“And the unique aspect, I think, certainly from a field sports standpoint for rugby is there is no real stoppage right? So, you know as well as anybody else in soccer, it's difficult. It's difficult for them to even hear you during the game. I ask my players all time how much can you hear me? Not at all right? Not at all. So, all it is really is just animation at that point because I haven't done my job in practice of allowing them to troubleshoot themselves and I'm constantly orchestrating that. They don't have practice in it. So therefore, how are they going to do it? Inside the game?”
Becky Carlson, 3X National Rugby Champion Coach talking about making sure her athletes learn to solve problems IN practice FOR the game because they can’t hear her anyway.
“I’ll hear my athletes consistently presenting things and saying, ‘I feel like.’ There is a very staunch neutrality about that. And it’s not making statements, it is giving opinions and therefore when you remain neutral, there never has to be any action items. So that carryover from their social interactions goes out on the field when they go, ‘I feel like we might not be getting to the rocks’ and my response is, are we? What is the action I'd have to follow. So now we're at a place where we are attempting in a very delicate manner, slowly but surely, to eradicate that from our language so we can be more productive and it's less about satiating my desire for the team to speak differently, but more of us to be productive and to garner results that are aligned with our goals.”
Becky Carlson again, talking about eliminating the phrase “I feel like” from her athletes and coaching staff in search of actionable language that will move the team forward.
"Just a quick statistic, we spend well over $150 billion a year pursuing health. Which includes how do we find the right diet program, the right exercise program, the right supplement. Maybe throw in some longevity hacks, you know, fly down to Costa Rica for some stem cells. And that's how we're going to live a long time. And that's common sense in America. But what's uncommon sense is this notion of instead of trying to change our behavior, we change our environment, and thereby engineer our unconscious decisions over the long run.”
Blue Zones explorer Dan Buettner talking about why it’s a struggle for people in America to make changes.
“I'm not that uncomfortable with the idea that every research study is questionable because kind of like that's the point. It's all gray and it's all hypothesis and nothing is certain. There's very few very distinct black and white findings or realities in our world. Everything's contextually finding blue and red but instead, it's smaller shades of purple, right? So, there's a spectrum of confidence that we can actually have around research. And some studies fly far over to the one side where we can say we have no confidence that that certain effect works and some studies are far over to the other side. We can say we got reasonable data, but there's no such thing as absolute confidence. Something like for instance, I don't know, sleep deprivation is bad for your health. Okay, I'm very confident sitting here that that's definitely true. Most studies have falsely claimed that. But then you move towards icing (ice baths) and caffeine and all sorts of other things and it gets a little bit more purple, and I'm okay with that. Honestly, I think that's what I would want people to take away from this is don't be definitive because even the science that you're relying on isn’t.”
Dr. Ross Tucker Ph.D., a Science and Research consultant talking about how research and the papers they produce should be questioned and not taken as gospel.
“So one of the things that was taking place is we were very clear that in the hallways, we were great about not talking about somebody that wasn't amongst us. And we would call on our discipline. If that person is not here, like just keep it moving if we don't need to say it to their face or to be able to confront them. And what ends up happening is that people start to feel really safe, because they're not worried about what's happening in that conversation over there. Like, is it about me? That's a very good standard.”
Dr. Michael Gervais, Performance Psychologist talking about creating safety within a team or workplace by not talking about someone who isn’t with that group.
