Coach Development: Know Thyself

On the surface, it may not seem like rowing and football have a lot in common. Perhaps rowing coaches and football coaches have even less in common.

On the collegiate level, football coaches are raking in millions of dollars, ensconced in their secure practice facilities, rarely putting in an appearance at any of those “mandatory” all-staff meetings for which the rest of us have to show up.

Similarities between the NFL coaching experience and that of our National Team coaches, for whom coaching an Olympic crew is often not even their full-time job, can seem essentially non-existent.

That’s why, over a decade ago, I was surprised to find myself devouring legendary football coach Pete Carroll’s book, Win Forever. And I’ve been even more surprised by how often I’ve returned to it in the years since.

I didn’t think of myself as a Pete Carroll fan when I picked up the book, but the success he had with USC and the Seahawks, making him one of only three head coaches ever to win a collegiate national championship and a Super Bowl, is undeniable.

My lasting takeaway from the book, and the reason I include it in the syllabus for the course on coaching that I teach at CRI’s Institute for Rowing Leadership, is how concisely Carroll articulates his core philosophy and the benefits he experienced by being able to do so.

There’s no long-winded back story or a pyramid hung up on the wall—just one clear idea: competition.

In the introduction, Carroll recounts how, after being fired by the Patriots in 2000, he was feeling lost and defeated. Inspired by another coaching great, John Wooden, who took 16 years to figure out his own immutable rules for success, Carroll set about defining his own.

He understood, as he says in Win Forever, that “one of the keys to success lies in knowing and believing in yourself.”  And what Carroll knows is that he is a competitor. He is driven by a single thought: “to do things better than they had ever been done before.”  And that’s how he decided to begin leading his teams.

It was shortly after defining this singular organizing principle that Carroll decided to leave the NFL and interviewed for the head-coaching position at USC. In the interviews, he unveiled his newly defined philosophy and, throughout that process, sensed a newfound confidence and belief in himself.

“I had never felt so prepared and well-equipped to deal with the challenges of taking over a program,” he recounts.

This, coming from someone who already had been coaching for nearly 30 years—four of them at the helm of an NFL team— speaks volumes about the benefits of defining and articulating your own guiding principles and values.

There’s no need to wait 30, or even 16, years to define your coaching philosophy. Think of what unimaginable successes Carroll or Wooden could have achieved if they had set about the work of articulating their values sooner.

Wherever you are in your coaching career, now is a great time to begin knowing and believing in yourself.

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