Delmont Madison | Mastering Change for Team & Leadership Success

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And Doug, Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music, Limu. Save yourself the. Money today your wealth. Customize and save. We see. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need at libertymutual.com Liberty, Liberty, liberty. Liberty Savings Very. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. What always has really fascinated me is how many people are just actually not interested in evolving.

You can try to open the doors and they just it's not something that I guess they are the ready for may never be ready for. But it it it really fascinates me that because it's such a big driver in myself. It's very hard to understand that it's not a driver in in in every human being. Welcome back Delmont and Doctor Charles, and this is your chance to put me in the hot seat. You've not given me forewarning, which is about a 5050 split, maybe slightly more towards people not giving me warning, wanting to see me squirm here and, and, and struggle to answer questions.

But yes, I'm looking forward to, to what you're going to ask me. So fire away. I'm all yours. Sounds good. So my first question would be, would mindset shift had the biggest impact on your life? When did it happen and how do you sustain it? I'm interested in knowing those things. I mean, I think actually I've, I've always been pretty reflective of what goes on even even in high school and wasn't really to do with my sport that much at that time. But I remember, you know, talk to friends and stuff like that and, and, and I'd kind of again feel like, yeah, I had empathy for what they were going through.

And, and, and and yeah. And was always curious about how people reacted to things. But I think when, when I got to college and I was playing college tennis, I, I met a guy called Tom Seaborn, who was, you know, one of the best karate guys, you know, on the planet. And he was the first person who used to, that I, I knew nothing about it, who used to meditate and, and, and talk about calmness and talk about, you know, mindset and, and he, he used to, he just loved tennis. So you'd come and watch matches and, and I ended up playing number one for the team and, and we connected quite well and we just had these fairly deep conversations And that sort of propelled me a little bit more onto the path of, of self-awareness.

And then I, I read a number of books and, and, you know, I was, I was, I was, you know, Buddhism, you know, I, I really struggled with the Bible. So, but I, I would read like interpretations and, you know, just was fascinated by, by, you know, different religious religions in terms of how they dealt with, you know, moral things and stuff like that.

But it probably wasn't until I stumbled upon Anthony Robbins and he, he had a series of tapes where years ago, I'm talking about in the 80s where he, he interviewed different people and they were very fascinating interviews. And I saw I started to open a real world to me of, of, you know, because basically Andrew Robbins is, is is well packaged NLP originally. And, and that, that really started to me and, and of course in, in, in playing sport, trying to discover ways to be better mentally myself, though that sort of thinking, you know, and it was right towards the end of my playing and, and into my early coaching days had some kind of impact.

And then Stephen Covey came out with a book. I can't remember exactly when it was the seven habits. And then I was lucky enough working with a, a group in the UK that actually brought Anthony Robbins to the UK And I saw him live three times and, and, and, and, and two of them in very small arenas. One of them was huge for his big show, but he had these, I was Privy to these small things and, and, and brought over Stephen Covey as well. And I was able to have some interaction with these guys and Stephen Covey really impressed me.

Again, he was much softer spoken. It wasn't as much razzmatazz and stuff. And, and, and I felt he had a a genuine empathy for for people and, and, and, you know, I do know on first hand authority that that he conducted his life very much how he he spoke, which is admirable. So, yeah, I mean, I can't say there was any one thing, but certainly all of these things drove me to a mindset that said, yeah, a belief of mine that is, is our whole job in life really is to get greater and greater self-awareness.

And that's the journey that as humans we, we, we should try to go on. And so yes, so I think it's if, if, if the mindset for me is self-awareness and and constant evolvement. I mean, I'd hate to think in two years time I'll think exactly like I do now. I know, right? Yet also, I'm very, very aware of how hard it is to break habits, you know, because, you know, it's very easy to help point out habits that other people need to break. And even if we know them in ourselves, they, they, they can be very hard to to break because they're almost intertwined with our personality if we've been doing something for a long, long time.

Yeah. So, yeah, I hope that answers your question. I kind of went a little around the houses. No, it does and I appreciate you sharing. It kind of reminded me of a quote that I've heard before as well as it relates to evolving. And I think it comes from Muhammad Ali, if I'm not mistaken. And it went something like, you know, if I still see life and approach life in a way that I did when I was, you know, 20 years ago, then I've wasted 20 years of my life, you know. And so I think I'm a lot of times we can find ourselves or some people can deal with things in a way that causes a stagnation or Arrested Development, for lack of a better word, because there hasn't been the influence around them to help them evolve and grow mentally.

That 20 years later, sometimes human beings can find themselves with the same perspectives and approach to life. Yeah. I really love that quote. It's it's fantastic. What always has really fascinated me is how many people are just actually not interested in evolving. You can try to open the doors and they just, it's not something that I guess they are, they're ready for, may never be ready for. But it, it, it really fascinates me that because it's such a big driver in myself, it's very hard to understand that it's not a driver in, in, in every human being.

But I've met a number of people who just really not interested in, in, in, in evolving and, and I find that fascinating. And, you know, it'd be lovely to find out how that psychology actually works exactly. You know why? But yeah, I I'm certainly in the camp of, of evolving. Yeah, that's great. And I and I agree with you on that point as well. Because when I think back after having had conversations with different athletes on different levels, I think fear plays a huge part in why there's that lack of evolution in a lot of athletes lives.

Because what that means is that now I have to face and ask answer questions that has never, that I've never, yeah, you know, been put in the space to have to answer. And so a lot of times the fear is hearing the truth from those questions. And the truth may be something completely different than what you believed or what you were taught. I I. I also believe that's a. That's a very good point you made there, that an athlete will have a success formula, the reason why they are where they are. And I think they're very afraid to disturb whatever it is that has propelled them to where they are.

So it's it's, it's, you know, I've got a success formula. It might not be the best one, but I don't want to mess with it because I don't know what would come in its place and whether I'd be as good if, if, if I went down some of these avenues of, of, of hearing truths. So I think, I think the fear of, of, of altering their performance by facing up to things is AI think, I think you're 100% right there. I think that's a very, very real fear. It is, it is. And me having been an educator with a master's degree in special education and I've also coached on a high level in like the AU circuit, AAU, Adidas and Nike circuits, I can say and there is a percentage of athletes who haven't been received enough attention to help them evolve mentally.

And, and what that looks like on the court is as athletes physically, you see grace, you see success, you see wins, and you see a lot of cheering and support for that particular athlete and what they've accomplished physically, Right? But when you sit down and you try to engage in a conversation like we're having right now, you'll see a completely different person, Yes. And so it's because of the lack of development and whether that was someone pouring into them emotionally or just educationally, there is a oftentimes A deficiency because the journey to become a high level athlete has been, you know, you've been pushed forward in that lean so fast that you that no one cared enough to take time.

Yeah, it's almost. Like a conveyor belt, once you get on, you know, and, and, and you just keep propelling forward like this and. And not giving your mental enough attention to evolve mentally and educationally. Absolutely.

Yeah. Next question. Fine. So my next question is, what are the most common, in your opinion, the most common mental blocks that keep athletes from reaching their full potential? Yeah, great. Great question. First and foremost, I'd say fear of success. And you know, people think, wow, you know, but fear of success is because it's unknown territory and people are always afraid of the unknown. So, you know, it's, it's interesting because the, the higher and higher athlete gets sometimes the greater that fear can become because like they've always hoped to get to a certain level.

And then when, when it's starting to get close and they've, they've been pretty successful, suddenly the fear kicks in that I don't want to lose what I've got, don't want to lose what I've got. And then they kind of shrink away from some of the decisions they have to make in order to go into the wilderness that they haven't been and, and see what they can do there. And then the other fear is if I do that and I fail, then I failed rather than, you know, if I do that and fail, I've still done pretty damn well.

And, and, and it's, it's an interesting dynamic because without stepping out to that next step, which I have done many times to get where they are, but the, the final steps often seem to be mentally the biggest steps for them. When in reality, I'd say they, if it's your next step, it's the same size as any of the steps steps before. So yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is, is, is, is a fear of the the unknown that success will bring.

Second thing that stops athletes.

It's a very, very good question. I mean, I would say it's management of their mind under pressure. So what happens is under pressure, all the doubts come out. And then it's what do you do about them? And, and it's how you change the way you feel about those doubts that's more important than what you actually say about them. And you know, I call it a transformation of, of a doubt or fear. You know, a lot of people try to block them out and you can't, you can't stop thoughts from coming into your head, but you need to transform those thoughts into something that's going to help you.

I think a lot of the times athletes and, and this would probably lead into the third thing that stops them is if they don't, if they've got some tools and they don't get immediate, immediate success out of them, they ditch the tool and go. That doesn't work. Absolutely. And so then they get on that, you know, magic bullet train, which is well, that didn't well, I'll try that. And if they get a win with that, it's like, oh, that works well, Oh no, now it stopped working. I got to find something else.

And that's almost an immature understanding of high level sport, which is it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to win and lose. And, and, and I think if they can accept that, that's a big, big part of the journey. And I'd say acceptance of the nature of sport. And really it's the nature of anything in life that you can do everything very well or as well as you possibly can do it and you can perform extremely well and still lose. Absolutely. And that's OK. Correct. And by by trying to deny that, I think it takes away some of the curiosity in, in my experience, the very best if they're losing, they log out.

Things aren't looking good, but I'll hang in. And if I just hang in for 5 minutes longer, maybe they'll get a little bit nervous or, you know, maybe they'll start to question things. So, you know, the very best are so good at hanging around with a sort of curiosity to see. I'll just keep going and see what happens rather than I can't believe this is happening and getting upset and, and actually getting into a downward spiral. They get almost more curious. And actually, that's why they can get braver when when they're in pressure situations because it's like, OK, well, if I just do this, let's see how they respond.

They're very good at kind of, you know, accepting that, hey, if I lose, I lose, but I'm still gonna stick around. Absolutely. So yeah, I think that's about three things there. That was that was wonderful. I mean, based on those three things, there's one particular pillar that we offer that comes to mind, and it's called mental mastery. That's exactly what it is, is being able to navigate those tough spaces during the most crucial times and doing in a way with grace, with calmness, with boldness and clarity.

And so I couldn't agree with you more. And I also think that well. It takes an enormous amount of practice. Absolutely. Because in those high pressure moments, you don't get them, you know, all the time as well. So whenever you get them, it's practice to learn how to get through them better and better and better. And you, you might have a lot of losing while you learning how to navigate that place. But as long as you're really positive and have a belief that I can learn how to navigate this, and I accept even when I'm very, very good at it, I'm still going to lose some.

Absolutely not being afraid to fail. But was that failure? Failure is it when you're competing against other people who want things as badly as you do. Absolutely. You know, on the day the margins aren't so big that you know the very, very, very best in the world, you know certainly win more than they lose. They lose, that's correct. But there's not many who do that, you know, And you know, there's a lot of teams at 5050 or a lot of individuals at 5050 who are doing very, very well. You know, if you if you're, you know, a scholarship college athlete or you know, a pro athlete, you've succeeded, you've won already.

Now it's just a crisis of how much are you going to win. But even with all that winning comes the losses. Absolutely, absolutely. And learning from those is a part of the journey. Being able to take lessons from that to do what we mentioned earlier, evolve, evolve between the lines and that, that is the journey. Yeah, and I think a lot of athletes get to this. Oh, I can't deal with that. And I would always say them, OK, it's far healthier to say I can't deal with this right now. Absolutely. But I. I will.

I will learn how, because everything you need you can probably learn. That's true. That's true. And you know, as a basketball player, and I think of one individual in general that has had a huge impact on that mental approach that you're describing. And I think almost every in the basketball space, not just in the basketball space, in the athletic space, across all sports have adopted this mentality. And it's the Mamba mentality. The. Exact thing that you're describing right now. I think the way Kobe defined that goes hand in hand with what you described.

Absolutely. Do you have any further questions for me? I do. I have one last question and I want, I'm very curious about what you have on your bookshelf right now. What is it that you're reading? And and it has to be something that you would reread at the drop of a dog. I've actually started a book right now of a guy I've never heard of before, and I could actually run and get it.

He's a producer in Hollywood, good friends with Kevin Hart. What's his name? And I can't think of that title as it's, it's like something like. You can definitely you can go and get it. I will take a minute no problem, but not in a hurry. Yeah, I think. I think it's downstairs. Oh, OK, I'll. Watch yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll put it in the show notes, but it's it's, it's very humorous, but it's got some good messages behind it. Yeah. Another book that I'm currently reading is Tim Ferriss Tools for Titans, which I, I quite like because it's short pieces of so many different successful people.

So yeah, at at the moment, those are the two that that that I'm diving into. And I do like to listen to some of the high performance podcast because they interview, you know, a lot of interesting people as well. So it's sort of at the moment. Those are the the three things. Gosh, I just wish I could remember this. I mean, I, I only read it last night and I was just gone. But it's, it's, it's, it's some good messages done in, in, in real life stories, things that really happen, you know, with him and, and, and, and particularly, you know, he's had a long journey with Kevin Hart.

And, and it's also somebody who, who has, you know, one of the stories he tells his mother, you know, he, he was very, very happy because he got, I don't know, like 4A's and 2B's or something like that. And he's like a bit of an honor student or something like that. And he left it on, on the kitchen table for his mom, you know, to, to look at and, you know, give him all this praise that he was expecting. And she didn't say anything. And then he was loitering around the fridge and stuff like that.

And, and, and eventually she she looked at the piece manager. Oh, oh, that's very good. You did very well there. Well, you know, well done. And he said, then as she was walking out, she said, of course, if you tried a little harder, you probably would have gotten all A's and then just walked out. And he said, you know, suddenly in his mind was like, wow, I was looking for all this praise and and while I got some of it, yeah, could have done better. And he said that set the scene for him off that he was a straight A student.

And, you know, everything he does, he said, you know, he always really, really tries to put his best in there. So, you know, it's it's it's you know, and it's just reminded me like as a coach, throw away comments are very, very powerful. But both ways can be very negative or very positive something as a coach, I always was very aware that a throwaway comment can be very, very damaging or very, very inspiring. And to try and remember that when you like walking off from an athlete or, you know, finishing a conversation, how you finish it or, you know, or when you're just walking past, you know, and I, and I'd use them a lot like, you know, you know, walking past and seeing a point or something.

They go, boy, now that was mentally tough. Oh yeah. Wow. Not seeing speed like that from you before, you know, so trying to just throw in the positives there, but I but I do remember coach once saying to a girl, look like you've put on a few pounds there had devastating effect on that girl. Absolutely. And a throwaway comment. You know I. Fully agree fully I when I think back, actually one of the mantras that I live by and especially during my coaching between the lines with athletes is you know kids, they don't care what you know until they know you care.

And so a part of making and developing that connection with them came with understanding them so that I know how to use the right tone that you mentioned earlier, because that tone matters because each of those kids have a different journey. And so I can't communicate to Delmont the athlete in the same way that I will with David. And so me being a player's coach and understanding their journey and, and, and what is most impactful with getting that player to perform at his or her best is what I try to keep in mind when communicating to those athletes.

And So what what I what I walk away, the message or the tone that I use before I walk away goes hand in hand with that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is what's very interesting is in businesses, I think selling a vision starts with individual meetings. I think when, when, when businesses, you know, get everybody together and then say this is a vision and, and you know, speak your mind of it no good. You know, the, the, the key stakeholders have to be met one-on-one and, and you need to hear what their ambitions are and what they want and, and, and then be able to sell them the vision and how what they're good at and what they bring and what they want fits into a vision.

Now, if you, you know, if you, you know, it depends on the size of, of a business. But if you have to do that with 12 people, you do it with 12 people. Once they've bought in, they do it with their 12 people and, and then it cascades all the way down. But the time that that takes, whilst it seems slow, is fundamentally how you can alter a culture or an environment of, of a business. And it's the only way that that you can really relatively quickly alter things. But it, it comes into that initial energy and work of getting to know each person individually and you know, I've got a set of questions that that for that first meeting that that need to be asked and it, it changes everything.

Absolutely. And that way you start to build a team of leaders that that are really have bought in. And sometimes you also find out and, and and, you know, people realize that work in that organization is not for them because you've had a good conversation. It's like, actually, you know what? This is not what I want. And then you can help them go find what they want and really need. So, you know, it's it's, it's, yeah. It's just very, very important. It's it's the same thing in business. You need to.

You need to know the people in order to lead them. Absolutely. And maximize that chemistry. So the book that I'm currently reading just to share with you is called Wealth Choice. It's by a gentleman who's actually a good friend of Doctor Robbie on Charles, His name is Doctor Kimbrough, Dr. Dennis Kimbrough. He also wrote Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich was another book that was actually gifted to me while I was in college at college. That's Napoleon Hill. Yes, yes. No, I read that years ago.

Yeah, it's very good. Yeah. And I like reading the Stoics as well, you know? Yes, Seneca. And I mean, what's the Roman emperor called? I mean, I just lose my head. Yeah, it'll come back to me, but everybody knows who it is anyway. But. Well, Stoicism. Yeah, Stoicism. Yeah. Is one of the that's the foundation of what we do. And I lead with that with all the athletes because again, we spoke earlier about the importance of them being comfortable and expressing their their truest emotions or truest feelings about anything in particular.

And it's important for them to also know in competition there will be, it's required that you find if you want to operate on a high level, it's required that you are able to find balance in those emotions and not having an extreme on in either direction. You know, not too high and not too low on being able to do that at a high level. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, many, many a match has been lost through being too happy too early just before the finish line. So, yeah. Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, both of you for for being here today.

And yeah, I wish you all the best in your journey. And yeah, fantastic. Really, really, really enjoyed it. And I want to thank you, David for the invite and allowing us the platform to hear our voices as it relates to the athletes compass and the impact that we plan to make in facing head on the crisis that athletes worldwide really are faced with today. And. I'm sure you will. Work that you do as well. Thank you much. Thanks for watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel. If you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform.

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