Owen Eastwood on Decoding Team Dynamics, Alpha Personalities, and Decreasing Performance Anxiety {High-Performance Coach/Author}

Inside the Episode

“When there are parts of this organism of a team that’s sick, unhappy, are taking a lot of energy away. It just affects everybody. We are all connected with each other. One of the principles of my work absolutely is that well-being is not a siloed topic we should be thinking about. Well-being is energy. We need everybody to feel well in order to have the most energy they can have in order to achieve the optimal performance, and so part of well-being isn’t just your emotional state as an individual or your physical well-being, it’s also the social setting. When people come into an environment which is toxic, they’re not well, it affects their well-being and it massively reduces their energy.” – Owen Eastwood

Owen Eastwood is one of the world’s leading high-performance coaches, as well as best-selling author of the book “Belonging”, which decodes the ancient rules of togetherness and group dynamics, and he joined us on the podcast this week to dive deeper into his work. In what turned out to be one of our favorite conversations so far this year, we explored the areas of:

• The “Silent Dance” of power, hierarchies, and cliques that form on all teams
• Alpha Personalities and how to manage them
• And we discuss Vision Statements and Decreasing Performance Anxiety during “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”

Transcript

Owen Eastwood 00:00

We are all connected with each other. One of the principles of my work, absolutely, is that well-being is not a siloed topic we should be thinking about. Well-being is energy. We need everybody to feel well in order to have the most energy they can have in order to achieve their optimal performance. Part of well-being isn’t just your emotional state as an individual or your physical well-being, it’s also the social setting. That when people come into an environment which is toxic, they’re not well. It affects their well-being and it massively reduces their energy. 

Dan 02:10

Please enjoy our conversation with Owen Eastwood. Owen, thank you very much for taking the time for us. We are beyond excited to discuss the book, Belonging, and much more with you today, so thanks for coming on the show. 

Owen Eastwood 02:27

Well, thank you for reaching out and inviting me. I really appreciate it. 

Dan 02:30

Absolutely. So, Owen, we want to start with a certain part of the book, Belonging. And for those who haven’t read, obviously, a terrific book that you read a couple of years ago, all about what it means for groups to come together, what Belonging really means. And we’ll get into a ton of that stuff today. But one of the chapters on The Silent Dance, we wanted to start with, and we’ll start more broadly, kick it to you on what The Silent Dance is that’s taking place on teams at every level, every year, and how coaches can start to think about dealing with some of those issues that arise with The Silent Dance that’s happening on their teams. 

Owen Eastwood 03:06

When you’re working with teams, there’s so much going on, isn’t there, in terms of the dynamics between people, between the hierarchy, different types of people with similar backgrounds. All of these things are happening the whole time. It’s what I call the silent dance. It’s not obvious. I became a performance coach about 10 years ago, quite accidentally, really. But what I found is that I couldn’t learn anything about these dynamics that are happening. People would talk about vision, purpose, values, and all these things. But actually, a lot of the things that affect performance of a team, their cohesion, their energy levels, their focus, is to do with how they are interacting with each other. One of the moments that became extremely obvious to me was I was invited to spend some time with a French football team. They were the team that spent the most money on salaries, and they had the best talent in the competition. There’s no doubt about it. They were floundering in the middle of the pack in their league. The owners and the coaches were so frustrated by not really understanding what was going on. I was asked over there just to take a look at this. Everything that you would go through a checklist was there. Amazing talent, great facilities. They had a vision. They had a purpose. They had values. It was all there. But this was a team which was really lacking energy and was not competing. I spent some time in there. What I saw was actually the team was at actually three different cliques. That’s really what the team was. Two dominant nations. You know what they were doing is actually they were really competing with each other all week, including their alpha leaders, were both wanting to be the captain of the team. Then there was a third clique as well, which was just basically in survival mode. They were expanding all this energy against each other rather than, in a way, preparing themselves for the competition in the weekend. We brought some attention to this and we fixed it. Then all of a sudden this team starts performing again. It was just a really obvious reminder to me that there was so much of that stuff that goes on in teams that coaches really need to have a grip on. I think it’s, for me anyway, it’s quite hard to find information about that as I went through my journey becoming a coach. 

Dan 05:11

When you discovered the cliques, and we maybe we can get a little bit more about how cliques form in a second, but what was the first job of yourself or and or the coaching staff once recognizing, okay, these are the things that have formed and it’s hurting us, the unraveling process of helping that group become more one and not be so segmented as you found them. 

Owen Eastwood 05:33

What I subsequently learned is that cliques are completely normal. I think there’s a term called homophily, which is natural in all species actually, and that is we have this absolute primal need to belong. Human beings have never been able to exist and survive unless they belong to a group. Even in today’s world, people who feel socially isolated, chronically lonely, are four times more likely to have mental health and cardiovascular issues.

It’s still a huge part of who we are as people, that we’re always looking to belong in a group. When you go into a group where you don’t know a lot of people or it’s quite a big group, you will naturally look for a smaller group of people that you feel even more belonging to, and they’re often people who speak your own language. You may look like you, may have a similar background. They’re not good guys, bad guys. This is all natural. Similarly, all human beings… I learned this through the evolutionary psychology guys at Oxford University, which I was very lucky, but they told me how every single room full of human beings will create their own hierarchy. We are unbelievably hierarchical, and we make calculations and split seconds about where we are on the ladder. The alphas amongst us have an absolute determination to be top doc. You’re Michael Jordan’s and these type of people, they need to be the top doc. They cannot settle for anything less than that.

Fleeks and status and hierarchy are all normal, but what’s interesting to me, working with coaches, is often they are completely unfamiliar with any of this, and therefore they don’t quite understand some of the dynamics playing out. To get back to your question, once you identify them, you bring awareness to them, to the coach, and then they can start analyzing the situation better. A bit more integration, a bit more sharing of roles across the alphas rather than picking one alpha as the winner. Actually, the football team, the big problem was they had two extreme alphas from different nationalities. They both wanted to captain that team. When one was appointed and the other one was not, that other one basically created their own team around them that they led. This is where lack of cohesion occurred. I actually watched a training session where the coach tried to practice one play and the alpha from the motored alpha refused to play it, refused to train it, came up with all these excuses. This was not a football decision. This was an assertion of power that, okay, I’m not captain, but I’ve got a big clique behind me and we’re not doing it. I’m showing you that I do have power in this team. I was literally watching it on the sideline and the coaches were like, what is earth is going on? But once we analyzed it correctly, there’s quite a few things we’re able to do to diffuse the situation and make sure that there’s much more integration between everybody rather than allowing these cliques to basically survive beside each other. 

Pat 08:09

You mentioned the alphas, and what is the difference between an alpha and a leader? 

Owen Eastwood 08:14

That’s a great question. Interestingly, alphas do not always want to lead the team, but they do want to be the most powerful, influential person on it. If you’ve got an alpha who’s a good leader, happy days, there are those leaders who are the alphas, and that’s fantastic. But sometimes alphas do not actually want to lead. Sometimes they’re actually just too selfish to lead. Either they internally don’t want to, or externally, they would be a terrible choice. The thing about them is they do want to be the most influential, and they want to have the most status. So I’ve been involved in teams where either they don’t want to, or they would be a disastrous captain, so there’s no way they are the official leader of our team. However, we do things like we put them in front of the cameras a lot. So their ego is being massaged all the time. They’ve got a high profile associated with the team. This seems to calm them a little bit. Also, I’ve had situations where we’ve had world-class young players in this team, and we go to an alpha like that and just say, hey, this kid is going to be world-class, and we want you to be his buddy and mentor. So doing things like that allows them to feel that they have the status which is right up there where they need it to be, and it can diffuse some of the tension. Otherwise, they can eat away at them, and they start looking for a tension and becoming a distraction and becoming a disruption. 

Pat 09:29

As a coach, if you talk with your leader, how would you help your leader manage or lead an alpha on the team? 

Owen Eastwood 09:35

Very important. And, you know, we need to educate a little bit, we need to educate ourselves, we need to educate our leaders in the team, including our captains and senior players that these are some of the dynamics in this team. I mean, my approach to this always is just to normalize it, because there’s a real risk of this becomes, okay, he’s a good guy, he’s a bad guy. It’s nothing to do with that. And although it can lead to bad behaviors, these dynamics are natural, are normal. And I’ve been with teams where we just laugh about it. So at the start of the pre-season, we just say, hey, high performing teams like this, and then if you think about an NBA team, it’s full of alphas, you can’t probably even be in the team like that unless you’re an alpha. Say, what’s an alpha? Well, we’re all determined to be the top dog. We want to be paid the most, we want the most status, we want, you know, to have the most influence over the way we play all of this. It’s all natural. We just normalize it, make it a bit of a joke, maybe get the players to reflect back on how their alphaness comes out. So that’s quite good. And then you get them, and some of them are quite self-analytical. And I’ll talk about, I know I can be a complete nightmare because sometimes this happens if I’m on the bench. So that’s all good. As part of that conversation, we start to create a few boundaries around, okay, we love the fact that we’re full of alpha dogs here, this is good. We’ve got to manage it. Otherwise, we’re going to just be wild. So what are the things we need to do? That’s how we would do it, just work it through. You know, what I don’t like doing in teams is punishing people for when they’re acting out as the alpha and becoming a bit disruptive. I don’t like the idea of finding them or suspending them or punishing them because to me that just keeps growing the clique ultimately and growing all that tension. So my preference is to put our arm around them. And you know, sometimes teams will have three or four alphas who will really be in leadership positions in different roles, different titles, and my experience has been quite a good way to manage it. 

Dan 11:18

In the book, I think you use animals as an example as far as the different levels that people naturally get into in Clicks. And I believe you use the lions, wolves, and sheep that people, when they’re in these groups, tend to get into. I wonder for a second, you can explain what those three are and then how that affects a sports team. 

Owen Eastwood 11:39

The thing about alphas is they can be unbelievable in energizing our competitiveness, and that’s how we want to utilize them. So that’s what we’re looking for. So when we can get unstuck is when we have alphas who are actually not incredibly competitive from a team point of view, they’re only really interested in their own digital performance. That’s when we’ve got a major problem. And that’s obviously comes back to a recruitment problem as well in the first place. That’s not who we want to be stuck with.  So the competitiveness is something that we double down on. And we try and analyze our players as to how truly competitive they are in terms of the team and the team doing well beyond themselves. Now that example you gave me, I was working with the international team and they’re analysts, brilliant analysts. And you know, all the analytics were great, all the game play and all the technical stuff was all amazing. And then one day he just took me aside and he said, I’ve just been playing with something I want to show it to you. I said, absolutely, what is it? And he said, I’m trying to analyze our competitiveness. And I know that it’s not as scientifically easy as other parts of the game, but I’ve been trying to do it. So he showed me and he put together some observations and statistics over the period of a year to try and analyze the competitiveness of all the players in the team. And he showed it to me, but what I thought was really impressive is that he said that I think we can categorize our team amongst three personality profiles is the Lions in our team. They are the people who will make a kill in order for this team to win. They will step up and do what is required under pressure in those key moments. They’re not waiting for someone else to do that. They will take the shot, you know, they’ll take the charge, they’ll throw their elbows, whatever’s required, they will do that. Then there’s the wolves. The wolves are the ones who actually don’t really step up in those crucial moments. But when we’re winning and someone else has done that, then they feast. So often their stats are quite inflated. But if you analyze what they do in the most critical moments, not very impressive. And then the sheep are those that are not even really thinking about winning the game for the team. They’re just happy to be there. They just want to survive. They just want to follow the rest of the route. And what he’d done really impressively is categorize our team and those three components. And he’d also categorize the last four teams with One World Cups in their sport, and show them that each team needs at least six Lions out of 11 players to win a World Cup. And he analyzed that we only had three. And that was incredibly useful for the coaches to think about selection and how we develop our players. These are interesting ways where you can use those sort of prime thought nature of humans and understand from a performance point of view, how you can utilize it a bit. 

Pat 14:09

I know it’s not a soccer podcast, but why did the coaching staff or you or the group feel that it needed to be six lions? How did you get to this number of five wasn’t enough. You need six or more. 

Owen Eastwood 14:19

Certainly because the analyst did an incredible thorough job of analyzing the previous four World Cups and seeing how their players all performed in precious situations. And then he categorized the average over those teams was that they contained six of those lions who stepped up. And you know, so his insight was that although, and actually we were world ranked number one team at the time, it was very interesting. His point was actually we haven’t got the right profile to win it. 

Pat 14:46

As far as then, if you look at the trickle-down effect of should you have as many wolves as possible and as less sheep, or is there also going to need to be balance of wolves and sheep? 

Owen Eastwood 14:54

Well, the critical one was really how many lions you have. You want to minimize the amount of sheep of people who are just there to be part of it and hanging on and not really contributing. I mean, sheep don’t really contribute using this analogy. The critical question around the wolves, so our best statistical players were, through his analysis, were wolves, not lions. So the other ones the media went crazy about and fell in love with, and other ones he signed the most autographs. But actually, it was the ones who had lesser statistics who often or most reliably stepped up under pressure for us. So what we really thought carefully about is how can we turn a wolf into a lion? And that’s where we put the effort, because you can’t let that talent go. They were amazing talent. It’s just that they tend to wait for others to do the crucial things and be brave. In football, that can be putting a pass forward rather than sideways in a critical moment, taking risks. So that was the key, and that’s where we put our effort in. And I think that was quite successful to turn a couple of those wolves into lions rather than looking for three brand new lions from outside of the whole squad. 

Pat 15:51

What were the ways that you guys tried to turn those wolves into lions? Or what kind of environments were you looking to create? 

Owen Eastwood 15:56

I think one of the things is to have an honest conversation with them. One of the key themes in belonging is that you get the best performance out of human beings when it’s a relational environment rather than a transactional one. That’s pretty obvious, I suppose, but this is quite a good example. First of all, you build a relationship with an athlete, and that allows you, then, to have very honest conversations with them. Actually, what happened was coaches, once they’d had this quite amazing and quite innovative way of analyzing the team, were able to sit down with these players and say, hey, you’re special. Why do you have talent-wise is through the roof and add so much to this team, but your scope to grow and to contribute to this team being the best in the world, we haven’t even tapped it. I’m going to share with you some really interesting analysis around how you contribute to our competitiveness. If they trust you and you’ve got a proper relationship with them, you can have conversations like that, and they were unaware of it, I think. I think they thought, actually, I’m a great contributor to our success, but when it’s shown that, actually, in these games, these are the four moments that determine whether we win or lose, and you’re absent during them in most games, then their competitiveness would fuel up, and they’d go like, I want to be the type of person who is the difference. That was quite a beautiful conversation to have, isn’t it? It really unlocked their growth, for sure.

Nothing too sophisticated, just awareness, and then, okay, how do we become, and we start training for it. Put ourselves into pressure scenarios and training, and watch them step up, and watch how they deal with that, and then that can replicate itself into games. Being very conscious about not embarrassing them in front of the team, you don’t have a team presentation where, okay, we’re going to talk about our wolves in the team. Here’s our wolves, here’s the four guys, great stats, don’t really contribute to us winning big games, but we never do that. It’s a one-on-one conversation around this. This was never shared in a team meeting around this analysis, but of course, the Lions, we did, again, in one-on-ones, tell them, hey, you need to understand how important you are to this team. 

Dan 17:53

As we’re talking about this silent dance and kind of the hierarchy that take place amongst a team, whether you’re doing anything about it or not, right? These things are going to happen or these things naturally kind of start to form amongst all teams. But one of the things you discuss in the book is about great cultures that make people feel like they belong and thrive, flatten the hierarchy at some point or make it so that it’s not so vertically structured top down type of deal. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that because it’s really interesting about how coaches could do that and why it’s so beneficial long-term to kind of flatten hierarchies if possible. 

Owen Eastwood 18:30

Well, again, from the evolutionary psychologists that I was lucky enough to connect with at Oxford University. I’m a New Zealander, but I live in England and quite close to Oxford. And they explained to me that for 95% of human history, we lived in these small bands of people, probably between 30 and 50 people. There wasn’t a hierarchy. The leader was appointed by the people. It wasn’t a dictatorship. Those sort of things didn’t arise until cities developed about 10,000 years ago. So all of our history, we are used to quite a flat hierarchy. A leader who knows us all personally, and we’re together, and not a lot of status. The status, all that’s ramped up a lot more once we’ve become more complex societies. So human beings are used to a degree of a flattened hierarchy, and we expect that. I think that’s where democracy would probably have emerged from.

And also, concepts of fairness. Human beings are very tuned to things that are fair or unfair, and I think a lot of it will come back from our ancient history of being used to quite flat hierarchies. And what I’ve noticed in sports, and I’m as a New Zealander, the New Zealander All Blacks rugby team are quite an amazing team. Over the 140 years, I’ve won 85% of all their games, and the next most successful rugby team in the world over that period has won 60%. But they’ve had quite an amazing record. Actually, at a financial and a playing numbers-wise disadvantage to other top nations. From 1905, they’ve had to play a leadership group that has run the team. And that’s quite amazing to me is that so early on, some of these teams were creating a flattened hierarchy where there wasn’t some dictatorial coach, it was actually really run by a leadership group. And now even with the All Blacks these days, the coach is just part of the leadership group, but he sits with the players. I gave some direct stories about how teams were underperforming with that sort of directive dictatorial approach, and then they created more of a shared ownership model, which again taps back into our ancient history. And it seems to unlock a lot of energy and buy-in and commitment from players once you do that. So I think that’s really, really important. 

Dan 20:29

Well, maybe I could follow up too, and it wasn’t quite in that section, but as it relates to sort of this conversation, a great quote from the book was, control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to freedom. And I think within this conversation about hierarchies, what that means and why coaches are striving for more autonomous groups rather than compliant groups. 

Owen Eastwood 20:49

Part of belonging is my own background, which is a Polynesian culture, the Māori people of New Zealand. When I was 12, I was taught by the elders that the world is only made up of two things, Tāpu, T-A-P-U, which is what is sacred, and Noah, N-O-A, which is everything else where you’ve got freedom to play. And it’s quite amazing because so much research comes out these days which keeps reaffirming this idea that human beings flourish and have the most energy, not when we are dictated to and have no autonomy, but also not when we have complete freedom and we are trying to figure it all out ourselves. Where human beings flourish is where these two things are in harmony and balance, i.e. the sacred things, which we all have to buy into a non-negotiable, but then all the rest where we get to just be ourselves and express ourselves.

So as a parent, you can relate to that. Kids like some boundaries, but then they like autonomy within them. But I find that in the high performing environments I’ve been in, this is really quite a strong principle as well, is that we want a diverse, crazy team of individuals. That’s all cool. Lots of alphas and everybody, it’s all great. But we are not a team unless we sign up for something that is sacred and we all buy into it.

Otherwise, we’re just a collection of interesting individuals with their own agenda. And lots of teams, I just check this all the time, is what is sacred about being part of this team? And often, coaches make exceptions or a willful blindness towards certain behaviors because they’re a bit intimidated perhaps by certain individuals. To me, that’s not a recipe for cohesion and ultimate energy in a team. So that beautiful balance between those two things is what we see. 

Dan 22:24

You’ve worked with some of the best coaches in the world, and for those that maybe tend to be leaning into more of controlling situations or have that instinct to want to control as much as possible, and I think coaches probably in general want to control as much as possible. What you do to help the coach try to loosen control in certain areas that you feel are helpful for the team at large, and what they’re holding on to, I guess, that you try to work through with them. 

Owen Eastwood 22:52

I am very contextual in the way that I coach. For example, if you have a very experienced team, if you’ve got a lot of experience on your team, to me, it’s a crazy and not the most optimal performance thing to do is just to keep telling them what to do and not asking their views, bringing in their experiences. To me, it does make sense.

In that type of situation, I would be coaching the coach around, come on, we need to create some structures around here where they have more voice and input because I’ve got incredible experiences to come to bear. But I’ve also been in situations where there’s been coaches with a very, very inexperienced team. They’ve never been in this situation before. In which case, they do need more direction or, if you want to use the word, control. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s one way of doing this. I would always be challenging coaches. Are you being adaptable and agile yourself in terms of how you’re thinking about this? If you have got some really, really excellent players with experience, then to me, you need to work with them rather than just telling them this is how you should be thinking and doing. But with inexperienced players, there’s no point just putting them in a room and saying, okay, so what do you think we should do? What’s our tactics? How should we train, et cetera? Because I look at you like rabbits frozen in the headlights. They won’t know what to do. It can text you all about it, but at the very least, just think it through. Where can they add their own value and go to another level of buy-in? 

Pat 24:15

Talking about autonomy and getting rid of the hierarchy, how do you help coaches or explain to coaches in terms of role clarification? And is there an importance to clarify roles to players and have these conversations? 

Owen Eastwood 24:29

It reminds me of quite an incredible meeting in the team meeting a few years ago where again, we were ranked number one team in the world at that time, just about to go to a tournament and I asked the coaches how the level of clarity was amongst the team and how we were going to play and deal with our opponents in this tournament and they were very, very confident that the clarity was great. It’s something in my gut told me there’s something off here and I don’t think they’re as clear as you think. So anyway, I persuaded the coaches for us just to have a session with the players and just ask each player, and we did it. We always do it loose. It’s not serious. We don’t want to be nice and relaxed. Just ask everybody as we go into this tournament, just share with us, share with the rest of the guys, what’s your role in the team to help us win? And it was quite eye watering. Probably half of the players had a definition of what their role was, which was at odds with what the coach’s game plan was. So I learned from that that you can never take it for granted that people have clarity and you need to check that before you go and compete.

And obviously, that can play out in the team dynamics as well if there’s a lack of clarity. Sometimes people think that they are but a bit more responsibility or whatever than the coach’s game plans would suggest. So clarity, you have to be critical to all of this as well. And when we have a bit of a muddle and with a bit of lack of clarity, that actually is when the silent dance really can take off. When people are unclear and anxious about the situation, then in anxiety, we tend to shoot off with our clique because it’s the place we feel most comfortable and safe. 

Pat 25:57

On these clicks or as the group is forming, what role does conflict play? What role does a healthy conflict that needs to happen for the group to form and to perform versus when is conflict with clicks detrimental? 

Owen Eastwood 26:11

What I try to do with teams is to try and normalize conflict. Now, human beings do not like conflict, and we do not like social conflict, because we have this desire to belong. And in order to belong, the best sort of thing you can do is be conformist, can’t you, and not create a problem. So when we’re in groups, we actually do not enjoy conflict whatsoever.

So the trick, I think, is just to normalize challenge. I don’t really use the word conflict. So if I only give you feedback when there’s a problem, you’re going to have high anxiety and be probably quite defensive. But if we have a rhythm where we’re giving feedback all of the time. And similarly, before we compete, if we do a good pre-mortem, we can challenge each other of how well prepared we really are for this, rather than waiting for the event to occur, have some problems, and then try and work backwards and sort of point fingers at people. So to me, conflict or challenge is absolutely essential, but just normalize it. Also, we have the same conversation on the team to say, hey, people don’t naturally. Some people do, more than sociopaths possibly, I don’t know, but some people love conflict and falling out with people. Most of us absolutely hate it. So it’s normal to not really want to have a difficult conversation with someone. Okay, it’s all right. You feel like it’s all right, but we’re going to help you because we’re going to role model this as coaches in a really compassionate way and in a consistent way. And we’re going to put little bits in our calendar during the week where we just check in with each other and we review and preview, and it becomes normal. So that’s the main thing. But when it’s not normal and when it’s edgy, yeah, that’s when you start to be in problems. And that’s when these rivalries between the cliques can boil over into actual conflict and even to the point of physical conflict at times. So we want to avoid all that. We want to normalize that. We want to diffuse the energy from cliques for them to put that same amount of energy into what the team’s trying to achieve. 

Pat 28:00

Have you worked with teams and part of teams where with our need to avoid conflict has there been a teamwork there has been no conflict because everyone’s been avoiding it but the sports teams need conflict to perform and have success for you found yourself talking to a coaching staff like we have to introduce challenges that kind of make these steps and break down their barriers of our natural need to avoid them. 

Owen Eastwood 28:22

My experience is we actually have to be proactive about building the facility to challenge and have conflict. Again, I don’t really use that word, but more on the idea of challenge and difficult conversations. I don’t think it comes naturally. I don’t think I’ve been in an environment where it’s just naturally people are brilliant at that. I think if it’s left alone, the natural thing is people won’t go there. They will basically sort of do the negative conversations in their cliques where it can boil over. You either go silent at one end or violent at the other end, verbally. Males in particular can go into their mancaves under pressure. Rather than confronting some of the issues, they will lead us to go missing in action. They become a bit less collaborative and the more dictatorial as pressure arises. None of these are great.

We want to be consistent and composed all the way through. To answer your question, I think we have to be proactive and we have to design this into the culture that is normalized and it’s done regularly. I used to be a lawyer. We would literally have feedback once a year. I was mad. We had a feedback once a year. How does that help an individual grow or address issues that they’ve got that could help them improve their performance? We want to make sure that in our calendars and teams that coaches have one-on-ones in a regular rhythm. It’s not unusual and not scary if someone says, let’s have a conversation about how things are going. It’s normal. 

Dan 29:43

When coaches ask us what our favorite go-to software we’re using headed into next year is, it’s pretty simple, just play. Last year was our first time using the all-in-one platform and we’re never going back. Our favorite feature was how easy it is to connect film from various providers right into opponent scout reports, along with our own in-house playbooks. This upcoming season will also be taking full advantage of their recruiting coordinator function to house all of our recruiting activity, including evaluations, notes, scheduling, and more.

To learn much more about everything Just Play has to offer, including their new AI-generating analytics and scout reports, visit JustPlaySolutions.com slash Slapping Glass today. Italy, Spain, Costa Rica, and beyond, ourselves, along with a number of other podcast guests, cannot say enough great things about our international tour experiences, working with Josh Erickson and Beyond Sports. From handling flights, hotels, game scheduling, excursions, service learning opportunities, and more, Josh and his team provide unmatched service and support throughout the entire trip. To learn more about why more than 650 programs have trusted Beyond Sports, visit BeyondSportsTours.com and tell them Slapping Glass sent you. Oh, and this has been awesome so far. We actually want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call Start, Sub, or Sit, and so what we’ll do for maybe those listening for the first time, we’ll give you three different options around a topic, ask you which one you would start of those, which one you would sub, and which one you would sit. So this first one, the topic is the end result of belonging. Basically, what’s the best outcome here of having a group that feels like they belong together or feels cohesive together? So option one is decreased anxiety, especially performance anxiety or anxiety in the group. Option two is increased resilience to hard times as a group and individually. Then option three is creating true trust amongst individuals so that they really do trust each other in anything. So Start, Sub, Sit, those three options, the best results of belonging. 

Owen Eastwood 32:00

I’d start with a performance and reducing anxiety, and then a sub-resilience, and then I’d sit, trust. 

Dan 32:07

I’ll follow up with your start, you just mentioned it in our last section, just a little bit about anxiety a little bit when you feel like you don’t belong or you don’t trust the leader or those around you. Could you just speak more on how both performance anxiety and anxiety amongst a group decreases the more someone feels like they belong to a group? 

Owen Eastwood 32:27

as a performance coach for me, the one thing I’m thinking about the whole time is the energy. We need to have optimal energy in the way we prepare to compete in the way we perform. And I’m looking with quite a laser focus, I hope, at where we leak energy outside of those two things.

And when people come into a group for the first time, they have this need to belong. And when it’s not fulfilled, they have these high stress levels, which you can measure, high cortisol levels, sometimes even adrenalin is pumping through them. That is taking away a lot of energy from individuals. And to me, that’s what I just call leakage. Because what we can do is when they come in, we can do certain things in order to make them feel that they belong. What happens is their cortisol levels will come down, their oxytocin and dopamine levels will come up. And there, we’re actually creating renewable energy for them and avoiding leakage.

I don’t see how a team can perform at their best when people have extra anxiety beyond just the fact of the competition. And particularly when we can do something to influence that internally, that’s a no-no for me. So that’s why belonging, just looking someone in the eye and saying, this is where you are here. This is what you bring to the team. You belong here. When people feel like an outsider or that they’re being judged and maybe rejected at any moment in time, they’re excluded. All of these things, it creates a massive energy tax. 

Dan 33:46

there was a later chapter on the long body that you discussed about groups and belonging in general, and that groups become kind of one at a certain point. And maybe tying those two things together here with this question as far as when a group does feel like they belong together, all the individuals do, what that end result is, as you spoke about nicely in the book with the long body. 

Owen Eastwood 34:08

I remember a few years ago working with a team who had not achieved one of their big goals and they were really, really disappointed. And this disappointment sort of ran for a year or so and their performances started to fall away. And they started to go into their cliques, those type of things, but also important conversations around standards weren’t being had. So they just started to fall and really their standards started to come down. And I remember we went into camp for a week and we addressed this stuff and we reconnected with our purpose, we reconnected with what the best version of us actually looks like. We had a session where everyone was able to be honest in the way they reflected on where they were at as a person and as an athlete at that point in time. And the captain at the end of it said, I feel like we’re healthy again. And I don’t feel we’ve been healthy for a long time. And it’s a bit like the long body idea is that when there are parts of this organism of a team that sick, unhappy, are taking a lot of energy away, it just affects everybody. We are all connected with each other. One of the principles of my work absolutely is that well-being is not a siloed topic we should be thinking about. Well-being is energy. We need everybody to feel well in order to have the most energy they can have in order to achieve the optimal performance. And so part of well-being isn’t just your emotional state as an individual or your physical well-being. It’s also the social setting that when people come into an environment which is toxic, they’re not well. It affects their well-being and it massively reduces their energy. So when I’m working with coaches, I love to see them be relational. I love to see them have a lot of optimism. I love to see them being able to be honest with players and make a commitment to the growth of those individuals. I want to see the team have a sense of purpose about what they’re doing. It’s not just an individualized what’s good for me. We’re actually trying to achieve something that would impact on a lot of people. All of these things create a social, healthy environment. And to me, that fuels performance. I really get pretty frustrated when people seem to talk about well-being as a completely separate category to performance. To me, performance is fueled by well-being and we need to be thinking about that and not just relying on an individual to be well, making sure we understand that the social environment is kind of a big influence on that. 

Pat 36:17

You just mentioned the individual goals, should coaches ignore the individual goals and focus solely on team goals that are in place or that are hoped for versus the need for the individual to have their own goals and succeed. 

Owen Eastwood 36:29

In the book, I write about individualist cultures and collectivist cultures, and that’s really, really, really interesting. Robert Sapolsky, professor at Stanford University has written amazing stuff around this and great research. And there are a lot of parts of the world where they have a collectivist view, and that is everything is about their family, everything is about their community, everything’s about their tribe, and they actually don’t need to have a personal conversation around, this is why it’ll be good for me. And in the book, I actually interviewed quite a famous former All-Black. And I asked him, what’s your personal purpose, your personal vision, your personal values? And he said to me, which is actually what I feel as well, he said that that doesn’t make any sense to me. My purpose in life is to help my family and to help my community and to help the teams I’m part of. I don’t need anything for myself beyond that. And there are a lot of people in Africa and Asia and Polynesia were wired that way. So in those type of environments of work, you don’t need to do a whole lot of work around that. But more individualist societies like the United Kingdom where I live and obviously the United States, there is much more of an individualist mindset around, I want to do well, I want to be successful, I have my own individualized sense of my purpose and vision of what I want to achieve.

So in those situations, what I absolutely do is we have a collective purpose about what we’re trying to do and why that would be impactful on others. And we make sure that it’s a motive and to a degree spiritual. But we also have one on one conversations with everybody. And that is along the lines of this is what we’re trying to do together. And you’re key to that. But this is why it also be good for you and make sure they’re aligned that they understand that if we have an amazing season, this will be great for them, but also be great for something bigger than them, both of them working together. 

Dan 38:11

When you’re working with coaches and players on their teams are showing behaviors that are unwanted and how much of the time you go back to the coaches and think about the environment, the structure, where they’re fitting in as a player and that some of these issues behaviorally maybe are caused by an environment issue versus when a player maybe just needs to be removed because the environment’s good and this player is just not going to fit. It’s going to, you mentioned the energy of a group, they’re going to take the energy no matter what you do environmentally. The conversations you might have about creating a better environment versus removing someone completely from it for the better of the group. 

Owen Eastwood 38:50

Well, removing someone from the environment is the last, last, last choice. And there’s a lot of work and a lot of things we can do before we get to that point. So when I get invited into an environment, you know, what I’m looking for initially is how strong is the code here? And sometimes it’s actually incredibly weak. And therefore, we get very judgmental about players who are exhibiting behaviors, but we actually haven’t really got a strong, powerful, well articulated code of who we are, how we do things. So that’s an important part of it and how they’ve been inducted when they’ve come in. So I’m looking at all that stuff. One experience with a team which was really powerful, we had some big personalities who had not been very popular in other environments. But this was a very cohesive thing, very successful team. But what we did was we had three stones which represented our three values. And what we would do at the start of each season is that we would allow every player just to hold each stone. One stone was about resilience, one was about honesty, one was about creativity. And we get each player to hold that stone and say to them that the beautiful thing about this team is we are very, very diverse. We’ve got a real incredible mix of people. But what’s going to bond us together, we’re all going to buy into the code of this team. And that is represented by our values. But we’re not going to tell you what these values mean. We’re not going to put a PowerPoint slide up. You will define what this value means for yourself based on your view of the world. So each of them got to hold the stone. And you know, I remember a Muslim player speaking about honesty and how what that means comes from the Quran and comes from the prophet. And he beautifully articulated that. And that’s how he lives his life. And that’s how he will be in the team. And then he passed it on to the next player. We talk about honesty, talk about his broken family, how his father was so dishonest with the rest of the family and ultimately broke the family apart. And he made a commitment as a young man that he never wanted to live a life like that. So honesty is everything for him. And then he passed it on to the next player. And that became all these very, you know, potentially challenging individuals, just creating a code, but not a prescription, allowing them to define. At the end of the day, this team, they had this incredible performance behaviors around all of these things that to me, if we haven’t done that type of work, then I’m saying, you know, just think twice about just getting rid of people. Let’s make sure we’ve got this incredible culture internally, because I think 99 times out of 100, they will buy into. 

Pat 41:10

Our next one for you has to do with creating a vision. We know in reading your book, that vision plays a large role in creating a culture and ultimately creating belonging. So this question has to do with when the vision is not doing its job, not serving its purpose, three things that would contribute to a poor vision. So option one would be lack of imagery used. Option two would be too outcome focused, or maybe too many stats analytics. And then option three would be not optimistic enough for lacking optimism. 

Owen Eastwood 41:44

Well, I would start with the lack of imagery and then I would sub-optimism and then I would sit outcome focused. 

Pat 41:51

I’ll start with your start, a lack of imagery and the role that imagery does play in the vision and why it’s so important. 

Owen Eastwood 41:57

part of our brain is the visual system. What was interesting to me learning about this was that the power of our visual system is not just seeing things, it’s imagining things. I talk about that in an amazing study from Harvard University a number of years ago where teenage piano students, half the class were asked not to physically practice over the course of about six weeks just to imagine practicing and the other half were allowed to physically practice. When they did the brain imaging, six weeks later they found there was very little difference between the two groups. That power of your imagination of visualizing is just incredible. I think we need to tap into that. Some teams are quite sophisticated on how they go about it. One team I’ve worked with, for example, they have a whole day on visioning as a team. They start off with our purpose. If we are to live our purpose out this season, what would that actually look like? That’s when the outcome can come into it, but there will be other elements as well like the style of play, the connection with fans, how we come across as human beings. All of these things start to feed into this image, but they also do things like use concentric circles. They say, if we were to win this season, how would that be good for us as individuals? That’s the first conversation they have. Coming back to our previous chat. Then secondly, if we were to win, how would that be good for our families? What they’re doing is creating visual images. If we’re winning, how would that be good for our families? Their dad would have won an NBA title. That actually would be something that would raise all of our confidence and our esteem and opportunity, etc. Then they say, how would that be the organization if we had another banner? Then if we go beyond that, how about our fan base? If we win, how would it change their lives? What would it make them feel? Chicago Cubs did this. They interviewed them as part of belonging. They had visualized the biggest celebration and street parade in American history if they were to win after all those decades and decades of missing out. That was actually visualized by the players in a session like that. Then they did it. That was the fifth biggest gathering of human beings. That was part of the visioning of success. It becomes three-dimensional and very rich. That’s how I like it, is spend a proper amount of time on it. It’s not just, obviously, we want to visualize holding the trophy. It’s like, if we were to do that, why would that be grand and start to really imagine bringing those visual images? All of these things become just primed up. It starts to have a sense of an adventure and a sense of reality to it. I think it’s really, really important, the imagery. Obviously, optimism. Human beings are going to be de-energized by anything other than an optimistic vision of what we’re trying to achieve. I’ll give you an example. I worked with the England National Football Team. A couple of years ago, we had a session just like this before the European Championships. We had never made the finals of the Euros ever in our history. 

Owen Eastwood 44:48

We had a session like this where we just imagined, if this was the best six weeks of our lives, what would happen? What would it look like? We started to think, why wouldn’t we be the first team to make that final and win four knockout games on the way? Then we envisioned how the people in the pubs and families at home watching TV, how they would feel. We got into all of this and we’d made history, made our first final. Sadly, we lost on a penalty shootout at the very end. That was a great example of pure optimism from the start that we don’t care what history says. This is what we think the next six weeks could entail. Optimism and vivid imagery together. 

Pat 45:26

Oh, and with that optimism, not every team is going to compete for a title. And, you know, maybe going into the season, the goal is if we make the playoffs as successful or even where a young team, if we go 500 were successful, but when you’re telling them to create this vision, use optimism is are you telling them the 20% more optimistic, you know, say second round or say, make the playoffs, is that always better than being too realistic focused in your vision? 

Owen Eastwood 45:51

I honestly just ask them. I’ve never had a situation near where players have been incredibly negative or extremely unrealistic. And sometimes it’s not about the outcome. It’s like we want to shock the world. We want to outperform what the betting agencies are saying or what our ranking is or what we did last year. I’ve not come across where anything outlandish has come out. I think where it can go wrong actually is when the coach stands at the start of the season and says, this is what I think you’re capable of or what we’re capable of. And it’s not optimistic enough. And I have had multiple occasions where that has happened. And players have said to me, that couldn’t have been more deflating for us to hear from our leader that he basically thinks that if we get through the first round of the playoffs, that would be as much of a selling as that we’re capable of.

I handed over to the athletes and give them at least a voice in this. And also, you know, sometimes, you know what, we’re building a team to win in three years time. Organizationally, we may well be thinking that. Again, I’ve had very mature conversations with players where we explain that. Like we are probably not in the position to win it all this season. Okay. I mean, we’re going to go and throw some punches and blood for noses. We’re going to go out there and frigging fight and see what happens. But actually, if we can raise ourselves from this level now to that next level, then that creates a foundation for the next season to go deeper. And then we’re going to have what we need. Our young rookies will be 30 vets then. They will be good enough for us to get to the finals or whatever. So I like treating athletes as mature human beings, not talking down to them, not dictating to them and getting them to buy into what this actual adventure is all about. 

Dan 47:28

In your work, in your experience, when have you felt like things need to be discussed as a full group versus small groups versus individually with players? When it comes to things like vision, when it comes to codes and culture and these things, how much should coaches be thinking about how individualized they get versus how group-oriented they are when they’re trying to instill these kinds of things? 

Owen Eastwood 47:54

It’s a good question. You got to be quite tactical about it. I think we need to connect as a whole group. I mean, basketball teams are a lot smaller than most other sports teams. It’s more intimate by nature. The best thing to think about is the campfire. For all of our history, we have loved being around the campfire feeling connected, feeling that we belong there, hearing stories about not only the past, but what might happen in the future. We’re massively fueled by that. So there are definitely set pieces we want to have in preseason, but also during the course of a season to connect with each other in that type of way and to re-energize things again, having adversity during the course of a season. So that’s very positive. It’s energizing. There are other times where we need to think bit carefully about this. So there are certain cultures, and Polynesia, where I come from, is one of them, where because it’s a collectivist view of the world, if people are embarrassed in the team meeting, there’s a profound effect on them. For example, some sports teams on a review session will show clips of things that didn’t go well. For a lot of athletes, that’s okay. They don’t mind. They can deal with that. But for some others, it is actually the most embarrassing and confidence-reducing thing that can happen to them. So coaches need to understand their people. Also, sometimes coaches will say, what do you all think? But there are a lot of people that come from cultures where a very hierarchical and actually you don’t just throw out your opinion. You would never do that. You would always just defer to people in a higher status position than you. So the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team have cultures like that. So what they would do, if they ever need to do some innovating, problem solving, that type of thing, what they do is they frame the issue and then they get them to go away in groups of three. Groups of three, it’s a safe place for you to express yourself into voice. And then they’ll come back and huddle back up and see what came out of that. But if you just throw it out there to the whole team together, what do you think? You’re going to have some very, very intelligent people with some fantastic ideas who say nothing. They are just not comfortable the way they were brought up to be talking as an equal to a coach or even to a player leader. And obviously feedback, and we talked about the lions and wolves and the sheep. Those type of conversations, you need to be carefully thinking this through. Not everything in a team meeting. 

Dan 50:05

Any differences at all between groups of men and groups of women when it comes to some of these things? 

Owen Eastwood 50:11

I think there are actually, and I think it’s an area that I need to learn more about and probably we all do. There is more activity in that space, I noticed, in the United Kingdom where there’s more research being done. I said I had a great collaboration with Oxford University. They did a study a few years ago, which I thought was quite profound when it comes to teen culture. That was they did this research around a woman and her 25 closest people in their network. What they found was the more that they talked with each other, the higher levels of endorphins released and social bonding occurred. That was their insight that when females are talking regularly with each other, it actually drives cohesion and connection and social bonding. Well, that makes sense. They did exactly the same survey with males. It was like a flat line, quite crazy. The more the guys talk with each other, they actually didn’t feel more socially bound together. But when the guys went and did something experiential, they went and did something together, then it was exactly the same line as when women were talking with each other in terms of the social bonding occurring. What that taught me was that I worked with quite a few corporate leadership teams as well. What it taught me was that you need to be smart about this because I’ve noticed some male coaches don’t really like having big chats and conversations and some of the deeper stuff we’ve spoken about today. But actually, if there’s females in the team, they, according to that research anyway, benefit massively and probably need, from a cultural point of view, to be having good quality, regular, consistent conversations about important stuff. So I think there is no one way. When we’ve got males and females in teams, we need a bit of both and we need to be aware of that insight depending on who we’re coaching. So I think there is a lot around that. I’m on the board of a sports organization, the Harlequins Rugby Club in London. What we’ve been encouraging our women’s program to do is please do not mimic how the guys do things, which is actually part of professional sport over here. It’s a history of it is they mimic that because I think that’s what it looks like. No, find out through good research and pioneers in women’s sport. One of the things actually that it should be bespoke to women’s teams that actually may not translate at all across to men’s teams. Have an open mind about it. Try things. I’m looking forward to learning a lot more in that space. 

Dan 52:26

Oh, and you’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us there. Okay. Oh, and we’ve got a final question for you before we close the show. But before we do, this was highly educational, entertaining. We learned so much and we really appreciate you coming on the show today. So thank you. Thank you. 

Owen Eastwood 52:42

What amazing questions guys, absolutely wonderful. Appreciate it. 

Dan 52:46

Our last question that we ask all the guests who come on is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career?  I’ve had a very unusual journey. As a Kiwi in New Zealand, they’re coming to live in the United Kingdom in my 20s and staying here basically marrying a lovely English woman and having an awesome family here. I was a lawyer. I was a partner in a law firm. As I mentioned about 10 years ago, I quite accidentally was invited into these team environments and then people seemed to be interested in my outside perspective and my coaching grew from there. Now, one of the things that happened early on was I felt like complete imposter syndrome like, what the hell am I doing in here? I don’t have any qualification and very little experience. But people reassured me that actually your outside point of view is very beneficial for us. We don’t want templates and checklists and people who are conforming to models. We actually just want a fresh pair of eyes. During that period, I asked a couple of trusted colleagues, should I go and get a qualification right now? Something sensible in this area. The advice that I got back, which I thought was very interesting, was because you are already exposed to some of these top teams and had an opportunity to work with the three generals who run NATO and worked at the Royal Ballet in the UK, because you’re already in those environments, really what you should do is just be brave and ask leaders in those environments, what about the key insights around performance? Not go away and spend the same amount of time that you’re studying. Actually, if you’ve got a choice, for most people studying is a great foundation in order to have that job, but you’re already operating in that area and they’ve got access to some of these world-class people. Just double down and spend more time talking with them. That was quite a strong piece of advice and I did that. I think the best investment I have been is to be a little bit brave and ask obvious, maybe simple questions of people who are successful. Then doing that across as many diverse and performing environments as I can, basketball, football, rugby, cricket, ballet, military, corporate, and then just reflect what are the themes and patterns that emerge across all of these things. That’s in some ways how I got to belonging because that was one that was ubiquitous through every endeavor and every part of groups was that people performed better, had more energy and more trust than others when they felt a sense of belonging. That’s what I really have been appreciative of and that was the best investment. 

Dan 55:16

I think this was a conversation you and I have been looking forward to having, obviously for a long time, that was out of our comfort zone for a little bit, as far as just really deep diving into something outside the basketball world, but having to do quite a bit with what we do. And so was an honor to have Owen on. He’s worked with the top teams in the world on this stuff. And so to have him spend some time with us was really cool. 

Pat 55:40

Yeah, no, I agree. It was a fun challenge for us and a great learning experience, definitely. 

Dan 55:44

For sure. It was fun in our prep. We flipped a coin who was going to read the book and then who was going to do all the other research, listen to podcasts, all that sort of stuff. 

Pat 55:53

Yeah. Surprise Surprise I was not reading the book. 

Dan 55:56

I won, that coin flip. But for me, I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed the book. And then obviously, you and I were talking about it nightly as I was going through it. He’s been on other podcasts and talked about it. He’s written a bunch. So you were doing all that research. And I think it was good, us coming from two different angles on it with this conversation. Well, we won’t delay. I’ll kick it back to you on any points or key takeaways in that first section. 

Pat 56:21

We started with the click conversation, really enjoyed that one, but had fun because I know it’s a conversation we’ve had before, just the alphas versus leaders conversation. And, you know, as he said, when your alpha is also your leader, like, you know, kumbaya, like everything is good, but oftentimes the alpha person, the alpha player, their personality don’t lend itself. Like you said, they either don’t want to be leaders or they’d be disastrous leaders. Yeah. It was fun to just get into that, the distinction, how to navigate basically alphas, I think appeasement is the wrong word, but how you also have to manage the alphas to make sure that, let’s say you’re taking care of their ego, so they continue to feel part of the team and not act out. So I really enjoyed when we got into that conversation and hearing his thoughts on that. The alpha conversation is very interesting and I think applicable to everybody listening to this because every team has them and they’re like you mentioned, they’re not always your leaders and they’re not always your best players either like they can be just any type of personality on the team at different spots and he mentioned in the book a little bit, but then he talked about here is a lot of times they have, you know, outsized returns as far as their impact can be greater because just their voice and their character is greater. And so if you’re not monitoring how they’re operating within your environment, they can be great if they’re pointing the right direction or they can cause problems. If not, they’re going to create the. 

Pat 57:46

Clicks that we talked about, you know, if they feel, yeah, emoted, undervalued, underappreciated, then they’re going to create the clicks in a way to say, well, I do have power, I have authority here, and then now we’re at these problems. 

Dan 57:58

Within that, the question I had wanted to ask him about too within all this was in the book he describes the three different types of people or characters that shape within the clique or within the group and that’s the lions, the wolves, and the sheep. I really enjoyed just getting a little bit deeper into that. I thought it was interesting how he mentioned about the lions and they did that study on how many lions that were needed for them to be a top performing team and I just think the framework for me, the imagery for me works like when I just am in my head thinking about my own team and who’s who and who can be counted on in certain situations and all those things are interesting and I like hearing him talk about it and I think you and I talked about this briefly a second ago but this is also contextual. I think a little bit certain players and coaches or people can be lions in certain instances and it’s not like a just straight line across the board this person’s a lion maybe even for me thinking about it a step further thinking who are lions in the locker room let’s say who are lions defensively who are our lions late game situations where we need a bucket and kind of forming a team around that being the core to me at least taking it a step further is what I was thinking about. 

Pat 59:14

Definitely because he mentioned too that usually the wolves were probably the higher achievers from a statistical standpoint, but they weren’t necessarily your lions. So especially when forming teams, competitive teams, which was kind of the framework of this lion’s wolf sheep to your point, you know, and it’s not necessarily like just get a bunch of, let’s say, scores or shooters. It’s gotta be guys that do the dirty works. I referenced back to coach Wahlberg and coach McCaslin really valued defenders. These guys that kind of do the stuff that no one wants to do, but really drive winning. And I think it’d be fair to say that those would be considered lions. If you’re going to put them in this framework, just a really interesting imagery or way to think about teams, building teams. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you got to then bring in new players recruit can also work with the wolves to get them to be lions. And just the conversations that he would have, or the coaching staff would have of acknowledging their value, what they bring to the team and kind of making them aware of when those skills are needed in big moments. For me, if we move through this conversation, stuff we missed on, but is it an awareness factor that maybe these wolves are missing or is it like a fear of failure or is it an environment where they don’t feel comfortable to risk something in these moments as to why they’re stuck in this wolves category versus being a lion. 

Dan 01:00:28

You asked a good follow-up question, like how you can take the wolf and move them into that category. And it was a good answer by him. And I think that, I guess, popular podcast of the year so far, but Julie Folks, her conversation with us, where she worked so much on who you are as a person and how you can benefit the team and sort of, okay, what’s the path from, let’s say, whatever you are right now, skill-wise or leadership-wise, can we move you up two levels? And in that case, it’d be like moving you from, you know, maybe a wolf in this standpoint to a lion. So, super interesting conversation. I think that’ll be my thing this year, just yelling at guys from the sideline to stop being a wolf and be a damn lion 

Pat 01:01:10

Avoid  PowerPoint presentations where you point out who the sheep are. 

Dan 01:01:15

Stand up. I want all the sheep to stand up in here. Yeah, that’s another takeaway. The other thing I think too that we briefly touched on before hopping on to do this was an overall theme of energy as a coach. And I guess I’ll kick it back to you in a second because you spoke well about it too, but just this stuff does take time energy, but that the energy in your organization or your team that it can create when this is done well or this is taken care of can have outsized impact. And so we were just talking about all of that having to do with energy hopping back on. So I’ll kick it back to you a little bit on that. 

Pat 01:01:54

I think coaches, everyone’s aware of having a good culture, taking the time to make people feel belonging or comfortable, but it does, as the season starts to move and you’re the head coach and you have so many things to take care of, preparation, practice planning, all this stuff, it does become a matter of how much energy are you willing to put on it. And I think then it gets to the conversation of flattening the hierarchy where when something is wrong, maybe a click’s formed or there’s some sort of conflict challenge. Coaches, they don’t want to spend the energy. The hierarchy doesn’t flatten in terms of that they want to put control on it or they’ll just make demands because it’s the quicker solution. But in reality, it’s more of like the Band-Aid fix and it hasn’t gone away. And maybe also under your standing yourself as a coach to make sure you have a staff member monitoring touching on this too, to really bring this to the forefront and say, hey, no, we need to put our energy and time on this rather whatever the next set of drills is going to be or the scout, this is problem. That other stuff is all secondary. And so that was kind of one of my big takeaways from this conversation too and hearing him talk about not only optimizing player energy by making a good culture, but also the energy of the coach and willing to take the time to address these things, build these things and monitor these things. 

Dan 01:03:09

Yeah, I think on your point of energy, as we know, coaching is so complex, it’s so challenging, and it’s not a straight path, but so many of these things too, it’s not just about the time investment that it takes. As a head coach or a coach in general, I mean, you know this, coaches listening know this, players coming to you with issues or outside problems, you carry that with you after the practice is over, right? Your players have issues or you have a long conversation about something with a player, like it’s not a light switch, you just turn off. And so I think sometimes to protect themselves, coaches will have some boundaries because, you know, you got to go home at night and also be a good wife or husband and be a good dad and be a good friend. And if you’re carrying all this stuff all the time, you’re waking up at 2am thinking about this stuff, like it also leads into your personal life. And so I think sometimes coaches will protect themselves from so much stuff with some hierarchy because they need to survive this season too. That’s why I think, you know, we have so much respect obviously for coaches and head coaches and what they go through because that’s part of it too. It’s not just, Hey, we got to take half an hour to talk with this player about something, you know, kind of deeper meaningful. It’s like, well, that half hour sticks with you as a coach. And though it can be really positive, it also just kind of adds to everything that you’re doing. So I think it’s such an interesting and complex conversation. And when we get to the energy and all that, so much of what I think we respect about great coaches everywhere is their ability to kind of manage their energy levels on all things and understand what’s important, give the output that you want versus flagging down things that aren’t important. And I think this is something that is super important, but, you know, it takes time. 

Pat 01:04:59

Well said to keep it moving here because I know if we try to discuss everything we wrote down on this paper You a lot of energy. Yeah, and we just was start to sound dumb after a while Thrown it to you with start sub sit.

Dan 01:05:13

Yeah. I think that when we were talking about this conversation, we really were excited obviously about doing the silent dance and the clicks and all that stuff in the main bucket, but we did want to make sure in Star Subsits that we got to two other kind of core tenets that we took from the book and from his speaking and all that. And that was vision statements and creating visions, missions and all that, which we’ll get to maybe a second. And the other one was you and I talk a lot about, and we just discussed to culture being sometimes kind of a buzzword, but we like to try to figure out what’s the end result of a great culture? Where can you really see the impact? And in the book, he does discuss different ways that when someone in a group feels together and they belong and they’re all in this same path, that there are results that take place on the field, the court, wherever it is. And so with that first one, with the end result of belonging, the decreased performance anxiety, the increased resilience and the true trust, he kind of hit on those in the book in different ways that these are things that are measurable that you see. And I think we just wanted to pick his brain on, give him an impossible question on as to what Star Subsits them. I liked his start on that first one, which is the decreased anxiety in the group and the performance anxiety. And so that if you’re wondering what a good culture or good environment produces, well, it can produce teams that perform better, especially under pressure because all of these factors are in place and they trust one another. So I took that away from that question. Yeah. 

Pat 01:06:41

Not hearing him talk on anxiety really simplified things for me or made the connection between why having a good culture can lead to, let’s say, on-court success, higher performance. When there’s less anxiety and their energy is all more focused on performance and they’re not being drained or sapped by an environment where they don’t feel comfortable, where they don’t feel like they can voice their opinion or it’s a toxic culture. For whatever it clicked in my head, super simple, I could see it, I could understand and it makes a lot of sense in the same way that you’re going to monitor players’ minutes in practice or their nutrition or make sure they treat treatments to try to all an effort to optimize their performance on the game day. The same way we need to apply that to their mental state and making sure mentally they’re comfortable, they feel like they belong so they can optimize their mental performance, which will, of course, lead to hopefully winning. 

Dan 01:07:32

Yeah, exactly. I think it was within this too. I think I gave him the quote from the book, which was control leads to compliance autonomy leads to freedom good takeaway for me from the book that I wanted to ask him about to in here and I think that Kind of fit into just this whole conversation about you eventually wanting autonomous players because they play more freely and People and groups playing more freely can lead to better results I also though did like that. There’s caveats to this like everything and that if you have a team that’s an older mature talented you trust whatever you’ve put some work in Over the years those teams you can give more freedom more autonomy versus a younger inexperienced team having a little bit more control around it and maybe you need to do that so that on the flip side Giving too much freedom to a young team can be frustrating for them because they were gonna have maybe not as much success And then they feel more lost or what not. And so within I guess that conversation about decreasing performance anxiety I liked his thoughts on just control versus autonomy and that kind of sliding scale that You know the art of coaching knowing where from one to ten You got to slide that control scale based off of your team and your personnel Yeah moving along to yours and that second one and this is one that you and I talked about a bunch trying to figure out the Best way to ask it and I really like where you ended with it with visions that need some work

Pat 01:08:56

Doing our research, he talked a lot, obviously, about imagery, which is the conversation we got into. And I think, for me, when we finally settled on how we wanted to have this vision conversation, I really wanted to center on the importance and role that imagery plays in it.

And I think it is often overlooked, which imagery and vision, I mean, could be almost synonymous, but how you wouldn’t think of it, you know, you just have a vision, here it is, and let’s move on and not taking the time, like he said, well, imagine us, how winning for yourself does, or for your family, for the club, and allowing the players to see it and build it in their heads, and, you know, the role that plays. That was like the driving force behind the conversation I wanted to have, but then also to the optimism, you know, I talked about that, and I mean, the follow-up question I had, but yeah, being optimistic versus realistic, I mean, of course, never be pessimistic, we get that, but the role that optimism also plays in creating this vision, and how, like he said, if you’re maybe too realistic-based, it can be very deflating. 

Dan 01:09:51

Yeah, and that was a good follow up to about just I think you’re talking about helping them with a realistic, optimistic vision. That would be the best way to say it. Yeah. I did enjoy just him talking about how important imagery is to people in general, whether this is a sports team or not, that just people latch on to that and it helps them learn, it helps them kind of grow. I mean, we discussed the, you know, the lions, the wolves and the sheep a second ago, that stuff helps with teams. I think I kind of tied it to like, good vocab and good imagery in teaching basketball concepts. I think Paul Kelleher does a great job of this. He’s been on the podcast with just creating these words, this imagery within now tactical stuff, as well as with your culture that just allows you to coach quicker, faster and for people to really lock in and buy into, you know, whatever it is that you’re teaching. 

Pat 01:10:39

I like the study he referenced with the violin for six months or six weeks. Just imagine practicing and then the other violinists actually practice and there was no noticeable difference. 

Dan 01:10:50

I would have liked to have been in the apartments of the kids that were visualizing being better at the violin versus living in the apartments versus the people actually practicing the violins. Moving on and coming to the close here, I had one miss that we briefly talked about before hopping on here. When we were discussing, I believe I asked him a follow-up about when there’s unwanted behavior and the process that coaches can think about, whether you remove someone from the team versus you just look at your environment or what you’re doing. I think rightfully so. He mentioned he’s always going to look at what they’re doing in the environment or in the culture first and that removing someone’s that last step. I think my follow-up was, and what I’d love to ask him about is, if the group rejects that player because you and I have been on teams together where there’s someone in there that doesn’t matter how much we sit around and talk, it doesn’t matter if we go bowling, it doesn’t matter if the coach likes them. We as a group for various reasons, it’s not working and what in that instance you do where it’s not a coach thing, it’s a player thing and how you try to handle that because that happens all the time where there’s just a player or two that doesn’t fit with everyone for whatever million reasons that might happen and how he would think about trying to either rectify that or at a certain point talent plays into this too, but when you remove that person because the group rejects them in some way. 

Pat 01:12:10

No, that would have been a really interesting conversation, because like you said, it does unfortunately happen. What’s it rooted in, how you solve it, what are the mechanisms put in place to maybe prevent it? 

Dan 01:12:21

Imagine his answer would be work on people’s origin story, getting to the why, getting to who they are. I think of Coach Schmidt, who we had on the podcast, London Lions last season. I know moving on with Atlanta Hawks G League this season, but he talked about having people stand up, tell their origin story. And I think things like that might help kind of humanize people a little bit.

I’m sure that’s where the starting point would be. I would love to have asked them. I think they’d be interesting to hear his answer. Absolutely. Well, Pat, there’s nothing else we can start kind of wrapping this up. Sounds good. We appreciate everybody listening. We thank Owen Eastwood, again, for coming on and going through all this so thoroughly with us. And we’ll do the skin next time. Thanks, everybody.