Tim Jankovich

The Great Coaches: Leadership & Life

Our Great Coach on this episode is Tim Jankovich a former player and now basketball coach.

As a player he was one of the winningest players in Kansas State history. In each of his seasons at KSU, his team ranked in the National top-20 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

He has been a College Assistant or Head Coach for 38 years and in that time his teams have won seven regular season conference championships, five league tournament titles and made 10 NCAA appearances.

He is presently the Head Coach of the Division 1 Southern Methodist University Mustangs. In his 4 years at the helm the team has won the 2016-17 American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament championships and made the 2017 NCAA Tournament.

In 2017 he was named American Athletic Conference Coach of the year.

Tim Jankovich is the type of coach we all hope our own children get to experience one day. The long arc of his coaching journey gives him a broad and balanced view on life, and has taught him that as a leader, winning is never as satisfying as seeing people succeed in life.

He believes in taking your time, and not letting the moment speed you up or disrupt your decision making. And that quite often the best way to enable this as a coach is to step back, be calm and not try to exert undue influence on the game.

Tim has a great way of people, and some of the key parts of this interview for me were,

• How great teams find a way to win when they have statistically below average games, and this is in fact how successful seasons are built.
• The importance or relaxing as a coach and portraying a sense of calm to the team as they will take their cue from you when it comes to dealing with emotional pressure.
• And that we are all born with a certain amount of self-belief or insecurity at birth, but this doesn’t have to dictate your life, you can develop self-belief through the choices you make about the environment you choose to place yourself in.

This was a wonderful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [e-mail] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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