The Field Guide for Coaches and Leaders is a leadership book by Kevin Weaver, founder of ELEVATE. Written from two decades of experience in high school and college athletics, it offers real stories and practical tools for leading yourself, your people, and your culture. Rather than prescribing one leadership style, it is meant to travel with the reader — referenced, written in, and returned to when facing a real decision.
Not a memoir. Not a manual.
Leadership development is a never-ending process. Anyone reading this can get better — including the person who wrote it. Everything in the Field Guide comes from someone still in the work, not someone who finished it: two decades across parks and recreation, high school athletics, college athletics, and a season in the NFL. Two state championship games in Tennessee. Back-to-back Final Fours in Florida. And plenty of forks in the road along the way.
Many people read a leadership book and then lead exactly the way the book says. That is not what this is for. This is a field guide — meant to travel with you, to be referenced, written in, and returned to when you hit a situation you do not quite know how to navigate.
What's inside
Real stories from the field — the 5:30 AM workout that taught a 19-year-old team manager what accountability feels like, the players whose TikTok fan page proved they were always watching, the walks that changed seasons. Each chapter closes with an honest question to carry with you, like:
How much do the people you lead actually know about you as a person? And how much do you know about them?
The guide covers finding each person's why, walking into toxic environments, responding instead of reacting, valuing the skills you actually have instead of the ones you think you are supposed to have — and Two Laps, the practice at the center of it all.
"Read this with a humble heart. Lead with an open one. Be where your feet are."KEVIN WEAVER — THE FIELD GUIDE
Get your copy
The Field Guide is live in paperback and on Kindle. Read it with a humble heart, lead with an open one, and keep it close for the fork in the road you haven't hit yet.
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