In this episode of Cultivate your Culture we are joined by Valorie Kondos-Field, often referred to as Miss Val. She is a retired American gymnastics coach. She was the head coach of the UCLA Bruins gymnastics team of the University of California, Los Angeles from 1991 to 2019, leading the Bruins to seven national championship titles.
In her book, Life is Short, Don't Wait to Dance, Miss Val shares personal stories, anecdotes, and lessons learned throughout the 37-year career of a dancer/choreographer turned athletic coach. Miss Val is a dynamic speaker and choreographer. She lights up a crowd with her enthusiasm and zest for life and mesmerizes audiences with her spectacular ability to entertain. And, as a newly retired head coach, she’s ready to spread her joy even further. Connect with Valorie via her website.
The host, Zoran Stojkovic believes that we are all born to flourish in work and life. Through his company, Kizo, he equips organizations and people with culture and mindset tools to reach full engagement through powerful workshops, memorable keynotes, and transformative individual consultations.
In this episode of Cultivate your Culture we are joined by Valorie Kondos-Field, often referred to as Miss Val. She is a retired American gymnastics coach. She was the head coach of the UCLA Bruins gymnastics team of the University of California, Los Angeles from 1991 to 2019, leading the Bruins to seven national championship titles.
In her book, Life is Short, Don't Wait to Dance, Miss Val shares personal stories, anecdotes, and lessons learned throughout the 37-year career of a dancer/choreographer turned athletic coach. Miss Val is a dynamic speaker and choreographer. She lights up a crowd with her enthusiasm and zest for life and mesmerizes audiences with her spectacular ability to entertain. And, as a newly retired head coach, she’s ready to spread her joy even further. Connect with Valorie via her website.
The host, Zoran Stojkovic believes that we are all born to flourish in work and life. Through his company, Kizo, he equips organizations and people with culture and mindset tools to reach full engagement through powerful workshops, memorable keynotes, and transformative individual consultations.
Hello, I'm your host Zoran Stojkovic and welcome to cultivate your culture. This podcast we'll be discussing how leaders can build connected high performing teams and business in sport using actionable tools evidence based systems and simple processes. Today on the show we have valorie kondos field, who is the head coach and seven time NCAA champion of the seven time NCAA champion 22 time regional and 18 time Pac 12 champion UCLA women's gymnastics team. She was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010. The four time national Coach of the Year was recently named West Region coach of the PAC 12 of the PAC West Region Coach of the Year Pac 12, Coach of the Year and coach of the century with her solid track record as a preeminent coach. crediting her mentor and legendary basketball coach we all know about john wooden and the Olympic Olympians and athletes with whom she's worked with misbalance success is due to her extraordinary leadership and mentorship of young student athletes. And the way in which she uses gymnastics as an avenue through which to teach valuable life lessons. Miss Val is a dynamic speaker and choreographer, used to do ballet and she lights up a crowd with her enthusiasm and zest for life and, and mesmerizes audiences with their spectacular ability to entertain. Bow. Thank you so much for coming on to the show. Yes, is the kind of day after I stopped.
Valorie Kondos Field:I knew that you knew Greek because the way you introduced me You said Valerie condos? Yes. Like most people say condos? Yes. Once in a while. They'll say Valerie condom? And I'm like, no, that's not My Name Is Khan. It is actually a contract this so Oh, yeah. How do you do?
Zoran Stojkovic:So I studied in Greece, I did my masters in in, in a Greek city. And I studied in Greece and Finland to Master's in sports psych. So I got to spend a lot of time in a small city. Not everybody spoke Greek Duolingo didn't have Greek on it. So I basically sort of looked phrases up. We had some Greek lessons and then buddies from the program would teach me Greek and some of it not going to say on the podcast here. But yeah, it's it's a really great language. The alphabet was okay to learn because Serbian, uses some similar letters. And then some were asked to go back to my physics and math textbook to remember. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks so much for coming on and taking the time to share your your knowledge and insights. First of all, the way I found out about you was through your awesome TED talk of why winning doesn't always equal success. And I've passed that on to so many people, it's informed to me as a coach and as a mental performance coach, and maybe tell me a little bit about that. Is there is there a backstory to how you know how that happened? And
Valorie Kondos Field:yes, there definitely is a backstory to how it happened. It was the summer of 2018. And it, sadly was the year of that the victims came out against Larry Nasser, the team physician for the UCLA, USA Gymnastics team. And I was invited to go to Washington, DC to speak with Senator Feinstein and a few of the members of the House of Representatives about culture. And I remember being in senator Feinstein's office. And I remember her saying, how do we change the culture of gymnastics. And at that moment, it like this light came on, it was like, it's not gymnastics. Gymnastics is an amazing sport. Sport, in itself is amazing. It's anytime there is someone who has oversees the development of someone else, particularly a child, you're going to see issues, you're going to have issues and whether it's sport, or in parenting, or school or politics, business, whatever. And in that moment, as I'm telling her all this, I, I realized, you know, we have a, we have a crisis. And I say this in my TED Talk, we have a crisis in the win at all cost cultures, in every avenue of life, that we all have accepted. And what really hit me and the reason why I wanted to do my TED talk on this was I started to do my research. And there have been more reports of depression, stress, anxiety, and suicide, particularly amongst our youth than ever before in the history of man. And that's not on them that's on us on us adults. And I just felt it was it It was really, it was something that hit my heart. And I wanted to do more research about it more thinking on it. And I wanted to bring it to a platform where I could encourage other people to answer the question is all winning success? Because I remember when I was talking to somebody about USA Gymnastics, and they said, but we've been so successful. I said, No, we've won a lot. There's a difference.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, that's a really important point. Because there is, and it's challenging, because head coaches get fired for not having results. So if that's how they're measured, and that's how success is measured at a pay, you know, depending on how much you get paid, or what opportunities you have, or how long you stay in a program, that's it is a system that would have to change and and, you know, the head coach would really have to be really dialed into their into their values and have a different barometer and different measure of success than just results.
Valorie Kondos Field:Absolutely. You mentioned my mentor, john wooden. He was coaching in college for 15 years before he won a national championship. So in this day and age, where you get basically three years to prove yourself in college or in the pros, you we we would we would have never had a Coach Wooden, I mean, we would have them we wouldn't have known, we probably would have gone back to coaching English, I mean, to teaching English. You know, I really feel that it's we're at an impasse where, especially the high schools and the colleges, we need to measure success as more than winning, we need to measure, we need to be able to measure character. As this conversation is going to evolve, we need to be able to measure culture, we need to be able to measure academics, community service, we need to be able to place a value on all those things in order to change this culture of when at all cost.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, definitely. And so that leads me to a question for you. How do you define team culture? I mean, this is a concept that gets thrown around so much, and togetherness and connection and all these things. And, and there's a lot of work being done on this. But how do you define it?
Valorie Kondos Field:Okay, well, first of all, I want to thank you for asking me to be on this podcast. And for anybody who's listening. All of these questions that he's going to ask me, I encourage you to take notes and answer them for yourself. Because as I told Zoran, I was like, I talked about culture all the time. But I've never really thought about it. I've never broken it down. And so when you told me what we were going to talk about, and shifted me sent me some questions. My mind has just been going, you know, 100 miles an hour and doing research and how do you develop culture? So the first thing you asked is how do you define culture, and I feel that culture is a common, agreed upon system of vision, values, and behavior, that are all shared by one team. And the word culture is interesting, because when you talk about culture, you're not just talking about good cultures, positive cultures, there are plenty I mean, they're a culture is anything in my opinion, that is a common vision, common values, and common behavior. And I, you know, since we're talking about sports, I teach, I taught a course at UCLA last year on the different philosophies of successful coaches, and we studied bobby knight. And I don't know if your listeners will know who bobby knight is, but he was the head coach at Indiana basketball and known for his volatile, verbal, physically abusive behavior. But he had athletes dying to go play for him. And, you know, he never was at a loss for talent on his teams. And so when I think about culture, and I think about someone like bobby knight, he had a clear vision of what was important winning, he had a clear value, he his values, were clear of how we're going to get there. And his behavior was clear. And sometimes it was gonna get volatile, and verbal, verbally abusive, but the players that signed up to play for him knew that so there was, as I just said, there was a common shared belief and agreement to all of that. And that was a very strong culture that he created.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah. And so the vision values and behaviors is how you've defined culture. It's a shared shared understanding and agreed upon vision values and behavior. And so but then why? Why is it important to cultivate the culture of a team? If you think about team in business or sports that has individual performers like your gymnastics program? Did I mean or a golf program or a or a sales, you know, sales company that has individual performers who are measured, measured individually on their on their performance?
Valorie Kondos Field:Well, I think that even if you were training one on one, if I was a golf coach, and I was training a golfer, and that's the only person I was training, I would still need to define how we're going to get to our goal. And why is it important to cultivate a culture, whether it be with one person or with a team of people, is to be able to move toward that common goal in sync and with Unity. Um, it's important to, to discern what your culture is what that culture is, okay? My mind is going 100 miles an hour right now. I feel like okay, the best way to do that is if I'm if you're my athlete, and I'm coaching you, Zoran, and we're going to go win the national championship in golf, I need to communicate to you a Why, why is it important that we do this? Why do I want to coach you? Why do you want to do it? What's your why and discuss the how, how we can get there, and then I'm going to educate you and you're going to educate me. And there's going to be this symbiotic education going on of the best way to get there. And we're going to communicate that over and over and over and over again daily, so that there is continuous growth through our United goal that will create this culture. So if I get upset with you about something, we can go back to why we're doing this, how did we decide agree to do this and talk about it. And I do feel that in cultures, cultures are not static cultures are fluid. And I feel like the best cultures allow for shifting, as long as there's an explanation of why, why are we making the shift? Is that in the best interest of what we're trying to achieve? Yeah, okay, then great. But let's make that shift.
Zoran Stojkovic:What I'm hearing you say is, it's important to cultivate the culture of of teams, and even individual teams, because the members of the team get synchronicity and alignment towards going towards the goals. So so that sense of vision, which is that it has to keep the the the the leaders of the team have to keep reminding people of that, but you're also mentioning that it's a symbiotic dance, where it's not just this leader tells you what to do, and you do it. It's developing a relationship where the coach or the leader and the team understands the people who are on the team. And there's a constant communication, I think you didn't use that word. But that's what I'm reading between the lines is constant communication of what's going on. Maybe a post mortem of when things go wrong, and things like that.
Valorie Kondos Field:Absolutely. And communication is key. And I think that I've been known for over communicating to my team over and over and over and over and over again. But I would rather err on that side than not, you brought up something, I think that you use the word dictate. And this is something that I talk about my TED talk, I feel like there are two types of leaders, those that dictate change in those that motivate change. When I first started, when I first became a head coach, I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I was a ballet dancer. And I hired, I could hire assistant coaches that knew the sport of gymnastics, the X's and O's and how to train skills. But I quickly realized, whoa, there's this whole thing called team culture I knew nothing about because you don't grow up with Team culture on stage as I did, and I mimicked other coaches that have been successful, and pretty much became a dictator, because that's what I thought that was what you know, I, I grew up in the 70s in the 80s. And it was coaches were these empirical dictators that, you know, everything landed on them, the winds, the they were hailed for the losses, they were, they assumed as well, so why they should be the ones to dictate how everybody's going to act in this in his team. And it really was back in those days. I sound so old back in those days, when your coach it's kind of like you're given this armor and you're given this, this way of doing things that is going to be successful. And so if you're going to coach, this is how you should do it. I did that and failed. miserably. And I'm going to take, just take us a little bit further imagine. So imagine you're an assistant coach, and I'm the head coach. And we're coaching UCLA gymnastics is one of the preeminent athletic programs in the United States. And you're working for me. And I don't know the first thing about gymnastics. So I'm just kind of winging it. And I'm doing all this coach talk and coach speak. And just, I honestly felt that it was more important that they did exactly what I told them to do, rather than doing it the right way, that's gonna get us to the common goal, it was more important that I did not lose my position as a leader, then humbling myself to say, you know what, there's probably a better way of doing this. And so I'm fumbling around. And then I remember so clearly, walking from the parking lot to the athletic department one day and looking up and UCLA is 24 sports. And I think at that time, in the late 80s, there were maybe our budget was maybe$50 million a year or something like that. And in New Zealand, BUT IT department, and I remember thinking, Oh my gosh,$50 million a year at UCLA is spent on what bragging rights to be able to say we beat you. And in that moment, I was like, there has to be more to sport than how we beat you. There has to be. And so I took, I don't know how long the next few days, weeks, I don't know how long, but to figure out my why, as Simon Sinek would have asked us all to to figure out your why. And my why absolutely was not about winning, because I did not grow up in this athletic culture at all. It was so weird to me, there had to be more to sport than just winning. And it became so clear, it was like sport, is the greatest venue to learn really, really, really tough life lessons that you don't learn in the classroom. And so at that moment, I was like, I'm gonna develop champions in life through sport. And because I work at UCLA, and I can recruit some of the best talent in the world. If I could help develop these young women into becoming a superheroes in life in all aspects of their life, that will translate to the competition floor. And that became my Why, why was I going to coach to develop superhumans through sport? Now? How am I going to do that? And then that became the foundation of our culture.
Zoran Stojkovic:That's, that's really interesting. I was just picturing the moment that you were walking from the parking lot to the building and kind of pondering that question of what does 50 mil get us? And is this actually important? And why is this important? And so what I'm hearing from your from your answer there, Val, is that a it's important to question old systems, regardless of what area somebody who's a leader, and to really update the systems to match what what science is learned, and what we learn about people and the way that culture more globally has changed. And the way that the people you work with have changed, but also to clarify your leadership philosophy or coaching philosophy? And can you speak a little bit more about either one of those on maybe how you did that? And what what are some of the questions you asked yourself, as you as you, as you will hear, why don't we maybe focus first on on the question questioning the old system, because that can sometimes be a pretty hectic process, especially if whoever is like, whoever hired you expect you to coach a certain way? So did you have to and your athletes are used to be encouraged in certain ways? So what are some ways that you like, how did you get that buy in from from above and from your athletes and from your coaching staff to do things differently?
Valorie Kondos Field:Well, I just I'm a firm believer in the combination of education and communication. And so I, I believe in a growth mindset, until the day we all die, I think we should continue to grow. And the more I learn, the more I want to share. And that's the same with my staff, and with our student athletes. And so I actually enjoyed being challenged as to why why do I have these rules and regulations? Why are we doing it this way? Why are we training these days and not these days? Why, why, why why. And I think it's so important because it forces you to take a pause. And to figure out your why. You know, we went from an example I prided myself on the fact that we never trained on the weekends, because I felt it was really important for our student athletes to be normal student human beings. And not be bad. Be an athlete seven days a week 24 seven. And I've always believed in the well rounded student athlete. And the more well rounded they were, the better their gymnastics would be. Because that's the type of dancer that I was. And then the last few years, we went to trading on Sundays. And our athletes hated it, and bucked the system. And we came in pissy and poopy and all that. And I was like, well, I need to explain why, obviously, I've not done a good enough job explaining my why. And the why in a shift in our culture that I had established for 20 years, I've never training on a weekend, or now want to train on a weekend. The why was because it got harder for them to take us to be able to sign up for classes outside of our training time. So we had more athletes missing training time. So we were not able to train as a team, very often during the week. And I felt it was super important that we were all there together, at least for one day a week, and to be able to be there on a day where they didn't have to rush out of gym to get to class. So explaining all of this to them. And then also explaining, so I'm going to, we're going to try it on Sundays, but guess what you're gonna get Wednesdays off. And so that means you're going to be able to like, go do things like normal people, do you need to go to the bank, because banks aren't open on Sundays, and you get to go, you know, to the beach in the middle of the week when it's not packed. How cool is that? So explaining all of that, I found as I became a better and better and better leader and coach that the more I explained the more buy in, I had, even if they didn't agree with me, they appreciated that I respected them enough to explain ad nauseum to them why I did things, right.
Zoran Stojkovic:So you're explaining why certain changes are happening, why you do things certain ways, and you think you think it was good, it is good. You invited athletes to challenge you and and to ask questions, because it got you also to reflect on why you were doing certain things. And another thing I picked up from what you just said is that it was important to be together, at least one day of the week, which wasn't happening. Hence, your change to practicing on Sundays in a turbulent I mean, turbulence is a strong word, but in a changing workplace where some companies have gone from in person to remote culture has really been shifted, because they don't, there isn't that in person time anymore. And so I think I think that's really challenging as well. And a lot of companies are figuring that out. And so, and teams as well, like I know, national teams were, you know, for a while there weren't training and athletes out to do at home workouts, and there was a lot of challenges with that, you know, with with regards to motivation and lack of connection and those kinds of things. And you've already touched upon some of this, but I'm wondering how culture, how can culture be cultivated? Like, what's the starting place? Who has to be in those conversations? Is it you know, starting with the sit down at the start of season set a team vision and mission statements? Is it? Have you used leadership groups? I mean, what are some of those practical systems you use to
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Valorie Kondos Field:You sit down at the beginning of season and you talk about the long term goal, and then you break that down? And what was the last thing you said? Do you remember?
Zoran Stojkovic:leadership groups?
Valorie Kondos Field:Yes, yeah. obvious. I look at this like a flowchart. Because I grew up in the era of flowchart, do they teach flowcharts anymore? I don't think they do that. I grew up in the air flow chart. So I thought is the leader that would be the head coach, that was me, and then to discuss with our staff, what is our goal? Okay, our goal is to win the national champion was when the national championship. second goal was always for me, I want to leave the season with no regrets. I don't want to have any regrets. So can we as a coaching staff agree on that? And then let's agree on how we're going to do that. And then the flowchart comes down to not the team yet. But explaining all of this to the people that have the most daily communication and engagement with the team. So that was having the meetings and explaining it to the staff. If a trainer, sports information director, the director of operations, the team managers, all of those people, that the girl the student athletes would gravitate towards to complain to, because that's natural. So then a team manager who was their exact age, could say, you know, well, this is what my spouse explained, and this is why we're going to do this and trusting telling them, I'm going to trust you to get my back on this and explain it in a way that is positive for us as a group and not explain it in a way that, yeah, she's just an old Biddy that wants to do it her way. And so having those conversations, and then you mentioned, leadership groups, and I had team captains when I first started becoming head coach, because as I told you, I just did what everybody else did. And all the teams that I knew had team captains, and it was a few years later, where one of my student athletes was having a problem on vault. And one of our seniors was just watching her but not saying anything to her and not helping her. And I said, Why aren't you helping in this situation? And she said, because there's a team captain, that's right there. I don't want to step on the captain's toes. And so as like, Oh, no, no, no, by having team captains, I was not allowing the space for all of the athletes to develop their own leadership styles, and test their leadership, their leadership skills and to hone their leadership skills. So I did away with team captains. And I went to, as you mentioned, a leadership group. And I had one person from each class, freshman, sophomore, junior senior, and I always made a point to have the person that was the it girl, the one that the team followed, that not necessarily, it was, I mean, like, usually the bad girl, you know, that was getting in trouble all the time. I made a point of having her in these leadership groups, because I wanted her to hear one on one from me or one me with a small group, over and over and over again, why we are doing things so that when he wanted to make a decision to go out at midnight on a weeknight that probably wasn't the best for the team, she might think twice about it, because I had explained myself so much
Zoran Stojkovic:You started by talking about team vision, sitting down to the coaching staff and saying, what do we want to achieve this season, communicating that to the operation staff and coordinators, and managers and whatnot. And then electing a leadership group, which we didn't do initially, you did what everybody else did. But then you decided to go against against the mold a little bit and do something different. And you had this leadership group where you had athletes from each year, but you made sure that the girl who was the you said the it girl and didn't wasn't always necessarily a good influence on the team was in these groups, and then through that, you would influence this person because this is a leader. This is like a natural leader in the team. And if they're not in this group, it just makes it less powerful, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So having having them on the team and you build more of that buy in, don't you with things when that person is on?
Valorie Kondos Field:Well, I think also people everybody wants to feel valued. And everything, you know, if you're an IT girl, and you're making poor decisions and all that, you're probably one of the best competitors. And okay, I'm going to tell you those Katelyn Ohashi. So anybody that How you do things. And it's important for the leader to be able to stand in front of the team and say, Okay, I know this is how we've always done things like, you know, when I said they never trained on weekends, but I'm gonna make a change. And this is the reason how I'm gonna make the change. Or if something goes wrong, and you make a huge mistake, as a leader, things just didn't turn out well to be able to model humility and vulnerability, and how to sincerely apologize. And I feel like we're in this culture shift in their, in our world where there's so much research coming out on the power of vulnerability, thank you, Bernie Brown, that we're realizing that vulnerability and humility and compassion, those are not weaknesses, their strengths, and to be able to model that behavior. For those people whom you are meeting is one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader, to develop this buy in to develop trust, huge word trust, able to have grace, and to model what grace looks like to be able to move forward. But when you do that, you give your staff and you give your those people whom you're leading the safe space to themselves, make mistakes, and not have to cover them up or feel badly about.
Zoran Stojkovic:That's I think that's huge. And this is something I was discussing, I was actually discussing with somebody a couple days ago about leaders, just the leader in their organization being very open to sharing when they failed. And something I've used as a coach in teams is having the senior athletes of the team share stories of when they failed, and seeing what I mean, like the oldest athletes of the team, I guess, so that the others can learn from this, I think that's really powerful. And especially if the leaders do it as well, and, and if it's just something that's normal, and not trying to cover it up. For me, that speaks to authenticity. And that speaks to vulnerability, which you mentioned. And also to that openness to communicate. I heard there's a college basketball coach here in Canada and one of her philosophies is five for the next 50. And she tries to prepare the girls on her team in the five years that they're with her for the next 50 years of their lives. And I think that's one of the things that that does that is getting people creating that space where people can explore and be vulnerable and share and that leads to definitely to enhance connection. You've touched a little bit on mistakes that leader can leaders can make what are some toxic behaviors in in team culture and how have you dealt with them either, you know, in in the leadership team and the team in the staff from yourself even I mean,
Valorie Kondos Field:I think that one of the toxic toxic environment in a team culture is, is not having trust. and so..on. I mentioned Caitlin Ohashi before, so I'll mention her again. She literally and I talked about this in the TED Talk. So it's no big secret. She literally came in she was one of the best journalists in the world. She's the last humans to ever beat Simone Biles, actually. And she came in just burnt out an angry and defiant and the whole bit. And her freshman year, she was just defiant. And we were having a team meeting mid mid year. And she just told the team and the staff, I just don't want to be great again. And I literally wanted to say then what the hell am I paying you $60,000 a year for? You know, thankfully, I didn't say that. And I thought, Why does she want to be great again, she says great athletes. And then she went on to explain because everything is she associated with being great, was hurtful, and, and didn't bring her joy. And why would she want to go back to that? She just let's just be mediocre. So I can have fun. And at that moment, I was like, okay, it's not that she hates gymnastics. She hates everything she associates with it. So I have to earn her trust, that I actually care about her more as a human being than as just an a great athlete that can get me another championship. And as we all know, trust takes time. And it takes time to build. It was super, super important. And dang it. I forgot your question.
Zoran Stojkovic:No, no, you you you're off, you're off to a good start. It was what are toxic behaviors in a team and how have you dealt with them?
Valorie Kondos Field:Yeah, so it was trust. And so, you know, we'll don't change overnight. None of us do. And for the next few months, actually her sophomore year, that whole year, she would still screw up and do things she shouldn't do as a student athlete that was helped trying to help retain a national championship and but there was Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. It's not gonna work. And she was dumbfounded. And I was thinking now what I say, you know, I, gosh, I apologize. And she said, I've never heard those words come out of the coach's mouth, I said what word chose I'm sorry. And to be able to model that behavior, without even knowing I was modeling the behavior for it was really, really powerful. Something I really remember and something that she speaks about quite often.
Zoran Stojkovic:And that's huge. And it seems like in that moment, you did pause between the stimulus and the response. And and that's a that's a really important skill for coaches. I mean, that's something that athletes that I work on with athletes, but it's important for coaches and leaders as well, for anybody really to take a pause process using emotion regulation. And just, you know, let the mind quiet down and then, and sometimes we have a couple of seconds, and sometimes that pause can be longer for bigger, bigger decisions. But that's really, I mean, I the thought that keeps coming to mind for me, Val is how did you get buy in if you never did gymnastics at the level needed?
Valorie Kondos Field:It really was because I was not afraid to show my vulnerability. And so You will have a far better result. If you allow the athlete to become a part of the process of figuring out how to achieve something, instead of dictating to them what to do another part that I learned early on in my coaching career that, you know, coaches that will make a correction ever give you a correction every single time you do something, that's not a good way to get a result at all, you're supposed to get correction. And then let the athlete take 567 turns, and them have the best space to figure it out. Yes, and 100% of the time, you have a better result.
Zoran Stojkovic:Because it it does take trial and error you most athletes can implement a new a new technical change right away. That's really interesting that you're mentioning that one of the most toxic behaviors or elements of bad team culture is a lack of trust. It's a strongest element of team culture. And it's definitely a starting place. And you mentioned a couple of different ways to generate that buy in and trust as well through through showing vulnerability and through involving the people you're working with in the process. And through that transparency. Culture is sometimes this airy fairy thing that is really hard to pinpoint. And it's hard to put a finger on how have you measured and assessed team culture? I mean, is it through talking to athletes? Is that through giving them a survey? Is it through your own observations? Is it through other tools? And means?
Valorie Kondos Field:Yeah, I think that it would be interesting. If I was, I think it'd be interesting to go back to UCLA and or to, you know, take one of our teams that we had asked them to write down what they felt the team culture was, and I guarantee you that they're not all going to have the same answer. And they're not going to have the same answer that I would put down. And then as a leader to try to, you know, figure out, okay, maybe somebody brought something up in the team culture that was really good that I didn't realize was part of our team culture. That's cool. But the way that I assessed our team culture, and the success of it every year was, as soon as the athletes started taking ownership of themselves, and of their teammates, that magic happened. And another another, what's it called? What's it called? Where you? You talk about something, but it really means something else? Oh, my gosh, I came upon
Zoran Stojkovic:a pun. No.
Valorie Kondos Field:Okay, I'll think of it. But another, this
Zoran Stojkovic:acronym?
Valorie Kondos Field:No, but like that. Oh, my gosh, I talked about it. When I talk about my book, life is short, going to dance and dance is obviously a metaphor. It's a metaphor for a metaphor for this culture. And when I know that it's working is a flywheel. And, you know, I never knew what a flywheel was, until I read the amazing book, Good to Great that Jim Collins wrote, it's like a Bible out there. But when you have a flywheel is this massive piece of steel wheel that is going to create energy, and it takes a massive amount of inertia to move this thing, the slightest bit, but consistent force on this, we'll, we'll get it to start to move. And once it moves, it, it continues to flow on its own. And that is what a team a good team culture is. And so I always knew that when I could take my hands off the wheel, and put the ownership on our student athletes, and they would take responsibility for their actions and their teammates actions. That's when the culture was thriving. And we talked about best when we had one heartbeat. You know, we would talk about going into competitions. And let's get to the point in our season, where we literally have one heart beat as a team.
Zoran Stojkovic:Wow, that's huge. And that is a great book that you you mentioned, the Good to Great and the flywheel and the one heart, that's a powerful, because it makes it feel like more like a system, like, like an organism, which you essentially are. That's what a culture is. We just it's not always so obvious on the surface. Because if you choose to look at people individually, you can do that. But there's this symbiotic relationship. And that's really, really awesome and interesting. I'm wondering if there's a book or resource that you would suggest to our listeners that has shaped your leadership style, and you've mentioned a bunch in here as well. You mentioned start with why you mentioned growth mindset. So mindsets by Carol Dweck. Good to Great you mentioned Man's Search for Meaning.
Valorie Kondos Field:Yes, as I mentioned, I'm teaching this class at UCLA on the philosophies of coaching. It's fascinating in love it because every single week we study a different coach. And we started with Phil Jackson. And then we went to bobby knight. And then we have Pat Summitt, and Coach Wooden and on and on, but the underlying book that I use throughout the entire quarter was dare to lead, burn a bridge. And that there were, every single student in this class was either a fifth year student athlete at UCLA or a graduate assistant with football. And at the end of the course, I asked them just to give me a debrief and tell me what they learned, you know, what's the like one of the two or three things that you learn in this class, every single one of them, especially the male athletes that were football players said, they never thought of vulnerability, and humility, as characteristics of strength. They were they all they grew up as tough boy, like when we say man up to him, not. That doesn't mean be more vulnerable, you know? And they shut down. Right, exactly. And so that was really cool. So dare to lead is kind of like a leadership Bible as far as I'm concerned. And I'm actually reading this book right now, Lincoln on leadership. And it's fascinating, because it goes into Abraham Lincoln's leadership. And it's a very small little book, but oh, my gosh, it's, it literally is speaking to exactly what leaders go through in this day and age, including the haters. I didn't know this. He had a ton of haters, and adversaries, and people that were just trying to tear him down and, and spewing lies and libel about him. And I was like, honestly, seriously. So I'm really enjoying, I'm enjoying this book a lot right now.
Zoran Stojkovic:Sweet. Those are, those are really good suggestions. I've not heard of the Lincoln one. But I've heard of Bernie Brown, of course, and dare to lead. Last. One of my last questions here is what's we had a lot of these kind of weaved in throughout the conversation, but what's one practical tool leaders can use to cultivate the culture of their team? Oh, that's a good one. I think I would go back to what I mentioned a little bit ago, a practical tool, if I was a leader, would be to ask a series of questions to the people who might relating and have them write down the answers to get back as to what do you see a healthy culture for this team? And is in this group of people that we're all going to be with for this next year? What do you see that looking like? What do you see some of the snakes coming? Weird? What do you feel if you were leading the team? What do you think should be our negotiables and our non negotiables, and have them write all that down, and then look at all over and then reconvene and talk about what they'd written in what you the commonalities and such. And I feel like immediately, as a leader, you would have buy in from your team, because you're asking him their opinions, you're giving them a voice, and you're making them feel that their opinions, and their discussion is valuable. And so I think whenever you give someone a voice and make them feel of value, you've already started the buy in of them. And then you got to follow through. You can't just throw it all out the window and do over the heck we want to do. Right, so the one tool you would suggest is questions and really good questions. And you you mentioned some really solid open ended questions that can give a coach a lot of information and and really build that relationship with the athlete as well because you putting it on them to co create the culture with you to help you and not not even to help you but to be part of the process that cultivates a culture.
Valorie Kondos Field:Okay, then let's take this one step further. And let's play off this scenario. And let's say then next week, you meet again as a team. And I say, Okay, the first question I asked you was, what is give me three non negotiables that you feel would help us create some unity with this team as we move forward? So Zoran, you wrote some really impressive things down here, would you explain them? And so to have the teammates explain their responses you just took you just empowered them? 100 times.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yes. And then constantly reminding people of what those non negotiables are having that common blueprint of vision, values, behaviors, and that that all feeds into it. That's a really solid suggestion and actually doing something about it not just asking questions for the sake of asking questions. Well, tell me about, tell me about your book, life is short, don't wait too Dance
Valorie Kondos Field:the book is. The book is about how I figured out this world of athletics. And the things that I did that didn't work and the things that I did that were very unorthodox as a head coach to do that did work. And just my journey along the way, it's a really fast read. So holidays are coming up people, it's gonna be a really great holiday gift. And as I was writing the book, I was trying to come up with the title of the book, and I was writing the part of the chapters, the Jefferson Coach Wooden, my relationship with him, I had a very, very, very close relationship with john wooden, and he lived to be 99, and nine months old, and the last few years of his life. Whenever I was with him, somebody would say, you know, coach, you've lived an impeccable life. Do you have any regrets. And he would always reply the same way, his little eyes, blue eyes would start to glisten with tears. And he would say, you know, my wife, Nellie love to dance. And he outlived his wife by I think, 30 years. And he said, and I grew up very shy, and I was never very good dancer. And so I never danced with my wife. And I realized now that had I danced with my wife, people wouldn't have made fun of me, they would have seen a couple of deeply in love dancing together. So if I have one regret, I would go back and dance with my wife. And so my title of the book is an homage to coach wouldn't Life is short. Don't wait to dance.
Zoran Stojkovic:Wow, I think you wouldn't know that's Yeah.
Valorie Kondos Field:And I can't tell you how many times I, in my speaking engagements, if I'm, when I'm done, or I'm signing books, or autographs or something, I will get elderly men come up to me with tears in their eyes and saying thank you. I'm going to go home and dance with my wife. Yay.
Zoran Stojkovic:That's a really powerful message. Val, tell me about what you're up to right now. And what about official Miss Val and where people can find you?
Valorie Kondos Field:Okay, you can I honestly have kind of gotten off social media. When COVID started, I just wanted to take a break and kind of refresh my whole being and what I wanted to do moving forward, I am still doing a lot of speaking engagements. And like you most people find me through the TED Talk. People can find me on my website, official misspell.com you can go to my Instagram and Twitter. But I don't post anything. I just don't like social media for a lot of reasons. And what I'm doing besides speaking, I'm super excited to produce an urban Nutcracker. Because I danced Nutcracker for 15 years. And I want to bring the classics of Tchaikovsky and his beautiful tail to the streets. And so like the street performance arts like popcorn cup water and skateboarding. I know that's gonna be a cool mix. I know. So I'm really excited to do that. And I want to develop a theater production or a film or even an animated film about the environment called trash. And so if you are any of your listeners on vinyl, environmentalist, I need a storyline. And I want it to be like I've recently been thinking about having it be animated kind of like Toy Story. And following you know, this lead character that maybe the lead character is a plastic bottle, I don't know, I want the whole message to be people, we need to wake up and start really on an individual basis taking care of our climate and our this beautiful planet that we live on. And so trash isn't a great name. I mean, imagine, imagine if it was like a theatre production, you say let's go get trashed, like, Oh my gosh, Mark value of that is just and I do have it copyrighted so yeah, trash or trash, and urban Nutcracker. And I also want to do a film on our last 2018 National Championship, which was literally one of the greatest comebacks in all sport. It is like a miracle and I story, and it needs to be told in a film. And so I'm actually working on all these three projects as I'm speaking all around the world. So that's what's going on.
Zoran Stojkovic:That is awesome. Seems like you're up to some quite different things. And and so thanks so much for taking the time to speak to me today and to share your insights and your stories and hope we can do this again in the future.
Valorie Kondos Field:Absolutely. And thank you for all you're doing to get us all to think in a much more powerful way. Have a great day. Thank you. Efharisto Poli!
Zoran Stojkovic:Efharisto poli! Hey, thanks for tuning in to cultivate your culture, rate and reviewer podcast on iTunes. Any websites and resources mentioned in the podcast as well as the guests information can be found on the show at www.kizo.ca/podcast. Here's a sneak peek of what's coming up in our episode next week.
Susan Scott:When you walk into an organization or you walk into a group of people who are doing something together, you can tell within seconds what the culture is.