Episode 47: Be Coachable: Practice Isn't Perfect With James Leath
What sets good leaders and high performers from everyone else? It’s not about talent; it’s about a passion for continuous learning, a recognition of one’s continuing evolution. It is being coachable. This is where you see parallels in sports and in leadership in any field, whether it’s in business, teaching or the performing arts. Joining Amy Vetter to talk about this and other lessons about performance and leadership is one of her best friends, performance coach, James Leath. James is the founder of Unleash the Athlete, an educational company for coaches and athletes in the areas of leadership, mental resilience and character development. Join in on this hilarious, touching and inspiring conversation as James shares his most important lessons he has learned during his life and on the field that can help any athlete, entertainer and even executives to reset and find new opportunities in how to lead others.
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Be Coachable: Practice Isn't Perfect With James Leath
Welcome to this episode where I interviewed James Leath. James is a mental performance coach and Founder of Unleash the Athlete with a Bachelor's Degree in Communication and a Master's in Performance Psychology. He has many years of coaching experience. James teaches leadership character and mental resiliency to elite performance in sport, theater and business through keynotes, workshops and online courses. He has worked for many companies such as IMG Academy, USA Swimming and Positive Coaching Alliance. During our interview, we discussed his life's journey and what he has learned on the field that can help any athlete, entertainer or even executive reset and find new opportunities and how to lead others.
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I'm here with James Leath. James is one of my best friends. I'm excited to have this interview with James. James, do you want to give a little background on yourself?
I run a company called Unleash the Athlete. It is focused on high-performers, not specifically to athletes, though I work with a lot of athletes. We talk about mental resiliency, leadership development, team dynamics, communication, character development, anything that is not in a playbook. That is what I'm helping people with, whether it's in a sports team, whether it's in a business environment or even theater or actors. A lot of sports psychology stuff. It's all the stuff that I wish I would have known when I was younger, I wouldn't have struggled so much.
We even talked about it with my own son that was doing cross country. We get sick before every race and the mindset behind that. Even as adults, we get that before we speak, before we have to do a presentation, go up for certain hard conversations. What you do is awesome. We are going to start in the beginning of James. Where did you grow up? What was it like? What did your parents do, all that jazz?
I grew up in Fresno, California, right in the middle of California and a couple of hours from the beach, which was great. That was our vacation thing. Parents did the best job they knew how. They separated when I was in eighth grade. I ended up living with my dad and my brother lived with my mom. That was a cool experience. Cool experience is a weird way to explain it. My father was an alcoholic, not verbally or physically abusive but absent. That led me to being raised by my coaches. I was blessed. I played a lot of sports in high school. I played football, baseball, basketball, wrestled, track and field, cheerleading. What happened was my dad said, “You have two options. You can get a job or you can play a sport.” Either way you're going to be doing something.
I went from sport to sport to sport. What I didn't know at the time is that all playing all those sports, being multi-sport athlete helped me in all the sports. Even when I played volleyball, my senior year, I joined a team of volleyball players that had been playing together for 6 or 7 years on a club team. They were like, “James, are you lost? What are you doing here?” I’m going to be part of the volleyball team and they were like, “Good luck.” The thing though is that I had a paper out. I was up at 4:30 in the morning folding papers. If I wanted to go to a dance or if I wanted to drive my jeep, I had to work. I would get done on a Friday night playing football and I'd show up to a place called Easy Riders Cafe at 11:30 at night. I'm limping around as this buster. I'm the youngest guy there. I'm like 16, 17 years old. I don't even know if I was legally able to be there. It was a motorcycle bar and I was the barback, so I'm running around. After playing a varsity football game, I'm working until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, working my tail off. That way I can go to prom, I can go to Sadie Hawkins dances. I can put gas in my Jeep. Saturday, I would sleep all day because Saturday night I had to show up again.
When these kids that I'm coaching now are like, “Coach, I can't practice. I don't have new cleats.” I'm like, “What are you talking about? I only had two pairs of cleats in high school, my freshman and sophomore year, my junior and senior year. Both of those were used. I did fine.” Going from sport to sport but then also having to support myself by having these other jobs, that led into being able to accomplish some great things. I'm an entrepreneur now. I run my own business and my own company. Those lessons that I learned back then, my dad, I don't know if he did this intentionally or not, but it allowed for me to create this work ethic, to learn that things that are worth having are worth the work. They're worth the wait. They're worth the sacrifice of maybe not going into that Friday night party in high school.
When I got to college, I wanted to play football and I got hurt. The cheer team noticed that I wasn't playing football and they said, “We'll pay your tuition if you come out and you do some stunts with the other cheerleaders and you'd be the mascot.” I thought, “I'll do that for now because I'm a football player. This is my identity. This is who I am.” What happened was I ended up falling in love with that experience. I ended up being a cheerleader, being a mascot throughout college. I still played football. I played semi-pro and Arena football. The busing of doing that was that as the mascot, I had this big bulldog head on. I would stick my head in the huddles during these college basketball games. The thing is that the coaches, because I grew up in the area, knew who I was. I came in. I was like, “I went to Central High School.” They're like, “Okay, cool.”
The coaches trusted that I wasn't messing around and I wasn't bothering them. Basketball coach would let me stick my head into the huddle. I'm learning from him how to talk to athletes and how to handle stressful situations. The audience thought I was messing around, but I'm taking these mental notes. It’s the same thing in football. I'd be on the sideline in the huddles. One of my favorite experiences was like Derek Carr was a quarterback at the time. He would score a touchdown and I'd run and we chest bump. Because I was a bulldog, I get down on all fours and he'd walk me across the end zone. It was such a cool experience.
When I graduated college, I had years of experience of hanging out with these great coaches. It was very easy for me to transition into coaching from being an athlete. I found that was my passion, that was something that I wanted to do. I've been coaching now for many years. I coach high school football here in Texas. I love it. When I created Unleash the Athlete, it started just for athletes. I'm getting calls from businesses, from actors guilds and saying, “Can you come in and teach the skills that you teach your athletes, but teach them to our executives? Can you teach them to our actors and actresses who are feeling anxious on the stage?” All the things that an athlete needs to be consistent and to have less anxiety are the same skills that we need when we're in the boardroom, when we're teaching, when we're trying to deliver a line or sing a song in front of 50,000 people. I've been doing that for the last couple of years. I love it.
You didn't get to tell your volleyball story because I interrupted you. What did you want to say about it?
That to me is a huge lesson in life. The first week they're aiming for me. I'm the only guy who doesn't play volleyball. I'm not a volleyball player. I'm not any good, but I’m athletic. The first week, they're spiking it. I got Wilson tattoos all over my face. That's the joke. It's like, “How many times can we hit Jim in the face?” it’s what they call me in high school. The second week, I realized these volleyballs don't hurt, so I'm going to stay in there. I'd stay in there and I dig it. There was one time I dove into the stands and I got it.
After the second week, there's no way I made the team. It was a fun experience. He posts the list of fifteen people. I'm the number fifteen guy. I thought, “This has got to be a mistake.” I pull it down. Everybody knows who made the team, they don't need to see the roster. I go to Coach McCarthy's office and I'm like, “There's a mistake.” He's on the computer. He doesn't even look up. He was like, “Nope, I don't make mistakes.” I go, “But I'm on the team.” He's like, “Yup.” I said, “But I'm not any good.” He's like, “Yup.” He takes his glasses off and looks at me and he's like, “Let me see your leg. How's your leg doing?” I pull up my shorts and there's this huge bruise on my leg. He goes, “How did you get that?” I go, “I dove into the stands to get a volleyball.” He goes, “Did you get it?” I said, “No, but I touched it.” He goes, “Exactly because you know what happened after that?” I said, “What?” He goes, “Other guys started diving.” He said, “That's been a big problem on our team. They're not aggressive enough. Even though we found success and they started doing that, you led the way.” I was like, “Okay.”
He goes, “What happens at the end of practice?” I said, “We bring all the balls and we put them away.” He goes, “No, before that.” I go, “Sprints.” He goes, “What happens during sprints?” I go, “I come in first every single time.” He goes, “Do you ever see the faces of your teammates?” I'm like, “No, they're behind me. I don't know what's going on.” He goes, “It pisses them off that you beat them every time. You're not going to play very much because you're not very good, but I need you on the team. You play a role on the team that is not to be out on the court, but it's to support your teammates. If you agree to be on the team, take it to the Vegas tournament, you'll get a varsity letter, you'll be a part of the team. That's your role. Your role is to be an inspiration. Your role is to be a leader.” I thought, “That sounds good.” What else am I going to do spring semester of my senior year? Make up reasons to ditch school.
Be Coachable: Leadership is not always about talent. It's about effort. It's about enthusiasm. It's about your ability to inspire other people.
About two weeks later, we do team captains and everybody votes for a team captain. I was voted a captain. In that moment, I realized that it's not always about talent. It's about effort. It's about enthusiasm. It's about your ability to inspire other people. Here I am, I've got a C on my shirt, I'm terrible. I probably couldn't make the JV team, but here I am as a captain. My role was not specifically to be the starting lineup, but it was to help the team to do well. I've used that lesson. When I try something new, it's not about being the best right away. It's about going all out, having a positive attitude, being somebody who adds value to the situation and finding a way to add value. Not in the traditional sense, but in ways that sometimes people don't think about.
It's an important point because there's so much out there about being a leader and leadership traits, but not about supporting roles and the importance of supporting roles. Defining what your role is on a team, whether that's athletic or in business is how do you contribute? How do you help the overall team? In business, there are a lot of ‘I,’ “This is what I did. This is what I accomplished. This is the promotion I want,” instead of, “How do I help the greater good and what is my role? What's my unique offering?” When you can identify what that is, that can be a change for you and how you view yourself and not feel so bad if you're not the smartest.
My definition of leadership is leadership is influence. I got that from John Maxwell. It's so true because when you ask people to think about a great leader and think about a couple of traits that they have, very rarely are they physical traits. There's research that shows that there are some secondary traits like being taller, having a loud voice, looking the part, those are important. What's important is your ability to influence people, to help them, to empower them, to give them the belief that they can do better. The belief that they can take a situation and they have the confidence, they have the tools, all that stuff. That's when I teach leadership.
For example, years ago, I was asked, “Who's your favorite leader?” It was 30 people before me, by the time they got to me, all the good ones were taken. I'm like, “I'm not going to say all these other ones. I’ve got to be creative.” I go, “Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.” The woman that was leading this didn't ask anybody to explain. She gets to me and I go, “Dorothy,” she goes, “I've never heard that before. Why?” I'm like, “Crap.” I was joking. I was taking it seriously, but I was also thinking like, “Why is Dorothy a leader?” About twenty minutes later, I had convinced myself and everybody else that Dorothy is an amazing leader. What happens is Dorothy has this dream. She runs away from everything that's comfortable. When she finally gets away, some guy, Professor Marvel, talks her into coming home like, “You’ve got to go home. Auntie Em is sick.”
She goes home and finds out everything is different. The world has gone on without her. She gets hit in the head and wakes up in the Land of Oz. She goes on this quest. Before she goes on this quest, she has this mentor. Glinda the Good Witch is like, “You’ve got to get to the wizard. That's all you’ve got to do.” She's like, “Okay, get to the wizard. Are you coming with me?” Glinda is like, “No, peace, I'm out.” She flies off and does her thing. You’ve got all these munchkins running around singing songs and stuff. She takes off on this journey. At the beginning of this journey, she finds Scarecrow. Scarecrow needed a brain. That's like us. When we get on this journey, sometimes we think like we need more information. We're going to Google. We're going to YouTube. We're going to Bing. We're going to do all this stuff to get this information. She says, “Come with me. I'm going to the wizard and the wizard will help you.” They keep going. Sometimes in a leader's journey, you lose heart. You start feeling like, “I can't do this anymore. I got the information, but I need heart.” There's the Tin Man. The Tin Man's like, “I need a heart. This is what I need.” She says, “Come with me.” You already see the leadership in Dorothy and that she's like, “Come with me on this journey.”
Once you have the information and once you have all the heart and the desire, and you know your why, it's scary because now you're on bigger stages. You're working with bigger people. When you and I first met, we were in a room with 50 people who were amazing speakers. They had all this platform and stuff. I remember looking around going like, “This is scary. There are some good people in here that I don't know if I measure up.” She runs into the Cowardly Lion. You’ve got the biggest animal in the forest. He's like, “I'm scared.” She says, “Come with me.” They meet the wizard. Finally, she's got the Scarecrow, The Tin Man and The Lion. The wizard is like, “Sorry, it's not good enough. I need you to go out and kill the witch.” They go out. They’ve got trees that are throwing apples at them. They've gotten poppy seeds field where they're getting high and passing out. They've got flying monkeys. Don't forget about the flying monkeys. They finally get to the witch and they kill her by throwing water on her, which is a weird way to die. They grabbed her broomstick and they go. The wizard is like, “This is great but it's not good enough.”
Toto, who is the self-conscious thing, the voice of reason goes and pulls the curtain back. Behind the curtain is this scared old man. They realized, “You're some jerk pulling strings. I'm good. I can handle this.” The wizard is like, “You're right. I'm a frail old man. I'm sorry of what I did,” whatever. He goes, “You have everything you need. Here you go. Scarecrow, here's a diploma. Tin Man, here's a little ticking so here's your heart. Lion, here's a medal of honor. You're good to go.” There's a good thing at the end. I promise it's worth it. The old man is like, “I'll take you home. I know that's where you want to go. I know that your dream is to get back home. Meet me at the air balloon.”
She gets to the air balloon and the stupid wizard is idiot, didn't tie the balloon good enough and he takes off without her. She's like, “What am I supposed to do?” Glinda shows up again, the mentor, the person that is teaching her and says, “Everything you needed was already inside you. You need to click your heels together and say, “There's no place like home.” What Glinda was telling Dorothy is that you need to click your heels together, which means you need to move your feet, you need to do the work. You need to do something, move. You need to say, “There's no place like home.” She's saying you need to believe. Glinda told Dorothy, “You need to move your feet. You need to believe more.” She said, “All right,” and she does that. Here's the best part of the story. Dorothy wakes up because the entire thing was a dream and everything that she needed to be a leader was already inside her. We have all these characters in fiction, if we're looking for motivation, we don't have to look very far. They're in front of us.
We're always looking to the outside on what other people have that we don't have. Instead of looking at what our strengths are and how we can be able to, not only lead, but also in that example, it's important that people want to follow. If you have not fired people to follow, you're never going to be able to achieve it. It always takes a team. It's never a one-person show.
Leadership is a lonely journey because before she met the three people that went with her, she was by herself. She had her voice of reason in Toto, which is the role that Toto, her dog, played. It's lonely. A lot of times when you want to do something, you want to go off on your own. You are on your own. The payoff is that you do it long enough and you don't change the goal, but you change your tactics. That's huge. In Alice in Wonderland, she goes up to the Cheshire Cat like, “Which way should I go?” He's like, “That depends. Where do you want to get to?” She's like, “I don't care.” He says, “It doesn't matter which way you go.” You have to have a goal. You have to have a destination and that journey can change. It looks like a whole bunch of different things, but you want to keep your eye on that goal and be flexible in how you get there. That's what great leadership is. It's being flexible in how to get there and using all the tools that you have at your disposal while you're gaining new skills in order to get to that spot.
I want to get back to you. You brought up your father lately, but I know he's been a big impact in your life and the journey you've been on. You mentioned he was an alcoholic. I know you think of him so positively. Maybe you can talk about your journey through that. I know a lot of people struggle with those things and they keep them on the inside a lot. With the places that I speak out, a lot of people feel no one is like them. Everyone's got their outside branding and what is happening on the inside. How does your father impact you in a positive way with going through something like that?
I grew up with a dad who did the best he could. I didn't know until my mid-twenties how he had grown up. Whenever I was in school and they said, “We're going to do our family tree.” I was like, “I don't know anything about my family.” My mom doesn't talk about her side. My dad’s is full of not very good people aside from my grandma and my grandpa who are my heroes in life. He did the best he could. We're sitting at a bar in Dallas in my mid-twenties and he's been drinking. He starts sharing with me all the things that his father did to him and how his father would beat my grandma. My hero is my step-grandfather actually. He would do all these things. He was a terrible person.
In that moment, I saw my dad not as my dad but as a guy who's going through stuff. He took on a new role in my life. It’s like, “You raised me the best you could, but now you've got all this wisdom inside of you that I can learn from. I'm sufficient. I'm good. I don't need you to raise me anymore, but I'd love to learn from you.” My dad taught me that even though for the first half of my life, he was an alcoholic and he was emotionally unavailable, is that he decided one day, “I'm done being that guy. I'm going to do some work.” I saw a transformation in my dad. It allowed me to see that people can change, but they have to want to change.
The transformation that I saw in my dad was life-changing because at that point in your mid-twenties you're like, “You're this person. You're always going to be that person.” That's one of the things we struggle with in our society is that if somebody made a mistake several years ago, we want to end their world now. It's like, “They've grown. They've evolved.” With cancel culture, if we don't allow them to make amends for the idiot things they did in their past, then that flies in the face of a social evolution and that we can change if we want to. My father stopped drinking. He stopped smoking. He stopped gambling, which is why my parents ended up divorcing. He had one night where he lost it all. I saw this man changed not over time, but in an instant.
Be Coachable: Great leadership is being flexible in getting to the goal and gaining new skills in order to get to that spot.
It took some time to create some new habits and create some new ways to respond to life. I saw in that moment and that night we were at that Dallas bar. I remember that night well because the Cowboys almost made it to the playoffs. The line he told me, “You figured it out on your own. That inspired me. I want to be the dad that you've always wanted.” That's what he told me. We did have this rite of passage moment in my senior year of high school when he thought I did something wrong, the principal called him. When I got home, he was ready to whip me. I'm a senior in high school. I'm all hopped up on Creatine and Mountain Dew.
He pulls off his belt and he stopped me. He's got his shirt off. He's like, “I heard you’re messing with some kids yesterday.” I'm like, “Dad, it wasn't me. The principal shouldn’t have called you and told you. You knew where I was last night.” He's like, “You're a liar.” I stood up to him and said, “Dad, I'm going to fight for my innocence right now. This is not going to end well for either one of us.” I stood there. I didn't break eye contact. He's about 3 or 4 inches taller than me at the time. He's got his belt out and he's been drinking and his shirt is off. You see him all bowed up and then you see him shoulders drop. He drops the belt. I haven’t seen him for a few days. It was him and I in the house.
Every Saturday morning, I would make breakfast and that was my thing. I'd make breakfast and he wouldn't come out. One day, I was in the kitchen and he finally shows up. He's been crying. This is my senior year of high school. He puts his hand on my shoulder and was like, “I'm sorry. You're right. I know now what happened. I want you to know that you became a man a few days ago.” To get that affirmation from a father is something a lot of young boys don't get. I had that moment. My life changed in that moment. I can see where my dad at that night in Dallas years ago when he changed, because something happened, something clicked in him. He was like, “I'm proud of you.”
For me, manhood started at the beginning of my senior year during football season during that story. It taught me that it takes a time to change the shift of whatever you're doing and change what's going on. Change happens in that moment. It's a decision, “Not another second, not another minute, an hour, day, month, year, I'm done with that life. I'm going to be different.” For him, that moment was that night in Dallas. I saw over time and I allowed for him to regress because sometimes when people make a decision, habits are deep rooted and you’ve got to allow for some mistakes. I love him. I wanted to see him do better. I wanted him to survive a long time, long enough to see me have kids and be a grandpa.
When I was working at IMG Academy in Florida, that was my dream job, leadership development. I was the head of the entire academy. He got sick and had a stroke. I said, “Do you want me to move to Dallas?” He was like, “No.” One time he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Done.” I resigned my position at IMG. I packed up all my stuff and I drove halfway across the country to spend the last eight months with him bringing them coffee. He lost his ability to communicate with six months left. What saddens me to this day is that I would go bring him coffee and I'd bring him donuts, he would be talking to me, sharing things with me, knowing that life was coming to an end, but he was mumbling. I lost all of that. I wasn't able to learn what it is that he was passing on to me.
One thing that I learned from that situation is that share experience. When I'm with my young guys at TCA for football, any chance I get to not talk about football, I'm trying to share wisdom with them. If you're ready to receive it, here you go. That's what Unleash the Athlete is all built on is that these are the lessons that I wish I would have known when I was younger. I'm not going to wait until I'm gray, old and in a rest home to share these things. I try to share as much as possible.
I want to pause because this is an area that we haven't covered as much on this podcast. A lot of times we talk about women issues, diversity, inclusion and all of the areas that we need to have extra awareness for. What we don't talk about is men in general, and the need for what you're talking about is vulnerability. The fact that for many years, men have felt that they can't be vulnerable, that it's not a safe place to be and to not necessarily share what you're eloquently sharing. I appreciate that on here.
I know from talks I've heard or maybe side conversations with male leaders, there's been forever in their career, the pressure to be a man, to not leave early, to go be with the kids. There are things that are an expectation with men and being in a profession. It's important to understand, if you feel like you weren't present or not that you had to be an alcoholic, but because you were the breadwinner, because you felt the responsibility as a man, that it's never too late to make that shift in your life. I have talked to partners that have made that shift. It's then changing the expectation with everyone around you and the expectations you've set prior. A big piece of what you said in there was your father apologized and apologized without excuse. It was an apology without, “But.” You have to give people around you that moment, no matter who you are, male or female. I want to focus on men right now.
Have an appreciation of the mentors and support people that have helped along the way, yourself and the people around you, if you weren't able to be present and wanted to be. When you talk about your coaches ended up filling that spot, it’s understanding who those people are so that you can go and show appreciation for those people as well. Understand who those people are and the people you care about life, so that you can make sure that you're elevating them, not feeling bad about it.
The vulnerability part doesn't come as natural. As men, a lot of us spend our childhood being taught, “You don't have emotions. You stay strong. You never show a chink in your armor. You never show any cracks in who you are.” What I've learned through a lot of the men and women that have been my coaches throughout the years is that there are a lot of different ways to be masculine. There are a lot of different ways to be feminine and that you can fully embrace all the emotions and not be a name called, not feel like you are not living up to what who people see you as. When it comes to apologizing, I learned that from my dad in that moment. I had some coaches that I would say, “I got a question about this,” and they would be like, “I don't know the answer to that.” I'm like, “That's okay.” I appreciate the honesty instead of lying and being like, “This is it right here.”
I see it even now on the football field that I coach on is you have one coach that coaches the way they were coached many years ago, which doesn't work with most athletes. You have newer coaches that are like, “Let's work on that together. Let's figure that out.” That's much more powerful and that creates trust. A great leader creates trust in the relationship. People can smell BS. They can smell when you are making things up and you're not being honest. If you don't know the answer, the best thing you say is, “I don't know but let me find out.” When you follow up and be like, “Remember that question you asked me?” because they probably won't because people forget. That builds this huge bond between you and that person who you have influenced over.
One more thing that you've said before is about the fact that there are many paths to get to a vision. A lot of times there's micro-managing at a leadership level because there's no trust or someone thinks there's one way to do it. When you open up to see how people figure out the plays to get to the end game, that can be interesting as a leader where you can learn as well. You expand more when more people are giving their input into that final answer.
When you want to teach something to somebody, whether it's a kid or it's an adult or whatever, and you allow for them to bring in their own personality, their own experiences, instead of saying like, “I'm coaching football,” and I use that as an example, if somebody is going to throw the ball, there's a wrong way to do it and there are a lot of right ways to do it. Some coaches will be like, “You have to throw like this.” If the kid has a different shoulder angle or they have a different longer torso or whatever it is, leave room for it. One of my philosophies in coaching is I'm going to teach you how to do it. I'm going to show you how to do it. Then I want you to do it on your own and get comfortable. If you're going to add your own flare, if you're going to add your own technique or whatever, good, I need you to get the job done.
I was a sales leader for many years at a company called Mindbody. I would tell the salespeople, “These are the numbers that we have to hit. These are the tools that you have. I'm excited to see how you use them, go. If you struggle with them, we'll work on it. I'm not going to be over your shoulder. I'm not going to be clocking you in and clocking you out is. If you're hitting your goals and your customers are happy about it, I need to learn what you're doing because maybe you're doing something that I could share with someone else on the team.” Instead of being like, “You need to say this. You need to read off this script. There's no going off of it. There's no calling Audible. There's nothing that you can do outside of this. Just do this.” That job will be taken over by a robot. I want humans.
Be Coachable: When you want to teach something to somebody, allow them to bring in their own personality, their own experiences, their own flair.
We're dealing with people who have emotions and they have stuff that they're going through. Especially during these crazy times, people are coming to their project, their job and their position with a lot of stuff that's going on outside of working hours. That needs to be taken into account. You and I have talked about how it's difficult right now when there's not a lot going on to do anything because you don't have the energy. Once things get busy, it's like, “Now I can do a whole bunch of stuff.” As a leader, you’ve got to adjust with, “Here's the mental state of the people who are looking to me for leadership are in and I need to act appropriately.”
You give the tools, but also give the space for them to surface what they need from you.
Use the tools and be like, “Where are you lacking?”
We have all of this and you look and say, “Where's your gap? How can I help?” There are a lot of problems that a lot of times people get elevated to leadership positions because of their skillset and their technical ability. Once you're in a leadership ability, it's about being a coach. It's about all the people under you, making them better. It's not about what you do anymore. That's a big shift for people and where sometimes many struggles because it's not what they were prepared for when they were seeing that job, not understanding what it would be.
You see this a lot when your top sales person becomes a manager and then they struggle. In our culture, there's no demotion without embarrassment, without losing face, and that's unfortunate. I wasn't a very good salesperson. When I got into management, it was awesome. If I had to start in management, if it was the other way around, I would have never made it to a salesperson. That's an unfortunate thing with a lot of businesses is that we think somebody is good at this job, “Let's put them in this other job.” It's like, “No. This is where they added value. This is where they're good.”
It’s how you keep them excited with what they're doing and feeling like they're getting the right credit that they're in. One of the other things that you've done is a lot of mindset coaching for Chicago Bulls. I'm going to focus on the male perspective right now is when you're in private, not in front of the team, where are the vulnerabilities? Where are men needing the most help?
What's interesting is that when you get into these one-on-one conversations, the vulnerability is there once you've established some trust. Whether it's a professional basketball player, somebody who is in the NFL or Major League baseball, whatever it is, the vulnerability is there as long as you have that trust. It's usually like I don't want to look stupid in front of my peers. I don't want to fail. I don't want to let people down. One of the biggest problems that I see is that asking for help is looked down upon. If someone's like, “You need to go talk to James. He's going to help you with your mindset.” It's like, “I don’t need to see a sports doc.” I'm like, “First of all, I’m not a doctor. Come on over and let's chat about it. I'm not a therapist either. A therapist wants you to cry. I want you to laugh. Let's go have some fun.”
When it comes to dealing specifically with the males that I've dealt with at the professional level, all the way through college and high school, is that you have to break the mold of whatever they've been taught as acceptable. You don't experience emotions. If we don't experience emotions, then we're going to have a hard time going from angry or excited. There's nothing in between, you're going to struggle with that. What I do is I end up like, “Let's talk about different situations that make you feel different emotions. Let’s talk about them.” What's crazy is you get to this professional level and they've gotten there despite their negative mindset. Their athletic prowess has gotten them to that point, then you do simple things, “When you're at the free throw line, do some breathing exercises. Here are some things that you can tell yourself. It will increase your ability or decrease your ability to be successful right there.”
If someone can admit that they're always in process, that they're always evolving, that's the best mindset you can be in. There's this thing that I do where I have people write out the word “opportunity is now here,” but I take all the spaces out. If you put it up on a marker board and you say, “What do you see?” You can read it two different ways. You can read it, “Opportunity is now here” or “Opportunity is nowhere.” The difference is in the pauses within the letters. If you can see that where you put the pauses or the lack of pauses are, can change your entire perspective on what's going on in front of you. You're going to have a very different experience. Right now, things are dark. The aliens are scheduled to come. It’s exciting but it's also scary. There's an asteroid coming on the election day.
How you look at life determines how you experience life. If you're going to have a mindset of, “I can achieve, I can overcome, I can do these things,” there's a good chance you're going to, even when you fail. I’m at practice with my JV guys and I've got this ball machine that shoots the ball at them fast. They kept dropping it. They're like, “Let's slow it down.” I was like, “For who? Are you slowing it down for me? I don't care if you drop it right now. I want you to keep it fast. I want to get you to get used to catching the ball fast.” They're like, “Yeah, Coach, but I don't want to drop them.” I go, “That's the point. You're at practice. This is when you fail.” You see their faces like, “Who is this guy telling me it's okay to fail?” I'm like, “I'm not interested in you being perfect right now. I want you to catch it on game day. I want you to deliver the presentation when the CEO is in the room. Right now, you're going to say, “um,” and you're going to mess up the PowerPoint slides. You're going to do all this other stuff. That's why we practice. Let's get better so that way you can deliver on “game day.””
I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category: family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Family and friends for 500, Amy.
Everyone picks family and friends.
Be Coachable: Leadership is not about what you do anymore. It’s about making the people under you perform better.
Which one do people not usually?
The other three: money, spiritual and health. I thought you would pick spiritual. Let's do health.
How about my spiritual health? Is that a category?
Yes, we can do that. Things or actions I don't have that I want when it comes to health?
It's probably my diet. There are certain things about my diet that I want to get better. I need to eat more vegetables, less gummy bears. The nightly ice cream, it's my habit but it's so delicious.
Things or actions I do have that I want with my health?
I'm very consistent at yoga, which I can thank you and Joe Rogan for.
I have never been put into a category with Joe Rogan.
You’re up there. We talk a lot. I listen to your podcast and I take notes. There's a lot of good stuff that happens. You have great guests. I was honored to be here in this formal setting. It’s the hot yoga. I do it five days a week. I take a day off on Friday and I go on Saturday, but that has changed my life, the flexibility that I have. The bonus that I didn't know what was going to happen was the mental fortitude, the focus. When I'm hitting a pose and my yoga teacher, Deborah, is like, “We're going to be here for five more seconds.” She counts it with like 6 or 7 alligators. I’m holding this pose and I'm hurting, and I have to make a decision in that point, “I'm not going to give up. I'm going to hold this pose until she's done counting.” That happens multiple times. When you practice being mentally tough, you end up being more mentally tough.
I would also say it's not about holding it for her, it's then about other things that you are telling your athletes, “Breathe,” or a mantra, whatever you have to do, that what's teaching you on the mat to take it off.
Stay coachable. In that moment where I’m sitting there and I’m like, “Deborah, we're going to do this. Let's go.” She's like, “Relax your toes.” I'm like, “I'm relaxing.” “Where's your neck?” I'm like, “Okay, relax.” Even in that moment where I'm like, “I'm going to hold this thing. This is my thing that I'm doing,” I'm listening and I'm adjusting. The same thing holds true when you're doing things in life where you got your goal, but you’ve got to be able to adjust. You’ve got to be able to adapt. Anybody who's in this business of speaking and sharing ideas, their entire world was changed in March 2020, in a very same way where it's like, “By the way, you have no keynotes and no workshops for the next year.” It's like, “This is 90% of my projected income. I’ve got to figure something out.”
Things or actions I don't have that I don't want?
I no longer am responsible for anybody else's health and fitness. I like that because I was a trainer for ten years. I like being able to go to the gym. I have my own workout and studio. I've got my yoga workout, but I'm not in charge of somebody else's fitness. I don't have to listen to them lie to me about how they've been good for the last few days because they're three pounds heavier. You can't outwork a bad diet. I'm glad I don't have to do that.
Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
Be Coachable: The best mindset you can be in is to admit that you are always in the process, that you are always evolving.
I had this habit of every day I'd go to practice and I'd pick up this big Reese's bar with peanut Reese's in there. I'm like, “It's okay. I'm going to work off this 800-calorie candy bar for the next five hours out in the sun.” I stopped and I recognized that I didn't need it. A lot of times, we have these crutches where it's like, “I always go to Starbucks or I always grab this thing.” I was like, “I'm not going to do it. If I struggle and if I suffer, it's okay because I know that I don't need all that extra sugar.” That happened and I feel fantastic. I'm happy to report that I have not had a Reese's bar.
Is there any big takeaway or action that you want people to leave with that we didn't during our conversation?
I love talking about the idea of making room to fail, making room to not be perfect especially when it's in a practice session. That's been big because people have a big failure mindset because all the bad things are going on right now. It’s like you can decide to look for the opportunity instead of focusing on the obstacles. Amy, I want to honor you for doing this. You have great people on this show. You're sharing a lot of your wisdom, your struggles and being vulnerable. Thank you for having this show and putting this stuff out in the world.
Thank you, James. I appreciate you being on.
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For Mindful Moments of this episode with James Leath, this was a great discussion that shows you no matter what profession you are in, the lessons that we have transcend whatever we do in life. We are all human. James’ story when he talks about how he went through his own sports career starting in high school and how he worked after football games and how that built the work ethic and a career drive that has helped him in his own success now is an important thing for us to reflect on. I know that during my life, I started working three jobs when I was sixteen. That can seem like such a hard thing that's going on at those moments. You have two weeks to look at those experiences that either you can be upset that it happened or feel sorry for yourself or look at it and say, “That built my positives, that built the things that now I am ready to take on as an adult because I had those hard things that happened when I was younger.”
It's all about perspective and mindset to make sure you use every experience in our life, whether it's good or bad in a positive way so that we can create success from it. His lesson about being a mascot I thought was a key thing to draw out of this interview. A lot of times, we look at something we're doing as just what it looks like on paper or what we see on the outside. What you heard him talk about was that he had built relationships. When he stuck his head in the huddle in his mascot costume, that he could hear what the coaches were telling the players. Everyone else thought he was being funny, which he was being funny, but he was getting a benefit for his own learning in order to be a better coach in the future. By listening to coaches from all different types of sports, this gave him a leg up in life that is unique.
It's important to think about all the things that we do and step back and say, “How else could we use that skill? How else could we use what we are doing now?” A lot of times, especially in entry level positions, or even if you've gone further in your career and it might feel like maintenance, how could you change the perspective on what you're doing into a learning perspective? If you have a vision three years or five years from now, what can you take advantage with your resources, your skills in order to help you into the future? Push yourself to think about new things that you could do.
One of the things that we got into was looking at all the different ways that people are coached. I thought it was an important message when he talked about his volleyball story when he wasn't the best person on the team, he wasn't as far as skills. What he was, was helping the team to be better because he was on it. As a manager and a leader, a lot of times we evaluate our staff based on the job description, rather than looking at the greater whole of what they contribute. I'll give an example. I had an accounting practice. I had a person that worked for me that their work wasn't always up to par from a technical perspective. However, every client loved that person to be on their account. Someone else on my team that was good technically, the clients didn't like as much. Even if I would try to convince them that they should, they were uncomfortable. It's important that we think about what skills we can utilize from team members that are most important. I could take that team member that has this great personality, but not very technical and look at it in two ways. I need to price that person's job differently. I know there are going to be right offs and extra time to correct the work.
Secondly, I might take that person and put them into a customer service role instead, where they're the interface with the client and you're keeping the technical person not as close to the client because that's what they're good at. Where can you look at your team members and put them in the right positions so that your overall team has success? We also got into his father and the background that he has. He was very vulnerable about the experience that he had with his father being an alcoholic and still how they were able to remain close. That's important because a lot of times when we experience hard stories with people, we will blame rather than trying to figure out what's the path forward. The reason he could find a path forward was because his father made real change.
A lot of people will say they want to change, will use the words but not the behavior. The behavior that his father did was first apologize without any excuses, without trying to couch it or try to blame someone else or something else for his behavior. He was able to be open enough to say, “Correct me when you see my habits showing up,” because his habits are built in. A lot of times I will hear adults say like, “This is who I am. It's too hard to change at this point.” We always have the opportunity to choose the path that we want in our life. Breaking those belief systems and those habits are some of the hardest things that we have to do sometimes. When we hear people saying the same thing or we see the impact we are having on other people, that is our time to step back and say, “What do we need to adjust?”
There was a second piece of this is when his father came to him to say that he was going to change his habits. James had to come back and give him space to fail. We talked a lot about this as we move forward in the conversation especially with men of being vulnerable to the fact that we have failed, admitting it, being okay to work together, to create a path forward, that we don't always have to do these things alone. We do have to create a relationship of trust that you do mean to do the work, that you're not going to back out. If someone goes and tries to help you and then you don't follow through, then you're going to break the trust and break your path to making that change. Being very open, having that communication was important, but also using the example that he had about practicing. Taking what we do in the arts, in sports, even when we're getting educated in the skills that we have, our technical skills, that is all practice. When we take on a new job, take on new technology, whatever that is, we have to stop and allow ourselves to fail as we're going through the process, but not get hard on ourselves.
Know that when we're going through that learning process, we are probably going to fail. That whole example he gave about the ball coming too fast to the player and the player wanting to be perfect every time during practice and his answer was, “This is not the time to be perfect. This is the time to figure out how to do it right.” That is so when you hit game day or when you hit the actual presentation day, or when you hit the time that you have to be in front of the client, that you are able to execute. We have to lighten up this whole experience of perfection. Instead, what James talked about was being coachable, making the room to fail, looking for the opportunities and finding the people that we can trust, so we get the support we need along the way.
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About James Leath
James Leath is a mental performance coach and the founder of Unleash the Athlete. With a bachelor’s in communication, a master’s in Performance Psychology, and almost 20 years of coaching experience, James teaches leadership, character, and mental residency to elite performers in sport, theater, and business through keynotes, workshops, and online courses.
James has worked for companies like IMG Academy, USA Swimming, Positive Coaching Alliance, American Heart Association, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Chicago Bulls. He currently lives in Dallas, TX and coaches high school football.
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