Hugh McCutcheon Edit

Sat, 3/5 6:27PM • 33:06

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coaching, people, athletes, winning, team, important, trust, volleyball, idea, life, responsibility, world, outcomes, moment, guiding principles, skiing, deal, bit, talk, teammates

SPEAKERS

Paul Barnett, Hugh McCutcheon

Paul Barnett 00:00

humor catchin Good morning, and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.

Hugh McCutcheon 00:04

Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Paul Barnett 00:06

Oh, I like hearing another voice from my part of the world. It's good to be with you a little bit today.

Hugh McCutcheon 00:11

Liyan, tivity. And Twain, yeah, nothing wrong with it. Very good.

Paul Barnett 00:14

Not at all. But I'm gonna start with something really simple here. Can you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today?

Hugh McCutcheon 00:21

Sure. I'm in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities Minnesota. So far, we've got the kids up, and they've got a day off school. So my wife and the kids are skiing today at a hill. It's about because there aren't too many mountains in Minnesota, and a hill, it's about 30 minutes away. I've been getting a few things done and with my inbox and get ready for this.

Paul Barnett 00:41

Well, I'm very thankful for you giving up some time skiing with the family to talk all things coaching with us. Thank you for that. Well, good. Here, I'm going to start by name checking some of the big name coaches that you've been involved with over the years, karma gown, Doug veal, and John Kessel. And that's just the name of you without all the other great coaches you've experienced at the Olympics. You've been to but I wanted to ask you from from this upclose experience you've had, what is it you think the great coaches do differently that sets them apart?

Hugh McCutcheon 01:12

I think the thing that's interesting is that they all probably play to a particular strength. And it's that strength that's probably gotten them as far as is it? Did we all well, at least in in my world, we like to talk about generalized specialists, people that are good at lots of things, but they're great at one or two. And I think that list, I think, yeah, there's people that are good at lots of things within the coaching realm, but they've had a few strings, a few strings to their bow that have really set them apart.[PB1]

Paul Barnett 01:37

So let's talk about you then, because you've got this bachelor's degree in physical education, and you've got a master's degree in exercise science. But what I wanted to do is ask you knowing what you know. Now, after all these years coaching and all the Olympics, you've been to, what do you wish they had taught you back at university that they didn't?

Hugh McCutcheon 01:56

Or there's not too much, I think probably the biggest thing is just when you look back, and you think, what advice would I give my younger self, etc, etc. It's probably just as much as we want to believe that this coaching gig is kind of algorithmic, it's not the same inputs, don't leave the same outputs. And that's not season to season, that's probably day to day. It's just you've got human beings that you're dealing with. And they come with all of the frailties of the human condition, right? Everyone's got baggage. It's just some people suitcases are bigger than others. And so to that end, day to day, your job as the coach has to be this consistent source of knowledge and information and connection, and then trying to I guess, take your guiding principles or whatever it is that's formulating your method and apply that in the way that's required on any given day or week or season. [PB2] So I think that's that's kind of the key to it all. Yeah.

Paul Barnett 02:46

So I want to get into these guiding principles of yours and these philosophies you've got but maybe just if we could build towards that a little bit, because I'd like to start with your first experience head coaching, which was in Austria, you took over the Vienna hot volleys, first season, lightning strikes, you win the inter Liga, the Austrian cup, and the champion the league championship all in the same year, it's not a bad way to start. If you cast your mind back to that gig that you had in Austria, what was some of the first things you did to put you on the road to success?

Hugh McCutcheon 03:21

Well, it was a very important formative experience, no doubt, it was a lot of work. You're talking about my my academic preparation. One of the things I also did was an MBA, because when I decided that I wanted to get into coaching after I did, because the exercise science thing was was geared more towards a possible career in academia. And I was coaching. I started coaching then as an assistant coach with the men's team at BYU, and I was going to school. And so I was kind of like, well, academics is great, but actually, this coaching thing has got a little more stuff to it connects your head and your heart. I like that idea. And once I started thinking, well, maybe I'm going to get into coaching. Well, now we're all an ankle sprain away from unemployment. So given that it's a more physical vocational field, and I'll tie this back to Vienna, given that it's a little more fickle, I thought, well, I better have a real world qualification. So I was able to do an MBA while I was coaching as well, obviously, the parallels between coaching and management are really strong. So that means that when I got to the ENA and now I'm in the with this deal, and I'm coaching players that are not too much younger than myself, then we're playing a Champions League, we're doing it with stuff, it was a lot, it really came down to this idea of like, hey, I can just do the best I can do. And I really made sure that I committed to that, that idea of best effort that I was going to try to just give it everything I've got. And yeah, I'll be good enough I run but if I can control as many of the variables as I can, then at least I will feel okay about it, regardless of the outcomes.

Paul Barnett 04:45

So it was a bet you setting yourself up and focusing on your effort? Primarily. Yeah. We then started engaging with the team. Is that what happened?

Hugh McCutcheon 04:55

Well, it started with this idea that I understand as the coach I'm going to have have the chance to set the temperature in the room. And if we're going to ask them to work hard, because we knew the expectations for this team were extremely high. You might even say unrealistic. But they were extremely high. And so it was like, Well, hey, if we're gonna have a chance at achieving any of this, then I'm going to ask them to work really hard, I've need to make sure that I'm working hard as well,[PB3]

Paul Barnett 05:20

you I've got a great quote from you, where you say trust is the currency that makes all high functioning teams work. And so I wanted to ask someone's listening, what would you say are the critical steps for developing the type of trust that people expect to see in high performing teams?

Hugh McCutcheon 05:36

Well, I think there's, there's three types really, that you'd want to speak to, I mean, three definitions of trust, I think, first and foremost, the athlete has to trust themselves, his skill set, they want to be able to be in those big moments and know that they've got the skills required to be able to execute those moments versus hope. And so to that end, as a coach, being able to help them to develop that fundamental mastery is a really important part of them developing trust within themselves that they can trust their game.

And then second of all, I think in team sports anywhere they go to trust your teammates. And so I'm a big believer in giving the team relationships, some boundaries, and some structure. So I think it's important that teammates friendly, for example, but we don't need everyone to be best friends. And in fact, the idea that we would all be best friends is probably a little at the very least naive, but we can be respectful and inclusive, and direct and honest, and in all of these things that I think are really important for developing trust, because there's some authenticity in those relationships that we need. And just to take that a little bit further extension, it doesn't mean that we're not friends, it just means that we're not requiring it. And I think in a lot of teams, especially in my coaching experience with women, there's kind of this need for required friendship, or at least expressions of required friendship. So putting your arms around each other, or holding hands and timeout or something like that. And it's just like, look, we want to operate in truth, it turns out that on our teams, the connections are strong, and there's a lot of really great friendships that evolved, but being able to take the, I guess, the pressure off, or at least the expectation off that we're going to have to be a certain way with certain people that we can be good teammates, which to me is a much bigger responsibility than in the college world, you get one to four years to be a good teammate, you can be friends for the rest of your life. But honoring that commitment means you can have some of the more challenging conversations when you have to have them between teammates, like there's some accountability pieces and some commitment to excellent pieces that we might want to say that maybe if we've got our little friend hats on, we might not want to have those difficult conversations for fear of judgment or grudge or retribution or whatever. Anyway, that's trust within the team.

And then finally, they've got to trust you as the coach. And to be a coach that I guess cultivates trust, you have to be trustworthy. So like I said, a credible source of knowledge and information about your sport, do you have character and integrity? Are you consistent in terms of your emotional control, all that kind of stuff. And I think, as I said, or as you said, right, trust is the currency that makes it work. But I think you need trust in all of those realms to really make it job to really make it happen. And as the coach, of course, like we said, you've got a responsibility, you set the temperature in the room, so you being trustworthy, and you really investing in those relationships, and, and really caring about those in terms of as coaches, we're service providers, right, and the service that we provide is to help these people become the best they can be. Well, you've really got to take that responsibility. Seriously.[PB4]

Paul Barnett 08:32

You said something really interesting there, you you said, emotional control, then I'm wondering, what in your mind is the link between emotional control and heightened trust?

Hugh McCutcheon 08:44

Well, I think it's really hard for an athlete if you walk into the gym, or the walk onto the field, or the pitch or whatever. And when you're in and every day, you've got to figure out well, what's it going to be today? Are we gonna get happy coach or sad coach or is giddy or angry or whatever, I just think we all have a responsibility if you if you coach you got across the line, when you get to practice or whatever it is, or the match, no matter what stuff you've got going on, and we've all got stuff going on, you've got to be able to step in and say hey, I'm going to do my job and help these athletes or help our team to, to win or whatever it is, and, and be able to control that versus let whatever, good day bad day you're having somehow dictate how you're going to be in those moments. Because as you've seen, I've got to spend a lot of time with a lot of great people. And one of them was a guy named Ken revisit a renowned sports psychologist whose work has been mainly in baseball, but he worked with us a little bit with our 2008 group. Well, actually quite a bit in that 2007 2008. And we were great friends until he unfortunately passed away a few years ago, that Ken would say, Hey, if you if you can control yourself, you can control your performance. And I think that's a really big deal. And I think there are very few coaches that want to understand that connection between we're going to have have emotional responses to the moment of competition. Or maybe we're going to have emotional responses and practice. But we also have the ability to respond to that response. And if we let our emotions kind of dictate our actions, then we're going to be on this inevitable roller coaster of performance. But if we can say, hey, I get it that I'm upset right now. But I can take a breath, and I can reset, and that me being upset doesn't have to dictate what I do next, my actions are the things that I get to really use as the defining characteristic of what I'm going to do in my sporting realm. So that ability to create that space, I guess, between emotion and action is something that I'm a big believer,[PB5]

Paul Barnett 10:37

and was it something you've always been good at? Or is it a skill you've developed as you've gone along?

Hugh McCutcheon 10:42

I think it's been a work in progress. Because when we're young, we're all prone to this idea of even something as simple as aggression. Like we want to be aggressive, but I'm not sure we do, right? I mean, that's a negative emotional response. But what about being assertive where it's an intention, and it's a proactive choice to engage in the moment, and I get these probably semantics, but those kinds of things, I think, are real. So over time, I think I've realized as the coach, my ability to stay in control probably has a big impact on our athletes ability to stay in control. And I don't mean that I'm Geppetto, pulling the strings, I'm just saying, like, I'll find out they're losing it, then what kind of example is that. And more often than not, in the big moments, if I can get them to take a breath or to stand tall or to just give them a little bit of tactical information to get him to kind of decompress and get back to somehow them being in charge of the moment versus the moment being in charge of them. I think that's part of my job[PB6] queue in

Paul Barnett 11:39

2005, you take over the USA men's team, and you write a mission statement. And if I've got it right, the objective was to be the best we could be with the big games. Now that I know about the NBA, I can see why you wrote a mission statement. But of course, that team did go on to win the gold medal in 2008. And I wanted to ask you, what is this process of going from mission statement to resolve teach you about visualization and goal setting?

Hugh McCutcheon 12:08

It was pretty important, really. And I understand I'm saying that with the benefit of knowing the outcome. But I think when you're trying to achieve something significant, you need not just Well, how about this, it just wanting it isn't enough, right? I mean, you need some clarity, as well as conviction. And the thing that that document, Davis was the opportunity to not only express the goal, but also to express a lot of the behaviors or at least behavioral expectations that were going to be around that. And even to some extent, a little bit of a vision statement woven in there about, you know, who we were going to become in terms of how we were going to manage the the moment of competition. And there were two things that that happened that I thought immediately changed the way we were able to operate. One was this idea of clarity, right? This is what we're trying to achieve. But to there was this instant accountability mechanism that was built in and and so once everybody had signed off to this idea of and we've probably didn't have any right to say, winning the Olympic gold in 2008, not that we were Dogmeat. I mean, we were a good team, but there were probably seven or eight teams that could have been vying for it. And then main teams would have been Brazil and Russia who were really good and Italy and any number of teams that worthy of saying that, but once everyone had signed off on it, now we had this accountability piece, where if we're coming into the gym on Monday morning, and you've been outraging all weekend, and you're not super crisp, well, there's a pretty big space between what you're saying you want to do and what you're actually doing. So it just was we were able to get people to say, hey, you know, what, if we are trying to be the best in the world at what we do, or how about this, if we are trying to become the best we can be with the hope of achieving this outcome, then we've got to act as if. And if we're not then at the very least, where we're being seen as duplicitous.[PB7]

Paul Barnett 13:58

He talked about accountability and pushing it onto the athletic comes through a lot in the articles I've read about you, or the video that I've seen about you as well. But I want to do explore the inner workings of accountability if we could and I want to talk to you about self talk. It's now an important part of any athlete's mental skills development. And I'd be really keen to know particularly as you're also a father, how you go about developing positive, healthy self talk in people.

Hugh McCutcheon 14:27

I think it's not just a sports thing. I think it's a life thing. And I think more than ever, in our world of comparison that that everybody chooses to engage in the narrative is inside your head is more important than f. So first and foremost, we understand that most of these athletes have bought into this false narrative that that somehow anything less than perfection is not worth celebrating, and even when they win the race or the middle or whatever. But if they did something wrong, then somehow those required moment of self flagellation Whatever we're gonna call it. So getting them to understand the importance of celebrating the successes, and allowing maybe the coaches to bring to attention. Some of their inefficiencies is a good place to start. But also, just that very word right there. We don't talk about right or wrong in our gym, we talk about effective and efficient methods were efficient is connected to biomechanical efficiency, which leads to repeatability and all kinds of things, right, but but just that idea of like, Hey, can we just see outcomes, for example, as outcomes and not assign an emotion to it or a value to it, but just see it as information and understand that that probably allows better learning and more importantly, more effective learning? Whereas if you get into that whole cycle of I'm frustrated? Well, yeah, I mean, don't get angry get better, right? I mean, when you're frustrated, you're not in a rational space, you're not able to take information and process it and make changes. You're just pissed. So that's the deal, right? Can you can you get off of the rather self indulgent thing of like, kind of, hey, I'm so angry, because I'm not getting it. And it's no, okay. Yeah, change is hard. So just accept that lean into it, and just choose to see it for what it is grasses, green sky is blue. You did this? And we want you to do their simple. Well, simple say.[PB8]

Paul Barnett 16:21

I was gonna follow that up, actually, because you're coaching University, the minute and you must have these 18 year olds roll up. This is new concepts to them? Or maybe it's not, maybe they've been in such strong programs that they arrive ready to go. But yeah, I mean, isn't classroom based? Or is it? It

Hugh McCutcheon 16:39

is I mean, we tell them like volleyball is probably going to be the hardest class you have, you know, I don't mean that like dum dum, dum, I mean, we're not setting them up for anything other than just the reality of like, hey, we understand that we have a responsibility to teach, and we can coach to right. But that's on the weekends, the other five days of the week, you've got a lot of teaching to do. But they also have a responsibility to learn. And so we try to help them to learn how to learn which when you think about it, as the most powerful lesson, anybody is going to be equipped with

Paul Barnett 17:06

one of your players deli, Santana said of you, He cares more about your life, outside volleyball, that plays a big part in wanting to play for him and wanting to get better when you're out there. And the way he coaches, he even changed the way I breed that how detailed he is. So there's a couple of follow ups here. One is I'd really like to know how to breathe better. But perhaps we could just start with why is care so important, obviously, to you as a coach,

Hugh McCutcheon 17:35

I think life for most people is complicated, right? These kids come in with it, I use the words, kids, it's probably sounds a little bit at the very least pedantic or something. But they are 18. Even though when I was 18, I was pretty sure I had it all figured out. Even though I know I didn't know, but but it come in. And there's a lot of complications, mainly around the idea of managing expectations, because they have been obviously extremely successful before they get to us. And they're going to have to learn to deal with failure in lots of different ways when they come to us because the club High School Volleyball world is great, but it's not the same as the college world and, and I see our responsibility, at least collegiately is to prepare them for what's to come. And there's probably three paths to that as a college volleyball environment. One is obviously we want to be about competitive excellence. So we want to step on the court and try to win of course, every time we can, but it's not about winning, it's about being the best you can be. Second, of course, is academic excellence. And these are in no particular order. Second is academic excellence. We're a college volleyball team. So you come to not only to play, but you get your degree. And for many of our athletes, they hope to go on and, and play professionally or go to the Olympics and dally got to do both. But as much as they believe that's kind of the plan A, it's probably the plan B the degrees, the plan a I mean, that's what most people are going to use. And then we also have this responsibility, at least I think to be about personal development to take on this pretty formative time in their lives and help them to learn a lot about life. Because the sport one of the great things about sport is you can learn life lessons in sport without incurring the same kind of collateral damage you might get if you screw up in life. So I think that holistic approach to development is really important in my current role. Now I get it when you're in the Olympic space, it's four years to be good for two weeks to hope to be good for the last two hours. And it's a lot about winning and getting on the podium and hardware and all that stuff. I get that. But like I see it with a college volleyball team. So we care about these people, not just as competitive commodities. They're not just athletes, they're young, growing, evolving entities that we need to help shape and develop so that when they leave us they're ready for whatever the next chapter is.[PB9]

Paul Barnett 19:40

Well, obviously you've been somewhat successful if one of your ex players is willing to say that about you. But

Hugh McCutcheon 19:46

to do that, you know,

Paul Barnett 19:48

you're moving on actually to leadership because one of the interesting things I heard you talk about when I was preparing for this interview was adaptive leadership and why you think it's so important Could you describe how this influences your coaching?

Hugh McCutcheon 20:03

Sure. The the idea of adapting is that again, going back to this idea of guiding principles, well, at least in this day and age, it's not about I say, jump and they say how Hi, right it's is the coach or the teacher or whatever, I believe we have a responsibility to try to connect our content to the learner, John Wooden gave a great quote on this, right? If they haven't learned you haven't taught. And I think that idea of taking 100% responsibility for your athletes outcomes, and trying to help them to figure out how to be better is a good place to start. So to that end, as much as I would like to think that these 18 year olds that I'm currently dealing with to 21 have the emotional or mental range to be able to adapt to whatever it is we're throwing out there. I think that's probably a little bit unrealistic. What I know is that I've been around the block a few more times than they have. So can I use my experience to find different ways to connect our information to the learner in a way that's going to work for them versus worrying about how it's going to work for me? Now, that's not that's kind of a band don't break thing, right? That's not saying that I'm compromising the way that I'm going to go about it or the principles that are driving I methods. It's just I'm finding ways to apply them that work best for the people that I'm working with[PB10] . You.

Paul Barnett 21:18

I've heard you talk about high performing teams, and how it's the little things like asking your teammates if they need something when you leave the table that really define these teams. But I've also heard you say that high performing teams can contain no more than 1.5 Idiots, which is one of the best quotes I've ever come across when I've been preparing for these interviews. So firstly, could you explain why you believe this? And possibly Secondly, have you got any tips on handling idiots?

Hugh McCutcheon 21:49

I think we went with knuckleheads. But But anyways, I think all teams have like we said, Right? There's people and there's there's elements of dysfunction that come with it. And so the the 1.5 thing was just talking about the fact that I think you can have one person on your team. And ideally, everyone's cool and high functioning, everyone gets going. But those teams are rare, right? But there's one person who's probably extremely talented adds value competitively. But you know, maybe off the court, or even on the court, it's not quite right, the half is like, hey, maybe today you're going to be a knucklehead, maybe tomorrow, I'm going to be a knucklehead. But once we get to knuckleheads, well, then all of a sudden, we got to click, and they're going to start recruiting other people to that world, and then it gets to be more complicated than I think you want it to be. So that's the one and a half. And generally the one, if the rest of the team is high functioning, they'll either kind of work into that space, or they'll find a way to self select doubt. But generally, they when they don't have another person to connect with on that level, then they generally they try to work their way into the fold. And it all works out. All right.[PB11] So so that's the one and a half thing. And yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've got any questions about that. But that's been my experience there. I

Paul Barnett 22:58

remember reading Phil Jackson, say something about, I'm going to get the quote a little wrong. But he said, you know, the trick with the bulls was to make sure that the five guys who weren't playing didn't get together and distract the five guys that were playing a similar sort of area that he was picking up on. But in all seriousness, how do you go about managing disruptive influences? Do you give multiple chances? Do you sit them down and tell them once and then two strikes, they're out? Is there any particular method you found more impactful than others?

Hugh McCutcheon 23:26

Really, I try to give as much help as I can, and bring their behaviors to their attention, I think that's part of it is a lot of times people get away with stuff because no one wants to have the difficult conversation for fear of they quit, or they leave or they do something. But I think, again, this we'll call it dysfunction or whatever, it can be a diminishing return, maybe there's a short term, degree of competitive success. And you probably tolerate that until you can either change it or replace it. But I think about people that have some of these dysfunctional behaviors, I think it's possible to get them from dysfunction to function, but it's going to be hard to get them to be great. So there also has to be some investment, getting people that are functional to being great, so that you can make up some of the difference then, but I think I think that's the part of it that we're we're all faced with is can you have those tough, difficult conversations when you need to have and that's why trust becomes this really, really critical part of it. Because then you can say to him, Hey, I know we're talking about whatever it is you're for on passing. But now we also have to talk about some of these unquote behaviors and see, hey, when you do this, this is what it looks like what these the ripples that you're creating, and then it's up to them to change or not right? They'll either say, Okay, I'll try and do it or they won't and then you got to give them enough rope. They have to pull themselves up or they don't they'll either try to change or they'll self select out.[PB12]

Paul Barnett 24:46

So you have these great period your coach to the gold medal in Beijing. You have a short break and then you back coaching this time the USA women, you lead them to the silver medal at the 2012 Olympics in London. I wanted to ask you about Winning silver after winning gold, and how this shaped your view on achievement going forward.

Hugh McCutcheon 25:06

Yeah, it was a very atypical coaching move, I guess to go from coaching men and then start coaching. I've never coached women before. And surprisingly, it's not that different. And I say that with a degree of sarcasm, but still, volleyball and volleyball is one of the few sports that changes the constraints of the competition environment to deal with the difference in height and power of the athletes. The thing that was I thought cool about that opportunity was the idea that we could coach take this very successful paradigm of coaching that had been established and developed over over years on the main site and take it to the women. So it's kind of cool that there isn't so much men's and women's volleyball now there's just volleyball in the US and the systems and the in the techniques and the stuff is not too dissimilar. So when we got to their 2012 year, the team was ranked number one in the world, we were undefeated, we hadn't lost a match going into the Olympic final. And Brazil played a really good match and, and they won, we beat them the last six times we played him, I think it's probably the very least challenging to beat the world number two teams seven times in a row or any times in a row, kudos to them. And yeah, there was some opportunities for us to when you look back at a while would have could have should have maybe a little bit of that. But overall, having seen both sides of that match, I think, has been also a unique experience. But I think it's okay, you get to that match, you have a chance to go to the mountaintop and you do wonderful and you don't and yeah, it stings. But I think the biggest thing was, when I looked at the body of work, we were ranked number one in the world and we got second we'd won the there's an annual event in international women's volleyball, it's now called VNL. But at that time, it was called the Grand Prix. We want it the last three years in a row, we'd had great success at international tournaments. And so it was an out day. And it's I think it's important again, we obviously hope to be the last team standing. But if we can't celebrate the body of work, then it feels like somehow we just let that one moment define the last four of our lives, we'd be forced four years of our lives, we'd be doing ourselves a fairly significant to service. So yeah, no one wants to lose that match. And it stings. But hey, it's a silver medal. And if we can't celebrate that, if whatever it was that year, let's say it was 30. And one or something is a bad year then sure feels like again, we're doing ourselves in the team a pretty significant disservice.

Paul Barnett 27:21

You You say, we all want to try to become the best version of ourselves. That's what was driving me. And so I wanted to ask, how do you approach development as a coach, as an educator, as a leader, to ensure that you keep moving towards the best version of yourself?

Hugh McCutcheon 27:38

I've been fortunate enough to work with lots of good people. And so that makes it much easier. But just being in an environment where you can be challenged and stimulated and still feel that you're on this path that you're progressing as a coach, I think is really important. Well, how about this, occasionally, we'll have a coaching job open, and I get lots of people that will write and, or email or whatever it is, and they'll say, hey, I really want to come, I think it'd be wonderful. I'm going to learn so much and all this stuff. And in my head, I'm thinking, look, I don't want someone that's going to come and yeah, maybe they'll learn from here. But I want someone that's going to teach me I want someone that can add value to this endeavor by bringing a different perspective. Because as we know, where everyone's thinking the same, no one's thinking very much. So just this idea of being with people that are going to keep you honest, I guess and and maybe more importantly, that also, if we're talking about similarities, then then similarly committed to the idea of this magical games concept that became so popular through British Cycling and all the rest of it. But that idea of, hey, we can year to year we can continue to evolve and our and our process that we're not this fixed and sit entity because I'd be the first to admit that we don't have it all figured out. I think we've got some good things in place. But we can always get better.[PB13]

Paul Barnett 28:52

Here. You say that you want to be a good husband, a good father, a good son, and try to be a good coach. So that's four goods in there. Yeah. How do you bring balance to your life so that you can try and be good in these many different roles? Well,

Hugh McCutcheon 29:06

I think one of the potential pitfalls of our vocation is that coaching becomes who you are versus what you do. And once you jump that shock, then it's really hard because then your ego gets way too involved, the team's wins become your wins the team's losses, become your losses, and somehow your coaching acumen or whatever you want to call it is on trial every time you step out onto the floor versus this idea of like, Hey, I'm gonna invest in the significant relationships in my life because ultimately, those things are important and real and they need to be preserved. And we can maybe talk about work life balance as an extension of those relationships if you want to have a follow up there but but the most important thing is I need to be able to say hey, I'm a coach. I'm someone that coaches versus call me coaching. Call me Susan. I don't care but don't have to call me coach right? My name is Hugh that's what I'll respond. too, but the most important thing is understanding that this is, this is what I do. It's not Hawaii,

Paul Barnett 30:05

any particular methods of review, like you do an annual review and how you're going in these roles. Is it more in the moment? I believe you've got quite young kids. They're not.

Hugh McCutcheon 30:14

They're living in nine now. So they're getting, they're getting a little bit more self contained. But yeah, still some great stuff, no doubt. So I think in terms of evaluation, after we compete, after we practice, we always will have some follow up, we'll try to chat a little bit about practice for the week, for example, and each day, we'll we'll have a little chat about how to go, what were some of the things we could be better at how did the athletes respond to this, if we need athlete feedback, we got no problem going in there. Again, trust allows us to do that. For me personally, we just again, commit to this idea of best effort, try to have honest conversations as a staff about ways that we can improve our process. And sometimes that happens organically. Other times, we try to set it up and have a postseason reflection or an annual thing over the summer when we've got a bit more time. But yeah, we try to review our keys, our our methods, what are some of the things we can be better at, we're open to those conversations, even though they can be difficult at times. But it's better to have that and somehow just think that because we're winning more than we're losing that we've got it all figured out winning to mask a lot of problems. [PB14] You You've

Paul Barnett 31:19

been very, very generous with your time. And I'm sure the family will be back at some point from skiing. So I'll probably just ask one final question. If I couldn't, before I ask it, I'd like to preface it with a quote that I have from you. And you say, I think our job is really as service providers. And it's tempting for coaches to put themselves in the middle of it. Because we do get a lot of control. And we do have some influence and power. But that seems irresponsible to me. We want to help these people be the best that they can be. And that's what we're here to do to enable their improvement and their development. So it's a great quote, it's a really powerful statement, I think about your philosophy, as a coach and as a leader. But to finish I just like to ask you, in the distant, distant future, when you do hang up the whistle, what's the legacy, you hope you've left as a coach?

Hugh McCutcheon 32:08

In terms of legacy, I would hope that, that the life lessons as much as competitive successes we've enjoyed and winning the championships and the medals and all the rest of stuff, I would hope that the athletes could feel that there was genuine care and concern for their overall well being and that they could apply some of these lessons learned and their lives and maybe in the lives of other people that they got to influence that we could set up this kind of cycle of functional coaching or whatever it is that we could get people to consider that maybe helping others is not a bad thing to do, and that when we do help out others, we actually end up helping ourselves.[PB15]

Paul Barnett 32:49

I think helping others is a great place to finish. So human catch, and thank you so much for your time today. I've been stalking you for a few months now. And I'm really happy that I didn't give up because it was great chatting to you. I really appreciate it.

Hugh McCutcheon 33:03

Likewise, it was a pleasure. Thanks, Paul.