John Tanner believes strong leaders and good citizens make the best players and teammates.

The Dunlevie Family Director and head coach of the Stanford women’s water polo program, known to friends and colleagues as “JT,” has led the team to 9 NCAA titles and 6 MPSF championships, and trained Olympians and dozens of U.S. Senior National Team members in his 26 years at Stanford.

What’s unique about his approach isn’t his focus on creating world class athletes and winning tournaments, but rather his conviction that coaches can nurture leaders and citizens for the long term.

Lisa Kay Solomon, Designer in Residence at the Stanford d.school, sat down with Tanner to learn more about his program and the inspiration behind his holistic approach.

You’re one of the most winning coaches of all time for NCAA women’s water polo. What is your inspiration for how you coach?

I was lucky early on to observe and learn from a lot of different perspectives on coaching, and not just from sports. I played the sport for a long time and learned a lot from having international opportunities to watch people from different places and working in different sports.

Bill Walsh [legendary college and NFL football coach] came back to Stanford after he retired from the San Francisco 49ers. It was incredible to hear somebody who was wise and sincere in his desire to help me. He prioritized investment in people and relationships, and maintained a consistent perspective of respect throughout all of his interactions.

Are there certain rituals you integrate into your practices to help the team come together?

Every team is different, and every context is different, so you have to tailor your decisions to meeting the team where they are. This is particularly true in the beginning when the team is coming together. Some players have played together for years, and some are total strangers to each other. The first several days or weeks of a season are critical.

We try to be intentional about every time we gather. There’s so much happening in our players’ lives. People are moving away from home for the first time, they are exploring who they are and who they want to be. The speed of change in their lives is accelerated. And, as that change accelerates, you need more opportunities to help them stay grounded.

We think very deeply about arriving to practice – the transition from the world away from the pool and team to coming back together again for a common purpose. Many of us are feeling overwhelmed from busy days so we try to be mindful about giving space to show up for ourselves, to show up for each other, and to rejoin the group.

Stanford women’s water polo claimed its second consecutive national title this year. (Image credit: Stanford Athletics)

You’ve been a leader in the All Vote No Play initiative to bring civic engagement into student athletics. Why are you so passionate about helping your players develop civic mindsets and practices?

There are so many long-term benefits to continuing their civic education, to becoming voters for life, to volunteering in their community, and to feeling satisfied and enmeshed within their community.

There’s also the short-term value of practicing disagreement, which is essential to team success. The water polo team is a microcosm of life. Every season is a lifetime, and we have the chance to imagine who we want to be, and work backward from there.

You have to move to the future and envision a world as you want it to be when you are finished with your team, when everyone is moving to the next chapter of their lives. What do you want to have done? What do you want that to feel like? Who do you want to be?

Civic education is a key part of that. We want our players to be voting when they’re 40 and 50. We want them to feel valued and part of their community. And we want them to be satisfied with their life and find opportunities to empathize and connect with their neighbors like they do with their teammates. It’s amazing that voting or even the discussions surr\ounding voting can be an entryway to that.

There are many unique hallmarks to your program, including the tradition of having each of your players give TED-style talks to the team on a topic of their choice. I can imagine some coaches not wanting to devote practice time to student-led presentations. Why is this so important to the program?

These presentations help athletes develop a confidence that translates to the broader team culture. When you give players the chance to become better teachers, it helps them become better learners, too. In that process, they not only learn how to teach others, but they also learn how to amplify their voice over their coaches and with 15, 20, or 80 athletes – whatever it might be.

It helps us develop as a team more quickly and increase our chances of winning. But I also know that the process of doing that presentation will have made them a better student for their classes down the line, and more confident people in the world.

Another special aspect of your program are your faculty dinners, where each player introduces their faculty guest. Can you talk about these dinners?

Every year in April, we host a faculty dinner where each player gets to invite a faculty member of their choice. It is very powerful for both the player and the faculty member. Players are able to see an entirely different side of their professors, who are often eager to learn more about them as students and learners. Players develop empathy for what professors do every day to deliver meaningful experiences for their students.

These gatherings serve as a very meaningful and effective way of building and deepening community outside of our sport. We want our players to experience the integration of what they do as athletes into a broader context of their campus life. It supports their development as a whole person, not just as a varsity athlete.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your coaching philosophy and the impact coaches can have on players’ lives?

Fundamentally, I think a coach’s job is to curate experiences that help players discover their potential. It’s not to give advice or to direct people and expect something in return. It’s to present possibilities in such a manner as to open up the potential for people to have breakthroughs and self-discovery.

One of the most critical things you want to arrange for is failure. Our nervous system responds really well to failure and setbacks. Losses can be the best thing to get that immediate focus and response. Crafting significant rehearsals of failure helps us figure out the discoveries that get us ready to compete – in the pool and in life.