An empowerment approach to coaching is an effective tool to enable athletes to learn and encourage them to make effective decisions. Athletes and coach share the ownership of learning. The result is enchanced athlete performance and a thriving supportive team culture.

Developing Decision Makers: An empowerment approach to coaching promotes the use of an empowerment approach among coaches for all levels of athletes. It relates successful stories about the approach from the prespectives of both elite and junior coaches and athletes themselves.

Among those to adopt an empowerment approach is Wayne Smith [regional and international rugby coach]. Interviewed for Developing Decision Makers he tells his story here, offering practical insight into how the approach works.

Through his example, and those of other coaches in this book, it is hoped that coaches may be inspired to break away from the traditional [autocratic or presciptive] approach and turn to an empowering style of coaching.

About the Authors

Lynn Kidman
Lynn Kidman is a coach educator at the Christchurch College of Education in New Zealand. Lynn has coached athletes from ages 5 to 75, in swimming, basketball, volleyball, softball, tennis and soccer. Since completing her PhD, which focused on self-reflective analysis for coaches, her main area of interest has been to determine how to enable athletes to learn best.

Rod Thorpe
Mr Rod Thorpe is the Director of Sports Development at Loughborough University. During his time at Loughborough, Rod has been part of a team developing sports technology—the application of sport science to sport, as well as innovative courses in physical education—leadership and coaching studies, reflecting on teaching and coaching.

External work has included consultancies on sports leadership, coach education (coordinating one of the first National Coaching Foundation Centres), development of Top Sport programmes for children, and games teaching innovations both nationally and internationally.

Craig Lewis
As a senior lecturer and acting head of the School of Sport at UNITEC Institute of Technology, Craig developed a number of sport programmes and qualifications, including the Bachelor of Sport Coaching degree.

In his research, Craig has spent many years exploring and developing performance enhancement and athlete welfare initiatives. Craig is now the director of Sportlife New Zealand.

Robyn Jones
Dr. Robyn Jones lectures in Sports Coaching at the University of Otago. His latest book, soon to be published by Longman, examines the practice of top-level coaches from the sociological perspectives of power, role and interaction. Having coached soccer in both Europe and the US, he is also currently the Director of Football for the Southern Federation (NZ).

Words of praise for Developing Decision Makers

"I read the book and agree with every word. This is my style of coaching, and the emphasis I put on all coaching courses and Academies I have conducted over the last 6 years, both here in the USA and in Holland where I was Tech Director/Coach.

"Empowering the players has given me by the far the best results from the players. At first, players were reluctant to have input into the way we play - but as each gained more confidence peak performance was increased. It enhanced team culture and brought many players out of their shell - with a lot more respect being shown between player/player and player/coach."

Geoff Old - Technical Director - USA Rugby

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