The "Politics" of Coaching (part 4)
Sociology of Sports Coaching #2.4
I’m always trying to read books that stretch my thinking about coaching and learning. I recently read two books that stretched me a lot so I am writing about concepts from those books for two reasons. First, I don’t think these books are widely read so if I don’t share them with you, I don’t know that anyone else will. Second, selfishly, writing about these concepts helps me think through what they mean to me and how I could incorporate them into my own coaching. I see these as opportunities to wrestle with some big ideas in front of others. I hope you find these explorations both interesting and edifying.
The concept below comes from The Sociology of Sports Coaching edited by Robyn Jones, Paul Potrac, Chris Cushion, and Lars Tore Ronglan1. Specifically, this concept is taken from chapter four, “Pierre Bourdieu: A theory of (coaching) practice”, written by Chris Cushion.
In part 3, I gave some detail about the symbiotic nature of field, habitus, and capital. The relationships between people are fraught with the consequences of our politics. While it can be difficult to see the causes and consequences at first, it’s an important step because it sets up the last step: making changes.
Ask yourself why coaches can fall back on compliance. Ask yourself what a player’s “yes” is worth if they can’t say “no”. Do you believe a coach’s work should be more on players than with players? Do you believe the coach-player relationship should be determined by force of will? Is demanding that players do what you tell them going to make you feel like you’re doing your best coaching? These are all things that the field allows and, therefore, perpetuates. Because the field perpetuates them, coaches will perceive that what the field allows is what the field requires to be successful.
This is where the subjects of habitus and field become even more sensitive. Because the field allows (or even encourages) you to coach for compliance, then being a “successful” coach means having compliant players. The field encourages coaches to do things for “the player’s own good”, but doesn’t encourage them to question how they know what that good is. If you’re rewarded for coaching that way, why would you coach any other way? After all, you’re competing for social goods when you coach and the field determines which social goods are at stake. If that’s what the field wants, that’s what the field will get because there are no incentives to go against the field. Or are there?
Remember that fields are products of the habitus of their members; it’s a two-way street. You can shape the field, even as it shapes you. In some ways, it’s as simple as saying you don’t want to abide by what the field values. That departure can be small, it doesn’t have to be wholesale rejection of the status quo. The only prerequisite is recognizing that the field isn’t currently supporting the habitus you want.
Think back to that player that wanted to be coached hard. I described them as seeing something missing from the field. There’s no rule saying that people have to do all the adjusting; the field changes too. Maintaining your habitus, despite the mismatch with the field, creates the conditions for change in both you and the field. That may seem daunting, like you’re taking on an entire institution. But, to the extent that’s true, you at least don’t have to confront the whole institution head on. It’s possible to begin in a corner of it and work your way out.
Remember that fields are interconnected and nested. You can create your own, smaller field within the one you aren’t fitting into quite like you want. The smaller field can be nearly identical to the larger field that subsumes it. But, within the smaller field, you (and others you include) can choose what your field will support and what it won’t. Coaches and teams already do this all the time, every time they say things like, “in here, this is how we define success.” Statements like those are how you change the world, or at least the little corner of the world you coach in. But you can’t just say that and then take someone else’s definition of success.
I had a professor in grad school who, when teaching how to create data visualizations, exhorted the class to never accept the default settings2 that applications choose for those visualizations. Bourdieu helps you realize field and habitus are constantly choosing defaults for us. He also helps you realize field and habitus are malleable. They can’t really be built from scratch, but they can be influenced and changed.
Rather than just accepting the default settings of “how it’s always been done” or the default settings of “how you were coached” or even the settings of what’s popular or common, you can actually choose deliberately. It’s okay to accept a lot of the conventional wisdom. It’s okay to be influenced by the field, but there’s much to be gained from questioning what that influence is and how deeply it shapes your coaching and your relationships.
One aspect of the larger coaching field I choose to change in my smaller field is what coaches talk to players about. I want players to have the opportunity to wrestle with ideas too. Instead of recommending that players conform or comply with my coaching because “that’s just how it is”, I would rather help them see the consequences of actions in terms of the field. I want to help them see the world through their own eyes and not just through mine. I want their “yes” to mean something so that means I need to create space for and then foster their understanding. I choose to accept that players have their own habitus that I need to understand rather than overcome. If you want to do that, you can’t just talk about sports. You have to start talking about something that actually means something.
That player who wants to be coached hard? Instead of you forcing them to change or them forcing you to change, what if you helped them see ways they could gain capital in your shared field? Remember that sports are just their (and your) way of trying to secure social goods. They’re looking for ways to belong and that doesn’t have to mean the same thing as conforming. What if belonging was a product of sharing their ideas about why they want to be coached hard? What if coaching was a product of sharing your ideas about what it means to coach and be coached?
You can be part of creating a field in which that kind of coaching is “how it’s done”. When people speak of “normalizing” some behavior, this is what they mean. It requires willfully changing how and why things are done (field), who you are when you’re coaching (habitus), and what you value and expect while coaching (capital).
Exploring Bourdieu’s work can feel a little bit like seeing through The Matrix for the first time. It can be very challenging but very freeing. It can been challenging because his work can leave you feeling unmoored from past certainty about what to do and who to be3. It can been freeing because it helps you realize that so many limits in coaching are only limits when you agree they are limiting.
You don’t have to accept the default settings. But, once you move past them, it’s nothing but work. Glorious, daunting, never-ending, rewarding, life-changing work.
P.S.: Here’s a quotation from one of my favorite cartoonists, illustrated by another one of my favorite cartoonists. The quotation drives home the idea that you don’t have to accept the field’s defaults if you decide they don’t work for you.
Jones, R. L., Potrac, P., Cushion, C., & Ronglan, L. T. (2010). The Sociology of Sports Coaching. Routledge.
While the first half of this article is interesting, the second half is more pertinent to my writing here. (Down where the author starts talking about Times New Roman.)
From Cushion’s chapter: “Efforts to introduce significant changes to existing social practices and power relations may result in coaches experiencing what Bourdieu termed hysteresis: a form of culture shock caused by the disintegration of the ontological security between habitus and habitat (Iellatchitch et al., 2003)” (p. 50).