Imagine you’re a U18 Head Coach for a AAA team in St. Louis Missouri. St. Louis is an NHL city and you notice at practice on a random Tuesday that Craig Berube, the Head Coach of the NHL Blues is standing on the glass observing your practice.
Like most coaches, “you’re always trying to get better” and other comforting clichés you say to yourself like, “I’m not above getting feedback from anyone.” You get his attention and ask him if he’ll still be at the rink in 20 minutes when practice is over. You’d love to get his feedback. He agrees and in 20 minutes, you’re sitting in the office, chatting with an NHL coach. Lucky you.
He gets right into it. He tells you that he didn’t like “X” drill that you did. Doesn’t give much as to why he doesn’t like it, but that feedback sticks to you like glue. He’s an NHL coach, of course, you’re going to take it as gospel.
But the question is, should you? Most coaches (me in my earlier days included) would scrap the drill and never use it again without thinking another second about it. Done. Next. We put high-level coaches on such a high pedestal when really, they should just be looked at as “somebody else with an opinion.”
I didn’t always know this, but I know this to be true…
Advice is too.
The first lesson today is, don’t take things on blind faith from anyone. Test and experiment for yourself.
I recently had a coach reach out and ask, “What kinds of questions should I ask to figure out if someone has a New Wave or Level 50 mindset?”
I share my initial thoughts here:
As someone who has the words, ‘helps players and coaches’ in their Twitter bio… You would think I would be so inclined to write an article titled,
“ The 7 Best Questions You Can Ask to Find New Wave Coaches”
Not gonna happen. Not now. Not ever.
Why?
A few reasons.
I am not your guru
I can’t tell ‘you’ what ‘you’ should do, think, or say
It’s for you to experiment, and for you to choose
Giving answers doesn’t ‘help’ you
I want you to be a ‘great solver of problems’
I am a guy that makes noise on the internet with the intention of helping coaches to think, evolve and then to take those two steps to help their players.
If you’re asking me what questions ‘you’ should ask, you’ve outsourced your thinking to me. You’ve allowed me to take the pleasure of solving your problem away from you.
You are to ‘think’ and ‘evolve’ so you can be a ‘great solver of problems.’
That’s my aim. Learned it from this guy…
Jordan Peterson on the big miss we make as coaches:
The anti-goal is…
Don’t steal someone else’s ability to solve their problems.
If you want to be told what to do, look elsewhere. It will never happen on my platform.
If you can’t respect it, the unsubscribe button is at the bottom of this page.
To your question, “What kinds of questions should I ask to figure out if someone has a New Wave or Level 50 mindset?”
The answer is here:
Where is your natural curiosity with the person?
What do you truly need to know to resonate with them?
What do you need to know that would make you want to work with them?
What are your ‘kill criteria’?
What would turn you off?
Trust and listen to yourself.
P.S. Once per quarter I set my New Wave Podcast as free to listen so you can see some of the premium benefits of upgrading your membership. Check out the Q2 episode for free here. I teach a concept through an example from Michigan Hockey:
Outsourced thinking... lotta that these days eh. That said I don't know man, I think one more guru is exactly what the internet needs so, you might be missing a big opportunity