Consider what you say when you are commenting on an athlete’s or employee’s performance. What are the words that you use most frequently?
- ‘Great’ – ‘amazing’ – ‘good work’ – ‘awesome’ – ‘well done’
What was your purpose behind saying this? Did you use this to motivate the athlete or employee?
Now consider this from their perspective. When you say – ‘Great’ – ‘amazing’ – ‘good work’ – ‘awesome’ – ‘well done’ – does the athlete or employee know what this refers to?
These words, while well intended, have no great value. If the athlete or employee has no point of reference to apply those words to, there is little value to serve as motivation.
Getting caught in the PRAISE trap
‘Well done’ – ‘great job’ – ‘amazing’ – ‘that was awesome’: these are words that offer PRAISE. And what praise offers is a judgement. They have reached a benchmark that YOU deem as meriting recognition.
It tends to be outcome focused. They have reached a level or produced something that you want to comment on. Therefore, it is based on external reward, and feeds external motivation.
If overused the person gets used to praise. And when withdrawn athlete or employee confidence and self-esteem plummets.
It has little knowledge-value for the athlete or employee. What is it they actually did that merited the praise?
The driver of learning is from YOU – the feedback giver. The person thinks, ‘if I do this thing well, the coach or manager gives me praise.’
It is a one-way form of communication. It comes from an authoritative style of coaching/managing which does not foster autonomy-supportive environments.
Consider these example and see if you can spot the common theme:
‘Well done, I’m impressed with your work today’
‘I know that was tough, I think you did great a job out there’
‘I thought that was a great run, amazing’
You may have been able to spot that the word ‘I’ features in every one of them. In conversation speak, we often just shorten the phrases down to the key words of praise – ‘well done’, ‘great job’, ‘amazing.’
Changing feedback to offer an affirmation
Consider what it is that you are trying to achieve as a coach or manager with your interactions and feedback to athletes or employees?
- Is it to help build good, trusting relationships?
- Is it to help develop the athlete’s or employee’s belief in their abilities?
- Is it to help the athlete or employee learn?
- Is it to help motivate the athlete or employee?
If these are your intentions as a coach or manager, then it may be helpful for you to contemplate using what is called an affirmation. You may already be using affirmations, but with an understanding of what they are, and their phraseology, you are more likely to frequently use them.
Affirmations:
- Acknowledge something inside athlete or employee that is already there – qualities, skills, abilities, strengths, effort
- You point out a positive inner resources that the athlete or employee can take ownership of
- Leads to athlete or employee beginning to notice these personal resources more often
- Affirmations have the word ‘you’ related to them
- Focus is on developing personal resources versus rectifying weaknesses
- An affirmation is a statement – not a question.
How do you give an affirmation?
First of all, giving an affirmation has to be genuine and also aligning with what the person has actually shown in their performance.
An affirmation is something that you observe and acknowledge, so it requires you looking for evidence of this.
Affirmation examples:
- ‘You were under pressure, but you managed to keep composed’
- ‘There was a lot work to do, you showed a lot of determination and courage to keep going’
- ‘You like to keep going and help others, particularly when things are not going well’
- ‘You stepped up showed a lot of leadership when it was needed’
- ‘Even when things are tough, you make solid decisions’
Why do we tend not to use affirmations? Because it is tough to do. It requires effort. It truly requires viewing what your athlete or employee has done. So we tend to revert to praise. But praise is cheap and has little value to learning, growth or long-term motivation.
Making skilful affirmations
I remember when I first started reading on psychology, and a book that resonated with me was on mindful learning. It began with saying that our modern concept of education had strayed far from its original meaning. Education is derived from the Latin word ‘Educare’ – which means ‘to bring out what is within.’
I love this because is captures what an affirmation is, helping to draw out, to identify the personal qualities that a person has. Then you are educating – coaching – managing.
Open questions are a great way to lead you into offering an affirmation, and the interaction can be more easily led to drawing out person’s own realisations about their personal qualities.
Why is this important? Well, consider how the difference between someone telling you something and you being guided to getting your own evidence. You believe it more.
It could go something like this:
- Coach/manager – ‘How did you do manage to keep perform well when it got tough?’
- Athlete/employee – ‘I dunno, I guess I just stuck at it.’
- Coach/manager – ‘You showed a lot of tenacity and commitment.’
- Athlete/employee – ‘Yeah, I guess I did.’
- Coach/manager – ‘Makes me wonder how you would be able to do that again next time you are under pressure.’
- Athlete/employee – ‘I guess just knowing that I can push through.’
This skilful conversation has drawn out the athlete or employee’s own realisation. Therefore, affirmations help athletes or employees find encouragement and motivation themselves. With an affirmation the athlete or employee’s learning comes from the inside, which with your guidance, helps draw that out from them.
This enables affirmations to be a more powerful driver of motivation and self-discovery. It facilitates an athlete/employee’s learning for themselves, being more prepared to try new things, and builds self-belief.
Helpful tips:
- Be curious about what you see the athlete or employee do
- Be an admiring witness to the qualities you observe
- Share your comments of the personal resources – skills, abilities, strengths – of the athlete or employee that you see on display
- Start with an open question to elicit a response from the athlete or employee
- Recognise the quality or skill and share it
- Use a reflective question – e.g. ‘how would you keep doing that?’
- Get confirmation of how they would do that – and if they are not certain, offer guidance to help
Of course, praise is not wholly negative, but can you expand your repertoire to include affirmations? Experiment at work and at home. It feels a bit clunky and deliberate to begin with, but soon you’ll begin seeing evidence of a person’s personal qualities more, because you are looking out for them.
And it is a much more positive personal quality that you can have to look out for qualities rather than weaknesses all of the time.
Would love to hear your comments on trying out some affirmations.
Stuart works with national teams and organisations to help provide psychologically informed environments that cultivate performance excellence. Workshops and ongoing training can be provided, and if you are interested in more information please feel free to contact me: [email protected]