Free Download — The S.A.Y. IT Field Guide
The Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding is Costing Your Program
Here's the framework that makes it possible. The S.A.Y. IT Field Guide walks you through the Hard Conversations framework step by step — with real coaching scenarios, a decision guide, and a one-page reference card you can keep on your desk.
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Six pages. No fluff. A specific tool you can use before the end of the week.
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What’s Inside
Six pages. Everything you need to have the conversation this week.
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Every component defined in plain language — See It, Acknowledge It, Your Move, Install It, Transfer It — with the logic behind each step explained.
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Each step of the framework is illustrated with a specific coaching scenario. Not hypotheticals adapted from corporate training. Situations you recognize.
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The Full S.A.Y. IT Framework
Real Coaching Scenario
The Conversation Decision Guide
A quick diagnostic for the conversation you've been avoiding: what kind of conversation is it, which step do you start at, and what does success look like.
One-Page Reference Card
The full framework on a single page. Print it. Keep it in your desk drawer. Pull it out before you walk into a conversation you've been putting off.
The Framework
Five steps. One conversation you stop avoiding
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See It
Name the actual problem — not the symptom. Most coaches have the wrong conversation because they react to the behavior in front of them instead of the pattern underneath it. See It is the diagnostic step. Before you say anything, you have to know exactly what you are addressing and why it matters to the program.
Acknowledge It
Open the conversation without triggering defensiveness. How you start determines whether you get a real conversation or a performance. Acknowledge It gives you the language to open honestly — without softening the message into meaninglessness or delivering it in a way that shuts the other person down before you've said anything useful.
Your Move
State what you need and own your part in it. This is where most hard conversations fall apart — the head coach either makes demands without context or hedges so much that nothing changes. Your Move is the step where you say clearly what you need, why you need it, and what your role is in the situation.
Install It
Build the agreement that makes the conversation stick. A hard conversation without a clear, specific agreement is just venting. Install It is the step where the conversation becomes a commitment — defined, documented if necessary, and mutual. Both people leave knowing exactly what was decided.
Transfer It
Follow up in a way that reinforces rather than undermines. Most coaches either micromanage after a hard conversation or disappear entirely. Transfer It gives you a specific follow-up structure that holds the commitment in place without creating resentment — and tells you when the conversation needs to happen again.
Who This Is For
If any of these sound like you, the field guide is for you.
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You have a conversation with a coordinator or assistant you've been putting off for two weeks — or two months. You know it needs to happen. You keep finding reasons to wait.
You've had the conversation before and nothing changed. You're not sure if you said what you needed to say or if you just said enough to feel like you did.
You know there's a staff dynamic that's affecting your program. You've managed around it rather than addressed it directly because you don't have a framework for doing it well.
You're a new head coach building a staff culture for the first time and you want to establish the expectation that hard conversations happen in this program — not around it.
You're a veteran head coach who is honest enough with yourself to know that the one thing holding your program back is a conversation you haven't been willing to have.
This framework wasn't built in a consultant's office. It was built on a sideline, inside a staff room, and in the years I spent as a defensive coordinator watching hard conversations get avoided until they became program-ending problems.
The S.A.Y. IT Framework is the product of fifteen years of football coaching — including a state championship staff — combined with a PhD in Instructional Design and Technology. Every step is grounded in how adults actually change behavior, not in what sounds good in a leadership seminar.
This is not adapted from corporate leadership training. It was built from inside the coaching profession, for the specific kind of hard conversation coaches actually have to have.
— Dr. Alex Wanstrath | Founder, Coachology | PhD, Instructional Design & Technology
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