Why Teams Don’t Just Lose—They Change

Today’s guest column is from professors John Cairney and Rick Burton.

With spring here, we thought we’d look at what sports leaders can learn from fishing—or more accurately, from a particular fish, a glass wall and what happens when the environment thwarts an organization’s best attempts to reach a goal

To borrow from behavioral science, it’s well known quiet but powerful shifts show up under pressure. It’s not in the playbook or replay. It’s in the mind—and once it takes hold, it can change everything. For coaches and leaders, the challenge is understanding this shift doesn’t just affect performance, it reshapes how teams think, decide and act in the most meaningful moments.

Here’s what we mean. A classic experiment in the 1870s was conducted by German zoologist Karl Möbius. A predatory pike was placed in a large tank with small bait fish. As expected, the bigger fish immediately attacked and ate them.

Möbius then inserted a clear glass barrier between predator and prey. The pike continued striking, repeatedly colliding with the unseen barrier until it was effectively conditioned by the experience. Each attempt resulted in failure, even pain, so, over time, it stopped trying.

The “aha” moment came when the barrier was removed. The bait prey was now fully accessible, but the aggressor didn’t “take the bait.” It stayed in its zone having learned that attacking was futile. The environment had changed, but the behavior did not.

The lesson for sports is straightforward yet uncomfortable: After repeated failure—or even the anticipation of it—athletes can shift from instinctive, goal-directed action (i.e., winning) to hesitation and restraint. The opportunity is still there, but the willingness to act has been rewritten.

We’ve all seen it.

The Golden State Warriors up 3–1 in the 2016 Finals, suddenly unable to close out a series. Brazil’s national soccer team conceding in waves against Germany as the 2014 World Cup semifinal unravelled during a 7-1 loss. The Atlanta Falcons watching a 28–3 Super Bowl lead evaporate during a 2017 overtime meltdown to the New England Patriots.

We call it “choking.” But that word suggests individual failure. What if the real story is collective?

Work led by University of Queensland sport psychologist Vanessa Wergin (and her colleagues) reframes the conversation. They describe a phenomenon possibly better understood as collective team collapse. It’s when an entire team underperforms in critical moments, not as isolated mistakes, but as a shared group breakdown in thinking and performance.

The patterns are strikingly consistent. Teams shift from goal-oriented play to a prevention mindset, preoccupied with not failing rather than executing. Players worry about letting others down. Accountability begins to thin—athletes hesitate in key moments, avoiding responsibility to reduce the risk of individual blame. What follows is fragmentation. The team stops functioning as a unit and starts behaving as a collection of individuals.

Next comes what Wergin and her team describe as an “actionist” environment. Structure gives way to reaction. Players try to force outcomes physically rather than work within a shared strategy. It looks like effort. Feels urgent. But it’s neither coordinated nor effective.

Like the pike, the team hasn’t lost ability. It’s lost the instinct to act decisively. The implication is both uncomfortable and important: Pressure doesn’t just test performance, it rewires it.

Interestingly, mindset is the hinge. Under pressure, teams don’t consciously decide to become defensive—they drift there, like a fish in a current. The shift from pursuing success to avoiding failure. It happens quietly, often triggered by a single mistake or decisive turning point.

Leaders who understand this don’t simply demand execution; they actively shape how moments are interpreted in real time. They re-anchor attention on task and process, not consequences. Because once mindset shifts to “don’t fail,” behavior follows. Hesitation creeps in, options narrow and teams begin playing within themselves.

Second, accountability is a performance system, not a value statement. In stable moments, shared responsibility feels natural. Under pressure, it becomes contested. Players begin to calculate risk—if I act and fail, I’m exposed; if I don’t act (or play it safe), I’m safe. Left unchecked, this logic spreads quickly and the team loses its willingness to engage in decisive actions.

Leaders who manage this well make accountability explicit in moments, not just in culture decks. They create clarity around roles, reinforce ownership of key actions and normalize error as part of execution. In doing so, they keep players in the game, rather than watching it unfold around them.

Elite coaches often understand this intuitively. Steve Kerr has consistently encouraged players within the Golden State Warriors system to keep moving the ball, continue taking open shots and avoid overreacting to mistakes. The philosophy is cultural as much as tactical: Once players become afraid of making the next mistake, decision-making narrows, ball movement slows, and the collective flow of the team begins to break down. 

Third, cohesion alone is not a safeguard. Research on “X-teams” led by Deborah Ancona shows highly cohesive teams can become inward-looking under pressure—over-relying on internal trust and shared understanding while shutting out external information, dissenting views or adaptive/negative signals from the environment.

In these moments, cohesion turns from strength to liability: Alignment becomes rigidity, trust triggers silence and teams double down on existing patterns rather than making key adjustments in real time. That’s because, when pressure hits, the risk is not just that teams fall apart. It’s that they change—subtly, collectively and often irreversibly within the moment.

The best leaders don’t just prepare teams to perform. They prepare them to think differently when it matters most. Example? The Warriors did lose in 2016 but look how they rebounded in 2017 going 16-1 in those NBA Playoffs and solidifying a dynasty behind the play of Steph Curry and others.

John Cairney is currently head of the University of Queensland’s School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. In August, he will become the dean of the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. Rick Burton is an honorary professor at UQ, Syracuse University’s David B. Falk Emeritus Professor of Sport Management, and co-author of The Rise of Major League Soccer (Lyons Press) and Business the NHL Way (Aevo/UTP).