Coaching Is Hard: Applying the Spirit of Competition to Business with Ed Molitor

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now, your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molotor Group, Ed Molotor.

One of the questions I get all.

The time, and if you've been following the podcast here for the last three and a half, four years, you know it's coming because I, I mentioned this, I reference this every now and then, is Ed, don't you miss coaching college basketball? Sure. There are things I miss. You always miss game day, can't get up for game day? Check your pulse. I miss practices. I miss preparing for games. I miss discount reports. I miss watching films. I miss the deep connection and relationships you have with the players, the coaches on your staff, the community. And I missed a fraternity of coaches. Sure, I still have a ton of friends that are in the coaching business and I talk to them, but they're different conversations. They're always going to be different conversations when you're on the outside and they're still amazing.

But just that day to day of picking up the phone and being able to call someone, know what they're going through, they know what you're going through. And just to have some laughs about some things in this world that only those on the inside truly understand, those are things I miss about it. Right? And I miss the recruiting I miss. I really do. I miss getting to know the parents of players, the teachers of players, the handlers, the folks in their inner circle that are so important to them. I do miss those things.

But let me tell you what I don't miss.

And right now you're like, oh, boy, here comes a good story. You're going to think like guys who cheat. Well, there's no such thing as cheating anymore. Nil took care of that. Okay. No, this is not me on a soapbox. This is not some of that stuff you listen to on sports talk radio. No, this is very real. And this is something I don't miss. And that has helped me immensely in the business world. It's helped me immensely as a business owner, this hatred that I have of losing. I hate losing. And what I don't miss as a college basketball coach, a high school basketball coach, regardless of what level you'll get what I'm saying here, I don't miss losing that last game. And then the next day, there was the most Hollow, shallow, empty feeling.

The next day, before you start judging, athletics aren't your thing, which is fine, right? Like the athletics of business. It could be your point of reference, could be music, it could be theater, it could be science, could be robotics, Anything but what I miss. Okay, before you judge, what I did, that or what I don't miss, that next day, that awful feeling, right? We're supposed to practice 3 to 5. What am I going to do with myself from 3 to 5? People say, oh, come on, man, get over it. Season's over, the grinds over. No, you know what you miss seeing the kids. You miss having a purpose that day, moving forward and helping people get better that day. The. There's nothing you are going to do that day.

Yes, you absolutely learn from failure, learn from winning too, but you absolutely learn from failure. But that day, after the season ends, when you can change nothing, the decisions you made in the game, in the moment, the preparation you may have missed or you may have overdone the swagger or lack of the mindset that you had going into the game, if it was a little bit off, all those things going through your head, it's off. You're sick to your stomach all day, you're walking around in a fog. And you try to be engaging, you try to be present for everybody. I hated it. And I see my friends go through it now and I feel awful for to this day, I still, I get heartbroken when I see seniors walk off the floor for the last time.

When you're watching a high school girls basketball game or a high school boys basketball game or a college men's or women's game, and you that moment when they realize there's no coming back, like this is it, and they take their seniors out for the last time.

And that's bad, that's hard.

That hatred of losing has instilled this passion. Not obsession, you can say obsession.

Paying attention to the fundamentals, the preparation, right?

The communication, the execution, the reflection, adaption, and every single thing I do.

I guess a better way of really.

Looking at this is like think about as an athlete, you're going to have physical injuries, right? I mean, there's always be one or two that you can't seem to shape, but you're going to get better. Like rehab, physical therapy, they're going to.

Get better, but the mental scars stay.

With you a little bit longer because you can't make that stuff better. You know, I remember as a little kid, my dad's teams would lose the last game of the year. And you know, I'd look around the locker room, I'd be 10, 11 years old. And you see these guys crying. If it was in a supersexional and you realize that you're supposed to be crying with them or you did cry because it meant so much to you, because you lived, you know, this was your life for four or five, six months, even in the summer with these guys. And it meant so much to them. So it meant so much to you. And as you get older and your dreams and your goals and your purpose are all wrapped around these things that you work towards.

And when you realize that's gone, then it's not there, that's not attainable anymore. It's a hard feeling.

But despite the fact that I hate.

Losing in the business world, I got much better at it. Not accepting it. I do not accept it. I try to learn from every single loss I possibly can. But I was able to increase my capacity to deal with the stress. I was able to sit there and get back in the fight again, so to speak. And I know sometimes people don't like when I talk about running to the fight, but that's the reality of life, right? Sometimes you have to be in survival mode. You have to get back out in front of your adversity and your circumstances, okay?

But tough losses are a part of the life. Tough losses are a part of business, right?

But it's what we do with them that counts.

It's how we respond, not react. It's how we respond that counts.

Now I'm in one of those moods right now. I'm avoiding cliches, but it is more true that you grow through adversity and learn from your losses. You do grow through adversity and you do learn from your losses. But you only do it if you're intentional. And let me repeat that, you only do it if you are intentional. Getting better, improving, growing does not happen by accident. It doesn't happen just because you're on the clock. It doesn't happen because you're part of what happened. You're a part of it.

You have to be intentional. And you need to honestly reflect on whatever that loss is. I mean, you think about it in.

The sense of a sales team. You could lose a huge deal, a.

Significant deal, and not just monetarily, but relationship wise one that was going to pay you tenfold over the years and you lost a piece of it. Whether it be a lack of performance.

When you had their business before, whether you didn't deliver on Their promises. Whether things change, you know, kind of over the course of the sales cycle and the numbers change and the pro.

Whatever it may be, and it might take you 3, 4, 10 deals to.

Make up for that one deal you lost.

But how soon are you going to get back into the fray? How soon are you going to sit there and be brutally honest with yourself and your team as a coaching leader?

I mean, think about this. Coaching is hard. It's hard.

It's the most fulfilling, rewarding, coolest thing that I've ever been a part of.

And I love teaching people how to do it. Our emerging leader coaching program, our leader and role coaching program are maxed out. And the conversations and the things that we share and the journey that I take with these folks is just mind blowing.

I love it. But, man, it is hard when you win. When you're successful, you're brilliant.

Which one you lose and you fail.

It's. It's like, it's like my boyfriend Sanford used to say, you're a big dummy. I mean, it's amazing how night and day you can go from top to the bottom like that.

In their eyes, you don't have to take that roller coaster ride, right?

So you have to honestly reflect on it as soon as possible. Now, why is it, why not take.

A day when I take two days? I have coaching friends that I was guilty of this when I was younger, that once they lose, they don't watch that game again. They lose their last game of the season and they're so crestfallen and so down and so drained, they don't watch that game again.

You know, I argue that you got.

To watch it right away.

I argue that you have to watch it right away so that you remember the details of how you prepared, what.

You got right, what you missed, and how things got away from you. If you want to take things to.

The next level and put yourself in a better position to be successful next time, then you need to break everything down then right now and lay out the adjustments that you're going to need to make. And yes, that's hard to do. It's hard to do in the moment when you're hurting. It's hard to do in the moment when you're.

You're mad at yourself, when the anxiety levels high, when the confusion is setting in, when there's ping your finger pointing maybe going on the team when people are chirping.

But you as a coaching leader have the responsibility to do more than anybody else.

So you're more prepared the next day. So your level of self awareness goes up. Your level of collective awareness goes up.

I was mentioning our emerging leader coaching.

Program and our leader role coaching program.

And over the last two weeks we've.

Started 12 new members in both those programs.

And it's a roller coaster ride. Like every day for these leaders is game day. And that's both a blessing and a curse. As a coaching leader, you think about this, you can experience some big wins and losses on the same day. I mean, that's a roller coaster ride. You can have a huge win and a little loss. You can have a little win and a big loss. They can offset, they cancel each other out. Or you can stay even, increase your capacity and learn from both the we have to protect ourselves against both winning.

And in losing and stay true to.

Our routine, stay true to our processes.

Our standards, our expectations.

And the beauty of business is this, is that you have the ability each day to create more opportunities for your team and yourself to take another crack at success when that season ends. In athletics.

That's it.

That's it for months. Don't give me this if you're listening, man, you got a you ball. No, you don't have. No, that's it for meaningful games and meaningful practices. That's it for a while in business, you can jump right back in the saddle and go find some new opportunities for yourself. You can find some new opportunities within the organization to impact somebody else on your team. Okay, how are you leading through all this? How do you lead through all this and continue to focus on growing, developing, inspiring, impacting and supporting your team members? And you could be saying, man, you need to take a beat. You need to take a breath. Here's the thing. You're either expanding or contracting. You're never staying the same as a human being, as a leader, as a coaching leader, you're either getting better or you're getting worse.

You're not staying the course.

You let toxic people on your team get to you and negatively impact the way you lead others. During times of adversity, during times of hard losses, again, coaching is hard. Do you default to connecting with people who will tell you what you want to hear? Let me say that again. Do you default in moments like this? Do you default to connecting with people who will tell you what you want to hear? Or are you committed to leaning into the people who are going to tell you what you need to hear? If you're answering this in your head, don't pay lip service to be brutally honest with yourself. Be brutally honest with yourself. I challenge you as a coaching leader. Think about this.

When you're sitting there having a one one with someone and someone lost a deal or they experienced failure, ask them what they did in the ensuing.

Hours after they realized they had failed. Who did you talk to? What did you listen to?

What did you read? What physical activity did you do? What conversation did you have in your head?

I mean, stay curious about your people.

Figure that out. Are you, as a coaching leader able to consistently communicate with positive energy despite the message and news you are delivering?

One of the things I hear all the time in my coaching programs. I fear the difficult conversation. And I get it. I understand difficult conversations are hard. It's why we call them difficult conversations. But again, I go back to what I always say when we talk about authenticity in terms of honesty, integrity and vulnerability, you're doing things the right way for the right reason, then you have nothing to fear. Get outside your comfort zone and grow. And if you have your team members, the people that you are leading, you have their best intentions at heart. And it's not about you and it's not about your ego. And you don't take their failure personal. As their coaching leader, you're doing things the right way. So I have that conversation because that conversation is going to help them. That conversation is going to help your team.

Now you could be sitting there saying, that's great, I still don't know how to do it. I mean, where do I start? Holy cow, do we do this after every single failure? Because we're failing a lot. How much do you squeeze out of it? You know, sometimes we play the numbers game, right? We play metrics. You know, we try to throw as much against the wall as we can and see what sticks, which is total garbage. That reminds me of some folks that I've worked alongside in the past. And it's not what you do. What's the quality of the work that you're doing? What's the quality of the leadership that you're providing? What's the quality of the coaching leadership you're providing?

So as a coaching leader, what about this?

What if you did this?

Identify a recent loss.

Okay, that was hard. And if you're driving, just do this in your head. If you're sitting there listening to this, you have a pen and paper, write these down and you can play this back and you can pause and do everything you want to do and take time doing this. You know, one of the things in our coaching program we have, obviously we Believe that self awareness is the competitive advantage. You hear say it all the time. Time. And on our new client questionnaire, I tell each new member of our program, say, listen, this isn't just a check the box, let's get this done so it has it and it's in the file and then away we go. No, I want them to take their time doing it.

I want them to go to places mentally and emotionally that they haven't been to in a while. I want them to increase their level of self awareness. True. This exercise in the new client questionnaire helps me get to know them better. As we start to work together, what it really does, it helps them get to know themselves better. How about this?

After a recent loss that was hard.

You answer these simple questions. What role did I play in this loss? What role did I play in this loss? What role did each team member play in this loss?

Every single stakeholder, every single person, I was involved in this.

What role did they play?

And this is not finger pointing. I mean, goodness, don't think this is finger pointing because it's not. This is the reality of it. This is what happens. I'm putting it down on paper because I care enough to get better so we don't lose the next time. What role did each team member play in this? What could I have done as their coaching leader to have put them in a better position, to have been successful? And I don't want to hear.

They weren't engaged.

I don't want to hear. I don't know if they're capable of it. I don't want to hear. Maybe they're quiet, quit. I don't want to hear. I can't control every single thing that they do. I want to hear what you as a coaching leader could have done. What could you have done to put them in a better position to have been successful?

And you know what? It might not have been on this deal, it might not have been in this situation. It might have been two years ago. When you let something slide in silence was consent. And you just enable them to continue losing habits. What role did you play and what.

Could you have done as their coaching.

Leaders or put them in better position to have been successful?

And where did we, us, we go wrong collectively as a team and have the courage to sit around the table or on the zoom call and talk about it, Have a proverbial film session. The film don't lie, guys. This is what happened. Let's get it out there. As hard as this is, it's nowhere near as Hard as losing like this. Let's get it out there, let's get better. And what can we do better next time? And how can we keep each other in check? And by the way, find a way to have them look at each other and say to each other, I refuse.

To let you fail.

I refuse to let you fail.

Then take it one step further as a coaching leader. Take a one step further. And this is. This is where I really love the work we do. I mean, love all of it. This is when it really gets good. This is when you take things to the whole next level as a coaching leader and you're able to keep this level head about you and consistently be the face and voice your team needs to see and hear day in and day out. Okay, as a coaching leader in this situation, what distractions was I dealing with? Personal distractions, professional distractions, anything. What distractions was I dealing with? How did I handle those distractions? In other words, how did I literally, when something popped up as a distraction, what did I physically, mentally and emotionally do? And what was I thinking when all that happened?

And you take all those and you ask yourself this question in each one, what could I have done better? And if you want, you can replace the word distractions with circumstances. Of course you can. Right? What circumstances were challenging? How did I handle those circumstances? In other words, did I react to them? Did I respond to them? Did I reframe them and see opportunity? Or I didn't see. Did I see nothing but doom? What could you have done better? Hey, folks, coaching is hard and it's awesome. And being a coaching leader is hard, but it's awesome. And yeah, there are times that it does get a bit lonely. I love the motivational speakers who sit there and tell you, oh, it doesn't get lonely. You're helping people you know at.

There are certain times in your professional life where you have to sit on stuff on your own and you can't talk to anybody, whether it be for. For HR reasons, whether it be out of respect to the people that are having the challenging situation, challenging circumstances. You have to sit in your own space with these things and navigate through them mentally on your own. I get that. I get that. It's one of the beautiful things about the relationship I have with coaching clients. They can bring that to me because my only interest and my only agenda is their growth. But it's hard. Well, what are you doing today to get better? When you suffer a loss, regardless of the size, what are you going to take from that loss and go Deeper with it, right? Go deeper with it.

You know, sometimes I almost got into talking about the movie For Love of the Game, where the lines the catcher used to, which was just an epic line. A lot of little ones make one big one. But you start thinking about like little losses. People can brush those off, right? Like it's by sales of sales deal. It's just. It's just a little one. They add up. So in the negative response and negative habits, in the lack of reflection and an adaption adjustment that piles up too. You got to take every single loss, every single failure, not dwell on it, Learn from it, squeeze it and get better for the next time. And by doing that, you can help team members learn vicariously through your mistakes as well. And vice versa. You can learn through theirs.

So just know that I get that coaching is hard. Losing is awful. Learn from it. Understand that coaching, our life's not a bunch of cliches. Success is not a bunch of cliches. I love them. I love motivational sayings. I love inspirational sayings. You know, the acronym victory to me is very special my heart because we have worked so hard at it. It is such a foundational piece. It is the foundational piece to all our programs. You know the values, who you are and what you stand for, your intangibles, what separates you, what are the little things that you do. The creativity piece, the ability to reframe, novel solutions, team part of something bigger than yourself. Collectively, you can all accomplish a lot more than you can individually. Objectives, purpose, vision, mission, goals, process, rules of the game.

What are the constraints that you're working inside of. Be willing to challenge the status quo in a professional way.

And then you, right, you're the hardest.

Most challenging, most important person that you will ever lead. Because until you learn to lead yourself, there's no way that you can lead others at the highest level you're capable of.

Throughout this podcast episode, I have referenced.

Our emerging leader coaching program or the elcp as well as our leader enroll coaching program, the ilcp.

If you are interested in learning more about those programs, please do not hesitate to reach out to Viennette at Viennet O.

That's V I A N e t.

O@The molitorgroup.com Shoot her a quick email.

Let her know what you're interested in. She'll get you all the information. Programs do fill up fast. They start quarterly. They fill up very fast.

But we would love to get you in.

We would love to get some conversations, some dialogue going and help you in any way that we possibly can here at the Malta Group.

Thank you for listening to the Athletics of business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit the athleticsofbusiness.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.