Starting in January 2023, McCutcheon is the assistant athletics director/sport development coach at Minnesota, after announcing his resignation from the volleyball team at the conclusion of the 2022 season.

He played on the New Zealand junior and senior national teams from 1988 to 1990 before coming to the United States and lettered in volleyball and field hockey at Shirley Boys' High School.

McCutcheon's team went on to win USA's first ever FIVB World League title in 2008 and finished the quadrennial as 2008 Olympic Champions.

On 15 December 2008, it was announced that McCutcheon accepted the head coach position of the U.S. Women's National Team for the 2009-2012 Olympic quadrennial.

He led the USA men's volleyball team to the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing for the first time since 1988, defeating gold-medal favorite Brazil in four sets.

After his Gold Medal win in 2008, McCutcheon sought the "really wonderful challenge" of "acquiring a different skill set" by coaching in the women's game.

Kiraly led the US Women's Team to its first-ever Gold Medal at the belated 2020 Summer Olympics, held in Japan in 2021 following delays related to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

[12] The book proposes a framework of holistic athlete development, pulling ideas from neuroscience, motor learning, and psychology.

"[12] McCutcheon propounds a coaching philosophy that foregrounds an athlete and team-focused approach with a clear-eyed view of the difficulties of achieving mastery in sport, values he learned while growing up in New Zealand, combined with his experiences living, studying, and working in the US.

[7] The Minnesota Star Tribune summarized the key message of Championship Behaviors, and by extension McCutcheon's overall coaching philosophy, in this way: "Growth is deeply personal, and our traditional ideas of success are fleeting.

[13] On 9 August 2008, the day after the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics,[14] the parents of McCutcheon's wife, former Olympian Elisabeth Bachman, were attacked at Drum Tower.

A 47-year-old Chinese man named Tang Yongming assaulted them at the Drum Tower eight kilometres from the main Olympic site before leaping to his death from the 40-metre high balcony.