Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

Youth Sports & The Nuclear Wasteland Of Toxic Culture

Coaches, leaders and parents understand that youth sports can be very challenging environments to help develop athletes. Oftentimes they will bring in outside consultants such as sport psychologists to help improve areas where they believe they have setbacks such as a perceived "lack of mental toughness". Based on our experience, we believe that team culture is where leadership should focus. Check out this article to learn more...

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Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

The UCLA Paradox: A Winning Tradition, An Outdated Playbook

Recently, UCLA fired their head coach after starting 0-3 for the season. While we are all familiar with the high-pressure demands that comes with competing in college athletics, we noticed something unique about UCLA’s current issues preventing their football program from achieving the success we know it is capable of. We wanted to explore why we believe UCLA is using conventional thinking models when they should instead be using a systems thinking approach…

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Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

The Carolina Way Was A Culture…Now It’s Just A Slogan

The Carolina Way was a powerful concept that described what a performance-optimized culture can look like. The UNC athletic department largely has embodied what it means to be an elite brand…except the football program. We wanted to give our hot take on why that is, and what Carolina (as well as other teams) can do to transition from being an irrelevant football program to a trend setter…

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Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

The NFL Revolving Door System: You Can’t Outspend Rotten Culture

Many NFL teams will go through an endless number of coaches, GMs, players, and even fans, until they have the “right-combination” of talent and personnel. We refer to this as the NFL Revolving Door System, which is a sign of an organization that is in need of a major overhaul of its’ culture…

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Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

The Drive-By Sport Psych Effect: Culture Can’t Be Delivered In A keynote

When leaders feel like their team needs a spark, some type of push to motivate them, or they are dealing with toxic culture, they will oftentimes try to bring in immediate support such as a sport psychologist, motivational speaker or organizational psychology consultant. We call this the “drive-by sport psych effect”, and we want to explain to you why this is usually the worst approach you can take when trying to fix culture…

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Benjamin Foodman Benjamin Foodman

Family On Three…Dysfunction On Four

Many sport and corporate teams tout how they have a “family-type” atmosphere, which they believe will attract elite level talent. This is so far from reality of the situation. Because Ibex Tactics coaches are the leading voice for the organizational and performance psychology industry, we wanted to explain why organizations need to immediately ditch this strategy…

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