Coaches & Leadership
This program is not entirely yours.
You built parts of it. You made decisions that shaped it. Your philosophy is embedded in it. Your staff, your culture, your recruiting — all of that is genuinely yours in the sense that you did it.
But the outcomes — the wins and losses, the development of the players, the reputation of the program — those belong to far more than you. And confusing your personal worth with the program’s outcomes is one of the most common and most costly mistakes coaches make.
Read this passage slowly.
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
1 Corinthians 3:6–7 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
I planted. Apollos watered. God makes it grow. The work is real. The contribution is genuine. And the outcome belongs to something larger than the person doing the planting.
Coaching is planting and watering. You create conditions. You invest in people. You build structures and cultures and relationships. But you don’t control whether the seed grows into what it has the potential to become. That involves too many variables — the individual athletes, the health and injury randomness, the external circumstances of the season, the opponents, the timing — to be entirely in your control.
The coach who has fused their identity with the program’s outcomes responds to a bad season as a personal verdict on their worth. That response is both painful and disruptive to the leadership quality the program needs. Because a coach in crisis over their own identity cannot lead the room effectively. The room needs the coach to be stable, and the coach who is using the room to validate their personal worth is the opposite of stable.
The program is bigger than you. Its success is not entirely your creation and its struggles are not entirely your failure. You plant. You water. Then you lead with everything you have, hold the outcomes loosely, and trust that the growth belongs to something larger than your decisions.
The coach who has fused their identity with the program’s outcomes cannot lead the room effectively. The room needs the coach to be stable.
Where are you taking the program’s results too personally? What would it look like to hold the outcomes more loosely while still caring deeply about the work?
The tension between caring deeply and holding loosely is the whole point. The question invites honest reflection on where the personal investment has become too fused.
Plant. Water. Hold the outcomes loosely. The growth belongs to something larger.
This works well in a coaches’ retreat or any setting where coaches have space for personal reflection rather than problem-solving.