Two Coaches and a Coffee – Season 3 Epsiode 13: Humility in Sports Performance
Hey, and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. I'm Jason Weber, and once again, I’m flying solo—Darren Burgess isn’t with me today. We’re hoping to get back together later this week, but like many of you know, time’s been tight lately. That’s just the nature of the job.
So in the meantime, I thought I’d drop a quick thought bubble—just something that’s been on my mind. It’s something that’s come up more than once in recent weeks across a few different conversations: humility.
In high performance sport, humility is critical. Whether you're just getting started, in a leadership position, or somewhere in the middle—which, to be honest, most of us are—you’re going to have people both above and below you. That’s just the structure of it. You’re not going to be the head coach, and that’s okay.
But I often get asked, “How do I become a High Performance Manager?” or “What’s the next step?” And I think one of the simplest things anyone can do is just look at how they work with others. Are you humble in your interactions? Or are you the kind of person who says, “I’m right. You’re wrong. That’s it.”?
I’ve seen it recently—more than once—from both S&C coaches and physiotherapists. People asserting absolute correctness in areas they don’t fully own. I don’t think you can do that. In fact, I’m confident you can’t. In some of those situations, I tried to gently say, “Hey, share your perspective. Let us understand it.” Because if you want people to get on board with your ideas, you’ve got to be able to communicate them clearly.
I tell my kids all the time: if you understand something, you should be able to explain it. And when someone says, “It’s too complicated, I can’t explain it,” I start to suspect they don’t actually understand it themselves. That’s when we drift into smoke-and-mirrors territory.
You’ll run into people who are masters of distraction—who try to generate the illusion of expertise by making things seem overly complex. Often, they’re not trying to manipulate others, they’re just trying to protect their place in the system because they lack real depth.
Personally, I’m not into power games. I want to work with people. Because high performance is human—it’s athletes, it’s coaches, it’s medical teams. No matter how good you are as an S&C coach or physio, you can’t do it alone. Collaboration is not optional.
That’s especially important in those gray zones between disciplines. Take S&C and physio for instance—there’s a lot of shared ground. This morning, I treated an athlete myself, hands-on. I got them 30–40 degrees more range through a biarticular hamstring, reduced pain in a tendinopathy. Now, I’m not saying I’m a physio, but I’ve been lucky enough to learn from some of the best, like Linda Bennett back in the Australian U21s. She taught me the fundamentals: “You do A, B, and C. I’ll do D, E, and F.”
The point is: we should be sharing knowledge across professions. If you’re aiming for leadership, you lead by engaging others, not by isolating them. If someone doesn’t know something, teach them. Don’t exclude them.
I’ve been fortunate to learn from great practitioners. That means I’ve got a responsibility to pay it forward. If we don’t, we risk the profession plateauing—or worse, resetting—every generation. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Too often, young practitioners are forced to reinvent the wheel because no one shared the blueprints.
So share your experience. Lift others up. That’s how you build a profession.
Leadership isn’t about pushing your view as gospel. It’s about explaining your thinking, showing others the way forward, and listening too. It’s not a badge that says, “I get to tell everyone what to do.”
And look, sometimes you also need to make the tough call—get off the fence. In leadership, you have to support people, guide them, and when needed, make clear decisions. Most people are good people. So help them, mentor them, guide them. And when they’re not? Move on.
And here’s another thing: stop thinking people work for you. Even if you’re their boss, try to create an environment where people work with you. That’s how you build engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, better outcomes. I try to live that, whether I’m working in pro sport, education, or government. The best teams don’t run on power dynamics—they run on shared goals.
So to wrap this up—yeah, it went longer than ten minutes—my message is this:
• Bring your intellect
• Bring your experience
• Bring your humility
• Bring your voice—but also bring your ears
Listen. Share. Collaborate. Avoid smoke and mirrors. Be a scientist. Be a human.
And finally, to anyone looking to take that next leadership step—good luck. I hope to be back soon with Burgo and we’ll dig back into the big issues of high performance sport. Until then, thanks for listening.
