High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 195: The Power of Positive with Jim Thompson, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Positive Coaching Alliance

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

Jim Thompson, founder and CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance, started PCA in 1998 to transform the culture of youth sports into a Development Zone™ with the goal to develop Better Athletes, Better People. PCA’s vision of youth sports as a Development Zone has attracted the support and involvement of many elite coaches, athletes, academics and business leaders in this country. Jim received an MBA from Stanford where he was Director of the Public Management Program, named during his tenure as the nation's top non-profit business management program. He has written nine books on youth sports including: Positive Coaching, The Double-Goal Coach, Shooting in the Dark, Elevating Your Game and Developing Better Athletes, Better People. Jim is on Stanford's Continuing Studies Program faculty where he teaches courses in coaching, leadership, and sport & spiritually. In this interview, Jim and Cindra talk about: Why he started Positive Coaching Alliance in 1998 and how they built a movement How we can fill our emotional tank and the tanks of others His ELM Tree of Mastery The magic ratio of positive comments The best way to respond to ensure our people know we have their backs Why psychological safety is important to develop as a leader You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/jimthompson

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 I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to episode 195 with Jim Thompson. 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 our sport.

And with two episodes weekly, we explore everything related to mindset. You can learn the secrets from a world-class consultant, coach, speaker, entrepreneur, or on Tuesdays, I also provide a short message to inspire you to be at your best consistently. If you know that your mindset is essential to your success, this is the podcast for you. In today's episode, I interview Jim Thompson, the founder and chief executive officer of

Positive Coaching Alliance. Now before we dive into the interview with Jim, I'm going to head over to iTunes to read a rating and review. This is from Robin who said, As an athlete and entrepreneur, I find the high-performance mindset helpful in doubling my confidence to be exactly what I needed to hear today. Love how conversational the podcast is and how they get straight to the point with useful mindset training presented in an upbeat and entertaining way. Thank you so much, Robin. I appreciate your comment over there on iTunes. All right, so if you enjoyed today's episode,

you can head over to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or iHeart Radio, anywhere you're listening, and leave a rating and review. Okay, so today's episode, I interview Jim Thompson, who's the founder and CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance. He started Positive Coaching Alliance in 1998 to help transform the culture of youth sport into what he calls a development zone with the goal to develop better athletes and better people. PCA's vision of youth sport as a development zone has attracted the support and involvement of many elite coaches, athletes, academies, and business leaders around the country.

Now, he received his MBA from Stanford, where he was the director of the public management program, which was named during his tenure as one of the nation's top nonprofit business management programs. He's written nine books on youth sport, including the one we talk about today, which is called Elevating Your Game. He also wrote a book called Positive Coaching, The Double Goal Coach, Shooting in the Dark, and Developing Better Athletes, Better People. Now there's a lot of reasons that I wanted to

have Jim on the podcast. First, I live in Minnesota and the Positive Coaching Alliance is very strong here. And I recently read his book called Elevating Your Game. And so I thought he'd provide a lot of useful wisdom for all of you listening out there. And I was blown away by the content of this interview. I think you'll find his content very useful and the way he leads very inspiring. Jim and I talk about a lot of things in this interview. We talk about why he started Positive Coaching Alliance and really how they built it as a movement. And the reason I asked him that question

is because I think we all can build a movement we're passionate about. I asked him that question to help inspire us. We also talk about how we can fill our emotional tanks and how we can fill the tanks of others. He talks about his concept called the Elm Tree of Mastery. We talk about the magic ratio of positive to negative comments, the best way to respond to ensure other people know that we have their backs, and why psychological safety is

important to develop as a leader. I know personally I became a better parent and leader after this interview and a few of the things that we talk about really hit home in terms of my parenting. My favorite part was when he talked about how we need to relentlessly love our children regardless of how they perform. This was important to me because right before I interviewed him my son was playing at the state championship as an 11 year old in the Center, which is where the Timberwolves and Lynx play. So that was important for me to remember. And then he talked about this magic ratio of five to one positive and negative comments. And he said the best way to ensure that our people know that we have their backs is to say things like, I see you.

I got your back. And I'm here to help things like, I see you. I got your back and I'm here to help you. So I think you're going to love this interview with Jim Thompson. I encourage you to leave a comment, a rating, and a review and let us know what you thought about the podcast. Jim and I are also on Twitter and you can head over there and you can join the conversation there. I'm at mentally underscore strong and Jim is at Jim Thompson 18. All right, let's bring on Jim. Welcome to the podcast, Jim. I'm excited to talk with you about Positive Coaching Alliance. How is the weather there from Mountain View, California? It's a beautiful day. It's about 70 degrees, blue skies. Fantastic.

That sounds wonderful. Well, I'm looking forward to talking to you a little bit about your journey, Jim, in terms of like starting the Positive Coaching Alliance and where you got the motivation and your decision to do that, but also like learning more about the work that you're doing right now. So to start us off, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. Yeah, so I've been passionate for many, many years about the ability to help people reach their potential. I started in your neck of the woods, really, in Minnesota. I got a job as a teacher aide many, many years ago in a school for emotionally disturbed behavior problem kids. These are very troubled kids and very hard to handle. And they were bused into a special school from all around the city.

And I was hired as a teacher aid and given incredible training by the principal, Shirley Pearl, and the social worker, Don Chalman, who were way ahead of their time. Nobody was talking about organizational culture in those days, but they created an organizational culture in that school of relentless positivity. And I saw these very troubled kids get better and go back to their regular schools. And we worked with the principal and the teachers at those schools to continue the relentless positivity. And that got me excited about the human potential.

So I met my wife there, we got married. We both were teachers in Wyoming for a while, worked in state government, came to business school at Stanford. And it's always been about how to get the best out of people. Awesome. And at what point did you decide, you know, Positive Coaching Alliance and that you wanted to start it? Was there something that triggered it? Well, the combination of my experience at this school called the Behavioral Learning Center and my experience a few years later when my son Gabriel started first grade and started playing new sports and I would go to his games. And man, there was just so much negativity, so much unhappiness. I grew up in North Dakota in what I call the golden

age of Sandlot ball. You know, not a lot of adults involved, just kids getting together and playing basketball all day long or playing baseball or softball all day long until we had to go home and get something to eat. So it was kind of a shock to see how much unhappiness there was around baseball and soccer and basketball. And that really got me going. The first year of business school at Stanford was very demanding. And plus, I didn't really have the idea of wanting to coach. But then when Gabriel started playing sports, and I would go to his games, the the bug the coaching bug came back or came to me the next year when I was a second year student at Stanford Business School and I wasn't worried about flunking out anymore and I decided I want to try coaching his teams and so that's he's 40

years old now and he was six then been doing this for for a long time. I think that there's a lot of need for what you're doing and there's continues to be a need. I think maybe even the need will get more, you know, higher, like the demand will be stronger because there is so much negativity and young kids can experience a lot of pressure. So you started Positive Coaching Alliance in 1998. Is that correct? Yeah, I coached my son in baseball and basketball. And then I wrote a book, Positive Coaching, Building Character and Self-Esteem Through Sports. Then I got a job. I was working, by that time I was working at the Stanford Business School. And I got a coaching job, coaching girls high school basketball at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, California, not too far from where I am right this moment. And that caused me to write another book called Shooting in the Dark, Tales of Coaching and Leadership.

I was co-teaching a class on leadership at the Stanford Business School. At the same time, I was coaching this high school girls basketball team. And shooting in the dark is really the intersection of the leadership class I was co-teaching and the basketball team I was coaching. And then, you know, it's just at a certain point, I was appointed to a national task force on building character through sports. And because I was a writer, I was given the task of writing the final report for this task force, which met in Washington, D.C. And I'm on the airplane on the way to the very last meeting of this task force,

where the report that I drafted will be adopted. And then I realized it would be put on a shelf. The task force had gone away. I have this report somewhere in my garage, but it became clear to me, nothing really much is going to happen from this task force because there needs to be an organization pushing these ideas. That's where Positive Coaching Alliance came from. Ah, outstanding. You know, I think one thing that's really impressed me is just like how you've built it from this idea, you know, in the 90s to, you know, 20 years later, you have 75 full-time employees, you know, 200 trainers, coaches. When you think about how did you build it, what, you know, what advice would you give to people who

maybe have an idea who'd like to start something similar well you know we really i i could make a joke and say we don't want we don't want any competition yeah not that it would be competing with you right for sure but this is maybe another idea but but we um we actually don't think of anybody as a competitor. Yeah. World of Youth Sports is so big and so decentralized that anybody who is doing good things want to support and collaborate with. But they're sort of thinking about if you do want to start an organization and have an impact, the first piece of it is to get credibility. And for that, I mean, why should there, lots of organizations get started every year? Why should anybody pay attention to your organization or to my organization?

Well, that it helps to have credibility there and having a vision of what you're trying to change really makes a difference. So for us, you know, the fact that Phil Jackson and people like him have become part of Positive Coaching Alliance because they because they like the vision. When I first met Doc Rivers, who's now the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, he embraced PCA right away because he had four kids who all played Division I sports and they had some good experiences and some bad experiences. So that first piece is to create a vision that will get people excited. The second is to develop a program like, okay, we've got the vision that's exciting to people, but do you have a program that improves

things, a program that works? And we've worked really hard to develop the workshops and the various tools and frameworks that we have to help not just coaches because we take a systems approach to use sports, but help leaders, coaches, parents and athletes get the best out of sports. So you have a program that works and then you need to have an organization that can deliver it. You know, if you're one person and you're doing some workshops in your town, that's fantastic. But that's not going to change the culture of your sports. So we have to figure out an organization that would allow us and this this year we will do 3 000 live workshops around the country so we had to develop an organization that could deliver that and then the fourth piece is when you're trying to change a major institution like youth sports you need to have a movement you need lots

and lots of people involved and so that's one of the things we're trying to do to have a movement. You need lots and lots of people involved. And so that's one of the things we're trying to do is create a movement of people who feel so strongly about what youth sports could be like that they help make it so. Outstanding. So when you, you know, describe, you know, that Phil Jackson is kind of believing in this vision of PCA, like, tell us about this vision, maybe the same way you tell Phil it. Yeah. So our tagline is better athletes, better people. And that's what you sports should be. We, we did an analysis when I first started this, like, what's the problem?

You know, we, we see the symptoms. We see kids dropping out of sports. We see, you know, I had a, I had a kid on my son's team, actually not the team I was coaching, but he had trouble hitting a ball off a tee because he was so nervous. His dad was putting so much pressure on him. So we see the symptoms, but the question is, what's the source of the problem? And I identified early on that the source of the problem is a win-at-all-cost mentality that comes from an entertainment sports culture. If you're an entertainment business, you're a business, you're trying to make money. And the only way you can

make money if you're an entertainment business is by entertaining people. And if you're a sports entertainment business, then the way you entertain people is by winning games. So it becomes a win-at-all-cost thing. And so we feel like you have to have a rival vision. And our vision is to create what we call a development zone, where the goal is to develop better athletes, better people. And if we can do that, we not only will have kids have a really great experience with sports, they will also grow up to be the kind of people that will help make the world

a better place. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I would definitely think that, you know, maybe the pro sports has contributed to youth sports seeming like it's, you know, this entertainment culture when really it's there to develop young kids. So tell us a little bit more about what you mean by development zone. And you think, you know, what do you see as the best practices of developing a culture that, you know, kids can thrive? So the first thing, you know, you have to

have a strong foundation. And the foundation of great teams is a caring culture. We really ascribe to Mary Fry's work. Mary is a... Of course. You know Mary? I do. I know Mary. She's at Kansas and a very good sports psychology researcher. Yes. And her work is about how you develop a caring, task-oriented culture. And the caring climate part, the key idea there for us, the key tool is the emotional tank. Every kid has an emotional tank. Every person has an emotional tank, which is like the gas tank in a car. If you're going to go on a long drive, you got to fill up your gas tank again and again and again until you get to where you're going. Well, a season, a sports season is a long journey and you've got to fill kids' emotional tanks again

and again and again. And when kids have their their emotional tanks filled they can't wait to go into practice they're not afraid of making a mistake because they know it's okay to make a mistake the other part of that is a task-oriented culture and this comes from sports psychology as you know you're an expert in this task orientation versus ego orientation that's the technical term for it. But we translated that into a mastery orientation or a scoreboard orientation. The scoreboard orientation is, we're trying to win. Am I better than that person? Are they better than we are? But it's a mastery orientation. So we developed a little thing, the elm tree of mastery you know i grew up in north dakota and minnesota where there's lots of elms or they used to be anyway and elm tree is e l m e for

effort give your best effort every time l is for learning and improvement maybe you're getting beat really badly but is there something you can learn from this it'll help you in the future and then m is for developing the discipline the discipline to be able to bounce back from mistakes. So effort, learning mistakes. And when you focus on that as a coach, it takes the pressure off kids. Because the one thing you cannot guarantee in a competitive environment is you can't guarantee that you're going to win. The other team is trying really hard to win. I was at an event we, our PCA Arizona chapter did a couple of weeks ago, and Dick Tomey, whose son, Rich Tomey, is the executive director of PCA Arizona. His dad, Dick Tomey, was football coach at Hawaii

and San Jose State and University of Arizona. And he said, you know, it's really hard to win a football game, because that other team is doing everything they can to win the game also. Yes, can't control that what you can control is you can control your effort, you can, you know, you can keep going, even though you're getting beat, you can improve, you can have a teachable spirit. So you're learning and we say be a sponge and you're sucking up everything you can that will help make you a better athlete and a better person. And then when mistakes happen because there's the inevitable setback, especially when you're playing a team that's trying to beat you, you're going to have setbacks. But can you rebound from them quickly? So those are really the foundation and then a third

piece besides the emotional tank filling emotional tanks and creating a an elm tree of mastery climate where you're trying to get better and winning is a byproduct of that and then the third piece of it is kids want to be part of a team that does things the right way so we develop the the roots of honoring the game, where roots stands for respect for the rules, your opponents, the officials, your teammates, and yourself. And of those, the most important one is the self. I tell players, I don't want you to honor the game because I want you to honor the game. I want you to honor the game because it's important to you. Absolutely. And you know, Jim, I like the concepts. when you, you know, I go back to like what you said about a caring task oriented culture.

What do you see like the best coaches do in terms of the caring piece? Can you maybe tell us some, some best practices there? Absolutely. There's a, there's a statement that's been thrown around in, in sports for years and years and years. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when I started digging into that, I discovered that that was first said by a very interesting person. It was President Theodore Roosevelt. He said, they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And it's become almost a cliche in sports,

but it's really true that we say to coaches in our workshops, if you want your players to commit to you as a coach, to the team and to your sport, then they've got to feel connected first. They've got to feel connected to you. They've got to have a relationship with their teammates. And that has to be done first're they're not going to be able to learn as much as they could in terms of skills they're not going to be able to learn as much in terms of character lessons if they're not in that environment where they are connected and you know i i don't know if you've had a chance to see the new movie the documentary about mr rogers called won't You Be My Neighbor.

I haven't, but it sounds wonderful. It is fantastic. Everybody I talk to, I say, go see this movie. He's been a hero of mine for a long time. And his statement, his main statement was, it's you I like. And I like you just the way you are. And kids need to hear that. They need to hear, I like you. I like you the way you are. I believe in you. We need you on this team. We can't be the best we can be without you. We need you. And then one of our most powerful tools is something we call you're the kind of person who statements. So let's say that you're one of your players has a chance to make the winning play and blows it and you end up losing. And you can have this kind of a conversation with them. It's very, very powerful. You can say, you know, I'm sure you wish you had made that play. But one of the things I like about you is that you're the kind of person who

fill in the blank, who doesn't get discouraged easily. You're the kind of person who is willing to take the shot. A lot of people would have been so nervous they wouldn't have even wanted to take the shot. You're the kind of person who will bounce back from it. And the kid, the first time the kid hears this, they might think, I am? That's the kind of person I am? But you're building their sense of their identity and who they are. Absolutely. And their confidence in themselves, right? That they can, you know, that they can next time make it or, you know, next time they can take that shot and they're not scared to take it.

Absolutely. Yeah. I like that. So you're the kind of person who, and you know, one of the things that first got me introduced to Positive Coaching Alliance is I read your book, Elevate Your Game or Elevating Your Game. And one of the things you guys talk about in there when you're discussing the emotional tanks, you talk about like this magic ratio of five to one, you know, five tank fillers for each criticism. Kind of tell us about that and maybe how this connects to this caring culture. Absolutely. Yeah. There's been a little bit of research around this

that, you know, there's actually a book, Teresa Amabile, I think is the author, she and her husband, it's called The Progress Principle. She's a Harvard Business School professor and she found that the most important motivator and a job is that people feel they're making progress in an important task. That feeling

that you're making progress, you're getting something done. And the idea behind the magic ratio is that we want to improve, we want to get better. So if somebody is always positive with you, never giving you any helpful criticism, that's not doing the best thing for you. The problem is we have people who are so negative that kids turn them off because they're always getting complained about. The research shows that this magic ratio, and you may know who John Goffman is, a psychologist at the University of Washington. I think he coined the term the magic ratio. And he was working with, is working with couples. And he used this as kind of a diagnostic tool that they would videotape couples interacting with each other. And when the couples were at one to one or less, one positive to one negative or one positive to two or three negative, those relationships didn't last. They end up in divorce. But when you get to a five to one ratio where you're giving feedback to people and criticism doesn't have to be negative, It can be taken as feedback. If John

Robinson, the former USC Southern Cal football coach said, I never criticize a player until I'm convinced that he believes that I believe in him. If you're a coach and you're saying to a kid, either in words or by your behavior, okay, let's see what you got. Are you good enough to be on this team? Then you're critical with the kid and that's devastating. On the other hand, if you say, I'm with you, I see you, I've got your back, I'm your coach, I'm here to help you. Let's see what you can do. And I'm going to give you some feedback that's looking at how you can improve the things you're not very good at. When a player believes that a coach sees them and supports them and has their back, they can accept criticism, which might be, we might say five to one. Wow, that's a criticism.

But if the relationship is such that that kid knows that the coach is in their corner, that even that criticism might be positive. Tell us how you think that maybe the criticism could be positive. Well, let's say you're writing something. I know you're a professor and a sports psychology guru and a teacher. And let's say you're writing something. You give it to me to look at. Now, I could say, wow, that's fantastic. Sure. But it doesn't really help you that much. Right. What if I were to say, you know, in chapter two, you know, we're talking about this, and I didn't quite understand it. It's an interesting idea, but can you explain it to me? We're engaging about your writing, and that can be tank filling. You know, we encourage coaches to ask questions, to ask rather than tell. So kid strikes out. I'll tell you an example happened with my

son Gabriel and me many, many years ago. I was coaching him. He's probably in third grade, second grade, something like that. And I was coaching his basketball team. And he was working on his left handed layup. He's right handed. And I said to him, you know, I noticed something about the way you're finishing your layup that might make you better at making more layups. I'd ask him and sometimes he would say, and so I'd say, are you open to hearing it? And sometimes he would say, no. Because kids hear from their parents so much. And I say, okay, no problem. Other times he would say, yeah, what is it? And then I would say, if you make sure you're shooting off your right foot with your left hand, so your left knee is up, or maybe if you shoot your shot underhanded rather than overhanded,

it'll have a softer touch on it, whatever it is. So giving kids feedback, asking them questions, engaging with them around them getting better, it may seem like, and initially it may feel like criticism. But when you develop that relationship where the kid knows that you're on his side, then it's like, help me get better. Absolutely. And that's really supporting like this task-oriented culture, this master-oriented culture you're talking about. And Jim, when you were talking about the five to one ratio and, you know, John Gottman's book, there's some research that like high performing teams need like an 85% positivity percentage, right? So maybe even higher than the five to one. So it relates to, you know, kids thriving in marriages, but also like how well our teams

work together. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a study that was done at Google, typically called the Aristotle Project, where they looked at lots of different teams. And Google has a lot of really smart people. They work really hard. And all of these teams had smart people on them. They had people who worked hard, but some were successful and some weren't so successful. And what they discovered, the key was how much psychological safety was in that group. When the people, and we're talking about adults here, we're not talking about kids, we're talking about 30, 40 year old engineers. When they felt that they could be themselves, when they could ask for help, when they could say, God, I know how to do this. That's when they bonded as a team

and were able to be successful. Absolutely. And so, Jim, one of the things I'm thinking about is parents who are listening, right? Who want to keep this front and center in terms of developing this caring culture, a place that's psychologically safe. How do you think that we might do that as parents? Well, I think the first thing is to be just be relentless about you. You love your child regardless of how they perform. I remember once I was coaching Gabriel on his basketball team and, you know, he made this winning basket and I just rushed over to him, gave him a big hug and a high five. And I realized afterwards, what I was communicating there was how great it was you made that winning basket. And kids get

confused. Sometimes parents, we want our kids to be successful. You know, we're worried. I don't want my kid to grow up to be a bum. And you know, I want to to be successful and we're so nervous that you know sometimes it it really backfires so to to say to the child i um i just want you to know i love watching you play i'm looking forward to coming to game today and i want to be real clear about this i don't really care how well you play i hope you do i hope you play well i hope your team wins but i love you no matter what and the game's over. We're going to go out and get ice cream or whatever. And how you do has nothing to do with whether I love you or not. You're the most important thing in my life. And that's not dependent on whether you make the winning basket or not.

That's such a powerful statement, right? Because then that does symbolize like love unconditionally. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I think about, Jim, like some of the things that I see when I watch sports where young kids are frustrated really easy or blow up, right? Maybe they have anger issues or maybe frustration with the officials. Like, where do you see that coming from? Just like within our culture and within youth sport? Well, we have a winner-take-all culture. We have a perfectionist culture. It's not unusual for kids. I think kids need to be taught that it's okay to make a mistake. When I first started coaching, my wife was first grade,

kindergarten and first grade teacher. And she took a workshop from Sister Grace Pilon, a Catholic nun. Sister Grace has passed on now. This was many years ago. She developed something she called the workshop way. And my wife took us, right after we got married in St. Paul, Minnesota, she took like a two or three or four week seminar with Sister Grace. And one of the things that Grace Pilon did was she'd say, she'd ask kids, is it okay to make a mistake? And the kids would say, no. And she'd say, actually, yes, it is. Only people who are smart, only smart people can make mistakes can a dog make a mistake no can a rabbit make a mistake no so when i started coaching so i i didn't even i met sister

grace once but i didn't take her to seminar but my wife did and when i started coaching the first thing i do is i think i have a i call the big three and rule number one. And the big three is have fun, be a good sport, and try your hardest. And rule number one is it's okay to make a mistake. Kids believe deep in their soul that it's okay with you, their coach, if you make a mistake, or you, your parent, if they make a mistake. Then they are liberated. They are free to be aggressive because perfectionism doesn't lead to perfection. It leads to procrastination. It leads to denial. It's like, I've got this big test coming up on Friday. Let's say I've got an essay I have to write and I just feel like it needs to be perfect.

Well, that doesn't cause me to start working on it early. That causes me to think, man, I can't be perfect. So, and it's not till Friday. This is Monday. I'm not going to work on it today. And then it gets to be Thursday night and like, oh my God, I got to do it. So perfectionism is really, it's really a little bit of a curse. Yes. Yeah. And Jim, one of the things I'm thinking about is, you know, how to help athletes let go of the mistake or move on or bounce back is another way that you described it. Do you think this is something that we have to continue to repeat? I just think sometimes even with my kids, right? You know, it's like they need to be reminded of that quite frequently. So what do you

think the best way is that we can approach this as coaches and parents? Well, so we developed a mistake ritual. Flushing mistakes is one. You're the coach and you have a player out in the softball field and she scoops up the grounder and throws it over the first baseman's head. And then she looks at you and you make a fleshing motion with your hand because we developed this team mistake ritual. Is it OK to make a mistake? Yes, it is. John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches ever, said the team that makes the most mistakes is going to win. Because I wanted, i need to explain that i wanted doers on my team people are going to push the action and when you're aggressive you make more mistakes but you actually win more that way so we're going to have a team mistake ritual

and i like flushing mistakes like you make a flushing motion like you're flushing a toilet it can be no sweat you wipe it off your your forehead it could be brushed off your shoulder i one of my favorite mistake rituals i did a workshop many years ago and there was a coach there who worked with hearing impaired kids okay and she her fact why don't you do this with me over the phone perfect i'll do it we'll hope that people listening this will to link your your index finger and your thumb and then link it with your other index finger and your thumb so you got two rings that are you're holding together okay and when when you see a player make mistake and these players couldn't hear So they look at the coach and you open your hands wide and you let it go,

which is the American sign language for let it go. And so that's a mistake ritual she used with her hearing impaired players. And some coaches have great success by asking the players, what mistake ritual would you like to do? This is something we can do. We can create our own mistake ritual. But the goal is to, when you first make a mistake, if you're been raised as a perfectionist, you're in the society we're all in, doing a mistake ritual, like let it go or flush it, is you're going through the motions. You don't really believe it. But as you keep doing it and your coach does it for you and your teammates say, hey, flush it. Most important play is always the next play. Get ready for the next play. Eventually you develop the brain muscle that allows you to have, you know,

just so much mental toughness that you actually can flush that mistake and then focus on the next play. Absolutely. And it might take some time. It might not be like the first time you do it that you can let it go, but repeating that action or that phrase is key. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Physical, physical motions as well as the words.

One of the things that I know you talk about within elevating your game, and that's kind of central to PCA is this idea of like the triple impact competitor. So can you tell us a little bit about that, Jim, like what that means and how it's connected to some of the things we've talked about so far? Yeah, one of the books I read when I was starting PCA was by Peter Senge at MIT. It's called The Fifth Discipline. And he talks about one of the five disciplines is mental models. He talks about how mental models determine our behavior a lot of the time. And I realized it often determines our behavior and we're not even aware of it. So I think of a mental model as often a subconscious job description. And I realized the mental model for coaches was when it all cost.

And so we created this model, the double goal coach, winning life lessons, better athletes, better people. And then for athletes, we created the triple impact competitor, elevate yourself, elevate your teammates, elevate the game and the larger community by the way you handle yourself, way you live your life. And there's two ways you can get people to change, at least two. One is punishments and rewards. Like you do what I want you to do and I'll reward you. If you don't do what I want you to do,

I'm gonna punish you. And they work short term, but the rewards are expensive and they wear off. Punishments make people angry. The other way, Jim March, who is a professor of mine at Stanford Business School and one of the great educators in the world, said the other way,

the better way to get people to change their behavior is have them change their identity, change their sense of who they are. So we're working very hard to get coaches to help athletes begin to think of themselves as triple impact competitors who elevate self teammates game larger community and we coined this new term it sounds like an old term but it's really a new term elevator with an er not or okay it's a new term

a new identity new term for a new identity so and, and so what is an elevator? An elevator is somebody in whatever situation they're in, you're looking around and saying, how can I make this better? How can I elevate this situation? And if we can get kids to think of themselves as triple impact competitors or elevators, they're going to try to live up to that. And that's would be very good for our society. Absolutely. And so I'm thinking elevate teammates might be that you, you know, encourage them that you build them up, elevate the game, respect the game. Tell us about like, what does elevate yourself mean? How do you see that? Well, we one of the frameworks or tools we have, we call double vision or window versus mirror and the idea is that when things go well

even if they go well because of you if you're the main person who made things go well you're looking through a window and you're looking around and saying and and sharing credit you're saying wow in the third inning you know billy made this incredible play you're looking through a window when things go bad even if it wasn't your fault you look in a mirror and you say what can i do to get better so the one of the ways to elevate people is by sharing credit and taking blame and imagine if you have a whole team of people doing that so people everybody's looking around and and sharing we we had a staff meeting today we got we had all of our staff around the country every two weeks on a phone meeting and we start with the first five or ten minutes

appreciations and triumphs and people thank each other for helping them get a project done or congratulate them on an accomplishment. And that fills their tank. So think about a team or an organization where everybody is trying to elevate each other and think of just what you could get done, the amazing accomplishments you could have then. So true. So elevate self, elevate the game and elevate teammates. So what keeps you going, Jim? Like, as I hear you talk about all these cool concepts

and ideas, like, you know, what is sort of like, what keeps you going? What's your why behind this? So the original idea behind PCA was kids weren't performing very well. So what do kids need to have a great experience with sports? And we came up with the three things I mentioned earlier. They need to feel connected. They need to believe they can get better. And they want to be part of a team that does things the right way. That was 20 years ago. And we live in a very different world today than we did 20 years ago. I think it's a scarier world. It's a harder world for kids to

grow up in. So now the question is not what a kid's, well, it also is what a kid's need from youth sports, but it's what does our society need? And I think what society needs is they need triple impact competitors. Our society needs elevators. We need people who go into politics and they think, how can I make things better? We need people going to business saying, how can I make things better? And wow, I could make some money here, but it would not elevate things. We need people who become police officers and teachers and attorneys and plumbers with the idea, I'm an elevator. Yes. I'm going to try to make things better. Jack Clark, my friend who is the rugby coach at University of California, I think he's won more national championships than any other college coach. Anyway, he's won a lot of them. And he once said to me, I wrote it down and then I

went over and got, got, make sure I got it right. He said, we're not one or two brilliant people away from solving our problem. We're going to need groups of people standing shoulder to shoulder with our noses pointed in the same direction. And you learn that from team sport. I'm really worried about our country, our society, our world. And we need kids coming out of high school sports, seeing themselves as elevators and being willing to tackle the really big problems that are already here and bigger ones coming down the road. Absolutely. I think there's so much negativity and maybe it's because of social media or, you know, how we can just blast people, you know, for no reason at all, or maybe you don't know them.

You know, I do think that there's so much negativity right now in our culture that it's, we need people building each other up and sharing more positivity as coaches and parents. Absolutely. Yeah. We say, what's the, what's the one thing a coach could do, the biggest thing a coach could do to make themselves a better coach. And it's up your, your plus minus ratio, that, that magic ratio. If you're, if you're one to one, get it up to two to one. If you're two to one, get up to three to one, get moved towards that five to one ratio. Positivity, you know, Barbara Fredrickson and other part of the, the positive psychology movement, the research shows that positivity does amazing things. You actually live longer. You live longer if you're in a positive environment. The most amazing thing to me is that when you're in a positive environment, your peripheral vision increases.

Isn't that crazy? That's awesome. When you're in a negative environment, the concept of threat rigidity is like, oh, my God, what's going to happen here? I've got to be careful. I've got to tighten up. And then you miss signals. Whereas if you're in a positive environment, you've got a soft focus instead of a narrow, hard focus. And you're looking around. You're taking in things, you're more open to people. Life is better with positivity. Yeah. And you know, what about those

people who are listening, Jim, who say, I don't know if I could get to that five to one or like, what if the five to one is just cheesy, right? Like, you know, what would you tell us in terms of what we should say in that five to one besides just like good job, right? Like, you know, what would you tell us in terms of what we should say in that five to one? And besides just like good job, right? Because that's not very specific. How do kids know what you're complimenting them on? You know, like what do you think about the quality of that five to one? You know, adults often have self-esteem issues with kids.

Yeah. You know, we think about kids being nervous around adults. But when you're a coach or a teacher when i'm a coach when i started coaching high school girls basketball i was very nervous are the are the girls on a team gonna accept me i didn't i tried not to project that but it's like it's really important for me to be a good coach and what if what if they don't like me so the the idea of i lost my train there. What was your question, Cyn? Oh, so my question was like, what do you think about the quality of that five to one?

You know, that it's more than just good job. I'm guessing, right? So what do you think about like, for those people who might be kind of just struggling with like, I don't know if I can do that five to one or what does that five to one sound like? Yeah, so one of the things I really wanted to do as a high school coach was to introduce visualization i'd read a whole bunch about it i tried it myself and i wanted to introduce it to my girls on my team and i was nervous about it and when i first introduced it to them and we first did a visualization i asked them to

at the end of practice this you know sit down on the bleachers and put your feet down on the floor and close your eyes and then i led them through a guided meditation visualization and they they giggled and i just felt like oh no oh no but i kept with it because it's so important yes the cheesy factor i think is yeah you believe it if you believe it they will come around to believe it maybe you don't feel comfortable and people say man you gotta be authentic you gotta be authentic well if you're a negative personality being authentically negative isn't isn't going to help you so try act as if uh the 12-step movement i have lots of friends who are in various 12-step movements and one of the one of the big things is act as if make it till you fake it if you if you introduce the emotional tank and the magic ratio

to your players and you act like you really believe it, and you really feel comfortable with it, they'll buy it. And it don't take very long before they realize, oh my God, this is a lot more fun playing on this team with when we've got a bunch of tank fillers, we've got a bunch of noticers and tank fillers. And that's the other thing is to tie these things to success on the scoreboard. The reason it's so important. Hey, hey, team. The reason it's so important that we focus on the emotional tank is because it will help us be a better team. My friend Dacher Keltner, who's he's on our national advisory board. He's with the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

He did what I call the NBA touch study. And the NBA touch study is they took every NBA team and they videotaped a game. And they counted how many times the players touched each other. And they normalized somehow, I don't know how they did it, but they normalized somehow for talent. So if you got LeBron James on your team, they normalized somehow of them. And then they predicted based on how much touching there was, how the teams would do, and they got it almost exactly right. The teams that touched more played better. And when we talk about filling emotional tanks, often we think it's verbal. It's all words. But getting a high five, i was just at a conference that where this guy did this incredible you know we started out by pairing up with someone and developing our own high five and it's kind of

ridiculous but carl the guy that i was paired with we we developed this really cool little high five handshake thing that we went through and every time we saw each other that those three days we would do it again and other people started picking it up too that's awesome touching is a way of appropriate touch and positive touch and touch that gives the other person the opportunity to say no i don't want to be touched is a tank filler so the main idea there cinderella is go into it when you introduce something that feels a little cheesy to you and you're afraid your players are going to think it's cheesy, go into it acting as if this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Tell them how

great it is. Tell them that the best athletes in the world do this kind of stuff. Yeah, love it. So the ways that we can fill people's emotional tanks or e-tanks are like verbal versus, you know, and as well as touch, right? Is there any other ways that we haven't talked about? Well, gestures. When I do a talk or a workshop, I'll often say, you know, drain my tank without saying a word. And, you know, they'll start'll start you know waving their hands like go away or you know thumbs down and you know frowning at me turning their back to me i'll say okay now fill my tank without saying a word that's harder because we're we're raised in a society to to be good at draining people's things but you know you smile, you smile, you make eye contact,

thumbs up, you know, fist power, you know, positive fist sign. So it's words, it's touch, and it's gestures. I'm glad I asked you that question. I think that gestures is really powerful. Just thinking about you speaking in front of the audience and they're all like draining your tank, that's got to feel terrible for a few minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In a competition, often you can't, you can't communicate

by talk. Right. Soccer, it seems too far away, but they can look and see your mistake ritual, your flush, even though they can't hear you. You know, Jim, one of the questions that I always ask people on the podcast is tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from it. And I'd love for you to tell a story about that, particularly because we've been talking about mistakes and how they're learning opportunities

and then, you know, that the best don't hold onto them, that they flush them or let them go. So tell us about a time, you know, in your career or your life or your time as a parent. Sure. You know, my friend Jerry Lynch has a book called Thinking Body, Dancing Mind. Such a good book. Thinking Body, Dancing Mind. And he tells a story about a farmer who has one horse and his son leaves the gate open and the horse runs away. Now, how are they going to do the farm work? They don't have that horse. And the kid goes to the dad and

says, oh man, that's the worst thing that could happen. And the dad says, oh, how do you know that? Next day, the horse comes back and leaves three or four other horses. Now they have four or five horses. They're rich. And the kid says, that's the best thing that could happen. And the dad says, oh, how do you know that? The next day, the kid is working with the horses and the wild horses and gets fucked off and breaks his shoulder. Now he can't help with his farm work. Oh, it's the worst thing. And dad says, how do you know that?

The next day, the emperor's army comes through and they take up all the able-bodied young men. They don't take the son because he's injured and he says oh that's the best thing that happened and I had a situation where I was working for the Oregon Department of Energy in Salem Oregon and I was ready to do something else and I applied for a job with the federal Bonneville Power Administration and it would have been, we moved to Portland, we wanted to live in the bigger city, would have paid more money, we'd have been able to,

I'd had more authority and power to, and money to do energy conservation projects with. And I ended up not getting the job. And I think about that, if I had gotten that job, and I probably thought at the time, God, this is the worst thing that could happen. I didn't get this job. If I had gotten that job, I probably wouldn't have applied to the business school at Stanford. We wouldn't have gotten in. We wouldn't have moved to California. I wouldn't have exposed all these ideas. I wouldn't have started Positive Coaching Alliance and if you have a minute, I can tell you a version of the story from Steve Kerr who's now the coach of the Golden State Warriors. In high school, he had a

Division One scholarship offer from Gonzaga University up in... Yes, I'd love for you to do that. And he went up there for a visit and he thought it was all taken care of. And so they got there and they said, we want you to work out. So they got him some gear and he's working out in a gym. And there's this player that he has never heard of before. And this guy is wiping the floor with him. He's just impossible to stop him. And he can't score on the guy. And they withdraw the scholarship offer. Well, it turns out that was John Stockton. It was John Stockton before anybody knew who John Stockton was. John Stockton was a Hall of Famer in the NBA. And they withdrew the scholarship offer.

And Steve Kerr comes home devastated. He's a high school kid. But he's playing in some summer tournaments. And Lute Olsen, the coach at the University of Arizona, sees him. He needs a three-point shooter. And he has a scholarship. And so he offers him the scholarship and Steve says that if he he believes if he'd gone to Gonzaga he never would have made

it to NBA so what seemed like the worst thing turned out to be a really good thing because he played with other NBA quality people now Gonzaga has has put a lot of people into the NBA but Steve feels like that it was really a good thing that he got turned down by Gonzaga. So he ended up in Arizona. So that's how I try to think about mistakes. It's not easy because when you really want something and something really important to other people and you screw it up, it seems like the worst thing that can happen. But my not getting that job with the Bonneville Power Administration, I don't think there would be a positive coaching alliance right now. Yeah. One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about those stories, Jim, was just how, like, it's similar to how I try to see mistakes and just difficulties in general that, you know, they're happening for me and not to me.

That they're, like, happening in some way for me to learn something or gain insight or move me onto the path that I'm supposed to be on. You know, I was at the Boston Marathon bombing and it was really, really tough, but it woke me up to my fire into my life, you know, and I've done a lot of different things since then because I was there. So I like the perspective of what you said of, you know, what seems to be a mistake is actually kind of the best thing. It often is. It often is. The takeaway for me is we don't know what's good for us a lot of the time. Absolutely. So as we wrap up, Jim, tell us about what you have going on. You know, what products or services could we use in terms of the Positive Coaching Alliances?

Tell us a little bit about how we might be able to follow you and get involved in some of the things that you're doing. Sure, absolutely. We have two websites, positivecoach.org, which has a lot of information. But we also have a website, which is the pcadevzone.org. And that stands for Development Zone. So PCADEV, D-E-V, zone.org. And this is a searchable resource that people can go to with any kind of question

they have about youth sports. Let's say you're a coach and the parents of your players are driving you nuts. Come to PCADevZone.org and we will help you. We've got stuff that can help you develop a better relationship with parents. If you're an athlete and you're not getting enough playing time, come to PCADevZone.org. And lots of videos from, we've got some, we have an amazing array of academics. We talked about Dacher Keltner and Mary Fry, some of the greatest coaches in the world, Steve Kerr and Brad Stevens

and Phil Jackson, people like that. And if you have a problem, you have an issue in youth sports and we don't have something that can address it, tell us that and we'll go find the person who can give us the answer on how to deal with that. We have online workshops. You can go to PCADevZone or our positivecoach.org and find our search for our online workshops. We also, I think I mentioned, we do about 3,000 live workshops this year

and we'll go anywhere in the country. We have 18 chapters. We just opened our Washington, D.C. Mid-Atlantic chapter. That's number 18, and we think live workshops where we can come in and work with the leaders, the coaches, the parents, and the athletes in an organization, that's where you get the best results, and we'll go anywhere. I was at a conference this last weekend and met somebody from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Well, we don't have a chapter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but we'll get a trainer there and work with that organization.

And you have one in Minnesota, and that's pretty close to Sioux Falls. So you'll find someone. That's what I'm hearing. Absolutely right. Well, Jim, I know you're also on Falls. So, you know, you'll find someone. Is that, that's what I'm hearing. Absolutely right. Yep. Well, Jim, I know you're also on Twitter. I follow you there. So tell us about where we can find you there.

I'd love for people to comment on there and join us in a conversation. Tell us what was helpful about the podcast or which of these concepts could you apply or will you plan to apply or what stood out to you what was sticky for you in this conversation so tell us how we can follow you there Jim yeah I think I'm Jim Thompson 18 nice and that's because there were 17 Jim Thompson's

it's funny because Gary Bettman who's the the commissioner of the NHL, he spoke at an event we had in New York City. And it just happened to be the 25th anniversary of his becoming the commissioner of the National Hockey League. And so we gave him a leadership award at our event in New York City. And he gave a speech and before he gave the speech he called me up on stage and he gave me a an all-star game jersey and it had the no it had my name on it Thompson and it had the number 18 and I'm thinking he or his staff must have gone to Twitter and said, Oh, that's awesome. I was Jim Thompson 18. And it's so cool because it's the, it wasn't used by an all-star player, but it's the exact same Jersey that the one side of the,

in the all-star game in Tampa a few days before that used. And it's like, wow, what a great, what a great gift from Gary Bettman. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, wow, what a great gift from Gary Bettman. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, Jim, I am just so impressed with your understanding and knowledge. And I really enjoyed this conversation. I'd love to tell you the things that I got from it that just helped remind me of the importance of some of the things you talked about. One of the things that you talked about was Mary Fry's work about having this caring and task-oriented culture. I

thought that was really important. I loved our discussion about the five-to-one and the kind of this magic ratio, John Gottman's work, and how it can be applied to kids in coaching, parenting, marriages, you know, high-performing teams. And I like even what you said about, yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, can I just interrupt for a second? Of course. You bet. I grew up in a perfectionist environment, but, and I realized I, I said, John Goffman and you, you, you didn't say, Hey, Jimmy got it wrong. John Gottman. But it's like,

those are the kinds of things that used to drive me nuts about myself. Like I got his name wrong. He's this incredible academic. And what's one of the things sports can help you do is, is flush that and just move on. So. Outstanding. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's good. We make those mistakes all the time and we're like our own worst critic, right? When I didn't even notice that you pronounced it wrong. So we're all good to go. But I love how even you were talking about like, just these comments of like, I see you,

I have your back, you know, I'm here for you. Just having someone tell you that is powerful and creates kind of like this. I like what you talked about, like filling your tanks and creating an emotionally safe culture. So I'm just so grateful that you came on today, Jim, to share your knowledge and your wisdom with us and look forward to people reaching out to you to learn more about your work there at PCA. Yeah, and it's been a really fun conversation. I know you work with the Minnesota Vikings. I grew up in North Dakota and was a Vikings fan for many years. Did you say was, Jim? Well. I'm kidding. Good point. No, I still am. The problem is that my high school was West Fargo Packers. And so I was both a Vikings fan and a Packers fan. And now, of course, we're in San Francisco area and the 49ers. We have so many professional teams that support PCA.

My grandson was over a while back and we counted up how many hats I had. And I had like 32 hats at home and I had about another 12 at work because I want to have a hat or a T-shirt for every professional team that supports us. I love it. I love it. Well, I appreciate you being on the podcast. And I know you said your family lives in New Ulm, which is like 30 minutes for me. So I look forward to getting together with you this summer and talking more about youth sport and creating a safe space for our kids. So thank you so much, Jim. Thank you for such a quality podcast. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at

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