A Coach's Diary

Failure is a part of everyone’s journey. The most successful people have a vision, create a plan, and stick to it no matter how much fear or failure they have or experience. Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, started with $5,000 and a dream and turned it into a billion-dollar business while balancing family and friends. In an interview with her husband, Jesse Itzler, Sara shared some of the keys to her success. Lemons Out of Lemonade Sara said she grew up wanting to be a lawyer because her dad was a trial attorney, but she was a terrible test-taker and after she bombed the LSAT twice, she changed the trajectory of her life. She said when bad things happen, they often feel like the worst thing ever but they often push us to our true purpose. Sara went to work at Disney for 3 months before taking a job selling fax machines for 7 years. She said she was kicked out of business every day, and one day decided she was in the wrong movie and wanted to do something different. Self-Discovery Sa...

Do you need a reason to keep going and not quit? Learn from one of the greatest, Tom Brady. Tom started his football career late and slowly, but he leveraged a growth mindset and a competitive spirit to become one of the best athletes of all time. We now know Tom Brady as one of the best quarterbacks ever to play, but he got a late start in football, he wasn’t very good when he started, and he had to overcome more adversity than most would go through on his journey to becoming a Hall of Fame, Super Bowl winning QB. In an interview titled The Leadership Playbook, Brady says he didn’t start playing football until he was a freshman in high school and was the backup QB who never played on a team that didn’t win any games. He said he became the starting JV QB the next year because the starting quarterback chose to quit football to play basketball. Brady grew into his body as a junior and became the starting varsity quarterback while working with a mentor who helped him improve his mechanics...

Do you ever feel like you aren’t good enough or can’t do something you think you should be able to or want to do, or that everyone is ahead of you or better than you? The reality is - you might not be good enough … yet. The Power of Yet is something educator and psychologist Carol Dweck talks about in her Ted Talk: The power of believing that you can improve. We are programmed to praise talent and success, and sometimes we think if we aren’t the smartest, the fastest, or the best socially, we aren’t good enough. Carol said we should instead recognize, reward, and praise effort, grit, and the ability to learn because when we do and when we have a growth mindset, we will put in the work needed to get better and might even pass up the more naturally talented and gifted people who were ahead of us while learning some valuable lessons on the way. Instead of saying “I’m not good,” “I’m not smart,” or, “I can’t do it,” say, “I’m not good, smart, or can’t do it yet .” That one word could chan...

Landry Fields played 5 seasons in the NBA and is the GM of the Atlanta Hawks. In an interview with Brett Ledbetter and What Drives Winning, he says when working with his young guys, he likes to map out a journey of development that everyone goes through that is a mix of The 4 Stages of Competence and The Hero’s Journey. The 4 Stages of Competence is a model that describes the learning process, including the inevitable need to overcome struggles and obstacles. He says this helps bring language to our experiences and the feelings that come with those feelings. Here are the 4 stages: Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: Blind Confidence You have blind confidence because you don’t know what you don’t know, and your excitement and innocence have not been tarnished by struggle or reality. This is like a rookie being drafted into the NBA or someone getting a new, great opportunity. Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: No Confidence He calls this The Fall. When you face obstacles and adversity, you ...

If you do things well enough that other people can see it, feel it, and say it back to you, you are doing things the right way. " Coach Greg Carvel In a podcast interview, National Champion Hockey coach, Coach Greg Carvel from the University of Massachusetts talks about how he has built a championship culture through the way he recruits, trains, and leads his athletes. When Coach Carvel was hired as the head coach, they were the worst team in the country, and just 5 years later, they won their first national championship in 91 years. UMass hockey has created a distinct culture that helped them go from last to first, and it focuses on character over skill. Coach Carvel says, “Culture relies heavily on leadership, and leadership trickles down. John Maxwell says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership; everything.” Identity They created an identity based on 3 words: Fast, hard, and prepared, and he wanted them to play to their identity so well that the opposing coach said their id...

Great teams have three things in common: Great leadership Great people A great culture Culture is the glue that holds everything together. Culture is what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. Anytime I work with a team, one of my biggest goals is to help them become the most connected team they can be by helping them create a stronger, more defined culture. Daniel Coyle wrote one of the best books on culture that I have ever read titled The Culture Code. He says culture is living relationships moving towards a goal together. How do you create a championship culture where everyone can thrive? Daniel Coyle says you have to have three things: Direction Connection Shared information Direction is defining where we want to go, what we want to do, and how we want to do it. Direction is defining the kind of culture we want to have. The leader defines the direction with the help of the team by learning what everyone wants to get out of working together and combining it with the goals and valu...

The video below is one of the best leadership videos I’ve seen. It gives a simple model for how to create and manage a high-performing environment. Brett Ledbetter is a thinking partner with some of the top coaches and athletes in the world He said an NBA GM was asked, “What is your role inside the organization?” and his response was, “My job is to build an environment where people can do their best work.” What is the most important thing you can do as a leader to build an environment where people can do their best work?” Brett said it comes back to three things: How you define, manage, and model your expectations. Defining is proactive. Managing is restive, and modeling happens all the time. Define Neil Armstrong once said, “If you’re an inch off in landing, no big deal. If you’re an inch off on takeoff, you miss the moon by a million miles.” What are the expectations that you need to define? The best leaders clearly define what success or appropriate behaviors look like and what it d...

Great teams have three things: Great leadership Great people A great culture Culture is the glue that holds everything together. Culture is what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. Anytime I work with a team, one of my biggest goals is helping them become the most connected team they can be by helping them create a stronger, more defined culture. Daniel Coyle wrote one of the best books on culture that I have read titled The Culture Code. He says culture is living relationships moving towards a goal together. How do you create a championship culture where everyone can thrive? Daniel Coyle says you have to have three things: Direction Connection Shared information Direction is defining where we want to go, what we want to do, and how we want to do it. Direction is defining the kind of culture we want to have. The leader defines the direction with the help of the team by learning what everyone wants to get out of working together and combining it with the goals, values, and expectati...

Vision, process, and discipline. Those are the three things Coach Saban said every great leader and team needs to be successful. Vision, process, and discipline. Greatness starts with having a great vision for what you want to do and accomplish. The process is what you do to make your dreams a reality and how you do it. The process is the work. The most important part is having the discipline to keep showing up and do what you know you need to, no matter how you feel. This is where most people fail. The hard part is staying disciplined and sticking to the process. Vision, process, discipline. The hard part is staying disciplined and sticking to the process. Coach Saban says it is not human nature to be great, human nature is just to survive. Being great games consistency and performance, but as soon as we get a little success, we want to breathe and take a break. Too often we let outside forces distract us or knock us off track: It’s too hard We get bored We don’t feel like it We get d...