Learn how to improve mental toughness
Clough, Earle and Sewell stated ‘mentally tough individuals tend to be sociable and outgoing, as they are able to remain calm and relaxed. They are competitive in many situations and have lower anxiety levels than others.
With a high sense of self-belief and an unshakeable faith that they control their own destiny, these individuals can remain relatively unaffected by competition or adversity.’
As a result, mentally tough individuals tend to lead in their industry, they maintain focus, have high levels of self-efficacy, and they’re highly successful at reaching their work or personal goals.
Mentally tough individuals tend to have positive relationships with family, friends and colleagues. They essentially seem to make ‘winning at modern life’ look easy.
To reliably understand how mentally touch individuals think, we’ve laid out the 8 Factors that make up Mental Toughness, according to world leading mental toughness researchers Doug Strycharczyk and Dr Peter Clough.
The 4C’s and 8 Factors of Mental Toughness
In a previous article we looked at the 4 Constructs – Challenge, Confidence, Commitment and Control of Mental Toughness, and here we’re expanding that to include the 8 Factors.
Dr Peter Clough has arranged these classifications, over the past 30 years, to accurately define Mental Toughness and to offer a reliable way to measure it. One benefit of measuring Mental Toughness is to provide an individual’s diagnostic profile of how they think and respond under stress, pressure and challenge. This ultimately helps a skilled coach to identify any individual’s unique strengths and capability building needs.
Let’s look at the 8 factors of Mental Toughness, and how they relate to the 4C’s:
Challenge: Learning Orientation; Risk Orientation
Confidence: Confidence in Abilities; Interpersonal Confidence
Commitment: Achievement Orientation; Goal orientation
Control: Emotional Control; Life control
Factor 1: Learning Orientation
The mentally tough typically approach any situation with the motivating question like, What can I learn? They know that even setbacks are opportunities for learning. A large part of this is having an active exploratory mind and seeking to learn from others.
Often referred to as a growth mindset, this is contrasted with a focus on performance orientation and the question: How can I demonstrate my competence? This is referred to as a fixed mindset.
Factor 2: Risk orientation
Risk orientation refers to an individual’s attitude towards change and new experiences. Mentally tough individuals are driven to succeed and push themselves to grow. They typically become leaders in their chosen field.
On the other hand, mentally sensitive individuals see risk as uncomfortable and something to be avoided. In contrast, mentally tough individuals see change as exciting, interesting and they can see the opportunity that new experiences presents for personal development.
Factor 3: Confidence in abilities
Mentally tough individuals believe they have the intellectual toolkit (whether it be knowledge, skills, education, and experience) to complete a particular task.
As a result, they tend to approach new tasks or actions with a pragmatism and self-belief that improves the likelihood of successfully completing the task.
Factor 4: Interpersonal Confidence
A mentally tough person shows assertiveness – that is, they positively influence others or stand their ground in the face of objections, aggression, or an alternative point of view.
This is an important skill in professional development of self, as a leader or someone who is responsible for their and other’s performance.
Factor 5: Achievement orientation
This relates to an individual’s ability to do what it takes to keep a promise and achieve their goals. This requires the individual to have a healthy level of tenaciousness. This means they’re prepared to do what it takes to follow things through, and find targets exhilarating.
This is contrast to a mentally sensitive individual who can shirk commitment in fear of failure. Mentally tough individuals they break projects down into manageable chunks, deliver outcomes on time, and have a strong sense of conscientiousness.
Factor 6: Goal orientation
This describes an individual’s preference for goals and targets. Mentally tough individuals set high standards for themselves and others.
Mentally tough individuals like being judged or assessed, accept responsibility, and like ownership, acceptance and responsibility. This is why these individuals tend to be unphased by competition or adversity, and make ideal leaders.
Factor 7: Emotional Control
Mentally tough individuals feel they are in control of their life, including their emotions and sense of life purpose. They feel comfortable in their own skin and have a good sense of who they are. This helps them to keep a cool head in pressure situations, and focused when others would find an environment impossibly noisy or stressful.
As a result, the mentally tough are considered to be good leaders and valuable workers in high pressure or stressful roles like working in emergency services. They are also wonderfully calming to others in times of despair.
Factor 8: Life Control
Mentally tough individuals feel and react more calmly when adverse events occur. A lot of this comes down to their sense of control or influence over what’s happening to them.
Not only are mentally tough individuals more likely to consider challenging situations or adverse events to be an opportunity for growth but they are less likely to reveal their emotional state to others — and be less distracted by the emotions of others.
This improves these individual’s ability to rationalise what are otherwise considered unfair situations, and to work pragmatically to either avoid the likelihood of it happening again or to recover from adversity.
How do you measure mental toughness?
The MTQ-Plus questionnaire is the only valid and reliable means of measuring an individual’s Mental Toughness. This questionnaire takes approximately 15-20 minutes to complete and it measures the 4 C’s and 8 Factors of Mental Toughness.
This forms the foundational assessment tool for our Mental Fitness Check, which reliably informs the specific interventions to support an individual to further develop their Mental Toughness.
What’s the ideal mental toughness score?
Regardless of what results you receive from the MTQ-Plus measure, an informed strategy can be designed so any individual can strategically develop those factors that are found to be high, average, or low.
This questionnaire offers 40+ thousand possible variables in any individual’s mental toughness profile results. There is no ideal score and individuals are encouraged to concentrate on addressing their own identified strengths and development areas, in collaboration with an accredited facilitator.
Potential downsides of scoring high in the 8 Factors
For those people who believe they would hit the mental toughness measures out of the park, it is important to realise that there are downsides to possessing very high levels of the 8 Factors. Here are some of those:
1 Learning orientation: May fail to see the significance to others, of an unsuccessful outcome
2 Risk orientation: Can take on too much; bores easily – will often create too much change
3 Confidence in one’s ability: Can believe they are right – even when they are wrong; Arrogant
4 Interpersonal confidence: May appear to be poor at listening; can rely on the ‘gift of the gab’
5 Achievement orientation: Can be intolerant of those who aren’t as committed
6 Goal orientation: Can intimidate others with their goal orientation
7 Emotional control: Unflappability can confuse others
8 Life control: Can fail to see own weaknesses
Can you develop your mental toughness?
From our work with clients, especially pre and post testing (9+ Months apart) leaders, we have consistently seen their desired mental toughness levels positively change.
If your a Leader, Student, Athlete, or someone who’s interested in improving your Mental Toughness and ability to deal more effectively with stress, pressure, and challenge, check out our Mental Fitness Check or Leader Support services.
Ready to develop your mental toughness?
Get Mentally Fit’s Principal Coaching Psychologist Emily Johnson is an accredited facilitator of the MTQ-Plus, Mental Toughness Questionnaire, and she’s used this tool to support hundreds of clients to improve their personal and professional capabilities.
Contact us to take the first step to measuring and improving your current levels of Mental Toughness.
