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Saturday, August 23, 2025

'Time longer than twine'

by

Shaun Fuentes
1609 days ago
20210328
Shaun Fuentes

Shaun Fuentes

No two peo­ple have the same type of per­son­al­i­ty, mean­ing that every­one who takes part in sport is a unique in­di­vid­ual.

Ath­letes gen­er­al­ly choose a sport based on their per­son­al­i­ty type. For in­stance, an ex­tro­vert may be more in­clined to play team sports, while in­tro­verts are like­ly to lean to­wards in­di­vid­ual ac­tiv­i­ties.

Per­son­al­i­ty is dis­played by how peo­ple be­have in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances and re­flect an in­di­vid­ual’s most promi­nent char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Not every­one will re­act the same way when pre­sent­ed with a spe­cif­ic set of cir­cum­stances, high­light­ing the im­por­tant role per­son­al­i­ty can play in sport.

There is not a coach we have worked with who has not ex­pe­ri­enced an ath­lete per­son­al­i­ty clash which has led to at least some poor lev­els of morale. The most im­por­tant as­pect of deal­ing with these clash­es is to ad­dress them at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble time, i.e. be­fore mole­hills be­come moun­tains. Man­ag­ing ath­lete per­son­al­i­ty clash­es and their re­sult­ing con­flict ef­fec­tive­ly is main­ly about set­ting a frame­work to un­der­stand how con­flict starts, notic­ing it at the low­est lev­el and then be­ing proac­tive and hon­est in deal­ing with it.

When an ath­lete per­son­al­i­ty clash oc­curs or with oth­er mem­bers of the team mat­ter of fact, who is right? Quite of­ten we are pro­grammed to think that we must be right be­cause this is the way we be­have and it works for us. How­ev­er, the oth­er per­son in­volved in the con­flict may have the same rea­son­ing. At some stage, every­one in­volved in the con­flict has had to sub­scribe to what is right for the team. This is the com­mon goal and it is crit­i­cal to set those foun­da­tions.

There are two main ‘ap­proach­es’ peo­ple take when deal­ing with events that oc­cur in their life – trait and sit­u­a­tion­al.

Some­one who has a trait ap­proach takes the same per­son­al­i­ty they pos­sess in every­day life and trans­fers that to their sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Per­son­al­i­ty has a huge in­flu­ence on the sport, im­pact­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty an ath­lete choos­es to un­der­take and their per­for­mance there­after. The same ap­plies to of­fi­cials or oth­er per­sons who work in sport or a busi­ness of any kind.

A key el­e­ment of how per­son­al­i­ty im­pacts sports per­for­mances is con­fi­dence – an ath­lete who be­lieves they will suc­ceed is more like­ly to do so than one who is wracked with self-doubt.

Be­ing con­fi­dent can help to boost mo­ti­va­tion lev­els and make an ath­lete even more de­ter­mined to ex­cel at their cho­sen sport.

How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that some­one who is over-con­fi­dent may ac­tu­al­ly end up fail­ing as com­pla­cen­cy can creep in­to their per­for­mances.

I've had di­rect work­ing re­la­tion­ships with at least fif­teen pro­fes­sion­al head coach­es in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball work­ing with Na­tion­al teams of T&T and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al sides. The num­ber of play­ers I've worked with is far more. I can say from ex­pe­ri­ence that once coach­es be­come aware of their own be­hav­iour­al style, and gain in­sight in­to their ath­letes’ be­hav­iour­al styles, mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing is built. Sim­i­lar can be said for the play­er.

An­oth­er as­pect of sports per­for­mance linked to per­son­al­i­ty is that of cop­ing be­hav­iour and strate­gies. This re­lates to the abil­i­ty or tech­niques used by an ath­lete to deal with psy­cho­log­i­cal stres­sors such as anx­i­ety. Allen et al. (2011) have dis­cussed how dif­fer­ent trait dom­i­nance re­sults in dif­fer­ent cop­ing strate­gies be­ing dis­played. This could be im­por­tant from a coach’s per­spec­tive due to the fact that un­der­stand­ing their trait dom­i­nance and the cop­ing strat­e­gy which is as­so­ci­at­ed with bring­ing the best re­sults for that trait, it is pos­si­ble to in­di­vid­u­alise di­rec­tion giv­en to play­ers re­gard­ing cop­ing. In re­turn, an ath­lete who is able to cope with the psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure present in sport is like­ly to per­form bet­ter.

Fur­ther­more, as a coach you are in a po­si­tion to see whether an ath­lete is adopt­ing an un­de­sir­able cop­ing strat­e­gy and can work to im­prove the cop­ing strat­e­gy to im­prove its ef­fec­tive­ness and ben­e­fit sub­se­quent per­for­mance. This ap­plies not on­ly to coach­es but to any­one who be­lieves they have a part to play or is trust­ed with a lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Most times it is com­bined with re­spect and dig­ni­ty.

Tim­ing is every­thing. And there is a right time and place for it. Some­one told me re­cent­ly, "Old peo­ple have a say­ing... time longer than twine." It is an ex­pres­sion that re­flects the wis­dom of the peo­ple and their cul­ture. Mean­ing, in one sense, that the things of the world al­ways dwarf the things of man.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com


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