You Won't Remember This

I got my first head coaching job at 23.

John Holsten was the person who gave me my start in coaching and was instrumental in helping me get that opportunity. I remember having a conversation with him shortly after I got the job.

He said something that has stayed with me ever since:

“The only limitations you have in coaching will be the ones you place on yourself.”

I don’t think he meant it as anything more than encouragement at the moment. I doubt he understood how much impact that sentence would have on me.

But it reframed something for me.

I was 23, coaching against people older and more experienced, unsure whether I belonged. His words didn’t erase the fear. They gave me a different way to think about it.

My age and experience didn’t define what I might become as a coach. What mattered was what I was capable of and how hard I was willing to work at becoming better. I didn’t need to decide in advance where my ceiling was.

I’ve thought about that sentence more times than John probably knows.

Sometimes we’re part of a chain and don’t know it

Sam Presti, general manager of the Oklahoma City Thunder, tells a story about being 17 and getting thoroughly beaten in a pickup basketball game by Jim McCaffrey, a former college player. Instead of leaving afterward, McCaffrey stayed. He showed Presti how to improve his footwork, broke down some of his own moves, and encouraged him to keep working.

Decades later, Presti tracked him down to tell him how much that afternoon had mattered.

McCaffrey didn’t remember it.

But he remembered someone who had done something similar for him. That started a remarkable chain.

McCaffrey remembered Stan Van Gundy. Van Gundy remembered Herb Livsey. Livsey remembered Bob Cousy. Cousy remembered a playground director named Morty Arkin.

Each could point backward to someone who had seen something in them, given them an opportunity, or said something they carried forward.

And repeatedly, the person who had created the moment barely remembered creating it. The recipient carried it for decades. The giver had simply gone on with his day.

You often can’t tell which one it is

That’s the part of the story I have been thinking about.

In the moment, they probably didn’t feel particularly significant. Someone saw something in another person and took the time to say it, teach it, or give them an opportunity.

Jeff Hunter, who’s spent decades thinking about human potential inside organizations, makes a related point: people often don’t know what they’re really good at.

And managers frequently make the mistake of assuming they do.

We see someone do something exceptionally well and assume they know it’s a strength. So we say nothing.

Hunter argues that part of a leader’s job is to make the strength visible: to tell someone specifically what you saw, why it was exceptional, and why it mattered.

Maybe that’s why some of the moments we carry with us aren’t particularly dramatic.

A sentence. An observation. A vote of confidence the other person didn’t realize they were giving.

Where this leaves you

What I find so interesting about these stories. You are almost certainly someone’s John Holsten right now, and you probably don’t know it.

You don’t get to know which conversation someone will carry with them.

You don’t know when you’re seeing something in someone that they can’t yet see in themselves.

And you don’t know which sentence they’ll remember long after you’ve forgotten saying it.

So maybe the lesson isn’t to try to manufacture more profound moments.

It’s to stop assuming people already know the good things we see in them.

Say it.

Be specific.

Tell them why it matters.

Then go on with your day.

They may not.