The Success Equation in Basketball and Business | Alan Stein Jr (Pt 1)

today's episode is brought to you by applaudable.net that's a huge part of of this success equation you know is is figuring out what sacrifices do you need to make to get where you want to go and then are you willing to deal with the subsequent discomfort that comes with making those types of changes so i really appreciate the you giving your time to be here today so i wanted to start with a little bit about you uh you're a former sports um strength and conditioning coach for basketball you've worked with a number of elite athletes in basketball that have gone on to play in the nba and some uh you've worked with in while they've been in the nba but one of those you have a story of kevin durant when you're working with him um trying to encourage him to hit the gym and or do strength and conditioning more so do you want to talk a little bit about that experience and and him giving you permission and how how you had to work him to to get him to that point most certainly yeah i mean kevin um had a i met him when he was 15 years old and for the most part most people think kevin is one of the top three basketball players in the world just in case some of your listeners don't follow basketball i mean so you're talking about someone that is um you know in the upper 01 of what he does and a true master his craft and when i met him when he was really young he had three of the four major pillars already in place to become a great player he had a great work ethic and a strong passion for the game he loved to play he had a very high basketball iq he understood the game he had great footwork and mechanics like he was fundamentally sound but the only thing he was really lacking was lack of strength kevin was very slender back then he was really tall had very long limbs and he wasn't near as strong as he needed to be so i started to convince him and his wonderful mom wanda that getting stronger was going to be a requirement that that was going to be you know something that could prevent him from playing at a high level and eventually kevin came in for a workout and i laid the hammer on him pretty good i mean i took him through a really really tough workout and at the end of it i asked him if he'd like the workout and it's funny now i didn't think it was so funny at the time but he said no i didn't but i know this is the kind of stuff that i need to do if i want to be a great player so when can we meet again and i just remember being blown away that this young man had the maturity to acknowledge that he was going to have to make a change to what he was doing and that change was going to require discomfort it was going to require a sacrifice you know he could have easily said look man i'm one of the best high school players in the country i'm doing fine i don't need to come in and do these kind of workouts because to be honest they're pretty hard and i don't like them but but he thought bigger than that and he thought on such a scale that he was willing to make that change and and was willing uh to do whatever he needed to do to be successful and he approached that discomfort head-on and he leaned into it and that's a huge part of of this success equation you know is is figuring out what sacrifices do you need to make to get where you want to go and then are you willing to deal with the uh subsequent discomfort that comes with making those types of changes and uh with that said i mean i never would have guessed back then that kevin would be one of the best players to ever play the game but now that he is i'm not even remotely surprised you've recently sadly bring this up but lost two very key people to that have motivated you and been part of your life one being morgan wooten of the martha where you worked and obviously kobe bryant who you also have had experiences working with what do you think their legacy is to uh those that are still here what do you think the messaging then what the takeaways from their lives are for people in sport and business well you know for frame of reference so morgan wooten uh was the coach at dematha catholic high school for 47 years uh i'm only 44 years old so he coached three years longer than i've been alive and that certainly should you don't do that without having a very high passion in his case not only for the game of basketball but for helping young people and pouring into young people so you know i think his legacy is absolutely cemented one of the best coaches and leaders of any sport or any industry you know he was one that i think he really showed other coaches how important relationships were and how important it was to care about your players you know he was the first one that i remember being coined with the saying that you know he taught in an all-boys school so i'm just saying boys clearly we would coach girls the same way but he would say you know i coach every young man as if he was my own son and i'm going to coach him with that type of care and love uh which of course means accountability and discipline um but but he really bought it brought a human side to coaching and of course you know the the bittersweet part about morgan's passing is you know he lived to be almost 90 years old so you're talking about someone that had a very full life um and and certainly got to see him do a lot of amazing things then you turn over to kobe which you know the reason his death was so sudden and so tragic was i mean he was cut down in his prime i mean he's 41 years old so he's not even as old as i am and he didn't get to live the long full life that maybe morgan did from a time standpoint but he certainly appeared to live as full of a life as you could live for only being 41 and you know certainly for most of his life he was hyper focused on the craft of basketball and becoming the best player that he could be and i don't think there's any question that he became the best player he was capable of where you rank him in history amongst other players is a completely separate discussion but i don't think kobe could have squeezed one more ounce of potential out of himself he got it all out and then he transferred that to the business world as well and started doing other things and you know the thing i really admire about him um is is how dedicated he was as a father how good of a family man he was i mean there even in his last moments on earth he's trying to take his daughter to a basketball game at you know his facility for a team that he coaches so it's it's certainly sad to see someone you know leave that early who still had so much more to do but i do think that if we can draw from that and say all right well we realize now and i know we all know this intuitively but it reminds us that uh we don't have we don't always have time it's not promise that anything could happen to any one of us any given day so let's live our lives accordingly let's let's not live our lives as if we have 40 years left let's live our lives as if we don't and then if we do end up with 40 more years like a morgan wooten uh then we'll have gotten the most out of that time so yeah i i think the world lost two amazing guys and two amazing leaders but both really left their thumb print on the world before they left which i think is what any of us are hoping to accomplish that word you threw in there hyper focus it i think the world would have been intrigued to see where kobe ended up in the business world because he seemed to carry and transfer the passion he had for the sport of basketball it sort of translated to business and and not surprisingly that's sort of similar to what you're doing is recognizing that the comparability of the two that a lot of what sport actually has to offer and teach you is translatable to business but he also had that same hyper focus you could see with his approaches to what he was actually doing in the and starting to do in the business world yeah it sure seemed like it and you know one of the things that i really believe separated him as a player was his preparation and his due diligence i mean uh i i believe legend has it i mean he watched more film as an individual player than probably anyone in existence because he was always studying what his opponent would do and what their tendencies were so he's watching hours and hours of film before every game and then he would also watch film of himself to see what things he could improve and i think he took that same mindset and that preparation and that due diligence to the business world i mean from what i gather he's made he made several really wise investments into different companies and i can only assume that wasn't luck that was because he did his due diligence and he studied everything he could about those companies not only from their product or service but you know what was their culture how did they behave you know and he he made very successful bets on those companies from his due diligence and then if you just even look at you know his his habits and his behavior you know he was notorious for getting up really early to get an early morning workouts when he was a player and i heard he was doing the same thing in the business world that he was choosing to get up early to put in work in the early morning so that he would be done his day by the time his daughters got off from school so you know they're getting out of school at two or three o'clock and he had pretty much already finished his business for the day so that he could spend quality time with them but that was only because he got up early he's still working eight to ten hour days he's just starting the clock much earlier and that was directly something that that he believed in as a player and did as a player around three or four years ago you decided to branch into the corporate world and a driving passion for you has been sport and basketball why the transition to business i was just ready for a change to be honest um you know basketball had been my number one driving passion ever since i was a child and i'm so thankful that i was able to to make a career out of the sport that i love so much for almost 20 years but i started to find that my own passion and my own interest started to wane as far as doing stuff on court with players and that i uh i don't want to be overly dramatic and say that i was burnt out but i could see myself heading in that direction and i'm a big believer as i'm sure many of your listeners are that you've really got to find your passion and you've got to find things that really light you up and i i just started to notice that that basketball performance training wasn't doing that for me anymore and i needed to make a change what pushed you down that path then of keynote speaking and well there were there were a couple of things i mean one um and my decision to make this change really came more out of a respect for the coaching craft you know i'm a big advocate and supporter of teachers and coaches and i'm a firm believer that if you as the teacher or coach aren't passionate about what you're doing that you're actually cheating your students or you're cheating your athletes and your players so while i was approaching burnout i'm sure that i still could have been good enough that i could have faked it put on a smile and still done a very good job but then i would have been cheating the players i was working with and i would have been cheating the game so that was why i was so resolute about making the change another part as far as why i chose professional keynote speaking one i loved speaking in general like i was doing a lot of clinics around the world speaking to basketball players and coaches um so i knew that that was the the craft that i wanted to pursue really all i needed to do was find a new audience and part of the reason that my passion started to shift was most of the work i was doing was helping players run faster and jump higher and improve athleticism on the court but my personal fascination and passion was in improving things like leadership accountability communication culture so i figured what's another target audience that could benefit from all of these things that i've learned in those domains from the game of basketball and business was just the most obvious choice do you think that the translatability of what you're doing as far as the you know moving from sport to business is because business is actually a team sport absolutely i'm so glad you brought that up and and i also believe you know quality leadership knows no bounds i mean quality leadership is needed in every area of our life both personal and professional i mean certainly you need you know ceos and executives on the business side and you've got coaches and trainers on the sports side but you need leadership just to run your own family you know you need leadership in communities you need leadership so these type of things i knew they had very high utility and um you know what's funny is the list is so long of things that can be transferred from sport to business that we could actually have a much shorter conversation if we talked about the differences because as you said business is very much a team sport there is a scoreboard in business now what you choose to use as your scoreboard uh can alter i mean it doesn't have to just be profits or or revenue um but yeah the similarities between the two are are incredible and uh with any time you know i can work on skills that have high utility that transferred any area of life i feel like that's a good investment in my own future and and you know along with leadership is communication you know there's not an area of life that doesn't get drastically enhanced by your ability to communicate more effectively once again personal or professional individual or organizational so yeah that was absolutely a main draw is is how much transfer there is between the two yeah with uh communication things i've identified over the years of the organizations i've been party to is that often where most problems occur is actually with miscommunication where someone didn't get a memo or someone didn't see something and then a blame game sort of starts around i didn't know about that and and or who's doing that so so communication just on the simplest and most basic levels is is extremely important absolutely so let's talk about some of these things that transition into business from sport so you've mentioned things like culture so teams in sport obviously the most successful teams seem to have something that's different a dynamic that's different and the same with successful businesses what do you see as the key components or some of the components of a of a business that has a good culture uh there's there's three in particular and i know culture is somewhat of a buzz word and i view culture as really is there alignment between what you believe and how you behave you know if if you have this vision statement for your company or this mission statement and it says that you're all about this well is that how you and your people actually behave on a daily basis because there's a lot of groups that that have the nice website or the trifold brochure or a nice gold plaque behind the front desk reception area and then you walk into their office and they're not living by those same values and those same principles so it's all about the experience that's created certainly for the members of your team or organization but also for your clients and customers and is there an alignment between belief and behavior and i believe there's actually three things that will determine culture the first is role clarity does everyone in your organization know exactly what their role is what the team needs them to do for the team to be successful and do they embrace and and try to start in their role so we have to have role clarity the second is accountability so once you've created standards for your organization is everyone living up to those and if not do you have systems in place where you guys hold each other accountable and very average organizations have what's called vertical accountability which is i'm at the top of the org chart i tell you what to do and you do it the best organizations have what's called horizontal accountability as well which means it doesn't matter where you fall on the org chart everybody holds everyone else accountable to live up to the standards that we all agreed to so that we can live out that mission and that vision and then the third we've already teed up and you're 100 right is communication or usually lack of miscommunication or poor communication the ability for teams to effectively communicate in different departments amongst colleagues and co-workers you know being able to speak the other person's language both through email uh and actually in person so that your message is always conveyed in the manner that you meant it to be uh those are the three things that i think weigh most heavily on an organization's ability to have what's a winning culture yeah so they're very important points all three of those and you do see those translate to the most successful teams are there things that sort of stand out in an organization that would say well maybe the culture needs some addressing here yeah i actually think it is it's the inverse it's uh there's there's lack of role clarity not everybody knows exactly what they're supposed to be doing or when they're supposed to be doing it they don't really know what's expected of them or worse uh they're actually they think their role is different than what it's supposed to be you know i work with a lot of executives and managers and supervisors and one of the exercises i have them do is say all right let's just say uh that craig let's just say that uh you report to me and i write down what i believe your role is and then i have you separately write down what you believe your role is and then we compare those two sets of notes and many times there's not near as much overlap as one would hope that you actually think you're supposed to be doing a b and c and i'm over here thinking you're supposed to be doing d e and f and now we've got some tension i'm frustrated you're not doing what i think you're supposed to be doing but you think you're supposed to be doing something completely different and now you're frustrated with me it starts a whole world of problems uh and then accountability the second pillar i actually think is probably the biggest separator amongst average great and elite organizations and that's caring enough to hold people accountable you know that's if you were to mess up craig and step out of bounds and not do what we've all agreed to do that i care enough about you and i care enough about our organization that i'm going to tell you that and i'm going to hold you accountable in an empathetic and compassionate way i'm a big believer that holding someone accountable is something you do for them it's not something you do to them and that the best gift you can give another human being is to hold them accountable to a very high standard so it's easy to let little things slide so you know in tomorrow's meeting you show up one minute late it's easy to just be like okay that's just one minute that's not that big of a deal well in and of itself yeah it's probably not that big of a deal but now you've started to plant a seed where well next time you're going to be 90 seconds late and then maybe the time after that you're four minutes late and now three other people who look up to you they're starting to show up late because they see you show up late spread to a major problem all because we lack the accountability and being able to say hey craig i noticed you walked in 60 minutes excuse me 60 seconds late today if you can't get here on time then the only other option is to get here early do it in a way that allows you to perform at a higher level and then clearly i think anyone listening or watching would understand how miscommunication or poor communication can completely undermine your entire culture i've seen that in my own organization i must say that when people start to slacken and don't hold each other to account that that it does sort of give it almost a permission to someone else to then start the same behavior and then it can go downhill from there so having everyone holding each other into account is an extremely important thing something you've talked about is is gaining permission to hold people to account that that's that's something that's extremely important so do you want to explain the concept of permission and and having the permission to hold someone to account absolutely i mean if i go back to my my basketball training days i had a series of questions that i would ask every player that i worked with the first question would be do you give me permission to coach you like are you going to be open to the suggestions that i make to coach you to be the best player that you can be you know are you going to allow me to use my expertise and my experience to do what i believe is in your best interest for you to be the best player you can be and and i need them to be able to say yes i mean if they look me in the eye and say no i'm not going to let you coach me then clearly this relationship can't work but then the next step is do you give me permission to hold you accountable so we're going to cr collectively come up with some standards of what's what's the atmosphere and environment that we need for you to perform at the highest level and we're going to come to agreement and consensus you know whether it's one-on-one or it's with our entire organization but we're going to come up with a list of standards that if we all live up to these standards we'll be on the path to achieving the goal and the mission and the vision that we've set so once we've created these standards now the next question is do you give me permission to hold you accountable to these standards that if i see or hear you do something that's not in alignment with these standards or i see you step out of bounds do you give me permission to bring that up to you and once again i mean we're looking for compliance we're looking for someone that says yes i want you to hold me accountable because once they've given you that permission it makes things so much easier moving forward there's a lot less friction because now if one of our standards is we will always be on time or early and at tomorrow's meeting you show up one minute late but you've already given me permission to hold you accountable there's really not a whole lot you can say i mean human nature dictates you're still probably just because you're a human being this certainly is not personal you're probably going to make an excuse on why you're late or you're probably going to blame someone else for why you're late uh or after i leave and hold you accountable you're probably going to complain about me to the folks sitting near you but there's really not a whole lot you can say you know craig did you know that being on time was one of our standards yes did you give me permission to hold you accountable when you stepped outside of that yes okay well then why are you surprised that i'm holding you accountable you showed up one minute late i mean you already know that i'm there and just that agreement already takes the sting and the issue out of most of it in fact if we've already created that agreement when you show up 60 seconds late you usually so show up with an apology and say you know i realized i messed up today i'm so sorry that i'm late it won't happen again and it's already defused the whole situation thanks for joining us for a basketball conversation feel free to start a conversation of your own with other ozbush super fans by commenting below and i look forward to sharing our next conversation with you soon i hope you'll join us again sometime catch you later

2021-01-14 11:14

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