As a performance psychologist and
coach, I am a strong believer in meticulous planning for success.
Planning process requires certain things from coach-athlete
relationships and first and foremost, mutual understanding of the
process.
Thereby, I'm experimenting with using
performance profiling (Butler & Hardy, 1992) together with
traditional goal setting and personal application of SWOT-Matrix.
Before practical application of these, my main concern is in the
athlete engagement. Moreover, do they think this a bit of jargon and
out of context or find it helpful?
Performance profiling reflects the
athlete's own perceptions of their abilities and attributes and how
they rate themselves amongst absolute elite (Butler & Hardy,
1992). The advantage from it is the self-engagement and straight
forward numerical results indicant strengths and areas for
improvement.
The goal setting process enables the
athlete provide them a source for motivation and dedication to work.
My aim is to find a set of goals for each athelete that all have
theoretical underpinning. Moreover, tha SMART principle (O'Neill et
al, 2006) should be identifiable as well as the three main types of
goals, outcome, process and performance, should be included in the
annual plan.
The most exciting thing for me, is the
use of SWOT-Matrix (Hill & Westbrook, 1997). Traditionally
SWOT-Matrix is used for businesses and organizations in order to
explore internal and external factors with possible effects. SWOT is
an abbreviation from Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and
Threats, and aim to cover the aspect having potential effects to the
performance.
Interesting to see it all works, and
does it work as a mean to an end – achieving the targets.
Butler,
R. and Hardy, L. (1992). The Performance Profile: Theory and
application. The Sport
Psychologist. 6 (3),
p. 257.
Hill,
T. & Westbrook, R. (1997). "SWOT Analysis: It’s Time for a
Product Recall". Long
Range Planning 30
(1):
46–52.
O'Neill,
J., Conzemius, A., Commodore, C., & Pulsfus, C. (2006). The
power of SMART goals: Using goals to improve student learning.
Bloomington: Solution Tree.
