The lowdown and benefits of the learning culture at Athletic Bilbao (Part 2)

FC Athletic Psychologist María Ruiz de Oña & my colleague Carlos Taboas Lorenzo at Lezama discussing Academy team preparation.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how Athletic Bilbao aim to generate and live an ideal ‘learning environment’ for their players and coaches. I wrote about how the restrictions at the club (both self imposed via their ‘La Cantera’ policy and by the lack of riches to be found at the likes of Barcelona and the 2 Madrid clubs) enable the Academy to breed a philosophy of trying to improve their players ‘inner game.’

What to me appears unique about the approach taken by the institution is how the club implement a process of continual improvement of their emotional skill development from the top down — with all of the coaches having to work at understanding themselves, their emotions and communication style as much as the players being trained to be more self-aware in order to help them become more autonomous and responsible for their thinking, behaviour and emotional conduct on and off the pitch. A week after my time at Lezama, I’ve been reflecting on what the lessons are that I learnt that I feel are most useful from my time there.

First of all, I’m interested in how people learn. I’m also interested in what the best environments are that allow people to develop in. As with business, sport can be a tough, pressurised place in which to develop. Despite the ethos mentioned in my previous piece about how the players are required to ‘find their personality’ and have a ‘victorious attitude,’ ultimately these desires will be hollow if the players aren’t able to step up to the first team and be competitive against the best players and teams in la liga. Effectively, Maria and Jose-Mari are breeding a coping and resilience culture within the organisation that allows the players to better regulate their emotions to achieve success. So this isn’t just a piece that applies solely to football. It has resonance for anyone who is:

• A coach or psychologist
• A teacher, lecturer or educator
• A business person or trainer
• Anyone trying to enhance their team or colleagues within an organisational setting

What specifically happens in the work done at the club from a physical and tactical perspective is as important as the psychological aspect in terms of impact (this article from IBWM from 2014 neatly sums up how the methodology works holistically). But, given my interest in optimal psychological learning environments, the rest of this piece will relate to the psychological methods implemented.

Maria sums the core principles for each individual in the Academy to be:
- Non-conformity
- Self Questioning
- Ability to seek out feedback, question, listen and implement emotional skill advice.

The coaches at Athletic, as at all Academies, spend time getting to know the players from a young age to build a solid relationship of trust and awareness of the emotional distance between themselves and each individual. The ideal relationship they are taught is one of equality, not being either over friendly or conversely authoritarian in style. Coaches are challenged by the players verbally, and it is expected of them that they don’t react or dismiss the players view. In reviews of previous and upcoming training sessions, the players are led by their coach to run and facilitate the session themselves. Even in the U15s and U12s sessions I sat in on, the coaches spoke very little, with the players leading conversations themselves of how they had felt and experienced the training, using the tactics board to demonstrate understanding and detail of what was expected of them in their position on the pitch.

The coaches are trained in the art of Socratic questioning, so as not to give answers to the players, but in order to force the players to think of the answers themselves and to talk in the first person about their feelings and to demonstrate that learning has occurred.
The process by which the development of learning is structured is thus:

i) Coach and players jointly understand the reason for learning co-create ‘What is learning?’ based around the club’s principles.

ii) The relationship between player and coach develops so both learn.

iii) Coach and player have to learn and accommodate their emotional blind spots.

iv) Coach and player have to push their limits to develop

v) The various possible threats (deficiencies if you like) that have to be identified in a player, admitted to in order to be worked on.

So players are emotionally exposed in the safety of the Lezama environment. Coaches are encouraged not to focus on opposition players, but their own brood. Maria said the hardest barrier she finds from working with coaches is the need to develop active, thinking players who are capable of taking responsibility and handle self-criticism. Naturally some coaches and players are better at it than others. But in the preparation for drills and the process that follows via in depth reflection (even with young age groups these can go on for 45 minutes) knowledge, development and application of emotional skills can occur.

It isn’t always perfect. There are some coaches who buy in less than others to the process. There are some reflective and planning sessions where the coach will lead more autocratically and directionally. So Lezama isn’t a Utopia, and it hasn’t always been plain sailing. The process has changed over the 20 years that Maria has lead it. She often incorporates new ideas and thinking to the way in which the coaches and system will work (she went to a course in Barcelona on Transactional Analysis the day after I left). But the fundamentals of the system remain and are backed by the Director. In driving the work in the fashion explained here, the number of players coming through the Lezama Academy to the Athletic 1st team is the highest of Academy graduates in Spain. The one thing I was expecting would be more play on the identity of the Basque culture and what playing for the team might mean — as a way of enhancing team spirit. But less is made of that within the system, and as the players are already at the club and are of Basque heritage, that aspect is left more to the individual and their families to incorporate into their development.

It was a privilege to experience of working at the club for 2 days and observing the players and coaches working together and how they played in the training sessions after their player led sessions.

If there are any questions or reflections you may have after reading this, please feel free to ask. As the people of the Basque country would say themselves: Eskerrik Asko! :-)