The staff matters too.

My news this week is, of course, the workshop I did with Sofia Jowett in Orléans as part of the SFPS conference (I’m a member of that organization). I really appreciate Sofia’s work on the coach-athlete relationship, which inspires me in my own practice.

One of the questions I asked her during the session, about her 3C+1 theory, was : « What difference do you make between individual and team sport ? ». Her answer was immediate. And straightforward. « Well. No difference. … But coaches are not alone. There is a staff. »

Simple as that.

As I already wrote this here : Want your team to perform ? Start with your staff.

I’ve written about Jowett’s work before (see my April 2025 article on this). But let me give a brief overview for context.

The 3+1C model defines the quality of a coach-athlete relationship through four interconnected dimensions :

• Closeness : the emotional bond (trust, respect, mutual appreciation, liking)
• Commitment : the shared intention to stay together and keep working toward something over time
• Complementarity : the cooperative behaviors (the coach being adaptable, the athlete being coachable, each responding to the other)
• Co-orientation (the « +1 ») : how aligned they are (do they see things the same way ? Are they on the same page about what they are doing and why ?

And here is what research keeps confirming : this relationship is a real performance factor. Not a soft, feel-good extra. A hard, measurable driver of both individual and collective performance. A recent study by Pan & Sui (2025), based on over 1 500 athletes, found that the quality of the coach-athlete relationship has a direct and significant positive effect on team performance, through increased emotional intelligence and athletic engagement.

So what about team sports ? This is where Jowett’s answer becomes really interesting.

In a team sport context, a head coach can be working with 20, 25, maybe 30 players. Building a high-quality individual relationship with each one of them is so challenging. Not impossible. But challenging. And Jowett made it clear : a great coach is one who finds a way to like all his players. That is actually a requirement, not just a nice-to-have.

But here is the reality she shared : the coach is not alone.

There is a strength & conditioning coach. A goalkeeping coach. A backs coach. An assistant coach. A manager. … Depending on the level and the sport, the staff can be significant. And each of those staff members interacts directly with players, day in, day out.

That means the relationship network is much broader than the classic coach-athlete dyad. Each staff member can (and does) build their own relationship with players. And that matters enormously.

During the workshop, Jowett presented a model she is currently working on about the quality of relationships.

It’s a two-axis framework :

• (Vertical axis) Interdependence (intimacy) : how emotionally connected are the two people?
• (Horizontal axis) Independence (separateness) : how much does each maintain their own space, identity, perspective ?

This creates four possible relationship profiles :

• Fully committed : high interdependence, high independence. The ideal. Each person is really invested in the other and maintains their own identity. They are close but not merged. This is where you want to be.
• Engulfed : high interdependence, low independence. There is closeness, but too much fusion. One person (or both) has lost their own perspective. In a coaching context, this can lead to dynamics where the athlete can’t function without constant support, or where honest feedback disappears.
• Isolated : low interdependence, high independence. Each person stays in their own lane. The relationship is technically functional, but there is no real bond. No trust, no real commitment. The athlete and staff member are essentially just doing their jobs around each other.
• Adrift : low on both axes. No closeness, no sense of self either. This is a relationship that isn’t really a relationship at all. That can’t provide performance.

What this model tells us is that quality is not just about being close. It’s about maintaining both real connection and individual clarity. And this applies just as much to the strength coach-athlete relationship as to the head coach-athlete relationship !

Think about the strength and conditioning coach who sees your players every morning. Or the assistant coach who works daily with a specific line or position group. They have something the head coach often couldn’t have : focused, low-pressure contact.

That daily contact is actually a goldmine for building the 3+1C : closeness develops through small, repeated moments of attention, complementarity grows through consistent, responsive feedback loops, commmitment is built simply by showing up with consistency and follow-through, over time, and co-orientation happens when staff members communicate with players about what they are working on and why, not just at them.

And according to recent research on the coach-team relationship (Booth et al., 2025), when these relational dimensions are present across the team environment (not just in the head coach dyad) team unity and collective performance are significantly stronger.

All of this brings me to something I think is really important. If the quality of relationships within the staff directly shapes the quality of relationships with players, and it does, then who the coach choose to have around him matters so much more.

Not people who think like him, see things like him, react like him. That would actually be a weakness. A staff where everyone is cut from the same cloth is a poor staff, intellectually narrow, with blind spots nobody ever challenges. Diversity in profiles, backgrounds, and perspectives is what makes a staff really rich. The S&C coach who sees things the athletic trainer misses. The assistant who reads the locker room differently than the head coach. That friction, when it’s healthy, is an asset.

But, and this is the real point, they need to be people the head coach can trust. People who will be loyal. Who will not say one thing in your office and another behind your back. Who will be corporate in the best sense of the word : aligned with the collective project, even when they disagree, even when it’s hard.

Because the relationships they build with the players are built in the name of the head coach too. Every interaction a staff member has with a player either reinforces or weakens the relational culture the coach is trying to create. You can’t afford to have someone on your staff who is not fully committed (in Jowett’s sense of the word) to what you are building together.

Choose people who are different from you. But choose people you can count on.

For any head coach reading this : do you actively think about the relational quality within your staff’s individual interactions with players ? Are your staff members fully committed with the players they work with daily ?

Because if the relationship is a real performance factor, and it is, then building it can’t be left to chance, or to the head coach alone.

The staff is not just a technical resource. It’s a relational one.