I recently had the chance to spend an evening listening to legendary football coach, Lou Holtz.  Ok, so there were about 2,000 people in the room – I still felt like Lou was talking directly to me.

I’d never given much thought to the skinny, bespectacled coach before that night.  Yet Lou Holtz, the only coach in the history of college football to lead six different teams to bowl games, made a lasting impression on me that night.

Here are some of the insights that will stay with me:

• “Coaching is coaching.  You get to help other people be successful. That lasts a lifetime.”
• “Being a coach is a chance to be significant in life.”
• The title “coach” comes from above (the administration); the title “leader” comes from below (your players).
• A coach (in any sport) needs four things to be successful:
  1. A vision for the program.
  2. A plan to achieve the vision.
  3. To lead by example everyday.
  4. To hold people accountable.

• When his son Skip asked his dad about what to say to a new team for the first time, Coach responded, “You tell them that you come here to become us. We are not here to become you. And that’s based on five assumptions I make about every player I’ve ever coached:
  1. You want to graduate;
  2. You want to be a champion;
  3. You want to be a great performer;
  4. You want to have respect for your teammates;
  5. And you want to contribute positively as a member of our society.”

• He told an incredible story about the importance of trust on a team.  On his South Carolina team that went 0-11 in his first year, he quipped, “Records can be deceiving. We weren’t as good as our record indicated.” It was a difficult year, he admitted, one in which his wife had major cancer surgery for the second time, his son fell into a coma and his mother died.

The next year, Coach learned that two former players from that 0-11 team were arrested for selling drugs.

“I was so mad because I wanted to know why those players didn’t trust me,” Holtz said. “Nobody said anything. And then Jonathan Martin stood up and said, ‘Coach, I trust you. A lot of my teammates trust you. But I look around and see some people I don’t trust.’  And then Andre Dixon said, ‘I’ve got to lock my locker when I take a shower.’

He told them to go home, make three columns on a piece of paper and write down the following:

1.    Things I don’t like about myself that I can’t change,

2.    Things I don’t like about myself that I can change and

3.    Everything I did last year I regret.

Coach ordered a tombstone and met with the team the next day. The entire team buried those papers. “We made the commitment that we would trust our teammates, on the field and off the field”, Holtz recalled.

That South Carolina team would go on to post the third-best single-season turnaround in college football history, going 8-4 in Holtz’s second season and defeating vaunted Ohio State in the Outback Bowl.

Yes, looks can be deceiving.  I never thought I’d glean so much from a short, skinny man in glasses!

Effective coaching is not so much what you say but what you ask.  Asking your players powerful questions is much more productive than telling them what to do.  True coaching is about developing a strong relationship with your players for the purpose of THEIR growth and development.  It’s about helping your players fulfill their goals and commitments.  Applying effective communication skills in coaching helps you to develop a strong relationship with your players.

One of a crucial coaching skill is having open coaching conversations with your athletes. Coaching conversations are side-by-side interactions where both of you are looking at where the athlete is headed and discussing what is the next step they need to take to get them there.  Your job is to conduct dialogues of inquiry with your players where ultimately they discover the next action to take.

As a coach, you set the context for these dialogues.  Setting the stage for effective coaching conversations begins during the recruiting phase and is reinforced every time you address your team.  Your players need to know clearly who you are and what you are trying to accomplish in your program.  Players need to know from the outset of their relationship with you that their goals and dreams are in alignment with yours. Effective coaching dialogs help to facilitate strong team communication and it creates an open atmosphere in the team.

Once a “good fit” is established, then the dialogues of inquiry can take place.  To coach anyone effectively, you need to know what they are committed to in their life.  Once you know what they are up to, it’s time to ask questions that will reveal the proper path to getting them where they want to go!