In many ways, coaches are a dying breed. No, the profession isn’t going away. It’s that, in a world filled with specialists, coaches are among the last of the master generalists. We have to wear dozens of hats to do the job well: teacher, counselor, therapist, biomechanist, physiologist, and trainer.
And yet coach education tends to focus on strategy or workouts, even though anyone who has spent time coaching knows it’s about the human element: convincing the person sitting across from you to dare to step into the arena, risk being exposed, and come face to face with their potential. In a time when everything is curated and filtered, and we don’t dare risk failure in a public setting because we could be transformed into a meme, coaching is one of the last places where we confront actual reality—or at least get people to try to.
Coaching is about developing the person across from you. Not merely the musician, runner, or soccer player—the PERSON sitting across from you. We help shape their relationship to success and failure, to their own potential, and to the work itself for the rest of their life.
If you don’t believe me, trust this duo: Sir Roger Bannister and his coach, Franz Stampfl:
“Franz is not the kind of coach who, Svengali-like, wishes to turn the athlete into a machine, working to his dictation. We shared a common view of athletics as a means of ‘re-creation’ of each individual, as a result of the liberation of the latent power within him. Franz was like an artist who could see character fulfilment in human struggle and achievement.”
Coaching is a heavy and often underappreciated burden—and a skill that we mostly have to figure out on the fly. So, with that understanding, I wanted to provide a leg up: to give any coach, whether in athletics or elsewhere, my cheat-sheet guide to coaching the whole person.
What follows are 27 lessons for coaching the whole person.
I. What a Coach Is
1. Become a Way-Shower
A coach is a way-shower. They’re someone who has been down the road and points to the next foothold, then steps back and lets the climber climb.
“My job was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That’s the difference between leadership and management.” —Sir Alex Ferguson
Help people see and realize a new self and a new potential.
2. Be the Thermostat
The thermometer reads the room. The thermostat sets the temperature you want others to feel.
They pick up and catch your vibes. But it’s more than that: your job is to provide the counterbalance—to offer perspective when they think this is the biggest moment in the world and help them lock in when they underestimate an opponent.
When they are frantic, be calm. When they are flat, bring intensity.
3. Define Success Together
Too often, we either assume what success means for the other person or provide a slogan that has little meaning behind it. We say “process over outcomes” because we heard Nick Saban say it.
Define what success means, and make sure it’s not just the result. A good coach gives multiple paths to ‘success.’
Ask: How do they define a good performance? What do you value and expect from them? Where do those definitions agree or conflict? What process, risk, behavior, and result will count today?
“Success is peace of mind … knowing you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming.” —John Wooden
II. Coach the Person
4. The Human Comes First
Coaching is about developing the person across from you. Whether you coach high school athletes or professionals, your job is to develop them holistically. Of course success matters, but if all they are left with is a few trophies, you’ve failed. As one of my coaching mentors put it, “It’s about the weddings you get invited to a decade from now.”
Listen to the coach of 800-meter track sensation Audrey Werro: “My philosophy is really to work on the development of the athlete. The medal is ultimately only the fruit of that development. I have a holistic vision of the athlete. Sport is a means to develop harmoniously.”
Performance is important, but it is downstream of the person you help someone become.
“Helping players be more successful on the court and more successful in their life go hand in hand.” —Tara VanDerveer
5. Care
If you don’t have buy-in, even the perfect workout schedule or tactics will fail. All anyone wants is to know that someone gives a damn about them. Especially younger athletes. They want someone who cares about them as a person, not someone who will use them to help land the next job.
In a transactional world, we’ve forgotten this. As the old saying goes, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
6. Hold Standards Plus Care
We need both standards and care. It’s what decades of parenting and coaching research tell us. High demand without warmth leads to poor behavior and lower levels of resilience. Warmth without demand produces directionless folks.
We need both.
It’s about sending a message: here are the expectations, but I won’t abandon you while you learn to meet them.
“The arm around Monty and sticking it to him in practice, both have to be there.” —Gregg Popovich
7. Coach Toward Independence, Not Dependence
Coaching is about making your own job kind of obsolete. Good coaches foster independence. We should be working toward having the athlete become self-sufficient, with our role gradually shifting toward course-correcting the ship as it goes.
Dependence can seem like an easier path for a coach. It makes them feel powerful, that an athlete needs them to succeed. That’s your ego talking, and it creates a fragile bond that will backfire. It’s the same as parenting: you want to prepare them to do it on their own.
Teach them the tools, let them mess up, be there to help them learn and grow. And over time, gradually lengthen the leash to give them the chance to see that they’re capable of more.
8. Belonging Beats Fitting In
Make people feel they belong, are heard, are significant, and have a path to get better. We thrive when the environment around us tells us that we belong here. Too often, we settle for the social media version: fitting in. It’s the junior high kid changing who they are just to be a part of the group.
It doesn’t mean everyone has to be best friends or that the environment has to be some kumbaya fantasy. It means giving people enough security to contribute as themselves.
“People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves.” —Mike Krzyzewski
III. Read the Athlete
9. Listen to Both Kinds of Feedback
Athletes provide two kinds of feedback: automatic and deliberate behavior. Automatic behavior includes posture, body language, and other outward cues that occur without conscious control. Deliberate behavior is consciously regulated; it reflects what the athlete wants to project.
When the messages conflict: an athlete may say they feel great and can do another repetition while their posture slumps and their mechanics begin to fail. Understanding what both sides are telling you is essential to knowing when and how to adjust.
It is when the athlete deviates from their norm that we should raise a red flag. A sudden change in personality might be an early indicator of overtraining. A change in posture during the warm-up might signal a need for recovery that even the latest monitoring gadget cannot detect.
“Communication … starts, number one, with listening.” —Tara VanDerveer
10. Start With the Story in Their Head
A therapist and social worker once told me, “It doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong. If they believe it is right, then it is right. The story in their head is all that matters.” His point was that, as humans, our need to make sense of the world and have a consistent narrative about who we are and what we believe is so strong that right and wrong don’t matter. The narrative does.
Step one is to understand the internal story the athlete is telling. Ignore what they should think or believe and begin with what they actually think.
When we look at changing behavior, we often assume facts will alter people’s decisions. They rarely do. How do they see themselves? How do they see you? How do they interpret what is happening? Only once you understand how they see the world can you attempt to adjust that view.
Right or wrong, the athlete’s internal narrative is the one driving the bus. Start there.
“People are wired differently … those things shape how they view not only football but the world.” —Mike Tomlin
11. Understand Motivation Before You Push
We use motivation as a kind of catch-all term. If someone doesn’t seem to give any effort, we say they have no drive. But that’s a gross simplification.
What do they care about? What gets them fired up? Who creates pressure around them? Do they have support? How do they define success and failure?
Too often, we write off a kid as unmotivated, without understanding that maybe their parents have instilled a fear of failure so strong in them that the rational choice is just not to try so they don’t risk failure.
First understand. Then start to shift.
“If you don’t know how players tick … it’s hard to progress them.” —Rehanne Skinner
12. Learn Their Stress Pattern
Some athletes do better when challenged. I had one athlete who requested that I cuss them out and put them down a bit when they were struggling. Others need calm and comfort. They need to feel supported no matter what, so that they can take that risk. We all handle stress and challenges differently. It’s right there in the science: we call them “individual zones of optimal functioning.”
The coach’s job is to help the athlete find the state that allows them to meet this moment.
“You can’t coach everybody the same way. What motivates others might embarrass others.” —Ime Udoka
13. Treat Potential as an Open Question
Be careful with labels. Athletes will hold whatever ceiling you put on them. It’s the classic research in schools, when kids are labeled gifted or not so bright, teachers treat them differently, and then grades follow the label.
Categorization is natural. But when it comes to potential, be careful about labeling potential too soon. We’re awful at predicting potential—just look at the NFL draft. Your job is to give them as many opportunities as possible to develop and grow that potential. No one knows how good someone will be. The only way to find out is to put in the work for a long time and see what happens.
“The greatest gift a coach can give a player … is the opportunity to imagine great things.” —Mike Krzyzewski
IV. Design Practice That Teaches
14. Hypothesize, Test, Reflect, Repeat
Coaching is like a mini-science experiment. You have an idea what you think a workout plan or instruction will do, then you try it out, observe the results, and then adjust.
We need each part of that process. And to understand each athlete is a new mini experiment that we’ve got figure out.
15. Train the Individual, Not the System
The game’s demands matter, but they only become useful when combined with the characteristics of the athlete in front of you.
In order to determine what each athlete needs, assess the physical, biomechanical, emotional, and psychological components. Look at strengths and weaknesses. What kinds of workouts does the athlete naturally handle well? What fuels the athlete’s drive? What excites them? Do they have the focus and patience required by the event, or do they function better with short-lived aggression?
The danger comes when the model becomes more important than the athlete standing in front of you.
16. Let the Athlete Struggle Enough to Learn
It’s tempting to step in and give the solution right away when you see someone struggle. But in doing so, it impairs learning.
Research on students found that if a teacher stepped in too soon, when they initially struggled, kids didn’t learn as much as when the teacher let them struggle for a bit. We need to wrestle with the problem, that’s where learning occurs.
It’s the same with coaching. Resist that temptation to step in early. The body and mind need enough stress to be embarrassed into adaptation. Put the athlete in a position where the system has to figure something out.
17. Design the Environment
The most disciplined performers aren’t grinding harder than the rest of us. They’ve made the right thing the obvious thing. Our environment impacts us more than we like to admit. If you live near trails, it’s easier to get out the door and run. If everyone around you is putting in 10 miles a day, that volume becomes normal instead of insane.
Be aware of what your environment is inviting. For example, if everyone’s on their phones at dinner, you’ve designed the wrong environment for connecting.
Make it easy and normal to do the hard and right thing. And have fun while doing it.
“If we’re not having fun, I’m screwing it up.” —Pete Carroll
18. Take the Complex and Make It Simple
It’s a common saying that people who truly understand a concept take it from a complex form and make it simpler. Charlatans who want to appear like they understand, do the opposite, complexifying concepts.
Complexity creates a mask where we can hide our true understanding. Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter has gone as far as proclaiming that training became complex once doping proliferated. Coaches and athletes needed a story to explain the massive increases in performance. So they used complex training regimes with a dash of science to paint the picture.
As coaches, it’s our job to always work towards breaking down concepts into usable forms. If we complexify, we lose applicability.
Make complex ideas simple. Going from complex to simple may make the work look less sophisticated to the untrained eye, but we want to back up our actions, not merely look good.
Expertise is not displaying everything you know. It is knowing what matters now and what can be ignored.
“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.” —Johan Cruyff
V. Prepare for Competition
19. Free Them Up to Perform
Ninety percent of coaching is helping people get out of their own way, letting them explore their potential instead of self-sabotaging.
We’ve got to give people permission to risk it. To try and fail. So much of our modern society (and psychology) pushes us to live in protection mode. We don’t want to feel embarrassed or exposed if we fall short. Especially now that everything is public.
So free them up. Redefine success. Give them permission to fail spectacularly. Figure out how to give them permission to risk, and convince them that they belong at the next level.
20. Teach Athletes to Zoom
When fear and anxiety rise before competition, zooming out can help the athlete see the entire forest. The moment might feel like life or death, but in the grand scheme of things it is a sporting event. The athlete has a future regardless of the result. Zooming out creates perspective and helps control emotion.
During the race, when the legs and lungs begin to burn, the wide view can become overwhelming. The athlete can zoom in: make it to the next marker, or focus only on what the arms and legs need to do in the next stride. Breaking the race into manageable pieces keeps doubt from expanding to fill the whole event.
This ability can be trained. We enhance it by practicing shifts in mindset and view—by practicing self-awareness and perspective before the athlete needs the skill under pressure.
Zoom out to restore perspective. Zoom in to find the next marker, action, cue, or decision.
VI. Build the Culture
21. Make Sure Your Actions Match Your Words
How many times have you heard someone talk about “process, process, process,” only for the first thing out of their mouth after the race to be a celebration of the outcome? Now, there’s nothing wrong with talking about wins or PRs or outcomes. But, too often what we preach doesn’t match the actions we take.
We can’t talk about team culture and then excuse the kid who violates all the rules because they’re a good athlete. People want to know what to expect. They thrive on consistency in message and action. Make sure your actions match your words.
If you talk about process and only celebrate outcomes, the brain hears the second message.
“What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.” —Nick Saban
22. Give the Team a Shared Purpose
Having a strong purpose acts as a turbo boost.
Whether that purpose comes from God, family, playing for your teammates, or a mission that holds deep importance, when our pursuits match with our purpose, we persist for much longer. Research shows that purpose and persistence are linked in the classroom, workplace, and athletics.
When we have a purpose, we are able not only to endure and persist but also to provide a beacon that reminds us of what’s important and to make the right decision at the right moment.
Create a goal bigger than any one person and make every role’s contribution clear.
23. Use the Power of Peers
Let’s be honest. Sometimes they’ll tune you out. They’ve heard your spiel so many times that you become the parent they stop listening to. This is why a great team culture is so important. They’ll turn to their peers when they aren’t listening to you.
It’s why research tends to show that captains have a large impact on team performance.
VII. Coach the Long Game
24. Plant Seeds You’ll Never See Grow
You’ll give the same lesson dozens of times. You’ll say it over and over, trying to get through to that athlete, but it just seems like it’s not getting through. Then, a decade later, you get the message from that former athlete, “I get it. That lesson really helped.”
You never know when something sinks in. Sometimes it takes hours, other times weeks or months. And still other, decades.
That’s what the work is about. You never know when something will connect and sink in. Your job is to keep planting seeds, in as many different ways as possible, then water them. Understand that some may take years to grow.
“Think like a gardener, work like a carpenter.” —Jim Larrañaga
25. Keep the Ego Coach Quiet
“Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.” —Phil Jackson
The cleanest articulation of the get-out-of-the-way principle from a coach with eleven rings to back it up.
The athlete makes the coach, not the other way around.
You’ve got to keep your ego in check. When it comes to athletics, talent matters. As coaches, it’s our job to nurture and allow that potential to show itself. Without talent, no matter how good a coach you are, you aren’t turning that athlete into a world-beater.
When we think we have the answers and that our coaching made all the difference, that mindset sends the signal that we have it figured out. Our minds accept closure, and we drop out of learning mode. Our ego prevents us from learning.
Give credit, share control, and let the athlete own the work.
26. Stay in Learning Mode
Once you have the answers, you stop learning. Closure shuts the brain off. It’s why success is the most dangerous moment in your coaching career: that’s when you stop searching.
Stay open-minded. Find peers to bounce ideas off of. Challenge your ideas regularly. Block off time for reflection and an end-of-year review.
And always remember: you can love an idea, just don’t marry it. Don’t become the kind of coach who is so wedded to one way that they stop seeing the game clearly.
Write it all down in a notebook. Over time, this creates a simple documentation of the coaching journey and the lessons learned each year. Reflection prevents us from falling into mindless default-mode coaching and workout creation.
“We learn new things all the time, from new experiences, from other people, from being a good listener.” —Nick Saban
27. Be Yourself and Go All the Way
Be yourself. Don’t cosplay another coach. The Bobby Knight clones don’t last. Pop is unrecreatable. All the strength coaches who adopt the same voice—well, most don’t pan out. Loud, quiet, thoughtful, outgoing, introverted—we’ve had great coaches with so many different makeups.
Be authentic. Figure out what works for you.
—
A coach is one of the most important jobs you can have. You wear many hats, but perhaps the most important one is role model. You get to shape the hearts and minds of kids and adults. Helping to show them what’s possible, how to handle failure, and to step forward and risk falling short. If we do the job well, they leave us not merely better performers, but more capable people.
—Steve Magness
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As a high school teacher and coach I truly appreciate this piece of work. Sharing it and coming back to it.
Wow! I am a subscriber now and wanted to take all of this in with one sitting, but this was too much to unpack in one sitting. In my 60's after a lifetime of coaching, I agree and live most of these "anchors" in the day-to-day multi hat wearing routine. I will come back to this, maybe even print it out to view and ruminate. Good write!!