Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

A self-fulfilling prophecy is the psychology of how group expectations become that group’s reality. In other words, when enough people expect something to happen their behavior changes in a way that makes it happen.

Today, as I was glancing through my notes of the classic mindset book Mind Gym by Gary Mack, I was reminded of the importance of self-fulfilling prophecies to coaches and athletes. There is a quote in the book from John Nabor, who is a five-time Olympic medalist, and former world record-holder in multiple swimming events. Nabor states:

Life is a collection of self-fulfilling prophecies.

I recommend all coaches and athletes pin this quote somewhere so they can keep it top of mind each day as they pursue their goals. The reason why is it perfectly sums up a fundamental truth about success and failure in sports.

To explain, first let’s revisit the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not an individual phenomenon. To make a prophecy self-fulfilling it requires enough people to create a tipping point. One person’s expectation is generally not enough to qualify unless the scenario is strictly under that individual’s control.

For coaches, this is not the norm. Coaches depend on team efforts. Moreover, for athletes, even those who play individual sports, a team effort is also a must for success. Therefore, to activate the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the expectations of the team must align to fulfill the prophecy.

This is what makes self-fulfilling prophecies so important. The idea of aligning a team to expect success with enough intensity to change the behavior of each individual on the team is something that doesn’t happen by accident. This requires a vision, a culture, and most of all, leadership.

With these three things in place, self-fulfilling prophecies generate a waterfall effect to success. On the other hand, without vision, culture, and leadership it’s just as likely that a self-fulfilling prophecy will be the cause of failure.