Episode 39 – What defines success for a coach?
What defines success for a coach?
Is it wins and losses? Championships won? Leading athletes to new personal bests? Having one athlete win an Olympic medal while destroying 20 of them?
These are the common notions that we associated with success.
But is it the best way? In this episode of the Magness & Marcus show, we look at how we, as coaches, should define success. Going back to our early days where the holy grail was coaching athletes to the Olympic Trials and the Olympic games, we look at how initially success is defined externally. We judge ourselves based on the traditional measures of success. As young coaches, this business model of coaching is ingrained into our mentality. We define ourselves by the races won, championships earned, or PR’s gained by our athletes. We have thoughts of “If only I coach an athlete to a state/NCAA/Olympic Trials championship, then I’ll be a great coach.” But as master coaches will tell you, that’s a hollow journey.
What the business model misses is the human side of coaching. As Jon phrases it in the podcast, our goal should be to help athletes grow as people. If we do that, the performances will come. Looking across domains, we discuss how the great movie directors of our time don’t judge their success based on box office sales. They tend to base it on making good art. As director Stephen Spielberg said “I’m not really interested in making money. That’s always come as the result of success, but it’s not been my goal.”
Thanks for giving it a listen, and if you could do us a huge favor and rate the show on iTunes that would be great!
Steve and Jon
@stevemagness
@jmarpdx
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
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Thank you for this. Incredibly helpful. I appreciate all of the podcasts.