Change Your Thinking, Change Your Culture

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In 2010, the Donegal intercounty football team had reached a low point after losing to Armagh 20-11 in the qualifiers for the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. As the 2011 season approached, they were ranked 19th out of 34 teams. What followed was a historical turnaround—winning the Ulster Provincial Title in 2011 and making it to the All-Ireland semi-final. In 2012, they achieved the unthinkable: they won the All-Ireland final, only the second time in their county's history. Donegal would remain relevant in the years that followed, making it back to the 2014 final.

Now, if you ask any fan of Gaelic football in Ireland what those Donegal teams are known for, they will tell you: their system of play. In fact, their defensive style of football is often “blamed” for ruining the game. Sadly, the average fan misses the bigger picture. They fail to recognize that tactical systems do not win championships. Any manager or coach can put together a winning game plan, but it takes a fully committed team to execute it. As the famous Peter Drucker saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

So, how did manager Jim McGuinness turn the team culture around at Donegal? In my book The Culture System, Chapter 7—Create Your Team Manifesto—I recount a story McGuinness tells in his autobiography Until Victory Always, where, in November 2010, the team gathered to discuss why they were ranked 19th in the country and what they needed to do to become the best team in Ireland. At first glance, this meeting appeared to be a typical team gathering to establish behavioral standards or team norms. As coaches work to co-create the culture of their teams with athletes, team standard meetings are becoming more and more common at the start of a season.

However, upon closer examination of McGuinness’s methods, I realized something more profound occurred during those first few months within the team. They didn’t just get clarity on the behaviors necessary to win a championship—McGuinness relentlessly spoke to the beliefs, the mindset necessary to win a championship. Before the behaviors started to change, the thinking had to change.

In 2011, the story the players within the team were telling themselves and each other shifted from “it can’t be done” to “it can be done.” How? McGuinness would bring the team together, look them in the eye, and tell them at each training session, “We’re going to be Ulster champions. We are going to be Ulster champions. We are going to be Ulster champions.” In his book, McGuinness shares how the team used to think, “Other county teams are laughing at us.” But that wasn’t the narrative he told his players, instead he describes how he would often bring the team in closer together after a training session, sweat pouring off them, steam rising, and the players still panting—and he’d let them know, “We’ve trained harder than anyone in the country today.”

It wasn’t all talk. McGuinness is known for the simplicity of his drills and the incredible intensity with which he required players to perform. A simple run in a passing drill would be repeated again and again until a player could say they had gone 100%. They were pushed physically harder than they had ever been pushed. And as the team worked and sacrificed, the mindset of individuals shifted from “look out for yourself” to “we are on a journey together.”

The mistake most coaches make when trying to improve results and drive their team’s performance forward is focusing solely on behaviors. As Daniel Coyle says in The Culture Code, “Culture is what you do.” I have come to slightly disagree—I think culture is more mindset than behaviors. Our thinking and feeling drives our behaviors and results. For people to perform better within a team, what core beliefs or mindset shifts are needed? If we can unlock this, we can create real momentum in driving behavioral change within our teams.