ABSTRACT
The idea of a coaching process is that coaches, in various ways, try to stimulate athletes’ learning and progressive performance. Naturally, to have an impact and achieve this, coaches have to interact with athletes. Thus, social interaction can be viewed as the essence of coaching, with coach-athlete relationships being at the heart of the activity (Jones et al., 2004). Other relationships also impact on successful coaching: for example, those between athletes, between coaches, and between coaches and other contextual actors (parents, additional staff members and administrators, among others). A principal challenge for coaches, then, is to handle different individuals and groups, and to be able to utilise the possibilities offered by the environment. This supposes flexibility and social competence: that is, the ability to engineer and shape face-to-face interactions productively.
