Cliff Mallett

University of Queensland | UQ · School of Human Movement Studies

The experience of a collective underperformance of a sport team in an important competition is often accompanied by the experience of extreme emotions, such as anxiety or anger, and their expression through certain behaviors, for example including body language or verbal communication (e.g., Apitzsch, 2009; Wergin et al., 2018). In many cases, the...

This study investigated the beliefs of effective coaching in Japanese high school track and field coaches. Ninety-seven Japanese high school track and field coaches were volunteered to take part in this study. A structured self-completion questionnaire was used to collect data consisted of three sections: demographical profile data, beliefs of effe...

High-performance coaching in Olympic sports is somewhat distinctive given the long period between peak competitions and the multi-sport format. Defining, understanding, and researching the learning of Olympic coaches presents opportunities for insights into the unique factors that impact the coaching process in this context. Moreover, the results o...

The methods used to assess sports coaching expertise vary considerably between studies. This variability limits the capacity for researchers to compare, contrast and replicate findings across the field. In this article, we describe research aimed at creating a self-report measure of sports coaching expertise. In the following sections, we discuss t...

As the number of international transfers increases in professional sport teams, it is unclear how this diversity impacts team functioning, and also, whether coaches feel equipped to meet this new challenge. In this study, we explored professional coaches’ perceptions and experiences of cultural diversity (i.e., national and racioethnic diversity),...

High-performance (HP) coaching has been described as “a complex, social, and dynamic activity that is not easily represented as a set of tangible and predictable processes.” Coaches are not only responsible for extensive planning, monitoring, and leadership in a dynamic and complex environment but also have responsibility for supporting athlete dev...

Grounded in role socialization theory, we examined the perceptions of teacher-coaches at an Australian independent, regional school regarding the challenges and opportunities associated with performing this dual role. This interpretivist exploratory case study was conducted with 10 teacher-coaches of various backgrounds and experience levels. Data...

Sport coaches develop their coaching knowledge and identity as coaches through their life experiences over time. However, limited knowledge exists for what motivates youth coaches in Asia to coach, how they learn their craft, and how they develop as coaches. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental pathways of youth...

The proportion of Aboriginal peoples in a variety of Australian sports are at a much higher levels than their proportion of the overall population in Australia. Given the relative absence of Aboriginal parents in discussions of parenting, and the strong involvement of Aboriginal peoples in sport, the experiences of Aboriginal parents within Junior...

Many sports are shifting to shared leadership models, but cricket remains somewhat wedded to traditional models of leadership. Female cricket especially might challenge this traditional model. Understanding how players and coaches have similar, or differing, views can inform how to implement contemporary leadership models into cricket and extend co...

The construct of “choking under pressure” is concerned with the phenomenon of unexpected, sudden, and significant declines in individual athletes’ performances in important situations and has received empirical attention in the field of sport psychology. Although a number of theories about the reasons for the occurrence of choking under pressure ex...

Coaches can influence athlete outcomes, such as performance and personal development; yet, coaches themselves are learners in their own right, who seek to develop their coaching craft. Reflective practice is essential for coaches’ development; however, coaches might engage and benefit from reflective practice in myriad ways. This study aimed to eva...

Enjoyment is an important psychological construct in many life domains. Despite the importance of the construct, conceptual clarity in what enjoyment is remains elusive. The elusive understanding of enjoyment is probably caused by conceptual ambiguity of the construct and a confusion in the public usage between hedonic and eudaimonic qualities of p...

For many athletes, retirement from higher levels of competitive sport poses significant challenges. Research has shown that athletic identity is a key predictor of adjustment trajectories, but the mechanisms through which this affects outcomes are less clear. Added to this, there has been limited research on the role that wider social identities, a...

In this research, we show how a quality teaching framework can be used with psychology, specifically self-determination theory (SDT), and a Game Sense Approach (GSA) to plan and teach a unit of work as a context-specific version of quality Physical Education. This unit of work using Buroinjin, an Australian Aboriginal traditional game, was taught t...

In this manuscript, we extend ecological approaches and suggest ideas for enhancing athlete development by utilizing the Skilled Intentionality Framework. A broad aim is to illustrate the extent to which social, cultural and historical aspects of life are embodied in the way football is played and the skills young footballers develop during learnin...

Higher-order cognitive functions refer to a collection of executive processes, which support the production of controlled, coordinated, and adaptive cognitive operations. Within the field of sports coaching, higher-order cognitive functions, such as cognitive control, are perceived to be beneficial for expert performance. Nevertheless, there is cur...

While the impact of coaches on their athletes has been appreciated for more than a century, only recently have researchers reached a consensus concerning the key coaching principles and methods that consistently ensure the most positive outcomes for athletes and coaches. Sport Coaches’ Handbook presents this more holistic approach to coaching and p...

While the impact of coaches on their athletes has been appreciated for more than a century, only recently have researchers reached a consensus concerning the key coaching principles and methods that consistently ensure the most positive outcomes for athletes and coaches. Sport Coaches’ Handbook presents this more holistic approach to coaching and p...

Purpose: To date, most research on the assessment of motivation has been exerciser-focused and has not considered how fitness professionals’ motivations impact their behaviors toward exercisers during training sessions. The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire in a sample of fitness profess...

While the impact of coaches on their athletes has been appreciated for more than a century, only recently have researchers reached a consensus concerning the key coaching principles and methods that consistently ensure the most positive outcomes for athletes and coaches. Sport Coaches’ Handbook presents this more holistic approach to coaching and p...

Overtraining, exhaustion, and burnout are widely recognized problems amongst elite athletes. The present research addresses this issue by exploring the extent to which high-quality athlete leadership is associated with elite athletes’ health and burnout. Participants (120 male athletes from three top-division Australian football teams) were asked t...

While most leadership programs seek to develop the leadership qualities of the formal team leader, programs that aim to develop the leadership qualities of team members are rare. This article draws on insights from organisational and sport psychology to develop and introduce a new leadership development program — the 5R Shared Leadership Program (5...

In this epilogue to the special issue of Journal of Applied Sport Psychology on the psychology of sports coaching, we provide a brief commentary on the field of sports coaching and some reflections on three key themes emerging from the research presented within the issue. In drawing our reflections together, we offer recommendations for the future...

Welcome to this special issue of Journal of Applied Sport Psychology dedicated to the psychology of sports coaching. In this editorial, it is our intention to provide some insight into the nature of sports coaching and the complexity inherent within the coaching process. Further, we offer some consideration of the importance of exploring sport psyc...

The challenge of developing creativity to enhance human potential is conceptualized as a multifaceted wicked problem due to the countless interactions between people and environments that constitute human development, athletic skill, and creative moments. To better comprehend the inter-relatedness of ecologies and human behaviors, there have been i...

Purpose: Despite the recruitment of foreign sport coaches being a relatively long-standing phenomenon, there is limited research examining the experiences of foreign coaches working in globalised high-performance sport contexts. In examining how foreign coaches learn to perform their craft, we draw upon Billett’s [2006. ‘Relational Interdependence...

Collective team collapse occurs when multiple players of a sport team experience a sudden and extreme underperformance within a game and are unable to return to their initial performance level. The occurrence of such a team collapse event commonly leads to the loss of the game or championship. A recent study investigated athletes’ perceptions of th...

Traditional career assistance programs focused on the provision of vocational and educational support for elite athletes. Following a recent shift towards the provision of holistic support services for these athletes, the purpose of this research was to explore newly developed Personal Excellence (PE) adviser role within Australia’s high-performanc...

Purpose Coaches' motivation is central to their coaching, however, few studies have examined coaches' motivation in different cultures. The aim of this study was to provide initial validation of the Portuguese version of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire. Method The participants were 369 coaches from various sports (males = 288) aged between 18 a...

Motor imagery has been found to be helpful for developing skills in sport. Motor imagery (MI) helps anathlete to visualize simple or complex motor activities in the absence of physical practice. Few studies haveinspected the effects of motor imagery on trained individuals. The purpose of this study was to investigate theeffects of motor imagery on...

This magazine article explains in detail the leadership style of the 17 Olympic and Professional Serial Winning Coaches we studied between 2012 and 2016. We called it Driven Benevolence.

In response to the wider call to put the person back into the study of coaching, this paper addresses my, the lead author’s, understandings of coaching an amateur women’s football team. Specifically, my co-authors and I critically consider how my embodied emotional experiences and meaning-making were produced in, as well as through, the interaction...

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

Social identity research shows that leadership is a process of group identity development but has not examined how leaders can manage group identities in the workplace. The 5R leadership development program addresses this issue. This takes leaders through a five-stage process of (1) Readying: explaining the importance of social identity processes f...

Using a life story approach, Hardy and colleagues present a study examining the similarities and differences in the psychosocial development of UK-based elite and super-elite athletes. We found this work to be a highly personal account into the lives of these cohorts, which advances knowledge concerning the psychology and influencing events and cir...

To enhance our understanding of the practices of successful people, a more comprehensive and nuanced examination of what underpins their successes is imperative; that is, why they behave the way they do. In this chapter, we provide an insight into what we have learned about highly successful elite sport coaches and how this understanding might info...

Research aims. The present article provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between playing position and leadership in sport. More particularly, it explores links between leadership and a player’s interactional centrality — defined as the degree to which their playing position provides opportunities for interaction with other team m...

The valid percentage of high-level, low-level, and youth athlete leaders playing in a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The playing positions of appointed athlete leaders and the team captain in the different sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The valid percentage of male and female athlete leaders playing on a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

In 2011, the Innovation Group of Leading Agencies of the International Council for Coaching Excellence initiated a project aimed at supporting the identification and development of the next generation of high performance coaches. The project, entitled Serial Winning Coaches, studied the personalities, practices and developmental pathways of profess...

Behavioural regulation in Coaches: A German version of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire (CMQ-G) Christian Zepp1, Paul Schaffran2, Michael Kellmann2,3 , Clifford J. Mallett3 & Jens Kleinert1 1 Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Germany 2 Faculty of Sport Science, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany 3School of Human Movement an...

Little in-depth knowledge is known about the person behind successful coaching. Therefore, the current study was designed to comprehensively examine the personality of a successful Olympic coach. Using McAdams' whole-person framework, we sought to elicit a coherent description of this coach's personality by integrating data drawn from three layers...

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Background and Purpose: Given the turbulent and highly contested environment in which professional coaches work, a prime concern to coach developers is how coaches learn their craft. Understanding the learning and development of senior coaches (SCs) and assistant coaches (ACs) in the Australian Football League (AFL – the peak organisation for Austr...

The sports environment is stress-eliciting in that it encapsulates perceived uncontrollability, unpredictability and requires ego-involvement. The HPA axis has been shown (indicated by cortisol release) to respond to anticipated sports competition up to a week prior to the event. Research also alludes to the importance of individual differences, su...

It was hypothesized that autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors, psychological needs satisfaction, and mental toughness would increase, and controlling coaching behaviors and psychological needs thwarting would decrease following a coach-directed autonomy-supportive intervention. Data related to these hypotheses were collected with coaches (N = 18)...

The purpose of this study was to conduct a guided reflection intervention for high performance basketball coaches. The study participants included two head basketball coaches and 10 of their players who were part of elite youth teams in Singapore. The coaches were highly experienced, each with 17 and 20 years of coaching experience respectively, an...

There has been much literature and anecdotal accounts reporting poor parental behaviours in the youth sporting context. Youth coaches and administrators, who regularly interact with parents within the youth sporting domain, are potentially a key source for investigating the influence of parents' sport-related behaviours on youths' sporting experien...

The development of burnout in the vocation of sports coaching is a process that can take months or even years. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of longitudinal examination of coaches' burnout, stress, and recovery. The present study investigated burnout, stress, and recovery of full and part-time coaches to examine possible changes during the cour...

This paper draws on contemporary views in personality psychology as a means for understanding people participating in sport and physical activity. Specifically, we focus on McAdams’ integrative framework [McAdams (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 272-295; McAdams & Pals (2006). A n...

Coaching employment in high-performance sport is capricious and dependent upon winning performances and players’ satisfaction. These internal and external pressures to perform successfully throughout the season have the potential to create significant stress for coaches. Moreover, as the season progresses the accumulation of stress and the ability...

The Coaching Behavior Scale for Sport (CBS-S) is designed to evaluate coaches' involvement in developing athletes, taking into considerations the complex training and competition environment. Although the CBS-S has been used in a number of empirical studies, the factor structure of the instrument has not been examined rigorously. The present study...

The World Junior Championships in Athletics (WJC), for athletes aged under 20 years, were introduced in 1986 with objectives including: retention, performance improvement, and being a pathway to elite senior performance. The authors documented the lived experiences of a group of participating athletes from New Zealand in order to determine the role...

Background and purpose: This paper attempts to move the discussion of high-performance coach development from an examination of coaches' volume of experiences towards a consideration of the contribution of the learning experiences that coaches have reported throughout their careers. Furthermore, a discussion of proximal and distal guidance in the d...

In light of the extant literature, the aim of the current study was to compare adolescents' perspectives on mental toughness and its development across performance contexts, and to explore if such perspectives align with Bronfenbrenner's (2001) bioecological model. Eighteen mentally tough adolescents (9 boys, 9 girls, Mage = 15.6 years) from three...

We argue that basic psychological needs theory (BPNT) offers impetus to the value of mental toughness as a mechanism for optimizing human functioning. We hypothesized that psychological needs satisfaction (thwarting) would be associated with higher (lower) levels of mental toughness, positive affect, and performance and lower (higher) levels of neg...

We argue that basic psychological needs theory (BPNT) offers impetus to the value of mental toughness as a mechanism for optimizing human functioning. We hypothesized that psychological needs satisfaction (thwarting) would be associated with higher (lower) levels of mental toughness, positive affect, and performance and lower (higher) levels of neg...

Guiding athletes to become senior international athletes is consistent with the brief of talent development programmes. The transition from junior to senior athlete might be viewed as a normative transition. Nevertheless, this transition is likely to be a complex process and some understanding of that complexity is necessary to inform those respons...

The aim of this study was to investigate the optimal psychological state for peak performance in Australian elite athletes. World championship and Olympic athletes (n = 17) and coaches (n = 6) from rowing, swimming, and diving were interviewed about the psychological states that contribute to peak performance. Results indicated that peak performanc...

Self-determination theory has been applied to the prediction of a number of health-related behaviors with self-determined or autonomous forms of motivation generally more effective in predicting health behavior than non-self-determined or controlled forms. Research has been confined to examining the motivational predictors in single health behavior...

There has been an increasing body of research on autonomy- or need-support specific to a coaching context that warrants some review of what we know and don't know, and what might be generative for future research. The previous studies reviewed within this article have shown consistent support for Self-determination theory with autonomy-supportive e...

Mental toughness has received increased scholarly attention in recent years, yet conceptual issues related to its (i) dimensionality, (ii) nomological network, and (iii) traitness remain unresolved. The series of studies reported in this paper were designed to examine these three substantive issues across several achievement contexts including spor...

In undertaking their complicated and multi-faceted work, high performance coaches have previously been shown to be influential in the performance of athletes. It has also been noted that high performance coaches are learners by necessity. However, what remains unclear is how coaches’ learning influences their engagement in sustainable practice. Thi...

The Coaching Behavior Scale for Sport (CBS-S) is designed to evaluate coaches’ involvement in developing athletes, taking into considerations the complex training and competition environment. Although CBS-S has been used in a number of empirical studies, the factor structure of the instrument has not been examined rigorously. The present study was,...

Mental toughness is a topic that has received growing attention in psychological literature over the past decade. Although some researchers have attempted to understand how mental toughness is developed, little effort has been made to integrate an understanding of mental toughness development with established psychological theory and research. The...

The measurement of mental toughness, which has gained increased popularity among scholars in the past decade, is an area of research that has typically lacked a synergy between theory and method. In a psychometric examination of the Mental Toughness Questionnaire-48 (MTQ48; Clough, Earle, & Sewell, 2002), Gucciardi, Hanton, and Mallett (2012) propo...

The current study was conducted to re-assess the factor structure of the 24-item Sport Motivation Scale-6 (SMS-6; Mallett, Kawabata, Newcombe, Otero-Forero, & Jackson, 2007) with an independent sample. A total of 437 participants completed the SMS-6, and their responses were examined with confirmatory factor analysis and recent exploratory structur...

Background: Sports coaching is largely a social activity where engagement with athletes and support staff can enhance the experiences for all involved. This paper examines how high performance football coaches develop knowledge through their interactions with others within a social learning theory framework.Purpose: The key purpose of this study wa...

Background: The development of high performance sports coaches has been proposed as a major imperative in the professionalization of sports coaching. Accordingly, an increasing body of research is beginning to address the question of how coaches learn. While this is important work, an understanding of how coaches learn must be underpinned by an und...

The present study examined the extent to which scores on the Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (DFS-2) could differentiate individuals who frequently experience flow characteristics in physical activity from those who do not. A total of 993 participants completed the Japanese version of the DFS-2. Latent class factor analysis (LCFA), which combines the st...

In preparation for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, the lead author engaged in systematic reflection in an attempt to implement coaching behaviours and create practice environments that promoted athlete development (psycho-social and physical performance). The research was carried out in relation to his work as head Ski Cross coach working...

The aim of this research was to develop and assess the psychometric properties of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire (CMQ). Study 1 focused on the compilation and pilot testing of potential questionnaire items. Consistent with self-determination theory, items were devised to tap into six forms of motivation: amotivation, external regulation, introj...

The purpose of the present study was to examine the differences in game-related statistics in discriminating successful from the unsuccessful female basketball teams that took part in the 1st Youth Olympic Games (YOG) FIBA33 games held in Singapore from 15 to 23 August 2010. A total of 70 games played by the 20 participating countries were used for...

Mental toughness has received increasing attention in the field of performance psychology, yet issues remain about its measurement by self-report. In this article, we have summarized mental toughness measurement issues and, as an example, provided a psychometric examination of the most frequently used measure. In an effort to operationalize mental...