Structure determines behaviour
Take home message
HOW CAN YOU MODIFY YOUR STRUCTURE TO ENCOURAGE THE BEHAVIOURS YOU SEEK.
For Coaches
Consider modifications to your environment to encourage optimum behaviour.
For Athletes
Your daily schedule or physical environment are opportunities for you to shape your structure to develop a behaviour.
A concept I have given a lot of thought regarding my coaching is structure determines behaviour, an interpretation from a podcast interview (The Next Big Idea, link below). Alter the temperature of water a few degrees and the same molecules that were once a liquid become rigid, solid and brittle. The behaviour of a fluid shaping to the vessel is replaced by a hard, unyielding material. The arrangement of the water molecules, their structure, determines their behaviour. Whilst the author was discussing organisational culture, I think about it often in regard to individual and team behaviours from a coaching perspective.
Photo by Lanju Fotografie on Unsplash
I am really starting to pay more attention to the structure of my interaction, environment, programs or education with the coaches and athletes I work with to enhance the behaviours we believe will lead to the outcomes we seek. For example, if recovery is important and we want more stretching and soft tissue work before or after training, in addition to education (and nagging!), I can organise the traffic work flow to make the rollers and trigger balls more easily accessible at training or the gym. That is an example of the environmental structure influencing a personal care behaviour.
If I want more education opportunities for players, about training principles, or GPS feedback, I can structure conversation time into my pre-gym call-in and message GPS reports or infographics prior to gym so we have a bit of pre-reading prior to the conversation. I can have the GPS or agility clips from training on the laptop at gym where informal conversations are much easier to have than on the training field. I find this allows athletes and I the chance to talk about the variables important to performance, which allows them to understand why conditioning may be prescribed the way it is. That’s an example of structure influencing educational behaviour (which may influence training behaviour).
It’s a simple concept that I believe can have powerful impact. I think if we look closely at the behaviours we wish to develop, and they can be cultural, physiological or technical, we can find opportunities in our physical environment or program, where we can create a structure that facilitates the behaviour. If I want to facilitate a cultural behaviour, I can pair junior and senior players in a mentoring capacity in gym programs - the physical pairing structure facilitates a behaviour of mentoring younger players, and older players hearing the concerns of younger team members.
Structure can also facilitate the behaviours we wish to become habits. In Atomic Habits, author James Clear writes about arranging the environment to facilitate good habits or eradicate bad ones. Will power and motivation are finite and I believe that a great opportunity for progress comes in the simple structures we can embed in our schedules and environments.
Consider a behaviour you wish to develop, either personally or professionally and assess how you can shape your environment, your structure, to facilitate the behaviour.
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Thanks again. BA.