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 Behaviors. To read more and have your athletes subscribe to the BETTER Athletes newsletter:

You can send them this link.

A player who needs the truth.
An assistant who isn't meeting the standard.
A parent whose expectations need to be reset.
A leader on the team who has quietly drifted.

You likely thought of someone who came to mind as you read those sentences.

And yet the conversation waits.

Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week becomes next month.

The issue becomes obvious to everyone except the person who most needs to hear it.

Not because coaches don't care. It’s because they do.

That's exactly what makes this topic a difficult one.

Most coaches think difficult conversations are a communication problem.

They're usually not. They're most often a fear problem.

We tell ourselves we're waiting for the "right time." We're trying to find the "right words." We're hoping emotions settle down.

Sometimes that's true. But often, something else is happening. We're protecting ourselves.

We're afraid the player won't like us.
We're afraid we'll damage the relationship.
We're afraid they'll transfer.
We're afraid we'll be misunderstood.

So we delay. And delay almost always increases the cost.

And what’s funny is that most often this doesn’t involve a player. Sometimes, but most often, the hardest conversations coaches have are with their fellow coaches.

And we can speak from experience. We have had WAY more conversations with coaches coaching them up to talk with a staff member than we have with coaches coaching them up to talk with a player.

Radical candor is difficult because it requires courage.

Leadership researcher Kim Scott describes the best feedback as Radical Candor:

Care Personally. Challenge Directly.

The order matters. If you challenge someone without caring, it feels harsh.

If you care without challenging, it feels kind, but it rarely helps them grow.

Most coaches don't struggle with caring. That's why they became coaches. They struggle with challenging directly.

Because challenging someone you genuinely care about is emotionally expensive. And, if you’re not used to doing it, changing course can be even more difficult.

Here's the lie we often tell ourselves:

"I'm protecting the relationship."

But what we're actually doing is protecting ourselves from discomfort.

Meanwhile, the athlete keeps repeating the same mistake.
The assistant keeps operating below the standard.
The culture slowly drifts.

And eventually, the conversation becomes much harder than it ever needed to be.

Delayed candor compounds.

Just like delayed conflict.

What if difficult conversations weren't acts of criticism?

What if they were acts of belief?

Every meaningful coach-player relationship is built on one shared understanding:

"I care too much about your potential to let you stay where you are."

That's what honest feedback communicates. It shouldn’t feel like rejection. It should feel like belief.

Players don't need coaches who make them comfortable. They need coaches who make them better.

And sometimes those are the same thing.

But often they aren't.

The best coaches don't avoid difficult conversations. In fact, in the best coaches we’ve watched, the time between issue and it being addressed is very short.

These types of conversations are normal.

And I think we assume that’s because they’re confrontational people or personalities. But, they’re not. They just understand something very important.

Unspoken truth quietly becomes accepted behavior.

Every conversation you avoid teaches something.

The question is:

What is it teaching?

If fear is the first step in our Performance Pathway, then difficult conversations are among the clearest places where fear shows up in leadership.

Fear tells us to delay. To soften. To avoid. To hope the problem solves itself.

Leadership asks something different.

Leadership says:

"Care enough to tell the truth."

Because sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is tell them something they need to hear before it's too late.

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