The Culture Builders - Lessons from 30 Years Coaching Practice

Let's start unpicking that a little bit then, 'cause that's where the, the gold nuggets are gonna be.

So I'm thoughtful about a word you've used a number of times already, which is community.

Mm-hmm.

And the reason it's popped out to me is because when we talk about culture, we talk about there's no silver bullet.

It's all fairy dust over every interaction.

Every moment with the people around you is what your culture is made up of.

Yep.

And a big part of that is a sense of, of belonging, right? Connection to the aim, connection to the ambition-

Yep

... connection to other people.

So as somebody who spent 17 years as a leader of a very successful program, what would you do to try and create community or set the tone for that community? What worked for you?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I, I, I'm gonna make this sound very simple, and it's not necessarily simple, but-

Oh, please do.

We love simple [laughs]

Yeah, I, I really believe, you know, we...

I talk about culture and building great culture and developing championship culture is really what I speak on, and there are a lot of things that go into that.

You know, I talk about different principles that I really leaned on and used in order to establish the culture with which we operated and then enhance it continuously.

But I really...

You know, people a lot of times ask me, "What do you do to build team chemistry?" And there's a lot of things that leaders do to build team chemistry in any type of team, but I really believe that the first thing you do to build team chemistry is you get a group of great people in the room together working on a common goal, right? And it doesn't mean you never have issues, but if you can, if you can get a group of great people together, high character, hardworking people that will be selfless, your team chemistry is going to probably be pretty good.

And so my recruiting philosophy, obviously, we went out and we recruited the student athletes that we coached.

I recruited the coaches, the assistant coaches that I worked with.

And so my recruiting philosophy is really very simple.

We would go out and recruit really good basketball players that were great people.

And notice I used two different words there, right? We-

Mm-hmm

Let's start unpicking that a little bit then, 'cause that's where the, the gold nuggets are gonna be.

So I'm thoughtful about a word you've used a number of times already, which is community.

Mm-hmm.

And the reason it's popped out to me is because when we talk about culture, we talk about there's no silver bullet.

It's all fairy dust over every interaction.

Every moment with the people around you is what your culture is made up of.

Yep.

And a big part of that is a sense of, of belonging, right? Connection to the aim, connection to the ambition-

Yep

... connection to other people.

So as somebody who spent 17 years as a leader of a very successful program, what would you do to try and create community or set the tone for that community? What worked for you?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I, I, I'm gonna make this sound very simple, and it's not necessarily simple, but-

Oh, please do.

We love simple [laughs]

Yeah, I, I really believe, you know, we...

I talk about culture and building great culture and developing championship culture is really what I speak on, and there are a lot of things that go into that.

You know, I talk about different principles that I really leaned on and used in order to establish the culture with which we operated and then enhance it continuously.

But I really...

You know, people a lot of times ask me, "What do you do to build team chemistry?" And there's a lot of things that leaders do to build team chemistry in any type of team, but I really believe that the first thing you do to build team chemistry is you get a group of great people in the room together working on a common goal, right? And it doesn't mean you never have issues, but if you can, if you can get a group of great people together, high character, hardworking people that will be selfless, your team chemistry is going to probably be pretty good.

And so my recruiting philosophy, obviously, we went out and we recruited the student athletes that we coached.

I recruited the coaches, the assistant coaches that I worked with.

And so my recruiting philosophy is really very simple.

We would go out and recruit really good basketball players that were great people.

And notice I used two different words there, right? We-

Mm-hmm