Emotions affect us in different ways. There’s no point trying to get rid of emotions. They help us make decisions. They help us act according to our values. Negative emotions help us shy away from danger. Positive emotions help us broaden our thinking to take in more points of view. Effective coaches tend to be good emotional managers. We like to think that coaches and athletes act rationally in practices and in competition, but the truth is that the emotions are reached first, with intellectual reasoning following to justify the actions taken. We can get better at managing our emotions by paying attention to them as they happen. By watching what happens with particular responses and by intentionally working on them to become more self-aware.
Self-awareness helps us manage our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Adam Naylor, a leading mental skills consultant for coaches and athletes at the high school, college, Olympic, and professional levels, agrees that self-awareness is a critical skill for the competitive coach. He says, “The ability to be aware of our thoughts and emotions and how they influence our coaching behaviors, and our personal behaviors brings a lot of strength to the coach’s personal playbook of skills.” He says that it is important to manage one’s own stress as it creates emotional contagion. Athletes look to the coach’s behavior and can respond to the emotional state he or she is in at the time.
Sean Quirk, head lacrosse coach for the Cannons Lacrosse Club in the Premier Lacrosse League, believes that is important to understand how your athletes tick, and it’s important for them to see how you tick. Being able to open up your emotions to them can be very valuable, whether you’re fired up and excited giving a pre-game pump-up speech or expressing anger about an athlete’s poor behavior. “I remember crying at practice, the day of the Boston Marathon bombings 20 miles away,” Sean says. “They see that you’re human and that you’re upset and you’re sad. Those moments build trust and respect and open up dialog so athletes can come speak to you about things that they’re struggling with.”
Sean asserts that there can be emotions expressed after winning a championship and being excited as a 12-year-old. “But you’re a 40-year-old coach and the athletes see that you’re excited and you handle yourself in a mature way after you win rather than sticking it in the face of the other team.” It’s important for coaches to show who they are and let their guard down a little bit to their team. However, sometimes negative emotions expressed by the coach can have a detrimental effect on the team. Sean remembers coaching a Boston Cannons game. It was a really close game, the Cannons were the heavy favorite, and they should’ve won. “I let my emotions get to me,” says Sean. “I focused on areas of the game that were out of my control. I got on the referees for making seemingly bad calls. The team fed into the negativity which resulted in a decrease in performance.”
Like Sean, we regularly experience events in the present that trigger emotions and physical responses without any conscious awareness. Most of us have noticed an increased breathing rate or heart rate or butterflies in the stomach before a contest. Based on neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s work, these gut feelings arise from somatic markers. The word somatic comes from the root “soma” relating to the body. The somatic marker drives our attention towards a possible negative result that deciding a certain way may lead to. These markers or reminders associate an emotional state that we’ve experienced and can greatly influence our decision-making when they re-occur. Coaches can learn to recognize the markers by observing how they feel about an event and what happened. A coach can say to him or herself, if they are upset and steam is coming out of their ears, “If I feel this, I need to do this.” This way, the coach connects the somatic marker to the right response.
Adam Naylor tells the story of a hockey coach who got thrown out of a couple games at the end of a season but then learned a behavior to control his behavior that made him a role model for his athletes. Adam described him as “a hard ass that liked to curse people.” However, he was the sweetest guy in the world off the ice. When Adam talked to him about why he’d get on the officials, he was very clear, “A: Because I’m passionate about the game. It’s how I am programmed. And B: Most of the time when I’m on the officials I fear for the safety of my players.”
Given this thinking, it was very rational to be emotional. However, the behavior was becoming less valuable to him because his athletic director was quite mad at him. Regardless of the team’s record, he was in the dog house. He admitted to Adam that he had a reputation for
this behavior but realized it didn’t serve him well. He also realized his behavior didn’t help the team on the ice, nor did the emotions he was spreading on the bench. He told Adam, “My players are thinking, ‘Are you nuts?’ So, how do I lead if my team thinks I am nuts?”
Adam helped the coach re-evaluate his situation. It was a protective instinct but not a helpful one. It was good that he was passionate, but how could he tweak the way he expressed his passion to fit his values without letting his emotions run rampant?
Adam thought when coaches get mad at an official, their natural inclination is to step forward. In hockey, there is the image of a foot on the boards and the coach leaning over towards the official. That’s the move. Adam also thought of the glass behind the bench. He provided the coach with the following cues:
What if move #1 is to make your back hit the glass. So, there is literally a step back.
Then move #2 may be to go forward. You’re still allowed to get after an official if you need to, but you are breaking the cycle for a second. You don’t take the emotion out of it because emotion is critical, but you use the emotion better because that pause lets you settle yourself long enough to think, “Is this a foot-on-the-boards moment or is it a let-it-play-out moment?”
If you aren’t an ice hockey coach, and you don’t have the glass behind you, what might be your move to interject just a moment’s pause between the emotion and the action? This allows you to slow down your thinking and let some momentary reflection happen.
Coaches can intentionally act as emotional role models for athletes by first being aware of situations that bring out the best and worst of their automatic thinking. They can learn to press the pause button before they respond inappropriately by being aware of the markers that bring these emotions to the forefront and making a choice to respond differently. Coaches are human and we have moments where we make mistakes in how emotions come out, but making a committed effort to express the appropriate emotions at the right time for the right reasons can provide athletes with a great model.
As a call to action, coaches can intentionally act as emotional role models for athletes by first being aware of situations that bring out the best and worst of their behavior. They can learn to press the pause button before they respond inappropriately by being aware of the markers that bring these emotions to the forefront and making a choice to respond differently.
Coaches are human and we have moments when we make mistakes in how emotions come out but making a committed effort to express the appropriate emotions at the right time for the right reasons can provide athletes with a great model.