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, marking the first time the team scored a conference victory in 26 seasons. Eslinger always tells his team to stay in the moment, which is helpful during so many defeats and a great feeling when you finally win.

This “in-the-moment” philosophy helps players put losses behind them. Eslinger admits that he is encouraging the team to reveal in this conference win for longer than a mere moment, and he is busy helping his team envision a fantastic future. “We are going to win the league,” Eslinger says in the article, “and we are going to win the league and go to the NCAA Tournament year after year.”

Why is golfer Bernhard Langer so successful? Senior Writer Randall Mell asks this question on a recent blog post online at Golf Channel.

Along with the usual answers such as hard work and excellent health, Langer lists a reason people don’t often mention: a lack of personal tumult. “I haven’t had marital problems, or a divorce. I’ve had the same coach for 35 years. I’ve had the same manager for 35 years. I’ve had the same wife for 27 years. Obviously, I’ve had to work hard on my game, but I think if other areas of your life are not right, you will have a hard time concentrating and performing,” said Langer.

Langer has won 83 professional titles and trophies over a career spanning more than 30 years. Mell writes Langer is proof that emotional stability is as helpful as good golfing technique and years of dedication. Divorce, defiant teenagers, money problems, and dying relatives all are hazards for professional athletes. This type of tumult is why people ponder Tiger Woods’ performance so closely these days.

Mell also writes about three-time major champion Larry Nelson, who admits his lack of focus after caring for his dying father for 21 days in a row. “I was fine going to play, I was excited about getting to play, I was ready to play, but I was just mentally exhausted,” Nelson said.

The next time you compete in your favorite sporting endeavor, take a moment to ponder your personal life. Do you live your life in a calm and supportive setting, or are events unfolding that create a lack of balance right now? Now look at how your game played out and think about how tumult or serenity affected you.

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 surrounding each soccer team.

Kanter uses this lens in the book Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. For this book, she researched how cricket teams in various countries rose and declined based on both culture and leadership practices. In this blog, she writes how the Australian Cricket Board’s (now Cricket Australia) fostered leadership and innovation, building a “winning national team.” Key tactics, which can be used in both business and on the field, included:

• Letting players mature and grow instead of discarding them, creating a solid team.
• Founding a youth cricket academy to invest in younger athletes.
• Offering scholarships for this academy for talent programs and camps.
• As winning made the sport more popular, the money from attendance was used to enliven World Series matches, and corporate sponsorship began.
• Good press made cricket even more popular.

The next time you watch your favorite sport team in action, think about why these players are successful or, alternatively, why your team is in the middle of a losing streak. And whether you are a leader on a field or at a company, use the lessons from this article and from your viewing time in your life.