Dealing With Downward Spirals

Dealing With Downward Spirals

By: Bill Beswick - Head Coach, Immaculate Heart Academy

Originally Published in: One Goal - The Mindset Of Winning Soccer Teams - Human Kinetics

During a long, competitive league season, teams can be on an upward spiral, experiencing good achievement and momentum; they can be on a plateau, seeing little progress or decline; or they can be in a downward spiral, dealing with an accumulation of negative thoughts, feelings and actions that bottoms out as a slump.

When adversity strikes, pressure goes up, whether real or perceived, and it becomes easier to be pessimistic and drawn into a negative mindset. Coaches must not allow adversity to become the starting point for a downward spiral.

In my experience the playing season demands attention on so much day-to-day detail that managers and coaches in a soccer club often do not have the space or time to reflect on the big picture. This lack of perspective can mean that the effect of adversity is not recognized soon enough, so an insidious descent into a downward spiral begins to gather pace. Upward spirals need recognizing and encouraging, often by doing less rather than more, whereas downward spirals need awareness and remedial action as early as possible.

Decline generally does not stem from a single factor, but from an accumulation of decisions, actions and commitments that become entangled in a self-perpetuating system of dynamics. Once a cycle of decline is established it's hard to simply call a halt, put on the brakes, and reverse direction. The system has momentum. Expectations have formed, and they can turn into a culture that perpetuates losing.

- Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2004)

Coaches must learn to read the increasingly damaging signals (see table 13.1) and take immediate steps to halt and then reverse the spiral, building resilience for future situations.