Like Your Life Depends on It, 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. Ed Molitore. And where do I begin? We are going through some unbelievable, crazy times as we jump in here into 2021. And for all of you who did not listen to me and you continue to just say goodbye to 2020, can't wait to see it in my rearview mirror. You know what happens when you keep looking in your rearview mirror and you don't pay attention to where you're going to? Boom. You run into something head on. And we've already done that here in 2021. We are going through some crazy stuff. And I think one of the things that's as obvious as it has ever been is that character is revealed during adversity.

And that's something that we've been saying from the beginning of the pandemic. We've been saying it forever, but really specifically on this podcast, we've talked about guest after guest, just had some wonderful conversations wrapped around the fact that your level of authentic leadership is either going to be revealed or exposed during these challenging times. And with what we have going on here in our government in the United States, the awful things that happened at our Capitol building as a parent now more than it has ever been, and then you stop to think about, okay, add to the crazy times. What about COVID What's going on with our Covid numbers? And I don't mean to timestamp this, but I think we're going through such a historic time and so many significant things. I want to talk about it.

I mean, in the United States right now, we are at 22.5 million cases of COVID with over 375,000 deaths. Now, this is not a political podcast. This is not a. A science podcast, a health podcast, nor am I here to form an opinion on the validity of the numbers or anything like that. What I am here to talk about is the fact that this is very real. This is still a struggle. It's going to continue to be a struggle, and it's probably going to get worse before it's going to get better. Something else we've been saying for a while, you know, but I want to talk about, and I want to be transparent, not just vulnerable, but I want to be a Little bit transparent with you as it's been a grind.

We took two weeks over the Christmas break to get up north and take the kids skiing and had just a phenomenal family time. Just created great memories. A lot of skiing, sledding. Probably ate way too much food and just a lot of laughs. And once we got back into it was hard to lock into the swing of things because we disconnected so well. At least I disconnected so well and just try to be present with the kids, with the family when we got back to reality. So much going on. Still had the kids at home with school before they went back hybrid, and they got back into their routine. So my routine was a little bit paused, and I just felt like I was grinding. I felt like I was sluggish. I didn't feel like I had that positive energy.

Not that I was negative, not that I was pessimistic, and not that I was depressed, but there was just something that was a little bit off. And I think that speaks very well into what we're going to talk about, and that's personal resilience. And, you know, we talk about resilience being a direct byproduct of your level of authenticity. Again, if you're new to the podcast or new to my content, I break authenticity down into three things. Honesty, integrity, and vulnerability. And I really believe when you do things in an authentic light, you're honest with yourself and with others. Your words and actions meet, your thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs are aligned, and you have the ability to be vulnerable and open yourself up. I believe you've built this unbelievable armor of resiliency.

Okay, that just grows over time, the more consistent you are in everything that you do. And right now, our personal resilience is being challenged at a completely different level than it was during that first wave, that initial shock of the COVID 19. It's funny how things work out. Mark Hydersbach, who is vice president of neuroscience sales for Acadia Pharmaceuticals, was kind enough to join us on podcast episode number 79. Okay, if you haven't listened to Mark's podcast, go listen to it. It is absolutely phenomenal. It's. And he shared an article with me last week. I believe it was. Might have been the week before from hbr. Okay. From the Harvard Business Review. And if you don't read that, you have to subscribe. Get it. It's unbelievable, the content they have in there.

And this is from the leading team section, and it was titled how to lead when your team is exhausted and you are too. And I think that's very fitting because I think as leaders, especially when we're going through challenging times, we really had the ability to just lock in and fly on fumes, right? It's that initial sense of responsibility and ownership of like, we've got this now. I'm going to figure out things right away. But this article does a great job of laying that out there. And I wanted to share that with you. Okay? I don't want to read it verbatim, but I want to share that with you. And it talks about psychological stamina, but here's what it says, okay? It talks about how to move through the second wave successfully.

Leaders need to reexamine their personal resilience and that of their team members. And we talk resilience all the time about the ability and strength to overcome obstacles. Bounce forward, they say. Bounce back. I call it bounce forward. And to recover in the face of challenges. Now, how to lead when the whole world is tired, right? So let me read this to you. Compare it to the adrenaline fueled response in the spring and false dawn about the recovery over the summer. The second wave requires a new understanding of personal resilience. Here's what I really want you to pay attention and think about this in terms of your own world, okay? In terms of what's going on with you right now. In the first wave, personal resilience relied on a psychological emergency response called arousal. Okay, let me reread that sentence.

In the first wave, personal resilience relied on a psychological emergency response called arousal. Shocks, threats and sudden uncertainty will make us super alert. And we activate resources that are skin deep things such like adrenaline, fighting, spirit, right? We're all in this together. We're pulling together. And that response is impulsive. It's almost universal and immediately recognizable across many teams. You think about it in the sense of athletics, right? Like, here we go. All right, we got punched in the mouth. Now we're going to change momentum in the game. We regroup, we're going to swing back at our opponent, okay? Or we're ready for the big game. We're locked in. Let's go. We're, we're in this together. But here's the deal. Over time, right? So now we're in the marathon, now we're in a long fight.

Personal resilience in the second wave is a completely different story because it relies on the very thing I want to talk to you about today, which is psychological stamina. Psychological stamina rests on more deep seated emotional patterns shaped by our individual needs, histories and experiences. Okay? And you think about it from a leadership standpoint, this is another one of the many great reasons to get to know your people at a deep level. Because their psychological stamina rests on their deep seated emotional patterns which are shaped by their individual needs, their histories and their experiences. In other words, their story, right? What makes them tick, how they respond, why they respond. Stamina is required because frankly, the second wave is not exciting at all. Which is what I was just talking about when I got tried to get back in the swing of things.

It was just everything seemed to be like a hassle. Now back to the article. People report feeling bored, disconnected and unnerved in contrast to the skin deep reactions of the first wave. The second wave requires, and I love this right here, perseverance, endurance and even defiance against the randomness, gloom and burden of the pandemic. And I'm going to argue not just a pandemic, but all the BS we have going on in the country right now. Okay? So because it does affect us, whether or not it affects your industry or your career or your job or your family, personally, it absolutely impacts you. Now, I'm cut from a very unique cloth. I mean, we're all cut from a different cloth, but I'm cut from a very unique cloth in the sense that I grew up and enjoyed operating with a chip on my shoulder. Okay.

I grew up a coach's son, which was always kind of a. You know, you saw your, your dad and his teams go to battle every week, right, in the games and you sit in the stands, you listen to what people say to your dad about his teams, about his coaching ability and what they think. You start operating with an edge. You know, I know as a player, you know, for me, for whatever reason, I had fun playing hard and playing with the chip on my shoulder. Like I wasn't the guy that you were going to see in a game laughing, joking around with the opponent. Didn't mean I didn't like him. Didn't mean we might not have gone to grade school together or at college. Maybe we had gone to high school together. But I loved operating with a sense of defiance.

It just allowed me to sustain the different things that would come up during games and as you train in the off season as an athlete, those days you didn't feel like going into the weight room, the days you didn't feel like jumping into the pool, the days you didn't feel like putting up shots in the gym, you had to find a way to get yourself to persevere. And endure all those times. Right. And that is something that speaks to the psychological stamina. It could be when you're bored. It could be when you just feel completely disconnected. You get rattled, you're a little bit unnerved. There might not be an end in sight. You know, everyone starts talking about the vaccines being the light at the end of the tunnel. That's great.

But we don't know when we're actually going to be face to face with that light. We don't know how far down the tunnel that light, which is the vaccine actually is residing. So we have to have this psychological stamina. And I firmly believe that you can build that psychological stamina even when things are going well in your life. And I'm going to share you a story with what I mean by that. Years ago, 14 or 15 years ago, I was the head basketball coach, head men's basketball coach at Harper College Junior college. Right around my hometown was in Palatine, Illinois. Just, it's a phenomenal junior college, great academic junior college in a very good athletic league. At the time, they still had football, incredible football program and wrestling program. And I had taken over for a gentleman by the name of John Bagley, who.

Former guard for the Boston Celtics way back when. And he did a really good job and program was struggling a little bit. And when I met with the team for the first time and he stepped down late, okay, it was in the spring, coming up on the summer, and he stepped down late. And the interview process moved fast. I think I got the job about a day after I interviewed. I only interviewed once, and I met with the team and I said, we're going to do three things. I talked, obviously, I talked about the academic world. I talked about what they're going to be like in the community. I established the standards. I talked about the high level of standards that we are going to have. We weren't going to. Now, what I'm about to say isn't a knock on junior college programs.

It's a statement to their resources. I said, we're not going to run this like a typical junior pilot college program. This is going to be run like an NCAA Division 1 program. And our expectations of you, standards of you on and off the court in the way we do things. And I said, we are not going to lose a home game. We're going to win every single game at home. We are never going to lose two games in a row. And if you know anything about junior college basketball, you play like 5,000 basketball games in the season. Okay? And your Road games, you're driving vans. I mean, it's not. There's nothing glamorous about it. It was a long way away from what I was doing when I was at Texas A and M. And we're going to win our conference, region and national championship.

Those are the three things I told them. Now, a lot of things had to change, and the first thing that had changed was we had to add some players because we only had five people. But it was unbelievable how these kids bought in. Okay, there was. There's five people at that meeting that made it to our first practice. And we signed some incredible players, just had some incredible players join the program. And about midway through the season, we found ourselves 15 and 2 and were ranked in the top 10 nationally. And again, I'm going back to how you can build your psychological stamina for tough times, even when you're being successful. Okay. Because what happens is people have a tendency to think that, oh, we got to go through adversity to build this psychological stamina. Okay, so back to the story.

So we're 15 and two. There's about a three or four day stretch where our guys, I sense that they're going through the motions. They're bored at practice. And I was trying to do some different things. They weren't there. It wasn't like they were being lazy. It wasn't like they're given 50% effort. They just weren't there. There wasn't the positive energy, there wasn't the over communication. They seemed kind of lost in their own minds and weren't getting better. We had several more days to our next game and weren't getting better. And I couldn't let it keep going much longer. So I yelled baseline, okay? And when I yelled baseline, it could be a really bad thing for the players. It could mean we're either going to run or it could be a really good thing. Can mean practice is over.

But this was not the case that day. It can mean we're going to run a lot, or I've got some peace of mind. I want to speak, but really, I wanted to use this as a teaching moment. So I yelled baseline. And our guys sprinted their lips off. I mean, they're unbelievable. Just a great group of guys. And they get to the baseline and they got this, oh, no, what's about to happen look on their face. And so I go through with what I've observed. I talk to them about what I've noticed. I don't raise my voice I don't get angry. I don't yell. I just simply state the facts, reality, and I say, what's up? What's going on? Now, an age group like this, junior college athletes, over Christmas break, 15 and 2, top 10 nationally.

Most of the guys living in an apartment. There could be many things that are actually going on. But what we identified was a lot of them were lost all of a sudden in their personal adversity. They're thinking about their individual adversity as opposed to the collective success that were experiencing. Some of it had to do with playing time for guys. Some of it had to do with issues with their girlfriends. Some didn't do as well academically. The grades had just come out. Even though he did great as a team, especially for a junior college, it was amazing. Others had issues at home, and some guys were just literally just bored. So I asked him a question. I said, fellas, let me ask you something. I said it, and raise your hand.

How many of you here have had a family member, maybe yourself have had a family member go through a significant personal health struggle in the last three to four years? And what I was trying to do is I was trying to get them to identify something that would create emotional response internally. So several of them raised their hand. I said, okay, put your hands down. I go, now the rest, I want you guys to stay with me here because I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to visualize something for me. Imagine this. Imagine a person you love or you care for is about to have a surgery that is very significant, like, your life depends on it. Okay? This is a life or death situation. Your life depends on this surgery.

And the surgeon walks in like it's just another day at the office. He has to be there. And you can tell by the look on his face that he's not really connected. Okay, or she's not really connected. And you can tell that they. They're kind of going through the motions. And they mumble, hello. And they mumble their communications to the support staff, to the nurses, to the or assistant, to the anesthesiologist. They're not really exuding that positive energy or that hope or that confidence or that sense of urgency that you would like them to have. And you notice that they're sort of moving around nonchalantly, but they're doing what seems to need to be done. Now I turn out, look at me.

I go, now, if this was you or someone you love, someone you care for, laying on that operating table, how Many of you would want your doctor to behave that way. Raise your hand. Nobody raises their hand. I said, is this the way you would want this surgeon? I go through it all again. No. To a man. No. Okay. A couple of them actually said something a little bit stronger. So then I asked the question, how would you want this person to operate? How would you want this person to behave? Excuse me?

How would you want this person to come into the operating room and act and behave and communicate, even though it might be the third surgery of the day, even though it might be the 20th surgery of the week, even though something awful may have just happened in his life, how would you want that to happen? And they proceeded to raise her hand and get engaged and tell me exactly right, With a little swagger, energy, confidence. Okay. Like, it's the only place that doctor wanted to be at that moment. The one I really loved was that doctor was the best person and the only person that I would want to have doing the surgery that day, which I thought was phenomenal.

And then one of our guys said, I want that doctor to walk in like my life depended on it, and like his life depended on it. And that's when it really resonated, right? That's when they knew what I was getting at. We needed to come in each and every day, no matter how bored were, no matter how disconnected were, no matter how much was going on in our world outside of those doors, of that gym. And we needed to be focused for two hours like our life depended on it. And that was the defiance that was going to be our perseverance. That was going to be what helped us endure. And I'll tell you this, we never had to have that conversation again the rest of the season. I just had an incredible run, and it really resonated with them.

And to me, that's a lesson I learned at a very early age, listening to my father tell his team. And when you put things in perspective, I mean, if it's important enough for a surgeon to have to do that when they're trying to save your life, why can't we, as people do that every single day? We can sit here and we can look at all the gloom and doom. We can look at the fact we get to get another zoom. I heard a great one the other day. Heard a great one from a client the other day. Yeah, it's going to be a challenge with this team, getting them to really get engaged on the zoom, no matter what you do. I mean, for instance, I have one Person that just doesn't want to put on her makeup. Okay, I get that.

What, is she going to have to put on her makeup when she goes to the office? Does she have to. Does he or she have to get in the car and drive? People complain about face to face meetings now at zoom meetings. And I respect and I am compassionate about the zoom fatigue. I get it. I get it. But that's why we're talking about psychological stamina right now. Right? That's why we're talking about taking our personal resilience away from just the arousal that you normally would get with the initial shock. And now we're moving it into the psychological stamina. And we're going to have the ability to persevere, to endure. There's a toughness, there's defiance. There is a grit about us. Which leads me to the next thing I want to talk about and the last thing I want to talk about.

Okay, I just really want touch base with you on this, you know, and I think. I think maybe I can finish up. Actually, this part talking about this, where it's. Talks about cultivating resilience, requires some emotional rewiring and calls for a different kind of appeal to team members and colleagues. And that's why I shared that story with you, because you can do it during tough times, but it's also very feasible and very applicable to do it during times when things are going okay. And the article again, hbr Harvard Business Review article titled how to Lead when youn Team is Exhausted and you'd are too. And then the three ways. The three key steps to psychological stamina are. One, understanding the difference between urgency and importance. Next one, balancing comfort with containment.

This is something we'll talk about in future solo cast and I'll ask about in future podcasts. It's so huge. And the third one is finding new ways to energize yourself and others. Now, the last thing I want to talk to you about. So this past weekend, so many sports stories. You got the playoffs. My Bears weren't a story tell you that. But you had playoffs. Football playoffs. College basketball is trying to get into full swing. NBA basketball is trying to get into full swing. Just a lot going on. But to me, the greatest sports story of the weekend was about Andrew Jones from Texas. Okay, Texas basketball. If you haven't heard this story, find it. Watch the video. I've been following Andrew Jones for a while now, and you'll figure this out here in a second. But down by one in the final minute.

All right, Texas gave Up two offensive rebounds to West Virginia. If you know anything about these two teams and their coaches, it is a flat out war. They absolutely battle and go at it. Now, Texas foul, I believe, is Emmett Matthews. Okay? And he goes to the free throw line. There's about 10 or 11 seconds left. Game. 10 seconds left in the game, I believe. And he missed both free throws. And Shaka Smart, head coach of Texas, he chose not to call a timeout and set up a play. So Courtney Rami takes the ball down the court and he drives the left side of the lane, the left side of lane. I mean, he puts his head down and he goes, all right. And obviously, West Virginia's defense collapsed on him.

And standing in the right corner on the other side of the court, which would seem like a completely blind pass on the other side of court was Andrew Jones. And he was open, kicks it to him. Jones absolutely buries a three pointer with about 1.1 seconds to go in the game. Now, puts him up, too, I believe. Put him 72 to 70. And there's some significance to this. Why is it such a big deal? It's a basketball game. How is that the greatest sports story of the weekend? If you know the story, you're looking like, okay, you're smiling right now because you know why? It's a great story. Jones also scored his 1000th point as a Longhorn during the game. He finished that game with 16 points, three rebounds, and made four threes. Still not the best sports story of the weekend.

Here's why it is. That game winner came three years to the day that he was diagnosed with leukemia. Three years to the day after the game, Andrew said, all glory to God for even allowing me to be here. Think about that. All glory to God. And I'm not getting religious. I'm just talking about what the young man said and his mindset and his thought. All glory to God for even allowing me to be here and play the game that I love. I had. You know, you've heard me talk about Brian Delaney on previous podcasts. High school team in mine, who I admired and looked up to like a big brother and had a huge impact in my life. And I watched him come to practice after he struggled through his treatments. Okay, he says thank you to my teammates and all my supporters.

Let's keep going. Now, I want to read a little bit because I want to make sure I get the facts straight here, though. Okay? So I printed this out for. I want you to really think about what this young man went through. This is Not a feel good story. I mean, it is a feel good story, but that's not why I'm telling you that. So I'm talking about psychological stamina. I'm talking about defiance of the odds. I'm talking about perseverance, and I'm talking about endurance. I'm talking about you have to have compassion for your people and compassion for yourself. But at some point, we need to step out of that. Not out of the compassion. We need to step out of that boredom, out of that gloom and doom.

We need to snap out of it and we need to go to work in stories like this that I want to share with you to help you do that. Here's what it says. Jones was diagnosed with leukemia in January of 2018. He was released from the hospital more than a month later. So in the middle of basketball season in 2018, he's diagnosed with leukemia. Now, you and I both know that when you are a college athlete, especially when you're playing at that level, your entire life, physically, emotionally, psychologically has been committed to getting to that level. Now here he is, 2018, he's diagnosed with leukemia, spends a month in the hospital. He completed his chemo treatment in August of 2018. Then he returned for two games in November, which was the beginning of the start of the 20182019 season.

But then he began another round of treatment just a month later, before Christmas, after missing the better part of two seasons. Jones had 20 points in Texas opener last season and went on to play all 31 games. We're talking about him winning the game. We're talking about him putting up. What were his stats again? What did I say they were? 16, three and four. Okay? Four three pointers, 16 points, three boards, four threes, including the one that won the game. Three years to the day that he was diagnosed with leukemia. Mind blowing to me. Okay? Now he missed the season opener, has played in all 10 games since, and they are off to 10 and 1.

Here's what Shaka Smart said, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, not just because of all the success he's had, but the things that he's endured. Okay? It's not easy being a coach at University of Texas and it's not easy being a minority coach at the University of Texas, especially if you struggle a couple seasons. And here's what Shaka Smart said. Complete class. He's come so far. I don't know a lot of guys that would be able to do what he did from the standpoint of scraping and clawing his Way back. The one thing that is just so impressive about Andrew from the beginning is after he was diagnosed, he kept saying, here's psychological stamina. All right, here's where it all begins. He kept saying, I'm going to come back and play. I'm going to come back and play.

And I think the rest of us were just like, we'll be happy if we can just get you back healthy. Forget playing right now. But I think that really helped him from a motivational standpoint. I mean, think about that. Okay? Yeah, it's an amazing story because it was three years today. He hit the game winner. But you think about all the trials and tribulations that young man went through just to be in position to be standing in that corner to receive that pass. Think about the psychological stamina. When he was in the middle of it a year and a half ago, did he say, you know what? You know what, fellas? I'm going to hit the game winner on January 10, 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, and that's where I'm going to be.

That's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to hit the game winner. It's gonna be three years today. How about that? No, we don't know where we're going to be a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. But what can you do today collectively, what can you do today individually, as a leader? How can you help your people increase and improve and tap into their psychological stamina? And I think that's something that we need to focus on and I think stay with the self awareness factor. Catch yourself when you're going down the other, you know, the rabbit hole of negative thinking. All right, have grace with yourself. We're going to take some punches, we're going to take some tough punches, and then when you have some wins, celebrate those wins, but stay true to the psychological stamina.

We don't know when this thing is going to pass. We don't know. We don't know if it's going to pass and when it does pass, what our world is really going to look like. But what we can do today is we can operate, we can behave, we can think, we can serve, we can do all of the things that we talk about, like our life depends on it. All right, I hope I shared some things with you can take away. Share with your team, share with your family, your mentees, your mentors again, please. I would love to hear from you. I love getting emails, I love getting instant messages. You can hit me up on my email@edemolatorgroup.com okay.

You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and just I can't thank you enough for listening and if you haven't had the opportunity to do so, go to itunes and rate and review the podcast. That would be fantastic. Just so many great reviews. I appreciate the feedback. If there's anything you would like to hear me talk about, any guests you'd like me try to go after to see if we can get on here for a wonderful conversation. And if you are a previous guest listening to this podcast, thank you again. Things I talked about will be in the link in the show notes.

Mark Heidersbach, episode 79 Vice President of Neuroscience Sales at Acadia Pharmaceuticals, was kind enough to share the HBR article which that article I will also have a link to in the podcast Show Notes and I'll put a link to this great article on ESPN.com to Andrew Jones and really go find out more about Andrew Jones Journey. Okay. If you want to know what athletics is all about, that kid right there, okay, what he's been through, how he's grown through it, and what it's meant to his team and his teammates. Remember, we're all part of something bigger than ourselves. If you need something, I'm going to leave you with this totally unscripted moment, but I'm going to leave you with this, something I read every single morning. It's taped in my bathroom mirror. There's one sitting in my office. Okay. It's in my kid's bathroom.

And it's titled this is something I Got my sophomore year in high school. Coach Williams gave this to us and he challenged us to do it for 21 days straight. I've been doing it ever since. It is awesome. And it is by Hartsell Wilson. Okay, I talked about Hartzell in a previous podcast. I won't go into detail here, but I'll tell you, this is something that he gave Paul Bear Bryant when Coach Bryant was the head coach at Texas A and M University, which was a lifetime ago. But it's titled the Beginning of a New Day. And I think this really helps us get focused every single day. There's times I read it more than once. Trust me. And it goes, this is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. Now.

If you're not spiritual, if you don't believe in God, you can replace that with I have been given this day to use as I will. But I read it as this is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place. I have traded for it. I want it to be a gain, not a loss. Good, not evil. Success, not failure in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for Keep doing great things.

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