IS GOOD THE ENEMY OF GREAT?

Most people pursue greatness in one or more disciplines.  Being great implies mastery through one’s own agency and means.  However, how often do people stop at good (enough) on the road to greatness?  Why do we see some athletes dominate only to all but come to a complete stop or reverse course after being drafted or signing a huge, long term contract? Some answers to complacency from the mental side are explored below.

Complacency deals with motivational styles and our biological reward systems.  Motivation is derived from control, autonomy, and relatedness. Many of us pursue a sport or discipline because of experienced success early on, we feel like we are in control of the outcome and what we do contributes to the desired outcome.  Others feel strong relatedness to the social environment and the camaraderie motivates their efforts.  When athlete’s feedback / self feedback increasingly comes more from outcomes and less from effort, our motivation tilts towards continuing to seek external validation for their efforts. Praise. Contracts. Endorsements. Status. These are all external rewards which increasingly depend on performance outcomes that inherently rely on variables we cannot control.  Also, an athlete’s sense of self becomes shaped by these external rewards; creating identities tied to being successful, and confidence correlated with performance.  An athlete can find themselves on a hedonic treadmill, where they lose interest in achieving what they thought would be awesome as they look for fulfillment from the next car, house, contract, etc. Additionally, confirmation bias is theorized to contribute to complacency. Confirmation bias can heavily impact how one interprets and accumulates information. For example, an athlete who believes that they do not need to attend an extra practice or need to complete all of their reps in the gym will view positive feedback from their coach as permission to slack off.

External rewards can be healthy when they coexist with intrinsic motivation.  Meaning, having a purpose greater than the status, big contract, next car, etc. driving commitment to greatness.  Then, any external validation becomes more of a by-product of being internally/ purpose driven.  Reaching for a greater purpose or mission sustains an athlete’s foot on the accelerator because they always see a reward in front of them, room between where they are and where they aspire to be.  Great athletes aren’t content with “good,” even if others perceive their good as great.  For example, many athletes dream of going pro as a means of providing a better life for family members.  Some see it as the only outlet they had growing up.  Others just loved playing the sport so much growing up, practice and works outs never felt like work.  Those examples, which once satisfied basic psychological needs, must evolve to match increased physical and mental demands and the next stage of our developmental needs.  Taking inventory on who you are as a person is a good step towards identifying the new purpose generating love for the game.

Ok, so understanding motivational profiles and building self-awareness to self-actualize is important. However, a nice dose of self-efficacy is necessary inorder to continue risking what it takes to move from good to great.  Self efficacy is confidence towards a specific task tied to your role.  Believing you have what it takes, specifically the motor skills and your influence on the result (vs. chalking up to good/bad luck).  There are a lot of factors impacting self-efficacy and the more we rely on outcomes as feedback, the more fragile our belief system becomes, and the less inclined we are to risk our current control and status for uncertainty.  This can lead to more than a fixed mindset towards our coaches, teammates, and conditional buy-in to the process.

Personality traits help identify key indicators in understanding motivational profile, determining self-efficacy to push past good, avoiding complacency, and build (yes, I am about to use the “g” word), grit.  CQ combines self-efficacy with other big five personality facets to reveal individual tendencies and context around what has shaped and what influence an individual’s tendency towards approaching risk and uncertainty as a means to purposeful reward vs a cause for anxiety and punishment. (Click here for a brief overview of the neuroscience behind our brain’s reward system)