The Right Way to Praise Your Athlete To Build Her Confidence & Foster a Growth Mindset

Welcome back to the Raising of the Competitors podcast. I'm Coach Brief, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I am so excited that you're here. No matter where you are on your sports parenting journey if you're just beginning, your daughters may be young, or you just found us, or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt and you want to help your daughter with her mental game and confidence so she can level up this is the right place for you. This podcast is for sports moms and dads to help them know exactly how to build mental strength and confidence in their athletes, and also so that you can enjoy this whole sports journey in the process. Now, in today's episode I'm really excited to dive into. We're talking all about the right way to praise your athlete, to build her confidence and also foster that growth mindset that we all want for our kids. I've got some research that we're going to dive into and then help you apply it to your daughter's sports context. Now, before we do, I do want to give a shout out to a mom in our community. This mom is going through our signature mental training program called the Elite Mental Game with her athlete daughter, and she just posted this inside our private group. She said my daughter this weekend made a pass that resulted in a goal being scored against her. At the very beginning of her foot saw game on Saturday she used her snapback routine and went back to have an incredible game. Coach told her it was her best. Yet the next day she had another foot saw game and guesting for another team. She said before the game it was the most nervous she had been in a while. She was using the techniques from the program and pre-competition routine and played the game so well that the other teams coach complimented her play and even a couple parents complimented her to me. So cool, so awesome to see that these skills are paying off for your daughter. So, jennifer, I just want to give you a huge shout out for providing her with the opportunity to develop these skills for herself. Specifically, she's talking about her snapback routine. So this is the routine that athletes develop to help them get over mistakes quickly. So instead of spiraling or beating themselves up after a mistake or making more mistakes, they are back in the game and ready to go. And then those pre-competition routines. So all athletes deal with nerves, pressure, like all of the feelings before games, but not all athletes actually see that as something that will help them. They see it as something negative and then it negatively impacts their performance. So the fact that your daughter is using and creating her pre-competition routine to help her in this moment is fantastic. So congratulations, keep going. Can't wait to hear how she continues throughout the program.

All right, one last thing before we jump into today's episode. If you enjoy this podcast, then do us a favor. It would really help us out if you rate and review. So if you're in your podcast player just giving us a rating and then, if you've got some time, to give us a quick review, that helps us a lot to reach more sports parents and also bring on amazing guests to help educate you. And if you find any of our episodes helpful and think another sports parent could benefit, go ahead and text on over that link to another parent so that they can listen in as well. I know that when my friends text me podcast episodes, they are the first ones that I'm listening to and I'm driving around picking up my kids in those moments. So that would help us out a lot if you could do that.

All right, let's go ahead and get into today's episode. Like I said, talking about the right way to praise our kids, and you know I always hesitate to say things like the right way and the wrong way, but in this instance the research is pretty clear on praising and where we're placing our recognition for our kids. So one area that is a big missed opportunity for a lot of sports parents when it comes to building confidence is when our kids do well, and here's why it's like almost a relief when our kids play well, they perform well, they win, they score the most points, whatever they're happy, and we just like move on right, we're like woo, woo, okay, we're good, let's go Like get something to eat. And really we are missing out on a big opportunity to build and develop their confidence and in fact, we actually might even be hurting their confidence, depending on what we're doing in those moments, because obviously what typically happens is that we praise them for, typically, the outcome right, the outcome of the game you won, you know you scored this many points, you are so good at defense, you're the best hitter out there, you know we're saying these things and we think that we're building their confidence when we say these things because they are really nice to hear, right, I would want to hear that. I want to hear that feels good to hear those things. Okay, and I'm not saying that you're not going to stop praising your athlete in helping her. You know, feel good things in those moments. But we're going to be more specific about what we're praising. Okay, because what we think right, we think by saying those things you know, you are so good at defense, you scored the most amount of points, you won, you crushed it out there, you did all those things we think that we're actually, you know, elevating her performance and we think that all of this, like, would be considered positive feedback and that's actually going to make her replicate it. Okay, but the opposite ends up being true. And we're going to lean specifically on Dr Carol Dweck's research study.

Maybe a lot of you have heard of Dr Carol Dweck and her book Grint, and she is, you know, one of the researchers who spearheaded the research in the area of growth mindset right, and so she has a study called praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and performance, and Dr Andrew Heberman actually, in his podcast the Heberman lab, broke this down as well recently and I was listening to that and I was like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense, and so we're going to talk about how to apply this to the sports context, because we all have an amazing opportunity, because we have kids that are performing every day. They are getting feedback from us every day. They're looking to us when they win, when they lose, when they perform. We have, like, multiple opportunities, if your kids play sports, to build their confidence in this way. So in this study from Dweck again called, praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and performance. Here is what they did they split up a group of children into three subgroups and each of these three subgroups were given different feedback, and after that feedback, they were given math problems to complete. So group one was given intelligence feedback. So intelligence feedback means that they were told things like you're smart, you're intelligent, things that were labels of their identity, you're really good at math. Okay, that is the feedback that they were given before they were given a set of math problems.

The second group was given effort feedback, and this was attached to verbs, so things that they can control, things like you kept trying, you don't give up, you can do hard things, all of those things that are tied to their effort, and then they had a control group that was given no feedback. So these three groups of kids were given a set of math problems to complete and they could choose which problems they wanted to complete. And here's what they found. In the group that was praised for their intelligence, so giving feedback around things like you are so smart, you're really good at math. Those children picked problems that were the easiest to complete so easiest so that they could be the most successful right. So they can reaffirm that feedback that they were getting about I'm good at math, I am smart, I'm intelligent. In the group that was praised for their efforts. So the effort praise group. They chose problems that were harder to complete, therefore also reinforcing the feedback that they were getting that you can do hard things, that you don't give up when things get hard. So super interesting there, but it gets even more interesting.

So what Dweck and her team did after this was they then gave all the kids the same set of problems. All right, some got some problems right, some got them wrong, all that and then they gave them feedback after they completed those problems. Again, three groups. So after they completed this set of problems, one group got intelligence based feedback like wow, you are so smart, you're so good at math, all of those identity based adjectives. The second group got their effort based feedback, so things that were verbs like you are hard at working, you don't give up when it gets tough. All the feedback related to their effort. And then the third group got no feedback at all. Then they were given one last set of problems all of the same and here is what is really fascinating in the kids that were in that control group so they didn't get any feedback, their performance stayed about the same, right, they didn't improve or decline.

In the kids that got the effort praise, so things that were praised for things that were in their control, their performance on those math problems increased. Okay, they were able to actually increase their performance from the start of this study to the end. And here's what's interesting the kids that were praised for their intelligence, their performance declined on those problems, so they actually got worse, which is so interesting because when we are praising our kids based on what we think is building their confidence, so things like you are so smart, you are so good at defense, you are one of the best players out there, you are the best player out there and we are praising all of these things around outcome and identity, we think we are elevating their performance, when, in fact, the research says that the opposite is true. Not only do they actually do things that are going to reinforce getting that praise, so they're going to not do harder things, they're gonna hesitate, they're gonna hold back, they're gonna play it safe. We see that in sports. Right, they don't want to mess up because they want to continue to get that praise Again. This is likely happening at a subconscious level, but they want to continue to prove that right, prove what all the people are saying that I am this player that does these things right and all of these outcome things that they want to make sure that they do. So not only are they actually playing it safe and not playing to their potential, their performance over time is actually decreasing when they are getting this constant praise that is related to their identity as an athlete. Okay, and so how can we make sure that we are not adding extra pressure to our kids, that we are praising them in a way that's actually building confidence and improving their performance over time? Well, as you can see from this study, we can apply the same thing to athletics.

Okay, so when we praise outcomes in our kids. They are going to stay in their comfort zone, they're not going to take risks and they're also going to experience more pressure, which means that they're going to have less confidence. Now, of course, an amount of pressure is good An amount. You can't get rid of all the pressure in sports. In fact, we don't want to. Okay, but when I hear parents say things like she put so much pressure on herself, or why is she putting so much pressure on herself? Or she's getting to the point now, as she grows in her sport, where she's getting more and more anxious, if we follow that thread back and we think about okay, well, what have they been praised for? Probably since the beginning of when they started their sport, likely for being the best you know, getting some sort of certain outcome. They're probably told at a young age you are so good at soccer, and that then comes with this extra pressure as they continue to grow. Now we don't want to say like you're bad at soccer or anything like that.

Okay, I'm not saying that we stop telling our kids good things, but instead of praising continually praising things that are related to their identity, so like adjectives, how can we shift it to things that are verbs, things that are related to their effort, things that are in their control, and when we do that, we actually allow kids to take more risks. They're okay with challenges, because challenges don't mean that if I fail that means I'm actually not good at soccer like everyone says I'm going to be. Everyone says that I am Okay. They're more focused on what's in their control, because ultimately, the score, the stats, the outcome all of those things are out of your athlete's control. Yes, they influence them, but if they are putting all of their influence and they're trying to, like, really get this outcome because they want to continue to get that praise, ultimately they're going to be at a dead end. They're going to be disappointed, right, because they can't 100% control any outcome in their sport.

And so if we can shift to effort based feedback, effort based praise, that is going to allow them to step outside of their comfort zone, take more risks, which is going to actually make them better. They're going to make mistakes, right, it's going to happen, but they're not tying those failures or those mistakes to their identity, as I am a failure or you know, people don't think that I'm living up to this identity, that they think I should be Okay, and, as I mentioned before, some of this is happening at the subconscious level, especially if your kids are playing sports very young and they were being praised pretty early on for some of these outcome things. And as kids bodies change and as other kids are catching up, and now they're at this place where it's like, oh my gosh, other people are good too, and what does that mean about me? Okay, and so rewarding effort, rewarding those things that are in her control, increases performance over time. Rewarding identity outcomes Okay, those type of things that we talked about as a result of Duak's study decreases her performance long term. And so the big takeaway from this is, yeah, while I don't like to say there's right or wrong ways to do things, and, of course, praising your kids every once in a while for amazing outcome things I'm not saying you don't do that, but can we swing that pendulum just a little bit more to effort, what is in her control? Okay, and continue like, make a running list of things that you can identify that are 100% in her control, things that you can say that are just in your back pocket, that continue to build that bridge and link that gap between the results that she's getting and what is in her control around those results.

And if you want a cheat sheet of this, we actually have our 25 key phrases cheat sheet. That is all around effort-based feedback. So we have 25 phrases that you can be using before and after games that really check the box in this whole effort-based feedback and we give that to you for free at our free training. So our free training is at trainhergamecom. This is our free training for sports moms and dads to help you know exactly how to build your athlete's daughter's confidence and her mental game. And when you show up live to that training, we give you that PDF for free.

And a lot of moms just say they have that in their back pocket, they take it out, you know, before their daughter gets in the car after a game. Because they're just reading through like, okay, these are my phrases that I'm gonna say because they are the ones that will help her win or lose, build her confidence. Okay, a lot of times we focus on, you know, when she's disappointed, when she is lost, like what do we say then? And of course, we help you with that. But when she wins, when she's feeling good, when she's proud of herself, that is a big, big opportunity to build her confidence in the right way. So I hope that this was helpful.

I know it was short, but hopefully a good takeaway that you can start doing right now to shift where your language is going right Around effort-based praise versus intelligence-based praise and really the implications of both of those. Now, if you want more, like I said, head to trainhergamecom. That's where our free training for sports moms is. We dive into even more research around what's going on in your daughter's brain when she's competing and what you can do to help her. Not only what you say, but also how you can give her the skills to strengthen her mental game and her confidence. So that's at trainhergamecom. All right, moms, I'm Coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, so happy that you join me for this episode and I will see you in the next episode of the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.