What Are You Anchored To?

Apr 10

The Question That Determines Whether Pressure Breaks You or Builds You

We’re in the middle of spring practice right now. Yesterday, the defense played great. Physical. Disciplined. Flying around. The offense struggled at times. Timing was off, execution inconsistent, some guys visibly frustrated with themselves.

Two sides of the ball. Two very different days. Same practice.

Here’s the thing about days like that. As a coach, you need anchoring either way. On the great days, you need something to keep you from getting inflated, from treating one good practice like proof that everything’s fixed. On the bad days, you need something to keep you from overreacting, from scrapping the plan or losing your composure with a kid who’s already beating himself up.

The good days test your anchor just as much as the bad ones. They just test it differently.

Every leader has a moment where the room demands certainty they don’t have yet. A parent is upset and waiting for an answer. A player is in your office asking why about scheme. A decision has to be made and the information isn’t all in yet, but the pressure is.

In that moment, you’re going to grab onto something. Everybody does. The question is what.

Some leaders grab onto ego. They need to look like they have it figured out, so they perform confidence and hope nobody notices the gap between the posture and the truth. Some grab onto approval. They read the room and say whatever calms the loudest voice. Some grab onto speed. They make a call, any call, because the discomfort of not deciding feels worse than the risk of deciding wrong.

None of those are anchors. They’re reactions dressed up as leadership.

An anchor is different. An anchor is what you hold onto when the current of least resistance is pulling hard and every instinct says move before you’re ready. It’s not a slogan on the wall of your office. It’s not a mission statement you memorized at orientation to be instantly forgotten. It’s a principle, a commitment, a value that existed before the pressure showed up and will still matter after it passes.

The Anchor Model is about knowing what yours is before the room asks you to perform certainty.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

If you’ve been following this series, you’ve already seen anchoring show up. In the Pause, Anchor, Expand post, the anchor was the middle step. Pause to interrupt the rush. Anchor in what matters. Expand to see the full picture.

But that post didn’t go deep on the anchor itself. It treated it like a step in a sequence. And for a lot of readers, that step was the vaguest one. “Ground yourself in your values” sounds right. It sounds wise and something to highlight (if you highlighted blog posts). But when someone is yelling at you or the clock is running or the group chat is blowing up, “ground yourself in your values” doesn’t tell you much and isn’t much comfort.

The Anchor Model goes deeper. It asks you to name, specifically, what you’re grounding in. And more importantly, it forces you to examine whether the thing you’ve been anchored to is actually worth holding.

Because here’s the uncomfortable part. Not every anchor holds.

The Anchor You Don’t Examine

Most leaders have an anchor they’ve never questioned. It formed early. Maybe it came from a mentor. Maybe from a culture. Maybe from a season of success that taught you a particular way of leading, and because it worked then, you assumed it would work forever.

For a long time, mine was decisiveness. I was anchored to the idea that good leaders make fast calls and don’t look back so they can move on to the next task / mountain / adversity to deal with. Coaching reinforced it. Winning reinforced it. The culture around me rewarded it. And it worked, until it didn’t. Until the situations got complex enough that speed wasn’t wisdom, it was just speed that took us down a wrong path. And the anchor I’d been holding was actually pulling me away from the thing the moment needed.

That’s the trap. An unexamined anchor feels like stability. But if you’re anchored to the wrong thing, you’re not stable. You’re stuck. You’re grounded in something that can’t hold the weight of what you’re actually carrying.

I’ve watched coaches anchor to a control authority approach and wonder why their players can’t make decisions without them. I’ve watched leaders anchor to being liked and wonder why nobody trusts them when things get hard and those that “like” them turn their backs on them when it gets tough. I’ve watched people anchor to a mentor’s approval long past the point where that mentor’s model still fit the moment.

The anchor held once. That doesn’t mean it holds now.

What a Real Anchor Looks Like

A real anchor has three qualities.

It’s specific. “I believe in doing the right thing” is not an anchor. It’s wallpaper. Everybody believes in doing the right thing. An anchor sounds more like: “I will not sacrifice a person’s dignity to make a situation more convenient for me.” Or: “I will tell the truth even when silence would be easier.” Or: “Development comes before winning. Always.” Those are specific enough to actually guide a decision when the pressure is real.

It holds under stress. This is the test. If your anchor only works when things are calm, it’s not an anchor. It’s a preference and usually built around something you’d like others to say about you. The whole point is that it steadies you when the room is hot, when the timeline is compressed, when people are watching and the stakes are high. If it bends the moment someone pushes back, it was never an anchor. It was a wish.

It exists independent of the outcome. This is the hardest one. A real anchor doesn’t depend on whether you win. It doesn’t depend on whether people applaud. It’s the thing you hold because it’s true, not because it’s popular. The leader who anchors in development over winning doesn’t abandon that anchor when the team loses. The leader who anchors in honesty doesn’t abandon it when honesty costs them something. That’s what separates an anchor from a strategy. A strategy changes when conditions change. An anchor doesn’t.

The Coaching Test

I think about this all the time on the field. What are we actually anchored to as a staff? Not what do we say we’re anchored to in recruiting pitches or parent meetings. What do we actually hold when things go sideways?

Spring practice surfaces this every single day. Yesterday was a perfect example. Defense dominated. Offense couldn’t find a rhythm. The temptation after a practice like that is to react to the scoreboard of the day. Blow up the offensive install. Praise the defense like they’ve arrived. Neither of those is anchored. One is panic, the other is premature celebration of scaling a false summit. Both are reactions to a single data point.

An anchored response looks different. It asks: did we compete the way we said we would? Did the effort match the standard? Are we developing or just performing? If the answer to those questions is yes, then a bad offensive day is information, not a crisis. And a great defensive day is confirmation, not a finish line.

The anchor test isn’t just the big moments. It’s every practice, every film session, every conversation in the hallway after a kid has a rough day. When a kid who’s producing on the field is poisoning the locker room, what wins? When a recruit’s measurables are off the charts but every conversation with him feels like you’re being managed and manipulated, what wins? When you lose three in a row and the pressure to change everything is coming from every direction, what do you hold?

Those moments reveal more about your program’s identity than any slogan on the weight room wall.

The programs I respect most aren’t the ones with the best talent. They’re the ones where the coaches know what they’re anchored to and they hold it even when holding it costs them something in the short term. You can feel it when you walk into those buildings. The players know what matters. The staff knows what matters. Nobody’s guessing. That clarity didn’t come from a speech. It came from a thousand small moments where somebody chose the anchor over the expedient thing.

Outgrowing an Anchor

Here’s also something to ponder...

Sometimes the anchor that got you here isn’t the one that takes you forward. Sometimes the mentor who shaped you, the philosophy that built you, the instinct that served you for years, stops being the right thing to hold.

That’s not betrayal. It’s growth. But it feels like betrayal, which is why most leaders avoid it.

I've had mentors whose voices still live in my head. Some of those voices still guide me. Others, I've had to quietly set down. Not because they were wrong or because I've forgotten what they taught me. Because the situations I'm leading in now require something they didn't teach me. Holding onto their model out of loyalty instead of conviction isn't honoring them. It's limiting me. And honestly, it limits them too. It flattens a real person with real range into a two dimensional caricature of who they actually were. Your mentor probably would have adapted to the circumstances you're facing now. They wouldn't have run the same playbook forever. So why freeze their approach into a box that can't be used?

The Anchor Model doesn’t ask you to pick one anchor forever. It asks you to be honest about what you’re holding right now and whether it’s actually the thing this moment needs. That honesty is harder than it sounds. Especially when the old anchor still feels comfortable. Especially when the people around you expect you to keep leading the way you always have.

Growth often looks like letting go of something that used to save you.

Try It Monday

This week, try answering three questions. Write them down. Not in your head. On paper.

What am I actually anchored to right now? Not what I say I’m anchored to. What do my decisions under pressure reveal about what I’m really holding?

Does that anchor hold under stress? When the room gets hot, when the timeline compresses, when someone pushes back, does this anchor steady me or does it bend?

Is this the anchor this season needs? Maybe it was the right anchor last year. Is it still? Or am I holding it out of habit instead of conviction?

If the answers surprise you, good. That’s the Anchor Model doing its work.

Go Deeper

The Anchor Model is one of seven frameworks in The Power of And. In the book, you'll see leaders discover that the people they were anchored to, the philosophies they trusted, and the instincts they relied on all had to be reexamined under real pressure. The cost of holding the wrong anchor is one of the most honest threads in the story.

Get the book on Amazon →

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