Commitment lesson final
Tue, May 23, 2023 8:20PM • 26:17
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, goals, commitment, team, athletes, players, winning, sport, great, olympic gold medal, gold medal, expectations, passion, talked, performance, learn, explaining, work, put, achieve
SPEAKERS
Jens Lang, Tim Walsh, Jan Stirling, Rohan Taylor, Gareth Baber, Eddie Jones, Paul Barnett, Slavomir Lener, Tom Ryan, Alyson Annan, Glee, WV Raman, James Wade, Steve Glasson, John Hamlett, Bill Snyder
Paul Barnett 00:00
Welcome to the lessons from the great coaches podcast.
00:04
I've learned that you don't do it alone, you learn so many different things from so many different coaches. That's an elite learning environment.
00:13
How you deal with how to be resilient, how important it is to infuse joy in the process of learning. To be
00:20
a good candidate, you've got to do more than you take. What an interesting way it is to be a leader.
Paul Barnett 00:29
My name is Paul Barnett, and you are listening to the great coach's podcast, where we explore leadership through the lens of high performance sport, by interviewing great coaches from around the world, to try and find ideas to help all of us be better leaders. We started this podcast because we wanted to have better conversations with our families around the dinner table. In a social media world with a goal is often to be the star of the show, we wanted to change the conversation and talk more about selflessness, leadership and responsibility. And the people we knew who best exhibited these qualities were great sports coaches. As the podcast has grown, the great coaches we have interviewed have shared so much insight and wisdom that we decided to create episodes dedicated entirely to the lessons that have resonated with us the most. Today's episode is on the topic of commitment. And it features audio quotes from a wide selection of coaches that we've interviewed from around the world. The lessons from the great coaches podcast, my thoughts on commitment were shaped in 1980, when my father took me along to see a film that featured a little green puppet that uttered these immortal lines.
01:42
No, try not Do or do not. There is no try.
Paul Barnett 01:51
I was seven when I first heard Yoda say those words. And they shaped the mind. And I imagine many other people's views on what it means to commit yourself to something important. The great coaches we've interviewed share a similar view to Yoders when it comes to emphasizing the importance of commitment. However, when they describe it, the image I get is not Luke Skywalker, trying to raise an ex fighter from a swamp, but rather a bridge that connects your passion on one side to the achievement of your goal on the other side. And on that bridge, you move forward through hard work and discipline. And the best coaches move along with you helping you maintain focus and the self belief required. The starting point for commitment, though, is passion. And as WNBA championship Coach James Wade told us, it fuels everything.
James Wade 02:44
It can be coached, but you have to have some of it in you, maybe you need a coach to bring it out of you. But and there's some players that don't know how to let the players that have spent enormous an enormous amount of time not working hard, maybe won't get there. I think it's something that you have in you that you, I don't know if you're born with it, but it comes out at a certain point early in life. And it's just, it's just a part of it has a lot to do with passion. It has a lot to do with passion. So if you if you have a passion for it, you'll work for it. Because that passion fuels everything.
Paul Barnett 03:19
With your passion in place, you then begin shaping the expectations you have. Alison Annan has won an Olympic gold medal as a player and a coach in field hockey. She talked to us about internal expectations, and shaping and planning for them in such a way that they propel you forward without the need for external pressure.
Alyson Annan 03:42
There are a lot of athletes who don't want to feel the pressure from within. So they won't go to the boundaries, they won't try and I'm here and this is good enough. And this this work. So that's enough. It's when other people start expecting things from you that players become nervous. So I really have a theory of if you expect more from yourself, then it doesn't matter what other people will expect from you because you're dealing with what your own expectations. And when you're working within a team. And if you're talking are my expectations realistic and how do I get there and you've got a plan and that's a well thought out plan, then it doesn't matter what other people think. And if you as a coach also expect that from the players to be the best they can be every single time they're on the pitch. And it doesn't matter what the outside world does, because the inside pressures so big, you've got your own individual pressure within your own team to do that.
Paul Barnett 04:42
The word of caution though, on internal expectations comes from world championship basketball coach Jen Sterling, who talked about having to manage internal expectations that were not aligned with the teams.
Jan Stirling 04:56
So you just got to manage the expectations of athletes. Coming from an environment where they're the actual absolute star in their professional league team, that they've come into the Oaklands. And they're not necessarily that absolute star. They're a very integral and important contributor to the Opals, but not necessarily iconic staff. And managing those expectations was something I had to learn pretty damn quickly.
Paul Barnett 05:25
Indian Women's cricket coach, WV Rahman builds on this idea of Jan's when he says that nobody is bigger than the others, and not less than the others when it comes to the pursuit of their goals.
WV Raman 05:41
But the most important thing is that in a team sport like cricket, it's important for each one of them to contribute, nobody is bigger than the others and nobody is lesser than the others. It's all about all of them going towards in one particular direction, and trying to achieve success for the team. And to me, I always have a lot of time for people who put their will put the team's interests ahead of their own personal interests, because that is what will eventually make a solid team.
Paul Barnett 06:16
James Lange grew up playing table tennis in Germany, where he was a professional for 14 years, he then moved to Australia, and became the national coach. Here, he talks about setting goals that stretch the individual relative to their performance potential. And why regret is such a powerful force. When it comes to goal setting.
Jens Lang 06:40
You often hear these messages from motivational speakers or other cultures, nothing is impossible, we're going for gold, we're going to win this or whatever. Obviously, that's great. That can be very motivational. But you need to be very careful, because it's very easy to set yourself up for failure. And then all, the result of that will be that the athletes that have put in countless hours, weeks, days, months of work, they come back with regret, because they set themselves the wrong goals. And then they come back with regret. And regret is a very, very strong feeling that you want to avoid. That's why That's why dead people receive more flowers than then living people because regret is stronger than gratitude. So you need to be really, really careful and cautious to set up goals that are realistic, and achievable. But at the same time, really, really challenging. And that is up to the coaches to do to assess the ability, the performance potential of their athletes of their teams, and set the goals at the top of the top and maybe in the top 5% of their performance potential. Because on the other side, setting goals that are too low that doesn't have any utility either, because it should have goals should always also have like a motivational effect. So I think, yeah, it's a really tough task to find the right goals and to define the right goals. But it's still a really, really important one, I think.
Paul Barnett 08:22
John Rudd is the first and only swimming coach worldwide to achieve the international coaching Grand Slam, which is coaching at least one athlete to all 14 major international gold medals that both senior and junior levels. He talked to us about the need to be willing to change all the facets of your life in pursuit of your goal. And how it was his role as a coach to help the athlete determine what needs to change.
08:54
There's a few times where pieces have been put in place in the right order at the right time in the right way. One instance that resulted in an Olympic gold medal from 15 year old girl, which was we talked about roller coasters there was a roller coaster for a few years. And what's interesting about that analogy is the athlete has to choose to allow all pieces of the jigsaw to be put on the table before you can actually start helping them put them together in the right order. And the vast majority of athletes leave one or two pieces missing. So you can never put the full picture together because there are parts of their life that they're not willing to change or maneuver to be the full pack. The 24/7 365 Day performance athlete with a performance lifestyle and mindset that that is 100%. And so quite often, quite often you don't find until you're a long way into putting those jigsaw pieces together that there's one or two bits that haven't been lost but you've just not been afforded to click into position and then you know that you're only going to find 97% or 94%, or whatever it is that athletes true capabilities and potential, but that's their choice. That's their choice. Because they the biggest challenge for for performance athletes is that holistic buy in is that 100% energy and commitment to what's necessary because the sacrifice that's necessary, there's difficult decisions to be made. And you have to be a really, really special individual to be able to do all
Jens Lang 10:33
of that. As a coach,
Paul Barnett 10:36
or a person who is leading someone towards their goal, you can't simply be directive, you need to take the time to explain the why behind your decisions. Here is NBA coach Trevor Gleason, explaining how he has experienced this change with athletes over time.
Glee 10:56
Since I first started, it was more so of jumping into the plays that say how high and now as a coach, you say jump and they say why. And then again, they say what's in it for me, so totally different in the spectrum that I've coached in but it's provide leadership provide coaching and developing your players, the players want to see themselves develop individually, and they want to be involved in team success.
Paul Barnett 11:25
One of the interesting things we have learned from our interview guests, is how they often enter competitions, without express goals that will be defined by the end result, like winning a gold medal, or even the result on the scoreboard. Instead, they talk about the expectations they have for the team and individuals, and how they will know if they've achieved them. The first example of this comes from gold medal winning ice hockey coach slavomir Lenna, talking about his team's gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.
Slavomir Lener 12:00
And the advantage for us as coaches was that the team they wanted, they wanted to prove that they're the best players on the planet and they can be anybody. Obviously, we want to Nagano with the goal not to be I will say when we come back, we will say we have done everything possible. We didn't have a gold medal plans, no way. You just wanted to play a good hockey and we just wanted to convince everybody that we are a good team, we get good scales and the whole management is to maximum for best results possible. We felt starting with goalie and defenseman and all the leaders upfront that the team wants to do it. And we were there as a coaches to support that.
Paul Barnett 12:43
Bill Snyder led the Kansas State University American football team to two big 12 championships. He talks about looking beyond the scoreboard to evaluate people based on their everyday effort to become better.
Bill Snyder 12:57
At the end of the bar first year, I was more confident than ever that we would be a successful program. And it wasn't because we won just one ballgame. It was at the beginning of the of the year, when I first arrived, I took our players out on the peels and turned the scoreboard on and I said I'm not going to assess you. Based on what the scoreboard says, my assessment will be made based on your every day effort to become better. And if you work diligently to improve every single day, you will have success here at Kansas State University. And at the end of the season, even though it was just the one game, I was confident that we had made a good deal of improvement consistently throughout the course of the season. And I was confident that if we continue that we would be a successful program.
Paul Barnett 13:51
The third example of this comes from NCAA Championship Wrestling coach Tom Ryan. And he builds on the examples of Slawomir and bill by explaining why expectations can't be based on winning
Tom Ryan 14:06
your goal in a classroom of second graders and you read you ask them to raise your hand who likes to win, right? Everyone, everyone raises their hand. Right? And winning is something that ultimately we don't have direct control. And we try to focus on things that we can control. And winning is not one of them. But to your point. Effort is one of them. Body language is one of them. Right? Your workload is one of them. So we really just try to build an infrastructure around people that cause less stress, and focus on the things that they can control in their life. And winning is not one of them.
Paul Barnett 14:44
The iconic coach, Eddie Jones takes this one step further by actually redefining winning,
Eddie Jones 14:51
because I don't accept anything less than then winning. And what I mean by winning is, is that you're doing everything you can To be at your best, you know, sometimes the result goes away. Sometimes it does. But if you're doing everything you can, if you're doing good practice all the time, then you're going to be successful.
Paul Barnett 15:13
With your goal in place, and your commitment supported through a coach, you set out on the journey, and experience the inevitable distractions. Learning to deal with these in a way that is systemic and ongoing is an important skill. Tim Walsh led the Australian Women's Rugby Sevens team to an Olympic gold medal. And he described the performance bubble technique he used to help achieve this.
Tim Walsh 15:39
We looked at our our debilitated errs of the Olympics. And one of them the biggest one was probably the pressure or the ability to stay in your performance bubble. So we had all these different techniques around dealing with it that were first we had to identify what they were. So we got this, drill this big bubble on the wall and then put us in the middle and then with okay, this is the bubble, what's going to come in there and try and try and pop pop it, whether it be family and friends, social media, pets, tragedies, partners in all that all that kind of stuff. Pressure was obviously a big one. And then develop techniques and how we were going to develop it. So preparation breeds confidence.
Paul Barnett 16:25
Gareth Baber led the Fiji men sevens to an Olympic gold medal. And he also talked about the importance of normalizing distractions, or as he called them, attention robbers in a way that empowers the team to deal with them. And in a social media world. But there is so much competing for your attention. This is an important skill that transcends sport.
Gareth Baber 16:48
But I think that one of the biggest ways that we normalize the process, if you like is we discussed it, we discussed it with the players quite regularly, I call them attention robbers, the players were quite aware of what they were. And we would if we will go into Hong Kong, for example. And we would know that there'll be the razzmatazz around a Hong Kong tournament, and there will be lots of people and lots of alcohol around and the things that can use distract you, if you go into other parts of the world is gonna be big Fujian communities, which is fantastic to have. But again, that can lead you away in terms of focus on what you gain. So I was always conscious, and you learn with experience as well as as you travel the world with Fijians that there's going to be greater attention on them, but ultimately, bring them back all the time to the purpose and the intention of what what you're there to do. And one of those intention purposes is to have fun as well. And I don't want to forget that because I had a huge amount of fun with these crazy Fijians that they do. They love around the world. They love everybody they meet, and they just enjoy being around each other the whole time. And they're so bonded in terms of their relationships. But that was a challenge, a challenge that we looked after, as as a staff, a challenge that we looked after, as a group of players in normalizing the process of understanding what the distractions would be and how we manage them. And I think that we did navigate our way through it, I wouldn't say it was perfect. But again, that's what the challenges are of being professional sports coaches and players is to ensure that you do keep ahead of this and when you do fall foul of it that you use it to learn from and move yourself on and ultimately not repeat errors like that in the future. And I like to think the players learned a huge amount from that.
Paul Barnett 18:34
The beauty of commitment in service of a goal is that it may help you experience a high point that very few others are able to. But at the same time for many high performance athletes. It can mean reaching a high point that becomes your life's greatest achievement. And this can be a bittersweet experience for many people hear his gold medal swimming coach John Rudd talking about his experience with this.
19:01
Because we're a sport that that requires early specialization, whether we like it or not, it does. It requires a high level of commitment quite early in a person's life. It does require them to commit a large part of their childhood and their adolescent to see now good that can be but it's not in those years that they're going to get to see what the endgame is for a 15 year old girl to win an Olympic gold medal is unusual. It's happened before it will happen again, but it's unusual, is even more unusual, if not unheard of in males. So we have to work on the basis that the vast majority of people who are potentially going to achieve their greatest achievement in the sport, whatever that might be. It's going to happen just before or close to a point of retirement. That they're in the if they're not In the 11th hour of their career, when they do it, they're in the ninth or 10th hour, because it's not in the first five minutes of starting. So, and I think this is this is the case with the vast majority of sports is that it's time sensitive, the window of opportunity is relatively small, doing the right things at the right time, allow that full fruition at a point of seniority to come at a time when the athlete is most likely to be able to say, that is potentially my greatest achievement. And I don't know if I'll ever beat that.
Paul Barnett 20:32
One of the things we have heard many times from our interview guests, is that your commitment as a coach will need to be greater than that of your athletes. But the focus of that commitment can be varied, from their physical performance, to a more holistic one that encompasses the whole relationship. Here is Australian national swimming coach Roland Taylor, explaining how he experiences this.
Rohan Taylor 20:56
So commitment to communicating commitment to working on what's needed the commitment, you know, we can easily say commitment to being there on time and, and being prepared and all those things. But I think, for me, it's Bill used to say to me that you have to be more committed than your athlete. So I always kind of drove myself to that standard, you know, I think it's what that looked like to me as a young coach was, was basically you know, just always being on pullback and you know, like basically committing my whole life to the sport. I think now it's about committing to the relationship with the park with the athlete in what their goal and what their desires are.
Paul Barnett 21:36
For the coach. There is often a dual focus though, the desire to help the athlete achieve their goals, but at the same time, leave the sport having learned valuable life lessons at a Steve Glasson explains also wonderful ambassadors to their own last name.
Steve Glasson 21:55
To me, I'm a very simple person when push comes to shove. But we want these players to hopefully realize their dreams in the sport. And that's not always going to happen. We're realistic about it. But we want them to leave the sport with a great legacy. And also the fact that they become better people for being a part of it. Wonderful sport ambassadors, wonderful ambassadors to their own last name, their partners, maybe their corporate sponsors, just this the whole picture. So I just come out of a better people for it, it is a big plus. And that's one of our big drivers in the actual program.
Paul Barnett 22:26
For the final word on commitment, I have chosen ultra marathon coach John Hamlin. He talks about the importance of passion. Many of our interview guests have said words to the effect, that passion fuels everything. And after 100 interviews, I'm convinced that they are right. Passion sets the platform for commitment. And then above that, you form goals. And from there, you sit out on your journey, and need to learn to manage distractions. A great coach walks beside you every step of the way, and thinks beyond your performance high point to make sure that the experience along the way leaves you a better person.
John Hamlett 23:06
So in a way, he made me make my decision, you forced me to say find your passion and do it and then stay with it no matter what. And I know it was my passion it running was my passion at that moment, I'd run that math when I crossed the line. I knew this is for me. I could run I could run 800 floss, I want all my school stuff, 801 Five, all that stuff. I could do it. But it just wasn't for me. I wanted this stuff that tasted me inside. When everything was tough. When everything was harsh, it tasted you, it took you about you. I think that's what it was, you know, when you got to the last minute and anybody's blisters in those silly shoes. And you and you got like 10 K's to go. And you see the stadium and you think Ah, I feel like I can just fall down and die. And then you are hanging in for dear life. And you're putting me foot in front and you think Jehovah can put my foot in front of another kilometer. And then a kilometer is gone. And the kilometer stretches, it feels like tin. And you keep going. And eventually when you finally see that finish line. It's just too awesome. It's just like, wow, I've found it. And I'm there and I've done it and I've done something that most people would never even dream of.
24:20
We hope you enjoyed our episode on commitment, and found one or two things that you can bring to your own dinner table, locker room or boardroom table for discussion. The key lessons I have taken away from our interview guests on the topic of commitment are that passion is a starting point for anyone who wants to achieve a goal. That is in the words of one of our great coaches, something that most people would never even dream of. Then you form expectations that are internally driven, and commit to a plan to help you achieve your goals. The goals you set should be stretched If and in the top end of your performance potential. However, the goals do not need to be defined by the end result, such as winning a gold medal, or championship. As a coach or leader helping someone to achieve their goals, you need to be able to explain why you're asking them to do what you were advising, all the while, also helping them manage the distractions that can derail their commitment. And, finally, your commitment as a leader will need to be greater than the person or team that you are leading towards their goal. Here at the great coaches podcast, we're always listening and trying to reflect and learn. So please let us know if you have any feedback. Just like Chris Brown, who said, Thank you for this podcast. It is brilliant, and would take years to get this kind of insight. Thanks, Chris. The interaction with people around the world who listen gives us great energy. And so if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know. And all the details on how to connect with us are in the show notes or on our website. The great coaches podcast.com