High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 119: Secrets of Successful Coaches with Dr. Greg Dale, Director of Sport Psychology Duke University Athletics

Episode Date: July 4, 2017

Gregory Dale, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics at Duke University. He is also the Director of the Sport Psychology and Leadership Programs for Duke Athletics. In addition to his work with Duke athletes and coaches, Greg consults with numerous college and professional athletes/teams as well as organizations and corporations around the world. Greg has written four books related to leadership, performance, and parenting.   In this interview, Greg discusses: The difference between winners and champions Secrets of successful coaches How coaches and leadership is an art Why coaches should let athletes compete through mistakes Why service is essential to keep center as a coach and leader For full show notes, visit: cindrakamphoff.com/greg

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, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to interview 119 with Greg Dale. 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 going to head over to iTunes

and read a review. And this is from ML Woodward. ML says, Dr. Kampoff is creating a great show that really challenges me to think differently. I hear about mindset all the time, but as a runner, I find many of the episodes especially helpful. She's also found amazing guests from various corners from sports to business. I highly recommend the show. Thank you so much, ML, for your five-star rating over there on iTunes and also for your comments and for tuning in each week. Now, if you enjoyed today's episode, I encourage you to head over to iTunes. You could rate the podcast over there on iTunes or Stitcher Radio if that's how you're listening.

Or you could share this interview or this podcast with a friend. That would make a huge difference to us. So in today, episode 119, I interviewed Greg Dale. Now, I've known Greg for a while. I heard him speak at different conferences and I actually had him a few years ago. I flew him to come down to Minnesota to actually work with our athletic coaches in the area. And I think you're going to really enjoy this interview. I wanted to bring something for athletic coaches and specifically leaders to help them develop

and just to be a holistic leader. And I think Greg does a nice job of describing all of these various strategies and tools and topics that we can use to be a better leader. Now, Greg Dale is a professor of sports psychology and sport ethics at Duke University. He's also the director of sports psychology and leadership programs for Duke Athletics. And like I mentioned, in addition to his work with Duke athletes and coaches, he also consults with numerous other college and professional athletes and teams. He also works with high school teachers and coaching staff. That's actually how I know him best. He consults with organizations and corporations around the world, including the World Bank,

Habitat for Humanity, and IBM. He's written four books, and in today, we talk about one of those books specifically. We talk about the seven secrets of successful coaches, how to unlock and unleash your team's full potential. And in this interview, he talks about the difference between winners and champions. He describes these secrets of successful coaches and talks really about how leadership is an art and why coaches, athletic coaches, should let their athletes compete through mistakes. We talk quite a bit about keeping service front and center as a leader and a coach. And my favorite quote from today's interview is this, You need to check your ego at the door. The key is to use phrases

like our, like our team instead of I, me, or my team. So I think you're really going to enjoy this interview with Greg Dale. And without further ado, let's bring him on. Welcome Greg Dale to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm excited that you're here with us. So welcome. Thanks a lot. I'm excited to be here. It's great to see you again after it's been a couple of years, but I'm excited to see you again. I know. I look forward to catching up in terms of what you've been doing. So for those people, Greg, who don't know you, just tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. Yeah. So my purpose, I really feel like my purpose in life is to try to help people enjoy what they do and make the most out of whatever they're doing.

And then hopefully, obviously, they can have a positive impact on other people along the way. And what I love about what I get to do is that I do it every day here at Duke with our student athletes and our coaches and our administrators, trying to help them. But I also have that opportunity to do this outside with other athletes and coaches and corporate executives and just different people outside of athletics. So I have a great job. I'm very fortunate to get to do what I do.

Yeah, absolutely. And I've heard you speak several times, Greg, one where we invited you to come and work with our coaches here in Minnesota. And you were just here a few months ago. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to Duke and how you got to do a lot of training and coaching and then kind of keynoting for other coaches. Yeah. So I, you know, I grew up being an athlete and I thought I was going to be a teacher and a coach. And so I had my career path going that way. And then I took a class in the psychology of sport and performance and it changed my life. And so I ended up switching and getting a master's there in that.

And then I went on and coached for eight years. I really wanted to work with coaches. I just really as a just never thought about having somebody be able to work with coaches and so I wanted to be a coach myself because if I was going to talk to coaches about coaching I had to have some experience doing that. So I did that in New York City and then back down in Texas where I'm from originally before I went on to do my doctoral work. And when I finished, I wrote the associate AD at Duke at the time and told him how wonderful I was and told him all these amazing things I could do. And he was kind enough to write back, thanks, but no thanks, but at least he wrote me back. And I took a, you know a tender tenure

track position and in another school and did that but uh every year for five years i wrote the guy and just updating him and letting him know where i was and then uh he became the athletic director and uh they decided they wanted to hire somebody full-time to work with their student athletes and coaches and i'm the guy he thought of and i I was very fortunate. And so when I came, I also wanted to have a faculty appointment. So I teach one class a semester. I teach a psychology, a sport and performance class in the fall, and then a sport ethics class in the spring. But I spend, you know, 90% of my time working with student athletes and coaches. Well, that's pretty cool that you knew exactly what you wanted, you know, in terms of working at Duke, and then you just went after it. So you

were really gritty, Greg. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Absolutely. Yes. And persevered and perseverance pays off. And I certainly am a big believer in that. And obviously, I have some luck and timing and all that. But I at some level you create some of that so yeah that's awesome so you know I know that you have such an incredible opportunity to work with some of the world's best coaches and athletes there what do you think that separates the the people that are successful either you know we can take the coaching route which we're going to talk a lot about today but also the athlete route? What do you think separates them? Well, obviously I'm a little biased, but I think those that not only work on their physical part of their game, but also the mental and emotional part of their game.

And here where I am, it sounds a little cliche, but I really try to talk to our kids about the difference between winners and champions. All of our kids here are winners. There's no question about it. but champions do things differently than winners. They do things differently than everybody else. And so what are those little things? What are those small things? What are the things that separate you from everybody else? And I challenge our athletes all the time that all of you are going to leave here and be winners and you're going to

go out and have a great job and conquer the world. But are you going to be a champion? And what, what did those people do differently? And I, when I work with corporate, in a corporate situation or other organizations, I have that same kind of discussion with those guys. I was working with a group of surgeons the other day, just talking about coaching and how do they help coach people and we were talking about the very same thing. So I really feel like

it's people that do the little things. Once you have the physical skills to do it and be able to do that at the high level, then what are those things that separate you? And it's doing those little things. It's truly focusing on and taking a more, I would call it a professional approach to what you do, even in college or even high school. But if you're taking a more professional approach to how you do things, then you take care of your body.

You go home when you're supposed to go home. You work on your mental approach to what you're doing as well as the physical part. That's awesome. So you spend time taking care of your body in terms of eating well, sleeping good, but you also do the mental training part. What do you think separates the really great coaches? Let's talk about coaching in particular. I know, you know, I have your book in front of me, The Seven Secrets of Successful Coaches, which we're going to dive into today. But, you know, what do you see some of the world's best coaches do? Yeah, you know, coaching is such a, it's a such a, as you know, such a great profession.

And I think a lot of coaches sometimes take for granted how much of an impact they have on people. But I truly believe that whatever level you are coaching, that at some level, athletes have to buy into you and what you're trying to get them to do every day. And you can create really good, compliant soldiers. You can be the dictator, and you can get kids to do what you tell them to do when they have to do it. But I think the very best coaches are able to capture people's hearts and they are able to get them to buy into not only them, but what they're trying to get them to do. And that is not easy. And not all the coaches out there have figured that out and a lot of coaches are uh what many people would call transactional coaches and i'm here to teach you and you're here to do what

i tell you to do and i'm not really interested in having a having a deeper relationship than that and and i would argue you might there are some coaches that are successful wins and losses wise because they're fortunate enough to get really talented people and the coaches are very smart And I would argue you might, there are some coaches that are successful wins and losses wise, because they're fortunate enough to get really talented people and the coaches are very smart. But boy, I would argue they could be even much more successful if they were able to get people to buy in. Awesome. So I heard you say a few things like the best kind of capture people's hearts, the athletes buy into what they do, but then they create this deeper relationship. So can you kind of describe to us, you know, how? So if coaches are listening, and I'm also thinking about how this applies to parenting. I have two kids, two boys, right? I'm going to apply this

to my parenting, but also leaders, business owners, managers, because, you know, it's all about leadership. So tell us about, you know, what do you see the best do in terms of capturing people's hearts and then kind of building this deep relationship? Yeah. So, you know, there are, to borrow something from Simon Sinek, he says that there are leaders and there are people who lead and leaders are people who hold positions and coaches have a position of authority. Executive have a, we as parents have positions of authority, but leaders truly lead.

And I think ultimately whatever situation you're in as a leader, your success comes down to credibility that you have with those people you're trying to lead. And credibility is like a bank account and you're either making deposits into that account or you're making withdrawals from that and uh and i think that your credibility means that people trust you they believe in you they want to follow you uh they you know they want to do what you're asking them to do and i think that the best leaders uh establish that credibility and so the way you do that is you guys show people you care about them.

You can have really high standards and hold people accountable, which you absolutely need to do. But in the process, can you let people know that you care? You have to be consistent in your mood. You have to be consistent in how you treat people. And, you know, this is a big piece of what I, when I work with coaches on is that, you know, one of the questions I'll ask them is, you know this is a big piece of what I when I work with coaches on is that you know one of the questions I'll ask them is you know you think it's important to treat when it comes to

discipline for instance you think it's important to treat everyone the same and a lot of coaches will say yes you got to treat them the same because you don't want to lose credibility and I would argue you can't treat them the same because people are motivated in different ways. And that same thing for everybody is the easy thing. And then there are a lot of coaches that like to have a lot of rules and they state the consequences ahead of time. But just know that when you do that, you can't take into consideration extenuating circumstances. And you're going to paint yourself into a corner sometime

where you have a great potential to either lose credibility or do something that's going to totally undermine your team's ability to have success because your star athlete breaks a rule. And you said ahead of time, if you break this rule, you're going to compete in the next competition. And it turns out the next competition is the championship. And now everybody's looking at you to decide what are you going to do, coach? Are you going to let this athlete compete?

Or are you going to do what you say you were going to do? And if you let the athlete compete, you might win, but you're going to lose credibility for the next several years in your program because you said one thing and you didn't follow through with it. Now I would argue that goes with parenting and it goes with working with individuals in the workplace as well. You have to be able to understand that and know that life is a series of extenuating circumstances. And if you live in a black and white world as a coach and everything's cut and dried and you don't take into consideration extenuating circumstances then you're you're you're not a leader you're a manager of situations and you're not being a leader so that's just kind of one a

couple ways that i think uh you start to build and and also lose credibility. You know, Greg, as you're talking, I've been thinking about, okay, who do I know as a coach who tells people or shows people that they care and then also is consistent in their mood and how they treat people? Can you think of anyone in particular that maybe you've worked with or you've just observed from afar? You know, anyone that you think exemplifies both of these characteristics of caring and consistency? Yeah, I would say Tony Dungy, the former coach at the Indianapolis Colts in Tampa Bay.

And he, you know, I've had a chance to work with some of the players that played with him. And all of those guys would all say that he was a credible coach, that he was somebody who they knew cared about him, held him accountable, but treated them with respect, but was also demanding at the same time and took into consideration extenuating circumstances. I think our men's lacrosse coach here at Duke, John Donowski, does a good job with it. They've won three out of the last, say, seven, I think our men's lacrosse coach here at Duke, John Donowski, does a good job with it. They've won three out of the last, say, seven, I think six or seven national championships.

And I think the kids know he cares about them. He's pretty tough on them when he needs to do that. And he started off as a middle school guidance counselor. So I think he has a different perspective a little bit maybe than some coaches do, who didn't start off that way. We tend to coach the way we were coached. And if you didn't have a great example, it's like we tend to parent the way we were parented. Although we say we'll never do that, we end up doing that unless we make a conscious effort to not do that.

So I just think that you have to be able to do that. As I said, I think coaching is an art. And another area that I'd like to just speak about just real quickly is how do you hold athletes accountable? How do you hold people accountable and have high standards, be demanding, and not destroy them, so to speak, in the process? How do we hold them to that high standard without undermining their confidence? And that's an art. It's not easy to do. And first thing I'm going to say is there's a difference in being emotional and being intense as a coach or a leader. Being intense to me means you care. It's important. We prepared for this. It means something. Emotional is much more reactionary. It's much more based on the situation that you're in.

And I would argue a lot of times you get yourself in trouble when you're more emotional than you are intense. And that I'm not saying you should never be emotional and show that emotion and show that you're human, but it's just know that you can get in a lot of trouble and say things you might later regret. I also challenge coaches. Just remember athletes aren't out there trying to screw up on purpose.

I mean, I'm not out here. Watch me coach. I'm going to drop this pass for us to lose the game or I'm out here. Watch me coach. I'm going to swing at a bad pitch. They don't, they don't do that.

But what happens is in game situations, if you think about it, coaches work with athletes, work with them and work with them. And then they put that product out there. don't do that. But what happens is in game situations, if you think about it, coaches work with athletes, work with them and work with them. And then they put that product out there. And if it doesn't look good, who's that a reflection on? Well, me as the leader and as the coach. And if it's about you and you're worried about how these people are making you look, you're going to respond differently because you're making me look bad right now. And I just think you got to be careful about checking your ego and where's your ego. And that's another way that you lose

credibility. If it's more about you than it is about the people you're leading, then you are not going to have credibility. And if you haven't figured out a way to keep your ego in check and understand that you're here to serve them rather than them serving you, then you're never going to be a great leader in whatever situation that you're in. I think you got to, so you got to just, you got to hold them accountable, be demanding, right? And can you do that without destroying their confidence? I have some other things I could say about that, but that's just in a nutshell what I think is really important there too. Well, you just like gave us a lot of value there, and so there's lots of different ways I could follow up on this, Greg.

So being demanding but also maintaining the athlete's confidence. Can you give us an example of maybe a coach you know of, or maybe not even an example but a way of doing that? Because I think you're right that it's like sometimes we can be demanding, but then the way we talk to our kids or talk to our athletes, that we end up undermining their confidence without even realizing. I know one of your C's in the seven secrets is that they build confidence, right? They're a confidence builder.

Yeah, so there's several things I could talk about with this I'll just talk about a couple the first thing I want you to that we need to try to help coaches think about and parents and is that we need to allow people to compete through mistakes whenever possible and so if you create a culture where every time an individual makes a mistake they've got one eye on what you're going to do and one eye on what they're trying to do here, then there's no way they can be fully engaged here. So do you create a culture where as long as people are working hard, you can free them up to just compete or do what they're needing to do?

And then you need to focus more on how they respond to that first mistake, not whether they make the first mistake. Do they make two in a row? Do they hang their head? Do they make a dumb foul? Do they do something else? If that happens, then you bring them off. And rather than yelling at them and saying, what the hell are you doing? Or why you do that? Or what are you doing? Or ignoring them. If you're the head coach and you can't, you don't have time because you're coaching. Somebody needs to ask the kid or ask the athlete. And I love this. I got this from a

couple of coaches that you put it on them right away. You ask them, hey, tell me what's going on out there. Tell me what just happened. So you get them involved in the process. Then you say, well, this is what I saw. And then the most important part of it is you say, what are you going to do to fix that? How are you going to change that? What are you going to do differently when we put you back out there? Next time you're in that situation, what are you going to do to fix that? How are you going to change that? What are you going to do differently when we put you back out there? Next time you're in that situation, what are you going to do differently? They tell you, you could say, yes, that sounds really good, or no, I think we've got to make sure we do this.

That's a much more constructive, educational, 20-second interaction than you yelling at them, them becoming defensive, and they don't learn anything. I would also say, so you've got to coach them and hold them accountable, but how you do that is a, is a big part of that. Another thing is just know that when you make it personal, you belittle or humiliate people in front of other people. I'm just telling you,

you are undermining and sometimes destroying conflict. I'm not saying that you don't hold people accountable in public. I'm not saying you never, you can't stop practice all the time and pulling people over individually and talk to them individually. Ideally, it'd be great if you could do that, but time is of the essence here. So sometimes you got to call people out and say, Hey, you can do this or you can do that, or you need to do this or whatever.

But what is your intent? Is your intent to humiliate this person in front of their peers or embarrass them or, or make it personal, right? I mean, I heard a coach tell an athlete one time, you know, if you're in a race with a pregnant woman, you come in third, that's how slow you are. All right, that's funny. But what good are we doing? Right there? What you've done is you've just now humiliated that individual. And what I try to get coaches and leaders to think about is, well, what would happen if your boss did that to you in front of your colleagues? And he or she asks you to give them that extra,

man, I need you to give me everything you've got. You're thinking, screw you, pal. I'll do it because I have to. I'll do it because it's my job or it's not going to be in it. It's no different with athletes. So I'm saying hold them accountable. Be demanding. But can you do it without giving that little jab,

without making it personal, without belittling or humiliating? And I would argue great coaches have that ability to do that. And if you can do that, those athletes are going to take it and they're going to more likely want to play for you at some level. It's not all about you, as I said, but if you have an environment where athletes want to play for themselves, their teammates, their university or their school or their program, but they also love playing and they want to play for their coach,

that's pretty good. Yeah, and I also think when I've seen players play for their coach, that's pretty good. Yeah, and I also think when I've seen players play for their coach, like they have so much more heart because they know their coach has heart, you know, that their coach loves them regardless of the consequence. I like, Greg, that you said like, you know, during a timeout, you might ask them what they saw first, right? So you get them thinking, then you tell them what you saw as a coach and then ask them,

what can they do to move forward? What did they learn from it? Yeah, it's definitely more of a learning approach than a personal approach or attacking approach. That's right. And again, remember, if you're emotional, you don't have the ability to do that. In that moment, when it's really tense and when it's really, things are falling down around you and things are going nuts, if you're emotional, then you're going to say things.

You're not going to coach in that moment. That's not yelling at somebody in that moment. I would argue that's not coaching. Right. They're teachers. Well, if you're truly that, then what better moment to do that? And if you think about it, if everything's going really badly, your athletes are watching you and you need to be in control of your emotion. You need to be calm. Maybe not

calm is not the right word. Again, you can be intense, but you're not losing your stuff because somebody's making mistakes or they're watching. It might not be the people that are out there. It's the people that are about to go in. Don't screw this up. That guy's a whack job or whatever. You need to be the calmest person in the place so you can have those kind of interactions with people. I would argue they're going to be much more likely to do it correctly the next time they go out there

because they've been involved in the process. It doesn't take any longer than you yelling at them and them becoming defensive about why they did it. And it's more effective. So what would you tell people or coaches or parents or leaders who are just, you know, maybe lose their emotions a little bit more often or have a difficult time kind of with emotional control? When you're, you know, giving trainings and keynotes around the world,

how do you talk to those coaches or people who might just have a little bit more difficulty? Well, I really try to help them really think about where their ego is and all of it. And, again, if it's really about you and your ego, then you're going to be more likely to do this. It's so funny.

When I ask coaches, you know, college level on down, I'll ask them, you know, how do you define success? And, boy, they all say, some will say winning is important, but most won't even put winning in the equation. They'll say it's about developing young men and women for life. And I say it like that because I really put it back on them. And I say, that's, that's a bunch of crap. You guys say that, but boy, your actions totally show something very different.

It's all about winning in those moments. If it's truly about helping them grow and develop, and I know certainly at the college level, you're held accountable to winning. You absolutely are, and it's important. Winning is absolutely important. But where is it in your priority list? And if it's all about winning and if it's all about you, then you aren't going to have that ability to control your emotions as much.

And so I, the first thing I say is you got to check your ego at the door and have you evolved enough? That's one of the things we talk about in that book is that coaches go through different stages in their lives as coaches and that stage of, you know, there's, there's a survival stage where you're just keeping your head above water, just trying to survive. And then you get into the success mode where it's about winning and it's about you and your ego.

And then you get to that significant stage where you've, at some point, and some coaches never figure it out, but that it's about them. I'm here to help them achieve their goals. And if I do that, then whatever I want out of this is going to be much more likely to happen. So if you can get to that point in your career, if you've evolved enough, if you've become confident enough in who you are, and you understand that it's not about you, then you're going to be more likely to be that educational, transformational, I should say, coach. So you've got to check your ego where is your ego

have you evolved that will help you uh also uh filming have somebody videotape you put a microphone on you so they can and you go back and watch it after four or five or six competitions what do you look like when it's not going well how do you interact with people because a lot of times we have blinders on we have sort of uh things that we really blind spots that we don't realize we do things and we athletes don't see what or they don't hear what you say they see what you do so what does your body language look like how do you how are you acting um so how i try to get people to videotape themselves and the ones that are able to do that can really see, wow, I need to, I need to control myself here.

And then, you know, doing some things like, you know, counting and, you know, taking a step back and just, Hey, count to three here. And then you got to catch yourself because if your natural response is to lash out, then you gotta, you gotta stop that. So we stopped, take a couple of deep breaths, maybe count, and then say what you to stop that. So when you stop, take a couple deep breaths, maybe count, and then say what you want to say. But, again, if your intent is to be an educator,

is to help these people develop, and that's truly what it's about, it's going to be easier for you. I've had the opportunity to work with coaches that have said, you know, you've helped me kind of see that, that, you know, I've kind of gone over to that side and understand that it isn't about me. I just heard an interview today from the Sam Houston State University baseball coach. They just got eliminated from having a chance to go to the College World Series, and it was a great thing. And the head coach said in his interview with the media afterwards, he said, I've been given a second chance. I got fired because I was a transactional coach. It was all about,

it was just about winning. It was just about this. And I'm so fortunate that I got a second chance. And I realized that it's not about me. It's about these guys. It's about helping them grow and develop and look as a result of that. I'm much more successful in terms of winning and losing because I figured it out. It took me to get fired to understand that and figure that out. But that's part of my whole goal in life with coaches is to kind of help shorten that learning curve. Don't be that coach that has to get fired for you to have to figure that out and not have to do it for 20 years to figure out it ain't about you. I think that's so interesting, Greg, because I've been noticing that a lot more as well. Probably the last year of coaches talking

about service or high-level leaders talking about servant leadership, you know, just like being there for them and it's not about you. And maybe it's part of my own journey and also keeping service in my heart, you know, that even this podcast really isn't about me. It's about, you know, growing the field and helping people all over the world, you know, master kind of their mindset and be the best version that they can be. So I think that's really interesting that you're talking about that. Besides like, you know, checking your ego, what are other ways that people can kind of keep the service mindset in kind of front and center? You know, like, do you think of any other ways they can do that? Oh, sure. Yeah. I, again, I really like a lot of Simon Sinek's work and his work on leadership. And, you know, he wrote a book, and it truly is in the military, that, you know, leaders eat last.

And that even trying to develop that within your own teams with the captains, the captains should be eating last. I've read a lot with the All Blacks, the rugby team from New Zealand and the culture that they create. And that the captains, the leaders, are the ones that clean up the shed. They call it the shed and they, they're the ones that clean everything up. And so how can you, how can you as the coach do that? How can you be last and not serving your needs? It's interesting.

I know a couple of teams that the coaches, this is at the college level, but the coaches fly a lot in recruiting and different things, and so they have some status with the airlines. And on two of those teams, when they fly, they fly commercially with the team. And when the teams fly and the coaches get upgraded to first class, the coaches on that staff always give their first class tickets to one of the athletes on the team, and the athletes take turns sitting in first class.

Head coach sitting in the back. And sitting in first class head coach sitting in the back and i've seen the head coach second row middle second row to the back in the middle seat and i'm not telling you he's loving it back there but it's that's a great sign it's not about us this is your team right and uh i mentioned our men's lacrosse coach earlier one of the very first things he said to the team when he took it over, you know, I don't know if you remember, but in 2006, we had a really unfortunate situation in our men's lacrosse program, and the new coach came in, and one of the first things he said to those guys is, this is not my team.

My team grew back when I was in high school, and when I was in college, those were my teams. This is your team, and I hope to earn your respect to someday make it our team. And that's how they talk about our, we, and us. And I do some work with a construction management company, a very large company, and they build really large structures around the world. And I was working with one team, the team that was building this, you know, $250 million,

well, actually it was a lot more than that place. And I had an opportunity to work with them. And after it was over, it was an incredible thing that they had built. But the leader of the group that built that team was giving a tour. And on a couple of different occasions during that, I was tagging along behind because I wanted to see the finished product as well. But he used the word I several times and then my and me two different occasions said I built this and I later challenged him

you didn't build anything the team that you led built this so one of the ways that you got to check your ego at the door is stop using the word I or me or the phrase my this or my that. Just really catch yourself. It's not your team. Your teams were back when you were a part of a team. And if you're the leader, it's our team. It's not your team. It's not my team. I didn't't do this i don't do that uh the best coaches deflect credit when things go well and they're willing to take the credit leaders is the same thing are you taking credit uh or are you really distributing that credit are you secure enough in yourself have you evolved enough as a leader to be able to to do that i heard one

very successful coach talk about it in terms of after it was over the competition he tries to look at it like he's looking through glass i look at it when it goes well i'm looking through a window i want to see where i can try to distribute that credit when it doesn't go well i'm looking right here in the mirror what could i have done differently and I think for leaders that's a hard thing to do because we're pointing and saying what they screwed up as opposed to taking some responsibility when it's appropriate yeah that's that's a really really good advice Greg so so far we've talked about several of this seven secrets of the success of the coaches so we've talked about being consistent and caring and confidence building tell us a we've talked about being consistent and caring and

confidence building. Tell us a little bit more about character based. And I think we've probably been talking about that a little bit as we go through, but tell us what you mean by character based and how do we know if we're really character based? Yeah, well, I think again, that starts with who's it about? Is it about you or is it about them? I think you have to have your standards. You have to have your values. And what are your values? Do the people that work with you and for you, do they know what your values are? Do they see those things in you every day? Are you living those? Are they visible? Can they, can they see this?

Are you breaking the rules in athletics? Athletes know if you guys are practicing outside of the time when you're supposed to be practicing or you're trying to get around the rules. If you're continually doing that, you're going to lose credibility. People aren't going to believe in you if you do that. If you're honest, if you're not honest. I mean, people don't always like it in that moment, but at the end of the day, they appreciate somebody who's going to be honest with them.

So if you tell them one thing and then you don't follow through on that, that's being dishonest. You lose credibility again. And so if you're willing to cheat, to get around the rules or do anything you have to do to, in order to win, if you're going to utilize, if you're going to make athletes who are injured, if you're going to put pressure on them to compete when they're not really healthy to do that, that's not being a character-based coach as well. And I think you got to really reinforce that with your athletes. If you're a college or a professional athlete,

you got to bring people in who have character, who have similar values that you do. If you don't, you're going to get burned almost every time. And I hear coaches say all the time that when I'm looking at talent and character, and if I take talent over character, I'm going to get burned all the time and almost every time. And a very successful coach told me one time, he said, all of us coaches think that we can change it and we can fix it. And what happens is we start bringing on people of questionable character.

And sometimes we start looking the other way when they do things that are questionable. We start becoming manager of problems than we are a coach. And again, where does winning fit into your philosophy? And are you going to be willing to take people who aren't going to fit into your system and find what you're what you're doing I look at the uh some people are going to say oh my gosh what are you talking about with the New England Patriots you know I deflate gate I don't I don't know what happened

there but I do know that if they bring if you bring people on and they don't fall into the way we do things and how we do this stuff then you don't get to be a part of what we're doing. And if you can apply that concept to our values and this is how we do things, then you're going to have a, a much better, much better environment. And, you know,

we can spend a whole podcast talking about culture. Sure. I think you have to create a culture where character is important, where integrity is important, where integrity is important, where our values, we hold them to a high level. And boy, when people, new people come on, they see very quickly that this is how we do things. There's a great saying that culture will eat strategy for lunch every day. And I think it's going to eat breakfast and dinner and everything else in between. And unfortunately, a lot of coaches don't spend a lot of time on culture because they

either don't know how, it's not in their wheelhouse, they don't value it. But boy, I also spend a lot of time trying to help coaches. I think credible coaches are willing to spend time on culture because it's really good. And what would you tell us in terms of if people are listening and saying, well, I don't really know what my values are. You know, you said, you know, can they be visible? And I'm assuming that means like visible by your behavior, but maybe even visible like written, right? So what would you tell us in terms of people who are like, I'm not really sure what my values are. Is there an exercise or, you know, what would you encourage people to do to find those? And then, you know, what would you tell them to do with them?

Absolutely. As a coach, if you don't know what those are, you need to really think about what are those things that you value. And just you can even go online and find a list of common values that are out there. And if you've never done that and go through there and what are those things that are really important. And that exercise I try to do is get people to start with 10 down to five. And then we actually narrow it down to three, three most important values to you. What are those? And you have to rank order those because those are going to come in conflict with each other. If loyalty and integrity are two of your main values, those two are going to come in conflict with each other all the time.

There are programs all across the country where your loyalty to a coach, to an assistant coach, or loyalty to a player who's broken the law or who's doing things that aren't considered to be, what we would say, filled with integrity, you're choosing loyalty over integrity. So you've got to – what's more important? Is integrity more important than loyalty? If it is, you've got to put it up there,

and that's going to take precedence over everything else. But you need to share that with the athletes that you coach, the people that you coach, or the people that you're leading. They need to know what your values are, why those are important to you. And then, you know, you obviously have to establish those values for the program that you're in. And hopefully the leaders or other people have some input into that, that have some major stakeholders in that organization, whether that be your team leaders or the captains or whatever. And then you have to hold people

accountable to those things. Absolutely. So Greg, let's actually turn the focus on you a little bit. And tell us, you know, why you do this. Why do you, you know, obviously work at Duke where you get to work with some of the best athletes and coaches, help them be at their best and developing the leaders, but also, you know, training all over throughout the world. So what is your why? And tell us, you know, how you keep that front and center. Yeah, it truly is about,

I truly want to help people realize their potential and enjoy the process and realize their potential. I know that sounds very broad, but because I do get to work in athletics, I do get to work with people who work at everyday jobs and outside of athletics. I work with leaders. I work with coaches. I work with people who work at everyday jobs and outside of athletics. I work with leaders. I work with coaches.

I work with parents. So I want them to be able to maximize whatever potential they have and enjoy that process along the way, but also have a positive impact on other people as they do that. So because I work with leaders, I want them to be able to make sure that they're having a positive impact on other people as they do that. So because I work with leaders, I want them to be able to make sure that they're having a positive impact. And, well, I just have really always believed that as long as I'm doing that, the money I make, all that other stuff kind of really, it's amazing.

It really truly takes care of itself. And what I do is, you know, I do these workshops. I write books. I do this kind of stuff with you. And that stuff allows me to accomplish what my why is. And I think if you can continually come back to why you do what you do, that is an exercise I do with our coaches I work with. You know, why are leaders leaders why are you doing this and if it's just simply to feed your family or make money or whatever then right that's not sufficient it's not going to carry you through right difficult and and it's going to be not as meaningful for sure yeah and I think you're you're when you're why is about service and the you know either

serving your team or serving your community or serving your world or your company, I think then you're actually, your purpose becomes more stronger and allows you to stay fueled. So I didn't tell you that I was going to ask you this question, but you know, we believe here, Greg, at the High Performance Mindset that if you can learn from times you've made a mistake or that you failed, it can actually really be helpful, right? And so tell us about a story of a time you failed and what you learned about yourself and how it might help us learn something. Where do I start?

There's so many of those I could go through. I think there's a couple of where I wasn't true to myself and wasn't myself and tried to be something that I wasn't. Or, yeah, tried to. It was a great opportunity. And I thought, well, I could do that. And I put myself in a situation there where it did not play to my strengths. It wasn't something I truly wasn't being true to who I was and the strengths that I have and the areas that I could focus on.

And it didn't go well. And I learned very – from then on, sometimes that means I have to say no to some things. But I think for all of us, we've got to know what our strengths are and the places where we can do things well and then be able to just stay with that and stay within that at some level. It doesn't mean you're not continually challenging yourself, but I know for me, for instance, whatever organization I'm working with,

whether it be an athletic team or an athletic organization or a corporation or a nonprofit or a family unit, whatever it is, I know I work on three things. I work performance-based, so whatever that could be. That could be work-life balance. It could be managing your time. It could be dealing with some competitive anxiety. It could be dealing with pressure, whatever it is.

That, I work on leadership and that's trying to help leaders be more effective in what they're doing and then work on team culture and team environment and helping leaders establish healthy team culture and team environment. And so while the terminology might change or while the circumstances might change, when you're in a corporate situation, you have to perform at a high level pressure situations. You have to have effective leadership and you have to work well together as a team. It's the same thing in athletics. And I would argue same thing in families and those kinds of things.

So whatever the group, I really try to stick to those three things and just know that that's what I And I would argue same thing in families and those kinds of things. So whatever the group, I really try to stick to those three things and just know that that's what I do well. And I'm going to try not to get outside that. That's good. So what I hear is the lesson learned and what we can take from that is knowing where your strengths are, knowing, you know, what you're about and where you can work and then, and saying no to things that aren't in that wheelhouse.

That's good. Again, I think it's easier for me now to do that, but wherever you are in your career, I just think you have to really try to continue to think, does it fit within my why and is it within my strengths? Typically, those two things pretty much match

up, but is it something that's going to help me accomplish my why, and if it's not, then you got to think really hard about whether you want to do that or not. Excellent. So the book that we've been talking about today is Greg's book, The Seven Secrets of Successful Coaches, How to Unlock and Unleash Your Team's Full Potential. We talked about character-based, we talked about caring, we talked about consistent and confidence building. You know, in terms of any other books, is there anything else you'd recommend in terms of, you know, coaches or parents or leaders?

You talked about Simon Sinek's book, Leaders. Can you ask anything else? Yeah. Well, I have a, I do have one. It's called It's a Mental Thing. I've written for for athletes. I teasingly tell them it's only 100's a Mental Thing. I've written for athletes. I teasingly tell them it's only 100 pages, big print, lots of pictures, so it doesn't take long to read. But I've also written one for parents called The Fulfilling Ride. It's a playoff of the full ride. It's what everybody's looking for, that full scholarship.

But I really try to help parents play their role effectively because it's a really important role in what they're doing. I've written a book for coaches on team building. It's 101 team building activities that you can use to, you know, do develop trust and teamwork and communication. And I have a new book coming out with, I wrote with a couple of colleagues that it's a little different, but you know, I told you I started off as a teacher and uh my first

foray into fiction I've written a story for teachers um out there and it's called Catch and Release uh becoming a teacher who changes lives and it's a kind of combination of uh Tuesdays with Maury and a river river runs through it so uh But it's for teachers to help them navigate these challenges that they have. It's kind of a love letter to teachers, so to speak. So that will be coming out mid-August. Oh, that's super good. So I hear resource for parents, for coaches, for teachers, for athletes. Where can we find more information about where we can get these books?

Yeah, Amazon, obviously you can do that or on my website, excellenceinperformance.com are two places for sure. Different bookstores around the country but those are probably the best and most convenient.

And Greg, as people are listening, how can they connect with you? Are you on social media or any other ways besides your website? No, I'm not great with that. I am on FaceTime. As Bill Belichick, I saw an interview with him the other day. He called it Snap Face and something else. But I do do Facebook, do a little bit on Twitter.

I've got to get better with that. But those are the two places that I'm on. That sounds good. And what's your Twitter handle? Gdale25. Gdale25. So I would encourage people to head over there. And you can tag Greg at Gdale25.

Tell us what stood out to you about this interview. I'm on Twitter as well at mentally underscore strong. You know, Greg, there were so many pieces of value you gave the listeners today. I loved a lot of things that we talked about. And first, I just want to thank you so much for what you've done. So to honor you for everything you've done for coaches and athletes and these excellent resources that you've developed to help us all be better. So I liked it. Beginning, we talked about the difference between winners and champions and how champions

do the small things, which includes, you know, working on the mental approach if they're an athlete or building their culture and really thinking deliberately who they are as coaches. We also talked about how coaches care and they have this level of caring. You gave an example of Tony Dungy. And you also talked about being demanding, but also upholding athletes' confidence. I loved our discussion about service and how the bats keep service right here in their heart. And also how, you know, to do that, we should keep our, check our ego. Yeah. Make it about them, not about you.

And then I loved our discussion at the end about character-based and working from a character-based model in terms of a leader. And just thinking about what your values are and keeping those front and center. So what kind of final advice do you have for everybody who's listening? Well, again, anyone who's in a leadership position, what a great opportunity to have a positive impact on others, and I just think we got to make sure we always keep that in mind, whether you're a parent, or a coach, or a teacher, or a leader, and whatever you are, take that role seriously, and that I would argue you owe it to whoever is reporting to you, whoever is there, you need to get as much information as you can and be self-aware enough to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and truly work very hard at trying to be the

best leader that you can be, whatever role that you play. Excellent. Thank you so much for your time and energy and your commitment today to make us all better, Greg. Thank you so much for your time and energy and your commitment today to make us all better, Greg. Thank you. Appreciate you having me. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.