Empowering and Disempowering Coaching Climates: Conceptualization, Measurement Considerations, and Intervention Implications

A considerable body of research in sport psychology and endless anecdotal accounts point to the relevance of coach behaviors to how athletes respond to and feel about their sport participation. Achievement goal theory (AGT) and self-determination theory (SDT) have provided considerable insight into key psychological dimensions of the coach-created climate that are pertinent to athletes' sport engagement, as well as its motivational and health-related concomitants. Recently, a conceptualization of the motivational environment, which integrates environmental dimensions from AGT and SDT and considers the degree to which coaches are empowering and disempowering, has been proposed. This chapter presents subjective and objective measures of the climate that have stemmed from this conceptualization and describes how it lays the bases for the current evolution of the Empowering Coaching™ coach education training. Findings to date from a large-scale European project entailing the delivery and evaluation of this training program to grassroots football coaches are highlighted.