Two books that are a little less known but will be highly valuable to your coaching craft. Dream Teams by Shane Snow & Die Empty by Todd Henry. My sneak peak takeaways are below:

Dream Teams by Shane Snow

Cognitive Diversity

- Differences are gifts: perspectives and heuristics

- Cognitive diversity: are different angles and views is how we break the mould

- Provocation: “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

- We need critics, whistle-blowers and crazy ideas to break intertia and get us in the zone

- Extreme viewpoints: whether they are right or wrong it makes us think critically

- Cognitive expansion = crazy ideas spark other ideas

- Don’t ignore any perspectives spend time in deep consideration

- Einstein: after finding the needle in the haystack, I would look through every strand of hay and explore all possibilities.

Super-ordinate Goal: one that takes precedent over all others

- Unites the most different of people

- Enemy of my enemy is my friend

- You cannot push your level of knowledge if you don’t collaborate with other smart people. You have to do the work yourself and be challenged.

- Successful companies have cult like values. However the atmosphere most likely to induce creativity is diametrically opposed to shared values.

- Not all values are created equal, we must value inclusion of others intentions.

Intellectual Humility

- Multiculturalism helps our lateral thinking

- How much time do we spend among different coaches from other sports?

- How much time do we spend living and immersed in other cultures?

Power of StoryTelling

- Increases oxytocin in the brain, emotional connection that provides us with greater memory and incentive.

- Use stories to create an emotional response, creates a real experience.

Die Empty by Todd Henry

- Great work requires suffering for something greater than yourself

- All passion is not crated equal

- What problems are you uniquely equipped to handle? Must solve problems for people, you were put on this earth for others not yourself.

- What have you been ignoring that you know you should be doing?

Values

- You have to stand for something, or else you will be mercy to falling for everything.

1. What will I stand for today? What do you refuse to compromise on?

2. What one action will move the project forward today?

3. What can I say NO to that is going to help narrow my focus?

4. What hope do you have for creating change?

Environment

- Where is your sacred space?

- Connect the dots between a problem people have, your grand solution.

- Identify your knowledge gap and push the needle forward.

- Commit to asking better questions.

- Stop waiting for a map, stop waiting because its comfortable.

- Where in your life are you waiting for permission?

- Seinfeld writers: jokes daily, refused to break the chain of momentum.

- If we don’t reflect daily we stagnate, identify the patterns that are holding you back.

- Where am I putting myself ahead of the work? Sacrifice your ego.

- Do not coast on your previous efforts?

- Apply peripheral aptitudes to your work: keep bringing new opportunities and don’t just keep allowing predictable results to follow.

- Hone and trust your instincts to keep innovating your best work.

Critical Friends

- Must have probing conversations with arguments to come up with your greatest ideas.

- Get together with somebody who can be brutally honest with you.

- Impossible to accomplish something that you cannot define. Where are you going?

- Clarity creates effectiveness.

- Don’t let fear of failure cost you delivering your best work, get out of the GREY zone.

• Do you live in design or default? Get out of default mode and live your greatest life.