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Citation

Macdonald S & Allen J (2025) Strong, challenging, deep conversations: Dialogic coaching. International Council for Coaching Excellence - 15th Global Coach Conference, Athens, Greece, 20.11.2025-23.11.2025.

Abstract
Coaching is built upon the coach-athlete relationship, with communication as its cornerstone. When enriched by effective dialogue, this relationship can foster athlete learning and elevate performance to its highest level. Coaching strategies naturally focus on technical and tactical instruction informed by performance analytics, which has been challenged for only focussing on part of what is a complex, multifaceted process. Researchers have sought to address this by considering the pedagogy of coaching and its associated integral social interactions. Communication in coaching has largely focused on discrete coaching behaviours (e.g., instruction, questioning, feedback) without considering the dialogue – the back-and-forth conversations between coaches and athletes - which may influence athlete learning and performance. In education contexts dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2020) has proven useful and has potential to advance our understanding of coaching conversations. Yet little is known about dialogic coaching, especially in performance sport. This presentation reports on one coach’s pedagogical principles in the months leading up to the Olympic Games. Data were collected from a coach and three athletes via observation and semi-structured interviews on multiple occasions over a 12-month period surrounding Tokyo 2020 and comprising six coach interviews, one athlete-only focus group interview, three individual athlete interviews, and 6 video-recorded coaching sessions and analysed thematically. Applying Alexander’s (2020) dialogic teaching framework to sport coaching, this multi-method approach provides rich insights into the coach’s communication strategies and how dialogic interactions contribute to athlete development and offers actionable insights for coaches aiming to refine their communication and pedagogical strategies.