Recently I was asked by one of my Practical Appreciative Inquiry students to suggest some ways that Appreciative Inquiry could be used to improve sports team performance. It turned out that he is the head coach for an army handball team in his country.
This request was somewhat out of my usual experience, as I have no background in sports psychology or even that strong an interest in sport. Nevertheless, he seemed to find my suggestions – which all came from applying basic appreciative principles to enhancing individual skills and team morale – useful. Afterwards I found some resources and models for using Appreciative Inquiry in sport, which I passed on to him and will share at the end of this article.
For context, the team is coming out of a three-year results slump, and the squad consists of seven experienced members and seven new recruits, all chosen on merit. They have about five months to pull things together before their first big challenge, an inter-services tournament.
Applying Appreciative Inquiry to Sport – Recommendations
This is what we arrived at after some discussion:
1. One-to-one appreciative interviews conducted by the head coach
My student proposed doing one-to-one appreciative interviews himself with each player. As he is also skilled in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), he can also ‘anchor’ the excellent state that each player will recall when talking about their peak experiences to a word, image, gesture, or piece of music, so that the state can be evoked on demand when the players need to have access to all their inner resources.
2. Appreciative interviews between players
My first suggestion was to have the players pair up and do brief appreciative interviews with each other, around their best experiences and best performances playing handball. The interviews serve a dual function; reminding players of how it feels when they are at their best, and increasing understanding between players so that they bond better as a team. To this end, each experienced player should be paired with a ‘newbie’ to increase understanding of each other’s viewpoint and build respect for each other’s skills.
3. Creating a team vision
Collectively, the players will create a vision of how they want to be as a team in an ideal world, probably using art materials rather than just words, to help them break free from linear thinking and fully engage with the vision on every level. This is best done right after they have interviewed each other, because the appreciative interviews will help to activate the ‘Default Mode’ or empathic networks in their brains, making them more creative, more open to new ideas, and able to relate better to their team mates.
4. Appreciative feedback from coaches (and fellow team members)
Currently, after each match, players are called back the next day morning to review a video playback of their performance. The review process focuses on what players could have done better rather than what they did wrong, with the players first being asked to explain their actions before the coaches deliver technical feedback. Making sure that the coaches are aware of the benefits of a positive approach to feedback would enable players to learn from the feedback with minimal resistance and reduction in morale.
I also suggested that it would be useful to place additional emphasis on analysing and reviewing when plays went particularly well, so that the players can identify what they are doing that contributes to success. And when it emerges that help from team mates has been crucial to a success (e.g. when a player sets up the winning goal for a striker), having players acknowledge that will increase bonding and respect within the team.
5. Recovering from adversity
It emerged that recent poor performance was partly attributed to referee decisions that went against the team. Again, appreciative interviews might be helpful here, to explore times when players overcame adverse decisions and bad luck (e.g. when injury robs them of their star player) and went on to achieve success. This would affirm resilience and remind players of the strategies they have used in the past to recover from setbacks. It would also be helpful to agree ‘If-Then’ rules with players so they can decide in advance how they will react if a decision goes against them, rather than trying to make the decision as they react in the moment.
Other Appreciative Inquiry Resources for Sports Coaching
I couldn’t find a huge amount of resources out there, but I did find ‘An Appreciative Approach to Sports Coaching’, a 2016 article by Matthew Scholes from AI Practitioner magazine about the Positive Sports Coaching Approach: “Using Appreciative Inquiry, Sports coaches are trained to identify and develop their athletes’ strengths while learning to overcome their negativity bias by training their brains to see the good things their athletes are doing.”
The graphics in the article download depicting the two feedback models mentioned in the article, the Positive Sports Coaching Wheel and the Positive Athlete Interaction Diamond, were a bit blurry, so I’ve reproduced higher-res versions here (click on the images to expand them):
There’s also this 2021 article by Shane Pill, ‘Appreciative inquiry: A strengths-based perspective for identifying and creating positive change in the design and enactment of physical and sport education’, which links through to three academic studies on the use of Appreciative Inquiry in sports coaching.
Have you used Appreciative Inquiry in sports coaching or sports psychology? Or are you aware of other relevant academic studies? If you are, please let us know via the comments.
