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INTRODUCTION

 

A few summers ago I had to do a research project for Spring Arbor University and finding a topic was relatively easy. My passions in life involve soccer and the expression of art through any medium. A vital component of this expression is creativity. As an athletic concept it can often be overlooked due to the fact that humans in general tend to gravitate towards what can be easily measured and controlled. Creativity is a difficult idea to successfully integrate into your coaching toolbox, BUT it is not out of reach for any individual. If we look at coaching as "unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance by facilitation of their learning, development and performance" (Palmer) then we owe it to the children we come into contact with to improve our understanding of creativity.

 

In this version I would like to condense my research project into a format that makes it easy for anybody, not only coaches, to take something away from it and hopefully improve their understanding of the mind.

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 Part I : CREATIVITY DEFINED

 

WHY IS CREATIVITY IMPORTANT?

• The Dynamic Systems Theory, a functional framework for analyzing expert athletic performers, identifies creativity as one of the most important aspects of development. (Phillips)

• A study of Olympic athletes in 2002 showed that Creativity was a common denominator among them. (Phillips)

• A study done on executive mental functions in high level soccer players strongly suggested that creativity was a predictor of future success. (Vestberg)

• In player driven sports such as soccer, the ability for the individual to produce their own novel solutions to problems is important. Soccer player's such as Messi, Ozil, Iniesta and Coutinho are highly prized for their seemingly magical decision making ability. 

 

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

• Production of a new solution or idea that is useful. (Reed)

• Mini-Creativity = novel solution specific to individual ; Big-Creativity = novel solution to all of humanity. (Boden)

The distinction in the above definition is very important. Often times we think creativity is something that is exclusive to the Albert Einsteins and Leonardo Da Vincis of the world when nothing could be further from the truth. The act of creativity is something that every human has infused into their daily existence.

 

NEUROLOGY OF CREATIVITY

 

Thanks to the fantastic neurological work of Arne Dietrich we know that creativity is the result of original data (stored in the temporal, occipital and parietal lobe) being processed but with the addition of the pre-frontal cortex's ability to identify and produce connections that are novel. From a coaching standpoint, it is important to note that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until the early to mid-20s. Dietrich identifies two ways in which creativity is processed, deliberate and spontaneous, and then two types of mental structures that contribute either emotional or cognitive content. This creates four definitive pathways of creativity that are able to blend together, with every act sharing the final doorway of assessment by the prefrontal cortex.

 

 

 

 

**** - For the sake of keeping down the bloating of this blog post I'll leave the neurology section at that. If you want to know a bit more about that I'll attach the actual research paper at the end of this post!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part II : COACHING CREATIVITY

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Now that we have a hold on the psychology of creativity and its importance to the realm of coaching we can begin to analyze how creativity can be fostered through one's coaching.

 

 

 

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

 

 

Before we look at our players and decide how to improve them, we must take a look at ourselves as coaches. Who we are as an individual determines how we interact with our players and the benchmark for our behavior is transformational leadership.

 

A study in 2009 showed that transformational leadership had a positive effect on the creativity of followers. The study also revealed intrinsic motivation and psychological empowerment to be significant mediators in the link between this leadership style and improvements to creativity. (Gumusluoglu, Ilsev)

 

But what is a transformational leader?

 

Someone who motivated people to do more than they had previously expected to do by:

• Raising our level of awareness, our level of consciousness about the importance and value of designated outcomes, and ways of reaching them.

• Getting us to transcend our own self-interest for the sake of the team, organization, or larger polity, and 

• Altering our need level on Maslow’s hierarchy by shifting from security to self-actualization. (Miner; Bass 1996)

The transformational leader achieves these goals through these four components: charismatic role modeling, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev). The charisma helps build influence, which is the primary measurement of this leadership type. Individualized consideration involves building a personal connection with each individual. Inspirational motivation involves creating a vision of the future and mapping out the pathway to it, and intellectual stimulation involves getting the followers to put more mental energy into the goal and to expand the quality of it (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev). For the benefits of coaching, we can look at these suggestions for transformational leadership from Yukl:

• Develop a challenging and attractive vision, together with the employees.

• Tie the vision to a strategy for its achievement.

• Develop the vision, specify and translate it to actions.

• Express confidence, decisiveness and optimism about the vision and its implementation.

• Realize the vision through small planned steps and small successes in the path for its full implementation.

 

 

FLOW

 

Part of your role as a coach is the day to day training of your team in preparation for the matches that lie ahead. Just as there are larger scopes of creativity relative to individualized ones, we can’t just look to a game-winning goal as the sole expression of creativity. We must look at how creativity can become a daily process or experience. Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow shows us how creativity can become a state of mind that is fostered through training environment structures. He states that flow, which is “a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity,” is life’s most genuinely satisfying way of experiencing. Flow is marked by feeling “strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, at the peak of ability, loss of one’s sense of time and an exhilarating feeling of transcendence.” In the book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation By R. Keith Sawyer we see that this state of flow is a primary state for creativity to unfold. The eight components of flow are:

• We confront tasks we have a chance of completing;

• We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing;

• The task has clear goals;

• The task provides immediate feedback;

• One acts with deep, but effortless involvement, that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life;

• One exercises a sense of control over their actions;

• Concern for the self disappears, yet, paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over; and

• The sense of duration of time is altered. 

When looking at these components we can see that as the trainer in control of the environment of those you coach, you can facilitate flow by giving accomplishable tasks that require concentration, making sure the task has clear goals and then providing immediate feedback on the task. It is difficult to maintain a constant state of flow because if the challenges begin to exceed a person’s skill, they become anxious and if a person’s skill begins to exceed the challenge, they become bored.

 

 

 

 

In order to maintain the balance of flow, the challenges offered to your team must remain dynamic and organic, always changing to provide a high level of challenge to make use of the high skill. Most interestingly, the state of flow provides intrinsic motivation to the individual as the enjoyment of the state inspires them to want to reach it again (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi).

 

** For more info on flow check out the full research paper. Link provided below

 

 

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

 

As we have seen, transformational leadership and facilitating flow are two powerful ways of increasing the creativity of your team, but the X factor involved in both of these methods is intrinsic motivation.

 

 

Ways to positively influence intrinsic motivation are:

• create autonomous and supportive environments

• optimal challenges

• positive performance feedback

• freedom from demeaning evaluations

 

 

Ways to negatively influence intrinsic motivation are:

• creating controlling environments

• deadlines

• threats

• pressured evaluation

• imposed goals

 

As coaches, we are the ones in control of the environment and the ones in control of the power. If we have a controlling environment where we abuse our power then the intrinsic motivation of our players will suffer and creativity, among other things, will struggle to exist. As famous author Aldous Huxley once said, “Too much organization transforms men and women into automata, suffocates the creative spirit and abolishes the very possibility of freedom.”

 

 

 

DOMAIN SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE

 

Earlier on in this review, we talked about the neurology of creativity and how you could have the cognitive and emotional pathways. When it comes to the cognitive pathways, Arne Dietrich showed that the foundation of creativity is the information we have stored in our memory. In order to create new connections, we must have information and experiences to connect. This is where the importance of domain specific knowledge comes into play. By exposing people to knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences in a specific subject matter or field you can get them to a stage of competence within that domain. Once that level of competence is reached you begin to see domain specific creativity, and for a chosen few you will see that H-creativity (or big-C) that can redefine the entire field. (Pfeiffer) As coaches this means that we must do everything within our power to increase our players’ inherent understanding of the game. Everything from tactics to technical abilities must be downloaded into them to give them the best possible foundation to be creative with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part III: Personal Integration

 

 

From this point onward I will do my best to relate what I have learned through my research to my own personal experiences in life, soccer and coaching.

 

 

 

CREATIVE DEMANDS OF SOCCER

 

In order to analyze the benefits of creativity to soccer, we will simplify the game down to two phases of play: defense and offense. On the defensive side of the game you have the world of simplification, structure and predictability. The best defenses in the world are fantastically drilled on positioning that is based on every predictable encounter the opposing team has to offer them. Deviation from the structure imposed by the coaching staff at these high levels is one of the main reasons that defenses fail. Practice after practice, top level teams drill the positioning and defensive structures into the heads of the team and they are expected to execute it like clockwork. Offense is an entirely different beast. It is founded upon connections between individual players, moments of brilliance and creative decision making in high pressure situations. The more structured an offense is, the easier it is for a defense to predict and then defend the movements. If there is no structure at all though, and individual players don’t have personal connections, then it can be impossible to break down a tightly woven defense. It is here where the attacking players must have a foundational framework of movement from which they can produce creative solutions from. Rinus Michels, one of the greatest soccer coaches ever, says that “the top level professional football has been characterized by a development in collectively defending, which places high demands on individual and team qualities during build-up and attack”. The strength of these defenses continues to grow and with this comes the need for creative players. I have seen time and time again in my lifetime, situations where coaches treat the attack as if it were defense. They turn it into a robotic show of power, almost as if they were running a football playbook. Every single time this happens, there is deterioration in the quality of the attack in both individual and collective creativity. I have been involved as a player and coach in a multitude of different environments and this has never failed to be true. Based on what we now know about intrinsic motivation, it is no surprise that a high level of control stifles creativity. The best teams in the world have environments where their attacking players are allowed freedom of expression in the attacking areas. Barcelona is a soccer team that in the past decade have produced arguably the greatest soccer team ever. They are world renowned for the level of creativity and expression in their attacking play and this is the foundation of their success. This need for individual and collective creativity to break down rigorous defenses exists at all levels of soccer and it is one of the main reasons I champion this human function.

 

 

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

 

Creativity as a means of winning games isn’t the only motivating factor behind my desire to understand and foster it. As we saw with transformational leadership and flow, fostering environments that produce creativity involve individual self-actualization and having peak experiences as a human. I believe that these elements are vital to improving the quality of life for each player. Remember, a primary element of a peak experiences characterized by flow is that the act itself is its own reward. These are the types of illuminating experiences in life that we should want our players to have. So much negativity, sorrow and stress pollute our minds on a daily basis and one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is a momentary escape from this. Giving them a taste of a complete connection to the present moment also plants a seed and the quality of the experience inspires their own intrinsic desire to reach that state again. Once the seed grows the player will have peak experiences more often and the quality of their life will have been improved.

 

 

SPIRITUALITY

 

The past decade I have spent countless hours researching religions and spirituality on my own time. My motivations for this were simply my own individual connection with a higher power and the desire to understand it, but as my understanding has grown I have been able to see its usefulness in every domain life has to offer. When reading about flow and how it is absolute absorption in the present activity and moment, the first thing that came to mind was spiritual enlightenment. Ekhart Tolle, listed by Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in 2011, says that spiritual enlightenment is simply a state of complete connection to the present moment. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to make the link here where we can view the power of flow as an expression of spirit. The reason this is important is because, as coaches, we can tap into the power of transformational coaching by tapping into the power of spiritual texts. By improving our own duration and quality of complete immersion in the present moment we can help those we come into contact with experience the same. Environments that we structure for the player’s will be colored with our own personalities and beliefs. Religious affiliations or lack thereof could severely decrease the amount of tools you have to work with in this domain, but the link is undeniable, powerful and worthy of consideration.

 

VISION

 

Providing the team with a collective vision and the goals to get there is one of the largest areas of my personal coaching that will improve thanks to this review. It is one of the foundational elements of transformational leadership and therefore a pillar of the creative environment. When I receive a team of players, one of the first things I do is compile their attributes within a formational structure and decide how to precede improving them and developing towards a future where we can play beautiful and creative soccer. I don’t usually go into detail about this with my players though. Looking back at my previous teams I can see how that because I didn’t map out this vision from the beginning, that it takes a few victories for progress to show that there is a vision within my own head and that it’s worth working for. I will definitely be more open about the vision in my head to my players at the beginning so that we start off with a bang. This will involve fleshing out the vision in my head rather than letting it play out organically. It would also be a good idea to create a physical representation of the vision and our goals on how to get there. Transformational leadership also involves aligning the interests of the individual with the interests of the group. Sharing the vision and creating a dogma relative to the team and collection of players will go a long way to achieving that.

 

 

FIRE

 

Arne Dietrich’s thorough analysis of neurology led me to the realization that people can creatively express their emotions. The combination of spontaneous and emotional creative expression was seen to be commonly reported as a religious experience or an epiphany of sorts. Looking back on my career as a soccer player I can pinpoint specific moments, often towards the end of close matches, where this euphoric feeling of connection (stronger than flow) swells up inside of me and then I go on to score the game winning goal or provide the assist for someone to do so. As I have gotten older and compiled a larger database of experiences with which to create emotional connections, these experiences have become more powerful and more effective. Realizing that this is a creative process and that I haven’t lost my mind to some mystical voodoo has given me the idea that I can try and foster this capacity within my teams. The idea of fostering this within others is relatively new so I don’t have any great ideas about how to do this, but it was sparked by this review and it is something I will work on. Identifying individuals that display this quality, labeling it as fire and then talking to the team about the benefits of this quality could be a decent start.

 

 

 

TRAINING SESSIONS

 

The facilitation of flow will now be one of my major goals for each individual training session. If I see any signs of collective anxiety or boredom I will know that I have essentially “failed” that portion of my training session. I will use that as the barometer for improving the structure and format of my sessions. Ideally I will reach a point one day where my team comes to me for training and then experiences the state of flow from the time they arrive to the time they depart. Looking back at recent sessions I am certainly aware of the fact that a lot of work must be done in this domain. Another area of improvement for training sessions will be to increase the number of times I give feedback throughout the session. According to transformational leadership many small steps of recognition and encouragement can help provide your players with a sense of accomplishment and help develop autonomy and intrinsic motivation. With each small step you must stretch them while not going beyond how far their skill can reach and provide immediate feedback (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part IV: The End

 

QUICK SUMMARY

 

 

Creativity Defined

• Creativity = production of a new solution or idea that is useful

• Studies prove it to be a vital component of athletic development

• Original data (stored in temporal, occipital and parietal lobe) processed and then identified by the prefontal cortex for production

• Prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until early to mid-20s

 

Keys to Coaching Creativity

 

• Tranformational Leadership 

• The maintenance of FLOW within environments and sessions

• Inspiring Intrinsic Motivation

• Improving Domain-Specific Knowledge

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

If you look at coaching in terms of results, dominance and self-indulgence then creativity could become an afterthought. If you look at coaching as the means of improving the lives of your players through successful growth, then it becomes the pillar. Turning it into the foundation of your environment with transformational leadership, the facilitation of flow, intrinsic motivation and increases in domain-specific knowledge will then bring about the self-actualization of your players. A convenient side effect will be the improved performance of your players. As a soccer coach, you will also have a more enjoyable time watching your team from the sideline as they express their improved levels of creativity on the field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**** LINK TO RESEARCH PAPER 

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0EC_5z_AaiUOTBMRlNweVpkNWc/view?usp=sharing