One Player at a Time - Daniel Jones
Joy Reigns
It's difficult for Daniel Jones and me to have short conversations. It's not that either of us is overly extroverted, it's due more to the passion we feel for the topics we tend to discuss when we're together. Whether we talk about mountain biking or teaching, Daniel can't help but show how much he loves the things he does in life. While he has coached many places, he is currently a women's indoor assistant coach at Brigham Young University.
What is “One Player at a Time”? - read here
Success is peace of mind that is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.
- John Wooden
John Wooden's definition of success came up very quickly in my conversation with Daniel Jones. The peace of mind Wooden describes, Daniel told me, allows him to experience joy. Given that success sits at the top of Wooden's philosophical pyramid, it seems logical that Daniel's feeling of joy would be a product of all that sits lower in the pyramid. And yet, for Daniel, joy is a way of living every day and not just a product of how he lives. Daniel's leadership is centered on conveying his sense of joy and helping others around him live joy-filled lives.
How does Daniel describe joy as a process (and not just an outcome)? “Eyes open, ears open, heart open.” For him, that’s how to be fully present in the moment. Since he was a teenager, he sensed he had within him a love for life and for others and it was important that he share it. Today, Daniel told me, that means he wants to lead others from a place of love. So what does that look like in practice? How does he actually coach in an open, joyful way?
It starts with what Daniel called “people-based coaching”. He doesn’t see himself as coaching volleyball skills first, he sees himself coaching life lessons through volleyball. This was obvious in the way Daniel spoke of Erica (not her real name), a player he coached recently. In the course of our conversation, Daniel didn’t talk at all about Erica’s volleyball skills. In fact, if he hadn’t mentioned at the outset which position Erica played, I wouldn’t have known. But that’s kind of the point. Daniel said his strength is relating to people so to coach people as he believes he should, technical and tactical feedback are perhaps secondary concerns. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t give technical and tactical feedback, it means that he does so in pursuit of something more important than that.
He’s not pushing players like Erica to execute volleyball skills. Instead, he’s pushing them to do what they do with intention, regardless of what they’re doing. Doing things with intention is another way of being in the moment, and there’s a joy in doing things with intention. He said that one of Erica’s super powers is discipline and there’s a lot of overlap of discipline and intention.
I want to take a moment to highlight what I see as the similarities and differences between discipline and intention as they’re being discussed here. They are similar in that they both connote focus. A person practicing with discipline maintains their focus on certain aspects of their performance despite distractions or stress. A person practicing with intention also maintains a high level of focus throughout performance. I differentiate between discipline and intention by acknowledging that “discipline” also means “punish”. Coaches commonly tacitly encourage this type of self-discipline, allowing players to treat themselves harshly when they make mistakes or fail. They regularly hold up such behaviors as worthy of emulation, despite the negative impacts those behaviors can have on athlete well-being and performance. In contrast, “intention” says the athlete knows what they want to do and are focused on execution, just as “discipline” does, but without the need to punish oneself. “Intention” gives more freedom to the athlete in how they choose to deal with failure without losing their focus.
For Daniel, practicing with intention is important because it describes how a person is present during practice. Practicing with discipline can end up being focused on being right or wrong, which is being focused on outcomes. Practicing with intention can be more process-focused, which can increase how much players are in the moment during practice, which increases how much joy they can feel during those times.
But why is that feeling of joy so important? Because it connects back to Wooden’s definition of success. During our conversation, Daniel repeatedly mentioned the “peace of mind” that comes from giving your best, which is another way of saying practicing with great intention. If players and coaches allow and/or expect the punishment aspects of self-discipline, it’s very difficult to achieve that peace of mind. By coaching from a place of love and encouraging intention, Daniel is working every day to show players that “a feeling of peace and of joy is attainable within the tumult of life.”
How is Daniel showing players how to find those feelings? In many ways, it depends on who the student-athlete already is. (This is the heart of the cliché “meet them where they are.”) For instance, Daniel’s initial perception of Erica was that she had many physical gifts but felt a lack of self esteem, particularly in certain aspects of her game. (Like many players, Erica feels more of a sense of accomplishment when she gets to play to her strengths and feels more hesitant when she’s leaning into what she perceives as her weaknesses.) But her self esteem was most noticeable to Daniel in her discomfort with feedback when they first started watching video together.
At BYU, players and coaches not only regularly watch video together, they also have regular one-on-one meetings that don’t necessarily include video. Daniel likes getting out of the office for those meetings, often going for walks outside, because he finds players behave differently when he changes the physical context (the location) of their conversation. Daniel found that Erica was much more engaged when they left the office versus when they would watch video together. Over time, at least partly due to those walks, Daniel learned more about Erica, like that she had a hard time taking a lot of feedback, even if most of it was positive. It took a while for Erica to find the words to express that feeling and it took a great deal of trust in him to actually say those words to him. Daniel earned Erica’s trust by learning about her and putting what he learned about her to use in how he interacted with her.
By being intentional about how much feedback he gives Erica during practice and competition, he finds moments to push and moments to back off. By modulating how much feedback he gives her, she has more space to explore what she can do. She can still be protective of her self esteem at times but, Daniel says, that helps him become a better coach by having to figure out when those moments arise. That’s what learning about a player looks like: Daniel looking for ways to change how he acts in changing situations.
Learning lessons about Erica is critically important to how Daniel helps her feel satisfaction in her work. By talking with Erica about her intentions for practice and competition, he helps her focus on what she wants to do and who she wants to be each day. Because Daniel learned to share more space with Erica and not weigh her down with too much feedback, she responded by filling that space with an increased investment in her own growth and development. Erica feels more satisfied with her performance, partly because she feels seen and valued by Daniel, the other coaches, and her teammates.
But sharing space with Erica doesn’t mean Daniel doesn’t push her at times as well. Wooden’s definition of success is centered on a feeling that you have done your best. Part of Daniel’s job is not necessarily to tell Erica that she hasn’t done her best, it is better viewed as helping her continually redefine what her best looks like. Daniel has a deeply-held belief that anyone can change so Daniel pushes Erica by keeping her from stagnating and only doing things she currently feels confident in. He believes in her ability to change herself. He said, “we are paid to see the best in them so, as a professional, I’m never going to stop believing in them.”
There are several psychological concepts that can describe the lessons Daniel is striving to teach Erica. Daniel framed his work in the context of approach and avoidance orientations. He wants to help Erica approach success rather than avoid failure. Continually pushing to expand what Erica can be successful at encourages an approach orientation while continually pushing to lessen failures at what she already does encourages an avoidance orientation. But you could also view how Daniel pushes as supporting a mastery orientation over a performance orientation. Or, in terms that might be more familiar, Daniel is pushing Erica in a way that supports a growth mindset rather than pushing her in a way that encourages a fixed mindset. While I believe there is a great deal for coaches to learn about theories of motivation and goal orientation, what it is most important to Daniel is not which theory you use to describe his efforts, but that Erica feels Daniel’s belief in her.
Daniel’s efforts to show his belief in others hasn’t always been easy or successful. He talked about how, when he began his coaching career, he felt like he “knew enough to be impactful” but he often struggled to figure out either what he wanted that impact to be or how he wanted to make that impact. But, over time, he gained a “confident humility” because “you have the scar tissue, you’ve done the work.” For him, a big example of gaining scar tissue was when he found himself as the head coach of a Division I team much earlier in his career than he had anticipated. He imagines that players on that team probably saw him as someone who started out enthusiastic and became more and more “riddled with anxiety” that was brought on by his increasing distraction with winning and with supporting his rapidly-growing family. He remembers telling those players he loved them but he doesn’t think the way he coached them actually demonstrated that love.
He’s learned from experiences like those that, despite his best intentions, he’s going to fall short at times. Today, falling short tends to look like frustration. “We’re all going to feel it, but how do we express it?”, he said. His awareness of that constant challenge means he’s very intentional about his body language, especially his facial expressions to ensure he’s presenting belief to players. To couple that together with his efforts to share space with Erica, the two have an agreement about how they communicate during competition. While they’re always going to talk about common things throughout play, they give each other permission to say more important, more meaningful things by holding their high fives and their eye contact longer. When that happens, Daniel knows he’s got to show belief in his words and actions. That’s an example of intentional trust and support that is a hallmark of Daniel’s coaching.
What does Daniel hope Erica (or any athlete in his care, for that matter) takes away from her experience being coached by him? He wants her to remember that she can do hard things, that she can always push the boundaries of what she can do. He hopes that knowledge of those things helps her find a sense of peace and joy at the end of the day. He recognizes that what she takes away from her experience is, to some extent, out of his control. But he’s at peace with that because of how intentional he is in his day-to-day work with her. To have a life-long impact, he can only plant seeds and tend them in hopes they will grow. As has been said…
These trees which he plants, and under whose shade he shall never sit, he loves them for themselves, and for the sake of his children and his children’s children, who are to sit beneath the shadow of their spreading boughs.
- Hyacinthe Loyson
Have questions for Daniel? You can ask me here or you can email Daniel directly.