Really appreciate you sharing this and thinking out loud with it. There’s a lot here that feels honest and useful, especially the emphasis on how a coach’s view of the situation shapes everything that follows. That shift—from seeing coaching as stable and rule-based to something dynamic and evolving—feels like a cornerstone insight.
I also like where you push back on the idea that time alone creates expertise. That’s a big one. The idea that development can be accelerated through intentional shifts in attention and behavior (rather than just years on the sideline) is something more coaches probably need to wrestle with.
Where this got me thinking, though, is around the idea of “seeing causes” and “applying cures.” I wonder if that framing still keeps us a bit stuck in a linear model—like the coach’s job is to diagnose and fix. In reality, what we often call a “cause” might just be one piece of a constantly shifting interaction between player, task, and environment.
So instead of getting better at identifying the right cause, maybe part of development is getting better at shaping the environment so different behaviors emerge in the first place.
That might shift proficiency from having better answers to designing better situations.
I agree with your insight about causes and fixes. Thinking about things in that way is uncomfortable for me as well. I'm trying to honor, at least to some extent, the work the authors did in creating this framework so I feel some need to express my ideas using their language. I think that's something that may come out a bit more in part 3, my struggle to figure out how to help coaches who are trying to get better at our craft, but don't necessarily hold the same values as I do. I think it's easy to create straw men of values that most would agree are wrong or counterproductive and then say that I should help those coaches change their values too. But what I'm really wrestling with is when our values don't overlap but are still reasonable and worthwhile. Expertise looks different to people who hold different values and I want people to excel on their terms, not mine. It's messy and I'm not at all close to figuring that part of coach development out. Yet.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate the work that you do in this area.
Really appreciate you sharing this and thinking out loud with it. There’s a lot here that feels honest and useful, especially the emphasis on how a coach’s view of the situation shapes everything that follows. That shift—from seeing coaching as stable and rule-based to something dynamic and evolving—feels like a cornerstone insight.
I also like where you push back on the idea that time alone creates expertise. That’s a big one. The idea that development can be accelerated through intentional shifts in attention and behavior (rather than just years on the sideline) is something more coaches probably need to wrestle with.
Where this got me thinking, though, is around the idea of “seeing causes” and “applying cures.” I wonder if that framing still keeps us a bit stuck in a linear model—like the coach’s job is to diagnose and fix. In reality, what we often call a “cause” might just be one piece of a constantly shifting interaction between player, task, and environment.
So instead of getting better at identifying the right cause, maybe part of development is getting better at shaping the environment so different behaviors emerge in the first place.
That might shift proficiency from having better answers to designing better situations.
I agree with your insight about causes and fixes. Thinking about things in that way is uncomfortable for me as well. I'm trying to honor, at least to some extent, the work the authors did in creating this framework so I feel some need to express my ideas using their language. I think that's something that may come out a bit more in part 3, my struggle to figure out how to help coaches who are trying to get better at our craft, but don't necessarily hold the same values as I do. I think it's easy to create straw men of values that most would agree are wrong or counterproductive and then say that I should help those coaches change their values too. But what I'm really wrestling with is when our values don't overlap but are still reasonable and worthwhile. Expertise looks different to people who hold different values and I want people to excel on their terms, not mine. It's messy and I'm not at all close to figuring that part of coach development out. Yet.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate the work that you do in this area.