Written by Since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea FC in July 2003 a number of managers have come and gone and yet trophy winning has been consistent. Managers have been sacked after winning a European cup (Di Matteo and Sarri) whilst club legend Frank Lampard was sacked at the beginning of this year as the club stalled to hit the heights the owner demands. Whenever a manager had been fired, rumours have swirled that player power saw an end to that manager. For Frank Lampard, he was accused of this as a player at Chelsea when managers would be sacked, and then rumours swirled again that he was now on the receiving end of player power when he was sacked as the manager. Often these rumours of player power were false or misleading but it raised an interesting talking point in the media around athlete empowerment and athlete led cultures.
Athlete led cultures are focused on supporting the athlete to make decisions around the culture and the coaching team engages with leading players around culture, ethos and principles of the team. The coaching teams who engage with player leadership groups have various questions to think about when developing an athlete led culture. How are the leadership groups decided – by the coaching team or the players themselves? Are they the most experience players? Are they the best players?
For a culture to thrive – the leadership group need to be an extension of the culture of the coach and the sports team. These athletes need to resemble and be an extension of the behaviours that are promoted within the culture. It is worth noting that these behaviours can be both positive and negative.
Negative or abusive may still have athlete leadership who are an extension of a toxic culture with leading athletes ensuring the compliance of anybody who enters the team. A clear example of this would be a doping culture in which athletes know, but don’t speak out about it. This agreed silence is called Omertà. Another example is a different culture of cheating behaviour that is enabled as witnessed with the Men’s Australian Cricket team ball tampering with sandpaper or the New England Patriots ball tampering by deflating the balls used.
Athlete leadership and engagement from the coaching team is often called “athlete empowerment”. In particular athlete empowerment is brought up when highlighting a team’s success in high performance settings. For example, the men’s New Zealand Rugby Team – the All Blacks – have a leadership group that engages with the coaching team on the culture and direction of the team. This may play a small part in the success of the team but having a player leadership group would play a much larger part in the culture the who team is trying to instil – from management to coaches to athletes.
Athlete empowerment is an interesting term to use when describing the balance between the coach-athlete relationship. Decision making on anything from tactics to logistics is taken out of the athlete’s hands to clear their focus on performance. Sport would continue tomorrow with athletes but wouldn’t continue without them, so the term ‘empowerment’ conjures up images of athletes making decisions and the coach allowing this to happen. To begin with any and all these decisions have been taken away from the athletes so rather than empower the athlete to make decisions or take ownership actually what is happening is some athletes are given more choice than others. The act of athlete empowerment is still the coach or management deciding that players can have some autonomy in an area they are happy to relinquish.
Framed in this way athlete empowerment is perhaps not the altruistic deed it is packaged as.
To be truly athlete led, cultures embrace what benefits the athlete’s performance without harming their health. Many within sport talk of the grey area around abuse or doping but an athlete led culture will work together to push the performance in an ethical way. Many abusive cultures may look athlete led, but as previously highlighted, this is where athletes are gaslighted into believing they have been given a choice about the culture they train in, when in reality there is no alternative option.