Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

When it comes to teaching athletes mental skills, self-awareness must be among the first priorities for coaches. Moreover, to teach self-awareness you must have a baseline. Athletes must know where they are to know where they need to go. Therefore, coaches must start the teaching process with a self-awareness test.

Before I talk about the test, I want to make sure we are on the same page with the definition of self-awareness. Self-awareness is the ability for a person to understand their own behavior and the behaviors they perceive in the world around them. Self-awareness is also arguably the most important of the four domains of emotional intelligence.

This is important because if an athlete lacks emotional intelligence the athlete will also lack coachability. Indeed, the coach-athlete relationship is highly dependent on the athlete’s emotional intelligence. Therefore, investing time to increase an athlete’s self-awareness equates to investing in increasing that athlete’s coachability.

Testing Self-Awareness to Create a Baseline

To test self-awareness, I like to break it down by assessing athletes in two categories:

1. Self-Motivation – Athletes must be self-aware about what innately gives them energy to work towards their goals.
2. Self-Confidence – Athletes must be self-aware about their sources of confidence and which of those sources are within their control vs. not within their control.

When athletes and coaches are on the same page with motivation and confidence, coaching an athlete gets exponentially easier.

1) Assessing Self-Motivation

If an athlete can use their innate self-motivation to turn training that feels like a grind into something they enjoy doing, it’s like magically creating fun out of pain. That is why self-motivation is so important. However, athletes are not born knowing how to motivate themselves.

Every athlete has a unique type of fuel that drives their motivation. This fuel comes from tapping into the natural tendencies that make them tick. Whether these tendencies come from nature or nurture doesn’t matter. What matters is that each athlete has self-awareness about what type of motivation uniquely drives them. Furthermore, once an athlete learns to tap into this knowledge, they will do better, be better, and achieve more.

My approach for helping athletes become self-aware about what drives their self-motivation starts by first talking to their parents, coaches, peers, and teachers to learn about their behaviors using the Strengths Based Parenting approach.

1. Yearning: What activities or environments is the athlete repeatedly drawn to or eager to try?
2. Rapid learning: What new skills or activities does the athlete pick up quickly and easily?
3. Satisfaction: When is the athlete most enthusiastic and fulfilled?  Which activities is he or she excited about doing again and again?
4. Timelessness: When does the athlete become so engrossed that he or she seems to lose track of time?

Then I use the  Newcastle personality test to help the athlete become self-aware about their dominant personality traits.

1. Openness: Known for their curiosity, imagination, and ingenuity.
2. Conscientiousness: Go getters with strong organization and execution skills. May have a tendency for perfectionism and being controlling.
3. Extroversion: Distinctly positive and have the potential for leadership due to their outgoing, energetic, and talkative traits.
4. Agreeableness: The quintessential team player due to their preference for cooperation. Typically behaves in a manner that’s considerate, generous, forgiving and trusting.
5. Neuroticism: Performs at the extremes with high highs and low lows due to being driven by emotions. Influenced by negativity and anxiety more than others.

Finally, I use a custom assessment I built to help the athlete become self-aware of what gives them energy.

1. Autonomy – Doesn’t like being told what to do and has a need to be self-reliant.
2. Competence – Wants to show mastery and craves moments to demonstrate their expertise in front of others.
3. Social Bonding – Needs to build relationships with others and pursue goals with friends.
4. Social Status – Must establish social significance and wants to be the “alpha” in their social circle.
5. Accomplishment – Loves planning and constantly wants to feel like they are making progress.
6. Knowledge – Wants to always keep learning new things and expanding their expertise.
7. Excitement – Needs to stimulate their emotions by taking on new and thrilling experiences.
8. Challenge – Must have purpose and seeks opportunities to push themselves and others beyond perceived limitations.
9. Creativity – Doesn’t like monotonous activities and needs to have a way to express their uniqueness.

2) Assessing Self-Confidence

 According to a famous study done on sport performance, there are 9 sources where athletes get their self-confidence. The study is titled The role of confidence in world-class sport performance. I have a series of questions related to each of the 9 sources that I use to test each athlete’s source of self-confidence.

1. Preparation: Do you gain confidence when you give maximum effort during training and practice?
2. Performance accomplishments: Have you had past success in achieving a goal related to your current goals that gives you confidence?
3. Coaching: Do you have a coach that you believe can help you achieve your goals?
4. Innate factors: Were you born with one or more abilities that make achieving your goals easier?
5. Social support: Does encouragement and positive support from family, friends, teammates, and coaches give you confidence?
6. Experience: Does learning lessons from a prior success or failure give you confidence? Does learning from seeing someone else achieve success who you believe you are similar to or better than give you confidence?
7. Competitive advantage: Does seeing your opponent perform badly or choke under pressure in a prior event give you confidence to beat that opponent? Does having a “home-field” advantage give you confidence? Do you believe there is some other environmental factor that can provide you with an advantage?
8. Self-awareness: Does knowing your strengths and weaknesses well give you confidence? Do you have more confidence when you know what you want and how to go after it?
9. Trust: Does having an overall sense of trust in your preparation, teammates, and coaching give you confidence?

Use a Confidence Ruler for Visual Measurements

What I like to do next is use what sports psychologist call a confidence ruler. A confidence ruler is a simple measurement technique based on a 0 to 10 scale. The idea is that a coach has an athlete rate themselves against specific performance related skills with 0 being not confident at all and 10 being extremely confident. This then gives both the coach and athlete a visual measurement of confidence on the technical skill side.

You can also use a confidence ruler to assess the 9 sources of confidence. Instead of just having the athlete answer questions, also allow an athlete to rate themselves on a 0 to 10 scale with the same intent.

Finally, other assessments to measure confidence coaches may want to consider include the Sport Confidence Inventory and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory.

Need Help Implementing these Self-Awareness Test?

I completely understand that most coaches just don’t have enough time to set aside for the mental side of the game. Coaches only have so much time with their athletes. Therefore, a coach’s sense of urgency must focus on helping their athletes master fundamentals, teaching their system, and conditioning.

My job as a mental skills coach is to help those coaches who lead teams fill the mental skills gap. To find out more about my mental skills training programs, and how I can help build your team’s self-awareness, please contact me here.