AUSTIN SWAIN

Sporting notes

• 1995 England Rugby Team – wikipedia link
• “I wanted to win”: Will Carling’s lessons from the rugby pitch – video link
• Quest For Number One – book by Robin Smith – amazon link
• Roger Bannister: Breaking the 4-minute mile – youtube link
• The Story Behind Bob Beamon’s Long Jump Olympic Record  – youtube link

Psychology notes

• Wilful Blindness – book by Margaret Heffernan – website link
• William James – one of the founding fathers of Social Psychology – wikipedia link
• What is psychological safety and why is it the key to great teamwork? – website link
• Fazey & Hardy – Catastrophe Theory – website link
• Why Athletes Choke Under Pressure – Optimal Level of Arousal – youtube link
• Albert Bandura – wikipedia link

General notes

• BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster in 2020 – 60 minutes documentary
• Shocking Facts About the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster – youtube link
• Chilean Miners 2010 – wikipedia link – bbc link – the 33 movie trailer

AUSTIN SWAIN

Austin Swain 00:00
Coping with pressure, that’s a lot of what sport psychology and or performance psychology is about. It’s about helping people manage their emotions and thoughts to create an optimal performance state, you know, so what’s the… best quote, best version of self, because very often we can have thinking patterns which hijack our ability to perform at our best and I sometimes look at there’s almost like three levels, there’s, you can be someone who conducts anxiety and stress as a function of your thinking patterns and the way you internalise it, or you can sort of insulate against it where it’s quite neutral, or you can actually thrive on it and maybe that’s some of the mindset shift, is that these are the conditions that actually bring the best out of me. So you get people having a sort of approach motivation, as opposed to an avoidance motivation,

Ben Ryan 00:42
Okay.

Austin Swain 00:43
And that’s you see things as opportunities as opposed to threat. So there’s some subtle mindset things there which are earned. It never ceases to amaze me that some of the great athletes who are supremely talented sometimes have sort of irrational thoughts and some sort of crooked thinking…sort of self sabotage.

Ben Ryan 01:00
Yes.

Austin Swain 01:01
So I give an example, I used to have this, a long, long time ago, Ben, but with a rugby player, international rugby player, many caps, who would say, “Oh, I never play well, three times in a row.” And you go, “Oh, well, no kidding”, you know, because it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that and it’s really interesting, just as an example of that, I had the pleasure of actually interviewing as part of a podcast, Rob Kearney, legendary Irish full back, you know, 95 caps, British Lion and one of our our clients is the Bank of Ireland, of course, Leinster are sponsored by the Bank of Ireland and we did this session interviewing a high performance, high performer from another sphere, and whether there’s some transfer into people who work in the bank, and I, he was telling the story about you know, never play well, three times in a row. He said, “Yeah, it’s funny that” he said, he said, “I always used to tell myself that I never play well, at Murrayfield” he said, “I don’t know why” he said, “I just managed to have to really, really grapple with my Gremlins about the fact that I just never play well at Murrayfield it’s one of those things”. And of course he had to find a way for that not to because it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Ben Ryan 02:01
And did he manage to break that?

Austin Swain 02:03
Yeah and he did. But it’s kind of like yeah, I just don’t sort of accept that but I have to maybe work harder, be more deliberate around how I prepare myself and shut down that potential thought. And he spoke really fluently and quite amusingly about that.

Ben Ryan 02:16
If you were to sum up, then what performance psychology brings to a sports team or an organisation? How do you sell that?

Austin Swain
I think that at an individual level, there is purely in terms of how you go about your life, and you take on the tasks that come your way, regulating thoughts and emotions, such that they are conducive, and you are the best version of yourself. So I think there’s a lovely phrase by Oscar Wilde, he talks about, be yourself, because everyone else is taken. But I think where the kind of performance psychology comes in is, like, be yourself, but with skill. So be aware of, that maybe the difference between intention and impact, be aware of how under pressure, there may well be certain behaviours, which are derailers, where sometimes overplayed strengths don’t necessarily bring out the best of you, and others. So there’s something about raising awareness, and or just ensuring that day in day out your best version of self, and that the pressures and the challenges that come your way, don’t take you off course.

Ben Ryan
So going back to say ’95, when you were with a group of players in England, with the national rugby team that would not probably have come across a psychologist in their group before and, you know, it was we’re just moving into the professional era, they’re still amateur back then just about to skip across into it in ’97. How did they see you then?

Austin Swain 03:43
Case by case for sure, for sure. And I think the advantage, in terms of the degree of acceptance or otherwise was that the captain at that time was Will Carling, Will Carling did a psychology degree at Durham and Will valued or saw the benefits that it could bring. Having said that, there was a really, it’s a really interesting time because I remember this, you’re taken me right back, there was a rugby special programme. I think Chris Rea hosted it. So I’m going I’m going way back in time and Jeff Probyn.

Ben Ryan 04:19
Yes, I’ve played with Jeff…

Austin Swain 04:21
Rugby legend. Right?

Ben Ryan 04:22
Yeah.

Austin Swain 04:22
And I think there was some conversation about the fact that England were involving a sport psychologist and Chris Rea fired the question “What’s your view?” And Jeff said “Well, in my view, you’re either good enough or you’re not.” So there was that subtext a little bit. And at the same time, I did some work with… I was invited in to do some work with a Premiership football team, Premier League just at the start and I remember the manager was not a fan and, and he says, “Well you need to convince me that there’s a role to be played here because when I was brought up, I was brought up to believe that men were men and sheep were sheep”. So in other words, a complete you’ve either got it or you haven’t and it’s a sign of weakness and there is absolutely no role. Now, coming back to the England team, I’m not saying all the players were like that at all. But there was still that perception that if you did see the sport psychologist, you weren’t capable of coping with the pressures of the game and it was seen as a sign of weakness, as opposed to being seen or interpreted as something where, actually this is going to help me become even better, or be more consistent and, you know, deal with running out in front of 80,000 people and actually loving it, you know…

Ben Ryan 05:31
Do you do anything as a team? Or was it individuals or was it a mix?

Austin Swain 05:35
A bit of both….certainly on an individual basis. So there’s certainly individuals who felt, once you got past the fact that there was no expectation that people will be dragooned into having a conversation. And I think sometimes you have to get past that view. But well, what are we talking about is, are you going to be asked questions about one’s childhood and what lie down on a reclining couch and Austin comes in with a white lab coat? No, you have to get past that. And of course, I think the world has moved on dramatically, since then. But one of the things I look back on it now is that there was a pressure or a taboo that had been lifted. So I’ll give you an example. So there was one player, who was a legend at that time within the England setup, and a key player within the squad and I remember one particular situation we sat at the lunch table, and the conversation came to oh, we’re not sleeping well, in the build-up again, for some reason, just not sleeping well. And so I approached afterwards and said, “Look, you know, there are things you can do around some meditative techniques and calming yourself down before you go to sleep, or you actually, you know, shut down that part of the brain that is just agitated and just can’t get… because clearly, we know that from performance perspective, a good night’s sleep is fundamental.” And he was interested. But he said, “No, I won’t go there.” I said, “why not?” He said, “My roommate would kill me, my roommate would ensure that I was ridiculed appropriately for it within the squad”, I use my words carefully and so such was the culture at the time in pockets was that you have a very established player who instinctively knows this is something that will help his performance, but chooses not to for the fear of the banter and the ridicule it might create from another senior player. And I remember being staggered by that. But that was what was what it was.

Ben Ryan 05:35
Yeah. And you’d hope things have changed now, because they’re so so much more embedded. I can think of a guy that I’ve helped out a little bit that’s now playing in the in the Premier League as a centre forward. And he you know, one of the one of his coping strategy, one of his strategies really is just writing down some sort of process goals that he’ll, he’ll pull out at halftime. And he’s also like, half the half, the thing there is to be confident enough to pull that out in front of his teammates, so that he can, because he wants to remind himself and he wants to stay in the moment and not worry if he’s missed a chance just before that, or he hasn’t scored yet, or all of those sort of things. And he’s using that.

Austin Swain
And Ben the world is dramatically different. I’m conscious as we’re talking here, that you might have some people going that’s staggering but it’s 25 years ago, and things have moved on dramatically, because teams now realise that there’s an acceptance of if that person, whatever that person does to be at their best, we’re all actually going to ultimately benefit from that. Now, one of the things I did do collectively, and this was a precursor to that, because I think there was a nascent need in that squad to talk openly about some of these things. But there wasn’t, I guess, it wasn’t established that that was okay to do so. So one thing I would share, and that is that on the night before, the quarterfinal…

Ben Ryan
So this is the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.

Austin Swain 08:51
England are playing Australia, this is a time when England would meet on a Wednesday lunchtime before a game on a Saturday, everybody was full time employed, more or less. And then the session on the afternoon on the Wednesday there wouldn’t be the full squad because some people couldn’t get some of work. So effectively you had two days, the Thursday and the Friday. So that was the context. And then during the World Cup in South Africa there’s the pool games, and then England qualified from the pool, and we’re playing Australia in the quarterfinals. And it was, yeah, clearly knockout game, and a lot at stake. And I do remember one player, senior player, saying this is like maybe 24 hours before the game saying, “I tell you what, guys, we’ve got to win otherwise, we’re back at work on Monday.” Now that’s it. The motivation was far deeper than that. Yeah, it was a throwaway line around… is almost a dawning on people that this three, four-week journey of spending time together, could come to an abrupt end this time tomorrow. And that’s the indication of the difference of the era okay. Now, having said that, these were the best athletes in the world supreme rugby performers. Now, so the night before, I just felt there was something that was that could possibly give an edge and it’s back to this point about this nascent wish to express something positive about each other, but without it being seen as a bit soft. Not something that big burly blokes did. So we did an exercise… so imagine the room you’ve got and I’ve got a bit of A4 paper, three sheets of A4 paper and each player had this this bit of paper and on each bit of paper with like, number one, the players name and a bit of space, number two players name and a bit of space, number three players name and a bit of space. And so on right through, through to 21. And I said right, what I’d like you to do is on this strip of paper, I want you to write down why you are pleased that you’re running out on the pitch tomorrow with this player. So if this player is the best player you have ever played with in this position, tell him. What does this player bring to this team that no one else brings? Now why are you personally just so excited about taking the pitch with this guy. And you’ve got to do it for everybody. And, and it’s interesting, because there wasn’t engagement straight away, there was absolute silence, but then at the end of the process I then separated out all of those strips of paper, and then put them in an envelope. So for example, if you were, for example, Will Carling, who’s number 12, Will would have had 20 statements from his 20 teammates as to why they were pleased they were running out on the pitch with him. And then of course, I submitted those to each of the players afterwards. And I think it made a huge difference because it was almost for the first time, it wasn’t laced with banter, for the first time, people knew the significance of that guys, you’re gonna get an envelope with 20 statements. This is not a time to damn someone with faint praise. Be authentic. But just think about what we’re stepping into tomorrow, and so on. Now, one of the things that really, really struck me was that there was some players there who had got 50, 60, 70 caps. And they chased me for the envelopes. Because they left the room whilst I did the kind of processing if you like, and there was a delay, and I came out and what I’d done, I’d slip the envelopes under the doors. But then some of these players were saying, where’s the envelope? Where’s the envelope? I said, “Well, actually, I put it under the door”. So that was my point about the nascent piece is that it wasn’t something that just naturally happened. But actually, there was a desire for it. There’s I mean, for example, the founding fathers of, one of the founding fathers of social psychology chap called William James, he talks about unconsciously, people craving appreciation. And in particular you might crave appreciation from peers. And equally the same time, at one level, we crave a sense of belonging. So if you think about this exercise that was all about tapping into appreciation and belonging

Ben Ryan 13:12
That was written down with nobody over your shoulder and you had time as a player to write down how you really felt and he felt safe to do so. That often for me, is absolute foundation stone now in building a culture, where you get the best out people, is creating that that safe environment and that psychological safety.

Austin Swain 13:31
Yeah massive. Great, great point because I think there’s something about when I think about psychological safety, there’s the link between that and also accountability, which we’ll probably get to but for me psychological safety certainly in a business context, is that you feel that you can express something that it’s a concern or actually a positive affirmation of someone without some sort of fear of repercussion.

Ben Ryan 13:53
So there’s no black tick or cross against your name…

Austin Swain
There’s no repercussion, as in “Oh, the comment was not actually well received”. So you’re showing some vulnerability. When you express something about about a teammate there’s vulnerability but that’s okay. You know, but also, there’s no repercussion if you’re expressing your concern about something or something that you are noticing, or something that you think we’re sweeping an issue under the carpet here, because if you don’t feel you’re psychologically safe to express that, because you think it’s career limiting, or that in some ways, you say there’s a black mark, then lots of things that should get surfaced and addressed and faced into just don’t. And so there’s brilliantly Margaret Haven has written a brilliant book called Willful Blindness and I think one of the problems…that is psychological safety is at the root of that, and I can think of…

Ben Ryan
So Willful Blindness, if you want to touch on that…

Austin Swain 14:46
Yeah, so Willful Blindness would be where people avoid facing into certain situations, a) because maybe they have a bias or confirmation bias that their view of the world is right, but actually, it isn’t safe to surface some concerns, so you park it and actually deny that it’s important. So that’s where there’s a blindness, you’re willfully blind, you kind of sleepwalk into a problem. And I think certainly with teams, if you don’t actually address some stuff that you know is a problem, then it will come back to haunt you at some stage. It’s just a matter of time. So I think the best teams do have those open conversations and a lovely phrase the Archbishop of Canterbury, he talks about high performing teams disagree well, they find a way to disagree well and there’s a lot in that. But so if I come back to the psychological safety bit, I think, if you look across some of and I can think of some examples where the absence of psychological safety has led to absolute disasters. So the best example I could probably give you is… we did a lot work with BP. And I’m sure people will be familiar with about 10 years ago, the Deepwater Horizon crisis of the Gulf of Mexico. So we at Lane 4 have worked subsequently with BP around BP Wells. So that aspect of their business, a culture that addresses some of the the fear of speaking up

Ben Ryan 15:51
And that disaster, just for those that didn’t, you know, it cost lots of lives…

Austin Swain 16:15
Oh, yeah. So I could probably give background, so it is still the largest marine oil spill in history, millions of barrels, or gallons of oil. I mean, yes, 11 men lost their life, but the cleanup operation took over four years, and an absolute conservation disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And there were all sorts of clues to that just waiting to happen. And, and I love aspects of your book, you talk about the standards you walk past are the standards you become and that’s a perfect example of this. Because this well, within the BP culture, was known as the well from hell, but no leader, no supervisor, if you like, sort of noticed that or reflected on that or wondered what that was about. Now, 10 years on, if you think about the the aspect, the focus on safety is dramatically different. But at that time, you had people turning a blind eye to this thing being called the well from hell. And so a lot of the work we got into was, okay, what were the barriers to it being called out? What were some of the behaviours and some of the standards that were people knew that there was happening and why was that? So in other words, when you look back, and there was no psychological safety, because people felt if they call stuff out, it would be career limiting, there will be repercussions. Now, another example of that, which one that I don’t have personal experience of was, you think about what happened with the Challenger. Now, the Challenger one is, again, really interesting but again, that’s a perfect example of psychological safety not being present. So this would have been probably mid 80s, actually, yes mid 80s. But it’s a really, I mean, you look at the transcripts and it’s become a brilliant case study for things at a couple of levels. One is about the role of leadership, vis a vis psychological safety, but then also representational dynamics and I’ll link those two things in a minute. But this is a situation where there was the launch of the space shuttle, there was a flawed design and they had the O ring seals, which some of the engineers were worried about, they were worried about under conditions of extreme cold, they would snap, and then there could be a disaster. And actually 70 seconds after takeoff, that very thing happens. So some of the engineers deepest fears, they actually did materialise and seven astronauts lost their lives. Now, the backdrop was that there were I think 20% of Americans were watching. So you have something like 60 million people watching or whatever, whatever the maths is. Now, this is why I want to link to representative dynamics, because the engineers didn’t feel that they had enough authority to call out their concerns, for fear of being seen as anti commercial. And one engineer did, and he was told by a superior not to worry about it. I’m sure it’s, it’s something that you’re magnifying. But you know, acknowledged it, but we’re saying “I want you to put your enterprise hat on, think about the commercial impact if we delay.” There’s likely to be 20% of Americans watching, there’s already been a delay if we put this off. So in other words, take your specialist functional hats off and think enterprise and the person did not feel psychologically safe to to hold his line in this instance. Basically kept quiet.

Ben Ryan 19:41
Huge consequences of action there. I suppose if you, if you think of the day to day, organisations, families, teams, individuals and groups, where it’s not as amplified as that there’s smaller repercussions for not having that psychological safety, which is I guess a relatively new, it’s not a theory, it’s a relatively new way of thinking about everything. It’s kind of it’s been around for last five or six years. That’d be about right, Austin.

Austin Swain
Yeah, I think Amy Edmondson brought it from Berkeley from Harvard, Harvard, and Berkeley and then subsequently prof at Harvard. But she has brought that, certainly to the fore. But I think the thing about what’s so important, it does link to trust, which is a fundamental, that is a fundamental thing. And how do you build trust in teams, that if you do feel that you expressing… for me they’re quite closely linked, but there’s also something around being one self, as well, and being authentic and true to one’s own values, because in those instances, you’ve got people who effectively were living a lie, they were pretending something that they weren’t and think that’s where psychological safety comes in. At what point am I just trying to conform, as opposed to quote back to my Oscar Wilde quote, being myself, and being myself with skill, and so whatever unconsciously or even semi consciously, I don’t feel I belong, if I don’t feel I can be myself and be valued for who I am, then that’s going to hold me back and going to hold back my contribution.

Ben Ryan
We were talking on one of our calls before we sat down here about the Chilean miners. And psychological safety. And I think, you know, I’d love to hear hear that story. And also, probably on the tail of that, a chat about your views really, on lots of time, we always talk about learning from failure. And I’ve had plenty of them. And I’m sure there’s been times in your life where you’ve failed and learnt from them. But kind of maybe putting a psychological angle on it on how on how failure or problems that arise, how they actually can strengthen you…

Austin Swain
It is a really good case study, because just take people back to 2010. It was a government state owned copper mine in Chile. And basically, there was an explosion and 33 men were trapped and the rescue attempt took 70 days. So they were trapped underground for 70 days, they did manage to get some provision down to them but for seven days, there was no contact. And they found, although they were two and a half thousand feet underground, they did found a pocket of air where they’re able to survive. And so 33 men all rescued, and it was great actually, example of international collaboration at one level, NASA were involved. But the reason why it’s always cited is just this brilliant case study in psychological safety, and how our decision making was leveraged at the right level. Because for all money they shouldn’t have got out, the granite with the thickness of the granite and where they were in the labyrinth, sort of nature of the tunnels and so on. They shouldn’t have got out but they did. And one of the things people talked about is that you didn’t have the leadership, who assumed they had all the answers, you didn’t have the leaders who disappeared into some sort of oak panelled, smoke filled room and came out a few days later with ‘try this’ you know, I mean, there were some suggestions, but I think they were respectfully ignored by the people who were closest to it. And so there was huge trust for the people who were right at the frontline of trying to resolve this, that they could say what they wanted to superiors, and it would be fine like so let’s take that out of the out of the equation, that white noise. And actually what they talked about is that everyone was was doing the right role. So the leadership, for example, were then all about how do we mobilise government, international government resource to help the rescue attempt as opposed to trying to do something that because we are the leaders, we’ve got to try and resolve this. And so there’s something about the authority to call the shots. And there is that phrase, which I know you’ll be familiar with, in the world of sport, where what you want, there is zero tolerance of precious professional boundaries. And the more and more I think about high performing cultures, you get that… now on one level that gets played out in organisations that have the open plan office, you don’t have sort of executive offices, you don’t have executive carpark slots, you don’t have executive toilets, because that just creates divisions. So I guess that’s a kind of extrapolation from that Chilean miners crisis, because everyone recognised whose voice was the one that needed to be heard.

Ben Ryan
That’s fascinating and the secondary, I guess, question that I had then was around failure, you know, because it’s sometimes a throwaway line where you learn more than failure in and I, I’m a advocate of that, but how would you… what do you think we learn from failure?

Austin Swain
There is something about learning from failure, providing we don’t over internalise the failure, such that it damages our self esteem. It’s important that we learn and we can internalise it. But then from an attribution perspective not seen as permanent, as opposed to temporary, because I think the attribution is the key thing here. This is really interesting because you get, you know, stable versus unstable attributions, and also permanent versus temporary, because it’s like we’ve lost and these are reasons why and how pervasive are those reasons? Are they something that we can resolve, are they something that we will be better if we face into, as opposed to where it doesn’t work is you’ve gone yep that’s just proof that we’re not good enough. And so there’s something about the attribution that you make. That doesn’t mean you externalise it, and you say, “Oh, we were just unlucky”. Because I think it’s really important you do internalise the failure, you own the failure, but you own it in a way that we can address it as opposed to owning it in a way that yeah, that proves I’m crap.

Ben Ryan
Yeah, or the opposite, which I’ve had a member speaking about about it to a rugby player that played a lot of test match rugby for Ireland. And he said, like, the way he protected himself was, if they win, then it’s down to me. And if they lose, it’s down to them, and he didn’t learn then but he protected his self confidence, in a position where he needed to be really confident.

Austin Swain
The protection is a good point, because it’s a fine line between protecting yourself so you still optimise yourself in that moment, as opposed to protecting yourself such that you then never learn. So I’ll give you a good example. A colleague of mine, Graham Jones, Graham Jones worked…I’m sure that Robin Smith, I know Robin Smith has permission because I’ve seen him talk about it. He tells a really interesting story about attributions. So Robin Smith, the ex England cricketer, brilliant South African middle order batsman played 70 or 80 times for England, played for Hampshire. And so Graham was working with him and he tells this story where they shifted the attributional sort of focus if you like, and that learning from failure, whether it was live at the crease or them back in the changing rooms and or the training environment. So he tells the story about where he was facing two great Pakistani bowlers Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram who were moving the ball around and he would be playing missing so in cricket, speak the ball would go pass it outside edge. And he says if he internalised that too much in the moment, he’d say, I’m not good enough at this level. These bowlers are too good for me. It’s not in me to cope. I’m gonna get out any minute. And this is back to that crooked thinking piece. His narrative was “I wonder what they’re saying up in the commentary box about Robin Smith isn’t good enough”. So his narrative, his self talk was utterly unhelpful, right? But he got to a point where… he was a he was a fantastic batsman, but every now and again, those Gremlins or that self talk got in the way. Now that’s clearly completely maladaptive thinking, it’s dysfunctional thinking, it’s cricket thinking. And sure as hell it’s self fulfilling. So what they reframed about was that the time it’s okay, at the crease in that moment to say, “Great delivery, world class bowler, that would have beaten anybody’s outside edge”. That sort of thing. And therefore you stay in the game, you stay on the next delivery, you stay in the present, you stay in the game, you’re not worried about what’s happened. But then as soon as he was eventually out, he then gets back into the training environment, that’s when he then properly internalises it, I have got to get better at this, I have got to move my feet, I’ve got to think about my head position. So it was like, yes, there was a shift because otherwise, he didn’t want to erode his confidence in the moment, but he recognised that he had to address it.

Ben Ryan
But yeah, so in that moment, if if a ball beats him, then he’s…well that would have beaten any cricketer in the world.

Austin Swain
We have to bring in the subject if like of self esteem and or self confidence, because I think that’s a huge moderator or mediator of it. And so very quickly, for me, there’s a subtle distinction between self esteem, which is the more generalised global stable trait, if you like the sort of self worth versus self confidence, which is more situational specific, in the moment. So for example, from a self confidence point of view, you can have high self confidence in sport but maybe less self confident in public speaking, or if you drill down you can have you could be… have high confidence maybe passing off your left hand, and less confident passing off your right hand. But so these and then might a nice example might be so if I’m speaking or I’m presenting to a group, and in this particular moment, the group either start leaving the room or they start yawning or they start looking at their watch, that might impact my self confidence in the moment, but it won’t necessarily impact my self esteem, that global perspective. However, if every time I present, then people start leaving the room or yawning or looking at their watch, and that would start to erode my self esteem, right. But I just wanted to reference that because I think whether it’s self esteem and or self confidence is really critical to the stress performance relationship. And you may remember this from your student days, because a theory that was really sort of strong at the time and still is, it’s held for the test of time, was catastrophe theory, Lou Hardy, and then John Phasic. Now, they of course, talked about, well, you need some arousal, because everybody knows if they’re lethargic, or they can’t get up for it, or they can’t get fired up, then that’s not good for performance. So we need some, of course, but they talked about the stress performance relationship, you potentially get into trouble if you have high levels of cognitive anxiety, in other words, worry and doubting, some of that self sabotage talk is starting to creep in. And at the same time, you’ve got high physiological arousal, you know, all the classic symptoms of, you know, increased heart rate, sweaty palms, you’re breathing shallow, maybe feeling nauseous, and you interpret all of those physical symptoms as negative, you don’t want them, they’re not taking you in a good direction. So what catastrophe theory talks about what Hardy and Phasic talk about is that if you have high levels of both, you’re right on the cusp of performance suddenly dropping off but what they then go on to say is that if in amongst that your confidence is low, then you have a catastrophe. So it’s a mediating variable. And so that’s where I think it’s really important to talk about self efficacy and self confidence for that reason. Now, there’s another prof, a social psychologist called Albert Bandura, from Stanford, who did some brilliant, brilliant work, which is still so true. And he talks about, and I’m going to use the two interchangeably now, self confidence and self esteem. He talks about four sort of descending sources of it. So maybe there’s something to think about here. And what he talks about is that self esteem and self confidence is built primarily on previous mastery experiences, you know, performance accomplishments… I’ve done it before. If I’ve done it once, I can do it again. Now, that makes sense. But this is where I think the attributions you make are really important. Because if you are if you have a mastery experience, and you don’t attribute it to oneself, and you kind of externalise, you go, oh, I got lucky, or the other guy just had a bad day, then that doesn’t necessarily contribute to self confidence, because you’ve not let it… not internalised it. So there’s something there about the performance accomplishments and how you draw on that. What Bandura then goes on to say is, there’s a second source, which is vicarious experience a bit of a jargon term, but it’s vicarious experience. In other words, you can get confidence from witnessing or observing people you identify with being successful, you can still get confidence from that. And I was thinking about this in a couple of ways. One, for example, this way, often, sometimes you get a crop of young players coming through in any particular sport, as for example, say in England under 20 player or that whole batch come through and all of a sudden on the cusp of the senior team, is because you must like break through the glass ceiling. So if I’m the player in that team I go, “Ah yeah, we can make it at that level because I identify with that player.” So there’s something about the vicarious experience. And a funny example, I always remember when I used to walk home from school with my brother, right? So I have a younger brother. And he’s braver than me, right? He’s younger, but he’s braver. And so we just had this, never forget it, we had this underpass under a dual carriageway on the way home and it was drop off the wall. And instead of taking the steps, my brother would go, we should jump off, we should jump off and I would go I’m not sure I’m not sure I’m not confident about doing that. And we one day, we walked up to the end of the wall and he just jumped off, he landed and he was fine and he looked up and smiled and thumbs up. I went “Ah, you can do it”. So in that moment, I jumped off. So in other words, there was a vicarious experience someone I identified had done it and I all of a sudden became more confident.

Ben Ryan
The extreme examples I can think of in sport were… I used to have a flat in Oxford that overlooked the, the track that Bannister broke the four minute mile on, he would have had his counterparts that might have beaten him in previous races or trained and thought “You know what? He’s my level” and see him do that and then suddenly, that’s why there was a flurry of four minute miles.

Austin Swain 34:26
Ben that Bannister story is a brilliant pick up on what we’ve just said, because that is all about vicarious experience. What you’ve just said there’s a brilliant link because I think it was a Swedish guy called Gundar Hagg had gone 4.01 and then lots of great athletes were trying to break the four minute barrier. And there was a famously there was an Australian guy called John Landy who, was brilliant and decided that it’s impossible actually and I just think physically human beings… and at the same time you had supposed experts from the world of physiology saying human beings just aren’t built to go under four minutes. So all of the kind of talk if you like all the verbal persuasion around it was it was impossible. Anyway Bannister’s… this is interesting because Bannister’s self talk was I’m refusing to listen to that, because otherwise it just sinks into my shoes. And that’s a great metaphor because if I’m listening I’m all of a sudden I’ve got heavy legs, I’ve got heavy feet and so I refuse to listen to it. So your points are for years and years and years, albeit World War Two, this is a factor, but no one got near it, Bannister does it and then two things happened. John Landy who had given up on the challenge, I think, three weeks later, runs 3.57.9. Boom. So the vicarious experience of Bannister doing it just lifted all sorts of shackles, it lifted off all sorts of limitations. He just did what he did. And then I think to the point you made just a moment ago, is that within two years, I think 15 men had gone under the four minute barrier.

Ben Ryan 36:01
So I’m going to give you… test you out. Now I’m going to give you a flip side example of this. 1968 Mexico Olympics at altitude Bob Beamon long jump, first jump, I think, absolutely shatters the world record eight metres 90 has a I think he has a catonic, I think that’s the word, seizure after it. He just couldn’t believe it. And neither could anybody that was competing against him. And they all absolute fluffed it. You know, they went well below that PB’s so that they didn’t see it as a glass ceiling they just saw it as something that was impossible.

Austin Swain 36:34
That’s a really interesting one. And it’s so true, because it’s only been broken once I think again, I think.

Ben Ryan
Yeah, Mike Powell in ’91.

Austin Swain
exactly that exactly that. And so the really nice link there is almost like there has to be close enough for it to be realistic that to a degree. So for example, you make a really good point. And it’s back to confidence. And the self talk, it’s back to the self talk. Because Lynn Davis in that particular Olympics, he’d won in 1964, he’d won the long jump, he was going to defend his title. And, of course, Beamon did what he did. And then Lynn is the defending champion tells the story that his self talk then became dramatic his confidence plummeted, because there is is there is no way I can do that. So absolutely, it can cut both ways. And I think that’s where if it is a very extreme piece, knowing what we’re capable is relevant, but then we’ve got to make certain that we don’t contribute in a self fulfilling way to our own downfall.

---

You’ve been listening to the Ben Ryan podcast, part of the sports Podcast Network.