As head coach of the MacEwan University Women’s Basketball team, Katherine Adams is mandated to engage with and give back to the Edmonton community. She does so by running Jr. Griffins, a youth developmental program for young female basketball players. When she mentioned that she needed a coach for her U15 team, I jumped at the opportunity.
From late March to Early June, our team trained regularly and competed against other junior programs run by the various USports universities in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Although we didn’t win many games, I felt we achieved our goals of individual and team improvement with flying colours. My satisfaction with our season was initially based on intuition, that is until I received a handwritten letter (not a text, not an e-mail, a real life handwritten letter) from one of our athletes (pseudonym: Chelsea) after our last game. With her permission, I have attached the letter:
Chelsea’s kind words were touching. It was evident that, in her eyes at least, we did something right over the course of our working together. As I reflected on the letter I began wondering what lessons we could pull from this experience to help us grow as coaches. I asked myself: what did we do right and how can we do it again? At the heart of Chelsea’s positive experience with our program was the aggregation of numerous interactions between her, our coaching staff, and her teammates. By evaluating particular interactions against the NCCP interacting competency outcomes, Riess’ work on The Science of Empathy and Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge, I hope to formalize and share some of my learning.
An overarching concept evident in Chelsea’s letter was empathy. Dr. Helen Riess captures the importance of empathy in her TED Talk:
The essence of empathy is understanding and responding to the needs of another person (Riess, 2013). In order to flourish, Chelsea needed a trusting environment and a coach who responded to her needs with emotional intelligence. The interacting competency outcomes serve to categorize how this was accomplished successfully.
A great coach can empathize and evaluate likely reactions:
“I was the person who defined themselves on how good they were at basketball… But you showed me that I am not basketball it is simply the sport I love”
In order to help Chelsea improve her emotional control, she had to figure out what was destabilizing it and we had to help guide her to that realization. Oftentimes it is easy to identify and treat symptoms of an underlying problem (i.e. poor emotional control during competition). Without getting to the cause of a behaviour (i.e. an overactive athlete identity leading to maladaptive perfectionist qualities and various coping mechanisms) there won’t be any meaningful and lasting improvement. Showing compassion to your athletes and being sensitive to their particular situation increases the athletes ability to perform effectively (Kouzes & Posner, 2017).
Too often coaches talk about discipline and accountability without considering the circumstances behind an individuals behaviour. Due to our reflective conversations, I knew where Chelsea was coming from when she became angry and tailored my interactions accordingly. We all have the ability to ‘tune in’ to the emotions of others. Research has shown that by simply observing the actions of other humans, we begin to feel what they feel (Riess, 2017). By gathering the data our brains are already setup to acquire, I was able to tell when Chelsea was nearing her emotional threshold and thus could intervene proactively by subbing her off so she could centre herself.
A great coach is aware of how he is being received by others and adapts his behaviour to suit the situation:
“You understood how to take care of me and how to handle me… The things you showed me and just the way you talk to me calms me down and helps me regain focus”
Chan and Mallett (2011) suggest that emotional intelligence (EI) is an integral part of effective interpersonal interactions. In Chelsea’s case, adverse situations during gameplay would cue a storm of negative emotions, undermining her ability to perform effectively. Such outbursts often resulted in foul trouble and extended periods of time sitting on the bench. As one of our most effective players, this cycle was harmful to Chelsea’s confidence and to the success of our team. Something had to be done.
Our first intervention, with the help of our mental performance consultant Marek Komar (check him out @flowperformancepsych), was to empower Chelsea with concrete psychological strategies to use in game (i.e. mindfulness). She worked on them religiously and made huge improvements over the course of the season. While she was honing her mental skills, though, we still had to help her through her acute on court reactions. To do so we turned to the concept of emotional contagion.
Human beings are susceptible to ‘catching’ and feeling the emotions of others in their proximity (Chan & Mallet, 2011). In order to interact effectively with Chelsea our coaching staff had to evaluate her level of frustration, deliberately choose verbal and non-verbal communication strategies, analyze her reaction to our chosen interventions, and reflexively continue the process until she regained emotional equilibrium. Too often coaches will project their frustrations onto their athletes who are already frustrated themselves. In reality such an approach only serves to exacerbate negative emotions and usually results in the erosion of healthy coach-player relationships. Instead, we modelled the emotional state we hoped to help Chelsea attain. We would approach her with a relaxed posture and speak in a calming tone. We would reframe any adverse situations and help guide her through the mental strategies she’d been practicing. At times it is best to coach opposite of the way you are feeling personally. Instead, tap into your EI and act based on what your athletes need.
A great coach initiates and grows mutually beneficial relationships while managing potentially difficult ones:
“You are the only coach I’ve ever had that I truly trust and respect and felt understood my needs and a player and a person”
Trust is the central issue in human relationships (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Without it, a potential leader has little hope of convincing would be followers to fall in line. In fact, multiple studies have shown trust to be a leading predictor of individual and team performance (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). For Chelsea to grow, she needed to have a trusting relationship with her coaching staff. By trusting her desire and ability to improve and showing that we cared for her as an individual we were able to turn what could have been a challenging relationship into a transformational one both for her and our coaching staff.
But trust in and of itself isn’t enough to sustain an enduring relationship. Once trust is established it must be reinforced everyday through positive interactions.
Athletes sincerely pursuing high performance sport work hard and make significant sacrifices to do so. When it comes time to compete (the reward for their toils) they are judged by their coaches, parents, friends, etc. on their production. In mathematical terms, such a phenomenon might be expressed like this:
Athletes worth = ((aggregation of all positive box score statistics) – (aggregation of all negative box score statistics)) x 10 to the power of however much we lost by
By this definition, players exist simply as tools for coaches to try and win basketball games and boost their ego. When players make a mistake, coaches get mad as a defence mechanism just so everyone watching knows that it’s the players fault and it had nothing to do with the coach. This was true for Chelsea: “I was the person who defined themselves on how good they were at basketball.” In such a culture an imbalance is created. Coaches benefit from the process of a season disproportionately in relation to their athletes. Any healthy, long-term relationship requires a sense of reciprocity (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Athletes must feel like they are benefitting from their experience working with the coach just as much, if not more than, the coaches benefit from working with the athlete. For Chelsea, whatever we asked of her on the floor was matched by the relentless approach of our coaching staff to help her develop as a person and a player.
Start with empathy; be aware of your players and their needs, make skillful use of your emotional intelligence to guide your choice of interventions, and ensure your coach-player relationships are built on reciprocity.
TL;DR – When interacting with your players, ensure you’re aware of: Eye contact, Muscles of facial expression, Posture, Affect, Tone of voice, Hearing the whole person, Your response
PS/ Sawubona is a Zulu greeting meaning “I See You.” It’s meaning is explained in Dr. Helen Riess’ TED talk.
JP
References
Chan, J. T., & Mallett, C. J. (2011). The value of emotional intelligence for high performance coaching. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 6(3), 315-328. doi:10.1260/1747-9541.6.3.315
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). Leadership challenge (6th ed.). Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
MD, H. R. (2017). The science of empathy. Journal of Patient Experience, 4(2), 74-77. doi:10.1177/2374373517699267
Riess, D. (2013, December 12). Retrieved June 19, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHrcC8B4WM
Hi Jackson,
I totally agree that a coach that develops a high level of mutual trust with an athlete can 1) inspire greater performance of that individual and 2) prevent that player from negatively spiraling. Being able to empathize with an athlete and show concern can be a key tool in developing an athlete’s EI and engaging in strategies to combat anxiety, stress and a number of other performance effecting factors.
In my opinion the art of coaching is the balance between; knowing when to push an athlete to drive through that perceived mental or physical barrier and understanding when to take a step back and listen to an athlete to guide your intervention strategy and coaching style. Great to see in this example the value of your efforts and interventions have truly been recognized by the athlete!
Hey Jackson,
Just wanted to say that I love your site! Really enjoyed reading you post and the wonderful letter you received from “Chelsea”. Receiving feedback like this can really feel like someone just filled up your gas tank.
I especially like your formula: Athletes worth = ((aggregation of all positive box score statistics) – (aggregation of all negative box score statistics)) x 10 to the power of however much we lost by
I feel like I could create one for coaches as well.
Coach Mood = (((Season record -Weekend Record) * National Ranking ))X 10 to the power of # injuries we suffered ) – how many athletes will miss practice for exams.
(Now I’m just getting out of hand).
Seriously though, I think that there are lots of athletes who struggle with identity and self worth issues and not a lot of coaches who really face that head on.
Can’t wait to read more.
Hey Jackson,
wow, great story and ability of the you and your staff to help develop Chelsea’s EI. I feel that your staff was able to make an impact on her life that most likely transcends beyond the court but was there ever a conversation between the staff of cutting her? Looking back on the situation, is there anything that you or that staff would have done differently? The story flows well and it’s easy to see how well you and your staff were able to empathize with her. I look forward to reading your next blog!
Its so easy to forget that we are coaching humans and in many cases within university sport, young athletes who are still defining him/herself as people. A good friend of mine , who is not involved in sport, often tells me that coaches are crazy for putting their livelihood in the hands of youth. If we completely evaluate our worth as coaches for our success on the court, then he is correct; but we have an opportunity to do so much more. One of the greatest challenges of coaches is the ability to emotionally expose themselves to their team, fans and public. The majority of the people will only have an opportunity to see and evaluate the result of the games and yet we must look past that to find our worth in all of the ways we create success for our programs and athletes.