What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from The Tech-Wise Family
A coach watches a young athlete check a phone between every single drill, reviewing a highlight clip instead of resting, talking, or simply noticing how the last rep actually felt. The technology is not the problem in any obvious way; the app tracks useful data, the video helps with form. But something about the constant checking seems to be replacing the quieter parts of development, the ones that used to happen in the gaps: reflecting on a mistake, sitting with frustration after a bad set, talking it through with a mentor instead of a screen. The coach has built a program around skill and character both. Lately it feels like character is losing ground to convenience without anyone deciding that on purpose. What is actually being developed here?
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Ease can quietly crowd out the growth you are building
Crouch's core distinction, between what is easy and what is genuinely worthwhile, sits at the center of good mentoring. A tool that removes a hard moment, a stat that answers a question a mentee should sit with themselves, can look helpful while quietly removing the exact friction that builds resilience and judgment. Crouch writes from his own Christian conviction that people grow through meaningful effort rather than mere ease; for a mentor of any belief, the underlying idea holds without that framework: convenience is worth using only when it serves growth, not when it quietly replaces the harder process that produces it.
Assuming every helpful-looking tool actually serves the mentee's long-term development rather than short-term comfort.
Before recommending a tool to a mentee, ask what struggle it might remove that they still need.
Create device-free space in your time together
Crouch's household boundaries, screen-free rooms and hours, translate into mentoring practice: a debrief conversation held without phones nearby, a session that starts with a few device-free minutes of actual reflection. These small structural choices create room for the kind of noticing and honest talk that rarely happens when a screen is available as an easy distraction from a harder, more vulnerable conversation.
A rule imposed without explanation feels like control rather than care, and mentees quietly resist it.
Begin one session each week with five device-free minutes of reflection before anything else happens.
Let your mentee sit with the hard moment
Crouch treats difficulty and even boredom as valuable, not problems to solve immediately. A mentor who rushes to fix every stuck or frustrated moment denies a mentee the exact friction that builds real character. This does not mean withholding support or encouragement; it means being deliberate about which struggles are actually productive, and resisting the urge, often technological, to smooth them over before the person has had a real chance to work through it themselves.
Mentors confuse withholding help with building resilience, and the mentee feels abandoned rather than trusted.
The next time a mentee is stuck, wait and ask a question before offering the answer.
Talk openly about what you are both building
Crouch's fourth theme is sustaining a commitment through honest, ongoing conversation and a real willingness to adapt, not a rigid rule imposed once and never revisited again. Naming your values around technology and growth directly with a mentee, and revisiting that conversation openly as they develop and circumstances change, builds a shared understanding that outlasts any single rule you might otherwise try to enforce alone.
A mentee's real frustration and a coach's instinct to help will regularly pull against each other in the same moment. There is no formula that resolves this cleanly every time; sometimes stepping in genuinely serves the person, and sometimes it robs them of exactly what they needed to build. The honest move is naming that tension to yourself in the moment, rather than always defaulting to whichever response feels most comfortable for you.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which moment in your sessions do you rescue automatically that might be better left alone? - Where could five device-free minutes change what actually happens in your time together? - What is the difference, for your mentee, between support and a shortcut?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
The next time a mentee is stuck, wait and ask a question before offering the answer.