The Technician: Helping elite coaches improve their mental health and well-being
Friday, September 13, 2024
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In our regular publication for coaches, experts tell us how managers and head coaches can cope with stressors that negatively impact their mental health and well-being.
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Managers and head coaches working in elite football regularly face intense and highly stressful demands. Without appropriate coping techniques, support structures and self-awareness, the environment of elite football can pose a risk to the mental health and well-being of those involved.
Over the last two years, the French Football Federation (FFF) has worked with more than 200 elite football coaches to study the impact elite football places on individual mental health and well-being. Over the course of a season, coaches have completed a monthly questionnaire focusing on their 'vitality' and other factors in their life.
Quality of relationships and social support for coaches have proved to be the most significant factors linked to mental health and well-being, explains Chloé Leprince, who leads the FFF's Research Centre at Clairefontaine.
"The factor of relationships and social support is most correlated to the vitality of the coach," she says. "We observed that relationships and social support play two roles: if the level of relationship is high, the level of vitality is also high. On the contrary, if the level of vitality and the level of relationship decreases, they decrease together. So, the factors are correlated."
Understanding the complex challenges managers and coaches face
Understanding the complex demands faced by modern managers and head coaches is key to helping improve mental health and well-being, says Dr Andy Cale, a football consultant working with a number of professional organisations, clubs and coaches.
"In modern football, there are so many things going on," says Dr Cale, whose previous roles include head of player and coach development at the English Football Association (FA). "You've got to make sure that coaches are in a perfect position to do their job."
The impact of constant pressure for results, managing large groups of players and staff, a relentless schedule of training, games and media responsibilities, as well as long periods away from family and friends, must be better understood to support coaches more effectively, says Dr Cale.
"The changing nature of the head coach role can mean a really stressful workload with too many things to do in one day and no time to do any of those things properly.
"Added to this, the coach may not have seen their family for a period of time. So, there are stressors from all of these things. The multiple skillsets coaches are required to have and the time pressure they are under make this a really difficult job."
Avoid the 'superhero complex'
It is not uncommon to see head coaches or managers develop a 'superhero' complex in response to the many stressors involved in the elite football environment, says Dr Peter Olusoga, senior lecturer in psychology and a chartered psychologist.
"Some of our research found that the culture of high-performance sport is all about constructs like strength, toughness, grit and pushing through adversity," he says.
"It's almost a hyper-masculine version of what sport is. What that does is stop coaches from seeking help and expressing the fact that they're finding things emotionally difficult. It means they develop what we call the 'superhero complex', which is the need to be all things to all people all of the time and never show any weakness."