ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between sports coaching and business, introducing the premise that sports coaching can be usefully transferred into a business context to aid learning and performance. It should be acknowledged that: ‘businesses are now growing to appreciate the potential benefits of understanding sports coaching techniques and applying these to related management and business issues’ (Wolsey and Whitrod Brown, 2012, p. 34). The business issue discussed in this chapter is commonly referred to as the ‘transfer problematic’ in recognition that companies invested 45.4 billion in training in 2015 and that two thirds of employers had arranged training and development for their staff in that year (UKCES, May 2016). Yet training, and in particular the successful transfer of it, continues to elude organisations (Grossman and Salas, 2011). Academic interest has kept pace with industry concerns and ‘research on training transfer has become a growing area of intensive enquiry’ (Segers and Gegenfurtner 2013 p. 1). These studies have identified the most significant variables thought to have an influence on transfer success but that go largely ignored in current training provision, offering potential opportunities for sports coaching to influence training transfer positively in a number of ways.
