Colm Nally: Communication and Inclusiveness

Welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.

Every month, we share new podcast episodes featuring interviews with Great Coaches from across the world of sports. Our interviews delve deep into the careers and leadership of our guests, seeking new insights to help us all lead our teams, communities and families better.

We also frequently share additional content and insight from our interviews across our social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Youtube, and TikTok. You can learn more about The Great Coaches, follow our channels and explore our website from our new Linktree page.

Defining Great Coaching With Colm Nally

Irish-born Colm Nally isn’t just a successful Gaelic Football coach — he’s also an author of three books and the face behind a Youtube channel with over 1 million views. And, as you might expect, he’s a confident and wise speaker, with plenty of experience and insight to share.

At the start of this week’s interview, we asked Colm how he would define Great Coaches. His answer, that they “don’t stand out just for their knowledge, but also for how they lead and connect and develop others,” is one that could describe many of our guests here on the podcast, including himself. Colm also dwelled on the topic of passion, pointing out that Great Coaches are often passionate people who understand that sometimes their passion needs to be controlled.

Other highlights of the interview include a discussion on the best team cultures (which he credits to a continuously positive outlook), as well as Colm’s fascinating view that if you continually analyse failure then you’ll eventually get used to it — a reminder to us all to place a greater focus on developmental positives.

Finally, I’m sure many of you will take insight from Colm’s views on tailoring coaching to the age and stage of an individual, helping them to both develop and build connection (which, he believes, boosts intrinsic motivation).

Make sure to listen to the full episode this weekend, and as always I’d love to hear what you think!

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

This Week’s Guest

Colm Nally is an Irish Gaelic Football coach who has coached at youth and adult levels with both club teams and at the top level with his county.

Colm’s teams have won promotion into division one and numerous intermediate titles, as well as competing in provincial All-Ireland finals.

Colm is also a designated GAA Master Coach Tutor, the author of three books on Gaelic Football training, and the owner of a Youtube channel that offers Gaelic Football coaching tips — to date, his videos have been viewed more than one million times.

On Balancing Passion

In each issue of the Great Coaches newsletter we share a different short lesson on leadership, inspired by the insights and ideas shared by our podcast guests.

In this week’s podcast episode, Great Coach Colm Nally spoke about the passionate trait shared by many Great Coaches — and also dwelled on their ability to temper that passion when the situation calls for it.

Striking the balance can be difficult for many people, especially leaders. Within both the sporting and corporate worlds, passion is often viewed as a vital, positive trait. Many job descriptions claim to be looking for someone “passionate about sales/service/technology etc.” who can “work hard and play hard”, whilst many sports players are judged by whether or not their “heart is in the game”. Passion is openly sought and celebrated, so it can be difficult to understand when (and why) it may need to be tempered.

Ultimately, the answer lies in a well-known phrase: “blinded by passion”. Similar to other emotions and feelings such as fear, anger, or excitement, passion can lead us to make spur-of-the-moment, emotion-led decisions with poor long-term outcomes. In a fit of passion, we can say things that we don’t mean - good or bad - and act rashly or impulsively. What’s more, someone with passion may run the risk of ignoring advice or protocol that they feel is ‘slowing them down’ or getting in the way of success.

In this clip from a past interview with Australian rugby league coach Ricky Stuart, he speaks on the need to balance passion with clarity and warns about the idea of disingenuous passion.

Looking for more inspiration? Our workshops and events deliver the insights of the Great Coaches straight to your team. They’re also tailored to the topics and issues that most impact you and your organisation, helping to boost engagement and encourage your team members to develop and build on the skills necessary for success.

For more information, get in touch today: [email protected]

Unfinished Business

I’ve got another fantastic ‘behind the scenes’ video to share with you this week, this time from the Origin Australian Diamonds during their time at the 2023 Netball World Cup in South Africa.

Our interviews with Great Coaches always provide a great insight into the realities of preparing successful teams for high-performance sporting events, but watching real footage helps to turn their words and ideas into something that you can see and replicate for yourselves.

If you know of any good videos, documentaries or clips that you think would be of benefit or inspirational for our readers and listeners, please don’t hesitate to share them with us.

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