A Coach's Diary

One thing that people mention when they talk about Michael Jordan was his work ethic. He didn't take a lot of days off, and when he was in the gym (or the golf course, in a card game, ping pong table, etc.) he was competing to be the best he could be.  In the Last Dance documentary, studio analyst and reporter Ahmad Rashad said, "Michael played every game as if it was his last. Every single game. It was never a day off. He knew that it was going to be somebody in the crowd who never saw him play before. That is what kept him going." Staying in the competitive mindset and always competing is a skill that can be a real difference-maker. Today, Ja Morant is an NBA star and viral sensation, but Ja was once an unknown and un-recruited high school basketball player trying to earn a college scholarship. Murray State assistant coach James Kane peaked his head into an aux gym at a small AAU combine where Ja Morant was playing three-on-three when Ja was in high school. Many high sc...

"It has become more apparent how important it is to promote teammates and teams; more than ever.  It has always been a team game for us and our sports, but more than ever, the awareness of our guys to be great teammates is more valuable and more important than it ever has been in my coaching. If you are a great teammate, then you are concerned for others, and the great Bill Russell was in our meeting rooms a couple of years back and out of nowhere he said: "You know what it takes to be a great teammate?   You have to wake up every morning thinking about how you can help one of your teammates be better." That kind of mentality doesn't have to only be on our teams.  Why can't that type of mentality be what it feels like to be an American?  That I am part of a team and what can I do to help the people around me? Why would that not be as important as ever instead of 'lookout for what I got' or 'protect your own' or 'save me.' ...

"Leadership is about the other people and holding ourselves accountable so that we can help those around us become who they can possibly be. Without that connection, there is no leadership. You have to have a connection with the people that you are serving and hold yourself accountable to them. You have to be willing to take the tough stands. You have to be willing to stand up for what you know is right and be willing to take the hit because it is the right thing to do. Good things happen when you do things for the right reasons.   You can make it through the hard times and you can rebound from setbacks and the problems. But it comes from the principles of serving others and doing a good job of it and letting yourself be scrutinized and to have the courage to suck it up and do it." Pete Carroll Flying Coach Podcast

“For some coaches, they love getting into the bunker of the season. They crave a darkness of everything and everyone. Yet, Kerr doesn’t see the profession as a way to grind everyone down. He coaches to elevate everyone, and maybe that’s made easy with Curry and Durant and Thompson. Still, Kerr has always been true to his disposition: fiercely competitive, relentlessly self-deprecating and smart with everything he’s done in the game. He’s truly a product of his coaching mentors: Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson and even Lute Olson. Mostly, Steve Kerr is the son of Malcolm Kerr, the American professor murdered in Beirut in a terrorist act in 1984. Kerr loves the game, but he’s always valued it within context of the people it allows him to reach, the voice it gives him for something bigger than the game.” These two paragraphs come from an article written about the struggles that Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is going through this playoff run.  For years, ‘the grind’ w...

This is a great article talking about the importance of knowing who you are as a coach and a leader, finding your voice, and knowing what you want to get out of your team.  Steve Kerr, upon taking over as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, watched the Seattle Seahawks and met with their head coach Pete Carroll.  He admired their energetic style and the way that they mixed having fun with making competition part of everything that they do. Below are some of the highlights and takeaways.  You can find the article in its entirety here . As The Article States, Only 20% Is X's And O's.  80% Is Relationship, Atmosphere And Culture. PLAY HARD | HAVE FUN BELOW ARE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARTICLE: Find Your Own Style It's no secret around Seattle, and the NFL for that matter, that Pete Carroll's coaching style is unique in a lot of ways. Music plays over the loudspeakers at practice, there's a basketball free-throw competition amongst players a...

The following article was written by Jim Trotter at The MMQB.  It was posted right after Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks beat the San Francisco 49ers enroute to their Super Bowl win over the Baltimore Ravens. The article talks a lot about Pete Carroll's philosophy and how he runs his program.  Here are some notes from the article.  You can read it in it's entirety   here . Doing Things The Best/Only Way You Know How:  “Pete told me once, ‘They already killed me once—they got me in New York and they got me in Boston—so I’m going to be me. They can’t hurt me now.’ For Pete that was a very humble way of saying, ‘I’ve been through a lot, and if I go to Seattle I’m going to do it the way that I’ve laid it out, exactly to my personality and to my philosophical approach.” Affirming His Coaching Tenets: For Carroll, Sunday wasn’t about proving anyone wrong. It was about proving himself right. It was about affirming that his coaching tenets—the r...

In his book Win Forever , Pete Carroll talks about the process of creating his own philosophy.  He starts out by talking about the impact that John Wooden and his book, They Call Me Coach , had on him defining his personal philosophy.  Here is an excerpt regarding Coach Wooden and his philosophy: "He had figured out absolutely everything about his program - his belief system, his philosophy, his delivery, and a million other details that made that first championship possible.  He had figured it out so completely that he could re-create it year after year after year.  Even more important, he had done more than just become aware of all those details inside his own mind.  He had refined them to the point that he could explain them to the people around him.  I think a great part of his genius was that he was able to explain his beliefs and tie them back into a clear vision that brought it all together into a single team effort." Here is an excerpt of hi...

In chapter 6 of his book Win Forever , Pete Carroll talked about some of the difficulties he faced as the head coach of the New England Patriots.  After two seasons with the 49ers, the Patriots hired him in large part because they wanted to run their organizations just like the 49ers organization, the organization they hired him from.  On the 49ers, Carroll said: Whether it was office dynamics, travel arrangements, or schematics of their offense and defense - everything the 49ers did was first-class and professional.  They were consistently efficient and effective in every aspect of their team. Carroll wrote that he learned early in his tenure with New England an important lesson about the difficulty of implementing change in an organization.  When the Patriots organization showed skepticism in his philosophy change, he called on Coach Seifert and Coach Walsh, two guys he worked with in San Francisco for advice.  He wrote that Coach Seifert's...

In chapter 5 of his book Win Forever , Pete Carroll talks about the influence the coaching staff at San Francisco  had on his coaching style and his philosophy.  He was just let out of his contract with the Jets and was free to find a new coaching staff to join.   He was able to get on with the San Francisco 49'ers as their defensive coordinator. They were coming off a Super Bowl victory and were considered one of the premier organizations of the NFL.  He talked about his experience working for defensive minded coach George Seifert. Being a defensive minded coach himself, he easily could have micromanaged me, but instead he allowed me to call the defense and have an ownership of our scheme.  Along with that, we would often discuss how he managed his team and his staff in more general ways, as I was constantly thinking about how I would lead a team when given the chance again. Coach Carroll was also greatly influenced by former 49ers coach, Coach...

In the 4th chapter of his book, Win Forever , Pete Carroll talks about the lessons he learned as the head coach of the New York Jets.  He was promoted from a defensive coordinator to head coach, and he talked about how he wanted his players to perceive him in his new role.  Concerning that, he wrote: I wanted to show them that they were going to get the same coach they had had the past four seasons - someone who was positive, focused, and extremely competitive.  I believed that the only way we were going to win was as a single, united team. His philosophy was forming, but it was still undeveloped.  He know what he wanted to do, but he was still figuring out how to make it happen.  Here he talks about the vision he had for the Jets organization: The vision I wanted the team and staff to share wasn't about 'not failing' but about really searching within yourself and developing positive approach to wining.  I wanted every member of the team to think of...

In Chapter 3 of Pete Carroll's book, Win Forever , Coach Carroll talks a lot about the importance of athletes achieving a 'peak performance' in competition by playing with a 'quieted mind.'  A quieted mind is when a player is completely absorbed by the task, free of distractions, and the game is moving in slow motion. I once had a 'peak performance' in an interview.  I was approached to apply for a position as an assistant principal in my district.  It was a position that I probably was not completely ready for, as I was still a young teacher, but the administration in my district thought that I would be good for the position and that I should go for it.  I was fully prepared to answer any and everything that they threw out at me, and I did a good enough job to earn the position because of my performance.   I remember being in a zone in while they were firing questions at me, and the biggest reason for that was the way that my principal at the time hel...

In chapter 2 of his book, Win Forever , Pete Carroll talks about how his academic learning helped influence his approach to coaching.   Abraham Maslow and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs made a lasting impression on how he approached getting the most out of his players.  Here is an excerpt on how Maslow influenced Carroll's viewpoints on player performance: "What I learned about Maslow's insights challenged me to start asking: What if my job as a coach isn't so much to force or coerce performance as it is to create situations where players develop the confidence to set their talents free and pursue their potential to its full extent?  What if my job as a coach is really to prove to these kids how good they already are, how good they could possibly become, and that they are truly capable of high level performance? What if players were able to perform exactly how they envisioned themselves performing?" I think as coaches, we have to identify our player'...

I slammed the book shut, stunned. It had been six months since I'd been fired as the head coach of the New England Patriots.  I was reading a book by the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. It took him sixteen years to figure it out, I told myself.  But once he did, he absolutely knew it.  After that, he rarely lost, and he went on to win ten of the next twelve national championships.  It seemed he won forever. I reached for a pad of paper and started writing.  What Coach Wooden had done that so impressed me was to pull together his own vision, philosophy, and belief system into a detailed plan for winning.  Once he had it, he went on, year after year, to build teams that were almost unstoppable.   I needed to come up with a plan of my own.  I need to develop my own winning philosophy and design a plan for implementing it. For the next few days, and weeks, I started to write about who I was, where I had been, where I wanted to go, ...

When the leader is clear and consistent about his philosophy's core values, it frees everyone up to do their best.  It frees top leadership to treat its middle managers in a whole new way.  When everyone understands the vision, the goals, and the overall system, they don't need the top boss always telling them what to do.  They can figure it out for themselves.  And for the middle managers, the is means that instead of being mere instruments for relaying instructions delivered from on high, they can get creative and share their own ideas.  Once they have the chance to find their own voices, their identity is now at the forefront.  The door then opens to competing not merely for the next promotion but to maximize their own potential.  Imagine how much energy this generates.  When everyone gets to contribute his maximum effort, it is transformative for the whole organization. Taken from Win Forever by Pete Carroll

The following article was taken from Pete Carroll's book, Win Forever.   At USC  Pete Carroll introduced "Three Rules," which became foundational elements for our program. Rule 1:  Always protect the team Rule 2:  No whining, No complaining, No Excuses Rule 3:  Be Early Rule 1: Protecting the Team This rule is about each individuals conscience and it holds everybody in the program accountable to the program and to each other.  Every decision is important and every decision can either hurt or help you, your teammates, and the team. Rule 2:  You Either Do or You Don't - There Are No Excuses Self-talk can be powerful and ultimately can create anticipated outcomes.  The language of the culture reflects the attitude of the culture.  If you're a culture of complaining and excuses, your actions and performance will reflect it. Rule 3:  Being Early Requires Being Prepared Being early is all about being discipli...

When asked how long it would take to win: "We'll be good when we're good.  My goal is to win right now." "Talk is cheap right now - we have to get to work.  My teams are going to play hard, they're going to play with enthusiasm, they're going to play with great intensity."  We competed in everything we did, from practice to teaching to showing up early.  We worked to gain confidence and erase fear by practicing for every contingency.  And we stayed constantly focused on maximizing the potential of everyone in the organization.  We applied ourselves and our philosophy diligently, and we started to win. http://www.amazon.com/Win-Forever-Live-Work-Champion/dp/1591844169 Carroll, Pete.  (2011).   Win Forever.   New York: The Penguin Group.