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104 - Building Anti-Fragile Athletes and Officers w/ Dr. Jenny Prohaska
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What happens on the youth sports field doesn't stay there. The culture a coach creates — the trust built, the conflict navigated, the way kids learn to repair relationships — travels with athletes long after the final whistle. And for the ones who go on to wear a badge, carry a weapon, or run toward danger for a living, those early lessons either become the foundation they stand on or the cracks they fall through.
Dr. Jenny Prohaska is a licensed clinical psychologist, founder of Tactical Longevity, and one of the few practitioners in the country working at the intersection of trauma, anti-fragility, and performance psychology with law enforcement and tactical teams. She's also spent over a decade screening new hire candidates entering the profession — giving her a rare, ground-level view of what's working and what's not in how we develop young people.
In this conversation, Tex and Dr. Jenny go deep on the psychological overlap between sport and public safety, the role of coaches in shaping (or breaking) long-term mental health, and the practical tools her tactical teams use to stay sharp under pressure — tools that translate directly to the locker room.
In this episode:
- Why emotional reactivity in coaches is often a skill deficit, not a personality trait
- The "Palms Up," "Be the Grass," and "Don't Feed the Weeds" heuristics Dr. Jenny uses with tactical teams
- How toxic coaching creates downstream relational damage that follows athletes for decades
- Why reparative relationships on teams are some of the most powerful mental health interventions available
- The psychological profile of athletes who can push through toxic environments and come out stronger
If you coach, parent, lead, or serve — this one's for you.
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Transcript
Emotional Reactivity vs Coaching Skills
00:00:00
Speaker
A lot of times that emotional reactivity is ah that makes up for a deficit in actual skill. And so when people are really emotionally reactive, it's oftentimes because they don't have any other skills coaching-wise to rely on.
00:00:12
Speaker
What happens on the youth sports field doesn't stay there. The culture a coach creates, the trust, the conflict, the way kids repair relationship, that stuff travels.
00:00:22
Speaker
It shapes who those kids become as adults, as teammates, as professionals.
Leadership in Sports and Beyond
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and the science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm your host, Texel Quilkin, and today my guest is Dr. Jenny Prohaska, clinical psychologist, founder of Tactical Longevity, and one of the few practitioners working at the intersection of trauma and performance and anti-fragility with law enforcement and first responders.
00:00:56
Speaker
What you'll hear in this conversation is how the seeds of all of it, the resilience, the isolation, the ability to trust, get planted long before anyone pins on a badge.
00:01:07
Speaker
Very excited for this episode with Dr. Jenny. Also excited to announce I'll be speaking at this year's NSCA Tactical Conference in August in Orlando, and I hope to see you there.
00:01:18
Speaker
Now let's hand it off to Dr. Jenny to help us raise the game. Ready, ready, and break. Dr. Jenny, thank you very much for joining me on the Captains and Coaches podcast.
Dr. Prohaska's Journey into Law Enforcement Psychology
00:01:27
Speaker
I'm very excited for this one and what the connections we're going to make between, i mean, just person development, child development, and then the challenges that tactical personnel face. I'll call them tactical athletes because that's the space I live in. And um I'll I want want to hand it off to you. And then we were talking before the show about tactical strength and conditioning.
00:01:52
Speaker
So excited. And I mean, just your experience is vast. And i'm I'm just really excited for this one. That's all I got to say. I'm talking too much. I'll i'll just hand it off to you real quick.
00:02:03
Speaker
I love it. You want a little bio, like who the heck am I type of thing? yeah I love it. So yeah the the audience for this is is mostly coaches, athletes, parents that are actively involved or school administrators. um So the problems that a lot of the populations you work with face The people that are listening to this show, there's an opportunity for you to see these negative traits, do the seeds of them, before they start to to plant when ah you know these high school athletes turn into professionals that enter into the realm of law enforcement, fire, and military.
00:02:43
Speaker
Right. Right. Absolutely. So my my background is actually I'm a police psychologist. So a lot of what I do nowadays is work heavily with tactical teams. So people under high risk conditions, helping them perform as optimally as possible, and then also help them like function through stress and strain, sometimes with You know, no clear ending in sight even. So and where the outcome isn't very clear. So that is my role now.
00:03:07
Speaker
But I started out as a clinical psychologist, mostly working in health psych. So how do we help people make better health decisions and how do we make people take advantage of their own health and their their capabilities? And so I started out in a hospital setting, mostly actually working with like head trauma, TBI stuff. And then also spinal cord injury.
00:03:25
Speaker
And then I transitioned out of that neuro rehabilitation psych world and I missed working in trauma medicine. So the very long story short is I ended up working mostly with law enforcement now. Law enforcement and then I do some private sector stuff too where I help people kind of bounce back after bad things happen in the private sector as well. But most of my work is law enforcement.
00:03:45
Speaker
And part of what I also do, it might be of interest somewhat to kind of your audience, is I also screen new hire candidates to become police officers. And I've been doing that for about, oh gosh, 11, almost 12 years now. So i have seen a huge change in the types of new workforce entering into the profession, positive and negative on some of those things. And so I have like kind of ground level, entry level, what's their baselines, followed by what happens after extreme stress.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yes, ah awesome. And the I mean, the the law enforcement, I got a lot of pals in law enforcement. I just spent a week up with ah a dear friend in
Parallels Between Law Enforcement and Sports
00:04:23
Speaker
Seattle. She's Seattle PD.
00:04:25
Speaker
And we've presented each other with each other at the National Strength Conditioning Tactical Conference. And it was a cool dynamic because she was she was full get up in uniform and speaking to the the movement problems that were presented with LEO. You're sitting down at a vehicle.
00:04:43
Speaker
You got to get up and go into a dead sprint. And then I presented on the strength and conditioning side. OK, here's how to aim to keep your body resilient. I know you hate that word.
00:04:54
Speaker
But keep your body resilient. It's fine. Ready to go. um So she also introduced many of the the mental challenges. I mean, because you're on shift at night and then you're going home to your family, like the bandwidth that a ah police officer needs to to do their job well and I mean, live a meaningful life is massive. and There's so many tools I feel within sport that we have the opportunity within a controlled environment with mentors to now hand off to these potential law enforcement, military, fire individuals and
00:05:34
Speaker
um we're we're just so aligned with the the sources that you're using to now aim to help these individuals. And then what I'm trying to do just to teach it on the ground floor.
Self-awareness in Coaching and Law Enforcement
00:05:47
Speaker
um So i'd I'd love to start with self-awareness because my connection to movement and coachability, right? I'm trying to see and assess how a kid moves in sport. and give him some feedback so he can improve his movement. That takes a lot of self-awareness and interoception, using big words, Doc, to now make some personal corrections and adjustments for this.
00:06:12
Speaker
So it's not only the coordination, it's also the ego and allowing coach to, you know, building trust to accept this feedback and try to make that connection. So, so much goes into self-awareness,
00:06:27
Speaker
for coach and athlete. And now I'm curious in, I mean, working with adults that have been through a lot of stuff, those walls are even higher, those, those, you know, shields are even thicker and stronger.
00:06:41
Speaker
What's your, your mindset and approach to even breaking down these walls of self awareness for these individuals? Well, I will start off and say the overlap between kind of sports performance and ah performing in the public safety sector, law enforcement in particular, and fire service as well, is really high. One of the things I think about this overlap in the context of this is even on the the physical stress level, There are many, many days and many, many hours that a law enforcement officer will spend sitting around or doing mostly routine tasks, repetitive routine calls. And then all of a sudden you get the big one when it's really time to perform. And so there's a lot of repetition in sports if you think about it too. There's so much on the ground level, going to practice, doing the reps, doing the drills over and over again that it's really easy to get kind of complacent too. And so being able to understand the importance of, hey, but then when it's really on and it's game time, and you're in a high pressure high pressure situation how do you optimally perform when you've been doing routine repetition you know not not a lot of uh not a lot of excitement there right and then there's these moments of excitement that pop up so i think that applies both to kind of sports And then all, and coaching by the way, sports and coaching, playing sports and coaching sports. And then also kind of the law enforcement sector, how they have to train for that too. um
00:07:58
Speaker
On the self-awareness front, you know I've heard you talk a little bit about the importance of like body-based self-awareness. So the somatic self-awareness, how do we feel physically and how do we use that information physically to help us make kind of better decisions about where we're at? That's that self-awareness. My angle is a little bit different in the sense that I take it, i use that information, and then I take it one step further. And I say, okay, cognitively. And so for the audience, if you don't know what cognitive means, cognitive just means thinking, you know, thinking-wise, your thinking processes.
00:08:27
Speaker
How do you think about that stressor? Maybe you're having a physical sensation or you're noticing you have self-awareness that... like your fists are clenched or your shoulders are up by your ears. How do you use that information to help that translate into, okay, well, what am I thinking right now or what am I telling myself?
00:08:44
Speaker
And how is what I'm telling myself going to affect my performance? So let's just say coach gives you some critique or criticism and you feel yourself getting hot. That's that body-based self-awareness, the somatic self-awareness. I like to take it one step further and say, well, what are you assuming right now? Or what is the narrative or the story, the script you're telling yourself right now, the cognitive part of this, that's making that amplify probably more than it needs to be?
00:09:11
Speaker
And then how do I switch the script so I can get into like kind of what I call the zone of optimal performance, which is how do I do i dial it back down a little bit? And so the body-based awareness is one type of signal. I like to take it one step further, especially with with teens in particular and say, okay, but what's the narrative? What's the script you're telling yourself here? You know, what's that crappy first draft that's running through your head about coach just gave you critique and criticism. What else are you adding to that critique and criticism to fire you up more? Yeah, right.
00:09:41
Speaker
I love it. And I mean, in stressful environments, there's there's no opportunity to get in and hear that story because we're in the middle of a game.
00:09:52
Speaker
Here's the fast feedback. I got to get my attention back to the field. So the the coaching bandwidth at game time during the moment, our moment, it's It's just so high where maybe your feedback feels sharp in that moment.
00:10:08
Speaker
And now practice, talking about practice, is that opportunity for us to really get inside their mind and and help one, see what story they're telling themselves. If I'm looking at practice, I practice six to eight hours a week.
00:10:23
Speaker
There's also a school that's six hours a day and whatever's going on at home, there's a lot more time outside of sport for the story to start to to write itself. So I'm seeing practice as this opportunity.
00:10:36
Speaker
Now, where within the, I mean, just thinking, sticking with law enforcement, where is there opportunity with for practice? What can you suggest for people to start to build trust within others? Was it relationships or trusting yourself?
00:10:53
Speaker
How can they start to, I mean, see the story that they're telling themselves versus the reality that may be out there?
Cultural Norms and Informal Leadership
00:11:00
Speaker
Well, a lot of it is I think that, so I'm a big believer that ah the most senior members are there to coach up the more junior members. And so I think that, i mean, we're really getting deep into into some other things here too with regards to culture. And I don't mean like fluffy team culture stuff. I mean like what type of messaging are you conveying? when you are helping someone on your team develop better skills? are you if you're a coach or maybe an informal leader, are you conveying a message um that, oh, you made a mistake, like that could be the end of you, which is kind of more of a toxic culture, right?
00:11:31
Speaker
Or here's a mistake, this is how we learn from them, here's how we move forward with a degree of like kind of psychological safety. um And I know it sounds a weird like a weird term, but how do I create an environment that it's okay to make mistakes and I'm okay to admit a mistake and then ask for feedback so I can get immediate feedback? and and improve i think that those like cultural norms come into play here i am i'll go back to it though i'm huge on informal leadership and i'm huge on how does the older generation teach the younger generation the right way to do things one of the things i've found in law enforcement techs is that if i come in as the shrink and i say here's what you need to do and here's how you need to think about it
00:12:12
Speaker
they're going to blow me off. like They don't care. Like i'm I'm not one of them really. I mean, I spent a lot of time with them and someone would say I'm, you know, kind of part of that team or culture, but at the end of the day i'm not on the shrink. And so I think one of the things I like to do is I like to aim for your social leadership. I like to aim there and say, here's the cultural norms we're going to talk about, about how to accept criticism, criticism and feedback. And then here's some other things about this is how we do it at the baseline. There's no other way to think about stress or training or all those stressors that you're going to face except this. And so I like that natural organic like like format there where the eldest members, the more senior members, more experienced members teach the younger members. That's my my key, I think, in in making these shifts ah like long term.
00:12:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And in in your experience, what is the weight room training culture look like for the departments you're going into? Is that an opportunity for these leaders and new members of that that that team to start to bond?
00:13:11
Speaker
Absolutely. So any opportunity is a bonding opportunity. It doesn't have to be a high stress moment. It doesn't have to be a trauma moment. It can be stuff like going and getting lunch with your buddies or training in the gym. I will say one of the things that's really been disheartening, and I'm sure you're probably well aware of this, but maybe your audience isn't, is that There is a not enough training in law enforcement. The budgets are tight, the hours are tight, and the staffing crisis is real. And so you don't have a lot of time, unfortunately, right now, in downtime to kind of train with each other or spend those moments kind of getting to know each other. So a lot of times that's one of the downsides about but what we're facing is we don't have those opportunities anymore. So we're trying to create those where we can and make them almost like intentional, more intentional.
00:13:57
Speaker
Time out. Observation, new coaches
Discipline and Time Management in Law Enforcement
00:14:00
Speaker
getting into the field are really smart and intelligent when it comes to programming or understanding practice plans and their sport, and really bad at people.
00:14:10
Speaker
They have high IQ and low EQ. I spent the past 14 years traveling the world teaching people how to teach people lifting weights, understanding sport, but most importantly, connecting with people.
00:14:24
Speaker
I've taken all those lessons from all over the world and put them into a new course, Why They're Not Listening, Coaching Today's Athlete. If you want the first lesson free, head to the website listen.captainsandcoaches.com to learn more.
00:14:39
Speaker
And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break. The challenge, the it's it's behavior, and and I know, i'm just thinking like ah an officer now, I know the value of training.
00:14:54
Speaker
I also know the value of my family time or decompressing from all this stuff that that happens. So it's finding a balance. ah I do offer training programs, it's called Old Bull.
00:15:06
Speaker
Meaning training with wisdom. And I got a whole bunch of LEO guys on there and fire. I don't want to leave them behind. Yeah. don't leave them behind yeah they They just owe me 60 to 60 minute sessions a week. And if they can't do that, then break it up into 30, 30, 30, 30.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I mean, we can find that 30 minutes to 15 minutes across seven days. So I aim to eliminate any excuse. And I mean, excuse is just such a negative label because I know that they and I value their family time to barrier. We'll use that word. Yeah. Yeah. A barrier. youre Yeah. With your experience in identifying storytelling, what what are what tools are you putting in place to now create some scaffolding so they can come to the decision on how to operate around this barrier versus just accepting it as a wall and a limitation?
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, the barrier being kind of that home environment, like, or the barrier but being like, how do we decompress and use our decompression time? Or just the barrier in general, you think? Like barriers to getting well?
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, they um I'm not going to do training because I'm going to do this other thing. Hopefully that other thing is a healthy choice. So i will say that people aren't very disciplined or thoughtful about how they spend their time. And that is a huge problem. I think that ah discipline comes very early in someone's life. There's a very, very, very famous psychological study about, have you ever heard of the marshmallow study?
00:16:40
Speaker
Oh yeah. Big fan. About discipline. Okay. Okay. so ah And the videos of it. Yes. I know. It's so great. And so I actually remember this, learning this in an undergraduate school. ah For your audience, what that means is the marshmallow study was a study where basically kids were brought into a room and they were sat in front of a table with ah like no stimulus, no boredom. And they said, and I'm just going to kind of play with numbers here. They said, hey, kid, if you sit here quietly for five minutes, you can get all these marshmallows in front of you.
00:17:09
Speaker
But if you, ah it's okay. like I'm going to leave the room here. And if you don't want to wait, you can just have a few, you're going to have this smaller pile now. And basically, the kids that were able to delay gratification, the ones that were able to wait the longest to get the biggest pile of marshmallows, tend to be ones who have a lot of success later in life. Now, there's, of course, other things involved in success later in life. But from the simplest principle, that that degree of delayed gratification, it makes really intentional use of your time and really intentional kind of goal goal attainment, making it making that really driven by, hey, look, I'm just going to delay other things that might bring bring me pleasure right now.
00:17:50
Speaker
And I'm going to hold off because I know the goal later is much more important. Those kids tend to do great. And so um that's, I think, where it starts. If we really want to get into it, like child development wise, it starts way back there. And I will tell you, modern day lifestyle is not helping us out on this one.
00:18:07
Speaker
I will tell you we're in trouble, I will say. And we're getting a little bit like kind of off the rails on this, but I will tell you, I really do think that when everything is automatic in life and we cannot delay gratification anymore, we are going to have a problem with self-discipline, which means we're going to have a problem with self-regulation, self-awareness, and being able to sustain stress over time. Mm-hmm.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, you have to practice being able to manage your stress before the big stressful event. So you have to be able to delay gratification and manage those emotions and manage those stressors before other things come up in life for you that are even more stressful.
00:18:44
Speaker
And so I think that as a society, we're really we're in trouble here. And I am trying to work really hard around that. So a lot of what um I try to teach my officers is the importance of if you are that like informal leader, how do you convey to the younger officer the importance of doing the right thing, even though it's a harder thing?
00:19:02
Speaker
And so we do that through a lot of kind of like one on one coaching and discussions that we really empower the trainers who are training these newer officers how to have those conversations about doing the right thing and how to have the conversation about delaying gratification and making sure that, yes, it might be harder to do that report um tonight. It might take you more time. And yes, I know you're tired, but if you push through it now, you'll have better results in the end. And I think that that is what we're trying to teach kids.
00:19:29
Speaker
and In sports too and I think we're having a little bit of a problem there I I i concur um I got a couple questions based off that. Sticking with yeah delayed gratification, what what are some opportunities that you feel you can start to just dose delayed gratification? This is Dalton getting in the shot. I love it. To dose delayed gratification for officers or any of the clients that you're working with so they can start to to to build that muscle up.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah. Honestly, I love to use other examples of people who have really pushed through and delayed gratification. I've used a lot of sports examples. So we have to have heroes in our culture or people we look up to in our culture that are demonstrating that as well. And so a lot of times I will have more senior officers articulate to the newer officer hey this is why we're doing it this way and this is an example of a time in my life when that really paid off and so i am all about cultural transmission of delayed gratification that is my big thing cultural transmission of delayed gratification this is the cultural norm here this is what we do i love it that's one way i would say that's the strong the strongest more prominent way i think that it gets transferred
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, I can see some opportunities ah within the the realm the team because we we have that as well with seniors to freshmen.
Enjoying the Journey in Sports and Training
00:20:58
Speaker
And one of the most challenging things to communicate is everything you're investing now in July, working hard, we are doing it because we've got big goals for April and May.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yes. So in my mind, that that staying present and a phrase I love within sport is be where your feet are. So we are where we are. We're going to work hard and push ourselves today, still understanding that we have this big goal come May.
00:21:29
Speaker
That rhymes. so It does. And also enjoying the journey, though. Enjoy the journey. I think if you're always saying, well, I'm only doing it for the payoff, especially in sports, that's not going to work. Or even in the tactical teamwork that I do, we don't always have wins. We don't always get what we want. And so I think you have to say like, yeah, but did I enjoy the journey? It's not always the final destination. The final destination is a short period of time.
00:21:54
Speaker
The journey is what should matter the most to you. Yes. And that's where I feel the be where your feet are is we're in this journey and some of the the banter. That's why I love athletics. That's why I love the the tactical population is because the the camaraderie, the banter.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yes, we are doing serious, hardworking things, but at the same time, I remember this quote from this one movie, it's appropriate here, I'm going to use it. um so So you said the the the destination, and this this I want to tap into your experience with behavior change. yeah Sometimes when people set a goal that's a number base, lose 30 pounds or you know run this marathon, once they do it, they get to that space of,
00:22:42
Speaker
It's not as satisfying as they thought it was going to be. So how, how do you aim to communicate to to law enforcement or recommend communicating to teenagers that emphasis on the journey that let's create goals that are evolving versus just, Hey, once you hit that 30 pounds and everything goes off the the rails.
00:23:02
Speaker
Right, right. So like that's that the whole thing. Obviously, more delayed gratification comes in there. But I would say that mental flexibility also comes in, which when we talk about people that are able to bounce back best from stress, they tend to have really good mental flexibility.
00:23:15
Speaker
And what that means is they can take new information. So they might have their original belief or their original goal. They take new information in. And then they adapt based on circumstance. And it's not making excuses or adapting down. It's more like, okay, given the current conditions, what can I make happen here? People who are mentally flexible tend to be some of my best operators too. The higher the mental flexibility, the better the performance because they're saying, nope, I'm not going to get stuck on what's behind me. I'm going to take on what's in front of me and I forget what's behind me. but We're moving forward. And so that mental flexibility, I think, really keeps people kind of focused towards their goals, but also able to say, OK, I made it to 25 pounds. I didn't make it to 30. That's great. Let's see if I can press in the following ways and set up the new challenge.
00:24:03
Speaker
in front of me. And so those mentally flexible people are really good at at doing that. I would also say we also are finding that people who are mentally flexible, people who have adaptable paradigms about how they view the world tend to be the least likely to incur damage mentally.
00:24:20
Speaker
So I want you to, I'm going to use it like a physical analogy here. So if you think about being really strong, but not flexible. So say you're really strong, but you have horrible mobility and you're going to push a whole bunch of weight above your head and you're going to do a clean and jerk. You're going to get that weight above your head. If you're really strong, that's awesome. Good job.
00:24:37
Speaker
Except that let's say your footing shifts or changes a little bit, or there's some kind of distraction. You've got all that heavy weight above your head. If you don't have good range of motion or mobility or strength around the joint, as you know, you're going to get injured.
00:24:49
Speaker
Something's going to, some little shift in life's going to happen and you're going to get injured. You're going to tear something. And so you have to be both strong and flexible. Strong is that so like the self-discipline stuff. So strong is the self-discipline stuff. And then flexible is that ability to adapt and move and change the conditions you're confronted with.
00:25:09
Speaker
And the faster you can do that, the better. I love it. Yeah, it's, it's many connections analogies are taking something that they understand, and then creating this new definition or this pair parallel definition.
00:25:26
Speaker
I'm all for so they understand strength, they understand flexibility. So now highlighting the behaviors they are doing so well, because they are disciplined, they just don't know it, or they were told otherwise, you know, by a frustrated teacher or parent, and you know, that they are adaptable.
00:25:43
Speaker
what What I do love about my current coaching situation is we have a grass field that's used by the community. So you don't know what you're going to walk into each day, whether people didn't care for it.
00:25:55
Speaker
I mean, it just iced and snowed here. So I don't know what's going to show up and to to practice when we go back tomorrow. So every single day is that adaptability. Now when we go to away games on beautiful, nice turf, it's like, oh, this is such a relief. This is easy.
00:26:12
Speaker
When people come to us, we got a true home field advantage because they don't want to get dirty. They got their nice, pristine little uniforms. So now we get the opportunity to roll around in the mud a little bit and see what they're like being uncomfortable.
00:26:27
Speaker
And One thing um i really aim to do, and I call it the science of the sidelines, if I want to connect this to child development, this is social awareness, just or environmental awareness, situational awareness, I think would be a good um like military term to use, but situational awareness, seeing the body language of my opponents.
00:26:47
Speaker
Are they uncomfortable? Are their hands on their knees, they're resting, ah because they're they're showing us they're tired. If our environment, our dirty grass, dirt, mud pit, it makes them uncomfortable.
00:27:01
Speaker
I want to be able to see it because that should give our athletes juice and energy because we play in this pig pen every single day. So now all these little things, i'm I'm trying to bring awareness to them. But how I'm accomplishing it is calling them out for the bad body language, the poor attitude.
00:27:21
Speaker
So it's it's it's this connectivity of self-awareness that then leads to social awareness. And I mean, the the beauty is they have great teammates.
00:27:32
Speaker
So now once I call them out for it, now I get the other guys calling them out for it. And we just create this ah self-aware team. And then once we start playing games, hey, now um I'm bringing reference to, you know, the hands on the head fatigue, the hands on the knees, tiredness, or, you know, the talking back to coach.
00:27:56
Speaker
We got them. Game's ours. This is our opportunity. So fun stuff like that. And I mean, as a ah law enforcement, you got to be socially aware. You got to be able to read people.
00:28:08
Speaker
So now i'm i'm my question for you now is, how do you help people regain the trust in themselves to then read people and analyze their environment So they nothing's lying to them. They're telling their own story sometimes, but how do they learn to trust their instincts in themselves when a conflict or a a moment, I think you call it a bang, in one interview happens?
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah. So a lot of what I do is left of bang. and And there's left of bang and right of bang. So I'll kind of go through those terminology really quickly. Bang is your event. So anything stressful in life, anything bad that happens, that's your bang event. And so you have left of bang and right of bang. Left of bang is pre-incident.
00:28:48
Speaker
Right of bang is recovery. So right of bang is the incidents already happened. How do we bounce back? And so I like to focus left of bang. So I am very, very convinced that if I can get officers to have good self-awareness, good self-regulation, good mental flexibility and a host of other things that are related to kind of being strong mentally, that when the event happens, they're more likely than not going to recover. Okay. And so when you're talking about the kind of the the athlete comparison about how do I read the environment and how do I trust what I'm reading? i think a lot of it is we don't gain confidence in ourselves by sitting on the sidelines.
00:29:24
Speaker
We gain confidence in ourselves by getting out there, experiencing things, sometimes being wrong, sometimes being right and getting lots of reps in. That's how we gain confidence. Confidence is not created by sitting on the couch and just hoping you can do it one day. Confidence is gained by getting out there and trying it again.
00:29:42
Speaker
Confidence is gained by proving to yourself that the original belief you had isn't right. hmm. So if you have a bad incident, let's say, and you say, well, I'll never be able to you know be that you know great tactical officer I've always wanted to be. I'm always going to be judged negatively.
00:30:00
Speaker
If that's what the belief you're going to hold and you don't do anything to challenge that belief, that's going to drive you in a different direction on how you view yourself for life. But if you have a bad event, a bad incident, and you initially tell your story so still yourself the story, hey, you know, um I'm never going to be a good officer again. I'm never going to be a good athlete again, whatever the analogy is here or the situation is here. If you go out and you keep challenging that and you go out and you keep showing up day after day, will have enough reparative experiences so that you you no longer think that about yourself, especially if you have the confidence to keep doing that.
00:30:35
Speaker
Reparative experiences. Yes, reparative experiences. explain that to a teenager? um Yeah, okay. Everything's challenging. I would say, you know, sometimes a belief that you hold now isn't a belief that you're going to forever.
00:30:55
Speaker
And so then I use as concrete of an example as possible. So remember when you were, you know, yeah three and you were terrified of the dark and you're not terrified the dark anymore, are you? Well, you're not terrified of the dark anymore because you've had enough experiences of the dark not doing anything bad to you because you had to go in into the dark.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yes. Something that's simple like that. Yeah. Yeah. theyll They'll give me a hard time to push back and say they are scared of the dark, but I feel that the the analogy will land very well.
00:31:25
Speaker
I like that. yes um I've heard you mention a few times here, informal leader. And that that jumped out to me. how What would you define as an informal leader?
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I think that's someone with like the social capital that is doing the right thing and people want to follow that person. So informal leadership, I think, is something that's actually sometimes more powerful than formal leadership. You know i work in an industry where people make rank, you know, they get promoted, not necessarily because they're the best leader, but because they passed a test.
00:32:04
Speaker
Or because they're buddies with somebody. And that happens everywhere, by the way. That's not just in the industry I work in. But I think that because that that's the nature of what happens, um sometimes your informal leaders carry the most social clout, and so they can change the culture.
00:32:17
Speaker
Your person that actually has rank may not be the one that actually has as much pull. Time out. I get two and a half This one's all about training. I'm talking about my old bull strength conditioning program that I have available on Train Heroic. This is Training with Wisdom. It's the program that I am following. I understand who you are. You don't have a lot of time.
00:32:40
Speaker
You're a busy leader, and you're beat up from years of athletics, years of training. Here in this program, we target hips, ankles, knee, back health with the barbell. We have fun variations of the squat and the programs, sexy Fridays, bodybuilding. It is an amazing time.
00:32:58
Speaker
It will keep you engaged, it will keep you involved, and keep you on a wise program that keeps you coming back for more instead of digging you a hole you can't come out of that affects life outside of training.
00:33:11
Speaker
come check us out for a seven-day free trial in the old bull program a link in the show notes or if you're watching it on youtube just click right here all right and now back to the show ready ready and break yeah we see that in in sports as well and every single every single year fascinates me because that's why i love sports is because the team changes every single year we're at the same school but this is a whole new team we got 70% of the same guys, but it's a whole new team.
00:33:42
Speaker
And every year, give the kids an opportunity to vote on captain. And sometimes it's aligned with the coach's views. And sometimes it's Like, where did that come from?
00:33:54
Speaker
yeah And sometimes it's a popularity contest because, I mean, like I said, six hours at school, we don't know what goes on. It could be a completely different kid than we're seeing ah show up on the field. And if they're, you know, Mr. Cool, well, they get that influence and they are a coach's worst nightmare sometimes yep because they they don't listen or they try to always be Mr. Cool at practice.
00:34:18
Speaker
Or eat it it could be anything. I mean, teenagers are interesting. so But I think when you describe that, one of the things I'm thinking of is like the importance of when that happens to you as a coach, stopping and instead of being like getting bent out of shape out of it, ah stop and go, hey, um I need to approach this maybe with some curiosity as opposed to immediate judgment. Because I think when we jump to judgment too quickly, that's actually kind of rigidity, not flexibility. So there's something going on, kind of like you mentioned. that is making that group of kids select that person. And so instead of getting upset about it or been out of shape about it, going, well, I'm going to be curious about it. I need to do a little bit more discovery or investigating here. And then also taking some ownership and saying, wonder why these group of kids thought they needed that person as a leader? Is it they don't know enough about leadership? Is it that they're not comfortable enough with me as their leader that they felt like they needed a social buffer? Like we have to take ownership. And I think when we jumped immediately to judgment or blame, we miss an opportunity for being able to assess the dynamics of a team and then being able to progress forward with whatever information we might have just discovered.
00:35:28
Speaker
You should use it as a diagnostic almost. Yeah. Yeah, that I mean, so much. I do probably too much reflection, but just on the years past when you're trusted the players vote to make the decision for you, and then i I've seen where it went wrong and i often think about why.
00:35:48
Speaker
So it's almost blending and and aiming to give the the coaches' votes more weight and then still considering ah what the students have to say.
00:35:58
Speaker
and the um um I'm curious for now, can how you would suggest just continual growth throughout the season?
00:36:11
Speaker
Because, you know, in a sense, in the beginning, you want to be captain because it's it's the social status, it's cool, but now here's all this responsibility that you didn't even know was part of this position. That's the coach's expectation of what it means to be a captain based off of their 20 year coaching career.
00:36:31
Speaker
So how would you almost level one, level two, level three, a new leader in this position that, I mean, they didn't anticipate this going on. I imagine the same in law enforcement when you level up, here's all this responsibility that you weren't aware of.
00:36:51
Speaker
For sure. So I think that you have to decide what your team mission and vision is. And you really need to get that really clear. And then you need to be able to express it to your newer leaders and say, no, seriously, what are we about? What is our culture about? Let's make it very intentional. And that also brings in like values. And so what's your priorities? What's your preferences when things get hard about how we go about accomplishing things?
00:37:16
Speaker
Do we turn on our brothers and sisters that we play with because we just want to win? Is winning the priority or the value versus we're here for better personal development. We're here to make great men and women for the future. And making sure that as a coach, you communicate that to your new leaders and then help them navigate and mentor through that. I think that's step two. and You communicate clearly what your kind of mission, vision, and values are on the team and be very clear about it, what the priorities are when things get hard.
00:37:44
Speaker
then you have to make sure that you're coaching them through that and always going back to and relying on, hey, we said our team values were this. Do you think we're acting in line with those team values? Help me help me coach you through how to act in line with those things.
00:37:58
Speaker
I mean, that's that's step two. And then I think step three, if you're really gonna get like into how do you create a synergistic culture on a team is then you say, okay, captain, how are you gonna teach this to these informal leaders on the team that you already see? so that you can proliferate your influence as a captain. You have to do less work now. Let's teach you how to grab those informal or social leaders and how do you put them on to your vision and help them continue that messaging down through their social chain on the team.
00:38:33
Speaker
I love it. I may change big words like proliferate. yeah But that's that's the idea. So tonight we're because snow practice is canceled, but we don't make an opportunity ah leading like a whiteboard goal session. And I got this.
00:38:48
Speaker
We were talking about presentations before the show. And I encourage any coach getting into presenting to have your just lock and key. presentation, no matter what, this is your go-to. So mine's self-leadership ladder, and where we start with just creating your own goals from nothing and then have them write on a piece of paper I want.
00:39:11
Speaker
And it could be anything, position agnostic, and then assign them an accountability buddy on the team within the same position group. I will. So now you're sharing your goal with them. And within want, teach them smart goals.
00:39:25
Speaker
Now I will. Now I'm sharing it with somebody else, getting some social awareness in there. And then now this leads into ah self-assessment of this is where I i currently am. What's my level?
00:39:37
Speaker
How far away from that goal am I? And that self-awareness, that self-assessment is is critical because the coaches are involved in that too.
00:39:48
Speaker
And we can see if they think the gap is here or the gap is way up here, OK, well, this is our opportunity to level set and put you in the best position to to reach that goal.
00:40:00
Speaker
And then I work them through, OK, now we break into offense and defense. you know if If kid number one, his goal is to get 40 goals, kid number two is to get 50, well, based off statistics, we know to make the state championship, we need to score 400 goals.
00:40:18
Speaker
Well, these kids are going to be the primary drivers of this. So just kind of work it into from individual goals and build it into our team. But the big thing now with this purpose is going to be holding them accountable for this. You said you wanted this.
00:40:36
Speaker
you're not taking the or you're stepping out of bounds of character. you know i I wouldn't do do the you language to them. um Find ways to to show them their behaviors and actions and connected to their goals.
00:40:50
Speaker
so now I'm big on stopping and asking why. like Why are you not acting in line with your goals? like Tell me more about what's getting in the way. And like not allowing the slippery language of blame more just like, hey, you know, this is what you you said. How do you think you're doing? First of all, self-assessment, like you said, and then also being like, well, what?
00:41:09
Speaker
Tell me why. Tell me why you think maybe this goal is less important to you now. Is something else going on? And then how do you tie that back to the team? Yeah, so that that that helps build into the question. Now, you get the opportunity to to speak and install.
00:41:25
Speaker
What are your feedback loops and processes in place that you either hand off to leadership or hold them accountable yourself? So here's my favorite thing. I am all about pre-work, prehab as much as possible. So we have some little techniques that we use when I teach on tactical teams in particular. We have certain phrases. we have ah They're called heuristics. So heuristics are like phrases that you can say that people will immediately think of something else. So um my grandma and like many other people's grandmas used to say, well, Jenny, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
00:41:58
Speaker
And that is obviously not about eggs in baskets. That is about making sure you diversify kind of where you put your energy, your efforts, and your time and talent. And so don't put all your eggs in one basket as a heuristic. And it's a phrase you can say quickly to somebody that makes them kind of flip their mindset really quickly. You don't have to explain a difficult concept. And so we use heuristics on my tactical teams in particular. And so what we do, we have one of them that's very important. It's called Palms Up. And palms up is a visual reminder that I'm about to share some things with you or confront you on something. But I promise you it's for the best of us. It's kind of like, you know, carry the logs, like like we're working together to something. so So a lot of times people come into difficult conversations when they need to talk to their peers about stuff or bosses or coworkers or teammates, whatever it is. And they come fist up, which is like, I am ready to fight you on what you're about to say. I'm not going to listen at all. I'm actually probably going to argue back with you. Fist up. And then the other way is just kind of hands up, which is different than palms up. So hands up is I'm not listening. I'm walking away. i'm blocking it out, right?
00:43:00
Speaker
Then palms up is literally your palms up kind of saying, hey, going to trade information with you. And I promise you the hard thing I'm about to tell you is in your best interest. So I'm about to tell you something hard, but it's because I want you and i to find a mutual benefit or goal here so that we can get to the finish line.
00:43:18
Speaker
And so I got to call you out or confront you on something. And so palms up is one of the heuristics we use a lot on tactical teams. Hey, this is a palms up moment, but I got to tell you something. You sucked at that. When we were training that, you know, we were doing firearms qualification. That was awful. But let's see how we can get you better. Can I give you a tip?
00:43:35
Speaker
So it's like kind of a way to preemptively let the defenses down on the person you're about to confront. So that's one of the heuristics we use. Another one that we use in tactical teams that I love is be the grass. So be the grass is a visual reminder of something. um And it's another way to remind your teammates we've got to be flexible here. So I'm from Kansas, still living Kansas, and we got a lot of tornadoes here.
00:43:59
Speaker
And a lot of times when people see a lot of times when people see pictures of the aftermath of tornadoes, like they bowl through towns and you see all the hospitals and the home depots and all the buildings that are rigid and don't have any flexibility, the tornado comes through and totally destroys them.
00:44:13
Speaker
ah But what people don't realize is that the grass is almost always intact. And that's because the grass has roots. It knows its purpose and its intent. but it moves with the tornado, with with the storm. So once the storm bowls through, it actually incurs less damage because it's flexible. So be the grass, like in a tactical team environment is like, hey, bud, I know we'd said we were going to do that one thing. We were going to make entry this way. Let's say, are we going to handle this call this way? That moment has passed. Let's roll with this. Let's adapt and change and move fluidly. Be the grass is like one of their one of their tips. So yeah. So those are like like the the things that we say on tactical teams to quickly get people into the right mindset.
00:44:52
Speaker
hey I love it um
00:44:58
Speaker
it. I'm gonna steal some of that. Palms up. I've already defined it, unfortunately, within the world of sport because that's the... like... Oh, I don't know. almost part of the blame, complain, defend, like if a ref makes a call, yeah what are we doing here?
00:45:14
Speaker
Then that palms up ah behavior. So I may... what my mind went to is hat in hand. yeah i'm I'm coming to you. So I take my helmet off, right? I'm showing vulnerability. yeahp You know, in the the the medieval days, taking my helmet off, you can kill me.
00:45:32
Speaker
Well, so that that's where my mind went from that. like Fist up and hands up is pretty clear. Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah, palms up is stolen. Switch it up. you You do whatever you want.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, the what the the heuristic is intact. um You mentioned be the grass, and I've heard you speak on feeding the weeds. Yeah.
00:45:54
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Okay. woof That's my other one. This great for teenagers. Yes. Okay. So I love a nature analogy. I love them. They're really like memorable, right? So physical analogies, i' like to take like physical things in your environment you can see and apply them to mental stuff. So don't feed the weeds is a great one. um Don't feed the weeds is basically this. If you have a plant in the garden that's going to produce, let's say tomatoes for you, and then you have weeds right next to it and you have,
00:46:23
Speaker
plant food and water you need to think about where you're going to put the plant food and water are you going to put it on the weeds or you're going to put it on the plant that's going to produce something and how that applies mentally is this there's a lot of things in your environment you can control and a lot you cannot and the weeds are the things you cannot control and the plant is the stuff you can control if you spend all your energy feeding the weeds which is the things you cannot control you are burning out your energy and it will only produce more weeds You have to think about what's in my control, what's not in my control, and how I'm going to divert my energy to pay my resources and my attention to the things that I can control that will produce something for me.
00:47:03
Speaker
And so that's don't feed the weeds. that's That's a great one for like if you see people spiraling out mentally, you know, like, oh, this happened and this happened. And you can kind of watch the downward spiral, like the crashing out coming and saying just, hey, don't feed the weeds, man. Like, let's get back on track for what's actually in our lane.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah that's that's that's in essence be where your feet are. Because you're either living in that past or just living in the future of what could go wrong, the self-fulfilling prophecy versus play right now.
00:47:36
Speaker
Right now, it's a great anxiety management tool. A lot of times, I think um people get way out over their skis in their head, right? And they're way, way thinking way too much in the future. And we just got to do right now, handle it one play at a time. I've come to love Nick Saban. am not a football gal, but I have come to be almost obsessively dedicated to learning about him actually and his leadership style because a lot of what he focuses on is just, hey, handle just this play and do it well, you know, and then they stack up over the time.
00:48:08
Speaker
Yeah, I also appreciate Nick Saban very much and him coaching coaches. Yes. Him holding his coaches accountable yeah for if they if they hear, if he sees something or hears something, he holds them accountable for what their athlete did a lot of times. So yeah almost that form of leadership. And there's a term we use in athletics, coaching tree.
00:48:31
Speaker
a lot of the people that have worked under him have gone on to find great success from, I mean, the accountability that they were held to. It may not have felt good in that moment. Hopefully they held onto that lesson to then take to their new squats. But think about, like, if you think about the coaching tree, it's almost what we were talking about, the proliferation, like teaching your your captains how to train other people to proliferate their messaging.
00:48:59
Speaker
And I think personally for me, mean this is just a me thing. How cool is it that you impacted someone's life like that? Like you taught them how to manage themselves and manage others and be part of a group or team or culture. and way after your days of sports are over, you can take that and move that on to life and you are a better person. And that coach and that captain can say, i did that.
00:49:24
Speaker
You know, at least I contributed to that. And that's that's a cool thing. Yeah, and I'll personally attest to that because there's dudes still in my life. They were my teammates and how they introduced me 20 years later from when we played together. This this is my captain.
00:49:44
Speaker
And that that makes it feel so good. And it it makes sense to me if I love coaching in small community and I see dudes that I coach that come back for Easter and Christmas break and run into them at a church or the grocery store and see their moms.
00:49:58
Speaker
And they're like, they they're calling me coach. That makes me feel good. But it was extra special when former teammates are introducing me to their new friends or community as my captain, oh captain, my captain. So yeah, I i can personally attest that it feels feels great. ah you know You made that impact from then and you weren't a ah ah jerk, which seems to be a thing. I guess next this leads me a next question for for responsibility and power.
00:50:27
Speaker
Stepping into a leadership role where you were once here, you were once peers, but now you are in a position to lead your former peer. What kind of tools or perspective or guidance would you give that teenager or law enforcement officer leveling up to now lead his former peers where you were just joking around and, you know, messing around with that person, you know, just last week?
00:50:54
Speaker
Oh, that's such a – we see that problem everywhere, especially in law enforcement where you were literally just in the storm with somebody, right? You know, and now all of a sudden you're in charge. I think, you know, one of the things – again, i'm going to go to prehab or like kind of left of bang, pre-incident, pre-promotion – is how are you setting yourself up to be well-respected from the beginning? When you get promoted or put into a captain role or whatever your your um upward trajectory is – Most of the the work or how people view you has already been done.
00:51:24
Speaker
And so I think you need to think way ahead of things, way ahead and say, hey, am I setting myself up to be a well-respected and en trusted and valued individual? And do I carry on the values, team morals, goals, et cetera, that I intended to? So that by the time I get promoted, it's actually a lot easier for me to be able to say, hey, I can't joke around with you now. I've got some other responsibilities. and So then I think that's pre, way pre, way pre incident. And I think a lot of times kids, they either have that leadership style in them or they don't really. And so I think if you are one of those kids that, or team members that you think, hey, I'm probably destined for that. I want that. I think you need to be thinking long-term about all your decisions and choices. It's lot of pre network. Yeah.
00:52:09
Speaker
ah A lot of pre-heb work. And i mean, in the first, it's almost the first incident where they you know try to pal around or maybe authority says this and you have to make sure it happens as that team captain, as that team leader.
00:52:26
Speaker
And then somebody comes back like, hey, are we really going to do this? Almost the first time you got to put the boundary up and you know almost embrace that, hey this is how we're going to change the culture, this is how we're going to prevent that from happening again.
00:52:43
Speaker
And I think a lot of that trust is built before you ever get to that promoted spot, right? Like a lot of trust is already in play before then. So you have to think about how do I use my relationship with this person? How do I use what i know or sense or feel about them, the self-awareness that I have about them?
00:52:59
Speaker
How do I use that self and other awareness to have this conversation about setting a boundary or setting down a goal here and in a parameter that we need to now abide by? And so it's all prehab, in my opinion.
00:53:10
Speaker
By the time you get there, you've either made it or not. And I mean, those conversations, they're not comfortable. And I've heard you say discomfort is data, not danger.
00:53:22
Speaker
yes So not only in social situations, like what are some other examples of leadership where, okay, we got to encourage team leaders, new leaders to step into that discomfort to grow into, i mean, the authority figure, you know, you have the potential to become.
00:53:42
Speaker
Discomfort is super important. Your ability to tolerate uncomfortability is one of the primary factors, I think, in being a good leader. If you can sit in that uncomfortability and you can work through it without panicking or freaking out, I think that that gives you an opportunity to um respond instead of react.
00:54:02
Speaker
So you want to be able to respond and not react. Reaction usually has a lot of emotion behind it and a lot of emotion will diminish trust over time. And so on a team, if you're displaying a lot of emotion all the time, I'm not talking about passion. I'm talking about emotion. They're they're two different things. If you're just displaying a lot of emotion all the time, it's going to make it a little bit more difficult for people to trust you.
00:54:23
Speaker
And so being able to tolerate discomfort and regulate that means that then people will trust you more and then you can have the data necessary to make good decisions and good choices.
00:54:36
Speaker
I love it. ah What I've observed, new leaders, kids that step into captain's roles, they default to what they view leadership as from authority figure. And that could be you know a football coach, MFing everybody, and yelling at the freshmen to go do this.
00:54:54
Speaker
or a model that they have at home or an older brother. So it's always an interesting social experiment every single year when someone is handed the keys. What do they default to?
00:55:05
Speaker
And you know that some I won't say I know all the parents, but I know some of the parents and it's interesting to see the dynamic and the parallel. And then when a parent's not there and we see a kid step into a leadership.
00:55:18
Speaker
So I'm always trying to collect as much data as possible and observe, but still you know, connect and teach them an appropriate way to respect their peers to build that buy in versus, you know, defaulting to what you know, which that kid more often than not also hates and doesn't want to listen to himself.
00:55:38
Speaker
ah A lot of time that emotional reactivity is ah that makes up for a deficit in actual skill. And so when people are really emotionally reactive, it's oftentimes because they don't have any other skills coaching wise to rely on.
00:55:52
Speaker
Wow. That is that's the highlight of the the show. I mean, can can you dive deeper into that? Because I've experienced that. And even me, myself as a man and a leader, a coach and athlete and relationship, when the emotions do rise up, it's I didn't have the skill to navigate this situation appropriately.
00:56:14
Speaker
So, yeah. Can we dive deeper into that? This is good into the dark psychology a little bit. But one of the purposes of emotion, especially display of emotion, is to make other people around you change your but their behavior.
00:56:30
Speaker
It's not always about us. So when we express a lot of outward emotion, sometimes it's about us. But sometimes it's about how do I use strong emotional presence in order to manipulate people to do what I need?
00:56:43
Speaker
And so that doesn't come into play unless you're feeling lower self-confidence about your ability to get the team to move in the direction you want.
00:56:54
Speaker
Man. So then at what stage do you hold the mirror up when the kids don't listen or they start fighting you back literate literally or with their actions fighting back by not listening?
00:57:08
Speaker
Tex, what stage do you hold the mirror up? You should always be holding the mirror up. Always. There is no stage. That's a constant. I think that that is a constant thing. You constantly need to be saying, how is my presence impacting other people?
00:57:25
Speaker
What is it about me that's driving certain behavior? Because I don't know about you, Tex, but I don't have great, great – I'm a psychologist even. i don't have great odds at controlling other people. um I can barely control myself and I'm working really hard on that. you know We're all working hard on that. And I think that's why it's so important to do that self-reflection. Like, hey, what am I bringing to the party here?
00:57:46
Speaker
If the common denominator is me, I need to stop and look at me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because can only influence me. Technically, at the end of the day, I mean, I might be a psychologist and my job might be help influence and change people's behavior. But at the end of the day, I can only control me.
00:58:01
Speaker
That's it. Yeah. So that that, in essence, is a part of the captains and coaches mission is because a lot of dudes, kids, athletes, they can't control who their coach is.
00:58:14
Speaker
Correct. more often than not, they step into toxic coaching environments and I want to help them build the toolkit, the mental scaffolding to protect themselves from what somebody, you know, their past, whatever it is, is being pushed down on this kid.
00:58:33
Speaker
and they believe that label. I don't want them to believe that label. I want to believe what they naturally hold for themselves. And i've I've worked with so many young kids and it's just fascinating to see this, I mean, amazing confidence that the little kids have, but there's some breaking point in life that they choose to listen to an authority figure.
00:58:55
Speaker
And I mean, i chose to listen to a lot of authority figures when I should not have and I should have been listening to a lot of the positive people around me. So I mean yes a leader should be holding the mirror up but more often not there's a lot of environments where they're not.
00:59:14
Speaker
So how can you help protect a um a informal leader who doesn't have this position, but is being told who they are by a negative external force to keep going and be motivated. It's so present in law enforcement as well.
00:59:33
Speaker
Well, how do you focus on yourself, your decisions, your actions, and insulating that from the negativity that's being pushed down towards you? It feels relevant for athletics and LEO.
00:59:47
Speaker
Absolutely. So those types of people who can push through those situations, they have certain characteristics. And so people who can push through bad feedback, push through toxic environments tend to be really self-aware. They know themselves, they know what bothers them. And so if you think about it, if you're getting screamed at from a coach and, um,
01:00:06
Speaker
you If you have great self-awareness, you can say to yourself, okay, this coach right here is yelling at me um and I'm pretty confident that I did actually mostly the right thing. So this probably isn't about me.
01:00:18
Speaker
That's one. If you have good self-awareness, that helps too on that and that lane, I would say. The other thing is good self-regulation. If I can control my emotions, that is like a superpower. So if somebody is trying to get me off course and someone's trying to throw me off by getting angry or getting up in my face or telling me,
01:00:35
Speaker
horrible things about my performance or me as a person, heaven forbid. If I have good self-regulation and I can internally control what's happening with my thoughts, my behaviors, and my feelings, then I can move myself away from that situation in a way, either mentally, if I have to stay actually physically present, or i can say to myself, I'm actually not going to be emotionally reactive here because if I'm emotionally reactive, I'm giving that person exactly what they want.
01:00:59
Speaker
And then guess what? They win. So by me being able to control me, I technically control the power. People don't realize that. You do not have to react to what everybody does around you.
01:01:12
Speaker
hmm. That is so important. So that's one thing I did. And then also that like, how do I get to a so ah ah spot where I go, hey, if I can only control me, this is that don't feed the weeds thing. How do I focus on what's in my lane, in my in my sphere of influence or control? And how do I capitalize on that and forget about what this person's going through over here?
01:01:33
Speaker
The other thing is rewriting a narrative. So if you know yourself well enough to know, I have written a narrative about myself not being good enough. Let's just say that as an example. I'm not good enough to be on this team or be here. um If I've written that narrative, does that need to be rewritten after I have new information?
01:01:49
Speaker
After I look at a bigger picture or I think about things from different angles, because I've got good awareness and enough to do that, social awareness to do that. If I look at this situation from different angles and I incorporate new information, how do I write something better than the crappy first draft?
01:02:03
Speaker
Because sometimes the second draft is more accurate and more helpful. and so a lot of what I spend time doing is helping people rewrite a second draft after a bad incident happened. How do I make the situation both realistic and more helpful for you?
01:02:19
Speaker
It doesn't need to be like, I'm not, I'm not selling you, you know, a bill of goods or unicorns and rainbows over here. I'm just saying where, how is another way to think of this situation that is realistic, considers all the facts of the matter, but is actually more helpful for me to people who are that type of mental flexible, like mental flexibility, they have that mental flexibility in play. They tend to do much better.
01:02:41
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, I'll speak from personal experience where I took it on a lot of false positivity. So being the teammate that just lifted everybody up in this negative environment, but that those were lies.
01:02:56
Speaker
Those were lies or ignoring the the negative sense that that was going on. So, yeah you know, even I knew that they they were not true.
01:03:09
Speaker
But saying that to others, and then, I mean, that only hurt, made the situation worse because yeah up here i knew i knew the facts. um You know, it's really, yeah, it's really bad when I think when a captain or somebody who's informal or formal leader denies the actual reality of the situation to ah to coat it in sprinkles. Look, you can put sprinkles on a turd, but it is still a turd at the end of the day. Right. And so you have to stop and go, how do I acknowledge that that this actually is bad and nearing intolerable? This is a thing. And here's my here's my zone of influence or control. And here's what I'm going to focus on.
01:03:47
Speaker
I think especially when you're a situation where when there's a power dynamic and the person above you is toxic. okay, you can't do nothing about that right now. Let's acknowledge it. Yes, this is all the behaviors that we wish were different. And right now they are not.
01:04:01
Speaker
And they might not be for a little bit. So how do we withstand and endure? And that goes back to focusing on what's in your lane and what you can control. And then also, how do I rewrite this draft now that I know that this person's toxic like that? How do I rewrite the draft in my head so that's more accurate so that I can keep moving forward?
01:04:17
Speaker
You don't want to deny reality ever. Because if you do that as a captain or a coach, you're going to in trouble. People won't trust you. yeah They won't trust you. It will catch up to you at some point if you're ignoring a small behavior in the preseason It's just inevitable at this biggest moment within the season, that will, that weakness that will break the chain.
01:04:39
Speaker
Um, it, uh, I've also encouraged to, to, you know, it's not looking at the bright side I'd like this reframe of, of second draft. Cause you're also turning and spinning it into what I like to call it a superpower, this negative experience, it sucked, but then who did you become because of it?
01:04:59
Speaker
And you know I've heard this called post-traumatic growth, yeah but then i I look at my experience and then a phrase that I i want to turn into a superpower for myself is hypervigilance.
01:05:11
Speaker
Hyper aware of what's going on in my my environment and reading people. Because the the environment that I was in, you didn't know who was going to show up. Are they going to yell at you?
01:05:22
Speaker
Are they going to have the best day of their life and treat you with ah you know love and respect? or not. So you're just on this hyper-aware waiting to see what who is showing up today to now, okay, it's safe or it's not safe.
01:05:38
Speaker
So now just being able to turn that into a superpower and reading 50 individuals, body language, sense, esteem, finding the person that needs me the most right now, and I'm to lean into them.
01:05:51
Speaker
So it's you know, it it's I'm not telling my so ah story as a victim is seeing this as a freaking OK, well, I've had a you know a million reps in this experience.
01:06:02
Speaker
How can I use my superpower for good now? And if if we look at, you know, comic book ah you know um mythology is the term I'm looking for, all of them have that weakness into their superpowers. That's how i I aim to frame it.
01:06:19
Speaker
And then you know the same with communicating that to the high schoolers, I'm not gonna tell them about hypervigilance or my story, I'm gonna try to reframe theirs as super power.
01:06:30
Speaker
And one one quick note, my my one of my sisters called me, her son, he's a swimmer, And he's he's the fastest at his current age group.
01:06:41
Speaker
And he was getting bullied by the other kids in this particular yeah ah class that he's taken because he's the fastest. So they're just trying to claw and bring him down.
01:06:53
Speaker
And she she was an athlete herself, a phenomenal golfer. So she's used to individual sports and shielding herself. But she didn't know how to teach her son these these tools. right She's just telling him exactly what to do versus teaching him and building that confidence. So now what she wanted to do was have him change in a separate locker room. And I told her, no way.
01:07:19
Speaker
He needs to he needs to to find a way to redirect. He can show up early and change early and get out there before everybody else because he's the fastest kid, that's who he is, and kind of embrace that that attitude that the the stats reinforce.
01:07:38
Speaker
And then i asked and this is this is almost like serendipitous. I asked who his favorite superhero was, Marvel character, and then he said Black Panther. And so Black Panther's got this suit that when he takes contact in a fight, it turns into energy and makes his you know his punches and and jumps more stronger and more powerful.
01:07:59
Speaker
I'm like, this is perfect. His favorite character, he understands the superpower. Well, that's what taking bullying is. You're not you're not just going to take those blows, you're going absorb them and redirect them into your performance.
01:08:12
Speaker
So helped helped coach my sister. It was a a special moment for me. you know I'm not just little brother anymore. she trusted me so yeah um but yeah it's it's superpowers is a term and i'm using that from nicole haverland who is team usa olympic rugby team captain these are her cleats worn in match up here on the wall of fame but um yeah she leaned into that superpower so much that she believed it and i'm like I got to find a way to embrace that for for myself and my athletes. so
01:08:47
Speaker
I actually think you great you gave your sister great advice, actually. I think that was really good because the more we avoid, we teach we teach the wrong lessons subconsciously. So the more we avoid, the more we teach this is something to be fearful or ashamed about. And so you have to, avoidance almost always makes the stress or the strain worse. And so...
01:09:06
Speaker
Your method was like, nope, we're just going to shift it and change it. And so it becomes part of kind of my mantra. I get there early. I do this. And this is what the leaderboard says. Right. And so you make it fit a narrative that's more healthy. Like you choose a behavior that's going to fit a more healthy narrative. A lot of times in society, we're teaching people to avoid things. And that's actually the opposite of what we want to do.
01:09:28
Speaker
We want to be able to have approach behaviors because that teaches us confidence and strength. I can get through difficult, hard times, kind of like you mentioned. And I will say, like, when you're describing what you're describing. So the thing I the program I have is called Tactical Longevity. And Tactical Longevity is taught all over the place, not just in law enforcement. It's taught in all different sectors. And one of the things that it's based on is actually the work of the Stoics. So you're talking about superpower and Marvel Comics and the heroes.
01:09:53
Speaker
i I take it a little bit more ancient and a lot of the stuff that I teach is based on the work of the Stoics. And the big principle behind Stoic philosophy is how do I cope with really difficult, hard things?
01:10:05
Speaker
And so if i if I can't change the exact situation around me, how do I make it manageable in my own mind, in my own philosophy, in my own life philosophy or psychology here? And so that is what we're doing a lot of. So when you're talking about, hey, you know, how I was raised or how my experience was when I was on teams made me more hypervigilant, what I call that direct stoic language here is problem is the opportunity.
01:10:27
Speaker
So what problem did you just have that is going to create a better human in the future? What problem are we facing right now that is going to make me stronger later?
01:10:38
Speaker
And if I can promise myself, I know I will be able to squeeze something out of this crappy situation in front of me, I might not know exactly what it is right now, but I'll probably get to it in the future. Those are the type of people that can withstand a lot of ah ah lot of stress and actually come back on the other side.
01:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, I see that connection. And you so spoke a lot about anti-fragility. yeah and I feel this is an appropriate time to to introduce that. and i got a buddy, Matt Spade, I got to give him a shout out. His company is 501c3 is Operation Anti-Fragile.
01:11:16
Speaker
so Just helping veterans come back and and and rejoin you know the the life here in the United States after they've been through traumatic experiences overseas in combat. so I love it what's it. Yeah. Anti-fragile, the word is kind of making, it's coming, making, it's not my own word. It's from Talib is his name. He was the original kind of coiner of the term um anti-fragile. But ah here's the thing. I am pretty sick of hearing the term resilient. And I understand why people use it. It is totally fine. But it's gotten a lot of overplay. And I think it's lost its meaning. So resiliency, on the one hand, is your ability to bounce back and return to your original form.
01:11:56
Speaker
you know, speed of which you could do that, all that kind of stuff, that's resiliency. um Anti-fragility is how do I use my negative experiences and craft them to make me a better person? How do I use my negative experiences to make me a better person? And I am very much of the mindset that that that is where we should aim is for anti-fragility, not necessarily the resiliency thing. The resiliency thing isn't bad. I want you to be able to bounce back. But what if we could get more out of it? What if we could even make you a better human from the bad things you've experienced or the stressors you've experienced? And I think we have to be intentional about that. And so that's the term I use a lot more is anti-fragile. How do I make you anti-fragile? Resilience is great. Bouncing back is awesome.
01:12:37
Speaker
I want more. I want more. I'm always aiming for that. So I think we want more that way. And how do you feel the the acceptance of that mindset is for the people that you're speaking to?
01:12:49
Speaker
Honestly, i've I've gotten a lot of positivity back about that. I think one of the kind of cultural commentary things I'll say is that some people's baselines nowadays aren't very good. So if we're bouncing back to that, that's not where we should probably stop.
01:13:04
Speaker
And so a lot of people I work with, I think they see that and they see, yeah, I need to actually be able to use these experiences to make me stronger. And so it's getting a lot of positive feedback, I think, in that way.
01:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's an excellent point with resilience. You're bouncing back to a baseline that is also a negative place that we don't want to be. Yeah. Yeah. yeah um
01:13:30
Speaker
I want to give the opportunity to speak on the importance of connection. And I mean, whether it's linked to so psychology or your experience of seeing what happens to individuals when they isolate and the value and opportunity. And ah it I mean, it takes a lot of courage for somebody from isolation and that's their comfort zone, even though it's negative to then step into a place of connection.
01:13:54
Speaker
So how do you aim to teach the value, not just speak it, but teach there's so much value in connection, especially when you're you're going to that dark place? So I will say, again, my whole life philosophy is, look, bad things can and will happen.
01:14:12
Speaker
It's just is life. That is the thing. And so ah one of the things I say a lot with regards to connection is this, bad things can and will happen. It's so much worse when you're going through them alone.
01:14:23
Speaker
And so you've got to make those investments to make sure that you have a tribe around you that is going to be able to sustain the bad event with you. And also, I will say the research is highly supportive of this. So when we look at post-traumatic stress disorder in particular, which is kind of a lot of the world I end up like treating or living in, when we look at post-traumatic stress, if we if we study, there's there's studies on natural disasters, for example, that we look at after natural disaster, who develops post-traumatic stress? um And researchers come in, they rush in, and they look at, hey, this one event happened to all these people. and it was about the same event. Who bounces back and who doesn't? And what the research says that is that this, if you have a strong connection, a good, solid-based team, tribe, et cetera, like you have a good sense of belonging at pre-incident, pre the natural disaster happening, you have about a 2.5% chance of developing post-traumatic stress disorder.
01:15:22
Speaker
However, if you have a weak social circle, you're not part of a group team or tribe, or it's not really well connected or bonded, that same natural disaster happens. If you don't have a strong, strong solid tribe, you have about a 12% chance of developing PTSD.
01:15:37
Speaker
And that's huge in my world, those stats, that that difference right there is gigantic. And I think I point that out because we know that there is a degree of our human biology at play here, that there is strength in numbers or safety in numbers. And so if something bad happens to you, you want to have a collective group team or tribe that can pick you back up.
01:15:57
Speaker
Yeah. And help you rewrite that story that may not be accurate up there. Absolutely. And in in the loneliness epidemic, I think as it's called nowadays, this is the problem that we're having. um This is why I'm so, so, so supportive of people playing team sports is it is a natural place or bond where you can get together and form a tribe.
01:16:24
Speaker
So we're relying there. Yeah. And then, yeah, take it a step further and being purposeful with that coaching and teaching the social skills.
01:16:36
Speaker
Because I've seen teams that just fall into, you know, I'll call it barroom intimacy, where they they need alcohol or other substances to then bond as a team.
01:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, which is not what we want. No, we, you know, the playful banter that I alluded to earlier, like that's true bonding, we're We're just hanging out, making fun of each other. If if ah even in warm up lines and I lead our warm up during our practices, if the banter is going on, I don't tell them to shut up and focus.
Impact of Toxic Coaching and Trauma Bonds
01:17:08
Speaker
I just let it roll and then cue and direct their bodies into their appropriate positions and keeping them rolling. I never tell them to to shut up when the the boys are being boys.
01:17:19
Speaker
Because that's where that value is. And then aim to help them, lead them to good decisions off the field. As tempting it as it is later in life, that stuff becomes destructive, especially if you don't have the confidence or social skills to bond with just a ah person hanging out over coffee or or or anything else.
01:17:42
Speaker
And you're leaning into that. It's not real. That's not teen. You're chasing something else. Yep. Can I point something out about like punitive coaching or like toxic coaching on this? lesson i Yes. Yeah, it's super important to me.
01:17:55
Speaker
One of the things I think people don't realize when they're that punitive or toxic coach or highly emotional coach, I don't think they realize what they're actually doing that's proliferating again, that word downward. When you are doing that, you will start to create an environment where players will turn on each other.
01:18:10
Speaker
Or sometimes they'll bond together in kind of a weird trauma bond thing. That does happen. But a lot of times they'll turn on each other and they'll kind of start to point out another further toxic behavior. You know, who's not as good or we'll get like this like tit for tat one up thing that happens. And when that happens, the downstream effect of that is men in particular don't learn that they can trust their peers. Right.
01:18:34
Speaker
And they don't learn that you can be vulnerable about whatever's going on with you and we got your back, we support you. Because you've now created a culture where it's dog-eat-dog. yeah And when you're doing that to young men in particular, you can have a downstream negative impact for all of their relationships for years and years to come.
01:18:53
Speaker
And so... I really hope that parents or coaches or anybody listening that that might speak to that you realize that keeping a kid around a toxic coach, especially males, has long term downstream effects for all the other relationships in their lives.
01:19:13
Speaker
I couldn't agree agree more. to Two points on that one. Definitely had toxic coaches, leaders in my life, and we trauma bonded.
01:19:24
Speaker
My closest friends, we've lived through that experience and it's still so many great hilarious stories now that we're out of it. We can point at this and be like, And they were crazy.
01:19:34
Speaker
Was that real? Was that real life? um And then in in my professional career and then, you know, so much time reflecting and, you know, I'm I'm I'm a good dude. I'm quick to trust people. And unfortunately, I've got to work on that.
01:19:51
Speaker
But there are times when there was, you know, that wolf in the hen house where you trusted somebody and face to face, they were this and then they were in the background. maneuvering and you know being Machiavellian and all that stuff. So then it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And you know then you think about, why didn't I see that coming?
01:20:12
Speaker
And then you just, you recall different stories that they shared about their past sporting
Covert Contracts and Conflict Resolution
01:20:19
Speaker
experiences. And you're like, man like i should have saw that coming based off of ah the clues that were right in front of me before so interesting to you know i'm much like any uh work environment strength and conditioning fitness it's a low barrier of entry so you ah you let a lot of people in there that i feel violate my personal values but you know it is what it is so now
01:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, seeing that, i I truly believe it and can attest like, hey, those those are real. um And I label those as antisocial behaviors when when I'm at practice. So you know there's teasing each other, but then there's ah you know calling people out where i I referenced palms up behavior earlier.
01:21:08
Speaker
So I try to nip those in the bud as much as I can. um But I mean, there's a whole list of them, antisocial behaviors. That's another child development term. But yeah, because ah I know it's just magnified and exemplified and going to be 10 times worse when they enter the workforce.
01:21:24
Speaker
and yeah And their their boss doesn't care as much as their coach does. I guarantee you that. They don't. They don't. Yeah. I just think that it sets it sets young men up in particular, I think, for a degree of isolation, like social and emotional isolation that sometimes is not recoverable. And so they they don't ever learn the value of two friendship. They don't have a reparative friendship because. Teams are also a great environment to have reparative friendships where you realize, oh, I can trust people or I can have I can express this difficult thing to my buddy on the team and he responds completely appropriately. That's a reparative relationship. And if you don't have those, then you go into adulthood. Think about all the relationships that you will have in adulthood that will be impacted by the fact that you don't trust enough people to open up about who you are or what you're going through.
01:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, and you're always looking to drag others down to put yourself above versus just being ah a good person towards other people and having them build a bond or value for you there.
01:22:27
Speaker
um Last note on that, there's a term that I discovered that I felt was appropriate for those actions. um Those individuals, from my experience, they had covert contracts, meaning we didn't state, I may i may have shared my expectations, but they didn't share their expectations.
01:22:49
Speaker
And then as a leader, I didn't meet their expectations because they didn't they didn't communicate that. And we never talked about it. But all of a sudden, I'm a bad guy because I didn't meet this contract that you made up in your head and did not communicate.
01:23:02
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Okay. Oh, I have so many things I could say. Look, I'm a chick. I work in a mostly male dominated field and I work with some of the toughest dudes like out there, like big, burly, tough dudes who do scary stuff. And then sometimes they'll come into my office and they'll be like, doc, I got this thing with the teammate or a boss or whatever. and And I'm like, well, have you talked to them about it? Have you made it clear that that's not okay? Or like, like have you had the conversation with them? And they're like, i can't do that.
01:23:31
Speaker
That's terrifying. it it's just – I think that it is so important when teach people that a little bit of conflict, a little bit of friction is good and then also being able to show that you can work through it. but We cannot be avoidant of conflict. We cannot be ah avoidant of appropriately and respectfully calling someone out and then saying, and I still love you so I'm going to hang out until we figure this out. I know you don't mean that but here's my expectation for this relationship. You're not meeting it.
01:23:59
Speaker
I care about you enough to figure this out and work together. And I think ah my big burly dudes that will tell me, i can't I can't talk to them about that. Something bad could happen to me when they'll run literally through, you know, dark alleys towards bullets and they won't have these conversations.
01:24:16
Speaker
It cracks me up. Yeah, that's, you know, we're all just little kids still you know in grown up bodies with guns. Yeah. And we're just trying to figure it out, right? We're just trying to figure it out. And i think that that's where it's so important to have a culture on a team where you can have difficult conversations and then show the repair and recovery of those difficult conversations. They don't all end in disaster.
01:24:40
Speaker
No. Yeah, reparative friendships. that's that's That's something I want to look further into, too, because you know college teammates literally fist fighting at practice. And then within moments, you know we're we're hanging out with each other again in the cafeteria. So like yeah that is the great representation of of reparative friendships and how conflict can be, um especially within sports where we still can get a little fisticuffs. Yeah.
01:25:11
Speaker
Well, I value this conversation. And if if people want to continue to learn from you, you've been ah on a number of podcasts of the opportunity to listen to and and learn so much. So thank you for joining me on this show. Where can people learn more from you, your mission, vision, and and reach out if they feel they need to?
01:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So it's tactical longevity.com. That's the easiest way to get ahold of me, fill out that form and then get ahold of me that way. Contact us form on there. So tactical longevity.com. And I will say like, yes, this was built in law enforcement, but this goes lots of different places. And I also know that there's going to be people who listen to this podcast and they think, oh, that's interesting. And that's it. But there might be people out there, I think, that listen to this podcast and go, my team needs this, or my group that I work with needs this, or my work group needs this, or whatever. And I just want to make it clear that we're not just law enforcement. We do a lot of different things. The number one question I actually get after I do talks, and this is kind of, I never expected this. This a very big surprise for me. The number one question I get asked after i finish a talk on this topic, on tactical longevity, anti-fragility, how do we make people bounce back from stress better, or perform better under stress? They come up and they ask me about their kids every time.
01:26:22
Speaker
I know. i know. i would i never thought i never thought of that until it started happening a lot. And I was like, okay, that makes sense actually. How do we instill this in our kids? And I think that team environments are the best place to set those cultural norms and and have the high repetition necessary to create anti-fragile kiddos.
Tactical Longevity Beyond Law Enforcement
01:26:41
Speaker
I believe it. And hopefully they have a healthy coach so they avoid any of the the negative toxic stuff. Unless they're trauma bonding. It always works out. Not really. But hey. You know, trauma bonding is a thing. It's not always bad. So.
01:26:56
Speaker
i Yeah, got I've been in stand stood in too many weddings um because of that, so I've got to be grateful for it. Absolutely. yeah Yes, Dr. Jenny, thank you very much.
01:27:08
Speaker
I imagine this is not the last time we'll speak, so looking forward to to next time. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Scene. Scene.