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111 - Connection Before Commitment: The 3-H's That Build Unbreakable Teams
106 Plays11 days ago
You can spend an entire season with someone and still not know a single real thing about them. You know their position. You know what they do when the game's on the line. But you don't know their story — and that gap is exactly where teams break down.
In this episode, Tex breaks down the Three H's: Hero, Hardship, Highlight — a team building exercise used by Jon Gordon with Dabo Swinney's Clemson football program, adopted by elite teams across sport and military.
This isn't a feel-good exercise. It's a leadership tool backed by research, tested at the highest levels of sport, and built on one truth: you'll never have commitment without connection. A team that knows each other's story will always fight harder than one that only knows each other's stats.
Education - Captains & Coaches course, "Why They're Not Listening - Coaching Today's Athlete": http://listen.captainsandcoaches.com
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Transcript
Life Events and Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
action. What's something in your life that if it hadn't happened, you'd be a completely different person?
Leadership and Teamwork in Sports
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through lens of athletics and beyond.
00:00:13
Speaker
Today is all about camaraderie and coming together as a team. going to lead off with another question. How many reps does it take to get to know someone?
00:00:24
Speaker
How many sprints? How many film sessions? How many conflicts in practice? How many confrontations, head bashing opportunities in games?
Team Knowledge and Camaraderie
00:00:37
Speaker
How many practices before you actually know a guy you're lining up next to? The answer for most teams is never. You can spend an entire season with someone and still not know a single real thing about them.
00:00:53
Speaker
You know what position they play. You know what they do when the game's on the line. You know they're coachable or if they dog it in practice. You know what they're capable of, where their potential lies, and then when they fall to when they're distracted or tired.
00:01:12
Speaker
but you don't know their story.
Heroes, Hardships, and Highlights Exercise
00:01:15
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And that's a problem because teams don't bond through reps. They bond through people. Today we're talking about one of the most powerful team building exercises I've ever come across.
00:01:28
Speaker
Three words. Heroes, hardships, and highlights. I first learned about this from Coach Ryan Davis, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for University of Maryland Football, and we talked about it way back on Episode 19 of the podcast. Highly recommend that interview.
00:01:46
Speaker
Since then, I've used it with coaches, athletes, and just recently a group of 14 to 16-year-old high school junior varsity, JV, lacrosse players who needed to learn something about grace, empathy, and each other.
00:02:03
Speaker
Today I'm going to break down what the three H's are, why each one matters, what the research says about why this works, and I'm going to share my own three H's, the ones I told my JV lacrosse team.
00:02:16
Speaker
Because if you're going to ask your players to go there, you got to go there first. The three H's, hero, hardship, highlight. It didn't start in a classroom or a leadership seminar. It started in locker rooms.
00:02:30
Speaker
There's a man named John Gordon, one of the most respected team culture voices in sport. He's the guy behind the energy bus and the power of positive team. He's used this exercise with some of the most elite teams
Vulnerability and Authentic Connections
00:02:44
Speaker
in the country. He used it with Dabo Sweeney at Clemson in a version they called safe seat, where a player sits in a chair in front of the whole team, shares their hero, hardship, and a defining moment, and the room just...
00:03:00
Speaker
listens John described what he's seen in that room. Some guys were brought to tears sharing stories about their past, their pain, and things they carried for years. And their teammates were sitting right there hearing it for the first time.
00:03:18
Speaker
Then, Another story is Auburn Golf used it. They won the SEC Championship that year. Their coach had never seen a group of golfer golfers more connected. James Leith, who facilitated this exercise with dozens of high school and collegiate programs, put it this way when he applied it with Auburn.
00:03:38
Speaker
This activity allows student athletes to get to know their teammates in a different light, leading to a more connected group. Another example is from the Royal Marines, one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. They built an entire approach to unit cohesion around this principle. A former Royal Marine put it this way, if you don't know your people, they will assume you don't care about them.
00:04:04
Speaker
Their perception of your leadership is all that counts. This is not a soft idea. It's a combat-tested truth. So when Ryan Davis told me about this exercise in the interview years ago, and I saw it show up again and again across elite sport and elite military, I paid attention.
00:04:26
Speaker
Let's get into why this works. Let me tell you the real reason the three H's are so powerful. It's not the exercise itself. It's what the exercise forces.
00:04:38
Speaker
Vulnerability. Making your team vulnerables. When someone shares who their hero is, who shaped them, who they look up to, who they're still trying to become, you learn their values. When someone shares a hardship, something that actually carried, they actually carried, the walls start to come down.
00:05:01
Speaker
And John Gordon, he said it better than I can. When the walls of pride and ego come crumbling down, authenticity and vulnerability pave the way for meaningful relationships and strong connections.
Emotional Intelligence in Coaching
00:05:15
Speaker
Time out. Observation, new coaches 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.
00:05:28
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,
00:05:41
Speaker
connecting with people. 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.
Transformational Team Relationships
00:05:57
Speaker
And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break. Transactional relationships. There's a lot of science on transformational versus transactional coaching.
00:06:08
Speaker
Transactional relationships where you only know someone by their role. These are the default for team settings. You show up to practice if you're not in that social circle and you're just going through the motions with that teammate.
00:06:22
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You know them as this specific position, offense, defense, the person who starts, the person who doesn't. That's it. And I see this every single year with different teams I'm working with.
00:06:34
Speaker
So when something goes wrong, a mistake, a conflict, a tough loss, You fill the gaps with your worst assumptions about this person, that they intentionally made that mistake or they intentionally said that thing to the referee, whatever it may be, because you don't actually know them.
00:06:55
Speaker
The three H's changes the relationship relationship from transactional to human. Brian Bowen, the head coach at UVA Men's Tennis, he understood this and applied the Triple H's himself. From 2001 to 11 year span, he never won a national championship despite recruiting and having championship level talent.
00:07:20
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Then came a turning point. Stuck in a hotel during a blizzard with his team after a tough loss, Bowen pulled his team together and asked one question.
Bowen's Snowstorm Story
00:07:31
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Do you know each other's families?
00:07:34
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They didn't. He said, if someone is important to you, shouldn't you know what's important to them? They spent hours learning each other's lives.
00:07:45
Speaker
Families sent videos. Guys gave presentations about their teammates. What a fun trip. So turning ah a snowstorm, something outside of their control, into a defining moment for their season, their team, and their future, because from 2013 on, they won four out of the next five national championships.
00:08:09
Speaker
Same talent, different connection. Going back to John Gordon, and he put it in simple terms, you'll never have commitment without connection. A connected team becomes a committed team.
00:08:24
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And that's the whole thing. You want your team to run through a wall for each other.
Heroes, Hardships, and Highlights Explained
00:08:29
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You can't get there through practice reps alone or yelling at them to be connected.
00:08:36
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okay You get there by knowing the person. Now let me break down each H. All right. Three H's. Starting with hero. A hero is someone who shaped who you are, dead or alive.
00:08:49
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Someone you know personally or someone you've read about. A parent, a coach, a mentor, a teammate, a history figure. The question is, who do you look up to and why?
00:09:01
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That's how I would frame it when presenting the three H's to my team. Who do you look look up to and why? And here's why this one matters. When you hear someone's hero, you hear their values.
00:09:13
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You understand what they're trying to become, what they're aiming for in their actions, in their goals. If a kid says his hero is his dad who worked two jobs and never complained, you understand his work ethic and where it comes from.
00:09:29
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If a kid says their hero is their older brother who struggled with addiction and turned his life around, you now understand the resilience and why they carry themselves the way they carry themselves.
00:09:42
Speaker
You don't just know what they do on the field anymore. You know why they are the way that they are. All right, number two, hardships. This is the one that takes the most courage to share and present.
00:09:59
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And working with that 14 to 16-year-olds, there were some that were ready to share hardship. They've experienced hardship and were willing to share with their team. Others had not experienced hardship or they were not willing to share it But again, we are just listening when it comes to this H. Hardship is a challenge, a loss, a season of life that was hard and what it made you.
00:10:29
Speaker
That's what we're aiming to highlight is the is the evolution, not just the the hardship, the moment that would happen to you, who you became because of it. This is where the walls start to come down and we reveal the person behind those walls. And the research is clear. When people share vulnerability, it creates what's called psychological safety. The sense that this team is a place where it's okay to be human, to struggle, and not have it all together.
00:11:01
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And teenage boys in particular, they are conditioned to hide hardship. Toughness is performed. It's performative. The struggle is hidden. They want everything to seem easy and appear easy to them because the locker room culture often punishes weakness.
00:11:20
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oh instead of giving them tools to learn how to step up, to learn how to take on conflict, to learn how to dig deep and face challenges and know that they can.
00:11:33
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So the three H's exercise, it it deliberately breaks that. Not because you force it, but because when one person goes first and shares something real, it gives everyone else permission to be human too.
00:11:49
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And it's okay to get emotional. I've quoted John Bradshaw on this podcast before. Emotion, E-motion, energy in motion. I want these stories to charge people up and connect it.
00:12:03
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Can connect them. right From that fiction friction, we can create a fire. So this is our opportunity. And the one important rule I mentioned earlier, listeners listen.
00:12:14
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When you're there in the seat, in the chair, standing in front of the huddle, we give them their opportunity to explore this hardship and the courage to share that.
00:12:27
Speaker
We don't counsel. We don't fix. We don't try to relate it back to our own story. We're not thinking of what we're going to say next.
00:12:38
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we And then we thank them for the courage of sharing. And then it's on to the next one. If they want to have conversation about what is shared afterwards outside of practice with their teammate, I welcome that.
00:12:52
Speaker
I also encourage them to to keep it within the team, keep it within the team in case something comes up, right? That's the part of being a good teammate is is keeping everything in-house because I mean, our goal isn't to solve anything. It's about coming together and connecting. We don't want this to break the bonds and trust that we're aiming to accomplish with our team by sharing outside of that.
Personal Narrative in Lacrosse
00:13:18
Speaker
The goal truly is to see each other. Alright, and finally we get to highlight. The highlight is a moment of pride, a peak experience, a personal achievement, something that still makes you smile when you think about it.
00:13:36
Speaker
I got lot these. It could be an athletic moment. It could be nothing to do with sport at all, and that's the point. When a player shares a highlight that isn't about sport, when they talk about a summer job or a project they're proud of, getting in or applying to a school and getting into the school, how they do in a music competition, something that is completely unrelated to athletics ah or the way they stepped up for their family.
00:14:04
Speaker
You see the whole person, not just an athlete, not just a a ah name on a depth chart, and a connection between whole people is what holds a team together when things start to get hard.
00:14:19
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season It's a long season. Seasons are long. You're have highs and lows and ups and downs, but we're aiming to get ahead of it and stay connected. John Gordon, he said it much better than I can, people light up when they talk about meaningful achievement.
00:14:35
Speaker
Can we dig on this one? We don't want to dig on hardships. Can we dig on this one to help them realize all the great things that they've accomplished? From my experience with teenage boys, this one's going to be even more difficult than hardships because we are trying to help them you know be modest, respectful, but still have some pride in what they have accomplished and let them know it's okay to be proud of yourself too and and aiming to help them light up all right my three h's here's here's the fun part right i i had to go here to share them i have a lot of heroes fortunately i've i've had a lot of them on the podcast i've had a lot of hardships i wanted to keep it right pg-13 for my crew
00:15:26
Speaker
And then highlights. I wanted to keep it within respect to the sport of lacrosse. And that's what I did. i i I aimed to highlight three H's that would then connect to this team and really aim to to to help mold the bonds and be in a position where they then can share authenticity and respect here. So...
00:15:51
Speaker
this this is what i shared with my team my hero coach michael cavanaugh coach cav not coach justin cavanaugh coach michael cavanaugh he was my lacrosse coach and helped us start the the katie taylor lacrosse program in 2002 important dates there i was i guess rising junior summer our football team not good We were getting our asses kicked.
00:16:19
Speaker
Our coaches were were treating us terribly, but we were great teammates. We were, i mean, great friends, all bonded together well. And then one of us had this crazy idea and introduced the concept of lacrosse of why don't we just go do this?
00:16:35
Speaker
And we were all still playing football, but then started a lacrosse team. And then we showed up Houston. This is in Houston. There was a men's summer league going on and We just randomly showed up and some of us had sticks. Not all of us had equipment, but we said, hey, we're going to start a team.
00:16:54
Speaker
Does anyone want to be our coach? Fortunately, a man lived out in Katy that was playing, and he had a nephew at a rival high school, so we understood the whole football culture and what we were trying to do, have fun, come together, and we knew we we thought we were winners, we knew we were leaders, and we just wanted to to do something that was our own.
00:17:17
Speaker
And he took the reins of the program. He volunteered his time. I mean, this is before club travel ball and all that all that crap. So, I mean, we didn't I didn't pay time to play. bought some equipment. But then, ah yeah, he he volunteered all the years that he gave to the program, and that that's something. And, man, he was a personality. was from Long Island. he He was lacrosse through and through.
00:17:45
Speaker
And, I mean, he just had an ambitious, rambunctious, audacious group. that thought, you know why not us? Why can't we do this?
00:17:55
Speaker
And that would that was something special. a bunch of kids would just show up and our high school did not allow us on to play on campus So we went to our middle school and we just showed up onto the field and dude, I can't remember. He had access to goals. So we just dropped goals off at our middle school, you know, dirt, disgusting fields. And we would just practice every single day and acted like we were supposed to be there.
00:18:25
Speaker
And so Coach Cav, great personality. I mean, i'll i'll I'll share some quick antidotes. Again, he ah volunteered his time and he he believed in us and gave us so much.
00:18:38
Speaker
and Cut a lot of corners in a good way to help his team. So fun stuff on our middle school field. He would have to line it for games. And we never rented the fields. We never, I mean, paid the middle school, never signed any insurance or any of that. We just showed up to play. So on game days, he would go early to paint and line the fields.
00:19:01
Speaker
And if there was anybody, you know, kicking a football around or jogging the track, he'd tell them, hey, ah we reserved the field. We got a game today. We didn't reserve the field. So he'd kick anybody off that was there. He'd paint the fields themselves. And again, we had like 10, 12 guys, barely enough to even ah field a team that first year. So instead of regulation lines, he'd just kind of eyeball it and make it skinnier and shorter than an actual lacrosse field because he knew we didn't have the legs and wanted us to compete.
00:19:33
Speaker
So little things like that and I mean just kept the attitude going. I still call Coach Cav a couple times a year and past Christmas just hanging out with some former teammates and stories come up so just you know hit him up whenever he pops into conversation and we were asking him about uh man just wild characters that just show up to a team outliers where they're coaches or or kids through lacrosse and yeah we we were randomly remembered some guy and coach this is his personality it's like yeah i remember that guy he's a few beers short of a six pack
00:20:11
Speaker
So I had all these like one Long Island one-liner quips that just, I mean, they they killed it. And so, I mean, yeah, my my favorite quote from him, and this this is something I embodied going into college, was you're going to be remembered for what you're not supposed to do.
00:20:34
Speaker
In reference to we had a lot of stud athletes from my high school, they were supposed to go on to be great collegiate athletes. A lot didn't work out.
00:20:46
Speaker
Then you had a bunch of guys from our team that five of the ten of us went on to go play college the start of the team. like We weren't supposed to go be college athletes. We were already written off. as as athletes but then we went on to have successful athletic careers at the college level which helped me get into school at marymount so i wasn't supposed to do that but it became a memorable moment so that hard charging i mean just perspective i still apply it today to that so i thank coach cav for that and i mean he is the reason i coach high school lacrosse right now it's ah it's
00:21:26
Speaker
ah the amount of time connected to it is a lot and i know it feeds a lot of the the opportunities that i'm sharing here and the thoughts and the experience so there is some fuel to help build this uh captains and coaches mission but at the same time man pouring into those dudes knowing that that they're lot are not going to go play in college which is okay but they're going to hold on to the the attitude the lessons and the I mean, the boundaries in place, letting them know is what's okay and what not okay, man. A lot of that came from from Coach Cavs, so I'm grateful for him, certainly. And every day that I step onto that high school field, because now our high school field is the same, just grass, dirt. You never know what you're going show up. It's been rainy, so it's a freaking mud bowl, similar to our our middle school field. We called it Eagle Stadium, jokingly, but back then. so
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, just fun. that's That's a hero I highlighted for my guys. And ironically, coaching now with a man that played against Coach Cav in high school.
00:22:35
Speaker
So fun to to have that that Strong Island personality just live or die lax with me on the sidelines today. So love it. Thank you, sir.
00:22:46
Speaker
All right. Hardship and i've I've shared this on the podcast an earlier episode.
Impact of Loss on Education
00:22:51
Speaker
I lost a friend of mine drew earlier i guess not earlier this year. This is in September and He was my neighbor in Katy. He was my friend.
00:23:03
Speaker
His brother was my age He was two years younger than me and he was one of the guys that helped us start that lacrosse program two years younger than me um Yeah, I mean, he he was a great football player, he was but he he clicked with the football rejects that we had on our team.
00:23:21
Speaker
And man, his attitude, he was fearless. He was shorter than I am and relentless. And it was fun to start something with him. And I went on to go play in college at Marymount University.
00:23:33
Speaker
Drew's two years younger than me. He followed me there. So we're teammates again. and that that was something special. And then when I became a graduate assistant coach, Drew was one of my first athletes.
00:23:47
Speaker
So i man, you know, 25 plus years of very close friendship and teamwork together. That was that was a special time and we had ah a great bond together and losing him was, it was heartbreaking. He passed away in September and i've spent a lot of time this year figuring out how to carry that.
00:24:13
Speaker
And it goes back to emotions, emotions, energy and motion. So i um I mean, he met his wife at Marymount You're welcome.
00:24:23
Speaker
So um just we were we were so connected through that and he actually moved back to Katy and started to coach in the in the high school in the youth program that and helped set up the youth program at Katy, which is wild. So, you know, started something special, continue to have that life together as friends, basically brothers and Yeah, losing losing him was very hard, but it it it I wanted to put that emotion into motion, energy into motion.
00:25:00
Speaker
So that was a catalyst for me to go back to school, to Marymount, and start my my doctorate program. So um that that that was tough and ken continues to
Generational Impact of Sports
00:25:14
Speaker
be tough. And when school is tough, lacrosse is tough, business is tough, just...
00:25:20
Speaker
and remember all the challenges that we we face together and you know, the the not supposed to. I joke Drew is shorter than me, man. He wasn't supposed to be a college athlete either, but then we found our way there and had had had a lot of success and not supposed tos and a fighting spirit is a good way to put drew uh because i mean he never saw a fight that he didn't think he could win on or off the field so it was always i got stories for days for him um
00:25:52
Speaker
And ah my highlight is it's all connected. I went back to ah Katie Houston for my my birthday this year. Go to an Astros game. Shout out Coach Stephanie Grubbs for some nice seats for my dad and I. And Saturday morning, I made a pit stop at the youth lacrosse and so drew sons nine seven and five years old they're playing they're on the katie team in the youth program from the program that we started 2002 so
00:26:30
Speaker
so that That was a highlight. I mean, seeing dozens of kids participate in a sport where when we were that age, at that time, it the town never even heard of it. Didn't know it existed.
00:26:46
Speaker
and now seeing the the families, the memories, the moments. I was on the sideline watching Drew's seven-year-old play. I was with Drew's dad and his wife, and anyone that's seen seven-year-old lacrosse, they got the helmets, and it's like bobbleheads just running around the field.
00:27:06
Speaker
And I mean, the lacrosse was bad, but it was just funny. It was hilarious. And I was just trapped in the moment that You know, as as humbly as I can put it, like, we freaking did this.
00:27:20
Speaker
Like, all these families are benefiting from a bunch of dudes that took their performance, their lives in their own hands, you know, nearly 25 years ago and just funny i don't i don't know i mean it's hundreds hundreds of kids at this stage that have been through the the high school team and the program but just crazy and it was i like to sit in that and the cutest thing happened
00:27:52
Speaker
um tradition in lacrosse after a game it's called go get your goalie so whether you win or lose you want to celebrate the goalie because it is the most thankless position and this this is very drew because that freshman year drew's basically our little brother on the team the freshman when we started the team you better believe who we put in goal at goalie drew because we were all freaking scared and one he was the smallest youngest two he's also fearless so he played goalie uh to start and he didn't play a college goalie but um yeah just just hilarious anyway so
00:28:32
Speaker
ah Get your goalie. You celebrate your goalie. You leave from your sideline and go cheer and just give them a hu huddle, high five, big hug, whatever it is. So in this seven-year-old lacrosse game,
00:28:48
Speaker
hilarious it is you know coach says hey go get your goalie so all the kids are running from the sideline at their at their goalie but he doesn't he doesn't understand he's seven years old and that's like the age where you draw the short stick to get into goal and so this little kid is in goalie barely paying attention holding onto a stick with one hand and then he gets eight other seven-year-olds like running after him screaming and he gets scared. So instead of like embracing into a big huddle, he starts running.
00:29:21
Speaker
And so he's like running around the goal, trying to get away from his friends. He doesn't understand like this is a celebration for him for being in goal.
00:29:32
Speaker
He thinks they're like playing tag or getting chased down. and uh man it was it was hilarious it was crazy cute like i don't know what to say just just a fun moment a highlight there and um just just a full circle moment and you know and you know the sons of the founders of the program are playing in this game it's just it's wild to me like legacy legacy is there and i i can't remember a record i remember a lot of the fights we got into with the the other team uh teams out there on the field which is freaking freaking funny can't do that anymore and um yeah morning on that sideline man that that was my highlight so
Episode Reflection and Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:30:26
Speaker
That was great. um you know I told my team, ah JV guys, after we finished this exercise, that the relationships you're building right now, they they are special. you know There's friends on the team. There's not friends on the team, but they're still on the same team.
00:30:44
Speaker
And you don't know it yet. You're in the middle of it. And it feels... like just another season, another practice, another game, and it's dragging on. When's this season gonna be over?
00:30:56
Speaker
But you'll look back someday and you'll realize these these are these are these are your people. This was the time. Records, nobody knows. No no one cares.
00:31:08
Speaker
You know, the this the drama, the stuff, the fights, the feels, whatever feels so big right now, doesn't matter. Those, they'll, and any wins or any big plays, you do have the positive memories. They're going to get exaggerated.
00:31:25
Speaker
And every time someone tells them, it's going to be fun. You know, those, those are bonds. They last, you know, the teammates who were with you when something that hard happened, the ones that showed up, the ones who knew your story, your hero, your hardship, your highlight,
00:31:43
Speaker
And they showed up anyway, in spite of that. And hopefully they they supported you and that brought you together. um Yeah, and the message here was, you know, win or lose. By the end of the year, we will be a team.
00:32:01
Speaker
So we got to make a count, make each day count.
00:32:05
Speaker
You know, that's that's what the 3H is all about. So it's not a team building exercise. It's not a box to check. It's a chance to see the people standing next to you and working so hard, you know, to to to aim up to be that hero, ah to carry that hardship and to create more highlights with their friends in the arena.
00:32:30
Speaker
So that's that does it for our episodes. Thank you to our sponsors at Train Heroic who helped make this happen. I'm strength conditioning coach by trade.
00:32:41
Speaker
So put all my training out on Train Heroic. Be sure to check them out if you're you're in the same ah position there. Again, ah put all my notes for podcasts, share a lot weekly insights from the best coaches in the world on my newsletter. Easy sign up at newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com.
00:33:02
Speaker
I got some education online as well. Always love to share that, how I'm helping athletes build confidence. help coaches connect, and take people where they can't take themselves.
00:33:13
Speaker
all right, that does it for another episode of the Captains & Coaches Podcast. Thank you for tuning, and see you.