Strength-Based Coaching

What in the world makes good coaches great?  What is that intangible something that sets great coaches apart from the rest?  A lot of people would say that coaches need to be tough.  Others would say they need to be feared by their athletes in order to be effective.  These notions however, run up against decades of research that says fear based learning produces fearful people.  It often creates athletes who are afraid of making a mistake, of disappointing people.  This mental framework is the absolute worst for creating an environment for optimal performance.  Primarily because because the mind-body connection is quite direct.  If I'm worried about failure, I create failure. It's almost more a law of physics than of psychology.  Namely, what we think about expands.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Strength-Based coaches know how to infuse practices and performances with an ongoing reinforcement of all the things that their athletes are doing right.  They focus on the positives, on the strengths. Clearly, this does not mean leaving an athlete's growth edges unexamined.  It does mean however, that coaches need to recognize and reinforce those micro-skills that successfully move their athletes toward optimal physical skills.  It's in fact called Successive Approximation.  When an athlete can feel the desired mechanics while laying down the corresponding muscle memory and attach this to a positive mental state, the environment for optimal performances is in place.