Athletic Coaches With Greater Emotional IQ Create Better Athletes/Performance

From the abstract from International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology…

Thelwell, R., Lane, A. M., Weston, N.J.V., & Greenlees, I.A. (2008). Examining relationships between emotional intelligence and coaching efficacy. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 6, 224-235.

The study examined the relationship between EI, as measured using the EI Scale (Schutte et al, 1998) and coaching efficacy, as measured using the Coaching Efficacy Scale, among 99 athletic coaches. Results revealed significant relationships between the two sets of variables. More specifically, results showed that motivation efficacy (e.g., maintain confidence) was significantly associated with the regulation of emotions and social skills, whereas character-building efficacy (e.g., promote good sportsmanship) was associated with optimism. Teaching technique efficacy (e.g., demonstrate the skills of your sport) was significantly associated with appraisal of own emotions.

The results indicate that should coaches be unable to appraise their own emotions and regulate them accordingly, then their ability to affect the learning and performance of their athletes will be severely hindered. As such, it may be that coaches who lacks awareness of their own emotions are subsequently unable to regulate them accordingly for the situation and ultimately their performers’ well-being. This is clearly in line with some of the reports from the business environment (e.g., George, 2000) where leaders lacking in EI had significantly reduced leadership effectiveness. Alternatively, coaches who can appraise their own emotions will arguably possess greater sensitivity to when their emotions need to be regulated in accord with the situation, thus enabling them to fulfill their coaching role (Gould et al., 2002). Again, this mirrors research outside of sport where leaders with high EI deal with potentially difficult situations more effectively (Jordan et al., 2002).

This entry was posted on 1. July 2009 at 20:27 and is filed under Emotional mind, Psychology & soccer, Emotional management, Anger Management, Awareness, Resiliency, Emotional IQ, Guide to Self, Swim coaches, Sports Psychology, Abusive Coaches, Positive Psychology, Life coach, Dr. John Schinnerer, Mean coaches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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