The constant ‘face-work’: The dramaturgical demands of coaches’ decision-making within a team context

Drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical framework, this study examines collective face-work within a high-performance coaching team, advancing understanding of how coaches’ decision-making is collaboratively produced, negotiated, and sustained in practice. The study explored the relationship between collective impression management and three defensive strategies: dramaturgical circumspection, loyalty, and discipline. Data were generated through extensive fieldnotes, professional discussions, semi-structured interviews, and observations across a season-long ethnographic endeavour. Findings revealed how collective performances were planned, managed, and controlled within the coaching context, forming three overlapping themes: (a) “Behind the coaching scenes: an office to think, plan, and rest”, (b) “The unwritten solidarity”, and (c) “The cap, it’s almost a safety blanket”. Each theme illustrates how the coaches enacted three defensive strategies to preserve performances during critical moments, whilst revealing episodes of fracture, dissent, and uneven loyalty. Collectively, the findings offer functional accounts of organisational life, challenging bounded conceptualisations of coaches’ decision-making.