Yes, it’s been a hard football watching season for Minnesota Vikings fans. Why couldn’t this team turn it around and win more than 3 games? This week’s Star Tribune Exit Interviews article ponders this question. Several players chime in, but linebacker Chad Greenway explains the disappointing season well. “To me, I think the biggest thing was the way this season started.  Those first three games. The way we lost them sort of creates the negative momentum, the negative mentality. Winning and losing is a culture. I think when you create that early on, you create a bad culture about, in your mind, can we do this? Can we not do this? How do you overcome that? You overcome that by getting a few wins and getting that confidence back. We just weren’t able to string that together and overcome all that...

If you have ever played on a losing team and hated it, you probably just needed a coach trained in sport psychology. Caltech Coach Oliver Eslinger makes good use of his sport psychology doctorate from Boston University, says a recent article online at timesunion.com. Eslinger begin coaching at Caltech three years ago, taking on a basketball team with a “deeply embedded culture” of losing, with not one winning season since the year 1954. “Last year we had 11 freshmen on the team, we were 0-25, and we got absolutely hammered in conference,” Eslinger says in the article. “You gotta have good heads. Luckily, that's where the psychology background comes into play. It's tough to keep losing. That can get at you.” This season, Caltech won a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game, markin...

Whether you are building a sports team or a company, author Rosabeth Moss Kanter recommends culling lessons from the sporting arena. In a Harvard Business Review blog,  Kantar turns her gaze to both World Cup Soccer action and the cricket field. What can we learn from the playing field? Kantar writes: "The leadership culture surrounding teams shapes outcomes. Whether in the boardroom, locker room, or living room, success is derived from not just the talents of individuals but the context surrounding them." If you caught any World Cup coverage this past summer, you may have witnessed the French team’s “emotional meltdown,” or the German team’s “discipline.”  Nigeria faltered while its country’s soccer federation suffered a corruption investigation. All of these examples point to the culture and leadership surroundin...