Understanding team resilience in the world's best athletes: A case study of a rugby union World Cup winning team.

By Paul Morgan, D. Fletcher, Mustafa Sarkar. 2015

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Objective Although team resilience research has identified the characteristics of elite sport teams that positively adapt to adversity, further research is required to understand how resilient teams function. The objective of this study, therefore, was to explore the psychosocial processes underpinning team resilience in elite sport. Design Narrative inquiry was employed to better understand team resilience. Method The sample consisted of eight members of the 2003 England rugby union World Cup winning team. The autobiographies of these team members were analyzed using three types of narrative analyzes: holistic-content analysis, holistic-form analysis, and categorical-form analysis. Results Findings revealed five main psychosocial processes underpinning team resilience: transformational leadership, shared team leadership, team learning, social identity, and positive emotions. An examination of narrative structure within the autobiographies revealed a progressive narrative form characterized by a collective positive evaluation of setbacks. Conclusions This study extends previous team resilience research by going beyond the identification of resilient characteristics to explaining underpinning psychosocial processes. The team resilience processes are discussed in relation to previous research findings and in terms of their implications for practising sport psychologists. It is anticipated that this study will provide practitioners with a framework to develop team resilience at the highest levels of sport.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2bbbaa01c51ddc0bd351c06f75928a1b2d629544

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Orthopedics and Sports Medicine

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

Workplace team resilience: A systematic review and conceptual development (2020, background): “Similarly, the findings from their follow-up case study (Morgan et al., 2015) suggest that team learning is a way of organizing team members’ knowledge on how to collectively act in an event of adversity or crisis.”
Mental fortitude training: An evidence-based approach to developing psychological resilience for sustained success (2016, background): “…is the way that the individuals’ collective qualities (e.g., defined roles and responsibilities, group goal commitment and alignment, nurtured supportive and caring relationships, strong belief in one another) are harnessed in which every member of the team can thrive (Morgan et al., 2013, 2015).”
Mental Toughness and Success in Sport: A Review and Prospect (2017, background): “several psychosocial processes that distinguish team from individual resilience [51], indicating team resilience comprises more than merely totalling each team member’s individual resilience [52].”
Athlete leadership in sport teams: Current understanding and future directions (2016, unknown): “Price and Weiss (2011) updated the PSLBI based on a pilot study, which resulted in a 49-item scale, representing eight different leadership dimensions: motivation, character, creativity and intelligence,”