Daniel Coyle

52 Books for Coaches to Read in 2021

The year is over. It is easy to label 2020 as a disaster, but the year’s problems also created many opportunities. Being in isolation with increasing amounts of free time, one of those opportunities came in the form of books. As Kevin Eastman (Book #52 on the Books for Coaches list) eloquently put it “How can I not find that time to read?”

The Top 52 Books for Coaches

My original intention was to include 50 books, but I could not do it. I settled on 52 with the excuse that a book per week fits the New Year’s theme. Despite adding two books to the original list there are still many tough omissions.

My primary criteria included remembering a quote (or several), the level of inspiration I felt to make a change during and after reading, and whether or not I would gift the book. The books are listed in order (#1 being the most influential book). Obviously bias comes into play, but in general I tried to list books that serve any coach.

My primary motivation for compiling this list is to get some book recommendations back. Anyone that sees this list and questions, “How do you leave off (insert book and author)?” please comment in this post or on Twitter so that I can read more books and revise the list at the end of 2021. Happy New Year!

#52 Books for Coaches: Why the Best Are the Best by Kevin Eastman

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 32 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “Once convinced to leave the drill, Kevin moved to the adjacent court, and as the eight players in the drill were talking and sliding and yelling out the defensive terminology each situation called for, we all heard another voice. The voice came from the other court, where Kevin was the only player. There he was, sliding talking and pretending to go through every action he would have had he still been in the actual drill… What we learned that day watching and listening to Kevin was the true definition of unrequired work!”

#51 Books for Coaches: 10-Minute Toughness by Jason Selk

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 28 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “The formula is 6-2-7: breathe in for six seconds, hold for two, and breathe out for seven seconds.”

#50 Books for Coaches: Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 46 per day

Genre: Academic

Most memorable quote: “At its core is the belief that a sequence beginning with a student unable (or unwilling) to answer a question should end with that student giving the right answer as often as possible, even if it is only to repeat the correct answer.”

#49 Books for Coaches: Talk Like Ted by Carmine Gallo

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 35 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “The average PowerPoint slide has 40 words. It’s nearly impossible to find one slide in a TED presentation that contains anywhere near 40 words, and these presentations are considered among the best in the world.”

#48 Books for Coaches: Play Their Hearts Out by George Dohrmann

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 62 per day

Genre: Non-fiction

Most memorable quote: “This philosophy of Keller’s was difficult to grasp. He often prioritized the perception of outsiders over matters a coach should consider more important, such as the development of the boys’ fundamentals and their cohesion as teammates. It was as if marketing the boys, particularly Demetrius, was more important than coaching them.”

#47 Books for Coaches: Spaceman by Mike Massimino

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 45 per day

Genre: Autobiography

Most memorable quote: “Neil Armstrong thought of himself as a pilot. Not as the first man to walk on the moon, but as a guy who loved to fly cool planes and was grateful for the opportunity to have done it. By focusing on the moon landing, I think he was trying to tell us that life is not about achieving one great thing, because once that thing is over, life keeps going. What motivates you then? The important thing is having a passion, something you love doing, and the greatest joy in the world is that you get to wake up every day and do it.”

#46 Books for Coaches: Swim with the Sharks by Harvey Mackay

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 41 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “General William Westmoreland was once reviewing a platoon of paratroopers in Vietnam. As he went down the line, he asked them a question. ‘How do you like jumping, son?’ ‘Love it, sir!’ was the first answer. ‘How do you like jumping?’ he asked the next. ‘The greatest experience in my life, sir!’ exclaimed the paratrooper. ‘How do you like jumping?’ he asked the third. ‘I hate it, sir,’ he replied. ‘Then why do you do it?’ ‘Because I want to be around guys who love to jump.’”

#45 Books for Coaches: Underdawgs by David Woods

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 43 per day

Genre: Non-fiction

Most memorable quote: “With the Bulldogs securely ahead by 25 points in the second half, the usually quiet Howard exhorted his teammates: ‘This is not over! Don’t stop playing!’ Howard never stopped. Soon thereafter, he dove into the courtside seats, knocking down a chain barrier and breaking a chair. In doing so, he batted a loose ball back into the hands of Shawn Vanzant. The extraordinary hustle resulted in a Veasley layup and a 27-points lead. Brad Stevens said he would show the play for the next 20 years, that it was the signature moment of the season. ‘For him to do that said, I care so much about doing the right thing on this possession, the score is inconsequential in my approach,’ Stevens said.”

#44 Books for Coaches: Deep Work by Cal Newport

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 41 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

#43 Books for Coaches: Originals by Adam Grant

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 46 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “High school seniors: 70 percent report that they have ‘above average’ leadership skills, compared with 2 percent ‘below average’; in the ability to get along with others, 25 percent rate themselves in the top 1 percent, and 60 percent put themselves in the top 10 percent.”

#42 Books for Coaches: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 48 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “When Cyrus the Great had ten thousand cooks prepare new dishes for his table, the rest of Persia had barely enough to eat. These days every household in the ‘first world’ has access to the recipes of the most diverse lands and can duplicate the feasts of past emperors. But does this make us more satisfied?…There is no inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way. The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#41 Books for Coaches: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 39 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “Pete Carroll was a victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Poker players have a word for this: ‘resulting.’ When I started playing poker, more experienced players warned me about the dangers of resulting, cautioning me to resist the temptation to change my strategy just because a few hands didn’t turn out well in the short run.”

#40 Books for Coaches: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 32 per day

Most memorable quote: “On several occasions, Sherman freely strategized and planned with the president, but at the end of his trip, he made on strange request; he’d accept his new promotion only with the assurance that he’d not have to assume superior command. Would Lincoln give him his word on that? With every other general asking for as much rank and power as possible, Lincoln happily agreed.

#39 Books for Coaches: Coaching Better Every Season by Wade Gilbert

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 60 per day

Genre: Academic

Most memorable quote: “A few years ago a successful coach shared with me a study conducted with athletes who played in the NBA. In the study all positive touches between teammates were recorded across one season. Athletes and teams that more frequently used positive touches during games won more often and demonstrated more cooperative behaviors (e.g., assists, setting screens, on-court communication and so on). I later learned that at the time of the study, two-time league MVP Steve Nash had the highest positive touch score.”

#38 Books for Coaches: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 55 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’” The water is habits, the unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every day – and which, just by looking at them, become visible again.” – Charles Duhigg

#37 Books for Coaches: Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 49 per day

Genre: Autobiography

Most memorable quote: “‘We catch one of you laughing or making fun of a man who has requested DOR, [quitting the Navy SEALs] we’ll hammer you without mercy. Big time. You will regret those moments of ridicule for a long time. I advise you not even to consider it.’ He closed by telling us the real battle is won in the mind. It’s won by guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit and think about it, plotting and planning to improve. Attending to the detail. Work on their weaknesses and overcome them. Because they can. ‘Your reputation is built right here in first phase. And you don’t want people to think you’re a guy who does just enough to scrape through. You want people to understand you always try to excel, to be better, to be completely reliable, always giving it your best shot. That’s the way we do business here.’”

#36 Books for Coaches: The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 43 per day

Genre: Education

Most memorable quote: “The fundamental difference was a psychological one. The education superpowers believed in rigor. People in these countries agreed on the purpose of school: School existed to help students master complex academic material. Other things mattered, too, but nothing mattered as much…Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them.”

#35 Books for Coaches: Inside Out Coaching by Joe Ehrmann

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 39 per day

Genre: Sports

Most memorable quote: “Nine Reasons I swear: It please my mom so much. It is a display of my manliness. It proves I have great self-control. It indicates how clearly my mind functions. It makes conversation so pleasant. It leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind as to my upbringing. It impresses people. It makes me a very desirable personality to children. It is an unmistakable sign of my culture and refinement.”

#34 Books for Coaches: Everyday Anti Racism by Mica Pollock

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 57 per day

Genre: Education

Most memorable quote: “The goal is dialogue, not debate. During a debate the goal is to win an argument; during a dialogue the goal is communication. During a debate you attack what the other person says; during a dialogue you respect what another is saying.” – L. Janelle Dance

#33 Books for Coaches: The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 37 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “Gallimore and Tharp recorded and coded 2,326 discrete acts of teaching. Of them, a mere 6.9 percent were compliments. Only 6.6 percent were expressions of displeasure. But 75 percent were pure information: what to do, how to do it, when to intensify an activity. One of Wooden’s most frequent forms of teaching was a three-part instruction where he modeled the right way to do something, showed the incorrect way, and then remodeled the right way.”

#32 Books for Coaches: Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov

Number of pages  (if read in a single week): 41 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “The rote and the creative is more commonly accepted in many nations in Asia. ‘Americans have developed a fine dichotomy between rote and critical thinking; one is good, the other is bad,’ write the authors of one study of Japanese schools. But they find that many types of higher-order thinking are in fact founded on and require rote learning.”

#31 Books for Coaches: Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 15 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “It is much easier for your brain to focus on the negatives, even if they are totally outweighed by the positives! Many people’s confidence suffers, because they are more concerned with appearing to be humble, so they have been conditioned to tell really negative stories about themselves and their performance. Now, there are people who have the reverse challenge and can’t see their flaws, but far and away the bigger issue is people who lack confidence and who are highly critical of themselves. But let’s be clear, negativity and a ‘nothing I do is good enough’ attitude is not humility. A much smarter man than I said, ‘Humility is not thinking less of your self, but thinking of your self less.”- Joshua Medcalf

#30 Books for Coaches: Principles by Ray Dalio

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 85 per day

Genre: Self-help, business

Most memorable quote: “Compliments are easy to give but they don’t help people stretch. Pointing out someone’s mistakes and weaknesses (so they learn what they need to deal with) is harder and less appreciated, but much more valuable in the long run.” – Ray Dalio

#29 Books for Coaches: Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 36 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “If it seems a bit depressing that the most important thing you can do to improve performance is not fun, take consolation in this fact: It must be so. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and they would not distinguish the best from the rest. The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.”

#28 Books for Coaches: Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 43 per day

Genre: Business

Most memorable quote: “Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions – they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images – ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors – because our brains are wired to remember concrete data.”

#27 Books for Coaches: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 39 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “Why do we automatically assume that someone who is smaller or poorer or less skilled is necessarily at a disadvantage?”

#26 Books for Coaches: The Captain Class by Sam Walker

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 50 per day

Genre: Non-fiction

Most memorable quote: “To catch Coleman, Russell had accelerated from a dead stop to reach an average speed of thirty-one feet per second, or twenty-one miles per hour. To get some perspective on this, I looked up the results of the men’s hundred-meter final at the previous year’s Olympics. The winning time was 10.62 seconds. If Russell had maintained the same average speed for a full one hundred meters, he would have finished in 10.58 seconds, winning the gold medal by a nose.”

#25 Books for Coaches: Rookie Smarts by Liz Wiseman

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 41 per day

Genre: Business

Most memorable quote: “Power or status decreases the likelihood of someone trying to understand another person’s perspective. As we climb to the top of the learning curve we also tend to stop seeking feedback.”

#24 Books for Coaches: How Children Succeed by Paul Tough

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 36 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “There is a neurobiological reason why rules work, whether you’re using them to avoid fried foods or the lure of American Idol. When you’re making rules for yourself, Kessler writes, you’re enlisting the prefrontal cortex as your partner against the more reflexive, appetite-driven parts of your brain. Rules, are not the same as willpower. They are a metacognitive substitute for willpower.” – Paul Tough

#23 Books for Coaches: The Man Watching by Tim Crothers

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 51 per day

Genre: Biography

Most memorable quote: “Whenever UNC is trailing with ten minutes left if a game, Dorrance begins composing his concession speech in his head. By doing so, he is already experiencing the loss emotionally, which relaxes him and helps him calm his players when they might otherwise panic.”

#22 Books for Coaches: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 131 per day (maybe a 2nd week will help!)

Genre: Biography

Most memorable quote: “Lincoln advised his floor manage, Stephen Logan, to drop him for Trumbull. Logan refused at first, protesting the injustice of the candidate with the much larger vote giving in to the candidate with the smaller vote. Lincoln was adamant, insisting that if his name remained on the ballot, ‘you will lose both Trumbull and myself and I think the cause in this case is to be preferred to men.

Lincoln’s supporters switched their votes to Trumbull, giving him the 51 votes needed for victory. Lincoln’s friends were inconsolable, believing that this was ‘perhaps his last chance for that high position.’”

#21 Books for Coaches: Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 44 per day

Genre: Academic

Most memorable quote: “In very short order we lose something like 70 percent of what we’ve just heard or read. After that, forgetting begins to slow, and the last 30 percent or so falls away more slowly, but the lesson is clear: a central challenge to improving the way we learn is finding a way to interrupt the process of forgetting.” – Peter C. Brown

#20 Books for Coaches: The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 22 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “When the work is piled high on your desk, think about how thankful you are to even have a job while so many are unemployed. When work is driving you crazy, think about the fact that you are healthy enough to work. When you are sitting in traffic, be thankful you can drive a car while so many have to walk miles just to get clean water. When the restaurant messes up your meal, think about how many unfed mouths there are in the world.

And as I told my father a number of years ago when he lost the love of his life – my mother ‘You had the kind of love for so many years that many people spend a lifetime searching for and never find. Let’s be thankful for that. Where there is a negative there is always a positive. Where there is a dark cloud, there is always a sun shining behind it.”

#19 Books for Coaches: Burn Your Goals by Joshua Medcalf & Jamie Gilbert

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 35 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “At the beginning of this season one of the girls on the team I get to work with tore her ACL. Everyone in her life was telling her how sorry they were and treating her like she lost a parent. The first day I saw her I gave her a big hug and told her how excited I was and that she had an amazing opportunity to learn and grow. The next thing I asked her to do was create a ‘can do’ list. A list of ALL the things she could do to get better while she was recovering. It is easy to slip into depression, feel sorry for yourself, and focus on all thing things you can’t do.”

#18 Books for Coaches: Drive by Daniel Pink

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 41 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. ‘A great man,’ she told him, ‘is a sentence.’ Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was ‘He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.’ Franklin Roosevelt’s sentence was: ‘He lifted us out of a Great Depression and helped us win a world war.’ Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph…As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the big question: What’s your sentence?”

#17 Books for Coaches: Attitude by Jay Wright

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 38 per day

Genre: Autobiography

Most memorable quote: “Each year, when the NCAA crowns a champion, we see it as an opportunity to measure ourselves against what that team achieved. That season the champion was Duke. We took a long look in the mirror and asked ourselves: How far are we from that level?” – Jay Wright

#16 Books for Coaches: Think and Grow Rich a Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 50 per day

Most memorable quote: “Aristotle, the great philosopher, was asked one day by a young citizen, ‘How do you get to Mount Olympus?’ To which Aristotle promptly replied, ‘By simply ensuring that each step you take is toward Mount Olympus.”

#15 Books for Coaches: The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 28 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “There is an old Zen story about a king whose people had grown soft and entitled. Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, he hoped to teach them a lesson. His plan was simple: He would place a large boulder in the middle of the main road, completely blocking entry into the city. He would then hide nearby an observe their reactions. How would they respond? Would they band together to remove it? Or would they get discouraged, quit, and return home?

With growing disappointment, the king watched as subject after subject came to this impediment and turned away. Or, at best, tried halfheartedly before giving up. Many openly complained or cursed the king or fortune or bemoaned the inconvenience, but none managed to do anything about it.

After several days, a lone peasant came along on his way into town. He did not turn away. Instead he strained and strained, trying to push it out of the way. Then an idea came to him: He scrambled into the nearby woods to find something he could use for leverage. Finally, he returned with a large branch he had crafted into a lever and deployed it to dislodge the massive rock from the road.

Beneath the rock were a purse of gold coins and a note from the king, which said: ‘The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.’”

#14 Books for Coaches: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 33 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “While you in fact may be right and the other person wrong, there is no sense in denting a person’s ego or permanently damaging a relationship. Always default to diplomacy. Admit that you may be wrong. Concede that the other person may be right. Be agreeable. Ask questions. And above all, consider the situation from the other’s perspective and show that person respect.”

#13 Books for Coaches: Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 73 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “If we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid indulging in it at all costs. We can use this understanding to harness the force of pain and pleasure to change virtually anything in our lives.”

#12 Books for Coaches: The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandivoz

Number of pages per day (if read in a single week): 13 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most Memorable quote: “I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheelp, I will hear not those who weep and compain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny. I will persist until I succeed.”

#11 Books for Coaches: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 45 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present. When you defend those who are absent, you retain the trust of those present.”

#10 Books for Coaches: Stuff Good Players Should Know by Dick DiVenzio

Number of pages  (if read in a single week): 23 per day

Most memorable quote: “Do you know how many people live their lives day after day without ever having the opportunity to feel nervous? They get up and rub their eyes and throw water on their faces and get something to eat, they drive to the office and they do their work – and some even do important work exceptionally well – and yet through it all, they have hardly experienced any emotional highs the way you feel before every game. Enjoy your nervousness instead of trying to hide from it.”

*We ordered one copy for every player in our program of DiVenzio’s book. It is basketball specific, but all coaches can benefit from his perspectives.

#9 Books for Coaches: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 23 per day

Genre: Psychology

Most memorable quote: “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

#8 Books for Coaches: Toughness by Jay Bilas

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 38 per day

Genre: Biography

Most memorable quote: “I wasn’t worried he was going to elbow me, beat me up physically or dunk on me. I was worried he was going to outwork me, outscrap me, outfight me, outhustle me, and outcompete me.

And he did. Ebeling played his butt off on every play. He didn’t run the floor; he sprinted the floor, and he did it on every possession. He didn’t just box out, turn and wait for the ball to come to him; he hit you first – hard – and pursued the ball as if every shot were a missed shot and his life depended upon securing possession of the rebound. He never said a word and never did anything dirty. He was just mentally tough, which led to his physical toughness. Ebeling was committed to playing hard on every play.”

Book #7 Books for Coaches: Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden and Steve Jamison

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 43 per day

Genre: Biography

Most memorable quote: “Don’t worry about whether you’re better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can become. You have control over that; the other you don’t. Time spent comparing yourself to others is time wasted.”

#6 Books for Coaches: Long Walk to Freedom  by Nelson Mandela

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 90 per day (vacation book?)

Genre: Autobiography

Most memorable quote: “There was no point in having a permanent enemy among the warders. It was ANC policy to try to educate all people, even our enemies: we believed that all men, even prison service warders, were capable of change, and we did our utmost to try to sway them.”

#5 Books for Coaches: Grit by Angela Duckworth

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 47 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote:  “Katie Ledeckey’s coach, Bruce Gemmell, says she’s always relished a challenge. ‘There’s a little video clip that Katie’s parents have of one of her first swim meets,’ Bruce told me. ‘It’s just one lap. She’s six years old. She swims a few strokes and then grabs on to the lane line. She swims a few more strokes and grabs on to the lane line again. Finally, she gets to the end of the pool and gets out of the water. Dad’s filming it, and he asks, ‘Tell me about your first race. How was it?’ She goes, ‘Great!’ A few seconds later, she adds, ‘That was hard!’ And she’s beaming – a smile from ear to ear. That says it all right there. She has that attitude with everything we do.’”

#4 Books for Coaches: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 43 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast.”

#3 Books for Coaches: Give and Take by Adam Grant

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 40 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.”

#2 Books for Coaches: The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 34 per day

Genre: Self-help

Most memorable quote: “’People tend to think of vulnerability in a touchy-feely way, but that’s not what’s happening,’ Polzer says. ‘It’s about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help. And if that behavior becomes a model for others, then you can set the insecurities aide and get to work, start to trust each other and help each other. If you never have that vulnerable moment, on the other hand, then people will try to cover up their weaknesses, and every little microtask becomes a place where insecurities manifest themselves.’”

#1 Books for Coaches: Mindset by Carol Dweck

Number of pages (if read in a single week): 35 per day

Genre: Pyschology

Most memorable quote: “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

One thought on “52 Books for Coaches to Read in 2021

  1. In my experience, coaching efforts are more successful when they focus on one or two key areas. That’s an idea that Marion Franklin’s book speaks to from front to back, outlining ideas that will help even the most experienced coaches maximize their time spent teaching. Best of all, the book asks questions throughout to help readers reflect on what they just learned.

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