Most coaches don't have the time (or inclination) to read long academic articles on coaching. Recognising that time is precious, High Performance Sport New Zealand has for some time provided summaries of coaching research articles to its targeted coaches. With the permission of HPSNZ we are now able to provide some of these summaries to our wider audience - take a look at the following two and see what you think.

Elite Athlete Experiences of Great Coaches

Andrea Becker (Department of Kinesiology, California State University, Fullerton) conducted 18 in-depth interviews with elite-level athletes (9 female; 9 male) from baseball, basketball, football, soccer, softball, volleyball, and water polo about their experiences of great coaches.

Key Findings

Greatness is not about what coaches do, but rather how they do it. All coaches teach. Great coaches teach the details. All coaches communicate. Great coaches communicate honestly. All coaches prepare. Great coaches prepare meticulously. All coaches develop expectations. Great coaches develop high expectations and do everything in their power to help athletes achieve them. For the athletes in the present study, it was the content, method, and quality of their coaches' actions that distinguished them as great.

"These coaches influenced the athletes' self-perceptions, development, and performance. Most importantly, they influenced the athletes' desire and ability to become the best that they could be, not only in sport but also in life."

Coach Attributes

• More than just a Coach - are teachers, mentors, friends, and parental figures. Coaches viewed as human and not afraid to make mistakes, show faults, or admit they don't have all the answers.
• Personality Characteristics - Cognitive (combines prior knowledge and being at the cutting edge of current knowledge), Emotional (passionate, inspirational, and enthusiastic, and able to use emotion to regulate athletes' energy in games), Social qualities (i.e. how coaches acted towards others, namely seen as genuine, honest, loyal, patient, and non-judgemental), Psychological (committed, disciplined, competitive, professional and consistent).
• Abilities - able to evaluate player potential, read and analyse training and match situations, adapt and overcome shortcomings (e.g. lacking interpersonal, emotional or management skills), and effectively integrate support staff.
• Experience - previous experience buys credibility and respect, more so as a former player as players believe the coach can relate to their actual experiences.

Creating and Managing Environments

• General Team Environment - athlete centred (not about the coaches), team centred (doing what is best for the team), structured, and fostering support, caring, and mutual trust.
• One-to-One Communication - coaches viewed as accessible, approachable, good listeners, and comfortable with athletes.
• Practice Environment - planned, highly structured, game-like, intense, and competitive.

The System - relates to the coach and team philosophy. Great coaches implement their training philosophies and game-strategies, but also believe in them.

Fostering and Maintaining Relationships

• Personal - setting boundaries, athlete-centred relationships based on trust, confidence and respect, coaches showing interest in athletes as people, athletes could relate to coaches.
• Professional - accountability for self and team sets the bar for athlete accountability, coaches believed in athletes, focus on building athlete strengths, empowering athletes.

Coaching Actions

• Teach - coaches don't just teach skills, they model them; specific instructions and attention to the little details, matching teaching to the individual athletes' ability.
• Communicate - saying what they wanted and also why; being clear, consistent, and honest; being appropriate, positive, and timely with input; strategic use of shock-value.
• Motivate - able to motivate athletes through motivational strategies tailored to the individual, either through setting visions and goals, or with appropriate 'carrots and sticks'.
• Preparation - ensuring high physical conditioning and utilising appropriate mental skills tools; being consistent in pre-game preparations, regardless of the match importance.
• Respond to Athletes - athletes broadly appreciated a response to their efforts, whether it was positive or negative.
• Perform Under Pressure - great coaches remain confident, calm, and emotionally stable and this calms the athletes.
• Disregard the Irrelevant - great coaches were seen to disregard anything that was irrelevant to winning games. They see the big picture. They also expect players to be self-motivated and responsible, for example it wasn't their job to enforce grooming and punctuality standards.

Full article: It's Not What They Do, It's How They Do It: Athlete Experiences of Great Coaching (PDF)

Mindset and Success - Carol Dweck presentation

Stanford's Carol Dweck, a highly respected social psychologist and researcher, speaks on mindsets and success.

Summay

This presentation by Carol Dweck looks at how the mindset of athletes and their coaches can influence performance. In her book she says some people believe their success is based on a natural ability, or fixed intelligence. Others believe their success is based on hard work and learning. In the long run, it's the people who believe in hard work that seek bigger challenges and push themselves. Sounds like common sense, but many of us are likely to fit into the first group. Listen to her apply her theories to athletes here.

In brief

• Growth mindsets see achievement as a development process, not a product fixed by traits.
• Growth and fixed mindsets differ on appearances, effort, and response to setbacks.
• Use of language and self-awareness plays a huge role in the formation and entrenchment of mindsets.

"I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures €_ I divide the world into the learners and non-learners." - CD

Key Points

Two Types of Mindset:

• FIXED MINDSET: Talent is a fixed trait.
• GROWTH MINDSET: Talent is a malleable quality; a potential that can be developed. Natural talent is a starting point, a platform from which to develop.

Two Mindsets, Three Cardinal Rules

• Appearances - A fixed mindset tries to look talented at all costs. A growth mindset seeks to learn, learn, learn.
• Effort - With fixed mindsets effort is a bad thing and it should come naturally. A growth mindset sees that the harder you work at something, the better you will be - effort is key.
• Setbacks - Fixed mindsets hide mistakes and conceal deficiencies. Growth mindsets capitalize on mistakes and confront deficiencies.

Limiting

• Fixed & Fragile - Dweck believes that it is the use of a fixed mindset that prevents many people from achieving their full potential, creates fragile talented athletes and people who believe that making a mistake is a reflection of their inadequacy.
• Lavish Praise Backfires - This has become much more prevalent since the 'Self Esteem Movement', which encouraged lavish praise in order to build a better self image. In reality, it may have actually cut short the ability of some to achieve more than what they currently believe themselves to be capable of €_

Recommendations

Teachable

• Dweck explains that these mindsets can be taught!
• The language that we use can influence an individual's openness to learning, and if we target our young athletes we could be giving them the tool to achieve great things.

Intelligence Praise

• A simple strategy for conveying a growth mindset is in the praise we use (Dweck gives examples from her research in academic pursuits).
• Intelligence praise compared to process praise. If we target our praise to the learning process, we can encourage the idea of growth in order to improve.

Language

• Entrenching Ability - Changing "Wow, you are awesome at that!" to "Wow, you did that really well, you must have been working really hard at that!".Effect - this praises and reinforces the idea that someone has a set level of talent, and their performance simply displays that talent.
• Promoting Learning - Changing "You got that so quickly and easily, very impressive!" to "You did that so quickly and easily. I'm sorry for wasting your time; let's do something you can learn from." Effect - praises and encourages the thought that skills can be improved with practice, and that being challenged and not being perfect all the time is a great way to learn.

Self-Awareness

• Education - some coaches or managers of organisations may need to be educated on what their own mindset is, as this is very easily portrayed through words and actions to athletes or employees. Dweck presents information on very successful workshops that have helped managers to change their mindset for the benefit and growth of their company.

Celebrate Struggle

• Always Negative - Dweck brings up the idea that 'struggle' has such a negative connotation in our culture. We never celebrate our struggles, or announce that we "had a fabulous struggle today".
• Committing - in reality, struggling is the act of making a commitment to something that you believe in, despite its challenges.
• Discuss & Embrace - one step in the direction of a growth mindset might be to sit around the dinner table and talk about our struggles, and what we are learning from them. We need to look forward to struggling, as it shows that we are willing to learn and have faith that we CAN be better than what we are today, building on that platform of natural talent.

Youth sports as a development zone: Jim Thompson at TEDxFargo

TEDTalks

Positive Coaching Alliance founder Jim Thompson says youth sports is dominated by a win-at-all-cost mentality that leads to undesired and sometimes tragic results. Jim Thompson wants to see youth sports become a "development zone" creating "better athletes, better people", which, with 40 million youth playing sports, will have far-reaching positive impacts.

Building resilience in children - a coaching approach

Impress

Andrew Pain on the role of self-talk in children's confidence.

Ashling O'Connor: Behind every great athlete is a great coach, but these unsung heroes seldom get the recognition - or the cash support - they deserve

Independent

 €œCoaches are an integral part of Britain's unprecedented sporting success but they are still largely anonymous. They deserve much higher appreciation - recognition that without them we would not know the names of the sports stars we take delight in watching.

Mentally strong people - the 13 things they avoid

Forbes

Here's number one: "Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves. You don't see mentally strong people feeling sorry for their circumstances or dwelling on the way they've been mistreated. They have learned to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes, and they have an inherent understanding of the fact that frequently life is not fair. They are able to emerge from trying circumstances with self-awareness and gratitude for the lessons learned. When a situation turns out badly, they respond with phrases such as  €œOh, well. €ù Or perhaps simply,  €œNext! €ù

Forbes followed up the popular article with a video interview.

Coaching in the Century of Entertainment

Sports Coaching Brain

How do you keep the attention of kids used to being constantly entertained? Wayne Goldsmith recommends a  €œgame sense €ù approach, which encourages skills development through experientation and trial.

6 Steps Great Coaches Take to Help Athletes Reach Potential

Tim Elmore, Huffington Post

 €œThese coaches simply used sports to teach a bigger lesson. €ù

How iPads Will Continue to Revolutionize Sports

Sportstechie

New, lighter iPads, and other mobile devices, have made tablet-assisted coaching even more attractive.Sportstechie offers practical examples.

Below: PlaybookBball demo.