We sat down this week with the Founder and CEO of Elite Cognition, Brittany Loney! In this highly interesting conversation the we dive into all things about improving group excellence and decision making, and discusses coaching through volatility and uncertainty, and optimizing the planner during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Dan
Brittany, we wanted to start with the work that you do with leaders, coaches, business people when it comes to improving both individual and group decision making.
Brittany Loney
Everything that we do, we approach from a level of the brain, so brain centered human performance. And then within that, obviously decision making is a critical component. I did my dissertation actually on dynamic decision making. So I think that’s really where a lot of my passion resides is within those fast-paced moments. How do we make decisions accurately? And then also how do we adapt when we make the wrong decision so we can get back on track and we don’t have that snowball. The model I created for my dissertation has four steps, and then there’s certain elements those four steps are housed within, and I’ll go through each of those. The first one is attention allocation. So where are we putting our attention? Is it on relevant or irrelevant things? Then it’s anticipation. So what do we predict is going to happen in the next few milliseconds or second? Like what is going to happen next?
Brittany Loney
And then also, even looking at 3rd and 4th order effects of that decision, response selection would be from the options that our brain can derive what is the best one to execute right now. And all of this happens really, really fast. And then from that point, we execute the decision. That’s the last stage, decision execution and evaluation and how we evaluate.
Was that decision successful or not? If it wasn’t and we have time, we go back to response selection and try to change it. In a game like basketball, it’s probably less likely. I mean, once you make the pass, you can’t unmake the pass. But when I did my dissertation, it was with medics. And if they had the wrong medical action, they would go back. OK, what else could I do without having to go all the way back through the attention allocation? And therefore, so all of these steps, these four steps are housed within what we call long term working memory. And that’s the technical name. I like to call it our accessible knowledge box. So we’ve got a ton of knowledge and experience that we’ve accumulated over the course of our lives. And then also within our specific sport and area of expertise. In this situation, it would be basketball, but we don’t have access to all of that information in every given moment. That would just be really overwhelming. So our brain narrows down. What information am I going to give this athlete or coach access to in this moment? So our knowledge box can shrink and it can expand. And this is all based on our internal environment. So think of your state of being and your neurobiology is going to be more of the technical aspect. What is your neurobiology and Physiology doing? And if it’s within certain controlled parameters, you’re going to have optimal access to the information that you need for that situation. If you’re overstressed, you’re going to reduce the knowledge that you can actually access. An example of this, which I think we can all relate to. If you’ve ever taken a test and you’re taking the test and you see a question, you’re like, I know, I know the answer to that, I just don’t know it right now. And then you try to sit there and see if you can get it doesn’t come to you. You hand in the test, 5 minutes later, boom, there’s the answer. And a lot of that reduced access was because of a heightened stress response that was beyond what was optimal. So you shrunk your knowledge box. You knew you knew it, you just couldn’t get there within the internal environment that you currently had. Usually when we hand a test in, our stress response goes down and then we get the access. So the same thing happens within sport environments, tactical environments, all the different environments that I’ve worked with him. That internal environments going to dictate what information a coach or an athlete actually can access in that moment.
Pat
When you first start working with a leader or coach, what part of all of that do you find they most need help in?
Brittany Loney
Every individual’s a bit different, but I would say emotional control, that’s the root of choking is emotional control. So I’d say if I had to pick one across the board, it would be that. And then I would also say because kind of our culture is one of immediate results and we like to kind of hack into things. There’s been a lot of positive press around getting in the zone flow moments and not as much positive press around deliberate practice and putting in the work to build performance capacity. So I like to balance the approach to that.
Many times an athlete or coach will come to me, help me get in the zone more. There’s tools that we can make you getting into flow or zone moments more likely and we can definitely work on those. But I also look at how are you deliberately building up your performance capacity before that moment so that even if you don’t enter the zone, your performance is still better than your opponent’s because zone moments are they’re very specific type of moment. So I would say it would be balancing out the value that we place on each of those.
Pat
And Brittany, just to follow up with coaches kind of increasing their capacity and these deliberate practices, what do you recommend or what are you trying to work with coaches to improve their performance capacities? So a lot of times it would be taking what they’re already doing. So coaches are already doing film review. They already dissect their decisions, but it’s looking at doing that in a more systematic manner and then tracking your decisions, approaching decision making as you do any skill that how many times were you successful, when were you unsuccessful and why? And a lot of times we look at the outcome to say if the decision was successful. But also, sometimes the players will adapt well, which is what you want them to do, and they can cover up for a bad decision you made and the outcome still be positive. I always recommend that coaches keep like a journal or a notebook of the different decisions, the critical decisions that they made throughout a game, throughout a practice, whatever it is. And look at was that decision the most effective? Why or why not? And then kind of break it down to what was the root issue. If it was the wrong decision, even if it was executed well by players and they ended up, you know, succeeding Despite that, what was the route? What did you miss as a coach? What biases did you end up having that made you go that route and miss maybe what was right in front of you? So I would just say having more of that deliberate system set up and reflective practices around decision making itself so you can continue to hone and refine decision making as a skill.
Pat
I want to get back on when you mentioned the beginning, how coaches can adapt to a wrong decision and like you just alluded to there. But first one, going back to the four components you mentioned of decision making. I like to follow up with the attention allocation. And this is a conversation we had coaches in the past. But when we’re in a practice or a game and there’s so much going on and you’re trying to account for 10 players on the floor, How can coaches or leaders kind of improve their attention allocation when the environment’s so dynamic? There’s so much information coming in and out, like watching the ball, watching off the ball, watching the defense, watching your offense. You know, what would you recommend or practices that you help with leaders and improving their attention allocation?
Brittany Loney
The first one would be awareness of their attention channel. And there’s four different channels of attention or quadrants of attention. And you may have heard of this before, it’s by Knight of Fir and it’s pretty popular. But there’s 2 dimensions within this. It’s narrow to broad. So what’s the width of your attention? Narrow to broad and then is your attention internally focused or are you analyzing, are you in your head or is it externally focused out in the environment? And then based on those two continuum, you end up with four different quadrants of attention when you’re out in your environment and you’re or broad. So I’m paying attention to a lot of things in my environment that’s assess mode. And again, we all have strengths and weaknesses. So assess mode, I can pick up a lot of things. I may not know a lot about one of those things, but I can look at the general pattern of all of those things together. So again, that would be assessed and then we’re going to stay in that broad spectrum. So paying attention to a lot of information, but now we’re going to go internally. This would be analyze mode I’m broad, I’m paying attention to and factoring in a multitude of data points and then I’m going to analyze that information. And that’s another attentional preference that some people have. I like to analyze and put things together. Again, that is broad internal. Now we’re going to go more narrow and go back to external. So narrow external would be more like target fixation, paying attention to one thing in your environment really well. When we don’t do this well, we tend to call this tunnel vision and we tend to miss other things because we are so hyper focused on the wrong thing. Sometimes we have a preference towards narrowing in in our environment. And then the last one is we’re still narrow, but now we’re back in our own head. This would be in a positive sense, this would be some emotional control aspects. You could be thinking about one particular thing someone did and kind of thinking through the 3rd and 4th, 3rd effects of that one decision you made. You’re kind of more isolating the information versus taking in a multitude of aspects. So those are the four quadrants, assess, analyze, kind of target fixation or locked in and then the kind of centered approach, which would be internal narrow. And again, we have strengths and weaknesses there. So I would first assess what is the coach’s general preference and then where do they struggle? A lot of times people think they’ll deduce a performance into, well, in basketball you need to be assessed or you need to be this or that. But really the truth is, in every situation, you have to be able to shift between those channels very, very rapidly because if you assess and don’t analyze, you’re picking up a lot of information, but you’re not doing anything with it a nd you can’t be in two quadrants at one time either. So we then train people’s brains to shift within those quadrants. And then if they have a gap, meaning like a non preference and they’re not really good at a certain element, we’ll also focus training on specifically training up that quadrant so that they can shift to that and be effective in that quadrant as well.
Pat
How would you work with a leader to just assess what they are good at and bad at? What is when you come in and start to work with these people that you will like an exercise? Or is it just observation to assess as a coach? Like, yeah, I’m good at this, I’m bad at that.
Brittany Loney
There’s a survey instrument, and then we follow up the survey instrument with a conversation and reflections. And then with some of the observational aspects, attention itself is really hard to observe. You really rely on the person’s reflection because I can’t see that your brain just went broad. So that’s really where it’s the conversation. And how does this come out? And a lot of questioning to gain awareness for the person and then also for us so that we can better help them develop. And then also what steals their attention. And we call these attention thieves. So when a coach is not optimally focused, where does their attention go? Or under stress, fatigue, even complacency. A lot of times we talk a lot about stress and pressure and all of this, but sometimes our attention blunders because of complacency. Sometimes we get too broad because we’ve gotten complacent and then we’re starting to factor in irrelevant things into our decision making. So I would also have that discussion around major distractors, what causes those things to happen to really get a good view on who they are right now and then where are those gaps that we can work with? Training, deliberate queuing and other tactics and tools.
Pat
From there Brittany, I mean, once they’ve you’ve kind of assessed and they’ve reflected and you maybe talked about the attention and thieves. Does that then help a coach understand when they need to shift or when maybe they’re getting stuck in one quadrant too long?
Brittany Loney
Yes, it’s crazy how awareness of just that there’s these different quadrants and you can’t be in tw o at the same time. Simply having that awareness is, you know, all right, where am I right now? It’s like a quick micro reset. Where am I right now? Is this where I need to be? If this isn’t where I need to be, what do I need to be paying attention to? And then we teach them about the brain’s filter as well. At any given moment, there are billions of cues we could be paying attention to internally and externally. The brain can only process about 40 to 60 bits of information. Sorry, I said billions. There’s millions available at any given point, but that’s a really small percentage that our brain can actually process in any given second. Now we can shift our attention a factor in more and more, but in really dynamic environment environments, it’s changing constantly.
Brittany Loney
So we’ll teach them about that brain filter and how important it is that those 40 to 60 bits are actually relevant to the task. So then we’ll start to look at what irrelevant things do you pay attention to, kind of create a list there. And irrelevant doesn’t mean, oh, they’re, you know, their minds wandering off the game. Irrelevant could be my mind was on the last play and I was thinking about that and I didn’t assess what was happening currently. Like I was literal millisecond or second behind because my mind was in the past or even in the future.
Tying a couple of things together you’ve been talking about within all the dynamic decision making stuff that we’re talking about, you also mentioned you do a lot of work with helping when a leader makes a wrong decision and what happens next. And we’re kind of in this conversation, it feels like a little right now with how they handle that. But let’s say in a game for basketball coaches a little bit different than say a practice where you could stop things you can correct, getting to like a game where things are happening fast and potentially a wrong decision is made. What’s the work or things that coaches can do in those moments? So what we help coaches build is a micro reset. And it’s a very quick reset that we train so much that it becomes pretty automatic. Because again, if someone’s thinking about doing a micro reset and kind of controlling their emotions, then guess what they’re not thinking about is the game that’s unfolding still right in front of them. So we like to make sure that we actually train these micro resets so that they can happen concurrently without taking attentional bandwidth. So then we’ll look at, OK, for that particular coach, we’ll come up with what is the best three breath reset. That’s where we kind of start. And then we’ll go through different breath control strategies. And that’s just one part of it because we’re going to try to control the Physiology. So if they’re over stressed or under stress, what breath control technique can we do to get them physiologically back where they need to be so they have all that accessible knowledge and their attentions in the right place. And there’s a lot of different breathing cadences I could go through if you wanted. We’ll work on that piece and then we’ll work on the thought aspect in the mindset piece. So breath one is essentially just bring yourself back to the moment. First breath is just awareness, all right, where am I, where am I, what’s going on? 2nd breath is relax, bring your Physiology back whe re it needs to be. Third breath, set your attention or intention going forward. And it’s very quick. It usually takes about 20 to 30 seconds. And again, when you have this really, really well trained, it’s not taking 20 or 30 seconds of like, hold on, let me go, take a time out for myself. You’re able to kind of do this real time without having to stop everything happening in the dynamic environment.
Dan
My next question was going to have to do a little bit with group decision making. And we’re talking a lot about the individual right now. And I know you also do work with helping groups become better. And one of the things I want to ask about was hiring a staff or bringing a group of people together that their decision making brains or the way that they function is good as a group as opposed to just random individuals trying to do things different ways.
Brittany Loney
That question relies on each individual kind of going through the process that we just discussed, but then also that team truly understanding how each person communicates. So we do stuff around communication styles, communication flexing, but then also we do assessments around problem solving preferences. So we all have a different preference in terms of the stages of problem solving that we tend to gravitate towards and without a awareness and value of each one that can cause unnecessary conflict. So real quick, the four stages would be you’ve got people who are illuminators, they like to clarify the problem, look at what’s at the root of things are very methodical, more deliberate process and then after illuminate. So they just illuminate the problem we have generate, which would be generating possible responses. So this would be the people who are really good at developing ideas. They’re usually thinking outside the box. Their brain tends to work very big pictures. So sometimes they just miss the details and very fast. So you could see already the illuminate and the generator could clash over speed. You know, the generator wants to move towards response options, while the illuminator is like, wait, what’s the problem? So then you have people like tugging each way. After that, then you have developers. And developers really like to take an idea and put it into a workable solution. They usually are very detail oriented. They like things to be pretty perfect. They have a hard time letting go of the solution, like no, no, it’s not ready, it’s not ready. And they are too methodical as well. Same with the illuminate. So illuminating developers are both very methodical, deliberately paced and then the illuminator and then the last one, which is going to be the execute person, they’re very fast-paced.
Brittany Loney
So they like to push the p rocess along versus the others tend to, hey, let’s give this more thought. So we tend to have education around that. Where can we leverage the different styles and look at the diversity of the problem solving as a strength versus like it keep creating conflict and they don’t even realize what’s at the root of it. So we’ll discuss those things, the communication styles, and then also how to develop shared mental models and shared situational awareness.
A lot of times we think when there’s shared situational awareness, we think everybody has to know everything at the same time. But really, the right people have to know the right information at the right time. Not everyone needs to know everything. And when you look at attention allocation, if you’re over communicating, because I often see a default be like, well, let’s over communicate. Well now you’re adding a lot of noise into the attentional system because you don’t potentially want to give it extra thought of who really needs to know this? What’s the right amount of information for them to know, and what is the right timing of this information? So we’ll look at the shared mental models, the communication methods from A non verbal aspect, being the players on the court, even the coach on the sideline, and then also the verbal aspect of that communication and that really creating the shared mental model. And everyone has to know their role and all of that because that will dictate what they should be paying attention to.
And then the shared mental models, this happens with experience, with practice scenarios when you’ve got, you know why the word is escape me right now, but you got the simulated my mind’s in like the tactical land right now. You get the simulated situations and scenarios and what not. And then you want to have reflective practice around that. One of the things the military does that is being increasingly brought into sport and corporate are after action reviews the ARS. And this is really what helps to refine the mental model of the entire team so that they’re on the same page with what different things mean, what different patterns mean, how they should anticipate in the future. And not just anticipate what the opponent will do, but what they will do, what the players will do in response to things. And then that’s through a well guided after action review and we help coaches formulate what that should look like, what the coaches should have the after action review on, and then when they should involve the players and what the players should have built into their processes.
Dan
What is an element of a good action after review for a staff?
Brittany Loney
So for the staff, if we’re looking at decision making, that’s where I would go in. And all right, what were our critical decisions? What decisions LED up to our critical decisions? Because maybe we never even had to be in that situation in the first place. So I just get out on a white board. All right? What were the decisions made? And then what went into those? OK, What decisions now that we look back, even if the outcome turned out OK, when we look back, was that the right decision? And if it was, OK, let’s continue doing that, what led to that? And then if it wasn’t, why did we make that decision? What caused us to make that again? Was it biases and assumptions or was it we just missed what was happening on the court because maybe that it was attention quadrants were off or maybe we didn’t communicate as a staff.
And those can highlight different systems and processes that could be put into place going forward.
Dan
And then with that, you mentioned players being involved as well, potentially. When might players be involved and what kind of information should they potentially know or not know?
Brittany Loney
So they could even on an individual level, I think I’d have them do it individually and then bring it to the team environment. But it could be something like, let’s say a pass was thrown out of bounds, right? Why did that happen? Was that because the point guard anticipated the shooting guard was going to fill the gap? Because the shooting guards looking at the gaps versus where the person is and then the person went another direction. OK, so why did we have that miscue? And then the players can talk about, you know, the shooting guard might say, oh, well, from my vantage point, you know, here’s what I saw and here’s why I went this other way. And then the point guard can say, OK, well, here’s my vantage point and why, you know, I was filling this gap. And then they can work that out.
It’s not to say one would be right versus the other, but they’ll start to understand how each other think and make decisions in real time while they’re on the court and just opening those discussions because so often if a turnover happens on a pass, it’s just like, all right, let’s just make less turnovers. This can go into what really caused it that, you know, one person went the other way that the other one didn’t anticipate them going. So that is a disconnect between their mental model.
Dan
Tying back to the four different illuminators, the generator, developers, executor. I guess when looking at leaders in general, do you find that certain types of let’s say, head coaches or CEOs fit closer in with one of these? And then is it you try to develop them to have a second one or does everybody have all of these? It’s just different shades. I mean, how does it all work with different types of leaders?
Brittany Loney
I love that question. There is an integrator type. So what we want to get everybody to is an integrator. An integrator is looking at what is the gap for the group and the collective problem solving your decision making right now. And they usually tend to fill it. And they’re strong in every aspect.
They don’t have a true preference. They value every piece, so that’s why they can see the gaps a lot easier. And then we have tools and techniques to help someone get better at those. Let’s say your lowest preference is generating ideas. You don’t feel like you’re good at it. We have a lot of techniques around unlocking a lot of those ideas because usually it’s our own constraints that cause us to be that way. We have that for every stage, so it will help with that aspect of it, but there is not one type we see most of. It’s just how they’re going to lead is going to look a little different. And I’ve worked with illuminators who they are really looking at the problem. They’re very deliberate and they’ve been great leaders as well. And then you’ve got the generator who’s going to lead from a really fast-paced like a lot of ideas. And the staff tends to feel like, OK, we’re going after this idea. Oh wait, no, we’re going after this idea. So they’re just leading differently. So there’s not like one type that’s better than another. I think it’s about the self-awareness of the leader and knowing what their natural preference is.
Build up the others, but also realize when your natural preference can actually be damaging to the organization. Like with the generator person, they can burn out organizations because everyone’s running in every direction and they start to feel frustrated. The executors who are like let’s just go do it. That can do the same thing. The more methodical ones like the staff can feel like man, like we’re not on the cutting edge where I feel like we’re stuck back or things happen so slowly around here. So there’s pros and cons of each one. It’s just how is the leader able to offset themselves either by surrounding themselves with people who are unlike them or training up their own ability and their non preferences.
Pat
Brittany, kind of the same question, but when you look at a leader in a game, so when there’s a time constraint, should one decision making process kind of dominate over the others due to the fact that yeah, I mean, you were just on offense, now you’re on defense and it just keeps moving. So you how methodical can you be in your decision making?
Brittany Loney
That is a great question. So what I’ve given you was the problem solving stages. Where is dynamic decision making is a very different thing. Too often we try to overlay one upon the other. They are very different processes, yet there probably is some impact. Whereas if you know, a coach is very methodical, they’re I’m for in dynamic decision making, maybe less, but they’ve probably trained themselves to get more and more comfortable. So there could be some bleed over and how the style impacts their dynamic decision making and where their fault lines are. And you know, I could definitely see either that illuminator or developer that more methodical type get stuck in analysis. You know, it’s just looking at OK, you might have this in problem solving, but then in dynamic decision making, where does it potentially cause you to get stuck within those attention quadrants? We can use the information, but they are not, you can’t use the same process for each one.
Pat
How do groups innovate?
Brittany Loney
A lot actually is around that problem solving process and we’ve guided organizations through that problem solving process that they’re looking at innovation in general. Let’s say they’re looking at aspects. We’d guide them through, OK, what is the real problem you’re trying to solve, right. We have the different tools we would teach them within that with the live problem. All right, now let’s generate the ideas. There’s a very specific process for generating ideas, which we most do wrong. This is a take away the coaches could take right away. If you’re having a problem solving session and you want more innovation or you just want to solve problems better. When you are brainstorming, try to prevent skeet shooting. Skeet shooting is when someone throws an idea out there and everybody shoots it down. And what happens is in this brainstorming session everybody gets a little frustrated. It’s taking forever. People stop sharing ideas because they don’t want to get shot down. And this is whole cycle of why can’t we progress?
We should not be skeet shooting. What we should do is get all ideas out there and fast. My favorite term when facilitating a brainstorming session is what else? Right When someone says an idea, there’s no discussion about it. They throw out an idea, I’m going to capture it. On a whiteboard or butcher block, I’m going to capture it. Even the most off the wall ideas have to get captured because the off the wall ideas are what break thinking inside the box, right? When someone throws that off the wall, it causes us to loosen the constraints we have on our box and brought in and start to see other ways. And it’s seeing every idea that’s thrown out there as utility versus looking for what’s right. During brainstorming, you are not looking for what’s right. I know that sounds crazy. Your goal in brainstorming is breath. How many ideas can we possibly capture in this time? And it does not have to take a long time. A lot of times people stop brainstorming because they think, oh, it’s just a painful process. But yeah, the old way is really painful and long. This way you can get hundreds of ideas within 30 minutes to an hour if you do it right.
So that would be my thing right away is in that brainstorming phase, it’s quantity and that’s the generate phase. And then once you get to develop that transition between generating and developing, that’s when we start to look at what are their criteria that our idea has to meet. And you actually start to pick them using a select in method. You identify the criteria this the idea has to meet these three to five things. And then you start to select those ideas in. And then we would guide the groups through that. And then to develop that out, you would use like a how how if it’s a big idea, well, how are we going to do this? And then you kind of have these branches. Well, how are we going to do that? So you go from the strategic to the tactical through that how how diagram.
Pat
Going back to innovating and getting a breath of ideas. Can you explain the unsung hero concept?
Brittany Loney
Yeah, so this stemmed originally from the ideal team player concept from Patrick Lencioni’s work, which is phenomenal. But as we were working with organizations, we started to think about K, what’s missing, what needs refinement. I love the ideal team player concept, but we wanted to build off of it even more. So we came up with the four attributes of the unsung heroes. So this is essentially what is the ideal teammate, right? And we call them the unsung heroes.
Number one is radical humility, and it’s about ego management. A lot of times we’ll say suppression of the ego. We’re human beings, We can’t fully suppress our egos. They keep us alive, but we can manage them and use them very deliberately. And we would talk about how you can use your ego to motivate competitive edge, all those things. But then actually when it comes time to trust and to execute, you actually need to go to an other orientation and stop focusing on self. Ego is self like, that’s you’re self focused. Whereas humility, the definition of it, many people think it’s a lack of confidence or just not being arrogant. Really the definition of humility is being other focused and serving others. So radical Humility and we work on developing that.
There’s a great book by ERS Koenig by that name, Radical Humility. Then we look at relentless fortitude, and this would be drive and resilience or growth and grit and looking at how do we increase somebody’s motivation. And then also there’s a lot of tools we have around building their resilience and their fortitude. And then we’ve got adaptive, which would be adaptive to people and adaptive to situations. So this is where we would look at emotional intelligence when it comes to people and when it comes to situations. We would look at building proactive adaptability and reactive adaptability. And then all those three things, the radical humility, relentless fortitude, and adaptive, it’s all housed within extreme ownership. This comes from Jocko Willink.
He talks about extreme ownership where accountability to self is #1 where you’re taking extreme ownership over your part in whatever it is versus looking at how other people were wrong and casting blame and all of that. It’s that perspective of, all right, where’s my piece and what can I do to correct that? And there’s different art types, based strengths and weaknesses. And we would look at the archetype, how that impacts of culture, and then you could look at your culture as a whole. I had an organization do this where leaders were assessing themselves on these these attributes. And what was really amazing is the founder said, you know, culturally I actually think we’re missing radical humility. We have a ton of relentless fortitude and we’re really good at being adaptive. However, I think sometimes we get a bit too self focused and how do we recognize the quiet professionals? So we actually had a brainstorming session around we keep rewarding relentless fortitude. How do we start rewarding the person who’s trying to raise the tide for everyone to make everyone better? And they’re not necessarily the louder one who’s pushing their idea. Many times they were the one who influenced that direction quietly.
Dan
We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call Start Sub or sit. We’re going to give you 3 options around a topic, ask you to start 1 sub one and sit 1. Brittany, if you’re ready, we will dive into this first question. Perfect.
OK. So this first one has to do with the VUCA framework, which is volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. And we’re going to just take three of those for this question. But it’s going to revolve around what a coach could do to help when it comes to a game plan, when it comes to help preparing your team and your group to play a game. Which of these three would be best to solve for to try to prepare your team for amongst these three, So option one would be preparing your team to handle volatility, Option 2, preparing your team to handle uncertainty in the game, or option 3, preparing your team to handle ambiguity within a game.
Brittany Loney
I don’t get to talk to the coach. I would go and I’m going to redefine volatility. I’m going to start volatility and I’m going to change the interpretation, usually volatilities about the environment. I’m going to change it to internal environment because when we look at dynamic decision making, your internal control, that neurobiology, you have to do things to control the internal volatility or all else fails. So I’m starting that one.
Pat
OK.
Brittany Loney
All right, now my sub uncertainty is going to be my second. I didn’t mean these to actually be in the order of the acronym. Uncertainty and ambiguity they’re so close, but I think uncertainty is more pervasive. If I do this, what will happen? The uncertainty just in the environment itself, what will unfold, all of that. And in a basketball game, I think they’re comparatively to, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of tactical operators. You know, there’s would probably be a bit more on the ambiguity aspect because in WAR the ambiguity is unreal. So I’m going to go with benching ambiguity when I’m looking at the basketball arena.
Dan
Great, I know a tough question here to have to rank these. I actually like to start with your sub, which is uncertainty and I guess ways that leaders can prepare people to handle uncertainty so it doesn’t just leave people scrambling in different directions when trouble hits.
Brittany Loney
My answer to that is going to be very cliche, but it’s true. And that is, what elements within this uncertainty do I actually have control over and which don’t I I think when we’re in uncertainty environments, we almost relinquish the certainty we do have within all uncertainty. There’s still certainties, but I think we get so consumed with the uncertainty that we forget about all the things we can control. And sometimes it comes down to just us. We may feel like everything else in that environment is uncertain, but the only certain thing you have is how you’re going to respond and show up in that moment of uncertainty. I think I would switch the focus. Actually, I know I would switch the focus from what am I going to do next to how am I going to be? And this would be how am I going to show up in alignment with my values.
Brittany Loney
And I think that helps take some of the pressure off. And we do work with a lot of leaders on value systems. And how do you show up with your values? I think that’s always in your control. When you feel like everything is out of your control and it’s really, really uncertain, we can get into over analysis or just completely frozen of what to do next. But if we bring it to being, I think what we need to do comes automatically.
Dan
Brittany, could you go a little deeper on just showing up with your values? It’s a great quote and I think something that play coaches would love to hear more on.
Brittany Loney
Yeah, I take a very character based perspective to excellence in general, and it’s really looking at what your value system is, your three to five top values. And we work with people on identifying them, Whether you’re a coach and athlete, staff, doesn’t matter who you are and what you’re performing. It’s really being clear about your top three to five values and even the order of those values because many moral dilemmas and ethical dilemmas actually come down to your top values coming into conflict with each other. And then sometimes I think when you look at flow moments and being in the zone, I think we become consumed with doing and overthink that and take ourselves out of the zone. The thing I’ve seen work best with people across disciplines is switch the focus before performance from doing the things right. How am I going to execute this skill, this play, blah, blah, blah. Like you’ve already trained that. Trust that and to switch to the trust thing, it’s how am I going to be out on that court? You know, let’s say my top value is hustle, and then my second top value is humility and serving others, serving my teammates. Then I’m going to bring my focus to all right, how am I going to show up with hustle, humility and serving my teammates? And you take the focus off yourself and the internal processes. You’re able to start to trust that because you’re thinking about showing up with value.
Pat
You mentioned the importance of the order of your values. How do you work with a coach or a leader on finding their order?
Brittany Loney
We go through various ethical case studies and really hard decisions others had to make. And then if they’re willing, I’ll bring in past decisions they’ve had to make. And we really look at it through the lens of kind of the armchair quarterback of all right, what values are actually playing into my thought process about the ethical decision making. We also go into which person do you choose to be most ethically responsible? Because it’s not always the person who is held responsible. And then I’ll ask them, well, why is that? And that’s where you’ll start to get their value system to come out. And then we’ll put them in very deliberate situations, scenario based, where we look at those three to five values and then we start to figure out which one goes above the other based on the scenarios.
Brittany Loney
OK, so you’re going to go this direction. Why was that? Oh, well, you know, here’s my thought process and then we start to see which one actually the edges over the other. And this helps with ethical decision making down the line so much. And then we also discussed moral scars. We all have moral scars. This is when we didn’t show go up in alignment with our values or we chose a lower value over a higher value and we live with this regret. Often times we’ll try not to do it again. But I think when we have the conversation about what are the moral scars and what value did it hit? And what’s the line in the concrete that you’re drawing where you’re never going to go back and, you know, do that again. The clarity starts to come through those case studies in the discussions
Pat
Going back to your start and when we kind of put in the framework of preparing your players a game plan with volatility, you preference or you preferred preparing them for internal volatility versus external volatility and I just like to follow up with why you felt that one was the one that coaches should prioritize.
Brittany Loney
So I think when you really look at the scale or the continuum of volatility from high to low in the scheme of life, the volatility of a basketball game, and I’m not trying to minimize it, but the true volatility compared to a battle, it’s very different. So I think most of the volatility comes from our emotional reactions to the uncertainty or the other things or the things not going right rather than it being some insanely volatile thing that just happened. And again, not to minimize it, it’s just different. That’s why I think the mastering has to come of oneself because of volatility is usually arising from within, and I think that’s where the control has to happen.
Dan
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Pat
All right, Brittany, our last start sub,sit for you. This question has to do with leadership fallacies. I want to give you 3 leadership fallacies. And which one do you think is the most detrimental to a successful leader? So option 1 is a leader should be an active listener, a leader should optimize the plan, or a leader should disassociate from fear and anger.
Brittany Loney
So in this question, I’m supposed to pick the most detrimental?
Pat
Yeah, it’s detrimental to them being an effective or good leader?
Brittany Loney
My dynamic decision making, You’re testing this right now. Gosh, it depends on the moment. So active listening, you know, if I’m having to deal with building a relationship with a player or staff member or am I in a game moment? So can I have you pick which environment we’re in?
Pat
Let’s go a game moment.
Brittany Loney
OK. I would start disassociating from fear and anger as a need to happen. Not that that if they disassociate, that’s not detrimental and it’s not really disassociating. I would say it’s the courage to face it and manage emotional control despite the fear and usually fear and anger come from ego because we go into self preservation mode and you start to make decisions to protect oneself versus sometimes what’s best for the situation. There are situations where the two align. So I’m going to say #1 I’m going to start. You have to disassociate from that sobbing. I’m going to optimize the plan. Actually, I’m going to optimize the planner, not the plan. The value of plans is in the process of planning. It’s where you kind of start to build your mental model that you’ll reference in game time. So I’m not going to spend time perfecting the plan. I’m going to spend time optimizing the planner through the process of planning. And I hope that makes sense and then I’m going to sit active listening. We’re in game time. Yeah, you have to have active listening to hear what your players are saying to you. All of that and your, the staff. I don’t want to sit it, but I’m going to have to bench them. I might regret this later. I’m going to go back and have my decision and evaluation.
Pat
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned there were two situations where I believe was it fear and the ego align or there’s situations where…
Brittany Loney
Fear usually results because we’re trying to protect our ego. Ego preservation and ego is, I mean, we all have it. We’re human beings, We have it built in and it gets a really bad name. I really think fear comes from self preservation.
Pat
My follow up is how are you helping coaches or how should coaches navigate or mobilize fear and anger in the heat of a moment of a competition?
Brittany Loney
One is maintaining control of it. I’m not saying get rid of it. Emotions are trying to tell you something. They’re signposts. Fear is telling you, you know, there’s something you need to be careful of. So when you feel fear, it’s not like, oh, I need to get rid of the spirit. OK, What is my brain cautioning me to look at, to consider, to avoid? It’s causing me to avoid something. Is that accurate? Maybe that helps preserve myself. But is that the best decision for the organization in the team? So look at the signpost.
Anger is I’ve been trespassed against. OK, so that’s information. Somebody has trespassed against me. Why do I feel like they’ve trespassed against me? Is that actually true? How have they trespassed against me? So I think when you fully understand how emotions or information and signposts for what’s going on in terms of the information in our environment, we can then use it effectively to make decisions. And then also you can use it to your team. You know, if you think the team is being complacent and you’ve seen that they really respond to you getting angry, make sure it’s measured because you don’t want to go overboard, but you could use that anger to get them amped up. So there’s utility in all emotion. It’s just making sure that you maintain the control of it in the modulation of it.
Pat
Is it true, or can players play better when they’re angry?
Brittany Loney
Yeah, it depends on the player. And I’m glad you brought this up because I wanted to bring it up when we were talking about internal control. Every single person, coach, athlete, staff member has their individual zone of optimal function, the eyes off, and there’s different emotions that we all tend to perform better under. When I was playing basketball, my team got amped up, they chest bumped and the music was just, you know, hype music.
I didn’t realize in that moment I really wish I had someone had helped me in this moment. I played awful when I was amped up. I actually played my best games when I was depressed and sick. And you know what? It was because this turned off, it was perspective. When I was depressed about something, it’s usually because something bigger in my life happened and it put basketball in perspective and I could shut off the over analysis mode and just trust. And it wasn’t lack of hair, it was more of just everything got put in perspective. But what would happen every game, our entire team warm up revolved around everyone getting hyped up. And it was good for some players. But for me, well I wish I knew that earlier. So I would say to a coach is realize your different players will have different emotional ingredient. Some will play really good angry, just making sure they keep control over that because anger’s the one where if they tip the scale, it can start to be detrimental to themselves in the team.
But I’m not going to go anti and not let them get angry. It’s teaching them how to control that and put the governor on it. But realize they all have different ingredients, emotional ingredients and is your team warm up design so that it’s not taking individuals out of their eyes off because you think there’s one way to perform best. We’ll usually have team conversations about this and individual conversation so we can bring this to the coach and the coach can then know because sometimes coaches will come in, well, this worked with my old team and then they experienced that point where, oh, this isn’t working. And sometimes it takes them a bit to figure that out. So a lot of this can be done proactively. Just remember, not every player is going to respond the same emotionally.
Dan
Brittany, you’re off the start summer sit hot seat. Thanks for going through all that with us and putting that a dynamic decision making the test. We’ve got a final question for you to close the show, but before we do, thank you again for coming on, sharing all this information. Very valuable stuff for us as coaches. So we appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Thank you all. I definitely appreciated this conversation.
Dan
Brittany, our final question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career valuing humility that is now been the route and the driver service to others. Again, not really looking, there’s a confidence aspect to humility, but it’s bringing my focus outside myself. How can I do the greatest good in whatever situation I’m in and not bring the focus to myself? Status, all the things that I think our ego wants to get wrapped up in really developing that and honing it. Early in my career, I took it’s called Values in Action survey and it lists forget how many. I want to say it’s 24 strengths in order. So of course they say, oh, even your 24th is a strength. Like, no, I looked straight to the bottom and saw humility was the last one. And this was early in my career and it really caused me to stop and reflect. And I’ve invested a lot in different readings around ego and humble leadership and all those type of things.
And I will say it’s a thing that’s kept me evolving and wanting to learn and then also continuing to listen and not think I have the one approach or the answer. Everything is a collaborative kind of test to, you know, keep moving forward. So humility by far.
Dan
Yeah, Brittany was so great. I mean, I felt like we could have just talked, tal∫ked for a long time about like, just take one slice of this conversation and done a whole episode on it. So much valuable information.
Pat
Yeah. Thoroughly enjoyed the conversation a little. Just quick back story, like just because of her schedule and how busy she is, you know, we’ve probably been working on this for what feels like and maybe close to like a year and was well worth the wait.
Dan
Yeah, let’s dive right in. Our top three takeaways from this conversation and I’ll kick it to you on number one.
Pat
My first take away was when we got in the conversation about attention allocation and this really for me, once she hit on it and start talking about like rang true. And we had a coach Stan Van Gundy on and we talked about how coaches see all 10 and process all 10 in a practice in a game. Brittany obviously went on to say the importance of our attention channels and the conversation I really enjoyed was what we need to be aware of as coaches of how our attention shifts or doesn’t shift. And you know she mentioned to a great what steals our attentions that then has like a domino effect on how we, you know receive information and make decisions. And she talked about narrow to broad channel internal versus external focus and how those overlap into different quadrants.
Pat
And she gave great examples on, OK, what is internal focus with a broad channel look like. So go back to hear her speak much, much better on it. But this was like the heart of the conversation I was after when we pursued her on just what goes into a decision making and what coaches really need to know and how we interact with our environment and the data and what helps us, hinders us, our strategies and just breaking down decision making and trying to be a better decision maker and make the right decisions in the heat of a moment.
Dan
Two things to follow up on that one, it was within the attention allocation, she talked about attention thieves and things that draw you away, which I thought was interesting. And then also within that conversation, we talked about the micro resets and when we got into like after you make a mistake or whatever happens during the game, some of the breath work and some of the thoughts that as a leader you can have that help you reset and, and refocus your attention to the correct area to continue coaching and leading and all that stuff. I thought that was really interesting.
And then going back to the attention allocation that you just mentioned, I think that this year, I’ll just personal example for me, like going from first year college head coach after being assistant for 11. It’s crazy to like that jump in where you have to allocate your attention as opposed to what you did as just the year before as the assistant. And like it’s not just about the tactical part, but you’re also the millions of things that you’re trying to keep track of as a head coach, the flow of the game, your team, how connected are they? All those things and trying to like then properly put your attention to the right part of the game as a head coach. Now different than as it was as an assistant. I think she broke down like the narrow to broad. And I just kept kind of reflecting back on my own personal journey this year and practice versus game and narrow versus broad. And you know how I was an assistant even getting into like the illuminator, generator, developer, executor stuff later on makes you think about who am I and, and what can I do better or what not within all this.
Pat
I think that’s the overarching goal of why we want to have this conversation. Just building an awareness to coaches so you can understand how you process decisions. And she gave great examples of just your after action reviews, but just like writing down your decisions and being able to go back. And once you have the awareness, you can maybe have a better understanding of when you get stuck in a different quadrant, let’s say. And like the artful skill is in being able to shift rod to narrow internal to external and knowing when to do it. I mean, of course that comes with. Experience and reps and failures, but I think really the important take away I took away too is like, yeah, really kind of journaling just your decisions and what worked and what did in the you know, I don’t think something I mean for sure I’m not doing probably should be or you know, I think this really good piece of advice.
Dan
Yeah. And to your point too, I really liked the after action review discussion and what leaders, what people can do to review each decision and try to dive into that. And I think that was part of that first bucket as well. But something I definitely take away, and I would love to it is also give you a quick miss, not from Brittany, but for me, I mean, I could spend more time on what a great after action review looks like systematically breaking it down, like with the staff. So both from the personal standpoint and then like with your staff and then like what you do with that stuff. I could have spent a lot more time personally because I just think that’s really interesting.
Pat
Yeah, without a doubt. So Dan, I’ll throw it back to you now to give your take away from our conversation with Brittany.
Dan
Yeah, I’m going to go to what was my start subset talking about, you know, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. And I think you and I wanted to ask a question about this just because that’s coaching daily and we wanted to kind of put in the context of it’s a game and what can you help prepare for what best helps your team and yourself. And I love that she kind of flipped the volatility from external to internal. And I like when she discussed that because then it LED into, I believe later kind of float into what was ultimately helping teams with showing up with your values and then what your three to five values are and really going to the heart of like as internal focus you can be to have everybody prepared to handle volatility because you understand what your values are and what the order of operations are. I took a lot away from that and I thought that was a great part of it.
Pat
I know before we kind of hopped on this recap, just talking back and forth with ideas. And I think I’d mentioned to you, like, I thought that piece was another huge take away for me as well because just of all the conversations that we’ve had in the past with coaches, I go back to coach Ryan Schmidt and his pillars and even talking with you as you took over Chapman and thinking about how you want to put your culture in. And it’s so intricate as we know. But of course of like, OK, what are your values? And then just not not giving them lip service, but then understanding the value of like, if you’re going to order them, the importance that order has. And I love how she broke it down and, you know, went into the detail or the example of how coaches should really think about, well, what is first and why you should have a priority of values and not just three. They’re all even this the eye opening nature of this whole conversation for me. I really like kind of her digging into that of why the order’s important and how you can as a code kind of discover that order.
Dan
Yeah, I know you and I have talked about this a lot off air and the importance of like sometimes you’re having values. Those kinds of things, like you said, can sound cliche or just stuff up on a white board or on a wall. But I think like the great coaches and leaders that you and I have talked to that try to emulate in our own programs and own ways, they’re living dynamic things that I think spill onto the court. Because when you have those, like she mentioned, three to five values, when Gray situations come up in the coaching, you can cling to those things. It helps kind of guide you through of times and it helps your team get through it too. I think that’s the beauty of it.
And so I really like that part of it. And now we’re talking about volatility and uncertain ambiguity. I mean, that’s every season for all of us. And I loved how she talked about that.
Pat
I agree. And I think it can kind of bleed into like your after action reviews or how you kind of, she mentioned the mental models. I think it all influences it because everyone kind of knows. It’s like, hey, it’s these three thing, everything we want to be doing and striving for. And so you quickly see how it all kind of ties together into navigating uncertainty, ambiguity and kind of reviewing your work, your decisions at the end of the day.
Dan
Yeah, absolutely. And then just to close on this, Dylan Murphy, Osceola Magic G League head coach, when he was on the pod last year, he talked about big rocks and everyday are we moving the big rocks in our program forward? And whether we’re in the middle of a three-game winning streak, 3 game losing streak, whatever, like are we moving those rocks forward? I was thinking of that too, like just knowing what those rocks are as a staff and being able to push them forward ultimately leads to success. So let’s go to the third take away to you, Pat.
Pat
I’d like to jump back to our first bucket. There was so much in there for my third take away only because it’s on the top of my mind just about innovation and how groups innovate. I really like first your question of putting together a staff that can also make decisions and building synergy there. So when she got into just the process of generating ideas, that was another really interesting part, like preventing skeet shooting, of shooting down ideas and the importance of like getting a breath of ideas, you know, no wrong answers and not like dwelling on any of them. Just getting them all kind of in the atmosphere on the board. And then picking a criteria of what you’re looking for, you know, coming up with a decision, solving the problem, whatever it may be, and then using that decision to start narrowing in the idea. So like most of this kind of the processes that she gave to explain things and how coaches can work through these stuff, that was another big take away for me just and trying to innovate and generate ideas as a staff and with your team and what she would recommend to do. Lastly, to like the how, how kind of as you know, you just kind of mind map it out. Just continue to ask how and what that leads to an asking how. And I thought it was just all great stuff there.
Dan
Yeah. I’m going to just give another Dylan Murphy shout out right here because crushing it. Yeah. In Dylan Murphy’s episode, he discussed the rumbles and a rumble is a meeting. The Brené Brown thing, another great person for people to check out if they haven’t but talked about in those rumble meetings, having it where people are just throwing stuff on the wall, see what sticks and no idea is a bad idea. And the process of going through the rumbles allows everybody’s ideas to be heard. Whether or not you use anything, one thing, two thing doesn’t matter. It’s just being able to kind of get ideas out and how people be heard.
And I thought that was another thing I was thinking about too, when it came to the things you’re talking about as far as innovation.
Pat
I think too, it’s like often the out of those things is like the idea that prompts the idea, you know, kind of those things like a hockey assist that kind of leads to the actual innovation or the breakthrough.
Dan
Yeah, I kind of gave one miss of mine. Is there anything else you wish we could have went deeper on today?
Pat
Going back to the four phases of decision making? We had more time. I wish I had kind of followed up on just anticipation and again, like just breaking down anticipation. What goes into that as a coach, how we anticipate things, how we’re like blind spots and stuff, all that stuff that we kind of hit on in other areas.
Dan
Yeah, one more from my end too, was on that your start subset, the leadership fallacies, misconceptions is that there’s an article that she was a part of writing about those three things and I think they’re really interesting. I would have liked to maybe follow up more with the active listener fallacy. She did contextualize that part of the conversation saying, hey, if it’s, you know, middle of a game, it’s different. But I think that’s really interesting because you hear all the time like being active listener, which of course is also a good thing. But I think she’d mentioned an article about being an active question asker or just, you know, we’ve had some conversations about good question asking before, but in the heat of a moment, what kinds of questions could be good to help your team and stuff like that could have been interesting,
Pat
All that stuff with when there’s a time constraint. I mean, I’m glad she clarified for us. If we quickly on that last start sub sit, is it basically a game environment, a competition versus a practice or more controlled environment making that distinction? Because yeah, like the introduction of like a time sensitive obviously greatly impacts how we lead, how decisions are made as well. Absolutely.
Dan
Once again, we thank Brittany for coming on and being so thorough. We appreciate every everybody listening and we’ll see you next time.