Today’s Episode is on the topic of Chasing Influence.

And I am joined for the discussion by my friend Murray Noble who is the President of the Melbourne Baseball club and Dr Troy Urdhal who has just written a terrific book called Chasing Influence. The books is half story and half reflection on his learning as an educator and coach, with a deep-rooted passion for inspiring positive change in the lives of others. Troy has a doctorate in Educational Leadership and boasts over two decades of experience in leadership and coaching in the U.S. 

Troy's details are:

Substack: www.chasing-influence.com

X: @TroyUrdahl

X: @chaseinfluence

email: [email protected] 

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Our Great Coach on this episode is Glenn Pocknall

Glenn is a cricket coach with over 20 years experience at the elite level. He started coaching in 2002, learning through coaching youth representative teams.

He eventually joined the Wellington Firebirds in the New Zealand National league as an Assistant coach. He then went to England, Ireland and the Netherlands to gather international experience and in eventually returned to New Zealand and became the Wellington Head Coach. In that role he led the team to win all 3 domestic titles, Ford Trophy (50over) in 2019, Plunket Shield (four day) in 2020 and back-to-back Super Smash (t20) titles in 2020 and 2021. In 2021 he was given his first chance to lead the New Zealand National team in a T20 series.

Glenn has a deep commitment to self development and the craft of coaching and in this gem of an interview

some of the key highlights were:

• The story of how he wrote a 10 year vision for himself that led him from being a factory worker to eventually coaching the NZ cricket team.
• The way he uses routines and imagery to help combat negative self talk with athletes.
• And The answer he gives around tryng not to give feedback but instead just to listen, and why this is difficult as the leader but can also be so powerful.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Today’s episode focuses on the topic of Legendary Coaches and I am joined for the discussion by Dr David Turner at Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching at ARU in Cambridge in the UK, and Valorie Kondos Field, universally known as Ms Val. Both have been on the podcast before Dr David in his role as a leading academic on coaching and Ms Val as a Great Coach. Ms Val led the t UCLA gymnastics team from 1991 to 2019, collecting the seven national Championships along the way and she now leads the course “Transformative Coaching. Introduction to Philosophies of Coaching and Leadership” at UCLA.

I have been looking forward to getting Dr David and Ms Val together for a long time now to talk about the Great Coaches they lecture on in their programs and today is a master class in what they have learnt on their teaching journeys.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Sir Matt Busby was the Head Coach or as they say in Soccer, Manager, for Manchester United from 1945 until 1969.

He was the first manager of an English team to win the European Cup which he did in 1968. As a player he won the FA cup with Manchester City and as Manager, won it twice. He also won the League title on 5 occasions. But as you will hear in this podcast, it’s not necessarily the titles that make him a Great Coach.

It’s the way he helped Manchester rebuild after the second world war. And then, the way he and his team responded to the tragic events of 1958. When the team were traveling home from a European Cup match when their plane crashed on the runway. In total 23 people died, including 8 Manchester United payers, while 2 other players were injured so badly they never played again.

Matt Busby died in 1994, and in this episode, I am going to create a posthumous discussion with him based on his words as read by a voice actor. I used 3 books to create this discussion, 2 of which he wrote.

Sir Matt Busby by Patrick Barclay

Soccer At The Top: My Life in Football by Matt Busby

Matt Busby My Story as told to David R. Jack

This episode was challenging to put together, but it was also fascinating given the present state of his beloved Manchester United in 2024 season and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Todays episode is on Emotional Control

And I am joined for the discussion by 3 Dr’s.

Dr. Michael Mantell who among many things has been the Chief Psychologist for San Diego’s Children’s Hospital and the San Diego Police Department, as well as working with elite athletes.

Website:

https://drmichaelmantell.com/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmichaelmantell

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/drmichaelmantell/

Email:

[email protected]

Dr. Darin Davidson, an Orthopedic surgeon who also coaches professionals in high demand, high pressure environments.

Website:

www.darindavidson.com

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-davidson-md-mhsc-frcsc-1478a974

Email:

[email protected]

And Dr. Brendan Meany a sport and performance psychology, whose work focuses on optimizing individual and group performance

Website:

UpDocYoga.com

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-meany-edd-54a99393/

Email:

[email protected]

Together they are known as the performance doctors and pool their talents to help teams and individuals improve their emotional control.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Linn Dunn is an American basketball coach.

She coached for 25 seasons at the college level, winning 447 games and going to the NCAA championships on 7 occasions. She then went on to be first coach and GM of the Seattle Storm in the WNBA, bringing superstars Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird into the team. In 2009 she was then appointed head coach of the Indiana Fever, and in 2012 that team go on to win the WNBA championship.

She has also coached at the Olympics and World Championships with the USA women's team. Has been named coach of the year on 4 occasions and is a member of seven different athletic halls of fame.

At 74 years of age she has now returned to the Indiana Fever as the GM.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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In this podcast we explore the Leadership traits that we have found from analyzing the transcripts of the 200+ Great Coaches we have interviewed.

If you would like to test your leadership against theres you can take our free, anonymous diagnostic here: https://thegreatcoachespodcast.com/survey-intro/

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Ante Milicic on Standards, Culture, and Staying Calm Under Pressure.

There is no algorithm for leadership. So we ask the world's great coaches how they do it.

On the Great Coaches podcast, Ante Milicic joins from Zagreb, Croatia, discussing his ongoing consultancy work and reflecting on lessons from coaching under figures like Ange Postecoglou, Toni Popovic, Bert van Marwijk, John van ’t Schip, and Jan Versleijen. He says great coaches are defined by consistently high standards, especially during long, high-pressure tournaments like World Cups. Milicic links his leadership to an immigrant upbringing centered on hard work, and explains how unfulfilled playing potential shaped his approach to mentoring players through motivation, mentorship, and environment. He describes learning cross-cultural communication abroad, developing calm decision-making through experience, and adapting to differences between coaching men and women, emphasizing belonging with female teams. He details building Macarthur FC’s culture from scratch through recruiting “good people,” and describes taking over the Matildas close to a World Cup via intensive preparation and staff alignment. He also explains resigning from Macarthur after 14 years without a break, COVID disruptions, and his father’s death, prioritizing recovery and balance, and notes Croatia’s sporting success despite modest facilities due to mentality and patriotism.

Q. Where am I letting inconsistency undermine the standards I claim to hold?

Q. Am I genuinely acting on the advice of the people around me — or just collecting opinions?

Q. Am I running on empty somewhere, and what's stopping me from admitting it honestly?

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Brian Bohannon is an American Football coach.

He started as an Assistant with Gardner-Webb in 1996, and then over the next 17 seasons progressed through roles with Georgia Southern, Navy and Georgia Tech. In 2014 he started as the inaugural Head Coach for Kennesaw State. That team has gone on to become the the best five-year start-up program in college football history. Along the way he has won 3 Big South Coach of the Year, the AFCE Coach of the Year as well as leading the team to two Big South Conference championships.

Some of the key highlights are:

• How he describes mental toughness as the ability to execute a simple task regardless of circumstance. And the way he strctures the teams culture around effort, attitude toughness to help re-enforce this.
•  The story he tells about starting up the team from scratch and taking it to be the most successful 5 year startup program in college football history.
• How the number one thing the great coaches have is the leadership ability to take a group of people from different places and backgrounds and get them to buy in to a common goal and vision.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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This week, my co-presenter the gold medal winning coach Hugh McCutcheon and I continue our exploration of Thriving Teams with the American Football coach Mike Bloomgren.

Mike started his career in 2000 as a graduate assistant and the the University of Alabama..

He then held various assistant roles before starting at the New York Jets in 2007. From there he moved to Stanford under David Shaw where he was part of the coaching staff that won the Pac 12 championship in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

In 2017 he was appointed head coach of Rice University.

Mike has terrific energy and some of the highlights of our interview were:

• His belief that optimism and pessimism are infectious when you are the leader, and they spread more rapidly from the head down than any other direction.
• The structured way he goes about building connection across the 107 players and 50 staff and their families, and the role this plays in building a sense of care across the team.
• His philosophy which he describes as Intellectual Brutality, and the role this plays in unlocking the decision making power of the athletes.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.