Teaching Tactical Creativity in Sport

Research and Practice

Daniel Memmert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317754060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Sportunterricht

Creativity is an essential component of sport performance. The player who can make decisions that are both unexpected – and therefore less easily predicted by his/her opponent – and appropriate is the player who is likely to be successful. In this ground-breaking new book Daniel Memmert explores the concept of tactical creativity, introducing a new theoretical framework based on extensive empirical research. He argues for the importance of encouraging divergent thinking abilities at an early age, and explains how tactical creativity sits alongside conventional approaches to 'teaching games for understanding'. The book outlines essential rules for environmental and training conditions, and suggests a wide range of game forms for teaching and coaching tactical creativity to children and young people. This is important to all students, researchers, coaches and teachers working in physical education, sports coaching, sport psychology or skill acquisition.

1
Creativity

An introduction

Creativity in real life

The terms uniqueness, originality, intuition or creativity have assumed a meaningful and individual position in our society during the last sixty years. Creative accomplishments often reveal bizarre ideas or the unusual behaviour of people, and seem to not involve analytical and rational thoughts. Accordingly, creativity is connected to imagined or hidden processes, and thus it appears to deny scientific access. A current example of this is one of the best football players in the world, Lionel Messi (Figure 1.1). Fabio Cannavaro, a former Italian world class footballer and now a coach, said of him: “In the way he plays, Messi gives the audience the illusion that the spontaneous and wild on the street still exists. How can you stop him? Shut your eyes and pray!” Or: “Messi is the most incredible player I have ever seen,” says basketball phenomenon Kobe Bryant. And: “The truth is that it amazes me when the best player in the world continues inventing things that I have never seen before. Messi is a very creative player and you never know what he is going to do with the ball. He creates excitement for the fans every time he touches the ball.”

Examples of creative products can be found in all eras: the infantile composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison, the chemical structure of the benzene ring, or the discovery of the Fosbury Flop in the high jump (see Figure 1.2). In addition, a well-known joke refers to a creative solution of a problem. Out of the blue, two men are facing a seemingly hungry lion in the desert. While one of them runs away in panic, the other one calmly puts on his running shoes. While running, the fleeing man shouts: “You don’t really think that you’ll be faster than the lion with those shoes, do you?” “No,” the guy says composedly, “but I’ll probably be faster than you.”

In team and racket sports, rehearsed action sequences (e.g. moves) often lead to creative success. However, creative tactical ideas play an important role in many cases. For example, in football, the midfield players have the task of controlling the team’s developing game by clever tactical decision-making behaviour. Similarly, “playmakers” in handball or basketball can set up finishing options for their team mates with creative solutions.

Figure 1.1 Lionel Messi (FIFA World Player of the Year in 2010, 2011 and 2012) with the author of this book at the training centre of FC Barcelona in May 2011

Figure 1.2 Creativity in sport: a new high jump technique (© Original by Helmut Wegmann, pixelio.de; www.pixelio.de

Examples of creative players based on statements from football experts:

“Messi plays on a completely different level.” (Neymar)

“Next to Ribéry we have one more who can bring creativity better into the game on a narrow space. We want to improve ourselves. This can only work with extraordinary players.” (Van Gaal, about Robben)

“He makes the difference, he brings unpredictability into the game and carries the team with him.” (Beckenbauer, about Robben)

“At his appearance, you can see how much fun he has playing football. He is an incredibly creative person.” (Reus, about Gцtze)

“With his tricks, Цzil dominates the art of the unexpected!“ (The Spanish newspaper El Pais)

These examples could be continued endlessly. In our everyday lives and working environments we are confronted with new situations for which we do not have learned and prepared solutions. Nevertheless, we manage to look for answers which let us cope with the tasks. All these examples demonstrate that creative solutions are central facets of life, concerning business life, professional life, and sports. Managers must find new ways to solve problems for industrial productions; designers must develop creative solutions in industrial or web design to secure crucial competitive advantages; and football players must make decisions in specific sporting situations which are unexpected and therefore less predictable for their opponents. Most of these original solutions are context-specific, embodied in emotions, and have a motivational background (Memmert, Hüttermann and Orliczek, 2013). So how do people find more creative solutions?

Creativity research has been approached in a multitude of domains as diverse as science itself – for instance, literature, music, art, religion, and politics (for an overview see Milgram, 1990; Runco, 2007; Sternberg, 1999; Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). First and foremost, in a general and scientific context, Sternberg and Lubart (1999, p. 3) define creativity as “the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful)” (for more detail, see Chapter 3). Therefore, the term “creativity” stands in contrast to the term intelligence (cf. also Chapter 3). Intelligence was the key variable for the description of intellectual skills according to the classic intelligence models of Thurstone (1938), Guilford (1956) or Cattell (1971), which have subsequently experienced modifications and extensions. Gardner (1993) names seven types of talents in his “multiple intelligences” model: linguistic, logical-mathematic, visual-spatially, musical, physical-kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence.

While intelligence is always connected with the only right (convergent) solutions, the term creativity stands for productive, original, shaping, artistic, artful, inventive, innovative, imaginative, enterprising, fanciful, groundbreaking or trend-setting solutions, to name just a few descriptors. Generally speaking, creative behaviour means creating ideas leading to adequate solutions of a tricky problem without prefabricated approaches. These solutions are often recognised as surprising, original and flexible within their environment. The central aim of this textbook is to discuss creative thinking in complex situations such as team and racket sports in order to analyse creative performance and its development in real world environments, as recommended by many investigators (Lieberman, 2000; Runco and Sakamoto, 1999; Simonton, 2003).

Creativity in industry, politics and business

To the greatest possible extent, nowadays there is agreement in economics, industry and politics that inventiveness and creativity have developed to become the central factors for the success of an enterprise. As an example: Robert Sternberg, the world’s leading scientist in creativity research, reports the garbage men in New York who had to face the time-consuming problem of picking up big and heavy dustbins from backyards, and then putting them back after emptying them before returning to the garbage truck. After a while, the men realised that it would be much more economical and faster (saving one trip) if they didn’t return the empty dustbins to their original place, but instead – because they are all the same size and colour – brought them to the next backyard where they picked up the next full dustbin. This saved almost 50% of the costs and working hours.

“Creativity is one of the key factors of an innovative society. The development of creative capital needs creative people, as well as an appropriate environment that makes living and working at certain places more attractive.” (Hans-Heinrich Grosse-Brockhoff, Cultural State Secretary in North Rhine-Westphalia, September 18^th 2007). In September 2007 Jьrgen Rьttgers (the Premier of North Rhine-Westphalia) announced the investment of a total of 50 million euro for transfer strategies until 2012, in order to increase the number of patents and to encourage technology-orientated foundations.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “Germany is once again able to demonstrate their long-standing power as a country of fruitful ideas. Frequently there were innovative ideas by German thinkers changing the world. Our two Nobel Prize winners are well-known examples of that. In the future, let us be the country of ideas that makes action out of ideas, and action will provide chances for everybody. These were, are and will be the strengths of Germany.”

For 75% out of 1070 managers from industry, the topic of innovation is one of the top three priorities of their business strategies, and for 40% of them it is the primary priority (worldwide survey of the business consultancy Boston Consulting Group). As Hasso Plattner (SAP founder and chairman of the board) suggests: “For a long time people spoke only about how to economise costs. Now many companies recognise that if it is not possible to keep profit they are not at all able to grow. One can only grow if one is seriously innovative.”

The concerns of creativity in the field of economics are also supported by numerous statistics (Jansen, 2006; Florida, 2002). In the European Union almost 6.5 million people, and 25% to 30% of the working population in developed industrial countries, work in the sector of creativity – for instance, in advertising, design, music, film, fashion or media – which is even more than in the chemical or car industries. In the USA these creative industries are believed to generate even more income than the industrial and service sectors put together. In 2004 the “creative class” (Florida, 2002) generated 2.6% of the gross domestic product of Germany, which is comparable with the chemical and car industry. The peak year turnovers are made by the sectors of culture (82.0 billion euro), software/computing (18.4 billion euro) and advertising (11.8 billion euro).

The importance of creativity in the economic field, and the large number of optimistic results has led to a rethinking and a reorientation of companies, managers, work-group leaders and other managers. Professor Robert Sternberg recently made the following statement to the German press about the importance of creativity in politics and economics: “Have a look at the current situation in the financial sector. We are going through a global crisis, only caused by misplaced credits of the banks. Only the investment bank Goldmann and Sachs has succeeded in escaping the danger. They have not only recovered their losses; they even made profits – although they had exactly the same information as their competitors. Creative, flexible thinking is not a luxury – it is a necessity.”

Today, terms like “autonomy” and “self-monitoring at work”, with a focus on long-term, self-initiated experiences, are becoming increasingly popular. This popularity is an argument for the establishment of creativity-supporting environments in companies and workplaces where employees are mostly independent, which would make non-compliant and unconventional work possible. Thus, management is more facilitating than directing. Bennis, Heil, and Stephens (2000) associated the optimal behaviour of managers with the behaviour of parents or teachers, which is focused more on growth and development than on productivity.

Based on Ekvall and Ryhammer (1999), an atmosphere that supports creativity can be established in companies by six factors: (1) make the achievement of employees’ goals possible, so their work is relevant; (2) give appropriate opportunities for such achievement; (3) support employees’ ideas, (4) instill confidence; (5) make regular, free exchange of ideas possible; and (6) permit or even support adventurous behaviour.

A range of questionnaires has been constructed which allows companies and organisations to assess the potential of their own atmosphere and environment for innovation. For instance, Kasof (1997) found that as a result of loud noise people focus their attention on solving a task even more than usual. Therefore, the width of their focus of attention necessarily decreases. As a result, they are less successful in creating original solutions than other experimental subjects, who solved the same creative tasks without auditory interruptions and who were therefore able to handle the tasks with a wider focus of attention without isolating themselves from their environments.

Overall, a form of communication in companies that includes employees seems to play an important role. Werth, Denzler and Förster (2002) showed that rewards, which are focused on profit and non-profit, lead to improved performance in creative tasks, but at the same time decrease analytical thinking.

The assessment of Germany as a location by Professor Herbert A. Henzler (business consultancy McKinsey), published in the magazine “sports” in December 1998, states the following: “In the 70s and at the beginning of the 80s, German football was world-leading. In the field of sport we were at the very forefront, and coaches from all over the world came to Germany to receive training. However, in the past few years we did not keep pace particularly in technique and tactics – almost similar to the society and the economy. One can find connections between a lack of innovation in economics and in sport. At the beginning of this century German technicians, entrepreneurs and scientists created a flourishing industrial society by a wave of inventions and new manufacturing processes. Today other countries are leading in innovations. To make Germany successful again, thinking barriers have to be overcome and routinised training methods have to be abandoned. Only those who have the nerve to experiment can succeed in the future.”

The science of economics takes a similar view: “Creativity is a basic element of human life, a widely laid out social process, which requires cooperation. This is stimulated by human exchange and networks; it takes place in actual communities and in real places” (Florida, 2002, p.23). Thus, competition for the most attractive locations and workplaces for creative people has already begun. This is underlined by the formation of megalopolises (metropolitan areas which are created by the merging of several cities), like the ones developing in Tokyo or “Boswash” (the metropolitan area between Boston and Washington). Megalopolises will be “creative oases”, the success centres of the global economy of the twenty-first ce...