Why Winning Matters | with Mindset Coach Zoe Sayetta
Zoe Sayetta is a Mental Performance Coach. You can book a session with her here. Follow her on Instagram.
Sport culture has come a long way since the “win at all costs” mentality seemed to pervade even tiniest nooks and crannies of youth sport.
Particularly in competitive climbing, whose culture is at least somewhat influenced by that of the climbing lifestyle, many coaches are well versed in the virtues of growth mindset, positive self-talk and a prioritization of The Process.
It's now common to hear coaches tell their athletes to focus on the process, not the outcome — I am one of those coaches. It’s generally good advice, but details matter and believe it or not, so do outcomes.
Without careful reflection and application of this core tenet, many driven athletes will flounder with no direction to keep them grounded in the process we are so desperately trying to protect. What does it mean to “focus on your process”, and does this need to happen in lieu of focusing on an outcome? It turns out The Process and The Outcome are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are inextricably linked.
As coaches, we need to help our athletes learn to focus on the right thing, at the right time. There is a time to prepare, a time to reflect and a time to perform. By helping our athletes to identify why winning matters, we can help them develop a process that will set them on the right course. Afterall, we climb for fun, but we compete to win. Here are some concrete steps we can take in supporting our athletes in their process and their goals.
The first step to reaching a goal is setting one.
The initial stage of the goal setting process is a great time to talk about winning, or more specifically, success. Establishing a clear idea of success can help to define the parameters of your goals. If you ask most high-level athletes if they want to win, they will give you an emphatic YES.
But when you dig a little deeper, and ask them what winning really means to them, you will find that taking first place is not what they’re after -- not entirely at least. There are many circumstances under which taking first place would not meet an athlete’s definition of success; taking first place in a field of competitors who are far less experienced than you, taking first place after your primary competitor is pulled from the competition with an injury, or taking first place, but not performing to one’s full potential.
When I talk to athletes about why they want to win, they describe the satisfaction of a very specific alignment of circumstances, one in which their potential, their process and the outcome all come together in on harmonious moment. As you can imagine, experiencing this intersection of things is relatively rare, and that’s precisely what makes it alluring. This is the success athletes are chasing, and if you ask me, that’s one hell of a worthy pursuit.
Once you’ve defined what winning means, and exactly what definition of success your athletes are striving for, it’s important to help them own these goals. The first step to a young athlete being able to own their goals, is for their “important others” to express an equal interest, commitment, and belief in their abilities to do so.
These conversations should happen in a low stake’s environment and during low pressure period of their training. For your athletes to get the most out of this process, you must create an environment in which they feel empowered and free to state their true goal. This will be scary and vulnerable, and it will need to come with a conversation about the uncertainty of competition, but unless they can honestly say what they want, they won’t be able to get it. For Google Maps to give you directions to your destination, you must first enter your desired location!
Enter the process.
I see this stage in two different parts: developing routines and remaining present through their execution.
Developing routines is a fantastic way to introduce consistency and predictability into the competitive environment, an environment which is often chaotic and unpredictable. From having a thorough warm-up, to your pre-competition fueling strategy, to packing your competition bag the night before, routines provide an important structure.
When developing these routines, it’s important to consider the replicability of each step, as you’ll want to be able to implement these routines in a variety of situations, environments and locations. Remember, the power of your routine comes from its ability to infuse order into the chaos.
A word to the wise: routines should be seen as a strategy to enhance confidence and boost performance; they should not become a crutch. If you start to notice your athletes making definitive statements about how they will perform based on an error in routine execution, it’s time to reevaluate how they engage with their routine.
Being Present. The human brain is remarkably bad at multi taking — that fact is the core emphasis of process vs. outcome. When an athlete is consumed by anxiety at a competition and expresses that they “need to send this climb in fewer than 3 attempts in order to advance” and their coach replies by saying “focus on the process, not the outcome” they are not in fact telling that athlete that advancing doesn’t matter (though that’s how it maybe internalized). Your brain simply cannot focus on both at the same time.
Our brains have a finite amount of attention and energy to spend in each moment, and if we choose to focus on whether we are going to advance in the round, or snag a podium finish, we are certainly not focusing on the actual climbing that needs to happen to achieve that goal. If you remember, the right time to be focused on the outcome is in the goal setting process – once that’s been addressed, it’s time to reorient to focusing only on winning the moment.
The final step in the process is reflection and refinement.
It’s a desirable trait to want to fix mistakes and refine your process. It’s what separates the great from the good. But learning when to engage in this process is what separates the elite from the rest. Again, we are trash multi taskers, so if your athletes are trying to fix their mistakes at the competition, they probably aren’t focusing on the competition. Help them suppress the desire to time travel by giving them time and space for these processes when it serves them best.
But will talking about winning create a toxic culture on my team? Isn’t it safer to just focus on the process? I used to think so, but it turns out, it’s not.
If we aren’t thoughtful about how we communicate the virtues of The Process, our climbers will infer our feelings about the outcome. By telling a climber “Winning doesn’t matter — only the process matters” we are effectively diminishing the value of their goals, and in the process, destroying their motivation to work towards them.
Not only that, but kids can sniff out BS better than most — we’ve all opted into a competitive sport. They know results are important. Don’t lose their trust by pretending they aren’t. Take the time required to talk about the details, your expectations as a coach, and the shared values of your team.