An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Club sports we’ll start to become more popular and the professional sports will start to recruit athletes at a younger age and perhaps have them not go to college an example would be Lisa Horan of the Angel City soccer team who went over to Europe to play because she got paid I think that’s gonna be especially for soccer and maybe hockey become the norm but I think it’s a huge mistake because we uniquely have the opportunity to call mingle sports in school because of title 9 and that gives so many people so many more opportunities in the states and it’s a wonderful model and I don’t want to get away from that but I don’t think we’re gonna have a choice money is becoming the sports mission.
The world of coaching is undergoing a seismic shift, with emerging trends set to redefine its boundaries and possibilities. From digital transformation and the integration of artificial intelligence to the growing emphasis on mental health and the global rise of coaching cultures within organizations, these developments are reshaping the landscape of personal and professional growth. As we navigate through these changes, understanding the forces that drive the future of coaching becomes paramount. I had the pleasure of interviewing Digit Murphy.
Digit is an innovator, visionary, and builder in the women’s sports world. She was founding president of the first PHF franchise in Canada, quickly catapulting the Toronto Six to the top of the leaderboard. Prior to that, she helped the KHL’s Kunlan Red Star organization in conjunction with Hockey China build women’s hockey in China in preparation for the 2022 winter Olympics. She founded United Women’s Sports, an innovative and disruptive model in the women’s sports space. Even earlier, she coached the CWHL’s Boston Blades and spent 24 years coaching at Division I Brown University. She has coached Olympians and All-Americans, and earned numerous ECAC and Ivy League titles.
Thank you for joining us. To start, could you share your “origin story” with our readers? How did you begin your coaching journey, and what challenges did you face in the early days?
I didn’t really even know I was going to coach when I started my journey I was working for a corporate company back in the early 80s did not like my job so I went back to school to be a physical education teacher and fell into the coaching job at brown I knew I wanted to be in sports but I had no idea where the energy was going to take me to a career in coaching and it was not easy I left my job making in what today’s standards would be a six figure salary to take a job that paid $2500 when my male counterparts were making 25,000 and you don’t really think at that point in your life because you’re in your 20s how it will impact life in the future but I was always drawn to the challenge there were no women coaching in hockey at the time as head coaches and there was only myself and a handful of other women and it was hard but it was satisfying because we were building we were winning we were challenging the norms we were challenging the establishment and I think that’s what made me addicted to coaching besides for winning. I remember the three men that ran the coaches association at the time and myself and Laura halderson who at the time was the Princeton assistant coach and then we both got head coaching jobs at the same time her at Princeton and me at brown and they literally gave us the leadership roles and said here you guys are in charge now it’s time how easy would it be if that happened in the athletic departments across the country when this happened women actually leading in their sport one of the paradoxes of all of this is that as more and more money has been put into women’s athletics due to the actual execution of title 9 the number of women coaching in women’s sports has actually decreased or let’s just say it has not increased the way that we would think for the leaders in the sport the athletes have gotten more opportunity but the people leading the athletes have not.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
The same traits that drive need to be a competitive athlete I use every single day even now when I think about business number one get up and do the work perseverance is what keeps me going when you do a sport from day one you have to get up when it’s cold outside and it’s early in the morning and everyone else is in their beds and going to get up and watch TV and eat a bowl of cereal and we’re up and out of the house as kids heading to practice and you can’t miss that’s what sports teaches you which is why girls can really benefit from this pattern behavior in sports it’s expected of the boys and I know it’s changing but not to the extent where once you have the choice to do it that women stay in the game #2 I would have to say learning to fail and moving on when you fail you learn and it would be like a sales a person in sales who only made one call and got to know and then just stop trying what being an athlete teaches you is you’re going to fail a lot I mean think about it there’s only one team that wins at the end of the year and I’ve been lucky enough to been on championship teams but there are athletes and coaches that never even get to that point and if you took the opinion of I won’t try anymore you would never actually get to compete so I would say learning when you fail and it’s interesting in business if you get your pink slip because your job is eliminated or because you’re not performing up to their standards it’s almost like people get embarrassed I think we should use it as a badge of honor that it just was not right for us at the time and we should be grateful for the opportunity to change course because a lot of us just go on the wheel of life and let the river of life take us instead of driving the boat to where we want to go and then #3 there are just so many… I would have to say listening to other people and being collaborative as a leader you can’t be great at everything and when you’re coaching a team or playing on a team there are specific roles that specific people do like in hockey you have forward defense goalie you have power play penalty kills special teams pulling the goalie different line combinations so you learn quite quickly that you can’t do everything because hockey is a coordinated almost a Symphony type event in every game and every practice everyone has to be on the same sheet of music in order to be successful so as a player on a team you have to play a part as a leader on the team you have to know your parts and how to put them together so I would say working collaboratively and understanding that certain people have certain roles.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?
Gosh there’s just so many I think I’m going to go in a different direction here and talk about a quote that is important to me that actually we started talking about in I think it was back in 2012 and myself and one of my assistants were coaching a you 18 junior hockey team it wasn’t when I was coaching all my big teams it was love wins and it resume resonated so much with us at the time but it really made a difference in how I coach and how I lead and I’m not saying I’m perfect at always teaching that everyone should love each other on the team but I think as a coach if you coach with compassion and try to put yourself in the shoes of the players or the shoes of your employees I think that quote reminds me that it’s important to care and I could be very athletic like and quote Bill Belichick or even pat summit but I think when you start to look at the humanity and what you learn as being part of a team sports is now its own separate category but back in the day sports was just something you did to have camaraderie and it’s turned into a whole business and industry but when I just say love wins in my head it reminds me to get back to the foundational reason that we play sports and it’s to care about other people and it’s to work together and it’s to have fun so call me soft in my old age but those two words I think put me on a different path in the coaching world and made me a better coach…
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Every day I wake up excited about the project I work on but one of the most exciting ones that will be coming up next June will be women sports initiative to bring people together and discuss ways to teach younger and older women alike how to navigate sports and the obstacles and pathways to become better and understanding why sports is right for you and why sports is good for you my day-to-day I work on my book my speeches and Insult on facilities sports projects and professional women’s sports that are emerging. Because I am a the belief that you cannot expect the same results let’s just talk first in the professional sports space that men’s sports have been accustomed to in such a short time women are very far behind women in men’s sports 125 years behind if you really think about it and there are different ways to consume women’s sports there are different audiences and I think right now we are making the mistake of just putting women’s sports and the mirror image of men’s sports I think you’re going to find down the road that we could have even got there quicker if we had more of a female mindset thinking strategically at the top and a female mindset that is creative and understands what women want and need out of sports I believe it’s a health and Wellness initiative physically and mentally and it is not just about players making more money or how many teach it asserts we sell it’s really about community and quality of life and how sports can teach that and I think we have an opportunity here to change the narrative around woman’s sports Angel City does a great job but not everyone has all these influencers that can lead the charge there are other ways to do it and I believe when I come to any project or sport that ioffer a unique way of looking at it and at some point I think we’ll pivot to a version of the model I’m thinking about.
Without saying any names could you share a particularly memorable success story from your coaching career?
Wow there are just so many stories that I have but I think the biggest adventure that I have ever been involved in was helping the Chinese national team start or let’s just say have a better understanding of the landscape of hockey in 2017 we were preparing them for the 2022 Olympics and we wanted the Chinese to have success because they were hosting in Beijing and we built two teams over in China and the professional space and myself and my team staff were a bunch of players who are amazing and staff who were amazing and sacrificed a couple of years of their life to go over to China to help the women athletes there and it really was a special bond we had with that first staff and team where we were all in it together and we were building something really special and we were mentoring and we were leading and we were educating and I mean staff and players alike we were making a difference and we really felt we were making an impact in the world because we were bringing our knowledge of sports and of female leadership over to a country that we thought could make a difference and I believe we did I believe after being part of our mindset and thought process of empowerment and education that these Chinese athletes and staff I think thought differently and we made an impact on them are two phrases were enjoy to enjoy the game and May 20 which was a Chinese word that meant no problem because I felt like when we got there the players were afraid to make a mistake and every time they made a mistake we would just say May 20 no problem and they ultimately got more confidence and the Chinese did have some success in 2022 I only worked on the project for about a year and a half but we got to the championship in the first year and lost so the fact that we got to the championship was unheard of anyways and was a huge feather in our caps and a testament to our team and staff and the leadership that we all had but wow what an adventure…
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview about coaching. How has your approach to coaching evolved over the years, and what personal learnings have you applied to your own development?
Well that’s a loaded question seeing that I’ve been coaching since 1987 and when I first started coaching I absolutely had no idea how to coach I just knew that I had a loud voice and I could project and I could get people to believe in going somewhere and quite frankly that’s a gift and I was not always like that but I like to take chances and I like to just do things and when I took the risk of quitting my job and going back to school and getting the assistant coaching job at brown that was a huge risk I had no idea whether I would be good at it but I love being around the team and I love sports so as an assistant coach I really dove into kind of being being good at it like one of the things as an athlete you don’t want to be bad at anything so you just keep trying things and working hard and every day doing the work and next thing you know two years later our head coach steps down and I’m the head coach two years in and there was no road map especially for women coaches so I call myself a self-taught coach and there was no education because at the time there was no mentorship it wasn’t like I was learning from the men’s coach they didn’t want anything to do with us at the time and there was no female coaching network because there were no women so I just kind of ingested the game and communicated it back out to how my brain thought about it which is why I think I am so good at coaching because no one told me how to coach I figured out how to coach on my own and I made all the mistakes and I probably said the wrong terms but I could get my players to believe and listen and coaching is just not about X’s and O’s and having the best players it’s about motivating a group of people who can have one mind and one mindset and I’ll tell you I was pretty awful probably in the 90s because I was a taskmaster some of the coaches that I learned from were just what I saw like Bobby knight yelling at his team and bill Parcells and her brooks doing herbies and I just emulated their behavior probably for the time it was fine but deep down I knew that it wasn’t really the kind of coach that I was so when I left brown and had the opportunity to reinvent myself to the love wins philosophy and learning everything that I had up until then I just became a really really really good let’s say leader because the coach is a leader and a part of the journey as a coach is to give your players rope especially in hockey there’s just so many mistakes that happen so I call it putting the players in the driver seat giving them the road map to drive and make sure that you put guardrails around them so you give them the keys to the car and let them drive and you lead guide and direct them so I would say I made that shift when I started coaching after brown with my junior teams and with my pro teams and I also do that when I lead a project or anything I do right now.
How do you incorporate feedback into your coaching practice to continuously improve?
Well when you coach hockey you get continuous feedback because the game happens so fast and you look for tendencies and I think early in my career I was much more focused on the mistakes and I think that as I’ve matured focusing on the successes allows you to learn from the mistakes and the feedback loop and show your players or your employees tendencies where success happens for example if your going into the corner when a team dumps it in as a defender and they’re smothering you with two people on the puck the first time you might have the puck taken away but the second time you can just quick exit out of the weak side and communicate with your D partner that that’s gonna happen so instead of focusing on the fact that the puck was taken away the first time you focus on how to give them feedback to make sure it doesn’t happen again and I feel like that’s really important the success rate and how you get to those small victories because those small victories add up to not only winning the game but also to playing better as a team together and winning the championship.
Can you discuss an innovation in coaching that you believe is currently underappreciated but has the potential to significantly impact the field?
Wow now you’re talking my style one of the things that I have always said especially in my sport is that men and women should play the same rules and there should be no checking it would be a more pure form of the game I’ve also said we should implement A2 point shot that would make hockey more exciting and innovative as far as coaching goes I think the innovation that more is not necessarily better is something that you have to almost sell your players on because your taught every day that you should train you should train you should train because I think it’s in grained in you because youth sports wants to make more money and make you practice more and we’ve gotten into this mindset that we need more we need more to be better and sometimes your brain needs a rest and sometimes your body needs a rest and sometimes your team doesn’t want to come to practice or hear your voice they need a a fresh perspective so I think in coaching it’s to know and to trust that you don’t have to do more and I didn’t learn that at brown I don’t think I think I learned that after brown so I feel like maybe we could have even been better at brown if I had not kind of been boxed into this winning is the most important thing I think as coaches you lack innovation when the administration doesn’t support you and the school has one way of looking at the way you should coach which is it’s really easy to evaluate you on wins and losses or whether your players like you but that shouldn’t be the case it should be how are you developing people and sometimes people who are judging you for your paycheck haven’t actually taking some of the advice I’m giving right now which is put yourself in the person’s shoes because a lot of people who are judging you in athletics have never coached and some have never played at a high level so that’s one of the problems you face.
In what ways can coaching address the evolving mental health needs of diverse populations in a digitally connected world?
Well hopefully we are talking athletic coaching here and not just coaching there are a lot of quote coaches UN quote out there who probably have never coached before athletically and there’s a big difference and this is going to sound really crazy but because of our standards and how we think about sports but I think that every person should be required to play sports from a young age there are proven studies that coordination and doing sports and exercise leads to lower rates of obesity lower rates of depression higher confidence especially in girls and women and sports has gotten away from that I remember back in the 70s you couldn’t graduate from a college unless you had a swim test and I think by getting away from the basic fundamentals that sports teaches like playing on a team learning cooperative behavior learning how to take direction learning how to take criticism all those things are hugely important in life and It’s a pretty simple premise that sports teaches life skills and we’ve made sports so expensive and so elite and you know women have followed what I call the hero worship mentality that men’s sports has and I think we’re going down the wrong path we need to simplify sports and life and the whole planet could be more capable and feel better about themselves and actually be good at sports one of the reasons why people aren’t good at sports they is that they’ve never done an athletic thing at a young age and science teaches us that you don’t develop the same neural pathways and all sorts of reasons why people can’t throw or catch a ball so I think we would find that if more people were required to play and coaches were educators not just people who put a whistle around their neck and call themselves the coach because they won a game and it’d be pretty special and I think the world needs people to be sporty.
How do you foresee artificial intelligence and machine learning transforming the coaching industry in the next decade?
Yeah I’m hoping that it will only impact the game from a predictive kind of outcome say watching video and making coaches smarter about tendencies I mean when you look at football for example and how it’s in my opinion gotten crazy and out of control that coaches use all the predictive measures to win that the stats tell you and it kind of takes the art out of coaching and it reeks of capitalism and it takes away from the foundational reason you replace play sports I talked about it earlier and I wished that we could go back to a time and I know we can’t but go back to a time where we did not use these kind of tools I mean even the cell phone has done a number on for example what bus rides look like I’m sure they look a lot different than they did back when I started in the late 80s and early 90s and the kids would bring their guitars and actually sing songs on the bus and I know that I’m harkening back to an time but it was pretty cool like you couldn’t call your parents like you had more independence and less pressure at some level and had a better time and lived in the moment and right now I kind of feel bad for parents and kids because they’re so connected and even people in general so you know AI is just the next form of technology that in my opinion is OK if you view sports from the mindset of it’s about winning and it’s about performing but there’s a whole school of thought that the moneyball mentality and the AI excludes just the people element and as you can tell I’m old school and I think people are important.
What role do you believe ethical considerations and privacy concerns will play in the future of coaching, especially with the increased use of digital platforms?
Let’s just say I think there should be a lot of ethical considerations and privacy concerns I think that the digital part of life while it’s made everything easier has destroyed so much and if you think about it you don’t have to put yourself out there and use digital media but our capitalistic economy and the way you get ahead which is winning and getting more money controls that whole industry so as sports has evolved into a business and a whole multibillion dollar industry you see players coaches universities all beholden to the digital part of the beast I’m not a fan I think that yes progress is important and we constantly try to as women’s sports live up to men’s sports but I’m not a fan just because people are doing the wrong thing do you have to follow them and we will because it’s financially feasible but like I said I’m not a fan of what we’re doing I would be very concerned especially for my 12 year old daughter being now on social media wrapping a top soccer program because I really believe that model could come to our country where it’s not an NCAA sport it’s a club sport I think that’s a trending way of looking at it.
Could you list and briefly explain “Top 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Coaching” based on your experiences and insights?
1 . Club sports we’ll start to become more popular and the professional sports will start to recruit athletes at a younger age and perhaps have them not go to college an example would be Lisa Horan of the Angel City soccer team who went over to Europe to play because she got paid I think that’s gonna be especially for soccer and maybe hockey become the norm but I think it’s a huge mistake because we uniquely have the opportunity to call mingle sports in school because of title 9 and that gives so many people so many more opportunities in the states and it’s a wonderful model and I don’t want to get away from that but I don’t think we’re gonna have a choice money is becoming the sports mission.
2 . I think you’ll see AI and a higher emphasis on statistics playing a role in coaching you’ll probably instead of having an assistant coach on the ice you’ll probably have a person and you’ve already seen it do video and then stats and AI so those positions will become more important I also think on that vain you will see because you you don’t have as many officials you’re going to start to see officials on cameras instead of having people on the ice you’ll have everything done on cameras and off the ice or off the field you already see video replay and I think again because of the lack of officials you’re gonna have to go that way anyways there are less and less people who want to be officials because whether it’s they don’t have the confidence to do it or the decision making ability there aren’t enough people you also get beat up a lot and people just don’t have the time for it.
3 . You’re already seeing more and more good coaches exit coaching because of the change in the philosophy of the way that the NCAA and I’m talking specifically college coaching but right now that’s where the majority of the coaches besides for youth are and you see the NCAA portal where a player can declare that they’re not happy at a school and they just go into the NCAA portal and essentially coaches just recruit off unhappy campers or people who didn’t have to pick or put thought into their college pick and it completely upsets the ecosystem of a team because a team is a rhythm it’s a set of people who have certain levels of experiences and have been brought up in a system and you build culture in a four year program and that will go away and it will just be based on performance and will take away from what you learn being on a team which is in my opinion one of the saddest pieces of this because not everyone gets a pro contract or can win a championship so to be part of a team and learned how to be with other people and build culture was one of the greatest things that sports teaches you and I think that that whole team experience is sadly going to start to dissipate.
4 . I’m hoping this is not the case but I already see a trend in it I see women leaving coaching if you look at some of the stats put out by the Tucker center you see an uptick on in basketball but the sad part about women coaching is that the demands that coaching puts on your life for all the reasons we just talked about earlier winning and the way that society puts pressure on you to do more and more and more sometimes completely collides with where women are in their cycles of life to have family and to have children be part of their goals and dreams and in coaching you commit to a certain lifestyle and it’s one thing if you’re going to get paid equally to your male counterpart and you can offset the expenses of childcare or you know moving to a different location but it’s really hard because you don’t see men moving for their wives and maybe that will change but it would definitely change if women’s salaries were equal and in a few sports and that’s pretty much what they focus on they are but the majority of women still get paid 70% of what the men make so you’ll see an exit of women coaching and that’s a shame because to not have representation at the leadership level in sports is a huge mistake because like we talked earlier sports teaches.
5 . Coaches will have to have a softer side men included and what I mean by that is you’re not gonna keep your job if you coach my way or the highway the players have a huge say in who the coach should be whether that’s right or wrong I’m not the one who’s an owner of a team or an athletic director or a president of the university I personally as a coach think that it’s wrong but I’m not in the mindset of the leaders who are making the decisions I would suspect it’s about lawsuits and money in not wanting to deal with disgruntled parents who actually are the customers of the universities or disgruntled players in the pro space who make millions and millions it’s much easier to just get rid of a coach then to deal with unhappy players so in my opinion it’s the leaders of these organizations that truly don’t care about the impact that coaching has on you as a person which says a lot about the athletic industry in general and what we think is important.
How do you envision the integration of coaching within organizational cultures changing the landscape of leadership and employee development?
I think that all organizations should have great coaches because the human factor is so important in business and succeeding whether it’s a nonprofit or whether it’s Amazon people working together communing having fun it’s a big part of your life your job you’re there a big part of your day and if you’re not happy and you’re not making progress and you’re not in the right space that needs to be changed and I don’t think that the way that we’re doing business now with corporate profits dictating people’s lives is the right way I feel like there is so much good in people and if you got to know your people and just shifted their motivation and mindset and how they do their job you can get a lot more out of them and that’s not to say that everyone’s a hard worker like there’s definitely lazy people out there but I always go to the root of the why why aren’t they lazy or why don’t they do their job and it could be that they’re in the wrong job and they could blossom in the same company in a different job I just think getting to know your people and your employees and building a great culture could really help business not only survive but thrive.
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the coaching industry today, and how might we overcome it?
I think the coaching industry if you’re talking about coaching and non sports coaching they’re two totally different things you know people can get a certificate that they’re a life coach at 25 and I think that’s wrong I think that coaching involves some parts of training you need to have training for coaches and I think it’s lacking everywhere you can’t just throw a whistle around someone’s neck and put them on skates and call them a coach because they took an online course I think you need mentorship and leaders leading coaches and until that happens it’s hit or miss it’s spray and prey I think the process of how you become a coach needs to be improved.
What is one long-term goal you have for your coaching practice, and how are you working towards it?
Long term goals of my coaching practice I mean I live my long term goals every day which is to try to continue to lead by example and be a mentor and grow the pool of coaches especially women coaches for women I’m working on a project right now the Tampa Bay Lightning to in their community attract retain develop and sustain more female coaches than we’re starting at younger ages so women can actually think about being coaches but for me it’s doing articles like this and having people understand that there’s a different way to look at coaching and hopefully we’re gonna change the conversation and I try to change the conversation long term one person at a time one article at a time and do the work one day at a time.
How can our readers continue to follow your work?
Mostly social media or cheer for the next team I coach or the next league I start I would encourage any high-powered women who want to make change to call me lol.
Thank you for offering such valuable insights into the future of coaching. We look forward to seeing your work continue to reach new heights, and we wish you continued success.
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
Digit Murphy On The Top 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Coaching was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.