Pressure - What The Managers Say - Part 7
Good morning once again tiddlywinks on a happy morning.
I went to bed at 9pm and up at 8am so gave my eye plenty of rest.
Three days of early nights is generally what it takes when my eye is strained and that straining helps to bring on the eye ulcer and impairs vision so with rest I can see quite well.
That enables me to pop down the seafront, find a bench and sit there for half an hour while the world ges on around me.
We all like a spot of people watching and it produces question such as why would you wear high heels to walk along the see front of a morning, vanity?
They went with the dress and so the impression created was a favourable one and her fella was no doubt proud to have her on his arm.
I once was going out with a woman and we went from one pub to a small pub with music one evening that was more of a students hang out.
She took on look and went home to change while I ordered the drinks.
The squabbling starlings have arrived at the bird feeders, they usually arrive with sparrows in tow and it becomes quite hectic and quite noisy.
They prefer that suet balls with seeds in rather than the seeds in the feeder ans there is a tray that catches the crumbs so there is generally one in the eating while 1 or 2 peck at the balls.
Anyway, let's crack on with Part 7 of the What The Managers Say series.
A motivating factor when under pressure can often be fear, but fear can distort reality.
Take our 90 minute fans, they have constant negativity towards the club because of their fear of the future and thus it distorts their reality, hence why they get so much wrong.
Fear can send you spiralling into a reactive approach (they complain about Spurs because of what others are doing that we can't control) and poor decision-making, losing their perspective.
A manager under pressure has to be able to handle fear, retain perspective and make the decisions to turn it around while fans around are shouting and screaming, demanding change.
The key is to see the situation as a challenge.
A challenge you approach with positivity, with relish, with renewed energy, thus you make better decisions.
We have gone from a society that had respect for elders, respect for leaders to one that doesn't, to one that has hate as their driving force.
Everybody now has an opinion about every decision a chairman or manager makes, even when they don't have any facts.
They are on internet straight away with the misguided belief they know better, they don't.
Sir Alex Ferguson explains the problem of a manager under pressure even though the players want to win for him.
"They fail simply because the fear of the manager about the results at the time drip-feeds into the players’ minds. I see it all the time."Drip, drip, drip in the head and eventually ... they give in."You can see them draining away. Some can pick themselves up, some can get out of it, some can recover, but fear has a draining effect.!Sir Alex Ferguson
People have an underlying fear of rejection, inadequacy, fear of failure and times of stress bring that to the surface.
A player has to deal with that is a positive way and not just throughout the game.
"My fear is about losing games. In spite of all my experience as a coach and a manager, it has not got any easier. The fear is still there."Chris Houghton
Fear though can be a motivator though, if used in the right way it can drive performance.
My best bowling performance in my mind is in a league game against a top side when we didn't have enough bowlers so if I didn't perform a the top of my game we would get hammered.
That's what players and managers have to do, channel it, some do it better than others.
"We live inside a circle bounded by our fears."Mohandas Gandhi
That quote says it all succinctly.
Fear is a brake, fear stops us doing but it stops the thought process too.
Imagine you see this perfect house from 10 feet above.
That is the answer to your dreams.
But if you look at it from 100 feet up, you see there is a sewage works not far one side and a no-go drug fuelled neighbourhood the other.
It is no longer the dream home for your family.
Fear makes you see things from 10 feet, unless you channel it, unless you see the task as a challenge.
Then you'll see it from 100 feet and make better more informed decisions.
The hate fuelled 90 minute fear driven fan only sees from 10 feet.
Learning is about going outside your comfort zone into areas you don't know about with an open enquiring mind.
Some though, shut their mind.
Again the 90 minute fan is a prime example, they don't see possibilities, opportunities, the bigger picture, their focus is narrow and nothing matters unless it fuels their hatred.
Their ego gets in the way of them developing, they haven't conquered fear, they aren't channeling it right.
That isn't the type of person you would put in charge of anything and resent those who are in charge, yet they have had the same chances, they have the same brain, they just haven't used it well enough.
That comfort zone circle is easy, you don't stretch yourself, you live at an easy pace working to make someone else rich.
To a winning mentality, that is dull, uninteresting, unchallenging, unfulfilling.
Brain dead or brain alive, different worlds.
The world outside your comfort one,beyond your fear, is exciting, interesting, challenging, fulfilling.
It's the only place you can grow.
As an employer, as a manager, which would you take on board, the individual who steps out of their comfort zone or the individual who stays within it?
One will take you forward, one won't.
Again, it's that mindset, it controls everything.
So how do we go about conquering fear, how can a player free himself?
1. Identify the fear
2. Put it in context
3. Believe the outcome will be positive
Mentally you have to accept fear, welcome it, see the game as a challenge and relish that challenge.
If you can do that, if you understand that's what you need to do, then the pressure goes away.
That key element is why you have to mentally train players that and not just hope they figure it out on their own or manage it on their own.
If you have had a defeat for instance, you have to put it in perspective, not dwell on it and move on.
You analyse it of course, you learn lessons from it, but you don't drag a squad down with it, you deal with it and move on.
There is a bigger picture.
Strong leaders are optimists.
"I can’t go in and let the players see that I’m down or that I think things are going wrong. Once I walk in training ground if I’m going to be down then we’ve got no chance."You’ve got to come out every day and you’ve got to be up and you’ve got to be bright and you’ve got to get them all going again because otherwise the players will pick up on that – they don’t miss a trick."So I find I have to be strong, I have to be positive."Harry Redknapp
A fan goes up and down with every performance.
The knee-jerk reaction approach is one-dimensional.
A manager sees the game and the bigger picture, two-dimensional.
A chairman an even bigger picture.
Not everyone can handle those different levels thus you have people only seeing life through their level,again something we know he fear mentality struggles with, like a horse with blinkers not being able to see the whole picture.
"You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball and over the horizon, all the time. Some aspiring leaders haven’t got it, they haven’t got the intellectual ability to deal with these complexities – they are one-dimensional.Howard Wilkinson
A sense of perspective allows you to see where you are in a journey, one match, one transfer window is just a blip within the journey, the trajectory.
Those people make better decisions and get better results.
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