Transcript
Speaker: Action. Halftime. Are you actually learning and making adjustments or just guessing? Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Speaker: And today we're talking about one of the most magical moments in sports, the halftime adjustment. We've all seen it. A team goes into the locker room. You're getting completely dismantled, and it hurts to be a part of it, especially on the player's side.
Speaker: The team looks lost, but then they emerge from the second half, and they look like a completely different squad, dominating the rest of the game. Or, think Jalen Brunson, eight minutes left, down by 22.
Speaker: yeah How does this happen? Not just about running faster or trying harder and willing your athletes, the calamitous force of will, to give more effort in the same game that they didn't care about in the previous half.
Speaker: It's about fundamentally changing the game plan. In organizational psychology, this is called double loop learning. But here's the secret that championship coaches know. You cannot just flip the switch for double loop learning at halftime.
Speaker: It's a cognitive skill that must begin in the offseason and be cultivated every single day of practice. And today we're going to break down exactly what du double loop learning is and how to build it into your team's daily DNA.
Speaker: So let's break down single loop versus double loop. And we've all been here before. You're down in at halftime. The outside hitter's getting stuffed. The point guard keeps turning over. The midfielder is dropping the ball and not getting back on transition.
Speaker: So you pull the team together and you give them a fundamental instruction. Keep your elbow up. Lock in on your defender. Stay in your lane. Hands up.
Speaker: These are corrections. They're technically adjustments, and there's nothing wrong with it. You need those, but what if the elbow isn't the problem?
Speaker: What if the assumption behind the entire play is the problem? What if the game plan is not bought in, and there's this disconnect between player and coach that you felt and knew it existed, but still didn't change your approach to the play, and then set them free to be themselves out there?
Speaker: So we're going to get into single versus double loop. And this is developed by organizational theorist in the 1970s, Chris Argyas. The easiest way that he painted this picture for us to understand is to think about a thermostat.
Speaker: Okay, for single loop thinking. a thermostat. It's programmed to keep the the room at 68 degrees. If it gets too cold, it turns on the heat.
Speaker: it gets warm enough, it shuts it off. It detects the error, corrects the error, and stays inside the program. Just this single loop way of thinking and processing and correcting.
Speaker: Now for the double loop. The thermostat stat stops and asks, why 68 degrees? Who decided that? What's the humidity in here? Is that even the right goal?
Speaker: So think about single loop, the thermostat you have in your home, and double loop, the freaking security thermostat in Mission Impossible 1, where Tom Cruise has got a...
Speaker: drop down and do that. So it's got security floors. It's thinking, okay, what are we doing? How cold does it have to be? We have to protect this, have to protect that. What's the humidity in here? So one adjusts within the framework.
Speaker: The other questions the framework itself. Here's a sport example, a tennis player, single loop thinking, okay. Their serve keeps hitting the net.
Speaker: They adjust the racket angle on the next serve. Get it over. Double loop. Okay. Is my aggressive baseline strategy even appropriate given how fatigued my legs are right now?
Speaker: I'm ahead by this many points. Do I need to be serving it as fast as I freaking can? Is the problem the swing or the mental model I'm running the whole game plan from?
Speaker: The tennis player doesn't just change the angle. They change the entire framework and approach to the game. So there are appropriate times for when to use each. Single loop isn't wrong. You need single loop adjustments constantly. 90% of our day is going to be sent in single loop, going through the motions, brushing your teeth, habits.
Speaker: Those are good things. We can't overanalyze everything that's going to slow us down and just call cause mental burnout. So an athlete who questions every fundamental thing, i don't know if you've ever coached these individuals, but it is very challenging, and that sets them up for failure and spiraling.
Speaker: So focusing single loop on the habits, the fundamentals, until they just become a part of you is a good thing. okay But when those patterns, when ah a pattern of failure shows up in different costumes, the same problem, different game, different opponent, same frustrations, they start this quicksand loop and they're overanalyzing simple plays and execution. That's when double loop starts to be a problem.
Speaker: so So get them back into concrete thinking if you can in those moments. The overarching theme I want you to take away is there's single loop problems that we can use single loop solutions to solve.
Speaker: More often than not, fundamentals. But there's also double loop problems. And we can't single loop our way out of double loop problems. We're shifting from a single loop, which is, are we doing things right?
Speaker: If the game plan requires them to execute fundamentals, then we're sticking in single loop solutions. Are we doing things right? But there's also a mindset and approach at halftime to think, are we doing the right things?
Speaker: This would cause us to start to think in a double loop and taking true adjustments into halftime and the second half. So when your problems on the field and the court are fundamentals, okay, single loop solutions, are we doing them right?
Speaker: If it's our game plan, our scheme, do we do we have the right matchups going in there? Are we doing things right? Now this requires double loop adjustments.
Speaker: And I, defensive coordinator, head coach, I've been a part of this where, okay, this is our game plan going in there. And then bing, bing, boom, one, two, three, four, five, six goals. Okay, we need to change this. And if you just watched, you're a lacrosse person, I am. If you just watched the national championship.
Speaker: Okay, well, Princeton gave up one, two, three goals right off the bat in the championship game against Notre Dame. What do they do? They switch from man to man into a zone defense, and then they shut the Irish out for 17, 18, 20 minutes, something ridiculous, and then they go on an 11-goal run.
Speaker: So they made a massive adjustment and it it paid off. So that's double loop thinking. Did we go in with the right game plan? Nope. Okay. That didn't work. We gave it three quick ones. We are going to make a true adjustment here. Okay.
Speaker: and So exploring more about double loop learning. Double loop learning takes what is called tacit knowledge. These are unexamined traditions, habits, the invisible rules that we blindly accept.
Speaker: Then it forces them to become explicit knowledge. and we're taking a step back to view it. Can you actually see and measure this stuff?
Speaker: We're not accepting anything. We're getting it on the whiteboard, we're drawing it up, and seeing if it actually works versus assuming that it works. And again, 90% of our day is spent in single loop Habits.
Speaker: These are essential. It's how we build and complete daily tasks. Danger arises now when we're stuck in a rut and we face complex shifting problems and instinct is to single loop our way out of it, doing the exact same thing, but harder and faster.
Speaker: And it will come to a so ah surprise for you for who struggles getting caught in single loop mindsets the most. It's elite athletes. This approach has worked for them and they have the athletic physical gifts that get them so far that now we're challenging them to question, to step back, to view different perspectives on what worked and what didn't work.
Speaker: and then change it. So this is a paradox for many athletically gifted individuals. And I see this at the high school, the college level. It is everything, they they were bigger, stronger, faster.
Speaker: It worked for them, but all of a sudden, guess what? Everybody else caught up with puberty. Or you were the biggest, strongest, fastest, baddest person on your high school team and then you got to college where everybody you're playing with was the baddest, fastest dude on the team.
Speaker: Now, everything that got you there is not necessarily going to keep you there. Can you take a step back and look at your methods, approaches, and behaviors to continue to grow? so the this is This has been common within this organizational leadership ah research.
Speaker: The same problem, whether it's athletics or business, the most successful, highly trained elite individuals, they are often absolute worst at learning to double loop.
Speaker: Think, learn. Elite athletes, they rarely fail because they rare been because they rarely fail. They never build the mental muscle that requires them to learn from this failure.
Speaker: When their core strategy gets challenged, their gut reaction is defensiveness. And how many of you experience this with an athlete where you're aiming, they're really good, and you're trying to give them one or two things to work on, and they get defensive.
Speaker: So Argyris called this defensive reasoning. And I encourage you to check out double loop learning research from the 70s. And this is one of the most sophisticated self-protection mechanisms that humans have.
Speaker: So we saw this as soon as we aim to start to expand and challenge our our tacit knowledge, what was assumed and worked for high functioning individuals.
Speaker: so He called this Model 1, where high achievers tend to operate within this Model 1 single loop approach, an internal operating system built on four rules. Pay close attention to these.
Speaker: Rule number one, always be in control. This is that single loop Model 1 thinking. You're fighting, you're always in control. You maximize winning and minimize losing at all costs.
Speaker: And three, suppress negative emotions. Ignoring the emotions and just think more work, more reps, more. And you are purely rational.
Speaker: You are not considering the human factor. You are a human doing versus a human being. When you run on this Model 1, any challenge to your system doesn't feel like feedback. It feels like a threat.
Speaker: And it triggers what Argyris called a dune loop, a spiral of shame and defensiveness that completely shuts down the capacity for real learning, real growth, and real development.
Speaker: And we've seen it. I've seen it as a coach. I've seen it it as a player. i've been like've I've had this as a player. And I so constantly see it at the high school level here where the player starts to blame the referee.
Speaker: Or blame their teammates. Or pushing the blame versus accepting responsibility for the mistake that they just made. A coach who credits every loss to the effort rather than examining the scheme.
Speaker: No, I put in the right defense. It's them that couldn't run it. The win at all cost mode and blaming everyone else why something failed. This isn't sport, this isn't business, this isn't life.
Speaker: That's not stubbornness for its own sake. That's that model one thinking doing exactly what it's designed to do. Protect the ego. And you can't flip a double loop switch at halftime.
Speaker: When the stakes are the highest, people default hardest to their established habits. Double loop learning is a cognitive skill and it has to be built before you need it.
Speaker: And I mentioned I struggled this, not only in sport, but in life. I used to believe that I could outwork my problems. working from high school football, collegiate lacrosse.
Speaker: It worked for me as an athlete. I could put in more reps no matter the problem. Solution was always more work. I mentioned on a previous episode, I needed to get in better shape for lacrosse. I joined the freaking college cross-country team.
Speaker: More. eight Grabbing, I had in my own key to the weight room, Marymount University, nobody's out there. After a loss, unlock the weight room, get in there and just start banging weights.
Speaker: More, more time on the wall, more time in the weight room, more time running. That was my solution for everything. And you could argue that that worked for me as an athlete.
Speaker: But then when I became a coach, more was still my solution to problems. With athletes, more. I need you to do more. More outside of this. You don't care unless you're doing more conditioning on your own, more training on your own, more time on the wall on your own. You don't care.
Speaker: And I would push people into these corners of, yes, more, but at what cost? Where I failed as a coach and a leader was by not taking a step back and asking why they're not doing the extra.
Speaker: Why their effort during practice wasn't enough so that they didn't have den i didn't feel like they had to do more. Why there their attitude was starting to get in their way and build this wall. What was I doing to then start to build resentment on certain individuals?
Speaker: It took a lot of time, frustration, and failure spinning in that that that single loop mindset to see that there's more. And then following collegiate coaching and getting into professional career, more it it carried it carried over into work and relationships and life outside of athletics.
Speaker: The single loop model module one thinking If a relationship wasn't going well, let me give more. More time, more gifts, more effort. Not looking at why things aren't going well.
Speaker: Looking for a root cause. Work the same. I'll stay longer. I'll develop more content, more connections, more. Never enough. My pal Luke Summers, he he started to help pull me out of this. I've done a couple podcasts on here, just a couple with him.
Speaker: And he started to pull me back and asking challenging questions. Why this? Do people really want that? Sure, they need it. But what do they want? And you can still hear our discourse on our podcast episodes here, which is awesome. but He's always pushing back.
Speaker: But that's that double loop. He's forcing me out of this this more single loop habit. And that that's why I love him. He pushes me and helped pull me out of that single loop default.
Speaker: even when you were arguing about stupid movies, but that's half the fun. So... That's where thinking can become habit by stuff arguing about stuff that doesn't matter.
Speaker: But he's he was helping teaching me how to think. And the the challenge is starting to look inward and what appropriate problem is a single loop solution and what problem is a double loop approach.
Speaker: And it's often the ones that are the the hardest that need a double loop learning situation. So Yeah, looking in, it's it's conceptual it's not conceptually hard. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker: The concept makes sense to most coaches pretty quickly, but it's psychologically hard. And why is it so much easier to tell a player to run faster than to ask yourself, is my entire offensive system built around the wrong premise?
Speaker: Are we not a speed squad? Because looking inward, it it may bring something up, embarrassment. You may have to contradict yourself as a leader, and then your fear is that's going to cost the attention of your team.
Speaker: They probably won't remember. You are genuinely trying to look and solve a problem. But if you're an asshole about it and still running in single loop and then blaming them for other stuff, that's going to cause more problem than you saying, hey, we tried this.
Speaker: It didn't work. I'm looking at a different solution and we're going to aim this that complements your strength as players. So you are allowed to be wrong. Athletes are allowed to make mistakes.
Speaker: But how is our learning process moving going forward? Okay. There's also this success trap. where you approached one way, this was your system, this was your scheme, your program, and you won a championship with it way back when.
Speaker: And it has this gravitational pull towards this, this this mental model that you're locked onto because it had success. And that trophy becomes evidence that you were right.
Speaker: And when what it actually proves is that something worked in a different context with a different team, a different group of individuals at a different moment in time against a different opponent.
Speaker: That's what we need to consider and start to take a step back from it and act why ask why. me and we commit attribution errors. And this is in the research where we're aiming to explain losses by pointing at other things outside of ourselves.
Speaker: But when it comes to winning, we're pointing towards ourselves and taking all of that ah credit for what was due versus aiming to actually look at what the success clues left, whatever that phrase is.
Speaker: So, you know, i I've done both and I bet you had too. So the fact that you start to think about this and if there was any light bulb moment at any point during this podcast, that is that is a successful win because self-awareness is so difficult to start to to to grow.
Speaker: So if you felt like, ah yeah, I've done that before, that's actually a precondition for growth and an opportunity to get want take one step farther away backwards where we can be in a position to see and grow from a double loop learning approach.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm in the off-season right now. I'm meeting with the the head coach for my lacrosse team weekly, and we're starting to ask these questions. So here are five steps for the off-season that I want you to think about this summer for your teams and then put yourself in a position where double-loop learning can become a daily practice.
Speaker: Number one, I want you to think of this off-season, this is your laboratory. The pressure is lower, the scoreboard isn't running, and you have psychologically safety to expose assumptions without the immediate cost of a a loss and no pressure from parents.
Speaker: Double loop learning has to be built in the off season. You have the time to think, which is so valuable. Halftime, you get 10 minutes. There is no time to think. You have to purposely respond.
Speaker: We want you to develop the habit where you are responding at halftime, not reacting at halftime. so Continuing step one is to immerse yourself in the discomfort. I love summertime because it is conference time.
Speaker: You cannot challenge your mental models if you stay in the same room with the same people thinking the same thoughts. deliberately get out there and spend time with coaches from entirely different sports systems approaches and conferences are best way you can do that.
Speaker: I have fortune. I go to sport and strength and conditioning conferences. So I get the both best of both worlds finding out and learning from these people. I speak at rugby conferences.
Speaker: and I've never played rugby except for organized grab ass in the backyard just tackling buddies for fun on Thanksgiving games, right? That's rugby, right? But no, I'm exposing myself trying to understand how different approaches are going. this I've talked about listening to basketball coaches that have changed the perspective that I then apply to teaching movement.
Speaker: not a basketball guy five seven genetic trash can but doesn't mean i can't go and learn from the best communicators within that sport so this is an opportunity for to immerse yourself in the discomfort versus just staying in your own echo chamber and and letting everybody tell how awesome and right you are You're seeking out this this this friction.
Speaker: We're not looking to convert or change anything. We're just seeking opportunities for us that challenge our beliefs and our ideas. And friction is is how you find the edges of your assumptions.
Speaker: That's a good thing. Okay, step two. Enlist truth tellers. And I mentioned my buddy Luke Summers before. That is absolutely it. He cares more about me than my ideas.
Speaker: So he wants to see me succeed. So he's pushing and challenging and pulling and wrestling and fighting with the ideas that I present and bring to him. That's why we make such a good team. It's because he was willing to then be a truth teller, but then also lead me to a better response within my own perspective. Again, Check out those podcasts with him and how well we do discourse and challenge each other's beliefs.
Speaker: So um but we're not looking for critics who are purposely trying and want to see you fail. So they're pointing things out to show that they're better than you. No, they're challenging so that you can grow.
Speaker: They're not yes men. They're people people will who will surface The gap between what you say you value and what you're actually doing. Jim Davis, amazing man, he does just that.
Speaker: Does your behavior match your goals? That's a truth teller and he aims to show versus just tell individuals. And that finding one person to tell you what that gap looks like from the outside, it's gonna hurt.
Speaker: However, if you're able to see it may not just be a little jump over that, it may be a Grand Canyon, but if we're able to acknowledge that, then we're in a great position. Coach Kav, another great friend and mentor, he calls this the awareness gap.
Speaker: You need to find those truth tellers that can help make you aware of that Grand Canyon that we're assuming is just a little hop, skip, and a jump. We're ignoring. Turning her back to. Okay.
Speaker: Number three, orchestrating productive failure. Now, I've i've said stated am against travel ball. Well, off season, this is a good time for us to test offenses, test defenses, and see if this play can be learned quickly so that we can get more reps.
Speaker: So I'm using this summertime and coaching travel to really test different schemes and how quickly new kids that I've never met before can pick them up. So we're designing and implementing off season experiments to test our assumptions.
Speaker: We assume this is easy to learn. because we've got vast years of coaching and playing experience, but how can somebody learn it, how quickly can somebody learn it that's never played with me before and has the limited playing experience?
Speaker: Is it as simple as I assume it is? Because if I want to install all these different schemes come season times that are easy for me, but I don't understand how to teach and coordinate or how complex they actually are for a less experienced kid, well then I need to challenge those assumptions.
Speaker: The off season is the time to do that. So if it holds up, great. Now I know how and why to implement it. If it doesn't, even better. Now I know what to actually fix.
Speaker: or how to communicate it better. So I'm willing to lose at practice if it means challenging my beliefs. And we will test it because we got our first match tournament this weekend. All right.
Speaker: So make your off season a place where that's not just allowed. Failure is not just allowed. It's the whole freaking point is to challenge your assumptions and how easy you think something is.
Speaker: Okay. Four. Uncover hidden assumptions. This is an exercise that the the founder of Double Loop Thinking Learning Institute, he calls it the left-hand column exercise.
Speaker: So get a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. On the right side, write the script of a difficult coaching conversation you recently had or the how an install a perfect install of your offense or defense will go.
Speaker: on the left side, write everything you were thinking and feeling during that conversation, but didn't say. You were trying to hold back and protect their feelings, but actually may have led to a false belief about themselves, or you built them up and then later gave them accurate feedback and it felt like you cut their legs right out from underneath.
Speaker: Or the simple air quotes, offense that you went to go install on the left side. How freaking complicated. What points did my high schoolers struggle with this season installing that?
Speaker: Where was the frustration? Why did that happen? What happened when we tried, we got it in practice, but then in games, looked like we forgot how to play? So we're trying to get on that right side the picture-perfect assumption, oh, this is going to be easy within our head. On the left side, as close to reality and accurate and factual in the experience as possible.
Speaker: So it's the, am my challenging if I think, then think on that left side, where's the finger pointing?
Speaker: Is it the kid's commitment? Is it their lack of work outside of practice? That raw data, if it's that defensive vocabulary, the defensive approach, I'm blaming everybody else, I'm stuck in that model one programming.
Speaker: If it's running, when I'm evaluating on that left side, okay, that's when I need to hold that mirror up. and start to take some responsibility. Most coaches, they they they don't do this exercise. They point the fingers outward and they'd be uncomfortable if they did. That's why exactly why i want you to do this. So picture perfect assumption on the right side and what actually happened on the left side, whether it's a conversation or a practice or an install or a game.
Speaker: That whole discomfort is your freaking point. And be ready for that because guess what comes next season? whole bunch of uncomfortable conversations. Offensive, defensive install.
Speaker: Game day frustrations. Conversations with parents. Meetings with parents. And then referees. I love refs. I've got a great relationship with refs. Not all coaches do. So can I uncover hidden model one assumptions with this right and left exercise?
Speaker: Okay, last one. Build cognitive agility. Single loop thinking asks, are we doing things right? That's a question of efficiency.
Speaker: Double loop thinking asked, are we doing the right things? And that's a question of effectiveness. Make it a daily practice to shift between those two questions in pre-practice meetings with our staff in your journal.
Speaker: How many times can we ask this question before we get caught in our doom loop? The goal is to make questioning the framework as automatic as correcting within it.
Speaker: So... That does it for our podcast, Single Loop versus Double Loop Learning. Take time this off-season to mean master both. That'd be our aim here, understanding. So neither one is the bad guys understanding the situation.
Speaker: loop Single loop becomes the bad guy if you are holding on to your beliefs and blaming everybody else for something and why it's not working versus taking responsibility. And if that single loop becomes your mastery, your only way of doing things is more, more, and more versus looking at the the the why, then we're caught in model one human doing versus double loop or in reality, in relationships, human beings.
Speaker: that does it for the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. If you like what you heard here today, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, review, hit that little bell on the YouTube, all that good stuff.
Speaker: I send out weekly newsletters with my notes from each podcast. To receive those, head to newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com. If you want to learn more, head to captainsandcoaches.com. Lots of education, blogs, courses, resources on there.
Speaker: encourage you to check those out. My favorite, take the time this offseason, dive into latest sports, it's called Why They're Not Listening. to Check out this first lesson free. Head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com.
Speaker: That's all I got for you. I got a tournament this weekend. I'll let you know how my one, two, three practice defensive install worked for a bunch of kids that I haven't met before. All have fun out there. Awesome. Thank you for tuning in, and we will see you next time. Thank you for helping us raise the game and see.
