The deconstruction and reconstruction of sports coaching: An interview with Professor Robyn Jones

Introduction

I became familiar with Professor Robyn Jones’ work through his book Sports Coaching Cultures ¹ when I was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sport and Recreation at the University of Bath, where Robyn had previously been a Reader in the Department of Education. Of particular interest was his idea and presentation of the ‘coach as orchestrator’, which I discussed in my review ² of a book for which he was editor, The Sports Coach as Educator. ³ My interview with Robyn for this article followed a conversation on the basis of my mind map of his work which was centred on the title of one of his book chapters, ‘Machiavelli in a morality play’. Here, reference was made to ‘tensions between control and caring’. The influence of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor is evident in the description of orchestration:

Orchestration implies steering, as opposed to controlling, a complex interactive process; of instigating, organising and maintaining oversight of an intricate array of coordinated tasks. It also involves coaching unobtrusively, involving much ‘behind the scenes string pulling’ towards desired objectives. Orchestration then involves detailed oversight of the minutiae of the coaching situation. It involves constant analysis, evaluation and scrutiny to keep things going, be they established core or new tasks. … [O]rchestration recognises the necessity for coaches to gather feedback in order to assist coordination and to pre-empt resistance; it is a stage managing of context, thus releasing practitioners from false moral dichotomies or dilemmas in relation to ‘good’ ethical or dark Machiavellian practices. … The orchestration metaphor … challenges the ‘coach as exclusive controller’ orthodoxy, by placing coaching as a contested, negotiated activity. In this respect, it allows coaches to invest effort where they may make a better impact for the collective good. ⁴ (emphasis added)

Interview with Professor Robyn Jones

SPRJ: Let’s start with your days of systematic observation research …

RLJ: It started when I did my doctorate at the University of Southern Mississipi (USM). Systematic observation was the main method of research there at the time. Rather unwittingly, as graduate students, we adopted what our supervisors were involved in. I did some with work with the Arizona State University Instrument and brought it over to the UK with me. It stopped not because I wanted to stop – or perhaps I was on a journey that I would soon recognise the limitations of systematic observation. It was working with papers being accepted in reputable journals. It stopped when I submitted a paper and received some reviews, one of which was scathing. If I remember the words, ‘This is rather old hat. You need to move on’. So I showed it to a colleague, Kathy Armour (now a Prof and Pro VC at Birmingham), for whom I’ve always had considerable respect. She said, ‘Well, what did you expect?’ That was bit of a wake-up call. I realised she was right. I then started to think about what contribution I was making to the field.

SPRJ: You started reading Goffman and you had a ‘moment’ while you were coaching children one cold, wet night. You were also influenced by an article that John Lyle wrote in 1993.

RLJ: I was starting to read some literature that I thought would be allied to systematic observation – the ‘how to behave’, ‘what works’ agenda. I accessed some of the early work by John in terms of modelling. And I remember coaching on a cold, wet Wednesday evening in west London on a football field placed in the middle of housing estate. It was challenging to say the least and, having cleared the field of dog shit, it was obvious that nobody really wanted to be there; neither me nor the 13–15 freezing children, nor the few parents begrudgingly watching. I thought, where’s my theory now? Where’s my sys obs? How’s it going to help me? It didn’t. As a result, I started to reflect on what I was trying to accomplish here. When I think back to it, I came to the conclusion that coaching is a joint endeavour. We all need each other to make coaching work. There has to be an interaction, a relationship, a dependence. I started to think about what kind of literature was going to help me understand that and do a better job. That led me to the interaction order, and Erving Goffman which really kick started things.

SPRJ: Your first degree was in Social History and you were influenced by E.H.Carr’s book …

RLJ: It was actually a joint degree – Social History and American Studies – but the emphasis was on social history. In my first week as an undergraduate at Swansea University – and in those days students were sent book lists which they were expected to buy in readiness for study – I found a second-hand bookshop in the Uplands area of Swansea and bought What is History? by E.H. Carr. That became influential because it undermined the assumption that historians write some kind of objective account of events; it was my introduction into historiography. Although it informed quite an immature mind at the time, it has always remained in my background. So, when I talk about finding Erving Goffman, and an interpretive paradigm I already had something of a head start. E.H. Carr had planted the seed.

SPRJ: And what do you remember about studying John Lyle’s model(s)?

RLJ: Recently I read that every academic area, or sub-discipline, has to go through certain stages of development. It doesn’t just arrive as a fully formed one and in that respect it could be argued that much of John’s work was necessary because he was one of the earliest to be writing about sports coaching. However, my thinking didn’t grow out of that work, it developed in parallel to it; my ontology was and is different; it’s more relativist and relational.

SPRJ: What did you write about in this regard?

RLJ: Around 1997, I wrote a piece with my then PhD student Paul Potrac called ‘The Invisible Ingredient in Coaching Knowledge’. It questioned the linear simplicity and functionality of much that was out there, arguing that the social forces that underpinned relationships, so vital to coaching, were just being ignored. I was thinking at the time that what we had in terms of sports coaching literature was not fit for purpose.

SPRJ: Throughout this time you were involved in football and several of your papers draw upon your experiences as a player and a coach. What are some of the ways in which Goffman enabled you to reflect in ways that were perhaps profound?

RLJ: Football, at the semi-professional level where I played, was, and still is, a pretty harsh environment. The inequality in terms of monies paid is often considerable, yet all the players have to share the same dressing room. This often leads to a sense of injustice. You’re also continuously in competition with somebody even though you’re on the same side; so there’s huge amounts of rivalry often expressed verbally; it’s there every day, in every session. The situation highlights the fallacy of functionality or contrived collegiality. It’s just not like that; and not just in football. I think we’d like it to be different in many ways, but to portray the coaching context as something it’s not does the field and those who work within it a disservice. Consequently, rather than ignoring the complexities under and through which coaches work, we should engage with them. As a coach, I felt those things, those problematic dilemmas, so I knew of them. I just needed a way to write about them. I knew more than I could say at the time. Erving Goffman’s work helped me understand what was happening here; the performances we provide as coaches to engineer a desired environment. He helped me to understand and put form on the feelings I had from my own experiences in football. In many ways then, he, and not any particular more senior scholar, supervisor or mentor, has been my guide.

SPRJ: In order to understand those experiences and feelings, you have written a number of papers from an autoethnographic perspective …

RLJ: Yes, the first one I wrote was about my own anxieties as a coach with a speech impediment. As a coach, you’re always trying to have influence over others; something that’s not easy when you don’t fit a particular expectation. You’re trying to present a certain image of the self, that you’re focused, you’re some kind of expert that knows their stuff, someone who’s lucid. Goffman’s work on stigma was both fascinating and enlightening here. We try to hide weakness that we perceive others will see in us, which is what I basically wrote about in this tale. It was about the flaws and frailties we think we have that we don’t want exposed. Consequently, it’s a wider social story, and not particularly about me. I just provide the illustrative case. That autoethnography then is a story about social anxiety, about marginalisation, and how we strive for acceptance in the eyes of others.

My second autoethnography was about care; about taking time to notice the value of others. I don’t think that as coaches we notice or properly ‘see’ (especially young) athletes; we don’t work hard to observe what’s going on. We have assumptions about what defines a ‘good’ player or athlete which we carry with us without thinking what else is happening or why. This, therefore, is a story about care, about living with and trying to inspire others, through noticing and affirming them.

My third autoethnography was called ‘Leaving’; about working in higher education and trying to be innovative. Universities, as you well know Simon, are often monolithic structures where if you want to introduce a new line of research for example, you have to expect a certain amount of opposition, for all sorts of personal and professional reasons. The Empire will fight back, as it always does. Consequently, this is a tale about the voice less heard trying to find a place for itself. Something, of course, that’s not always easy.

SPRJ: Let’s turn to Noddings – the initial promise and then the limitations …

RLJ: It was really heartening to find some of Nel Noddings’ writings – the feminist ethic of care. However, we’ve decided to go further than her conceptualisation, as, in coaching, care takes on many guises. It’s more than just taking care of the person; it’s also taking care about things, about behaviours, about concepts, about the organisation, and not least, about performance. These subjects of care don’t have to stand in opposition, but neither do they have to align. Care is, therefore, complex; and it’s some of this complexity which we are trying to address right now within the group at Cardiff Met.

SPRJ: Your turn to Garfinkel – how did that come about?

RLJ: It was serendipitous to an extent. I’d become interested in phenomenology which, in many ways, is closely related to ethnomethodology. This led me to think about the unwritten rules of coaching. Of what are the social norms of practice? And, why are they so obeyed? Initially, what I tried to do here was to understand the coaching environment through deconstructing it, using theorists such as Foucault and Bourdieu. Garfinkel built on this line, and was very useful in terms of seeing how these rules or norms were actually enacted, hinting at and leading to a more reconstructive project. I’ve always been a sociologist of the micro, interested in face-to-face interaction and Garfinkel certainly advanced that.

SPRJ: From microsociology and being a critical sociologist, which is how you see yourself, how has this identity developed?

RLJ: Retrospectively, or its realisation has been retrospective. I’ve always been a sceptic. Some have called it cynicism! I tend to call it healthy scepticism; counter cultural if you like. I’ve always existed outside the mainstream; walking the ‘back roads’. It stemmed from dissatisfaction with other research, which just did not reflect my reality. I had experience as a coach and teacher, and much of what I was reading was not related to that experience; so, I had to find another way of expressing and understanding it.

SPRJ: You cite on several occasions in your work Gardiner’s Critiques of Everyday Life …

RLJ: Yes. It’s a sociology of the everyday. For Gardiner, it is the apparent mundane that matters; the concepts contained bring relationships alive. It’s fascinating how these things work because to get the best out of athletes you must interact with them; where the small things matter. It doesn’t have to be functional all the time, but there has to be care and consideration of likely consequences. There also has to be an appreciation of the backstage work or scaffolding that you have to do; the invisible work we spoke about earlier. Through this and other work, I came to realise that sports coaching is not about the sport. It’s about the relationships within the context. Of course, it helps if a coach is inventive and knows about the intricacies of the sport, but, like teaching, the phenomenon is essentially a social, interactive one.

SPRJ: In your article with Mike Wallace you cite an interview with rugby union coach Sir Ian McGeechan and his metaphor of ‘roots and wings’. Roots relates to structure, wings relates to improvisation. How do you extend that to include the relational?

RLJ: It’s a lovely metaphor which I’ve used with students over the years. It’s about recognising the need for both agency and structure. Ironically, since then, I’ve been accused of overegging the agential or complexity argument. However, as McGeechan says, there has to be structure in coaching, it just depends on how much and when it’s employed; I’ve never said anything different. How McGeechan defined it, was that Shakespearean concepts and flights of fancy can’t be accessed if there is no mastery of the English language. Thus, structure is necessary, so that the imagination can be released. Too much structure, however, breeds a mechanical way of coaching which, it seems everyone agrees, is not desirable.

SPRJ: You’ve also cited Shulman in your work and you’ve written about the sports coach as an educator. In your grand conceptual framework, how big a place is there for the coach as an educator or a teacher, and would you make a distinction between them?

RLJ: I wouldn’t make much of a distinction. The ultimate aim of coaching is athlete learning; so coaching is about facilitating that. It’s a pedagogical act at heart, with the purpose of generating or drawing the best performance from others.

SPRJ: And that takes us to ‘orchestration’, which has been a theme in your work …

RLJ: Orchestration came from the work of Mike Wallace whom I worked with at Bath for a while. He conceptualised school heads as orchestrators in the work they do; an idea that resonated with me. As applied to coaching, however, it’s only a loose metaphor, albeit a quite well received one. It was an early effort at the reconstruction of practice. Having deconstructed through Foucault and others, it was an attempt at providing some lines of good practice while allowing agency.

SPRJ: You wrote a paper in which you talked about ambiguity, noticing and social irony …

RLJ: The ambiguity came from initially defining some of the complexity and uncertainty that coaches have to work with. Similarly, it was to highlight that much of what happens in coaching is ironic, in terms of not being intended; coaching can never be so pre-planned, which incidentally, has led to some writings on emergence and activity theory. In response, orchestration, as previously said, was given as a way of thinking about coaching, of how to organise some of this complexity. It relates to acting unobtrusively, to think ahead, to be a stage manager, to perform; a way of structuring practice to better navigate this ambiguous world. In terms of noticing, this somewhat filled the gap between outlining the complexity evident within coaching, and what to do about it. It arose, again from some reflective thoughts, about what would inform acts of orchestration. Here, I considered (rather phenomenologically) what is it that coaches actually do over and above all else? Not planning, delivering, questioning, recruiting, deciding on game plans or instructing … but observing. This, of course, led to the question what should coaches be looking for? Again, there was not much literature to help. What did, however, was John Mason’s pedagogically focussed book on the ‘discipline of noticing’. The main message was about being sensitive to the needs of the moment. That led me to Niklas Luhman’s theory of observation (through my good friend Lars Tore Ronglan), which was a real eye-opener! Now, then, I’m focussed on the question of ‘what do coaches actually see when making their decisions’? I suppose I should have started there, but it reflects this unfolding journey of mine which has been anything but pre-planned.

SPRJ: How do you see this line of work extending?

RLJ: What we’re doing with orchestration at the moment is carrying out some empirical work in terms of what it looks like in practice, to put some meat on the bones. Relatedly, I think it’s vital that, as a coach, you have some kind of consistency between your ontology and your methods; you have to live your theories to have a degree of sincerity. And that’s vital to have influence over people be they students, colleagues or athletes.

SPRJ: This is a good point to turn to your recent development of a professional doctorate in sports coaching (DSC). What was the rationale and what did you say in the documentation about your own ontological and epistemological beliefs?

RLJ: The roots of it again came from everyday life. The foundation lay in our graduating Masters students’ rather frustrated questioning of ‘what next for me?’ I’ve always thought that those who proclaim coaching as a practical job are doing it a disservice; for me, it’s primarily a cerebral one, which then leads to action. Consequently, I was thinking about how to help take coaches (students of coaching) further, thus equating to a PhD level of thought. Having worked with coaches of all levels for a number of years, I know it’s not realistic for the vast majority to engage with a traditional research-orientated PhD. I thought of my own modular structured doctoral experience at USM and decided to write a similarly organised DSC. It was launched last September with an initial cohort of four coaches who can dip in and out at their own pace. A big theme of the DSC is a movement from theory to practice to theory. This final step relates to their personal theorisation of practice which has been initially theoretically informed and is tied to the internalisation of knowledge and identity development.

SPRJ: There is a theme in your work of ‘Who is coaching?’ …

RLJ: I remember José Mourinho in his first spell at Chelsea saying, ‘All my sessions are open and so you can watch them, in fact you can video them. You can say everything I say, when I say it. Essentially, you can replicate my practice … but you won’t get the same results as me’. No doubt, there was a hint of arrogance there which is what drew many to him, but it got me to thinking what is it about people like him that make others follow? Not so much what or how to coach, but rather who is the coach became important to me.

SPRJ: The psychologist might say it’s charisma. What would the microsociologist say?

RLJ: We did some interesting work recently. We followed a group of our undergraduates from their first day at university through to their graduation. We wanted to see who they became as coaches, and what catalysed such developments. There were many factors in the development of so-called charisma (or not). Such factors revolved around a security in purpose and role, an ability to generate relationships through power, context, humour, a framing of past achievements, the managing of others’ perception of care and innovation, among others. The person of the coach then, demands much more work. In doing so, a better understanding of why athletes trust, respect and/or simply comply can be gleaned. But it’s far from being a matter of either having so-called charisma or not. The social world is never so clean.

Conclusion

In an article entitled, ‘The Goffman Legacy: Deconstructing/Reconstructing Social Science’, Thomas Scheff stated that all of Goffman’s work ‘deconstructed the assumptive reality current in our society’. ¹⁴ The term ‘assumptive reality’ comes from Manning ¹⁵ and refers to ‘taken-for-granted conventions’. ¹⁴ Robyn Jones is very much the Erving Goffman of Sports Coaching. With Robyn having the influence on him of Charles Lemert’s Social Life (R Jones, 2017, personal communication), it is appropriate here to quote Lemert ¹⁶ on Goffman’s legacy:

While many professional sociologists, before and since, have rendered excellent accounts of the thousands of small interactive moments by which daily life is organized, Goffman wrote about them in such a distinctive way that his countercultural view of social things has had a lasting influence. … There is something in human nature (at least in the nature of many Americans and other European peoples) that prompts us to think of our actions, as well as our feelings, as though they were the distinctive issue of something inside us, something uniquely ours. Some (perhaps many) are. But most of the actions and feelings that help us enter into working relations with fellow members of the world are not all that private. They are, in fact, performances we execute in acceptably close conformity to widely accepted social rules. These rules are learned and held by us in such an easy way that we indulge the conceit that they are our own brilliant accomplishments. We think of them, as Goffman said, as though they were the inventions of our own utterly original psychic lives, when most of them are as familiar to others as they are to us. … We encounter social things, and learn how to live them, and we do it every day. There are only a few acceptable ways to make dates, and, depending on taste, not many more to have sex. Otherwise, life with others would be an endless misery of negotiations, when what one mostly wants is to catch a bus or get some affection and companionship. The most practical social facts constitute a working knowledge that allows, not just me as an individual, but we in all our inordinately various collective comings together, to make some worlds work, even if poorly at times. (pp. 30–31)

It is interesting that Robyn describes his research area as a ‘critical sociology of sports coaching in respect of examining the complexity of the inter-active coaching context and how practitioners manage the power-ridden dilemmas that arise’, ¹³ yet he makes reference in the interview to an ‘interpretive paradigm’ (p. 2). Goffman has been associated with both interpretivism ^a and critical theory, but he himself considered labels and epithets as either erroneous or irrelevant ²¹ (p. 90):

Goffman was a uniquely gestalted hybrid between a multitude of different – and apparently mutually excluding – academic camps. … Throughout his career, Goffman analysed and sought to promote acceptance of a ‘new’ and special domain of social life – the interaction order. ²¹ (p. 90)