"Names Create Norms"
Today’s newsletter will be sister posts. The two pieces will be discussing both what is useful and not useful about buzzwords/catchphrases. I will link Kevin’s post at the end so you can click over to it.
A few years ago when I started coaching, I took an interest in P.J. Fleck. As someone who was looking to build a great culture for an expansion junior hockey franchise, I watched a lot of videos like this one.
Related Reading:
After taking my lumps and learning a lot of lessons, I recently connected this video to an idea from Alchemy. Rory Sutherland speaks of the idea that “names create norms.”
Rory’s Examples
The invention of the ‘designated driver’ was an even cleverer use of semantics and naming to create a social good. The phrase, meaning the person who is nominated to stay sober in order to drive his friends home safely, was a deliberate coinage that spread with the active support of Hollywood who agreed to use it in selected episodes of popular sitcoms and dramas.
Once you can casually ask, ‘Who’s going to be the DD on Friday?’ it’s easy to see how this behaviour becomes much easier to adopt, and it’s also much easier for the sober person to defend their sobriety when anyone offers them a drink. In Belgium and the Netherlands, he (or she) simply explains I can’t drink tonight, I’m Bob’ – a Dutch acronym* for Bewust Onbeschonken Bestuurder or ‘deliberately sober driver’. In both cases, creating a name for a behaviour implicitly creates a norm for it.
Jesse’s Example
Jesse Marsch had a catchphrase with his teams at Red Bull. He would just say “Muhammed Ali” and everyone knew what that meant in their culture.
If he had individual players or the whole team at halftime playing timid, he could deploy the phrase.
It meant “play with confidence.” All of Ali’s talking was for him, he needed to create a sense of confidence that he was the best in the world before a fight. Otherwise, he would get nervous and start doubting.
The affirmations helped him produce a heightened level of confidence he needed to perform at his best. Marsch knows sometimes that’s all a player needs. You don’t always have to dissect the tactics or tell the team they are laying an egg in the first half.
Sometimes you just have to come in and say, “Muhammed Ali” and then get out of their way.
When everyone knows what it means, less can be more.
Why This is Advantageous?
Naming something creates awareness and brings ideas about them to the “top of mind.”
This top-of-mind awareness is the key to turn in order to start driving further teaching.
When you put a name something like “Nekton Mentality” there are no more questions as to what that means. Somebody can just say it and the picture in your head appears of “how things should be done here.”
Increase Processing Fluency
I knew rhyming and alliteration increased processing fluency and made ideas stick with players easier, but I didn’t think twice about the names P.J. used for his behavioral standards. The image it creates allows players to visualize what it looks like. The name creates a norm and signals, “we want to do this sort of thing here, in this way.”
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on reasons why my behavioral standards weren’t adhered to as well as I would have imagined.
Don’t get me wrong… This is not the only reason, but it could have been one of them.
If you want a behavior to be more commonplace in your culture… Try giving it a name.
Make sure to check out Kevin’s post: CLICK HERE