The Illusion of Choice

In the men’s 100 metre final at the Paris Olympics, the difference between first and last was 0.12 seconds — the closest race in history.

The 2024 Stanley Cup Final was decided in the final game of a 7-game series.

The 2024 WNBA Finals were decided in the final game of a 5-game series.

In three of the last five Premier League seasons, the second-placed finisher has amassed enough points to win almost any other season in history.

In 2024, after Round 18 of the AFL season there was just one win separating second second on the ladder and ninth on the ladder.

In the most recent Women’s Rugby World Cup final, England had a lineout on New Zealand’s try line with seconds remaining, but were unable to score. They lost by 3 points.

In the most recent Men’s Rugby World Cup final, New Zealand missed a conversion that would have put them ahead. They lost by 1 point.

The margins at the elite end of competitive sport have become razor thin. In almost every sport.

Razor thin.

As margins get smaller, the margin for error gets smaller.

Coincidentally, this period of tight competition has overlapped with an era of athletes who think they have choices about the level of work required to reach their goals.

Nick Saban is having none of it.

“The fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you don’t have a lot of choices,” Saban says.

In my experience, this is inherently true. The higher your aspirations, the less choices you have, particularly as you get closer to the ultimate prize.

Saban continues: “It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful, so you have to make decisions and have the discipline and focus to follow the process to achieve your goals. All these guys who think they have a lot of choices are sadly mistaken”.

Unfortunately, it often takes athletes falling well-short of their goals before this message truly sinks in. It’s like how our parents told us that we shouldn’t touch the pot on the stove, but we needed to touch it in order to feel the heat for ourselves.

It could be the case that we need to burn our hand, and athletes need to fall short of their goals. But I’m not convinced that this pattern means we should just give up trying to help them shortcut that experience.

The illusion of communication

While athletes might be wrapped up in an illusion of choice, we coaches are wrapped up in an illusion of communication.

Our part in the whole charade is that we’re often unable to go beyond platitudes and comprehensively unpack the real meaning behind the things we say.

‘It takes what it takes’ is good communication if you’re a Nike billboard, much less if you’re trying to form a convincing argument as to why an athlete needs to re-shape their habits.

I still see a lot of coaches stop at this first level of communication, convinced that because they’ve said something — anything — that they’ve done a good job.

The truth is, the second and third level of communication are where messages become understood and start to become entrenched in an athlete’s identity.

Second-level communication adds context, personalizing a message for someone and helping them see a clear path forward. Something like this:

‘You’ve stated that you want to play on a national championship team. Let’s reverse engineer what it’s going to take so you can see the steps to get there.’

Third-level communication is where the handover occurs and your message becomes their self-talk. It could sound similar to this:

‘You’re someone who has clearly demonstrated that they’re capable of playing on a national championship team. And I think we can agree you’ve also got a few extra gears to go up. You may want to consider narrowing your focus and reducing the choices you’re making to really see what levels you’re capable of hitting.’

The reason deeper levels of communication are effective is because they fuse together choice, goal orientation, and belonging. They cut beyond vacant slogans and become the type of language that drives energized determination.

This is your craft.

As a coach, the job isn’t to point fingers at certain generations and bemoan that they’re not listening. The job is to become more skillful at helping.

To achieve their lofty goals, your athletes don’t have a lot of choices, but neither do you.

Especially when the margins are so razor thin.

Watch the full Nick Saban video here: