‘Think growth mindset’: Heimir Hallgrímsson tweaking preparations for Ireland Austria clash

A question we pondered in the early stages of Heimir Hallgrímsson’s Ireland reign: how would the Icelander’s cool and remorseless logic react with the spasms of wild emotion that often envelop his team?

This tension was tested beyond all reasonable demand around the Israel games last month, but Hallgrímsson’s rational and analytical worldview seems to have escaped largely unscathed.

Speaking in Linz on Friday, Hallgrímsson explained he has challenged each of the various departments involved with the international squad to do something different for this camp. This is partly to relegate the Israel ordeal to history, but also to challenge everyone to improve.

The players assembled a day later than usual; the team meeting schedule has been changed; a new coach, Pete Shuttleworth, is with the squad; and branding around the team hotel has been moved around.

Hallgrímsson said the changes have extended to media engagements, which have been reduced, while long-established content embargoes have been removed. (We note this because ancient Aztec tribes did not afford their gods the same level of holy respect and observance that newspaper journalists invest in The Embargo.)

“We want to challenge everybody in the camp to think, ‘growth mindset’,” he said. “We should always challenge ourselves to improve our working environment. These guys deserve that their environment is improving. That is how everyone should be: players, staff, coaches ... media.”

With that final word, Hallgrímsson showed there is still some vestigial emotion from last month, left sitting in his solution for moving on like limescale grit in a cup of tea. Where previous Irish managers have become angry at the media, Hallgrímsson is just disappointed.

He is also unlike many of his successors in so openly subscribing to the growth mindset mantra, which was popularised in the 1970s by American psychologist Carol Dweck. Her theory ran that a person’s intelligence was not fixed and predetermined, but could instead be developed through effort, experience and, specifically, grit, whereby one is open to learning from one’s mistakes and failures.

The enthusiastic reception Dweck’s theory received in the United States perhaps owed to the fact it read like a psychologist’s supporting charter for the national pretensions to equality and social mobility, but it has become extremely influential in the West. It has reached the stage that a top, top cynic like Samuel Beckett has had his bleak “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” gag bastardised by a series of self-help gurus as an inspiring creed for never giving up.

The Irish rugby team was a much earlier public adopter of the growth mindset theory than the Irish football team, and we speculatively attribute this to the fact the bulk of the rugby team have been coached by teachers at fee-paying schools where Dweck’s theory soaked into the entire ethos of education.

Regardless of the actual reasons for this, rugby’s mindset is so open to growth that the sport has had to coin dowdy phrases like “work-ons” and “learnings” to be able to fully wield the awesome opportunities that lie in mistake and failure. The Irish football team, by contrast, has historically trafficked in the kind of fatalistic wails that would make Carol Dweck weep.

These include the sense we are fated to forever draw 1-1; that we can’t aspire to be anything more than hard to beat; and that “we just don’t have the players” – a favourite of some previous managers.

The chief benefit of Hallgrímsson’s growth mindset is that it comes coded with hope. It tells players that nothing is final; that every defeat or failure can be viewed as a piece of information to ensure things are better tomorrow. Hallgrímsson likes to recite a phrase he attributes to Dara O’Shea that Ireland’s motto can be distilled to “win or learn”.

He can point to tangible successes on this front. The team has grown some confidence and resolve to genuinely compete in every game they have played since being hammered 5-0 by England at Wembley; the defensive balance has improved and they are much less susceptible to counter-attacks; an alarming vulnerability at set pieces looked to be addressed last month.

There are some recurring issues that have to be fixed against Austria, principally Ireland’s habit of letting standards slip across a game. This has manifested itself in a maddening trend of tossing away two-goal leads (Austria at home and, gallingly, Czech Republic away), while the first-half performances against Israel were a lot better than what came after the break. The second-half away to Kosovo, meanwhile, looked good only in comparison to the first-half.

[ Ken Early: Ireland’s loss to Czech Republic leaves us in a Kafkaesque nightmareOpens in new window ]

Ireland must also make improvements specific to Austria. The collapse in Dublin was precipitated by Liam Kitching’s dawdling in possession, with Patrick Wimmer winning possession to create his side’s first goal. Ireland must be better prepared to deal with their high pressing.

Austria are depleted by injury and though they are guarding a three-year unbeaten home record, Ireland are good enough to believe they should win if they can put in a 90-minute performance.

But if they fail to do that again, they are best to ignore the other side of the growth mindset: you are complicit in your own recurring shortcomings.

This explains the appeal of the fixed mindset. In its state of learned helplessness, at least failure is never your fault.