The power of a clean ego

If there’s a single lesson that stands out from this masterclass on the power of a clean ego, it’s this: your role as a coach goes beyond tactics, technique, and improving skills—it’s about daily shaping the environment where your athletes show up, grow, and transform as people. The real coaching job is to help build a space where your players—and you—can operate with a clean ego: healthy self-confidence, hunger to improve, and relational maturity.

Why is this so fundamental?

Because at field hockey’s sharpest edge—whether you’re working with elite, youth or masters athletes—performance will always reflect the lived culture of your team. That culture is directly shaped by how you handle ego in your daily environment. When a coach models and nurtures a clean ego, that team can grow, adapt, handle pressure, and build the kind of relationships that produce not just better players but better people.

Think about your daily practices. How many times have you seen a talented athlete ruminate on mistakes, spiral downwards, or lash out after a tough loss? Or maybe you’ve noticed the “hungry” but toxic drive—the athlete whose desperate need to prove themselves ends up hurting teammates, sabotaging team culture and morale. As field hockey coaches, we see both sides: the broken ego (self-doubt, excessive self-criticism) and the unhealthy ego (dominance, selfishness).

The actionable insight: your job is to create and sustain upward spirals—not just to stop the rot or break a downward spiral. That begins by helping players separate healthy ambition from destructive rumination, and by anchoring your daily feedback, team talks, and one-on-one conversations in behaviors that reflect your team’s agreed values.

As Iain Shippey put it in the session:

❝

“Coach, can you trigger and sustain an upward spiral?... Can we be the catalyst of an upward spiral? Are we able to notice as a teenager comes to the astronomy end of a long, hard day… Are we able to give them a foothold? Are we, like my dear friend Coach Pholo, able to have that eye contact, sense where they’re at, connect with them, be the best part of their day, affirm their skills, give them a foothold, an upward trajectory?”

The technique for this is surprisingly simple and practical:

Start every season by co-creating team values with your players, not dictating them.
Regularly discuss—on and off the pitch—what behaviors reflect those values.
In moments of stress (poor performance, conflict, loss), return to these values in your language and actions.
Acknowledge mistakes directly, but in a way that preserves each individual’s dignity and fosters their growth mindset.
Make your players feel safe enough not just to try, but also to fail—and then own those failures in a constructive, non-judgmental environment.

Using this approach in daily training means more one-on-one conversations focused on personal transformation rather than just performance. It means making deposits of relational capital—small gestures, affirmations, honest apologies—so that when you need to pull hard on the “team rope” in tense moments, it holds. Ultimately, the clean ego is about everyone in your squad being able to look themselves in the mirror after tournaments and saying they’ve grown—as players, yes, but more importantly, as people.

1. A Clean Ego Is Not Just Absence of Arrogance—It’s a Daily Commitment to Mindfulness and Relational Accountability

First, clarify what “clean ego” is. Not a lack of confidence or ambition. Not simply being “nice.” Instead, as Iain Shippey laid out, it’s “a part of us where we feel good about ourselves. We understand our values and we will defend those and stand up for those. It’s a healthy self-focus.”

How does this show up in field hockey?

Mindful coaching: This means regularly looking in the mirror—not to tear yourself or your players down, but to spot blind spots and build on strengths. Iain Shippey was refreshingly blunt: “The mirror, I look into the mirror regularly on this basis and found myself sitting with my therapist this last Monday, caught up in the passion of the Commonwealth Games and all that took place to finish fourth place. I had neglected a few areas in my home life, in my domestic life, and I had to glaringly be shown some of the blind spots in my own life that are the size of the Titanic.”
Relational accountability: Make time for honest apologies and owning up—not just for your players but for yourself as coach. Shippey’s story about David Reed Ross, the 65-year-old player-coach, is essential listening: “David, for me, was the epitome of what we’re talking about today, a clean ego. He… initiated this conversation with the team and I was the facilitator with an honest sort of an apology and an appeal to engage around his coaching style.”

How can you apply this?

Build regular feedback cycles (practice reviews, end-of-week check-ins) where both you and your athletes share vulnerabilities and discuss what they’ve learned—not just technically, but personally.
When giving feedback, always separate the action from the individual. Create an atmosphere where “mistake” equals “learning opportunity” rather than “event to hide or deny.”
Model the conduct you want to see: admit your own errors, ask for help, and—crucially—show how to reset after a tough drill, game or season.

2. The Ideal Team Player: Humility, Hunger, and Emotional Intelligence in Tension

A particularly useful framework presented is Patrick Lencioni’s “ideal team player”—part humble, part hungry, part smart. Smart here is emotional intelligence, not IQ. In high-level field hockey, this matters as much as fitness or skill.

❝

“He has a very simple definition of an ideal team player. And he says they’re humble… They’re hungry. And those live in tension with one another… And that smart doesn’t have to do with intellectual IQ smarts. It has to do with EQ or interpersonal smarts.”

How to build this in your team environment:

Humility: Encourage your athletes to own mistakes, swap positions for the team’s sake (“Players, are you able to change position because it’s better for the team?”), and directly address over-inflated self-focus by re-centering on shared goals.
Hunger: Feed ambition, but don’t let desire for personal glory override team success. Facilitate conversations around “What impact does my behavior have on others?” and “How can my ambition pull the team up, not leave them behind?”
Smart (EQ): Foster direct communication, conflict resolution, positive reinforcement. Review matches not just for tactics, but for “moments EQ won us the ball”—where quick thinking and relational skills shifted momentum (check-ins, supportive touch, strategic encouragement on pitch).

Practical exercises:

In team meetings, have regular “humility checks”: ask each player to name something they learned from someone else that week.
For hunger, use “goal ladders” that combine team outcome targets with individual improvement benchmarks—and celebrate both types publicly.
To build EQ: roleplay high-pressure scenarios (bad referee calls, missed penalty strokes, parental pressure) to rehearse how players will respond emotionally and support each other.

3. Upward Spirals Are Built, Not Hoped For: Create Tangible Footholds of Progress

Perhaps the most powerful actionable point is Shippey’s concept of “triggering and sustaining upward spirals.” Downward spirals—after losses, poor starts, or toxic conflict—are familiar for every coach. So, the challenge is to structure your environment to build the opposite: tangible, repeatable progress, even under stress.

❝

“To escalate up a wall, you need support structures. You need a rope. You need the safety. That’s the environment that you create as a coach… Are there those footholds that people can tangibly put a foot on and press and thrust themselves upwards? Are there handholds? And that for me is so important.”

Translating this for field hockey:

After every grind or setback, immediately anchor attention to small wins—a crisp sequence of passes, a defensive adjustment, a saved penalty.
Let players see the “rope”—the support structure. This means building positive rituals (feedback circles, peer shout-outs), safeguarding mental health in intense tournament environments, and deliberately “banking positivity” to help recover from tough losses.
Shippey describes coaches as “catalysts” for these upward spirals—proactive in spotting when individuals are struggling and responding not by critique alone, but by offering “footholds” to climb back into confidence (affirmation, specific skill focus, mental reset strategies).

Practical drill:

Post-practice or match, run a structured reflection. Ask each player to name the best “foothold” they gave or received in that session (a technical adjustment, a kind word, a strategic tip).
Encourage players to coach each other in moments of crisis: assign “support partners” for each training block, especially for young or new members, so everyone has a built-in emotional and practical anchor.
Build “reset routines” for your players—physical (breathing exercises, mini-walks), verbal (“what’s the next right action?”), team huddle moments.

Bonus: Remember that personal transformation is the highest prize. As Shippey put it to his national Masters team:

❝

“Let’s chase that medal. But the greatest prize, if you’re sitting at 55, is that we’re able to call each other when we’re 80 and we’re 85, to go out for a beer, to go for a walk, to support one another through the different stages of life.”

The upward spiral isn’t just for on-pitch performance. It’s about building enduring bonds, a legacy that outlasts the “shine of the podium.”

Closing Thoughts

Implementing the clean ego approach isn’t about rewriting everything you do, but about cross-checking your existing practices and daily routines against a higher standard of team culture, interpersonal respect, and personal growth. Make it practical: co-create team values, model vulnerability, actively build upward spirals. Your reward? Not just better performances, but a more resilient, committed squad—and relationships that last well beyond your next trophy or loss.