To win even as an individual you have got to perform as a team player

Wild Water Case

It is already known that the team atmosphere can influent around 30% of the individual´s personal performance. (Source: http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/) However, it can become really difficult for each individual when being in a team with a successful athlete, whose performance is exceeding others.

SportMind has started to cooperate with a team of 6 canoeists. Canoe slalom is mainly an individual sport, but at the same time, all athletes belong to one holistic team. The different canoeists have the same coaches and one service & back-up team. When they are at training camps they also come together as the whole team and often share an apartment for a few weeks.

Jiri Prskavec is a member of this USK Praha Canoe Slalom Team and a World Champion in 2015 and in 2016 he won the Bronze Medal in Olympic Games. He demonstrates a very strong ability to concentrate during races and this has been consistently identified in the measurement of his Psychic Energy.

What is most interesting is the ability of the coaches to work with all members of the team, which SportMind supports in co-operation with the coach Jiří Prskavec senior. He is very keen to back all team members and to tailor his style of leadership according to individual personalities, but this can be quite a challenge as part of this team is his son Jiri junior, the world champion and Olympic Bronze Medalist. The most important thing is that Jiri senior can embrace the results of the diagnostics and use them in practice with all team members equally. This then fulfills the idea of applied psychology.

“We can recognize the problem before it comes with each individual and respond to it.” Jiří Prskavec senior.

 

And what comes next?

We want to further encourage each member of the team to continuously ‘buy in’ to this diagnostic process through proven individual progress and support, so that their potential and talent will also show through in future performances. We can then challenge areas of greater risk for successful outcomes and then increased individual self-confidence will follow.

For systematic development with a small team use the Minimum Team Licence.