The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - What Matt Serra Taught Me About Onboarding Teams | BJJ, Leadership, and PMO Culture

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

What can PMO leaders, healthcare IT teams, and organizational leaders learn from UFC Hall of Famer Matt Serra’s approach to onboarding new Brazilian Jiu Jitsu students?Quite a bit.In this episode, What Matt Serra Taught Me About Onboarding Teams, Kevin Pannell reflects on lessons from BJJ, emergency management, healthcare IT, and PMO leadership to explore why new employees are basically white belts and why good onboarding matters more than most organizations realize.The conversation covers:• onboarding and organizational culture• confidence through repetition• balancing accountability with support• psychological safety and leadership• progressive exposure versus overwhelming people• lessons from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Incident Management TeamsA central theme throughout the episode: “New people do not need to be tested immediately. They need to be developed.”Own your mind. Move your body. Anchor your spirit.Godspeed, y’all.

Starting new jiu-jitsu school and starting a new job have more in common than most people realize. You walk into a room where everybody already understands the language, systems, expectations, and culture while you're just trying to figure out where you fit and whether you belong there at all. Recently, I read an article by Claudia Martin from April 17, 2026, titled UFC Hall of Famer explains how to spot a good jujitsu gym, where Matt Sarah talked about what makes a good academy and how he approaches beginners. As I read through it, I realized he was really describing something much bigger than Jiu-Jitsu. He was talking about culture, onboarding, leadership, and the responsibility experience people have when somebody knew walks through the door. Own your mind, move your body, anchor your spirit. This is Own Move Anchor with Kevin Pennell.

Here we focus on practical leadership, clear thinking, physical readiness, and staying steady when life and work get heavy. Drawing from emergency response, health care, project leadership in everyday life, Each episode connects real world experience to actions you can apply immediately. Three pillars, one powerful you. You can find more at unmoveanchor.com, and if you're getting value from the show, like, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's get into it.

My first presumption you get to experience was through an eight-week intro program. During those eight weeks, we learned the basic position, some escapes, some submissions, and we did all wearing t-shirts and shorts, no ghee at this point. Looking back, it was a really smart onboarding process. Nobody was trying to prove how tough they were, nobody was trying to win the room. The goal was simple. Help new people understand enough about Jiu-Jitsu to decide whether they wanted to continue showing up. Then later I moved and walked into a completely different gym.

At that point, it was already a white belt with maybe not quite a year of experience. I still remember walking in wondering whether I would fit there, whether I'd be accepted, whether I'd get smashed immediately, all the normal things people think when they walk into a new environment. Instead, I was welcomed. The structure felt familiar, warm up, drill, then live roll. There was consistency, there was process, there was support. Then I just kept grinding year after year. Now I'm a 52-year-old purple belt.

And honestly, I think that original onboarding process and the years of steady instruction from coaches and training partners are a huge reason I stayed with Jiu-Jitsu long term. That matters because onboarding matters everywhere. One of the things Sarah said that stood out immediately was how important the energy of a play is. He talked about whether people are smiling, whether the instructor greets new people, whether the environment feels welcoming or full of ego. That applies directly to organizations. People know pretty quickly whether they joined a healthy team or not. I experienced this when I moved into a state-level healthcare preparedness role. Before that, I'd worked locally and regionally

here in Virginia. Now suddenly, I was supporting hospital and healthcare preparedness at the state level. Parts of the work were great, parts were monotonous, parts were draining. But the big, the big The bigger issue was the culture. The environment slowly became one where people felt pressure to constantly be visible to others would perceive them as productive. Not collaborative, not outcome focus, just visibly present. And listen, I am not anti-office. I am not anti-relationship building. A huge part of my career success has come from building relationships and sitting down with people face to face.

But when everybody feels pressure to constantly perform productivity instead of actually collaborating becomes exhausting. comes exhausting, especially when the collaboration itself is inconsistent. That kind of culture slowly drains motivation. People know when culture is authentic, and they definitely know when it is not. I think a lot of leaders underestimate how stressful it is for somebody new to enter an unfamiliar environment. Even highly experienced people can feel completely out of place when they do not yet understand the systems, personalities, politics, workflows, or expectations. In Jiu-Jitsu, beginners react incorrectly under pressure because instinct takes over. Matt Serra talked about new people pushing the wrong direction, exposing their back, or panicking

because they simply do not know what to do yet. The same thing happens in organizations. New employees overcommunicate, undercommunicate, escalate too quickly, avoid asking questions, or try to prove themselves by staying constantly busy instead of slowing down enough to actually learn the environment first. Not because they're weak, usually because they're overreact. And honestly, I've made plenty of mistakes throughout my own career. I've sent data before checking it fully. I've misspoken about dates and confused people.

Everybody has. The difference is whether you learn from those moments and whether leaders help people recover and improve instead of making them feel like one mistake defines them. Over time, I learned from those experience and started helping newer team members avoid the same landmines. That is leadership too. One of the strongest points Sarah made was that he does not throw beginners directly into live rolling right away. Instead, they spend time learning techniques,

warming up, drilling, and gradually building confidence before full resistance training. Honestly, that's exactly how onboarding should be in PMOs, healthcare IT, emergency management, teams, and leadership environments. Giving new people even highly competent people too much responsibility too early is poor leadership. It assumes people should magically know the right stakeholders, understand organizational politics, send the perfect email, navigate personalities, and immediately function as some kind of turnkey solution. That is not realistic. That does not mean people should not be skilled at their core responsibilities. They absolutely should be. But leaders still have a responsibility to help people understand who's who, what matters, how communication flows,

where decisions happen, and how their experience can help move the organization forward. That takes deliberate onboarding and it takes metered onboarding. I've seen this in project management especially. Sometimes leaders hand somebody a politically sensitive project or a difficult steering committee before they even understand the organization itself. Then leadership gets frustrated when the person struggles, but the reality is we skip the development process. Nobody starts as a black belt. Nobody walks calmly into chaos on day one. Confidence gets built through repetitions, observation, coaching, failure, adjustment, and experience. At this point in my life, I can usually tell you within about 10 to 15 seconds,

how it would pull together a team I don't know in a place I've never been and help produce results people initially think are impossible. That confidence did not come from a certification. It came from failing, succeeding, adjusting, recalibrating, and continuing to move forward through military service, fatherhood, marriage, health grant, team, emergency management, public safety. and program leadership. That kind of confidence gets earned slowly,

not downloaded instantly. Another thing I appreciated about Sarah's perspective was that he acknowledged how hard it is to just walk into the room in the first place. That applies everywhere. Sometimes the hardest part for people is not the work itself. It's showing up feeling uncertain

and experience or intimidated. I've been fortunate throughout my career and volunteer work to have steady people around me who helped me recalibrate when I get too locked into process. are too frustrated by resistance to change. My fire and law enforcement teammates on our local and regional incident management teams taught

me something years ago that sticks with me. Some of the changes I wanted to push were right, but the people involved were not ready for the pace or scale of change I thought should happen. And that mattered because people are the most important part of any plan. So instead of forcing change, we started helping partners gradually see the value of supportive, collaborative, all hazards planning, and operational execution. We chipped away at it over time and eventually it worked. I'm really thankful for that.

So we're our partners. That experience reinforced something I still believe strongly today. Good leadership balances accountability and support. Leaders absolutely need to hold people accountable. Sometimes that means difficult conversations, sometimes documentation, sometimes reprimands. Those are real leadership responsibilities too. But punitive action should always be the last option. after leaders have done everything responsible to coach, support, clarify expectations,

and help people succeed. Because eventually leaders cannot own another adult's actions for them. The longer I lead teams and work with organizations, the more I believe onboarding shapes long-term culture. Good onboarding should include listening to the new hire's expectations, sharing leadership's expectations clearly, helping people build relationships, giving them the tools and knowledge needed to contribute,

and maintaining irregular connection points like bi-weekly one-on-ones. Leaders need to own the onboarding process itself. Leaders need to move alongside new people as they meet teammates, learn systems, and build confidence. And leaders can anchor people by consistently reinforcing the why behind the team, department, and organization in a way that stays practical, transparent, and real. Matt Sarah closed with simple advice. Go into the place, do a trial class, see if you feel like it's a fit. Honestly, that applies to organizations too.

People are evaluating leadership, culture, communication, and emotional climate long before they evaluate governance structure or workflows. And leaders should remember, new people do not need to be tested immediately. They need to be developed. Own your mind. Move your body. Anchor your spirit. Godspeed, if this episode was helpful, share it with someone who could use it.

You could find more at Omnoveanchor.com. I'm on Instagram and X at the Kevin Penne. and on YouTube at Own Move Anchor Today. If you're getting value from the show, please like, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find the show. Own your mind, move your body, anchor your spirit.

Three pillars, one powerful you. Godspeed, y'all.