The ability to lead is essential for successful coaches at any level. Over the years, coaches have shared their theories and methods of leadership both in the athletic reality and how they might also work in the business world. While researchers on the business side of things have invested significant amount of time investigating and developing leadership models, research in sport leadership has often lagged behind. We haven't seen too much documentation about theories of studies into how sports coaches lead except for a few exceptions. Coach K's book, Leading with the Heart is one I enjoyed and that certainly looks at the cross-over. Not to mention his connection with West Point brings in another dimension.
The reality is that how athletes view their coaches is a determining factor in how an athlete might perform and ultimately succeed. At the very basic level, the feedback provided by coaches to their athletes will have a great impact on aspects like self-esteem, satisfaction, and perceived competence of the coach and will influence athletes’ perceptions of coaches’ leadership styles. Regardless of any coaches teaching ability in terms of skills and tactics there is often correlation between between athlete satisfaction, athlete motivation, and the perceived competence of the coach, overall athlete performance and the leadership style of the coach. One aspect of the coach - athlete relationship is the emotional intelligence of the coach and his/ her ability to read verbal and non-verbal cues from the athletes. The basic definition of emotional intelligence is managing feelings effectively and appropriately, enabling people to work together toward common goals and dealing with groups of people. In order to succeed, leaders have to be strong in four main aspects, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Self-awareness includes understanding and assessing one’s own emotional state, while self-management is the ability to regulate one’s own emotions; social awareness includes detecting the emotions of others, while relationship management involves developing and influencing others. In the area of sports, specifically, this means that a coach is able not only to teach the appropriate related skills, convey the tactical requirements and game plan but also and often more importantly foster an environment that will permit athletes to perform at optimal levels when required. This can be done via trying to recreate game like conditions during training sessions, preparing athletes to be able to cope with unforeseen challenges and encouraging individual problem solving abilities in each athlete. Some of this ties into yesterday's blog post on the "Mindset for Success" mindset-for-success-have-it-or-train-it.html However, yesterday's post was more about the manner in which individual athlete's can achieve a the right mindset for success whereas today it is about how the perceptions that athlete's might have of their coach can play a role. When you look at the 4 aspects of emotional intelligence listed above the two most significant and important in relation to coaching are self-management and social awareness. As the main figure and primary decision maker ( or should be although some times the parents might.... oh don't get me started) in the athletic environment, the coach retains the primary responsibility for the quality and direction of each athlete's sport experience and the overall success or failure of the team. Coaches who exhibit positive feedback behaviors are more likely to give rise to athletes with higher levels of social cohesion. Conversely, although their are examples where it might have very short term benefits, athletes are less motivated when coaches are verbally aggressive. Therefore, coaches who are aware of and can control their own negative emotional impulses can act and speak constructively to athletes even in times of turmoil and distress, producing positive outcomes for the athlete and the team. Likewise, the emotions of the coach have the potential to influence the emotions of the athlete. Athletes report feeling charged, determined, and/or energetic following their coach’s pre-game speech. A coach who can evoke positive pre-game feelings in his/her athletes demonstrates a command of his/her own emotional state and knowledge of the sentiments that will stir them to respond. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the coach to be able to exercise emotional regulation and control, as displays of emotion may directly or indirectly influence or enhance an athlete’s or team’s performance. Also, key moments in competition often require that coaches recognize and control their emotions so they can think clearly about game strategy and/or refrain from garnering penalties that might adversely affect the outcome. Many top level coaches report that the ability to stay cool under pressure positively affected their ability to effectively coach their team. Yelling or arguing with athletes, losing control of tempers, or arguing with officials, etc are common misbehavior often engaged in by coaches which feeds into athlete's stressors and can fuel their own frustrations. Coaches must always lead by example. Thus, the ability to control one’s emotional state and conceal select emotions from the athletes has proven to be a valuable skill for coaches. It is a proven fact that a relationship exists between an athlete’s emotional state and his/her performance quality. Individual athletes perform best when their emotional states are within their preferred range. Coaches who know and can recognize when an athlete’s emotions are outside of the preferred range can modify his/her own behaviors and emotions to assist the athlete in regaining emotional control. For example anger, which is most often viewed as a hindrance to performance, may actually enhance performance if the athlete is required to perform a physical skill similar to anger’s associated tendency, such as tackling in football. Therefore, in these instances, a coach might act to induce a feeling of anger in his/her athlete. Conversely, anxiety can have a debilitating effect on performance. A coach who can recognize anxiety in his/her athletes can then demonstrate behaviors to reduce athlete anxiety. Unfortunately for many sports, coaching remains a voluntary pastime with limited resources and effort put in for development and specialized training. When their are coaching clinics, they focus on teaching the skills of the sport and little if no time is spend on the so-called soft skills. This leave most levels of youth sport with coaches who are not very accurate in predicting the psychological states of their athletes, nor are they accurate in perceiving the supportiveness or unsupportiveness of their own behavior. Therefore, even incremental improvement in increasing one’s emotional intelligence could produce positive outcomes for the coach, athlete, and team. Relationship management is another important area where the presence of emotional intelligence would be important for an athletic coach. Relationship management includes the ability to manage conflict, develop and inspire others, and promote teamwork and collaboration. On every team, conflict will arise. The role of the coach is to defuse conflicts among players, and at times between players and the coaching staff, in order to create the unity required to win games. Additionally, there can be great pressure on coaches to win games, particularly at the top levels. In these situations, coaches must be able to not only improve players’ abilities but also motivate them to reach individual and team goals. However, winning and developing sport specific abilities are often only a part of the job. It is also expected that participation in sport will develop character and teach moral reasoning and social responsibility, all under the guidance and direction provided by the coach. Therefore, the coach often takes on many roles including being a role model, a parent substitute, a counselor, and/or a friend. Emotional intelligence skills, particularly relationship management, might aide a coach in fulfilling these roles. Acknowledging the wide ranging situations in which coaches operate and the contrasting personalities with whom they work, reinforces not only the need for emotional intelligence within coaches but it also identifies the many difficulties within their role where emotional intelligence may be of use. One important variable in coaching effectiveness is athletes’ own perceptions of their coaches’ behaviors. In order to maximize coaching/leadership effectiveness, there should be consistency between the athletes’ perceptions of the coaches’ behavior and the coaches’ perceptions of their own behavior. as I often used to tell young coaches or coaches at clinics I might be giving, "it isn't important how you see yourself or what message you think you are sharing with the athletes, it comes down to how they see you and what they understand." Athlete perceptions are a key component of coaching effectiveness, and are important because it is the athlete who is experiencing the coach’s behavior and may be profoundly impacted by that behavior. For example, if an athlete perceives that his/her coach does not have emotional self-control but the coach believes the opposite, then the athlete and his/her performance may be adversely affected by the coach’s seemingly uncontrollable emotional outbursts, while the coach perceives that his/her players are unaffected by these demonstrations of emotion. Similarly, if a coach perceives that his/her ability to inspire is adequate while the athletes feel differently, then the adjustments that the coach may or may not make to his/her behavior may prove to be inappropriate in helping the team reach its goal. There is also correlation between how athletes perceive their coach and how long they have played for said coach. Often times, new or first year athletes will perceive their coaches’ levels of emotional intelligence much differently than those who had played successive years for their coach. As they say, familiarity breeds complacency. when coaches work with the same athletes over an extended period of time, some tend to get comfortable and even lazy in checking in with their athletes and assume that what has always worked, continues to work, when the fact is that this is often not the case. People evolve,athletes evolve and evolving includes changing, so if athletes change, by default their perceptions and opinions are going to change. So it is imperative for all coaches to stay on top of their group and be able to read how they are being perceived. Don't be afraid to ask difficult questions, don't take comments that appear negative as criticism but rather as a critique and opportunity to adapt and better serve the interests of the athletes. Coaching an athletic team is a unique experience. I have coached various teams and many athletes and I came to understand that there will always be differences between how coaches view their own emotional intelligence and how their players view them. I became a much better coach ( or at least I would like to think so) when I would learn about perceptions issues my athlete's had about me. As I became more self-aware of this fact, I learned how to pay more attention, seek out different social and non verbal cues and most importantly ask better questions about feedback. To decrease the gap between how you see yourself and how coaches see you, plus ultimately improve effectiveness, coaches should realize that their own words and actions are not always interpreted by players in a manner that they were intended. Coaches could take steps to discover how they are viewed by players and work to change those perceptions which are potentially detrimental to team chemistry. Further research is warranted to determine whether these differences in views impact the effectiveness of coaches or the success of their teams.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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