ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what athletes, coaches and sports leaders might think about kindness and specifically its role in facilitating performance. A team or squad without kindness and compassion is a team with an inability to work with and learn of the power of vulnerability. Several athletes spoke of the difference between healthy and unhealthy competition and the potentially devastating impact unhealthy competition can have on an athlete's physical and mental health and conversely the powerful effect of healthy competition. The nature of the athlete–coach relationship has some unusual features in terms particularly of the intensity of the relationship and the interdependency between coach and athlete. Sports organisations can create policy that protects whistle blowers and encourages the use of wholly independent panels, for selection disputes, medical negligence or conduct complaints. Kindness in sport involves helping people achieve what they want to achieve in a way which is congruent with whom they want to be.
