The June special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research presents articles that focus on psychologically based coaching with elite performers in various domains.
The purpose of the issue is to inform readers about the world of performance-psychology coaching and stimulate them to consider how this might influence the development of their own areas of consulting psychology.
Guest editor Stewart Cooper, PhD, discusses the issue's significance and practical implications.
What is the special issue about?
This special issue focuses on the emerging area of performance psychology, in particular psychologically based coaching with elite performers in business, sports, the performing arts, military special forces, and surgeons and emergency-room physicians. Each of the main articles is written in an informative and interesting narrative form by leading psychologists working with these particular and highly talented populations.
What is the significance of the issue?
Performance psychology involves the study and application of psychological principles of human performance to help people consistently perform in the upper range of their capabilities and more thoroughly enjoy the performance process.
This special issue utilizes a special lens — doing this work through the eyes of psychologists engaged in many years of coaching elites. Studying and assisting elite performers across diverse professions, roles, and contexts — some with significant, at times life and death or global, consequences — offers insight into the optimal functioning of all of us.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
Performance psychology coaching is designed to help individuals perform under situations of great pressure. The development of key psychological skills for self-management is essential.
Five psychological skills seem central.
Relaxation is perhaps the most important skill for managing arousal, because it can help to keep the stress in the peak-performance zone and prevent it from becoming debilitating anxiety.
Positive self-talk to replace internal discouraging thoughts with constructive, affirmative, and performance enhancement thoughts is helpful.
Imagery can promote the development of challenge rather than threat appraisal yielding improved performance.
Positively framed SMART goals, particularly those that the individual is working on incrementally growing toward mastery, help develop the needed focus.
The overall development of abilities to concentrate and focus are needed to minimize distraction from the external environment as well as one's internal thoughts and feelings that are not conducive to high performance.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
The reader will learn how performance psychology coaching plays out with elite performers in highly diverse areas including unique factors and implications for working with each group.
Those interested in developing competency in this area will discover pathways for professional growth. Those wishing to increase their own performance will discover tools and techniques to do so.
Special Issue
- View the table of contents and abstracts on APA PsycNET
- Purchase the special issue
PDF Format ($24.95)
Note: This article is in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Management topic area. View more articles in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Management topic area.