Coachable

How the Greatest Performers Reach Their Highest Potential

By: Ric Bucher

What separates the greatest athletes from the rest? What allows them to elevate their game to higher levels than those who may be bigger, stronger, and faster? Coachability.

Sports analyst Ric Bucher has spent the last three decades surrounded by some of the greatest athletes of our time. Over the years, he became obsessed with the ultimate question in sports and life: Which traits separate the best from the rest?

He began asking that question, and the same answer kept coming back again and again from greats like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Diana Taurasi, Brandi Chastain, and Stephen Curry.

I was coachable.

Coachable? Yes, coachable. Of all the possible markers that contributed to their greatness, coachability emerged as the surprising X factor. So Bucher set out to explore this often overlooked aspect of the careers of every major athlete he could access and found stories that these stars have never revealed. Coachable is organized around the 10 Truths of Coachability that every athlete, team leader, manager, coach, and parent needs to know, including:

• Don’t let who you want to be stop you from being who you can be;
• The greatest goals are the ones you can never reach alone;
• Only the athlete knows what is most important to them; and
• A coach who knows who you are knows what you can be.

Each truth is dissected and illuminated through exclusive interviews and stories from legendary coaches like Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr, and Coach K; all-time greats like Stephen Curry and Landon Donovan; the rising stars of tomorrow, like Rose Zhang and Paolo Banchero; and some of the athletes most known for maximizing their talent, like Fred VanVleet and Richard Jefferson. Taken together, the stories and insights in Coachable are a fascinating window into how we can improve at whatever we do.