UK Coaching - How To Build Stronger Relationships With Your Athletes

18/07/2021 UK Coaching - How to Build Stronger Relationships with your Athletes
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How to Build Stronger Relationships with Your Athletes
UK Coaching Team
29 Jun 2020
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Rapport Building and Communicating
How to Build Stronger

Relationships with Your
Athletes
The coach-athlete relationship plays a central role in ensuring both athletes' and
coaches’ needs are being met. Professor Sophia Jowett highlights the four 'key
dimensions’ of a good quality coach-athlete relationship, and UK Coaching’s
Chris Chapman poses key questions to help you reflect on your relationships
with your athletes
Sophia Jowett is a coach, professor of psychology at Loughborough University,

acknowledged expert in coach-athlete relationships and has supported coaches and UK
Sport to better maximise the relationship.
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Coaching is viewed as a process and practice
within which both coaches and athletes are expected to engage, interact and communicate. It is this
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combined interrelating between coaches and athletes that define the effectiveness of coaching and
ultimately determines the success of the coaching.
While the coach and the athlete need one another to bring about change in performance (as neither of
them can do it alone), they also need each other to experience a sense of personal fulfilment and
satisfaction in the pursuit of performance accomplishments.
Good quality coach-athlete relationships matter not only because

 they drive better results but also because they create a social
environment within which both the coach and the athlete feel positive,
happy, energised, determined (gritty) and strong (resilient).
The relationship promotes a social environment that is functional,

 within which coaches and athletes are prepared to strive and
thrive.
There are many examples of coaches who have embraced, understood and applied this notion of, what
we call, a “relational coaching environment”, where building good quality relationships is at the heart of
it.
Coaches across the world who have achieved the highest sport accolades with their athletes include Pep
Guardiola (football), Mike Krzyzewski (basketball), Lisa Alexander (netball), Mel Marshall (swimming), Ans
Botham (athletics), among others. They have talked openly about the role and significance of the coach-
athlete relationship.
It becomes immediately apparent that these coaches care a great deal for their athletes and want to
support them to become the best they can be. Such coaches become talent magnets, because athletes
want to work with and for them!
As the saying goes: “Two is better than one if two can act as one.”

What does a good quality coach-athlete relationship look like?
A good quality coach-athlete relationship comprises of four dimensions: Closeness, Commitment,

Complementarity and Co-orientation.
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Closeness refers to the affective or emotional tone of the relationship. It captures such feelings as trust,
respect, appreciation and liking. Coaches who convey their respect – showing they respect and
appreciate, or show gratitude by being prepared to support, by wanting to know and understand, by
considering their viewpoints and indeed by trying to see the world through their eyes – are central in
developing emotional closeness or strong affective ties.
Tips for building closeness in the coach-athlete relationship
 Be open with your athletes, offer information, show you have nothing to hide, don’t
‘wear a mask’; openness is reciprocated.
 Display loyalty and protect your athletes, be on their side both in their presence and
absence.
 Be reliable, consistent and predictable; if you let them down or fail to follow through it
will create cracks in your trustworthiness.
 Honour your promises; if you make promises you cannot keep, your athletes will think
you are not dependable. Do not belittle the promise. However small you think it is, your
athletes may think it to be significant.
Commitment refers to the willingness and intention to maintain a stable and secure relationship over
time. Sport throws at coaches and athletes’ numerous challenges that have to be overcome. Commitment
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becomes a vital ingredient to the survival of the relationship, especially during difficult and challenging
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injury, deselection, performance decline, as well as personal-
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related, such as school exams, work dismissal, school/work underachievement, family bereavement or
divorce.
If there is commitment from both the coach and the athlete, the likelihood of overcoming difficult and
challenging situations will increase. Commitment becomes the glue that keeps coaches and athletes
together over time through highs and lows.
Tips for building commitment in the coach-athlete relationship
 Develop individual developmental plans for each athlete (they need to feel there is a
plan for them). It will engage them and motivate them to stay and to work hard.
 Have a programme based on well-defined and mutually agreed goals.
 Make athletes’ committed to the squad and team’s goals.
 Involve them in the coaching process by asking them what they need to be more
effective and what will make them more committed.
Complementarity refers to coaches and athletes’ levels of cooperation, coordination and collaboration. It
reflects the degree to which coaches and athletes are responsive, receptive, open, friendly, approachable
during training and competition. For example, if a coach readily responds to their athlete following the
execution of a movement with constructive and genuine feedback, then the athlete may more readily
receive and use this feedback (and even seek out further feedback from the coach).
If there is complementarity, the likelihood of athletes feeling intimidated, humiliated and manipulated is
low because athletes have experienced coaches’ positive, supportive and helpful behaviours.
Complementarity also captures the specific roles coaches and athletes take in this type of relationship.
On one hand, coaches are leaders, orchestrators, instructors and on the other hand athletes are
followers, executors, doers and makers.
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Tips for building complementarity in the coach-athlete relationship
 Work together through well-coordinated actions.
 Improve communication. “Simple communication” is best and more impactful.
 Clarify roles and reinforce rules; explain consequences if rules are not met.
 Create a friendly and supportive environment; show flexibility and adaptability (adopt a
flexible leadership style).
Lastly, co-orientation simply reflects the degree to which coaches and athletes understand one another
and outlines the degree to which coaches and athletes have developed a common ground. It is a
measure of the extent to which coaches and athletes are trying to see the world through each other’s
eyes. Co-orientation relates to the notion of empathy and perspective taking.
is the ability to look beyond your own point of

Perspective taking
 view, so that you can consider how someone else may think or
feel about something. To do this successfully, you must have some
understanding of others' thoughts, feelings, motivations, and intentions.
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Research has also shown that communication is Afundamental

CCEPT
to good quality relationships.
I use an analogy to pull all the Cs together: the quality of the coach-athlete relationship (the 4Cs) is
viewed as a vehicle that takes coaches and athletes on a journey, where A is their starting point and B is
their destination. The relationship as a vehicle requires fuel to transport both coaches and athletes from
place A to place B (a “Better” place). Communication is the fuel, the energy and power of coach-athlete
relationships. Communication as a fuel can accelerate/speed up or decelerate/slow down the journey.
Communication powers the relationship and empowers coaches and athletes within their “working”
sporting relationships.
Have a go!
Select three athletes that you coach and write their names in the column below (this template is
available to download and print out via the link at the bottom of the page).
Now look back through the explanations on each of the dimensions above and write down how you feel
about this dimension with each athlete.
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Now step into their shoes and think how they will feel about your
relationship.
Q. Anything stand out or surprise you?
Q. How would you improve the quality of the relationship?
Q. Which dimension will you consider first?
Q. How will you develop strategies/ an action plan to improve your coach-athlete
relationships?
The COMPASS model uses seven strategies of communication: Conflict Management, Openness,
Motivational, Preventative, Assurance, Support and Social Network. Coaches (and athletes) use these
strategies to maintain good quality, functional and healthy working relationships which promotes
closeness (increased mutual trust, respect, appreciation), commitment (enhanced eagerness to continue
the relationship) and complementarity (improved capacity to work together in responsive and friendly
manner).
While coaches’ overarching goal is to support athletes to achieve their goals, meet their athletes’ needs,
support athletes to develop and grow physio-social-psychologically, some coaches fall short.
One reason for this may be their focus on performance issues and less so on relationship issues.
The coach-athlete relationship is at the heart of coaching and in turn the quality of the relationship can
define the effectiveness (process and practice) and success of coaching (destination).
A conscious and deliberate effort to invest in building good quality

 relationships (4Cs) and communicating competently can have long-
lasting and cumulative effects on coaches’ and athletes’ performance
and well-being, including their Cookies
growth and development, personal
Wesuccess andtosatisfaction,
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Failing to notice the relational side of coaching is failing to notice yourselves as a coach and what you
represent (values, goals, expectations), as well as failing to notice your athletes – the people who you so
desperately want to support and develop.
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18/07/2021 UK Coaching - How to Build Stronger Relationships with your Athletes

Rapport Building and Communicating

How to Build Stronger

Sophia Jowett is a coach, professor of psychology at Loughborough University,

Good quality coach-athlete relationships matter not only because

The relationship promotes a social environment that is functional,

A good quality coach-athlete relationship comprises of four dimensions: Closeness, Commitment,

Tips for building closeness in the coach-athlete relationship

Tips for building commitment in the coach-athlete relationship

 Have a programme based on well-defined and mutually agreed goals.

 Make athletes’ committed to the squad and team’s goals.

Tips for building complementarity in the coach-athlete relationship

 Work together through well-coordinated actions.

 Improve communication. “Simple communication” is best and more impactful.

is the ability to look beyond your own point of

Research has also shown that communication is Afundamental

Q. How would you improve the quality of the relationship?

Q. Which dimension will you consider first?

A conscious and deliberate effort to invest in building good quality

Join The Club

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