Case study: ice hockey

Let’s stick together

The aim of the MyDrives workshop in Tilburg: how can the Tilburg Trappers gain even more understanding of one another? How do you create an even better atmosphere? And how can that, in turn, lead to even better performances? Theo van Gerwen – technical director of the Dutch Ice Hockey Association – is also present during the workshop. He embraced MyDrives straight away. His explanation: you don’t become champions with the best players alone. Just look at Manchester City. In the 2021-2022 season, that football club won the Premier League with 93 points. That was one point more than Liverpool, a club that many insiders in the football world believed had slightly better players. Back to the Tilburg Trappers – and Theo is certain of it: the team became champions above all through togetherness, the will to win together. Translated into the world of ice hockey: let’s stick together. In his view, the added value of MyDrives in reaching that goal is unmistakably great. Because MyDrives builds extra trust in your teammates as people, as well as extra trust in their knowledge and ability.

You don’t become champions with the best players alone.

MyDrives

Using an iceberg model, MyDrives analyses the hidden human drivers beneath the surface of the water. In this case the drivers of the ice hockey players, but also of the coach, the masseur and the equipment manager. Because they are all an inseparable part of the team. These drivers come together in the question: what do you want? Above the surface of the water, the fixed habits of the individual Tilburg Trappers become visible. The central question here is: what do you do? To arrive at a balanced analysis, the Tilburg Trappers completed the MyDrives questionnaire online in preparation for the workshop. Based on their answers, all participants receive a tailored report after the workshop. It sets out in a chart which colour or colours are defining for each person’s personality. Does red, for example, tip the balance? Then you are a decisive individual who is not easily stopped by anyone or anything. Does the colour green predominate? Then you are an empathetic and harmonious person, someone who likes to be among people. Blue, in turn, stands for structure, fixed rules and discipline. The report also contains a personal energy balance: which colours give you energy and which colours drain energy from you?

Tactical improvements

The MyDrives analysis of the Tilburg Trappers reveals, among other things, that as a team – alongside performance-driven orange – they have relatively a lot of purple in their profile. Here the colour purple stands for the sense of club, for mutual connection, pride and loyalty. MyDrives not only ensures that this purple is preserved, but that it can become even more purple. How does that work? Theo van Gerwen explains that, first of all, the players are going to compare their personal colour profiles, so that they learn even more about one another’s personalities. In addition, he will – in consultation with the coach of the Tilburg Trappers – look at how the outcomes of the MyDrives analysis can be applied at a tactical level. An example: the right combination of the different colour profiles within a line of players can mean that a power-play situation is played out even better. Marc Stijfs and Jos Crijns – the founders of MyDrives, MyHabits and MyMatch – point out that MyHabits can be a follow-up step to MyDrives. With MyHabits, a series of practical assignments helps to break through fixed thought patterns and actions. MyMatch, in its turn, can be of added value if the Tilburg Trappers go looking for a new player. Or, put differently: MyMatch shows that a happy match has nothing to do with luck.

Wanting matters more than being able

And furthermore: wanting matters more than being able, because a strong will to achieve something can partly compensate for a weaker competence. Conversely, a strong competence can never compensate for a lack of motivation. Take the example of the Canadian Wayne Gretzky, the greatest ice hockey player ever. Alongside his extraordinary talent, his will to achieve was enormous. You can see this in a film his father made in November 1963. Wayne is two years old at the time, sliding and tumbling in all directions on his first skates across the frozen Nith River in Brantford, Ontario. At that point he still uses his stick mainly to keep from falling. Yet he falls all the same. Time and again. But after a thousand bruises he no longer falls, and in the years that follow Wayne Gretzky grows into the absolute star of the National Hockey League. By then he uses his stick as a conductor’s baton and a deadly goal-scoring weapon.