Grades and Graduation Sep 2009

As of Sep 2009, my grades ('D' for Distinction and 'HD' for High Distinction) for the essays of all my modules are as follows:

On 10 Sep 2009, I graduated from the Monash University's Master of Education (Leadership, Policy and Change) Programme.

Reflection on Personal Learning

This is an essay I have written to reflect on the learning I have gained during research.

Reflection on Personal Learning

The kind of academic research I have done for this project is not something I would do in my normal daily life. Although there are many questions I may want or like answered, given the many priorities in my life, most are forgettable or easily satisfied by simply visiting the Internet. For these questions, I do not carry out the same amount of reading and degree of reflection which I had done for the project.

This research project had called away a significant amount of my time and effort. There is an opportunity cost in this. Ever since I have committed to this project eight months ago, I have felt a burden on my shoulder and it has become stressful.

The source of this burden is not from the shortage of time and energy to conduct the literature research and data collection or to analyse the data and write the report. There is sufficient of practice for these from all other modules in this academic programme. Also, I had adjusted my lifestyle to make the time and energy for the endeavour.

The source is in the fear that my effort comes to nothing. I am worried that the research questions turn out to be frivolous. I am worried that the literature suggests that it is a waste of my and everyone else's time to pursue what Î want to know. This fear is always at the back of my mind because I always suspect there are some articles hidden somewhere in some journals which I have missed that say that I am wasting my time. I am worried that at the end of the eighth month I would find out that I have not created anything new and I have not expanded the current body of knowledge. This is the struggle I have encountered throughout the research. Even now, I am not absolutely sure that this research project has ended well and is enough a contribution to improve the society at large. This is the cost of 'what if’s'.

Still, with doubts abound, I am more confident now than eight months ago. I have learnt the process of research and reflection. I have learnt that for every article that has sent me to a wild goose chase, there is another that beats an enlightened path to something exciting. I have learnt to be patient. Also, I have learnt to let the knowledge and data speak, and to believe that they will point me to something that is important or lead me to somewhere brighter. I just need to listen and the answers will come. Life has a strange way of showing itself.

More importantly, I have bunch people whom I have read and who could have carried similar notions as mine to inspire me on. Through their writing, no matter how subjective they may sound, I could hear their willingness to share what they have suspected and discovered, and to suggest the ways for other researchers who are interested in our field to follow so that the knowledge grows and gets deepened. I am not alone. I have the shoulders of these researchers to stand on and this has lessened my fears. I am very glad for having such an experience in my life time.

This reflection was first written on 27 Jul 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Research Project Report - 'Do emotions of the coach impact his athletes’ race performance?'

This report was graded by Dr. Amanda Berry, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Monash University, and here are her comments:

'Please find attached your Project that has now been marked. You gained a grade of Distinction. Your work clearly distinguishes your potential as a PhD candidate.'

Research Project Report

Do emotions of the coach impact his athletes’ race performance?

Tracing the History of Sports in Singapore

Sports have a long history in Singapore. Prior to Singapore’s independence, sports were leisure pursuits of the rich and privileged few. Today, sports are accessible to every resident in the country and have become an important source of national identity and pride for the nation. In addition, sports have been identified by the Government as a new growth engine for the economy and efforts have been made to develop Singapore into a sporting hub in Asia.

Sports were only strategically developed and systematically cultivated in Singapore after her separation from Malaysia in 1965. The Government at that time understood the significant role sports played in bonding Singaporeans from different cultural backgrounds into members of a rugged society. She saw sports as a means to tame the ethnical and social tensions that existed during the period of the separation. So, the Sports Division was created in the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1966 (Aplin, Soucie, Quek and Oon, 1996) with the specific aim to achieve these objectives. In the same year, the foundations of the National Stadium were laid in Kallang. Eventually, the National Stadium Corporation was formed to operate the stadium when it was officially opened in 1973.

Five years after the formation of the Division, the Singapore National Sports Promotion Board was established to further provide emphasis in promoting sports as a way of life in Singapore. Its mission was "to promote, assist and organise international competitions in consultation with the national sports associations and the Singapore National Olympic Council, and to manage and maintain sports facilities and sports stadia" (Wok, 1973). In order to streamline their efforts in promoting sports to the masses, the amalgamation of the Singapore National Sports Promotion Board and the National Stadium Corporation took effect in October 1973, and the Singapore Sports Council was formed in their place in the Ministry of Community Development and Sports.

Taking Sports in Singapore into the 21st Century

In September 2000, the Committee on Sporting Singapore was set up to envisage a new vision for sports in Singapore. The Committee’s report was presented to the Senior Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, in July 2001 and it contains forty broad suggestions which lay out the roadmap and pathways for bringing sports and sports development in Singapore into the 21st Century (Tarmugi, 2001).

In consequence to these recommendations, the Singapore Sports Council has redrawn its purpose to include the development of sports champions and cultivation of a sporting culture that creates enjoyable sporting experiences in Singapore. It plans to attain these outcomes through sports excellence and the creation of a vibrant sports industry.

Flowing from these recommendations were some very significant developments in the sports community in the next 8 years. These included the commitment of S$500 million that year for developing sports in Singapore for the ensuing five years and the opening of the Singapore Sports School in 2004. Singapore had also sent off to Beijing in 2008 the largest contingent of Singaporean athletes ever to any Olympic Games. She had hosted of the Junior World Hockey Cup and inaugural Asian Youth Game in 2009, and will be hosting the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010. There are the on-going preparations of Singapore’s top athletes for the 2012 London Olympic Games as well. On top of these were the 2008’s inaugural Formula One Night Race and the HSBC Women’s Golf Championship. Later in July 2009, the Liverpool Football Club will play against the Singapore National Football Team at the National Stadium, and Formula One Night Race will come back to the country for the second consecutive season in September. The plans to replace the National Stadium with the Singapore Sports Hub in 2011 and to set up the Singapore Sports Institute that year have also already been announced.

Developing Coaches in Singapore

The Singapore Sports Council understands the influences the coach has on his athletes’ perception of their sports. It also comprehends the impact the coach has on his athletes’ performance during training and in competitions. In addition, it sees the connection between the size of the pool of talented home-grown athletes in Singapore and the number of qualified coaches in the nation.

Towards this end, the Singapore Sports Council created the Coaching and Technical Development Division in 2006 to systematically develop coaches through three enabling strategies, and training and development is one of these. One of its key initiatives is the National Coaching Accreditation Programme (NCAP), which is the national standard for coaching in Singapore.

The programme has two broad syllabi. The first is a series of lectures on the principles of coaching and sports science. The modules include the role of the coach and sports science, growth and developmental cycles of the athlete, analysis and development of skills in sports, athlete’s physical preparation, sports nutrition and mental skills development, planning and periodisation of training and competitions, and safety in sports. These lessons are conducted by sport science practitioners engaged by the Singapore Sports Council. Besides the theoretical and generic aspects of coaching, the technical elements of coaching are taught as well. Here, aspiring coaches will attend workshops or lectures on the strategies, techniques and tactics of teaching the sport to their athletes, methods for developing their sport fitness, and understanding the rules in sports. These sessions, which are sports specific, are organised by the National Sports Associations. The coaches will also undergo hands-on attachments at their respective National Sports Associations to learn the best practices of coaching from expert coaches in their respective sports.

The National Coaching Accreditation Programme is an important step towards entry into the National Registry of Coaches (NROC). This is a fraternity of certified, competent and professional coaches, who subscribe to the Coaches' Code of Ethics. It has a database of nationally certified or accredited coaches who hold valid certification in Standard First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR).

To ensure that this is a mark of quality in coaching for the general public, the coaches, who are members of the National Registry of Coaches, are expected to keep their coaching knowledge and skills updated. They do this continuously by participating in various upgrading activities offered by the Council through its Continuing Coach Education (CCE) Programme.

Sensing the Limitations in Coach Development

I am one of a handful of Laser sailors in Singapore who had sailed competitively on a standard rig in the past ten years. I had sailed in the waters of Singapore and around the region. It is natural that I would want to be a sailing coach when I have retired from competitive sailing in 2007. I have aspired to play a role in preparing the next generation of high performance sailors for the nation.

I had attended the lectures and workshops that are mentioned in the preceding section of this report. I have found that the knowledge, skills and attitude imparted in the programme to be useful. However, I am deeply concerned by the focus of the programme. It is heavily skewed towards learning about the enhancement of human performance through only biomechanical and nutritional means. While some mentions are made about the importance of good relationship between the coach and his athletes, very little is said about the emotive aspects of coaching.

This research project is my attempt to empirically establish that there is a relationship between the emotions of the coach and the performance of his athletes in sports. I have also postulated that the athletes may possess mitigating capabilities that may help them negate the impact their coach’s negative emotions may have on their performance during sailing. Since I was a dingy sailor, the context of this study is confined to sailing in Singapore.

I will try to establish the importance of coach and athlete relationship in sports performance. Also, I want to find out if the emotive aspects of coaching are determinants of coaching efficacy in sports. In addition, I wish to determine if the athlete is capable of mitigating the emotive impact from their coaches to reduce its effects on their performance during sailing. I will also examine how self-regulation affects the athlete’s emotions and look at the role of self-talk as a skill in self-regulation to influence personal cognitive processes.

This exploratory study will provide in-roads to a more in-depth research to understand the levers that drive these emotions and as well as to establish a reliable means to measure these mitigating influences. My specific aim is to create an instrument or instruments, using the definitions and descriptors uncovered in this and the new study, to help me predict sports performance in the field where coaching that could be influenced by the effects of emotions. My goal is to inform and influence the leaders in my sporting community on what are the right things they should be doing when developing their coaches in Singapore so that they could achieve greater coaching efficacy to support their interaction with their athletes.

Given these, I had embarked on a literature research on these topics for the past eight months. There are a total of sixteen sections in this research report. The first two sections of the report trace the history of sports in Singapore and explain why they continue to be important to the island state. The following two sections provide a description of the approach the National Sports Council has taken to develop coaches in Singapore and the research questions which answers I am trying to locate. After these is the main bulk of the report covering the findings from the literature research and the survey. Included here is a segment that talks about the methods of data collection. Towards the end of this document is a discussion about the research and the limitations inherited in the research design. The references and evidence of the research, and a reflection on my personal learning arising from carrying out this research project are found at the end of the report.

Appreciating the Nature of Coach-Athlete Relationship

Studies done in the area of sports performance have widely reported on the association between the coach and his athlete (Jowett and Lavallee, 2007), and the importance of this relationship in the development of the athlete in the sport (Jowett, 2003; Jowett and Cockerill, 2003).

This relationship is not merely built on a series of transactions where the coach points out to the athlete his blind-spots, or dishes out advice, or gives instructions during training or competitions. According to Kelly, Berscheid, Christensen, Harvey, Huston, and Levinger (1983), when the coach works with his athlete, he is creating and building an interpersonal relationship in which ‘two people’s behaviors, emotions, and thoughts are interrelated’. In this description, the coach is not viewed just as someone who helps the athlete to perform. It is more complex and complicated than this. There are characteristics of a principal-agent relationship (Lagzdins, M, 2007) in this association where the athlete looks up to the coach as someone who he could trust and whose judgments which he could respect (Dieffenbach, Gould and Moffett, 2002). Effective, fruitful and long lasting coach-athlete relationship requires both parties becoming aware of one's self and the others' to avoid causing psychological and affective damage to each other. This means that each stakeholder needs to co-ordinate their ‘respective skills by appreciating each other’s technical and dispositional attributes’ (Schinke and Tabakman, 2001). The quality of this relationship has significant impact on the intrinsic motivation of the athlete and could influence his interest in the sport and decisions to stay with it over time (Hollembeak and Amorose, 2005).

Examining Emotions in Coaching

As the coach-athlete relationship involves emotions, I cannot avoid conducting a more detail examination of the role of emotional intelligence in this relationship and its implications in sports performance. This is especially so because the preceding paragraph hints that a fruitful coach-athlete relationship seems to hinge on the athlete’s and coach’s ability to perceive, integrate, understand and manage their own emotions and those emotions they experienced from others (Salovey and Mayer, 1997). By being able to discriminate emotions, one is able to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Mayer and Salovey, 1995). This shows that coach-athlete relationship has both feedback and feed-forward components. The emotions of the coach could influence his athlete’s sports performance as much as the emotions of the athlete could do similar to the quality of coaching efficacy of the coach.

In addition, in domains outside of sports, the applications of Emotional Intelligence have been widely studied and links have been found to positively chain Emotion Intelligence to relationship (Goleman, 1995; Goleman, 1998) and performance (Goleman, 2000). A number of sports psychologists have predicted that similar outcomes may be observed in sports (Botterill and Brown, 2002; McCann, 1999, Meyer, Fletcher, Kilty and Richburg, 2003; Zizzi, Deaner and Hirschhorn, 2003) if more studies in this particular area are conducted in the community.

The study of Emotional Intelligence could be traced from two main branches. One of these involves the understanding the personalities and mental abilities of individuals to inform on Emotional Intelligence. This trait and state characterization of Emotional Intelligence is called the mixed model and the leading proponents in this field are Goleman (Goleman, 1995; Goleman 1998), Bar-On (Bar-On, 1997) and Schutte (Schutte, Malouff, Simunek, McKenley and Hollander, 2002). The other branch is the Ability Model. It suggests that Emotional Intelligence is a set of abilities that could be learnt and developed with time. As abilities, individuals are able to decode information that is encoded in emotions to direct cognitive processes and motivate behavior to attain performance (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). This latter definition makes the study of Emotional Intelligence in sports a worthwhile cause as it is described as a set of skills that could be effectively taught and learnt through formal training, and could be sharpened and perfected through experience (Meyer and Fletcher, 2007). This is unlike the formal definition, which is given and static with time.

Understanding Coaching Efficacy

I have mentioned coaching efficacy several times in the previous segment of this report. Let's explore this topic further. Coaching efficacy measures the belief the coach has about his capacity to influence the development and performance of his athletes (Feltz, Chase, Moritz and Sullivan, 1999).

There are four types of coaching efficacy (Thelwell, Lane, Weston and Greenlees, 2008). These are the efficacies in game strategy, techniques, character building, and motivation. Game strategy efficacy studies the confidence the coach has in guiding his athletes during competitions and leading them to victory. Techniques efficacy looks at the belief that the coach holds about the quality of his instructions given during training and competitions, and the confidence over the diagnostic skills used to assess the performance of his athletes. Character building efficacy examines the coach’s perception of his capability in influencing the personal development of his athletes and their attitude towards the sport. Efficacy in motivation is described as the confidence the coach possesses in molding the psychological states and skills of his athletes. A deficit in any of these aspects could have a debilitating effect on the coach's quality of coaching.

It has been found in a study conducted by Thelwell, Lane, Weston and Greenlees (2008) that there is significant correlation between the overall coaching efficacy and the ability of the coach in appraising and regulating his own emotions. In the same study, this significance has been extended to include the coach’s ability to appraise the emotions of others. This seems to validate a separate study by Fung (2003). In this earlier research, the importance of emotional intelligence has been found in all the coaching efficacies except in the game strategy efficacy. These studies strongly suggest that emotional intelligence plays a significant role in coaching and the performance of the athletes in their sports.

Mitigating the Emotive Impact of Coaches

Does this mean to say that the athlete will always be under the influence his coach's emotion during training and competitions? To answer this question, I now need to look for the kinds of mitigating mechanisms that the athlete may used to reduce the impact.

Self-regulation is a self-directed and self-controlled process of using a set of cognitive, behavioral, emotional responses to achieve a goal in a given environment (Heatherton and Ambady, 1993; Schunk, 1004; Zimmerman, 1989). This implies that through self-regulation, the thoughts, affects, behaviors and attention could be modulated (Karoly, 1993) by the athlete. This process is conducted fairly independent of external reinforcements and punishment exigencies (Kanfer, 1970), and Emotional intelligence has been identified as the meta-cognitive skill required in the self-regulation process (Behncke, 2005; Frohlich and Kuhl, 2003; Schneider, Bos and Rieder, 1993).

Self-Regulating with Self-Talk

One common technique used by athletes to direct their cognitive processes in self-regulation is self-talk. When an athlete talks to himself he is said to be engaging in self-talk. Here, the athlete has the opportunity to express his feelings, verbalise his perceptions, and regulate and revise his thoughts to facilitate skill learning and enhance skill execution (Zinsser, Bunker and Williams, 2001).

There two kinds of self-talk. Self-talks that motivate are found to increase motivation (Hardy, Gammage and Hall, 2001) and build confidence (Landin and Hebert, 1999). This kind of self-talk could increase the athlete's effort in controlling arousal and anxiety during the execution of skills. In sports, a good execution of skills could differentiate between gaining grounds and losing them altogether in the game. The other kind of self-talk is instructional in nature (Gould, Eklund and Jackson, 1992). The athlete focuses his attention in collecting and reading useful technical information, and in making the appropriate tactical choices (Chroni, Perkos and Theodorakis, 2007) to improve his performance in the pressures of the game. The quality of these decisions has significant impact in sustaining the athlete's performance throughout the duration of the competition.

The athlete does these kinds of self-talk to think more appropriately about his performance and direct his actions to reach a desired outcome. However, some research suggests that there is no direct association between self-talk and performance. The association is found between self-talk and self-efficacy (Hatzigeorgiadis, Theodorakis and Zourbanos, 2004) and self-efficacy has been found to be positively linked to task performance (Sandri and Robertson, 1993; Treasure, Monson and Lox, 1996; Moritz, Feltz, Fahrbach and Mack, 2000). Self-efficacy refers to the strength of the confidence in acting out the behaviour competently (Bandura, 1986). When the athlete conducts positive self-talks on himself, he is able to reduce the interfering thoughts that may affect self-efficacy, which improves his confidence for receiving vicarious experiences, managing his emotional arousal, conducting verbal persuasion, and achieving performance (Hardy, Hall, Gibbs and Greenslade, 2005).

Through this cognitive-focussed coping mechanism, the athlete is able to regulate his emotional responses by changing the meaning he attaches to a given situation (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). This is the mental toughness some studies talked about. It is about being clear about what they need to think about and what to focus in without being affected by others (Bull, Shambrook, James and Brooks, 2005). This means that it is not the type of self-talk that matters but how the athlete interprets its nature, content and delivery (Seligman, 1991; Rettew and Reivich, 1995). Therefore, the personal interpretation patterns of an athlete have an important impact on how he will perceive and response to his coach criticisms (Hamilton, Scott and MacDougall, 2007; Goodhart, 1986; Van Raalte, Cornelius, Brewer and Hatten 2000). How a person feels plays a substantial role in human experience and this is essential for our understanding of sport excellence (Doell, Durand-Bush and Newburg, 2006). This shows that self-talk is a core competency of emotional intelligence. It can assist in effectively manage one’s feelings and emotions about a given situations.

Conducting the Survey

The literature research came to an end towards the last week of June 2009. The research project went into its second phase. A survey was conducted to examine whether what has been informed in the literature could be found in the behaviours of sailors in Singapore.
The audience from which to select the target respondents for this research are sailors from the Singapore Armed Forces Yacht Club. The choice is related to the ease of obtaining the contact information and reaching the sailors since the researcher for this project is also a member of the club. Only sailors who are currently training at the Changi Club House and competing in Singapore’s waters under the guidance of their coaches are selected. Sailors who have recently retired from competitive sailing and who had trained with their coaches are also included in the study. A total of twenty sailors who meets these requirements are identified as potential respondents for this survey but at the end of the survey period, only eight had actually responded.

Of these eight, two have already retired from competitive sailing for about three years. The ages of these eight sailors are between fifteen and thirty-five. In Singapore, sailors rarely sail competitively beyond eighteen years of age. They have sailed with their coaches for about two to eight years. Half of these sailors are females with the rest being males. All the respondents are Bytes class sailors except for two who were Laser class sailors using Radial rigs.
The permissions to conduct the survey and approach the target respondents were sought and received from the Ethics Committee at Monash University, the General Manager of the Singapore Armed Forces Yacht Club, and the parents of the target respondents who are under eighteen years old.

All respondents were provided with an email describing the purpose of the research, criteria for their selection, methods for protecting the data collected and their identities, and the ways the information will eventually be used. The electronic address to the survey and the password to assess to the questions were also included in this email. All respondents who had participated in the survey did so voluntarily and there were no payment, gifts or other inducements provided to encourage their participation.

The purpose this research project is to study the effects of the coach’s emotions on the performance of his athletes, and to uncover the existence of mitigating capabilities the athletes may possess to negate the effects. There are six key categories of information to be collected through the survey to inform me of these. The survey has employed questions to find out whether the respondents conduct self-talk during sailing, identify the common self-talk triggers, determine the kinds of self-talk used and whether the respondents believe in the effectiveness of their self-talk in improving self-efficacy, measure the quality of the coach-athlete relationship and identify the typical emotions their coaches had displayed during training and competitions, and uncover whether the respondents mitigate negative feedback using self-talk.

Instead of printing the survey and distributing it in hardcopies, the questions were launched onto the Internet using SurveyMonkey. This is an on-line application that makes this kind of survey more easily managed. There are configurations in the application that protect the identities of the respondents and features to secure the questions against uninvited guests.
The survey was conducted in the first week of July 2009 after been delayed by the priorities related to the local Influenza A H1N1 epidemic at the schools where the sailors studied at and at the club they sailed from. The period of the survey was to last for a week but this was also lengthened to 2 weeks because the sailors were busy participating in the Asian Youth Game during the month. Given these unexpected events, the survey was only closed in the third week of July 2009.

Findings from the Survey

It is found that all the eight respondents had been triggered in a number of ways to engage in different kinds of self-talk when they sailed under the guidance of their coaches.
All the respondents believe that self-talk has improved their self-confidence and helped them perform more consistently in their race. They have attributed this self-confidence to their belief that their self-talk had helped them judge their sailing performance objectively throughout the race. Also, they believe that their reliance on self-talk had directed their attention towards executing specific skills and making specific choices and decisions that had helped them effectively dominate their opponents at critical moments of the race.

While they have acknowledged the importance and usefulness of self-talk for these reasons, half of them feel that their own self-talk had increased their anxiety levels when they were using it during a crucial moment of the race. Such a moment could determine whether a sailor would tactically gain control over other boats and stay ahead of them or lose tactical control and end up falling behind. One such moment is the overtaking of their opponents during a leg in the race. Still, all the respondents have indicated that self-talk is an important self-regulatory mechanism that has managed their cognitive processes when they sailed.

As for of the kinds of trigger that have activated the respondents into conducting self-talks, all of them had self-talked when there was a need to choose and decide on the strategies to adopt to make gains during the race. Three-quarter of them inform that they had self-talked when tactical issues were their main preoccupations. However, only half of the respondents do so when they had encountered challenges in maintaining their optimum boat speed.

It is found that the respondents have engaged in both positive and negative self-talks. However, they are slightly less likely to engage in negative self-talks than positive ones. When they do engage in negative self-talks, they do so when they were ineffective in the ways they had handled their boats, or had lost positions because of tactical errors or went the wrong way because of mistakes in strategies. When they self-talked positively, they had tended to do so to encourage themselves to put in more effort, or to look at a bad or disadvantaged situation more optimistically.

All the respondents have reported that they had confidence in their coaches’ ability to help them perform better in their sport. They have contributed this observation to their coaches’ willingness to share their sailing knowledge, help them become aware of their blind spots, teach them the ropes to leverage on their strengths, and be clear about their expectations before the sailors hit the waters. In these observations, the respondents have indicated a higher propensity for their coaches to talk to them about their strengths and showing them the ways to leverage on these strengths than to point out their blind spots and showing them methods to correct these weaknesses. Still, given these positivism about their coaches, only 50% of the respondents trust that their coaches will do their best to make them better sailors.

This may have caused to some respondents to report the lack of empathy in their coaches even though, by and large, most of the time they feel their coaches come across as supportive and motivational. There are reports of coaches usually seen by the respondents as being critical and angry with their charges during sailing. A quarter of the respondents feel that their coaches had come across as hostile, blaming and ignoring when they had trained under them.

An interesting part of the survey reveals the way the respondents deal with the negative feedback or scolding from their coaches because of poor performance. It also informs about the way respondents react to their coaches when their coaches ignored them during sailing.
When the coach scolded them about their performance during sailing, the reactions of the respondents displayed tend to be mixed. Half of them became angry with themselves after receiving the scolding. A quarter of the respondents ignored the criticisms and continued to do what they normally will do. Seventy-five percent of the respondents feel that the mood of their coaches has nothing to do with them and were the coaches’ problems. They are also able to brush these negativities aside and negate their effects they brought to their sailing. The rest view such inputs as a challenge their coaches had placed on them to do better in the next race or next round of training. Half of the respondents also tend to engage in less self-talk when they feel that their coaches had ignored them during training or during competition than being scolded. Still, the moods of the coaches do trigger the athlete into self-talking but they are more likely to self-talk positively when their coaches were negative about their performance. As for the complements from their coaches, they were treated as happy experiences and they had motivated them to do even better.

Discussing the Findings Of The Survey

The purpose of this study is to determine if the athlete is capable of mitigating the emotive impact from their coaches to reduce its effects on their performance during training and competitions. To establish this, the link between the coach and athlete relationship and sports performance needs to be explored. Also, there is a need to find out if the emotive aspects of coaching are determinants of coaching efficacy in sports. Finally, the role of self-talk, as a skill in self-regulation, is examined to understand the mechanism the athletes use to mitigate the emotive influences of their coaches.

Sailing requires both brawn and brain. To do well in the sport, the sailor has to have good seamanship, could create a number of remarkable choices, and make a few calculated but risky decisions. He has to have the ability to configure the boat so that she is sailing at optimal speed. Otherwise, she would be overtaken by other boats or late in reaching the most favourable side of the race course to grab the opportunities the weather has to offer. In addition, the sailor is never alone in a race. He has to contend with boats around him and each of these boats has the capability of derailing his plans and interfering with his goals of winning the race. On top of these, he has to consistently look ahead, behind and around him so that he could collect and interpret the signs that may indicate changes to the direction and power of the wind, shifts in the flow and strength of the current, and the effects of nearby land mass on these elements. These are the skills of boat handling, boat tactics and race strategies, and any sailor has to constantly do these well throughout the sixty to ninety minute-race in order to perform.

The data from the survey inform that all the respondents have used self-talk as a self-regulatory mechanism when they sailed. However, they have engaged in less self-talk for boat handling than for boat tactics and race strategies. Zizzi, Deaner and Hirschhorn’s (2003) study on baseball players may provide an explanation for this. In their study, they have found that emotional intelligence is more strongly related to pitching performance where the player could dictate the pace of the game than to hitting performance. This is because the player does not have the time to process emotional states, initiate self-talk and direct behaviours to cope with the very reactive situation of hitting the ball. This is similar to sailing. The wind shifts and wave forms could appear suddenly and the sailor needs to be very intuitive when he makes adjustments to the boat’s configuration to keep it upright and at an optimum speed. There is very little time to think here. This is unlike boat tactics and race strategies, which could be developed and fine-tuned over a longer period of time.

The literature states that a positive coach and athlete relationship is important to the athlete’s performance. However, it is by no mean conclusive that this is the sole determinant of performance. The respondents in the survey are capable of understanding the criticisms, anger, and hostilities exhibited by their coaches, which indicate a less than positive coach and athlete relationship, as their coaches’ problems and not to let these affect their sailing.
The literature seems to support this observation. A task-involved athlete, who is also adaptive in his self-regulation patterns, tends to display a higher sense of personal control and perceive a greater level of personal improvement even when the coach is critical about his performance (Gano-Overway, 2008). Perhaps, it is not a surprise that the respondents in the survey are more likely to do positive and motivational kinds of self-talks than negative and instructional kinds of self-talks when they had encountered challenges when sailing. They seem to belong to this group of task-involved athletes. Also, the respondents have reported that they had perceived such criticisms as challenges given by their coaches to do better (Hamilton, Scott and MacDougall, 2007). Horn, Lox and Labrador (2006) suggest that such athletes see themselves as more competent when their coaches criticised them than those individuals who received neutral responses for poor performance from their coaches.

However, while the respondents are able to self-talk the negative emotions of their coaches away, it does not mean that the emotions of their coaches do not impact their performance at all. The data collected from the survey hint that positive emotions expressed in the form of praises and complements do make the respondents happy and drive them to work even harder. These show that the emotive aspects of coaching are still important determinants of coaching efficacy in the sport (Gould, Greenleaf, Guinan and Chung, 2002).

An interesting point about the data is the way the respondents deal with their coaches when their coaches had ignored them. While further studies are required to understand this phenomenon, a possible explanation could be due to the way sailing coaches are assigned to the athletes. In Singapore, owing to the shortage of sailing coaches and the increase in the number of aspiring sailors joining the sailing clubs, several sailors are assigned to a coach. On some occasions, there could be up to fourteen sailors training under a coach. Sailors do not react strongly to the lack of attention from their coach given this condition. This may suggest that the respondents are less likely to self-talk when they were ignored by their coaches.

Up to this point, the data observations are very telling. It strongly indicates that the respondents are not totally helpless to the emotive influences of their coaches. They are capable of engaging the competencies of emotional intelligence to interpret the contents of the encoded emotions expressed in the coaches’ criticisms or negative feedback to self-regulate their thoughts and behaviours. Still, this cannot mean that the athlete is totally unaffected by their coaches’ emotion. It is the type of emotions that counts.

Concluding the Research Report

It is unfortunate that the period of data collection has taken place during the school holidays. This, together with the Asian Youth Games and prevailing Influenza A H1N1 epidemic in Singapore, has restricted my access to a number of respondents who could have participated in this study. Given the small number of respondents, I have to caution against extrapolating the findings in this study to the whole sailing community in the nation. Also, I cannot suggest that the findings in this study could be used to inform on other types of sports in Singapore. A more comprehensive study, where more sailors and athletes from other sporting fraternities could be included, may expand this body of knowledge. Nevertheless, given these limitations, this research has unveiled some interesting information.

When I was designing the research, I have not differentiated sailors who had received formal training in self-talk from those who had practiced self-talk because they had discovered it accidently and used it a matter of fact. It is possible that sailors who were formally trained may understand the impact of self-talk on their sailing performance and could be more capable in using it. With this awareness, they could be more adept in translating negative self-talks into positive ones and leverage them for better sailing performance. The findings in this research may not be true for sailors who lack this kind of mental skill development.

The competitive nature of racing may sometimes be simulated by the coach under training conditions. However, while the simulated racing conditions may be close to the real sailing regattas, they are not identical since the set up of the full racing course is constraint by logistics, and sailors training frequently together may breed familiarity. This means, I need to suspect that the triggers and frequency of self-talks used for self-regulation may differ between these two sailing conditions. A similar finding has been discovered by Barkhoff, Heiby and Pagano (2007) when they studied the self-regulation skills of ‘competitor type’ and ‘training champion’ athletes in artistic roller skating. This particular difference needs to be explored further.
In addition, studies in other domains on the application of emotional intelligence have informed about cultural differences. These studies have suggested that gender types may play an influential role in the use of self-talks for self-regulation (Goleman, 2000). Also, recent studies have reported that male coaches are more efficacious than female coaches (Short, Smiley and Ross-Stewart, 2005). I have not taken these into consideration when I designed the research.
Finally the focus of this study is the use of self-talk as a mechanism for self-regulation. Self-talk is one of many methods use in managing cognitive processes in self-regulation. Although self-talk has been widely studies, it does not means that this is the only method used to regulate oneself (Behncke, 2004). Other approaches may need to be investigated and compared to self-talk. It is interesting to know whether self-talk works independently from these other mechanisms in self-regulation or whether it has a catalytic effect to these mechanisms. By addressing these limitations in studies of similar nature as this research project will further enhance our understanding on this subject.

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This report was first written on 27 Jul 2009.

The orignial text was kept without further changes after grading by the University.

Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Grading of Essays by the University

Currently, my grades, as of 31 Mar 2009, for the essays are as follows:

Effects of Coaches’ Emotional Competencies on Athletes’ Sporting Performance - Literature Research

Introduction

Goleman (1998) defines emotional intelligence as the capacity for recognising one’s own feelings and those of others for the purpose of managing our emotions and the emotions of others whom we are related with. As a national sailing coach in Singapore, this is of utmost interest to me as much has been written about the importance of coach-athlete relationship and the factors influencing its quality (motivation, Jowett (2008); leadership styles, Trzaskoma-Bicserdy, Bognar, Revesz and Geczi, (2007)), and its ultimate impact on the athlete’s performance (Cross and Lyle, 1999). It is surprising to learn that coaches are not familiar with the concepts of emotional intelligence and they largely operate to maintain unilateral control or power over the athletes (Drury, 2007). If the relationship between the coach and athlete is so important, how does emotional intelligence of the coach supports his athletes in sustaining a positive coach-athlete relationship and in creating opportunities for better performance in his athletes. In another words, what is the impact of the coach’s emotional competencies on the career success of his athletes?

Annotated Citations

During the keyword search for literature that may shed light into my research interest, 36 articles are found and seven of these are discarded as they are later found not relevant. The reminder is grouped into seven broad categories. These categories include Emotional Intelligence and Performance, Emotional Intelligence and Coaching, Coach-Athlete Relationship and Performance, Emotional Intelligence and Definitions, Use of Emotions in Sports, Application of Emotional Intelligence in Coaching, and Impact of Coach’s Emotion on Performance of Athletes. The list of 29 articles is presented in the bibliography.

The following five articles are selected from five of these categories and they represent the more influential studies and record the most recent development in their respective fields. Collectively, they provide five different perspectives, each adding to enlarge my understanding of emotional intelligence, and its impact of the coach on his athletes. An extended critical review of the fifth article can be found towards the end of this article.

Dries, N. and Pepermans, R. (2007). Using emotional intelligence to identify high potential: a metagcompetency perspective. Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, 28(8), 749-770.

The authors have observed that the competency frameworks used by organisations to identify their high potentials is derived from the competencies of past and current cohort of successful executives rather from those competencies of future executives dealing with future challenges. They argue that the inclusion of emotional intelligence components into the frameworks may re-orientate this approach of identifying high potentials and enhancing the job performance and commitment of these future executives in the organisations.

They have proposed the use of Emotional Intelligence Personal Factor Model (Dulewicz and Higgs, 2004) and Meta-competency Model of Continuous Learning (Briscoe and Hall, 1999) as the key concepts underlining their study. They believe that by uncovering the executives’ meta-competencies, which is their ability to self-correct in response to new and unfamiliar demand of the environment and to self-reflect and assimilate what is learnt; executive potential could be better predicted and managed.

The research, which examines the emotional intelligence-high potential link, and the relationships between job performance and career commitment, involved 102 managers from three organisations from the financial, insurance and telecom industries in Belgium.

While assertiveness, independence, optimism and a few other elements appear to be ‘covert’ high-potential identification criteria, it is problematic to generalise these across the population because of the small sample size and the self-enhancement bias fostered by the self-reporting nature of the instrument used, which may skew the findings. These limitations are acknowledged by the authors.

The research was carried out in a few industries and in a Dutch-speaking region. It is also difficult to discount the possibility of industry-specific influences and cross-cultural differences from the findings. Still, the research provides a gleam into the possibility of strengthening the current approach of high potential identification with the knowledge from emotional intelligence.

The key weakness in this study is in the instrument – EQ-i. It was used in the study as a proxy for Briscoe and Hall’s meta-competency model (1999), and the authors have acknowledged that the correspondences between the elements in the instrument and those in the model are tentative and they ‘merely serve to demonstrate the probability of a connection between emotional intelligence and the potential for continuous learning’.

There is a discussion of EQ-i in the article which includes a segment on its criticisms. A similar discussion was presented by Livingstone (2001) where she queried about EQ-i measures and what they predict. Her study suggests that EQ-i greatly co-relates with the Big Five personality dimensions and accounts for both job and life satisfaction after controlling for the influence of demographic characteristics and personality. This may further suggest an inherent validity problem in the findings of Dries and Peperman’s research because they may not have been aware of this limitation and have not conducted the controls.

This study seems to indicate that the emotional intelligence of the coach may not have a significant impact on the performance of his athlete if the athlete has the ability to learn from past experience and to control his stress level effectively. These metacompetencies prevent the athlete from having negative effects on his sailing career-related attitudes. This awareness is important in my research because ignoring it may inject errors into my findings – coaches’ impact on their athletes’ performance may be misread because their athletes are able to negate the effects on their own.

There could be a certain degree of ‘us-verses-them’ sensitivity in the research as without the confidentiality, the job morale and commitment of those classified as non-high potential may severely be affected. The authors had deployed a series of measures to protect the identities of those involved in the study.

Depape, A.R., Hakim-Larson, J., Voelker, S., Page, S. and Jackson, S.L. (2006). Self-talk and emotional intelligence in University students. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 38(3), 250-260.

In this study, the authors bring two bodies of knowledge together – self-talk and emotional intelligence. Self-talk is the reproduction of the perspectives of others in an individual’s private speech. It is a strategy one adopts to solve his social and emotional problems, and in the process develops his self-concept.

In this definition, the authors uncovered a bridge that may link these two concepts. The literature indicates that inner speech positively correlates to private and public self-consciousness, and the authors believe that by attending to these inner thoughts frequently, one is more able to attain higher self-awareness and better at regulating one’s emotions. The authors conclude that certain aspects of self-talk are subsets of emotional intelligence since it includes the ability to recognise, express, regulate and harness emotions, which are terms familiar to self-talk enthusiasts. For these, they want to examine this link and argue that when one engages more in self-talk, he tends to exhibit higher levels of emotional intelligence. They also want to include developmental and gender differences in emotional intelligence into the study.

The study involved 126 participants between the ages of 18 to 42. They were recruited through the Psychological Department of a mid-size, ethnically diverse University in southern Ontario, Canada.

The research empirically suggests that some aspects of self-talk are found to predict emotional intelligence but there are several limitations in the study that make it difficult to extrapolate the findings to the general population.

Besides working with a small sample size, the research is too broadly based. The ages of the participants are too dispersed and ethnically they are too diverse. There could be over-reporting because of the self-reporting nature of some of the instruments used and credit points were awarded to participants. The possibility of under-reporting could not be discounted since previous studies highlighted that participants may not be aware that they were engaged in self-talk (Winster and Naglieri, 2003). In addition, there seems to be a problem with the triangulation carried out in the study. The global Self-Verbalisation Questionnaire score predicted emotional intelligence but not the Self-Talk Scale. This calls into question the reliability of these instruments and the authors’ understanding of what they truly measure (Livingstone, 2001).

One key weakness the authors did not acknowledge is that they have not included the developmental differences in self-talk - practices, familiarity, social setting and task difficulties, which they mentioned in their literature research, in the study. One is not sure how the findings may change when these were factored into the design of the research.

This research reminds me of an article written by Tischler, Biberman and McKeage (2002). They have attempted to link spirituality and emotional intelligence to workplace performance. They suggest that, while the concepts begin from separate areas, they appear to lead to similar attitudes, behaviours and skills. It is currently unknown if empirical studies have been conducted to establish this link but this shows that there is interest in several quarters in the academia to link their field of study to emotional intelligence.

Depape et al.’s article is relevant to my sphere of study because it suggests self-talk is most likely to occur when there is a difference in perspective within one self and between one self and others. Self-awareness is enhanced when it is accompanied by positive affect and constricted when accompanied by negative affect (Morin, 1993). This provides the first strong indication from the literature I have gathered that the emotional intelligence of the coach could affect the performance of his athletes.

There are several questions that kept occurring in my mind as I read this article – Is there harm in making the participants aware that they are engaging in self-talk? Would this awareness makes self-talk ineffective to the participant as a strategy in dealing with complex tasks? These are not addressed by the authors. Also, there could be ethical issues with not informing the participants of the purpose of the research before administering the instruments.

Saury, J. and Durand, M. (1998). On-site study of coaching in sailing. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 69(3), 254-266.

The authors believe that the coaching methods used during training are bounded by a specific set of constraints. These constraints are defined by the task and its range of possible and acceptable work strategies, and by the coach’s behaviours, diversity of operating strategies he possesses, and his knowledge of the sport. Given the task and its constraints, the coach has to use all his means to create the appropriate physical and social conditions to achieve the training objectives and for helping his athletes reach their performance goals.

The authors see this as an important study because it directly relates to the athlete’s performance in the sport, and improving this body of knowledge ensures the design of better reason-based coaching methods and schemes for educating and licensing current and future coaches. They have also observed that there were no studies specifically oriented towards describing the constraints inherent in the coaching activity.

They argue for the study of expert coaches recognised as most effective in their field (Martens, 1987) and further state their suspicion that sailing coaches face a unique set of constraints that is different in other sports.

This was a study to analyse the practical knowledge of five expert sailing coaches of the French team preparing for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Games.

The study has uncovered a set of complex rules that govern the design of coaching activities. However, there are some challenges in generalising these, even in the sailing community. Besides the small sample size, the participants were not randomly selected. As the participants were all male, based in France and were coaches to Olympians, the findings may be valid for coaches sharing a similar space in this universe.

Perhaps the biggest weakness found in this article is that the study is mainly carried out through observations and recalls. As the training sessions took about 3 to 4 hours, fatigue may prevent proper observations and the lengthy duration may degrade recall accuracy. Also, due to weather, there were too much of variables in the study to constitute a valid observation and conducting the study through only five training sessions makes the internal validation more difficult.

In Perlini and Halverson (2006)’s study of emotional intelligence in the National Hockey League, they have found that years-since-draft is the strongest predictor of performance and draft rank is the weakest. This is interesting as it calls into question whether the degree of agility the coach exhibits in implementing coaching activities may be influenced by the years of experience his athletes had withjthe sport.

This is a study regarding coaching in sailing. It lists a set of constraints unique to sailing because of the ‘open’ nature of the sport. In an environment that is unpredictable and uncertain, tactical and strategy component play a important role in the athlete’s development for the sport, and the coach’s ability to ‘see things from the athlete’s point of view’ and ‘attempt to feel what the athlete feels’ suggest the importance of in-depth knowledge about the sport and high level of awareness and monitoring of the self and his athlete by the coach. This means emotional intelligence is an essential skill of the coach to enable joint control of the coach and his athlete over the training session and its coaching activities.

The coaches may not want to reveal much during the study because of the ‘secrets’ in their trade. Their discovery may affect the competitiveness of the coach when a job opening becomes available. This could be an ethical issue. Also, the athletes may be disturbed by the observations conducted by the researchers and these may impact their preparation for the Games.

Lafreniere, M. K., Jowett, S., Vallerand, R. J., Donahue, E. G. and Lorimer, R. (2008). Passion in Sport: On the quality of the coach-athlete relationship. Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology, 30, 541-560.

The authors argue that harmonious passion of the coach in coaching may cause situational positive emotions that improve the quality of interpersonal relationship between the coach and the athlete, and increase their subjective well-being in the dyad. They also argue that obsessive passion creates no or opposite effects.

They reason that when the coach and his athlete are passionate about their sport, their love for the sport and devotion to reach higher levels of performance could lead them to develop positive coach-athlete relationship.

The authors recognise the dualistic nature of passion and believe that with harmonious passion, the coach autonomously internalise the coaching activity into his identity and become willing to accept it as important but will not allow this urge to come into conflict with other parts of his life. This desire to engage coaching freely and with openness is favourable in creating a positive experience (Hodgin & Knee, 2002) for his athletes.

They see obsessive passion the opposite of the harmonious one because the values and regulations related to coaching are only partially internalised in the identity (Vallerand, 2008). This creates uncontrollable urge to constantly engage in coaching activity at the expense of other parts of the coach’s life, which runs the risk of experiencing negative consequences during and after the passionate activity.

Two studies were conducted to investigate the role of passion in the quality of coach-athlete relationships. The first study consisted of 157 British college athletes comprising of about equal number of the two genders pegged at difference performance levels. The second study included 106 French-Canadian coaches with different levels of coaching certifications. There are only 6 female coaches in this study and both studies took participants from different popular sports.

While the two studies suggest that there is empirical evidence to support the arguments, the difficulties in generalising this across the population are many folds. Like in the previous three articles, the small sample size and the self-reporting nature of the instruments could introduce biases into the findings. At most, the findings may be applicable in Canada, and maybe only to the French-speaking parts of the country. Since this is a study about the coach and passion in coaching, the study should account for gender differences. This, the authors have acknowledged as a weakness in the studies.

It was not mentioned in the article but if my assumptions are correct, then it is strange to conduct two related studies with English-speaking students and a seemingly different group of French-speaking coaches. The studies could be strengthened if the coaches of these English-speaking athletes were invited to the study and the two studies were carried out with matching sport certifications of the coach and athlete performance levels.

The studies ruminate well with the essay on the role of the coach in the coach-athlete relationship (Short and Short, 2005). The authors talked about the coach needing to be the athlete’s friend and mentor and the positive effects of doing this role well on the feelings and satisfaction of the athlete with his coach.

These two studies are important to my research topic as they suggest mitigation elements that may affect the coach’s level of emotional intelligence on the performance of his athletes. If the coach has a harmonious passion for the sport, naturally he tends to create a positive relationship with his athletes. Based on these two studies, the opposite is true as well. So, the disposition of the coach has a say in the nature of his emotional competencies.

These studies may look like an exercise of conducting a 360-degree feedback on the coach by his athletes, which may be sensitive for the coach if his performance and remuneration is based on the quality of the coach-athlete relationship. It is not mentioned in the article how this was been addressed.

Rozell, E. J., Pettijohn, C. E. and Parker, R. S. (2002). An empirical evaluation of emotional intelligence: The impact on management development. The Journal of Management Development, 21(4), 272-289.

The authors wanted to use Goleman’s 137-item emotional quotient test as the basis for assessing the efficacy of using emotional intelligence as a predictor of academic success of 295 undergraduate business majors from a mid-western university in the United States of America. They believe that the emotional intelligence of these students may be positively correlated to their academic performance.

However, they suspected that there are variances in the results and argue that the differences in the emotional quotient scores between groups of business undergraduates may be attributed to the academic majors they had specialised in, the extra-curriculum activities they were affiliated to, and the student status they currently holding to. The study was set up to identify these driving differentiators as well as to validate the properties of Goleman’s five dimensions of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998) and the capacities of his measurement in identifying these properties.

They have provided four reasons for conducting this study. They hope that their effort could inform on the enhancements to current high potentials identification systems, appropriate management development programmes that human resource practitioners should create to train and develop these potentials, cultural differences in using emotional intelligence, and scale for measuring emotional intelligence of prospective managers in an expeditious manner. They argue that their findings could be extrapolated from academic success into workplace performance and career success of potential and current cohort of business executives.

There is no mention of the 137-item emotional quotient test in the references the authors have provided in their bibliography. Besides describing the five dimensions and 25 competencies, Goleman (1998) has not directly presented the instrument although there are clues that he had conducted some studies on his own or assisted in the conduct of some studies with other collaborators who had use his competencies as the framework for analysis. Also, this instrument is not included in Livingstone’s (2001) literature review when she set about to conduct an assessment of emotional intelligence measures. Given the importance of Goleman’s work and the frequency the dimensions are cited by other academics, I find the silence on the instrument strange and I am suspicious about the origins of this test.

Even if the emotional quotient test could be traced to Goleman, the factor analysis the authors had conducted on the 137 items may have caused validity problems in the instrument. The regrouping of these items into six factors, reducing these to five, and forcefully aligning them to Goleman’s five dimensions of emotional intelligence is problematic. With phrases like ‘maybe viewed’, ‘most closely related to’, ‘very similar to’, ‘seems to be’ and ‘perceived as being’ found in the same passage where the authors were describing the factor analysis process suggests that to a large extent, they are not fully convinced that there is a total fit between the emotional quotient test they had created and Goleman’s dimensions.

I have also found one important weakness in the instrument. On examination of Factor 4 – ‘Customer satisfaction focus’, of the authors’ emotional intelligence scale, I find the word - ‘customers’, appearing in five of the six statements in this category. I think this set of statements may not be respondent friendly as almost 80% of the participants are undergraduates and may not have work experience. Even for those who had accumulated hours of outside employment, they may not be in professions they were studying at the university at that moment. They may have difficulties relating to ‘customers’ in Factor 4. This may have skewed the findings and conclusions made about the emotional intelligence of accounting majors. Of course, using only 15 accounting majors to reach this conclusion is already a challenge.

Interestingly, the article mentions about Cooper and Sawaf’s (1997) EQ MAP test in the article. While it is not validated, it could be used for the study since it measures emotional intelligence at the executive level and this is a study about predicting career success at the workplace.

Besides these potential design flaws, the study was conducted at a mid-western university in the United States of America and on 295 business majors. The size of the sample and its source make it difficult to do significant generalisation on academic success, other than for those campuses and individuals who share similar characteristics. The assumption that business executives come from business majors may be a bit difficult to accept, and their inclusion into the study could produce strong reasons for wider generalisation.

I have uncovered other weaknesses in the findings. There is no evidence to suggest that the authors had controlled the study for gender and developmental differences. Mayer, Caruso and Salovey (1999) have found evidence for gender differences in emotional intelligence. They have found females to outperform males by about a 0.5 standard deviation on these emotional intelligence tasks when consensus agreement scoring is used. There were 126 females and only 97 males in the current study and this may push the mean forward given the unique features of females in emotional intelligence. Schutte and Malouff (1998) also report that upper level university students had higher emotional intelligence scores than did their freshmen counterparts. This seems to resonate with Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) framework of psychological processes in emotional intelligence. They claim that people obtain higher levels of emotional and intellect growth once they have taken time to gain mastery of the previous levels. In the current study, the mean age of domestic students was 23 while their international counterparts were averaged at 25. It may be difficult to suggest that these two groups share the same predictors in the emotional intelligence scales given these earlier studies.

Furthermore, the authors have not acknowledged the contradictions found in the findings of international student affiliated with extra-curriculum activities and the positive correlation they have established between emotional intelligence and affiliation with extra-curriculum activities. While the international students scored lower than their domestic counterparts, there are significant differences within each category. International students who engaged in extra-curriculum activities did better than other international students who are not affiliated with any sorts of club. These differences are significantly higher than those found the domestic group. This may suggest that there was emotion work (Opengart, 2005) carried out by the international students to ‘fit’ into their clubs. In addition, more interesting information could be revealed if participants were asked about their membership in informal groups. This requirement was excluded from the study. This portion of the study is also intriguing because it contradicts with Smart’s (2004) conclusion that there is no significant association between university athletic participation and emotional intelligence levels of university students of either gender. Another suspicion I have about this piece of finding is whether there is discrimination in the university that prevented international students from being affiliated with their clubs or becoming fully functional in them. The authors have not included this in their discussion.

Towards the end of the article, the authors conclude from the findings that certain factors in the emotional intelligence scale may predict academic success. Although much were written to inform management development practitioners about the care they need to exercise in recruiting and managing foreign students, nothing is said about the emotional intelligence predictors for them, especially they are being differentiated from the domestic ones.

The study was set up to conduct a study that determines the emotional competencies for achieving academic success and they used the institution-specific GPA and cumulative GPA as measures of academic success. The authors wish to use the findings and conclusions drawn from the research to describe the emotional competencies that management development professionals should look out for when identifying high potentials, and that business executive need to acquire to create workplace performance and career success. I think the reason posit by the authors creates problems in the study.

In establishing this connection, they have down played Goleman’s (1998) contention that such measurements lack the predictive ability for academic and career success. They have acknowledged the limitations of using these ‘surrogates’ but do so in return for expediency in the research. The authors are quiet about the link between successful intelligence and emotional intelligence. According to Sternberg (1996), individuals possessing successful traits are able to translate academic success into success in the workplace. The authors suggest successful intelligence ‘parallels’ emotional intelligence but they have not explain the ways they could overlap each other. This is another black box that needs further exploration by the authors to make their argument of the connection more powerful. Finally, the authors have not provided any information to explain the means workplace success could be potentially predicted by academic success. Without these in the open, the justifications for the alignment are quite dubious.

All in all, I have some strong doubts about the vigour and credibility of the study.

The study suggests that individuals are pre-disposed for workplace success and there are several drivers that shape this disposition.

Sailing has been classified a SPEX sport in the country. Given this national status, there is pressure in the sailing community to identify coaches with the right dispositions to coach sailing (Martens, 1987). The availability of a tool that could predict workplace performance and career commitment (Dries and Pepermans, 2007) is extremely useful. This study provides clues into the derivation of the authors’ five-factor Emotional Quotient Test from Goleman’s original 137-item scale (Goleman, 1998) as well as the problems the authors subsequently encountered.

An effective coach is capable of appreciating the constraints imposed on coaching (Saury and Durand, 1998). The knowledge of the general disposition of his athletes helps him modify his coaching behaviour and operating strategies to create the best physical and social environment for his charges to train in.

The authors have described the drivers for the disposition and I found them to be relevant since coaches are beginning to see sailors of foreign origins coming into their coaching teams. Also, sailor who participates in extra-curriculum activities other than sailing may demonstrate a fuller integration of the values and regulations (Lafreniere, Jowett, Vallerand, Donahue and Lorimer) of sailing into his identify. It is interesting to know if this could be a mediating factor for positive emotions in the coach-athlete relationship. As some sailors are currently undergraduates of the local universities, the authors’ suggestion of academic majors having an influence on the quality of the emotional competencies is intriguing and it is worth further examination in the context of the coach-athlete relationship. These variables need to be accounted for in the scope of my research for without them, they may skew my analysis and render my findings invalid.

In the article, the authors have articulated the purpose of this study on several occasions. They wanted to advice management of the variables that may create differentiators between individuals exhibiting high and low emotional competencies and their links to workplace performance. They have found that the academic field the individual had majored in, his membership of extra-curriculum activities, and his foreign status at his university as these variables.

As this article was published in a management development journal, readers may use these as heuristics to develop their human resource policies without fully appreciate the scope and limitations of the study. They may end up labelling all individuals who possess similar academic background as having low emotional competencies. Some forms of discrimination may develop in the management of these foreign executives and this selection perspective of emotional intelligence (Dries and Pepermans, 2007) may cause the high potential executive identification system to become ineffective and it could deprive deserving executives of their developmental and growth opportunities in their organisations.

Conclusion

These articles continue to show a major gap in the body of knowledge in coaching, not just in Singapore, but also in the rest of the world (Drury, 2007). This awareness merits further exploration of the affective state on coach on his athlete’s sports performance and outcome (Turnbull and Wolfson, 2002). Since I am a member of sailing fraternity, I will like to be the first to this study this arena.

This essay was first written on 26 Jan 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

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