A Case for Self-Regard (And How to Build It)

DR. LAUREN K. MCHENRY, CMPC, NCC

In a Netflix series titled The Playbook: A Coaches’ Rules for Life, Head Coach of NBA team Philadelphia 76ers, Doc Rivers stated: “Every time I walk into the locker room for the first time I tell my players every year, and I’ve told ‘em for 21 years: I’m Doc Rivers, and I’m human, and I’m going to make mistakes.” Rivers’ opening statement to his athletes each season is a powerful modeling of the ability to take responsibility for mistakes while maintaining a consistent sense of positive self-regard. In other words, Rivers can own his mistakes and continue to accept and respect himself through them—a necessary precursor to learning from mistakes and challenging oneself to improve. And this is just what he wants his athletes to learn to do.

To have consistent self-regard is to accept, respect, engage with, believe in, and challenge oneself in any circumstance. With this definition, you might agree that consistent self-regard is an important quality for athletes to develop to own their mistakes without it crushing their confidence, accept your critique without taking it personally, and challenge themselves in the face of fear or adversity. Rivers reminds us that a coach’s way of being—for example, modeling your own consistent self-regard—can be as impactful on athlete development than anything you say or do. Yet modeling consistent self-regard is hard to do!

Think about the way you talk to yourself on a bad day. Is it always accepting or respectful?

Most people’s (myself included!) response to this question is, “…Nope!” As human beings, we are all susceptible to blind spots and missing information that might help us improve. Become more attuned to your own self-regard by trying one or more of the following strategies.

Grow your strengths

What do you have within you that is valuable, authentic, and inspiring for your professional role? Retired head coach of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) gymnastics team, Valerie Kondos-Field, asked herself this question after her first two seasons as head coach in which her team failed miserably. Kondos- Field had compensated her for imposter syndrome by mimicking how she thought a coach should be. She took a “my way or the highway” approach and exerted power over, belittled, and shamed athletes. This approach was so ineffective that after two years, she was ready to resign. Yet before doing so, she came across

John Wooden’s definition of success: “success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Kondos- Field realized that in trying to be someone other than herself, she had not done her best to become her best in her head coaching role. Instead of resigning, she identified and began to capitalize on her own strengths while delegating roles to others in areas she was lacking. Her shift toward coaching with authenticity led to a 28-year career as head coach at UCLA during which she led her team to seven NCAA national championship wins. Take a moment to reflect on what you bring to your job that is valuable, authentic, and inspiring. Consider how you can grow these strengths within your coaching daily.

Check your values

Values are defined as the “guiding principles in people’s lives.” Dr. Shalom Schwartz indicated that there are six main features of values:

(1) values are beliefs

(2) values refer to desirable goals and can be used to motivate action

(3) values transcend specific situations (e.g., they apply in sport and in life outside of sport)

(4) values serve as standards or criteria

(5) values are ordered by importance, and

(6) the relative importance of multiple values in a given situation will guide action.

We quickly become ingenuine and inauthentic when the values we say are important don’t match our actions. A key strategy is to check your actions with your values daily. For example, head coach of women’s soccer at Idaho State University, Debs Brereton, created an acronym with her top four values—GRIT: gratitude, respect, integrity, and trust. Brereton shared of her daily practice: “I’ve got [GRIT] written on my mirror [in my office], and before I leave the office every day, I look into it and just, you know, be honest with myself for a few seconds and I’m like, ‘Was I good and true to those words today?’ And if I wasn’t, then why? If I was, then ‘Good on you, do it again tomorrow.’”

Draw your boundaries

Brené Brown has found through her research that the most loving and caring people are also the best at establishing and clearly communicating their own boundaries. That means they are clear for themselves on what is OKAY and NOT OKAY in terms of how others treat them and they ensure that others understand this. For example, you might set a boundary around when and how athletes’ parents can contact you as well as how long you need to respond. Then, you may communicate this with an understanding that parents want to be involved and reasoning behind how this structure of communication will help you be at your best for their child. When your needs are protected, then you’ll have a lot more to give in terms of empathy and positive regard for your athletes (and their parents!). Boundaries can also include placing a literal boundary around specific things you do to care for yourself, such as exercise, time with family or friends, professional education/development, or meditation. With such demanding jobs, protecting this time can be most difficult. A key strategy is to schedule an appointment with yourself each day for a self-care action—and put it on your calendar—even if the appointment is as short as 5- to 15-minutes long. Making this appointment and showing up for yourself will improve your quality of work through the rest of the day.

Practice failure-recovery

Failure-recovery means having a system to take ownership of a mistake and get back into the moment immediately following that mistake. For example, head coach of the Western Washington University women’s volleyball team, Diane Flick-Williams, has a system in which athletes

(1) immediately own a mistake

(2) make direct eye contact with a coach or teammate as if to say, “I’m back,” and

(3) state a positive affirmation or accept a positive affirmation from a coach or teammate. Implementing a system like this with athletes may come easier if you practice it yourself. For example, let’s say you failed to debrief with an athlete at the end of a lesson in which their actions frustrated you. You can demonstrate failure-recovery by

(1) owning the fact that your frustration interfered with a debrief,

(2) communicate your awareness of the mistake to the athlete to say, “I’m here and learning,” and

(3) remind yourself of your strengths that you will capitalize on in that athlete’s next lesson.

Establish your professional “board of directors”

Anybody can have an opinion about your coaching. And while a common piece of advice is to “not care what others think,” it is important for your professional and personal development to care what some people think. Brené Brown’s research has shown that you only need three to six people—max—in your life whom you truly care what they think of you. Brown offers a strategy to identify these people in which you write their names on a 1”x1” square piece of paper, because that’s all the space you need to fit the names of those who matter most. I like to call this group of people your professional (and personal) “board of directors,” meaning these are the people you want to run ideas by, ask for critique and consultation, and ensure that they will tell you when you’re in the wrong. When it comes to building your own self-regard, it is critical that these are also people who show consistent regard to you—so that even when they give you feedback that is hard to hear, they accept, respect, engage with, believe in, and challenge you to keep striving toward your highest potential.

Dr. Lauren McHenry is a former figure skater and certified mental performance consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. She holds a PhD in sport psychology and motor behavior and is the lead author of two articles on coach-athlete relationships in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology. Lauren is a consultant to athletes and coaches across sports nation-wide and is subcontracted to support the U.S. Figure Skating sport psychology team. She is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Contact: mchenry.lk@gmail.com

REFERENCES

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. Random House, New York.

Greenbaum, J. (Director) (2020, September 22). Doc Rivers: A coach’s rules for life. [Docuseries, Episode 5]. In L. James & M. Carter (Executive Producers), The Playbook: A coach’s rules for life. Netflix original network. Retrieved from https://www.netflix.com/title/81025735

Kim, J., Joseph, S., & Price, S. (2020). The positive psychology of relational depth and its association with unconditional positive self-regard and authenticity. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 19(1), 1–10. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2020.1717983

Kondos Field, V. with Cooper, S. (2019). Life is short, don’t wait to dance: Advice and inspiration from the UCLA athletic hall of fame coach of 7 NCAA Championship teams. Hachette Book Group.

McHenry, L. K., Cochran, J. L., Zakrajsek, R. A., Fisher, L. A., Couch S., & Hill, B. (2020). Elite figure skaters’ experiences of thriving in the coach-athlete relationship: A person-centered theory perspective. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 1-21.

McHenry, L. K. (2021). A Realist Evaluation of the Professional Development Program Thriving through Being with Professional Coaches and Support Staff of NCAA Women’s Basketball. PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, 2021.

Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116Wooden, J. R. with Tobin, J. (2004). They call me coach. McGraw-Hill, New York.