Leadership Presence: What Coaching Teaches About Showing Up

00:00 · The importance of asking kids about their dreams - and the silence that reveals the disconnection

I asked them what their dreams were and nobody answered. By now, you know, I coach a middle school football team. I want to tell you about that. Before I tell you anything else this week, because it's the part of my life right now that has nothing to do with Wednesday or Trinity One or a blank sheet of paper and everything to do with all of it at the same time. We're a few weeks out from our spring game day. The season went for six weeks. This group is talented, smaller than last year's championship run team, but smarter. Again, we're installing a high school level offense. I think we can make a run for the title again. One of the last days on the last week of practice, I did something I do with every group at some point. I asked them what their dreams were. And as I said, nobody answered.

00:34 · How early environments shape our ability to dream and speak our truth

Not one kid. 12 and 13 year olds with more future in front of them than they can possibly imagine. And the question landed like I'd asked them to solve a calculus problem. Blank faces, shifting weight. A couple of them looked at the ground. One kid looked at me like he was waiting for the punchline. There wasn't one. And I just stood there for a second and let it sit because that silence, that specific silence is the whole reason the Dream Manager methodology exists. Not the answer, but the absence of one. And I want to be honest about what I felt in that moment. Not the professional observation, not the Dream Manager analysis. I felt sad. Not frustrated or surprised, but sad because these are kids. They were 12 and 13 years old. They should have more dreams than they know what to do with.

01:19 · The Dream Manager methodology and its relevance beyond therapy or coaching

And the question landed like a foreign language. That's not their fault. It's not the failure of this particular group. That's what happens when nobody asks, right? when the world around them has already started teaching them to translate dreams into something more practical before they even get the words out. I stood there on the field and thought, if it's already this hard at 12, what does 43 look like? I thought, there it is. That's the whole thing right there on a football field. In season 3, episode 1, it opened with a man staring at a blank sheet of paper. He was 43 years old and couldn't name a single dream. We spent the entire episode on that moment. What it means, why it happens, and what the Dream Manager question unlocks. I've told that story a hundred times. And then I stood on a football field and asked 12 year olds what they want and got the same blank stare. But but it hit me differently than it ever has before because these kids haven't had 43 years to forget how to dream. They've had 12, 13, 14 max. And already the question lands wrong. already nobody has asked them enough times for them to have an answer ready. I want to sit with that for a second because I think it's the most important thing I've said in four episodes. We'll talk about the Dream Manager methodology as something for the workplace, as an engagement tool, a retention strategy, something you bring in when your people are disengaged. But disengagement doesn't start at work. It starts here on fields like the one that I stood on. In classrooms where the right answer matters more than the true answer. At dinner tables where the question gets redirected before it gets answered. in a thousand small moments where a kid tries to reach towards something real and gets handed the practical version instead. By the time they're 43 and staring at a blank page, they've had three decades of practice not answering. Matthew Kelly's insight cuts deeper than most people let it.

04:09 · The story of a podcast episode about a man at 43 with no dreams, and the relevance to youth

Most people aren't disengaged from work. They're disconnected from their own dreams. And that disconnection started long before they ever got hired. I didn't push the kids that day. You can't force the question to land. What you can do is keep showing up. Keep creating the conditions where the answer feels safe. Keep being the person on the field actually wants to know. So that's what I'm doing. Somewhere in the near future, one of them will answer the question, maybe not to me, maybe to a teammate, maybe to themselves on the bus, ride home after a game. That's how the Dream Manager methodology actually works. Not in one session, but over time and through presence. So, I'm going to go back and talk about my father. I've spoken about him plenty of times. He was my hero, right? I mean, like most kids, I had a healthy fear of my father, but loved him deeply. He coached a football and he ran the league. Not a league someone handed him, a league that he built. He organized it, recruited the coaches, and kept it running year after year.

05:59 · The roots of disengagement starting in early environments, not just at work

There were kids in that league who had nobody else showing up for them on a Sunday morning. But my father showed up not for any recogition, not because it advanced his career, but because he decided it mattered and then he made it happen. I was one of the kids on those fields. And the honest truth is I didn't fully understand what I was watching. How could I? I was somewhere between six and n years old. You don't when you're young. You just know your dad is there. That he shows up. That the other kids know who he is. And that something about being around him on that field felt different from everywhere else, more purposeful, more alive, like the thing he was doing out there was the thing he was actually built for. Well, here I am at 51 and I understand it now in a way I couldn't have 10 years ago. Now I'm building a business from scratch. I just buried my godfather, carried my parents' ashes over to Ireland, and then upon returning from the vacation, Wednesday happened. The financial room needs work now. The physical room needs more honesty than I've been giving it because I have time to give it now. And I'm on a football field with other people's kids several afternoons a week because I can't not be. That's the only honest way to say it. It's not strategic.

07:30 · The potential of future answers when the environment is safe

It's not on the content calendar. It's not even something I could explain to someone who's never felt it. It's just that my father built something on a field like the one I am and I watched him do it and it went into me in a way I couldn't name till I found myself doing the same thing 35 years later. That is legacy. Not the word, the thing itself. The way a man shows up other people's kids gets passed from father to son without either of them having to say it out loud comes without a handoff ceremony without a conversation about values or intention or purpose. It just goes quietly through the watching. I think about him a lot when I'm out there. What he saw in those kids that made him give his Saturdays to them. whether he ever stood in front of a group and asked them what they wanted and got the same silence I got a few weeks back and whether he ever drove home from practice wondering if any of it was landing. I think he did, right?

09:03 · The silent legacy of showing up for others’ kids and its impact

We we all do coaches, but he showed up anyway. My boys are watching me coach. Liam is 13. I've been coaching him since he was six. He's the same age as most of the kids on the team. Brendan is now six and thinks every practicing game is the most important thing happening anywhere in the world. They're going to carry something from this field suit. I don't know exactly what yet, but I know they're watching. And what they see is their father showing up in the middle of everything. Because some things you show up for no matter what else is happening. My father told me that not in a speech but on a field just like the one that I'm on every night. Last week I told you the physical room needs work. That two and a half years after triple bypass surgery, I'm not being as intentional exercise as I should be. That was true, but it was incomplete. Let me tell you what I did. I know what I'm supposed to do. My cardiologist has been crystal clear. My wife has been patient about it. The evidence is not in dispute.

10:00 · Lessons learned from Kevin’s father about purpose and service

Exercise is not optional for someone with my cardiac history. It's maintenance. It's the difference between managing what happened and letting it recur. While I sit at a desk, I sit in front of cameras, sit meetings, on calls, building things that are important to me, things I believe in. And I'm doing all of that. And in doing all of that, I am daily choosing not to do the thing that keeps me alive long enough to finish Italy. That's not a small thing to admit. But here's what's also true. The physical room doesn't open in a gym. I've tried that. The gym is where I go to think about exercise.

11:13 · The power of quiet consistency and the passing of legacy across generations

The field is where I actually do it. When I'm coaching, right, I'm moving, demonstrating, walking the sideline, pacing like a lunatic, getting in someone's face about their stance or their footwork, jogging out, reset a drill. That's when my body is actually working. And that's when I'm not sitting anywhere thinking about anything. I'm just in it. And I've been treating that like a hobby. instead of recognizing it for what it actually is. And that's that it's a it's a prescription written by a cardiologist two and a half years ago filled every time I show up on that field. Here's the harder. Going all in on Trinity 1 means more hours at his desk, right? more time these cameras and the laptop, less time moving. And I can feel the difference. Not dramatically, but I can feel it. The stiffness in the morning, the afternoon energy dip, the way two hours on a football field leaves me feeling more awake than 8 hours in front of a screen. The field isn't a distraction. and building Trinity 1. The field is part of the infrastructure that makes building Trinity 1 possible. When the spring season ended, I told the kids, you have a month off the which is the month of May. Today is May 28th.

12:36 · How showing up creates trust and lays the foundation for future dreams

Then we're going to get back at it in June. That gap is where the physical room would have or should have either gotten addressed or was avoided again. I'll give you the guess of which the two are and that was that it got avoided again. Right. But I'm done pretending the question isn't there. I'm just done. Here's something those kids don't know. The coach who showed up at practice last week was also the guy who flew solo to a military burial the week before that, who came home from Ireland and had the door closed, who opened the laptop and started building a business with no safety net. They don't know any of that.

13:20 · The impact of modeling presence for children and the next generation

They just know that I'm there, that I know their names. I know who's been working and who's been coasting and that I care whether they run the right route and whether they understand the play or the concept and whether they believe actually believe that we can make a run for this championship. And that's exactly right. That's how it should be. But here's what I've been thinking about. The field is where I stop being a person carrying Wednesday and become the person that my father raised. Not because the weight goes away. It doesn't. It's there on the drive over. It's there on the drive home. But for two hours on a football field, the most important thing in the world is whether a 13-year-old understands his blocking assignment.

14:23 · The importance of physical activity as a vital, life-sustaining practice

whether a kid who's been second-guessing himself is starting to trust what he can do and whether the play we worked on all week actually holds up under pressure. That singular focus, that complete presence in what's right in front of you is the Dream Manager methodology at its most distilled. You cannot ask someone what their dreams are while you're distracted. You cannot coach someone through a play while you're in your own head. The field demands that you be there fully or it will not. And presence right now is the thing that I need most. Not just for the team, but for me. And not just from me, but from my staff, my assistant coaches, my friends. Right.

Wednesday gave me a blank sheet of paper. The field reminds me why it matters what I write. It reminds me what I'm writing it for. Specifically, Kelly, Liam, and Brendan, the business, the people I want to help build something, the kids on this team who don't know yet what they're capable of. The field keeps me honest about all of it. I don't know if any these kids will answer the question before the season starts, but I'm going to keep asking starting early. Not every practice because that would pressure because that would be pressure, not invitation. But I'm going to keep being the person on the field who wants to know because that's what my father did. He showed up.

15:53 · The role of movement and physical engagement on the football field as a form of health

He cared. He built something that outlasted his time on the field and on this earth. He didn't need to see the fruit of every seed he planted. He just kept planting it. And somewhere in a 13-year-old who looked at the ground when I asked about dreams, something is working. Something is being planted. You don't always see the moment it takes root. You just have to keep showing up long enough to find out. I know that because someone showed up for me. My father built the league. I'm still on the field. Liam and Brendan are watching. Next week we start talking about what Trinity 1 is actually building.

16:42 · The challenge of balancing focus on the work and prioritizing physical well-being

the frameworks, the tools, the reason Wednesday wasn't a disaster, but a starting gun. I can't wait to get into it with you, and I'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the Dream Dividend. Have a great