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Nurture Their Will To Win – Part 1

Nurture Their Will To Win – Part 1

What does it mean to actually “take care” of a trainee or new hire? What does good mentorship/preceptorship look like? I think it starts with being the mentor you always wanted, and that goes beyond making sure they “know what they are doing.” I think many times the FTO forgets what it was like for them and (potentially) how much they hated the way their were taught, but repeat the cycle because they do not know a better way. Training new folks or even just being their FTO as they orient into a new organization is a prime opportunity to shape and positively impact, not just the organization, but potentially the profession.

Reflect on these:

  • What did you actually teach them?
  • Did you just evaluate them and measure them against an arbitrarily selected set of standards?
  • Were you simply focused on the outcome the entire time or did you pay close attention to their performance?
  • Did they really improve or did they just hit all of the little benchmarks? In other words, what kind of impact did YOU have on them?

The real goal for you, day-to-day, is to nurture their will to win by helping them build the psychological foundation they need, not just to succeed in training, but build a career and thrive on. Which can be applied to even the saltiest and most experienced trainee. That psychological foundation really has nothing to do with memorizing dosages, policies, or protocol. It has everything to do with developing the brain and bolstering the character of the individual that is showing up to the patient’s side. It is about building that individual’s mind into what is required for this profession and for high level execution.

That mindset has a little but to do with Russian sport psychology believe it or not. Performance psychology is performance psychology and it is focused on how we get the best from people who are in the developmental stages of their careers. It requires a specific formula, and that formula transcends all boundaries of sports, medicine, and life.


What is the formula for building their success?

In the late 1920s, a Russian college student named Avksenty Puni (shout out to Dr. Lauria for introducing me to his work) began to research the relationship between psychology and sport performance. Over the years of studying this relationship he was able to identify 5 core elements of psychological performance that translated into high level physical execution. His work was more focused in competition preparation than it was on the in-situ performance of the athlete. Why? Well, that is where all performance comes from, first. You have to win in your mind before you ever step out onto the streets, or else you can get crushed by the immense pressure we are under in an emergency situation.

Training people to perform under that pressure is about building and nurturing their will to win. To win in our world is devoid of trophies and accolades like “greatest in the world.” Instead, to win in our world is to execute and perform at a high level, regardless of the circumstances, several times a day. Instilling what Ben Bergeron would call “competitive excellence.” Puni called it boevaya gotovnost or “the will to win.”

The formula to build and nurture the will to win is:

  • Build sensible self-confidence
  • Support and promote uncompromising effort
  • Teach control and focus for optimal emotional arousal
  • Build a high tolerance for stress and distraction
  • Teach self-control

These are the actions that YOU take as the preceptor/FTO to ensure the long-term success of your trainees. You don’t need to extend the training program or process to implement these things into your practice or training philosophy, you merely need to change the mindset with which you approach the training and development of your teammate. And that is the first mindset shift. It is not a leader/subordinate relationship (although what you are doing is, in fact leadership). This is a peer-to-peer relationship. Teammate-to-teammate. They may very well end up on your shift and/or your unit as a permanent partner… and you get to influence this person’s mindset and approach to the job.

But be aware… these are not things that you can instill in someone else if they have not first been instilled in you. You have to have these integrated into your own personal system, otherwise, these just become a handful of platitudes that look good on social media. This is deep and heavy work for you and your teammates, but it is necessary.

Part 2 will unlock the “how” behind the formula and dive deeper into the mindset we need to build in that new person. If that new person only has 20 days on the job or if they 20 years on the job, we have an awesome responsibility of shaping their mindset for success in what we do.

Stay tuned…

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