Prescripción inmediata de la responsabilidad solidaria

At the outset of this research project, it was my intention to understand the role of MT in how teams deliver optimum performances and thus, by virtue of this, how coaches elicit optimum MT from their charges. From my results, it is apparent that MT within rugby is not merely an individual construct, nor even a team construct, but one that is delivered in teams by a fluid team dynamic and a particular social milieu. Regardless of its origins, and often referred to only “in hindsight”, MT is a vague concept and “opaque theoretical construct” (Caddick & Ryall, 2012, p. 139, p. 137). My results reduce the ambiguity as to whether MT is a trait, skill or mindset and show how the multitude of messages that players receive from coaches, coaching staff, support staff, playing peers and even the media will impact their MT in rugby. Importantly, however, the results also demonstrate that MT is far from a simple construct. Added to the complexities in sending and receiving these messages, which includes both senders’ ability to send coherent messages and receivers’ ability to interpret them, this reinforces both the complexity of MT and the transient and highly malleable mindset of a rugby team.

The meanings that players derive from these messages within the social interactions of the team - fostering togetherness, group challenges, rooming lists, the social interactions and the social milieu - all determine the level and appropriateness of mentally tough actions. With reciprocal determinism (Bandura, 1978) operating

within the team, this highlights the need for coaches to manage these messages. Integral to this management/manipulation is the support/coercion from player leaders or CAs in order for them to act as enforcers for coaches and as guardians for the team. The language then used between players adds to the collective mind and sense making (Weick, 1993) that gives both structure and understanding, facilitating the SMMs that enable teams to perform with MT. Furthermore, the group identity that is so pertinent in my study is further supported in recent research that reinforces the importance of not assessing MT in a vacuum and to instead assess the culturally informed view to better understand MT and how it is developed and elicited (Eubank et al., 2017).

My pragmatic approach focused upon how coaches elicit MT and whilst I acknowledge the individual’s role in MT, and indeed, that coaches should recruit players with greater MT capacities (Weinberg et al., 2011), my aim is to see how coaches can control these MT performances. Coaches are the critical engineers of the environment that can crucially enhance MT (Coulter & Mallett, 2011). As such, they need the awareness of these social interactions and the capacity for managing the necessary and often Machiavellian machinations, as mentioned earlier in the thesis, that are integral to eliciting MT. How coaches condition – physically and mentally – through challenging and creating the cohesive and coherent team is dependent on having consistent and coherent messaging with players, and knowing how each player will interpret these messages. The ‘derived meaning’ from these social interactions allows rugby teams to act mentally tough or be diminished by these coach feedbacks (Owusu-Sekyere & Gervis, 2016). To elicit MT on a consistent basis demands that coaches should be chameleon-like in their adaptations to each player’s individual needs while also maintaining goal perspective, knowing what it means to be mentally tough but more so delivering MT and so exposing the to and fro that is so useful

between coaches and players. These machinations might, as shown, also include the manipulation of players, assistant coaches and the media to further project manage towards the end goal. Coaches should be master politicians in terms of manipulating their own image – IM – and mastering the micro-politics needed to succeed (Potrac & Jones, 2009). To do so, coaches need to know where they are going and the experience of the coach seems significant, as evidenced in Chapter 4 and more explicitly in Chapter 7 in the progression from Martin Johnson to SL and then to EJ (Hodgson et al., 2017). Even within Chapter 4 there was an emphasis on the need for nuanced and careful approach to managing the team’s interactions and group dynamics in order to elicit MT. The ability to deliver consistent messages in the fluid sporting and social milieu while maintaining clarity of direction requires impressive communication skills: non-verbal skills (such as knowing how to enter a room and eavesdrop on the team bus) as well as verbal communication skills, EI and a coherent vision, in tandem with organisational, group dynamics and media skills. The highly experienced cohort within my study exhibited a high degree of emotional intelligence and leadership capacities due to their experience (Cavazotte et al., 2012). Indeed, these coaches demonstrated experience in building player leadership; in showing how they developed as well as managed it, they also articulated the importance that they attached to this process. As mentioned by Fletcher and Wagstaff (2009, p. 433), there should be more research focus upon constructs such as EI that “advocate the importance of social and interpersonal skills” and self-regulation that “promote organizational functioning”.

Indeed, when all of these external messages are aligned, it adds to the clarity and reduces the dissonance within the team, allowing the players to focus upon more controllable factors such as effort. Furthermore, this emphasis on effort can also

reduce internal distractions and further enhance focus and confidence with an increase in the crucial MT component of motivation to act/play (Bull et al., 2005; Jones et al., 2002, 2007; Jones & Moorhouse, 2007; Williams, 1988). Indeed, when players know their roles and have an increased understanding of these within SMMs, it helps motivation. This, along with the SBA and controllable factors, will help to elicit MT. Embedding this focus and confidence can be achieved through the use of PST such as self-talk or visualisation (Butt et al., 2010; Connaughton et al., 2010; Driska et al., 2012; Thelwell et al., 2010).

In summary, my results show how MT is elicited in elite rugby teams. Whilst my journey started where I believe many others have in thinking of MT as an individual construct it quickly moved to the multitude of factors that feed into an individuals mindset, and reciprocally into a teams mindset, and which reflects optimal performance. Indeed, it is evident from my findings that coaches (and players) believe MT is the result of multiple factors that affect the individual and subsequent group mindset. These factors reflect the groups interpretation of situations into mentally tough or peak performance and further shows the complexity of MT. As such, MT is shown in our behaviors (Hardy et al., 2014) and with the ever changing dynamic of teams, this leads into the many demands and skills that coaches need to develop in order to manage this global, ambiguous, and hard to pin down construct. To borrow the ‘4 Cs’ from Clough and colleagues (2002), the clarity of the coach conditions the players, both physically and mentally, through coherent, consistent challenge in order to build a cohesive team. This coherence is achieved through SMMs exemplified by player leaders under an aligned coherent and consistent leadership that is reinforced and supported by coherent media messages. All of these contributing factors funnel through the multiple messaging players and teams receive into creating the MT

mindset that drives/supports players into delivering consistent mentally tough team performances. As such, MT is another term for peak performance or a hold-all for desirable factors which are then evidenced in a teams performance behaviours or as Lombardi suggested, a teams “character in action” (Sheard, 2013, p 28).