On Friday 2020-08-14 we hosted a very special masterclass. Topic of the day was the Pygmalion effect and we could think of no one better than Andreu Enrich to present the topic and answer your questions on this interesting topic.
Andreu Enrich will be coaching Mannheimer HC as of next season in the German Bundesliga, where he was still playing himself in the Belgian Honour Division for KHC Leuven until the season and his playing days got cut short because of COVID19. Though originally from the legendary club Atlètic Terrassa in Spain he played (and coached) all over the world. Author of several books on hockey with a particular philosophical view on our sport and coaching.
Before we forget. Andreu brought along some friends to debate the topic. So the coaches talking about the Pygmalion effect with Andreu Enrich were
The One Thing to Take Away
If there’s one lesson field hockey coaches should take from this Pygmalion Effect masterclass, it’s the profound influence of your expectations and daily interactions on player development. Whether you coach juniors, national teams, or anything in between, understanding how your perception of an athlete shapes their reality is fundamental—not just for peak performance, but for the holistic growth that sustains long-term team and player success.
Why Does This Matter?
Every coach brings a philosophy to their training ground, but often it’s the invisible expectations—communicated through tone, feedback, and presence—that do the heaviest lifting behind the scenes. The Pygmalion Effect, rooted in both classical literature and psychological studies, demonstrates that players rise or fall to the level of belief their coaches have in them. When you’re conscious of the ‘climate’ you set and the narrative you invite your players to inhabit, you unlock their ability to exceed what even they believe is possible.
Andreu Enrich traced this back to the well-known experiment of Rosenthal & Jacobson, where randomly assigned “top” students performed better simply because teachers expected more from them. The parallel for field hockey is obvious: if you truly believe in the potential of every squad member—not just the stars—your training, feedback, and support will reflect this belief and drive real outcomes.
How to Apply It in Day-to-Day Coaching
1. Warmth and Support as Standard:
Don’t reserve constructive feedback and warm engagement for your best players. Make the climate of your training sessions positive, challenging, but supportive—for everyone. Take extra care to ensure that less “gifted” or less experienced athletes receive attention, technical feedback, and belief in equal measure. Ric Charlesworth put it succinctly:
“Your job as a coach is to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable... The athletes who are struggling need to be supported.”
2. Intentional Feedback:
Offer praise for the right things—intention, effort, and improvement, not just outcome. Work with every player on an individual growth plan, as Andreu Enrich described, based not purely on performance data but on personal development targets the player helps set.
3. Engage Players in Their Growth:
Bring athletes actively into the process by challenging them with open questions in meetings, inviting their insights, and encouraging ownership of development. As David Harte noted, having played under a range of coaching styles, input and autonomy are central to getting buy-in—“how the player responds to it is key.”
4. Calibrate Expectations to Reality:
Beware the trap of “naive optimism.” Setting the bar high is important, but so is realism. Be honest with your players about their limits, but also about how those limits can be shifted. Over-coaching or idealizing what players “should” be can lead to frustration and burnout.
Daily, this means:
Regular 1:1 conversations
Purposeful rotation across senior and junior players for feedback and attention
Using video reviews for all, not just your stars
Positioning yourself as both challenger and supporter, varying your tactics as the season and sessions demand
A Quote That Nails It
“When you’re a coach, you never change anybody. You create an environment where they can change, but they have to change themselves. This is an act of free will.” – Ric Charlesworth
Why Watch the Full Masterclass?
There are few discussions that cut as sharply to the core of field hockey coaching as this. In one session, you get practical frameworks, cross-cultural insights into team dynamics, and honest debate about how to blend data with intuition. Whether you want to revisit how you set up training or rethink your approach to supporting both stars and squad players, the lessons here are deeply actionable.
You’ll hear first-hand how to avoid the most common pitfalls, and how to use both hardship and success to fuel your team’s growth. 
