⏳ Read Time: 4 min

Coaches are the individuals who have an impact on the next generation. There are over 500,000 coaches in the United States, ranging from youth to collegiate levels. Yet, they are one of the most underserved groups of leaders.

BETTER exists to fill that gap for coaches, athletes, and the leaders supporting them.

The best way for you to join in that mission? Forward this newsletter or share this link to another coach, athletic director, or athlete who needs it.

📌 What’s in this newsletter?

• 🥧 The Pie Metaphor: How coaches misunderstand their own leadership.

• 👤 Anecdote: The coach who thought he needed tactics—and got a mirror instead.

• 🧠 Research Insight: Leadership as an integrative function in high-performance teams.

• ✅ Five Takeaways: How to reframe leadership from slice to crust.

🥧 The Idea: Leadership Isn't a Slice—It's the Crust

We get to have lots of conversations with coaches across all levels. We hear a lot of perspectives on the role of things like culture and leadership in running a program. Most coaches talk about leadership like it’s a box to check.

They’ll say things like:

It’s well-meaning. But, without realizing it, coaches are buying into a flawed model. They see leadership as one slice of the job—like recruiting, strategy, fundraising, or player development.

We think that’s backward.

Leadership is not a slice of the pie. It’s the crust. It’s what holds all the slices together.

👤 Anecdote: “I Thought I Needed More Plays.”

A Division I head coach we worked with called us during a rough stretch. He said:

From our perspective, the issue wasn’t tactics. It was trust.

Players didn’t feel clear on their roles. The assistants weren’t aligned and in agreement on what the tactics should even be. Team meetings felt more like presentations than conversations.

So, we asked the head coach to do something simple but powerful: run a personal leadership diagnostic and share the results with their staff.

It changed everything. Not because they changed their plays. Because they owned their leadership and modeled vulnerability.

That’s when we saw the team’s performance shift. The leadership got stronger.

📊 Research Insight: The ROI of Investing in People

In organizational psychology, there’s a concept called “integrative leadership.”

Research shows that the most effective leaders don’t just execute functions—they align them. They create coherence across complex roles and systems.

One study in the Leadership Quarterly found that leadership behavior, especially at the head level, predicted alignment between vision, culture, and execution. That alignment was the strongest predictor of sustained performance.

In other words, good leaders don’t just run better practices. They create stronger ecosystems.

Leadership isn’t a task. It’s the connective tissue.

🛠️ Putting It All Together:

Want stronger recruiting, clearer strategy, better retention, and higher performance? Strengthen the crust. Here’s how to start:

1. Redraw the Pie: Sketch the current “slices” of your job. What changes when you view the crust as the foundation of all of it?

2. Run a Weekly Leadership Check-In: Each week, ask yourself: “Where did my leadership create alignment this week? Where did it create confusion?” Write it down.

3. Link Every Meeting to Culture: Don’t let team or staff meetings be purely informational. Start each one with a 90-second reminder of the culture you’re building and how this meeting supports it.

4. Coach the Coaches: Have weekly or bi-weekly 15-minute 1-on-1—not about Xs and Os, but about how they’re leading, influencing, and modeling.

5. Set One Leadership Habit: Choose a simple leadership behavior to model consistently—like always starting on time, following up personally after hard conversations, or sharing credit publicly. Small habits reinforce big culture.

🏁 Conclusion: It All Comes Back to the Crust

Leadership isn’t just one part of your job—it’s what determines how every part functions. When coaches own their leadership, everything else gets sharper: tactics, recruiting, retention, and relationships. If you want stronger outcomes, don’t start with more strategy. Start with better self-leadership. Strengthen the crust, and every slice holds together.

🛠️ Your Summer Playbook

The summer is an ideal time for high school and college coaches to establish their culture. Most people know what they want to do, but they don’t know how to do it.

They need a system.

The Culture Playbook is BETTER’s custom system, complete with tools that you can use with your team to establish a culture. It’s full of team exercises you can do with your team in very little time to help you establish your culture.

These tools are used by entities such as Microsoft, Google, and athletic departments like Mississippi State, Florida State, and thousands of high schools.

And you can see it all with no commitment. Coaches — access your free trial below.

🛠️ Want to win more? Know Yourself First.

Just last week, nearly 60 leaders signed up for our 5-day leadership course based on your Voice!

It will be sent to your inbox starting the Monday after you take the assessment and run for that week.

The assessment takes 10-15 minutes. Take it below.