David speaks with Alan Stein Jr., a speaker, coach, and author. He spent 15 years working with top-performing basketball players (including NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant) and now teaches companies how to apply the same strategies in business. He is the author of Raise Your Game and Sustain Your Game, which offers proven strategies to improve both individual and organisational performance.
They talked about:
🏅 The role of mindset in athletic performance
⚖️ The power of consistency in achieving success
🚫 The consequences of poor company in sports and life
🏆 How success can lead to complacency
👥 Why great leaders embrace accountability
🎓 The coach’s role in maximising performance
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🎧 Listen on Spotify:
📹 Watch on Youtube:
📄 Show notes:
[00:00] Introduction
[03:47] How basketball became Alan’s ultimate passion
[04:55] How sports led Alan to strength and fitness
[05:42] Why attitude matters in athletics
[08:07] The challenge of staying consistent
[10:04] Why some talented athletes fail to reach their potential
[13:37] The importance of a supportive network
[17:36] Success isn't solo
[22:47] The positive side of accountability
[25:28] The essence of great coaching and leadership
[28:06] How coaches see what we can't
[31:25] The necessity of specialised coaching
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
NCAA Division 1 (D1) schools | https://www.ncsasports.org/best-colleges/best-division-1-colleges
Elon University | https://www.elon.edu/u/about/
NBA | https://www.nba.com/news/about
Kevin Durant | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Durant
Brock Purdy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Purdy
Johnny Manziel | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Manziel
LeBron James | https://theknowledge.io/issue50/
Maverick Carter | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_Carter
Ja Morant | https://www.nba.com/player/1629630/ja-morant/
Anthony Edwards | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Edwards_(basketball)
Baker Mayfield | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Mayfield
Shaquille O'Neal | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaquille_O'Neal
Kobe Bryant | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant
Tiger Woods | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods
Stephen Curry | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Curry
Tom Brady | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brady
Brad Stevens | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Stevens
Mike Krzyzewski | https://coachk.com/
Ryan Hawk | https://theknowledge.io/ryanhawk-1/
USA Basketball Men's Olympic Team |
https://www.usab.com/teams/5x5-mens-olympics
👤 Connect with Alan:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alansteinjr/?hl=en
Twitter: https://x.com/AlanSteinJr
Website: https://alansteinjr.com/
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people think deeper and work smarter.
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📜 Full transcript:
Alan Stein, Jr: Everyone has the right to lean and live and navigate their life, however they see fit. The problem is most of the time, they're not doing that consciously. These are blind spots. These are things they're unaware of. They don't realize that they're starting to lose their work ethic or starting to lose some of their edge and they need to have someone there that cares enough to tell them that. And that's the hardest part because in many of these instances, understandably, I think the people are worried. If we tell him these things, we tell him the things he needs to hear, not that he wants to hear well, then maybe he'll cut us out of his life.
This week I'm sharing part of my conversation with Alan Stein Jr. who is a speaker, a coach, and an author. He's written two awesome books, Raise Your Game and Sustain Your Game, but Alan spent 15 years of his career working with arguably some of the best Basketball players of all time. He's worked with Kevin Durant. He's worked with Stephen Curry. He's worked with Kobe Bryant and in particular with some players like Kevin Durant, he's got to see them from being 14 or 15 all the way through to playing in the NBA.
And so in this conversation, you're going to hear us digging into, you know, what some of those differences are beyond just raw talent. What are the soft skills that make or break the difference between someone having great talent and actually being able to use that and carry that out. But more importantly, Alan since then has transitioned in his career to working with businesses and translating a lot of the lessons that he's learned from working with some of the best basketball players in the world to now working with some of the biggest and best business players in the world.
And so we talk about the role of mindset both in Business and in athletic performance. We talk about the power of consistency and the compounding nature of your efforts over time. We talk about the importance of the company that you keep and how it can create large dichotomies in your outcomes, both in sports and in life. We talk about how success and tasting greatness can lead to complacency. We talk about why great leaders embrace accountability and we discuss accountability in some ways that you might not have come across before. It was something that really rung a bell and resonated in this conversation, just how important accountability can be and linking to that coachability.
And I think this was also something that was really important from our conversation, this idea of a coach having a role in maximizing your performance. And there's this idea, you know, just to expand on that momentarily, that within sports, it's quite easy to see that even some of the best players of all time, you look at your Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, some of these people, even they have coaches. And it's not to say that their coach is specifically better than them at playing their sport, but their coach has a really important role in bringing out the best in some of these top performers.
And there is a massive analog to our professional lives as well. We have managers, we have CEO's, we have executives, and sometimes you will also be the person playing those roles.
And so we unpack what does it mean to be a great coach? What does it look like to coach someone well and really bring the best out of them?
And so you're going to hear us attack that from a number of angles, but this was really a great conversation.
You can get the full show notes the transcripts and read my newsletter at theknowledge.Io. And you can find alan on twitter and instagram @alansteinjr. His personal website is alansteinjr.com.
Now if you love this episode, please do me the tremendous favor. I need two things from you. First of all, please think of one friend that you think would love this episode and share it with them. And then second, don't forget to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, particularly on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Leave a review and tell people what you think. It helps us tremendously to find other listeners just like you.
David Elikwu: Yeah, so where I thought I would start is, I know that, okay, throughout your background, you have been involved in, in basketball or professional sports sphere before transitioning to being more, a lot more business focused and being a professional speaker, et cetera, and a business person doing your podcasts and a lot of other things.
But I'm interested to start with the beginning of your basketball journey. I think you probably started playing from when you were five or so. What got you into the sport and what was that journey like?
Alan Stein, Jr: When I was a kid, I was heavily attracted to anything where I could move and burn physical energy. I mean, I've always had a ton of energy and was heavily just attracted to sports and athletics in general. And you know, I had an opportunity to play or try just about every sport under the sun when I was really young. But basketball, for some reason, always was my favorite. It always came back to basketball. I mean, I played football and soccer, you know, I did things like martial arts and BMX biking, tried everything, but for whatever reason kept coming back to basketball. So that ended up winning out as my favorite sport. Although I certainly enjoyed participating in the others.
David Elikwu: And you went on to play at a D1 school. You went, you played at Elon. right?
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah, so I had a fairly decent public high school career here in the Washington D. C. area and then was able to play down at Elon in the mid to late nineties. And while I was at Elon, it's where I started to develop a newfound love for the training side of the game for strength and conditioning and fitness and nutrition and mindset and really became enamored with everything above and beyond just the skills and the X's and O's of the game.
So when I graduated from Elon in the late nineties you know, I figure what could be better than taking this original love of basketball and combining it with this newfound love of strength and conditioning and performance training. So that's really what led me down that path in the initial part of my career.
David Elikwu: There's one thing I wanted to ask you about your playing time there, which is, I think for a lot of people that maybe go into coaching or things that are ancillary to the playing of basketball, there is very often, there are a lot of learnings that you hear coaches say that they may not have learned while they were actually playing.
And I know for you, I think I've, I've heard you mention that. I think coming up in high school, you were like a pass, a shoot first point guard, right? You just chucked up a bunch of shots. And you probably had to learn a lot during your time playing in college, which served you a bit later on.
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah, the biggest adjustment for me going to college with hindsight now being 2020, I can look back and realize that I, I started to get complacent. I thought that all the work that I had put in in high school was going to be enough to carry me through a college career. And when I got to college, I was fortunate enough to play a decent amount as a freshman. And I just that signaled to me that I could just kind of coast for the next 3 or 4 years. Well, anyone that is, you know, participated in collegiate athletics knows nothing could be further from the truth. You have to earn your minutes and earn your spot every day and every year. So I really kind of took my eye off the ball my freshman year. And stop coming in for extra workouts, stop doing all of the little things, all the things that have allowed me to play a lot as a freshman, I kind of stopped doing and spent more time partying and and doing other things.
And then my sophomore year, I was faced with the reality that, you know, everyone had kind of continued to improve and continued to pass me and I didn't play very much as a sophomore. And instead of looking at that as a chance to recalibrate and a chance to recommit and go all in and earn that time back. Unfortunately, I chose the other side of the fork in the road, and that was to have a really bad attitude and to blame and complain and make excuses about why I wasn't playing. And then things really started to spiral out of control. So, looking back on it, my college career from a playing standpoint was incredibly disappointing, but the lessons that I learned from it really make up the foundation of the stuff that I preach and teach today. So, even though there were kind of challenging, painful times I'm very grateful that I went through that.
And that was part of my journey because it gives me such a better perspective now, you know, on not only what I teach, you know, from a keynote speaking and writing standpoint, but even how I deal with my own children who all are youth athletes.
David Elikwu: Yeah. And I think one of the really interesting lessons that you mentioned there is this idea of consistency, being such an important factor. It's not just enough to have the natural talent. You actually have to continue putting in the effort. And I think that's something a lot of people can easily overlook.
You probably get maybe two types of people. There are some people that always find it difficult from the beginning. It was always going to be hard and they had an uphill struggle the entire time. So they had to learn the skills they had to push really hard. And there's some people where actually they already have some skills and they can probably get a starting position, they can find it easy to get onto the team, they have some skills that they can contribute, etc. But throughout the journey of playing, in whatever game you're playing, whether it's sports, whether it's life, you have to continue not just maintaining the existing skills that you have, but also upskilling it and increasing the level of skill that you have.
And it's something that you can't take it for granted, but so many people do. And it's so easy to, it's so easy to slip from the path. Saying consistency sounds very easy to say. It's something people have read in a dozen business books. It's something that people hear all the time. Oh, you have to keep going. You have to keep doing the thing. But simultaneously, so many people don't.
Even, when I think about your podcast, you did a podcast for a tremendous amount of time. And very often you might hear people say, Oh, is it too late to start a podcast? Is it too late to start a YouTube channel? I almost think it never really is because most people that start one will not continue. Your podcast went on for hundreds of episodes and loads of things that people stop, they don't have the consistency to finish. So I think that's a really important factor as well.
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah, no question. I mean, of all of the traits, consistency certainly makes my Mount Rushmore of traits as far as how important they are to not only being a high performer or successful in any area of life, but to have true fulfillment and enjoyment. It's not the things that we do occasionally, or we do when we feel like it, or we do when it's convenient. You know, it's the things that we do religiously all of the time that really make the foundation to which everything else we do is built.
David Elikwu: This is probably a useful transition to something else I wanted to ask you. I know that you spent a lot of time working with loads of people that ended up becoming stars in the NBA, you know, with Kevin Durant you know, some of these people at a very young age But I'm interested to know from your perspective, there are a lot of things that are easy to say with retrospect hindsight is 2020, when you see Kevin Durant become a star, you can look back and say, Oh, I can see all the signs that would have led him to being at that point.
But I think that one thing that stands out to me is also, and maybe I think you see this a little bit more in college football than college basketball, for example, where two examples that came to my mind immediately were like the difference between Brock Purdy and Johnny Manziel, where Johnny Manziel had all the talent in college. You could see every piece of skill, anything that could be done. It seems like he can do it. He could scramble in the pocket. He has a really strong arm. He could throw, he could do everything. He got the nickname Johnny Football because he could pretty much do anything.
And then you have Brock Purdy who played okay at his college, but he wasn't necessarily a star. You know, he was the last pick of the draft, very much overlooked by every single team. But he's now a starter. Johnny Manziel that was meant to be this breakout star coming into the league. Everyone thought he was going to be the bee's knees has already bombed out of the league. And what that tells me is that there's a really important balance between character and competence and the idea that it's not just enough just to have the skill and the talent.
So your Kevin Durant that you might have seen when he was 14 or 15, he might have had all the skill, and there's a lot of people that you might have seen at a similar age that had all the skill and they look like, oh, at this stage, if you're a scout coming to watch their game, they're the complete package. They've got everything.
And I think we've seen this a bunch of times, actually, thinking about basketball. with, I can't tell you the number of times I've heard someone say, Oh, this is the next LeBron James. And they're never the next LeBron James, right? There are so many people in high school where they say, Oh my gosh, look at this guy. He's the complete package. He's tall. He's got this, he's got that. And then somehow within a few years, they just don't match up to their potential.
So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that from the experience that you've had, looking at a lot of people in various domains that even whether or not they have the talent at an early age, there still seems to be something in the gap between whatever you've got and whatever you can keep.
Alan Stein, Jr: Without question. Yeah. I mean, as you already said that the genetic predispositions and the natural inborn talent is somewhat of a prerequisite to end up playing at that level. But that in and of itself is never enough. You've highlighted some folks where they've over indexed on the talent, but under indexed maybe on some of these other areas and discipline being one of them, consistency, like we just talked about as part of it, a respect and appreciation for working on the fundamentals, you know, having a certain level of humility, being coachable and being open to feedback, understanding that, yes, I have a lot of talent and I have the potential to be really good. But I'm not anywhere close to where I'm capable of becoming like I still need to continue to put in the work. And a lot of that just has to do with the company you keep, you know, it's making sure that you constantly insulate yourself with people that truly care about you and your progression and your performance, and your potential.
If you can insulate yourself with people that want to see you successful and really have your best interest at heart, that's a big part of it. You know, many times when you find an athlete that as we can say, kind of goes off the rails a little bit, that's usually part of the problem. They haven't been able to kind of insulate themselves away from some of the people that are taking away some of those opportunities and dragging them down.
David Elikwu: Oh, man, can you tell me a bit more about this? Because I think this is actually a really important point that is very rarely talked about, this idea that it's not just about the play themselves or the talent themselves. And this, again, like I say, applies to loads of different domains. This can apply to you at work. It could apply to your business. It can apply to lots of different things.
This idea that it's not sufficient just to be great on your own, but actually a big part of the factors of your success depends on the people that you surround yourself with some part of that can come with coaching and we can talk about coaching in a second, but I think just sticking on this, this part about the teammates when I think about, you know, just thinking, first of all, about LeBron James as an example, when you look at all the people that he kept around him from those very early days are all incredibly successful now in lots of different domains, right? Maverick Carter, you've got these people becoming top agents, top people in lots of different fields, right? They're making films, they're doing all kinds of things, and that's not necessarily because of him, but you can see the impact that it has when you're surrounded by a certain kind of people.
And actually, you know going back to what we were talking about with that balance of talent If you look at Ja Morant as an example where okay, incredibly talented, you know coming up to the league. It's funny how his peak has kind of been eclipsed in the last year or so, a little bit by Anthony Edwards, but largely because of unforced errors, things that happen off the court. It's not necessarily about, Oh, his game is any worse or anything that's happened, but he's just gotten himself into some trouble because of the company that he keeps and things like that.
And so I'd love to hear more about that from, from your perspective as well.
Alan Stein, Jr: What's really important just to surround yourself with people that are going to hold you to the highest standard of excellence both on and off the court, with the way that you play, but also with your character and the way that you conduct yourself off of the court. So, yeah, you've got to be around people that care enough to hold you accountable.
And, you know, again, with these examples that you've brought up, it's crystal clear, which guys have people around them that care enough to give them honest feedback and hold them accountable, and which guys don't. I can only imagine being that young and being thrust into a certain level of fame and notoriety and a certain amount of money. You have all of the external trappings that you've ever wanted and dreamed about. And if you don't have someone continuing to challenge you and push you and tell you the truth and hold you accountable. I mean, I have nothing but empathy and compassion for these guys that unfortunately make some really bad decisions. I don't think it means they're bad people. I just think it means they're not strong enough to make the right decisions on their own. And unfortunately, they weren't wise enough to put themselves in a bubble with people that can help course correct.
And hopefully for all of these guys, you know, they're able to see that light and make better decisions moving forward. And that first decision they need to make is, I need to get rid of the people that are not here for my best interest. They're here because they have a specific agenda or they want something from me as opposed to people that are here to lift me up and to push me and challenge me and care about me.
And like you said, you know, LeBron was both fortunate and wise to do that at a very early age. Which is why he's had a once in a generation type career and has been able to sustain that for two decades.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I think something you've touched on there, what two things, one accountability, which I want to come back to in a second, but I think this other part, which is just this general idea of mental fortitude and the importance of that.
And I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that from, from your experience as well, just because I think this applies to lots of different domains as well. One aspect of it is, it's a lot easier to be good when things are good than it is to be good, you know, regardless of the conditions, right?
And, simultaneously, there's also this idea that something that feeds into a lot of the things that we've discussed, keeping the right people around you, your level of consistency, etc. Is a certain level of mental resilience where you are able to stay focused, where you're able to, you know, stay in control, to keep doing the things that you know that you should be doing. It's very easy to get distracted. You know, you talked about your college experience. I had much of the same, right? You go to university, you're living on your own for the first time, you know, you join societies, you can go to parties, you can do lots of different things. ~And I think this actually also ties into something you just touched on as well, which is this idea that ~
Another, aspect of that is also success. When you have a taste of success, it's easy to go off the rails. I think when I think about football, I think even Baker has had a good example of this as a QB where, okay, he came into the league, kind of went off the rails a bit, but he's course corrected now. But I think you, you see a lot of this with people that find some, some elite success where. They can lose a bit of the focus, they can lose a bit of the concentration. It kind of gets to the head a little bit. I think I've heard Shaquille O'Neal talk about this as well, right? He starts getting the championships, stops taking care of his body, starts slipping in the level of discipline that someone like his teammate Kobe Bryant would have been very accustomed to. It's really hard. This really goes back to what we were talking about with consistency, right? It's really hard to do something that might seem simple or easy for a very long time. I think that additional aspects of it is the part that introduces a ton of difficulty.
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah. And it's easy to start believing your own press clippings and thinking that you can continue to do those types of things. That's why it all comes back to the company you keep, you know, with your example with Shaq, it had the people closest to him, cared enough to tell him the truth and say, Hey, you know, you're gaining some extra weight or you're spending too much time in the off season, doing movies and rap videos instead of working on your game. You know, maybe if he would have had people that would have held him to that higher standard, things might've been different. No, maybe not. You know, at the same time. Shaq might have said, look, I want to do rap videos and I want to act and I want to do other things. Basketball is not my entire life. And I'm willing to give it 70 percent because I want to do these other things.
And even at 70%, I'm still going to be one of the best players in the world. I'm okay with that. If that's his conscious decision, I have no problem with that whatsoever. I mean, I believe everyone has the right to lean and live and navigate their life, however they see fit. The problem is most of the time, they're not doing that consciously. These are blind spots. These are things they're unaware of. They don't realize that they're starting to lose their work ethic or starting to lose some of their edge or not doing the things that they used to do. And they need to have someone there that cares enough to tell them that. And that's the hardest part, you know, because in many of these instances, understandably, I think the people are worried. Well, if we tell him these things, we tell him the things he needs to hear, not that he wants to hear well, then maybe he'll cut us out of his life. Now I don't have the, the gravy train that, that I had before, so I can see from both sides of it.
So with all of this stuff, I don't want to look at any of this through a lens of judgment. I'm not trying to judge any of these people for the decisions they've made. It's very easy for me to kind of sit back and be able to look at the big picture. I just know that in my own life. I try to constantly have people in my life that care enough to tell me the truth, care enough to help expose some of my blind spots, because I certainly have them and care enough to tell me the things that I need to hear.
And, you mentioned mental fortitude, you know, I'm a big believer that mental fortitude and mental toughness is nothing more than making the commitment to do the best you can with what you have, wherever you are, right? To me, that is what mental toughness is. Under any circumstance in any situation, you still make the commitment to do the best you can with the resources available. And the reason I love that as a mindset and as a personal operating system, is it eliminates a trilogy of behaviors that can really screw up your performance and your productivity and your optimism and your confidence. And that is blaming, complaining and making excuses. Which are three rather natural tendencies. But blaming, complaining and making excuses will never ever help you improve or make your situation better. And it still comes back to insulating yourself with these people in your life, because you need to surround yourself with people that will call you out when you start to blame, complain, or make excuses that they're not going to enable those behaviors and support those behaviors. They're going to say, Hey, look, blaming, complaining, and making excuses is not going to help you get to that next level. And having people like that, that are willing to tell you that type of hard truth in the moment is not easy to find, but if you want to get to and stay at the level of the people that you've just mentioned it's imperative.
David Elikwu: Yeah and I think something that goes to the heart of what you're talking about now that I've heard you mention in the past is this idea of accountability. And the fact that accountability and holding someone to an incredibly high standard is such a powerful thing and it's a gift as well. And I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about this, this idea that accountability is a gift.
It's not just, I think this is something people can struggle with. There's a duality here where let's say in the workplace, you have some people that, you know, that they're flogging their workers, right? They are just forcing people to come into the office on weekends or all kinds of hours. And it can feel overbearing and it can feel like, Oh, you know, this guy is really breaking my back. This guy, you know, he has it out for me. He's always trying to get me to do things I'm not really willing to do. And I think, you see the same in sports. You have some coaches that I think, coach Carter just came to mind, right? You have some of these coaches that really seem like they're busting their players, but simultaneously. There is also some value that comes with that.
There's this idea that actually being able to, to push people more than what they might be comfortable with by themselves can be useful. But I think you have to be able to find that balance. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah, well, you just hit it on the head. I mean, accountability really is a gift. It's so important for people to understand that holding someone accountable. It's something you do for them. It's not something you do to them. And when you can get to the point in any area of life, where you recognize that people that hold you accountable to a high standard of excellence are in fact, giving you a gift, they're doing something for your betterment. Then it becomes a little bit more palatable to accept if you choose to view it as them holding me accountable, you know, they're trying to discipline me or they're being critical of me or they're, no, that's the that's the, an unhelpful way to look at it. So you got to get to the point, where you surround yourself with enough people that will tell you the truth, hold you to that high level of accountability. And then you have the humility and the vulnerability and the courage to look at that as a gift to welcome it, to appreciate it.
And, you know, when you look at some high performers like a Tiger Woods or a Stephen Curry, Tom Brady, those guys wanted people in their lives that would tell them the little things that they could do, you know, in Tiger's case to tweak his swing or in Stephen Curry's case to tweak something on his, his shooting mechanics. They craved the type of feedback and accountability because they knew if someone can help me improve just even a half percent. That is massive progress for someone that has already gotten to their level. So, yeah, it's, it's really, really important to reframe accountability, to not give it a negative connotation, but to look at it, as you said, perfectly as a gift.
David Elikwu: Yeah, I think something you've touched on there is this idea that there are actually two separate skills that are really important for success in lots of different domains, right? Coachability and also coaching. I think both of them are separate skills, and I think that's something that's relatively underrated, right? I think sometimes I was talking to someone about this the other day when we talk about leadership. There's things that loads of people focus on, something I like to say often is that leadership is a lot like economics, that it works one way in the theory and in the books, and it works another way in reality, right? You know, there's so many people that go to leadership seminars and do a lot of these things. But then if you go around and ask people, how good is your boss? Like, is your boss a good leader? You know, there's a imbalance there of the number of people that would say, Oh, I have a great manager. I have a great boss compared to the number of people that buy business books and just happen to read them.
There's a really interesting element there, that I want to talk about, and then also this aspect of, being coachable as well. And I think I've heard you talk about a story with Kevin Durant and how coachable he was, but I'd love to start with the coaching side because you've had a lot of interactions with Brad Stevens, Coach K, loads of incredible coaches.
I'd love to know both from your time working directly with teams, but also in your capacity, I guess, just generally speaking with coaches and interacting with coaches. What would you see as some of the most common traits or, especially perhaps the things that are not easy to see on the surface. Like, what are the underlying things that connect some of these great coaches that you've seen?
Alan Stein, Jr: Well, the first is these great coaches and these great leaders understand that it's not about them. It's about the people they're trying to serve. It's about, you know, in the instance of the guys you just mentioned, it's the players on their team. So, they understand as coaches that their job is to be able to pour into and develop and to uplift and empower the people on their team. So it's never about them. It's always about the groups that they're serving.
And, you know, coaches at the highest level have the innate ability to not see what someone is, but see what they believe someone can become. So they're, they're coaching the player that they capable of being not the player they are right in front of them at that moment. And that's what great coaches do. They have that type of vision. And usually, in many cases a great coach may even have more belief in what that player can become than the player has in themselves. The coach is able to, to really be able to cast that vision and say, man, you, you have the potential to be an unbelievable player, if you're willing to do these things and many of the things that we've, we've already talked about. So, a great coaches truly care as well. I mean, that's, that's probably one of the biggest differentiators that they care about their players. They care about their team and their organization. They care about excellence. They put their heart and soul into everything that they do.
David Elikwu: Yeah, and I think something that links to what you were just talking about now is this idea that, like you say, coaches are able to see something that you might not see for yourself. Actually, funnily enough, I think someone that you have interacted with Ryan Hawke, said something similar to me. You know, we, we spoke not long ago and he talked about his coach, he played football in high school and college. And this idea that, yeah, sometimes you do have these coaches that are able to see things that other people don't see. And the opposite of that, which is quite funny. And actually I've had an experience with this myself. So it's going to sound like it's not about coaching, but I'll just tell you the story very quickly. It actually happened to me today.
So this chair that I'm sitting in right now, it's a, it's an office chair. It's nice, ergonomic, a lot of these things, but it's also a little bit uncomfortable. And for the last two years, I've kind of struggled with it. For a variety of reasons. But the main has been, it has these handles on the side which makes it really hard to sit at my desk because there's just something about the maximum height of the chair, it happens to match the, it's slightly above the bottom height of the table, so it's just super uncomfortable to try and sit at and it's just been a bit of a faff and for some reasons the arm rests were quite hard as well. And so sometimes even if I'm sitting in my desk for quite a while, while my back might feel fine and the sitting position is fine, my arms end up hurting and I've got these like sore arms and stuff. And so earlier today I was just like, Oh, this is really frustrating. It's really getting to me. I started looking online to try and buy another chair and this, this chair already costs, you know, quite a bit. Then suddenly at one point it just occurred to me, I have a screwdriver. I could literally just take off the handles and that's what I did for the first time. It took two years or so, but I literally just went, I took off the, the headrest. I took off the arms. I could just build the actual thing that I wanted. I didn't have to go out and buy a whole separate chair.
And I think, you know, tying this back to this idea that we were talking about both with coaching and I think it can come with coaches, but it can also come from ourselves. This is the idea that very often we have more control than we think that we do. And also the potential for the thing that we think that we want, the conditions for it may already exist and I think you see this a lot of the time in teams. Let's say with coaches or teams in general where people say, oh my gosh, we're just missing one piece, right? We're just missing these these three players, you know, we don't have someone that can do this. We need someone that can do that. And the we don't have the capacity right now, there's always one piece missing. There's always something else that we could get to achieve the thing that we want, when actually you could flip your perspective and say, okay, how can I use the things that I already have and get the best out of it? You know, how can I look at the players that I already have, the people that I already have on my team, and how can I get the best out of them, instead of thinking, nah, this guy, he's not really hitting the sales numbers, we need a rockstar sales guy, let me go look on LinkedIn, let me go and try and find someone else, let me recruit a player from another school that has this thing that I think this guy doesn't have.
Alan Stein, Jr: Absolutely. I mean, that's what coaches do. I mean, they not only make sure they get the right people on the bus, but they put the right people in the right positions based on their skill sets so that everybody's role on the team is making a maximum contribution.
And when something doesn't seem to quite be working right, then they can switch somebody's role or give someone a new responsibility or let them play a different position so that they can make a maximum contribution to the team. And it's about getting as much out of each and every member of the team as possible. So no, I, I love that story in that analogy.
David Elikwu: So now flipping the coin and talking about coachability, it's funny that there are a lot of ways that, sports and business can be very similar. But there's also some areas where there are big differences.
And one of them that I think about quite often is coachability, right? It's this idea that people need coaching or they need to work with someone to learn something. And I think there is some strange sense that a lot of people can balk at that. A lot of people think, oh no, I can just learn things. I can just, I can learn via experience rather than learning through coaching. I don't need to go out and look for a coach. I don't need to go out and look for someone that can teach me some, some stuff. People just default to learning everything by themselves and going through everything, you know, one at a time. I don't know if some of that is just ego and not wanting to feel like, Oh, I'm beholding to some other person, but it's interesting that there is that dynamic difference. Whereas, when you look in sports, every single sport, if you look at the person that's at the top of their game, they don't just have one coach, they have multiple, and they have coaches for things you don't even think that they need, right? LeBron James has a coach. Serena Williams had a coach, you know, you have all these people, the best golf players in the world, the best tennis players in the world, their coaches are not better than them at the sport that they play. That's not the point. The point is there are other things that the coach adds to them. They help provide structure. They help provide a lot of other things. And I think that's something that we can often miss, let's say in a business context or in lots of other contexts. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Alan Stein, Jr: Yeah, I mean, the whole point of a coach is to be able to help expose blind spots, is to be able to hold you accountable, is to be able to offer you feedback in real time so that you can make the requisite changes or tweaks in order to get better. Yeah, it's certainly not a prerequisite that a coach is better at any specific skill set than a player, but they certainly have to have a certain level of competence and understanding of whatever skill set it is that they're trying to teach.
But yeah, that's in essence why we all need coaches because they help us see the things that we can't see ourselves and they have a certain level of experience and expertise and acumen and whatever that is. And as you continue to improve and get better the pool of people that can effectively coach you get smaller and smaller. I mean, you know, it's, it's my assertion that Stephen Curry is the greatest shooter to ever play the game of basketball. There's not too many people on this planet that have the type of experience and expertise and acumen to be able to help coach him to a higher level because he's already reached that upper 01 percentile, but, you know, when he was 10, there was a lot bigger of a pool of people that could still have coached and poured into him and I'm sure they did, which is why he's been able to ascend to that level.
So the higher you get in your own performance and your own ability then you have to have much higher discernment over who you're willing to listen to and over who can actually coach you. You know, I've always believed that was one of the reasons that coach K was able to effectively coach the U.S. Men's Olympic team even though he was a college coach, he still had so much that he could teach and share with those, you know, those unbelievable NBA players. And that's why they listened to him because he had earned that type of trust and respect and they knew that he had the expertise and the experience to be able to still take them to another level. But, you know, once again, how many coaches out there are able to coach the U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team? It's a small handful of people because that level of play is just so high.
David Elikwu: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please do stay tuned for more. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. It really helps the podcast and follow me on Twitter feel free to shoot me any thoughts. See you next time.
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