Estimated read time: 4 minutes
Hey Coach,
A few years ago, I started telling a player named Camille she'd make a great coach.
She kept telling me no.
She was at the end of a long professional career and she didn't see herself that way. "I'm a player," she'd say. "I'm not a coach. I'm a player."
I didn't keep arguing with her. I just kept offering her things.
A prep training session for younger players. Could you run it?
A Bible study for the girls. Will you lead it?
A shooting clinic. Want to set it up?
One small opportunity at a time.
And somewhere along the way, she stopped saying "I'm a player."
Now she's a coach…a really good one!
I didn't train her into being a coach. I didn't sit her down and explain how to teach a shooting form, how to give a player feedback, or how to design a drill. None of that.
I just kept seeing who she could become and giving her room to walk into it.
That's the difference between empowering someone and training them.
It's a distinction most coaches miss. And it's the reason so many head coaches end up burned out, surrounded by assistants who haven't grown, and convinced that "nobody else can do this as well as I can."
EMPOWERMENT is what you do when you see who someone could become.
You identify their talent. Their passion. Their natural inclination. You give them a real opportunity and you step back. You don't train them through it. You let the opportunity itself do the work.
TRAINING is what you do when they fall short.
When they use the wrong language. When they execute poorly. When their lens hasn't developed and you can see the gap. Now you step in - the same way you'd step in with a player who missed a read. You teach. You coach. You give them more reps until it sticks.
Two different moments. Two different moves.
Most coaches mix these up and here's what happens when you do them at the wrong time.
You train when you should be empowering.
You hire an assistant, see the potential, and immediately start "developing" them. You tell them how to run the warm-up. You rewrite their scout. You hover. They never get to find out what they could become because you never gave them space to walk into it on their own.
Or you empower when you should be training.
You delegate the scouting report and walk away. Two weeks later it's not at standard, and instead of coaching them through it, you take it back. You decide they "just don't get it." You add it to your own plate and they never grow because you never taught them what good looks like.
Both are forms of doing too much. Both end in the same place…a head coach doing everyone else's job, an assistant staff that looks the same in March as it did in October, and a program that can't scale past one person.
So how do you know which move to make?
Empower first. Train second.
Pick one thing you're currently doing yourself. Scouting. Practice planning. Player development meetings. Parent communication. The warm-up. Booster night.
Give it away.
Pick the assistant (or the volunteer, the senior player, etc) who you see something in and hand them the keys.
Then watch. Don't hover.
If they hit the standard? You just bought back your time and built a leader!
If they fall short? Now you train. Pull them aside and show them what good looks like. Use the same language you use with your team. (Mark & I started having our assistant coaches write their own job description - what they want to own, what they want to grow into - and we train them into that.) Don't take the job back, support them through more reps.
The job of a head coach isn't to do everything.
It's to see who people could become, and coach them into it.
Camille didn't see herself as a coach.
But I did, so I empowered her. And when she struggled with a session or asked me a question, I trained her.
That's the whole move.
Apply it this season and you'll stop doing everyone else's job and start building a program that doesn't run out of leaders.
Stay SAVI,
-Tyler
P.S. Quick aside, Coach: the 28-Day Shooting Challenge starts Monday, June 15th. I'm running it inside our Basketball Training by SAVI player community. $47 for the month. Guaranteed shot transformation. If you've got a player who needs to walk into next season as a real shooter, SEND THEM HERE. Get your players in.
P.P.S. If you liked this, you'll love our SAVI Coaching Podcast, The Hours. We dive deeper into this conversation in EP 119 — the CEO Coach archetype, the three skills behind it (Vision, Equip, Train), and the trap most CEO coaches fall into. Subscribe here.
P.P.P.S. Want to do this work with us? Join the SAVI Basketball Community for our courses, consulting, and cohorts. Click here to try it FREE for 7 days.
P.P.P.P.S. Want help finding the one thing you should be empowering right now? Book a discovery call and we'll help you figure it out. Click here to book 15 minutes with us.
