Roy Masters: Embracing Positivism

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.

If you enjoy listening to the Great Coaches then you might consider this week’s podcast episode to be a 2-for-1 special: I was joined by one Great Coach, Hugh McCutcheon, to interview another — Roy Masters. Make sure to give it a listen as I’m sure you’ll take a lot from it.

As you know, we’re really passionate about our podcast and reaching as many people as possible with the fantastic insights that our guests have shared. One of the best ways for us to reach new people is through recommendations from our existing listeners. If you have the time to leave The Great Coaches a review on your favourite podcast platform, then we'd be thrilled and grateful to hear your thoughts (and we might share them on our social media, as well).

Moderating Honesty With Roy Masters

Here on the Great Coaches podcast, we’ve interviewed guests from a variety of different backgrounds. Some of them have had decades of coaching experience, while others have found success towards the start of their careers. Regardless of how long they’ve been coaching, they’ve all had one thing in common: great leadership.

With that said, there’s something that really stands out when interviewing people with decades of experience, and that is their insight into how sports and coaching approaches have changed over time.

When Roy Masters first started coaching in the 1970s, things were quite a bit different to how they are now. Technology and data analytics have come on leaps and bounds to help coaches and athletes better understand and improve their performance, and attitudes and approaches to players’ mental and physical health have been completely transformed.

With that said, there are of course some changes that are less positive. As Roy shares in our interview, he feels that modern players have lost their personal accountability, partly driven by an over-reliance on managers. It would be interesting to hear whether any of our listeners who have been in leadership positions for similar amounts of time agree.

We also spent some considerable time talking about the lessons that Roy has learned over the duration of his career, such as the need to embrace positivism and how pride and unity can play a vital role in helping teams with less resources compete against teams who have more. Of course, there are also some things that he has learned to avoid; negative motivation (let’s prove these people wrong!), for example, has a tendency to backfire.

Finally, one point that I think will interest many of you is Roy’s belief that it’s important to moderate the level of honesty you share in conversations, using increments of truth to deliver your message in a way that resonates. In comparison, some Great Coaches guests advocate for full honesty in communication — take a listen and let me know what you think once you’ve heard Roy’s reasoning.

Listen to the episode now: Apple | Spotify 

This Week’s Guests

Roy Masters

Roy Masters is an Australian sports journalist and former rugby league football coach.

Roy’s coaching career originally started during his time as a school teacher, when he began coaching school sides. After some success as the coach of the Australian schoolboys representatives side, he moved on to the Penrith Panthers to coach their youth team. By 1978, he had become the Head Coach of the Western Suburbs Magpies.

During the 10 years that Roy spent working as a head coach for the Magpies and the St. George Dragons, he was awarded ‘Coach of the Year’ on 3 occasions and was twice a runner up on Grand Final Day. Roy received special attention for his ability to take clubs that struggled financially and coaching them to a higher standard of performance.

When he left the world of coaching Roy decided to transition into a career in sports journalism, at which he has been very successful. In 2012, he was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to sport and journalism.

Hugh McCutcheon

Hugh McCutcheon is a former volleyball coach who has worked with both the US men’s and women’s national volleyball teams as well as the University of Minnesota’s women’s volleyball team. An International Volleyball Hall of Fame inductee and the recipient of multiple Coach of the Year awards, Hugh is also the only USA Olympic team coach to have coached both men and women to a podium finish.

Today, Hugh works as the assistant athletics director and sports development coach at the University of Minnesota, and consults for the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB). He is also an author, consultant and public speaker.

Encouraging Self-Reliance

In this week’s interview with Roy Masters, he brought up his view that modern athletes and players are overly reliant on their managers, leading to a lack of personal accountability.

The topics of self-reliance and encouraging athletes to take more responsibility for their own development often come up in our interviews, which means we’ve gathered quite a few insights that may be useful if you’ve noticed this issue occurring within your own team or work environment.

In this clip, senior university lecturer Dr David Turner speaks about another Great Coach, the late James “Doc” Counsilman, who successfully encouraged his swimmers to practice self-reliance and take accountability for their own success.

Want to explore this topic further? Explore our archive of topic-based insights and bundles on our website with a Great Coaches Membership.

The Great Coaches Membership

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Kevin O’Connell: ‘Make The Complex Simple’

For those of you unfamiliar with American football, the Minnesota Vikings have a slightly interesting record of being one of the most successful NFL teams to have never won a Super Bowl. In fact, they’ve made it to (and lost) the Super Bowl four times, which means they have the most conference championship appearances of any non-winning team.

Enter Kevin “KOC” O’Connell, a former player who took the Vikings’ Head Coach position in 2022. Within two seasons of working with the team, he had already led them to 20 wins, making him the fastest head coach in the team’s history to do so. In fact, 13 of those wins took place within his first season — the most by any first-year head coach in franchise history.

This year Kevin has been making a bit of a name for himself, with a number of his victory speeches going viral online. These passionate, un-prepped speeches give an insight into the positive and uplifting culture that Kevin has worked to build with the Vikings and, so far, his efforts seem to be having the right effect on his team.

For even more of an insight into Kevin’s leadership, check out this article from the New York Times.

Great Coaches At Your Next Event

If you’d like to bring the voices of the Great Coaches into the room at your next event, then we can help.

Watch the short video below to learn more about how a Great Coaches presentation can inspire your team, group, or organisation.

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