The Basketball Coach Who Sees the People Behind the Problem

Bret Burchard likes to say he was born into coaching.

“My dad was a college basketball coach, and I was born on the first day of summer basketball camp,” he said. “In my heart of hearts, I was always going to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

Naturally, after a successful playing career at NAIA Taylor University in Indiana, Burchard transitioned to the sidelines.

He worked at his alma mater for a couple of years, then earned a job as an assistant coach with the Northern Arizona Suns in the NBA G-League, becoming the team's head coach in 2018.

Burchard's experiences at the highest levels of the sport led him to found ChampionShift, a mindset training company geared toward helping coaches create sustainable habits and maximize their impact on players.

"There is no such thing as a perfect culture, and we shouldn't strive to have one," he said. "Culture is not a destination — culture is a direction. All we want to do is keep moving in the right direction."

Best of 7 spoke to Burchard about avoiding cynicism as a coach, the role insecurity plays in larger decision-making, and the three cultural tension points that ultimately influence success.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Coach, I’ve heard you talk about this concept “emotional drift.” What is emotional drift?

Most of the coaches I work with start with this intention to coach for impact, to make a difference in people's lives. Then, as the intensity of the job heats up, we start accumulating results, positive or negative, and have to start making hard decisions. Pressure and stress start rising, and we tend to drift from that original vision of leading for impact and instead start leading for our own validation.

No one's really immune to this. You see it at all levels, every coach, no matter how good and how genuine of a heart they have. I lived that experience myself when I was coaching in the G-League. I think when we're at our best emotional state, we have the heart to see the people behind the problem and a willingness to sacrifice for the vision we're pursuing.

It sounds like you’re saying a coach isn’t necessarily wrong to feel drift. It’s more, once you do, how do you respond?

One-hundred percent. It just means you're human. And if you're not drifting, you've probably plateaued or stagnated. You’re not pushing up against the edge of your abilities.

The idea is to be aware of it (because) the people who aren't aware let drift happen and next thing they know, they wake up and they're miserable. Their health is gone. Their family is torn apart. Their locker room is ruined. We want to catch that drift early, because it is reversible. You can fix it. You can get back on track.

How do you go about reversing it?

The formula for impact is action plus motive. You take the right action with the right motive, and you're going to have a lasting impact.

But when we start drifting, the actions we take come out of an insecure motive. We’re trying to comfort our own insecurities, trying to get our own validation for what we’re doing. That leads us to take the wrong actions, or actions with the wrong motive. It’s paying attention to that first, and addressing, “What's the motive behind the actions I'm taking? Am I doing this to comfort the insecurity I feel, or am I doing this because this is what the team needs and this is how I can have the biggest impact?”

How do you see insecurity cloud decision-making?

We all have insecurities under the surface that are driving our actions, reactions, our decisions. And it doesn't mean we're insecure people 100 percent of the time — it shows up when we're under the most stress and pressure. It's like the 3 percent of moments when that intensity is ratcheted up, our insecurities come out. And that's defining or shaping the motive behind our actions.

When we feel that insecurity, we feel the results or the decisions that are happening are a threat to who we are or how we see ourselves. Then, we start taking action to comfort that, to try to control that narrative, control the perception others have of us, control the perception we have of ourselves. And when that insecurity starts driving your actions or decisions, now you're leading for your own validation more than you're leading to impact. You're leading for what you can get out of it to make yourself feel good rather than what you can give to help other people grow and develop.

Some really valuable thoughts. Can you share your three cultural tension points?

The tension points you experience are going to show you exactly how your culture can grow and what your culture needs. As a leader, when you talk about trying to build culture, that can be an overwhelming and daunting task. Where do I start? What makes up a good culture? What goes into that? But there are three key tension points that are going to show up: Confusion, resistance and conflict.

What do confusion, resistance and conflict look like?

There's going to be confusion about the direction you're headed, why you're doing what you're doing. When you experience that, the antidote is more clarity, not more intensity. When people forget their role, or forget why you're doing what you're doing, you want to yell at them and discipline them, ratchet up your intensity, but you just need more clarity. They haven't heard it yet. You’ve got to find a better way to communicate the vision of where you're going and why it matters.

Then, as you make these changes to accomplish the vision, people are going to start resisting that. People don't like change unless they came up with the idea themselves. How you handle that resistance is going to shape how the culture plays out. Your vision and your systems create the context for healthy relationships.

When you start experiencing conflict interpersonally, that's when you start asking, is there lack of clarity in the vision or in their roles? Is there a system that needs to be changed or upgraded, or do I need to deepen the relationship?

I think it's also easy to go over or address something once as a coach and think that should suffice.

Such a big mistake we make as coaches. We ruminate on an idea. We test it. We hypothesize. We ask someone else. We stress test it. And then we finally convince ourselves this is the way to go.

Then, we go to the team, and we communicate the vision, and we expect them to walk out of the locker room, “Yup, I got it. I'm on board. Let's go full speed.” Well, you thought about it for hours, days, weeks before that, you've wrestled with it, and you told it to them once and expect them to be fully on board? It's just not realistic.

As a communicator, as a leader, you have to restate your vision over and over. You’re going to repeat it so much until you feel like you're vomiting it, and then you’ve got to say it one more time. Because the reality is, as soon as they leave your locker room, what's the first thing they're doing? Picking up their phones, scrolling.

Every day, every chance you get to interact with them, you have to keep communicating your vision.

What I learned…

I thought Coach Burchard struck a nice balance between identifying the negative consequences of emotional drift while simultaneously reserving judgment on coaches who experience it — even pointing out that it can have positive aspects.

The critical distinction to me was that even though a coach’s cynicism or general frustrations may be warranted, the ability to not capitulate to these and to continue “to see the people behind the problem” is a differentiator and mindset shift necessary for greater long-term success.

Needless to say, not all moments in coaching have the same impact or lasting impression on players. The “3 percent” that Coach Burchard referenced may be an outlier, but it can easily become the larger narrative.

Recognizing instances of heightened emotion requires self-awareness and even a deeper strategy to avoid negative impulses.