Underdog lesson final

Thu, Jun 01, 2023 4:12PM • 40:31

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

team, players, underdogs, volleyball, coaches, doug, win, shawn, people, trust, story, underdog, olympics, outward bound, put, sports, beale, volleyball court, soviet union, thought

SPEAKERS

Carrie Graf, Paul Barnett, Sean Murray, Sean Dyche, Jim Woolfrey, Grant Liversage

Paul Barnett  00:00

Welcome to the lessons from the great coaches podcast.

00:04

I've learned that you don't do it alone. You learn so many different things from so many different coaches. That's an elite learning environment.

00:13

How you deal with how to be resilient, how important it is to infuse joy in the process of learning. To be a good candidate, you've got to do more than you take.

00:24

What an interesting life it is to be a leader.

Paul Barnett  00:29

My name is Paul Barnett, and you are listening to the great coach's podcast, where we explore leadership through the lens of high performance sport by interviewing great coaches from around the world, to try and find ideas to help all of us lead better. As the podcast has grown. The great coaches we have interviewed have shared so much insight and wisdom that we decided to create episodes dedicated entirely to the ideas that have resonated with us the most. Today's episode is on the topic of underdogs. In grant and I are joined for the discussion by Shaun Murray, who has just written a fantastic book called if gold is our destiny, how a team of Mavericks came together for Olympic glory. If you would like to join us for a future episode to discuss a coaching or leadership topic that is close to your heart, then please contact us using the details in the show notes. And now, please enjoy our discussion with Sean Murray.

Grant Liversage  01:27

The lessons from the great coaches podcast. Good morning, Shawn, maybe if you can tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we can get into the story of the underdogs.

Sean Murray  01:36

Great. Thank you, Grant. It's a pleasure to be on your show. I'm excited to talk about a team that I spent a lot of time researching and learning about and writing a book. It's the 1984 US Men's Olympic volleyball team. And I recently published a book called if gold is our destiny, how a team of Mavericks came together for Olympic glory. And it was a fascinating process to study a team that really was A True Underdog that two years before the Olympics finished 13th in their sporting world championship and somehow won a gold medal. And I'm excited to kind of go into that. But just to give a little background about who I am and what I do. In addition to, you know, writing this book, I help organizations and teams reach their full potential, helping them build better teams build better cultures, and, and leaders can get the most out of their teams and organizations. I'm based here in the United States in Seattle, Washington and worked with mostly mid to large sized companies and executive teams doing just that. And I wanted to write a book that where I studied a team how a team became the best in the world at what they did. And I happened to have a personal connection to this team. This underdog team we're going to talk about my father was the well, he took on the role they called the team psychologists, he wasn't really a sports psychologist, he was there to try to help the team become a better team, which is a really fascinating, you know, process. You know, what do you do to bring a group of individuals together to do something that they couldn't do collectively, they couldn't do on their own that they could only do collectively and, and so my father was a part of that team as a team psychologist, and I got to know the coach of that team, Doug Beale. And when I went when I thought about writing a book about a team, that was the first team I thought of, I called up my friend Doug Biel, who was the coach of the gold medal winning at 14, US men's volleyball team. And I said, Doug, I'm thinking about writing a book about that team. It was a special team. He said, I think you're right. It was a special team, and I love to help you and, and it was his help and guidance, connecting me with the players and others that got got the project started. So that's a little bit about me.

Grant Liversage  04:01

You mentioned that what you do is help leaders primarily in the corporate world, and yet you're writing a book about sports, and what's the linkage between the story of underdogs and this team and the leadership and lessons from a sport?

Sean Murray  04:18

Yeah, well, you know, people learn, I believe through stories. You know, I think stories are very important. I mean, you guys get this and how you do podcasts and, and just it's a very human way to learn and relate to others and, and I found that people love sports stories. And there's really some great analogies between specialty teams in sports and teams in business, right? I mean, we can watch a soccer or football team The World Cup is going on, you know, probably as we speak right now, and you know, you watch a team come together and you can learn from that and apply that to other parts of of your world. And, and people just generally gravitate towards these stories, especially around the Olympics stories, you know, connections, the emotional connections that you don't normally get, if you're just talking about maybe other business teams. And so I find that they, these stories resonate. And, you know, and so I thought, let's, let's use a sports story I, I actually read a book called Boys in the Boat, which is I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, with that story. But it's, it's another story about an American Olympic team. That happened to be a crew team that won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which was the Nazi Olympics, and they beat the Nazi bow, you know, I mean, it's just an incredible story, nother underdog story. I happened to read that book. And I thought, you know, there's so many great lessons in this team that I could use to teach people in business. And, and I find when I talk to, to business executives, they often use sports metaphors, right? So anyway, it was a natural fit. And I people can make the leap. And so that's why I decided to write a book about a sports team, even though I'm trying to teach people in business.

Grant Liversage  06:12

So tell us the story of the team.

Sean Murray  06:16

Well, the team is, you know, to understand this team, this is the 1984 Olympics, it was in Los Angeles, four years before, that was probably the biggest underdog story of all time in the United States, which was the 1980, men's Olympic hockey team. And that's a story that almost everyone universally knows here in the United States. I don't know how well known it is globally, but it's because they beat the Soviet Union, which was absolutely dominant in hockey. This this story that I wrote was about volleyball, and volleyball is not as popular as hockey. And the story is not as well known, but I think it has every bit the same amount of emotion and interest. And it's a very similar story in coming from so flow to so high right from so B is such an underdog to becoming the best in the world. And they did have to beat the Soviet Union. And I have to kind of explain that because this the Soviet Union was not at the Eastern Bloc countries were not at the 1984 Olympics, if you remember, they were boycotting that Olympics. But so I will talk a little bit about that. But the so So that's to understand the backdrop of this team. In the 1970s. Even though volleyball was invented in the United States, the national team was severely underperforming. What would happen was, it was we those states had a lot of talented players, because the size of the country, the fact that volleyball was invented here, it's not that there weren't a lot of great players, California was a hotbed of volleyball, it still is today. You know, imagine the beaches of Southern California kids growing up playing volleyball, they had players, but what the, what the USA volleyball at the time did was they would bring together these sort of all star players a few months before the European tournaments in May, or June. And they pick a team of 12 or 14, all star players, they have a few practices together, they throw a coach at this team, and they go off to Europe, and they would just, you know, they would get beat bad. And they had no success doing this, even though they had talented players. And of course, looking back on it now you can sort of see that it's hard to get a team together quickly, especially with big egos, you know, highly talented players. They weren't gelling. They weren't a cohesive unit. They weren't on the same page, all those things. But that was the way that the US did at the time for thinking, well, we've got these great stars, let's just get them out there and they're going to, you know, they're going to do what they do, and they're going to win. They didn't win. One of the players in the 1970s was a gentleman named Doug Beale. And, and he might my father was actually working as a team psychologist with the team in the 70s. And this player Doug Beal thought you know this, my father's name was Don Murray. And he said, you know, this Don Murray guy that's preaching this team building. I think we need to do more of that. If we want to become a better team, and we're going off for playing teams, from Poland, from Bulgaria, from Italy, from the Soviet Union, that were playing year round that were that really were had a team environment. And so when that that young player Doug Beal was just tired of being humiliated. He became the next coach. And he thought, you know, if we do this, let's do it. Right. Let's get a team together in a training center, spend more than a few weeks learning and let's do some of these practices. about learning about each other building trust, creating feedback processes for the players to give feedback to the coaches, the coaches give feedback to the players, too, they build our communication, on and off the court. So these are some of the things they started to do to become a team, even they have to add talent, like, let's get better at becoming a team. And so that's where were they the United States was in the early 1980s, knowing that they were going to host the Olympics in 84, that automatic bid, they hadn't been to the Olympics since 1968. And they thought, well, you know, at least we're going to be in the Olympics first time and in 16 years, or something like that. And so, you know, that that's kind of the state of the affairs, they had a player that was that believed in team. They had a coach who was a former player who believed in this whole team aspect, and, and that's, that's where they were about 1981 or 82.

Grant Liversage  11:00

And so, Shawn, you, you paint the picture of the had the opportunity, but it was a long shot. So what happened then?

Sean Murray  11:10

Yeah, the definitely wasn't long shot. Most people in volleyball world didn't give this team much of a chance to medal at this Olympics, you know, a 1980 to two years before the Olympics, the team went to Argentina for the World Cup, and they finished 13th They had a couple of matches, where they were close to winning, and then they blew it, you know, things would, which often happens in volleyball or in sports, you know, the momentum shifts, how do you react? How do you deal when things aren't going your way, on a team or in sports, that's the difference between great teams and championship teams, they they're able to overcome that they have the confidence, they have the trust, they have the the resilience to overcome these, these swings in momentum. And so this team did not have that, you know, they went down to Argentina, they, they got third, they finished 13th. The Soviet Union at the time, was the the they had won the gold medal in 1980. And they'd won the World Championships will say in 7880, and 82. So this was the Soviet Union was the most dominant team in the world at the time, and they won the world championships. And it was sort of as dominant as Soviet hockey was in 1980. So Soviet volleyball team. And so here's the US, you know, 13, not even in the same league. And the coaches thought something's got to change, you know, what are we going to do? And they threw around some ideas. And one idea they came up with was, you know, what this team needs is a shared significant life experience, you know, something that they do together, outside of volleyball, to bring them together, so they get to know each other. There were a lot of personality, strong personalities on this team, there were, there was a bit of a divide between the East players from the eastern part of United States and the western part of the United States. They call them the East east and the west east. There were a bit of a tribal fault lines between the different colleges where the these young men went, you know, between UCLA, and USC, and Pepperdine, these big colleges in Southern California. So there wasn't a team that had real strong friendships across the board, there were a few pockets of strong friendships. So for all these reasons, and this whole idea of resilience, they've thought, let's do something outside of volleyball, their first idea was to send them to boot camp, you know, grant, it was, let's, let's send these this send these young men to the big become Marines, you know, we'll just, we'll 10 weeks of marine training or something, or two weeks, or whatever they could do. And they called up the marine base, which was close by this team was based in San Diego, and, you know, the US Marine Corps said, No, we're not going to put your volleyball team through our training. So they thought, Okay, well let's, they came up with, or they came across this organization called Outward Bound, which actually started in the UK. And Outward Bound is an organization that takes people through an experiential learning process. Usually, at the time, it was 1234 weeks with fairly long, where you go out into the wilderness, and you learn skills in as you were out there learning surviving, and suddenly you're burning life skills around how to survive, how to build resilience, how to care for other people, not just yourself, but others on your team. So it's groups of people that they take these, these these trips on, and that was the idea that coaches that will that's the approach that we're bound, and our bounds said that they would design a course for this team and they thought It would be great if this course was in the winter because these players were mostly from Southern California. So they were more comfortable in the warm climates. They grew up playing volleyball on the beach. They weren't as familiar with the mountains with the snow. And so they designed a three week course through the mountains of Utah, in the Canyonlands National Park in United States in the middle of winter in January of 1983. And the players absolutely did not want to go on this this experiential learning process. You know, their feeling was you get better at volleyball on the volleyball court. You know, why would we take time out of practicing on the volleyball court to go try to get better at volleyball by snowshoeing around Utah with 70 pound packs and snowshoes and so they were adamantly against it. And Doug Beal, the coach to his credit, said, No, we're gonna do this and his assistant coaches and, and they, they ended up flying into Utah, and actually Colorado and the driving down into Utah. And in getting off a bus in January of 1983, strapping on snow shoes and, and all of a sudden, they were, you know, five miles and up into a pass about 1000 feet in elevation and complete silence. And these players were in another world all of a sudden, and, and they had to learn how to survive out there in the wilderness. And that experience was the beginning, in my opinion, of building towards becoming the best team in the world, not just the best team in 84, but a dominant team for about six years. And it started right there.

Grant Liversage  16:41

That's a fantastic story, this whole notion of building resilience through shared experience. And I wonder, Paul, other examples in your interviews with the great coaches on underdogs and overcoming odds in the way that Shawn is talking about it.

Paul Barnett  16:59

It's a great story, Shawn. I mean, we interviewed Doug, a couple of months back and he he really picked up the story from the Olympics forward. So it's great to hear the context and the backstory to the team that he led to that gold medal. But grant I do have an example of coaches talking about underdogs and the first one comes from Sean Dyche. Now, up until early 2022 When he was sacked Shawn was actually the longest serving coach in the English Premier League. And he coached a team called Burnley. And I asked him specifically about how he was able to create such a competitive team at Burnley given that they had much less resources than their their rivals, their competitors. And and I'll insert here what Shawn said about underdogs or, or is he referred to them at the time, positive realities. And here's that quote now from Sean

Sean Dyche  18:01

we sort of worked on the idea of reality really, you know, positive realities, as I call it, so I never be asked the team on stand in front and when you play Mansi and got these like, crap, lads, I say, Look, we know these are proper players. These are proper, proper players. But if we can make the game about us, if we can make it uncomfortable, we can make it feel like it's not their kind of format a game, then that just knocks them out of kilter. And if we knock them out of kilter, do a few get a bit disgruntled, or they make it feels different, it feels awkward. We tried to use that kind of feeling amongst a group. And then it was like build that mentally. And what about that one? That is the one What about that game when you do beat and what about that feeling? Well, you know about that, how good is that fear. So we kind of, I mean, the bit one of the best accolades ever been given, I remember Pep Guardiola he was waxing lyrical about all the teams, you went to Man City, and they played good football. And he won five nil Obviously, every time which he did eventually against us. But the first few seasons, he used to say guns burners, like, like going to the dentist, and I was loving it. And so that was it. I'm absolutely loving that. It was like the biggest compliment of that I've probably ever been given, you know what I mean by someone of his prowess. And I actually I bet a few times we have a laugh about some of the stuff, you know. But you got I mean, it was a it was a compliment, because he's got it. He's basically, it's hard. It's awkward. It's uncomfortable, you know, and, and when you build that mentality, it becomes a bit of a badge of honor.

Grant Liversage  19:26

So thanks, Paul. Shawn, over to you and tell us what happened during or after the outward bound experience.

Sean Murray  19:36

Yeah, well, the outward bound experience was really fascinating to learn about as I researched it, I mean, a couple things stood out. One they had to take care of each other to survive out there and I think that's a really interesting aspect around team and, and I think underdogs in general. They they, they develop this idea that of taking care of each other and believing in each other. And that's a very, very important aspect of, of any underdog story is that it's sort of us against the world. Other people don't believe in us, but we believe in each other. And I think the outward bound experience was the foundation of these players believed in each other. And the way that worked was just imagine being out there in the snow, it's, it's below freezing, you know, you're high in elevation, it's hard to breathe, you've got this pack on, you've got snowshoes, you're breaking trail, and it's someone, one of your teammates is ahead of you Breaking Trail, and it makes it a lot easier. And then that person goes to the end. And now it's your turn, you've got to be out front Breaking Trail. And that's what they did. They would break trails long as they could and then they would go to the back. And so that was step one in starting to understand okay, to get from point A to point B, we have to work together. And then when they got to the their campsite, so to speak, someone had to clear the snow out, someone had put a tent up, someone had to go gather firewood, someone had to create a fire, someone started had to start cooking to survive out there, you have just a little bit of daylight before it's gonna get dark in the winter months in North America. And so they had to work hard to feed themselves, stay warm, provide a little entertainment, you know, the camaraderie and then get into their tents and survive the night and then wake up the next morning, and then put the tent camp taken down repacked and on their way, because they had to keep moving. And what they did was they they developed empathy for one another, they learned to serve one another. They learned about each other as humans. And in sports, there's usually a pecking order on any team based on your ability, right? If you're the starter, or if you're the captain, if you are the star of the team, you're sort of higher in the pecking order. Well, this whole experience broke that down. One of the best players was not necessarily going to be the best person as making the fire or cooking. Whereas maybe someone who isn't a strong player, all of a sudden is the go to person to help, you know, get through this night or whatnot. And, and so they started to see each other as people as humans and relate to each other in different ways. There was one player who happened to be one of the best players on the team wanted to leave. And he said he thought he had enough. He didn't know why he was out there. He he that he taught went to the coach Doug feelings that I'm leaving, there was a resupply truck that met them at a certain point. And he said, I'm driving out with the I'm catching a ride on the resupply truck, I'm out of here. This is this is not for me. And Doug Beale said well, okay, you can leave. But there's no guarantee that you're going to have a spot on this team. When you come back. When we see you again in San Diego in three weeks. I cannot guarantee you that. And, and and so the player that I interviewed, the player said, Well, how did you feel at that moment, and he said, You know, I really wanted to leave, but I knew that I knew Doug was gonna let me leave. And I was pretty sure that Doug was going to have me back on the team, because he was, you know, the he was basically the star, one of the top players on the team. And so it was going to be hard for Doug to truly let him go. But he's said, you know, I would not have the trust of my teammates, if I came back, they I would have lost them, and then I would not have been effective. And he realized that he had to stay. And you know, that decision right there he stayed, you know, and the players respected them, they all finish together. And they came back and all of a sudden, they had this trust and this understanding the shared experience and the stories in belief in each other. And then you would they could overcome they could do that. I mean, they could overcome being down four points in the final set. Right. I mean, and and so that was the beginning of the trust. And trust is a really important aspect in any sports team, I think especially for underdogs. They had the trust and the belief in each other when they came out of that. And, and it led to, I think another important aspect of this team and just about any underdog which was how are you going to compete and win, because you're, if you're an underdog, by your very nature, you're probably lacking in something either. You don't have a history of winning. You don't have the right strategy. You don't have something there's some reason why you're not predicted to win. And, you know, most underdog most teams that are are not doing well. They tend to look at the best teams in the world and earn their league and say let's Copy them, right? Let's just copy them. And because they're winning in that was the original thought of this USA volleyball team coming out of this our BAM experience, let's copy. The Japanese were very, very good at a time they had won a gold medal in 72. I think it was. And so they they went to the Japanese and the Japanese were teaching all these skills with their videos and sharing with the world how they were approaching volleyball. And the American Coach just thought this was strange, because why would you share your secrets? And the Japanese Coach told them he said, Well, we share this, this information because only the Japanese can play like the Japanese. I think what he meant by that was, well, he sort of provide an analogy. So it's like a copy or a xerox copy. So you could copy how the Japanese play but the next generations is going to be not the same quality as the original, right. And so he thought, sure, you could copy how the Japanese played, but you'll never beat the Japanese at how the Japanese play volleyball. And that was a light bulb for Doug Beale, and the US team just to think, Okay, we've got to figure out how to play in a way that takes advantage of the unique skills and talents of our team. And I think that's something most the underdogs eventually figured out is. We're not going to you don't usually beat the best team using their playbook you use it using the underdog playbook. And so the USA had to figure out, how do we play in a way that utilizes the unique talents and skills of our players aren't the US players did not look like the Soviet players, they weren't really big and tall and couldn't block like the Soviet team. And so the Soviets scheme was not going to work for them. They were they were shorter. They were they tended to come from beach volleyball. So they had a lot of non traditional ways that they that ways they they approach the game. They liked to improvise, they were very creative. They're sort of like Brazilian soccer players in volleyball, because they grew up playing to on to on the beach, like the Brazilians grow up playing their version of soccer in Brazil, right? Football or whatever they call that. So it they very much figured out Okay, throw it let's not play at the Japanese, let's not play the Soviet Union. And in practice, they started to develop their own way they've been a bit be calling the American system. And it's still used today. It was it's much more focused on differentiation of skills. And you calling audibles, you know, allowing all kinds of options and plays on the volleyball court. Without getting into a lot of detail, we probably don't want to get into this podcast. The basic lesson was they figured out how to utilize their unique strengths. And I think that's what underdogs do, and it wouldn't have been possible without the outward bound in the trust building.

Grant Liversage  27:58

That's such a great story. Sean Paul, I know that you've got some thoughts on this from the great coaches are

Paul Barnett  28:05

thanks grant. My second example comes from a lady called Carrie graph. Now Kerry's fascinating because she's presently a professor, she's the director of sport at the University of Canberra in Australia. But prior to that she was a very successful player and a coach. And she coached in the WNBA in America. But she also led a team to the Australian National Championship in her first year as a coach. And that team were not expected to do as well as they did. In fact, she refers to them in this quote, as underdogs. So here is Carrie Graf.

Carrie Graf  28:41

But the first thing I did was we got into it and said, Who He who he thinks we could win the championship, and I could see the looks on the faces of the Canberra girls that can go over here thinking, Oh, my God, Is she serious. And then I went around the room and went, cannot let soak up the championships we want, whether it's in under 12, or under 14, or under sixteenths, or in the WNBA, or any championships, you've won on state teams, and we went around the room and the number, you know, I'd been a part of many Shelley Sandhi been a part of many. So our numbers of the group of winning was in the hundreds. So suddenly, everyone in the room went well, we know how to win, because we've got a whole lot of people in here that know how to win. And even if we haven't been a part of a WNBA championship, yeah, we want it I want an underdog premiership or on the school girls championship. So it was it was really setting the stage for you do know how to win because you want it doesn't matter if you haven't won at this level. And everything we did was about, well, how do we win this championship? And we kept that front, front and center and we set goals to sit under that but it was really about instilling some belief earlier that if we do these certain things, we've absolutely got the talent to to win a championship and those of us that have won, here's some of the things that we think we can do to help this team win. So it was about instilling belief I think and then going about a process of You know, doing the hard work, learning and evolving as a group and keeping our our goal at the at the forefront without being over focused on the outcome.

Grant Liversage  30:10

So Shawn, coming back to you, how do you recreate the outward bound experience and the reinventing the game? If you're a local team that's not in in the Olympic medal contention? How do you take the lessons from this and recreate it in a local sports environment?

Sean Murray  30:30

As I mentioned earlier, I think trust is an important element to establish before and you can do that through I think communication, you don't have to go on an outward bound, you know, not everyone's gonna go three weeks in the wilderness, but just getting your players to talk to each other and relate to each other in ways that are outside of being on the pitch or on the court or wherever you are, to relate to each other as humans as fellow friends as acquaintances as So, so that you open up those channels of communication and trust. So I think that's step number one, I think step number two for especially for coaches is that there's a bit of humility here, that you may not be able to design from the top exactly how this team is going to be reaching its potential once you've got the trust. And this is how it worked with the this volleyball team. It was through listening to each other and trying things out in practice, that they develop this, it wasn't an overnight thing. It wasn't someone who drew it up on the whiteboard and said, I've got it, I figured it out. Here it is you do this, you do that. It was part of it was player saying, Coach, what if I tried this, or the coach sitting back and observing and watching a scrimmage and saying, well, that worked really well? It's what work? can we how can we set our team up to have that kind of play happen more? Or tell me more about why that worked? Well, do you think that worked? Well, so asking the players and the players would say, well, it works well, because, you know, I'm coming in from the outside. And, and I, you know, I that's the way I'd like to come in from so if we can set that up. And if we have another player as a deep decoy over here that's going to work that these kinds of conversations, they described as an iterative process, but with the trust and the iterative process, I would say that it emerged it wasn't designed from on top, this, this play emerged. No, I haven't studied, you know, across multiple underdogs to see, but I have a feeling that what's going on with these underdog teams is they they're you they're vastly outperforming the other team and reaching in finding the potential in their players. Because they may not have the skills, they may not have the legacy and history of winning, but they're getting a lot more out of the talent, and they believe in each other. And the way to do that is to let the players in the coaches together, you have to learn, be curious, try things you can't. One of the great things, Doug said Doug Beale, the coach said about this. This particular part of the journey was he said, You can't I wasn't was he said we weren't afraid to look foolish. In other words, he would put things out in international tournaments, he put plays and formations out where people could ridicule it, because it's never been tried before. Why would you do that? That looks ridiculous. No one ever puts two players in the back of a volleyball court to receive serve it never been done before. You know, you always put three or four back there because it's so important to receive this serve. Well, Doug said no, we're gonna put two back there because we have two really good guys that can return serve. And then the other four players don't have to practice that. And we can spend time and so they tried something that if it failed, it looks foolish. But he said, you know, and there were a lot of things they tried that looked foolish, but they weren't afraid. Because what did they have to lose? They were the underdogs, right? Let's try let's try something. Maybe that's one of the advantages of the underdogs. It's like, you know, let's try it. And when you're on top, you don't want to mess with what you've got, you know, so the underdogs have to do that. You got to experiment. You got to listen to your players, you got to build trust, you got to have humility. And you got to believe in each other.

Grant Liversage  34:23

Yeah, that's such a fantastic transferable lesson that sort of test and learn when you've created an environment where people feel safe and trusted. What a fantastic story. So maybe if I can just ask you to close Shawn with the lessons from this volleyball team into the work environment.

Sean Murray  34:41

Well, one thing that I learned is that the these teams that are successful, you have to put the success of the team above yourself. I think that was part of going all the way back to why things weren't working in the 1970s for the USA volleyball with these all stars that were a little too much about themselves and not enough about team and So one of the things I talk to organizations in business and other organizations, teams that are maybe outside of sports is that when you bring a group together, you have to understand what's your higher purpose in it and be able to commit to that, which sometimes means sacrificing in some way, it may mean taking on a role, that's not the perfect role for you, it may mean putting in extra work. So I really understanding your role sacrificing so that the success of the team becomes the most important thing, if that. So there's a certain amount of shared values that you that you need to understand and being able to articulate those values, you know, trust being one of them, how people treat each other, how people are going to communicate, you know, what's the, what's our system for giving feedback to each other, these are all things that if you can talk about them, write them down, spend time, spend time on your team, not just on doing the work, but on how we're working together as a team, it will pay dividends for you down the road, and then this whole idea of finding a way for the unique talents of your team to emerge and shine, I think there's a parallel for that, too, in the business world, you know, and if you may also find that there's someone on your team that's very talented, but doesn't share the values. You know, this, this is the thing that's really hard sometimes. And, you know, I didn't talk about this in the volleyball story. But there were several players that were considered the best in the United States at the time, that did not want to commit to some of the some of the values and even the structure that Doug veal put together for this program, and they opted out. And the team actually became better because these highly talented players left. A lot of people thought the team wouldn't do as well if these players left, but they because they left, the rest of the players really bought into the values and, and so so, you know, it's important that everyone share the values and work together towards the team success. And so those are just a few of the of the lessons that you can apply in the business world, whether you're trying to be successful on the soccer pitch and volleyball court in the basketball court. A lot of times when it comes down to humans getting together to work together a lot of these principles and the process is the same. It's you know, it's this is how we, in the military and in India human endeavor, we've, you know, the secret to humans success through history through culture is how humans collaborate and work together. And so, you know, these lessons are transferable.

Grant Liversage  37:53

Thank you very much, Shawn. That was great. And thanks, Paul, for giving us the insights from the great coaches. So Shawn, if people want to get in touch with you or find out more about what you do and how you do it, how did they do that?

Sean Murray  38:05

Well, you can find the book at amazon or just about anywhere where you can buy a book online. If gold is our destiny, how a team of Mavericks came together for Olympic glory. I also have a website at real time. performance.com. And I publish a blog there and there's a link to a podcast I do called the good life. And you can find all my social media there too. I'm on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Grant Liversage  38:29

Great, thank you very much, gentlemen.

Sean Murray  38:33

Thanks, grandpa was great to be here.

Jim Woolfrey  38:37

Hi, everyone. It's Jim here. We hope you enjoyed our discussion on underdogs with Shaun Murray, and found one or two things that you can bring to your own dinner table, locker room or boardroom table for discussion. The key lessons I've taken away on the topic of underdogs were the power of developing team connections through shared experiences away from the training facilities or the clubhouse. As an underdog, looking to copy the best in the world isn't necessarily the right way to go. Instead, use the underdog playbook where you utilize your unique talents and skills. Underdog teams outperform other teams in unlocking the potential of their members. And they achieved this through being curious learning and trying innovative things where you are, quote, not afraid to look foolish and quote, and that underdogs successfully put the team needs ahead of the individual and a willing to sacrifice in order for this to happen. Here at the great coaches podcast. We are always trying to learn so please let us know if you have any feedback. Just like Tony McLaughlin, who after listening to our Roy Hodgson interview said, really enjoyed this. I've always admired Roy Hudson over the years. He's very articulate, interesting, and a humble guy He is that Tony, thank you so much. It's this interaction with people all around the world who listen, give us great energy. And so if you have any feedback or any comments, please let us know. And if they're positive ones, then please let your friends know too. And all the details on how you can connect with us or in the show notes or on our website, the great coaches podcast.com