second set of eyes edit
Tue, Nov 28, 2023 11:08AM • 36:48
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaches, head coach, performance, players, assistant coach, team, cody, years, great, state, role, lead, afl, book, department, play, experience, provide, organizations, helping
SPEAKERS
Cody Royle, Paul Barnett, Neil Craig, Dean Vickerman, David Parkin
00:00
Katy Royal.
Paul Barnett 00:01
Good morning, and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Cody Royle 00:06
Or thanks so much for having me. I've been a longtime listener. So absolutely delighted to be here and a huge admirer of what you've been doing for the coaching community. So absolutely stoked to get your message to say, Hey, do you want to come on? Cody
Paul Barnett 00:21
we first message each other about three years ago, I was just saying it was two countries ago. So it's great that I'm actually getting the chance to talk to you today about your great brand new book, which I've just read. But before we do that, as I always ask a no everyone can hear the Australian accent. But where are you in the world? And what have you been doing so far? Today?
Cody Royle 00:44
I am in Toronto, Ontario. This is my second or maybe third home. So I'm from Melbourne originally. I moved here in 2009. And it was the typical Ozzie thing of go away for a couple of years and work overseas with the intent to go home. And I just never did. And now 15 years later, and what I've been doing today, I launched my book today. So I've been busy with a little bit of marketing and responding to some message jizz and also trying to coach some of my coaches, which is what we're going to talk about,
Paul Barnett 01:22
we will get into that as well. It's your third book, and it's a ripper. I read it in two settings. The title of the book is a second set of eyes. And I guess the first question I'd like to start with with is what was the impetus to write the book?
Cody Royle 01:40
Yeah, I wrote a book three or four years ago called the tough stuff, which was about the emotional toll of head coaching. And at the time, I was coaching Canada's national AFL program, the men's program. I've done that for about 10 years and coached open aged men, you know, so despite the fact that might be it doesn't quite join up. I've coached for 15 years and. And, yeah, we had an instance which kind of led me to write about the emotional toll. And head coaches read that and started approaching me to work with them on some of the things that came out of the book. And so it was, you know, what does it actually feel like? What's the lived experience and the human experience of being a head coach with all the scrutiny and all the challenges? And, you know, all the armchair experts and yeah, I saw that that was something that wasn't really talked about. And so yeah, a second set of eyes came off the back of that with starting to coach coaches and running into a lot of misconceptions about what the work is, for starters, what is a coach who coaches coaches? And you know, what's if clubs would ask, what's the return on investment? And, you know, coaches would ask, does it degrade my authority? If I, you know, I'm saying to have a coat? And, you know, sometimes some of the bosses would say, Can you fix my coach. And so, really, the intent of the book was to start to normalize this work, normalize coaches, having coaches just like leaders do in other industries. And I think books are a great platform for that, because they still have a cut through that other mediums don't, you know, we could do this as a podcast, and it wouldn't quite have the same impact, or we could do it as a Netflix special, and I wouldn't quite have that same impact. You know, I look to have had James Kerr on the show, like James is a friend of mine, and what his book did to consolidate culture for us and give us a common verbiage and help us understand what it was. I like that idea that it becomes a consolidating document for everyone to look to and say, This is what I'm talking about when I talk about culture. And so second set of eyes is my attempt to do that for coaches having their own coach to help with their leadership and their performance and their well being.
Paul Barnett 04:14
We're talking about the role of a coach who coaches coaches, you had this to say in the book, I'll just play back the quality before I read the question, you say, I believe that the principal goal of a second set of eyes should be to help a head coach achieve a state of being where they are able to coach free. I love this idea of being able to coach free it really intrigued me, could you tell us more about the state of coaching free?
Cody Royle 04:44
Well, this really comes from just my experience in moving from coaching teams and players over to coaches and when you look at players you say, well, what's the ultimate goal? What am I trying to prepare them for? And so on. Yes, it's performance. And yes, there's, you know, physiological aspects to that there's psychological aspects to that as technical as tactical. But really what we're trying to get them into is a state where they play free. And they kind of play intuitively and they know the information, they use the information sources available to them in the game. And so you know, at the moment, we're talking a lot about scanning and what you're looking at as a player during the game, and identifying space and ball movements and things like that. And that concept really appealed to me for the knowledge work that coaches do, because I think it's exactly the same as you actually want a coach to be in that intuitive state, where they're not thinking too much. They're not thinking too little. They're not tightening up too much. They're really using their innate abilities and their inner intelligence. And so it's really a mental state that we're trying to get our coaches into. And, you know, obviously, with the amount of distractions and the crowd and all the different factors involved, it's a little bit different from playing. But yeah, I think that same mental state, and being able to coach a game, quite intuitively, is what coaches describe of themselves, when you ask them about their best game when they're absolutely firing on all cylinders. [PB1]
And so I think it's incumbent on us to try to provide that state or provide environment that facilitates that state for them. And I think that's what that coach role should be about how do I put this person in a position where they can achieve that optimum state that they know that it's just this perfect state where things are flowing perfectly, and they're using the data, they're using their intuition, they're using inputs from the other coaches, bundling it all together and coming out with a helpful resource for their players so that they can play the game.
Paul Barnett 07:10
This idea of, of coaching free, or at least having a person with you that can help you process some of the doubts or thoughts that you might be having was actually something that Dean Vickerman spoke to us about, he was one of the very first interviews that we did, and of course, Dean's that the very successful basketball coach here in Australia. And I'll insert this audio quote now on what he had to say about how his coach helps him.
Dean Vickerman 07:36
I normally deal with a lot of things myself, but through those times of self doubt, you know, having those mentors above you that could reinforce you know, that you were living the culture, you were doing the right things. But you just needed to make some changes to your, to the personnel, and to your own accountability to play relationships as well.
Paul Barnett 07:59
Cody, you talk about head coaches becoming performance. And you say, their preparation, and their renewal is essential for sustainable performance. I love this idea of the coach, thinking of themselves as being a performer, an active participant in the event, was there something in your life, something that you experienced, that helped you develop this view?
Cody Royle 08:22
Yeah, it was really this experience that I went through as a head coach, unfortunately, just before COVID, we had a player take his own life. And so that led to writing the book about the emotional toll of coaching and what coaches go through when it really made me reflect on what coaching performance is. And it really goes under appreciated, I think, we've perfectly mapped the playing environment, we know down to the morsel of food when they're going to have enough energy or run out of energy, how many high speed Sprint's our players need to do, you know, to generate X kind of result and stopping and all these kinds of things, but we haven't really mapped the performance environment for our coaches. And so I kind of shot me down that path because the overwhelm with dealing with helping 50 young men grieve and try to lead through that process just led to a complete state of depletion and I didn't know where to go, I didn't know what to do. Then COVID happened and again, it kind of made me reflect on what is that coaching performance and, and, and then, really, it started to be coach burnout started to become more prominent. Even through that process. We started hearing more about it. Pretty successful coaches started talking about it. You've had a couple on your show. I know Lisa Alexander has talked a little bit about it. It's been awesome. venga wrote about it in his autobiography, just people that we don't expect to say that they've struggled with their performance through stages of burnout and what that does to them. And so that was really a catalyst event that shot my line of thinking down,
we need to better map what a performance is for coaches, and it is high performance knowledge work, like we do knowledge work in a high performance environment. And so there are things that we can do, there are strategies that we can put in place that can help facilitate a better environment for our coaches. [PB2]
And so yeah, there was definitely an event and an experience for me. But it's been a series of events and experiences since then, as I've tried to better map exactly what it is that coaches do.
Paul Barnett 10:52
And how have you, how do you work with your, your, your clients, your coaches today, when it comes to helping them renew their own energy?
Cody Royle 11:05
Yeah, well, it depends. Because the environment is so different, right? So let's say we look at sandy brown dello, who actually coaches two teams right now is a WNBA, Coach and an international basketball coach. And so it goes from periods of games, to his last WNBA season, Navy every second day, for almost six months, and across time zones, and flights and all of that to into tournament, based with the ovals and the time in between, right the way through to, you know, an AFL coach or rugby league coaches paying weekly. And so they get preparation time, and they get reflection time and renewal time and days off in between. And so the answer is, it depends. But it really is the starting point is to look at, where are they spending their time? Where has there been, particularly scope creep for their job, that doesn't allow them to actually do things that are beneficial to what a knowledge worker should be doing or could be doing?
You know, because there's this idea that the leader needs to be, in first, Outlast, always available via email, always respond within 10 minutes to emails, you know, it's just this constant churn of day to day that we can even just look at that and interrogate that and say, Is there a better way for someone who has such a prominent role in helping our team win the games? Can we set that person up? And can we create an environment and so we start there, and then it can get right the way down to just finding tiny pockets of space? You know, Matthew, Pete, the Wigan rugby league coach told me about this pausing before he enters the room for 10 seconds, just to center himself and concern himself with his own body language. Because how he enters the room as an authority figure matters. And so there's there's big things that we can do. But then there's also just that 10 second pause, and you can't tell me that you can't find time to just put your hand on the on the doorknob, pause for a second have a breath? Am I agitated? Do I look agitated? And do I need to be when I walk in this room and greet my players?[PB3]
Paul Barnett 13:42
When talking about finding a second set of eyes, in the book, you say that experience as a head coach is vital. And yet, in the book, many of the examples you provide our coaches working with, with people who don't necessarily have their experiences some some really great examples of people calling on others from different walks of life. So I wanted to ask you and, um, is a shared functional experience. Essential?
Cody Royle 14:10
Well, it's not just my opinion, it's, it's what the science says. You know, Judo is the optimum for decision making. So there's neuroscience behind that. And the idea being that an individual is obviously susceptible to individual biases. A collective like a board can be susceptible to the social biases, whereas two tends to be cut through both of those. However, what the research says is that they need a similar level of experience and be able to confidently state their level of belief that a choice or a decision is going to lead to a particular outcome. And so really, when I read that same level of experience and be able to state your confidence in an outcome actually happening, I look at that and say, well, the optimum version of that is that someone should have coached, it's not to say that other areas of leadership aren't helpful, it's to say that if you haven't dealt with player agents, or the NCAA regulations as a head coach, or parents or the CBA, or you can start to guide a coach down a particularly wrong path. And so, on top of that, I think there's just an emotional connection of someone who's been a head coach, in the past, when I'm sure you've seen and heard this before, is when coaches get in the room, there's no walls, everyone just guards come down, and what have you been up to? And it's just the most magnificent thing. And so second to that is, you know, one of the things that I wanted to achieve the second set of eyes was to create this kind of role, whatever you want to call it, coaching mentor, and leadership coach, whatever, I want it to be seen as a viable career option for former coaches, I want it to be part of the coaching pathway, I don't want us to lose the expertise that we have, where they just exit the industry and go straight into keynote speaking or consulting, I think we need to gather that knowledge, just like you've been doing all these years. And, and actually put it back into the coaching system, but it hasn't been seen as a viable option for a lot of coaches. And I want to make the statement that the One A option for us is for former head coaches to provide that role. But also, I'm well aware that, you know, two things can be true at the same time, and I'm not saying that other areas of leadership aren't helpful. Certainly, you know, particularly with the size of our organizations, the demands on us as head coaches, I look at CEOs. And I look at military leaders as two very good, you know, one B and one C options for this type of second set of eyes where, you know, a C suite leader, they know the weight, that we're talking about the emotional weight of leading people and everything that comes with it, and they can feel the scrutiny. And you can see when you start to talk about these things with, you know, CEOs, their, their physiology changes when they you know, and they can actually feel it in their body, you know, they've had to lay off people or make difficult decisions or, and it weighs on them, like it does on head coaches. And also, you know, the world that we live in now with the size of our sporting teams, they are organizations now. And so navigating some of those challenges would also fit that kind of experience with, with business leaders. And so I know that's a long answer. But yeah, it's not just my opinion, I think there's some neuroscience behind that. I really want coaches to think about being able to go back into a consulting role with other coaches. And I also think that it is true. There are other functions within leadership that can be very helpful to coaches. But there's still the B and C option as far as I'm concerned.
Paul Barnett 18:44
No, that's a good answer. Cody and I, I've heard you're right, I have heard other coaches playback very similar versions of what you said, you know, about walls and sharing and helping each other. And I've also heard that, you know, another coach who's retired can be your most important asset. I have had this great quote from David Park, and many of our Australian listeners will know David's he's an academic and very, very successful coach. And he, he talks about, he talks about a second set of eyes or a mentor being his greatest asset, and I'll insert that that quote now from David, the
David Parkin 19:20
greatest asset for me was to have what I would call mentors for one of a better word, my better still critical friends, who knew you loved you knew your business, and could tell it to you exactly, and I think I was only talking to the Adelaide coach who's been struggling without a win was a level three graduate of ours some 10 years ago. Brilliant. Student within that course, contributed magnificently. I thought somewhere down the track, he'll become an AFL coach, which in fact, he has, but he's had a miserable start. And he was looking to for what would help him through this. And it's a terrible, it's a terrible time when you're under the spotlight. And your team just can't get up and when I don't think it's a great team at the moment, but it's better team than the performances, which has been producing and you go back into a shell. So if you don't have someone in your life, who knows you extremely well, who knows your business that has your specific role in that business? At the moment, well, who is available can watch you at work and hear you but having that I call them critical friends, who can give it to in a way that you need to hear and who do have the experience and background and understandings required to have them in your life is critical. And I'm not sure that Well, I can I talk about AFL coaches really can't talk about others. But I'm not sure that all AFL coaches do have them, and are open to the kind of suggestions and input and feedback, which they can provide. In
Paul Barnett 21:03
the book, Cody, you say that the head coaches role is no longer team dynamics. It's organizational dynamics. And I think this is so true. And I think it's a great observation. But what's changed in the world of high performance sport to bring about this shift in focus?
Cody Royle 21:23
It's been a relatively fast change. And the reason I talk about it is I don't think we'd give it enough credence, really the money that has poured in. And we tend to forget how recent that has been to you know, a lot of in Australia, a lot of our sports really only professionalized in the 90s. And so we're still probably only really in late adolescence in terms of our development through that. But, you know, the example that I think about is in 2002. That's only 20 years ago, Tony Granada, who was a legendary player that played on the same line as Wayne Gretzky was coaching the Colorado Avalanche in the NHL, and he had one assistant coach who was the only staff member, one assistant coach, and this is a team packed of Hall of Famers. If you know anything about hockey, Patrick, while Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, this is probably one of the greatest teams ever iced, one head coach, one assistant coach, no other staff, that's in 2002. And so the change now when you look at how the organization's have ballooned out, we now have departments, we don't have staff, we don't have individual staff, we have departments, we have a coaching department now. We have performance department, we have an analysis department, we have analytics department, we have a medical department, have a scouting department have an operations department. And so they all have different priorities, they all have different versions of what success looks like, you can have a terrible team in terms of win loss, that's a great thing in terms of medical, because I keep everyone on the park. And so is that a success or not. And they also have differing opinions about how a coach should lead. And you know, there's a reason that in my previous book, the first chapter was called, everyone thinks you're an idiot. And it was about how some of the toughest scrutiny can actually come from inside your walls. That's what I mean, in terms of a department might disagree with how a head coach goes about their work. And so that's a new challenge that a lot of coaches one don't fully understand, don't comprehend. Because their pathway is to be an assistant coach, and to do X's and O's, right the way up. And then you get a head coaching gig and they say, oh, yeah, by the way, you're now the face of the entire organization. And you've got to manage all these departments. There's no real training or understanding, you get shielded from a lot of that organizational politics and dynamics, basically, your whole coaching and training. And then they give you the keys to the whole thing and say, Yeah, you better learn fast. And so that's been a relatively fast evolution from, you know, one assistant coach to departments and money and scrutiny. And that's why I think a lot of head coaches can deal with, or should have someone that they can bounce ideas off, they can bounce, how to talk to a particular department, or how to manage certain staff that might come into your office with a particular problem, because it's not the X's and O's. And it's not just the players coming into your office, now. It's everyone and all of their careers and livelihoods depend on you. And that brings a particular weight with it. And so, yeah, that's been the shift from just focusing on the team. Just these players, and that's all I really care about and managed to an organization that can be hundreds, and, you know, multi millions, sometimes billions of dollars worth of investment into it.
Paul Barnett 25:16
It's funny, I started the podcast because I wanted to find ideas to lead better. And of course, my background is corporate. I was in Europe, they say, managing director in North America, Australia to say CEO, and I was running a big brewery of about 1700 people. And as I interviewed more and more of these coaches, what became clear to me was, as you just said, they have to learn fast, they get promoted into the role very quickly, whereas I think in the corporate world, you spend a long time building up to that senior role. And you take a lot of lessons along the way. So that when you get there, your emotional muscle is developed to the extent that, as you just said, you know, everyone thinks perhaps you're going to be an idiot, you get that. But you also know, that's part of the job description. And I just feel there's a big distinction there. And I think the work you're doing will help working with coaches will help them learn quicker and move faster into those roles, because they do go very quickly. Some of them retire. And then two or three years later, they're head coaches running big organizations. And it's a steep, steep learning curve, as you rightly put out.
Cody Royle 26:22
It is, yeah, one of the things that stuck with me on this topic was Dan Quinn, the former Atlanta Falcons head coach, and he hadn't been a head coach at any level until he got the NFL job. And he's, you know, unfortunately become famous for the Super Bowl where the Patriots came back from whatever it was 21 at halftime. And, you know, he, he talks about that, on one day, he's a coordinator. And then the next day, he's a head coach, and even the, the vibe in the office in terms of how people who yesterday had treated him a particular way, now treated him completely differently. And even the idea of, you know, having to come to the realization and plug into his awareness that it might just be another five minutes in his day. But when someone comes into his office, that might be the most important five minutes of their day. And they might have had a sleepless night, the night before, worrying about having to go into the head coach's office and tell them this particular bit of news. And there's little kind of nuanced things like that, that play into that organizational dynamic that I think a lot I'm prepared for, because it doesn't really happen until you're in the big seat. And yes, you can learn those skills quickly. But you know, I, I'm a fan of kind of guided learning. And I think you can have someone to help you navigate those because they come from nowhere, and you don't know which ones are going to affect you in a particular way and cause stress for you that detracts from the team performance.
Paul Barnett 28:06
Bodie, there was a wonderful article here in the press recently talking about the work you do on mental preparation with Adam O'Brien. And it didn't go into all the details. So I guess I'm gonna put you on the spot and ask you for a little bit more detail around what that mental preparation plan looks like.
Cody Royle 28:27
You know, Adam and I still work together. So I can give you a bit of a high level overview as to not break trust is what I trade off. But yeah, that, you know, the, the article was really interested in how he had managed to keep it all together, given what he had gone through last year. And that was losing his mother. Prominent media talking about his job security, or lack thereof, on a daily basis, and trying to coach a team all at the same time. And so, you know, what? Adam's big change was when we started talking and working together was was really growing into a leader seeing himself as a performer. Understanding, you know, his preparation is important to the overall outcomes, but also his ability to maintain that for in the NRL 27 weeks, which is a long period of time. And so the big change for him was we we really started to map about his year we looked at, you know, short turnarounds and we looked at long turnarounds and so, you know, we kind of periodized his whole season we had the draw, we already have the draw for next So we can do that, again, we can look at, you know, his breaks, we can look at his behaviors. One of the things in the article was, he loves going down to Merryweather beach for a swim in the morning, because it just makes him feel good. And so getting him down, there becomes a priority. If you can start the day off as a leader, feeling good about yourself and feeling refreshed, and even recharged at six o'clock in the morning, let's do that. And that carries right the way through to his game strategy and his kind of his understanding of that his energetic needs carry through to the game as well, he needs energy come to o'clock on a Saturday or Sunday, to be able to observe the game in the way that he can do it best. And so that that has been in incredible to watch and, and, you know, watch from a close distance, his performance through that, and his his buy in to what we've been working on and commitment to it. And, you know, outcomes, this leader who we all knew he was capable of what we did towards the back end of the season. And it all came together for him and, and he showed that he's a leader capable of coaching a 10 game winning streak. And you know, one of the most kind of talked about stories of the year, but it was it was his commitment, preparation to his own performance that really fueled that.
Paul Barnett 31:35
I think it's a it's a great example. And it probably indicates why your mentor Neil Craig had this to say about the critical nature of the role of a mentor. And I'll insert this quote from Neil now, which quite quite nicely amplifies the message that you that you have there.
Neil Craig 31:55
The role of the mentor. Now, I think in High Performance Coaching is, is crucial, because of it's such a complicated and complex role to play. So we all need help. And, and the older coaches have been around for awhile, and who are happy to be vulnerable, and have had this humility, say, coming here. As I said, they still control the situation, they're still in charge, and they accept that responsibility. But they just want a bit of balance in their thinking.
Paul Barnett 32:29
Cody, just to finish, I have another wonderful quote from you. You say, coaching is a deeply human endeavor done by humans. For humans, it capitalizes on the most extraordinary elements of our shared humanity, and shows us that we get better together. It's a really great quote. And I say that as someone that that works in the executive coaching space as well. But I wondered Cody, what change? You've talked about it a little bit in this interview, but what change are you hoping to make in the world through your work?
Cody Royle 33:02
You're really clear on this. Now I'm striving to be one of the participants not the only but be one of the participants that helps rehumanize coaching. There's a lot of coaches that are hurting. There's a lot of coaches that are leaving. There's a lot of women coaches that can't even get in. You know, the the average tenure in the championship in English soccer is 0.8 years. So it's like seven months, something like that. You know, there were 12 Men's managers in the championship sacked in October alone. And there's something like are the estimates $533 million in dead money in college football and basketball over a 10 year period, a half a billion dollars to not coach all of those things. You know, I call it the fear culture that exists around coaching, it's, you've got to succeed fast. We are willing to pay you to not be here. If you don't succeed, if you can even get in in the first place, which isn't a given for a lot of coaches. And it's lost its human element. And that quote that you read there is a reminder more than anything that there is no x's and o's and lines on a board and there are no tactics and there's none of that actually exists. That's all in our imaginations. What exists is is the shared humanity and the exchange of progress that happens through coaching. And that's what coaching is about. It doesn't matter if it's For me going to the gym, and having a personal trainer who's coaching me, he helped, he can help me lift 910 1112 reps, I could do it on my own. But he helps me with 910 11 and 12. And I get better through his sheer presence, right the way through to these human beings that are leading our sporting organizations. And so we talk about endlessly about providing healthy environments, high performing environments for our athletes. But I don't see it for our coaches. And so I start to wonder whether they can actually provide a healthy and high performing environment for their athletes if they don't have one themselves. And so that's what I mean about really humanizing the world for our coaches is, there's a certain fear that is used against them, there is negative connotations that are used towards them. And it just doesn't provide this, this human experience for coaches, and I hate seeing the life sucked out of it. I hate seeing the humanity sucked out of it. Because that's all it is, is just an exchange of humanity. And so I want to bring that back.
Paul Barnett 36:19
I think we're humanizing the world of coaching is a wonderful place for us to end and it's a wonderful mission to set out on as a human being yourself. So, Cody, thanks for your time today. It's been great getting to know you and to read the book. I think it's, I think it's a fantastic read. I recommend it to everybody and I'll put the link to the book and your website and all the other books in social media that you have as well in the show notes. Thanks for