectionistic thinking can drive them into.”<\/p>\n

Again, the approach is all-encompassing. \u201cWe want to give them holistic training that gives them insight into not only pushing themselves physically and mentally but to do so in a way that is constructive, positive and properly paced.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Expand your athletes\u2019 comfort zones<\/strong><\/p>\n

Athletes and performers who are more comfortable taking risks are also more likely to be your clutch individuals. As such, V\u00e9ronique Richard<\/a>, a mental performance consultant who works with Cirque du Soleil as well as a variety of sports organisations, prefers to cultivate \u2018risk-friendly\u2019 environments rather than those of psychological safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cRisk needs to be part of your environment,\u201d she told the 2018 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. Richard strives to foster the conditions for enhanced skill development in the athletes and performance artists with whom she works.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you create a risk-friendly environment?\u201d she asked. \u201cI use the dynamical system theory approach, which suggests that by creating chaos in a system, be it a motor system, perceptual system, psychological system, you bring people to work within two stability zones, which is called a \u2018meta-stable region\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy working through that mess, people actually increase their repertoires of thoughts and actions, which contributes to creativity.\u201d Richard advocates a non-linear pedagogical approach that uses task and environmental design to develop skill acquisition.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, I ask the athlete: \u2018what are you avoiding not because you\u2019re not skilled enough but because it makes you uncomfortable?\u2019 There\u2019s all sorts of things we don\u2019t do because of discomfort; it can be technical, tactical psychological, emotional, personal, ego and then, as a leader, your role is to find the right stimuli to bring the person to explore discomfort and bring people to work in this zone of discomfort; and if you manage that successfully you actually expand their zone of comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Ensure coaches find the right words<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first four tips largely focus on the week building up to the game, but what about game day itself? Michael Gervais<\/a>, a high performance psychologist and former Leaders Performance Institute speaker, suggests that a coach\u2019s ability to find the right verbal cues in the locker room is important.<\/p>\n

\u201cPressure is the relationship we have with a moment,\u201d explained the man who works closely with the Seattle Seahawks and their Head Coach Pete Carroll. \u201cThat pressure comes from thinking we might not be able to handle it. Thus, we talk to ourselves a certain way to try and take the focus away from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to manage the dialogue, the self-talk if you will, is golden when you talk about alleviating pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a coach says to an athlete prior to a big moment \u2018this is it\u2019 the coach should naturally have thought about how they can support the athlete. Usually, the go-to word is trust. \u2018You\u2019ve done this through your history; I know you can do it and you know you can.\u2019 This is the formula to basically tell someone, \u2018you got it\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they can say \u2018I got it\u2019 to themselves, they reduce the level of pressure. It\u2019s incredibly powerful and effective when an athlete can sit in the moment and adjust accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you prepare your team for those clutch moments? 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