Too Late to Coach

Aug 2

Most of you probably don’t know how big basketball is in England. There’s a very specific reason for that. They’re generally not very good. Only twice has the men’s team qualified to participate in the Olympics. Both of those were host nation qualifications - which means they didn’t earn their spot. So it makes sense that British basketball probably hasn’t pinged your radar.

I was also never a great basketball player. I was only decent enough to ride the bench through high school. But if you take a high school bench warmer from almost any school in the US and set him down in England, 99 out of 100 times he will know vastly more about basketball than anyone else around him. So, for a season in my life I found myself starting a community basketball club in England with my limited playing ability, a big love for the game, and a deep appreciation for how sport can change lives. I was actually a much better soccer player, but no one in England is going to listen to an average American coaching soccer.

It wasn’t long before the club grew enough to bring in an experienced coach from the US, and I started to see things in the game that I had never seen before. I’m sure I was frustrated by our players’ lack of basketball IQ or skill during a game. I don’t remember exactly what was happening, but I very clearly remember this coach leaning over to me, calmly, still looking at the boys on the court, and saying, “Once you’re in the game, it’s too late to coach.”

Strategic Pauses

“Once you’re in the game, it’s too late to coach.”

The truth in that simple phrase grows more profound the more I lead. Coaching, clarity, problem solving and growth don’t happen when everything is in full swing. It happens in the pauses — postgame evaluation, team practice, position specific training, film room, coaches meetings, and conditioning sessions. We all expect this in sports. Those rhythms are built into the fabric of sports culture. But what does the culture of your business look like?

You may feel like you’re bringing clarity and problem solving with your team all the time — jumping in during client crises, giving rapid-fire feedback when something goes wrong, texting quick bullet point to do lists, tossing out a vision “reminder” as you pass in the hall. But without the right pauses your team isn’t executing at their highest potential. Many of us are so focused on growing the business and keeping up with the work that we don’t build in rhythms to develop and give direction to the people doing the work.

It can be hard to pause. But if you want a team that executes well and keeps growing, you have to create intentional rhythms to pause — times to communicate, evaluate, give feedback, solve problems, train, and reset vision.

Meetings that Matter

In much of the business world meetings have become one sided talk sessions. One or two people deliver information to everyone in the room. (That’s a pointless meeting. If there won’t be any meaningful interaction, find an asynchronous way to share that information.) These pointless meetings are what make people cringe and roll their eyes when they think of meetings. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if your “meetings” were more like the sessions necessary for a sports team? What if you reserved your meeting times for specific, focussed purposes that involve connection, two-way communication, and collaboration.

Here are a few types of meetings to consider.

1. Evaluation: Make Time to Look in the Mirror

Most teams don’t fail because they’re bad — they fail because they’re blind.

They’re moving so fast, they never stop to ask:

Where have we been? Where are we now? Where are we going?
What’s actually working?
What’s consistently breaking down?
Where are we losing time, talent, or energy?

A regular rhythm of evaluation creates space to reflect and realign — weekly, monthly, or quarterly. It’s about staying on course toward the big vision. Make this part of your team rhythm. These aren’t performance reviews. This is about the whole system, not just individuals. It gives you and your team insight and ownership.

2. Feedback: Early, Often, and with Intention

Without feedback, people create their own stories about how they’re doing — and those stories are almost always inaccurate. Either they’re overconfident or they’re silently insecure and confused.

Feedback works best when it’s normalized and expected. When your team knows you care about their growth, and they see feedback as an act of support, the whole culture shifts. Your team also needs to know when it’s appropriate to share their own feedback with you - where they feel like they need more support or challenge, areas they lack clarity, gaps they see developing, unseen challenges they are facing, how their current work fits with their personal goals, etc.

Great feedback isn’t just about catching what’s wrong. It’s about helping people see themselves clearly — their strengths, patterns, and growth opportunities - to respond proactively.

Feedback allows the opportunity to bring appropriate support and challenge and to help people know themselves to lead themselves..

3. Problem Solving: Let the Team Solve Their Own Stuff

If you solve every problem for your team, you’ll always be the bottleneck. If you want to multiply leaders, scale your business, and have freedom in your own life, you need to give your team space to wrestle with real problems — together.

Create structured times where the team brings challenges to the table and works together to solve them. Facilitate, don’t fix.

Use a simple framework like the CORE Process:

Call It: What happened? What’s the real issue or learning opportunity?
Own It: Why did it happen? What’s in our control? What’s my part?
Respond: What’s the most important thing we can do in response?
Execute: WHO will do WHAT by WHEN? How will we know if we’re successful?

This not only leads to better decisions — it develops critical thinking, collaboration, responsibility, and confidence in your team.

4. Training: Build in Skill Reps

Most of the people on your team are doing their best with what they’ve got — but they don’t know how to level up. They’ve been hired for their skill set, but few have had structured time to grow that skill set.

Training isn’t just for onboarding. You need a rhythm for consistent, bite-sized, high-impact training. It could be:

Give people reps - outside of daily execution - in the skills they need next, not just the ones they’ve already mastered.

5. Vision: Remind Them What It’s All For

Vision is like a leaky bucket. If you don’t keep filling it up, it will eventually run dry. You can share a compelling, motivating vision in January and by June the team is going in all different directions.

Great leaders naturally and intentionally share vision so that the team takes ownership and moves together.

Remind people why you’re here as a team/business.
Celebrate progress.
Name what’s at stake.
Point to where you’re going.

This doesn’t require big speeches. Help your team take ownership of the future you are moving towards together. If you never bring people back to the “why,” they’ll revert to their own, and the team will start to fray.

Create Rhythms

If you want to grow a healthy, high performing team, you can’t just lead in the moment. You need to build a system that develops and gives direction to your team before the moment comes.

Evaluation to reflect & re-align.
Feedback for growth & care.
Problem solving that develops responsibility.
Training to build capacity.
Vision that keeps the team together.

None of this happens by accident. You have to create the rhythms and make them part of your culture.

If this feels overwhelming, don’t try to do it all at once. Pick one rhythm — just one — and put it on the calendar. Start small, stay consistent, and build from there.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash