Emotional Intelligence: The KEY To Your Success As A Basketball Player (Podcast Episode 83)

Foreign podcast. Appreciate you guys on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Pandora, Google podcast or wherever you may be listening from. And of course everybody who's watching right now on YouTube, shout out to you guys. Make sure you drop a, like subscribe. If you are new, drop a comment, let me know what you think, you have, any questions moving forward, all that sort of stuff. And if you guys are an Apple podcast, you do me a huge favor, scroll down to the bottom of the page, leave a review, let me know what you think about the show. Like I said, I appreciate every single person who's tuned in listening today. So really excited to talk about today's topic, which I went over a little bit on on my Instagram yesterday and just talking about one of the most important characteristics of successful players, but successful people in general, and that's having emotional intelligence. And this is a topic that I don't really see being talked about very much when it comes to basketball, but I think if you talk to a lot of people who are successful, they're going to completely agree. Like, yeah, like the. Having emotional intelligence is just a complete game changer. And I actually read a book that I have right here with me. It's called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. It's by Travis Bradbury and Jean Greaves and just finished. Actually I got it yesterday. And I actually finished reading it yesterday. Like, I just like started going. I just could not put it down. And a lot of the concepts that are brought up in this book are so applicable to everything but to basketball specifically. And there were so many times where, like, man, like, that's such a great way of putting it. If players had the understanding of what it actually means to be emotionally intelligent and how you can use that to get the most out of yourself and the most out of your own performance as well as those around you, your teammates, you're going to make everybody else around you better. Your team is going to be better and you're going to be better. And overall you're going to have a more enjoyable experience. You're going to win more, you're going to be more successful individually. And it all stems from having emotional intelligence and having that at a high level. So being a leader, I think that's the first part to start off with is, you know, people talk about coaching, hey, we got, we got guys who are leaders. You guys need to be leaders. You got to step up and be a leader. And I think there's a lot of times there's misconceptions about what that actually means. I Think a lot of times, you know, people think that being a leader is about telling people what to do and being the boss. Right? And making people do things or not do things, depending on what you want. That's, that's not what being a leader is. In fact, being a leader, I think step number one to that is being able to connect with the people that you're supposed to be leading and having them be receptive to what you say and what you do. Because if they're not receptive to what you say and what you do, then you're not a leader because no one's going to follow you. And if they do follow you, it's out of spite. It's. It's because they have to, it's not because they want to. And generally, when people have to do stuff because they're forced to, the result is not going to be as good as it could be is if they were choosing to do that. Right. So we don't want to be in a position where people, you know, look at you as a leader because, oh, you're, you're a captain or you're a senior. So they have to. Right? You want people to want to follow what you have to say and listen to what you have to say. And that's what having emotional intelligence is all about, is being able to be that person who is a leader. Because people want to know what you have to say. People, people respect you, people trust you. And emotional intelligence is the single biggest predictor of success of anything. And it's the main driver behind leadership and personal excellence. Right. So both sides of it, both in terms of team success, but also your own individual success is so reliant on your, your level of emotional intelligence. And, you know, they've done studies in the, the research group that I'm blanking on now. I don't know if it says in the book right here, but the, the company that these authors are associated with did a bunch of studies measuring emotional intelligence compared compared to success. And they actually compared how much, you know, they call it EQ is a short for emotional intelligence. How does emotional intelligence compare to success? And then they measured that versus how does IQ compare to success? We take people who are successful. What correlates more so with success? Is it having a high emotional intelligence, having high iq? And they found that having a high emotional intelligence actually was much more correlated directly with, with success than having a high IQ was. Meaning that you had people who had a high IQ who weren't necessarily that successful. And you might have People with a low IQ that were really, really successful. But generally the people that you had, who were successful had a very high emotional intelligence. And people who didn't, who weren't successful had a very low emotional intelligence. In fact, they found that 90% of high performers that they, that they had in their study, 90% of them were also very high in EM intelligence. So what that means is that if you are high in emotional intelligence, chances are you're a high performer as well. And then they also found that only 20% of the low performers in their study were high in that emotional intelligence as well. So if you want to be a low performer, then be low in emotional intelligence. And you know, it's like what people say you are who you hang out with. Well, if you're, if you, if you are, you know, low in emotional intelligence, you're more likely to not be successful. And if you're high in it, you're more likely to be successful. Just like if you hang out with a bunch of, you know, millionaires, you're more likely to be a millionaire. If you hang out with a bunch of people who are, who have no money, then you're more likely to have no money as well. Right. It's the same thing when it comes to emotional intelligence. And they even found that with emotional intelligence, people who had a high level of, of EQ were on average made $29,000 more per year than people who didn't have a high emotional intelligence. And they actually found that in their, in their study and kind of how they run their tests with measuring that, they found that for every point increase of emotional intelligence on their, on their test that correlated to 1.3000 higher in terms of salary every year. So if you have somebody who has an 84 on their test for somebody who has an 83, the person who has the 84 on average is going to make 1.3000 more per year than that, than that person. That that was how direct the success, or direct the correlation between emotional intelligence and success was in the studies that they did. So that goes to show you how important this, this thing is. Again, the main determiner of success is emotional intelligence. And it's not iq, it's not communication, it's not discipline, it's not your decision making, it's emotional intelligence is what they found in their study was the main, what, what correlated the most with high performers was that. So if that's the case, right. Don't you think that that probably can have some sort of impact on you as a basketball player. Right. And this can also go for coaches as well. I think this is an. This is something that coaches have to have. Like, you have to have this master if you want to be a successful coach. But we talk about that, right? That's something that coaches talk about. There's plenty of, you know, resources out there that talk about stuff like this for coaches. But for players, this is something that's talked about very often, is why it's important to have a high level of emotional intelligence. There's four main areas that we're going to talk about here. I'm going to give you guys some, like, concrete things you can do to improve yourself in these areas. And the four main areas of emotional intelligence are self awareness, self management, social awareness, and relation. Relationship. Relationship awareness. And I'll kind of give you a brief run, a brief run through of each. But the first one is self awareness. And that's the ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations. Okay? So this is understanding your strengths, your weaknesses, what you do well, what situations might make you upset, you know, how you handle situations. Generally what your tendencies are. That's. That's what, that's what self awareness is. That's. That's category number one. Category number two is self management. And this is the ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behaviors positively. So this is your ability to, you know, when you. When you are in different situations, when you experience different emotions or different situations that you are able to not fall victim to, you know, always being overrun by your emotions, but you're able to control yourself. You're able to think rationally and make the right decision, the positive decision. And this kind of will incorporate a few different strategies you can use to make sure that this is what you do. So that's. Category number two is self management. Number three is social awareness. And this is the ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them. This is your ability to walk into a room and be able to look at somebody and have an idea of what they're feeling, what they're going through. Being able to read the room, right, as people say, being able to kind of have the pulse on what's happening around you. And this is very, very, very important aspect to this, especially in the context of a team sport like basketball. So we'll get more into that. But then the fourth area is relationship management, and that's the ability to use your awareness of your emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully. This is where kind of all three of those things merge. And you actually have, you know, what your, what your interactions with your teammates, with your coaches, with your friends. What does that actually look like? And how good are you at managing those relationships? That's category number four. And that's really where everything sort of ties together. So how this book kind of starts off is a test you can take where it basically gives you your score in each of these four categories. So I actually didn't take the test with this book because you needed a code for it. I didn't have it, so I took it. I took a different one actually. I'm gonna link the test below if you guys want to take it as well. I think it was with Psychology Today or something like that. It was like a 150 question test or something like that. Um, and so it, it gave me some very similar categories, very similar, you know, questions and all that. So I was able to kind of see, like, okay, what do I do? Well, so I found with that test that my worst category was actually self awareness. At first I was like, no, I don't think that's true. And then I actually read into what it was telling me and I was like, yeah, okay, I can kind of see it. But it gave me an idea of, like, what areas I could be better at. Because generally when it comes, when it comes to, like, social awareness and relationship management, I'm really, really good at those. And I felt like I was going into the test, but there's definitely areas when it comes to, you know, self awareness that I can be better at. And that's what this, this test kind of showed me. And this book goes directly into how you can actually do that. So highly recommend you guys take the test again. I'll link that below if you guys are interested in that. And again, that'll give you guys a roadmap of how to improve moving forward. And so that being said, you know, ideally you'll take that test, but I want to give you guys some actionable steps that you can take in each of these categories to get better at it. And I'm going to try and I'm going to tie this into basketball so you can see like, okay, how can this actually help me on the court? And how can this actually make me a better leader, a better teammate, a better player, and how can this ultimately make me more successful? But that's what you're here for is to, you know, ideally be more successful as A basketball player. So that's what I want all this tied back to. So we're going to start off with self awareness and I'm going to give you guys a few different points from the book that actually I thought really resonated with me. Um, and I think specifically I was looking for points that I know for basketball players will be really, really helpful. And again, coaches as well, if you're listening to this, this will help you as well. And obviously it's something you can, you can instill into your players too, hopefully. So self awareness, number one is you have to observe the ripple effect from your emotions. So if you want to be a leader or somebody who is, you know, people trust, then you have to be stable, right? People have to know what they're going to get from. People have to be able to trust you. And you can see this all the time with coaches, right? You'll have a coach who is not in control of their emotions, who doesn't recognize how do my emotions affect my players? And they're going to freak out on a player during practice one day and just really go at them. And next thing you know, that player is constantly playing it safe. They know they don't want to make any more mistakes because if they make mistakes, the coach is going to get mad at them. So all the other players see that and they also start playing as he because they don't want to be the one who's getting yelled at by the coach. Next thing you know, the coach is a team full of players who just play it safe all the time. And you can't win if you play it safe all the time. Right? You know, it's like, it's like, it's like going to Vegas, right? If you're trying to win money, you can't just, you know, fold every single time that you get your, your hand of cards, right? Sometimes you gotta, sometimes you gotta, you know, sometimes you gotta call. And I think that's the right terminology. I'm in Vegas, so you guys can call me out if I'm wrong on that. No pun intended. But what I'm trying to. The point I'm trying to make is that you have to, like, if you always play it safe, it's going to be hard to win. So that coach is going to go through a season and win two games because he's got a bunch of players who are scared to make mistakes. And that all comes from the coach not understanding how his emotions affected his team. Now he's going to be trying to be like, oh, what's wrong with my team? When actually you're what caused the problem, right? And that's a coaching example right there. But it can be the same thing for you as a player, right? If you are, you know, if you're the one who's always yelling at your teammates and getting mad at them and constantly throwing your own anger onto them, they're going to resent you. They're not going to respect what you have to say. They're not going to listen to you. If they do listen to you, it's because they have to, not because they want to. And again, you're going to wonder why your teammates don't like you. You're going to wonder why they don't pass you the ball. You're going to wonder why they don't support you. It's because they don't like you and you're the one who caused it, right? So the first thing, the first part of self awareness you guys got to get is that your emotions have a ripple effect. It's not just the situation you're in right there where you get mad at somebody or you say this, you say that. It's what does that emotional outburst cause down the line? Cause in a week, in a month, right? That's what you have to be able to look at. So that's point number one is observe the ripple effect from your emotions. Number two is watch yourself like a hawk. And what this means is that when you are in a situation, sometimes it's good to be able to step back and think about what it would look like from a hawk's perspective, right? So think about a hawk up in the sky circling around. What does your situation look like to somebody who's on the outside? Because that gives you an idea of how to step back and not be emotional about it and just think about it from a strictly rational perspective. Generally, this is going to allow you to make better decisions moving forward. So if you're frustrated because you know you aren't, you feel like your coach, you know, isn't playing you as much as you want to, or he's not playing you in the spot that you want to play you at, allow yourself to step back and think about what it would look like from somebody on the outside, right? And a lot of times that's going to give you a different perspective right there. If you're frustrated with your teammate, and we're going to get into this in a second in some of these other sections, but instead of you just going at them immediately Step back and think about how the situation looks like to somebody on the outside, somebody who's not you. Because your emotions can really cloud your judgment sometimes. So it's good to be able to take a step back and see things for what they actually are. So that's number two in self awareness. I want to move to self management right here. And this one is really, really simple. And it's just count to 10. And so what this means is like, this goes back to like kindergarten, right, where your teacher would. If you guys were all being loud and you know, your teacher would like, okay, I'm going to count to 10. You guys got to be quiet. And then she counts 10. By the time you guys got 10, hopefully you guys are quiet, right? It's the same thing right here. When you are in a situation where you're really upset, you're really, really mad about something that somebody said or something that somebody did or somebody messed something up or whatever. Instead of you immediately responding and probably saying something that you either don't mean or that you're going to regret or that again is going to cause that ripple effect that's going to be negative. Because with that ripple effect, you can decide if it's going to be a positive ripple effect or a negative one. We want to avoid the negative ones. So if, if that's going to be the case, the best thing you can do is not allow yourself to respond immediately. So that's where you can count to 10. And you might not make it to 10, right? You might have 10 seconds on the court to actually sit there and go, 1, 2, 3. You might not have that much time, but by the time you get to three, you might be in a position where you don't blurt out the first emotional thing that you have to say. And the reason that this works is because actually how your brain works is that when you feel an emotion, it starts with just an electric signal that goes from somewhere in your body up through into your brain. So it goes through actually the first part of your brain, which is where all. Basically it's like the emotional aspect of it. So before it gets to the rational part of your brain, it first has to go through the emotional part. So that's why a lot of times the first reaction is an emotional one, because that's literally how your brain works, is that it's going to start with the emotional response. And if you don't allow yourself to relax and take a couple seconds, that's what you're going to end up reacting with. And sometimes that's okay. A lot of times it's not what you want to do. You want to wait a couple more seconds and then let the rational part of your brain kind of figure it out. And then you want to go back with your response, and that's generally going to lead to much, much better outcomes for you. So. So that's why counting to 10, as basic as it is, can be really effective. So the second point I want to make when it comes to self management is to smile and laugh more. So another really, really simple one, but they actually did a study where they took two groups of people and they had them read identical comic books. And for one group, they actually made them put a pencil in their mouth, like sideways, which actually kind of stimulates the same muscles that you use to smile. And. And they made them read their comic books like that. And the other group, they made them just read them normally. And they found that the group that had the pencils in their mouth and were simulating those smiling muscles actually found the comic books to be more funny and actually had a better time reading them than the other group, the same exact books. And that was what they found pretty much as a consensus with the entire group. And so that shows the power of what smiling actually does to your body. Smiling literally sends. It literally takes, you know, your face sends a signal to your brain that you're happy when you're smiling, right? So if you just like, you can even try right out, like, pause the podcast and just start, like, laughing about something and just notice how you just feel better, right? Even if it's like, there's nothing to be. Maybe there's nothing funny right now, but just by smiling and laughing, you just naturally feel a little bit better. And this is a great thing you can use in those situations where you're frustrated, where you're really upset, right? You had a bad practice, you had a bad game, you had whatever. Like, getting yourself out of that mindset, you just made a bad play just trying to get yourself. Maybe it's in the locker room at halftime, you had a bad first half. Just like forcing yourself to get into a better state of mind can again change you from reacting emotionally and then being able to also think rational or think rationally and not be having a constant negative approach on things, right? That can even be in the. In the context of a practice, that's tough, right? Instead of being negative and being down the whole time, you're able to kind of pick up the energy. That's the other thing that. That Smiling, laughing does. Is that it. It rubs off on everybody else around you. So it's contagious, right? When you are somebody who's constantly smiling, someone's constantly laughing, like, that energy is something that picks up everybody else around you, right? And it makes you much more trustworthy, like whether or not you. That it makes sense. People trust people who are generally happier, right? And so, again, being a leader isn't always about being super tough and being, oh, yeah, you guys, listen to what I got to do. Being a leader is being somebody who people want to trust, people want to be around. And if you want to be a leader, step one, building trust and people who are, you know, just happier and smiling and laughing. Those people who people trust more. So there's a couple different reasons why that's important, but those are two areas that I think are really, really going to be helpful for you guys is if you focus on getting counted to 10, not allowing yourself to react emotionally right away to things. And then number two is just smiling and laughing more. So, moving on to social awareness, step number one that I want to talk about is watching body language. So this section, I think, is super, super, super important. And this is like the main area that if you guys pick anything from, it's this. Watching body language is so important, right? You have to be able to tell what kind of the vibe is of your teammates, and you can get so much just from body language, right? So if one of your teammates has their head down and you can tell they're frustrated, they might not say a word to you, but that lets you know that you can go and pick them up, right? If you're on the court and one of your teammates has super bad body language, chances are they're not going to be focused on that possession. So now you're playing four on five because one of your teammates is kind of out of it. So when you see that you've got to be one to go over and be like, hey, man, we're good. Like, next one. All right, you're good. Don't worry about it. Like, we're good. Let's keep going. And get them from being so internally focused on the negative. Get them outside of that, right? Hey, man, let's get a stop right here. We're all good. All right, we'll get the next one. Just something as simple as that can take somebody and completely change their body language and get them back into the swing of things. So the first thing you got to be able to do to have social awareness is be able to recognize when you see poor body language, shoulder slumped, head down, just sad look on their face, just generally a defeated look when you see that, you got to go say something and help that person get out of that state. Okay, so number two, I think this is a really, really big one, is timing is everything. Think about this sort of situation, right? Let's say, you know, you're at work, and your coworker, she comes in and she starts talking about how her mother. She's got a call from her mother. Her mother is super sick in the hospital, and she's going to fly out in a couple hours after she's done with work to go and be in the hospital with her. Right. If your first reaction to that is, okay, well, do you have any of those project ideas for the meeting we're going to have tomorrow? That's obviously not good timing, right? Because she's so emotionally focused on, oh, like my mom, my mom is sick, my mom is in trouble. And your only thought is, oh, well, I need these project ideas so that timing might be good for you. Like, you might want those ideas right now so you can start to prepare for the meeting tomorrow. But for her, that timing is horrible because she's worried about something way more important than project ideas. So that. That's what I mean by timing is. Everything is. You can't just focus on what's right right now for you. You have to focus on what's right right now for your teammate as well. And so your teammate just. Let's say your teammate just turned the ball over, right? And they're visibly frustrated. Like, they're. They're upset about that. Now is probably not the best time for you to go over and then get on them about the fact that you were open in the corner, right? If your teammate just turned the ball over because they drove to the basket and they got it stripped and they're frustrated, they're mad about it, and they. You walk over to the. Immediately say, hey, I was open. How do you think they're going to take that? You're going to take it positively. Maybe. Maybe you're going to have a really, really emotionally mature teammate who can handle that. Probably not going to be the case with 95% of players that you're going to play with. They're probably going to take that as, oh, you know, f this guy. That's what they're going to think. So now what you just did is you just created a barrier between you and your teammate. So now he doesn't even want to pass you the ball anymore. Like now he wants to pass you the ball less because you just did that to him. Because you are not taking into account how he's feeling at the time. You're only taking into account how you're feeling, which is upset you didn't get the ball. Not worried about him being upset because he turned the ball over. He feels like he let the team down that possession. He's embarrassed because he turned the ball over. You're not worried about what he's feeling. You're only worried about what you're feeling. And if that's what you do, if, if that's what you, you're worried about. It's very, very difficult to be socially aware and emotionally intelligent. So what you could do in the situation instead is let them cool down for a possession, right? Let them cool down until the next time out or until halftime. And then when they've had a little bit of time to relax and get over it, you can go say, hey, man, make sure you look corner next time, right? Or like, hey, man, make sure you make that one extra swing past and then, you know, we'll have another close up to attack right there, right? Or make sure, hey, make sure you look up with the ball in transition, right? And at that point, they're in a much more receptive state. So just, just by you waiting a little bit for the timing to be better, they're probably going to actually be receptive to what you have to say to them and it's actually going to make a difference. Again, this isn't about being right. This is about winning and being better and your team being better. So you have to be able to pay attention to the timing of things. And when you say that and understand that I want to make sure I say this to my teammate when they're in a position to receive it, not right when I need. Right when I want to say it. It's got to be when they're ready to hear it, okay? That's an important thing for you to understand. The key to social awareness, guys, is focusing on others instead of focusing on yourself. If you are always focused on you, you, you, you, you, you will not be socially aware. And if you don't have social awareness, you're not emotionally intelligent. And like I said, if you're not emotionally intelligent, chances are you're not going to be a high performer, right? So that's something for you to think about. So the next thing for you to think about, it's kind of going along with this point is Step into their shoes. So step into the shoes of your teammates. Right? How would they feel in this situation? Right. If you were the one who just turned the ball over, how would you feel? Probably pretty upset, probably pretty frustrated. And then if your teammate immediately walks up to you and says, hey, I was open, or, hey, pass me the ball, how are you? You're gonna feel more frustrated. More than likely. You're gonna feel resentful to that teammate. More than likely. Okay, if you, you know, were. If you were open and, you know, you. You took a shot and you missed it, and then your teammate says, hey, pass the ball next time you, what are you going to think? You're going to be probably pretty resentful of that teammate. You're going to be upset. Like, hey, I was open. That's a good shot. I took it. Instead of that teammate maybe waiting until the next time out and then saying, hey, when you catch the ball, make sure you watch for me cutting the basket, because a lot of times I'm wide open on it. You're probably going to be more receptive to that then. So by putting yourself in their shoes, you're going to be able to actually know what to say and when to say it to them, just by having a little bit of empathy for them. Okay. That's a super important thing, is being able to put yourself into other people's shoes. If you want to be socially aware. And then the last part I want to talk about for social awareness is you have to be able to catch the mood of the room so this can be on the court. Right? Like I said earlier, body language. What is the body language like? Are people's head. Do people have their heads down or shoulders slumped? Are people upset about something? Is the energy high? Is the energy low? Are people talking? Are people communicating with each other? Is everything silent? And of course, going back to it, how is body language? Right? That's the ultimate key. So you have to be able to read and see what's happening and then be able to go and deliver a message if needed, or be able to go talk to somebody one on one if needed. Again, if you see your teammates really frustrated, maybe they missed a couple shots, you guys are coming off the floor for a timeout, going up and giving them some, hey, man, we're good. Going to hit the next one. Keep shooting the ball, man. Keep. Keep getting open looks right. That's. It can be as simple as that. Getting them from being in their own head to out onto the court. That's what matters. And so if you have the ability to read the room and see what people are going through and what they're feeling, then you're going to be a step ahead when it comes to being able to manage all of that and having that emotional intelligence. So moving on to the, the last part right here, which is relationship management. The, the first part I want to talk about is taking feedback well. And this is an area where a lot of players struggle with. A lot of them struggle with, is taking feedback well, taking coaching well. And we're going to talk about this from, we can talk about this from really either perspective. But, you know, generally a teammate or a coach that you have, they're going to have relevance information to the situation that you're in. Like, they generally have an idea, an accurate idea of what's actually happening, right? They're in practice with you, they're in games with you, they see what's happening. So when they say something to you, they typically have at least some evidence for what they're saying, right? It's not as if it's some random person talking to you. So I'm talking specifically somebody who actually has relevant information, somebody who's with you in practice, with you in games, who sees all that sort of stuff. And also they generally have a vested interest in you being better, you being as good as you can be because for a coach, the better you are, the better his team is. And, and the better he is as a coach because he wins more games because his team is better. So you being better is in his best interest for your teammate, right? You being better is for their best interest. If they want to win, they, if they're a teammate who values winning, they want you to be the best you can be. So you have to understand that generally when you get feedback from your teammates and coaches, they first of all have an idea of what's actually the case, and they have relevant information. And two, they also are. They want you to be as successful as possible because that helps them. So you have to approach, start, start looking at feedback as a good thing. I mean, okay, if they're giving me feedback, that means that they actually care about me succeeding, right? And they want me to be the best that I can be. So you have to look at feedback through that lens, first of all. So don't be the player who can't accept feedback, especially criticism, because that's the sign of a very emotionally immature player, is players who can't accept criticism. And when you receive that feedback, right, when your coaches, your coach says to you hey, like, you know, you're not doing a great job of, you know, getting to help. We need to be there. Like, you're getting there late. If you have a question on that, then ask the question on it, right? You don't have to just sit there and be like, oh, okay, and not know what they're talking about. You can ask them to elaborate a little bit if you need more of that. But regardless of that, when you receive that feedback, and you might not always agree with the feedback either. You might not always think like, oh, well, if your teammate tells you, like, hey, you know, you got to sprint harder in transition and you already feel like you are, you know, again, maybe that's a situation where you don't agree with them completely, but again, they're saying that because they want you to be better, because it helps them be better. You know what I mean? So when you receive feedback, thank them for their feedback, right? And. And I understand, like, you're not always gonna have a chance to say, hell, thank you for that. Like, but at the very least, be appreciative of them giving you feedback. First of all, if a coach is giving you feedback, that's a good thing, because generally it means that they actually, again, they care about you being better. If they. There are. There are plenty of players coaches have who they don't even give feedback to because they know that player doesn't care or that player isn't going to help them. That player is not good enough to even. Like, it doesn't even matter, right? So if they're giving you feedback, it's because they care about you and they want you to be successful, which is a great thing. And same thing with your teammates, too. So be appreciative of that feedback and start looking at it as a good thing instead of somebody attacking you, because generally it's not that. So then the second point I want to make with relationship management is on the other side of it, give clear and constructive feedback. So feedback is meant to address the problem, not the person, right? So you need to think about, how does this person need to hear my message so that it's clear, direct, constructive, and respectful? Those things matter. You cannot just blurt out the first thing you want to say to somebody, because if it's not those things, then they're probably not going to get the message. And if you are actually concerned about fixing a problem, then you're not. You're not putting yourself in the best position to actually do that. So first of all, you know who you're Talking to some people, some teammates you might have are very direct, and they can be told things very directly and very bluntly. And they like, they can. They can handle that. Like, that's how they are. But you're also gonna have teammates who aren't that, teammates who are a little bit more sensitive, teammates who maybe can't handle you being direct with them. So if you try and be direct with those sort of teammates, they're going to resent you. They're not going to listen to you. They're going to be defensive and not take what you have to say. And then at that point, what are we doing? We're not fixing any problems. You're probably creating more problems by being direct with that person. So what you can do, and generally I think this is a good habit to have, is use softening statements. So this can be like, you know, I think or I believe or I. Or, you know, this time or last time or sometimes, right? So, you know, you might say, instead of saying to somebody, like, hey, you know, that was, you know, let's say you're on the court and your teammate takes a shot that you don't like. And instead of you saying like, hey, man, terrible shot. Pass the ball next time. Again, we talked about timing, right? If they just took a bad shot and they missed it, the ball went out of bounds, you walk up and say, that's a terrible shot. Passing ball next time. How do you think they're going to take that? Probably not. Well, probably not going to look to pass you the ball because they're probably going to resent you for that. So how can we adjust that to make it a little bit softer so that they're more receptive to that? Well, one thing you can do is you can say, hey, man, it's all good. Next time, though, make sure you take a look to the corner because they're closing out hard to you. So I'll be wide open on that. And honestly, you'll probably get the ball back if I attack it right there. So you just said the same thing to them, which is, I didn't like that shot. Pass me the ball next time. But you said it in a way that wasn't going. Wasn't attacking them, wasn't calling them out, wasn't, you know, again, wasn't putting them on the defensive. Because once somebody gets defensive, you're not going to. They're not going to be receptive. What you say. They're. They're going to put up a wall immediately. And anything you say to Them is just going to bounce right off of that. So you. You were able to keep them away from being defensive about something, but you still get the same point across, which is, hey, next time, passing the ball, and then you know that's going to be better for our team. That was essentially what you said. But they are going to. They're going to take it in a way is like, okay. Like, you know, he said, like, hey, he didn't come at me and say, that was terrible. He said, hey, make sure you pass the ball in this time, because if I catch it and they close out hard, I'll be able to drive and probably kick it right back to you. So he's like, okay, yeah, I can do that. Next time you're going to get the ball, pass to you. So the goal is to fix the problem, not to go at the person. The point is to fix what's wrong. And in that second scenario where you went out there, where you said to them, hey, man, it's all good. Next time, though, is make sure you look corner, made that extra pass to me, because their calls aren't really hard to you. And if I get it and I drive, I'll probably hit it right back to you will be good. All right. That. That, like, you fixed the problem with that situation, the first one where you just went right out and said, hey, that was terrible shot. Pass the ball. You didn't fix anything. You just made things worse. Right? So the goal is to fix things. And when you put people on the defensive, you don't fix things. You make things worse. So you have to be able to kind of disarm your teammates by how you actually say things to them. Because how you say things is probably more. In fact, it is how you say things is more important than what you actually say. Because if you say something the wrong way, even if it's the right information, if you say it the wrong way, then they're going to put up a wall, they're going to resent you, and it's going to make the relationship worse, and it's going to make your team worse. That's where. Why we have a bunch of teammates who hate each other because they don't know how to communicate with each other. Right? And we don't want that. We don't want that to be the case. So that's what. That's. That's what you guys have to understand about relationship management, is that how you do things matters more than what it is that you do, Right? How you actually go about Making sure people are receptive, what you have to say, what you do. That stuff matters when it comes to being a leader. So that's. That's category number four of having emotional Intelligence. And these were just areas that I felt like were really, really helpful when it comes to basketball specifically. But there's so many points like this in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0. So I highly recommend you guys read this book. If you guys found this podcast interesting, my other challenge to you is, you know, kind of go back through this podcast and I'll. Let's timestamp this as well on YouTube, but kind of go through this and then look at, you know, maybe picking three of these of these categories that you feel like you could be better at. And then just focus on that. Focus on how, okay, I'm going to be better at these three categories. And then once you feel like you've done that, maybe you move on, right? And I think that's going to be the best way for you to go about improving your emotional intelligence. And again, as you do that, you're going to become more successful because that's just how it is, right? That's the correlation so incredibly, incredibly important. And a lot of direct translation when it comes to that to basketball as well. So hopefully you guys found this podcast helpful. And I know, like, if there's one thing I can say to you guys, like, take this seriously, because basketball or not, like, this is such an important life skill that you can learn through basketball that's going to make you successful in pretty much anything that you do. So again, appreciate you guys who, who have listened this far. Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Everybody who's watching YouTube right now. Make sure you guys give me a follow on Instagram at Vision Driven Basketball as well. If you have not. If you guys on YouTube drop a comment, let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any suggestions moving forward. I will talk to you guys soon. Peace.