Multi-Disciplinary Team Practitioners Working in High Performance Sport: Skilled intuitive ‘doers’ or novel problem-solving innovators

Abstract

Practitioners operating in performance sport are required to problem solve, enabling them to offer tailored performance solutions, whilst making expert decisions with a high degree of precision. Problem solving and decision-making are intertwined and tangled in practice, however the reality is that they are two independent skillsets that practitioners require. The aim of this study is to investigate performance practitioner’s approaches to problem solving and decision-making, analysing the meta-cognitive skills required by multi-disciplinary team (MDT) practitioners to be effective in their daily practice. Utilising a 71-statement Likert scale survey, 115 Performance and Medical related MDT practitioners were surveyed to gain insight into their strength of perceptions on how they think about and approach their work in relation to problem solving and decision making. We tabulated descriptive data and created heat maps to visualise correlations between responses. Findings suggest that practitioners rely on a mixed bag of approaches cognitively toggling between problem types, approaches, and decision styles. In this study practitioners preferred skilled procedural doing and intuitive expertise to overcome simple problems over rationalistic, logical innovating to address complex problems. Findings suggest the need for MDT Practitioners to differentiate between problem types, problem solving approaches and decision-making styles whilst deepening our comprehension of practitioners' expertise. It offers insight into the cognition that forms the foundation of their approaches, providing a valuable perspective.