602: The Learning Leader Team of Coaches - Sherri Coale, Brook Cupps, Geron Stokes, Eli Leiker - Helping Teams Be Elite and People To Be Excellent

28:02We've said it for a while. There's a lot of people that know how to do it and very few people that actually do it. A lot of people, it's like driving, right? Everybody knows how to drive when they're not driving. But prove to us that you can drive. Well, we're in the middle of the fist fight every day. And that doesn't make us perfect. We were screwing it up. We're making mistakes. We're trying new things, evaluating, reflecting, fixing, constantly trying to monitor the whole deal and teach leadership and character development at the same time. So how cool is that? we're yeah we say we like not do as we say but like try to do as we do and we're still learning and trying to mix it up too so g speaking of driving you know some people get so caught up in their purpose and coaching and chasing excellence over success that they actually forget to renew their driver's license and have to go retake their driver's exam the same the same one you take when you're 16 years old my driving analogy i was thinking about my driving analogy and the first thing that popped in my head was how bad bc is behind the wheel terrible unbelievable he's always a passenger when every picture i see he's asleep he's or upside down or upside down he's got a bad hip so he like flips upside down in the passenger seat usually or goes in the back seat very very weird guy it's real there's really no need for any of that dialogue.

29:31No need. I did forget to renew my license for two years. And I mean, that thing's hard to remember. I don't know how everybody remembers that all the time. I think you're one of the most focused humans ever, but you're focused on the things that you care about. And there are a lot of other things that you don't. And it's just like, I'm not going to play golf. I'm not going to do these other hobbies. I'm going to make people better. I'm going to coach. I'm going to help my team. I'm going to live my purpose. Oh, yeah, and I'm going to forget a bunch of other stuff that's outside of all of the main issues.

30:03Yeah, forget about legally driving. Forget about legally driving. You can't do everything. I mean, got to pick. Speaking of driving, though, you guys, you two went on a trip to, was it Missouri, to a conference? Garen, can you tell this story? Yeah, drove my old Acura that had one headlight. I got pulled over on the way. BC had a summer league game that night. and the clinic started at 8 o 'clock the next morning, 9 o 'clock the next morning. And we said, all right, how we got to get to Missouri? I'll just pick you up after the summer league game. You're not driving. You're riding with me. And I get pulled over about halfway out there in Illinois, BC's videotaping the whole thing.

30:44We get there at like 2.30, 3 o 'clock in the morning. It was a very weird time to get there. And we're like, okay, we didn't get like a hotel or anything. What are we going to do? We'll just pull up into where the clinic's at and sit in the parking lot and fall asleep for a little bit. And we fell asleep and it was like a hundred degree night for some reason. It was a real hot night. So I had to leave the car on air conditioning on and campus security pulls up to us at like three 30 in the morning, knocks on the window. Like, what are you two guys doing in this car? Like, well, we're here for the windows are fogged up.

31:16Yeah. Bad, bad, bad situation. Bad deal. And so we ended up, whatever, he lets us sleep and we wake up the next morning, like 6am, 7am. And we drive to Denny's, go brush our teeth and kind of take somewhat of a Denny's shower. And then the whole point we went there was to see these great coaches speak. And on the stage walks Coach Sherry Cole and delivers this powerful, powerful speech. And then I remember she ended the whole thing with another powerful speech. And we wrote down, BC, it changed our programs. It changed us as coaches. It was 2016. I'll never forget it. It changed the direction of where we were going as coaches.

32:01We were kind of on that path. We drove back the whole way home. We were like, man, this is it. This is it. This is the way. This is the path. And it's changed us as coaches forever, in large part to Coach Cole and her people. The people I was surrounded with at the conference is the deal. I got the opportunity to sort of wrap everything up in a bow at the end and grab all the nuggets of wisdom from all those folks, Anson Dorrance. I don't know if Gino was at that one, but I know there were a lot of powerful Mike Gundy, I think, from Oklahoma State. Lots of nuggets flowing around. And my job was sort of to package them all together and show how they connect and make sense at the end.

32:36And I think from that, you know, the people in the audience at those things are usually people who who are hungry and they want an edge. They want just something little extra. But the people who take whatever they find in that and then go back and apply it to how they do business, to how they live, to how they work, to how they coach, I think that's a select few. I don't think the whole congregation at that conference went back and decided this is the kind of coach and teacher I want to be. And that's one of the things that makes G and BC so unique is when they are totally bought into something, they're going to apply it in every area of their life.

33:21And that's to your previous question, Ryan, about real time, you know, G, BC and E are all real time in the trenches. The people in the trenches know the most about the problems. They're the ones who know the most about the challenges, what they're facing, the riddles that can't be solved. And so that's an invigorating thing for me to be a part of this group. Those guys are right there every day, and they're having to figure out how to get through it. And theory is one thing, and practical application is another thing entirely, and they live that daily. And we were just talking about that. Brooke, the seconds before we hit record, we're talking about people.

34:00We're talking about a player and how you manage that situation so it's happening in real time. Can you share more about that? Not about this specific instance, right? But just, Brooke, in general of dealing with the things you deal with when you're leading a team. And I'd also like you to add, too, because I think I pushed you a little bit on this back in 2017 when I was asking you to speak at the first event that I had you come to where you said, these CEOs and senior leaders don't want to listen to me because my sports stuff doesn't apply to them. And I said, oh my gosh, yes, it does. I promise you it does.

34:36And I think, you know, I like to think I was right. After you spoke, you were rated the top speaker of the event and absolutely destroyed the room by being you, by being authentic and saying, I'm just going to go for it. So maybe talk a little bit about the combination of that real-time stuff, as well as how this applies off of the basketball court into both life and the professional world. Well, I mean, the stuff of being an active coach, I think it's, I mean, it's kind of like G was talking about, like, it's a little bit selfish. Like, I'm getting noticeably better every single day because it's so top of mind.

35:10Like, everything we're talking about is so top of mind. I'm trying to apply it. I'm trying to think through situations. I have a different awareness, I would say, because we're doing this. We're talking about how to best lead teams. Then it gives me ideas and I go try to apply those things. And some fail miserably and some are great. And when they're great, I come back and be like, hey, this was really good. So it's an incredible testing ground for things. So I think that's the side of it that is so attractive to be an active coach and to be involved with something like this is that I'm hopefully helping people, but I'm directly helping my guys too, the guys that I'm coaching on a daily basis, hopefully.

35:52The application outside of coaching, I mean, it did surprise me. My dad was a teacher. My mom was a bus driver. I've taught for 25 years. I've never been outside of education. So every single thing to me is through that lens. And so the most impactful people to me in my life have been teachers and coaches. And so knowing how it applied in the business sector was completely foreign to me. So, Ryan, I really just believe Jim was like, all right, what the hell? I guess I'll just go tell him what I think. I mean, that was pretty much the essence of it. And then when you're in that environment and you start talking to people that run their own businesses and CEOs, you start realizing it's literally the exact same thing.

36:40You have to find ways to build trust. You have to find ways to hold people accountable. You have to set a standard. Or do you have like, it's even like recruiting and think you've got to get people to want to be in your program. You've got to set a vision. It's literally the exact same thing. And so that has been really, I mean, really fascinating to me because I just, I guess I never saw that, that alignment outside of team sports. Sherry G, I would love to hear you. You're as you've had now, Sherry, you've probably been doing this a little bit longer when it comes to, because people are asking you to speak for years and years that are outside of sports.

37:22So I'd love to hear both of you, your thoughts on the application of taking the stories and the team building from a football team or a basketball program and making that portable into the business world where we spend the majority of our time. we take a lot for granted as coaches that there are things that we have to do multiple things that we have to do basically simultaneously in a coaching role you know you're you're putting a team together you're holding people accountable you're teaching you're there are all these things that you're doing and we sometimes take it for granted the things that we learn through those multiple experiences because i i liken it to this it's the same thing that happens in the business world.

38:11But just like there's this giant neon scoreboard when we play games and at the end, you know who won and lost based on that giant neon scoreboard, everything is amplified. So all of those interactions that we're having, they're like sped up and they're amplified. They're more intense because of the arena. And so when we can take that and dismantle it and then share it, it transfers beautifully to the corporate world and to business leaders. They understand all that. Maybe their interactions are fewer and further between. Maybe those relationships of trust, that trust building is over a longer span.

38:49We got six weeks till season starts. We got a boom, boom, boom. There's that speed that's always pushing the athletic world. But inside, it's always the same stuff. And I think the key, the anchor is always, it's real people, real life, real emotion. And so when we share those stories that take place on the court or on the field, over with the boardroom, if you will, then that emotion and that real experience of human nature and human interactions transfers and they feel it. And when they feel it, then they can go into their respective spheres and apply it. Yeah. I keep thinking just like, okay, go to your freshman team and look at the problems that they're dealing with.

39:37It usually comes back to character and competence and like BC, like trust building and alignment. And then working with these companies, you see the same thing. Their issues come from character or competence or a lack of communication. It's all the same stuff. I said it a while ago. It's like all the things that Your third grade teacher taught you, you know, lead by example, do what's right, hold people accountable, treat everybody the way you want to be treated. Like that's all the leadership issues that we see. We're just all humans just trying to figure it out one bit at a time. And I'm surprised, too.

40:14I was very surprised, like, BC to see it's very similar coaching to leading a company to leading a family to anything. So it's been cool to see that, like, hey, we're not the only ones that have to deal with that. You know, that makes me think of what Brooke said just a bit ago about awareness, because as we as a group work together and BC mentioned, he's more aware. It's more top of mind. These things are more top of mind as we get off our calls, our planning calls, our client calls, whatever in our respective individual lives. It's more top of line. Awareness is such a key part of the leadership process.

40:49If you skip that, then everything else has nothing to root into. And yet it's seemingly such a simple thing. And yet so many people don't do it or people want to fly right over it. I want to get to that. I want you to show me how to do that thing. Well, unless you can really hone in and be truly self-aware and aware of your surroundings and the people that you're responsible for helping to improve, none of that other stuff sticks. It doesn't make any sense. And we all spend the first few weeks of every season trying to talk about that with our players. And then it's a constant force or a constant area of focus throughout the year.

41:29Usually when things fly off center, it's because of a lack of awareness and you can bring people back to that. So what we experience in a nutshell is what everybody's experiencing outside of that athletic field. Well, I think what Coach Cole said about the reps is a big deal too. Like I've been coaching 25 years, so 25 years worth of putting a team together and building trust and establishing of it. Like every year you get to do that. Every year you have a new group of freshmen in that, or young kids that you're building trust with, you're creating a relationship with. You get so many reps in the, as a teacher, 30 kids at the bell, build a relationship, develop trust, set a vision for the class, speak in front of people.

42:12Like it's just the number of reps you get in those two professions. It's wild in terms of... Then you think about a CEO of a company, they don't get all those reps. But the one or two reps that they get, they got to make count.

42:29That is another benefit of being surrounded by teachers and working with. You've all gotten so many. We went to Garen's game the other night and there was six, seven, eight different mini keynote speeches Garen gave just in the time that we were there, right? Pre-game, halftime, in between quarters, talking to different people. And you may not even think of that, but that's important. Each of those reps are important because you're trying to communicate effectively. And that is a skill that, I mean, I just talked about this with my dad. I think one of the reasons my dad rose so high in his career and it affected so many people in a positive way is because he worked so hard at being a great communicator.

43:13And I asked him like, what did you do? And he's like, I got lucky early on. I got a job at AT &T as a trainer. And so literally every day for years, I was training multiple groups. Something as little as putting the cap on the Sharpie marker when you're writing up on the board, because it makes people uncomfortable if you leave the cap off. That granular of detail of what it means to get up in front of a group of people and speak. is, Brooke, that's an amazing point you brought up because you all have gotten so many reps that that's why when we get with clients, when we stand up in front of them, even if you haven't fully, I'm like, hey, BC, can you get up and talk about that for 10 minutes?

43:55You just go and do it because you've done it so many times before. That's different. That's unique. The fact that our whole group has gotten so many reps on a stage or in front of a group of people or giving mini keynotes where you got to be good. And I think the people that we work with, they benefit from that. They get to see that. And I'm grateful that that's a big part of what we do. One of the things that we did at the very beginning that I think has been good is we defined our purpose, our values, and our behaviors as a group. Now, we've all done this individually as well. We all have a purpose.

44:34We all have values. We have critical behaviors. We help people define their purpose and their values and the behaviors to match, to make them real, to bring them to life. But I like to talk through our purpose and our values and behaviors, just riff on these and have you guys add color to them as well. So our purpose is to help people become excellent and teams become elite. We define excellent as becoming the best version of yourself. We define elite as functioning at optimal potential, right? So we help people become excellent and teams become elite. If you're leading a company, this is obviously what you want.

45:08And a lot of senior leaders at companies, they're doing so many different things that they don't necessarily have the internal people that are fully focused on the things that we're focused on. So that's why they bring us in. But then you look at our values, right? And again, if you value everything, you value nothing. So we had to really work to narrow these down to curious, honest, and intentional and the behaviors to match each of those curious is we're going to practice invested listening. We're going to listen with our eyes. We're going to listen with our ears. We're really going to be invested listeners.

45:43We're honest. We said this from the beginning. We are never afraid to be fired. We're not going to be afraid to be fired. Because of that, we're going to give you honest and direct feedback. Sometimes people get brought in and they're getting paid well as these high-priced consultants and they're like, God, I don't want to lose this gig. So you just take it a little bit easy when you're providing feedback in order to not make the client mad, thus becoming less effective and not helping them. So I think that's one thing of us is we're never going to be afraid to be fired because we're honest. We're going to give direct feedback.

46:19And then intentional is that we're going to provide purposeful action. Like everything we do, we want you to take it and actually implement. At the end of all of our calls, I feel like this happens with every client all the time is, okay, what does this look like tomorrow? What does this look like tomorrow when you implement the things we talked about today? And we have each person go around and talk about what it looks like when they implement the things we're doing. So they didn't just sit there during our training and take notes and be like, oh, okay, that was cool. Yeah, they were excited and then not do anything with it.

46:48They have to implement it. So getting clear on our purpose, getting clear on our values and the critical behaviors, I think has been a North Star for us. That's really important. We help other people too, but we had to live it. We, and we are living it. Uh, BC, this is something I've learned from you many years ago. And you personally helped me as my coach to get me clear on my purpose and my values and my behaviors. I'd love to have you go first and hear of your thoughts on our team purpose, values, and behaviors. Well, I don't think it's any different than for an individual. You know, you guys love the driving metaphor so much, so I can stick with that.

47:24When you don't know where you're going, right, and you've got to put something in your GPS to get directions. If you don't put anything in GPS and you start wandering around driving, that's what it's like when you're operating without any values and without any purpose. So by setting a purpose, we know what we're trying to do is we're trying to make people excellent and teams elite. So then you say, okay, well, how do we do that? Like, what does this group believe is that is that the core of doing that? And we think it's curiosity, honesty, and intentionality, right? Being, being those three things.

48:02So if our vision is to make people excellent, why wouldn't we be curious? We have to be curious in order for that to happen. Why wouldn't we be honest? Why would we hold back when we know it's going to help you, right whether you like it or not whether you're going to fire us or not that's irrelevant if we think it's going to help you we need to tell you right and then why not provide you with specific actions to be able to implement that all the time day in day-to-day life so it's that vision that allows us to live those values and and why those values make sense for us like you said ryan i think it's just a north star it tells you where you're going and how to get there it's way more about the how and the why than the what.

48:46It's a culmination of the personalities on this call too. I was initially drawn to your podcast, Ryan, because of your just transparent curiosity. When you ask your guests questions, you're not asking them questions performatively. You're asking them questions because you really want to know. And it's not always exactly what they wanted you to ask them, I'm sure. But you start probing because you sincerely want to know. When we talk about honest, Garen Stokes is one of the most honest individuals I've ever met. And he's able to do it in a way that I know why he's such a great coach, because he's able to do it in a way that makes you want to be better.

49:27But he is unfiltered honesty. And so that comes across. And then BC is the most intentional dude I've ever seen. Just like you said, he may not renew his dadgum driver's license, but he is going to teach at practice today. And here's how it's going to happen. So I think it's a culmination of our individual personalities and what we know works in real time. I just think it's very clear on who we are and it makes decision making so much easier. We've been on calls, man, you guys see this? Should we tell them? Like the answer's, yep, tell them. Or, hey, did you guys hear that? We should ask more about that, right?

50:07We should ask more about that. or guys, we got to give them something specific. We got to give them something specific so they can actually utilize something to make their company better. It just drives all decision making. So very, very clear on who we are. Well, BC and I were texting recently about one of the ones we're working with and he said, Hey, just, you know, I gave him everything. Like I told him straight, it was about an issue. There's always issues at every place. We know That's how it works. There's people issues. There's whatever's happening, whether there's a level of commitment or not.

50:40And he's like, I laid it all out exactly as it is. And I think that's a little risky. That's not always safe too, because that reflects poorly on the person that's leading that team, that they may have commitment issues, but that's honest. That's living in accordance with the values. If you know something, it's like, Garen, if you see it and you don't say it, then you're not living in alignment with our values. And that's a problem. I think that's a problem. I think they're not real values unless you're willing to potentially cause issues or lose out on something or get fired by saying them. That's when you know they're actually real values.

51:19And I think that's what makes this authentic. That's what makes this real. And that's what makes it attractive to people and why, like I said, they may bring us in for a little thing. And then before you know it, they want us working with the whole company, which that's as good of a compliment as we could receive is, hey, we want more, we want more, what else can you do? So I think that's been a big, big part of what's made us good. And what's also made this fun for me, Eli sent me some questions that I want to ask you guys that I think could be useful. One of them is on team building. So I recently talked to my dad of my brother about this because I think team building is at the foundation of what we do, especially you guys as coaches.

52:04When you think about, and maybe you could even give a specific example. I'll share it. I have you go first. When you think about like, oh, these are my favorite teams or my best teams, and maybe those aren't the same. I don't know. But if you had to pick out the qualities or the attributes of your favorite and or best teams you've ever been a part of? What are some of the commonalities among those teams? The first word that comes to mind is always toughness. And that's not necessarily physical toughness, though that is a part of it in sport, but it's mental and emotional toughness, the ability to see something hard and not shy away from it, the ability to fail and not be devastated by it.

52:44the ability to cheer out outside noise, all those things, toughness. Another would be, and it's going to sound kind of crazy, but when I think about my most successful and even favorite that maybe weren't, you're not supposed to have favorites like kids, but the ones I enjoyed the most, the teams that maybe didn't go to the final four, but were really, really good. Those teams had fun together. We laughed a ton. We were serious when we needed to be serious. We were incredibly intense, but we had a lot of fun together. And I think that gets overlooked sometimes. I think connection, knowing they really knew each other well, like they really knew who was to their right and to their left.

53:29And when you pose that question, I couldn't help but think about part of what we do as a group is we have formed a team and we are living and modeling what we're hoping to share with the clients that we hire. One of the greatest takeaways for me being a lifetime member of an athletic team and a coach my entire life until three years ago is that when the Indiana Hoosiers play, I have a Hoosiers hoodie that I put on and I go find the stinking Big Ten Network and watch because BC's kid, Gabe, plays at Indiana. And I'm invested. Now I'm invested. Okay. On Friday nights, we have a group text where you guys are given, usually Eli, he's the best play-by-play guy.

54:19BC works hard at it, but Eli's the best. And I get Garen's, I know what the score is. Rocks, not rocks at the end of every quarter. and it doesn't matter where I am. I'm like on my phone, like involved. I'm invested. My heart is in that. And I think the best teams do that. They're connected in a way that people outside can't understand. And because of that investment, there's great joy in that. I've watched these guys in the short amount of time I've been a part of this group succeed wildly and fail. Both have happen. Big wins, big losses. And the thing that I've noticed is that they don't change.

55:01They're the same in the face of both of those imposters. And we're getting to live that. And we're in the trench of that together. And that's what we share with the people that we're trying to assist outside of the athletic world or in the athletic world. To hear what goes through the mind of Garen Stokes during an Indiana basketball game. Oh, man. It's good that those aren't public. Brooke, how about you, man? Best slash favorite teams, the kind of commonalities among them. Yeah, I mean, Coach hit on a ton of them. When I think of it, I think of they really care about each other. More than anything else, they celebrate each other's successes really well, and they pull together rather than pull apart when they're facing adversity.

55:49Let me pick a specific one. I'm not saying this is your favorite. This is one that I enjoyed. Gabe's sophomore year at Centerville High School. You happened to win a state championship, a number of great wins along the way. What was it about that team? What made them so good? They didn't think they were good. That was a big part of it. A lot of those guys were sophomores and juniors. Every time we beat somebody good, it was a little bit of a surprise. They're like, oh, oh, oh. They're kind of proving it to themselves along the way. and then we we had a couple losses during that season that were you know one was one was like kind of set the course for everything and then there was another one later on where we we played pretty well we lost to a really good team ast vincentst mary's team that won the state division two that year and we played them really well and lost at home they pulled together rather than separating it was like all right guys like we're close like we we need we instead of like like they tightened the shoestrings instead of loosened them.

56:49And so interesting that I bet I would like to hear from Garen too, that, that those teams that we're talking about and describing right now, almost always have that moment where they get to make that choice. We're either going to come together or we're going to splinter apart. And you don't always know it at the time. I think most of us can kind of sense this could be one of those, but you don't know until you look back, maybe at end of the year, maybe even years, years past. And you look back and you go, that was, that's when it happened. I'd like to hear, Garen, you have any thoughts? Does that resonate with you?

57:25I was just listening to you guys. I think all of you guys are right, but I think there's a gritty humility about our best teams where at some point they have to take all the feedback that they've gotten. None of our, none of my favorite teams or our best teams started out really good. None of them. They were messy and ugly and forming. And they decided at some point, I'm going to take all the feedback and I'm going to be humble enough to listen to it and fix it and go through the hard to make ourselves better. And it usually goes like it's flat and it's up and down, it's up and down, up, down, up, down, and then it takes off.

58:06And you can see the the wheels go off the ground and the flight takes off so uh yeah they own it they start they start owning it right yeah yeah actually this reminds me i feel like we had this text going six ten months ago i don't know where garen and brooke were fighting about humility and i think this is part of the part of the cool stuff that happens where we're maybe chiming in here and there but like watching you guys fight in a group text and then talk about it too. Garen, can you, can you go more? Cause like humility is good. And I know like BC is, you've got to be humble. You got to be humble.

58:44And I think you were arguing a little bit about that. Do you remember that? I'd like to maybe let's just, let's just do it here in public. I'll hear about maybe humility isn't always the best move. So I think that, I think that there has to, on the best of the best, like there's a conviction. There's a belief that I am equipped. I am prepared. I am better than other people. I believe that there has to be that in your heart or you can't be the greatest. Like you go, you reverse engineer the greatest of all time. They had to be super humble, super humble to get to that point. They keep getting better, keep getting better, keep getting better.

59:25You have to have humility to get better, but then there has to be like a manage of that to where there's conviction and belief that damn it i'm better than you i'm gonna go out and compete i'm going i deserve to win which is a unique trait i think i don't know go ahead bc argue i i just better than what like what's that even mean like better than better than what and confidence in what

59:55that you're better than like your opponent better better than what like like your opponent your opponent better than him at what football basketball working out okay that and that makes you the greatest no but i'm thinking like kobe and and tom brady and belichick and saban and popovich and go down the list that have all been they they have a the best have a belief like they want the ball last they they They have, like, they're not, and people are like, I'm humbled. No, like, I want the ball. I want the ball, and I'm going to go score. I don't think that's counter to humility. I mean, I think humility just says, I think of other people more than myself.

1:00:46That's what humility is. And it doesn't mean you're not confident. I think humility is one of the strongest traits, a reflection of strength and power rather than I think it's portrayed so much as weakness and softness. And I think it's the complete opposite of that. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you on that. I think you're the most humble. Yes. And then they turn it off. Yeah, I think you've got to have some of that conviction, though, because I can specifically remember times mostly as a player, a little bit as a keynote speaker, when I was fully convicted that I was the man. we're losing by four points against Springfield South those guys are absolute killers they're great players and there's I think two minutes ish left on the game luckily we stopped them and they're punting to us and I remember the ball goes over our punt returner's head he lets it go and it rolls down slowly to the one yard line and we're down four with two minutes to go and I vividly remember saying my guys like Garen it was I was arrogant and very cocky in that moment of this is what I'm about to do.

1:01:54This is what we are about to do. We went 99 yards in two minutes and won the game. I think part of it was I wasn't very humble in that moment. I was very convicted and very sure of what I was going to do. If you then look at maybe a moment in college when maybe I wasn't as prepared, wasn't as convicted, had the same exact situation against Akron my senior year and junior year, sorry, and completely flubbed the two minute drive, throw a pick and lose the game. That's confidence though. That's not humility. Humility is having that moment where you think you're the man and you make the play and you come off and now you think you're above everybody else because you made that play.

1:02:38That's a lack of humility, right? You can make that play and then come off and say, great job blocking. Great. Thank you. I'm so grateful. Thank God. Thank your team. Thank. Right. Now you're still operating in humility while having the confidence to go make the play that you've trained for. Yeah. Because your team, the 2021 team, you said they were humble. They were almost surprised when they won, which that actually answer surprised me. But they were confident. Like when I see Tom Howell shoot that 25-footer and just stone cold drill it, that guy looked very confident, very sure of himself. Is that an actor?

1:03:15Was that real? What's going on? Surprise probably isn't the right word. I think the level that they were able to succeed at what we were, they were a little surprised that all the stuff that we were having them do was effective. Like it, it worked. They're like, oh crap. Like, okay, okay. We can beat those guys doing this. We can beat those guys doing this. And so at no point during that process, did that group ever waver in the work and the effort and the focus that what they trusted you they trusted you and they were bought in they were and it was a little bit of a blind trust at that point because they didn't know it was going to pay off and that's what i think great teams require like there's a little blind trust in the leader like all right let's go that leads me to one of the most common things that we face, that every team faces, is there are certain people, even in leadership roles, that we work with, that they are there.

1:04:10And I'm not even saying maybe there's something wrong with this because everybody can choose to do what they want to do, but they're there to cash a check. They have their job and they're working for the weekend, or they're there because they just want to get paid so that they can do the work they need to do, not necessarily anything more than that, and then go home and enjoy whatever their families or kids sports games, which again, I get it. I do that too, that part of it at least. So at times though, we have leaders say, hey, can you work with so-and-so and so-and-so? They're not fully bought in or not fully committed here or I don't know.

1:04:48And this happens at every single place you're going to go, right? It's just people are messy. I'd love to hear from each of you, What do you think about that when it comes to the commitment continuum, Brooke, things we've taught, how to work with that person who is, they're fine, they're in it enough, but they're not fully in it. They're mainly there because it's a pretty good job and they're going to do a pretty good job, but they're not all away in it like some are. Garen, how about you start? How do we work through that? I think you get very curious and you ask a lot of questions and you understand because they're human.

1:05:29They have a purpose. They have a purpose. I think you get people to be very honest with them and you give them direct feedback and you show them why. It's not necessarily an issue, but you could be working at optimum efficiency if it got better. and then you give them, I'm not trying to be cliche here, but you give them purposeful action. Like you give them, this could improve the company that you're working for if you do this and this and this and this, or if you somehow, the access you could gain from living in a purpose, how much better could you be? So that's what comes to my mind. That was cool.

1:06:11Yeah, right where you started, G, with curiosity. I don't believe that there's anybody who wants to sleepwalk their way through life. I just don't believe that people want to do that. Something's in the way. Sometimes it might be because they haven't experienced what it feels like to go all in on anything. So they don't know that high that we're talking about. So you have to get them to experience that. And in order to do that, you got to ask a lot of questions because there's something, whether it be contextually in their daily life or the way they were raised or where they were raised or the experiences they've had, whatever.

1:06:45You got to kind of unpack all that to help them remove the obstacles so that they can feel it. I'm completely convinced that when somebody feels the high that comes from going all in for something, they're going to want to do it again. And they're not going to be okay. I've told the story a million times about our high school team that won the state championship and we left the gold ball in the locker room because it wasn't about the trophy that we won. That group of girls learned how to go all in on a thing. As a result, there'll be different spouses, different employees, different bosses, different friends, different parents the rest of their life because they know what it feels like when it's right.

1:07:23And they won't always know how to get there when it's not right, but they'll hunger and thirst for it and itch. And that's what you want to give to that person who's sleepwalking. You want to give them access to that so that they can then hunger and thirst for it. And then you can lead them fairly easily. But curiosity starts that whole path. Cherry, those girls too, I don't know that team, but I have to believe that they're connected for life. Ryan, you don't know them because you were probably three when that happened. They are connected for life. We are connected for life. I still talk to many of them.

1:08:01And it's just when you go through hard things together, you leave parts of yourself on each other. And it's just that way forever. You can do that in the business world too. I have some sales teams from LexisNexis that we are still that tight because of how tough of a goal we were given by the company and how hard we got after it on Mondays and Thursdays to train, how people mentored others and stepped up and were selfless, how we got the new people up to speed really quick, faster than anybody else in the company. And that's what we were really proud of that our people didn't need a ramp like everybody, like all of these things, members of that team, again, not a sports team.

1:08:41This isn't the business world. Members of that team are still really tight. We still talk about those moments, how much fun we had, how hard it was, how hard we worked and got people going. There's nothing better. It's almost nothing better than doing hard things with people you grow to love and accomplishing things and then seeing others rise as a result. It's the coolest thing ever. BC, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too. Well, the only thing I would add is all that's true. We got to be curious. We got to try to ask them a lot of questions. We got to try to figure out what's blocking them from fully committing, but you have to get volunteers, not hostages.

1:09:22you have to and you can only make every every person in that group that you're making you're compromising your ceiling like you're limiting how high that group can go and so i'm not saying you never have to do it there are roles that have to be filled you have to have some people so everybody's got to make that decision based on their situation and you know the spectrum that you can accept but volunteers not hostages you're never going to get the most out of them until you free them up to be a volunteer. So true. And that takes tireless work, BC. Like it takes tireless work because maybe they're volunteers, but they don't understand, or maybe they don't.

1:10:00It's the power of yet too, right? I've had it a bunch of times and gee, I know you have too, we've talked about it. Some kids just aren't ready yet. Like they're not going to make that decision yet. I fully believe everybody figures out their purpose and figures out their values at some point in life. My goal is just to hopefully help you do that before you're on deathbed so you can have some good times before that where you're authentic and you're who you are there's been plenty of hostages that have become volunteers there's been plenty of those and it just it just it just takes tireless work to try to get them there and and love i could tell too regardless how frustrated you get garen we text about this stuff quite a bit is if you really care, truly, truly care and have love for that person.

1:10:48My brother just told a story that I never heard before about his defensive coordinator in college. I know a guy, you know, Garen, Mark D 'Antonio, who went on to be a great head coach, but about how much time and effort and love he poured into each of his players, even any, he scared him. He was really hard on them. He's, He said super high expectations, but they all love him for that. And I think the people in our lives that we probably look up to the most are the ones that we're most grateful for. They cared and loved us enough to tell us the truth, to nudge us, to push us, to set a higher standard, to say, I know you got more.

1:11:24I know it. But if you don't care or have love for that person, you'll just kind of ignore them. You'll just let them go. And I think that's what the best leaders do is you care enough. You have enough love for that person that you're willing to push them. You're willing to expect more. You're willing to spend extra time with them. And I think that's, again, part of our edge. And what we try to do is like, hey, we care about these people. Like you all have our phone numbers. Every client, they have our numbers. They can text us. They can call us. Right. We do these things off on the side because like if we're going to do it and we're going to be very selective, that's another thing I guess we haven't talked about.

1:12:01We're going to be very selective with who we choose to work with. So if we do, though, we're committing. We're all in. We're 24-7. If you are dealing with something, you know, hey, got a minute? Yeah, we got a minute. Yeah. And so I think that's a big part of it too. Okay. To close, we close our meetings with gratitude. This is one of my core values. I think it's something we all share. I know BC is big on this and everybody in our group is really big on gratitude, on living life, thinking about and actually voicing the words, thank you to the people who are important. And so I just thought we would focus on the importance of gratitude, why we choose to end all of our trainings and our meetings with gratitude and really pushing on others.

1:12:50Brooke, how about you start with the importance of having gratitude in your life and why it's a big part of what we do? I mean, it's just a better way to live life. I don't really like it's just, it's just better to recognize and appreciate the things that you have, the things that you've been given. I look at it as virtually everything in my life has been given to me. I didn't get a pick how awesome my parents are. So none of the stuff that I have is truly because of anything I've done. And I think when you operate from that perspective, I just think it's way easier to see the good in people, way easier to be accepting and not judgmental, way easier to be optimistic instead of pessimistic.

1:13:33I just think it sets up so many different things for you that just the way to go. I've been the other way. This is better. Coach? So good. Yeah, gratitude is one of my core values. Counting blessings is something I do every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. I found that gratitude is an all-encompassing thing. There's no space for anything else while you're being grateful. You can't worry. I used to have a thought for the day in practice. Every day we'd have a thought for the day. One of them was you can't roll up your sleeves and wring your hands at the same time. To me, that's gratitude.

1:14:07You can't worry. You can't be thankful for something and worried about something simultaneously. It just can't coincide. And so it's a cleansing trait to me. It's freeing and it's cleansing and it gives us access to grace, which is maybe the most important thing that we carry with us when we're trying to deal with other people, that avenue of grace, because we can't know everything that another person is facing or enduring or feeling at a time. And so it's just a perfect conduit into building successful relationships. I started a gratitude journal probably 10 years ago, and we've done thankful Thursdays on our team for I don't know how long, probably 10, 12 years.

1:14:50And it literally changes the lens you see the world through. It's like putting sunglasses on. I don't wear sunglasses, our dog, because I just don't believe in them. What? It's a shock? Gee, are you saying that you're stronger than the sun? The tan? I don't need. I'm not worried. Sunglasses have nothing to do with the tan. It's just a shock. You're right in the middle of such like a beautiful thing. You take a shot and be like, God, you look like you got a fresh spray tan with those shades you're wearing too. Anyway, go ahead. It literally changes the lens you see the world through. It changes everything that you start to notice becomes something that you're grateful for.

1:15:39It's completely changed my life and how I view everything. Obstacles, I'm grateful for it. Adversity, I'm grateful for it. People throwing shots at me, I'm grateful for it. The hardest times I've been through, I'm super grateful for it. And then you start noticing all the things people do for you or the people that are giving effort to help things that you're around. You just become a noticer of all the things that you're so lucky to have. I would recommend to anybody and everybody, I'll die on that one, that gratitude can change, like just a simple direction of your eyes can change the way you go about your life.

1:16:19That sounds awesome, G, but how do you actually do it in the moment? So, you know, your starting quarterback gets hurt, right? This is a huge obstacle or whatever, a bad thing happens in your life. How are you able to, in the moment, be grateful for something that at the time seems like a, not a fun thing to deal with. You practice it. You practice it. Like it, it doesn't like I, I write down three things every day for 10 years. The next thing, you know, that's just, that's just become your automatic response. Uh, you screw it up and you fix it. Like, yeah. Yeah. When it happens in your life, you just, you say, perfect.

1:16:56How grateful is this of an opportunity? Is this like now, now we got to go play with a backup. Perfect. I got to be better. Our team's got to be better. How cool is this? It removes the victim mindset that we all have naturally. It removes it because you're just grateful for everything that comes your way. Also, the see it, say it with gratitude is, I think, really important. For example, this is something anybody could do right now. With the most important person in your life, hopefully most people, that's their husband or wife, that I tried to implement this from learning from you guys is anytime I see Miranda do anything that is good, just say thank you.

1:17:36Thank you for doing the dishes. Thank you for this amazing meal. Thank you for helping Charlie with her homework. I think just saying it, you have to actually verbalize it though. And the more you say it, the more you end up seeing it out in the world. I joked about being really hard on Eli, which I am at times, but I also, hopefully he would feel that I do say thank you to him a lot because I'm very grateful for how hard he works and try to be that with everybody in my life. If they do anything that serves me or is helpful, when you see it, you say it. It's just like when you're thinking something positive about somebody, send them a text immediately.

1:18:14Just send it right now. Oh, I remember I just did this with Steve Wojciechowski actually. We saw Wojciechowski years ago. I haven't seen him in years, but I saw he did something and immediately texted him and it led to this amazing conversation over text for a while. You see it and say it. As Garen said, you're practicing it regularly, whether you write it down or you have it in your mind, like when I see this, I'm going to say it. You just end up doing more and more and more. And like you said, it just makes your life better. It makes you more of an optimist. It makes you see more good in the world instead of the things that the online world is trying to make you see, which is all of the rage type stuff, it really will change your life in a better way.

1:18:55And it's probably as needed now more than ever. And again, this is another thing we try to help leaders with is, hey, this is a different way to view your job. This is a different way to view your family. It's a different way to view the challenges you're facing because that's a certainty. We know for certain adversity is going to strike. We know for certain that you're going to have challenges. We hopefully, I think with this style of looking at them and we mess it up, obviously, as Brooke said, but with this way of looking at it, hopefully we'll better suit you, better prepare you to handle them head on and, and, and be better for it.

1:19:29So anyway, I could go, we could go all day. I really appreciate you guys. I love you. I'm so grateful that you allow me to be a member of this team. I don't say that with any humility. I just, I mean it sincerely. I'm grateful as BC puts the heart so that I get to be a part of this team, man. And it brings me so much joy because I've been doing this kind of by myself for a bit for years. And to one of the things I'm asked about from others is what are you up to or what are you excited about? And I'm like, I'm on a team, man. I get to be on a team and I haven't been on a team like this in a long time.

1:20:03And this team makes me better. And how cool is that? How cool is to be able to be, I got you, G, to be able to be on a team where everyone that you're surrounded with makes you a lot better. And that just juices me up to keep doing this stuff. Coach Cole hooked me up with Mike Gundy, Coach Gundy in Oklahoma State. And he ended his staff meeting when we were out there. And he said, can you believe people pay us to do this? Can you believe people pay us to do this? And that's the feeling I get up with every single morning being with you guys. So super grateful. So good. Love it. thank you guys we should do this again maybe we'll do make it a semi-regular thing as we go through all the stuff we're doing but i i really appreciate love you guys and i'm sure i'll see you like in an hour so okay later all right it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club if you are send me a note ryan at learning leader.com let me know what you learned from this great conversation with the hall of famer sherry Cole, Brooke Cubs, Garen Stokes, and Eli Leiker.

1:21:08Also, if you want to know more about working with us, our team, you can go to learningleader.com slash team. That's learningleader.com slash team. Okay, a few takeaways from my notes. The makeup of a great team. They are tough. They have fun together. They care about each other. They have that gritty humility about them. They're humble enough to listen, gritty enough to apply. That's what makes a great team. Now, how do we work with that employee who just won't fully buy in? Everybody in the world who works at a business is thinking of a person or two who they're there just to kind of collect a paycheck.

1:21:47And I thought this was a cool part of the conversation. We talked about being curious, not judgmental, asking questions, listening, both with your eyes and ears. You got to care. And as Sherry said, I don't think anybody wants to sleepwalk through life. So we need to figure out what makes them come alive and help them bring that to the team. And then we closed with gratitude. You can't roll up your sleeves and clench your fist at the same time. What a great one from Sherry. Living with gratitude is about recognizing and appreciating what you have. This will change the lens in which you view the world.

1:22:25As Garen said, I can't believe they pay us to do this, right? I agree. And it's so much fun for me to get to work with this team. And the reward is that we get to keep doing it. I'm so, so grateful. And I'm also so grateful for you for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, this is a little bit different of an episode of the Learning Leader Show. It's with the Learning Leader team, Sherry Cole and Brooke Cobbs, Garen Stokes, Eli Leiker. But I think listening to them will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you write a thoughtful review and you subscribe to the show and you rate it hopefully five stars.

1:23:00And by doing all of that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.