On February 16, 2009, Dr. Peter Jensen was on the local radio station (FAN590) to pump his new book Igniting the Third Factor (Buy from Amazon). I was in the car at the time and was struck by how much great advice there was for team leads in it (keeping in my ongoing theme of coaching sport and leading teams). I emailed the station to get a copy of the interview and they sent me one — goes to show the power of asking for something. I’m not sure if I am allowed to post the audio of it online, but here it is. And here are my notes

  • Sports psychology looks at what makes athletes successful. ‘Regular’ psychology looks at what makes people dysfunctional
  • Take the intangible, and figure out how to make it tangible
  • Most athletic performance, at the high levels, is mental
  • Athletes taper their mental and physical preparation in opposition to each other while getting ready to compete
  • Mental preparation takes the place of physical aspect leading up to the event
  • You can’t tell how good a coach is based on immediate or current performance. The labels of success or failure can only be applied years later as a result of what the people they have coached accomplish (or don’t)
  • Past players of successful coaches don’t talk about the sport they were coached in, but about the influence the coach had on them
  • Successful coaches grow not only gold medals, but exceptional people
  • True coaching is a long-term commitment
  • High Performance coaches:
    • Manage themselves well
    • Build trust intentionally
    • Imagery – Find out what the athlete is thinking
    • Find out what is blocking their athletes and work to remove it
    • Embrace adversity – if we were prepared to go to the next level then there wouldn’t be adversity in the first place
  • Don’t force talent into a system; design a system for what you’ve got
  • If you are paid in terms of wins vs. losses or making the playoffs, you have to skip some of the developmental stuff listed above. Again, make sure your motivational and reward system garners you the desired result
  • Confidence vs. Competence is a 60/40 split 4 months before a major event (like the Olympics). By the time they are about to compete they ratio is 100% Confidence
  • Your strengths taken to the extreme become your weakness
  • The lessons for coaches at the professional level vs. the house league level are the same but the application is totally different
  • Confidence is very fragile. Don’t set people up for major failure — let them scrape their knees, but don’t let them break their leg