Pebble Water 23.0

In this "Pebble Water 23.0" episode of "A Pane In The Glass Podcast" you will hear an email from a regular listener (Leslie Gerard) who has some thing to say about soccer/football now that the games of World Cup 2026 have begun. There is a followup sound bite from a Canadian who is not happy about the cultural demise of "Hockey Night In Canada". Trust will be centre stage in a sound bite by Simon Sinek. His message goes out to anyone in a leadership role in sports or any other aspect of life. The episode will conclude with sound bites by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the well known astrophysicist and Billy Crystal, actor and baseball fan. You may wish to make use of the chapter markers (above) to locate that portion of the episode that particularly interests you or return to a portion that you wish to hear again. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

This is Pebble Water 23.0. For those who are somewhat new to the podcast, every once in a while I put an episode together, which is a collection of topics. And sometimes they're related to one another. Frequently they're not related to one another. But I have chosen them because I think you will find them interesting, entertaining in some cases, and hopefully informative. 23.0 is one of those episodes. And I'm going to kick things off with an email that has arrived in my inbox from my loyal listener, Leslie Girard, who has something to say about the beautiful game. And the beautiful game to which I refer, of course, is soccer or football, wherever you happen to live. You might be more familiar with one term or the other. But of course, North America, Canada, the United States, and Mexico are the hosts for the 2026 World Cup of Soccer. And just as the name implies, this is the big time as far as soccer is concerned. We see which country will emerge in, well, about seven weeks or so as World Cup champions. And so luckily has some things to say about soccer or football, as I said. So let's kick it off that way. And again, welcome to Pebble Water 2322. Bill,

An Email About The World Cup (Leslie Gerard)

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I've got some things I want to say about soccer, or as the rest of the world knows it, football. Most of them are negative, I'm afraid, but I'm gonna try to be as open-minded as possible. So let's start off with something I've heard you say on the podcast. It's interesting that this World Cup of Soccer and the trophy that goes with it is not a cup. So I'd really like to know why they call it the World Cup. And I do not understand why there isn't, as there is in most team sports that are played to a time restriction, that there is no game clock. Now, they say that there's a game clock, but when play stops for a variety of reasons, the clock doesn't stop. To make up for the time, some mystery person, I'm not sure who it is, I used to think it was the referee, but I'm not so convinced now that there will be stoppage time. What I don't understand is why, since you have minor officials on the sidelines with flags and the referee with a whistle, that when play stops, the flag goes up or the referee sounds his whistle, that the clock doesn't stop. It's really quite simple. And then when the ball is back in play, the clock resumes. It seems like just the right thing to do and the most accurate thing to do. In that stoppage time, nobody really knows how much time is left. And at a game of this importance, I think it's really important to know that. There are too many players on the field. Now, you may look at a soccer pitch, football pitch, and that vast expanse of grass and think, well, lots of room for 22 people. 11 aside. The problem is scoring. Once one team on attack gets close enough to the opponent's goal area, it's like trying to kick the ball through a forest of trees. There's just simply too many people. And I'm going to come back to the number of players on the field in a few minutes. For the life of me, I do not understand why this game needs an offside rule. There's precious little scoring as it is, and it seems like the offside rule is there to make sure that there isn't a lot of scoring. Can you imagine an offside rule in a game like basketball? Now I know in ice hockey, the offside rule is designed to keep the play flowing back and forth, so there is a blue line. But that doesn't seem to be the case in soccer. I just wonder if soccer and its sports governing body has ever experimented at the highest levels with games where there is no offside rule. There's no offside from a corner kick, there's no offside from a throw-in. I would just like to see a game where there is no offside. Maybe the sun will come up the next day. It's not going to be as disastrous as a lot of soccer people might think. And of course, perhaps one of the most embarrassing parts about the beautiful game is the embellishment, or as most people know it, diving. And it is so obvious when a player goes down like they are the victims of an assault, when it's pretty obvious that it's to stop the play. I don't know what can be done about it. That's kind of a cultural thing, Bill. It starts with coaches. If the coaches don't stand for it, the players won't either. It's an embarrassment to the game, and nobody seems to be willing to do anything about it. Now, about extra time. I know that once they get into the knockout round, that there's uh, I think ten minutes of playing time, uh at least a period of minutes, where it is overtime and first goal wins. No, I don't care if it is first goal wins, Bill. But anyway, here's the point. No one likes penalties, meaning penalty kicks. I've heard very few people talk about the glory of penalty kicks. It seems as though people try to avoid it at all costs. Well, here's a suggestion. And it goes back to the number of players on the field. My suggestion would be to start the extra time with nine aside for a period of minutes. If there is no goal scored and its first goal wins, it's sudden death, then it's seven aside until a goal is scored. Like in hockey, once you get to three players aside on the ice, seven aside on the pitch, there will be a goal, and I think people are going to be much more satisfied. Well, I promise I wouldn't be totally negative, and I have great admiration for the skill of these players. They're great athletes. I like watching the games, and you do have to watch the games start to finish to really appreciate this game and all of the nuances. So for the next uh number of weeks, North America is going to be home to the World Cup of Soccer, and it's going to be in the finals a very exciting number of games in the knockout stage to see who wins that World Cup. And remember, it's not a cup. Thanks, Bill. Keep up the good work. Your friend, Leslie Gerrard. In the last episode, I dealt with the announcement by CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that its iconic hockey night in Canada brand was going to change dramatically. And the dramatic change, of course, is the fact that it's no longer going to be associated with hockey. This soundbite is very much Canadian culture. It's a Canadian citizen. I'm not exactly sure who it is, but he's talking from the standpoint of the loss of Hockey Night in Canada as to the culture of the country. Let's hear what he has to say.

The Cultural Demise of "Hockey Night In Canada"

SPEAKER_04 9:50

Hockey Night in Canada is coming to an end. It was announced today that the iconic program was no more. Now, Hockey Night in Canada debuted on television in 1952, but its roots go back much farther, all the way to the 1930s when Foster Hewitt was doing the play-by-plays. The name Hockey Night in Canada first came about in 1936. This is more than a television program or a radio program. It's a part of Canadian culture. So many great hockey players first started getting into hockey by listening to it on the radio or watching on television, picturing themselves in the game. And this is a trend we've been seeing with these kind of iconic Canadian brands or shows. I mean, look at Enus. It disappeared in 1999. And then we started to see a variety of great Canadian brands disappearing. Sound record man. Even these. These are part of my childhood, and we can't even get these anymore. They disappeared in 2012 or discontinued in 2012. And now they're just a collector's item. And so many other companies on the same boat. Hudson's Bay Company was founded in 1670. And now it's a kiosk. Canadian tire. And when we lose things like Hockey Night in Canada, or these things that help define us and make us Canadian, we lose a bit of ourselves. Hockey Night in Canada, like I said, is more than a program. It's part of our culture. It was where instant replay came from. Canadians bought televisions to watch Hockey Night in Canada. One of my favorite stories of Hockey Night in Canada is that Alex Trebek was almost part of the commentator crew, but producers didn't want him because he had a mustache in the early 1970s. But Hockey Knight Canada was very important to our culture and now it's gone. It's like that song says, you don't know what you got until it's gone. You know, another part of our culture, another piece of what makes Canada Canada. It's gone. And that's unfortunate. Most Canadians know exactly what you're humming. It's a Hockey Knight Canada theme song. Some people call it Canada's second national anthem. That's how important Hockey Knight Canada was. And today was a dark day for our history because we're losing something that was truly part of Canada and part of ourselves. And I'm really bummed out that we're losing Hawkey Knight Canada.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

This next sound bite by Simon Sinek focuses on something over the years I've come to believe in. It's all about trust. And he's talking about this is the exact title of what you're about to hear. Simon Sidney.

Trusting Teams

SPEAKER_06 13:07

I went on a business trip to Las Vegas. And they put me up at the Four Seasons out there, which is a beautiful hotel. And one of the reasons it's a wonderful hotel is not because of the fancy beds. Any hotel can buy a fancy bed. The reason the Four Seasons is a fantastic hotel is because of the people who work there. That when you roam the halls and somebody says hello, you get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say hello, not that they were told to say hello. We're highly tuned social animals. We can tell the difference. Like we can always tell when someone's working on commission, right? You can kind of feel it. Right? We can tell the difference when somebody's genuinely being friendly or not. They happened to have a coffee bar in the lobby there at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas, and one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee. And there was a barista working that day named Noah. Noah was funny and engaging, charming. I spent far too long standing there buying my cup of coffee because I just so enjoyed talking to Noah. So, as is my nature, I asked Noah a question. I said, Do you like your job? And without skipping a beat, Noah said, I love my job. Now, in my line of business, that's significant. Because like is rational. I like the people I work with, I like the job, I like the challenge, I get paid well, I like my job. Love is emotional, it's a higher order connection. Do you love your wife? I like her a lot. Right? There's there's a difference. Noah said, I love my job. My ears perked up. He has an emotional connection to this company. This is interesting. So I immediately follow up and I said, tell me specifically what the four seasons is doing that you would say to me you love your job. Without skipping the beat, Noah said that throughout the day, managers will walk past him and ask him how he's doing, ask him anything that he needs to do his job better. Not just his manager, any manager. And then he also said, I also work at Caesar's Palace. And there the managers walk past us and catch us when we're doing things wrong and make sure that we're making the numbers and performing. And there I like to just keep my head below the radar and get through the day and collect my paycheck. He said, only at the four seasons do I feel I can be myself. This is the exact same human being. And yet the customer service experience that we would have meeting him at one hotel or the other will be profoundly different, not because of the person, but because of the leaders, because of the leadership environment in which he's been asked to work. I get this question all the time. Simon, how do we get the most out of our people? They're not a towel, we don't ring them out to see how much we can get out of our people. It's a flawed question. Which means we're gonna get flawed answers. The correct question is how do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best? And the answers will be profoundly different. If you do not have trusting teams, what you do have is a group of people who show up to work every single day, lying, hiding, and faking. Remember, a trusting team is when people feel safe. It's a trusting team, is when people feel they can be vulnerable amongst their own. They can raise their hand and say, I made a mistake. Or you promoted me to a position where I don't really know what to do. I think I need more training. Or I'm having troubles at home and it's affecting my work, or I'm scared, or I need help, without any fear of humiliation, without any fear of retribution. In fact, they say these things with confidence that their leader, their boss, their colleagues will rush to them to support them. If you do not have trusting teams, what you have is a group of people who show up to work every day who will hide mistakes for fear of getting in trouble. They will not admit that you promoted them to a position and they actually have no clue what they're doing. They're gonna just keep faking it. This is William McNulty, head of mission of White Stork. For over 1700 days, they would never tell you that they're suffering undue stress because of something that's happening at home and that it's affecting their work. They're not gonna tell you that they're scared and they're definitely not gonna ask for help for fear that they'll find themselves on some short list for the next round of redundancies. And eventually, cracks will show up. And eventually the organization will break. Not because of the people, but because of the leaders leading those people. We know what this looks like in the extreme. I'm sure you all remember a couple of years ago, United Airlines had an incident where they dragged the paying customer off their aircraft with a broken nose, broken teeth, and a concussion. I feel sorry for every single member of that crew because 100% of them knew that that was the wrong thing to do, but none of them spoke up. None of them intervened because they feared getting in trouble more than doing the right thing. They did not work on trusting teams. This was not an anomaly. This was a steady build over the course of years that eventually culminated in an event like that. I was witness to a scene that played out years before with United Airlines that gave a flag that something was wrong. A scene played out in front of me as I was preparing to board a plane, where one of the passengers attempted to board the aircraft before their group number was called. Which, as you all know, is a serious crime. And that is exactly how the gate agent treated this passenger. Step aside, sir. I haven't called your group yet. Please step aside and wait till I call your group as how she talked to a paying customer. And so I spoke up. I said, Why do you have to talk to us that way? Why can't you talk to us like we're human beings? And she looked me in the eye and said, Sir, if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble or lose my job. What she revealed to me is that she does not feel safe in her own organization. Her leaders do not trust her to do the job for which she's been trained to do. And guess who suffers? Company, customer, and her. The reason we love flying Virgin Atlantic, for example, is not because they have some magical formula to hire all the best people. It's because the people who work there feel safe in their own jobs, they feel trusted to do the job for which they've been trained to do. And guess who benefits? Customer, company, and the people who work there. It is a leader's responsibility to set an environment. Leadership is not about being in charge, leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. Leaders are not responsible for the results, they're responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. And if you get the environment right, you get people like Noah. If you get the environment wrong, you get people like Noah. It's not the people, it's the leaders. Almost always when there are performance issues, almost always when there are customer service issues, it's so rarely the people. Yes, we have anomalies, of course, but if on balance you find that there's issues, it's almost always the leadership in the leadership environment, and usually it's the lack of trusting teams. The job of leadership is to create trusting teams, and if you want to play in the infinite game, you must have trusting teams. One of the worst things about trusting teams is how you build them. Because they're not traditional in the sense that we set a target, we're gonna build our teams of trust, and we set out to build them. It's more of a practice, it's like getting into shape, it's like going to the gym. Yes, you want to get into shape. Unfortunately, you can't go to the gym for nine hours and get into shape. It won't work. But if you commit yourself to go to the gym every single day for 20 minutes, 100% you'll get into shape. Simon, how long is it gonna take me to get into shape? I don't know. And that's the problem. Someone, some will respond quickly and some will respond slowly, and there is no formula, but we all 100% know that the process works. We 100% know that if you work out every single day for 20 minutes and eat healthily, 100% of us will get into shape. It's the same in leadership. There's no five magical things that I can tell you to do. There's no one-day course you can go take, or one offset you can have with your team and all of a sudden they become trusting teams. Yes, those things are important, but they're part of a process, a process that we trust in. That process is called leadership. Leadership is a lifestyle. And even when you achieve your goal, even when you get into shape, even when the trusting teams are built, unfortunately, you have to keep going to the gym for the rest of your life. It's a lifestyle. And the purpose of that lifestyle is to produce teams who take care of each other, who love each other, and feel valued and valuable in the organization where they work. That is your job.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I like the way Simon introduced his talk. And he talked about uh an employee at a hotel who actually worked at two hotels. And you remember he talked about Noah, who had a very different uh experience at one as opposed to the other. Well, I'm gonna recount that similar kind of experience that I had as the resorts coach for our then uh Canadian Junior Curling Championship. Danny Lamero of the Canadian Curling Association put us up uh at a uh very unique hotel on the Inner Harbor in Victoria. Victoria was the site of the championship that year. It was the inn at Floral Point, and uh it didn't take more than a few minutes, and I had been in a lot of hotels in that role as resource coach, and I knew something was different right away. And the staff was different, they spoke to us, uh the coaches, the team, the athletes. It was just something different, you could feel it. And I had no idea exactly what it was, but I learned that the innate laurel point was started by a couple sorry I cannot remember their names, they were both deceased, and they made a point of uh in their wills, I guess, that the inner laurel point will never be sold. It will never be sold to be part of a chain, you know, part of uh you know a worldwide uh uh hotel chain. It was to remain a standalone hotel with very high standards. In fact, when I spoke with uh one of the managers and expressed our uh gratitude for being allowed to stay there, and I always thank Danny for doing it. I don't know how he swung this. Um the the building is very unique. Those of you who have been to the inner harbor in Victoria, and if you walk around to Fisherman's Wharf, you go by a sort of a street and you'll see Inn at Laurel Point. But if you see it from the water, it's amazing. It was designed to look like a cruise ship. And when you look at the inn at Laurel Point from the water, it really does look like a cruise ship. And the manager said that there are people who apply to work at the Inn at Laurel Point, um, and there's a waiting list for people who want to work there because, like Noah, they feel they can be themselves because they're part of a trusting team. We shall end Pebble Water 23.0 with two sound bites. Short but impactful for very different reasons. The first one that you will hear is a soundbite by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the noted astrophysicist. I had to research the exact meaning of astrophysicist. Pretty impressive. And I think many of you will have seen or heard uh Neil talk about uh various aspects of our world. Uh he's a scientist, and that's what that first sound bite is all about. And then the second one uh will just simply make you feel better. It's about baseball, but not really the competitive nature of baseball. Just about what baseball means uh from a personal perspective. And you will understand uh when you hear the words of Billy Crystal.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

SPEAKER_01 26:24

When we were all in the caves, half of everyone born was dead before the age of 30. Jesus. Fast forward to 1840, sure. That number went up to 35. Half of everyone born was dead by the time they were 35. So in the tens of thousands of years between living in caves and the middle of the 19th century, we got five years. Okay, so then with advances in medicine, and everyone back then was eating organic. And the water was clear, the air rampier, the the game was free range. Science matters here. Okay. You can run around and eat all the organic you want. Okay, you can dead by the third unless some doctor came in. You're directing this at me as if I'm our case.

Billy Crystal

SPEAKER_05 27:40

But to me, the more powerful line is a look on the father's face when he turns around and says, No. Sorry, that's when I lost it. Because baseball is a game usually that fathers teach their sons. The first ball that comes rolling toward you usually is a scout with red stitching on it. And you roll it and starts rolling it back on the floor, and then you start it's a bounce, and then suddenly you're throwing and tossing and hitting, and so to me, for my own life, having been raised, you know, by a you know, wonderful dad who played baseball and um taught me how to play uh at a very young age and appreciate the nuances of the game and and and and the feeling and the majesty of what it's like to walk into a stadium the privilege it is to watch great baseball players play. Um when he said, Do I have a catch? That was interesting.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Emil de Grasse's uh soundbite uh was meant to make you think. When I heard that the first time, my gosh, uh that he makes a very good point. Uh as he says, Science matters. I'd like to know what you think. And then, of course, the movie to which Billy Crystal was referring was The Iconic Field of Dreams. And uh yes, that line gets me as well. I remember very clearly when my dad uh just played catch. And uh yes, uh yeah, it struck me the same way as it did Billy Crystal. Well, as I indicated in the introduction to this episode, these were uh topics that seem to have nothing to do with one another. And as we go into the summer months, uh it will continue that way. I'll try to create uh topics that uh will uh entertain you to some degree, but make you think, and you might disagree with uh what you hear me say or what the people that uh I choose to share with you say, and I'm I'm happy to to hear that. And you can do that uh anonymously by clicking on the hyperlink uh in the show notes. Now, speaking about the show notes, this again is one of those episodes where you may wish to go back to hear certain sound bites, especially the Neil de Grasse one. I think you want to hear that one over again. And you don't have to find your way all the way through the episode to know where it is because you uh click on chapters just above the show notes, and uh it will take you right to those spots. So, until next time, when I have an exciting announcement, uh it's uh something that I've uh thought about for quite quite a while. I've done it twice before, so there's a bit of a hint, and I hope it uh will involve uh younger listeners, and it's about a story. So until next time, wherever you are, please remember the words of that great North American philosopher Charlie Brown don't focus too much on things that make you sad, because there are so many things that make you can make you happy, and to help you with that, I'm gonna play you a with Permit the Frog.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

I'm telling you, we can do it.