Emotions, Emotion Norms, and Emotion Management in Community Sport Coaching

Emotions pervade community sport coaching. They are inextricably linked to one’s thought, behaviour, interaction, and patterns of social organisation. This chapter aims to help readers understand and navigate the emotional demands of community sport coaching work. It examines interactionist concepts, including emotion norms, emotional deviance, emotion management, and interpersonal emotion management, to facilitate a critical reflection on emotions in the community sport coaching workplace. Case study examples from Chris Johnston, a full-time community sport coach at a Football in the Community Trust, are provided throughout to spark interest and illustrate how practitioners constantly manage and manipulate their own, or others’, emotional experiences and displays, in order to conform to cultural expectations, impress an audience, avoid sanctions, or accomplish other goals.