It's time for Stars on Sports, a.

Podcast radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College.

LCC athletics has a strong tradition.

24 national championship wins, over 170 all.

Americans, 19 MCCAA all sports trophies.

Starzon Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program's success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it.

We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation.

And right here at lcc, this is Starz on Sports.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports.

I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter and our producer and gentlemen, today we're going to be talking about the lifeblood of an athletic administrator's job and that coaching our coaching staff.

And you know, I got into this business because I had great coaches growing up that had a significant impact on me and were very influential.

And being a leader of coaches, they inspire me every day.

And you know, when I have a coaches meeting, I always put the quote by Billy Graham on the bottom of it.

A coach impacts more people in a year than most people do in a lifetime.

And you know, coaches always surprise me when I think I get to know them.

They might go a different direction but for the most part they are who they are and their strengths are what make them be successful.

So I wanted to kind of talk about that because I listened to a lot of leadership podcasts and obviously some of the same characteristics that a successful CEO or a successful president of a bank has are the same characteristics that successful coaches have.

And the other neat thing about leadership or and especially in coaching staff is there's different ways of doing things.

It just you know, every coach is different and you know, it just what works for them and they can be successful by being who they are instead of everyone has to be a model or of the of the same mode.

And you know I'd hire a lot of coaches over my career and I revamped my list of what I'm looking for and we'll talk about that through this podcast.

The list yeah I gotta find it in my pile here again I might have forgot it actually but it's here nor there I know it old school paper I am that posted we've been joking about post its in my office or last week how many I hey I do that so yeah so you know but it's evolved and but some of them have staged true.

You know in my previous job at a lower level of athletic competition One of the main premises was if a coach could communicate and was organized, they could be successful because of the audience they were dealing with.

But I truly believe that's kind of true for every leadership, especially communication, because I learned a long time ago communication is at the root of all problems and it solves all problems.

So my previous level, too, I looked for English teachers because they had a background in communication.

So I thought English teachers made great coaches.

But in that same sense, teachers make great coaches.

Coaches are teachers.

That's what it boiled down to.

I saw an article a couple years ago that really stuck with me.

I loved it.

Is when you look back at the word coach, in the old days, it was a carriage that took people from one place to the next, and that's what coaches do, Taking student athletes from one place to the next.

I think it's a very fitting word.

Coach.

Any initial thoughts on coaching?

Coaching characteristics?

I'd like to talk about head coaching, assistant coaching and that.

But again, I just like some general things, and that was kind of the direction we head.

Yeah.

Leadership things.

I think I certainly am excited to dive into this a little bit and trying to completely understand the direction you want to go with it.

But I believe there are strong parallels between athletics and the business world and CEOs and presidents and everything else.

There are very strong characteristics.

I like the initial understanding that a coach was taking people from one place to another.

There's also the piece of it that sometimes there's just not enough room on that carriage to get everybody to where they need to go.

And so there's that whole world there as well.

Yeah.

And I think the dallian.

I'll get to you in a second.

I think most coaches do a great job of getting as many people on that carriage to do that next place.

What about you, dad?

Alien.

Even in, you know, I think of you in music all the time for some reason, but in the music world, you know, what are your thoughts?

I mean, it comes down to leadership, really, is what you're talking about.

And I.

To me, it just seems like there's been quite a bit of shift over the last.

I don't know how many years, but where empathy has become a little bit more prevalent and significant in being in a leadership role as well as emotional intelligence.

Excellent.

It's incredible.

Emotional toughness as well.

Yeah, the intelligence and the.

And the toughness.

And I do believe that the empathy is greater.

I know one thing that I kind of stand by is state the facts and speak the truth with.

And that.

And that is the communication style that I use with student athletes and with people that I coach.

But there's also lines, you know, some things that I won't touch is belief systems.

If somebody has a higher belief system than maybe what they are, I really don't touch that piece of it because those are really hard to build.

You can start working on building the skills, but not necessarily touch the belief system because if they have something higher where they're believing in themselves, that's an extremely positive thing.

They think they're better than what they are.

That's a very positive thing.

Versus the 180 of it where they just don't believe that they can lead or do or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

And back to Dadalion's point, I think even in coaching in athletic that's been a significant shift of going from like authoritarian dictator, coach in charge to empathy and being more player emphasis.

And just again, I think empathy is even in the athletic world has been a more emphasis and shift.

And for the good.

I mean, you also talk about emotional intelligence, which is a real hot topic in leadership nowadays.

And I listened to a great podcast and talking to Coach about this for the CEO of Whole Food, the previous one, he talked about emotional intelligence for those who know is self awareness and empathy.

Those are the two things that he used and how important that is and building a team.

And he even talked about emotional intelligence and hiring people, which is a good segue for his characteristics.

Where he wanted intelligent people, he wanted people with drive, he wanted people that he could trust.

And his number one characteristic was integrity, People of integrity and then caring.

And to me, that last one is one of my biggest one to someone that cares because I think they'll do that extra mile.

And my favorite quote that I also use on a coach's agenda is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

And knowledge is overrated to me in hiring for some reason.

Just I think because the applicant pool I get, that's one that's usually pretty equal.

I mean, also are a Ted Lasso fan.

Yes, I am.

Which I think they're the.

Excuse me, a lot of certain characteristics there that apply to hiring good people or being around good people.

So caring is a big one.

But you know, I just listened to one of our previous podcasts about kindness and kindness versus competitiveness and.

And that same thing goes true because I want a competitive person too.

I want a person that has high expectations.

You know, another person said championship expectations and.

And that's what we want because we do compete at this level.

And I think that best balance of caring and being competitive is something it's hard to maybe go through in an interview process depending on the length of that interview process.

But those are, you know, besides, you know, in addition to communication ones that I look for.

Yeah.

And I think there is is a balance piece of it because even with the empathy piece you can put yourself in other people's situations or shoes or whatever it might be and somewhat understand that.

But with the coaching piece of it, you're trying to take them to a different level as well.

And so you've got to, you know, not only understand where they're at to, to be able to get them to the next spot.

And I think that's huge as a leader of coaches is understanding your coaches.

Because I think that's one of my main jobs is the develop coaches, help them get better to the challenge them, to work with them.

Because in our world, as in every world, you get some coaches that are inexperienced and some that are very experience and knowing which way you want to go and keeping them improving.

Because as we talk about many forward be better than yesterday is our main goal.

So yes, I definitely think what you're looking for and even the difference between a head coach and assistant coach.

I look for assistant coaches that balance a staff that it's kind of like a puzzle you put together.

I don't want all yes people as assistant coaches.

I want one that complement the skills of the head coach so that they are a puzzle that fits well together.

But.

And they're very important at our level in all levels of because of the individual they deal with how much they deal with student athletes on a given day.

But the other big attribute that I think big at our level that we don't maybe emphasize the programs that are really good emphasize it.

But is recruiting at this level.

Coaches have to be good recruiters, excellent recruiters, excellent.

The lifeblood.

And you know, I talked to D1 coach about six months ago and he said the three I asked him what made their staff so successful and he said recruiting.

Surrounding yourself with a good staff and teaching leadership and talking to a D, a D2, one of the best D2 athletic directors in history.

He would do a recruiting shop every year with his coaching staff, a two day recruiting shop, making sure they were all on the same page of how they recruit.

And because it back to our brand too that you know, you got to recruit your brand or.

And we both talked about how winning can help with recruiting or Successful at this level, it wouldn't have been in my other job because you couldn't recruit, although you did go out and recruit the hallways.

But recruiting is an integral part of at least the coaching leadership skill.

Yeah, for sure.

The.

With all the things that you're talking about, it's.

It's.

Whether it's with intelligence, competitiveness, whatever it might be that you're looking for in people to grow, all those things can be built.

They just take time.

And it's much like putting 50 people in a weight room and having them all do the same exercise for 30 days.

You're going to see significant growth in certain people and you'll see less growth in others.

And so you never really know when you're recruiting.

Most of this stuff is really hard to measure.

Really hard to measure.

You might be seeing people when it's sunny and 75 and on their best day.

And you might also show up to another place and you're seeing somebody on their worst day.

And you can get some measurements from that kind of stuff, like how they're reacting or whether they're selfish or selfless and some of their actions.

But it's pretty difficult because a lot of this, you just can't really measure.

And I think that's another nice pathway in the sense of hiring the gamble.

I mean, I always joke that when people complain about a coach, be careful what you wish for.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

And just because a coach has a bad year doesn't mean they're a bad coach.

I mean, it could just have been a bad fit.

It could have been injuries, it could have been something.

And we can define the definition of bad because I see you over there smirking.

But that's the other thing too.

And it's hard.

It's finding the best fit because just like I have, my favorite college is, and there's been certain hires in the past that they were the best coach available, but they weren't the best fit for that institution.

So to your point of, some things aren't measurable and you're taking a risk anytime you hire that you're hoping a good fit for that program.

So you gotta know what you're looking for.

And that's not always easy.

I mean, usually when you hire.

There's two reasons when you usually hire.

One, you probably fired someone and the situation needs correcting, or it's really good and that person moved on and you want someone to come in and try and build on that.

So great point.

But the other thing I think a struggle now too when you talk about non measurable is patience.

I don't think there is much patience nowadays with leadership that there was back then.

We talked about on this podcast before.

John Wooden didn't win his first national championship until like between the 13th and 16th year.

And nowadays with social media, I mean, you got to win.

It's the world we live in.

We're not waiting to get messages from the mailbox anymore.

We're getting him instantaneously.

And so it's just the world we live in.

So there's going to be less patience.

And, and it definitely applies in the sporting world.

And people, you know, will be on people for one bad season, you know, and they don't have the necessarily the patience that people had for John Wooden and for him to.

And basically try to figure it out.

I do believe one of the biggest things that, that I look for is intrinsic motivation.

And that's an internal motivation where they are trying to become better people better, you know, athletes better in their community and things like that.

And they're intrinsically motivated.

Not for the materialistic things, whether it's the fame or the fortune or whatever it might be.

They're focused on the things that maybe I would say matter the most.

That you will find the most motivation anybody can have is intrinsically.

And if you can develop and get people who are intrinsically motivated, you will go a lot farther, whether it's in the weight room or the boardroom.

First of all, I do like mail and I do wait for mail in my mail.

I check it every night and I'm going the way we with the timing of this podcast.

I get a lot of political mail.

I'm going to miss that.

I could build a house with the political mail.

I know I've got crazy.

You get your mail every day.

I do not.

I tend to do it maybe once a week now.

Me as well.

Really?

About once a week, if I come.

Home and my daughter or wife hasn't checked the mail, I go out to the mail.

There might be nothing, but he's laughing at me.

You're an old soul.

I could probably check it once a week, but now with all the political mail, I don't know, I just like checking the mail.

So I didn't mean to digress, but intrinsic motivation is a great one because I think this ties into me and I'd like you to tell me if I disagree.

Is passionate, you know, if that person had that passion and you need it in this job.

Back to internal Satisfaction is where that comes from.

So yeah, for sure passion is huge.

And it's huge in this business because of, I guess, you know, as you move up the leadership hierarchy, the hours you put in, the stress you deal with dealing with other people's kids.

That there's a lot, you know, as I've always said, everyone's responsible for themselves.

A leader is responsible for others and in coaching that those others are kids or young adults.

So and how you can, you know, we've seen coaches decision that sent kid down different path whether they stayed with that sport or whether they were, you know, had success.

So back to that impact quote.

It could be a negative thing for some that having that passion carries you through because of, you know, like, you know, some people, if you have a 9 to 5 job, you go home and you come back the next day.

When you're dealing with kids and boarding event that go to 10:00 at night, it never ends.

You're always thinking, did they make it home safely on the bus?

Did they make it home from the bus to their house?

Did they get hurt at the game?

So you're just constantly dealing with the stress of what could happen with young adults that were responsible for.

Yeah, to play off that a little bit, it's kind of like Gladwell's book that he wrote about outliers and everything affects everything.

So it's just not the season that you have or the four years that you have with the people or the 10 years in your company, everything affects everything.

And where they, where they've come from, their experiences that they've had, the modeling that they've had, the prior coaches, all that stuff affects everything.

And it's, you know, I think I remember in that book you talked about how important it was for if you're going to be in an airplane crash, it wasn't just your pilot's training but where they came from mattered because if.

They could comfortable communicating during stress.

Man.

That book's been popular on our podcast Outlier.

So that's a interesting one.

But yeah, same with the butterfly effect.

Everything does affect everything, especially when you're a leadership because it usually comes to you.

Most people solve the easy ones, it's the difficult one that make it to you.

But.

It'S also a piece of as long as you understand that then you maybe have a practice that at 11:00am or 4:00 or you need to show up for work at 8am understanding that everything's affecting everything that people are coming in with.

What we've talked about before with backpacks and understanding through empathy and everything else like how do you, how do you motivate through that and how do you grow through, through everything that's, you know, already there.

And I think that the other thing that's changed in society and in our world, and I know you and your team do an excellent job, is teaching leadership.

We used to use leadership as popularity or that you couldn't teach it.

It was you're born with it.

But how much we've learned.

Back to what I said, that one coach, they taught leadership to their student athletes and a majority of our teams do now because of we understand the importance of it and because how important is to have leaders among our team that, you know, coach fed, player led.

Your motto that you use that if a leader is the only one talking or teaching or learning back to.

I think of having a strong assistant coaching staff, it gets old, it gets tuned out where if you have players that are helping you spread that message and teach it.

So I think that's another big change in society and business is what we've learned about leadership and how we teach leadership.

And I think the successful teams do teach leadership on a frequent basis.

And we have three or four teams that do leadership training at least once a week.

A lot, you know, journaling is another part of that.

It still comes down to respect.

And I think it's most challenging at our level.

It's not much different than being out of business.

And you've been there for 10 years and they bring somebody in that's been there for 10 weeks to be your new leader of your division or whatever.

There's always a lack of respect that happens because of the seniority or the timeframe there.

And the same thing happens at our level where if you're at a four year, it's a little bit different because you do have juniors and seniors that have put some time into a program, whatever that program might be.

And so when they're providing leadership, there's a little more respect there because they've been a part of some type of journey and they understand at our level we really don't have that being that it's a two year thing.

So it's very often that the respect ends up being the biggest thing.

Can this person respect this other person who's trying to lead?

And it really starts with modeling.

Yeah.

And again, a lot of attribute there.

And one to go back to what you talked about earlier is trust and even telling the truth because in the end leadership about I think relationships developing Relationships, it's about influence, it's about believing in your team to get them from one place to the next.

So because in the end we, we don't like the work potential in our world, but our goal is from where we start.

It's where we start, but where we finish and getting them to a better place and being the best that we can in that time.

Because in our world, you know, we deal with a lot of external factors and it's a very public job.

So, you know, we can probably make this a three or four part podcast.

But, you know, some of the things that I try and tell remind our coaches is believe in your student athlete.

Back to Ted Lasso, back to earlier comment about people's beliefs that you got to believe you can win, you got to believe you can do it.

Represent well, that's huge.

I think as coaches you're a very public figure that you have to represent our institution.

Well.

Sportsmanship starts with them.

If you're demonstrative or angry, I think that feeds off to the kids and then feeds off to the crowd.

And then the communication part of it's not what you say, it's what they hear.

And talking to every kid every day, those are like some things that I try and emphasize with our coaching staff that help lead their team.

So we'll end with that.

I think we could probably dig more deeply into characteristics in the future.

This went a lot of different ways than I thought.

So for those that are still listening, I have a couple questions that a food one and my scenario one.

So my favorite food is a hamburger.

All right.

And I could eat them every day of the week, probably three days a week.

But I know it's not good from my heart, so I don't do that.

But I do like.

So what we talked about pizza toppings before.

So if you are having a burger, whether it's a vegetarian burger, burger, Angus burger, what's your.

What are you putting on it?

Well, I think there's gotta be some kind of cheese like pepper Jack and the normal condiments with ketchup and lettuce and tomatoes and things like that.

Some of the best burgers I've had have had some bacon on it, maybe some blue cheese, some different things making me hungry.

Yeah, definitely.

There are places to get burgers and then there are places that you just do not get burgers from.

Oh, see, I'm a simple guy, but I would argue the nice thing about my appetite is there's a burger and a chicken tender on every menu.

So I'M pretty safe to know that I can get one of those at Chicken Tenders, any restaurant that I'm at.

What do you.

All you and your chicken nuggets.

Yeah.

And I'm not sure Tasty Chicken.

The Nervous Bird, too.

So I don't eat it often, but.

Because I think it makes you nervous, like Harbaugh said.

But go say medallion.

What are you putting on your burger?

I mean, you know, as far as favorite burger goes, there's a lot of great burgers out there.

And I'm still always gonna be a fan of the olive burger, no matter what I do.

Wow.

Which is a big Michigan dancing thing, isn't it?

But if I was to make one at home, what it is usually is cheese.

It could be Pepper Jack.

Always gotta have cheese, though.

You always gotta have bacon.

And I love me some jalapeno on there, some lettuce, some tomato.

And then actually there's this stuff called Hell of a good dip.

And so in place of, like, say, mayonnaise, they've got this jalapeno cheese one that is just awesome on a burger.

Nice.

Okay.

And it's not something you'd normally put on a burger.

It's.

It's a chip dip.

But I put it on.

I put it on burgers.

I put it on my eggs all the time, too.

That's a great question.

Because they've, like, just like salad.

They've evolved with burgers.

What you can put on them or not put them eggs or cheese.

See, I'm a simple guy.

I forget.

I took for granted cheese.

It's got to have cheese on it.

I forget that.

But simple.

I just want ketchup and pickles on it to go extra.

I would prefer bacon on it.

But the new one is like these rodeo burgers that have an onion ring with bacon on it.

That's kind of been my favorite.

Yeah.

Barbecue sauce.

My wife got me hooked on having maybe mayonnaise on your burger.

But simply for Ladig, it's ketchup, pickles and cheese, and then maybe some bacon or an onion ring on.

See?

Simple.

I'd go just the deluxe.

Mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato.

Okay.

And that, you know, the number one is every combo meal.

Probably.

Pretty much.

So we're going to skip my other question because we are where I want to be.

So until next time.

Go Starz.

Starz on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ Studios.

Engineering and production assistance are provided by Dadalian Lowry and Jereny Robinson.

You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand@lcc connect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit lccstars.com thanks for listening.

Go Stars.

Victory Count down.

Go out.