Although there is burgeoning research on resilience in elite athletes, there has been no empirical investigation of resilience in elite coaches. The purpose of this study was to explore psychological resilience in world-class coaches and how they develop resilience in athletes. A longitudinal qualitative design was adopted due to the dynamic and temporal nature of resilience. Five Olympic medal–winning coaches (four males and one female) were interviewed twice over a 12-month swimming season. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data. Findings revealed 14 higher order themes, which were categorized into the following three general dimensions: coach stressors (managing the Olympic environment, preparation for major events, coach personal well-being, directing an organization); coach protective factors (progressive coaching, coaching support network, maintaining work/life balance, secure working environment, durable motivation, effective decision making); and enhancing resilience in athletes (developing a strong coach–athlete relationship, creating a facilitative environment, developing a resilience process, athlete individual factors). The results are presented to demonstrate the interplay between coach stressors and protective factors over time, which offers an original and significant contribution to the resilience literature by providing a unique insight into the dynamic and temporal nature of resilience in Olympic medal–winning coaches.
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Psychological Resilience in Olympic Medal–Winning Coaches: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study
Mustafa Sarkar and Nathan K. Hilton
Achievement Despite Adversity: A Qualitative Investigation of Undrafted National Hockey League Players
Jordan D. Herbison, Luc J. Martin, and Mustafa Sarkar
Adversity is viewed as both an inevitable and an important experience for elite athletes. The purpose of this study was to explore elite athletes’ perceptions of the experiences and characteristics that helped them overcome a shared sport-specific adversity. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 professional athletes (M age = 27.25, SD = 3.28 yr) who had progressed to careers in the National Hockey League (NHL) despite not being selected in the annual amateur entry draft. Participants discussed their long-term objectives of playing in the NHL, previous experiences with adversity, certain psychological characteristics that facilitated their progression (e.g., competitiveness, passion, confidence), and the significance of social support as key factors that helped them overcome the initial and subsequent adversities associated with being unselected during the amateur entry draft. Practical implications and proposed avenues for future research are discussed in the context of the study’s limitations.
Psychological Safety: A Qualitative Study on Coach and Athlete Perceptions
Michael Cooke, Kyle F. Paradis, Lee Ann Sharp, David Woods, and Mustafa Sarkar
Aims: The concept of psychological safety has received growing interest within a sport context in recent years. Despite a small but growing body of literature, there is still a lack of conceptual clarity, and thus research is needed to gain a better understanding of how psychological safety manifests in sport. Existing literature suggests psychological safety may allow for positive outcomes in various sport settings. As this may be of interest to many coaches and sporting organisations, a deeper evidence base will prove beneficial for further support to this claim. The aim of the current study was to garner conceptual clarity by gathering coach and athlete perceptions of psychological safety in high-performance pathway sport environments. Methods: Qualitative findings of six focus groups with coaches (two focus groups) and athletes (four focus groups) were comprised of four sports (association football, boxing, field hockey, and swimming). A total of 25 participants included 18 athletes (M age = 19.6 years; M experience = 10.6 years) and seven coaches (M age = 45 years; M experience = 19.6 years) who discussed psychological safety within their high-performance pathway sport environment. Focus groups lasted from 36 to 78 minutes (M length = 56 min). Qualitative content analysis was utilised to categorise themes identified from the focus groups. Findings: Findings offer a conceptualisation of the defining attributes (e.g., freedom to speak freely and raise issues), antecedents (e.g., positional competition, selection, and deselection), and outcomes (e.g., positive climate and enjoyment of sport) of psychological safety in sport settings. One of the key takeaways within the findings suggests that psychological safety in a sport context may manifest in a dual process, namely on-field (e.g., the freedom to take risks) and off-field (e.g., the freedom to speak freely and raise issues).
