Communicating Effectively with Athletes

Source: "Soccer - Army Youth Sports and Fitness - CYSS - Camp Humphreys, South Korea - 111001" by USAG-Humphreys, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Coaches devote a great deal of time and energy to providing a worthwhile life experience for young athletes. To optimize coaching effectiveness, they must be aware of the importance of skillful communication in achieving their objectives.

This post is primarily directed at youth sport coaches, but its content is also relevant for parents. Why? Because it’s well-known that parents often find themselves in a teaching role outside of the sport environment.

Principles of Effective Communication

Everything we do communicates something to others. Because of this, coaches should develop the habit of asking themselves (and, at times, their athletes) how their actions are being interpreted. This enables coaches to evaluate whether they are communicating what they intend to.

Communication is a two-way street. By keeping the lines of interaction open, coaches can be more aware of opportunities to have a positive impact on athletes.

Fostering two-way communication does not mean that athletes are free to be disrespectful toward their coach in word or action. Rather, it invites athletes to express their views (both positive and negative) with the assurance that they will be heard by the coach. Furthermore, by presenting a model of an attentive listener, coaches can hope to improve the listening skills of their athletes.

Coaches should view a team as a group of individuals and respond to these individuals accordingly. For example, a youngster who has low self-confidence may be crushed (or positively affected) by something that has no impact whatever on an athlete with high self-esteem. By improving sensitivity to the needs of athletes, coaches can be more successful.

Timing is important. Communication is most effective when someone is receptive. For example, coaches find that one athlete responds much better to instruction if they wait a while after a mistake; whereas, another athlete may respond best to immediate correction.

Relating Effectively to Athletes

In addition to the principles presented above, the importance of communicating with a positive (mastery) approach should be emphasized. This approach is designed to strengthen desirable behaviors by motivating athletes to perform them and by reinforcing the athletes when they do so. In contrast, a negative approach involves attempts to eliminate athletes’ mistakes through the use of punishment and criticism. The motivating factor is fear, which creates resentment and hostility.

Scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of the Mastery Approach to Coaching is summarized in a chapter titled “A social-cognitive approach to conducting evidence-based coach-training programs” (Smoll & Smith, 2021). Also, Dr. Rainer Martens (2012, p. 94) recommended the following guidelines for implementing the mastery approach in coaches’ communication:

• Provide honest, direct, and constructive messages.
• Adopt an attitude in which you focus on catching athletes doing good or right, and then telling them they’ve done so (“catching them doing good”).
• Avoid sarcasm and put-downs; but at the same time, don’t sugarcoat athletes’ misbehaviors by falsely putting a positive spin on them.
• Emphasize what can be done, instead of what cannot be done. Similarly, use language that focuses on solutions, instead of dwelling on problems.
• Seek to build character rather than destroy it.