Joerik Michiels' The Player Development Blueprint
My friend, Joerik Michiels, is a top-notch skills trainer from Belgium.
I have had the great privilege to watch him work for the last five years during his visits to Canada. He is one of the world's best coaches at infusing skill development and constraints-led learning. He is also a firm believer that basketball is the vehicle for developing better people.
He has just released the Player Development Blueprint, which shares all he has learned on developing culture, personal development, leadership and the progressions he uses to teach modern basketball skills.
It is a great resources for any coach.
Joerik has profoundly impacted my coaching both on and off the floor. He has helped me win more games, but more importantly, he has helped me build better people.
I could not recommend this book any more highly.
Outcome Goals Create Pressure. Process Goals Create Performance.
As the year winds down, many coaches naturally find themselves reflecting.
Did we win enough?
Did we meet expectations?
Did we fall short of the goal we set back in August?
The end of a season, or a calendar year, has a way of pulling our attention toward outcomes. Records. Championships. Results. That’s understandable. Outcomes matter.
But they also come at a cost.
When the Pressure Started to Show
Halfway through the 2005–06 season, the pressure was starting to show.
We were the favourites to win the provincial championship, yet our performance was inconsistent. I was in just my second year as a head coach, young and inexperienced. I felt the weight of expectations every single day.
Practices were tense.
Players were tight.
Every drill felt like a test.
We talked more about winning than daily habits. More about upcoming opponents than how we needed to show up in practice. The goal, win a provincial championship, was crystal clear.
The path to get there was not.
After a frustrating loss, a friend made an observation that stopped me in my tracks: “No one looks like they’re having any fun.”
They were right.
The joy had been stripped from everything we were doing. And even if we won the championship, it was becoming clear that it wouldn’t mean much if we weren’t enjoying the process or living the values we claimed to believe in.
So I made a simple decision.
For the next few weeks, we would stop talking about the scoreboard.
No discussion of record.
No scoreboard in practice.
No references to playoffs.
Shifting the Focus
Instead, we revisited the vision statement we had created earlier in the season.
Our goal was simple: to be the team no one wanted to play.
We reviewed our standards:
- Practice like we play
- Run, run, run
- Listen and apply
- Own the defensive boards
- Play intense, physical defense
At the end of each practice, we spent five minutes reflecting on one question:
How did we live these today?
Something shifted almost immediately.
I stopped correcting every mistake and focused only on behaviours tied to our standards. Practices loosened. Energy returned. Feedback became clearer. Players knew exactly how to be successful each day, and most importantly, they started having fun again.
The team didn’t suddenly become perfect.
But performance followed.
Why Process Goals Matter
Outcome goals create pressure.
Process goals create performance.
Our team, and especially its coach, was far too focused on winning a championship. That single outcome created a mountain of pressure that affected decision-making, confidence, and enjoyment.
Traditionally, success in sport is measured by one question: Did you win the championship? Through that lens, there can only be one successful team. The pressure is obvious—99.9% of teams will fall short.
Outcome goals can inspire, but they also create anxiety, distraction, and short-term thinking. That pressure is one of the biggest contributors to coach burnout.
Winning matters. There’s no getting around that.
But the teams that win most consistently are not obsessed with winning. They are obsessed with improving. They focus relentlessly on what they can control—habits, preparation, effort, response to adversity.
They focus on the process.
What the Best Coaches Have Always Known
John Wooden never chased championships. He chased mastery. While the world measured UCLA by banners, Wooden measured execution—how players tied their shoes, pivoted, passed, and prepared. Those details didn’t win games directly, but they built discipline, confidence, and trust. The championships followed.
Bill Walsh built the San Francisco 49ers on what he called The Standard of Performance. Players were evaluated daily—not on wins or losses—but on preparation, precision, and professionalism. Meetings, practices, and even locker rooms were treated as reflections of excellence.
Nick Saban distilled it into a simple phrase: The Process. His athletes are trained to focus on the next six seconds, the next assignment, the next rep, the next decision. Confidence comes from doing your job, moment by moment, not from staring at the scoreboard.
Across sports, levels, and eras, the pattern is clear.
Process goals reduce pressure by shifting attention to what athletes can control. They replace anxiety with clarity. They give players—and coaches—a way to succeed every single day.
What Makes a Great Process Goal?
Effective process goals share three traits:
- They are controllable – effort, focus, preparation, communication
- They are observable – behaviours you can see, hear, and measure
- They are repeatable – habits that can be practiced daily
When feedback, practice design, and evaluation consistently point toward these behaviours, culture stops being motivational and starts becoming operational.
The Moment That Tested Us
Late in the provincial semi-final, we were down eight points in the fourth quarter.
There was no panic. No talk of the score. We relied on what we had trained for months, one possession at a time, one defensive stop, one response after another.
I remember glancing at the scoreboard late in the fourth quarter and being genuinely surprised we were up by three. I had been locked into the process, just like the players.
We won the provincial title the next day by 30. It felt surreal.
That season, we were fortunate to be rewarded with a championship. The other twenty-four seasons of my coaching career ended without one. But most of those teams walked away proud, because they defined success by how they showed up, not just how the season ended.
A Year-End Question for Coaches
As this year comes to a close, here’s a question worth reflecting on, not just in your coaching:
What did you measure most often, outcomes or behaviours?
Outcome goals will always matter. But they should live quietly in the background. The real work, the meaningful work, happens when the focus stays on the process.
Because when coaches and athletes commit to daily, controllable behaviours, performance stops being forced.
It becomes inevitable.
Are you or your athletes struggling to be their best?
Let's find a solution together.
I help coaches thrive.
As a Certified Mental Performance Consultant and a basketball coach with 25 years of experience, I understand the barriers to peak performance for both you and your athletes.
I would love to help you or your team build a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways I can help:
- Consult with your team or coaching staff
- Teach mental skills to your team via Zoom
- Work 1 on 1 with coaches
- Work 1 on 1 with athletes
Book a Free Discovery Call
If you’re feeling the weight of expectations, pressure, or burnout, you don’t have to figure this out alone.
A discovery call is simply a chance to talk through your season, your goals, and your process, with another coach who’s been there. No pitch. No obligation. Just a meaningful conversation.
Schedule a discovery call here.
Shoot me an email at jasonpayne@evolutionmpc.com. I love to talk coaching and see how I can help you.
Coaching is hard, let's make it easier.
Check out my website at http://jasonpayne.ca
Thanks for reading and have a great week and all the best in 2026.