The Science Behind a Team Collapse and How to Prevent It
Remember the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI? How could you forget? Up 28-3 in the third quarter, they were all but celebrating their victory. That is, however, until Tom Brady rallied his Patriots and slowly clawed away at this commanding lead. From one offensive touchdown to a defensive stop, things were clicking for the Pats. At the same time, you can see the Falcons’ falter. Arguments and frustration outbursts were contagious on the their sideline. Mistake followed by frustration followed by more mistakes. The Falcons’ were spiraling out of control. In less than 20 minutes of game time, the Patriots had put themselves back on top and won in the most miraculous way possible. These moments in competition are specifically critical circumstances where our negative emotions are heightened, causing detrimental outcomes regarding our individual and team performance.
What if I told you that there was a way to negate these critical moments by improving the way we regulate our emotions?
In 2024, Wergin et al. published a study titled, “Experienced emotions, emotion regulating strategies, and regulation depletion in collective team collapse and performance recovery situations.” The authors argue that a team’s underperformance is often accompanied by extreme negative emotions like anxiety, anger, and frustration which are displayed through body language or communication. These negative emotions and behaviors work together to negatively impact performance by sapping an athletes cognitive and behavioral ability, leading to a vicious cycle of mistakes and emotions. The authors further argue that this cycle is even more impactful in a team setting due to the social factors associated with emotion, behavior, and performance in a competitive environment.
However, there is a way to negate these effects. Given the relationship described between emotions, performance, and collapse, emotional regulation inserts itself as the remedy to this vicious cycle. The article depicts a handful of individual and collaborative emotional regulation strategies shown to help a team ‘bounce back’ from a critical event.
So… what strategies work?
On an individual level, cognitive reappraisal was found to be one of the most widely used and effective emotional regulation strategy. Cognitive reappraisal involves many different techniques which reduces emotional intensity and helps regulate emotions. Another individual emotional regulation strategy was mistake acceptance. By leveraging self-compassion, an individual can take a balanced view on their emotions, understand their capabilities, and work back to a place of neutrality.
On an collaborative level, positive feedback, emotional modeling, and redirecting attention were all shown to benefit performance recovery. Furthermore, emphasizing confidence communication and displaying calmness following a critical event worked to restore confidence throughout the team. Physical interaction like a pat on the back, hug, or chin-up demonstration worked to improve performance recovery as well. Even a clever use of humor can work to lift a team’s spirit and restore a sense of self-efficacy to their game.
The underlying theme throughout these strategies is a foundational understanding and commitment to emotional regulation. By being able to understand your own emotions in stressful situations, you can successfully navigate them to restore cognitive and behavioral homeostasis which can contribute to performance recovery and help build resilience in the face of competitive adversity.
TLDR, what does this mean for you? Critical negative events which lead to a comprehensive breakdown in performance are bound to happen in competition. They are even more detrimental in team settings. However, emotional regulation serves as a practice to negate the negative spiral which can follow these critical events.
Want to learn more about emotional regulation strategies that you can implement? Interested in building your own set of techniques for use in competition and seeing instant benefits? Contact now.
Wergin, V. V., Wolf, S. A., Schwender, J. T., & Mallett, C. J. (2024). Experienced emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and regulation depletion in collective team collapse and performance recovery situations. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2024.2413996