If you want your team to communicate more, tell them what to say.

“It’s more important to be decisive than to be right.” - Brad Faxon, 8-time PGA Tour winner, talking about putting.

A terrific podcast with Josh Merkel, a national championship winning coach at Randolph-Macon. Well worth your time.

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay." - Harold Wilson

How much are you willing to change as a coach? A lot of coaches get stuck in a certain way of doing things, it’s what they know, and they just continue to do it. When things aren’t working, the adjustment is to work harder and do it better. Put in more time and figure it out.

Good stuff here from Mike Tomlin on expectations.

Production does not equal leadership. I think a lot of organizations get this wrong, and we do it with our teams. We think the best players are supposed to be the leaders. We equate their ability to produce with their ability to lead the team, and then we spend a lot of time complaining about a lack of leadership.

How do you handle setbacks? There is a great chapter in Daniel Coyle’s “The Culture Code” about Gregg Popovich and the Spurs, after having just lost game 6 of the NBA finals to a Ray Allen’s famous dagger three-pointer off of a loose ball rebound.

“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”

When emotion takes over, the message becomes irrelevant.

I got a great text last week from a former player of mine at the University of Maine who shared a picture of him finishing a marathon in under three hours. He thanked me for the way we coached him at Maine, and told me that the mental toughness we helped instill in him through our program was a big part of his life today - and a big reason why he was able to finish a marathon in under three hours. He’s hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon in the future. I’ve said this many times - texts like that are really the reason why I coach.