The Other Half of Feedback
What you affirm shapes performance as much as what you correct
Principle: The Feedback You’re Not Giving
I play in a recreational soccer league every week. We just played the best team in the league. It was a tense match, and I noticed that the more pressure mounted, the more our communication defaulted to what was going wrong. Mistakes were pointed out. Frustration was audible. More tension. More mistakes.
Nobody chose it. Pressure just narrowed what we noticed, and what we said.
That pattern isn’t unique to recreational football. It’s the default in most coaching environments. And it has a cost.
Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy — one of the most replicated bodies of research in performance psychology — identified verbal affirmation from a credible source as one of the primary mechanisms by which athletes build belief in their own capability. Not just feel better. Build capability. In sport, few sources are more credible than the coach.
When you tell an athlete “that was right, do that again,” you aren’t just offering praise. You’re providing information. You’re telling them what to keep, and you’re building the belief that they can execute it when it counts.
Research backs this up: a recent study found that supportive coaching behaviours including constructive, affirming feedback, directly predicted athlete performance through increased self-efficacy and psychological safety, while controlling, correction-only approaches had the opposite effect.
The problem is that in high-stakes moments, exactly when affirmation matters most, pressure narrows communication to correction.
And what doesn’t get said has consequences too.
Perspective: Silence Isn’t Neutral
There’s a belief, often unspoken, that positive feedback is for beginners. That once someone is elite, they don’t need to be told they’re good. They should already know. Praise is for youth sport.
This is wrong.
Silence after good work isn’t neutrality. It’s a message. And the message is: that wasn’t worth noting.
In high-performance environments, athletes are already operating in a constant state of self-evaluation. They’re looking for signal in everything, including what you choose not to say. When a coach only speaks to correct, the athlete’s internal calculus becomes simple:
Feedback means I failed. No feedback means I barely got it right.
The cost isn’t just psychological. It’s behavioural. Athletes who aren’t told what to keep doing often stop doing it. The behaviour that earned silence gets quietly revised and replaced by something that at least produces a reaction.
You didn’t intend to coach them away from it. But you did.
Story: What Klopp Understood About Signal
In their early years at Liverpool, Klopp developed a reputation not for tactical complexity — other coaches matched him there — but for his ability to make elite players feel like the best version of themselves.
Those who’ve studied his approach describe a consistent pattern: Klopp would find three things you did right in a game where you made five mistakes. He didn’t ignore the mistakes. But he led with what worked.
The principle wasn’t naivety. It was strategic. When players feel capable, they attempt more. When they attempt more, they create more. When they create more, there’s more to correct, but there’s also more to build on.
Coaches who only correct are managing. Coaches who affirm and correct are developing and that compounds over a career.
Question:
Think about the last session you ran.
If I asked your athletes what they did well today, would they be able to tell me?
Closing Thought:
Correction tells someone what to change.
Affirmation tells them what to keep.
Both are coaching decisions.
The absence of one is a gap. Say what they did right. Mean it. Then raise the bar.
Until next week,
Caleb Cousens
Positive affirmation can do wonders in any person's life be it any walk/domain of life.
I have understood that speaking loudly has to be the last resort, one has to be calm & composed while dealing with any kind of situation/circumstance. Being calm lets us view the things from a lot of angles which lets us trouble shoot that very moment but with anger or speaking loudly one's viewpoint for sure gets narrowed down as their cognition's energy/time is mostly taken up by the anger.
The love I possess for March Madness can't be matched by anything else. It has been since last year that I have watched it and listened to almost very bit of pre and post game interviews of coaches & players and I am like the relationship, the bond, the rapport each and every player build and the bond shared by coaches with players is best thing I can listen to 7 witness.
Coaches treat their players more better than people treat in their bloodline for sure.
Coaches can make or break team. That goes for Gregg Popovich, that goes for Coach K, Steve Kerr, Tara VanDerveer, Dawn Staley, Kara Lawson, Geno Auriemma, Patrick Sang and other thousands of coaches in any walk of life.
Sticking to fundamentals, being authentic and flexible, putting in consistent work for years on end yields good results.
Take for example this.
Two years before she was named “Most Outstanding Player” of the 2026 NCAA Tournament, Lauren Betts was lying on a gurney in a psychiatric ward.
At 6 ft 7” and the No. 1 ranked recruit in her class, Lauren was a starter for one of the best women’s basketball programs in the country. From the outside, she was thriving. On the inside, she was suffering.
In a deeply personal essay published in The Players’ Tribune in March 2026, a few weeks before she led UCLA to its first-ever national championship, Betts described the morning her depression finally broke through every defense she had built: “I don’t want to do this anymore.” She called the team trainer and she checked herself in to the psychiatric ward.
“On the outside, she appeared beautiful, talented, and successful. But on the inside, it didn’t match.” - UCLA Head Coach Cori Close
I don't know but players/athletes are some focused that they have to deal with Identity Foreclosure at some point of time in their lives or it can be multiple times for some as well.
When one is playing at the highest level or be it Sophomore as well, they are entirely focused on how to be the best version of themselves. From the time they wake up- they need to do take are of the diet before the workouts, then go for the workout, strength & conditioning in the gym, rest and then do some of it in the evening and very next day appears. This is the routine of any basketball player which they keep on doing it for months which turn to years and the ultimate goal is to win the NCAA Championship once if not multiple times.
How can one jump off from this box, it is quite difficult for anyone to broaden the aperture and put off the blinders for once. But blinders are quite helpful as in today's world, the algo can easily waver us off the Task in hand and can distract & steal our effort in the moment.
But the way Lauren Betts cam through all of this is great to see and behind every of this story there are n number of people whose support was the reason one could do wonders.
I have understood Psychological Safety in any team, organization, family set up or be it anywhere is the foremost thing to thrive in life.
It was because of her mother & coach Close that got her back told her to be vulnerable and be herself with whatever she feels. It is quite difficult to talk about mental health socially because people are quite fast to tear you apart but when you are supported by people around you, you are not filled with fear as you know you have a safety net even if you fall.