400: Championship Secrets: How to Coach Your Team Through High-Pressure Moments | Alex Auerbach Pt 1

So as a student of leadership and culture, I try to always be observant, like learning as much as I can from every situation. So the more I observe culture in my work with leaders, coaches and teams, the more I've done that these last eight years, the more wrong I think I've been about probably one really big thing, which is behaviors. I've really emphasized. Culture change comes down to behavior change, and I think that's possibly really like only the tip of the iceberg. That might be a bit of extreme, because behaviors really do matter. They are significant. But the beliefs that we hold, they drive the behaviors. Now, I'm not talking about aspirational beliefs. Aspirational beliefs are the ones that players share in a team meeting before they're in the thick of the season, right? And that's why most players, beginning of the season, they're all feeling good. They're all committed to being a team, being a family. Aspirational beliefs are the ones that we, as leaders, as coaches, we share at the preseason meeting with parents, with our athletes. We share it in the job interview to get the job. We share it at a coaching conference or retreat. No, not talking about aspirational beliefs. I'm talking about the actual beliefs that people hold about themselves, about each other, about why we're here, about what matters and what doesn't. What are the conscious and subconscious beliefs that we as leaders hold in the big game when the pressure is on, or when our team loses three games in a row, or even when our team wins three games? Or what are the beliefs that are driving our players when they're playing poorly, when they're not getting playing time, or they're three months of the season and they're missing that social life. As coaches, we need to be intentional in shaping our own beliefs so that they align with our identity, our aspirational identity, and what we want to drive within our culture, like our mission, our vision, our values, all those things. And we also have to help our team shape their beliefs so that that will drive and support the behaviors that will lead to high performance and great results for them. So this is something we're going to be exploring on and off the next while on the Coaching Culture podcast and some of my articles. Now the next two episodes, we've got mental performance coach Alex Auerbach, and he's coming back on the podcast because Alex has been on before. Alex is a performance psychologist. He's had experience working in the NBA and NFL. Most recently, he served as the Toronto Raptors senior director of Wellness and development, and he served as an executive for them. Alex worked with NCAA Division 1 schools in the SEC, PAC 12, ACC, Big 12, Conference USA. He's been all over. He was on episodes 303 and 304 if you want to go back and listen to those and most recently, Alex left the front office of the Raptors. He's gone out on his own to be doing work and coaching and he published his first book called To Greatness, and we'll be talking about that in the next few episodes. But today, in this episode, he'll be unpacking how to shape your team's mindset, their beliefs, especially around high pressure competition. Welcome to the Coaching Culture Podcast, where we're dedicated to helping you unlock your leadership potential and create winning team environments. My name is JP Nervin and I'm joined today by my incredible co host, Nate Sanderson. Betsy sat this interview out. Each week we bring you practical tips and strategies to elevate your coaching. For more, explore our online courses and books and articles@tocculture.com and BetsyButTrak.com and subscribe to our newsletter@tocculture.com for weekly coach Culture Building insights as well as the notes to this and every episode.

Well, Alex, it's great to have you back on the podcast here. I know I've enjoyed kind of our conversations in between your last appearance here on the Coaching Culture podcast, and I'd really like to get us started today. We're going to talk about your book here in a little bit, but you provided a little bit of coaching for me this season. And spoiler alert, our season ended with a state championship here in Iowa, and I was picking your brain a little bit before we went into the state tournament experience because I had sent some things with our team that I just needed a little bit of help with. And so what I'd like to do to get us started here is just provide a little bit of context in terms of what I sensed in our team and then the coaching that you gave us. And maybe you could just sort of walk us through the thinking behind a couple of the questions, particularly that you had us bring to our team. So one of the things that I started to get kind of on my radar from our captain's council as we got closer to the state tournament was with a freshman guard that's just a stud and some players that were not with our team last year that we're going to experience this postseason and the state tournament for the first time. And so there was some Nervousness, and we had been ranked number one all season long. And so there was a little bit of pressure that we hadn't experienced previously. And so as I was thinking about this, one of the things that you encouraged us to do was just to kind of surface that a little bit with our team to have them talk about, like, what is it that makes them nervous as we're looking to, you know, two days later, get on the bus and head out to the state tournament. And just from a starting place there. Why is that important or why was it good for us? Because it was a great conversation to provide some space for. For them to talk about that.

Nate, first, congratulations to you for an incredible season. And congrats to your team. Must have been a ton of fun. And I deserve zero credit, but I was honored that you reached out and allowed me to help you and support you a bit in that process. I think the real reason that I prompted you to think a little bit about that with your team was I think coaches in particular, and it sounds like some of your captains, too, have some more experience that makes these situations feel a little bit less scary or a little bit less intense, intimidating. Right? You've been to the playoffs before. You know what it feels like. And even in the NBA we would talk about this, right? You know, there's value in having guys who have been there, won, lost, like, know the experience of the pressure in that situation. But for those who haven't had the chance to be there, it's this sort of like ethereal kind of like, oh my goodness, what is this going to be like? And it becomes the kind of thing that people feel like they need to manage internally. Right? Because you're not talking about it. And so people don't really understand that it's okay to share that you feel nervous or share that you're excited, or share that there's this new part of the season that we're going to be managing together and to learn from each other about the best way to manage that. And so why I suggested talking about it was to really surface the expertise of the group so that everyone can help each other navigate this new situation as effectively as possible. There's no reason for a senior, let's say, to keep inside their head what the experience is like of managing the playoffs when a first year freshman student is not having any understanding of what that might be like at all. Right? So if this senior can help this freshman in any way, that's super useful. And if we can make it an open conversation and an Honest acknowledgment about what it is, it often makes the experience much less scary. And this is generally true of emotion, broadly speaking, right? Like, once you label emotion, the intensity of the emotion goes down considerably. So it's basically that same principle, right? Let's name the fact that, that this is going to be more intense, it's going to be a little nerve wracking, we're going to feel a little bit more jazzed up. And let's talk about it.

You would, would you do this, the Raptors? Like, would this be something that you guys might have done there, which is kind of a group coaching situation, team coaching, where players share their experiences as you're going on the journey. Have you seen that effective at those levels as well?

A lot of times at the highest level, it happens in like one on one interaction, right? You know, it's a veteran guy takes a rookie out to dinner and says, you know, look, look here, young man, like, what we're about to do is going to different than what we've done so far. But it can happen in a team setting too. You know, you hear about the players who get up and give the speech, right? Or share a little bit or invite a conversation around it. And I think this is what some of the best leaders, not in just the NBA, but across sports do, right? Is they acknowledge and bring to light an honest conversation about the experience that we're having. I think a lot of times what happens in sports, particularly in more like macho sports cultures, right, Is we take some of these things that feel kind of taboo to talk about, right? Your feelings or whatever it might be, and we sort of like just ignore it or pretend like it's not. Not a thing. Or, you know, we let this narrative play out where it's like, you know, the coach feels one way and he thinks the players feel the same way, but really the players feel a completely different way because no one's talking about it, right? And like, we just need to surface all that stuff because we can deal with it once we know what it is. But if you just let it sort of linger behind closed doors or sweep it under the rug, you can never really address it in the way it needs to get addressed. So there would be times that I'd facilitate, you know, maybe older player talking to a younger player, or I'd suggest, hey, look, you know, it might be useful if you took, took him out to dinner and talked to him about what's going to go on, or if we talked a little bit for the Guys, you know, the first year we made the playoffs, when I was there, like for the guys that had been there, if you could talk a little bit about how this is going to be different, that would be useful for those guys who have never had this opportunity to be, be a part of this. And you guys know from being around high level sports, like it is different. You know, the 82 games that you play in the regular season are one thing, and then you show up for night one of a seven game series and it's like, you know, even my wife, the first time she came to a playoff game was like, I can't even imagine. Like I never would have imagined playoff basketball was so different. Right. So for the players who have never lived it, that's a, that's a big leap to make and it's important to address it proactively.

I think one of the things that I have grown in over the last five to 10 years is trying to make space for those conversations to happen. Whereas in the past I might have done a presentation, you know, put some slides together and talk about this is how you deal with pressure, or this is how you deal with being nervous, where, you know, I'm putting myself up there as the so called expert and telling them rather than providing them space in order to have those conversations. For a coach that maybe hasn't done that before, or maybe that's know, a little bit of foreign territory here. You mean I'm going to open up the floor and just let kids talk about their feelings. Like, do you know the guys that I'm working with here, Alex, you know, what kind of encouragement or just first steps could you give, you know, a coach that maybe is thinking about doing something like that for the first time?

Yeah, I mean, practically I would think about it as facilitation. Right. So your job is to ask a good question and then be quiet and let people answer. And if you don't get an answer after a certain point, pull it out. But probably two or three times longer than you feel comfortable with. Right. So, you know, one of the things that I think is important is like leave people space to process. And often when they're silent, you know, we all feel pulled to like fill that void with often more nonsense, you know, and so to the extent that you can fight that urge to fill the void. Right. Just let your players like take their time and speak up. If for some reason after say a minute or 90 seconds, no one said a single thing, then call on the player that you think is most emotionally equipped and mature to answer this question, right, the person who's going to give you the answer that opens up the rest of the door. Don't ask the captain if the captain's not going to be able to give you a good answer. Don't ask the senior if the senior is not going to give you the depth that you need. You need the first person to be a person who's willing to share a little bit more and be more vulnerable. It sets the stage for everybody else. And if no one fits that mold, then you as the coach can play that role, right? You can play the role of being the person who says, look, I'm really excited for you guys, but I'm also pretty nervous. I'm nervous about what this means for our team. I'm sad about the fact that we're losing our seniors. I'm excited for our first years stepping into this opportunity. I think we've got incredible chemistry here, but I'm thinking a lot about how we hold it together, right? Like, the more depth that you can give, then the more you show them what it looks like to share.

And.

And so I think I would try to switch the mentality from, I'm the coach, I need to have it all together. You know, I'm the leader, show no weakness to. I'm a facilitator and my job here is to pull out this information from these players. And again, think of it as gathering data, right? This is just you gathering information about where your team is so you can give them the resources they need to be successful. This doesn't have to be thought of as like this big, deep, emotional, you know, thing. If that doesn't resonate for you, right? Like, it's okay for it to be a bit of exploration together and a bit of figuring out how we support each other. If it goes to an emotional place, great, it goes to an emotional place. But even if it still remains like a little bit, I don't know what you call surface level, it's okay, just use that information to facilitate. And ultimately, the more data you have, the better you're going to be able to do as a coach. And so I think that's the other piece is when you get up there and you talk at them, you give your lecture, you give your speech or you show them slides. It's a very like one directional exchange of information, right? And, you know, the best coaches I've been around will sort of say things like, 30% of you will get this, 30% of you won't care. Right? And 30% of you will hate what I'm about to say. You know, 10% of you won't even be listening. You'll be checked out or you didn't show up on time, you know, and so it's like if that. If that principle holds, then, you know, you're probably not getting as much information across as you. As you'd like to. Right. And so if you can create an experience where everyone's involved or even 60% of people are involved in a meaningful way, it's going to be much, much better than this one. Directional exchange of information. Of course, there's a time and place for coaching, leading, skill building and all those things, but there is and should be a time and place for the team to express a little bit of where they are and what they need to be successful.

The other thing that we've done that we found to be helpful with that initial question, because you're right, sometimes kids are going to just look that, you know, back at you, and we're going to have a staring contest about who's going to break first, is just having them jot down on a note card their initial thoughts, you know, so that question of what, what makes you feel nervous? We just had everybody, you know, write something on a note card and then share with the person next to them. Then we would open it up, you know, and just that first of all provides some accountability that we do expect everybody to, you know, respond, to, engage, but also just makes them a little bit more comfortable sharing out of those groups. And the other part I liked about that you talked about gathering information is we then collect those cards when they leave the meeting room. And so that even if they didn't share, I've got at least a couple bullet points for, you know, a touch point for where everybody's at that I can follow up with later.

Yeah, I think that's super smart.

Well, here's another thing that you were really instrumental for us, again, being the number one seed overall in the tournament, ranked number one most of the season. There was pressure that our players felt. And one of the things that was overwhelming on those cards that they wrote about nervousness was fear of losing. We don't want to lose. We don't want to miss this opportunity. And so you really, I think, gave us a little bit of a framework to sort of reframe pressure as almost as a privilege, as though we had earned that. And that opened up a really good conversation with our team as well. But I wonder if you could unpack a little bit of this idea of just looking at pressure a little bit differently than the weight of the world on our shoulders.

Yeah. I mean, first, it's common for people to feel that way. Right. Especially when you've been, you know, the team was sort of a target on your back all year. Right. And people have been chasing you. I think as the stakes increase, you start to wonder how we'll maintain that. Right. It's a very normal human process to be thinking about how are we going to do when people are pushing even harder. Right. Or when we've got even greater expectations on us. And I think a lot of this boils down to the concept of framing. Right. A lot of it is about how you talk about it as a coach or a leader or what language you allow to be spoken in the locker room about whatever the experience is. Right. So sometimes coaches will do things like allow their players to feel that pressure and feel the fear of losing because they think it's better to hate to lose than love to win. Right. Or they think that pressure is going to fuel something useful. And that's fine if that works for some of your players. My philosophy is that to the extent possible, you should try to take these experiences that are ambiguous. Right. Pressure can be framed as a privilege, or it can be framed as a problem. Stress could be framed as an opportunity to get better or as something that's going to break you down. Right. Like the way that you talk about them, the way that you think about them does change people's psychological and even physiological reactions to those specific experiences. And so what I was sharing with you was if you can put this in a way that helps them see the opportunity that's in front of them. And typically, I think of pressure, stress, and kind of four framings, right? The first is it's an opportunity. The second is it's a sign we care. The third is a sign we're determined. And fourth is excitement. And so, depending on what situation you're in, I'm going to pull one of those things out and sort of say, like, look, this is the framing that I think most applies to your current experience of pressure, which is what I did with you. And I think it's the opportunity, right? This is an opportunity to show what you're made of. And so, you know, there's other famous, much smarter people than I am, came up with sayings like, pressure is a privilege. I think that was Billie Jean King. But, you know, I think that the idea holds, which is essentially that you can let this pressure be debilitating right. You can let it be something that you're afraid of. You can let it be something that you think fuels proactive behavior because people are playing, afraid of losing instead of playing to win. Right. Or you can turn it into something that's a adaptive, that's useful, that facilitates peak performance. And that's where I think the framing of pressure as a privilege and an opportunity to show what you're made of is going to lead to some much more adaptive behavior in the long run. And for me, in any playoff situation, yes, it's, it's motivating to hate to lose, but I do think it's better and more adaptive to be thinking about loving to win. Right. And how you can engage in some kind of approach oriented behavior is what a psychologist would call it in those situations. Right. I don't want you playing stiff or playing not to lose or playing not to make a mistake. I want you playing at your highest, best potential, which may mean taking some risks and may mean making some mistakes, but is also going to give you the greatest chance of winning.

Well, I'm really curious, like in a team context, you know, we can try to frame it through a speech, through a converse, you know, through a conversation, a team, team workshop, facilitating that team meeting around that, you know, helping them to shift that mindset from a problem to a privilege. Like you said, what are the disciplines, the practices, the things that the players should be doing between, you know, that meeting in the next competition or between competition between practices that really reinforce that though, because I imagine this isn't like, oh, hey, oh man, we just, we had this great insight, this breakthrough, and now we're good to go. Like, what is it that, that athletes and, and coaches need to be doing to continuously be working to, to reframe.

Yeah. So there are a few things I'd suggest. The first is, you know, coach the language that you want to hear, right. So if you have players go out on the court after that, like, listen for the way that they're talking about the stress or the pressure, what they say about what their experience is even in practice, or if you do any kind of like simulated pressure training, right. Give them an opportunity to practice this in the moment and catch them when they deviate from something that's useful, right? So, you know, we've all seen this like out of practice, right? Player misses a shot and like hangs his head and throws his arms back and it's this big like, oh, woe is me, right? Like those are your moments to be like, hey man, what Just happened in your head, right? And like, let's talk about the impact that this had on the people around you because we're all social creatures. So if I see you do that, I start to think, man, you know, Johnny's over here having a meltdown again. Like now I got to pick it up for him. And now my attention's on something that's not as useful for performance as it could be. Right. But in contrast, you could have Johnny be talking about how fun it is to go out here and play in these playoffs, what a cool opportunity it is for us to show what we're made of. We worked so hard all year to get to this point. This is our chance to show them how good of a team we are, you know, and little changes in the way that they're talking about it are going to change the way that other people around them think. Mindset is a pretty social experience as far as like the way that it's shaped, right? We know that growth mindset or fixed mindset comes from coaches, peers and parents as much as it comes from in internal self belief. And this same stress is enhancing. Mindset is like the science underneath it, right? This same idea around pressure is a social experience, right. The way that people talk about it, think about it, interact with it is going to shape the way that the players internalize what they should be believing about that. The second thing is to whether it's you as a coach or a sports ike or whatever you have available is to actually teach skills for managing pressure. I think a lot of times coaches in particular that I've been around, they use pressure as this sort of like filtering experience, right? Well, it's like, well, we'll just see who's mentally tough enough to get out there and make it. And it's like, okay, cool, that's fine. But you're not helping your team win. That's not going to help you get to the highest level to just see who's going to be good enough. Right? But there are real things you can actually teach players to do that make pressure more manageable at the least and facilitative of high performance at its best. Right. So these are things like pre performance routines, teaching them reappraisal techniques like we just talked about, right? Helping them be really focused on the task at hand. There's data that shows that you can even teach players strategies for increasing their effort, which is really important for managing pressure. Right. So if you can get them to be thinking about how this is an opportunity or how this pressure is enhancing them. If you can get them to focus on a really clear goal in that situation, if you can get them to increase their effort, and if you've done some of these other things right, giving them a good pre performance routine, help them learn how to talk to themselves, help them even do some visualization or simulated pressure training in advance, you're going to get much better performance under pressure. And I think a lot of times again, we just wait for these things to happen and then we're like, well, we'll see what happens. It's pretty tough out there. And that's, that's just not good enough. You know, that's not the way that it has to be. And I recognize that these other strategies I'm sharing are like not commonly taught. Right? Coaches are not always exposed to these concepts, but you have good experts around you, people near you that can help you think about ways that you could structure your training or these mental skills practices to elevate the performance of your athletes. And ultimately, I think that's your greatest responsibility as a coach is to arm them for whatever situation they're going to be in. And a big part of that is arming them with this mindset work that allows them to be more flourishing under pressure situations.

Well, Alex, I've got two more here and then we're going to transition into your book here. But another thing that we again surfaced in our conversation was this lingering question from our team. And this obviously comes from individuals, but it was an overwhelming kind of feeling in the room of are we good enough? You know, and we had started the year, we lost in the final Four the previous year. So you know, the goal was pretty obvious of what we wanted to try to accomplish. And here we were on the doorstep and yet there was kind of this sort of lingering, you know, we hope to get here and that's great, but we're not sure if we're going to be good enough yet. And so the thing that we did is that we asked the team to think about a moment where we felt like we were playing our best during the season. And then we had them jot down like what were we doing during that time. And it wasn't necessarily like making shots, missing shots, you know, or switching defense or whatever. It was really about the behaviors of our team. We celebrated each other, you know, we touched between possessions, you know, those types of things to really, to really what we came back to that I should say in the state tournament and said, look, when we do these things for each other, that's when we play at our best, if we play at our best, we're going to have the best chance to advance. Why or how? I guess because coaches see this all the time, this lingering doubt and the confidence of a team. Like, what is the best way or what are ways that we can engage with that from a head coaching position.

I think you did one of the two most powerful things, which is you examined the data. Oftentimes when we do something well, we treat it like we expected that. And when we do something poorly or we lose, then we think this is our chance to learn. Learn. And so what ends up happening a lot of times in sports is when you win a lot or you win consistently, you don't really take the time to appreciate how you made that happen. Because no one goes out there in a basketball game expecting to get whooped. They expect to win. But you have to cultivate that expectation, right? You have to cultivate that belief that we're good enough out there to do that. And so I think it's really useful to go back into your history as long as you can and look for past evidence of success. Like you did, right? What did we do that made us successful in these other tournaments or these other games? And how do we replicate that? And what I love that you did was you looked for what I'd call winning behaviors. You're not looking for, like, you know, we did this great pass or we ran the world's best play. You're looking for, like, we consistently did these things, right? We gave great effort. We interacted with each other. We were really uplifting. We were committed. You know, these things that sort of like, give people a roadmap for how to repeat that. Right. Well, if it turns out that great effort and full commitment to the game plan are critical for every time we won, well, we can control that going into the playoffs. Let's just do that again. And so this past data gives you a really clear set of principles that you can follow and apply again in future situations. And I know we talked about this, too. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here with your last question, but there's this idea that, like, when we get to the playoffs, you know, everything is different. And to a degree, that's true. Like, the games do have a different set of consequences, but by and large, like, basketball is pretty similar. You know, the behaviors that are going to facilitate winning in the playoffs in the regular season are pretty similar. And so if you can find that good data and then port it over to the new situation that's going to help give your players a great sense of control and confidence in what they can do moving forward. The second thing you can do is just really high quality preparation. You know, when people get ready and feel like they've covered all their bases, you kind of eliminate some of that doubt because you know you've left no stone unturned. So I think you can also ensure that your preparation is as adequate as you need it to be. And I think the key there is recognizing that sometimes that preparation might be recovery, like it might be time away from the game, it might be a little bit of time off to get let players get back to 100% because maybe what's holding them back isn't, we don't know the game plan. It's, my body's a little bit sore. And so you've got to balance those things so that you can make sure your players feel like they're in the right place to be successful going into these next, you know, few stretches of games here. And if you can do that well, then I think you're going to have much less self doubt or much less sort of concern about whether or not we're going to be okay when we get to these situations, because you've got a key set of strengths and behaviors you can replicate and you've got players feeling as ready as possible to perform.

Yeah, that's really good. You know, the phrase that we came back to, we did the, you know, keys to the game on the whiteboard before the game and then put the marker down and took a deep breath and said, you know, listen, all I know, like this is the basketball stuff, but when we play hard and we love each other and we do what we do, good things happen for us, you know. And that was the last message that I wanted them to hear before we went out on. Out on the court and that that was really good for us, you know. All right, here's the last one. And I think this is also really challenging as, as you progress in a season and the stakes become higher. I recognize again that I thought it was going to be a challenge for our players to be present. That fear, you know, that lingering fear and the nervousness and the anxiety, like all of that stuff kind of pools together. And if you're not careful in the moments where you go out and you miss your first couple shots and then you start to be afraid of the outcome or, you know, the results or what have you and you miss, like the moments that we still have in front of us and so the question that we wrestled with here to try to again frame this and, and surface some things was this was on a Saturday. And so we knew, like, no matter what, this team was only going to exist for one more week. Like Friday night was the championship game. So we had seven days, including that day left. And we asked them when this thing is finally over, because it will come to an end. And we can see that one way or another in front of us, what are you going to miss the most about being part of this team? And so they wrote that down and they talked about it. We put it on the board and the message was, you know, we know we have Sunday, we play the quarterfinal on Monday. So we have two games, two days where we get to continue to experience this. Don't miss it on those two days, right? Don't make Monday about Thursday. Make Monday about making sure that we enjoy what we're going to miss the most. And this phrase of enjoy the moments while they're still there kind of became a little bit of a rallying cry for us. But I think getting kids to be present in those high pressure situations is a challenge. I don't know if you could address that a little bit as well.

Of course. I mean, I think anytime you're in a high pressure situation, it's pretty normal for your brain to go to the future and wonder what could happen if this doesn't work. Right. And what your brain is really trying to do is protect you from some feared outcome that you can't know yet. The tricky part is recognizing that trying to protect yourself from that feared outcome creates a much higher likelihood that that feared outcome comes to exist. Right? So if you spend all your time thinking about what it's going to be like to lose, you're probably going to end up losing because you're not in the right headspace and you're not as present as you need to be to perform. And so I think the key, and we talked about this a little bit earlier when we were talking about sort of demystifying the pressure, right. Is to try to reduce the sense of ambiguity that comes with thinking about the future. Right. Like you and you. Again, to use you as an example, you did this. Right. Look, we don't know what that is going to be. We do know we have these things, so let's do these things. Well, we can't change, you know, what's going to happen the next week. What we can change is what we do on Monday. Let's stay focused on Monday. And I think one of the mistakes that everyone makes in this situation a little bit. Right. Is that you look to the future a little bit too far or you don't take the present as seriously as you should. Right. You start to think like you, yeah, we're a pretty good team. And that other team we're playing, like they're ranked, you know, 16, like we'll probably get them. Right. And that's how you get a team that sneaks up on you and beats you because you're sort of thinking about whatever that that next game is. And I think as, as it pertains to younger athletes. Right. So high school or college athletes. I think that's particularly true. Right. You're. You're more prone to thinking about whatever could be than you are if you're a pro athlete where you've had tons of experience navigating those things. So I think the first thing is to do what you did and sort of like contain and compartmentalize those experiences and try to get them really focused on what's at hand. And then I think the second thing to do would be to give them a clear set again of winning behaviors or process goals they could engage in during the moment where you could redirect attention. Anytime you see something that isn't helpful, right. So it's not useful, for example, to yell at a player or get your head in the game. While that's helpful feedback, you're not actually giving them anything to do. So if you've got these like winning behaviors and these process oriented goals, right. Hey, we're going to like love each other, we're going to be present, we're going to play our game, we're going to be consistent, we're going to execute the game plan. Then when you see Johnny out there not paying attention, you can redirect Johnny back to something you need him to do in the moment. And the more that you can do that and keep them engaged in the behavior in the moment, the more effective the performance is going to be. So the only other suggestion I'd have is to really get clear on what are the three to five key behaviors you want to see in the context of this game that you think as a coach are going to lead to your best chances of winning. And anytime you see a player not doing those things consistently, your feedback is about one of those three to five things. It's not about, you know, them daydreaming about their girlfriend or whatever other feedback that you think you should give to sort of snap them out of it. Right. It's like, get them focused on what you want them to be paying attention to. People do extremely well following other people's attention, right? You see this all the time. If you've ever been outside and like, been walking with someone and you hear a plane overhead and the other person next to you goes like this, and you instinctually go like this because you want to see the plane. Like you're just following someone else's attention. That's it. So if you, the coach, direct your attention to what you want them to be paying attention to, they are going to follow you because it's instinctual human nature to be like, oh, this is probably important data in the environment. Let me figure out what this is. So those would be the things I'd suggest for managing that and getting people to be present. It's not this big. Like, yes, mindfulness is helpful, but it's not this big. Like, you know, woo, woo. We've got to figure out how we just be in the moment all the time. Like, again, there are real things you can do to, to help people be fully locked into the moment. And a lot of it comes down to the feedback you give and where you point their attention to.

All right, that's it for part one. Just two quotes that have really stuck with me since this interview. The first one is mindset is a pretty social experience. The way that people talk about it, think about it, interact with it is going to shape the way the players internalize what they should be believing about that. The second one, very similar to that, was people do extremely well following other people's attention. If you, the coach, direct your attention to what you want them to be paying attention to, they are going to follow you. Those are two great lines from Alex. They're a great challenge to us as coaches, as leaders on how we shape our team's mindset with our own mindset. And we'll be unpacking more of how to do this better in our next episode with Alex. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with other leaders and be sure you are subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, if you want to go deeper, if you want to actually train yourself on how to create an extraordinary culture, you might want to consider the TOC Transformational Coach and Culture Certification. For more information and all our online courses and more, go to tocculture.com and don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter@tocculture.com for the episode notes and resources thanks for listening and.