Tara VanDerveer: It's Like Slow Cooking

Welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.

Every month, we publish two new podcast episodes featuring an interview with a Great Coach 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.

Enjoying The Process with Tara VanDerveer

With almost fifty years of coaching experience under her belt, it’s safe to say that Tara Ann VanDerveer knows a few things about successful leadership and coaching. She’s one of only nine NCAA Women’s Basketball coaches to win over 900 games, has won countless Coach of the Year awards, and retired in 2024 as the winningest head coach in college basketball history — a truly astounding list of achievements (with more still to mention).

With so much experience to share, any conversation with Tara quickly becomes a true leadership masterclass. This week’s podcast is no exception.

Listeners will hear Tara explain how she turned to a leadership coach to help her develop her communication skills and energy, as well as to better guide her in building connection within and throughout her team.

They’ll also hear her share the importance of being a safety net for the people that you ask to go up on the high wire — a role that she believes coaches must always fulfil, no matter what.

Finally, I’d like to bring attention to Tara’s words on the ‘slow cooking’ process of becoming great, and how the gradual process of building skill and achieving success can feel extremely challenging in a world of instant satisfaction and gratification. Ultimately, she believes that it’s the people who can enjoy the process who will end up being the happiest.

Accordingly, I hope you’ll take the time to reflect on Tara’s insights after listening to this week’s interview. It’s available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

This Week’s Guest

Tara Ann VanDerveer is a retired American basketball coach.

Prior to retirement, Tara led the Stanford Cardinal women’s basketball team for an astounding 38 years; during that time she saw them through to 3 NCAA championships and 13 final fours. In 1996 she also took a brief break from Stanford to lead the US national team to a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics.

In January 2024 Tara surpassed both Pat Summitt and Mike Krzyzewski as the winningest coach in college basketball history, retiring with a record of 1218 wins at a ratio of 81.8%.

Tara has been voted the Naismith National Coach of the Year on 3 separate occasions. She has also received the Pac 12 Coach of the Year award a remarkable 18 times, and was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002.

On the Mentored and the Mentoring

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, listeners will hear Great Coach Tara VanDerveer speak about turning to a leadership coach in order to improve her own coaching and leadership skills. Executive coaching and skills coaching are topics that we’ve spoken about previously on the podcast, and a resource that many of our guests (and hosts!) are familiar with.

Another option that we often cover is mentorship. As a new or aspiring leader, the mentorship of someone more experienced can provide invaluable opportunities to learn new skills, explore different perspectives, and receive valuable feedback on your ideas, plans, and decisions.

As a mentor, more senior coaches and leaders have the chance to really make a difference to the lives and careers of those around them. You can help new leaders to avoid the mistakes that you’ve made during your own career, and share valuable insights that may otherwise have taken them decades to uncover.

In this clip, Great Coach Lin Dunn advocates for the benefits of mentorship and the value of receiving honest feedback.

If you’re still new to leadership, consider reaching out to someone you respect (or a coaching service) this week to establish a potential mentoring relationship. Alternatively, if you’re more experienced, is there someone that you know who could benefit from your consideration and mentoring?

If you’re looking to further develop your own leadership skills and ability, then make sure to head over to our website. For an annual cost of just $4.50 USD, Great Coaches members can access more than 1,800 clips, 30 special lessons, and more great content designed to help them become better, more effective leaders.

Behind The Success

You may not know much about Luis Enrique. The Paris St-Germain manager prefers to live his life away from the cameras and microphones of the media, and is far more interested in the success of his team than his public persona. With that said, he does occasionally give us a glimpse behind the scenes; in a recent documentary for Zoomsport he opened up about some of the challenges and tragedies that have shaped his life and career.

As readers of this article from BBC Sport will come to learn, Enrique’s life has been far from easy. In 2019 he lost his daughter, and in her memory he and his wife have launched a foundation for families with terminally ill children. He was reluctant to take on the management role at PSG, and his approach to coaching and leadership has led to quite a few raised eyebrows (and butted heads).

Despite all this, he remains focused on his ultimate goal of a Champions League win.

A very interesting article that reminds us that Great Coaches are people just like you and I, with their own challenges and hurdles to overcome.

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