Why Coaching Is Harder Than It Looks - [Glue Guys, Ep. 78]

How many college coaches are taking credit for the victory? And when they lose, how many pressers do you see coaches throwing their team under the bus? Oh, we didn't play hard enough. We weren't tough. We, we didn't— we got out-rebounded, right? You just— they trash their teams, right? There are very few coaches in college that are taking responsibility and saying, you know what, I had a bad game plan. No, they're saying my team didn't execute my plan. All right, fellas.

Shane and I were talking before we pressed record, but for everybody out there, if they don't know, I've been, you know, my wife kind of goaded me a little bit, but long story short, I'm helping coach my son's high school. Okay.

She inspired you, Alex.

Yeah.

She inspired me. Coach Smith. Coach Smith.

And so, this is my first time coaching, right, at this level, high school level. My son's playing JV. I'm not doing as much on the JV level. I'm actually Doing way more on the varsity level. But we're only 4 games into the season. And I was telling Shane, like, I think, again, I played a really long time, been around some amazing coaches, but the experience has given me a newfound appreciation for coaching in general, right? For the coaches that I had, for all the great coaches out there at whatever level. Because I mean, I think I just, From the outside in, you think it's, uh, you think it's so simple, you know. And yeah, being in it, right, especially high school kids, and you only have so much time, and, you know, uh, trying to be thoughtful about not just the football side, right, not, not just the X's and O's, but bigger picture, and, you know, where we're at and the ups and downs. And again, football is just— there's, you know, you, you have 7 games— I mean, 7 days between games. So you lose a game, you feel like crap for a whole week. Yeah. Right. How do you kind of, from a psychology standpoint, get the team back? You know what I'm saying?

But come on, like you, you, you played 20 years and you understood what went into all the, you know, how many meetings you got, you have a day, you know, you had thousands of meetings about meetings.

We had meetings to go over our meetings,

you know?

Yeah.

I mean, the facility, right? We don't have that though.

So I like to—

So you underestimated that process?

Yeah. To clarify, that probably is also part of the learning curve is that there's such a limited finite amount of time that you have with the kids and there's such a small teaching time.

Yes.

Right? And that's the hard part, Shane, because I'm so used to like, you know, again, like obviously coming from a professional world, it shouldn't take that long to like master something, you know? And it's just obviously very different when you're dealing with 16 and 17-year-olds who

Okay. I have a very specific question. Have a lot going on. A very specific question for both of you guys, just as coaches who played professionally, and played professionally, not like rando one year, long careers, successful careers, really decorated careers. Do the kids listen to you more than they would a person that has not achieved at that level, Or are all teenagers the same of kind of like, look, you're the coach, but you're yesterday. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, I'm trying to figure out, do you guys get a lot more credibility because you played? Or tell me about that. I actually— what does it feel like to the players when they get coached by you?

That's a good question. We should interview them. I

was just gonna say, you're asking the wrong people.

So I think—

I gotta imagine, yes, Shane, these kids gotta see you and they're like, yeah.

Yeah, I like to think so, but I still get shaken off. You know, you know when you get blown off. All right. And so you have to, I think it's just in general with teenagers, you got to pick your spots, you know.

Even in basketball as a former professional, you're still picking your spots with teenagers.

There's nothing that these kids have seen that I don't know infinitely more about. The game, right? That I've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of times, you know? And so, like, yeah, if I wanted to stop every single play and correct them and say, well, you know, I did this against Carmelo and, you know, Tim Duncan did this, you know, their heads would explode, you know? So, you still got to, you know, as much as we want to, like, correct them and teach them and let's say, no, no, no, no, I know the way. Just trust me. Just trust me. You got to pick your spots. I don't know about you, Alex.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, listen, I do think, and it's unique for me, I'm also coaching Bryant Young is also helping out. Oh, wow. So, I mean, this guy's got a gold jacket.

Okay.

A gold jacket. Like, and he still looks the part and he's just an amazing human being. Right. He's, you know, a former teammate. He's just—

That's a pretty stacked coaching staff for this high school.

Okay. Yeah. So, but then I think, I do think they listen, to answer your question. Yes. Okay. Right. Like you've played. I get asked. Yeah, they're very curious. I get asked questions about college and pro. Now, some of them I had to explain. I mean, a couple of the younger players, like they had no idea about like where I played, who I played for. Right. Like, I mean, I think it's— Got it.

So it's like an abstract thing that you played professionally, not that they like knew your history.

Abstracted 21 years ago. Right. Like some of these kids are 15, 16 years old. Right.

Where were you drafted again? What pick?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, but I still think they're— listen, and again, they're eager. But no, there is a little bit there. You do have some built-in cred for sure.

I find it, they listen better when I say, I did this, versus I say, when I played with T-Mac did this. And they'll be like, oh, oh, you know, versus like, no, no, like, I shot the gap here and pushed him that way. Or, oh, you know, I saw, you know, when I played with Ron Artest, Ron Artest, he was amazing at this. And I got up, you know, he got up into him and sent him this way. And so, I find that I have to mix metaphors, you know, and I think it's same thing as a parent, you know? Yeah. And, you know, because if you say, hey, You know, so-and-so is doing this, you should do it too. You know, it's social proof, right? And our kids probably will follow the advice if, you know, if you guys talked to my kids and said, you guys really should consider doing this, I think they might mean more than if I said the exact same thing in the exact same way, right? It's just social proof. That's just the way it goes.

You brought up parenting. We should get back to coaching. But I think that to me, if you just take a step back, that's the ultimate thing that you gain appreciation for only after doing it, right? Yeah. Because there's all these opinions that I had on it. And then the instant you have little babies and you realize what somebody did for you, there's all these moments where you— it's like your parents get smarter as you get older because you're like, oh, Now I get it. But I would imagine, Alex, this is something that— give me an example of something you appreciate more now having coached that you probably didn't fully appreciate until you did it.

Oh, man. I mean, obviously, again, like I said, coaching. I think this has made me appreciate my high school experience, how good I had it, and I had no idea. I lost one game in high school. One game. Okay.

Were the games close or were they just blowouts all the time?

No, I mean, I think, like, we played a couple close games.

Yeah.

No, no. The vast majority—

You guys are just rolling.

Yeah. And when you're in it, you think it's all because of you, right? Like, yeah, we're just that good, you know? And obviously it was all because it was all—

wasn't it all because of Reggie?

All because of Reggie.

Yeah.

But yeah, like, again, And I tell the story, right? I've said this, like, I wasn't recruited. I only had the one offer. Like, there's all these things when you can look at it that way. But also, I had this, like, amazing high school experience. It was, like, super fortunate, obviously, the team I was on and coaching staff and, right, the culture of the program. And so, like, and again, this is, like, all the stops. It kind of makes you go through them and, you know, think about it. And then watching my son play, right? Like, being there kind of around the program and You know, even on the sidelines when he plays is, uh, it's really fun to watch him go through that experience. I don't know about you, Shane, like it's, uh, you know, and again, he's young, he's 15, he's like on JV quarterback, like it's, but, uh, it's cool. It's very cool. Right. And again, it's, uh, it's something I've worried about so much as a dad that played quarterback. He wants to play quarterback, right? Like all that pressure that I never had to deal with. But, um, it's been cool to be there. I'm glad I'm there, you know, if that makes sense.

I, you know, for me, I went somewhere different. After being the dad of a, of a strong woman, I have much more appreciation for my wife and, you know, all mothers in the world. You know, I've known my wife forever. And so we settled into, you know, very distinctive patterns. And I think I know how she thinks. And, you know, we have idiosyncrasies, but like nothing major after 23 years of marriage, right? No surprises. But when you throw a dynamic young lady into the mix, a teenager trying to figure it out, and Eloise is going to be a senator one day, you just realize and appreciate just the female spirit. The female spirit. And I just do. I— and being a mother, I— it's the toughest job in the world. It is.

Yes.

It's way tougher than being a dad. Okay. For a lot of reasons. So I have amazing kids, dynamic kids, a dynamic daughter. She is awesome. But it has made me appreciate my wife more and mothers Everywhere for what they do. How about that? You know, my wife always says I rip on her, but I'm giving her— Yeah, exactly.

We got to make sure we clip that.

Giving her her flowers.

You know, I think interestingly and maybe relatedly, I think I have gained a lot of appreciation for teaching, for watching Avni do the homeschool at home. Like, you know, you don't— I don't think I realized how much preparation people put in. You know, like, just the various teachers that have all taught us. It's not just coaches. But like, you know, Avni spends a lot of time preparing for like, what is she going to talk about? You know, what is she going to do? Some of the stuff that she's teaching them, she knows from before, but she has to like brush up on, right? So I see her like sitting there, you know, studying science. You're like, I mean, and the kids will ask me some of the stuff like, Dad, do you know this? Like some science question, and I don't remember it. is not even close to being remembered. It's so far out of my brain, I couldn't do it. But I guess my point is, I don't think you realize how much time things take until you see somebody doing it. And I think that the point for me was, if I want to do a good job, I teach the kids for an hour a week, an hour. Okay? But if I want to do a good job, I got to spend a lot more than that hour to get myself ready and to prep. Right? And Avni spends a lot more than that in number of hours teaching them because they're homeschooling. And it's just a remarkable multiplier of what people do in order to do a good job at the thing. I think you envision it as the time you spend with the other person, but it's all the background work that's actually quite different. I'd imagine, Shane, that part of the reason you're saying being a mother is hard is that there's a lot of stuff that a mom does that's not the moment of her interacting with each kid, you know, and it's like all this behind-the-scenes stuff. I would imagine in coaching that's true too, you know?

Yeah. The hours you're trying to put in to like just try to give these kids a little advantage and help them. Yeah. You know, and it may not even work, you know, like there's no guarantees it pays off. For sure. For sure.

In my role now as chief culture advisor for Palmetto, We're leading the world towards a clean energy future, thinking about really big energy issues that affect all of us. My job is to keep a pulse of the culture, make sure we're living our mission, values, principles, which is a really fun job. I love it. I love talking teamwork and leadership. It's my first corporate experience, like real corporate experience. I've worked You know, in a basketball franchise before, did broadcasting, but did not really ever have an office job. And, you know, I appreciate—

Except for when you were, Shane, when you were in college and Coach K would call you and hang up on you. That was an office job. Yeah, last time I had an office job.

That was. That was. Internships? I had an internship. Okay.

At a PR firm, I think?

Or was that an organization? Yeah, at a PR firm. Yeah, POC and Happy Meals.

We listen. We listen closely, Shane.

So, you know, that experience propelled me to work harder on my basketball game for sure. But now I'm done with basketball. I'm actually choosing to go to the office, which is a little bit different. Managing people is really, really hard. And—

Amen.

And I give credit to to all the managers out there, especially the middle management, the people who are out, they got boots on the ground, they have directives from above, and they are really the soul and the heartbeat of a company. And the reason why most people get promoted to that level of rank is because they are great individual contributors. And if they've shown an ethic or an intelligence or a Something that made them special. But there's no manuals out there on how to manage people, right? There's no, you know, go to night school or go take a class, but very few people have that ability. And it's not even really the, you know, the big crises that you think of that need management. It's just the everyday courage it takes, you know, to get 2 teammates who are bickering or someone who feels slighted, or there's so many things that the middle managers have to clean up that just are, you know, can't be addressed by the executive level. And so, I have a great appreciation for the energy it takes to not only produce but to manage at that level. Really, the unsung heroes in most companies. And that's certainly true at Palmetto. So, shout out to all my managers out there. You know, I enjoyed working with them because there's a hunger. They want to do well, just like a great coach, just like a parent, just like a great teacher. You know, people have spent a lot of time thinking about, hey, what else can I do? What else can I do? And so we're sensing a theme. If you want to be great, you got to put in the time mentally outside of the game, right?

How big is the company, Shane? How many people?

We have 600 employees worldwide.

Okay. Have you got your posters up on the wall yet? Your slogans?

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. It's coming.

All hands, the team meetings. Yeah.

I was about to say you have to, you know, model it after a football or basketball facility with the various words and posters and all that.

Oh yeah.

The,

so Ravi,

you know, Shane, can you do this in a corporate setting, by the way? Because like Shane, I'm sure you've always heard this. Ravi, In the sports world, you come in the building and there's— it was like all the great coaches always had this. It was like, whatever we say here, whatever we see here stays here when we leave here kind of thing.

Oh, wow.

Like, listen, this is sacred space, right? Like what goes— but I don't know if you can obviously do that in the corporate world.

Well, there's probably at least one element of that that would be hard. which is that there's much more of like a— you need to be open to the whistleblower in a corporate culture. Yeah, totally. Maybe it's a little different than— I think if you really went hard on like, it never leaves here, you might get yourself into some issue. But I think that the idea of it being sacred and ours is probably something to continue. Yeah, I word it differently. Yeah, you got to word it a little differently. I do think that cool companies, though, do have words around them that remind you where you are and why, and they try to communicate it in different ways. So some people, A lot of things what companies will do is they'll have a theme for how they name the conference rooms, and that will be something reflective of their values, right? So that every time you walk into one, you'll feel something. So some people will have great scientists, some people like Spotify, for instance, they have great— they have musical artists. The conference rooms are named after musical artists because they want to honor the musician, they honor the artist. So there's stuff like that that you'll see. A lot of times you see the values of the company up against the wall, like Instacart values are everywhere. One of the other things that happened in the Instacart lobby that I always liked was they had quotes from customers about us, and they were just everywhere because it sort of reminds you why you're there. You're trying to serve something. Shane, one thing I was thinking about in your manager point is it's actually interesting. Michael Park, our friend of the pod, Commissioner Circle member, was telling me that I think McKinsey has this idea of executive as athlete as like an analogy. And the reason that they bring it up is that it's sort of like athletes train. You know, they don't just like play the game, they train a lot. And if you look at like musicians, musicians practice, like there's this whole thing of like, why would you expect that you don't need to be trained? Why would you expect that you don't need to be coached? Why would you expect that you don't need to practice? And I think that there's a lot of insight in there. You think about why a lot of managers have difficulty with tough conversations. Well, because tough conversations are hard by definition. And if you don't practice them, why would you expect to be good at them? And other professions, it's more normal to practice and to train. In the corporate world, it's actually more of a forcing. It's unusual To do that. People don't practice, they don't train, they do it on the job. And that, I think, is a big difference.

Yeah, that's super interesting. Weird to think about, Shane, the amount of hours you put in practicing versus playing. Like, if you took that ratio, football, it's off the charts. I mean, it's like— Yeah.

But that's where the growth mindset comes in. And I think the best companies out there, Ravi, tell me wrong, are— we talk about learning companies versus knowing companies. Right. And so, for the tough conversation issue, instead of approaching it as something that has to be done, you approach it, hey, this is something I have a chance to get better at. Right? And I'm not looking forward to it, but hey, what did I learn from this? And how can I grow? Right? And it's people, they don't want feedback, but they want feedback. All right? Because people want to be the best version of themselves. Right? And that only comes— I love what Michael said. It only comes with with repetition and practice. And, you know, the most effective people I've been around in business are athletes. They do approach it that way.

Have I told you guys about the thing? I don't know if I've ever mentioned this. One of my favorite things that Harbaugh did when he came in, and it ran the whole time. So I've told you guys about the wise words, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Every single day after practice, he'd pick somebody different to do like 2 minutes of wise words. It was just like, whatever's on your mind, what's important to you right now kind of thing. And so you really got to hear from everybody. It was super cool. And then he's obviously the birthday thing. Again, that was always like a huge priority, celebrating everybody's birthday. But there was this big whiteboard in the facility, kind of in the heartbeat of the facility. It was right next to the weight room, the training room, and the locker room, right? So like as a player, right? Like this, you walked by this whiteboard, you know, 15 times a day and it was big. And he divvied it up every single day and it was on this rotating cycle of everybody in the building. And you got to put up a quote or a music lyric, right? Or like a movie, it could be anything. And it was just like your day and there were no other rules about it, right? And again, you had to go put it up just by hand. You had to, it was your day, come in in the morning and be thoughtful. It was super cool. It was a super cool exercise to like— I like that. So-and-so wrote this. Like, it was interesting and you'd walk by it every day. I was like, oh, like, you know, it was a cool way to like, for people to have their—

How big was the board?

It was not a small whiteboard, like a decent-sized whiteboard. And again, it was like kind of in this hallway where, again, right by the training room, right by the weight room, locker room, and you would just always ride by it. It was super cool though. It was fun to kind of hear from everybody. It was another way to like be heard, be seen.

Do you remember any of the quotes or music lyrics in particular that—

I think I did a Pearl Jam quote the first time I did a musical. I can't remember. Yeah, but it came around to you, you know, you end up having, you know, there's 100 guys in the building because coaches would get it too, right? Like it would rotate through the whole training staff, equipment guys, like everybody got to take—

We used to at Sequoia, Sequoia doesn't do this anymore, but There was a time where when I first started that every week, same thing, quote of the week, somebody would have to come up. We just rotated through the investment team of like, you know, are you doing— there would be 2 things, it'd be company and quote, which is, you know, somebody would be assigned to have a company to talk about, and somebody would be assigned to have a quote. Obviously, the quote's easier, just like throw a quote up on the whiteboard, and then talk about why you shared it. And then the company was like, just talk about a company. pick a company and share it with people. Why did you want to talk about it? I thought they were both pretty cool traditions because what they do is, one, it gives everyone an opportunity to say what's on their mind. The second is you do have some interesting learnings as to why somebody picks something. When some people pick up certain companies, they would pick an obscure one. They would be like, what I thought was cool here was this. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but do you know that I think Home Depot, since it went public, has had better performance than Google in the public stock, in the public market? It's like an insane stat, truly insane. Somebody will pick Home Depot, and they don't name, they just show you the numbers. They don't name the company, and you're supposed to try and guess. Then they'll be like, well, why did you pick it? They'll be like, well, I think Home Depot I think if you'd have asked everyone what they thought the highest performing stock would've been, it wouldn't have been Home Depot. Here's what I learned when I studied it. Here's why they were able to compound for so long. And it was like, cool. You'd learn a lot about what was on someone's mind and it gets everybody involved. So I think that that was interesting. I used to run this training at Instacart, manager training, and I would start a video and it would just be Steph shooting. But it was Steph not in the game shooting. It was him doing his workout. Before. And you'd ask people like, what is he doing? And be like, he's shooting. What is he doing? Finally, after 3 or 4 guesses, someone would say he's practicing. And you'd be like, this guy is the greatest shooter of all time. He's literally like, nobody's ever shot a basketball better than him. And he's not practicing something else. He's practicing shooting. That's the thing he's practicing, even though he's the best in the world at it. And he still practices, interestingly enough, as long as or more than other people. he's out there by himself on the court. And it was the point is sort of like, if he's got to practice shooting, don't you think you have to practice every part of your job? If Steph has to practice shooting, I don't know. That sort of seems like each of us probably needs to practice everything that we're supposed to do.

How do you practice operations and/or Culture building and, you know, kind of, you know.

Yeah.

Do you read? Do you read? Do you study?

Well, Shane, I'm curious what you think. I can tell you what I do. I can tell you what I've seen other people do. I, you know, I don't, I don't know if I have a right answer, but we can, like, learn together. But I don't know, Shane, if you have an answer to this. Otherwise, I can give you some.

You just do it.

Yeah.

Again and again and again. It is not rocket science. Right? And so, for culture building, what are you talking about? What are you talking about in the small moments that are outside of meetings? Right? The culture is formed when no one is looking because people are always trying to figure out what is punished, what's rewarded in any team, any group setting. Right? But the more you talk about it, the more you make people aware of it, The more it sticks. All right. The mission values, principles that, that are just pieces of paper on the wall, guess what? They're not practiced. Right. And people look at them and they know they're not practiced and they know there's not value to them. Right. And so, it's no different. You want to be great at something? Got to practice. Got to practice. Got to practice. No matter how good you are. I love that Steph analogy. It's, it's so true.

I think, Alex, what I've seen people do, and what I think is, if you think about like practice versus purposeful practice, like, you know, imagine going for a run and not timing yourself. There's a time to time yourself, and there's a time not to. But if you want to get better, you probably need to time yourself, right? And you need to see like, how fast did I go? And then you have to try and think about, okay, what am I going to try and do? Let's try to set a goal, whatever. So one thing I think when people are practicing like a skill when it comes to like company building, right? They have to measure it in some way, right?

Yes.

So for instance, like, let's say that someone is going to have a tough review conversation with somebody, right? Ideally, like a really good manager, what they'll do is they'll sit with one of their peers and they'll sit with them and they'll say, hey, can I practice on you? I got to go tell this person that they're not going to get promoted today.

Yeah.

Here's what I was going to say, but I want you to tell me what you'd feel like if you were them. So the measurement is like they've gone to somebody else, they've gone and had the conversation, and the other person's like, look, it took a long time before you got to the point. Or they say, man, you are really harsh. Are you trying to be that harsh? So there is literally a role-play conversation with the feedback afterwards that I think can help. I think another thing that companies do, if you want to practice it, is it's sort of they They have a continuous learning approach. And so like, you know, there's places that will do postmortems. Okay, this thing didn't go well. Somebody writes something up. Let's have a meeting and talk about why it didn't go well. What are things that we might suggest doing differently next time, you know, in order to not have that happen? Right. So that's another, like, you know, mechanism some people can use in practicing. Another thing that happens is just having a culture that you encourage talking about the mistake. So for instance, you asked about operating, how do you actually practice it? A lot of times what happens is if you make a mistake yourself, you try as a leader, try to stand in front of the company and say you made it. And it's not so that there's shame, it's that to be like, I make these mistakes all the time. Here's what I did. Here's what I'm going to do differently. Because what you want is for basically the rest of the team to know that it's okay to make a mistake, As long as you get better as a result of it. So you go and stand in front of everybody. I did this, I screwed this up. This was a decision I made that went wrong. And here's how I got there. I think that all those things are things that companies who want to practice and learn that they do well naturally, or not naturally, actually, they abnormally create processes or interactions that encourage that.

Which is not the way Sports franchises work, right, Alex?

They don't.

Well, no one's having a practice chewout session. No, no, no.

Well, that totally, totally. And that was going to actually like, was that

too harsh? Yeah. You know, I don't think Coach K ever, ever, ever, you know, talked to Wojo and Johnny Dawkins. And practice his tirades on them first.

But I will tell you, by the way, just as a little aside, I could not believe when we sat with Coach K a few years ago and he showed us the practice plans. You know what I'm saying? Every practice, thousands of practices, right? I mean, tens of— the full, here's what we're going to do from the start to finish. Like longhand, you know, preparing for a practice. I mean, it was incredible. I thought

it was. And guess what? He demanded that we had precision, energy, enthusiasm, because I think he spent so much time writing those practice plans out.

Right.

He wasn't, he wasn't messing around.

Yeah.

Would you guys get the practice plans as players?

Oh, no, no. Okay. We'd always try to sneak a peek to see if we had 17 across or what kind of conditioning we had at the end. You're just like, oh gosh, we got that. So aside from that, we didn't care about anything else, but the conditioning part we were very interested in.

I think about, again, going back to the chew out in sports, I think a lot about it, and this does relate, I think, especially even into the corporate world, it's like getting up in front of the room, right? And it could be your unit room, right? It could be obviously even bigger if you're in a position of leadership. But those are times like, how do you practice that? Right? Like, how do you get feedback there? I think about it all the time as coaches get promoted, because all of a sudden you're thrust into these positions where you are in front of the room and you haven't had that experience or practice at all. Right? And again, it just is like, oh, one guy has it, one guy doesn't. But there is very little development of that skill, if that makes sense. And I'm sure it's the same in the corporate world, right? All of a sudden—

Oh, for sure. Have you guys heard of this thing called the Peter Principle?

No.

Yeah. Yeah. So the Peter Principle, Alex, is this idea that you are promoted— everybody's incompetent at their job because you're promoted to your level of incompetence. And specifically what it means is you think you get promoted to something if you did a good job. Then when you stop getting promoted, obviously there's some logic of like, well, you're not doing as good of a job because you otherwise would have been promoted. And so it's sort of like Everybody is sort of at this level that is a little too high for them. And I think that one way I have seen people do that is they just say like, hey, I'm still learning this. They don't try to act like they know everything. One of the things that I found interesting was I read this thing that apparently Mark Zuckerberg said, like 10 years into running Facebook, He's like, look, he's like, Facebook's not only the first company I've ever started, it's the first company I've ever worked at. Because he never had a job before he started Facebook, now Meta. And I actually thought that I would imagine that that was kind of cool for the team, which is like, look guys, I'm figuring this out too. I don't even have something to compare it to. And of course, he's the boss and they have to listen. But It's useful, I think, every once in a while to tell someone like, I'm trying this for the first time too. I occasionally tell that to the kids. If I've screwed something up, I'm like, look, this is my first time being a parent. And as far as I can tell, it's going to be my only time being a parent. And so we're going to figure this out together. But I think there's some element to that. And I would imagine if you become a head coach in the NFL, it's hard to admit to the team that you don't really know. Right. But the reality is you don't. And, you know, there's a time and a place, I think, sometimes to share that with people of like, you know, hey, this is new for me too. It's different than it is for like Andy Reid, who's done it for however many years.

For sure. Totally. Yeah. I mean, that takes a lot of strength.

I think so.

In front of a room of people that you're supposed to be leading and inspiring and they want to, you know, you want them on board. Right? With your vision, your plan.

Jeff Van Gundy did it best of all the coaches I ever played for. I mean, I've said this line on the pod before, but he was at the forefront of analytics with the Rockets, obviously, 2006. And for the history of basketball before 2006, everyone thought that a 15-foot jump shot Which is part of the game, mid-range jumper, right? And so, even pedestrian fans know that the mid-range jumper is a really hard shot and it's a bad shot, right? They may not understand the math behind it, but no one was talking about how hard a 15-foot jump shot was, especially off the dribble back in 2006. Well, Van Gundy got it because he understood the math behind it. And so, he walked into a meeting And we were showing tape and a guy hit a 15-foot jump shot off the dribble. And he said, guys, this shot will not beat us. This shot will not beat us. As long as we put a hand up and they take that shot, this will not beat us. So I will never yell at you. I will never yell at you if a team beats us making a ton of these 15-foot jump shots. It's on me. Okay. He said, don't fail the plan. Let the plan fail you. Okay. The plan is like we take away 3s, we take away layups, and if we give up that 15-foot jumper, it will not beat us. Right. And if you do that, we are— you're good with me. But if you go rogue and yet you start doing things that are outside the plan, now we got a problem. Okay. So just, you know, don't fail the plan. Let the plan fail you. Right. And so it was the first time I ever had a coach stand up and say, look, if it doesn't work, it's on me. And it's pretty funny. Hubie Brown was one of the first coaches to point this out to me that the difference between college coaches and pro coaches is that in the pros, when you win, who gets all the credit? Players. And when you lose, who's the first to get criticized? For the most part. Coach.

Coach.

Okay. In college, that dynamic is flipped.

Yeah.

Right. And in college, when you win, how many college coaches are taking credit for the victory? And when they lose, how many pressers do you see coaches throwing their team under the bus? Oh, we didn't play hard enough. We weren't tough. We, we didn't— we got out-rebounded. Right. You just— they trash their teams. Right. And that is the dynamic. I think the money has something to do with it in the pros. Right. But it's an interesting dynamic in sports where I think as a coach in the pros, you kind of have to take responsibility. Right. That's the gig. You know, there are very few coaches in college that are taking responsibility and saying, you know what, I had a bad game plan. No, they're saying my team didn't execute my plan. Am I right, Alex?

No, I think you're right too. I also think it's the nature of college where you're— there's an influx of new players every year. And so it's obviously traditionally it was like, hey, freshmen are coming in freshman class and then everybody's getting older. And obviously now there's a ton of turnover. So I honestly think in college there's this aspect of like, well, we just got to get better players. You know, like coaches are the attention. You think about the college football coach, they're larger than life. Nick Saban, you know, they're the first guys running out of the tunnel. That does not happen at the professional level. You do not get Andy Reid coming out of the tunnel in front of his team. And yet at the collegiate level, they all do it. It's like, you know what I'm saying? It's this branding exercise.

You're so right. That's so, you're so right.

Sarkisian's got to run out of the tunnel first with his team. You know, like it just doesn't, that doesn't happen at the professional level.

Do you guys think that you would ever enjoy coaching if it wasn't with your son or daughter on the team?

Yeah. Yeah.

If I had the right group.

Yeah, exactly. I think—

do you mean the right group of players or the right group of coaches?

People who want to learn. It's no different than like who I want to hang out with, who I want to be friends with, right? I don't want to be friends with knuckleheads and people who don't listen and are closed-minded. And if I had a bunch of team— a bunch of guys on my team that were closed-minded and knuckleheads, they'd be miserable, right? And that's, you know, people who hate coaching, they usually have a lot of knuckleheads, right? You know, a lot of just shipbirds, right? I don't want that. But if people are coachable and enthusiastic and want to learn, yeah, great.

Yeah.

Staff too. Yes. You're working with.

Yes, 100%. Right. Love. I love my staff.

The group you're with. Love my staff. I mean, it would.

We have more fun than players. We have more fun than the players. And that's, you know, when you're when you're a coach, Ravi, you know, there comes a time when you know. You know, even my own son, you know, you get on the wrong side of the coach, right? And just be like, you know, but like, you know, your coaches, you always love them. You always love them.

I see that. I thought one of my favorite parts of the— did you read 7 Seconds or Less, the book about the Suns from a while ago?

Yeah.

Okay. Alex, I think it's still interesting to read. It's like the Steve Nash Suns. But my favorite part of that book was actually D'Antoni with the coaching staff, just like getting to witness that relationship and the way that they interacted with each other, the friendships that get developed, the different roles each person plays. It's a team within a team. So I think that makes sense to me, Shane, that the staff makes a big difference. I find right now that in the much smaller scale coaching I do with our kids, I kind of feel what you guys felt. Alex, you referenced it of just like, just really being happy to get to be there to watch them get coached, you know, by somebody else, even to watch them get the experience, to watch them get the experience with their teammates. You know, I feel, I feel very lucky that I get to see it up close. You know, it's one of my favorite things.

Yeah. I mean, again, I think these like The whole thing, right? To get to see them be a teammate. That's kind of like what we talk about, like, you know, and to be there, right? There's so many teachable moments.

And you got to pick your spots, like Shane said, about when you're doing

it.

The unique thing about quarterback, right? Like when you're a quarterback, it's like you have the ball in your hand every single play. But when it— if it's bad, like if it's going bad, if you're overmatched and you have the ball in your hand every play,

Yeah.

That's not, that's not like an envious place to be. Right. Like if you can't block them, if you can't block them up front and you guys don't, and like we can't get open. Right. Like all of a sudden, hey, you got the ball every play. Like,

are you, are you getting feedback on every snap you take in film?

When I played?

Yeah. Was it, is there a coach? Every single play.

Andy Reid and Jim Harbaugh stood 10 yards behind the center. Behind the quarterback, every single snap, every single snap of practice. And then we filmed every practice. You're getting double feedback. I got feedback right after the play and I got feedback in the meeting room.

What kind of— give it, make it real for me. Like, what's the kind of feedback that you can, that you'll get from Reid or from Harbaugh standing 10 yards behind you after like a run-of-the-mill play?

Yeah, like sometimes there'd be, it could be a lot of things, right? Like sometimes it could be schematic. Right? Hey, this is what we're thinking here on this read, right? We want to read this guy. If he goes high, we're going here, right? It could be something like very technical X's and O's. It could be, this is why we're calling this play.

Yeah.

Right? Like the background of it, right? Like intent. And I think that's a big part with quarterbacks because like often, like when the play call comes in, there's some level of communication that comes with it.

What do you mean when you say this is why we're calling this play? Like, what's a reason that could be the reason you're calling the play? Like, what, give me, what does that mean?

Yeah. Like, I mean, again, you got to think about there's like 70 in a given game. There's like 70 plays for each side of the ball, but on a game plan sheet, you probably got like more than double that potentially, right? Like at your disposal. And when a call comes in, yeah, there is like intent that comes with it. Is this just like a simple first down completion play? Is this a run play that we're going to run? But if we get this certain pressure, I like, I got to protect the play and get to this or throw this kind of thing, right? Like, or we're obviously like generically, like we're calling a shot. If we get this look, we want to take the shot. But if we don't get this look, check the ball down, right? Like again, keep it moving. And then I, the thing that like sticks out a ton for me For both of those guys, Jim and Andy, was like body length, like all the time, like my balance, my feet, my platform, right? Like very physical, tangible things, right? Like that, that's what they were looking at.

Did you think that's the best way that you could learn? Like if you could draw up a way to learn better, right? And it's not just verbal feedback. What would it be in your position? Or is that just like the— that's the nature of the beast and everyone learns that way. So like there is no alternative to— I know they have like, you know, 3D VR headsets now and all this noise, you know.

I mean, no, I mean, again, I liked it. Obviously it was a lot of it was like how the message was given. Right? Right. Like if it's a ton of negative feedback constantly and you feel scrutinized and you feel like you, again, like Ravi said, like you can't make a mistake, then I would call that bad feedback, right? Like, but oftentimes this wasn't— it was never like— sometimes there was no feedback, right? Like, he just ran a play and it was like, next play. Like, Andy was like always very man of few words, right?

You think Peyton and TB12 got feedback every play too?

Yeah. Yes.

Constantly.

Because you gotta— I do. And I think again, when you film it, that's the other part is like you get to watch yourself. So now you're getting another form of feedback, right? You get this visual loop Of like, oh, that's what I looked like on that play. And then you get to see the all 22, right, from a different perspective. So you're like, oh, that was the distribution of this play, right? And again, that always looks different from the pocket level, from field level than it does from all of a sudden a tower. And so these are all reps now, right? Like I've just, there's a finite amount of reps in the week that I'm practicing and now I'm like double dipping, right? I got feedback right after the play. I get feedback in the locker room. I'm getting visual feedback of the meeting. And so by the time Sunday rolls around, when that play call comes in, I know the intent. I know what the distribution's supposed to look like, right? Like I've had so many looks at it in my head. I can visualize it, right? Does that make sense?

I think that's why quarterbacks are so ornery because they get feedback every play and they're always yelling at their linemen and the receivers because they get to yell at somebody. They get yelled at every play. Every rep. Could you imagine that, Ravi? Could you imagine going to work and someone, you know, gives you feedback on every email, every phone call, every meeting, right?

The other thing I can't quite imagine—

Every speech. Could you imagine that?

Like, you know, the idea of getting traded, you know, it's like, hey, you know, you have been traded from, you know, Sequoia to, you know, Benchmark for cash considerations. Like, that's not like a thing that I can really get my head around.

Like how, like illegal the labor

Yeah,

structure is in pro sports.

Alex, like when you would get feedback on your like platform or your balance, right? I'm just trying to think of something that feels more like physical, you know, rather than like, this is the read, you know, like I— this is whatever. Was that something where like you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I agree. That's how I felt. Or were you like, what are you talking about? Like, could you feel When somebody would give you feedback on like what you should be doing in your balance, was it consistent with what you were experiencing or was it like not?

Both. Yeah. There are times for sure. Like, he'd be like, oh, you were too tall. And I felt it like I was high and kind of off of balance or I didn't have a good base or maybe I was too wide. Right. And I was overstriding. That makes sense. Sometimes no. Right. Like again, you couldn't relate. And then I would watch it on film and I could see and it would validate potentially. Something like that. Does that make sense? The best is like, and again, this goes back to this, like, and I think coaches like Andy Reid, right? Like for everybody out there, you can like picture him. Andy Reid would coach the receivers on how to get in and out of breaks. And it was amazing. Like he would be in front of the, like in the film, like we'd have our meeting room, right? We're doing install and he'd be up there instructing Kelce and Tyreek and he would do it, be doing it step by step. It was like fascinating to watch. Really? They can corner better, right? Like how they need to drop their weight, things they can do with their body, their arms to corner better in and out of a cut.

Demonstrating it.

Yes. Yes. It's like, it was fascinating to watch. And he always had analogies. He would like, one of them, he would, it would be an analogy to motorcycles, how you have to like, you've ever watched people that turn on a motorcycle? It's like, and so he'd have these and he would go through it. And it's, I'm sure people out there are like, Andy Reid coaches the receivers on how to— yeah. Yes, he does.

Yes.

Yes.

Shane, what you always hear about Coach K is that his gift was much more about the person than it was about the body position. You know what I'm saying? So were you coached— is there an analogy to you of who coached you the way Andy Reid is coaching the receivers on Here's where to put your body, you know what I'm saying? And here's how to do these things.

More from a macro level. Look, I never had a coach that I think of that I played for that said, Shane, like, your elbow's out, like, you know, on this jumper. Like in basketball, it's like, yeah, you better fucking go practice. If you're missing shots, go practice. And if you don't make shots, we'll find someone who will, right? So there's no feedback on sort of Physical, you know, no one's saying, oh, you got to get lower on your blockouts or, you know, you're standing too tall on your defensive slides. There was none of that.

None of that. There's no like shooting coach on each team that's like—

Like now there is, like now there is, you know, but like the shooting coaches, they don't talk to the top players. Tell you that, you know, the shooting coaches, they don't mess with them. They don't mess with them. There's a lot of like, you know, you're here for a reason. We're not going to try to mess it up, right?

Go develop the bench players.

Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. And so like with Coach K, there was definitely a technique aspect. You know, like we used to, which is insane. Like no one does this anymore. We used to deny wing entries, usually on defense. Now everyone kind of packs it in and just like protects the middle. But not us. We had to get out in the passing lane, thumbs down, hand in the passing lane. If we could run through and get a steal, we were trying to do it. And so that meant the point guard, whoever was on the ball, had zero help. And he was just like, you got to bone up. You got to keep them out of the paint. You know, we're playing the top players. So the 2 hardest things in basketball are to deny somebody and to keep someone out of the paint with no help, right? But that's what we did. That was our— that was what he felt. There was a technique to it. But, it wasn't like he was correcting every single position. It was more spatial positioning. We knew when we were out of position, but it wasn't a physical technique thing at all.

Yeah. Football to me is— I've learned, I know nothing about it and I've learned so much about it just from talking to you, Alex, and even having our kids play flag. I'm so not used to there being these plays. Basketball is just not That's my point.

There's no transitions in football, right? Like every play is start, stop. And so it's a rehearsed choreographed practice thing, whereas like basketball is this, it's just constant transitions. And so you need to be able to just to play and flow and think for yourself. And

yeah,

right. Like there isn't an opportunity to give feedback. You run a play, you've got 40 seconds before the next play. There is this like great window for feedback. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yes. And it's actually quite special with like the coach and the quarterback of like, what are you seeing? You know, it's very cool. What I realized is like, you know, my, my nature works a lot better in defensive coaching and football than it does offensive coaching, because I don't notice everything in terms of like what's open, what's not, you know, in offense, whereas in defense, it is more like, it feels sometimes a little bit more cultural, you know, of like, all right, like we're gonna fly around. Okay, we're gonna do this, you know, like go hunt, go get this guy. Like, it's just different.

No, there is an element to like all great defenses. And this is like, regardless of scheme and how good of players they are, like when you turn on the film, there's typically like 11 guys in the picture, right? Like every tackle, like they just, they just run to the ball, right? And that's like not a, again, this isn't like a skilled schematic thing, right? Like they just run to the football and that's a sign of good defense, period.

Yeah. And it's so interesting to me because like, you know, I'll, do it on the offensive side, of course, but I don't really know. Whereas on defense, I'm kind of like, okay, like, look guys, like, you know, you got, you got to all be around the dude with the ball, you know, like help your teammates, put them to the inside. Don't let somebody get behind you.

Yep.

Yeah. Well, there's lots of things that you appreciate once you see them up close. I think that coaching, managing, parenting, our spouses, you know, as you just— I'm glad we talked about it. I think that I think that honestly, I think most things are pretty interesting if you're willing to go into detail on them. Yeah. You know, if like, if you really do understand, like I was listening to this author the other day go through like his process of like how he writes books. And it was fascinating just to like hear like, what does he do? And so I think it's sort of like if you kind of treat anything with respect, you learn that there's way more time outside of the activity than there is in the activity.