May 27, 2025 • 21 mins
• Dr. Simone Erdner's website: DearCoachBook.com
• Free eBook download of Dear Coach
• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks
***
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
coaches for coaches, powered by Gill Athletics.
Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
you grow as a coach. We're bringing the once a year
track clinic straight to your ears daily.
Interested in creating your own episode?
Everyone's welcome to participate.
(00:21):
Check out the show notes below For more information.
Now let's get into today's topic.
Hello Gil 1918 podcast audience.My name is Doctor Urdner and I'm
excited for you to be here with me today as I talk to you about
my book, Dear Coach, What I WishI Could have told you letters
from your athletes. So I'll in this episode, what
(00:42):
I'm going to do is I'll kind of explain the book, why I even
wrote this book, talk about somesample letters, excerpts from
the chapters of the book and then obviously where you can
purchase the book because I am going to promote myself here,
obviously. So I have my coffee in hand.
I'm excited for you to spend this next 20 to 30 minutes with
me as I talk about my book, which the undertone of all of it
(01:05):
is empathizing with you as a coach.
Because as I was reading betweenthe the lines of coaching
interviews that I've done for research, athlete interviews,
collecting a bunch of quantitative data.
When you read between the lines and I'm going to, I'm going to
say this in the beginning, I'll say it in the middle and I'll
say it at the end, I believe as sport as a whole that we are not
(01:29):
providing ample resources for you as the coach.
So I'm coming from a place of empathy.
The book is written in a way to be empathetic toward you.
So maybe you read that title where it says, dear coach, what
I wish I could have told you letters from your athletes.
Maybe you cringe a little bit. Maybe you're like, Oh no, I
don't know if I want to read those letters because what might
(01:51):
my athletes say about me? It's a very vulnerable thing to
do, obviously. But I do believe that we need to
start having the conversations within the coach athlete dynamic
and then at a larger scale with all sports stakeholders to talk
about how to create sport as a psychologically safer
environment for everybody, not just the athlete.
(02:11):
OK, so I'll get into that a little bit more later, but to
explain the book to you so that I believe the title does a
pretty good job of explaining it.
But the book, Dear Coach, what Iwish I could have told you,
Letters from your athletes written by me, Doctor Sarah
Erdner. It is a book about what athletes
have left unsaid. So when we look at the coach
(02:31):
athlete relationship, we're looking at a power dynamic that
all of us have been in, in one way or another, maybe on the
athlete side, the coach side, both sides, maybe.
And what has been left unsaid inthe marginalized space, which
would be the athletes. So they are the ones with lesser
power. So they are following the
guidance of the coach. And so prior to getting my PhD
(02:53):
in sports psychology and motor behavior, where I emphasized on
the coach athlete relationship, got that PhD from University of
Tennessee in Knoxville, I got 2°for my master's and my
bachelor's degree, Bachelor science, Masters of Science in
communication studies with an emphasis on interpersonal
community communication. So my first love is
(03:13):
communication. And then when I transitioned
into sports psychology, looking at the coach athlete
relationship, there was no way Icouldn't look at the
communication or lack thereof inthe coach athlete relationship
or any other relationships. The assistant coach to head
coach relationship, the sport administrator to the coach
relationship. So it's a very multi multimodal
(03:37):
approach in looking at the communication, but this book
secifically is looking at coach to athlete communication.
What have athletes left unsaid? O when I first started this
journey, how did I even get to writing this book?
I when you get into a PhD program for some, maybe some of
you know this, you get in and a lot of what they're encouraging
(03:59):
you to do is graduate on time. So within a, for me, it was a
three-year time span. Mostly it's 4, but they're like,
hey, like, you know, we're not necessarily saying you have to
do this, but this is a very arduous process.
So when you do research, it's about choosing a population of
people to research that is a little is easier to access.
(04:19):
So when I first started, coacheswere easier to access.
You could go on to any university website and find
these coaching emails. So it was easy to create a
coaching e-mail database. So I did, I started out doing
that. And something I want you all to
know about me is I'm pretty rebellious within parameters in,
(04:40):
in society. So somebody tells me like I need
to do something. I might in the beginning kind of
do it. And then I start getting a
little like, this isn't really what I want to do.
So thankfully had a very supportive PhD mentors and I
went to them and I said, listen,I really want to pivot.
And some of this pivot was encouraged by you all as the
coaches. So I started out asking coaches
(05:02):
qualitative research, their lived experience with the coach
athlete relationship, looking atthe psychological needs of
autonomy related in this incompetence as it's related to
self determination theory. And they were all lovely.
They gave me great data. But when I would finish the
recording and I would click end on the record off script, they
would be like, oh, you know, I would actually love to know what
(05:23):
athletes think about this. And I was like, you know what's
funny? That's actually the research I
want to do. So me again, being like, you
know what, I'm going to do this.And then you all as the coaches
encouraging me to say, we actually want to know what the
athletes think. I go to my PhD mentors and I say
we need a pivot. And with this pivot, I actually
do want to access athletes stories and I know they're going
(05:45):
to be harder to gather, but I still would rather do this work
because I don't want to look back and regret it.
So this was around the time of my dissertation.
So I got the support for my PhD mentors, went into the IRB
process, got it approved that I could access, you know, athletes
stories. It took a couple different, you
know, gatekeepers that I had to get to to get access to them.
(06:08):
But I was able to get quality interviews with these athletes
to ask about their lived experience with the coach
athlete relationship as it's specifically, and this was for
my dissertation, so I had to have some nice controlled
variables as it specifically pertained to relational
resilience. So when you have a breakdown in
the coach athlete relationship, how resilient is that
(06:28):
relationship to be able to bounce back after a
disconnection happens? So I tell these athletes, as I
told the IRB that, you know, these will be 60 to 90 minute
interviews. And let me tell you of every
single interview that I gathered, they were close to 2
1/2, three hours long. So, and I would tell them I'd be
like, hey, you know, we're kind of at that 60 to 90 minute spot.
(06:50):
If we need to make a break and come back on a later date, let
me know. And they were like, no, I want
to keep sharing. And I felt like a lot of it was
because I was this neutral partycoming in demonstrating to care
about their lived experience. I wasn't another coach.
I wasn't a teammate, I wasn't their parent who obviously had
bias either toward the coach or toward the athlete, whatever it
might be. But they just knew.
(07:11):
And I told them I was like, my purpose for gathering these
stories is to advocate for your lived experience and to see
where are the breakdowns happening to where psychological
safety isn't as present as it could be.
So in these stories. So I'm gathering them and
something really interesting came up.
So when I from the the dissertation, I decided to then
(07:33):
go and write the book itself. And in that shifted a little
bit, obviously writing scientific research to writing
this more popular press book, ifyou will.
Definitely had to have a lot of coaching from my editor, from my
publisher. And so I went out and thought,
you know what, I want to go gather more stories.
And so I put it out into the world and said, Hey, I'm, I'm
(07:55):
writing this book. What do you wish you could have
told your coach but never did? And something that was really
surprising to me and a bias thatI had was that I felt I was
going to only receive critical letters.
And some of that was because of my own lived experience as an
athlete. Not that all my coaches were
bad, but the majority of them I felt like I would have written
(08:16):
more critical letters. And when you asked me that
question, what do you wish you would have told your coach?
Whatever did, my brain immediately would go to a more
critical letter. But I received a bunch of thank
you letters and that was fascinating to me as a person
who specializes in communicationbecause, wow, not only is there
a lack of communication on the critical side of things, we are
(08:41):
also not communicating the quoteUN quote good, the thank yous.
We see athletes more so maybe telling the coach at the end of
the game or the end of the season.
Thanks coach. I really appreciate what you did
for me, but not going into detail.
So how does the coach actually know what they did?
Well? So we're not doing this positive
reinforcement for coaches to really understand how they're
(09:01):
doing well. And that was very eye opening
for me and absolutely demonstrated the depth of the
problem, which is without properhumanistically healthy
communication within the coach athlete relationship that we're
seeing a breakdown of the coach athlete relationship itself
(09:25):
that's impacting optimal performance.
The XS and OS that's on the coreon the field, whatever
respective sport that you play. So that was really fascinating
to me. Another thing that was extremely
fascinating is that as I was gathering these letters, some of
them, I mean, as you could imagine, some of them just came
out right? And they're like, I hate my
coach, blah, blah, blah. So I was coaching them a little
(09:47):
bit and not necessarily leading them, but just saying, hey, the
audience is I want this book to be educational in nature.
Your lived experience is valid. Let's take this from AI.
Didn't like it when you did this.
This is what I would have preferred instead.
So it was me coaching them a little bit through like, how can
we like, There's not just sayingI hated you and you did this,
blah, blah. And just kind of bashing isn't
(10:08):
necessarily helpful. So that was really powerful,
very therapeutic when we were working through that.
As with the athletes that were writing these letters were some
of them were written real time and some of them were
retroactive. I did take out all identifying
information because I didn't want people to get caught in the
weeds necessarily of oh this letter is written by a football
player. So this doesn't pertain to me
(10:30):
because when you actually read the letters taking out the
identifying information, whetherit was a male or female, what
sport it was, etcetera, or even the race of the athlete, we see
that the themes are very similaracross them.
Now with that being said, when Iwent in and was thematizing
these letters as the qualitativeresearcher I am, I go through,
(10:53):
I've learned over the years to do multiple passes through on
that thematic analysis because when you the first one you do
very superficial. So you're kind of your own
biases are coming through as much as we're trying to not let
them bleed into the process. So I'm sitting in, I'm actually
teaching a methods of coaching course and I'm standing in front
of the class and I'm telling them about like as coaches, as
(11:16):
future coaches, we want to make sure that we honor the athletes
voice more, that we bring it in more and listen to it more
rather than just dictating what the athlete is supposed to do.
And there's ways that we can do this by providing like, let's
say the task for the day is to to get better at layups in a
aggressive defensive situation. Well, as a coach, you could say
(11:36):
that's the task, but here's three different exercises that
we can do to accomplish this. And then having the athletes
determine what they want to do collectively.
So that's a way to give autonomy.
So I'm talking to class about this and about how we would, we
don't want to dictate to the athletes what they should do.
We want to bring their voice andgive them more choice.
And I stopped dead in my tracks middle of the lesson.
(11:58):
And the students are like, I think Doctor Earner's having a
stroke. And I said, I need to step out
for just a second and I'll be right back.
Y'all stop talking to small groups.
I walk out, I call my editor, Amanda, and I say, I know this
is going to cost me way more money to do what I'm about to
ask if it's OK if we do. But I think I need to completely
(12:19):
rework this book because the original draft of the book in
the first couple, like 5 drafts of the book was me offering a
letter. And then I would come in as the
author and say, you know, this is what you should get from that
letter. And here's all the research that
supports it. I'd offer another letter.
I'd do the same thing O it hit me when I was teaching this
class. I'm actually doing the thing
(12:39):
that I am teaching against that I am dictating to the reader
what they should get out of these letters.
And one of my favorite, favoritequotes is a book read by 1000
different people is 1000 different books because your
lived experience as the reader of Dear Coach is going to
interact differently with each letter based on your specific
(13:01):
nuanced live experience versus another reader's.
So me coming in and doing lettertelling you what to get out of
it, letter telling you what to get out of it.
So I call Amanda and I say I need to gather more letters and
I need to shut up more. So the way the book is written,
it's a three-part book. There's the thank you letters in
the beginning and Ioffer a letter and then I provide some
journal prompts after so that you can engage with the letter.
(13:24):
You can start having conversations with people in
your support group about that letter and how it pertains to
you. The the Part 2, which has the a
larger handful of letters, there's a good amount in the in
Part 1 with thank you is the more critical letters.
It's it's more so of you know, this is what I wish you.
This is what I didn't like. This is what I wish you would
have done as a coach. That would have helped me feel
(13:45):
psychologically safer. And then I also give journal
prompts after that Part 3 is where I come in and I basically
say that this is my truth with alowercase T, not an uppercase T
because I do not situate myself as the expert.
I am an expert that would like aseat at the table, but I want to
collaborate with other people because some of the change that
(14:07):
I'm calling for is a marathon approach.
This isn't me. This is me wanting to call
multiple people into a conversation for us to have
discussions on ways that we can change sport to be
psychologically safer for all stakeholders.
So circling back to that thematic analysis that I did
where I talked about, you know, the first couple layers of
(14:30):
thematic analysis I do. But when I get to those deeper
layers and I really, really readbetween the lines of what these
athletes are saying, almost every one of them at some point
in their letter, there's a shiftinto empathy.
There's a shift into, OK, well, when I take myself out of my
(14:51):
shoes and possibly stand next toyou and yours, I can't imagine
how hard it is to be a coach. You're working endless hours.
You have a family at home that you're never getting to see or
like you there. There was a couple athletes who
they're the coach's partner was diagnosed with breast cancer,
for example, or there was a death in the family, whatever it
(15:12):
is. But there was always a shift in
these athletes to where I thought that is profound.
So when I looked at that empathetic approach, which is a
part actually of something called the humanistic approach
within counseling therapy. So the humanistic approach was
brought about by Carl Rogers in the 1970s, and the three tenets
(15:35):
of the humanistic approach are engaging in empathy,
unconditional positive regard, and authenticity to create a
therapeutic relationship. That therapeutic relationship
then leads to optimal levels of performance.
And when we bring that into a sports setting, we see optimal
levels within the sporting environment.
So I was like, you know what, this empathy, I've heard of this
(15:56):
before and I actually see that intuitively without me coaching
or me really even knowing the background of these men,
people's mental health journeys.These people are intuitively
engaging empathy in these letters, which is an aspect of
of of adopting A humanistic approach with a coach.
So then I took a step back and Ithought, how might sport as a
(16:18):
whole not be empathizing, not beengaging in a humanistic
approach at large, right. Like we have like coaches
engaging in a humanistic approach, empathy, unconditional
part of regard and authenticity with athletes, of course, but
how could sport as a whole not be adopting this humanistic
approach? And how are we failing coaches?
(16:40):
So this transitions me into really getting into the meat of
the matter and how I spoke aboutin the beginning.
I'm now sprinkling in here and I'll I'll end this episode on
this is this book was written ina very empathetic way.
This book was not written to call you out as a coach, but to
call you into a conversation because you yourself as a coach
(17:01):
were an athlete once who likely has your own dear coach letter.
So if I were to ask you as a coach, put yourself back into
your athlete's shoes. And if you were to write a
letter to your coach, that's wasdear coach.
This is what I wish I could havetold you but never did.
What would that letter entail? And then after you write that
letter, the next step is very vulnerable.
(17:23):
Do it on your own. You don't have to share it with
anybody. You don't have to.
This isn't a homework assignment.
You don't have to send it to me.I'm not going to redline it.
OK, Reread that letter that you wrote to yourself.
Read it to you as if it was written by an athlete that's
currently under in in the relationship with you or maybe a
previous athlete that was in a relationship with you.
(17:43):
What components of that letter might you be enacting today?
That's either not great, great what have you and make a list
of, OK, where's the reality here?
How might I actually be acting like the coach?
Like all the things I said to myself prior, like I'm never
going when I become a coach, I'mnever going to do this.
(18:05):
But the unfortunate truth is it's a lot stronger than just
saying that we have mirror neurons in our brain.
So the neurobiology of this is that mirror neurons are what we
there are social learning neurons.
So when we're a social learning environment, so put yourself
back in your shoes in an athlete, you're sitting here
saying I'm never going to do this, I'm never going to do
this. And sure, you may never actually
(18:25):
do it, but the mirror neurons are there that we mimic the
social behavior that we're around.
And if we don't intentionally intervene on the behavioral, the
emotional and the mental level to actually change that
behavior, we are explicitly and implicitly going to likely
(18:46):
engage in the same behavior, maybe not at the same magnitude
as our previous coach did because of these Marinons.
They're socially learned behaviors that we then we soak
them in to the fabric of our being.
And unbeknownst to us in later years, we actually engage in the
same behavior, but it might present a little differently.
So we think I'm not like my old coach, my old coach, you know,
(19:10):
my old coach did this. I'm not doing that specifically,
but it might show up differentlyin a masked way that isn't a one
to one ratio from what it was previously.
So doing this writing your own dear coach letter and then
rereading that letter back to you as if it was written by an
athlete under your power, under your supervision, under your
(19:31):
coaching and having the honest conversation with yourself of
what should I keep doing that I feel like is helpful.
What are things I should stop doing?
Like, let's be real with ourselves.
Yikes, I probably shouldn't do that.
So what would should we start doing?
That may be like, oh, that's something my coach did that
actually was really powerful me.I should actually start
(19:52):
implementing that more. What should we stop doing
though? The yikesy moments that we're
like, oh, that's a little crazy.I need to stop doing that.
What should we keep doing? So what are the things that
you're doing currently that you're like, oh, I think this is
make that list and help that guide your coaching behaviors.
Another thing that came from these letters themselves was the
concept of culture. Now buzz, buzz, buzzword
(20:16):
culture, culture, culture. This is our culture.
What I've seen a lot of coaches do is use the word culture very
prescriptively. So an example of this is this is
the team culture. And you as an athlete have to
adhere to this culture. And if you don't, we're going to
let you go because you're not a good cultural fit.
The issue with that is that culture is so much deeper than
(20:39):
that Culture is when there is a psychological component to it.
So let's say you are a coach forat the high school level,
university level, whatever, and these athletes come in and you
are using culture in a very prescriptive nature.
This is the culture and you haveto adhere to it or else.
(21:00):
Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
amounts of value and I hope thisone hit the mark.
The Guild 1918 Project is reallydependent on you if for you to
build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
(21:22):
heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
there. So please get a hold of me,
e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
Project. Hope you enjoy the day and we'll
see you tomorrow.
Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
coaches for coaches, powered by Gill Athletics.
Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
you grow as a coach. We're bringing the once a year
track clinic straight to your ears daily.
Interested in creating your own episode?
Everyone's welcome to participate.
(00:21):
Check out the show notes below For more information.
Now let's get into today's topic.
Hello Gil 1918 podcast audience.My name is Doctor Urdner and I'm
excited for you to be here with me today as I talk to you about
my book, Dear Coach, What I WishI Could have told you letters
from your athletes. So I'll in this episode, what
(00:42):
I'm going to do is I'll kind of explain the book, why I even
wrote this book, talk about somesample letters, excerpts from
the chapters of the book and then obviously where you can
purchase the book because I am going to promote myself here,
obviously. So I have my coffee in hand.
I'm excited for you to spend this next 20 to 30 minutes with
me as I talk about my book, which the undertone of all of it
(01:05):
is empathizing with you as a coach.
Because as I was reading betweenthe the lines of coaching
interviews that I've done for research, athlete interviews,
collecting a bunch of quantitative data.
When you read between the lines and I'm going to, I'm going to
say this in the beginning, I'll say it in the middle and I'll
say it at the end, I believe as sport as a whole that we are not
(01:29):
providing ample resources for you as the coach.
So I'm coming from a place of empathy.
The book is written in a way to be empathetic toward you.
So maybe you read that title where it says, dear coach, what
I wish I could have told you letters from your athletes.
Maybe you cringe a little bit. Maybe you're like, Oh no, I
don't know if I want to read those letters because what might
(01:51):
my athletes say about me? It's a very vulnerable thing to
do, obviously. But I do believe that we need to
start having the conversations within the coach athlete dynamic
and then at a larger scale with all sports stakeholders to talk
about how to create sport as a psychologically safer
environment for everybody, not just the athlete.
(02:11):
OK, so I'll get into that a little bit more later, but to
explain the book to you so that I believe the title does a
pretty good job of explaining it.
But the book, Dear Coach, what Iwish I could have told you,
Letters from your athletes written by me, Doctor Sarah
Erdner. It is a book about what athletes
have left unsaid. So when we look at the coach
(02:31):
athlete relationship, we're looking at a power dynamic that
all of us have been in, in one way or another, maybe on the
athlete side, the coach side, both sides, maybe.
And what has been left unsaid inthe marginalized space, which
would be the athletes. So they are the ones with lesser
power. So they are following the
guidance of the coach. And so prior to getting my PhD
(02:53):
in sports psychology and motor behavior, where I emphasized on
the coach athlete relationship, got that PhD from University of
Tennessee in Knoxville, I got 2°for my master's and my
bachelor's degree, Bachelor science, Masters of Science in
communication studies with an emphasis on interpersonal
community communication. So my first love is
(03:13):
communication. And then when I transitioned
into sports psychology, looking at the coach athlete
relationship, there was no way Icouldn't look at the
communication or lack thereof inthe coach athlete relationship
or any other relationships. The assistant coach to head
coach relationship, the sport administrator to the coach
relationship. So it's a very multi multimodal
(03:37):
approach in looking at the communication, but this book
secifically is looking at coach to athlete communication.
What have athletes left unsaid? O when I first started this
journey, how did I even get to writing this book?
I when you get into a PhD program for some, maybe some of
you know this, you get in and a lot of what they're encouraging
(03:59):
you to do is graduate on time. So within a, for me, it was a
three-year time span. Mostly it's 4, but they're like,
hey, like, you know, we're not necessarily saying you have to
do this, but this is a very arduous process.
So when you do research, it's about choosing a population of
people to research that is a little is easier to access.
(04:19):
So when I first started, coacheswere easier to access.
You could go on to any university website and find
these coaching emails. So it was easy to create a
coaching e-mail database. So I did, I started out doing
that. And something I want you all to
know about me is I'm pretty rebellious within parameters in,
(04:40):
in society. So somebody tells me like I need
to do something. I might in the beginning kind of
do it. And then I start getting a
little like, this isn't really what I want to do.
So thankfully had a very supportive PhD mentors and I
went to them and I said, listen,I really want to pivot.
And some of this pivot was encouraged by you all as the
coaches. So I started out asking coaches
(05:02):
qualitative research, their lived experience with the coach
athlete relationship, looking atthe psychological needs of
autonomy related in this incompetence as it's related to
self determination theory. And they were all lovely.
They gave me great data. But when I would finish the
recording and I would click end on the record off script, they
would be like, oh, you know, I would actually love to know what
(05:23):
athletes think about this. And I was like, you know what's
funny? That's actually the research I
want to do. So me again, being like, you
know what, I'm going to do this.And then you all as the coaches
encouraging me to say, we actually want to know what the
athletes think. I go to my PhD mentors and I say
we need a pivot. And with this pivot, I actually
do want to access athletes stories and I know they're going
(05:45):
to be harder to gather, but I still would rather do this work
because I don't want to look back and regret it.
So this was around the time of my dissertation.
So I got the support for my PhD mentors, went into the IRB
process, got it approved that I could access, you know, athletes
stories. It took a couple different, you
know, gatekeepers that I had to get to to get access to them.
(06:08):
But I was able to get quality interviews with these athletes
to ask about their lived experience with the coach
athlete relationship as it's specifically, and this was for
my dissertation, so I had to have some nice controlled
variables as it specifically pertained to relational
resilience. So when you have a breakdown in
the coach athlete relationship, how resilient is that
(06:28):
relationship to be able to bounce back after a
disconnection happens? So I tell these athletes, as I
told the IRB that, you know, these will be 60 to 90 minute
interviews. And let me tell you of every
single interview that I gathered, they were close to 2
1/2, three hours long. So, and I would tell them I'd be
like, hey, you know, we're kind of at that 60 to 90 minute spot.
(06:50):
If we need to make a break and come back on a later date, let
me know. And they were like, no, I want
to keep sharing. And I felt like a lot of it was
because I was this neutral partycoming in demonstrating to care
about their lived experience. I wasn't another coach.
I wasn't a teammate, I wasn't their parent who obviously had
bias either toward the coach or toward the athlete, whatever it
might be. But they just knew.
(07:11):
And I told them I was like, my purpose for gathering these
stories is to advocate for your lived experience and to see
where are the breakdowns happening to where psychological
safety isn't as present as it could be.
So in these stories. So I'm gathering them and
something really interesting came up.
So when I from the the dissertation, I decided to then
(07:33):
go and write the book itself. And in that shifted a little
bit, obviously writing scientific research to writing
this more popular press book, ifyou will.
Definitely had to have a lot of coaching from my editor, from my
publisher. And so I went out and thought,
you know what, I want to go gather more stories.
And so I put it out into the world and said, Hey, I'm, I'm
(07:55):
writing this book. What do you wish you could have
told your coach but never did? And something that was really
surprising to me and a bias thatI had was that I felt I was
going to only receive critical letters.
And some of that was because of my own lived experience as an
athlete. Not that all my coaches were
bad, but the majority of them I felt like I would have written
(08:16):
more critical letters. And when you asked me that
question, what do you wish you would have told your coach?
Whatever did, my brain immediately would go to a more
critical letter. But I received a bunch of thank
you letters and that was fascinating to me as a person
who specializes in communicationbecause, wow, not only is there
a lack of communication on the critical side of things, we are
(08:41):
also not communicating the quoteUN quote good, the thank yous.
We see athletes more so maybe telling the coach at the end of
the game or the end of the season.
Thanks coach. I really appreciate what you did
for me, but not going into detail.
So how does the coach actually know what they did?
Well? So we're not doing this positive
reinforcement for coaches to really understand how they're
(09:01):
doing well. And that was very eye opening
for me and absolutely demonstrated the depth of the
problem, which is without properhumanistically healthy
communication within the coach athlete relationship that we're
seeing a breakdown of the coach athlete relationship itself
(09:25):
that's impacting optimal performance.
The XS and OS that's on the coreon the field, whatever
respective sport that you play. So that was really fascinating
to me. Another thing that was extremely
fascinating is that as I was gathering these letters, some of
them, I mean, as you could imagine, some of them just came
out right? And they're like, I hate my
coach, blah, blah, blah. So I was coaching them a little
(09:47):
bit and not necessarily leading them, but just saying, hey, the
audience is I want this book to be educational in nature.
Your lived experience is valid. Let's take this from AI.
Didn't like it when you did this.
This is what I would have preferred instead.
So it was me coaching them a little bit through like, how can
we like, There's not just sayingI hated you and you did this,
blah, blah. And just kind of bashing isn't
(10:08):
necessarily helpful. So that was really powerful,
very therapeutic when we were working through that.
As with the athletes that were writing these letters were some
of them were written real time and some of them were
retroactive. I did take out all identifying
information because I didn't want people to get caught in the
weeds necessarily of oh this letter is written by a football
player. So this doesn't pertain to me
(10:30):
because when you actually read the letters taking out the
identifying information, whetherit was a male or female, what
sport it was, etcetera, or even the race of the athlete, we see
that the themes are very similaracross them.
Now with that being said, when Iwent in and was thematizing
these letters as the qualitativeresearcher I am, I go through,
(10:53):
I've learned over the years to do multiple passes through on
that thematic analysis because when you the first one you do
very superficial. So you're kind of your own
biases are coming through as much as we're trying to not let
them bleed into the process. So I'm sitting in, I'm actually
teaching a methods of coaching course and I'm standing in front
of the class and I'm telling them about like as coaches, as
(11:16):
future coaches, we want to make sure that we honor the athletes
voice more, that we bring it in more and listen to it more
rather than just dictating what the athlete is supposed to do.
And there's ways that we can do this by providing like, let's
say the task for the day is to to get better at layups in a
aggressive defensive situation. Well, as a coach, you could say
(11:36):
that's the task, but here's three different exercises that
we can do to accomplish this. And then having the athletes
determine what they want to do collectively.
So that's a way to give autonomy.
So I'm talking to class about this and about how we would, we
don't want to dictate to the athletes what they should do.
We want to bring their voice andgive them more choice.
And I stopped dead in my tracks middle of the lesson.
(11:58):
And the students are like, I think Doctor Earner's having a
stroke. And I said, I need to step out
for just a second and I'll be right back.
Y'all stop talking to small groups.
I walk out, I call my editor, Amanda, and I say, I know this
is going to cost me way more money to do what I'm about to
ask if it's OK if we do. But I think I need to completely
(12:19):
rework this book because the original draft of the book in
the first couple, like 5 drafts of the book was me offering a
letter. And then I would come in as the
author and say, you know, this is what you should get from that
letter. And here's all the research that
supports it. I'd offer another letter.
I'd do the same thing O it hit me when I was teaching this
class. I'm actually doing the thing
(12:39):
that I am teaching against that I am dictating to the reader
what they should get out of these letters.
And one of my favorite, favoritequotes is a book read by 1000
different people is 1000 different books because your
lived experience as the reader of Dear Coach is going to
interact differently with each letter based on your specific
(13:01):
nuanced live experience versus another reader's.
So me coming in and doing lettertelling you what to get out of
it, letter telling you what to get out of it.
So I call Amanda and I say I need to gather more letters and
I need to shut up more. So the way the book is written,
it's a three-part book. There's the thank you letters in
the beginning and Ioffer a letter and then I provide some
journal prompts after so that you can engage with the letter.
(13:24):
You can start having conversations with people in
your support group about that letter and how it pertains to
you. The the Part 2, which has the a
larger handful of letters, there's a good amount in the in
Part 1 with thank you is the more critical letters.
It's it's more so of you know, this is what I wish you.
This is what I didn't like. This is what I wish you would
have done as a coach. That would have helped me feel
(13:45):
psychologically safer. And then I also give journal
prompts after that Part 3 is where I come in and I basically
say that this is my truth with alowercase T, not an uppercase T
because I do not situate myself as the expert.
I am an expert that would like aseat at the table, but I want to
collaborate with other people because some of the change that
(14:07):
I'm calling for is a marathon approach.
This isn't me. This is me wanting to call
multiple people into a conversation for us to have
discussions on ways that we can change sport to be
psychologically safer for all stakeholders.
So circling back to that thematic analysis that I did
where I talked about, you know, the first couple layers of
(14:30):
thematic analysis I do. But when I get to those deeper
layers and I really, really readbetween the lines of what these
athletes are saying, almost every one of them at some point
in their letter, there's a shiftinto empathy.
There's a shift into, OK, well, when I take myself out of my
(14:51):
shoes and possibly stand next toyou and yours, I can't imagine
how hard it is to be a coach. You're working endless hours.
You have a family at home that you're never getting to see or
like you there. There was a couple athletes who
they're the coach's partner was diagnosed with breast cancer,
for example, or there was a death in the family, whatever it
(15:12):
is. But there was always a shift in
these athletes to where I thought that is profound.
So when I looked at that empathetic approach, which is a
part actually of something called the humanistic approach
within counseling therapy. So the humanistic approach was
brought about by Carl Rogers in the 1970s, and the three tenets
(15:35):
of the humanistic approach are engaging in empathy,
unconditional positive regard, and authenticity to create a
therapeutic relationship. That therapeutic relationship
then leads to optimal levels of performance.
And when we bring that into a sports setting, we see optimal
levels within the sporting environment.
So I was like, you know what, this empathy, I've heard of this
(15:56):
before and I actually see that intuitively without me coaching
or me really even knowing the background of these men,
people's mental health journeys.These people are intuitively
engaging empathy in these letters, which is an aspect of
of of adopting A humanistic approach with a coach.
So then I took a step back and Ithought, how might sport as a
(16:18):
whole not be empathizing, not beengaging in a humanistic
approach at large, right. Like we have like coaches
engaging in a humanistic approach, empathy, unconditional
part of regard and authenticity with athletes, of course, but
how could sport as a whole not be adopting this humanistic
approach? And how are we failing coaches?
(16:40):
So this transitions me into really getting into the meat of
the matter and how I spoke aboutin the beginning.
I'm now sprinkling in here and I'll I'll end this episode on
this is this book was written ina very empathetic way.
This book was not written to call you out as a coach, but to
call you into a conversation because you yourself as a coach
(17:01):
were an athlete once who likely has your own dear coach letter.
So if I were to ask you as a coach, put yourself back into
your athlete's shoes. And if you were to write a
letter to your coach, that's wasdear coach.
This is what I wish I could havetold you but never did.
What would that letter entail? And then after you write that
letter, the next step is very vulnerable.
(17:23):
Do it on your own. You don't have to share it with
anybody. You don't have to.
This isn't a homework assignment.
You don't have to send it to me.I'm not going to redline it.
OK, Reread that letter that you wrote to yourself.
Read it to you as if it was written by an athlete that's
currently under in in the relationship with you or maybe a
previous athlete that was in a relationship with you.
(17:43):
What components of that letter might you be enacting today?
That's either not great, great what have you and make a list
of, OK, where's the reality here?
How might I actually be acting like the coach?
Like all the things I said to myself prior, like I'm never
going when I become a coach, I'mnever going to do this.
(18:05):
But the unfortunate truth is it's a lot stronger than just
saying that we have mirror neurons in our brain.
So the neurobiology of this is that mirror neurons are what we
there are social learning neurons.
So when we're a social learning environment, so put yourself
back in your shoes in an athlete, you're sitting here
saying I'm never going to do this, I'm never going to do
this. And sure, you may never actually
(18:25):
do it, but the mirror neurons are there that we mimic the
social behavior that we're around.
And if we don't intentionally intervene on the behavioral, the
emotional and the mental level to actually change that
behavior, we are explicitly and implicitly going to likely
(18:46):
engage in the same behavior, maybe not at the same magnitude
as our previous coach did because of these Marinons.
They're socially learned behaviors that we then we soak
them in to the fabric of our being.
And unbeknownst to us in later years, we actually engage in the
same behavior, but it might present a little differently.
So we think I'm not like my old coach, my old coach, you know,
(19:10):
my old coach did this. I'm not doing that specifically,
but it might show up differentlyin a masked way that isn't a one
to one ratio from what it was previously.
So doing this writing your own dear coach letter and then
rereading that letter back to you as if it was written by an
athlete under your power, under your supervision, under your
(19:31):
coaching and having the honest conversation with yourself of
what should I keep doing that I feel like is helpful.
What are things I should stop doing?
Like, let's be real with ourselves.
Yikes, I probably shouldn't do that.
So what would should we start doing?
That may be like, oh, that's something my coach did that
actually was really powerful me.I should actually start
(19:52):
implementing that more. What should we stop doing
though? The yikesy moments that we're
like, oh, that's a little crazy.I need to stop doing that.
What should we keep doing? So what are the things that
you're doing currently that you're like, oh, I think this is
make that list and help that guide your coaching behaviors.
Another thing that came from these letters themselves was the
concept of culture. Now buzz, buzz, buzzword
(20:16):
culture, culture, culture. This is our culture.
What I've seen a lot of coaches do is use the word culture very
prescriptively. So an example of this is this is
the team culture. And you as an athlete have to
adhere to this culture. And if you don't, we're going to
let you go because you're not a good cultural fit.
The issue with that is that culture is so much deeper than
(20:39):
that Culture is when there is a psychological component to it.
So let's say you are a coach forat the high school level,
university level, whatever, and these athletes come in and you
are using culture in a very prescriptive nature.
This is the culture and you haveto adhere to it or else.
(21:00):
Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
amounts of value and I hope thisone hit the mark.
The Guild 1918 Project is reallydependent on you if for you to
build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
(21:22):
heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
there. So please get a hold of me,
e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
Project. Hope you enjoy the day and we'll
see you tomorrow.
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