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We marvel at the steely nerves, acute concentration, and flawless execution exhibited on the 18th green, at the free-throw line, in the starting blocks, and on the balance beam. While state-of-the-art training regimens have extended athletes' physical boundaries, more and more coaches are realizing the importance of sport psychology in taking athletic performance to new levels. Tomorrow's record-breaking accomplishments will not be the result of athletes' training harder physically, but of athletes' training smarter mentally.
Sport Psychology for Coaches provides information that coaches need to help athletes build mental toughness and achieve excellence—in sport and in life. As a coach, you'll gain a big-picture perspective on the mental side of sport by examining how athletes act, think, and feel when they practice and compete. You'll learn to use such mental tools as goal setting, imagery, relaxation, energization, and self-talk to help your athletes build mental training programs. You'll also see how assisting your athletes in developing mental skills such as motivation, energy management, focus, stress management, and self-confidence leads to increased enjoyment, improved life skills, and enhanced performance. And you'll discover how to put it all together into mental plans and mental skills training programs that allow your athletes to attain and maintain a mind-set that fosters peak performance.
The easy-to-follow format of the text includes learning objectives that introduce each chapter, sidebars illustrating sport-specific applications of key concepts and principles, chapter summaries organized by content and sequence, key terms, chapter review questions, a comprehensive glossary, and other useful resources to help readers implement mental training programs for athletes.
Written primarily for high school coaches, Sport Psychology for Coaches is a practical, easy-to-use resource reflecting the two authors' combined 45 years of teaching, coaching, researching, and consulting experience. It reflects principles that are not only consistent with the latest theory and research, but have stood the test of time and worked for coaches and athletes in all sports at all levels. You'll come away from Sport Psychology for Coaches with a greater understanding and appreciation for sport psychology and the practical knowledge you need to put it to work for you and your athletes.
Sport Psychology for Coaches serves as the text for the American Sport Education Program Silver Level course, Sport Psychology for Coaches.
ASEP Silver Level Series Preface
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part ICreating a Solid Foundation
Chapter 1Coaching Philosophy
Developing a Positive Coaching Philosophy
Understanding Competition and Using It Constructively
Chapter 2Communication
What Is Communication?
Sending Effective Messages
Attentive Listening
Conflicts and Confrontations
Chapter 3Introduction to Mental Skills Training
Psychological Factors and Performance Excellence
Does MST Work?
The MST Approach
Roadblocks and Myths Surrounding MST
Developing MST
Part IIDeveloping Mental Training Tools
Chapter 4Goal Setting
What Are Goals and Why Use Them?
Characteristics of Effective Goals
Making Goals Work: The Goal Implementation Process
Developing Athletes' Goal-Setting Skills
Chapter 5Imagery
What Is Imagery?
Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Imagery
Using Imagery Effectively
Developing an Imagery Training Program
Chapter 6Relaxation and Energization
What Is Relaxation?
Relaxation Strategies
What Is Energization?
Energization Strategies
Developing Athletes' Relaxation and Energization Skills
Chapter 7Self-Talk
What Is Self-Talk?
How Self-Talk Works
Positive Versus Negative Thinking
Optimizing Self-Talk
Developing Athletes' Smart-Talk Skills
Part IIIEnhancing Mental Skills
Chapter 8Motivation
What Is Motivation?
Athletes' Needs and Intrinsic Motivation
Impact of Rewards
Handling Success and Failure
Creating a Mastery-Oriented Motivational Atmosphere
Chapter 9Energy Management
Understanding Energy Management
How Does Arousal Affect Performance?
Why Underarousal and Overarousal Impair Performance
Determining Optimal Energy Zones
Mental Side of Arousal
Developing Athletes' Energy Management Skills
Chapter 10Attention
Understanding Attention
Attentional Capacity
Selective Attention
Sustaining Focus: Concentration
Implementing an Attentional Skills Program
Chapter 11Stress Management
Understanding Stress
Stress Management
Developing Athletes' Stress Management Skills
Chapter 12Self-Confidence
Understanding Self-Confidence
Conceptualizing Self-Confidence
Boosting Self-Confidence
Developing Team Confidence
Developing and Maintaining Self-Confidence During Competition
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Confidence Booster or Deflator?
Developing Athletes' Self-Confidence
Final Thoughts: Developing Ultimate Confidence
Part IVIntegrating Mental Training Tools and Skills
Chapter 13Mental Plans
Understanding Mental Plans
Types of Mental Plans
Role of Triggers, Releases, and Cue Words
Developing Mental Plans
Developing Athletes' Mental Toughness Skills
Chapter 14Mental Skills Training Programs
Components of Effective MST Programs
Implementing a Basic MST Program
Appendix A: Answers to Review Questions
Appendix B: Relaxation and Energization Scripts
Appendix C: Test of Performance Strategies
Glossary
References and Resources
Index
About the Authors
Damon Burton is a professor of sport psychology at the University of Idaho and has taught undergraduate and graduate applied sport psychology courses since 1983. At Idaho, Burton created master's and doctoral programs to develop sport psychology consultants with strong backgrounds in both counseling and performance enhancement. A fellow and former president of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), he is an AASP-certified consultant and past chair of the certification committee. A former athlete and coach who has worked extensively in coaching education for almost 30 years, educating over 4,500 coaches, Burton has consulted with coaches and athletes from youth sport to Olympic and professional levels on the development of mental skills in both individual and team settings. He coauthored Competitive Anxiety in Sport, authored or coauthored numerous research studies evaluating the effectiveness of mental skills training programs, and supervised or mentored many master's and doctoral students in their work helping coaches and athletes develop mental skills. Burton is past chair of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) Sport Psychology Academy and a longtime member of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA). He earned a master's degree in sport psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a PhD in sport psychology from the University of Illinois, specializing in applied sport psychology and coaching education.
Thomas D. Raedeke is associate professor of sport and exercise psychology at East Carolina University. Since 1992, Raedeke has taught graduate and undergraduate applied sport psychology courses focusing on coaching education and mental skills training at the University of Oregon, University of Colorado, and East Carolina University, earning the University of North Carolina's Board of Governor Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award in 2007. A research expert on motivation, stress, and burnout, Raedeke has worked with athletes and coaches from a variety of sport types and skill levels. He is a certified consultant through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), where he is chair of the Health and Exercise Psychology Committee. He is also a member of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) and the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD). Raedeke is past chair of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) Sport and Exercise Psychology Academy. A former collegiate wrestler, Dr. Raedeke earned his master's degree from the University of Idaho and a PhD from the University of Oregon, with a focus on sport and exercise psychology. He has also served as a research assistant in sport psychology at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and as an instructor for American Sport Education Program (ASEP) coaching courses.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
What communication means for a coach
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth.
Communication skills may be the best predictor of coaching success. The life of a coach is filled with a steady flow of communication: Coaches talk, read, write, gesture, listen, teach, console, persuade, demonstrate, and observe. Beyond their interaction with athletes, they spend a great deal of time communicating with parents, administrators, officials, other coaches, the media, booster club members, and support staff. So it is no secret that your success as a coach will depend on your ability to communicate effectively. You need strong communication skills to instruct your athletes clearly, motivate them, and inspire confidence. Communication skills are the foundation for creating rapport with your athletes and developing team harmony. Being a good communicator can pave the way to a rewarding coaching experience, while communication breakdowns can lead to conflict, frustration, stress, and job dissatisfaction. Indeed, effective communication skills transcend sport. They are important in every area of life, and improving them will make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Despite their importance, communication skills are often taken for granted. In the face of communication breakdowns, we tend to believe that our communication efforts are fine and that the problem lies with the people we are trying to communicate with. The reality is that we are not always effective communicators. Have you ever made a comment you regretted? Do you sometimes unintentionally expect others to be able to read your mind? Do you find yourself talking more than you listen? Have you ever expected athletes to respond well to constructive criticism while not being open to feedback yourself? Most of us can relate to these scenarios. If you can, this chapter is for you.
Becoming an effective communicator is not an easy task. Like any other skill, it takes education, hard work, and practice. Part of the challenge in developing communication skills is that ineffective communication patterns are often so ingrained that it is difficult to become aware of them and let them go. The first step in improving your communication skills is to realize their importance and become aware of your communication style. This chapter helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and provides you with foundational knowledge you can put into action to improve your communication skills.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: “Run hard”; “Follow through strongly on your shot”; “Fake before you pass”; “Practice with intensity.” In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, “Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down,” a coach may mean, “We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution,” but an athlete may interpret it as, “Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice.” Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by—and might affect—the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend “Run hard!” as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: “He never thinks I run hard enough.” Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Coaches key in making competition a positive or negative sport experience for athletes
Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not.
A competition is a situation where an individual's or team's performance is being compared with a standard (Martens 1975). What standard will your athletes use? Comparisons can be made with three types of standards: an athlete's previous performance (self-evaluation focused on learning and improving); performances of other competitors (social evaluation focused on winning or placing high); and idealized standards (commonly recognized benchmarks of superior performance, such as a 4-minute mile (1.6 km), a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole vault, a triple-double in basketball, or a 100-yard (91 m) rushing game in American football). You will learn later in this text how to help athletes reduce anxiety and improve performance by focusing on self-evaluative goals rather than on winning. Are you willing to do this, even in a competitive situation? This is the type of question that your coaching philosophy will help you answer.
In addition, you'll need to think about whether competition is good or bad. How can your view of competition affect your coaching philosophy? Critics of competition point to problems such as violence between performers, coaches, officials, and spectators; development of serious participation-related physical disabilities; promotion of poor character development and distorted reasoning skills; lack of accountability in the classroom; and negative attitudes toward physical activity because of unpleasant sport experiences. Proponents, on the other hand, view competition as a constructive use of time and energy; a way to develop a sense of fair play, positive character traits, and skills that promote success in career and life; an important tool for enhancing quality of performance; and a powerful learning strategy that helps us to view problems as opportunities for achievement and fulfillment. Arguments on both sides of this debate are insightful and compelling, and it can be difficult to determine how beneficial competition really is.
When we ask our students whether they feel competition is good or bad, the overwhelming response is that it is good, although many students want to qualify their answer, having seen or experienced the negative consequences of winning being overemphasized. To us, this is a trick question, because we view competition as a neutral process, inherently neither good nor bad. Competition is not responsible for either the positive or the negative consequences so frequently highlighted by the media. The impact of competition, both helpful and detrimental, results not from competition itself but from how it is organized and conducted. As a coach, you play a major role in making sport a positive competitive experience—or not. In fact, competition can be fun, and making sport enjoyable will help your athletes stay in it longer and feel high intrinsic motivation to improve. Coaches who focus on athletes' physical, psychological, and social development, and make sport fun, normally promote high participation rates and minimize attrition. As you can see, then, the very nature of competition can affect your coaching philosophy.
This section discusses four areas of competition that your coaching philosophy must address in order to maximize the positive effects of competing. Let's look at what coaches must do to make competition a powerful motivational force, a valuable strategy for improving the quality of performance, a way to help athletes develop positive character traits, and a means of developing cooperative as well as competitive skills.
Making Competition a Powerful Motivational Force
Just as competition is used to motivate people in a variety of educational and business settings, it can be used to motivate your athletes in sport situations as well. Your coaching philosophy needs to ensure that competition is used appropriately to enhance your athletes' motivation. You may recall situations in which competition motivated you, such as playing an archrival for the conference championship, trying to outperform a friend on a big test, or working to land a good job. But have there ever been times when competition did not motivate you, or when it even reduced your motivation? As you can see in figure 1.3, competition provides the greatest motivation when the level of challenge is moderately difficult. That is, your athletes' motivation will probably be highest when they tackle a challenge approximately equal to their current capabilities. And their motivation will likely remain high as long as challenge falls within a comfort zone ranging from just above to just below their current capabilities.
As the discrepancy between skill level and the competitive challenge increases, motivation steadily declines. Athletes normally have less motivation to compete against substantially superior or inferior opponents than against ones of similar ability. In the first case, athletes may be able to play their best and still have no chance to win, and in the second case they'll probably win no matter how poorly they perform. Neither of these situations offers much motivation to perform their best. Therefore, coaches need a philosophy that encourages athletes to set process or performance goals—not focused solely on winning—with an optimal level of challenge so that they develop and maintain high motivation.
Improving Quality of Performance Through Competition
Competition can lead athletes to consistently perform their best—that is, it can improve their quality of performance. Having two players compete for a spot on the volleyball squad should lead to a better team, because each player is trying to improve as much as she can in order to make the team, become a starter, and contribute to team success. However, coaches must understand that competition doesn't automatically enhance quality, and they must learn how to counter the potential of pressure-packed situations to reduce quality or prompt performers to adopt negative solutions for reaching a particular competitive standard.
Competition can cause athletes to become shortsighted and thus hinder them from fully developing their capabilities. For example, some wrestlers become so concerned with outperforming their sparring partners that they continually rely on favorite moves instead of developing and refining new ones. Thus they perform well in practice but ultimately limit their skill development. Indeed, too much competition may be just as problematic for quality control as too little: My (Damon Burton's) work with the U.S. Ski Jumping Team showed me a classic example of the insidious effects of competition on athletes' development. Regulations from the team's executive board mandated that athlete funding and trip selection be based exclusively on performance. This system meant that every single jump—from dry-land training on plastic to on-snow training and competition—was vitally important. Every jump, each day, was a competition, prompting the jumpers to focus on maximizing their immediate results. Thus, although the system was designed to ensure equality of opportunity, it ended up inhibiting the jumpers' technical and tactical development.
Learning curves for any skill are seldom linear (see figure 1.4). Normally, when athletes learn new skills or try to correct major flaws in form, they must suffer through a temporary drop, and often subsequent plateaus, before moving on to higher performance levels. Unfortunately, the ski jumpers could not afford to go through this performance decline on their way to developing improved technique, because it could cost them funding and trips. Not surprisingly, an extensive evaluation of the jumpers' technical improvement over a 4-year period revealed minimal gains compared with those of jumpers from other countries. As a result, our jumpers had difficulty competing with opponents whose teams' selection procedures allowed them to develop their fundamental jumping techniques and tactics more normally. Competition needs to be used judiciously, so that it stimulates improvement in the quality of performance without limiting skill development. Your competitive philosophy must emphasize development, so that athletes strive to enhance quality in appropriate ways.
Competition as a Means to Develop Positive Character Traits
Your coaching philosophy must specify the importance you place on character development. Competition can play a valuable role in helping athletes develop positive character traits that will help them succeed in future endeavors. But competition does not automatically generate positive character traits, and, regrettably, competing in sport sometimes detracts from character development. Thus we believe it is essential that your coaching philosophy specify the role you will play in your athletes' character development.
Research has confirmed that athletes are less likely to participate in delinquent behavior than are nonathletes (Seefeldt & Ewing 1997). However, moral reasoning and good sporting behavior seem to decline as athletes progress to higher competitive levels, in part because of the increased emphasis on winning (Beller & Stoll 1995). Thus winning can be a double-edged sword in teaching character development. Some athletes may want to win so much that they lie, cheat, break team rules, and develop undesirable character traits that can enhance their ability to win in the short term. However, when athletes resist the temptation to win through unscrupulous means, they can develop positive character traits that last a lifetime. Character is a learned behavior, and a sense of fair play develops only if coaches plan to teach those lessons systematically, along with strategies for transferring the lessons and values to future life experiences.
Consider the character development possibilities in the following scenarios where a tennis player, Bob, could call his opponent's shot, a would-be winner, in or out because no one else could tell for sure where it landed:
- Bob and his roommate John are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of their friendly match. In addition to bragging rights, the two have a cold drink wagered on the outcome.
- Bob and his archrival are tied at 6 in the final-set tiebreaker of the state tennis championship. A possible college scholarship is also at stake.
It's easy to make the honest call in the first situation, playing against a friend with little riding on the outcome, but the response may have only minimal impact on Bob's long-term character development. However, if Bob makes the right call in the state championship match, with so much riding on the outcome, it is a lesson that can positively shape his character for the rest of his life. The value that athletes place on competitive success makes sport a domain for teaching integrity and character development, which can have long-lasting effects on personal growth. But these positive outcomes occur only when coaches make character development a high priority.
Teaching Athletes How to Cooperate as Well as Compete
We live in an extremely interdependent and cooperative society. In our everyday lives, we may go days at a time without competing, but we cooperate in many ways each day—from collaborating with others at work and home to purchasing products made by others (or creating products for others to purchase). Thus, in our modern society, learning how to cooperate is just as important for our young athletes as learning how to compete. This may become part of your coaching philosophy. Competition and cooperation are often depicted as opposing processes, even though they are actually complementary. Sport sociologist Gunther Luschen (1970) has described the relationship between competition and cooperation in terms of what he calls association—the ways that individuals or teams must cooperate in order to compete effectively.
Most of us can readily identify one type of association in that athletes in team sports must cooperate with each other in order for the team to perform cohesively. Such within-team cooperation is essential to a team's success. But between-team cooperation is necessary for competition to even occur. Teams have to agree on a time and place to compete. They also have to agree to a set of rules to govern their competition and promise to abide by them. Finally, competition assumes that all competitors or teams are going to give their best effort, or at least establish a mutually agreed upon level of commitment and effort. At its best, then, competition should involve a quest for excellence between evenly matched opponents who are giving maximal effort. Will you make it part of your philosophy to teach your athletes how to cooperate with each other—and with opposing teams—so that competition is the best it can be?
Final Thoughts on Competition
When administrators, coaches, parents, and fans understand competition and are committed to helping young athletes get the most from their competitive experiences, competition is viewed almost universally as positive. However, when members of any of these important adult groups, particularly coaches, lose perspective and fail to put the welfare of young athletes first, competition can become a negative experience. Your coaching philosophy provides the foundation for ensuring positive sport experiences for your athletes.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
Good communication skills are key to successful coaching
Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes.
What Is Communication?
Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms. Verbal communication is the spoken word, while nonverbal communication involves actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures. Communication can occur in one-on-one or group settings, and in written formats (e.g., printed materials) or in visual formats (e.g., pictures, videos, and observational learning). And it involves not only the content of a message but also its emotional impact, or the effect the message has on the person receiving it.
Sending and Receiving Messages
The very word coach suggests that individuals in this profession send many messages. Coaches need to be able to clearly communicate expectations, goals, standards, and feelings to their athletes. They instruct, encourage, discipline, organize, and provide feedback. And although we tend to think of effective communicators as being able to send clear messages that are interpreted as intended, communication is a two-way street that also involves receiving messages. For a coach, this means listening attentively. Athletes need to be able to communicate their goals, frustrations, and feelings to their coach.
Nonverbal and Verbal Channels
As a coach, you can say a lot without uttering a word: A frown, a look of disbelief, a disgusted shake of your head, or a smile can communicate quite a bit. In fact, communication experts suggest that between 65% and 93% of the meaning of a message is conveyed through tone of voice and nonverbal behaviors (Johnson 2003). Thus, in addition to becoming aware of the words you use, it is essential that you become aware of your tone and nonverbal behaviors so that you understand the messages you are sending to athletes.
Lou Holtz tells a revealing story about his coaching experience at Notre Dame that highlights the importance of developing self-awareness in becoming an effective communicator. His recruiting coordinator developed a video to send to potential recruits. Holtz thought it did a great job of selling the program but wished it included some clips of him having positive interactions with his players. The recruiting coordinator said he had looked and looked but could not find any. This comment took Holtz completely by surprise because he prided himself on being a positive coach and sending positive messages (Janssen & Dale 2002). This experience helped Holtz become more aware of his interactions with his players and discover a pathway for becoming a more effective communicator. Like Holtz, many coaches are often unaware of the messages they send nonverbally.
By the same token, athletes also communicate nonverbally, and coaches can learn to be more effective listeners by becoming astute observers of athlete's nonverbal communications. Understanding the nonverbal messages athletes send is a passport to greater understanding of the athletes you are coaching.
Content and Emotional Impact
When communicating, coaches tend to focus on the content or the substance of the messages they send: "Run hard"; "Follow through strongly on your shot"; "Fake before you pass"; "Practice with intensity." In doing so, they believe that the information is objective and that athletes will always receive the message as intended. That belief is far from the truth. When receiving messages, athletes may not share the same perception or hear the same message the coach thought she was sending. For example, by saying, "Tomorrow we are going to make sure to get this defense down," a coach may mean, "We're going to focus on the technical aspects of the defense to perfect our execution," but an athlete may interpret it as, "Tomorrow's going to be a physically tough practice." Communication problems arise if a coach assumes athletes are interpreting a message exactly as the coach intended. Thus effective communicators focus not only on message content but also on how a message might be interpreted by-and might affect-the receiver.
Beyond message content, then, communication also involves the emotional impact of the message on the athlete. How do your athletes perceive and react to the content of your messages? Failure to recognize the effect the message has on the athlete is all too common. For instance, a coach could intend "Run hard!" as a positive note of encouragement, whereas the athlete could interpret it negatively: "He never thinks I run hard enough." Effective communicators give equal weight to message content and emotional impact on the receiver. The challenge in effective communication is to be clear both about what you say and about how you say it by becoming more aware of the impact your messages have on your team.
Sending Effective Messages
Effective communicators are able to send messages that clearly convey the intended content and are received in the desired way. The most important judgment you need to make is whether a message needs to be sent. Some coaches talk too much, rambling on about things that bore others or distract athletes during practice. Some coaches talk too little, assuming that others know what they think or want. We've listed some guidelines for sending effective messages in figure 2.1. Read each guideline and then honestly rate whether this is a communication strength or weakness for you by circling the appropriate number. Be sure to rate yourself objectively and take action to improve any deficiencies. Rest assured that we all have communication strengths and weaknesses!
Effect of Your Messages
Smoll and Smith spent hundreds of hours observing coaches and evaluating their impact on athletes (Smith 2001, Smoll & Smith 2006). In all, they observed more than 70 coaches, coded more than 80,000 behaviors, and surveyed nearly 1,000 athletes. They found that athletes responded positively to coaches who provided
- positive feedback after a good performance effort,
- corrective instruction and encouragement after a performance mistake, and
- technical instruction and a moderate amount of general encouragement unrelated to performance quality
In contrast, Smoll and Smith found that athletes responded unfavorably to coaches who failed to notice or reinforce good performance efforts, criticized mistakes, or provided instruction after a mistake in a critical fashion.
Learn more about Sport Psychology for Coaches.
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