Episode 120: Larry's Daily Reflections on Winning - Insights on Great Coaches and Leaders

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell, and let's get started. This episode is another idea I'm sharing with you from my own personal daily reflections on winning. Here's some bullet points on great coaches, great leaders, because, and I'm doing this because sometimes it's just good to get reminders. I'm sure you pretty much know all this stuff, but let's just think about great coaches, great leaders, because if you do anything great, you got to have a team and you got to be the leader. So great coaches and leaders, first of all, they're people who read people well. They can tell what people are good at. They can tell, you know, they can pick up the telltale signs when people are conning them. They're, you know, they're fidgeting around. They can tell. They notice when people don't live up to commitments, you know, and they know that you give. They know to like if somebody won't do a simple thing, take simple things seriously, they're not going to be take the tough thing seriously. So they want people they can depend on. And so they're constantly evaluating in big and little things, the people around them to see if they can depend on them when things get tough. You know, that's the main thing. Not, not can they do the things when everything's easy. So they, they read people well. They really know they don't fall. They really know who's right for the job, who has the potential to move up, who doesn't have the potential to move up. Okay, now they. Another thing they do, they help people become their own best coach. They might micromanage in the beginning, starting up a new person. That's not bad. Just to make sure you explain everything to them. Like the great basketball coach John Wooden would start every season at UCLA where they won 10 national championships in a row. Never been duplicated by, you know, no one's much, no one's won 10, much less in a row. But. And he had the greatest he could get pick of the talent of the high school basketball players all over the country. But still, when these kids came in, they started every season. He started the sprint, the, the PRAC preseason practice by showing them how to tie their shoes so the shoelaces would not get loose and turn into a problem during the game. So it's like here, that's how he started every season with these like all Stars. And you know, people went out of the hall of Fame in basketball, they had unbelievable talent. But when he had Them, he started at the basic, but then you turn them loose. But see, he did that in practice. He did that to start it off. But when he got into the games, whereas, you see basketball coaches get up, they yell, they scream, and their arms are waving and everything. He just sat there quiet on the bench, never got up, never yelled. Because his idea was, it's before the game, you get them prepared to play, and when it's time to play and they're out there, let them figure it out. Let them think, give them some freedom. It must have paid off pretty good. The other guy who was like that was Phil Jackson, NBA coach. He won as a player with the Knicks, but he also. I don't know how many champions you got, like 13 championships. But he would take. I mean, he would do a thing where a lot of coaches do it now. But, you know, when the huddle, they had the huddle, they come up for the huddle. He let him come and sit down, and he would. He would go wander off, look up in the stands, go talk to someone else. He wouldn't even talk to him until like the last 10 seconds of the timeout. And then he'd come over and, you know, now they're going to pay attention because they had a chance to cool out, to relax, to let their head thing. But a lot of coaches, as soon as you come off, they got the, you know, the board out and they're diagramming plays and they're yapping the whole time. No, Jackson wasn't like that. And look at the championships he won. And he'd be. A lot of times he'd be at the end of the game and he would, you know, be tense back and forth, this, that, the other. He would even call the timeout. He'd let him figure it out. And most of the time they did because he, you know, he had people like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant on the floor. So, you know, he let them be great. Let them figure it out. So great coaches help people become their own best coach. They stay in touch, but they don't allow themselves to be indispensable. See, they teach people how to coach themselves, because most of the time, that's where they. The most important coaching occurs. Because when you learn a lesson for yourself and no matter how interested, invested a coach is in you and how much time you spend together, coaches really don't know exactly how you think or where all the experiences of your background, how you interpret all this stuff, but you do. And they don't know as much as you as what really works for you and how you set yourself up to be the best in any given situation. So the one thing they can do is help coach you to become, you know, teach each individual how to coach themselves. And now when it comes to organizing organization with teams, they know you set up systems and schedule so it'll run. You know, most of the time people don't have, you're not reinventing the wheel. Each week you show up, people know when you, you know, the meetings are, when the practice time, you know, what you do before a game, things like that. And so with teams, you set up systems and schedules. With individuals, you work with them to get a plan. See if you have. Even if you're in a team sport, the great coaches will have meetings with the really great players. And to say, what can, you know, we got our team goals, but what can this season mean for you? What would make this for you personally? Now let's say we go and hit all our goals. But with you, what are the highlights for you? You know, that could be like, if you're in a team sport, be an all star, be an mvp, lead the league in scoring or something like that. You know, in business it could be get a, you know, a big business type thing. It could be get a promotion, win a contest, things like that. So you want the team to have systems, schedules, goals, things like that. But within individuals, you want to work with them to get the their own special plan so they will flourish inside the group system and schedule that you set up. Now, when coaches work with teams, their focus is to make everyone good supporters of each other. They want the team to flourish. And you can't do that in an environment where you have little rivalries and little negative things happening. And it's important that they make sure everyone on that team contributes to the environment, positive or negative. And attitudes are like viruses, you know, they spread. Good ones spread, bad ones spread. And so it's up to them not to let negativity spread. You know, it's like, ignore it, stomp it out. But the main thing is encourage each other and, you know, be a good supporter so everybody can be at their best and then have wasted energy going around on side issues that just, you know, ruins your focus and your concentration. And again, nobody's perfect on this. But this is what, why you have a coach and this is why you have team leaders that understand these things and try and make them happen. So coaches also, when things go wrong, they adapt rather than getting stressed out over things they can't control. That's why you see the great coaches when you know the team makes some incredible. Somebody makes some incredible boneheaded mistake or this, that the other, they get way behind or whatever. The coach likely to be the coolest one on the field because they know giving in to emotional outbursts over time is going to be destructive. And so they're maybe not perfect at it, but they're more like they're probably the last ones to crack in a stress situation. Also, coaches set boundaries. You got to give people freedom, but you can't give them total, complete freedom. So you have freedom within boundaries. So people know there is a line. And as long as I stay between those lines, you know, inside that line, I'm going to be good and I make a good effort, I've got a good attitude, you know, I'm a good team member. But if I step over the line now, I've moved myself into a group of people that, that are troublemakers, are problem people. And so I want to stay on the right side of the line. But you can't do that if you don't know where the boundary is. Another thing coaches do is they identify strengths, help. So you want to help people do well. And a lot of times we can't see ourselves, you know, we, we have ideas that we're good at this, not good at that, and it could be that we have strength we're not even aware of. But the coach, as you know, that's the advantage of a coach. They could be outside of this, another set of eyes, objective, and they can help you find your strengths and put you in situations where you can get the most out of those strengths. And they get things done not just by yelling at people or by, you know, being annoying, but by putting people in a place where they're strong at doing what they're doing, they're good at doing, they feel good about, they know they're getting better at it, and they put them in a situation where they can excel. And so there's great results because the coaches kind of set them up for success, helped set them up for success rather than tried to yell them to success. And they know when things are not going right, you got to make a change. It's not going to change by itself. And one of the great ways of making changes is set some new goals, short term, medium, long term goals, change things up, get people focused on some different achievable, doable goals so the team can get the sense that, okay, now we're moving now, you know, we were in a Funk, we were stalled out, but now we ran into a brick wall. But now we got a plan that'll work. And we know it'll work because we got the first part of it done. And so to make changes, great coaches know setting new goals can be a powerful tool. Now, the key is not only to find ways to push people, but help them figure out how to push themselves and hold themselves accountable. So that's why you have contests. That's why you keep up with the numbers. And not that just the coach is going to know what's going on, but where people can monitor themselves. You know, they. You know, they train people, they put these standards in. This is part of the boundaries and the game plans and the schedules and all where people know what their job is. They know when they're doing well, they know when they're not. They're falling behind. And to take the mystery out of that. And so when people know what they're supposed to do, they know how to do it. That's when they can hold themselves accountable. And especially if the leader puts some great incentives in there and rewards them when they hit their goals and things like that. And then, you know, no matter where, unfortunately, you know, I found this out early in my career. Some people just don't like you. And, you know, we all want to be liked. And we are always shocked to find out for some reason we rub. You know, we're not shocked when we find somebody else that rubs us the wrong way, but we're really shocked when we find out that we rub somebody else the wrong ways, like, how dare they? But the deal is that you're going to find that you got to work. If you're firing people all the time, you're like, I'm not going to put up with that. Well, you're probably going to run off some people that are difference makers for you. So the key is one of the keys that makes great coaches, you know, because if you're blowing up all the time and firing people all the time, what happens is that all of the time and energy and effort you put into that person, it's now gone. You know, when they go out the door that, you know, all that effort you put in is out the door. And the other thing to ask yourself is, like, why would that. Why was that person ever even on your team? Did they. Were that. Were they bad then? No. Probably you thought they were great. You know, you like their talent, you like this, that the other. Well, one thing. If this keeps happening to you over and over again, where you're running people. Often as a coach, you have to be honest and say, maybe I'm part of the problem. You see what I'm saying? Those are things we don't like to admit. But if something's happening repetitively to you and you're keeping continuing having problems with people that you thought were great, because that's what we used to say when we recruit people. You know, in our business, we're recruiting and then, you know, we have a manager in, I don't know, San Antonio or someplace, and he said this sob, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, who recruited that sob? You did. How did that great recruit wind up turning into an sob? You know, because this is happening regularly to you, you know, so maybe you have a little piece of the problem, or maybe you need to change how you evaluate people. And so great coaches find ways to work with people they don't necessarily see eye to eye with because they know it's not a world. They know it's not a perfect world. You're not going to get along great with everybody. And they also know people change. Some of the people you knock heads with today are going to be your biggest buddies down the road because they made you realize something you was doing that needed to be fixed. And on the other hand, you maybe you made them realize something that they were doing to undermine all of their effort and everything. And so a lot of times you go through these situations and if you don't let yourself blow up and either quit or if the person's underneath you, you know, run them off. Well, a lot of times you find out that things come back together, you know, because people can grow. Sometimes it's struggle and trials that forge the strongest friendships and relationships. So anyway, they find ways to work with them. All you got to get through is the next state, find a way to work with work, find a way to work it out. And unless they're persistency, persistently, consistently disruptive, then they got to go. And great coaches keep the attention on details. They have perspective, they plan ahead. They're constantly putting themselves and the team in position to be prepared for what's next, which is they create a margin for error. They know life is full of surprises, so they like to get ahead of the game. They do overwork the details. They over plan because they want to make sure that they're prepared for the normal surprises that always happen, but that you can't predict. And so if they've got, if they're ahead of the game, they've got momentum, then they've got some margin for error to absorb some downtime, some disruption, so they can still finish with a bang whatever project they've got going on. And one last thing is even great coaches know you can't work with a martyr. Because the idea of being a great coach is you're working with people, helping them be the best they could be, putting a team together that can be that as a team, you're much more powerful and can accomplish much more than any, any individual on the team can do by themselves. And so you're bringing out the best in the team, you're bringing out the best in the people. You're having fun while you're doing it. You created a positive environment. You know, there's a lot of things we just covered right here. We're just, you know, there's this just. It's kind of like, how do you be a great mom? You know, there's about a million jobs moms have, and so how do you be a great coach or leader? There's a million jobs, a million areas where you're going to have to handle things. This is just kind of a big overview. But you can't work with a martyr. People are always making excuses, always blaming other people. No matter how great a coach you are, you can't help someone who is not taking responsibility, who never will think anything is their fault, and always looking for excuses. Woe is me. Worlds against me, folks. You know, you can't build a great team with a martyr. You got to have somebody that. Not perfect, but they're willing to be coach and they're aware that they've got some, you know, done some things that are maybe not put themselves in the best position in life, but they also know, hey, I can change, I can improve, I can learn new skills. And they're eager to change things in their life and move up. See, those kind of people you can work with. But somebody who's a martyr is going to stay a martyr, and you'll just wear your butt out trying to change them. It's just like, you know, something is rotten to the core. You're just. It's like sour. You have milk, it goes sour, and it's in your refrigerator. Guess what? No matter how good a cook you are, unless you're going to turn it into buttermilk or something that I, I don't know how that works, but you just can't make sour milk fresh. And there are people, they just let their life, their attitude, their mind, their core. It just sour. You know, you can't work with barters, but you can do amazing things with people who want to do something great with their life. Looking for a chance, want to be a part of a team like being around other people and will allow you to be that great coach because they will allow themselves to be coached. And the great coaches can really help you if you're willing to be helped. And so great coaches know no matter how they coach or how they lead, it's what happens when the team gets in play. You know, when people are working, you know, they go to work, they go to the game, they get it's out of the coaches and leaders hands at that point and that's when the greatness comes. So great coaches know they're totally their reputation, everything is totally dependent on their team and so they're going to do everything they can to help you excel. So that's a few insights on great coaches and leaders.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my Widel Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelonwinning. Com. I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go.