Learn how to keep a True Growth Mindset in your Coaching. It’s a must read article for all coaches!
I think on a very basic level, everybody involved in coaching wants to be better than they already are. Many of us are former players who have the instinct for improvement and the desire for hard, productive work. There are a few keys to keeping that true growth mindset going with us as long as we are involved in coaching basketball.
1. Avoid arrogance. Not one human being has ever known all there is to know about basketball. The great chess champion Magnus Carlsen once stated that he makes all sorts of tactical and positional mistakes every game he plays. Nobody can fully master a sport. Arrogance makes you defensive when somebody legitimately questions your tactics or your execution. Defensiveness is the opposite of growth mindset, it prevents us from hearing what criticism is necessary from others, and therefore prevents us from making changes when appropriate. Don’t fall into the trap. No matter how great your playing career, no matter how many wins you’ve had as a coach, be open minded to learning more.
2. Work hard, and also, work smart. The road map to coaching success has been laid out by hundreds of exceptional individuals from the past. They have often written books, manuals, guides that explain how they did what they did. Most of them were just ordinary people who constructed extraordinary circumstances for their athletes. Working hard means taking the time to learn from others, and not just from what they did well, but learning also from their mistakes. Just as we want our players to be exceptional learners, we too need to follow suit and aggressively learn as much as we can.
3. Be the core values you wish to instill. John Wooden said this that no amount of telling an athlete how to behave would be better than being the living embodiment of those values. Gandhi noted that we should be the change we wish to see in the world. There are a lot of coaches who want shortcuts to the top, who hope for their teams to be successful overnight and for praise to be heaped upon them as sort of conquering geniuses. Rather than taking a disciplined daily approach, they seek any path to the top, regardless of sustainability. On the other hand, successful coaches are the ones who go out each and every day and try to improve themselves, try to demonstrate what they want their athletes to be. The more we seek shortcuts, the less likely we are actually to climb the mountain.
4. Be wary of the general tribe. While relying on the lessons of history to guide us as coaches, it can be dangerous to rely solely on our contemporaries. There exist many truly incredible people in the coaching profession, but ultimately it is a journey of self-discovery. The tribe of coaches often falls into group-think, patting each other on the back, with a limited sense of growth mindset. Great coaches must go on the hero’s journey, wherein they face the world and go through the struggles themselves. Most of the great coaches I am aware of took over struggling (or non-existent) programs and built them from mostly scratch. Their vision and perseverance are what allowed them to become great along with the way. Group-think gets in the way of that kind of resilience and gives us an easy excuse for when things don’t go well. Avoid a coaching life of security and comfort at all costs.
Ultimately the coaching profession is a journey, and those on the correct path are sure to run into major obstacles. It is the response to those challenges that separate the great from the not-so-great.
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