chasing influence edit
Wed, Apr 10, 2024 3:31PM • 37:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaches, athletes, sports, coaching, people, talk, parents, book, team, good, relationships, troy, showing, opportunity, significant, leaders, kids, influence, communication, finding
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Murray Noble, Troy Urdal
Paul Barnett 00:00
Troy doll. Good morning and welcome to the Great coach's podcast. Thanks
Troy Urdal 00:05
for having me on. We're looking forward to connecting and talking about their coaching.
Paul Barnett 00:09
Well, and I'm here today also with my good friend down in Melbourne, Australia, president of the Melbourne baseball club, Murray noble, how are you, Mary?
Murray Noble 00:19
Great, Paul, good to be here. Good to meet you, too. Troy.
Paul Barnett 00:23
Troy, could we start with something really simple? Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today,
Troy Urdal 00:31
I am coming to you from near Minneapolis, Minnesota. And so I am a career on educator, I have been a head baseball coach for 23 years, started off as a classroom teacher. And now I am a school administrator. And my day job is an activities director. And so I help coordinate all the Athletics and Activities programs for the public high school in grades nine through 12, of about 700 students. So a mid sized High School right outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Paul Barnett 01:03
Well, we're very happy to have you on today to talk about your book, Marie and I have both read it, we we loved it, we're gonna get into it. It's a part story. It's part fable, there's a lot of 23 years worth of wisdom in it. But the book is called Chasing influence. And I want to start by asking you what the title means to you.
Troy Urdal 01:26
You know, for anyone who's interested in being better, or improving their influence on others, so anyone that wants to positively influence other people and leave a legacy of servant leadership, and care is really who the target is for this book.
I believe that life is all about relationships and the relationships we hold. And that coaching is one of the greatest opportunities a person can have in life, I can't think of many jobs better than the opportunity to be a coach. And unfortunately, too many coaches I believe, are chasing after the wrong outcomes. And in some cases, at whatever cost it might be. And I just don't think that's what we want our legacy to be as coaches. And so as a coach important questions about who are you? And what do you want to do? Do you want to be chasing afterwards? Or do you want to have the opportunity to make other people's lives better? And I think that's an easy answer for me. Because of our influence, we have the opportunity. So it's all about chasing the influence, not chasing the winds.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 02:27
And what was the impetus to write the book.
Troy Urdal 02:31
You know, I never thought I'd read a book, to be honest with you, I really didn't ever think I'd read a book. But as an activities director, we do a lot of work with our student athletes about developing and building better people, not just better athletes. And that comes in the form of various lessons. And so, all the way I didn't realize it, but really, they had kind of been writing a book without knowing it. And so didn't think I'd write one, but really kind of was, it was probably meant to be when I was quarantined with COVID. And it made perfect sense to capture the opportunity to capture that moment to read the book. So in truth, I flushed out and outlines this book in Mexico when I was on quarantine in early 2022. Stephen the hotel room by myself, and grab the opportunity to say, All right, this is what the book could look like and then spent the next year writing that book. And it all ties into my my leadership purpose and who I am as a leader, and as a coach, and I served use the power of school activities to make the world a better place. I think through sport, we can make the world a better place. And I get the opportunity to work with some awesome people to do that. And that's why I show up each and every day is because I truly believe that leaders can make the world a better place. We see examples on the other side too, of making a worse place. But I don't think there's any more influential leaders and coaches, their influence is gonna last a lifetime. There aren't that many jobs where we can say that influence is gonna last for a lifetime. Wow,
Paul Barnett 04:00
that was the that was the impetus to start the podcast actually, that the best leaders I know of sports coaches, I think there's just something about their selflessness and, and stoicism that's that's in short supply these days. But let's talk about the book. The main character in the book is Coach stick Olson. And we're going to talk a lot about stick today is a fantastic character you've created there, but he uses the acronym heart to explain his values. Now, could you tell us about them, but importantly, how they go on to shape stick as a leader
Troy Urdal 04:36
is technically in combination on amalgamation of all the great coaches that I've had the pleasure to work with or be coached by in my wife and some of the lessons I have many of the lessons I've learned as a coach along the way, are incorporated into us into this flawed but transformational figure who is showing up each and every day. to capture the heart of students of his athletes, and in this case, athletes means high school athletes and adults because because of the ages and groups, he's able to coach and he shows up every day to capture the hearts of those players. And that means he's all in on relationships. When we say capture the heart, there's two pieces to it. And we know, there's coaches that are athletes don't really care what we know until they know that we care. And the relationship piece is so significant, so important for expert for great coaches. And so we want to teach life skills. We might be as ballplayers for a handful of years, but they're going to be part of his greater team and his legacy for the rest of their lives. And so for that, for them, and for him in his coaching, that meant teaching the skills of heart. And so heart means hard work, empathy, attitude, teamwork, respect, and teamwork, like getting like get my spelling, right, how to work empathy, attitude, respect, and teamwork that spells out hearts. So there's really a dual meaning to this. And that's as coaches and for Stig, he showed up every day to teach life skills. And that's why he coached, he wanted to win for sure. And he's competitive in the book, the character comes through as competitive. But at the same time relationships might not be anything more important than the relationship that a coach creates with his or her athletes. And I think that's something that we're getting a lot better at, that's changed over time, as athletes have evolved. And as coaches as as have evolved, that we now know how significant and important that relationship piece was, I'm not sure that decades past, we'd always say the relationship was there. But to be a transformational coach, we know how significant now how important that really is. We can learn performance skills, like hard work, attitude, teamwork, in sports, we can also learn moral character skills, and that's where the empathy and the respect piece comes in. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way that that can get lost too, because we know sports can teach really bad lessons, if the wrong people are leading them in that research, or even show the more advanced level you get to In sports, the more morally corrupt sport can become. And so it's people that stick coach stick to the transformational carrying coaches, who are the linchpin to connect that learning that will carry through for the rest of our life. So heart hearts, all about teaching life lessons. And in making that relationship and that connection with athletes, I think it's something that every transformational coach prioritizes. Troy,
Murray Noble 07:34
you, you open the book with a quote from Nelson Mandela, and I'll read that sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does, which I agree. How have you seen that unfold in the fields? When you've been coaching teams, Troy,
Troy Urdal 07:54
thanks for grabbing that guy. That's one of my favorites. I think it's a wonderful as well.
Murray Noble 07:58
Lots of likes, what's a great quote to the book.
Troy Urdal 08:03
It's part of being a history teacher, I think context matters for me, and there's so many fantastic lessons throughout time, if we take the opportunity to capture them. And sports that really is like the original reality TV show, whether it's the World Cup, the Olympics, even the Super Bowl, you name it, there's little that can really unite people like sports camp. People, for some reason seem to connect around the weather, right? We ask how's the weather, and the other thing that we connect around is sports. That's what we talked about. For whatever reason, we talked about weather, we talked about the sports and one of the best experiences of sport.
And one of the maybe one reasons for being on a team is because of the connections to others and the bonds that we form with teammates. And that's what's so significant and how it really unites us. And, you know, I think back to my own experiences, and even as a father, when when my kids lost their grandfather at too young of an age, who showed up from it was the teammates that showed up from even as youth players on a larger, more national, even I guess this is an American example. But it's a global stage. I think back to those unifying moments through sport. After after 911, President Bush came out to the mountains at Yankee Stadium. And so I guess it's a good baseball example, that you drove everything a bulletproof vest, and there was a lot of people that did not want him to go out there and do that. And he threw out the first pitch of, I think was game three in 2001. And he absolutely stuck it he threw a lay down right down the middle. And it brought a country together. For only a moment regardless of politics. It really brought a country together. That's a really big example. But this is happening, smaller level and every team across the world every day.[PB2]
Murray Noble 10:00
That is a great example. And I do I have seen some great videos from that. From George Bush and Derek Jeter don't bounce it.
Troy Urdal 10:10
Will afterwards he was before going out there was Jr telling them not to throw in the dirt.
Murray Noble 10:15
And he was probably I think it was probably more nervous about that. And if any warmed up, no one was up, as we know, Fitty cent and a few others showed, but no, I understand the book is obviously non fictional. And there's the situations or characters, lots of metaphors and so forth. But one thing I noted about the book, relevant to today is that the Internet doesn't exist in muscle falls. And I have expired, I've got a 17 year old and actually one of the guys sent a photo off in the weekend where we're just waiting for the temperature to be right. And there's seven kids on the beach with their phones out. Kids are blasted from advice with advice from social media. There's some ridiculous schools and techniques that and some weird exercises of the kids are now being suggested they do. But how would you suggest that amateur coaches, which is the majority of coaches, obviously, work with these methods to ensure that we're getting consistent message to these kids?
Troy Urdal 11:14
There are lots of angles to go with Allen, right? We're to the point where I would say what information overload like like you're mentioning, there's just almost too much available to us between social media, and YouTube, you can find just about anything on the internet. And as we're talking about sports and kids, I think for all of us, as coaches, it's important to remind ourselves why we're showing up? And what is our why, what's that coaching purpose? Is it? Is it about us? Is it for us? Or is it about roles that we serve? And for those who are servant leaders, transformational leaders, they obviously know we're showing up to serve other people. I think there's some constants in expert coaching. And in how we get past that, you know, that overload of information and even over coaching, you know, establishing culture, coaches are the driving force in doing that in culture. And so every last athlete, then even their parents should know what's expected of them. And from their coach, you know, as coaches are we looking past for behavior or selfish actions? Are we calling out and saying that's not okay here? So as we establish that culture, how are we showing up? What kind of what kind of an example as a coach? Are we setting in? Are we portraying to our athletes, and this is whether it's even sports or even adult level. But we do know that kids want certain things. You use kids, they want coaches who are motivating, encouraging. They want coaches who are approachable, and they want coaches who know what they're talking about that are competent. And that's remained constant throughout my career as a coach, and as an activities director, when we talk to youth athletes, there are a lot of coaches who are motivating, encouraging, help them get to that next place was approachable that relationship is, and someone who knows what they're talking about someone who's competent, who knows the Exos in sport. So with that, I think we are complicated. And we just need to keep it simple. Sometimes. Let's not overcomplicate our sports that we suppose a wonderful example that we talked about all the data analytics and the sabermetrics that go into baseball, it's sometimes it's just see ball hit ball, read our athletes, be athletes, and then maybe most importantly of everything. Let's remember why people are showing up to play sports. And that's to have fun. And so I think simplicity is the key. It was just to keep it simple and not to overcomplicate it.
Murray Noble 13:49
There this I wrote some notes when I was preparing for today read the book and I had probably 41 line quotes from the book and I struggled to work out which one was my favorite? There was so many but I do love the you can grind it dull, or you can drop grinded sharp. Go rock, sorry, go slower, arrive sooner. The red board examples the wooden bamboo. Fantastic. One of the things I've noticed, I know as a coach, and that's something I've always focused on is making sure that parents understand a plan. So do you as a coach, do you encourage time spent with the parents preseason, especially or pre trainees? Because some of them just want immediate results for their for their child?
Troy Urdal 14:36
Yeah, and I think a preseason meeting at minimum should be required for especially in the level of new sport, and then part it's setting expectations and also getting everyone on that same sheet of music and it all comes back to communication. In my work, I've seen many wonderful coaches and I've seen The number of coaches who struggle to and the ones who struggle, a lot of times it's actually related to communication and communicating with parents. You know, parents get a bad rap. Sometimes I, I think, I don't know what the number is 95 98% Most parents are really mean well, and they also view things through the eyes of love. And as coaches, we need to understand that, that we're working with the most valuable possession in their world, that parents will their child. And sometimes, you know, having that perspective, I think it's probably why I changed as a coach when I became a parent, as well. And a lot of times when you have, when the when I've seen disagreements with parents, it's usually around misunderstandings. And a lot of times that misunderstanding it's about about the purpose of our programs, and why our coaches are there every day, they're there to help those athletes have fun to get better at something they love to do. And to become a better person, not just a better athlete, that's why our coaches are showing up. So if they're looking for, you know, draft status, or a division one scholarship, or some type of record, or NFL money, or some other crazy thing, they're gonna, they're not gonna get that from our programs, and from our coaches, they're not gonna get that, from me, what they're gonna get from me, is an effort to attempt to capture that heart each and every day, and to use those core values to make that student for the athlete, a better person, and push them to be their absolute best, each and every day. And so coaches have to share that vision that why and they need to do it early on with athletes with parents, that way parents can understand how to define what success means, really, what what the coach defines the success.
Murray Noble 16:47
I found with coaching teams and rec teams in the likes that state and national championships. I try to make sure that parents hear what I'm saying to the kids after the game, I kind of head towards the fence and I talk loud enough intentionally. The kids don't know that. But I'm not normally talking to them. I'm talking to the parents. But I read article years ago that, that the one thing that kids hated most about youth sport, was the drive home. And that's of course related to parents not understanding the little things the 1% effort to in baseball or sacrifice band or a backing up. Or the biggest cheerleader, or the one guy that steps out of the dugout and high fives everyone more than anyone else. The the Steve Nash, the most the guy who gave the most high five, the bump X, that's something that I think is really, really important. So it's the same in sports, it should be the same in businesses, how do we how do we encourage parents or or supporters or managers to understand this?
Troy Urdal 17:48
Yeah, that's so much easier said than done. Right? It's, it's easy to admire the problem. It's much more difficult to solve it. And I think it is a vicious cycle. You know, we hear about like a 24 hour rule for for parents to talking to coaches, there should probably be a 24 hour rule for parents talking to their kids as well. And when I say that, I mean more, and the negativity and the criticism that can sometimes come in that car ride home, we talked about college home, I think the only words the parents should say after the game are watching the play, then just keep it as simple as watching you play in the family positive reinforcement, by all means, but like the postgame critique, that can wait for that the coach can do that. And as a matter of fact, the kid knows already. The kid already knows this. And you don't need mom and dad to be hammering home, especially in that moment when probably all they need is to be walked at that moment. And so, you know, it'll be good. The best coaches are the ones that understand this, and they can help coach and teach the parents in that moment. But it can be really hard, because there's so much emotion that goes into sports, and it's why you see crazy fan behavior, and then everything else that goes with it. Because sports are emotional. It's part of what we love about it, but not in the car ride home.
Murray Noble 19:19
Yeah, one of my one of the guys that I play with, he's played a very senior level his sons in the industry ad in Australian squad as a baseball er and they've got a great family rule, which I really admire. If he if the sun sits in the car with his hat on, we can talk about the game. He puts his hat in the back or in the boot. I don't want to talk about the game and it's a very, very beautiful, subtle, respected way to operate.
Troy Urdal 19:46
I think that's a fantastic rule. I like that and share that with our parents. Troy
Paul Barnett 19:51
in the book, there's a quote where you say one of the most significant influences on team members experiences is The depth and quality of relationships, I can see you nodding as I say it. Now learning to be a good teammate. It's also a life skill given the amount of work that these days it's done in teams, community groups, corporate life, work life, wherever you happen to be. Ours, the effort required to build the relationships in skills changed over the years, you've been involved with sport.
Troy Urdal 20:26
This is another tricky one for us to navigate and 2024 and beyond. And in part where that quote comes from, is my own research. When I when I did my dissertation, I traveled across our region. And I asked athletes about the best and worst experiences. And best experiences certainly come back to relationships, relationships with peers, relationships with coaches. But I think we're in a crossroads now of me versus we, in sports athletes. I think too frequently. It says though, the becoming weaponized or a mercenary of sports or like an independent contractor where the girl from team to team. And we've seen this in pro sports right now in the States, it's, it's NFL free agent signings. And so this is happening a lot over a year now. And now it's become norm in college sports. That didn't used to be the case. And we're even seeing this more and more new sports where I don't like the situation, I'm gonna go find a different team. And, you know, we start to lose that community, in the community sense that really is that bonding piece, that glue that holds people together, and you build a team through shared goals and purpose and time together that significant time together. And so it's those experiences away from practices and away from games that are in many ways every bit as meaningful, if not more meaningful than then some of the competitions for our athletes. And if you ask athletes, they'll tell you that you asked about their best experiences, they're going to talk about the bus rides, or the car rides with our friends, we're gonna talk about the weekend tournaments, or that time at a hotel, or the pool or team meals, whatever it might be some team outing, always opportunities to create bonds, and to create relationships just being together as a team. And so that's why I think for coaches, it's significant, important thing that we don't just focus on. And it could be any team setting, right? It could be athletics, or it could be, oh, it's in the business world, if you have a team of people, that you need to focus on relationships, and you need to build bonds, if we do that, we know that those groups will perform better. So often, we spend our time focusing on the technical details, the X is known as the practice plans. And we glaze over skip some of that meaningful time together, that that's valued most.
Paul Barnett 22:55
Another idea I like in the book is the Goldilocks principle of communication. Can you tell us about that?
Troy Urdal 23:02
story of Goldilocks, right. And so that's about having the just right amount of something. So not too cold, not too hot, or not having too much of something or not having too little of it. And so it's applied to communication. There's a lot of different ways in chasing influence that connects to this idea. And we talked about communication early and how significant important is, right all parts of life, whether it's coaching, whether it's leadership, whether it's being a good co worker, or being a good spouse, a good father, that, that we owe the world. And we owe those that we have relationships with honesty, and I think we are our athletes, honesty, too. But at the same time, it's not about crushing dreams. And this is something I think every coach can relate to anyone who's had that conversation with a team member about what is their role and value on the team? What team are they on, you know, playing time, that dirty word playing time, we want our athletes to be honest, at the same time, we shouldn't be crushing dreams. And so that's really the Goldilocks principle is finding that balance between the two. And I think that's the key to great coaching is being a strong communicator, where athletes do know the role and value where as coaches, we're holding our teams to high expectations at the same time giving them care and support every step of the way. And so there's a lot you know, this is a passion for me on communication and the Goldilocks zone finding it right. One thing that always trips me up in coaching is yelling, you know, are you lower in do you coach angry? These ideas? I just don't, I don't know what other areas of life, we can get away with that and somehow we continue to allow it in coaching, right? With your boss yelled at you every day at work. How long would you keep doing it? If your teacher screamed at you every day in the classroom? How long would that teacher be teaching? If your spouse screaming and yelled at you every day? How long have you still married Ah, I know that that is a whole different can of worms. But we just don't really stand for it in other areas of life, but somehow in coaching, we allow it. And so avoiding the angry coaching group somehow, you know, that's like I said, a passion for me is just understanding why you're showing up and you're not coaching angry. And that old school notion of, I'm gonna send a message, that's poor communication, unless the athlete knows what your message is, all you're doing is giving your athlete reasons to be upset at you, because they're gonna make up their own story about whatever the message is, the coach is sending it. So I think that's one of those soft skills that coaches and leaders can spend more time on that, that everyone can improve. And anyone can change in terms of communication, but we just don't spend enough time thinking and reflecting on how do we present how do we communicate? Where are the messages that we send both verbally and non verbally?
Murray Noble 25:58
I think relevant to that Troy is IU football, former Australian Army Chief David Morrison once said, The standard you will pass is the standard you accept, which I think's got a lot of similarities to what you just said, and your quote, what you permit, you promote. Yelling is an example of that behavior. A coach is very much an example that we're human, we get frustrated, we make mistakes. As a coach, what tools do you have? And what do you encourage coaches and managers across all fields of endeavor to avoid acting and reacting so emotionally?
Troy Urdal 26:37
And I think, you know, as I talked about, I always want to, this is why I throw it out there that transformational coaches aren't perfect coaches, right? servant leaders aren't perfect leaders. And so we all need to acknowledge that we're human, and we're going to make mistakes as leaders, and we're going to make mistakes as coaches, I know that I make mistakes, like it's just part of being human is to be flawed. And when that happens, we have to take responsibility, and the hits, we'll come right and so directly in specifically to your question of the what is a strategy or what's the way that manage it when when these problems and issues come our way, I think the best way to say it is to insert your purpose, you know, because in sports, your best player is gonna get injured, the team ball bag might get lost, right? It didn't make it through and luggage, whatever it might be, it won't stop raining, the weather's perfect, whatever it is, reps are gonna make bad calls. That's just that's part of sport, it's gonna happen. angry parent yelling at you, you name it, the hits are gonna come. And I think what happens usually, is when the hits come, we respond, right, someone hit me, I'm gonna respond right back to it. But if we can pause, and throw our purpose in there, and just get back to that, it's really, I think, a calming mechanism to ground yourself, and why am I doing less work? What really is the issue to gain some perspective and get you back to your true motivations. And so that's a strategy I use is that when something's going poorly, then I love the jackal YouTube video, and have you ever seen it before? You know, good, something bad happens, good, good, gives me an opportunity to get better to learn from it and to improve. And part of that good for me, stone epicenter, you know, whatever, whatever it is, there's something to be learned by it. But that will only happen if we pause to take advantage of the opportunity.
Murray Noble 28:36
How a leader or coach responds to failure could influence people for a lifetime. Can you tell us about your experience with this? Please try
Troy Urdal 28:47
it with us. Chairman. I borrow this. Dr. Syndra, Camp off talks about run, burn return. And I know this is really true for me, because that can be a tough question for a lot of leaders, a lot of people and I throw myself in that camp, you know, the interview question, tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from or something like that. I really do learn and burn. And maybe my burn is a little too strong. But I don't dwell on failures. yet. I know how significant and important it is to learn from those failures and how significant and important it is to get honest feedback and reflection that can help us and inform us to make future better decisions and then to make improvement. But reflection can be hard in such a fast paced, busy world we're in. I don't know that that becomes much of a practice for many of us to reflect. But I think that mistake making can really humanize us. It shows our vulnerabilities, it shows that we are human, and that all of us need to have failure or mistake making is part of our narrative part of our story, right because all of us make mistakes. That was I've done that before. The story that is most memorable to me in terms of failure and mistake making the one that still will run or make me sweat and tingle and just all those emotions come back I might even blush right now, as I talked about it is I once was leading across country, this is an activities director in a golf cart with a couple 100 runners behind me. And I was in charge of running this meat and the mountain biker what was supposed to be the rabbit, lead, the race didn't show up. And so they asked me as the person as the administrator in charge if I if I run that cross country race. And I said, Sure, like I'm familiar enough with that course. Halfway through, I took a wrong turn, I took a wrong turn, and a cross country race with a couple of 100 runners behind me following me. I mean, the distance matters, this is this is something that really, really matters. And I messed it up. And I was probably the most horrifying, couple few minutes of my life. But I like to, I like to use that as a story about earlier and mistake making because in the end, calmer heads prevail. The person next to me, who was sharing a throne with me, was able to call a coach and figure out how to get the distance back to near perfection. So even though they were running, running in the wrong order, in the wrong places, we got it back to a 5k which it was supposed to be or really, really close to the five gate. And then the amount of grace that these teenage athletes gave me afterwards because I was pretty dejected. I mean, this was a traumatic moment for me, super public, leaving hundreds of people down the wrong path. And in the amount of grace, including to the next day, a student athlete giving me a little note and some of the saying you did great yesterday. So mistakes don't need to define you. Right, we can learn from them, we're all gonna fail. It's really about how we, what we learn from it, and how we respond. That's more significant and most important, we can't be afraid of mistakes. I think that's crippling for all of us, as leaders, as performers, is to be afraid of making mistake that was to try are going to fail more than those who don't. And I think there's an important life lesson than that.
Murray Noble 32:18
There's a lot of stoicism in good coaches, isn't it?
Troy Urdal 32:22
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well,
Paul Barnett 32:24
I do love the TED lasso approach of just be a goldfish. I think that works really well, too. But there's a there's a question I'd like to ask you, Troy, I might I'm not a coach, I haven't really been involved. Well, I coached the under 13 years, and it is a goat. But my background is corporate. So I was the CEO and I used to run businesses in Europe. And one of the ideas in the book that I ascribe to is this idea of being careful of using absolutes and leaving room for maybe I don't think the world is black and white, I think it's gray. And I think you have to navigate that gray every day. But tell us why you think this is so important when leading people.
Troy Urdal 33:03
Right, they got it from my mom. And so you know, the choice of words has always been significant, that I know that there was some language differences between English in the States and Australia. But my mom would always remind me there's no backwards, there's no s at the end of the record backwards a single direction, you're going backward, you don't say you're going forwards, you're going forward, you're going backward. Same would be you know, if someone says most unique, unique, that's one of a kind, there isn't such a thing, as most unique, it's either unique, or it's not unique. And so there's a special place for me about absolutes and leaving room for maybe. And words like must accept every not always, never right you have to be careful when you're using those words, because the brain immediately goes to finding exceptions, any anytime we do that we try to break that we try to find an exception to why that's not true when someone uses that absolute. I think it's also a reminder that we have to seek to understand before we cast judgment, that we give ourselves some wiggle room in there, because we may need it. And we don't know what may have happened or what the situation was or the circumstances behind it. And that there's a little grace, it gives us that wiggle room that we might need. I like to tell a coach isn't for me to try the practices, remove the word but from our vocab and really replace it with a word now. So Robbie, an example. That was a great shot. But next time, let's say the back of the neck. Right. So if you said that that was a great shot, but next time let's hit the back of the athlete didn't hear anything prior to but all they heard is oh, I didn't score him. I'm not very good. It wasn't a very good effort or it wasn't. It wasn't performed well. If you looking around and say, there's a great shot. Now next time, let's hit the back of the net right? There, I received both sides of that sense. And so language is significant. It is important to me and I tried to be mindful in that. And that's a good example of throwing maybe in there is a set that grace in that wiggle room we sometimes need.
Paul Barnett 35:21
Troy, maybe just one final question, if I could. Towards the end of the book, he talked about the concept of true success. I'm using an absolute there are no but you do talk about it as true success. Tell us how you describe it in the book and what it means to you.
Troy Urdal 35:38
And I think we can do it with us. I think it works. And I'll explain why I and I believe every coach needs to know their purpose in their why they need to show up, they need to know why they show up and why they coach the way they do. I think it's significant for them to understand how it feels to be coached by them. And they also need to know what success means or what true success but what they're after, and how they're going to get there. For me, it's about living my purpose. So true success for me, you know, did I help someone today, that service was able to help someone, they help another person grow today, as an educator and as a coach. That's leadership. And that's back to my purpose. I said at the beginning is I served using the power of sports to make the world a better place. Oh, that make another person better other than growing other person. And then it's for me to get I get better today. And so at the end of the day, those are questions I asked myself. So to your question, I think success, there's two parts to it. It's making a positive difference in another person's life. And it's the pursuit of mastery for each of us striving to become the best version of ourselves. Sometimes that's easier than others. That's not always easy to do that it's it's not always easy to capture those opportunities. That's why my office I have a quote hanging up that a lot of us it's it's a Thomas Edison quote I use in the book, most people miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work, right. I think that really sums up that finding success. It's not something that's gonna fall in our lap. But to always look out for me making that positive difference in other person's life, and then pursuing mastery being the best version of myself possible.
Paul Barnett 37:18
Troy what a great way to finish thank you so much for your time today. I loved reading about Coach stick Olson and the tech town of waffle falls at all of the people in the new stadium and I highly recommend the book I'll put the link in the show notes and I wish you all the best with it. Thanks
Troy Urdal 37:35
for having me on. lucked out