The Fearless Warrior Podcast

112: This Isn't the 90s Anymore, How Coaches Need to Adapt with Dr. Barry Davis

• Amanda Schaefer

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In this week's episode, I interviewed Dr. Barry Davis, Leadership Coach and Author. We explore how emotional intelligence turns rigid control into real leadership. Dr. Davis shares stories, tools, and mistakes that shaped a steadier, clearer coaching style grounded in trust and accountability.

Episode Highlights:

• Defining emotional intelligence for coaches
• Five pillars for sustainable culture
• Self-talk, reset cues, and calm under stress
• Discipline through ownership, not punishment
• Reflection habits that build postseason readiness


Connect with Dr. Barry Davis:

Website: https://drbarrydavis.com/

Book: Old Dogs, New Tricks: The Power of Leading with Emotional Intelligence

IG: @drbarrydavis42

X: @BarryDavis42

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbarrydavis42/


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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast, a place for athletes, coaches, and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, Koch AB, a mental performance coach, automated performance off-ball coach, Wi-Fi, and Mama 3. At each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools, and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain a mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. Dr. Barry Davis is an accomplished college baseball coach, leadership consultant, and keynote speaker with more than 35 years of head coaching experience. Widely recognized for his ability to transform teams and build winning cultures, Dr. Davis has led three baseball programs to new heights, amassing over 1,000 career victories, four D3 junior college national championships, six Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference titles, and four NCAA regional tournament appearances, as well as a five-time Hall of Famer. He resides in Pennsylvania with his wife, Brett. And he has just published his new book, Old Dog, New Tricks: The Power of Leading with Emotional Intelligence, which I just picked up a copy myself and have been loving it. This episode is really special because it felt like I was getting coaching wisdom that I could have greatly utilized as a coach. Dr. Davis and I go down memory lane, and some of the stories he shares might make you cringe, but I also hope that it makes you laugh. It serves as an incredible conversation of how the game has changed and what coaches can do to be better leaders for the teams they serve and simply have more fun coaching again. I can't wait for you to hear this amazing episode. Dr. Barry Davis, welcome to the Fearless Warrior Pod.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm so excited to finally get to connect with you in person. And as always, everyone kind of laughs because this is my shtick on the podcast. I just need to hit record, having amazing conversations. Let's just pick up right where we had left off. Tell the fearless fan, you know, who are you? Where are you at? What are you doing these days?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Um I am Dr. Barry Davis. I am a former college head baseball coach of 35 years, 38 years total. Uh I have a PhD in sports leadership. And um, after 35 years of head coaching, I decided to get out of coaching and pursue speaking, uh, writing, consulting, other coaches, other leaders. And I wrote a book, and the book was uh was published in June of 2025. The title is Old Dog New Tricks, The Power of Leading with Emotional Intelligence. And the emotional intelligence aspect is probably the main the tipping point ingredient on what I feel is separates from the great coach to the elite coach. It's that one little bit. It's like the salt, you know, that you know, the that little ingredient that you can add to what you already know, your competency, you know, the character level that you have, the standards that you have, and the leadership skills that you have, which you need to have all those, uh, which I learned, you know, working on my um PhD uh from 2014 to 2019. So I spent a lot of time researching and writing and reading and learning about elite coaches, elite leaders, and how to transform uh, you know, poor performing organizations or programs, athletic programs, and uh basically transform them into cultures of excellence. And they were able to sustain that culture through uh, you know, I would say the foundational uh pillars that I that I discovered through my through my work. And and also was able to implement a lot of that into my coaching in the last, I would say the last five years of my coaching, which you could argue were my most successful, not in not in terms of wins and losses or accomplishments, but just how my relationship with the players you know was was stronger, which I felt like I got more out of them without getting um too authoritative and becoming more uh you know of an act an autocrat, you know, type of coach, which a lot of people still are. And I felt like I I gained a lot more uh power by relinquishing the power and having to know everything and do everything. Uh hired some good people, had some good coaches with me, let them do their job, and uh it became more fun. Um whereas I think as a younger coach, it was it was it was always fun, but it was only fun when we won. Uh now when we were to lose, it would all we would look at it differently. Like these are the things that we need to improve on. These are things that that are that losses, failure identifies things you need to work on. Now we don't want to lose a lot, but it's okay to lose so we can identify them so we can improve on them so the the losses can be reduced and the wins can be increased, and the enjoyment of being a part of a team and building and building and building, which is um the fun. I think that's the joy of uh of coaching is being able to take something, mold it, get it like you want it, and and to and to excel. So uh that's the long version, I guess, of where I'm at. And uh I'm happy to be here and share some of my ideas.

SPEAKER_01:

And I love that you brought us on that journey because in 35 years, you've learned a lot, and now you're in this next evolution of your career of helping other coaches not make the same mistakes and really looking at the last five years. And, you know, I I've got your website pulled up. And for those of you listening, I mean, we're talking about a Hall of Fame coach here that has reached the championships and has reached the wins and loss column that every coach dreams of. And what I'm hearing you say loud and clear is it was just more fun when you started using more of what you're learning about. And I wrote down you gained power by relinquishing the power. I would love for you to go deeper into that. Let's just start with that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think you know, the the first thing is that you become more of a listener, you try to listen. I understood that I was the head coach and I was the CEO in essence. And um, I needed to look at myself, I know, almost like step out of my body and say, okay, you're you're in charge, you're the leader, and carry yourself like the leader without having to be loud, without having to act like you know everything. Uh, one of the four words that I think you could put in, you could use for the rest of your life is what do you think? Like, what do you think about this situation? What do you think about how we're playing? What do you think we should do today? What do you think we did today that wasn't good enough? Uh asking a player, what do you think uh we need to do to get you better? How do you want me to coach you when situations where I may not be as uh as as thrilled or happy with your performance or the way you're carrying yourself, how would what are the solutions? What solutions do you have? You tell me the answers. And then um I just felt like they they it built more trust. Um, it um it gave them autonomy and empowered them to do things that they could do on their own without me overlooking them. But I also felt, you know, if I were needed to step in, I could do it with a calmer, more soothing way to get to get my point across. And I think that even though you felt like you just you felt like you didn't have to be so micromanaging in charge to get them to do what you wanted to do. You could get them to do what you wanted to do by to have by ask by asking less of yourself. I just felt like it just got easier. Um, it's kind of a weird dynamic because you're you're afraid to give it up because if you give it up, you feel like you're gonna lose it. But I didn't lose it. And um it just it it made for a safe environment. And then when you know you're working somewhere where you feel comfortable and you feel uh someone believes in you and you feel supported, you can do great things. You can do great work, you could do better work. Whereas opposed you know, opposed to where you feel like somebody's always looking at you, you know, you're always being you know critiqued, and every little thing you do is going to be um criticized or uh graded. Um, so I just tried to be the best leader I could, set the best example that I could, and to um be patient, stay calm, you know, be steady. Um, and again, you know, you had to kind of fight it sometimes because you could feel it inside your inside your body, you know, you're warming up and you're getting frustrated, but then you just deep breath, you know, realize that you're in charge and uh people are looking at you to to be calm in the in these tough situations. So I had prepared myself for practices and games to try to stay in the moment, be calm, be cool. And then if I was, they were. And I just felt like I could get them to do more without me having to ask for more. I asked less, got more.

SPEAKER_01:

Which is so incredible because where were you five years ago? I felt like as a coach, we can speak to our experiences of it's very apparent of this new generation of athletes where it's easy to say, well, that's not how I was coached. You know, I we would never dream of having the conversation with our coaches about playing time like these players are. And they want to be involved, they want to feel like they're heard. And so, you know, I think about the times that I really was transactional as a coach because I felt the pressure to hey, my job as a coach is to correct you. But if all you're ever doing is criticizing and correcting, it makes sense why they're shutting down versus when you're asking them, I wrote this down, your four words is what do you think? And the temptation is if I ask a kid what they think, I'm no longer the expert. And you're saying that's completely opposite of you're getting their buy-in and you're having that conversation together.

SPEAKER_00:

And I and I think it's hard, and I think it was easier for me because I had built up a uh decades of success. And I mean, I'd had you know, some failures, don't get me wrong. I mean, you can't win them all, but I felt like I had done enough. This is where the experience aspect comes in. A young coach, you know, is gonna have to overcome that because he's fearful of not being able, he hasn't done anything, he hasn't won any games. If I when I got to Ryder, I had won championships. So even though I wasn't as emotionally intelligent as I was at the end, I wish I was, but I had built up enough uh credibility to get him to at least you know do what I asked because I I've seen it work. Whereas at the end, even though I was still being successful, I just I I guess it's the way you carried yourself, you know, when you know, because you know when you're around people when they're uptight or when they're nervous or when they're stressed or when they're feeling the weight of the world. I don't think I ever felt that. And in the biggest games, I felt less. I mean, I felt like, hey, let's go, let's go play. And uh we're ready. We're ready. Trust me, we're ready, we practice. You do you agree or disagree? Yeah, what do you think? There you go.

SPEAKER_01:

There it is. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, I think so too. So let's let's go do it. So there's like this fine line between, like, you know, I think where you feel comfortable in in letting go a little bit and and then not letting go. There's that line. And usually it comes with your own confidence in yourself. I was a lot more confident in my abilities later on in my career than I was at the beginning. I was more insecure because I needed I needed to win to prove everything. Yeah, we're high, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We're hired as a coach, you're hired to win, we're hired to coach. Coaching means criticism, coaching means depth charts, coaching means tough conversations with the kid where you do have to give them constructive criticism on where they're not, you know, meeting the bar. So before we hit record, we were talking about the 90s and the paradigm shift and how we were coached, isn't how you know we if we continue on that path, and I know you talk about it in your book, but let's just start with you know, ground zero. How do you define emotional intelligence?

SPEAKER_00:

Um well, I mean, there's there's been a lot of research, you know, in in the field, and I and I sort of take the coaching aspect of it outside of just the normal day-to-day uh emotional skills, being being self-aware of how you feel. Um, there's a there's a mood meter that's he that we used online. Uh Dr. Mark Brackett, he runs the Emotional Intelligence Center at Yale, and he had this mood meter, and it certainly defines what your mood is, like what my mood is right now. Like my mood is uh I have high energy right now because I'm excited, you know, and I'm very pleasant. I'm pleasant, I feel good, I'm happy. So I'm kind of in this quadrant of, you know, I'm I'm excited, uh, I'm I'm fulfilled, I'm I'm I'm happy, you know, whereas the opposite would be low pleasantness. I'm not very pleasant, and I would have low energy, which would be like depression, you know, you know, really down, and um, you know, maybe not v vocally, you know, showing it, but being really like blue in a sense. And then there's that red, furious, you know, we're high energy, but you're really unpleasant. And and I spent a lot of my coaching career early in that in that quadrant when things didn't go right because I felt like I needed to do that to get them to do more. Uh if I did that, then I would be happy, you know. But and and I would sometimes, don't get me wrong. It it happened a lot. I I would push them and push them. But overall, you know, the idea is that you're self-aware of your mood that day. Some days you don't feel good, some days you don't feel like it, and you're less tolerant with things that don't go well. You know, when you're not in a good mood in the car and you get in a in a traffic jam or somebody cuts you off, your reaction sometimes is different as opposed to if you're in a good mood, you're not in a hurry, you're pretty, you're you're feeling, you know, you're pleasant, you know, you um you're calm, you know, you're cool, you know, everything's good. And then somebody cuts you off, you may not, you know, freak out or get upset, right? Because of how you how you feel. So being self-aware of your of your actual mood at the moment is you want to determine how you respond to events. And then, you know, it's you know, I know you'd mentioned Brian Kane earlier, E plus R equals O, you know, event plus respond equals outcome. So if your mood, I just tried to keep on a steady, steady, steady pace, and that way my mood wouldn't fluctuate too much and it wouldn't cause me to react with a negative tone. Uh, I would be more patient. Um, so self-awareness is number one. So you got to be self-aware too, it'd be self-control and self-regulated, being able to control your emotions. Like when something happens, just you know, you got to be able to hit pause and not react with a negative side. Now, sometimes, you know, you're you're not happy with something, but but but anybody can get angry. Daniel Goleman, who's considered the father of uh emotional intelligence, said, you know, getting angry makes smart people stupid. And I always remember that. I'm like, that makes so much sense because it's easy to get mad. It's very difficult to stay calm. So you got to learn that, you know. So self-regulation will be something that I needed to work on a lot. And and I've done a very good job, in my opinion, uh, over the last few years being able to regulate it. Now, the third area is motivation, persistence, grit, you know, the ability to keep at it. And I think that's of all the the attributes of what emotional intelligence, how they define it, that's the one I was actually really good at. I was I could persevere, I was motivated. So though that quality, I was, I think I was so good at say so good at it. I was that's where I excelled. It overcame the self awareness, self-regulation areas where I wasn't very good because I was always still trying to push and to get better. So I would always want to, I'd always outwork the other person, or I felt like I was always gonna have to outwork them. The third one, the fourth one is empathy. I mean, I say this in my talk. I come from a family who has the worst hugs in America. We are not a hugging, loving family. I mean, we might be a little bit more now. My mother's in, you know, in her 80s, she's still alive. But when I was growing up, it wasn't I love you, here, give me a hug. It was I'm going, I'll see you later. It was none of that. It's just, you know, I'm proud of you, but it was that was it. It was no, there was no physical love touch. I knew they loved me, but it just wasn't that way. You know, I think my dad hugged me once in my life, and that was when I graduated college. I knew he cared about me and he loved me and he took care of me, but there wasn't that empathy um in that in that fashion, uh, where it was you know, hugs and kisses and making you feel safe. So you so that so I grew up that way. So how can I be that way? So I had a difficult time with my players listening, caring, touching. I mean, I had to basically learn that, you know, and and it it I mean I'm I'm much better at it now. I'm a matter of fact, I'm probably really good at it. I mean, I've probably seen half a dozen of my old players, and we hug each other, we tell each other we love each other, you know. But that did not happen, you know, and I think it was mainly because of the way I was brought up. And then the last one is just social skills, you know, being able to read the room, being able to um it's kind of your emotion, your, your, your emotional um smoke alarm. Like when you go to practice, you you know, you can kind of see that something somebody's not with it today. And I would say that's that would probably be number two for me behind motivation and and grit and perseverance is I kind of could feel that because I was always looking around to see what I could observe with the players and with our mood and with with our tone. So I was pretty aware. Um, I was aware when I was younger seeing kids that didn't fit in, and I and I noticed that. So I was always pretty, pretty good with that. But uh empathy, self-regulation, and self-awareness, those are bottom feeders for me, and uh and needed and needed work, but uh, but it but it but it came. It came because I I intentionally and deliberately tried to be better in those areas. But those are the five, and then you add the emotional intelligence total to the whole package of coaching, you know, uh leadership and consistency and communication and high standards and growth mindset and getting the right people around you. You add the emotional intelligence to that, and uh you're cooking with gas, then you know, now we're now we can rock.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh and like you said earlier, that's when coaching becomes fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's supposed to be fun, right? And you get into it because you love the game, you get into it because you love the competition. You might get into it because you really don't want to work, you know, because I never considered myself working, even though it was hard work. It was always fun to get up in the morning. And when I when I was working on my book, it was always fun to get up and type and and and try to create something that uh that someone could learn from, which I think I was able to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, when you're passionate about it, it doesn't feel like work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, you can't do you can't be good in anything if you don't love to do it. Yeah, it's just impossible.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, so I want to go back in the conversation. I would love to hear what your former players have said to you of well, coach, you've changed. Do you have any stories of that?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yes. Uh, I mean, and you wouldn't believe how he was back in when he coached us. He was crazy, uh, you know, and uh nuts. I mean, just and I I I guess I was. I mean, I was just I was overbearing. I mean, it was every every little detail, anything you made, if any mistake you made, I I mean, I was on it. And um, that wasn't a bad thing because I was teaching and coaching constantly. I think it was just my delivery. But I I was able to get them to play, and we we were talented, and we probably overcame some of my deficiencies because we were. Um maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought I was because I feel like I'm so much better now. But they they, if you got them in a room and said, okay, what's your best Barry Davis story? They would not have to go very far to find one. And uh everybody has one. I'll give you one story. I would love a story that I use. Um, we're coming back from a game, and uh my assistant coach, Rob Bailey, who's now the head coach at South Jersey at at Gloucester now, doing a wonderful job. And uh so we were driving we're driving vans, and um, and I looked down on my leg, somebody had either threw a piece of ice or spit a piece of ice, it landed on my leg. And uh I just I just lost it. So I pulled the car over on the on the New Jersey Turnpike, the van car, the van, with my team, half of my team in this van. There was another half of the team who was in the van behind me. They pull in behind me. I get out of my van. Cars are, you know, it's on the turnpike, it's about seven o'clock, you know, in the in the spring, kind of dusky. And I make the guys in the back van get out and start running down the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike. So in your van. Well, they're the people in my van are just still in my van and no one's saying a word because they're scared to death. Because now they're the grant the van in the back, which was doing, I mean, I don't know what they were doing, but they were they didn't throw a piece of ice up and hit me by accident. I know they didn't mean to, but I just lost my mind. And we're running down the highway. The state police pulls up behind me and their lights are on, and and then I I stop, of course, and he says, You got to get them off the highway. And I said, Well, I'm just trying to teach him a lesson. He goes, I know, I know, okay, but get them off the highway. Now, he didn't give me a ticket, he didn't yell and scream, he was emotionally intelligent, he was calm, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

And when can we pause this story? What year was this?

SPEAKER_00:

1997. Okay, so that's uh almost 30 years ago. So um, I get him back in the van. But think about it. That what was I think? I mean, I mean, there's cars. I mean, imagine driving down the highway, down the New Jersey Turnpike at 65 to 70 or 75 miles an hour, and there's 12 guys running down the shoulder, and they're not in the road, but hey, what if a car, I don't know, blows a tire? What if somebody runs up behind? I mean, think of the tragic, oh my God, how I mean, what am I thinking? Not I wasn't thinking, you know, instead of me just saying instead of just stopping and pausing and catching myself and saying, listen, we'll deal with it and I get to the next stop. I just I just reacted immediately. And um that's probably one of the stories that comes to mind. Like, what were you thinking? Because you weren't thinking. And you know what? I didn't think I was doing anything wrong.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't remember going home that night, sitting in the bed going, oh God, I'm gonna get a phone call from my boss tomorrow. It's gonna be somebody's gonna be complaining, or a player's gonna go home and tell mom and dad and they're gonna go call me. I didn't think of any of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and you're gonna double down. I mean, I the story that you're telling me right now is I can think as a young coach with a chip on my shoulder. I have plenty of those stories, maybe not on a highway, but where if I was called into my AD's office or called in by a parent, I'm gonna double down on my decision because I didn't have the self-awareness to to put my ego aside because I thought that it was the right decision.

SPEAKER_00:

So this absolute, I mean, self-awareness and yeah, I didn't, I mean, and there's multiple other times where we and most of it involves some type of conditioning or some type of running. And this went on for a while. Um, I mean, I I mean, later on in my career, I mean, I I knew that the this was a situation where I would do something like that. And I might, instead of running the young man or conditioning the young man or making him physically, you know, making him uh physically uncomfortable, right? I might just say, listen, you know, we got to come up with a with a decision here on what to do with you. What do you mean what what would you do if you were me?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you you asked that when it comes to disciplinary. This is the what do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

You're like, okay, you you just mispractice completely. What would you do? Do you want to miss? Should I suspend what would you tell me? There's a lot of things we can do here. You know, and I might end it. Well, uh, depending on who they were, um, they may say, I won't do it again. I I I trust me, coach, I'll never do it again and never say never. And I'm like, look, if this happens again, we're gonna suspend you, you know, for a game or multiple games. Something to that effect. They may say that, or they may say, Coach, just run me, I'll run something. You know, they would come up with it. Okay, well, why, why, why did we get to this spot? Why are we at this spot? Like I've sent guys home and they get their flake for practice multiple times. So listen, why don't you just go back to the dorm? You think about what you're doing here and decide whether or not you want to be committed to the program without me raising my voice and and and you know, and then I think we've had guys go sit out in their car and then meet me after practice and apologize.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, that's almost a bigger punishment than running. I mean, I it's it's it's more appropriate. And then like I'm thinking about situations where the brevity of that mistake, it makes them own it more because instead of us being enemies and I'm making you run, now you're owning your mistake, and now you have two hours to stew on it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it it becomes you. The biggest thing I I think I learned at the end was or at the later, later on, the last third of my coaching career was that I I didn't need to get worked up to make my point. Um maybe I thought I had to because I wanted to make sure they knew I was upset. Um but yeah, I I think you know, discipl not discipline, but like there's there's consequences. And if we don't get it straightened out, the consequences are gonna escalate. And we need we need your commitment to the program. And we and a lot of this is laid out right from the get-go, right from the start, day one. I mean, day one meeting, first day meeting, first, first day, first one, and to be consistent with those of the way you're gonna handle yourself within the culture, what's expected of you. And uh, and I had to do it. Like I had to be, when I got to practice, and this is this is honest got truth, for 35 years, I can probably count maybe on one hand, when I got to practice and I didn't feel good about being there. I loved coming to practice. I I mean, there that was the one thing that I think that you know, I made sure for two hours, two and a half hours, when I was younger, it was like three hours, or you know, there weren't any rules back then. We didn't have any 20-hour work weeks.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

But I at the end, I was it was two hours. I said, look, we're gonna go for two hours. I need you, I need you focused, committed to this two hours. Now, if I needed to keep you a little longer, I would let you know. So, hey, tomorrow we're gonna go a little longer because we, you know, we had some bad weather or because you know we're a little behind here. Do y'all understand that? And then most of them, yes, yes, sir. You know, they would never, you know, some of them, yes, sir, no, sir, but they would agree, and then the next day we would maybe add an extra half an hour. But, you know, I was consistent with my tried to be with my communication and tried to be there um uh with with the right mindset. One of the things that my wife Brett, who does mental performance, and you do it as well, and you know it's it's important is self talk. So I I even today, self talk for Me is still important to talk to myself, to get myself mentally ready to be my best. Because you, you know, it's a long day, you get down on yourself, and things are, you know, you're not selling enough books, or you, you know, you didn't get the speech that you wanted, you know, or whatever. There's always something to keep try to keep you motivated. So, anyway, I started to walk to practice, and I called it a self-talk walk. So, on my way to practice, I would basically say to myself, how good of a coach I was going to be that day, how patient I was going to be, how calm I would be, how how much of an example setter I was going to be. Uh, I was going to teach, you know, I was going to do all those things that that good coaches do. And then when I got to the gate and walked in, my mindset was that way. And that that went a long way for me. And I would I would highly recommend that to anyone listening to this. When you were walking to practice or walking to class or walking to a meeting or whatever you're doing to get yourself mentally ready to go, that mindset of being excellent and talk to yourself. And it's almost as if you know you you stood a little taller, your chest cut out a little bit, you know, the big body language, as they would say, you know. Uh, and I think I did that, and I and I did that on a on a daily basis, and I it became easier to be a good coach, to be a better leader, all that.

SPEAKER_01:

So and when did you start implementing the self-talk walk?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say 2021 or 22.

SPEAKER_01:

So recent.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, you know, I had I had about a quarter mile walk from the office to the field, you know, and uh it was it was like soothing in a sense. I mean, I would write all the noise.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we're just inundated with noise and podcasts and texts and right.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I would write, I don't have my hat with me, but I would write inside of my hat, you know, teach, be patient, lead, calm, you know, be the best, whatever. I mean, some little things. And it would be written all in inside of my hat, so I would look at my hat a lot of times. You know, and if things got hot, I would always have water near me. So I would like take a sip of water. It was almost kind of like I'm cooling myself off, like, all right, I'll calm down. And I would take a sip.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it begins before it begins.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's that, yeah. Yeah, so it was you know, breathing. I know breathing's big and mental performance, it's like take a deep breath, relax. I mean, it's it's it's always gonna work out. It's like you know, at some point, it'll it'll eventually work out. So I I try to stay calm. That was that was one of the big things.

SPEAKER_01:

I love all of this because as a mental performance coach, I think the the value in this, and until this very conversation right now, the teams and the coaches that I'm consulting with, it had never occurred to me that yes, we're teaching mental skills to these coaches that then want to teach and implement and carry these mental skills into their practice plan. You're saying I'm using these mental skills myself. That this is like a whole new conversation. I'm gonna have to text all my coaching friends and all my teams that I'm working with, because what you're saying is I am choosing to use self-talk. I'm using a reset mechanism, I'm using all of these. And going back to what you said is the last five years are the most fun five years of your career because you started showing up differently.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And I feel like even though I'm not coaching now, if I were to go back and say, okay, I'm gonna put all my emphasis on coaching, I'm better now than I've ever been. And um, the book, which is right here, is really a mentor leading a coach on how to improve his emotional intelligence skills and how to lead a group of young women, which is what it is. It's a women's basketball team that's struggling, who now has this uh highly volatile coach from a from from years past where he just couldn't control himself. And now he has a mentor who's showing him that look, you you're gonna, first of all, you you you this is the last job you're gonna have, so we got to make some changes. And uh he vows to listen, and he does, and then they build these emotional skills through the season, and the team improves, and there's there's all these team things that happen all the time. You know, there's always someone not working as hard as they need to be, and there's always somebody who's a really hard worker or a great leader. And now we're trying to bring the people that are not doing what they're supposed to be doing up to the level that the best players are playing at. And as a coach, you are performing. Um, I had a conversation with a coach once, and I and he said, you know, I hate when someone asks me, Are you ready to go? He says, Yeah, I'm always ready. I mean, he said he said it as if I don't need to be ready, they need to be ready, my players. And and I didn't, like I said, I mean, again, I didn't get into a this debate about it, but you have to be ready. You are performing too. Like you're the coach, you are, you know, you are an actor on the stage, just like everybody else. So you gotta be ready. And I think if I'm ready and they see that I'm ready, there the chances that they're gonna be ready are gonna be even better, too. Uh, I'm ready, you know. I've prepared, I mean, I've prepared to handle the bad things, the good things, whatever. But yes, are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. You know, I would never say, uh, don't ask me, it's the players that need to be ready. Well, I'm gonna prepare the players, but I'm also gonna prepare myself and get myself ready to be able to coach the game at the highest level possible.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great advice. I want to go back to coaching because I'm immediately, I mean, I can think of times where I'm sitting on a bucket frantically writing a lineup, you know, and the umpires are saying, coaches, you know, like, and I'm still writing my lineup, and I'm so focused on the X's and O's of the game that those were the games that I felt like my emotional intelligence was probably a very low scorecard because I didn't do the things that we're talking about right now. So, what advice would you give to coaches of like, is it a self-talk walk? Like, and obviously read your book, learn about these five. Do you call them pillars?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, well, the five pillars are kind of uh trinkled in and out, but the five pillars that I that when I wrote my dissertation, because you can get my dissertation. If you go on my website, you can actually buy my dissertation and then you can just download it in a PDF. The five pillars are leadership and leadership development, is number one. That's the most important. Two is consistency and consistent communication. Three, it was high standards, expectations, slash expectations. Four, it was the right people, the right fit. And five, it was the growth mindset. Now, those those five pillars are derived from nine interviews with nine nine talks to elite baseball coaches who transformed their programs into winning and sustainable champions. There were seven national championships within those nine coaches, you know, and uh the the other that didn't make it to the national championship have played in multiple regionals or been a part of championship teams at different levels. Uh, but these were all Division I coaches at Power Five schools, with the exception of two. So seven power fives and two non-power fives. I mean, one was St. John's, still high level, and the other one was Coastal Carolina, who had won a national championship, even though they weren't a power five or four at the time. So those were that those pillars were were basically founded on the information, the qualitative study that I performed with those nine coaches. So it didn't, I just didn't pull them out of the hat or read a bunch of things and say, okay, these this is what happens. I coded it, I I went through the interviews, I transcribed everything, and that's what I that's what I came up with. And it's a pretty sound foundation. And all five of those, if you if you take all five, they're they're they're not mutually exclusive. So you gotta have them all. You can't have just one or two or three. You gotta have all five. Because if you pull any one of those five out, you're not gonna be successful.

SPEAKER_01:

You've got a leaky bucket.

SPEAKER_00:

And I mean, the one that might they, well, what about growth mindset? Well, eventually somebody else will continue to learn and evolve and get better, and they'll beat you, and they're gonna be more successful than you are. The right fit, even though it's four on the list, I still put that one pretty high because you gotta have the right people. But your expectations cannot be low. Your consistency has got to be there. Routines, I mean, routine, routine. We gotta, we there's no surprises. The communication has to be sound, clear, great clarity, and then leadership is you are you're basically setting the example and you're doing the right things, um, handling yourself properly, great ethics, and just just do it, just being above board on everything, above the line versus below the line.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, and if you you know, if you don't fall into those one of those areas, if you start to slack off and you know you're not very consistent, or your communication, you know, starts to fail you, you know, there's there's miss mixed messaging, there's gonna be problems. And then throw in that emotional intelligence aspect, and uh you need if you have all that, we have a really good chance of being unbelievable, uh unstoppable, as Dr. Rob Gilbert would say. You know, uh, we're gonna be unstoppable. And uh so the book is basically a story about a program rebuilding, but a person, a coach rebuilding himself to become more emotional intelligence with leadership up from above that knows what it takes to win, and he knows what it takes to be a uh high-level people skills person. And in the book, I use it the term gold medal people skills. I mean, this guy is the this guy's the, you know, he's the guy because he's has the experience, he has has failed, but he knows the how to do it. So it's kind of a twofold story and in program transformation. If you're a coach out there who wants to learn some techniques that are not X's and O's, that you know, it's not X's and O's. Um, there's some, but it's basketball. So, but you can apply these principles to any sport softball, baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse, whatever. Any team, team sport. And there's some there's some individual duals, you know, how to handle an individual, but for the most part, it's a team-building book, too.

SPEAKER_01:

And what a gift, because I think sometimes we get overwhelmed with, I gotta do a little bit of this and a little bit of this, and what about this? And it's like you have gathered this research to be able to say, look, it's these five things. And if you can handle these five things at a really high level, we get this tunnel vision of what really matters versus just, you know, I felt like sometimes when I was coaching, I was throwing spaghetti at the wall of like, I gotta get my pitchers, you know, the X's and O's, we got to get the pitchers, the hitters, we got to get everybody grooving. And it just, you know, sometimes I think it gets overwhelming as a coach because you feel the pressure of the X's and O's.

SPEAKER_00:

And the other, the other key term in this whole thing is it takes time. I mean, you have you can't, I mean, uh you can fix it, you can make a program, you can improve a program in one year, but the over the overall building and sustainability comes with consistency and and long-term building. You know, you can't practice every aspect of softball, baseball, football in one day, you know, just like you just said, you're trying to do everything. You get little pieces put together with pieces and pieces and pieces, and eventually you start putting those pieces together. It's like a big puzzle. And then at the end of the season, when it comes tournament time, that's when you need to be your best, and that's when all the pieces need to be there. And some years it's still not there because you get you don't win the championship or you don't get to the finals. But you see it all the time, how these programs are built. They get there, they just missed, and next year they get a little further, then they get a little further, then they get there, then they win a Super Bowl, or then they win a World Series. Now it's changed a little bit with free agency and NIL and all that. So, but the premise is still there. It takes time to build, and um that's the fun part, but that's where you just you coach, you you make notes, you reflect. Big word, another big word that that needs to be thrown in there is reflection, self-reflection, day-to-day, well, better, how, stop, start, continue. These are all in the book.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so good. Uh, so I have a question that I've been gnawing on, and and this is real, we're gonna go real deep on communication for a second. I would love your advice as a coach. I would love to hear what you did specifically, and then you know, the nine coaches you interviewed. One of the things that's been coming up with my one-on-one clients, especially in the college space, is there's two types of coaches that I'm seeing that are wreaking havoc on the mental performance of an athlete. And it's it's shocking to me. And I'm very curious to hear your answer. There are coaches that wait until literally 15 to 30 minutes before game time or an hour before game time to announce the lineup. And then there's the coaches that will announce the lineup the day of or the day before or the week of of like, hey, here's my game plan. And I realize writing a lineup can change, but what did you do as a coach when it came to lineups and preparing your guys for what lineup you had built?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, what I learned over the years was that my best teams basically played the same guys. Like once we got going, we knew like I knew Scotty Shaw was playing left field. You know, um our center fielder was Richie Sick, our right fielder was Brandon O'Donnell. I mean, that was almost every game. Eric Hartman played some out there. But when just let's just use those three as an example. Shaw left, okay, Sica Center, O'Donnell right, every game. Now, if I were gonna make a change, I would tell now, if I made it like really early, maybe maybe I found out O'Donnell got sick in that morning he couldn't feel good. So then we would, you know, handle it right then. But if I knew I was gonna make a change before the game, I would do it the day before. Or I might do it two days before. Only because I would say, look, we need to get Eric in the game and we need to work him in, and you'd be ready to go in for defense. I'm gonna move O'Donnell to center field, I'm gonna play Hartman and and right. Um and and that scene, my communication and that that fact that that did the best. Now, if it was the day before, I might say, Look, we're having a midweek game. We're gonna we're gonna move some guys around, you know, we're gonna change catchers and we're gonna do you're gonna catch and you're gonna do this, and then I would let everybody know the day before. Um but and I also sometimes would not tell a kid he wasn't playing. I would switch it like right before. Like I had a catcher one time, he would always catch game two. Well, when we got to game two at Oklahoma, I didn't catch him. But I didn't tell him. Now I should have told him, but I didn't tell him, so I just kind of said, okay, let me just see how he reacts.

SPEAKER_01:

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

He reacted so bad. And I talked to him afterwards, said, Look, it's my fault I should have told you. But I also you have to understand that why we're catching him. But I also want you to know that you can't react that way. You know you're playing. It wasn't like I pulled you out of the game. You're still hitting, you're still DH'ing. But I as soon as I put it up on the board, I sat back and watched him walk over to that board, which proves to me that you got to communicate those things out in front. You got to stay ahead of that and just understand. Say, look, you bring him in and say, Sock, sock was his nickname. Sock, come here. Listen, we're gonna catch Brian all three games this weekend. This team really runs. I don't think that you're now. Hey, you don't have to be you agree, but I'm just telling you, that's why we're doing it. But I need your focus in the game, you know, um, because I think switching it without communicating it and out without telling them why you're doing it can cause harm, you know, because then they start to question, well, what do I do? And then they start looking over their shoulder about, you know, not playing well, you know, that type of thing. So there's a lot of psychological things you can do uh in the fall or in early season practice. Say you have a guy that that he thinks he he has a couple bad days, he's not hustling, he's not producing. Maybe you move him to the second team without saying anything to see how he reacts. Maybe he goes, you know what, I need to pick it up. And then he starts to pick it up. So yeah, it depends. It depends on the person, it depends on on who you have. Um, I think you just have to be aware and of your team and understand. And you might tell them at the beginning of the season, say, look, you know, once we get our lineup, we're gonna probably stick with that lineup. And I stuck with that lineup. I felt, I mean, you can go back and look at the box scores. We very rarely changed it. But here's what happened at the end of the year. Our center fielder was not playing real well. One of my seniors came to me and says, Coach, we got to get him out of there. The guys on the team have no confidence in him. So I said, Okay. So I went to my assistant coaches and I said, Okay, this is what they're telling me. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

What do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

And my my my pitching coach goes, if that's what they want, that's what we got to do. I said, Okay. So right before the tournament started, I brought the scene. He was a he was a junior, and I said, Come here, uh, we're gonna make a change here. We're gonna, you know, we need his bat. You're struggling a little bit. Uh, just you know, keep your head and um, you know, just be a team guy. I mean, we're gonna make that change because we need more offense. And sure enough, we get in against Coastal Carolina, ranked 10th in the country. We get the lead. I put him in for defense. They end up coming back, we go extra innings. He makes the diving catch. It's the number one play on Sports Center. Number one. Top 10, ESPN. We're number one. He's making that catch. And he had been benched weeks before. Good kid, you know, maybe a worser kid doesn't go out there and make that play. Maybe he does. But communicate it as early as you can, but then, you know, but but you have time early in the season to kind of feel them out to see what works, what doesn't work. Not every kid responds the same way. You know, Sok didn't respond really well. He would have been easier to talk to him. And I probably took my experience from Socrates and used it with the other young man late in the year. So the short answer is don't do it five minutes before the game unless there's something that tragically happens or something that just has to change because of something. You know, he got sick or he got hurt in warm-ups, or uh he came late to practice. I've had guys miss batting practice and they expect to play and they're not playing.

SPEAKER_01:

Or they miss the Yeah, it goes back to the standards, communications. It's the five, these five feet off of each other. I was just curious, your you know, what you saw. And I think, you know, going on to the mental performance side is I'm on the other end of it trying to coach kids through the spiral of the negative self-talk that they attach with. They don't know why they're not playing, or they, you know, they think they have a shot to be a starter and then they find out five minutes before game time, they're not in a good headspace. So I think about you know, my time right in lineups. If I could go back and change how I coached, is I think that communication, the lineups, you know, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they want, you know, this is awesome. The what do you think? You're not giving away your power by asking them what do you think? You're just bringing them into that duality of they just want to be involved and they just want to know why and what's our ultimate goal as coaches. I want you to succeed. I want you to succeed as my player. Well, what do you need to succeed? They need to feel like they're bought in. And you are making me so excited.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to get back into coaching of like, okay, let's let's get these five pillars rolling and the other thing is, and when you make a mistake in the game and say, Listen, I I left a pitcher in one time and I should have taken him out, but I trusted him. So I know the next time I go out to tell him, Look, I'm taking you out, he's not gonna argue with me. But I also would say, Listen, guys, hey, I made a mistake, I should have taken him out. I mean, I I even have a pitching coach come to me and says, Coach, I should have told you to take him out. I said, No, well, you yeah, you could have told me, and I might have listened, but I made the decision, my fault, my mistake. And uh, so I think also admitting your mistakes and always admit your mistakes first. I did learn that. Uh, there's a book right here. I got it. It's funny, I have it right here. Um, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

SPEAKER_01:

That's my favorite book. I read that in fourth grade. They have a teen girl version.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the best. I mean, you could take every book I have here and uh when that's connected to something like this and put it in the garbage. This is the only one you need.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you know what my favorite takeaway from Dale Carnegie's book is?

SPEAKER_00:

What's that?

SPEAKER_01:

The three C's. Change my life. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Don't you get rid of the three C's, your life is eternally different.

SPEAKER_00:

Chapter one. I mean, it's chapter one. And um, and that's and that and that holds true. And that's uh emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean Oh my gosh, this is we could talk for hours and hours and hours. I I would love to ask you the question I've been asking everybody recently. And the question goes something like this if you could share your best advice that you received. We used to ask a different question of like, you know, what would you tell your past self? But what is the best piece of advice you've gotten from somebody else?

SPEAKER_00:

That's uh there's a lot of of good things I've heard over the years. Um I would say, I I mean, now you kind of put me not on the spot, but I'm trying to think. There was an old uh Los Angeles Dodger scout, his name was Gene Kearns. I'm not sure Gene's still with us. Um, but Gene would come to our games and he liked me and we'd talk. And this is back when scouting was like there wasn't analytics, it was scouting. You went and you looked at the guy and you thought, okay, he has the tools, whatever. Gene Kearns said, Look, told me once, he said, you don't have to do all this complicated stuff. Just you could just hit ground balls and do situations and just make sure they know what to do in the simplest things. Practice the things that you do the most. And I'm like, okay, so getting complicated with all these fancy things, he was he told me, said, look, you don't need to winning teams don't do that. Winning teams do simple things really well. And that's what I took from Gene. And that's that's what comes to mind when you ask me that question. Now, when we're done here, I go back and I get my notepad out and I start writing all the things that you know that I might have remembered from other people, but that's the one that sticks. And I just remember Gene saying, Listen, you don't need to do all that crazy stuff you're doing. Just just do this. I did that, and we were always very good on defense, and we were always good at this. You know, do the simple things well, the things that happen a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, which is a full circle moment because it's it's your book. It's the five things we talked about today. If you can get rid of all the extra fluff, if I could redo my coaching career, if you go back into coaching, I mean it it really can be that simple. It's these five things.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And and you can talk about it. And the older you get, the more you do it, the more experience you have to be able to pull from stories and things that you've learned. Uh, there's there's several stories in this book. Uh my my favorite is the Pete Rose story. Uh, Pete Rose, who, to his non-credit, had had a rough ending with his life, with the gambling and the whole thing. But when he played, we all wanted to be like Pete Rose. I mean, he hustled, he dove, we peep Pete Rose, we were on Pete Rose slide. It was, it was, it wasn't a call to head first slide, it was we're going to Pete Rose into second or third. We're going to play like Pete. Anyway, so Pete tells his story in 1975. The team's struggling. The manager comes in and says, now Pete's been playing the outfield for like eight years. Eight years outfield. And if you played softball, playing the outfield, and then playing the infield, two separate things. Big difference. Now, if you do it, if you play soft, if you play infield one day and outfield the next, infield, outfield, you know, you go, it's okay. But when you're playing the outfield for like eight years, so Sparky Anderson, Hall of Fame manager, comes to Pete and says, listen, we we're bringing this guy up named George Foster. He's an offensive guy. We're not hitting the ball. We need offense. Can you move to third base? He goes, When do you need me to move to third base? Now remember now, he's played here for like eight years, gold glove in the outfield. I need you to move Friday. Pete says it's Tuesday. So Pete leaves the position. He played for eight years, was really good at it, goes in to play third base, which, if you've ever played baseball, third base is not the easiest spot to play. And they play third, and then they become the big red machine. They win two World Series, and Pete Rose plays third base. He didn't worry about his ego. He worried about how we could win more games. And if that meant him moving from left field to third base within two or three days, then we're gonna, then, then that's what's gonna happen. We're gonna can you do that on your team? Can you change positions? Can you move? Can you go from leading off to batting ninth? Can you go from left field to right field to DH or whatever it is to help the team? And Pete Rose did that. And uh so if I was coaching today and I had to tell that story, I would tell it in the sense that look, every one of you are going to be in that situation at some point. Are you gonna handle it like Pete Rose did? And you go back and look at the box scores in 1975, and you'll see Rose move from left field to third base. Now he goes back to left at maybe a game or here, but for the most part, he ends up being their starting third baseman for the next two years. And you know, all because it made the team better. And uh, so that that is in there. That's a story in the book. I use that story. There's several, but that's one that sticks.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and stories in our minds psychologically. We remember stories, we remember analogies. So this has been incredible. We'll be sure to link the book below for everyone listening. What is the best place? Where are you most active on socials?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I do uh, I mean, LinkedIn is is sort of because of business. I try to, you know, I try to do something there. Uh, the best place to get something from me on a on a weekly basis is to go to my website, drberydavis.com, and subscribe to my email list. And if you're unsure about the book, you you'll get when you when you sign up, it'll two two two chapters will download into your into your box and you can read the you know, read the chapters. And you can also get access to the to the dissertation as well. But that's the first one. Um, I'm on I'm on X, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, um Facebook, uh, but but that's more of a friend thing, I guess. More people, you know, but but for me, LinkedIn and and uh Instagram and Twitter I use uh Twitter is uh X is uh at Barry Davis42 and Instagram is uh at Dr.Bury Davis42.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. And we will link all of those below in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00:

And if you need anything from me, just just just uh contact me. And uh if you do get the book and you do read the book, uh if you could leave a review, that would be phenomenal. My goal is 100. I've been told by all the business people get 100. I think I'm at 66 right now, and so a little bit every day. Have you got the book?

SPEAKER_01:

I need to get the book now. I I we scheduled this podcast too fast. It needs to get here. So I'll be 6'7 on your reviews. Okay, which is uh yeah, it's so great.

unknown:

Dr.

SPEAKER_01:

Barry Davis, thank you for your time today. This has been incredible. We just appreciate all of your expertise and and your wife and the mental performance world is just so good to be connected with people who are doing great things. So appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thank you for having me. I had a wonderful time. Wonderful time. Thank you.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host