58. The Underdog Advantage: What the Best Teams Know About Leadership and Growth

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: Alright friends, welcome back to the podcast. This is our last episode in our sports series. So I decided to jump in and do a sports series because it's the NBA playoffs and I love me some basketball. And as I was watching the basketball players, these are, you know, some of the most elite athletes that exist for some of the best coaches in the world. watching their interactions, watching how they win, how they lose, because there's so many great lessons in how somebody loses, watching comebacks, watching mindset, all those types of things. It got me thinking, wow, there is so much to learn, not just in the doing, what, how do I push myself harder? What skills do I need? How do I follow through when I'm shooting a free throw? But actually in the being, in the ways of being of these elite performers. And so I brought you some examples of some of the most elite performers and the way they think and feel, some of their coaches. And today we're jumping into an underdog story. So shifting the lens of the way we think. And we're not talking necessarily about individual greatness today. We're talking about teams and how they perform. I think they can teach us so much about leadership and culture and collective success. ⁓ And I think that is, ⁓ that's just really, really powerful. So that's what we're jumping into today. Before I start, just a few announcements. Number one, if you are enjoying what you are learning here, if you're enjoying being part of this community, whether you're watching us on YouTube or whether you are listening to this on podcast streaming platform, ⁓ would love your support in growing our community. So the way we do that. is we share these episodes with people that you think would resonate with them, with your friends, with your family, with your colleagues. Please share these episodes with them. And I'd also appreciate if you could leave us a rating and a review. Wherever you're listening, rate the show, subscribe and leave us a review. It could be something short and sweet, maybe the best thing you've learned from the last episode. But that's just how the algorithms recognize these shows. And the more people engage with the content, the more we grow. And the more we grow, the more conscious community we create. All right, so let us jump in today and talk about the underdog story. a in psychology called collective It's the shared belief of a group ⁓ their ability to And research shows that this belief often matters much more than individual talent. So ⁓ teams that believe that they can win will outperform teams that should win on paper. If you believe that you can win, it'll outperform teams that should be winning. shared on the last episode the US women's national soccer team, they'd play, they would all do chant together. The chant is so powerful. You should watch it on YouTube. Watch it with your kids. It's so inspirational. And the team captain, Megan, would say, believe, and everybody would chant after her. I believe. I believe that we will win. And they all chant. And it's not I believe that we can win. It's I believe that we will win. So powerful. OK, I'm going to give you five different underdog stories and a few lessons from each one. And we are going to start with. The Hoosiers because they're, if you haven't seen the movie yet, it's a really fun movie to watch. So The Hoosiers was a basketball team and the story is inspired by real life, 1954 Milan High School team in rural Indiana. And really I think it shows us the power of fundamentals. And again, this sense of collective efficacy, the sense that we will win. talking about this tiny, tiny town of a few hundred people. So it's a tiny high school and the high school is competing against schools that are 10 times their size. Indiana, in state, basketball is not just considered a sport, it's part of the culture. ⁓ But this team It was a small team in a small town, so they didn't have any elite recruits. They didn't have a physical advantage. ⁓ They had ⁓ no reason win. So what makes the story remarkable? coach, Norman Dale, What he tried to do was not necessarily outplay bigger teams. He did something a little different. He decided that he was going to simplify the game and get them to really excel at the fundamentals. Fewer passes, really disciplined play, precision over flashy plays, and belief again before there was evidence that they could win. There's this iconic scene in the movie where he measures the hoop before the championship game. to show their players belief like, hey, look at this game here, this court, this hoop is the same exact height as your home court. Really to allow them to really feel into the concept that they belong there. Because you can imagine if you're an underdog and you've never played at a championship game and you get there and you look around and the stadium is gigantic, it could be really intimidating. But reminding yourself that you belong is huge. And in fact, one of the biggest antidotes to imposter syndrome is the practice of belonging. It's telling yourself, I belong here. I belong here because imposter syndrome creates fear. Do I belong here? I don't think so. But practicing belonging actually is a huge antidote to imposter syndrome. So what actually made the Hoosiers successful? Number one, mastering fundamentals, regulating their emotions under pressure and really a huge shift in the concept of belonging. Belonging. They belong there. So when you're thinking about this, if we were going to extrapolate their lessons into your life as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a high performing professional, one of the things that I think is important is simplicity. I think simplicity is so important. The more simple we can make things, whether it's our messaging, whether it's our strategy, the better execution we get. And one of my favorite teachers and coaches once said, if you keep things simple, and this is actually an equation that I created based on one of his lessons, he essentially was saying, the more simple, the better, the more simple, the more focused you will be. And so I had this formula that I created that would on my computer, which Simplicity plus focus equals service. The more simple I can make things, the more I can focus one strategy, ⁓ the more service I'll create, more impact I will have. ⁓ And that really, really served because before that, honestly, I think that there was sense of I to myself and the way to do that was to make things really complicated. and it definitely made things complicated and I wasn't proving myself to anybody as I quickly learned. so that's the first one. Number two ⁓ is story ⁓ of miracle, the 1980s US Olympic hockey team. ⁓ So you guys haven't yet seen that movie, it's a great one. you know, funny. When I was researching I was like, why have they made so many movies of underdogs? And if you think about the psychology behind it, it's so relatable and it feels so good to us because an underdog can make it, then anybody can make it. And it just feels so inspiring. because Hoosiers and Miracle have both been made movies and they're great movies. let's talk about ⁓ Miracle I think one of the most important things to understand about Miracle is where they came from, the players came from. Because the US team wasn't made up of these seasoned professionals. Remember, this is like an Olympic hockey team. were actually made up of college players ⁓ mostly from ⁓ rival programs in the United States like Boston versus Minnesota. ⁓ they were relatively young folks ⁓ they were unproven necessarily on the world stage. ⁓ they were going up against the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union had dominated international hockey for decades. They played together year round. They had just defeated a team of NHL All-Stars. so this wasn't like like David versus Goliath. This was way deeper than that. This was like David versus Goliath when Goliath had already won like 10 times. So I think what makes this really remarkable that the gap wasn't just in the talent. It was an experience, the experience of the players. Like they didn't have a lot of experience. They didn't even have chemistry. They hadn't even played together. And they definitely did not have confidence. Like they never thought that they could beat the Soviet team because the Soviet team moved like a machine and our team didn't even fully trust each other yet. They still identified as a hockey player from Minnesota or a hockey player from Boston. They were just wearing the same jersey. And I think what their coach did that really changed the game was a few things. Number one, he understood something that I think a lot of people miss, which is you're not going to win at the highest level with talent alone. You cannot win with just talent. You need to win with something deeper than that. You need to win with identity. And so there's this famous line in the movie where he says, I'm not just looking for the best player. looking for the right players. He was looking for players who were willing to be coachable, who were willing to be adaptable. this is the most important. He was looking for players who were willing to sacrifice individual identity for the entire team. He wanted to optimize for team, for building team, for building a collective, not just building ⁓ or one player doing everything. And really, really powerful. And he was willing to break down the ego to build them back up as a team. another really famous scene in the movie where he's making them play on the ice and he keeps saying again, again, again, and pushing them harder. he them, listen, we might not be the most talented, ⁓ but we're to be the most conditioned player. and that's kind of what it looked like on the surface, but deep down underneath what he was actually doing ⁓ is supporting them eliminating ego and creating shared adversity. and forcing them to unite together. Because as soon as he did that drill over and over again, know, before that drill, he would ask him, who are you and who do you play for? He's like, the team would say, I play for Minnesota or I play for Boston. And that scene, what it showed us is after that shared adversity, when he'd ask them, who are you and what do you play for? And they would say their last name and they'd say, I play for Team USA. this unity and this shared collective that was so powerful. And there's actually really ⁓ data back this up. ⁓ There's that shows that shared struggle ⁓ increases sense of trust, ⁓ because it actually does when you're sharing struggle with others, it releases oxytocin. ⁓ Oxytocin that feel good hormone that creates intimacy. It's like what the mother releases when she has a baby that helps her connect with the baby. ⁓ But same hormone gets released when you have shared adversity. I think about residency. So in medical school, we have to go through something called residency. It's through anywhere from three to seven or eight years, depending on your specialty of training. And pretty brutal. Some of our residency, but you get so tight with your residents again, shared adversity, this collective hardship builds cohesion. And you think about that, he's not just training the athletes at that time. Now he's training their entire team to connect. it's powerful to see that you can rewire folks for identity, for cohesion, ⁓ to build a team. So he built that belief that they were going to be able to succeed and that they were going to be able to win with the right players even before there was evidence there. And a lot of people did not believe that it was possible. ⁓ think ⁓ really, powerful see because the other thing this showed us is that, because all of these individual players on the hockey team ⁓ were They were great. But that's not what he was looking for. He wasn't looking for individual players. He was looking for a collective. And one of the lessons I realized from this is that a team of high performers is not the same ⁓ as high performing team. ⁓ I'm to say that again. A team of high performers is not the same ⁓ as high performing team. Because if every high performer is, you think about some of those teams that had these all-stars that wanted to always be the best and the brightest and always wanted to shine and outshine their team, they don't do as well if they're not always focused on the team better than them. So we greater than just me as an individual. that is something I want you all to take with you. How you intentionally build an identity of a team? You ask yourself, who are we as a team? What do we stand for? How do we operate under pressure? And it's important to identify it and to define it because your team will not embody it if you don't define it. think about the team that ⁓ created and am actively still working to build and create with business. ⁓ And want us to have a vision and a mission that's so much bigger than just us. And it's so much bigger than just. you know, end of year revenue. It's, hey, we are here to make this world a better place. We are here to support the elevation of consciousness to help leaders and these professionals heal and grow into their next level. That's really powerful stuff. And we are doing that together as a collective. And inspires me and it's super powerful because it builds up our team cohesion. So for you think about what is the vision and the mission that I have created for my team? or that I want to create for my team we can embody a collective. Because when you embody a collective, you're able to do big, powerful things. It creates a sense of trust ⁓ and transforms folks from ⁓ individual to excellence. ⁓ And that's powerful. ⁓ One player might be able win a game, but won't always be able to win a championship. You need a team for that. Okay, so I'm going to go on to Leicester City. This ⁓ is European soccer team. And so I didn't actually start following soccer until very recently because I didn't know the rules. I didn't play growing up. And soccer, or as it's known in the rest of the world, football, a big deal in Latin American countries. my from Mexico, my dad's from El Salvador. And I up in a house where during the World Cup, they would set alarms to get up. whenever their teams were playing and watch games at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. And I never followed along because I didn't understand it. All I remember of soccer growing up is the announcers in Spanish yelling goal, really long goal, every time somebody would score. And the scoring, don't don't score often. And so they were low scoring games. ⁓ never understood it. ⁓ And I actually tried to play soccer when I was a young kid and somebody kicked the ball and hit me in the stomach and blew the air out of me. And I was like, peace out, I'm not playing this. But anyway, now my kids both play soccer and I had to learn the game. I had to learn the rules because I wanted to understand what was going on. I am in love with soccer now. I think it is so fascinating to watch the skill set, the endurance, the level of team that it requires. the fields are big you have to play team if you're going to win it's so powerful i'm bringing you um an underdog story that's actually a european soccer league story the story of luster city from 2015 to 2016 so they started off the season with a 5 000 to 1 odds actually it was doing some research i was like has had there ever been odds that are that bad? Turns out there have not. This is like the worst odds that have ever existed. So it was considered like frankly impossible that they would do anything but lose. had ⁓ zero chance and most experts predicted that they would essentially be fighting just to avoid last place. They even supposed to be competing. So Leicester city is not a powerhouse club. They don't have all the financial backings like the big teams like Manchester United or Chelsea. They didn't have a big roster filled with all the big names. So what they had was essentially of their players were overlooked, undervalued, previously rejected, and they hadn't been playing football or soccer in really big leagues for a really long time. were essentially No one ever thought that they would win. So What made story so significant is not just they won one game. It's that they were able to sustain excellence over an entire season. ⁓ It's like that ⁓ series on Apple TV, Ted where he comes into this team that's like wildly underperforming and then just turns him around. It was like that. So how did they do it? what they did is ⁓ after week, they were focusing on something so unique. What they did was assign roles to each one of their players and make it super clear to them, hey, your job is this. That's it. That's all you got to focus on is just this. ⁓ they practiced their roles over ⁓ over and over again. For example, they a player on their team, Jamie Vardy, and he considered the finisher. He's not considered necessarily the creator of the play, but the finisher. role was to run behind and finish the score. So score. So he responsible for building a play ⁓ or he responsible for organizing the offense. What his success looked like is when the other teams are coming and they try to score and they miss, your job is to finish. As I like to say, take out the trash. ⁓ You take trash out. So if they miss the goal, you come behind and you score. So what he did was essentially threaten the defensive line and he had this relentless pressure on defenders. That's all he did. He didn't try to do everything ⁓ coach knew you have master what is that you are supposed to do. And that's what he did. He mastered his lane. And they had another player on team, Conte. And Conte's role was to win the win the ball. ⁓ So his role was essentially to ⁓ to recover the ball and that's it. He wasn't responsible for scoring. He wasn't responsible for being like a flashy offensive player. success looked like intercept the ball, win the ball, regain the possession and that's it. And he covered that so that the other teammates could also shine in their role. And he did this with ⁓ every of them. There was another player named Riyad and his role was essentially create the opportunity. you know, pass the ball down the lane, create the opportunity. You don't necessarily have to score. You just have to make it easier for others to score. he did that with all of his players over and over again. And what this showed us is that the more clear the roles are, the easier it is for the brain to focus on what it is you have to do. So ⁓ science behind this is cognitive load. So what's important about this is this, that under pressure, If you have a high cognitive load, a lot of things you have to do under pressure, then it's hard for you to focus on just one thing. But when your cognitive load is clear, my role is to win the ball. My role is to finish the score if they miss. My role is to, disrupt the ⁓ If that what your role is, then your cognitive load is super, super clear. what that does for you is when there's a lot of pressure, instead of hesitating, it makes it easier ⁓ you to make a decision and you'll make your decisions faster. That's you want. Faster decision making, easier decision making, making it super clear, and then you become super effective at what it is you do. So what this looks like when we move it outside of the soccer field and into ⁓ life leadership and business is this. is clear on what their roles are and everyone is moving in the same direction, you don't necessarily need bigger the best to become the most effective. You just need people to be clear. You just need clarity. You don't need, for example, if your role is not marketing, don't go and try to do marketing and operations. Let the operations person do operations. Let the marketing person do the marketing. you do what your role is, maybe your role is strategy or vision. more that you can have your team members not duplicate work, the more efficient things will be, the less friction, the less confusion. I that's so important because when we're building teams, so if you're an early stage entrepreneur, maybe you have a team of one or a team of two you have VA ⁓ and the VA not super clear on what they're supposed to do because in your mind, the just helps you with everything. That's what you think, your VA is helping you with everything. actually creates a lot of overwork ⁓ doing things over and over again, a lot of inefficiencies. They're writing content, but you're still fixing the content. You're still checking the details. You're still ⁓ checking everything and you continue to stay overextended. And that creates a problem because the whole point of a VA ⁓ to get things off of your plate so that you have the bandwidth to think clearly, to strategize, to operationalize. ⁓ That's your role to have the vision, to have the space for creativity. so you need to make sure that folks are super clear on what their roles are and you manage them effectively. ⁓ also builds a ton of trust. When people know what their roles are, ⁓ think back to Lester ⁓ all of their folks on their team, everybody knows what their roles are so they can trust each other. ⁓ when you can trust your team, it creates psychological safety. We talked about psychological safety a couple episodes ago. Psychological safety creates a sense of the ability for the team to understand that there can be better communication, there's less hesitation. And we know that in research shows us that teams that have high psychological safety will always outperform teams that are quote unquote more talented because there's more trust in these teams than there are in the other teams. And trust creates adaptability, creates... It creates the ability to speak up, more innovation, more creativity. And that's essentially what we want. We want our teams to feel safe so that they will be more effective and higher performing. let's on. So ⁓ the team I'm going to talk about is Villanova. So Villanova ⁓ is pretty impressive basketball team now, ⁓ but were not that flashy of a team back in the day. I love March Madness. I love watching the college teams play basketball because it does, it feels like not just March Madness, it feels like March Magic because underdogs can like throw high seeds off their game and the games are so fast and people are playing so hard. It's so fun to watch. And in 2016, ⁓ they have big stars. They didn't have really big recruits. What they had instead was something a little different, but incredibly powerful. So if you watch them play, you'll see what stands out. What they were doing was moving the ball consistently, passing, cutting into the middle, rotating, passing the ball again. So no one was holding the ball too long and there were never any forced shots. was nobody that had to have the ball because it needed to be a hero. ⁓ ⁓ what actually created really this iconic team ⁓ ⁓ supported them is building a perfect team that was able to execute together as a team. So notice the story here for all of these is that there was very little ego. They didn't have the luxury of these big names. There was not a lot of ego in any of these examples. All of these examples was built on team and creating a high performing team when nobody else believed it was possible. And that's exactly what Villanova did. Each player trusted. because they practiced so much that they were going to be passing the ball that the ball was going to come back to them eventually. And they each trusted that their teams were going to do the right thing for the sake of the team. There was no ego driven decisions. Nobody needed to be the big star. Nobody needed to take the final shot to get the credit. what's so surprising about this or maybe just paradoxical is ⁓ no one needed to be the star, they all emerged as the star because the team that took the team to greatness, that took the team to winning. And I just think that's so powerful. And I want to invite you now to think about the teams you lead, because even if you can take yourself out of, you you need to be the star, you need to be seen as the greatest. If you remove your ego from all of us too and look at this as an entire team, it's our team that does this together. Can you imagine how powerful that is? Because everybody can feel that. It's not about one individual. It's not even about the leader. It's about the entire team together. The system over the individual. That's what the coach built. Coach Jay Wright at the time built a system where the team itself was the strategy. The strategy is we play hard as a team. It's not the individual. And that's really systems thinking, thinking bigger. Success emerges from us interacting together, not an isolated performance, but performing as a team. So the science behind it is really, really fascinating. when ego is high, people hold on to control because you have to continue to prove your ego right. And your ego does not want to get hurt or bruised. That's Freud's whole theory on superego. And decision making slows down and then other people have a tough time. You know, like you don't trust other people because you feel like you have to have control. And when trust is high, the brain feels safe. when you, so safety is the key to everything, which is why psychological safety is so important. Because when you feel safe, your prefrontal cortex functions better the opposite of safety is fear. in a fear state, you have your amygdala that's overactive. You're in a hypervigilant, overactive amygdala state. And when your amygdala is overactive, your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that's responsible for decision-making and innovation and social judgment, that part will start to down-regulate. So when the ego is high, there's less safety, more control, more fear, higher amygdala. When trust is high, the amygdala feels calm and down regulates. Your prefrontal cortex up regulates and it creates a sense of safety. And when trust creates safety and safety allows for prefrontal cortex to up regulate, which allows you to be more creative, more innovative, allows for decisions to be faster, for them to be more accurate. ⁓ that's what trust allows you to do. It's so powerful. And that's exactly what they did with this team. Some lessons for all of us here is how can we make sure that we are building a team where the team knows that wins of the team are the wins of everybody. And it's really ⁓ versus any individual. It's we greater than me. And I'm gonna end today's episode by talking about the Golden State Warriors. So the Golden State Warriors were not always the dynasty that they became. They were a very, very different team. So before they won all these championships, they were a different team. And what actually changed them and made them really remarkable ⁓ their coach came in, Steve Carr, ⁓ he implemented something so ⁓ Before this, he had a bunch of players that were individually okay, individually good, ⁓ he wanted them to play with joy, with connection. He wanted to build a team. that knew that the way for them to win is for them to win together and play together. And so you could see, if you ever watch one of the old games in 2016, 2015, 2017, what you would start to see is that even the people on the bench were fully engaged on what was happening. They all celebrated each other. There was so much connection they started to play in a flow state. psychology, flow is like the ability for the energy to be moving through you without you really thinking about it. And it's so effortless. that's what their team started to do. They were fully immersed, highly focused and had this effortless execution. People knew who to pass the ball to, where it was going to go. It was powerful. And there's research behind the joy that Steve Carr was also creating. The science behind it. comes from Barbara Fredrickson and she shows us that when you lean into a sense of positive emotion instead of negative or neutral, it expands your ability to be creative. It strengthens the relationships. It allows you to think differently and improve your problem solving. Of course, it leads to better performance. So this really speaks to culture. When you think about your culture as a culture that leans into joy, a culture that leans into spriticor like Everybody knows like we're here because we want to have a good time. And yes, we want to win, but we care about winning as a team more than any individual. pretty powerful. And that's what they did. OK, we talked about a lot of teams. ⁓ let me wrap us up. So we talked about these five underdogs. And if you think about the through line between all of them, it's essentially a sense of we over me building a really strong team. ⁓ where the identity of the team matters more than any individual person. We talked about creating super clear roles so people understood, that's my job. And there was a strong sense of trust and psychological safety. These are the things that create high performing teams and that can create high performing teams from underdogs. It's super powerful. So it's not necessarily about having the strongest or the best. It's about building a culture where we know we're all in this together. And that is what I will leave you with and an invitation for you to think about how can you start thinking through, how can I create a mission statement that inspires my team to know that it's us against the world? You know, that's like that level five teamwork, us against the world. it's not just, ⁓ you know, this one person. It's not about the CEO or this person over here. It's about all of us together. Alright sweet friends, I will leave you with that and if this is resonating with you, I am so happy. Make sure you share this episode with a friend or a loved one and of course leave us a rating or review. That's how others find us. And I would love to support you if you are in a stage of growth and you are ready for your next level. If you feel stuck, if you're feeling unhappy, if you know that there's more for you and you don't know how to get there yet, I would love to help you. I work one-on-one with high functioning folks with leaders, with entrepreneurs, with physicians, with other professionals. And I help you create your next level, whether that's in life, in leadership, in business. So you can schedule a consult with me. There's a link to schedule that consult in the show notes. All right, sweet friends, I'll see you next week. Adios.