Promoting Athletes’ Motivation and Engagement: Towards a Refinement of Coaches’ Motivating Style Based on Self-Determination Theory

Besides its health-enhancing benefits, sport participation has shown to positively affect youth athletes’ psychosocial (e.g., cooperation), behavioral (e.g., being persistent), and leadership (e.g., being assertive) development (Côté, 2002; Eley & Kirk, 2002; Wright & Côté, 2003). Coaches take up a crucial role in motivating their athletes towards long-term sport participation, as they can be considered as the most important socializing agents within a sport club. Regarding specific coach behaviors which foster athletes’ motivation, Self-Determination Theory (SDT: Deci & Ryan, 2000) suggests that coaches should aim to support athletes’ basic psychological needs (i.e., need for autonomy, competence & relatedness). An extensive amount of research focused on identifying different coaching styles which either promote the satisfaction (i.e., autonomy support and structure) or frustration (i.e., control and chaos) of these basic psychological needs. Yet, the first aim of the current dissertation was to provide a more refined, integrated, and nuanced perspective on these (de)motivating coaching styles (i.e., Chapter 2 & 4). Second, we aimed to examine whether coaches could be trained in adopting an autonomy-supportive and structuring attitude by testing the effectiveness of a newly developed need-supportive intervention program.

Towards a refined and integrative insight in (de)motivating coaching - Chapter 2

Most of the studies considered autonomy support, structure, chaos and control as rather distinctive coaching styles, thereby largely disregarding how they relate with each other. However, as such a categorical separation may not correctly reflect reality, a more gradual approach may be appropriate to get a more refined insight in the differences between and within these coaching styles. To get such a more refined insight in the relation between need-supportive (i.e., autonomy support and structure) and need-thwarting (i.e., control and chaos) coaching styles, we first developed a new situation-specific and sport-focused instrument, involving vignettes which represent frequently occurring and specific coach-athlete interactions. Using this newly developed instrument, we examined how autonomy-supportive, structuring, controlling and chaotic coaching styles related to each other within a sample of both athletes (N = 377) and coaches (N = 893) from different sport types. Relying on Multidimensional Scaling analyses (MDS: Borg, Groenen, & Mair, 2013), four quadrants of coaching practices, representing the coaching styles of autonomy support, structure, control and chaos, could be identified along a circumplex structure. Moreover, within each of these identified coaching styles, different co-occuring coach practices clustered together into more specific approaches. More specifically, the four coaching styles of autonomy support (i.e., participative and attuning), structure (i.e., guiding and clarifying), control (i.e., demanding and domineering), and chaos (i.e., awaiting and abandoning) could each be segmented in two more specific approaches. Furthermore, correlations between the eight approaches and critical external outcomes (e.g., autonomous motivation and athletes’ ratings of coach quality) showed a systematic sinusoid pattern. More specifically, whereas these outcomes showed the strongest positive associations with approaches situated at the most need-supportive end (i.e., attuning and guiding), they showed a negative pattern of correlations with the domineering, abandoning and awaiting approach. Following the idea of a gradual perspective, not all of the coaching approaches should therefore be considered as equally need-nurturing or need-thwarting. More specifically, the attuning (i.e., autonomy support) and guiding (i.e., structure) approaches could be considered as being need-nurturing approaches as they seem to support athletes’ psychological needs in a more direct way. Differently, the participative (i.e., autonomy) and clarifying (i.e., structure) approaches could be characterized as need-enabling because they more indirectly provide opportunities for athletes’ needs to be satisfied. Next, the demanding (i.e., control) and awaiting (i.e., chaos) approaches may neither actively support nor thwart one’s needs or motivation straightforward, but rather inhibit possible need support or facilitate possible need thwarting, and can therefore be seen as more need-depriving. Finally, domineering (i.e., control) and the abandoning (i.e., chaos) approaches can be considered as directly need-thwarting. These findings highlight the importance of a fine-grained perspective towards (de)motivating coaching, with coaching approaches differing from one another in more gradual instead of categorical approach.

Can coaches be trained in being need-supportive? - Chapter 3  

Given previous research, which emphasized the positive role of an autonomy-supportive and structuring coaching style in motivating athletes, the second aim of this dissertation was to investigate coaches’ trainability in adopting a need-supportive coaching style. Because SDT-interventional research in the sport context is rather scarce, we tried to contribute to current literature by developing a need-supportive intervention program and testing it in terms of its effectiveness. A multi-informant approach (i.e., coach and athlete reports) within a broad variety of both team and individual sport types showed that coaches’ need-supportive coaching style changed after following the intervention program. More specifically, coaches in the intervention group reported positive changes regarding self-reported autonomy support (pre-post) and structure (post-follow-up), and negative changes in control (i.e., from pre-post and post-follow-up), when compared with coaches in control group. In line with these results, also athletes reported positive changes in perceived autonomy-supportive and structuring behavior. Yet, athletes did not perceive changes in controlling coaching, whereas a significant interaction effect was found with respect to perceived chaotic coaching behavior. Moreover, athletes whose coaches followed the intervention program reported positive changes regarding their autonomous motivation and engagement. Remarkably, when differentiating between type of sport (i.e., individual versus team sports) results indicated that the abovementioned findings hold on among athletes of individual sports but differed among athletes of team sports. That is, besides effects on perceived chaos and athletes’ autonomous motivation, team sport athletes did not report significant positive changes regarding coaches’ autonomy support and structure, and athletes’ engagement. Taken together, the results of this study are hopeful as findings show that coaches could be trained to adopt a need-supportive coaching style, which is, in turn, essential in order to keep athletes engaged and motivated towards sustainable sport participation (Gillet et al., 2012; Carlman et al., 2013).

The role of demanding and domineering behavior in team sports - Chapter 4

Within the context of team sports, Chapter 4 examined associations between demanding or domineering behavior and athletes’ motivational outcomes, especially when these approaches are combined with need-supportive coach behavior (i.e., autonomy support and structure). More specifically, within a sample of team sport athletes (N = 317), K – means cluster analyses were performed to study the role of coaches’ demanding and domineering behavior in athletes’ motivational outcomes (i.e., autonomous motivation, controlled motivation and engagement) when accompanied by either an autonomy-supportive or structuring style. Aligning with theoretical assumptions of the circumplex structure obtained in Chapter 2, results showed that controlling (i.e., domineering and demanding) and need-supportive (i.e., autonomy and structure) behaviors may both co-occur to certain levels. Importantly, configurations including the presence of a highly domineering approach showed a negative pattern of associations with all motivational outcomes, indicating the use of a domineering approach to be detrimental in coaching team sport athletes. Therefore, coaches should avoid the use of domineering coaching strategies, as no single athlete will benefit from guilt- and anxiety-induction, intimidation or personal attack. In contrast, when coaches adopt a demanding approach in combination with being highly autonomy-supportive or structuring, athletes reported high levels of autonomous motivation and engagement, suggesting that in a team sport setting the use of demanding strategies does not necessarily have to harm athletes’ autonomous motivation and engagement as long as they are complemented with high levels of autonomy-support or structure. However, coaches should be aware of potential pitfalls of a demanding approach as it may induce higher levels of controlled motivation and open the door towards a more domineering approach.

Final conclusion

The current dissertation aimed to advance current SDT-research in the sport context by providing more refined, integrated, and nuanced perspective on (de)motivating coaching behavior. First, the identification of a circumplex structure regarding coaches’ motivating styles and its underlying approaches suggests that, instead of a categorical, a more gradual approach towards (de)motivating coaching is warranted. Extending this gradual perspective, we found that controlling (i.e., domineering and demanding) and need-supportive (i.e., autonomy and structure) behaviors may both occur in a simultaneous or differentiated way in multiple configurations, which further emphasizes the gradual perspective on these different coaching behaviors. Furthermore, new insights in controlling coach behavior in team sports are presented, with a domineering approach being strongly discouraged, while demanding behavior seem to not harm athletes’ motivational outcomes, but only when coaches show high levels of autonomy-supportive or structuring behavior. Finally, this dissertation provided evidence for the trainability of coaches to adopt a need-supportive (i.e., autonomy support and structure) coaching style, which in turn will benefit athletes’ autonomous motivation and engagement.