High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 241: Hall of Fame Coach Shares Principles of Positive Coaching and Leadership

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

Dr. Rick McGuire is the Director of the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching. He recently retired as the Director of Sport Psychology for the Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Missouri, and Graduate Professor of Sport Psychology. For 27 years (from 1983-2010) he was Missouri’s Head Track and Field Coach. Under Coach McGuire’s tutelage, Missouri athletes earned 143 All-American recognitions, 110 Conference champions, 29 USA National Members, 3 collegiate records, and 5 Olympians. He is the founder and chairman for 27 years of the USA Track and Field Sport Psychology program, and served as a staff for 11 USATF National Teams, including the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games in Barcelona and Atlanta. In this podcast, Rick and Cindra talk about: His principles of positive coaching Why demeaning never helps athletes Ways to increase athletes’ self-worth and self-esteem The most impactful way to motivate athletes The importance of communication with your athletes and teams You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/rick.  

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. Thank you so much for joining me here today. This is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, Certified Mental Performance Consultant, Speaker, and Author. And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I'm grateful that you're here. Now, the goal of this podcast and 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 in our field or a sport. Now, typically with two episodes weekly, we explore everything related to mindset. And today's interview is with Dr. Rick McGuire. Dr. Rick McGuire is the director of the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching. He recently retired is the director of the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching. He recently retired as the director of sports psychology for intercollegiate athletics at the University of Missouri and was a graduate professor of sports psychology. So for 27 years, he was Missouri's head track and field coach. And I ran at the University of Northern Iowa. I remember competing against Dr. McGuire and it was really tough to compete against him.

So under Coach McGuire's tutelage, Missouri athletes earned 143 All-American recognitions. Outstanding. 110 conference champions, 29 USA national members, three collegiate records, and five Olympians. So he is also the founder and chairman for 27 years of USA Track and Field and their sports psychology program. He served on the staff of 11 USATF national teams, including the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games in Barcelona and Atlanta. Now, we talk about a variety of things in this podcast. 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games in Barcelona and Atlanta.

Now, we talk about a variety of things in this podcast here, some of the most important things and the main things that we talk about. He shares his principles of positive coaching, really how he got into studying positive coaching and his own personal experiences. I asked him a really tough question about a time that he failed. I stumped him. I didn't tell him I was going to ask him that. So I think you're going to enjoy his conversation and description about that. He talks about why demeaning never helps people, ways that we can increase other people's

self-worth and self-esteem, and the most impactful ways to motivate others. And I think that you're going to learn about athletes and how to motivate athletes and teams in this podcast. But I think you can also apply the principles to your leadership, your leadership in your organization or in your family. So without further ado, let's bring on Dr. McGuire. Dr. Rick McGuire, thank you so much for joining us here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. So welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here, Cassandra. I'm looking forward to interviewing you today. I know we've had a chance to speak multiple times and I've heard you speak

at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology Conference. So I'm just looking forward to learning more about your background and sharing it with the audience. So I'm just looking forward to learning more about your background and sharing it with the audience. So maybe to start us off, Rick, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. I'm a coach. I'm proud to be a coach. It's the most special, most important, most impacting thing that I could do with my life. And so this is my 50th year as a coach. And the short version is I had a very abusive high school coach, but we had a highly successful team. And so the scream, yell, curse, humiliate, threaten, berate, bully physically, emotionally, mentally, anything that could make you maybe go a little bit harder, a little bit longer,

was fair game in his coaching toolbox. Nobody questioned it because we won. But we won, but we weren't celebrative. We were surviving. My college coach was, my sport was basketball. My college coach, Bob Sheldon, Division III, St. Lawrence University, was maybe the nicest human being I've ever met in my life. And a freshman team that was 18 and 3 were 5 and 18 as seniors.

So we literally lost. And so the picture looked like SOBs win championships, nice guys finish last. Sure. I couldn't accept any of that. And so that kind of made a right turn and decided I was going to become a coach and I was going to find a better way. Back then, my passion was to coach my team against my high school coach's team, beat him, and go up afterwards and say, there, that's how to coach. That I recognized later was revenge. Sure.

That's not any better than the garbage that he was doing, except revenge, in this case, it was a riveting motive, and it wasn't hurting anybody. And I'm not defending it. I'm just saying I'm glad my motivations grew stronger for other sources than revenge. But it was a riveting motive to find a better way. I thought it was going to be easy. Turns out I was wrong at first, and then when I really did understand and started to really build my own model, my own philosophy, my own principles, it also became real easy. So I went from thinking it was easy to finding it wasn't very easy to finding, wow, this is really deep, and some can consider it hard. But in the end of

the day, it turns out it's all really pretty easy. But people make it unnecessarily complicated and hurtful. So that's my passion to change that. Wherever kids meet sport, kids do meet sport to coach. So wherever they're meeting sport to coach, I want it to be that the coach showing up makes the whole thing better. And that isn't always the case. And we all know that there's still way too many people out there in coaching roles that have just terrible behaviors. They're bullies, they're hurting kids. That's being allowed because some way along the line, people said, well, that's coaches and you got to be like that. They're going to be good. All nonsense. So there's my motive. Love it. That's a strong purpose and why. And we're going to talk a little bit more today about

why you started the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching and what positive coaching is. I want to take us back just a little bit. And I think about, you know, just the long history you've had in 27 years as the director of the track and field program at University of Missouri. You started the sports ecology graduate program there. You know, just you've had so much success. When you think about your success as a track and field coach, what would you say, you know, in terms of what led to that and, you know, in terms of your coaching and how you showed up as a coach?

Well, the first answer is going to sound trite. Maybe it is trite. But in the end of the day, it's the truth and every coach should be admitting it. The number one variable that led to our successes at Missouri and beyond was that I just had a great opportunity to work with unbelievably great athletes. And, and in the end of the day, I've never made a slow kid fast. You know, I've helped people become faster or higher or farther, but it took talented, talented athletes. For sure. That, I mean, it's just, that's just the truth.

And so it's not trite, and it's an important recognition. And so I understood that my role was to be a steward of their opportunity. And stewards protect things. And so my role was to polish them, not pound them. Certainly, I was to help them get stronger and faster and quicker and more flexible and more resilient. But in the end of the day, I was to protect them, their health, their fitness, their opportunities, and to nurture in them their sense of autonomy. That they were in control, not me, and that my job was to have them feel inspired and not be driven by the external motivation that came from me as their coach.

And so everything that I did, every word, every action, every workout, every relationship started and grew with that one basic understanding that great athletes here that have amazing opportunities. And it's my job to protect them and those opportunities and give them all the chance to flourish and become reality. That's really what the University of Missouri, it provided me an intersection where really great, talented young men and women could choose to come and be a part of our environment. At the beginning, as you were aware, we didn't have an outdoor track in Missouri. I mean, not even an old one to practice on. Wow. So it looked like, gee, why would anybody go there?

They don't even have a track. And you can be sure in high-level Division I sport that might get mentioned a few times by the opposing coaches in the recruiting. Negative recruiting, right? And so I tell everybody right up front, here, this is what it's going to be. And if you're interested, I want you to come visit. When you come visit, you're going to find for sure we don't have a track. But what you're also going to find is we have some fantastic track and field athletes.

And the thing they have in common is they're all there at Missouri with me. And so your job when you come to visit is to see if you can find out why did they pick that why did they choose to come to be here and why might you want to choose to come be here with them and so obviously my belief was that there are a lot of ways you can train people they don't have to be on a track fortunately in my 14th year we we got a beautiful track, one of the best in the country. But I understood from not having a track that the track isn't what makes the difference.

It's the relationship. It's the mission. And it's the approach and the experiences growing that are being provided in the relationships and in the setting where we find ourselves. So, Rick, I like that you mentioned just, you know, that you didn't have the track. So it might have been a place where student athletes didn't want to come, but obviously they did. You know, when you talk about autonomy and how to build it, I think people might be listening and thinking, okay, well, actually, how do you do that?

How do you help athletes feel like they are in control of themselves and, you know, they're not doing it for the coach or for other external reasons? What practical advice would you give a coach or a parent or, you know, a leader related to building autonomy? This is easy. And some people just don't want to accept how easy it is. You can tell people what to do, or you can describe what you're trying to achieve and then give people an array of choices. So it's all autonomy is all about. I take control of me and I make the choice about what I'm going to invest myself in. And I do that on a broad scale basis for over a period of years. I do it on an annual basis. I do it on a daily basis. And I do it on a moment by moment basis. And so people say, well, that sounds kind of

philosophic. So I say, okay, here, let's get real then. I had absolutely no rules on my team, zero rules. And you could talk to kids from my team and they would say, no, coach never talked about rules. So I didn't even have a rule about you have to go to practice. I did not want kids to come to practice because the rule was you had to be at practice on time. And if you didn't, here's the punishment. I didn't want them to come to practice because they had to go to practice. I wanted them to come to practice

because they wanted to get great. And they knew that practice with me and with our staff, they were going to have the opportunity not only to get great, but to share with others trying to get great. But they had to choose to come. I did have three expectations. One was to have a desire to be good and have the willingness to work hard to be good. A lot of times I've had people say, I want to be great. And I'd say, that's good. I get it. Just you haven't been around really great ones yet. And you're going to see high bar. But of course, I want you to be starting to be great and be willing to invest yourself in becoming great. Second, I expect kids to go to class every day.

And one time I had an athlete say, that sounds like a rule. I said, no, it's not a rule. It's an expectation. I expect you to go to class every day. It was a young man. And he said, well, coach, I love everything you're talking about. But if I'm at Missouri, I want you to know that I'll be 19 years old. I think when I'm 19 years old, I should be able to choose whether I get up and go to class or not. Gosh, I could go to war. So I'll be able to choose whether I can go to class or not. I said

that's exactly right. He said, you said you expect me to go to class every day. That's because I do expect you every day to get up and choose and go to class. Unless you're sick, really sick, and you're going to endanger the other ones in the class, then I expect you to go and go to class. Unless you're sick, really sick, and you're going to endanger the other ones in the class, then I expect you to go and go to class. He said, but I'll be 19. I think I should have the right to choose. I said, that's good. I'll be 55 and I've got the right to choose who I'm going to pay for school for. And I'm going to pay for school for the people who are going to go to school. So if you're not going to get and go to school, why would I pay for going to school? So I didn't say I'm going to make you go to class. It's just if you want your scholarship, you got to go to class. That's all. I expect you to choose

to go to class. It's all about choice. Might as well start right there going to class. And the third thing, as I said, I expect everybody to recognize that none of us get along in the world without help from others. Sometimes we know exactly who helped us. Sometimes we don't. But none of us can be as successful if we're an island unto ourselves. We all benefit from others giving us a hand up, a help, an encouragement, an idea, an opportunity, whatever it is. Whenever somebody does something good that's going to help you

and make your day easier or better or you to get better at what you're trying to do, you make sure they know you appreciate it. And the only way that I can be sure and you can be sure that they do is if you walk up, look them in the eye, engage jaw, and say thank you a lot. I'm not saying say thank you to me. I'm saying say thank you to anybody that's helped you along the way and is thank you a lot. I'm not saying say thank you to me. I'm saying say thank you to anybody that's helped you along the way and is helping you today. If we live with those three things every day in our life, have a desire to be good and be willing to work hard to be good,

going to class every day, and that means we show up and are engaged in who we are and what we're doing. And third, we're appreciative of others, and we know we couldn't make it without their help, and we're appreciative, and we share that with them. If we do those three things, people who do those three things succeed. Cinder, that's where we started. And then I said to people, you're going to notice. I have every year in the first team meetings, we have no rules at practice, usually around three.

We'll have one team meeting a week. I try to be there, but I'll have a handout on everything that's discussed so you can get it if you've got a lab or something. So I don't have any rules, but I'm going to give you a thousand choices a day that you get to make the choice on. And the better you get at making the right choice, it's like getting through a maze. You can go left, right, straight ahead, or backwards. You got to make the right choice. When you make the right choices over and over and over and over and over again,

then you find yourself at the 600 mark in the 800-meter race. That's that far corner where the gorilla pole is, and the gorilla jumps on your back and plants both feet in the 800 meter race that's that far corner where the gorilla pole is and the gorilla jumps on your back and plants both feet in the cheeks of your butt and reaches over your forehead and gets your upper lip and tries to pull it back over your nose i know that people say what are you talking about but i know you know what that feels like cind For sure. And at that moment, at that moment, only you can make the choice to run those last 200 meters hard. And the last 80, and the last 50, and the last 30, when someone pulls up on your shoulder, only you can dig down in and find that little bit more it's going to take

to dive at the line and be the champion. And you're going to learn that. You can make that choice. You will make that choice because you're going to have been making hundreds and thousands of choices every day instead of being a robot that just reacts to everything I say to do. Outstanding. So that's a great example of like how to build autonomy. Rick, before we kind of dive into some of the principles of positive coaching that you've outlined, I want to ask you a question and have you share a story with us because I think you could see your career as, you know, 27 years a head coach at University of Missouri. You started a graduate program. You've worked, you know, with USA Track and Field, you know, all of these

accolades. Can you tell us a story about maybe a time that didn't go so well for you, maybe a time that you failed or you had somebody that you worked with that failed, just as a way for us to connect with you and also learn more about, like, what did you learn from that maybe mistake or failure? Wow. Can you think of something? Mm-hmm. Yeah. There was early, early in my collegiate coaching experience, I had, I was working with two terrific athletes. Both went on to be All-Americans, and they were a couple. They were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they were in the same events, so trained together with the rest of the athletes in those events, but trained together, traveled together. Because they were higher-level athletes than some of the others in our training group,

they had opportunities that were nearly limitless. You know, they were nationally ranked, so they qualified for every meet, including Olympic trials. So the three of us spent a lot of time traveling together and had strong relationship with both. So we were really, I mean, literally, we're talking national championships, Olympic trials, and in a lesser meet on the way, along the way in the season, one of the two kind of stubbed their toe. Not literally. They let down. They didn't give their best. They had a poor performance. It wasn't a knocky out, but it was a setback. And I saw it as a teaching moment. And so I did some significant teaching.

Okay. a teaching moment and so I did some significant teaching okay but it had to do with addressing better choice making and how we apply that and how it carries over from what appear to be little things into makes difference in key moments in a competition against other high level athletes you wouldn't you wouldn't you it wouldn't be exposed if they were other athletes were just average athletes but in a when it's the best show up together those little things are going to end up being the weak links in the chain and you won't get more success so I thought as a teaching moment okay and I so I taught. And I said to the two of them, look, it's just the three of us, but would you rather just have it be you and me, or is it okay with the third?

And, oh, no, everything's fine, coach. You know, we're close. It's all good. Bring it on. So I did, and I didn't do it meanly, but it was addressing, had to do a better job of making better choices on these kinds of things, et cetera, et cetera. And in the end of the day, caused a serious setback in my relationship with the one who was being critiqued and instructed with the significant other in the camera in

hearing the conversation seeing the conversation and even though the the one had given me permission didn't see it coming I should have seen it coming so I would never do that again and what do feel like you learned from that situation? How did it impact your coaching later? Well, I didn't ever do it again. That would be, but it brought things back for me that, so there was no, when we had this conversation, there was, it was just instruction. There was no yelling. There was no cursing. There was no condemning. It was all, here was a little blip, here was a little blip, here was a little blip. That develops a habit pattern. And then here in this setting, can you see the connection between, and in this setting,

this is what you didn't do. But you're but you're gonna be in this in these kinds of settings where this this what my others might think is small is turns out to be enough to derail uh your your pathway to success i learned from that really what i knew from the beginning that anything that would be humiliating or demeaning or condemning just doesn't have to be. And it certainly doesn't have to be in front of others. And even if the others, and maybe even more specifically, especially not in front of the others when the other is your most special relationship in your life. So I learned, even though I thought we were in a perfectly safe environment and setting and safe and secure relationships, I learned that that significant

other relationship thing is really powerful, really important. And so that's not a good idea. But on the broader scale, it just stamped for me even more. So I was in a setting there where it was literally three people in a comfortable room talking specific stuff about what impacted a less than best performance, normal coaching stuff in a really safe setting. So just think what that stamped for me, the criticalness of in a public setting with at practice or in a competition and as you know in track there's a lot of coach athlete activity that happens in and during and around the performance even for runners on the track the coach and athlete are communicating and and information and

encouragement is being provided and but it it with me, it cemented for me, the realization of never demean or call out or have personal criticism in front of others, that the cons so outweigh the pros, that it's learn a better way. Develop some personal signals that you might, you know, you might say a thing that, you know, chocolate chip cookies, and that sounds to the rest of the world like chocolate chip cookies, but the athlete knows what you're really saying with chocolate chip cookies, but the athlete knows what you're really saying with chocolate chip cookies,

you know, and it might be real strong encouragement to change something they're doing, but there's no humiliation, no embarrassment, no degradation, no way to bring any confusion of that into play. Philosophic, but that was a big thing in my life. And I appreciate you sharing that with us because I think it shows that you're real, right? And we can learn a lot from situations that you share like that. What do you think that take home for us is? You know, like I heard you say demeaning, condemning, and, you know, calling people out, personal criticism in front of others is not the way to go. Is there any other messages from that story that you want us to hear?

Like any lessons that we can take from a difficulty you had? Probably the takeaway from that, as the people who are hearing this interview will know, I didn't know that that question was coming right I know and at first I didn't know where to go or what to share and I went so I went to one that was a significant thing early in my life and know that then it was early in my career but it wasn't the beginning of my career I had had 12 years of coaching experience when that happened, not at Missouri. This was before I got to Missouri, but I'd had 12 years of coaching experience and know that every day I was

trying to live my role as a coach to never, ever have an athlete feel what my teammates and I had felt in my coach. So I didn't, I hadn't yet had things come together to where I had this whole concept of positive coaching and it turned into, you know, the 29 principles of positive coaching. But I was very aware that I never, ever, ever wanted to create an experience for one of my athletes that was anything like the ones that I had

experienced and and so early on in the in the understandings of the foundations of what I now call positive coaching are things like you can be sport is demanding life is demanding. Life is demanding. So preparing for sport and preparing for life, there's nothing wrong with experiencing demand. But a coach can be demanding without being demeaning. And demeaning is never right. When is it right to be disrespectful of another individual? Answer, never. Okay?

There's nothing so valuable that it's okay to disrespect somebody in an attempt to get something good to happen. I've asked literally hundreds of thousands of coaches, eyeball to eyeball, not one at a time, but I've asked, what do you value? What's really important to you? How would you like it if your leader, your boss, your athletic director, your president, your chancellor, the boss came down on your court, your diamond, your track, your, your mat, your pitch, your first tee, your pool deck track. Yeah, a lot. Yeah, for sure. Sure. Probably get track in there,

but come right down where you meet your team and in front of your staff, in front of your players, in front of your family, your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your friends from your community, in front of everybody, jumped your case, screamed, yelled, cursed, threatened, humiliated, demeaned, humiliated you, all in the name of motivating you to work harder to be a better coach. Which of you would love that and thrive with it? If you've got 100 in the room, you've always got some jackass that we go, yeah, that's me, bring it on. I'd say, yep, you need counseling. None of us want that. Most of us have experienced it at some time and we didn't like it.

We maybe even got better and later thought, well, boy, he was tough, but I got there. But it is no fun. And the real truth is that there's no evidence anywhere that that type of leadership, that that type of external avoidance motivation is more powerful, more enduring, more lasting, more impacting than a whole array of other better ideas and approaches. And it's just really simple. Commun communicate with the people you lead in a way that you would like to be communicated with by those who lead you I was with the Chicago White Sox at spring training in the mid late 80s Jeff Torborg was the manager I only would my approach was I worked with coaches athletes meet sport at the coach I teach the coaches coaches teach the athletes so we were there we were in Fort Myers and and I had coaches and managers and

and we had a good evening had an early session the next morning I was in real early get that set up the Jeff Torborg manager comes room says Rick Rick I know I'd heard that somewhere before. I knew it. I knew it. I finally found it. Rick. I said, what was that, Jeff?

He says, Rick, it's in the Bible. It's a golden rule. Gosh, Rick, that's a golden rule. Do unto others. Did you know that? I said, well, Jeff, I actually did know that. Did you know you paid me $2,000 to fly down here and teach you that? I mean that all these other approaches, all these other alternatives to humiliating and demeaning and threatening are more effective. And they all

lead to developing that autonomy because in the midst of competition, only the athlete is in control. That's an important realization and understanding that coaches must make. I'm saying if they want to really be the great effective coach that they dream to be and want to be. These are not puppets on strings and we're the puppet masters and and we're we're calling the shots and making every move and so positive coaching for me that got that became a cornerstone of positive coaching and clearly identifying behaviors that should should occur in our coaching role and behaviors that absolutely needed to be excluded from our coaching role. So Rick, tell us a little bit about how you would define positive coaching and what that means to you. Well, when people hear the phrase positive coaching, most people in sport have some idea of what they think that is. And those ideas, lots of times have to do with be nice, be kind, be sharing. Everybody

should get a chance to play. Everybody should have a chance to get a ribbon or a medal. It's really about everybody having a good experience and having a good time. And the critics or people who feel threatened by it would say, well, that's really cool. That's really good, but I've got to win. Now, if I was the Brownie Scouts leader and we were going to have a camp out, we're going to build a bonfire and we're going to make s'mores. Positive coaching would be great, getting those kids to make the greatest s'mores in the history of the world. But not for me. Where I play, we've got to win.

And so that won't work with what I do and where I do it. That's what the critics would say. That would be their perspective on what positive coaching is. And I would say, so this now is the answer to your question. I just wanted to frame it like that. I would say that the foundations of positive coaching are all about striving for excellence and every person can experience excellence, their own personal excellence.

Every person can strive to be and become the best they can be. And whatever that is, it's good enough. It's understanding it does matter that we win, but it's not all that matters. Positive coaching is all about high performance, but it's not all about winning. There are other things that matter also. It's about achieving optimal performance. It's about teaching and modeling the process of becoming a success. Senator, I think what you and I learned in our own athletic experiences that taught us about what it took to become a success were some of the most important things that we ever learned throughout our entire educational experience. And we can provide an experience in sport that is all about understanding

how to engage yourself in the process of becoming a successful and satisfied person. It's about leading a group to become a highly effective team. Positive coaching is all about that. I'd say positive coaching is all about intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic, intrinsic, where the source of the reward is found inside of me. You know, as I do from DC and Ryan in 78 on, that the research shows clearly that intrinsic motivation is the most powerful, most impacting, most lasting and enduring of all of our motivational experiences.

And so as a coach, that says to me, wow, I want that for my athletes. I want intrinsic motivation for my athletes. So it's my job to coach them in such a way that it grows and lives in them and they recognize it. They understand what it is and they understand who they are. And I would say to people, and you know for sure you're not paying me to say this, but I would say to people, and I am saying to people, get Cindra's book, Be Honest with Me. And in her book, she's talking about this very topic, about being a success. It isn't something that others do for you or to you. It's something you do for you. But this is what positive coaching is. It is

about nurturing intrinsic motivation. And in doing that, that you are always communicating with people as you would wish to be communicated with. It's about respecting every kid, every athlete's sense of self-worth. It's about being demanding, but never being demeaning. It's about shaping the person's will, the willingness, the willpower to choose to go again and again and again. I mean, again, in your own life, the distance runner, man, you've got, you had anywhere from four and a half minutes to 30 minutes in your races yes there's a lot of thinking that gets done along too much thinking many times okay and it hurts people who haven't run the 800 as a race run it hard or people who haven't run the 10K and be out there 7K and recognize, God, this hurts. I don't think I saved enough. If you don't have that experience,

you aren't trying hard enough. So every step along the way, your willpower, your willingness, your will is being tested. And the person who has the will, all willpower is, is the choice power. The willingness to make the choice to keep going, to do the right thing, to do it correctly, to take one more step, do one more lap. It's all a choice. You break their will. If you break their spirit, you've broken their will. And I've seen lots of kids have their spirit broken by their coach. And so I talk about shaping their will without breaking their spirit. And where's the willpower? Inside, autonomy, choice making. So it's realizing it does matter that we win. And this comes right to the heart in essence.

But it does matter that we win as coaches, that we win in the life of every single kid we have the opportunity to share as their coach, the honor to be their coach. This is what positive coaching is about. Last thing I would say to you, coaching really isn't about sport. It gets identified with sport.

So when people hear coach, they think sport. Now we're starting to hear life coaches and all this other stuff. But coaching is about a relationship that one has with another or others, the team. And in that relationship, it's the coach's role to share, to teach, to guide, to encourage, to share from every bit of who the coach is and what the coach has, to share that in such a way with the full intention that in the future the other or others get better. That's what coaching is, to influence others so that they get better.

So coaching is about teaching, guiding, encouraging, building, believing, caring, sharing, giving, forgiving, expecting, respecting, modeling, serving, and inspiring. That's what positive coaching is. Outstanding. So Rick, I have a few follow-up questions on that. And one of the things that I heard you say was respecting and protecting the self-worth of the athletes. I think that word self-worth is really powerful. And I think, you know, the relationship is at the heart of that. Tell us what you see coaches do that you think enhances self-worth versus, you know, decreases or doesn't support self-worth. Praise, humiliate. Kid makes a mistake. Scream, yell, curse, ridicule. Kid made a mistake. You know what that means? Needs to learn better. Instruct. Error detection, error correction. Okay. Kid's

made a mistake. They haven't learned the thing well enough yet. Instruct constructively. A whole lot of instruction is destructive. It makes no sense. They're essentially anonyms. You want more? Sure. Well, I'll ask you the next question. You know, so I appreciate that what you said about self-worth. And when you think about, you know, demeaning or humiliating some of those other words that you really strongly, you mentioned, do you think coaches can do that non-verbally? You know, like some of the examples that you provided are more like verbal, but I'm thinking about maybe how even in my sporting experience, you know, that, that the relationship wasn't always strong with my coach. And it wasn't necessarily

because they demeaned, but it was almost like they didn't care. And then that impacted my self-worth, my intrinsic motivation, my ability to want to actually perform well. And so I'm wondering what you think about that, because I don't think in this particular situation I'm thinking about, you know, it was positive coaching, but it wasn't demeaning. So I'm just trying to make sense of it as I'm listening to you. What do you think? Well, there's many ways that one person communicates with another. Sometimes it's words. Sometimes it's sign language. Sometimes it's posture. Sometimes it's distance. And so sometimes it has to do with safety. Right. trust and the issue of trusting relationship and the strengths of a trusting relationship and the harm that's done when the trust is broken.

The, as I've coached 50 years and thousands and thousands of athletes, am I a perfect model? No, because who's perfect? And in positive coaching, we set the bar pretty high as in terms of what's perfect. And in positive coaching, we set the bar pretty high in terms of what's expected. Now, I do that because there's a problem in sport, and it is negative coaching, wrong behaviors at all levels. It doesn't mean every coach everywhere, but I'm telling you, everywhere there are some that are negative coaches and we all know it. And the problem is that in a lot of cases they get rewarded

and they stay there or they even move up. But what they're doing is wrong and it's unnecessary and it isn't remotely the most effective way to have athletes led, taught, coached in their experience. And so I'm not saying that I'm perfect, but I'm saying I've worked at this for a long time. There are, just as your question is also your answer, that of course there are, so when you were at a 10K and your coach is giving you splits, the coach is typically standing at a place that has meaning.

You know where he or she is. You're going to go by there several times. The coach will provide a number, a split time, and the coach will provide something that should be encouraging. So the coach does that, and if the coach is being encouraging and the words are encouraging and the numbers you're getting are giving you information that either you're right on or you know to pick it up or you might want to comment a little bit, you're able to interpret the information.

Now, if all of a sudden the coach, it changes and the coach's intensity level changes, you've got to interpret what's that mean. If the words are ones that are causing you to doubt or be confused or feel hurt or ashamed or know that with all those people and you're there and it's a hard day but coach I'm trying but you're hearing this stuff and then and I've seen this I know you've seen this I hope you haven't experienced it but sometimes the coach is embarrassed sure the coach leaves the next time the kid comes around the coach isn't even there right could there be a stronger statement than that no is it necessary no is it is it right no right so so

I want to say two things here one it's all about communication there's lots of ways that we communicate we have more opportunities to communicate and communicate publicly as coaches than the normal person. So that means we have a challenge that most normal jobs and people don't have. Is there any chance that we're going to be perfect every single time with every single kid for a 50-year career? Of course not. But we can start with the intention and the awareness and understanding,

and there are a lot of intersections. I know for a fact what was said and done to me as an athlete. I can name time, place. I can write the script. You get called a stupid MF-er. You don't forget that. You get called a stupid MF or you don't forget that. You get called that in front of people, you don't get that. And that's not a my friend. We all know it. Right. Exactly. And the kid doesn't forget that. So you've had tough

experiences at times with coaches. You haven't forgotten them. And it's a source of motivation i see it in your book yeah okay it's just like you see it in my book so so the point is the bar for us isn't perfection but we should be striving to be the very best we can be. And the bad stuff is a low bar. I mean, even the very untalented high jumper can get over a low bar. So we can identify the things that should never show up in our communication, including never walk away and leave them. You know, so, so all the ways that we communicate are in play and, and whether it's verbal or nonverbal as coaches, we need to be skilled. Most,

most coaches are highly effective communicators. And even, I mean the ones who I would say are negative coaches are highly effective communicators. I'm just saying what they're communicating is wrong, unnecessary, and should not be allowed. So just as you have in positive coaching, this isn't, positive coaching was not built out of ideas that I pulled out of my hip pocket. No, it stands on really great accepted research that creates the foundation that the whole thing's built on. And I know that this is 2019 and nobody's buying Model T Fords anymore. But I also know that there are some giants in our professional field of psychology

that are giants. Probably none bigger than Maslow. Most people that have taken a psychology course in high school or college, if you say Maslow, they say self-actualization and they may not know anything else in psychology, but they know that. And so self-actualization is just striving to be the best me I can be. Isn't that what I want for every kid I coach? Them striving to be the best they can be. And what did Maslow tell us? Well, he told us, well, first you've got to have the needs met to keep you alive. Food, shelter, water. Then you need to have a safe setting. You can't be striving to perform if you're trying to also stay alive.

So you've got to be in a safe setting. Pretty quick he gets to things like self-worth. That's where this question started. So he talks about self-worth. He talks about feeling belonging, being appreciated and accepted. So I just put those all into self-worth and say, in sport, we can do this. I can do this. I can have every athlete know that they are loved, not romantic love, loved, cared for, appreciated, belong right here. You're important

to me. And where we are, it matters that you're important to me. When everybody else sees you're important to me, that means you're important to them. This matters. And when people have that in their life, we all know what came next in Maslow's hierarchy, self-actualization. Absolutely. But if they don't have that, and you and I in our experience, it both experienced a setback on some of this. We

weren't getting that great self-worth experience. And we both got past it and learned from it and went on and found ways in our career to help others not have to deal with that. But the very point here is that if all the other stuff is in place, but an athlete is shamed and demeaned and humiliated, you've just short-circuited the process one step from self-actualization. Everything else is blown up if you've destroyed their self-worth. The person who does not feel worthy or valuable has no reason to do all the things it takes to strive for and achieve excellence. So Rick, one thing that I'm hearing just in the whole interview today is this relationship as at the center, right, of positive coaching. And you've talked about how it's important the way

that we communicate, right, and coaches are great communicators. Is there anything else that you think when you think about like painting this picture of a relationship that's based on positive coaching? Is there anything that you think we haven't talked about that can give people a sense of the relationship that they should work to create? Yes. And it's probably the thing that I'm going to focus this next chapter of my career is going to be focused on helping coaches understand this. It isn't just how we communicate, but what we communicate. And the coach, kids meet sport with the coach. coach so the coach is the this isn't the new stuff the coach is the definer the shaper the creator the deliverer of the sport experience and you and i both understand that any coach any day can absolutely make a great experience

for the team or an individual athlete or two or three people on the team can make a great experience for them or they can break that experience have a horrible experience it's easy it's easy we've we've both seen lots of athletes get broken by their coach. Okay, but we don't want to be breakers. We want to be makers. And so we are, you and I in all this conversation, in a whole lot of our work, are focused on how the coach delivers, how the coach coaches. But in the end of the day, the coach, what doesn't matter what the sport is, there are some capabilities that need to be built for the athlete to get better,

so they can perform better, so they can prepare better to perform better. And so every coach has to be developing the athlete physically, so train the body, technically, skills, tactically, strategies, plays, mentally, how they think. And it's really simple. I mean, so Yogi Berra, somebody said something about 90% sports, 90% metal. Right, yeah. That's nonsense. If if it was why do we sweat so much

so but it's but but it's important and at the moment of delivery it might have absolutely the controlling variable on delivering the very best performance we have. So at that instant of delivery, it might be, you know, a real high percentage because we understand wrong thoughts hurt performance. If wrong thoughts hurt performance, right thoughts will help performance. So I'm all the time teaching wrong thoughts hurt, right thoughts help, learn the difference, learn to think right okay well on this think right we really need to understand this so i tell a story that harry mara told me so harry mara is ashton eaton's coach and Harry tells this publicly and so I'm referencing Harry and Ashton but he tells it publicly okay so it's not me this isn't this isn't telling stories that shouldn't be told but the story is one that all coaches should should know and understand and and respect and

honor and I think it's what you I think you'll be glad for this story. So Ashton Eaton, for those who aren't track and field fans or follow the Olympic Games, Ashton Eaton is the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and multiple world indoor and outdoor championships, including the world record in both the decathlon and the indoor heptathlon for men. Certainly one of the greatest track and field athletes that ever lived. Okay, Harry became Ashton's coach, I think, between Ashton's sophomore and junior years at the University of Oregon. And he had emerged as a sophomore as this really amazing athlete. He'd been a good freshman.

He was an unbelievable athlete as a sophomore. And he was just getting started. Everybody knew it. And I happened to coach one of his at the time rivals but and we knew this kid's special harry was chosen ashton's coach had left uh to go to the university of northern iowa to be the head coach and harry was chosen to be the new coach uh for for ashton and the decathletes and heptathletes at Oregon. So Harry had known of, he'd seen. I don't know if Ashton knew Harry prior to that.

They didn't have a relationship other than connection in the decathlon. So their first meeting. So Ashton comes in the office. Harry's still just getting his stuff put into the file cabinets and drawers and getting organized. Ashton comes in and Harry gets up and greets him. They're shaking hands. Harry goes to sit down and Ashton's still standing.

And Harry looks at Ashton and Ashton says, coach, before we get started, this is something I want to, I want to have told you, I want to have said to you, is that okay? And so Ashton says, coach, I want you to know whatever it is you tell me to do, whatever it is, whatever it is you tell me to do, however you tell me to do it, I promise you that every single time I will 100% try to do exactly what you tell me to do, exactly how you tell me to do it. you tell me to do it so you better be right how about that last part yeah wow that sounds like pressure yeah it's exactly what harry thought

harry harry said i could he said wow as in exactly here i was thinking i'm gonna be here i got this great athlete wow this is gonna be great it's just gonna be magic i couldn't wait for that conversation to get over and for him to leave, not because I didn't want to talk to him, but because I needed to study because he was right. I have to be right. Okay, that's my point. This is the responsibility of coaches. So whatever sport you coach, you need to know that what you're

teaching is right. How you're training your athlete physically, how you're teaching skills, and what are the mechanics of skills and, and understanding motor learning. So you have that skill learning. So you can be an instructor that's literally plugging into how to teach motor skills correctly. The strategic part of the game is obvious. Plays and strategies and responding to the opponents and what they're doing and where that fits in this competition. This is an important part. And then obviously where you and I live, there's so much critical

in the mental aspects of sport preparations and certainly in sport competitions. And these aren't just inherited things. These are absolutely teachable, learnable skills. And you and I both know that there's way more available for coaches to know about the mental aspects of sport today than there were 30 years ago or 20 years ago or 10 years ago. And how you and I know that is because we know what's there and we both are contributing to having there be more and better there for coaches and athletes to be able to learn and be right so they can prepare better, to perform better and achieve more. And when they do that and achieve more to be prouder and happier and more fulfilled and absolutely motivated to want to do more. But that won't happen if the way coaches coach,

what they coach is just how they were coached or the offense their coach used or what they read a book or they went to a clinic and they brought the speaker's workouts back and you just use those workouts. No. It's a responsibility of a coach. Kids have you as their coach. Sport is going to be one of the most defining experiences in their life. You have the opportunity to impact each youngster for their life. Be prepared.

That's what the next, I hope, 10 years of my career. Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, Rick, I know we have to wrap it up. I need to have you back on because I think we need to go deeper into some of your principles, but where should people find more about the Missouri Institute of Positive Coaching? Where can they find more about your 29 principles of positive coaching? Tell us where we can find more information or how we can contact you. I know you do a lot of speaking, coaching, training all over the world. So tell us how we might reach out to you for interest in learning more. Pretty easy. DrRittMcGuire.com was one. And there'll be a link there to the Missouri Institute for Positive Coaching. If you put Missouri Institute for Positive Coaching in, it'll eventually, sometimes it'll take you right to it, but sometimes it'll go other

directions. And so might be, I think it's even MOPositiveCoaching.com will probably get you there also, as in Missouri, MO. But DrRickMcGuire.com will get you there, get you to me. I can get you to the other. You get all, you can find all of it at both places. Outstanding. Well, I am so grateful for the time that you spent with us today. Things that stood out to me was, you know, your conversation at the beginning about building autonomy and giving athletes choices. And I'm grateful for the story that you shared of a difficulty, even though I didn't tell you that question was going to come. So I appreciate you just being open and honest about that. And just the power of building a strong relationship

and not demeaning or condemning athletes. I appreciated all the content and tips that you provided us today. So Rick, I'm just grateful for what you've done in our field and how you have positively impacted coaches and sports psychology professionals all over the world. So thank you for all that you have done to help us and help us be better in our field and in our sport. So thank you so much today for taking the time to talk with us. Anytime, you know that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you

like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter Thank you.