Three Pointers: How to Be Your Kid’s Confidence Coach

Excited about this idea of a Confidence Coach, and curious how you can be one for your kid?

We’ve read the research on confidence coaching (you can find it linked below) and talked to the experts so you don’t have to. Here are the techniques that bona fide confidence coaches use when working with athletes on building confidence—techniques that you can use in your family, too.

1. Hold back your good advice—and instead, ask good questions.

Confidence coaches use a technique called motivational interviewing—a counseling method that helps people build the will to change their lives. It’s a research-based technique that has proven effective in helping people quit smoking, lose weight, and curtail substance use. And yes, it helps athletes, too.

The key to motivational interviewing is simple: you don’t give advice. You don’t identify the problems or solutions. You don’t impose—or even offer—your viewpoint.

Instead, you just ask questions. You listen for someone to express a desire to change in some way. Then, repeat back what you heard and ask them what they think a solution might be. You help them consider multiple viewpoints, but ultimately, they are the ones who suggest a problem they want to solve and a change they want to make.

So when you’re trying to be your kid’s confidence coach, hold back all of your wisdom and instead—like Socrates—see what questions you can ask to help them come up with the wisdom themselves.

2. Help your kid identify where their confidence comes from—and what kills it.

When your kid is confident about something, ask them: “Where do you think that confidence comes from?”

That’s literally the exact question that confidence coaches ask the elite athletes they work with. (You can read the research about their whole technique here.) And when an athlete isn’t confident, they’ll ask: “Where do you think that lack of confidence comes from?”

Why do this with your kids? Because the things that boost or sap our confidence are generally factors we have some control over. If a kid is able to identify the people, situations, and behaviors that make them feel more confident, they’ll gravitate towards those. You can guide them towards that understanding.

3. Help your kid decide on one small thing they can start doing right now.

Machiavelli once said “make no small plans.” Unsurprisingly, he wouldn’t have been a very good confidence coach. Confidence coaches focus on making small plans— because they know confidence comes from gradual, consistent progress on things that are in your control.

When confidence coaches work with athletes, they:

• break their performance down into small parts—body positioning, movement execution, strength, and others depending on the sport

• ask them to rate their confidence in those areas on a scale of 1-10

• ask them, “What would it take to make your confidence in your body positioning go from (let’s say) a 3 to a 7?”

• and finally, they ask: “What would be a good first step?”

That final answer to that final question is the takeaway—the thing the athlete works on and practices to improve their confidence.

It’s almost laughably micro that one single action is a first step towards somewhat increasing your confidence in a very specific area of performance.

But it works. It’s used with Olympic athletes and has been shown to be successful in published studies like this one.

If you want direct access to our team of educators, sneak peeks at Legends products, and the opportunity to participate in what we’re building— plus a community of parents and educators who care about transforming education and building confident kids—email [email protected] and we’ll add you to Insiders.