E50 | JP Nerbun: The Culture System – Are you Transactional or Transformational?

[0:00:00 Donnie]  Welcome to the team behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Maib. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team based model, approach to ethic, performance, strength and conditioning, sports, medicine, sports, science, mental health and wellness and sports nutrition. Hello and welcome back to the Team behind the Team Podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Maib and man, this month on our podcast, I am so pumped and excited to have my good friend and distinguished guest, JP Nerbun and JP. What’s going on today?

[0:00:47 JP]  What’s going on Donnie? This is awesome. Great to be with you, man.

[0:00:50 Donnie]  Hey, I’m gonna tell you guys a little bit about JP. Coach Joe Krawczyk is not here today, so he will not be on the show. Just wanna let our listeners know, but a little bit about JP. JP is currently living in Dublin, Ireland. Correct. JP. Yeah. How are things in Ireland right now before we get into your bio? How’s things over there these days? A

[0:01:10 JP]  little colder and rainier than probably in Texas? Well, start with that.,

[0:01:14 Donnie]  pit stop coach. Well, again, just a little history. I found, I guess you could say I found and then eventually met JP through reading his book, which we’re gonna dive into all things teen culture and leadership. Today, the book is called The Culture System. I absolutely recommend you get off this podcast and go get it right now. It is incredible. It’s probably one of the most practical and just extensive and simple systems of how to build a culture within a team or sport environment. So, he’s the best selling author of that book. He’s written another book. We’ll, we’ll talk about that later. Leadership coach. He is the founder of the TLT culture consulting. He’s a leading global sports consulting and leadership coaching business guy. And his, his mission, I love this. His mission is to support leaders and their teams in achieving their full potential through one on one coaching, consulting and community engagement. So that’s kind of what he’s doing in. JP. If you look at his background, he has an extensive background in various fields from obviously sports. He’s been a basketball coach before and led camps and clinics and dealt with parents, which we’ll talk about that in a minute, probably education, health care and business. So he’s got a, a wide range of experience in dealing with leadership and coaching people through these different situations. Again, published his recent book, the one, his first book was calling up discovering your journey to transformational leadership received critical acclaim in 22. Again, he wrote the book we just talked about. He’s got a new book coming out which we’re gonna try to pull some of that from him in a second. And again, he lives in Ireland. He is married with three healthy, awesome Children. JP. That’s a little bit about you. So glad you’re here.

[0:03:03 JP]  Hey, I’m excited for the opportunity and ready to get into it.

[0:03:06 Donnie]  Well, I just thought 11 thing I was, we were talking about before we hopped on, obviously, I’ve been coaching now 29 years. And in your book, you talk about transformational leadership. And so just one topic I thought we could kind of break the ice with is I heard this one person say something about one of our recent athletes that had graduated and her name with Logan Eggleston, she’s playing pro plays for now. She’s an incredible person and leader. Somebody just randomly said she’s a transformational player and leader. What does that mean? Kind of unpack that for us? Maybe some of your book and your thoughts on that. What does that mean?

[0:03:51 JP]  Yeah, I mean, there’s transformational and there’s transactional and I don’t think anyone is just purely one or the other. I think it’s about kind of how we operate in the world. The transactional leader is looking to get, they’re looking to prove themselves. They oftentimes view leadership as a as a reward they want it to be easy. it’s really about them. Right. And, and everything is, they’re at the center of the world, they’re at the center of their team. And oftentimes they will view other people, not as people, but they’ll view them as vehicles to help them be successful, obstacles when they’re not working or not helping them, you know, to, to their success or they’re irrelevant. You know, they’re, they, they, they’re the leader, the coach, you know, that ignores the janitor doesn’t see them, doesn’t see the other people out there that maybe necessarily don’t have as much power or influence as they do. But when you look at transformational leaders, they’re looking to give, not to get, they want a coach might way looking to give his players an opportunity to grow, you know, giving them a great experience, something to remember, an athlete might be looking to give their team, they’re not just worried about them, you know, getting, getting that, that scholarship or getting that pro contract or, you know, getting that award. It’s about what can they give their team? So they show up in that, with that mindset, they see people’s people, they see people, their needs, their objectives, their challenges as legitimate as their own. They don’t see themselves as above other people. They see respon leadership as a responsibility, not necessarily a reward. And so the way that they operate in the world is not just what they say, is important or the person they want to be or the teammate they want to be or the leader they wanna be because we got a lot of people say they wanna be great teammates. We got most coaches out there say they want to make an impact in kids lives. But how do we show up? So if we say we value hard work and discipline, self control, do we demonstrate that? So do our behaviors match up with that? And even under below the behaviors is how we measure ourselves at the end of the day? Are we measuring ourselves by the results? Are we measuring ourselves by our impact and how our influence and, and, and impacting other people and comes down to our mindset. Do we see people as people? Right? Do we operate in that space or do we see ourselves as the bothers? Do we, you know, like that, that, that kind of what I call it inward mindset?

[0:06:13 Donnie]  I love that what you said that transactional, versus transformational the piece I think you reminded me it was years ago. It’s probably been 15 years. JP. I was talking to one of our head coaches at Texas and we were talking about, about different players and how, how they’re impacting our culture on our team and we’d had a really successful run and then all of a sudden we were hitting this wall and weren’t, we weren’t having the success, we weren’t winning as much and I’ll never forget. He said this JP. He said exactly what you said in a little different way. He said when it comes to recruiting players, what I, he said, I think I boiled it down to two thing or one thing, but there’s two things, two parts of this. One thing on recruiting is that you’ve got athletes you bring into Texas that want to take more than they give. He goes, those athletes, they’re hard to manage, they kind of impact your culture negatively and you’ll still win. They may be talented and really good. But man, it is, you pay a price for that. But if you bring in athletes that are talented and they wanna give more than they take, that’s an athlete that I wanna bring here to be successful. And I thought that was so profound again, you just do it on the head. So,

[0:07:29 JP]  yeah, and I think as a transformational leader, we’re trying to have an impact, an impact. I would say two things is we’re trying to help others to make that shift so that they become more transformational, more selfless, right? So we, we’re growing the character, improving the mindset of our athletes around us. So that’s a, it’s a responsibility on us, you know, is, is to not just accept athletes as they are when they come to us, but you know, accept them, recognize where they’re at and then help them to grow and, and that’s a, that’s a, that’s a responsibility of a transformational coach as well as grow yourself. At the end of the day, none of us are perfect. You know, we all have these values, we have this person that we desire to be and then we have the person that we are. You know, and for me sometimes it is the grumpy dad and some days it’s the happy dad that’s, you know, loves his kids and is kind and patient. And other days it’s not. And for me as a coach, I, I was really caught up in the, in, in talking about the type of coach that I’ve kind of maybe wanted to be or the, that my values or what I when I set up kind of envisioned, you know, I wanted to teach my players, but I didn’t always put the work in, actually bring about that change within myself. And there came that moment in 2016 when I recognized man, all these things, you know, like that I’m talking about, you know, this pyramid of success from John Wooden, I hand out to my players like a lot of these things like self control. Like I’m probably the worst example of that around here. So, you know, transformational leaders are, are first and foremost concerned with, you know, growing themselves and then, then they’re focusing on the transformation of the people that they’re around.

[0:09:06 Donnie]  That’s a, that’s a great point. I I’ve, I’ve always, I think it’s always been pretty interesting being in, I’m in, I’m obviously in performance, strength and conditioning and performance, but you see a lot of difference, like you said, different styles of head coaches and assistant coaches, how they lead the way they manage their team themselves, their staff. I’ve always found it interesting that, a lot of coaches and, sad to say high level administrators oftentimes are so busy doing their job. They don’t, they stop working on themselves. And I think, I think it’s I forget the guy’s name. I think it’s Marshall Smith. I can’t remember his name. He’s got a book. The title book is something like what got you here, won’t get you there, something like that. But it’s still your same principle of like oftentimes you work your tail off to get to this high level or this position of leadership, but then you stop working on yourself to continue to grow, to actually be the leader that’s carrying more weight down. So that is, that’s so powerful and, and profound.

[0:10:10 JP]  Yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s it, it comes down to taking care of ourselves so that we can show up the best version of ourselves and then also investing in ourselves so that we can grow our capacity and our character and our skills.

[0:10:23 Donnie]  It’s the how would you take? So take that same topic now, going into a team culture setting. How does a we’re talking about specifically like a player, an athlete, how does their leadership impact, positively or negatively the culture of that team? Obviously, the head coach has a big influence. We’ll get to that in a minute on how a coach kind of sets the tone. But how does a athlete, if you’re talking to some of our listeners, how does that leadership of that individual impact the team culture?

[0:10:57 JP]  Yeah, I, I think there’s three ways that anybody in the organization, whether there’s an athlete, an assistant coach, you know, whatever, if you’re not like the main CEO of the head ho show, right? I would really try to look at three areas. One is building relationships. What are you doing to reach out connect, get to know other people, right? Not just, you know, outside of your sport. I would really try to spend time investing and getting to know those people. that would be a huge component of it. Can you build relationships and connections with everyone in, in that team or organization, whether you like them or not or you have a lot of respect for them or not? You have a responsibility to kind of try to build build relationships. The second big thing is, is it to, to be an example, right? So especially if you’re in a culture that’s struggling or even if it’s a culture that’s not, I mean, the real reality is like everyone says they want to be a good team teammate until being a good teammate is really hard until other people aren’t a good teammate or the coach isn’t really negative or whatever. We always find these excuses. Reality is, can you hold yourself to the highest standard of anybody in that organization? Hold yourself that high standard? Do your behaviors match your beliefs? If you believe in being a good teammate, you believe in hard work, you be believe in being selfless, you believe in, you know, all those types of things, do your behaviors match up with that? That would be a big component of it as well. And lastly is you gotta try to create feedback loops. And so the easiest way to start giving people feedback in in your organization, whether it’s the teammates or you’re even your head coach is to first off, ask for feedback, genuinely go in there learning. Hey, what are you noticing? What do you see about me? What can I improve at? How can I be a better teammate? How can be a better player? How, what can I do constantly? Not just not just being coachable and accepting feedback when you get it, but going and asking for it. What do I need to do to grow as a leader? How can I have a better impact on this team here? Just asking those questions. And the second part of that feedback loop is to give it, that takes a lot of courage to do that. I would say that one of the easiest ways are the best ways, not necessarily easy. Gotta have a lot of courage. But one of the best ways to give going and give that feedback is to go and getting feedback with the mindset. I’m here to learn. So when you sit down with an individual and you say, and you give them feedback, hey, coach, you know, one thing I’m seeing in this or you give a teammate feedback, hey, I’m seeing it here in the practice. You don’t, you haven’t been working hard, you haven’t running hard or you’ve been talking back a lot or you’ve been leaving stuff a mess, whatever that feedback is that you gotta give somebody is to sit back and say, hey, I’m noticing, I’m seeing these things. Just don’t come in with judgment, don’t tell, don’t use names or labels like you’re lazy, you’re entitled, you’re selfish. All right, you’re a jerk, right? Just go and say, hey, I’m seeing these things, what’s going on, you know, or we’re noticing this, you know, like just even we don’t have that courage to get your coach feedback on his impact or her impact on the, on the team. Just, hey, coach, you know, I said, notice when we lose a game, you come in there and you just bla blast us, right? Like, and, and I feel like this is the effect it has on the team. What do you think so just coming up, you know, I would say feedback, you gotta give feedback, you gotta receive feedback. You gotta be an example and how you show up every day and then you gotta build relationships.

[0:14:16 Donnie]  Yeah, the feedback, I agree. The feedback part does take a lot of courage. I think I like what you said about. Not just, you know, if, if, if you’re not careful, right on feedback, it can be, people can take it personal, right? It’s already like you said, it takes courage just to say something of an area that somebody needs to improve. But but to say, you know, not to be attacking or, or, you know, using words that are like making people feel like they’re failures or they’re a loser, right? But giving them a constructive, not destructive criticism is definitely not only a gift, but it definitely can help. But if, because if like you said, I, I I’ve seen it in sports all the time like we can, I love what I forget the quote, but we could put a man on the moon but we still can’t see the back of our necks, right? And so we all have got to have feedback if we’re going to grow and stretch and improve and be the best version of ourselves we can as a teammate and as a leader. So, so, so, so spot on,

[0:15:19 JP]  yeah, it takes a lot of effort in and work into that. I remember hearing a cool story about the South African rugby team, you know, and, and they still had a lot of racial divisions from the apartheid era and players were really struggling to give each other feedback within the team. And they, they did this before their world cup win in 2 2019. They kind of leaned up to that. They sat down 23 years out and they created a template for each other to get feedback. And it was like, hey, hey, man, this is what I’m seeing. I could be wrong. I’m giving this feedback just because I care about you and I want us to be successful. They literally created a template for players to do that because, and when people use that template, they knew, OK. Yeah, he’s doing this out of that. We’ve all agreed to this, right? We’ve accepted, this is the way we give feedback here. So the more you can normalize feedback and, and do that in an effective way, the better.

[0:16:06 Donnie]  So that little change in topic here. How would you define team culture or culture within a sport? How would you define that, Jackie?

[0:16:17 JP]  Yeah, when we look at culture, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s how people show up why people show up and why they do things the way they do things, you know. So it’s a lot about the behaviors and the mindset behind those behaviors. But within that, I think the best way to measure culture is relationships and standards. So I, I always do a graph and on my X axis that put the relationships, the connections. So how connected are people here? How strongly are, are people connected to each other? Do people feel safe here? Do people feel known? Do they feel appreciated? And then on my Y axis, I put standards, the behaviors, how we do things here. Do we work hard? Do we have a good attitude? All those things, the reality is you can’t have really high standards if you don’t have strong connections, right? I think like, if you don’t, aren’t connected, you’re not gonna work that hard. If you’re not connected, you’re not gonna show a lot of respect and vice versa. If you don’t have strong relationships, then you’re not gonna be able to maintain those high sta you know, standards and, and vice versa. So, if I care about you,, as a teammate, well, I have to hold you accountable to high standards. We don’t have a really great relationship or your coach doesn’t really care about you if it’ll hold you to a high standard. So,, that,

[0:17:27 Donnie]  so I have seen that I’m, you said that a lot easier than I could, say it and seen it over the years. But I literally have seen teams where the relationships are so poor. But, and again, it could be a lack of trust. It could be very selfish behaviors like you mentioned earlier about, I’m not playing enough. I’m not, I’m not getting the ball enough. I’m not getting the accolades, whatever the reason is that causes the breach and trust in the relationship and you cannot hold that team to a high, high standard. It becomes very siloed. A lot of I would say like silencing and like stonewalling, there’s, there’s no, the communication is, is very, intense, right? It’s not proactive, it’s reactive and then you can see that same thing, that same thing that’s happening, off the court, go right on court and just watch a talented team fall apart. It is crazy what you just said., I don’t know if you got, if you got the cure for that, but you would, you’d be a rich man if you could find a cure. So

[0:18:38 JP]  it’s good. Yeah, I mean, I think the, the big thing with those, those teams that are super disconnected is that you, you, we can have a lot more impact than we think we can, you know, always tell us the coaches that I work with. Like, if you got a really toxic individual in your culture, it can, it’ll just, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll destroy everything at the same time. If you’ve got a really good individual leader in the locker room, it can make your job so much easier. And so for athletes, I say the same thing, you know, like you, you have so much impact, you can be that toxic influence or you can be that positive influence. A lot of times when I see athletes struggles, they’re like, well, so and so is just killing our culture and we just wait for that person to graduate or move on before we start to have good, good years and good times there’s this great study out there that was done. I think I for which school it was done by but it was years and years ago and they replicated it many times. It’s called the Bad Apple experiment. And they did this like 100 groups and essentially they had like a group of six people. There would be this one guy who was planted, he’s an actor, he just be was Bad Apple, he’s really negative and, and the performance of every group went down when the bad apples there, like you’d see like this one individual could kill the culture except they found this one outlier expe group. And there was this other individual who, who counteracted the bad apple and that was a positive influence. And when that person would get negative, they’d just be like, come on, come on, you know, like they would just kind of brush it off. They, they would, they would do something to, you know, to counteract that negativity. And so no matter what your situation is, you know, even if you do have that really bad apple in the group. Anybody, a coach athlete can be the counterbalance to that and really trying to neg negate that and lift the group up. so, you know, that’s just a challenge to anybody that’s part of a team. It’s just, you know, are you the bad Apple or are you the one in there that, that’s lifting up other people?

[0:20:33 Donnie]  I’ll tell you what, that is, there’s a, there’s a quote and again, I don’t remember who to give credit to, but you probably heard it before but it’s called addition by subtraction, right? When you start talking about team culture, I mean, I have and I think I, I love what you said right there that, that one individual, if you got a, a high level athlete or player, if they’re a really good leader and they, and they kind of build and enforce that culture and strengthen it, it’ll make your job a lot easier. And I have the years that we have really struggled, we’ve lacked the leadership. The culture has been not as strong and I call it like sideways energy. We’ve spent more time doing sideways, like working, talking to this pro pro pro problem with this person or this issue. And then we’re not focusing on like the mission and, and the, the standards and objectives of the team. So I have literally seen to your point JP, you get one, either they graduate or now you got the transfer portal which is a whole another topic. They end up leaving the team and we get auditioned by subtraction. And you think, man, I can’t believe we’ve invested so much in this person that he left the team. And then you look back, you know, a year, months later and you go, man, we’re better. I didn’t realize we’d be that much better. And, and this, I remember this is probably 15 years ago. I remember one team I worked with,, we fought like crazy to get this one athlete and he came and, and, for four years, we struggled with this guy to get him to buy in. And after he left, I mean, it was a long four years, we still were pretty successful but not the level we could have been. And when he left, we actually found out there were athletes that would not come because that one athlete was on the team. So not only to your point, does it make your job harder to coach the athletes you currently have? But it’s a small world in the, in the sports world, people know, like you just said, they know their behaviors, they know, if they’re like, they’re a me guy or a wee guy and kind of what the experiences they’ve had with other, other athletes across the, the US and globally and they build that, that kind of, I guess so to speak. A reputation. For what kind of, you know, a person they are and then that can kind of turn other people away. And so, man, it’s crazy, the, the amount of impact that can have on a team.

[0:22:58 JP]  Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s, you know, a lot of our job as coaches is to nurture fine recruit those individuals and, and the amazing thing is everyone’s got a choice, the choice that if they wanna be that person or not.

[0:23:12 Donnie]  How about, take some of that practicality now and apply it again. It’s coming from your book, I thought was so good. Was you talk about a captain’s kill? So I remember, you know, working with coach Brown, all the years he was at Texas. He’s now at North Carolina doing a great job, but he always had a council of guys. He had a basically had, I think he called the Mac eight. There were eight people, coaches and administrators on this council that they would be talk about the team. But then the team also had a captain’s council that they would kind of meet stuff and bring it to that council. Talk about how would you practically, counsel or give advice on how to a set up a captain’s council? Then how should that function? Talk about that for a little bit.

[0:23:59 JP]  Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest mistakes coaches can do is just to pick the eight guys or girls that they feel like they think are leaders and, and back to your polling earlier, like who are the influencers who do, who are people watching. And so getting the players to identify the influencers in a healthy way is really important. So we like to do an activity where the team creates a job description that they carry on year to year. I mean, essentially what do we need a leader this year and come up with three qualities and the behaviors that align with those and then they vote on that. The team votes on those three qualities. Each of those like selfless, competitive, resilient, who’s the most, who are top eight or top five, most selfless individuals who are top most, you know, competitive, who are top most accountable, right? Whatever those votes are, and then you pick it from there, you know, and, and, and, and so we have a kind of intricate system there to give the players a voice. Coaches can have some say at a person here or there. But the reality is, you know, we want, who do people look to and then they get kind of the two big things. I mean, there’s some of the little intricate things that we do with this, but the two big things, there’s a weekly meeting with that leadership council and the coach sits down and it’s not the coach teaching about leadership, it’s not them just sitting there reading a book or players talk about the issues it is sometimes we, we get to the point where the players run the meeting, the a the captains run it. They get in there, they celebrate what’s going well, they focus on something good or what gratitude. And then you get into what are the issues, what issues have come up and what are some solutions? And the players and the coaches are all part of solutions. Everyone is a part of involved of taking ownership. And so sometimes that, hey, a player’s not happier on the playing time. The best person to talk to him is, is one of the captains, right? And that kind of leads me to my second piece, which is we, we create units. So if you got a football team or, you know, you got a team like and you got 50 people on it, you know, you might have eight people in that leadership council and you got five or six in a unit and that leader is now in charge of looking after that unit. And a lot of times basketball team might have 44 people in leadership council, 16 players. So groups of four and what are those units? Well, those units, you know their ways to to break down clicks within a team. But also it, it empowers that leader to look after those guys. So everybody, Leadership council has a commitment to serve, a commitment to support and a commitment to connect. So serving could be carrying the water. It could be sweeping the floor, it could be clean up the locker room, like, you know, sweep the shads is an old phrase for the New Zealand, all blacks. You know, where the captain, the leaders would actually lead the cleaning on their, you know, this is one of the greatest sports teams of all time. They actually lead the cleaning. Right. So, they’re doing something to serve. They’re doing something to connect the group, they’re organizing team, get togethers, they’re having lunches with the people, they’re doing one on one with everybody in their unit. And then the, the third thing is to support. So what does support look like? It looks different because, you know, one guy might struggle, struggle to show up on time. So I might be that guy that helps remind him, one guy might struggle with emotion. It’s a tough moment. So it’s my job to get in there and help him, you know, calm down, refocus, reset himself, right? Like you that, that leader now has the ability to like responsibility to support and hold guys accountable. Have tough one on one. So come back to that example, like a player struggle a playing in time or throwing them by their rule. Sometimes it’s the let the captain that can best speak in their life and not a coach or assistant coach. So those would be two of the big core elements of it with a lot of the little things that we’ve developed over the year. And here’s the thing about it, people want to talk about leadership curriculums, they wanna do stuff and classes and, you know, read a book and all those things are good things. But the only thing that’s been actually proven to develop leadership is actually leading real learning with mentorship, with coaching on it. So instead of us acting as the teacher and we’re teaching our guys about leaders, we’re acting more like the Sherpa, we’re acting more like the guide. Hey, we’re giving you opportunities to lead, which means you have to make decisions. You gotta hold people accountable, you gotta do things like that. And then you as a coach are coming in and helping them to learn from their experiences because they’re not gonna do a good job all the time. They’re not gonna hold guys accountable. Certain guys are gonna struggle, they’re gonna be afraid, right? They’re gonna do, they’re gonna, their standards are gonna slip and, and so we come in there not to say, hey, you’re doing a bad job. It’s like, ok, what’s going on? How are you doing on those commitments you’ve made? What could you do more? So, here we are, we’re kind of mentoring and guiding them and that is all the research around leadership development. That that is the only proven way. You know, by all the Ivy League schools out there that’s been shown is experiential learning, not you know, in the classroom type of approach,

[0:28:36 Donnie]  I love it. I think, you know, listen to that. I, I think that speaks, speaks directly into today. We have so much online curriculum and videos and content. But I, I, you know, my major, I had a crazy major in college. I was actually a, a drawing and painting major is art. And one of the things I know just from studying art, if you go back through the years in history, the way you learned art was like you were under somebody who was watching you and mentoring you and giving you advice and giving you that you said, like you said that feedback, so you actually could become a good artist and not just read a book on it. And I, I forget where I read it too recently. Like the percentage of like you said, learning and change that you get from like just taking a whether it’s a course or read, the book is very, very small miniscule compared to having that one on one. So that is so good with that piece. You kind of touched on this earlier. What about get into some practical things on you? You mentioned this just a second ago, like you’re not the main driver of the culture but what are some ways you can or strategies that some, like somebody on a team can influence a team culture in a good way, even though they’re not kind of that person who dictates culture. How would you do that recommend that?

[0:29:58 JP]  Yeah, II I think I’d go back to those main three things I mentioned earlier around, you know, build relationships with other people, be the example and create feedback loops. But I would double click right now on being the example. And I, I think this is where a lot of people struggle, which is, it’s very hard to change, it’s very hard to grow our character and we have to have a real commitment to that. I think we rely too much on just habits and we try to operate and we just say I’ll try harder next time. And so everybody to, to, to be the example. First off, can we show up as our best self in that moment? And that means we gotta do things that keep us centered. So, I mean, this is gonna sound crazy but like, did you get enough sleep? Did you eat well? You know, are you watching how much time you’re spending on social media? and on your phone? Like, are you spending time with people you care about like, you know, those type of quality relationships? So what do you need to do to be centered? Right? You know, mindfulness practices, you know, those that type of self care stuff is really important because if you don’t do that stuff, then you, then you have the capacity to show up as a joyful you know, very calm person. When adversity strikes, you become that that guy or that girl that keeps everybody calm in, in the storm. But if you don’t do those things and you show up and you don’t have that capacity, your window of tolerance because of stress in life just builds up, builds up. The other aspect is not just self-care but self improvement, personal growth. And so are you reading, are you learning, Are you finding people to mentor you so that you can make the most of your experiences, whether you’re the leader, the head coach or you’re at the bottom of that roster, you all have an experience right in front of you. You have stress, you have challenges and, and those present opportunities for us to grow. And I think that’s probably one of my biggest regrets in life is I went through periods of as an athlete and then as a coach where I was so caught up in like as an athlete, like, how do I get a better jump shot? And how do I, you know, and so I’d be spending hours and hours shooting the gym, you know, 1000 shots every day when I was playing basketball in South Carolina. And then as a coach, I’d be so caught up in the Xs and Os and tactical and technical and the reality is like getting all those shots that didn’t matter if I didn’t, if I wasn’t well rested, if my mind wasn’t right if I wasn’t doing, like, if I was a, you know, this big ball of stress because I wasn’t doing work on myself and my impact on my team could have been better than shooting 44% from the three point line that year. It could have been, you know, being a really effective leader. And instead I was just an average leader, same as a coach. I got so caught up in the Xs and Os and yet my team would never be able to execute because our culture stunk, you know, like we, we didn’t have to feel connected. So we have all these players that require players to share the basketball, but nobody shares the basketball because nobody cares about each other. So who cares if you got a great scout and spent five hours staying up all night to do that, you show up, you’re exhausted, you’re, you’re short tempered and your team doesn’t even want to pass the ball because they’re all care about themselves. So forget about the scout, you know, or the plan game plan you put together that won’t be effective. So it comes back to working, making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves and we’re improving ourselves and do that. Then we’re gonna walk in, we’re gonna be able to be a better example. We’re gonna be able to be more effective at building relationships and we’re gonna be, you know, get, be getting better at giving that, that, that feedback to each other.

[0:33:42 Donnie]  Yeah. I, I know you’re a big John Wooden fan as well. I know I am, love his, some of his books and quotes. But you made me think of that quote of his. I think it goes something like that. The greatest, influence a leader has is their own personal example. And you, I mean, that could be the foundation because I think part of, I know just working with different leaders in different sports through the years, it’s oftentimes it’s not what they do on court or on field that sets them apart as a leader or it holds them back. It’s what they do off court when nobody’s looking, right? And that comes back to that comes back to character, right? One of my, one of my favorite definitions of character I think is by Oz Guinness, but it says, you know, character is who you are when no one is watching. And I cannot tell you, I know you’ve seen it. It’s what athletes are doing when they’re out with their buddies or their friends out on a weekend. What they do there impacts and influences the level of influence and character they have and leadership they have in the team culture for that team. So it’s good stuff talking a little bit now about just pulling from your book a little again here. How do you enforce culture? Like, OK, you got your leaders, you got your council, you kind of establish it, you got your mission values. But man, some years, man, culture is great. We’re winning and all of a sudden you get, like you said earlier, you get one or two bad apples in there. How do you enforce that team culture? JP.

[0:35:17 JP]  Yeah, you know it’s not a silver bullet right? There is no one thing because culture is very complex. People are complex and so sometimes people want to have this one approach, this one size fits all. But that’s why we talk about a culture system and, and I my present a framework for a lot of coaches on this is because there’s many different ways that we should be enforcing the culture. transactional leaders are demeaning. They use a lot of fear or to, to oftentimes enforce standards, transformational coaches they’re demanding, they’re very tough, very hard. John Wooden was incredibly demanding. You mentioned John Wooden and a lot of the great coaches that Greg Popovich is like these type of guys that, you know, they love their guys, but they’re also tough. Now, the thing with the the enforcement aspect is when we’re demanding, we cannot be relying on fear based tactics. I got a thing for coaches no blaming, no shaming, no blaming, no shaming, right? And, and really we don’t know how to be yelling at people. And a lot of times coaches rely on those types of blaming the athletes shaming the athletes just yelling at them, getting them in them to get them to work hard. That, that old school approach, it might be effective in the short term. But if you want your ath, I mean, at the end of the day, we want athletes to show up, work hard, have a good attitude because it’s who they wanna be because they know if they work hard, they’re gonna achieve their goals, they’re gonna achieve the team’s goals. We don’t want people that work hard and show up and have a good attitude because we said so or because if they don’t, we’re gonna rip them. So when it comes to enforcing standards, we gotta stop all that stuff. Right? I know like one of those, no, no P CD, no blame complain to defend is a lot of thing that coaches tell their athletes today. Well, do we do that? You know, do we blame athletes? Do we sit around and complain about our athletes? Do we defend our actions constantly? And too often we do what we know about the brain is that for optimum performance, we need to maintain connection and often this the, this the the sporting environment is very stressful. There’s a lot of pressure. So in stressful, high pressure and moments, it does not where the athlete is all already becoming disregulation emotionally. It does not help for us to come in there and blow up on them. It just adds further further to that disregulation. A deregulated individual will never regulate another person. So whether you’re an athlete or a coach, like blowing up on someone that’s already shutting down or already struggling, that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. Definitely in the long term. So when we talk about enforcing standards a few things, one is catch them doing good things, you gotta celebrate the things you wanna see. That’s the first one. That’s an obvious one. The second one though is you gotta have conversations around the consequences. Like if we don’t work hard, we don’t have a good attitude. What is the consequences of that? Three months from now? Well, we’re not gonna be winning championships, right? That’s for sure. But like today like so sometimes just like when your team goes through a drill, they don’t work hard or you go through a bad practice instead of ripping them, just hold everybody in, you know, you’re an athlete or a coach say guys like how do we feel about our effort today? Do we feel good about that? No, no, no. Ok. So what are we gonna do tomorrow? How can, what can we do differently? What can we do different the next drill? So just talking about how like that’s not who we wanna be. It doesn’t feel good. The second one is using logical consequences and there’s kind of two types of logical consequences. I kind of propose one is progressive consequences and John one was famous for using this. We got a lot other coaches that use this, but we enforce standards by saying, hey, I’m not gonna yell, scream at you. I’m not going to give you false praise. I’m not, I I’m gonna be real with you, right? When you’re not meeting the standard, when you’re not going hard, there’s gonna be a consequence, you know, and, and eventually that’s gonna be you, you lost the opportunity to get better, right? Because practice is a privilege playing the game being a part of this team is a privilege. So athlete doesn’t work hard, you say, all right, do the drill again. They keep, you know, they, they don’t address their effort, you might say, right? You know what, you step out of this drill and as soon as you’re ready to start working hard, you can come back in a, they still didn’t correct themselves. The next progression might be, you know what? I don’t think you’re feeling today, we’ll see you tomorrow and we, we do the same thing in games. So these, these progressive logical consequences are a loss of privilege. There are a lot, you might give an opportunity to fix their behavior, but eventually we, they lose that privilege. And what does this do is so profound because it teaches our athletes and it, it, it reminds us that we should be grateful for the opportunity we get to come in here and practice. Practice is a privilege. But when we yell and scream, then they come in there and they have, it’s a got to, right. It becomes this fear based thing that they have to show up at. So we can do that no matter what the environment, you know, it’s, it’s such a profound, profound way to enforce the standard is, is to say, hey, what can you do to fix the situation? If you’re not going to fix it, then you, you lost the privilege and the opportunity to get better. And, those are some of our more popular ways. There’s a few other ways that we do enforce the culture as well. Eventually, sometimes you got to remove people from the team and stuff like that, but you don’t want to get to those stages if you haven’t done these other things that have been proven to be effective in education and sports, you know what I mean?

[0:40:40 Donnie]  Yeah, you, one of the best coaches I’ve seen, he’s retired, been retired for a while, but, Bill mccartney, my first job at Colorado. I was a young coach, coming out of college and they had, they had a couple of guys on the football team that they’d done some, you know, had some behaviors that were, were not their standard. And he didn’t yell at him, he didn’t curse them out. He took away their privileges, took some playing time, which is, I think I think it’s harder for coaches to do that day for whatever reason. I think with the, the transfer portal, kids can just leave, you know, if you, if you offend the kid or don’t give them exactly what they want, they kind of try to hang that over your head today. You know, that’s kind of the reality of the landscape. And so I think,, watching a coach like Bill mccartney enforce and not be afraid to keep kids back from playing. If you go again, the, the, the game is the miracle in Michigan in 1994. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, where Cordell Stewart throws this huge bomb. There are some kids that didn’t make that, that game because he was holding them out because of something they had done in the offseason. And you know what those situations, not only set sets an example like this is our team culture, we’re going to enforce it, but it makes the team stronger in the end, you may sacrifice some losses on that. But I think I agree with you. I think if you can make those, those tough decisions and athletes lose privileges, you’re not going off on them that it’s going to change the culture in a positive way to get them back on track. But man, that takes a lot of, a lot of gumption a day, I feel like for a lot of coaches,

[0:42:24 JP]  a lot of courage a lot of conviction and, and, and a lot of coaches push back and say, well, JP, you can’t do that. That’s giving them what they want. They’re not working hard and, and to my, my answer to that is, well, coach, first off, how’s the way you’re currently doing things working for you? What’s it costing you to constantly be berating, your players getting on your players yelling at your players. What’s it costing you to always have to put them on the line? I mean, it’s costing you time for one thing, right? It’s costing you energy, you know, you’re just constantly coaching with the stick. It’s just, it’s just not effective. One of my favorite coaches out there is Eric Lang American International took them from the worst division one hockey program into one of the better ones in the country. And early on he made some tough decisions, you know, he, he sat players out, he’d left players behind because they didn’t make the bus on time. That was the policy. That was the rule. But you know what? It cost him a lot. He got crushed by, I think Maine or somebody early on in his first year there, they don’t have problems anymore. People showing up late, you know, it cost him a lot in that moment with the benefit down the road was exponential, exponential because they knew what he said was serious. But so often me as a coach, I’d come in there and lay in guys that we value hard work, you know, work, not, we get on and make him run and then that guy still be playing on Friday night. He’d still be playing the guy that didn’t listen, didn’t work hard in the drills. And what am I reinforcing? I’m reinforcing that math. Hard work. Isn’t that important? It’s actually talent, talent.

[0:43:53 Donnie]  Good. Go maybe one tough question for you here. Then we’ll wrap up here in a second. But I have unfortunately had the pleasure of being through a season like this. Where man, what would you say to somebody like their own? They’re, they’re working with a team and man, it’s just not going well. The, the culture is very toxic. No matter what you do, it’s not getting better. Like what, how do you manage and navigate? You still got this season in front of you. Again, I’ve been through a season like that unfortunately, with the team not recently, but in my, my 29 years, I’ve definitely had to deal with that. I’ve also seen even more recent we’ve had, I know we’ve had some of our other staff that, that the teen culture needs to be addressed. So what would you tell somebody ships going down? Like, what do you do now? You know, you just throw up your hands and give up. Don’t care. Like I don’t think that’s a good response. What do you, what would you say,

[0:44:51 JP]  well, I think, well, one thing is we got to accept the limit of our control just like you could put together the perfect game plan. You go out there, couple bobbles shots, don’t fall kicks go awry. Player gets injured, season goes down the drain there, right? Like just in like results when it comes to the scoreboard, it’s the same with culture. There’s a lot of things outside of an individual’s control, But what can you control? Right? So all the things we’ve talked about earlier today, right? You’re trying to do all these little things that you can within your control. That’s why I talk about a systematic approach, not just doing one team meeting of the year or one intervention or one come to Jesus meeting. It’s all these different approaches. You’re constantly approaching it. OK? But I would say if, if, if, if the ship is struggling, right? Is how do we hit that reset? How do we hit that reset button? II, I could talk about this for hours, but I’ll tell you this one thing you work with the people in the organization to reset, you don’t hit the reset and the easiest way to do. This is, is one of my favorite stories and share in the book is Captain Mike Abera. He was captain of the US S Ben Fold, which was the worst ship in the US Navy, I think back in 1999 and then a year later it was voted the best ship in the US Navy. How did he do this? He sat down with 310 sailors and he said, what do you enjoy about work working on the ship? What don’t you enjoy? And if you were the captain, what’s one thing you would change? And he took the suggestions of these 310 sailors and he implemented them. That’s it. He didn’t come up with great ideas. He heard that the onboarding program was really, really bad by their suggestions. They fixed it. He heard that there was a lot of fun. The food in the cafeteria was horrible. They fixed it right. They did all these things that they implemented, but it was on the suggestions of the people there. The reality is, everyone wants a great team, everyone wants a great experience, everyone wants to be successful and oftentimes the people right in it, they’re the ones that see the problems and know how to solve it. And so by looking and empowering the people around us, I would sit down with people and say, hey, we’re on the right path here. Let’s have some honest, hard conversation. What’s working, what’s not, what can we change. And, and if you start to implement the people’s suggestions, there are gonna be good suggestions a lot of the time and they’re gonna be bought into them because they came from the people in the team

[0:47:05 Donnie]  that’s so powerful I think I’ve read that book and that book is profound. I love that. I’ve never, I kind of thought of it but that you do like, need a collective reset of, you need people to be on board with you again. That’s probably why it’s the season struggling because not everybody’s on board. But if you can get, I think it was Tom and as sorta, he talked about like you were, when he was the, the manager of the Dodgers, he was talking about like his, his kind of philosophy always was like, he’s gonna find the, the best seven rate players and he’s gonna work with them to really set the culture and kind of weed out some of the bad apples and that was kind of his philosophy and kind of got those guys rallied and they helped him. So it definitely takes, takes a group effort and some, some unity there. So that’s good stuff. Last question for you today. What are you currently working on? Can you, are you? I know you got a new book coming out, what else is going on JP? Tell us what’s happening.

[0:48:03 JP]  Yeah. I’m just continuing to grow as a, as a leadership coach. And so I, you know, really recently just got certified through Georgetown University, you know, through the IC F. So I just continue to grow that, that aspect of how I serve and be better at that as well. As being my facilitator license. So just a professional facilitator of workshops and, and retreats. So I love, love doing that with the coaches and the leaders that I support in their businesses to kind of go in there and, and, and get on the ground floor and, and, and do some work with the teams. And then I got my new book coming out the Sports Parent Solution and it’s kind of a sequel to my book, The Culture System. But like, you don’t have to have read the Culture system. It’ll be coming out in middle of November. And it’s all about just very practical ways that coaches can start to partner with parents because right now we just create walls and we’ve got coaches at the youth level, the high school level and collegiate level. We’ve got some great stories about college division one coaches, that are doing events that involve the parents that bring them in to the team experience. And so by bringing them into the team experience, by the coaches creating connections with, with the the parents, you know, the parents are more bottom into the team, they’re more willing to support the team culture and they’re able to support the coach in challenging and working with that athlete, their, their son or their daughter. And so, it’s kind of two fold is to support the team. We want the parents behind the team, but we also want to work with the parents and partner with them to better support each individual, individual athlete. And so we’ve got a lot of very practical things in that book that, people will love.

[0:49:49 Donnie]  Yeah. II, I, when you, originally told me about this book, I was like, oh, my God, where is JP? Been? Because, I mean, I’m a daughter, I mean, I have four daughters. I’m a dad of four daughters and we’ve been in club sports. We’ve been in high school sports, yada, yada yada. And it’s like the part I’ve seen today more than ever is like the parenting piece. Even in the college system, I’ve seen different styles where head coaches cut off the parent and now the kids telling the parents a different story than actually what’s happening and there’s no partnering. But what I have seen, like you just said that that you don’t have to give them all the information, but there’s got to be a partnering between the coaches and the parents and getting them engaged and to be kind of a cola with your, your kid, again, not allowing them to make decisions obviously, but there’s gotta be some kind of connection there that shows that you actually care about the individual, the kids you’re working with. So I am excited for that book to come out. Can’t wait to get, we may have to do a second episode on that down the road at some point. Where can people they want to connect with you, like, tell us a little bit more. I know you got a podcast. You do. What’s the name of your podcast? JP.

[0:51:04 JP]  The Coaching culture podcast.

[0:51:05 Donnie]  So that’s one way you can, if you want to listen to JP and, some of the topics and what he is a guest he, he has on that show. That’d be great. What else do you have? Coach?

[0:51:15 JP]  Yeah, you can go to my website to OC culture dot com. We’ve got articles there, we got links to all the podcasts. We’ve got some online courses around playing time, our competitive cauldron and the whole culture system framework that you can be trained up on there. You want to learn more about our Captains Council Leadership Council, how to do that. So we get all those things there on the website as well as you can learn more about our community of coaches that get access to resources. We have a, a yearly retreat for all our community members that’s free for anybody in the community. That’s a really cool experience. So we got a lot of different things within that. And then I’m occasionally on Twitter at JP NN er B UN.

[0:52:01 Donnie]  What’s the quickest way somebody wants you right there? What would they do to hit

[0:52:04 JP]  you JP NN er B UN at OC culture dot com? That’s my email

[0:52:09 Donnie]  there. It is so incredible. I got one last selfish question. Top best leadership book recommendation beside a no culture system is number one. But like, what would be your next for, for me? I’m just kind of, it’s kind of a personal thing. I love leadership. So

[0:52:27 JP]  absolutely, the top of my list and you’ll never have heard of it. I promise you. It’s called Unlocking Leadership Mind Traps. And it’s by a woman named Jennifer Garvey Berger. It is the best leadership book on the market today.

[0:52:42 Donnie]  You are correct. I have, I feel like I have failed. I’ve never heard of that. I will be purchasing that very soon. JP. So well. coach, it has been a pleasure. I appreciate. I know you are a very busy man with your, your business and your beautiful family over in Highland. So thank you for getting up early. I think what time it does that early there? Is it? What time is there? No,

[0:53:05 JP]  it’s in the afternoon. So you’re up early. I’m

[0:53:07 Donnie]  up early. But hey, JP, thank you so much. You are a gift. You’ve been a great mentor and coach to me and I know that if anybody’s interested, please reach out, connect with him, follow him, check him out. You will not be disappointed. And again, thank you so much JP.

[0:53:22 JP]  Yeah, super grateful for the opportunity.

[0:53:25 Donnie]  Well, hey, that’s it. From the team behind the team here in Austin, Texas and we will catch you on the flip side, hook em horns. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team behind the team podcast for future episodes. Go to itunes, Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher. We definitely wanna keep having great guests on the show and great content. So if you have a moment, please go to itunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing. I’m Donnie Maib and thanks so much for tuning in