How Great Coaches Communcate | Maxwell Leadership

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to you. You listener, you viewer, you leader. Because we know this, you will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today John Maxwell is going to teach us on a subject that will make you better because he’s going to talk about how great coaches communicate. Whether you’re a coach in sports, whether you’re a coach in business, or even coaching your family, this episode will give you a playbook for motivating your team, your group, to reach the next level. After John’s lesson, I’ll be joined by Chris Godie, who chris is a coach. Chris coached football for years and years and years, played the game, coached the game.

Chris and I are going to discuss practical ways you can apply this to your life and leadership. If you would like to download the bonus resource. And by the way, you’re going to want to today because John’s going to give you 17 don’t get overwhelmed. He’s going to do it quick, but he’s going to give you 17 points on how to be an effective coach, how to coach and communicate effectively. So if you’ll download the resource for this lesson, it will help you. You can also watch the episode on YouTube. Just go to forward slash coach. You’ll find the link to YouTube.

You’ll find the link to the worksheet. Let’s get started. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:

Excellent coaches communicate effectively. They really have the ability to communicate in such a way that the players know what to do. Red hourBack. Who was the coach for the Boston Celtics? A very, very successful basketball coach. One of the most successful professional basketball coaches said, it’s not what you tell your players that counts, it’s what they hear. A communicator understands this. The desire of a communicator is to say it in such a way that the people truly understand. And in your notes, I have found that in communication, the two words information and communication many times are often used interchangeably, but they signify different things.

Information is giving out. When you inform people you’re giving out things and communication is getting through. And a lot of people speak, they give out. They give out a lot of information. But your goal and my goal isn’t to give out information. Your goal and my goal is, if we’re going to be a great coach, is to get through. Not to give out, but to get through. So I began to ask myself this question, what should a coach communicate? If you’re going to communicate to your players, what are the essentials? What are you going to communicate? I think, first of all, you want to communicate the value of teamwork.

You want to communicate the fact that if you’re going to be successful, you’re going to be successful together. The law of significance, one is too small of a number to achieve greatness. I think if you’re going to communicate as a coach, you secondly want to communicate the big picture because the law of the big picture says that the goal is more important than the role. I think if you want to communicate successfully the third thing you want to do is communicate each player’s role so they know what their job is. They’re very clear in what they need to do to add value to the team. Because the law of the niche says all players have a place where they add the most value. I think coaches, great coaches want to communicate. Number four the raising of the bar.

They want to get the bar, the standard up higher for the team because the low Mount Everest says as the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates. Number five hard decisions. As a coach, you want to communicate to your team the hard decisions because the law of the chain says the strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link. Number six. Communicate personal challenges. Let them understand that teamwork is tough because the law of the catalyst says winning teams have players that make things happen. Number seven vision and mission. You got to communicate that as a leader.

The law of the compass says vision gives team members direction and confidence. Number eight. Communicate to them the importance of a good attitude. Law of the bad apple tells us that rotten attitudes ruin a team. Number nine. Communicate to them personal responsibility. The law of accountability says teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts. Number ten communicate sacrifice individually and corporately because the law the price tag says the team fails to reach its potential when it fails to pay the price.

Communicate. Number eleven willingness to change. Law of the scoreboard says the team can make adjustments when it knows where it stands. Number twelve. As a coach, communicate the value of each player because the law of the bench says great teams have great depth. Communicate as a coach. 13th the value of the team. The values of the team are very important because the law of identity tells us shared values define that team.

Number 14 as a coach, communicate the need for communication because the law of communication says interaction fuels action. Number 15 communicate leadership as a coach because the law of the edge tells us the difference between two equally talented teams is leadership. Number 16 as a coach, communicate hope and encouragement. The law of high morale says when you’re winning, nothing hurts. Finally, as a coach, communicate no shortcuts. The law of dividend says investing in the team compounds over time. So when you’re saying what should I be communicating to my team? Communicate the laws of teamwork. Now, what’s interesting is the other day somebody sent me the Miami paper and on the front page of the sports section was Dave Wanstadt.

And as he was out on his porch, he had my laws of teamwork and he was reading it and they’d got a picture of him and they were talking about him as a coach communicating. And when I saw the picture of him reading the laws of teamwork, I thought to myself, there’s your guideline as a coach. There’s your guideline of knowing what to communicate. But the question is, after you know what to communicate, how do you communicate? How do you communicate as a coach things that are going to make a difference in the lives of people? I would suggest two things as a coach communicate with passion. In fact, what makes a coach a great coach is that they thoroughly believe the principles they teach. The quote is so true, you should put everything you’ve got into everything you do. And when I think of great, passionate coaches, I think of the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. In 1959, he went to the Green Bay Packers.

In the previous year, they had lost ten games, tied one and won one. Took a team at the bottom of the division, assembled his troops together and held up a football. And because they hadn’t done so well the year before, looked at him and said, this is a football. Thought he’d better introduce it to them. He wasn’t sure they knew what it was. He said, I’m going to teach you how to do the basics. I’m going to teach you how to block. I’m going to teach you how to run.

I’m going to teach you the basics of this game. I’m going to teach you how to tackle. We’re going to start at ground zero. We’re going to do 101 stuff in this camp. He said, I’m going to teach you not only how to do the basics, but I’m going to teach you how to do it with passion. They said, I want you to understand something. The difference between one pro and another pro in the National Football League is not their skill level. They all have it.

They wouldn’t even be here if it was skill issues. The only difference between a winning team and a losing team on Sunday is that the winning team wants the game more than the losing team. They want to win. So he said, I’m going to teach you to be passionate people. And they said, I’m going to expect you to be full of enthusiasm. In fact, he looked at him, I love this quote. He said, if you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, he said, I will fire you with enthusiasm. That’s a great statement.

He built a great team. But if you look at the Vince Lombardi teams, the difference maker was the passion that they had within them. Now, here’s what I want you to understand about coaching. You cannot give what you do not have. If you do not have a passion for what you’re doing, the players will never have a passion for what you’re sharing. Understand that passion is something that has to be given from one to another. It’s not caught out amidair. It’s caught from an individual enthusiasm.

It’s caught from someone. And if you do not have it, you can’t transport it. And if you do not have it, the people that you coach won’t have it. It’s a fact of life. You don’t see a very laid back coach with a passionate team. Never has happened. It’s not going to happen with yours. It always begins with the leader.

It always begins with the coach. And I love the quote, the end of this one section on passion in your notes man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul impossibilities vanish. You know what your job is as a coach? Your job is to be such a good coach that your players start playing, to use the sport phrase, they start playing over their head. That’s your goal. Your goal isn’t to bring the best out of people. Don’t listen to people tell you that kind of stuff. Your goal is to get your players to play over their head. When you get them to play over their head, they’re doing more than their best.

They’re playing on a level they shouldn’t be playing on. They’re doing things that they normally shouldn’t do. They’re beyond their gifts. They’re beyond their strengths. They’re beyond their abilities. That’s the job of the great coaches. The great coaches don’t get the best out of their people. They get the best out of their people to such a degree that they create a synergy on that team that allows that team to play over their heads until they look at their team and they realize their team is doing better than what they’re capable of doing.

And I can tell you that all begins with passion. You’ve never seen a team playing over its head, void of enthusiasm. You’ve never seen a team nonchalantly reproducing more than they have the ability to reproduce. You have never seen a player have his greatest game with a take it or leave it attitude. That’s why when I see a board leader or I see a board coach and they ask me what they should do, I tell them quit. Now. Usually that’s not the advice they’re looking for, but just quit. If you’re a board pastor, quit.

If you’re a board CEO of a company, quit. If you’re board leader, quit. Just do us all a favor. You’re killing the team. You’re killing the team. Get off the team. Leave. When you have a been there, done that mindset, you’ll never get a team that can reach its potential.

So communicate with passion as a coach. One other thing I would talk about how to communicate, and that is communicate with simplicity. Keep it simple. Effective leaders have the ability to boil down complex issues into concise, straightforward statements of what should be done. And since I started with Vince, let me just close this first quality of a great coach with Vince Lombardi, who was at a coach’s convention for three days of which they were taking turns standing up in front of other coaches and giving their offense and defense strategies as coach. Many of them were complex, many of them were very difficult to understand. Many of them were highly sophisticated. Finally, on the third day was Vince Lombardi’s turn and he got up and he said, well, I’ve done my best to understand what’s been said.

John Maxwell:

He said my offense and defense strategy is kind of simple. When we’re on the offense, we have the ball and we do our best to run the ball for a touchdown and we figure our greatest ODS are knocking all the defensive players down. So it AIDS us in scoring, said my defensive strategy. It’s kind of simple too, because they have the ball and our goal is to knock all their players down again. Because he said, I have found in coaching, if your team knocks their team down, you win. So simple. So simple.

Mark Cole:

As leaders, it’s so tempting to feel like we need to do it all. We put this enormous pressure on ourselves to accomplish more today than we did yesterday, to earn more this year than we did last year. And somehow along the way we still want to be present and more available in our personal relationships. I would suggest something has to give. Doing it all is a myth of leadership. In fact, the best leaders are the ones who delegate, operate out of their strength and set others up to do the same. If you want to discover that kind of freedom and that kind of effectiveness, BELAY can help. BELAY pairs busy leaders with highly vetted US based virtual assistants that save them from administrative overwhelm and direct them back to working on what matters most.

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Mark Cole:

Hey, welcome back.

I mentioned in the top of the show that Chris is here. Chris, you’re a leader of coaches. You coach our sales team, you coach our corporate solutions team and you’ve actually coached the game that you played football. And I love it because I want to start with a quote that Phil Jackson said. He said, good teams become great ones when the members trust each other when they trust each other enough to surrender the me for the we. And there is a underlying theme that John has right here that the difference maker in great teams is not talent. A lot of talent out there, right? The difference is a coach that can pull out that special uniqueness that it factor out of the coaches or out of the teams. And I bet you you can attest to that.

Chris Goede:

I can. Unfortunately, I’ve retired from coaching because this principle we’re going to talk about today didn’t work. In the last middle school team I was coaching, I tried my hardest, and I was like, this is not working. But I have had the opportunity to coach at multiple different levels. And I think you’re right, that’s the challenge he talks about. How do we help them build rapport? And to your point, Cohesively, how do we help them bring that out? And it’s through the power of communication. And you and I have been in this leadership space for a long time, and this is something that I know you work really hard on, and I know it’s something that I try to improve on because this is ultimately, I believe, the key to connecting to people. And we say all the time, right, you got to connect with them first before you can lead them through anything.

And I think you got to be able to communicate. We’ve all had leaders in the past or coaches in the past that have been great communicators. And then, well, you know where I’m going, right? They’ve been a little bit of a talk. I want to start off and I just want to pull a couple things out of you. John gave us a ton of content here. It’s like a playbook, right? They can go and download that. I want to pull a couple of areas out that I just want you to give us some practical advice how you’re leading, how you’re working through that, how you’re communicating. And before we even get to the list, I was struck by him saying, hey, there’s a difference between information and communication.

And I know, I was like, oh, man, I know. A lot of times I just want to give information. I really do a good job of communicating. Talk a little bit about when you heard John mention those two things and in your leadership, how do you differentiate them? And then how do you really work on the communication side of getting through to people versus just giving out the information?

Mark Cole:

Yeah. So I’m now 23 years in John’s organization, and even before I came to work at Enjoy back then, Maxwell Leadership, I had the chance to lead. In fact, my first chance to be visibly a leader at Maxwell Leadership again 23 years ago, back in the day, was coaching our company softball team. And I think I’ve told the story on the podcast before, but I am convinced that it was me coaching our team that gave our leaders who are also on that team visibility that I could actually lead in a business environment as well. So going back to softball, I didn’t hit many home runs, I didn’t make many spectacular plays, but I made an impression with leadership that perhaps got me here today. But we talk a lot about communication, how to communicate effectively. Everyone communicates, few connect. John’s written several topics.

He just wrote the book 15 laws of communication. But the thing that and I said 15 laws. It’s actually 16 laws. I just stumbled on myself. It’s actually 16 laws of communication. But we talk a lot about you need to listen more than you need to talk. And I think that’s right. In fact, we’ve talked about listen, learn, then lead.

Make sure you learn something before you leave. We talk about listen to understand, don’t listen to respond. But today, I really want to bring a different angle. Sometimes we as coaches, as leaders, we need to communicate to be heard. And I get it again, I’m not undoing everything we’ve been talking about in this current generation of leading. And that is leaders need to stop talking as much and start listening. But there are times leaders, you need to be heard. That your game plan, coach, needs to be understood.

And so that’s really what I’m talking about today when I say there are times that we need to listen to be heard. And I think that’s what John’s saying. Information is giving stuff out. But when John says that communication is getting through, he’s talking about the same message, the same two groups of people. But are you just getting information out for someone to digest or not? Or are you getting information to get through to that person to make them a valuable part of your team? I would challenge all of us that communicate with something to say. In other words, you’re a coach and you have a game plan that an entire group of people needs to listen to. You’re a leader. You have a team of people that needs to be on the same page.

I would challenge you after you communicate your game plan, after you communicate your direction, to ask three questions of the people you just spoke to. And I’m going to give you those again, you’ve been writing furiously because John gave us a lot of content today. I’m going to ask you to keep the pen in your hand for just another moment because there’s three questions that every coach, every leader needs to ask of his or her people after he delivers the game plan, after he delivers the strategic initiative plan. Number one, you need to ask your people, what did I say? Get them to give you back your talking points. I know the Atlanta Falcons, they’re not a great example. We have won no championship. But I remember the years that we were better than most years, which there was only about two or three of those, and it was the brotherhood. Rise up.

The brotherhood. And everybody in the locker room was using the same language. In other words, the coach sometime asked them, what did I say? And they said, you said brotherhood. You said rise up. There were talking points. That when you can hear what I say, you will repeat what I say.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

So question number one, what did I say? Question number two is what did you hear? In other words, when I say brotherhood, what did you hear? When I say that, that means we’re one for all, that we’ve got each other’s back. We’re not going to go to the media complaining about Matt Ryan’s throwing or Jones coolio Jones, his catching ability. Those were the glory days, guys. We’re not going to go and throw each other on the bus because we’re a brotherhood. So what I heard is we stand up for each other. What I say is the talking points, the buzwords, the repeatable phrases. What I heard is how I interpreted what you said, how I am going to absorb that information. And here’s the third question, what did I say? What did you hear? Question number three is what will you do? And when a great coach, a great communicator, a great leader can hear back, take time.

If you got a 30 minutes spot, only speak for 20 minutes and spend the last ten minutes asking those three questions because it’s in the what will you do? That you begin to see your game plan beginning to be lived out, the tangible handles that makes that game plan, that strategic plan really makes sense. And you can’t know if your plan sticks until you ask them what did you hear or what did I say? What did you hear and what will you do about it?

Chris Goede:

Those are three great questions and I’ve actually seen you live this out and over the last twelve months or so. So whether or not you have the ability to communicate with a lot of words or maybe you don’t communicate with a lot of words, these three questions are relevant for however we communicate. And in leadership meetings, you’ll make sure we’re all paying attention because you’ll just jump up and in the middle you’ll be like, hey, what was it that I said? And then tell the team, what did you hear in your own words? And what’s fascinating about these three questions I love that you use here is the first two you asked during the meeting. The last one you always save to the end of the meeting, which is what are we going to go do about it? And then not only are you making sure that there’s clarity, but then you’re almost having peer to peer accountability based off of how you’ve led us and what you’ve communicated to us.

Mark Cole:

Love that, man.

Chris Goede:

So I love that I wrote them down again. Believe me, I’m aware of them because I am sitting on go at times.

Mark Cole:

For me to call you out, for.

Chris Goede:

Mark to call me out, yeah. And so, man, I love that we haven’t even gotten into the meat of the lesson again. We want you to download that because John gave us so many things, but that right there out of the chute with information or communication is so important. Now, there’s one other thing I want you to unpack a little bit for us. And this could fall under several of these different topics that John gave us. We probably would put it under leadership just because that’s our natural bent. But when I just talked about clarity, it reminded me, man, for a couple years now, especially when we were coming out of COVID But even to this day, you talk a lot about leaders or communicators.

Mark Cole:

Right.

Chris Goede:

There’s a difference between clarity and certainty. Unpack that a little bit as we’re communicating to the team, making sure we’re not just giving information right. We’re trying to get the best out of everybody we can for the benefit of the person first, the organization second, talk about the difference between those two as we’re communicating in that team.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, And in full disclosure, we’ve had him a couple of times on this podcast, a great communicator. Andy Stanley here in the Atlanta area is actually the one that enlightened me on this. And when he taught it really effectively was right at the beginning of COVID and he said, when a leader can’t be certain, a leader must always be. I went, Whoa, whoa, wait.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

Everybody wants certainty. I want certainty. Are we going to be okay? Is everything going to be fine? And oftentimes, as leaders, especially in times of uncertainty, we can’t give certainty.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

Uncertainty. Hence, no certainty.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

But everybody wants it. And when we can’t give it, we start questioning our ability to lead. And that is incorrect. That is a wrong litmus test of saying, can I be certain? The answer is no. What if there’s an economic meltdown? What if the world crumbles and falls apart? We don’t know. We can do our best to be certain. But we’ve all led long enough or most of us have led long enough to know that sometimes the best intentions, the best level of disciplines, leads to a completely different results. That’s because of the life’s uncertainties.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

But you can always be clear. Always be clear. And what that means is I may not can give you the final step, but I can give you the next step. I may not be able to give you the results of what this next step is going to be, but I can tell you this we’re going to all be in sync on this next step. Too often, my leadership has been rendered ineffective because I didn’t take the time to be disciplined in communicating clarity of the next step. Way too many times. I can tell you I’m thinking of issues right now, leadership challenges that I have faced over the years. And so often it’s when I didn’t pursue clarity and I tried to give certainty.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

And we as leaders listening to this podcast, we need to know the next step. And if you don’t know the next step, stay in the hole of your office until you get it, because people need the clarity of the next step.

Chris Goede:

Now you need that next step. What you don’t know, and it’s okay and you’re uncertain is the 15th step.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

You and I are coming off of an incredible week with our nonprofit, and you and John have this massive vision and this just audacious goal, and you’re communicating of saying, hey, let me go back on this movement, is what we were talking about a little bit last week. And John was communicating to us. We didn’t know what this was going to look like, but I was very clear on what the next thing is.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

And the next thing, and the next thing. And so I absolutely love that. As leaders, we need to be aware of that because depending on your personality type, at times you’ll get paralyzed.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Goede:

And then you’ll shut the whole thing down. But if you’re very clear, then just take that next step. We’re completely uncertain on what the future will look like.

Mark Cole:

And let me say one more thing on that, Chris, that’s such a great example of the nonprofit Maxwell Leadership Foundation. We had no idea that five steps, ten steps in really four years, five years in that we were radically going to embrace a new idea, and that was to truly transform a country, to truly transform a community, you’ve got to start with the next generation. You can make moderate changes with the existing generation. You can get a little affirmation from the previous. The older generation say, oh, that’s good, Sonny, go do that. But that moderate change. And that affirmation is not going to transform a country. You’re going to transform a country by the young people, by the next generation, by beginning to develop a values conscience with the next generation.

We wouldn’t have known that when we started. Now we are training over 4 million school age students in different communities around the globe. Why? Because we took the first step that we knew, and we let that step give clarity to the next step. To the next step to where now it is a huge part of what we’re doing.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, that’s great. I appreciate you unpacking that because I think that is key. And remember, we’ve all heard this statement of how you do some things is how we do everything. And I see you and John living that out when it comes to the clarity versus the uncertainty. Okay, we’re off topic a little bit there, but that’s right. You and I tend to do that as we’re making our way to close. I think this is really key, and I want to hit on this. And it’s the last thing John talked about where he talks about communicating with simplicity.

Mark Cole:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

And as a leader or as a head coach or whatever it might be, we know the complex situations that are in our head. You just mentioned a few minutes ago.

Lots of things you’re thinking about complex situations, but man, we have to keep it very simple. And when we do that, it reminded me as I was listening to this lesson, you and I had a conversation. This was a couple of years ago. You went into a team meeting and you were communicating something, and you’re like, hey, it just didn’t feel right. I felt like it was a little complicated. I feel like I missed it. Half the room missed it. And we started talking about the difference.

And this is just a little nugget for you listeners. Your team members either listen in the why we’re doing something or why you’re communicating something, or the how are we going to do this? And you and I began unpacking this, had a little leadership conversation around the difference, and it’s changed the way that we communicate, the way I communicate so that I can do it, be as simple as possible. This is something I know you self admittedly will start thinking and talking. And I know John has worked with you and you’re really getting your messages down to very simple. Why is that so important as we’re communicating to our team, our peers, our spouses, our family, why is simplicity so important to you as a communicator?

Mark Cole:

Well, so every good leader has processed a lot of things before she or he gives a message. And often what we don’t understand as communicators of a message is there’s a difference in the leader’s responsibility to make sure that the idea is fully vetted, it’s fully looked at from multiple angles. What we don’t realize is we lose it at that point. And when we start given all the rabbit chasing that we did, we’re trying to distill it down. We confuse people with what the real issue or what the real expectation is.

Chris Goede:

That’s good.

Mark Cole:

And oftentimes we also want to prove our worth. Hey, we really spent two weeks on this 20 minutes decision, and it’s more to show that we are valued and that we took it serious, when really what people want to hear is just what are we going to do? And what does this mean to me?

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

What are we going to do? And what does this mean to me? What’s the win? Now, it’s not that they’re selfish, although people are very selfish. All of us are. It’s not that they’re selfish, but most people are following you not because of the direction you’re going, but because of the connection they have with you.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

And if they’re following you with the connection, we spend so much time trying to justify the direction, and they’re not even asking that question right. We are, because we’re trying to see more and before the leader is trying to see the horizon, trying to anticipate the challenges, trying to make sure that the obstacles doesn’t stop us. But most of the people are just saying, hey, point me in the right direction and tell me what the benefit is if we can distill down our messaging to just be that simple and give the message in a 510 minutes spot and then spend the rest of the time asking the questions from the people’s vantage point. And often, again, we build ten points to make the simplicity point, and we lose people on .3 and they never get the meat of the message. Give the meat of the message and then let them determine the points needed to solidify it in their mind. And that communication. If I could do this, man, I’m preaching to the choir here. If I could just go, what is the simple message I’m trying to give? How many times do I need to repeat it for it to settle and then spend the rest of the time clarifying it?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I think one of the things I’m convicted by that you just said that’s interesting is we want to communicate the message, but we’re also trying to communicate what it took for us to.

Mark Cole:

Get to that message.

Chris Goede:

Lost hours and sleepless nights and this and uphill both ways. And I was convicted by that because I was like, no, that’s my responsibility as a leader, as a coach, that’s your responsibility. It’s everybody that’s listening as responsibility, then we got to just communicate it in a simple way. All right, I’m going to throw it to you for closing thoughts here in just a minute. Here’s one last thought that I wrote down as I was again, thinking through what John just talked know this is not easy. Mark has been communicating for a long time. As a matter of fact, he’s being mentored by the best communicator out there, both on stage and in meetings. And here’s what I want to encourage you.

This takes practice. And what I want you to understand is that this is not about as a coach or as a leader. When you communicate these ways that John gave you and the points that Mark shared with you, it’s not about winning or losing a game, a project, a KPI. For us, it’s about adding value to people. If you figure out how to communicate effectively, like John and Mark have laid out here, you’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some. But if you do it the right way with some of these tips, you’re going to always add value to people through your communication, and that’s the key. So give us some closing thoughts on this, where you’re at, and then wrap us up.

Mark Cole:

Well, there’s two books that I’m going to recommend. The first one is Sometimes You Win and Sometimes You Learn, because Chris just said, sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some as a brand.

Chris Goede:

Sorry, John.

Mark Cole:

And sometimes you learn some. But that’s the first book, and it really is a good book. That’s very apropos to what we’ve been talking about today. But the big book. The big idea that I want to leave you with today is the book 17 Laws of Teamwork. Now, you just heard John go through 17 different components of what great coaches do to communicate, but he’ll take you deeper in this book. And I’ve asked the team to give the 15% discount. Just use the code podcast and that book will really, truly change your perspective on a leader’s responsibility to her or his team.

So pick that book up. John made a point. He didn’t say it exactly like this. So if this doesn’t make sense, call my English teacher and remind her how bad I did in English. But John made a point that it wasn’t exactly like this, but this was kind of the idea. Great coaches make teams better than their talent. Great coaches always make the team better than the individual. Talent on there, every one of them.

Chris Goede:

It’s good.

Mark Cole:

You look at the difference maker. Go talk to any winner of the past World Series or past Super Bowl and they’ll talk about some it factor that was beyond the talent of the individual. The Cohesiveness. They worked together. I mentioned the Brotherhood a while ago. There was just this deep connection. Coaches have the ability to find that and pull it out. And by making the team better than talent, you realize that talent is great.

Can’t do it without talent, but with talent you still cannot do it.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

Because you’ve got to be able to find that unique identifier. And when you do, talent becomes better, talent becomes sharper, talent becomes more noticeable because you have brought out something bigger and better than the talent to search it. Too many teams that rely on individual talent end up not making it work in the end from the idea of pursuing and accomplishing a championship. And that is because they have not found something bigger to focus on. Coaches, leaders, it’s our responsibility to find that thing that’s bigger than talent. And that’s what the whole topic of today’s conversation was about. And we hope that we’ve added value to you. I do want to go to Eric from Woodburn, Indiana.

Eric gave us a comment. Eric, your comments as well as all of you, wherever you listen to this podcast, wherever you view this podcast, give us a comment. Let us hear from you out there. I love talking about these, but Eric said hi there. Love the statement that says I’m not who I was, I am who I was born to be. Remember that. Thanks. Eric goes on to say, enjoy your journey through life.

May God richly bless you and live life loud. Eric is talking about the podcast that we just had be the one. So go check that out. We’ll put it in the show notes. Eric, thank you. Because that is a great statement, by the way. Why do you want to be a great communicating coach? Because everyone deserves to be led well.