High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 108: Leadership is Influence with Director of Leadership at IMG Academy, James Leath

Episode Date: May 15, 2017

James Leath joined IMG Academy in 2015. As Head of Leadership Development, James develops and delivers curriculum for IMG Academy student-athletes across 8 sports and presents to visiting teams, companies, and professional athletes. James attended Fresno State University where he received his B.A. in Communication. During college, when he wasn't playing football, he was best known for being the beloved mascot of Fresno State, Time Out. After graduation, James went on to play quarterback for a semi-pro team in Fresno, CA. With over 15 years of coaching experience and a M.A. in Performance Psychology, James is passionate about teaching athletes the tools they need in order to be successful in life and in sport.  Some gems James provides in this interview include: How you are a leader James’ definition of leadership Why Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz is James’ favorite leader The characteristics of a great leader Why adversity is essential to leader 5 areas of great leadership 3 people you need in your life   You can find James on Twitter @JamesLeath or follow his blog at jamesleath.com. Get a description and summary at cindrakamphoff.com/james.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Syndra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm grateful that you're here for episode 108 with James Leith. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport.

And today I'm welcoming you from sunny Tampa, Florida, where I came to keynote at the Women in Sports Psychology Conference hosted by Amanda Marburg at A-Game Sports Psychology. So I want to give her a shout out for putting on an amazing conference and i also spent um the day before the conference started at img academy where james is the director of leadership and so i decided to go there i wanted to interview james as well as uh reconnect with all of my um colleagues in sports psychology and visit their vision lab this this interview is live from IMG Academy. And before we get into the interview, I want to read an iTunes review.

This is from Tracy Seekins. She said, Dr. Asindra has a very easygoing way of reminding her listeners how to live a positive life. Tonight, I listened to Respond, Not React, and it was just what I needed to hear tonight. I can see how this podcast will help me in my job and my life and I will absolutely continue to listen thank you for helping people and sharing your message hey thank you so much Tracy for heading over to iTunes and providing that review now I had mentioned to you a few weeks ago that I had the intention of doubling

the downloads of this podcast in 100 days I just think that more and more people can learn about how to control their mindset or make the world a better place. And so I set my intention, I told you, and I've been tracking it. And guess what? It's been working just by saying it out loud and telling you about it. It's been working. We haven't quite doubled the downloads, but I'm wondering if you could help me to reach that goal.

So you can do one of two things. If you enjoyed this podcast or another podcast episode, you can post it on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Or you can head over to iTunes like Tracy did and provide a comment or a rating. Or you could tell the friend about a podcast. That would be amazing. All right, so let's jump into James Leith, episode 108. And James joined IMG Academy in 2015. As the head of leadership development, James develops and delivers curriculum for IMG

Academy, their student athletes across eight sports, as well as he presents to visiting teams, companies, and professional athletes. Now he attended Fresno State where he received a BA in communication. And when he wasn't playing football at Fresno State, he actually became the beloved mascot for Fresno State timeout. So after graduation, James played quarterback for a semi-professional team in Fresno, California. And with over 15 years of coaching experience, as well as a master's in performance psychology, he's passionate about teaching us about how we can lead more effectively. So there's lots of gems that James provides. He talks about how we're all a leader. He shares

his definition of leadership. Why Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz is James' favorite leader. We talk about characteristics of good leaders, five different areas of great leadership, and three people that you need in your life. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode. Learn about how you can be a better leader and a greater leader with more influence. So here's a few of my favorite quotes from this podcast that you can listen for. He talks about how either opportunity is nowhere or opportunity is now here. You can decide how you see the opportunities. That's a really good discussion. And then he talks about that it's not the books that you read, but more

about being an open book as a leader. All right, without further ado, let's bring on James. Welcome, James, to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm here at IMG Academy. James, I'm excited that you're here on the podcast with me live. Super pumped. Let's go. So, James, let's start us off. Tell us about your passion and what you do. So I thought I was always going to be a high school or college coach, football coach up on the board, X's and O's. And I spent a couple years chasing that dream, and I realized that i didn't really like as much the strategy i didn't really care about the this play goes with

this play what i loved was the relationship so really what i wanted to do is figure out a way to influence athletes without having to be really good at x's and O's. I wanted to just be able to inspire them to go be the best that they can be. And it's athletes, non-athletes in the business world, you know, whatever it is, I wanted to use my stories and things that I've learned over through the past to kind of help people be the best version of themselves. And tell us a little bit about your responsibilities here at IMG as the director of Leadership Development. So the Head of Leadership Development is a position where I get to do exactly what I just wanted to do. With my background in mental conditioning, I have a master's in sports psychology. I don't really deal with the basic tenets of sports psychology.

I get to talk about leadership and character development, and it deals with things like identity and helping somebody figure out who they are, whether it's while they're in sport or when they hang up their cleats and they go off and do something else. What is their identity? How to communicate with individuals. I get to bring a focus on the student athlete, not just the athlete. I get to talk about the human aspect of being an athlete. And so in our classes, I really get to focus on helping them become a better person. Awesome. So as the head of leadership development, big question to start us off. How do you define the leadership? What does it mean to you?

I love that question, and I stole it from John Maxwell. John says leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. And what I've learned in that is that it's absolutely true. It's your ability to influence somebody. And when I ask my student athletes, tell me somebody who has influence, they always want to talk about, oh, well, this person did this good thing and that good thing. I said, no, we're not talking about good or bad. Influence is neutral. How can you influence somebody? Because you can influence somebody to do something illegal.

That's still leadership. It's your ability to lead. And so leadership is influence. And I'll start every class like that. Say, what is leadership? It's influence. And then we kind of build off of that. So how do you think that you maybe train or develop your leadership?

I have a feeling you're going to ask me that question. So as a follow-up, if leadership is influence, influence comes from the person's ability to display who they are. You're going to follow somebody that you like their traits or you like what they have to say. And so leadership development is what I teach, but another aspect of it is character development. And so somebody's character influences how they're able to lead others. For an example, if I go to some student athlete who's in the batting cage and he swings the bat and misses and i say hey man you suck he's like who are you like get out of here go

the next day if i had met him that morning i go out to the batting cage and i go and he swings and miss and i say hey man you suck he hey, Coach Lee, what's going on? The only thing that has changed is my relationship to him. He's now given me permission to have influence in his life. And, you know, so whenever you are looking to influence somebody, think about what is your relationship to them. Because if I have a coach who I really – let's say I have – in high school, I played volleyball for a little bit and I had this wonderful female coach, uh, coach K and, and everybody loved her and she would yell at the top of her lungs at us, but we knew she loved us. So cool. You're just passionate. I'm not going to take it personal. However, there was a JV coach, a guy who yelled all the time too, and we all hated him because he was not in it for us. He was in it for him. He wanted to be varsity. Long backstory, but it had to do with her ability to show us that, hey, I love you and I'm yelling in your direction and it's loud and there's a scowl on my face but you know what I'm trying

to tell you is trying to help you and so she had influence over us because we knew that she loved us and when you talk about how to influence kids or influence anybody people don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care and that's people have been saying that for years right but it's totally true and that as soon as you find out somebody cares about you, they all of a sudden have more influence over you. You know, as people are listening, they might be thinking about, okay, well, how do you keep kind of love or caring front and center? How do you develop that?

What do you think about that? Because that might be really hard for people to do. It absolutely is, and it can be forced. And so it's very difficult for single-season teams to create that kind of atmosphere. Single-season meaning a club team that's only going to have these 12 girls for three months, and then the team's never going to be together. And so experience together, overcoming adversity, players catching their coach reading. Like, oh, coaches, look at coaches reading. Like, what is that? Or players catching So those two things, right? So inside jokes just happen. The coach allows people to be silly when it's appropriate, but then also the coach can

yell something out and then the kids or the athletes, they respond right away. So those two things now, and that's outside of talent, right? That's, talent is not my area. I'm not making somebody a better soccer player, but what i can do is i can bring a team together by giving them experience making them do an obstacle course blindfolded as they yell at each other and they don't realize that what they're doing is that they're forming these bonds these these just they're becoming a more cohesive unit it has nothing to do with soccer but has everything to do with being on a soccer team and so how a coach can develop a trust between him or herself and the team is just get caught loving on them in the most positive way you know giving encouragement when they need it and not

and like john coach john wooden says it's like i don't treat everybody the same but i treat them equal you know some kids need a pal in the back some kids need a little bit lower and a little bit harder and that's I found that to be true and then as a coach and as a teacher I treat the kids the way that they need to be treated and love them the way that they need to be loved in order to get them to where I know that they can get. So when you think of people, you know, if you can think in your mind of, you know, some of the best leaders that you can think of, maybe coaches, athletes, or even outside of

sport, and you're describing that they love and they care for the people that they're around. Can you think of one or two ways that they demonstrate that love and care? So, you know, I just heard you say like encouragement when needed what are the things do you think that really separate the best leaders from others that you know maybe aren't so great here's why Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz is my favorite leader she had a dream and she went and to chase after it and then she gets kind of shut down by this crazy dude who tells her, go home, your aunt's sick, whatever.

So she goes home, things have changed. Now people are hiding because the tornado's coming. She goes on this journey, and the first person that she meets is the scarecrow. You're familiar with the story, right? He didn't know where to go, and so he's like, oh, some people do go both ways. And she's like, well, you know, I'm looking for the Wizard of Oz. Do you want to go with me? And all of a sudden he's like, yeah,

cause I, I need a brain. So she goes, okay, come along with me. So already she's showing leadership traits because she's realizing that all journeys are better with other people. So now she's showing teamwork, but she's also leading the way. So then they cruise and they find a tin man. Tin Man means a heart because after your journey, sometimes you lose heart. You're like, oh man, I just don't have the energy to get up at four o'clock in the morning and get in that pool again. So Dorothy's like, okay, well, I got a Tin Man. Tin Man, hey, come with me. I'll help you get to this place. So she's leading and it's this person who just went on this quest. And all of a

sudden, she's got the scarecrow and she's got the Tin Man. And then after a time when you're searching after a goal, sometimes you get scared. And oh man, look what happens. The Cowardly Lion shows up. The lion needs courage, right? And so now you've got the scarecrow that needs a brain. You've got the tin man that needs a heart. You've got the lion that needs courage. And they go up against this big, scary thing. And he goes, all right, if you guys want what you say you want, you have to go and conquer the Wicked Witch. You got to go kill her. So as a team, they go and they do it. They conquer. They come back, and they go, hey, Wicked Witch is dead. Well, Toto, who's the voice of reason in this whole story, right? Toto goes and pulls back the curtain.

And it turns out the big scary person was just some old dude who was trying to help people. And so he comes out, and he goes, hey, you know what? You guys did it. Great job. Let me give you some rewards. And this is where it gets really good. Because Dorothy, if you remember, sits back while the scarecrow gets a diploma. And while the Tin Man gets a tick-tock, like a little clock.

And the Cowardly Lion gets a medal. Do you remember what Dorothy gets? Nothing. Nothing. The shoes. She already has The shoes. She already has the shoes. And the whole time she's just smiling because her team got it.

And so they accomplished the goal. And a lot of great things can happen where nobody cares who gets the credit. And Dorothy realized that, look, I don't need anything. My team got it. So then this crazy old man is like, hey, you know what? I'll take you home. Here we go. Let's go. And then he's an idiot because he takes off and doesn't, you know, lock the balloon away. And so he flies away. So now Dorothy, who is this great leader and got her team everything they needed. They won the championship. She's lost until Glinda shows up. So Glinda shows up and she comes down and she was like, Dorothy, what's wrong? She's like, oh, you know, I'll

never make it home. And she's like, what's wrong with you? Like you have the power this whole time. All you have to do is say, there's no place like home and click your heels together. So what Glinda told her is that all you have to do is believe, which leaders need to believe, and click your heels together. Move your feet. So great leaders have stronger belief than most, and they do more action than most. So she closes her eyes, says there's no place like home she puts her heels together and she wakes up because the whole time she was asleep and everything she needed to be a leader was already inside of her that's awesome i was thinking about watching the the movie you know i don't know how many years ago when i first saw it when i was growing up so leaders have everything inside them that they need to be successful. Well, and what you need to get that out is adversity. Dorothy needed a challenge to realize

that she had the capability to lead. When you have an eighth grade basketball team, that's about 500, and there's no way they're going to make playoffs. And you go and you say, hey, I need someone to step up. I need someone to lead. They have no idea what you're talking about because there's no need to do that. If you are an excellent team, undefeated, everybody's firing all sunlanders, there's no need for like yelling. Because you're just – you're going to win most likely. What happens is when adversity strikes, that's when leadership can grow. It's like you can water a plant all you want, but until the sun goes and starts getting into those leaves, that's when growth happens. And you can't have leadership growth without number one, adversity,

and then number two, reflection upon that adversity adversity because you can go through bad stuff and then not learn from it just like you can work at a company for 20 years and not have 20 years experience you have one year 20 times and so there's intentional growth and then there's just stagnant you're just you're just not growing and so one one thing that we here at IMG, which isn't specific to us, but we use improvisational activities to make kids feel uncomfortable in front of their peers because that's the most uncomfortable place you can put anybody. You know, Jerry Seinfeld says, um, number two or the number one fear, um, of all most people is speaking in front of people. Number two is death. And so that most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. That's true. Right? And so you put, you, you put them in front of their peers and then they fail and everybody laughs at them and then the athlete realizes, oh, I didn't die. Oh, that was actually fun. Oh, okay. So now then they take another chance and then they make

another decision and okay, now I'm a purple duck and I'm walking in an ice factory and it seems so silly, but then they go out into the field and now they're taking chances because they realize that their teammates trust them. So it's hard to teach leadership, but it's easy to recognize it. And you can't recognize it until you see somebody overcoming some kind of adversity. Which is why a lot of rich parents don't see their kids making it to pro sports. I mean, you work in professional football. We just heard a fantastic story right now. Best athletes in the world, the exception is they were taken care of as a kid.

And the rule is usually that they struggled big time all the way up until professional sports. Because they had to learn how to fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and take care of themselves and kind of thrive in that diversity. Yeah. Yeah. So, James, tell us a little bit about which leadership themes that you focus on here at IMG. We have five that we really focus on a lot that has been kind of a culmination of a bunch of years and a bunch of different great minds that have been here at IMG.

The first one's identity. So we'll spend a lot of time, a week or two, talking about a student athlete's beliefs, their values, and then how those manifest in the rules that they set for themselves. And so there's a lot of overlap of mental conditioning and leadership. At IMG, we're lucky to be able to kind of separate them and focus on different things. So when it comes to identity, you have these habits that you have. But a lot of times before you have a habit, you have these habits that you have, but a lot of times before you have a habit, you have a rule. You have something you set for yourself. You want to lose weight. You need to get up early in the morning. Well, it's not a habit the first day

you do it. It's a habit 10, 15, 30 days down the road, you know, the 21 day habit rule is totally made up, but whatever, like, you know, it's, you's you you make this rule like i have a rule that don't go to bed without reading you know or um i have a rule that i i wake up in the morning and the first thing i do is i make that delicious espresso you know and that's a habit now like i need it well i guess i don't need it but i love it but we would talk about identity and we talk about how your beliefs will guide you. And so be careful what you let influence you. And so what does influence you? Your family, the music you listen to, the TV shows that you binge on, the five people that are closest to you, you know, it's that old adage where you become the average of the five people you hang out with. And

so really just let help them recognize who is influencing you because if leadership is influenced we're all being influenced i tell them that you know who loves the under armor who loves what you drink who loves what you eat you know who who loves what what you what you're wearing all the time and it's all these different things like but we are most most people are brand loyal like i'm lucky i just i love under armor and we just happen to be sponsored by him and so like i'm like yes i get all these under armor clothes but um you know what influences us i i watch a lot of uh presidential shows or um csi or stuff like that that stuff influences you right we go into connection is the next one and that's connection with we have team sports here and we have non-team sports.

We have golf and tennis. But then we also have soccer and lacrosse and football and basketball. And when you look at basketball, I always forget one sport. But when you try to figure out how do I connect with the team, how do I connect with the community, how do I connect with my critics? Because the older you get, the better you get at your sport or the better you get at your job, people want to talk to you. And so when that happens, your critics get a lot louder. And you can ignore them to a certain point. And after a while, sometimes you just have to address it, and you see it all the time on Twitter.

And so that connection to the community, that connection to – even the connection to your sport, a lot of individuals that I work with – for a football example, I'll talk about a coach from the 1930s or a player from the 1950s they have no idea and I mentioned Emmett Smith a couple weeks ago and most of the class had never heard of him like are you kidding me like Emmett Smith you don't know who Emmett Smith is you know or maybe should I say Herschel Walker so I'm like you know like you know one of your guys but like you know there's there's for a lot of, there's no connections in the past. And you see that a lot with female sports. We have the Empowered Female Athlete Curriculum here at IMG Academy. And we try to connect them to strong women in the past that have kind of paved the way for different sports to be able to be recognized as official or whatever it is.

And, you know, for the guys, it it's you know who who in your past in the sport has allowed for you to play this way you know some football players don't even know that you can't always pass it hasn't always been that way and there was a point in time where it was just running and you know so and offenses come and go and defenses come and go and basketball plays come and go but connection to the history of their sport we talked about that now communication communication is something that we could spend the whole time on because you break it into most people do verbal and non-verbal we also throw in digital which you are fantastic at you know i've had lots of conversations about the digital communication but everybody knows knows verbal and nonverbal,

so I'll spend a little bit of time on the digital in that social media has been the megaphone of our character. Our kids, for example, when I was in the eighth grade, no one knows what I did wrong. These kids in their eighth grade, I know everything they did. Yes, they posted it. And so the way the internet works that if I find something as a hiring manager that you posted as a 13 year old, and now you're

18, well, it's like you posted it yesterday, even though it's timestamped, you said that, and that's just the way it goes on the internet. And so spend a lot of time with the kids, not just saying, don't post this, don't post this. It's do post this. Know that whether you like it or not, people are going to assume that you are like your online profile. And if I as a hiring manager for the leadership department see a resume and then I go on Instagram and I see someone who does not match that resume, I may not tell that person that's why they didn't get the job. So they may never even know because I've got 10 seconds to look at the resume and then move on. And so with the athletes, we teach them,

here's what you need to post. Here are some cautionary tales. You know, when it comes to sending, like nude pics. Like in high school, you got sexting going on a lot in different schools, right? But just understanding, like if you're a female and you send that, you'll never get it back and it will be spread and everybody that boy knows will share it. And then there's the other point where it's like, well, it's also child pornography. And then you get their eyes like, what? It's like, yeah, I'm trying to teach you this.

You have to be careful about that. And so I love that I get to tell them those things because where else are they going to get it? And so that's communication. Okay, so we've talked about identity, connection, communication, and there are a few others? There are two others. Two others, okay. So inspiration. How do you get people, how do you keep them motivated motivated and because we have middle school all the way through professional sports we have different levels of

this inspiration we talk about the three people you need in your life you need somebody to look up to you need a mentor you need somebody to live life with. Someone who is going to carry your casket. That person that you trust with everything. And you need somebody to leave a legacy with. You need somebody who is going to be

looking up to you. Because everybody is a better version of themselves when they know somebody younger is looking at them. I know. I coach youth sports. And whenever I'm around that team I just want to be a better human for them. And so we talk about being very intentional about inspiring others. The last one is empowerment and empowering our athletes to go use sport as a vehicle for change. Because we get our professional athletes in here, these college athletes in here, and even our varsity teams. They put on their varsity jerseys and go across the street and help with the Boys and Girls Club.

They might as well be professional athletes. Because these 6th and 7th graders just look at us like, oh my gosh, but you empower them to do that. You empower these seniors. One of the things I do with all my seniors is I have them write a letter to themselves. And there's a calendar alert on my outlet. In 12 months, these May ones, I'll mail them out, take them to the post office and they'll all get mailed out. So I do that at the end of every seven week session that I have with seniors and post-grad athletes. And it's really just so that they can see in one year how much I've grown. Because when we are going, like up until we get out of college, the difference between one year and

the next year is just there's so much change going on. As we get older, things kind of slow down. It's like, wow, I'm about as fat as I was last year, and i'm about as smart as i was last year you know but like when you're a kid it's just you grow at this astronomical rate and so i love being able to see that and i've been doing that for 10 years or so at different organizations i've been with and it's so great when they get on that coach i can't believe you remembered yeah that's awesome so you empower them to empower themselves 12 months from now and then you know, encouraging to do volunteer work. That sounds great. So the five are identity, connection, communication, inspiration, and empowerment. So James, what would you tell us in terms of, all right, so not everyone's

listening might be an athlete or even in sport, right? They might not be a coach. How do you think that we can apply these five areas to our business to our work maybe even perhaps to our family right because if if leadership is influence we influence our family as parents as sisters as brothers siblings what do you think well all our our identity changes all the time it's very fluid and when you're a freshman in high school and you're playing a sport or you're a freshman in high school and you join a club, you're at the bottom of the barrel. You have to earn your way up. The thing is, those same skills you learn as a young person, whether it's in sport or out of sport with a club or whatever, that never ends because then you get

a job and you're at the bottom of the barrel and you have to learn to talk to people that you don't like. If you were an athlete, you kind of have, I think, a little bit of an advantage because you've had coaches that you didn't like and you have coaches that you did like. As an adult, you have bosses that you don't like and you have bosses that you do like. You have coworkers that backstab and you have coworkers that encourage just like in high school. So high school never ends. Like that, I think it's a Blink-182 song. Brad Pitt's the quarterback. Jack Black's the joker.

Like that never ends. And everybody's worried about who's wearing what and who's hanging out with who. And so, but you have, sports has always been like kind of a microcosm for adulthood. And you learn how to work with people. You learn how tom for adulthood and you learn how to work with people you learn how to deal with defeat you learn how to win with dignity so you can take those and you can use them in the workplace and when i look at resumes especially here i want to see that you have some team experience because it's it's difficult to bring somebody on to a team who's never been on a team before because they're just lost.

Like I don't understand all these dynamics. Why can't everybody just accept me for who I am and I can just say whatever I want in meetings and people just know what I mean. It's like that's not true. That's not life. And you've been given the disservice that you believe that. And so I really think that the things that you learn as a young athlete are applicable. But you can't be a leader unless you reflect on the things that you've done in the past.

And so if you don't look at the things that have happened to you and translate that into this is how I'm going to be a better person, you're going to struggle as an adult. And I always say that leadership is less about the number of books you read and more about being an open book i've been a sales manager for sales people who were older than me who were probably more qualified than me and the only way i could win them is by being an open book and saying hey i don't know the answer to that question you probably do can you help me out so I can help you out? Because if you help me out, then I can make your life easier as your manager. And that worked. Instead of being like, no, I'm the boss. You see the title outside my door?

That means I'm in charge, so you shut up. That doesn't work. That's a short term. They may pay attention to you for a little bit, but eventually that's not a long-term strategy. Dictator coaches don't last very long. They may have some good seasons, but they don't have good legacies. Absolutely. Can you tell us a story or maybe give us an example of a team or a group or maybe even an individual that you helped develop their leadership?

Yeah, I think that one of my favorite stories is when I was coaching a seventh grade football team. And we were put in a league that we shouldn't have been in. We were undersized. We were younger. It just seemed like everything. We went defeated. We lost every game. But I didn't lose any players.

They stayed the whole time. And we changed our goals. and i was honest with them game six i'm like guys we're not and we have some girls on the team we're not going to win let me just be very honest as your coach we're probably not going to win any games so let's change what success means and i was like make it personal i want you guys to have victories throughout the game. So I would be like, hey, Charles, what's your success today? He's like, I want to make two tackles. I'm like, okay, when you do, let me know, and we'll celebrate.

And so we would have a team full of 20 kids, and 16 or 17 of them, after we would lose the game, would come up to me like, today I won, coach. Nice. I did my thing. Yeah. And so I thought, okay, well, that's cute uh but they'll probably never play football again after this so I'm at the banquet and uh I'm up there and I get emotional you know I've been accused of being a passionate individual and I said just accused not proven but I was like all right uh so just just want to know

end of the banquet thank thank you, everybody. Can you raise your hand if you're going to play next year? And nobody raised their hand. Every player stood up and raised their hand. Every player came back. I thought, that's cute. Like, you guys were still terrible. Like, we'll probably, next year, they went undefeated.

Wow. They won every single game. And that was 10 years ago. And so I've talked to some of the individuals since, and they were like, that season of losing taught me more about life than anything. And so you take these negative situations that the world says, oh, you lost. You must not have anything to add. So we'll know if you always win, what can you teach anybody?

John Maxwell says sometimes you lose and sometimes you learn. There's a third thing. Sometimes you waste an experience. And that's what somebody who doesn't understand that they have leadership capabilities does. They just waste an experience or they discount it saying, oh, nobody cares about that. And I just spent five minutes talking about a seventh grade football team in San Luis Obispo, California. So when you think about James in terms of, you know, leadership as influence, what things have influenced you? You know, have you, you know, maybe just could give us some resources in terms of what have you read or listened to that you

think has really helped you develop your leadership or your knowledge about leadership i i love to to just interview coaches like by the water cooler interviews you know just like hey tell me about uh your best season ever as a coach and then you let them talk to yourself and that i mean that's also a strategy and when how to win friends and influence people is like get them to talk about themselves, right? And all of a sudden

they walk away and they're like, James is amazing. I'm like, I didn't even say anything, you know? But some of the situations that I've been in

have really allowed for me to use those. And in my own life, I said the open book thing, I openly talk about my brother passing away when I was in my early 20s and stepping away from playing football and, you know my divorce and you know being failing in

that it's such an intimate thing it's like you know what i need to use this to help other people and and not being afraid of that even though some people are like oh yeah that should be private it's like yeah well that's not what you got for me on this earth. I need to share this. And so I think it's very important that people take their past experiences and just use them to help other people. Because, I mean, why else are we here? And so I mean, I get paid to do this stuff, but I love just sharing life. So I'll read books that have to do nothing with sports. But then I'll learn like Dorothy.

Yeah, that's an awesome story. It's not an athlete. Great application. Right? Right, absolutely. But when I talk to a certain demographic, they're just at the edge of their seat. Like, Dorothy, that's right. Toto, oh my gosh, that's my childhood.

I need to find one for these kids, like Power Rangers or something. Yeah, maybe. that I just love. I mean, Stephen Covey, even like older ones. Horizon Swept Martin was wrote in the late 1800s. But it's principles of leadership don't change. I mentioned Horizon Swept Martin and he wrote a book called Pushing from the Front, which is a very weird sentence. You push from the front. But even he talks about, and I think it was written in 1908. I have the first edition.

I'm pretty excited about it. I got it on eBay a couple months ago. Yeah, that's awesome. But he talks about how city boys just don't know the value of hard work. And that if you want somebody who works hard, hire someone that was raised on a farm. And it's over 100 years. And you're like, yeah, that's probably about right right there. And so the principles of overcoming something and being better is universal.

Like Oprah Winfrey, if you want to see somebody who struggled, you can't write that story. And yet she may be our first president. I don't know. Why not now? Who knows? And yet she may be our first president. I don't know. Why not now, you know? Who knows? And so you have these stories of overcoming adversity. And it seems like that's, if we make everything so easy for our kids,

they just will never learn the lessons that you and I learned. Absolutely. So since we're talking about that, that's a really good segue into one of my questions you know what you just said is you know use your failings to influence people so tell us the story james about a time you failed and what you learned about yourself and what we can learn from that wow i think i think people have really lionized failing they're like yeah fail you know instagram it drives me nuts like just go out there and do something, you know, or like a early twenties and be like, what should I do with my life? Like go somewhere you'll bounce back. Right? So I'm a 19 man of high school and I go back to my elementary school coach. I'm like, Hey, can you give me a job? I want to, I want to coach football here. Let's do that. And he goes, yeah,

absolutely. We'll make you the resource teacher and you'll be teaching recess and you'll be good to go and so i kept being late because i'm a 19 year old kid finally one day he comes out and just goes uh jimmy you're fired i'm like oh come on coach give me a warning you know he's like no you're an adult you are no longer employed here you need to leave i've known this guy 10 years he He was my favorite coach. I love him as a human being. And he just fired me. And I was angry because I'm 19. I don't understand. So as I'm walking away, he goes, also, I need you to know like you can't coach either. You're done. Wow. So that was I was I was devastated. So that football season, I went to the library during when I was supposed to be at practice, and I just read books, tons of books on coaching.

Football season is over, and I go back to this coach, and I say, hey, I realized that I was really immature in the way I acted, and I realized that it was a good thing that you fired me, and I'm ready. Please. And before I could even ask for the job back, he goes, you're hired. Welcome back. Wow. And that was it. He wanted to see how i would react and in life the things that happen to us don't define us it's how we respond to those things that define who we are and i didn't just write him off and just not want to ever talk about my childhood i went back and we'll bring it back around to dorothy i went back to the wizard and I was like, Hey, I fought that demon. I killed the witch. I'm no longer going to be late. And he was pulled it back and he was like, jump in the hot air balloon.

Let's go. And that changed me because then I realized that this man loved me enough to punish me, to discipline me. You know, and you've got guys like Johnny Menzel and these other professional football players that, you know, we can only blame them so much. But it's also, when were they ever disciplined? Sure. When were they ever held to the consequences of their actions? So if we'd apply to us, you know, for us to really think about how, it's not what happens to us right but it's about how you react to it is really key what other applications do you think that you can use from your story to help us grow and learn i think the word that you used react is interesting because

leadership is also about the language that you use and my biggest problem as a young person was I reacted a lot. And when I was able to respond, now I have control over it. Someone steps on my shoe, I react by punching them in the throat, or I respond by saying, oh, excuse me, sorry, maybe it was my fault. Maybe I put my foot under there and they step on it. Who knows? But that works in relationships. Somebody – your spouse has a busy day and comes home in a bad mood and yells out your name. And all of a sudden you react like, why do you always yell at me?

It's like it had nothing to do with you, but now it has everything to do with you, and now you're in a fight. When really you could have just responded and be like, hey, can I get you some tea? Can I give you a hug? You know, and so my teacher that Mr. Gabriel was telling me about, he responded in love and I reacted in anger. But then I came back and I responded saying, hey, I see the air. And he said, fantastic.

You know, so I heard long ago, I ordered a very fruity drink, like those martinis, like the colored ones or something. I was really embarrassed. And this old man next to me, he leaned over and he goes, never judge a person by what they drink, but by how they drink it. Nice. And I was like, thank you, sir, very much. Let me buy you a beer, you know. And so I did that.

But it's also, I translate that into life. It's like I don't judge people by what's happened to them. I judge them by how they responded to it. What did they do after that? Did they make it into a life lesson? Or did they just go, oh, life sucks and it always – people are always coming at me. There's this thing. I had a friend come visit me the other day and he says give me the five most important things about building a business and teaching and learning

and I wrote on this piece of paper opportunity I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E and some people read that as opportunity is nowhere. Okay. And then I'd say, look at it again. And they look at it again and they'd see it says opportunity is now here. I love it. And that's what life is. Opportunity is all around us. So is poverty and devastation and all this negative stuff.

And if you're looking for the negative, you'll find it. If you're looking for the positive, you'll find it. And if you, for some reason, can't find it, create it. Because opportunity is now here. You get fired, you now have an opportunity to get a new job. You build a new skill. You lose somebody in your life, you now have an opportunity to get a new job, build a new skill. You know, you lose somebody in your life, you now have an opportunity to be a better person and live for two. Like when I lost my brother, I was like, well, I'm living for two now, so I need to take some chances.

Nice. Awesome. So opportunity is now here instead of opportunity is nowhere. That's it. That's a great quote, James. It's right over my desk right there. Oh, I see it. I was wondering what that was. So there we go. That's it. That's a great quote, James. It's right over my desk right there. Oh, I see it. I was wondering what that was. So there we go.

I'm scared. I'm scared. So James, I know you have an amazing blog and you post some awesome things on Twitter and social media. So tell us, for those who are listening who want to get more of your wisdom and your teachings, tell us how we can find more about you and where we can follow you. Well, thank you. JamesLeath.com. I send out a coach note every week and it we can follow you. Well, thank you. JamesLeath.com I send out a coach note

every week and it's just little stories, little anecdotes. It's nothing big. It's 500 words. It's just little stories. And so I send that out every week and I do a lot of retweeting of your stuff and other people's stuff and post a lot of stuff on Twitter. And yeah, reach

out to me. Awesome. Awesome. So James, I so appreciate your time and your energy and your wisdom today. I want to tell you the things that stood out to me about what you talked about today and the things that I'm taking from today. So I loved our discussion at the beginning about how leaders keep love and care at the center and how that's so important in terms of being a good leader is developing those relationships and showing that you care and love and love love loved your story about Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz really good application to leadership and I also liked how you described that you know opportunity is nowhere or opportunity is now here. It's just about our lens and we can, we can choose to

respond and not react. And the last thing is, is all about how leadership is influenced. So everybody's a leader because we all have influence on people. Yeah. Leadership starts with the self. Nice. You know, look in the mirror and then people will follow. Awesome. Awesome. Do you have any final advice for us or wisdom? Yeah, just be nice to each other. People are so mean. You know, like every time that I have an opportunity to just like, hey, how you doing? And then you wait for their response.

You can totally make somebody's day by just letting them respond. Instead of being like, hey, how you doing? Oh, you wait for their response. You could totally make somebody's day by just letting them respond. Instead of being like, hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm good. How you doing? Cool. And then you just walk on. I challenge people. Sit there and wait for them to respond.

And that might be the one thing that they need. Ben Harper has a great lyric. And he says, everyone I know is in the fight of their lives. You have no idea how you just stopping and looking at someone and saying, how you doing, and waiting could change that whole day for that. That's influence. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and energy today, James.

Thank you so much today for joining me for this interview. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. You can find quotes as well as the full show notes at cindercampoff.com slash James. And James and I are also on Twitter. You can find James at James Leith and myself at Mentally Underscore Strong. So if you'd like to reach out to us, we'll make sure to get back to you there. And you can also find more about James at jamesleith.com where you can sign up for his weekly coach notes

and his blog. They're super good. Have an outstanding week, my friends, and be mentally strong.