Paul Barnett

0:02

Dr David Turner, good evening. How are you? Welcome back for the umpteenth time to the great coaches podcast.

David Turner

0:10

Thank you. Good morning from Cambridge. Well,

Paul Barnett

0:13

yeah, there you go. You've stolen my first question. Where are you in the world, and what have you been up to today?

David Turner

0:18

Okay, well, I'm an academic nomad. At the moment, I've been walking around the building at university trying to find an empty room, which I finally found because it's getting towards the end of the Easter term, and everybody's very busy, and suddenly everybody's in. I'm usually here on my own. Well,

Paul Barnett

0:32

I'm glad you've found a little bit of space, because last year 2024 we did a great episode together on Pep Guardiola, and you took us through his story and what we can what we can learn from him, from both a leadership and a coaching point of view, and today, we're back with a coach who I don't know a lot about, and that's Joe Missoula. Perhaps we should just start with the obvious. Who is Joe Missoula, and why did you choose him to be the latest subject in your learning from legendary coaches project?

David Turner

1:08

Yeah, sure. So Joe Missoula is a pretty unlikely NBA championship winning head coach, so he's the current champion. Relatively inexperienced. He's young. He never played himself at professional level in basketball, so that draws your attention to him as a potential subject straight away. But then when you read stuff on social media about him, there was, there was a post where he's described as a genius, a sicko and weird, and that was by his own players, and then you start to think, Well, this guy could be a bit intriguing. So he's got an unexpected developmental pathway and an unusual coaching approach. One of the descriptions of him recently is he's got radical honesty, which makes him really interesting. Makes him Eddie a bit like Brian Clough used to be in football, but that's resulted already in the highest win percentage of any coach in NBA history after two seasons at the helm of the Boston Celtics. So I wanted to kind of explore some themes that might explain his astounding early career success. And then I wanted to explore because I usually look at legendary coaches who've got loads of books written about them, lots of stuff to access. Not true with Missoula, because he's only been there for a short space of time. So I wanted to think about he's a kind of rising star in coaching. And I wanted to think, well, what would he have to do to progress to fully recognized or confirmed legendary coaching status from here? So that's why I chose him.

Paul Barnett

2:34

So current NBA champion coach, 37 years old. How did he get to where he was? What? What took him there? Yeah,

David Turner

2:47

because I said unusual background. Didn't play professional basketball. Did play well at high school, got three state titles, went to university at West Virginia, and started off really well, but he had this shoulder injury in 2000 late, 2009 as I understand it. It's a shoulder injury that nobody had ever come back from at that point to play again, so he was unsure he'd ever play. They practiced hard. He had surgery, and he came back. When he came back, he was a little bit disappointing, and his attitude was a bit lax. He was arrested for domestic battery in a bar. He was suspended from playing by the coach. He got this phone call from a famous ex player from West Virginia, Jerry West, and this is what Missoula said about Jerry West. But what's interesting about this is it tells you a lot about Missoula as well. He said. The thing I remember about him is that he had a tough way of showing you that he loved you, but he was super, super competitive, and he really, really cared about you, and he showed it in a way that spoke to my language. So he credits that phone call from Jerry West as turning himself around, and he then ends up doing really well with the rest of his time and has impressive playing stats at West Virginia University. So his attitude and his abilities were questioned, but ultimately, he kind of maintained his self belief. So that made me think about coach's developmental journeys. There's a quote from Che Guevara that says, if you can find ways without any obstacles, it probably leads nowhere. So he's got this kind of rocky road, and it reminded me of something I wrote a few years back. I think it's called strength through adversity in sports coaching,

and it was about something called the B plus hypothesis. And this arose when I was researching sprint coaches, but basically, if I translate it to coaching, the hype B plus hypothesis is as follows, B plus athletes often make better coaches than a plus athletes because they've experienced adversity and they've worked their way through it. So I think that's an interesting idea. In the changing room of the New England Patriots and other Boston sports franchise, they had the following on the wall at one point. What comes easy won't last long. What lasts long won't come easy. And as a kind of more general thing we use in society, smooth seas never made for skilled sailors. So what I use that for, usually legendary coaches, is kind of a public talk. So I got my coaches at that point who attended, to stop and have a reflective question and a discussion, and I asked them, What adversity Have you experienced in your developmental journey that might help you better support people in this so I'm using this material, if you like, to try and get people to think about coaching. [PB1]

Anyway. Onwards with Missoula, a little bit so impressive stats at university, but he can't get a professional contract. Eventually he ends up taking coaching assistant roles at universities, and then he ends up leading at, I think it's Fairmont State. He's the lead coach for two years. So when he takes over at the Celtics, his only head coaching experience is at NCAA, Division Two, all right, so that's not great preparation taking over one of the most famous franchises in the NBA, but he had been selling its assistant coach for three years before he was unexpectedly catapulted into the head coach role because the head coach had been having a relationship with one of the support staff. So it was an unexpected climb into position. But by the end of 2324 season, he'd had two years head coach at Fairmont State collegiate and two years in the NBA, and he had a 73% win record from those four seasons, which is almost identical to pep when we started talking about the start I was at 72 so in 2324 Boston Celtics. This is the second season in charge. Boston Celtics had a 6418 regular season record, 16, three postseason run, and he secured the the first Celtics championship since 2008 this season so far, 24 74% win record. Started as favorites to retain that title, but they've had injuries, been inconsistent, and they're sitting third out of the two leagues, third seed overall in the US. But what I want to point out is last point here about his background in the coaching Missoula teams that he's head coached have consistently won seven out of 10 games across four and a half seasons. Now

Paul Barnett

7:25

it's an astonishing, astonishing rise. Was there a person, a sponsor, an individual who saw something in him and gave him that opportunity?

David Turner

7:38

Yes. Brad Stevens is the CEO of the Boston Celtics. I've profiled him as a coach as well in the past. He's he believes in Missoula. He's very aligned with Missoula. They're both strong Christian beliefs, etc. They both have a certain ideas about how you coach people. So I think he's an interesting figure. But I also wanted to kind of go into Missoula grounding influences, because I think his grounding influences are the things that keep him anchored in place. So I'm just going to hit some of those, if that's okay. So first of all, he comes from Rhode Island. There's a nice HBO documentary on Missoula that people can find on YouTube, and his Rhode Island roots are important to him, so in that documentary, he goes back to the basketball court that he played pickup games with his uncle and his father, uncles and his father, he said there was no leeway given to him. They taught him toughness and not to make any excuses. So that's part of his upbringing. And you can tell from his reactions in a video that he loves, thinking about that time when he fell in love with basketball, his father is another influence. Those grounding influences. He had been an ex pro player in Chile. He was a recreation officer and a community basketball coach who dished out tough love and high expectations. Missoula talks about actually having a fight with his dad at one point on one podcast, which sounds really extreme, but Missoula kind of says, oh, you know, I was I was not behaving properly, and that was what you do. And I learned things from that. And he likes that life lesson, not exactly recommending that people dish that up. His Italian heritage is really important to him. On that HBO documentary, he's seen loving his Italian food and sharing meal times. Really interesting bit in there that that struck me is that Missoula even gets competitive at the restaurant table. He orders what he wants. Works out if he can manipulate people to order the stuff he might want as well and then shares it so he's he's quite interested in that regard. His family is really important to him. He's got two sons, one adopted close marriage to a former high performance athlete, so she understands the pressures and the world he's going through, and a Rottweiler dog, a breed he claims is misunderstood. His strong Christian faith is really important to him, as is the. Tradition of the Celtics. His dad was a fan of the Celtics. Missoula was a fan in childhood. Missoula said there's nothing better than resenting the Celtics and being part of history. So at the 2024 championship rings ceremony, Missoula got down and kissed the parquet floor of the home playing court, and a journalist said to him, you know, what did it taste like? And Missoula said, blood. I mean, I wish it did. He explained that. He said that's where the blood, sweat and tears of the greats have been. So he really connects with the franchise. He's a homeboy who's who's invested in the organization. He's a really strong cultural fit. So just to bring together a little bit about his grounding influences, and maybe try and kind of bring in the strongest three of them. I've christened it Missoula, holy trinity of grounding influences. What's most important to him are his faith, his family and the tradition of the Celtics. And there was a famous English film director called Alfred Hitchcock, who used something called a McGuffin. It was a little instrument in the film that summarized things. And I've got a McGuffin from Missoula. Missoula has got a rosary made out of the floor of the old Celtics court surface that his wife bought for him. And that sums up for me that Holy Trinity is family, his faith and a traditional the Celtics. That's it. Again, I asked my my people who came to the talk, you know, to to reflect upon what's their grounding influences. But just quickly, why a grounding influence is important. I've got a huge shopping list here, but I'll pick out three. Maybe there are means of maintaining balance while you adapt to radical change, they're like an anchor. They keep you resilient in terms of challenges and setbacks. They enhance your creativity and innovation by quieting your mind and allowing new ideas and solutions to emerge. So just to focus again, he he has this focused intentionality. Missoula regards what he cares most deeply about, faith, family, the Celtics.

Paul Barnett

12:07

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating, especially the rosary idea. But can I circle back? You start off by saying the players describe him as genius, sicko and weird, yeah, three interesting adjectives. How does this manifest itself in the way he goes about things on a day to day basis? Yeah? Team, okay,

David Turner

12:31

yeah, absolutely. So came up with a series of themes for this when I did the talk, had nine of them. We'll get for as many as we can. We've done the first grounding influences maybe, if I take up your question with the second, which is called doing things differently. So the fact that he's a sicko weird and genius is manifested in the fact that Peyton Pritchard, one of his players, says he's different, but we respect that.

So he's got a quirky personality, he's got oddball quotes, he's got a really unorthodox approach, and he's a critical thinker. So recently, he was saying, you know, why do we need half time in basketball matches? You know, he's asking critical questions that other people are not asking. Let me give you some of his oddball quotes, because they're quite entertaining. On teams targeting Boston because they're the reigning champs, people are going to say the target is on our back, but I hope, I hope it's right in our forehead, in between our eyes. I hope I can see the red.so he's inviting the kind of pressure on the silk. He's getting booed after a loss by the home crowd. It's beautiful. You should get booed. To me, it's the ultimate compliment. So he sees it as a sign of connection. It shows that the team needs to improve. So it's good for you. On how much pressure are they facing as reigning champions, we're all going to be dead soon, and it doesn't really matter anymore, so there's zero pressure. So this kind of deflecting with the media, and one more very similar, on why the media doesn't affect him. We're either going to win or we're not. And 40 years from now, none of you invited to my funeral, and that's it. So he's very I said to you, he's very frank, radical honesty.[PB2]

But going back to your point about how does it manifest in his coaching, I think it tells us that successful coach will have tendencies that differentiate them from their peers. You don't get to higher levels by being normal, just being like everyone else is not going to make me stand out from the crowd, and it's not going to provide you with a competitive advantage over people. So one quick example of that, he prioritized three pointer shots, and that's not usually the best way to achieve a championship, but the Celtics champions were the first team in NBA history to have eight different players who made 100 points from three pointers in one season. So he's not relying on one three point specialist. He's distributing the three point responsibility across the team. Missoula has got a relentless approach on focus and committing to the details every day rather than outcomes. If. Sizes, pace, space, ball movement, taking the right shot, analytics driven approach with a versatile, multi functional set of players on the versatility of his roster. He said, Have you ever seen Spider Man into the spider verse? That's like 20 different spider men. That's like our team. So this guy uses a lot of cultural references that quite interesting as well. What I find interesting

Paul Barnett

15:20

there is the way the examples you gave, he's very good at reframing things, which I think is a tool the great coaches possess. They take a challenge, they reframe it and make it seem smaller or different or easier to attack, and therefore it's given better context for the individuals within the group? Yeah, absolutely, it would. Can I ask you, though, you know the downside? I've heard we interviewed Jenny bucek, one of the first she was the second female to coach in the NBA, and was terrific interview. We did it very early on, when we started the podcast. And she talked a bit about when you're different, your margin for error is is reduced. You just don't have you can be different and be a bit quirky, but as soon as things go a bit pear shaped, you're going to come under pressure a lot quicker than perhaps someone that's a bit more straight laced in their approach. But if we we think about trust being the currency that keeps high performing teams working. How does this quirkiness, this this weirdness, manifest or make itself visible when it comes to building trust with the

David Turner

16:33

players? Yeah, I think that's interesting. He is unusual. He is innovative, but some of these things are very traditional and important. So for instance, he uses a lot of simulated scenarios throughout the season. They'll be put in in what they call championship scenarios, like last minute moves and things. And the players seem to appreciate that a lot.

So one of the players said it starts in practice with him, championship stations that Joe loves to do, it starts there, and you just continue to trust one another. So I think there's an authenticity in the way that he coaches the players. Now we're going to go into some things later on, but although this guy is a bit weird and out there and innovative, his stuff is based on a lot of expertise, the expertise of others that he draws upon. And I'm going to talk about that later. He's an I'm going to emphasize later anyway, but I do it now. He's an absolutely voracious learner. You know, I said she's a process coach. The players can see how much this guy invests in the process, and they know that he's committed. He might have some unusual ideas, but they're based on something usually he's worked on it hard, and he's as committed as they are to playing, to coaching. So I think that's part of the trust issue. One of the things that Missoula is particularly good on, or he says he's good on, is building relationships with players. So he said, I think one of the best gifts that I have, and why I got into coaching, is building relationships. Now I want you to think about Jerry West, the quote we had earlier, and Missoula dad. They're extremely tough, but deeply caring. And now that is an unusual mix. People are often a caring coach or extremely tough, but this guy's got an interesting mix of both. They know he cares, so they'll put up with the unusual stuff. Now. He hasn't. He hasn't had an extended poor run. They've been inconsistent, but I agree with you, as soon as someone's got an alternative approach and they're a bit different, they'll come under fire earlier, but you heard how forthright he is with the media and how he armors himself against the media. They don't seem to be out and get to him very much.

Paul Barnett

18:45

You say the media can't get to him. Is it part of this reframing he does? You talked about it earlier where he says, Well, I'm going to paraphrase you a little bit. You said, we're all going to die anyway. So what does it matter? It seems a little bit nihilistic, but surely he must engage with some of his personality, otherwise he would just come across as being stone, a bit of a stone wall, and no one could engage with him. Yeah.

David Turner

19:12

I mean, in Boston, you've also got, oh, dear Bill Belichick, who you know, famously was very dry with the media, etc. I think what, what Missoula has got that Belichick didn't have is he's got a very good sense of humor, and he uses that in situations as well. So, you know, one of the media says, Did you get the chance to meet the royal family who were attending the game today? And he says, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He doesn't get backed into a corner by the by the media at all. There was also a serious question someone was asking, you know, first time we've had two black coaches in the final the NBA. Now, what does that mean for the plight of black coaches, whoever? And and he sets up this question. You know, Missoula goes, I wonder how many of them been Christian coaches? And it goes, so. Dollar, just like that. So this guy doesn't like being backed into a corner. David,

Paul Barnett

20:05

could we pick up competitiveness? You? You just earlier, when he was in reference to the way he was ordering food, tell me a little bit, a bit about his competitive mindset and how this, how this appears in his in his coaching.

David Turner

20:21

Sure. Okay, so I need to set this up first by saying that one of the things Missoula does is practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

There is a wonderful video on Missoula and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and how it impacts his coaching. He says it's made him not only a better coach, but a better person, which is interesting. I'm a martial artist. I kind of understand that, but it's part of his competitive nature. So he's a ferocious competitor that they have pickup games with the coaching staff at Boston Celtics. They're notoriously violent with Missoula fouling, diving for loose balls and taking charges. 111 year NBA veteran who was involved in this found the pickup games in Missoula far too intense, and withdrew. One of Missoula players was talking with him about running a marathon, and the famous player, Al Horford, said he couldn't make more than a mile in the event. Missoula said I would just go until I die. And that's the idea of not putting limitations on yourself.[PB3]

Of I could just go a mile. So there's always a message behind this quirky stuff. With Missoula, he once challenged his player development coach to walk a mile with him carrying kettlebells. So this guy's quite competitive. Now, I told you he's into martial arts, but he also uses UFC clips to show that the fighter who feels that they're about to win relaxes and gives their opponent an opportunity at that moment, serious message to his team that the closer you are to winning, the closer they are to surviving. So he gets his players and his team to play without expectations. He said, If you're winning a lot, if you're losing a lot, it doesn't really matter. So once that steady mind of not being distracted by the fact that you're being successful. Um, he also does this thing with uses a lot of imagery. So he played his team a kind of sand castle image of a sand castle being washed away. That's the metaphor that even the best built castles get washed away daily by the tide and need a constant rebuilding. So you know, when someone said to him, you what you going to do this year after the championship year? Going to do the same sort of thing. And he said, Just because we won last year, we can't take for granted the details, the habit, the execution, the togetherness, the trust. So I'm going to the rest of the quote, but it tells you that this guy is a little bit like Thomas Tull is onto the next they move on quickly from defeats and

Paul Barnett

22:37

victories. Well, fascinating. I I interviewed a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach, Matt Thornton, one of the one of the top coaches globally, I believe in the sport, and he'd written a book, and I I interviewed him, and I went into it. I don't watch UFC. I'm not really interested. I'm not a martial artist, but I came out of it with this deep appreciation for the failure that goes into learning a martial art. So he was sort of said, you know, you will tap out 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of time, times on your way to gaining Black Belt status. And this, he said, as a result, the humility that comes with that and the self control allows you to to manage the the skills that you've learned and potentially the mindset that could go with the use of those skills. And I thought it was, it was really illuminating, and I've kept an eye on him since, and there's a guy called John Kavanagh who coached Conor McGregor for many years. And I'd love to interview him. I haven't been able to convince him to come on yet, but I will keep trying.

David Turner

23:45

Have you read Kavanaugh book when I learned

Paul Barnett

23:46

No, I have ordered it, but I will. I've usually got so many others I'm reading to prepare for these interviews. But he's he's got an interesting story himself. He started the straight blast gym over there in Ireland, he's had many, many great fighters come through there, and he's very disciplined person, very much into the community and things like that as well. I wanted

David Turner

24:09

to just say something else about his competitiveness. Just quickly, Missoula says, How can I win every single situation or environment, like, how can I win the environment no matter where I am at any particular time. What are the threats? What are the strengths? What are the opportunities? So he will manipulate the rules in as far as he can. He will manipulate himself. He will manipulate the players and the roster. He will do anything he can for the winning process, and he he's very interested in that regard. So that even goes to the fact that he won't walk into revolving doors outside of the game, because if you get stuck in him, you're a sitting duck. He says. He says, if you sit in a restaurant, he won't sit with anywhere, anywhere, unless he's got his back to and he can see the door kind of thing, uh, a vantage point to see everything going on around you. Um, and that's manifested as well in the fact he doesn't get caught. By the media, as I said, so he's averse to being cornered. That's partly from martial arts, but partly from his competitive background.

Paul Barnett

25:09

Can we talk about the Celtics for a minute? The Doc Rivers was there in 2008 we haven't interviewed doc, but we interviewed Kevin Eastman, who was on the staff for that victory. He's got an amazing story himself. But Doc Rivers introduced Ubuntu, which was popular, which he which he talked about at the Netflix documentary, has that idea of, you know, I we, the collective of the team, been something that has also been a hallmark of Missoula leadership.

David Turner

25:47

Yes, absolutely one of my themes. I'm zipping onto it because it was later in my order, but his theme eight was egoless, so he seems to have persuaded his players to supplement, to supplement their egos for the sake of the team or project. Now that might be inherited, because I know there was the work on Ubuntu, and I know by the way, that the previous coach to Missoula was was relatively successful and had a game plan that Missoula adopted and took on, although his win percentage wasn't as high, we have very few complaints from individual players about the amount of shots, taking touches of the ball, playing minutes. It's the same sort of victory of we over me that Phil Jackson and Pat Riley used to work for in basketball. Derek white, one of his players, congratulated Missoula for winning coach at a month White said that Missoula gonna just looked at him and said, nobody cares. So there's something going on there with a kind of humility. One of the opponents coaches, when they played Boston Celtics, said, Because Jason Tate, one of their best players, wasn't playing, he said they play the same way, with or without him, they moved the ball. They're one of the most unselfish teams we've seen consistently, and they've got immense levels of talent all over the floor. So he said, I know it sounds crazy, but there aren't many teams at this level. We'll just throw the ball to the open man that shows the ultimate amount of trust in the team. They just seem, seems that they care about winning more than anything else. So I think we've got players who are invested in something that is felt of as bigger than themselves. So you get this broader, less self centered perspective. Now, I know we were thinking about playing a clip, but I think I'll kind of summarize it myself, but he was on a podcast recently where Missoula says, you know, years from now, no one will care about what I'm doing. Someone else will come along and do something better than I am, and I don't matter any more than the person down the road, the gas station, man and stuff like that, who's trying to feed his family. So I really like the humility of Missoula. He's up there at 70 odd percent. But he's not claiming his greatness, and he's saying that he's his impact is transitory. So I really like that. There's an element of, there was a phrase they used whatever it takes in going for the championship. So it's kind of finding a way to overcome adversity and win together, so doing whatever's necessary for the collective so they're three nil down to Miami in the playoffs. Lose one more game and they're out. And he agreed to Al Horford suggestion that they ditch a film session to find connection and togetherness on a top golf trip. And they hit the film The next date, and they won the next three games, lost, ultimately, got knocked out. But I like the idea of whatever it takes in the moment. I like the idea that Missoula is open to the suggestion from the player that we need to work on togetherness here, even though we're across this situation. Final thing I guess I'd say, is Missoula seems to model servant leadership, something that a lot of Christian based coaches do. John Wooden, for instance, he builds trust in the process. He empowers his team. He creates a culture of growth and ownership, and he expresses genuine care.

So Missoula highlighted in one source, how he prepared for the championship winning season, three step approach. He identified who he wanted to be and how he wanted to be defined as a leader. He connected with each player to listen to what they needed to be the highest performing version of themselves, and to use the voices of others to create a shared vision and an approach to operating together. So taking the steps to know yourself, to listen to others and create a shared vision leads collective buy in and success. And collective buy in means we're all on the same page, and means that we can have more of an ego, less approach to how we play the game.[PB4]

Paul Barnett

29:43

And David, he's so young, who are the people that have influenced him to this point? Who? Who's who shaped him, or is he largely remotely educated himself through this idea of involuntary mentors. You know, books from. Wooden and Phil Jackson and people he might have seen online and these type of things.

David Turner

30:03

Yeah, he's more hands on. For me, I think his grounding influences are big on him, like his dad. But I think that he actively, well, I used the phrase earlier, but I'll use it again. I think he's a voracious learner now. He when we profile coaches, sometimes we come up with one mentor who's been really important to him with Missoula. He's christened it himself as as his own Mount Rushmore of influences. So first of all, a guy called Doug Lemov, who's an educationalist, who I don't know if you've come across, he wrote teacher luck champion. He wrote the coach's guide to teaching, he worked with Missoula on teaching and learning. So Missoula has described le mov as the biggest influence on him outside of basketball. Missoula Ric a sidebar in the coach's guide to teaching on perception, self awareness and feedback, including details of how Missoula uses film helps his players to self assess and self correct in the learning process. For Teach Like a Champion. If you put Joe Missoula in and Teach Like a Champion and positive framing, you'll come up with a clip where Doug Lemov analyzes what he's doing when he's helping a team in a tournament. Positive framing is the delivery of information athletes need in a manner that motivates, inspires and communicates our belief in their capacity. So they're in a tournament, they've what are their way to the to the final. This is when he was assistant coach. It's like a summer league. They come under difficulty in the final. He calls a time out, and he says to him, Look, each of you is going to have to guard a player of this quality if you get to the NBA, this is a great learning opportunity for you. So think about it as an opportunity go and use it, embrace it and get it done. So it's this message of you have to step up, but I believe in you. And remember I said earlier that he's this balance of intenseness and care, which is this comes out in that Missoula is influenced by the mov ideas about teaching. For instance, la Moff talks about the war on forgetting. We were talking about martial arts. I was doing Wing Chun, Kung Fu last night and talking to my instructors, and we were talking about the syllabus, and I said, it's not what you teach, it's when you return to it and do retrieval practice just when people are forgetting it. So I love LA Mo's idea about war on forgetting. Missoula did a great basketball immersion podcast where he talks about how to teach basketball better. So he's really influenced about his teaching and learning by Missoula. One last thing about, sorry not Missoula, by lemovre. One last thing about LA Mo's influence. I often hear Missoula say when they question him about his approach, or whatever he said, I should have taught it better. And that's interesting. There's a psychological kind of concept called Locus of Control, which means your belief in your inner control over your own actions, rather than being controlled by external events. So as coaches, we can always get better at being an educator. It's something we can always improve. So another education list has a great quote that I've used in the past when I train teachers. He said every teacher needs to improve, not because they're not good enough, but because they can be even better. And I think that summarizes Missoula relationship with La MOV, um, should I go move on to the second influence? Yes, absolutely. Okay. I don't know if you come across Josh. Josh Waitzkin. He authored a book called The Art of Learning. Really worth look, worth reading. It's on my it's in my library that my wife tells me we've got to cut down. He beat the Russians at chess and he beat the Taiwanese at Push Hands Tai Chi. He's a close friend of Missoula. Missoula says he's become a coach. To me, Missoula describes him as one of the best competitors of all time. He says he conquered greatness in diverse areas. I think he's doing foil at the moment. Um, he says those concepts in conquering greatness can be used in any arena. So in his first season, Missoula leads the Celtics, and they they have an exit in the playoffs in his first season, and white skin invites him down to Costa Rica, where he lives. And Missoula says they were in the jungle working physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, on stripping himself down and building himself back up again, ready for the next season in order, in order to kind of refresh, reconnect, go again. So white skin seems to be an interesting influence on Missoula. Third is our friend Pep Guardiola, who we profiled before. So Missoula often says he studied things. So he's often been ridiculed for not calling time outs in the traditional way in basketball, you normally call a time out to stop the momentum of the scoring team, for instance. But he studied time outs, and he wants to use him in different ways. He likes to save two for late in the game, and he's influenced in his use of time outs by watching soccer. He was a soccer player himself, whoever I told you he had the shoulder injury when he went to his coach and cried. And said, I don't know where I'm ever going to play again. His coach said, Well, you're always telling us you're a great soccer player in Rhode Island. Go and do that and but he's influenced by soccer. And he says, you know, the fact that the players can solve things themselves in the moment is what he wants to do. So he doesn't want to solve things for people with timeouts a little bit like Phil Jackson used to do in the past. But anyway, I'm straying a little bit, he says he studied Pep Guardiola for in a row titles. So there's kind of a shared wisdom between him and Pep Guardiola on sustained success. Missoula visited pep at Man City. Pep attended game one of the NBA finals to support Missoula. Missoula said that he's grateful for help in improving strategy, spacing, and particularly transitions. Basketball is obviously a game of transitions, but pep style of play is all about. How do you respond to transitions, defensively and offensively? So there are three of those big influences. And you know, I said to you, I had an audience. I had a young kid who came to the Missoula talk and who aspires to be a coach in the future. And I challenge people there to say, well, who's your who's in your Mount Rushmore? And this guy came up with, this young guy came up with Greg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Phil Jackson. And when we were talking about distance mentors earlier, what, what a powerful group of people to influence you. You might never meet them, but they're going to influence somebody who aspires to be a coach. Here

Paul Barnett

36:24

we go. I think we'll do that episode on distance mentoring, uh, later in the year, when you get a break from from teaching. But David, I know I've asked you the impossible. You've taken a two to three hour presentation. You can text it down into 45 minutes. But what is it we can take out of Joe Missouri story? Okay,

David Turner

36:47

that's really interesting, because I set I always set these up with reflective questions, and one of the reflective questions was, what can we learn from Missoula coaching, journey and story? I'm going to duck the question, but I do it in a very elaborate way. So basically, this is a question I don't want to be prescriptive about. When I tell the story of these when I research these coaches and tell the story, I think each person needs to digest and respond to the story in their own way and derive their own learnings. Sometimes people come up to me after these talks and say, I've really enjoyed that. Oh, what did you enjoy about it? What did you get from it? They tell me, and I think it's interesting. I never got that, but it's nice to leave the gaps between the notes in the music for people to fill in. So a story is never complete. For me, it's something that people can complete themselves. I would claim, though, that there's much to learn from azul. Is rich story, and he's developmental journey. It's genuinely been inspiring for me to look into Joe Missoula, the coach and the person, and to present on him. This is the fourth time I've presented on him, and I'll probably leave it there and look at another coach. But I'm really looking forward to how Joe and the Celtics fair in the playoffs from April onwards. I just want to give one quote about Missoula before you might want to ask someone else, but he said, You get very few chances in life to be great. You just got to take the ball by the horns and you just got to own it. And I think he's owned the opportunities have been unexpectedly put in front of him, but Paul, I'm going to flip it now. I said, you know about the audience and what each person needs to take away. Answer your own question, what do you think we might be able to learn from his coaching journey and story?

Paul Barnett

38:28

Well, I guess I've only heard the story through your lens, so I'm reacting to what you've said. But I if I look at the notes I've written in front of me, you know the reframing thing I've ticked several times, and I think the ability to do that in a way, using a story or a metaphor that connects with the individual is very, very powerful. And I'm thinking about it in the context of politics at the minute, and that's the last thing people want to probably hear about, given where we are, a leadership, uh, podcast. But I, you know, we, there's an election been called here in Australia, and my daughter's gone down to Canberra to study politics and law. She just moved Canberra is about three and a half hours away, so she's, she's living down there, and she's home. And we were talking about it yesterday, and we were talking about the issues that will shape this election here in Australia and the the topic then turned to, how do you sell your story? How do you sell the message? And we started talking about storytelling and good examples and bad examples of that from around the world. And I think whether you would, regardless of how you feel about President Trump, he did an excellent job of telling stories about American society and reframing it in a way that people could engage with. And I see the best coaches do it time and time again. I. Don't always see it in the corporate world, it's a little bit more safe to not stray into that territory, you know, you tend to keep things a little bit black and white. You don't want to be too weird, you don't want to be too different, you know, you sort of want to walk that line so you don't see it as much, but that's what I take out of the story this evening. It's this idea of reframing it, but in a way that's engaging and touches the other person.

David Turner

40:30

Yeah, and I take all your points about selling a narrative, and that's really important, in a way, that's what I'm doing with learning from legendary coaches. As you say, I'm only telling my version of this story, which is why I want to leave the gaps for people to fill in, because it is only my version. I usually give people the sources and say, Go away and have a look yourself. Now, make up your own mind. But one of the other things about being a leader is is being authentic and keeping things in perspective. And maybe this is where maybe we do use one of our clips. Have you got that clip where he he starts talking about the the girls that he visits, you know the

41:05

one? I'll insert it now. Okay,

Speaker 1

41:10

Joe, the winner die mentality. How have you dealt with that personally? I mean, is there something you're doing over the last 48 hours to keep yourself away from just being consumed with this? Are you watching different movies? Are you binge What are you doing over the last 48 hours, not to be lose sleep and not be yourself?

Speaker 2

41:29

I met three girls under the age of 21 with terminal cancer, and I thought I was helping them by talking to them, and they were helping me and so having an understanding about what life is really all about, and watching a girl dying and smiling and enjoying her life, that's what it's really all about, and having that faith and understanding that. The other thing is, you always hear people, you know, give glory to God and say thank you when they're holding a trophy, but you never really hear it in times like this. And so for me, it's an opportunity to just sit right where I'm at and just be faithful. That's what it's about.

David Turner

42:05

So I think what that does is that starts to give you an idea about his authenticity. What he's saying is kind of quite shocking in the way that he turns it around. And the media person is asking him, how does he cope with pressure? But he's saying one of the ways he cuts with pressure is to keep it in perspective. Because, you know, we're just basketball players. It's just sport. Now, I know that that seems weird in the modern era when it when it's cost so much, but I think then we can use another quote. We another clip. We can use the clip where he says, I'm not a basketball coach, so should we listen to that?

Speaker 2

42:45

I'm not a basketball coach, just a person that shows up to work every day to help people. And I think that's where you have to look at it. I don't coach basketball. I don't really care about basketball as much as I care about people next to me, the people that I can influence and the people that I can help. And that's the foundation of love and faith and respect and understanding of the guy, regardless of what you do or who you are. I don't think it matters. And so my identity is not in what I do, and I think that's that's a message that we can learn from.

David Turner

43:16

Okay, so you talked about reframing, and I really like that idea. And it's not one that had occurred to me, but I take it. It's very good. So here we have Missoula. He was actually talking, I think there'd been a murder, and he it, it sent his prayers, etc, to the family, and this was the end of that. But it was really Missoula saying that he's not a basketball coach. He's just someone who's there to help people that he can influence and to make things better. And that's the best summation of the fact that he's got a servant leadership style that I think we could have mentioned the servant leadership style earlier. It's a quote actually, I heard recently, somebody said to Jim, he said, What would you do if you weren't a basketball coach? And he said, I wouldn't be doing anything else. Wouldn't be doing anything else. Is the only thing I'm any good at. But actually he's not. I think he's a really good leader at reframing things, getting them in perspective, getting people who could be a bunch of egos to connect to something bigger than themselves. That comes from him two things. If he respects the tradition of Celtics so much, so will the players part of something bigger than yourself? I also think if he's a voracious learner and he's got all these people influencing him, then he's a role model for all the people that he leads in terms of learning. He says, I'm really lucky to have a group of players that embrace learning and development. You make your own luck if you're a great role model of being a voracious learner. That's part of the outcome. That's perhaps a good place for me to finish.

Paul Barnett

44:50

David, fascinating. Always fascinating listening to the way that you describe the learning that you take from these these legendary coaches and I. Thank you very much. And I have to finish with asking you who's next.

David Turner

45:05

Oh, good question. Good question. I thought about doing Valerie condos, field of you know, and John Wooden I might be doing that. I'm going to call it a Padre Dean, which is a joint dance, and and I'm going to try and weave together their ideas about Transformative Leadership, what I think the strap line was part how an English teacher and a ballet dancer ended up transforming lives, because kind of they both came from unusual backgrounds, and they both got unusual perspectives on what winning is. So I think that that might be on the cards, so I'll look at that. But for now, I'm going to park Missoula and park legendary coaches. I'm doing a couple of talks on ignorance in sports coaching in the summer, and how we and how we educate our performance analysts best along their developmental pathways. So changing focus is always good for you, right? Coaches, go and change your focus. Look at a new challenge.

Paul Barnett

46:02

David, thank you so much. I'll send a message to miss Val telling us she's on your radar and look forward to talking to you again soon.

David Turner

46:11

Lovely. Thank you very much. You.