You met one of our consultant clients in an earlier article, mental performance coach, Dr Tiff Jones. We wanted to share a fantastic podcast she did with John O’Sullivan, host of Way Of Champions. During their chat she also shares; some significant research about the impact of technology on our current generation of athletes, her thoughts on the biggest obstacles holding athletes back, developing mental skills, toughness, and the qualities of an excellent coach. She also talks about Athlete Assessments DISC Profiles; why, how and when she uses them. She explains the critical difference between personality and behavioral assessments and how behavioral assessments can help you reach your excellence.
Dr Tiff opens by describing what she does working as a mental performance consultant in her own company, X-Factor Performance Consulting and how she specializes in mental skills training for athletes, teams, coaches, and corporations who are reaching for their excellence.
Currently Dr Tiff works with USA Ice Hockey, USA Swimming, University of Florida (Go Gators), University of Southern California (USC) Women’s Tennis, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, William Smith Athletics, Skidmore Athletics, Stevenson University, Meghan Klingenberg Soccer Camps, and True North Sports. Along with the National Programs and Universities, Dr Tiff works with several professional athletes in a variety of sports and has become a consistent guest on CNN World Sports. Dr Tiff has an athletic history as a high-performance athlete in soccer.
Together, host John O’Sullivan and Dr Tiff tackle the most pressing topics and questions affecting sports performance today. Of particular interest is Dr Tiff’s insight into profiling. She’s an Athlete Assessments DISC consultant and uses AthleteDISC, CoachDISC and Sports ManagerDISC with clients. She talks about how it lays the foundations for self-awareness and what profiles contribute to coach-athlete relationships, team chemistry and how they impact performance.
Giving some background to the development and use of profiling in sport, Dr Tiff explains that DISC was around in the corporate world but Athlete Assessments DISC profiles were developed by Bo Hanson and Liz Masen for use specifically within a sporting environment. And, they are the only sports specific behavioral profiles available on the world market today.
Dr Tiff explains that irrespective of who she is working with, the first thing she gets them to do is an assessment. Clarifying, she says, “there’s never a perfect assessment so it’s really important to have athletes and coaches understand, or parents understand, that there is no right answer here. There’s no gaming the system. Just be honest. That’s the only thing that you can be, is just honest and when you’re answering the questions just be knee jerk in your response and don’t over think things.”
Reinforcing how useful the assessments are and how her clients apply them, Dr Tiff says each assessment, “prints out a 40 page report and it gives you all this information about fear, motivation, communication styles, passions and all this really neat stuff that will help athletes be able to understand themselves better.“
Then Dr Tiff explains why Athlete Assessments DISC profiles are so valuable for our clients whose time is already scheduled to the max.
She says, “if you have the coach and the athlete take it, it helps the dialogue between those parties. It immediately starts opening things where it could take a year to two years to learn this information about someone, you can learn it quickly and then really start with the deep dive into building that relationship and helping the athlete and the athlete-coach relationship really take off.”
Getting to the heart of why Athlete Assessments DISC profiles are different Dr Tiff says, ”the other important thing to know is that Athlete Assessments profiles – AthleteDISC, CoachDISC and Sports ManagerDISC are not a personality assessments.”
Commenting on the difference between personality and behavioral assessments, she says, ”what I don’t like about personality assessments is that they test something that you can’t do anything about – personality is fixed – I was born this way, just take it or leave it, it’s who I am, I can’t help it.”
Explaining how behavior is different to personality, Dr Tiff says, ”you may have been born that way, but we adapt our behaviors all the time and you can behave in certain ways no matter what. You can learn how to behave appropriately in a way that will help you reach your excellence.”
She says, “so, it’s super important to understand that behavior is important because it helps explain what you do, it does not make excuses for behavior. We use psychology over just trying to make excuses for people. If I can understand the why, I can start giving the tools to help change or adapt behavior under different situations. So that’s what’s really important about the AthleteDISC and the CoachDISC, they give you the information to help you understand why people behave the way they do.”
Throughout the podcast Dr Tiff reinforces just how empowering it is for athletes, coaches and professionals to understand that behavior is flexible and with awareness and the right tools, they can try different responses, using their behavior to help them reach their excellence.
To hear Dr Tiff’s awesome insights into the biggest obstacles that are holding athletes back, developing mental skills, toughness, and the qualities of an excellent coach listen to the podcast. Plus, she shares that research on the impact of technology has on our current generation of athletes.
You can listen to the full podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/way-of-champions-podcast/id1223779199?i=1000467142097
Where to from here?
Are you a sport psychologist looking to achieve similar results with your clients? You too can take your consultancy to the next level and achieve the success that Dr Tiffany Jones has.
As a top consultant, your clients rely on you being the best in your field, knowing the true determinants of success and having access to the tools that will make the most impact when it comes to improving performance. Athlete Assessments’ DISC Profiling is the tool you need to help your clients realize their potential.
Find out more about Athlete Assessments’ Consultant Program now.
At Athlete Assessments we’re here to provide you with excellence in service and to help you be your best. If there is anything we can do to be of service, don’t hesitate to contact us.
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