⏳ Read Time: 4.5 min

🔍 What’s in this week’s newsletter?

• 🧨 Why Feedback Fails: Most feedback doesn’t help—here’s why.

• 🧠 The Psychology of Growth: 3 science-backed rules for better feedback.

• 🛠️ A Simple 3-Step Formula: How to give feedback that develops people.

• ✅ Practical Takeaways: Five ways to improve how your team gives and receives feedback.

We’re adding a section to the newsletter!

We are lucky. We get to rub shoulders with movers and shakers in college athletics. So, Kevin and I are both asked frequently what people are talking about. So, we figured we’d start including a section called “Here’s what we're paying attention to,” where we'll highlight a story that caught our eye or is the talk of NCAA athletic departments.

For now, that section will go below the body of the regular newsletter
Let us know what you think about this idea simply by hitting reply!

📖 The Review That Changed Nothing

It’s performance review season! Think back to the last performance review you received.
Did it change how you showed up the next day?

Most people say no—and the research backs it up.

According to the Harvard Business Review, only 29% of feedback improves performance. The rest? It sparks anxiety, resentment, or confusion.

Why?

Too often, feedback feels like a verdict instead of a conversation.

One of the first problems we got invited into was by a high-major Athletic Director. They said, “I know I do performance reviews for my coaches. But it doesn’t match what it means to be a high-major Head Coach. How can we make this BETTER?"

(Cue our theme music)

So, we helped them build one. The results look like this.

This tool (or something like it) very quickly became one of the most popular tools we started handing out to NCAA and HS athletic departments. But the magic isn’t about the tool.

It’s about the conversations that it facilitates. This is what differentiates healthy athletic departments from unhealthy ones.

It’s the 4th line. “Productive communication builds healthy cultures.”

Our Head Coach Review is simply a tool, with language, that facilitates productive communication. It all comes down to feedback.

🧠 What the Best Do Differently

Here are three science-backed shifts that change how people receive feedback—and whether they grow from it:

1. Psychological Safety > Performance Pressure
   Amy Edmondson’s research shows that people grow when they feel safe and are not scrutinized. Without safety, feedback feels like a threat. And threat triggers fight, flight, or freeze.

2. The Inchworm Theory (Josh Waitzkin)
   Everyone has a “best self” and “worst self” that develop together. Growth happens fastest when you raise your floor, not your ceiling. What are the biggest obstacles holding you (or your players/employees) back?

3. Feedforward > Feedback (Marshall Goldsmith)
   The past can’t be changed. The future can. “Next time, try this…” is more actionable (and more motivating) than “Here’s what you did wrong.”

🛠️ The Feedback Formula

Let’s turn theory into practice. This framework comes from the Center for Creative Leadership—refined by hundreds of leaders:

1. Start with Signal, Not Surprise

Feedback should never be a bombshell. You should be building healthy rhythms of feedback for your people.

2. Be a Mirror

• Observation: “Here’s what I noticed…”

• Impact: “Here’s what it caused…”

• Invitation: “Can we explore what to do next?”

Example:

3. Pull, Don’t Push

Ask first before correction.

Let them self-assess. You’re not the hero—you’re the mirror.

✅ Putting it all together:

1. Use Questions as Feedback
   Asking > Telling. “How do you think that landed?” invites growth.

2. Set the Tone Early
   Make feedback part of the culture—early, often, and informal. Use your following performance review to determine how usually you will meet like this with your people.

3. Make It a Dialogue, Not a Diagnosis
   Don’t drop a monologue. Start a conversation.

4. Be Future-First
   Don’t rehash the mistake—build the path forward.

5. End with Ownership
   Ask: “What will you do differently next time?” Let them own the growth.

🏗️ Closing Thought:

Here’s the bottom line:

Every piece of feedback either makes someone feel smaller or stronger.
Leaders don’t get to be neutral.

So ask yourself:

Be the leader who opens the door for them to level up.

Here’s what we are paying attention to:

This story from Kevin Sweeney highlights the different ways basketball programs are thinking about building their rosters as the transfer portal window approaches its close.

Team-building in and of itself breeds plenty of interesting topics. It seems that Men’s Basketball has been the most meticulous and intentional so far.

But, what catches our eye is that we're paying close attention to who’s calling the shots. Is it the coaches? Is it the AD? Is it a combination of folks, including some boosters?

Which Departments will be the first to start functioning like a pro sports organization and take the decision-making out of the hands of the coaches?

These are all things we are watching very closely.

The Coach Development Every AD Wishes Their Coach Had.

Join our community of 200 leaders of High School Coaches, High School ADs, College Coaches, and College ADs.

If you ask your AD to cover your development, it should be this.