Pete Carroll’s big moment

How a random thought started Pete Carroll on his journey to become one of NFL’s greatest coaches:

“I think it was my second year of coaching as a graduate assistant. I was at a night meeting, and I had the thought to ask the guys, what do you need to work on? In the drills tomorrow, what can I do to help you?”

“All of a sudden, these guys were filling up a chalkboard with ideas and all things that they wanted to do. It was the best meeting I ever had, the players were interacting and we're going and we're working.”

“After the meeting was over I jogged back to the football office, and the first person I ran into was my old head coach, who was an old a style coach and as authoritarian as you can be. And I said coach, I just had the best meeting I ever had. He asked, what happened? I said, Well, I asked the guys what they wanted to work on in practice tomorrow and they were all fired up and they told me a million things.”

“He said, don't you *ever* ask them what they want to do. You don't ever want them to know you're listening to what their considerations are.”

“For a moment I slumped because I loved my coach, and I thought, I just was totally wrong, And then I thought about it for a couple of minutes, and I thought, Wait a minute, I was just there, I watched what happened. That was freaking awesome.”

“And so I did just what I said I was gonna do, and we did the drills that the players were talking about. And from that point forward, I realized that I was I was on a different wavelength than the guy I was working for.”

“It was really a big moment, that moment when you connect with people, and they communicate with you, and they realize that you care enough that you would ask them and then you'll act on it and you'll back it up and you'll come through for them. The relationship just skyrocketed.”

“If I was going to try to help a company do better, I'd go right to dealing with their people. Start a level of communication that isn't present and is uncommon and show your people why it's important to see how extraordinarily unique they are and uncover that. And make them realize that you care about understanding that, and that you recognize them, that you see them and you hear them.”

“It's getting people to realize that you see them at their best.”