Tribes Always Triumph

THE POWER OF POSITIVE COMMUNITIES IN SPORT

The game was over, a thriller that went down to the last minute. The 75,000 fans were heading for the exits.

Then something strange happened that made them stop.

Every single player, on both teams, linked arms in the center of the field. Even the coaches were there.

In an unexpected scene that floored the nation, the Hawthorn and Collingwood teams offered a silent moving tribute to the players and coaches at the Adelaide Crows, who had suffered the unimaginable: their head coach, Phil Walsh, had been murdered only days earlier. The football world was stunned.

Other teams in every match since have paid tribute in the same fashion. Fellow players have reached out the Crows in a show of solidarity. The media praised their courage. The fans of both Adelaide teams, where Walsh worked, have been amazing.

And the response from the Crows players and coaches themselves? Emotional. Gripping. Raw. But positive and supportive — exactly how their coaches have taught them to be. Another of their former coaches, Dean Bailey, knew this power of positive communities well, having been a head coach or assistant at fourth different teams.

He spoke of it often as we chatted while he battled cancer last year.

“You walk into the club, and you’re a lot stronger when you walk through the door than when you walk out of it — cos you’re surrounded with your teammates, I suppose — but when you walk out you’re on your own.”

He was still only 47, and the senior assistant at his fourth club, when he lost his battle the week before the 2014 season. In a tragic turn of events, his close friend Phil Walsh became head coach of the team he left behind — until he, too, died unexpectedly last week.

It bought a horrible wave of memories, but the reaction from the football community also reminded me of the positivity both men preached.

Around my third hospital visit with the coach everyone called ‘Bails’, we had TV in the background as we chatted. It was Super Bowl week, so thankfully there was more sport than we could both have wished for as a better focal point for the conversation than the chemotherapy.

“Who do you like Paddy?” Bails would ask. He wouldn’t wait for a response before offering his take on the game. “The Broncos for me — the whole Peyton Manning story is just too good.”

“Nah,” I replied as I swigged my coffee, “I want the Seahawks to win.” He cocked an eyebrow waiting for an explanation as he adjusted his morphine feed. I obliged. “They do things differently — kind of like what we’ve been talking about building in our club.”

We had made plans — before he fell ill — that we were going to train the mental game like it hadn’t been done before. A competitive advantage in a playing field that was becoming more even every year.

We talked for a short while about the way they did things at the Seahawks, and how their positive environment, focus on mental strength and allowing individuals to thrive were seen as a competitive edge. I asked a more general question then, about what makes good teams great.

“All the different club environments you’ve been in,” I began, “what’s the common theme? Strip away the superstars and the level that it’s at, and the difference between a red and a yellow sash…”

“Um,” he pondered again, then took a deep breath to answer. “Ah, There’s still that feeling, that tribal feel amongst players, that group power. You know, once you become part of a group, it’s a very strong thing to be in.”

He paused, adjusted his oxygen and considered his answer, then confirmed it with his very next breath.

“People like to be in a strong group. And when they feel they can achieve within a group, they get good support, they get, um, guidance, then they tend to succeed.”

His point, and the Seahawks rise to the top, prompted a fascinating discussion: Do the champs just get to the top of the mountain because they’re special, or have logged their 10,000 hours on the road? Or is it actually because they have better support around them along the way?

The 2014 Superbowl champs think it’s the latter.

The Seahawks have built a champion team based largely on being different from traditional sports teams. And it hasn’t been by accident — Pete Carroll spent years planning this, before he even took the job in Seattle. Carroll had an inglorious first stint as a head coach at New England, and then had time away to re-evaluate and rebuild his program from scratch.

“Every day,” Carroll would reminisce, “I asked myself: what would I do differently if I had my time again?”

His answer? People caring for each other.

“It basically comes down to taking care of the people in your program and making them the best they can be,” he explains. “Not giving up on them and never failing to be there for them. They don’t even totally know that’s how we are with them, because we do it so completely.”

They are now widely recognized as one of the most positive cultures in sports, and much of the credit for their success is attributed to it. It is perhaps so simple it’s almost hard to believe — but Carroll insists it’s the difference maker.

“It may not sound like much,” he agrees, “but the power comes from the genuine and energetic connection that’s created by the conviction and commitment between everyone involved!”

While Coach Carroll has built his philosophy through years of tireless reflection, there is a good body of research that has been done in many fields to suggests he’s right.

Kelly McGonigal’s work on our innate systems for controlling focus show that willpower improves with support and care from fellow tribe members, not scolding and shame. What exactly does increased willpower mean for performers? For starters, they’ll be more able to stick to a plan. They will be better placed to make sacrifices, and it’s basically the key ingredient to being able to persevere when things are hard.

At a group level, the benefits are there too — surprisingly, it’s forgiveness and compassion (not guilt) that increase intrinsic accountability over the long run. Researchers have found that taking a compassionate point of view during setbacks makes people more likely to help others, and take responsibility for their own role.

The support that comes from a tribe, and the reserves of willpower it builds in the individuals within it, are powerful forces in dealing with adversity like death or loss. But it also helps buffer from the daily setbacks that are part of becoming great — the loss on the weekend; the failed time trial; the mistake at training.

The day the Seahawks won their first Superbowl, I came off the training track to find two text messages on my phone. It was Bails, who had been watching the game on TV from his front row seat in hospital while we sweated it out at training.

He was excited. Their approach was the same as Bails — and it had finally been proven a winner.

In the tributes that have flowed over the past 10 days players, coaches and others who knew him have all praised Phil Walsh for the same qualities: Supportive. Caring. Nurturing. As they paid homage to his unique life in the game he loved, the greater tribe of sports came together — from the other players, other teams, football supporters and even other sports — folded it’s arms around those who were hurting, and helped lift them up.

While both Bailey and Walsh are missed, they have left their mark on the supportive tribes they helped build.

In this way, their legacies are both still very much alive and kicking.

(This is an extract from the upcoming book about a coach who died while still at the top of the game. You can follow the story here or simply register your support for the family he left behind at www.BreakfastWithBails.com.)