Mini-Series
Last week we looked at the gap between the coach you intended to become and the one you actually are.
This week I want to get more specific. I want to talk about the gap between the coach you think you are — the self-perception you carry into every practice — and the coach your athletes are actually experiencing.
These are often not the same person.
Read this passage slowly.
The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.
Proverbs 20:5 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters. The motives that drive coaching behavior are not always visible to the coach themselves. The coach who believes they are being demanding because they care about the athlete’s development may be being demanding because they are anxious about their own record. The coach who believes they are giving honest feedback may be venting frustration. The coach who believes they are building a culture of accountability may be creating a culture of fear. The self-perception is real. The impact may be different.
Your athletes see things you don’t know they see. They see how you treat the equipment manager. They see the difference in how you respond to mistakes from your best player versus your walk-on. They see whether you are genuinely present in the individual conversations or performing presence while thinking about something else. They see how you handle the losses you didn’t expect. They see the consistency — or the inconsistency — between what you say in the team meeting and what you do when the situation gets hard.
The coach who has never asked their athletes for honest feedback about their coaching — not through a formal evaluation process, but in a genuine conversation with a player they trust — is operating on incomplete information. You may be more effective than you think. You may be less. But you will not know until you create the conditions that allow someone in the room to tell you the truth.
Your athletes see how you treat the equipment manager, the difference in how you handle mistakes from your best player vs. your walk-on, and whether you are genuinely present. They see all of it.
If you asked your most honest player to describe your coaching in three words — not for your resume, for the truth — what would they say? How close is that to what you would say about yourself?
The gap between the two answers is the diagnostic. Let coaches sit with it.
Ask someone to tell you the truth. Create the conditions for an honest answer. Then receive it.
This session requires the safety of a coaches-only environment. The self-examination it invites is not appropriate in a mixed context.