Happy New Year. Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact podcast. I'm Justin Sua in this episode 20068.

As many of you know, I primarily work with coaches in professional sports working on developing high performance relationships.

The intersection and the relationship between the coach and the athlete is so important,

and not just at the pro level, but even at the amateur level, the youth level.

And I want to give you, for those of you who coach at any level, here's a simple framework

to remember on how to strengthen your relationship with the players.

And if you're a player, had to strengthen your relationship with the coach.

So here they are.

It's the clear model.

The C stands for clarity.

Coaches need to clearly communicate expectations, roles, objectives to make sure that

everybody is aligned and to eliminate ambiguity, to eliminate the missed end,

to eliminate confusion in order to build trust. I can't tell you how many times players do not

know what they're doing. Even if you think they know, it's important to reiterate it over

and over again. The next letter is L.

And this stands for listening. I heard a podcast once where Mike Tomlin, the head coach of

the Pittsburgh Steelers, says that coaches don't listen. They listen to respond. They don't truly

listen to understand. He said that on the pivot, so the podcast, the Pivot.

Active listening is about giving feedback. It's about listening to understand instead of trying to be understood.

It demonstrates respect.

It fosters understanding and it helps the player feel valued.

The E stands for empathy.

...