B Is For Books: 5 Books That Made Me A Better Coach

Join me for a fun series. My mission, and I have decided to accept it, is to write a post based on each letter of the alphabet. My inner English major is so excited about this project… and my inner nerd is even more excited! Check back as he tackled the intangible aspects of the sport… from A to Z.

I’m a book nerd… I love them! So much so that I put together a summer reading list every year to make sure I get my reading fix. These are books that have helped me over the years, and I’m sure you’ll find them useful too. I hope this article makes it easy for you to learn!

Here are five books I come back to again and again…and they never let me down.

Gender and Competition: How Men and Women Approach Work and Play Differently by Kathy DeBoer

I, like many former athletes my age, only played for male coaches. So when I decided I wanted to coach, I did it the only way I knew how: as a man. The result? womb disaster. Sounds familiar? Or are you a coach wondering why your women’s team isn’t “aggressive” enough? I bet you will love this book because it contains a lot of good stories and tips.

DeBoer says that culturally, young women view winning and losing as opposed to the “closeness that women value” and avoid it in gambling activities. As she reads this, her eyes will be opened to the type of environment she can create to help her women’s team embrace competition.

Daniel Coyle’s Talent Code

He had me at the book’s tagline: “Greatness is not born. It grows. That’s how.” I’m sure we’ve all had those athletes who are pretty good, but we look at them and see who they are. could be if they just pushed themselves. We challenge them to try new things, but they are perfectionists and hate to make mistakes, so they fall short of their potential. They play it safe, they stay comfortable…they’re good, not great.

The whole point of the book is that we are in control of our talent and our greatness… that we can work on it if we do it the right way: “struggling in certain specific ways, operating at the limit of your capacity, where you make mistakes, It makes you smarter.” By reading the book, we learn how to make this happen for our players.

Silent Force by Tony Dungy

Unlike the first two books, this is more of a biography than a “how to”. I think the title of this book could have been “Quiet Confidence” as well. Think of the inner strength and confidence Dungy must have had in himself and his way of doing things to be able to break tradition and coach football on his own terms. What a great lesson for all of us to learn!

To have confidence in your vocation as a coach when the results are not turning out as you would like. Be confident in your training style and philosophy when others tell you that you cannot be successful using their methods. The book details Dungy’s career from player to Super Bowl champion…and all the ups and downs in between. But the one thing that is a constant theme throughout the book is his commitment to his coaching style.

Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

When I first entered the workforce, the company I worked for had a 7 Habits seminar right there in the office. Over the course of three days, I learned how to be a professional and how to work well with others… I’d say that was a pretty powerful three day period!

The first three habits are about us as individuals, the next three are about interacting with others, the last habit is for all of us to pursue a lifetime of learning…always seeking to improve. As you progress through the book, habits work to transform us from dependency to independence to interdependence. Interdependence means mutual trust in each other… or a “team”! I have used this book as a captains training manual and also as a team book with quite a bit of success.

Wooden: A lifetime of observations on and off the pitch by John Wooden

So often when people talk about team chemistry, leadership, or team dynamics, they seem to think, “Well, that’s great…if I have time to do it.” I think it’s partly because coaches understand the tangibles: setting up a practice plan, putting drills together, making corrections to specific behaviors. I also think it’s partly because coaches don’t understand the ins and outs of those intangibles (and how to measure whether we’ve been successful), so we tend to steer clear of them.

But if we are to believe the Pyramid, then a successful team is built on intangibles. What Coach Wooden has brilliantly given us with his Pyramid is a way to measure the success of those intangibles. Build these Pyramid of Success blocks into your practice plans and you’ll be well on your way to reaching your goals! There is more to this book than the Pyramid… but those are the pages of my book that are very worn.

There are so many books out there that will make us better coaches… these are my top five, but they certainly aren’t the only ones that have impacted my life as a coach.