Leadership Begins with Culture

[Music]

in july

of 2019 my wife and i welcomed our

second child into the world

maddox a beautiful baby boy weighing in

at 10

pounds 6 ounces it was so amazing

to see our oldest son interact with his

new little brother

and i was so proud of my wife

everything was going well until it

wasn’t

the next thing i knew i was driving down

i-75 and a torrential downpour

racing a helicopter that was carrying my

eight-day-old son to a children’s

hospital

the doctor at the yard told us he has a

bacterial infection

we have 12 hours to find the cause or

the damage would be irreversible

over the next week my wife and i split

time between our house with our

three-year-old

and in the hospital with our newborn now

as a college softball coach you tend to

meet a lot of people

by wednesday of that week my phone was

blowing up

with text messages emails social media

messages

all coming from current players former

players coaches from around the state

colleagues at work and of course

friends and family i was overwhelmed

in 2015 i took over the lake sumter

state college

softball program and i quickly learned

i was going to have to change the

culture off the field

to properly affect the outcome on the

field

sitting there in that hospital room i

realized we had accomplished exactly

what we had set out to do

change the culture create better people

not just better ball players in 2018

we broke the school record for wins in

the season had our best finish

in mid-florida conference history and

had our first winning season

since the year 2000. in three short

years we took one of the most down on

their luck programs in the state

and made them competitive how

realizing it all begins with people

and not necessarily athletes was the

starting point

the second realization was creating a

culture that welcomed everyone

for who they are one of the first

players we signed was a young girl named

rachel

when rachel arrived on campus in the

fall of 2016 i wasn’t quite sure what to

make of her

she was a commuter so she lived at home

with her family and not in the

apartments with the other players

her teammates weren’t sure what to make

of her either they knew that she was

homeschooled

and that her religion was the most

important thing to her very different

than most girls her age

a few practices go by and i notice

toward the end of each day that

rachel becomes reserved and tries to

isolate herself from the rest of the

team

during a team bonding exercise she

actually tells us that she gets homesick

during practice

and how all day she just misses her

family and wants to be with them

but remember rachel lives at home

my thought process was why fight this

kid why try to change her

instead embrace her for everything that

makes her unique

and wonderful being homesick means you

love hard

and players who love hard are the ones

that are willing to go the extra mile

for you

the next time i saw rachel getting into

her end of the practice funk

i just walked over and i said rach i

want to go home too

i miss my wife and son give me 10 more

minutes

and we’ll be on the road now how would

other coaches you know

have reacted to this kid

how would you have reacted to this kid

she appreciated the fact that we

accepted her for who she was and didn’t

try to change her

i considered who she was as a person

before

selfishly considering what i needed her

to be

as a ball player rachel responded to

that environment of love and support

by being a two-time all-conference

selection

she was a two-time njcaa all-academic

first team member

she was the first player from our

program to be selected as the state of

florida gene williams award winner

she finished her academic career with a

perfect 4.0 gpa

and in 2018 rachel was the only first

baseman

in the entire country at any level of

collegiate softball

to lead her conference in stolen bases

it all comes down to environment and the

question i pose to you

is are you creating a place at work

within your community on your team that

allows people to feel good about

themselves

every day they come in a study done by

gallup in 2017

tells us that 85 of people worldwide

hate their job

now that number goes down slightly in

the us to a mere 70 percent

of people who strongly dislike their job

or their boss

those numbers are extremely discouraging

as we see

the depression rates and suicide rates

continuing to climb

it’s time we start putting people first

and thinking of them as employees

or team members second

in savannah georgia there’s a summer

baseball team made up of college players

from all over the country

you may have heard of them they’re

called the savannah bananas

they’re known for crazy antics like

wearing kilts while they play or playing

in all bright yellow uniforms in front

of sold out crowds

every single night whenever you see the

bananas

they’re having fun doing what they love

jesse cole the owner of the bananas says

it’s all about the atmosphere

in a three year period the bananas have

won more games

than any other team in the coastal

plains league

jesse explains it this way he said we

don’t focus on the wins and losses

we don’t focus on the baseball but what

happens is

because of the atmosphere because

they’re having fun they play

better

an assistant professor at georgia

southern university named curtis sprole

heard this

decided he wanted to put it to the test

does culture

does environment impact on field

performance

what professor sprawl did was he

collected the data over that three year

period

he then took all the ncaa division one

players

and compared their stats to that of when

they played for the bananas

he then did the same thing for the

entire league specifically

he looked at ops a player’s on base

percentage

plus slugging percentage one of the most

telling stats when evaluating offensive

performance

in professor sprawls works after running

the data for the entire league

the only team that showed a significant

positive relationship

for improving players performance was

the savannah bananas to this point

professor sprole’s research shows a

direct correlation between environment

culture and on-field performance

there’s a saying in the sports world

feel good

play good so simple

but yet so underutilized by all those in

different kind of leadership positions

looking back at that same gallup poll it

told us the alarming number of people

who hate their job worldwide it gave us

another piece of information

of the 1 million u.s workers polled

75 percent have quit a job

because of their boss or immediate

supervisor

it wasn’t their position or their

colleagues in the workplace

but management and how they conducted

business

and it all comes back to culture and

environment

which is created by leadership

now inspired by the events that took

place while my son was in the hospital

and too much of my family’s surprise

i wrote a book it’s called the island

an unconventional way of coaching people

not players

i wrote about our program and our

culture and how it’s changed and why

it’s important

most people already have this image in

their mind when they think of coaches

they think intensity veracity

anger and of course yelling

there’s actually a chapter in the book

titled yelling is barbaric

and it was an important chapter to write

because it gives opposing views on

yelling and why we refrain from doing so

with our athletes

now i grew up around yelling from a

coach who was also my father

and in my father’s defense he yelled

just as many good things

as he did bad things do i yell sometimes

yes but i absolutely hate it and it is a

last-ditch effort to get someone’s

attention

i’m able to get to that level with my

players because of the relationship i

build with each individual person

they know me and they know the values

i’m trying to instill in them and they

know that i only

come from a place of love if you do not

have that relationship with your players

yelling can spread like a cancer and

tear

a team apart the problem with consistent

yelling is it desensitizes the athletes

they come to know it as normal and it

creates an environment

filled with negativity remember

feel good play good

during our first fall game at lake

sumter our shortstop had a ball hit to

her

and it went right between her legs

she stopped what she was doing after she

committed the error looked straight at

me in the dugout

once the inning was over i walked over

to her and i said why did you stop going

after that ball

she said i made an error aren’t you

going to yell at me

she had been conditioned by previous

coaches

that making an error meant you were

gonna get berated

now how does that fix anything when one

athlete’s getting yelled at

the other ones hear it and they tighten

up not wanting to make the same mistake

and we all know what happens when we

think about not making mistakes

we tend to make those mistakes now for

the first four years at lake sumter

my father was my assistant coach and we

got along very well

most of the time when things didn’t go

as planned he would revert back to his

old school ways

i once threw my own father out of the

dugout

in the middle of a game because he was

being too negative

the negativity was spreading to the

players and they became afraid to move

or even talk and you can’t be successful

in that atmosphere now my father is as

old school as it gets

but he constantly worked at being better

about what he said

and how he said it after four years my

father left the program for higher pay

and less responsibility and i never

understood why

but he went back to the high school

level and was coaching football

as well as softball one day i asked him

how football was going in his answer

stopped me in my tracks

he said i don’t get it all these coaches

do

is yell at these kids and expect

different results when the kids

don’t even hear them anymore

i was so proud of my father for seeing

things from a different perspective

after all these years

there was a study done at brigham young

university by david c barney

and alema toiley that looked at the

correlation between coaches who

consistently yelled at their athletes

and the athletes responses the study

asked 124

former athletes 11 questions

the second question asked was what was

your immediate response

after being yelled at answers range from

angry mad to disappointed

and even fearful

previous research has shown athletes are

more negatively affected by being yelled

at than actually motivated

and the implications of the study stated

that coaches who consistently

yell at their athletes are not going to

yield the results that they want

it’s time we stop looking at people

as employees pencil pushers

and dollar makers and simply look at

them as

people remember the golden rule

treat others as you would want to be

treated

as for my son maddox he’s thriving at 19

months old

and he’s just like his mother so

beautiful

but will stare daggers through your very

soul when he gets angry

and i’d like to end with this coach your

players hard

but love them as people even harder

thank you

you