FC Barcelona's Culture, Avoiding Flow, Brad Stevens Commencement Speech
“In our society sometimes it’s hard to come to grips with filling a role instead of trying to be a superstar. A superstar’s talent can win games, but it’s teamwork that wins championships.” — Michael Jordan
Good morning, coaches!
Today we have articles on the importance of curating the content you consume and why you should avoid flow, podcasts on FC Barcelona’s culture and leadership lessons, and a great commencement speech from Brad Stevens at Butler.
If you have any feedback or content you think could be helpful for other coaches, feel free to reach out or leave a comment.
Here we go!
ARTICLES
How Emotionally Intelligent People Avoid Negative Media: This is a great explanation of why I decided to create this newsletter - we are all being bombarded with information and I, like many others, find it hard to sort through what’s worth reading based on my interest. The author does a better job of explaining it than I do, but we all have to create filters to sort what we take in or we will be overwhelmed.
Selective ignorance is not the avoidance of learning. It’s not the avoidance of getting feedback. It’s simply the intelligence of knowing that with certain things and people, the juice will never be worth the squeeze. It’s knowing what to avoid.
Flow is the Opiate of the Mediocre: Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player: This explains what separated his most successful students from the weaker students. Lots of great takeaways and I was surprised by #1.
Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy
To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder
Systematically Eliminate Weakness
Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness
PODCASTS
Note: if you want to listen to one of these podcasts, click the link at the end of the description to play it on the app of your choice. You may need to scroll back within your app to the date the episode released. If you are listening on a computer, I suggest using Overcast.
The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman: 205: Robert Sutton on Good Leaders vs. Bad Leaders. The leadership topics discussed in this episode are really good and all stem from the guests’ recent article called 15 Things I Believe. Sutton is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford and author of multiple books including The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. You’ll enjoy this — check out some of my favorite topics he discusses below. [July 30, 2020–1 hour, 1 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Google | Breaker | Website Link
Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!
Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.
Kurt Vonnegut was right. It is often more constructive to tell yourself “I have enough” than to keep asking how you can get more and more and more. I don’t believe that people who die with the most money, fancy stuff, power, or prestige win the game of life.
The Efficient Coach: Damian Hughes on The Barcelona Way, Unlocking the DNA of a Winning Culture. Hughes is a business and athletic consultant who specializes in the creation of high-performing cultures. He also wrote the book The Barcelona Way: How to Create a Winning Team, which is the focus of this conversation. He explains how Barcelona has created such a strong culture, how coaches can help strengthen the culture over time, and how to handle players who are your best performers on the field but don’t fit within the culture you’ve built. [April 30, 2020–44 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Google
The question is are those leaders (players on your team), cultural architects or are they cultural assassins? Because they’re the ones who lead when no coach is in the room.
MISCELLANEOUS
David Allen Quote (via Khe Hy):
Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing . . . Recall the pure job of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do no strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival.
Billionaire Investor Cliff Asness on Decision-Making (via Flirting With Models podcast):
The decision in investing is almost always the same. It’s never ‘Do I believe this?’ That’s binary. It’s ‘How much do I believe this and how important is it?’
VIDEO
Brad Stevens Spring Commencement Address 2014 | Butler University. Current Boston Celtics head coach and former Butler head coach Brad Stevens talks about embracing being a continuous learner, not letting your circumstances dictate your attitude, having a growth mindset and being gritty, embracing the work everyday, and the fact that people are the biggest asset in your life. You can really see what principles and ideas have made the biggest impact on him over the course of his career in the speech.
“The times of the biggest adversity have also been the times when the trampoline is the bounciest.”