Coaching Culture · 2026-06-14 · 39 min
Most coaches spend their careers shaping athletes. Rustin Dodd and Elise Devlin spend theirs learning from them - and what they've found might change how you coach. Rustin and Elise write NY Times feature, The Peak for The Athletic, a section devoted to the mental side of elite sports. In this episode with JP Nerbun, they unpack what a year of "I Tried" journalism has taught them: Kobe's silence practice, Michael Phelps' freestyle journaling, Buzz Williams writing four to five letters a day, an Olympian who approaches every failure with childlike curiosity, and a reminder from David Ortiz about what it actually means to bounce back. The thread running through all of it: curiosity. For coaches who want to understand what's going on inside their athletes - and maybe inside themselves - before it becomes a problem.
The Hardest Part of Leading Yourself | The Culture Captain: Level Two | Episode 46155 / 100The Mental Habits of Elite Coaches | Rustin Dodd & Elise Devlin, The Athletic | Episode 460The Culture Captain: Building Leaders From the Inside Out | John O'Sullivan | Episode 458Identity, Influence, and the Leadership Nobody Told You Was Already Yours | Culture Captain: Level One | Episode 457 Coach The Person: The Science of Transformational Conversations | Marcia Reynolds | Episode 456