Welcome

to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger rackets leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former all American tennis player and now the director of tennis management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, the USTA senior director of Racquet Sports Development. Today on Racquet Fuel, new data shows that many employees aren't sure what's expected of them at work. That's prompted Kim and Simon to look at some of the good and bad practices around communications and their belief that you cannot overcommunicate. Now, here's Kim and Simon.

Welcome to Racquet Fuel. I'm Kim Bastable. Today, I'm here with Simon, and we are going to do a deep dive into communication. A leader's role and responsibility around communication is very important. We feel this is a subject that doesn't get enough conversation in the weeds.

Like, maybe in general, people talk about being a good communicator. But what does a good communicator sound like, look like, act like? That's, like, a bigger question. So, Simon, what do you think? We're gonna talk this over.

Look, we've talked about this earlier in this season. There's a theme with a lot of the leaders we we interview that centers around communication, but we we touch on it. I think the ability to deep dive a little and I wouldn't say we're experts experts on on it. I think it's a conversation and and some of the pitfalls and things that we do well and things we've learned will will come through today. But I think it it if it gets people thinking about their communication and how they manage their team, then I think this is a worthwhile episode.

Yeah. So some of the data around this is a bit alarming and one of the pieces that maybe inspired this was a piece of data from the Gallup Corporation that says that only half of American workers feel like they truly understand what their employer wants from them. So how do you actually do your job when you're really unsure what's expected? What the clarity can come from, you know, we wanna make more money. But, again, that's pretty broad, and there's a lot of parts to that.

So maybe let's start there. I mean, the idea of how have you, Simon, gets communicated within the systems of the places you've worked? How how does the worker know what's expected of them?

Look, it's that's a frightening number to start with as a first reaction. But I think it's something you you get better at over time is understanding as the leader, I need all of my team firing on all cylinders. And if there's if there's not clarity around what they're doing or we leave a meeting with clarity around what the action items are, people aren't empowered to do their job, and that actually makes my job more difficult. And if that's what the feedback is from a Gallup poll, there's probably some attachment how long they stay in a job if they don't feel valued and contributing to a bigger picture. So there's a lot that comes with that poll, I think.

But what I've started to do with each new team I've managed is realized that a job description is a job description and it's a very brief summary of what I need you to to focus on big picture with some major duties. But then once you're here, I'm going to give you another document which is your role and responsibilities which completely breaks down those major bullet points into actionable job duties and then there will be some sort of scope of work depending on the role, especially in a leadership role that's attached to that so that it breaks it down into more detail and then daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual responsibilities. So there shouldn't be any gray area and I'm going to review that with you during your first week during orientation to make sure we're on the same page and then there'll be thirty, sixty, ninety day check ins as part of your onboarding to make sure do you have any questions around your job description or roles and responsibilities. And at the end of twelve months, we will review that and then say what changes for next year? Does anything need to be added?

What do we take away? And it's a constant back and forth. And even as recently as the last six months, I've sat with my head pros and said, so your right hands, the the associate head pros. In their role, I need you to review their roles and responsibilities and at least a third of what was on the paper changed in six months. This was dead and buried and we've got to remove it.

We've added this. We'll make sure that's updated regularly so there's not a lack of clarity. So that's become a process and like anything, it takes time and you've got to invest that time, but there's nothing more important than having your your team understanding exactly what they're waking up every day to do.

Yeah. I think I'm gonna challenge you in your next staff meeting or something. You're gonna ask them to tell you how many people feel a lack of clarity in what's expected of them. I'm hoping not half the hands are are gonna go up. If probably I'm doubting any of the hands will go up because you do take the time to go back and forth and have the communication.

And and what I think is key about communication are two things. One, talking is not communication. It's only communication if the person on the other side of what the listener hears what you wanted them to hear, understands what you were saying. So communication is really a a two way street. I often talk to my students about the old telephone game where, you know, you would talk in someone's ear and say something, and then they would say something to the next person, and then they would say something to the next person.

And after about, you know, five or six or 10 people, you see what comes out at the other side, and it's very never anywhere close to the first words or first comments that were said. So we lose a lot in the translation. And what I think is really key, I also hear people say, have an open door policy. And I think to myself, well, if your door's open, but you're in there working and your head's down, I'm not sure anybody feels welcome to walk in your office and interrupt you. So what what does an open door policy really mean?

So I like where you mentioned you set up conversations, and I'm guessing those are two way street conversations. They're not just you talking.

Yeah. No. I'll be honest. I don't think fifteen, twenty years ago, I was really good at that. I think I I've always been someone who cares and has some emotional intelligence and that's always been there and you learn how to use that over time.

But the management of people and a team and getting away from me telling you what I think and learning to ask questions, That's something that I work on every day. And so those the dialogue in a meeting is me constantly telling myself to be quiet. It's like, shut up Simon, shut up Simon, shut up Simon and ask a question and listen. And listen to understand what they're saying, not listen so I can respond. And and I didn't really understand what that meant until probably more recently.

And gee, it makes a difference when you you you engage with someone and you're trying to find out once you get past the the fluffy questions of how you're doing, how's your family, like when you dig in further and say, so talk to me about your job. Are you clear with what it is you're you're engaged in at the moment? Are you clear where we're headed as a business? Do you understand why this is important? And when you seek that out, it's amazing what feedback you get and it shapes that open door policy as you say because an open door is one thing but I'm not sure people are always comfortable to walk through that door and engage with you depending on their personality.

It quite often needs a structure of we're going to have a quarterly meeting or a monthly meeting or a weekly meeting and even if it's five minutes, check-in. Something that creates this healthy communication. That creates the open door policy, but I'm not sure many people walk through that door just because you told them it's open.

Yeah. It seems a bit intimidating, just the idea of that. So I loved it. You originally talked about empowerment, and I think that's another communication piece, and it it also goes to just motivation is when we have clear communication, you allow someone to be empowered to actually make a decision or make a response to something or maybe help a customer, the empowerment piece. But when there's no clear communication, then I think many staff people are just unsure if they have the power to do that.

They're unsure they don't have the answer, so they pass the buck and say, oh, that's not my responsibility. I'll have to ask someone, and there's nothing more frustrating when you're the customer and, you know, you get passed off to someone else. And so that empowerment piece, I think, is one of the results of good communication that that just helps everyone. It helps the employee, but it helps the customer because people get things done versus pass the buck.

Yeah. I think that comes down to what is your structure within your your your team. You know, if you're a small business, you're in each other's space all the time and there's constant communication, but you still have to have structured times where we meet on this topic. We meet at this time regularly and we stop everything. Even though you have daily communication, we stop and we we reflect on where we're at.

We talk about what needs to get done next and who's responsible for it. And if I can set that standard and then hold people accountable to what we agreed on, then there's a lot of empowerment because the next meeting we circle back and I say, let's look back at last week's agenda. You were responsible for this. Give me an update. And the bigger the team, the more important that is because I can't keep my finger on the pulse of everything going on across a team of eight, twelve who are in leadership roles.

I have to trust that there's a cascading of information and people are doing what we ask them to do, but I need to hold them accountable to that. That's my job versus doing it with them, doing it for them, or micromanaging them. I can't do that at a bigger facility. So you've got to understand your facility. You've got to understand what's needed, and you've got to give them the freedom to do it, mess up, learn from it, and then move forward.

Because for our business, it's just tennis. We can't mess up too much. We're not managing someone's financial portfolio for retirement. We're we're talking about a tennis lesson or people being on a court playing. We can make some mistakes and correct those, but we don't wanna make the same mistakes over and over.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting in terms of then you get to this topic of what do you talk about that's sensitive. So can you give information about somebody else's work status or or job status? And I was talking to you the other day when I told you the story of someone in the COVID times where they worked for a college. And during, you know, some of the COVID times, they decided to let go one of the coaches in one of the sports.

But because no one was in the office and no one was around, there was very little communication about that cut being made, which probably realistically was due to financial reasons or, you know, some other COVID related item. But the reality is this person who was still employed by the university was very threatened because I thought, am I next? I'm on the chopping block. Is this gonna happen to me, my sport? Like, what's next?

Because there was no information given on the person who had been let go about the nature of that, just no cheerleading for the rest of the people left. Hey. This had to happen. Sorry that we had he had to go. Oh, this department, you know, had to be cut, but but you guys are still okay.

I mean, there wasn't communication there. So how do you handle that when it comes to the sensitive nature of someone that might have to be let go or leave?

Yeah. That's an excellent question and I I really enjoyed that story when you told me about that. And I think it's moments like that you realize how important your words are as the leader and also equally important your actions. And so

Or your lack of words. I mean, that's the reality. It's what you say or what you don't say.

And I think you have to put you yourself in the the role of an employee and say, well, this person was just let go or they left or it was a mutual agreement. They don't even know that. The employee doesn't. And also they see all they see is that somebody is no longer working here and I wonder why and I wonder if I'm next. How how is this leader measuring my impact and success and I wonder where I stand?

Well, you don't want your employees thinking that as they are doing their job. So I have found that over time, again with a bigger team, but even with a smaller team, the importance of something as simple as a memo. So when I get a new pro that we bring on, a memo goes out with a quick summary of their bio and the areas they would be working in, whether they're working in performance or juniors or adults, where they're gonna be spending most of their time, kind of why we hired them, a quick sentence about why we think they're going to have an impact and please make them welcome. So everybody on the team knows what date they're starting and there's a picture of them generally so they can look for this person. On the flip side, when somebody gets let go or resigns for their next opportunity, I'll put a memo out that says, as of this date, so and so will be leaving the company.

We thank them for their contribution. They've helped in so and so areas. They've got an amazing opportunity out in California to elevate to a director's role, and we appreciate all that they've done here. And so that goes out as well so that the staff know, but then when we have our next staff meeting, which might be a thirty minute monthly where they get a quick update. I'm very transparent about reflecting back on that memo and saying just a reminder that this pro is no longer with us and we all saw how they grew over the two years they were with us and wow, isn't it great that they're leaving the campus to move on to a better role?

Or it wasn't working. We had somebody grossly violate one of our non negotiables and they were let go for this reason. I might not put that in the memo, but in the next meeting, I will explain. And I want that so that they understand that we have high standards, for example. But I also want them to understand that there was a solid reason why someone was left and it's not up to you to spread gossip about why someone left.

This was the reason and I want you to understand. So transparency becomes very important. Are we going to give all the details? No. But you can read between the lines with my comments as to whether this person moved on or they were let go.

I think that's important.

That's excellent. Yeah. No. It is. It's the other thing that comment that this coach made is, you know, they didn't have a chance to celebrate this guy.

He'd been there several years and, you know, someone that might be leaving for a positive reason, hopefully, you know, there's reason to celebrate and and have a conversation that makes him feel sad that we're sad to see them go. So it's, you know and the leader should show up for that. I mean, it's it's just the idea that we have to communicate or there does it's like lack of communication. Rumors will fly. Speculation will fly, And that's really never never good for anyone.

No. And I think I might share more with my leadership team, my direct leaders, because I need them as the the the troops on the ground start asking them questions out on the courts. I need them to be unified in their answer as to why this person left and not to engage in gossip and set the record straight because we know that's going to happen. A memo is not enough. But to your point about celebrating people leaving, we we had a pro recently leave who's been with us five years, went on to a great opportunity.

And we took the time to have a luncheon on campus, all 35 pros and programming. You you're talking 45, 50 people. It's a heavy expense, but they've been super successful too for us and generate a lot of revenue for us over time. It was a win win situation and we wanted to celebrate that and he got to make a little speech. I said something, my director said something and everybody got to say goodbye because I think that's important for your culture to celebrate people's next moves.

Twenty years ago, I probably take it a little more personally when somebody left. Now it happens and it's the right thing for their family and I'll shake your hand and say best of luck. But that's me evolving as a leader from twenty years ago to now. And and I think the light bulb goes off, you get it. You understand what's important to your team.

Yeah. So those are good examples of spoken leadership and communication. I'm curious to know, you know, written communication is is very important as well. What's the process? And I know a lot of clubs, you may have a a bigger chain of, who edits your writing and but but being able to write is is actually a lost art sometimes.

And you have to write for newsletters or you might have to write your memos as you spoke, but how hard is it for you to frame your words? Do you have somebody looking over your shoulder? How do you deal with the writing aspect?

Well, a definite no is writing from emotion and responding too quickly whether it's an email or a memo usually and and I I haven't learned through trial and error with that. I I always have been able to put the brakes on and say, this is my first draft and I'm going to sit back and sit on it for a couple of hours or a couple of days depending on the importance of it and the subject and then I'll go back and 99 out of a 100 times it has multiple edits before it goes out. But I will have my director look at it. I'll have someone from marketing or HR depending on what the subject is to make sure I'm not saying anything that could get me in trouble, that could be used against me, but also just to make sure my message to the staff is right. Does this come off sounding like, you know, there's sour grapes over this person leaving or just the message, you know, genuine?

Just making sure those messages because I don't want them to interpret it the wrong way. I don't want them to think, gee, that that sounds a little harsh, that person who was let go. It's important that that message is well received so there's a lot of thought that goes into a basic paragraph, for example, centered around why somebody was let go with a follow-up explanation as I said in our next meeting. So yeah, the writing is very important and that's not my strong suit. I've learned how to do that but after a while you start to have some templates too.

You know, this is the firing memo, this is the congratulatory memo for a promotion and you start to tap into those you you build them over time and you have a library you can pull from.

Well, there's a lot of people that are using AI now to start writings and have you entered into that?

Absolutely. I mean, it's a it's a great tool. You know, I can take what I thought was a wordsmith's work and you throw it in there and say rephrase and it just comes out more polished. But when it has language in it that I would not associate with myself and people know it's not you, then then I'm not going to use it. But I think it's a great base to build off and I think the amount of time we spend writing things, you know, you can use that technology to your benefit and it complements what you're trying to do, I think it only helps you save some time and time is precious in a leadership role.

A combination of it, I think, is is a invaluable tool, and who knows how we're gonna be using it in five, ten years.

Yeah. Well, I think the writing part and having somebody look at your writing is key, and I'll have to tell the story because I'm still reeling, but I received a letter in the mail from an HOA where I have a property, a a townhouse. And the the letter told me of an assessment for my for my little townhouse, which I rent, and, they said that the assessment was $16,000, and it need to be paid immediately. And my jaw was on the ground. And so I inquired and was told it was very transparent.

Yes. The assessment is $16,000. And I responded back again, is that divided by all the homeowners, or is that the assessment per homeowner? And they very flippantly said, well, of course, it's divided by all the homeowners. And I thought, your writing was pathetic.

It did not say anything about dividing amongst the homeowners. It just said you owe $16,000 immediately as of October 1. And I just thought that was a very, very poor piece of writing. And I can imagine there were a whole lot of homers. We're talking about the difference between 16,000 or I think it's a 161, which is a pretty vast difference.

And I thought, boy, that was poor communication. And I just thought, wow, that person needs to learn to write better.

Well, I live in an HOA too, so I can completely relate, but I haven't got the $16,000 letter yet. But you do have like, when you're talking about money or or hiring, firing, like, they're sensitive subjects and you don't know how people are going to react. So you've got to try and think of everybody before that goes out and someone has to read this and say, does that make sense? Is that clear to you? And I'll generally throw the line out and say, we know what we're talking about and we know what our message is because we've spent a month talking about this before we released it.

But when our customer who doesn't live and breathe what we do casually reads it in an email, does it make sense to them so I'll have my wife read it? Or someone at the front desk, somebody who's not attached to the build up and say, does this make sense to you? And they'll always pick it apart and it always comes out better.

Yeah. I love that. I mean, just some innocent bystander. Just ask the guy on the street, read this and see what do you learn. Yeah.

Somebody needed to do that on that on that writing. So let's talk a minute about meetings. I think there's a a question about how often should you meet, how do you deal with meetings, what's the importance of them, how do you keep track of action items, and follow back up. I think you have some good tips that you've learned in in your years. You've adapted from maybe twenty years ago.

What are your thoughts?

Yes. Look, smaller club, less meetings, bigger facility, more meetings. Think that's the general rule of thumb. But I think I've tried to read a lot on this and just look at how my weeks play out and I'm involved in a lot of meetings, but I always try and look at is this meeting absolutely necessary? Can this especially in this day and age with communication tools, can this be relayed via Google chat or an email?

You know, what's a chat or a text or a group text? What's a email and what elevates to needing a meeting? And if I'm just having a meeting because we feel like we should have one and there's no real measure of why we need the meeting, then I think you're wasting people's time. And I'd rather than be selling spots in programs and and connecting with players than sitting in a meeting talking about it. So one of the rules of thumb I have is if if there's not actionable items at the end of the meeting and everybody has some clarity around what they are, then the meeting was just a lot of hot air that was exchanged.

It might have been great information, but what are we doing with that next? And then the following meeting, we need to circle back on how did we go with those action items. So one of the things that that we use Google Suite and so within a meeting, can attach meeting notes like a basic word doc and then you build an agenda. And my job as the meeting lead is to make sure there is a clear agenda and the agenda makes sense versus I go into a meeting and I just waffle for an hour and nobody has any sense of direction. And I also want to make sure those in the meeting are engaged and so I'll either have one of them practice chairing a meeting because it good practice for the future or they have moments in the meeting where they have to give updates.

It sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many meetings you go to that don't have a structure. And therefore, everyone has to come prepared and if they're not prepared, I hold them accountable and say, the agenda was done in advance. I took the time to build it. You need to make sure you come prepared and you need to keep it concise. You got two minutes to to do your piece, not ten minutes.

I don't need all the details. I need a high level update that benefits the group. And at the end of that meeting, here are action items. We circle the room and say, everyone agree on these, and it's noted in the meeting notes. And so next week when we circle back, we open up the agenda which is just one doc that has each week built on top of each other and you can see last week's action items.

Give me an update. Where are you on this, this, this, and this? And as a result, we keep on track with things. I value my time and so I don't wanna just fill in time for the sake of saying we had a meeting. So I look at time and say, we schedule an hour because it's nine till ten, but we're gonna make this minute fifty minutes so everyone has ten minutes to go to the bathroom, get a coffee and go to their next meeting versus we're gonna fill an hour just because we scheduled an respectful of people's time and you'll fill an hour because you can.

But I guarantee if you make it forty five or fifty minutes, you'll get it done in time because you're sensitive to people's time. So little things like that make a big difference to the quality and whether a meeting is actually worth having.

Yeah. I like that. That's good good suggestions. I particularly like the forty five or fifty minutes to get back on track with the next next appointment. So something that I think is a trend in in our world is this idea of, you know, I'll just send a text and I'll I'll get this text.

You know, you get a list of things to do in a text. And if it's a task, you know, it's kind of there's zero determination of when that task should be completed by. There's just this task. There are two or three tasks. And and then if you say yes, you'll do it or you respond or maybe there's a list of three and someone only responds to one.

Or I just feel that texting, and you may have a different opinion, but is a very inefficient leadership style, particularly for tasks. And what I always keep saying at the clubs that I work with is that there just needs to be clarity of an entire list of things and who's in charge and when it's need you know, these things need to be done by. Like, your example, maybe the response is to get those done by the next meeting, which is a week later. So it's clear you have one week to do it. But the other thing that I get dislike a lot is, will you get me x, period?

And I don't know when they need that. I don't know if the building's on fire and they need it in an hour, or I don't know if they need it in two weeks. But when I open up an email and it asks me for something with no context, it makes my blood pressure boil because I I don't know whether to put this, like, top of my list or can I put it where it properly would go if I continued down my daily or weekly path and I say, you know, I get that email on Monday, I'll get it to you on Friday? Is that okay? But without a date, I don't know.

So what's your thought on text and on date deadlines for tasks?

You have to have clarity around the task and an exact deadline. And I think, is it an immediate thing? So here's where I would use a text or or a g chat for example is, if I need an immediate answer, can be done in two minutes, then take care of it right now. Beyond that, it's a task and it has twenty four hours or a week or a month, three months by the middle of the year, you know, six months. And you have to have a system for tracking that and so it gets put in a task list maybe on a spreadsheet at a basic form and it's it is a forty eight hour, one week, one month, three month and they're broken out into categories with a deadline date on them and you might have something in there from a tracking point of view that you circle back in your meetings and say, so where are we on this?

Are you on track? Are you stalled? You need help or way behind? It could be a color coded system, somebody updates and when you come to my meeting, you tell me that this is a red for me. I am really stuck and I'm having trouble and the team can help.

Or what do we need to get you there? If it's green, it's on track and everything's great. Okay. But how do we pivot and react based on where people are in their task? What I don't want is the day before the task is due, hey, I'm really struggling and I'm not gonna get this done on time.

So how are you tracking it over time so you get updates from your team? We use something called monday.com, which is a project management tool and that's been tremendously helpful, but we're also a team of 80 people who have a lot of tasks and and there is a lot of overlap. If you are at a smaller facility, it might be a spreadsheet which is what I used to do. But you have to have a system that allows you to track progress. In relation to texting and emailing and so on, we use G chat a lot within Google to get daily messages that are quick updates about court rotations, somebody's running late, pro needs to cover two courts for five minutes because a pro is stuck in traffic.

If it's something that's a policy related type thing, that needs to be in person face to face or it's an email blast that outlines a concern I have. And then if not, does it need to become part of a meeting and it's a large team meeting because I have a concern about some of our standards or something like that. So we kind of look at it across those three layers and say, one does this fit in versus big announcements about policy changes get lost in a text thread and they never get seen. How do I elevate this so it gets seen? And what really bugs us is when somebody you send something and there is zero response.

So an expectation, if I took the hour to produce this for you and send it, I need a thumbs up or a or a smiley face emoji or I need an okay or if you're really lazy, could just say k because that's even shorter. But I need a response and acknowledgement that you actually read this. It's not a lot to ask but it's a small pet peeve that I have that mostly just seem to be on the same page with.

Yeah. Totally fair. Totally fair. And just a little bit of communication acknowledgment. Yes.

So I believe, and this is my guess after working with you, that you own two cell phones or you have a cell phone for your personal and then maybe a business one that was authorized for you with the USDA. Is that do we think that's a good thing? I'm tending to think there could be a lot of benefit in that. The idea that we have, you know, one cell phone that communicates all of my life sometimes does feel a little overwhelming. This is just an aside comment.

Do you is that true? Do you have a separate cell phone?

I do. I hate it. Oh. Because Good. It's two things I could lose.

But worse than that is that I think all of us have cell phone addiction. It's hard to walk past it and not pick it up and now I have two reasons to pick up a cell phone. So I am in the process of getting rid of one of them and having one phone, but I think we're able to go down that road from a budget point of view.

Right.

We can build it in, but I think for a for a club that's not investing in its staff with cell phones, then I think the importance of I don't believe in using text messaging. I believe you should have something like we used to use Slack if you don't have Google Suite. Slack was was our outlet. And when your day is off, I want you to turn it off. I want the notifications off.

After 08:00 at night, unless it's an emergency, you will not hear from us. These are our communication policies. Right? And vice versa. I don't wanna hear from you after eight unless it's an emergency.

And we need to respect each other's space. But that gave it a a work space versus it was in my text messages. And then within my personal life, I'm getting work text. Yes. And I get so I think it's really important that you use Slack or or a WhatsApp group or something that separates the work from personal.

I think that's important and it was helpful for us to to not be connected all the time. Because on my day off, I don't want a ping every five minutes because there's communication going on at work. So that was an important thing we learned over time.

That's a good advice. I would love for our listeners to weigh in on this subject, maybe make some comments, provide us some feedback. Let us know their questions or thoughts on this because I think it's an ongoing challenge to do leadership communication well. I also think that, you know, what you are as a person is very important to how you communicate. You have to be consistent.

The character values that you have, you wanna make sure that you consistently employ those as in what you say at the work workplace. And leadership is complex. Communication is complex. The two of them going together. We have to get good at it.

We have to get better at it every day. Yeah. We're all we're all learning constantly, but I think we've probably just touched the surface on this. But we have been able to come up with some very important points of of taking responsibility for how you communicate, when you communicate, what you communicate, really at any level. But if you're the leader, it's it's really important.

I would say more is better than less. And just being transparent is if you really look at any of the leadership research and recommendations, it's it's about that more being transparent, talking to people, listening to people, what their needs are. More is better than less.

Yeah. I agree. I don't think you can overcommunicate. I think you can have too many meetings, but I don't think you can overcommunicate where you're headed and how you're going to get there. And I think you have to when you're in that leadership role, especially if you transition to one or you're new to it, if you're not a natural communicator, you have to program this into your daily activities the same as you did when you booked lessons.

You have to find ways to learn to do it because your words are so important and as we said earlier, your actions are equally important. So I think understanding that as the leader, just don't underestimate it because it's how your employees look at you. It's how they value your your leadership is what you say and how you act. So everybody's looking at you through a different lens than when you were an employee if you're in a leadership role. So this has been fun.

Enjoyed it and I think we just scratched the surface as you said.

Yeah. There's much more we could do and maybe we will. So Racquet Fuel listeners, that's your assignment. Let us know what this topic, made you think about and then maybe any other topics that you would like to hear in future Racquet Fuel episodes. That's all for today.

We'll see you next time on Racquet Fuel.

That's all for today, but we're not out of fuel. You can find more information and resources in our show notes and by visiting racketfuelpodcast.com. If you liked what you just heard, please subscribe. And also, leave a review, which helps other people join the mission to become stronger Racquet's leaders.

This podcast is a production of Athlete Plus, the people, stories, and science behind elite athletes and teams. Athlete Plus is the official podcast network of the Institute for Coaching Excellence, a research, education, and outreach center in the College of Health and Human Performance at the University of Florida. The Institute for Coaching Excellence offers various online certificate programs and degrees in partnership with the Department of Sport Management. Learn more today at coaching.hhp.ufl.edu.