To even the most casual spectator, the superior athlete is readily distinguishable from their less-accomplished counterparts. Superior athletes simply go about the task of sport performance at a higher level of proficiency and with consistently greater results. Superior athletes, in the main, are faster, stronger, better skilled and demonstrate remarkable judgement. But turn your eye to the coaches on either side of the pitch or court, and it is far more challenging to detect the subtleties that characterise coaches who consistently outperform their coaching peers.

It is important to understand the differences between those who find ways to guide their athletes to success time after time, and those who do not. In recent years, a growing body of research has contributed greatly to identifying the characteristics, skill, and knowledge that distinguish the great from the good in coaching. Research has, for example, revealed that expert coaches see things differently from the less expert (Woorons 2001); but what exactly do they see? Research also reveals that expert coaches can, for the most part, say the right thing to the right player at the right time (Webster 2006), but how do they know what to say and when to say it? The results achieved by expert coaches over time suggest that, in the main, they know when and how to make the decisions that lead an athlete or a team to success, but do we understand how expert coaches make decisions? In this chapter, we will explore the traits of expert coaches identified by systematic, scholarly inquiry (Gilbert et al., 2006 and Schempp et al., 2006b). From this work, three elements consistently emerge as contributing to the expertise of a coach: (a) experience, (b) knowledge, and (c) skills. These three elements will, therefore, comprise the main structure of this chapter.

There is no substitute for experience when it comes to developing expertise. Simply put, no one achieves expertise in coaching without substantial experience. There is no empirical evidence to support the notion that an inexperienced coach can consistently outperform a coach with extensive experience. To the contrary, research has repeatedly revealed that it takes extensive experience – a minimum of 10 years in most fields – to reach the level of expert (e.g. Ericsson 1998). While it takes more than just experience, clearly one cannot become expert without substantial experience in one’s craft. It is in these experiences, and as a result of these experiences, that skills and knowledge unite to define the coach’s level of competence and performance. To be considered an expert coach, one must prove it in the practical experience of coaching. Put another way, one’s record of success and failure is forged in the experiences one has as a coach, and, by definition, the best coaches have established the best records by consistently outperforming their peers over time (Tan 1997).

However, experience provides something more than a means by which to exercise skill and knowledge. Experience offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn. All too often, however, coaches ignore the lessons offered by their experiences and simply repeat, again and again, the same ineffective patterns of performance. Coaches who consistently reach the pinnacle of successful do so, in large part, because they have mastered the skill of learning from their experiences – and from the experiences of others (Vickers 2008). This process means that by thoughtfully analysing the events of their experiences outstanding coaches identify what they did well and what could be improved (Schempp et al 2007). Put another way, outstanding coaches continually evaluate and critique the quality of their performance to search for what might be improved in their coaching practice. Knowing what was good (or rather, effective) and what could be done better are equally important, for both suggest insights that can lead to improved performances. Perhaps as a reflection of their limited practical experience, novices find ‘real world’ experience to be their most important source of information for increasing expertise (Schempp 2003). Like novices, expert coaches embrace the lessons they learn from experience, but unlike novices, they realise that there are other sources that are equally valuable for increasing skill, knowledge and performance. We will return to this in the next two sections of the chapter.

A greater diversity of coaching experiences (e.g. different people, situations, purposes) offers even more benefits (Schempp 2003). Different experiences represent opportunities to apply skills and knowledge in unique and untested ways. When a coach modifies and adapts her or his skills to meet the changing environmental demands, those coaching skills become stronger and more robust. Likewise, when a coach works through the challenges of different athletes, opponents, competitive demands and the like, the deeper their knowledge base grows. In essence, there is a clear relationship between experience and knowledge; indeed, from experience comes knowledge.

Experience alone, however, will neither increase expertise nor improve a coach’s record of success. This point is made clear by Dr. Anders Ericsson (Ericsson et al 2006), arguably the world’s leading scholar on developing expertise, when he writes:

In other words, it is deliberate, systematic and continual change that brings about the improvements leading to expert performance. Experience is a critical, but clearly not a singular key to developing expertise (Ericsson et al 2006). In addition to extensive experience, great coaches share two other characteristics: extensive knowledge and highly developed coaching skills. In the next section, we will explore the knowledge of an expert coach.

While it perhaps seems obvious that an expert coach has an extensive knowledge base, the importance of this characteristic to their success demands that it be scrutinised thoroughly. There are many lessons for developing coaches in knowing what an expert knows – and how they came to know it. Experts make a significant investment in learning all they can about their subject, their athletes and their coaching (Schempp et al., 1998a and Schempp et al., 1999). Attend coaching workshops, clinics or conferences, and you will be likely to see expert coaches there. Many of the experts will be the presenters, but experts also attend as learners. This may seem counterintuitive but we know from our study of these extraordinary coaches that while it appears experts are the least likely to benefit from attending a workshop, they become expert because they seldom pass up opportunities to learn – from anyone, at any time, and anywhere. This point was pressed upon us in a study with the highly successful American football coach Bobby Bowden. After listening to another coach for a lengthy period of time, coach Bowden was asked why he listened so intently to someone who was not nearly as accomplished as himself. His reply was ‘You never know where the next great idea is going to come from’ (Vickers 2008).

In contrast, those who fail to achieve the experts’ level of competence are the ones who stop reading, going to workshops or talking with colleagues because they believe they ‘pretty much know everything there is to know.’ Further buttressing this notion of ‘continual improvement’ is the research suggesting that expert coaches monitor their progress consistently and vigilantly by setting goals for their performance and concocting strategies to achieve those goals (Schempp et al., 2006a and Schempp et al., 2007).

While knowledge provides the foundation for the expert coach’s decisions, a second factor that sets them apart from those with less expertise is the skill set they employ in their coaching practices (DeMarco and McCullick, 1997 and Schempp et al., 2006b). In other words, it is both what they know and what they do that defines the expert coach. Expert coaching is thus comprised of large quantities of experience, knowledge and skill (Dodds, 1994, DeMarco and McCullick, 1997 and Martens, 2004). In this section, we focus on the skills of the expert coach, but before doing so we offer one note of caution – do not confuse skills with characteristics. Many tend to believe that what a coach does is the same as the type of person a coach is. This should be of some comfort to those aspiring to increase their expertise, as skills can be learned whereas personality traits are much more difficult to change.