The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life

Our Great Coach on this episode is Tim Jankovich a former player and now basketball coach.As a player he was one of the winningest players in Kansas State history. In each of his seasons at KSU, his team ranked in the National top-20 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.He has been a College Assistant or Head Coach for 38 years and in that time his teams have won seven regular season conference championships, five league tournament titles and made 10 NCAA appearances.He is presently the Head Coach of the Division 1 Southern Methodist University Mustangs. In his 4 years at the helm the team has won the 2016-17 American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament championships and made the 2017 NCAA Tournament.In 2017 he was named American Athletic Conference Coach of the year.Tim Jankovich is the type of coach we all hope our own children get to experience one day. The long arc of his coaching journey gives him a broad and balanced view on life, and has taught him that as a leader, winning is never as satisfying as seeing people succeed in life.He believes in taking your time, and not letting the moment speed you up or disrupt your decision making. And that quite often the best way to enable this as a coach is to step back, be calm and not try to exert undue influence on the game.Tim has a great way of people, and some of the key parts of this interview for me were,How great teams find a way to win when they have statistically below average games, and this is in fact how successful seasons are built.The importance or relaxing as a coach and portraying a sense of calm to the team as they will take their cue from you when it comes to dealing with emotional pressure.And that we are all born with a certain amount of self-belief or insecurity at birth, but this doesn’t have to dictate your life, you can develop self-belief through the choices you make about the environment you choose to place yourself in.This was a wonderful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays episode is on the topic of Vision, and it features audio quotes from 12 Great Coaches.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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Great Coach on this episode is Rod Macqueen.Rod is an Australian Rugby Union Coach.Rod started coaching in the 1980’s before taking over the NSW Waratahs in 1991. From there he went on to become the inaugural coach for the Brumbies in the newly formed Super Rugby competition.In 1997 he was appointed as the Head Coach of the Australian Wallabies, and the team goes on to win the 1999 World Cup, the Tri Nation series for the first time, the Bledisloe Cup 3 years in a row and then it culminates with being the first Australian team to win over the British & Irish Lions in 2001.Rod is also successful business owner and in this interview talks about the similarities between sport and business when it comes to leadership, culture and strategy.Some of the other key highlights of our discussion include:The journey of the Australian team towards winning the World Cup, and how he laid out the path to that victory by focusing the on 3 key elements of the journey; the beginning , the journey and the destiny.His views on the fine line between arrogance and confidence.How he used business plans to outline the vision for this teams, and a key part of that plan was the coaching succession plan to replace him.And The importance of empowering the players to make decisions, so that as the coach can look forward and try to see what is going to happen next.This was a terrific conversation with Rod, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays episode is on the topic of Learning , and it features audio quotes from 11 coaches that we have interviewed on the podcast.Join our Patreon community and help us build one of the worlds great leadership libraries at www.patreon.com/GreatCoachesIf 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 thegreatcoachespodcast@gmail.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Great Coach on this episode is English cricket coach Kevin Sharp.Kevin Sharp is an English cricket coach and a former first-class cricketer.He played 432 professional games and scored nearly ten thousand first-class runs.After retirement, he became a batting coach at his former team Yorkshire where he helped to develop a number of players who have gone on to represent England including the current Test captain, Joe Root.He was also the batting coach for the English Womens Team which won the World Cup in 1993.In 2018 he was appointed as Head Coach of Worcestershire and that year they won T20 Championship.Kevin is a coach with a deep passion for helping others overcome, in his words, the mental anguish and pain that he felt as a young batsmen. He talks about the pain of living with the thought of underachievement in his career, and how this has spurred him on to become the type of coach who can talk confidently on both physical and mental techniques. In fact, it was another great coach, Anthony McGrath, who introduced me to Kevin, and shared his own experience of using Kevin’s tools as a player and now as a coach himself.He is spiritual and yet pragmatic, self-effacing, and yet assured enough to talk about the techniques he teaches and how they have helped people succeed at the most elite level.They key highlights for me in this interview areHow anxiety can be a good thing if it helps you focus your mind.The importance of finding a mentor or person that you can trust and talk to, to help you deal with the unexplored territory that might be holding you back.The self-talk diary that he now uses with players to help them exert control over their inner critic and build self-belief.And his love of developing junior talent, and the terrific story he shares about meeting and training the now England captain Joe Root for the first time.Kevin is the type of wise and calm mentor we all wish we could have in our life and I hope you get as much from this discussion 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays episode is on the topic of Values, and it features audio quotes from 22 coaches that we have interviewed on the podcast.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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Great Coach on this episode is Sue Enquist.Sue played softball at UCLA from 1975 to 1978. She was a part of the team that won the 1978 Women's College World Series and became UCLA's first All-American softball player.In 1980 she transitioned into coaching and retired with a career winning percentage of 83. As a coach her teams won 10 national championships, and her produced 65 All-Americans and 15 Olympians.She was also a coach for 1996 Olympic Gold medal winning team.In 2008 she was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of FameSue is a coach who believes in the type of transformational leadership where, in her words, you are more collaborative, truthful and positive in developing skills. She believes that when people feel safe they will go for it when it comes to courage, and that your role as a coach is to be the eyes of the athletes development, and feed them with what she is seeing in their progress.She is also highly articulate, passionate and a firm believer in the importance of curiosity as a leader to ensure that your program is always changing and developing. She also explains that High performing teams have high standards, expectations, accountability and efficient failure recovery routines.Other key parts of the interview were:Her view on the importance of a next event mindset, in keeping failure small relative to your integrity and character.Her advice on managing our weak voice that comes up from our subconscious, and building on our strong voice.And How, as a white women of privilege, she feels that she must advocate for people who didn’t have the access to excellence that she did.This was a thought provoking 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays episode is on the topic of Culture, and it features audio quotes from 20 Great Coaches that we have interviewed on the podcast.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 thegreatcoachespodcast@gmail.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Great Coach on this episode is Indian National Badminton Coach, Pullela Gopichand.As a player Gopichand won his first National Badminton Championship title in 1996, and went on to win the title five times in a row, until 2000.In 1999 he won the Toulouse open championship in France and the Scottish open championship. And then in 2001 he won the prestigious All England Open Badminton Championships.He started coaching in 2004, and in 2008 founded the Gopichand Badminton Academy.In the last 120 years, India has won 35 Olympic medals; Gopichand has coached 3 of these from the Academy he set up.He also coached players to win 4 World Championship medals, including 1 Gold and 15 Super series titles.Gopi is a coach with a deep appreciation of the role that mindfulness, passion and belief can play in shaping individual performance.He believes that your mental strength comes from the efforts you put in to being physically strong , and that this physical strength comes from your training, recovery, nutrition and overall lifestyle decisions.He is also driven to create change in the world around him through, sharing his learning on what is required to be a world champion with whoever is willing to put in the work and make the required sacrifices.Some of the other key parts of this interview were:His belief that science, not the athlete should drive the athletic system in India. And he describes this system as being coach-led, sport science driven and athlete centric.The importance of athletes managing their life outside of their sport, so that their mindset develops in a holistic way.And The importance of having people around you who don’t just tell you good things, but rather the truth that you have to hear.It took a long time to reach Gopi for this interview, and I am so glad I preserved. His approach to life and leadership resonated with me strongly, and I hope you enjoy this interview as much 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays episode is on the topic of Resilience and is brought to you by the world record holding Australian cricket coach John Buchanan.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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.