The Paradox of Coaching

This article marks the sixth installment for the A Coach's Dozen: 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches .  This post looks at the belief that to be a good coach you must be a great teacher. With the tip-off of the college basketball season, the march to madness has begun again.  What that means for me, and countless other hoop fans, is the daily digestion of newspaper and magazine articles all breaking down the strengths and weaknesses of every one of the 347 Division I university teams.  I am sure this is a similar pre-season ritual for many of you with your favorite sport.  During my current obsession of scouting reports and team breakdowns, something struck me.  It seems the favorite cliché used by every sports reporter when describing college basketball coaches is… player’s coach .    By no means is the term player’s coach new to athletics.  In fact, I can’t recall ever meeting a coach at any level of competition that either didn’t describe themse...

Recently, I posted a list of 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches .  Now I’m following up by digging deeper into each of them.  This post is the fifth principle: I am a creator of spirit. In the dark hours of August 17th, 2017 a storm like no other hit the Gulf Coast of the United States.  The devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey is still being felt months later.  However, after the initial shock has worn off, we can begin to appreciate the stories of courage and heroism shown by so many during the disaster.  Many of these stories highlight the courage of coaches and athletes who stepped up to meet the challenge.  Please look here and here for a couple of these heartwarming stories. Great coaches understand the power of athletics.  They understand that there is an energy inherent to sport that can affect not only athletes, but everyone in our society.  The special power that athletics possesses, call it spirit, comes from the fact that athletics ...

Recently, I posted a list of 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches .  I’m following up by digging deeper into each of them.  This post is the fourth: I am balanced.  It investigates how great coaches strike a balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough. Over the past few months I have been consulting with a local high school football team.  It has been a great experience, and I can honestly say I have learned more from the team’s coaches than they have learned from me.  On one particular day, as I arrived at practice three players passed me walking in the opposite direction.  The look of shock and awe on the players’ faces was my first clue that this day’s practice was not the usual routine.  Taking my spot under the goal post, I immediately sensed the tension in the air.  Dave (the head coach) was stalking the sidelines like a hungry grizzly bear after a long winter’s nap.  This was not his usual low key, good-humored, almost mothe...

This post is the third installment in the series A Coach's Dozen: 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . One of my favorite coaches of all time is the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.  His story is told in one of the best coaching biographies ever written, David Maraniss’s When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi .  I admire many things about Coach Lombardi; his passion, his commitment to family, his faith in the power of both sport and God to bring out the best in people were all keys to Lombardi’s coaching philosophy.   Yet, the thing I admire most about Vince Lombardi is that he didn’t suggest for a second he had discovered a new way to coach.  He never pretended his success resulted from a mysterious or complicated method.  My favorite quote of Coach Lombardi’s isn’t his most famous ( winning isn’t everything… ), the quote I liked best is when he said, “Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist, but football is only two things...

Recently, I posted a list of 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches .  This is the second installment as we dive deeper into the mindset of great coaching.   One of my favorite quotes from the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is, “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given.  Be careful.”   I imagine you have asked the question, “Why is my team so dysfunctional?”  Coaching a group of young people is like herding cats.  Frustration is just part of the job, right?  What if it’s not.  Your athletes may not be the problem.  Hold onto your hat, that dysfunction might just be your fault! A coach’s lack of self-awareness is often at the heart of a sports team’s dysfunction (Jones & Wallace, 2010) .  The next time you are frustrated and pondering why your team seems so maladjusted I want you to stop and ask a different question.  Ask, “What does it actually feel like to play for a co...

    Recently I posted A Coach's Dozen: 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches .  In that post I failed to describe my 13 principles in any detail, but promised that I would over the coming weeks.  This post begins our journey.     Good coaches recognize that WHY they do something is just as important as WHAT they do.  When it comes to coaching… motive must precede action.  It was legendary coach Pat Summitt who said, “They don’t care how much you know, unless they know how much you care.”  However, we have all experienced a particular moment I will call the “horse-shit” juncture.  It’s when the hair on the back of your neck bristles and you sense the story someone is telling you just doesn’t add up.  Researchers are convinced we all have a built in horse-shit detector, and I would argue athletes tend to be really good at spotting a fake.  Maybe for you it was a classroom, a field, or a court when your horse-shit i...

    What makes a coach great?  What does great coaching look like?  Can greatness be taught or are coaches simply born that way?  For the past few years it has been questions like these that have sparked my interest while earning my PhD in sports pedagogy and athletic leadership.  For 18 years before that, I was living the dream as an interscholastic coach in one of the fastest growing cities in America.  Most recently, I have been working on a book that attempts to paint a picture of authentic coaching .  An in-depth view of my work can be seen in a paper I wrote entitled, The Authentic Coaching Model: A Grounded Theory of Coaching .     Great coaches always know seeing is believing—don’t tell me what you can do, show me.  I would never claim to be great.  Yet, as a researcher and as a coach my method has always centered on being as evidence-based as possible.  I will avoid giving any advice, tec...