Can we kick it?
Galway United Football Club has had a number of highlights in its 32-year history. It won the FAI Cup in 1991 and appointed former “rogue trader” Nick Leeson as CEO in 2005. It avoided relegation in the 2008 season too. And it had coaching to thank for it.
The latter is a tale of hope, optimism and sheer determination to succeed against the odds. It affords a glimpse into the world of professional football and a structured team intervention.
Nial O’Reilly – club director
Located on the west coast of Ireland, Galway United, whose players are part-time professionals, is more a social enterprise than a commercial one. But its supporters are as proud as they are passionate.
The club earned its place in a revised Premier Division in 2007, avoiding relegation, and decided to invest in a full-time professional set-up for the season ahead. Despite the preparations and level of investment, however, the team began disappointingly. After a draw and three defeats in the first four games, the manager was relieved of his post.
Then Jeff Kenna joined as manager in April 2008. His personal target was league survival.
The loss of his first home game in charge was followed by four wins, but the optimism was short-lived. The club was heading for major financial difficulty. Gate receipts were well below budget and sponsorship and advertising were plummeting.
When CEO Leeson failed to secure a consensus among the players for a cut in wages, seven of the biggest earners were sold or released to other clubs. When United lost 4-1 to Cobh Ramblers in a relegation dogfight at the end of August, the team looked doomed. A new strategy was required – and fast.
As a long-standing club director, I was a close confidant of Kenna’s. I am also an executive business coach and completed an advanced management diploma in the UCD Smurfit Business School under the tutelage of Peter Bluckert of PB Coaching/MCD.
Peter and I share a passion for football so we hatched a plan for a business coaching intervention with the players.
The club was rooted at the bottom of the table. Its league record read as follows: played 24; won 3; drawn 5; lost 16; points 14, so we needed another 14 points from nine games to avoid relegation. But the team had collected only 14 points from the first 24 games. How could it achieve this?
Peter Bluckert – consultant
When I first met Jeff Kenna and his assistant manager, Ian Foster, I was struck by Kenna’s openness to learning and help. He displayed an admirable combination of determination and strength coupled with honesty and a lack of arrogance.
But he also looked worried. This was, after all, his first managerial appointment and he was desperate to make it work. He acknowledged it would be hard for the club to avoid relegation, but an ex-professional footballer with more than 500 league games and 30 international caps behind him tends to be made of solid stuff, and he was clearly in the mood for the challenge.
The coaching process
I ran a two-day team workshop for players and staff with a shorter follow-up workshop in early November and occasional phone conversations with the manager in-between.
Feedback suggested that the main benefits of the workshop were that it gave everyone an opportunity to get issues off their chests in a structured, safe environment. They could express themselves and move on. Despite the power of this classic method to transform, it is not often used because teams rarely want to go through such an intense experience and fear it may do more harm than good. They can also be dubious about whether the team facilitator has the skills to resolve painful issues.
The team workshop strategy that we developed had five elements:
1 Holding the space My son, Alex Bluckert, was co-facilitating for the first time. I warned him to expect a whirlwind of anxiety from the players and staff. My advice was to notice it but not get drawn into it. Our job was to “hold the space”.
2 Focus on the “what is” It was not long before we were into their current reality and it was neither positive nor pretty. The interactions all had the same themes: blame; self-blame; criticism; self-criticism. One player’s accusations were followed by the next’s. There was a pervading sense of hopelessness and resignation.
There were clearly a lot of open wounds. This was a group of people under stress, in conflict with each other and with themselves. The good news was they were engaging with the process.
3 Structured learning Following the initial outpouring, we went into a session led by Phillip Matthews, an ex-Ireland rugby union captain and British and Irish Lion, and current head of executive education at University College Dublin. His experience, stature and tough yet compassionate presence immediately grabbed the players’ attention. His open style, combining a few war stories with some profound messages about personal standards, lifted the room. Without fuelling their self–blame, he challenged them to be the best they could be.
He majored on an important personal credo – the classic Tim Gallwey notion of “relaxed, focused attention” as the optimum state for performance. The principle took root in the team consciousness
that afternoon.
A highly productive “Sad, mad and glad” exercise was conducted in small groups during which the quieter, less confident players were more able to express their views. The lively, full group session following this had a cathartic effect as some of the “undiscussables” and previously “too difficult” issues were aired and addressed in an open forum for the first time. As those familiar with the culture of professional football clubs will appreciate, this is a highly unusual event.
Other structured learning interventions included input on individual and team performance, the “inner game”, positive emotions for performance and coping with setbacks. We also facilitated a deeper self-disclosure exercise to help them get to know each other better.
4 Emergent interventions I was very struck with the toxic power of the self-blame many of the players were levelling at themselves. I challenged those players beating themselves up to end their war with themselves. A part of them desperately wanted to hear this. At the same time, the blaming of each other was gradually melting.
Kenna intervened with a passionate speech about how success would only come from togetherness. Lines in the sand were drawn and the negative energy spiral was replaced by hope and optimism, resolve and fight.
A particularly successful learning intervention saw the defenders, midfielders and forwards spending time in groups sharing what they wanted more of, less of and the same of. Each team “unit” then reported on their own discussions and what they needed from the rest of the team. This gave a practical focus to the group discussion and a number of key actions were identified.
One of these was that the team wanted the midfield players to shoot more often. These players acknowledged they were taking the low-risk option of making the easy pass. They were consumed with fear that their shots would miss and attract criticism from team members and the crowd.
However, one of the midfielders committed to two shots in the next game. I suggested 10 and the team merrily agreed. He negotiated it to four.
Other changes included the team persuading Kenna to step down from playing to focus entirely on his touchline responsibilities. This was a significant risk for the players but the manager responded positively.
5 Closing out The players left the workshop with a strong sense of hope and optimism, and a togetherness that had been totally lacking 36 hours earlier. We all knew it had been a breakthrough but would it translate into results? It was my turn to feel anxious.
What happened next?
In the final analysis the team needed 17 points to stay up. It went right to the wire, and the team bagged the final three points in the last game of the season to complete the “great escape”: played 9; won 5; drawn 3; lost 1; points 18.
By any standard this was an extraordinary turnaround: a 252 per cent improvement in performance in terms of points collected, without calculating the effect of reduced resource levels. Had the team been this successful throughout the season, Galway United would have finished second in the table behind the runaway league winners.
An interesting side effect of the improved performance was that no player was unavailable for any of the last nine games through injury, even though the season had been arduous and the squad size had reduced drastically mid-season.
Match highlights
- Everything has to start somewhere: Mark, a defender who had also committed to shooting more often, scored in the first game following the workshop with a stunning 30-yard shot. Ciaran, who pledged to take four shots each game, scored in the next.
- The team had an unbeaten run of six games.
- They reached the semi-final of the Football Association of Ireland Cup and were narrowly defeated.
- Manager Kenna rarely played another game, except where suspensions necessitated, yet significantly increased his impact and influence from the touchline.
- Against the odds, the team fought back, took it to the final game of the season and triumphed.
- The flipchart from the workshop with the words “Relaxed, Focused, Attention” was to be found on every changing room wall at every game, home and away.
Learning points
- Hold the space – it’s vital to provide a safe container for the anxiety inherent in the system.
- Progress requires taking the risk to really tackle the “what is” – being faint-hearted won’t cut it.
- A cathartic experience can release a team from a negative focus, freeing up positive energy for improved performance.
- Leadership is critical to success.
- Togetherness is equally important.
- A professional role model can lift people’s horizons.
- Positive emotions and values such as optimism, hope, confidence, belief and trust are hugely powerful drivers to transforming performance.
- The “inner game” and team relationships are key targets for performance improvement, and skilled intervention can affect both.
- Team development methods commonly used with business teams can readily translate to sports teams.
About the authors
Peter Bluckert is managing director of PB Coaching, a founding member of the EMCC and APECS, and author of Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching (OUP, 2006). He has more than 25 years’ experience of organisation and leadership development consultancy and brings a Gestalt approach to individual and team coaching.
peter.bluckert@pbcoaching.com
Nial O’Reilly is a director and former chairman of Galway United FC and Ignite Coaching, through which he works as an executive coach and facilitator of senior business teams.
nial@ignitecoach.com
Alex Bluckert is an international business student, budding coach and football enthusiast who has a strong interest in bringing business coaching approaches into team-building in sport.
alib4@hotmail.com