Learnings and Missteps
The Learnings and Missteps Podcast is about unconventional roads to success and the life lessons learned along the way.
You will find a library of interviews packed with actionable take aways that you can apply as you progress on your career path.
Through these interviews you will learn about the buttons you can push to be a better leader, launch a business, and build your influence.
Find yourself in their stories and know that your path is still ahead of you.
Learnings and Missteps
Steve Mellor on Resilience and Defining Your Path
Ever wondered how the relentless drive for success can shape and even challenge personal relationships and life pursuits? Join us for an engrossing conversation with Steve Mellor, an executive coach and former world-class swimmer, as he unpacks the paradox of hyper-competitiveness. With tales from his transformation from a fiercely competitive athlete to a more aligned individual, Steve illustrates how this drive can be both a superpower and a vulnerability. His insights pave the way for understanding the delicate balance of maintaining meaningful connections while striving for excellence.
Experience the power of resilience and ownership through Steve's personal anecdotes, as he shares pivotal moments that led him to shift from sports to coaching, focusing on the non-linear paths of growth and success. From working with executives to helping athletes like Brooks Curry achieve gold at the Olympics, Steve's stories emphasize the significance of belief and perseverance. Learn about the importance of defining your journey, recognizing when to persist, and when it's time to change direction to align with your aspirations.
In a reflective discussion, we explore the integral roles of introspection and curiosity in uncovering potential and fostering genuine understanding. Steve reveals the power of intuition in coaching and how curiosity can prevent assumptions and foster clarity in communication. Our conversation also touches on his rebranding journey to Growth Ready, highlighting a commitment to personal development and creating impactful experiences. Listen in to discover how aligning with your optimal self can lead to a ripple effect of positivity and fulfillment, both personally and within your community.
Connect with Steve at:
Instagram @coachstevemellor
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-mellor-cc/
https://growthready.com/
Make yourself a priority and get more done: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
I was the kid growing up where the game didn't get to end until I won. You know that would mean that we're playing long after the sun went down. Communication is not communication. If it's one way, it has to be two ways. It's not about perfection, it's about direction. You will always have way more reasons not to than you will to do something, and in order to pursue your optimal self, you have to focus on the one reason why and find a reason to push away the four or five reasons. And that is my promise to anyone and everyone that I interact with through my life.
Speaker 2:What is going on L&M family family. If you have any interest, curiosity, and especially if you have a passion for human performance and human potential, I got a special nugget for you. I had the opportunity of spending some time with our guest previously, maybe a month or so back, and he has granted us the gift of coming on the Learnings and missteps podcast, mr steve meller, who you might notice his accent, you might be able to tell he's from louisiana, maybe, maybe not. He's an executive coach. He is the founder of growth ready and he also has a podcast.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I had the opportunity to play there, so clearly he is very accepting of weirdos because he let me be on his podcast. And not only is he a devoted husband and father, he's also a professional speaker and an author. There's all kinds of stuff that I'm going to try to contain myself and dive into so that the family out there can get some value out of it and dive into so that the family out there can get some value out of it. And folks, if you're new, this is the Learnings and Missteps podcast, where you get to see how real people just like you are sharing their gifts and talents to leave this world better than they found it. I'm Jesse, and now you are going to get to know Mr Steve, mr.
Speaker 1:Steve, how are you? Sir Jesse? I'm doing wonderful, brother. Any hour I get to spend in my day with your energy is an hour well spent, so I just appreciate the opportunity. I am so well-versed in lessons and making the incorrect step that I could not be in a better place to talk, I think, right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, good, good, so we're going to have some fun. So I did a little bit of stalking on the interwebs, on the socials, and you are a world-class competitor, right Like, you've been at the highest levels, and so the L&M family wants to know what advice do you have for hyper-competitive people, managing their pursuit of excellence and staying connected with the human beings that are most important to them?
Speaker 1:So much in one question. You know the connection that you finish the question there, this idea of remaining connected to the people around you. I think hyper-competitiveness it can be a superpower. It can also be an absolute kryptonite in terms of just how you truly handle this thing that we call life. And when I think about my background, you know the sport we'll probably get into it, but my sport growing up was swimming, swam at a very high level, became a top 50 world-class athlete in my respective event, coached at an even higher level, and for me that competitiveness is as pure today as it was back then. The difference between the 39-year-old Steve that's talking to you now versus that 18, 19-year-old version of Steve that used to be able to rock a Speedo and look good in it, as opposed to is that that 18, 19 year old competitiveness was at all costs.
Speaker 1:If I look back to that time, when it came to the costs themselves, in the grand scheme of life they were pretty insignificant. I'm talking about I had to maybe lose a few friendships, or I had to maybe say no to this party on a Friday night, or whatever it was. And then, as life evolves, the stakes get greater. Right, the stakes continue to grow. We find a spouse, maybe we have a child, we have a house. So adamant about achieving that, it becomes easy to become disconnected to the things that truly matter, because you get too focused on that one thing that matters in your mind, for whatever reason, it matters most. When life has this way of teaching us that, can we, just as we pursue this excellence and as life grows around us, can we find that alignment between the two and you'll notice I didn't say the word balance Alignment Can we find that alignment between pursuing high performance but then holding ourselves to the same standards when it comes to the relationships that we have in our lives too, those things that truly matter? Are we able to shift that alignment at times towards what matters most? So for me, man, it's an evolution. It never ends.
Speaker 1:I'm 39. I'm referencing the 18, 19-year-old version of myself. There'll be a day where I'm 59. And I look back on this 39-year-old version of myself and I'm like man. That kid learned a lot in the last 20 years. The same way that kid back in 19,.
Speaker 1:He's learned a lot too. But man, it's all about that alignment right, and I think when we get that alignment, everything else seems to fall into place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, good. I love your answer for a lot of reasons and I hope what the listener gets out of this is like there's no silver bullet, particularly this alignment versus I shouldn't say versus, but alignment or balance. And I have a perspective on intensity which maybe we'll get into a little bit down the road. But, being a competitor at the level that you've been at and I'm sure you still bring the same intensity to the way you serve your clients today how early did you discover that your appetite to compete and grow and learn and improve was different than your peers? When did that become aware?
Speaker 1:obvious I mean early, early, early early. I was man. I was a kid growing up where the game didn't get to end until I won you know it was and that that would mean that we're playing long after the sun went down. Man, man Like again. I was always the young I don't know why it was or how it happened but pretty much from the age of about eight until 16, 17, I was always around kids two, three, four years older than me, and you know you talk about dog, eat dog, be competitive. It's like, hey, if I don't show up and keep my chest out and hold my head high, I'm going to get eaten alive around these bigger, stronger, faster guys in all these different sports that I was playing, and what that really showed me, though, was that I was never deterred and that's kind of where I'm going to here is like even in those moments where I maybe lost 20 times, but I won the 21st time, for the lesson that came out of that every time was that you didn't get deterred. In those defeats, you found ways to say hey, on to the next one, on to the next one, and that's where I really noticed the difference growing up was that, when you're around sport.
Speaker 1:One of the stories that rarely gets told is the majority of people that compete in sport give up at some point. Every single age group you go. Another few kids drop out, their commitments go elsewhere. And I use the term give up lightly because at the end of the day sometimes it's just a matter of hey, my attention has moved elsewhere, my commitments are elsewhere, whatever it may be. And so at a certain point you get to that 17, 18 years old and you're moving into a senior level of sport and you have decisions to make about your entire life, nevermind the sport. Like, hey, am I, am I in on this sport? Am I, should I be more in on this part of my education now and all this kind of stuff. And suddenly now it's like, hey, everybody at this point has not been deterred, everybody at this point has kept going.
Speaker 1:So now that you're at this level, the senior level, the international level, as I eventually got to, then it becomes about okay, in this really small vacuum of performance, can you still remain focused and create and maintain that momentum in your work and in your results where you still don't get deterred? And that's to really fast forward. Now to what I'm doing with executives and business owners and emerging leaders. That is what I get to do now with them. They'll tell me at some point this is what I want to achieve and as we go through the adversities and the rollercoaster that is their business and life, my goal is to ensure that we don't get deterred. We stay on it, man. We keep going, because that thing that you wanted to do three months ago, it's still the case today. Maybe the adversity is getting the better of you today, but we cannot allow ourselves to get deterred on whatever that end goal, whatever that end vision is that we have in mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so much there, right? Sometimes it's really just a matter of keeping on, just keep going. For me, the reason it's hard to keep going is because it's so easy to stop, like, I mean, you've got a podcast right? Did you have a million downloads on your first episode?
Speaker 1:I still don't have a million downloads after 240 episodes.
Speaker 2:So it would be easy to just stop. But no, I don't know about you, but I know for me. Anytime, you know, when I start kind of losing the wind in my sails and I'm like, man, this is a whole lot of effort, you got to schedule, you got to edit, you got to blah, blah, blah, right around that time somebody will send me a text and say, man, I listened to such and such episode and it's exactly what I needed. The thing I got from it is going to help me. I'm like okay, I got juice for another year, let's go, is that the same? Oh, my goodness, okay, good. So, folks, if you didn't catch it, let me say it one more time Keep on keeping on, especially when it gets hard.
Speaker 2:Now there's probably some well, let's get into that here in a bit around. What are the signals or maybe criteria that somebody should use to decide that this is not the direction I need to go and maybe it's time for a shift in direction. But we'll come back to that. You started super competitive. If anybody was going to play a game with you Monopoly basketball, it didn't matter. They were going to play until you won, which I think is freaking fantastic. Then you got into swimming. Then you're a coach, professional speaker and advisor to amazing careers. Did you have it planned out and has it happened in the timeline that you expected?
Speaker 1:the skill of not being deterred was through the lessons and through the missteps. And so to this question too. It's like if you're trying to paint this perfect picture and we were joking before we got recording how growth and progress and improvement and success is not linear and I kind of joke with you I don't think there's even a line. I don't think there's even. Let's just stop trying to paint a line period, Like why don't we just say, hey, this thing, it's just a process in itself. Let's not define the law, let's not give it a line, let's not give it a path, let's just accept that this is an experience that we're all going through and we have the opportunity to own it. And I think that's the biggest part for me.
Speaker 1:I speak about this on stage all the time when I talk about growth. Growth is when you actually look at the dictionary definition. It's an incredibly vague term. It's not. People think when I say, hey, Jesse, man, we should focus on growth, and you're like heck, yeah, man, let's do it. We both think we understand what one another's saying, but if we then get pulled aside by someone else and say, hey, Jesse, define growth, Steve, define growth, we're going to have two different answers. We're going to have two different answers, and I'm sure every listener on this call is going to have a different answer for how they define growth. Now, that's okay, as long as you give it a strong enough definition where you're actually owning it, Because when we keep it vague, we keep it at an arm's length, we don't actually own it in that moment.
Speaker 1:And so when we talk about these ideas of our lives and this direction that we want to go on, that's all well and good. If you don't want to own it, then good luck with actually bringing any of that to fruition. And you can't then have the audacity to complain about where you're at if you're not willing to take ownership for the direction you're going in. And that's hard for people to accept. Man, it's really hard for people to accept.
Speaker 1:But for me, when I go back and look at my lifespan, you could never have convinced me I would have gone into swim coaching. I did it for 10 years. You could never have convinced me that I was going to be an entrepreneur here I am three years into it now. You could never have told me that I was going to be on stage speaking about a story of how I took an Olympic swimmer to an Olympic gold. That had no right, even considering that that was a possibility. But here I am telling these stories today because what I've allowed myself to do is simply own the experience that is my life and own what it is I want to get out of it, Outside of that man I give it up to the guy upstairs. He has a huge influence on that but at the same time I'm also being comfortable enough that this experience that we're all going through it's evolving as we go through it. We just have to be comfortable enough and own that part of it.
Speaker 2:Why is it ownership? You said the word multiple times. I'm not disagreeing, but can you fill in the blanks for the listener out there? I hear you say own. Why is that important and what does that look like?
Speaker 1:So I'll actually do it the other way around. So what it looks like, and then why it's important. So what it looks like, is you really putting your stamp on what it is you want and why it is you want it? And then there's this third piece that we rarely do why is it that you're the one that should make it happen? So it's not just what do I want and why do I want it, but why you? Why are you called to do this? Why are you the one that should do this? Because when we get to the heart of that third part of this, jesse, that's when the ownership happens. That's when we actually we see ourself owning it.
Speaker 1:It's not just this concept anymore, it's not this idea anymore. It's something and this is the other word I like to use around ownership. It's something we possess. We possess it. It's our vision, it's our dream, it's our legacy. However, you want to look at it, because we see us being the one bringing it to fruition, because we've defined why. We've defined why we are the one that can make it happen. As opposed to, this seems like a great idea, and this is why I want to do it. No, no, no. Go one step further, go one step further. Why are you the one that's going to make this happen? And answering that question and getting better about the way you answer that question, brother. That's how we develop ownership over time.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm going to have to rewrite that and maybe get a tattoo of it.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't be the first person that is considered a tattoo based on something that I said.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate that. Well, it's clearly like 100% evidence of why you're a professional speaker. And so we got a lot of people that are listening, that have big dreams, hopes that maybe are terrified. Like man, I can't motivate people to get tattoos of my words, yet Maybe I shouldn't be a public speaker. And so did you take a class? What was the journey in your head, the evolution for you to come to terms with being on stage and then saying, yeah, I'm a professional speaker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the question.
Speaker 2:But first I want to give the L&M family member shout out. I got this awesome comment on the LinkedIn from Mr Edmund. Edmund says Jesse, your raw and real approach in an error where so much is camouflaged is rare and admirable. Keep it going. I respect your authenticity, edmund. Thank you, bro. Cause that that really makes me feel good. Cause sometimes I'm worried that I'm offending people or I might be losing credibility, but the truth is, if you don't have credibility, there's nothing to lose. So I think I'm okay there.
Speaker 1:I think it's such an important question because I think there's probably going to be people listening here that will try to discourage themselves and discourage themselves, but even try to justify why they should not speak. I actually have a number of my clients that I don't coach people on speaking, but now and again when I'm doing my executive coaching, it will come up and like, hey, I've got this opportunity to go speak or hey, I'm going to go on this podcast. I just don't know why I should be doing it and a lot of that. It's an opportunity for a person to really explore the value that they're bringing and the impact that they can provide. I think the more we make it about the external benefit, the less the more we get out of our own way.
Speaker 1:For me, I learned early on in my life I was one of these interesting kids growing up man where I was both the athlete and the actor. So usually in school it's like there's the sports people and there's the drama people. I was bouncing between the two. I was a little hybrid, and so up until as far as I went with my sport up until about 18, I I was actually quite committed to my acting too, performing, and so I did that all the way through the age of 18. And that was one of my biggest crossroads in life. Was I chose sports over that?
Speaker 1:But once I committed to going to college in the US at 20, I decided to do my degree in communication media, because I just felt as though part of my calling in life was to just communicate to people. I didn't know how I was going to do it, going back to that question earlier, like I didn't have that perfect, hey, this is what it's going to bring me to. I just knew where my passion and where my talents lay and I wanted to make sure that I was fine tuned in those to the best of my ability. And lo and behold, I went 15 years after getting that degree until I started considering getting on stages.
Speaker 2:Oh wow.
Speaker 1:So, the passion never went away. The talent also never went away. And here's something I really want to suggest to you and just make clear to your listeners, because I'm assuming you've got a lot of people on that listen to this who are leaders, people that are at some point in their day or their week. They are the voice in the room, not a voice in the room. They are the voice in the room.
Speaker 1:If you have an issue about being on stage, forget it, because you're already on stage. You're already on a stage. You're just not above people on a stage. You're not scheduled to be on a stage. That's the only thing that's different, because those people are giving you their undivided attention and you're doing the work around yourself to gain their respect and to demand their undivided attention. That is no different than anything that I'm doing on a stage. The only difference is I'm scheduled to get on the stage at a certain time. The speech is a little bit more worked out, there's probably a few more people in the audience, that's it. That's the only difference. The game itself is the same.
Speaker 2:The field is only the field, that's it. That's the only difference. The game itself is the same the field, it's only the field that's different. Oh yeah, One of my favorite things of speaking up on stage is that I'm too far to see people rolling their eyes. I can't see them roll their eyes when I'm in the office. I can see them roll their eyes.
Speaker 1:When I speak here in Louisiana. I mean you made that joke at the front end, but I think that's everyone in the audience is probably thinking man, he's a Louisiana British dude. And it's just like whenever I'm speaking in Louisiana, the response in the back is always hilarious because most people are just like what is this guy saying? You know? Like what is he?
Speaker 1:I think I know what he's saying it sounds really, he sounds really intelligent. He might not be intelligent, but he sounds intelligent just because of his accent. But yeah, it is funny. But like you said that, that close proximity, yeah, you got to, you got to deal with those, that body language a little bit more in your face, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and that feedback loop is instant. And just to reinforce what you said, you're leading meetings, you're having these crucial conversations as a leader where you've got responsibility within an organization. You already have the skillset and you have reps and reps of doing the speaking. It's just like you said, just a different field. I think that's a phenomenal framework to help people get through it. So thank you for that. Now, Shock the World. You wrote a book, Shock the World. Where did that happen and what was the experience of production like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's about to turn two years old. The book as we record this today and the story itself came from what ended up being pretty much my last act as a swim coach. So I, in 2019, I had a young, up and coming talent called Brooks Curry come to LSU. So I used to be the associate head coach for swimming at LSU and he was very unrecruited but highly talented, highly motivated, but for whatever reason, people just didn't take an interest in him. I took an interest in him because I saw what he was capable of. And in 2019, he came into my office and he said listen, coach, I'm feeling pretty good about my development. I know this might sound crazy, but I feel as though, if we do things right, I could be in with a shot to qualify for the US Olympic team. Now, if he'd walked into just about any other office in the world of college swimming and swimming period, not a lot of coaches would have taken him seriously. I heard him and I'm like listen, if that's where you want to go, I want to go there with you. Just know this If we pull it off, brother, we're going to shock the world. We're going to shock the world.
Speaker 1:And it became Jesse. It became our mantra for the whole journey we went on. At first it was only going to be like a 10-month window that we had to do this, and then the pandemic came in 2020. The Olympics get pushed back a year. It wasn't ideal from a training standpoint, but it did give us an extra year to then pull it off. And, lo and behold, he was 100-meter freestyle. We qualified for the Us olympic trials. They take four guys for the 100 freestyle because it's an olympic, it's a relay event, and brooks only went in place fourth at the olympic trials and made it to the olympic games. And and then he got himself an olympic gold medal on the back end too.
Speaker 1:So it's just, it was a wild story. It was too incredible and powerful. I mean in my hairs. I literally can't tell that story without the hairs on my arms going up and it was too impressive a story for it not to be shared with the world, and so we shocked the world of swimming, and what the book really talks to is that the world is not as we know it in terms of the universe. The world is you, your world, you. We all live in our own world and there is a way that you can shock that world in how you go about doing what it is you do. The question is, what does that world look like that you want to shock? And now how do you want to go through the process of actually shocking that world? And that's what the book does, man, we pull from all these different podcast episodes that I've recorded, all these different guests, all this sort of stuff comes in, but it is something I'm so proud of.
Speaker 1:It blows my mind still that people like not only read my book but then come back and tell me it's good. You know, it's just like. Oh, I got some like sixth grade english teachers that have been massively proven wrong, so I'm excited about that. But that's another. That's the competitor in me right now. Man, like he's coming, yeah, like I showed you, I showed you sixth grade english teacher.
Speaker 1:I got that one, so I love it.
Speaker 2:I totally. I don't know if she's listening, but I have a friend, dear friend. I've known her since sixth grade. We were, we'll say, boyfriend and girlfriend going around that's what we used to call it back then and she broke up with me because I and she told me she's like Jesse, I'm breaking up with you because you're bad for my image. We're sixth graders, right Like that. That hurt that. She's an English teacher now and I do a lot of speaking within the like in the education space for a little bit, publish the book, and so I'm like hey, girl, like how you like me.
Speaker 2:Now it's the competitive. We got to get some friends on the board and celebrate them every time we get them. Okay, now you said something like this gentleman that you that was like under recruited got a gold medal. You saw capability in him that most people missed now. Well, so this question is related to that and I'm curious have you ever seen, like, how do you? There's the question how do you manage seeing potential within somebody and maybe guiding them, introducing them to it at the rate that they can achieve versus the rate you want them to get?
Speaker 1:it. Yeah, it's an important question, man. Again, what I love about your question so far is it speaks to your experience of as a leader, working and having these conversations with people, and it's kind of twofold in my response. One is how have you gone through that process yourself? So how have you actually acknowledged your own potential and worked through it? Because you know as well as I do that there's all these folks over the years that we've been on this planet, where you have a leader who's so adamant about getting the best out of everybody else and you want to go well, hey, hey, hey, hey, what about you? Because I don't see you. You seem so adamant about me, but I want to see you adamant about you, and so for me the potential piece is huge on that.
Speaker 1:So I look back on my life. I had hundreds of athletes who I saw potential in that they couldn't see in themselves, and so for me it was always about hey, how am I? How am I being that example to them? How am I showing them listen, steve is trying to get everything out of himself, and I can do that in ways where I'm not literally telling them that I'm doing it. They can just see it being displayed. So that's the first part of it, but then the second part of it, too, is are you willing to press pause for long enough to learn what someone's potential might look like? Because if you're operating from your perspective, what's probably happening is you're putting your thoughts into what this person's potential is and you might be way off just because you've just not been willing to press pause for long enough to dial in and say, well, actually, now that we talk about it, now that I see, now that I learn, turns out there's this potential in you that I hadn't even considered because I hadn't been willing to press pause for long enough to identify it. And that is again when I think, coming from sport, man like you get used to it, especially once you become a coach of.
Speaker 1:Every parent thinks they've got the next Michael Phelps right. Every parent thinks their kid's the next Michael Phelps and at a certain point you're like's the next Michael Phelps, and at a certain point you're like I'm sorry, kid's not, and that's hard for you to hear right now. But here's what they can be. They can still be really, really good, but if you treat them like Michael Phelps, they're going to quit. They're not even going to try. If you treat them in terms of where their potential truly lies, they're going to go on and have a wonderfully successful, fulfilling career in this, but you've got to want to see it for them and stop wanting to see it for you.
Speaker 2:It's like you're reading my mind. You can see all the garbage I've put people through. I had one apprentice he was amazing. The dude was solid, like just naturally gifted apprentice. I was a plumber. He was my apprentice and I decided that I was going to coach him through there's like a national craft championship where it's an installation thing and it's national competition. He hadn't even started his apprenticeship program but I decided that David was going to be competing in that thing and I was going to help him get there and he was going to be a foreman within three and a half years. Like, I mapped this whole thing out for him and after maybe a year of working with me, he quit and we worked together every day. We had lunch together and he I had there was no indication that he was going to quit and he quit and he went to work for the school district and I'm like, why would you do that? And finally, after he left, he feed me. A couple of days later I became able to get ahold of him. He's like Jess, you just put too much pressure on me, like, and you never asked me what I wanted to do, and I was like, oh and? So there's this thing where I've done it I know some of the L&M family members have done it where we see a glimmer or something that resembles potential in an individual, but we don't take account that maybe we're projecting something A, b.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are seeing something, but what we're seeing is the resources that the individual has and what we would do if we had them. And then we try to force them and push them into these nooks and crannies that they're not designed for, or rather, that the nooks and crannies aren't designed to help them thrive and wear them out, whereas what we should be doing is help them become resourceful so that they learn how to access those things. And, like you said, the pause right, what else is there? Because there's not just one thing. So, again, like that's a master, master skill. Did you write that skill? Like, how did you come to terms with picking that apart and saying, okay, I need to pause, which sounds simple, but I don't think it's simple no, and and what one thing you'll learn.
Speaker 1:One thing I I kind of describe myself as a social scientist like because it's. I'm probably doing a little of a disservice to the true meaning of a social scientist when I say that sometimes, but what I mean by that is that I learned through doing. I am a graduate of the School of Trial and Error, and for me and I go back every year to renew it too so I look back to when I was 24 and I started volunteering in the summer to coach some swimming with the college team that I just finished swimming with and I was a backstroke swimmer and I would look at the backstrokers and I would just be like I don't get it, why are you not getting what I'm trying to get you to understand? Well, I was looking at it through my many, many years of swimming backstroke. I wasn't looking at it through any of their years of swimming backstroke, and so for me, I was able to see that quickly, and one thing I've always been very good at again is just that ability to say like hold up intuitively, something's off what you're saying and what they're hearing, or what you're hearing and what they're saying, my intuition's kicking in saying there's something up here, and for me to learn that ability to pause at 24, 25 when I'm working with these athletes and saying, hey, help me understand.
Speaker 1:Going right back to that first answer that I gave you here today what is it you want? Why is it you want? Why is it you want it and why are you the one that can actually go and do it? To have that kind of conversation with someone and then coach them? It's just like, oh wow, no longer am I holding you accountable to something that I want for you. Now I'm helping you be accountable to what you want, and it's just like let's go, baby, let's go.
Speaker 1:This is when great things happen, because now the accountability is shared, if not owned, by the individual. And then you talk about potential. You're basing potential on what is right in front of you and what that person wants, and that is. That's huge. That's really how I've learned things over the years. And again to the whole premise of this show man, I am comfortable getting that lesson by taking that misstep, acknowledging the misstep and then coming right back into my own shoes and saying, okay, what did we learn from this and how do we move forward and make it better in the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh. So a couple of things. I love what you said in that you're not holding them accountable, You're helping holding them accountable. You're helping them be accountable.
Speaker 2:A lot of people know I have a hangup about the word accountability and the way we use it or the way we think about it, because it's almost always coming from a punitive perspective, in that we don't hold people accountable. You can't. You can't hold me accountable to any commitment I haven't made, which speaks to what you just said. If I've made a commitment, you can help me be accountable to my commitments. If you want accountability, be accountable. It doesn't work any other way, or at least not in Jesse land. So thank you for that Super, super good. Now the other thing that comes through is I feel like you have a very developed muscle for introspection and evaluating your motives and the impact they're having on the experience you're having in the moment. Is that something that you built? Did you? How did you build that? Or is it something that just kind of man, I got lucky and I used the hell out of it?
Speaker 1:Well, I have no doubt that God blessed me with it. There's no doubt about that. It freaks people out. Sometimes, I'll be honest with you, I can be having a very surface level conversation with someone and we're about five minutes in and we've only known each other for five minutes, and they'll say something and my intuition will kick in right away and I'll say something to them and they're just like how could you possibly sort of read that? Like how did you and I like to play with people at times when it comes to that, have a little bit of fun, but as a coach, it's a superpower, no doubt it allows me to really be in a room with someone, pick up on body language, pick up on energy.
Speaker 1:All this kind of stuff is a skill that you must practice and it's that willingness to sometimes maybe think that you're being intuitive and speak to something and be comfortable knowing that when you speak to it, someone's going to turn around and say, no, that's not what I'm feeling at all, and it's like okay, that's great, my intuition was wrong. Now I know better, moving forwards, and what I now know is that, based on our relationship, I can now be intuitive more effectively with you. You know again, I'm a married man you use too much intuition with your wife. You end up in the doghouse. Real often it's just like hey, check in and ask the question, don't like. And again, there's a very fine line between intuition and assumption. I believe the fine line is the ability to speak on it versus act on it. So the intuition piece you speak on, the assumption piece you just go and act on and that usually ends up in trouble. Again.
Speaker 1:Going back to my education in communication, I do believe that degree served me, even in the sports world, because it allowed me just to really honor that two people have to be involved in communication. Communication is not communication. If it's one way, it has to be two ways, you know. And so again, like getting an athlete to actually say yes, coach, and this I understand, coach, and all this kind of thing, as opposed to scream and then walk away. So for me that is huge. But I think that fine line, when we start to notice that we're acting without communicating, that's when we move away from that intuition and we now moved into assumption and typically, well, we know what a suit is right. It makes you an ass out of you and me. So there you go right there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, Okay. So I perused your website and I noticed like there was like a four-step thing. It was a framework, a process, I'm not sure, but it was curiosity. The first thing that stood out to me was curiosity. What's the relationship between this intuition and speaking on it and curiosity in terms of how you serve your clients?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, curiosity. It's such an underutilized skill because I believe that there's a point in our lives when we're kids and we're going through school and everything is play, play, play, play, play right. And I've got a four-year-old boy. He, all he does is play and his curiosity is off the charts.
Speaker 1:And as we go through education, curiosity not to make this a completely different conversation, but the fact is, curiosity is kind of slowly made smaller and smaller, squeeze out of us because we're told it's this test, this is right, this is wrong, all this kind of stuff, and our mind goes in that direction, understandably so. And so the question becomes how are you working that curiosity muscle? It's a muscle, it's like any other of these traits that we've talked about today is what does it mean to be curious but actually intentionally be curious, to wonder, to ask questions that typically you would maybe keep quiet and not keep to yourself because you're too scared about asking the question, whatever it may be. And so curiosity, I believe in the coaching world. What that does for me is it makes it about the person, it doesn't make it about me.
Speaker 1:If I'm truly curious. Again, I'm not assuming I'm asking questions, I want to better understand, I want to know, and I'm not doing it for my own purpose, because I don't think that's curiosity. Curiosity is to truly understand, based on another person, whoever it may be, or another situation, whatever that may be. So I think, for me, the reason I put it right there, square and center on my website website's about to get a huge upgrade through my rebrand and all this kind of thing but curiosity is one of these three Cs that I utilize in my coaching. And it's the first C, because without curiosity, the other two Cs, which are challenging and commitments, those two don't make sense if we don't start with curiosity.
Speaker 2:Which again frees us from the pitfalls of assumptions. To be curious means I'm not going to act on my assumptions, and it's one thing that I like to spend a lot of time is like whenever I'm in the right space, because I don't do it all the time, but it's OK, I'm making a decision. I want to respond in a certain way based on this set of assumptions. I know I have assumptions. Why do I think that? Where is that assumption coming from? Because it may not be right. Most often, like you said earlier, it's not, and so that requires a huge, huge degree of curiosity. Now, with your clients, the curiosity might feel like this squishy kind of Disneyland type of notion. And you're serving high performers, people that have significant responsibility, significant authority and influence, so curiosity feels kind of squishy. And then you also mentioned earlier a delineation between balance and alignment. Yeah, alignment. And so how do people respond to that when you're interacting with your clients and you're saying, well, no, no, no, not balance, alignment and curiosity, what does that feel like for you?
Speaker 1:I love that notice because, again, curiosity it's not much of a skill if we don't know why or what we're being curious toward. There's still so much to be better framed and articulated and created within the coaching world. The coaching world remains this kind of big bag of gray right now. People just sort of maybe they get an attaboy about how they recently dealt with another colleague and they're like, hey, you could be a coach. And suddenly now this person's on LinkedIn saying that they're a coach. And sadly, that is the space that the coaching world is right now, that there's not much of a process to actually define what a coach is and what a coach isn't.
Speaker 1:For me, the curiosity piece and the alignment piece, you couldn't have connected better one-two punch of what I do as a coach, because the first thing we do whenever I work with anyone is we go through what's called a strategic alignment and it's like, hey, this is where we are. Let's get super clear on where we want to get to Now. We're not going to get again. Like I said before, there's no straight line. We're not going to get focused about perfection, it's about direction. It's not about perfection, it's about direction. So that's the destination, this is the current state, and all I want to know is what is the commitment towards getting over here at some point to the destination? Once we're clear on that, now the curiosity is towards how do we get there? Not just about, hey, how do I work on this or how do I work on that, or something came in my email today and I'm really curious about what that might mean for my life and I'm like, well, what does that have to do with anything that we're working on right now? It's like I'm not here just to sort of hypothesize and wonder and generalize when you brought me in to go from here and achieve this specific direction.
Speaker 1:Ideally, if we are so aligned in that agreement on the front end, then all the curiosity is being held accountable to that destination. And so, again, it's why, for me, part of my curiosity and challenge and commitment is that every commitment we make, once we go through curiosity and I challenge you around the curiosity once we make a commitment, one of my sort of absolute non-negotiables is that that commitment must bring us back around to curiosity. So, whatever you achieve, whatever you achieve in that commitment by going away and doing it in the time between when I saw you last and when I see you next, if we've not come back with greater curiosity by pursuing that commitment, it's the wrong commitment. If it takes us just to, hey, check it off the list, okay, now what, coach? That's not serving the process.
Speaker 1:Great thing is that, hey, sometimes you're going to make a commitment and you're not going to follow through with it, and that's okay, because we can come back and then be super curious about well, hey, you sounded super excited about this commitment last time we spoke and then you've done nothing about it. Let's talk about that. Yeah, are we aligned? Are we off or whatever it might be? And so again, the curiosity in the alignment piece. Man, you couldn't have hit it better, like in terms of those two truly working using that word in alignment, but they're collaborating with one another throughout the process, because where we're aligned in terms of the strategy and the vision, we're going to constantly be curious towards that vision man, it's a beautiful reinforcing loop and if it's not having that cycle, that reciprocal effect, then that's a signal.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we need to go a different direction, maybe we pick the wrong direction. Oh my goodness, thank you for that, because that excites me. There's questions that I run through my head, especially when I'm stuck. I'm wondering, so I'd like a check from you. Does this kind of land in the curiosity bucket? One of the questions I ask myself is what is also true, what could I do to address the issue and what's the worst thing that can happen?
Speaker 1:I'm writing these down, man, we're doing a little impromptu coaching session now. So what I would say about that is that there is no doubt that that is moving towards curiosity, and there's almost an opportunity to see it to add one more thing to that of just like always running it through the filter of the other, and again, I'm sure you're doing that to an extent but to say, like what is also true, what could I do differently or better? And then what's the worst thing that could happen? And I think, with that curiosity, when we make it only about ourselves and typically people like yourself and those working in high performance, there is some sort of collateral damage to every decision that's made, right, yes, so again, that is such an important part of this piece is that? And it's what I love about the work that I do, as opposed to just working with one member of an executive team, I work with the entire executive team, and so when one member of the executive team is speaking to something in a group environment, we then get to get into the really powerful good stuff, because we're now talking about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, I hear what you're saying. Hey, other four, what are you hearing when you hear that? And it's just like well, I don't think you're hearing it from the perspective of our department or from this section of the company. Okay, let's talk to that. Let's get curious about that piece of this. How can we see it from every single angle? And so like that for me is, if we can do that and I know you're working with people where there's always going to be that knock-on effect to the work that you're doing, and I have no doubt that you're already considering that but to be really intentional about that piece of just hey, what is that knock-on effect of anything that we're talking about, that commitment that you're going to go away and do? Awesome, really excited about it. Let's just check in before we go. Is there a potential knock-on effect that we're not considering?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, thank you for that, because full transparency I don't do that as often as I should and I end up like, oh, I created problems, this is my fault, I did it again.
Speaker 1:And I want to be and just to be clear. I love that vulnerability on your part to even share that with your listeners, and I always try to make this clear in any of these kind of interviews. This is not me speaking from a position of perfection. I cannot be any more clear about that. Just because I'm speaking to this and the service and the impact and the value that I bring as a coach, as a speaker, however you want to look at it doesn't mean that I'm crushing it.
Speaker 1:When it comes to all of this, all of this, all of this I said it before it's a muscle and there's so many elements of what we've talked about here today that involves the training, the testing and the trust of the muscle. How do you train the muscle? How do you test the muscle and then build trust in the muscle so that the majority of the time it's going to serve you well and that's what I've been able to do the majority of the time it serves me very well. Do I still make missteps 100%? And am I going to keep making them Absolutely? And I think that's. I just want to give that encouragement to everybody. It's like all of this stuff that I'm saying. This is not plug and play and you've got it figured out. No, no, no, no, no. This is a consistent training process so that over time you can keep developing that trust around all of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, got to get the reps in. Keep at it, keep on keeping on and learn from the missteps, learn from the bumps and the scrapes. So, before we get into the closing question, steve, where can people find me? I'm sure people are fired up right now, like Jesse. Would you just ask them how we can get a hold of them, because I'm tired of listening to you. So where should people go to find you, interact with you, and so forth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know when this is going out, but I will say this I'm about to do a huge rebrand Everything that you heard in the introduction. Growth Ready is coming. Growth Ready is not what my company was about a month or two ago. I've changed the name. It was Career Competitor as my company's grown and my clients have grown. Growth Ready speaks a lot more to what the work I'm doing now, and so the podcast was the first thing that changed.
Speaker 1:So the Growth Ready podcast is a great place to start. You're going to find incredible guests like Jesse on there where you can go check out and listen. Got to give you the shout out, but then, from that point on, LinkedIn is my favorite. Got to give you the shout out, but then from that point on, link Mala on next. I love hearing from people how anything that I said maybe be of impact. If you've got any curiosity about you know just what I can do, how I do it, all that kind of stuff. Steve at growthreadycom Super simple, Reach out to me there, Otherwise all my handles at coach Steve Mala you can find me on pretty much anywhere else that way too.
Speaker 2:So Awesome, oh, thank you for that. And, folks, I'm going to have all the links. We'll have them down in the in the thing so that you can click and connect with Steve. And so now here's the closing question. You ready, bring it. You've had an amazing life, steve and and I. What I really really appreciate is you've taken those experiences, those lessons, and you're pouring them into other people, I mean even me. When you and I had the first conversation on the podcast on your podcast I felt like a champ because of the honor and care and attention that you gave me, and so, having had those effects and the impact and contributions you've made to so many lives thus far, I imagine your answer is going to be amazing. And so here's the question what is the promise? You are intended to be?
Speaker 1:What is the promise that I'm intended to be. You know I'm going to answer that. I'm going to answer that with really what has brought me to this point. Okay, so firstly, just thank you for everything that you just said, because, believe it or not, that experience that I provide, I see it as an experience when people come on my podcast and just to throw it right back at you. This has been nothing but an incredible experience for me too. But I have this term that I coined when I finished some coaching and I started my business and I started to get creative around words and terminology and things like that.
Speaker 1:I had this thing called the optimal self, and for me and I mentioned it in the book too it's like too often in life, we are given the five reasons not to and it takes our attention away from the one reason that we should, and that is why I wake up every day, literally. I got kids. Now I got a wife, and I know in the four walls of my house, I can help them see the one reason to do something, as opposed to focus too much on the four or five reasons not to. So that's how I get to do it close to home. And then I'm a spiritual guy too. I get to do that through my church too. I get to help people, encourage people through that too, and then any client that I work with it's the same.
Speaker 1:So any listener that's listening to this right now, it's all I want to tell you is that you will always have way more reasons not to than you will to do something, and in order to pursue your optimal self, you have to focus on the one reason why and find a reason to push away the four or five reasons not to. And that is my promise to anyone and everyone that I interact with through my life is that if you give me one reason to buy into you and believe in you and to support you, you are going to get all of Steve and nothing else. But if you just want to focus on the four or five reasons not to, chances are I'm going to try to bring your attention to the one reason. But that is my promise, brother. I love the question because for me, my promise to anyone and everyone is that if you want to be in my world, because I want to be in yours, let's focus and talk about what it means to pursue your optimal self, because that is a life worth living right there.
Speaker 2:Amen, and that's going to help people share their gifts and talents with the rest of the world. So again that reciprocal, exponential, beautiful amazingness, Steve. Thank you, man, Did you have a good time?
Speaker 1:Brother, I had an incredible time. I had an incredible time mainly because you, my friend, are incredible. Your energy is phenomenal, your intentions are real and the people in your world I have no doubt see that and appreciate that all the time. So I just appreciate your time as much as the opportunity to be here.