Coaching is often described as a rewarding and fulfilling profession, with many coaches’ expressing passion and enthusiasm for their role in developing individuals through sport. However, the volatile nature of high-performance sports generates significant stress, job insecurity, and other challenges to well-being, leading to the profession being labelled as unsustainable. To date, coaches’ well-being remains largely unexplored in research, practice, and the profession itself, where the responsibility for a coach’s well-being is commonly ‘left to’ the coach. However, scholars have called for further exploration on what is needed to promote well-being amongst coaches, recognising that coach-level interventions are not sufficient, therefore requiring change at an organisational level.
At the same time, the Theory of Psychological Safety has received growing attention within the field of Sport. Psychologically safe environments enable authenticity, empowerment, and promote well-being, rather than psychologically unsafe environments, which create feelings of guilt, perceived weakness and can negatively affect well-being. To date, coaches within the literature have been solely perceived as the providers of psychologically safe environments, predominantly focusing on the effects on youth elite athletes and their well-being and performance. My PhD challenges the position of coaches as the providers and instead looks at them as the recipients, exploring their perceptions of what psychological safety could look like, what the antecedents of it are and the potential implications. By looking at well-being through the lens of Psychological Safety, my PhD begins to look at the organisational influence on coach well-being, and how stakeholders can support or thwart the well-being of its coaches.
