Leadership: integrity, honesty and accountability; all components of trust

To all my Southern Hemisphere coaching and global business friends entering a new year and season, remember in earnest; if every member of a team doesn’t grow together, they will grow apart.  As we prepare for a new rugby season, pre-season should be the time for remembering that we as leaders are responsible for setting the tone of the environment needed in order to be at our best. Therefore, understanding and solidifying why we are coaching, leading and teaching is the thing that inspires us and inspires those around us. Use this time at the start of 2018 to ask ourselves and communicate with others what our purpose or beliefs are, establishing or reaffirming connections through trust and authenticity which is vital to an organization or sporting team's success and become better leaders through recognition and celebration, coaching, and communication skills.

A small group of inspired and engaged employees or players can have a positive impact. Players today want to feel that they matter, that their work or efforts matter and that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. Together, you and your teams can create a positive and productive environment where trust and cooperation are the norm, not the exception. However, for people to follow you and identify you as their leader, it starts with integrity, honesty and accountability; all components of trust. When you clearly understand our own why, you can display a greater sense of purpose within our teams and organization and are able to contribute the best of who you are. When you are at your best, contributing to the vision and the long-term progress of the teams or businesses we are involved in, the natural result is greater fulfillment for all involved.

Once you've established why you are leading or coaching, here's some leadership tips for managing young workers and players in today's environment:

• Lead by example; show heroism and leadership in their daily lives for examples to follow.
• Teach them leadership including sharing ideas on how to give and receive feedback for personal growth.
• Accept "failures" as part of growth mindset: Acknowledge failures are helping the person and program grow if we learn and grow from mistakes made.
•  Teach and empower them to search and solve their own problems, encouraging new and innovative ideas for ever-changing environments.

"Just helping athletes be the best they can be": Pete Carroll

After listening to a 2016 podcast with Pete Carroll, I needed to dig further into what he does and why. Extremely successful, Carroll is one of only three football coaches who have won both a Super Bowl and a College National Championship and is the oldest head coach currently working in the NFL. However, his attitude to relationship-based coaching, focusing on being present and recognizing moments and helping others optimism and drive made me want to compare further ideas against athlete led versus coach led approaches, something he touches on in this "Finding Mastery" podcast. It is believed that it is beyond the capacity of any coach (or person in senior management or leadership roles in my opinion) to achieve full, predictable control over leadership and development processes. Therefore, coaches need to learn to cope with ambiguity and difficulty of their role, overcoming a sense of legitimacy or validation and the perceived expectations of others. The challenge of successful coaching is acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Jones et all (2004) quotes coaching as “inherently fluid and multifaceted, militating against clean treatment, typified by pre-specification of a cumulative sequence of precise objectives and monitoring their achievement” (Jones et al, 2004). Other research noted expert coaches could be recognized as highly adaptive in nature and adopt flexible planning strategies, relative to the context offered, quoted by Cote as “coaching expertise requires flexible adaptation to constraints” (Cote et al, 1995).

Sports coaches of athletes act as pedagogues and adopt comprehensive and holistic roles in the moral development of their athletes through their adopted and shared practices, languages and beliefs. If coaches are to develop knowledgeable athletes, capable of performing learned tasks when under pressure and not under direct instructions, I believe this shall require bidirectional transfer of knowledge or total ownership by athletes of their development, with support from the coaches as “more capable other”.

Having coaches adopt supporting roles, such as an orchestrating role, allows them to support their “leading actors” through methods such as offering practical guidance with limited control, focusing attention on aiding development through decision making for players and practices from observations, evaluations with positive and honest feedback whilst displaying understanding and care towards players, something regarded as highly important by Carroll. Kidman’s research (2001) addressed ideas such as coaches developing player’s complex skills and tactical knowledge through encouraging abstract thought processes by asking high order questions, which require athletes to apply, analyse and synthesize information. This style of leadership has the coach steering as opposed to controlling decisions and actions, encouraging player discovery through evolutionary planning and organizing of tasks whilst keeping sight of overall objectives and showing empathy to get the best from the athletes. Coaches acting as orchestrators whilst attempting to create a successful pedagogic setting requires coordination of activities to investigate, monitor and respond with honesty to players. This may require some transparency from coaches to offer rationale for processes. It may also require negotiation of processes with players to meet individual and collective performance measures of those being coached whilst matching evolving circumstances for learning and development against attempting keeping sight of overall objectives.

Wallace (2001) looked at shared leadership through “promoting cultural transformation for followers through articulating vision of desirable future state, empathizing dialogue, team work and mutual support”. Therefore, coaches shall look to incorporate a greater degree of follower power, gaining an overall system of collective relations between activities, agents and objectives. Therefore, as defined by Gibb (1954), this form of leadership would be recognized as collaborative, “accomplishing group tasks with leadership as fluid (state) as opposed to fixed phenomenon”. This should enable intrinsically satisfying experiences for all involved, enable personal development through informal and incidental learning opportunities and increased levels of skill and knowledge retention due to increased input into leadership.

However, as indicated, this suggests that group or team consensuses may not be reached by team or informal leaders or contradictory or conflicting beliefs developing amongst players shall result in conflicting micro-politics with players selecting personal over collective interests (Hargreaves, 1994). With these ideas in mind, coaches could acknowledge and support their team as a community of practice or local learning system to teach players within athletic environment socially appropriate cultures of practice, related to their sport. Within this, players can develop shared repertoire, where routines, tools, gestures and concepts become adopted and pat of standard practice by playing members, creating joint enterprise within teams through mutual engagement, therefore finding common goals and reasons for participation in groups. Therefore, like discussed by Carroll in regards to his relationships with players and other coaches, a realistic conceptualization of shared leadership in sports team scenarios would see coaches promoting shared leadership with benefits to all stakeholders while setting boundaries and taking ownership of decisions when disagreement between players arise.

Issues surrounding the ideas of shared leadership appears to stem around coaches attempting to take the “lead role”; these ideas were discussed by Carroll looking at former coaches approaches having heavy military themes and being one of the moments "he knew he had a different vision for coaching". Actions such as controlling behaviors as opposed to self-rule for decisions in fear of becoming redundant, coincided with coach-athlete relationship not being treated as interactive or dynamic in nature could result in poor coach-athlete relations. The argument remains that the perceived democracy of athlete-supportive coaches only offers players an illusion of empowerment; the official focus and directions as determined through group or team goal setting originate with the person or people of most authority, which is inherently the coach. However, coaches forcing ideas and issues in forceful or authoritarian manner, alongside lack of information or honesty between all involved stakeholders shall result in absence in effort or damaged relationships.Autocratic styles, being prescriptive in nature with unidirectional transmission of information results in athletes or players feeling undervalued due to lack of opportunity to voice ideas and experiences with coach and other athletes. Therefore, this disengages players and reduces chances to collaboratively learn and resourcefully develop decision making, problem solving and creative skills.

Coaches attempting to control every situation creates an understandable strain on responsibility and accountability; therefore, under a “backstage” leadership style of mentorship or athlete led learning, the coach is required and called upon for detailed observation and analysis whilst offering little direct leadership. Offering player or athlete autonomy “positively corresponds to a number of desirable (player) outcomes” (Gagne et al, 2003); these include task perseverance through developed intrinsic motivation and physiological well-being. Protrac (2000) investigated ideas of coaching unobtrusively which allows players to informally focus on the exercise and objectives with the activities, games or skills being worked on acting as the “teacher”; ideas such as democratic leadership and integrating TGfU (Teaching Games for Understanding) would support this transfer of control whilst offering greater opportunities for decision making and athlete centered cognitive development.

Coaches can still have impact through supporting athletes through suitable use of expert power. They can offer meaningful rationale for completing tasks, offer support for choices made and empathy and acknowledgement as part of feedback, as explored by Mageau and Vallerand (2003). Cognitive development is a social, historical and cultural process, where higher mental functions such as problem solving, planning and communication, are developed through interaction and collaboration as opposed to direct instruction. Direct instruction results in slightly extended form of recitation as opposed to genuine cognitive development. Coaches should recognize and acknowledge that there should be a “dynamic power relationship between the athlete and coach for effective education (and development) to occur” (Jones et al; 2004). I believe coaches can only call upon influence in expert or legitimate power, having no control over social domains of players. Therefore, coaches whom try to “lead” through controlling the education process have a reliance on expert or specialist knowledge, which in turn enhances or negatively reinforces legitimate power.

As previously mentioned, we recognize coaching as acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaborative dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Lemert (1997) discussed that coaches “define themselves and their role by their perception of what it means to be a coach with the influence of occupational socialization and subculture, which provide a sense of others expectations”. However, as explored through previous research mentioned in this article, it is believed coaches whom relationships with players respect their knowledge or expertise in athletic or sports based contexts, cultivate learning without exercising legitimate power and do not influence social aspects or relations can lead to new shared understandings with their athletes. Akin to Carroll's coaching philosophies, Jones and Standage discuss the ideas that “empowering athletes by transferring decision making to them is gathering momentum” yet I believe within rugby union from my research conducted, we need to speed this up for concepts including higher levels of player retention, greater satisfaction at all skill and development levels whilst being committed to develop better people when offering scenarios to create better players as a wider community of practice. I believe a shift in player autonomy like expressed in early stages of Carroll's coaching career shall allow self-rule in athlete actions, offering greater consideration and allowance for their decisions. This shall make the shift by coaches from “being an authority as opposed to in authority” (Bergman Drewe, 2000), gaining closer, more impactful relationships with their players whilst creating player volitional control and self-determined and intrinsically driven actions for expertise in their sport, all working towards Carroll's beliefs of always competing and helping people be the best they can be.

How Dan Pink's ideas can be applied to sporting atmospheres

Combining my experience, past education and current research involving business, sports, motivation and learning assistance, I wanted to explore ways business and motivation books could support and enhance sports coaching practices. With this in mind, this current piece of writing shall address ideas from Dan Pink’s books Drive and To Sell is Human and identify ways in which this could be applied to my current research and coaching specializing sports players and athletes. Within my current research, I aim to understand what intrinsically drives these players to remain in their sport, push for mastery within the sport and the roles coaches or leaders play within this, areas of interest which Dan Pink has previously researched, written and presented around. We understand drive in most sporting participants is found from intrinsic motives; their internal desire to master their sports and challenge themselves through committed engagement in highly repetitive activities. Age grade coaching environments need to adopt and offer players ingredients for genuine motivation; mastery, autonomy and purpose. These ingredients are echoed within research conducted in sports coaching involving the study of self-determination theory, which addresses innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Cliff Mallet researched and explained that “self-determination theory underscores the role of environment in fueling people’s perceptions of (autonomy, competence and relatedness) in contexts of sport” (Mallett, 2005). Amorose supported that “the more athletes felt autonomous, competent and have a sense of relatedness, the more reasons for participating were self-determined in future” (Amorose, 2007). Mallet also explained that “intrinsically motivated behaviours involve genuine interest and enjoyment in pursuing particular activities with a natural tendency to seek unique challenges, explore and learn” (Mallett, 2005). Therefore, all stakeholders, coaches and administrators involved in these player’s development need to tap into athlete’s intrinsic motivation to most effectively facilitate learning, enhance player’s creativity towards development and pervasively drive the athlete through the enjoyment of tasks and challenges, searching for mastery. Coaches should “agitate over irritate” to challenge players to accomplish something they want to achieve.

Autonomy in sports context can be offering players ability to have choices, input and emphasis onto their self-direction and development, allowing athletes to act on their curious nature while acting with choice. The art of autonomy is allowing people to be accountable of their actions and decisions; coaches should offer players control over their tasks, time, techniques and team around them (to a limited extent) to help them find accountability as control (or perceived control) is an important component of happiness. Amorose (2007) stated perception of the coach to be autonomy supportive had a significant impact on athlete motivational orientation. Coaches need to offer and monitor accountability and feedback of control offered and adopted by players whilst encouraging player autonomy in learning and tasks, as autonomy leads to engagement, which results in drive for mastery. Players when adopting a mastery mindset shall be driven by constant and consistent desire to improve, focus on learning goals and have incremental theory towards sport-specific knowledge and skill level.

The challenge of successful coaching is acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Past research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sports setting”. Pink acknowledges people are spending more time at their place of employment engaged in non-sales selling, such as persuading, influencing and convincing others, which is regarded as critical to success. Therefore, coaches to successfully “move” their players or athletes need to offer attunement, buoyancy and clarity by providing “astute perspective taking, infectious positivity and brilliant framing”. Therefore, as sports coaching has socially dynamic scenarios to factor, coaches also need to be prepared to successfully improvise and strategically mimic to enhance player and group perspective taking; improvising by coaches compensates changes and allows ideas to be developed through effective communication. However, improvisation success hinges on coach-athlete attunement.

Attunement is “the ability to bring one’s actions and outlook into harmony with other people and context you are in”; applying Galinsky and Maddux’s research to sporting context would recognise that “taking the perspective of (player) produced both greater joint gains and profitable individual outcomes”.  This could be seen as improved coach-athlete relationships, regular player involvement in decision-making processes, honest and accurate goal attainment for coach, player and playing group as a whole and personal development from all stakeholders. Pink’s research acknowledges empathy as important as can build enduring relationships and defuse conflicts; I have read and acknowledged Jowett’s research which recognises 3+1 C’s (closeness, commitment, complementary and coordination) (Jowett, 2007) being critical for successful coach-athlete relationships. However, like mentioned, I believe a coach’s ability to use contrast principle, offering clarity by adding context, honesty and reasoning when offering perspective for dynamic and interactive coaching scenarios experienced and athlete relations shall reap long-term gains and reciprocal commitment and closeness from the athlete in return. My beliefs are echoed in past research including investigations by Mageau and Vallerand (2003); they believe coaches need to offer players opportunity for choice, acknowledge player feelings and perspective, limit controlling behaviours while valuing initiative, problem-solving and involvement in decision making (Mageau, 2003).

Communication when offering perception is important for coach-athlete relationships; coaches need to develop “ambivert” attitudes, being neither overly introverted or extroverted and juggling ability to both inspect and respond to situations when required as opposed to when desired. Coaches need to show openness to ideas, offering elements of power to athletes and enable them to take initiative or control of decision-making process; coach adopted transformational leadership styles would result in positive intrinsic motivations and increased athlete effort as “genuine, not manufactured variety is the key form of human connection”. However, talking too much/listening too little in an attempt to gain assertiveness, dull athletes or other’s perspective or becoming task focused may result in the coach adopting a controlling interpersonal style. Adopting this style puts pressure on the players to act, think and feel in a way consistent with the needs and wants of the coach (Amorose, 2015). Coaches when offering positive, non-controlling feedback need to ensure is related to self-delusion suffocates self-improvement. However, feedback and advice to players from coaches should never be “negative judgements of performance because levels of confidence, motivation and enthusiasm shall not be boosted by negative one to one conversations” (Bullock and Wikeley, 2004). Appropriate negativity allows players to process feedback and make related improvements. A suitable use of coaching time and resources would be educating players on self-reflection and self-talk finds to enhance intrinsic motivation and drive. Decisiveness through interrogative self-questioning gains answers and confirms belief for internally motivated goals as opposed to seeking for extrinsic measures or confirmations.

Clarity in the ability or capacity to assist others see their situations in fresh, revealing ways and identify problems they didn’t have is another necessity for moving others. Coaches should assist players to identify problems as opposed to solving them, offering ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions. As Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi’s research addressed, creative people are driven by discovery and creation of problems as opposed to superior skills or ability. Therefore, coaches could adopt ideas from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), where this theory has the coach standing as a recognised more capable other to the athlete with their requirement being to engage in contextual collaborative and learning relationship with athletes to ensure optimal psychological functioning for maximal sporting performance. The coach or more capable other plays a significant role in transitioning athlete from other’s assistance to self-assistance through ideas such as leading questions or prompting higher cognitive thoughts to assist independent problem identification and solving leading to improved performance in next similar situation. Having three stages in shifting from assistance by others, transition stage and assistance to self, this supports the theory that “development appears twice”. This theory believes development firstly occurs inter-psychological between peers or playing group for this context, prior to occurring intra-psychological, where we internally process and develop, therefore allowing coaches to offer opportunities for players to identify problems as opposed to solving them and propose ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions.

I believe this Vygotskian approach to team-based learning would be strongly advantageous in team sports environments if adapted to age grade applications. A collaborative exploration into the technical and tactical sides of sports such as rugby union offer the support required for age grade players in specialising periods of sporting career whilst allowing coaches to unobtrusively redesign coaching environment based on player’s learning styles, acknowledging various philosophies, outlooks and player identities. This method may impact team cultures and social dynamics less as the approach is physically and emotionally safe for involved athletes who have clarity and control over their investigative and learning methods with all tasks being meaningful and understood. Ideas within sessions to build a sense of ZPD include open games and skills exploration akin to ideas in TGfU (Teaching Games for Understanding), aimed at discovery of new techniques and problems identifying/solving strategies along with improved coach communication such as open-ended coach questioning and honest feedback to allow players to discover solutions.

Back to recent readings, Pink notes that “optimism is a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges and stoke confidence that we can influence our surroundings”, all traits necessary and desirable for our specialising rugby players to adopt. As leaders or coaches, we aim to offer buoyancy by which we aim to assist our players to “stay afloat amid an ocean of rejection through infectious positivity”. By doing so, we can increase persons, or in this case, player’s effectiveness as positive emotions can “widen counterparts’ views towards situations, expand behavioural repertoires and heighten creativity”, qualities we are endeavouring to install into our developing athletes and young men within my proposed study. Within coach developed and supported positive learning atmospheres or encouraged positive emotions towards learning and performance, we again empower players to take control of their actions, emotions and thinking towards personal development. Coaches in creating a positive, empowered learning atmosphere for the players allows athletes to broaden ideas for future actions and ideas, open awareness to a wider range of thought and make players more receptive and creative to problems within learning contexts.

Pink’s books both address attunement, buoyancy and clarity as key factors for moving people or “selling” people through engagement of your ideas or goals as the case may be in sports coaching. He also addresses enabling and assisting people to find the internal drive or intrinsic motivation through offering autonomy in their actions, purpose in what they do and target mastery of their positions or roles should assist increasing creativity, eliminate narrow focus or unethical behaviour whilst improving performance. Coaches acting with honesty, intimacy, purpose and being personal can create positive learning atmospheres where they can afford to offer bigger picture and allow players to take more control. My research aims to support Pink’s ideas and supported studies mentioned within this article; supportive environments are important for engagement, peak performance and continued participation. As mentioned earlier, I believe for engagement and continuously improved performance, coaches need to offer players opportunity for choice, acknowledge player feelings and perspective, limit controlling behaviours while valuing initiative, problem-solving and involvement in decision making (Mageau, 2003).

My current belief that rugby union age grade development and coaching has become algorithmic as opposed to heuristic. I believe through our (coach’s) desire of personal extrinsic motivators (both self-determining and non-self determining), use of extrinsic rewards, controlling feedback, adopted tactics and set instructions for reliably safe outcomes, we are acting against player’s inherent tendency to seek out challenges, exercise their capabilities and desire to explore and learn, recognised by Deci’s research. While there is a place within rugby for the encouragement of the development of closed skills, I feel these would be better suited at a later stage of player’s developmental process, the investment stage. I believe at this specializing stage of rugby union development, coaches and programs should be offering opportunities and environments to challenge themselves with freedom and purpose whilst finding the balance to ensure players are neither overwhelmed with anxiety to perform or underwhelmed with monotony to drive personal development. Again, within my research, I aim to address the current types of roles coaches offer, forms of learning offered in age-grade programs and compare against what is expected or sought after from their players or athletes in the form of a grounded research qualitative study. Within these teams and player environments I have researched, I believe coaches have to be allowing players to have elements of control over what they do, how, whom and when they can direct their development and learn within sports contexts. Players with mastery mindset will find intrinsic motivation and drive for the pursuit; where I believe we as coaches fit into the equation is offering consistent, critical yet non-controlling feedback while offering support and praise for effort, strategy and exploration of skills and abilities.

New master(y) in practice at Ballymore?

At Ballymore last week, newly-appointed Queensland Reds head coach Brad Thorn was discussing his coaching philosophy, talking decisively about action, improvement and passion and whilst being highly experienced, acknowledging being considered as a rookie coach.

"Taking advice is crucial because I know there are massive gaps but you have your own style too,” Thorn said openly of his head coach skills

Regarding having the like of Tony McGahan and Cameron Lillicrap available at Ballymore: “Sometimes coaches will block that out. When I meet people who know more about things than me, I love being around them to learn.”

“No.1, is care ... I’m big on caring about, the team caring about each other, caring about the cause they’re trying to achieve and they’re striving for and big on caring about who you’re representing, be it the family or the fans and stuff like that"  Thorn said.

"I’m massive on that, massive on working hard - talent’s not enough and having high standards. I talk about striving for excellence with all the teams I’m part of."

In previous sports specific research, Cliff Mallet of University of Queensland explained that “intrinsically motivated behaviors involve genuine interest and enjoyment in pursuing particular activities with natural tendency to seek unique challenges, explore and learn” (Mallett, 2005). Therefore, Thorn's suggested quest to tap into athlete’s intrinsic motivation should effectively facilitate development, enhance player’s creativity towards learning and pervasively drive the athlete through enjoyment of tasks and challenges, searching for mastery. Thorn and his co-coaches should “agitate over irritate” to challenge players to accomplish something they want to achieve. My current belief that rugby union player development and coaching has become algorithmic as opposed to heuristic. I believe through our (coach’s) desire of personal extrinsic motivators (both self-determining and non-self determining), use of extrinsic rewards, controlling feedback, adopted tactics and set instructions for reliably safe outcomes, we are acting against player’s inherent tendency to seek out challenges, exercise their capabilities and desire to explore and learn. Thorn's early interviews suggest he is going to tap into different areas of player's motivations.

We understand drive in most sporting participants is found from intrinsic motives; their internal desire to master their sports and challenge themselves through committed engagement in highly repetitive activities. High performance coaching environments such as QLD Reds need to adopt and offer players ingredients for genuine motivation; mastery, autonomy and purpose. These ingredients have been mentioned by Thorn's early interviews and are echoed within research conducted in sports coaching involving study of self-determination theory, which addresses innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Mallet researched and explained that “self-determination theory underscores the role of environment in fueling people’s perceptions of (autonomy, competence and relatedness) in contexts of sport” (Mallett, 2005). Amorose supported that “the more athletes felt autonomous, competent and have sense of relatedness, the more reasons for participating were self-determined in future” (Amorose, 2007).

Richard Barker of QRU came out and stated:

"We feel strongly that Brad Thorn is the right person to lead this change and that his appointment as head coach is the necessary catalyst for that change,"

"Brad has a proven track record of success as both a player and a coach.

"He is without peer when it comes to the culture and professionalism required to be successful at the highest level of our sport and he is enthusiastic about moving the Reds forward and creating a winning culture at Ballymore once again.

High quality coach-athlete relationships and organisational culture, which is optimized by harmonious passion, results in higher subjective well-being within player (Lafrenière, 2008), an area which is critical for high performance environment's development of self-determined motivations and mastery mindset. Stepping into Thorn's shoes and development from master player to master coach, what tactics or techniques can he adopt to his coaching practices? Taking principles from "The Concise Mastery" by Robert Greene,  completing his apprenticeship to master coach could be improved by:

• Keep expanding your horizons
• Trust the process
• Combine the "how" and "what"
• Advance through trial and error

Vealey (1986) recognized sports confidence as “belief or degree of certainty individuals possess about their ability to be successful in sport”. I believe progression or development of skills to performance adaptation requires character growth, which would enable Thorn to adopt a mastery outlook on his coaching practices, evaluate his performance and areas for improvement made possible from developed confidence. Positive effect and psychological impetus are regarded as drivers for enjoyment, which in turn would offer greater engagement to Thorn's early stages of coaching development.

Brad and his co-coaches need to offer and monitor accountability and feedback of control offered and adopted by players whilst encouraging player autonomy in learning and tasks, as autonomy leads to engagement, which results in drive for mastery and high standards he has mentioned. Players when adopting a Thorn-like mastery mindset shall be driven by constant and consistent desire to improve, focus on learning goals and have incremental theory towards sport specific knowledge and skill level. Players with mastery mindset will find intrinsic motivation and drive for the pursuit. Thorn, McGahan and Mooney can fit into the equation by understanding player’s personal strivings, motivations and typical tendencies, subsequently offering consistent, critical yet non-controlling feedback and offer support and praise for effort, strategy and exploration of skills and abilities.

Either way, the buzz and excitement is real and as Brad has mentioned, "I think people have had enough of talk. They just want to see stuff. And that suits me.”

Comparing coaching philosophies between codes in Irish sport

During my recent trip to UK and Ireland following attending ICCE Global Coaching conference, I was extremely fortunate to catch up and discuss coaching philosophies and ideas with some of the top GAA Football and rugby union coaches. I was lucky to catch up with:

• Brian McIver, current Derry director of football and former Championship winning coach
• Frank McLeigh whom looks after all Down Emerging Talent GAA sides among other sides
• Cormac Venney whom is both an Elite Inter County GAA coach and offers Sport Psychology support for Ulster Rugby Academy sides
• Willie Anderson, former Irish international second row, assistant coach of Leinster and Scottish national side; currently coaching as part of Ulster Rugby Academy structure
• Sigerson Cup winning coach with St Marys Belfast, Paddy Tally whom has previously coached GAA senior sides including 2003 Championship winning side Tyrone, 2010 finalists Down and Derry
• Matt Wilkie; current Head of Coach Development at Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU)

Some of the main questions and areas I wanted to look around included different tactics and methods for athlete engagement in different sports and ways these high-performance coaches offered autonomy supportive methods and ways to develop players while developing their own practices in elite atmospheres.

Sitting down first with Brian, Frank and Cormac, we discussed the recent stats provided by Club Players Association addressing player dropout (see one of my previous blog posts), talking about how players have changed, creating a necessity for improved player-coach relations and changes to traditionalist ideas to occur. As I posed ideas including acknowledging the challenge of successful coaching is recognizing social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them, they called upon examples faced within high performance amateur sport such as player's professional and family lives and the supportive, flexible roles they must adapt to support different circumstances.  These high-level coaches all acknowledged the importance of coaching the individual, recognizing players as a person and all eluding to autonomy supportive practices and expressing elements of self-determination ideas for player engagement and involvement in decisions for sports practices with Cormac mentioning ideas from Google's supportive and inclusive ideas and his application into sporting atmospheres.

As mentioned, I was fortunate to shadow Willie Anderson, who allowed me to question methods and reasoning for choices made in live sessions. Again, like previous coaches, I found him to be extremely athlete focused and autonomy supportive to player decisions and actions. He frequently used questioning and player involvement for decisions in his drive to make players "warriors as well as winners". He discussed the importance of delegating to other coaching staff and players; he echoed like I regularly mention to the players I coach, "once they step over the paint, it is all down to them", supporting them to make decisions and drive player autonomy for how and why they play. He drew upon a document drafted by former National Coach Development Manager for IRFU, Stephen Aboud, talking about the importance of creating a positive environment for the players to grow and constantly reviewing his own performance through a 360-degree process, addressing abilities to plan, align plans and empower.

On having a coffee with Paddy Tally, I again was immensely caught up in his passion for coaching and desire to share his beliefs and understand ideas from other sports and practices also. One of the most powerful quotes offered when speaking of entering a new yet highly resourceful county side was:

If they want coffee, give it to them black...no sugar, no cream; let's see how much they want it.

At first, it came across as quite an authoritarian approach; however, akin to all the excellent coaches spoken with over the past few weeks, he showed he was trying to remind players of their passion and drive like when they initially adopted the sport. Similar to Eddie Jones' beliefs displayed at ICCE Conference, he wanted them to embrace the professional attitude towards training with the amateur's ideals of enjoyment and love for the game. Paddy talks about the "buy in culture" he assists developing through encouraging genuine friendships within the teams he's involved in, supported by a culture of honesty among all those involved. He also encourages greater player autonomy and engagement through functional training and scenario based sessions and games, developing player's decisions under pressure while encouraging them to play, chase and win the game, forever learning lessons throughout.

Discussing similar areas with a person in charge of coach development, I was fortunate to discuss ideas and applied strategies with Matt Wilkie. We discussed how we felt coaching within different hemispheres had become very content based and how he was implementing ideas to offer a greater focus on coaches for how they coach and why for greater impact among players of all capabilities. Introducing and applying principles such as cueing (language), constraints based coaching and ideas from Basic Psychological Needs Theory, whereby coaches and players alike understand the concept of evolved psychological needs and their relations to psychological health and well-being, predicated on autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which shall offer greater understanding for higher levels of commitment for game involvement for coaches and players alike. He discussed ways in which he could create avenues for coaches to turn to and progressively discuss ideas and practices through communities of practice and online techniques and strategies to break down traditionalist ideas and coaching rigidity within rugby union.

Combining these discussions with high-performance coaches in Irish sport alongside notes from presentations in Liverpool's International Council for Coaching Excellence conference, there is a definite acknowledgment towards player awareness and autonomy alongside tactical periodization where coaches and programs are structured to meet both player needs and sports expectations. But, in my opinion, where are possible areas of improvement for coach adaptability and learning opportunities? One immediate avenue of opportunity would be the introduction of communities of practice between sports; gathering ideas, effective adopted practices and even cross code reviews to develop understanding and add value from other avenues. I believe we have become very content focused and over analytical towards how we believe and perceive players within team sports SHOULD be played, coached and reviewed. However, with this, we have lost the concept of acknowledging the social and interactive side to coaching; offering ideas, choices and solutions to scenarios which may be sport applicable or just socially responsible when required for all players and coaches involved to collaboratively overcome and improve.

How does this resonate in your sport currently? I'd love to hear your thoughts towards this article....