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Today, I’m thrilled to share a conversation with Dr. Alex Auerbach. Alex is an expert on peak performance and the psychology of coaching who is currently Sr. Director of Wellness and Development for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors.
In addition to his work with NBA players, Alex has worked with NFL and NCAA athletes, elite head coaches, military members, Fortune 500 executives, and venture capital funds as a performance psychologist and executive coach.
We discussed Alex’s definition of high performance, his experience working with athletes at a variety of levels, helping young athletes overcome some of their most challenging struggles, and more:
- What Alex does in his current role
- How he got into performance psychology and coaching
- Athletes’ most common struggles and their causes
- Signs to look for when young athletes experience performance anxiety
- Blending athletic performance with overall wellbeing
- Developing teamwork, team mindset, and motivation
- Key insights for parents of athletes
Subscribe to Sideline Sessions to hear the rest of our fall-winter season. We’ll continue to bring you insights from diverse coaches across the sporting landscape. Subscribe here: https://sidelinesessions.transistor.fm/subscribe
About today’s guest
Dr. Alex Auerbach is the Sr. Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors (National Basketball Association). In addition to his work with NBA players, he’s worked with elite head coaches, military members, Fortune 500 executives, and venture capital funds. He’s an expert on peak performance and the psychology of coaching.
Learn more:
- Perform Newsletter: https://perform.substack.com
- Twitter: @alexauerbachphd
About the host
Ross Romano is co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and also hosts The Authority Podcast. He began his career in the pro sports industry before becoming a leading communications, marketing, and management expert working with education companies. He is founder and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. He also works directly with professionals at all levels, in all industries, coaching them in their pursuit of success.
Are you a professional looking for insights to reach the next level, find a fulfilling new career, or achieve peak performance? You may be a candidate for performance coaching. Schedule an introductory chat here.
Creators & Guests
Host
What is Sideline Sessions?
Designed for coaches, parents and other stakeholders in the world of youth, scholastic, and amateur sports, this show brings you interviews with leaders at the highest levels of their respective sports.
Hear from coaches and performance experts with experience in the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Olympics, and NCAA Division-I, plus those who run elite youth programs, successful high school teams, and more. Hear about their motivations, philosophies, and strategies for success, and take away actionable insights to support the athletes in your life.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to another episode of Sideline Sessions here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks so much for being with us. If you've been with us throughout the season, thank you so much for helping us become the most [00:01:00] popular news show in my house. So, but I think we're doing pretty well overall.
We have another great guest with us today and he's actually a guest he's worth waiting for. So let's wait. Wait. All right, that's enough waiting. All right, so we have Alex Auerbach with us today. He is a counseling and performance psychologist currently working as the Senior Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association.
Alex has worked with the best athletes across a variety of sports as well as high performers and other domains from the military to fortune 500 execs and more. Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Auerbach: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here with you, Ross.
Ross Romano: Yeah, it's really it's great to have you here. And I think you're going to add a lot to what we've been exploring so far this season. You know, and you work with such a variety of people in a diversity of ways. And then certainly what you do the sports psychology realm and performance coaching.
I [00:02:00] wanted to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself a little bit more than what I've done so far. Talk a bit about your role, what it looks like and what do you actually do?
Alex Auerbach: Sure. Well, I'll try to be as succinct as I can in there because there's a lot to unpack, but in my daily work, like you mentioned, I'm the Senior Director of Wellness and Development for the Raptors. And what that really means is I'm responsible for everything mental health, mental performance, and what we call off court development, which you can think of as things like leadership development or character development or life skills development.
for players and coaches and staff. So it's a kind of broad, all encompassing role where I'm part of our executive team, helping shape organizational culture and the direction of the organization, but I'm also working directly with players one on one, primarily in my role on things like mental health or mental performance.
I'm really lucky to have a talented team that helps me with some of the off court player development stuff, so we've got a really nice Balance addressing pretty much everything that happens away from the [00:03:00] game and then a good bit of what's happening in the game as it pertains to focus, decision making, confidence, performance under pressure, leadership, teamwork these sort of core competencies that cut across high performing industries.
And so it's been a labor of love trying to kind of infuse some of this work into an organization that's very progressive and forward thinking has been very successful and we've had a great time starting to put this into practice and really make this work for everyone.
Ross Romano: Excellent. What what got you into, to that line of work? Was it something where you knew from college that you had a particular trajectory, something you discovered over time?
Alex Auerbach: iT was probably a bit of luck, honestly. So I started my career as a college football coach. That was sort of my dream in high school. You know, I did my senior project in my final year of high school on coaching. Thought that's what I really wanted to do, decided where I was going to undergrad based on the one institution that would give me an opportunity to work with a football program and did a [00:04:00] year working on recruiting and a year working on offense and then a year working on defense, did a couple internships in the NFL and graduated and took a full time coaching job.
And after about four months, I realized it just wasn't for me. The way I was spending my time just wasn't fully aligned with where I felt like I could add the most value wasn't the things that brought me the most energy. And so. I sort of went on like a little soul searching tour from there explored a bunch of different avenues, some in business some still like related to sports, and then was lucky enough to have kind of a career counselor and mentor of mine suggest you might take a look at this sports psychology thing.
It's a way to stay. involved in the space and be involved in sport, but to do more of what you really like, which is working with players on things outside of sports. And that was as a young coach, so that was what a lot of players gravitated toward me for. It was for the I don't know what major to pick, or I'm in trouble at 4 a.
m. Can you come pick me up? I need some help. And it was much less the X's and O's, and I found that stuff. Very [00:05:00] rewarding. And so I ended up going back to school after meeting with a couple more people and figuring out what the path looked like. I went actually back, took some prerequisite courses before pursuing my PhD, and then really had no, like, agenda, I guess you could say, to end up in the MBA.
You know, I actually had the chance to go back to my alma mater and run the mental health and mental performance services there, which was an incredible opportunity. But I had been around basketball enough that I think I just sort of got lucky and ended up having the opportunity to interview for a few MBA jobs and then found one where the leadership really aligned with kind of my vision for how programs should develop and made the jump to the Raptors.
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Ross Romano: Excellent. Have you noticed it certainly seems partially from your description of what your role currently entails and a lot of what I feel like I've observed as well, that there's been a a shift toward a more comprehensive approach to mental health, mental skills, right? Like, [00:06:00] the sports psychology around the around all around performance with athletes in the sports where you know, I think when a lot of it initiated and originated, it was around a pitcher that has the yips and can't throw strikes anymore or somebody who just lost the ability to shoot free throws.
It was more narrowly defined, okay there must be a mental performance issue here because it's not really physical, but not necessarily at that time looking at mental health and mental wellness overall beyond how it relates to athletic performance. Have you, do you feel like now there's generally a more comprehensive approach to that?
Alex Auerbach: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think you're spot on. You know, the origin of a lot of sports psychology was really, it was in baseball, speaking of the yips and pitchers, but it was really about solving. A specific performance problem. You know, someone would be on the team and executives and coaches would be trying to figure out how we get this guy to do what we want him to [00:07:00] do basically and to perform well, and it's not a physical skill deficit.
So it must be something going on between the years. And then I think. As we've gotten more sort of culturally sophisticated in our understanding of mental health and the link between the brain and body and how everything works and fits together, I think sports teams are wise enough to this idea that like, you can't really perform if you're not well, and well means both physically well, right?
We don't expect an NBA player to play 82 games on a bum ACL. And mentally well too, right? We shouldn't expect an NBA player to be able to perform at their highest level. When they're struggling with things like depression or anxiety or substance use or whatever else it may be. And I think as people have started to think about wellness as an investment in future performance rather than this kind of taboo subject that we don't really want to deal with and only fits for specific problems.
You've started to see more and more acceptance and openness toward mental health broadly. And of course that's been helped by players [00:08:00] like DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love. Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, like speaking out about mental health and how their mental health has been impacted by and through their sport participation.
But it's also been, I think, a larger sort of cultural reckoning with the fact that mental health doesn't have anything to do with weakness or problems. What it really has to do with is building a foundational set of well being practices that allow you to sustain growth and development over time and take care of yourself.
And with that lens, yes, you're absolutely seeing more and more sports teams invest in this, not because they're trying to fix the yips, but because they recognize that we have a bunch of mentally healthy, mentally well players, they're going to perform better over an 82 game season.
Ross Romano: Right. And and some of it is you know, it's hard to necessarily discern like whether or not their performance is impacted, right? You know, performance, especially in a team sport, in a [00:09:00] competitive head to head sport, it's variable, it's contingent on what your opponent's doing at a given time, how you're doing, everybody goes through ups and downs and times when they're fatigued, they're exhausted, or they just don't have a good day, and yet You know, even if you're at peak performance on the field or on the court it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not still a value to considering the the wellness all around.
And in particular, we're talking about you know, student athletes, I mean, athletes at the high school level, college level, that at each of these levels, there's different pressures. that are placed on the athletes. There's different you know, different phases of development and brain development that they're perhaps dealing with adolescence and anxieties and things that are common at that time anyway.
But perhaps you're a high performing student athlete in high school and you feel a lot of pressure to earn a college scholarship because you think that's your opportunity to have a better [00:10:00] future or at the college level. You're thinking about being able to make it to professional. Of course, as a professional, the number of eyes that are on you, the amount of money involved, right, the pressure that you're feeling there.
But so much of it, if there's not a designed system and structure and a proactive approach to making it inclusive and comprehensive and something that's available to everybody, and that's just provided. To everybody, one eliminates, if anybody is feeling like some stigma around seeking help, right, and they might want it, and they know it's available, but they won't seek it because they don't want to be the only one, or I think it's easy for a a lot of things to fall through the gaps because they're not totally evident on the surface things look okay.
I'm thinking of this wasn't necessarily particularly a mental health issue, but it certainly had to do with [00:11:00] mentality and mindset. The story made famous in the Moneyball book about Billy Bean, right? And how Like, nobody really noticed that he wasn't actually performing very well in his sport of baseball because he looked like he was a great athlete, he looked, everything looked fine on the surface, and he got drafted really high in the draft, and nobody really noticed, well, actually, like, his performance has dipped.
Significantly. Now, in his case, it was more of just, he didn't necessarily have that love or that passion for continuing to play it at the highest level. Right. But that's all related. Right. That if you're initiating conversations and talking to your athletes and you're finding out, okay, is there something that we can be helping you with or some other way you need to be supported or Thank you.
Or some other opportunity that would be better for you, right? That but there, I mean, and there's also things that are going to be more urgent and and important to [00:12:00] uncover as well that that a proactive approach is going to find where it's just by saying a resource is available doesn't necessarily mean that that people will avail themselves of it,
Alex Auerbach: I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean, I think you're spot on and thinking about the preventive approach and why it matters to have as much access to this service as humanly possible at any given stage, right? You know, oftentimes, of course, an NBA Budget looks different than a high school budget, but that doesn't mean there aren't things the high school could be doing to promote a resource like this.
Help student athletes explore their own mindset, their own values, their own identity, and who they want to become and what they're working toward in a way that helps them not only unlock their full potential, but helps them identify potential trigger points or slip ups or mistakes or whatever along the way.
So that they can learn the skills that they need to be resilient. I mean, what I'm sitting with as I'm hearing your reflection is [00:13:00] and I think about this for me, maybe it's different now. Like, when I was in high school, nobody really taught me any of this stuff. You know, I never got exposed to anything that would have shown me How do you cope with stress effectively?
What does it mean to talk to yourself in a way that's productive or helpful? How do you set a goal and work toward that? And these are sort of fundamental behaviors of human motivation and engagement and joy that no one's teaching you because you're busy learning about American history or whatever else, right?
And not to say American history isn't important, right? But there's like these fundamental life skills that you just don't really And then of course, by the time they get to the NBA and in my case, I mean, we have athletes in some cases who are one year removed from high school and so you still haven't had the opportunity to learn or master those skills.
And yet, those are the very skills you're going to need to actually stick in the league for 15 years or to successfully rise to a college scholarship and get through a four year program. And so I think. The more we [00:14:00] can get people access to the service, the more we can talk about being proactive and developing these skills coming from a perspective of not, we need to fix something that's wrong, but we just want to develop a foundation of growth for this person so that they can flourish.
I think the better off we're going to be.
Ross Romano: Yeah, excellent. So, do you have a unified definition of coaching? You know, you've had experience as what we'll call a field coach, right, in football, as a performance coach in sports and outside of sports. But it's all coaching. I mean, do you have a way that you define what coaching is to you?
Alex Auerbach: That's a really interesting question. And I wouldn't have thought about it beforehand, but I'll try to put one together on the spot for you. I mean, I think ultimately the job of a coach, any coach. is to try to get the maximum potential out of anyone that you're working with. And so whether you're an on field coach or a mental skills coach, what you're trying to do is really develop and extract the highest [00:15:00] potential or maximum talent.
from that person and help them reach their full potential. I think that's what good coaching is really about. And then you've obviously got skills or tactics or different techniques you'll use to do that based on your specialty or what area you're working on. But fundamentally there's a bit of teaching in there.
There's a bit of giving feedback in there. There's a bit of guiding in there with your eye on helping someone be their best.
Ross Romano: Do you see the type of coaching that you're currently focused on as Supplementing, augmenting enhancing. I guess that's coaching done by the traditional coaching snap. And in other words, I guess like make the case to those traditional coaching staffs about why they should en ensure that there is performance coaching, a sports psychology element to you know, to improve the overall performance of their athletes.
Alex Auerbach: Yeah, to me the case is. It's really, we just have an adjacent set of skills that can help you [00:16:00] find the gap or fill the gap that your traditional coaching skills wouldn't fill, right? I mean, for sports, the reality is like, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's probably more than half of it is physical skill based execution, right?
But there's, even in that, things that a sports psychologist can help you with, right? Refining your practice modality, understanding skill acquisition, recognizing how people can learn to help you maximize. The value of the work that you're doing to max out whatever percentage of sport is actually physical skill.
I don't think any of us knows. And then the mental side is going to be whatever is left over, right? There's going to be a lot that we don't see or that is untapped in potential by not addressing that. And so when I talk about my work, the way I think about it is we all have the same goals. You know, just like you as a tactical coach want to win and want your athletes to develop and perform well, I also want part.
or athletes to develop and perform well. I also want to win. My expertise is just in human [00:17:00] behavior and understanding how mindset drives human behavior toward a specific goal, and your expertise is in how we develop the physical skills needed to execute. Task and pursuit of that goal. And if we put those two things together, we've got the whole person and the best chance of reaching that a hundred percent potential.
And if we don't, we're gonna be leaving something out somewhere. And unfortunately sports psychology has not always done as a field the best job of articulating.
And so I think there still is a little bit of like resistance and oftentimes coaches feel like it's their team and the sports psychologist is trying to take their team from them. And the reality is we're not really opposing each other. We all want the same things. We just have to find ways to frame it so that everyone recognizes the unique value of each skill set and aligns around the
Ross Romano: Yeah, and I mean, that's a, I think that's a great point. And we haven't. talked about it in that specific lens before, but I think that theme [00:18:00] has recurred at times during this season, just with relationship to the different approaches to coaching, right? And that traditional authoritarian mindset of kind of the coach as general sort of thing.
And I need to be in charge to you know, hopefully more modern and enlightened views, but still. It comes up right when there's things that the coach is feeling like, well, this is out of my control or, and by nature, it's prohibited from being under my control. Right? You know, not only am I not in charge of what's happening with, say mental health services being provided to my athletes, but I'm not allowed to interfere with it.
And then, and okay, now am I starting to lack confidence or not know what's happening and all of that. And yet fortunately in many cases, the results can speak for themselves. Sometimes, I think between identifying and then actually being able to deliver on [00:19:00] support is not always easy because you need to have a willing participant, right?
And you know, I'm sure you've had this experience. I've, I noticed it in my history, but yeah, I was a psychology undergrad, considered going into sports psychology, ended up going a sports business route, but had spent time working in this, particularly in baseball. And there were just things I probably because of having an interest in it and having some knowledge of it and some intuition where I think most.
Coaches and scouts and folks like that certainly believe themselves to be experts in behavioral theory and behavioral psychology and yet as proven by things such as the You know, pretty consistently poor track record of teams when it comes to drafting players, right? And not being able to really figure out, okay, who's gonna achieve their potential, who's not, and all [00:20:00] these factors beyond athletic ability.
But there were certain things where it was like. In five minutes, based on something that a certain athlete is doing, I can tell whether this person is going to be successful or not now, of course, we all remember our, when we were right, more than we remember the times we were wrong, but there's like certain things that you might pick up on when you're just looking at those.
ways around and it doesn't have to be anything. And in order for it to be effective, it's not anything that's that dramatic, but it's just things that tell you about their level of focus and attention or their mentality and mindset toward how like. Seriously, they're taking their own development improvement or not, or the certain people who stand out and you can just tell, okay, this is the type of person who's going to be an overachiever.
And this one over here, I'm not so sure because the, and if there's a subtle things that. You know, if it was[00:21:00] easy to just kind of force people to take help it would be different, but I'm sure there's things in all of those kinds of regards. And now in a role that's more of a front office type role, right, where there's plenty of gaps to still close.
There's plenty of areas for exploration to figure out, okay, there's something we clearly still don't know about how to have a much better way of. evaluating or and making informed guests about who's who's going to be the one that we draft them and they show up for training camp and we're like, great, this is exactly what we expected.
And the guy who shows up and you're like, oh my goodness, how did we miss this? But it happens all the time,
Alex Auerbach: coach. I think it's really hard, right? I mean, and you know this, you're alluding to it, right? But evaluating talent is really hard. And the reality is I think most teams are bad at it. And I think a lot of times it's really a function of what question you're trying to [00:22:00] answer, you know? And so for me, when I think about evaluating talent.
A lot of what I'm looking for is not necessarily should we do this or should we not do this? It's, if we did this, what would we get? You know, and that I think is a very different way of looking at it, because what happens is you're now, no longer trying to get it right. You're just trying to assess like, do we have the resources, the capability, would we be comfortable with this?
Assuming that from my lens, the physical talent is accounted for, right, I'm nowhere near qualified to evaluate an NBA physical talent, and that's kind of a baseline prerequisite in my world for getting in, right? But assuming you can get in the club, do you have, or do we feel comfortable with the constellation of characteristics and mental skills or personality traits, whatever you want to call them, that we would be working with on a day to day basis?
And you'd be surprised at the number of teams across all four or five leagues that don't even touch this at all for whatever reason, right? They're not sure about it, or it's hard to [00:23:00] measure, or they just don't believe in it yet. There's lots of reasons, but it does, to your point, really cloud.
your understanding of who a person is, especially we know that personality changes by state and situation, right? Like who you are in a basketball court is not who you're going to be at home with your partner. And there's going to be certain core features of you that carry over. But there's going to be a lot of you that doesn't, right?
And so to only understand you in one context is to really miss, like, a whole bunch of other things that contribute. And if you look at the draft class, typically, like, in the NBA, who doesn't get an extension, for example, in their rookie deal, those are, like, the first kind of signs that things have gone south.
You know, when you look at those patterns over time, a lot of what it is, at least publicly, is more of the Kind of understanding of life skills, management stuff that gets in the way very rarely is a player not extended at all because they simply lack talent. It's more because [00:24:00] maybe they struggle with decision making or they're struggling with their mental health and they haven't received support or whatever it might be.
And you can identify some of that stuff earlier in the process and really help yourself figure out if we get this person, here's what we need to do. to support them and do we have that ability to do that? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, right on but if the answer is no, you're doing both yourself as a team and the player a disservice and trying to sort of imagine or pretend that doesn't exist or isn't important to the performance.
Ross Romano: Yeah. One of the things that, that tells me clearly that So much of it is based on factors outside of athletic ability is how immediately it often shows up right where again, it's typically with like a rookie type player and or a draft pick or something, but how it, I mean, as soon [00:25:00] as they show up for training camp, all of a sudden, it's like, oh, my goodness, there's something that we missed.
And if it was physical ability like the scouts wouldn't be that far off. sOmetimes think again, in head to head sports, you have different levels of competition and surroundings and things that you have to project. But there's also other things where it's Oh, we were completely wrong.
And we know this right away where it's like, okay, there's a, there's still, and a lot of it's going to be hard to figure out forever, but there's also other things where it's worth. Thinking about and investigating. I wanted to ask you about high performance, Alex, and in this, as you define it, but And correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I assume to a large extent when you're working on high performance coaching with, in a business context not an athletic context but somebody's coming to you for coaching, that, It's really built around their [00:26:00] definition of high performance.
What performance do they want to achieve in their role? What are their goals? What are they working toward? How does that look either by comparison or contrast? in a sporting context where in a lot of ways the goals may be more universally defined or defined by the team, but yet also individual athletes have things that are particularly interesting to them.
Right,
Alex Auerbach: you've got a few factors to consider. So one is whether it's a sports team or a business, Whoever you're working with is going to have individual goals, and those individual goals hopefully fit into the larger context of an organizational goal or a team goal, right? And what those goals are might look different, but even NBA players, sure the team goal is to win a championship, but every individual NBA player is hoping to accomplish something significant.
In business, I think the same is true. You know, it's maybe it's got a promotion or [00:27:00] elevate my leadership or become more of a visionary, but that's also in the context of helping take the company from 50 million to 150 million or whatever it is in revenue. So you've got some similarities there.
There's a lot of similarities around kind of core concepts that you're addressing. So things like, Self regulation or what you might call kind of like discipline and self control, teamwork, leadership, decision making, performance under pressure almost all of those buckets are going to be present in both spaces.
What I think is kind of a core difference is In sports, what you're really trying to address from a peak performance perspective is what we might call maximal performance. It's like trying to raise the highest ceiling, or raise the level of what your highest possible performance is, and trying to hit that not maximum, Somewhat regularly, but not regularly, if that makes sense, right?
You're not trying to max out every day. You're trying to max out 10 times during a regular season and every night during the [00:28:00] playoffs, right? And that's really what you're working toward. Or if you look at like an NFL team, for example, it's maximal performance. Every Sunday and then maximal performance in the playoffs.
Whereas if you're a business person, what you're really trying to do most of the time is maximize what we might call typical performance. And typical performance is how you show up on a day-to-day basis, and trying to get the most out of yourself during those times. And those performances are fundamentally different.
You know what you do. Under a giant pitch to an investor, right? That's a maximal performance moment for a business person. The skills required in that moment are different than the skills that you need to be at a high level on a day-to-day basis. And we can work on both of those things, but the reality is most business people, when they come in thinking about peak performance, are really thinking about things like efficiency, productivity, getting the most out of their team and doing it.
on a day in and day out basis. And of course, athletes are [00:29:00] trying to get better and trying to develop, but we're not necessarily trying to maximize practice performance. You know what I mean? You're trying to practice hard and do a good job, but it's not really about that. It's about the big moments and the big game.
So I think that's probably the biggest difference I've seen in my performance work with the two. But of course there's still some overlap there as well.
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Ross Romano: So for the rest of kind of our conversation here, I wanted to sort of divide it semi equally between individual and then the team when it comes to sports. Right? And there's things here that are particularly interesting to an individual athlete, to their parents, if they're listening, and they're you know, looking at ways to support their student athletes.
And of course, coaches want to know about the individual and the team. I thought maybe we could get even slightly more granular into some of the particular things that come up. commonly that you would work with athletes on or that you certainly know that, right. Young athletes are either they're [00:30:00] aspiring to, or that they're challenged by, right.
Either, either case, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're struggling with anything in particular in order to want support, but they do, right. Performance, anxiety, things like that. I mean, there's a lot of that goes on.
Alex Auerbach: Yeah, I think I mean, I guess to cut across like the sort of common challenges or the things that are coming up most regularly in youth sports, I think perfectionism, which I think is like adjacent to performance anxiety. PErformance Anxiety, you named. What else would I think would be present there?
I think a lot of it is confidence and like learning just kind of the fundamental skills to sort of manage and maximize yourself during those times. You know, again, like there's just not a lot that's been taught there. And a lot of what we internalize is like our parents, our coaches, right? And now on the team side.
I think there's work to do around teamwork, leadership, interpersonal skill communication, so I don't know if I'm answering your question, but those are the things that are like, I think are kind of [00:31:00] most top of mind for me.
Ross Romano: Are there certain, it's a hard question to answer because there's a variety of different things and it might not, they might not all be the same, but are there like Signs to look for. Let's say I'm a parent of a high school athlete or whatever, and I kind of want to figure out is there something that, that my, my child might be challenged with or they're struggling with a little bit and how do I pick up on that so that I can go about talking to them or seeing if there's resources available.
Alex Auerbach: I mean, I think the first thing to look for is just a change in behavior, right? So if all of a sudden your kiddo is behaving differently after practice or before practice or has a pattern where all of a sudden they just don't feel like playing as much anymore, or they don't want to go, or they're more resistant, or they drag their feet or whatever those would be things to kind of look for.
That would sort of be a sign of like, huh, some, something might be up here and I think it's [00:32:00] hard because as a parent, you want nothing but the best for your kids, right? You always want them to feel good and feel happy and be fulfilled. And yet we can't like rescue them from the normal human experiences that they're going to have around like looking good in front of their peers and managing social impressions and all those things.
And so I think I would encourage parents to be open, vulnerable and transparent about what it is that they're seeing and be open to the response from their athletes. So one of the things that's tricky in this situation is. I've worked with parents that I've worked with, hedge is not necessarily the right word, but it's the word I'll use the kind of like hedge in their questioning, because they think that they know right and of course we know our kids better than anyone else right and
They know themselves, but that shapes the way we ask the question hey you, it seems like something's wrong will you tell me what's wrong.
is a very different question than how are you feeling about going to practice today? [00:33:00] And looking for data versus looking to confirm what you believe I think is a little bit different. And so that's really what I'd encourage is going in with this openness. Here's a change in your behavior I've observed.
Can you tell me what this change means? Now, this change of behavior means something is wrong. What is wrong? Explain to me the problem. And if you can get into that level of kind of framing it, then you open up a possibility of your kiddo saying to you, you know what I'm struggling with this. Or actually, you know what, when we're driving to practice today, I'm really preoccupied with this test I've got going.
It has nothing to do with sports. And I think you want to create a space where. your athlete can talk to you about whatever it is, which is ultimately what I think most loving parents want and not create a space where they feel like they are kind of boxed in by the way we ask questions. So it's tricky, but that's how I might think about approaching it and what I'd look for.
Ross Romano: Yeah, now, tricky is a good word because, and I know I'm [00:34:00] not only speaking from personal experience, because I know I'm not the only one who ever would have experienced a scenario, for example, in which participating in the sport is the thing that brings you joy, but the coaches are the bring you the opposite, right? And it's like, okay, they go together. I had these particular coaches or coaching staffs that I really butt heads with, don't really want to spend a lot of time around. And yet that's kind of part of being on this team. How do I, especially as a student athlete, a young athlete, how do I not throw away the thing that is valuable to me, whether it's just the participation in that activity, that sport, and I just enjoying it for what it is, or whether it's something that I, that might lead to future opportunities, right?
How do I still embrace that and make [00:35:00] the most of it according to what I want to get out of it? While also navigating these other things that are causing me a lot of strain, right? Tricky, but something that perhaps at least the dialogue could start to get to some sort of a solution.
So
Alex Auerbach: I think it's about. You know, asking your athlete, or if you're an athlete, listening, like, reflecting on, like why do you want to participate? What are your values here? What's in it for you? What's the meaning you're extracting? And for a lot of high school athletes in particular, I think what you'll find is some of the stuff you've alluded to, right?
It's time with friends. It's an opportunity to develop a new skill. It's love of the sport. But coaching, parent feedback, wins and losses scholarships. A lot of these things, I would say like obscure our view of why we got into it in the first place and so regular conversation or dialogue kind of revisiting those things and asking the right [00:36:00] questions about those things can go a really long way.
So thinking about things like what did you learn today? Athlete is really focused on development or if you're an athlete writing down What have you learned each day in practice or if what keeps you in sports is fun like great What was fun today. You know or if it's friendships so what did you.
How did you interact with your teammates today what was that about trying to really tap in and stay grounded to those things that sort of pulled you in the first place, I think is what can keep you kind of coming back for more and more in that space and ultimately sustain engagement but of course like.
You know, parents and coaches do have a responsibility, I think. to try to create an environment where engagement is sort of at the center and unfortunately at like every level the pressure to win or perceived pressure to win can kind of drive behavior away from that and outcomes that we're focused on can drive behavior or feedback away from that, but I think the more we can kind of remind our athletes and remind ourselves of what this is like really all about, I think the more [00:37:00] healthy the sport environment will be.
Ross Romano: on the team side of things teamwork, maybe that's the question. Teamwork cultivating teamwork talk to me about that a little bit and how, of course that builds from these things we've talked about with respect to individuals.
Alex Auerbach: teamwork I think is really a function of a few things, right? So one is task cohesion, which is this idea that we understand the shared goals and our shared roles on this team, and it meshes well together and it's functioning well. And so with task cohesion, you'll get things like what us nerds would call backup behavior, I know your job and when you can't do your job, I can step in and help you, right?
So a simple metaphor would be like a rotation in basketball, right? You go out there and I know you can't get back, so I'm going to come over to help you. It's backup behavior. Task cohesion also gives us things around clarity around things like roles, right? Which is really important for the team to function well, so people understand what they're asked to do.
And have confidence in their ability to execute. [00:38:00] And then you've got the second dimension is team cohesion, which is sort of like, how much do we like each other? How close do we feel? How much do we get along? How connected are we? And some of that's impacted by having a shared goal, having a shared mission, understanding our roles.
But a lot of that's just impacted by building quality relationships and helping people feel close. And like we compliment each other and like we work well together and like you understand me and I understand you. And honestly a lot of that is a function of time and exposure to one another and the chance to kind of go through things together.
So that's sort of the really simple framework I use to kind of think through like teamwork and what it means or how people get better at it. It's sort of clarifying or amplifying one of those dimensions and really trying to figure out like how you get great at whatever that one thing is, whether it's leadership.
Because all teams need a leader, or a good communication about the roles or tasks, or a good communication about the quality of our relationship, or learning to back someone else up and support more than we typically do all those things would sort of be a function of good teamwork.
Ross Romano: [00:39:00] How I guess with respect to like mindset and motivation, right? I mean, what are some of the things a coach may focus on in order to kind of cultivate an attitude of teamwork and team orientation as a positive you know, and I think it's particularly true at amateur levels, high school levels where it was like, for example You know, I recall in my days of playing high school football, how our sideline When you look at, like, how many players are on this team, it was always a lot emptier than it should have been relative to the size of the school, right, but it was because there just really was never much of any kind of intentional effort undertaken to make Players feel like they were an important part of the team if they weren't a starter, right?
So as soon as you came out of training camp and the lineups were kind of established and certain guys weren't playing, then they would just quit the [00:40:00] team because it was like, and you know, part of that is probably adolescents acting like adolescents and then maybe not being nice to one another, those kinds of things.
But also I feel like part of like, I don't recall there ever being like that type of a thing to like really communicate about how everybody is an important part of the success or failure of that team, the roles that we play in practice, the roles that we play in sharpening one another's skills, right?
Supporting one another, the role that we play in being prepared to be the next man up, so to speak, when somebody goes down with an injury and so forth. But that's, that Everybody is going to have certain individual goals of their own, whether they're trying to get a scholarship or just trying to be the star player or trying whatever, or just trying to have fun.
But there's a certain, I think there's a certain challenging, tricky, again, [00:41:00] like it's not easy but you know, an important objective around being able to help the individuals on a team develop a mindset about. Seeing it as their contributions to the team as being important, no matter what their respective role is within that roster.
Alex Auerbach: Yeah, I think there are probably two kind of fundamental underlying beliefs, assumptions, or biases that I've seen kind of play out with coaches in the way that you're describing. So, the first is this. I think incorrect assumption that you can either have a team goal or an individual goal, but you can't have both.
And so coaches will often talk about things like you need to give yourself over to the team. You need to subvert your own needs in service of the team. You need to let go of your own agenda and be about the team. And nobody can do that because we're all fundamentally evolutionarily evolved to take care of ourselves [00:42:00] first, right, in our immediate tribe.
And the reality is your team is not your tribe. Your team is not your family, right? Your family is different. That's why you go home and you live with them, right? Most kids aren't going home and staying overnight with their coach and eating dinner and having to deal with all that other stuff, right? So there, there were kind of fundamental differences.
And so my point being like, by trying to sort of cajole athletes into letting go of their individual identities and letting go of their individual goals in service of the larger team goal, What you're really doing is asking someone to do the impossible because you're not comfortable making room for the fact that both can coexist.
And we have really good data about this. And not only do we have good data about it, but we know that people that have both individual goals and what would be called self transcendent goals, these goals that are larger than themselves and connected to a team or a group, perform better. And they perform better longer over time because inevitably you're going to have an [00:43:00] individual goal or a team goal at some point get thwarted or be frustrating, right?
And so to have another source of motivation is actually very helpful, right? If you want me to give myself over to the team and the team is bad and we're 0 that's all I have going for me, well like it's, sorry, it's not really that motivating to be a part of this group. But if I care about my own improvement, if I care about my own development, if I care about being the best I can be, I can still show up in that circumstance.
And give great effort and try harder. And so you don't want, or you don't have to exist in a world where it's one or the other, right? You can exist in a world where it's both. And then the real challenge is to set norms and expectations and talk about how basically to use language from like Seth Godin in marketing, right?
People like me do things like this. People like us do things like this, right? So our norm is We show up and we work hard for the team, but we're also gonna support you as an individual, right? I wanna understand, as your coach, [00:44:00] what do you care about? I want you to understand what I care about and what the team cares about, and let's figure out how we meld those together.
And if you can start to create norms where it's like, look, it's normal for people to have both goals. We want both goals, then you're not really existing in a world where like the individual competes against the team goal. It's kind of like a false dichotomy that we create. But of course, creating that dichotomy then perpetuates that, right?
If you want someone to really do the team stuff, and you think they're really about the individual stuff, you're going to treat them like they only care about individual stuff, which is going to make them not want to care about the team stuff, right? So we've got to kind of lean into the both and not the either or.
And so that's, I think, one false assumption or false belief that people have about teamwork and individual contributions. The second mistake I see coaches make often is you know, it's sort of like you treat everyone like you love them or you care about them or like we're family or you're invested in practice.
But when it comes to game time, what you care about is the five men [00:45:00] on the court or the 11 men on the field or the five girls playing on the court, whatever it is, that sends very mixed messages. Which then makes the people who are not participating feel less invested in whatever the team goal is.
And I think that comes from a mistaken belief that people who are not playing don't contribute. And we know that teams who feel more cohesive, like the bench players, are involved, right? They play, in some cases, a very big role in keeping the group together. See things that players on the court don't see.
They can have different relationships with players who are playing than the players on the court might have. And so those people can be really instrumental in encouraging their teammates or building a healthier culture of support. And so we need to treat them like those roles really matter. And if we can do that, then we can really get the most out of the group and outta the team.
And by the way, the players who are starting. The players who are starting care about how their friends in the locker room who [00:46:00] aren't playing are being treated, whether they say that to you or not. It's just every athlete I've worked with. They care about all of their teammates because they're in it together in a way that they're not in it with the coach.
And so you have to appreciate that how you treat everyone is going to be absorbed by each individual player, and it's going to shape the way each individual player feels about the team you're creating.
Ross Romano: Yeah. No, that's all that's great. And I, particularly, I love that research about the individual, there are players who have individual goals and the self transcending goals perform the best. And that adds up, right? And it's. It encounters, I think, a lot of friction in the popular discourse about winning versus, and, but I think the elite athletes or just any ambitious athlete, they want to win, but they want to win.
They want a team to win because of them, because of the, what they contributed, right? Not independent of them or not in [00:47:00] spite of them, right? And you might hear those soundbites every now and then from a player who had a great game, but the team lost and they'll ask them about the great game. Now, well, I would have rather had the win and.
You know, that may be true for a day. Today, I would have been happy if I played a bad game, but we won anyway. But over the long term, no, right? Over the long term, I want to win, but I want to be the one. And that, you don't have to be, again, the star player or anything, but you have to feel like your contribution, you are making contributions, your contributions are valued, they make a difference.
And whether you're the, right, the, on the starting lineup or at the end of the bench, everybody has times when they contribute in different ways when they're called upon and particularly, right, if you're somebody who's Opportunity is you don't know when it's going to come up even more important to be prepared and to be [00:48:00] anticipating that because that day when your number is called on I mean, you have to be ready in a way that that's very different from when it's always so Alex says we're winding down here.
I guess similarly along those lines to that research you shared, but it could be research, it could be anecdotal, it could be anything, but I'm curious if there's anything that comes to mind regarding athletic performance or the contributing factors that listeners would be surprised to hear something that, that maybe you often encounter that seems counterintuitive or that most people seem to sort of think the opposite, but that In fact, it's not the case.
Alex Auerbach: Interesting question. I love it. So can I give you a few, can I, is that okay?
Ross Romano: me as many as you'd like. Surprise me many times.
Alex Auerbach: Okay, cool. So, the kind of first three that come to mind. So the first is. This idea that fixed mindset is bad and that what you really need to be [00:49:00] successful is a growth mindset. And I think what you'd find at the highest level is that you actually need both.
You need both a fixed mindset, this belief that you belong, that you have natural talent, that you have an ability that makes you special, that allows you to be here. is really important for maintaining confidence, because if all it took was hard work, I could get to the NBA, but I can't, because I'm not that athletic, and I don't have the natural ability.
And if all you believe is what matters is hard work, then nothing really separates you, and nothing makes you special, because Pretty much anyone can work hard. And that's not to say hard work is easy or we should take it for granted. It's just to say that it's not unique, right? And so I think we have done popularly in psychology over the last decade or so, really a number on ourselves, sort of creating this illusion that like growth mindset is everything, right?
The solution to failure is growth mindset. The solution to talent and success is growth mindset. It's just not true. And [00:50:00] even the Carol Black the lady who first started researching growth mindset will come out and tell you it's not true. And the research actually, if you look at the data, points to you really need both, right?
You need a fixed mindset, you need a belief in your natural talent, and you also need a belief that effort matters. And what you get if you have both is this really cool combination where. You know what makes you special, you know what separates you, you know what your role is, or what you're designed to do in sport, and you also know that you've got to work really hard to maximize that.
So that's one. The second is this idea that performance comes from within. And I think we really misunderstand the role environment plays in allowing high performance to emerge. So I think the second thing that would surprise you is the best performances tend to come from places that have good environments.
And environments being both like, physical setup, but it also means culture and connection between the team. It means the way people talk, the way people interact, sort of like the space around the team and within the team and [00:51:00] between the team, as much as each individual performer. You know, and if you look at kind of dynasty type teams, right, the Golden State Warriors of the last decade or the New England Patriots of the previous, what you have is a really special atmosphere.
There's no like signature, right? They don't all do it the same way. But what is consistent is the fact that there's a special environment or culture here. that allows peak performance to emerge versus asking everyone individually to sort of do like the heroic individualism and be the best that they can be on their own and that will be good enough you know and I think we've led people to believe that performance is kind of a function of what's inside you and that's partially true but it's a lot mediated by What's happening to you.
And there's some fascinating research on this, but I think for the adults listening or the high school kids listening, like the easiest example I can give you is we've all had that experience where we've either sent the text or received the text that says we need to talk.
And when you've sent or received that text how you feel. And that just shows you how [00:52:00] impactful human language and human interaction can be on someone's immediate functioning, right? It feels really crappy to get that text message, right, from your person that you care about. And that just shows you, like, that's an environmental influence on your performance.
That's an environmental influence on your emotion. That's not something coming from within, right? But it's really powerful. And so you've got to optimize that if you really want the chance to get the most out of yourself, you actually have to optimize who's around you and what's around you so that you're set up to show up your best.
And then finally, it's that excellence is really boring. And what I mean by that is A lot of what you would see the greatest NBA players, greatest NFL players, greatest golfers, whoever it is, a lot of what you'd see them do looks the same every single day. And that doesn't mean that it is the same, but it looks the same, right?
It's taking 500 shots at the end of practice. Now the quality of those shots, of course, matters and how you do it matters, but there's a reality that it's still doing the same thing every single day with this [00:53:00] intensity. And level of attention to detail that I think is unmatched by slightly less elite players.
And so I think people view the NBA in new peak performance, view high performances like flashy, breakout, kind of golden, incredible moments. And sometimes they show up that way. But a lot of times it's really the function of like, toiling away basically, day after day. and learning to kind of fall in love with that boredom and embrace that boredom as a function of helping you get better.
Ross Romano: Wow. Those are all, yeah, wonderful. And your certainly the point about environment being such an important role in performance. It's given me a new idea to advocate for like, an annual expansion type draft in pro sports league. Cause that's one of the challenges, right? Of really being able to get.
Real clarity on how much is individual versus environmental. Is that typically when you're in a certain environment [00:54:00] You can't do you can't test it scientifically and say, okay, let's compare this quarterback when he plays for this team versus this team. And you can't switch environments in a timely fashion.
But I think a lot of times it's clear you have a pretty good idea of, you know what, this person, if they were in a better. in a better environment, they probably would have had a much better career, but there's no way to know that for certain. I think it also contributes to a lot of just all the pro sports things, but why there's a lot of momentum right now in changing the way that You know, amateur player drafts are conducted because it's not only about, Oh, well, should, why should we reward the worst teams with the best players?
But it's also like, why should we increase the chances of those players having an unsuccessful career? Because we're placing them in the worst environment. Right. And and then that's, I mean, there's [00:55:00] no way, but that matters in every level because Yeah, and outside of sports, right, but who you surround yourself with, who's your peer group, who do you choose to spend time with, who do you allow to influence you and that either will bring out the best in you or the worst and choosing to be around people who encourage you to try to do your best you know, also seeking out environments where People are better than you, smarter than you, know more than you, et cetera, people who can bring you up and you can learn things from and increase and improve what you know or know how to do whether that's sports or otherwise and those are things that are largely within our control a lot of times and making those decisions and and, but they're good things for everybody involved in the process to know coaches, parents, it's I'm going to this school, this college, et cetera.
And and [00:56:00] there's no objective better or worse necessarily, but it's like, what's where am I comfortable? Where do I feel like I can succeed? I have the support I want. What's right for me? And Those things will largely supersede what you can just do independently, because ultimately we're all, we're in other ways we're part of a society, so we can only do so much ourselves.
Well, Alex, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show. And listeners, we'll put links below to find Alex on social media and his sub stack and podcast. Anything in particular you want to direct folks to where they should learn more about your work, anything they should read or check out.
Alex Auerbach: Well, thank you first for having me, Ross. This has been fun. It's always cool to talk to people who like get it from the outside so it's a, it was a pleasure to have the conversation with you and appreciate the opportunity. I would say if you want to follow me or follow my work, probably my Substack is my best [00:57:00] outlet.
It's perform. substack. com. And then for parents or coaches who are interested in doing more mental performance work with their athletes, myself and a few colleagues have kind of set out to figure out how do we bring really high level mental skills training. to athletes between the ages of basically 12 and 20, because there's not that many options.
And so we've built a team. Our company is called Momentum Labs. Find us at momentumlabs. coach, where we're offering battle performance coaching services to young athletes with a handful of talented practitioners. So if anyone's interested in that, we'd love to see you and help out.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, yeah, we will put the links below. Certainly it's where you can subscribe to the sub stack and find Alex on Twitter and LinkedIn and It sounds like, he and his colleagues are taking on quite the challenge with Momentum Labs because if we know that the male brain doesn't even fully develop until age 25, dealing with ages 12 to 20, right, and [00:58:00] trying to really support performance and maturity and growth and success and all these different ways.
And I'm sure you have your work cut out for you. So thanks, Alex, for being on the show. Thank you, listeners, for being a part of this as well. If you're not subscribed already, please do subscribe to Sideline Sessions to hear the rest of our current season here. We're going to continue to have insights and conversations from all different kind of sports Olympic sports, track and field, swimming, basketball, baseball recruiting, a little bit of everything.
So check that out. And if you're interested in learning about all of our shows here on the network, visit bpodcast. network for shows about teaching, school leadership, learning and development, parenting, and a lot more. So thanks again for being with us and thank you, Alex, for being here. [00:59:00]