High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 235: How to Build a Relationship Culture

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Brock Thompson was named head coach of the South Dakota State women's soccer program on Jan. 31, 2017 after a nine-year stint as an assistant with the Jackrabbits. He just completed his second season at the helm. Under his leadership, the Jackrabbits have claimed back-to-back Summit League regular season championships in 2017 and 2018. The 2017 Summit League Coach of the Year, Thompson has a 23-11-4 overall mark on the sidelines at South Dakota State with a 14-1 record in league games. Originally from Blair, Nebraska, he has coached 15 All-Summit League selections, including the 2017 and 2018 Defensive Player and Goalkeeper of the Year award winners. He has been on board for all of SDSU’s Summit League titles, claiming four tournament titles (2008, 2014, 2015 and 2016) and six regular season crowns (2008, 2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018). He is active in the local soccer community serving in various roles and is a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Board of Directors for the Northeast South Dakota chapter. In this interview, Brock and Cindra talk about: His journey from a results-driven coach to a relationship-driven coach How to create a relationship-driven culture How love is a big motivator His perspective on how outcome goals hinder performance How he used mental training with his team You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/brock.

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, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, keynote speaker, author, and high performance coach. And today you're going to listen to episode 235 with Brock Thompson. Now the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, consultants, all about the topic of mindset to help us be high performers in our life. And in today's episode, I interview Brock Thompson, who was named head coach of the South Dakota State women's soccer program in 2017 after a nine-year stint as the assistant for the Jackrabbits.

And he just completed his second season at the helm. Under his leadership, the Jackrabbits have claimed back-to-back Summit League regular season championships in 2017 and 2018. He was the 2017 Summit League Coach of the Year, and he has a record of 14-1 in league games. He's originally from Blair, Nebraska, and he's coached 15 All-Summit League selections, including in the 2017 and 2018 Defensive Player and Goalkeeper of the Year Awards. And regardless if you're a coach or not, there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from his perspective as a leader. And specifically, the thing we talk quite a bit about is his journey from being a results-driven coach to a relationship-driven coach. And I think that applies to business, to coaching and sport, but also to family relationships. We talk about how he's created a relationship-driven culture,

why he thinks that love is a big motivator, and his perspective on how outcome goals actually hinder performance. And I had the privilege of working with his team last year doing mental training. So we talk about that and what that was like and what he learned from that experience. So we'd love to hear from you. You can head over to Twitter and connect with Brock and I there. Brock is at Thompson underscore Brock, and I am at Mentally underscore Strong. You can find the show notes and tweets over at cindracampoff.com slash Brock. All right, without further ado, here's Brock. Welcome to the podcast today, Brock Thompson. I'm so excited that you're here with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me,

Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking to you more about coaching and coaching philosophy and how you have implemented the mental game. So to get us started, tell us a little bit about, you know, your passion and what you do. Yeah, so, you know, I played college soccer at a small school in Bismarck, North Dakota called the University of Mary, and I remember struggling about what to major in and what I wanted my profession to be. And I coached the high school JV team and it just clicked. Like, this is kind of what I'm called to do. I did that in kind of the spring of my junior year of college and it just was like, and so I rearranged all of my academic curriculum and it just kind of felt like what I was supposed to do. And so I've been on this journey ever since.

And there's been a few things that have shaped me along that. Very early in my journey, I would say I was very much success driven and results driven. And as I get to a point where I'm at SDSU, I try to feel, I feel like we try to build a culture that's more relationship driven, where the relationships drive the success. And there's been a few events in between that have kind of shaped that as well. Yeah, well, I'm sure we're going to get into that today, so I appreciate it. I want to hear just a little bit about what you see the difference, you know, results-driven versus relationships-driven. Tell us a bit about the differences that you see there.

Right. And I think, I think, I think culture is both right. You got, you have to have both, but I think one always drives the other. And as a leader, as a coach, we get the choice to figure out which one we want to drive the other from that. And I think they both work, you know but I just kind of feel like that love is a big motivator within within the team and that we really strive to create a culture where we have players that are competing with each other and not against each other and that our success is driven from those relationships and that connectivity ultimately drives success on the field where

they want to sacrifice for each other and so um that's just that's how that's how i've chosen to do it that's how we've chosen to do the sdsu and i think that uh that's what makes our culture a little bit unique in division one athletics absolutely well and i i heard the word love that's not a word that you hear a lot, maybe in sports, you know, maybe, maybe you hear like love the game, but you don't hear like love one, one another. So tell us like, what does that mean to you? And, and how do you, you know, create a culture of love? Right. I think, you know, and I think myself and our staff, we do a really good job and we have a leadership council. And one of the things that if there's one word that I could say defines love within an athletic team it's it's service and and so i think when we talk when

we train our leaders and us as coaches um it's really important that we i view my job as a coach is to serve my players and and serve them in a way that helps them become the best that they can be and through that you know and that and that can be a variety of ways. And one of the ways right now at like this point in the year, I meet with all of our players every week. And sometimes we talk about soccer and sometimes we talk about school and sometimes we talk about their family. But it's just a way for me to meet them where they're at.

Sometimes those meetings take place in the office. Sometimes they take place in the coffee shop on campus, kind of in their world. And so that's kind of when I think about what love and our culture is all about. I think that's kind of how it's lived out. Excellent, excellent. So to kind of fill in the blanks, Brock, when you're kind of talking about when you first started realizing

that coaching was your calling, right, at the University of Mary. And then now to SDSU, South Dakota State University. Tell us a little bit about that journey and how you got there to SDSU. Right. So I was at the University of Mary. I played there. I ended up becoming the head women's coach there at 22 years old. So I coached the high school team. I jumped in to be a college head coach at a really young age. In fact, my first team,

I had a player that was older than me on the team as a coach, which was a unique situation. And so I just jumped into the deep end, to be completely honest with you. And coaching was almost an extension of playing. At times I felt like my value as a person and as a coach was tied to the results of our team and our program from there. And so I went to become a graduate assistant. I was there for three years. I went to become a graduate assistant at Indiana State, which really helped me work under somebody.

It helped me kind of learn the ropes a little bit. It helped me make the transition from small school to Division I and what some of the differences both administratively as well as athletically are. And then I went to become the head coach at the University of North Dakota, and that lasted three years. At that time, the first year we were in the NCAA tournament, and by the third

year, I had my contract not renewed, and we weren't a very good team that last year. And I think the way that I would define myself as a coach and our culture then, it was definitely results-driven. It was my coaching style. I learned it would have been textbook defined as transactional or or transformational. And ultimately, if I was going to be in this profession, it isn't really the way I wanted to do it, if that makes sense. And so it really took that event to kind of reshape me and remold me. And I was grateful. I was an assistant coach to SDSU for nine years before I became the head coach. I worked under a man named Lang Wiedemeyer,

who's the head coach of Liberty. But I worked with a number of coaches at SDSU that were great role models as far as how to help balance and how to be exceptional coaches, but good men, good fathers, good husbands, just good people. And to do it with balance and to do it the right way. And so it was really important for me to come from that UND experience

into SDSU and, and be able to, you know, have positive role models in my life, but then prepare for kind of this moment where now I'm the head coach and I have been for the last few years here and, and be able to do it the way that I think that I want to do and the way I kind of feel like I've been called to. Oh, wow. So a few things I'm hearing, Brock, like, I think that I want to do and the way I kind of feel like I've been called to do. Oh, wow. So a few things I'm hearing, Brock, like I think that experience at UND happened for you, not to you, you know, and kind of what I mean by that is so many times when we're going through a difficult situation, like our contract not being renewed, we can take a really victim approach. But what I'm hearing is like that you've really, it gave you a time to really step back and realize, okay, that you wanted to shift your coaching philosophy and maybe there's something

good that came from that. Right. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It is, I absolutely believe that it happened to me and it wasn't easy at the time. None of those moments are easy at the time. Right. But I agree that it needed to happen to me for me to grow as a person, for me to grow as a coach. And I'm grateful that it did. I really am from that standpoint. You know, and so I know that coaches and leaders who are listening, they might be thinking the same question.

I'm thinking like, okay, so you and D, you're more, especially your last year, transactional, not transformational, maybe more results driven instead of relationships driven. I guess what was the impact of being more results driven and what did you, how did you see that wasn't working? Yeah, I think, you know, I think when I reflect on it, I think it's one of those things where this is one of the, this is one of like the, the simplest cliches that people talk about in coaching, right? Is, is players need to know that you care before they care about how much you know, right? And I think that really defines, I think that really defines the trans, you know, transactional coaches. Ultimately they,

those coaches don't do a great job of demonstrating how much they care. And I'm not saying that I didn't care. I did care about my players there, but I did not do a great job of showing appreciation and demonstrating how much I cared for them as people, first and foremost. And I think that's kind of how I would define it. That would end up being a little bit of the byproduct of where I was in my coaching journey. So in terms of how would you maybe describe from a student-athlete's perspective, how would they describe you now as a coach compared to then when you were more transactional? Right. I hope that they would describe me as authentic and honest you know difficult conversations aren't easy but but i i try to have them in the most personal way possible but that's one of the things i've kind of always lived by is you know if i if somebody on our team is not going to make a travel squad or there's a difficult conversation i'm going to have that

conversation in person um i think that you know I hope our players would say that I care about them as people first from that standpoint. The minutes that you play is not relevant to the relationship that I have with you from that. And I work really hard at trying to show that. I'm more, I'm a little bit of an introvert and a little bit more internal and analytical at times. And so sometimes that's really, really hard. And actually, that's one of the reasons why I started meeting with our players individually every week once I became the head coach. Because as an assistant coach, I love kind of the one-on-one access that you have with players just kind of organically or naturally. But when you become the head coach, sometimes you miss out on that.

And that's been an important part of what I've done as a head coach to kind of maintain those relationships at that level. Excellent, excellent. So Brock, I appreciate the vulnerability just in terms of like you're telling us about a contract that wasn't renewed, right? And I always ask people at the beginning of the interview

to tell us about a time that they failed and what you learned from it. So, you know, what would you say, you know, the thing that you learned from that experience? What's your take home for you? Yeah, I think I would sum it up this way. I think before that happened, I was probably always afraid of it happening. Does that make sense? I think as a coach, we talk about athletes being afraid of failing, you know, or afraid of it happening. Does that make sense? I think as a coach, we talk about athletes being afraid of failing, or afraid of losing, or afraid of not being good enough. I think as a coach that's kind of how I was at that point, because I was afraid of that exact thing happening in a weird way. Once it's happened and

the world hasn't ended, I've landed on my feet and I've kind of used it as a catapult forward, that fear disintegrates rapidly from that standpoint. And so now it's more about like, it's more about your conscience. Like I coach, you know, I coach in a way that I just have to be able to sleep well at night knowing that, you know, I'm doing the right thing with our program and with our team and with our staff. Absolutely. I have a few questions about kind of the mental side of sport, just from your perspective. When you step back and you think about the culture that you've created now, more relationships oriented, what do you see, you know, when you think about when the players are really

able to thrive, like in their performance and on the team, what do you see that they do? Or tell us a bit more about your perceptions. Right. I think as our players kind of go through their journey, we preach this a lot. And I know this is something that you're big on too, Cindra, but we preach that we focus on the process. In fact, we don't reset goals here at FDSU, and that blows a lot of people's minds. We just focus on our habits every day and being really honest and vulnerable about whether we've given it each and every day. But I think the true thing happens when a player surrenders the outcome and just ultimately grabs hold of the

things that they can control they play free they do more they're willing to sacrifice for others the you know the glass ceiling that maybe was above them as far as from a performance standpoint starts to disappear because they're not trying to be just good enough to get on the field. They're trying to become the best. And there's a lot of joy in that process when you truly strip all those other things away. And we've had some players that have truly done that. And we have some players that struggle with it all through their time here

that we work with them on that. But the ones that i think have achieved the most that's that's been a really important thing and and some of them it's taken an injury for them to kind of shift their mindset you know we've had a couple players that's taken a serious injury where they they've had to just surrender it because they realize it now can end in the in the snapping the fingers from that and and so that, you know, as we create these relationships and as we do all this, I think that's the ultimate goal is that truly they move forward with the idea

that it's just really about today. And it's about being the best you can today. And one, to do that, they do so much more than probably what they even envisioned they were capable of prior to coming to SDSU. Awesome. So really staying focused in the present on the process, right? Which is how you're at your best. So, you know, that makes sense that you're seeing that.

So when you think about the players, you know, that are at top of mind when you're talking about their ability to really take it day by day, focus on the process, like what do you see them do and then maybe not do? The biggest part of focusing on the process for me is your ability. And we define it because a lot of people, they talk about, you know, a lot of people think your best is just showing up and working hard. Right. And that's a good start. That's a good start. But we take it a little step further

and we define it like it's to be your best. You not only have to show up and work hard, but you have to have proper nutrition, hydration, and sleep. But you also have to have a championship level of confidence. And so we start to define what your best really, really looks like in all areas of it, because it's more than just showing up and working hard. And sometimes that's the mindset that we kind of feel like, well, that's my best. I show up every day and I work hard. That's not a bad place to be, but your best is so much better than just that, right? From then, ultimately what holds particularly some of our players back, and I think maybe

female athletes in general, is the confidence piece. And I think it's a way for them to kind of own their confidence when they finally make the connection that like I really can't be at my best if I'm not confident yeah for sure from that standpoint and so and we define confidence for our players we define it as you know belief in yourself that you have the necessary skills to perform a task and so and we tell them that if yourself that you have the necessary skills to perform a task. And so, and we tell them that if you don't have the necessary skills, that's what we're here for. If you need to strike the ball better or receive a ball more proficiently or, you know, be better on the dribble, if you need these things, if you need those skills, we're here for that.

But if the issue is the belief in yourself that's kind of an inside job yeah and I think that is difficult for people to understand how to actually improve confidence right I think so without a doubt and I think that you know it's a big deal I think sometimes it comes back to what I I felt this when I was an athlete and early in the coaching career that it sums to how you're going to be judged based on the outcome of something. Right. I think that's one of the biggest confidence destroyers, right?

Yeah, I completely agree. Or you're focused on the outcome, right? And maybe questioning if you're going to be judged, are you going to lose playing time or are you going to be cut or are you going to be embarrassed? Right. So Brock, I like what you said about championship level confidence. So it's not just like be confident, but it's like this

championship level. Tell us a bit more about how you might describe that. Yeah, you know, and I try to strip the result away. Like I've said to some of our players sometimes, like, you you know if it's in the waning moments of the game and the ball falls to your foot um i hope that you make the play for us but ultimately i really don't care as long as you believe you can make the play um from that piece of it and so i try to minimize any sort of feeling that they feel like they may have that there may be repercussions from not making a play, from that side of things.

But ultimately, it's just a belief that, you know, one, the game of soccer and athletics in general, sometimes it's not fair. You know, we've been in games where it's not fair, and your confidence has to be able to handle that. And, like, there's going to be bad calls. There's going to be you can do everything right in the goalkeeper on the other team. They pull a ball out of the top corner, and that's – it's not fair. Maybe you would score that goal on, you know, 344 Division I teams,

but the one that you're playing against today, they had a player that wasn't going to let that ball go in from that. And so it's – we try to simplify it in some of those ways from that. And so it's, we try to simplify it in some of those ways from that. We talk a lot about, you know, about self-talk and power phrases and things as far as being able to prepare for that moment, you know, being aware of what you're feeling prior to that moment. From that, I know this is one of your sayings that we've adopted a little bit. We talk about pressure being a privilege. For sure.

And when you feel that pressure, your confidence should rise because you've earned this moment from that standpoint and you should enjoy it as well. And so it's kind of a combination of all of those things. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, Brock,

you said like one of the foundations of building a championship level confidence is stripping the results away. And so I'm thinking about how that's really difficult to do. Like it's difficult to do in the culture of division one athletics, right? When teams want to win, when athletic departments want to win, when players want to win, when you want to win, you know? So how do you balance that and tell tell give us a little insight on like how do you actually not let that overcome your focus right and we you know so we do two things that i think one we have we have a vision for our program that uh that we define as um we want to be a

destination program that that includes undeniable on-the-field results, unquestioned community support, and unrivaled culture. So we define those three things. So those are the three things that we work at every single day as coaches and as players. So on-the-field success is a sliver of that, right? So it puts it in perspective. Because if we want to be a destination program, you've got to be able to have some success. But the other part of that success is we talk about our core values a lot. And our three core values are growth,

which is becoming the best version of yourself you can be. And we just define that as being a better you makes us a better us. And that's important. Family, which we've talked a lot about the relationship driven culture and then and then kind of our highest standard we define as true mental toughness which is it's tnt for short but it's giving your very best having a great attitude or treating people well regardless of your circumstance and we've all been in circumstances where we've sacrificed one two or all three of those things and we talk to our players more about when they fall short in that area

and how they can learn and grow from it than anything that happens on the field. And so sometimes that circumstance is you are a starter and now you're a substitute, and it's affected the way you train. Well, we talk to you about that in that context. We talk to all of our recruits before when they come on campus about those are those are our expectations is that you embrace our core values from that it's not that you run this fast or jump this high or you know lift this much it's that you embrace our core values and so I think if you focus on the right things and you do it consistently over time, you get there.

The hard part is everybody starts similar, right? Everybody starts with that in mind. And then all of a sudden, sometimes they lose a game or they lose a few games. And then they become very result-driven. Right. And so in those critical moments, as a leader, those are the most challenging times so those are the tempting times to kind of throw it out the window and go back to my old ways of being result driven and transactional and that and that's where I've been really disciplined to be relationship driven and

trust in the process and and go from there and it's it's amazing how you know how when you strip the emotion away from the result and you evaluate your team the same way all the time it kind of starts to happen a little bit easier and easier as you go through things well and i'm also hearing like it takes a lot of self-awareness in terms of you as the leader because that's really you know how the results driven focus comes out is maybe in your body language or in the way you might say things or what you might say, right? And so it takes a lot of, it takes a strong ability to step back and realize, okay, what's the belief here or what's the idea that's powering my feedback, you know? So I

honor you for that because that takes a lot of awareness of how you're showing up. Right. And I think, you know, this is one of the ways I've become more aware of it. It's amazing how many times we win a game, Kendra, and I go back and watch the film, and we didn't play as well as I felt like we played. Sure. Because the result influenced my emotions. And the flip side is almost always true, too, is we lose a game,

and inside me I feel like we didn't play very well and then I go back and watch the game on video and we didn't play as badly as I felt and so like for me that it like that that's like that it just tells me that my job as a leader is to evaluate our performance without the emotion that to it from that standpoint. And so I feel pretty strongly about that. And I think that doing that consistently over time starts to get our players to believe some of those similar things. So, you know, I'm thinking about values and the values that you mentioned and holding people accountable for that and the vision. Tell us what you've learned in the process about giving feedback and maybe tough feedback or having tough conversations.

What is, you know, tell us a little bit about how, what have you found in terms of what works and what doesn't work in those kind of conversations? Yeah, I think I kind of abide by the direct and in-person. Like that's kind of it and that's my that's my most and i think you can always i think you can all like sometimes i preface it by saying you know we're gonna you know we're gonna talk about some really difficult things for the in this meeting and you know and i reinforce the fact that you know it's because it's because we think highly

of you and we want the best for you that that we're gonna we're gonna have this conversation but i think sometimes you can't sugarcoat it i always think back to the the movie scene um in moneyball where billy dean has to let the guy go and like he's being coached on like he's pulled the band-aid off yeah thank him for the time and like you know like don't these are professionals. Don't beat around the bush. Well, I think like college athletes, like, like they, they want it direct to from that standpoint, they don't want it. They don't want it all sugarcoated good or bad. They want it fairly direct to you. And I think that, uh, that's a hard thing,

but I think the more direct feedback that we've been able to give in a private environment, it usually ends up being more useful. And so I try not to criticize our players too much in public. We try to have those conversations in private, and I try really hard to be really direct with that feedback. Yeah, I know they appreciate that, because it is easy, I think, maybe if you're a leader or a coach and it's easy to not like, just let it go under the rug, push it under the rug. Like, you know, I don't want to do that. Right. But then, then you can't maintain the culture that you're describing. Yeah.

So one other question I had Brock for you is I know you've implemented mental training this past season. And I want to talk a little bit about your experiences with that and you know we're learning more and more in the field of mindset and sport performance and sports psychology that like training your mind is part of the equation in terms of performance but tell us right what led you to decide to okay it's something that you wanted to do and implement with your team? Right.

You know, when I first started, when I first went down the road of becoming a coach, you would do these coaching licenses. And soccer has a fairly specific kind of pathway for that. And one of the things in teaching, the very very first one is there's four pillars to the game of soccer. Technical, which is obviously the fundamental skill. Practical, which is decision making. The physical, which is the athleticism piece. And the psychological. And so you would go to all of these coaching courses and they would tell you about these four pillars, but they would never train you on the psychological piece of it. And it got to the point where I went through essentially almost every license I can do. And at most, it was like a 25-minute classroom session on the psychology of, you know, on the psychological topic.

Sometimes it was leadership and sometimes it – and it just kind of like – I kind of felt like we were missing the boat a little bit from an education standpoint. And so then, you know, and so like most people early on, I just kind of got more, I would say self-taught with some of that stuff. I read a lot of books. I, you know, I would pick up a John Gordon book and, and it would be, you know, and it'd be really inspirational for me. It would just change my perspective a little bit. And then I thought that this is changing my perspective a little bit, that, you know, we've got to make sure that we're connecting with our players kind of on the

same way from that. And so, you know, you can argue what the percentage is. I mean, I think, you know, I think you and I would probably argue that the percentage that you need to vote developmental training is probably a lot higher than some other people. But even if you take it to face value and say, there's four components to the game of soccer and you sign them all 25%, I'm like, am I spending 25% of my time,

energy, and resources on developing the psychological part of our players and our team? I think it should be a lot higher than that. But if it's important to us, then we've got to find ways to devote time, energy, and resources. And resources for us is just budget dollars, right, from that standpoint.

And so we're committed to doing that. It's been tremendous. We do a couple of things. We do some mental training things, both as a team and individual. Right now in the spring semester, twice a week we meet as a team. One day a week we discuss a book that we're reading and the second day that we bring in guest speakers and we kind of call those speakers like secretists of success, like they're business leaders that talk about the things that they've learned from that piece of like the one we had

last week talked about Zig Ziglar's Wheel of Life and like the seven areas to have balance in. And so, you know, my job as a leader is to really assign what we devote time, energy, and resources to. And if it's important to us as a program, we're going to devote time, energy, and resources to it. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I like what you said about if we do think it's just 25% of the game, which, you know, usually my answer to the question, what percentage of sport is mental? I say 100%. And the answer to that is because, you know, like everything goes through your mind, right? And I'm not saying that, you know, that you have to have physical

skills and you have to have technical skills. You have to have knowledge of the game to be able to even play the game. But, you know, it's like, if you're kind of what you said, if one of your student athletes are lacking confidence, you know, they're not going to be able to play at their highest level or reach their best self, you know, like what you said. So I appreciate that you've like been thinking about how do, how do we train our athletes on the mental side? And, you know, we did some, I did some presentations for your team and then worked individually for some of your athletes. What did you see like the impact? You know, if you could, I know there's a lot of coaches and leaders listening. So what would you say is like why you'd want to implement something

like this? Yeah, I think for us, you know, what we've done with our program is, you know, is obviously some team, general team stuff, which I think gives a great foundation for our team. There's three pieces of your training that resonate through our team quite a bit. One is your, you know, attitude preparation effort, that kind of mantra resonates through our team quite a bit. The other one is just, you know, how fast you have to move on from mistakes. And it's really the snap of your fingers from that. Those two ones from a foundational thing, I think have helped the foundation of our team a great deal.

But with our rising juniors and working with them individually, I think it's giving them a safe place to be able for them to be 100% vulnerable and authentic. And obviously as a coach, you know, I hope and wish and desire that they would be that way when we have our conversations between them and I. But you have no control over their playing time. And so it gives them a chance to just kind of unload all of their feelings and emotions and stresses and issues in a really safe environment and to get really unbiased feedback. Yeah.

Right? Because, you know, you work with our program, but you don't work for our program, right? And so there's a big difference there from that. So when you give them feedback, it's unbiased, you know, and I think that that means the world to some of those people. And I can tell you the people that you've worked with, they've gotten mentally stronger, their confidence has grown, they get past mistakes faster. Their belief and optimism in pressure-filled moments has been, you know, has been, I think, at an elite level. Many of those people that you worked with this last fall made big-time plays at critical moments of the game, but I think, you know, that their mental

training absolutely has a role in that. And so it's been a great, it's been a great addition to our program, for sure. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you being open and honest about that, because I think that just kind of shows you the importance of training all pieces of performance and all pieces of the athlete. So appreciate that. And for those people who are interested in learning more about what you might do in the spring, right? And the spring is great for you because it's like off-season, right? And you have some time to still work on your skills, but you might have more time to have these meetings with, you know, the book clubs, kind of what you said, or outside speakers. Tell us a little bit about what kind of books your athletes have found to be beneficial.

Like what have they enjoyed reading? Yeah, so we do, you know, we have kind of a layer of different things. So all of our players, before they come into our program, read John Gordon's Training Camp. That's a summer read for our incoming players, you know, incoming freshmen. I think that kind of lays the groundwork. Currently this spring we're reading your book, Beyond Grit, that we go through a section a week. One of our spring goals as a team is really to just consistently practice mental training. And so that's why that book makes a lot of sense,

because we try to get our players through just one little two or three-page chapter a day. And if nothing else, that's your consistent mental training practice from that. We've read Legacy by the All Blacks in the past. We've read The Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews. We've read a couple of John Gordon books. We've read Chop Wood, Carry Water by Joshua Metcalf. And so those are some of the more recent ones that we've gone through as a team during that time.

There's a little book by an author from Brookings called The Richest Man in Town, B.J. Smith. It's about a Walmart greeter actually in Brookings, but it's more about how you treat people. And it's a quick, easy read. And so we've read that and spoken to our team in the spring. And so those are some of the things that we kind of seek out and go from there. And as far as our guest speakers, it's really interesting. Sometimes for people with the smallest society kind of thinks of the smallest title have the biggest impact. You know,

our equipment managers was one of our guest speakers and her, and her talk was unbelievable from that standpoint. And so we've had, we've had people of all, we've had CEOs to, you know, to equipment managers and everybody in between. And there's been some really inspiring messages. Oh, that's outstanding. Well, and you never know what you learn from people when you bring them in and have them speak to your team.

You know, just the idea of that, you know, just getting a positive message every week, I think is really powerful. Yeah, for sure. And it's, and I know our players like it. And I know it, you know, it just gives them, it just gives them another voice. And sometimes they say things that are very practical. Sometimes they say things that are a little bit even contradictory to what we do. And that's okay, too. It's funny, you know, we we try we're very much anti-goal and so anytime somebody works with our team and talks about goals all of the players are always like they talked about goals and you don't talk about goals and and that kind of thing and so it's but it's good it doesn't mean it's wrong it just means that you know like like players need to kind of find their way a little

bit and and our job is you know as leaders and coaches is to educate them and guide them and help them. And maybe your goals are more focused on the process, right? Not that, not the way that we like define a goal, which is typically like winning or an outcome goal. Yeah. It's more of, it's more than anti-outcome goal. I mean, it's a little bit more semantics and we're, we talk a lot more about habits and dreams, right? And so that's the terminology that we use. What are your daily habits? Well, you could say those are your daily goals. That makes total sense, right? We talk about dreams,

you know, dreams of, you know, playing in NCAA tournaments and making it, you know, deep in the tournaments. And those are dreams. And we could say those are long-term, those are goals, right, from that. But I think sometimes, because we've kind of stripped that word away from our team a little bit, it's a lot easier for them not to have outcome-based goals. Absolutely.

And that is powerful because, you know, sometimes outcome-based goals, especially if you think about them at the wrong time, they can lead to anxiety or pressure. And then you're not able to perform at your best if you're really focused on them at the wrong time. Yeah, I read, you know, there's two things that kind of shaped me from a philosophy standpoint with it. One, you know, I had a New Year's resolution one year to run a thousand miles in a year, and I made it, and I I made it and it took me to new year's eve but uh I didn't really want to run for quite a while after that time um it just got to be

I was really proud of this one to accomplish it and I felt good about it but it it became an obligation versus a habit and so I think sometimes sometimes outcome-based goals can do that um and if you do something out of obligation the level that you do it at is never really at your absolute best the other one was I was reading a study about baseball players and in goal setting and uh and I can't even remember the book it was in but it talked about um they had 100 professional baseball players and and they devoted you know they all set goals about batting average. And they did all these things. They worked with the goal coach.

And they did all these, like, goal – they had them in front of them. But for every minute that they had something each week, you know, they worked as a group, and they talked about goals, and they talked. There was another group that spent the same amount of time just working on fundamentals and like nine percent of the goal group met their goal which was usually like a like a career best batting average but like 72 percent of the non-goal group that was just focused on extra fundamentals had career best batting averages. And so I think, you know, I think sometimes outcome-based goals can be suffocating and they can add pressure. And when they talk through these things, it's like these baseball players, if they would go 0 for 4, they knew, like, they felt like the next day they had to go 3 for 4 to make up for it. Right. And it was just kind of like constricted them from that piece of things,

you know? Whereas the group that just was focused on fundamentals, they just went out there every, every at bat and just tried to do the little things right. Every single at bat. And the byproduct was they all, a large number of them had, you know,

career best batting averages from that. Yeah, and I think you're really talking about the fundamentals as really the process, right? What are the small things you need to do your best instead of, like, what's the outcome or the stat going to be at the end of the game or the end of the season? Right, right. And so I think, you know,

process goals great about creating, you know, routines and habits that will enhance your fundamentals and will aid your preparation. Like all that stuff is, is great. Right. You know, I think, I think the mistake a lot of people make is they set outcome goals without the other pieces of it and it adds stress and then And then with stress, they lose confidence and then they spiral in the other direction. Yeah. Or I think about times in my life, particularly when I was a college athlete, where I was thinking about that outcome goal at the wrong time, you know, like maybe even during the race or right before the race.

And then I got way too nervous. And, you know, it was like I couldn't even breathe while I was running, you know. This is kind of funny. And, you know, it was like I couldn't even breathe while I was running, you know. Right. Rock, this is kind of funny. I set a goal at the beginning of the year to run every day this year. So it's sort of like a similar goal to you, except about two weeks ago, my treadmill broke. And, you know, Minnesota's just been cold as South Dakota, you know, that polar vortex came through. And I've been having to run outside.

And right now I'm not too motivated to keep going with that goal. Right. But I'm doing it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, no, and I think, you know, the other story I'll share with you is, you know, we have a goalkeeper. But, you know, her first year she kind of broke into the lineup for us. She ended up finishing, like, second or third in the country in goals against average.

It was phenomenal. Had an unbelievable breakout year. And this was when I was still an assistant coach. You know, we set quite a few individual goals in our program at that time. And I remember talking to her and saying, you know, I think she allowed four goals over the course of the season. And I remember talking to her, and I said, well, what are your goals next year? Like, I want to break four goals over the course of the season. And I remember talking to her and I said, well, what, you know, what are your goals next year? Like,

I want to break my goals against record. I'm like, you allowed four. Like we're going to play the university of Utah who's 10th in the country next year in the first game of the year. Like, I don't, I see, you know, that I don't know, is that realistic or not? Like from that piece of things. And so that I asked her, I said, what was your goal this year? She goes, I really didn't have any. I said, well, what did you focus on? I focused on just getting better every day and helping the team win.

Right. And I said, maybe we should stick to making that the focus, you know, getting better every day and helping the team win. And if we focus on those pieces, some of the outcome stuff will come their way. And she's been, you know, she's been goalkeeper of the year in the conference for two years. And obviously, you know, is doing something right. But the mental piece of her game is very, very strong and very important to her as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great example of what can happen when you're so focused on that outcome goal. And then it sometimes does become unrealistic and you have to step back and look at what you're doing and

how you're thinking about it. Right. So Brock, one question I have is I step back and I think about what you've talked about today and I think about coaches. You know, maybe coaches that are coaching right now or want to coach or perhaps want to coach at the Division I level? Like what advice would you give to other coaches out there? Yeah, I think, you know, coaching is a profession that rewards those that are willing to sacrifice. And so what I mean by that is I can tell you like my first coaching job, I remember it. I was the head women's soccer coach at the University of Mary. I was the director of intramurals for the school. My salary was $10,000 a year.

It was not that long ago. I believe in 2001. My salary was $10,000 a year and an on-campus dorm room was from that. And so, you know, coaching is a profession that really rewards those willing to sacrifice and those that they're willing to be diligent diligent and diligent in pursuing opportunities but also diligent in learning and practicing your craft and getting better at it and growing from that standpoint so a lot of the people that don't make it in the profession they want to go from the ground to the to the best of

the best with kind of unprecedented speed from that they want to go from finishing playing to being a full-time coach when maybe you've got to take a and become a graduate assistant or maybe you've got to volunteer for a year or maybe you need to teach at the high school level and coach high school and club soccer and you know and practice your craft from that standpoint so I I think you know it's really interesting um I think was the the University of Texas football coach that just went back there but he had a business card from when he was a GA at Texas and the time it took it to go full circle it's sometimes it's just a test of persistence. Like a patience and persistence. Those are two P words I'm thinking about, you know, that it takes a while to get to where you want to go.

And even as an athlete, you know, maybe the same thing we would tell an athlete is to, to stick with it and don't expect it overnight. Right. You can't control the time. You just have to have the belief that it'll be worth it. Like, you know, from that, you know, everybody wants it, wishes it would have happened yesterday, but we never know when that time will be. You never know when, you know, it's like the pound of stone reference, right? You never know which swing is going to break the rock, but you just have to keep going. And when you think about

what motivates you, what would you describe as your why? Like what's, what keeps you going in terms of your motivation? Yeah, you know, people, and I take a tremendous amount of joy seeing people not just become their best, but I think becoming better than what they feel like they were, they thought that they could be when they, when they started. I take a lot of it it gives me a ton of energy to see players grow through difficult moments um and it's and it's hard like nobody wants difficult moments but i remember you know we just had our senior banquet a couple weeks ago and i said this and it sounds really weird but there was one of the seniors that used her injury as a way like just right you know I could just reshape her mentality and her mindset and and that and and my comment was

you know I'm kind of glad that you got hurt because it's a lot like what you talked about earlier because it happened for her and the and the person that she became out of that was unbelievable um from that so I I like seeing people deal with adversity and overcome adversity and use it in the right way. I take a lot of pride in trying to, you know, develop and train leaders. We have a leadership council within our team that meets weekly, both for dealing with stuff within our team, but also for leadership growth. Those things are definitely fuel for my life. Excellent, excellent. Well, Brock, I'm so grateful that you spent the time with us today talking about, you know, your philosophy and your

journey, and I know people who are listening got a lot out of it. I want to share with you what stood out to me. So at the beginning when you were talking about success and results driven versus more of the relationships driven, you mentioned love and how that's a big motivator and how that's kind of foundational to your philosophy of building the culture that you have there. I appreciated that you shared about your experience at UND and how your contract wasn't renewed and how perhaps that happened for you, not to you. And I also just appreciated our conversation about confidence and championship level confidence and how, you know, you really see that a way to build championship confidence is not being

so connected to the results, like strip the results away and stay focused more on the process. And then, you know, our final conversation about outcome goals. I think that's really eye-opening that maybe perhaps people haven't really thought about the danger sometimes of outcome goals and, and even how you guys describe in your culture more about focus on habits and dreams. So I'm grateful that you spent some time with us today. What, what final advice would you have for those who are listening, Brock?

Just stay true to yourself, right? I mean, you know, every experience you have shapes you and ultimately we live in a world where we may have a lot of pressures from a lot of different areas, but ultimately you've got to stay true to yourself and your beliefs and your values from that standpoint. And I think that's the most important thing that it gives you a sense of peace to be able to do what you want to do, how you want to do it. And that's important. Love it. Love it. Well, how can people follow you and the team right now in this upcoming season? Yeah, you know, we have a we have a pretty solid social media presence, both myself and our team, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, both myself and Go Jackcer are on all that stuff.

Our team accounts are probably a little bit more. There's probably a little bit more material there from that standpoint. Most of those, just at Go Jack Soccer is most of the handles for all of our social media. Mine, there aren't a ton of Brock Thompson's out there, but most of it ends up being at Thompson underscore Brock for my social media accounts. And yeah, I'm welcome to have conversations with anybody that has questions about our experience, using mental training,

the things that we do with our team as a whole. You know, dialogue is always good. Love it. Thank you so much, Brock. Outstanding today. Okay. I appreciate you, Cindra. Love it. Thank you so much, Brock. Outstanding today. Okay. I appreciate you, Sindra. Thanks for all that you do. 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.