How To Be A Better Coach: Learning the Love Language of Your players - Episode 21 - w/Coach Bryn

The interesting thing about love languages is that most of us, even when we identify our own love language, we tend to give love the way we like to receive love. So for example, me, I've already disclosed to you that my favorite, my love language, my main love language is words of affirmation. Okay, I tend to want to tell people what they mean to me. I tend to give love the way I like to receive love. The interesting thing about that is we almost always attract people who tend to want love in the ones that are the least important to us. I'm excited for you to see this week's episode, but before we get to that, I have a message for you. If you're a parent of an elite athlete or a coach of a high-performing team and you want— you're looking for some help or assistance with making them more mentally resilient, perform with more confidence, be more consistent, anything like that, then this is for you. I have an 8-week program all designed to address exactly that, to help your athlete be at their best on a more consistent basis and not get tripped up by those little voices in their head and getting down on themselves for mistakes, but performing like we know they can. So what I want you to do is don't delay, schedule a— just grab a time on my calendar through this link and let's set up a time to talk about your specific situation and how what I'm offering in my 8-week program can help. Okay, so it's Bryndresher.com/freeconsultation. So click this link, grab a time on my calendar. I look forward to talking to you. And now on to this week's episode. Welcome back to another episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast. It's me, your host, Coach Brynn, with another episode. I hope you've been enjoying all the episodes thus far. Do check out all the previous episodes, whether they be interviews or the things that I am sharing. Today we are talking about something very, very valuable. If you are a coach, an athlete, a parent, or just someone that is somehow involved with any of those type of roles, this is going to be a beneficial episode for you. Have you ever had a situation where you have attempted to communicate something to someone and it didn't exactly translate to them, even though you felt you were being clear? Have you had a situation where you had an athlete where you were wanting to motivate them and it just isn't working, or it backfired and it went the completely opposite direction of where you wanted? This is what we're talking about today. We're going to be discussing love languages. Love languages. Now, I know many of you may have heard of the book by Dr. Gary Chapman, and it's all about the love languages. There's 5 of them, okay? There's words of affirmation— that's mine, in case you were wondering— there is quality time, physical touch, uh, acts of service, and receiving gifts. We're going to talk about those but also just kind of elaborate a little bit. Now, of course, many of us probably think of love language more in the context of a romantic relationship, right? And the interesting thing about love languages is that most of us, even when we identify our own love language, we tend to give love the way we like to receive love. So for example, me, I've already disclosed to you that my favorite, my love language, my main love language is words of affirmation, okay? I tend to want to tell people what they mean to me. I tend to give love the way I like to receive love. The interesting thing about that is we almost always attract people who tend to want love in the ones that are the least important to us. So for example, I'm in a relationship with someone whose main love language is acts of service. So although I may want to say a bunch of kind things, I am getting back a bunch of like, okay, what have you done for me lately type looks when I'm just like, I love you so much, you're amazing. Right? And it's like, oh, thank you so much, but it doesn't mean as much to them as perhaps quality time or acts of service. So why am I mentioning this in the context of athletes? Well, in the old days of coaching, all right, or even captaining, right, because this is really for everyone— the parent, the coach, the captain— depending on whatever role you're in, it was sort of like, it's my team, it's my way. If I'm the parent, if I'm the captain, you know, I'm— this is kind of like, you know, it's my team. Now we've had a major shift with the different generations, and it seems that the more that we want certain goals accomplished, we would be more successful by tapping into the love language, aka getting to know our players better, our teammates, our players, our children better, so that we can then help them develop what they need necessary to have the best performances, confidence, outcomes as possible. And how do we do that? And that's through the word, the R word, relationship. We have to spend time getting to know them. As a coach, as a parent, are we tapping into what our child needs the most? There's this great saying that says Children don't want your presence with a T-S. They want your presence with a C-E. So it's that idea that we're checking in, making sure, because sometimes our children do want our presence, right? From the coach, from the parent, from, you know, the captain. They want those gifts if that's their love language. But often They just want that, like, you know me, they get seen by you, to make your players seen. We saw with Tom Brady going to play with Tampa Bay after Belichick kind of said, you know, you're not going to be our starter anymore, and they're building the franchise with someone else. He finds a place where he's loved, and we see this all the time where players don't perform for one organization and then they go transfer, get traded to another organization, and suddenly they have their best numbers ever. On my first episode of the podcast, Nick Swisher talked about that when he played in Chicago with the White Sox and had one of his lowest seasons he did of his MLB career. And then he goes to New York, and New York says, hey, we know that that's not an indication of what's possible for you. We know what you have in the tank. And, you know, he's able to produce and help the New York Yankees win a World Series. You see this time and time again, no matter where you look at it, you would see cases of a player going from one club team and feeling completely defeated, then finding a coach and an environment that supports that player, and suddenly the production, the output, even the attitude changes. Now, of course, we can't always control that, and I talk to my players all the time about, you know, you're not always going to have the best coach, the best team, the best environment. So what are we going to do? How can we focus on what we can control? And, uh, you know, adjusting our decisions and responding accordingly. But how can we help meet the players halfway so that ultimately, if our goal is to win, is to get the most out of the athlete, is to begin to unlock potential, then it's going to behoove us to get to know the player better. So let's talk about these different love languages in the case of Gary Chapman's 5, as we already discussed. But we also have the ability to talk about it in lots of different other scenarios, which I'll go into towards the end here. All right, so let's say they're like me and they like words of affirmation. As a coach, as a parent, are you praising them? Now, we often say you pray— you promote what you praise. You promote what you praise. If you praise winning, if you praise, you know, always completing shots, or if that— they start to associate, right? Like Pavlov's dog, when the bell rings, then the salivation occurs. So we have to understand that the stimulus, then the response occurs in the brain, and then the association happens. Neurons wired together, they fire. When fire together, they wire together. So we want to promote and praise the effort, not the outcome. So if we're only praising wins, if we're only praising success, then when there is no success, then we set ourselves up and that athlete and that child for something not so great. Carol Dweck talks about this in her book "Mindset." Always praise the effort. Praise the effort because you create actually more resiliency in that athlete because you're talking about, I love how hardworking you are. I love the effort out on the field. I love the way you fought through that difficult moment in the middle of the game. Suddenly they recognize and they start to see themselves as someone who is a hard worker, who fights through difficulty and challenge. So you want to be strategic in how you praise, not that you don't praise, but what you praise, okay? So when we're talking about words of affirmation for an athlete, you want to consider praising the effort and the different, you know, the different process, the process over the outcome. Okay, that's very important for words of affirmation. Okay, for those in getting to know, how do you know your player likes words of affirmation? Just test them all on your person. Obviously, if your primary love language is one thing, be mindful of your own bias of giving love in that way. So check yourself first and say, okay, my primary love language is, uh, words of affirmation. So most likely, um, I may have a team that is going to challenge that, so I need to know. So you may want to do a mirror effect there, but you also just kind of test it all on your athletes. Which ones like words of affirmation? Which ones like, uh, a little bit more quality time? So we'll go into quality time, okay? Quality time. As a coach, understandably, you have limited practice time if you're a club coach. If you are, um, even a high school coach, you only have so much time with the athletes. But just setting aside time, like Chris McSwain talked about in our last episode, of just setting up maybe small meetings with a few of your athletes, or maybe having one-on-ones. I, when I do my 8-week coaching program in a group coaching environment, I have a one-on-one with the athlete in the beginning in the middle, and then the end with each athlete, even though we're doing a group coaching environment. So they get an opportunity to interface with me one-on-one so that we can kind of feed those that need the quality time, but also so that I can check in, because sometimes people will not disclose things in a group environment that they may feel more comfortable if there's a more intimate connection with that person, or a heartfelt connection. Okay, so that's important to to be mindful of when you're doing that. And then finding out what are their goals, what other things interest them. Find out about the player in the uniform, not just the athlete, right? Who's the person behind the athlete or the full person so that you can take all those things into an account and they feel seen by you. So that's important for quality time, quality time, okay? Now the next one is physical touch. Now, of course, we are talking about in this case of, like, let's say you're a teammate, you are a coach, or a parent. Now, if it's your own child, of course, hugging and certain things usually pretty appropriate. In some veins and ways, depending on your relationship with that athlete, you have to decide what your professional comfortability— and, you know, like I said, professionalism is good with that— but high fives, you know, fist bumps, you know, elbow stuff, just like maybe a touch on the shoulder, you know, something like that. Just find a way to connect to that athlete, to that, you know, that student, that person, in a way that makes them seen. Or even when you're just like, they're coaching, you know, like I read somewhere online, I looked when I was looking this up, you can also help them with stretching. But again, professionalism abound, right? So maybe you're pushing them down, helping them with stretching that their partner would normally do. They would do a partner in practice, I mean. So that could be another way that you could connect with them. All right, but again, you have to think about what's the professional way of doing that physical touch, but a lot of high fives, different things like that. And even, you know, some people like to do, you know, I know there's a lot of like chest bumping in certain sports and things like that. So again, keep it professional, but find what works for you and that athlete, and then professionalism, of course. All right, the next one is acts of service. Acts of service. So now this is usually would be on a teammate basis, but even, you know, what is a small thing you can do? Maybe help clean up their locker. You could, you know, oh, hey, I grabbed your stuff that you left out there. I'll carry your things. There's different ways. As a coach, for acts of service, what can you do? Different things maybe to think about. What does your athlete need as far as in the classroom? Maybe set up tutoring sessions for them, different things. Maybe that act of service is staying after practice for 5 minutes to help this particular athlete. So what are different ways that you can do acts of service in a relationship context? Doing the dishes, taking out the trash, a back rub, but acts of service. So obviously that wouldn't be appropriate or necessarily, but maybe you normally have the athletes clean up the locker room, and then maybe you say, okay, you know, after such a hard week, I got the— I got cleanup. You guys go ahead and go home. We'll take care of cleaning up this, you know, the gym or the locker room or whatever the case like that. So different ways to kind of show the athletes acts of service. You know, you have to think and be creative, think outside the box for that. Okay, and then the next thing is receiving gifts. Obviously, they don't have to be of a monetary value. They could be things you made like, even though it's a words of affirmation combination, but like a little gift, like, you know, said, hey, I know that this was important to you. Something simple, like if you watch Ted Lasso, he likes to give them these little toy soldiers, which funny enough, he gave it to Sam Obisanye, who's from Africa, and was like, kind of, you know, the American military symbolizes colonization for him. So while that gift— this is really important for gifts And this is huge in relationships. A lot of times when giving a gift to someone, we're giving the gift because it means something to us, but then conversely, we're not thinking about how the person that's going to receive the gift may feel about it. So going back to the Sam Obasanje example, even though he understood the gesture, it was like, yeah, you'll forgive me if I won't keep this because this symbolizes colonization for me. So it's keeping in mind when giving gifts that you're not giving gifts that mean something to you, but to the receiver, right? To the receiver. So you want to think about what would mean something to that, you know, your players, your team. So if everybody is always talking about how much they love ice cream, maybe we do like an organized ice cream outing after a big game, or find a way to have like a special incentive that, you know, like, hey guys, you know, I know we've been working hard. And again, I know there's some professional boundaries there, but you got to find that. And then as a parent, considering not buying your child's affection, because a lot of times we want to overgive, and that might— may not be our child's love language. So we want to consider, is this the gift that is for them or for me? Am I trying to make me feel better? Am I— sure, it makes me feel good to know that I bought them a PlayStation, but if they don't really care about PlayStation You know, or this isn't really necessarily like, yeah, they want a PlayStation, but is this the right time to give it to them when it really— I'm trying to encourage them for an athletic outcome. So maybe finding a way that would motivate them, a gift that would keep them on track, something maybe even in the vein of their sport, something that would actually make them feel supported in their journey and not something that might be a distraction ultimately that you'll be arguing over, like, oh, you're now spending so much time on video games, you're not out practicing playing, you know, etc. So you want to be considerate about that and making sure you're not giving gifts for gifts' sake. We're not trying to buy affection of— as a coach, as a captain, we are earning the right and showing what we know. All of these things is showing what we know about the player, which ultimately our main goal, of course, number one is to develop a relationship, and then number two is to help that athlete find what's best in them to perform at their best to accomplish their sports and life's life goals. Okay, so we've talked about the different— I think all 5 of the love languages. Now, does it have to be the love languages? You're like, well, I'm not really into these love languages. All right, well, there's lots of different ones. There's the DISC assessment, there's the grit scale, there's all these different modalities out there. And the one thing I would say as a coach, captain, or parent, um, is getting to know your athlete, but also maybe developing some sort of profile so that you can see, like, um, you know, you can use a combination of the three, right? You don't have to— you can use the combination of many, right? You can use the grid scale, you can use, you know, uh, different tests and things out there like the DiSC assessment. They've got the Gallup, they've got, you know, so many different things, okay? They, they, they have so many different personality assessments The one thing I will caution you is to know that everybody's not just one of these, right? They are sometimes a combination. Like, though I do love words of affirmation, I'm also a, um, you know, a, a physical touch person, and, and, uh, and quality time. Like, I love some quality time with my partner. So it's finding that— what are the, the intersections, and how can we play to those strengths so that person feels supported within our environment? What environment are we surrounding our players with so that they feel like they have the best opportunity to produce? And obviously when a player's unhappy and they don't feel supported, then usually that will be reflective in their performance and their outcomes on the field of play. And we want to maximize that as best as we can. So in short, the questions you need to be asking yourself is, okay, I have this, this bunch of players, and you also want to be mindful— sorry, I know I'm kind of skipping in here, but I want to, I want to say this because it occurred to me— you want to be mindful of not trying to paint everybody with the same brush. So every year you're going to have a different team. Sometimes you're going to have seniors graduating, you're going to have new people come in, player dynamics. Sometimes things change things.. So constantly checking in. That's why one-on-ones are so important to do them periodically because things change. People go through life events, you know, like a death in the family. I was very different after my mom died. So lots of different things happen and you want to check in on that athlete and kind of make sure that what you're reading about the situation is still accurate and anything you need to adjust. Keeping player profiles up to date with your, um, your team is really important. And as a captain, kind of getting to know your players, looking for team chemistry, helping to connect dots, maybe seeing like, hey, he likes this and she likes this, maybe this would be a good time to let them know that they have this in common. Different ways to create those different intersections so that they feel more a part of the team, more part of the the bond, and ultimately knowing Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the more that we feel that our basic needs are being met, the more we have the higher versions of confidence and self-efficacy and all that. So you want to make sure that as you're doing these different assessments and profiles, that you understand that, as, uh, Dr. Goldman said on my podcast, Scott Goldman, Things are meant to be descriptive, not predictive. So you may have a general idea of what that player likes, but again, meet them where they're at in the moment and know that there's no one-size-fits-all label for any human being. So be flexible in how you're flowing with that and go with the flow and flow with the go. And, you know, your insights, you want to sort of make sure that it's asking questions. That's another powerful thing with love languages. It's like I was talking about this with Chris McSwain and we did a live this week after he had been on the podcast. We're talking about when oftentimes a player may come to you and say, I want more playing time, I want to— why am I not getting, you know, the same playing time? Or I want to start. And it's instead of telling them like, okay, here's the reasons I'm not starting you, here's the reasons, you know, like you're not getting more playing time, or here's the reasons I don't think you could go Division I or play more, you know, play at the varsity level, or whatever it is, or even go pro. I think it's more leading that player to come to their own conclusion. So in other words, all right, you want more playing time. What leads you to believe you need— you deserve more playing time? And I'm not— this is not me attacking you, I'm just curious because you're coming to me. What is telling you you need more playing time? Well, I did this, this, and this. Okay, all right, those are all good things. Here, may I offer some counterpoints? Now, when you talk about this, do you know the percentage of the person that's your, you know, that's starting in your position? Or do you know the average of the conference in that, you know, vein? Oh, I don't. Okay, well, why don't you look that up, come back to me, and let's discuss? Because maybe what we need to be doing is making some different, uh, adjustments in the way that we're training you up so that I can make sure that we give you the best opportunity for those positions. Because It doesn't mean not having hard conversations with your players, but part of that is being able to be transparent with them, but also helping them to be an ally in the process, that it's a collaborative effort and it's not a my team in the way I see it, but it's helping them and coming together and talking about how can we do this, all right, and accomplish the goals that we have as a team and as an individual player. So that is the love language conversation. Of course, as we said, you can take the Gary Chapman love language quiz online if you wanted to do that. And I will say that there is one for teens, and there is a high school in the area that I live in, Los Angeles Unified School District, that literally has all of their students go do the love language thing assessment And through that, then they get paired with certain teachers and they coach them around their academics based on their love language and obviously several other factors. But they have found that they have a higher— the highest rate of graduation and, uh, you know, less attrition as far as dropout and things like that in a very impoverished neighborhood where the kids are battling a lot of stuff with gangs and poverty and, uh, you know, just different things. So I'm suggesting that you could put your player through the love language thing. And if you're a higher caliber coach, a college coach, or even, you know, um, on a professional or semi-professional level, this is notwithstanding. I believe that you becoming more versed in your players and learning how to meet them halfway and understanding that hard decisions have to be made, hard conversations have to be had, but they're far more receptive if they feel that there's a care for them up front, right? They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So if we can lead with love first, I believe that is the key to unlocking everything else. So in general, let's love more, let's live more, let's laugh more, and then let's have better performances all around. So that is this week's Mental Advantage podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave your biggest takeaways in the comments below. Let me know what other, what other topics you would like to be covered. And as you know, words of affirmation is my love language, so any positive or constructive feedback is very helpful, but lead with the positive first. I'm much more receptive to it. Uh, not saying that I don't take the constructive. All right everybody, have a great day and I'll see you in the next episode.