“The mind entertains one thought at a time, and only one. The greatest cause of feeling ‘swamped’ and ‘overwhelmed’ in life is…not knowing this.”

—Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson, 100 Ways to Motivate Others: How Great Leaders Can Produce Insane Results Without Driving People Crazy

The more that you have connected and supported, connected and supported, over and over again, the easier it will be to offer direction. It's like priming the pump. Once you've laid the groundwork and established the relationship, the other person is in a place where he or she is open and trusting and ready to receive the direction.

How do you know when the person is ready? He or she may say: “Coach, tell me what you really want me to work on. Don't hold back.”

It's not necessary to authentically connect, genuinely support, and provide concise direction in every conversation. Sometimes you can skip the connection part and move right into supporting and directing. When can you do this? When you have a solid relationship. Think about your best friend. Do you need to start every conversation with a peer-to-peer greeting? No. You can tackle your best friend. You can pull a prank on him. You can greet him pretty much however you like, because your connection is real. Your best friend would likely question whether you are sober if you approached him with a “Hi, Bob, it's so good to see you today. How was your weekend?” What is that? No nicknames? No informality? That's certainly not a very strong friendship.

And even better, you can often skip over both the connection-building and the support-providing parts of the model and jump right to offering the concise direction. Ever asked your best friend for advice on the same thing over and over again? For instance, about a relationship that isn't going well with a significant other? Would your best friend really need to start with “Oh, I'm so glad you asked me, I'm happy to provide some guidance here. You know I'm here for you, and care about you a lot” and then provide support with a “I know this must be hard for you. You are a great person and you care about her feelings, so I'm sure this isn't easy”? No, your best friend would likely say, “Dude, are you kidding me? For the hundredth time, you need to dump her, it's totally unacceptable that she cheated on you with your brother!” Boom. There's the concise direction without any need for reconfirming a connection or offering support; your friend knows those things are firmly in place.

My first year playing professional basketball in Israel, I played for Hapoel Migdal Jerusalem—the beloved professional basketball team of the city of Jerusalem and one of the best teams not only in Israel's top league, but also in all of European international competition. I had been a leading (all-league, all-state, all-New England, etc.) player the previous year as a senior at Bowdoin College, helping guide the team to the best year in school history. But that was Division III collegiate basketball. Making the jump from that level of play to being a rookie on one of the best professional basketball teams in the world was quite a leap. My new team included six former National Basketball Association (NBA) players and four Israeli National Team players. I was the eleventh player. At 6′6″, and having normally played as a power forward, I arrived in Israel with an image of myself as a big guy. Well, on Hapoel Jerusalem we had a 7-footer—and he played as our starting small forward. I quickly realized that this was another level of the sport I loved. I was buried on the bench and relegated to rookie chores—carrying the veterans' bags on all our team flights to Europe and Russia for international competition and essentially serving as a practice player.

Nonetheless, my coach, Israeli basketball legend Guy Goodes, saw something in me, and to my great surprise he signed me to a multiyear contract. When Coach David Blatt left our number one rival, Maccabi Tel Aviv, two years ago to become the head coach of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, helping them reach the NBA championship with LeBron James in 2014–2015, it was Guy Goodes who replaced David Blatt as the head coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv. Needless to say, we are talking about an elite level of basketball here and an elite coach in Guy Goodes, who himself had been a longtime star as a player with Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Israeli National Team back in his day.

Like any great coach, Coach Goodes excelled at defining roles. He made my role very clear to me: (1) I was to push our star power forward, Omar Sneed, in practice (except on game days or when we were traveling, we had two tough 2-hour practices a day), and (2) I was to help bridge the division between the American and Israeli players in the locker room. That was it. This was a year for me to learn, to develop as a player, and to support the team in the locker room and at practice.

When we signed Roger Powell, Jr., a 6′6″ former standout forward, who helped take the University of Illinois team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) finals and who later played with the NBA's Seattle Supersonics, Utah Jazz, and Chicago Bulls, his addition to our team caused a lot of concern in the locker room. First, a very well-liked player was released from our roster to make room for Roger, and second: Roger was really good! Although he came off the bench, his addition posed a threat to the playing time of our other star forwards. As for me, well, I was hardly playing anyway; but the addition of Roger meant that I would surely never see the court that year.

So, what did Coach Goodes ask me to do? He solicited my opinion on what we could do as a team to help Roger adjust to life in Israel and be more connected to the team. So I set about making a concerted effort to look out for Roger. After all, I knew firsthand how difficult it could be for a new arrival to get adjusted to a foreign country and a new team. I spent a lot of time taking Roger out to eat, showing him new places, introducing him to new people, and rooming together and hanging out together while we traveled to Europe and Russia for our away games. When we broke up into pairs to shoot jump shots at practice, I was assigned to work with Roger. Roger, being an amazing person, made the job particularly fun, despite never letting me outshoot him.

By further involving me in the overall success of the team, Coach Goodes both provided genuine support for Roger through me and gave my role on the team purpose. My identity that year—as a guy who might not be playing in the games but who could help the team through his presence in the locker room and his efforts in practice—was reinforced by Coach Goodes's support for my role.

After all, many of the players on any team don't play starring roles but supporting roles, as I did on Hapoel Jerusalem. How do you, as a coach, effectively engage and integrate everyone on the team? So often, coaches focus their attention and praise on the stars, causing the other players to feel left out. Almost all of us, as athletes, have known that feeling of not being the apple of the coach's eye, and it negatively affects our motivation and cohesion as a team. What Coach Goodes did to empower both Roger and me was a powerful lesson in providing indirect support for the players on your team, regardless of their roles.

And how did Coach Goodes provide concise direction? I remember having a really good scrimmage against Hapoel Holon. It was the most playing time I had all season, even though it didn't count as an official game. I matched up against Deron Washington, a star 6′7″ small forward who had been a second-round NBA pick by the Detroit Pistons the previous year out of Virginia Tech. Let's put it this way: Deron was much, much better than me at basketball. There will never be any point, no matter how many years go by, at which I will ever be as good as Deron. He was an elite athlete who could run by me and jump over me at will.

But I played really well that game. I hit my shots, made some good plays, and did a decent job defending him. I wouldn't say I outplayed him that game, but I held my own. It was a huge boost to my self-esteem as a player, having played at a small college and not yet sure whether I really belonged in a top professional league. After the game, I had a new belief in myself as a capable role player at the professional level. So I was feeling pretty good about my performance after the game, with the exception of having missed one of my free throws. As I was making my way out of the arena, I ran into Coach Goodes. I must have smiled at him, because he smiled back. And there it was—and I was waiting for it—some genuine support, please, Coach! “Hey, kid,” he said, “nice job. But next time, make your damn free throws.” We both laughed.

What was his message? “Get off it, Jordan. You played okay. Don't get too caught up in it, because you have a long way to go. But enjoy the moment.” If he weren't authentic, if he weren't a real coach—someone who played the game at a high level, who really understood what was going through the mind of his young player, and who really got it—he wouldn't have said anything at all, or maybe he would have just said, “Good game.” Instead, he reinforced that despite him being the coach, and me the lowly rookie destined for many more months on the bench and likely a long-term career in something other than professional basketball, there was a mutual respect. It made me excited to carry out the role he assigned me that year, despite the frustrations of being on the low end of the totem pole.

And that's exactly the point: by being a transparent leader—one who displays humor and humility, who assigns clear roles, strives to foster transparency throughout the organization, and provides genuine support—a coach earns the right to lead.

And this is really important: the best coaches and leaders are able to get so much done, in so little time, in communicating what they need of their players in crunch time conversations precisely because they can skip over steps 1 and 2 and cut right to the chase. Their players want that direction and are in a position to receive it positively and act on it enthusiastically, because they know from numerous previous interactions that they have an authentic connection with their coach and that their coach genuinely supports them and wants what's best for them.

I was receptive to Coach Goodes's very concise direction to me, “Make your damn free throws,” because we had an authentic connection and because he not only provided genuine support to my teammates and me but also literally defined my role as one in which I would spend my entire season supporting my other teammates in practice, in the locker room, and on the road. It was very clear to all of us that what motivated Coach was the team's success. If the team did well, then we would each benefit individually as professional players. Toward that end, he supported us, and he asked that we support one another.

So we did. I'll never forget how tight we became as a team. Despite having not seen one another for many years, I know that we would all drop everything to help one another to this day. Adam Haluska, Travis Watson, Timmy Bowers, Omar Sneed, Torin Francis, and, of course, Roger Powell—we were a hell of a team. I give Coach Goodes all the credit in the world for being able to successfully merge those talented American players with our terrific Israeli National Team stars—Yuval Naimy, Moran Roth, Sharon Shason, and Erez Marckovich. The brotherhood and strength of those relationships remains as strong as ever to this day.

It takes a transformational leader to unite a highly talented, highly competitive, and socially and culturally disparate group. It takes a whole set of skills at listening well, building authentic connections, providing genuine support, and offering concise direction to help each individual see the bigger picture. When we were on our game, we were almost unstoppable—as we demonstrated at home against our archrival Maccabi Tel Aviv, winning easily against the best team in the Euroleague at that time.

When you are part of a special group, going after a big mission, led by a leader who practices the Coaching Up Model, you dedicate yourself to the team and become fully invested in the outcome. The few truly outstanding teams I've been on—my senior year Bowdoin College basketball team, my rookie year Hapoel Jerusalem pro basketball team, and the team we forged at CoachUp during our first few years getting the company off the ground—those tight-knit teams were amazing to be a part of. It didn't matter whether my role was as a leading player (Bowdoin), a rookie on the bench (Jerusalem), or the CEO/founder/coach (CoachUp). Though each team was as different from the others as you might think possible, they all shared the same set of values, passed down from leaders who practiced the Coaching Up Model. And the results speak for themselves—each team won, and won big.

Have you ever seen Coach K at Duke, perhaps the best coach on the planet, turn bright red and yell at his players in the heat of a game? Do you think his players are offended? Do you think they shrivel up inside and want to crawl back to their dorm rooms and hide from the world? No! They know Coach K is real—and is there for them. Coach K has done the legwork, starting with the recruiting process, the practice sessions, the film room studies, the bus rides, and all the hundreds of interactions with his players, to prepare precisely for that moment—the moment when the outcome of the big game hinges on his ability to communicate clearly and effectively with his players, without them feeling that they are being coached down. As Shane Battier puts it:

“What makes Coach K better than any other coach in the entire world, in any sport, is his ability to understand every member of his team and what makes each of them tick. It's his ability to unite and inspire the whole group, by connecting with and inspiring each of us in his own special way. That's an unbelievable skill. I have no doubt that if Coach K weren't the world's greatest basketball coach, he'd be running a Fortune 500 company, or he'd be a senator, a great general, or pretty much anything he wanted to be. He just has an uncanny ability to reach the people in his circle. In terms of the Coaching Up Model, he's a genius at building authentic connections.”

If you get great players, the rest has a way of taking care of itself. If you have star players, who respect you as a coach, work hard, play unselfishly, and lead by example, other top recruits will self-select to play for your program, and your star players will hold the rest accountable to a higher purpose of supporting the team and prioritizing winning above all else. And everyone (rookies included!) will fall into line.

In The Extraordinary Coach, the authors John H. Zenger and Kathleen Stinnett describe the importance of establishing a caring, trusting relationship between a leader and a follower before anything can get accomplished:

“Very few individuals shared that they valued the coaching they received from leaders with whom they had a rocky relationship…. Most of the time, the number one attribute provided is ‘My coach genuinely cared about me.’ A trust-based relationship must be in place if coaching is to work.”