Creating a Culture of Confidence

As the shrill of the final whistle faded into the intense winds of a cold November afternoon, my players walked off the field looking dejected. An opportunity to claim their spot as the best team in the state had slipped through their fingers, and the performance on the field suggested that the gap was wider than our efforts could manage. Though I resonated with their disappointment, I could not accept the idea that we were as far off as the game made it appear. After some brief words of encouragement that fell rather flat, the boys filtered away from the scene and I approached our director to get his take. What tactical changes did I miss? What did we miss in our preparation? Were we fit enough to compete in such an intense game? 

“It just seemed like the boys lacked the confidence to get it done today.”

Confidence, a much discussed topic in sport performance, can be difficult to define. Miami’s Dr. Robin Vealey has spent decades doing so, first proposing it to be both a disposition and a state in 1986 before exploring ideas such as trait (stable) and state (unstable) confidence in the early 2000s. This definition is intuitive if you work with youth players – some players seem to “have it”, while others don’t. But the research continued to find that confidence can be heavily impacted by organizational culture and other social factors in an athlete’s environment. So rather than being a strictly internal battle, self-confidence can also be viewed from a sociocultural perspective. 

Back on the sidelines of my team’s defeat, I began to process what my director’s diagnosis meant as the word confidence rang in my ears. There are so many layers of confidence to peel back – the responsibility of the player, the role of the coach, the role of the competition, etc. Ultimately, what I chose to focus on are three coaching-specific actions that I will outline in this article: the coach’s duty to inspire, instruct, and include. 

Inspire

Legendary Notre Dame American Football coach Ara Parasheghian once said, “A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.” A player’s imagination is one of their greatest tools, and the coach should bear partial responsibility for directing their players’ dreams in a positive way. When players lose their agency, when creativity and experimentation are replaced with rigidity and caution, it has a negative effect on confidence. Phillip Lahm, having observed a dismal Paris St. Germain side fall to his former club Bayern Munich, described the “uninspired football” that led to their downfall. This is a challenge for coaches at every level, to capture the imagination of players and allow them space to discover how beautiful football can be.

This inspiration that manifests as confidence could be viewed as a frame of Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy theory, or the perception of one’s ability to perform a task successfully. Athletes with high self-efficacy (self-belief) have been proven to set more challenging goals for themselves. This high-achievement mindset is something I want to see in every player I coach, so our team culture is directed toward building that self-belief. Encouraging brave play that may lead to mistakes, publicly celebrating goal achievement, and leading players to point out the positives they see in each other are all behaviors that have begun to transform my team’s culture into one that is more inspirational. 

Ask yourself this question – in my training preparation, in my coaching delivery, in my game management, how can I foster inspiration in the minds of my players? 

Instruct

Failure is an unavoidable companion to sport. Some players have a better relationship with failure than others, and a lot of that will be determined by their level of self-confidence. But the coach’s reaction to failure will have a big impact on an athlete’s self-confidence. How do we embrace our roles as teachers without harming the confidence of our players?

In researching successful high performance environments, Solomon (2010) found that skill errors should generally be responded to with specific information regarding how to perform the skill correctly. We have all let the occasional “unlucky” slip out when a player makes a technical mistake. Rather than taking the moment to instruct, we have dismissed the moment as an anomaly that will quickly be forgotten by our player. Unfortunately, some athletes will then “unlucky” themselves right onto your bench, wondering what they could have done to improve their play. 

When you plan your training sessions, you have an objective that will demand certain actions from your players. This helps you prepare for the types of corrective feedback you may have to provide during the session. For instance, if you know you are going to be working in the final third, you might prepare technical points surrounding different types of finishing in the box. Rather than meeting a missed scoring chance with criticism or “unlucky”, you have prepared details in advance that will help your player master the technique in question, which will in turn boost their self-confidence. 

Do not let a lack of detail be the downfall of your team’s confidence levels – prepare to give helpful corrective feedback when appropriate so that they find satisfaction in mastering their skills. 

Include

Coaches are asked to make a lot of decisions that impact their team environment. From training activities to team bonding outings to starting lineups, each decision impacts each player differently and adds a new wrinkle to the team culture. Along with the lessons on instruction, Solomon (2010) also suggested that coaches should interact frequently with all of their players to learn about their perceptions, opinions, and attitudes regarding team rules and organization. 

At a recent team meeting during a weekend tournament, I led my U13 boys through a discussion that focused on how they wanted to implement our club values into our team culture. Despite already having a high view of our group, my assistant coach and I walked away astounded by their level of insight and desire to be a part of something exceptional. They set non-performance goals for themselves, goals that centered on who they wanted to be as a team. They talked about tactics they would like to learn about and try on the field. They talked about holding each other accountable to training outside of organized practice. Meanwhile, I had nothing to add – they had set the bar for the experience they want to have, and all they needed from me was a bit of guidance. 

I learned that day that I felt the need to control too much of the team experience. Had I included them in the conversation earlier, we would be six months ahead of the culture they are now forming. They are embodying these values and growing in confidence by the week, with every member of the team getting a clearer picture of their role. I encourage you to invite your players into your process – include them in the decisions that define some of the most influential moments of their lives and watch their collective confidence blossom. 

I can’t be sure what would have changed the outcome for my players on that cold, windy day in November. But as a coach, I have been learning to stop questioning outcomes and start embracing processes. The process of building confidence within my teams has no guarantees of producing results or reducing mistakes. But if taking steps to inspire, instruct, and include my players will produce a group of confident and self-fulfilled young athletes, then it will be time well spent. 

*This article originally appeared in the United Soccer Coaches “Soccer Journal”, Pre-Season Ed. (2023).