930. Why Don't Great Players Make Great Coaches?

I've always wondered why some great players struggle to become great coaches—and why good (not great) players, the ones who weren’t always at the top, often turn out to be great coaches.

Our personal story, our expectations, and even our success can sometimes get in the way of truly seeing and developing others.

If you’ve ever led a team, raised a kid, coached someone, or even just tried to help a friend, you need this episode. It’s not about cloning people into mini-versions of you. It’s about suspending your story long enough to actually see their story.

Let’s talk about how to lead from the shadows and be the coach you wish you had.

Let's get it! 

Transcript

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Have you ever wondered why good players often become great coaches, but great players usually don't become great coaches? It seems like it should be the other way around, right? If you're a great player, it feels like coaching will be a natural next step, but most of the time it's not. Great. Players usually make terrible coaches and good. Not great, but good. Players end up becoming some of the best coaches. And I've always questioned why is that? Ed Mylett asked Hall of Famer, Deion Sanders, this exact question. He said, why are you such a great coach when most players aren't? And Deion said, because I'm not trying to make them me. My job is to create the best version of them. That's key. Deion stepped back from his stats, from his spotlight, from all the accolades he left his greatness behind and became just good again for them. And that's what great players have to do. If they wanna become great coaches, they have to step back, let go of their accomplishments, use their resume. Sure, but don't try to recreate it in someone else. Now your job is to develop the player in front of you in their way, their timing, their style, and really it's a paradox. See, I wasn't a top performer in sales. I was good. I was really good, but I wasn't number one. But I became a great coach and I had to ask myself, why is that? And truthfully, I think it's because I had just enough, just enough talent to hang with the big boys, but not enough to coast. So I've always had to overcompensate. I had to dig deeper. I had to figure it out on my own. And that effort, that grind built something different in me, A work ethic, an obsession with the details. I became a scientist in my craft. See, I was never the most talented. I wasn't the smartest or the sharpest. I was oftentimes the last to be picked on teams because I was undersized. But I was also underestimated. Nobody feared me. Nobody scouted me. And because of that, they left me alone. I got good right there in plain sight in the shadows, and that's what great coaches do. They live in the shadows. They see the shadows. They notice what's missing. They see the adjacent possible and things that are almost there. And those are the hidden next steps. They help them see glimpses of their potential just a little bit more each time. And when the player sees more, they end up doing more. And inch by inch, they develop that player. And when they do, that player and that coach become more together. See, that's the game. I can't do the work for you, but I can show you where to look. I can help you become someone who can do the work. And when a good player turned great, coach meets a player who wants more, that's where greatness happens. Now on the flip side, I'm not saying that great players cannot become great coaches. They can, but they've gotta leave their past behind. They can't create a team full of clones, a bunch of you's. What made you great might not work for them. And so the challenge, and now your job is to take fragments of what worked for you and. Mold it into their style. It's like little puzzle pieces. You customize your coaching, and you adapt. Leave your resume where it is. Walk away from your greatness and step back into the grind. Start at good again. Look in the shadows, see what's missing. Develop the player in front of you as they are, not as they were. Use their natural gifts, their wiring, their past potential, things they don't even know about. Find it in the shadows. Reveal it to 'em. Take pieces of what you've learned. Bend it, break it, and rebuild it and customize it for them. Do that and do it for each player because every one of 'em are different. See great players who struggle to coach. They expect everyone to be like them, to think like them. To train like them, to want it like they wanted. And it's just not the case. Everyone's different. Everyone has a different upbringing, a different pain, a different personality. Some had it easy and some had it rough. It doesn't matter. You can't judge that. You gotta suspend your story so you can see their story, and I think that's the real divide. Great players trying to coach. They tend to be judgmental, but great coaches, they're experimental. They're curious. They're creative, they're patient. And they're willing to pull out the best of someone who doesn't even know it's there yet. That's what it means to be a coach., Be the coach that you wish you had. Let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.