Doug Beal Edit
Tue, 8/23 1:34PM • 34:33
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, volleyball, sport, world, players, people, team, played, talk, gold medal, objectives, role, years, important, love, ceo, strategy, group, part, doug
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Doug Beal
Paul Barnett 00:00
Doug Bill. Good evening, my time. Good morning, your time and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Doug Beal 00:06
Thanks, Paul. It's a pleasure to be here. It's exciting and I'm looking forward to the conversation. Well,
Paul Barnett 00:11
I haven't as well dug in perhaps something really simple to get his going. Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today,
Doug Beal 00:19
I'm in Colorado Springs. I've been living here almost 30 years, my family and I moved here because a coaching responsibility, I'm sure you know the overall background. So I've coached our men's USA team for quite a while on and off. And for a while we trained here at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and then I stayed on after I finished coaching and was the CEO of USA volleyball for about 13 years, and the organization is here has been here for a long time before I started, CEO and remains here largely because the Olympic Paralympic Committee is headquartered here in Colorado Springs. It's a beautiful place. We love it. Our kids grew up here. We love the outdoor lifestyle. I think it's a gorgeous place to live and play and go skiing and biking and all those kind of fun outdoor activities.
Paul Barnett 01:12
Well as I sit here listening to you on a dark, but hot night in Bucharest, I'm very jealous, Doug, we're gonna get into your journey. We're going to talk about the coaching, we're going to talk about the gold medal, we're going to talk about your role as the CEO and how you've built that organization. But I'd really like to start by talking about the great coaches that you've had firsthand experience with Yuri Cheskin of Jim McLaughlin, Carl McGowan, Hugh McCutcheon, the list goes pretty much on and on. And so who's who of anyone who's ever been a great coach on the world stage in volleyball, but from this experience that you've had up close with these great coaches? I'd like to start by asking you, what is it you think they do differently, that sets them apart?
Doug Beal 01:54
We could probably spend pretty much the entire hour just talking about that. I think, first of all, I've been extraordinarily fortunate to have the relationships that I've had with a series of really remarkable people and remarkable coaches. And I'm positive that I've been significantly influenced by each one of them. And a whole bunch that weren't named, most people wouldn't have heard of that were really early in my career, and perhaps even the most impactful physical educators and coaches on clubs that lots of us started with, one of whom is still alive. And I'm very close to still to this day, and probably just had as much influence on me as my own father.
So I think, Gosh, what do they have in common? A really impactful coach once told me that the starting point to be good is some degree of self confidence, you have to know yourself, you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe you can lead this group or that you have something to offer to this group. And it's not arrogance, it's not this belief that I'm always right. But it is a belief that I can find a way to lead the group or respond to the needs of the group. I think you'll find as we talk today that I spend most of my time talking about a group. And so I'm much more focused on and have experience in team sports versus individual sports, I think there are some pretty significant differences that I think the great coaches are eager to learn. They aren't just lifelong learners, I think that's an easy answer. They're eager to learn. They reach out to peers and other people that they find information about or that somebody introduces them to, they have developed a network that is important to them as people and it's much more than just how these individuals helped me be better solving a problem or relating to a group or knowing myself, it's how do they make me a better person? How do they make me more aware of my failings, my limitations and my strengths? And I think they'd become a big part of that. [PB1]
I would be really surprised, Paul, if you didn't hear from lots of the people you've interviewed, that this core group of people that coaches relate to are the most impactful people in their life equal to or perhaps even more important than their parents or their siblings, and we spend more time with them as life goes on. I start with the self confidence issue, then I start with this eagerness to expand my world. How can I benefit by getting to know your each hasn't caught or Slava Putana or Carl Magallon, or Jim Coleman, or so many people, John Kessel, an interesting guy who's never really coached at a very high level and maybe is one of the most impactful people that I know in coaching and I could throw out names forever here. You've mentioned a bunch more. It's an important part of who you are as a coach and I think one of the things that has been special and unique in the United States in the international volleyball culture that has grown up in the United States is the stream of continuity of coaches and how we've sort of built on top of what this person accomplished. Jim Coleman, Carl, Miguel and me, Mark Dunphy, Hugh McCutcheon l night now. johnsburg Aw, Terry Mackiewicz MC Haley, Ari Salinger. And lots of us are really close still to this day, and talk and interact a lot. I've had many other coaches in other countries tell me that's unique. And it's been a real strength here in this country. And it has allowed us right through to coach cry right now, who's maybe going to be the best coach of all, and we applaud that we love it, we support it. It's an interesting culture that has grown up here in the United States. I think,
Paul Barnett 05:54
Doug, you went to the World Championships back in 1970. It was in Bulgaria, just down the road from where I am today, not far from you. And I understand that it was there that you first started writing things down that you will learning by watching great teams play. And I've heard you referenced the Czechoslovakia and team, which was very good at the time has this practice of observation and reflection stayed with you as a leader?
Doug Beal 06:20
Absolutely.
I can't remember when I started making notes, and keeping notebooks of observations and strategies and goals in my life and plans. But I've been doing it long before 1970, even I can remember in high school sitting in class and I was so taken with volleyball, which wasn't a very organized, structured sport at that time, putting lineups together and things that we have to do with our little club team that was really not a very structured group with a very organized coaching situation. I'm a writer, I write things down, I make lists, I have most of them, I've kept them. [PB2]
When I left, and retired as CEO at USA volleyball, I had boxes of material that I brought home. And then there were boxes here at home that I hadn't looked at in years. And I took almost a year and a half, maybe two years to go through all those anyway, I have almost all those notebooks and I'll occasionally go down into the basement of our house and reread them. And it's just a fascinating process for me to look at how I've changed and what was a priority 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40, unfortunately, longer ago than I, I wish it was, it's been a big part of how I've evolved as a coach to share that and to ask people I've worked with to respond to things I've written to them. Here are my objectives, or here's my list of things we do well, or here's the things that I think we don't do. Well tell me what you think which ones can we change? Which ones can we make better quickly? or long term? So yeah, it's it's something I've just always done that well, and the checks were a wonderful team at the time, we were in a small city in Bulgaria, the first pool, I think it was called Yambol, Bulgaria. And gosh, we we snuck into practices and two or three of us players and the level that they were playing at relative to the level of our team at that time. So as you said it was 1970 was just hit us like a brick wall. How do we compete with this? We have so many things that we have to be better at? And how do we do that look at how they train and look at the drills they're doing and look at the exercises and how they're spending their time and we're not doing much of this, there must be something we have to change because they were a world class team at the time. And we were clearly not,
Paul Barnett 08:42
let's talk about that brick wall. Because 14 years later, your playing career is finished, you play over 200 games, the national team, you become the coach. And in 1984, the team famously win the gold medal. There's a TV movie, and there's a book about the experience. And it was very audacious at the time given where you were ranked in the world. But I wanted to ask you about this whole idea of audacious goals, because seems to me like through your career, you've actually set many of them. And I wanted to ask you through the lens of is it potentially distracting when you set such a big goal for the team to focus on? And there are still so many steps along the way to get there?
Doug Beal 09:24
Yes, it is, I think sometimes distracting and probably not the smartest approach. I'm not one of these individuals that looks back on things that I've done or haven't done or process and go, I wouldn't change a thing. I'm not one of those. I would probably change lots of things. It's always struck me as a little bit arrogant for people to say, oh, everything I did or I can explain it or I wouldn't change the thing.
So first of all, I believe in big picture thinking I think that's a part of leadership. I think you have to sort of set some a little bit pie in the sky. I objectives you have to convince people that you can do more than they think perhaps or that some of the individuals think you have to be able to just see the bigger world see the bigger picture. I think that's a big part of, of leadership, I have a wonderful quote that I love. So I'm going to take a second and just tell you this quote, and it's from the late 1800s, which is interesting. And this is a guy who said, Make no little plans, they have no magic, disturbed man's blood, and probably themselves will not be realized, make big plans, aim high and hope and work. It just really resonates with me. And the guy who said that his name was Daniel Burnham, and he organized and was responsible for the World's Fair in Chicago back in 1893. I think his profession was architect or maybe even a landscape architect, it's so resonates, we can do small things, which lead to big things. But we have to somehow have this big vision, this big picture of where we want to go. And to me, it's not a problem to say we want to win a gold medal, we want to be world champions, the issue is doing way beyond with your group, how do we achieve that? What are the steps that allow us to say that, here we are today, down here, someplace here, we want to be a year from now, five years from now up here. So there's a process that's involved. And that's really the most important thing, setting the goal is easy, saying I want to win a gold medal, I want to be world champion, I want to win my league, I want to whatever convincing your players convincing the group, there's a process that allows you to achieve that. [PB3]
And also understanding sometimes we could run out of time, we might be on this path. And the path is longer than the moment when that goal was available to us. And so you might fail, you might fail. And I think that's part of being a great leader, you have to be willing to fail, you have to be willing to miss that mark. And it simply means we ran out of time, we didn't adjust our intermediate steps effectively enough, maybe I wasn't good enough to teach you or to manage the process, or I think all those things are okay. And you know, the effort, the process is probably more valuable than I achieved that goal. [PB4]
And I know sometimes we achieve this goal, and we throw our hands up and go out what else is there to do. I'm done, you know, my life has peaked. I'm 30 years old, or I'm 40 years old or something, that would be the saddest part, I think it never scared me, or it never intimidated me to say, Hey, this is a pretty audacious goal, because there has to be a process. And if you can't create the process, then the goal is meaningless anyway. And so it doesn't have much resonance. And it's not, you're not going to connect with your group that to me is is just part of the issue here.
Paul Barnett 12:58
Doug, I want to talk to you about missing the mark. But first, I want to talk about sure hitting the mark, because you win the gold medal and the team just go on an amazing run. And a lot of it is on the back of some innovation that you bring in. I'm not a deep volleyball expert. But I understand there is innovation in the way the team is attacked and defended and passed. And you talked about the roles that players undertook in that team. And they go on this run, and they win the Triple Crown, the Olympic gold medal, the World Cup medal and the World Championships. And just building on what you were saying then about the long term plan, the pie in the sky, I'm wondering what this experience and the many others you've had over your career have taught you about the balance between this strategy, this big picture thinking and the tactical execution of today.
Doug Beal 13:42
I've never been able to specifically articulate the difference between strategy and tactics as well as I think some other people do. So I'm talking from the perspective that strategy is a bigger picture issue in tech are the unique ways that we are implementing some broader strategy, a couple of things occur to me, there are two really challenging objectives. One is to reach some high high goal to change the dynamic of the group that you start with the team. And the second one is to maintain that level over some period of time.
I think most coaches would say great teams are great over time, and that lots of teams that are not great, have risen up and won a competition or have a short period of time when they're really good. And frankly, in today's world, I think with I guess the movement of players and the amount of money and resources that are available, it's even harder to maintain a group to achieve at a high level over time, and we don't see it very often. Maybe we've never seen it very often. And so it's unique in that the team that that we started with, really was probably the best team in the world from sometime in late 1983 through rue 89, something like that, because won a second gold medal, and probably with one or two very small modifications would have won a third straight in 92. We did some nice things to maintain in an evolving world milieu, I guess a core group of players a commitment to the team objectives to be able to fulfill the strategy and the tactics. I guess we're how do we adapt to an ever changing environment, players want flexibility, players come and go, there are injuries, there are other outside influences that distract, you don't have as much control over the life of players as we did. One of the big examples I use regularly is one of the years in leading updated for we played more than 100 international matches, nobody even comes close to that in today's world, there are too many competing opportunities. And we probably trained over 10,000 hours that year. Again, nobody can do that right now. And I'm not sure if there was ever even good back then. But to make that leap from where we were as a team and where the sport was, and where the mentality of the players were the expectations to get to this higher level, the strategy had to be implementing these tactics, we had to make a lot of change, I think and I still believe that. And I think I honestly think most of the players even believe it now and maybe be grudgingly at the time.
What's that famous phrase, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things that fail over and over. So change, when you have this big goal, these big strategies, to me is just, of course, we have to change, we have to rethink everything. And part of that was how we trained how many hours we put in how many matches we played, and how we played the game. You know, at the time that I was a young coach and starting out the Soviet Union. Now Russia was really a dominant team, and their culture in the sport far exceeded ours. And so we had to figure a new way, the Japanese were really a powerhouse at the time, a lot of the other European, Eastern European at the time, Cuba was enormously good. And they were doing things collectively very differently than we did. And so I don't know, we just had to say, We're Americans, there are things embedded in our culture in our society that allow us to do some things. And there's a whole bunch of things that we can't do that don't work in our society, in our culture. So how do we get really good? How do we make changes, we rethought the game, I think in some pretty interesting and creative ways that allowed us to be good. And it influenced the sport, I think, in a really positive way, which I'm pleased about and allowed this team to be good, because other teams tried to do what we did. But it's really hard to do that we didn't try to do things like the Japanese, like the Soviets, like the Bulgarians, like the Cubans, we tried to do things differently. And again, you have to risk falling on your face and looking foolish, and doesn't always work. But it sure did for those years, and I think it's gone on to make the US as an anomaly. We're a world volleyball power. [PB5]
Without a professional league, what we do have is a really robust NCAA collegiate environment that for some years, quite a few wasn't recognized by the rest of the world as much as it was in this country. It's a remarkable alternative to the professional leagues that exist all around the world today, and we're starting to get some professional volleyball, especially on the women's side, a little bit on the men's side. And I think there's every reason to believe that the US is going to continue to dominate in Men and Women's International volleyball and even beach I think, in significant part because of our collegiate environment that feeds downward into clubs and high school, etc. And, and is pretty think has proven to be pretty successful, and maybe in some ways, more impactful than the professional model that the rest of the world sort of uses with a few other exceptions.
Paul Barnett 19:27
I'd like to talk to you in a minute actually, about the success you've had when you moved into the CEO role in cross beach para and floor volleyball. But maybe just one more question around your coaching style if I could, because there's a quote I found from you and part of it caught my attention and I'll read it to you before I ask the question. You say I believe less is more. I don't think coaches should spend a whole lot of time talking to try to convince their players how smart they are. I think you've convinced them by what you do, and how you interact with people largely One on one. That was the last part that caught my eye. And I wanted to ask you, why is this one on one concept, so important to you, when dealing with a team and trying to improve their dynamics,
Doug Beal 20:12
mostly, what I'm talking about there is that it's very challenging for a coach to relate the head coach to relate to every individual the same way successfully make that connection, it's much easier if you're willing to acknowledge that some of your players are going to have a better connection to an assistant coach for several or maybe the team trainer, or maybe the team manager, or maybe the staff person, or maybe any number of people that you may have around the team, maybe some administrator. And I don't think it's absolutely essential for every player on the team to feel that they have this direct connection to the head coach, I think coaches do tend to, especially young coaches, to want to impress their team with what they know. And I'm in charge, I'm the leader. And the most effective way to change motor behavior is to put players in a position with the exercises that you're doing in practice, and giving them appropriate feedback without stopping the drill, getting everybody to come together, which you see commonly and sort of pontificating to the team. And I see it a lot when I visit gyms, or training situations. And the older I get. And the more I see, the more I'm impressed with those coaches who can keep the training going, provide effective feedback with minimal stoppages of action. [PB6]
And certainly, we're not talking about two or three or four hours of nonstop action that's pretty debilitating. There's all kinds of stoppages, the game itself provides all kinds of stoppages, and that we don't have to spend a huge amount of time convincing players how smart we are the one on one interactions, during a drill during an exercise, calling attention to decision making, and what creates a volleyball or a sport IQ is hugely impactful.
And I'm talking about a broad generalization here that is going to change if you're dealing with 10 year olds versus 16 year olds versus 25 year olds, and certainly it'll experience and the environment that you're coaching in makes, there's not one size that fits all, but the coach doesn't have to be the king, the coach doesn't have to be the the all powerful wizard of Oz, I guess, the coach has to worry about the entire environment, we coach people, they're all different. One size doesn't fit all, a huge part of being successful, I think, is understanding how to treat individuals uniquely within the environment. Now we call it the culture that I've created in my world. And if that culture is a good one, whatever that whatever that means good is a hard definition here, it's going to have a role for every person, the staff included, and sometimes the players are going to relate to the assistant coach or the manager or people I've mentioned, much better than the head coach. And that's, that could be a personality issue. That could be a background issue. That could be any number of things that influence how you and I might relate. I think it's important for the coach to know their strengths. But it's even more important for the coach to know where they need assistance to smooth out how they affect every individual. [PB7]
And it's not always perfect. It's a hard question. It's an interesting question to try to deal with I just the best interactions are trying to figure out how do I make the player make the best decision, the right decision within my understanding of what the game how the game should look for me?
Paul Barnett 24:23
Let me follow it up with maybe a question that's a little bit easier than that was tough, 100 games as a player, gold medals as a coach. And then there's a third act and the third axes, he was the CEO of USA volleyball. And what's amazing is more success follows this time, not just in volleyball, but in beach volleyball, and I believe it's called sitting or pair of volleyball as well all three areas. Now, as you rightly pointed out areas where the USA wins multiple medals. What's the key differences between being a head coach and a CEO?
Doug Beal 24:58
I'm not sure There is a lot of difference. Honestly, there's a certain side to being a CEO, where you have to know governance and finances and operations, and compliance issues, etc, all of which can be gained externally, I guess I would say there's much more commonality, then there is differences in its simplest form, or the simplest way to answer it is find really good people. empower those people, and make sure that their vision and their ultimate objectives are aligned with yours, or that you have convinced them, your objectives are their objectives, and then support them, but leave them alone and find good people identify their role, communicate that role, and then encourage them to take that and run as far as they could challenge me to rein you in. challenge me to say, Oh, we don't have the money for that, or I don't know how we're gonna get that. Something like that. [PB8]
And I think we did pretty well. I'm, I say this to a lot of people, you're by far not the first one, I was a pretty good player. So I played on the US national team, I was by no means the star or the team or a remarkable player in the world. But I was a pretty good player. And I guess I always saw my role in the sport sort of continuing evolving. So I was a pretty good player, I think I was a better coach than I was a player, not just because we want a gold medal. But I but because I think we changed how we did things, I helped that happen. And because the people after me, did better. I've always thought that was a really important marker. Gosh, if I'm the peak, that's a problem. I haven't left things in a good situation. So I was a pretty good player, a better coach, I think I was an even better administrator, because I have the ability to see the big picture or I strive hard for that.
And I empower people or I believe I've empowered people. And I've made the the we much more important than the i One of the things I used to talk about in staff meetings is it's another quarter. Anybody ever said this, but it's amazing what you can accomplish. If you don't care who gets the credit, I really believe that I think it's really important. And in today's world much more than 30 or 40 years ago, that's a hard thing for coaches to deal with. Because the individual behavior has become so much more demonstrative. In sports, you see so much more, I guess I want to call it a little bit showboating. I guess it's more demonstrative behavior. People, individual players want to call attention to themselves, they scream and yell, raise their hand, if you look at almost any sport. 3040 years ago, you see very little of that very little demonstrative behavior. So it's much more part of our culture to draw attention to myself. And so that becomes more of a challenge. That's a challenge for the coaches. It's a challenge for the officials, referees, umpires, whatever, there's a lot more sort of in your face kind of behavior. [PB9]
One of the other things we used to talk about to the team is define for me what it means to be a great competitor. What does it mean to be a great competitor? It's not an easy question. And everybody will talk about I work hard, and I achieve great and I want to be good. One of the ways to be a great competitor is to respect your opponent and respect the sport, respect the environment. And there are lots of ways to do that. But I think understanding that maybe that's minimally, you should do that. I respect myself, certainly. But I respect my opponent and I respect the sport, I think, I hope I created an environment where I respected the organization, USA volleyball, I respected the Olympic world, and we wanted to create programs that attracted people to want to experience what volleyball has to offer, sitting Beach, now even snow, whatever, indoor, of course, I wanted everybody to be winners.[PB10]
I wanted every staff person to be a winner. So we just tried to be good and I and all the programs were we were involved with
Paul Barnett 29:18
Mark dumphy said his vision, work ethic, creativity and courage earned respect, from every aspect, and every level of sport. It's a great quote, such a powerful quote, no lovely thing for someone to say about you and you've worked beyond lovely. You've worked across so many layers of the game over so many years from the bottom all the way to the top. How do you maintain your energy as a leader?
Doug Beal 29:43
I've been passionate about volleyball since I got introduced to the sport when I was 10 years old and a fourth grade. I wish I could give you a great answer as to why something about the sport resonated with me. I never was tired of playing it just something clicked. It's something mystical. Maybe I consider Marv just one of the wonderful coaches in the world and incredible career at the national team level. Probably the most remarkable career. I don't know. I think in the relatively short time he coached the national team for four years. I don't know that he lost a tournament, I think he took the team that we developed and made it better and better and better. And of course, at Pepperdine, just terrific hit. So he's, he's one of those people that I alluded to earlier in a terrific line. And you hear this a lot. I think he's a better human being than he ever was a coach. So anyway, it's, it's beyond special that he would say things like that. So he's a great, great friend. I think we have this wonderful, wonderful culture in this country that I feel I've contributed to and feel a great part of that has been important for us. And I think there's so many things about volleyball that are even specially suited to today's world. There's this power, there's this finesse, there's this team where there's the sort of the non physical, direct physical confrontation, it's a game that is easy to understand, you're trying to get the ball back and forth over the net. I think it has so many elements. I love the International Federations, efforts to try to make it the premier family sport in the world. I think there's an opportunity there that we love about volleyball, it's great for the eight or nine or 10 year old, it's great for the 16 or 18 year old, it's great for the parents, the adults, I love the fact that there's this Mamasan volleyball in Japan and Mama net volleyball in Israel and pockets around the world where the sport resonates in a social environment. So I don't know, I'm always really interested in seeing new ventures for the sport, new ways to promote it. And, and certainly, I want it to be more, I guess, commercially viable around the world. I'd love to see bigger crowds and more television exposure. Probably every sport wants the same thing in this ever increasing sort of sports entertainment world, but I think volleyball has something really special. My passion is easy. I love seeing the way it's grown. I'm not sure any sport has grown more dramatically than volleyball over the last 30 or 40 years.
Paul Barnett 32:24
I'm going to ask this last question. Anyway, you I think you've already alluded to the answer, but I want to ask it directly and put you on the spot. Tremendous career player, coach administrator touched people all over the world and created growth in the sport, which is now as you rightly say, played in every corner, all around this wonderful globe. But what's the legacy that you hope you've left behind as a leader?
Doug Beal 32:48
sport and what impact I may have had and I feel pretty good about that. And I just I love where the sport is going. I think volleyball is special. I'm just grateful as I can be to have played whatever role I've played. It's been terrific for me, and I'm retired. I'm retired. I'm okay with that, too.[PB11]
Paul Barnett 34:19
Doug, it's been great chatting to you tonight. I appreciate you spending an hour with us talking about leadership and coaching. It's been a real masterclass and I wish you all the best for whatever challenges lay ahead.
Doug Beal 34:31
This was great. Thanks very much.