At the heart of coaching is a deep-rooted  commitment to helping people become the best versions of themselves. The role of a coach is to see the potential in people and then do everything within their power to help them get there. As a coach, you're less concerned with the end goal—although every coach wants to win!—and more concerned with the progress your athletes make.

Great coaches, as with other great leaders, must be willing to give the best of themselves to set the example for the cultures they wish to build. In that spirit—to give our best to help you become your best—we have created a short story about a team, hurt and divided, which needed the Locker Room to help them heal, unite, and overcome.

Before entering the Locker Room, we would like to offer some insight into a few of the choices made.

We chose the Locker Room as the location of this story because we both have experienced the power of the Locker Room in sports. We are both former athletes (we won't talk about who was the better athlete) and have seen the Locker Room break down barriers and transform lives. While the Locker Room is a physical place for athletes, it has its analogues for students in a classroom, executives in a boardroom, workers in any workplace, service men and women in the Armed Forces, and people in their communities. The Locker Room can be made up of 100 people or just two people sitting across from each other.

The Locker Room is anywhere that:

1. People from different backgrounds, with different hurts, hang-ups, and histories come together for a common goal.
2. The standard is the standard, and it isn't lowered because of talent, position, or for short-term gain.
3. Diversity of skill, ability, and personality aren't challenges to overcome, but the very strengths that will allow a team to overcome any challenge.
4. Making a mistake doesn't make you a mistake.
5. Hard days are endured; hard conversations are engaged; hard truths are received; hard consequences grow into encouragement to become your best.
6. Success of the individual is always secondary to the success of the team.

Sports felt an appropriate setting for our story because sports has the power to transcend boundaries; the lessons learned in sports eclipse athletics, helping people become the fullness of who they were created to be.

People from different backgrounds come together in the Locker Room to unite around a common goal. The Locker Room is the setting to engage in difficult conversations about race and discrimination because these are issues that coaches, athletes, leaders, and companies are seeking to address.

The ideas discussed in this story can help anyone begin the conversation toward healing and unity.

We believe that the path to reach our full potential is by people gathering together in their own “Locker Rooms” and having hard, but fruitful conversations, with humility and grace.

The Locker Room is a story about building great culture: your team, organization, or business will be able to immediately apply these principles and grow as a result.

The Locker Room is a story about the importance of great character and a challenge to never let your talent outrun your character. But most of all, The Locker Room is a story about the power that each one of us has to make a difference in our own Locker Room, when we choose to give our best for the best of someone else.

Of course, you don't have to be an athlete, or former athlete, for this story to impact you. You just have to be willing to listen.

With humility and grace,