Are your coaching methodologies killing your athlete's "WHY"?

On the build up to this week’s Winter Olympics, I was fortunate to have a chat with the awesome Dr Jo Brown a couple of weeks ago, which is coming out on a podcast very soon. As she prepares to head to Beijing, we found time to chat on all things research, coaching and athlete engagement but a real common theme of interest was helping athletes find their WHY. Dr Brown has previously written around this area and below is some of the highlights:

True champions, world champions, Olympic champions they all live their lives in the purposeful pursuit of excellence. Aristotle said "excellence is the art won by training and habituation, and high performance is just excellence over and over. They have absolute clarity of what they want (THEIR END GAME), how they are going to achieve and execute, who is going to help them but most importantly they have the utmost clarity of their "WHY".

They say behind every great performance there is a team of people and for the most part this is true. For true champions their circle of influence is small. Any and all relationships built on trust. A champion will never sit in the passenger seat unless they can 100% that they trust the driver. They quickly realise they don't have all the answers and that they need people that can operate at the same level of excellence to put the pieces in play for best performance….PEOPLE & POWER; To let the wrong people in is to give away your power and performance.

This coincides well with a new report from Norway looking at how they manage their athletes to help the nation sit atop of the Winter Olympics medal table since the Games began. So how does Norway do it? How can a rustic of 5.3 million folks – roughly one-third the inhabitants of Ontario, Canada as example – produce such a wealth of expertise? It begins with a radically different approach to sports that’s based mostly on an idea generally known as the “Joy of Sport for All.” While Canadians and Americans stream children who show potential into elite groups at an early age, Norway retains the deal with participation, helping sport participants find their why. Tor-Arne Hetland, a nationwide cross-country ski coach and Olympic gold medallist is quoted as saying:

The Norwegian mentality is that you should give kids a chance to be kids,” stated In many countries the parents will drive the kids to training. In Norway it’s often the parents will train together with the kids.

If you teach the skill set and the passion, then the athletes develop themselves. Athletes are partly coaching themselves with coaches more as mentors and less as dictators. In Norway, it’s like we’re developing citizens and not only athletes

Young people in Norway, they have the possibilities to try a lot of different sports, and at the end of the day they can choose by themselves,…It’s not the coach or father or mother that are choosing for them

Reflecting on this article which considers the importance of developing good citizens as well as good sportspeople, Dr Brown and I agreed on and discussed ideas around how you coach and manage the athlete as a person as opposed to solely a player or athlete, not forcing technical or tactical information or physiological elements, regardless of your background or research. Ask yourself as a coach am I creating an environment to create better people as well as better players? Are we allowing them to express themselves, try and fail in many scenarios to enhance creativity and commitment to their own development? I’ve previously said that I believe the term “soft skills” should be banned from coach education; understanding your players, their identity and establishing points of connection is just GOOD COACHING PRACTICE! As I’ve written in my most current research paper:

Acknowledging that social and cultural forces exert a strong impact on the content, timing, and player’s articulation of characteristic adaptations such as personal strivings, it might be beneficial for coaches…to be more aware of (player’s) personal strivings, motivation or goals to better understand their internal narrative identity and desired cultural demands or encouragement expected to effectively develop their life story.

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 like mentioned in Dr Brown’s referenced article. 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, offering a safe space for athletes to find and develop the clarity needed to find their end game.

Quality coaching responds to the need for collaboration between coach and players in navigating social interactions in the sporting context; this includes identifying and understanding differences between individual and team goal setting, 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 describe the actions of coaches as important motivational influences within sport settings or environments (Mageau, 2003). Coaching should be recognised as a dynamic relationship, in which the coach can assist player’s goal achievement 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. Setting this environment and involving the athlete in practice design shall help them find parts of their sport which motivates and drives them….finding their WHY.

Dr Brown and I also discussed the importance of allowing our transition athletes, players or participants leaving school, to explore and find their WHY in sport at a particularly challenging period of their lives. This would be especially important for sports such as ones seen in 2022 Winter Olympics, having a very high commitment with very little financial gain or reward. The role of a performance coach for athletes entering this transition stage (usually seen as the investment stage yet variable between sports) is highly important and understanding athlete’s motivations shall have positive impact on learning and development relationship of athletes of this stage. Coaches can “prepare 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; this can and should include understanding other elements of player’s identity as opposed to solely their sporting motivations. Again, the important element here is understanding your athlete as a whole person and not solely as an athlete…

Understanding motivation is necessary to investigate why athletes play and sustain their engagement or drop-out from sport. Basic psychological needs theory (BPNT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) is one of the sub theories within self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985). Autonomy (self-determination), relatedness (belonging), and competence (mastery) are the espoused universal needs (BPNT within SDT) that underpin why we do what we do. Self-determination theory, which is a popular framework for understanding motivational processes and outcomes (players’ cognitions, affect, and behaviours), is a social-cognitive and organismic theory of motivation and personality development that focuses on the social factors that influence different forms of motivation through influencing perceptions of these universal psychological needs. Coaching environments are contexts in which coaches can nurture psychological need satisfaction and subsequent internal motivation to enhance both performance and well-being (Amorose, 2007; Mallett, 2005). Satisfying these basic needs is said to “foster self-determined motivation” (Hollembeak, 2005) and has been associated with higher self-esteem and lower anxiety through greater engagement (Deci, 2001). Athletes or players are then better placed in developing intrinsically defined motivation in the pursuit of their sporting goals. Basic needs satisfaction also results in positive psychological consequences such as adaptive coping strategies for personal development and flow experiences, ideal for player development and both consequences required for specialising adolescent athletes as part of personal development (Lonsdale, 2009).

New articles and apologises have come out from Gymnastics AUS and Swimming AUS where we seen coaches have negative or controlling behaviours, developing an unsafe psychological environment. Psychological safety is about removing fear from human interaction and replacing it with respectful and accepting behaviours. Psychologically safe environments in sport and all walks of life, have been identified as group environments where there is a shared belief that team members are safe to take interpersonal risk without fear of being ridiculed, punished or rejected. Research by Prof Sophia Jowett and others recently investigated and found that coaches whom attended athletes concerns and needs, empowering and inspiring athletes to achieve more and encouraged to work towards their identified goals created psychologically safe environments, aided and supported by connected, stable and cooperative relationships. Negatively, the lack of these quality relationships can weaken interpersonal relationships and even augment exploitation, intimidation and humiliation in interactions which can effect the involved athlete’s wellbeing.

When athletes’ psychological needs are not satisfied and indeed thwarted, externally regulated motivations (controlling coach behaviours) are likely to lead to less adaptive outcomes in how players think, feel, and act (Bartholomew et al. 2009; 2011). For example, often overlooked symptoms of burnout, such as reduced sense of accomplishment and devaluation of sport may be exacerbated by behaviours or environments where athletes experience low levels of need satisfaction or perceive their basic needs to be chronically frustrated by controlling coach behaviours (Bartholomew, 2011). Research by Gould and colleagues (1996) suggested that coaches should cultivate personal involvement with players, offer two way communication, utilise player input and understand player’s feelings so as to enhance player engagement and motivation whilst reducing symptoms of burnout including depersonalisation towards their sport (Gould et al., 1996). All these factors would be elements or examples of the wrong actions or the wrong people distracting athletes or sports participants in finding their why for being involved in sport.

Reflecting on these ideas and the discussion with Dr Brown, what can we do to help or enhance our athletes finding their why? We should reflect and build our interpersonal skills to allow us to take time in future to better know and understand our athletes. We as coaches need to gain a holistic view of involved players and athletes of all ages. 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….