coaches as educators edit
Tue, Sep 03, 2024 8:56PM • 45:33
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, athlete, ucla, teaching, student athletes, life, conversation, sport, influence, kirk, alter ego, speak, leadership, leader, val, educator, learned, talk, interviewed, answers
SPEAKERS
Hugh McCutcheon, Kirk Walker, Paul Barnett, Valorie Kondos Field, Dean Benton
Paul Barnett 00:00
Well, it's a very special morning for me. Today. I have two great coaches on the podcast. I have Miss Valerie connorsfield, good morning. Miss Val
Valorie Kondos Field 00:08
Good morning. Thank you for having me back.
Paul Barnett 00:11
Always, always a pleasure to talk to you. And I can't wait, actually, at the end, to talk a little bit about the Olympics, if we can, if we can fit that in. And I have Mr. Kirk Walker here with us as well. Kirk, it's lovely to meet you.
Kirk Walker 00:24
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks Paul. Thank
Paul Barnett 00:26
you for coming along. And I think, well, we should probably start before I ask you where, where you are in the world. I guess between you both, you'd have, if memory serves, is it 17 national championships? Is that or is it 18?
Valorie Kondos Field 00:40
It's it's a slew. I've had seven then at UCLA, and then at Oregon State as a head coach, and back at UCLA, so he has seven as well. But the whole, the whole dynamic, has been super we've known each other 42 years. Yeah, UCLA softball coach, you say gym Master's coach, assistants, our little cubicles were right next to each other back in the 80s.
Paul Barnett 01:07
So I'm looking forward to listening a little bit to both talk about the long arcs of your careers. But of course, the focus today is coaches as educators. But of course, before I get into that, I have to ask you, where are you in the world today, and what have you both been up to? And maybe ladies first, Miss Fowler, if we could start with
Valorie Kondos Field 01:27
you, I am in our home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and you just saw my living room. You've called it a hunting lodge. Okay, there's no dead animals in here, but that's cool. And I am got a lot going on. I am still teaching a math course on leadership and coaching at UCLA. I've been asked to teach a course on leadership now at the University of Arkansas, which I'm thrilled with. But as we speak, I am inundated with, uh, producing and choreographing the Simone Biles gold over America tour that is coming to 30 cities near you in the States. So massive.
Paul Barnett 02:09
Fantastic. Any Simone going to be in that show? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Congratulations.
Valorie Kondos Field 02:15
Female Olympians dance. It's a, it's a massive rock and roll arena show travels 30 cities. That is the biggest, most, grandest thing I've ever done. But when I retired, I remember so distinctly saying, Okay, God, I want to be really, really challenged, and I want to be really inspired, but I want to be challenged in ways that I haven't done before. So to produce live content like this, on that scale, and to have Simone trust me to do it, it we I mean, there's a whole slew of us. There's four producers, another choreographer, but Simone Biles committed to come to UCLA when she was a teenager, before she went professional. So we've been close for a long time.
Paul Barnett 02:58
I had the great pleasure of interviewing Amy Borman, who talked a lot, who was a, I think she followed her from childhood all the way through, and was a terrific interview. And I'm I mean that she captured, hey, Simone, captured the whole world's attention. Yeah, what she just did over there in Paris.
Valorie Kondos Field 03:13
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And, you know, it would have been magnificent without this Olympic games, but the fact that she took the time for her mental health, and the fact that she glows when she speaks about her therapist, and she even said at the Olympics that she spoke to her therapist, you know, right, the morning that she was competing, I just think That's such a gift to all of us that has elevated her status. And I keep telling her I'm like Simone, you have transcended sport by what you've done for humans.
Paul Barnett 03:51
Oh, fantastic, Miss fell well, Kirk, are you able to fill us in on what you've been up to? Is it anything as grand as that?
Kirk Walker 03:59
Nothing is grand. Nothing's as ever, as grand as what Miss val is doing. So yeah, it's, it is what it is. I actually happen to be in Miss Val's office a few doors down from where she is right now, currently, as I'm here visiting, but I'm living in LA still coaching at UCLA in in my last year before retirement at UCLA, and just 11 lifebang Back there, and being back at UCLA, it's going to be a part of this whole big, Big 10 transition right for the conference, for UCLA. So excited about that. And then we'll see what the future holds. I'll probably be following the goat tour around a little bit this this year. But other than that, I'm going to keep busy with the UCLA softball.
Paul Barnett 04:43
Well, it's terrific to get a chance to to chat with you, but today this this topic is one that Miss Val and I have been talking about for a while now, and it's about coaches as educators and I as the conversation runs along. I want to extend that into leaders as educators. But let's start with with with. The through the lens of coaches. And my opening question probably, if I could ask you to start Miss Fowler's, where does education sit in the long list of things that head coaches have to get done?
Valorie Kondos Field 05:14
You know, sadly, it was, it had a much grander seat before nio, before name, image and likeness, before coaches and Kirko can speak to this. And it's I, every single coach I speak to now says I just want to coach, and I want to teach and I want to mentor. I want to I don't want to spend half my time fundraising for recruits. And so in my day, I retired right before covid. I retired right before nio. And so in my world, it was all about using sport as a metaphor for life.
And I you, and I've talked about this before,
my whole reason I coached was to help help develop champions in life through sport that are go out and make the world a better place, and the classroom was the gym in my office and the conversations we had, and so that I loved every second of my coaching career, because it really wasn't about the wins and losses or the X's and O's, it was about the teaching. You gotta teach it, and you got to coach them up and mentor them to why the teaching is important. And I used to have this conversation with Coach Wooden all the time because he would say, I'm just a teacher. I'm like, well, it's one thing to teach someone. It's another thing to motivate and inspire them to want to do what you're helping them learn[PB1]
Paul Barnett 06:41
from your experience? Kirk,
Kirk Walker 06:42
yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think what I would say a little bit different twist on it.
I think the teaching of the sport, the teaching of the game, is really become a very small part of what we do, but I think we are teaching constantly. So even with n i L and with the challenges that face student athlete today, we're modeling and and having conversations around a far greater swath of information. So we're teaching far more than ever, but it's less and less about the sport. It's more and more about how they're going to navigate the world in front of them, and generationally, to be honest with you, it becomes more and more challenging when the digital platforms that they're on and that they're navigating, I'll become more and more foreign to my generation. It's harder and harder sometimes to navigate the problems that they come to us with. But I think we're the only reason why anyone, in my opinion, can, can stay in coaching as long as you know either of us have here or done is that you are an educator, that you understand and that that is our major mission. It's not about winning championships, it's not about stats. It's not about even, to be honest with you, developing all Americans or anything like that. Those are the side benefits, I think, to what we do on a daily basis, which is educate young adults how to navigate the next stage of their life[PB2] .
That is very different. When you move them away from their parents and move them away from their comfort zone, and you introduce a lot of failure, and that's our job, introduce a lot of failure, because that's the greatest teacher is failure, and we do it with a safety net. Obviously, not not a mat, but a safety net, obviously, to be able to protect them from too far failure, but ultimately, we have to create the failure for them and then navigate them through that. I
Paul Barnett 08:39
love this idea of education being your major mission, and I want to link that with something Miss Val. Talked about Miss Val. You talked about John Wooden there, and of course, his Four Laws of learning are quite famous. I've heard many people play them back to me, but when you reflect on both of your journeys as a coach, did you have to remember that you were an educator, is it easy to forget that in the context of what you're setting out to achieve? I'm
Valorie Kondos Field 09:07
going to answer. I'm going to go first. Kirk grew up in the world of athletics. I grew up in the world of ballet. So there was no winning and losing in dance when I was growing up. So for me, it was extremely it wasn't just easy. It was my natural way to coach and teach when I was at UCLA, to focus on them as human beings and to help them navigate life. Although I do believe that we are all born with a competitive spirit, and I will notice when I would go on the competition floor, this alter ego comes, would come out, and I'm like, well, who's that? I've never experienced that before. Who's she? Like, who's this, like, badass that just wants to go burn, kill everybody. And that was an interesting dynamic. For me to not shift who I was, for my student athletes on the competition floor to not become my alter ego. Ego, because winning is all about ego. And so it was that was something that I would even look at myself. I'd look at film or photos, and I would notice my posture, and I would notice my face, and it was just this stern. And I was like, Who's that lady? That's not me. I
Paul Barnett 10:32
want to talk to you about your alter ego if I can. But I can see Kirk laughing at you there, and I should probably find out why he's laughing
Kirk Walker 10:38
so much. Yes, hold that thought. So. The interesting thing is, and Valerie's correct, is that we entered into sports in completely different really veins. I was really fortunate. I grew up a part of competitive programs and winning national titles when I was 17. We won our first national title before I even got to UCLA. So I came into UCLA already. In that competitive mindset, UCLA softball was at the premiere, you know, in the country. So I walked right into the highly successful, most successful program in the history of the sport, and was able to kind of build off of that, and won six national titles in my first 11 years. Just the first 11 years of my coaching experience at the division one level were national championships that included also two second place and a third place. So it was a world that was really fascinating. And to me, I love the competitive drive of it. And there was two, probably the biggest eye openers for me about that I was an educator was first of all, when Lisa Fernandez, the greatest player to ever play our game, came into our sport, came into UCLA. She required so much more than anyone else, not because she was high maintenance, because she demanded to know and have an understanding of why anything was happening. So I changed how I coached, and every time I was giving her feedback or improvements or my thoughts. It was always try this, do this, because.dot.it was never just do it. And so that really changed my perspective as an assistant coach to teaching the game. And I love that. And that was during that first 11 years. The second thing, well, there's three things, but the second thing I'll cover was when I got to Oregon State as a head coach, because now I'm going into Oregon State, bottom of the country, literally horrible program and horrible success they've lost for 40 consecutive years, never had a winning season. So I went in there thinking I'm going to immediately build in all this immediate success, and very quickly realized I could have a high standard, but I wasn't necessarily going to get the the outcome as quickly as I was used to, and it frustrated me in the beginning, and then I started to realize the gains that were happening. We weren't seeing statistically as quickly, but we were seeing dramatically in the classroom, we were seeing dramatically in how they were representing and how they were kind of being part of the athletic department and engaging. So I learned really quickly there my first years that, okay, this is not just about winning, because I can't get them to win, but I'm getting them to be successful. And that was the second thing, the third thing was, I didn't start competing as an athlete, elite athlete, until after I had been coaching for probably about 11 years, and so when I started competing, my eyes were completely open to what coach's role really could be to develop so but yeah, I would love to hear about the alter ego, because, to me, a funny story I will tell you. I used to be in the gym and at the meets when I was we were both assistants, and I would go from softball to gymnastics, and we'd be at a meet, and, you know, there's multiple athletes going up at the same time, and an athlete on the other team would fall on beam, and I'd be like, yes, and Valerie would give me a stern look like new. We do not do that. We want everyone to hit. We want everyone to succeed, and then we want to come out on top. And I went, Oh, no, I am a coach. I want to destroy our opponent. I don't care if they all fall. So that was an interesting experience for me that, well, we're going
Paul Barnett 14:21
to I'm going to come back. You're not going to escape that. I'm coming back to dive into that as well and see where that mindset leads you. But I'm interested Miss Val on this alter ego comment you made, and I'm wondering, was that alter ego, someone who was entitled to success, or expected success? Is that where it came from? No,
Valorie Kondos Field 14:42
no, no, no.
The Alter Ego came from insecurity, 100% insecurity because I was hired to be the head coach UCLA. Got multiple emails, phone calls, you're going to destroy. This national program by hiring a ballerina choreography to be your head coach. What does she know? Nothing. And so I had to posture and the alter ego. I remember so clearly being on the competition floor and posturing because I knew the chancellor was in the arena. I knew the other coaches were in the arena. I knew we were on live TV, and I needed people to know that I was taking this job very seriously. And so it came out in what I thought a strong leader was you have all the answers. It's black and white. There is no discussion. You are in charge of everything, and you can never let them see you sweat, and you can never let them think that you don't have all the answers. And so that was my alter ego, and it literally took meeting Coach Wooden and reading his books and definition of success and talking him through all of this and to allow myself to just be mean. And I remember thinking, you say they hired you for a reason, you know, go to that person that they hired. Go be that person that they hired, because you're trying to be somebody else, and you're not doing a very good job at it at all. So go be the person that they hired. [PB3] And then 10 years, nine years, eight years before I retired, I had breast cancer, and it was the greatest year of the years the 37 years I was at UCLA, because every single student, athlete, staff member, coach, elevated their game, their moral, cultural, foundational game, and because they said, We're going to make this the least, the least. What's the word? Stressful year of misspells life because I was going through chemotherapy and surgeries while I was coaching, and the girls came up after me at the end of the season, and they said, Miss Val, I have never had so much fun competing gymnastics in all my life. And I said, why? And he said, Because you how you were on the floor allowed us to enjoy it, and we didn't have to take it so seriously, dogmatically seriously, but we were able to celebrate all of our hard work, and it was because of how I let go of the posture.
Paul Barnett 17:31
Isn't that fascinating? I think there's such a clear memory for I think all of us, listening to everyone, listening to them, will be able to close their eyes and think of a great teacher in their life and a great coach in their life, and clearly, from that moment, you've made that mark on some of the people that were in the program. Then
Valorie Kondos Field 17:49
I have to share a story of Kirk mentioned Lisa Fernandez, the greatest softball player in our history, and their cubicles were right next to our cubicles, so we heard everything. So when I become a head coach, and I've got student athletes that I know are lying to me about why they can't come in for training, and I'm thinking, I have got to break the cycle of them thinking that they can't be honest in sharing their truths. So I offered our student athletes three personal days during the 15 weeks of our quarter at UCLA, and a personal day you that's literally a personal day. You can take it for any reason you want. If you're behind on your sleep, if you're behind on your laundry, you've got to go study. If you just want to go shopping, it's a great day. You want to go to the beach, all you have to do is call me and let me know, are you sick or are you injured, or is there something egregious going on, and otherwise, that you can take a personal day for any reason. And the beauty of it was, it taught them time management, because you only get three so go through your calendar, figure out when you got tests and papers coming up, when you're going to need that downtime. Plan those out. Plan your personal days out. Lisa Fernandez that one of the greatest, most competitive athletes on the planet of any sport comes from your office. She goes personal days. Personal days. We're giving athletes personal days now. What are their personal day? They need to be out in the gym. They need to be on the they name it in the field, they may be getting better. What's with the personal days? And like, Lisa, let's talk about personal days. Okay,
Paul Barnett 19:29
I'm feeling a bit scared just watching you do that. And
Valorie Kondos Field 19:32
then she comes up to me because she wants to drop some weight. And I said, Well, how about if you just like stick to chicken and fish and vegetables. She comes back the next day, so proud of herself. She's got panda chicken, which is wrapped in fat and fried, but she's so excited for herself, because she's eating chicken,
Kirk Walker 19:53
orange chicken, so it was orange. It had fruit in it, yeah,
Valorie Kondos Field 19:58
I guess as a teacher. Her as an educator, I failed in that aspect.
Kirk Walker 20:03
I'm not sure. Well, she was my athlete, so I guess I failed at even greater extent, nutrition was an eye light on the softball program at that time.
Paul Barnett 20:11
Now I I'm going to take us from nutrition, and I'm going to play a clip from an SNC coach that I interviewed actually called Dean Benton. He's Australian, he's he's world renowned in his area of expertise, and in it, he talks about coaching and teaching. So I'm going to play the clip, and then I'm going to ask you both the
Dean Benton 20:35
question, teaching is about the acquisition of youth, new new knowledge and new skills. Coaching, on the other hand, is more focused on refining developing knowledge and skills over time. Teaching tends to be a one way process where the teacher transfers their knowledge to the athlete, whereas coaching is a two way process, and as as that two way process grows over time. It actually flips around the other way.
Paul Barnett 21:06
Now I was interested to ask you both, does thinking about them as separate things matter?
Kirk Walker 21:15
Well, I'll, I'll jump in and start rambling here a little bit, and then see what comes out of it. You know, it's interesting, when I heard him say that that teaching is a one way conversation, and coaching is a two way conversation, and I don't know that I fully agree with that, but I think I understand where he's coming from. Teaching is, obviously, is providing somebody information that they don't have, that they didn't have prior. So that can only come in one direction. So I understand that portion of it. I think certainly his concept of coaching is a two way conversation is very, very accurate. I don't think you can help an athlete grow and get better and fine tune unless you are hearing from them either how they're interpreting what you're saying or how they're feeling what you're asking them to do, and can they, you know, execute it. So I definitely think the coaching is a two way. I've never thought about them differently. It to me. I guess life to me, is always a two way conversation. So I think I learned from my athletes just as much when I feel like I'm teaching them as they do from me. So I may have a really good source of information for them, but in that process, they're experiencing life from a different perspective, different generation. So I never want to be closed off that I have all of the information and there isn't something more that I may get from them. So I that's where I would say. I don't know that I agree with it, but I do understand the concept that teaching is the acquisition of knowledge, which is going to be one directional.
Valorie Kondos Field 22:57
Um, I wholeheartedly agree, and I understand the nuances here. I think this is a fascinating time to be having this conversation, because I think anybody 20 years and older, for sure, has experienced an authoritative, dictatorial style of teacher, and there is like when Kirk was talking about, it's about the conversations and the relationship and the two way that is not what we grew up with, like I grew up, we all grew up, I think, with somebody in our lives, parent or a teacher or a coach, someone just do it, because I said so, and then I started thinking about the difference between teaching and coaching, and it's about the coaching is about developing the relationship so that you can actually have an effect on someone, because you just you teach them about the skill and the drills the sport, like I said earlier, there's not a lot of motivation Going on to want to change, and the only reason any of us need a coach in our lives is to help us achieve something we can't achieve on our own.
So if I want to get healthier, I can read a bunch of books, and that's teaching me how to eat better, how to exercise better, how to have a better mental mindset. But the coach is the one, then that steps in and that helps develop the plan, that helps hold you accountable, helps you understand the why of what you're doing. Why is that important? That's the that is where coaches that are old school, they're not going to survive if they don't start understanding it's the relationship between the student and that doesn't mean you're going to lunch and coffee and shopping. The relationship is having the conversation. [PB4]
As Kirk said, he learns as much when he teaches, he learns as much as is he sharing. I wouldn't say that's across the board, though, for all coaches,
Paul Barnett 24:56
listening to you both and having interviewed so many coaches, I do. Hear them talk a lot about teaching skills or imparting information, perhaps not as much at the elite level, where you assume someone has arrived with a certain amount of skill in place. And one of the things that I learned from listening to them is the style of communication they use in that process. I think their communication skills are elite in society, and there's a lot to be learned. There's a lot to learn from the way that some of the great coaches are able to communicate through their body, through the way they listen, through the way that they speak, the way they they use certain phrases and so on. And I've got a that I would like to share with you from Hugh McCutcheon and Hugh, I've interviewed Hugh many, many times on the podcast. He's New Zealander, so I have an affinity with him from a cultural point of view, but he's he coaches in America, and he led the he led the American men to the gold and the women to silver at the Olympics. And he coaches at the college level. So he's got this really nice way of seeing both the college level athlete and the the elite level athlete. So I'm going to play that clip, and then I'm going to come back and talk to you about examples of communication that you may have seen that are salient
Hugh McCutcheon 26:20
in this day and age, it's not about I say jump and they say, how high, right? It's as the coach or the teacher or whatever, I believe we have a responsibility to try to connect our content to the learner. And you know, John Wooden gave a great quote on this, right? If they haven't learned, you haven't taught. And I think that idea of taking 100% responsibility for your athletes outcomes and trying to help them to figure out how to be better is a good place to start. So to that end, as much as I would like to think that these 18 year olds that I'm currently dealing with to 21 have the emotional or mental range to be able to adapt to whatever it is we're throwing out there. I think that's probably a little bit unrealistic. What I know is that I've been around the block a few more times than they have. So can I use my experience to find different ways to connect our information to the learner in a way that's going to work for them, versus worrying about how it's going to work for me. Now that's not that's kind of a bend, don't break thing, right? That's not saying that I'm compromising the way that I'm I'm going to go about it, or the principles that are driving our methods. It's just I'm finding ways to apply them that work best for the people that I'm working with.
Paul Barnett 27:41
When I heard Hugh say that, it sort of a light bulb went off in my mind, because I found that his message, this communication, being the bridge between, you know, teaching and coaching. But I'm really interested to hear your reactions to that clip, and whether there's any any salient examples in your experience where you've seen that that work.
Valorie Kondos Field 28:03
Yes, people ask me about my career and the athletes that I coached, and you know, how do I have any regrets? And I think knowing what I know now how important the relationship is, and that doesn't mean you have to be this kumbaya symbiotic with your student athletes, but for them to feel that they have a voice for you, to develop trust with them, that they can share their voice. And when I look back at the handful of student athletes that I don't have a close relationship, that aren't Miss Val fans, and I think, Wow, a commonality is I didn't have a relationship with them, and what would I do differently now is I would have them in a meeting. Sadly, you can't have one on one meetings anymore. Somebody else has to be in the room. But I would have the meeting, and I would just ask that, instead of me starting off with this is what I'm saying, This is what you're doing. This is where we're getting I would say, What do you think is the most important thing that we should be talking about right now? What? And let them bring their perspective to how they're feeling being a part of this team to the table. And and that's something, I mean, one of my most favorite books now I've just gave it to Kirk is fierce conversations. And she says, When you're in a really when you're in a really touchy, potentially volatile discussion, hand them the conversation starter. What do you? What do you feel we should be talking about right now? And that doesn't mean like Coach mccussion just said he has a ton more experience than any athlete he will ever coach. We all do. So I really believe that the there's a beautiful. Mix of being a transactional coach and being a transformational coach, and that mix is if you can spend the majority of your time explaining why you're asking someone to do something, helping to figure out what helps them motivate develop that relationship in a transformational way, then when those moments come where you've got to bark orders and they've got to jump you've already it comes from a place of trust. You've already earned their trust. So they know that there are not just barking orders at you because your ego is blowing up. They know there's a reason because you've spent the time developing that trust.
Kirk Walker 30:43
That's phenomenal. That's awesome. I think three things that stood out to me, and I think Valerie touched on a ton of it, so I don't want to reciprocate everything she said, but two quotes that really stand out to me. One is the John Wooden quote, and I'll get the quote wrong, and Miss, Miss wooden here will correct me. But another one was from a coach that a mentor of mine and and I learned very early in my time at UCLA, is that she learned that young athletes, they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, right? And that has something that has always resonated with me because I realized that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to go great in depth into their personal lives and I become best friends with them, but they need to know that I care about them more than just as an athlete. And then I'll also take the John Wooden quote, which is he spoke to an athlete and said, You know, I love you all the same, but I like you all a little different. So you may have different relationships with different athletes because you may like them, you may actually bond with them a little bit differently, but you can still love them all the same. And I think those two quotes have always resonated with it, even if there's an athlete that I don't really, I don't really jive with her, like we just have different personalities, different sense of humor. So she's maybe not something that I'm going to spend my extra time with after she graduates, but I'm going to love her just as much as the athlete that I do like as an athlete. So that's really important to me. And then the last thing that stood out to me was totally different tangent. But tangents are good, right? Oftentimes, when we are talking an athlete about skill development, we're asking athletes to do a skill, and we keep asking the skill, and then they can't get it right, and it happens, and you're like, Well, this is I have all the knowledge and experience. I've taught this to many different athletes for many years. And do this, do this, right? So so many young coaches feel like it's about learning and acquiring the knowledge about the skill set, but it is about what the athlete learns from you that really is the most important thing. But there's a missing link that we're learning more and more now, and Australia's way ahead of the game on this with their Sports Institute, is your physical assessment. We're asking athletes to do something because they're an elite athlete. They physically, their body may not actually be strong enough or stable enough to get that joint in that position to do the skill set that we're asking them to do. So when they're not doing it, and they're failing, and they're failing and they're failing, right? I as a coach, start to feel insecure because they're not getting it done. The athletes feeling horrible because they can't because they can't execute it. And meanwhile, it's a simple solution of conversation, of saying, hey, we need to get some physical screening and assessment done to find out whether there is a reason physically that we can work on in the in the weight room or in the athletic training room to rehab so that you can execute this movement that's a part of this skill, and I it's become a big part of something that I've been involved with with Dr Greg rose out of the title of Sports Institute, or Titleist Performance Institute. And, you know, understanding that coaches are insecure about not having the answers, and athletes are are uncomfortable when they can't execute what the coach is asking. But it's that missing piece that we have to continue to do better with, and that's important.
Valorie Kondos Field 34:10
Yeah, good point. Kirko, good point.
Paul Barnett 34:14
Before I flip this conversation around to leadership leaders as educators. Miss Val, can I just circle back? You can't have one on ones with athletes anymore. I wasn't aware of this. When did this change? You
Valorie Kondos Field 34:29
should not have a one on one with an athlete anymore. It's what's happened with cancel culture. Is if an athlete leaves your office and they're not happy with you, they can twist your words. They can turn them around, I can post them out there and you have zero rebuttal, and it's you're canceled. And I would imagine vice versa, that athletes, student athletes, feel intimidated being in a one on one with a coach, because they want to be able to make sure that they're being heard. As well, and so I don't know of a I don't know of a coach that has an one on one with an athlete anymore.
Paul Barnett 35:09
Fascinating. They think this is a good bridge into leadership, actually, because I am a CEO, and I, when preparing for this conversation with you both, I struggled a little bit with it, because I kept flicking it around, saying, if you substitute the word coaching or leadership, what role as a leader, does education play in your kickback? Now, I'm not sure that I do a whole lot of educating, to be to be perfectly frank, I do. I think I do a lot of coaching. I think I do a lot of asking people what their their ideas might be and trying to get people together around the table, but I'm not sure I do a lot of educating. But equally, I know both of you span the corporate world and and the the education world and the sporting world. I'm interested to hear how you think the idea of education as part of a coaches or a leader's role in your world could apply to other people in society.
Valorie Kondos Field 36:06
I like to, I like to boil everything down to something that I can understand and in leadership, because so many people, that's what I do now.
I speak about leadership is It's simply about influence. I mean, think about it. If, if people are following you, then you're a leader. And I think I don't know who is what John Maxwell said, if your people aren't following you, you're just out for a walk. Um, but I, you know, I tell when I speak with children, I go, if your younger sibling is following your lead. Guess what? Your leader and that place is enormous responsibility, daunting response, when you think of it that way, especially as a coach, every single thing I say, everything I don't say, every mannerism I have, how I look at them, how I greet them, everything is being interpreted, and it is influencing. I am influencing how I would like for them to respond. And so I feel like a leader is model the behavior you want to impart and influence on the people who are under your charge. So that I used to tell our the leaders, the natural leaders on our team, they said, like, I don't want to be a leader. I'm like, Why? Because I gotta be on 24/7 I'm like, right? It's called integrity and character. And what you do some of the time, you're gonna do all the time. So as a coach, you can't you have to be consistent. And that's why I love studying the coaches like Bobby Knight, the volatile coaches, the ones where he should have never recruited anybody. Why would anybody want to go play there? But that consistency of influence is fascinating.[PB5]
Kirk Walker 38:03
I'm going to jump right in off that. I Valerie said it before I got to say it, but I was thinking the exact thing, which is leadership is really influence, right? And it is. Leadership doesn't always mean you're the one speaking or the one saying or the one dictating, right? You're the one that's influencing somebody else. And so equally as important, when we start to figure out who our leaders are going to be, or who are asking to be leaders on our team, we do run up against that athlete that's like, oh, I don't want to be like, I don't like to speak up in front of the group. And I'm like, I'm not asking you to I'm asking you to be an influencer. So you don't have to be the one that's necessarily, you know, standing up and barking orders or keeping people in line, but influence into your strength, right? Influence into the way that you do. The only reason we ask leaders to be leaders is because they we see influence in them, and we also see that there are athletes on our team that influence in the wrong direction, right? And they influence because they're not a leader. They influence by basically what they want to do. Sometimes, those are people that you can use, not subversively, but intricately. Knowing that they're an influencer, put them in a position to influence on the positive, because they have an ability to pull people and rally people, but you also don't necessarily want to put them in a title of leadership sometimes. So I think it's, it's really athletics has given me a great opportunity to see a lot of different types of leaders and leadership styles within our bubble alone, let alone the leadership above us, with administrators, and I think you just come in a lot of packages, but it comes down to influence.
Valorie Kondos Field 39:46
I have a cute little story. Many of your listeners may know who Caitlin Aha, she is. Her Flora teams only garnered what, two 60 million views, but she came in as a freshman, and she was over to me. Six, she just wanted to meet everybody on campus and party hardy. And she's so adorable, the whole rest of the team is following her lead. And so I had this conversation that Kurt just talked about, you know, having to get them to understand that I know you don't want to be a leader, but you're so charismatic, people follow your lead. So the next year, instead of have, I've never had team captains. So the next year, we just, we had a Leadership Council, so five student athletes on our team, one from every one from every class, and then Caitlin Ohashi and the other coaches were like, you're putting Caitlin in a leadership Caitlin in a leadership council who's out like almost every night in Westwood, partying and blah, blah, blah, I go, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are, because she has to understand how her influence is affecting her team. It doesn't affect her because she was the last gym to speak small Biles. I mean, she could still show up and do all her stuff, but she has to learn. She's gotta be in there sitting with her teammates and having this trusting conversation about what she does absolutely affects everybody on this team.
Paul Barnett 41:15
That's the link, isn't it? When you're influencing someone, you're actually educating them. I think that's probably the link that what I've taken from what you've both said, I'm going to flick from influence to Shakespeare if I can. And I often finish the interviews with great coaches with the question around legacy, the legacy they'd like to leave, the legacy they've hoped they've left. And I get so many fascinating answers, but I haven't found a better answer through all of those interviews than the one that Shakespeare gave. And I can't remember the name of the play, but the quote goes to along the lines of your legacy is woven into the lives of others, and I was reflecting on it as you were both speaking, because it seems to me that the way you weave that legacy into the lives of others is through education. So perhaps, to close, if I could get your reflections on what you hope you've achieved through the education that you've embodied through your coaching.
Kirk Walker 42:28
Well, I think again, our journey as coaches, in my opinion, or my journey as a coach, has always been as a learner, so I would hope that I've left a legacy of be committed, be passionate, be convicted, but always be open to not having all the answers, or not knowing everything. And I tend to be somebody that is what you would call a little bit of a know it all. And the girls like to play a game of Stump Kirk, right? They'll come up with a question to try and see if they can stump me, and I'll give them an answer, even if I don't know, and I can say it in a convincing way. And they like, Oh, okay. And then they'll go, Wait, is that real or is that and and so I like to be in the know, and it was so it was a challenge for me to understand that it's okay when you don't have the answer. So I think the legacy that I would hope to leave is that you don't have to know everything, but you need to give everything you have when you have the opportunity.
Valorie Kondos Field 43:32
It's interesting. What legacy would I want to leave? And it really is that, and I have felt this since I was diagnosed with cancer. None of us know if we've got tomorrow, so let's make the absolute most of today. John widham, let's make today a masterpiece and take responsibility for all of your actions, all of your emotions that start with your thoughts, choose your thoughts wisely, understand that don't, don't become a victim and say, my emotions made me do this, or might say this. And so if you asked any one of my student athletes like, what is the one thing they've learned is that life is about choice. The choices I make will dictate the life that I live. And once they get that, they're no longer victims in life, and once they get that they can live every day fully because they're choosing the life they want to live. So we started off with the fact that I was a ballerina. Choreography. People think it's like step, step to music. No choreography is any intentional movement. So I always would tell them, Go, choreograph your life. One intentional choice the time that starts with your thoughts and you will live a beautiful life. What
Paul Barnett 45:09
an amazing place to finish. What a wonderful place to finish. Miss Val Kirk, it's been lovely to spend an hour with you this morning. I wish you all the best for the day. I look forward to a further conversation with you in the future.
Valorie Kondos Field 45:25
Great. Thank you, and thank you for getting up at that time to accommodate us. Appreciate it.
Kirk Walker 45:31
Thank you, Paul.