Sport At Its Best

Cal Botterill (see Contributors) is an accomplished teacher of sport (or performance) psychology.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Cal over the past few years through his work with the Canadian bobsleigh and skeleton teams (while I have been coaching skeleton).  Before meeting Cal, I certainly knew of him by reputation through friends and colleagues of mine who think very highly of him and as I am coming to realize, for good reason.

What I find really appealing about Cal is his positivity.  When you’re talking to him you really get the feeling he ‘gets it’.  One thing that contributes to making Cal a great communicator, is the fact that he’s been in his field working with elite athletes for decades and has some great anecdotes to draw from.  When you can illustrate your point by referring to people who have won championship trophies or Olympic medals, you can make a strong argument.

One of the challenges in working with a team of athletes that compete in an individual sport is the fact that your teammate is also your competition (like Jamie Gregg and Jeremy Wotherspoon).  Speaking from personal experience as both an athlete and a coach, it’s difficult sometimes to be in that environment and not look at a teammate as the enemy.  It’s easy to fall in to that trap.  Depending on your perspective, it can be really stressful to go to practice every day along side someone else who wants nothing more that to be exactly where you want to be – on top of the podium.

Of course this is a very limited perspective – everyone in your entire sport wants to be on top of the podium.  In fact, it’s their job as your competition to want to be on top of the podium, and they serve you best by challenging you.  In general terms, your opponent (teammate or not), shouldn’t be thought of as “the enemy” or someone you have contempt for but someone that will help you to reach your best by creating the greatest possible challenge and exposing areas of your game that you can improve upon.

In fact, it’s their job as your competition to want to be on top of the podium, and they serve you best by challenging you.

Here’s what Cal and Tom Patrick wrote in their book Perspective, The Key To Life (Lifeskills, 2003) about teamwork and perspective,

People with perspective are usually great at teamwork.  Their ability to see the big picture helps them recognize and appreciate the value of collaboration and working with others.  Their sensitivity and perceptiveness help them realize that everybody has a role that is important and needs to be appreciated.

Most of all, people with perspective have enough vision, gratitude and security to be open to positive rivalries and other people’s needs.  Positive rivalries are reflected in the sentiment “I hope you are great, because that brings out the best in me, and that’s better for all of us”.  Top competitors seem to embrace positive rivalries and share this attitude.  It is clearly a much higher level of functioning than negative rivalries and the “eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth” mentality that often creeps into highly competitive activity when people lose perspective.

Positive rivalries bring out the best in us and promote a win-win possibility.  They promote an approach-success versus avoid-failure outlook, which is much healthier and facilitates, much higher levels of performance and functioning.  Negative images, fears and tension are reduced and enhanced focus, connection and flow become possible.

People with perspective play a leadership role (by example or initiative)!  Their poise has a settling effect on people.  These people play a huge role in teams developing perspective.  When this happens, it is an exciting thing to be a part of.  Team members become constant reminders of the perspective, poise and dedication necessary to be successful.  Natural energy flows and is shared and felt regularly, without the tension and static that is part of negative rivalries and have to versus want to mentalities.

One of the great examples I was referring to previously that Cal has to draw from is the positive rivalry once held between Susan Auch and Catriona LeMay-Doan.  At the Nagano Olympics in 1998, Susan won her second straight silver medal in the 500 meters speed skating event while Catriona won her first of two consecutive gold medals.  It was a case of two world-beaters on the same team, always training on the same ice at the same time.  Cal suggested that I look up an old video that he had put together for Sport Manitoba.  The video talks about the rivalry and you really get the feeling that it was a strain at times but there’s a great segment in which Susan talks about the end result,

“Catriona and I became powerful because we were working together.  I think it’s a lot harder being from the same country, but obviously it’s possible.  I mean there were times that were really really difficult.  They were dumb things [the petty differences] so in the end I definitely think that the two of us wouldn’t have been on the podium without doing it the way we did.  We would not have both been on the podium, maybe one of us would have, maybe the other, maybe not first.  But I’m sure we both wouldn’t have.”

Positivity and collaboration facilitated by perspective results here in higher achievement.  This is yet another case where attitude translates in to success.