Hey Coach, if you’re like me, you’re constantly trying to get better and improve. You probably see things differently now than you did five years ago, one year ago, or even yesterday. In my 20+ years of coaching and athletic administrating, I had my fair share of ups and downs, but I also felt that I got better every year. Leaders are learners and I wanted to always be learning.
I’m a product of those people I’ve been associated with and the environments I was a part of. Oftentimes in coaching, we do things the way others close to us did them. We may coach similar to the way our old coach did back in the day. We might run some of the same plays. Our communication might resemble their methods, as well.
However, through the years I realized that if I’m going to get better and improve as a coach, I must constantly be re-evaluating and honestly assessing some of my actions, words, and philosophies. Especially toward the end of my career in organized athletics, I tried to be as coachable as possible and be willing to adjust, adapt, and pivot when it was necessary.
From the start of my career as an assistant coach to getting my first NCAA head coaching job at the age of 27 to becoming the all-time wins leader of a college program, here are 7 things that I changed my mind about when it came to coaching ….
- Everyone is a leader, not just the captains
- Team captains are not coaches
- Parents are part of your program
- Seek ownership rather than buy-in
- It might not be my fault, but it’s 100% my responsibility
- Not everything needs to be a battle
- Maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses
As you read these, please keep an open mind, a coachable spirit, and learner’s point of view. These might even percolate some other ideas within you of how you can adjust your thinking to be a better coach.
I wish you the best and thank you for all you do for your student-athletes.
Good luck!
Everyone is a leader
Team captains are very important but there will be more non-captains on your team. It’s just a numbers game, but we tend to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about our captains rather than worrying about our overall team leadership. When you treat every athlete as a leader, then it creates an environment in which everyone is taking responsibility for the culture. When you trains everyone to be a leader, then everyone is equipped to put out fires when they pop up. Everyone is invested in the process. Not every athlete will be THE leader of the team, but every athlete can be a leader on the team because leadership is just influence. Every athlete can influence someone else in a good way or bad way. Don’t leave that up to chance. When you trains all your athletes to be leaders, you’re increasing the likelihood that they become people of influence – in a good way.
Team captains are not coaches
Related to team captains, I stopped treating team captains as coaches and extensions of me. More specifically, I mentally stopped expecting so much of them. Our teenagers and young adults are not us. Yes, we can equip, develop, and empower them but we can’t expect them to be like us. They simply don’t have the experience, maturity, or the perspective we do. This is our life, our career, and our job. Captains are peers to their teammates. Captains are friends to their teammates. It’s not natural for our athletes to know how to lead and hold their teammates (their friends) accountable in all circumstances. This doesn’t mean we don’t train them and help them, but it does mean we should temper our expectations of them. They’ll mess up. They’ll miss opportunities. They’ll do things we wouldn’t do. Those are all learning opportunities and when they occur, we can enrich their leadership skills with love, patience, and understanding. They don’t need added pressure from us to be a Mini-Me. They don’t need the extra burden of having to be perfect.
Parents are part of the program
Early on in my career, I wouldn’t talk with parents about playing time, strategy, or their kid’s role on the team. I also made it clear that I was going to be communicating with the athlete and if the parent had questions, then they could talk to their child. Three major problems with this: (1) Our athletes are not good at communicating period, let alone relaying our intended message; (2) When we avoid conversations with parents, it creates a void and that void will never be filled with what we want it to be filled with, and (3) parents are part of the program whether we like it or not. They can be both the problem and the solution at the same time.
Legendary NC State basketball coach Jim Valvano used to say that his dream job would be to coach at an orphanage. There is some truth to this humorous line, but the reality is that as annoying as parents can be sometimes, they often know their kids better than we do and can be an additional resource for us motivating our athletes. I started finding ways to talk with the parents about their kids and how I could better coach them. It wasn’t easy at times, but it was amazing how many times we got more out of an athlete and my relationship with the parent became less hostile. It was like we were working together with the common goal of maximizing their child’s potential.
Seek ownership rather than buy-in
To this day, I still say “buy-in” more than I mean to. I’ll be speaking to hundreds of coaches and say, “You’ll have a better culture if your kids buy into what you’re saying.” It’s just habit, really, because I said buy-in for so many years but toward the end of my coaching career I realized that I shouldn’t be emphasizing buy-in, but rather ownership. It’s an easy mistake to make. In fact, it’s a fine line between the two. I still occasionally use the words interchangeably when I’m not thinking about it. Buy-in is much better than compliance but not as good as ownership.
Many coaches only want their athletes to comply with their wishes, orders, or demands. “Just do what I tell you to do” or some variation of that phrase is uttered by coaches everywhere. I was no different, especially early in my career. In fact, I still catch myself saying that to my 12 year old son, Jaylen. Compliance should not be the goal of any of us. People doing what we tell them to do just because we have a position of authority or have some power over them doesn’t build a sustainable culture (or followership). The next step is buy-in. We have athletes that agree with what we’re asking them to do. Maybe instead of telling them to do something, we ask them to do it. We might even lay out some reasons. We essentially convince them of something. We appeal to them. As coaches, we do all the thinking and then try get them to go along with our ideas. They might have a good attitude about it, but it’s still “Coach’s plays” or “Coach’s idea”.
When an athlete takes ownership in something, they feel as though it’s their idea, decision, or choice. They feel as though they participated in the decision-making or idea-generating process. It’s “Our play” or “Our idea”. When athletes feel like they own what’s going on, then your culture is strengthened. When they are invested in the process, they are more likely to make sacrifices and do things for the overall good, rather than just their own self-serving motives. They pick up the rolled-up tape in the locker room even though there is a custodian on duty. They hand a teammate a water bottle even though there’s an athletic trainer. They carry a bag even though the team has a manager. I sought to empower my athletes to take ownership in the process. This was their team, not just my team. It was “we”, “us”, and “ours”.
It might not be my fault, but it’s 100% my responsibility
I can remember so many times in my coaching career that I blamed athletes (or teams) for losses. One of the best games people play is the blame game. We see it in sports, politics, business, and family life. We want to know who’s fault it is when a setback occurs or who to credit when something goes well. The blame (or praise) game can be very destructive and create an individualistic, selfish, and unhealthy culture. We need to point more thumbs than fingers. In other words, we as leaders need to do a better job stepping up and taking responsibility for things.
Many of us understand (and are even good at) taking responsibility for our own actions. As a coach, if I messed up, I would fess up to it. Away from the basketball court, if I did something wrong, I would own it. If I got a speeding ticket, I wouldn’t get mad that the police officer caught me instead of everyone else. I took responsibility for the fact that I was doing something wrong. Right is right even if no one is doing it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Most of us in leadership positions understand this and take responsibility for our own actions. However, I struggled with taking responsibility for someone else’s actions.
When an athlete messes up in a game, it may not be my fault but it’s 100% my responsibility. It’s either my responsibility that the mistake was possible or it’s my responsibility to make sure we minimize the possibility of that mistake happening in the future. It’s not my fault that an athlete messed up but did I put them in a precarious situation? Were they playing the wrong position? Did I equip them properly? Did they get enough repetitions to make their actions (or reactions) automatic? Was the stress, tension, or challenge of the situation something they could handle? Did the moment match their skills? Was the right person playing at that time? Was the right play called? These are just a few of the things I need to consider. Everything that happens in my program is my responsibility. Ultimately, I allowed that athlete to be on the team. Ultimately I trained (or didn’t train) that athlete properly. The buck stops with me.
Not everything needs to be a battle
Not everything needs to be set in stone. Not everything is a non-negotiable. It took me a long time to start picking my battles. Every hill was worth dying on and it seemed that I was dying a lot. I would have a million rules. Everything I said was the law. I might have gotten my way, but as a coach who micromanaged, I also lost many of my athletes – both physically and mentally. They either quit the team or just quit on me.
We could all stand to remember the line from the famous Kenny Rogers song The Gambler that goes, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.” We don’t have to attend every argument we’re invited to and we don’t have to fight every battle that pops up. In other words, I don’t need to always pick the fund-raiser, community service project, pre-game music, or the restaurant for our post-game meal. I don’t need to make every decision and I certainly don’t need to get my way all the time. In fact, the less I get my way and the more the athletes are empowered, the more ownership they’ll have, which leads to a stronger culture.
Certainly, tough decisions will need to be made at some point. Yes, I can’t compromise all the time or allow myself to get walked over, but that is where wisdom and discernment come into play. Know which battles to fight. Know what’s important. Know what you can delegate. Have some self-awareness and be in tune with your team. Understand them and know their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll make enough decisions that they disagree with, so be careful making trivial decisions. Our athletes might make mountains out of these molehills. These seemingly innocuous decisions can lead to hurt feelings, distrust, apathy, or worse, an overall feeling of “coach is an idiot.”
Maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses
I was like most coaches for much of my career in that (1) I‘d fit the players to my plays or offense, and (2) I’d try to turn their weaknesses into a strength. Eventually I changed the way I looked at both of these related items. Even though I had ideas of what we should do from an X’s and O’s standpoint, it was easier for me to adjust and change, than it was for my players. Instead of making them fit to what I wanted to do, I tried to fit and align our offense to what they did best. I tried to capitalize on their strengths.
My philosophy started to change. Sure, there were things I wanted to do from an X’s and O’s standpoint, but I didn’t want to force it. Each team, each year was slightly different, and I didn’t want to bang my head against the wall trying to get them to be something they weren’t. It was easier for me to adjust then for an athlete to adjust. My goal was to maximize their strengths, minimize their weaknesses, and find ways to motivate them to be their best. If a player wasn’t good at something, I tried to limit the times they were put into certain situations. I wanted to prop our players up and help them achieve success, rather than set them up for failure. I wanted to minimize the amount of times I tried to fit a square peg into a round hole.
I wasn’t overly concerned about an athlete’s weaknesses other than to use that knowledge to avoid negative situations. Most coaches talk about turning a weakness into a strength. This was not my intention. My desire was to make you great at what you do well. I wanted help make your strength even better. Below is an example from basketball and some questions I’d examine to take a player from good to great in their area of strength. You can take this example and modify it for your athletes and your specific sport.
For instance, normally if a basketball player is a good three-point shooter, a coach might spend much of the off-season working on their driving or dribbling abilities. I wanted them to become an even better three-point shooter. Could we speed up the shot by working on their preparation, foot work, or hand positioning? Could they shoot equally well receiving a pass from the left, right, or straight on? Are they good at catching and shooting on the move, off the dribble, or do they have to be stationary? Are they a prolific shooter coming off a flare screen, ball-screen, or curl screen? Can they pivot off both feet?
A high school or college coach just doesn’t have enough time to correct all of an athlete’s flaws. Even if you did help an athlete improve on their weakness, did it become a weapon? Did it become a strength or is it just not a major liability anymore? Most of us aren’t dealing with elite level athletes that have very few flaws. If that’s the case, then yes, the lack of flaws can be the X-factor. But for most of us, the athletic weapon … the strength our athletes possess can be the X-factor. They have so much to learn and develop when it comes to their strength, I prefer to focus on that. Turn their good into great. Besides, you’ll most likely see an uptick in their motivation and desire to train when they are working on things they like.
Are you coachable?
You don’t have to agree with these six things, nor do you have to start implementing these philosophies, but these were some of the big ones for me. Regardless, there’s something in your coaching that you may be able to adjust that might take your team to a new level. There might be something you’re holding on to or have never examined that could open up new possibilities and maximize your potential as a coach, as well as your athlete’s potential. I want to encourage you to be coachable and never stop looking for ways to become better.
Change is inevitable but growth is optional. The world of sports and coaching will change at times. The people around us will change. The situations we find ourselves in will change. But will we grow, develop, and move forward when change occurs? You’ve made it this far in reading this article, so my guess is that your answer is yes. Yes, you want to be coachable and maximize your potential. If that is the case, examine the things you do and what can you adjust to become the best you’re capable of becoming?