Dr. Craig Stewart, a professor at the University of Montana, sent an article titled “Motivational Traits of Elite Young Soccer Players.” In the paper, older players scored higher than younger players in their motivation to avoid failure. The article states:
It has been determined that players who seek to avoid failure will avoid achievement-oriented behavior, participate in situations only if assured of success, develop various coping or ‘face-saving’ behavior to pre-explain their failure, exhibit lower effort in practice or game situations, and only increase effort if the team is successful (wins) (Cratty 1983).
Obviously, this does not lead to enhanced performance. The author suggests that the older players may have developed this negative type of motivation due to the coaching:
The avoidance of failure may be the result of the significant number of situations in which the athlete has been exposed to coaches who exhibit command-style techniques. Command-style coaches not only make the majority of decisions in an athletic situation, but also create an environment in which failure is more threatening to the athlete than success is rewarding. The longer players remain in that situation, the more they are apt to exhibit many of these counterproductive characteristics (Stewart and Meyers).
In Developing Game Intelligence, Horst Wein writes:
This rigid and authoritarian coaching style does not develop intelligent players with awareness and responsibility. To get more intelligent players on the pitch in the future, coaches need to stimulate more and instruct less.
To develop better players who make better decisions and to enhance motivation, coaches need to move away from the command coaching style.
Players will never reach an elite level if their motivation to succeed is stifled. Players who play with fear will never reach their maximum performance.
The only way to develop is to make mistakes. Without mistakes, there is no growth or development; the player simply does what he can already do. Nobody develops without bumps in the road.
Coaches should understand that youth athletes:
are best motivated when they believe personal success is self-determined by their skills and performance;
prolong their performance when internally motivated;
Do NOT trivialize the importance of fun…regardless of age.
In The Power of Mindful Learning, Ellen J. Langer tells the story of her friend:
A writer friend of mine was trying to concentrate on writing when some school-age children started up a hilarious, noisy game below his window. He asked them to leave. Since he was breaking up what clearly seemed a delightful scene, he paid them each a quarter for doing so. The next day they came back and caused the same annoyance; again, he paid them to leave. This routine continued for over a week, until one day my friend found he was out of quarters, and he suffered through the racket as best he could. He discovered that he could work despite the disturbance, and thence he gave no more quarters. The children stopped coming. Two weeks later he ran into one of them at the market and asked why he and his friends no longer came around. The child replied, “What do you think, we’re going to come for nothing?”
Unfortunately, the story describes the effects of organized youth sports for many players. Children play basketball for fun, shooting around with friends, playing pick-up games, and trying new moves. Because of their interest, their parents sign up for a youth league believing that the organization and structure will enhance their enjoyment of the activity.
The organization changes the activity just as the quarters changed the activity for the children. In organized leagues, winning and competition take precedence over playing and enjoyment. The motivation shifts from play for the sake of play to practice to prepare for a game.
When this shift occurs too early, the game loses its fun for some players. They depend on the external rewards – winning, playing time, an ice cream cone for making a basket – to maintain their motivation rather than playing because they love to play.
While some players quit when these external rewards disappear or fail to increase, others persist for various reasons. However, without the internal motivation, they will never maximize their talent or love the activity. As Daniel Pink says, players thrive in an environment of “autonomy, mastery and purpose.”
When the game becomes focused on results, rather than learning; and the coach takes control of the activity rather than empowering his players; and the practice loses meaning to the players, the effort, enjoyment and improvement diminish.
That does not mean that coaches should ignore discipline, drills or hard work. However, it does mean that coaches and parents should be mindful of their approach and their words (rewarding effort, not just performance), and coaches should strive for an environment of “autonomy, mastery and purpose.”
In the summer of 2002, I worked the Stanford University women’s basketball camp. In 2002, the And1 Mix-Tapes were nearing the height of their popularity. At the camp, a couple girls saw me messing around and doing some ball-handling tricks during the first break. One girl – a 14-year-old from Anchorage, Alaska – asked if I could teach her how to do the slip-and-slide, a move from the Mix-Tapes. I said that I could, but she had to learn to dribble better first.
At lunch for the rest of the week, we sprinted to the cafeteria, hurried through a sandwich and spent the remainder of the break on the outdoor, asphalt court working on ball handling drills. While the other players sat in the air-conditioned dorms and the coaches went to Starbucks, she spent 45 minutes doing extra drills.
I made a deal with her: if she did the drills, I would teach her the slip-and-slide. The slip-and-slide is not a move that she would use in a game, but she wanted to impress the boys back home. When the other players and coaches walked up to the court for the start of the afternoon sessions, they saw her rolling on the ground while dribbling the ball, trying to master the slip-and-slide.
The coaches rolled their eyes. Nothing drew a coach’s ire from 2001-2003 quite like the And1 Mix-Tapes, as coaches believed that the tapes embodied everything wrong with the American player. Most coaches blamed the tapes for everything from unmotivated players (“they just want to do tricks”) to poor shooting (“they have no fundamentals”).
Some players could not believe this girl, as she finished lunch dirty and sweaty, with the asphalt all over her hands and legs, while they returned from their dorm with fresh make-up and a spotless white tee. However, a couple players asked if they could join. By week’s end, four or five girls were hurrying through lunch and skipping their break so they could practice their dribbling.
A Whole New Mind author Dan Pink argues in his TED (Technology, Education and Design) speech that “there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does” in terms of incentives, bonuses and motivation.
He provides several economic studies (based on the Candle Problem) and argues persuasively against the “carrot and the stick” approach to motivation. Instead, he shows that people perform better when intrinsically motivated and offers a new model for motivation based on “autonomy, mastery and purpose.”
Pink’s presentation focuses on business motivation, management and the creative class, as he advocates for a new world order based on right-brain thinking: the subtitle of A Whole New Mind is “Why right-brainers will rule the world.” However, his argument easily lends itself to coaching and youth sports.
At the Stanford camp, as with most camps, stations represent the bulk of the instruction and non-game time, and fall into two categories: boring/poorly taught or recreational with little relevance (the Stanford camp is notorious for the numerous cheers that players master as well as time-wasters like “Land-Sea-Air”).
For instance, I worked another camp where an instructor spent one hour lecturing, demonstrating and drilling the first step on a closeout (when a defender plays help defense and then runs to his man when he receives the pass). The players never worked against a live defender. Instead, they spent one hour running back and forth from Point A to Point B as if they always would start and end in the same spot and not have to react to an offensive player who could shoot, drive left or drive right. The coaches praised the session as “fundamental” and “great teaching,” while I and many of the 13 and 14-year-old players were bored.
Many coaches assume that players learn best through these repetitive drills which break the game into almost unrecognizable segments only to return to 5v5 scrimmages with minimal transfer from the drill to the games. When the skills fail to transfer, coaches blame the players for not listening, lack of concentration or lack of effort.
Rarely does a coach examine the teaching methods and question why the players fail to understand or transfer the skill from one setting to the next.
While there are several variables, Pink explains that people have the “urge to direct our own lives; desire to get better and better at something that matters; and yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”
The same mismatch that Pink sees between science and business happens in coaching too. We live in a world of external rewards. However, people learn best when intrinsically motivated: in an environment of autonomy, mastery and purpose. At the camp, the girl asked me to help her (autonomy); she wanted to learn something new (mastery); and she had a goal that was important to her (purpose).
Often in coaching, especially when we organize drills that are far from the actual game, we fail to motivate the player intrinsically, so coaches fall back to the “carrot-and-stick” approach: “work harder or you’ll run!” The purpose is no longer intrinsically motivating (avoiding punishment), and the coach focuses on outcomes, not the learning or improvement.
In the studies cited by Pink, external rewards improved performance on mechanical tasks. Therefore, in a drill like the closeout drill, the fear of running improved performance in terms of more hustle and less talking from the players.
However, on cognitive tasks, or tasks requiring creative thinking, higher external rewards hurt performance. The ball handling drills involved a creative element, and more importantly, their transfer to a game requires cognitive skills, as the player uses the dribble to create a pass or shot and must evaluate options while dribbling.
The reward system works for many coaches who stress order and structure; for instance, a basketball coach who runs a continuity offense and just wants the players to run the offense or a soccer coach who just wants his fullbacks to boot the ball down field as far as possible rather than playing the ball out of the back.
However, this reward system fails to motivate in situations where developing independent and critical thinking is important.
Most invasive games (soccer, lacrosse, basketball, field hockey, water polo, etc.) require critical thinking skills, flexibility and creativity. These games involve movement, perceptual and cognitive elements, while other sports like swimming or running involve primarily movement elements. Using the “carrot-and-stick” approach is not the best way to develop skills and players in these sports.
Instead, players need some control over their learning. This does not mean that coaches cede control to the players. However, asking players questions and empowering players to make decisions builds intrinsic motivation. For instance, at practice the other day, I asked the players what they thought of the drill and whether we should continue or move to something else.
I often ask players which drills they like and do not like, and I spend more time on those they enjoy. If they enjoy what they are doing, they will work harder and improve more than if they are forced to do drills they dislike. The challenge for a coach is to devise drills that the players enjoy which teach the skills and game concepts that he knows are important to their development and success.
Coaching is not a matter of giving into the players and their desires. However, the coach and players should work together; the players should not view the coach as an antagonistic force. When players and coaches communicate (in both directions), they work together for the same goals. When this communication breaks down or the coach ignores the players, players see the coach more as the person taking the inherent fun out of playing rather than a guide trying to improve one’s skills to enhance the enjoyment of the game.
At its core, we play sports to have fun, and a coach’s role is to enhance the enjoyment of the activity and to develop skills that allow the players to continue playing. When coaches focus on these roles, they ignore the “carrot-and-stick” approach and move to a more empowering approach which builds the players’ intrinsic motivation, often eliminating the need for discipline.
I did not have to motivate the young Alaskan. She chose to work out during her break and do extra drills because the goal had meaning to her; she felt that she was improving and learning something new; and she had some control over her environment.
