Our Boys are Coming Home!

Although we wish we could be writing about another England Win and the excitement of our men’s team entering their first FIFA World Cup Final since 1966, we can’t. Our guys gave it their absolute all last night against Croatia, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Yes we lost that match, but we gained so much more. Gareth Southgate and his team have managed to pull people together in a time when they felt divided, football fan or not it’s safe to say everyone felt a sense of hope and pride. Most of all the journey and experience of this team making it further in the FIFA World Cup tournament in 28 years taught us all some valuable lessons.

The team are young and ambitious but it’s the psychological transformation of the team that has taken them much further than anyone could have expected at the start of the tournament, and raises the question of what the rest of us can learn from England’s awakening, and from sports psychology more generally.

The team appears in a better place psychologically than it has for generations. Much of the credit has gone to Southgate, but also to Pippa Grange. Grange was appointed by the FA as its head of people and team development in November last year, given the job of building resilience while confronting the pressures and psychodramas faced by previous England squads. Hired by The FA to change the squad’s “culture and mindset” she has become a key ally of the manager and is said to have boosted the players’ ‘psychological resilience’

Pippa believes that the solution lies in getting players to admit to vulnerabilities in team meetings which she believes creates trust both on and off the pitch, which in turn leads to better performances individually and collectively.

Grange has no fear of failure either. She has written: “I’d like to turn this unhealthy preoccupation with success on its head and put it on the record that I think failure is really useful. For without failure we cannot progress longer, higher or faster. It’s a funny paradox – our successes are achieved through trying, and trying most often ends in failure. Every day in our general lives and our sporting lives we will win some and lose some; it’s just part of the way life should be. It could be missing out on a promotion, being pipped at the line in a running race or bombing out in an exam – it doesn’t matter – the important lesson is to learn from our failures, reassess, rethink, move forward (sometimes in a different direction) and keep those dreams and goals alive.”

If we can take anything from the last few weeks it’s that overall whether it is at work, life or in sport culture and mindset play a huge part in achievement.

Here at SCL our culture statement says:

“Be the best you can be by habitually living life of self-improvement and development, reaching fulfilment and taking pride in helping others to feel valued and have total trust in all that you do and say.

Leading by example and being first to bring innovative improvements in the service we deliver to our customers.

BE THE BEST FIRST”

We truly believe that our mindset and culture are what keep up growing and performing. “Together We Enhance People’s Lives” and we do so by committing to our points of culture which you can read here: https://sclmanagedservices.com/our-culture/

Well Done England! Bring on Euro 2020 🙂