Coaches & Leadership
Something is off. You can feel it. The team isn’t playing the way they’re capable of playing, and you’ve watched enough film and run enough practices to know it’s not primarily a technical problem.
Something is happening beneath the surface. In the culture, in the relationships, in the mental or emotional state of the room. And you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.
That’s one of the hardest places to coach from. The problem you can’t see clearly is the one you can’t fix directly.
Read this passage slowly.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
The Lord looks at the heart. Samuel was looking at the obvious — height, appearance, the things that signal strength and leadership by external measure. God was looking at something invisible to the human eye.
When a team is underperforming without a clear technical cause, the diagnosis almost always requires looking at the heart of the room — the things that don’t show up on film. The trust level between players. The unaddressed conflict that’s taking up space. The individual who is carrying something that’s affecting the whole. The cultural drift that happens gradually and shows up suddenly in the results.
The diagnostic work in this situation requires a different approach than film review. It requires listening. Watching. Having individual conversations that create space for what’s really happening to surface. Asking questions without the agenda of already knowing the answer. Being patient enough to let the room tell you what’s wrong rather than imposing a diagnosis that fits your theory.
The coach who can read the heart of a room — who can sense what’s actually happening beneath the performance — is the coach who can address problems before they become crises. That capacity develops through relationship, through presence, through the habit of looking at more than the outward appearance.
Look at the heart. That’s where the answer almost always is.
When a team is underperforming without a clear technical cause, the diagnosis almost always requires looking at the heart of the room.
What do you think is actually happening in this room beneath the performance? Not what the film shows — what do you sense is really going on?
Intuition-based question. The coach’s gut read on the room is often more accurate than the data. Create space for it.
Look at the heart of the room. That’s where the answer is.
This works best as a coaches’ meeting devotional when the coaching staff is trying to diagnose a team performance problem together.