The importance of relationships in coaching: Premier League point of difference

2021 English Premier League has come to a close and while Man City claimed the crown from 2020 winners Liverpool, it was incidents from both coaches on the run towards the finish line that grabbed my attention. Liverpool grabbed a Champions League spot on the last day, fighting through a hectic schedule to earn their place in Europe’s premier club competition next season. However, one incident from earlier this month showed the emotional intelligence of Klopp as a manager. Klopp discussed the incident involving him and Sadio Mané whom refused to shake his hand at Old Trafford but insisted one show of disrespect would not be held against the Liverpool striker. Klopp said:

If somebody shows me respect five million times and one time not, what is then more important? The world is in a situation when you make this one time bigger than necessary. That’s unfortunately the case. I hope for you that your boss (questioning reporter), if you one time don’t show him respect, he then does not forget all the other stuff.

I am completely relaxed about it. If you had seen me as a player what I did out of emotion was insane – and I’m a completely normal guy. But it happened to me. We will talk about it and then it will be sorted. Everything will be fine. 

Klopp displayed his understanding of the high pressure nature of competitive sport and respected the relationship with his player over media comments as they charged towards the end of the season. Just last year, Klopp outlined his ideas and methodology to his leadership style, where he discussed the importance of relationships and meaningful actions:

“All we do in life is about relationships.

As a football team, we have to work really closely together. Each of our players knows the name of each person who works at Melwood.

It’s not for me to create an atmosphere in a room - each person in our team is responsible for that. It’s worked out well. We all win for each other; we do it for (kitchen staff) Carol (Farrell) and Caroline (Guest), because we know how important it is for them.

That makes it more valuable, more worthy. If you have a bigger group to do it for, it feels better for yourself.”

Meanwhile, when awarded the EPL trophy, Pep Guardiola’s emotions also were displayed to the media after the last game. Speaking to Sky Sports after the final whistle, Guardiola struggled to hold back the tears as he played tribute to the 32-year-old.

We love him so much. He’s a special person for all of us. He’s so nice, so nice. He helped me a lot. We cannot replace him, we cannot. We have his legacy. He showed his quality in 30 minutes.

Again, Pep Guardiola, a manager at the highest level, addresses some key areas around coach-athlete relationships, including ensuring the players are enjoying the game while technically developing the individuals yet shows his immense pride in being involved in the development of a person as opposed to solely a player which all comes back to understanding whom is standing in front of you. If you don't understand the individual or group, what drives them and how to communicate, your message shall not get across. I believe team sports in many regions and countries is currently suffering currently due to the "one box fits all" at lower levels, prescribing content in coach education as opposed to improving coaching techniques and having astute coach-athlete relationships like displayed by Klopp and Guardiola. Drawing upon a previous blog article, let’s focus on how we’re coaching as opposed to what we are coaching; how can we adjust our focus to the how and to whom we coach, rather than the specific content or focusing solely on the what aspects such as technical, tactical and strategic aspects?

I want to focus on the aspects of relatedness that a good coach-athlete relationship offers, supported by comments made by Klopp and Guardiola. 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 fit within developing these motives and keep perspective in a culture where performance and winning are seemingly the most important outcomes?

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. Klopp’s understanding of Mane’s decision and Pep’s acknowledgement of Sergio’s influence on the club speaks volumes of the players as people as opposed to solely athletes. 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, 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. Both Klopp and Guardiola have openly discussed their roles in developing the player as a person and not solely as an athlete on many occasions but including the examples shown at the end of 2021 season.

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). 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, all of which was displayed by the Liverpool and Man City coaches respectively, can offer solid base for positive group climate. Like stressed by Klopp, deep understanding and relationships with harmonious passion between coach and player are extremely important for athlete 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, such as Liverpool’s or Tottenham’s top bosses, exhibit a leadership style that empathised training and instructional behaviours while exhibiting democratic behaviour rather than autocratic leadership styles (Amorose, 2007b). 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.

Research by Dan Pink (2010) acknowledges empathy as important as it can build enduring relationships and defuse conflicts. These ideas are supported by Jowett’s research, which recognises 3+1 C’s (closeness, commitment, complementary and coordination) (Jowett, 2007) being critical for successful coach-athlete relationships. 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).

In mu opinion, coaches should forget the fixated focus on KPI’s, performance markers and physical or technical attributes 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. Therefore, coaches could adopt ideas from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), where this theory has the coach standing as a recognised more capable other to the athlete with their requirement being to engage in contextual collaborative and learning relationship with athletes to ensure optimal psychological functioning for maximal sporting performance. This theory 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 for instances highlighted by Klopp and Guardiola, 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, 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 Klopp’s comments from last year.

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, Klopp and Guardiola focus on relationships, empathy and player-centred approaches led them to strong finishes this year but has set behaviours which shall strengthen and develop their squads for years to come. Likewise, we should reflect and build our interpersonal skills to allow us to take time in future to better know and understand our athletes to gain a holistic view of involved players. The art of coaching is knowing how and when to communicate, and how this varies from individual. Work on empathetic relationships and having a better understanding of your athletes or players as this will allow you to modify your environment or approaches for greater impact and understanding. Know your players, know their story, know their context and then put it into practice….