- The Performance Lab
- Posts
- The Art of Negotiating with Your Athlete
Hi Everyone, thanks for checking out this week’s newsletter. Below you'll find:
Performance Concept of the week
The Art of Negotiating with Your Athlete to Assist with Performance
Action plan
Resource of the week
Things to Explore
Got Questions?
Performance Concept of the Week
The Art of Negotiating with Your Athlete to Assist with Performance
Today’s sporting experience is riddled with stress and pressure. Often this stress and pressure begins at a young an age, but its impact runs rampant in competitive and high performance sports.
The past couple of weeks our articles/posts have been about controlling the controllables, and managing stress and pressure, both aimed to help reduce these factors. This article aims to provide even more ways for you to support your competitive or high performance athlete by simply by being there for them, and when necessary, negotiating with them.
Stress and pressure brings about a lot of unhelpful thoughts and emotions for athletes (and likely you too as a parent watching). These unhelpful thoughts and emotions often kill an athletes confidence, becomes an energy suck, muddies up their clarity of purpose, and increases their indecision which are all performance debilitating factors.
For an athlete, having someone in their corner is often what they need most. Athletes are constantly talking to themselves and even “negotiating” with themselves to, manage their self-talk, mindset, focus, thoughts, emotions, motivation, drive, mental toughness, mental agility, and much more. Having someone, or another voice to say “hey it’s ok, you got this”, or “focus on the process”, “control the controllables”, or “remember your why”, or “why do you play” can go a long way in helping their performance when stress and pressure are high.
If athletes are constantly negotiating with themselves, then why not as a parent support your athlete with the same approach?
5 Factors Promoting the Optimal Performance Mindset
Here are five (5) factors that you can use to support the performance mindset when negotiating with your athlete:
Self-referenced or self-reliance - While it is important to appreciate the presence of others, it is also important to remember to come back to yourself as an athlete. Encourage your athlete to take charge of themself through preparation, work ethic, compete level, and being a good teammate irrespective of their role.
Task Oriented - Remind your athlete to focus on their strengths, not their weaknesses. No player ever made a team, or the next level because of their weaknesses. They made it because of their strengths. Their ability to stay at the next level is based upon the athlete’s ability to develop as a person, athlete, and to turn their weaknesses into not being a liability. This is done through being task oriented and always focusing on their next main task completely.
Flexibility with their Attention - Being able to switch their attention between tasks quickly, and accurately is critical for elite performance. Being flexible enough to do this so they do not get stuck is key. Promote flexibility with your athlete.
Managing Thoughts & Emotions - To have your thoughts or emotions run wild is a normal part of life. The key to elite performance is an athlete’s ability to deal with thoughts or emotions that are relevant, and accept others. Thoughts and emotions come and go, but they can choose what to ignore, and what will consume them.
Be a Team Player - Know your role, play to your strengths, compete at the level your teammates know you have their back. Even an individual sport athlete still is part of a team (coaches, trainers, medical staff, etc.).
How to Negotiate With Your Athlete For Performance
The difference between good athletes, and great athletes is the great ones are constantly negotiating with themselves. Nothing is ever a “hard no”, but more of a “negotiate and an I’ll show you”.
What does negotiation mean in this context? Negotiation simple means to take control, and take charge. Athletes can take charge by:
Brainstorming solutions
Accept the current situation and choose to make the best of it
Talk back to themself when needed
Pump themself up or psych up when needed
Make adjustments when needed
When your athlete needs it, negotiate with them! This can best be done not by telling them what they need to do or hear, but rather by asking questions and making them think.
What Does the Research Say to Help us?
Sport psychology research and literature is dominated by self-determination theory. Self determination theory (SDT) is a theory of what motivates humans and it is based upon three basic human needs.
Autonomy - The needs to make choices, have control over our lives, and make decisions on our own (this includes input into training).
Competence - The need to feel successful, accomplished, and capable of doing something (i.e. setting a goal, and working to achieve it).
Relatedness - Need to have positive connections with others and feel like we belong to a group (supporting and working with teammates).
By negotiating with your athlete, you can promote the three tenants of SDT. If they are told what to do they may do it, if they get a choice and it is important to them, they’ll usually do it!
Remember the best way is to ask them questions!
Summary
This article emphasizes the valuable role of negotiation with your athlete when they seem off or are struggling with their performance. Competitive sports often exert significant stress resulting in unhelpful thoughts and emotions that can undermine confidence, clarity, and increases indecision. You can help mitigate this through negotiating with your athlete or speaking to them to challenge their negative or low energy thoughts. You do this through asking question, not telling them what they need to know so you can promote their own self-awareness and self-determination.
Action Plan
This week’s action plan includes:
Enhance self-reliance: Encourage athletes to take charge of their own preparation, work ethic, and growth, emphasizing the importance of being a good teammate regardless of their role in the team.
Focus on tasks: Guide your athlete in concentrating on their strengths and addressing weaknesses by setting specific, achievable tasks for improvement. Remind them that their contributions to the team are based on their unique skills and continuous development.
Develop attention flexibility: Teach athletes to swiftly and accurately shift their attention between tasks in training and competition scenarios. Help them cultivate the ability to mentally adapt and stay engaged during various challenges.
Manage thoughts and emotions: Provide athletes with tools to navigate and cope with their thoughts and emotions, highlighting that they can choose what to focus on and what to ignore. Encourage open communication and a growth mindset to help them build mental resilience.
Foster teamwork: Emphasize the importance of cooperation, support, and communication within the team. Encourage athletes to understand their roles, play to their strengths, and create a positive environment where the team can grow together.
Resource of the Week
Click here to watch a video on self-determination theory in less than 2 minutes.
Things to Explore
Read: Our Reading Library
Download: Resource Guide Series
Got Questions?
Do you have a question, or want to know more about a topic. Let our team of experts help you. Ask your question here by clicking the button below. We will post answers to questions within future newsletters.
Don’t forget to follow us on social!