Leadership in Sport

Ian O'Boyle, Duncan Murray, Paul Cummins, Ian O'Boyle, Duncan Murray, Paul Cummins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138818248
• eBook ISBN: 9781317594987
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Effective leadership is essential in any sports organisation, both in the boardroom and on the training pitch. Leadership in Sport is the first textbook to examine sports leadership in the round, across both management and coaching environments. It includes a dedicated section to underpinning core leadership theories, and employs a number of case studies throughout to show how best practice is applied in real world settings.

Drawing on expertise from some of the leading academics and practitioners throughout the world, and from both disciplines, the book covers various leadership issues including:

• facilitative leadership
• strategic leadership
• leading effective change
• diversity in leadership
• communication and empathy
• motivation and performance.

Key conceptual questions—the nature of leadership, its role in sport, styles of leadership, what constitutes ineffective leadership—and other contemporary issues are also explored to give students and practitioners the most complete and clear picture of contemporary leadership in sport. With useful features in every chapter, such as key terms and review questions, this is an essential text for sport management or coaching degree courses.

Part C Leadership in sport coaching

DOI: 10.4324/9781315745374-14

The sport coach

Andrew Cruickshank and Dave Collins

DOI: 10.4324/9781315745374-15

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After completing this chapter you should be able to:

1. understand some of the core differences between coaching requirements in participation and performance domains;
2. discuss diverse models of sports coaching and how these differ in terms of their emphasis, strengths and limitations;
3. describe a range of key factors that impact on the coaching process and how these can be integrated through a focus on professional judgement and decision making;
4. describe some crucial skills that can help coaches to understand and manage the complex and dynamic environments in which they work and best lead performers.

KEY TERMS

• coaching process
• professional judgement and decision making
• adaptive expertise
• nested thinking

INTRODUCTION

With the previous sections of this book having provided an overview of leadership theories and their application in sport management, we now open this section on leadership as applied in the context of sports coaching. To lay the foundations for later chapters, as well as provide a point of comparison and contrast with the previous section (note that organisational and sport participation/performance settings are similar but not identical!), this chapter will first introduce the sports coach and outline the requirements of this role across participation and performance environments. We then provide an overview of models that have attempted to conceptualise the coaching process, culminating in a focus on coach decision making. In the third and final section, we identify and discuss some core skills that help coaches to make consistently effective decisions when leading sports performers and teams.

INTRODUCING THE SPORTS COACH

While undertaking a host of supporting activities, the primary role of the sports coach is to develop and optimise the performance of individuals and teams. This mainly involves the coach organising practice sessions and training schedules, supporting the development and refinement of physical, technical and tactical skills for competition, and leading the performers or team throughout a season and beyond. In addition, however, a great deal of communication and support work should also go on outside the direct training environment. It is the subtle but optimum blend of these two types of coaching, direct and indirect, that characterises the best coach–leaders.

In terms of the specific requirements of coaches (i.e. their work in the ‘direct’ training environment), these will clearly vary in relation to the nature of the goal for the performer/team (i.e. performance or participation), the aim of the governing body/organisation/club, the nature of the sport and the level of competition. For participation coaches, the focus will usually be tipped in favour of promoting positive sporting experience to a greater extent than performance outcomes. As such, participation coaches are required to generally focus less on results and more on the interpretation, development and well-being of the performers/team. Indeed, rather than winning and/or outperforming others (although these will still be factors!), coaches in this setting may also often work to foster individual and interpersonal skills that benefit individuals in their sporting and wider social contexts; for example, developing resilience and teamwork that can be applied at school/in their job. Coaching effectiveness will therefore be gauged against the delivery of these types of outcomes as well as how individuals generally feel about their participation (e.g. ‘Did I have a good time?’ ‘Have I learned something new?’ ‘Am I getting better?’).

For coaches operating under a performance remit, the focus will instead be tipped in favour of promoting performance outcomes to a greater extent than positive sporting experience. As such, performance coaches are therefore required to generally focus more on systems and processes that enable peak performance and competitive success rather than individual well-being. Indeed, although coaches in this environment will still look to foster positive broader individual and interpersonal skills, these are seen as the means to achieving the main goal of objective success (i.e. not the main goal itself). Coaching effectiveness will therefore be gauged more closely against performer/team evolution, their execution of performance, the consistency of this execution, and their hard results. This should not be taken to mean that participation coaching involves a greater percentage of indirect work (i.e. that done away from the immediate training environment) than performance coaching. Rather, as we will explore later, the judgement of what to do, how much, when and how is the crucial variable.

CONCEPTUALISING THE COACHING PROCESS

As outlined by Lyle (2002), the coaching process can be considered a purposeful series of goals, activities and interventions that are designed to improve the performance of teams and athletes. Although the prior section outlined some broad criteria that can define effectiveness in performance and participation domains, we must emphasise that identifying markers of successful coaching is an inherently difficult task due to the subjectivity of the coaching process, the variability of sporting outcomes (e.g. performer development and results) and, of course, the length of time that may be involved before the efficacy of the coaching process can be truly evaluated. For example, the ‘making’ of an Olympian may take 12–16 years, with several coaches contributing to the performance ladder. As a result, it is usually much better to look at the quality of the process (what is being done against logically derived criteria) than the outcome of how well the performer is doing. Indeed, the best coaches do not necessarily work with the best performers/teams, or performers/teams who seem to be having the best time. Unfortunately, before this was commonly acknowledged, coaching literature was dominated by a behaviourist approach that aimed to develop definitive coach profiles (through assessing coaches of successful performers/teams) which could then be prescribed to those learning their trade. In this way, expert coaching behaviours were perceived to be distinct, observable, measurable, predictable, controllable and generalisable. However, as asserted by many coaching researchers (Cushion et al., 2006; Nash and Collins, 2006; Nash et al., 2012), this behaviourist approach was based on a flawed assumption that coaching expertise can be simply copied and reproduced. With a focus on what (apparently) good coaches look like, it also overlooked the actual process of coaching (i.e. how coaches work) and, even more crucially, why (and why not) particular methods were used.

In a move away from the traits of (apparently) effective coaches towards the coaching process itself, a number of models have been developed to define and operationalise coaching effectiveness. Following the classifications of Lyle (2002) and Cushion et al. (2006), these models can be considered as either ‘of’ or ‘for’ the coaching process. Models ‘for’ coaching have typically been developed through the critical review and integration of prior theory and research (Franks et al., 1986; Fairs, 1987; Sherman et al., 1997; Lyle, 2002). In their review of coaching literature, however, Cushion et al. (2006) argued that these models are overly simplistic and often fail to account for core features of effective practice. More specifically, with their primary focus on the sequential structure and function of the coaching process (i.e. ‘do this, then this, then this’), important social dimensions such as the quality of coach–performer interactions have been overlooked or downplayed (Borrie, 1996; Jones et al., 2004). Finally, as shown by various authors in coaching (e.g. Abraham and Collins, 2011) and sport science (e.g. Martindale and Collins, 2010), the complexity of the coaching environment suggests greater benefit from a focus on ‘the why’ of the coaching process.

In terms of models of coaching, and in contrast to those ‘for’ the process, these have been developed via the assessment of expert/successful coaches but not carefully evaluated against established theoretical ideas. More specifically, Cushion et al. (2006) argued that work in this area – despite adopting a more holistic approach – has positioned coaching as a largely implicit and uncontested process (e.g. Côté et al., 1995a, 1995b; McClean and Chelladurai, 1995; d’Arrippe-Longueville et al., 1998). Indeed, although complexity and context receive greater recognition, these models still present coaching as a one-way activity in which performers are passive recipients of coach knowledge and direction.

To address these shortcomings in models for and of coaching, Abraham et al. (2006) took the middle ground to develop a model ‘for’ coaching that was then assessed by expert coaches (who could comment on its depiction ‘of’ coaching). Rather than attempting to prescribe ‘ideal procedures’ or represent all interacting factors, the resultant model instead centred upon the knowledge that underpins effectiveness. More specifically, Abraham et al. identified that coaching excellence requires extensive knowledge of:

1. the performer(s) (i.e. through an understanding of scientific disciplines such as sport psychology, biomechanics, nutrition, motor control, etc.);
2. the techniques and tactics of the specific sport;
3. pedagogical principles (i.e. the systems and processes of performer learning and development).

By encouraging coaches to explicitly and simultaneously consider the performer/team, sport and learning environment in practice situations, this model promoted a more holistic approach to coaching that moved beyond the design and delivery of drills. Indeed, by considering these three areas in tandem, this model promotes a ‘breadth-first’ approach to problem solving and the generation of ‘best-fit’ solutions. Within this conceptualisation, the coaching process is therefore depicted as a continual series of goal-based decisions.

Although useful for promoting a focus on coach knowledge and decision making rather than ‘prototypical’ personality characteristics and behaviours, evidence has gathered to suggest that Abraham et al.’s (2006) model does still not fully reflect the multidimensional nature of coaching (Abraham and Collins, 2011). In addition, Cushion et al. (2006, p. 90...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Biography
• Contributors
• Glossary
• PART A Leadership theories applicable to the sport environment
• PART B Leadership in sport management
• PART C Leadership in sport coaching
• Index