Coaches & Leadership
I want to describe something that is rarer than it should be.
A coaching staff that genuinely trusts each other. Not just works together — trusts. Where honest disagreement is safe. Where each person’s expertise is actually used. Where the head coach doesn’t have to manage the staff’s politics because there are no politics. Where the unified front in the room is real, not performed.
That’s the most effective coaching environment possible. And it’s available if the people in this room choose to build it.
Read this passage slowly.
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9–10,12 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
The cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes’ image is of something woven together — not just placed alongside each other, but genuinely intertwined. That’s different from parallel operation.
A coaching staff that trusts each other operates with a kind of integration that parallel-operating staffs don’t have. Information flows freely because nobody is protecting their turf. Problems surface faster because the person who sees one isn’t afraid to name it. The load is genuinely shared rather than formally distributed. And the athletes experience a unified front that is actually unified — not a performance of alignment that breaks down the moment the head coach leaves the room.
That trust is built the same way all trust is built: in small, consistent moments where someone is vulnerable and the other person handles it well. A staff member says something honest in a meeting and the head coach responds with genuine appreciation rather than defensiveness. A coach owns a mistake in front of the staff and the response is accountability rather than punishment. A disagreement happens and it makes the decision better rather than creating division.
Each of those moments either builds the cord or weakens it. Over a season, the accumulation of those moments is what determines whether the cord is woven tight or slowly unraveling.
Build the cord. Each moment counts.
A staff that trusts each other isn’t just more pleasant. It’s a genuine competitive advantage that parallel-operating staffs cannot replicate.
What’s one thing this staff could do differently that would increase the trust between us? And what’s one thing you personally could contribute to building it?
Both parts of the question are important. The second one makes it personal rather than leaving it as a group observation.
Build the cord. Each moment either tightens it or loosens it.
Best as an early-season staff devotional that sets the culture for how the staff will operate together throughout the year.