Ways To Win | Craig Robinson

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3:01Welcome to the Art of Charm podcast, where we break down the science of powerful communication and winning mindsets. So you have the cheat code to succeed with people. Every episode is jam-packed with actionable steps to unlock the hidden superpowers inside of you. Level up with us each week by listening to interviews with the best in business, psychology, and relationships. We distill thousands of hours of research into the most effective tools and the latest science so you can start winning today. Let's face it. In order to be seen and heard, your communication needs to cut through the noise.

3:31And we're going to show you how. I'm AJ, successfully recovered introvert, entrepreneur, and self-development junkie. And I'm Johnny Zubak, former touring musician, promoter, rock and roller, and co-founder here at The Art of Charm. And for the last 15 years, we've trained thousands of top performers and teams from every background. We have dedicated our lives to teaching men and women all they need to know about communication, networking, and relationships. You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary. All right, let's kick off today's show. Today we're talking with Craig Robinson, a college basketball coach, basketball executive, and podcaster.

4:07In his career as a player, he played college basketball at Princeton. and was a two-time Ivy League player of the year in the early 80s. He then was the head coach for Boston University and Oregon State University before he became a basketball executive for the New York Knicks and the Milwaukee Bucks. He's now the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and his new podcast is called Ways to Win, where Craig and Coach John Calipari use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems. He stops by today to discuss how to build momentum in your life to reach your goals, the mindsets that helped build his winning career on and off the court, why you need great mentors to help you make the leap, and what it was like walking away from a successful career in finance to pursue his true love, coaching.

4:51Welcome to the show, Craig. Great to have you. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Well, we know you launched a new podcast called Ways to Win. Can you share what's the inspiration behind the show and what you hope the audience takes away from it? Yeah. So, AJ, the inspiration was, you know, I am the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and we have 5 ,000 members. And they're basketball coaches ranging from Division I all the way down to high school. So NAIA coaches, Division II, Division III. We have some grassroots coaches or AAU coaches. We have junior college coaches.

5:30and just all during my life, I've had the benefit of being coached, starting with my parents all the way to right now when I'm still getting coached by former coaches and by my members. And it came to me that most people don't get access to the kind of coaching that we have to offer. So we thought, how cool would it be to have a couple of coaches talk about life lessons they've learned and how folks who are not in the sports realm can take advantage of the same coaching philosophies and lessons and all the things as athletes have had the benefit of for many years. So that was the initial premise.

6:17And then once we started going, people were like, you know, there isn't anything like this. So we've been very fortunate to have some really cool guests on. We haven't been on as long as you guys, but in the short period of time, it's been really fun. We've gotten really good feedback and it allows me to do really cool things like coming on the Art of Charm. Well, we're happy to have you. And I know for a lot of our audience members, they might not be athletes or coaches, but they are looking to make the jump in their career from individual contributor to leader. And you were a player who then moved to coaching.

6:51And that transition is very similar when you go from individual skills and contributing to now leading a team. So can you talk a little bit about your own journey and then what your philosophy is around how to be a better leader? Yeah, you know, I have to be honest with you guys that my road is less traveled, right? I didn't come up the traditional way of getting into coaching where you're a former player and then when you're done playing, you become sort of a director of basketball operations or a, you know, we call them dobos or a video coordinator and you just kind of work your way up. The story I always tell is, you know, I was playing in college at Princeton University and I had a really good career there.

7:35We had a really good team. I was fortunate enough to get drafted into the NBA, but not good enough to play in the NBA. So I got cut, but I did play professionally overseas. And my coach was a guy by the name of Tom Becker, who was an American coaching in Manchester, England. And now it's funny, my apartment was right near the Manchester City football field. Back then, nobody knew what that was. You know, we're talking 35, 40 years ago, right? Nobody knew what that was. Now everybody knows what that is. And we used to go to those matches and it was a fight after every match. I mean, it was just like you went to a fight and a soccer match broke out, right?

8:20But I digress. But this guy, Tom Becker, knew of my college coach, Pete Carrill. And he asked me when I got over there, he said, would you mind putting in some of that Princeton offense stuff? I absolutely love it, but I've never had anybody who's been able to teach it. So here I am, a 21-year-old kid putting in an offense with a bunch of pro athletes, right? And so I do it, and a light bulb goes off in my head, and I'm like, this is really neat. We had a great season. I think I want to be a coach. So I traveled back to the United States on my way back home to Chicago. I stop off at Princeton, visit my old teammates, visit my sister who's still there, visit my coach.

9:06And I sit down with my coach and I said, coach, I know what I want to be. I want to be a coach. And he says to me, like he's furious. He's like, coach, you don't want to be an effing coach? And he didn't say effing, right? He just went, he lit into me. And I was devastated, right? Because here I am thinking I had figured out what I wanted to do. And one of my mentors tells me I can't do it. And I actually thought he didn't think I'd be a good coach. But what he was doing was he was, this is what he said. Here you are, a young black guy from the South side of Chicago with a Princeton degree and you can't give up basketball.

9:49So he was actually thinking he was being a counselor to me and not, and expanding my horizons. And he said to me, I'll tell you when you can be a coach. And I left his office being the dutiful player that I was. And I went and got a job working in finance. And I did that for 14 years, right? Right. And, but I always thought once I went into finance, I was working on Wall Street and then I worked for a Wall Street firm in Chicago as a bond trader. And once I started realizing the kind of money you could make in that, I was thinking, okay, if I do this right, I save my money. When I hit the age of 50, 55, I can retire from this.

10:37I can teach seventh grade and I can coach high school basketball. That was my plan. But before I got anywhere near the end of that, one of the assistant coaches at Princeton got the head coaching job at Northwestern University in Chicago, called me up, offered me a job. And that is how I made the transition from player to corporate denizen to coach. coach. Now, for those in our audience, coaching profession doesn't pay as well as a job in finance. So you walked away from a very financially sound decision to shaky ground on where your career was going to go, what opportunities would be in your future, but also what you could earn in that moment.

11:23So what was it like for you to make that decision to choose your passion over the safe road? Well, I'll tell you what, AJ, I was convinced that the money didn't bother me because we grew up, my mom and dad, neither one of them went to college, right? So we grew up very working class. And my dad worked for the city of Chicago. My mom was a homemaker until my sister and I got to high school. Then she was a secretary at a bank. So I always felt, listen, I can exist on non-investment banker money because I grew up that way. Right. So I wasn't the money for me wasn't afraid, but I had two young children that I was responsible for.

12:08And I was going through this horrible divorce. So I didn't want to change their lifestyle. So I said to myself, let me just see what their reaction would be to me taken to this job. And my kids, my two older kids were eight and four at the time, eight-year-old boy, four-year-old girl. And I said, listen, guys, daddy's going to take a new job. And the first thing they thought was we had to move. I was moving away. And I was like, nope, nope, not moving away. I'm going to still be here, but I'm going to be a coach. And I was in my mind thinking like an adult, nice house, nice cars, nice vacations all down the drain, right?

12:51Because as you mentioned, AJ, the assistant coaching job is, I might've been making$50 ,000 tops, right? At a big 10 school. So my son says, does that mean that your office is a gym? And I said, well, my office isn't a gym, but it's right next to the gym. And my daughter chimed right in. Now she's four years old right after. She said, do they have a pool there? And when she said that, I knew I was taking the job because they, I mean, this whole time I'm thinking they're going to be devastated. Their lives are going to change. They had no idea what their lives were. Right. They were just excited that their dad was going to, his office was going to be a gym that had a pool next to it.

13:38And so that's what made my decision. I had already, you know, my dad had said to me, working every day of his life for the city of Chicago, he never took any days off until he passed away. And he had MS, multiple cirrhosis, went to work every day. And he always said to me, if you can ever find a job that you love doing, take it. You won't feel like you work a day in your life. He was not at that kind of a job, but he knew what he was striving for. And that was always in the back of my mind. So I really didn't think much about the change in financial situation. And I was right, because once I got there, I absolutely loved my job to the point where I would tell anybody, any of your listeners out there, if you have the opportunity to just try something you love, do it so that at least you know what you're missing, because there's nothing wrong with chasing the dollar.

14:37Listen, if you want to do that, do that. Also should know what you're missing if you have the opportunity to do something you really love, like being a musician. You mentioned starting a little bit later than a normal coaching career. Most go directly from player to coach. So talk a little bit about that ego for yourself, jumping into a new career at 35 when a lot of your peers are younger, further along, they've been in it longer. What was that like for you? Not a heavy lift at all, AJ. I've been really fortunate to have some really good parents, mentors, coaches along the way. And I think having played a team sport helps you understand what sacrificing your ego does for the whole team.

15:23And so that helped me in that position of being sort of one of the older assistant coaches who's doing all the grunt work. But I didn't look at it that way. I looked at it as just this huge opportunity to learn something new. And nowadays, you know, we're talking 30 something years ago, maybe not quite 30 years ago, 20 something years ago. And people have a term for it now. It's called lifelong learner, right? Everybody has this term talking about lifelong learning, which is funny to me because we have all these great terms now that people were doing stuff back in the day that we didn't have a term for it.

16:01But my parents always said, always be willing to learn new things. And they said that to me and my sister when we were, shoot, eight, nine years old, you know, when you're old enough to understand those kind of philosophical ideals. And I just was like, this is great. I'm learning something new at, you know, 37 years old or 36, whatever I was at the time. And I also, you know how as you get older, you bring some maturity to your thought process, too. I knew that there were some things that I was bringing to the table as an older assistant coach or an older, newer assistant coach that I could share with those folks.

16:43Like, and I'll use this as a perfect example. when I got into coaching, people were still using index cards for recruiting. Like it was a contact manager of index cards. Now, I had been in sales and trading, investment banking. Your contacts were all done on the computer so that if you're on the phone with somebody, you just click on their name and you can see what you said to them the last time. I was like, everybody does it. And it was the whole industry. The whole industry was still doing it that way. And I sort of said, you know, you can automate this. This makes your life a whole lot easier.

17:21And that was just something that I brought to the table. But I didn't have a big challenge ego-wise. Again, I was having a blast and I was learning new things and the enthusiasm that comes with working with young people. I vowed at that point that I was always going to have young people around me because those guys and gals all made me feel young. The older I got, the younger I felt, they just have this energy about them that just makes you want to go to work every day. Hiring the right person with the right skills, that's what moves a business forward. If you want candidates who match what you're looking for, you need Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

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21:25Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash charm. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash charm. I was just going to say, Craig, you bring up a good point. which is about young people then getting acquainted and being part of a group and whether that that group is going to be the collective of of a team sport or a political or scholastic organization and for a lot of kids sports is the first time that they're not going to look at themselves as an individual or even if they're an incredibly talented kid um his individualism is the first thing to go getting into a team sport because he has to learn to work with others and especially for the talented kid that he may think hey i'm better than everybody here well your role is to bring up everybody around you as a team because you're now a part of something that is bigger than you, which is going to be stronger, which is going to protect you and your family.

22:44And the stronger that team or organization is, the stronger those bonds, the more it can accomplish. Yeah, exactly. And Johnny, I love individual sports too, but there is that dynamic of being a part of a team where you have to do exactly what you said if you're the best guy you got to bring everybody up if you're not the best guy you got to figure out how you're going to fit in and then there's always the person who thinks they should be the best guy but they aren't really and you can show them how to behave in that role because that is learned behavior for most people because you come up in your family you're either the best guy or your brother was the best guy and you were the second best guy or your your sister was the best student or you were the second best student but you always thought i am gonna catch that person it's a great learning environment team sports at an early age and i'm just although i i see us moving in the wrong direction with youth sports it's turning into a a money-making racket unfortunately but the concept of playing on a team at a young age is still extremely important Yeah.

23:57If you're a talented kid and you're coming into that team and you don't have the seniority, you have to learn to be patient, to bide your time, to help the other guys, and that you will get your shot if you are patient. And the diplomacy that you're going to learn is going later to allow you to be a leader of men. You're not going to learn to be a leader of men being hyper individualistic. and it's also and i'm sure you had to do this with some of your players as well where they actually had to sacrifice maybe their moment of glory for the team and it may be the first time that they ever had to learn that lesson as well because at the end of the day that sacrifice makes the team better and which is the ultimate goal for that yeah yeah the hardest part about coaching basketball in my opinion is having a really good player where you have to tell them in order for us to win, you have to score fewer points.

24:59It's the hardest discussion to have, and intuitively, nobody can believe it. Well, coaching, much like leadership, has evolved over the years. And I know my dad's boss had a much different dynamic than what I would want from my boss. We know the classic coaches like Bobby Knight throwing chairs and getting in players' faces. And you look at the cool, calm, collected coaches now who have a stronger bond with their players, aren't building that hierarchy, top-down authoritarian view around how to build a winning team. What have you seen in your coaching career as the evolution of leadership? And how does that translate to those who maybe aren't coaching, but want to be better leaders?

25:40The thing that's at the top of the list for me, guys, that I see now, and it was great because in my evolution from being a player into being a coach over these years, I've had to implement a lot of this stuff. But the thing that I noticed the most is that coaches nowadays have to be, and leaders too, right? So this is leadership. You know, when I was managing a trading desk, it was the same thing. You have to be empathetic as a leader. You have to understand, And this was something that I started hearing about as a child with my parents. My parents always said, never underestimate what the other person's plight is.

26:26Nobody uses that word anymore. Their plight, right? That way you can understand why they do some of the things they do. And no coach was empathetic in my day growing up. It was military. It was corporal punishment. It was my way or the highway. And as we've evolved and learned more psychological and emotional intelligence type of behavior, you have to understand where these young people are and the term meeting them where they are. that's what you're seeing coaches are doing now. And I also think that's what you're seeing with what good leaders are doing now. Because to me, good leaders, good coaches are trying to get people to do what they couldn't do on their own, right?

27:18Because if they could do it on their own, you wouldn't need us, right? You wouldn't need any coaches. But people have a ceiling on their own and can be pushed to higher heights with the help of good leadership, good coaching. And I think understanding where everybody is vis-a-vis everyone else and being able to explain why you're where you are how you get to be at the top and if you're at the top what do you have to do to stay there you have to sort of understand where people are coming from and I would say that's the biggest thing that I've noticed the second biggest thing is there's way more communication now between coach and player than it was when I was coming up as a player.

28:02Like I said, it was either my way or the highway. Stop asking so many questions. Go execute. Now, these kids aren't raised that way anymore. So when you are, and I shouldn't say kids, I should say people aren't raised that way anymore. They want an explanation for what you're asking them to do and how it is going to affect their lives. And a lot of times they want to see you lead by example too. They want to see you leaning in and performing at your best to be a peak performer before they want to take that leap themselves. You know, and I've seen not only in the coaching environment, but in the leadership environment in corporate, that they're looking to leaders who lead by example, who have their own habits, who have their own routines for their performance before they turn around and say, okay, I need you to perform.

28:48Yeah. And, you know, gone are the days when you sort of, because I, you know, what I found interesting moving out of athletics into the corporate America, there was a lot of line skipping in corporate America where you can't have line skipping in athletics because the guys you're skipping over the line are trying to beat your brains out to be in front of you, right? So there's actual objectivity to it and not just subjectivity. And so that is a really good point, especially in corporate America where you, you know, sometimes the best salesman didn't get to be the sales manager. Sometimes it was the worst salesman because he wasn't a good salesman.