Netball Wellington Centre

Don Tricker - Life, Performance and Leadership

High performance isn’t just about talent, coaches are in the business of building self-esteem and creating culture. The story behind a top athlete can be key to finding the right ways to motivate and inspire them to be at their best.
 
Jason Pine delved into the story behind one of New Zealand’s top performance coaches, Don Tricker, to uncover his story and journey from coaching softball in Porirua, to High Performance Manager of the All Blacks, to his current role as the Director of Performance of the San Diego Padres Major League Baseball team.
 
Breakfast with Don Tricker - his approach to life, performance and leadership
 
Sport Wellington was fortunate to host a breakfast interview with Don Tricker and Jason Pine, NewstalkZB on the 14th of September. Over 120 people attended the presentation, with a good cross section from sporting sectors and roles. Don’s presentation really resonated with attendees with a lot of feedback coming back in to Sport Wellington.
 
Don’s story is rich in experiences and is driven from his deep rooted beliefs that have been formed from his experiences growing up in the Porirua community, from his family (being one of five boys) and from key people who he chanced upon through sport.

His philosophy that has been engrained from these experiences is around his value-add - what he can bring to any situation or context. From playing softball to coaching softball, which includes coaching two World Championship winning teams, to working as the High Performance Manager of the All Blacks, and now the Director of Performance and Player Welfare at San Diego Padres Major League Baseball Club in the US, is testament to the value he adds.
 
Jason Pine started the interview with questions relating to Don’s role at the Padres and moved on to questions relating to coaching, teams, building culture, leadership, and his experience with the All Blacks. The following is a summary of the interview.

What have you taken from NZ sport to the Padres? “Well that’s the Porirua thing. Connected people. The sporting context is no different between NZ sport and Baseball.
 
There are three key aspects: 1. Being clear on what you want.
2. Key people within the organisation are aligned on the purpose at a strategic level (e.g. the owner, general manager, and the coach), this avoids arguments and allows all to focus on a common goal.
3. How you learn and how quickly can you learn? In baseball they’re not that good at this due to the huge amount of games they play and hence it’s too easy to flush things as you’re having to prepare for the next game.”

Can you coach desire? According to Tricker, “You can coach anything, so ‘yes’. Coaching is about two things, transferring responsibility to the athlete because they play the game, and about raising awareness. So if an athlete isn’t ‘bone deep’ in desire, it’s your role as a coach to bring this to the table to form a conversation helping the athlete understand their role in taking responsibility for what they want to achieve. The athletes that tend to excel are those that take ownership of their goals.”

How can you tell if an athlete is ‘bone deep’? You create incidents that test them. You’re trying to test resilience. “The thing about resilience is that it’s easy to sweat when someone is watching, but who are the guys that are running up hills when no-one is watching?” As coaches we should see everything but assume nothing, we should know if players are running up hills when no one is watching.

When asked about team culture, how important it is and how to build it, Don replied “If we focus on the game at the expense of the building the team …cracks will appear. You need to build the team before the game. Get the dialogue going and make sure it’s the athletes that are building it. What do we want to look like? What do you want people to say about us in 5-10 years time?”

Some other key points that attendees took away were:
• Leadership is about sharing vulnerabilities and owning your mistakes. You need to define what is expected when you talk about leadership.

• As coaches, you can get blinded by wanting to play your best players all the time. But best players not operating at 100% typically are not better than the other players who are playing at 100%. You need to rest them.

• Create an environment where you think about the athlete's families and their significant other as often decisions being made aren’t made by the athlete alone.
 
• No one is irreplaceable, so long as you have your succession planning in place.

• “The driver for me has always been about value. How can I add value for my children or anyone that I coach?” The true key to success is to add value and making a difference.

• Coaching youth, you’re in the self esteem business it’s about encouragement and learning. Feedback and praise without context is a waste of time.

• It’s important not to be judgemental as a coach. Use self-reflection as to what could be done differently and leverage off what happened as a learning opportunity.

• A trap for coaches is that we make it about ourselves. We look at it from our own experiences which are largely irrelevant and mean you bring technical bias to the conversation. Coaches coach what they see and athletes play how they feel. You need to break that disconnect and utilise things like video to allow the athlete to see for themselves. Back the fact that athletes know things.

Jason asked, “Was leaving the All Blacks a hard decision to make?” “…the Padres are trying to do something that has never been done before, so there’s the challenge, and they’re good people. Good people plus a challenge is an exciting time.”

Kevin Wilson, Leadership and Governance Senior Advisor, Sport Wellington said “The combination of Jason Pine and Don Tricker; put simply there were two professionals on stage, both at the top of their ‘game’ and they got the best from each other. This was truly one of the best breakfasts I have ever been to.”

Written by Kirsten Kilmister
Commercial Development Manager, Sport Wellington.
 


Last Modified on 24/09/2018 08:09

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