Against one of the most beautiful backdrops I've seen, I was delighted to speak about VOTG to students at the NUI, Galway's Speech Pathology discipline .
Some interesting questions were posed by students, including:
·
Can we really track if
coaches having healthier voices makes a difference to team performance/wins?
This is a tough one to
answer. It certainly isn’t something I can directly claim from my own research
(we didn’t consider players’ unfolding performance over the season). The
coaches and I did discuss that players behaviour impacted on coaches’ voice use
and vocal health. However, so many factors contribute to how a team performs within
a game. It may be suggested that healthy voice facilitates effective voice performance,
which impacts on effective vocal communication. In that regard, the health of
the voice may influence how well a coach can deliver critical information to
players. This vocal communication effectiveness may influence a team’s
performance during competition. But can healthy voice lead directly to a win?
Hard to say.
·
Will focusing on voice
detract from coaches focusing on players?
Again, a really good
questions. What we have found is that focus on health does not appear to be
coaches’ primary focus point. Coaches are more likely to drop focus on their
vocal health in order to focus on players’ performance needs. Indeed, a culture
presenteeism seems imbedded in basketball coaching. Passion for coaching and
enjoyment of facilitating athletes’ achievements often see coaches attend sport
when they are unwell. Team loyalty also plays a part, with coaches not wanting
to let athletes down by not being at training or games. This all suggests that
focusing on voice is an adjunct to focusing on players (not a competing
demand).
·
What have been the
surprise findings when working with coaches on their voices?
I
think one of the biggest surprises has come from the detailed level of insight
basketball coaches have into their voice use. Coaches often detailed the nature
of their reliance on voice across job tasks. This spanned training, games and
other coaching contexts. During a match, this also included talking to
official, players and each other. Coaches often discussed how changes in pitch,
tone and volume were critical for coaching. However, considerations of the
importance of voice were often confined to vocal communication success. Coaches
did not tend to consider their vocal health alongside the performance of their
voices.
·
Do you consider that this
area will become a focus in future?
In short, I hope so. Having
coaches’ ‘buy-in’ to focusing on voice was why my research used collaboration with
coaches. The future of vocal ergonomics with precarious workers may well rest
on how well we (speech therapists, ergonomics and researchers) engage
occupations in advocating for their vocal health needs. What is more certain is
the importance of considering voice alongside other Occupational Safety and
Health factors for workers like coaches.
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NUI can be found at:
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