Parents and coaches have a big impact on an athlete's development and use of goal setting systems. Here is how you can help athletes create and sustain effective goal setting.
Tips For Parents:
Don’t set goals for athletes- let them come up with their own.
Ask athletes what they hope to learn and improve within their season.
Support goal setting by providing resources for tracking goals.
Ask about progress related to goals, rather than just about outcomes.
Prompt the athlete to describe a process goal they are focusing on in training
Help athletes let process goals by asking about feedback they receive from coach
Model goal setting by setting different kinds of goals yourself. Talk about how you are tracking your own progress.
Tips for Coaches:
Provide a worksheet for athletes to set an outcome goal, performance goal, and process goal for the season. Review goals and give feedback on what short term process goals to set to accomplish their longer term goals.
Let practice time start with the setting of process goals for the training time. Give athletes times to write in their notebooks, or have them huddle up and have them verbalize their goals.
Give specific feedback about improvement, effort, persistence, and technique. Set team process goals daily.
Regularly check in with progress toward team performance and outcome goals. Give praise for athletes, publicly and privately, when goals are accomplished.
End practice by having athletes review their process goals for the day and their progress toward them.