High Performing Teams - Perspective
The Characteristics of High Performing Teams - Part 5
We had just lost to Amherst at home. My Rhode Island College team as very good, and Amherst was one of the elite teams in the country, having beaten us in the Elite 8 a few years earlier on the way to their first national title. Losing to Amherst wasn’t the end of the world, but we had a couple of other tough losses in January and we put an NCAA Tournament bid in danger. Beating Amherst would have been a huge win, one that likely would have put us in the Tournament. We didn’t pay well, and they handled us pretty good.
I rarely reacted emotionally after games, especially losses, preferring to watch the film and understand a lot more about how we played before drawing any conclusions. After this game, I was pretty down. We expected a lot better and this was a huge game for us, and we didn’t perform.
I walked into the locker room after the game and the players could tell I was pretty disappointed. We had put ourselves in a tough spot as far as just making the tournament, with our consecutive streak of 5 straight tournaments on the line. I let the players know we had dug ourselves a pretty big hole, and we had a lot of work to do to get out of it. But their response was interesting. They were obviously disappointed that we lost. But they didn’t seem like it was that big of a deal to them. They weren’t distraught. They were saying stuff like “we’ll see them again, well get them in the tournament.” I was thinking, what tournament??? We had a lot of work to do just to have a chance.
I remember we came back the next and we were really sharp at practice. Our guys were a little pissed off that we lost, but it didn’t impact our approach to work the next day. I felt a lot worse than they did. If it was up to me, that loss probably would have stung a little bit and changed our approach to practice a bit. But our players were confident in each other and what we did, and it was just time to get back to work. They had great perspective. And I learned a lot about that from them.
Their unique perspective was the attitude that they took towards losing. I learned, over time, that my best teams had a great relationship with losing. That doesn’t mean they accepted it or didn’t think winning was important. They just didn’t let losing have a negative impact on what they did next. They hated to lose, but it didn’t phase them to the point where they were making bad decisions moving forward.
Elite players and high performing teams have great perspective. They have a particular attitude toward what happens around them, and they are very balanced mentally.