Storytelling, Visualization, and the Secret Sauce of Sustainable Leadership with Al Lattell (Part 1)

Al Lattell is a trailblazer in athletic leadership at Georgetown Athletics who is breaking the mold by pushing beyond basic leadership drills into something way bigger—building a culture that cultivates leaders for the long haul. He joined me on the show to share how he’s helping craft team cultures that set athletes up for success on and off the field.

We’ll cover everything from the power of visualization to why continuous learning and honest reflection are game-changers in leadership. So, whether you’re coaching a team, leading in the boardroom, or just hungry for some solid growth tactics, this chat’s packed with insights you won’t want to miss. So, get ready to unpack what it takes to craft a winning culture and develop true leaders, both in sports and beyond.

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Transcript

Al Lattell: 0:00

I live in athletics, right? You live in athletic think of those great people, the stories that our grandfathers told about watching this person or that person, it's all a storytelling exercise. So I think not limiting yourself to like the traditional CEO style management techniques when you're looking at leadership has been really cool.

Pete Kadushin: 0:22

You welcome back to the mental training lab, where we have deep conversations with elite performers and coaches and share practical tools and expert insights to help you perform your best when it matters most in sport, leadership often gets mistaken for having really good X's and O's, what if the key to strong leadership isn't about teaching tactical and technical skills, but instead about building an intentional team culture? That's exactly the approach my guest, Al latel has been taking at Georgetown, and the results have been pretty remarkable. Al is the executive director of the Cooper athletics Leadership program at Georgetown, where he's created an incredible space to dream, test and refine his approach and toolset related to nurturing, resilient and effective leaders. Today, our conversation is focusing on how he's reshaping leadership in sport through innovative culture building that extends beyond the game and into the lives of the athletes that he's working with. We talk about visualizing success and the critical role of continuous learning and self reflection in leadership, whether you're leading a team, coaching the coaches, or just passionate about self leadership. Al's insights are going to offer some real, actionable wisdom. All right, enough. Let's get into the lab. Hey, Al, thank you so much for joining us on the mental training lab. I say us, it's really it's me and you. So I guess that makes us, but, yeah, it's great to have you. It's really interesting that we were able to reconnect over the last probably half decade because we went to high school together, and then when we were both in Boston a handful years ago, ended up bumping into each other at a high school reunion, talked a little bit and realized we had a lot of shared interest. So here we are.

Al Lattell: 2:11

Yeah, no, thank you for having me. It's great to catch up. I'm glad that we shoot. Was it 15 years 20? I hope it was 15, but it might have been our 20 year 15. I think

Pete Kadushin: 2:20

it was 15. Had to be 15. The math doesn't work great. I think, yeah,

Al Lattell: 2:24

20s this year. I think, I think 20s this year, but it's good to catch up. I'm glad we were able to do that. You know, it's interesting. Not only do we both live but we both worked at Boston University the same time, and didn't know that we were working in there. And then we caught up right as I was moving down to Maryland. So even the world has changed a lot, even since then, but it's awesome to catch up and connect and see how we're both doing and what's going on. Yeah,

Pete Kadushin: 2:45

well, I appreciate the time. And, you know, we got going before I click Record, and I really rapidly realized that we just needed to hit record because we were already into the good stuff. So I'm gonna just jump right in with a couple of questions, and then we're gonna meander, wander and otherwise Deep Dive. So right out of the gate, you know, you talked a little bit about being at BU then heading down to Maryland, where you're at John Hopkins now you're at Georgetown. You've had a number of roles, either in coaching or in, you know, leadership development. And so I'd love to know, based on those experiences, what really drew you to leadership as a topic and a skill set? Yeah,

Al Lattell: 3:22

it's a great question, and it's one of those things where I probably couldn't have drawn a straight line path when I was in it, and I was living in it, but looking back now, some things make sense, and I can kind of connect the dots. However, not straight they were. But, you know, I grew up playing sports. You know, we think we probably played literally baseball together. We both really loved sports and the environment and, you know, went to college and, you know, I think one of the things I was thinking about right away is that I kind of had to lean on leadership a little bit to make up for the lack of natural athletic ability and most of the exploits that I had, whether it be football, swimming or lacrosse. I mean, it's, it's tough to be reminded every day in college athletic setting, how non athletic you were when you thought you were and, you know, but, but I think that was something that always pertained to me. I mean, I always, I always enjoyed the aspect of being on the team as much as I did kind of competing. I think I'm a relatively competitive person, but I always found it really nice to kind of belong to something and belong to something that you're proud of. And you know, so that translated from my, you know, playing experience into coaching, and got into coaching kind of part time. Right when I got out of college, I was coaching on a club team. Boston University had a club cross team there. It mattered to me. I was a two time Captain when I played there. I love those guys, and I wanted to still really, truly be as part of a team. I mean, you can hear, you know, you hear corporations all the time. We're like a team, or like a team, or like a team. Well, it's not really the same unless you're actually part of the team. And so I was fortunate start my career at BU. During that time period, they announced that they were going to transition the team. Team from the club level to division one sport, and I became very tunnel vision, great. I didn't necessarily know what that entailed, but I was like, I'm going to be on that roster. Like, that's when I'm going to be coaching that team. I don't care what they pay me, or really what they don't pay me. I don't care how hard it is. And I was probably a little naive and not really understanding kind of the landscape of that world. You know, college across for for any that aren't familiar, there's 70, I think 71 division one teams, you know. So that's two full time coaches at the time and a head coach on staff. That's 210, people at the top of a profession. And it's a profession where people have relationships and, you know, play for a coach, and then they go work for them. It's hard to get in. And I had no relationships outside of my experience at the school, and over time, found my way as a volunteer assistant on our first season at BU and that's when things kind of started to change. You know, I loved building, you know, we talked about this a little early here, when we were just catching up. I loved being on a team that everything we did was kind of for the future and could set us up one way or the other, right? And we had no leaders, we had no upperclassmen, we had no history, no tradition. And so it really was like an all hands on deck, feeling where you went to work and there were long days and there were hard days, and you know, canduly, it took us a while to get our first win, and that was two months of of giving everything and not getting anything in return. But then when you step back and look back four years later at kind of what we built, it was awesome. And I think one of the things that came up really early on was our culture and realizing that when you don't have upper class, when you don't have those leaders, you don't have people that have been there before, you really have to be intentional about kind of what foundation you want to set, because that's going to be the foundation that lasts beyond you in most cases, especially as an assistant coach. And so I was kind of tasked at that time of looking into kind of, how we build our culture, and what it means to be not just good on the field, but good off the field. And I really enjoyed it. And, you know, moved on from bu to Harvard, you know, made the mile and a half Road, mile and a half trip down the road. And, you know, when we got there, first year I was there, we had some talent, and we just never really got above 500 and we started wondering, like, what? What's going on with this group? You know, we're getting top 10 recruiting classes every year. And we started looking at kind of their process in terms of how they developed leaders and how they elected captains, and the IVs, or at least Harvard and Yale have some interesting kind of views on that. Coaches have no input. We're not allowed to be in the room. And and we realized, like, if we couldn't kind of put in place the people that we felt were good leaders. We needed to kind of showcase what good leadership was for our students, and kind of model that so that they kind of knew who they were looking at, who they were looking to. And you know, it's funny, I was thinking about this the other day, we developed like a leadership culture curriculum. I was tasked with doing that every Thursday in the fall, in the fall and the spring, we do kind of classroom based sessions with our team. And as important as it was to kind of give them some tools to become better leaders, what we were really trying to do is kind of put a model on the board of like, this is what it means to be a good leader who in this room has that, and let's look to them for the leadership. And so I really enjoyed that. And then as college sports happens, you know, coaches get let go. They don't get renewed. And kind of in a situation where I'm looking for a new gig, and started to really reflect on, like, Okay, what do I like about this job? What don't I like about this job? And for me, it was really simple. I love the relationship development piece. I loved being a mentor. You know, I always said in my head, like, my to do my job. Yeah, winning is great, especially in athletics. You know, we're judged by our wins and losses. But you know, how many weddings am I gonna get invited to for my former athletes? And how many, you know, things like that? It's funny, I just got my first one. You know, a student that was like one of our captains at BU I was there through his junior year. I left. He graduated in 2018 he's getting married this fall. Just got the invitation. Which is, which is really cool, because it's more about, like, how what are we in their lives? Like, what are we trying to do? And as much as we're trying to win, you know, especially in my experience, you know, being at, you know, in a Patriot League school, which is a mid major in the Ivy's, and now I'm, you know, a division three school, mostly with Hopkins. And it's not about the dot the bottom line. And obviously that's always real in college athletics and the university being successful and making money, because it costs money to run it, but it's really about, like, how are we developing these people through athletics and not, you know, just worry about the wins and losses and and so that's really cool for me. And I really made up my mind that, hey, this administrative thing is kind of where I want to go. But I never want to give up that relationship piece. I never want to give up the interaction piece, just not how I operate. And I candidly, not really good at sitting behind a desk and looking at spreadsheets. It's just not going to work for me. And I don't think it utilizes, you know, at this point I'm pretty humble, but I don't think it utilizes, kind of my best traits. And my best traits are getting, you know, our athletes to kind of want to be a part of something and want to be connected to something. And I realized pretty quickly that that might seem to some people as being too social and too affable and maybe too easy on them, but at the same time, what I learned through coaching was my style was that I wanted them to not want to mess up because they didn't want to let me down, because they cared so much about letting me down, it wasn't they were worried I was going to yell at them or get mad at them, because I just didn't have that in me. It didn't feel natural to me and it didn't feel natural to them, but I. Realized that I can motivate the same way, you know, early on in my tenure at BU and I was like, well, let's, let's live in this, let's, let's utilize this opportunity to develop relationships. Get them to trust you, get them to buy into what you're saying. And so it was lucky enough to have an opportunity at Hopkins, you know that that situation was tough. I got the job early January 2020, we all know kind of what happened about six weeks later with COVID and the shutdown. And so spend most of my time working from home, which was really hard, because, you know, I got into at that career trying to develop relationships, and it's, we all know it's harder to do that. I mean, obviously some things were great. We got to start catching up over, you know, over zoom and phone calls during that time, which was great, because geography didn't matter, but at the same time, you know, in an industry where you're really with these kids, you know, 20 hours per NCAA. But you know, my office right now is in our study hall. I have kids in my office every day, you know. And you those casual, you know, things. So that was hard, and was fortunate enough to get a job at Georgetown, and when I got here, they said, listen, like we haven't had someone in the role for a year she had left, and no one filled the job, and the years prior to that were COVID. So what do you think this job should be, and how should you do it and go, go, have at it. So, you know, I was fortunate enough to kind of live in that in between role, between being a coach and being an administrator, you know, try to try to be very, very student, facing and engaging with them and kind of blur those lines of like the power dynamic, because I don't want them to ever feel that they can't come to me. You know, I have athletes on certain teams that still call me coach, even though I'm not on their staff. And, you know, candidly, hopefully for them, I'm not doing any game planning or anything like that, but, but it's kind of a hybrid role, and I realized, as part of the things that helped me when I was coaching is like I got to be around them as much as I can. They can't just see me, you know, as a person that comes in when there's a problem or there's something to fix or something to build on, but rather, like, be at practice, be on the sideline of games, be in the weight room. When they're in the weight room, just do things around with them so that they start seeing me as part of what they're trying to do, as opposed to someone that's kind of having my own prerogative. And that's kind of where I am right now, is that really, you know, it's good and bad, you know, we're just got through graduation season and love it, right? Great. You know, pinnacle of their college athletic lives. But at the same time, that means we lose about 25% of our athletes that I developed really strong relationships with, and especially this particular class that I got to grow with over two years. And a lot of my right hand men and women that I can lean on and do some stuff are all gone, so we just got to get back and build those relationships again. So that's kind of how we got here. Yeah,

Pete Kadushin: 12:35

yeah, there is. There's a lot packed in there. And so just a few things that stood out as you're sharing your journey, one the that there's a mirroring of what you're studying and then what you're passing on to your athletes in your own experience, right? So talking about being drawn to leadership as an athlete yourself, and then, you know, joking, not joking, but that when you're not a physical specimen at whatever level, right? You have to find ways to then add to the quality of the team in other ways. And I think I was in the same boat as an athlete, which was, I was good at a lot, but I wasn't great at a ton, and so I had to find ways to chip in. But then as a coach, realizing that some things didn't fit your style. It's really easy to look at others and go, Oh, I just got to do it like them because they're really good, or I'm drawn to them. We have a great relationship with that coach, but recognizing that for you, motivating through care and having your athletes wanting to do a great job for you because they didn't want to let you down, as opposed to, Oh man, I'm gonna get yelled at. I'm gonna get benched. Finding your style in terms of how you connected, how you spent time around them. Some coaches, head coaches, often, you know, they're they have to create distance from their players, because they're the ones making roster decisions. Sometimes they're making decisions about ups, downs, but like, assistant coaches often exist in that more social role. And so hearing you kind of as you went through the timeline, talk about reflecting and refining your own leadership style, and then also then finding ways to connect that to the student athletes that you're working with that really stood out. The other really interesting piece for me was talking about the sort of starting from scratch, right? What do you do when you don't have leaders in place? And you talked a lot about culture, you also talked about when you don't get to pick your leaders. And I can hear some of the coaches listening to this cringing thinking about not having that control, right? Not being able to say, hey, I want that person whose voice is now going to be the loudest, but it sounded like a really neat experiment, because it put you all in the position where you said, Well, if we don't get to pick our leaders, we get to then develop them, and that, I think, ends up building a skill set for a coaching staff that often some. Times gets lost, right? You pick the person who's either the best player or you pick the person who has like, the quote, unquote leadership, whether you think it's born or it's made. And instead, you all had to focus on, what do we define as leadership? What are the skills? And then how can we set that tone for the whole group? And I think that's pretty neat. I'd love to hear a little bit more about those two pieces, right? So the culture and leadership and how those things are related, and then also, sort of the nurturing of leadership, as opposed to potentially just looking for whoever already has the skill that you you want?

Al Lattell: 15:36

Yeah, I think, I think we'll start kind of on that second question first, and I'll go back to the first one. You know, I thought about it a lot, and one of the things that I always think about is, yeah, you mentioned the kind of natural born leader. And there's definitely some things people are born with that make it easier for them to be in those type of roles, right? But I always try to push back on that. I know, you know, I know the way you said it, that's not what you were doing, but I always try to push back on that, because, you know, there's a lot of different ways to lead. And you know, we talked offline a little bit about some of my research, and, you know, situations matter. You know, what the coaching say, who you have on your team is who you're leading, right? What makes you a leader is the people that you're leading, you know, and you're not a leader. And I don't mean this to offend anyone. That's an individual sport, right? But if I'm a golf player and I'm the best in the world, and I do all these things, these things, you know, if I'm not influencing someone else, and in those cases, unless you're in, you know, some of those team competitions, there's, there's no team. You're not, you're not influencing the group, right? So, you know, by nature, leadership has to be able to fit with who you're with, right? Who you're leading, who what the group is, but also what those dynamics are. You know, it's getting harder and harder in college athletics, where people have the opportunity to get theirs right, and they whether it's through the N i L, through the transfer portal, it's harder to build teams because it's harder to put, you know, people's that I think athletes are recognizing, like, I have a four maybe five year life cycle at this an opportunity to capitalize, sometimes more than I'll ever be able to make after college, and I gotta go get mine. And I think that individual drive is good, but the the reasonings behind it aren't necessarily good for team building. It's not to say that they don't deserve it. It's not to say that they shouldn't get it, but it's really hard. So for me, it's like, what, where are we now? What is our team? What do we need? And everyone had, let's look at, like, where we're strong and where are we so some of our teams, what we did was did a whole exercise, and kind of whittled down. I don't want to use the term core values, but, but kind of value add, right? You mentioned this earlier. What can I add to the table and come with a list of like, five to 10 different words and define them with the group, and then think about, like, introspectively, where am I the best at those five or 10, whatever that number is, and where do I need to work on and if I'm really, really quiet and shy and, you know, timid in a large group setting, I'm probably not going to go from zero to 60 and be that person that has all but if I can get a little bit better there and recognize that I'm really good at one on one conversations, so you know, if Pete's getting crushed by a coach. And, you know, maybe addressing that person in front of the whole team isn't the best in that situation. I might be really good at, you know, put an arm around a shoulder afterwards and having a one on one conversation. So looking at, like, where are our strengths, where our weaknesses? What do our team need? Right? Like, that's the fascinating thing. Working at a place like Georgetown, you know, we have 30 varsity sports. Obviously, some of those are like a track and then a cross country, then an indoor so the delineation isn't quite 30 separate entities, because some of those people kind of come and go different based on their events and some of those sports. But, you know, we have about 30 of those sports, right? And and then we have a handful of sports that are expected to compete nationally, on the national scale. Win national championships doesn't mean they win every year, but they're in the conversation. We have others where, you know, their kind of high water mark is a conference championship. So, you know, I look at our swimming and diving program, who have won the men's side three Big East championships in a row, but they have no scholarships. They have one coach for both the men and the female team. And you know, the way that sport is set up, you don't qualify as a team, so you win the Big East, you don't then go to Nationals, like you have in some other sports, right? So it's very individual based. So for them, it's like, we're going to do what we can control and win the Big East, and that's a successful year. And then you have, you know, some other sports that are really struggling based on, you know, how we fund them, or they don't have facilities on campus, or they don't have the right amount of scholarships, or a full coaching staff, so even, like, what success means, right? That's just the that's just the end goal, right? We're not even talking about how we get there, but we're just talking about, like, what does it look like when we're there? And that's very different from team to team, and so for me, so I

Pete Kadushin: 19:35

just want to slow this down, because there's so much packed in here, and one of the things I always want to make sure we do in these conversations is provide some practical steps for folks listening, right? So the couple things you touched on right out of the gate in terms of awareness building, right? So as an athlete, I can be doing this, or I can have a coach, if there are coaches listening, who can then run this through their whole team, right? But that idea of values, but also strengths and weaknesses. What am I good at and what do I potentially need to work on? But tucked in there you You pointed to the fact that just because I might be low on the extra version scale, I'm not necessarily high fiving and fist pumping and talking to everybody and standing in the middle of locker room. I don't need to look at a weakness and suddenly, if I'm an athlete, flip that and say, Okay, I'm gonna be totally different to my nature, right? So that, I think that gets mixed up sometimes with the strengths and weaknesses, like I look at I go, Okay, I'm really good at these things. I need to get better at those, right? But then I'm also not great at these things. I need to get much better at those. And so how would you approach helping an athlete tease out from that awareness building standpoint, like, what do I know as a strength? Where do I want to focus on in terms of strengths? And then when do I look at a weakness and say, sorry, I often use area of opportunity instead of weakness. But how do you, how do you kind of help somebody tease out when to focus on that area of growth and when to focus on just super strength thing, the stuff in the other column, oh,

Al Lattell: 21:05

it's a great question. I think that's, I apologize, it's gonna be a multi part answer here, but let's do it first one, I touch on the thing about you talking about, like, going from zero 60, right? So we, we do utilize, or have available, and have used with a lot of our teams, a behavioral assessment. This behavioral assessment, which I find very valuable, just that starting point, right? Just to really get, you know, a mirror, like you're looking in a mirror of who I am and what, how others see me, not. There's no good, there's no bad, there's no ugly. It's just this is where we are right now, the same way you would do, you know, we walked into a weight room and you just maxed on everything you could, so you had your numbers, and you're building a plan to get four, right? So I think one of the things I like to talk about is a, you hit on it. We use a, I use the rubber band reference, right? A rubber band is meant to stretch, but if you stretch it too far, too fast or for too long, it's going to start fraying, and it might even snap, right? So when we talk about kind of the extroversion scale, or or some of those other things, you know, we're talking about within that behavioral profile, it's like you're not expected to go from from zero to 60, because you can't do that. It'll provide, you know, whether it's physical stress, mental stress, you know, it will be another area of stress in your life. And college athletes, you know, have a lot of that coming at them from a lot of different places. So that's the first thing. But going into the more practical steps, one of my favorite things to do, especially the beginning of the year for a team, is an exercise that, you know, we get. It's a multi layered exercise, which is great for me because it provides a lot of touch points, and build on it throughout the season. And I also like to tie what we're doing in my sessions to the fact that, like, it's very similar to everything else you're trying to do, right? If I we have a nutritionist, we have Sports Therapy, you know, we have, you know, athletic training, and all those people we have, you know, strength and conditioning. Well, those are all process oriented, right? So for our strength and conditioning, pretty much everywhere I've been, you know, when our freshmen come in, you know, they start with the strength coaches off to the side and really learn the technique. Like, we don't care that you can squat 500 pounds, because some of them probably can, but we're going to teach you the right way to squat before we put any pounds on there. We'll give you a PVC pipe. We're going to go through everything technique wise, the bare, bare minimum, and then over time, then we're going to figure out where we are, right. We need to know where we are, to know where we're going. And then we're going to develop a plan to get there, but everyone in their right mind, their right mind knows that, you know, we're not going to go from 200 pounds of 10% body fat to 240 and 4% body fat in a week, right? Like we know it takes x amount of time, maybe it's three months, six months a year, whatever that is. And we all buy into that, right? Everyone in athletics buys into that some level, right? Same with our nutritionist. I tear my ACL, we know it's gonna be surgery, and, you know, a month of pre had, so I go to surgery, then I'm going to go surgery, and then these milestones go here and there, and maybe I'm a little faster, maybe a little slower, but we know what that looks like, right? I'm not coming back in a week, right? I'm coming back six months, seven months, whatever that is. But for whatever reason, a lot of times when we talk in probably very similar in your field, in the sport performance, kind of it's like, oh, well, I'm gonna come in, we're gonna have a session with Al, and then tomorrow we're having no problems. And that's just not, just not realistic, right? A, because things take time. We're talking about people. B, because it's like any other skill, it takes time to master it, right? So I like those multi touch points. I always try to push back on coaches that, like, hey, you know, we we have no leaders. Come on in for an hour. And then also, tomorrow we're gonna have the best leaders in the world. Like, it doesn't work that way. And that way. And unfortunately, most of us, people are people know that, but they think of this more academic setting, or more of a, you know, soft stuff, I guess I call it soft skills, like they don't see the same progression. So one of the first things we do is, and we talked about this a little bit storytelling. I think storytelling is so important in in leadership, being able to captivate someone, to think about some and trust that wherever you know I'm hopping on this train, the train is going to take me where I want to go. But what does it look like when I get there? I want to know what it looks like, so we start in the reverse. So I've done this for probably five to six teams, and it's one of my favorite exercises, is we'll start off. And I did, I did steal this from someone. I don't want to name names, but I took it from someone at Hopkins in a totally different sector. It was more on the diversity, equity, inclusion idea, but they coined the phrase blue sky. Like, what is your blue sky day? What is your sunny day? What does it look like? So don't tell me we're going to be better. We're going to be in that case, you know, we're all going to be better leaders, and we're going to be successful and be great. Well, what does great mean to you? And that's why we talked about kind of different. You know, opportunities for some of these different teams. But okay, so let's envision that it's the last day of your year, and you have a recruit on campus just finished your season, and you had the best season possible. It met all of your your goals and expectations. What are you telling that kid? What are you telling that recruit about coming here? What does it look like? What does it taste like? What does it feel like, right? What goes into it? And let's describe that. So describe to me what you want to do if everything went the way we planned, and really firm detail it's, you know, we're tired, right? We are burnt out. That's okay. Like, we want to be tired at the end of the year, that's good time to be tired. And you know, we've been, you know, resilient, and X, Y and Z, and come up with a whole list, and then we're going to define them and put actions around that. What does it mean to be resilient, right? Everyone can say resilient and and you probably have seen tons of different definitions in that, but you know, what does it look like to you? Because otherwise, a word is just a word, right? And let's map that out, right? So we get on a whiteboard, and we have different colors. We split them up in smaller groups so they can talk, and have them present to their team like, well, this is what you know. Hard work looks like. This is what you know. And they provide. And then when we step back and I pause for a little bit, and I give him a little metaphor, and I like to live in metaphors. It's how my brain works. So, you know, I get one person up in front of the room, and I tell them, we're taking them to IKEA and I'm buying them a whole new bedroom set for their summer internship in New York, or whatever it is. And I said, walk me through this experience, right? So, more visualization, more storytelling. So, you know, you walk into an IKEA and it's beautiful showroom. Everything's put together. And you're walking around, you say, Well, I like that bed and I like that, you know, I don't know, TV stand and the dresser awesome, right? So I'm gonna buy it for you. Money's not an issue. Al is with you, and I'm walking them through this in real time. And then I say, All right, so now what happens next? And you know, some of them have been to IKEA, it's like, you go down to the warehouse, you pick out the boxes with the number, and you go pay. And I'm like, so now we get home and we're in your empty apartment, and does it look anything like it did in IKEA? It's like, No, right? So what do we need to get there? How do we need to get it to look like that? It's like, well, we need instructions, which, you know, I use IKEA for a reason. We need instructions, and we need the parts, right? And we need the tools to get there, right? Okay, so what are those tools, and what are those instructions? We're not getting to that apartment unless we have those instructions. So we're not getting to that end result, that blue sky, unless you have details that you can follow every day to get there. And so I let them create it, right? And what those, what those steps look like. So for each one of those words, you know, I have a bunch of them here. I'm trying to see if I can use an example here. I take pictures of them all the time. So like, you know, one of the good ones that I really liked was interesting was one of our teams. They said street credibility. So that was what their blue sky wanted to look like right the end of the day, it was street cred. And I said, What does that mean? And they had kind of two different definitions. Well, they wanted their opponents to value that, you know, so like to look at them Be like, that's, that's a team that we don't want to play. But they also wanted their peers here, you know, the football team, the crossing, the baseball team, basketball, whatever it was to be, hey, like, that's a program we want to be a part of. And I'm like, Okay, that's great that that's really descriptive. You explained it really well. What does it take on a Tuesday in November and a Wednesday in December to be able to do that, and not to say you're gonna be perfect every day, because you're not, but you can look at the end of the day and say, All right, this is where I stacked up. And then so from there, then we take all those words and we have them to define it on their own, right? What does it mean for them? And then we ask them to rank themselves from, you know, either zero to five or one to 10, or whatever you want to do with that day. And we look at in the beginning, and then be like, All right, well, so what's the strongest? What's the weakest, right? And then we can look at, you know, week to week, especially when they're in season, like, all right, this weekend you're going to Xavier for the weekend you're playing two games. Which one of these are you going to work on? Just pick one of these, these values that we're gonna work on, and you're gonna own that, what's it gonna look like, how you gonna do it, and then how you gonna grade yourself after and really just kind of look at that over and over again and continue that. We also like to look at who on your team best displays this characteristic, right? So if it's competitive, and you know who, so where you're strong and weak, but also who you where your teammates are, right? And get that kind of cross analysis there, and then look and be like, All right? Well, you three are the ones that your teammates thought are the most competitive. What's that going to look like to you now, right? And where do we need that more? And where's our team struggle? And you know? All right, so we put five these on the board. We want to go to, yeah, we're doing one of them all the time, right? That's not translating the championships. What are those other two that we really need to get there? Or what do our opponents do really well that we think we need to get to? So it's really like allowing them to make their own map. So

Pete Kadushin: 29:02

I'm going to hit pause again, because I want to, I want to hammer like five different things for sure, just to make sure that the folks listening can take away, because there's so much hacking around to just that that one so first defining success clearly, and you mentioned the variety of different teams at Georgetown with different levels of expectation, right? And some of that's outside expectation, some of that is coaching staff expectation. Then you have this extra layer, then of the main layer of athletes who, what are they expecting, right? But if we can't get a shared understanding, and this is something that keeps coming up as you talk through leadership, right? So the storytelling and meaning making this is, this is something I've started really getting drawn to, as well as, how are we helping others make meaning out of their experience, right? So that's it. It's all stories. And so as a leader, helping people to find that upfront. So we need to know what the the stuff we're buying from IKEA is supposed to look like, right? Because then even if we get the instructions, we open up and go, Oh, that's not what I needed, right, right? I often use the Google Maps analogy instead, which is, right, you got to plug in a destination first, or else, Google Maps can't get you there. Yeah, right. You

Al Lattell: 30:20

have no idea where you're going. I mean, it can take you all around, but it's not going to take you where you want

Pete Kadushin: 30:25

to be. The other thing that I thought was really great is how specific, right? When you're defining the experience of that success, what does it feel like when you are in your body? What is it you get into the senses of it, right? How does it taste? How do you feel? What's your body like? What's the sunshine like on your face? What do you hear? What do you smell? Because we can think about a lot, but when it comes to actually motivating and creating action, right, it really has to be driven from the the embodied space, right? The body's got to be doing the thing and helping people go through that visualization process. But really, instead of keeping it a cerebral thing, getting it down into their bodies makes that a much more effective activity. Yeah,

Al Lattell: 31:09

it's been great. And, you know, I think it's really interesting because, you know, I mentioned, and I started with the, you know, the different expectations, right? And one of the funniest things is how sometimes even that changes. So I was working with a group that I'm very close with. I work with I've worked with basically once a week for the last two years, and they're one of our more successful programs. Have been for the last five, five to 10 years. And they got to a point in their year last season where, at that point they were like, you know, they've been to, they haven't been to a Final Four in a while, but, you know, consistently top five to 10 team. And they said, listen, at this point in the year, like, we want to win a national championship. That's That is our goal. Like that is where we are. But that's probably the every other team that's at that level is kind of saying the same thing. So how can we reframe that? Right? So there's some teams, there's, I'd say, probably three, hopefully very soon, for teams here on campus that can say, like, we want to win a national championship. And yes, it ball might not bounce our way, but like, we can say that no one's gonna laugh at us, right? There's others that can't. Now this is one of those teams that can. And they said, listen, that's not gonna, that's not gonna differentiate us anymore. Like, you know, Virginia is doing that, and Duke is doing that, and Maryland's doing that, so we're not any different than them. One of the things that they said, I love this, and it came from them and the players only, is we want to turn back. And really, since we're already talking about, you know, building a daily plan to get somewhere in three months, let's just focus on the end result today. And they said, what we want to do now on is, even if you don't know this sport, you've never watched it, whatever you do, and you stumbled upon practice at one o'clock in the afternoon, you said to yourself, I know that that team wants to kick the crap out of whoever it is that they're playing next time. I don't know anything about the sport, but I know that they're going to willing to do anything based on practice, right? And they reframed everything to be like, that's all we want. We're gonna, you know, the win the day and go want to know all that stuff. They're like, No, no. We just want someone to see us and be like, Oh crap. They want to beat whoever it is they're playing. I have no idea who it is, and that's kind of how they reframed it. So it's really interesting. And I think it's always a process, right? Like, I think you need to have where you want to go, and probably in that aspirational sense, at a certain point in this building, right? Because you have to talk into an existence. But then once you get closer there, it's really like, Well, how do you want to get there? Like, what is it? You know, I want to roll in on time, you know, shoot, looking really good. Or do I want to run through the door sweating and and, you know, coughing, because I just ran up the hill, whatever it is, right? How do I want to get there? And how do I want to be when I get there? Is also really important and and, you know, some teams like we really do have to start from scratch, like we really do have to do that, and some individuals on those teams have never talked about any of this stuff. And I think I keep coming back to this conversational piece. And one of the things I try to tell our teams all the time is that even if I'm the best the world of this when I'm not saying I am nowhere close, right? But even if I was the best, and I sat with you for an hour and then left and we never talked again, you're not going to get to where you want to go. And so because of that, what I need to do is get you comfortable talking about these type of things in this setting, everyone's voice included, not just the captain, not just that fifth year senior, to a point where, when I leave, those conversations can keep on happening. And so it's like what you know, the old adage of, you know, you teach a person to fish. They fish. They eat for life. You give them a fish. They eat for a night. I'm trying to teach them how to teach each other how to fish, right? So I'm trying to insert myself and then remove myself from the situation, because at the end of the day, there's 30 of teams. There's 30 teams, 800 student athletes. They're all impressive in their own right. They're already starting off somewhere. But they just need to know that they can talk about these things. And you know, some of those times it's just really a muscle. And I love watching so on your first question about kind of how to develop that and how to get there. There's nothing I love more than watching someone get artificially empowered to do something that they know how to do. So I'll give you an example. We had a freshman. He's a freshman football player last year, so he's going to be a junior now, my first year here, and we were doing a team session, and usually it's dominated. By the upper classmen, and, in most cases, the physically imposing people and all of that. And, you know, in a small session, probably 40 guys, we split the team up. He said something that was really profound. And so, you know, I liked it. It kind of went a little unnoticed. We kept on having the conversation. Well, I reached out to him. I said, Listen, come talk a little bit more, right? And that's, that's the benefit of being kind of in house. It's like, come on in tomorrow or the next day. Let's chat a little bit more. We said, because it was really valuable, and I think we can build think we can build on this. Yeah, that was great conversation. But the coolest thing about it was, the next week, he didn't shut up in those sessions, right? He didn't care that he was a friend, all of a sudden, someone saw something in him and validated what was already there, right? It was already there. He already had that ability, and then he took and ran with it. And that's something that's been consistent that I've seen with a lot of our teams. I'm always thinking of, you know, kind of recession or, you know, planning once things go wrong, planning when people graduate, starting to plant that seed a little bit, identify who those people are and give them opportunities. You know, in the classroom based kind of conversational style, I can call on people, right? So, you know, I can be like, What are you thinking knowing that you have something profound that you might not, you might be the sophomore on a team with 10/5 year students, so you're probably not that guy that's just going to step up right and practice that and get them comfortable there. And I think that's been the coolest thing to see for me is, you know, as a coach in college, you always love like the next year, when you're you know, your freshmen come back and they're sophomores, and they're a little bit more confident and they're a little bit more comfortable, and you start to see comfortable, and you start to see a little bit of who they are, and usually a little bit bigger, stronger, faster, because that's a really big year for development. But I like seeing that kind of happen in the moment, and, and I'm always cognizant of that, how to do that and, and you know how to shut up someone like me who would be talking in all those sessions, and get another voice in there. And then, when to stop? You know, when to stop? I've had some times where, yeah, 45 minutes with a team, and we're about 3334 minutes in, and someone says something so profound, it's like, alright, it's good. That's all we need. We don't need anymore. Let's go out and do it, you know, and go out and do it, put into action, and to be okay with that. So I think for me, it's, it's the identity, identifying piece people and letting them, like it's a skill, it's a skill, right? Like, even as an assistant coach, you know, coming up, like there was a lot of imposter syndrome when I was first starting, and, you know, fortunately, my boss gave me, like, you own these two things, right? So when you're in front of the team, you're talking about whether you know it's the itinerary for travel, like, where we're going, when we're leaving, what we're packing, like, when they know, when you step in front of them, you are owners, owning that, and you, and you have no question, there's no questions, or we have full faith in you for that. And then you start getting comfortable being in front of those people. And then the next time we give you a little bit more and a little bit more, because there's no substitute for doing it. It's an action oriented thing, right? Leadership is, is about the action, you know so

Pete Kadushin: 37:39

well, check this out. So you were talking about the rubber band earlier, right? Too much, too long, and then you're gonna end up snapping it, right? So your head coach did that for you, in terms of being able to say, hey, we're gonna constrain this. We know this is new for you, right? And I think, or at least, adopted the idea that if you don't have a little imposter syndrome when you step into a new role, then the role wasn't big enough for you. I remember listening to a podcast years ago that said, if you think you can do the job, when you accept the job, then it wasn't the right job for you. And just again, I keep wanting to come back and highlight some stuff that you're you're really hammering here. So edge.

Al Lattell: 38:19

Want to jump in. I apologize. I want to jump in something that you, you will appreciate. So I had a great text from Coach Alex Roscoe, who was our high school well, I don't know he was a football coach. He was gym teacher, legend, yeah, very, very influential. Someone was very influential on me. Personally, I still keep in touch with them. And this text from 2020 and he said I did a podcast couple years ago for USA football, and I said I was never ready for any job I ever had until coming to Maine. He's like, you'll figure it out. There's a reason they hired you. Glad you're both okay. That was during COVID. But his point was, I mean, by the time he got that job in Maine, that was probably 50 years into his career, he'd already been successful, and it was really interesting to think about that. And that changed how I felt right, because someone said that, like, oh, wait, it feel that way.

Pete Kadushin: 39:07

Well, and this actually it's man perfect, because it loops back in. And I haven't thought of coach Roscoe in a long time, but influential because of his position as both football coach and then also the gym teacher. And so I had him for gym and just somebody was passionate about getting people excited. But what I love about this in particular is that you were talking about encouraging people and planting seeds as a freshman or a sophomore, when somebody might not think of themselves as a leader, right? So I'm not asking you to lead yet, but I'm giving you that sense of you can and you might and here in this future, so you're helping them tell the story. But when we think about the different flavors of or components that influence efficacy, my belief and my ability, one of those is verbal persuasion, right? So when people that I care about or believe in or trust. Just are telling me something. I'm more likely than to believe it myself. And so when you build a relationship with someone, and then you call on them in one of these classroom sessions and ask for their input, right? Or you pull this football player aside and you get to expand on what they shared in that group session, right? You're hitting them with a little bit of that verbal persuasion, which then all of a sudden, again, it can be really subtle, but now all of a sudden, I'm thinking about, Okay, well, that felt really good. It felt like something I was good at. Maybe I can do a little bit more of that. And then we build slowly so that the rubber band doesn't snap the other one, right? Vicarious experience is another component of that self efficacy model. And so what I loved about, you know, you've outlined now from success all the way backwards to what are the behaviors, the values that we want to embody today, right? And then you talked a little bit about some teams are then tracking those right, one to five. How did we do today, on our getting ready for our trip, or I'm on our road trip, right? But then also picking a somebody, a teammate, right? So it can be hard sometimes to flip the mirror around and look at yourself and evaluate yourself. But if I say, Who do I think really embodies on this team that compete level? What that does is I look at someone who's on the team that I'm sitting next to in lock a room or on the bus with, and I go, Okay, well, if they can do it. And again, it's super subtle. You're not saying hey, because they can do it, you can do it. But instead just asking them to identify and they get to close the gap themselves. But there's a little bit of that gravity that says, Well, if they're competing like that, I could too, right? If they're willing to walk the walk that way, I can too. And so you've really started to build, you know what? We maybe we're gonna have time to get to culture. Maybe we're not. But you're building a culture that facilitates leadership in a way that allows everybody to start to look around and go like all right, they're doing it. Let me find where I can add some value to and then you're doing some of that work explicitly with folks that says, help them identify how they can be adding value. So

Al Lattell: 42:03

yeah, and you hit the nail on the head. And I think I see as I do see, or I talk about, let's say, let's put this way, when I talk about, I talk about leadership and culture as interchangeable and not for the reasons people expect. I think, I think the leader for sure. A lot of people would say, like the leader sets the culture right, or polices the culture, or does all that stuff which is totally valid and true. But I also think the culture builds the leaders, and I think that's just as important, and it is cyclical, and it's constantly going in multi directions. And so that's why the way that I've approached, candidly, what I've done and kind of what I've built as a program is really starting with the culture, and then within each group, because every group has a different culture. And even if they're, you know, we would talk about the differentiation of our programs, but even within some of our best programs, they look vastly different in how they operate. So, you know, I spent a lot of time with men's soccer here, women's soccer and men's across. Those are three ideal, you know, very, very strong programs here, they're all so different, you know, so different how they operate. And, you know, they're it's cool on a college campus, because they do support each other and their friends, which is awesome. But you walk into a weight room and you watch one team train, another team train, and they do things differently. They just couldn't the other one wouldn't do right. Strength coach would laugh, like, I just couldn't do it with my guys, right? And, but, but it works for them, right? It works for them based on their coach, their player, their players that they recruit, right? And I think, you know, that's, that's the mistake. That's where it gets hard in college, and I guess in the pros too, is, like, you know, you see a shiny object. Well, is that the right person for, you know, coaches are very easy. Like, you know, he's a three point shooter, and we need a three point shooter. That's great. He fits into our system, but does his personality fit into our culture? And they can't put those two together, right? They see the shiny object and and now I think as they get more and more, you know, efficient in their coaching, then they start saying, like, they can look at a drill and be like, that drill is awesome I saw at this camp, but it doesn't work for our offense or our defense or, you know, that that skill sets awesome. I recognize He's amazing. But we don't need a, you know, a Wildcat quarterback. We need a, you know, drop back, whatever that is, right? But then they still struggle a little bit more with the culture, right? They think, you know, I think we, as you know, people in this profession, and I've fallen just made that mistake recently, and is that we think we can, we can fix everything, right? Like we cannot fix, but like we can, there's no, you know, and I'm bummed we had an athlete that had struggled for three years here and being accountable and, you know, being a good team player. And had a great conversation with him towards the end of his junior spring, and said, Listen, like I've realized I pointed the finger at every single person throughout my experience here as they're the problem, until I ran out of people to point the finger on, and it's me, and I realize it's me, and how do I, how do we fix this? Right? And we worked a lot, and he was getting better, and unfortunately, he just up and left over the summer and transferred for his last year of school. And I never said about anyone. I like that, so I was kind of pissed. So like, I thought we had something there, yeah, but that's, you know, that's the nature of it. But, like, I. Think the culture is so important because it's a living, breathing organism, like it's not this thing, and that's why I always laugh when you know, and it happens in business, not just in sport, right? Like we have this whole marketing campaign and our values, and we put them on the wall everywhere, and put them on shirts and but we don't live them, then they're not our values, right? And it's the same with our culture in general, right? Values a huge part of that. But like, how you do things all the time is your culture, and what you allow and what you don't allow is your culture and what it mean. But I think the other piece, and this is that, back to that storytelling thing, and I've had a lot of fun with this, because I think it's the romantic kind of sexy stuff is, you know, like, what does it mean to me to be a part of this particular culture, and why? And what am I willing to sacrifice out of my own to make this culture stay and so we did a really cool exercise with a team where, like, and it worked better for different grade years, right? The older guys that worked better for but, like, What is something you learned from, from a former teammate that was older than you, that you want to take make your own so that a future teammate is in this room in four years, talking about how they learned it from you, right? So it's that tie from past to current to future and but it really forces them to understand, like, what is it about this group that's different than any other group, and why am I proud to be a part of that outside of the scoreboard on a Tuesday night or a Saturday afternoon or whatever that is? But why? You know, and it becomes their identity, right? So, like, they join this because of some reason, and then they build it, and they add to that identity, for sure. But then it you wear. It's like, you know, it's on everything you do, and it's how you smell, and it's all right, that's who you are, because you can't leave that and turn that off. And so I think the culture is the environment that allows us to grow leaders. So what I've done is I've mirrored that. So the first time I meet with teams, it's usually in the team culture setting, right? As opposed to like, well, who are your captains? They're going to stand next to me. We're going to tell you how it's done. No, everyone in that room is evil. Everyone is evil. Everyone is contributing at some level to that culture, good, bad, ugly. If you're not, I always feel like there's no neutral there. Either you're adding to it or you're taking away from it. But we start there, and then what happens is then people start to arise in different areas, depending on what we're talking about. And then we can go more one on one, or make take a smaller group and really dive into that, that more leadership development piece, but it starts in the culture, because we need to know what it is. We need to know what needs to change, but also where we lean into and how we utilize it to help us. And I don't think you can be the best leader, and I think that's where some of this studying has done, right? I've, you know, the past week, I've read a book from Bill Walsh. I'm reading Phil Jackson. I did Belichick, Saban, Bear Bryant, general McRaven, who did you know, I've read about 20 books in the last two weeks, and all these people have their philosophy in leadership, and for the most part, they're writing a book because it worked at some level, right? And so what we've tried to do is boil down what everyone said, and been like, all right? Well, what are they saying? Like, why is leadership important, and what does it look like? Right? And you have some guys like John Wooden or Bill Walsh, that they control everything, and they have lists, and they have standards, and they have pyramids of success. And, you know, you do A, B, C, D, E and F, just the way I said it, and that's then you'll be good. And that becomes a race of culture. Well, you know, Bill Walsh won four Super Bowls, had great players, but he was in a situation where he controlled everything, right? He was a lot, if buck stops here. And you know, in pro sports, he had a young owner who didn't really know the sport, so deferred to him. There was no GM. He was allowed to make those rules for every single person there. That worked, right? But if he was an assistant coach on some other team, you know, would that style have worked? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. And so, you know, for me, it's like you can't control that, especially in college, you know, you just can't control all those things. You know, I feel for any of your college coaches listening out there, and probably even the high school coaches now, in this day and age, like your livelihood depends on, you know, 18 to 22 year olds, or 16 to 22 year olds in high school, whatever that is, and, and they're people, and so you really need to build the environment first to allow them to grow and and then you can water the plant, then you can give the plant sunshine, then you can fertilize it, or whatever, if you're organic, not fertilize it, right? But then you can do all those things, but you need to know where you're growing it, and you need to know what plant I'm not growing a palm tree back in long metal mass, right? So if that's the tree I want, that's not the right environment for it, and it's not going to work there no matter how much I water it. And so being cognizant of that and understanding they always go together is fun and it's interesting for me, because I need my own little Rolodex of like, well, what does that team need compared to that team and that team? And I'm like, That guy would be great on that program, but it's not going to really work over there yet. And to be able to do that and catch myself sometimes give him grace,

Pete Kadushin: 49:35

yeah, the did that focus on the team as its own organism, is what I'm hearing, and at least that's the way I translate it. And I was sitting there thinking, like, you know, the analogy would be like, you have the you're buying tomato sauce off the shelf at the store, and like, what's on the label isn't what's in the jar, right? But if what's in the jar has gone bad, it doesn't matter what. High quality pasta you add or what other ingredients you put in, because the environment is no good, right? So you talked about having values that don't live in the space. Well, that's the best ingredients label, and the Oh, super organic tomatoes from Italy, right? Great. It doesn't really matter what's on label. It matters what's in the jar. And then, let's see, there's still legs to this, but we'll loop back in terms of, yeah.

Al Lattell: 50:27

And then when you're adding ingredients, what? Like, you know, I'm not going to put peanut butter in that tomato sauce. I mean, like, I mean, like, I got maybe some basil and some extra garlic I'm adding in there. But like, the ingredients have to be right to go into that to make it where we want. Otherwise, we're not going to get the end result right. And I think that's it could be the best peanut butter in the entire world. It can be a million dollar can of peanut butter. It's not going to make the sauce taste great. I think it's going to be weird on my pizza, right. Like, so, like, what am I going to do there, and to put those people in there, and what are the amounts Right? Like, you know, like, how much of the salt or am I going to put right? Like, what are those things that has to be right? And so it's a great analogy. It's the one that I love. I was actually going to use the, like, you know, we're making a friends giving dinner, right? And there's five of us, and we have to make 10 different dishes. And like, you know, maybe I'm just cutting vegetables, but you need someone to cut the vegetables so you can do your thing over there and all that. And, like, that's, you know, it's that family style meal that we're all putting into it, and maybe someone else who sets the table, but like, we want the table set, and maybe that's what they're really good at, and we need them

Pete Kadushin: 51:26

an example piece of Yeah. And so the take home for me is that, and this is how I feel, too, and I recognize sometimes, knowing that we we have similar ideologies, that I'll ask a leading question, right? But that culture and leadership are so closely intertwined that if coaches or leaders, folks who are kind of caretaking that ecosystem and the organism aren't paying attention to both at the same time, maybe not at the same time, but sharing sort of vision for both, then you're missing that piece of the puzzle, because you can do the best leadership development in the world. But if a culture world, but if the culture sucks, it's not going to matter. And if you're only doing culture building, but you're not also then focusing on the people who draw the most energy and attention in the room, and you aren't making sure that they're a part of and building off of that culture, then that can really spoil things pretty quickly as well. So I'm looking, looking at the time, and I'm realizing that I actually I had nine questions nominally here on my list, and I've asked one of them, which is amazing, all right, because I already know that we're gonna, we're gonna end up reconnecting and doing some more of this. There's just too much more to dig into. But I'm gonna give you a few quick hit questions that we'll just kind of bounce through, and we'll see how quick we keep them. But then what I'll just plan is I'll roll over everything we didn't get to today into the next one or one or two. It's all good. So the the first question I'll ask is, if there's one thing that you would recommend to our listeners, whether they're coach, athlete, performer, one thing that they could do or focus on to start building their leadership skill or continuing to cultivate their leadership skill. Is there one thing that you could pick and what? Yeah,

Al Lattell: 53:11

I mean, it's a big, big, short word that means a lot. I think just act do I think be right? It's a verb, right? Go, do it. Go, try it. A lot of the work that I do ties on to that leadership identity piece. I think if anyone has been listening to us, kind of understanding that we talk about the self efficacy stuff, like just visualizing yourself as a leader goes a long way. Right? So go do find opportunities to do something, make a choice, do something and practice it. Because, you know, if I want to be the best three point shooter in the world, I gotta go shoot shots. I'm gonna miss a few. I'm gonna miss a lot. Then I'm gonna have some days where I'm really good. I'm really good and I'm still not gonna do it right. So go do it. Take that first step and go try something. See what works, see what fits. If we're talking about our own personal style, we need to know what that is. We need to know what it looks like in action. And so just take up every day, there's an opportunity to make a decision. Every day. There's an opportunity to do something right. Leaders are faced with 1000s and 1000s of decisions every day, just go make a few. Take the time look back at what it was. How did it feel? Would you like? What didn't you like? And if you didn't like the result, what can you do differently next time to get the same result or different result?

Pete Kadushin: 54:11

There you go. Yeah. So the thing that's been baked into all the different skills you've rolled out is that awareness and reflection piece, right? And so as you were saying the do, I was like, man, but I know that you're about to say the do, and then look back and go, What did I like? What could I do differently? And so you married those two really well. Next quick hit question, if you could pick one favorite leader, whether it's somebody you've read about, you've been led by, who would that be, and why?

Al Lattell: 54:43

Oh, man. Uh, geez, one favorite leader. So I go back to I gotta picture this man on my wall. I got a tattoo of one of his favorite quotes on my arm. I can't not say Jimmy Valvano. So Jim Valvano, NC State basketball coach in the 80s who have. Maybe 70s, 80s, then transitioned to be an announcer, kind of Dick, Vitale, you know his he was very passionate. He was very, very emotionally connected, and he really wanted to get his know, his athletes as people. And he was also big on, it's funny, funny story I wish I won't get into, but he had, he had a practice it was, became notorious for, like they practiced cutting down the nets after a basketball championship so they could visualize what it would look like if they wanted or, you know, I guess they cut them down, Elite Eight, Final Four, whatever, they come down a lot. Now, you know, I did work for someone that went through that and then cut it across net, and then I had to go back and restring it, but it didn't have the same effect. And it was, you know, Mandela, but at the end of the day, right? He talks a lot. You know, he's famous for his SP speech when he was dying of cancer. Just the fact that he got up there and spoke was was heroic in itself, but talked about living just a good life and caring for people, never giving up, which I think is just so important. I think it's so easy to get bogged down and a world that we're living in where sometimes things feel like they're not going to work. Just keep trying. You don't lose, you know, you ran out of time. You didn't lose, right? Keep doing that. But, you know, talked about how to enjoy life and how to care and be passionate. I'm a very passionate person. I think that in my work, I would say that I get excited about this, and I think that allows me to connect with people. So I think it ends up being a good thing for me, and it fits me. It might not fit everyone, but I think it's it's very easy for our my athletes, to know how much I care about them, not just that I care about them, how much I care about them, and that immediately breaks down barriers. So for me, Jim Valvano, I get motivated every time I hear his speech, you know, he, he talks about enthusiasm, he talks about passion, not giving up, and really that connecting piece. You know, all of his former athletes talked about how, you know, we never talked about basketball. We talked about life. He wanted to come talk to us, and he wanted us to come sit and talk and and I love that. And so I think for me, there's some amazing examples of leaders, but we want to talk about being authentic and true to ourselves. And I think, you know, if I had an opportunity, to be someone like that, I think that would make the most sense for me in terms of modeling my style after him. And yeah, good 30 for 30. Survive in advance. If you haven't watched it, it's tremendous. I don't work for ESPN, but gotta give a little plug there. It's an awesome basketball story, but also an awesome human interest story. So, you know, pricing that about 40 times Awesome.

Pete Kadushin: 57:24

Yeah, it's, it's one of my favorite questions when I'm talking about leadership, because for every person you talk to, you might get a different answer, even if it's same person different why? And you really touched on the What drew you to his leadership style, and again, having marinated in leadership now for years in the coaching, the development space. Now, I do want to loop back around the reason you're crushing this many books in a short span of time. We didn't talk about it while we were rolling, is that you're currently in your doctorate, and you're working on understanding leadership from a number of different angles, which we're going to have to save for part two, but right? So you've, you've really made this your life's work, and in terms of passion, anybody listening to this is going to be really clear about how excited you get about this. And then the other thing that stands out for me is how easy you are with sharing it, right? And so, of course, your athletes are going to be able to be able to feel it, because it's not something that you're keeping to yourself. And so I'm really grateful for the time that we've had. And I mean, I'm gonna send you an email as soon as we finish to be like, All right, when I'm rescheduling number two, the last thing I'll say is, is there anything that you'd want listeners to go check out, or ways to connect with you. It can kind of run the gamut in terms of what you could do for your call to action, but I always want to leave some space for folks at the end to to plug whatever they'd like to plug. Yeah, you

Al Lattell: 58:52

know, candidly, I don't, I don't have too much to personally plug for to help me, but, you know, I would love, I love talking about this stuff. I love getting different perspectives. So, you know, my email address is on our Gu Hoyas website. So it's www.guhoyas.com you can find me on LinkedIn, happy to connect with anyone and have conversations about this stuff. This is, you know, it's my life's work, but it's also what I enjoy doing. It's the movies I watch, it's the books I read, it's the podcast I listen to, which I'm very, very fortunate to be able to combine all that and, you know, get a paycheck for it so but yeah, happy to connect with anyone there, Al Hotel on LinkedIn, and looking forward to continuing this conversation for part two,

Pete Kadushin: 59:36

yeah. I mean, the the whole point of this podcast is to do this sort of thing and connect with folks like you, reconnect with folks like you. And so I'm grateful too that this has become our life's work. And so thanks again. I'll make sure that all the links and stuff where people can find you're in the show notes, so that they can track you down, and everybody can keep geeking about culture and leadership and hopefully make. Making sport and the world a better place by helping other people develop those skills.

Al Lattell: 1:00:06

Fantastic. Love it. Great. Catch not Pete, yeah. Thank

Pete Kadushin: 1:00:09

you. Thanks for joining us. We will be back in two weeks with a new episode, and in the meantime, if you're interested in checking out other episodes or accessing show notes, head to the website MTL, dot Academy, or follow us on Apple podcasts or Spotify. If you got something out of today's episode, do me a favor, leave me a review, or send this over to a friend or a teammate who could benefit from listening better yet, do both. The mental training lab is produced by the team Palmer tree pod co Anthony Palmer is the executive producer, and thanks to our digital team, Emily miles and Caitlin cranes. The content for this episode was created by me, Pete kidion, you.