Chapter 8·The Coaching Gap
Fulfillment
What makes a person come alive, and how to coach from there.
THE LEADER WITHIN
both at full strength, at the same time
VALUES: FOLLOW THE ANGER
Ask anyone their values and the answer is instant, and mostly borrowed. The reliable window: anger. It is the alarm that goes off when a value gets violated. Anger has an address.
THE ANCHOR
"Be the turtle." One concrete image of a player at their best survives pressure in a way a paragraph never will. Don't supply it. Wait. The ones they find themselves are the ones that hold.
THE WHY THAT CARRIES THE HOW
Players don't break because the how is too hard. They break because the why is too thin. Connect the hardest days to the deepest reasons.
AND THEN THERE IS YOU
In 2023 the NCAA surveyed six thousand coaches: one in three is barely holding the rope, and almost none say it out loud. Everything on this page applies to you before it applies to your players. Whether the thing you're sacrificing for is still a real why, or just momentum wearing the jersey of a why.
“Fulfillment is being wholly alive. It has almost nothing to do with feeling good.”
One thing to try
Ask one player this week to tell you about a moment in his life when he was at his best. Any moment, his choice. Then just listen.
The Coaching Gap