⏳ Read Time: 3 min

We’ve seen some of the fastest growth this newsletter has ever had in the past two months. Thank you for being here and for being a part of our mission to elevate the level of leadership in athletics. In fact, last week was our most-read newsletter in the 2.5-year history of the BETTER Letter.

Want to know more? Read about the BETTER Team and Mission here.

📌 What’s inside:

• ⏱ The problem: We prepare athletes for pressure, not ourselves

• 🧠 The insight: Stress reveals your default, not your potential

• 🛠 Five ways to pressure-train your leadership

Most fall seasons are well underway. If you’re not in-season, you’re officially doing pre-season workouts. We wanted to address a topic today that resonates with the feelings every coach experiences after the first set of games has come and gone.

⏱️ Anecdote: When the Game Gets Tight

Try to find coaches talking about how they prepare for pressure — how they prepare their own leadership for those moments. You’ll find almost nothing.

You can find thousands of hours on how to train your athletes under stress, but almost none on how to train yourself. And that’s the point: most leaders don’t see their own leadership as something worth preparing. But your team feels your presence in those moments more than any play you draw up.

Every coach knows the feeling: the game tightens, the clock winds down, the season hangs in the balance.

Your athletes have repped those moments. They’ve trained late-game situations, pressure-free throws, and two-minute drills.

But what about you?
Have you trained your leadership for pressure — or are you just hoping you’ll rise to the occasion?

The truth is, none of us rises to the moment. We fall back on our training. If we haven’t trained ourselves to manage stress, we often default to emotions, instincts, or old habits. And that’s where leaders lose their edge.

Between Kevin, Jeremie, and me, we could rattle off a list of household names in NCAA coaching we’ve gotten to sit down with and evaluate and plan for their leadership in pressure situations. Nearly all of them report to us that those moments were some of the most impactful we had together.

Not something we did for their team. And yet, so few coaches do this. And you rarely hear about it in common coaching education. Why is that?

And how can you do it on your own? What’s your plan to move the inchworm on your development?

📊 Research Insight: The Science of Expertise

In leadership, as with elite performance, pressure doesn't forge strength — it reveals whether strength has already been trained.

About a decade ago, the U.S. Air Force hired Rand to conduct some focus groups with their pararescuers to evaluate the effectiveness of their training.

In high-stakes roles — like pararescue — personnel are trained under simulated stressors so they can act clearly and purposefully when the stakes are highest.

More recently, a neuroscience-informed review of “tactical athletes” (e.g., military operators) underscores that cognitive resilience — the ability to think clearly under stress — isn't inherent. It’s cultivated with intentional training that builds psychological durability and decision-making under pressure.

Let’s conduct a brief examination of your leadership. Are you treating your non-conference schedule as a “stress test” of your leadership?
How are you evaluating?
How are you reflecting?
Are you growing to be the leader your team needs at the end of the season?
Or do you exhibit the same patterns and tendencies, both in and out of games?

🛠️ Putting It All Together:

🛠 Five Ways to Pressure-Train Your Leadership

Here are some of the techniques we use with coaches and ADs to help them develop their leadership skills in high-pressure situations.

1. Rehearse Hard Conversations

   • Grab a trusted assistant or colleague and role-play delivering tough feedback or handling conflict. Get reps before the real moment.

2. Create Decision-Time Limits

   • Too much input from the bench clouds the decision-making process. Too little and you’re not equipped. In practice or staff meetings, rehearse the bench dialogue with staff. Build speed under time constraints.

3. Write a Script

   • How do you want to respond if the other team scores first? If your team scores first? If you’re up two scores? Down two scores? What does your team need from you in each of those moments?

4. Review Your Emotional Film

   • After high-pressure moments, reflect: How did I show up? What tone did I set? What did my body language communicate?

5. Debrief After the Fire

   • Involve your staff: “What did you see from me in that moment? Where was I clear? Where was I not?” Feedback under stress is gold.

💡 Pro Tip: Keep a simple journal. Pick three traits you want to exhibit to your team on the sidelines in pressure situations. Score yourself 1-5 against those three traits after every game. Build some data to show improvement (or lack thereof).

Bonus Points: Invite a trusted staff member or even a captain or two to score you on those three traits.

🏁 Conclusion: There is a Higher Ceiling Than Winning

Your athletes are training to perform when it matters most. Are you?

Pressure moments don’t build new skills — they reveal the ones you’ve prepared. So stop hoping you’ll rise to the occasion. Start pressure-training your leadership now.

Because your team doesn’t just need your vision, they need your calm when the storm comes.

🧱 Build Your Culture on Purpose

Just in the past two weeks, we’ve added over 100 coaches and ADs to our Culture Playbook Community.

Most coaches know the kind of culture they want.
But when is it time to teach it, reinforce it, and make it visible?
That’s where it breaks down.

That’s why we built the Culture Playbook—a simple, customizable system you can use to make your culture clear and coachable from Day 1.

It’s packed with short, practical tools and team exercises that take your values off the wall and bring them to life.
The same tools are used by programs like Mississippi State, Florida State, and even teams at Microsoft and Google.

🛠️ 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.

A Quick Word

About this time last year, we decided to be as clear as we could in our marketing, so we “stopped” marketing any product other than the Culture Playbook and our Coach Community. That being said, we’ve had a couple of dozen asks about our Team Talks.

For the new folks, we developed a series of Team Talks, 18 in-season and 18 out-of-season talks, designed to help coaches meet their team where they are, regardless of what challenges they face during a season. The coach can put the talk up on the screen and hit play. Or use the video to prepare themselves to give the same talk to their team.

We still have them! We don’t market them nearly as much anymore. If you’d be interested in purchasing for your Department (ADs) or your program (Coaches), just DM Seth or Kevin on Twitter or reply to this email.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming!