Latest / Momentum Sessions / Who Owns Your Team’s Values? | Jay Martin

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Who Owns Your Team’s Values? | Jay Martin · Momentum Sessions

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Many coaches think that winning will produce a culture.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's backwards.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it is.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: You have a culture, and then you start winning.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that we do in a culture is talk about values.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're tackling something that every team struggles with.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: We say we have values like commitment, accountability, toughness, respect.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: But do our athletes actually own them when it matters?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're joined today by Dr.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Jay Martin, the winningest coach in NCAA men's soccer history.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a couple of national championships and more than 750 wins.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Coach Martin, thanks so much for being here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why have values been such a central part of your success?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Values have been, uh, Matt, I think the cornerstone of my coaching for 40 years.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very fortunate in my life to have a father who coached me in every sport.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um he was as unathletic as anybody you've ever met.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't even know the rules of most of these sports.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was I was taken very uh I was taken aback when he passed away and we had his wake.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm from Boston, and I call we call it a wake.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's called other things in different parts of the country.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um the wake went from 8 to 11, and at 1.30 there were still people coming in.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I had men who were in their 30s and 40s come up to me and thank me for uh my father and what they learned from my father.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, he knew nothing about sports.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what he knew and what he showed is that he cared for every kid on his team.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean, even I lived in a suburb of Boston which was uh very white, very Protestant, and so on.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And after after tryouts every year, he was the only coach that would take black athletes.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they weren't really athletes at the time, none of us were athletes at the time, but he'd take them on our team.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I was I I knew that was going on, but it didn't hit me until that wake.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, this guy had something going for him.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he, and you know, I I'm a I'm a father of two men now, and you know, the biggest thing I read an article the other day, Matt, that said for parents should understand that being a role model is far more important than telling people what to do, telling your kids what to do, or in our case, telling our players what to do.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you're a role model and they see how you act in all kinds of circumstances, that's when they learn.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I learned subtly from my father.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it at the time, but he cared about people, he he cared about values.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I remember again another quick story when my new wife and I went to visit them in Boston, way, way back.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Boston has two newspapers, the Globe and the Herald.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: My father sent me up to the store to buy the Globe and the Herald.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I came back and I found out that the guy at the store only charges for one.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of said, Hey Dad, I got two for one.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, You get your ass back in that car and you go up and give him the dollar.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I did, trust me, I did.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's an example of without him saying, Jay, this is a value, you know, don't cheat, don't do this.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He showed me, and I understood it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the second I was very lucky.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Basketball was my sport.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a I'm a terrible soccer player, always have been.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I played four years of pro basketball in Europe, but my high school basketball coach was very much like my father.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he, I don't ever remember him talking about winning and losing, ever, ever.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about values and things that were important and things that I carried with me into my uh professional career.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: For example, this is going to be hard for you coaches to understand.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've won a ton of games, a couple championships, and so on and so forth.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not once did I ever tell my team that we had to win this game.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not once in 48 years.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know that's hard to believe, and quite frankly, most people don't believe me.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ask any of my players, you know, and they'll tell you.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They that's not what we talked about.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about culture and other aspects of the process of going about the process to be successful, which in some people's mind is winning.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I understand that.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a culture man.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a book, I think Matt bought it, I don't know if he read it, but he bought it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the bottom line for culture is values.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Without values, you don't have a culture.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk, we hear coaches talk all the time about culture.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think a lot of coaches really understand what culture is.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's kind of a catchword.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that that word that teams use, we're a family.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't use that either, because we're not a family, I mean, but but that's okay.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um but people have jumped on this culture bandwagon without really understanding what culture is.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna tell you this, coaches, culture comes before winning.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Many coaches that I've dealt with, especially in my department, I told Matt I'm still teaching at Ohio West End, a full load, and so on.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Many coaches think that winning will produce a culture.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's backwards.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it is.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have a culture, and then you start winning.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that we do in a culture is talk about values.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Love the background.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh you put the full perspective of coaching and the powerfulness also on display right there.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: What did your best teams understand about values that other teams maybe missed?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you define best teams, Matt?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's number one.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the team that won the championship in '98 was not one of our best teams.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, we lucked into the championship.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: We had six teams that were undefeated, ranked number one in the country, going into the tournament, and not one of them won the national tournament.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the team that did second team in 211 was really the best team in the country.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were they were really, really, really good.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think the I make a differentiation between what any of my teams did differently.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had a process that we followed, and sometimes we were lucky enough to win a national championship, but more often than not, we we didn't.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the process, the process never, never changed.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I do want to just take us half a step back.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Look, when I started coaching at Ohio Wesleyan in August of 19 uh 77, which is before most of you were born, um I was a young coach, and I I defined success by winning.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what young coaches do.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, unfortunately, many coaches don't change that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we, my first year, we uh I was I was a terrible coach.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: We were absolutely awful.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next 18 years in a row, we broke an NCAA record by being selected for the NCAA tournament.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, it was the longest tournament, consecutive tournament in NCAA history.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 1996, we didn't make the tournament for the first time in 18 years.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We were 12-4 and 2, but our strength of schedule was terrible, and we didn't make the tournament.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that, coaches, uh, was a wake-up call to me.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I I remember distinctly, as if it were yesterday, I called my two captains out, one young man from Wisconsin, one from Pennsylvania, and I told them, guys, we're never going to talk about winning again.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about the process.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I got away from the process, and you know, coincidentally, two years later, we won the national championship.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Did that have anything to do with who who knows?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you you all coaches know.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You just never know what your decisions, what decisions came out well, what what didn't come out well.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that changed everything that I've everything that I did with with the program.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point on, we hold the NCAA record in men's soccer.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, maybe the total record.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: We made the NCAA term in 44 of the 48 years that I that I coached.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Focusing on the culture, focusing on the process.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna get to that process here in just a second.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Coach is really opening up his whole program, at least the framework of how he did it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gonna be exciting.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Coach Martin, you also put an emphasis on fun.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think values and standards actually help a team enjoy the process more?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Values is always, and when we go over how we do the values, I'll get into this maybe a little differently.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: But one of our values has always been fun.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every player on my team and every player on your team, the people who are listening, went to their second practice because they had fun at the first, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they go to the second, the third, the fourth, and they they keep going back because whatever sport you you coach, uh they had, and in my case, soccer, because they had fun playing soccer.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So my question when I talk to coaches' groups, and I do a lot, is why do we take fun away from the players?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think if you look at your careers, or at least your participation in sport, you did your best when you're having fun.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is simple.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the pressure of winning takes away fun.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, oftentimes, I have to break incoming freshmen of this terrible pressure that they feel that they have to win.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we do in practice at Ohio Wesleyan is for fun.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everything.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We compete.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: How do you have fun?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Athletes like to compete.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: We compete in every training session.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll have two teams, for example, a red team and a gray team.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We keep score on everything.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: A shooting activity, everything we keep score on.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of practice, there's a winning team and a losing team.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: The winning team gets their picture taken, and my assistants put it on our social media platform because I don't know how to do that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the losing team uh picks up the trash, puts the gear away, does the laundry, whatever, and then we do it again tomorrow.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the teams are never the same.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every day they're different.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I want my players looking forward to coming to practice every single day.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, you have to have a fun environment.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: A fun, positive, competitive environment.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the environment that we try to foster at Ohio Wesle in is motivating, it's challenging, and it's fun.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Walsh wrote a great book, coaches.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Score Takes Care of Itself, and I really recommend that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's his examples of football related, and yes, he coached Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, and all these great players.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he talks in that book about fun and how much fun they used to have in practice.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you if you focus on the process, as his book says, the score is going to take care of itself.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's jump into your framework.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: How did you come to this?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And was this kind of an evolving process that you you eventually came to, this framework?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was evolving.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I think uh for most coaches is an evolutionary process, hopefully that it moves in a positive direction.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not always.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I see some of the coaches in our department and I I I shake.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but no, it was an e it was an evolutionary process.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: To start this, and what made me this started right after that 96 uh story that I told you.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: What I've noticed with coaches in terms of values is I would think that the majority of coaches uh that I've observed will set the values for their team.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as I talked to these coaches and I listened to their value setting and everything, I said that doesn't make sense to me at all.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because those are your values, Mr.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Coach.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the values necessarily of the team.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um the team at Ohio Wesleyan, the first day of practice in preseason, the t we have a process that we're going to share with you, and the team members set the goals.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even in the room.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can do that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Want me to go down this list, Matt?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Also, what I've learned over the years is many, if not most, of your students understand what values are, and they kind of have values, but they've never taken time to really think about it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the first step that we use, we give each young man one of these uh handouts, and the handouts list 400 values.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a a kind of an example.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I ask the guys to do is to write their, look this over.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: They can even talk together, I don't care, look this over and list their top ten values.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then, when they've got those, I want them to eliminate a five and list their five top values.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to write out what that value is and why it's important to them.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I may maybe you know one is uh hard work or whatever.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's great.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's it mean to you?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this important to you in terms of who you are, where you are, and where you and where you want to go?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then we simply eliminate going down the the line.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are your top four, three, two, and what is your top value?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And why is this your top value?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does, I think, is it forces the guys to think about their own individual values.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important because the next step we have is I'm going to ask them to create our team values for that particular year.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they have to understand their values before they can hang values on the team.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I really think that's important.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this process, you you should be in, I'm not in the locker room.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: My office is right next to the locker room, so I can kind of hear what's going on.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is uh the students have engaged in some very thoughtful conversation about their values.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we'll have a young man sitting next to one of his buddies, and he'll look over at his paper and say, Hey Joe, why did you have this certain thing as a value?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you have it?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the interchange about values is very, very positive.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: When they have their final values, their top ten, we put it, we put it on a uh, the duplicating folks on campus put it on a like a five by seven card, just list them, and I have them paste those values, paste those cards in their locker.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do they look at it every day?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, of course they don't.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I under I understand that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's there.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's step one.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Step two then is I each senior on the on the team, I I divide the number of players on the team by the number of seniors, and they have a group of players, five, six, seven, whatever the number is, and I give them a um clipboard again with a list of team values, and um I tell them to go out around the facility and come back with their top ten team values.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh the captains will the captains run this meeting, the captains and the seniors run those meetings.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: The captains then will collate those values on the board.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe maybe the total is who knows, 25 on the board.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have I have the seniors, you know, take those 25, and they've got to come back now with seven out of the twenty five as their top values.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: We collate those again on the board, and then finally they come back with the top five values for their group.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are some values that that that we have every year, and fun is one of them.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, trust me, fun is always on that on that list.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there are changes depending on the the makeup of the team.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are some subtle changes in every single year's values presentation.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we have our values, and then from our values we talk about our characteristics.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is an all-day process.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't let them on the field, and trust me, they want to get on the field, but we don't let them on the field until this process is over.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we have values.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: What do values mean?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does loyalty mean?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: What does commitment mean?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is commitment to these people?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we ask the the team again to define from our values what are our characteristics.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So as you can see in the middle column, no whining, enthusiasm, focused, and you could you could construe these as values, but they're we in this group we call them characteristics of what we feel of behaviors that what we feel are important from the values that they listed.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um emotional control, accountability, and so and so on and so forth.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we have our values, we have our characteristics, and then we have our outcomes, team spirit, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can see going down, success, unity, and so on.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as you'll see, at some point we make a uh make a poster, and the poster hangs in the locker room, and like the values that I ask our guys to put in their locker, they don't read it every single day.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our locker room is made up of a team room with a big TV and so on and so forth, and you have to go through a double door into the locker room.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: We hang this type of poster on the left-hand side of the double door, so the guys have to pass it every single day.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so this is the outcome.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have the guys set our off-field goals.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the off-field goals are about what we expect day to day, attend every class, sit up front.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: We do have study tables, not run by the coaching staff, run by the players, and so that is laminated, and we put it on the wall in our locker room.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can see those stripes on the both sides.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Each player and each coach has to sign that with a with a Sharpie or something, and we and we hang it up.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is done 100% by the players.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's much stronger, and the buy-in, in quotes, will come quicker if it's done by the players.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: That means, for example, here we are in October and we're having a terrible, terrible practice.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll call the guys together and I'll say as an example, look, one of your one of your goals was to win the conference.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have a conference game tomorrow, fellas.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't improve in this practice, we're just not going to win the game.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's 100% up to you.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I can call them out on their stuff, on their goals, and their and and their and their values.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: They made them, and I and I really think that's that's that's uh really important.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: This has been awesome framework.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think, though, is the key though to preventing it from just being you know a preseason activity and actually something that lives throughout the season?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think you gotta keep it, I think you have to keep it alive.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um say a young man is struggling, uh, I'll call him into the office.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we keep all this stuff in a three-ring binder.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I'll call him in and I'll use his values to try to help him get out of the slump or doing whatever's whatever's doing.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh maybe uh maybe I'll say, okay, you know, Sean, one of your values here is uh accountability.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel that you're accountable to your teammates the way you're playing right now?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: More importantly, are you accountable to your teammates the way that you are practicing right now?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that starts a discourse and we can go forward.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about them all the time.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And look, it takes it takes an effort, Matt, to do that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: It takes an effort.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a lot of people, when I give a similar combat uh presentation to coaches group, you know, inevitably one coach, and maybe some of you are thinking this, one coach, you know, puts up his hand and says, Jay, um, doesn't that take away from practice time?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, and I say, Well, what is practice for?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me what practice is for?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because no, this is practice time.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is, you know, the only time that we can really get into the heads of these guys.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we do this in the off season, too.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the offseason, every player on the team has to read a book online.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I have hundreds in my office at Ohio Wesleyan.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when we have meetings, they have to give a book report.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and uh so we try to keep this stuff alive and the off-seasons, not really off.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do a lot of strength training and technique work, but we do a lot of, as I said, what I call software.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, okay, leadership, so you're gonna read this book by Maxwell.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tell your teammates what the top four things you learned in this book about leadership, and we just keep moving forward mentally, fit philosophically, values, and culture-wise.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it takes work, Matt.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy, but I swear, and if you asked any of my former players about this process, they would all be very, very, very positive about it.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very positive.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to just take, you know, the first step in starting to do something like this, and they maybe have never done something like this, what what would you advise though?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like the first thing to start to implement.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing for coaches for anything, Matt, which I see most, many, not most, I'm sorry, many, many coaches abuse, the first thing I would tell them is to be prepared.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: To walk, walk in there, do your homework, make an agenda for yourself, maybe bring in that values thing that we just shared with them, and be prepared.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're not prepared, you're gonna lose the group, period.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can come in and sell the importance of values and culture and how it's gonna help us be successful, then um things things will work out.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I've seen, I think the number one mistake coaches in this country make, this is my observation over 50 years of watching coaches.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was also AD at Ohio, as in for 21 years or so, and so I evaluated every coach on the staff and so on.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest mistake coaches make in this country is they're not prepared.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're not prepared for practice, they're not prepared for talking about values, they're not prepared for games, to be honest with you.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's very, very, very important.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to sell that what you're doing is gonna help them get better.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're worth a damn as a player, they want to get better.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a couple questions in the chat.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Coach Charlie Smith says, How do you overcome a situation where you struggle with numbers and sometimes have to select the players that don't abide by the team's values?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Charlie, good question.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I will say this.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've only kicked one young man off the team in 48 years.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason was he could not, he couldn't, he wouldn't subject himself to the uh to the team, to be honest, all the values of the team.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was a really, really good player.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was from Denver, Colorado, really, really good midfielder, but his behavior was destructive.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, very, very destructive.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: As a rule, I hate cutting players, so I don't.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this young man was the only person I kicked off the team, and I just kicked him off the team, you know, and that sucks.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's terrible.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um he he later transferred, and then he transferred again because he was doing the same crap with the new team.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, for uh Charlie, I I I uh we talked to him in the office on the field, we tried to change him, we did some behavior modification with him, trying to change him.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't buy in, boom, gone.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's unfortunately, I know it's harsh, but that's if it only happened once, then that's not too bad in 48 years, I think.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: So part of the process is even if you're struggling with numbers, you do have to at some point there's got to be consequences for gotta be consequences.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned earlier, Matt, we do have a leadership council.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on about that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a brilliant, brilliant thing.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: We meet every Monday afternoon before practice.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about where we are in the season, how we're feeling, how's the fitness, so on and so on and so forth.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when there's a situation like this, I turn it over to the leadership council, which is comprised of the captains and an elected member of each class, because I think it's important for them to make these types of decisions.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not afraid of making those decisions, but I think this is a college, and I think I think it's a learning experience if we have these guys make these kinds of decisions.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, there will be consequences.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have another minute?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a kid, a forward from Saint uh Cincinnati.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was not a starter.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was he he was a sub, he was a decent player, good speed, not great technically.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was arrested by the campus police for selling marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it went to the courts in Delaware and he got uh fined.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I can't even remember, to be honest with you, what his his civil responsibility was.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do with him?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the do we do you kick him off?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we went to the leadership council, and here's what they came up with.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this was brilliant.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could say I did this.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Jay, he needs us more than we need him.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now look, he he wasn't a starter.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was okay, but he he said so they said so we're gonna keep him on the team.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what he has to do.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: He has to show up for every practice.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think they suspended him for three or four games, I think.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can't quite remember.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um then they they talked to each elementary school in Delaware, and he had to go to an assembly with each elementary school, and he had to make a presentation on drugs and alcohol and uh drugs and alcohol abuse.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how powerful was that?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not for him.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: He he now he's owns three businesses in Cincinnati, sends us a lot of money.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: He says that that was the best thing that ever happened to him, you know, in at college, the the best thing.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: He learned, that the guys who came up with this learned.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a great learning experience that took care of the problem.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: That is amazing all the way around for the whole thing.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Coach Peterson is asking, it sounds like um he might have a few toxic players in his words.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Do the players handle the ones that are not aligned?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying the toxic, not bought-in players.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: The leadership council and the seniors take care of that.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look, maybe you folks remember when you were younger.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't anymore, but I know I was young, I just don't remember it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's more powerful for a teammate to call you out than it is a coach.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the truth.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it is.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are really the friend of Joe and the captain of the team, and you want us to win whatever, do whatever, whatever, then you have to tell him, boom.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just like I tell my seniors, guys, I want you to make sure that you talk to every freshman and every member of the team every day.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Come in and say, Hey, Matt, great practice today, because that is unbelievably powerful.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I say it, and look, that's what coaches are supposed to say, right?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if the players say it, it's incredibly powerful.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And a follow-up to that, Charlie's asking, how did you select the leadership council?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: What made them eligible for that leadership group?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And or did the players select that?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, this is one of the few things I select.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there is, Charlie, a minimum GPA.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a 3.25.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um the captains are on the leadership council every year, and then each class elects a member of their class to join the leadership council.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm trying to find, especially with freshmen, I'm trying to find the guys who the other their classmates look up to them.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you voted on, they look up to you.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that gives them a little bit of clout and so on.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's how it is.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we usually have three captains and we have four other members, seven members on the leadership council, and that's that's enough.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we meet every Monday at 2.15 before practice that starts at four.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Melissa's saying what gets re uh what gets celebrated gets repeated.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's just a good note around recognition and the power of that.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa is correct.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and coach, you mentioned the book earlier.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I did get it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have read it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Lessons from the Best Coach Developing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Matt, Matt.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, please.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm embarrassed by that title.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's presumptuous.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't make the title.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: My title was Lessons from the Best Coach You've Never Heard Of.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the marketing people dropped, never heard of.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a terrible, terrible.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I apologize for that, but go ahead.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've heard that from a lot.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard that actually Bill Belichick was talking about that recently where the they changed the title after the book gets written.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it is called, if you want to find it, it's lessons from the best coach.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Develop a winning team culture that lasts is on Amazon.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's worth picking up.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look at Coach Mike Hagan's uh question.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear more about how you keep it fun.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do you have high standards and work hard while keeping it fun?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Your your kids like to compete.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that fair?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So all we do is we have them compete.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we do in practice is competition because they like to do that and it's fun.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they like to beat their buddies more than they like to beat the school we're playing on Saturday, believe me.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of back and forth, and they give each other crap and so on and so forth.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's fun, it's competitive.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have a winning team and a losing team, and then now we we the losing team does some menial work.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: The winning team has 24 hours uh bragging rights, and then we do it again tomorrow.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so they give each other crap for 24 hours and then they come back, and that's an incentive for the guys who lost to not lose again, which means they compete hard.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially gamifying practice as much as you can for trading.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then Coach Smith is saying another great session.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Coach Jay.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Great insights, loved every minute of the chat.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: So as we wrap up here, if a coach is listening and wants to just kind of look at one thing to start to improve, or one big tip from your all the wisdom that you have, what would you think um would you point them in as the the big thing to do?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Send me an email and ask for anything you want, and uh I'll be happy to share.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've got, as you can imagine, I've got hundreds of files of things that we've done oh over the years, and I will readily share what I have with um any of you.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Coach Martin, real quick, Bonnie's just asking the chats if you were to pick, you know, maybe up to your three favorite leadership books.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have people ask me this all the time?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have a list of books that I've read.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they're all they're not there's not a soccer book amongst them.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about leadership and all these other things, and I will be more than happy to send you and anybody else that list.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I update it every year, so it's maybe three pages and so on.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: But Bonnie, here's my latest.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you can read this.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think like a horse.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Think like a horse.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're not gonna believe this, but it's a great leadership book.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh it just it was just published.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I finished it like in a day and a half.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really good.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: But send me that email and I'll send you my list.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I I will check off some of the good leadership books that I that I like.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Coach, again, thank you so much for all the wisdom.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: This has been an powerful session, and I hope we catch up down the road.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I hope.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime in the future, Matt, let me know.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you folks, if you want something, send me an email and I'll do my best.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I will get something out.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's very kind of you to offer that.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks everyone for showing up.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And coach, again, thank you so much for your time.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to the end of season three of Momentum Sessions.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Jay and to every guest who shared their experience for these episodes, and thank you to you for making time for these conversations.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to be subscribed and follow this show on your favorite podcast platform.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: We will be back in 2027 with our next season.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to keep learning and growing before then, join us for a future conversation.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Our free coaching community is at momentumteams.comslash sessions.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: The link is in the episode description.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you there.