http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/a_more_productive_way_to_think_about_opponents.html

For more than a century, the contention that sport builds character has been popular among educators. The more cautious perspective of researchers is that sport might build character, but only under the right conditions. In this paper, Brenda Light Bredemeier, Ph.D., and David Light Shields, Ph.D., report on three aspects of character that may be influenced by sport participation: perspective taking and empathy; moral reasoning; and motivational orientation. In each area, research-based recommendations are offered for coaches and others in sport leadership positions.

Download the full paper:

President’s Council: Sport and Character Development

We might say, for example, “She was too competitive,” when we see an athlete behave in an unsavory manner. On the other hand, we might say, “He just wasn’t competitive enough,” when we see an athlete eschew gamesmanship.

But such observations are limited–and limiting–in their ability to provide us with the insights we need to enjoy participating in contests, while maintaining a deep commitment to personal ethics.

In the following pages, taken from the keynote address presented at the Mendelson Center’s Inaugural Conference, TrueCompetition.Org’s founder, David Light Shields, explains the theory that will help us all reclaim competition for excellence, ethics and enjoyment.

Background

We believe competition is a great vehicle for promoting both top performance and positive human development. But the idea that competition is a good vehicle for promoting human development, and especially character development, may strike some as odd. Those who have read Alfie Kohn’s (1992) provocative and awarding-winning book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, may be particularly skeptical.

For Kohn, all competition is inherently bad. And competition is bad, Kohn argues, for a number of reasons. Contrary to popular belief, Kohn points out that competition typically does not lead to improved performance or productivity. Kohn cites numerous studies which all seem to suggest that competition undermines both the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of performance.

Competition, Kohn also argues, is bad from a psychological standpoint. Competition leads to heightened anxiety and stress and lowered self-esteem. It leads to dependence on external evaluation, and performance-based standards of personal worth. Occasionally, poignant experiences of competition can lead to devastating feelings of humiliation and shame that stay with a person throughout life.

Most importantly, however, Kohn argues that competition is simply bad from a moral or ethical standpoint. In short, his argument is that competition makes one person’s happiness dependent on another’s sorrow; it trains people to take delight in other’s pain. According to Kohn, competition inherently sets up antagonisms between people and trains us to think that our own interests and well-being can be served only at the expense of others. This is a mindset that easily persists beyond the bounds of the formal contest and infuses our everyday lives.

Personally, I am convinced that Kohn’s analysis, which of course is far more nuanced and complex than I have presented here, is essentially correct. He has summarized a century of research on competition well. But, and here’s the catch, I don’t think he’s talking about competition at all! He uses the word, but it is really a misuse of the word. What Kohn is talking about is what I would like to call (since we currently lack a word in English) “decompetition.”

Part of the problem is that we have a very inadequate language when it comes to competition. We need a better vocabulary if we are going to preserve what is valuable about competition. We need to expand our vocabulary so that we can recognize and name activities that may look like competition but, in fact, are not.

Let us keep in mind that the word competition comes from the Latin -petere, meaning “to strive” or “to seek”, combined with the prefix, com-, meaning “with”. So the root meaning of competition is “to strive with.” Note that it is not “to strive against;” but rather “to strive with”. When you strive with someone, you seek to bring out the best in each other through presenting a worthy challenge. You seek excellence together. Seeking excellence (and the enjoyment that comes from the strenuous pursuit of it) is the goal of true competition.

Now here’s the rub. This process of competition – of striving with another, of seeking excellence together – is really a fairly delicate process. It requires balancing seriousness with play, intrinsic motivations with extrinsic motivations, product orientation with process orientation. When the delicate balance required for true competition is upset, competition can all too easily dissolve or decompose or degenerate into decompetition. The prefix “de-“ means “reverse of” or “opposite of.” So decompetition is competition that has devolved into something that is really the antagonist of the original.

Let me briefly outline more specifically what each of these words point to. In short, competition and decompetition involve contrasting views of opponents, officials, the rules, the goal, and the process. About the only thing that competition and decompetition share in common is the external, structural arrangement of mutually exclusive goal attainment (that is, they both take place inside a contest of some sort). But the real meaning and attributes of that structural arrangement are quite different for the two. Let’s explore more thoroughly the differences between true competition and decompetition.

The Root Metaphor

At the most general level, competition and decompetition differ in relation to the basic metaphor that guides them. Competition reflects a metaphor of partnership. By this metaphor, each competitor is viewed as an enabler (in the positive sense) for the other; each requires the other to bring out the best in each. There is a synergy that results from the mutual challenge that each competitor provides to the other; this synergy enables each competitor to reach new heights of excellence and mastery that could not be achieved in isolation. Because achieving my own best performance is contingent on the availability of a worthy challenge, I hope that my competitor is performing at her or his best. Viewed in this light, competition is really a subset of cooperation.

The basic metaphor for decompetition is a battle or war. Decompetitors view the other through the lens of rivalry, and rather than hope that they perform at their best, I hope that they trip up. For decompetitors, opponents are obstacles to be overcome, enemies to be conquered, foes to vanquish. Decompetition, not competition, is the opposite of cooperation.

Motivation

Turning to motivation, we can say that “love of the game” and a desire to develop mastery and achieve excellence within the game are the primary reason that competitors seek to participate. Correspondingly, there is a respect and appreciation for the game and its lore and traditions. For the exceptional athlete who competes, there is a desire to leave a legacy to the game that contributes to its positive character and qualities. In contrast, where there is decompetition, the motivation is no longer love of the game, but use of the game. The decompetitor is motivated by what he or she can get out of the game, whether that be material reward, adoration and praise, or simply feelings of superiority. Thus, the true competitor is motivated to pursue values intrinsic to the game, while the decompetitor is motivated by the pursuit of values extrinsic to the game.

Goals

In terms of goals, true competition is multidimensional in scope. Its desired goals including the development and display of mastery and excellence, together with the experience of that host of emotions that come with strenuous play, emotions such as joy, exhilaration, excitement, and hope. In contrast, decompetition is rather flat and unidimensional with the desired goal being winning through domination. Rather than seeking to develop mastery, the decompetitor is seeking to display superiority. The hoped for emotional element is simply the thrill that comes with conquest.

Process and Outcome

Competition and decompetition also promote fundamentally different views of the relationship between the process of play and the game outcome. Within true competition, winning and losing are required because these outcomes enable the process. Winning is significant because it allows striving to win. Yes, competitors want to win. They may well want to win as much as the decompetitor. But the primary focus is still on the process – on the striving, on the playing; that process is made possible by the structural set-up of mutually exclusive goal attainment. Within decompetition, the outcome becomes separated from the process and draws all significance to itself. In decompetition, the outcome or end cannibalizes the process or means. Winning is everything. While true competition maintains a balance of seriousness and play, decompetition takes itself too seriously and the play dimension is removed.

It is important to emphasize again that both competitors and decompetitors want to win. After all, if you don’t want to win, you don’t play the game. Both competitors and decompetitors can enter the game with the same intensity, focus, determination, and drive. But having said that, the role of winning is still distinct for the two. For competitors, winning and losing are acceptable because they enable a worthwhile process to take place. For decompetitors, the process is acceptable, the playing of the game is tolerable, because it allows for the reward of winning and the spoils that too often go with it. For true competitors, one cannot win without winning fairly; for decompetitors, the concluding scoreboard is the only arbiter of winning.

Process: An Elaboration

As implied by the last comments, competition and decompetition entail fundamentally different views of the process. For competitors, the ideal process is saturated with drama and uncertainty. There is mystery and tension involved; but it is not the tension of antagonists so much as the tension of the unknown. How will things turn out in the end? The ideal competition involves story and plot and turns of event. In contrast, certainty is desired by those engaged in decompetition. Putting the game away early is ideal, and running up the score is okay, because they guarantee victory which is the only true value motivating decompetition.

Rules and Officials

Competition and decompetition also involve different views of sportspersonhsip, as well as the role of rules and officials. First, with regard to the nature of sportspersonship, competitors tend to adopt a moral view of sportspersonship; they are fundamentally guided in their actions by the ideals of fairness, respect, and noninjurious play. Upholding the spirit of competition (as opposed to decompetition) – even when not required by the rules – is the core of sportspersonship. In contrast, decompetitors tend to adopt a conventional or nonmoral view of sportspersonship. By this I mean that sportspersonship, to the extent that it is considered at all, is viewed as behavior that conforms to the minimal demands of politeness, civility, and rule obedience.

Turning to the theme of rules, true competitors tend to view rules as essential, but imperfect, expressions of the effort to establish and sustain a fair and safe contest. Thus, upholding the rules is viewed as the minimal demand of good sport behavior. But if a situation arises in which fairness requires going beyond simple rule obedience, the requirements of fairness take priority. In other words, when moral norms conflict with strategic interests, the moral norms are upheld regardless of whether the rules require that or not. For decompetitors, rules are partially tolerated restraints, and circumvention of rules is to be expected when detection is unlikely. Thus, rather than rules providing the minimal floor for sportspersonship, they provide its maximal ceiling. Rule adherence is probably the very most we can expect of the decompetitor, and even rule obedience cannot be expected if there are informal norms allowing for rule deviation.

Finally, for true competitors, officials are viewed as personal agents who share an important role in the process of competition by seeking to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment and minimization of risk. Within decompetition, officials are tolerated, because even the decompetitor recognizes that the adversary – the opponent – needs to be restrained! While the officials are there to enable or facilitate the game for the competitor, in an odd sort of way the officials become indistinguishable from the game for the decompetitor; outwitting the officials is just one more game strategy. Officials are part of the opposition.

Empirical Research

Having sketched out some of the differences between competition and decompetition, I would like to turn now to some of our empirical research and use it as a way to further develop these ideas. The focus of the research that Dr. Bredemeier and I have conducted over the past twenty years has been on moral reasoning and development as they relate to sport (e.g., Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). In some of our early research, we were disturbed to find that participants in some sports were, on average, less mature in their moral reasoning than their non-sport-involved peers (Bredemeier, et al., 1986; Bredemeier & Shields, 1986). This got us to wondering more about how moral issues are thought about in the context of sport.

Here, I need to present a brief aside. The way moral reasoning maturity is typically assessed is by presenting people with short stories that depict situations in which actors need to make a decision that has moral implications. The situation, for example, may revolve around a choice between honesty and hurting someone’s feelings; or maybe, more dramatically, the actor may be in a situation in which theft is the only way to preserve someone’s life. We then ask the person to tell us what they think the protagonist should do. What is important, from a developmental standpoint, is not so much what they say an actor should do, but the reasons why. What are the considerations that they think are important? How do they balance the different moral issues involved? Why does one moral value take priority over another, and so on. Then, through an analysis of the underlying system or structure of reasoning, a distinct moral logic can be extracted and identified. We call that moral logic a moral stage or level. And though researchers differ in the nuances of their interpretations, there is general agreement that as children develop, they pass through a regular age-related sequence of stages on their way toward moral reasoning maturity (e.g., Gibbs, et al.., 1992; Haan, et al., 1985; Kohlberg, 1984; Rest, et al., 1999). Early on, children use a moral logic that tends to be rather egocentric, with one’s own interests being given more weight than those of others. Later, children or adolescents tend to think in terms of the group, and what one’s reference group, community, or society in general expects. Finally, with maturity, one approaches moral issues in terms of fundamental principles or values that are independent of specific cultural expectations.

Since our special interest was in how people think about moral issues in sport, we designed two sets of moral dilemmas. One set paralleled the standard stories typically used in this type of research. These dilemmas were set in everyday life and presented choices in which the protagonist needed to choose one moral value or another. In addition, we designed a set of dilemmas that placed the moral issues in a sport context. We were interested in finding out whether people would use the same pattern of reasoning about moral issues in a sport context as they did when the moral issues were placed in everyday life.

In short, we found that they did not. When people reasoned about the moral dilemmas set within a sport context they tended to use a pattern of moral reasoning, a stage of moral reasoning, that was lower on the developmental continuum than when the same people reasoned about similar issues in everyday life. In short, their reasoning become more egocentric. As a result of these and similar findings, we developed a theory of game reasoning. One leg of the theory is the empirical results just mentioned.

Another leg of the theory is an interesting body of philosophical and social science literature on play, games, and sports. In this literature, it is commonplace to discuss these activities as somehow “set apart” from everyday life. The noted philosopher Huizinga (1955), for example, described play as “a stepping out of ‘real life’ into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own” (p. 8). Handelman (1977), an anthropologist, wrote that entry into the play realm requires “a radical transformation in cognition and perception” (p. 186). Schmitz (1976), a sociologist, similarly suggested that play transfers participants into a world with new forms of space, time, and behavior, “delivering its own values in and for itself” (p. 26). Anthropologists, such as Firth (1973), have documented rituals and conventions that serve to mark off the spacial and temporal boundaries of play and sport; and these rituals and conventions not only designate special space and time, they symbolically function to redefine people as players and then reconstitute players back into people at the game’s conclusion.

Our theory holds that movement into the world of sport involves not only the kind of cognitive and affective adjustments that these social scientists have highlighted, but that it also typically involves changes in moral perception and reasoning, and that is why we find people scoring lower on moral judgment tests when the dilemmas are set in sport contexts.

The theory is also congruent with informal observation. Sport commentators often contrast the on-field behavior of athletes to their off-field behavior. A tennis player, for example, may be described as mean and nasty on the court, but gentle and kind in everyday life. Moreover, athletes themselves often make this same distinction. For example, former heavyweight boxing champion, Larry Holmes, once said in a 60 Minutes interview that before he enters the ring, “I have to change, I have to leave the goodness out and bring all the bad in, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Holmes comments were echoed in a number of interviews that we conducted. In many of these interviews, athletes suggested that you have to be bad to be good in sport. For example, in an interview that we conducted with Ron Rivera, who played with the Chicago Bears, he described a similar transformation. In talking about his everyday personality, he described himself as typically soft-spoken, considerate, and friendly. But when asked to describe the on-field Ron, he replied, “He’s totally opposite from me. …He’s a madman. …No matter what happens, he hits people. He’s a guy with no regard for the human body.”

I find that quote fascinating. Rivera begins by asserting a radical dualistic view of his own persona, objectifying and distancing the “athletic self” from what he perceives to be his real self. Speaking of the athletic self, Rivera said: “He’s totally opposite from me. …He’s a madman…” This sounds very much like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Larry Holmes.

I suspect that many of you may question the legitimacy of the reasoning transformations implied in these quotes. But my point is that it is a common experience in the world of sport to alter the way one typically thinks and feels about moral issues. Perhaps Holmes and Rivera represent somewhat extreme cases, though I don’t think they are all that atypical. The reality is that many actions that may be seen as totally illegitimate in everyday life – such as inflicting pain on another human beinb – may be accepted and even embraced as a routine part of some sports.

To better understand this change from life to sport, we conducted a qualitative study in which we asked athletes specifically about the differences between their thinking about moral issues in sport and in other areas of their life. In these interviews, we focused specifically on the issue of aggression because of its clear moral implications, and we interviewed athletes immediately following a game so as to maximize the likelihood of tapping the forms of reasoning actually used during competition.

What we found is that many athletes, certainly not all, saw sport as a time of letting go of everyday life concerns, including, at least to a limited extent, moral concerns. They wanted to throw themselves into the sport experience, thinking only about their own interest, and perhaps that of their team. This fits the description of sport provided by the sociologist, Ennis (1976), who describes sport as an “institution of release”. It is a sphere of activity that is not only “set aside” spacially and temporally from everyday life, it “sets aside” or releases the concerns of everyday life. Indeed, part of the appeal of sport is its relative freedom from daily concerns. This “moral release” theme recurred in many of our interviews. For example, one athlete put it quite succintly when he said (quoted in Bredemeier & Shields, 1985):

In sports you can do what you want. In life it’s more restricted. The pressure is different in sports and life. It’s harder to make decisions in life because there are so many people to think about, different people to worry about. In sports you’re free to think about yourself.

For this athlete, and for many others that we interviewed, sport released them from the everyday obligation to think of others, to give them the same kind of moral consideration that would be appropriate at other times.

There are a number of special conditions present in sport that help create this sphere of freedom and release. Sport is a very unique context that has a number of atypical features that jointly function to create its “set aside” character. First, sport action is oriented toward an artificial, scarce goal, namely winning. Second, both the goal (winning) and the actions allowed (such as dribbling in basketball or soccer) have no particular value or meaning apart from the sport context. Sport is tethered to play, and, in itself, is nonserious and nonconsequential. Third, the game relevant interests of the participants are, by definition, in zero-sum opposition. If one party obtains the goal, by necessity the other party or parties do not. Fourth, and this is critical, the actions that comprise sport are rule-governed and those rules have been carefully designed to both equalize opportunity and minimize risk. One could say, perhaps, that they are based on the moral concepts of justice and care! Finally, at least in formal, organized sport, action is continually and externally monitored to insure a reasonable level of conformity to the equalizing and protective rule structure.

All of these features of sport, working together, allow the sport participant to focus narrowly on performance and largely set aside other concerns. Narrow self-focus, or egocentrism, is allowed because the goal has no intrinsic value. It is allowed because the moral issues of fairness and protection are already presupposed. It is allowed because moral authority is, by design, externalized and placed in the hands of coaches and officials.

Of course, moral issues do arise in sport and they actually arise quite frequently. Whether one chooses to use pain as a tactical strategy, and to what degree, is a moral decision. How strictly one wants to interpret the rules is a moral decision; when and how much to use techniques of psychological distraction and intimidation on opponents is a moral decision, and so on. Often, such moral issues are subtly negotiated among the players in virtually ever game.

We have called the form of moral exchange that occurs in sport, “bracketed morality” (Bredemeier & Shields, 1986a, 1986b; Shields & Bredemeier, 1984, 1995). It is morality that in some important ways is Abracketed@ or set-off from everyday life. At its best, “bracketed morality” is simply a playful deviation from everyday life with no real world consequences. In a very real sense, people play at egocentrism. In such cases, we view it as entirely appropriate and legitimate, even though it resembles less mature forms of moral reasoning.

We used the term bracketed to connote two points. First, as I have been suggesting, the moral exchange that occurs in sport is different from that of daily life. Most of the time, morality requires that we pay attention to the need to equalize the obligations and benefits associated with our various relationships. Sport, on the other hand, is characterized by a greater degree of personal freedom, and a lessening of such relational responsibility. Focus on self-interest, or collective self-interest by which I mean team-interest, is not only allowed in sport, it is presupposed. As a consequence, egocentric moral thinking characterizes much of the moral exchange in sport. Because of the unique features of sport, this egocentrism is viewed as legitimate by all parties involved (or at least nearly all) and by most observers.

But not all action supportive of self-interest is morally appropriate, even in sport. Sport may allow for a greater degree of freedom, but it is not pure moral anarchy. That is the second point. The term bracketed still connotes connection. Bracketed morality is a form of moral action that is nested within a broader, more encompassing morality. It is set apart by its relative leniency, yet it remains connected to basic moral presuppositions. It is a playful deviation, not a serious detachment.

The critical and philosophical question is just how free is a person to neglect standard moral concerns while playing sport? Just how lenient and elastic is this morality? I am not going to attempt a complete answer to that question, but would like to offer one observation. The egocentrism of bracketed morality, the focus on self-interest, the relative moral freedom of sport, presupposes – depends upon for its legitimacy – the special conditions of sport, conditions that are designed to guarantee initial conditions of fairness, on-going safeguards of equal opportunity, and reasonable protections of physical well-being. When the freedom associated with bracketed morality is used to undermine these conditions, bracketed morality ceases to be a nonserious and playful deviation from the morality of everyday life and loses its legitimacy.

And in the context of sport, this happens all too frequently. Since sport is known for its penchant for short aphorisms and cliches, let me adapt one here: If you give sport participants a moral inch, they’ll take a mile! Whether we’re talking about blatant cheating, aggression, or verbal abuse, we all know the stories. Now, lest I be misunderstood, let me quickly add that I don’t think athletes are some breed apart from the rest of us. Something else must be going on here. Briefly, what I think is going on is that contemporary sport is rarely just sport. It is business. It is politics. It is entertainment. And so on. As a result, sport participants experience sport less as play than as an opportunity to pursue goals with real world consequences.

At its core, sport is an odd blending of play and work, of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, of “it’s just a game”, and, “life’s a game”. Under these conflicting tensions and pulls, it is not surprising that a moral leniency that is legitimated, in part, by the playful, nonserious nature of sport is stretched beyond its appropriate bounds. One can hide seriousness under the cloak of play. The egocentrism of the game provides an easy rationalization of all manner of egocentric moral distortion.

How, then, do we encourage, or at least allow, an appropriate Aletting go@ of everyday morality without simultaneously inviting moral corruption? There is clearly no single or easy answer to this question, but I would suggest that one approach is to clearly differentiate competition from decompetition. Competition can embrace moral freedom as a playful deviation from everyday life, but as competition degenerates into decompetition, that same freedom degenerates into license. The real question, then, is how can we learn to handle freedom?

If we are going to handle freedom in sport or in other competitive contexts, we need to learn to distinguish between true competition and decompetition, and the moral issues that arise when the shift from the former to the latter occurs. Within decompetition, opponents are viewed as enemies or objects, neither of which hold moral rights equivalent to the self. Within decompetition, officials are there to be manipulated and influenced, rather than to serve as protectors of the conditions that allow for the moral freedom that characterizes genuine competition. Within decompetition, rules are inconveniences to be observed when necessary, rather than essential frameworks that make the unique space and time and practice of sport possible and desirable.

The final question I would like to address, and I can do so only briefly, is how do we sustain competition? How do we encourage competition and discourage decompetition? I think to do so, we need to avoid two opposite tendencies. First, I think we need to avoid thinking of the problem in solely or even primarily individual terms. Too often, I think we try to isolate the problem in terms of individual athletes or coaches. If only we could fix the athletes or coaches – make them better people – we would be OK. A variant is the “fix the kids” approach. If only we could teach children proper values, we would be OK. I think that the individual approach fails to recognize how thoroughly social we all are; how we are formed in and through community, and how we take on the values and perspectives that are ingrained within our collective myths, rituals, symbols and organized patterns of behavior. We are not going to get very far if our efforts are limited to trying to make change one person at a time.

The other approach that I think we need to avoid is that of seeking to change the totality of culture, as if we had sufficient power to alter the deeply-rooted collective yearnings, images, and goals of our society. You can’t stop a stampeding elephant with a fly-swatter, and we are not going to change the culture of sports by asking people to sign codes of conduct, making public service announcements, or plastering posters on locker room walls. I think we need to recognize how deeply counter-cultural the effort to restore competition really is. As a counter-cultural effort, we need to employ tools appropriate to counter-cultural movements.

I think the best approach is neither to focus on changing individuals nor society – at least not as our starting point. Rather, we need to try to make change team by team, community by community, league by league. We need to build within our sport teams and local communities a sufficient depth of understanding of what we are talking about that they can start to embody within their own patterns of behavior the true norms of competition. Within sport teams, this will require that we build a genuine sense of community and shared life so that the collective norms of the group can take on real significance for each member.

At the Mendelson Center for Sport, Character & Culture, one of our primary goals is to design sport programs that can foster positive character development. In this task, we share a goal for sport involvement with millions of parents who believe, perhaps naively, that their children’s participation in sport programs is a good thing. “Sport builds character”, is the cultural adage. As researchers, we believe that sport does no such thing. At least not automatically. If sport is to be of any positive benefit, from a character standpoint, then deliberate effort and planning need to occur. And that effort and planning needs to be informed by an understanding of the real moral dynamics that characterize sport experience. We believe that clarifying the nature of competition, and distinguishing it from decompetition, is one dimension of this effort. If we can make sport truly competitive, it can build character. And, simultaneously, it takes character to make sport truly competitive.

So, yes, we want to encourage competition. We want to encourage competition for the sake of sport, and for the sake of those who participate in sport. But we fundamentally need the concept of decompetition to clarify our meaning. We hope you will embrace this “two letter intervention” and start in your own work to talk of competition and decompetition, of competitors and decompetitors. We hope this new language will help to open hearts and minds to just what is at stake, to what is being lost in our culture as competition surrenders to decompetition, and we hope it will provide a means for us all, working together, to reclaim that important space in which we can strive with one another in seriousness, but also in joy. Thank you.

To sport or not to sport? That is the question that many parents of school-age children are asking. Perhaps you’ve heard stories of tunnel-vision coaches who push children under the guise of making them champions or of narcissistic parents who try to relive their childhood (real or imagined) through their offspring.

Parents who oppose youth sports can point to a mountain of newspaper articles reporting brawls on T-ball fields, cheating on Little Leagues diamonds and disrespectful fans in the stands wherever kids play. On the other hand, doesn’t sport build character? Doesn’t it help children develop social skills and a competitive drive? Doesn’t it promote their physical and psychological well-being?

In a recent survey of youth sport participants, their coaches and their parents, we have found support for both sides of the argument. On the positive side, nearly all coaches reported that they talk about the importance of good sportsmanship.

Four out of five parents reported that they are “very happy” or “somewhat happy” with their child’s coach. And the kids themselves are positive about their experience, with 96% of them reporting that they try to be good sports and 84% saying that their coach makes sport fun and exciting.

Still there are troubling signs.

Among them:

• 9% of the youth said that they cheat
• 13% said that they tried to hurt an opponent
• 31% said that they argued with the referee or official
• 13% of the parents reported that they angrily criticized their child
• 36% of the coaches reported that they angrily yelled at a player
• 42% of the coaches reported that they angrily yelled at a game official

So what is a parent to do?

There is no doubt that sports can provide a positive experience for many youth. Despite the concern raised by some of the above statistics, there is no need for panic, but there is need for parental oversight. Coaches should not be viewed as cheap babysitters.

Particularly when getting to know a new coach, parents, if possible, should observe a number of practices and games.

Youth sports should be fun. If the coach seems zealous about fielding a winning team, if she or he yells at a child for making a mistake, or if some children spend most of their time watching and observing, then it is important for you to have a friendly but frank talk with the coach.

If you find yourself in disagreement over philosophy or approach, withdraw from the team, report the coach to the league hierarchy and enroll in another program. Always remember that sports are for the kids, not for the adults.

David Shields is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri St. Louis.

Whether you are in sports or business, whether you compete for fun or profit, there are hidden strategies both to boost your performance and find more enjoyment in the process. Here are five such strategies.

First, to maximize your likelihood of winning (whether a game or a contract), forget about winning!

The more that you think about the outcome, the more mental focus is drained away from the process of getting there. To do your best, all your mental energy needs to be concentrated in the present. If you stay focused on the immediate demands that are right in front of you, winning will take care of itself. A bit cliché, but true.

Second, think of the contest as an opportunity to stretch yourself. Focus on how you can gain.

This is particularly valuable when you can think of how you can benefit, even if you end up losing. Perhaps you can gain new insights that will help you compete better the next time around. The attitude that “nothing is gained in a losing effort” not only robs you of potential gains, but makes losing more likely.

Third, find the middle ground between stress and relaxation. You cannot “force” optimal performance by putting yourself under increased pressure.

Performance deteriorates under high stress. On the other hand, you need a certain amount of stress to shift your mind and body into full gear. So if you tend to be rather lax, fire yourself up. Kick yourself in the pants. Tell yourself that it really does matter and that you must do well. But if you tend to get too serious or worried, take the opposite approach. Bring a dimension of play to your competing. Even when the consequences are important (in fact, especially when they are very important), relax and have some fun. People handle serious situations best when they lighten up. Take this strategy and you’ll enjoy yourself more, and you’ll perform better.

Fourth, think of your opponent as your partner. To do your best, you need the opponent to push you.

You gain the most when you have tough competitors. Good competition comes about when all competitors are doing well. So appreciate your opponents; without them, you would not be able to reach the same heights of performance. While you want to defeat your opponents, opponents are not enemies.

Fifth, compete with a sense of deep purpose. If you are simply competing to gain personal benefit (whether material benefit or ego), you are going to perform less well than if you are dedicated to values, goals, and ideals that are beyond yourself.

So know what is important to you and find your center of gravity beyond yourself. Consider, for example, the case of Lance Armstrong. He won the Tour de France a record-shattering seven consecutive years. What kept him going through one of the most mentally and physically demanding events in all of sports? He had a mission. He wanted to demonstrate what cancer survivors can do. Find your mission and you’ll perform at your peak. Just as important, you’ll have an enduring sense of satisfaction.

The brochure can answer many basic questions about TrueCompetition.Org: who we are, what we do, and who can benefit from the True Competition approach.

For even more information, check out our Resources page, or the True Competition Bibliography.

True Competition: A Guide to Pursuing Excellence in Sport and Society

Q: Your book is titled, “True Competition.” What do you mean by that?

DS: I’ve been working with athletes and coaches for many years and over that time, I’ve become convinced that most people fall far short of their full potential – and, frankly, do not win or succeed as often as they might. So why is that? There are many reasons, of course. There’s performance anxiety; stresses of various sorts. But one of the most pervasive and profound reasons goes largely unnoticed. It originates in the way people think about the very meaning and purpose of competition.

By this I mean that many of us, probably most of us, harbor (deep in our psyche) a fundamental misunderstanding of what competition is all about. And that misunderstanding quietly interferes with our ability to perform at our best.

And what is perhaps even more interesting is that this same misunderstanding which keeps us from reaching our optimal performance, also promotes many of the social problems and ills that so often plague our playing fields and sport arenas – problems like cheating, aggression, fighting, showboating, taunting, baiting officials, and so on. In fact, one of the key points of the book is to demonstrate how excellence and ethics go hand-in-hand.

Q: Can you elaborate on that? What is this misunderstanding?

DS: Let me start by asking a question: When you are competing, do you want your opponents to perform at their best, even if that means you might lose? Or would you rather that they trip up, have an off-day? If you are like most people, you’re quite happy if your opponent is not at the peak of their capability. And why is that? It is because we tend to think of the contest as a miniature war and the ultimate goal is to defeat the enemy – the opponent.

So one way to think about competition is built on a metaphor of a battle or war. This comes so naturally to us that we are often unaware that there is a different, and more advantageous, way to think about competition.

Q: What is this other way?

DS: There’s a hidden pearl of wisdom about competition buried in the Latin origins of the word. What does the word “competition” literally mean? Well, it means “to strive” or “to seek” with. Importantly, it does not mean to strive against, but to strive with. Competition is a kind of partnership in which something is being “strived for” or “sought after.” What is that something? Let me tell a brief story.

After her wonderfully successful career, tennis star Chris Evert was asked about her favorite match. Interestingly, she didn’t name any of the Wimbleton titles that she won. Instead, she named a match that she lost. She lost it to her arch rival, Martina Navratilova. Now why would she name that match? It is because it was a match that provided her with the opportunity to push her own boundaries; to push toward excellence. In a sense, even while competing, she was in a partnership with Martina in which each of them pushed the other to the very top of their game.

True competition is all about seeking excellence. Winning is great when it happens; but the ultimate goal is to improve ourselves; to test the limits of our ability. So most fundamentally, at its root, competition is about partnering with opponents to seek excellence. And seeking excellence occurs most naturally when those who are involved see the underlying partnership that makes it all possible.

Q: So are you saying that seeking excellence and trying to win are two different things?

DS: Seeking excellence and trying to win are different. They can, and often do, go hand-in-glove. But they can also pull us in quite different directions. It may strike some as odd, but the strongest motivation for winning comes when a person is motivated by things more important than winning. The motivation to pursue excellence, which requires an opponent who is performing well, will bring out our best much better than simply desiring to win, even if the desire for victory is quite strong.

But please don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with wanting to win. And there is certainly nothing wrong with giving your all, with leaving nothing behind, as they say, in an all-out effort to achieve victory. And yet that effort is more sustainable, more focused, and more energized if it is rooted in a deep desire to push against the boundaries of one’s own capabilities; to experience one’s own form of excellence. That’s what competition is really all about. And to do that effectively, you absolutely need challenging opponents who are performing well.

Q: Can you elaborate on these two different ways of understanding competition?

DS: As I said, sometimes we think about competition as if the contest is a battle or war. Opponents are enemies and the goal is simply to emerge from the battle victorious. Since this isn’t really consistent with the etymology of the word competition, I actually prefer to call this “decompetition.” I add the prefix “de-“ because it means “reserve of” or “opposite of.” And thinking about the contest as a war is really the opposite of why we have contests in the first place.

In true competition, the contest is thought about as a special kind of partnership. Yes, each competitor is trying to defeat his or her opponents, but it is the challenge that each person provides to their opponent that fuels an upward spiral of performance. While we often think about competition as the opposite of cooperation, in reality my opponent is cooperating with me by trying to defeat me; by giving me the best challenge he or she can. Only when the bar is set high can I push myself to the limits. Only when I have a strong opponent, can I dig deep and test the boundaries of my own capabilities.

Q: Are there other implications for thinking about the contest as a war?

DS: Sure. There are plenty of implications, all of which tend to distract us from achieving excellence. When we think about the contest as a miniature, scaled-down war, then we tend to focus more on the outcome than the process. We tend to see the contest as an opportunity to showcase our superiority, our dominance, over opponents, rather than an opportunity to strengthen our mastery and commitment. We tend to focus more on the rewards that can come with victory, rather than enjoying the internal or intrinsic benefits of playing the game. That’s just a few of the many consequences of thinking of the contest as a war. In our book, I elaborate on these and many others.

Q: And what about the benefits of thinking of the contest as a partnership?

DS: When we let our minds marinade in the metaphor of partnership, we start to reap a number of important benefits. First of all, we tap into the most powerful of all motives. A deep love of the game and a resonant sense of commitment to one’s teammates, is a far more lasting and potent motivation than can be tapped by thinking of opponents as enemies. And the kind of enjoyment that can be had from a strenuous pursuit of excellence is more enduring and sustaining than the flash-in-the-pan emotional boost that comes from conquering over others. And, finally, let me just mention that thinking of the contest as a mutual seeking of excellence undermines the motives that lead to all the many distortions that so often creep up in contest settings. When your focus is on excellence, it makes no sense to cheat, for example.

Q: Are there specific things that coaches can do to help their athletes gain the benefits of true competition?

DS: There are a host of strategies available. But before any of the specific strategies can be used effectively, the coach needs to be crystal clear about the inner dynamics and qualities of true competition. The coach must be able to recognize the tale-tale signs of true competition and be able to immediately spot any signs that it is beginning to degenerate into decompetition. In the third chapter of the book, we offer a field guide to true competition for just that purpose. In the following chapters, we identify a range of concrete strategies and approaches that a coach can use to support true competition, which, of course, will simultaneously support both optimal individual and team performance and create a positive sport environment.

Shields, D., Bredemeier, B., & Funk, C. (2010). Becoming champions: Coaches’ manual. St. Louis: True Competition Publications.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2009). True competition: A guide to pursuing excellence in sport and society. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Articles:

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (In press). It’s time to teach competition. Principal.

Shields, D., Funk, C., & Bredemeier, B. (In press). Teach to compete. Strategies.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2010). Competition: Was Kohn right? Phi Delta Kappan, 91(5), 62-67.

Hatton, J. (2009, Spring). True competition. UM St. Louis, 13.
Torres, C.R., & Hager, P.F. (2007). De-emphasizing competition in organized youth sport: Misdirected reforms and misled children. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 34, 194-210.

Shields, D. (2002). Youth ministry through sports. The Living Light, 39(2), 36-44.

Presentations:

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2010, March). Ethics to excellence: Pathway to true competition. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Indianapolis, IN.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2009, October). Reclaiming competition for character. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Character Education Partnership, Washington, D.C.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2009, September). Ethics to excellence: Coaching for true competition. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology conference, Salt Lake City, UT.

Shields, D., & Funk, C. (2009, July). Character and competition: From classrooms to sport fields. Paper presented at the 15th Annual Character Education Conference, CharacterPlus, St. Louis, MO.

Shields, D. (2009, June). Developing champions: From ethics to excellence. Presented at the 2006 Summer Institute, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA.

Shields, D. (2009, June). True competition: What it is; why it matters. Presented at the 2006 Summer Institute, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA.

Funk, C. (2009, June). Ethics to Excellence: Promoting Positive Competition in Sports and School. Presented at the 2009 Focus on Character Conference, Jefferson, WI.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2009, June). Coaching for true competition. Paper presented at the National Coaching Educators’ Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (2007, November). Moral and performance character: Building character and citizenship through sports. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Moral Education, New York, NY.

Shields, D. (2006, June). Competition and character. Presented at the 2006 Summer Institute, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA.

Shields, D. (2006, Sept.). What is competition? Presented at the 2006 International Youth Sports Congress sponsored by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, Washington, D.C.

Shields, D. (2001, December). Competition for character. Keynote address at the Coaches and Athletic Directors Conference sponsored by the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education, Atlanta, GA.

Shields, D. (2001, August). Two metaphors for competition. Keynote address at the Coaching for Character conference, Culver Academies, Indiana.

Shields, D. (2001, May). Opponents or enemies: Rethinking the nature of competition. Keynote address at the inaugural conference of the Mendelson Center for Sport, Character & Culture, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.

Related Work by Shields & Bredemeier (Partial Listing)

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2008). Sport and the development of character. In L. Nucci & D. Narvaez, Handbook of moral and character education (pp. 500-519). New York: Routledge.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2007). Advances in sport morality research. In G. Tenenbaum & R.C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (3rd ed., pp. 662-684). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Shields, D., LaVoi, N., Bredemeier, B., & Power, F.C. (2007). Predictors of poor sportspersonship in youth sports: Personal attitudes and social influences. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 29, 747-762.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (2006). Sports and character development. Research Digest, President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, 7(1), 1-8.

Shields, D., Bredemeier, B., LaVoi, N., & Power, F.C. (2005). The sport behavior of youth, parents, and coaches: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Research in Character Education, 3, 43-59.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (2005). Sport and the development of character. In D. Hackfort, J. Duda, & R. Lidor (Eds.), Handbook of research in applied sport and exercise psychology: International perspectives (pp. 275-290). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (2005). Can sports build character? In D. Lapsley & F.C. Power (Eds.), Character psychology and education (pp. 121-139). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Shields, D., Bredemeier, B., & Power, F.C. (2002). Character development and children’s sport. In F. Smoll & R. Smith (Eds.), Children and youth in sport: A biopsychosocial perspective (2nd ed., pp. 537-559). Indianapolis: Brown & Benchmark.

Power, C., Power, A., Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (2001). Democratic education and children=s rights. In S. Hart, C Cohen, M. Erickson, & M Flekkoy (Eds.), Children’s rights in education (pp. 98-118). London: Jessica Kingsley.

Miller, S., Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1997). Sociomoral education through physical education with at-risk children. Quest, 49, 114-129.

Shields, D., Gardner, D., Bredemeier, B., & Bostrom, A. (1997). The relationship between leadership behaviors and group cohesion in team sports. Journal of Psychology, 131, 196-210.

Gardner, D., Shields, D., Bredemeier, B., & Bostrom, A. (1996). The relationship between perceived coaching behaviors and team cohesion among baseball and softball players. The Sport Psychologist, 10, 367-381.

Shields, D., Bredemeier, B., Gardner, D., & Bostrom, A. (1995). Leadership, cohesion and team norms regarding cheating and aggression. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 324-336.

Shields, D., & Bredemeier, B. (1995). Character development and physical activity. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1994). Applied ethics and moral reasoning in sport. In J. Rest (Ed.), Moral development in the professions (pp. 173-187). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1986a). Athletic aggression: An issue of contextual morality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 3 15 28.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1986b). Game reasoning and interactional morality. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 147, 257-275.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1986c). Moral growth among athletes and nonathletes: A comparative analysis. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 147, 7 18.

Bredemeier, B., Weiss, M., Shields, D., & Cooper, B. (1986). The relationship of sport involvement with children’s moral reasoning and aggression tendencies. Journal of Sport Psychology, 8, 304 318.

Bredemeier, B., Weiss, M., Shields, D., & Shewchuk, R. (1986). Promoting moral growth in a summer sport camp: The implementation of theoretically grounded instructional strategies. Journal of Moral Education, 15, 212 220.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1985). Values and violence in sport. Psychology Today, 19, 22-32.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1984a). Divergence in moral reasoning about sport and life. Sociology of Sport Journal, 1, 348-357.

Bredemeier, B., & Shields, D. (1984b). The utility of moral stage analysis in the investigation of athletic aggression. Sociology of Sport Journal, 1, 138 149.

Most of my blogs have been about sports.  But I would like to use this comment as an illustration of how the ideas that are at the heart of TrueCompetition.Org apply far beyond the playing fields.

Our political system, from local government through national politics, relies on candidates contesting for votes, and political representatives contesting over policy proposals.  It is not surprising that commentators often use sport metaphors when talking about the games of politics.

Sports, at their best, are enjoyable quests for excellence.  They are opportunities to excel, to push one’s boundaries, to experience the exhilaration and excitement of the contest.  But they can also degrade into battles for bragging rights.  They can degenerate into wars over who wins the spoils of victory.  Because these are really two quite distinct ways of approaching the contest, we refer to them as competition and decompetition.

The same insights apply to political contests.  Politics can be dedicated to pursuing excellence in public service or they can degenerate into entrenched battles over narrowly defined ideologies and personal careers.  Debates over policies can be honest efforts to allow the best ideas to surface or they can be manipulated sound bites designed only to placate donors and voters.

The commentator on the radio indicated that the Republicans have “no incentive to cooperate.”  No incentive?  What about trying to accomplish something for the American people?  We have become so cynical that we don’t even recognize it when we simply assume a decompetitive view of politics.  Of course, the Republicans are not the only ones who play this decompetitive version of politics.  Unfortunately, the true public servant is rare on both sides of the aisle.

A disgusted public often responds to the do-nothing Congress with a “throw the bums out” attitude.  But this attitude fails to recognize that the problem originates not in Congress nor in corrupt politicians (though we certainly have some).  We need to look deeper.  More specifically, we need to look inward.  We are all part of the problem.  We have all become too enamored with a cut-throat approach to contesting.  We have come to believe that it is the only way to seek victory.

Throwing one group of politicians out of office, replacing them with another, will do little good.  Unless there is a cultural change in how we view competition, the new ones will quickly come to look like the old ones.  The problem lies less with the specific representatives, but with the people they represent.  We all need to embrace our own responsibility.  The gridlock in Congress reflects a natural extension of how we have come to view contesting.  Unless we learn to respect opponents, unless we learn to listen with open hearts to those who differ from us, how can we expect more from those who represent us?

Almost invariably, when sport safety is considered, discussion focuses on equipment, training, technique, and enforcement. I applaud these efforts. The insights of medical professionals, biomechanics experts, exercise physiologists, and numerous others need to be combined with the first-hand experience of coaches and athletes to arrive at workable policies and procedures that will reduce the dangers associated with sport.

Unfortunately, another dimension of sport safety too often escapes discussion. In addition to the kinds of considerations already mentioned, we need to consider the culture of sports, particularly those contact sports where injuries arise from physical contact, either directly or with a sport implement. Invariably, “toughness” is a part of sport. Both mental and physical toughness are desired attributes. Yet we need to be cautious about how these are defined, understood, and encouraged. To persevere through difficulty is admirable; to play with dangerous injuries is foolishness. To face an intimidator with unflinching resolve is good; to threaten or inflict bodily harm is corrupt.

Sports are not wars and competition is not a battle. But sometimes these metaphors can creep into sports and distort their fundamental purpose, and do so in a way that undermines safety. When opponents become enemies, their safety is no longer a high priority. When contests become wars, we may feel pressured to take dangerous health risks in order to help our team win. But when everyone is committed to the pursuit of excellence, the culture can support a rugged yet safe contest. That should be our goal.