BIRGing and CORFing – Dealing with Your Team’s Performance

Basking in Reflected Glory

This refers to how someone’s individual self-esteem can be enhanced by the success of another individual or team. The feeling of basking in glory as such is not from one’s own personal successes, and therefore they are basking in ‘reflected’ glory – that of their favourite football team winning the Grand Final, for example.

Cutting off Reflected Failure

CORFing refers to acting in the opposite way to another person or team’s losses. In this case, individuals will distance themselves from the club and their loss as far as possible to avoid facing any kind of backlash or confronting interaction regarding the loss.