How to Motivate Athletes with Different Personality Types
Categorizing people into personality types is a controversial topic. First, there is no standard categorization. Second, most people don’t fit neatly into one category. Finally, there is a wide belief that personality types vary by culture and there is no comprehensive cross-cultural agreement on personality traits.
With that said, nearly all professionals who study this topic agree there is still merit in using personality categories to study the similarities and differences between people. The one model I found most widely referenced is called the five-factor model or the big five personality traits. The personality categories are the following:
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
The acronym used to remember these 5 personality traits is OCEAN. As you can see the first letter in each trait spells out this acronym. For this reason, many people also call this the OCEAN model.
My interest in this area centers particularly around motivating athletes. I believe that a parent or coach who is able to identify a certain trait in an athlete can tailor their methods to better motivate them. The caveat is that many people have multiple traits, and there may be some who don’t have a dominant trait. For this reason, it’s likely that my approach will work better for some, and not so good for others.
Openness
People who are dominant in the openness personality trait are known for their curiosity, imagination, and ingenuity. In sports, this type of athlete likes to try or even invent new techniques or strategies, is always open to learning from others, and wants to experience traveling to new and different types of competitions.
If I were to work with an athlete dominant in openness, I wouldn’t try to get them to specialize in one sport before college. I would allow them to experiment with as many sports as possible to feed their curiosity. In addition, I would encourage this athlete to watch a lot of film and encourage them to try what they see in practice.
Finally, I would spend a good bit of time with them discussing the competition schedule for the year. In doing this, I would encourage them to provide input into what events they want to attend and the places they want to travel to throughout the season.
Conscientiousness
People who are dominant in the conscientiousness personality trait are known for being organized and having a tendency for perfectionism. In sports, this type of athlete may not like to compete as much as they like to practice. As they say, practice makes perfect, so an athlete that is dominant in conscientiousness wants to make sure they are more than ready before they compete. Furthermore, because these athletes tend to be perfectionist, they don’t want to try to incorporate many new techniques into their repertoire. They prefer to do what’s worked for them in the past and shy away from change.
If I were to work with an athlete dominant in conscientiousness, I would encourage them to focus on no more than two sports pre-college. Possibly even specialize in one if there was a strong and obvious passion for one.
In addition, depending on the sport, I would work hard to make sure they didn’t become predictable for their competitors. To do this, I would spend a good amount of time helping them organize their techniques into categories. Then I would help them understand how and why they need to expand their ability to execute techniques in each category.
Finally, I would make sure there is a practice plan in place that aligns with each competition. The competition schedule would be planned out well in advance and no spontaneous changes made unless there was no other option.
Extroversion
People who are dominant in the extroversion personality trait are known for being outgoing, energetic, and talkative. In sports, this type of athlete may prefer team sports over individual sports, and often would be good in the role of a team captain.
If I were to work with an athlete dominant in the extroversion trait I would focus on developing their leadership skills. Often, a talkative person is a distraction to a coach in practice. This could demotivate an extrovert as they would likely often get in trouble for this. So channeling this energy towards leadership would be helpful to motivate this type of person to bring the best of themselves to the team.
I would also use some of the same techniques I suggested for the openness personality trait.
Agreeableness
People who are dominant in the agreeableness personality trait are known for being highly cooperative with others. What’s more, agreeable people are known for being considerate, generous, forgiving and trusting. In sports, this type of athlete is the consummate team player. However, these athletes tend to care too much about what others think. This may cause them to either avoid trying new things or bend to peer pressure.
If I were to work with an athlete dominant in the agreeableness trait I would focus on developing their network of support. I would pay more attention than normal to their environment. I would ensure there are no bad influences to distract them away from their goals. I would also make sure that there were several good role models surrounding them as coaches and teammates.
Neuroticism
People who are dominant in the neuroticism personality trait are known for being driven by emotion and being moody. In sports, this type of athlete is known to have mood swings under high pressure that aren’t on display in low pressure situations. For example, this type of athlete could be what’s called a “gamer” and outperform in big meaningful competitions as compared to practice or less meaningful games. The opposite “choke” emotion is also possible. This is when performance anxiety and fear causes the athlete to perform worse in big competitions.
If I were to work with an athlete dominant in the neuroticism trait I would focus on helping them understand their emotions and their emotional triggers. I would also spend a lot of time working with them on goals, decision making, and choices.
I would then help them correlate their emotions with decision making, and show them how their choices have long term impacts on their goals.