The Way of Excellence - 'A conversation with Brad Stulberg'

In this episode best selling author and coach Brad Stulberg joins Gordon MacLelland to discuss his new book 'The Way of Excellence' which explores what sustainable excellence really looks like and what it potentially means for us all in supporting young athletes.

During the conversation they discuss amongst other things:

• Building excellence through rhythm and balance
• The dangers of outcome obsession
• Supporting our young people to build and maintain a 'stable sense of self'
• Helping our young people build confidence through effective preparation
• The importance of discomfort for growth but not chaos
• Helping young people interpret failure as information, not a final verdict
• Creating support systems and environments full of clarity and consistency that help develop resilience and self-awareness

Brad Stulberg researches, writes, and coaches on performance, well-being, and sustainable excellence. He is the bestselling author of The Practice of Groundedness and Master of Change, and is the co-author of Peak
Performance with former guest Steve Magness.  

Brad regularly contributes to the New York Times and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic, among many other outlets. He serves as the co-host of the podcast “excellence, actually” and is on the faculty at the University of Michigan. 

Additional Reading

How do you manage your child if they are physically small and potentially a late developer?

Are you patient with the process?

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:12

Welcome to season seven of the Parents in Sport Podcast. I am your host, Gordon Maclelland. I'm delighted to be joined today by best-selling author and performance coach Brad Stulberg. Brad, thank you for joining us on the show.

Speaker 0:26

Gordon, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 1 0:29

So today we're going to be talking about Brad's new book, uh, The Way of Excellence, and what it potentially means for us as sports parents in supporting our young athletes, but perhaps what it means for us as coaches uh for those running sports programs. But before we dig into that, um, Brad, if you can just tell our listeners uh a little bit more about yourself and your background.

Speaker 0:55

So my background as an athlete uh is one of diversity. I grew up playing all manner of ball sports. I played soccer, basketball, baseball, football. In high school, I played baseball, basketball, and football before specializing my junior and senior year in football. I thought I was gonna go on and play football in college, uh, but decided to pursue a different route. Uh I was good enough to play in the American system in a D2, D3 school. Uh, chose to go to the University of Michigan, which I was not a good enough football player to play at. Uh, went on to study public health in graduate school, though I was always very interested in not so much the absence of disease, but what does it take for us to flourish and how can we define health more broadly as human flourishing? Uh, since then, I've become an author. I've written, this is my fifth book, all related to human nature, human flourishing, performance, excellence. I have a performance coaching practice where I work with high-level individuals on their mental skills. And I am also a proud youth sports coach. I've got an almost eight-year-old and three-year-old, and I am heavily immersed in rec sports here in Western North Carolina.

Speaker 1 2:07

Fantastic. Um, I didn't realize you were in North Carolina. If I'd known that this summer when I was out there working, I would have definitely uh uh seeked you out. Um I'm also intrigued, I think, another day to talk about how you're finding the whole sports parenting thing. Maybe at the end. Um I was speaking to somebody yesterday, Brad, in a live session, and they'd been heavily uh involved in sport performance all of their lives. And a bit like me, it was like, well, it just went all out of the window when it came about our kids. It was like you couldn't make any sense of what it was that that we were seeing, and that was an interesting dialogue. I I want to start for today's episode on uh excellence, which is obviously the the main part of this book, and uh I think your book reframes what you know X what many of us think excellence is. Now, in sport, we definitely see excellence as the sort of medals, the scholarships, the winning. Um, you suggest that it needs to be something much richer than that, but it shows the challenge here because I'm gonna immediately throw in that if you buy Brad's book that you need to and read, this is not some happy clappy book that does not understand the realities of trying to achieve. And I think that sums it up the fact that I'm even having to throw that caveat in before you answer that we're not saying winning's not important, we're not saying that these aspects aren't part of the process, but there is far more to it. So, Brad, how are you uh defining excellence?

Speaker 3:43

That's right. The the the project with this book is essentially to reclaim excellence in to reclaim it from these two broad extremes that I think both have it wrong. So the one extreme is perfectionism, obsession, win at all cost, integrity be damned, excellence is never making a mistake in working toward perfection or as close to perfect as possible, and then maintaining that. It's getting the scholarship, it's winning the World Cup. There's another school of thought that says that it's just about the journey, and that we should all hold hands and sing kumbaya together, and we are too hard on ourselves and we're too hard on athletes, and it doesn't really matter if we win, it's all about the journey. And I think that both of those schools of thought could actually do well to be in conversation with each other a little bit more often. So, my rendering of excellence is involved engagement in something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals, where the results matter and who you become as a person as you pursue those results matters. So, not either or, but both and. And I've spent the last decade researching, reporting on this book, coaching, counseling, many elite, in some cases world-class performers. And what I found is that those that are able to sustain that sort of elite level performance in whatever domain, whether it's in sport, whether it's in art, whether it's in music, whether it's running a restaurant, whether it's in business, you have to be a fierce competitor with a lot of intensity. And you also have to zoom out and be really interested in the process of learning of growth and self-discovery. So the way that I like to think about it is it's very important to have a goal, to have a target, to want to reach the top of the mountain. However, the fact of the matter is we spend 99.999% of our time on the sides of the mountain climbing. And if we can't learn to find satisfaction, enjoy, and fulfillment and growth in the climb, then we're not going to last long at whatever we do. And to me, excellence is just that. It's being fully involved. It's giving something your all, it's caring deeply, and it's doing it in a way where yes, the results matter and you want to win, whatever winning might mean to you. And you're also equally interested in how the process and how the pursuit is shaping your character as a person.

Speaker 1 6:11

Yeah, and you know, I'm going to follow up the uh come by y'all line, uh, Brad, with hallelujah, which I think is probably rather appropriate because I think you see far too often, I think what you've alluded to, and I think this is where we are struggling to get balance right, is the merging of those two schools of thought. And where do you draw the line? And not being archaic and brutal in a way that that drags us back decades that we don't need to be, but also not going too far off the other end, like you say, where it just becomes so happy clappy. That actually, if you even tried to land that message with the vast majority of people, I think, particularly in sport or people with kids, you probably couldn't get them to go with you anyway, because half the population would have switched off as a starting point. And I think that's really important that we do start to join up those two schools of thought with context as well, I think, don't you? Because I think what you were talking about, your kids, I think with an eight-year-old, the context of excellence in that environment will be different to heading towards the Olympics. So we've got to add that layer of context to those two schools as well.

Speaker 7:30

Yeah, that's right. I think that it depends on the the person in the case of youth sports, the young adult or the child. Um, and it depends on where they're at in their journey. Uh, I think that what excellence looks like for an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 10-year-old is smiling, having a lot of fun, um, learning about winning and learning about losing, and most important, wanting to play again next year. Uh, you know as well as me, there's data that shows that 70% of kids quit youth sports by the age of 13. And the number one reason that they give for quitting youth sports is it's no longer fun. So I think that fun has got to be in the driver's seat. Um as one gets older and as the stakes get higher, then I think that there is more emphasis placed on results, but not at the expense of fun. Uh, there's this wonderful clip. It's very clear to the audience, probably from my accent or lack thereof, depending on where you are, that I'm an American and I follow uh baseball, Major League Baseball. And we're recording this, and the World Series is playing out. And there's a clip from game three of the World Series where Shohei Otani, the star of the Dodgers, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the star of the Blue Jays, are meeting on first base because Guerrero plays first base and Otani got walked. And they both have the biggest smiles on their face. They look like two kids in the sand lot playing in third grade. And they're playing on the biggest stage for the biggest prize in the sport. And that smile is so important to them being able to play with that level of intensity. So I think that it shifts as we get older, as the stakes get higher, to a little bit more emphasis on the result, but never at the expense of fun.

Speaker 1 9:16

Yeah, absolutely. And I I think one of the one of the key parts of our workshops at the moment, Brad, is actually getting parents to check with their kids why they do their sport. And what are they working on at the moment? Because the answer to that question will change, like you say, at different ages, different stages, whether we're close to professional contracts or whether we're actually supporting somebody setting out. But it as you say, you've also alluded to, it's quite an individual thing as well, isn't it? Because what might be fun for me might not be fun for you. It's not as easy as saying it fun. And when we look at the work of Amanda Vissen, you know, and you've got all those different fun determinants that young people 81 of them, that actually you've got to know your child if we're supporting our young performers.

Speaker 10:03

Yeah, that's 100% right. Uh, for some kids, fun is being in a really competitive environment. For other kids, fun is being part of a team. For other kids, fun is getting a chance to learn a new skill. Um, and that's gonna change over the course of time. Uh, when I think about what does it mean to be excellent as a parent or as a coach, as you guide someone on this journey, I think of it no different than what does it mean to be an excellent craftsperson who's building a wood table, an excellent musician. You've got to have a really intimate relationship with your subject matter. And in this case, your subject matter is your child, your athlete, if you're the coach. And that means concentration, that means respect, that means being endlessly curious to your point, that means asking the right questions, and it means being able to adjust and respond to what their needs are as you go.

Speaker 1 10:55

Yeah, and I think that probably then leads on, which we're both very aware of, that actually then to be a brilliant coach or a brilliant person working with people is that you've got to build relationships, haven't you? Because how many times do we have coaches potentially who don't know the players well enough? What might work for one player certainly doesn't work for another. And that's where we've got to get that information so that we can help them be the best version of themselves.

Speaker 11:22

Yeah, that's right. And I think that also um is as a coach and certainly as a parent, creating an environment where the your child or your athlete knows that you've got their back. So even when you're correcting them, even when you're being hard on them, they know that it's all held in a container of love and support in their best interest.

Speaker 1 11:47

Yeah, I look look for me, and and you know, I spent a lot of time coaching younger age groups and national title winning sides, and I just believe, and I'll I always held this mantra that for me you could be demanding, but you could be loving as well. And I think if you get the combination right, it's this most beautiful thing. On the day where you do need to be a little bit more forceful or a little bit more demanding, if they know you've got the back, they're gonna do it, but likewise you cared about them as well, and that relationship was in place, which means that it that it all works, doesn't it? It all fits together or gives you a chance of it all fitting together, I would say.

Speaker 12:25

Yeah, that's spot on. I also think that then you role model having that relationship with oneself for a young person. Uh something that I found in reporting on this new book is the intensity and joy or self-discipline and self-compassion, they they tend to coexist with excellence. So if you as a coach or you as a parent can have that demanding love, then the child learns that they can be demanding of themselves while also loving themselves and having their own back. And so much of excellence, so much of elite performance is being able to step into the arena, do something really hard, give it your all, and know that if you fail, you still have self-worth and you're not going to beat yourself up too hard. Because if you did beat yourself up too hard, then you never step back in the arena. And that's it. It's giving your all, it's laying it on the line, being extremely self-disciplined, having tons of accountability, all couched in self-respect and self-confidence. And when you have those things come together, that's where the magic happens.

Speaker 1 13:29

Yeah, I thought I think that's yeah, I think that's absolutely brilliantly put. Do you know what's funny is when you look back with hindsight, I'm sure you've done this on some things, and you start reading and you think, oh my goodness, that magically happened, but there was no thought process. It's only retrospectively. I've thought, well, actually, it was demanding and loving. And people sort of said, Why did it work? But actually, when we start talking like this, you start to realize why it might have worked. Now, I didn't know that as a young 20-year-old coach, that that was the magic formula for coaching. It was probably something that evolved with experience. And I probably got, like you say, I think the role modelling one there is interesting, in so much that coaches, parents, for a lot of young people, particularly in their early stages, are the ultimate role models, aren't they? And I suppose a lot of the messaging that we taught to them about our behaviors are the things that they see and may actually normalize.

Speaker 14:28

100%. And it's not enough to say it, you actually have to show it. Um you know, kids are always watching you. Um, but yeah, this gets back to that definition of excellence, right? Like you're striving for a destination or for a goal, but you're also shaping a person along the way. And as a coach, you have to hold both those things in your mind at the same time. Um, so you can have these these these two goals, right? There might be a goal to win a 16U, 15U championship. And at the same time, there's a goal to develop the character of every one of the kids on the roster.

Speaker 1 15:03

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's another part of your book, isn't there, that I quite liked as well about I suppose it's just jumping slightly off, but it goes to that setting of goals, doesn't it? Because I always have this belief that young people should strive and absolutely go for something. And I think we should give huge credit for the people who are putting themselves out there, being vulnerable, having to risk it all to try and achieve. Because with that, there comes other things, there'll come disappointment, there'll come failure, which we'll go on to later. But I do think, and it I suppose it's the size of your mounting analogy, that in striving to get there, even if you don't quite achieve what you set out to achieve, you'll probably have achieved a hell of a lot more than if you'd never even attempted it. And there's a fine line for you, isn't there, on that balance between how far we can set our goals so it doesn't become pressure almost because we've over egged it almost.

Speaker 16:02

Yeah, that's right. I think that there's a there's a couple ways to think about this. The first is that you you want the goal to be uh challenging and aspirational, but not so unlikely that um it almost starts to feel impossible, or you beat yourself up if you don't have it, even though you never had a chance. Um if I were to tell a 13-year-old whose parents were six foot one and five foot ten that they're gonna play in the MBA, I mean, I don't know. Like that that might not be so honest. Now, you could tell that kid that if you work really hard, you're gonna make your high school varsity basketball team. That feels like a much more honest goal. The second thing that I would say, and this is hard to understand and practice as adults, so it's even harder to then bestow this to our children, is at any point in time on the path of genuine excellence, you're playing these two games. In one game is the finite game. And the finite game is time bound and it has winners and losers. So the finite game might be my uh soccer season, my baseball season, my field hockey season. The finite game might be making my middle school team, making my high school team. The finite game might be getting a college scholarship, making it to a professional league, right? It's time bound, and you either succeed or you fail. But then we're also playing an infinite game. And an infinite game knows no end. The only point of an infinite game is to keep on playing, to stay curious and keep playing. And the infinite game is the game that we're playing with ourselves. That's our life. And all of these experiences, the wins, the losses, the successes, the losses, the frustrations, um, they're all shaping us as a person. And if you can hold on to both of these things at once, it allows you to give it your all and to try to win those finite games while at the same time realizing that you're you're still playing this infinite game. You're constantly learning. Um, there's a beautiful quote from the um the basketball coach Steve Kerr, who's a role model of mine. And he says that when you're on the basketball court, nothing else matters but winning that basketball game. But at the same time, that basketball game is so trivial in the scheme of things. And it kind of destroys the rules of physics, or like either or. Um, but it's true. And I think that as we think about pursuing excellence ourselves and as we think about bestowing these messages to our kids, if you can help your kid understand, I'll use my son, his name's Theo as an example. Like, yes, Theo, you know, even at age eight, these kids are competitive, especially the boys. Like, he wants to win a championship. And it's like, I don't tell him, oh, you shouldn't want to win, you should just have fun. Because that would that that's not true. He wants to win. I want to encourage that. So I tell him, Theo, like I love how intense you are and how competitive you are, and that you want to win this championship. And whether you win or lose, this is making you a better athlete and a better person. And you'll carry these lessons with you next year to school, to basketball, to soccer, to the year after that, and on and on and on. And just constantly in my mind is whenever I talk about a finite game with him, which again is winning or losing, at this age, I also bring up the infinite game, which is you're learning so much as a person, you're putting yourself out there, you're making friends, you're learning how to be physically uncomfortable in all these lessons that they extend beyond the acute winner loss.

Speaker 1 19:27

Yeah, I and I think what we're seeing, I think, with young people. I even had uh one this week, brought a parent who said to me, I'm struggling, my son's struggling with sort of negative feed. Well, not negative feedback, just lowly scored on a progress report that they'd been given, or kids struggling with losing or disappointment. And how do we help manage that? But obviously, it's a combination of things, isn't it? Because it goes back to role modelling, what we normalize, how we talk about things, and that's tricky, isn't it? Because that I love the way you've talked about finite, infinite work, whatever way we want to just describe that is a good framework. Is it our role modelling that sets that? Is it coaching setting environments? Is it how we just talk more about the realities of what performance actually is or what life is?

Speaker 20:24

I think it's all of the above. Is a parent, I think that the foremost thing is to love your kid, and your kid needs to know that regardless of what that progress report says, regardless if they win or lose, you love them. Because if that kid feels like your love is dependent on them performing a certain way, then they're gonna put a lot of pressure on themselves, and when they inevitably fall short, it's gonna be pretty catastrophic for them. So I think first and foremost is showing your kid, communicating to your kid that you love them just for being them. This is such a powerful thing, but you can just tell your kid once a week, car ride home from school, after dinner, you just say, Theo, I just want you to know that I love you just for being you, just for being who you are. And it sounds kind of corny in kumbaya, but you're you'll see, you do this with your kid, they like their whole body language changes, they light up, they'll hold your hand, they'll give you a hug. So set that foundation so that they know that they're loved regardless. And then the report card, the progress report, uh getting cut from the team, whatever the disappointment might be, that that still hurts, but it hurts in a finite game way because the infinite game is like, hey, I'm loved, I'm whole, I'm a good person. This also gets into trying never to have uh a youth's entire identity fused with sport. Because if your whole identity is contingent on how good you are as an athlete, then when you fail, it's an attack on you, the person, instead of, oh, this is uh this is not an attack on me as a person. Just a failure in this game that I happen to care deeply about.

Speaker 1 22:02

Yeah, and I and that leads nicely on to what again some of the ways you framed some of this in your book, I think, are unbelievably excellent, so to speak. And you talk about the house and the rooms in a house on this. Just want to come back from that slightly before we talk about that and what that means for us. Um a lot of parents acknowledge just what you've said in a lot of performance domains, and probably myself on occasions where we fall into the trap because our kids are involved in performance, but you're trying to achieve outcomes and you're always looking ahead at what comes what comes next, you do forget inadvertently without realizing that just like you've said, what when am I actually telling them that I love them? Because you fall into the trap of saying, I love you and I'm proud of you when they've scored three goals or or three hoops or they get an A grade at school, or it's something linked to something they do rather than who they actually are. And I do think it's a good talking point because it's uh it's just a nobody's deliberately doing that, it's just a self-awareness thing that if we talk about like, oh god, yeah, I really need to just think about that. So let's just link that, which you've already mentioned, with this idea that as our kids are growing, this idea of building a house with many rooms, but I'll let you expand on that.

Speaker 23:31

Yeah, if I may, I want to add one more example of how to do this in a sporting context, is in games where perhaps your child has mixed results, which are most games. So in a baseball game, they might have two hits and one strikeout. And after the game, you could say, Hey, I'm really proud of you for doing a couple things, but the thing that I'm most proud of you for is after you struck out, you went back to the dugout, you might have been frustrated for a little, and then you went to the field and you kept playing your hardest. So you're not just rewarding the home run, you're actually telling them that I'm actually like it's easy to hit a home run and be really happy. Yeah. It's hard to strike out or to miss a penalty kick or whatever it is, and still carry on and have your own back and be strong. So you want to reward that too. And you want to be proud of how they how they deal with disappointment as much as proud of their success.

Speaker 1 24:23

So we've got we've all we've also then we've got to shine a light on the processes behind the outcomes, haven't we? Because young people won't understand they're valuable unless they're highlighted to them. And that's going to be the adults around them to do that because they won't be able to make sense of that.

Speaker 24:39

That's right. And it's just about praising, praising efforts, not result. So even when you're praising the results, I'm really proud of how well you played in the soccer game in or in in in across the pond in the UK in the football game, in your PKs and all that. And I'm really proud of how hard you tried to get here and how you went to the practices and how you practiced in the backyard and how you envisioned it, and in and then you're you're switching it from just results to process. Now, the identity house. Um, the the metaphor that I have in in the book that I use all the time with myself and with my children and with the young kids that I coach uh is to think of identity like a house. And if you have a house that only has one room in it, and that room catches fire or floods, you have to move out of the house completely. It's going to be very disorienting. Whereas if you have a house that has multiple rooms in it, in one room catches fire or floods, then you can go seek refuge in one of the other rooms while the fire or flood works itself out. So to translate the metaphor more explicitly, if the only room in your identity house is basketball player and you get caught from your team or you have a really bad game, then that is no longer just getting cut from a basketball team. That is I no longer know what to do with myself as a human being. Whereas if you have rooms in your identity house such as basketball player, community member, person who loves reading books, um, volunteer, spiritual person, whatever it is, whatever the other rooms are, then it makes you more robust to the metaphorical floods and fires that happen in the sport room. And in this metaphor, I'm not arguing for balance. The rooms don't all have to be the same size. You don't have to spend the same amount of time in each room. If you're someone that's trying to get a collegiate scholarship, the biggest room in your identity house is probably going to be your sporting room. It just means that you can't completely leave the other rooms behind. You got to spend enough time in them so that you can use them to stabilize when you're experiencing frustration in the main room.

Speaker 1 26:47

Yeah, and I think that's a brilliant way of explaining that. And I think we all know that it's probably far, those of you who are listening, parents of younger athletes, it's far better to build the house with the rooms than it will be to pick up the pieces from the burnt down house later if there's only ever been one room, because that's uh that's a lot tougher when it's more ingrained and it they've lived on the room.

Speaker 27:13

That's right. And even with massive successes. So you look at um you tend to look at these case studies of athletes who who did make it, who played professionally, in some cases who won world championships. And when they transition out of sport, if they've only had one room in their identity house, they tend to suffer with depression and substance use disorders much more than if they've had multiple rooms in their identity house. Uh because imagine being 30, 31, 32, maybe 33, if you're lucky, 34, 35. And if all you've been doing in the only way you've seen yourself is as an athlete, and now your professional career is over, well then who are you? Yeah. But if you have some other ways that you identify, then you can lean into those other ways.

Speaker 1 28:00

Yeah, I I yeah, absolutely. I and I think for I think the pressure of systems sometimes causes some confusion for uh sports parents in this space because they think the the more they do, the better we'll be, and we'll all disappear into the sunset and the and the world's gonna be a happy place. But it's not as straightforward as that because we know kids who did a wider variety of sports when the younger potentially have got more chance of being elite. We also know that rest and recovery is also a key part of that, so that doesn't mean you have to do it for 12 months a year for every minute of your life, but I do think and not just not just physically, Gordon, but real quick, if if I can interject, also psychologically.

Speaker 28:45

Yeah, absolutely. So every kid is different and every temperament is different, but the vast majority of people perform best from a place of freedom. Uh in the literature, it's called a performance approach mindset. And if your 12-year-old steps up in the batter's box and their entire sense of self-worth is baseball because all they do and all they know is baseball, they're gonna have a lot of pressure on themselves. And they're gonna probably think, ooh, I can't strike out. If your kid steps up into that batter's box and they've trained hard and they've prepared, and yes, they care about baseball, but they also have friends outside of the sport and they also do well at school, and they also like reading, and they also have a dog that they love, and they also um are interested in playing soccer, even if they only play soccer in a recreational league, they still like it. That kid is gonna step into the batter's box and instead of thinking, oh no, I better not strike out, that kid's gonna probably think, Let me let it rip.

Speaker 1 29:43

Yeah.

Speaker 29:43

And that mindset is much more conducive to peak performance. Um, so it's this, it's this kind of like twisted paradox where we think the more time, energy, and mental resources we identify with the thing, the better we get. And that's true up to a point. But once you exceed that point, it actually can backfire.

Speaker 1 30:02

Yeah, brilliant. Um, you talk about recovery, uh, both physically and mentally. Uh, busy families, busy schedules. Yours is certainly very, very busy. Great that we found a slot um to do this, fitting everything in. Um, any thoughts on how families can just build a few of those into what is normally quite a chaotic week for a lot of people?

Speaker 30:25

Yeah, I think that every again, every family has to come up with their own set of um rules and systems for this. I think some families say uh no travel leagues until the kid is named that age. Other families might say we'll do travel leagues, but we're only going to travel to tournaments that are within an hour. Um other families might say that you're only doing one sport every season. Other families might say you can do two sports a season, but you have to pick which one is your primary one because when soccer and basketball are on the same day and they're only within a half an hour of each other, and your sister's also got dance, you have to choose do you want to do soccer or basketball? Um, so I just think it's about having some boundaries and some constraints because otherwise what ends up happening is you've got a kid on a travel baseball team, a travel soccer team, then you've got your other kid uh doing dance and softball. And next thing you know, your entire life is just going from one tournament and one practice to the next. The kids don't see each other, you don't see your spouse, and um and then the kids feel a lot of pressure to perform because the kids say, Oh my god, mom and dad have invested their whole life in driving me to practice. What if I don't do well? Um, so I I think that especially for younger kids, and I'll define younger kids as 13 and under, you know, before middle school, I think that um we often overemphasize the benefits of having that hectic travel schedule, and we don't account for the costs of what it does to lifestyle, to marriages, to relationships. And I want to be careful and caveat this with saying that there's always situations where it depends. If you live in a really small town and there's just no one that's nearly as good as your kid, and your kid wants the challenge of playing against good kids, that's a situation where playing on a travel team makes a lot of sense. Yeah. If you're in a small town where everyone's really good, then you can probably play in your rec league and it will be fine.

Speaker 1 32:24

Yeah, that's it. And again, the I think the beauty of this conversation again today is this idea that we're not really doing one size fits all here, are we, Brad? We're providing frameworks that are very individual, either for family units, young athletes, or even coaches and teachers. And that's important to stress because there's little nuances, isn't there, depending on these things. Goes back to context.

Speaker 32:50

And that in that and that is part and parcel to excellence. Uh to excellence as a parent, to excellence as a coach. Again, you think about an excellent writer or an excellent craftsperson or musician, and there are basic sets of principles and rules that you have to master. Right? To write a good song, you have to know enough about music theory, you have to have practiced enough, and you have to have those basic systems and principles mastered. But then, if all you do is follow a cookbook or follow a guide, you'll make a decent recipe, you'll write a decent song, but it's not going to be great. So, what makes someone great is when they know those rules, when they know those basic principles, and then they get really intimate and pay close attention with what they're doing in the moment, and they make these micro adjustments along the way to account for their situation. And I think that building a beautiful table or writing a beautiful song or training for a world championship as an athlete is not too dissimilar than coaching kids or even parenting kids. Like you're in a constant conversation with what's happening, and you have to take that feedback and then adjust, all the while having some basic principles.

Speaker 1 34:03

Yeah. Yeah, brilliantly put. Now I'm just conscious of time. Last couple of uh questions uh while we've got you here. I do enjoy the bit around excellence combines the mastery piece, the bit around, you know, and for that improving at uh something that matters to people. But I also like that other bit that people need to feel that their effort has meaning. And you call it, I think, uh, excellence combines mastery and mattering. Uh, do you want to just expand on that? What does it mean for us, do you think, as the adults around these young people?

Speaker 34:36

How do we support that? I think it is more important than ever. And if you get me going on this topic, Gordon, I'll get a little bit um maybe uh what's the right word? I don't want to get too dramatic, but I think that like you you youth sports can like truly save the world. And what I mean by this is right now in much of the developed world, you have all of these teens and young kids that grow up on screens and their social skills are deteriorating. They have really bad mental health issues, um, they don't put themselves out there, and they uh can fall into these rabbit holes where they get radicalized on the internet. And you know what the best antidote to that is? Doing real things in the real world with real people. You know what the best antidote to obesity is? Moving your body. And youth sports can combine all of this. So youth sports, when done right, gives kids something to compete for, helps their self-esteem, lets them have mastery, they improve and they feel like they matter because they are part of a team, they're part of a community. And guess what? You're doing it in person in your visceral body, not behind a screen. Yeah. So if we can get youth sports right, we can raise the next generation with these basic principles. However, if we mess this up and everybody quits youth sports because it's no fun, then you get a bunch of kids in dark corners of the internet becoming radicalized, and that's very bad. So mastery and mattering. Mastery, to get really explicit, is making tangible concrete progress on a skill that you're working at. And mattering is feeling like what you're doing matters and like you belong to something that is beyond yourself. And being a sports person inherently combines those two things.

Speaker 1 36:27

Yeah, and I I think to just sort of uh uh add, I think, to that, where I, you know, come from, I think, with a lot of work with parents and helping them develop young people, it still remains for me one of the safest vehicles to equip our kids with a wide range of character and life skills that will allow them to thrive in whatever walk of life they go into, but only if it's done well. That requires every and that requires everybody around the environment, the kids, the parents, the coaches, and the organizational values all to be pulling in the same direction with some consistency.

Speaker 37:05

That's right. And you don't have to be perfect as a parent. Um, because like you're gonna make mistakes, and that's okay. Like there's plenty of room for for errors and for mistakes. I caught myself, my my eight-year-old, uh, he's he's almost eight, I should say, seven and a half-year-old son in his baseball league. He's playing in fall baseball. And uh, it was the first season I didn't coach uh because I wanted him to have the experience of playing with a different coach. And I'm watching the games, I'm in the stands, and he's he's playing shortstop, and team hits a couple fly balls over his head, and he's playing really close in, and no one's telling him to move back. And I did it. I was the parent from the sideline. I said, Theo, take three steps back. And then the minute I said it, I said, What am I doing here? I'm not the coach. I'm not the coach. Like, just watch the game. And even me, who's sitting here recording this podcast with you, stumbles, and that's okay. It's just be be aware of that.

Speaker 1 38:01

Yeah. Oh, look, Brad, I mean, I I I talk on this topic every single day, and basically a lot of it is admitting my own mistakes. I mean, it's brilliant. It's brilliant, isn't it? You know, we talk about all these things with parents, and then I'm sat at home and I've done something today, and I'm like, what are you doing? You talk about people not to do that every day, and you've just done it. And that sums up how hard this whole thing is in supporting young people. But I do think the more we talk, the more we understand what excellence may mean, the more we know about how we can support young people in a real way. I think the real way is the important, not the the the come by our way, in a real way that's realistic to the world. Um, I had a couple of young performers, Brad, say to me recently, and I bet you've had this with a couple of sort of athletes, late teens, who said, Gordon, um I wish somebody had told me what the world's actually like. It had gone too much the other it had gone too much the other way, and they just weren't prepared for what came next. They were nowhere near equipped because we hadn't set them up in a way that was going to allow them to thrive. And that that was a tough one to hear because I sort of blamed the adult, I blamed the adults for that.

Speaker 39:19

Yeah, I think that's right. I think the pendulum swung pretty hard from old school 80s, 90s, uh borderline, truly abusive coach. Absolutely up to yeah, yeah. To kumbaya, if you're feeling any discomfort, you don't have to do it, and to fragility, essentially. And what what I'm trying to do is is acknowledge that, you know, I love your language of um, I think you said like demanding love or loving and demanding uh of intensity and joy in in talking about how real excellence, real craftspeople in any domain, masters of crafts, um, they do realize that sometimes things are hard and sometimes things suck and sometimes things are uncomfortable. And you do need a lot of discipline in personal responsibility and accountability. And you've got to have your own back and you've got to play the infinite game, and you've got to be able to laugh at yourself. Um, and you've got to be able to take the work really seriously, but never take yourself too seriously.

Speaker 1 40:19

And you know what? I think what a fantastic way to call it a day on today's episode. Because I was gonna ask you, how do we finish this? And I think you've just done that uh beautifully with that that closing remark. Brad, uh absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Um, we will be including uh all the details to Brad's book, uh Brad's previous work, Brad's previous book, uh The Master of Change, was also an excellent read. Thoroughly enjoyed that. We will include that on all the media, all the show notes. Um Brad, thank you for joining us, and we look forward to maybe doing it again one day in the future. Who knows, perhaps with another new book coming out as well.

Speaker 40:58

Thank you so much, Gordon. This was a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 1 41:03

Thank you for listening. Check it out at parentinsport.co.uk.