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The development of young athletes is a complex process characterised by
dynamic changes and uncertainty [Abbott, A., Button, C., Pepping, G.-J., &
Collins, D. (2005). Unnatural selection: Talent identification and
development in sport. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences,
9(1), 61–88]. Talent development systems are characterised by a high
level of uncertainty and unpredictability related to future outcomes
[Phillips, E., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Portus, M. (2010). Expert
performance in sport and the dynamics of talent development. Sports
Medicine, 40(4), 271–283]. This complexity means that attempts to
identify sporting talent and to predict who will eventually succeed have
a low level of success [Johnston, K., Wattie, N., Schorer, J., & Baker,
J. (2018). Talent identification in sport: A systematic review. Sports
Medicine, 48(1), 97–109]. Research has challenged the trend of
advocating formalised and normative systems of talent identification
and development [Bailey, R., & Collins, D. (2013). The standard model of
talent development and its discontents. Kinesiology Review, 2(4), 248–
259], and empirical research has identified different approaches to talent
development [Bjørndal, C. T., Andersen, S. S., & Ronglan, L. T. (2017).
Successful and unsuccessful transitions to the elite level: The youth
national team pathways in Norwegian handball. International Journal of
Sports Science & Coaching, 13(4), 533–544]. However, surprisingly few
researchers have focused their attention on the identification of
effective, operational and concrete strategies for steering athlete
developmental processes. This research gap is troubling because of the
problematic nature of popular development strategies in modern elite
sport systems. The complex and dynamic roles of coaches in steering
athlete development have been explored by Bjørndal & Ronglan, using
[Jones, R. L., & Wallace, M. (2005). Another bad day at the training
ground: Coping with ambiguity in the coaching context. Sport,
Education and Society, 10(1), 119–134] conceptualisation of coaching as
a form of orchestration. However, the usefulness of this
conceptualisation has been criticised because although it reflects the
complexity of talent development, it is difficult to use as a foundation
for a practical, everyday conceptualisation of the challenges and
opportunities associated with talent development. The aim of this paper,
therefore, is to deepen and to refine the conceptualisation of coaching
within complex athlete development settings. The paper explores
[Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of “muddling through”. Public
Administration Review, 19(2), 79–88] seminal idea of incrementalism to operationalise and refine the notion of ‘leadership by orchestration’ in the
context of talent development. Developing a coaching strategy based on
incremental leadership should therefore be seen as an attempt to better
coordinate, plan and act on the uncertainties associated with talent
development.