Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter:Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach

Coach observations come with benefits for aiding behavioural understanding and improvement in coaching, but we don't discuss their innate problems enough. Yet we seem to rely on observational data or perception at an increasing rate for coach education and sense making. Coach observations carry baggage, in terms of their validity and reliability and in this episode I flesh out this problem. Both through the scientific lens and the relational lens of coaching, which are best viewed - and used - synergistically to achieve meaningful learning while mitigating against errors. This conversation serve to elaborate on an argument I started in a previous episode: The information fallacy in coach behaviour change.

Learn more about your host and access my services:

https://markjcarrollcoaching.wordpress.com/consultancy/

Connect with me on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjcarrollresearcher/

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter:Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach

If a coach is controlling but shows high relatedness towards an athlete, does the relatedness buffer the control? Not quite, it turns out. In this episode I chat to Elisa Lefever, Doctoral Assistant at Gent University, about the intriguing cautionary findings of a recent paper determining the interacting impacts of coach control and relatedness on athlete performance, anxiety, burnout, and engagement.

Paper discussed:

Lefever, E., Flamant, N., Morbée, S., Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Ntoumanis, N., & Haerens, L. (2025). Does a closer coach-athlete bond buffer or exacerbate the detrimental effects of controlling coaching on athletes’ coping and outcomes?. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 20(1), 56-69.

Learn more about your host and access my services:

https://markjcarrollcoaching.wordpress.com/consultancy/

Connect with me on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjcarrollresearcher/

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter:Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach

Learning more about what you should do as a coach should directly help improve your behaviour, right? Not quite. More information on your what, without knowing you why and how, leads to frustration for coaches, their organisation, and propagates a false formula that sets coaches up to fail. Coaches are increasingly audited and sold monitoring products that don't fix their behavioural problems. This is wrong. My PhD research taught my that information is the start line, but understanding yourself and your surroundings better is critical for putting in place meaningful training and support that lead to real change (if change is even what should be targeted). Listen in and I'll talk you through - just don't think this information is useful without taking further steps!

If you enjoy this episode, I suggest checking out this other episode too:

Why effective coaching needs reflexivity

Feedback if LoSC impacts your practice: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rJEqYsDpCm

Become a patron: https://shorturl.at/QgMCF

Visit website: https://markjcarrollcoaching.wordpress.com/

Connect with me on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjcarrollresearcher/