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Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments

(1) Background: The interpersonal dimensions of coaching in high performance sport have been subject to increasing scrutiny but with limited evidence to guide practice. Similarly, there is increasing practical interest in the concept of psychological safety, often portrayed as an implicitly desirabl...

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Autores principales: Taylor, Jamie, Ashford, Michael, Collins, Dave
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9230064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35736823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports10060083
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author Taylor, Jamie
Ashford, Michael
Collins, Dave
author_facet Taylor, Jamie
Ashford, Michael
Collins, Dave
author_sort Taylor, Jamie
collection PubMed
description (1) Background: The interpersonal dimensions of coaching in high performance sport have been subject to increasing scrutiny but with limited evidence to guide practice. Similarly, there is increasing practical interest in the concept of psychological safety, often portrayed as an implicitly desirable characteristic of all sporting environments but, as yet, still to receive research attention in high performance. As a first step to addressing these deficiencies, the present study addressed two research aims: (a) to examine the extent to which matched groups of international and released professional rugby union players perceived psychological safety to be an adaptive feature of their developmental experience and (b) to understand what elements of the player’s coaching experience were perceived to be enabling or disenabling of future progress. (2) Methods: Seven rugby union players who had ‘made it’ and eight players who had been released from their professional contracts took part in a semi-structured interview exploring their developmental experiences. Data were subsequently analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. (3) Results: Both groups of players found each of their talent development and high performance environments to be psychologically unsafe. Furthermore, players perceived coaches who were the most impactful in their development as offering ‘tough love’. This included a range of ‘harder’ and ‘softer’ interpersonal approaches that presented the player with clear direction, role clarity and a sense of care. It appeared that this interpersonal approach helped the player to navigate, and benefit from, the psychologically unsafe high performance milieu. (4) Conclusions: There appear to be a number of balances for the coach in the high performance setting to navigate and a need for more nuance in applying constructs such as psychological safety.
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spelling pubmed-92300642022-06-25 Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments Taylor, Jamie Ashford, Michael Collins, Dave Sports (Basel) Article (1) Background: The interpersonal dimensions of coaching in high performance sport have been subject to increasing scrutiny but with limited evidence to guide practice. Similarly, there is increasing practical interest in the concept of psychological safety, often portrayed as an implicitly desirable characteristic of all sporting environments but, as yet, still to receive research attention in high performance. As a first step to addressing these deficiencies, the present study addressed two research aims: (a) to examine the extent to which matched groups of international and released professional rugby union players perceived psychological safety to be an adaptive feature of their developmental experience and (b) to understand what elements of the player’s coaching experience were perceived to be enabling or disenabling of future progress. (2) Methods: Seven rugby union players who had ‘made it’ and eight players who had been released from their professional contracts took part in a semi-structured interview exploring their developmental experiences. Data were subsequently analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. (3) Results: Both groups of players found each of their talent development and high performance environments to be psychologically unsafe. Furthermore, players perceived coaches who were the most impactful in their development as offering ‘tough love’. This included a range of ‘harder’ and ‘softer’ interpersonal approaches that presented the player with clear direction, role clarity and a sense of care. It appeared that this interpersonal approach helped the player to navigate, and benefit from, the psychologically unsafe high performance milieu. (4) Conclusions: There appear to be a number of balances for the coach in the high performance setting to navigate and a need for more nuance in applying constructs such as psychological safety. MDPI 2022-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9230064/ /pubmed/35736823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports10060083 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Taylor, Jamie
Ashford, Michael
Collins, Dave
Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title_full Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title_fullStr Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title_full_unstemmed Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title_short Tough Love—Impactful, Caring Coaching in Psychologically Unsafe Environments
title_sort tough love—impactful, caring coaching in psychologically unsafe environments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9230064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35736823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports10060083
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