Episode 215 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. In this week’s episode, I have a guest with me. His name is Rusty Komori. He is an inspirational keynote speaker, executive coach, and a tennis professional based in Honolulu, Hawaii. From 1994 until 2015, he was the head tennis coach for a boys varsity team that won an unprecedented 22 consecutive state championship, which is a national record in all sports that stands to this day.

0:00:30 Ramona Shaw: Beyond his work as a speaker and as a coach, he also has a televised series called beyond the Lines, and he’s the author of three books, including his most recent release, creating a superior culture of excellence. In this episode today, I talked to Rusty about a range of different topics, including how to be more proactive as a leader, how to prepare your team for challenges, conflict, tension on the team, but also for failures, obstacles, and setbacks.

0:01:01 Ramona Shaw: We talk about the power of self discipline and habit. We talk about how to communicate well with your team and many more things. So if you’ve been thinking about how to get an edge in life, how to get an edge in your leadership role, how to create more excellence within your team, this episode is for you. So without further ado, let’s dive in and welcome Rusty to the show. Here’s the question.

0:01:23 Ramona Shaw: How do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role, build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? That’s the question, and this show provides the answers. Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw, and I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source of stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection, and fulfillment.

0:01:51 Ramona Shaw: And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you learn how to think, communicate, and act as the confident and competent leader you know you can be.

0:02:06 Ramona Shaw: Rusty, it’s great to have you on the show. Thank you for being on The Manager Track podcast. I’m excited to have you here.

0:02:13 Rusty Komori: Oh, Ramona, I’m super excited to be with you.

0:02:16 Ramona Shaw: I looked at your book and a few things that really stood out to me and wanted to talk to you about with the emphasize that you place on developing this high performing mindset in order to achieve exceptional results in business, in life, and in sport. And one of the frameworks that you talk about was related to the three cs. Can you elaborate a little bit more about what made you think of the three cs and what are they and why are they relevant to managers in the workforce?

0:02:48 Rusty Komori: Yes. So basically, when I was a head coach for the Puente Hole School boys varsity tennis team, I. Once we went through tryouts and I had my team together, I would share with them that we’re going to have some major adversity this year. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it is going to happen. And you know what? When the adversity happens and we deal with it and we get through it, we become stronger for that experience.

0:03:16 Rusty Komori: We become better, smarter, tougher for going through that experience. So we need to welcome adversities and look forward to challenges because it’s inevitable. So I’m trying to change. I’m trying to really influence my team’s mindset. And when you focus on the three c’s, choices, communication and culture. For example, choices, I wanted my players to focus on three things. One, control your thoughts, control your mouth, and control your hands.

0:03:54 Rusty Komori: If we can control what we think, what we say and what we do, we have a great chance of controlling our destiny. So, and that’s a choice. I mean, think how simple that concept is. But I really love simplicity and clarity. So I wanted my team to make those proper choices, to control their thoughts, their mouth and their hands. In terms of communication, I share that there’s four situations that cause the most problems in all of our lives.

0:04:28 Rusty Komori: And I refer to these four situations as the four misses, miscommunication, misunderstanding, misinformation and misperceptions. So I’m trying to help teams, whether it be in sports or business, to really try to avoid the four misses. Because if you don’t, you’re going to go off on these tangents with your coworkers or clients, and some of these relationships might not ever be fully repaired. All the while, you’re wasting time taking away from the goals that you want to achieve for your organization.

0:05:05 Rusty Komori: And then the third c is culture. When you’re number one, when you’re in the spotlight, whether it be in business or sports, I would share with my team that we can do 99 things right. If we do one wrong thing, then everyone’s only going to remember that one wrong thing. So we can never do that one wrong thing if you want to be an elite team or a superior organization. So really focusing on the three C’s, choices, communication and culture, keeps you on that, the right path to, you know, ultimately achieving superior excellence.

0:05:47 Ramona Shaw: I love how you call out the importance of embracing adversity and to do so leading up to it. So not once it happened and as a response to it, but already cultivating that mindset, challenges are going to happen. Be prepared for them. Like, this is when you will sharpen the knives. We’ll get better at it. So when it hits, we’re not all flustered and stressed out and overwhelmed by the situation because we were anticipating that something like this will happen and we prepared for it. Like, in sports, we see this all the time.

0:06:21 Ramona Shaw: Gymnasts prepare for falling off the beam. They know how to land well. And in business, that’s something that often gets missed. So I appreciate you calling that out.

0:06:31 Rusty Komori: Yeah, no, that’s for sure. You know, another thing that I would focus on with my teams is I would tell them that I’m not going to protect you from a challenge. And they’re like, what? I said, no, but I’m going to teach you how to face it. Because it goes along the lines of welcoming adversities and looking forward to challenges. It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. But the mindset is so huge. And I know, Ramona, that greatness is a choice because so many people ask me, how do you achieve greatness?

0:07:06 Rusty Komori: Well, greatness is a choice. Excellence is a choice. Kindness, courage are choices. Positivity, perseverance, resiliency are choices. Self discipline is a choice. Self discipline leads to habits which lead to success. So choices, having people understand the power of choices is really huge.

0:07:33 Ramona Shaw: I want to get to self discipline here in a moment, but before we do, you brought out the four misses earlier, and I find this really intriguing because I most definitely see this all the time in a coaching world. Right. When someone comes and brings a challenge and we sort of uncover what are the facts that we really know for sure, and what is it that we don’t know for sure, and what’s the story that we tell ourselves that that’s coming out of it and is that useful or not?

0:08:01 Ramona Shaw: When you work with teams or for people who get this and they understand, like, yeah, I can see how a lot of those misses, the miscommunication, misunderstanding, misperception that they get in the way of good teamwork, what is a way to get to identify them and then help a team? Like, practically speaking, how do you do this for teams to do this work together and recognize it and prevent or prevent it?

0:08:26 Rusty Komori: Yeah, great question, Ramona. So, yeah, I like to be proactive, to really try to anticipate anything and everything that could happen in a business, because, I mean, the greatest leaders are always proactive. They’re never reactive and they’re never complacent, and they’re already training their teams to be proactive as well. So I like to go into an organization, go into a business, and really try to brainstorm with the team members.

0:09:00 Rusty Komori: You know, what, what are some things, some unforeseen circumstances that can and will happen? And then when it happens, how are we going to deal with it? What is our response going to be? And so what happens, Ramona, is when you have that kind of mindset of being proactive, when a tragedy or some kind of really unforeseen circumstance happens, everyone, the team always looks at the leader, and if the leader is flustered and nervous, then the whole team gets flustered and nervous.

0:09:37 Rusty Komori: But if the leader has poised under pressure, they’re calm. Then the whole team feels like, wow, they’re calm, too. Everything’s under control. So, you know, having that kind of attitude and that kind of preparation is really huge, no matter what organization you’re in, whether it be sports, business, or families, because parents are leaders of families, and, you know, to keep your sons and daughters calm when things might be going haywire is really, really important.

0:10:12 Ramona Shaw: So am I understanding you right, that even with, when it comes to those misses, you talk to the team about what are misconceptions, what are potential misinformation? So you’re trying to foresee where those and how those misses may show up in the future and then discuss as a team sort of the team norms of how are we going to respond to that?

0:10:34 Rusty Komori: Yes, exactly. Because I’ll give an example. I’ll say, hey, Ramona, when you get mad at Daniel, because maybe Daniel said something that you might misperceive, where you didn’t have all the information or you might be taking things out of context because you didn’t hear all the facts or the whole story, then that causes you to have awareness. But it also helps where all the other team members might recognize, oh, when Ramona’s getting mad at Daniel, it’s exactly what coach Rusty said about the four misses. And then instead of going off on that tangent, it just stops right there, because now we realize, oh, okay, what are all the facts? And, you know, let’s. Let’s hear all the information.

0:11:21 Rusty Komori: So we don’t have any of those four misses become a problem.

0:11:26 Ramona Shaw: I think this is great work for leaders to do. I don’t see it often implemented, and I think oftentimes leaders hesitate to do this work proactively because it takes courage. It goes a little bit against the grain or the easy. It really means no, we have to get the team together and we have to talk about some uncomfortable things, right. We have to talk about what are the potential misses and failures that they’re going to come up and that may not feel most comfortable and it may get a little bit personal.

0:11:57 Ramona Shaw: So why not just keep bump track with the to do list or the projects and stay in the comfort zone? It does take courage. Is that what you observe as well when you do this, work with teams?

0:12:06 Rusty Komori: Oh, totally. Because the greatest organizations don’t just have a one way street going from the executives to the rest of the team members. It’s a two way street because you need to know what the pulse and the vibe is every day with your company because you don’t want any mishaps to happen. And everyone’s a reflection of each other. So if you’re a CEO, you’re a reflection of your entire company, and your company is a reflection of the CEO.

0:12:36 Rusty Komori: So for me, I have really high standards. I want to share with people the difference between a culture of excellence versus a superior culture of excellence and the gigantic difference between attention to details versus superior discipline. Details. And Ramona, in my new book, we’ve heard the term high achievers before. Well, I’m inventing the term superior achievers because there is a difference between going from good great to superior.

0:13:14 Rusty Komori: And when I’m meeting with various CEO’s every week, I might meet with a CEO and the CEO might say, hey, coach Rusty, I read your books. And I’m like, fantastic, that’s a high achiever. But I might meet with another CEO who will tell me, hey, Coach Rusty, I read all three of your books. Six times each. That’s a superior achiever. Just to give an example, I’ve been.

0:13:39 Ramona Shaw: Thinking about and reflecting on the way students go through our programs, and there is a very strong difference between people who are sort of consuming it and seeing it as like an add on versus people who really embrace it. They learn. It’s not just learning from knowing to doing. There’s a step in between. They learn, they reflect in between. They make it theirs, and then they start doing. And that’s a really.

0:14:10 Ramona Shaw: It takes it to a whole new level. And the results that they achieve are hence also superior, which is reminded me of what we were sharing here. But it comes with the practice. So let’s talk about discipline, because those things we all would like to have the time to read the book six times, right? Or to consume information and then sit down and reflect it and sort of hash it out of, what am I going to do with it? But that takes discipline. So how do you think about self discipline and how do you talk to your business leaders and CEO’s about habits and practices on a regular basis?

0:14:45 Rusty Komori: Yeah. So self discipline is a choice. And you either have self discipline or you don’t. And what I like to do, the success that I had with my teams, you know, when you’re working on something, when you’re practicing something, I don’t want you to practice it until you get it right. I want you to practice it until you can’t get it wrong. And think about how important this is. You don’t work on something until you barely get it.

0:15:14 Rusty Komori: No, you work on something until you can’t get it wrong, until it becomes something that you do and it becomes a part of you and it becomes your identity. So, yeah, I mean, working on something and really achieving mastery with it is what it takes, because everyone has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. Now, I like to highlight, when people make a team, whether it be in sports or business, they’re making the team because of their strengths.

0:15:50 Rusty Komori: They’re not making the team because of the weaknesses that they have. So when they make a team, I want to identify with each individual person what their strengths are. And I’ll ask them, can you tell me what you feel your strengths are? And they might list two, three, four things, but some of those things might not actually be a strength. And then I’ll share with them what I feel their strengths are and I’ll list all these other things and it just opens their mind up to be thinking, wow, I had no idea that people look at me in that way, that that’s my identity, this is what I’m good at.

0:16:30 Rusty Komori: And I’ll share with them that this is how you can help our team, this is how you’re going to contribute, this is how you matter. This is why you need to do what you do in order for us to succeed as a team, as a company. And what I focus on is really making their strengths stronger. I want to amplify their strengths. Sure, we can work on a weakness here and there, but ultimately, I want every person on a business team to have certain strengths and to improve on those strengths because collectively, that would be incredible to have a team with so many strengths, because, you know, you don’t necessarily need to have every strength but or no weaknesses.

0:17:22 Rusty Komori: But collectively, when everybody has, like, something that they excel in, that makes the whole organization special.

0:17:32 Ramona Shaw: And for people to know it, for other people to see it and reflect it back, and then to cultivate an environment where that’s constantly being reinforced I most definitely see this all the time. When teams are leaders do this well, it creates a whole different dynamic and a work environment in which the employees and the team as a whole thrive.

0:17:53 Rusty Komori: Yes, and it’s a back and forth. And, I mean, if the leader has self discipline, self discipline becomes contagious with your team members. And another thing that I’d like to focus on that really leads to building habits is to eliminate unforced errors, to really control everything that you have control of and not really worry about things beyond your control. You know, you can. You can know and have. Be aware about what your competitors are doing, but what. What matters most is what you do.

0:18:29 Rusty Komori: You want to try to outdo what you did yesterday in yesterday’s home runs, don’t win today’s games. So you’re.

0:18:37 Ramona Shaw: You.

0:18:38 Rusty Komori: You have to come with a healthy mindset every day to want to improve yourself. And. And how can I get 1% better doing this or 1% better doing this, or can I get 1% more knowledge today about learning something? And that’s huge. And another huge thing that I’ve had success with is empathy. And, Ramona, you as a leader might have empathy for your team. The key is they need to know that the leader has empathy for them.

0:19:13 Rusty Komori: There’s oftentimes that the leader does have empathy for their team, but the team doesn’t know it. So, for example, if I’m meeting with one of my former tennis students and we’re walking up to the tennis courts together, I might say, oh, I heard that your parents got divorced. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you. Or I remember you saying that your mom had surgery. How is she recovering?

0:19:41 Rusty Komori: Or I remember you saying that you had three big tests today. How did that go? We get up to the tennis courts and they get on the courts, and they want to play their butts off for me, just because they know that I care about them as a person first and as a tennis player second. And that’s the same in business. If your team members know that the leader cares about them as a person first, what are their goals? What are they trying to achieve? How can we add personal growth to them and then thinking that they’re an employee second?

0:20:18 Rusty Komori: That’s how you have empathy. And when you have empathy like that and your people know it, it just creates a huge special bond where that trust and respect gets even deeper.

0:20:32 Ramona Shaw: And it can easily be a loss if we miss that. Right. If people share personal information, we can’t remember it, or we forget to do a follow up when someone has a big event and we just kind of ignore it as a follow up, and there’s so many missed opportunities. And I often find a lot of us think that the people who do this well, will they just remember? I’m always saying, no, don’t assume that they just remember. Most of them are pretty systematic about it.

0:20:59 Ramona Shaw: Most of them will somehow take notes of it. You can do that, too, right? You can have a document, a piece of paper on your desk where you write down things that are going on in your team members lives and then be able to refer it back. Don’t rely on having a good memory in the midst of all the things that are going on work wise.

0:21:19 Rusty Komori: Yeah, Ramona, that’s so important because what I train CEO’s and other executives to do is when they are talking with one of their team members about maybe a personal experience, they might be asking, how’s your son doing? How’s your daughter doing? But then to remember what their names are, jot it down on a paper or write down what school they’re attending, whether it be high school or college. And then the next time you talk with that person, you can review your notes, and it really makes that other person feel like, wow, you care that you heard what they said in the last conversation and you’re following up with them. So you’re so right about really jotting down some notes.

0:22:10 Rusty Komori: And again, you’re doing it because you really care about building relationships with your team members and with the whole team that you have collectively.

0:22:23 Ramona Shaw: Yeah. I want to quickly double click here on what you said with the self discipline for managers and for people that you generally support, what are the most? What are they challenged by the most? Where you think if you develop a little bit more self discipline or a whole lot more self discipline in this particular area, it would change. The way you function or create is more superior, not a more a superior team.

0:22:54 Ramona Shaw: What are those habits? What are the routines?

0:22:56 Rusty Komori: Yeah. So there’s a gigantic difference, Ramona, between difficulty versus impossible. There’s often times where people on a team will say, oh, my gosh, I can’t do it. That’s impossible. Really? Is it really impossible or is it just difficult? And when you highlight what the differences are, then they realize, oh, you’re right, it’s not impossible. It’s just going to be difficult to accomplish it. But it is possible.

0:23:27 Rusty Komori: And so I like to highlight the difference between difficult versus impossible. And another big thing is I like to highlight the difference between performance goals versus results goals because so many times people focus on the results, they want to focus on winning, making money, being number one. Well, how do you win? How do you make money? How do you reach that number one status? Well, it’s through performance goals.

0:23:58 Rusty Komori: And when you focus on performance goals, that that kind of points you in the right direction to keep working towards that goal, and sooner or later, you’re going to achieve it, because a performance goal influences the results. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to be number one, but how do you do it? And then when you can involve your team to really think about different creative ideas or different solutions or new possibilities, things that haven’t been done before, maybe haven’t even been accomplished or invented yet, but you might be on the brink of doing something extraordinary with your team, and you want them thinking, like I say, beyond the lines. You want them thinking, not just being constrained and just doing the things that they’ve always done. You want them to really think about what are the possibilities?

0:24:58 Rusty Komori: How can we achieve what some people think was impossible?

0:25:03 Ramona Shaw: And that gives you a lot more clarity on what are the disciplines that you have to achieve. If you think about it from a performance goal perspective. Yeah.

0:25:11 Rusty Komori: Oh, definitely, definitely. And more specific, you can be the better.

0:25:18 Ramona Shaw: Speaking of performance, you made a comment in your book about the idea of getting trophies for participation or not. Can you elaborate a little bit on that and how you see this show up at work?

0:25:34 Rusty Komori: Yeah, I don’t agree with participation trophies just because it devalues the meaning of a trophy or of that recognition. People know, I mean, they know when they’re just getting a participation trophy. I mean, they know if they deserve it or they don’t deserve it. But you never want to devalue the meaning of a trophy or an award or an honoring because you want to hold that in such a high esteem. And, Ramona, what we did at puddle hole for our tennis program, we would have a puddle hole junior novice tournament.

0:26:18 Rusty Komori: And this is for players who are just learning how to play tournaments. And on the first day, we would display all of the trophies. And there was two sizes of trophies. One was the little size and one was this gigantic trophy and the little ones. Upon closer inspection, the parents and the players looked down and they said, wow, this is the trophies for the winners and the finalists. And these big trophies were for the sportsmanship winners.

0:26:53 Rusty Komori: So what are we trying to accomplish there? We’re trying to show everybody that what we value most is sportsmanship. And then the ironic situation is when you see all the players and even the parents being very nice, very kind, very respectful, you know, giving great effort, having a great attitude that influences the results, that influences winning. But they all want to win the sportsmanship trophy.

0:27:26 Rusty Komori: So that becomes a valuable, meaningful award when they get it, versus everyone getting a sportsmanship trophy, that doesn’t accomplish much at all.

0:27:41 Ramona Shaw: And so if you try to see this in the workplace, how do you see that show up where we might be giving out participation trophy?

0:27:50 Rusty Komori: Yeah. So, I mean, everybody knows in a business who’s deserving. I mean, who’s working extra hard, who is really being extra kind, extra nice, you know, who’s doing all these extra things behind the scenes. And then when those people get honored, it is deserved. But when other people get honored incorrectly, or somebody gets a promotion that they don’t deserve, then everyone else starts to lose trust and respect, or the leader or the management team because it’s not deserved. And maybe they’re just out of touch or they’re showing favoritism.

0:28:35 Rusty Komori: And so that starts to erode the foundations of any team, because you want to. You actually want to build everybody up, and you want to promote and highlight well deserved actions or behaviors and not reward behaviors that are, like, toxic or bad, or just somebody that might not be really helping the team, but they might be hurting the team.

0:29:06 Ramona Shaw: Or sometimes it’s also just not proportionate to the rewards. They may not be doing something bad, but it’s not as in proportion to the promotion that they get or the recognition that they get that then starts to erode some of that trust. And what I also find, to add, what you shared here, sometimes it’s not necessarily that it was done the wrong way, but it wasn’t communicated clearly. There wasn’t transparency of why did this person get promoted or why did this person get to be this project team, this high visibility project team.

0:29:37 Ramona Shaw: And so when we don’t talk about it, people will make up their own stories of why. And it’s usually not the good ones, right? It’s usually some kind of favoritism that will bias, that will play into it. So being transparent of what will get you promoted or for what reasons? Did someone get a reward or a recognition or be part of this project team? Those are all ways that people can assume. I’m seeing your head.

0:30:01 Rusty Komori: No, Ramona, you nailed it. You nailed it right there. Because when a leader makes a decision, if they make a very tough decision, you can’t make everybody happy. You can’t make 100% of everybody happy with the decision that you might make. But what you can do is you can share with them why you made the decision, why this person got promoted. And still, not everyone might agree with it, but they’re all going to respect why you made that tough decision.

0:30:36 Rusty Komori: And when you explain the reasons why, again, you’re avoiding the four misses, you’re avoiding that misperception or that misunderstanding. So too many leaders, they make decisions and that’s it. Just everyone else starts to be thinking, why? Why was that decision made? It doesn’t make any sense. So again, that’s when that misperception or misunderstanding starts to happen. And then now you’re going off on these tangents and instead of staying on that path to really achieve the goals that you need to achieve.

0:31:12 Ramona Shaw: Right. As we wrap up, what’s something that is that you would deem to be important for the audience of The Manager Track podcast, but we haven’t yet talked about?

0:31:24 Rusty Komori: Well, you know, I like to share with everybody that all of us are capable of doing more than what we think we’re capable of doing, and all of us are capable of achieving more than what we think we’re capable of achieving. And there’s two types of people in the world. One, one type of person has a victim mindset and the other has a Victor mindset. Now, what do you think achieves greatness or superior excellence?

0:32:00 Rusty Komori: Not having that victim mindset and, you know, thinking, oh, woe is me. And, wow, I can never catch a break. I’m the unluckiest person in the world. No, you gotta be having that Victor mindset about, you know, thinking that life doesn’t happen to you, life happens for you. And all of us, again, we’re gonna have challenges in our life. But in some of the challenges, some of the adversities will be a lot deeper than what other people might deal with, but challenges nonetheless.

0:32:33 Rusty Komori: And the only way to overcome that is by having that Victor mindset.

0:32:39 Ramona Shaw: And that’s something that we can develop over time. Right. So that is a part of your work, and that leads us to your book. Tell us a bit more about your new book.

0:32:48 Rusty Komori: Yeah, so, superior. I share with everyone that there’s a difference between good, great and superior. And what superior is about, ultimately, is it’s a lifestyle. How do you be a superior parent? Or how do you be a superior son or daughter, or coach, or player or leader or team member? So superior is about, it’s a playbook for you to achieve peak performance for yourself, but to also help others around you achieve peak performance for themselves.

0:33:26 Ramona Shaw: Thank you for sharing that. We will put your book into the show notes and we will include your social media channels as well. I recommend reading the book going through this. This kind of work, I think is totally undervalued or underestimated for many facets of our lives. We may think about it as sports athletes and Olympians, the high achievers in the sports world where we know they have mindset coaches and we kind of assume, well, fine, that’s them, but that’s not me. And we don’t realize how much and how beneficial it can be for us to think about our thinking and how our mindsets create and influence our actions, the way we feel, and ultimately the results that we create.

0:34:12 Ramona Shaw: And I love your distinction between exceptional and superior. So thank you for coming on, sharing a bit more about your perspective around work and teams and how to create better teams. I appreciate having you on and lots of success with your book and your future work.

0:34:31 Rusty Komori: Thank you. Ramona, it was awesome being with you on the show today.0:34:36 Ramona Shaw: If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes my best selling book, the confident and competent new manager, which you can find on Amazon or@ramonashaw.com book and a free training on how to successfully lead as a new manager. You can check it out@ramonashaw.com masterclass these resources and a couple more you’ll find in the show notes down below.