Coaching through building confidence

Confidence, as well as self-confidence, self-worth and self-efficacy has been the point of interest not only within the sporting environment (e.g., Vealey and Chase 2008; Feltz 2007; Woodman and Hardy 2011; Bessa et al. 2021; Trudel, Gilbert and Rodrigue 2016) but also within the industry (e.g., Kay & Shipman 2014), social psychology (e.g., Greenacre, Tung and Chapman 2014), marketing (e.g., Paridon, Carraher and Carraher 2006), economics (e.g., Bénabou & Tirole 2000; Möbius, Niederle, Niehaus and Rosenblat 2014) and management (e.g., Tsui 1998) environments. In this blog I will focus on confidence development in sport participants through great and effective coaching, especially through providing a list of practical tips for training sessions.

But before I continue it might be necessary to check the dictionary for the definition of the terms looked at in this blog. Even though we think we are able to explain the meaning of each term we might still struggle with describing their slight differences.

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Through creating an environment in which sport participants are challenged and supported their confidence will increase as will their self-confidence and self-efficacy. Through experiencing success sport participants will feel empowered and their self-confidence will grow, as will their self-worth.

However, as coaches we have to plan these opportunities for success consciously into our training sessions otherwise the success opportunities are left to chance, making our sessions less effective.

Here some practical tips that you as a coach can apply in your coaching session:

Create a training atmosphere which is safe, so your sport participants can be brave to try out things
Let participants teach each other skills
Provide participants with small challenges that they need to solve in training either alone or together
Change positions in team sports
Give your participants tasks that they have to complete such as planning some part of the training, refereeing, score keeping, or coaching each other
Praise effort in a meaningful way
Create opportunities in training for them to be successful
Let them contribute to the session
Ask your sport participants what it looks like when they complete a skill with confidence
Scaffold skill training
Talk to your sport participants and ask them what they like to do, what interests them and what they have difficulties with
Know your participants abilities to adapt your sessions accordingly
Provide participants with possibilities on making decisions themselves
Encourage Fair Play

For more ideas and information around the C’s System, check out the materials created by UKCoaching.

The purpose of my blogs on the C’s System is to spread the idea of the C’s to other coaches so that we all can plan and prepare effective, great and quality training sessions for our participants, independent of the coaching context or the coach identity evolution path we find ourselves in.