Can mentorship or assisted self reflection help you coach to your athlete's needs?

Mentorship has been a topic I’ve been looking into and involved within over the past few weeks. I’ve been invited to be a critical ear for coaches within both soccer and rugby union this month, asking questions and scratching the surface of coach’s ideas and methodologies to allow them to better understand reasons behind choices made. The subject of mentoring was also in the news this month with former AFL senior coach Neil Craig describing his role as a ‘critical friend’ to the famously idiosyncratic Australian head coach of England Rugby Union, Eddie Jones (https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/the-key-to-ensure-bellamy-as-coach-mentor-doesn-t-end-in-tears-20210220-p574cg.html). Craig plays his part in a functional trusting relationship with Jones and those at the top end of the English rugby high performance pyramid. He admits a fraction of his work was dealing with technical aspects, like using AFL knowledge to help with high balls, but the most intriguing was his relationship with Jones, a job that doesn’t fit a specific description but one which Jones regards as invaluable.

“It’s a critical friend, it’s a mentor, it’s a listener, a challenger, a micro monitor. That’s not something you can force on coaches. The technical, tactical side is about 10 per cent of it. The rest of it is relationships, a vision, making people feel valued, conflict management, facilitation, behavioural changes. It goes on and on.

I knew I had heard similar comments before and looking through my achieves, identified that coaches Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll essentially said the exact same comments as part of their Flying Coaches podcast series (https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/two-champions-on-mentors-philosophies-why-they-coach/id1507792638?i=1000471344334). In one of their earlier episodes where they were acting as critical friends in each other’s sports and coaching methodologies, Carroll asked Kerr how he was going to coach. Kerr responded “what…like tactics?”. Carroll laughed and said “No, that’s just stuff…” and talked more about philosophies, mentors and why they coach.

Interestingly, there was some similar sub headings between points raised by Neil Craig and the Kerr-Carroll discussions; one main area was what is the role of the coach in an athlete centred environment and how can mentorship or “guided” self reflection assist your coaching effectiveness? Craig, Kerr and Carroll all identified the importance of relationships and making people feel loved or valued within their coaching practices; there is still a high level of responsibility for the coach of knowing when to take control as per the needs of the group due to the hierarchical nature and responsibility towards the group but I feel it’s critically important to continually reflect on your practices, methodologies and reasons for for making certain choices to develop a culture where the players feel psychologically safe and offer permission for the coach to take control. Talking of what they had learned from other great coaches they’ve played for or worked around, Carroll and Kerr discussed how the “Xs and Os don’t really matter” and knowing who you are, recognising your principles and how these relate to the players you’re currently working with are the important factors. Steve Kerr said:

You need to be comfortable in yourself to serve your players in an authoritative way….it’s not telling them what to do, it’s building connection, acknowledging what they have done and pushing them on (based on their needs)

Contrasting against another blog post by Coach Brett Bartholomew, founder of Art of Coaching and author of Conscious Coaching, Bartholomew opens with a solid point: Coaches are forgetting how to actually coach. Growing up in an ‘evidence-based’ science culture, and confused as to what ‘evidence-based’ is intended to mean, younger coaches are threatening to co-opt the profession, turning it into an off-set of sport-science. Talking around evidence based practices (https://brettbartholomew.net/evidence-based-coaching/), Bartholomew mentions:

“Science is helping to inform the decision-making process – but not dictating it. Coaches are increasingly ready to generate their own knowledge and understanding with a more scientific approach to training, and I in no way want to discourage this practice.
(However) less and less interest is being placed on the ‘soft-sciences’, and we are producing relatively ‘smarter’ (more educated) coaches who cannot communicate. Science and practice is simultaneously growing further apart, and coming closer together.
Not finding a common stance to communicate from just leads to greater division; this is as true in the sports world as it is in society as a whole.”

While Bartholomew is more discussing educator to coach communication and cooperation, the same principles translate to athlete centred coaching and how mentorship or supported self reflection can strengthen these key relationships with players or athletes. Bartholomew talks more about the importance of asking questions and exploration of methodologies; I’ve deciphered this part of discussion as the understanding of your athletes as people and players, what drives them, what technical or tactical capabilities they currently have and what direction they collectively want to go will be strengthened by the coach’s self reflection and exploration of how you can coach to their needs as opposed to “hanging your hat” on certain ideals or methodologies.

Science should help inform our opinions, but we should always question the source. We should act on facts, and on the most accurate interpretation of them, using the best scientific information, but understand that we don’t need to have 100% ‘evidence’ about everything. We should all question our knowledge – with an understanding that introspection and a readiness to admit uncertainty of opinion is the key to moving forward

So, how can mentorship or better understanding yourself allow you to be more attuned to your athletes needs or help you create a player led environment? What techniques or which critical friends can you welcome into personal reflection of yourself and your methodologies to better serve the needs of your athletes? One of the big things I’ve been discussing and reflecting on with other coaches is the saying “Just because it is measurable doesn’t mean it should be measured”, akin to what Bartholomew is suggesting. Many coaches struggle to ascertain what their role is within an athlete centred coaching style and lean on tactical or technical areas of coaching, prescribing data, ideas and past experiences as opposed to working out where they fit or reflect on what they should do to allow athletes to drive their own development. Therefore, adopting the idea of “needs centred” coaching allows us as coaches to continually reflect and constantly adjust to information offered from the players and learning environment. Coaches should design practice and develop learning environments which are reflective to the identified goals of the players and their current capabilities, both as individuals and as a group, and offer focus on relationships, a vision, making people feel valued, conflict management and other areas highlighted as important as Neil Craig. This process is not solely playing games or asking questions as this shall not answer to the athlete’s needs; it is creating an environment where players explore their ideas, test their capabilities and work towards identified goals while the coach create scenarios and adapted learning situations to ensure players are building towards development and with competitive performance in mind through decision making, being creative and problem solving as individuals and as a group. These ideas are excellent dynamic coaching techniques which are reflective and cyclical in nature, having to constantly review and reflect accordingly, plus puts the athlete’s current needs front and centre for training design, areas which Neil Craig identifies he assists Eddie Jones with currently.

Coaches reflecting and acting with honesty, intimacy, purpose and being personal (many of the attributes Coaches Kerr and Carroll discussed) can create positive learning atmospheres where they can afford to offer bigger picture and allow players to take more control. As previously mentioned, I believe for engagement and continuously improved performance, 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). 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, again all points highlighted by Kerr, Carroll and Craig. Both performance enhancement and psychological well-being is deeply engrained within the coach-athlete relationship; for example, 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). 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 relationships and learning atmospheres.

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. All coaches should recognise that 1. its difficult; 2. it’s easier by understanding your athletes and having them or fellow coaches or mentors involved in the steps and processes and importantly for this post; 3. it’s always changing and evolving so needs to be reflected and reviewed on. The role of performance coaches for professional, HP athletes is highly important; coaches are “preparing athletes for consistent high-level competitive performance” (Côté, 2009a) 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, which requires an adjustment of tactics and techniques on a regular basis, ideally with a critical friend!

Coaches attempting to create a successful pedagogic setting requires coordination of activities to scan or investigate, monitor and respond with honesty to players. This may require some transparency, honesty and humility from coaches to offer rationale for processes. It may also require negotiation of processes with players to meet individual and collective performance measures of those being coached whilst matching evolving circumstances for learning and development against attempting keeping sight of overall objectives. Therefore, identifying & approaching a mentor or critical friend to reflect and review your methodologies or discuss your communication styles with may be a great new or next step for your coaching development. Developing strong athlete relationships needs to be continually addressed and worked on, understanding people, personalities and environments shall change. Through personal reflection, be willing to change ideas or structures to match what your athletes or players need today and be reflective and flexible to change to what they need tomorrow and in future.