BILL TAYLOR – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “MANAGING SPORTS CONFLICT” & FOUNDER OF THE SPORTS CONFLICT LAB – EPISODE 1297

Website – https://www.sportsconflictlab.com/

Email – [email protected]

Twitter/X – @Sports_Conflict

Bill Taylor is the author of the book, Managing Sports Conflict, and the founder of the Sports Conflict Lab which helps sports professionals navigate conflict, elevate leadership, and build cultures that win with integrity.

Over a remarkable 28-year coaching career in track & field and cross country, including 22 years as a collegiate head coach and administrator,  Bill’s leadership has produced a National Championship (NAIA), 16 Conference Titles (12 NCAA Division I, 4 NAIA), and 28 Coach of the Year honors.

On this episode Mike & Bill discuss why conflict is unavoidable in sports and relationships. Taylor explains how a difficult conflict led him to study conflict management more deeply. He introduces five key tools: managing emotions, communicating effectively, looking below the surface of stated issues, seeking win-win solutions, and following through to build trust. The conversation applies these tools to common coaching challenges such as playing-time discussions, team accountability, emotional parents, and maintaining a strong culture. Taylor encourages coaches to stop avoiding or improvising through conflict and instead establish clear expectations and a deliberate conflict-resolution process.

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You will definitely want to grab your notebook to jot down some ideas as you listen to this episode with Bill Taylor, author of the book Managing Sports Conflict and the founder of the Sports Conflict Lab.

What We Discuss with Bill Taylor

10 Key Takeaways for Basketball Coaches

1. Treat conflict as normal, not as a sign that your team is broken

Conflict is unavoidable whenever people with different personalities, experiences, and expectations work together. Bill explains that every relationship contains conflict, and that avoiding it usually allows it to grow.

Basketball example: Two players disagree about roles or playing time. Instead of viewing the disagreement as a threat to team chemistry, treat it as an opportunity to clarify expectations and strengthen the relationship.

Coaching application: Build a culture where players understand that conflict should be addressed respectfully rather than ignored.

2. Silence does not mean the conflict is resolved

A player may stop arguing because the coach has authority, not because the player agrees or feels satisfied. Bill specifically warns that silence can give coaches the false impression that an issue has been solved.

Basketball example: You explain to an athlete why they are not playing, and they simply nod. That does not necessarily mean they understand or accept the decision.

Coaching application:

Ask follow-up questions such as:

• “What are you taking away from this conversation?”
• “What questions do you still have?”
• “What would help you move forward?”

3. Ask questions instead of only giving instructions

Bill emphasizes that people develop more ownership when they participate in finding the solution rather than simply being told what to do.

Basketball example:

Instead of saying, “You need to defend better,” ask:

• “What did you see on those defensive possessions?”
• “What could you have done differently?”
• “What is one adjustment you can make in practice tomorrow?”

Coaching application: Questions help athletes reach conclusions in their own words. That makes them more likely to follow through and builds trust in the process.

4. Look below the surface of the complaint

One of the episode’s most useful concepts is “below the line”: the stated issue may not be the actual source of the conflict.

Basketball example: An athlete says they want more playing time. The surface issue is minutes, but the deeper concern may be respect, recognition, belonging, or fear that the coach does not value them.

Coaching application:

Do not immediately respond only to the request. Ask questions that uncover the underlying concern:

• “What would more playing time mean to you?”
• “What part of your current role is most frustrating?”
• “What do you feel is not being recognized?”

5. Control your emotions before trying to solve the problem

Bill calls emotion the first tool because high emotion makes productive decision-making difficult.

Basketball example: A parent confronts you immediately after a game, or an athlete reacts angrily to being removed from the court. Responding with the same intensity can turn a manageable issue into a larger conflict.

Coaching application:

• Pause before responding.
• Identify the goal of the conversation.
• Separate the person from the immediate emotional moment.
• Move the discussion to a calmer setting when necessary.

Sometimes the best decision during a game is to postpone the full conversation until everyone can think clearly.

6. Use face-to-face communication for personal or corrective issues

Bill recommends using written communication primarily for factual information and reserving personal, critical, or constructive conversations for in-person discussion.

Basketball example: A text saying, “We need to talk about your effort” may sound much harsher than intended because the athlete cannot hear your tone or see your body language.

Coaching application: Use messages for details such as practice times, travel information, or uniform requirements. Discuss playing time, effort, attitude, and relationship concerns in person whenever possible.

7. Aim for win-win solutions rather than winning the argument

A coach can win a disagreement through positional authority and still damage the relationship. Bill explains that forcing a win often pushes the conflict underground and reduces trust.

Basketball example: A player asks why they are not starting. A win-lose response might be, “Because I’m the coach and I make the decisions.” A win-win response provides an honest explanation and a clear path for improvement.

Coaching application:

A win-win does not mean giving the athlete everything they request. It means finding a productive outcome for both sides.  For example:

• The coach maintains the current lineup.
• The athlete receives specific performance standards.
• Both agree on what improvement will look like.
• The coach commits to reviewing progress.

8. Be honest about roles, playing time, and expectations

The episode gives a particularly relevant basketball example: telling an athlete that another player is currently better, while clearly explaining what the athlete must improve to earn more opportunities.

Basketball example:

Instead of saying, “You’re doing great—just keep working,” explain:

• “Player X is currently ahead in defensive positioning and decision-making.”
• “To compete for more minutes, you need to improve those two areas.”
• “Here is how we will measure your progress.”

Coaching application: Clear truth can be difficult to hear, but vague encouragement often creates more confusion. Athletes can respond to honest feedback when they also receive a realistic plan.

9. Define your culture clearly—and enforce it consistently

Bill describes how one of his teams’ “team family” culture was gradually reinterpreted as making sure everyone stayed happy, even when standards and accountability declined.

Basketball example: If your team says it values effort, but a player repeatedly quits during drills without being addressed, the team learns that the real standard is lower than the stated one.

Coaching application:

Define what cultural words actually mean:

• What does “accountability” look like?
• What does “team first” sound like?
• How should teammates respond when someone falls short?
• What behaviors are non-negotiable?

A culture is reinforced when players and coaches consistently act on those definitions.

10. Create a conflict policy before the season begins

Bill’s final major recommendation is for teams and organizations to create a clear conflict policy.

Basketball example: If a player has a concern about a teammate, the policy might require them to address that teammate directly before involving the coach. If the issue cannot be resolved, the coach becomes part of the process.

Coaching application:

A simple team policy might include:

1. Address the conflict directly with the person involved.
2. Do not recruit teammates to take sides.
3. Do not spread the issue through group chats or social media.
4. Involve the coach if the players cannot resolve it respectfully.
5. Agree on specific next steps.
6. Follow up later to confirm that the issue is actually resolved.

As Bill explains, most conflicts can be resolved at the first level when the people involved use the right tools and follow a clear process.

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THANKS, BILL TAYLOR

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TRANSCRIPT FOR BILL TAYLOR – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “MANAGING SPORTS CONFLICT” & FOUNDER OF THE SPORTS CONFLICT LAB – EPISODE 1297

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

[00:00:20] Bill Taylor: We tend to avoid conflict because we don’t have the skillset. Most people don’t even know there is a skillset. So we avoid things that scare us or that we don’t feel comfortable with. The more you learn and the more you then practice it, conflict isn’t as big a deal. It starts to become far less of a problem and more of a something that you know is going to work to your advantage most of the time.

And so you go into it m- maybe not happy, but you go into it much more calm and much more confident and are able to deal with these things

[00:00:55] Mike Klinzing: Bill Taylor is the author of the book Managing Sports Conflict and the founder of the Sports Conflict Lab, which helps sports professionals navigate conflict, elevate leadership, and build cultures that win with integrity.

Over a remarkable twenty-eight-year coaching career in track and field and cross country, including twenty-two years as a collegiate head coach and administrator, Bill’s leadership has produced a national championship in NAIA, sixteen conference titles, twelve Division I, and

[00:01:19] Bill Taylor: four NAIA, and twenty-eight Coach of the Year honors.

[00:01:25] Mike Klinzing: Ever since I founded Head Start Basketball in 1993, we’ve helped young players develop their skills, confidence, and love for the game. Now we’re partnering with coaches and athletic programs to bring the Head Start Basketball camp experience to new communities. Our camps run for five days, three hours per day, and serve boys and girls in grades one through six.

You or someone on your staff directs the on-court portion of the camp, while Head Start Basketball manages registration, promotion, parent communication, T-shirts, trophies, website setup, and administration. There are no upfront camp planning headaches, and the profits are divided 50/50 between your program and Head Start Basketball.

If you want to reach more families or strengthen your youth basketball pipeline or just create additional revenue for your program, visit headstartbasketball.com to explore hosting a camp.

[00:02:12] Matt Mann: Good day. This is Matt Mann, basketball shooting coach, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast.

[00:02:20] Mike Klinzing: You’ll definitely want to grab your notebook to jot down some ideas as you listen to this episode with Bill Taylor, author of the book

[00:02:26] Bill Taylor: Managing Sports Conflict and the founder of the Sports Conflict Lab.

[00:02:31] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here tonight without my co-host, Jason Sunkel. But I am pleased to welcome in Bill Taylor, the author of the new book, Managing Sports Conflict: Five Tools to Master Conflict. Bill, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

[00:02:49] Bill Taylor: Thank you, Mike. I’m happy to be here.

[00:02:53] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into the book. I think there’s a lot of great stuff in here for coaches who… Look, anybody who’s ever coached a team knows there’s conflict. Anybody who’s ever lived with other people in their family knows there’s conflict. Anybody who’s gone through life in any way, shape, or form knows that at some point you run into conflict.

And so I think there’s a ton of- Yeah … great stuff in here that we’re going to get into as we go out- throughout this conversation. But let’s start with just the generalities of the book, Bill. Give us- Yeah … an idea. If somebody picks up a copy of the book, what is it that they’re going to learn from picking up the book?

Give us the 30-second one-minute pitch o- of what the book’s all about.

[00:03:31] Bill Taylor: Yeah. It’s what I’ve found to be five of the best tools that you can have for dealing, managing conflict successfully. So that’s the heart of the book is built around those five tools. They’re quick to learn very effective.

The book also talks about the process, which I, and a policy, things like that, that are really important. I touch on some other stuff, and just kinda generally talk about conflict to start with. Specifically, how to deal with it and how important it is When most people think of it as being a negative or most people are trying to avoid it, I really hit on that kind of stuff.

But yeah, it’s a tool book so that people can handle conflict way better and not only avoid bad things, but actually take their teams, their relationships to another level that you can only get by dealing with conflict in a positive way

[00:04:21] Mike Klinzing: So let’s give people an idea of your background. Where do you come from- Yeah

in terms of your coaching background, your athletic life? Just give us the backstory of how you got to this point, and then we’ll talk a little bit more about the mechanics of the book.

[00:04:36] Bill Taylor: Yeah. 23 years of college coaching 22 of which were as a head coach or director/head coach in track and cross-country.

They’re interchangeable. Did– I was 10 years at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington an AI school. Was fortunate to win a national championship there. And then I was 12 years– I was 1 year as an assistant coach at Belmont University, a Division I school, and then 12 years as a Division I head coach at Lipscomb University, both in Nashville, Tennessee.

And then- So- Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. And then I yeah, through the process, we’ll probably touch on this, but also at North– or at Lipscomb got a master’s degree in conflict management. So melded those two worlds after dealing with a conflict that I wasn’t I felt like I was unprepared for and never wanted to be unprepared for a conflict again.

[00:05:28] Mike Klinzing: So it was things in your career that drove you to the interest of, “Hey, maybe I should get a master’s in this particular program.” Obviously-

[00:05:36] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:05:36] Mike Klinzing: not every school, I’m sure, has the-

[00:05:39] Bill Taylor: No.

[00:05:41] Mike Klinzing: Has managing- Yeah … sport conflict as something that you can get a master’s degree in, so it was a confluence of two things that brought that together.

But just tell me a little bit about why- Yeah … that program was so appealing to you at that moment in your coaching career.

[00:05:56] Bill Taylor: It’s funny when I started at Lipscomb you could get a master’s degree for free if you were a full-time employee. So I thought about it, but you’re working, as a coach, I’m working 60 to 80 hours a week all year because I’m a cross country and track and field coach, so there’s no off-season for me.

And so I didn’t even know what it was. I just thought, “Oh, conflict management. That sounds like a cool degree of the master’s degrees I could get.” You’re right. There aren’t very many universities that have a conflict management or conflict resolution type degree, master’s degree. So it’s pretty unusual.

And then I just I was more focused on my team. I, I was transforming a program, building a culture, growing the program from very few people to a lot, so I had a lot on my plate, plus two young daughters and a wife and all that. Yeah, really didn’t think I had the time. But in about, probably it was about the beginning of my ninth year at Lipscomb just ran into a conflict that, Wasn’t getting resolved quickly or easily.

It I didn’t– I found I didn’t have the skill set. I didn’t do everything right. A few athletes that had started this, they weren’t doing the right things. And then my administration, not intentionally, unintentionally really made some big missteps that broke trust and escalated the conflict pretty dramatically.

And so I’m in the midst of this, and I thought I’d probably solved every conflict before. Once I learned about conflict, I learned silence doesn’t necessarily mean that the conflict has been solved. So there’s some things there. But I was really frustrated that this had happened, and that I didn’t have the skill set to deal with it.

And I– so I just decided, I’m– I never want to go through something like this ever again, so I’m going to go get this master’s degree in conflict management so I can increase that skill set. And then I started the program, and I’m just like, “This is amazing.” This is the most amazing education.

Literally day one, I’m like, “This stuff should be taught in elementary school.” Every kid should learn about conflict management because as you started the whole thing with, you can’t get away from conflict. It’s universal. Every relationship there, that there is, has conflict. So it’s not whether you can get away from it.

You can’t avoid it. You cannot deal with it, in which case it’ll still be there. It’ll probably grow. But every relationship has conflict. So how you deal with conflict determines your success, your failure, your enjoyment, your misery. All– so many things are dependent on conflict and, again, can be made better than they could be without conflict, but also can be really mangled and destroyed.

So yeah, it was just amazing education

[00:08:27] Mike Klinzing: How long were you in the program? H- how far- Yeah … into your coursework? Was it three days in? Was it a weekend where you’re like, “Oh yeah this hits exactly where I need it to hit. I’m going to be able to take all of this and implement it into what I’m doing, and it’s going to really help me as a coach.”

Did it ta- was it almost instantaneous? That’s what it sounds like. Yeah. Again, as you said, it came through the book loud and clear- Good … how valuable you felt that experience was. I- that was one of the- Yeah … key takeaways from the book is, man, d- that program clearly transformed who you were as a coach and how you handled conflict moving forward after getting that degree.

[00:09:04] Bill Taylor: Yeah, immediately I understood, I started to, immediately understand that this is way more valuable and way more universal than I had even realized. I didn’t have all the answers yet. I hadn’t been transformed, ’cause you have to keep taking the courses. The way the master’s program worked you’d take a, a full class in two full weekends.

So you’d go early morning to night Saturday, Sunday, and then another weekend, and that’s one class. And then you get your next class the next two weekends. And so you’re being immersed in one specific aspect of conflict at a time. So the first one’s an intro course, then it’s negotiation and mediation and conflict communications and different courses through.

So yeah, as I keep building, as I kept… each class was added on, it increased my knowledge. But I will say, in terms of sports, first of all, the reason why the book was created, the reason why I have a business doing education and consulting and mediation and things like that, is because what I found when I was going through my big conflict was there are no resources in sports.

It’s hard to find resources anywhere, but especially, I’m not aware of any other book written on this subject in sports. People know conflict’s a problem, but they’re not real familiar with it, and they don’t know that it’s a whole toolkit and a skill set. So those things were added as I went, and then probably even more so after.

And as I was writing the book, and I think we might touch on this later, but I w- I was able to bring these things out and formulate them into a, a system that I maybe didn’t have fully formulated. But they did immediately impact my view of conflict, my view of how to deal with this stuff, and immediately started helping me as a coach.

Absolutely

[00:10:45] Mike Klinzing: When you decide to write the book, is that a light bulb moment? Is it a slow build of, “Hey, I want to take what I’ve learned and put it out there for coaches,” ’cause I know there are so many coaches who struggle with this, face this. Obviously, as we said before, no matter what walk of life you’re in, conflict is always a part of it.

How’d you get the idea for the book?

[00:11:09] Bill Taylor: Yeah, so it’s funny. I actually s- created the business, or was planning to create the business. So Sports Conflict Lab, my business, that does the education and stuff for coaches and administrators and teams and all that was first. So I knew I wanted to create a business to help people learn about conflict and help people work through conflict for big conflicts.

I’m not… I don’t really love doing self-promotion. I’m not, I don’t know if I’m good at it. I don’t like tooting my own horn very much, so I thought I’m not… I was really good at recruiting, but that’s a different kind of sales than, I don’t know, than this or other sales. So I thought if I write a book, that’ll give me some extra credibility, it’ll get the information out for people so that they c- it can impact people, and it’ll serve as a way of promoting myself.

Problem is you have to promote the book, so I didn’t really get away from that at all. But it was awesome to be able to write the book. Now, it’s funny, I wrote a different book, or on the same subject first. I spent about nine months. I worked so hard on this book. I poured through all my academic material and did academic research, and this book was full of great information.

Highly academic, really awesome information, and I read it, and it was so boring and so long and so horrible, and I thought, I was a 60, 80-hour-a-week coach. I would, I could never read this. I would never read it. I’d read two pages and be like, “Nope. I don’t have time for this.” So this book actually came from, I took about three months of feeling sad for myself and not knowing what to do, and then starting over with the five tools as the basis of it, and with the goal of writing the shortest, quickest, actionable book I could possibly write, and so that’s how the book came about.

And yeah, so it was meant to support the business but I think, so much and hopefully… I feel like people who’ve read it really agree with this, that it really is got some great information and, at the very least, a very good starting point. Even if you pick… i’d love it if somebody knew it inside and out, but even if you just picked a couple of the tools and started using them in the conflicts and in life and working with people, I think it’s going to make relationships and performance and e- enjoyment and all that better

[00:13:25] Mike Klinzing: I couldn’t agree more in terms of the actionable piece of what you said, that when you read it, and you also go through the book and give different examples, and we’ll talk maybe about a couple of those, and I may even throw a scenario or two at you that I’ve been around in my sporting life.

But you throw those examples out there, and then you walk through, “Hey, here’s what the conflict was. Here’s- … some of the steps that we took to try to resolve the conflict and move forward.” You talked several times about hey, if we don’t address the conflict or if we didn’t address the conflict, kind of what the results were- Yeah

of that. And so to speak to what you just said, I definitely think that any coach who reads this and hears some of the scenarios that you talked about in the book, and then obviously learns those five tools, they can take those immediately. And when you come across conflict, when you face conflict, now I can go and turn to those tools, or I can think about the examples that you gave and say, “Okay, how are these applicable to what I’m trying to do?”

And use those not just in a book in academia, but I can actually- … use those in real life. And obviously, as you said, for anyone who’s coaching, during your season especially, nobody’s sitting down to pore over a, a 500-page how-to book, and that’s academic. And you want something that, boom, it’s a quick hitter.

You can go and you can grab this- Yeah … or you can get, take this tool, and now I can utilize those things with my teams. And so I think that for any coach that’s out there listening, and again, we all face conflict, if you’re looking for a way to be able to better deal with conflict, Bill’s book i- is a great tool.

Let me ask you this. One of the things that I think that I, as I was reading the book, I know that one of the frequent talking points that I have on the podcast with coaches is coaches will tell me how important it is to have difficult conversations, right? You have to have, if something arises, you have to have a difficult conversation.

And there’s several- Yeah … examples of that in your book. But one of the things that I found interesting is that it was more than just having the conversation. So if Bill isn’t playing as much as maybe Bill would like, I can sit down and I can have the conversation with Bill and explain my point of view and maybe why you’re not playing as much or what you can do to play more, but yet you could still walk away from that conversation feeling like the conflict had not been-

Resolved, right? It’s I had the conversation- Yeah … you’re silent, so I think- … I’ve taken control of the situation. We’ve hashed it out. Now that conflict is gone. Yeah. And what I found interesting in the book, which I never really had thought about it from this perspective, was the one person in the conversation, in this case you as the player, walk away from that and maybe you’re still not satisfied that the conflict has reached some type of resolution.

So talk a little bit about scenarios like that where it’s a difficult conversation-

[00:16:42] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:16:42] Mike Klinzing: but it really doesn’t necessarily solve what the true conflict is.

[00:16:47] Bill Taylor: Yeah, some of that’s, the power imbalance and just the, the way coaches think. For example, as a coach or a leader, you know the r- you know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

You know what the training plan is. You know what the progressions are going to be. You know what the game plan is. You know what the tactics are. You know how to adjust. And so we try to w- it’s a… a- and we’re busy. We got a lot of athletes. We got a lot of things going on. So we skip the process and tell.

‘Cause why w- we know that this is the way it is, so why wouldn’t they? All I need to do is tell them how it is, and then they’ll just be fine. But there’s a few things we can touch on Below The Line, which is one of the tools, but maybe we’ll hit that later. But most people I would say nobody likes to be told.

Nobody likes to have somebody tell them how things are going to be or tell them what to think. And that’s why I think when you talk to people, it’s best, it’s better to learn how to be a great a- question asker, to be curious, to find out what they think, and then to work on solutions together, which is part of another one of the tools.

But the more involvement and participation and ownership that somebody puts in, the more you’re likely to resolve the conflict, the more satisfied they’re going to be with whatever the result is, even if the result isn’t anything different technically. So those are really important. The other thing is when you ask questions, people answer, and it’s their voice answering.

So I can tell you, “Do X,” and you might be like I don’t want to do X ’cause you’re telling me to do X.” But if I say, “What do you think you should do?” Maybe I sh- I think I sh- should probably do X.” Th- Their voice, their ownership, much more likely they’re going to follow through and respond to that.

Telling isn’t a great way of going about things. If you don’t want conflict, if you want to resolve conflict, asking questions, helping somebody to get to those conclusions, which does take a little more patience, can take a lot more time sometimes. But is well worth it for the conflict you eliminate and for the next level, because now they have trust in you, and they know you’re interested in them, and they know you care about them, and there’s all these dynamics that go with that, that that are really important, that are better than just telling.

I don’t know if the… Is that what you were asking? Some of that?

[00:19:03] Mike Klinzing: It is. And I do think that you hit on a couple important points there that, again, run through a lot of the conversations that I have of, if I ask questions and I’m learning about the person that I’m having a conversation with- Yeah … that helps me to better understand their perspective.

Helps me to hear what they want or what they’re looking for out of the conversation or the situation- Yeah … that’s created the conflict in the first place. It also just helps me to get to know them better as a human being, which we all know as coaches, right? The more I can connect with someone as a human being and not just as an athlete, not just as a basketball player, a track and field athlete.

If I can connect with them on a real way and demonstrate that I care about them as-

[00:19:47] Bill Taylor: Yeah … a

[00:19:47] Mike Klinzing: student, as a son, as a daughter, as a whatever- Yeah … not just as an athlete, that I’m much more likely to get better results- … from the conversations that I have with them. And so I think what you’re touching on there are all really important things when it comes to being able to have those types of conversations when a conflict does arise.

Is that, does that make sense to summarize what- Absolutely … what you were talking about there?

[00:20:15] Bill Taylor: Yeah and not just better results with the person, but you’re more likely to get better athletic results too, because- … as you build a whole person and as you invest in the relationship, and you show you care, you’re going to get more out of the, the whole relationship.

On top of the fact that, I’ve been blessed to have had a lot of championships and a lot of wins and a national championship. B- but coaching and sport, that’s not the purpose of sport. That’s not the reason or the amazing value. We certainly want to try, strive to win. But that’s, if once it gets to that where it’s only about that, not about growing people, not about investing in people, not about using this amazing laboratory called athletics, sport, to grow people in ways that they can’t be grown anywhere else, that’s- that’s where the disconnect happens.

And yeah, you’re going to have less conflict if you invest in people and learn about people, and show you care about them in every aspect of who they are, and that their value isn’t as an athlete. And you’re going to be able to resolve conflict a lot quicker and in a very positive direction if you take that approach as well.

[00:21:23] Mike Klinzing: I think sometimes Young coaches especially have a tendency to- … want to ignore conflict, right? And just- Yeah … turn away and hope that goes away. And- Yeah … what we’re talking about here is the ability to develop this set of tools that- Yeah … enables you to confront that conflict and then be able to utilize that in a positive way to, A, impact people on the field, on the court, but also just, again, as you said, as human beings.

And it’s just funny how the language of coaches, that when people are talking different things, like when I hear tough conversations, I think of that tough conversation has arisen because of conflict, right? So when somebody says- … “Hey, I have to have a tough conversation,” I’ve have to resolve a conflict with someone, and to me, those two things- Yep

are, again, six of one, half dozen the other. They’re describing- Yep … the same thing. And then as I was going through it and thinking about the different tools that you list, and we’ll maybe have you share all of them in just a second. But the first one when you talk about just making sure that you have control of your emotions, right?

That-

[00:22:34] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:22:35] Mike Klinzing: nobody, I don’t care in what walk of life, I don’t care if it’s athletics, I don’t care if it’s with your spouse, I don’t care if it’s with one of your friends. If there’s a conflict and one or both of the people are overly emotional- Yeah … the results of what you’re going to get are not going to be good because chances are you’re not going to be thinking clearly and your emotions are going to overrun whatever logical thinking might be there that would allow the two people to resolve their conflict.

So talk a little bit about, maybe give us a scenario or a situation where coaches need to be really careful about how they manage their emotions when it comes to dealing with conflict.

[00:23:15] Bill Taylor: Yeah, and it’s it’s tough in anything in life. We’re humans. We have emotions. We have egos. We have…

We’re defensive. We have insecurities. All those things, kind of stoke emotion. No, no good decision happens in high emotion. That’s just the way it is. If you’re highly emotional, you’re not logical. If you’re not logical, you’re not necessarily making decisions that are– You’re usually not making decisions that are best for you or others.

And you’re right. You’re absolutely right. If one or more, and that’s the challenge, there’s, conflict is a relationship, so you’re dealing with mult- one or more people. If emotion is high it’s, you’re not going to get a positive result, and if you get sucked in, so to speak, somebody insults you, somebody approaches you in high emotion, and you respond in high emotion, now we’re in a death spiral.

Now we’re not going to get anywhere until we can get emotion down. So that is number o- the tool number one is emotion, how to deal with it and going through that for that reason, because you can master every other- concept of every other tool of conflict management. If you can’t manage your own emotion, control your own emotion, and if you can’t help others to bring their emotion down, you’re not going to solve any conflict.

Coaches are in highly emotional environment. Sports is very emotional at any level, at any place. I think club, that kind of level where the parents are there, and there’s lots of people, and there’s big tournaments, can be even more emotional. Parents bring sometimes some other aspects. That’s why we have a parent conflict course, because there’s some unique aspects of conflict that happen from parents.

I don’t think, again, nec- not necessarily intentionally, just the nature of it. They’re investing a lot of time. They’re investing a lot of money. They… Their kid out there. They’re living sometimes through their kid. So you’re h- pumping up emotion and making sports something way bigger than it really is a lot of times.

Coaches are the same way. You mentioned coaches avoiding conflict. That’s certainly, I think I’m just wild guess, but I think 70% of people try to avoid conflict, and again, that doesn’t work because it just grow- it stays and it grows, so it’s worse down the road. I think younger coaches, when I was a younger coach, again, I was much more w- much more thinking I just, I’m the coach.

I need to tell. Again, when you tell, unless it’s an emergency situation, there’s t- there’s a time and a place that you have to just tell, where you’re taking care of people’s immediate safety. Other than that, I think that you have to be aware of your emotions. You have to do the three seconds if that’s what it takes.

What, there’s, again, we have tools, but there’s different things you can do where you just stop yourself for a minute and assess, “What are, what am I thinking? What am I doing here? What’s the goal? Is the goal to win an argument, or is the goal to get things settled down so that we can…” And sometimes in the, in a, with coaches, there’s the moment.

It’s a game, it’s a contest. That’s a lot tougher, and you can’t deal with everything right then because you have a game to coach. You have players that need to be taken care of, more than just one. So those situations are are more challenging, and sometimes need to just have some some separation.

Pull somebody out, have an assistant coach work with them, do s- have a plan to deal with situations like that so that it doesn’t take over the game, doesn’t take over the experience of all the players, all the spectators, all the coaches and that you have some, some plans. So again whether it’s our education programs or the book, I think there’s a lot of things that can be gleaned out of there.

Then it’s important, it’s always important to take what you learn and use it. If you just learn it and then don’t make any changes, you’re not going to get very far. And I highly encourage, especially the chapter on a policy, having stuff that everybody, the coach understands, the athletes understand, the administration understands, the organization, whatever organization it is.

Conflict’s all right to deal with. In fact, we want you to deal with it. We expect you to deal with it. It’s not scary, and here’s the process. And the other thing is the more you learn, we tend to avoid conflict because we don’t have the skill set. Most people don’t even know there is a skill set.

So we avoid things that scare us or that we don’t feel comfortable with, and so that’s why the book, I hope, is going to be valuable. That’s why I hope our training programs and things like that are going to be valuable because the more you learn, and the more you then practice it Conflict does isn’t as big a deal.

It starts to become far less of a problem and more of a something that you know is going to work to your advantage most of the time. And so it’s you go into it maybe not happy, but you go into it much more calm and much more confident and are able to deal with these things.

[00:28:02] Mike Klinzing: You talked about in the book that most, the way most coaches deal with conflict is they wing it, right?

And-

[00:28:07] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:28:08] Mike Klinzing: I can put myself in that ca- category. I’m sure there are a lot of coaches out there listening that do the same thing, right? They don’t have that- Yeah … written policy that you’re talk- talking about how do we deal with conflict. It’s, “No, a conflict has arisen.” I’m just going to deal with it and figure out- Yeah

what that looks like in the moment as I’m going through it. And so it is much less likely that you’re going to have a good outcome when you are winging it as opposed to having a plan. And there’s a word that I find myself using all the time when I’m interviewing coaches and just mirror- mirroring back to them some of the things that they’re saying, is the ability to be intentional with whatever- it is that you do, whether you’re being intentional with what you teach in your practices and how you teach it, whether you’re being intentional with how you want to build your culture, whether you’re being intentional with, “Hey, these are the three most important things that I’ve have to teach my team over the course of the season.

These are those three non-negotiables. When I walk into practice, I have to know what it is that I want to do. I have to know how I want to teach it. I have to know the f-…” All those things that coaches that are good and organized end up- Yeah … doing are always done intentionally. And again, another theme that ran through the book for me was if I learn all these different tools and I have a plan, now- i’m not just going into it, “Oh, there there’s conflict.” Instead, I now know when a conflict arises, I know what I have to do-

[00:29:39] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:29:39] Mike Klinzing: in order to resolve that conflict in a positive way. And so that’s, again, that intentionality or that having a plan before it happens to me is so important, Bill.

[00:29:51] Bill Taylor: A- a 1000%, and like you said, it’s true in everything.

You wouldn’t just wa- roll into practice and go what are we going to do today? I don’t know. Take- go shoot some hoops. We’ll figure it out here in a little bit.” Everything i- is built towards getting, development, logical development and things like that. The avoid w- my approach to conflict as a coach before learning this stuff was avoid it as long as I could, and when I absolutely couldn’t avoid it anymore, wing it.

And within wing it, usually because I was in a position of power, this can’t- we can’t have this. We can’t have a conflict. And I’m the coach and I’m telling you we can’t have a conflict. None of those things work, but it was the best I could do, and I didn’t know there was, I didn’t know there was conflict tools.

I didn’t know there was a pol- that you could put together a policy. I didn’t know that you could be that intentional about that subject. I think we just kinda… Conflict, on the one side it’s so vital because conflict is everywhere and we always have conflict, and on the other side, because we always have conflict, I think it numbs us to the thought that we ne- that we would benefit from tools and a plan and a policy and just bringing it out.

And because it’s thought of as so negative- People don’t want to a- I don’t want to address it, so they don’t even address it. They avoid even addressing it. Whereas getting it out in the open and just what you said being intentional and having a plan beats not having a plan Almost every time. A- and winging it can work.

It worked for me, sometimes, right? Because a little logic and a little bit of psychology and you can work through some things. Maybe not s- as good as you could, but you can get through things, but it’s not even close to what it could be if you have the skills and the knowledge.

[00:31:36] Mike Klinzing: All right, so tool number one was emotion.

Tool number two is communication. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about why that one’s so important.

[00:31:42] Bill Taylor: Yeah, communication is at the heart of all relationships, and it’s required to build a relationship. Conflict is about relationships, so cou- con- communication is absolutely vital. And it sounds simple, right?

Oh yeah, talking or whatever. I touch on a few things in the book, a few different aspects of c- of communication. I always talk about active listening. I think that one’s sen- I’m sensitive to it because I was accused of not being a good listener by some athletes every once in a while, and my response was defensive, and of course I’m listening to you, and I could repeat back what they said.

And then when I learned about active listening much more in depth, I realized, oh, I’m not as… I wasn’t as good a listener as I thought I was, and I certainly was not good at demonstrating or showing somebody that I was listening. And by not showing I’m listening, they think I’m not, and that wrecks trust, and we don’t get anywhere.

So I, I spend some time on active listening skills, asking questions, being patient learning about people things like that in active listening. I also really, communication is more than the words we use. It’s our body posture, it’s our body language, it’s our eye contact, it’s our tone and inflection.

It’s all these different things, and they’re all really important. And if I do one of them wrong, if I sound sarcastic, saying the right words, but being sarcastic-sounding or flippant or irritated, then the person’s not going to take from my words what the words seem to mean. They’re going to take from it that, oh my goodness, he…

Or if I look stern, or if I look, disinterested, if I’m looking up at a ceiling or checking my watch or on my phone, that tells somebody I, I don’t care. So all your body language, all your inflection and tone, all those things are vitally important, and I go through those pretty, I think pretty well in the book, but just you really do, just like you have to be in check of your emotions, you also really need to make sure that you’re communicating the way you want.

And just ’cause it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s coming out that way. And especially that’s true with text and email, where you lose all these other things. And not only do you lose body language and tone and inflection and eye contact and all these things, you also lose the ability to immediately c- feed- get immediate feedback.

So I would write a text where I– and es- especially if I was in high emotion, if something had gone wrong, a practice had gone wrong, a meet, we hadn’t competed well. And my intention was good. I intended to help them get better. I intended to help correct mistakes so that we wouldn’t make them again. But my emotion was high, and I’m typing, and they lose all those other things, and so they read it very…

can, sometimes would read it very different than my intention, than my heart. My heart was never to mess them up, never to make them feel bad. It was always to correct. But then I go back years later and read some of my texts, like, and the emails “Oh, wow, that is not– that does not read like my brain wanted it to read.”

So that’s another thing is I just I have a personal policy. I encourage this to other people. People can take from it what they want, but I have a personal policy of I only communicate in writing facts. Be at the bus at this time. The game starts at this time. Wear these clothes, for warm-ups.

Things like that, and I save everything personal, constructive, critical, anything like that is for in person where they– the full communication can come, and where they can say, “Are you telling me this?” “No. No, I’m not. I mean this.” “Oh. Are– Did you mean to do this?” “No, I wasn’t intending for you to read that.”

So you can get that back and forth and that, that clarification. So those are some aspects of communication that I cover.

[00:35:32] Mike Klinzing: Great advice, and I think it’s something that we’ve all, I’m sure, experienced an email or a text, either one that we sent that wasn’t received in the way that we anticipated, or one that we got that we read all kinds of things into it that maybe the person did mean, maybe the person didn’t mean.

We’re left with all these questions. And I always think- Yeah … that with communication, both people, you want to try to walk away from a conversation where both people clearly understood what the other person was truly trying to say, and have an understanding of what that other person was trying to say. And as you said, when you do that through email or text or any kind of written word, it becomes much more difficult.

And I love the rule, pretty simple of you only communicate facts. That’s a pretty simple yes or no sort of factor tree to be able to go through and be like, “Is this a fact? Okay, I can send it in an email or a text. Is it not a fact? Okay, then I have to wait until I can talk to the person in face to face.”

And I think that those kinds of simple little rules that you can put in place for yourself help you from making a mistake again- Absolutely … in a time where maybe you’re emotional or maybe there’s something else going on, and you’re not trying to be a certain way, but you don’t take the time to consider how that may be perceived.

So I think that’s a, a really good piece of advice from that section of the book.

[00:36:54] Bill Taylor: And it’s not only you being emotional. I could be perfectly fine and write a very simple statement, but if the receiver is emotional, or maybe they felt like you were mad at them earlier, and so now everything in their lens, all their…

everything they’re reading is through a lens of, “He’s mad at me.” So now you write something very nice or very normal, but it’s… it might be critical or it might have some aspect of it, they’re reading it through those lenses. And then they just sit and dwell on it. And humans, when we think about things, when we think about what somebody’s thinking in a negative way it doesn’t go positive.

It gets worse. It grows into a monster that it rarely ever is, but that’s how most humans do things in the absence of other feedback. So

[00:37:40] Mike Klinzing: All right, tool number three, below the line. Tell us what that is. Yeah. Ooh. That’s one that probably is not, if some- if I just hear that, people are going to say, “Below the line, what’s that mean?”

Yeah. So give us an idea of what that’s all about.

[00:37:52] Bill Taylor: Yeah. It’s an amazing tool. It’s going to be a little challenging to to describe. It’s, I think it’s better in the book just because it’s complex. When I first heard it, being a coach, I thought, “Oh, below the line, that means you’re not meeting the mark.

You’re below expectations.” It’s not what it means in conflict. In conflict, it’s referring to interests, or i- issues and interests, okay? So issues would be what somebody states or what somebody says their conflict is about. In the book I use getting a s- I want a scholarship increase.

So athlete says, “I want a scholarship increase.” That’s the issue, more money. So the coach, if the coach thinks it’s about money, which it could be, but maybe sometimes we have things below the line that are really the problem. And if you don’t address those things, those interests below the line, you’re not going to resolve the conflict, even though they were never stated.

You have to be working on those things or detect it. So they say “My issue is I want more money.” Sometimes money isn’t about money, it’s about respect. This is just as one example. Maybe I want the respect of getting a, a bigger scholarship, and it’s not about the money itself. And I just, ’cause it comes to my mind quickest the example in the book, the coach says, “Oh fine, I’ll give you a scholarship increase, but I don’t know if you’ve really earned it, and you need to bring a lot more to the table, next time.”

The issue was money. They got the money. Conflict resolved. The issue is respect. Now they got the money, which they wanted for respect, but they got disrespected. So you haven’t resolved the conflict at all. You accomplished what was asked for, more money, but you didn’t resolve the conflict because the r- conflict on below the line, the unseen, we always think of it like the iceberg example.

You see the tip, but you don’t see what’s really going on necessarily. And so that below the line is going to have more to do with whether the conflict goes on or whether more conflict get added to it than than the issue often. And so you have to be wise and look at all things.

Sometimes it is the issue, that’s it, that’s cool, but be aware of other things that are going on below the surface. The more you get to know somebody, especially in advance, the more you get to know your players, the more administrators get to know their coaches, the more coaches get to know administrators, all those different lines of com- of relationship in athletics.

The more each one of those relationships builds beforehand, learns about people, learns about their background, gets to know them, the better you’re going to be able to determine below the lines that lead to more satisfactory conflict resolutions. So in back to that, that example if the coach didn’t have more money, the issue wasn’t really money, it was respect, but the coach says, “I don’t have any more money, but man, you are so awesome, and I want to really get you into doing m- being more of a leader on the team, being captain.”

You didn’t solve the issue, but you could have solved the conflict because you dealt with some other things. And we’ll talk– Ma- we’ll probably talk more on another tool about some of this stuff too that kind of links to it. But I thought below the line was one of the most amazing tools, mas- most amazing concepts I’d ever heard, not just because it helps you go deeper, helps you be a detective and really work to help people at all levels, but I also found it to be something where it may not change a person.

So a person does some things that I don’t like. They act in a certain way, or they have a certain tendency. I don’t maybe like it. But once I unders- like kind of look at it, okay, below the line, okay, their background is this, and they’ve had this happen in their life, and th- I can see why they’re acting that way Or I can see why they think that because of this.

Might help me in the long term work with them on getting through some issues, but more than that, it just helps me understand them better. O- often increases empathy, and allows me to go, “Okay I don’t like it, but I get it, and I understand where it’s coming from.” And it’s not just because they’re trying to be an evil person or a mean person, it’s ’cause they got some other stuff below the line that they’re dealing with that they may or may not even know themselves.

They may n- might not be conscious of it. So below the line, huge one to me. Again, pretty complex in some ways, but once you get it it… I find it to be a tool I use in not just in conflict, but just in understanding people and working through life.

[00:42:16] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. So a couple things jump out at me from- Yeah

what you said there and what I read as I went through the book. One is this obviously ties back to communication, right? And getting to know your athlete. Yeah. Yeah. If you know your athlete better, then you may have a, you may more quickly come to realize that the issue they’re bringing to you, to you- there may be something underlying that is- Yeah … more important to them, that is causing them to bring the issue. So again- Yeah … communication with your athlete, understanding them, very important. And then number two, what we also talked about was being intentional, right? You have to go into the conversation not just literally hearing the words that they’re saying, but having an understanding of who they are, what they’re about- Yep

what their background is, where they are. And if you go into that intentionally with the idea of I’m listening to what they’re saying, but I’m also trying to put that in context with everything that I already know about them, who they are, what they’re about- Yeah … then I can start to dig maybe a little bit deeper and find that below the line thing that will allow me to, again, resolve the conflict.

So communication, being intentional, to me both tie into that below the line. Yep. And then the other thing that I didn’t think this while I was reading the book, but as you were talking and you were explaining how, again, that if you get to understand someone, you may not like what they bring to the table in terms of their argument or what they’re thinking, but you can understand and it gives you a better grip on where they’re coming from.

And there’s Morgan Housel, he wrote the book The Psychology of Money, and I listen to his podcast, and one of the things that he talks about is that if you were to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and live through their life, and if you could see all of their experiences, you might look at something, I might look at something Bill does at his house and be like, “What is…

Like, why would Bill do that? That is one of the dumbest things. Why would he ever do that?” And his point is that the more you understand about the person and their experiences- Yeah … even though it might look dumb to me, if I had lived your experiences- … I would understand exactly why you were making the choices that you were making.

Now, I don’t have to love your choices-

…

[00:44:38] Mike Klinzing: But I can at least come to an understanding. I think that’s what you’re saying and- Very much … you articulated that very well.

[00:44:44] Bill Taylor: Yeah that’s a great… I like that. And I think that’s right on. The other thing, I was just thinking this out, I, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this, but I feel like below the line is in the plot of every great sports movie that’s ever been.

There’s always the, the athlete- Yeah … that has stuff going on at home that the coach doesn’t know about, or there’s always below the lines because we’re humans and we’re complex and every one of us has below the lines no matter what we think. So it’s just funny that I was just thinking about, I can’t think of a sports movie that I’ve ever watched that doesn’t have below the lines all over the place that they’re trying to resolve.

That’s part of the conflict of a story that then gets resolved- … through these things. Sorry.

[00:45:22] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the interesting things about the book and just about having a conversation is you’re just peeling back layers and the conversation reveals this or reveals that, and that’s hopefully what you’re doing as a coach with your athletes all the time- Yeah

is getting to know them. And by getting to know them better, it allows you to reach them better, it allows you to coach them better, and it allows you to resolve the conflict with them in a more productive way than just, as we talked about earlier, winging it. All right. So tool number four. Yeah. Be creative, looking for win-win solutions.

So talk a little about why it’s important, ’cause again, you said it- Yeah … right off the top that oftentimes as a coach I have a conflict. In sports, we want to win or lose, right? I want to win the conflict. In the moment, I have the power as the coach over my athlete. Yeah. I can easily win this conflict.

My athlete walks away, they’re quiet. I think I won the conflict, but it’s still there, now it’s just gone underground. So explain why the win-win concept is so important.

[00:46:24] Bill Taylor: Yeah, so win-win means you’re looking for things that help both parties feel good about the situation, and that may mean that each person is giving up a little bit.

That’s harder to do as a coach or a, a leader, somebody, an administrator, somebody in charge. B- but the more you look for the win-win, the opportunity for everybody to get something and to move forward, that may be just… Getting something may be just a great explanation that they understand now and agree, something they didn’t understand before.

It can be as simple as that. The point of it is, and this is where that’s tied to that, is creative solutions, is there isn’t, there’s rarely, for any conflict, there’s rarely one and only one solution to it. And not only that, but as we talked about before with people say- speaking, being asked questions and speaking their own answers- You’re not going to get a lot of ownership usually if you’re told something, if you’re told an outcome.

Here’s what the resolution’s going to be. You’re going to have much more buy-in when you have ownership, and ownership comes through participating in the process. Not only that, but when we talk about the positives of conflict, one of the big positives is building relationships. Building relationships happens through communication and engagement, working together to solve things.

Problem-solving is a great way to build a relationship. And so it’s really important to be open to all kinds of different possible solutions, and to be seeking not to crush somebody. You can win a conflict through force or positional power a- and you’re going to lose the relationship. The conflict isn’t going to go away.

It may go silent, but it’s not going to go away. It’s not only not going to go away, it’s going to get worse. It’s probably going to, y- the opinion of you is going to go so down, and humans talk to other humans, so now it’s going to spread. And now because it was dictated and it was a competition for conflict, now they’re not going to come to you, they’re going to go to other people and tell them what a jerk you are, and they’re going to have an example of how you are a jerk.

So it, yeah, you can win that conflict, win the battle, lose the war. And what is your goal? I think I s- I speak to this in the book. As a coach or an administrator or whatever, what is your goal? Is your goal to build a relationship that moves forward and grows and is mutually beneficial, or is your goal to win a conflict?

Because if your goal is to win the conflict, then the relationship is probably going to be dismantled, and at some point it will, it’ll either be disengaged, negative, or it’ll just go away. So I just don’t know what you’ve gained in that. You haven’t gained, you’ve lost. You feel good about yourself, but that’s a whole different issue.

I can’t think of any situation… I was when I was talking to somebody else and I was like the only thing I can think of for win-lose is war.” But then if you’re a historian, you look at things like World War I, the Allies win, we punish Germany like crazy. Guess what happens? World War II, bigger and worse.

And that’s a metaphor, I think, for most of these things. If you d- if you go about it win-lose, it’s going to be a big lose ultimately. So yeah, work on big solutions. I feel like our government used to be better at both sides of the aisle working together and giving a little and getting a little and working towards the benefit of the relationship of the, the country.

I feel like that’s gone away a lot, and the result is chaos. The result is more conflict. Now we’re speaking outside of sports, but that’s what’s going on in our society. People aren’t dealing with conflict. They aren’t working together to find solutions. They aren’t giving a little. They aren’t going win-win.

They’re going win-lose. I need to win and you need to lose, and we’ll do whatever it takes to do that, even if it burns the building down. So yeah, that’s touching on that, that fourth skill.

[00:50:15] Mike Klinzing: I think when I think about this, one of the things that came to my mind that I’ve been in this situation as a player, I’ve been in this situation as a coach, I’ve been in this situation as a parent-

Where there’s a conversation that needs to be had about, “Hey, why am I not playing as much as I want to?” Or-

… “

[00:50:39] Mike Klinzing: Why is my role not bigger than what I would like it to be?” And in situations where the coach has, I look at it as told the truth, right? You said the conflict is just going to go underground, and I’ve been in situations where the coach has told the truth.

Maybe it was something that the player, whether that was me, whether that was one of my players, whether that was one of my kids, might not have been something that they wanted to hear. Like- … “Hey, the reason why you’re not playing is ’cause player X is better than you, and here’s the things that you need to work on in order to be able to get better to beat out player X and earn more playing time.”

Great, because you’ve told me the truth. Now I know exactly where you’re coming from. Now I know exactly what I have to work on. I can step- Yeah … out onto the practice court and I can work on those things, or I can go and work on my own to try to improve and get better. And in situations where a coach or myself has not been honest with the player, where you beat around the bush, you’re like, “Oh, you’re doing a great job,” and “Hey, everything’s…

just keep doing what you’re doing.” And then the player walks away going Well, I’m not doing great because-

…

[00:51:52] Mike Klinzing: I want to be able to play more. I want to be able to contribute more to the team. And if I was doing so great, wouldn’t I be earning more minutes? And so I think that you made a great point about, again, it going underground.

And if you find a win-win, a win-win doesn’t necessarily have to be I come in as a player looking to earn more playing time. A win-win doesn’t mean that I just tell you, “Hey, Bill, all right, you came in and talked to me, so now I’m going to change my whole approach, and now, Bill- … you’re in the starting lineup.”

But if I am honest with you, you go away now with a constructive plan of what you need to do to be able to work on your game to be able to improve and get better. And I think that’s an example of a situation that coaches face all the time, where it could be win-lose, where the player doesn’t get the truth.

They walk away even more confused than they were before, or they know that what the coach said was not honest. Yeah. And then to your point, they go and they talk to other human beings, and now you have this sort of subversiveness that’s going through your team. And so I think that’s a good example of a win-win type situation that almost every coach has faced that type of conversation at some point in their career.

[00:53:04] Bill Taylor: So conflicts generally are unmet expectations. They’re generally I expected this, and it’s, what I expected isn’t happening for whatever reason, and so I’m frustrated. And so if you’re not clear, if you soft pedal or try and, or don’t… Now they don’t know what to expect. They’re interpreting expectations in that gray area or that soft I must be good.

He’s telling me that I’m probably good, so I should be…” When you say, “Here’s the reason this person is playing better than you,” some sports you have stats that work really well. My world was easy. There’s times or distances or, so you can just “Sorry they’ve run faster, or they’ve jumped higher.”

But there’s some things you can back it up with, but by saying, “Here’s the reason. Nothing personal. I want you to succeed. I’m going to give you everything I can possibly give you to get better if you’re willing to do your part. There’s no guarantee because you still have to achieve these certain things, but here’s what you need to do.”

Now the expectations are clear. I either do those things and then have results from those things, or I don’t. If I don’t, now I can’t be mad at the coach anymore because it was spelled out for me, and I didn’t follow through. I’m still upset about playing time. Did you do X, Y, and Z? No. Now we’ve got clear expectations, and the blame doesn’t have to be on the coach, and there’s- the expectations aren’t artificially pumped up because somebody doesn’t, a coach doesn’t want the athlete to feel bad.

You can tell the truth without making them feel bad, and unfortunately, they also have a choice of whether they feel bad or not. You can’t stop somebody from feeling bad. That’s their choice. You can try your best. You can show them you support them regardless of where they are on the team, no matter m- how much playing time they do or don’t get.

Give them the path. Clear expectations, you’re much less likely to have conflict the clearer the expectations and the more those expectations can be met.

[00:55:05] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, and I think, again, the idea of win-win doesn’t mean that both parties go skipping away from- … the discussion smiling and getting- … everything that they want.

It’s-

[00:55:17] Bill Taylor: Correct …

[00:55:17] Mike Klinzing: we had a conversation that is productive, that is positive, that both sides can take away something that improves their situation or gives them an avenue to be able to improve their situation.

[00:55:29] Bill Taylor: And wi- so win-win is a, an approach as much as anything. It’s the c- it’s the- Correct … pers- especially for the person in power, but both s- both sides.

It’s saying, “I want to try to make this as good as possible, and I’m not just here to tell you to shut up and do what I say.” That type of attitude. “I’m the person- Yep … in charge,” or, “I’m the person who knows everything, and you’re just dumb,” that’s kind of that win-lose. “I’m just going to squash everything.”

Win-win, as much as anything, is, “I’m going to try to get, to help this situation be the best it can be and to get where it… I may not be able to agree with what you have. I may not be able to accommodate you. I will be able to tell you why and why it’s in the best interest from my opinion as the leader, at the end of the day I’m responsible for everybody, why that we’re doing this.”

It’s possible a person still won’t like that. I hate this, and I don’t think it happens very often, but sometimes somebody needs to leave the relationship. That’s not the goal. You should do everything possible to not have that happen. But if if you can’t meet somebody’s expectations no matter what you do, and you aren’t going to compromise your culture and your values, th- then maybe a different situation is a better situation in those hopefully very few situations.

[00:56:48] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it makes sense. And again, even that is a win-win because- Absolutely … hopefully the departure of that person is going to be better for the team that they’re leaving- Yep … and hopefully they’re going to find a better fit for their personality, who they are- Yeah … somewhere where they can excel and be happy.

And so even though it might- Yep … not necessarily always look like a win-win, I understand completely the point that you’re trying to make, is you’re trying to make the situation better for both parties, not just one party- … and have it go away. And so- Absolutely … that makes a lot of sense, and I think coaches can relate to that point, for sure.

All right, tool number five, trust and follow through. This is a- Yeah … huge one, right? Yeah. I think it’s huge in every walk of life, right? I… This is a lesson that I learned very early on, I think almost as much as a teacher as a coach- … that if you say you’re going to do something-

[00:57:39] Bill Taylor: Yeah …

[00:57:40] Mike Klinzing: the first time or two that you don’t do it, guess what?

The next time you ask somebody to do something or you say, “Hey, this is what’s going to happen,” the amount of belief that you’re going to do that is completely gone off the table. So just talk about a little bit- Yeah … how trust and follow through works in your mind, a- and how you made sure that you did that in your career.

[00:58:04] Bill Taylor: So some of the trust, even though it’s its own tool or listed as its own tool, the trust process is happening in everything you do, in your communication, in how you control your emotions, in how you learn about somebody and start to understand them. In every aspect, you’re building, if you’re doing the right things, you’re building trust.

Trust, for most people pretty hard to get pretty easy to lose, and even harder to regain if you lose it. Some people won’t let you ever, no matter what you do, no matter how genuine you are. There are people who will like, “Nope.” Below the lines, how many times have they been, feel like they’ve been betrayed in the past?

That’s going to influence how much rope you have. The big thing is you can go through the whole process of conflict, of a conflict, the whole management process, do it really well, use all the tools incredibly well really learn about somebody, get to an amazing resolution that seems like it’s a huge win-win for everybody.

You can do all that work, get to that point. The conflict isn’t done. It sounds like it is because you got to a resolution. Now, it’s going to … You’re going to determine whether that conflict is resolved based on what you do afterwards. If you do what you say you’ll do, you’re going to build trust, you’re going to increase the relationship, you’re going to show that you cared, you’re going to show that it was all worth something.

If you do all that work, and then you don’t do what you say you’ll do, you’re going to lose it all. And not only are you going to lose that trust like we say, it’s going to be so much harder to get it back. And so you have another conflict, and you start to work through it, and you’re working through…

You think you’re working through it with all the right tools and everything, but they’re looking at you going, “Yeah. Yeah, you don’t mean it,” because you didn’t prove… You proved to them that you didn’t mean it by not doing it. So it has to go all the way through the process, and you have to be v- You’ve used the word intentional.

I think that’s so important here. You have to be very intentional about what that resolution is and being intentional about following through and doing what you said you’ll do, and even, I think, having a follow-up meeting. This… Just so that people are clear on their expectations and on their interpretation of things.

“Hey, I’ve been working on this. You’ve been work- I see you’ve been working on that. How do you feel about our conflict?” If it’s a significant… If it’s a little conflict, no, but anything of significance, having that follow-up check-in, I think, is really big and can really help. “Yeah, you have been. I really appreciate it, and now we’re s- continuing to build the relationship even stronger and build the trust even stronger.”

[01:00:40] Mike Klinzing: One of the stories that you told in the book, I think, is one that basketball coaches in particular oftentimes struggle with, I think especially at the high school level. And I’ll share the story that you gave in the book and then-

[01:00:57] Bill Taylor: Sure …

[01:00:57] Mike Klinzing: maybe equate it a little bit to what a basketball coach might face.

So you talked about one of your teams that you coached that Everybody just wanted everybody else to be happy. Yeah. And so when performance slacked, when somebody wasn’t working as hard as they should have, when somebody was doing something that was probably against the culture that you wanted to have, nobody really called them out on that.

Everybody just put their arms around them and said, “Hey, it’s all right. You’re a great person, and e- Yeah … everything’s going to be fine.” Yeah. And the value on your team became not necessarily holding people accountable to a certain level of performance or expectation, but instead it became, we just want everyone to get along-

[01:01:41] Bill Taylor: Yeah

[01:01:41] Mike Klinzing: and be happy. Yeah. And so I found that to be something that I could definitely relate to, again, on a lot of different levels. I think one of the things that basketball coaches, particularly at the high school level, struggle with is I, as a coach, can hold players accountable to a standard, but when we really reach another level is when players can hold one another to that standard and make them- Yeah

accountable. But when you’re talking about high school players, you’re talking about 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old kids who you’re asking them to have some of the tools that we talked about tonight, that you wrote about in your book, that- Yeah … we know that as adult coaches, sometimes we struggle- … with that ability to handle conflict, and now we’re asking our athletes to almost work through that process themselves with a teammate.

And so one of the things that I think coaches struggle with at the high school level with basketball is, how do you get your players to hold their teammates accountable to a level of effort, a level of accountability on and off the floor of this is the way we do things? So if a high school- Yeah

basketball coach comes to you and says, “Hey, I want my team to be more accountable to one another. I want them to be better,” I don’t know if leaders is the right word, “but I want them, if somebody’s not doing what we all talked about that we said we were going to do that’s important to us, we want to be able to approach that individual and say, ‘Hey, you need to get back on board with what we all talked about-

And what our team needs to do in order to have success.'” What advice would you give to a basketball coach who’s trying to help not necessarily themselves better manage conflict, but help their players to manage conflict between each other?

[01:03:32] Bill Taylor: Yeah, so and I talk about that situation, I think, in two different places, but the big part is in the culture chapter, which is not one of the five tools, but I think it may be my favorite chapter, actually, in the book, and probably something that I’m going to expand on in the future.

At the end of the day your culture will be tested by conflict. So whether you’re- We all, most people, most coaches, most administrators have a culture statement or have a, “This is what my culture is.” How well they define it is really important because the clearer you are about what that means, and I talk about in there kinda assuming my culture was going to continue with future, groups of kids, and neglecting my holding my team accountable to the culture because I just thought, “Oh they’re just going to share it, and they all know.”

And instead, a, a major culture statement of being a team family got hijacked and redefined, and I didn’t even know it was happening. And resulting in this instead of being accountable, instead of holding… giving your best for each other and not accepting less than your best for each other, and things like that.

Yeah, it became, “Oh, you’re all right. You’re awesome.” You just quit in the middle of the race. You’re not awesome. You are as a person, but that behavior certainly wasn’t awesome, and it wasn’t living up. So I think that coaches need to be very clear about their culture, what their culture statement is, and communicate it very clearly.

This is what we’re about, and this is what that looks like. Any- Ask questions. What are situations that you can think of so that everybody understands. And then you do need, I think, the conflict policy and the tools because I can’t think of anything else that disrupts culture other than conflict.

Conflict tests. Did you mean what you said when you said, “This is our culture. We hold each other accountable. We expect the best from each other”? Okay. When that doesn’t happen- What do we– That’s a conflict. You’re ch- you’re changing what the culture statement is. You’re not holding somebody accountable.

You’re re- in celebrating mediocrity. It’s not about wins or losses, it’s about effort. It’s about living by the standards of the culture, living up to those types of expectations. So coaches need to be clear on their culture, then they need to be clear on how they’re going to deal with conflict that attacks their culture.

And if you don’t deal with it, if you don’t deal with the conflict that, that threatens to change your culture, you’re not going to have the culture you wanted, and it’s going to be your fault. When my culture shifted, I’d love to blame it on the girls that started changing it. They’re responsible for that aspect, but it’s on me.

I neglected my culture during that time and didn’t pay attention. I assumed it was going a certain way, and so I, again, didn’t want to deal with conflict. I’m sure I saw things along the way. Oh, I’ll just hope they go away, or hope they’re little things, or I don’t want to make a big thing out a little thing.

And next thing I know, I’ve got… That was kind of the heart of what became the conflict that I had to deal with, was from that, from letting my culture get hijacked and not dealing with the conflict that, that was pulling it away. And so I let it get pulled away. Does that make sense?

[01:06:54] Mike Klinzing: It does. It, it really does.

And I think that, again it’s collaborative, right? The coach has to be paying attention to what’s going on with the culture. The players have to be paying attention to what’s going on with the culture. And together you’re working, hopefully, and so many coaches put together that culture statement or those expectations together with their team, right?

And a coach guides it- … and you have an idea of what you want that ultimate- saying or that ultimate culture to look like, but- Yeah … the players contribute to that, and then again, now we can go back to the players and say, “Hey, this is what we talked about, this is what we agreed about, this is what we said we’re going to do.”

[01:07:28] Bill Taylor: Yep.

[01:07:28] Mike Klinzing: Now it’s not happening. How do we make sure that everybody’s on board with that? And it’s becomes a, an easier conversation, right? You still have to- Yeah … work through all the steps and- Yeah … and utilize all the tools, but it’s a much easier conversation if, as you said, I’ve defined my culture well as opposed to it’s kinda wishy-washy and there’s a lot of gray areas that I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to enforce this or not enforce that.

It, if you do it and you w- write it and you define it well, now it becomes much easier for somebody to look at it and say, “It’s being followed,” or, “It’s not being followed.” Then that makes the next steps in the process easier.

[01:08:07] Bill Taylor: W- 100%. A- again, your culture’s going to be tested because for one thing I’m the coach.

I think a culture statement. I state it. I’ve got, let’s say I have a basketball team, so I don’t know, average basketball team, probably 14-ish, somewhere in there. That’s 14 different brains with 14 different experiences, 14 different things that are important to them, 14 different expectations, and 14 different interpretations, even if slightly different of what you’ve just said.

Also, 14 different agendas. So when you’re saying this, you’re thinking this is what the culture is, back to communication and writing it down, right? This is what I’m communicating. But they’re not necessarily hearing it exactly the way it’s in your brain, so there’s, that’s, you’re guaranteed to have conflict because people just are different.

It’s not wrong, bad, or good, it’s just how we’re built, and so that’s why the conflict is good. You work through these things, and people start to get clarity on what the expectations are, clarity on what you mean by this and that. Sometimes it’s clarity to the coach of, “This was well intended, but it’s not actually going to work to our benefit, so I need to make some slight changes here and be open to that because my goal is to provide the best environment and the best opportunities.”

So conflict will happen because we’re all different people, and no matter what you do, and no matter how much I think I’m s- I’m sharing something very clearly, it’s still being interpreted differently. And as we work through those conflicts that are inevitable, we start to get on the same page, closer and closer.

Maybe never 100%, but closer and closer, and understand the why, which is vital, right? Why are, why is this a culture statement? What is in the… Why is it in the best interest of me and you and all of us to get our goals? Oh, now if I understand that, and I understand how that looks, then I can buy in a- and be more likely to live up to it

[01:10:08] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely.

And again, like we talked about at the very beginning, conflict is everywhere. It’s not just in sports, it’s in life. Anything that you do, everybody, just like you talked about 14 different people on your team might have a different point of view. You’re walking down the street, or you’re dealing with your family, or you’re dealing with people at work- Yep

or whatever it might be, there’s always going to be conflict ’cause everybody brings a different point of view- Yep … to the table. One final question, Bill. Sure. If there’s one thing from the book that we have not hit on that you think’s important for a coach to know, something that we didn’t- Yeah … talk about or that I didn’t ask about, make one final point that you think is critical that we haven’t discussed so far.

[01:10:48] Bill Taylor: Yeah. I’m convinced that it’s absolutely critical for organizations, for teams to be very clear and establish a conflict policy. Roadmap would be nice. That gives you how to use the tools, but I think the policy is absolutely vital for a bunch of reasons. So the policy tells you what the steps are when you deal with a conflict, and they’re in order.

And there’s some absolutely don’t dos and some absolute you have to do it this way. And I put the, the basics. You can add to what I put in the book and what I talked about in the book. But a policy lets everybody know right up front, we’re okay with conflict. We expect conflict. It’s not something to be afraid of.

In fact, it can be a good thing, and we want to work through it to have the best chance of making it a good thing and resolving it. So number one, and I don’t remember them in order, but basically there’s just a… You do… When you have a conflict, you do need to address it. You can’t avoid it. It’s not allowed.

That’s not part of our culture. That’s not part of our expectations. You address conflict when you have conflict. You address it first and foremost with the person and only the person or people that you are actually having a conflict with. Nobody else. You don’t jump up the ladder. You don’t go to other people.

I say, I keep in my policy, three-way conflict is an absolute no. Three-way conflict being I have a problem with Bob, and I don’t go to Bob. That’s the only person who can resolve the conflict with me is, ’cause it’s between me and Bob. Instead of going to Bob, I go to Chuck and tell him how, what a jerk Bob is.

Chuck didn’t have a conflict Bob. Now Chuck’s involved in the conflict. Now the conflict has grown, and we’ve, can’t resolve it ’cause the only people that can resolve it are me and Bob. So that’s always cowardly. It’s always a way of people looking for feeling so they can feel like they’re right without actually going and dealing with the conflict.

So there’s an absolute no on that. The other absolute no is jumping. So in my… I hate to use my example, but one of the things that betrayed trust with administration, and again, it’s not, I’m not, it wasn’t intentional. They just didn’t know. They didn’t know how to deal with it. They didn’t have a conflict policy.

So An athlete has a problem with me. They never told me they had a problem with- I had no idea there was any problem until my athletic director says, “Thus and such came to me with a problem, and w- ” So now I’m defending myself to my athletic director, who has no idea what’s going on. Not to the person who needs to be held accountable and who can…

The only people who can work it out are us two. The athlete should have come to me. We should have worked th- through the conflict the best we could. 90% of conflicts are going to be resolved there if the skillsets be, good if people are using the tools correctly. If it can’t be, then you take it to another lev- you bring in a higher level with the two people still, not independent of the people that are in the part of the conflict, and you tr- that person works as a mediator to play goalie.

And then if that doesn’t work, you can go to another level, and at some point you run out of levels, and, but it almost, it rarely gets to that point. But I just think that it’s really vital for coaches and administrators and club owners and, at all levels, to be clear on a conflict policy to make it so that conflict is something that isn’t to be afraid of, and so people are very clear.

The more you understand, the more you have the tools, and the more you have a clear process ahead of you, so you know how to navigate, where to go, what not to do, what to do, your chances of resolving conflict positively go up exponentially

[01:14:33] Mike Klinzing: Said, and I think those are a couple of really great points to end our conversation on.

Before we wrap up, Bill, I want to give you a chance to share how can people get the book, how can they reach out to you, how can they work with the Conflict Sports Lab? Give me your website, email- Yeah … social media, wherever, what- whatever you want to give us- … so that we can figure out how to get the book and how to con- how to connect with you.

[01:14:57] Bill Taylor: So our business is Sports Conflict Lab, so the website is sportsconflictlab, as if it were one word, .com. On there you can communicate with me. They we have some stuff about our programs. I think we have four programs right now. We’re really emphasizing two. One is leadership, so that’s for coaches, administrators and athletes.

It depends on what, what is needed, but it’s the basics of conflict, going deeper than in the book, doing, working with people and doing exercises and things like that to really to really reinforce the po- those things. The other one that’s pretty big emphasis for us is going to be parent conflict, mostly working with organizations in conjunction with parents to establish clarity on roles, clarity on expectations, and to provide the tools so that both sides, so everybody has these tools.

The more people have these tools, the better chance of getting things resolved. We also do mediation if there’s a big conflict. Most conflicts should be fi- fixable positively from either a good reading, couple readings of the book and practicing it or bringing us in to teach. That should establish the basics that allow most conflicts to be resolved.

Sometimes that, it goes past that, because humans are involved, and so we can do mediation and help with that process. The book Managing Sports Conflict, is available on our website. It’s available on Amazon. And it’s available on the publisher’s website, Coach’s Choice Publishing. So there’s three opportunities to get the book.

And I, yeah, the goal is to really make a huge impact. I think it, we’re getting a slow start, but we’re the first in this category. I don’t know of any other book ever been written on conflict management in sports. I don’t know of any other business that is doing what we’re doing. So it’s it’s exciting, ’cause we’re new, and we’re, w- we’re solving a, a problem that people didn’t even necessarily know.

That’s awesome and exciting, but that, that is part of the challenge is that people don’t realize how important, how impacting r- learning these skills and having a plan in place and working through this stuff is, how important conflict is to growth and how deadly it can be if you don’t deal with it right.

So that’s the process, trying to educate people and I think as that starts to pick up, we’re going to see a big impact on the world of sports in this area.

[01:17:19] Mike Klinzing: Bill I think anybody who listened to our conversation and thought about what it was that we discussed tonight, and then thought about the situations that they’ve been in throughout their athletic life, I think they’ll see the value in improving their ability to deal with conflict.

And I’ll go back to what I said earlier it won’t help you not just in your athletic life, but it will help you in life in general if you can master the tools that Bill has put together here in the book. So please make sure you run out, get a copy of the book, help yourself to work on being a better manager of conflict and figuring out how to be intentional, how to use the five tools that Bill talked about.

And again, if you need Bill’s services, please feel free to reach out to him. And again, to you, Bill, I say thanks for all your time tonight. Thanks for sharing the book with us and with our audience. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

[01:18:22] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast, presented by Head Start Basketball