What a Basketball Game Taught Me About Leadership (Step 4)

What if the biggest lesson about leadership, discipline, and culture… didn’t come from a stage, but from a basketball court?

In this episode of Speak On Purpose, I take you back to a moment just out of high school, playing with two hometown legends Mel McDaniel and Chubby Wells. What looked effortless on the court revealed something deeper: greatness isn’t natural… it’s practiced.

We talk a lot about vision.
We preach values.
We set goals and dream big.

But here’s the truth most leaders miss:

👉 Culture doesn’t change because we talk about it.
 👉 Culture changes because we practice it daily.

This episode will challenge you to rethink how real transformation happens in your life, your leadership, and your organization.

Because what you repeat… you become.

🎯 In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why culture is built in the small, unseen moments 
•  The connection between discipline and leadership 
•  How to move from preaching values to actually living them 
•  The one question every leader needs to ask themselves 

If you’re ready to stop talking about change and start building it this one’s for you.

Transcript

Speak On Purpose Podcast (00:00)
Some of the greatest lessons I ever learned about life didn't happen in a church, didn't happen in a conference room. It didn't happen at a leadership retreat or seminar, or even in the pages of a great. book, they happened to me on a basketball court with two guys named Mel McDaniel and Chubby Wells. And I had no idea, no idea that what I was experiencing in that moment going to shape the way I think about leadership, discipline, and even culture for the rest of my life.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (00:43)
Welcome back to the speak on purpose podcast. I'm Brian Cox. And if you're new here, welcome. We talk about leading better living on purpose and building something that actually lasts today. We continue our series on culture. And if you've been with us for the last few episodes, you know, we've been building towards something we've talked about defining culture. We've talked about.

Writing it down, what we call the culture commandments. talk about modeling culture, what we do reflects on others. And today we're going to talk about a part that most of us skip because today we're talking about what it actually takes to change culture and spoiler is not a speech. It's not a vision statement. It's not really a good Sunday morning moment. It's something a lot less glamorous. than that. 

Let's get into it.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (01:47)
Here's something I want you to stop and think about for a second. Every leader I know has a moment like this. Maybe you've had yours, maybe you're in it right now. It's the moment where you look around at your team, your organization, your church, maybe even your own life. And you start to think, how do I actually change this? How can I turn this around? Maybe it's negativity. Maybe it's the church isn't growing. Maybe it's just a bad vibe and you can't see clearly what to do.

Maybe it's something in your own life and you want to change and you just don't know how. One thing I know about you as a leader is that you love talking about change. know because I've done this so many times. I've gathered my team, we get a whiteboard out, we start making plans, casting vision, preaching values, and then we leave the meeting and nothing changes. And why is that? Well, here's the part we keep forgetting.

Culture doesn't change. Let me start this and say it slowly. Culture changes or doesn't change because you want it to. You can't wish it into existence. Culture changes because you practice it into reality. And I love this quote from John Maxwell. 

He says this, you celebrate the process more than the event or result. It's the process. 

It's the small things every day that bring the result eventually that changed the culture. And we, we kind of get uncomfortable with that because practice, practice isn't a conference moment. It's not a platform moment. Nobody posts your practice on Instagram. I once heard somebody say, nobody's slow clapping in the green room after your practice. Practice is what happens when nobody's watching. It's a small repeated, often invisible choices every single day that eventually become.

The culture everyone else inherits. let me take you back. Take you back to my young days. I don't want to your story about how I learned this lesson on a basketball court.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (04:00)
I just gotten out of high school and I want to be honest with you. I thought I knew a little bit basketball because I had played it my whole life and you know how it is. You're young. You've got some confidence, maybe a little too much confidence. And then I get on the basketball court with Mel McDaniel and Chubby Wells. These were hometown legends. One played at Furman, one played at Clemson. And I mean, these guys can move and they move differently.

The way they handled the ball, the way they read the court, the way they shot, it looked effortless. Like they'd been born with a basketball in their hands. Like the game was easy for them in a way. just wasn't for me or anyone else. And I remember watching them thinking, man, some people just have it. But I was wrong because what I thought was natural, it wasn't natural at all. Yes, there was a gift, but it was much more than that.

It was practiced relentlessly. When I saw them on the court, wasn't just a gift. was the result. It was a result of years of reps, hours of showing up thousands of shots in the empty gyms when nobody was around to see any of it. Effortless never means effortless. It means practice.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (05:23)
And here's where I want you to make the connection with me because it's where all this clicked for me. What I saw on that basketball court with Mel and Chubby wasn't just talent. It was discipline on repeat. The same principle here, this applies to leadership. The same principle applies to culture because here's what I know.

And I want you to write down or screenshot or tattoo it on your forearm, whatever you need to do. Hear this culture is not what you say. Culture is what you repeat. It's not what you announce. It's what you allow. It's not what you preach from the stage. However, it's what you practice consistently behind the scenes. You say you value honesty.

Do you practice honesty in hard conversations when it costs you something? You say you value excellence. Do you practice excellence in the small stuff, the stuff nobody praises you for? Example, do you pick up the trash or wait for someone else to do it? You say you want a culture of trust. Do you practice trust daily or do you keep pulling the reins back every time?

It gets uncomfortable because the gap, the gap between what you say we value and what we actually practice that gap in the middle, that gap is the culture. So here step four, if you want to change culture, you don't just preach it, you practice it, you model it, you reinforce it, you return to it.

You repeat it until it stops being something you intentionally do. And it starts being something you do instinctively. And listen, I want to be real as I can with you about something.

And I think about this more than anything else when it comes to leadership all the time. Here it is. You don't rise to the level of your vision. You fall to the level of your habits. Let me read that again. You don't rise to the level of your vision. You fall to the level of your habits.

vision can be extraordinary. Your goals can be massive. Your dreams can be as big as you want them to be. at the end of the day, you and your team will not become what you say. You will become what you practice consistently.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (08:10)
So now I want to get really practical with you because I know some of you are sitting there thinking, all right, I believe you, but what does this actually look like in real life? What do I start doing on Monday? Great question. Let's talk about it. I want to introduce you to something I call culture words.

Think about Chick-fil-A for a second. You know what happens every time you go in a Chick-fil-A and you say, thank you. What do they do every single time? What do they say? My pleasure to the point. almost drives me crazy to be honest, but you know what you're going to get. Not yet. Not sure, not a grunt, hopefully or a nod, but you get my pleasure. Two words said consistently by everyone in every location, every single day. And what does that do? It communicates something. It says you matter here. Serving you isn't a burden is something we really want to do. not an accident. That's a culture word practiced until it became instinct.

Now, what are your culture words? Think about that. So I want to give you a framework that might help you think about the words and phrases your team uses every week, especially in three formats. Number one, when you're affirming people words like grateful for you, appreciate you, you are seen, you are valued.

Those are really nice things to say when you say them consistently with intention.

It becomes the culture. They signal to the people. This is a place you're a notice. This is a place where your work means something. Number two, when you're encouraging people through a hard season, words matter more than anything. It's going to be okay. Let's, let's move together. We're praying for you because culture needs to hold up under pressure. And when your team hears.

The same thing in the hard moments as they hear in the good ones. That's when culture becomes really incredible. number three, when you're empowering people to lead, say things like you are called, you are equipped. And this, this was big for I became in the ministry. had someone speak over me and say, Hey, I see something in you.

I believe in you, you can do this. And it really set the tone for my life. Wherever you are, look around, who are the leaders you need to speak over, to speak into? It does something to them when you do. It shifts how they see themselves. It shifts how they carry their role in life. Now, I'm gonna give you another thought to think about.

I call this the VIP meeting idea. Once a month, once a quarter, ⁓ we gather your leaders and volunteers and what I call a VIP meeting. And when I say VIP, I mean it. These are people that are your VIPs and the whole meeting runs on culture words, not corporate language, not agendas. I know we all have those. You open up with gratitude. You speak over your people.

You call out specific contributions by name, like Larry, thank you so much for staying over last night and moving those chairs. Angela, thank you so much for praying with that lady. saw you down front. Thank you for taking the time to do that. And when we, as a leader open our meeting and we're grateful for them and we mean it and we say it every time, eventually your team starts saying it to each other.

That's what I love to see when you lead by example and you speak culture words, you will see your team start to adopt those words and it begins to spread. That's where practice pays That's why we need to practice these culture words.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (12:21)
And before I let you go, I need to say one more thing. And this might be the most important thing I say the entire episode. Everything we've talked about, the culture words, the VIP meetings, all that stuff we talk about practicing. None of it works if you hadn't done the work on yourself. Because here's the truth. A lot of leaders don't want to hear this. It doesn't sit well with them. If you can't lead yourself,

You will never truly be able to lead others. If you can't lead yourself, you will never truly be able to lead others. At least not sustainably, not authentically, not in a way that actually changes people. I know that might hurt. It might sting a little bit. I had to face it myself because it's easy to focus on the team. It's easy to pour into the culture.

• It's easy to cast vision and build systems and run meetings. It's really hard to look in the mirror and ask, am I practicing what I'm preaching? 
• Am I disciplined and private? Am I growing? Am I healthy? Am I the kind of person I'm asking my team to become? The leader everyone sees on Sunday, the one with a vision, the presence, the words that move people. 

That person Is built on the person nobody sees Monday through Saturday. That's who you are. The person Monday through Saturday. That is who you become on Sunday.

The good news, that same framework we've been talking about this whole episode long, it applies to you personally.

You need to practice it on yourself first, your habits, your words, your discipline, your emotional health, that foundation, everything else is built on top of it.

Speak On Purpose Podcast (14:15)
Well, that's a wrap. But before we go, remember what I said at the top of the episode that some of the greatest lessons I ever learned didn't happen in a church. They happen on a basketball court with two guys who made something difficult, look effortless because they had done the work nobody had saw. And that's what I want for you. I want the people on your team to look at your culture. You've built and think, how did they do that?

That looks so natural, so effortless, and you'll know the truth. It was built one practice at a time. And if you want to go deeper, I wrote a short book called the great church culture blueprint, and it's waiting for you right now at Amazon. Everything we've covered in this series and more laid out in a practical step-by-step guide to help you start building a great culture. The link is in the show notes.

Grab your copy today and thank you for being here. Now go lead yourself first, your people second, and I'll see you next time.