What coaching methods best help coaches "make their mark"?

AFL is back!! Aussie Rules Footy has been in heavy focus over the past few weeks; with the release of “Making Their Mark” earlier this month, it brought back focus to one of Australia’s top team sports in time for AFL’s Round 1 over the weekend. Like many others, I loved the documentary, offering insight’s into 5 of the league’s professional teams, ranging from bottom placed Adelaide Crows, fallen heavy weights from 2019 Grand Final GWS Giants and eventual Premiers (for third time in 4 years), Richmond Tigers.

Something I enjoyed from the documentary, which may not surprise you, was the contrasting coaching styles between clubs. Couple in particular really stood out for me; Damien Hardwick of Richmond and Matthew Nicks of Adelaide Crows. 2020 was Nick’s first season as head coach and you could see him trying to put his stamp on his new team in early episodes; very prescribed, methodical approach, looking to work on playing systems with some positive coaching strategies. However, facing a season winless, his strengthening relationship with his team captain acted as a pivotal point. During a review session, Nicks’ was asking the players whom or how didn’t they understand the systems put in place which seen Rory Sloane challenge the staff and players alike stating “we mustn’t understand them based on the performances we’ve shown”. This hard but honest truth seen coaches work with the leadership group, offering players like Sloane more autonomy while chasing feedback in training and performance and trusting players involvement as opposed to reliance on playing systems, leading to a couple of wins to finish 2020 season and a cracking first year this year.

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick offered an interesting contrast; 10th year as coach of Richmond Tigers, he has both strengthened the playing squad and seen recent success with 2020 flag being Richmond’s 3rd in 4 years. I personally enjoyed his style and methodologies shown as part of documentary; question-led meetings, positive feedback and relationships with players he referred to as “Richmond men” whilst using player mistakes as learning lessons and making members accountable for their choices. 2020 wasn’t an easy year for the squad yet Hardwick’s strong, supportive stance galvanised the coach-athlete’s bond developed over 10 years and strengthened further by time in the hubs. A recent report regarding Hardwick strengthened the areas viewed as part of the documentary (https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-news-2021-damien-hardwick-coaching-career-player-stats-richmond-vs-carlton-tom-morris/news-story/dd4b652c54501b4f7ef43dc83b9cbd7c); people such as club president Peggy O’Neill and former player Jordan Lewis are quoted as saying:

Damien has the character and values we want in someone who leads our players. The players also have great respect for their coach and his approach to getting the best out of them.

He has a great temperament. He balances being measured versus being able to dial it up and stimulate the players

What he has as a coach is that players want to play for him. Relationships are his biggest asset.

During the series, I looked at the differences and some eventual similarities of the coaching styles. The seemingly top heavy, system focused Crows appeared to have little player involvement or engagement during the early stages of the season. Whilst Sloane stated the effort was high and they were building throughout the year, the question I wanted to ask was were the players working on a system or fighting for goals which felt foreign to them, lacking their input or understanding until the late season injection of honesty? Richmond coaches, good and bad, referred to “Richmond style” as a deeply engrained culture with organisation wide expectations that, even when broken, were used and identified as learning opportunities by coaching staff. I feel the major difference was the strength and importance of relationships between coaches and athletes, communicating and understanding what is collectively important to work on and build true sense of identity or culture. All coaching environments need to adopt and offer players ingredients for genuine motivation; mastery, autonomy and purpose. These ingredients are echoed within research conducted in sports coaching involving study of self-determination theory, which addresses innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Amorose supported that “the more athletes felt autonomous, competent and have sense of relatedness, the more reasons for participating were self-determined in future” (Amorose, 2007). Mallet researched and explained that “self-determination theory underscores the role of environment in fuelling people’s perceptions of (autonomy, competence and relatedness) in contexts of sport” (Mallett, 2005). We understand drive in most sporting participants is found from intrinsic motives; their internal desire to master their sports and challenge themselves through committed engagement in highly repetitive activities. So where do high performance coaches such as Hardwick and Nicks fit within developing these motives? 

The challenge of successful coaching is acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Past research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sport setting”. Coaching should be recognised as an educational dynamic relationship, where the coach can satisfy player’s goals and development but both sides have an investment of will capital, where human initiative and intentionality are both dedicated to show commitment towards goals and relationships. The role of performance coach for specialising athletes is highly important; coaches are “preparing athletes for consistent high-level competitive performance” (Côté, 2009) through effective tactics such as integration of professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal knowledge and developing player’s specific competence, confidence, connection, and character needs on regular basis. Hardwick’s coaching and questioning styles within meetings showed his role in developing the player as a person and not solely as an athlete on many occasions, offering scope for life learning opportunities.

Studies have shown that athlete satisfaction is related to the degree to which athletes understand their role and responsibilities within interactive sports teams. (Eys, 2007), an area that was seemingly lacking for Adelaide Crows until later in the season. The main aspects of influential and successful coach-athlete relationships revolve around ideals such as mutual trust, respect, support, cooperation, communication and understanding of each other and impact of each other within the relationship. Both performance enhancement and physiological well-being is deeply ingrained within the coach-athlete relationship. Coaches need to acknowledge and recognise the effects of positive, interdependent relationships, which are dynamic and interlinked with cognition, feelings and behaviours to achieve common recognised goals (Jowett, 2007). Therefore, a coach’s ability to acknowledge and develop positive interpersonal connections, driven by interpersonal skills and united sense of purpose and achievement, can offer solid base for positive group climate. Like shown by Hardwick and Nicks towards the end of the season, a deep understanding and relationships with harmonious passion between coach and player are extremely important for athlete engagement and development.

Attunement is “the ability to bring one’s actions and outlook into harmony with other people and context you are in”. (Balduck, 2011). Recent studies recognised high levels of individual’s intrinsic motivations when coaches exhibit a leadership style that empathised training and instructional behaviours while exhibiting democratic behaviour rather than autocratic leadership styles (Amorose, 2007, something Richmond’s head coach offered in spades. Applying Galinsky and Maddux’s research to sporting context would recognise that “taking perspective of (player) produced both greater joint gains and profitable individual outcomes”. In a sports context, this could be seen as improved coach-athlete relationships, regular player involvement in decision making processes, honest and accurate goal attainment for coach, player and playing group as a whole and personal development from all stakeholders, areas which most teams in AFL documentary endeavoured to offer and grow.

I believe a coach’s ability to use contrast principle, offering clarity by adding context, honesty and reasoning when offering perspective for dynamic and interactive coaching scenarios experienced and athlete relations shall reap long term gains and reciprocal commitment and closeness from athlete in return. My beliefs are echoed in past research including investigations by Mageau and Vallerand (2003); they believe coaches need to offer players opportunity for choice, acknowledge player feelings and perspective, limit controlling behaviours while valuing initiative, problem solving and involvement in decision making (Mageau, 2003). Similar to Hardwick’s style, coaches should forget the “iron fist approach” and assist players to identify problems, offering ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions. As Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi’s research addressed, creative people are driven by discovery and creation of problems as opposed to superior skills or ability. Their theory or ideas encourages players to ask questions and adopt sub routines; therefore, the players are taking over the structure of tasks and practice while acquiring performance or transfer of performance. These autonomy supportive practices allows coaches to act as mentors, focusing on relationships between coach and athlete while supporting players to develop meta cognitive skills where the athletes are aware of and take responsibility of appropriate practices and thinking strategies. This method positions coaches as mentors where they shift from knowledge expert for athlete as in early stages of development to learning manager or facilitator (Carnell and Lodge, 2002), offering constructive feedback for the player to investigate further.

These studied theories are supported by Entwistle and Smith’s research (2002); this allows an athlete to explore personal understanding of subject or sport in question, assisted with relevant, timely and challenging feedback from coach or mentor. These theories promote the ideas of both learner/athlete and educator/coach to act, reflect, evaluate, plan and experiment prior to acting and starting the cycle over again. These processes offer both players and coaches security to adopt and test skills in preparation for competitive environment, understanding that all involved parties can reflect and plan new strategies if required. As opposed to a coach led or directive approach like Adelaide’s style early in 2020 season, it offers players autonomy to internally understand sport expectations and how they may offer new solutions or scenarios to develop mastery approach or elite status, approaches identified within tagged comments regarding Hardwick.

As suggested, this focus on empathy and close, meaningful relationships between coaches, players and all stakeholders involved offers meaningful impact and actions by the players. Players drive their own development and reflect on personal and collective performance to allow the coach to offer closeness and desired commitment to their relationships through autonomy supportive practices. As mentioned, focusing on relationships, empathy and player-centred approaches has started the Tiger’s and Crow’s 2021 season off strong but has also set behaviours which will strengthen and develop their squads for years to come.