Session 3 | Effective Communication that Keeps Mental Wellness in Mind

Kara Winger: Hey, I’m Kara Winger, here at the TrueSport Talks Symposium in 2023 on Mental Wellness and the Modern Coach, with Dr. Alex Cohen, one of the sport psychological services providers for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. You’re talking to us today about effective communication that keeps mental wellness in mind. How’s that going to go?

Dr. Alex Cohen: I am, and it’s not something that gets enough attention. We often talk about the effects of difficult or challenging conversations for athletes, but we don’t often pay enough attention to the effect that that has on coaches and their well-being. And so among the many challenging conversations that coaches have with athletes is unfortunately having to tell an athlete that they’re cut or they’re not named to a team, whether it’s a bench versus starter or being named to an Olympic or Paralympic team. And so we’re going to talk about that as an example of a really challenging conversation that coaches get to have and how to have those conversations not be quite so stressful.

Kara Winger: Very cool. Well, I’ll have a lot of questions for you, so get ready.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Sounds good.

Kara Winger: Let’s all tune in.

Kara Winger: So, in preparation for hearing from Dr. Alex Cohen, I wanted to tell you another story about communication. I mentioned that my husband Russ coached me in my final season. That was mostly because we were athletes together for 10 years. He threw the shot put and discus, I threw the javelin. So he didn’t necessarily know about the javelin, but he is my constant throughout my entire athletic career. We met in 2006 as junior athletes on a team in the Dominican Republic. It was very exciting and we’ve been together ever since.

So we decided to work together. His schedule, my schedule, they weren’t quite lining up. It was so exciting to come to the decision that we should spend my final year competing together independently. We were in the kitchen one day and I said, Russ, I’ve decided who I want to coach me. And he whipped around. He was standing by this sink, I’ll never forget it, and he said, me too, can I be your coach? Independently. Really cool marriage moment. But then scheduling got difficult and I looked at him one day and I said, you know, we’re only going to do this for one season. I need to know if you can commit the time or not. Either way is fine, but I need to manage my own expectations and victory of victories if anyone else is married in this room. He looked at me and thought for a second and he said, you’re right.

And it was only a season. It was only this one time. It was a celebration of my entire career that we got to spend together all over the world. And I ended that season as the number one javelin thrower in the world with the best distance. I had not thrown a personal best for 12 seasons prior to the second to the last meet of my career, and with him by my side knowing everything about my entire career as a javelin thrower and as a human being, we were the best in the world together. So my favorite thing to hear him say was rookie coach of the year 2022. But communication led us there, open and honest, both coach, athlete and marriage. So Dr. Alex Cohen, senior director of Sports Psychological Services for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee is going to share with us today effective communication with mental wellness in mind. Let’s welcome him to the stage.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Nice. I will stand up here so everybody can see me. I’m Dr. Alex Cohen. I’m a senior psychological services provider with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. I get to work with one of the best teams in the world. Dr. Jess Bartley is our senior director. She’s terrific and she leads 14 of us, which is just a great staff. So this presentation, this workshop I’ve been doing for about four years or so, and I co-developed it with my friend and colleague, Chris Clements, who is the director of coaching education now for the USOPC. He’s from New Zealand, so his accent is much, much nicer than mine. I’m from Texas. So we wanted to put together a workshop to address one of the things that keeps coming up for us in our work with coaches and athletes and teams. I’m a licensed psychologist and a sports psychologist, so I work with coaches as performers and Chris works with coaches from a [inaudible 00:05:34] coaching sport pedagogy perspective.

And there’s some really fun areas of overlap there. I played lacrosse in college. And my freshman year, this is where everybody tells there how I was coached story, part of the evening. So my freshman year in college, my coach pulled me aside and said, you’re going to be on the varsity team if you can get out of your own way. And I remember nodding my head and having no idea what he was talking about. And I took a sports psychology class and that was it. I knew I wasn’t going to ever be a professional athlete, but I wanted to be able to help athletes and help coaches create mastery learning environments to help their coaches and teams.

He also told me while I was my first year being captain of the team right before the championship game, remember the most important thing, just be perfect and don’t embarrass me. He didn’t, but we were pretty close by that point and we could joke around with each other. So I’m not going to stand up here for an hour and 15 minutes, whatever, and just talk at you. This is going to be an interactive workshop and we’ve got a thousand plus people online I think tuning in as well. So what I really would like you to be able to do is bring these ideas, bring these skills back to your teams. And whatever context you’re in, high school coaches, professionals coaches, collegiate coaches. I work with national team, Olympic, Paralympic coaches, and when I say this is going to be an interactive workshop, I really mean it.

I’m going to be grabbing some volunteers up into these chairs and we’re going to role play these skills. So all the info that you’re going to see on these slides is useful stuff. It’s collected from some of the best coaches in the world from your expertise, but there’s nothing magic in the slides. The only way this really comes alive is if you practice these skills. So we’re going to practice them here on stage with everybody watching and watching online. And did anybody’s heart rate just go up a little bit? And if you don’t know me, I choose volunteers, so you might as well volunteer. Those of you sitting in the back and the edges, I see you. All right, we’re going to come up here and if you can’t do these conversations just sort of in a fake role play pretend scenario, how are you going to have them in real life?

So communicating challenging stuff and originally we called it communicating athlete cuts because it sounded better, but it’s really selection and de-selection conversations. Who has had the experience of having to cut an athlete from a team completely or tell them you’re not named to a team or sometimes it can just be you’re starter, you’re not a starter, you didn’t get renamed to the team? It’s a brutal experience, right? It’s super stressful for coaches. Sort of by analogy to our work in the mental health space, if you can talk about suicide with athletes, with coaches, with teammates, you can talk about any mental health issues. Similarly, if you can successfully communicate to an athlete that they’re not going to be on the team, at least for this upcoming season or period of time, you can talk about any issue. So as we go through this, take some notes because some of you’re going to come join me on stage and we’re going to role play athlete and coach having this discussion.

So some actual discussion questions that we’re going to go through. The best way to have this conversation with an athlete is to go back in time and set it up well ahead of time. But the reason that these conversations are often really, really challenging… And Chris Clements who I developed this workshop with was a former head coach of the USA men’s field hockey team. Had plenty of these conversations, really came up with some excellent structures. Many of you here and at home have excellent structures for this process, and yet sometimes these things are vague no matter how transparent… How many of you had that experience of being really transparent about selection criteria and you feel like you’re doing a really nice job of letting fellow coaches and your athletes know where your athletes stand? And then as we get closer to the cut-down time, some athlete professes not to have heard the message at all. They have no idea where they stand. And it’s like, I thought I was being really transparent. It happens. Has anybody been cut from a team in here? How’d that feel?

I’ve been a part of teams where cuts were just posted on the locker room door. Come read your name. If you’re not on there, you’re not on the team. I’ve been a part of teams where literally it was out of some movie. Okay, everybody step forward, you’re on the team, not you, Johnson, right? It can be brutal. And the reason I think these conversations are not only hard on athletes but really, really hard on coaches. Maybe one of the most stressful conversations the coaches have is we don’t always have a good model, a good system for having these conversations and we don’t practice it, but most importantly, we avoid these conversations. So if we can set up a structure, where we’re having these conversations just embedded within an ongoing dialogue with athletes, then it becomes much easier. Well at least simpler, maybe not easier, but simpler when it comes time to have these discussions with your athletes.

So I want to practice what I preach. I told you some of you’re going to come up here with me and we’re going to role play some of these things because I don’t want you to be surprised. And if you write down one theme from today, that would be it. No surprises. That’s aspirational a little bit, but wouldn’t it be great to get to that point in the season or in an athlete’s career where you’re having that discussion and it’s not a surprise? That’d be kind of nice. So here’s some of the things that we’re going to go over and as we go through this workshop, write down some notes because one of the things you’ll get from this that your excellent coaches you knew already is to write down what you want to say before you say it.

None of this stuff is magic. It’s all really straight forward. It’s just having the will to do it and it can be really, really uncomfortable. But when done well, it not only improves your athlete’s performance, it can help them understand where they are. It can support that relationship, it can support your own mental health, it can reduce some stress. So be prepared. Shocking message, right? Anybody really, really confident in having these conversations? I work with a lot of coaches and it’s amazing when we do role plays. They’re just like, boom, done. And it’s like, wow, you’ve done this before and some coaches, it’s just super, super challenging. How many of you within your team’s practice or role play having these conversations throughout your cycle, throughout your year, throughout your season? Cool, we’re going to get some work done.

So again, just have the structure. What are your current procedures in the Olympic, Paralympic world I live? I mean it’s interesting. So sometimes we’re recruiting athletes, sometimes not. Sometimes we have programs where you’re drafting athletes on the Olympic, Paralympic movement, whoever comes up through the developmental process and there’s international competitive analysis. And then how many spots there are on the bus so to speak for World Cup competition, Olympic, Paralympic competition. In some sports you can talent ID, athletes can transfer over, maybe we can work with a club to sort of rebuild your skills and come back to the team potentially. I heard tons of stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes who’ve been off the team multiple times, work their way back on and were Olympic or Paralympic medalists.

And this is a big one, alignment. Can really get in the way. That’s how you’re doing a great job with your coaching staff of having a real clear philosophy, clear message, really clear about what your selection procedures are. Coaches don’t necessarily love discretion, right? Athletes always think it’s like, oh, discretion, they just want to keep me on the team or off the team or whatever. Wouldn’t it be great if just performance took care of everything and there was no injuries and… Would make it for an easier discussion, right? What if all the coaching staff is really aligned and the sport director has a different perspective or if the sporting director and the coaches are all in alignment and the CEO has a different perspective and gives a different message, not only to your team but to the community at large? It happens and it makes these more challenging conversations.

So how have you done this? Yeah, feel free to take pictures. I think we’ll send it out. There’s nothing magic in these slides, but that’s the key is, can we get to a point in this conversation where there are no surprises? That would be kind of nice. How have your athletes typically responded? Has it gone well? Has it gone poorly? I’ve worked with coaches who they’re making those phone calls and you’ll see it later. Ideally you do this in person with at least a couple of coaches for a lot of good reasons so that there’s clarity. I don’t know why when working with American athletes it’s also good to have a couple of coaches in that conversation so that there aren’t as many lawsuits. But coach is walking around after the selection committee has made their decision and you’re walking around the parking lot, dreading these phone calls, tears coming down your face. I’m about to call this athlete and tell them they’re not on the Olympic or Paralympic team because they were the fifth person and we had four spots.

Can you imagine that conversation going well, being productive, there being no surprises? That would be nice. So what do you want to say? How is this embedded within your philosophy as well as your selection procedures, if that’s applicable? And like I’ve said, write it down. And I love this idea. How many of you actually coach a son or a daughter or a spouse? I still wanted to ask Kara, what if her husband’s actually cut from the team even though it’s a team of one? This idea here is, and certainly if you’re actually coaching your son and daughter, child, and wearing different hats, but if you were going to continue to have a relationship with this athlete for years to come, how would that impact the conversation? Because be honest, I mean I want this to be tangible and practical. Frequently that conversation is like geesh, I just want to get through it and then they’re probably going to retire and I’ll never see them again. That’s a bummer. It happens. But a lot of our sports are pretty small communities.

The athlete you cut today may be one of your assistant coaches a year from now. So if you’re going to have an ongoing relationship with this athlete, how would that impact the conversation? It’s easy for me to say own the moment, but what does that mean? I think one of the reasons this is often so difficult is because we avoid having the conversation. So owning the moment means just to avoid avoiding, you can have the conversation, it gets better, it gets easier. So face-to-face, sit down, schedule those meetings, whatever, it’s ideal. But many of our athletes are all over the country, all over the world. You can’t always do it. Zoom would be great or video conferencing, sometimes it’s a phone call, but have a plan for how you’re going to do it. A little bit of compassion helps.

This is maybe the critical piece. Why are they being selected and what about that athlete is leading to them being selected or deselected from a team? I’ve seen a million different selection procedures. Some of them work well, some of them don’t. Somebody had the experience of selection procedures changed this year from the previous season because there was one athlete or one situation that brought up something that we weren’t really planning for and now we’ve changed the system for everybody in the system which created some other unintended downstream consequences. It’s sort of an ever-evolving thing and you can have the best plans and procedures and… Just following your selection procedures is not enough. So what are the reasons that you’re making this decision? And some of our sports… I really want to be clear about this, it’s not about performance or mental health, mental well-being. Like USOPC talk about empowering team USA athletes for sustained competitive excellence and well-being. It’s not either or. In fact they support each other. Same thing for coaches.

So it’s not about not performing and let’s all have a group hug. It’s about both. I’ve never known any athletes who didn’t want to perform as well as have good mental health. And same for coaches. You want to perform, sometimes you have to perform. So sometimes with that matrix… Well we’ve got this sort of path of results that we’ve seen and if you were 17, that’d be good, but now that you’re 27, the bar’s a little bit higher, okay, that’s fair. What do athletes say when that’s one of the criteria? You’re just trying to age me out of the sport. Oh yeah, I mean, got to perform, but if I have a two-minute conversation with that athlete and I say, remember when I said you’re 27 now and remember you’re 27, so clock’s ticking and being 27 is really… Right, you don’t need to twist the knife, just be clear, be direct with the criteria. And if I haven’t already said it enough, write out what you want to say ahead of time, but don’t hide behind this.

Y’all this is controversial stuff. I mean we’ve sort of refined this workshop over the years based on feedback from world-class coaches about what really comes up, what really gets in the way of these conversations and it’s so easy to avoid when it’s about that athlete. Well, we didn’t have the budget… Technically maybe you met criteria, but we didn’t quite don’t have enough budget this year and it wasn’t up to me. My high performance director or… The best is just… The NGB is totally behind you. The USOPC didn’t give enough money this year to support us and so blame them, whatever. So when I say have this conversation, be embedded within an ongoing dialogue with your athletes. Athletes will persist in sport, especially the elite level sport if they feel like they’re making progress. So if each of your athletes has in whatever way you craft this, an individual progression plan to perform, to keep improving their performance and as well as supporting their mental health and mental well-being, it’s a much easier conversation. No surprises.

So remember back in the beginning of the season, we said we wanted to hit these targets and we’re going to agree together. It’s not just telling them what their plan is. It’s mutually drive, coach and athlete conversation coming up with your goals, there’s buy-in and it’s like we just haven’t seen enough progress. We didn’t hit the marks we wanted. Why do coaches avoid that conversation? What’s the athlete response going to be? If you’re referencing that athlete’s individual performance plan… What’s that? You didn’t help me get there. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe I didn’t. You’re allowed to learn as a coach too, right? But if you’re going to have that conversation anyway right before the team is named for the games, wouldn’t it be better to be having that conversation along the way so I can do a better job of helping you be your best along the way? Start the conversation earlier.

This last point is really, really tough. So whether it’s a completely individual sport or a co-acting team made up of individuals or a true sort of intact sport, when you have the conversation with the athletes and by the way, you’re supposed to bond and team culture but you’re competing against your teammates and friends for a few spots on this team, and who’s going to start, who’s going to be on the bus or not, and you have the conversation, what are your athletes going to say? Well, I won just as many World Cups as this athlete did, what do you do with that? Go back in time, come up with your process, figure out what you want to say. You getting knowledge, you can validate, but as much as possible keep the emphasis on this athlete and their performance. It’s tricky.

What does tactical patience mean? We’ll talk a bit about a potential structure and how you could do this and I’ll be curious to hear how it sort of compares and contrasts to how you have these conversations with your athletes. Conversation can’t be rushed, but it can’t take all day either, right? What’s a good amount of time to have these discussions? So you’ve got 12 athletes on the team, 6 of them are going to the games and you’re going to announce all this on one day. How long would you like to take to have these conversations with each athlete individually? Thanks for volunteering. How long would you like to have? Longer, shorter, five minutes, an hour? 30 minutes. Cool. By the time you’re done with that first 30 minute conversation and you start the second one, that athletes already put it all on social media. My coach hates me. I didn’t get named to the team. They’ve already told all of their teammates. It’s the world we live in.

Be prepared for rebuttal and answer questions. Answer the questions. If they ask, answer. You don’t have to twist the knife, but you can answer the question and that’s much, much easier to do if you’ve already answered that question throughout the season or throughout their career. Psychologists always say validate emotions. It’s a good thing to do. When in doubt, go with emotion. It’s also a nice opportunity to correct maybe any misperceptions that they have. Well, I podiumed in two World Cups or I’ve done this and that on the team or whatever, and it’s like, okay, but remember, if we look at the whole of our selection criteria, that actually means this… And even if you’ve had that conversation five times and as always, try and keep it focused on their performance. Bring it back to that athlete.

This can be done really well or really superficially. And if you haven’t been doing this all season and then you do it when they’re being cut, kind of falls flat, doesn’t it? One of the best teams I work with has a relevance coach along with technical, tactical. It’s that coach’s job to make sure every single athlete on the team feels relevant. How do you do that? This particular coach has a spreadsheet of every athlete on the team and when they’re going to meet with them, it doesn’t have to be long meetings, but it’s going to be check-in. I’m an advocate for athletes, an advocate for coaches. And I coached lacrosse for a couple of years enough to know that it’s really, really hard to be a good coach. I’m glad I don’t have to do it anymore. And if I can support you and your mental health and wellness and performance as coaches, then I’ve done my job. So if you can have this conversation along the way, one of the things you get is fewer complaints from your athletes. Wouldn’t that be great? As well as that connection, that bond with them.

When you celebrate their career and accomplishments, it should be in that conversation, part of what you can script ahead of time. There’s nothing worth in that feeling of my coach just Googled my career to see what they could say about me to give me some praise. It’s got to be genuine. So this is kind of the heart of it. No surprises. And ideally you get to a place where they respect the decision, they respect you, they respect where the team is in. That doesn’t mean they have to agree with the decision. The best example I’ve ever seen of this, 2018 Olympics with one of our sports where you get race starts with an athlete who actually didn’t know you could be an Olympian, not as an alternate, actually be an Olympian but still not race in the Olympics. And there are team events and coaches have to select for relays or whatever.

And the athlete who wasn’t selected and the team that was performed very, very well. The athlete who wasn’t selected was very vocal about saying, I’m super proud of my teammates. They performed great and I should have been on the field to play. And to me that was perfect. It was honorable, it was respectful. It’s an athlete who believed in themselves and supported their teammate, and the only way that conversation happened at the games was because it was part of a series of conversations that this team just has as part of their culture. So the athlete doesn’t need to agree with the decision or like it, but if they can respect it and respect you in the process, it’ll be okay.

Follow-ups. That’s fun. I literally underlined it, right? The line has been drawn. Because it’s so easy to get pulled back into that conversation or they want to go deep and it’s like, well, hang on. Remember I tried to be really clear already about sort of why the rationale, selection criteria, performance factors, etc, etc. Discretionary stuff can be tricky here. So the follow-up conversation is not to re-litigate it or rehash it out. It’s about this. I know there’s a lot of words on this slide, but it’s again to remind them what you value about them, but also to help them take the next step.

Somebody ever had conversation that went anything like this? We love what you’ve given to the sport. I actually think if you work on X, Y, Z, you can really contribute to this team. You can be a starter, you can be an Olympian, Paralympian, you can go to the games. Sometimes the timing of selection announcements is so tough. Maybe some of you have been in the experience where it’s the end of the season, everybody’s tired, but somebody says this is the ideal time to sort of debrief the season and here’s where we’re going to do our selection procedures and we’re going to sort of decide who the team is going to be and we’ve got to get this information to the larger organization so that they can figure out budget stuff and we’re planning on camps and so the newly named team is going to be at this team camp next month. Make sense? Everybody been there? And one of the athletes who you know is about to be cut from the team is talking to you about travel and lodging and logistics for that team camp that they want to go to.

But you haven’t announced the team yet. You haven’t had those deselection conversations yet. What do you do? Yes, there is a team camp. You may or may not be there. That doesn’t go over too well. What do you do? Sometimes you have to have a plan for that. That’s not written into any selection procedures typically, but maybe you have a pathway to say, I know this athlete’s about to be deselected from the team. I’m going to communicate that. And maybe depending on the sport, the context, they could go to the camp, they may have to pay their own way or maybe there’s some other place they could train. Maybe there’s a completely different pathway. We have a lot of athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic movement who’ve talent ID’d into some other sport completely differently. Do you have any questions about these opportunities? We always say opportunities, right? Thanks. I just got cut. Now you’re telling me again why I was cut and you’re asking me about opportunities.

Some of it is just the basics. So you’re going to have health insurance for X number of days. At the end there’s an example, I don’t know if I’ve got it hyperlinked or whatever, but it’s that example from Moneyball. You all seen that movie, right? Where general manager Billy Beane I think is sort of teaching his protege sort of how to cut an athlete. Has anybody ever been in professional baseball? It’s so hard. The AAA minor league manager who has to do the final round of cuts, it’s got to be one of the hardest jobs in the world. Just lots of tears. And so his protege is like, I’ve never cut anybody. I deal with numbers. How do I do this? And he’s like, you just got traded. Here’s your paperwork, Janice down the hall is going to help set you up. That’s one way to do it. Sometimes that’s entirely appropriate. Maybe not. It depends on the sport. It depends on the context. It depends on who you are as a person and a coach.

I will tell you that we have had plenty of athletes play the retired but not really retired game. And that makes a lot of sense. If that’s one of the only ways you’re going to get health insurance in this country, which is a whole other workshop, but if that’s the only way you’re going to get support, our athletes sometimes have to do that and then I guess they still get tested and they have to do their whereabouts and etc, etc. Thanks True Sport. So how can we help with this? What’s the process got to be like for you?

No surprises. If you could publish these things well in advance, and this is basic, everybody knows this stuff and yet we don’t always do it. And even if we publish it, and even if you’re super crystal clear and transparent and you’ve sent [inaudible 00:33:22] emails about selection criteria, there’s always going to be a few athletes who didn’t get the message or didn’t hear, right? But can this be a part of not only a regular conversation but part of your team culture? Again, if you get in the habit of some healthy discussion, healthy confrontation, avoid avoiding, [inaudible 00:33:41] that much of a problem. Now, the feedback we often get from coaches in doing this work is so you’re telling me every single competition, I’m reminding athletes, hey, remember you’ve got to achieve this or you’re not going to make the team later, maybe, I don’t know, probably not.

We’ve got to find the style that works well for you and find the vocabulary that works well for every single one of your athletes. And once you make the decision, announce it as soon as possible… This has always been good practice, but especially now in social media, man, you want to control your narrative as much as possible because somebody’s going to get ahead of it and somebody’s going to incorrectly share a story about how this went or what the procedures were. And for a lot of reasons, if you can have a couple of coaches be a part of this conversation or a coach and a high-performance director or sometimes a coach and a CEO, again, write it down before the meeting. See, I’m hammering home some points here, right? To not rocket surgery. If there are some alternatives that are available, discuss them, bring them up. Actually I have done some research about it.

Like I said, we’ve got a lot of athletes in a lot of sports who have come over from some other area, track cycling, speed skating, a bunch of different sports bobsled, energy systems. So there’s a lot of ways and some sports where we can and some of our sports and communities leagues, go to another team potentially. If there is a way to reselect athletes, let them know what that looks like. I really think most athletes just want to know what do I have to do to get better? What do I have to do to be on this team? You’ve all had some star athletes on your teams and somewhere along the way, I’m pretty sure somebody had the thought, so-and-so never gave me headaches about this. So-and-so never was in my office all the time, knocking on the door, what are the selection procedures? Am I going to be in the team or not? And man, wouldn’t it be great if my whole team was like that? What’s wrong with that scenario?

Jim, you’re shaking your head, nodding. The problem is not every athlete’s in that situation, it would be lovely if you had a whole team of athletes that just perform and results will take care of themselves. Sports psychologists are famous for saying some version of just focus on the process, just master your skills and the outcomes will take care of themselves. Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting results and performances. It’s just how do we get there? So every athlete’s going to be a little bit unique. Yeah, you’re going to have some athletes who maybe from day one all the way through the arc of their career to retirement, never question, never a problem. They just focus on performance because they’re so elite that selection procedures aren’t an issue, but it’s a pretty small percentage of your athletes. So they’re not all going to be like that.

All right, so what’s a strategy? What’s a timeline? How do you announce these things? This can make your life a lot easier. When is the best time to communicate this timeline to the team? Well in advance. Again, there’s some themes here that keep coming up again and again, right? Know what you want to say, write it down, have the discussion early. I get asked the question a lot at the games. Should we be discussing medals and performance? What do you think? Yes, no, should we be discussing medals and performance? What’s the effect that that has on athletes and teams? Who’s been to a games? What’s the effect could that have on athletes and teams?

How do you know summer, winter games, which lodging in the village is Team USA housing? It’s the one with no flags. Because somebody and security is always concerned that somebody’s going to do something to one of the houses that every other nation has their flags on their houses, so it’s pretty to figure out who we are, right? And many nations put up a giant eagle or a flag or whatever, and they post medals on the side of the building. It’s like, oh, it’s too much pressure or whatever. I don’t know any athletes who don’t want to perform, right? It’s not either or. Same for coaches, who want to perform and do it well. So there’s nothing wrong with talking about results in performance if you also help your athletes know how to handle that pressure. Same thing here. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s going to happen. There’s nothing wrong with the conversation. It’s about having it early and often.

So here’s an example from winter sports. We’re going to announce the team March 27th, whatever it is. Sometimes that’s based on competition. Sometimes it’s based on the budgetary process. Sometimes it’s based on external criteria. So we got a dozen athletes on the team. In mountain time or wherever it is around the world, we’re going to make 10-minute calls. Here’s my call sheet. We’re going to do Zoom meetings or we’re going to call you into the office. If you’re doing them in person, do you stagger those? All right, so somebody’s super excited or crying when they come out of the room while their teammate’s about to go in and just have a think through about some of these things. And then we’re going to immediately, we’re not going to string anybody along, right? We’re going to send an email to the team. Here’s the team for this season. Here’s the team that’s going to be on the bus. And know ahead of time when you’re going to schedule the follow-up conversations.

I work with coaches as performers, right? You’re about to go to world championships, you’re about to go to the Super Bowl or your state championship, about to go to the Olympics or Paralympics. You’ve worked all season, all quad, supposed to be really, really exciting. You get to share this moment with your team and it’s completely undermined by this conversation not going well. And now you’re going into the championships or the games or world championships or whatever it is with just this awful feeling. Man, what about the athletes who didn’t make the team? What about the athletes who are on the team whose best friend didn’t make the team or partner?

I’ve seen so many coaches games be disrupted and really diminished. I’m an athlete advocate and always will be. And whenever it’s a rough process and it’s not as meaningful and enjoyable as it can be at championships or the games is when the athlete who’s not in a position to medal is worried about being the second or third alternate and spends hours and hours and hours and hours talking with their coaches about it at the games. That’s a reality and it’s just tough. It’s tough for both athlete and coach and that happens on some of the best, most transparent teams with the best communication. But I can see it coming sometimes and it’s like, man, this coach has worked so hard to be in this moment and you get to lead this team and to practice the culture that they’ve helped build and they’re going to have some regrets afterwards. It’s a shame. So if you can be really clear about this structure so that there are no surprises, it gets better.

How are you going to announce it? You going to announce the team. Obviously this also covers announcing some retirements. Sometimes you’ll have athletes who choose to retire rather than be cut or deselected. Do your athletes have that option? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. One of the other things we often avoid… How do you ask that question? You’re not going to be on the team this year. Here’s some resources. You going to keep going, you going to retire? What do you think? Give them some autonomy. Give them voice and role in that conversation. So how frequently do you discuss this with your teams? Their individual and team progression, their performance, their trajectory, their profile by performance, by benchmarks, by age, by discretionary things, by their contribution to the team and the culture. Being a good teammate, being a leader.

No surprises. Wouldn’t that be nice? Can you help athletes articulate where they are in the process? What if you just started with that question? So end of the season we’ll be selecting a team, maybe 3/4 of the team’s going to be just performance criteria, maybe that last spot’s going to be discretionary. Where do you think you are on the bus? Is anybody dreading that conversation now just thinking about it? Is anybody like, oh no, I got this? If athletes can hear themselves say it out loud, they have much more ownership of the process, much more control. It’s not just happening to them. We talk a lot about the athlete experience.

So for me it’s not just about performance, it’s not just about mental health and well-being, when athletes leave sport, are they going to join the bitter alumni club and have a lot of blame for an organization or the USOPC or the sport? Or are they going to have an ongoing family for the rest of their life? I know we throw that word around a lot, family, but it’s true. I mean, coaches have such a vital role to play. We have a lot of athletes who drop out of sport at age 10, 11, 12, and a lot of it has to do with that coach experience. Athletes meet sport at the coach.

So if you knew you were going to work with an athlete for a long time, potentially years, potentially guide them onto a national team or an Olympic team or a professional team, what do you want their experience to be like when they’re done with sport? Do you want it to be a platform for the rest of their life or do you want them to have some bitterness about it? You don’t control all of that obviously, but the way we communicate selection and deselection has a lot to do with this.

Everybody does this already. International competitive analysis. You know what spots you have, what kind of performance benchmarks ideally you want for your teams, how many podiums, performance trajectories, whatever. It’s not always super clear. It depends on the sport, but if you had your team… We always do these exercise examples and very rarely do coaches follow up on it because it’s scary. This is the easy version by the way. Wait for the next couple of slides.

If you give the selection criteria to your athletes and say, here we go, you’re going to rank yourselves and rank each other and then we’re going to have a little chat about it as a team in this room. It’s one of my favorite things. Put everybody in a room and talk about it until we figure it out and it goes great or it’s like a supernova eruption. So how’s that conversation going to go? Wait a minute, you want me to rank myself and rank my teammate and who’s going to be on the team this year? You better know how to keep that psychologically safe if you’re going to have that conversation, but no surprises, right? You will surface whatever issues are there and whatever culture you need to create for your team if you’re doing this kind of a conversation. So you can do a selection activity exercise, criteria, non-criteria.

This one’s wild, but it really works. If you can create the safety and the culture to do this and have it be a regular part, the fabric of your team culture. So you can do it anonymously or not. If people sign their name or own it or whatever, it’s easier to follow up. There’s a lot of ways to get at this. Some of our teams use, it’s called a team barometer, where every period you sort of get feedback. How this camp goes, how this sort of stretch of competitions go. How are we doing against this stuff? Are we living our culture? Are we living our values? What went through their mind as they went through this process? Well clearly coach, you’re playing favorites because I’ve done a great job and yet I don’t get any attention. Or yeah, I could have performed more consistently, but it’s your job to help me. How are you going to help me get there?

It would be great if you could sort of align athlete perception with coaching perception. I will say that in addition to, well, you didn’t help me get there. You didn’t help me achieve my goals. Sometimes there’s a sense that if I’m really, really clear about the stuff and I communicate it, then I’m going to be held accountable as a coach for it and somebody’s going to file a complaint or this athlete’s going to destroy me on social media or I’m going to hear about it from the parents. Anybody deal with parents? Well, it’s just job security for me, and I’m a sports parent.

So it would be pretty nice if we got clarity about both the objective and maybe subjective criteria. Maybe you can get some better alignment. And that’s with the criteria. What about without the criteria? If you said, all right, we’re not going to even look at the criteria. You as a team, to your athletes, what do you think is important? What do you think is most valuable? I did this once with a team that I knew pretty well, so I knew it would be kind of safe. And somebody who had just been cut a month before, that athlete’s name kept getting brought up in the meeting. Should he have been on the team? Should he not have been on the team? If we had different criteria, what do we value? What’s important for performance?

Good conversation. And finally, one of the athletes on the team is a leader on the team, been there for a while, just kind of stood up, raised his hand and said, if that athlete thought he was going to be on this team, he’s crazy. There’s no way. There’s no way he should have been on this team. Why are we still talking about it? A) we needed to talk about it. And B) he wasn’t wrong. And it led to one of the best conversations ever and there were no surprises for that team the rest of the season. To create that discussion. This is what I want to do. It’s not just some suggestions on paper or whatever. I want this to be a part of your culture. I want to make your lives easier and better as coaches.

So we get to role play some of these things. So Jim and Craig, where’s Craig? Come on up. Thanks for volunteering. I appreciate that. All right, you’re supposed to have a couple of microphones. True Sport is on it. This is great. So remember, I work with coaches as performers, got to work on our performance. So the performers are the stars. It’s supposed to be about them. It’s not about me. So I’m going to get out of the way here. Try not to fall off. You’re not even on. Okay, so here’s the scenario, and this is how I’d really like you to sort of bring this back to your teams, here for all the folks… Have a seat.

So director of endurance, cycling, coaching, high performance director. Cool. This is actually how… Okay, a couple of ground rules. We’re going to have fun with this. I mean it. Did I mention there’s like 1,200 people watching online? This is great.

Dr. Alex Cohen: You want your athletes to play under pressure. That’s how it goes. So we’ll have some fun with this, but this is sacred, okay? It is so hard to get up here and do this. The first one’s always the hardest, right? This is a sacred process to do this role play, even when it’s pretend. I’ve seen people break down. It’s really emotional. It’s tough. So here’s how we do it and play around it with your teams. Do this multiple times throughout the season. So you’re his boss, so you’re going to cut your boss. So you get to be the coach and you’re going to be an athlete.

Take a few moments and just sort of talk about the scenario if you want. Think of something legitimate. You’ve both been in the situation, maybe as an athlete, but certainly as coaches. It can be an athlete who just sort of didn’t meet performance criteria to be in the Olympic team. Sometimes the conversation is, I’ve got to hold you out of this competition so that you don’t get hurt. It can be all kinds of things. So take a moment. Hopefully you’re using this time to sort of write… Everybody’s writing now. It’s like, is he going to call on me? What am I going to have to say? So hopefully you’ve taken a minute to sort of think about your philosophy. It’s embedded. Ready? So real names. Okay, so what athlete are we cutting here? What sport, which discipline?

Craig: Jim, believe it or not, is a cyclist. He competes in the four-man team pursuit on the track. We have a training group of eight athletes all contending for Olympic spots.

Dr. Alex Cohen: And so how many spots are available? And Jim is just the first spot out or didn’t make it?

Craig: Jim’s first alternate.

Dr. Alex Cohen: First alternate. Ooh, that is a really, really tricky one. Alternates work at the Olympics or in Paralympics. You go depending on where it is. You have to keep training. You’re not on the team, but keep training. Maybe in the States, maybe we’re going to fly you over and you’re going to be a hundred yards from the village, but you’re not going to be a part of any of this and you don’t get any gear. And stay ready, but you’re not on the team. Yeah?

Craig: Exactly.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Fire away. And remember, we’re going to give feedback about this process. What went well. We’ve talked about a bunch of different points, how these were incorporated. Go for it.

Craig: Jim, thanks for meeting today. I know this is going to be a difficult conversation, but we’ve made our selections for the Olympic team based on our criteria, which we’ve reviewed over the last few months periodically, it’s been posted for some time. You are selected to the team, but you’re an alternate. At this point in time we feel that your performances are worthy of selection, but we can’t guarantee that you’re going to go to the line at this point in time. As you know, our sport is very data-driven and going through the selection process and the data we found that you were lacking in a few areas and we’ve talked about that previously. So we just wanted to let you know where things stand right now and really want to hear what you have to say.

Jim: He has practice. Well, of course I disagree with your assessment.

Craig: That’s fine. You don’t have to agree with it. Just respect it, please.

Jim: It wasn’t clear to me what I had to do. You didn’t tell me what I had to do. You didn’t tell me the markers I needed to meet. I was on a team that stood on the podium in the World Cup. Your fourth place rider was not on a team that stood on the podium in the World Cup. I don’t know how I was not selected.

Craig: Those are all good points. I think what we need to go back and look at the composition of the teams at those competitions that we use for the selection. Look at your contribution to the team relative to your teammates, and basically evaluate your performances against what we feel are middle-winning performances. And I believe that process was fairly transparent and that data was made available to you in that process.

Jim: But I produce more power than the fourth place. The fourth rider.

Craig: Produce more what?

Jim: I produce more power. I’m a better rider. Everybody knows it.

Craig: Power is one thing, results and times are another.

Jim: And I was on the podium and they weren’t.

Craig: Well, I think we have to go back and look at the riders that weren’t on the team at that point in time and look at the circumstances why those athletes were not competing. It’s a four-man team and everyone plays a critical role within the team. And as we’ve talked about in our team meetings, everyone has value in each position in the team. And right now we don’t see you being an athlete that contributes the most in a particular position within the team.

Jim: I disagree with the position you put me in. I think if I wasn’t riding in position two and I was riding in position four, I would’ve been able to contribute more. And you didn’t put me there.

Craig: Well, every athlete could say the same thing. I think what we need to do is look at your role within the team, look at everyone else’s role within the team. And ultimately our job is to select a team, nominate a team that is the fastest combination of athletes. It’s not in particular one athlete that anchors a team or plays a significant role. It’s what each athlete contributes to that performance. And in your situation, your being in the lineup was not, I would say the best lineup to make the team go faster. It was the best combination of athletes was with athletes, B, C, and D.

Jim: But you should select the best four and I’m one of the best four.

Craig: Data shows that you’re not.

Jim: My data shows I does.

Craig: Well, I think we need to go back and revisit the data. I mean, this is a conversation that we’ve had previously. And yes, you do have the highest absolute power numbers in the group, but you’re technically not as good.

Jim: See, you just said I’m the best.

Craig: I said you have…

Jim: How can I not be in the team?

Craig: Physical attributes play…

Jim: So much more fun on this side.

Craig: Physical attributes play a key role, but there’s more to it than that. The technical side of things, we all know that CDA or aerodynamics and Jim looking at you, you’re not the best rider aerodynamically on the team. And so when you look at power per CDA, and ultimately you look at the stopwatch, your lap splits were not competitive in the positions that we rode you in. And we’ve seen that not just in training but also in racing.

Jim: But I only got to go to the wind tunnel one time. Everybody else got to go three or four times. How can my CDA not be as good?

Craig: We worked on it. I mean, we gave you those exercises to do, the mobility exercises, the strength exercise to hold that aero position. And we’ve tried to work on it all year and we just didn’t see the improvements that you needed to make to get to the aerodynamics that you needed.

Jim: But if I would’ve had the same opportunity, I would’ve been. You provide the opportunity and you didn’t give me the opportunity.

Craig: I don’t have an answer for that one. I’m going to say budget.

Dr. Alex Cohen: All right, here we go. Round of applause. Okay. Stay here.

Craig: This is a real conversation by the way.

Dr. Alex Cohen: I know.

Craig: Professional.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Absolute pros. Absolute pros here. You can see that they’ve been through this conversation on both sides probably multiple times. What was that experience like? I mean it was a real experience, but we’re just sitting up here with friends and yet you feel some kind of way about it.

Craig: Yeah, no, I’ve gone through this as a coach for eight Olympic or Paralympic games and the week leading into selection is hell because you’re trying to ensure that you choose the right athletes. And often they’re not… Every coach has favorites, right? I mean they’re just nice people and some are real… I won’t say it actually. But we don’t choose who we work with as national team coaches. Athletes come to us and so we work with people that we may not enjoy working with and we have to select those athletes that we really do like working with and are actually nice people.

Dr. Alex Cohen: We can have favorites. We just can’t play favorites.

Craig: Exactly. And so someone that you’ve really invested in a lot of time in that you have a really close relationship and you’ve got to tell them they’re not going to the games. Those are really tough conversations to have. And you’re right, you have to be scripted. You have to… I’ve got in situations where I’ve set up a meeting place and I’ve arranged the chairs and I’ve tried to script it to make sure that the conversation goes how it needs to go and it’s just tough.

Dr. Alex Cohen: How was it for you as an athlete, Jim?

Craig: Yeah, you have someone like Jim that’s just…

Dr. Alex Cohen: Not aerodynamic evidently.

Craig: But no, it’s tough. And that week is more stressful than the I think the games.

Dr. Alex Cohen: It really is. How was that for you?

Jim: That was a lot more fun than the side I’m usually on. However, I understand if it’s Olympic Games and you’re an athlete and you on the bubble of going or not and you’ve committed your entire life to this, that you’re going to fight tooth and nail to get on that team. This is your dream. This is what you’ve worked for. This is where it comes to fruition. And then you just got told no and you’re not going to let it go. The conversation earlier about how much time do you allow, I think in those conversations with Olympic selections, you got to plan two hours. As soon as you hang up the phone, it’s over for them. And they’re not going to hang up. They’re not. They’re going to stay there and fight and fight and fight.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Yeah. And how do you hang up the phone? So I’ll just mention a few things that I saw that was excellent. Keeping the conversation on the athlete, about the athlete. We talked about the exercises we wanted you to do, the improvement that we wanted to see. The criteria we wanted you to hit, we wanted you to make, we didn’t see that progress. So whether or not the athlete was in the mood to hear it, referencing that sort of performance trajectory and conversations ideally we’ve had along the way. Started with you didn’t make the team, but you’re an alternate. I never heard that again, but I put out the most wattage, I have the most power. And that’s one of the reasons you’re an alternate. So we still need you and you still got to train. So keep putting out power, right?

You’re not going to get a jacket maybe… So it’s a difficult conversation. Remember, we’ve put aside 10 minutes for this call, so I need to end it here, and we’re going to have a follow-up conversation March 29th or whatever to talk about it further. Not to discuss the decision again, but to make sure you’re okay. I’m going to check in with you. If you don’t answer, I’m going to keep calling to make sure you know what the next steps are, especially if you’re in all those kinds of things. Just knowing how to get out of the conversation well can be helpful.

Jim: Super hard though.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Super hard though. Yeah, for sure. What’d y’all think? Yeah, pretty good. What did they do well? Come on. Yeah, good…. Was a respectful conversation. It’s calm.

Craig: I tell you one thing, it’s really hard not to get combative though.

Dr. Alex Cohen: Thanks guys. I really appreciate that. I think we have time for one more. I usually do multiple of these in the workshop. How much time do we have? 10 minutes. Cool. So they were pros. Who is an early career coach? Thanks for volunteering. Come on up. You don’t even have to cut athletes from your team, but maybe, who do you want to cut? Grab anybody. Yeah, this is… See, volunteers. I love it. Okay, what’s the scenario? Have you ever had to cut anybody? Have you been cut? Have you ever… You need to discuss real quick what the situation is? Or it could be like, hey, you’re not starting or coming off the bench now if you want to do that. What’s relevant? Okay, let’s do that.

Speaker 8: Okay, so if you didn’t hear, he’s coming off the bench now and not starting.

Speaker 9: Basketball.

Speaker 8: Okay, basketball. You want to do basketball? We can do soccer if you want.

Speaker 9: Basketball.

Speaker 8: Basketball. All right. Hey, appreciate you coming in. It’s good to see you. How you doing today?

Speaker 9: Doing good. What’s up, coach?

Speaker 8: Hey, not much. Just wanted to sit down with you and give you an update on where we’re going moving forward. Obviously you’re a huge part of this team, a big-time leader. Again, we’re a better team with you. Just wanted to kind of let you know what I and other coaches have been talking about. Again, I know you started a couple of games. We’re just, moving forward we just see a better fit with you coming off the bench and adding a spark off the bench. The lineups that we have coming in, want to get off to a little bit of a better start. We need some more scoring off the bench. We think you can provide that for us. So just wanted to give you a heads up. Hey, moving forward, going to have you coming off the bench and playing with that lineup a little bit more. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 9: Coach, you said I’m a leader. How can I lead from the bench?

Speaker 8: Hey, I will tell you the best leaders we’ve had have come off the bench before and you’ve done an amazing job bringing the right energy, the right attitude to every practice, to every game. And again, the rest of your teammates, if they see you still doing that, it’s going to make them be a better version of themselves.

Speaker 9: But you said we need more points. I’m averaging 20. That’s not making sense to me, coach.

Speaker 8: Yeah, which is definitely fair. You are one of our best scorers, right? We look at the lineup that we’re starting with. We have three other guys that shoot the ball a lot, right?

Speaker 9: So how come they can’t come off the bench?

Speaker 8: That’s a good question. So biggest… That’s a good one.

Dr. Alex Cohen: That’s a good one. That was a very validating response, by the way. It’s a very good question. Lots of good questions.

Speaker 9: I’ve been cut before so I know all of them.

Speaker 8: You know all of them. No, that’s a very valid question. And biggest thing is, again, we talked about your leadership, what you can bring to that second unit. We don’t…

Speaker 9: So I’m getting punished because I’m a good teammate?

Speaker 8: Also a good question and no, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a punishment. Again, it’s just that starting spot. We still think you’re a valuable asset to our team. You still think that you’re going to get good playing time and be able to contribute a lot to our team.

Speaker 9: How much playing time?

Speaker 8: Hey, game dependent, right? Game dependent. And you know the game of basketball is a game that runs, a lot of ups and downs. It depends on who we’re playing against.

Speaker 9: So is it about my scoring or is it about playing time?

Speaker 8: It’s just about lineups more than anything, who we need to be playing on the court at the same time. And again, like I said, we just believe as a coaching staff, you coming off the bench and providing that with that next group of players is going to make us a better team overall.

Speaker 9: But why the change? We’ve been winning, our record’s good. I’ve been working. I’m a senior now. I’ve been fighting to be a starter.

Speaker 8: Which has been great. And again, I amend you for that because again, you have been in here working every single day, and again, talking about your leadership, you’ve been leading the rest of the team. You’ve been an integral part of our culture. And again, that’s really what helps us be confident in your ability to succeed in this role.

Speaker 9: But how’s this going to help me? I got college coaches looking at my film. If they see me coming off the bench, that hurts me.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Well…

Speaker 9: Are you going to help pay for my scholarship?

Speaker 8: It’s a good question, right? And I appreciate everything you do. And again, when I talk to college coaches about what you provide to the team.

Speaker 9: So what are you going to tell them when you put me on the bench?

Speaker 8: I’m going to tell them exactly what we just had the conversation with today. I’m telling them, hey, we’ve had conversations around this. And again, being able to adapt to a decision and that’s not easy for you to accept. But again, my confidence in you is that hey, you were going to grab this decision by the horns and kill it, right? And again, I know who you are as a person and I believe personally that you’re still going to be able to do it with the right mindset, with the right attitude, and with the right leadership. And that’s exactly what I’m going to tell all these college coaches. Again, still think you’re going to kill it. Still think you’re going to be able to go out there and play your game. And this is something else that I’m just going to lean into with these college coaches to help get you to where you want to be in your career.

Speaker 9: So is this permanent or is it just… What’s going on?

Speaker 8: Yeah, well, not permanent, right? I mean, it’s up in the air like we talked about, a lot of things may change throughout the season. Again, as you know with basketball, things can change, but again, for the foreseen future, this is what we’re moving forward with.

Speaker 9: All right, and you sure it’s not because Johnny’s dad used to play here?

Speaker 8: Hey, I don’t even know Johnny’s dad.

Dr. Alex Cohen: All right, here we go. Excellent, well done. Now bear in mind the challenges in this role play. I put y’all on the spot. I’ve warned you like no surprises, right? But you didn’t have time to formulate a specific rationale for that athlete. And that challenge came through and I thought you navigated it really, really well. Had you had the time to keep bringing it back to this athlete and his performance, it might’ve been… Like we said, athletes just want to know what they have to do to be on the team or to progress or to play. So it’s not about me, it’s not about Johnny’s dad who bought the team uniforms this year or whatever. And okay, is this permanent? What do I have to do? Why is this decision being made?

And I’d set you up for it. It was tough. If it was, well, this is part of the conversation we’ve been having all year. Our philosophy is threes and rebounds and you keep taking mid-range jumpers for some reason. And that hasn’t changed and so we wanted to be a leader off the bench until… Or whatever. You can tell I don’t play basketball. So what was that like as a coach having that conversation?

Speaker 8: Yeah, it was tough for me. Because looking at my perspective in my career, there were times where I did have to go through that and come off the bench and accept a role where that wasn’t me. And again, being on your side of things, I’m like, oh yeah, that would’ve been a lot easier. And those are the exact same things that, again, I thought about it in my own head, but as a coach, to your point being, it’s difficult because I didn’t have those foundational pieces to lean back on. It just makes it more important for me and stuff that I’m going to take back to the team is, hey, laying that groundwork up front. Because again, when those conversations do come up, I don’t know if it’ll make it easier, but it’ll give some context on what’s…

Dr. Alex Cohen: Best way to have that conversation is to go back in time and set it up well. What was it like for you as an athlete?

Speaker 9: I had some PTSD, you know, I’m just kidding. That was good. I respect coaches that are just… Don’t sugarcoat, straight to it. How can I try to start and why am I not, don’t try to come up with all these different excuses to make me feel good. Because once I hear I’m cut, I’m already thinking, all right, how can I get back to that spot? Or how can I…

Dr. Alex Cohen: That’s a really good point. Sometimes once you hear that, even if a coach is saying, here’s what you can do to get back on the team, or here’s your other opportunities, none of that’s going in, right? It’s another good reason to have that follow-up conversation. Round of applause. Thanks y’all. Well done guys. They took the easy way to the stage, by the way. All right, so that’s that firing player scene from Moneyball. Some of this work, I think you can still find it online. Mike Davenport’s work is excellent on communicating athlete cuts, deselection, that type of stuff. So a nice resource for you. Questions about this process. What are you going to take home with you? How can you integrate some of this into your practice? We even have time for Q&A. Maybe one question. One question.

Speaker 10: So for the earlier role play, how much grace do you give if the Olympian… Sorry. So say you’re an Olympian, you get chosen to be an alternate and the Olympian checks out. How much grace as a coach do you give them to come back and say, all right, I accept being an alternate?

Dr. Alex Cohen: What do your selection procedures say? The reason that I always let athletes and coaches… I have absolutely nothing to do with selection procedures, otherwise nobody’s going to talk to me. So what are your selection procedures? And one of the things that I’ve discovered about being with the USOPC for a long time is whenever some controversy comes up and it’s usually the last player on the team or the alternate and there’s some discretion, the first thing we do is check, did they follow their select procedures or not? So you may have written in, there’s a bit of a grace period because you can decline. I mean, you can decline a spot on any team technically, right? But we’ve had athletes who were like, that’s insane. I’m not on the team, but you want me to keep training and I’m actually going to go over there. I could start school.

I’m not going to be an alternate, okay? You have 24 hours to give me your final decision, and then we’re going to move on to the next alternate, if that’s a possibility. Depends on the selection procedures, right? Again, go back in time, have a really clear process for how you want to do this and how to have this conversation. I really appreciate you staying with us, your time, your attention. I hope that some of this was practical and useful, and I hope this supports your mental health and wellness as coaches. Thank you very much.