Leadership Lessons from the DugOut

from the ball field to the board room

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about

I have over experience as a baseball coach, working across rec leagues, travel baseball, travel softball and high school programs. I’ve coached players ranging in age from 4 to 20, including those in our college-age travel teams. My own baseball journey began at age 7 and eventually ended on a Division 1 College Baseball team. In addition to my sports coaching background, I have over than 20 years of experience in the corporate world of leadership development. Over time, I’ve come to recognize that many of the lessons learned on the baseball or softball field translate directly to the broader world of leadership development and people management. I’ve been fortunate to learn from many outstanding baseball coaches and corporate leaders along the way.

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  • If You Don’t Define Success, Someone Else Will

    To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road can get you there.” It’s a simple idea, but an important one in both youth sports and leadership. Goals tell us where we want to go. Clear expectations help us understand how to get there. As coaches, we often have goals for…

  • Know when to break the rules

    A few months ago, I attended a baseball and softball coaching conference. During one of the sessions, the presenter was talking about the evolution of catching, and teaching hitters when he paused and said something that has stuck with me ever since: “Just remember, there are no always and never’s in baseball.” The more I…

  • Trust the Process, Not Just the Results

    One of the hardest things about baseball and softball is that the results are obvious, but the process that created those results is often invisible. A hitter can flare a weak pop-up that drops between two fielders or hit a slow ground ball that finds a hole. The swing wasn’t particularly good, yet the box…

  • More Than Talent: The Power of Relationships

    One of the greatest predictors of success for any baseball or softball team isn’t talent alone—it’s the quality of the relationships within the team. Teams with strong, healthy relationships consistently communicate better, trust each other more, overcome adversity more effectively, and ultimately perform at a higher level. The same principle applies in the workplace. Within…

  • The Best Leaders Still Practice the Basics

    As youth players get older, coaching naturally changes. There is always something fun about watching a group of five- and six-year-olds chase a baseball around the field, but there are limits to what you can realistically expect them to do. At those young ages, and for several years after, coaches focus almost exclusively on the…

  • The Leadership Power of Small Victories

    I’ve written before that the ultimate goal of most youth baseball and softball teams is to win a championship. It might be a league title, a tournament championship, a state championship, or someday even the College World Series or Major League Baseball’s World Series. In a previous post, I talked about the idea of “winning…

  • The Little Things Aren’t Little

    One of the biggest mistakes we make as coaches—especially as players get older—is assuming they’ve “mastered” the fundamentals. As youth players age and gain experience, we naturally spend less and less time reinforcing the basics. We move on to more advanced concepts, complex strategies, situational play, analytics, and game planning. Those things absolutely matter. But…

  • Leadership Without Consistency Fails Fast

    One of the biggest mistakes we make as coaches, leaders, and managers is assuming trust automatically comes with the title. Too often, coaches believe young players will trust them simply because they are the “expert” or the adult in the room. The reality is, trust does not come with a whistle, a lineup card, or…

  • When the Game Gets Loud, the Best Get Quiet

    During any given game, it’s very likely that one of the few things you’ll hear me yell at a player is, “Take a breath and focus.” What I’m trying to remind them to do is simple—but not easy: block out all the outside noise—fan chatter, the opposing bench, runners on base—and lock in on the…

  • If You’re Leading the Same Way Every Time, You’re Doing It Wrong

    One of the best parts about both watching and coaching sports—at any level—is that there is no script. While patterns may repeat, no two games are ever exactly the same. The same is true in leadership. Situations may feel familiar, but the details are always changing. The best players and coaches understand this. They don’t…