Both Sue Enquist and Dan Coyle know what it takes to be great. Sue learned it on the ball field on her way to winning 11 softball national championships at UCLA, and Dan Coyle learned it by researching his book, The Talent Code, as he visited 9 different places around the world that constantly produce world-class talent. Read on to discover their advice and discoveries that can help us all go from good to Great.

Anyone who knows Sue Enquist knows she has the energy of 1,000 people and the intensity of a blow torch. As this year’s NFCA Keynote speaker I came away with Sue’s key points for helping all of us inspire our players to greatness.

Sue identified 3 things that all players want to know every day, every practice and every game, and that we as coaches must be able to tell them so our players can relax and develop trust in our ability to lead:

  1. Where Do I Go? – Where’s our practice or meeting or game today, or where do I go right now in practice? Players need to know where you need them to be so they can confidently get there to do their job.
  2. What Do I Do When I Get There? – What are you expecting of me when I get wherever it is I’m going? When your players go to class are you asking them to sit in one of the first 2 rows like many coaches do? When I get to the bullpen for today’s pitching workout am I simply working on the spins I want to or am I practicing a specific routine that includes eliminating my best pitch? What are you asking of me whenever I get wherever I’m going? The more you can tell me about what’s expected of me the more prepared and confident I am when I get where I’m going.
  3. Will You Catch Me When I Fall? – This one’s HUGE! Will you as the coach or the teammate be there to catch me when I fail, or fall? It’s not just saying it at the beginning of the year in a meeting room it’s doing it when you strike out with the bases loaded in an early season game. Catching me when I fall involves helping me get through the failure, supporting me when I’m tearing myself apart and giving me another chance to right the wrong instead of benching me for the rest of the season. The more we’re there for our players when they fall the more risks our players will be willing to take which means the greater the players will be capable of becoming.
INFECT THEM WITH BELIEF! Everyone is trainable - from goldfish and dogs to softball players, but the first thing we must do is get them to believe they’re trainable. But in typical Sue Enquist fashion she didn’t say “get them to believe”, but instead she used a much more dynamic word – INFECT. “Infect” is so much more powerful and descriptive than any other word we might use. “Infect” means to contaminate or become affected as in action! Contaminate your players with the belief that they CAN do whatever it is they’re trying to do instead of convincing them how horrible they are! This phrase was one of the last things Sue said and yet it was, to me, the most powerful thing I heard!

Dan Coyle spoke at this years NFCA Convention about his ground-breaking book, The Talent Code. He spent 2 years visiting 9 different hotbeds of talent around the world to discover why they consistently produced extraordinary performers. Not just good performers but world-class, best in their field performers. In the case of the Russian tennis club called Spartak, it’s produced more top-20 women’s tennis players than the entire US – and they only have one rundown indoor court! How can that happen?

Daniel Coyle found 3 common factors that all 9 of these amazing places had in common:

  1. Deep Practice – they all conducted a specific kind of practice that increased skill up to 10 times faster than ordinary practice.
  2. Ignition – they all ignited passion in their players that helped greatly increase skill development.
  3. Master Coaching – each had Master Coaches – or Talent Whisperers – that helped inspire deep practice, ignite passion and ultimately bring out the best in each of their players.
While I can’t recommend this book enough to you I want to give you the key points I came away with while listening to Dan, and a few special nuggets I grabbed while picking his brain over dinner:

  • We don’t learn when information flows over us like a warm bath. Instead, when we operate on the edges of our ability we increase our learning at a tremendous rate!
  • You Must Create a Stretch – A mistake is not a mistake, it’s an opportunity for your players to create a reach – a stretch of their skill. IT’S A GOLDEN SECOND!!! That opportunity when your player has reached outside of her skill just enough to make a mistake is the only way she can improve a skill. Stretching increases improvement.
  • No Pain of Mistakes No Development of Skill! It’s like lifting weights…you don’t go to the gym and lift marshmallows because doing so would not challenge your muscles in anyway so they wouldn’t improve and get stronger. The same is true when building skills. Simply building skills through marshmallow actions (those things we can do easily and without any real effort) don’t make us stronger at all!
  • Myelin Makes it – 500,000 neurons must wrap in order to produce a complex action like a softball swing. Wrapping around neurons is a magic substance called Myelin, the more Myelin the faster information flows from the players brain to her body parts. The faster the info flows the better the athlete performs so increasing Myelin is key. Deep Practice creates Myelin and Myelin builds skill highways.
  • Put Something in Their Windshield – Outstanding performers are usually chasing something that’s just out of reach, as if they’re driving down the highway to excellence and what they’re chasing is on their windshield. Call it a goal or a dream but having something on your windshield is vital for players to stay motivated and challenged and reaching for excellence. This can be something as simple as visual examples of outstanding players in the Olympics or the Women’s College World Series but it’s something that young boys can get much more readily via tv than can young girls, so let’s all do a better job of getting something on their windshield.
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