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Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach

For this episode I'm joined by Professor Sophia Jowett to discuss what it takes for coaches to build functional, satisfying and effective coach-athlete relationships, based on Sophia's famous '3Cs+1' empirical framework developed across decades of research. We chat about the relational imperatives of coaching, observed outcomes and determinants of high quality coach-athlete relationships, as well as cross-overs and distinctions with basic psychological needs theory from both academic and practical perspectives.

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

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/