When I was younger, like most teenagers, I was obsessed with football. Even in Secondary School, although I’d never had any trials, I possessed a burning desire to be a footballer and somehow against all the odds I thought I could make it.
As I got home from school, rather than spending pointless time on the Playstation or Xbox, I would change straight into my football kit (shinpads included) and do an endless amount of ‘keepy-uppies’ on the driveway. After I’d done at least a couple of hundred, I’d stroll down to the local park and practice an array of heading drills until darkness set in – the latter may help to explain why I’m not quite the full shilling today, but that’s a different story…
Anyway, by the time I’d reached aged 16, the typical things, alongside a distinct lack of height and a clear shortage of pace sidetracked me from accomplishing my goal of being a pro. Nonetheless, I was still eager to work in football within some capacity so it was no surprise that when it came to choosing my A-Levels, I selected Physical Education.
Some 15 years later, while I look back and see that the youthful ambition to work within the beautiful game never quite materialised, I am grateful that my Physical Education A-Level gave me an introduction to an area which I later went and studied at University, and a discipline I’ve been truly fascinated by ever since – Sport and Exercise Psychology.
Since graduating, I’ve been predominantly sat on a chair behind a computer rather than sat in the middle of the park, but what I have found is that many of these leading principles and theories of Sport Psychology can easily be transferred and applied to an office setting, especially the Fitness Business.
Today I want to focus on one theory in particular – Atkinson and McLelland’s Achievement Motivation Theory.
The Achievement Motivation Model – NACH/NAF
The model asserts that a sports performer has two main motives which influence their behaviour – one is the motive to achieve success, and the other is the motive to avoid failure. It is believed that one of these motives will determine whether an athlete approaches or avoids certain situations.
The model contends that if an athlete’s motivation to achieve success (NACH) is stronger than their motive to avoid failure (NAF), the athlete will enter into an ‘achievement situation’, however, if their need to avoid failure is stronger, it will lead to performance detriments.
Characteristics of NACH/NAF
If an athlete has a NACH mindset, they like to be challenged, they value all kinds of feedback and they express confidence and optimism at all times. Furthermore, they are not worried about the prospect of failure, they show persistence in the face of adversity and take pride in their accomplishments.
In stark contrast to that, if an athlete has a NAF mindset, they avoid challenges and they don’t like to be tested. A NAF athlete will be at their worst when the probability of success is 50/50, at this point they are likely to give up much more easily and avoid taking personal responsibility. A NAF athlete instead seeks out situations where they are clear favourites as they serve to protect their ego. As they don’t like their self-esteem being damaged, NAF athletes hate feedback and will often crumble in situations in which they are being evaluated.
When I look back, the reason I never made it as a footballer was because, sadly, I had a NAF mindset.
What can Health Clubs take from this model?
In his recent talk at FitNation, BasicFit CEO Rene Moos held up a powerpoint slide highlighted ‘5 takeaways to be successful’. The first point he made was ‘You win some, you learn some – don’t be afraid to make mistakes’.
I believe that what Rene was essentially referring to is that your Health Club should be exhibiting NACH type behaviours rather than displaying NAF type characteristics, as if your Health Club possesses the latter, your motive is to avoid failure rather than to achieve success.
Let’s use an example here using a scenario to demonstrate.
It is May, a low point in the season for your Health Club but you have a strong competitor opening up in your area 200 metres down the road next month. Your annual Marketing Budget did not foresee this happening, and you didn’t allocate enough ‘emergency budget’ to do what you’d like. You have lots of feedback from members that in order to improve you should add more HiiT classes to your timetable, and you need to tidy up the weights areas on your gym floor. Your sales figures are quite low in comparison to other branches, and you’ve identified that although your show ratios are quite good, your close ratios are letting your Health Club down. Your Marketing Activity has been quite limited around this site since you opened 1 year ago. Despite some teething problems, your customer service is strong and your Personal Trainer turnover is very low.
Just like athletes, Health Clubs must not be afraid to seek out difficult situations. In this example above, a NACH Health Club would accept that having a new competitor opening up so close by may prove challenging but would not shirk the competition. They would acknowledge that Marketing Budgets sometimes need to be re-adjusted and would ensure they have an effective response.
If you flip that on its head, a NAF minded Health Club would struggle in these circumstances, they may avoid spending any more money on their facility and use the excuse that the marketing budget cannot allocate budget, yet the reality is that they fear losing out and therefore don’t want to compete, they use the ‘no-budget’ as a mere excuse to protect their own self-esteem.
A NACH Health Club would also take on board the feedback given and tackle it head-on, whether that’s the internal performance feedback coming from a CRM Dashboard, i.e, poor close ratios, or the external feedback coming from members, i.e. lack of HIIT classes/untidy weights area. A NACH Health Club would come up with solutions to fix these problems and not let them get any worse.
Conversely, a NAF club, may drum up more excuses such as ‘our timetable is fixed for the next 3 months’ or ‘our free weights areas do get busy at peak times and it’s up to our members to tidy up’, they would not approach the situation by encouraging Personal Trainers to be taking on more HiiT classes in the studio and they certainly wouldn’t take on the idea of encouraging Personal Trainers to be more proactive on the gym floor as they might be met with some resistance – they’ll think it’s definitely best to avoid that confrontation!
NAF Health Clubs don’t like to take personal responsibility for their problems so they may directly blame the sales staff for their poor close ratios rather than making an effort to improve the facility themselves. A NACH Health Club, however, would act with confidence and would maintain a positive mindset, so sales staff would NOT be made to feel threatened if certain figures weren’t hit, but instead, they would be made to feel inspired and rewarded. The sales staff may feel inspired by the key decision-makers actually making physical changes to the Health Club, which in turn improves team morale and prospects perceptions of the place.
As far as marketing is concerned, A NACH club would still convey feelings of confidence and self-belief in their brand message, they would look at the dashboards available within their Club Management Software to identify their core target market and put together a strong campaign to attract even more of this segment. A NACH club may also use dashboards to look at areas to improve within their marketing and attempt to execute a campaign right away to fix that problem, for example, if the data shows that they have a proportionately low number of members aged 31-45 in comparison to the area’s population, they may run more activity to target Generation X communities.
On the other hand, a NAF club would continue their marketing operations as normal, they may actually avoid looking at the dashboards to establish who their target market is and insist they ‘know it already.’ If a NAF Club analyst does look at their trends and finds potential areas of improvement, they may not share such findings with anyone because they know that ‘it won’t make a difference anyway’. A NAF club would avoid doing anything out of the norm, because they don’t have the budget for it, however, they may do something very low cost to protect their self-esteem such as saying ‘everyone can use the facility free for 3 days’, but then not follow this up with enough marketing activity or a clear process for turning leads into sales.
Summary
You can see from the example within this post, I’ve highlighted several ways in which a Health Club can elicit either NACH or NAF characteristics.
Just as is the case with the athletes I learned about all those years ago during my Sports Psychology degree, it is essential for a Health Club to show resilience, perseverance and tenacity if they are to succeed in business. Moreover, it is destructive if a Health Club avoids challenges, it is further debilitating if a Health Club avoids a situation where the probability of success is 50/50, and it is even more counter-productive if a Health Club and the personnel within it then show the avoidance behaviours underpinned by their need to avoid failure.
In a nutshell, if a Health Club operates with a NACH culture, they won’t be afraid to make mistakes because they won’t fear failure in the first place, whereas if a Health Club operates with a NAF mindset, they will always hold back, withdraw from situations and as a result, they will never achieve what they are ultimately capable of. That’s why you should not be afraid to make mistakes but instead, you should use the intelligence data you have at your disposal to learn from them.
Does your Health Club have a NACH or NAF mindset?