“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
(Albert Einstein)
Flexible thinking requires the ability to “unlearn” old ways of doing things, switch gears and look at things differently.
It’s a one-point game. 18 seconds left on the clock. As coach you call a timeout. You lay out your meticulous plan for the team to clinch the winning basket and players nod their approval. High fives all round, you pump them up and hold your breath as they troop back onto the court. Oops! The opposition unexpectedly blocks your suggested play. Horrified, you watch in the hope that the guy with the ball will come up with another way of getting there. He doesn’t. The hooter goes. Game over.
What happened? Why couldn’t he improvise? A big reason is that he could not think flexibly unable to switch gears straightaway with a new approach to solve his problem. Unfortunately it was not a one off. It was integral to his overall thinking style.
From my time assessing the England rugby players and coaches in their run-up to winning the world cup, two players stood out at opposite ends of the flexibility thinking spectrum. One was extremely inflexible and the other was his polar opposite. Knowing this type of information is illuminating when it comes to one-on-one coaching with players and for building more effective team dynamics.
For obvious reasons names of players are changed so let’s make one up. The case of Jason. Due to the interaction of various aspects of his personality, he was someone who had a great need for order in his life. Whether due to an underlying anxiety or a need for security or a long-standing pattern was difficult to say. In any event the effects on the way he lived his life and dealt with others, particularly his teammates, were clear.
Jason was a typical introvert who liked the clear-cut nature of analysis. He seldom had time for high-minded ideas that lacked practical value. Most importantly his need for order in his personal life or on the field, came out strongly through his drive to achieve measurable performance based results. Thus, Jason was uncomfortable with open-endedness and always a bit suspicious of some of his coach’s creative ideas which he generally saw as leading nowhere. He responded well to detailed structured rules and specific plays and workouts (and was the case in his home life, where routine was definitely the order of the day.)
Jason’s difficulty was that he had what I call categorical thinking and this sometimes caused problems for him with people on and off the field. He was not always tolerant of other viewpoints and found adapting to change difficult. Not infrequently he was inflexible even rigid. Teammates complained that he could be unreasonable in arguments because he defended his views so strongly that he never really listened to anyone or anything else. To complicate matters as many introverts tend to do, he often didn’t share his true feelings openly.
Jason’s example is contrasted starkly against a teammate who was almost too flexible. Generally he found it very difficult to make decisions or ever to stick to a path of action, because there always seemed more interesting ways of executing a move or an alternative for the team to try it out. Perhaps in their relationships such athletes are too easily influenced or may be so easy-going, as to barely contribute to team-think. We all know people who just seem to let others make all their decisions for them.
It’s worth noting that some athletes with learning and attention difficulties will struggle with flexible thinking patterns. They have trouble seeing other viewpoints and alternative ways of doing things. Coaches and teammates should remember this when considering new informational input.