Own Your Journey

By Roddy Ward

Athletes must learn to take ownership over their careers. It is vital that this mental characteristic is developed early in an athlete’s career. Ownership drives knowledge acquisition and builds confidence in decision making. A knowledgeable athlete will progress faster and make less costly mistakes along the way. While most mistakes lead to learning opportunities, the wrong mistake later in a career can have significant negative outcomes.

Good decision-making compounds over time. Over a period of years, good decision making can result in a drastically different outcome.

Confidence in decision making is a fundamental skill. The athlete will be required to make decisions in both training and the competitive arena. In fact, during competition, the athlete will be left to make all decisions.

As a national team coach, the absolute best step I took was to empower the athletes I coached. I leaned into developing ownership in the athletes. I gave them autonomy. I encouraged independent thinking and decision making. I gave them more and more choice. I began to reward creativity, curiosity, and experimentation. I would help them analyze where they could improve, and I stepped back and watched them perform miracles.

In my opinion, empowering athletes to take ownership was one of the significant difference makers for two athletes I coached on the Canadian National Biathlon Team: Rosanna Crawford & Nathan Smith. Both athletes embraced ownership and went from being the lowest ranked in the team to the highest ranked in just one training season. Both athletes went on to win multiple medals at the World Cup/World Championships.

I knew I was onto something when I saw a massive shift in Rosanna and Nathan. I have leaned into developing ownership in athletes further since. You could even say that developing ownership in athletes defines my coaching philosophy. After studying and working with both high performance and developing athletes I can appreciate just how powerful athlete ownership can be if developed from a young age. I’ve seen this recommendation based on research, and I have seen fantastic outcomes with my own eyes and experience.

In the last few years, I have been describing athlete ownership through a “bus driver” analogy. The athlete is the bus driver. On the bus is the athlete’s whole support network. The personal coach and close family members are right up at the front. The bus contains other team coaches, mentors, friends, teammates, etc. The point is that the athlete has a large support network they can draw upon for their career decisions, but the athlete drives. When trying to navigate somewhere, the athlete can look back and ask questions or for directions to anyone on that bus. What the athlete does not need is a lot of back seat drivers screaming 8 different directions.

So how do we build *ownership* (of career, process, and results) in developing athletes?

Give athletes choices.

Coaches should simply give athletes some choice in what they do, every session, every day. This gives the athlete space to make decisions and live with those outcomes. This can also come in the form of flexibility if the athlete has other commitments and needs to adjust their training. Athletes need to have the confidence to choose and learn from the outcome.

Allow athletes to come up with their own ideas.

Coaches can simply ask the athletes for ideas without prompting. This forces the athlete to be creative and think deeper about why they are choosing certain activities. Athletes need to make thoughtful decisions that work towards improving their athletic abilities and motivate them.

Let athletes make decisions and learn from the outcome.

Coaches must refrain from giving the answer every time. Mistakes and failure are our biggest teachers. A coach can protect an athlete from a large mistake, like anything that can cause negative health repercussions, but let the athlete decide if the potential outcomes are not damaging. The coach needs to strike a balance of where to draw a hard line and where to leave the decision to the athlete. The athlete needs to be able to make decisions when called upon, but also be open to listening and consulting.

Always explain and understand the “why” behind everything we do.

Want to learn more about the power of “why”? Read “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek. Understanding why we do things leads to greater motivation, enjoyment, effort, and better decision making. Coaches must be capable of explaining “Why” and athletes must always remain curious.

Make decisions “together”

The more you make decisions “together”, as opposed to a coach making decisions “for” an athlete, the more you both will learn. This will take the athlete & coach along the decision-making journey together and strengthen the coach/athlete relationship. Two minds are better than one.

One practical step could be for the coach and athlete to build the training plan together. Done right, this will progress over time with more and more input from the athlete as they become more mature and experienced. By the time they hit the national team, the plan can be built equally together.

Only give part of the answer.

A coach can help an athlete with “what” to work on, but at times they should stop short on "how" to work on it. Ask the athlete, “What would be a good way to work on this? Why do you think that would work?” Then, let them try it. The coach may be surprised by a great result from a unique “how” that the athlete came up with. I know I have been.

An athlete needs to develop confidence and not look to the coach for every answer. Instead, an athlete needs to come up with their own ways to work on something that needs improving. Try something, get feedback, adjust your method, try again.

Ask questions.

The coach can lead the athlete into thinking deeper and encourage decision making by asking questions. For example, while doing technique, I always start by asking the athletes, “What do you see?” and “What have you been working on?” before I open my mouth to give any feedback or advice. The exact same goes for the athlete. Don’t wait for the coach to pull you aside or intervene. Ask the coach what they think. Ask them their opinion on how to improve something you’re putting effort into improving. For example, “Coach, am I getting forward enough in my double pole technique?” or “What’s a good drill to really feel myself falling onto my poles?”.

Create a culture of learning.

A coach should teach an athlete that mistakes are an essential part of the learning process. An athlete needs to be willing to make mistakes and fail. This is how we learn and improve; we literally cannot improve without making mistakes. The best way to avoid catastrophic failure as an adult is to make lots of small failures as a kid.

Reward creativity, curiosity, experimentation.

A coach should allow an athlete freedom to express themselves, even when it’s outside the coach’s “box” of thinking. Reward the athlete’s effort and confidence to put themselves out there to try something new. An athlete should learn to express their creativity and put their own twist on their development. They should remain always curious and become a student of their sport. They must have the confidence to hypothesize, carry out experimentation and learn from the outcome.

I truly believe an athlete needs to start owning their journey at a young age. This should define the way both coaches and athletes work. If we fail to develop ownership in our young athletes, they will be less prepared to own their journey later in life. They will have less self awareness and less experience through trial and error. They could be more likely to blame others for their mistakes and failures, which will hurt their ability to learn and improve.

A critical way to optimize the athlete development journey is to build ownership through improving decision making abilities, increasing knowledge and experience, creating a culture of learning, and rewarding creativity, curiosity, and experimentation.