WHOOP Podcast - Science of Winning, Part 2: Kristen Holmes and Mike Lombardi on building team culture, plus how to promote and enhance key performance traits like grit, character, intrinsic motivation, leadership, and self-concept clarity.

Episode Date: December 11, 2019

In Part 2 of Science of Winning, Kristen Holmes and Mike Lombardi discuss building team culture (3:53), assessing key performance traits (8:17), what it means to have grit (11:48), aligned organizational values (13:28), intrinsic motivation (16:16), self-concept clarity (19:51), leadership starting with self-rule (21:54), speaking once and listening twice (23:25), what is your superpower (24:55), sleep, recovery and fueling behavior (28:06), knowing your team (34:24), and defining core values (38:18).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. Our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among whoop members is a passion to improve.

What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? And now that we've just launched all-new whoop strap 3.0 featuring Whoop Live, which takes real-time training and recovery analysis to the next level, you're going to hear how many of these users are optimizing their body with whoop and with other things in their life. On this podcast, we dig deeper. We interview experts. We interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? What should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the

Whoop Podcast. Grit, for example, that's one of the key performance traits and behaviors. So if you're exceeding standard in terms of your grit, you're resisting short-term temptations for long-term gain. You've got a high degree of optimism, focus, and control. You've used setbacks as an opportunity for growth and learning. Maintains positive outlook and face of adversities. And if you're below standard, you're giving up when things are tough.

You display apathy in the face of challenge or personal disappointment. You make excuses. Hello, folks. On today's podcast, our VP of Performance, Kristen Holmes and elite performance manager, Mike Lombardi, are back with Science of Winning Part 2. Make sure to check out their previous episode on the Science of Winning if you haven't already. Today, Kristen and Mike tap into a deep dive on many of the principles she developed and applied to becoming an NCAA champion coach at Princeton University. They discussed team culture. and how it's built on behaviors, not beliefs, how to promote and enhance key performance traits like grit, character, intrinsic motivation, leadership, and self-concept clarity, and the impact data has on winning

and how it can help make smarter behavioral choices. Whether you're a coach, an athlete, or just someone looking to be better at what you do, there's lots of great stuff in here for you. Without further ado, here are Kristen and Mike. Hey, everybody, I'm Mike Lombardi, elite performance manager here at Woop. And once again, I am joined by Kristen Holmes, our vice president of performance. We are coming back at you with the second edition of Science of Winning.

We've got a lot of feedback. And today we're going to deep dive into culture. A lot of people talk about culture, how important it is. And there's so much gray area that comes along with that, just by saying culture, and people think that all of a sudden it's going to happen. So what we're going to talk about today is how to define culture and both sides of it, both physiological and psychological and how you can really measure that to move your group forward, whether that's a corporate environment and an athletic team environment,

how you measure that and make people better as an individual and how to make the team better. So Kristen, let's jump in. Let's talk about culture. All right. Well, I think at a foundational level, culture is not. what you believe. It's how you behave. And I think that's just important for organizations to understand is I think because we talk a pretty big game, but yet behaviors don't necessarily align or it's just very ill-defined, right? So as a result, like things are super random,

they're unstructured from a behavioral standpoint, and those behaviors aren't necessarily driving toward whatever it is the overall mission is. So I think when you kind of distill it down to the most critical behaviors that you know are absolutely central to drive the organization's mission forward. I think that's the place to kind of start. So it's really defining what those, you know, and this is kind of the first principle, what are the behaviors and traits that are going to lead to whatever outcome it is that you want for your team? And that's like just so central. And then I think the second principle is actually having, kind of mapping those behaviors into a framework that you can actually actually interpret. And that's clear to everyone, to the individual, as well as to all the folks

who are managing or overseeing the team. There should be zero confusion around what those behaviors in action look like. And I think most frameworks in general focus on the psychological side. And we'll say, hey, these are kind of the set of grit is really important. Like we want people to exhibit grit. What is that? What's grit, right? What does that mean? What does that look like from behavioral side. And I think the other issue where folks fall down is they totally ignored the physiological side. And I think definitely on the corporate side and outside of a team environment, they really, really ignore that stuff. Like, that's an area that no one wants to touch. And I think they're just missing an enormous opportunity by not flagging that

in some way that complies with all the regulations that exist in a corporate environment. But I think that if someone can figure out how to incorporate the physiological stuff, I think that would absolutely can transform an organization. And obviously, it's more prevalent on the team side, you know, when you're thinking about sports teams, for example, we're talking about nutrition, we're talking about sleep behavior for the most part. But even still physiological as it ties back to the psychological aspects where people are looking at, well, this person's maybe just not tough enough. Let's just keep using the grit example early on here. If a person is not rested, not fueled, how can you expect a person to do anything? Right.

It's not that they're not tough. They physically cannot do this. Yeah. And I think that's such a great point. And some folks I worked with at University of Iowa, like, you know, a really long time ago, they would always say, if you're recruiting the right folks in your organization and your program, it's never that they don't want to perform. It's usually they can't. They don't have the skill set or the competency. They don't have the right resources.

They don't have the right information. They're not set up to succeed. So generally speaking, in most high performing environments where you've got high performing well-intentioned individuals, they want to perform. It's for some reason they can't. And it could be the physiological pieces, right, the sleep, the nutrition, the diet. rest stress management. You know, it could be a host of physiological factors, but then also just a lack of clarity in the environment. And that's where I think we lead into principle three is being able to actually quantify what is generally like super intangible, right? Culture is just

this like abstract kind of what does that really mean, right? And it means a ton of different things do a ton of different people. But I think when you come at it from the perspective of, what do these behaviors look like in action? Now all of a sudden, you can create a framework around it and actually quantify what those intangibles look like. We'll get into a little bit more of that. And then I think principle four is just the mindset that traits and behaviors are actually skills you develop. So once you define from an organizational perspective, what are the behaviors that are going to really drive my organization forwards? Then folks, if they understand what those behaviors look like in action, they can start to develop habits around how to make that

a possibility for them and how to contribute in the most amazing way possible for their respective organization. So those are kind of like the four principles, I think, that are really central to kind of defining a culture. Right. Again, so if we're just running it back, that was a lot of great information. Just to summarize quickly, there has to be what is the end goal? And then that's what's leading all of these principles that Kristen's been talking about. So you did something pretty unique that probably most people think, hey, I can do this, but then they realize this is a lot of work and it's hard. So then it never actually happens. So this quantification of intangibles, both the psychological and then obviously the physiological. Do you want to talk a

little bit about what that kind of looks like? Yeah, definitely. We had kind of a key performance trait and behavior assessment form that my athletes would fill out once in preseason at the end of preseason and then another time. We did it three times a year and then we started doing it just bookending the kind of academic year. So we ended up doing it twice a year. But yeah, we basically had a scale of one to five and we had 10 different behaviors or traits that I felt were absolutely critical if we wanted to optimize physical and mental and emotional potential and really help the athletes have a framework on how to think about their behaviors. So we had kind of this robust assessment form that outlined the key performing traits in behavior. What I felt was really central

from a behavioral standpoint that would enable the team to achieve all of its goals as well as just from an individual perspective helping the athletes understand what are the behaviors that are really core to our environment that are going to help them achieve everything that they needed to achieve in the classroom and on the field and socially and basically, you know, everything that they kind of strive to be as a human being. And then it would also move the team for it as well. And I think combining both the physiological psychological, as I mentioned before, is really important. So you've got the scale one to five. You've got 10 behaviors and traits. So you've got a total possible point of 50. So if you were to be above exceeding standards across the board for

all these 10 traits, you'd get five points for each one of these traits or behaviors. And you'd have a total point of 50. So the idea is come in as a freshman, for example, probably you do some of these things well, but maybe not a five. So the concept is you score yourself and then everyone else scores you as well. So you get this 360 degree picture of where you think you are on this scale across these behaviors and traits. And then you get an average of where everyone else thinks you sit. And I think that's really important. And that doesn't happen, I think, in enough environments where perception, like you said this other day, perception is reality, right? that's really important. And I think when perception isn't meaning reality, that's the point of discussion. So having this quantified kind of approach to what is considered generally pretty intangible, now of a sudden you're having a way more robust conversation. If you're falling short in an area, your behaviors, your actions are not saying that you're exceeding standards, but in fact, you're below standard. Well, what are the behaviors that I'm exhibiting that people see in me that put me in this spot? And that's where, okay,

hey, this is where people think you are. Let's talk through. How do we get ourselves to a better spot? Right. And people love lists. However, they probably don't like being rated themselves. However, with friction can come growth. So this sort of openness, it's an uncomfortable topic for the most part if it's not framed correctly. So as we're talking about these sort of 10 traits or behaviors, there needs to be an objective qualification of what is exceeding a standard and what is below standard. because what I think is good a five in leadership could be vastly different from someone else or how other teammates are rating it. So to someone that could be, hey, that person's really there for me when I'm down,

and someone else's leads by example, X, Y, Z. But within this sort of traits and scoring system as you're defining it, it's important to have an objective qualifier that every single person understands what each score is. Right. And I can give you just a couple examples. I think what Mike and I'll do is we'll kind of talk through what I defined in my environment as being the key performance traits and behaviors. And what we'll do is we'll supply this template for you. So, and again, every organization is going to have a different viewpoint on what's important and how these actions need to be defined.

But just give you a quick example, grit, for example, that's one of the key performance traits and behaviors. So if you're exceeding standard in terms of your grit, you're resisting short-term temptations for long-term gain. You've got a high degree of optimism, focus, and control. You've used setbacks as an opportunity for growth and learning. maintains positive outlook and face of adversity. So that would be exceeding standards. Above standard, meet standard, you know, kind of you're declining in that from a behavior standpoint. And if you're below standard, you're giving up when things are tough. You display apathy in the face of challenge or personal disappointment. You make excuses. So when you're in a team environment, you kind of define

yourself as having a lot of grit, but yet you get apathetic when things don't go your way or passive aggressive or you're just overtly, like, disappointed when you don't get the playing time you need. You know, those are things that are not cool and acceptable. They weren't acceptable in my environment. And so this gave us the ability to hold people accountable, right? Like, so if grit is critical and we view that as really important behavior to have just as a human being, certainly do succeed in these four years, but in beyond, then, all right, what does the actual behavior look like? And that's what we were able to map kind of in this framework is these an actual definition of what these behaviors and traits look like in action. Right.

And accountability is one of those overarching things where people. people love saying accountability talk about it yeah but there's no but there's no definition right again it's a completely personal definition so if you have 50 people in an organization each with a different understanding of what accountability to oneself and to the team means that's going to be an absolute disaster yeah and you're really setting yourself up for ultimate failure especially as it gets larger and larger so if you have a big team or you are growing a company what you're going to see is if the values aren't aligned and there's not an understanding, people are going to go every which way. And again, it's just going to be a disaster. That kind of leads nicely into the next behavior trait. So, yeah, we're going to talk about the behavioral stuff because it's a little bit easier to quantify the physiological.

It is. We can burn through that. Yeah. But again, these are just suggestions, but these are things that we've seen to be very effective in defining this gray area that's encompassed by. or accountability or, you know, good teamwork. The next one on the assessment is character. Exceeding standards, behaviors aligned with personal and organizational core values. You are a role model and inspiration to others, and you drive the norms. So that's really kind of how we look at character. If you are below standard, you're unwilling to adopt a healthy personal value system. Behaviors do not align with core values of organization.

So this obviously implies that your values are well defined. And I think that's when you're trying to evaluate a high performing organization, that's the first thing I look at is you've got this in a high performance organization. You know, you have the high performers and you have just basically this, if you just imagine like this kind of horizontal scale. And if you've got people on the, anyone who's on the fence from a value perspective and just in a norms perspective, those people because you've got such strong folks kind of. of driving on the exceeding standards standpoint, you've got everyone kind of pushing in that direction. The less defined the values and the norms are, the more you're going to have folks all over that spectrum. I think that's a good way to think about it is how big is that core driving the norms and the values? And if it's less than 50 percent, you're screwed pretty much.

You want it to be at least 80 percent of the organization needs to be on that side of the high performance and driving towards exceeding standards, you know, above standard, exceeding standard, meeting standard, and then you can probably get away with 20% on the other end. But thinking about that ratio, I think is really important. Absolutely. The next couple are deep. They're so deep. Yeah. So for college students, really deep. But I think that's part of this asking the right questions. And this applies at any point. All of these topics are things that can, again, like Kristen said earlier, can be improved upon. And that's why they're on this list. And they're not just a core value. That's the core values that make up the character. So everything

kind of builds upon itself. So there has to be these several layers of framework. It can't just be, hey, we're going to throw this plan in without these other steps first. Totally. It's such a good point. And just to be clear, like, I didn't just pick these out of a hat, right? This is based on a lot, you know, huge amounts of thought, lots of changes over the years in terms of what was really core, but also based on just a lot of research. And the third one we've all kind of heard about intrinsic motivation. But again, what does that actually look like in action? You know, this is really about having a clear life purpose that aligns with your personal passions, your values and your goals. You take initiative to plan and prioritize tasks. Motivation and intent is clear and generally

you are fulfilled. That's what it looks like in our environment. That's what it look like when you're really meeting standards. And this is, I think, what's important is that when you come in as a freshman or you're younger, you're coming out of high school, like, you're not supposed to have like everything figured out. Like, that's not what this is about. It's about asking the right questions of yourself and creating space in your environment to be able to have that dialogue with yourself. And I think, you know, that's a lot of what we talked about in our environment is how do you adopt these behaviors and traits, you know, if leadership will talk about it in a minute, you can't be a leader unless you're actually having quiet time to reflect on the

things that you care about and what are my behavior saying about me as a human being, as a teammate, as a friend, as a daughter, as a son, you know, as a partner. What do my behaviors actually say. And I think that's what this intrinsic motivation kind of gets at is, do I need outside influences to validate who I am? You want that answer to be no. I am intrinsically motivated to do the things that I want to do across the day. Yeah, that makes sense. So many people are motivated by this sort of external feedback, positive reinforcement. I'm sure that you've probably had plenty of athletes that are doing things because they're looking for affirmation that what they're doing is correct as opposed to I am secure in the actions I'm taking and this is this is what

I'm working towards. And good thing because it aligns and hey, thanks for the pat on the back. But I'm doing this because I give a shit and this is important. Yeah, exactly. And I think the degree to which your intrinsic motivation is kind of driving behavior, I think that's what enables being present. That enables being unlocking compassion and empathy. And again, it just gives you the capacity to give to others to be generous and attentive. and things like that. And when you're on the other end of the spectrum, you're disorganized, you're unsure of your purpose, you seek validation and attention from just the hollow sources of social media, random acquaintances that don't know you, don't know understand your values, and just generally

lacking kind of enthusiasm and energy for life. And a lot of times, and I would say this in my environment, it doesn't mean if your values don't align with your organization, it doesn't make you a bad person. I think that's important to call out too. If you're one of my student athletes, for example, and the behavior, there's a real clear dissidence between how you're behaving and what the values of the organization are, then that's probably my fault. Because, you know, we didn't ask the right questions during the recruiting process to make sure we're getting the right folks into the program that have a good alignment. But oftentimes it's just you want to spend your time doing something else. And that's perfectly fine. But just build in the time to be aware so you can unlock this intrinsic motivation, that you don't need anyone to tell you what it is that you need to do and how you need to live your life. Like that is driven by the passions. and the interests that you have for your work and just energized to wake every day and basically enable your skills, you know? Right.

To come to life. You know that. Honestly, the biggest thing that when you said if you don't fit the culture, it doesn't make you a bad person. The strongest thing I took out of business school was our dean said to us, hey, you might like kind of the work and the paycheck,

but if you're not part of the culture and it's not right for you, that's not your team. Yeah. And you have to be honest with yourself. And I think this is where we're going to get into self-concept clarity of truly understanding kind of what you are about. Yeah. For sure.

And I think, you know, this is something I'd kind of meditate on really frequently. I think being able to generate like a super accurate description of yourself is important. Like recognizing, okay, what are my strengths and my skill sets? And what are my barriers? And being able to do that without judgment is very much a skill, I think, as well. And something that you're kind of actively working toward. If you don't have the competencies that you're actually working. toward those. And then through that all, you're maintaining kind of this healthy self-esteem and

self-image. We're none of us are finished projects, right? Like we're, you know, we're all going to have things that don't work for us. And it's about just being aware of what those things are. And then being able to prioritize, okay, what do I actually need to spend time on? You know, how is that going to move the needle for me personally? How is it going to move the needle for me professionally? Am I getting closer to the person I aspire to be? But without this kind of accurate description of yourself, it makes it hard for you actually to position yourself to leverage your strengths. And I think that's what self-concept clarity to me unlocks or enables is this mastery of being able to actually leverage the things that you're really good at. Takes a lot of time. It does. And I think that's,

it's not easy, right? Like building culture and identifying, like, what's really core to you as an individual and into your organization. It's not, you know, these aren't light questions. You know, they take a lot of introspection, a lot of reflection and sitting alone in a room for a bit in thinking about your own personal direction and your values and where you want your organization to go, your team to go, and then having the courage, I think, to put it down on paper. And I think that's with this kind of assessment. For me, that was the exercise is, okay, gosh, we're going to do this. What does it actually look like? And I think it takes a little bit of courage for the whole organization, the whole team to kind of adopt this level of transparency around these behaviors.

Yeah, being open to feedback and being able to put yourself out there takes a lot. Yeah. Leadership's a hot topic where people think, oh, I'm just a natural leader. One, why do you think that do you have any basis or you just don't like following? Just because you don't like to follow doesn't mean that you're a leader. In your own perspective, how would you define leadership within the confines of a successful team? It starts with self-rule. I always think the serious quote, do you want a great empire? Rule yourself.

So I think rule of yourself is number one. I'm not going to follow someone who doesn't take care of themselves and does it. own the physiological pieces. Someone who isn't in control of their life doesn't exhibit character and for me it's just hard to follow someone like that. So I think being the person that other folks want to follow, I think first starts with just ruling over yourself and the factors that are actually going to influence your level of performance. Again, the concept of performance, you know, capacity to intentionally have a level equal your physical mental and emotional potential. You know, if we use that as just the framework in order to be a leader, I think it's really central that you're owning your own stuff first. So once you've found this ownership, popular question is, hey, how do you work well with others? Do you play well with others? So teamwork, now that all these things have been laid out, how does teamwork kind of play in with this? It's been a lot of sort of sense of self and intrinsic motivation. How does this now play out into the larger perspective of teamwork and how you actually are as a team member? Teamwork leadership from I seek manifest through listening. I think most folks just want to be understood. So leaders have the ability to understand people and I think ask good questions of their teammates and of their colleagues and then really listen to what those answers are and internalize that and kind of build that into the framework of the infrastructure of the team. So I think speaking once and listening twice is probably the best rule of a leader and figuring out how to make people feel they're included and a part of the mission, regardless of how glamorous the role might be, but just kind of valuing everyone's contribution and that's obviously well documented. But I think there's a lot of meat to that. Being a strong communicator and a clear thinker are also important attributes. And I think I always

would say, you know, has gravitas. I think that's another piece. You know, I think leaders do have a little bit of a swag, right? And I think that comes from like confidence and self-esteem comes from living the behaviors, you know, that are like core to high performance. And when you do that all of a sudden, You don't even have to talk about it. It's just who you are. It's how you carry yourself. You can see it in your skin and your eyes. And that sounds silly. But it's where a lot of these behaviors actually come through. And I think that's what it actually enables trust. I don't know. That's my viewpoint. I think it's right. I think part of it, too, is you've earned that trust by listening, by being able to empathize and understand everyone around you. They feel comfortable with you. So that this sort of empowerment amongst peers helps boost even more. Yep. So being able to, you know, stay grounded within that, that's, you know, what ultimately makes a power, it can be a powerful leader. Yeah. Good stuff on the psychological and sort of vague side. Now we're going to talk about. Well, teamwork, unless we kind of bundled them in. Oh, you want to do, no, but we can do more in teamwork. Let's do teamwork. Makes a dream work. I know. That's the, that's the old

saying. But what actually is required of teamwork to, to make things happen? Yeah. I think what's your ability to mentor others. I think everyone should be a mentor. Everyone's got a superpower, right? So when you look at a freshman, for example, maybe she's not getting a lot of playing time, for example, or, you know, isn't, but she's got something that she can bring in the table. So what is that superpower? So that's important. Again, it kind of goes back to the self-concept clarity. How can you contribute to the greater mission? You know, I think that's a big piece of the teamwork is, and that's what will make the team actually work is that everyone is figuring out, okay, what can I bring today that's going to add value? actually enables teamwork, is each individual bringing whatever their value is, can I bring that

today and as consistently as possible? That's what really inspires cooperation and progress. I like that. The more and more we talk, the more you're just Belichick. Oh, good God. Yeah, in a different form. You fit in or not get out, but you make it very clear what the standard is and what's expected to be high-rated now that there's a score. It's not just, hey, be a good teammate and be part of the system, it's, I'm showing you the way. If you're falling short, I'm here to help you, and so are your teammates, and so is this group. That's part of, needs to be a necessary part of the culture, too. So along with these definitions of here's how we're measuring, there also needs to be that

help system and support system that helps people along, not just only the strong survive, because that's another way that culture can go. And there's probably going to see a lot more high stress, potentially poor performance because of, man, if I don't do this, then I'm out. I'm not going to start. I'm lose my job or, you know. Yeah, it's an important point. If you take this at surface level, it sounds, oh, Kristen, the data nerd, another score, another, you know, point, another quantification. This is just the foundation.

If you have the foundation right, i.e. everyone understands what the standards are. Everyone's really clear of, you know, physiologically, what's going to move the needle, what isn't. If you have this foundation and everyone is really clear about what that foundation is, that is how you unlock the creativity, the innovation, the spontaneity and, you know, all the things that I think actually make a magical culture, you know, get unlocked when you have this foundation in place. And I think that's where people, that's what I see in all the high performance organizations that I've kind of been in is that they don't spend enough time on the foundation. They just don't. They don't because it's hard work, right? It's hard work, and it takes courage, I think, implementing this kind of really transparent type of model and framework of assessment. That, to me, is how you end up optimizing your potential, winning conference championships year after year, and, you know, winning a national championship and being able to recruit and attract talent, right?

Like, when this foundation's clear, expectations are clear, everyone's driving toward the same thing. Wow, you just open up the capacity for your brain to work in ways that you never knew was possible and your body, for that matter. There you go. The framework's in place. Part of what the expectation is is also physiological. Right. We can fly through these a little bit faster because this is purely physiological. So let's start with sleep. Yeah. What I was trying to do at Princeton when I created this assessment was building a whoopish type of technology. So I had a sleep score and I had recovery kind of a readiness score as well.

So we're actually, you know, if you're exceeding standards, you know, you're basically meeting physiological intent. Okay. So from a training behavior perspective, you have the capacity to meet physiological intent. So that's kind of how we thought about the training behavior and the recovery behavior is from a recovery standpoint. And basically, the behaviors are, am I preventing negative stress accumulation by measuring and accounting for physical, mental, and emotional stress with appropriate levels of rest? Am I exhibiting proportion and balance in my daily life? You know, that was, if you're exceeding standards, like that's what recovery behavior look like. So again, being able to map it and gosh, what's awesome is now we've got actual tools. like whoop, which is like kick-ass, which is going to tell you, if I'm in a functional overreaching period, for example, I want to come with as much capacity as possible to be able to adapt to those stressors in the most functional way. But what does that look like from a score perspective? You know, am I in that yellow range? Or am I not taking care of the behaviors off the field, the feeling behavior, hydration behavior

and the sleep behavior? So I'm in the red, right? I'm not adapting functionally. So to be able to quantify this and understand what the behaviors are that are going to lead to optimal recovery is really central. And that's what we're mapping in this framework with recovery specifically. You know, and then sleep behavior, you know, are you adopting the right hygiene? Are you creating boundaries with your roommates and your friends so you can kind of maintain a sleep wake cycle? Are you thinking about being really proactive with how you're

managing your study habits throughout the day to set yourself up for that sleep behavior, that optimal sleep behavior so you can come with capacity and energy and, again, to unlock the magic, right? Like, this is a huge piece. And then feeling behavior, same sort of thing. You know, Mike and I were chatting in the kitchen before we set off for this podcast. And we were talking about how in a collegiate environment in particular, it's such a hard thing to talk about. It's almost like it's been mandated. You can't talk about food or calories. You know, in our environment, we definitely talked about it. Are you underfueling? Are you overfueling? Like, this is an important life skill, right? And if you're on one end of the spectrum and it's noticed,

you know, for example, you know, I'm meeting three grapes and two lettuce leaves at dinner. And I'm not meeting the standards, you know, and I'm getting assessed for that. Like, well, now of a sudden when I have a one-on-one with an athlete and they're like, yeah, I'm exceeding standards, but you know what, everyone around you says you're not. All right, now it's, you can get that person some resources and get them some help. Like, it just brings to the front the stuff that we know is central for optimal human development. And I think we need to figure out how to have these conversations in high-performing environments in a way that actually helps someone adopt the behaviors that they're going to enable them to be the best version of themselves.

And ignoring it is not, and I want to swear so badly right now, ignoring it is not a solution. It's just not a solution. And I just feel so passionately about that. And across all of this, like, it's just pushing stuff under the rug, like it's not going to help you organizationally. It just is not. So I think getting stuff out there on the front

and really identifying these behaviors is just it's the only path forward. And we haven't defined this as a, you know, a characteristic, but obviously very integral to this whole process is this transparency, the openness. So this is to bring everyone up. And you can think about this in a whoop perspective or you can think about it in this sort of scoring rubric perspective. When you have things that can objectively or slightly subjectively measure you and give you feedback, it's not a damning thing.

It is an evaluation point. You at a point in time doing something, whether that's sleep, training, character, are you aligned with your values? it's important to have these because if you don't have these check-ins every once in a while, whether it could be twice a year, could be quarterly, however you want to do it, you need this feedback to continue to grow because goals change over time, teams change over time. Values. Yeah, and with that, your values are going to change over time.

So what Chris and I could tell you that 10 years ago, our values, maybe some are the same, probably a lot are different. Yeah, 100%. And you have to understand that and continue to grow as well, that what used to maybe comment you down or give you passion or joy isn't quite the same anymore. And that's fine. Yeah. That is fine. Just reevaluate. See how you're checking in. So. And don't be afraid to change direction. Yeah. Pivot. Like that's cool. Like that's okay. I think more and more is, you know, time change and technology changes and how business and teams are run. People aren't in lifelong careers or do one

thing just for their life. It doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. So college kids, hey, I want to go play sports. and I have no idea what to do with my life. This is still going to apply when you graduate. It's going to be like, okay, now what? What does training after college look like? How do I fit this in? I'm working in an investment bank. I'm working 100 hours a week.

Holy shit, I don't know what to do. My life's out of control three years out. They're like, I've got to go back to business school because I'm out of control. And then there's opportunities to reset. It's important to measure, be truthful. And part of this culture is being understanding. Not that there are no wrong answers, but listen, you nailed this. You've read the profit, right?

Oh, yeah, that's where I got it. Yeah. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. My dad's been telling me that since I was like five years old. Well, you embody that, Mike. It's a young age. And these are types of things where you do. So, Kristen, you can maybe not tell.

We're very different in terms of how we process information. So I run off at the mouth because there's no filter. And Kristen is a little more reserved, takes in the information, and then is a bit more articulate. it. But because we understand each other that way, that's what allows for good synergy and progress forward. So understanding that everyone's not going to be the same as you, and they don't have to be. And that within this sort of framework, you can have a very successful culture because everyone brings something different to the table. So when you were talking about teamwork, everybody's got a superpower. Yeah. Don't forget that. Everybody's got a superpower.

So true. And that's going to evolve and change, you know, that can grow. As you get better, you don't even know. You might not even know what your true superpower is yet. So. So true. Keep growing. Yeah. I think just in practice, in our environment, this is really important. Like, we basically divided the season into kind of four phases. And I had three people on staff. And we would meet with every single student athlete once a week. So I would have seven athletes that I was responsible for in phase one. My assistant coach had seven athletes, you know, she was responsible for in phase one. And The other coach would have seven athletes. So you would really get to kind of know those athletes.

And I had a volunteer assistant who also participated in these one-on-one meetings. So we had generally around 25 athletes. So we just basically divided across the four coaches and these four phases. So every phase, you'd have a new set of athletes. But what I'm getting at is that you have to have contact with your athletes. If you're managing a team in a corporate setting, like, you need to have contact. If you're a lieutenant commander of a troop, like, you need to have contact. You need to understand the folks in your environment because that is going to set up your tactics and your techniques and how you talk about your mission and how you talk about a practice design, like all of those things, you know, how you're framing up a pregame and a post game.

Like if you don't know your players, then you're not going to do that effectively. And you can't know your players unless you talk to them. So I think, again, you know, this is one of the things I think is missing in a lot of environment. is that true contact. And what this framework enables is, again, just a better conversation. If we have this in front of us a fair amount, it just allows a better conversation, a more transparent conversation, more honest conversation, a place to go back to, vote questions. But again, you can't do that without the contact. And these one-on-one meetings, we would talk about this stuff. We'd talk about our key performing behaviors and how we're tracking. And then we'd also talk, you know, we'd do some video

in those meetings too. And generally, they're 30 minutes. But I think that's just really important. I see, Mike, we do this, you know, at WOOP as well. You know, we have one-on-ones with the team and just trying to make sure everyone's tracking in the most optimal direction, you know, toward our kind of ultimate mission. But I think contact's really important to make this role. And just for reference, when, like, no one's above the standard, including the people that are running the groups. Like, you as a staff also ran through the exact same thing.

Like, you know, it's not like, hey, this is going to apply to everyone else that I'm kind of running through this. program, but I don't have to do it. Yeah, I mean, I get early on, you know, as you started to adopt this, like, you know, crushed and called out on the sleep, you know, because I was sending emails laid and trying to sleep, but I just couldn't get out of this old mindset. And that was awesome. Like, just like, shoot, you know, people are watching the leaders. And we talked about this in the last podcast. Like, you have to, you know, when you're the leader of people and, you know,

if you want them to do something, then shit, you better do it yourself. Oh, yeah. It's, it's, we are far beyond the age of, uh, in most places, blind following because I said so. People want to know why, and they want to believe in something, and passion is so integral to why a lot of people do things now. So, yeah, hope this kind of serves as a guide and is helpful. Like Kristen said, there's going to be a little bit of a template to you can sort of create the things that are important to you, and that is important, right?

So we've talked about things that are very tangible and useful for a training environment, you know, some of these things are probably going to be different for you and your team because there's different circumstances, different people, different environmental factors that are confounding variables that you just have to deal with that maybe somebody else doesn't. So really take some time. This is something that could legitimately take a true month. Oh, yeah. Easily, like on the short end to flesh out and build to something like, you're going to have multiple drafts of that. I don't think that's totally right. This took me ages to put together.

So, again, you probably, if you haven't even done the core values thing that we talked about last time, start there. Start there before you build out this massive framework. Because your values will inform what these behaviors look at. Like I said, you kind of want to back into it, you know, define, where the heck do you want to go, right? Kind of have a sense of that. And then you can back in our, what are the behaviors that are going to help us get there? And that's kind of how you need to think about it. Hell yeah.

Yeah. So we're going to wrap it up, Science of Winning Part 2. Happy to hear some thoughts for Part 3. It's going to come sometime in the future. Thanks, Kristen. All right. You're welcome, Mike. Thanks again to Kristen and Mike for sharing their insights

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