Five More Quotes From Smart People

Our first of five comes from former Olympic Marathoner and Coach Mark Coogan gave us this absolute gem of the realities of being an Olympic athlete;

"You have to put in 100% effort to extract a 1% improvement, and that 1% improvement is kind of what keeps us going forward. And to give that 100% , knowing that you might only get 1% back, that's the true courage."

Remember the last 11 year old you coached? Or maybe the last 17 year old? Maybe it didn't seem like they were giving 100% because they were slow to process or their body hadn't caught up with their mind yet. But this is a daunting proposition that we ask of our athletes each and every practice. It deserves our utmost respect and to be grateful for that courage!

"Coddling produces an ineptness that doesn't prepare us to survive, much less thrive. If Momma bird over cares for her young, then nature will destroy them. The bird that can't fly or hunt doesn't eat. The bird that doesn't eat doesn't survive. Bye bye Baby Bird. It is Momma Bird's responsibility to prepare her young to survive and it is our responsibility as leaders and Parents to prepare our young to survive. We don't do that by coddling them."

Authors Chris McAlister and Bret Burchard in their book "Leading for Impact" talk about how we as coaches, parents and leaders are letting down our kids, students and athletes by not holding them accountable and  how too many leaders are leading for validation, not impact, and modern leadership development isn’t helping people become great leaders.

Long Beach Men's Volleyball Coach Alan Knipe has been the leader of one of the most consistently excellent volleyball programs in the country for the last decade. In his tenure as the Long Beach coach, he took a four year hiatus to coach the 2012 USA Men's team in London. Here, Knipe talks about why WHEN we give feedback is as important as what feedback we give as coaches.

"It's not that it doesn't matter that we just made an error or we made a mistake or we did something out of character that doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter right now. It matters after the match in between sets in video session tomorrow as we go on Mindset Monday. It doesn't matter right now because it doesn't have anything to do with us winning the next point. So once you can kind of get to that point that you can go back later and talk about things you don't have to fix everything real time because it's not going to help them win the next point. "

"If you were to use for example, like an American baseball pitcher or any golfer, you look at that situation when they're getting ready to pitch and no one says anything to them. When someone's getting ready to hit a golf ball, they're going to go to their backswing, the whole crowd, they put signs up that say quiet, be quiet. And it's a technique sport, right so they don't want that. But in volleyball, even though it's a highly highly technical sport and techniques work, we tend to constantly coach about their last play and their technique, but then ask them to be really dialed in and focus on the next point. I don't think that the athletes over time can mentally do that very well. So the idea is to try to be so good in training that we can truly allow them to be as freed up as possible on the court to make the proper reads during the game. But more importantly than how, and this is probably the most vital part, is in between the points as they prep for the next point, is their total focus on just winning the next point there."

Coach and Communication Specialist Betsy Butterick was on a recent podcast talking about one of the most frustrating elements of being an athlete; the inconsistent coach. In interviewing an athlete, Butterick continued...

"She was like, I'm just ready for the season to be done which was very different than how she felt during basketball. I'm like, Well, why what's going on? And she said, I'm just tired of my coach's inconsistencies. And when I started asking more questions about that, she's like, some days, he shows up hot and he's mad when we start practice, and it's a long day. And then he comes back the next day and wants to be everybody's best friend. He just doesn't have a consistency in how he shows up. And that really makes it tough for the players because they don't know what to expect. And they're not really sure how to interact with him, depending on the mood he might be in or frustrated from the last game. And so it just makes that environment very difficult for them. I think that's true for parents and administrators as well, like the biggest headaches come from coaches, that are just not consistent with how they enforce policies or how they communicate. That you can be going on Friday and play on Saturday, JP is going on Friday but doesn't play till the following Wednesday, with no explanation. And so you know, those inconsistencies just produce headache after headache after headache, and they frustrate everybody around the coach. And I think something related to that maybe is just, for lack of a better word, is hypocrisy."
This inconsistency can be the death knell to a culture and can lost your athletes trust and focus quickly. Butterick's point that it is not just an athlete that suffers but Parents and other coaches as well. Consistency is a must in leading a program.
Finally, from another future Hall of Fame Coach, Nebraska's John Cook talks about how his newfound love of riding and roping has translated into him being a better coach for his players.
"When I'm roping on horses, I'm not thinking about any of that stuff. I'm thinking about staying on the horse, doing my job on something that's very fast, but I'm also learning. I'm learning a ton from these cowboys. You might think this is nuts, but I wish I could write a book on this. Now I've got the chapters in my head. But what I've learned from the cowboys and how they work with horses is made me a better coach because especially when you're riding a horse, you're trying to get that horse to trust you. You're trying to get them to do what you want him to do, but you can't talk to him. That's one of the things I see with young coaches. They all want to talk all the time. When you go watch these young coaches, they all stop every two minutes. They've got to talk, talk, talk. It's what I see in club practices, because they have to show everybody how much they know. Horses can't talk. So you have to get them to feel and trust and understand what you want and so it's now how I look at coaching. And as I'm riding horses, I got to get these players to trust and feel what they need to do and the cowboys have really really helped me with this."
It's an exemplary trait for a successful coach to always be looking for another edge. Using riding and roping, Cook reexamines how he relates to his athletes to get the best out of them. 
What can we do in our lives and hobbies to elicit a better coach inside all of us?