Our Great Coach on this episode is Slavomir Lener.

Slavomir is presently the director of the Czech National Ice Hockey Team, and the Union Coach who leads the development of all coaches in the Czech Republic.

However he is most known as the co- head coach of the teams that won gold at the 1996 World Cup

and 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, this win being one of the greatest sporting successes in the history of the country.

He has also coached in the National Hockey League in America, with the Calgary Flames and Florida Panthers, in the Swedish Elite League with Lulea and Linkoping and in Germany with Dusseldorf.

Slavomír is a master coach whose insight transcends ice hockey and is applicable in any endeavor where groups of people are trying to come together to produce a better outcome than they can alone.

He is self reflective, driven and passionate about using the sport of ice hockey to make a difference in the lives of youth. He has also been involved in coaching long enough to see how the craft has evolved, and how it needs to remain fresh and spontaneous if it is to remain relevant.

He is a legend in his own country and so it was a great privilege to interview him, and some of the key points that stayed with me afterwards were

• The role that learning and development plays in his growth as a coach and the story he shares about heart surgeons to illustrate this.
• How the first task when you are traying to improve a team culture is to set up the guard rails that will shape the atmosphere in the dressing room, and that these rules must be positive and not necessarily strict.
• And The story he shares about winning the gold medal in 1998 and how the team did not go to the Olympics with the expectation of winning but, rather just playing good hockey and proving to people that they were the best team on the planet.

This was a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as I did.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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