High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 200: "Perfect in Mindset. Perfect Attitude. Perfect Effort. Perfect Teammate" with Andrea Becker, Assistant Professor & Assistant Coach for USA Men's Volleyball

Episode Date: August 11, 2018

Dr. Andrea Becker is an Assistant Professor at Sacramento State where she teaches courses in sport psychology such as Psychological Aspects of Peak Performance and Sport and Exercise Psychology. She also serves as an Assistant Coach (the Sport Psych Coach) for the USA Men’s Volleyball and traveled to the Rio Olympics with the team. Andrea completed her Ph.D. in Sport Psychology at the University of Tennessee and her dissertation was on the psychology of coaching. She has published research articles examining great coaches including legendary coach, Pat Summit. In this interview, Andrea and Cindra talk about: The uniqueness of the Olympic Games The pressures of social media Consistent themes related to the mental game of the elite Why it is essential to focus on the process The importance of being vulnerable on a team Her research on the best coaches including Pat Summit You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/andreabecker

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 episode 200 with Andrea Becker. 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. Now typically with two episodes weekly,

we explore everything related to mindset and you can learn secrets from world-class consultants like in today's episode, or you can listen to myself provide a short powerful message each week to inspire you to be at your best consistently now if you know that your mindset is essential to your success then this is the podcast for you so thank you so much for joining me today over to listen to dr andrea becker now before we do that i thought i would head over to itunes and read a rating and a review. Now this one is from George T. So George said, this podcast has been a large part of my mentorship

and has changed my life. Can you believe that? He said, Cinder has taught me the continuous practice of high performance and having the high performance mindset daily. I now am pursuing my dreams and it's paying off tremendously.

Thank you so much, Cinder. I couldn't put it into words in terms of you changing my life. Thank you for your mentorship. Thank you so much, Sindra. I couldn't put it into words in terms of you changing my life. Thank you for your mentorship. Thank you so much, George T., for writing that review and comment over there on iTunes. Super appreciate it. And you know, I think sometimes we don't realize the impact that we make. So keep doing what you're doing, everyone out there, continuing to inspire other people and continuing to help other people master their mindset every day so george thank you so much for your comment okay so let's head over to the interview with dr andrea becker so i'd like to give you a little

bit of background of of andrea if you're not sure or if you haven't heard about her work before so dr andrea becker is an associate professor at Sacramento State where she teaches classes in sports psychology, such as classes such as the psychological aspects of peak performance and sport and exercise psychology. Now she also serves in a unique role as assistant coach for the USA men's volleyball team. So that's a pretty cool role. And specifically, she is the sports psychology coach or the sports psych coach, which she calls herself. And she traveled with the men's volleyball team last year to the Rio Olympic Games. She worked with the team for several years, predominantly doing sports psychology work. And then as you hear, just other coaching work.

She completed her PhD in sports psychology at the University of Tennessee and her dissertation was on the psychology of coaching. So she's published many research articles examining great coaches including some of them that I use in my course in psychology of coaching that I teach here in Minnesota. So it's pretty cool. I wanted to have her on mostly because of her work with USA Volleyball and how that's such a unique role in terms of being a sports psychology coach, but also being an assistant coach as a sports psychology professional. I think sometimes that sports psychology professionals are brought in as a consultant or in a consultant role. But what's unique about Andrea's role is she is an assistant coach to a men's team. She also has done some research while

she was at the University of Tennessee examining the legendary coach Pat Summitt, who was the winningest coach in women's basketball. So there's a lot of different things that we talk about in this interview. We talk about the uniqueness of the Olympic Games. We also talk about pressures on social media and how social media does impact this idea of perfectionism among elite athletes. We talk about consistent themes that she sees in terms of the mental game among elite athletes, why it's really essential that we stay focused on the process and what that means to her. We talk about the importance of being vulnerable as a team in order to create a positive culture and a high performance culture. And then she talks quite a bit about her research on the best coaches, including her research on past summit, which is pretty eye opening. Now, there's a lot of different

parts that I really enjoyed about this interview. One of my favorite parts is what she's talking about related to the Olympic Games. And she says that it's the most intense sporting event she's ever been a part of. And then she talks about, you know, how perfectionism can get in the way of athletes. And she says, really, we need to be perfect in our mindset. We need to be a perfect teammate. We need to have a perfect attitude and perfect effort.

So that's really what I think is the process, what she talks about. If you enjoyed today's interview, I encourage you to, wherever you're listening to this, to provide a rating and review, just like George T. did, either on iHeartRadio, iTunes, wherever you're listening to the interview. And you can find myself on Twitter at Mentally underscore Strong, as well as Andrea at Andrea J. Becker. So we look forward to hearing from you and what stood out to you about today's interview. All right, let's join

Andrea. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation. And first of all, I just appreciate that you put some time in your busy schedule to talk with us today. No problem. Happy to do it. Looking forward to chatting with you about some of these sports psychology topics. I know. I can't wait. So we had a conversation, we're able to catch up a few times, but just kind of start us off and tell us about your passion and what you do right now, Andrea.

My true passion is helping people to perform at their best. In sports psychology, the reward to me isn't necessarily winning. I do love the excitement of competition. I like being a part of that. I'm a naturally competitive person. But what I really love and what really drives me is when I see an athlete or a coach achieve something that they've been striving to achieve for many years, months, weeks,

whatever it is. And that's really what's special about this profession to me. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more that it's really rewarding to see someone reach their best and their potential. Yeah. So give us a little update on where you are now and how you got there. Wow. Where I am now. I'm currently beginning my 12th year as a professor in sports psychology, and I'm currently at California State University, Sacramento. I just transferred universities from Cal State Fullerton this past year. It was a bittersweet move. I loved Cal State Fullerton. I had really great colleagues and a sense of family in Southern California, but I'm originally from Northern California and my biological family is up north and the opportunity to move back to still do the work that I love in a place with the people who I love, who are my closest people, has been a really fortunate experience for me. And so I feel really lucky to do that.

So that's my professional side of it. In addition to that, I'm still able to work with the USA men's volleyball team in the capacity of being a sports psychology coach. And the reason why I call it a coach is because I think we have technical and tactical coaches. And I consider myself a mental behavioral social coach in that regard. It's still coaching. It's just a different type of coaching.

We're looking at different things from different perspectives. So I'm a member of the coaching staff for the men's team. And I work as a professor during the winter months. And during the summers, I travel with the team around the world competing in various tournaments and friendly competitions. Excellent. And I know you played volleyball at Sac State, right? Where you're a professor right now. I actually played softball. Softball was my primary sport growing up, although I

played a bunch of different sports, including bowling. I usually don't throw that one out there, but I bowled competitively as a youngster. That's a long story, so I'm not going to get into it, but I had a pretty fruitful bowling career before I got to high school and decided that it wasn't too cool anymore. So I went with volleyball, basketball, and softball and actually had some back injuries throughout my entire playing career that by the time I got to my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college, I didn't play any sports at all. As a sophomore in college, I walked on to the softball team at Sac State,

made the team, and ended up playing middle infield for the rest of my career. So I was just very fortunate to be able to play a sport at the collegiate level and really had a great experience with that. So yeah, I played softball. So to end up in volleyball is serendipitous in many ways. And how that happened was while I was doing my PhD at the University of Tennessee, I was really focused on the psychology of coaching, what makes some coaches great, what separates the great coaches from the good coaches from the experiences that are not so good for the athletes who play for them. And I was really

wanting to become one of the leading experts in great coaching. And so that's what I was doing. And while I was on the campus at the University of Tennessee, I heard that there was a group of researchers who met on Tuesday afternoons from many different fields, whether it was nursing, general psychology, statistics, all different areas on campus. And they were coming to share their research and learn about each other's research methods and share ideas. And so I attended the group Tuesday afternoons for the duration of my time at the University of Tennessee and happened to meet a nursing professor who one day said to me, you know, you sit in on these meetings and you listen to everybody's research, you haven't said very much about your own. And at

the time, it made me laugh because I was listening to research about Homeland Security, triage, saving lives, helping people. And I was thinking to myself, I'm doing coaching research. And so I'm not going to say anything. Oh, sure. And she said, well, my son's a coach, and he would be interested in your research. Would you meet with him? And I said, sure. And at the time, I thought maybe it was a coach in Knoxville, Tennessee. And so she set up a breakfast for me to meet with her son. And when he arrived to the breakfast, he wasn't a coach in Tennessee. He was actually the head volleyball coach at UC Irvine in Southern California. And since I was from California and I was living in Tennessee at the time, it was fun for me to have a connection with somebody from California. It felt like, oh, you're from back home. And so we talked a lot about coaching and had a great conversation and struck up a friendship from that point forward. Graduated at the University of Tennessee. Got a job at Cal State Fullerton as an assistant professor,

which was 20 minutes down the road from where John, his name's John Spraw, was coaching at UC Irvine. And we've pretty much worked together ever since. And that's really how I got into volleyball. And during my fourth year as a professor at Cal State Fullerton, he called me up one day and he said, I was walking to class to teach an introduction to kinesiology class. I know exactly where I was walking across the campus. And he said, he had nicknamed me Bex at that point. And he said, Hey, Bex, my assistant coach has taken a job at the University of Illinois. And I've always been pretty good at the X's and O's of volleyball. And what I've really wanted to do a better job at is the mental game. And I'm calling to see if you'd like to be my assistant coach. And you can imagine as a young assistant professor who doesn't have tenure yet,

I'm laughing at that prospect because I'm thinking in my mind, well, I'm teaching for a four course load and I have 240 students and I have graduate students and there's no possible way that I'm going to be able to do these two jobs. That's a full-time job. And after a couple weeks of convincing me and encouraging me to talk to my department chair, it's a long story, but I ended up agreeing to do that for one season at UC Irvine. So, and I would say that my first months of coaching were studying the game of volleyball. I watched hours and hours of volleyball film and I'll never forget the first time that he taught me how to scout a match. And it was actually a live match between some

international competition. China was playing Japan. And we were sitting on the end line. And he was telling me, this is an X2. And this is a D ball. And this is a red. And this is a gold. And I couldn't even believe how he was seeing what was going on. How can I code this behavior, let alone know what everybody was doing on this side of the court in addition to on the other side of the court. And so what I did was I spent many hours watching volleyball video in slow motion to learn all the systems of play and to develop an eye for the game before our season started so that I could help as an assistant coach to do the scouting on our opponents and as well as our own team. And I think that that really helped me learn volleyball at a high level.

Ah, I love it. as well as our own team. And I think that that really helped me learn volleyball at a high level. The other nice part of it was that, and we don't talk about this in coaching, but typically when you're a head coach and you hire an assistant coach, that coach comes with their own belief systems, their own systems of play, perhaps their beliefs about how to carry out techniques and tactics and I didn't come with any of that so it was a way for him to mold me into a coach that would be 100% supportive of the things that he was teaching and espousing to his athletes while also providing perspectives and asking him questions on why we do those things so that I could better explain them and enforce them to the athletes. And so I thought that was really unique about our relationship there. And also, I think that it developed trust in me on his part, because

he knew that I was simply teaching the skills and techniques and systems that he wanted to be reinforced. And so it really created some consistency within the program. Ah, Andrea, what I love about that story is a couple of things. First, that you were following your passion by going to this research group, right? And then this led you to a coach that led you to your coaching position right now with UC Irvine, but then UCLA, right? And now the national team. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like connecting the dots. You never know who might be the person to introduce you to, you know, like part of your destiny. That's what I love about your story. Tell us a little bit about like your responsibilities as a mental coach. Cause I think one thing that's unique and one

of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast is, you know, your assistant coach for a men's national team. So a woman, a woman who is an assistant coach for the national team, but then you're doing mental training, right? And you're this sports psychology coach. So tell us a bit more about your responsibilities there and what you do for the team. That's a complicated question. Somebody actually asked that of our head coach this summer, what is Andrea's role and how do you see her role? And he said, she does everything that we need when we need somebody to fill in on something. But what could that entail? To begin with, I do a lot of the headed delegation responsibilities, which means that I provide our team's paperwork to the host country, sit in on the meetings, make sure that we're prepared and we have the right paperwork to compete in the tournament. I do the schedule when we're on the road so that every evening the guys know the schedule for the next day. And I confer

with our athletic trainer and our coaching staff on the things we want to do. When do we want to have weights? When do we want to leave for the competition hall? Help our team statistician coordinate uniforms. If we need laundry, I help with the laundry. And then in terms of my role doing the mental training, I have individual meetings with athletes. I have head coach plus athlete meetings. I have coaching staff meetings. I'll talk to the team as a whole. Last summer, we did a series of more formal talks where I actually did PowerPoint presentations. We don't always do that, but we did a little series last summer where we did some PowerPoint presentations to hammer on some of the,

some of the lessons learned and the things that we wanted. A lot of our, we had a lot of turnover after the 2016 Olympic games. So a lot of the new guys coming in would be exposed. A lot of the concepts that we had talked to our veterans for four years about. And so we did a little series like that. Sometimes we'll read a book as a team and I'll lead the discussions about the texts that we're reading. Leading up to the 2015 World Cup, for example, we read the book, Boys in the Boat, and we had weekly meetings about the different types of challenges they faced as competitors and just in their lives in general. And that facilitated a lot of really nice discussion among our team about the challenges that we faced and how they were similar yet different than the ones we I'm observing the players behaviors, if I notice subtle changes in the

things that they're doing, based on the score or things that are different in the game than how they do them in practice, maybe they got away from something because they're thinking too much. And I might give them a little reminder, like, hey, you seem to be rushing, you're rushing your serve routine, for example, I also run the iPad on the bench, which consists of timeouts, the challenge system and substitutions. So I'm really watching our head coach like a hawk because those gymnasiums can be loud and we can't hear each other. So I'm having to interpret what he wants to happen and then insert that on an iPad, which has a clock that's winding down. It's got seven seconds,

seven seconds on it. And I'm trying to push the right buttons within the right timeframe to hopefully not lose a point from the bench. So I do that. And I think that one of the things that I do is I just, I'm 100% unconditional support for any of our team members or coaching staff at any point in time. I'm there for you. And I think, yeah, so whatever it is that somebody needs at that point in time, then I'm going to try to do my best to fill that because I want to make sure that we put them in the best possible position to perform at their best when their best is needed. Yeah. And what I'm hearing, Andrea, is like this mental component that you're responsible for, like this unconditional support and teaching them the mental strategies to

a peak performance. But I also hear that you are helpful in all these other various ways. And I think as a coach, I think that's really powerful that it's, you know, not just the mental side, but that you've integrated yourself into the team. When you think about like what's at the heart of your professional philosophy when you're there, tell us like what do you see yourself talking a lot about with the athletes, you know, when you think about the mental standpoint? At the heart of my philosophy, what do I see myself? Wow, that's a deep question. I guess just off the top of my head, do I see myself wow that's a that's a deep question I guess just off the top of my head what I can tell you is I in our sport and with the level of athletes I deal with I think that I there are many consistent themes that are reoccurring over the years that

tend to come up dealing with expectations the expectations of the expectations of self, expectations of others, dealing with perfectionism, managing social media, and how all of the social media has an influence on their experiences when playing, whether they're being judged, whether they're being supported, whether they're trying to live up to the way that they're portrayed in the social media. I think those are all real life challenges that these men face, as well as managing their families and time on the road. And our guys actually don't get very many breaks. This summer, they got a two-week break, and that's probably the longest break that most of them have had in four years because they play professionally overseas all winter. And when they get out,

they maybe have five days in between starting up with USA volleyball, which puts them usually back overseas or in South America and Asia. So they're away from their families a lot. And I think the, they live really difficult lifestyles and they, they do it gracefully and it's really impressive. But I would say expectations, perfectionism, dealing with the social aspect of it are some of the most consistent themes that I see over a period of time. And how do you see the expectations for themselves and others kind of show up? And how do you think that it becomes a mental barrier?

Sure. I think when they, for example, go into a match with the expectation that they should play a certain way or get a certain outcome by a certain point in time. And when that does, that outcome doesn't occur, it affects them emotionally. And maybe the response is shut down or maybe they get quiet, or maybe they make less eye contact with their teammates. And so we try to do a lot of addressing that prior to it happening. Like, hey, it would be easy to go in tonight and have an expectation that we're going to beat this team because we're supposed to be better than them. And we're supposed to play a certain way. And that may not happen. But how we're going to play the game is the way we play usa volleyball

and we define what that is and how to do that over a period of time and and a lot of that has to do with their attitude and their behaviors and so some examples might be that we play with energy. And so we define what is energy. Energy is keeping your head up, making eye contact, quick movements, finishing the play and getting to the center, connecting with your teammates, talking is energy. So filling the gaps in the space on the court with communication, that's energy. And so quick movements, great body posture, and a lot of communication. And so those are three things that we can visibly see and address instead of just saying we don't have enough energy. Well, that's an elusive term. So we've got to define those terms and then help them to exhibit the behaviors that go along with those terms. And that's just one of

them. Another thing would be dealing with frustration and helping them move on from a play that didn't go their way or a miss serve. You know, nobody wants to go back there and miss a serve at game point. And how do we move them on from that's just one point, whether it's the first point or the last point, it's one point. And we're going to play every single point the same way. This point is the only point. If we could get them to play this point volleyball over and over and over again, then we have them in a pretty good mental space to play the best they're capable of playing that day. And sometimes you just have an off day. Volleyball is a momentum sport. It's a rhythm sport. Maybe you don't have your legs. And so maybe you don't realize that you don't

have your legs, but you're just, your performance isn't as good as it seems, but gosh, maybe you don't have your legs. And so maybe you don't realize that you don't have your legs, but you're just, your performance isn't as good as it seems, but gosh, maybe you're fatigued and you don't consciously know that, or maybe you're not consciously aware of it. And so just helping give them perspective on where they are and be okay with where they are and continue to play the game the way we played at USA Voll USA volleyball. And over the last four years, we've really espoused tough and together. And those have become the cornerstones of how we play our game. And we define tough and together over and over and over again. Yeah. And I'm thinking, Andrea, like what,

what I hear you saying is that the expectations can sometimes be really outcome focused. You know, we expect to win. We expect to, you know, beat this team by such and such. But really, kind of what you're saying is that, you know, it's best to stay focused on the how, you know, how do we show up as USA Volleyball? How do we play? This is how we define how we play. And that's with energy and looks like this and this and this. So more focused on the process. Definitely. Yeah. When you think about going to the, you know, 2016 Olympic games with the team, you know, tell us about what that experience was like for you as a coach and a mental coach. And just tell us a little bit more about that. The Olympic games was the most intense sporting event I've ever been a part of. The atmosphere, the energy, the preparation leading

up to the games, and also what occurs, the types of things that occur as you approach the Olympics. You know, we have approximately at any point in time, 30 to 45 guys in our gym and 12 people make the final roster. And so during that summer, a lot of the behavior, a lot of the process behaviors that we focused on for the first three years of the quad become naturally more outcome driven during that Olympic summer, because people want to get an outcome and they want to get that outcome within a timeframe, whereas prior to they were maybe a little bit more patient with the process. And so just stick with what we've been doing for the last three years was certainly a challenge for me. And it required many difficult conversations.

And I think that fortunately, I worked with amazing staff of coaches, mature individuals, open-minded individuals, communicative people where we were able to have those difficult conversations, not only with ourselves as a staff, but also with our athletes when necessary, both individually and as a team, to help us by the time that we got there to come together and to play USA Volleyball, which I mean, I thought that they did an incredible job with the pressure of social media and some of the other things that come along with being at the Olympic Games. For 2016, also, the Olympic Village was quite a distance from our arena. So we ended up staying pretty close

to where our arena was, which wasn't necessarily the safest neighborhood. So we also had some other things that we were handling as a team that were outside the performance context that could have affected our performance. But I think that we prepared as a staff and as a team really well to pre-think about those things prior to getting there. And also had our team visit the hotel, make a drive to the arena earlier in the summer so that they knew exactly what they would be getting into prior to going

there. Yeah. One thing I'm hearing is just the importance of being really deliberate with your attention when you're there. There's a lot of things that can be really distracting and pre-planning some of those things that could potentially be barriers. For sure. Yeah. Even just family. Our guys play overseas all year round. And they play in a lot of really crowded, you know, they could have at any point in time 60,000 fans in a stadium,

but not their family. When it comes to the Olympic Games, their entire family wants to be there and support them and do that. And, and while that's wonderful, it poses a new distraction that they may not always have when they're playing your round that you want to address ahead of time. Like, Hey,

we don't want them worrying about tickets. We don't want them worrying about where their family's sitting. If they got in. Okay. How's their safety in the city outside of that? And so really thinking about all of the details that can occur prior to a competition like that is really important. And what do you think predicts, you know, performance at the Olympics from a mental standpoint? You got to

see your team, but then a lot of other teams when you were there, right? What do you think that predicts just them doing well, big stakes event? Wow, what do I think predicts performance? I think that obviously your preparation, getting your team as confident as you possibly can, and a lot of that comes with the preparation, having a very healthy team dynamic when you're there, physically peaking, and then ultimately a little bit of luck because all of the teams at that point are playing their best volleyball. And it's going to be about who can sustain that best volleyball over a two-week tournament, which is really intense, and taking care of their bodies and doing the right things and being in that moment over and over and over again.

But yeah, ultimately, at the end of the day, I do think that it comes down to a little bit of luck. Because the teams are so similar in terms of their physical ability. The margins are so slim. We talk so often about how we just need one or two points and that is it. And oftentimes that one or two points is going to come down to which team was more mentally stable for a longer period of time. If they're physically at the same, you know, a similar level. And when you see mental stability in volleyball, what do you,

what do you see athletes do when they're mentally stable? I see unwavering focus and unwavering control of their emotions. So they're just point after point after point, refocus, refocus, maintaining the energy, maintaining the the focus maintaining the emotional control point by point from the first point to the last point where you don't notice a change sure they're going to celebrate a point sure they're going to have a response to a play they wish they would have gotten the outcome that they had hoped for but that isn't going to last long and they're going to immediately get back to refocusing on the point at hand over and over and over again.

I think that takes a lot of experience, right? Like these guys have been playing professional for a long amount of time. So they're able to train their mind in terms of focusing point after point after point. But what do you, what do you feel like helps athletes train that mentality? You know, just this emotional control and just the ability to stay focused right here, right now. Yeah, I think training that for coaches is one of the most difficult tasks as a coach, because I think it requires staying on top of those behaviors. So recognizing if a player is

frustrated in practice, and rather than allowing them to practice in a frustrated or negative emotional state, identifying that that's not necessarily helping their performance, it's actually a distraction to their focus, and then helping them refocus and constantly having conversations about how those types of behaviors negatively influence their performance and then how things that they can do to get them back to that present moment. And our head coach does a wonderful job at continually teaching our athletes about why those things influence their performance or why their ego plays a role in having those frustrated responses or their expectations or

their desire to be perfect and how perfection is not a part of the game. The game is a game of probabilities and it's not a game of perfection. And if you want to be perfect, then you can't be perfect in outcome, but you can be perfect in mindset, perfect attitude, perfect effort, and perfect teammate. And I say that a lot, you know, to my athletes, it's like, hey, the point was over, but did you, were you best attitude, best effort, best teammate? And if the answer to that question is yes, and when I say effort, I'm talking about physical effort, but focused effort. Were you totally dialed into your serve routine? Did you really dial your eyes onto your target? Were you repeating a verbal protocol if that's what

helps you to perform your best? If you did all the things you could possibly do, then you have to be okay with that. If there was something you didn't do, if you were distracted, if you had negative thoughts running through your mind, if you were worried about getting taken out, if you weren't totally focused on your target, then you could fix it on the next play. But just by judging yourself on the outcome isn't going to help the athlete rebound on the next play. That's just going to help them feel bad about what didn't happen right. And then they're probably going to carry that memory of what didn't occur

into the subsequent play and maybe even four plays later. And they don't do it because they don't care or that they're selfish. They're really doing it because they care. And so we just have to transfer caring into a different type of response instead of a negative emotional response. It's a bounce back response where you're really focused on getting that next one. I like that bounce back response. And I do find that elite athletes, and perhaps this is maybe even more in volleyball, definitely have perfectionistic tendencies that they have to work that can definitely get in their way, right? And what I'm hearing is just like being perfect in the process,

the perfect attitude, perfect effort, perfect teammate, and then the outcome you can't control. Definitely. When you said, Andrea, that you see ego playing a role, tell us kind of what you see there and maybe what the head coach or what you hear the head coach say about that. Sure, sure. I think he's had many conversations with our teams over the year about how our ego, our sense of self, our identity is developed from a young age as being good volleyball players. And they're told that they're good volleyball players over and over and over again.

So that's who they are, that's who they become, and that's what they do. So when they get into a match or into a practice where that ego isn't being reinforced by the outcomes, it's hard. It's hard to cope with that. I'm supposed to be good, and that's not what's occurring right now. And so now I'm going to have a negative emotional response. And so we have a lot of

conversations about why, why that occurs for them and why they respond in the way they do and how we can change that. So really helping them understand how their entire identity has been built around being good. And that's why it's caused these negative responses, but it doesn't have to and how we can help them overcome that and ultimately be better in the long run and then hopefully help them develop other aspects over their identity. Sure, you're a good volleyball player,

but you're more than a volleyball player. Play a musical instrument. You're a father. You're a brother. They have many. Our team has young men filled with many talents, to be honest with you. I mean, we have a photographer, we have, we have a couple fathers, we have, I mean, they have a lot of different things outside of volleyball that make them special people. And so helping them to

recognize that, and that ultimately, this is just a game is a very important perspective. And ultimately, what we're striving for is to have healthy individuals in all aspects of their life. We fundamentally believe in that if they're healthy in their social life and in their family life, and in their volleyball life and in their just personal health and well being, then we're going to have a better chance for them to be healthy volleyball players and perform well on the court. So our coaching staff is very much so dedicated to the overall health of the individual. Yeah. And you know, one thing, Andrea, I'm hearing, and so there's coaches who are listening, you know, I think that you have such a open communication on the team that you can have conversations about ego and about

perfectionism and these other mindset-related topics. And I think there's a lot of teams that maybe don't. And I think about the research that you've done on coaching, which a couple articles I want to ask you a little bit about. I actually assigned in my psychology of coaching class. So it's pretty cool that I get to talk to the author about it. So you know I'm going to be having the students listen to your interview. Okay. Yeah.

But, you know, I just, I want to commend you and the coaching staff for just being so open, having the difficult conversations that have this impact performance. Yeah. Yeah. And as you bring that up, I would say that to really have a team that's together, which is one of the things that we espouse to our team all the time, that we're going to be tough and we're going to be together. In order to truly be together, you need trust and you need respect within a team.

And in order to build trust, you have to be truly vulnerable to one another. You have to be able to share those very difficult things that you experience yourself and to voice them. For example, your fears so that you can get the support of those teammates when you feel those things and to be there for one another and to know that that's okay. It's okay to feel like you're stepping out on the court one night and you feel like you have to prove something that night because you haven't signed your professional contract yet and you need that contract in order to support your family and that's okay. And if you share those things with your teammates and they're able to say, hey, we got your back and that's okay.

And we're going to be here and we're going to do this with you. Wow. How liberating is that for your ability to step on the court and play that night? And we've had many conversations and we're still, it's a process. We're always working on it. It's like a relationship when you're in a relationship with another person, even though you can have a really great relationship, you still have to have very difficult and vulnerable conversations over the period of time so that you learn and continue to grow together. And if you think about a team, that's a really huge, complex relationship. But in order to stay together and to develop together and to move in one direction together, it requires those very candid and vulnerable conversations that aren't always easy. And sometimes we have to say things to our teammates that may feel like a blow at first, but to know that we say them from

a place of love is so important. And I could say that this particular team, USA Volleyball, men's volleyball team, those guys love each other. I've never seen a team as close as these guys, no matter what they go through together, they are together. And for me, it's really endearing to watch them. And it's so special. as I'm listening, I'm thinking about the men's teams that I work with and how, how like just breaking down those barriers or being vulnerable and, and sharing your fears, right. And being open and honest with each other can be difficult just for men's teams in general. You know, maybe I think that's also part of our culture, you know, that the way that we might expect men to, to act. So what are your thoughts on that? I think that's really interesting. I think that our head coach, John Spraw, talks about what it means to be a man a lot. And what it means to be a man doesn't mean being tough and being guarded

and being all of those things all the time. And to him and how he defines being a man is being vulnerable. And he has a little diagram he actually draws up sometimes to the team that when you're a young person, you get taken care of and children get taken care of. And as you become an adolescent, you learn to take care of yourself and truly becoming a man is taking care of others. And that's what we do within our team. We take care of one another. We take care of one another physically. is taking care of others. And that's what we do within our team. We take care of one another. We take care of one another physically. We take care of one another socially.

We take care of one another emotionally. And we have conversations about how we go about doing that. And I think the reason why it works, and I think the reason why those barriers can be broken is because our leader not only exposes them, but lives them. He's not afraid to be vulnerable in front of the team. He's not afraid to share his feelings. He's not afraid to set aside his ego to listen to other people's opinions. He has a female on staff who he listens to. I mean,

how many coaches would not only choose to have somebody, not only is it a female on staff, but one of my roles is to critique the things he says and does, and then give him feedback on those things. How many coaches, what percentage of coaches would say, he just gave that talk to the team. What did you think about it? Was there anything that I said that I shouldn't have said? What can I do to get better? Wow. Instead of being a coach who says, well, I know how to do it and I know it all and I don't care what you think. And allowing for that criticism day in and day out and changing his behaviors to try to better the opportunities for his athletes and to make their experiences

enjoyable once. And ultimately at the end of the day, while he wants to win, we all want to win. That's why we participate in sport. He ultimately does want, it doesn't mean we always do it the right way, or it doesn't mean we don't make mistakes along the way, but he wants them to have an enjoyable experience at the highest level. And I think for the most part, we do. I would say that we have a great time with one another. And I think, you know, as people are listening, I think that's really eye-opening to hear such a strong leader being so open to criticism and feedback and just continuing to get better. You know, Andrea, when you think about like your research on the psychology of coaching, and so one article I'm thinking about is one of the ones I assign in class is the article

you wrote about Pat Summitt. So I know when you were working on your degree, you were able to observe, you know, Pat Summitt, legendary women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee. What did you learn from her, you know, or from this research that you think informs your understanding of good coaching? Yeah, I think when I originally got into research in the psychology of coaching, the area that interested me a lot was coaches' expectations and how those expectations influence the way that they treat their athletes. you're going to develop perceptions of what your athletes are capable of doing. And so you're going to view some athletes as being more talented and other athletes as being less talented. And so what I was originally interested in as a researcher was, well, how did those perceptions influence the way that coaches treat athletes?

Because oftentimes within teams, you see patterns of unfair treatment where when the coach perceives certain athletes to be better, those athletes get more feedback. They get more communications with the coach. They get better treatment, more playing time, more opportunities to serve in higher roles like being a team captain or decision-making and those types of things, as opposed to the ones the coaches think who are less talented where they don't get very much attention from their coach. So when I did the research on Pat's summit, because she had been so successful, I wondered how her self-perceptions of her athletes' abilities

would influence her treatment toward them. And because the majority of the research in that area suggests that most coaches do provide differential treatment based on their expectations. I just assume that the same would be true for Pat Summitt. But when I video recorded her practice behaviors over the course of the season and had her evaluate all of her athletes' abilities using rating scales at the beginning of the season and then did some statistics on how her ratings influenced her behaviors, I found that she didn't have differences in the way that she treated the high expectancy athletes versus the low expectancy athletes. And I think that was a pretty significant finding. And while she's just one coach, what it may say to other coaches is that to have truly a cohesive team or a team where

everybody has a good experience doesn't mean that they're all going to get playing time and it doesn't mean that they're always all going to be at the same level. But it also doesn't mean that they all can't get better and improve based on their original baseline when you receive them on your team. And so as a coach, as difficult as it may be to provide opportunities and feedback and attention to all of your athletes. So if you're a basketball coach, and it's probably easier in certain sports than others. So if you're in football, obviously you're not going to be able to do that, but that's why you have a number of position coaches who can then do that in their areas, but to really help all athletes based on their needs. And so if an athlete is more physically

skilled technically, then you can focus with that athlete on more systems or more strategies and tactics of the game. And if an athlete is less skilled in their technique, then you focus on what they need, which is more technical information. So, but really just providing them with equitable treatment, not equal because nobody needs equal, but fair treatment and attention and making them feel like a worthy and valued member of your team. I think that's just so important. If you're a part of a team, you should feel like you're an important part of the team. And that might mean that your job is maybe you're in baseball or softball and you're never going to play. But maybe your job is to help interpret the signals of the

opponent or provide some kind of information that makes you feel like your job is valuable. And I think that we could be better as coaches about finding ways to do that. And I think it takes time. I think the same thing is true for your coaching staff. I think oftentimes coaches want to feel valuable. They want to feel like they're contributing to the team. And so really helping assistant coaches develop those roles and provide them with tasks that make them feel valuable, both in practice and on the bench is really important and coordinating with them. You don't want to develop a practice plan and then get to practice and your assistant coaches don't know what's going on that day. You want to make sure they know ahead of time so that when they go to

do that drill, they can have command over what they're doing. And I think that's really important for the trust and respect that they earn with the team as well. And when you were able to observe Pat Summitt, was there anything unique about how she coached or what she did that stands out to you that you think is a powerful message to other leaders? I would say one of her greatest strengths in my observations was simply her intensity. So many of the players and people around her always talked about how nobody

would outwork her. And she was a tireless worker and she matched that with her intensity in practice. And when you watch her in practice, she was up and down the court, constant communication, constant instruction, constant coaching, right there with them, never taking a break. And I think when you put forth that level of energy over and over again, then you're going to get that level of energy from your team, that level of effort. And I think that that really stood out in terms of what she did. And I ultimately think she loved them. And sometimes that meant that she had to be more hard-nosed or she had to be a disciplinarian. But I think that came from a place of love and really the desire to develop those players into becoming the best that they could be. Absolutely. And Andrea,

there's another article that I assigned in the class. The title is, it's not what they do, it's how they do it, athlete experience of great coaching. And what I like about that article is you interviewed female and male athletes, a variety of levels, some that were pro athletes, but it was like what they wanted of great coaching. So what did you learn from that study about what athletes want from great coaching? Yeah, that's interesting because usually we define great coaching by coaches who've accumulated really high win records and coach for many years. But how do we know that makes them great? The only way to truly know if a coach is great is if the athletes who played for them had a great experience and say they're great, right? I mean, ultimately, it comes down to the experiences of those who play for them. And I think if you look at coaches and you look at observation research and other research,

all coaches do many of the same tasks. So all coaches instruct, all coaches motivate. Some motivate with carrots and some motivate with sticks. But all coaches to some level motivate. All coaches plan. All coaches carry out practices. All coaches provide feedback. But how they do that is what differs. The manners in which they do that. And great coaches do it

meticulously. And great coaches do it, you know, with great detail and care. And so it's really, you know, you could give a message to an athlete, and even just by changing the tone of the words conveys an entire different message to the athlete than what was actually said. And I think it's those little nuances of coaching, the methods and the qualities of what coaches do that separate the great from the good. Absolutely. And a few, you know, one theme I'm hearing you say a lot about is like love, right? They, they love and they care about the athletes. And, you know, even if leaders are listening where they might not be coaches, I'm thinking about how I might apply what you just said to the graduate program that I help with, right? Or the other ways that I lead. I think

we're all leaders in some way. Yeah. And I think another thing that pops into my mind as you bring that up is truly as a leader, it's about being consistent in who you are, what you do and how you do it. So if one day you come out to the field or into the gym and you're behaving warm and light and friendly, and the next day you're behaving hard-nosed and you're sending a mixed signal to the athletes about what you expect in terms of how they behave. Nobody knows how to behave. Or if one day you're quiet and the next day you're talkative and really being consistent in who you are, what you do and how you do it is so important so that they know what

to expect and they know then how to behave themselves. Outstanding. Andrea, I have so enjoyed talking with you today. I think we could keep on going and going, but I want to share with you a few things that really stood out to me about the interview today as a way to kind of summarize what we talked about, but also, you know, how people who are listening at least pull out what I think there are the biggest gems. I like what you said about how you got involved in volleyball. And I think that's a unique story, but just kind of shows how you are following your passion. And then when

you're talking about how the Olympics was, I think what you said was the most intense sporting event that you've ever been a part of. And how there's so many different pressures there at the Olympics and things that are uncontrollable that might impact performance. But what you said was what a mentally stable athlete looked like was an unwavering focus and control of their emotions, like point after point after point. And we talked about, you know, how we might train that. And then when you talked about perfectionism and how that gets in the way and how really it's a focus on the process, you know, being perfect in your attitude and your effort and being a perfect teammate. I think a lot of people can apply that to their leadership or to whatever they're doing. And then just this, you know, thinking

about culture and how coaches and leaders develop culture. And one of the themes that I really heard in your conversation was the importance of like loving and caring and making this space vulnerable and having the tough conversations that are gonna help performance, but also help athletes and people that you're leading be more aware of themselves, aware of their fears, aware of the things

that might get in their way. It's unsigned contract, one example that you provided. So I'm grateful that you were able to spend the time today and that you could put it into your schedule and share your experience and your wisdom with everyone listening. So thank you so much for sharing with us today. Sure, no problem.

And if people are interested in connecting with you, how might they do that, Andrea? Oh, they can probably just simply reach me at my email address, andrea.becker at csus.edu. Outstanding. And are you on social media any place? I am on Twitter. And I'm not the best tweeter, but I am on there. And I'm also on Facebook. Outstanding. What is your Twitter

handle for those people who might want to tweet about the show and the interview? Andrea J. Becker. Okay. Andrea J. Becker. Any other final thoughts or advice you might have for those people who are listening? Do good. Nice. Love what you do. Love what you do. Follow your passions. And I think that, I guess I'll leave you with this. When I was a kid, my dad always used to say to me, if you want to be something, be that something now. And when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a coach. And he would give me that phrase. And my response would be, but dad, I'm 14. I'm not a coach. And he said, but that doesn't mean you can't think like a coach, study the game like a coach,

take notes like a coach, read books like a coach. And if you want to be a coach, coach now. And I think that I've truly embraced that advice. And over the years, I've done just the best I can at what I wanted to be. And when you wake you know, when you wake up someday and you're a coach, then don't be surprised because you've put the work in. And I think, you know, just whatever it is that you want to be, then, then be that thing now. That's what I'd like everybody to know. That's powerful. If you want to be something, be something now. Thank you so much for joining us Andrea. All right. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance something now. Thank you so much for joining us today, Andrea. All right, thank you.

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 Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.