Assessing the impact and delivery of the Transformational Coaching Workshop in Para sport

Abstract

Few evidence-informed coach development programs are available for coaches of athletes with a disability (CAWAD; Cheon et al., 2015). Additionally, there is a general need to use behaviour change theories in designing and evaluating these programs (Allan, Vierimaa, et al., 2018). The Transformational Coaching Workshop (TCW) is one program designed through behaviour change theories that is effective in changing coaches’ leadership behaviours (Lawrason et al., 2019). However, the TCW has not been evaluated in the Para sport context. Thus, the study’s purpose was to assess the impact and delivery of the TCW for CAWAD.

Two workshops were delivered to CAWAD and 17 coaches participated in this study. Sixteen participants completed the capability-opportunity-motivation-behaviour (COM-B; Michie et al. 2011) questionnaire which assessed coaches’ perceptions of demonstrating transformational coaching behaviours and facilitating athletes’ quality experiences. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate workshop delivery. Six Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted to assess the differences in coaches’ COM-B measures from pre- to post-workshop. A thematic analysis was conducted to explore coaches’ feedback on the workshop delivery.

Generally, the workshops were positively received from coaches and were delivered as intended. Findings showed significantly higher differences in coaches’ perceived capability and opportunity to demonstrate transformational coaching behaviours, and coaches’ perceived capability to facilitate athletes’ quality experiences after attending the TCW. However, there were no significant differences in coaches’ perceived motivation to demonstrate transformational coaching behaviours, and coaches’ perceived opportunity and motivation to facilitate athletes’ quality experiences between pre- and post-workshop. Two themes developed from the coach feedback regarding (1) the workshop’s strengths, limitations, and areas to improve, and (2) the strengths and barrier of transformational coaching. The TCW’s strengths were that it was highly engaging, unique from other programs, and worth disseminating to others. However, the workshop was limited by coaches that were already transformational and could potentially benefit from further improving content and activities. The strengths of transformational coaching were that the behaviours matched coaches’ values and are easy to implement but can be limited by the barrier of time. Taken together, these study findings suggest the TCW could offer an evidence-informed program for CAWAD.