⏳ Read Time: 4 min

Coaches are individuals who have a profound 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 inside today’s letter:

• 🔁 Quick Recap: Why leadership → culture → performance is the right order

• 🧠 New Insight: Most leaders skip the first step—and pay for it later

• 👟 Anecdote: A coach who couldn’t get buy-in until they did this one thing

• ✅ Five Tactical Starting Points: What to do this week to lead more clearly

• 🧵 X Posts: To share, teach, and spread the idea

🔁 Why Leadership Comes First

The order still holds:

You don’t create culture by writing values on the wall. You do it by modeling them with your leadership. And you don’t perform consistently unless your culture reinforces the behaviors that drive results.

But now comes the part most leaders get wrong: they try to fix culture without fixing their leadership first.

🧠 What Most Coaches Miss

Great leadership doesn’t start with vision boards, value statements, or a locker room rebrand.

It starts with clarity.
Specifically: Who are you as a leader? What do you want this team to feel like? What do you want to stand for—and never tolerate?

Without that clarity, any cultural initiative is just noise. You’ll say one thing and model another. That’s how trust erodes, and culture becomes hollow.

 👟 Anecdote: The Coach Who Couldn’t Get Buy-In

One DI head coach we worked with told us, “I’ve been hammering effort and selflessness all year. My staff says the team hears me, but they don’t feel it.”

We asked the coach one question:

Then the coach built one tiny change: opening every team meeting by recognizing someone for a selfless act—before addressing tactics.

Two weeks later, the tone of the locker room shifted. Not because of slogans. Because the leader got into alignment.

🛠️ Putting It All Together:

✅ Five Tactical Starting Points to Lead with Clarity

Here’s where coaches and administrators can start—this week.

1. Define Your 3 Leadership Anchors
   Write down the three behaviors you most want to model. Not your team’s values—yours. (e.g., “Directness with care,” “Energy over emotion,” “Clarity beats charisma.”)

2. Ask for Honest Feedback
   Choose one trusted staff member and ask:

3. Pick One Leadership Habit to Model
   Choose a daily or weekly action that reinforces your culture. Examples:

• Celebrate effort before outcomes

• Be the first to pick up after practice

• Follow up every hard convo with a personal check-in

4. Make Your Leadership Visible
   Don’t just hope people notice. Narrate your leadership choices out loud.

5. Audit Your Meetings and Messages
   Review the subsequent three team meetings or internal communications. Do they reflect your culture? Edit until they do.

🏁 Conclusion: Culture Is Watching

If you want to build the culture your team needs, start with the leader they follow: you. Set the tone. Model the message. Get clear on your values—and make them visible in your leadership. Culture isn’t formed by what you say. It’s formed by what you do, consistently.

🛠️ 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.