Achieving Excellence by Dr. Colleen M. Hacker with Mallory E. Mann - Book with Online Resource - click here.

This clip comes from our AD Insider | Thursday 30 episode #112. Click here to view full episode.

By: Wade Gilbert

Originally Published in: Coaching Better Every Season

Provided by: Human Kinetics

Athletes will never reach their peak performance unless a deliberate and sustained effort to teach and build trusting relationships occurs between teammates and between athletes and coaches. At the beginning of a career, most coaches focus on building their knowledge of the game. But with experience, the best realize that more time should be spent on building relationships. Hall of Fame volleyball coach Mike Hebert summed it up well when he shared,

As I entered the final years of my career, I realized that I was on the verge of identifying the most important element in building team success. Without it, there can be no journey to the top. No dynasties. No championships. But if you can harness its power, you will find your program on the way to levels of achievement that had been impossible before. The element I am speaking about is trust.

I vividly recall a conversation I had with a national team coach shortly after the team, which was expected to place high in the world championships, was prematurely eliminated from the tournament. We both noted how odd it was that athletes, including one who was recognized as the best in the world, did not perform well at the world championships but were now again dominating the game with their professional teams.

What changed in a few weeks for these athletes? They were still competing against the world's best, but now they appeared much more relaxed and confident. Why couldn't they compete like that with their national team? We realized that what plagued the national team was a culture of distrust. This circumstance commonly occurs when teams are put together quickly and coaches and athletes do not have enough time to build trusting relationships through shared experiences.

Mutual trust is defined as being comfortable with exposing vulnerabilities, fears, weaknesses, and needs with others. Trust allows athletes to focus their time and energy on the business of getting better and contributing to team goals by releasing unhealthy and energy-sucking worries about potential motives and consequences of the actions of coaches or teammates.

Trust rests on the assumption that the moral standards and intimate details of a relationship will not be violated. This concept is perhaps the most important one for coaches to grasp when planning how to build a cohesive team. Every single athlete and coach is vulnerable, all the way from young novices up to world champions. Achieving peak performance depends on the degree to which coaches and athletes feel comfortable exposing and sharing vulnerabilities, so that they can provide each other with the necessary emotional, physical, and technical support to overcome challenges and sustain positive momentum.

Dr. Brené Brown, whose TED talk on the power of vulnerability has been viewed nearly 25 million times, explains that being vulnerable requires the courage to allow others to see our imperfections. Through her extensive research she has found that showing vulnerability is a sign of authenticity that fosters trust. Furthermore, the ability to show empathy and experience things like love and belonging requires vulnerability. Many of the greatest coaches of all-time reference love as a cornerstone of their successful coaching philosophy, including John Wooden, who described love as acting in the best interest of each athlete. Clearly, the willingness to embrace vulnerability is critical for building meaningful and trusting coach-athlete relationships.

Leadership scientist Kurt Dirks conducted a landmark study with 30 American collegiate basketball teams that showed beyond a doubt the power of trust and the way in which it directly influences team performance. A series of trust surveys and interviews were matched with a wide range of potential factors that could influence team performance (e.g., prior team performance, coach and player experience, team talent level).

Athletes' trust in their coach had a significant effect on the team's winning percentage. In fact, teams that reported the highest levels of trust in their coaches performed the best. Conversely, teams that reported the lowest levels of trust in their coaches performed the worst; the least trusted coach was fired at the end of the season on a team that won only 10 percent of their games. Team performance measured over the four years before the study also had a significant positive effect on the athletes' trust in the coach. Collectively, these findings show that trust in the coach is partly based on the coach's prior record and in turn directly affects future team performance.

Other research corroborates this conclusion, showing that coaches will appear more trustworthy if they have a past record of modeling core values and respect (reputation), are currently modeling core values and respect (performance), and demonstrate self-confidence, professionalism, and dignity (appearance).

One of the most common mistakes that coaches make is underestimating the amount of time and effort needed to build trusting relationships with athletes. Trust is perhaps the most valuable asset of high-performing teams, whether it is a team comprising a single coach and one athlete or a large team of dozens of athletes and coaches working together. Trust is the foundation and core cohesion. Coach Urban Meyer summed it up well when reflecting on the keys to winning the inaugural College Football National Playoff Championship in 2015: "I am convinced that this unique bond was the fuel that energized our championship run. It would not have happened without the enormous investment we made of teaching and building trust among our coaches and players.”

Trust can be thought of as confidence in someone else's character. Trust has sometimes been described as a bet that you make based on your assumptions about how others will react in relation to your own behaviors. For example, an athlete demonstrates trust in her coach and teammates when she is willing to take a calculated risk during a competition. She is betting that her coach and teammates will not reprimand or belittle her if the risk results in failure.

We cannot expect our athletes to trust us, and each other, simply because we are the coach or because we play on the same team. Assuming the role of the coach is the launching point for building a bank of trust. Much as regular deposits must be made to a bank account to offset withdrawals, coaches and athletes must make frequent deposits to their trust account to build and sustain healthy relationships. This approach is consistent with that used by championship high school coaches to build athlete character.

  ]]> https://coachesinsider.com/soccer/establishing-mutual-trust-8/feed/ 0 125751 https://coachesinsider.com/soccer/3v1-to-goal-fast-break-with-ian-barker-united-soccer-coaches/ https://coachesinsider.com/soccer/3v1-to-goal-fast-break-with-ian-barker-united-soccer-coaches/#respond Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:00:11 +0000 https://coachesinsider.com/?p=95551 Watch as Coach Ian Barker explains this 3v1 to goal fast break drill. This is a full-field drill with 2 goalies and a 1v1 (center back and a striker) in front of each goal. On each flank there are players on deck. The far goalie will play a ball to one of them and the exercise turns into a 3v1 to goal. After a goal the ball is played to the opposite goal and the process is repeated. This is a fast-paced, back-and-forth exercise and as the coach you can control the scenario by adding defenders.

1. Controlling the ball out of the back when pressed
2. Enforcing good positional placement on goal kicks
3. Maintaining formational and positional integrity when counterattacked.

Coach Marcus Edmondson's updated contact information as of August 2025: MEdmondson@Eanesisd.net

Marcus Edmondson was previously a coach at Glen High School (TX).

Zack Etter, LMHC, LPC, CMPC is a licensed Mental Health Therapist and a Certified Mental Performance Consultant with the Association of Applied Sport Psychology at the University of Massachusetts.

By: Dan Gould and Cliff Mallett

Originally Published in: Sport Coaches' Handbook

Provided by: Human Kinetics

The coaching process has been increasingly recognized as a complex social and cognitive system. In this context, the quality of the coach-athlete relationship has been proposed as a critical success factor for effective coaching, and that relationship can be understood in terms of the 3+1Cs model.

• Closeness refers to affective ties between athlete and coach, such as mutual trust, respect, appreciation, and liking.
• Commitment of explicit dedication to the common goal
• Complementarity collaboration and mutual responses, such as ready support and overall friendliness
• Co-orientation interdependence, or the degree to which coaches and athletes seem to have a shared understanding

As these elements suggest, the quality of the coach-athlete relationship is determined in considerable part by the coach's ability to recognize and empathize with the emotions, feelings, needs, and desires of others (typically athletes, but also other stakeholders). This empathy enables the coach to understand and cater to athletes by providing athlete centered coaching. It is not, however, enough by itself. The quality of the coach-athlete relationship also depends on the ability of the coach and athlete to coordinate objectives and efforts. Thus empathy provides only the starting point for the coach and the athlete to create a shared understanding as the basis for their work together.

Based on this perspective of optimal empathy as shared understanding, coaches should engage in the following practices.

• Seek formal and informal opportunities to speak with athletes individually, both about sport and about other topics.
• Develop a culture in which everyone's opinions are shared through consistent opportunities for athletes' voices to be heard and valued nonjudgmentally
• Review and evaluate communication strategies to ensure that coaching messages are received in the manner intended
• Promote opportunities for social interaction between athletes and coaches
• Attend to both verbal and nonverbal cues