Dr. Jim Taylor's blog

I was asked recently by a sports parent, “What does it take to make a champion?” I thought for a moment and then responded with three words: “Genes, motivation, and support.” So let’s explore these three essential components to athletic success.

Genes

Genes are the foundation of all athletic success. Athletes can have all the motivation and support in the world, but if they’re not physically capable?of performing in their sport better than everyone else, nothing else matter. Though physical capabilities, such as strength, agility, stamina, and flexibility, can be developed to some degree through conditioning, we are all limited by the genes we get from our parents.

Genes are also the X factor for two reasons. First, there’s no way to tell whether young athletes have good athletic genes until they show those genes by growing up. Sure, you can look at their parents and see what kind of athletes they are and what kind of body types they have, but if you look at the parents of a lot of professional athletes and Olympians, you’ll wonder whether genes have anything to do with being a great athlete. And early success that many see as indicators of good genes often doesn’t prove anything (how do you account for all of the late bloomers?).

Second, good athletic genes aren’t enough. I’ve seen many athletes over the years who had tremendous natural physical ability, yet lacked the motivation to become successful. These athletes invariably never lived up to expectations and many I have spoken with regretted not having had the work ethic to match their physical capabilities. Conversely, if you have a kid who is incredibly motivated and well supported, but lack world-class genes, they may not win Wimbledon or play in the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have a successful and rewarding experience as a athlete. Not only that, but it’s likely that these less naturally gifted athletes will learn important life lessons that will help them to be successful later in life. Ultimately, as I see it, you can’t control genes, so there’s little point in even talking about them.

Motivation

Motivation is the only contributor to athletic achievement that is thoroughly within athlete’s control. They can’t control their genes, but they can do everything in their power to fully realize whatever genetic capabilities their parents gave them. And research has shown that the single greatest predictor of success is the amount of time athletes put in. Those who are most motivated will devote the most time to training which will lead to the greatest success. Of course, those with the best genes and are also highly motivated will have the most success.

So the $64,000 question for parents is: “How do I motivate my athlete-child?” Motivation is the most difficult psychological contributor to success because you can’t give your children motivation. Rather, they have to find it within themselves which means finding a reason that they want to play their sport and work hard toward their goals. If your children aren’t motivated, you’ll want to find out whether something or someone (often a parent) is squashing their motivation, they may be playing the sport for a reason other than to become a superstar, or maybe that sport just isn’t for them and they should find something else to do.

Nonetheless, let me offer a few suggestions that can bolster motivation. The easiest way to answer this question is for athletes to have a great passion for the sport. Athletes who love to train and compete will do whatever it takes because they just love being out there. Setting, working toward, and achieving goals are immensely satisfying, so you can also help them set realistic, yet challenging goals toward which they can strive. Having your kids in a junior program with an inspiring coach and other motivated athletes creates an environment that fosters motivation. You also need to make sure that it’s fun. Given that the odds are very long that your children will become great athletes, there’s no other reason for them to be doing it. Finally, get out of their way! An absolute motivation killer is for you to get overly invested in children’s sport and take ownership away from them. If you care more about their sport than they do, you guarantee that they will not be successful or enjoy the sport.

Support

This is the other $64,000 question: “How do I best support my athletic children?” The answer starts with everyone involved understanding what their jobs are. It’s the athletes’ job to work hard, pay attention to their coaches, and take full advantage of the opportunities they are given. It’s the coaches’ job to prepare athletes physical, technically, and mentally to achieve their goals and have fun. And it’s your job to provide the opportunities for your children (e.g., coaching, camps, equipment), pay the bills (which can be incredibly difficult, especially these days), get them where they need to be on time, pat them on the back when they do well, console them when they do poorly, and support the coaches so they can do their jobs. If everyone does their job and their job alone, then young athletes have a good time and usually perform to the best of their ability. If someone either doesn’t do their job or tries to do another job, then things go south quickly.

Let me conclude with some thoughts about your goals in having your children participate in sports. If your objective is to turn them into champions, the odds are that you’re wasting your money and time and your children’s happiness. Sports are metaphorically littered with the scarred psyches of children whose parents tried and failed to do what Earl Woods and Richard Williams succeeded at doing. Your goals as parents are for your children to have fun, learn life skills to succeed later in life, value health and fitness, and develop a love of sports. If by some freak chance you give them world-class athletic genes, they love the sport enough to work incredibly hard, and they get the right kind of support from you, and they become professional or Olympic athletes, then that’s just icing on the cake.

To read more about the psychology of sport, click here. To read more about how to raise successful and happy children, click here.

Over the past two years, we have seen what some have called a transformative demonstration of leadership. This process culminated on January 20^th with the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44^th President of the United States. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and Prime Business Alert! is decidedly nonpartisan), you have to respect his journey and appreciate his leadership capabilities. You can also learn a great deal about effective leadership and sustained, high-level performance by studying his improbable and meteoric rise.

From humble beginnings, having to prevail over the dual “handicaps” of race and fatherlessness, and overcome two of the most formidable political forces in history (the Clintons and the Republican Party), President Obama showed us that a person with imagination, determination, and faith could surmount incalculable odds and rise to the highest and most powerful office in the world. During his entire candidacy, he exhibited the leadership qualities that led to this landmark achievement:

• President Obama saw opportunity where others saw obstacles;
• Saw solutions where others saw problems;
• Had confidence when others had doubt;
• Had resolve when others wavered;
• Was disciplined when others were lax;
• Stayed calm when others panicked;
• Had hope when others lost faith;
• And, ultimately, he saw possibility where others saw none.

President Obama established several essential elements in his campaign. First, he affirmed his leadership by making clear who was in charge, what messages would be communicated, and his commitment to those messages. At the same time, he was open to ideas and willing to adapt when presented with a compelling reason to do so. Second, he set the psychology of his campaign, ensuring that it was positive, proactive, and focused. Third, he actively created a culture of integrity, openness, and determination that permeated throughout his campaign organization. These specific messages and the way in which he conveyed them are powerful lessons for you in your leadership role at your company.

President Obama also convinced millions of individual Americans that they too could alter their own personal histories and futures. We saw the force of this message in interviews with African-Americans who lived through segregation and the civil-rights movement and in the voices of hope and possibility from young African-Americans who saw what was once inconceivable was now a reality and that if he could move mountains, so could they. And this message reverberated across racial age, gender, and ethnic lines. President Obama showed us that, in a world where the status quo had seemingly immovable inertia, change could happen. And in a world that often times seems to be spinning out of control, he gave many the courage to embrace the “audacity of hope.”

This message of possibility and personal empowerment from President Obama moved people and caused an unstoppable groundswell of support that propelled him to the Presidency. This same message can empower your employees to achieve their own and your company’s goals and take their performance, productivity, and profitability to a new level.

President Obama also showed us that disconnected individuals with a common vision could coalesce into a formidable force. His life and his words inspired millions of previously uninvolved Americans to enter the political arena and stand up for what they believed. But, despite what many people think, inspiration is not his greatest gift.? President Obama’s real strengths are not only to inspire, but also to inform and transform. He gave people the information and tools they needed to focus and direct their inspiration. And then he transformed that inspiration and information into action. By exploiting both low-tech (boots on the ground) and high-tech (the Internet) means, he created what was certainly the most potent political campaign in history.

As a leader, you can unite your corporate team in the same way. First, create a shared vision of what your team wants to accomplish. Making this a collaborative effort increases “buy in” and ownership. Second, give your team the knowledge they need to do their jobs individually and collectively to the best of their ability. Third, provide them with the resources to turn their inspiration and information into action.

President Obama now faces the most daunting test of his leadership skills as he attempts to forge a sense of unity, where others have tried and failed, in a political culture that has many political, economic, and cultural factions. Can he inspire, inform, and transform those who have fundamental disagreements with him? To do so, he will have to marshal all of his remarkable leadership skills. In this time of crisis, his oratory gifts can inspire all Americans to set aside small concerns and work together to overcome the current challenges at home and abroad. This ability involves framing divisive issues in terms that transcend specific ideologies and focus on larger universal themes. He began this process in his inaugural speech when he declared, “We gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

The same kind of divergence of views can handicap a company as well. The ability to inspire your employees, rally them around a shared cause, demonstrate respect for all perspectives, and find common ground is an essential skill for providing leadership to a successful company.

President Obama’s confident, calm, and commanding presence in these difficult times can inspire trust that he has America’s best interests at heart despite policy differences. His noted respect for diverse viewpoints and willingness to listen to others can also encourage “buy in” from those less inclined to do so. And his thoughtful and far-reaching responses to issues that impact all Americans can convince even those who might be resistant to, at a minimum, give him a chance to prove himself right.

Similarly, a style of corporate leadership that is authoritative, yet empathic and trustworthy, can reduce the flames of conflict and encourage those with different ideas to be open to others’ viewpoints and be willing to find compromise for the good of the individual and the company.

In the business world, there are profound lessons to be learned from studying President Obama’s leadership capabilities. By applying his skills and strategies to your work, you can create your own transformative leadership experience that can help you and your company to achieve its goals.

To read more about the psychology of business, click here.

Frustration may be your children’s most significant obstacle to achieving their goals. We all have experienced the feeling of frustration when we’re not able to do something as we pursue our goals; we feel stuck, we get uptight, and we have difficulty focusing. The best way I can describe the feeling is: AAARRGGHH!! It is a truly infuriating feeling.

But what is frustration precisely and what causes it? Simply put, frustration arises when the path toward a goal is blocked. Most people think of frustration as a bad emotion, but it is actually more complex than that. The fact is that frustration is hard wired into us and has tremendous adaptive value. Frustration starts as a good emotion because when we get frustrated, we are motivated to remove the obstacle that is blocking our path toward our goals. We try harder and that extra effort frequently results in clearing that path enabling us to continue pursuit of our goals.

Negative Emotional Chain

Unfortunately, if, despite our best efforts, we can’t? overcome those roadblocks, frustration can become a destructive emotion. In fact, if frustration isn’t dealt with effectively and quickly, it can trigger what I can the “negative emotional chain” in which frustration leads to a descent into a series of truly unhealthy emotions.

If frustration isn’t dealt in a productive way, it can morph into anger. Most people also believe that anger is a bad emotion, but, like frustration, it too has both positive and negative sides. Anger starts out as being helpful because it too is motivating. When children are angry, they want to go after the thing that is causing their anger. Unfortunately, for most tasks that your children are involved in, for example, school, games, sports, or the performing arts, anger swiftly becomes a harmful emotion. The feelings of anger are like those of frustration, but with the volume turned up considerably. Children’s bodies become tense so, if they are involved in a physical activity, they lose their coordination and the quality of their efforts decline. Their focus narrows so much that they miss important cues necessary to perform their best. And children’s thinking becomes clouded by the anger, so they aren’t able to think clearly or make good decisions.

If your children aren’t able to clear the obstacles from their path at this point, their emotions shift to the final stage of the negative emotional chain; they experience despair. They have tried and tried and tried and still can’t remove the barriers, so the natural thing to do is quit. What’s the point of continuing to try if nothing they do works? The unfortunate outcome of the conclusion of the negative emotional chain is immediate failure to achieve their goals.

It has been my experience that if children move from frustration to anger, continued efforts that day usually fail. And if children experience the negative emotional chain on a regular basis-sinking repeatedly into despair-they will likely lose their motivation and be unwilling to make a sustained effort in the future. With each descent down the negative emotional chain, children come to believe that their actions have little effect and they will progressively lose confidence in their ability to achieve their goals.

Your Role

How your children deal with frustration is influenced by how you react to it. If you model an unhealthy response to the frustration you experience in your life, for example, with impatience or anger, they may learn that this is an appropriate way to deal with frustration. If you are calm, positive, and look for solutions when you get frustrated, your children will likely adopt this approach to frustration.

How you respond to your children’s frustration will also affect how they learn to deal with their frustration. If you become impatient and angry with them, their frustration may escalate and more quickly turn into anger and despair, further preventing your children from resolving the source of their frustration. If you respond to your children’s frustration by asking them in a soothing voice what they are frustrated about and discuss how you want to help them deal with it, then they will likely calm down and follow your lead in looking for a solution to their frustration.

Teaching Frustration Mastery

Despite the fundamental role that frustration plays in their efforts to be their best, children are rarely shown how to deal with their frustration in a constructive way. Your goal as parents is to teach your children to stop the negative emotional chain at frustration by responding positively to the frustration when it first arises.

The first mistake that many children make-and that parents often encourage-when faced with frustration is to just increase their effort, in other words, do whatever they are doing more and harder. But then they are violating the Law of Insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results.

When frustration first arises, rather than plowing ahead, your children should do just the opposite, in other words, step back from the situation that is causing the frustration. For example, if your child can’t solve a math problem or learn a new sports skill that she is practicing, she should set it aside and take a break. Stopping the activity creates emotional distance from the frustration, thus easing its grip on them.

Next, your children should do something that is fun and relaxing during the break, for example, getting a snack (hunger is a significant cause of frustration, particularly among young children), listening to music, or getting some physical activity. This step lessens the uncomfortable physical symptoms that come with frustration and generates emotions, such as happiness or excitement, that can counteract the feelings of frustration. A powerful way to counter the feelings of frustration when they have stepped back from the activity is to have your children do something at which they can succeed, thus feeding their feelings of confidence and generating positive emotions such as pride and inspiration.

Once the negative emotional chain has been broken, your children should return to the activity with a focus on finding a solution that will relieve the frustration. This process starts with understanding the problem. If they know what the specific problem is, then they have a better chance at finding a solution. Though you want to give your children plenty of opportunity to identify the problem and find the solution themselves, I encourage you to engage in “emotional coaching” when needed by providing guidance and direction to help them find the answers they need. Here’s a helpful hint: sometimes it’s useful to break down the bigger problem into smaller, more manageable problems.

The reality is that children can’t always immediately clear the obstacles to their goals, so continued efforts? in pursuit of those goals would be futile. The barriers may be just too great to surmount on that day. Your children have two options here. First, they can change their goals to ones that can be achieved in the short term. For example, let’s say your tennis-playing son is getting frustrated because he’s losing a match and nothing he can do will turn the match around. In this case, continuing to pursue the goal of winning will likely take him quickly along the negative emotional chain. But if he shifts his goals, for instance, improving a technical or tactical part of his game, he can still experience some success and get something out of the match.

Second, there are going to be days when your children just aren’t going to make any progress toward their goals and continuing to try without success will just discourage them and actually hurt their efforts in the long run. In this case, it may be wise to deliberately “give up” and choose to fight another day.

To read more about how to raise successful and happy children, click here.