When to Yell the Thing?

I watched this video so many times, I stopped counting.

Maryland coach Brenda Frese is nose-to-nose with her player Oluchi Okananwa on the sideline. She's got her by the wrist, finger to her chest. The intensity is so close and so physical that at first read (especially without audio) it looks like someone is in trouble.

But that's not what's happening at all. What's happening is coaching, real coaching! The kind that doesn't look pretty on camera but lands exactly where it needs to.

Then Okananwa spoke after the game and reframed the whole thing. "I love to be coached hard," she said. "That's what she does with me every single day." And Frese, when asked about the moment, didn't apologize or walk it back. She just said the quiet part out loud: "You can't have those conversations without a relationship."

This whole thing has me soo shook.

It reframes everything about what we saw on that sideline. The intensity wasn't the point, the relationship underneath it was. Frese didn't go hard on Okananwa because she was frustrated or reactive. She went hard because she knew exactly who she was talking to, what she needed in that moment and that she could handle it. To the casual observer it looks like aggression. I think it's something closer to precision.

We're not the head coach. We're not the assistant coach running drills, and we're definitely not the GM watching from the box. We're the person on the bench who has the coach's ear and the player's trust. That’s actually a rare seat that most of us underleverage.

We spend a lot of time facilitating, translating, and coordination. But the people around us sometimes need someone who will get in there and tell them the truth about what they're capable of. We are uniquely positioned to do exactly that.

I'm particularly fond of the non-HR-approved version of that conversation. Not reckless, not unkind, real. The kind that says I see what you're doing, I know you can do better, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise because I believe in you. That's the Frese move and it's one of the most underused tools in this role.

I'll be the first to say I don't always do this well.

I still catch myself softening things that didn't need to be softened, waiting for a better moment that never quite arrives, and defaulting to diplomatic when direct would have served everyone better. For a while I told myself it was because I was new and still learning the nuance. Some of that was true.

But at some point "I'm still finding my footing" stops being a reason and starts being a story I'm telling myself so I don't have to do the harder thing. And the harder thing in this role is directly saying what you see.

I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of coaching. A while back, when I was in the middle of a job search and completely in my head about it, my coach called me out. No preamble, no softening. She said: you need to hear this. You sound desperate, and nobody wants to hire someone who sounds desperate.

Well dang girl! I thought I was holding it together. I had no idea it was coming through that clearly. But the second she said it, everything about my approach changed. Instantly! Because she knew me, she'd earned the right to say it, and I trusted that she meant it for me, not to me.

What I love about Frese wasn't just the intensity, it was the absence of hesitation. She didn't calculate the risk or wonder if it was the right moment. She just knew her player, trusted the relationship and went for it.

The thing is, none of what Frese did would have worked without the foundation underneath it. You can't coach someone hard if they don't trust that you see them clearly and want something real for them. Okananwa left the sideline and performed because she knew exactly where that intensity was coming from. A strong relationship.

And that, friends, is the actual work. The years of showing up, paying attention, and knowing your people well enough that when the moment calls for it, you can say the hard thing.

And they receive it as the gift it is.

Affiliate Link Disclaimer: Some of the links in this email are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.