PETE CARROLL: PLAYING IN THE ABSENCE OF FEAR

A head coach’s primary objective is to orchestrate the overall mentality of his team.  Great teams commonly display an air of confidence that separates them from others.  They have earned the right to be confident through their hard work and success.  The best teams utilized that confidence to share a feeling where they not only expect to win, they know they are going to win.  That knowing is what allows a team to play in the absence of fear. 

In my time as a coach I’ve learned that possibly the greatest detractor from high performance is fear:  fear that you are not prepared, fear that you are in over your head, fear that you are not worthy, and ultimately, fear of failure.  If you can eliminate that fear-not through arrogance or just wishing difficulties away, but through hard work and preparation-you will put yourself in an incredibly powerful position to take on the challenges you face.

I am a firm believer in the idea that more often than not, people will live up to the expectations you set for them, and when it comes to our players, we set those expectations extremely high from their first day in the program-often even well beyond what the player himself thinks he can achieve-and we make sure they know it.  High expectations are one of the most powerful tools we have.  But we also understand that, if those expectations are unrealistic, inappropriate for the individual player in question, or so overwhelming and long term that players don’t have the opportunity to enjoy smaller accomplishments along the way, then we are just setting our players up to fail. 

Ideally, we want to create an atmosphere or a culture where our players can perform in the absence of fear.  It is my job to orchestrate this “knowing we are going to win” mentality.  Achieving that means finding ways to prove to players that they can rely on themselves and their teammates to perform at the highest level in the face of any challenge-even losing. 

 While the Win Forever philosophy sounds great when things are going well, what happens when things go wrong?  How do you Win Forever given that everyone loses sometimes?  The reality is that, no matter how well you practice, how fully you develop your philosophy, or how effectively you recruit, you will lose now and then.  What separates those who have a true Win Forever outlook from those who don’t is the ability to approach that challenge of losing with the same competitive spirit with which they approach everything else.  When I say that “everything counts” or that every challenge in live is a chance to compete, I mean it. I don’t’ mean “everything except losing.”

From "Win Forever" by Pete Carroll