Why Bother?

I got into an interesting Twitter discussion yesterday on ethics as they apply in sport situations. Specifically, the discussion centered around whether contravention of doping rules was unethical behaviour. While it is a fascinating exercise to have discussions like this in 140 character chunks, it’s a pretty cumbersome process where explanation is involved. Sometimes more room is needed to get the point across. So now I’ve done this.

Ethics covers a very large swath of philosophical territory. Luckily, we don’t need to go there. What a relief. It’s a mucky, murky place where one can follow a circuitous path right up one’s nether sphincter.

Why bother with ethics at all given the paragraph above? It turns out that ethics are very useful for defining rules for behaviour. These rules help to create a level playing field between individuals. The rules also help to ensure that there are remedies for breaches of ethical rules. Most importantly, the ethical rules allow sport to function.

A key feature of any sport are the rules. Some of the rules are functional in nature describing the size of the playing area, dimensions of the implements, duration of the contest, and so on. Other of the rules are ethical in nature and are commonly referred to as ‘fair play’ rules. All sports provide for specific penalties for violation of the ethical rules. For example, in most sports it will contravene the ethical rules if you kill, maim, poison or otherwise seriously harm your opponent outside of the context of the game. Appropriate penalties will be applied.

The rules associated with doping and doping infractions are another level of ethical sport rules. Doping rules are extra-sport, that is, these rules exist and are created outside of any individual sport and are adopted by individual sports. This is done in order to attain some level of consistency between sports as well as to create an environment where doping rules can be enforced at all.

Because of the adoption of doping rules by a sport they have the same impact and enforcement capabilities as any other rules of the sport. The doping rules become, by adoption, the rules of the sport and not some set of rules imposed from the outside by a foreign body.

Why does this confuse us?

No doubt, ethics can be confusing. The primary area for confusion is with morality, particularly individual moral values. Some folks seem to think that ethics are relative to an individual’s personal moral code. On an individual basis, this can be a valid proposition. Where any sport is concerned, this would be a disaster. Imagine any sporting contest where the participants were allowed to determine the applicability of the ethical rules based on each participant’s specific moral belief system. There would be no enforceable rules and no contest.

The area of ethics that sport is concerned with is called ‘professional ethics’. What makes professional ethics apply to sport, either to coaches or athletes? Sport requires a specific skill set that is unique to sport and that sport, to a great extent, is self-governed. There are two areas of conduct that professional ethics are concerned with.

• The first is how professionals act between and among each other. The profession is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the professionals, between themselves, conduct themselves so that no individual or group within the profession gains unfair advantage over another individual or group within the profession.
• The second area of conduct for professional ethics is how the individuals in the profession affect those outside of the profession.

How can Ethics be managed?

For nearly all professions, ethics are managed using a specific ‘Code of Ethics’. This code contains a lengthy list of rules that need to be followed by the professional. The code attempts to be an all-inclusive document that has provisions for most eventualities. All codes also include a catch-all or universal rule that is generally stated in terms of ‘actions that bring the profession into disrepute’.

For example, nearly all codes have some form of rule that states, (this is a highly paraphrased and colloquialized form) ‘don’t fuck the clients/athletes/staff’. This is usually framed in both literal and figurative terms. It is easy to see that this rule may not be being used to prevent specifically immoral behaviour (at least where consenting adults are concerned). The behaviour may not be immoral at all. A rule such as this is based on lengthy experience that such behaviour generally ends badly for the professional, professionals associated with the professional and the profession in general.

In most cases, athletes do not have a specific professional association. Athletes are regulated professionally by way of an agreement. The agreement is usually not as comprehensive as a code of ethics but contains a list of rules of behaviour that are agreed to by the athlete and the sport organisation. The agreement nearly always contains a provision relating to the requirement to adhere to the doping rules as adopted by the international sport federation or the IOC. The doping rules referred to are nearly always those created by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In any profession, ethical rules are adjudicated and enforced in a hierarchy going from the local profession level, through the regional profession level, the national professional level and up to and including the national courts. In sport, there is an additional international level in the Court for Arbitration in Sport.

Ethics is the Glue

Our ability to conceive of all the different ways that we can arrange contests of skill, capacity and strategy is probably without bounds. In every sport, without exception, there have been rules created to govern ethical behaviour to be able to contest fairly and in a commonly comparable manner.

Over the years, those who have chosen to ignore the ethical rules have attained a level of international infamy. During the last 100 years we have seen a vast array of ethical violations. The Chicago ‘Black’ Sox betting scandal, the Nancy Kerrigan kneecapping, the Lance Armstrong mega-doping, the FIFA, IAAF and IOC games awarding scandals and, most recently the Russian state-sponsored doping program to name a few that come to mind. In every case the violations damaged sport in some way and in every case, the ethical rules and related remedies helped to repair that damage.

Ethics is not a preventative that can’t reasonably be done; ethics is a restorative that can be done.

Sport without ethics is chaos, pure and simple. We need ethical sport and we need consistent and equitable enforcement of all ethical rules to allow sport to achieve its purpose. The purpose of contesting to determine who is:  FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER.

The Athlete Capability Maturity Model (ACMM)

What is it?

The Athlete Capability Maturity Model (ACMM) is a system developed to improve your management of athlete development to get full advantage from your coaching development efforts.

The ACMM is used to attract, train, deploy, and retain the athletes you need to develop a high performance competitive environment. With the help of the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI), any sport organization can make improvements in their development systems processes and practices. Many have discovered that their continued improvement requires significant changes in the way they manage all of the people involved in their organisation.

The ACMM is a maturity framework that describes the key elements of managing and developing the training groups of a sport organization. It describes an evolutionary improvement path from an ad hoc approach to managing the training groups, to a mature, disciplined development of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of the athletes, coaches and other staff that fuels enhanced performance.

What does it do?

The ACMM helps organizations to

• characterize the maturity of their athlete and coach development practices
• set priorities for improving the competence of its training groups
• integrate competence growth with process improvement
• establish a culture of performance excellence

The ACMM will support incorporating athlete management capabilities into improvement programs by communicating a model that complements the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI), and by making available an appraisal method that can be used alone or integrated with existing process appraisal methods.

The ACMM is designed to guide organizations in selecting activities for improving their development practices based on the current maturity of their development practices. By concentrating on a focused set of practices and working aggressively to install them, sport organizations can steadily improve their level of talent and make continuous and lasting gains in their performance. The ACMM guides an organization through a series of increasingly sophisticated practices and techniques for perfecting its overall development program. These practices have been chosen from experience as those that have significant impact on individual, team, and organizational performance.

How does it do this?

The Athlete Capability Maturity Model (ACMM) adapts the maturity framework of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) [Paulk 95], for managing and developing a sport organization’s people. The motivation for the ACMM is to radically improve the ability of sport organizations to attract, develop, motivate, organize, and retain the talent needed to continuously improve athlete development capability. The ACMM is designed to allow sport organizations to integrate people improvement with sport process improvement programs guided by the CMM. The ACMM can also be used by any kind of organization as a guide for improving their people-related and work-force practices.

Based on the best current practices in the fields such as human resources and organizational development, the ACMM provides organizations with guidance on how to gain control of their processes for managing and developing their people. The ACMM helps organizations to:

• characterize the maturity of their people management practices,
• guide a program of continuous people development,
• set priorities for immediate actions,
• integrate people development with process improvement, and
• establish a culture of sport excellence.

ACMM describes an evolutionary improvement path from ad hoc, inconsistently performed practices, to a mature, disciplined development of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of the athletes and coaches, just as the CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path for the processes within an organization.

What does it look like?

The ACMM consists of five maturity levels that lay successive foundations for continuously improving talent, developing effective teams, and successfully managing the athlete and coaching assets of the organization. Each maturity level is a well-defined evolutionary plateau that institutionalizes a level of capability for developing the talent within the organization.

Except for Level 1, each maturity level is decomposed into several key process areas that indicate the areas an organization should focus on to improve its athlete and coaching capability. Each key process area is described in terms of the key practices that contribute to satisfying its goals. The key practices describe the infrastructure and activities that contribute most to the effective implementation and institutionalization of the key process area.

The five maturity levels of the ACMM are:

1. Initial.
2. Managed. The key process areas at Level 2 focus on instilling basic discipline into workforce activities. They are:
   • Training Environment
   • Communications
   • Staffing
   • Performance Management
   • Education
   • Compensation
3. Defined. The key process areas at Level 3 address issues surrounding the identification of the organization’s primary competencies and aligning its people management activities with them. They are:
   • Knowledge and Skills Analysis
   • Athlete/Coach Development Planning
   • Competency Development
   • Career Development
   • Competency-Based Practices
   • Participatory Culture
4. Predictable. The key process areas at Level 4 focus on quantitatively managing organizational growth in people management capabilities and in establishing competency-based teams. They are:
   • Mentoring
   • Team Building
   • Team-Based Practices
   • Organizational Competency Management
   • Organizational Development
   • Performance Alignment
5. Optimizing. The key process areas at Level 5 cover the issues that address continuous improvement of methods for developing competency, at both the organizational and the individual level. They are:
   • Personal Competency Development
   • Coaching at every level
   • Continuous Athlete/Coach Innovation

Find Out More

The Athlete CMM program is designed for athlete training organisations that are serious about attaining and maintaining world standards for athlete development. For more on the program and how to adopt it for your organisation contact Gerry Dragomir through a comment on this blog.

The Original Csikszentmihalyi Model

Flow is a useful concept but difficult to develop as a teachable practice. Revising the model can help.

For a number of years, I’ve been keenly interested in the Flow concept as researched and developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Dr. C). While the concept and theory are exceptionally well researched and presented, practical application of the concept was difficult for me. What I experienced was that, knowing Flow Theory, it became easy to recognise when a Flow state had been attained in performance. It wasn’t difficult to recognise a Flow State before knowing Flow Theory, I just didn’t have labels for the state. What was missing was an understanding of the process that leads to generating a flow state.

The primary tool for outlining the process is the Flow Model that Dr. C created to encapsulate his theory.

His model looks like this:

The model is a simple matrix using two axes, one for a progression of intensity (Level of Challenge) and one for a progression of capability (Level of Skill). Eight emotional states populate the interior of the matrix representing the path to the Flow State.

From this model, it appears that there are many paths to a Flow state (which is probably true) but no predictable means of getting there.

There must be more to it than what this model shows.

A Useful Addition to the Original Model

Studying the model carefully over a significant period of time I first came to a realisation that there were two more dynamics that were impacting the attainment of a Flow State. The first dynamic is the Level of Action. This is a parallel dynamic to the Level of Challenge. Level of Action is different because it is about the pace of the activity and not the difficulty of the activity. Action or pace may or may not increase the Challenge but Challenge exists independently of Action. As the Action increases the likelihood of Flow State attainment also increases.

The second dynamic is Emotional Quality. As the model shows the Emotional Quality is low on the left side of the matrix and high on the right side.

The modified model now looks like this:

With the revised model it is now possible to see that where it is possible to generate high Quality Emotions in situations that require high Skill and offer a high degree of Challenge combined with high levels of Action a Flow State will have an increased likelihood of occurring.

Not all of the dynamics need to be at high levels to attain a useful state of functioning although the state may not be what Dr. C has defined as a true Flow State.

Further Model Development Through an Inspired Realisation

Close inspection of the revised model reveals another helpful insight. Looking at the two emotional states in the middle of the matrix, Worry and Control, one can see that these two states are opposite sides of the same coin. That coin is the coin of Confidence. Worry and Control, in their form as emotional states, represent the ends of a continuum that represents the Confidence spectrum.

With this realisation, the model can be further adjusted to look like this:

With the realisation that the second level of the matrix deals with Confidence, terms more appropriate for expression of Confidence can now be used. Worry is replaced with Doubt and Control is replaced with Assurance.

It can now also be seen that we have continuums in both the horizontal and vertical planes. We have now also exposed two very valuable additional realisations. These two realisations create the environment where a process begins to be revealed. It is now possible to see the path for training through to the consistent achievement of a Flow State in performance.

The Horizontal State Pattern

As the model has now developed it is possible to see that there is not one continuum of States but three continuums. These continuums represent the essential performance elements of Perception, Belief and Activation. Any performer must be operating at a high level (right side) of each of these continuums in order to achieve an effective Flow State in performance.

The model now looks like this:

The mystery of Flow State achievement now begins to be unravelled. We see that development in the areas of Perception, Belief and Activation will lead to an improved likelihood of consistent Flow State achievement. It is highly possible to work effectively in each of the three continuums. Each of the three continuums can be worked on independently. Creating a program to address and improve function in the three continuums will improve general performance maturity which, in itself, will improve performance while making Flow States easier to achieve and more frequent in their occurrence.

The Vertical State Pattern

With the inclusion of this dimension, the auxilliary development of the model is now fully complete (at least in our usage context). We can see a full, multi-dimensional, process oriented, model that can be used to develop and monitor performer acquisition of Flow State creation skills.

By using the vertical perspective, we can now see that, from left to right, the model indicates differing levels of performance maturity. The characteristics of the leftmost state are those of the Novice. The middle state denotes attributes of a Performer or journeyman and the rightmost state is that of the Master.

As the model now indicates the path from Novice to Master is also the path to being able to consistently establish a Flow State during performance. It is quite likely and totally consistent with the model to have a performer operating at each of the three maturity levels simultaneously. In fact, this would be considered to be the norm. A performer may have certain elements of the performance that are fully mastered where Flow State occurs consistently and naturally. The same performer will have areas where only the Performer level has been attained and Flow State is only rarely attained during those aspects of the performance. And, of course, the same performer can have areas where the Novice level exists. These areas would most likely be areas where very new technique or capability is being introduced.

What this means to My Coaching Practice

The methods and techniques for coaching a performer differ according to the level of maturity in the development process. The same methods and techniques for training are not effective at all of the levels of maturity. While the process is the same the methods and techniques need to match maturity level. Novice level maturity requires a high level of input and control over the training program by the coach. For the Performer level the input is primarily in the nature of guidance and occasional suggestions for improvement. At the Master level the coaching relationship turns to more of a mentoring role.

The big insight for this work, aside from now having a process whereby Flow States can be consistently achieved, is that the same performer requires different coaching approaches depending on the maturity level of each aspect of the performance spectrum.

The best coaches assume that this ability to recognise maturity levels within individual athletes and between different athletes is an intuitive gift.

This gift however, comes from an accumulation of knowledge of both the performance area and human nature over many years. The gift can be learned and developed. Using the work of Dr. C on Flow States can help further your development and hopefully this addition to the model can give you a path to do that work successfully.