Transcript
Speaker: Action! Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where explore the art the science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. I'm your host, Tex McQuilkin, and today we're starting with a quote from a good friend of mine. You may or may not heard me say this, Sports don't teach lessons.
Speaker: Coaches do. That's from Jim Davis of The Good Athlete Project. He's been a good friend of mine, and I've used that line in presentations, in clinics, sharing information with with others on this podcast. And now I'm leveling up with the challenge because I have to prove it.
Speaker: Not to a room full of coaches, not to a podcast, not to a clinic clinic I'm leading, but to a dissertation committee. So that's what we're going to be walking through is what I've been buried in for the past six plus months and will continue to for the next couple of years.
Speaker: And I needed to pick a theory that's going to help me Hold on to this idea and shine a light and fill the gap that sports are not teaching lessons.
Speaker: Who really is and what are they learning? So here's the thing about research. You can have the best instinct in the world about leadership. And I've coached six continents. I've coached at many different levels and I've watched captains carry teams. And I've watched captains be the right person for the job, but then lose the team over the length of a season, which eventually sinks that team.
Speaker: But instinct isn't enough for a dissertation. You need a framework. You need decades of research standing behind you in the gap that you're identifying or the idea that you're trying to prove.
Speaker: So today, i want to walk you through the framework that I've landed on and why I've landed on it. and then hand it straight to you because if it's strong enough to hold up the the research and everything I'm going to put myself in a position to conduct, it's strong enough to help your team right now.
Speaker: i don't want you to wait. So when you're building a psychometric instrument instrument, questions that I'm going to be asking team captains at the college level to identify gaps and resources that they need to allow themselves to be prepared to lead their team,
Speaker: and That's what my dissertation is about. You need a theory with teeth, not a buzzword, not TED talk concept, not TikTok concept, a model that's been tested, retested, and applied across businesses, education, and sport.
Speaker: and The one I chose has been locked in for over 40 years, and that's transformational leadership theory. That's the model I'm going to be leaning in along with social emotional learning that I've done many podcasts on.
Speaker: And this is founded in 1985, gentleman named Bass. And here's what convinced me that it belonged at the center of my research. The sports psychology literature landing on the same conclusion study after study. Coaches who lead with this transformational approach They build athletes who are more motivated, more satisfied, and less stressed.
Speaker: Peer leaders, your captain who lead this way, they build teams that are more cohesive and more confident. So let's get into it Transformational Leadership Theory. It breaks down into four behaviors.
Speaker: Researchers call them the four I's. I want to give you all four, and I want to give you a version that you can actually take to your team tomorrow. All right, starting I number one, idealized influence.
Speaker: This is you as the role model, not the loudest person in the room. not Not the loudest person in the room, the most consistent one. You show up early.
Speaker: You work as hard in the drills that nobody's watching as you do the drills that everybody's watching and participating in in practice. You hold a moral line and you don't move it when it's inconvenient.
Speaker: And here's the captain tool. I want you to pick one standard you will never break, publicly or privately, and you let your team watch you keep it for the full season and hopefully your full career. Consistency is the currency here.
Speaker: One slip and you are back to zero. When you're jumping on people or calling people out for their negative behaviors, they're immediately going to try to find something that you're leading with to pull you down or something you're doing to pull you down and not listen to you.
Speaker: So the objective here is to have anchor roles, decisions, things that you do that stand above your team and allow you to lead them.
Speaker: So you are certainly not going to be in a position to be a hypocrite. For me, it was it was always anchored in attitude and being there 30 minutes before practice. I would go to the training room, get ankles taped,
Speaker: get whatever I needed, be there, and then be on the practice field 30 minutes before practice. So if I was late to the training room, then I would skip that and then just go to be out on the field early at practice. So I was always there, but left myself a cushion to in case I needed to, to get there. And with the attitude,
Speaker: It became a joke. I always say, take advantage of the weather. That was my calling card, breaking the huddle before we got into to practice, whether it was raining, whether it was snowing, whether was the most beautiful day in Northern Virginia that we had.
Speaker: Take advantage of the weather. So that was the attitude that I was painting. i was always aiming to reframe an idealized influence. That's something I backed into as a leader and had and was leading with morals through this and aiming to hold people accountable throughout the whole team at all levels, senior all the way to freshmen.
Speaker: which then helped me transition to become a great coach with the same players that I was once on the same team with. All right the second I, inspirational motivation.
Speaker: This is painting the picture of where the team is going and why it matters. Not a poster on the wall with a little kitten hanging there. It's a true story that your team can actually see themselves living, breathing, and thriving inside of.
Speaker: It's not just saying and giving a blanket goal out there like we're going hang the banner, we're going win the state championship, we're going all the way. And you are so far from that. What is a realistic motivation, goal, end point, something that we can start to make sacrifices for in July to accomplish in the spring?
Speaker: So that delayed gratification. So you're Captain Toole. Hand it off. Before a big week, Tell your team one specific story. And this week could be a game. It could be preseason. could be at any point. But something that they are facing that is a challenge and an opportunity for the team to learn something about themselves. I want you to tell them one story.
Speaker: A past game, past accomplishment, past teammate, a past version of the team that connects to what they're chasing right now, right in front of them.
Speaker: Research on this behavior consistently shows it's one of the strongest predictors of whether athletes enjoy the sport and stay intrinsically motivated to keep training.
Speaker: One of my favorite stories about inspirational motivation, this comes from Pete Carroll in his book, Man, it's it's on my shelf. ah winning is Winning is everything. Something along those lines.
Speaker: But anyway, Pete Carroll, he knew his players so well that the dinner before all games, he would ask one of them to stand up and share an inspirational moment at any point in their athletic career.
Speaker: But he knew the guys and he knew the stories that they were going to tell. So he would tee them up. Not, hey, before this dinner, I want you tell this story. He would recall it from a conversation or from a previous team or a teammate or somebody told him and he would allow them to tell that story authentically in the moment.
Speaker: And that led to, okay momentum going in. to the next play. I think it's called win forever. Anyway, so inspirational motivation. This is not an everyday thing. It's not the anchor of take advantage of the weather. This is when you need it so you can prove something to the team about themselves that they may have a doubt for.
Speaker: Okay. The third eye, intellectual stimulation. Pun intended here. I'm pointing at my forehead third eye if you're watching on the YouTubes. Okay, this is the captains skip the most because it means giving up control.
Speaker: The objective here with intellectual stimulation is you will empower your team, giving your power away, allowing them to make decisions. You're inviting your teammates to solve problems instead of you solving them and telling them what to do all the freaking time.
Speaker: They're taking charge. It's an opportunity for them to get reps. And I say this all the time. Leadership takes reps. It's tolerating the wrong answer in practice or off the field so somebody's willing to try the right one in the game, on the field, when it matters.
Speaker: Captain's tool, next time something breaks down, at practice, on the field, off the field, training, doesn't matter. Don't fix it. Turn to your team. Turn to your group. Ask them, what do we think went wrong?
Speaker: What's a different way that we can try this? Double loop learning questions. Going back to a previous podcast I had, look up double loop learning. So ask these questions and shut up.
Speaker: Wait. Let them sit in that and try to figure it out. Somebody will fill in. And if nobody fills in, this may be a sign for you as a captain that we're not leaving enough room for intellectual stimulation.
Speaker: Well, guess what's going to happen as soon as you leave the team? Exactly the silence and the leadership void that you felt and experienced, but instead of ah an awkward moment you're sitting in, it's going to be an awkward season for everybody.
Speaker: So third eye, intellectual stimulation. Fourth eye, individualized consideration. Remembering these are people. This is seeing each teammate as the person first, as a human being, not a human doing on your team not or stat line.
Speaker: It's knowing what's going on outside of the sport, having a real conversation with your teammates, as painful as that is for some guys. It's coaching the freshmen different than you would coach your senior teammates that you have a four-year relationship with, or you were roommates at with them at one point, or are roommates with them.
Speaker: All different relationships. you're going to lead those groups in completely different ways. I'm recalling some of my ways that I led my college roommates, especially the senior year when we're all living together.
Speaker: As a defense, that's why we were so connected and good. All right. But yeah, ah all different things required of you because they're all different people. There's no one way to lead a team.
Speaker: And then how we're able to lead a team is by leading the mental and emotional state of an individual. That allows us to understand and get a feel for the group and then lead the mental and emotional state of a team.
Speaker: So your captain tool, as big as your team is, just pick one teammate a week. See if they're struggling. Ask them what's going on outside. Have a conversation with them that has nothing to do with performance or the sport.
Speaker: Ask about their week, their family, their major the performance conversation. It'll still be there tomorrow. Sport's always going to be there. and Aim to get their mind off of it. And it could open up some opportunities for you to help and be a leader in their life outside of the sport.
Speaker: All right. So those those are the four eyes and here's where my research really took a turn and this is only a matter of weeks ago that has really, really, really recharged me up here. so and very excited about it. So transformational leadership theory, it tells you the behaviors of captains, of team leaders, or the expectations of coaches for their team captains.
Speaker: It doesn't fully explain though the internal skillset a captain needs to actually execute them. It's just the behaviors. That's where, ah,
Speaker: I make a connection to social emotional learning, SEL, and how it connects into the framework built around the five competencies of SEL, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making.
Speaker: That is how captains can lead. And you can identify deficiency and then specifically work on that. That allows you to accomplish the four I's.
Speaker: So... I feel, and this is a Steve Jobs quote, creativity is in the connections. I feel that SEL lines up so well with these four I's. These are going to be my anchor theories for the research project, probably for a long time. So get used to to hearing these things.
Speaker: And the the connection I feel is almost one-to-one. Idealized influence requires self-awareness and self-management. You got to lead yourself first and be that idealized individual as the team captain so people don't not listen to you because your actions off the field.
Speaker: You can't be a consistent role model without knowing your own patterns and controlling them under pressure. And then inspirational motivation. This requires social awareness, right? I said leading the mental mental and emotional state of an individual before we can lead the mental and emotional state of a team.
Speaker: That's social awareness in a nutshell. You can't paint a vision that lands unless you understand what your teammates are actually caring about and believe that they can accomplish.
Speaker: Then we have intellectual stimulation. This requires relationship skills. You have to build enough trust that teammates feel safe offering bad ideas out loud.
Speaker: And then instead of jumping on them and telling them how stupid they are, creating a a mental block, a fixed mindset, you shape them up. And knowing that you are preparing for when you leave.
Speaker: And lastly, individualized consideration. This requires responsible... decision-making. I can't discipline my whole team like I would the seniors or I can't let my pals slide and then just put all my energy into yelling at the freshmen.
Speaker: That's not going to be great for our team in long run. So the discipline to, by my part as a leader, to treat people differently based on what's fair for them, that's not the easiest thing for me to do.
Speaker: So understanding when to to to lay on the gas and when to lay off and have expectations and standards for the team that I also have for myself.
Speaker: All right. So my research question, I've done previous podcasts research questions that I'm diving into to to jog your memory here. It is. It's not just do transformational captains build better teams.
Speaker: Bored. I want to dive a layer deeper. So the question becomes, what social emotional skills sit underneath transformational captain behavior?
Speaker: And what can we actually, how can we actually measure them? That's the instrument I'm going to build for the the the surveys, the research that I'm going to conduct.
Speaker: And that's the gap in the literature that I found. Most of the research on this theory, transformational leadership theory, and there's a lot of it at the high school level, it measures the coach.
Speaker: Almost none of it isolates the captain and asks what's happening inside of them before the behavior even shows up. So let me put the whole thing together for you really quick because this is the model. My entire dissertation will sit on top of.
Speaker: okay Picture it in four layers from top to bottom. Layer one, this is going to be capacity. That's SEL, the five internal skills a captain either has, very strong sense in, or they need work in.
Speaker: Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. That's layer one. if you're great If you're a great player and really bad at people, then no one's no one's going to help you with those social skills at the college level.
Speaker: You fail to be the captain that the people need. or if you are naturally a quiet kid or introverted. or reserve and you play a leadership position like quarterback, for example, well, guess what the pressure and the expectation that the coaches are going to be?
Speaker: They're going to make you captain. They're going to tell you to hit the four eyes, but then the skills underneath that, the self-awareness, the self-confidence, the self-management to step into that role is limited.
Speaker: So I feel that the SEL is the bedrock before we can level up into Layer two, which is behaviors, the actions of a team captain, and that's the four I's from transformational leadership theory.
Speaker: The observable stuff, the role modeling, the visual casting, the problem solving invitations, the individual attention that you give the members of your team.
Speaker: Like as a coach, I can see those behaviors. But then, am I judging the skills? How is the communication going down? Am I observing and helping aid in your social-emotional leadership development underneath those? That's what I want to find out is that layer one.
Speaker: So layer two is the behaviors, the external actions of a captain, great captain. Okay, layer three, and this is the part nobody's talking about. Okay, we've we've talked about what's going on inside the captain. We talked about the behaviors, the actions that I can observe externally.
Speaker: And layer three is, I'm referring to this as the gate. This is the barrier. This is the the the line, the the hero's journey that you must embark on as a leader, which is friends versus leader. This tension where you're starting to call people out, where you grow into...
Speaker: what it takes to be a team captain. And then your buddies are still being stupid. But you need to call them out because the team has bigger goals. So that is breaking that threshold all bit and having the confidence and the skill set to do so that takes social emotional learning, that takes transformational learning theory. Those are your your behaviors and your tools to do so and have success at this third level.
Speaker: So this is the where the the behavior survives the locker room and turns it into a a team and a culture. That's the beautiful thing here is this layer three is when our captains have the gusto and the tools to step up and start calling people out for certain behaviors.
Speaker: Now the team is going to begin to turn around. And lastly, layer four, this is going our outcome. This is going our performance. And this is where the research gets very specific And it's it's fun to see teams that have done transformational leadership theory well, where they have task cohesion, social cohesion, a collective efficacy where the team's shared confidence in itself and higher athlete satisfaction. They attribute sports to teaching them that.
Speaker: When in fact, it was the captains leading the team that allowed the experience to be so rich, but they connected it to volleyball, their sport, but it wasn't a sport.
Speaker: And that shows up study after study. They're attributing it to the store, the the sport. It's wild. um So here's the part that matters for you as a captain winding down here and most developmental programs, most books, most talks, most loud locker room posters, they start at layer two.
Speaker: Hey, here's transformational leadership theory. Here's your tools. I need you to go apply that before starting with the person. They hand you the behaviors, but skip the capacity underneath them.
Speaker: The lack of self-awareness, the lack of confidence, really, the lack of social awareness, your ability to read a room where you go in too hard charging and being a jerk or poor decision-making, you are the best player on the team, so you start to think the world start is going to gravitate around you.
Speaker: So you can lead with those four eyes, but if you're an asshole, no nobody's going follow. So that's why it's so I feel it's so important to get underneath that.
Speaker: That's like, yeah, so.
Speaker: closing down here, just a lot going through my head, but yeah, excited to continue to dive in and, and, podcasts are very helpful for me. One to talk to experts like David Yeager and really uncover a lot of the perspective in the current research and expectations, and then see how we can layer through the lens of athletics.
Speaker: And here's the part that matters for my research specifically in almost everything published on transformational leadership theory in sports studies. It studies the coach, an adult, with built-in authority, with a title that does a lot of the work for them.
Speaker: And kids are going to listen because they're there. And my dissertation is asking what happens to this exact same model when you strip away the adult who's guiding the leadership.
Speaker: Does SEL stick around from high school? What are the barriers that are in a way of a captain stepping up through that gate, crossing the threshold with confidence and the skill set to do so?
Speaker: When the person doing the leading is a 20 year old who has to walk in the same dining hall as the the freshman that they just benched or kicked out of practice because their behavior.
Speaker: that's That's the collegiate context. where there is scaffolding and support at the high school level and sport is part of high school. Those coaches are also teachers. They see you in the hallways. They want to see you succeed and go off and leave.
Speaker: College is about performing, not necessarily developing your social emotional skills. It's performed so I can keep my job, period.
Speaker: That's the collegiate context and that's the gap. removing the adult scaffolding and and what happens to our development as leaders. So if you're a captain listening to this, here's what I want you to take away with you.
Speaker: You don't need a title to lead this way. Research backs this up over and over. When coaches and captains both show these behaviors, teams get the but best of both worlds.
Speaker: Coaches tend to move the needle more on individual confidence and performance. A lot of one-on-one meetings and then executing X's and O's as well.
Speaker: Captains tend to move the needle more on how united and connected a team feels and operates together. You are not competing with your coach for influence.
Speaker: You're covering a completely different ground and you have a lot of opportunity and influence I just want you have the confidence and the tools to do so. So if you're a coach, this is your reminder that developing your captains is not a side project.
Speaker: It's leadership development. all the time, throughout season, off season, as long as their athlete is under your watch, they're your responsibility to develop them as young men and women and those leadership skills. I view everyone as a leader.
Speaker: Everyone has these four behaviors that can be taught. Everyone has social emotional skills that need to be cultivated and crafted before they head into the next level, whether it's pro or professional careers in life.
Speaker: And researchers have shown these transformational leadership and social emotional learning skills, they can be trained deliberately. And it's not a fixed personality trait that some people are born with and others aren't.
Speaker: so That's the model I'll be working with, the theories that I'm going to be anchoring, the the questions that I develop and the teams that I interview. So five capacities, four behaviors, one tension point that decides whether any of it survives the locker room, and outcomes you can actually measure on the other side.
Speaker: That's the architecture in my mind right now that I'll be researching and working towards one captain standing in the gap between what a coach can give a team and what only a peer can give a team and have the confidence to do so so I'll be continuing to to expand on this, share this as I uncover it. So I'm very excited.
Speaker: And if you like the podcast, continue to follow along these Tuesday, these tuesday Wednesday shows, solo shows are a lot of the research that I'm finding either applying these tools to my team or uncovering in class and and sharing with the world. so If you like this, like, subscribe, rate, review, all that good stuff that keeps the momentum going for the show.
Speaker: And I've continued to have education online. i encourage you the best way to find that is going to be newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com to get these weekly updates and show notes and all that good stuff.
Speaker: It's after practice. It's late. I've already lost my voice traveling to NSEA national early morning tomorrow. i got a major I got a lot of speaking gigs coming up, so I'll be on the road for July and August and start of September.
Speaker: So all up and down the East Coast, Nashville, Philly, Boston, Orlando for tactical. That'll probably be and NSCA tactical, probably the best place for me to hang out um and see. So never hesitate, say hello, reach out, and appreciate each and every one for tuning in.
Speaker: That does it for the show. Good night. Thanks for tuning in and helping us raise the game. All right. And see you.
