Preface: The Importance of a Cohesive Mentality
All team games suffer from a common problem: personality conflicts. Esports are particularly volatile in this regard. Esports’ relatively small team size and most teams’ reluctance to build bench depth mean any roster move runs the risk of pushing the team dynamic away from a stable orbit. Top players often find themselves juggled between various teams for months on end as they “look for a home.” How could it be that some of the best players in the world can’t seem to find a long-term team? Teams have answered this question time and time again with the adage that the player “just wasn’t a good fit.”
This raises interesting questions: What makes a “good fit?” And, what are we fitting into, exactly?
A player’s personality is rarely outright caustic enough to see them shuffled between teams. Likewise, especially at a top level, a player’s raw skill alone is rarely the determining factor in whether they are released or traded. The answer to why even top players often struggle to find long-term teams lies deeper than looking to a single metric or their sense of humor . . .
Esports, especially at the semi-professional and amateur levels, provide a unique challenge for those who try to compete: How does one get better? Any competitor knows this is a tougher question than most realize. More often than not, players don’t have access to one-on-one coaching of any real value. Players are forced to learn via self-reflection and discussion, and this means they effectively have to learn how to learn on their own. Players can reflect on their decisions and performance in isolation but will often find themselves asking the wrong questions or failing to realize there are problems altogether. A collaborative reflection, a discussion, rather than isolated reflection remedies this issue.
This learning process of reflection and discussion determines whether one can “fit” in a given team. A team is not a cold, dead thing. A team is a manifestation of the combined work and understanding of its individuals. As such, an effective, sustainable, and healthy team starts first and foremost with how the group approaches the reflection and discussion required for improvement.
It’s important to note that there is a distinction between how a single player pursues individual growth and how a group of players grows as a team. Individual growth, while often spurred via discussion, occurs internally. In contrast, teams grow by sharing internal growth between members through discussion. This is why many players struggle to find their footing on a team: The way they learn and grow as an individual shares little overlap with how their current team communicates internally. For example: A player who learns primarily through film study will struggle to find their footing on a team that prefers to grind. Likewise, a player who avoids confrontation is unlikely to find success on a team where teammates point out mistakes as they happen. Cultivating an environment for growth, this elusive “culture of improvement,” is key to long-term success.
So, how does one go about creating such an environment?
Establishing Expectations
When building a team from the ground up, or when trying to develop a system with an existing team, it is of paramount importance that all parties understand what is expected of them. A discussion about these expectations should occur as early as possible, ideally before the roster is finalized. Players often have polarizing responses to these expectations, and the team needs to address any conflicts before they manifest later on.
Fred Fielder writes in Leadership and Effective Management about four key factors of establishing an organization climate, and he suggests the kinds of questions that should be asked to ensure that climate is conducive to success:
Individual autonomy. What degree of freedom does an individual have in a given system? Can one improvise in the moment? Should one speak up if they disagree with an instruction?
Structure. Who is giving directions? When and where are these directions given? Even more basic: when and where do you practice?
Reward orientation. What is a win? What is good practice? What are the long and short term goals of the team?
Support. How are problems and concerns addressed? To what extent are mistakes forgiven? What are acceptable mistakes to make? How does the team plan to hold its members accountable? How should frustration be handled?
As you might guess, there are myriad possible answers to these questions, and these aren’t the only questions to be asked in a given organization, but the framework is very helpful. An earnest discussion with team members will produce the “correct” answer for that team—there is no one-sized answer for all teams; each team will be unique in its optimal organization.
When answering these sorts of questions it is important to be realistic with the answers given. A team consisting of players who lack any real professional experience would do well to be hesitant about setting a world championship as their goal. A team that lacks a clear leader needs to be careful establishing an autocratic leadership structure, just as a team with a strong personality or two ought to be careful deciding to be more democratic in structure.
While factors 1 and 2 are important for logistical reasons, 3 and 4 are the main focus here. Players that hate to lose, be it scrimmages, league matches, or even aim duels, would never call a loss a win, but a player that loves to see what’s possible will always call a loss a “win” in that the loss is an opportunity to improve. Players that live for confrontation and want immediate change will want to correct problems as they happen, but players that keep reflection and gameplay compartmentalized will likely avoid addressing problems in the moment. Identifying what kinds of individual mentalities a team’s players bring to the table will determine the team mentality moving forward. The goal of the discussion about Reward Orientation and Support is to find as much common ground possible. This common ground will be the team’s culture, and is the cornerstone upon which the team’s success will be dependent. A perfectly logistically organized team will still be profoundly ineffective if its players hate being around each other.
Finding this common ground is a relatively easy task. The next post will discuss the hard part: Maintaining it.