Kevin and Seth led a 90-minute workshop for 15 top leaders in NCAA Athletics at AD360 in Atlanta on Tuesday, who are preparing to become ADs.

We led on:
- The Leadership Control Panel
- How understanding your leadership voice should drive your decisions as a leader
- Building a support and challenge system for feedback

We also spoke to about 250 ADs and their executives at CALS 1-Day.

Kevin will be traveling to Vegas to speak at NACDA early next week! If you’ll be at any of these events, we’d love to say hello! Want to bring us to your campus/event? Reply to this email, and we’ll make it happen!

Our first book, Lead Yourself First, is our field manual for coaches to build their Leadership. We’ve heard from many coaches who have read it, love it, and are taking their staff through it.

Haven’t gotten your copy yet?

We’ve started sending a Tuesday edition written directly for athletes.

Coaches can read it, forward it, print it, teach from it, or use it as a weekly conversation starter with their team.

The topic this week was Addressing Fear. To read more and have your athletes subscribe to the BETTER Athletes newsletter:

You can send them this link.

One of the most common coaching mistakes sounds like this:

"This player just needs more confidence” or "They need to improve their technique” or "They need more reps." Sometimes that's true. But often, it's not.

Watch enough elite performers, and you'll notice something interesting.

The issue usually isn't capability. It's interference.

The athlete already has the shot. The leader already knows what to do. The team already possesses the talent. Yet something gets in the way when it matters most.

Fear. Pressure. Overthinking. Self-doubt. Expectation.

And suddenly, performance looks very different from potential.

One of the foundational ideas from The Inner Game of Tennis is this:

Performance = Potential - Interference

Most development efforts focus on increasing potential.

More training. More information. More systems. More resources.

But what if the biggest opportunity isn't adding something?

What if it's removing something?

Because for most athletes, coaches, and leaders, the largest gap isn't between where they are and what they know.

It's between what they're capable of and what they're consistently able to access.

When coaches hear "interference," they often think about athletes. But interference affects everyone.

For athletes, it might look like:

For coaches, it might look like:

Different people.

Same problem.

Something internal is preventing potential from showing up consistently.

When performance drops, our instinct is usually to add.

Add another drill.
Add another meeting.
Add another workout.
Add another solution.

But sometimes the answer isn't addition. It's subtraction.

Removing fear, doubt, pressure, distractions, unrealistic expectations, or limiting beliefs.

The best coaches understand this distinction. They don't just build skills.

They help remove barriers.

So, Instead of asking:

"What does this person need more of?"

Try asking:

"What's getting in the way of what's already there?"

That question changes everything. Because development isn't always about building.

Sometimes it's about uncovering.

🏁 A Final Thought:

Most people spend their lives trying to add to their potential.

The best performers spend just as much time reducing interference.

They know that greatness isn't always found in learning something new.

Sometimes it's found in removing the things that were holding them back all along.

Get BETTER’s Culture Playbook. A system designed to install a thriving, healthy, high-performance culture. Join over 1,000 coaches who use our Culture Playbook from youth club teams to national championship NCAA programs and everything in between.