IDO MOVEMENT FOR CULTURE

The coach’s obvious generally accepted and understood tasks are: developing athlete’s energy fitness, motor co-ordination, technique, technical and tactical abilities, developing pupils motivation, self-efficacy and creative personality. In sport rivalry an obvious and important object is to ensure high results in competition. One shoud not forget, however, that equally important tasks is to develop pupils’ active attitude and active co-operation. So the couch must know not only how to develop athletes’ motor fitness (energy fitness and coordination) technique and tactics but also he must know how to apply active cooperation, and how to ensure team cohesiveness, how to listen and discuss various aspects of training with athletes, their parents, other coaches and how to solve conflicts. Thus coach’s interpersonal skills are very important. Taking all this in consideration the author describes and discusses the leadership styles – dictatorial, directing, formal, co-operative and friendly. He presents on the table the most important features of dictatorial and co-operative – friendly style, underlining the good sides of co-operative style (good relations with people, common understanding, high competition results). The author (taking advantage of his over seventy years lasting practical experience and literature) discusses the coach’s interpersonal skills while dealing with competitors, their parents and other coaches. In various human activities – and, of course, in athletics too, in interpersonal relations may and often appear differences of opinion or/and lack of understanding of each other. One shoud not ignore lack of information, misunderstandings, different opinions and conflicts. The coach should try to understand other peoples’ opinions, views, doubts, and actively try to solve the problems and conflicts. At the end five different ways of solving conflicts are described.
The efficacy of training and athlete’s competition results depend on many factors. To such well known and appreciated factors belong: state of health, athlete’s physical fitness, motor coordination, motivation, perseverance, resistance to stressful situations, level of arousal, tactical and technical abilities and coach’s personality – his knowledge, practical skills of conducting exercises. One has to notice, however, that beside coach’s skills of conducting exercises, teaching technique and tactics, developing energy and co-ordination abilities, extremely important – and often not appreciated – are coach’s leadership styles and interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills ought to ensure good and efficient coach’s co-operation with athletes, athlete’s parents and other coaches. In this respect also very important is coach’s ability to solve various problems and conflicts. In this article the author discusses shortly the leadership styles and – in more detail – coach’s interpersonal skills and different ways of solving conflicts.