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There are certain things that you as a coach value that you want to be hallmarks of your program and I think that it is a very intelligent and probably successful coach who realizes that team building and connection needs to be part of that planning schedule.

Sean Glaze is a leadership and team.

Building speaker and author who delivers engaging experiences that ignite team performance.

Shawn was a teacher and high school coach for more than 25 years and is currently an assistant coach with the Rinehart University Men's Basketball Program.

Sean's engaging conference keynotes and custom team building programs have helped clients like Cisco, John Deere, the CDC and Emory University to increase collaboration, boost productivity and build more positive and profitable workplace cultures.

As a successful basketball coach, Sean gained valuable insights on turning talent into teamwork and now he travels around the country to share those lessons.

Sean's books, Rapid Teamwork, the Ten Commandments of Winning Teammates and Staying Coachable are entertaining parables that help accelerate the growth of leaders and their teams.

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Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Sean Glaze, leadership and team building speaker.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sukel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Sean Glaze from Great Results Team Building.

Sean, welcome to the Hoop Headspot.

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

Hate that we're missing Jason, but looking forward to a great conversation.

Absolutely.

Looking forward to diving into some leadership stuff, some teamwork stuff, talking about your coaching background.

I thought we would start tonight by just allowing you to tell our audience exactly what it is that you do, how you do it, maybe a little bit about how you got into it.

So we're asking you for your elevator pitch and then we're going to kind of go back through your life story that gets you to where we are today.

Yeah, always an interesting path to get coaches or I know some of your, your new guests to explain kind of where they've ended up and how they got there.

Mine is probably just as fascinating and unexpected.

Went from obviously high school literature teacher and basketball coach that we'll talk about and in some of those experiences led to where now 28 years later, I am working with corporate groups, organizations, associations.

I'm a team building and leadership speaker.

I've got four or five books and I go around the country working with organizations and teams to help them build better cultures and develop effective leaders and winning teammates.

Awesome.

And I think it's going to be a super interesting conversation on a lot of fronts.

For me personally, I'm always interested in the transition of how you go from, okay, here I am, I'm a high school teacher and coach and now suddenly I'm out talking in the corporate world, which as you well know from being in the education profession and then switching over the corporate world, there is a lot of differences which I'm sure we'll talk about.

And like I said, I'm curious about that transition for you.

But let's start by going back to when you were a kid.

Tell me about your athletic background, how you got involved with basketball and what start there.

Such an unexpected story.

Grew up in a great neighborhood.

I was unbelievably blessed to have probably 15 to 18 guys around my same age, you know, in the Latin, you know, within a year or two of each other.

And so we were constantly outside, you know, of course I'm in my 50s now, but, but we were Constantly outside.

And whether it was basketball or Nerf football or Wiffle ball or just out in the woods or fishing, you know, tremendous background there with a lot of friends.

And in coming up through middle school and high school, I was actually far more of a soccer player than anything else.

Played freshman football and actually stopped playing football in order to sell out to running, cross country and play in fall soccer and obviously playing spring soccer for the school down here just outside Atlanta, and was never at all involved with basketball in terms of an organized sport until I started coaching.

I.

I got out of Georgia Southern University with a degree in English.

Thought I was going to be an attorney.

Didn't get accepted to law school.

I was going to teach for a year and reapply and just fell in love with the classroom, fell in love with the locker room.

The.

The basketball coach.

That was the coach when I was at Pebble Brook High School just outside Atlanta here.

When I went back to teach for a year.

We're in pre planning and, you know, kind of just before that first year of my teaching, and.

And he pulls me aside, he's like, sean, we need a freshman basketball coach.

Would you be willing.

I don't know anything about coaching basketball, Coach Morgan.

That's all right.

I know who you are.

I know that you'll be a great teacher.

You'll do a great job.

I can teach you the X's and O's.

And so I took it on because I was waiting on my wife to finish up with her nursing degree.

And.

And it was probably around, you know, Thanksgiving break, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, certainly that very first year of teaching and coaching, that I realized that, you know, Providence had put me where I was supposed to be and told my wife that there was no need to reapply to law school, that I knew where.

Where I wanted to spend the next few decades.

So when you get that basketball position, and obviously, as you said, as a soccer player when you were younger, was there any thought of.

Was there.

Was there any opportunity to coach a sport that maybe you had a little bit more experience in as a player.

Or was it just a basketball?

The reason that he had asked me is I was already coaching cross country and soccer, which were obviously kind of my background.

And then I picked up basketball, which was my third sport.

And honestly, you know, as we came back from winter break, coming into January of that year, one of the tennis coaches ended up, you know, having to.

To leave for.

For a medical reason.

And I ended up picking up a fourth sport because, again, my wife's down to Georgia Southern and didn't have anything to do in the afternoon.

So, sure, why not coach four sports in one year?

But yeah, that was absolutely the.

The fear taken on the basketball coaching in.

In my eyes, because anything I wanted to do, I wanted to do a tremendous job of.

And I felt like, again, a good teacher is going to be a good coach.

But I didn't have the background knowledge of a lot of the technical stuff that went into coaching.

And that's where I really poured myself into wanting to learn and to spend a whole lot of time with Coach Morgan and a whole lot of time with Championship Productions and in some.

Some VCR tapes, because there was a whole lot of Google back then.

Absolutely.

So would you say when you start looking at that learning curve and trying to figure things out, would you say that Championship Productions and Coach Morgan, were those your two biggest resources that you went to?

Was there anyone?

Was there any other person?

Or just what was your process for trying to get better?

Yeah, well, I think that the experience I had wanting to immerse myself in terms of the knowledge of the scheme, right.

And as I came to find out later, and one of the things that I share with organizations and leaders now, I think every exceptional team is built on three areas.

Every team has to have talent, whether it's basketball or business.

Everybody's in the talent acquisition business.

If you don't have talent, you're not going to win.

The second part of that, the second piece of the puzzle is going to be scheme or strategy.

It's that X's and O's, and that's where I really thought, man, this is what's going to take over the world.

When I went from being an assistant to being a head coach, I really believe that that was the determining factor.

And oh, my goodness, look at how great, you know, my scheme or my strategy, my playbook is.

And that's where I really poured into my.

My learning is really looking at the X's and O's.

And I had, completely, honestly, for the first few years of my coaching career, Mike, I had completely overlooked what now I'm passionately, you know, focused on sharing with leaders and teams, which is the impact and the value of that third piece of the puzzle that was missing for me early on, which is culture.

And because I was so focused on trying to get myself up to speed with learning the X's and O's and the technical side of the game, that was something that I neglected.

And it was something that eventually, because of the early failure, I had as, as a coach, neglecting that, that ended up opening the door for what now?

I, I think, I think I've become a pretty well known expert in terms of helping teams and leaders recognize and implement a lot of those things that help their talent to overachieve.

Was there a light bulb moment when you realize that, hey, it's not necessarily the X's and O's that are putting me over the top as a coach, it's more about the people skills, the culture part of it, or was that more of a slow burn over time where you just started to come to realize, like, hey, I think I have the right X's and O's in place, but something's still not working.

How did that process work for you?

That is a very specific moment.

I had been an assistant at Pebblebrook for a few years.

I had gotten a JV job working at McEachern again, two pretty nice sized schools.

We had a good bit of talent and so I was able to win some games just because we were more talented with my freshmen and then with my JV bunch and I take over my very first head coaching job coaching girls basketball at Pope High School again, kind of northwest Atlanta area.

And that very first year we had enough talent to be certainly middle of the region.

And we ended up winning five games, losing 21.

And the story that I tell when I'm on stage, you're working with associations and talking about how they can implement culture in the five areas of culture that leaders need to focus on.

And what I'll kind of oftentimes open up, though those keynote sessions with is the story of being in that losing locker room after our last loss of the season.

And you give the obligatory end of the season talk and ladies, I'm excited to have everybody back.

We've made a lot of progress and we did all the, you know, the weightlifting and the conditioning and the skills and we had great scheme and knew they could do their effort.

And you know, we had really underachieved based upon the talent that I think that we had.

And so, you know, you kind of give them that speech and I'm excited and I appreciate all that you've done and I'm looking forward to next year, we're going to get started again, etc.

And you mean every word.

But the message kind of falls flat because, man, they're devastated after the 21st loss.

And I walk over to the, to the mirror there in the locker room, you know, surrounded by the cinder block walls that we've all you know, spent a whole lot of time with.

And I splash some water on my face and I look up and there in the mirror is a guy who doesn't know what to do differently.

You know, I'd done everything that I knew to do based upon the X's and O's that I had so focused on.

And I'm standing next to my assistant coach and.

And it was literally him that kind of gives me that nudge and taps me on the shoulders.

The kids are beginning to walk out of the locker room one by one.

As individuals.

He's like, coach, we gotta spend some time on relationships.

And that was the very first inkling of what eventually became an avalanche of information where we really sought to.

To focus more on connection and culture and standards and expectations and accountability conversations and one on ones and.

And team time and all the other stuff that eventually we added to our program to build leaders instead of just athletes.

So do you think that the gender changing from boys to girls, do you think that that maybe accelerated the idea that a lot of times we'll talk to coaches who have coached both.

And I know that I can probably speak to this for me too, coaching my son's teams and my daughter's teams, that a lot of times, especially on the girls side of it, those relationships are paramount.

Not that they're not paramount on the boys side, but I think on the girl side, things can go.

Things can go wrong quickly.

I'm just curious if that transition for you, going from boys to girls, how that sort of impacted, or if you think it impacted maybe how quickly you came to that realization.

I think that's something.

Again, not just in basketball, but working with my business clients and organizations, the exact same thing holds true.

And that was a question for me going into the head coaching job, having not coached girls athletes before, because I'd spent a handful of years, 9th grade in JV, it was all guys, and now I'm, you know, coaching young ladies.

And you're.

I kind of went in.

Now I'm coaching athletes.

I'm not coaching ladies, et cetera.

And again, some of that is certainly true, but what I found was absolutely.

That second year, when we focused upon relationships and we focused upon connection and culture and all the other things that surround that, that eventually we continued to add to, we completely flipped the script.

And that same group of kind of top seven kids ended up winning 19 games.

And we go to the state for the first time in years.

And it's not because the X's and O's were Difference because the team was different based upon what we had kind of built.

The problem was, after that second year at Pope, I get invited to take over a men's program that was a little bit closer to home, that hadn't had a whole lot of success.

And so I take over again.

Everybody loves a challenge, right?

And so I'm coaching guys again, and this is a team and you kind of go in and we got, you know, some pretty good.

But again, it's very, very young talent.

We're going to develop this little freshman class a couple of years and.

And I went in and I think that oftentimes even good leaders and good teammates have to learn lessons more than once.

And I completely neglected the same stuff that had made us successful that second year at Pope.

Guys don't need this stuff, right?

And again, we struggled that very first year.

And I'm like, well, you know what?

Maybe that same thing that we did there, maybe that would work with our guys.

And when you go in.

And a year after that, you know, we're in our, I think, our third year at Woodstock and we ended up having the most wins in the school's history, largely because we had begun to implement some of those things that again, I neglected my very first year because you think guys don't need this stuff.

And the reality is, and this is, you know, speaking to your experience coaching both.

What I found was when I first started coaching girls, and this may be something that some of your listeners have experienced as well, you get some of that, that advice that, oh, well, guys are all egos and girls are all emotions.

And, and what I found in coaching girls on a couple of occasions, and certainly coaching guys for years as well, is guys have emotions and undoubtedly girls have egos.

And, and so that's not the determining kind of separating factor.

What was interesting to me and what I think was applicable the second time that I took over a girls program was when I'm sitting in the locker room at halftime and I'm talking with the girls and I say, man, we gotta black out every one of those girls because they're so hyper self critical.

They're thinking, oh, he's talking to me.

I've got to do a better job of blacking out.

When I say the same thing to a group of guys, they're thinking, man, that blinker next to me better start blocking out instead of pointing at themselves.

Sometimes it's the other guy that's doing it until you show it on film.

And I think that that was, that was probably the One major difference is, is you need to be, you know, in terms of clarity and film, especially with the guys, to make sure that they're seeing their own opportunities for growth.

And I think what I hear you saying, which I agree with 100, is that all the things that go into building a good culture, right, and building relationships and the way that you interact with your team, whether they be female or male, ultimately they need the same sort of things.

But sometimes the delivery of how you get them those things ends up being slightly different just based upon, again, your specific team, sometimes in case of gender.

And obviously, there's a lot of individual.

What does this individual need versus what does that need?

Individual need.

But I think it.

The key point is how do you deliver that message so that it builds.

You're trying to reach the same goal, right?

You're trying to build the type of culture where everybody cares about each other, where teammates are supportive of one another.

And you can get to that in different ways, maybe with different individuals, with different genders, with different teams.

So you as the coach, have to figure out what's my best delivery method to get that to my team.

And that's kind of what I hear you saying.

Oh, absolutely.

I think that, as you said, you know, that it's not necessarily, you know, male versus female.

I think that you have different personality styles and you learned that as well in terms of, you know, whatever the personality style.

And I used to do that with our teams as well because they needed to understand themselves as much as their teammates in terms of how people process things and how, you know, the stories that people would tell themselves based upon.

What are those kind of areas of focus.

And every team needs to have clarity about goals and purpose.

Every team needs to have trust in relationship and connections.

Every team needs to set standards and have expectations and commitments.

Every team needs to have recognition and praise and see progress.

And every team needs to be willing to have accountability conversations and respond to feedback.

And those are things that.

That doesn't change whether you're on the court or in a sales meeting or whatever that circumstance might be.

And I think that's why a lot of the messages and the trainings and the team building and the leadership awareness stuff that I do with organizations has been so effective, and you get the referrals and the other stuff that I've gotten, honestly, Mike, is because teamwork and leadership and culture translate across industry.

No, there's no doubt.

I mean, I think when you start talking about those building the types of relationships that are required in order to Be able to have the right culture where people are all rowing the boat metaphorically in the same direction.

Right?

You don't have one person rowing over this way, the other one trying to go the other way.

And I think when you can do that, then obviously, no matter what the type of team is that you're trying to build, then you're headed in the right direction.

Let me leap backwards for a second to that moment back in the locker room with your first girls team where you realize, hey, it's not about the X's and O's.

It is about the culture and the relationships and those things.

Clearly, at that point, you had to go back and say, how am I going to.

I realize now that this is what I need.

How am I going to do that?

Just like I asked you with the X's and O's, who did you go to?

How did you learn?

How did you learn.

How did.

Where did you go to learn the culture piece of it?

How did you go about developing your knowledge in that area?

I think I was, not long after that moment in the same spot that a lot of coaches and leaders find themselves in, which is, I know the team needs something.

I don't know what it is, and I don't have that.

That magic pill to be able to, you know, focus on.

And.

And so I did.

I called around and I actually, I remember you driving around the southeast and visiting a few college coaches.

Hey, what do you do for culture and connection and camaraderie and all the other stuff outside of the X's and O's?

And then I reached out to a guy, and this is the beginning of where I started the team building as I reached out to a guy, because I didn't know what team building was, but I knew that we needed something, and maybe that was a piece of the puzzle, and I didn't want to do anything.

It was going to be cheesy and ridiculous.

And, you know, as I call him up, he's like, well, Sean, I appreciate you calling, but I don't work with kids, and you couldn't afford me.

Okay, well, tell me a little bit more.

And honestly, became a really good friend of mine, ended up being a mentor in a lot of ways and sharing some things that I still now use with.

With teams based upon, you know, some of the conversations that I have and what their needs are.

But that individual ended up allowing me to come and observe a couple of his corporate trainings and then to begin to take away some of the things that I thought would be Relevant.

And again, every facilitator speaker has their own personality.

And this is something that I think would, would be relevant and meaningful.

And that's something that I might not necessarily think is, is my personality.

But the idea is how do you use an activity or a challenge, whether it's a group of two or a whole group or groups of four, groups of three, and, and take that challenge or that activity and make it something that is a relevant experience that then allows you to point to something going on in the team so that they have an insight that they can apply.

And ultimately everything I do now Mike, is, is based upon what do you do to create a sticky culture?

Sticky in the, in the, in the way of, you know, it's something that is going to be memorable and simple and useful and actionable for teams and leaders and ultimately the things that are memorable to us just as people, our stories are memorable, emotions are memorable and activities and experiences are memorable.

And if you can weave in a couple of stories and, and give them the emotion of laughter or even in the story and emotion of you, but that idea of the activities that you facilitate become really sticky.

Memorable experiences that carry with them an insight that then they can apply and it gives them a better appreciation and awareness of how their behaviors affect other people and affect the achievements that they care about.

So if I'm a high school basketball coach and I'm thinking about what you just said, I'm trying to figure out how do I incorporate those ideas into what I'm doing.

Would you say that like, for example, when I think of a team building activity, there are things that I can do within a practice or at the end of my practice or the beginning of my practice.

Then there's also team building where I can take my team off site.

Maybe it's just simply to my classroom to have a team breakfast or maybe we have the team bowling event or we have whatever.

So just what, in your opinion or what worked for you?

Just give me some thoughts for a high school coach of how you can, I guess, embed some of these things into what I'm trying to do on a day to day basis.

Any client that I work with and whether that's a coach or a leader or a business owner, I want to treat just like it was somebody like myself.

Where you've got a team and you understand you got talent, you've got strategy.

And culture is going to always determine how well your talent implements that strategy.

Culture is basically the behaviors that are allowed and repeated in an organization.

And so if I am a coach or a leader.

Ultimately, you're going to start with, here are goals, here's our mission, here's our vision.

The next is, here are our values.

Values are those guardrails about this is how we're going to get to that place.

Because I think ultimately any organization needs to have values because that gives people an understanding of what is important here and how do we go about achieving those things so we don't cut corners.

Once you've identified those three to five values and you've identified as a leader on the team, and this is a lot of preseason stuff obviously for basketball, what do those values look like in terms of specific behaviors in your organization?

If you say we're together, what does together look like on the court?

What does together look like off the court?

What are specific examples that your players can give?

If competitive is one of those values, what does that look like on the court?

What does it look like off the court?

What are those things that you value?

And again, I think more than five, it ends up being less memorable and less impactful.

But three to five of those values that you and maybe you and your assistants or even your team members identify and then clarify by the behaviors.

And then once you've done that, then ultimately everything that you're going to do moving forward throughout the season, as you plan your practice schedule is going to be based upon what you value as a coach.

If you're Tom Izzo, you're going to focus on rebounding and defense.

Those are going to be things that are in your practice plan every single day.

And if you think about it as a coach, whether it is mental toughness or whether it is passing or whether it is free throws, there are certain things that you as a coach value that you want to kind of be hallmarks of your program.

And I think that it is a very intelligent and probably successful coach who realizes that team building and connection needs to be part of that planning schedule.

And those are certainly things you can do before practice or after practice, even during practice at times, to do something for connection or do something for accountability, do something for communication.

And what is it you want to build into?

And that goes back to how do you set up, even on a large scale, early in the season before you start with conditioning and one on one stuff and anything else, how do you lay out?

This is my kind of yearly calendar.

This is when we need to get this in, this is when we get that in.

And this is where we're going to be doing the team development, the leadership Development stuff that's going to allow our strategy to succeed.

Love the idea that you mentioned there about taking whatever the standard is or whatever the pillar is that you're trying to instill.

So let's say again, it's competitiveness.

And I like how you talked about, you have to be able to show your players or tell your players, what does competitiveness look like?

Right?

Because we can talk about, hey, we're competitive.

This is one of my favorite follow up questions when I'm doing a podcast with a coach when they'll tell me, hey, our pillars are okay.

Okay.

So, yeah, I know that you can say those four things and I get it.

Like, in my mind, I know what unity means, or I know what toughness means, or I know what competitiveness means.

But do the players in the program know what that means?

And then do they reflect that back with the behavior?

And then obviously as a coach, when you see those things, you're trying to praise those.

So you get that repeated behavior like you talked about.

So can you give me one or two examples from the time when you were coaching in terms of a word that, okay, here's a word that's important to us in our program.

Now, here are the behaviors that we attach to that word.

One of the things that, that, you know, we used to, you and I stole a good bit from Tom Izzo, as a matter of fact, and he has, you know, something in his locker room.

You know, players play tough, players win.

And we actually changed that to, you know, average players play tough, players win.

We wanted toughness to be one of those values.

And we define toughness as a program, as toughness is consistency and adversity.

If you're a tough player, you're going to be the same kid on tape after you've missed three threes than if you made three threes, you're going to be the same defender, you're going to have the same voice, you're going to give the same effort.

After you've had a couple of bad calls or you dribble the ball off your foot, bad moments happen.

But that response, how tough are you going to be?

Because it's all about, what is the team need?

That's the question you need to be asking yourself consistently now, what's convenient?

Not what do I feel like, what does the team need?

That's what a tough player is going to think about and respond to.

And so I think that idea of, of toughness is something that we've truly, really tried.

You know, how do you respond to Blank.

And we would show clips of, hey, here's somebody who just made two threes.

Look at how, you know, enthusiastically how hard he's playing, he's slapping the floor and he's got all this.

And then one of the things that I love to do is we had one player in particular, his name was Jack, who was exactly the ideal of that, because he would miss one or two.

And you still see him sprinting back and being a voice and doing all the other peripheral, you know, things that, that make a great teammate in terms of energy and voice and, and attention to detail and realizing that 95% of the game isn't shooting.

And so the idea of, you know, what does toughness look like for us?

That was one of the things we focused on.

Another thing we focused on was we have, we had a thing.

No rear view criticisms.

Because the easiest thing in the world in basketball or business to do is to point a finger at somebody and say, why didn't you?

And when you point that finger, you're not only blaming somebody else, which makes you a victim, but you're blaming somebody else for something that's occurred that they can't go back and change.

Man, why didn't you block out?

And there's a story I tell about a really huge missed blockout when one of our players, you could tell, was about to say to that kid who didn't block out, man, why didn't you?

And one of our great guards, who was just a fantastic guy, wonderful, you know, husband and father and, and, and in the workforce now, because this is a long time ago, but he came up and put his arm around the guy and basically kind of, you know, I'm sure said something to the extent of no rearview criticisms.

And we all, as a program, including me as a coach, missed the opportunity to.

Instead of giving a rearview criticism, what is the reminder or encouragement that you can take ownership of and you can take the initiative to share before the play?

Because your job as a winning teammate is to think.

No rearview criticisms.

We want to think next play.

What do we need to hear before the ball is inbounded?

Where do we need to be before the ball is inbound?

And that idea of dead ball intensity and making sure we're talking and moving, thinking about the next play instead of, you know, lingering on the last play was one of those, again, things that we wanted the kids to have an understanding because as you said, you know, as coaches, we can't score, we can't rebound, we can't pass.

And any success that we enjoy as coaches is through the people that we have helped to understand and implement things that hopefully are valuable to them as well.

Now, I love that rear view criticism point.

And I think about that as you were talking in terms of a timeout situation, right?

So often coaches will call a timeout and then what do we do?

Right?

We talk about what just happened.

We maybe are angry at a player for making a mistake, or we're upset with the team because they didn't give a great effort on that particular place.

So we're kind of rehashing that.

And then by the time the timeout's over, we haven't had an opportunity to do what you described, which is, let's look forward of, okay, we're coming out of this timeout.

What do we need to make sure we do?

And I know that I have been guilty of this many, many, many, many times in the past as a coach of not utilizing a timeout in such a way that it benefits.

I'm a rambler.

So I'll tend to be in a timeout And I'll say 42 different things, because these are all the 42 things that I noticed.

Whereas what I hear you saying, what I think is really important for coaches to understand is a.

You can't look back.

That's not to say that.

You can't say, hey, here's a situation.

If we see this situation again, this is how we need to react to it, but also looking forward from this moment in time, what do we need to do next when we step out of this huddle?

And so often if you give kids more than one or two things, the odds of them being able to remember and execute, those things are very, very small.

So that's what I get when I hear you talking about that rearview criticism.

I think it's not only important for players, as you kind of described it, but also really important for coaches to be able to, again, especially in game situations, to be able to look forward.

If that makes sense.

Yeah.

One of one of the most powerful questions that was asked of me that now I share with audiences all over the country is what does the team need?

Because we were in the middle of a game against a rival in our region and we had no business being within 20 points of this nationally ranked team.

And we were up like six or eight at halftime, and I was mad that we had just given up an offensive rebound and allowed them to score a couple right at that first half buzzer instead of blocking out.

And my goodness.

And I was about to go in and rant rave because I was going to be upset instead of realizing, you know, again, what does the team need?

We need to make sure we focus upon handling the press.

We need to make sure we do a great job of running our stuff.

We need to make sure that we focus.

And, and I think to your point, that idea as leaders, not just as team members.

As leaders, sometimes we need to be reminded to think, what does the team need?

Because they're not going to remember 16 things if you just ramble on.

They're going to remember one, maybe two in a timeout or at halftime.

And so what are those two things that we can get clarity on so we can share that clarity and get our kids to focus upon what's going to make them more successful?

Absolutely.

Tell me a little bit about developing leaders on your team, because I think that's something that coaches sometimes struggle with is how do I create an environment that allows leaders to grow and develop?

How do I give them opportunities to lead?

Because I think especially for young coaches, they want to have their hands on everything and have a piece of this and that.

And sometimes we don't leave room for players to be able to have opportunities to lead.

So when you think about developing leaders on a basketball team, what does that look like from your perspective?

I think developing leaders in a basketball team is very much like developing leaders in an organization.

They're eventually going to identify themselves because they're going to do some of the things that need to be done really well.

They're going to take some initiative, they're going to exhibit some of those traits that you want to have everybody else emulate.

And those are the people that you delegate to that you begin to give more responsibility to and that you praise and hope that other people begin to.

You kind of repeat what's been rewarded with some of that praise.

But, you know, we.

And I think that I maybe tried to have captains once or twice early in my career.

And then you begin to realize that, you know, you don't necessarily, you can identify somebody that you would like to be.

But ultimately, you know, leadership, this is one of those things that early in the season I think that there's such an opportunity specifically for athletic coaches to, prior to your competitions and even prior to your practices, what are you doing in that preseason, along with weights and conditioning and whatever one on one stuff you're doing or skill stuff you're doing to build into your program that leadership and culture component.

One of the things that I talk about in my sessions that I've done with a lot of athletic groups at the university level.

Coach, when I'll come to do a training or a team building half day or a full day session is I'll give each of the kids an index card.

And we did a lot of activities with index cards in the classroom.

We were doing the leadership stuff.

And it would be sometimes as simple as you.

Okay, if we're reading a book together, what's the major takeaway?

What's the one thing that you took away from X chapter?

But one of the more powerful activities we did, which actually led to one of my books, was you give them an X card.

Okay.

Before we got into a whole lot of the other stuff, who's the best teammate you ever had?

Write their name on the front of the index card.

And you're probably thinking, right now you've got a face and you've got a name of the teammate, and you don't even.

Again, when I do this with businesses even, you don't even need to have been an athlete to have had an unbelievably memorable teammate.

Somebody that did something that made things better.

Right.

That stood out for some reason.

Then on the backside of the index card, I'll have them write down, all right, what is that trait?

What is that one thing that they did that made them so memorable to you and have them have such a positive impact on your team?

And the major takeaway from that activity isn't necessarily the name on the front, although you tell them, hey, make sure you reach out to them, let them know you thought about them, that they had a special plate in your heart and your memory, in your past.

But on the backside, I want you to notice, and I do this with business groups as well, you know, it is never technical skill that people list on the backside.

It's never for businesses.

You know, Steve is really good at Excel files.

It's never for basketball.

You know, Susie's a really good free throw shooter.

What you get on the backside of every one of those index cards, and I've done thousands and thousands of them with audiences from just about any industry, is everything is interpersonal and absolutely technical skills are important.

We need people who can dribble and shoot and pass, et cetera.

But the thing that makes you a winning teammate, the thing that's going to make us an exceptional program and sustain our success, isn't talent.

Because talent can be sabotaged if you've got toxic teammates.

Everything that was ever written on the back one of those index cards is something that you as a team member can choose to do if you really want to be a great teammate.

And I think as you think about that and you kind of share that, that kind of begins to open the door to, you know, all right, what are some other things that I could you remind myself of that I can take initiative to do?

Because it's not necessarily ridiculously difficult stuff.

It's just.

And again, the basics always win, Right?

It's new, fundamental stuff like, you know, somebody who's going to be a voice, somebody's going to.

It's going to care enough to say thank you or to ask about or be concerned about.

Somebody's going, you know, to be coachable and want to get better and accept criticism or feedback.

And you.

Those were the ten commandments of winning teammates.

That book was all about the responses that I had gotten from so many of those index card activities.

Yeah, that becomes a powerful sharing activity, right?

Where you do that with a basketball team.

You have 12 or 15 kids, whatever, and each one of them writes down the teammate and then writes down a characteristic on the back.

And now all of a sudden, now maybe you get one or two duplicates there, but you're going to have a variety of different answers.

And then that opens up a whole another conversation that you can have of, okay, well, let's look at all these characteristics that all of you cited and now take it back to what we talked about before.

Right?

So one of those characteristics that comes up on the back of the index card.

Now, how can we demonstrate that on a daily basis that's going to allow us to be even better teammates?

You can just see how all these things interweave themselves into the fabric and the culture of your team if you're constantly talking about them.

And to me, that's really where you get the power of that collective and people thinking about it.

And I think in so many ways, a lot of what we're talking about when it comes to culture is.

Is common sense.

I mean, it sounds almost silly to say that it's not.

But sometimes, and I know, and you probably can speak to this too, as a teacher, there are a lot of times that you'll go to like an in service as a teacher, as a coach, and you'll sit in the audience and you'll hear things that are said to you, and you'll be like, I've heard that before.

I already know that, or whatever.

But sometimes you just need a reminder.

Sometimes you just need a refresher.

Sometimes you just need it to be put in front of you.

And be given, again, the explanation for why do these characteristics make for a great teammate?

And conversely, when we have everybody doing these characteristics, performing in this way, how does that strengthen our team and our culture?

And I just think all these things that you're talking about just lead to the opportunity for coaches to have really powerful conversations with their team and for teammates to talk amongst themselves as well, which I'm sure that is part of what.

What you're doing, both as a coach and as a, you know, as a speaker.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, you mentioned something that I will sometimes say jokingly is, is I'm not a motivational speaker.

That's not my personality.

I am very much a remindervational speaker.

And a lot of the things that you're going to hear in this session are going to be things that you may have heard before.

And you're going to hear some things that are a little bit new, more cleverly said, or maybe insightful that you haven't heard.

But ultimately, it's going to come down to things that you are certainly capable of doing that sometimes we just don't think to do because we don't understand the impact that it can have.

And every one of the books, you know, in terms of, you know, the.

The five areas of culture, when I.

The very first book I wrote was Rapid Teamwork, and that was how do you, as a leader, create a great culture?

And I use that cheesy kind of acronym.

Great.

Because there's five areas of culture that leaders need to focus on to build a thriving culture where people can overachieve.

And the first is goals.

The next is obviously relationships and trust.

And then you've got expectations and clarity of standards and commitments.

Then you've got accountability and adjustments.

Then finally.

And that kind of great acronym or kind of the five areas.

And most leaders are going to be really good at two, maybe three of those.

But most leaders also have one or two that they, for whatever reason, they've neglected just because it's not at the top of their list of priorities.

It's not something that they've seen have an impact.

And I think that that neglect sometimes ends up being the thing that sabotages some of the team members from being as good as they might be on and off the court.

And I think that that idea of building a great culture or, you know, focusing upon, you know, staying coachable or, you know, being a winning teammate, that idea of reminding your kids, I am.

Absolutely.

That's why you do drills and practice.

Right?

Because repetition is the key to Learning.

Repetition is the key to learning.

Repetition is the key to learning.

And the reason, I think, Mike, that that, that organizations and athletic teams will bring me in is really the same reason that I would bring because we would have guest speakers come in every couple of weeks and we do Chick Fil a after our 4 to 6 practice.

We do chick fil a from 6 to 7.

And as part of that, we'd have somebody come in.

There was a church leader or a business leader or a college coach or somebody that I knew that was going to be a positive voice to pour into them a relevant message.

And they're going to largely say a lot of the same stuff that I might have said before, but they're hearing it from a different voice.

And because of that, that different perspective sometimes makes it resonate a little bit more.

Yeah, it certainly does.

I mean, I think that when you can get someone else to echo the message that you're sharing, that can be super powerful.

And depending upon where you pull those guest speakers from, obviously they can bring a slightly different perspective.

But if they're sharing the same message that resonates with your, whether it's your business people or whether it's with your team, obviously that allows you to be able to have a greater impact because they're just hearing that voice from someone else as opposed to just, okay, coach is talking to us about this over and over and over again.

And now we hear from, hey, he's not just, he's not just making up.

It's just like when I'm talking to my kids, right?

When they hear it from somebody else, it tends to at least solidify what they've heard from what they've heard from their dad over the course of time.

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Tell me about the books.

When did you know you wanted to be an author?

Well, I taught literature for about 15 years before I started, you know, scribbling myself.

And, and it was honestly the very first book again, video you Kind of see behind me here in Orange.

It was originally titled Fistitude, and now it's the Unexpected Leader.

It was basically a story I wanted my players to read.

I wanted them to be.

It was all about developing, you know, athletes into leaders and leaders making better programs and better programs having better results.

And so that idea of, you know, how do we help people be better leaders so that they're better not just as basketball players, but they're better when they leave here in whatever capacity they're going to serve as husbands or wives or business owners or etc.

And so how do you emphasize the opportunity that leadership is influenced?

It's not position, it's the authority of your influence based upon, you know, your desire to actually have that influence, to take the initiative and to take the ownership.

And.

And it was a story about how a player, when the coach ends up kind of going away, how a player ends up taking the reins and.

And wanting to kind of be that leadership influence on his team members in the absence of a strong leader.

And then I realized, okay, that's probably not going to be a corporate message.

So what from the stuff that I've learned and the stuff that I share with, with athletic teams at the time that I would go around and.

And do, you know, team building and leadership training stuff, what's something that would be relevant to leaders and organizations?

And that was that first real kind of intentional book, which was rapid teamwork with the great culture and the five questions that leaders need to ask to build a great culture.

And then I realized that not every audience is going to be all managers and leaders.

Every organization is going to have frontline employees.

And what do you talk to the other 95% of the organization about?

And that came back to the winning teammates.

That's where I had the index cards.

You realized there were really about 10 different categories that those responses fell into.

And that was, you know, who's the best teammate you ever had?

Is kind of the question that runs through the book.

And that leads to the 10 different responses that ultimately the main character gets in.

Each of my books are parables.

So I've got what's hopefully an entertaining story kind of wrapped around the content that I think is valuable.

Tell me about your writing process.

Content first.

You know, here's what I think is going to be valuable.

This is what I'd love for people to be able to implement and apply to their team, to themselves.

And then ultimately, what is.

Okay, what is a story that would be entertaining and would allow that content to be Shared.

And so like any other, you know, again, background in literature.

So there's always going to be the.

The main character who is the lost hero, who needs the.

The wise Yoda character to be the guide.

So in some capacity, you've got, here's the challenge.

Here's somebody that can be a leader, that can have an impact, that needs to have this insight or to be equipped in some way.

And then you have somebody come along beside them to share the things that then they can take and then they can share with somebody else afterwards.

All right, so to follow up on sort of the.

The literary process and the.

The plot, the plot line, what have you found to be the biggest obstacle that coaches face in trying to build a great culture?

Whether that's a story from your own experiences, from experiences you've had working with various teams, what are the obstacles to building a great culture?

Yeah, and again, I know our listeners can't see me pointing at myself, but.

But I would absolutely argue that the greatest hindrance to our growth as leaders and our positive impact on our teams is our own ego.

And, and, you know, I went into that very first head coaching job that I had, Mike, with a big old bucket of male ego.

And with every One of those 21 losses, that kind of.

That bucket got emptier and emptier to the point that I was just devastated at the end.

And it was.

It was that disappointment and that gap between what I had expected and what I had experienced that was really the catalyst for me to go out and look for answers that I didn't have.

And I think that sometimes, you know, praise validates, oh, you won the game, so you must be doing something right, you must have it all figured out, etc.

But I think that pain educates or at least leads us to seek what's going to educate.

And I think that sometimes the best thing you can do as a young coach is to lose enough that you have this hunger to learn so you don't have that feeling again.

And, And I think that ultimately, if you can win and learn, man, that's nice.

But, but most of us, you know, in our human, you know, the more wins we get, sometimes the more blind we get to the things that we've been neglecting.

And I think that happens in corporate world as well.

You know, the, The.

The people that hear, yes, the most often are those that have reached, you know, different levels of status in an organization, and they don't see the things that the frontline employees see, and they don't.

You have the curiosity and the humility to ask for the perspective or the ideas or the insights of people that could give them a much better appreciation of some of the things that might help them to be better in their role.

So yeah, I think that, that as a coach, I think the best thing you can do is certainly to reflect and to be more reflective.

Because awareness is what makes you better as a coach.

If you want to be a more effective leader in any area, it's not experience, it's the awareness.

Awareness is what you notice in those experiences.

And so reflection is powerful.

But even more so, can you find an assistant that you trust or somebody around your program that you trust to then ask every week just ask one pointed question.

Hey, you know, what's something that you noticed here that I could do better?

Hey, what's something that I'm not seeing that you see that might help me to be better for this group?

And I think if you'll give yourself permission to be imperfect and then to seek the wisdom of others, that that's something that, that is invaluable.

Because I went into that first job thinking I was confident and I wasn't confident, I was arrogant.

Confidence is thinking you can help.

Arrogance is thinking you don't need help.

And, and I wish I had been less arrogant and more humble as a young coach.

Why do you incorporate conversations with players?

Again, thinking about it from a high school basketball coaching perspective, how do you incorporate conversations with your players into that self reflection process, into that gaining an understanding of what your team needs in a given moment, which ultimately leads to you being able to better implement the type of culture that's going to serve your team.

That's honestly something that, you know, looking back, you know, I coached for about 28 years before I went full time with the speaking and facilitating and writing stuff.

And now, you know, kind of help a little bit part time.

But it's certainly not, you know, something that you're, you're, you're involved with every single day in terms of owning a program.

But that's one of the things looking back that I really regret because I don't think that I invested enough time in those one on one conversations is you'd have the beginning of the year conversation and establish a role and you'd have the, towards the end of the year right before you go into, you know, kind of the, the last part of the region and the tournament stuff, you coming out of your first of the year stuff in terms of clarifying some of that and making sure that they understand you know, here's what we need from you and we can talk about you kind of role clarity, that index card opportunity, activity.

And then you'd have at the end, you know, right around banquet time, you know, you'd have a meeting with, you know, hey, what are you.

The, the highlights and what are the, the difficulties and what are some things that you see as opportunities for us to grow as a program?

You.

And, and so I asked it, you know, three or four times during the year, but I really didn't do as good a job as I wish I had in having weekly or bi weekly conversations just to come in and have because we would schedule them and then sometimes just, just life and high school and meetings and other crud got in the way and I didn't value those.

And now when I talk to leaders about the importance of one on one conversations and cancel everything else, but you cannot cancel that one on one because that's where you really build not just rapport, but you do develop some of that awareness of your people and you give them a safe space to ask questions and to admit mistakes and to take risks and, and to feel that they're cared for beyond just that role.

And, and that's something I think that, that most coaches who are really successful do a great job of connecting before they're correcting it is hard.

I mean, you're tired talking about just trying to carve out the time to be able to do that.

Especially you're talking about from a high school coach's perspective who many of them are.

Yes.

Teaching, teaching.

Teaching American lit and Brit lit or.

Algebra or whatever else.

Exactly, exactly.

Or I mean, a lot of cases now you have coaches who at least the teacher is in the building.

Right.

You can grab somebody during their lunch or during a study hall or whatever.

A lot of coaches today now are working outside of the high school building.

And so then there's even more of a challenge when you talk about the communication.

But I do agree with you 100% that the ability to have a one on one conversation.

I've talked to a bunch of different coaches, Sean, about just how they do it.

And some guys are like, I do it during pre practice stretching every day I try to get to two or three kids and have a two or three minute conversation with everybody.

And so I'm doing that once a week.

If I get to two or three kids every day during stretching, you have other coaches who like to do it on a more formal basis.

And everybody kind of has their different.

I just like to grab Kids in the hallway or I like to have lunch with somebody once in a while, those kinds of things.

And so I think everybody has it right.

It goes back to what you talked about earlier, that you have to take what works for you and make the idea of, okay, I want to have these one on one conversations with players, what works for me.

And ultimately, I think when you do that, you incorporate your own personality into building the culture of your team.

And I think, and I'm sure you found this, and maybe you can speak to this part of the question that every leadership and team building looks different for everybody.

You sort of have to take a, I gotta take this and this is what works for me versus I can look at what somebody else is doing and that maybe the idea behind it works, but the execution looks different.

And so when you talk about the different people that you've worked with, maybe talk about just how you think about helping them to tweak sort of the ideas that you bring to the table to fit their team or their business, if that question makes, makes sense.

Yeah, I think that goes back to the personality styles.

And again, I started doing that with our athletes for them to have a little bit of an appreciation of their tendencies and their challenges, but to know their team members as well and how they're going to process.

Because some people are going to be a little bit more focused upon goal and they don't mind, you know, the, the, the very, very clear, honest, you know, appraisal of, hey, you got to do this for us to get that.

And some are far more focused upon relation, some are far more detail oriented and some are far more focused upon, you know, kind of that, that charisma and connection.

And, and so that idea of appreciating those personality styles is important not just within the locker room, but in the coach's office.

I think that as a leader, you need to understand who you are.

And I very much was, you know, goal oriented and kind of detail oriented and I was probably too controlling in terms of we want to make sure we have everything just so.

And you have our new playbook, we have our notebooks and this is.

And everything was very much planned out and organized, but I wasn't as focused on those relationships and connections because I was building systems, not necessarily relationships.

And that's where I think I did a nice job of at the very least making sure that I always had a couple of good assistants who were better at that side of.

So if I was going to be sometimes the bad guy, who was going to be the guardrails and going to sometimes rub paint off the side of the door because, no, this is the way we're going to do it.

They were really good about having you connected and being able to smooth things over and make sure the kid was reminded, hey, you're still on board, et cetera.

And so I think that understanding yourself, you want to surround yourself with people that hopefully fill in some of those gaps that aren't your strength.

That's really well said.

And I think it's something that any leader can benefit from them.

I think about, again, working, whether it's basketball camp in the summertime or whether it's the times when I was coaching and you kind of look at your colleagues and you try to figure out, okay, what are my colleagues stronger at?

What strengths can I bring to the table?

How do I see an area where somebody needs a little bit of help?

Or is there an area that I need a little bit of help that I can go to somebody who I feel like is stronger in that area?

I think that that, to me, goes across cuts, across lines, whether you're talking about coaching, whether you're talking about business, whether you're talking about.

In a family.

A lot of times, right, we.

We divide up roles based on things that we're good at or maybe in some cases, what we like to do.

But certainly, I think, I.

I think when you start talking about being able to fit the puzzle pieces together, when you have people that have different strengths that they bring to the table, it's going to make the overall group stronger without question.

Tell me about the transition from coach teacher to going out and getting on the speaking circuit.

When did you first start thinking about it, and how long after you first had the thought come into your mind did it take before you pulled the trigger of like, hey, I'm going to get out here, and.

And then we can talk a little about how you built that speaking business.

Well, and, and.

And for, you know, your listeners, and you've done such a fantastic job of building an unbelievable library of conversations that you've got in the can now with what?

It's over a thousand now, Is that correct?

Over a thousand, yeah.

That's unreal.

Crazy.

So to make sure this is a valuable conversation, people don't care about me unless I can kind of help them where they're at in their journey.

And I think that one of the things I realized was a good teacher is a good teacher is a good teacher, and that's all I do now.

I'm still a teacher at heart, I'm still a coach.

I still want to help other people be better than otherwise they would.

You had I not had some type of influence.

And, and ultimately the only reason I started doing some of this stuff that now I'm doing with organizations and corporate groups, that I started doing it with college organizations and thinking I might be able to help them is I realized, hey, there's a young coach somewhere who is about to step in the same potholes I stepped in, and maybe I can share something that he and his team or that she and her team will be able to implement so they can dodge that and they're going to accelerate their, their speed and shorten their path to success and have a whole lot more time having successful seasons instead of having to learn the lessons over that I already learned.

And so that was, that was the catalyst of, you know, after I've turned around, you know, three or four basketball programs, we've had success.

We had to build, you know, and sustain, you know, a winning program where people are really good teammates and people are becoming a little bit better with leadership and stuff.

And then you realize, well, there are some of these things that we couldn't translate to, you know, college soccer, college volleyball, or college basketball.

And so I was very fortunate to work with, you know, a couple of handfuls of those around the Southeast early on, until somebody said, hey, you know, my wife would be able to use this with her nursing or my husband will be able to use this with this sales group.

And, and that's when you put together, you know, the hideous website and a really bad flyer and you go from really, really bad and hideous to not quite so bad to you get better over the years with the iteration of the, the, the branding and the website at great results, team building stuff.

But yeah, early on, I didn't know what marketing was.

You just kind of, hey, how can I be helpful?

I think ultimately the best marketing in the world is how helpful can you be?

And so what I would tell your listeners is the, the, the one thing that, that spurred me to, to try and share is the same thing that, that people come to you for and the other conversations you have, you know, how can I be better for my team?

Because I picked up something that we can implement so we're better next week than we were today.

And then every single year, every one of those teams becomes better because I've learned this thing that now hasn't left me.

And I think that for.

When you talk about team building, it is absolutely different because the team building I do is very different than the person that was kind of that early mentor for me because I do think I'm far more focused and intentional about team building than some of the recreational.

I think recreational stuff can be fun, but it doesn't necessarily have a pointed and intentional impact upon team performance.

And that was always my job is I didn't want just fluff.

I wanted profitable fluff.

I wanted to make sure that what we did, if we're going to invest time in it, I want to see changes in growth and awareness and in behaviors and in that intention of team members to be better to because they then realized other people are depending upon them and what they do affects people that they care about and goals that they care about.

And so, you know, the accountability stuff or the trust stuff or the communication stuff that would be the activities we wove in that now I use with just about any type of industry are those that hopefully open their eyes and those insights are things that again lead you to have some of those conversations about no rear view criticisms and thinking next play and, and you know, what does the team need and what part of my leadership led.

Because ultimately the quality of a leader and the quality of a team member is always going to be kind of determined by the quality of the questions they first ask themselves.

How do you get feedback on what you share with a business when you come in and you give a workshop and so you go through and you talk about all the things that we've been talking about tonight, the things that you've worked on with your basketball team.

Obviously as a basketball coach, right.

You get that feedback maybe not immediately, but over the course of time, right.

You see how your team develops and how those relationships and how your team is coming together.

When you come in and you do a workshop and then you leave and now you've hopefully left the tools for those business leaders to be able to do that.

How do you collect feedback and what have you learned from that feedback that's helped make you better at what you do, both as potentially a basketball coach, but also as a speaker and just improving your delivery of what you're trying to, what you're trying to do for people, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great question.

And I think that, you know, if we are truly interested in having a better impact, we're always looking for feedback and for quality feedback from people that can help us to improve based upon their perspective and comments.

And so yeah, when I work with any client, whether this is a college program or even a high school program sometimes or a corporate group.

It's basically in three different sections.

The first is on the front end.

What are we doing pre game?

Right.

And so you're still using the same stuff.

And so I'll actually set up a custom culture and leadership survey for that organization or for that team to get the perspective not just of the leaders, but that cross section of the organization.

And if there's 300 people in the organization, normally you got 270 of them that are completing the culture survey that give me a nice snapshot of where they see themselves in those five areas of culture.

And what is the best thing about the culture and what is something that has been an obstacle for us and what are two words that describe, you know, our team.

And so that gives you a lot of information on the front end to help me to tailor the event to what are their challenges.

Right.

To make it really meaningful for that group.

And then I'm going to identify based upon some of that, you know, information and data that I collect, I'm going to identify what in that three hour or seven hour, you know, half day, full day session that I might have, what are those activities and conversations we need to have that are really going to move the meter to change their awareness, to change their beliefs, to change their behaviors.

Then you, I'll, you know, put together a video to make sure you build some anticipation and then I'll show up that day and whatever book is going to be relevant and you go through the activities, they have, the conversations, you make sure this interactive.

So this an experience instead of just being passive receptacles.

And then I think as you said, the most important part of that is about a week to 10 days after the event, we always have that follow up call that post game kind of review where we go back and look at the event.

Here are some of the things I thought were really powerful outcomes for your people.

These are a couple of the things that they mentioned as challenges.

We'll go through the PDF, which is the survey results and then I'll give them specifically here are two or three resources that you're going to be able to use moving forward in order to continue to address that.

Because again, change happens in an instant.

But it's going to just like if I were to hit a bell, it's going to eventually kind of, you know, the sound is going to, going to fade away a little bit.

And I think that, that, that learning and the memory, you know, if you've got a phrase, if you've got that, that reminder in the next meeting of, hey, remember when we went through Blake activity, we want to make sure we stay focused upon X, Y and Z.

And then that gives people a reference point that they can still rec.

You kind of call back to three years later.

And.

And what are those things that they can use to move forward, to reinforce the takeaways and make sure that some of those ideas become implemented and part of the program?

What do you think are the things that are the most similar between a basketball team and a business team?

And what do you think are the most dissimilar?

How are they the most different?

So the most similar and the most dissimilar.

Yeah.

Between basketball and business in terms of teams, they are oddly similar.

And.

And this is the thing.

Yeah.

I've worked with teams and you name an industry, it's been really enlightening for me to learn how many niche industries there are, whether it's working with North American hoses and distributors, you know, who you basically, you sell and distribute the hoses at gas stations or, you know, people who do, you know, florists and floral to manufacturing to banking to pharmaceutical.

And every one of those teams, much like in my locker room, they've got issues with clarity of expectations and values.

They've got issues with, you know, making sure that their people are engaged, which means they care about the results that their efforts are contributing to.

So you need to help the people on your team.

All of us have the 7 through 12 on our bench that don't play as much.

And so how do you help them to feel that they're making a meaningful difference and that they're having an impact and that their efforts matter and that people appreciate what they're doing and that they see an impact of what they're pouring into.

Because everybody's job is to be a small contributing part of something larger than themselves.

And so how do you help your people connect those dots so that they do stay engaged and take seriously the role that they have to make the team better?

And I think that idea of accountability, one of the things that I think is, is even more and more rampant these days is people being uncomfortable with accountability or feedback conversations.

Again, they don't want to be told or don't want to feel that they're imperfect because they take that as a personal front instead of no, love you, but the team needs you to do this or to be here, etc.

And that's going to be the thing that helps us.

That's the standard.

That's not about you that's, hey, we need to make sure.

And when you're talking with organizations that aren't athletes or basketball focused, again, the idea of, you know, this is what the team needs, this is our standard, this is what the client expects.

We can't let them down.

And again, I think that there are so many more similarities than you would expect.

And that's why I think you see, what is it, something like 95% of female CEOs were involved as athletes.

I think the athletes learn so much about culture and working together and depending upon others, and they become tremendous assets for organizations because of that.

Yeah, I think the two things there that stick out for me are accountability and being a part of something that's bigger than yourself.

And when I think about the most successful teams that I've played on way back a long time ago, or that I've been involved with as a coach, I think those two things certainly were a part of it.

Where you talk about everyone wants to be able to feel like they can contribute.

Right.

Which is what you're talking about when you say players 7 through 12 who don't play as much or maybe don't have as big of a role on the floor, but maybe their role is on the bench during games, maybe it's in practice or wherever that role may fall.

But those people have to feel just as valued in terms of the bigger picture of what we're trying to accomplish, whether that's putting together a winning team and a winning culture as a basketball program, or whether that's winning in business by keeping our customers happy and growing the business and doing all the things that are related on that end of it.

And so I think being a part of something that's bigger than yourself is critically important.

And I like the other part of it, in terms of accountability, where you start talking about, hey, you might want to do this, this might be what you want to do, but that's not what our team needs.

That's not what our business needs.

And it's not an attack on you.

It's an.

It's that, hey, we need to take and what you're doing and move it in another direction.

And anybody who's ever coached a team knows that players tend to want to do one thing and coaches tend to want players to do another thing.

And sometimes those interests align, sometimes those interests don't perfectly align.

And on the best teams that I've ever been a part of, the coaching staff and the players themselves get everybody focused on.

We want our team to be successful.

And what do I need to do that?

And I'm sure in the business world, obviously that's what you're trying to get to, if you're a CEO or you're a leader of a team, is you want everybody to be trying to strive for the same goal, not have the renegade person over here taking 25 shots a game when they're, when that's not what their role is.

Or, hey, we need you to be a defender and you're over here trying to be Magic Johnson with the ball.

And so that, again, that, that's leadership in a nutshell.

Right, Sean?

I think.

Absolutely.

All right, two part question to wrap it up.

When you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day and have an impact on people who are then taking your impact and sharing it with others.

So your impact is sort of the old proverbial toss a pebble in the pond and the ripples are flowing out.

When you think about the opportunity to do that, what brings you the most joy in the area of what you're doing today?

So your biggest challenge, and then your.

Biggest joy, biggest challenge over the next year probably involves just, just the idea of the discipline to complete what was really exciting to start, which is that fourth book specifically on what effective leaders do, the team building and culture.

Everything else comes back to being an effective leader in effectiveness really is about awareness and, you know, where do you prioritize your focus.

And a lot of leaders will focus on stuff or focus on their staff.

And we need to focus upon ourselves and our systems so that everybody then benefits.

And I think that the story and the content that's wrapped inside that, I'm about three or four chapters in and so about seven or eight chapters to go.

And hopefully have that something that by late spring or early summer is ready to go.

But yeah, that's, that's the challenge now is making sure that those ideas that were so great to get started finally kind of end up being harvested and, and turn into something that I'm proud of in terms of the ripple impact, something that I want to make sure, again, I think it goes back to, I love to teach.

It's something that I think that the joy of teaching is knowing that hopefully you've left somebody better because of the moment or the experience or the influence that you shared and that they're able to have a better life because of the encouragement or the equipment that you provided.

And that's something that, again, that's the reason you do, why you do, I'm sure.

Absolutely.

That's very well said.

I mean, I think the, I say it all the time that the ability to, to give back to the game of basketball, I'll never be able to give basketball what it's given me in any way, shape or form.

But that ability to hopefully give back in some small way and then allow guests like yourself to be able to share your knowledge and give back in that way, to give people a platform to be able to share has been cool.

I mean, I'm just so thankful that I've had the opportunity to meet so many great people through the podcast and share their stories and give them a chance to share their, their knowledge with our audience.

And so again, I would say thank you to you for that.

And it's just one of those things that we don't even oftentimes, again, as a teacher, as a coach, as a, as a speaker, you don't know you're not going to meet every single person that you impact.

And even the people that you do meet that you impact, sometimes that impact really isn't shown until 10 or 20 years down the line.

And that's when it's, that's when it's really powerful.

Before we wrap up, Sean, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people connect with you?

Where can they find your books, share your website, social media promo, away with whatever you got?

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah, well, for, for those who are courageous enough to put up with this for the entire conversation, Mike, I would love to be able to share just a boatload of free resources.

If you go to toolboxstuff.com or go to great results.

Team building, which is the main website on great, real great results Team Building main page, you can scroll down, there's a little toolbox you can sign up, just give kind of name and email.

And basically it gives you access, honestly to the audio version of every one of my books.

It gives you about 50 or 60 different downloadable resources that you can use, whether it's values, whether it's the index card activities that I've talked about, whether it is goal stuff, whether it's building relationships, whether it's having accountability conversations, whether it's reporting progress.

And you know, those are the things that as a leader, I want to make all of that completely free and available to you and your team if ever I can be of service.

If you're looking for somebody to come in and work with your team and give them a fantastic and memorable experience going to make them better teammates and leaders, I'd love to talk with you, but again, everything is available at great resultsteambuilding.com you can find me on LinkedIn at.

Sean Glaze Sean, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on and join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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