philosophy of coaching research paper

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

The future of coaching: a conceptual framework for the coaching sector from personal craft to scientific process and the implications for practice and research.

• 1 CoachHub GmbH, Berlin, Germany
• 2 Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

This conceptual paper explores the development of coaching, as an expression of applied positive psychology. It argues that coaching is a positive psychology dialogue which has probably existed since the emergence of sophisticated forms of language, but only in the past few 1000years, has evidence emerged of its use as a deliberate practice to enhance learning. In the past 50years, this dialectic tool has been professionalised, through the emergence of professional bodies, and the introduction of formal training and certification. In considering the development of the coaching industry, we have used Rostow’s model of sector development to reflect on future possible pathways and the changes in the coaching industry with the clothing sector, to understand possible futures. We have offered a five-stage model to conceptualise this pathway of development. Using this insight, we have further reviewed past research and predicted future pathways for coaching research, based on a new ten-phase model of coaching research.

Introduction

Coaching is often considered an applied aspect of positive psychology. Both emerged from humanistic psychology, with its focus on the flourishing of the individual, and how individuals, teams and society can create the right conditions for this to be achieved. In this paper, we explore the nature of coaching, as an applied aspect of positive psychology, the journey so far and where practice and research may be heading over the coming 30years.

It would seem only prudent at the start of this paper that we note the challenges of predicting the future direction of any industry and of research in general. We acknowledge the future is ‘trumpet-shaped’, emerging from the point of singularity (now) to multiple possible futures. Any attempt to accurately ‘predict’ the future is challenged by inevitable unforeseen events, their timing and the interaction between foreseen and unforeseen events. We have tried to improve our predictions by drawing on a previously published framework, which we have adapted. However, we ask the reader to note this is just one possible future.

What Is Coaching?

The clear link between coaching as lived positive psychology has been focused on by many writers ( Lomas et al., 2014 ). However, just how much of a driving force positive psychology was in the maturation of coaching is yet to be discussed. In order to establish the role positive psychology played in the maturation of the coaching sector, this section will review their shared historical roots and focus on the influence positive psychology research had on the evolution of coaching definitions.

Coaching and positive psychology’s histories are dynamic and rooted across multiple disciplines, yet they are both born out of the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s. This led to the popularisation of personal and professional growth and development, through pioneers such as Werber Erhard. Brock’s (2010) review of the development of coaching notes the humanistic tradition and the work of Carl Rogers’ of particular significance. Rogers’ focus on the relation and the needs of the clients’ and the potential to find their own way forward have become central features of coaching. Coaching rise coincided with a shift in the perspective about illness and wellbeing. This was the move from the medical model that focused on pathologies to the wellbeing model, which encouraged greater attention towards what individual’s strengths.

Interestingly, coaching psychology (CP) launched in the same year as positive psychology. Atad and Grant (2021) described how coaching psychology was a ‘grassroots’ movement, led by founders of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney and the Special Interest Group in Coaching Psychology in the British Psychological Society (BPS) including psychologists like Stephen Palmer, Jonathan Passmore and Alison Whybrow.

While positive psychology and coaching psychology both focus on the cultivation of optimal functioning and wellbeing ( Green and Palmer, 2019 ), often through the use of personal strengths development, Atad and Grant (2021) reported key differences. The first is that approaches like solutions-focused cognitive-behavioural coaching also aim to help clients define and attain practical solutions to problems. A second difference is the characteristics of the interventions used in each discipline. In coaching psychology interventions, the coach-coachee relationship is central to the coachees development of self-regulated change, whereas Positive Psychology Interventions (PPI’s) typically apply a self-help format.

Since its foundation, positive psychology (PP), the ‘ scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing intra-personally (e.g. , biologically, emotionally, cognitively ) , inter-personally (e.g. , relationally ) , and collectively (e.g. , institutionally, culturally, and globally )’ ( Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ; Oades et al., 2017 ), has grown into a field of applied science ( Atad and Grant, 2021 ).

The field covers an array of topics, most commonly focused on life satisfaction, happiness, motivation, achievement, optimism and organisational citizenship and fairness ( Rusk and Water, 2013 ). Gable and Haidt (2005 , p. 103) defined positive psychology as ‘ The study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing ( wellbeing ) or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions ’. A vast number of PPI’s have been developed and validated ( Donaldson et al., 2014 ), with the aim to enhance subjective or psychological wellbeing or to cultivate positive feelings, behaviours, or cognitions ( Sin and Lyubomirsky, 2009 ).

Strength development is viewed as a key process in positive psychology due to the shift from a deficit-based approach towards human functioning: a move from ‘what’s wrong and how can we fix it’, to ‘what’s right and how can we strengthen it’. McQuaid (2017 , p. 285–284) simply describes strengths as, ‘ the things you are good at and enjoy doing ’, which is reflective of Linley and Harrington’s (2006) definition of strengths as ‘ a natural capacity for behaving, thinking, or feeling in a way that allows optimal functioning and performance in the pursuit of valued outcomes ’. Strength-based interventions that aim to promote the awareness, cultivation and application of personal strengths have been reported to have many positive individual and organisational outcomes ( McQuaid, 2017 ). Strengths research is one of the most integrated concepts from positive psychology into coaching psychology.

Interestingly, coaching psychology (CP) also launched in the same year as positive psychology. Atad and Grant (2021) described how coaching psychology was a ‘grassroots’ movement, led by founders of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney and the Special Interest Group in Coaching Psychology in the BPS in the United Kingdom. CP also experienced its own rapid growth in research and practice ( Green and Palmer, 2019 ), which is discussed below.

At the heart of coaching, noted by multiple coaching writers, was its facilitative nature ( Passmore and Lai, 2019 ). Coaching pioneer John Whitmore’s working with Graham Alexander and Alan Fine in the later 1970s and 1980s, and informed by the work of Tim Gallwey (1986) , focused on the self-awareness and personal responsibility which coaching created. This led to Whitmore (1992) defining coaching as having the potential to maximise a person’s performance by adopting a facilitation approach to learning rather than teaching.

This has direct parallels with Deci and Ryan’s (1985) work on self-determination theory (SDT). SDT identifies the conditions that elicit and sustain motivation, focusing on self-regulated intrinsic motivation. These include the needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness ( Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). While Whitmore never formally engaged with SDT Whitmore’s definition of coaching can be seen as a direct application of Deci and Ryan’s (1985) SDT theory and therefore an early indicator of coaching as an applied aspect of positive psychology.

In Brock’s (2010) reflection on the common themes, the facilitative nature of coaching is the strongest similarity across definitions. Brock (2010) also emphasised the interpersonal interactive process that places the coaching relationship at the centre of the facilitation and essential for positive behavioural change. This perspective was maintained in later definitions, which introduced the purpose of coaching to drive positive behavioural changes ( Passmore and Lai, 2019 ) For example, Lai (2014) reported that this was driven by the reflective process between coaches and coachees and continuous dialogue and negotiations that aimed to help coachees’ achieve personal or professional goals.

In summary, in spite of the complementary nature of PP and CP, the fields remain sisters as opposed to fully integrated areas of practice, with coaching psychology drawing from the well of positive psychology, alongside wells of neuroscience and industrial and organisational psychology.

A Conceptual Model for Coaching Development

To date, little has been written about the development of the coaching sector, as a specific industry. This may reflect in part the relative immaturity of the industry, but a wider review of industrial literature reveals the categorisation of sector development is limited. One of the few conceptual models is Rostow’s (1959) generalised model of the six stages of economic growth. This offered a linear model of development, which reviews traditional society; the preconditions for take-off; the take-off; the drive to maturity; the age of high mass consumption; and beyond consumption (the search for quality). The model is summarised in Table 1 .

Table 1 . Rostow’s stages of economic growth.

Rostow argued that these stages captured the dynamic nature of economic growth, reflecting the nature of consumption, saving, investment and the social trends that impact it. Rostow’s framework offered insight into the triggers for change at each stage. However, as a generalised model, it is unlikely that all industries or sectors follow the same pathway. Some may never take-off, and others remain as mass consumption. It is also important to note that Rostow’s model is based on observations from a predominantly Western economic perspective situated within a capitalist economic model of growth.

We believe this model provides a heuristic guide, a map, for those observing the development of coaching, and offers an opportunity to predict, based on trends in other industries, how coaching may develop over the coming few decades. In undertaking an analysis of the model, it may be helpful to explore it through a specific sector. The example we selected was clothing manufacture, as being a process which like language, dates back to the prehistory, but which has also changed and developed over the centuries.

The Clothing Sector

The clothing sector has undergone a transformation over the past 10,000years. We might start by considering ‘the sector’ at the time of the Neolithic Revolution, as humans transitioned from hunter gathers to farmers. In hunter-gatherer societies, clothing was primarily a form of protection: protection from cold, plants, animals and battles with fellow tribes. Although given evidence from modern day hunter-gatherer societies, there are also limited examples of parts of clothing being used for status, for example Native American head-wear ( Grinnell, 2008 ). As humans settled, this too started evolve with the emergence of greater status divisions and the development in manufacturing of items, allowing greater differentiation of objects. In the earliest period, most people will have collected the raw materials, engaging as a group in killing an animal. They will have prepared the materials in small groups, stripping the flesh and processing the hide and finished the item will individuals sewing to weaving items together to form the clothing.

As food surpluses emerged as a result of the shift towards settled farming, specialisms started to also emerge. Clothing production shifted from the collective task for small groups and individuals, to the one or more specialists, such as a tailor. This process of specialisation continued with the emergence of training and the development of trades: where individuals could progress over several years of training form apprentice through journeyman to master craftsman. Alongside, this came trade bodies and guilds in the 12th and 13th centuries, to represent the profession and to protect members rights ( Ogilvie, 2011 ). The industrial revolution brought further change with production moving from cottage industries, small shops or upstairs of building used as part home and part clothing ‘factory’ to formal factory production using mechanisation to increase consistency and reduce costs. This process has continued with continued development of automation and over the past 30 years through the digital revolution, which has witnessed a shift from individual’s controlling machines to machines controlling machines. Table 2 summarises the transformation of the clothing sector and demonstrates how Rostow’s model could be applied.

Table 2 . Model of clothing sector development based on Rostow’s model.

Coaching: The Future of Research and Practice

We argue that coaching can learn from the evolution of these other sectors and from the wider conceptual model proposed by Rostow, to better understand the future direction of the coaching and its implications for practice and research.

We start by suggesting that coaching is likely to have a prehistory past. While some argue that coaching was born in 1974 ( Carter-Scott, 2010 ), we believe it is almost certain hunter gathers will have engaged in the use of listening, questioning and encouraging reflective practice to help fellow members of their tribe to improve their hunting skills or their sewing. There is some evidence from Maori people, in New Zealand, that such questioning styles have been used for centuries to aid learning ( Stewart, 2020 ). However, the spoken word leaves no trace for archaeologists to confirm the development of these practices.

While the clothing sector developed in full sight, leaving traces for archaeologists in graves and wall paintings, coaching remained a hidden communication form, until its emergence in societies where written records documented different forms of learning. At that moment, the Socratic form was born. It is often this moment which until now has been regarded as the birth of the positive psychology practice of coaching. It has taken a further 2,500years for coaching to move from a learning technique used by teachers to a specialisation increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, which requires training, credentials, supervision and ongoing membership of a professional body. While there is good evidence of individuals using coaching in the 1910s ( Trueblood, 1911 ), 1920’s ( Huston, 1924 ; Griffith, 1926 ) and 1930’s ( Gordy, 1937 ; Bigelow, 1938 ), the journey of professionalisation started during the 1980s and 1990s, with the emergence of formal coach training programmes and the formation of professional bodies, such as the European Mentoring and Coaching Council in 1992 and International Coaching Federation in 1995. The trigger for this change is difficult to exactly identify, but the growth of the human potential movement during the 1960s and 1970s and its focus on self-actualisation, combined with the growing wealth held by organisations and individuals meant a demand for such ‘services’ started to emerge from managers and leaders as part of the wider trends in professional development which started in the 1980’s.

This trend of professionalisation has continued for the last three decade. The number of coaches has grown to exceed some 70,000 individuals who are members of professional bodies and industry, although given data from recent studies which reveal that over 30% of coaches have no affiliations, we estimate over 100,000 people earn some or all of their income from coaching ( Passmore, 2021 ). In terms of scale, the industry is estimated to be worth $2.849 billion U.S. dollars (International Coaching Federation, 2020), but in many respects, it has remained a cottage industry, dominated by sole traders and small collectives, with little consolidation of services by larger providers, with little use of technology and science to drive efficiencies or improve outcomes.

Given model and recent developments in technology and the growth of coaching science over the past 10years is coaching reaching a tipping point? Is coaching about to enter the next phase of sector development? Is coaching about to begin the transition from professional service delivered by a limited number of high-cost specialists to an industrial process capable of being delivering low-cost coaching for the many with higher standards in product (service) consistency?

What makes this change likely? There are three factors in our view propelling coaching towards its next stage in development. Firstly, the growth of online communications platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Hangout, are enabling individuals to connect with high-quality audio and video images. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020–21 has seen the development these platforms now reach almost universal adoption. At the same time, a growing number of employees have switched from ‘always in the office’ modes of working to either working from home or hybrid working, working 2, 3 or 4days a week from home ( Owen, 2021 ). Such models provide lower costs for employers, and evidence suggests many employees favour the flexibility working from home provides.

Secondly, the period 2010–2020 witnessed a growth in the science connected with positive psychology and coaching, proving practitioners with a good understanding of the theory and research. Access to this research has been enhanced by an increasing move to Open Access journals, the emergence of research platforms, such as ResearchGate, sharing published papers and tools such as Sci-Hub, granting access to published science, alongside search tools such as Google Scholar allowing efficient discovery of relevant material by practitioners, as well as academics with access to university library databases. In combination, these online tools are democratising the science of coaching and are stimulating the next phase of development.

The third factor is the growth of investor interest in digital platforms, which have seen significant growth during the 2010–2020 period, enabling start-ups to secure the investment need for the development of products, from online mental health (Headspace) to online learning (Lyra Learning - LinkedIn Learning).

The next phase we predict will be an emergence, growth and ultimately domination of coaching by online large-scale platforms, who offer low-cost and on-demand access to coaching services informed by science, in multiple languages and to a consistently high-quality standard. Echoing the changes in clothing production, with mechanisation using machines like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, and Arkwright’s spinning machine which revolutionised clothing production.

We have developed Rostow’s model and propose a 5P’s model for the coaching industry development. This is summarised in Table 3 . A journey from unconscious practice used by hunter-gatherer societies, through formal use in learning, to specialisation and professionalisation, to the deployment of technology and onwards towards a more conscious use across society of positive psychology approaches, including coaching as a tool to enhance self-awareness and self-responsibility, embedded in technology.

Table 3 . 5P’s model of coaching industry development.

It is worth noting that across sectors the move from one stage to the next created disruption and negative consequences in uncontrolled markets. In agriculture, shifts in production, such as land enclosures, and introduction of mechanisation led to landlessness and starvation, in clothing manufacturing production disruptions lead to low pay and exploitation. These changes also stimulated agricultural revolts and the emergence of Luddites, as workers affected by change pushed back against these change in their daily work patterns, income levels or status.

In coaching, we can see similar push back from some in coaching, who fear the negative impacts of research and technology, as coaching starts to move away from being a cottage industry, where fee rates are unrelated to training, qualifications or other measurable indicators ( Passmore et al., 2017 ) towards providing greater consistency, evidence driven practice. Such push back is likely not only to be from individuals but also guilds (professional bodies) wo see their power being undermined by the rise of large-scale, Google-LinkedIn, providers, who’s income, corporate relationships and global reach will shift the power balance in the industry.

Given this awareness of the risks of change, it is beholden on the new technology firms to be sensitive to the needs of all stakeholders. We advocate a Green Ocean strategy ( Passmore and Mir, 2020 ). Under such a strategy, the focus is on collaboration, seeking sustainable win-win outcomes, which benefit all stakeholders, and take at their heart environmental considerations and ethical management, balancing such needs against the drive for quarterly revenues.

The Implications for Positive Psychology - Coaching Research

In previous papers, we have proposed a model reviewing the journey of positive psychology coaching research ( Passmore and Fillery-Travis, 2011 ). This offered a series of broad phases, noting the journey of published papers from case studies to more scientific methods, such as randomised control trials, between the 1980s and 2010. The past decade, 2011–21, has witnessed a continued development along the scientific pathway, thanks to the work of researchers such as Anthony Grant, Rebecca Jones, Erik de Haan and Carsten Schermuly.

Specifically, the publication of randomised control trials has grown from a handful of papers in 2011 to several dozen by 2021, while still limited in comparison to areas of practice such as motivational interviewing ( Passmore and Leach, 2021 ), the expanded data set has provided evidence for systematic literature reviews and combination studies, such as meta-analysis. These papers have provided evidence that coaching works, with an effect size broadly similar to other organisational interventions, as well as giving insights at to the most important ingredients of the coaching process.

It is this blossoming of higher quality, quantitative studies, which has led us to believe the science in coaching is maturing. While much work still needs to be done over the coming decade, the insights to date can be used to inform practice at a scale leading to Stage 4 in our 5P coaching sector model.

The coming decade may see opportunities for greater collaboration between coach service providers, as these organisations increase in scale and profitability, and university researchers, keen to access large data sets enabled by the greater use of technology and the global scale of the new coach service providers.

Reflecting these industry changes and the proliferation of research, we have also updated the research journey model, reflecting these developments. We suggested the emergence of new phase of research exploring individual, exceptions and negative effects of coaching ( Passmore, 2016 ; Passmore and Theeboom, 2016 ). This has started to happen with work by Schermuly and Grabmann (2018) and De Hann (2021) . We have linked research papers to the model of coach development in Table 4 and have extended it to create 10 phases.

Table 4 . 10-phase model of coaching research.

The emergence of large coaching providers, operating on digital platforms, with the ability to collect, hold and analyses large volumes of data, the opportunity exists to significantly step up the quantity and quality of research including RCT’s and exploring exceptions and specific presenting issues, ingredients and tools. Of specific interest will be questions including: How does the coach (or client) personality impact on the relationship and outcomes? What roles does similarity in terms of race, gender or sector background have on outcomes? What factors contribute to client trust? How significant is empathy as a factor and in want types of coaching is it most valued? What role do discovery meetings, contracting, external support networks and ‘homework’ play in successful coaching assignments?

Over the next 20years, we can start to unpick these aspects with the help of big data, and unlike some aspects of technological research, let us argue in favour now of sharing knowledge through Open Access, so everyone can gain, and the quality of each and every coaching conversation can be enhanced.

In this paper, we have explored coaching as an expression of positive psychology. We have offered two conceptual frameworks, one for research and one for practice. We hope these frameworks will stimulate further discussion by coaching and positive psychology communities. Our view is that the coaching has become an ‘industry’ and is following a pathway of development similar to many other industries. Recent technological developments, combined with a quickening pace in coaching research, will move coaching from a ‘cottage industry’ towards a fully mechanised process, enhancing accessibility, consistency and reducing cost. This will start with platforms and is likely to lead towards a growing use of automation. This scale provides opportunities for more data, more research and a deeper understanding of the intervention, creating a virtuous circle of development. This too will stimulate the continued development of coaching research pathways considering the assignment and the wider system.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, and further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

Authors JP and REK were employed by company CoachHub GmbH.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: positive psychology, coaching research, coaching practice, democratisation of coaching, coaching trends

Citation: Passmore J and Evans-Krimme R (2021) The Future of Coaching: A Conceptual Framework for the Coaching Sector From Personal Craft to Scientific Process and the Implications for Practice and Research. Front. Psychol . 12:715228. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.715228

Received: 26 May 2021; Accepted: 18 October 2021; Published: 10 November 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Passmore and Evans-Krimme. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Jonathan Passmore, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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75 Coaching and Well-being: A Brief Review of Existing Evidence, Relevant Theory, and Implications for Practitioners

Gordon B. Spence, Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney

Anthony M. Grant, Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

• Published: 01 August 2013
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Whilst scholarly interest in coaching has increased dramatically in the past decade, the further maturation of the field will continue to depend upon the degree to which knowledge is developed along both theoretical and empirical lines. In this chapter both domains are explored. After providing a brief introduction to coaching, the first section summarizes findings from the empirical coaching literature, which suggest that coaching can positively impact human functioning and well-being across several different contexts. Having reviewed evidence that supports the efficacy of coaching, the second section focuses on an important related question: Why does coaching work? To help answer this question, self-determination theory is introduced and presented as a useful theoretical lens for understanding how a coaching process might yield beneficial effects, for grounding coaching practice in firm foundations and also for generating highly valuable research questions.

This chapter is about coaching and its influence on human functioning and well-being. The chapter is presented in two sections. In the first section coaching is defined and accompanied by a brief description of its essential practices, along with a review of what is currently known empirically about its impact on human functioning and well-being. Having reviewed some evidence that supports the efficacy of coaching, the second section will focus on the important question: Why does coaching work? In proposing an answer to this question we will draw upon self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985 ), a metatheory of human functioning that we believe helps to theoretically ground the practice of coaching. We hope that this discussion will provide both a good general introduction to the field in its current state and stimulate an understanding of why coaching effectively contributes to well-being.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is an action-oriented, collaborative process that seeks to facilitate goal attainment, self-directed learning, and/or enhance performance in the coachee's personal or professional life (Spence & Grant, 2007 ). The articulation of goals is central to the coaching process and these are generally set in a way that stretches an individual's current capacities or performance (Grant & Greene, 2001 ). In essence, the coaching process facilitates goal attainment by helping individuals to: (1) identify desired outcomes, (2) establish specific goals, (3) enhance motivation by identifying strengths and building self-efficacy, (4) identify resources and formulate action plans, (5) monitor and evaluate progress, and (6) modify action plans (where necessary). As shown in Fig. 75.1 , this monitor–evaluate–modify process constitutes a cycle of self-regulated behavior that is key to creating intentional behavior change (Carver & Scheier, 1998 ). The role of the coach is to facilitate the coachee's movement through this self-regulatory cycle, by helping the coachee to develop specific action plans and then to monitor and to evaluate their progression toward those goals.

Generic cycle of self-regulation.

Much of a coach's skill lies in being able to accelerate goal attainment by helping individuals develop and implement solutions to the ongoing challenges faced during goal striving. Regardless of whether coaching occurs as brief, informal “on-the-fly” coaching (lasting, say, 10 minutes) or more lengthy, formal sessions (sometimes lasting up to 2 hours or more), considerable emphasis is placed on the coach to act as the facilitator (rather than the provider) of solutions. Increasingly this has led coaches to adopt the use of solution-focused and strengths-based techniques, which can assist coachees to tap into their personal strengths and resources (Berg & Szabo, 2005 ).

Is coaching effective? What the research says

The first appearance of coaching in the peer-reviewed literature occurs in Gorby's ( 1937 ) report of senior staff coaching junior employees on how to reduce waste, and Bigelow's ( 1938 ) article on how best to implement a sales coaching program. Despite its long history, the coaching literature is still relatively small, although it has grown significantly in recent years.

According to Grant ( 2010 ), in the 62 years between 1937 and 1999 only 93 papers on coaching were published, compared to 542 since 2000. However, of the 616 papers published since 1980, the vast majority have been opinion pieces, descriptive articles or theoretical discussions. Furthermore, of the 179 empirical papers published in this period, many are surveys (e.g., Coutu & Kauffman, 2009 ; Douglas & McCauley, 1999 ), descriptive studies about executive coaching (e.g., Bono, Purvanova, Towler, & Peterson, 2009 ), or research into the characteristics of coach training schools (e.g., Grant & O’Hara, 2006 ). As such, most of the extant empirical coaching literature comprises contextual or survey-based investigations, with little research focused on determining the efficacy of coaching as a methodology for creating purposeful positive change and enhancing well-being. Nevertheless, a brief overview of this literature follows and will be drawn from four areas: workplace/executive coaching; life coaching; health coaching and coaching within educational settings.

Workplace and executive coaching

Although coaching is widely used in the workplace, only two randomized controlled studies of workplace coaching have been reported. In the first, Deviney ( 1994 ) examined the efficacy of supervisors acting as internal workplace coaches and found no changes in supervisors’ feedback skills following a multiple-rater feedback intervention and coaching from their managers over a 9-week period. In the other study, Duijts, Kant, van den Brandt, and Swaen ( 2008 ) examined the effectiveness of coaching as a means of reducing work absence due to psychosocial health complaints. Whilst no decrease in absenteeism was observed, there was significantly lower burnout along with improvements in health, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being. These results suggest that coaching might enhance employee well-being.

There have been some quasi-experimental studies in the workplace using pre-test and post-test comparisons and non-randomized allocation to an intervention or control group. For example, Gyllensten and Palmer ( 2005 ) found that coaching was associated with lower levels of anxiety and workplace stress (compared with a control group), whilst Evers, Brouwers, and Tomic ( 2006 ) reported that executive coaching enhanced participants’ self-efficacy and self-perceived ability to set personal goals. In addition, Barrett ( 2007 ) found that group coaching was effective for reducing burnout but not for improving productivity.

Finally, one study reported on the effectiveness of executive coaching (using a randomized controlled design). In this, participants received 360-degree feedback followed by four sessions of executive coaching. Coaching was found to reduce stress and depression, improve goal attainment, and increase resilience (Grant, Curtayne, & Burton, 2009 ).

Life coaching

Given that commercial life coach training schools first emerged in the early 1990s, it is surprising that comparatively few outcome studies have been conducted on life coaching. In the first published study, Grant ( 2003a ) used a within-subjects (pre–post) design to explore the efficacy of a group-based, solution-focused cognitive behavioral (SF-CB) life coaching program (n = 20). The results indicated that life coaching was associated with enhanced mental health, quality of life, and goal attainment. In a partial replication of this study, Green, Oades, and Grant ( 2006 ) tested the same SF-CB coaching program using a randomized controlled (pre–post) design and found that group life coaching was associated with increases in goal striving, well-being and hope, with some gains maintained at 30 weeks.

Extending this line of research, Spence and Grant ( 2007 ) compared the efficacy of individualized professional one-to-one coaching to peer coaching with an adult community sample (n = 63) over a 10-week period. The results indicated that coachees of professional coaches were more engaged in the coaching process and reported greater goal commitment and goal progression compared to peer coachees and controls. Whilst these participants also reported greater levels of environmental mastery, other facets of well-being did not change.

Finally, life coaching has also been found to be effective with young adults. Using a sample of 56 female high school students (mean age 16 years), Green, Grant, and Rynsaardt ( 2007 ) found that participation in SF-CB life coaching was associated with significant increases in levels of cognitive hardiness and hope, and significant decreases in depression.

Health coaching

The use of coaching in health-related settings is steadily increasing and may prove a useful way of enhancing patient self-management and better utilization of healthcare resources (for a discussion see Kreitzer et al., 2008 ). Health coaching is a patient-centered process that consists of setting health-related goals, identifying obstacles to change, and mobilizing support and resources to enable change (Palmer, Tubbs, & Whybrow, 2003 ). It is typically a multifaceted intervention incorporating cognitive, behavioral and lifestyle change strategies, and includes the teaching of coping skills (Grey et al., 2009 ). A review of this literature reveals that health coaching is being used to address a variety of concerns in an array of settings. For example, Linden, Butterworth, and Prochaska ( 2010 ) provided chronically ill patients with telephone-based health coaching informed by motivational interviewing principles (Miller & Rollnick, 2002 ) and found that it increased their self-efficacy, lifestyle change scores and perceived health status.

In another study, Grey et al. ( 2009 ) explored the difference between general health education and coping skills-based health coaching with inner city youth at risk for type II diabetes. Results indicated that both groups showed some improvement in anthropometric measures, lipids, and depressive symptoms over 12 months, but students who received health coaching showed a greater improvement on indicators of metabolic risk than students who received education only. This confirmed earlier results reported by Spence, Cavanagh, and Grant ( 2008 ) who found that health goal attainment was greater when participants received coaching, compared to a directive, health education-only intervention.

Not all health coaching studies have reported such successes. Gorczynski, Morrow, and Irwin ( 2008 ) reported on the impact of coaching on physical activity participation, self-efficacy, social support, and perceived behavioral control among physically inactive youth. Whilst physical activity significantly increased for one participant, the other participants’ activity levels remained unchanged. No significant changes were found across the other study variables. Similarly, an internet-based health coaching study conducted by Leveille et al. ( 2009 ) reported mixed findings. In investigating the efficacy of coaching aimed at enhancing communication between patients and their primary care physician, results showed that while coached patients received more information from their physicians there was no difference in the detection or management of screened conditions, symptom ratings, and quality of life between the coaching and non-coaching groups.

It appears that whilst life coaching and organizational coaching tend to be effective, health coaching is less so. This is perhaps unsurprising given that such behaviors tend to be anchored by decades of habit. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine whether the health coaching reported in the literature accurately reflects coaching (i.e., a client-centered process aimed at facilitating self-directed learning), or whether it is being utilized as an alternative way to deliver expert information.

Although health coaching for health-related behavior change may not be consistently effective, the use of workplace or executive coaching in health settings to change non-health-related behaviors has been more successful. For example, Taylor ( 1997 ) found that solution-focused coaching enhanced resilience in medical students, whilst Gattellari et al. ( 2005 ) reported that peer coaching by general practitioners improved the coachees’ ability to make informed decisions about prostate-specific antigen screening. Also, Miller, Yahbe, Moyers, Martinez, and Pirritanol ( 2004 ) used a coaching program to help clinicians learn motivational interviewing skills and found that coaching with feedback was superior to training-only. Finally, Yu, Collins, Cavanagh, White, and Fairbrother ( 2008 ) found coaching was associated with significantly greater proactivity, core performance, goal-attainment, self-insight, motivation, positive affect and autonomy for 17 managers in a large teaching hospital.

Coaching in educational settings

Whilst there is now a considerable amount of literature regarding coaching in educational settings much of it is student-focused and directed towards enhancing student learning, or overcoming literacy or learning difficulties (e.g., Merriman & Codding, 2008 ). We will not review this literature here, rather, we will focus on an emerging literature related to teacher-focused coaching (for a review see Denton & Hasbrouck, 2009 ). It should be noted that the term “coaching” in educational settings refers to a very broad range of applications, indicating technical or instructional coaching to increase the instructional skills of teachers (e.g., Brown, Reumann-Moore, Hugh, Du Plessis, & Christman, 2006 ) and reflective practice coaching, which is “a process in which teachers explore the thinking behind their practices” (Garmston, Linder, & Whitaker, 1993 , p. 57).

Whilst little has been reported on the use of coaching to directly increase the well-being or happiness of students or teachers, it has been applied to facilitating professional development and enhancing leadership within educational settings. Much of this work has been conducted using peer coaching with both novice (Jenkins, Garn, & Jenkins, 2005 ; Suleyman, 2006 ) and experienced educators (Johnson, 2009 ). However, as in commercial organizations, some senior management in educational settings also engage in developmental coaching of subordinates (MacKenzie & Marnik, 2008 ). These coaching interventions can be relatively sophisticated with senior school leaders receiving coaching skills training within the context of a structured coaching program, and often incorporate ongoing supervision and impact evaluation (for an example see Simkins, Coldwell, Caillau, Finlayson, & Morgan, 2006 ). Globally, the use of professional coaches and consultants for leadership and professional development within educational settings has been increasing, with some studies yielding encouraging results (Allan, 2007 ; Contreras, 2009 ).

On the basis of the findings presented, coaching appears to be a promising methodology for facilitating goal attainment and enhancing well-being across a variety of domains. Whilst some of this evidence has been generated through the use of robust scientific methods, there is a pressing need for more research in each of the domains outlined; research that seeks to understand (1) the specific impact of coaching across domains, and (2) what processes coaching activates to generate these effects.

How Does Coaching Impact Well-Being?

Using self-determination theory to understand coaching efficacy.

As outlined in the previous section, a growing body of empirical evidence indicates that coaching impacts an array of positive psychological characteristics, including various dimensions of subjective and psychological well-being (e.g., positive affect and environmental mastery). Whilst such findings are encouraging, there are two reasons that this work should be interpreted cautiously. First, the empirical coaching literature is still relatively small with few replications and considerable methodological variability. Second, most of the coaching research conducted to date has lacked firm theoretical foundations and occurred in the absence of clearly articulated, coherent research agendas. As a result, the evidence-base for coaching would best be described as disparate, largely atheoretical, and primarily comprised of “one-off” findings. Clearly, it is not yet a mature field of study.

These observations are not intended as criticisms of the field or those working within it. Rather, they are brief reflections on the current state of coaching research and serve as a reminder that maturation takes time and occurs via the steady accumulation of rigorous empirical work. Whilst we hope that dedicating the remainder of this chapter to SDT (Deci & Ryan, 1985 ) might provide a new perspective from which to formulate coaching research questions and so stimulate further empirical work, our primary aim is to introduce a well-researched theory of human motivation and goal-directed behavior that can both inform the practice of coaching and help to understand its beneficial effects.

Coaching and well-being

What makes coaching an intervention that can influence well-being and happiness? Numerous explanations could be proposed to answer this question. One might be that coaching enhances well-being simply because it focuses on the subjective concerns of individuals and provides a helpful collaborator (i.e., the coach) to assist with resolving those concerns. According to this view, coaching would enhance well-being via the experience of being genuinely supported. A second explanation might be that coaching enhances well-being by providing coachees with rare opportunities to reflect on and (re)discover their personal strengths and capacities. From this perspective, well-being is enhanced through feelings of mastery that build over time. Alternatively, it could be argued that coaching enhances well-being by helping coachees to think deeply about their goals and encouraging them to use values and interests—rather than external inducements or introjects—as a basis for choosing commitments in life. According to this view, it is the developing sense of self-authorship and volition that would lead one to feel good.

Whilst these perspectives are intuitively appealing they provide only superficial explanations about how or why coaching might be expected to impact well-being. The potential value that SDT offers to coaches is that it can help to make sense of such “explanations” by providing a comprehensive account of human functioning and the processes that shape cognitive, emotional and behavioral self-regulation and development.

Self-determination theory

As practitioners we have continually found SDT to be highly relevant, conceptually coherent, and, as we will argue, useful for understanding coaching practice at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level, SDT provides a metatheoretical account of growth tendencies, innate psychological needs, and environmental forces that shape human personality, behavioral self-regulation, and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000 ). Put more simply, the theory says much about what needs to happen if people are to “do well” and “feel good” throughout the course of their lives.

At the micro level, SDT can help practitioners to appreciate the importance of the client-coach relationship and understand that, through the process of relating , conditions can be created that are necessary for optimal growth and development. More specifically, the use of core micro-skills such as active listening, expressing empathy, exploring successes, identifying personal strengths, clarifying values, encouraging volitional acts and other supportive gestures help to enliven developmental processes that are central to (what is commonly referred to as) “human flourishing” (Keyes & Haidt, 2003 ).

Some self-determination theory basics

According to Deci and Ryan ( 2000 ), “it is part of the adaptive design features of the human organism to engage in interesting activities, to exercise capacities, to pursue connectedness in social groups, and to integrate intrapsychic and interpersonal experiences into a relative unity” (p. 229). This statement conveys several ideas that we believe make SDT a relevant theoretical backdrop for coaching.

First, SDT adopts a positive view of human nature. Consistent with the basic tenets of humanistic psychology (Rogers, 1961 ), people are seen as possessing innate growth tendencies and, provided supportive socio-contextual conditions exist, will naturally seek out experiences that promote growth and development. Whilst SDT explicitly acknowledges that these innate tendencies exist, it also acknowledges the organismic-dialectic of human experience (Deci & Ryan, 1985 ). Simply put, a dialectic is the juxtaposition of conflicting forces or ideas. In SDT the dialectic of interest is the conflict that exists between the inherent growth orientation of humans and the disruptive power of various socio-contextual forces (e.g., excessive parental control, peer pressure and restrictive legislation) that act to thwart or stall these positive developmental tendencies (Ryan & Deci, 2000 ).

Second, SDT proposes that a person's level of functioning and well-being depends upon the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. According to the theory, people do well and feel at their best when the socio-cultural conditions of their lives (i.e., family relationships, friendships, workplace culture, political system, and cultural norms) support the innate needs of freely engaging in interesting activities (autonomy), producing valued outcomes via the use of their capacities (competence), and feeling closely and securely connected to significant others (relatedness).

Third, SDT conceptualizes the self not as a fixed, rigid core (i.e., “self-as-object”) residing somewhere deep within the person. Rather, it is viewed as an active processor of experience, a dynamic psychic structure that continuously seeks to make meaning of the myriad internal and external events that comprise a person's life (i.e., “self-as-process”) and integrate them into a coherent, unified sense of self. Specifically, Deci and Ryan ( 1985 ) argue that this processor works best when the conditions of a person's life support satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence.

Relevance to coaching

When an individual engages the services of a coach, they gain access to someone with the potential to facilitate basic need satisfaction via a relational process focused on the coachee's aspirations and salient concerns. In this way, the formation of a coaching relationship can represent a positive change in the sociocultural conditions of a coachee's life, provided that the relationship respects their core values and developing interests, acknowledges their capacities, and occurs against a backdrop of genuine caring, trust and honesty. From an SDT perspective, coaches who focus on the creation of these conditions help to create a platform for effective human action and the complex meaning-making process that represents the development of the self.

It should be noted that SDT is not a single theory. Rather, it is a set of four related mini-theories that have evolved over four decades (Deci & Ryan, 1985 ). Whilst each subtheory has its own specific focus (see Table 75.1 ), all address psychological processes that are interrelated and deemed to be important for psychological growth and development (for a comprehensive review see Deci & Ryan, 2000 ). As SDT views the satisfaction of basic needs as a prerequisite for human development and growth, attempts to understand coaching from this perspective are best focused on the extent to which coaching can satisfy needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy. The remainder of the chapter is focused on the ways that coaching might help to meet these needs.

Coaching conversations: creating conditions for growth, development, and well-being

Relatedness.

Coaching is generally considered to be founded upon Rogerian, person-centered principles (Stober & Grant, 2006 ) that are reinforced through the use of core micro-skills such as active listening, empathy, unconditional positive regard and attentive and responsive body language. From an SDT perspective the use of such skills creates an atmosphere conducive to satisfying the need for relatedness, through the establishment of good rapport and the development of a warm, trusting and caring relationship that is squarely focused on addressing the coachee's salient concerns. Importantly, whilst the coachee may have close relationships outside coaching, they may not have been consistently felt heard, understood, valued, and/or genuinely supported within these. If so, such conditions are unlikely to satisfy relatedness needs and impel people to seek connection with others by acting in accordance with their preferences, rather than one's own (such as when an adolescent disengages from pursuing a hobby because of parental disapproval or disinterest). In situations like this, coaching may help an inadequately supported person to feel safe enough to explore and consider more self-concordant forms of action.

In keeping with the core assumptions of humanistic psychology (Maslow, 1954 ; Rogers, 1961 ), coaching assumes that people are essentially capable and possess potential that can emerge in the presence of supportive conditions (Grant, 2003b ). A key strategy to uncover latent potential is the solution-focused approach (Berg & Szabo, 2005 ), which assumes people are highly capable and already enacting desirable, target behaviors. As such, coaching tends to orient people towards what they are doing well, what is working, as well as their personal strengths and ways in which those strengths might be put into daily use (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005 ). Given this focus, coaches are generally striving to create conditions that will help clients develop feelings of competence. Various psychometric tools (e.g., strengths inventories) or more informal methods (e.g., achievement journals) can help to raise awareness of personal strengths and talents that may have been long forgotten, ignored or devalued, whilst also permitting the coachee to consider ways that these capacities might be better utilized within the context of their life.

Most coaching models and frameworks place the coachee at the centre of decision-making processes as a way of encouraging ownership of their development and growth (Grant, 2006 ). Whilst the coach will typically look to the coachee to provide impetus for any goals set throughout a coaching engagement, this principle is also applied within sessions. For example, the use of simple process models like GROW (Goal-Reality-Options-Wrap Up; Whitmore, 1996 ) encourage coachees to own their behavior change process by setting the agenda for each conversation. Oftentimes, however, clients can find the invitation to engage in the goal setting process uncomfortable. In our experience, this can occur because they are: (1) not clear on what they are striving for, (2) unfamiliar with being asked to take responsibility for their developmental agenda, or (3) fearful the process might not work (i.e., they might not attain their goals). Whatever the reason(s), when coaching is structured using models like GROW the implicit message is “you are free to choose what we work on and your choice will be respected and valued.”

Self-determination theory and case formulation

Whilst psychotherapists and counselors have long used case formulations to understand client needs (Kuyken, Fothergill, Musa, & Chadwick, 2005 ), this practice appears less widely used in coaching (Corrie & Lane, 2010 ). SDT provides a practical perspective on human growth and development that makes it a useful lens through which to understand a coachee. Not surprisingly, an SDT-informed case formulation would begin with seeking to understand the degree to which the coachee has been able to satisfy their basic needs via their interactions with the world. For example, employees are often expected to direct energy and effort towards performance goals imposed by employers, and in this context it is not uncommon for them to feel controlled or coerced, with few options other than compliance. In such situations, a case formulation is likely to reveal a diminished sense of autonomy and indicate the potential usefulness of autonomy support strategies. This might include the coach assisting the coachee to try and understand what credible rationale might exist for such goals, genuinely acknowledging how the coachee might feel about the goals, and helping the coachee to make choices about how they engage in the goal striving process. Such strategies have been found to enhance autonomous need satisfaction in situations where personal choice is compromised (see Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994 ).

The coaching process: supporting more self-determined living

The working alliance is key to the attainment of successful outcomes in coaching (Peltier, 2001 ). This is because the establishment of a warm, encouraging, affirming relationship has much to do with how much hope, courage, and resilience can be mustered to support goal striving and behavior change in the broader context of one's life. Consistent with the research on subjective vitality (see Ryan & Deci, 2008 ), it is expected that whenever a coaching relationship is supportive of basic psychological needs (as outlined earlier), a coachee is likely to feel a renewed sense of energy and a greater capacity to act in accordance with core aspects of the developing self.

Typically individuals come to coaching seeking help to attain personal and professional goals. Whilst for some these goals are clear and obvious, for many they are not, and a coach can help to resolve a variety of concerns such as not knowing what goals to set, struggling to strive towards goals set by others, and/or managing fluctuations in goal-related motivation. Fortunately, SDT has focused closely on goal striving processes (e.g., Sheldon & Elliot, 1998 , 1999 ) and has yielded useful frameworks for helping individuals resolve such challenges.

Goal ownership: a developmental trajectory

The developmental processes described in SDT are helpful for understanding how coaching might enhance well-being. According to the theory, whilst the organismic-dialectic makes most behavior extrinsically motivated (as opposed to intrinsically motivated) people adopt goals for a variety of reasons that can be plotted along a continuum of self-regulation varying from extrinsic regulation to intrinsic regulation (see Table 75.2 ). Furthermore, it argues that these motivational underpinnings greatly impact how much energy people direct towards goal striving and how much satisfaction is gained from their attainment. More specifically, SDT contends that externally regulated or controlled goals (those adopted primarily for money, praise, etc.) tend to be associated with feelings of pressure and tension and result in poorer continuity of effort. In contrast, more integrated or autonomous goals (those aligned with one's values and interests) tend to be associated with feelings of congruence and greater long term effort (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998 ).

Adapted from The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior, Edward L. Deci, Richard M. Ryan, Psychological Inquiry , © Taylor & Francis, 2000 , reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals ).

Most importantly, the theory proposes that people can (and do) move towards more autonomous action over time, via processes of internalization and integration (or assimilation) (Deci & Ryan, 1985 ). It further proposes that this developmental progression can be catalyzed by the presence of conditions that support the satisfaction of basic needs (as discussed earlier)—a proposition that has received considerable empirical support (e.g., Deci, et al., 1994 ; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999 ; Sheldon, Kasser, Smith, & Share, 2002 ).

Implications for coaches

These findings have importance for coaches because they suggest it is possible to facilitate helpful shifts in goal motivation. This is particularly relevant when individuals are faced with the challenge of working towards goals that are not self-selected (as often occurs in organizational settings or health contexts) and over which they feel a diminished sense of ownership. In such situations a coach can potentially be helpful in one of two ways. First, they may be helpful by providing the person with the opportunity to reflect on the nature of the imposed goal and explore (positive and negative) implications of striving towards it. Having done so the coach can then encourage the coachee to make a choice about what s/he will do. In the event that s/he decides not to pursue such a goal, ongoing support may be required to manage the implications of that decision. If, on the other hand, s/he decides to pursue the goal and does so in a way that indicates a lack of subjective ownership (i.e., for external or introjected reasons), the coach may utilize an autonomy support strategy (e.g., the rationale–acknowledgement–choice framework) to help the coachee find ways of identifying with the goal and aligning it to their core values and developing interests. For example, Bob is prescribed an exercise program by his doctor and, with the help of his health coach, is able to develop ways of making the goal fun or more challenging (thereby increasing intrinsic motivation). In this case, a shift in the locus of causality would have occurred, away from external inducements (external motivation) and towards the person's values and developing interests (identified motivation). As indicated in Fig. 75.2 , such a movement represents a shift towards core aspects of the person.

Second, a coach may help an individual to reframe the goal by exploring alternative perspectives and seeking to attach an alternative meaning to it. For example, Christine is told by her boss that she must raise the profile of her department and this goal is written into her performance agreement. Being an introvert this is not a goal she would have chosen for herself. However, rather than being stoic and enduring the discomfort associated with striving towards this goal (e.g., social networking and public presentations), an executive coach could help Christine to take a different perspective on the goal that results in her seeing that building the skills needed to attain this goal might be transferable to other areas of interest (e.g., organizing fundraisers for a charitable organization). If so, she would be in a position to choose what the goal would mean to her (an autonomous act) and more likely to be positively energized towards it (Ryan & Deci, 2008 ).

In summary, coaching can enhance more autonomous, self-determined living by helping individuals to make more conscious, intentional decisions about what goals they commit to (or not) in the context of their life or, in situations where there is little perceived choice, by choosing what these goals will mean to them.

Simple spatial representation of differing degrees of extrinsically motivated action.

Recommendations for practitioners

As has already been stated, we believe that SDT is a relevant and practically useful theory for coaching. For those readers who are practicing coaches we offer the following suggestions:

Consider using SDT for case formulations, either as the primary theoretical framework or as just one perspective for developing client understanding and possible interventions.

Explore underlying goal motivation with your clients by referring to the different types of regulation described in Table 75.2 and graphically represented in Fig. 75.2 .

Seek out information about SDT across different domains of interest. The University of Rochester web site ( http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/ ) is a good place to start and is helpful because it organizes publications by a variety of research and application topics.

As coaching is still not a mature field of study, care should be taken not to overstate what is known about it from the extant literature. Rather, if validation of one's practice is important (and cannot be gained from the existing knowledge base), the SDT literature may prove to be a useful resource to draw upon.

In this chapter we have reviewed evidence from the peer-reviewed academic literature that is generally supportive of coaching as an intervention that enhances human functioning and well-being. We have also acknowledged that whilst this evidence-base is growing steadily, the field of coaching is still maturing and lacks empirical work that is firmly grounded in theory. There have been relatively few attempts to provide a detailed theoretical account of what happens in coaching, or to build our understanding about why coaching works in the way that it seems to. Through our brief overview of SDT and sketching out some implications for coaching, we hope this chapter will help practitioners to develop new or alternative perspectives on their work, and stimulate researchers to formulate their hypotheses against the backdrop of a well established, coherent, and relevant theory of human functioning and well-being.

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A critical analysis of the conceptualisation of ‘coaching philosophy’'

Abstract The aim of this paper was to critically review existing literature relating to, and critically analyse current conceptualisations of, ‘coaching philosophy’. The review reveals a bewildering approach to definitions, terms and frameworks that have limited explanation and reveal a lack of conceptual clarity. It is argued that rather than provide clarification and understanding the existing literature conflates coaching rhetoric and ideology with coaching philosophy and serves to reproduce existing coaching discourse rather than explain coaching practice. The paper problematises the unquestioned assumptions currently underpinning ‘coaching philosophy’; namely the overemphasis of coaches’ agency and reflexivity, the downplaying of the significance of social structure on coaches’ dispositions and the acceptance that coaching practice is an entirely conscious activity. The paper argues for an alternative philosophy of coaching that uses philosophic thinking to help coaches question existing ideology, and critically evaluate the assumptions and beliefs underpinning their practice. Keywords: Coaching philosophy, philosophical enquiry, coach education, coaching, critical analysis, ideology, coaching discourse.

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Article contents

Coaching behavior and effectiveness in sport and exercise psychology.

• Ronald E. Smith Ronald E. Smith Department of Psychology, University of Washington
•  and  Frank L. Smoll Frank L. Smoll Department of Psychology, University of Washington
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.188
• Published online: 19 December 2017

Coaches occupy a central role in sport, fulfilling instructional, organizational, strategic, and social relationship functions, and their relationships with athletes influence both skill development and psychosocial outcomes of sport participation. This review presents the major theoretical models and empirical results derived from coaching research, focusing on the measurement and correlates of coaching behaviors and on intervention programs designed to enhance coaching effectiveness.

A strong empirical literature on motor skill development has addressed the development of technical sport skills, guided in part by a model that divides the skill acquisition process into cognitive, associative, and autonomous phases, each requiring specific coaching knowledge and instructional techniques. Social-cognitive theory’s mediational model, the multidimensional model of sport leadership, achievement goal theory, and self-determination theory have been highly influential in research on the psychosocial aspects of the sport environment. These conceptual models have inspired basic research on the antecedents and consequences of defined coaching behaviors as well as applied research on coach training programs designed to enhance athletes’ sport outcomes. Of the few programs that have been systematically evaluated, outcomes such as enjoyment, liking for coach and teammates, team cohesion, self-esteem, performance anxiety, athletes’ motivational orientation, and sport attrition can be influenced in a salutary fashion by a brief intervention with specific empirically derived behavioral guidelines that focus on creating a mastery motivational climate and positive coach-athlete interactions. However, other existing programs have yet to demonstrate efficacy in controlled outcome research.

• coaching behaviors
• leadership measurement
• behavioral assessment
• motor skill development
• social cognitive theory
• multidimensional leadership model
• achievement goal theory
• self-determination theory
• coaching behavior interventions
• psychosocial outcomes

Introduction

Coaches occupy a central role in sport, fulfilling instructional, organizational, strategic, and social relationship functions. Athletes’ skill acquisition, success, enjoyment, continued participation, and physical and psychological well-being are all strongly influenced by coaching behaviors. Not surprisingly, therefore, research on coaching behaviors and their consequences have been a strong focus of research in sport and exercise psychology. This body of scientific literature illustrates important reciprocal linkages between theory, research, and practice. This review focuses on three central facets of this research literature: measurement of coaching behaviors; relations between coaching behaviors and other variables, and interventions designed to enhance coaching practices.

Measurement and Correlates of Coaching Behaviors

Theory and measurement are intimately related. Theoretical models cannot be tested without measures that provide operational definitions of the model’s constructs, and the constructs provide the basis for the content of the measures, whether the measurement model involves questionnaire items completed by coaches and athletes or systematic observation and coding of actual coaching behaviors. Within sport and exercise psychology, several theoretical models have guided research on coaching behaviors. They are considered in their historical order of appearance.

Social-Cognitive Learning Theory: The Mediational Model

Direct observation of behavior is a hallmark of behavioral approaches, including social cognitive learning theory (Mischel, 1973 ; Bandura, 1986 ). The fact that coaching behaviors occur in a public context where they can be directly observed, categorized, and quantified inspired the development of behavioral coding systems beginning in the 1970s. An early example was the use of a ten-category system to assess the coaching behaviors of legendary University of California, Los Angeles basketball coach John Wooden (Tharp & Gallimore, 1976 ). Based on more than 30 hours of observation during team practices, the data showed that Wooden spent approximately 50% of his time giving verbal instruction, 12.7% in admonitions to hustle, and about 7% giving either encouragement and compliments or scolds, respectively. They also described stylistic aspects of his coaching, such as giving very brief and specific instructions and demonstrations that seldom lasted more than 5 seconds.

At about the same time, the Coaching Behavior Assessment System (CBAS) was developed as a research tool to permit the direct observation and coding of coaches’ actions during practices and games (Smith, Smoll, & Hunt, 1977 ). The CBAS contained 12 categories divided into two major classes of behaviors. Reactive (elicited) behaviors are responses to immediately preceding athlete or team behaviors, while spontaneous (emitted) behaviors are initiated by the coach and are not a response to a discernible preceding event. Reactive behaviors are responses to either desirable performance or effort (i.e., reinforcement, nonreinforcement), mistakes and errors (i.e., mistake-contingent encouragement, mistake-contingent technical instruction, punishment, punitive technical instruction, ignoring mistakes), or misbehaviors on the part of athletes (i.e., keeping control). The spontaneous class includes general technical instruction, general encouragement, organization, and general communication (unrelated to the current situation). The system thus involves basic interactions between the situation and the coach’s behavior. Use of the CBAS in observing and coding coaching behaviors in a variety of sports has shown that (a) the scoring system is sufficiently comprehensive to incorporate the vast majority of overt leader behaviors, (b) high interrater reliability can be obtained, and (c) individual differences in behavioral patterns can be discerned (Smith, Smoll, & Christensen, 1996 ).

The CBAS was developed within a cognitive-behavioral mediational model that involved interactions between the situation, coaching behaviors, the athlete’s perceptions of the behaviors, and the athlete’s reactions to the behavior (Smoll & Smith, 1989 ). The athlete’s reactions are assumed to be mediated by the athlete’s encoding and perception of the coach’s behavior. This assumption led to the development of a questionnaire (CBAS Perceived Behaviors sScale) for athletes, asking them how frequently their coach engaged in each of the CBAS categories. The latter consists of definitional items that provide examples of prototypic categorical behaviors. For example, the preface to a question on mistake-contingent encouragement may include the following: “A coach may say: ‘Sometimes players goof and make mistakes.’ Some coaches give their players support and encouragement after they make a mistake. For example, they may say, ‘That’s OK. Don’t worry about it; you’ll get ‘em next time.’ Other coaches don’t give much encouragement after mistakes.” Then the survey follows with “How often did your coach encourage you after you made mistakes?” In a study involving 51 youth baseball coaches, 542 athletes, and 57,213 coded behaviors, team-level bivariate correlations between observed and perceived behaviors were variable, with the highest levels of agreement occurring for the categories involving the coaches’ responses to mistakes (+.54 for punishment, +.37 for punitive technical instruction, and +.31 for mistake-contingent technical instruction). Canonical correlation analyses of the observed and perceived behaviors revealed dimensions that correlated +.89 with one another and were both related to attitudes toward the coach, assessed at the end of the season. Both behavioral and perceived dimensions had their highest loadings on the supportive (i.e., positive reinforcement and mistake-contingent encouragement) and the punitive behavioral categories. Notably, however, although the level of agreement reflects as much as 30% common variance, the level of agreement allows for substantial lack of correspondence between observed behaviors and athlete perceptions, and for variation in athletes’ perceptions of a particular coach. Also in accord with the mediational model, athlete-perceived coaching behaviors were more highly and consistently related to their attitudes toward the coach than were observed behaviors. Five behaviors (i.e., mistake-contingent encouragement, general encouragement, punishment, punitive technical instruction, and general technical instruction) were correlated with positive evaluations of the coach at values between .34 and .43, with the punitive categories being negatively correlated with attitudes toward the coach (Smith, Smoll, & Curtis, 1978 ).

A companion self-report CBAS questionnaire modeled on the athlete perception form was also created for coaches. Research showed that, consistent with the mediational model, athlete-perceived coaching behaviors were more strongly related to outcome variables than were the observed behaviors. Furthermore, athletes’ reports were more strongly related to the observed behaviors than were the coaches’ self-reports, indicating that except with regard to punitive behaviors, coaches have limited awareness of how they behave (Smith et al., 1978 ).

Factor analyses of the CBAS revealed three major factors that account for approximately 75% of the behavioral variance: (a) supportiveness (comprised of reinforcement and mistake-contingent encouragement), (b) instructiveness (general technical instruction and mistake-contingent technical instruction versus general communication and general encouragement), and (c) punitiveness (punishment and punitive technical instruction). Relations between coaches’ scores on these behavioral dimensions and athletes’ postseason attitude measures indicated that players responded most favorably to coaches who engaged in higher percentages of supportive and instructional behaviors (Smith et al., 1978 ). Athletes on teams whose coaches created a supportive environment also liked their teammates more. A somewhat surprising finding was that the team’s win-loss record was essentially unrelated to how well the players liked the coach and how much they wanted to play for the coach in the future. This finding that coaching behaviors were far more important predictors of liking for the coach than was win-loss record was replicated in another study involving youth basketball (Cumming, Smoll, Smith, & Grossbard, 2007 ). Notably, however, winning assumed greater importance beyond age 12, although it continued to be a less important attitudinal determinant than coaching behaviors.

As the mediational model predicts, athlete’s reactions to coaching behaviors are influenced by both athlete and situational characteristics. For example, athletes with low in self-esteem are especially responsive to variations in supportive and instructional behaviors in terms of their liking for coaches, preferring coaches who are high on both dimensions, whereas children with high self-esteem are less influenced by how supportive or instructive the coach is (Smith & Smoll, 1990 ). Situational characteristics also matter. In one study in which score of the baseball games were assessed each half inning, factor scores on the supportiveness, punitiveness, and instructiveness dimensions revealed that the rate of supportive behaviors that coaches delivered while their team was winning correlated highly with athlete’s postseason liking, whereas supportive behaviors that occurred while the team was losing bore no relation to liking for the coach. The opposite occurred for punitive behaviors, which were strongly and negatively related to liking when delivered in losing situations, but were only weakly related when given during winning situations. Instructiveness was not differentially affected by the score at the time it occurred (Smith, Shoda, Cumming, & Smoll, 2009 ).

The CBAS has been used in many studies, particularly within youth sports, to develop behavioral profiles of coaches, to assess relations between coaching behaviors and other variables, such as evaluative reactions to the coach, team cohesion, and sport attrition, as well as athletes’ anxiety and self-esteem. It has also been used to measure behavioral changes that occur as a result of coach training (e.g., Smith, Smoll, & Curtis, 1979 ; Conroy & Coatsworth, 2004 ; Lewis, Groom, & Roberts, 2014 ). The CBAS has given impetus to the development of other behavioral coding systems containing similar or related behavioral categories (Morgan, Muir, & Abraham, 2014 ). One recent example, the Coach Analysis and Intervention System (Cushion, Harvey, Muir, & Nelson, 2012 ) uses computer technology to code a wide variety of verbal and nonverbal behaviors and the circumstances under which they occur, to whom they are directed, and how they are combined when a coach exhibits several behaviors simultaneously. Another valuable tool allows for the coding of both coach and athlete behaviors, permitting an analysis of coach-athlete interaction patterns (Erickson, Cộté, Hollenstein, & Deakin, 2011 ). These recent developments promise to build upon the research base derived from the CBAS over the past four decades.

Multidimensional Model of Sport Leadership

The study of leadership has a long history in mainstream psychology, spanning social psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and military psychology (VanVactor, 2013 ). Drawing upon the many theories of leadership, Chelladurai ( 1993 , 2012 ) advanced a multidimensional model of leadership that includes situational characteristics, leader characteristics, and member characteristics. To measure leader characteristics, Chelladurai focused on five dimensions of coaching behavior: (a) training and instruction; (b) democratic behavior (allowing athletes a voice in team decisions); (c) autocratic behaviors (decisions restricted to the coach); (d) social support (expressing personal concern for individual athletes); and (e) positive feedback for good performance. These dimensions are measured by a 40-item leadership scale for sports (LSS), which assesses athletes’ preferences for specific behaviors, their perceptions of their coach’s behaviors, and coaches’ perceptions of their own behavior. The scale has acceptable psychometric properties and has been used in many studies of coaches.

The multidimensional model predicts that athlete performance and satisfaction will be greatest when required (situationally elicited) behaviors, preferred leader behaviors, and actual leader behaviors are aligned. Although support has been found for this hypothesis (Chelladurai, 1984 , 2012 ), results have been inconsistent, with congruent findings for some subscales and not for others, and with inconsistent patterns across studies. In general, however, low discrepancies between training and instruction, social support, and positive feedback tend to be more often related to satisfaction, while autocratic behaviors that exceed preferences are aversive and related to dissatisfaction.

Clearly, other variables interact with the congruence measure in ways as yet undetermined. Of particular interest in this regard is the fact that preferred leader behaviors can vary among athletes. For example, athletes with high anxiety prefer more social support and positive feedback behaviors than do athletes with low anxiety, and athletes with low levels of motivation prefer autocratic behaviors that apparently substitute for internal motivation (Horn, Bloom, Berglund, & Packard, 2011 ). Older and more accomplished athletes prefer coaches who are both autocratic and socially supportive. Males prefer training and instructional and an autocratic style more than women do, whereas women tend to prefer a more democratic style. Studies have also shown marked differences across different nations and cultures (Chelladurai & Reimer, 1998 ). Thus, within this model, there is no “one size fits all” preferred coaching pattern. Rather, coaches who are flexible and can adapt their coaching behaviors to the situation and to the preferences of individual athletes are likely to be most successful.

Given the substantial amount of research involving the LSS, it is puzzling that although many positive findings have occurred in terms of differences between groups of athletes and support has been found for the importance of alignment between preferred and actual coach behaviors, relations between hypotheses derived from the multidimensional model and objective measures of performance have proven to be weaker than expected, and at times inconsistent with expectations (Chelladurai & Reimer, 2012 ). Objective performance is an understandably challenging target variable, as it is affected by many factors beyond leadership style, including athletic talent, unforeseen injuries, strength of opponents, and an array of psychological factors that are largely beyond the coach’s influence. Also, quantitative measures of broad classes of behavior, whether coded with the CBAS or reported, do not necessarily reflect important qualities of the behavior (e.g., instructional adequacy or encouragement delivered in a sarcastic fashion), a fact that can reduce relations to performance. Moreover, there is evidence that coaches are perceived as responding differentially to more and less successful athletes. In a study of collegiate football players, for example, higher-performing athletes (starters) rated their coaches as engaging in significantly higher levels of training and instruction, as having a more democratic and a less autocratic decision-making style, as being more socially supportive, and as offering more positive feedback than did lower-status athletes labeled “survivors” by their coaches. The latter perceived their coaches as more autocratic and as low on the other four behavioral dimensions. Additionally, longitudinal evidence exists that LSS behaviors are not stable over the course of a season, with instructional, democratic, and positive feedback showing the largest changes (Fletcher & Roberts, 2013 ). Temporal invariance could therefore affect perceived behavior scores on the LSS and cloud relationships of the LSS with other variables across studies.

Finally, the multidimensional model is complex, with many “moving parts.” It is possible that complex and as yet undiscovered interactions among mediating factors remain hidden, as in the mediation model, where nonsignificant overall relations between CBAS observed behaviors and attitudes toward the coach when behaviors were aggregated across game situations suddenly became highly significant when the game situation variable was taken into account.

Given the degree of conceptual overlap between the mediational and multidimensional models of coaching behavior, it is interesting to assess relations between the CBAS and the LSS. A study of high school athletes that related LSS scores to scores on the CBAS athlete form revealed strong relations between scores on the two scales, and both LSS and CBAS scores accounted for substantial and similar amount of variance in positive attitudes toward the coach (Cumming, Smith, & Smoll, 2006 ). For example, the CBAS categories accounted for 39% of the variance, and the LSS scales accounted for 37% of the variance in the amount of enjoyment experienced while playing for the coach. In accord with predictions made by Chelladurai ( 1993 ), the LSS positive feedback scale was highly correlated with the CBAS categories of reinforcement and general encouragement and negatively related to nonreinforcement. However, the same pattern was shown for the LSS social support scale and, in general, all of the positively toned CBAS behaviors correlated well with all of the LSS scales, except autocratic, the only scale that correlated positively with the punitive CBAS categories. In general, therefore, convergent validity greatly exceeded discriminant validity in the LSS-CBAS relations. High positive correlations among the training, democratic, positive feedback, and social support scales of the LSS add to the discriminant validity issue.

Achievement Goal Theory

No theory has had a greater impact on sport psychology over the past two decades than achievement goal theory (AGT). Originally developed to study motivation within the educational domain (Nicholls, 1989 ; Ames, 1992 ), the relevance of the theory to motivational issues in sport soon became apparent, inspiring a substantial amount of sport psychology research.

Achievement goal theory focuses on the function and the meaning of goal-directed actions, based on how participants define success and how they judge whether or not they have demonstrated competence. The two central constructs in the theory are individual goal orientations that guide achievement perceptions and behavior, and the motivational climate created within achievement settings. The theory posits two separate conceptions of success represented in mastery (task) and ego achievement goal orientations. In mastery orientation, success is self-referenced, defined in terms of personal improvement, enjoyment, effort, and learning from mistakes. In ego orientation, success is other-referenced, achieved through besting others or equaling their level of performance using minimal effort (Ames, 1992 ; Roberts, 2001 ).

According to AGT, how an individual defines success and competence is influenced by interacting dispositional and environmental factors. Environmental conditions that emphasize and reinforce mastery or ego success criteria comprise the motivational climate. Achievement goal theory posits two types of motivational climates that promote either mastery or ego conceptions of success. A mastery climate emphasizes enjoyment, giving maximum effort, and personal improvement as indicators of success, stresses the importance of each team member and promotes mutual support and cooperative learning. Mistakes are viewed not as something to be dreaded but as a natural consequence of learning and as providing the feedback needed to improve performance; coaches provide encouragement and corrective instruction when they occur.

In an ego climate, there is a strong emphasis on outcome. Success is defined as winning out over others; differential attention is focused on the best athletes; intrateam rivalry is promoted by comparing athletes favorably or unfavorably with one another; and mistakes are negatively evaluated and often punished (Ames, 1992 ; Roberts, 2001 ).

Achievement goal theory has inspired the development of sport-specific measures designed to assess differences in both achievement goal orientations and in motivational climates created by coaches, parents, and peers. The most widely employed coach-initiated motivational climate scale is the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire-2 (PIMCSQ-2; Newton, Duda, & Yin, 2000 ), which is appropriate by its reading level for adolescents and adult populations. An adaptation designed for children down to ages 8 or 9 is the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sport (MCSYS; Smith, Cumming, & Smoll, 2008 ). Both scales have separate mastery (task) and ego-climate subscales, but the PIMCSQ-2 also measures underlying facets of the task climate (i.e., cooperative learning, effort-improvement emphasis, and an important role for all participants) and ego climate (i.e., intrateam rivalry, unequal recognition, and punishment for mistakes). Most studies use the superordinate task and ego scales. The MCSYS mastery and ego scales correlate −.38, indicating that coaches engage in both classes of behavior. Sample mastery scale items are (a) “The coach told players to help each other get better,” (b) “The coach made players feel good when they improved a skill,” and (c) “Coach said that all of us were important to the team’s success.” Sample ego-scale items are (a) “Winning games was the most important thing for the coach,” (b) “Players were taken out of games if they made a mistake,” and (c) “The coach paid most attention to the best players.”

The motivational climate created by coaches has been shown to be related to a wide array of sport outcomes (Duda & Treasure, 2015 ; McArdle & Duda, 2002 ). As in educational settings, a strong body of empirical evidence shows that a mastery climate is linked to a wide array of positive outcomes, including enhanced enjoyment and satisfaction, higher levels of perceived competence and performance, lower performance anxiety, higher levels of self-esteem, and higher levels of intrinsic motivation for sport participation. A mastery environment fosters the belief that effort, which is controllable, is the key to sport success, whereas athletes in an ego climate place greater emphasis on ability. A mastery climate promotes greater goal persistence and sustained effort, and athletes tend to adopt adaptive achievement strategies such as selecting challenging tasks, giving maximum effort, persisting in the face of setbacks, and taking pride in personal improvement. In contrast, an ego-involving climate promotes social comparison as a basis for success judgments, whereas an ego environment yields discouragement when a positive outcome is not achieved. In a mastery climate, athletes show more positive and prosocial moral attitudes, whereas an ego climate is associated with greater willingness to cheat or do whatever is necessary to win. Finally, a mastery climate fosters greater team cohesion, attraction among team members, positive evaluations of the coach, and lower rates of sport attrition compared with an ego climate. Consistent with AGT, a large body of research shows that mastery and ego climates promote and strengthen corresponding goal orientations (Duda & Treasure, 2015 ). Over the course of a sport season, youth athletes exposed to a mastery climate exhibit increases in mastery goal orientation scores and decreases in ego goal orientation, whereas those in an ego climate show increases in ego goal orientation (Smith, Smoll, & Cumming, 2009 ).

Notably, behaviors associated with mastery and ego climates are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are a matter of emphasis. Most coaches engage in a mixture of mastery- and ego-oriented behaviors, particularly during competition, when the orientation is likely to shift the outcome. The same is true of athletes’ goal orientations. Highly successful athletes often have an overall mastery orientation but shift into an ego-oriented state during competition, when the focus is on winning.

One indicator of the influence of the motivational climate comes from studies comparing its effects on athletes’ reactions to their sport experience with team success (win-loss record). In a study of 10- to 15-year-old athletes, their team’s winning percentage was positively related to athletes’ judgments of their coaches’ perceived knowledge and teaching ability, but motivational climate accounted for far more variance than did winning percentage in terms of how much they liked playing for the coach and wished to do so in the future (Cumming et al., 2007 ). In a later study of adolescent basketball players, motivational climate exhibited stronger and more pervasive relations to the athletes’ attitudes toward the coach, teammates, and the sport experience than did winning (Breiger, Cumming, Smith, & Smoll, 2015 ). For both boys and girls, winning percentage was related to enjoyment derived from playing the sport and intention to continue participation the following season. Likewise, for both boys and girls, mastery climate scores were positively and significantly related to enjoyment playing on the team, liking for the coach, and perceived liking by the coach. However, the results also showed that gender influences athletes’ responses to both winning and to the motivational climate. An ego climate clearly had a more negative impact on girls, with ego climate scores being negatively related to how much girls liked the sport, how much fun they had playing on their teams, and how much they believed the coach liked them.

An ego climate also affected the importance of win-loss record in ways a mastery climate did not. For both boys and girls, significant relations were found between winning percentage and liking for the sport, personal importance of winning, and intention to return the following year. Nonetheless, gender differences also occurred. In an ego climate, liking for and desire to again play for the coach, liking for teammates and enjoyment playing on the team were positively related to winning record for boys, but not for girls. Enjoyment playing on the team and desire to play for the coach again were positively and significantly related to winning record for boys, but not for girls. It thus appears that winning within an ego climate is more important than it is in a mastery climate, but that winning may affect different attitudes and aspects of the experience for boys than for girls.

Motivational climate research has focused attention on the coach-athlete relationship. Building upon this foundation, several new conceptual models have appeared that focus on the quality of the relationship that is to be found particularly within a mastery climate. Relational coaching (Jowett, 2009 ) focuses on four important aspects of the coach-athlete relationship: (a) mutual closeness, (b) commitment to the relationship, (c) complementarity (ability to work cooperatively), and (d) co-orientation (the ability to view the relationship from both one’s own and the other’s perspective). The Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire is used to measure these aspects of the relationship, and research using this measure shows that relationships that are high on these factors produce the most enjoyable and productive coach-athlete climate.

Another derivative conception, again related to the mastery climate but not identical with it, is the caring environment, where individuals are made to feel a sense of belonging and in which participants treat one another with kindness and mutual respect. Research on the caring environment has shown that the positive emotions produced by such an environment mediate positive well-being in athletes (Fry, Guivernau, Kim, Newton, Gano-Overway, & Magyar, 2012 ).

All of the AGT results cited so far are based on athlete perceptions of the motivational climate, using either the PMCSQ or the MCSYS instruments. This is an entirely defensible approach, for as the mediational model described earlier emphasizes, it is the athlete’s perceptions of the climate that mediate the effects of coach behaviors on outcome variables. Nonetheless, the need to assess the actual climate-relevant behaviors of coaches from both methodological and theoretical perspectives has repeatedly been cited (N. Smith et al., 2015 ). A new theoretical advance integrating AGT and self-determination theory, described in the following section, has inspired the development of a new observation system tied to the expanded model.

Self-Determination Theory

A recent theoretical advance integrates AGT with another prominent motivational theory that has special relevance to sport-related motivation (Duda, 2013 ). Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000 ) focuses on factors that influence the development of motivation, particularly intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The relative strength of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation determines an individual’s sense of autonomy, the extent to which behavior is viewed as self-governed. Together with competence (the perceived mastery over behavior) and relatedness (the perceived sense of belonging), autonomy is considered a basic need that facilitates psychological well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2000 ). SDT proposes that the social environment influences the extent to which these basic needs are satisfied.

SDT holds that internal and external behavioral goals are distributed on a continuum of self-determination. On the self-determined end lies intrinsic motivation, where actions are performed in the service of inherent enjoyment of the activity. The continuum also contains three different variants of extrinsic motivation. From higher to lower self-determination, these are termed (a) identified regulation (in which behavior is related to other goals, such as engaging in the sport to lose weight or improve conditioning), (b) introjected regulation (in which behavior functions to avoid a negative emotion or for ego enhancement), and (c) external regulation (in which the behavior is performed for external reasons, such as tangible rewards or the avoidance of punishment). SDT also retains the concept of amotivation, in which behavior loses all reinforcement value and occurs largely out of habit (e.g., “I’m not sure why I swim any more.”). Generally, because behavior is guided more by external incentives or becomes amotivated, positive qualities of human nature are hindered, whereas greater self-determination or autonomy allows positive qualities to flourish (Deci & Ryan, 2000 ). An imposing literature both within and outside of sport supports this contention and demonstrates superior well-being (i.e., high feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness) under conditions that foster high intrinsic motivation (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000 ; Duda, 2013 ; Amorose & Anderson-Butcher, 2015 ).

The integration of AGT and SDT was inspired by clear conceptual overlap between a mastery motivational climate and situational factors identified in SDT research that promoted the satisfaction of autonomy, relatedness, and competency needs, as well as strong evidence that a mastery motivational climate had salutary effects on the need variables within SDT. Moreover, in the prediction of meaningful sport outcomes, concurrently applying AGT and SDT measures as predictor variables accounted for overlapping but also independent sources of variance (Quested & Duda, 2010 ), and they also related differentially to important aspects of athlete well-being and quality of functioning. Duda ( 2013 ) advanced a hierarchical multidimensional model of empowering and disempowering motivational climates. An empowering environment is mastery-oriented, socially supportive, and autonomy supportive of internal self-regulation. A disempowering climate is ego oriented, punitive, nonsupportive, and controlling.

Although applications of the model are in their relative infancy, both perceived and behavioral-observation measures of the integrated motivational climate have been developed. A 30-item Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire-Coach (EDMCQ-C; Appleton, Ntoumanis, Quested, Viladrich, & Duda, 2016 ) allows athletes to rate their coach’s climate relevant behavior on an agree-disagree scale and is used to measure five dimensions of the perceived motivational climate: (a) task involved, (b) ego involved, (c) controlling, (d) autonomy supportive, and (e) socially supportive.

A behavioral observational system, the Multidimensional Motivational Climate Observation System (MMCOS; N. Smith et al., 2015 ) provides a measure used to rate the measure the coach’s observed behaviors in relation to the theoretical model. It is a complex system, consisting of two superordinate dimensions (empowering and disempowering) seven environmental dimensions (autonomy support, controlling, task-involving, ego-involving, relatedness support, relatedness thwarting, and structure), and 32 lower-order coaching strategies that are checked off and used to rate the higher-order dimensions. The system is used to code temporally or event-defined segments (e.g., 5-minute segments in a soccer match). The MMCOS is clearly more complex than the CBAS and provides a more nuanced behavioral profile. However, unlike the CBAS and other behavioral coding systems, it is not a quantitative measure of the frequency with which observed behaviors actually occur; rather, it is a set of observer ratings.

Initial assessment of the construct validity of the perceived and observed behavior measures have been conducted with large multinational samples of athletes representing a variety of sports. One study that assessed relationships between athlete-perceived (EDMCQ-C) and observed (MMCOS) behaviors as well as the relations of both measures to athlete indices of autonomous (internal), externally controlled motivation, and amotivation (N. Smith, Tessier, Tzioumakis, Fabra, Quested, Appleton et al., 2016 ). None of the correlations between athlete-perceived and observed behaviors providing indices of the five empowering and disempowering dimensions exceeded .09, reflecting less than 1% common variance, a figure far lower than that obtained with the CBAS categories derived from social learning theory in a youth sport sample similar in age. Likewise, relationships between the MCCOS behavior measures and the theoretically related athlete motivation measures were quite low, ranging from −.01 to .09 and accounting for less than 1% of the motivational outcome variance. Correlations of the athlete-perceived EDMCQ-C measures with the athlete motivation variables were more favorable, with correlations exceeding .30 found between coach controlling and ego-oriented behaviors and athletes’ externally controlled motivation and amotivation. These results lend stronger evidence for the construct validity of the athlete-perceived measure than those reported for the observational measure. In another study, empowering climate scores on the EDMCQ-C were positively related to enjoyment and self-esteem and negatively related to reduced accomplishment, devaluation, and physical health symptoms, whereas a disempowering climate was negatively related to enjoyment and self-esteem, and positively related to athlete burnout and negative health symptoms (Appleton & Duda, 2016 ). However, a more sophisticated analysis that simultaneously assessed the interactive effects of empowering and disempowering motivational climates accounted for only about 1% of the variance in these targeted outcome variables. Buffering the effects of disempowering coach behaviors required a very high level of empowering behaviors. This result is consistent with CBAS findings that although punitive behavior categories occur with far less frequency than do the positive behaviors (also shown in the observational data of N. Smith et al., 2016 ), they have a disproportionate negative impact on athletes by creating an aversive sport environment.

Enhancing Coaching Effectiveness

There has never been any question that coaches occupy a central role in sports, exerting key influence on sport outcomes through their roles as teachers and strategic planners, and in the relationships they form with athletes and parents. Understandably, therefore, enhancing their pedagogical, strategic, and interpersonal capabilities has long been a focus within sport and exercise psychology. Two lines of emphasis are evident that, historically, have occurred along relatively independent tracks. The first involves instruction in motor learning principles and strategic techniques designed to develop athletes’ physical skills and optimal strategic decision making by coaches. The second emphasis, of more recent origin, is focused on helping coaches to create a psychosocial sport environment that enhances outcomes for athletes. As empirical evidence, such as that reviewed in the previous section, has accumulated showing consistent relationships between coaching behaviors and their impact on athletes and team functioning, coach interventions addressing this domain have been developed.

Enhancing Strategic and Instructional Capabilities

Motor skill learning is highly sport specific, but a strong science base has emerged on general principles involved in learning, maintaining, and improving such skills (Coker, 2013 ; Magill, 2013 ). The dominant model divides the motor learning process into three phases: the cognitive, associative, and autonomous phases. Each of these requires different coaching techniques. In the cognitive phase, explanations and demonstrations by the coach allow athletes to develop a motor program, a set of internal representations, and self-instructions to guide the movement. With practice and feedback, both from the athlete’s sensory systems and from the coach, the motor program is revised, corrected, and refined so that the skill is executed in an increasingly synchronized fashion. The coach designs exercises and practice routines, adjusts instruction depending on the progress being shown, gives corrective feedback, and provides encouragement to facilitate the process.

Once the athlete can execute the skill in the way it was demonstrated, the associative phase begins. In this intermediate phase of learning, the learner has moved from having a general idea of how to perform the skill to being able to perform it accurately and consistently. Speed, accuracy, coordination, and consistency improves even further and the athlete develops an implicit “feel” for the activity based on a more autonomous motor program and the ability to self-correct when errors occur. The coach’s role is now to utilize the skill in actual sport situations and to plan strategy, largely by designing effective practices that allow the athlete to apply the skill to simulated or real competitive situations. Error correction requires the ability to detect increasingly subtle errors and to provide demonstrations and feedback in a manner that can be used for further refinement and skill application. In closed skills (e.g., bowling or free throw shooting), the environment is fairly constant, and consistency of movement is the primary focus. In open skills, where the environment is diverse and unpredictable (e.g., in golf), the coach must help the athlete diversify the movement to meet environmental demands and teach the athlete which environmental cues are key to planning and making adjustments. The provision of effective feedback continues to be an important function of the coach during this phase.

In the autonomous or advanced phase of skill learning, the motor program is run off with little conscious thought or attention to the movement. Indeed, conscious attention to the movement can degrade performance by disrupting the automaticity of the highly developed skill sequence. As Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time.” The phrase “paralysis by analysis,” popular among coaches and athletes, captures the phenomenon. Performance slumps are perpetuated by cognitive interference with the normal flow of skill execution. During this phase, the major demands on the coach involve highly refined practice routines, subtle error correction, and encouragement and motivational overtures where needed. At this level, exquisite understanding of the skill and ability to communicate effectively are prime requisites for effective coaching. Excellent resources are available to help coaches at all levels of sport refine their sport-specific teaching and strategic skills (e.g., Coker, 2013 ; Martens, 2012 ). Among the newer additions to the coach’s performance enhancement tool kit is instruction in utilizing and teaching athletes not only motor and strategic skills, but also empirically supported psychological skills such as systematic goal setting, attention control, stress management, self-talk, confidence, and mental rehearsal procedures (e.g., Burton & Raedeke, 2008 ).

Enhancing Psychosocial Outcomes in Athletes

Increased awareness of the manner in which the coach-athlete relationship can positively or adversely affect not only skill development but also a wide range of psychosocial outcomes in athletes of all ages is attributable to an enormous body of empirical research. Coaching behaviors have been shown to influence athletes’ self-esteem, motivation, performance anxiety, attitudes toward their sport experience, peer relationships, burnout, psychological skills development, physical well-being, and sport attrition. Concerns about athletes’ well-being, an alarming sport dropout rate exceeding 30% per year in young athletes (Gould, 1987 ) and, in some cases, formal legislation requiring training for youth sport coaches, has stimulated the development of many training programs for coaches over the past four decades. Unfortunately, development has far outstripped systematic evaluation of their effects.

Coach Effectiveness Training/Mastery Approach to Coaching

Widespread concerns about adult-created problems in youth sports prompted the Youth Enrichment in Sports program of research and application. The aims of the project, carried out in two phases were (a) to study relations between coaching behaviors and young athletes’ reactions to their youth sport experience and (b) to use the empirical results as the basis for an evidence-based intervention for coaches (Smith et al., 1978 ). Cognitive social learning theory (Bandura, 1986 ; Mischel, 1973 ) formed the basis for instrument development (e.g., the CBAS) and the intervention procedures, which involved modeling and role playing of desirable behaviors and coach self-monitoring of their behaviors to enhance awareness. A more comprehensive discussion of cognitive-behavioral principles and techniques used in conducting psychologically oriented coach training programs appears elsewhere (Smoll & Smith, 2015 ). Essentially, however, the intervention is designed to influence observed and athlete-perceived coaching behaviors, and these changes, are thought to mediate other effects of the training on young athletes.

Data derived from two large-scale phase 1 studies provided clear links between the CBAS dimensions of supportiveness, instructiveness, and punitiveness and athletes’ reactions to their coach, their teammates, and other aspects of their experience. Phase 2 involved the development and evaluation of a brief and highly focused intervention for youth sport coaches based on the evidence-based phase 1 findings. The intervention initially was called Coach Effectiveness Training (CET). With the development of AGT a decade later, it became clear that the CET guidelines (particularly its conception of success) were entirely consistent with the mastery motivational climate described by AGT, and a later version of the intervention formally introduced motivational climate content. The 75-minute intervention was therefore renamed the Mastery Approach to Coaching (MAC).

The MAC program incorporates two major themes. First, it strongly emphasizes the distinction between positive versus aversive control of behavior (Smith, 2015 ). In a series of coaching “do’s and don’ts” derived from the foundational phase 1 research on coaching behaviors and their effects, coaches are encouraged to increase four specific behaviors: (a) positive reinforcement, (b) mistake-contingent encouragement, (c) corrective instruction given in a positive and encouraging fashion, and (d) sound technical instruction. Coaches are urged to avoid nonreinforcement of positive behaviors, punishment for mistakes, and punitive technical instruction following mistakes. They are also instructed how to establish team rules and reinforce compliance with them to avoid discipline problems, and to reinforce socially supportive behaviors among team members. These guidelines, which are summarized in Table 1 , are designed to increase positive coach-athlete interactions, enhance team solidarity, reduce fear of failure, and promote a positive atmosphere for skill development.

The second important MAC theme is a conception of success as giving maximum effort and becoming the best one can be, rather than an emphasis on winning or outperforming others. Derived from Coach John Wooden’s definition of success as “the sense of self-satisfaction from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming,” (Wooden & Carty, 2005 , p. 12), MAC-trained coaches are thus encouraged to adopt a four-part philosophy of winning (Smith & Smoll, 2012 , pp. 27–28):

Winning isn’t everything, nor is it the only thing . Young athletes cannot get the most out of sports if they think that the only objective is to beat their opponents. Although winning is an important goal, it is not the most important objective.

Failure is not the same thing as losing . It is important that athletes do not view losing as a sign of failure or as a threat to their personal value.

Success is not equivalent to winning . Neither success nor failure need depend on the outcome of a contest or on a win-loss record. Winning and losing pertain to the outcome of a contest, whereas success and failure do not.

Athletes should be taught that success is found in striving for victory (i.e., success is related to commitment and effort). Athletes should be taught that they are never “losers” if they give maximum effort.

This philosophy, which is highly congruent with a mastery motivational climate, is designed to maximize young athletes’ enjoyment of sport and their chances of deriving the benefits of participation, partly as a result of combating competitive anxiety. Although seeking victory is encouraged as inherent to competitive sports, the ultimate importance of winning is reduced relative to other participation motives. In recognition of the inverse relation between enjoyment and postcompetition stress (Smith, Smoll, & Passer, 2002 ), fun is highlighted as the paramount objective. The philosophy also promotes separation of the athlete’s feelings of self-worth from the game’s outcome, which serves to help overcome fear of failure. The mastery-oriented coaching guidelines and philosophy of winning are thus consistent with the procedures successfully designed by Ames ( 1992 ) and Epstein ( 1988 ) to create a mastery learning climate in the classroom. The behavioral guidelines that form the core of the MAC intervention are shown in Table 1 . The MAC workshop, together with supporting materials, is now available online at www.y-e-sports.org .

Table 1. Summary of Mastery Approach to Coaching Guidelines

Note . Excerpted from the manual given to MAC workshop participants (Smoll & Smith, 2009 ).

A notable finding from observational studies is that coaches have very limited awareness of how they behave, as indicated by low correlations between observed and coach-rated behaviors (N. Smith et al., 2016 ; R. Smith et al., 1978 ). Because behavior change does not occur without awareness of one’s behavior, MAC coaches are taught the use of two proven behavioral-change techniques, namely, behavioral feedback and self-monitoring. To obtain feedback, coaches are encouraged to work with their assistants as a team and share descriptions of each others’ behaviors. Another feedback procedure involves coaches soliciting input directly from their athletes. With respect to self-monitoring, the workshop manual includes a brief Coach Self-Report Form, containing nine items related to the behavioral guidelines that coaches complete after practices and games (Smoll & Smith, 2009 , p. 25). On the form, coaches are asked how often they engaged in the recommended behaviors in relevant situations.

The CET/MAC intervention has been evaluated numerous times in experimental and quasi-experimental studies since its development (for more detailed reviews, see Smith & Smoll, 2011 ; Smoll & Smith, 2015 ). The outcomes supporting the efficacy of the coach-training program are summarized here:

Differences between experimental and control group coaches occurred in both observed and athlete-perceived coach behaviors in accordance with the behavioral guidelines (Smith et al., 1979 ; Smoll, Smith, & Cumming, 2007 ; Lewis et al., 2014 ).

Trained coaches were better liked and rated as better teachers; and their athletes reported more fun playing the sport, and a higher level of attraction among teammates. Increases in athletes’ perceptions of both task-related and social group cohesion have also been reported for youngsters who played for trained versus untrained coaches (Smith et al., 1979 ; McLaren, Eys, & Murray, 2015 ).

Athletes’ reports of their team’s coach-initiated motivational climate clearly supported the efficacy of the intervention. In this regard, trained coaches received significantly higher mastery-climate scores and lower ego-climate scores on the MCSYS climate measure compared with untrained coaches. Moreover, in accord with AGT, male and female athletes who played for trained coaches exhibited increases in mastery goal orientation scores and significant decreases in ego orientation scores. In contrast, athletes who played for control group coaches did not change in their goal orientations from preseason to late season. Paralleling the significant difference between intervention and control groups in sport-related mastery scores, a significant group difference was found on the mastery score of an academic achievement goal scale as well, suggesting generalization of achievement goals (Smoll et al., 2007 ).

Consistent with a self-esteem enhancement model, children with low self-esteem who played for trained coaches show significant increases in feelings of self-worth. Youngsters with low self-esteem in the control group did not change (Smith et al., 1979 ; Smoll, Smith, Barnett, & Everett, 1993 ; Coatsworth & Conroy, 2006 ).

Athletes who played for trained coaches showed significant decreases in sport performance anxiety over the course of the season (Smith, Smoll, & Barnett, 1995 ; Conroy & Coatsworth, 2004 ; Smith, Smoll, & Cumming, 2007 ).

Attrition in youth sports is a pervasive concern that has negative health and psychosocial implications. With the win-loss record controlled, children who played for untrained youth baseball coaches dropped out of all sports the following season at a rate of 26%, whereas those who played for trained coaches had only a 5% dropout rate (Barnett, Smoll, & Smith, 1992 ).

Traditionally, CET/MAC training has been offered in a workshop format. However, many sport psychologists work with individual coaches. A recent and promising adaptation is the Individualized Program for Counseling Coaches (Sousa, Smith, & Cruz, 2008 ; Cruz, Mora, Sousa, & Alcaraz, 2016 ). This individualized intervention combines MAC principles and behavioral guidelines with behavioral feedback and systematic goal setting to help coaches modify their behavior in accordance with their own behavioral objectives.

The intervention occurs in six steps. First, the CBAS is used to code the coach’s behaviors during a series of practices and matches to provide an average of 250–400 coded behaviors, thereby providing baseline data to help coaches become more aware of their coaching pattern and to assess postintervention changes. Next, a 60-minute session is held to go over basic principles concerning the motivational climate and its effects on athletes. In a second 60-minute session, the behavioral guidelines shown in Table 1 are presented in an interactive fashion. In the following session, the coach is presented with his or her behavioral profile derived from the CBAS observations, summarized in terms of the three factorial dimensions of supportiveness, punitiveness, and instructiveness, together with feedback on which behaviors would best be increased or decreased to optimize the coach’s effectiveness. The coach is then asked to select three CBAS categories that they want to increase or decrease. Finally, role playing is used to help the coach rehearse the target behaviors with the guidance of the trainer. The coach is encouraged to self-monitor during subsequent practices and matches and are given guidelines and reminders. CBAS data as well as athlete and coach reports are then collected during two subsequent practices and two matches as at baseline.

The results of the intervention have been very encouraging. In separate single-subject studies involving a total of 5 coaches, the trained coaches have exhibited behavior changes in accordance with their goals in most instances, increasing desirable behaviors and reducing negative ones (Sousa et al., 2008 ; Cruz et al., 2016 ). Of additional interest, generalization effects have been shown in behavior categories that were not specifically targeted by the coach, yielding a more positive behavioral profile overall following the intervention. For example, coaches who chose to increase positive reinforcement and encouragement showed a concomitant drop in punitive behaviors. These behavior changes were in most cases consistent with athlete’s perceptions of the coach’s behaviors on the athlete perception CBAS questionnaire. The encouraging results obtained in these single-coach studies indicate that this adaptation is worthy of further investigation and that its use of feedback and individualized goal setting, both of which have strong empirical support, is a significant feature of the training program.

Despite the rapid proliferation of coach education programs since the early 1970s, almost all of the systematic outcome research on the efficacy of coach training has been done with the CET/MAC program (Langan, Blake, & Lonsdale, 2013 ). Evidence for the efficacy of the intervention has now been provided by five different research groups. Based on the outcome studies, it appears that the empirically derived behavioral principles can be readily applied by coaches and that their application has salutary effects on a range of psychosocial outcome variables in young male and female athletes. However, there is a need for further research, particularly follow-up studies to assess the longer-term impact of the intervention on both coaches and athletes.

Empowering Coaching

The integration of AGT with SDT (Duda, 2013 ) is a major theoretical advance that has resulted in the concept of empowering and disempowering motivational climates. In an empowering climate, athletes strive for mastery goals, feel a sense of belonging, and believe they have a choice over how they behave. In a disempowering environment, the emphasis is on ego goals, punishment is applied, and athletes feel controlled by their coach.

Based on this model, an Empowering Coaching TM intervention was developed, applied, and evaluated in five European countries. The intervention is of 6 hours duration and educates coaches about the tenets of AGT and SDT relating to task and ego climates and intrinsic-extrinsic motivation and offers guidelines for increasing the empowering climate and reducing its disempowering aspects. Video clips and reflective exercises are designed to engage coaches in the content of the workshop (for a more detailed descriptions of the project and the intervention, see Duda, 2013 ; Project PAPA, 2016 ). The program’s emphasis differs somewhat from the CET/MAC empirically based behavioral guidelines approach:

Furthermore, this education programme is not about providing coaches with a “laundry list” of strategies or responses they can and should employ when interacting with their athletes . . . Rather, . . . the aim is to develop coaches’ conceptual understanding of motivation, motivation processes and their consequences. It is assumed that this enhanced “working knowledge” will make it more likely that a more empowering approach to coaching will be adopted, maintained, and generalized to different situations (Duda, 2013 , p. 315).

The intervention was tested in the largest experimental trial undertaken to date, involving 175 clubs, 854 teams, and 7,769 children in five European countries. Outcome variables involved athletes’ perceptions of empowering and disempowering aspects of the motivational climate using the behavioral EDMCQ-C measure, as well as measures of self-esteem, enjoyment, anxiety, and intentions to drop out. Some children wore accelerometers to record activity level during the week, and a subset of coaches was filmed so that their behaviors could be coded using the MCCOS observational instrument.

Several positive results were obtained. Behavioral observations in a subset of trained coaches revealed a more empowering and less disempowering climate over the course of the season. Children who played for trained coaches viewed their motivational climate as less disempowering (but not more empowering) and rated themselves as less likely to drop out of their program. However, no statistically significant positive outcomes have been reported for other important athlete variables, including autonomy, competence, and relatedness need satisfaction, enjoyment, self-esteem, anxiety, athlete burnout, and increased physical activity (Project PAPA, 2016 ). Possibly, the Empowering Coaches TM programs’ heavy emphasis on theoretical and conceptual content interfered with the development of the kind of rule-governed behavior that has been shown to result from adherence to specific behavioral guidelines (Baldwin & Baldwin, 2001 ). A more focused approach with greater emphasis on clear and specific behavioral guidelines may prove more efficacious while at the same time resulting in a more time-limited intervention.

Undoubtedly, coaches play a vital role in the athletic environment, and their behaviors influence the technical, cognitive, strategic, and psychosocial development of athletes. There is a wealth of empirical support for methods of teaching technical skills. The same is not the case in the psychosocial domain. Despite the substantial number of coach intervention programs developed over the past 30 years designed to enhance psychosocial outcomes, it is rather astounding that only a few of these programs have undergone any evaluation of efficacy. Coach training, particularly in the area of youth sports, has become a large-scale commercial enterprise in the United States. The American Sport Education Program , the National Youth Sports Coaches Association , and the Positive Coaching Alliance are among the most visible. Unfortunately, however, although their content does not deviate from what has been established empirically as producing a positive athletic climate, virtually nothing is known about what effects these specific programs actually have on coaches and athletes and how well they achieve their objectives. This absence of empirical attention is understandable, as developers of existing programs have been focused primarily on development, marketing, and dissemination rather than evaluation, and they have not had the benefit of research grants to support evaluation research. However, evaluation research is not only desirable, but essential to providing coaches with the quality of evidence-based training that will have the most salutary impact on their athletes. In the words of Lipsey and Cordray ( 2000 ), “the overarching goal of the program evaluation enterprise is to contribute to the improvement of social conditions by providing scientifically credible information and balanced judgment to legitimate social agents about the effectiveness of interventions intended to produce social benefits” (p. 346).

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