Motivation & Goal Setting

Defining Motivation

The term motivation can be used to explain why a swimmer such as double Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington, trains at 6am daily or why Olympic rowing gold medallist rower Matthew Pinsent trained in blocks of 20 days with one rest day at the end. The drive of a performer is often referred to as; a desire or will to succeed. Often the most talented juniors do not make it as an adult and quite often this relates to their motivation. Other psychological factors are affected by, or effect motivation. For example if self-confidence is low this can drive a performer to train harder so their confidence is improved and they are more successful. However, it can also have the opposite effect leading to a performer quitting their sport if they are not successful because of their lack of confidence. Motivation is to do with the direction and intensity of a person’s efforts (or lack of efforts). If we asked one person why they trained in the gym it may be to lose some body fat and to stay fit and healthy. Another individual may be solely concerned with their appearance and looking good.

Motivation is the external stimuli and internal mechanisms that arouse and direct our behaviour.

Extrinsic Motivation is the drive provided by external sources; rewards coming from outside of the performer. These are further categorized into tangible and intangible rewards.

Tangible rewards are physical or concrete items such as trophies, money, a gold medal, certificates or badges. They can be physically touched or held. For example, in swimming youngsters are awarded a swimming badge and certificate to reward their achievement for swimming 20m in the pool.

Intangible rewards are non-physical and include praise, recognition and fame.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic

Coaches are often faced with the decision of what type of motivation they should use and this can be a difficult decision as both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards have strengths and weaknesses; what may work for a Premiership footballer may not work for an eight year old tennis player. Generally younger children have different motives for participation compared to adults.

Intrinsic motivation is usually more effective because it gives the performers a sense of control over performance. Intrinsic is spontaneous motivation, however this drive is never fully satisfied often leaving the individual to persist in the desire to satisfy this drive. This means that intrinsic motivation can be enduring. However, the coach must have detailed knowledge of the individual to design appropriate intrinsic motivators; this can therefore take some time, so it is not a quick fix to a lack of motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is a good short term motivator; it can produce quick improvements to motivation as there is often little knowledge of the performer needed. However, overuse of extrinsic rewards can lead to a decrease in intrinsic motivation. Once the extrinsic reward is removed all motivation could be lost.

This could be attributed to the fact that once the intrinsic factors (fun) of football have been replaced by extrinsic factors (money), the value of intrinsic motivation is lowered and is no longer enduring. Once the superficial extrinsic motivation has been satisfied there is no longer a drive to continue in the activity.

Achievement motivation has often been proposed to explain why there are different individual approaches to competition. In sport, it is generally recognised that this depends on personality. It is a person’s likelihood to:

• Strive for task success.
• Continue in the face of failure.
• Experience pride in accomplishments.

Some athletes seem to want to accomplish this and are referred to as a Need to Achieve (NACH) personality; whilst those not willing to peruse this are referred to as Need to Avoid Failure (NAF) personality.

NACH personalities show ‘approach’ behaviours, they are more likely to:

• Approach evaluative situations (e.g. a group of girls ask to demonstrate their dance routine in a PE lesson),
• Take risks,
• Seek challenge,
• Welcome feedback,
• Take personal responsibility for actions.

NACH personalities will persist at the task for a longer duration and are not afraid to fail; seeing challenge as an opportunity to learn and improve. These performers typically attribute success to internal, stable factors and failure to unstable, yet controllable factors (see Attribution Theory). NACH performers are concerned with high standards of performance and have high self-efficacy.

NAF personalities show ‘avoidance’ behaviours, they are more likely to approach situations where they are guaranteed to win or lose, i.e. not 50:50 situations; this is because there is no risk taken in the victory and no shame or humiliation in losing a match that they were expected to lose. NAF personalities aren’t concerned with pushing themselves and avoid competition. These performers are likely to give up easily, they do not like evaluation or feedback; they lack self-efficacy, attributing success to external factors, and failure to internal factors.

Developing NACH

A coach could encourage a performer to adopt a NACH rather than a NAF approach by raising the performer’s self-esteem by guaranteeing success, setting up scenarios that are achievable thus raising confidence. For example a squash coach with a group of beginners, may choose to start them off playing racket ball to guarantee successful performances.

Setting performance and process goals rather than product goals ensures that a performer can achieve success even when losing; this maintains confidence and reduces anxiety. For example an 800m runner might set the target of 2mins 2secs rather than looking at their final placing, this means that they may still achieve a personal best despite coming in 3^rd place.

A coach may show successful models and use vicarious experiences to help increase the performer’s achievement motivation. A volleyball player who refuses to ‘spike’ the ball in case they miss may be shown videos of their role models successfully ‘spiking’ in an attempt to increase their motivation.

Verbal persuasion is a method used to improve NACH personalities; this is when a coach may give encouragement or positive reinforcement to their players and a reminder of past performance accomplishments.

Sometimes people with NAF personalities need to lower arousal levels to change to NACH. Ensuring that they are in their optimal level of performance can increase the likelihood of achieving a NACH personality; this can be achieved using relaxation strategies.

Attributional retraining is a method that can develop NACH personalities, this involves attributing success internally rather than externally and decreases the shame linked to failure.

“My whole career and goals are all based around time keeping, being able to do best times, being able to hit the wall first, and all of that together has made me successful”. This statement by Legendary Swimmer Michael Phelps indicates the positive effect goal setting can have on an individual and it is generally accepted as a reliable method for increasing and maintaining motivation. Goals are targets an athlete may set or an objective standard that is the aim of an action. Goals are categorised into three different types: Process, Performance and Product.

Process goals focus on the actions an individual must engage in during performance to execute or perform well. In competition, these goals are generally concerned with technique and direct attention at a specific aspect of executing skills successfully. They are usually goals that impact upon performance or product goals.

Performance goals focus on achieving standards based on one’s previous performances, not on the outcome of others. They provide intermediate results; a stepping stone to improve outcome, giving feelings of achievement and satisfaction.

Product goals are also known as outcome goals and focus on achieving a victory in a competitive situation. The target is based on the end result and is concerned with the outcome of the competition. These goals can facilitate short-term motivation, but often lead to anxiety before and during competition; this is because the end results may rest on the performance of an individual player; this pressure results in anxiety and can affect performance as seen in the Inverted-U theory (see Arousal).

Principles of Effective Goal Setting

Research has shown that goal setting is a tremendously powerful method for enhancing performance, but it must be properly implemented. There are a variety of key principles that are necessary for effective goal setting; some of these have been abbreviated into the mnemonic SMARTER;

· Specific

· Measurable

· Agreed

· Realistic

· Time-phased

· Exciting

· Recorded

Specific goals can influence behaviour more effectively than ‘do your best’ or general goals; this means that the athlete knows what they are working towards and when they have reached the goal.

An example of a general goal would be “I want to improve my goal keeping performance”, this is very ambiguous as there is no performance indicator. A more specific goal would be “I want to keep a clean sheet in the next match”, this makes it clear for the performer and directs behaviour towards this target.

Measurable goals require the goal to have some form of quantitative score such as a set time, distance or number of places in the league. These goals should be written down so the performer can easily track them.

Goals set by the coaches for their athletes without consultation are not as effective as goals that are agreed. These collaborative goals increase the performer’s likelihood to persist with the task in hand as the athlete has a sense of ownership of the goal.

Realistic goals should not be too easy or too difficult. They should be challenging yet achievable within the athlete’s capabilities, so that the performer does not become disheartened by being unable to reach the goal. An example of an unrealistic goal is setting an obese, non-exerciser, the target of running the next London Marathon; this would decrease motivation, as the individual would know that there was no chance of achieving the goal. A more realistic goal would be setting the target of walking continuously up to one hour by the end of the first month; this would be a challenge but within reason.

Behavioural change does not happen quickly and goal setting must reflect this. Having time-phased goals can be very motivating; breaking the goal up into smaller incremental steps provides regular boosts in confidence and satisfaction every time one is achieved. Deadlines need to be set for each of these goals preventing the individual taking too long and losing interest in achieving their goals.

A 110m hurdler may set a goal of qualifying for the semi-finals in the next Olympics (up to 4 years away). This is an example of a long-term goal. The athlete would then set a series of short and medium-term goals in an attempt to map out achievement of this long-term goal. A medium-term goal could be achieving a time of 13.5 seconds in the national championships. A short-term goal would be to improve their start (the first 20m) by 0.05 seconds and running a time of better than 13.7 seconds in the upcoming race.

Athletes will have sustained motivation if the goals they have are exciting and stimulating. The task should be enjoyable to provide an incentive and the satisfaction of achievements. If the athlete does not enjoy what they are doing then they will drop out of the activity.

If the goal is recorded and written down it can be evaluated. This is an essential practice as it allows the performer to assess if they have achieved their goal too quickly and reset new goals. This ensures that the goal is always realistic and challenging. For the goals to be evaluated effectively the previous principles must be applied.

An alternative acronym to SMARTER, is SCCAMP, although many of these terms are the same or similar

Specific – As above

Challenging – The target should not be too easy to achieve or too difficult to reach. Similar to ‘realistic’ above!

Controllable – Your goal must be something that you can achieve without too much help from anyone else.

Attainable – The goal should be something that is achievable and within a timescale. Same as ‘achievable’ above!

Measureable – As above

Personal – An individual should set their own goals. Although a teacher or coach could guide then, the individual is much more likely to achieve a goal if they have set it. Quite often people pursue goals just to prove a teacher or coach wrong!

Why Goal Setting Works

Goal setting has been shown to influence behaviour and performances in a number of ways. They are a simple yet effective method that coaches, managers and performers should employ because goal setting can:

· Direct attention and focus efforts;

· Gives a target to aspire to;

· Raise self confidence;

· Control arousal levels;

· Motivates, especially if short-term goals are regularly achieved;

· Enable success to be experienced;

· Regulate the amount of effort expended on a particular task thus ensuring no effort is wasted;

· Increase performer persistence and perseverance;

· Foster the development of new learning strategies.