A Coach's Diary

Managing relationships on teams is just as important - if not more important - than managing Xs and Os. Two important questions that coaches and teams who are looking to increase their team's self-awareness and connectedness are:  How well are we working together? How might we get better at it? Treatment Agreements are a very important part of what I do as a coach because every athlete wants to receive feedback, praise, and criticism differently. Treatment Agreements systematically help us answer those two questions proactively and reactively. Some athletes want to be praised publicly and criticized privately, and some need the complete opposite. For some athletes, how they receive praise and feedback truly doesn't matter, but for many, how we communicate with them could be the difference between our athletes giving us their best effort or shutting down on the team.  Our athletes also respond differently to how coaches praise and criticize them versus how their teammates prai...

Let's say that you are a coach, a teacher, a principal, or in a leadership role and you are starting a new season, a new year, or starting a new leadership position; what are some of the first things, from a cultural standpoint, that you would think about or do to set the tone for success? Daniel Coyle is the New York Times bestselling author of the Culture Code. He has worked with and learned from some of the best leaders of the best cultures in the world. He was asked this question, and the first thing he said was he would think about the relationship between connections and safety. He says connection and safety are the foundations of a great culture. "WITHOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY, YOU CAN BE AS SMART AS YOU WANT TO BE, BUT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ADD UP TO MORE THAN THE SUM OF YOUR PARTS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GIVING PEOPLE A VOICE."  - DANIEL COYLE When teams win championships, they often talk about how close they are and how strong their relationships are. When the LA R...

A big part of coaching is our ability to connect with our athletes and their families. A quote that will stick with me is, "He made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as a learner." As coaches, we can easily change that quote to say, " My coach made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as an athlete, and as a person ." We are wired for connection. We all have different reasons for why we started playing and why we have stayed around the game, but at the foundation of sports is the human need to connect. Our brain's two main goals are to stay safe and be happy. We internally protect our self-worth, our self-determination, our well-being, and our connection to the community. To get our athletes to perform at their best for themselves and for the team, we need our athletes to feel like they are valued members of the team, and we do that by minimizing threats and maximizing well-being. Sometimes, one of the biggest threats to our athletes can be ourselves. We have all...