Giving Feedback That Actually Lands: A Sport Psychology Approach

As a coach, you are probably very familiar with this moment. You spot something in training that would genuinely make one of your athletes better, and know what they need to do to fix it. You approach the athlete and explain the solution well. You were clear, calm, and they seemed receptive. They nod, confirming this: “yeah, I've got it.” You leave this interaction feeling good about yourself.

Then later that week the next session rolls around, you watch that athlete do the exact same thing again as if you never said anything to them - no growth shown.

It is one of the most frustrating parts of coaching, and it usually has nothing to do with how well you explained it, chances are you explained it well. But the key difference is in how we bring that information to them more than how well we explain it. You need to change the delivery style whilst delivering the same message. Let's start by exploring Motivational Interviewing.

What Motivational Interviewing Actually Is

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a style of conversation designed to help someone find their own reasons for change, rather than handing them yours. It grew out of health and behaviour change work, and is now used widely in sport.

One idea sits underneath all of it: people commit far more strongly to what they say themselves than to what they are told by others.

When the reason to change belongs to your athlete, it survives the moments you are not there to reinforce it. The aim is to deliver information as if it is there idea and responsibility to bare on their terms.

Why Good Feedback Bounces Off

The mechanism behind this is call the righting reflex: which is the instinct to spot a problem and fix it immediately. Coaches often have it in abundance, and for good reason. Coaches are their to help growth and development in the people under their care. Their roles inherently involve spotting problems and giving solutions to fix them.

The problem is that, whilst that sentiment is correct, it often doesn't necessarily translate well to the athlete. Often you'll find that the harder you push a solution, the more resistance you are met with it. People will naturally try to defend their own positions when trying to teach them and bringing their defence to mind is likely to reinforce their original idea/belief more so than take your one on. By the end of a back and forth conversation, you're likely further away than when you started.

So how do I approach giving advice to the athletes that I work with?

Five Shifts That Help Feedback Land

1. Ask for permission

The first shift happens before you have said a word about the mistake. Instead of opening with the correction, ask whether they want it: “Do you want my read on that last one, or another go first?”

It sounds like a small courtesy, but it changes the whole shape of the conversation. An athlete who has agreed to hear your advice is far more receptive to it, because they have chosen to listen rather than been made to. The feedback becomes an opportunity they have taken up rather than a correction aimed at them, and that removes most of the resistance that comes from having a solution pushed on you.

Asking also protects their autonomy, which is exactly what the righting reflex overrides. When athletes feel that hearing your view is their choice, they give it a proper hearing. And if they say “another go first”, let them have it. Often they will come back and ask for your read anyway, and now they are the one asking, which is the best possible start for everything that follows.

2. How to give feedback to athletes: ask, offer, ask

Once your athlete has said yes, the next question is how to deliver the message itself. Most of us were taught the feedback sandwich: a compliment, the correction, another compliment. Athletes see through it quickly. They hear the opening praise and wait for the “but”, so the correction arrives with their guard already up.

Motivational interviewing replaces the sandwich with a simple three-step rhythm: ask, offer, ask.

• Ask. Start with their view, not yours: “What did you notice there?” Then let them answer. The silence that follows will feel long, but that is the athlete thinking, so resist the urge to fill it.

• Offer. Share one observation, briefly: “The bit I saw was your first step going backwards.” Make sure its one thing, not five. An athlete can act on a single clear point, whereas a list of corrections turns into noise.

• Ask. Hand the conversation back: “What do you make of that?” This invites them to connect your observation to what they felt, rather than simply accept it or push back against it.

The rhythm works because the athlete does most of the thinking. Your observation lands in the middle of their own reflection rather than being pushed on them from outside, so there is far less for them to defend. More often than you would expect, they name the problem before you do, and when they do, the correction already belongs to them.

3. Reflect more than you correct

Ask, offer, ask only works if you do something useful with what the athlete says, and this is where the core skills of motivational interviewing come in. MI is built on four of them, remembered by the acronym OARS: open questions, affirmations, reflections and summaries. Open questions get the athlete talking. Affirmations recognise what they are doing well, which we will come to shortly. Reflections and summaries show the athlete they have been heard.

Of the four, reflection is the one most coaches under-use, and it is easy to see why. When an athlete says something, the coaching instinct is to answer with a fix. A reflection does something different: it simply says back what you heard. “So you felt rushed the moment the press came on.” No advice, no correction, just their own words handed back to them.

It sounds too simple to matter, but a reflection does two things a correction doesn't. It proves you were listening, which makes the athlete far more willing to keep talking. And it lets them hear their own thinking out loud, which is usually where insight turns up. An athlete who hears themselves say “I felt rushed” is already halfway to asking what they could do about it. Remember, you haven't told them anything, you have simply given them the room to work it out.

4. Affirm the process, not just the outcome

Affirmations are the A in OARS, and they are easily confused with praise, but there is a key difference. Praise is about the result: great goal, well done, etc. An affirmation is about the person and what they controlled to get there: “You held your shape when you were exhausted. That takes real discipline.”

Both feel positive in the moment, but they teach very different lessons. Outcome praise quietly tells athletes that their worth rises and falls with the scoreboard. That is a fragile place to perform from, because the scoreboard is never fully in their control, and it is exactly the kind of thinking that cracks under pressure. An athlete who is only praised for winning learns to fear losing.

Affirming effort, attitude and decision-making does the opposite. It points athletes at the controllables, the things they can repeat on a bad day as well as a good one. Over time, it builds a growth mindset: the belief that ability is developed through work rather than something you either have or you don’t. Athletes who believe that treat mistakes as information, which is exactly what you need them to do if your feedback is going to be used rather than defended against.

5. Let the athlete name the next step

Everything so far has been about the conversation. This final shift is what turns the conversation into change. When you reach the point of agreeing what happens next, resist the urge to prescribe the drill. Ask instead: “So what are you doing differently on Thursday?”

This is the idea that sits underneath motivational interviewing, put into practice. When the athlete says it, they own it. When you say it, they comply with it, and compliance lasts only as long as you are watching. Think back to the athlete at the start of this post, the one who nodded and then changed nothing. They had not committed to anything. They had agreed, which is the quickest way to end a conversation about your own mistakes. A plan in their own words is a different thing entirely, because now there is something of their own to live up to.

Two things make this work. Keep it specific: “I’ll check my first step before every rep” is a plan, whereas “I’ll work on my footwork” is a hope. And keep it small enough to actually happen this week. A step the athlete can complete and notice gives you both something to build on next time, which is where the next ask, offer, ask begins.

When You Still Need to Be Direct

None of this is an argument for never telling anyone anything. Some moments call for a clear, direct instruction; for instance, a safety issue, a decision under time pressure, or a technical fix that has to happen before the next rep. Your athletes deserve your expertise, and holding it back when they need it is not good coaching either.

The point is where you set your default. Motivational interviewing is the setting you start from, not a gag on ever giving an answer. Most feedback is simply not as urgent as it feels in the moment, and the five shifts above are for that majority. Save direct instruction for the moments that need it, and it will carry more weight when you use it.

Try This With One Athlete This Week

Five shifts at once is too much to take into a session, so start small.

• Pick one athlete and one session.

• Ask one question before every piece of feedback you give.

• Finish with them naming the next step, not you.

  
  

It will feel clunky for a while, as every new skill does, and you will catch yourself jumping to the fix more than once. But don't worry about that, keep going. It becomes the way you talk with time, and you will notice athletes arriving with their own observations before you have even said anything.

The Coach Behind the Confident Athlete

Better feedback is about more than fixing technique. How you deliver it shapes the relationship, and the relationship shapes everything else. Athletes who feel understood take more risks, hide fewer problems and are far more likely to tell you when something is wrong - whether that is in their game or in their head. That openness is where real confidence comes from: not from never making mistakes, but from knowing they can be talked about and worked on.

So here is the question to sit with. What would change in your group if your athletes started arriving with the answers?

Ready to Build This Into Your Coaching?

If you would like support with the mental side of performance, whether for yourself as a coach or for the athletes you work with, let’s have a conversation. A discovery call is a relaxed chat about where you are now and what would actually help, with no pressure attached.

From there, The Empowered Programme is six one-to-one sessions built on established psychological models, developing the confidence, focus and resilience that turn potential into performance. Get in touch, and let’s build the athlete you know is in there.

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Epictetus