- Be a hypocrite
If you want to ruin your credibility with your players, ask more of them than you do of yourself. Better yet, have completely different rules for governing your own behaviors.
- Be inconsistent with your messages to your team
Consistency breeds habit and feelings of comfort. If you aren't consistent with your messages to your team and athletes, you'll only confuse them as to what you expect of them.
- Work all the time
If you want to burn out quickly, work all the time. Take your work home with you on a daily basis.
- Surround yourself with yes people
"Yes" people are great for our egos but terrible for our ability to expand our ideals and philosophies.
- Make it about you
Mediocre coaches lose sight of what the job is really about, which is teaching athletes life lessons through sport participation. Mediocre coaches think that the athletes are there to serve them, not vice versa.
- Forget the lessons that sport teaches
Sports teach great life lessons, like how to be gracious in defeat, how to strategize for goal attainment, and how to handle pressure.
- Neglect your health
Coaches are notorious for neglecting their health. This is a sure way to take years off your life, and to downgrade your standard of daily living.
- Neglect your continuing education
Mediocre coaches believe they have learned everything they already need to know. They fail to constantly educate themselves in various areas of their lives.
- Be inflexible
Coaches that subscribe to the "old school" methods of authoritarian leadership don't do well with today's generation of athletes. The "my way or the highway" style of leadership only serves to alienate today's athlete.
- Take yourself too seriously
Taking yourself too seriously is another great way to not only burn out quickly, but to lose perspective entirely and thus greatly decrease your chances of leading today's athletes to successful outcomes in sport.
