Nancy Louie

In sports, the thrill of competition often goes hand-in-hand with excessive pressure on young athletes and concerns about performance-enhancing drugs.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and alumnus Jim Thompson are attacking these issues by spreading the word about the importance of mindset and positive coaching.

In her recent book, Mindset, Dweck posits that an athlete’s mindset can be more important than his or her talent.

As she observed children as they learned, Dweck developed her theory of mindset. Children (or athletes) with a "fixed mindset" believe they either have it or they don't. Parents and coaches reinforce this, to the children's detriment, and they get locked in. But children (or athletes) with a "growth mindset" can transform themselves.

One of Dweck's students recently did an honors thesis reporting that Stanford athletes who thought their coaches believed in effort over ability tended to perform better.

People who worship athletes "forget that the drive got them there," Dweck said. "Michael Jordan said, 'I worked hard, it's not a gift.' He said, 'I've missed lots of baskets, I've failed.' But people don't believe it."

People prefer to think that champions are superheroes, she said. "I'm not saying there's no such thing as talent; there is. But that's just a starting point. Even Michael Jordan never coasted on his talent. You have to keep growing.

"Look at [former Stanford student] Tiger Woods. Several years ago he completely took apart his game. He understood that he had to lose for a while, and then he came back in this extraordinary way."

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is high on everyone's list of great coaches because he managed to get people who were not as talented as their opponents to nonetheless win. "Wooden's objective was to get all the players to give their all," Dweck said. "Too much emphasis on winning without team spirit is a losing strategy. It's like a company that looks good on Wall Street but actually is unhealthy."

That segue between coaching and management would come as no surprise to Jim Thompson, a Stanford MBA, former head of the Graduate School of Business' Public Management Program and founding director of the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), a nationwide organization that counts among its supporters Dweck and Michael Jordan's former coach Phil Jackson.

Thompson uses the prisoner's dilemma metaphor. "The only way to ensure that students practice only 20 hours a week is to go outside the frame," he said. "Individual directors can't change the way things are done. And the problem is the trickle-down. When colleges start football in spring, high schools have to do the same."

When Thompson came up with the idea for PCA, which assists elementary and high-school sports programs, he got instant support.

"Athletic Director, Ted Leland, was very interested in psychology, in the degradation of the culture of sports," Thompson said. "So he was very excited about PCA. He thought it was a good thing for society, and he wanted to support it.

"Stanford is a great place for these ideas to incubate. I met with some people from [another university] who were working on similar projects, and I showed them my card, which said Athletics Department. They couldn't believe it. 'I can't even get in the door of our athletics department,' one said, 'and you're housed there?'"

Current Stanford Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby is "fantastic," Thompson said. "I was at a meeting in Washington, D.C., when he was appointed, and everyone at my meeting was congratulating me."

Though PCA later moved its offices off campus, Thompson continues to have close links to the university. Like Dweck, he believes that effort, not some mysterious innate ability, is the key to sports performance. He would never say, however, that winning isn't important. He knows that it is very, very important. His organization rewards "triple-impact" athletes: those who have a positive impact on themselves, on their team and on the sport. To be a winner, PCA says, a coach must focus on effort, learning and mistakes.