Resources for Coaches & Leaders
For years I ran two different websites — Coach with Character & Great Resources for Coaches. I created both of those sites to offer coaches, athletes, parents, and leaders a variety of resources to help them develop to be their best. While I tried to offer a variety of resources on those sites, I will fully admit that I could have had a lot more resources on them.
My goal and my vow to you is to provide many different resources on this page to help you. As of right now at the advent of this new site, the number of resources will be limited. But over time, I will continue to add resources that will help you become the best you’re capable of becoming.
**Note – some of the links that you will click on may be affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission if you purchase anything after clicking on that link. However, your cost is not affected by going through the link on my page.
Websites
Here are some websites that I believe you will find useful and helpful to you in either the sports, coaching, teaching, parenting, or leadership world. Some will be more specific than others. For most of these, I am getting no royalty or commission from them. They have either been useful to me or other people, or I have come across them in searches and thought, “Hmm. That is cool. I should spread the news.”
www.proactivecoaching.info – This is the organization for which I speak and do presentations/workshops at schools, leagues, conferences, and businesses all across the US & Canada. (We have also started to go elsewhere in the world.) While I am biased, I believe it is the best of the best when it comes to coaching education on creating team cultures of excellence and great character. and with over 830,000 people following them on their Facebook page, I’m certainly not alone in that feeling. If you are interested in having me speak at your school, league, conference, or business, go to my “Speaking” page to see the presentations I do and to contact me to get signed up.
Sports Pro Magazine 20 Tech Ideas – Quite honestly, I just found this site today as I was doing a Google search, and I thought it looked interesting and like it had a some very cool things listed for coaches to check out. I have not used any of the gadgets/sites they list, but I thought you might be interested in checking it out to see what’s out there that is new and cutting edge.
Books
I tell coaches all the time that “Leaders are readers.” You must expand your mind if you are going to lead. You also want to be an example for your players to do the same thing. Therefore, I usually do a blog post once or twice a year with great books for coaches, teachers, leaders, and parents. Here are some of those books and some new ones.
Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life – I start with one of my all-time favorites. It is a great book for anyone interested in learning to lead in any capacity. It is always the first book I reach for when I need something on leadership. (By the way, the audio version is Awesome! Coach K reads it, so you get exactly what he was wanting you to hear.)
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner) – This is a book that most of you may have never heard of or dealt with, but it is one of the best books on leadership I ever read. Easy to read and tons of info.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Another one of those books that might not be on other lists you see compiled by and for coaches, but one that should be. This is one of those “must-read” books for leaders of any kind of organization. * Also, Simon Sinek’s TedTalk on the topic is one of the most-viewed TedTalks of all time.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success – Yet another book that might not be at the top of some other coaches’ lists that I think is a “must-read” book for coaches, teachers, parents, and any leader out there. Are you cultivating a “Fixed Mindset” or a “Growth Mindset” in your kids? How about in yourself? This book gets at the heart of how we think, feel, praise, and respond to others, and how we succeed or fail based on those things.
High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals
Four books that all focus on the importance of creating great goals and habits to achieve the success you seek in your life. Each has its own twist on the concept and each will provide you all kinds of impactful ways to create more success for your team, your family, and for yourself.
Say Anything: How Leaders Inspire Ideas, Cultivate Candor, and Forge Fearless Cultures
Permission to Speak Freely: How the Best Leaders Cultivate a Culture of Candor
Do the people on your team, organization, friend groups, or family feel they can say anything to you or to the group with total honesty and without fear? Do they all feel that they will be listened to and responded to with respect and honesty? Here are two excellent books by Doug Crandall & Matt Kincaid that focus on the concept of creating a team culture where people feel empowered to and comfortable with saying anything that needs to be said in order for the team to succeed. I think every person in any leadership capacity or on any team (I guess I mean every person in the world!) should read these two books.
Audiobooks
While every one of the books listed above can be listened to on audiobook, (and I listened to a few of them that way and they were awesome!), the books below are books that I only listened to in audio format. Therefore, I thought I would put them in a list specifically for audiobooks.
You can listen through a variety of places. The most popular in the world is Audible from Amazon. It is a subscription that you pay a monthly fee for to get free and discounted reads on audiobooks. It is an outstanding way to read a lot of books without having to sit down and read a lot of books.
I also use an audiobook app called Chirp. Chirp is a discount audiobook store. They have audiobooks that go on a deep discount for 30 days or so. I receive an email from them everyday with three or four new books on their list. I have read some outstanding books that I would have probably never read, all because they were only $.99 to $3.99 for audiobooks that retail for upwards of $30.00. All you have to do is sign up for the app, install it on your phone/computer, and you’re good to go. Then you just purchase any book that you find intriguing. You can get 20% off your first book if you click here. You can also get 20% off other books whenever you get other people to sign up and buy their first book, too.
Here are some books that I listened to on Chirp that were outstanding books on leadership. While they might not still be on the deal page on Chirp, you can get these at Amazon, Audible, or other book outlets.
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning – I wish I had this book when I was just starting out as a teacher and a coach. I would have done so many things so differently for the last 30+ years. However, it’s not too late to change! I learned so much about how we learn, what works for students and what doesn’t, and how to help people REALLY learn things as opposed to cramming things into short-term memory, only to be lost in a few weeks. A must-read for all teachers and coaches!
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life – For those of you who struggle with the title, I apologize. Now I will tell you to get over it and read/listen to this book! There are so many great ideas in here to become the best you can be. The author, Jen Sincero, narrates it herself, and I generally like books more when the author reads them because (s)he knows exactly what (s)he meant and how (s)he meant to say it. Anyway, it’s a good book and a fun listen.
Two books by Marc Reklau, both of which offered great insights into ways to make your life better by changing your habits and changing your outlook. Lots of great little nuggets in each of them.