57. How Elite Coaches Think: 5 Lessons on Leadership, Mindset, and Greatness

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: Hi friends, welcome back to the Authentic Path. I am so happy to have you here. A few announcements before we jump right in. Number one, if you are enjoying what you're listening to, I would love your help in helping grow our community here on YouTube or on any podcast streaming platform that you're listening on. So the way we grow our community is by subscribing. So either subscribe on YouTube or subscribe to the podcast directly on wherever you're listening to the podcast and leave us a review. That's really the way the podcast grows is comments, ratings, reviews. That's how the algorithms know people are engaged and listening. And if there are episodes that you are really enjoying, please share them with your friends, with your family, with your colleagues. The more people we have as part of our community, the more conscious world that we live in. And it really makes the world a better place for all of us in this world. OK. And the second announcement I have is if you are enjoying what you're listening to and you want to take this work even deeper, you want to work specifically on what's going on in your life. You want to feel better. You want to live a life that is more disciplined, more committed. bigger life, more audacious life, and you want help doing that, I would recommend that you schedule a coaching consult with me. So there's a link in the show notes to a consult call. my consult calls are all about you. We talk about all of the patterns that have ⁓ you living the life that you're living now and what it is that's necessary for you to live at your next level ⁓ what it is that we can do when we work together. So you can find that link OK, let's jump in. What are we talking about today? So we are doing an entire series on elite athletes and elite coaches, how they think, how they feel, how they approach the way they train and the way they live and lead to really help you grow with more ease, with more grace. And really because I wanted us to start thinking differently about growth, because I think We, many people confuse growth and think that the only way to do it is by strategy and tactics. Tell me what it is I need to do instead of really thinking about how do I need to be? What are my ways of being? How do I need to show up? How do I need to feel and think? And so what we did over the last two episodes was we focused on elite athletes and we went through and shared a lot of their life lessons. And what we're talking about today is elite coaches. And next week we're going to jump in and do an underdog episode I love me some underdogs. And so for those of you that don't know, I grew up playing sports. I don't consider myself an elite athlete by any means, I grew up as an athlete playing sports. And ⁓ I've always so intrigued by the mindset ⁓ of elite like the Olympians and the mindset of coaches because ⁓ I know for a fact it's not just the physical skill. There is so much more that goes into that high performance, that high level of performance. And I consider all of you listening, high performers. You know, we are folks that are very interested in growing into our next level, whether that's in our careers, leadership, in ⁓ our businesses. Many of us are entrepreneurs that are listening. And we're professionals and we're always considering what is next for us. What's our next level of growth? I consider us high performers. And the more we can tap into mindsets, habits, philosophies of things that have worked in the past, ⁓ better able we will be to tap into what will work for us. So today we're going to go through ⁓ different elite ⁓ ⁓ we're going to talk about the way they approached how they led their teams. And whether or not you consider yourself a coach, I know many of you listening also have coaching businesses, but whether or not you consider yourself a coach, this episode is relevant for you because you're leading a team, if you're building a business, if you're raising a family, ⁓ ⁓ essentially coaching because the coaching, a lot of it is ⁓ how people think, how people perform. ⁓ I think most importantly, ⁓ they believe themselves, like who they believe themselves to be. And so that's how we essentially transform teams and transform people is by helping them understand and really shape who they believe themselves to be. right, so we're going to talk about five different coaches and we're going to start with one of my favorites, Phil Jackson, because I grew up in Los Angeles ⁓ Phil Jackson was one of the Lakers coaches. ⁓ so The thing about him is that he wasn't just coaching players. He figured out that what he needed to do was master the way he thought about energy and coach energy. And a lot of people know him as the Zen Master. That was sort of his nickname. So he served as the head coach for the Chicago Bulls from 1989 to 1998 during the era of MJ Michael Jordan. He won six NBA championships during that time. And then he also coached the Lakers, Los Angeles Lakers. He coached Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and again, won five more championships. So we're not just talking about someone who coached and had a great season. We're talking about sustained excellence across different personalities. You can imagine coaching MJ, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, different personalities at different stages of their lives when there was a lot of ego and then when was able to support them in really creating team. ⁓ so ⁓ coached different personalities at different eras ⁓ different team dynamics. ⁓ I think what made him extraordinary wasn't just how he coached ⁓ their strategy of defense and offense. It was how he handled very specific things, ⁓ he handled Michael Jordan's intensity, because MJ was incredibly intense and committed to winning. how he handled Kobe Bryant's drive. He was driven. He was getting up early in the morning. He had that mamba mentality. And how he handled Shaquille O'Neal's dominance and presence. He was big energy. So these folks have big personalities, big energies, a lot of ego. And I think the way most people try to manage that kind of energy when you're leading that type of energy is to control it. But Phil Jackson did something very different. Instead of trying to control them, what he did was grounded them. And so when I think about grounding, grounding, what does it sound like? Ground, getting close to the ground. And in practice, it means humility. It means being reconnected to something so much bigger than you. In fact, the root word of the word humble, H-U-M, it means ground, to come to the ground. So he grounded all of that energy. He didn't take away and try to make them feel smaller than they were. He just introduced practices so that they could ground their energy and be able to focus their energy and direct it towards the outcomes that they wanted to have. So one of the things he introduced was meditative practice. Meditation. He introduced breath awareness, connect with the breath. He introduced silence. silence as a strategy, intentional silence before games. And he brought in philosophies that were coming from the Eastern world, but also Native Americans. So Native American and Zen philosophies. And so instead of the locker rooms being fueled by adrenaline and competition, he understood something that many leaders did not, which is we need to grab this energy. We need to focus it. And I think about it as sort of Chi. Chi is another word for energy. focus that chi, that energy in towards the outcome we want to create. It's called channeling, channeling the energy. It's so profound. And in many indigenous communities, there's three foundational medicines. One of them is the breath, breath, water, sleep. When you can harness your breath, that energy, when you can harness your mind and really direct it to what you want to create, that's incredibly powerful. And that is exactly what Phil Jackson did with all of his teams. And there's now a ton of science to sort of validate what he was doing intuitively, a ton of science to show that mindfulness reduces your hypervigilance, your amygdala activation. It increases your ability to focus your prefrontal cortex. ⁓ it enhances your control, your ability to control. So if you do something quote unquote wrong. If you make a mistake, you're able to control that, let it go and come back and be back in the present moment. Instead of telling yourself over and over again, ⁓ man, I shouldn't have done that. I messed up. The team's going to lose. You let it go. And high performance environments, that's incredibly powerful. It really, really matters. So I think about this concept of channeling our energy, managing our own energy. And I want you to think about this for yourself. How do you show up? Let's say you all know I'm an ER doctor by training and I love the emergency department. And I remember who I was in the ER running a code before I started practicing mindfulness and then who I was after I started practicing mindfulness. So a code is when somebody's heart's not working anymore and you have to go in and essentially bring them back to life. And you can imagine how hectic the code room is. There's people in there trying to make sure the person is breathing, giving medications, doing chest compressions, all of these things happening at the same time. It's really loud in there. People are yelling and screaming and it can be very scary. And I remember the first time I ran a code, whoa, my heart was beating really fast. I was super nervous. I was making sure that I wasn't making any mistakes, that I wasn't missing something. And then fast forward. Once I started practicing meditation regularly, I remember I'd walk into the room and I feel my heart beating really fast and I'd put my feet flat on the ground and I would tell myself, slow, steady, grounded, and I would just take a deep breath and I would visualize, before the patient would come into the room, because usually you get a call from the ambulance so you can set up, before the patient would arrive ⁓ I would visualize exactly what was gonna happen. The patient's gonna come in, we have to make sure that they have an airway. ⁓ Are they breathing? What's happening with their heart? What's their rhythm doing? And I would visualize all that in my head and I would visualize the team in there and me directing the team. Because when you're the physician, you're the leader in the room. So you direct the team. And I remember one time getting feedback from one of the one of our paramedics. The paramedics brought the patient in and normally they bring them in, put them on our table and then they're out. They leave. But they brought the patient and put on the table and then they stood back by the doorway and watched. And at the end of that, the paramedic comes and tells me, she says, I stayed around because I wanted to watch your magic. like, what? ⁓ She's like, you perform some magic in there. You're so The entire code runs so smoothly because you're so calm. ⁓ And I just thought, wow, what feedback. That's incredible to that because ⁓ the difference between you channeling when your energy is scattered all over the place and you can be thinking about a million things versus channeling your energy for the outcome that you want to create. And my outcome was like, OK, whatever's in the highest and best interest of this patient, may that may we create that for this patient. Sometimes that means we revive them and they get the heartbeat back. Sometimes we don't because sometimes they're a 95 year old patient and it's time for them to pass to their next experience or next life. So that feedback was powerful and that's what's available to all of you when you're able to harness your energy with the breath, with meditative practices. I have an episode ⁓ very early on here and I will, ⁓ I'll link it in the show notes and it's all about how to start meditating if that's something you want to start doing and how to really connect with your breath and regulate your energy. OK, so this can be true whether you're a physician, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a leader, because we all face uncertainty. And when we're experiencing uncertainty, what happens inside of our bodies? We get really nervous. And that is when we need to be the most regulated, when our revenue is fluctuating, when we have to make a high stakes decision. How can we be the most regulated? How can we connect to our breath, connect to our presence? so that we are making decisions for the highest and greatest good of ourselves, of our teams, of our clients, of our patients. Essentially, that is what's possible for us when we regulate our energy. That's what we learned from Phil Jackson. Okay, go on. The coach I want to bring to you ⁓ is Staley. ⁓ Dawn ⁓ she's still coaching now. She's amazing. So she coaches ⁓ basketball at of Southern California. So she's won three NCAA women's basketball championships. And I chose her as an example is because ⁓ one the things she focused on was belief. Building belief her team, in the people that coached, in her players, before they believed it themselves. ⁓ And I think that's so powerful ⁓ she was not waiting for her for her ⁓ team to prove for her players to prove themselves. ⁓ She decided who were first. She decided they're going to be excellent. They're going to be great at what they do. The best defense, the best offense. ⁓ And when she that, she reflected back to them their confidence, their capacity, their leadership. And that's really powerful ⁓ because I think of us do the opposite. Let me, I'll believe it when I see it, but she said no, because I believe it, then I will see it." So I think what makes her leadership even more distinct is that, again, she's not just building a sense of confidence, she's building in her players a sense of identity. And something that I think is even a little bit deeper here is this, that Dawn Staley is a Black woman and she's leading at the highest level of college basketball, coaching predominantly Black female athletes. And so she brings in something I think that's very different and can sometimes be overlooked in the world of leadership, which is representation. Now, it should be pretty obvious now that representation matters because you do not know what's possible for you. And it's hard to believe it's possible for you if you have not seen other people do it. And so her players are not just learning how to perform at their highest capacity to win games. What they are also learning is what leadership can look like, what excellence looks like, what power looks like. And that is incredibly important and why diversity matters so much in every field that we're in, especially in leadership. It really, I think, changes everything. And there's this concept in psychology, the self-efficacy theory. The self-efficacy theory states that belief in one's ability is one of the strongest predictors of performance. So if you have high self-belief, your likelihood to perform increases. So it's directly related to your ability to perform. Again, I talked about this, think, one or two episodes ago, which is what Bad Bunny did at the Super Bowl performance, at the halftime Super Bowl performance this year. ⁓ point his performance where he stops, looks directly in the camera, starts speaking really slowly and says, the reason why I'm here is because I never stopped believing in myself and you shouldn't either. That's powerful and that's proven in the literature and the psychology literature. And what Dawn Staley did is exactly that. She said, ⁓ some of players don't have the self belief yet, but ⁓ I am to give them the belief that they need. so that they can start believing in themselves because she knew that that self-efficacy leads to greater persistence, more resilience under failure and higher achievement. It's so, so, so, so powerful. OK, so before I go on, I go and on and on the concept of self-belief. a lot of my episodes are about self-belief because ⁓ I think it's incredibly important the more you believe in yourself, the more you know what's available for you. And the more you're to get yourself back up again when you fall or when you fail, because if you already believe that it's possible for you ⁓ and you fail, you make that mean then it must not be possible. What you just think is like, okay, that's just a hiccup. I know that my success is inevitable. ⁓ So I'm just going get back up and try again. That didn't work. No big deal. Let me try again. I think that's why self-belief is so important. Okay, I'm gonna go on and I'm gonna talk now about coach Popovich, Greg Popovich. So he coached the San Antonio Spurs and he coached them to five NBA championships. And the reason why I'm using him as an example is because if you were to ask any of his players, like tell us about your coach. What you start to read and learn is that none of them start with strategy first. They don't say like, ⁓ he was the best strategist or he made the best plays. They all start with how this coach made them all feel. He made me feel seen, respected. He made me feel like a human, not just a player, not just a cog in a wheel. So I'm using him as an example of culture and an example of belonging. because culture and belonging is a huge driver of performance. And I didn't realize I was doing this when ⁓ I was a department chair. My very first job as a department chair, I was very early on in my leadership career, one year out of residency. And really relationships. I really value helping people feel seen. I want to make people feel seen and part of our team. ⁓ And so, I knew the names of everybody I worked with, not just the doctors and the advanced providers that I was leading. I knew the name of the radiology techs, of all of the nurses. I knew the name of our environmental services, the people that came in and took out the trash and cleaned the rooms. And I didn't just know their names. I knew their names. I knew the names of their kids. I knew what was going on in their lives because that really mattered to me. I wanted them all to know that there was no way that what we did as physicians was possible without all of their teamwork. Like we were all one team. And I wanted them to feel that level of teamwork. I had no idea that what I was doing was building a culture of belonging, a culture of team. Like we're all in this together. And we had great outcomes. We went from place that was Pretty ⁓ staffing with lots of turnovers. We built that up and we had a huge incredible team ⁓ the wait list. Everybody wanted to work with us ⁓ we increased our revenue. Our patient outcomes got better. We had great outcomes in that department because culture and belonging drive performance. ⁓ reason why ⁓ wanted to just give that backstory is because yes, culture and belonging drive performance, but culture and belonging is just the right thing to do. So I just want to invite all of you to consider this, to do this just because it's the right thing to do, not just because it drives performance, but because it's the right thing to do. In fact, do you all remember, there's a really famous quote by Maya Angelou, people won't often remember what you say, but they will always remember how you made them feel. And I think that's so important. So when you're a leader, a business owner, a teammate, parent, a professional, think about how you're making people feel because the more they feel like they belong, the more they feel safe, the better their performance will be. Plus, it's just the right thing to do. So one of the things that Popovich did is he was known for taking his players out to dinner whenever they were traveling, for asking specifically about their families, talking about culture, talking about life essentially outside of basketball. so that the players knew that they mattered. They weren't just a cog in the wheel, they just didn't have to come out and perform. They actually mattered. And so investing in who they were off the court was a really, really big deal. So that connection is supported in a ton of research in leadership and a ton of research in performance. One of them is psychological safety. So a lot of the literature in psychological safety has been published by Amy Edmondson. And we know it's one of the strongest predictors of high performing teams because teams perform better when people feel safe. They're able to speak up. They're able to correct mistakes faster because they will name their mistakes. They're able to share ideas, which increases creativity and innovation. so belonging and performance incredibly matters. It improves engagement, improves collaboration, enhances resilience under stress. And of course it makes people feel welcomed. more fulfilled. It makes them feel like they're part of something so much bigger than themselves. And that's exactly what we want. And I've coached teams in super what you would think by looking at their just like their finances, that they're a really high performing team because they're a multi-billion dollar multinational company. And I've coached teams there and holy smokes, like what got them to that point? they're really stuck is not gonna get them to the next because they lack so much psychological safety. And I've coached teams that I can just tell, holy smokes, this team's gonna blow up. Because there's so much safety in this team, everybody feels so valued, it is such a warm, lovely place to work, and you can start seeing how their results reflect that team culture. So it's really, really powerful. So I will just invite all of you to think about. Where is it that I can create more belonging, create a better sense of culture where my team feels valued just for who they are? It's really powerful. Okay, let's go Number four, coach number four is Jill Ellis. Jill Ellis, if you guys remember, she coached US women's national soccer team, and she coached them to win back-to-back World Cup championships in 2015 and 2019 when... Rapinoe was on the team and she's awesome. But early on, she was actually really, really criticized. Repeatedly in the public, she was criticized and there were all these calls for her to be replaced. So she was really controversial in the beginning because in the beginning, the team was seen as underperforming there was this inconsistency ⁓ the strategy and in lineups. And so... She had all this tension around how she was leading the team. also felt like, gosh, am I being too rigid? I don't know. Am I ⁓ fully leveraging the player strengths here? ⁓ And ⁓ actually that moment to redefine who she was as a leader ⁓ and really into an authentic, ⁓ intuitive leadership of hers, because she could have responded by the way a lot of people respond in these settings, which is more control. more structure, more command, more authority. But she didn't because a lot of people sort of respond that way when they're under pressure. They just revert back to things that they thought worked well. But instead, she shifted to an entire new way of leadership and she started sharing leadership. So she leaned into her veteran players like Carly Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe and she had this open communication and greater collaboration in her team culture. Instead of thinking she needed to have all the answers, she started changing the way the entire team thought about teamwork as we are all in this together. ⁓ super powerful. It's a different model of leadership ⁓ opposed to the traditional leadership models, which are, ⁓ guys ⁓ have felt it, very hierarchical, top-down, authority-driven. ⁓ She was leading in what's known the research as transformational. So she was practicing transformational leadership styles, ⁓ which more collaborative. It's ⁓ really ⁓ really with your team and creating a sense of collaboration, ⁓ being compassionate with your team members, making them feel like they ⁓ matter, they care. ⁓ And know that transformative leadership qualities have higher engagement. There's more innovation. There's long term, better long term performance because your team feels valued. And that's exactly what she did. was ⁓ to watch because you guys know the outcomes. They won two World Cups after that. ⁓ ⁓ never felt like, ⁓ I being less of a leader because of this? Instead, she felt like, no, I'm ⁓ as a leader. And that created an increased sense of trust. an increased sense of accountability and an increased sense of ownership. All of the team felt like they owned the team and they own the results. So they didn't just perform. Her players didn't just perform. They all co-led the entire team and they dominated. They dominated. I don't know if you guys have seen this yet, but you can YouTube it. You can go look at Megan Rapinewes, I believe routine. ⁓ By the way, I fully know I might be saying her name wrong. she has this incredible I believe routine before the game starts where she gets them all together and she has them chant out loud. ⁓ believe, ⁓ believe, ⁓ believe that we will win. Holy smokes. ⁓ the energy just listening to it is so powerful. ⁓ so ⁓ did. They all led and they all won and they dominated. And that team was so in sync that as an entire ⁓ female team, even their menstrual cycle started co-regulating. So they were all of their team's menstrual cycles were on the same cycle. they even started using the energy of the moon to support their training. So you know much about the energy of the new moon and the full moon and the different moon cycles, ⁓ during full moon, ⁓ we really supported with the energy of the moon and we have much more energy. And so would train really, really hard during their full moons. But during the new moon, that's when we know just energetically and also by nature that that's when we're supposed to rest and retreat. that's when they would take their down days and rest during their new moon. ⁓ it worked for them. It was so powerful to watch. ⁓ ⁓ can we learn from Jill? A ton of stuff. We can learn that control maybe will create some compliance in the short term, but empowerment creates a sense of commitment, a sense of we're all in this together. ownership and that is really, really powerful because that creates sustainable results. It creates resilience long term. It's really, really powerful. going end an incredible coach. You guys might know him as Coach K. He coached the Dukes basketball team. His name is actually Szczepski. ⁓ His last name is It's I think it's pronounced Szczepski, but spelled very, very long, not a lot of syllables. I mean, not a lot of vowels. And his last name starts with K, which is why he's known as Coach K. the about Coach K. Coach K ⁓ is known for leading Duke to incredible championships. He was an amazing coach at Duke. ⁓ But in early years as a coach, he really, really struggled. ⁓ And there times where fans were chanting for him to be fired. And they thought he wasn't doing a very good job. And his instinct, because he's a military dude, he came from West was really to double down on control because that is how a lot of people learn how to lead. Hierarchical, top-down, authoritative. ⁓ so that's what he tried to do. More discipline, more structure, more authority, because that's what he thought would work for his team, because that's what had worked for him. But what was so powerful here is that That did not work. In fact, it stopped working. instead of him leaning more into that, ⁓ did something that a lot of high performers really struggled to do sometimes. He paused, he took a break, he stepped back and he reflected. And he realized, holy smokes, this isn't working. I have to adapt, but I don't want to lose my edge. ⁓ so he learned how to adapt and how to soften in a way without losing his edge. And over time, he became known not just for winning, but for the relationships he had with his players. Similar to Popovich, he would have these late night conversations with his players, personal check-ins, where his players felt deeply seen and valued. So this is the type of coach that would challenge definitely you on the court and really push you to grow, ⁓ but would sit with you and check in with you and see how you're doing. And what I really like about this is that though he softened around the edges and though he fully adapted and changed, he didn't lose the things that were working for him. He didn't abandon his discipline. He expanded it, not just to include like pushing hard, but also emotional intelligence, like first coach we talked about today. So, ⁓ emotional intelligence, trust connection, ⁓ and really what allowed him to coach across so many generations. because he coached players like Grant Hill and Kyrie Irving, different eras, different personalities, and a lot of the same excellence. one of the things that I think Coach K teaches us is, and I really ⁓ you to sit with this, ⁓ that your first version of success is rarely gonna be your final version of success. And the more you release an identity of who you have to be, ⁓ the easier it will be for you to adapt and become who you are becoming. And that is what's going to help you continue to grow and adapt and be flexible. Because in the psychology literature, there's a concept of cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility is the ability for us to shift perspectives and adapt behavior based on new information. And it's, of course, you can imagine it's strongly link to long-term leadership success because if something isn't working, you don't want to double down on it sometimes. ⁓ want to take a step back and figure out how to do it differently. ⁓ when there's new technology that's showing up, you get to just lean in and adapt as opposed to what sometimes programmed to do, which is stay with what is familiar. But staying what is familiar sometimes will slow us down. ⁓ We have be able to be adaptable. So the more you can release an identity of this is who I am and how I have to be. And the more you can let that go and say, listen, I know my core values. Like for me, for example, my core values are authenticity, excellence, curiosity. If I have to learn a new skill, if I have to learn a new technology to do that, all right, let's do it. I know that at my core, that's who I am. ⁓ that I think is what really supports me ⁓ ⁓ more and more success or support or being in service bigger and better in the world is that I double down on curiosity. I double down on authenticity and joy. That's who I am. Authenticity, joy, curiosity, and I always shoot for excellence. Like how can we do this and do this really, really well? right, so I going to just close by reviewing everyone we talked about today. So we started with Phil Jackson, the Zen master ⁓ who leaned into ⁓ channeling energy, so mindfulness and the breath and channeling energy for the outcomes you want. We talked about Don Staley and belief really creating not just a belief in themselves but in their identity, helping her players understand that they were capable of so much more. And then we talked about Greg Popovich, culture and belonging. We talked about Jill Ellis, letting go of control to unlock greatness. Man. One last thing about Jill Ellis I'll just say because when I think about her, it feels still really confronting to me because clearly I'm still learning how to do this, which is to let go of control if you want to be bigger. You know, there's this really powerful African proverb, which is if you want to go fast, go alone. ⁓ But you want to go far, go together. That's what she did with her team. ⁓ And is why building teams is so powerful because There comes a point where you can no longer be the bottleneck of what you're creating, of how you're in service to the world. You get to support yourself and the work that you're doing and have a bigger impact when you're more resourced, when you have a team. And that requires you letting go of a lot of control. And then we ended with Coach K, which really is all about evolution. Evolution without losing your core values or losing your edge. All right, sweet friends, I hope you found this supportive. I hope you found this really helpful. And I wanna remind you that your next level of wherever you're going, your next level of growth is not just about strategy. It's not just about pushing harder, working harder, more productive, more doing. It's about who you get to be to create this next version of you. How you think, how you feel, how you regulate yourself, how you relate to yourself and relate to others. That right there is what's going to support you in creating the next evolution. And if you want help doing that, I would recommend you schedule a consult with me. I work one-on-one with leaders, with entrepreneurs, with high performers that are interested, that want that next level of growth, or that are sitting in a place where they're not super happy with where they are right now. They're just, something feels off. I'm still so stressed out. I'm so burnt out. I just feel blah. If you want to feel better, I can help you do that work. So you can schedule a consult with me. The link is in the show notes. Alright sweet friends, I will see you next week. Adios.