Joe Ehrman, founder of Coach for America and Positive Coaching Alliance National Advisory board member, shares his biggest concern amongst coaches is moral failure. This manifests itself in two ways:

1. Men are leading isolating lives, leaving them with no meaningful relationships that call for accountability. This leaves coaches, a position dominated by males, focusing on attributes like individual play and selfish behavior, instead of teamwork, accountability and life lessons
2. A lack of value for moral courage. According to Ehrmann, coaches emphasize physical courage over moral courage, which has youth athletes focusing on the wrong value system. He stresses that we need coaches who are teaching what’s right and wrong, instead of just the playbook and physical dominance.

Many of the injustices in the world happen when observers stand by because they lack moral courage. Moral courage is standing up publicly for what you believe is right even when others—including sometimes your friends and teammates—don’t. Exhibiting moral courage requires real courage.

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