The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life

Our Great Coach on this episode is Bill Sweetenham.   Bill is an Australian swimming coach, who first started training athletes in the 1970’s in the rural Australian town of Mount Isa. His coaching career progressed quickly and he coached at his first Olympian in 1976. His swimmers have delivered 27 Olympic and World Championship medals and have broken 9 world records.   I first intervie...

Our Great Coach on this episode is Barry Dancer.   Barry Dancer is a is a former Australian field hockey player and coach of Australian men's national field hockey team. As a player he competed in 48 international matches for Australia between 1973 and 1979. he was a member of the men's hockey team that won a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics. He began coaching late in his career as a...

Today’s episode is on the topic of Mindset as a superpower, and we are joined for the discussion by Allister McCaw,   Alistair is that rare person who excels across disciplines and industries. In addition to being an author who has sold over 300,000 books, his podcast ranks in the top 1% in the world, and for the last 25 years he has also consulted and worked with Olympic Gold Marri...

Our Great Coach on this episode is Shane Beamer.   Shane is an American Football Coach. He started as a coach in 2000 after finishing as player with Virginia Tech. He then held positions with the University of Tennessee, Mississippi State, the University of Georgia and then University of Oklahoma where they won 3 Big 12 Championships. He was then appointed head Coach for the University of Sou...

Today’s episode is focuses on the topic of having a Billion Dollar Mind   And my good friend and co-host Jonathan Cole who is himself an Executive Coach are joined by the great tennis coach Rick Macci, who has worked with players like Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova Andy Roddick, and Jennifer Capriati. He is also a 7 times USPTA national coach of the year and in 2010 was induc...

Gail Goestenkors is a former All American player and Coach. At just 29 years of age she was appointed as Head Coach of the Duke Womens program and led them for 15 seasons including 4 final fours and 2 national runners up. She was the ACC coach of the year on 7 occasions, and on 3 occasions led the team to undefeated regular seasons. She has also led the University of Texas and been a Coach on...

Jess Thirlby is a former England netballer and now coach. As a player she represented England in youth teams all the way to the senior team. She began coaching England National Youth teams while still a player and then retired at 26 to take up coaching full time. She went on to lead Bath to 3 super league titles and in 2019 was appointed England Head Coach.   If you would like to send us any...

Our Great Coach on this episode is Alan McConnel.   Alan is a former Australian Rules Football and now coach. In 1996 he was appointed as the coach of the Fitzroy Football club for the final 8 games in their 113 year history before they were merged with the team who were then known as the Brisbane Bears. After Fitzroy he joined Geelong under Mark Thompson and was then appointed Head Coach at...

Today’s episode is focuses on the topic of 2 great soccer coaches Jose Mourihno and Arsene Wenger, and its led byDr  David Turner   David at Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching at ARU in Cambridge in the UK. We unpack the background of both coaches and how it shaped who their style, critical incidents in their careers and the key lessons that come out of their journeys. We h...

Andrej Lemanis is a former professional basketball player and now coach. As a player he won the Australian National championship with the South East Melbourne Magic in 1992. He then transitioned into coaching holding various assistant roles until he was appointed head coach of the New Zealand Breakers in 2005. That team would ultimately go on to win 3 consecutive Championships, helping Andrej to b...

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...

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 internatio...

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 gy...

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 t...

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://ww...

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...

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

Ante Milicic is an Australian soccer Coach and former professional player. As a player he represented Australia and won National Championships and was the first player to score a hat-trick in the A-League. After retiring he moved in to coaching straight away with becoming player/coach for Sydney United in 2009. At the same time he became an Assistant coach for the Australian U20 team. From there h...

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...

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...

This week my co-host, Professor Eric Knight and I are joined by Kevin Eastman. Kevin is an American Basketball coach. He started coaching in 1978 progressing through assistant roles to become the Head coach of Belmont Abbey College. He then went on to lead the lead Washington State University and then the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In 2003 he was Nike’s Basketball National Direc...

This week my co-host, Professor Eric Knight and I continue our exploration of Thriving Teams with Shane Mcleod. Shane is a former New Zealand hockey player and now coach.   He transitioned into coaching while still playing, and coached teams in Europe before becoming the Belgium Women’s team coach in 2002.   In 2007 he moved back to New Zealand and led the Men's team at the 2008 and...

This week my co-host, Professor Eric Knight and I continue our exploration of Thriving Teams with Ben Darwin. Ben is a former Australian Rugby Union player who represented his country 28 times. He retired at the age of 27 after a neck injury and moved in to coaching before co-founding Gain Line Analytics, a company that has uses empirical analysis to understand the way professional sports tea...

This week my co-host, Professor Eric Knight and I continue our exploration of Thriving Teams with the Great Coach Jill McIntosh   Jill McIntosh is a former Australian National netball player and team coach. As a player she won the 1983 World Championship and then coached the national team to the championship in 1995 and 1999, as well as gold medals at the 1998 and 2002 Commonwealth Games...

In 2022 we were talking with 2 of the great coaches we have interviewed over a coffee, Eddie Jones and Neil Craig, as we got up to leave they challenged with an idea; so many sports coaches have models to illustrate what they think high performing teams do, why not compare them against what the coaches you are interviewing are saying?   It was an interesting idea that stayed with me afterward...