Chapter 9: Extending the Sports Coaching Metaphor: Coaches and Teammates as Creators of the Feedback Environment

This chapter illustrates the value of feedback availability in organizations through the lens of athletes and coaches who are known for creating a favorable feedback environment and experienced great success as a result. This context is ideal for explaining the role of the feedback environment in contemporary organizations as it naturally flows from the sports coaching metaphor often borrowed to explain the value of developmental feedback and employee coaching. Although this chapter will not address “coaching” per se, we will address the role of the sports coach as a provider of feedback, and the qualities that make a coach, or a player, a creator of a favorable feedback environment for others.