4 ms·

Sports is a good place to look for models since the hiring and firing of coaching staff is reported right alongside the other narratives during a season. It's

Sports is a good place to look for models since the hiring and firing of coaching staff is reported right alongside the other narratives during a season. It's rare for the best coaches to have been the elite practitioners of a sport. What's very common is for someone who struggled to even break into the elite league or had a very short career there goes on to work through the coaching ranks and become an elite coach. I have always thought it's due to mid-tier players needing to really focus on every lesson they get, studying every drill, obsessing over every piece of advice they get. Elite players just absorb the drills and lessons into who they are and forget it was ever taught to them in the first place. When the learning comes hard the player will understand the complete process to come to understanding. They will also see the elite players around them apply the lesson and improve, so they know the lesson works. Being worse at doing the skill can ultimately make you better at teaching it because you are forced to understand the skill more deeply. Being a replacement-level player doesn't automatically make you great coaching material though, that's where the filtering starts to find great teachers and communicators. As many others have commented, teaching is a skill unto itself, one not everyone has.

nonameiguess 4y ago
This is a really key point. While teaching is certainly a separate skill from doing, there is also the fact that the top performers in any given field may have never truly been novices in the way most beginners are. Think of Andy Bolton deadlifting 500 pounds on his first ever attempt. What is he supposed to tell someone about how to do it? He never struggled, never had anything to learn. It's why Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were such terrible teammates. They just got frustrated that the game didn't come as easy to other players as it did to them and yelled at them for being shitty.

nonameiguess 4y ago

This is a really key point. While teaching is certainly a separate skill from doing, there is also the fact that the top performers in any given field may have never truly been novices in the way most beginners are. Think of Andy Bolton deadlifting 500 pounds on his first ever attempt. What is he supposed to tell someone about how to do it? He never struggled, never had anything to learn. It's why Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were such terrible teammates. They just got frustrated that the game didn't come as easy to other players as it did to them and yelled at them for being shitty.