A Coach's Diary

“Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.” - Doc Rivers Do you like being coached and receiving feedback, or do you run from it? Tony Robbins is one of the most successful motivational speakers in the world. He gets paid millions and millions of dollars to motivate people. I met a person who had a relationship with him, and he said one of the things that makes Tony great is that he DEMANDS feedback. He said some people want feedback, but the best of the best demand it. How? After every speech, Tony asks two questions: What is one thing I did well? What is one thing I could’ve done better or differently? NBA coach Doc Rivers once said, “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.” If you want to be the best you can be, you can’t just ask for feedback; you have to demand it. Every person needs to have a truth-teller in their life whom they can trust...

Steve Kerr has won a total of 9 championships as a player and a coach, so few people in basketball know more about winning and culture than Coach Kerr. In an interview with Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, he was asked how to build an effective culture. Before he started coaching, Coach Kerr said he visited several coaches, and NFL coach Pete Carroll asked him, “How are you going to coach your team?” More important than Xs and Os are the kind of culture you want to build, the values you want to have, and how you want to make them come alive. Carroll asked him, “What is the most important thing in your life? What are the most important values in your life?” Coach Kerr said, “[Your athletes] have to feel the authenticity of you.” When you have genuine, real values and make them come alive, that is when the culture starts to form. Coach Kerr came up with four words that defined him and his approach to life the most: joy, competitiveness, mindfulness, and c...

“Champions keep playing until they get it right.” - Billie Jean King Someone once told me they have voices in their head constantly asking themselves, “What are you going to do?” When something bad happens, that voice asks, “What are you going to do?” When they lose, fail, or get called out, it asks, “What are you going to do?” I’ve noticed a lot of the people around me tend to ask the same question when they see me struggling, making mistakes, or being held accountable: “What are you going to do?” Do you know what champions do? The next right thing. They lean on the work and stay committed to the plans they have created for themselves. Billie Jean King is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, and she is famously known for her advocacy for women’s rights, including beating male tennis player Bobby Riggs in a match that was called “The Battle of the Sexes” that was watched by 90 million people worldwide. She knows a lot about overcoming adversity and obstacles. She once said, ...

“There’s no substitute for hard work. If you work hard and prepare yourself, you might get beat, but you’ll never lose.” Nancy Lieberman Nancy Lieberman is a basketball Hall of Famer and is one of the greatest figures in women’s basketball. But Lieberman had a rough upbringing and many tough obstacles she had to overcome. In a TEDx Talk, she said, “My life has been riddled with Nancy-can’t Moments. Nancy can’t do this, Nancy can’t do this, Nancy can’t do that.” She said you have to beat the Mind Monsters - the voices that tell you what you can’t do and shouldn’t do, but her mantra has been: You have to see it, say it, and be it. This is how she reinforced her confidence, self-esteem, and decision-making. This mantra helps overcome the Mind Monsters and live with confidence. She won championships in college in as a professional, and she became a head coach in the WNBA. Then, when the NBA created the D-League, the Dallas Mavericks named her the first female head coach in a men’s professi...

“Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.” - Vince Lombardi You can’t always control whether you win or not. Sometimes, your opponent is too big, strong, experienced, and good to overcome. But that should never impact how you show up, do your job, add value, and compete. Legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” Coach Lombardi was known for his demanding coaching style and relentless pursuit of excellence. This quote says that the pursuit of greatness and excellence is just as important as the result. Your will is a strong intention or desire to do something. When your will is strong enough, you will wake up or show up early, you will do your job with integrity and excellence, and you will find ways to add value. My favorite athlete of all time is Michael Jordan. He was blessed with a lot of talent and world-class athleticism, but he was also blessed with an intense will to compete and get better. When Jor...

“Success doesn't come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently.” - Marie Forleo How do you stay consistent? Entrepreneur and author Marie Forleo says most of us struggle with consistency in some parts of our lives, and working on being more consistent is worth the effort.  In a YouTube video , she outlines 5 steps we can use to be more consistent: 1 - Keep Your Eye on Your Why: Know what you want to achieve, and more importantly, know why. Your why keeps you going when the going gets tough. 2 - Pick Your [1] Battle: Start with one thing and stick to that. We have limited capacity when it comes to willpower and discipline. If you try to do too many things at one time, you will fail at them all. 3 - Schedule It: Steven Covey said, “Don’t prioritize your schedule, schedule your priorities.” Build your life around what you are trying to be more consistent with instead of trying to fit it in. 4 - Ignore Your Feelings: When it comes to developing habits, igno...

  “Undisciplined people do dumb things. Disciplined people do smart things. Which are you?.” - Nick Saban Do you have the discipline it takes to accomplish what you want to accomplish? Championship football coach Nick Saban says to be successful, you have to have a good plan, preparation, a good system, and an ability to adjust based on the situation you are in, but he says the real key to winning is all about mindset. If you don’t think about and focus on what it takes to win, you will struggle. He says there are three steps to creating a championship mindset: 1 - Vision: What are we trying to accomplish? 2 - Plan: What are the systems and processes that are required to accomplish it? 3 - Discipline: You have to have the discipline to execute it every day. This is where most people fail. Coach Saban says most people define discipline as doing what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way you’re supposed to do it - right thing, right way, right time, all the ...

“If you want a bigger house, you have to make a bigger deposit.” - Vanessa Blair-Lewis Before the start of the 2021 basketball season, the new head women’s basketball coach at George Mason, Vanessa Blair-Lewis, hung a banner that read: Future Atlantic 10 Champions. It symbolized the championships she promised they would win and the future banners she promised to hang. This was a bold prediction for a team coming off a 3-win season, but it sent a message: Anything is possible if you are willing to put in the work. She told the team then, “We’re not putting this on social media, we’re not telling everyone about this. What you do here every day without the bright lights, without the cameras, will show if one day we’re worthy of this. And we will be.” They made this promise a reality in the 2024-25 season, where they won their first-ever conference tournament championship, recorded a school-record 27 wins, and reached back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time in program history. Their...

“The key in life is getting over, under, around, and through those rocks.” - Howard Behar What are the rocks in your way? Howard Behar helped Starbucks grow from a regional, northwest coffee chain to an international giant. He says he lives his life according to his 6 Ps: Purpose, passion, persistence, patience, performance, and people. When he talks about persistence, Howard says, “The river of life has a lot of rocks in it. Some of the rocks we see and we hit anyway, some of the rocks we don’t see and we slam into, and some rocks we put there ourselves. The key in life is getting over, under, around, and through those rocks.” What do you do when you run into a rock? Do you stop, quit, or find your way around it? Know that there are rocks in your way and there always will be, so prepare yourself for how you will overcome them. Build Good Habits: The habits you build today will be what carry you past the rocks in the future. Do today what your future self will thank you for. Build a Te...

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” - Unknown What stops you from learning and growing? Learning and growth happen outside of our Comfort Zone, but it’s easy to live there because it’s where we feel safe, at ease, and in control. The Discomfort Zone is where fear, panic, or resistance can send us back into our Comfort Zone, or we can jump into The Learning Zone by being bold and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. What stops you? What keeps you stuck and sends you back to your Comfort Zone? That is the mountain you have to climb or the enemy you have to beat. When you do and find yourself in The Learning Zone, your existing skills and abilities are stretched, allowing you to learn and develop new ones. Then, with time and practice, you find yourself in The Growth Zone where you are able to extend your Comfort Zone by stretching your existing skills and abilities, allowing you to learn and develop new ones. How do you get out of your Comfort Zo...

“When you don’t know what to do in a situation, ask yourself, ‘What would the person I want to be do in this situation?’ Then do that.” - Drew Dudley You never know what interaction might change somebody’s life, so make sure you make the most of all of them. That was my takeaway from Drew Dudley’s Ted Talk about “Leading With Lollipops.” In his talk, Drew told a story about a college freshman who wanted to quit and go back home before school even started, but she ran into Drew, who made her laugh and helped her meet her future husband by handing him a lollipop to give her. This random moment led to her sticking with college, a relationship with an embarrassed young classmate, and an engagement, and Drew didn’t even remember his integral part in it. Every day, we have several Lollipop Moments, moments where we say or do something that fundamentally improves someone else’s life. Often, we have those moments, good or bad, and don’t even realize it. Lollipop Moments are what make us all le...

“The best leaders and teammates have the best engagements with each other.” - Levi Turner What do you want people to say about you when you aren't around? Principal Levi Turner says the best teammates and leaders have the best engagements or interactions with people. He says our engagements with others can be positive or negative and direct or indirect. Our direct engagements are easy to recognize; they happen anytime we have direct communication with someone. Our indirect engagements are a little more difficult to identify. A few examples include how we walk past people, the energy and body language we have while in the same room as someone else, and how we talk about people when they aren’t around. All of those things can affect how people perceive us, our relationships, and our ability to lead. The goal is to be mindful of the types of engagements we have, positive and negative, so we are showing up the way we want to. For example, I want to have as many positive engagements as ...

“Every team needs lions - competitors who are willing to step out first, take risks, and will their teams to victory.” What kind of competitor are you? Owen Eastwood says there are three types of competitors: Lions, wolves, and sheep. Lions are teammates who will step up, lead, and do whatever it takes for their team to win. They are the ones who jump to the front of the line, who go first, and who you can trust to take the big shot or make the big play no matter how much pressure they are in. Wolves are the teammates who are killers when things are going great, but won’t be the first to step up and won’t step up in crucial moments, but they’ll feast when the lions are leading the way. The sheep are the ones who are just happy to be there, they just want to survive, and they just want to follow the lions and the wolves to safety. Eastwood studied several World Cup champions and learned that each team needs at least 6 lions out of 11 to win it all. This helps coaches think about se...

“If you tell yourself something often enough, you’ll start to believe it. So say nice things to yourself about yourself.” - Shade Zahrai I have an overthinking problem that I can sometimes manage and can’t at other times. It can steal my focus, drive, and joy, so I have had to work to overcome it. Peak performance educator Shade Zahrai made a short video describing how and why overthinking can kill your joy by hijacking your experiences. Research shows what you think about can be a stronger predictor of happiness than what you are actually doing or experiencing. She says if you want to feel better, start by noticing where your mind is and where it wanders to and from. Doing quick check-ins throughout the day where you ask yourself, “What’s on my mind right ?” can help you identify patterns and refocus patterns. Here are a few other things I do to overcome overthinking: 1 - Walk or workout in the morning: Moving and exercising bring me clarity and focus and help me feel better. 2 - Writ...