By Zach Weinberg, Tennessee Tech Head Beach Coach/Associate Head Women’s Coach
Recently, I was listening to one of my favorite coaching podcasts: “Coaching DNA,” which was created by Travis Wyckoff. On the podcast, Wyckoff, who markets himself as a coach for coaches and runs a consulting business called Kingdom Coaching, sits down with coaches, administrators, and sports professionals from across the athletics landscape to pick their brains and hear their thoughts on leadership, team building, culture, and learning.
While Travis’ background as a baseball player and former collegiate coach lends itself to the guest list skewing toward current baseball coaches, his reach into other sports is abundantly clear. Volleyball coaches are featured with a high level of frequency, and he has talked with volleyball leaders such as Kevin Hambly, Christy Johnson Lynch, John Mayer, Travis Hudson, Jen Greeny, and many more.
Whenever I listen to any of his guests, I am constantly taking away information and coaching tactics to apply to my own coaching journey. While listening to a recent episode, I found myself thinking, “With all of the esteemed minds and great leaders that Travis has spoken with on this podcast, surely he must have some great advice of his own that he has formulated from all of these conversations.”
So, I reached out to Travis and asked if he would be willing to chat and offer advice on how coaches, of any sport or level, can always be filling their toolbelt with ways to grow and best practices for coaches to always be learning. Thankfully, Travis accepted my invite, and what came of our conversation was even better than I could have imagined!
Travis and I discussed two ways coaches can view learning and bettering themselves: the broad spectrum, which Travis calls the 30-Thousand-Foot View, and the Boots on the Ground View, where the coach is learning by doing. Both views have a place in the coach’s learning journey, and we discussed them as two separate entities. What follows is a recap of our conversation; there are no direct quotes, but I have paraphrased Travis’ responses below.
30-Thousand-Foot View
The 30-Thousand-Foot View is an approach to learning that covers a more general range of topics. Learning strategies in this group don’t include on-court coaching, but instead they are things that feed you: podcasts, books, conventions, and overall reflection. In fact, Travis feels that reflection after practices and matches is one of the very best ways a coach can learn.
To get the most out of reflection, the coach needs to make sure they are self-aware in all their coaching practices. Self-awareness leads to great reflection, as well as the ability to challenge assumptions. However, reflection without self-awareness will lead to jaded views, so it is incredibly important for coaches to align themselves with people that are going to sharpen their minds and, maybe most importantly, tell them the truth. Someone that can point out blind spots and offer constructive criticism is paramount to a coach’s growth.
In the 30-Thousand-Foot View, if a coach can learn and grow daily from every avenue at their disposal, and if the coach can be a voracious learner, then they will only improve as a coach. But, the goal is for what Travis calls Compound Growth—hanging in there every single day to learn as much as possible, and over time, filling your coaching cup so you can become the best possible leader and coach.
Boots on the Ground View
In layman’s terms, having “boots on the ground’ means that we are learning by doing. Maximizing the amount of coaching reps you can get is one of the best ways to learn by doing, but at the same time, so is writing about your experiences. In Travis’ mind, writing is the best way to figure out what you know and what you don’t know. Even deeper than that, though, writing assists the coach in finding gaps in what they do know and how they articulate it to others.
Imagine a coach who is very intuitive about recruiting; if that coach is in a convention center watching youth volleyball, they may know exactly what they are looking for. But if another coach asks them what they look for in an outside hitter, for example, it may be very hard to articulate and they would most likely respond with something like, “I don’t know, I just know it when I see it.”
The same can be said when you ask a for their coaching philosophy. They should be able to respond right away, but if they haven’t written it down, the answer is likely to be unfocused and not as sharp. If the philosophy is first written down, then the likeliness of rambling is lower in the moment.
Writing can be useful when listening to a podcast as well. Because there is so much information on a podcast and it is harder to go back and find information you were looking for, taking notes while listening can help you understand and maximize the context of what you’ve learned.
Writing is something that I have started to dabble in. I have my “volleyball notebook” that is always on me—I bring it with me to convention—and it has become a running list of presentations, notes, drills, and clinic information. Because of my own writing journey, I asked Travis: “What do you write about when you don’t know what to write about?” His answer was perfect and absolutely will guide me in my writing journey: “If I have nothing to write about, I go read. If I have too many thoughts, I go write.”
Travis’ final nugget, which I think rings true with the notion that coaches are teachers, was that teaching something to someone else is the best way of learning a coach can have. As coaches, I believe that we can all resonate with that thought process.
I want to thank Travis Wyckoff again for lending me his time to share his knowledge on how coaches can continue to develop professionally in their learning journey. If you are curious to learn more about Travis and Kingdom Coaching, you can find him over at his website, on Twitter at @KingdomCoachingTW, and on Instagram at @TravisWyckoff.
Do you have a learning tactic or strategy that helps you in your learning journey or any advice on writing topics that have helped you? I want to hear them! You can reach me at zweinberg@tntech.edu. I look forward to the conversation!