Playing to Win vs. Playing to Not Lose

“Yeah, but it’s a bad place to lose”

Former Red Sox shortstop John Valentin during the 1995 baseball season, after a member of the media said “This is a great place to win” before a game at Fenway

Boston’s sports teams, as chronicled by Tony Massarotti in This Is Our City, perhaps understand better than most the intense pressure to win.

Boston has sporting exceptionality in many ways.

Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago, New York or even London, Manchester, Sydney or Paris, Boston has only one team in each of the major sports. Bostonians are unified in their support for their teams.

Bostonians project a fierce connection to their resilient and tenacious city and their identity is deeply woven into the fabric of their sports teams.

As such, there is a ferocity from the media and fans that carries with it an intensity that few other cities can relate to. Boston’s teams are expected to win. Failure is met with skepticism and often sees abrupt changes to the coaching staff.

What's fascinating throughout the book is the differing perspectives of the head coaches for each team at certain points in their lifecycles and the subsequent approach and success it had on the team.

The Paradox of Mindset

A commonly held misconception is that the head coach sits at one end of the scale and remains there; they’re either inherently positive, bold and attack minded or they ‘play it safe’, are cautious and look to minimize their losses.

This perception is both too simplistic an exposition whilst also being at odds with the reality of coaching at the elite level where contexts are in an almost constant state of flux, rosters evolve, external pressure mounts and internal dynamics shift.

In every sporting environment, a significant slice of the head coach’s role is to have ‘their finger on the pulse’ and ensure that their own mindset is reflected onto the team with careful handling that retains the equilibrium that is so vital between coach and players.

Where the Issue Lies

This blog is not intended to pass judgement on what is the ultimate mindset to possess at any given time.

Rather, its purpose is to address the issue that is so commonplace in teams across all sports- the disconnect between the mindset the head coach believes they embody and that of which is projected & received by others in the building.

So often a lack of cohesion on-field stems less as a result of poor tactics or strategy but due in large part to a disconnect between coaches and players.

I regularly spend time in environments where the head coach sincerely believes they project confidence and a large degree of autonomy in decision-making onto the players.

The reality is the success of this transmission from coach to players hinges entirely on the clarity of language, reinforcement, selection, game strategy and culture that is constructed on the foundations of the countless interactions on a daily basis.

My experience of most environments is that a desynchronization exists between coach and players.

Playing to Win

This mindset is often driven by performance approach focused on positive outcomes and rewards.

Risk-taking behavior creates heightened excitement and drive, activating the prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making and goal-setting) and the ventral striatum (key in reward processing) which encourages more aggressive, forward-thinking decisions that align with a proactive approach to winning.

The Red Sox 2004 Championship team were emblematic of this mindset. Featuring hitters like Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Johnny Damon, their offense was built around putting pressure on the opposition by scoring runs early and often.

This is where knowledge of your player’s personalities and the team’s culture and traditions is essential. Had the Red Sox not had the batting line-up available, this approach would likely have been suicidal.

Carlo Ancelotti’s dismissal from Chelsea (despite winning the Premier League and FA Cup) was largely as a result of enforcing a ‘play to win’ style at a club that was steeped in a hard-working defensive tradition.

Similarly, Paul Gustard’s firing at Harlequins was considered in part due to clashes with senior players who wouldn’t accept his more pragmatic and defense-focused game design.

Playing to Not Lose

The antithesis of approach motivation is performance avoidance where the brain is focused on minimizing potential negative outcomes rather than maximizing rewards.

This state centers around the amygdala, which is involved in fear and threat processing, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which monitors for mistakes or errors and often results in increased cortisol production- the hormone responsible for stress.

Daniel Kahnaman (author of Thinking Fast and Slow) as well as other psychologists have found that when it comes to assessing risk, potential losses always loom larger than gains. In fact, we are neurologically wired to overestimate the size of risks, underestimate our ability to handle them and to discount the cost of inaction.

This further signifies the critical ability of a head coach to communicate and transform a collective mindset- particularly in the face of external pressures and when results have impacted on confidence.

Bruin’s head coach Claude Julien, despite winning the 2011 Stanley Cup was routinely chastised for his team’s lack of offensive creativity. His ‘defense-first’ and ‘protect the lead’ approach was often at odds with fans and the media who felt he was underusing a talented roster.

Marc Savard (“he wants you to play his way, and that's tough for some players”) and Tyler Seguin; (“I was definitely frustrated because I didn’t have the freedom I wanted”) were amongst the players to openly voice their frustrations about this style.

Bullet-Proofing The Mindset

Recently, whilst facilitating a coach’s planning session for a football team competing in one of Asia’s top leagues, one of the key outcomes they were looking for was to evolve their style of play to a more positive and attack-centered approach.

This would better suit the players at their disposal, the tradition of the club and made sense to them from a competition standpoint.

It did, however, require a deep analysis of the coaching team, their coaching practice, “pre-morteming” scenarios and other areas of their environment that would need to be aligned.

As previously stated, success on the field requires alignment. Alignment can only be achieved if enough of your interactions are in support of a certain mindset. Contradictions destroy what message or mindset you wish to impart.

Some of the areas we looked into were:

• Coaching From The Same Page

  • As professionalism has become more entrenched, coaching teams have increased in size. A key element of a head coach’s success lies in their ability to align their philosophy with their assistant coaches. Each coach must agree in the approach that is taken and be understanding of the value they play in projecting this consistently to the players. One coach projecting an alternative message erodes trust and undermines clarity which will be apparent on the field.

  • With this particular coaching team, coaches were given ample time to consider and construct their opinions before we met. We began by having a rigorous and honest assessment of the intended direction where the manager (head coach) was last to speak. This approach not only prevented a ‘mirroring dynamic’ to occur but ensured that differing views were valued as providing a richer and more accurate view.

  • As a side note, head coaches must be aware of the ‘cognitive homogeneity’ (the sharing of similar beliefs and ideas) that exists in their coaching teams. Collective intelligence requires regular challenge and evolving which often isn’t attainable with individuals sharing a similar frame of reference.

• Coaching Practice

  • It might seem obvious but practice design has to align with your playing mindset. A team that wants to compete for everything on the field should be shrouded in competition in training. A team that wishes its players to be creative and take calculated risks must design its training around the same opportunities. How you train is how you play after all.

  • In considering suitable coaching practice, we also delved into the difference between positive and negative reinforcement. In this case, in attempting to shift the collective mindset to a more positive approach, training competition was all well and good as long as the desire to win was greater than the reluctance to lose. For the coaching staff, this required them to adjust their approach to rewarding success rather than punishing loss. It required a considered approach to developing the resilience of the players to maintaining a ‘winning mindset’ when losing. It was also essential to role model and celebrate the valued behaviors of hard work, zeal and selflessness- particularly after making an error.

  • In This Is Our City, coach Doc Rivers spoke of the need to “build a culture of accountability” whilst also emphasizing the obligation of players needing “to feel empowered to play their game.”

• Empowerment

  • Revisiting the countless coaches I see who are incorrectly under the impression their team is one that is backed and free to be bold, the disconnect of this reality often stems from misapplied empowerment.

  • Patriot’s six-time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Belichick stated that "the more players understand what we're trying to do, the more ownership they take in it. They become better players when they understand why we’re doing what we’re doing." This implies the need to develop your player’s individual and collective understanding of the intended playing style. Within this, players also require clarity around calculated risk-taking that’s differentiated from the outcome.

• Verbal & Non-Verbal Communication

  • ‘Words are the foundation that underpins everything’.

  • Much of the three previous segments rely on communication. Coaching is almost entirely about communication. The language that is used can destroy a mindset much faster than it can reinforce one.

  • There’s any number of rabbit holes that one can go down when considering language’s impact on developing a particular mindset. In the particular case of this football team, it’ll be an ongoing process to embed a vocabulary, questioning and reinforcement framework that is harmony with the tone they wish to set. In role-playing situations such as responses to losses, negative-decision outcomes and half-time scenarios, we focused on instilling a ‘growth’ mindset and considered the implications of different responses to player confidence and trust.

"The most important thing is to keep the game simple. Let the players play. Make sure they understand what we expect, but let them be who they are and do what they do best."

Terry Francona (Red Sox head coach 2004-2011)