Assessments and Interventions
Assessments and Interventions
How questions can drive training
As we keep off a month of favorite techniques and approaches, I wanted to begin with an observation with assessments, because they have influenced some of my approaches over the years. They have influenced me in two ways:
Providing “Driving Questions” for my audience to discuss and explore
Shaping the type of exercises and training sessions
For today, I want to discuss culture and resilience and a couple of my favorite approaches to working with teams on it.
BUILDING RESILIENCE
“The ability to bounce back”. This is a common definition. It is what drives the Army’s “Ready and Resilient” programs and we may approach this topic from varying perspectives such as positive psychology, cognitive theories, and more. One subject matter that has been consistent across resilience literature is the role of social support and relationships.
As many of you know, several years ago I met a professor Dr. Fred Hanna while teaching at Adler University in Chicago. His background was working with resistant and defiant individuals, which in turn eventually led us to discussing his assessment. Unlike other assessments, his was based on independent factors that worked together to discover the potential for how likely positive change could occur. I share this, because there are two factors that have changed (no pun intended) how I work through training groups on resiliency.
THE FACTORS
There are two factors from his assessment that help drive the education and support today.
Factor #1: Social support. This one is obvious for many reasons, but there are key driving questions.
Does your organization (a.k.a. - coaches and administration actively encourage your growth and development?
Do you have relationships of mutual understanding/trust?
Factor #2: Willingness to embrace difficulty. You may call this grit, but it addresses the elephant in the room on an individual level.
Do you take responsibility of setbacks or challenges without blaming yourself or others?
Do you embrace uncomfortable emotions such as discouragement, fear, or anxiety?
When you encounter setbacks, do you collaborate with your teammates and coaches to find solutions?
These questions provide a focus to the conversation. I was able to really drill down to specific concepts that coaches and athletes need to discuss when attempting to promote a high performing climate. As a team, are you shutting down on each other when it gets tough or are you keeping the dialogue going? How do you support each other, especially during times of discouragement? Who are the people you surround yourself with or go to when it gets tough? What are the opportunity to establish teamwide structures so it becomes the norm to be “open and honest” with how we manage relationships and stress? Because of those factors and the driving questions, I could work with athletes and coaches to develop strategies and structures that were focused and addressing the core issues behind team culture an resiliency head-on. There was a level of depth I was able to reach that I wasn’t able to achieve in the past and this was due to looking at assessments.
THE PATH AHEAD
Today was a kick-off to favorite strategies, but I wanted to take a moment to touch on assessments. They can be used in so many ways and my favorite part of assessments is that it provides the “driving questions” behind our training. It has shaped some of my favorite interventions and strategies and as we go through this month, I hope it helps to give you some ideas as well!