Today’s episode features performance coach, author, and speaker, Brett Bartholomew. Brett is the founder of “Art of Coaching™”, which works with corporations in the financial and tech sector, medical professionals, military, as well as professional sporting organizations to enhance their leadership ability through improved communication and understanding of human behavior. Brett is the author of the best-selling book “Conscious Coaching”, and has spoken worldwide on performance and communication topics. Brett has served as a performance coach for a diverse range of athletes, ranging from youth to Olympians, those in nearly every professional sport, as well as those in the U.S. Special Forces and Fortune 500 companies.
Coaching is a rapidly evolving field. Strength coaches must grow in a multi-disciplinary manner on a variety of levels to stay competitive and serve athletes better. Sport skill coaches cannot simply use the same rigid cues and drill sets and methods that their coach used on them. Rather, a thorough understanding of human learning and psychology, a more holistic model must be found to facilitate the optimal technical and tactical development of the athlete.
Brett Bartholomew has evolved greatly in his time as a coach, and his diverse coaching background has given him the means to see a large problem in the field: A lack of education, skills, and emphasis in general on communication and understanding of human behavior. Being a better communicator means acquiring better buy-in, more effort, and more enjoyment on the part of those we are coaching, and there are a lot of means by which we can improve in this arena as coaches. On today’s show, Brett talks about why communication has been under-emphasized in coaching (despite its importance) how improving in this area can improve athlete outputs, as well as practices and exercises that coaches can utilize to improve their own leadership and communication abilities.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
3:30 Key moments in Brett’s evolution as a coach, and his drive towards an emphasis on communication in learning
11:45 Why communication is under-emphasized in most coach education programs, and why coaches are often blind to their own coaching communication abilities
20:40 Concrete outcomes of better communication on the level of the coach and athlete
26:10 How improving one’s communication can help one’s evolution as a coach and leader
38:00 Impression management in life, as well as in the coaching profession
44:10 Types of activities that can make a coach better in a chaotic environment
“Most leaders at companies at high level organizations are making decisions with less than 70% of the information that they need”
“Athletes are people first… you have to show varying levels of yourself, building buy in requires you to get on the level of other people”
“Why do we think we are so good at communication when so few people get evaluated (in communication)”
“We think that just because we value getting information a certain way, that other people value that way as well”
“When the foundation of coaching is communicating with others, and knowing how to translate literally and metaphorically what you mean to broader audience, and you can’t do that, something has gone wrong”
“You need to be able to tune your message into different frequencies”
“If you are a better communicator, you are going to get more out of people”
“Success with high performance environments is not just about managing an athlete’s training, it’s about managing the athlete themselves, and their environment”
“There’s 5-6 forms of various impression management tactics people use, and once you know them, you can’t help but see them everywhere. It’s not about are they right or wrong, it’s are they managed skillfully and ethically”
“Coaching and communication and leadership is a non-linear thing… the only way to fight chaos is to become more adapted to chaos”
“If you don’t put skin in the game, I don’t know that you are going to improve”
About Brett Bartholomew
Brett Bartholomew is a performance coach, author and keynote speaker.
His company, Art of Coaching™ works with corporations in the financial and tech sector, medical professionals, military, as well as professional sporting organizations to enhance their ability to lead more effectively through a better understanding of human behavior, persuasion, and power dynamics.
His book Conscious Coaching: The Art & Science of Building Buy-In, was named,
The #1 BESTSELLER IN SPORTS COACHING ON AMAZON
The #8 BESTSELLER IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP AMAZON
TOP 100 BESTSELLER ON AMAZON
Prior to his work in the leadership space, Brett served as a performance coach for a diverse range of athletes across 23 sports worldwide including those who compete in the NFL, NBA, MLB, UFC, MLS, and NCAA, the Olympics as well as members of the U.S. Special Forces and Fortune 500 companies.
Transcripts
Joel Smith: On this show, we’re always trying to find, or grab those low hanging fruits of athletic performance, whether it be training the mind, nutrition, stress, and lifestyle perception, reaction, finer points of speed biomechanics, and really anything that exists that I feel is really underrepresented in the way that we seek to give athletes their best experience I’m always looking for. When it comes to coaching, Brett Bartholomew is addressing a very significant, low hanging fruit, and that is of understanding human behavior and communicating properly with one’s team, athletes, whoever you’re working with in coaching. That’s something that doesn’t just reside in the coaching field, but is universal. And it shows in Brett’s work. Brett is the founder of the Art of Coaching, where he works with many corporations, such as finance, tech, medical professionals, military, as well as sport and athletic coaches. Brett is the author of the bestselling book, Conscious Coaching.
Joel Smith: He spoken worldwide on performance and communication topics. And of course, Brett has put his years in, in the trenches coaching, having worked with a diverse range of athletes from youth to Olympians to those in nearly every professional sport, as well as those in U.S. Special Forces and fortune 500 companies. Coaching is really a rapidly evolving field, especially sports performance is so multidisciplinary. I think there’s so many things that we can put in our own tool belt in our layers of awareness to just be better at what we do to serve athletes better, to give them the best in training techniques, but also the best experience, the best buy-in the best relationship with us as coaches. And so with that, our show with Brett has some really relevant topics lined up. He’s going to talk about some key moments in his evolution as a coach and key moments where he really saw communication has a really important part or piece in the coaches arsenal.
Joel Smith: He’s going to talk about why communication is underemphasized, concrete outcomes of improving one’s communication and knowledge of human behavior, and finally, some practical activities and ideas that can help coaches get a better sense of themselves, better awareness and improve the way that they speak and interact with their athletes on a regular basis. I’m excited to get you guys this episode, so let’s get onto it. Episode 217 with Brett Bartholomew. Brett man, it’s awesome to have you on the show. Thanks for being here today.
Brett Bartholomew : Hey, great to be on here. Thanks for having me.
Joel Smith: So I know that you’ve talked about this multiple probably podcasts in the past and many times on your own, but we have a kind of a multidisciplinary field in strength and conditioning and it, and it needs to evolve. And in some ways I think of things as becoming your own superhero, you know, what skills are you putting onto yourself and how are you evolving over time to serve athletes better? And so my question for you is, what are some skills at critical moments and skills that you’ve formed yourself as a coach over the years?
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah. I think the ability to adapt a lot more effectively and efficiently by putting myself in dense and diverse environments, you know, there were a lot of times where it’s one thing to coach athletes in a environment where you have all the tech, all the toys, all the tools you need. It’s another thing when all of a sudden, you know, I was on a plane having to teach in a country where nobody spoke English, or all of a sudden I’m running a workshop somewhere else and you don’t have half the things you were supposed to have. The logistics don’t go well, and you’ve just got to figure it out. And I think that that’s something that really is not great for emergent leaders or coaches, whatever term you want to define when they’re so focused on controlling the environment. And so focused on trying to have everything locked and loaded that they don’t know how to improvise. You know, research shows, Joel, like most leaders today, especially at high level companies and organizations, which coaches need to view themselves as, and in their own way, basically are making decisions with less than 70% of the information they need. And so I just think the willingness to be able to adapt, to adopt new strategies, to focus on communication, psychology, getting everybody on the same page so that we can have, you know, a longer term commitment, higher level commitment and better outputs has been the most critical thing.
Joel Smith: Yeah. As I know, as you’ve with just coaching in general, you’ve been to a lot of places, coached in a lot of situations and had to do a lot of unique thinking and problem solving and communicating. So along the way, what were some real key places you’ve been that forced you to change to evolve?
Brett Bartholomew : I think the earliest one was going to Norway and I had to go to Norway, which, you know, plenty of them spoke English, but in this in this unique circumstance, I had to run a workshop that was 50% more lecture, philosophical, 50% applied. And, you know, there was a time where I was supposed to lead 50 Norwegian coaches through multidirectional movement. And we were supposed to have this basketball court and everything was supposed to be locked in. We were supposed to have a translator, all these things, we ended up basically having none of those things. We had a third of the space that we needed. Translator was late, you know, so all of a sudden I had to rely on various levels of nonverbal signals some verbal cause you couldn’t alienate the entire audience, even though some of them spoke English.
Brett Bartholomew : If you leaned on that, then you were alienating the other parts. You know, we got through that. It was, it was pretty fascinating and it was eyeopening. And then of course like many coaches now, I’ve done some work in China, whether that was for three days or two weeks or what have you, it didn’t really matter. And we also had Chinese athletes and athletes from Taiwan. I worked with the Taiwanese boxing team and some of their Olympic athletes. And you had to adapt. I mean, at one point in time, I was teaching 84 Chinese coaches med ball work and in various forms of power derivatives and also multidirectional movement, because that was an area that I specialize in pretty decently well, and again, there are so many barriers there. And so you have to think, right. Analogy and metaphor doesn’t work. I can’t just use body language cause I have to keep them engaged.
Brett Bartholomew : What can I do here? And a lot of led into, you know, in terms of keeping them engaged, I’m a big proponent of experiential learning and discovery based motor skill acquisition. I mean, that was my background in my Master’s. So you find like we can’t wait for their movements or their understanding to be perfect. We need to get them involved. And so, you know, when you’re in different environments, when you’re in foreign environments, you can get as much information as you want, but you can also get drunk on that information. And that makes you less adaptive in the meantime. So throw yourself into the fray, adapt as you go. And if you don’t have faith in your abilities, you have to trust in the fact that you’re gonna be way better off just embracing the chaos and embracing the gray area than trying to make it something really controlled and organized all the time.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’ve heard from not just like the strength and conditioning field, I’ve heard this in track and field of the idea that don’t just coach on one level. Like if you’re a high school or college coach, like if you’re a college coach, like try to maybe maybe you can coach youth at some point or club track or something, or coach eight year olds, they never really speaks English there. Right? Like, so to get to a point where there’s not even the language barriers, even there, I imagine that really changes you. And was that really the point where I don’t know if it was like one point in time, but what was kind of that light bulb moment? If there was one where you were like, this is the gap in the coaching field is communication and a lack of just that element.
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah. There were a couple of things. I mean, one, you know, I worked as a college strength coach as a graduate assistant. I was the head strength coach for about …what was it men’s and women’s golf men’s and women’s swimming and diving men’s and women’s tennis, the baseball team, the cheerleaders, the dance team. And then I was an assistant for basketball and football. And even just going within those demographics, you realized that you couldn’t coach the swimming and diving team, the same way you coach the golfers, the same way you coach the dancers, the same way that you coach football players. Now there’s a lot of coaches that try, you know, they have this one size fits all model, but they forget athletes are people first. And like most people, they have agendas of their own. Then when I went into the private sector, you know, it was the same way.
Brett Bartholomew : I’d have to shift from training surgeons at the Andrews Institute in the morning that were part of a partnership with Athletes Performance. And then I’d have to work with wounded warriors. They have to work with members of special forces, but then I’d have to switch gears and work with college athletes, pro athletes youth. Then it was just evident. I mean, no different than I can talk to my wife the same way I’m talking to you and an audience right now, that would be just ignorant. Right? And so we forget that you have to show varying levels of yourself building buy-in requires you to get on the level of other people. And so many people think that they’re good at it. And it’s really a bit of Dunning-Kruger. Why do we think we’re so good at communication, Joel, when so few people ever really get evaluated in communication?
Brett Bartholomew : And if they do, I’m not talking about like an Enneagram or MBTI or a personality assessment I’m talking about actually going and getting evaluated as a communicator and the way that you resolve conflict, which is a lot of the work we’re doing now to spearheaded the art of coaching. I think another area that we became really, really evident to me is we used to run a lot of workshops when I was a part of Athlete’s Performance. And it’s been a little half a decade now since I’ve been there. So I can’t speak to anything that company is doing now, but we would have four levels of mentorship that people could come to to get more and more granular about the training, whether that was periodization, program design, “sports specific movements,” speed. And then we would have one element where these coaches had to coach each other.
Brett Bartholomew : And what we saw as these coaches could come to three to four levels of mentorship, but still not coach. They didn’t know how to run a group. They didn’t know how to get over this curse of knowledge. They didn’t know how to interact with strangers. I mean, gosh, when coaching… When the foundation of coaching is communicating with others and knowing how to translate literally and metaphorically, what you mean to a broader audience and you can’t do that, something has gone wrong. And that’s kind of the data that we’ve seen. A 2016 article shows that 96% of coach development workshops are technically focused with only a smaller percentage, a much smaller percentage, being focused on interpersonal skills. That’s a tremendous gap.
Joel Smith: Do you think… I was just thinking about this as you were talking, but do you think that coaches take it more personally having their communication evaluated versus their, you know, their periodization model or their tactical strategy picked apart? Cause I feel like that might get to people more like this is who I am, you know, like just to be fine. Like, do you think that bothers people more?
Brett Bartholomew : Sure. Cause you’re, you’re basically attacking in their view. You, they feel like you’re attacking a self image, you know, their self image, most people, I think they’re already good enough at communicating. Just like most people probably think they’re already good enough in their marriage yet. Look at the rates of divorce, right? Just cause I wake up as a husband every day doesn’t mean I don’t work on my relationship. Dunning-Kruger permeates every level of who we are in some aspect or another. And so I think when you also tell coaches who have spent significant amount of time and money, improving their knowledge and understanding whether it’s a sport coach on the sport and techniques and tactics or as a strength coach or performance coach, and then you tell them, Hey, that’s only one side of it. Emerging research shows that we really need to work on the social aspect of what we do that makes them mad, because then now you’re telling them something else that they think they’re already good at is what they need to work on, yet
Brett Bartholomew : the research is clear, you know? And so as human history. Miscommunication costs people, relationships it’s caused empires to crumble. It’s caused businesses to deal with bankruptcies. I mean, if there is any point in human history that aside from right now, that shows how important communication and the ability to improvise and look deeper is, and people don’t realize that then I’m very, very scared because right now we’re seeing the role that, and not being able to learn how to help others change their behavior, whether it’s wearing masks or doing what they need to do it is. I mean, I don’t know that there’s a point in history, more poignant than right now.
Joel Smith: It’s interesting that you mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is thinking you’re better at something than you really are. And I’ve heard the term, where am I done triggering in my life. It wasn’t even on my radar in terms of how I spoke to a group or even presented myself. And I had two real big points that I think that will always stick with me. One of which was I worked with a lot of aquatic teams back at UC Berkeley and the swim teams are really into it. Like they would stand If I was going to explain a workout for three, four, five minutes, they would listen to it very intently and really absorbed that. And then they wanted to know why versus for some reason, I thought than my, my water polo team was under the same rules and they definitely weren’t. They had much less… They just wanted to get to work let’s just say.
Joel Smith: But I never realized that until my boss actually told me that. He’s like, look, these guys just want to train. They don’t care as much… You know, everyone’s different. They don’t care as much about why they’re doing everything. They just want to, they want to get that feeling of what they are expecting and they want to train. And as soon as I realized that everything changed and I was talking to the group again, I was like, wow, you know what? My boss is totally right. And I need to be really need to be more diverse in how I get to these groups. And some level before that was training a lot of groups, I was training those ones that, that communication style worked well for where it’s like, okay, you know, Hey, let me explain you all these little details.
Joel Smith: And I tried not to go overboard in that cause I realized I could, but that was really big one. And then another one was there was a video being taken in the weight room of some athletes training. And I wasn’t… There was a part of the video where I was not like the main person, but I was in the background coaching and I saw myself and my posture and I was like, Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad. I’m like, and I stuck with me ever since. That was about just the only like two, three months ago. It just stuck with me. And so there was all these things that I was not aware of that really made a big difference for me. Yeah.
Brett Bartholomew : How crazy is that right? That and what we, what that’s called is an egocentric bias. We think that just because we value getting information a certain way, that other people value that as well. And that’s why the whole start with why maybe a catchy term, but it’s quite a bit of a misnomer. You know, it’s not about starting with why. Not everybody cares about the why. You need to start with who, if you don’t know your audience and you don’t understand your audience, then you’re going to be a poor communicator. Because understanding how to communicate well comes down to knowing yourself and knowing your audience as well as the landscape in which they interact. And that’s a big reason why in my book, I talked about those 16 archetypes. Those are just representations of things that you’ve gotta be able to tune your message into different frequencies.
Brett Bartholomew : If I ride a bike, I need to use the right gear for the right hill. But it’s embarrassing a little bit that we’re not taught that right at an early age. It’s kind of like how we’re taking, like recess has been removed for schools, sex education… like who gets education on how to communicate. And that shows our egocentric bias. When we think we’re already really good at that, yet there’s nothing that can make a situation worse, more so than poor communication. And so, you know, people need to know their audience, they need to understand everybody’s different. This isn’t a snowflake thing. It just means if you think that you can communicate the same way to everybody, then you’re ignorant. You’re, the problem. And that’s a collective, you’re. I’m included in that as well. Nobody amongst us as a perfect communicator, but how you are as a leader and your effectiveness as a leader in a large part is determined by how well you communicate and how much you’re willing to invest in and being exposed in that capacity.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think that it’s something that it filters into it, I think a lot more than the, the result a lot more than we realize. And I think we talk about leadership a lot. I think, especially in strength and conditioning, I’m sure just coaching in general does as well. But in terms of, if we were to look at, I mean, when we look at an exercise program or tactical strategy or something that’s related to a direct outcome, it’s I think in the strength and conditioning community, particularly it’s extremely quantitative field. I always mess those two terms quantitative and qualitative, but it’s a very quantitative field. Numbers. What are we getting? What is the numerical outputs of this exercise, this program, this assessment, like you see the assessments now where someone’s like connected to a fricking like the video game.
Joel Smith: That’s like the wii. They’re just assessing their joint angles and all this stuff. It’s a very numbers based field. So what are some… In a recent podcast, I just took Paul Cater, and he’s like, if I could assign a numerical value to athlete awareness, I would. Well, how do you bridge that gap is what I’m asking, and show people like concretely say, look, this is what is going to happen when you, as a leader are a better communicator. I think we intuitively know on many levels, but do you have any more details on that?
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah. So if I understand your question directly, you’re asking what are the outcomes of more effective communication?
Joel Smith: Yes. Yeah. So I make, I made it too complicated…
Brett Bartholomew : No, that’s okay. I mean, it depends on the level of research and the depth you want to dive into. Right. Research makes it clear that, I mean, let’s talk about the most drastic level. You know, in general, humans are the preeminent social animal on the planet and a lack of connection and communication is probably the crudest thing you can do. I mean, they show that people in social isolation they’ll literally go insane and it leads to depression, you know, on a much more basic level. I mean, it’s simple. If you’re a more effective communicator, you’re going to get more out of people because you breed more commitments, right? There’s great research that shows careers progress faster for people that are stronger interpersonal skills. There’s a litany of research that supports that. That at the beginning of your career, technical skills may separate you.
Brett Bartholomew : But if you want to get in above middle management and into true leadership, CEO, higher paid positions, it’s interpersonal skills that helps you overcome that chasm. If you want to learn, look at behavioral economics, the way we phrase things, the way we advertise things, the way we market things leads to improvements to the tune of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in forms of consumer behavior. You look at cancer research and oncology research. Tremendous stuff going on right now where oncologists are getting significant amounts of communication and improv based training because patients believe that their outcomes are largely determined by the relationship they have with their providers. You know, more effective communicators in the medical space, help people better understand their prognosis, their diagnosis. It helps them form better reactions with it in the mental health space, more effective counselors and people that are able to reach their clients are able to have more effective treatments.
Brett Bartholomew : I mean the bottom line is, the outcome of more effective communication is less stress, fewer misunderstandings, a higher connection, better relationships. And when you relate and you trust somebody more and you’re more committed to them or the process that they’re trying to Institute that directly correlates to the level of effort that they’re going to put into something. So if we look at better communication leads to more trust, which leads to higher level engagement, which leads to longer term connection and commitment, which leads to improved outputs and efforts over time. So, you know, I always tell people let’s think of it the opposite way, right? You tell me where more improved communication doesn’t help. Right? You tell me about a situation where enhanced social skills, interpersonal skills about the enhanced ability to relate to others does not help. Right? I’d almost like to flip that and I invite that discussion, right. Can you tell me that, like when is it a bad idea to invest in becoming a better communicator?
Joel Smith: Yeah, that’s a good question. I would have to, I feel like I could spend a good like hour or two thinking about it. Probably not really come up with anything good.
Brett Bartholomew : We did a workshop once and it was fascinating. You know, this is when you know, people are really reaching Joel. We asked somebody that very question, when is becoming a better communicator, a bad idea. And somebody goes, Hitler. And I said, excuse me? And they go, Hitler. He was a great communicator, and look what happened. And I go, yeah, Hitler did not… The Holocaust and things like that were not caused because of Hitler being a great communicator. Hitler was a bad person. Right. And they could say he was an effective leader in context. And there’s people that make that argument and that’s a whole nother, you know, whatever, how you define effective leadership and all that, you know, just getting people to follow you, does not mean you’re an effective leader in many terms depending on the utilitarian output and the bigger picture of things.
Brett Bartholomew : But I thought that was very interesting. Somebody was trying to say that Hitler that was manifested his behaviors were manifested as a byproduct of his ability to communicate well. That’s one piece of the puzzle. For every drastic example, you can give me a Hitler. And when people use Hitler as an explanation for things, you know, they’re reaching, I can show you 500 examples of where poor communication led to even worse things. And, you know, you could argue that, you know, even though he may have been an effective orator that did not mean that he was an effective communicator because you know, how we define effective communication is not just one’s ability to rile people up and get them motivated. It’s the ability to convey like facts. It’s the ability to convey, you know, higher purpose and things like that for a better outcome. So I just think that’s funny.
Brett Bartholomew : We’re in a world now where it’s like, you have to try to prove that communication is important. I’d much rather see the opposite. If the world right now, if you and I had poor wifi, we had poor audio. If somebody goes up and doesn’t tell their wife or husband, they appreciate them. If somebody goes on Twitter and put something that is just absolutely tone deaf, go ahead and see the responses, you know, but an alarmingly few amount of coaches or leaders ever record their sessions, alarmingly, few amount of people ever really watch video of themselves coaching or leading and break that down or more importantly, send that to unbiased third parties and ask them to break that down. I think we’re scared of what we’d find. I know I was, I know the first time I saw myself on tape. Shoot, the first time I heard myself on a podcast and even now I listened to myself and I’m like, Oh my God, but that’s the fun of it. Right. A true professional doesn’t look at what they’re good at and rests on their laurels. A true professional looks at what they’re bad at and wants to find ways to continue to improve and chase that.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s interesting. You mentioned listening to your own podcast or presentation. I’ve, I’ve done that. I mean, sometimes I listened to even the Q and A’s that I do when I get questions and answer, I’m not to hear myself talk, but just to kind of understand myself better, like how did I tackle that question? Where was my mind going? Things like that. I I’m just interested in dissecting myself a little bit there, but it was really the video that was seeing the video of myself and talking directly to other people for me is the thing, because I always feel like in front of a microphone, it’s just me and the mic on some level of my thoughts. And that’s where my strength has been over the years versus actually seeing myself communicating with a group of people. And it’s just, it’s just a little bit different ball game, but it’s really important because I would say that that particular for me has been the part of my own coaching.
Joel Smith: I mean, I was a track coach full time for six years. Two of that as like a GA assistant kinda type person, and then spent eight years as a strength coach full time. And I can tell you what I learned as a strength coach was not, I mean yes, human physiology improving like some little nuances of the weight room and, and the way things go in there for sure. But I would say I learned a lot more about culture and communication and people and relationships and amongst a lot of other things, but that was a needed part of the journey for me. Absolutely. And so that was a really, it was something I was really unaware of before that, that eight years, for sure.
Brett Bartholomew : Well, people forget about that. Right. Success with high performance environments is not just a matter of managing an athlete’s training. It’s about managing the athlete themselves and their environment.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Back to what you said too. I really like we talked about like, quantifying. Tell me a number for how much this is going to help. But I just think, I just think about, you said you, at two point, people are more energized and something I’ve been talking on this podcast a lot, and yes, it might be a little more esoteric, but if you actually, if you’re in the trenches coaching, you know it, and that’s just the quality of the training environment that outputs you get to the athlete. And for me personally, I think the biggest thing in my own learning has been being in training environments that were more robotic to me and not necessarily stimulating versus being in a truly stimulating and immersive environment where the exercises themselves were not necessarily that much different, but everything else was. And the output, like let’s just save in vertical jump that went up more, you know, like, like whatever outputs you’re seeking that any, I think of it too, as like, are you more energized people who work for a bad boss or a good boss, who’s going to do more work and work being, if it’s in the weight room or coaching or anywhere on that spectrum, you’re going to get more work done and better work done.
Joel Smith: Just like you had mentioned.
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah. Well, I mean, and it’s not really esoteric Joel, right? Like Nobel prize winners, people like Daniel Economen and others study human behavior and human behavior is altered through communication. The study of interpersonal skills predates, you know, 1918. There’s over a hundred years of research on communication and the effects of what enhanced communication does. There’s also great research in the performance space. I just don’t think people look at it much. There’s one article in particular by Paul Poltrack and Robin Jones called Power, Conflict, and Cooperation. And it talks about the politics of coaching. You know, I think it’s, don’t quote me on this, but there’s another researcher. I’m going to draw a blank, but I have her stuff in one of my presentations that talks about, you know, they interviewed Olympic athletes and talked about, you know, Olympic athletes and they asked them, you know, what effect does the relationship with your coach have on, on your performance?
Brett Bartholomew : And many of them said, listen, if I don’t have a relationship with my coach, my performance definitely is impeded. You know, I, this is somebody that I need to trust. I need to understand. I need to be able to interact with on a variety of levels. And so there really is no debate about the negative outcomes or impact of poor performance. I just think that it’s research that a lot of people aren’t diving into because it’s not as sexy of a presentation. And that’s really what we’re trying to change it at art of coaching. But it’s really simple. If you don’t understand how to read or interpret the micro political nature of a particular situation, you’re to lose a job, you’re going to lose respect. You might even lose your own reputation. You have to understand how to read the room in every situation in life.
Brett Bartholomew : Otherwise, again, don’t expect to be in a very long, and I would think coaches understand this. I mean, I hear coaches whine a lot online and in many cases rightfully so about how so and so shouldn’t have gotten this job. And so, and so shut up and it’s kind of silly. They think that there are people out there that think they’re going to get jobs just by doing these witch hunts online or talking about, you know, how much research they know or about how much better they are. I don’t think they realize that a lot of people get jobs because they know how to play the game better. They know how they have better interpersonal skills and right wrong or indifferent relationships matter and career advancement. So in an ideal world, you don’t have to choose between the two, right? You can be a very, that’s why we chose the term conscious coaching for my book. We said, Hey, you should be somebody who understands the technical side of things and the person interpersonal side of things with tremendous detail. And they go hand in hand.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I agree. I like well, first off I apologize. Cause I think in my mind I was making esoteric and qualitative the same thing.
Brett Bartholomew : Oh no, I understand what you mean. I’m trying to make it. You’re, you’re very clear. Right? And your stance on these things is not in question, right? You’re somebody that you, you spent a great deal of time studying how to relate to others and, and how your work comes across. You’re very thoughtful in that. This is my message to a broader audience of like, we’ve got to wake up, we’ve got to wake up. When other industries are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on leadership education focused on communication and interpersonal skills. And if we want to have jobs, especially as this digital age continues to… Let’s just say, the future of what sport looks like down the road, the way we communicate is going to be more important than ever before. There’s just not going to be a time 10 years from now where every coach in the world who teaches a squat a certain way and a clean a certain way, is going to be able to guarantee themselves a position because that’s not what the athletes care about. At the end of the day, you’ve gotta be able to reach them at many different levels. And also the people hiring you. People hiring, you are looking for people that can relate and communicate at a very high level, especially today. So, you know, good luck if what you think you can lean on is research or how you teach at clean and whether you go from the bottom up or the top down.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I think about when you say that, I think about Lewis, hell. Isn’t like the masks of masculinity book, which I actually haven’t. I just listened to podcasts on it. So I can’t say I read it, but I know just thinking about like maybe we put on different masks that validate us, or we get loved by being a certain thing. And the one that had resonated with me when I heard that podcast is it’s the know it all guy, you know, or the intellectual mask. And it’s like that look that mask, some people are gonna be impressed by that mask. They’re gonna be like, Oh, you know, look, wow, look at these technical skills that you can teach me and et cetera. But it’s like, I’ve completely shut athletes out by a lack of relational ability. Back when I was a track coach, I was a guy who had favorites. Like I played favorites.
Brett Bartholomew : We all do. Yeah, we, everybody does. If they’re, if they say they don’t, they’re lying. Everybody’s got somebody that they relate to a little bit more. It’s how you manage that.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I mean, I’ve played it to the point that I really was not giving much attention to people to the point that their performance was degrading. And it was because of me, it wasn’t because of the workouts. It was because they didn’t get attention. And there was one girl in particular member who she switched over to another coach because I wasn’t, I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. And I, and it was, it was wrong. Like that, that on that level, it was like a high magnitude. I mean, even as I evolved, I still had favorites and things like that. I tried not to, but you know, like you said, subconsciously, at least we all kind of do. But it was bad back then. And I remember the second she went to another coach… She was high jumping and it was like someone just put so much energy into her.
Joel Smith: She was like bouncing around. And like, she jumped like three inches higher instantly because it’s someone actually went and like paid attention to her and you could just, everything was different. And I just started watching that. I was like, yeah, I F’d up. I messed up. And it’s one of those moments where you just, you learn. And then again, that’s why a huge reason why I had my next chapter was eight years and as just a strength coach, because that relational element… I needed to master that. I needed to get the point where I would say, you know, everyone’s name., I remember hearing this. Tony Holler, Feed the Cats, talking about at a track football consortum, like make sure you mentioned every athlete’s name. And I was like, yeah, I need to do, there’s just stuff like that.
Joel Smith: That, that really changed me over time. And so anyways, I didn’t want a rabbit trail there, but I, it was almost like we see ourselves by something. And I think in strengthening additioning, it’s, it’s oftentimes like technical knowledge, our appearance, you know, our lifting numbers, those types of things. Versus like you said, at the end of the day, it’s those people… The athletes don’t remember what you instructed them to do in a lift. They remember the relationship with the coach, you know, like at the same thing, with what I remember with, with all the beloved coaches that I have taught me over time. I mean, I remember some things they taught me, but it’s more you remember the things that… Really, you remember the emotional imprints that you spent the time with them.
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah. A hundred percent. And that’s what, you know, we wanted to seek out and teach, you know, across professions is, cause it bugged me that I got really tired. You know, there was a time where I’d save every penny I could to go to all these, you know, workshops and things like that. And strength and conditioning. And I’d geek out, I’d watch five or six lectures in a row of the same thing. I’d go home and review my notes. And then, you know, year after year after year, I mean, you certainly don’t quit identifying as a lifelong learner. And by no means, do I know anywhere close to everything about training. That’s not the point, but you realize the more and more, and to borrow your term esoteric. A lot of these presentations got the less and less they could really be applied. I mean, I’ve worked with pro athletes for a significant amount of time now, and I’ve yet to find one that cleans so well, squats
Brett Bartholomew : so well, deadlifts well, moved so well, that I need to do super maximally eccentrics with weight releasers, you know, and or that I need to use, you know, the most esoteric forms of training. And it’s just not the reality, you know? And on the other hand, like now I don’t invest that same level of money in that where I invested in is more of the psychology, the sociology. And then I said, you know what? I need to put skin in the game. And that’s why we created our workshops because we want to teach that stuff. And what you talked about earlier with the mask, I can’t, you know, I can’t speak to Lewis Howes. I don’t, I don’t listen to his work much, but like, you know, this was stuff that we talk about in our course of like it’s impression management.
Brett Bartholomew : And it goes back to something that’s sociologist, Erving Goffman talked about where, you know, everybody wears a mask and that’s not right or wrong. I mean, that’s life. Like Shakespeare was right. All of performance and all of life is a stage. You don’t talk to your wife the same way you talk to a veterinarian, the same way you talk to your inlaws, the same way you talk to your athletes. We all wear masks. And impression management, isn’t static or flawless. It’s actually a series of performances we all put on that are fraught with some level of contradiction and tension. And it’s interesting, there’s research in the nonprofit space, which highly correlates a lot with coaching where, you know, they were asking a lot of participants in this study about how they self identify and many of them self identify as benevolent and humble to use the term in the literature, servant leaders by attempting to appear as mentors.
Brett Bartholomew : And if you say, well, what did that mean? Like, well, they downplay their authority and they claim to integrate a lot of feedback into what they’re doing. They also claim to employ a lot of self benevolent forms of like discipline, you know, being a lifelong learner. They’ll talk about how they’re the dumbest person in the room, even if they’re not. And these are all various forms of impression management tactics that I went down, a deep rabbit hole researching for over a year because I needed that to make sense based on things that we teach in our workshops. But there’s five to six various forms of impression management tactics people use. And it’s fascinating because once you know them, you can’t interact with people without seeing them everywhere, everywhere, and it’s not about, is it right or wrong? It’s more about, is it applied skillfully and ethically?
Joel Smith: I think that that relates to something that we had talked about before this podcast, even, and just the idea I think of coaching in general. And I think we all do want this, I think on some level and I think some more than others, but it is at the heart of what we do is we say we coach to serve athletes, to help athletes. But I think that intention and what actually happens is oftentimes… Cause I probably would have said that back when I was a track coach, you know, ignoring people.
Brett Bartholomew : And then we all say the same things. Yeah. It’s like a, it’s like when you become a strength coach, you get a script and it’s like, Oh, we’re doing this for the health safety wellbeing of the student athlete to apply pragmatic principles, to address bioenergetic, neuromuscular and biomechanical. You know, it’s just like, we mean it at the time, but we have no idea what we’re really saying. We feel like we need to say, like, we could just say, Hey, we like to help. You know what I mean? But we have to make everything seem so, I don’t know. It’s all, it’s all advertising. Even when you say they don’t believe in branding or marketing our field brands and markets itself every day, you know, and pretty poorly as well. Cause again, we’re not, we’re not taught how to do it well, and, and there is a right way to do this. This is why marketing is an actual degree people get that’s based on research. But when you, when you say those things are wrong and then you don’t educate yourself on how to do it, and your self image is a skew based on the wrong things, then all of a sudden, you know, you wonder why we’re perceived a certain way.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s I would agree with that. Yeah. Cause everything has to… Selling is everything. I saw one of those it was a YouTube, well it’s masterclass that pops up on your YouTube and it was like a negotiation masterclass. And the guy’s like, everything is negotiation. You may think it is or not.
Brett Bartholomew : It’s just like life is improv. When we have one of our workshops, we teach a lot of improv and we had one person that was like, you know, what’s with all the improv. And I go that’s life like name five things that you predicted in the last 24 hours that you knew how they were going to unfold in every single circumstance in the exact way. Coaching and communication and leadership is a nonlinear thing. And by definition, that makes it part of chaos theory. And the only way to fight chaos is to become better adapted to chaos. But our field wants to battle chaos and uncertainty by getting a how to manual, you know, they need a chart for how to interact with people and that just doesn’t exist.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I get that for sure. I hear you on that stuff. You have books and courses on this stuff that goes into extensive detail, but just a few things in terms of effective communication. If you had to say, hey, if you want to be an effective communicator, here’s… Gosh, I almost hate it when I ask even this question because…
Brett Bartholomew : That’s okay. If it’s a vague question, just know I’ll give you a semi vague answer because that’s the only way you can do that. So you can’t fail. I totally get why you have to do this. You know, the audience kind of wants to know broad stuff sometimes. So dude don’t worry. I totally get it.
Joel Smith: This is my way of trying to get into nuts and bolts. So nuts and bolts though. Like just, if you had to say, let’s just even say in the weight room, strength, coaches as a population, but what are some… I guess it really honestly could play to any coach?
Brett Bartholomew : All, all of our stuff at Art of Coaching is for… We define coaching as anybody that leads and guides. So this isn’t, this isn’t vocations specific.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s good. I’m glad you mentioned that. Cause like you and I both talked about, and I’ve thought about this as like it’s coaching is coaching, you know, it’s all pervasive.
Brett Bartholomew : Right the term coach in no way, shape or form, like if you look at the definition of it, I mean the definition is a drawn carriage or a railroad car or something like that. But nothing about like, if you look up the Miriam, you know, definition of a coach says one who only works in sports or only with athletes. Right. And that’s why we call our company art of coaching. It’s it’s you could basically say art of leadership, art of communication, art of giving a shit about, you know, relationships with people, whatever.
Joel Smith: Yeah. So a part of me wants to say, you know, well, what should be the things outside the box that maybe I’ll pitch the question this way? Like you said, coaching in another country where language was a barrior. Doing improv class. Are there any other activities? Cause maybe I think about it as activities, you know, like, cause to me, like I signed my wife up for improv lessons a couple of years ago. And she loved it and she would come home and help me out with some of that. And I’m Oh, I, I feel like I would be horrible, but then I guess I should probably do this. But if you had to list some things that those types of activities that can make a coach better in those outside of the box type things, if you will, or there’s any more of those, that would be kind of a good practice?
Brett Bartholomew : We have a ton on our website and I won’t go through that, you know, but there’s a ton of free resources on artofcoaching.com for that. But you know, it’s, it’s not… I wouldn’t use the term correct to you. You didn’t say anything wrong, but it’s not about necessarily taking an improv class as it is embracing elements of that. So like, Joel, I’ll be honest and I’ll be honest with your listeners if they want to tune out right now. Like there’s no way for me to answer that question without straight up talking about something we do. So we wanted to create a workshop that had what we believe can fix those things. And this is part of my doctorate, right? So like when you looked at the research, what the research said was clear and how they would’ve answered your question is, and this is actual verbiage is they said there needs to be more facilitated outputs that basically put coaches in situations and then make them reflect.
Brett Bartholomew : So what we do is we lean on something called Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. And what this dictates is to truly become skilled at something you need really four components, you need a concrete experience. So for us in our workshop, that is a lot of the improv and we get very specific and nonspecific with the improv and I’m happy to elaborate on what that means if you’d like later, but people need to experience it firsthand. They can’t just read it. They can’t learn about it on a podcast. They can’t just go and look at power points. They’ve got to experience it. So we put people improvised, chaotic scenarios. The other part of Kolb’s experiential learning is reflective observation. So this is when people look back and assess what went well and not so well. So this is why we film things at our apprenticeship workshops.
Brett Bartholomew : So people will go through things and we film it. And then we do a breakdown with an actual like evaluation that we’ve created at art of coaching, because they’ve got to have that reflective observation, the third part of it, and there’s four parts in total of the experiential learning cycle, is what’s called abstract conceptualization. That’s a fancy way of just, Hey, we’ve got to make sense of this experience now. Right? We’ve done it. We reflected on it, but like what are actions going forward? Right? So we do this in our workshop by having small group discussions, breakouts and things that are truly interactive in that sense. And then people are able to put a plan in motion. And then the final part is then active experimentation. That’s saying, Oh, I’m going to test my conclusions. Right? There’s a conscious plan of action that came from that experience.
Brett Bartholomew : My observation of it, my, you know, conceptualization of what I should do differently and now I’m going to put it to use. So we took on the challenge of designing our workshops. All those things are present. Now, if you say screw you Brett, I don’t care about your workshops, whatever, that’s fine, but just understand. You’re still going to have to have those four elements. You’re going to have to do it. You’re going to have to observe it. Ideally not just yourself. You need somebody else in a relatively unbiased third party. And we all have our own biases, but you know, just asking your staff or your significant other, or you know, whatever, to really give you an evaluation or breakdowns, really not gonna cut it because you’re going to have a lot of power dynamics, right? You’re going to have, we saw it at one of our workshops where somebody worked under the individual hosting it.
Brett Bartholomew : And he was very scared to give his boss, the feedback that he really needed. And at lunch, the boss admitted that he said, Hey, you know, I’d rather not be partnered up with him because I understand he’s hesitant and reticent to give me feedback. And that’s really what I need from him to be a better leader. So people have to seek out elements of this cycle. They have to do, they have to evaluate, they have to reflect, they have to put a plan down. They have to experiment again. But most people just don’t do that in their daily life. And that is why we decided to try to create an output that they could do that. But at the very least, I mean, they’ve got to start actually, you know, whether it’s simply recording themselves or putting more of their work out there and being more interactive and finding a way to engage and, and deal with that, they’ve got to do it, you know, and we have services if people are interested in that.
Brett Bartholomew : And if not, that’s fine. There’s many ways you can do it on your own. It’s I’m just going to ask you, are you going to, cause if you don’t put skin in the game, then I don’t know that you’re going to improve, frankly. And I was the same way, you know, like writing my book and you wrote a book. That’s an example of skin in the game. You think, you know something. And then when you have to sit down and put it on paper and you know that it’s going to reach an audience, I’m sure like with your book, Joel, some of my audience thought my book was too technical for some of it thought it was too simple. There’s people that think it’s in between. That’s the point. If I write another book, I can tell you right now, you’re the first person to hear it.
Brett Bartholomew : I will write another book and there’s going to be a lot of people that really don’t like it. The tone is going to be something very different than people are used to. And it’s going to strike a lot of chords with some people, but that’s okay. You know, I want it to stimulate discussion and, and that’s how people should feel about, you know, embracing activities of being a better communicator is if they get bad feedback, that’s okay. It’s just feedback. Like not everybody’s gonna like you in life, but at least it brings self-awareness compared to you just like thinking you’re already good enough and not doing anything.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I love that. And as you were talking about that awareness, that feedback process, I think about from my track and field background, it’s like every track athlete for the most part loves to watch a video of their jump, their throw, their technique, but they ideally want someone to make remarks on it with you. And it’s like, why does that process change? Once you flip the script a little bit and now you become a coach it’s really intuitive. Like, this is how we get better. You’re right. Like all the evaluations… Like I think the evaluations, a lot of coaches get, it’s like, you know, numbers one through five. How did you do in this XYZ? But how often do we really get into that? Like how did your athletes really perceive that? And I have one last question for you here at about that is I’ve seen the practice of at least an administrator giving ratings or reviews for athletes. The athletes could review their coaches like one through five, and then the coaches would see that later. But if I’m a coach, I mean, what do you think about giving out like a review to your athletes? Like, is that aligned, or what’s the deal with like that line or having an athlete review?
Brett Bartholomew : No, I’ve done that. I created Google forms, very simple things. No more than five, I would say maybe 10 or less, 10 or fewer questions that have said, Hey, what was your favorite part of this session? You know why? And it would give me an idea of kind of where they fit with their drives. You know, what they gravitated to, what have you. And it was all, I mean, we do this at our workshop. Like after day one, everybody gets sent a Google form that says, Hey, evaluate me. Am I talking too fast? Am I not going deep enough? Are there things that I’m missing? We evaluate everything we do at art of coaching. And we take everything super seriously. If somebody says, Hey man, your stuff’s dog, shit, you’re speaking too quickly. Thankfully, we haven’t had anything like that. But if we did, we’d still, you know, alright, that’s cool.
Brett Bartholomew : And we saw recently we asked somebody for feedback on an event that we just ran in, in South Carolina. And it was a younger physical therapist. And he said, you know, we asked them what teaching methods should we not utilize in the future? And he had said, and I commend him for his honesty. This was a pretty hardheaded kid. And his boss kind of made him go very, very knowledgeable, all these things. But you could tell, I didn’t really want to work on the interpersonal side. A lot of his gripes… Because we ask them coming in, what they’re dealing with… A lot of his gripes were people don’t listen to what I say. I give them the information. They don’t do anything with it. It’s frustrating. What have you. But anyway, he had written on his evaluation. He said, day one, you had asked a question to the audience and called me out specifically to answer it.
Brett Bartholomew : I didn’t know the answer. And I also was overwhelmed, like not expecting to have somebody call on me and it put me in a bad mood. Cause I thought I looked foolish the rest of the day, I try to nitpick everything you said. He was talking about me. To try to find ways to disagree with it because I needed a way to kind of avenge my embarrassment. And man, I thought that was fascinating. What self-awareness right. Like to say that, because that’s something we’ve all related to like, have you ever been to a conference show where somebody is like, Hey, can I get a volunteer? And they don’t give you any guidance. And then they kind of make you look dumb and they’re like, Oh, see, see what happened there? Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve either seen that or you’ve been subject to that, right.
Brett Bartholomew : And then it makes you kind of feel like, come on, dude. You know what I mean? Like at least, you know, at least like set me up for some level of success. If I’m coming up here as a volunteer and you’re going to make me look dumb, you know? And that’s why we knew like our workshops needed to be a safe place to fail. If I’m going to make you look dumb, Joel, I’m going to say, Hey Joel, would you mind coming up here? And by the way, I’m going to make you look dumb. So just laugh it off and have some fun with it. It’s to illustrate a point now just telling you that, how does that change your perception of what’s going to go on?
Joel Smith: Yeah. I mean, I would appreciate that cause at least, cause that’s you get up there. Yeah.
Brett Bartholomew : It’s a safe environment. Right? And so like, you know, yeah. I mean, like if you can ask people questions and just say, Hey, what was one silly thing I did that just didn’t make sense to you? But if you’re saying, Hey guys, what did I do today? That was great. What was bad? You’re going to get a very different kind of feedback. Like invite them to be real. And the way you phrase your question that, you know, even just saying, Hey, I, I need to get better. I know I make mistakes. What were two things that confuse you today? You know? And that stuff is awesome. You know, it’s great to hear and that’s how you should want yourself to evolve as a coach because otherwise what’s, what’s the alternative. You’re just going to go along thinking you’re great at everything. And Oh my God, like how boring, you know, how boring like that’s part of what it means to turn fro, be more receptive to feedback.
Joel Smith: I couldn’t agree more turning pro it’s, it’s such a good way of putting it cause like breaking outside the, you know, it’s cliche is to take the red pill, but just to break outside the bubble and to learn more about who you are,
Brett Bartholomew : Steven Pressfield, you know, I’ll give him credit for like his phrasing, but he just calls it like turning pro is like, and that’s a problem with strength and conditioning in general. Like nobody values them outside of the field because they don’t value themselves. It’s very contentious argumentative. I was there too. You know, it’s, it’s very much trying to prove itself all the time. You know, we’re an obscure profession that many people don’t know much about. And until we become better at taking ourselves, how we brand ourselves, how we get along, how we try to transcend our teachings into other environments, just like everybody else has. I mean, you know, people read Adam Grant, he’s a professor at Wharton. People read Angela Ducksworth, she’s a professor, people read, you know, Jocko Willink stuff, he’s a former Navy seal, but we don’t embrace the ideology of crossing over. You know?
Brett Bartholomew : And I know that because like our work has crossed over conscious coaching is now being used by organizations and tech and finance. And for the first year, like I got like shit from our audience, you know, our audience means strength coaches. And they’d be like, Oh, are you a coach now? Or a speaker? And I’m like both, you know? And so we have to want each other, Joel, I hope your work, and your book crosses over a million different ways because otherwise who’s going to know about what we do to that level. We’re just going to be subject to like, you know, whatever the world thinks about us. That’s the reality of it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I even my, my upcoming book is on the foot and fascial systems, but it’s one that kind of can go outside the box of just, I guess, strength and conditioning athletes, even track and field and into runners and more, you just always trying to expand, and I couldn’t agree more. Brett I know our time’s just about up here, but you had mentioned your book and your courses. Could you tell us a little bit what’s going on with some of the projects, ways can people can learn more if they want to reach out on those projects?
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah, a lot. I mean the easiest way is just go to artofcoaching.com. That’ll have access to everything. We have online courses. They’re CEU approved. We have, you know, tons of free downloads and things like that, regardless of where you’re at in your career. Advice for new coaches, coaches who feel stuck. We have stuff on communication training. We have all these things. If you’re in general leadership, we have tons of stuff on our podcasts, but online courses or workshops, you know, obviously COVID affects the workshops to a degree, but we host them anywhere in the world. They’re ubiquitous and they’re tied into my doctoral research that’s totally focused around communication and leadership development. And so these things are not vocation specific. If you are a leader or a professional of any kind that deals with people our stuff’s for you. So check it out and you can find my book anywhere in the world on amazon.com.
Joel Smith: Awesome. Thank you so much, Brett. It was awesome having you on here.
Brett Bartholomew : Yeah, my pleasure, Joel. Thank you.
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