How Your Environment Shapes Motivation & Confidence in Sport
Ottawa Senators v Philadelphia Flyers | Emilee Chinn/GettyImages
A mastery-oriented environment — one that emphasizes effort, learning, and personal improvement — can boost intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy in athletes.
Environments that stress comparison and competition (called performance climates) are associated with more tension, lower motivation, and fragile confidence.
Instructors, coaches, and leaders play a key role in shaping this motivational climate — especially in early stages of skill development or when confidence is low.
Tailoring the environment to promote learning rather than comparison can help people stay motivated, feel more competent, and build long-term engagement in sport and physical activity.
What to Consider When Reading
How do you currently define success in your sport, classroom, or training environment?
Have you experienced a time when the environment helped—or hurt—your motivation or confidence?
Why the Right Climate Matters
Whether you’re a coach, a teacher, or someone learning a new skill, the environment around you is doing more than you think. Research shows that how a sport or physical activity feels — the tone, the messaging, the way success is defined — shapes your motivation and even how confident you feel in your abilities.
The study explored two types of motivational climates:
Mastery climate: Emphasizes growth, learning, trying your best, and self-improvement.
Performance climate: Emphasizes outperforming others, ranking, and comparison.
Turns out, mastery climates do more than make us feel good — they’re linked to better outcomes across the board: more enjoyment, higher effort, greater confidence, and even reduced stress levels.
On the flip side, performance climates tend to increase tension and reduce intrinsic motivation — especially in people who are already unsure about their ability.
Member Insight: What Confidence Looks Like in Context
A college student taking a beginner tennis class shared they felt overwhelmed at first. But the instructor’s focus on individual progress — rather than who's the best — helped them stick with it. “Knowing I was being measured against myself, not the class, made me want to try harder,” they said. “I actually started to enjoy it.”
10 Research-Based Ways to Build a Mastery Climate
Highlight effort, not just outcome.
Encourage students or athletes by praising their persistence, not just wins. For example, “You kept going even when it got tough” goes a long way.Set self-referenced goals.
Help individuals define success based on their own growth — not how they compare to others.Normalize mistakes.
In mastery climates, errors are part of learning. Reinforce the idea that trying and failing is a step toward improving.Avoid public ranking.
Performance boards or comparisons can demotivate. Consider private feedback or progress tracking instead.Provide constructive feedback.
Frame feedback in terms of what the person can control: effort, strategy, or focus, rather than innate talent.Support autonomy.
Let participants have a say in their learning — choosing drills, setting goals, or reflecting on their progress can foster motivation.Be mindful of gender differences.
The study found that women were especially sensitive to the environment, with performance climates decreasing their confidence. A supportive environment might matter even more when someone is new or feeling unsure.Reduce emphasis on peer comparison.
Foster a sense of collaboration rather than competition. Group activities that emphasize shared success can help.Celebrate individual improvement.
Highlight how someone has progressed from their own starting point — even if they’re not “the best” yet.Check in on perceived ability.
Self-efficacy — the belief that you can succeed — was one of the strongest predictors of motivation. Creating space to talk about doubts or fears can help tailor support.
Bottom Line
Motivation and confidence don’t just come from within — they’re shaped by what’s around us. The climate created by coaches, instructors, or peers can influence whether someone loves an activity or walks away from it.
Creating environments that promote learning, effort, and self-improvement doesn’t just make people feel better — it helps them perform better, too.
Want to apply this in your team or classroom?
Start with one question: “What am I doing that helps people feel safe to grow?”
Let that guide your next practice, session, or meeting — and see what shifts.
