The primary purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between Finnish professional coaches` emotional skills, coaching styles and well-being. The focus was particularly on the moderating effects of the athlete-oriented and performance-oriented coaching styles, and the relationship between the coaches` emotional skills and wellbeing. The participants (104 males, 39 females), registered members of the Professional Coaches of Finland, completed a mailed set of questionnaires assessing their 1) high emotional skills (i.e. capabilities to identify, understand, facilitate, and regulate emotions; Schutte et al., 1998); 2) low emotional skills (i.e. difficulties identifying and describing feelings, externally-oriented thinking; Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1997); 3) athlete-oriented and performance-oriented coaching styles, and 4) well-being (i.e. self-assessed health, psychological distress, psychosomatic symptoms, general stress, coaching-related stress, working capacity, and job satisfaction). The correlational findings showed that coaches` emotional skills were positively connected to an athlete-oriented coaching style, which in turn was related to their lower psychological distress and higher job satisfaction. Coaches` difficulty describing their feelings was connected to low athleteoriented and performance-oriented coaching styles, and their externally-oriented thinking was associated with a low athlete-oriented coaching style. The moderated regression analysis revealed that the performance-oriented coaching style moderated more frequently the relationship between emotional skills and well-being (particularly self-assessed health and working capacity) than the performance-oriented coaching style. Additionally, t-tests revealed that female coaches scored higher than male coaches in psychosomatic symptoms, poor self-assessed health, psychological distress, and general stress.
© Copyright 2007 12th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science, Jyväskylä, Finland - July 11-14th 2007. All rights reserved.