Glenn Paulley, PhD 🌾🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🥌

We often think coaching is all about the workouts, game plans, and the technical stuff. It's not. That stuff matters. But it misses the stuff that actually make a difference. Here's 23 coaching principles I've collected over two decades of coaching everyone from high school kids to some of the world's best: 1. Coach from dependence to independence. Coaching is about making your own job kind of obsolete. Works towards having our athlete be more self-sufficient, with a coaches role moving towards a kind of mentor and partnership. 2. Coaching comes from conversation. And most of that is observing and listening. The athlete tells you everything you need to know…if you're paying attention. 3. Caring comes first. If they know you don’t care, the perfect plan won’t matter. The old saying “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” is still true. 4. Standards without warmth makes them fragile. Warmth without standards leaves them lost. You need both. In parenting research they call this authoritative instead of authoritarian. 5. The story they tell themselves runs the show. Coach the story. Knowledge doesn’t change behavior. Story does. “It’s hard to outperform your self-concept.” 6. You can't want it more than they do. The day you start trying to is the day you've lost the room. Your job is to set the conditions and pull the lever, not push the cart. 7. Effort is contagious. So is dread. Pay attention to which one you're spreading. You are the thermostat not the thermometer. You're changing the room temp. 8. Challenged, not threatened. We do our best when we're stretched, not when our worth is on the line. Hard things land different when failing doesn't mean you're worthless. Stretch the challenge. Keep the worth out of it. 9. People perform best when they feel valued as a person and not just an athlete, that they belong, and when they’re performing out of joy instead of fear. Joy is a performance enhancer. 10. Reward what you preach. If you say process and only celebrate outcomes, the brain hears the second message.What is honored will be cultivated. Watch what you praise. 11. Action is the antidote to anxiety. One purposeful step convinces the brain the situation is manageable. Don't wrestle the monster. Point at the work and start moving. 12. Confidence is quiet. Insecurity is loud. Arrogance sits on insecurity. Confidence sits on experience. The brashest voice in any room is usually the one most afraid of being found out. Real confidence comes from earned experience. Do the work. 13. Ego kills sync. It crowds out the signals that lead to connection. Always stay in learning mode. Be curious. “Once you stop learning about your athletes, you've stopped coaching.” Brother Colm O’Connell 14. Skills come from struggle. Don’t over coach or step in too early. Rescue them too soon and they don’t keep what they almost figured out. Productive failure beats premature help. 15. Plant seeds constantly. And water them. Any coach, teacher, or parent will tell you of the kid who told them years later they finally get it. We can’t force understanding. Just keep cultivating the space for it to grow. 16. Define success yourself. Don't import a definition that gets in the way of the person you're trying to help become. The borrowed definition almost always fails the person who's actually in front of you. 17. Lower the bar, raise the floor. Too often we focus on those rare days when everything aligns. You can’t control when those show up. Focus on raising your floor, making the average days better. 18. If they can only succeed with you, you’ve failed. The goal is to give people autonomy and agency. To teach them how to do the thing, and then ultimately let them go. 19. Teach, don’t just train. Too often, we get stuck in prescriptive mode. Remember, you are fundamentally changing the person in front of you. 20. Coaching is pattern recognition. We pick up patterns when we pay attention. Build a database deep enough that you can see what an athlete is showing you. Then trust it. 21. Be in love with an idea, just don't marry it. Don't become the person who swears by a single diet for everyone. Every system eventually fails, and if you've tied your identity to it, you go down with the ship. 22. The car ride home is the practice. After a hard race or a bad workout, the brain is wide open. What you say in those minutes lasts longer than anything you said in practice all season. 23. Get out of your own way. Most of coaching is helping people stop self-sabotaging. Under-preparation is a coping strategy. The athlete who skips the work is protecting his ego.