Using Personality Insights to Improve Student-Athlete Performance
A deeper understanding of your student-athletes’ and team’s personality traits can help Coaches and Administrators create better relationships, cultivate a stronger team culture, and improve performance. While there is no silver living to the way COVID has impacted today’s student-athletes, it does provide an opportunity to try new things that impact team culture and improve performance once teams are operating normally. Insights from a team personality test - like what’s provided in a 1-Hour Custom Workshop - describe with great accuracy who student-athletes are and how you can adapt your approach to better serve them.
The Big Five Personality Traits
The Big Five Personality model is a test that shows where a student-athlete or a team scores on a scale for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (commonly referred to with the acronym O.C.E.A.N.)
Openness relates to coping with anything new; student-athletes who score high in openness are willing to try new things and those who score lower often stay in their comfort zones
Conscientiousness relates to discipline; student-athletes who score high in this area are goal-oriented and those who score lower are often disorganized
Extraversion relates to interaction with people; student-athletes who score higher in this area are more assertive and those who score lower prefer solitude
Agreeableness relates to cooperating with others; student-athletes who score higher in this area are more empathetic of others and those who score lower are often uncooperative
Neuroticism relates to dealing with stress; student-athletes who score higher in this area are anxious and those who score lower find it easier to remain calm
How to Lead Where Student-Athletes Scored Favorably
To understand student-athletes nationally, I use artificial intelligence (AI) to study the anonymized data of approximately 10,000 college student-athletes and non-athletes. Representation in my studies include all sports and align with the 2019 NCAA Demographic Database for all divisions.
In my study conducted in September 2020, student-athletes scored higher/better in the following:
Conscientiousness
Student-Athletes on this part of the scale often have a fear of failure and will not take on new challenges unless they're sure that they will be successful; Coaches often need to reassure them that mistakes/failure are part of improving performance
Watch for student-athletes who set unrealistically high standards for themselves or tend to be very self-critical; consider working with student-athletes on "adaptive" perfectionism, which is to have high standards, but to learn when "enough is enough" before moving to work on another skill
Extraversion
Student-Athlete extroverts' performance drops when they don't have clear objectives or enough information about what a Coach is asking for
Student-Athlete extroverts struggle to work effectively when there are factions or conflict on a team; Coaches will likely need to step in, as extroverts are not prone to negotiate or find common ground
Neuroticism
These student-athletes won't over-react negatively to bad news; Coaches do not need to sugarcoat things and in fact that style may backfire
As student-athletes at this place on the Neuroticism scale, they are likely to remain relaxed in most situations; Coaches may need to generate a “spark” to "wake them up" to any new scenario or remind them of the small details they are prone to ignore
How to Lead Where Student-Athletes Scored Less Favorably
Openness
With so much chaos in the daily life of student-athletes right now (i.e. postponed seasons, remote learning, disruption to their social lives), it’s understandable that student-athletes are not as open to new experiences which could create more disorder in their lives
Student-Athletes can be resistant to change because they believe their past success will lead to future success; this can put them at odds with a Coach whose job it is to improve performance, which cannot be done without change
Agreeableness
Coaches may be surprised that student-athletes didn’t score more favorably in Agreeableness; in fact, team sport student-athletes (i.e. soccer, lacrosse, field hockey) did score favorably, while individual sport student-athletes in a team structure (i.e. swimming, track, gymnastics) did not score favorably
These student-athletes have a high self-awareness and Coaches can capitalize on these their willingness to take an honest look at themselves; they are excellent at controlling their emotions; so if they are angry or rejecting something, they are not being reactive, but rather have given it much thought
Take Action
Our current environmental factors -including COVID, the social justice movement, and a flailing economy - all have an impact on testing of personality traits. But despite our current environment, the majority of student-athletes remain goal oriented, assertive, and able to remain calm. Coaches should consider the factors that could improve how student-athletes are coping with new things (Openness) and working with others (Agreeableness.)
A final reminder - a national study like this is useful as a “benchmark,” but to get an accurate picture of your student-athletes, I recommend something like my 50-Minute Remote Workshop or the free Big Five test like this one licensed by MIT.