A Good Book or More

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The Christmas break was a good one for myself as I had a chance to go back to Edmonton and see family.  It is always good to reconnect with them.  I also had a chance to read a lot.  One of the main things that my family taught me was the enjoyment in a good book.  I really enjoy reading coaching books or books that I can apply to the team. 

My Ipad is full of this type of books.   I really enjoyed “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle.  This book talks about how there is no such thing as talent.  That is it environmental and that it takes a group to help encourage people to strive towards something.  He talks about why there are pockets of places that develop athletes that dominate sports.  He believes that young kids get inspiration from somewhere and then work towards that icon and try to become that level.  This is why I believe that our university athletes have to give back to the young kids in the community.

A book that really influenced my coaching is “Leading with the Heart” by Mike Krzyzewski.  In this book he talks about how he developed his standards in coaching. In this book Coach K discusses about how he handles his players and deals with administration. This is a must read for all new coaches.

Before the break Tom Skinner gave me the book.”Be Quick, Don’t Hurry” by Andrew Hill and John Wooden.  Andrew wasn’t a star player on Coach Wooden’s team when he played, he actually clashed a lot with Coach.  It wasn’t until later when he was involved in his own career that he realized the messages and lessons that Coach Wooden taught him.  One of the lessons that really stuck with me was fair doesn’t mean equal.  Andrew talked about how he learned if he was going to be late for a meal or a meeting to make sure he was late with Bill Walton.  Bill would get benched but only for a quarter.  Coach explained that if he benched them longer it would affect the whole team in a negative way.  A Quarter was enough for the message to be sent.

Another book that has me really thinking is the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gwande. This book discusses how the evolution of the pre flight checklist for pilots came into existence and how other main industries such as medicine has developed checklists as well. This book helped lead  me to develop checklists that we use as a team for pre-game, checklist of discussion points for first meeting with potential recruits and parents.  As a coach we develop year plans which are essentially an in-depth checklist to help us determine where, when and how much we will train the athletes and prepare them to play their best. In discussing the potential of checklists in coaching with other CIS coaches it has me thinking about how this helps leave no stone unturned