High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 298: Coaching the 3 Dimensions – Skill, Psychology and Heart, with Wes Simmons, 3D Institute

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

Wes Simmons is the CEP of 3Dimensional Coaching and a national presenter who has delivered workshops to thousands of coaches at every level of sport. From youth sports clubs to college athletic departments, from local school districts to National conventions, from Florida to California, Wes has captured audiences with the 3Dimensional Coaching content while sharing his personal experience of both playing for, and coaching with, a 3D coach. Wes played college football at Northwest Missouri State University where he started on back-to-back NCAA DII National Championship teams. Upon graduation, he began his coaching career at Northwest while completing his Master’s degree in Athletic Administration. Since that time, his career has shifted from on-field coaching to coaching both athletes and coaches in all areas of life. Along with presenting 3Dimensional Coaching workshops/clinics, Wes serves as an adjunct lecturer at NWMSU where he teaches the 3D Coaching course to graduate students. resides in St. Joseph, MO, where he lives with his wife Amy and their 4 children.   In this podcast, Wes and Cindra talk about: The 3 Dimensions of Coaching Why Love is Important in Coaching and Leadership His Definition of Love Ways to Coach Love and the Heart Why Sharing Your purpose and Story is at the Heart of Relationship Building You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/wes.

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, Certified Mental Performance Coach and Keynote Speaker. And I'm excited today that you are here for episode 298, almost episode 300 maybe, with Wes Simmons. So I'm excited that you're here ready to listen to Wes and you know if you know that mindset is essential to your success then you're in the right place

because every week we talk about various topics related to mindset and today we talk to Wes about psychology, heart, and coaching skill. Wes Simmons is the CEO of Three Dimensional Coaching, something I heard about several years ago at an athletic director's conference. And Wes is also a national presenter who has delivered workshops to thousands of coaches at every level of sport. You know, from youth sport clubs to college athletic departments, from local school districts to national conventions, from Florida to California, Wes has captured audiences with a three-dimensional coaching content while sharing his own personal experience of both playing for and coaching with a 3D coach. So Wes played football at Northwest Missouri State University, where he started on

back-to-back Division II National Championship teams. And after graduation, he began his coaching career at Northwest in his master's degree in athletic administration. You know, since that time, his career has shifted from on-field coaching to coaching both athletes and coaches in all areas of their lives. Wes also serves as an adjunct lecturer at Northwest Missouri State, where he teaches a 3D coaching course to graduate students. Wes lives in St. Joseph, Missouri, with his wife and four children. And today, Wes and I talk about various topics. We talk about what the three dimensions of coaching are. We talk a lot about love and heart.

Those are my questions for Wes. And so much of our conversation revolves on, like, how do we actually lead and coach with our heart? And he talks about what love is and his definition of love which I thought was really awesome. We talk about ways to coach love and coach from the heart, why love is actually really important to coaching and leadership and he shares with us really practical tools that we can implement in our leadership and specifically how sharing our purpose and our story is at the heart of relationship building. Now, there's several things that are my favorite in this podcast. First, he talks about how love is the most motivational force in the universe.

And second, I would encourage you to listen for the spotlight drill that he talks about at the end of the podcast and think about how you might use that in your leadership as well. Without further ado, let's bring on Wes. Wes, thank you so much for joining us today on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. How's everything going today over there for you? We are doing well here. Kids are home for Christmas break and, you know, so it's a little hectic around here, but I'm excited to carve out a few minutes here to chat with you and learn more from you and talk a little bit about 3D coaching.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. I know as people are listening to this, it's the holiday season, so we wish everyone happy holidays. And thank you so much for joining us. So, Wes, to kind of get us started, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now. In 95, I was a senior in high school school and I was kind of one of those tweener kids coming out. Football was my main sport, going through the recruiting process. But the reality came in, you know, after Christmas break, that my only official visit offers were Division II schools. Really didn't know a lot about the recruiting process and all that thing, all those

kind of issues. So I kind of randomly set up visits without really knowing much about any of these smaller schools. And there was one school on the planet, though, that I thought that I'm not going to. And that was a school called Northwest Missouri State University, where my parents went. I think as an 18-year-old, I had enough maybe, you know, rebel in me that I want to do something different, go 500 miles away from there. So, you know, I decided I'm going to take the trip just for the fun of it. And even though I'd kind of made up my mind that's not where somewhere I'd be interested in going. But when

I showed up on that campus, you could just tell there was something different about the staff, the coaching staff and the culture they were creating. Now my mentor, Mel Churchman, he just got inducted into the Hall of Fame for college football last year, along with Frank Beamer and Mac Brown. He was the D2 guy. A lot of people hadn't heard of, but I'd heard of him because, you know, he had made such an impact in my life. And, you know, when he was taking over that program, him and his staff, you know, they hadn't had back-to-back winning seasons in 20 years.

They were terrible with facilities, really no tradition or any real reason that somebody like me would want to go there, especially because it was literally the worst offer I had financially. But there was an it factor. There was an it factor. And, you know, the beauty of that program drew me in. And I remember coming home from that visit, letting everyone know, I'm signing there, you know, the beauty of that program drew me in. And I remember coming home from that visit, letting everyone know, I'm signing there, you know. Everyone's like, why? Why would you do

that? And I didn't have a real good answer for it. I didn't have language for it. But I just, I said, there's an it factor. Well, that translated into a great experience there. One that's very formative in my life. We've had a lot of success. We won two national titles there. They've sustained that success over the years pretty consistently. And that was just such a big part of my narrative. And I was just passionate about other kids. I wish every kid could have a coach like Coach Churchman in their life. Well, in 2009 was the first time I ever heard Dr. Jeff Duke share what we call the 3D framework. And for me, it was this aha moment because it was like, that's it. That gives language to what I was able to experience as a player and then later as a coach.

You know, Coach Churchill would not have self-identified as a 3D coach, but that's what he was. He was skilled. You know, him and his staff were very skilled at coaching the fundamentals, but they were also very intentional in engaging the mind, and they were focused on capturing the heart. And the result of that was this environment where relationships flourished and performance went through the roof. So that's my passion for what I do because I was able to play for

and coach with what I would describe as three-dimensional coaches. And as I mentioned, not to be redundant, but I believe every kid, my desire is that every kid have at least one 3D coach in their life. Fortunately, a lot of times they don't. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, first of all, I do some work in the Division II football. I work with Minnesota State football, which we were just chatting. They just played the national championship game on Saturday. So we lost by a touchdown, which is hard.

But I even think in that program, there are a lot of 3D coaches, right? Coaches that really connect with the athletes. It is not just about performance, but about relationships and like what you said about the mind and capturing the heart. Like what was the language that these coaches used? Cause I want to ask you these kinds of questions so that as people are listening, maybe they are coaches or they're leaders and, you know, just if they're, they might be coaching maybe business. And so I want us to kind of explore these ideas,

but what did you see that your coaches talked about? Well, that also taps into the reason I'm passionate about what we're doing now is because we're giving a language that I don't think existed priorly, you know, with any real intentionality. You know, I was, you know, when I think back on Coach T, he had great mentors in his life and he coached long enough that he began to figure some of these things out. I think the closest thing that you, that we talked about all the time was, you know, family. It's about relationships. It's about valuing people over performance, uh, character. You know,

these are some of the buzzwords, but you know, the thing that I've recognized in dealing with coaches and just leaders in general over the years is that everyone kind of has their system and they have their language. But what gives me a passion for what we're doing with 3D is that we can bottle that up into a language that, and then train to that so that we don't have, you know, a lot of coaches don't have a great coach that was a mentor, you know, and I think coaching is one of those professions that's very much, it's one of the few professions that's really very much like an apprenticeship type position.

Most coaches just coach the way they were coached. You know, and I think a lot of my coaches had great coaches in their life. They emulated that. And then again, they coach long enough, they start to figure some of this stuff out. So the foundation's there, the foundation of character's there. And then just by trial and error, over time, they really fine tune their system. What we desire to do is because we have a language and a framework, we can be intentional about coaching the next generation where they don't have

to maybe learn all the lessons the hard way and, and stumble ahead into, you know, best practices with, with a lot of regret in the rearview mirror. Absolutely. For sure. You know, Wes, when I think about when I first heard about 3D Coach, I heard it and I got Jeff Duke's book after I went to an athletic director's conference where there are a lot of ADs and there were coaches. So that's cool because the people we're talking about are the people that you want to be talking about it. But for those people who aren't sure what 3d coaching is, can you give us just like a snapshot

of what that means? And like, um, the language that you might use to refer to 3d coaching? Absolutely. The, the way we think of 3d is it's a framework for coaching built on a foundation of purpose. Now to unpack that, you know, if you think about the role of a framework that shapes something, right? And we'd like to think of 3D as a framework for coaching that can help coaches with great intentionality shape a transformational culture. You know, and so I'm standing here at my house and the reason there's not a big pile of rubble on top of me is because there's a framework that gives this house shape, right?

And that's part of the value of it, I think, is that with a framework, we can help coaches not just be ethereal and, hey, we want to be positive coaches or we want to be transformational coaches. You know, there's a lot of words like that, which I certainly like, and we utilize those kind of words. But at the same time, those things can be tough concepts for certain coaches

and administrators that are trying to install a culture to grasp. So 3D is a framework for coaching that can give shape to a transformational culture, but it's built on a foundation of purpose. So we consider the purpose, a coach clearly understanding why she or he coaches as foundational. And then the 3D framework can help them flesh that out. Real quick, the framework, the three dimensions are really the three components of humanity, really. So this has great application not only in coaching, but teaching and business and really all forms of leadership. And if you want to be a great coach or a leader, you need to coach or lead in all three dimensions. The first dimension has to do with the skill set.

It's the fundamentals. In sport, we're talking about things like strength, power, cardiovascular, speed, quickness, agility, tactics, repetition. You know, and if you're going to be a great coach, you've got to be great there, or you're not a great coach yet. Yeah. But that's where most coaches stop, you know. And so what we've found in research and from experience is about 75 to 80 percent of coaches are what we would describe as first dimension coaches only, which by that we mean, well, first of all, what we don't mean is that coaches don't deal with other issues when they arise. It's just we're talking proactive strategy. So when we go around and we pull coaches and ask them questions like, hey, coach, what's your off-season strategy to get your athletes bigger, faster, stronger? They can nail it.

You know, they have that fine-tuned and defined out. But if we were to say, hey, coach, what's your pre-season strategy for a second-dimension issue like motivation, confidence, emotions, team cohesion, goal setting. You know, we can only find about 15 to 20 percent could really articulate the same kind of intentionality that they bring to the second dimension, which is the mindset. It's more of the psychology as they do the first dimension. So level one is the skill set. Level two is the mindset. And the third dimension is what we call the heart set you know that's that's that deeper executive center of the being where things such as identity character significance self-worth value purpose you know those are third dimension attributes in our

framework and we can only find five maybe ten percent of coaches that had any kind of real strategy for the third dimension like they do the first dimension so it's not really a you know to be a three-dimensional coach does not mean that you're not a one-dimensional coach it means that you're it's holistic you know we're going to be just as intentional about engaging the mind and heart as we are the physicality of the game, knowing that when people flourish in all three dimensions, not only does performance improve, but coaches, because of their influence and the impact that they have, they leave a tremendous legacy all by how they coach. So that's a snapshot of our framework.

And I think the last thing I'll say real quick is part of the power of it is it helps you categorize your thoughts and therefore think in a new way. When coaches don't have strategies for the second and third dimension, what tends to happen is they try to fix everything in the first dimension. Sure. Things like team cohesion, which is really about relationships, right? You'll hear coaches say things like, okay, we're either going to get along or we're going to run, which is really a cardiovascular strategy applied to a relational issue. Or if you're not going to be motivated, then just push the tire across the field or something like that.

So that's a power or a strength strategy. So we want to help coaches deal with the issues with with appropriate strategy so that we get beyond really just mere behavior modification to heart transformation yeah i love that and i remember seeing this kind of pyramid it's like the skill set is on the bottom then psychology and hearts at the top right It's like a pyramid of these three dimensions. Yes. We use a pyramid diagram. The one thing that, you know, in a lot of ways you can make a case for a Venn diagram or something like that because the reality is it's not hierarchical. But we just wanted to give coaches a, because one dimension

as you know, and you can coach me up on them, sure. One dimension affects the other two, you know, so they're all integrated. And, but the pyramid diagram just kind of helps give a picture to it where coaches can just make sense of it. And it's simple, which I think is helpful. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the third dimension, the heart, right? Because that there might be like less written out there about, you know, the heart over the psychology or the skillset. I don't know, maybe we can argue that, you know, lots of different ways. But when, and I love that what you included in there is like identity,

character, values, purpose, significance. Wow. You know, these are some really important ideas. So what do you think about, you know, best practices when you watch coaches who are really great at coaching the third dimension of the heart? What are the things that they do or don't do? Well, I think that the one thing that great coaches that are great three-dimensional coaches do is that they focus less on the outcome and more on the process, and that that process would be driven by character. And so character is a third-dimension attribute of the heart. And that's one of the great kind of American truisms anyways is that sport builds character, right?

We hear things like that. But one of the things we try to help coaches understand is that while there's truth in that it's not a complete picture of the truth because you've got to understand really what's meant by the word character so we do workshops all the time this is always one of my favorite things to do is to ask the audience of coaches true or false sports builds character about half the half the hand shoot up and say true okay I think the other half are

just reluctant to shoot their hand up because they think it's a trick question sure yeah that's right true you know but but by default we all kind of have subscribed to that and that's why we invest so much time and energy effort money into sport is because we do recognize that there's there's great qualities that can be formed in us through a healthy participation in sports. As I pull the bold and brave ones that have their hands up and ask them, what character does sport build? You always hear about the same five or six answers. You hear, you know, teamwork, commitment, sacrifice, you know, overcoming adversity, those types of character attributes to which I would say,

yes, I agree with that. But then I always hasten to add that, you know, think of it like this, could you be a hardworking, teamwork-oriented, sacrificing, committed terrorist? And it always kind of, an uncomfortable silence comes over the room because we all recognize, yeah, those are all very good descriptors of somebody who's committed to the cause of, you know, whatever they're terrorizing over or whatever. Right. So, you know, those are, we'd like to describe that as performance character, but there's a difference between performance character and moral character and so what we try to help coaches understand is that sport does a great job of coaching these things left

to itself but this moral component is really modeled and taught by a coach and those are the issues of honesty and justice and you know responsibility and you know we look at the research on that. It's been pretty conclusive studies with the Ham Speller Moral Reasoning Survey, you know, the Josephson Institute found the same thing, that the sport left to itself, the longer kids are involved in sport, it builds performance character, but the default mode is to erode moral character. So, you know, Which fried my circuits the first time I heard it.

But when you start thinking about it, it kind of makes sense because competition left to itself can easily become an exercise in self-interest. So to me, the greatest coaches, they first embody both types of character. They are hardworking. They are committed. They are sacrificing. But there's a moral component that brings a whole nother level of beauty to it. And therefore, it's attractive and worth emulating and very impactful on the athletes that they leave or lead. Excuse me. So I would say that's one thing is that. To you know, we always tell coaches, don't be a tour guide to a land you haven't traveled.

This is your journey first. But when a coach embodies the right kind of character, it's just communicable to those kids that are athletes that are looking up to them because their position of influence. And then I think the other thing I would say on the third dimension, that's very important in our day and age is that we have got to come together as a sporting community, really look at a lot of the research that is being done on these issues of performance-based identity and help kids and young people understand that sports are what they do.

It's not who they are. Absolutely. Because it's causing, I'd like to get your perspective on that but but i know you're probably reading a lot of the same things i am on this whole new kind of buzzword of performance anxiety and you know i just i perceive kind of a a nuclear bomb of mental health issues on the horizon if we don't start pushing back against some of the the pressures that we're all under to just perform perform perform perform perform in that first dimension yeah and not have those

things properly yeah yeah i think we're already seeing it right the rise of mental health issues and the rise of anxiety and like college athletics high school athletics even you know more pros are talking about the issues that they experience so i think that's already happening you know, more pros are talking about the issues that they experience. So I think that's already happening, you know, but you're right. It's like, I kind of, maybe something very similar when an athlete fails that I talk about how failure is not, failure is an event, not who they are. And sometimes they, and it's difficult, you know, I just was at Saturday at the national championship game and I saw, you know, some mistakes, you know, and it's easy. I think maybe our default is to blame ourselves and, you know, that, you know, we're a failure, but that's not true, right? It's just something that we did. So definitely, I think

athletes need to be educated on this. Coaches need to be educated because I think you're right, like coaches aren't necessarily educated in these things formally, right, that they just kind of learn from previous coaches. And maybe a previous coach might have maybe said something after they failed or punished them after failure. So it might be easy to do the same as a coach. There's no question, you know, and the thing you said there that I often think about is, you know, how coaches have the least amount of training in precisely the areas they can have the greatest impact, and what a coach says, what a coach does, and how they make an athlete feel will often be remembered for a lifetime, so, you know, this great power requires great character

and great caution for that to be a blessing and not a curse, so couldn't agree more, you know, this great power requires great character and great caution for that to be a blessing and not a curse. So I couldn't agree more. You know, and it expands beyond sports. It's just that's where he's – that's my world. That's where I live and see it everywhere. But it's really just any profession of life or just any phase of life, whether you're in the business world or any other you know sector I think a recipe for an unhealthy existence is to have your whole identity and worth and value all predicated by your performance you know those issues are inherent and

you know that's what breeds that that wrong understanding I think really breathe breeds transactional relationships. And, you know, a lot of unintended wounding takes place when we only result to people by the numbers, where that's the bottom line in the business world or a stat line in the sports world. Yeah, and I think sometimes as athletes we can get really wrapped up in our own athletic identity, which then becomes an issue because when we don't perform up to our best or when we transition out of sport that can make it really difficult so i you know i'm speaking from experience i think this is what yeah this is why

your your work is really important because it's helping educate coaches in these areas? Okay, really what we do though, you know, is as a framework we try to, we're our partnering organization. So when we work with a school district, when we work with an athletic organization, whether it be a club, a college, university, athletic department, really what we provide is a baseline of training on these issues and And it's a shallow dive, you know, into the three dimensions. We don't go real in depth, but we want to create that common language, that common framework, and a foundation of knowledge that we all can share as a community, and then learn to speak that language together. But on an ongoing basis, the gift that we can give an organization is that framework

that can now be fleshed out with a lot of open source resources and programs because there's a lot of great content experts out there like yourself that we seek to partner with to say, okay, we're going to try to get everyone thinking in the same way. We want to give them the same framework. And now as an athletic director or whoever's leading that organization, there's a lot of autonomy where they can partner, you know, they can bring other resources that do maybe more of a deep dive into a content area to help coaches continue learning.

So really that's what we try to do is create a foundational training that sets the stage for a lifelong learning. But it all kind of starts with giving them a, I'll put it this way. We don't think of 3D coaching as like a program or a product that sits on a shelf and has a shelf life. It's more like a shelf. It doesn that sits on a shelf and has a shelf life. Yeah. It's more like a shelf. It doesn't sit on a shelf. It is a shelf.

And so the idea is once you kind of have that framework in mind or that shelf picture in your head, then it creates an opportunity to quote, stock the shelves with other great content that takes the learning deeper on an ongoing basis. So really there's no end to it. Yeah. And I think, isn't that true? Like as professionals, we have to continue to grow and learn. And as coaches, you know, you're,

one thing I'm seeing is that athletes are changing even, you know, compared to how they were five or 10 years ago. Do you see the same thing and how do you see that athletes in general are changing? Well, it's, it's a rapid change, even from when I came up. You know, I'm 41. And so my experience playing sports in the 80s and 90s, my last year playing college athletics was 2000. You know, it is fundamentally different than what I experienced as a kid. And, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons why. Some of the more obvious ones that, well, they're obvious to me

because now I've been cursed with knowledge. You know, I always think of the curse of knowledge as once you know something, you can't unknow it. Yeah, that's true. And be true to yourself. So I didn't come up about this myself necessarily, but the light's been shed on some major issues that I think have changed. Obviously, technology has changed the way kids play.

And then I'd say the other thing is the monetization of youth sports has changed the way kids play sports. So the key, you know, the common denominator in both of those issues is play. I think that, you know, I don't know how it is where you're at, but everywhere I go around the country, I'm driving home and through the neighborhoods, there's not a lot of unstructured free play going on anywhere. You know, there's not pickup basketball games and there's not wiffle ball games and there's not, you know, kids just out playing in the neighborhood. So, and then what activity they are getting is all structured and governed by adults at younger and younger and younger ages.

So, I mean, I can't do any better than the research that Dr. Peter Gray at Boston College has written a lot about, but he makes a strong case for at least the correlation between the lack of free play the kids are experiencing and the reason that why the 21st century adolescents seem to be more anxious, more depressed, and maybe less resilient than times past, you know, maybe ever. So I think that's one major factor and something that's changed since when I was a kid. Yeah, for sure. I think about all of that's changed, you know, when I was a kid as well.

And I have two boys, and we're trying to get them playing outside as much as we can, but it's like, you know, what they really want to do is play video games, you know, so as parents, we have to limit that. Wes, one of the things that I heard you talking about in a different interview I listened to is like this idea of love, right? I think the idea of loving and building relationships with the athletes that you coach is really at the heart, the heart piece of the 3D model. But sometimes when I talk to coaches about that, they might say, well, I don't know, should I really love them? You know, that seems like kind of an extreme word. What are your thoughts on that? And like, maybe some best practices on building that relationship with

your athletes? Well, I think that there's nothing wrong with the word, but the problem with the word in the English language is that it means too many things. You know, we've got one word for love. So we mean that for romantic love, obviously, but we can also use it in as a euphemism for like, so we say things like, Oh, I love pizza and I love ice cream and I love the Chiefs and I used to love the Royals back in like 2015 I'm gonna can't sit here anymore oh and then I love my wife and kids too right sure yeah the question is like okay do all those mean the same thing yeah that's right love needs definition and that's always one of the things that I want to help coaches think through is that we're not talking about, obviously, the romantic type of love. But that's where it can get obviously misconstrued or uncomfortable because, again, we have that one word that means everything.

And when something means everything, it means nothing. So we like to define it for coaches or just leaders in general. And then, and then illustrate a point that again, once they know, I don't think they can know. Um, and so we'd like to describe love as sacrificial giving for the benefit of others. That's the kind of love that motivates.

That's the kind of love we're talking about when it's self-sacrifice for the other benefit of others. That's the kind of love that will transform a team, an organization, a community. And I would commit the world, you know, that's the kind of love that we're talking about. And I always like to help coaches think of it like this, that you will do more for people you love than you'll do for anybody else. I mean, and they may not see it immediately, so I usually use an example like this.

Listen, if you need a kidney and I'm a match, or let's flip that around. If I need a kidney and you're a match, it's like, are you going to give him the kidney? I don't know.

We just met. It's a major sacrifice, right? Right. But, you know it's like are you going to give him a kidney i don't know we just met i don't you know major sacrifice right right but in my case if it was my wife or kids who needed a kidney and i'm a match of course yeah guess who's motivated like let's go like what are we waiting for time's ticking we're burning daylight get me to the hospital give me on the table drug me up cut me open to get it out of me. Put it in there. Let's go. Why?

Because love is the most powerful motivational force in the entire universe. When we see it like that, it's so obvious. It should be self-evident, but it's not. So what I like to help coaches think about is when it comes to motivating your team, which is a huge part of your job as a coach, right? If you're a coach or a leader, part of your job is to help intrinsically motivate your team. Extrinsic motivation has its place. I get that. But if that's part of your job though, coach, why wouldn't you harness the most powerful motivational force in the

universe? And when you start to make sense of it like that, it's kind of like, yeah, because I think that the only other option when it comes to motivation and, you know, I'd love your perspective on this, but I think a lot about this.

I'm not written much about this because I'm not sure I've passed the test of experts like you. But the way I think about it, that really when it comes to motivation, there's really only two options. It's going to be some manifestation of love or it's going to be some manifestation of fear. And those are the two forces that you can somehow manipulate or maneuver or harness and get people to move. Well, I believe that fear-based motivation is certainly a diminishing return. It's going to require more and more. It's going to deliver less and less, like all other forms of extrinsic motivation. And then eventually, it's just going to begin to have that harming effect on really what you're trying to accomplish.

Whereas I believe that when you motivate with love, the opposite of that is true. Over time, it requires less and less, but it delivers more and more. So, you know, that's a little ethereal, I guess, but it's a point to be made. And then really it's as simple as, you know, I think the golden rule, you know, it's, it's, you start to treat people the way you want to be treated. You start to value relationships over performance. You, you, you connect with the heart. You don't have to overcomplicate it, but when you start to get relationships right it's amazing how performance will improve and again I think the more important thing is the legacy that you leave as a coach

is profound and you at the end of life you look back and feel really good about the difference you made in this world well and I think about you know the top five leaders who had the most influence on me. And I would say at least two or maybe three of those are my high school and college coaches, you know, because they really, yeah, it's amazing. Very, you know, a lot, a lot of years ago, but they were the people who said, Sindra, you can, you can do this, or you can do that, or you're really talented, or you have these skills, you know? And so they gave me the confidence and the belief in myself. I hear that what you're saying is like coaches really have a major impact on young people's lives.

I really appreciate what you said about love is the most motivational force in the universe. Like, wow, that was really powerful. And then kind of the practical ways you're saying this is like treat people the way that you want to be treated, connect from the heart, keep your relationships right. Can you, I want to try to like make it really practical for those leaders and coaches who are listening and maybe even parents, right? Because I think about how we can, I can use this in my parenting, but is there any other strategies that you would suggest, you know, coaches or leaders use to kind of keep this love front and center? Yeah, I think there's two things that we challenge coaches with

that have been through our training. Of course, our training helps them get to the point where they can clearly articulate their transformational purpose as a coach. You know, so if you were to ask me, why do I coach? You know, I coach to inspire athletes and coaches, really, coaches and athletes to pursue excellence in sports and in life while embracing the process and enjoying the journey. So, I mean, that's a formalized statement that I've worked on and it's worked on me. But the idea is that that has become really a filter or, you know, a sliv, I guess, if you will, for every kind of thing we're trying to do in our programs that I'm involved in coaching, you know, that, that governor of every interaction

and activity that takes place, you know, and if that's authentic and that is, is part of who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing. And I think that's one of the most powerful tools a coach has is to share your purpose. I mean, coaches are really good at sharing their goals with the team and maybe even the parents of the athletes and those types of things. If you share your goals, why not share your purpose? Because if your purpose is based in relationships and you're seeking to live that out and you can articulate that, well, one thing it does is it begins to redefine success for the group, not in terms of just wins and losses, and it begins to cultivate that environment where relationships flourish because it's not just about hanging

another banner. It's about the transcendent cause of establishing relationships that will last forever, and we want those to be healthy. So, you know, to share your purpose, I think is a, is a great tool. And then I think another one is to share your story. Yeah. If you want to connect with the heart of people, you got to become real to them, you know, and too many coaches from my experience, you know, because they've not created a partnership with parents or they put walls up, you know, walls aren't good for relationships.

Right. So how do we tear those down? And one of the most powerful things we have is to share your story. Everyone's got a story. And stories connect. And it's not about the imperfect. A lot of people are scared of their story, maybe to share that. But I think that when it comes to establishing those relationships,

humility and authenticity and transparency are keys. And you have to tell them everything. But if you tell them some of your story and become real people, you start to build trust and trust is the glue of all relationships. Yeah. Super good. Yeah. That's super good. And I think about maybe why some coaches don't or what some, why some leaders maybe don't share their purpose or their story maybe because they don't realize what their purpose is. Right. Which your training can do.

But I also think about how that takes so much vulnerability, you know, to like, it's a lot easier for me to teach the X's and O's and the how, but wow, I have to show my own heart and share my purpose and why I'm doing what I'm doing and what my journey has been. That can be really difficult for people, but love the idea just of like how this builds trust. So I'm thinking, Wes, when you follow coaches, are there any coaches that you see that do a great job of, maybe you can give us a few just that you think are role models of coaching the three dimensions of the athlete. Is there any role models that you can think of or people that you think are doing a great job of this? Like specific people? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean,

the one that's, I've already mentioned Mel Churchman, who's my role model, and of course, he's retired now, but that would be, but I think that, you think that this is a language that would apply to some very well-known coaches that we're all very familiar with, people like John Wooden, people like Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne. I mean, there's a lot of great coaches that were very successful. And if you read about why they did what they did, it's very much a three-dimensional approach. But a contemporary example that's fresh on my mind is none other than Dr. Jeff Duke's son, Cameron. And if he was listening, he'd probably feel pretty uncomfortable with this. But there's a great story going on, even as we speak.

They just finished their season. But, you know, a few years back, Edgewater High School in Orlando, Florida, hired Cameron, who's Jeff's son, to take over a program that had a great tradition of excellence, at least athletically, but had been down, you know, had been really down times there.

And, you know, maybe came back and started rebuilding the culture, you know, maybe came back and started rebuilding the culture, you know, and really filtering every interaction and activity through why they're doing what they're doing. They started implementing second-dimensional strategies, things like something we call the spotlight drill, which is a simple strategy that takes place after practice, you know, where, you know, it just takes two minutes, you know, but they bring somebody up into the spotlight and they train these kids to see what's good in their teammate and verbalize it. It's simple. It can almost seem,

it can almost seem corny to a high school kid until you start coaching it up. Then the kids won't let you miss it. So, you know, they do that. They also bring the parents in or that's where they invite the parents come around after, you know, they do that. They also bring the parents in. That's where they invite the parents to come around after, you know, they're all standing around waiting to pick up their kids. You know, so the spotlight drill, just things like that. They started doing off-season team cohesion. Strategies like, you know, one of the things that we try to help coaches think about,

and it's all really just based on Dr. Albert Car's you know dynamics of team cohesion but but that whole idea of group relational you know how do you get the group to come together relationally one of the things that encourages you know one of the best ways to forge that is at least once a year you know as a group go serve somebody less fortunate. Go serve others. You know, and it starts to redefine those issues of entitlement that we're all dealing with and those types of things. So they started doing that. You know, they started taking their kids to orphanages in the off season just to really give them healthy perspective, not only on how thankful they should be that their situation isn't so bad, but just also give them the opportunity to serve others.

And when you start serving others, that's more blessed to give than receive. That starts coming back on you. It starts creating the culture, right? Things like that. They do things like they got tired of all the extrinsic rewards, you know? So what they do at their awards banquet, you know, if you go back about 20 years,

that's another thing that's changed is the sheer number of awards we give out, the size of medals and all this, you know. And so, you know, when I was in high school, you had four awards. You had MVP, most valuable offense, most valuable defense, and maybe like most improved. Right. Maybe a hustle award or something. You know, it's funny, you go to a high school banquet now,

and it's like, you go to a high school banquet now and it's like, everyone gets an award. There's trophies lined up from that side of the stage to the other. So you got MVP offense, sophomore. MVP defense, sophomore. Junior, senior. Everyone's walking out of here or something, right? They got tired of all that. And so they're just like,

you know what? We're going to do an award ceremony where we're going to give any awards. Now, they still do some of the extrinsic awards. They used to do that in the locker room privately. They still value and honor those who do great things in the first dimension. But when it comes to the end-of-the-year celebration, they just started doing things like having the seniors write a letter to their parents about what this program has meant in their life and how it's going to serve them moving forward. And so they'll play the highlight video.

They'll have a meal. And the whole program is just a senior coming up into the front, bringing their parents up, reading this letter to their parents. And it's just beautiful. I mean, everyone's crying and you know they had to move it from you know the high school cafeteria to like the auditorium because you got so many people showing up to the community now wow so just little things like that you know i mean there's there's a million things you can do but what's happened is they went from i think you know over his first year i think they were 9-2 in the second year.

I think they went – I don't know. Somebody go back, check me, and look it up, and I'll be a little bit off. But last year they were in the semifinals, and this year they made it to the state championship game, and they played the number two team in the nation, which was St. Thomas Aquinas from South Florida. And they had – I mean, they looked like a college team. They could compete with Minnesota State or Northwest Missouri State. I mean, it was incredible.

I mean, they had, I think, 13 or 16 Division I commits on that team. Everyone ruled them a, you know, three-touchdown underdog in that state championship game. And they played it, and they lost. They lost 24 to 28. And so it goes to show it's a great picture of what we say you know sometimes other teams are just better in the first dimension right i mean yeah it's hard to beat yeah high school team it's hard for a high school team to beat a college team which in a lot of ways that was. But for the kids you get, they play at a higher level.

Now, they obviously had some great talent as well. But how many times do we see a group of great athletes that never rise above and beyond whatever their expectations just because of their physical skill set? There's something more. And so, you know, it's exciting to watch him and his career. And that, you know, I think Jeff's, he's already told me that probably his next book is really the Chronicle in the last three years. Wow.

That's going to be great. Well, you know, there's so many stories along the way, you know, with the coaching staff, you know, they've seen a coach that was struggling his marriage and their marriage is healed you know and because they're because they are vulnerable because they are real with each other they've created this little pocket of beauty where relationships flourish and now it's impacting their families so anyways i could go on and on well that's awesome i think that's a great example i'm glad i asked you that question because along the way you gave us like even more specific things that coaches could do to kind of foster this 3D coaching, but I'm really hearing a lot of what you said is like psychology and then heart. So Wes, I am so

grateful that you spent some time during the holidays talking with us about best practices and coaching. And I know you have a whole bunch of, like, a certification course and you have a whole bunch of resources for people. So tell us a little bit about that before we wrap up. Absolutely. 3Dinstitute.com. Just as it sounds, number three, letter D, institute.com, is where you can connect.

And then, you know, we've got a pretty active Twitter handle, at 3Dcoaches. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook as well. We love to disconnect with more people. And anybody that wants to dive a little deeper, I think the website's the best place to go. Okay, awesome. So 3Dinstitute.com. And Wes, here's what I got from the interview. So I was taking some good notes as we were chatting to kind of summarize what you talked about. And you talked about really three dimensions of coaching, the skill set, the psychology, and the heart. And I liked what you said about, you know, sometimes if coaches don't have enough strategies for the psychology or the heart, they overcoach the skill set, you know, the main piece. You talked about sport is not who people are, but it's about what they do. I think that's powerful. And then I loved our conversation about love and how you defined love as like a sacrificial giving for the benefit

of others and how it's really like a motivational force. And you gave us a lot of different ways that we can incorporate love into our coaching and our leadership. But one that I really heard from you is like showing your purpose and telling your story and being vulnerable about that to connect with people in a real way. And loved the conversation at the end about that example of Jeff Duke's son. And the one thing I heard from that

was like the spotlight drill and how cool would that be to end practice with just two minutes bringing someone up in the spotlight and having the athletes tell them what's great about their teammates. So I am so grateful that you spent some time with us. Do you have any kind of final thoughts or advice for everybody who's listening out there? I just encourage people to stick with it. You know, we're at a time where we desperately need coaches who know why they're doing it to stay committed to the cause.

I think we have a generation of young people that are still flocking to sport, but they're being weeded out at younger and younger ages and coaches are getting burnt out. And, you know, it's tough. It's tough to keep coaches in the business. And I would say that, you know, I understand that, you know, the financial incentives aren't always what they should be and those types of things. But when you understand your transformational purpose, then it's hard to put a price tag on that. And we desperately need that as a society, I believe, right now. So I just want to say thank you to all of those who are doing such a great job. Keep going.

Persevere. We need you. Awesome. Thank you, Wes. We do need all those coaches out there, so keep going. So thank you again so much for being here, Wes, sharing your wisdom. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast,

make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.