“When you rearrange the letters in ‘listen’ it spells ‘silent.’ In order to truly listen, we have to silence our brains and stop trying to be right and figuring out how to respond. Just shut up and listen to our children.”

In this episode, I sat down with Valorie Kondos Field to chat about her coaching history, philosophy, and approach. As coaches, we should always be learning no matter how much experience we have and this episode will provide a wonderful opportunity to learn from one of the best of all time; regardless of sport. Miss Val has a unique and valuable coaching story and philosophy that offers incredible value to those who are open to learning from it.

Listen in as we talk about coaching, why we should re-define what success looks like, what the true role of a coach is, and why it’s so important to instill joy in others.

Some takeaways and questions we think about:

1. Infuse Joy
2. Would you coach differently if nothing was attached to winning?
3. We should never stop learning how to better support our youth.
4. Learning how to compete is a skill. 
5. Don’t coach from your ego! 
6. Focus 90% at least on the mental health and wellbeing of their players.