Athletes and legendary coaches from sport are often cited by leaders to motivate, inspire, and pull together as a team. But how many leaders actually practice and employ the skills these high-achievers leverage to be successful? In today’s sports landscape, coaches who have embraced emotional intelligent approaches are scoring points and building dynasties. And corporate leaders have a lot to learn from them.
Today, Dr. Peter Sear and I talk about how sport leadership has changed and become more empathic over the last two decades – thus attracting a different kind of leader. We discuss how coaches manage empathic relationships and get the balance of “close but not too close” right. Peter also shares the concept of Empathic Accuracy and tips for how to help your team build empathy among each other.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- It is important to find and keep the balance between coach and athlete. The same thing goes for employers and employees.
- Nothing beats getting to know someone on a human level.
- In modern workplaces, it is important that leaders model and show empathy to their teams.
“The ‘my way or the highway’ approach that coaches often used to apply just doesn’t work with athletes of this generation. They’ve got different expectations and different powers.”
— Dr. Peter Sear, Founder, Empathic Minds
About Dr. Peter Sear, Founder Empathic Minds
I started off as a Futures Floor Trader, trading sugar futures in London, for five years. I traveled before going to University aged 23, to study psychology. That led to my first Masters degree, during which I opened a property company with my parents. I continued to study, getting another Masters, in Jung, and learning some neuroscience. I’ve worked in many roles, including as a commissioned artist. My PhD was at Loughborough (the best University in the world for sport related research!). Since then, I’ve written for Psychology Today, The World Financial Review among others. I now help coaches, leaders, organizations, consultancies, and individuals learn about the powers of empathy and how to develop them.
Connect with Dr. Peter Sear:
The Empathic Minds Organisation: https://empathicminds.org/
Book: Empathic Leadership: Lessons from Elite Sport
X: https://twitter.com/DrPeterSear
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-peter-sear-em-3b226096/
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Athletes and legendary coaches from sport are often cited by leaders to motivate, inspire and pull together as a team. But how many leaders actually practice and employ the skills that these high achievers leverage to be so successful? In my personal experience, I’ve seen leaders who idolize the sports and coaching legends, only to never heed any of their advice on team building, empathy and motivation. But I digress. In today’s sports landscape coaches who have embraced emotional intelligent approaches are scoring points and building dynasties, and corporate leaders have a lot to learn from them. Today, my guest is Dr. Peter Cyr, founder of empathic minds, and a consultant to head coaches and leaders. And we talk about what elite sport can teach you about empathic leadership. Peter started off as a futures floor trader, trading sugar futures in London, but then left to study psychology and earned a few master’s degrees, including one in neuroscience. He earned his PhD from an I know I’m gonna pronounce this wrong, Loughborough the best university in the world for sport related research, and did much of his work around the psychology of elite sport champions. He now helps coaches leaders, organizations, consultancies and individuals learn about the power of empathy and how to develop it. Today, we talk about how sport leadership has changed and become more empathic over the last two decades, thus attracting a different kind of leader. We discuss how coaches manage empathic relationships, and getting the balance of close but not too close, right. Peter also shares the concept of empathic accuracy, and tips for how to help build your team’s empathy with each other. This was such an enlightening episode, take a listen. Big welcome Peter Singer to the empathy edge podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
03:13
Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.
Maria Ross 03:15
So I’m so intrigued and curious about your work with looking at empathetic leadership lessons from elite sport. And your book title, as we mentioned, is called the empathic leadership lessons from elite sport. And you’ve been doing this work for a while, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this work of consulting around empathy, but consulting with head coaches, as well as corporate executives and other professionals. Okay,
Dr. Peter Sear 03:45
so it was off the back of my PhD into empathic leadership. I’d studied psychology and from various angles, step psychology and a little bit of neuroscience as well. And I’d always been really interested in emotions as drivers of behavior. And empathy seemed to bring all of that together. So when it came to looking at a choice of subjects to PhD in sport was my other interest. And I tried to get as many interests into a PhD as possible, because everybody told me that that’s what you need to do to stay sane. And so I approached Loughborough University, because this considered the best university for sports related subjects. And I had the idea of empathic leadership in sport and they loved it, and they said, you can start when you want. So I did that for four years. The end of it was during the start of the pandemic, which obviously gave a little bit of very interesting yeah. And then, since then, I just started getting approached by different head coaches and people who are doing the coaching badges in various sports, because a lot of them found, though getting taught a lot of the practical skills of coaching and the technical stuff, where there was a gap there with the psychological areas and Did you know empathy been a quiet buzzword of the moment and somebody that had heard about in other industries, they wouldn’t know why we got into this. And I noticed, for example, during my PhD research, the Football Association in England, had nothing on their website on their coaching badges about empathy. And then during that, I approached them a couple of times, and still didn’t really hear much back then. But then all of a sudden, I had a page whole page of empathy and spool, and then the in football, so there was sort of progression guide on the whole time through my PhD. And more and more people are interested in I’ll get approaches from all different sports.
Maria Ross 05:39
Oh, well, I can see that. And I love that you have this perspective that sport leadership has become more empathic over the last two decades, and it’s attracting a different kind of leader, which is interesting, because as someone who is not in the sporting world, my impression has always been that many successful coaches, whether they call it or empathy, or not, have always sort of brought that aspect of motivating, inspiring, you know, tailoring the way they talk to their team to get the best out of them really caring about their players. That’s always been my impression of the way successful coaches have operated. But you’re saying that that’s actually been a shift. Can you talk to us about that shift.
Dr. Peter Sear 06:18
Roughing is interesting, the way you phrase that question, successful coaches, and I think there have been a lot of successful coaches that have had success by coaching in that way. And I think there were other coaches who had success coach in a different way. But that way, is just unacceptable by athletes. Now, the my way, or the highway approach that coaches often use to apply, it just doesn’t work with athletes of this generation. They’ve got different expectations, they’ve got different, that it’s a different world as well, but they’ve got more powers, athletes, athletes have got more ability to move clubs, etc. So it’s a matter of retaining talent. If you don’t want to lose people, you can’t treat them badly anymore.
Maria Ross 07:00
Well, and it’s funny, I’m laughing, as you’re saying that because you literally could replace the word, you know, coaching and sport with the corporate world. And it’s the same trend. It’s the same trend of employees demanding a different type of workplace. Yeah, really craving a different type of leader that sees, hears and values them, so that they can just innovate and perform and bring their best to work every day. And it’s interesting to see that that’s permeated into the world of sport as well.
Dr. Peter Sear 07:30
Yeah, one of the reasons I chose sport was not not just because I was really into it, because I’d seen that other industries look to sport as a model for leadership. It’s a very transparent industries. Now it’s everywhere. So whatever industry you’re working in, if you talk to somebody, so it’s a common ground that you can discuss sport leadership. And the coaches I spoke to, I interviewed for my research, often compared the way they coach and the way their contemporaries coach with how they were coached when they were athletes themselves. So the change that I talked about was typically over a sort of 20 year period, something like that. And they gave examples like, when, for team selection, for example, the old way might have been to post a piece of paper up on the wall with a table on it, and everybody had to go and look at it a second time. And while they look clearly at the coaches in his car and driving off home before he asked to speak to anybody, now, coaches will often tailor this news individually to athletes, they’ll ask each individual How do you want to know about selection? Do you want me to call you into our mid to the email usually to speak directly to me. And sometimes athletes will choose an email, for example, and then once they’ve calmed down after their reaction, perhaps then go to the coach and say, Can we have a conversation? But other times, they’d like just straight face to face conversations.
Maria Ross 08:56
So that’s super interesting. Can you give us some examples of the power of empathy that we may have seen you talk about the World Cup winners, you talk about Lionel Messi? Give us some examples of empathy and action among high performing teams and players.
Dr. Peter Sear 09:13
Okay, so Argentina won the World Cup in 2022. Their best player everyone would agree is Lionel Messi, the best best footballer in the world over the last 2015 20 years probably. He’s also showed that he’s an empathic leader on the pitch. So I can give you an example of that, as Sergeant seed awaits the World Cup though. Many people’s favorites. The first game the World Cup, they lost to Saudi Arabia, which was a big shock to World Football. And there was a die in their squad that didn’t start that game that was brought into the team for the next guy who played very well. And in the gamemaster that he scored a goal is known as Lex Alexis McAllister. And in the World Cup final itself he set up one of the goals and Argentina won the world cup so he was Part of their transformation as a team during the World Cup. And one of the things that he went through is very interesting before he was played in the team. He was training with the team civically, he was very overbroad about trading with Messi and some of these heroes. And he has Scottish and Irish heritage and he has ginger hair. So a lot of the other players nickname do colo which in Argentina is what they call people with ginger hair, apparently. And Lionel Messi is captain of Argentina saw this was going on in trading, and maybe that it wasn’t good for this athlete. And he said, Well, how do you feel when the other athletes who colo and he said I don’t like it, you know, and that was it. Obviously, Lionel Messi is only gonna say, the way he feels about it’s the rest of his team. Right now. We’ll call him out again, it gets an insane and the rest is history, as they say. So it’s just one example of how the fortunes of a player have changed, and probably his whole confidence and well being has changed and it’s made his World Cup.
Maria Ross 11:04
Wow. Well, in here in the States, we have a great example of an empathetic and Empathic Coach, and that Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors. He is known for being incredibly empathetic. And he has created dynasties of championship teams with the Golden State Warriors, and he was part of a championship dynasty with the Chicago Bulls and learned much of his coaching style from Phil Jackson. So followed a similar philosophy I believe he was I might be misspeaking, but I think he was a Zen Buddhist, as
Dr. Peter Sear 11:40
well. I played links for that. Yes. And so positive interview. Yes. And just to say, Dr. Dorsa, who you interviewed, had endorsed fantrip Yes, yeah, he’s podcast. Yeah,
Maria Ross 11:51
definitely. And there’s just this whole philosophy around how he coaches and how he brings out the best in his team. It’s very collaborative. It’s very personal. It’s very emotional, and he genuinely cares about as players and you were saying how, you know, sports analogies are so pervasive in leadership and coming from the corporate world, we were just discussing this, how so many sales leaders and C suite leaders love to quote, coaches loved quote, athletes and talk about building the team. But many of them don’t embody those empathic leadership skills that those coaches practice in order to create such high performing teams. So I’ve always found that very interesting. The irony of the fact that these are people that they’re quoting in terms of their leadership, but they’re not modeling their leadership style. In every case,
Dr. Peter Sear 12:44
I think the one thing sports coaches have been doing in this move towards more empathic solid leadership is they’re becoming very close with their athletes, you can see that physically their relationships, were at the end of a game, the coach will go up and hug all their players, you know, that didn’t happen sort of as much, 20 years ago, there might have been a handshake back then perhaps, my five might be but that was it about its own problems, though. Because if you’re getting really close, and you’re trying to know the athletes as best you can or to understand, and then your empathy can work better, the more knowledge you have than then these close relationships often mean that the balance can go too far that way, and you could become too close. And the dangers of that are obviously that you might become biased in your decision making. Other athletes might think that or get jealous about your relationships together. I’ve got an example of that there was a coach in Australia who had a very successful team. And they won everything they could have won that season. And all of his team, the male athletes that he’s coaching have asked him to go out drinking with him to celebrate, they went out for a few nights in first week after the end of the season. And then they start training the rest of the following season. And the athletes are ringing him up and say no, you’re coming out for a beer tonight. And he says no, that was because we were celebrating so we’re not best friends, you know, you’ve got to draw the line and keep that, that balance that distance that’s necessary between a coach and athlete.
Maria Ross 14:18
And how can leaders do that? How can you see them getting the balance right?
Dr. Peter Sear 14:23
I think it’s really difficult I think, I think people are always going to have preferences for who they will spend time with as well and who they want to talk to so just traveling to away games for example. A lot of coaches I spoke to said that they try to move around the coach or the aeroplane when they’re traveling so that they get to know each individual and find out things they didn’t know about them, you know, what they do in their spare time etc. And that can often create a closer bonds with them. But if they say that they’re doing that with everybody, it stops that blast we’ve been in let jealousy in relationships.
Maria Ross 14:58
And what do you think about You know, you’ve mentioned close but not too close, right? What are some tips or boundaries for leaders to create that boundary? So it doesn’t seem like they’re being inauthentic when they are practicing empathy, but they’re making it very clear that this is a working relationship.
Dr. Peter Sear 15:17
Yeah, I think it is a really difficult challenge people now, I think that the physical relationship is the problems which are magnified. Of course, when you’ve got a male coach from a female team, or, or the opposite. There was a female coach of a national sports team was coaching men. And she found there was already that gender difference created enough of a barrier. And she felt that it was an advantage. She was a woman because the team had been renowned before she started coaching for being a bit too aggressive and feminine qualities brought him down to earth a little bit, and they wouldn’t do certain things in front of her because she was a woman. That was her idea, really, anyway, but I think I did netball coach the other day said to me that it’s not easy to get the judgment, right, she saw one of her athletes in tears, signaled some steps. And she had coached this girl who was near a woman for all through her teenage years. And so she sat down and put her arm around her. But she jumped up as if to say, Why are you touching me? So even when you think you get it, right, it is difficult with the hugging and all sports, all the coaches were saying to me that you’ve got to understand whether that player is happy being how to, you know, you’ve got to know and be able to judge him for that. And you need to really know them well. And it might be somebody who you know, or want to be hugged in a certain situation, but not another situation. So it’s a very difficult thing to get right. Yeah. How
Maria Ross 16:35
can you develop empathy in teams? So you have a coach that’s bringing a very empathic leadership style to a team? How can they shore up empathy among the teammates?
Dr. Peter Sear 16:46
Yeah, that’s a good question. So that that’s one of the goals of the coaches that I spoke, to bring the group closer together, like cohesion in teams is obviously really important. But also, what empathy does it it brings commitment, if you feel that somebody’s empathizing with you, and understanding, then you’re automatically going to be more committed to them, you feel closer, and you’re going to, you know, push a little bit harder for them. So you’re not the coaches were really focused on encouraging this between players in teams. So the kinds of things they do is in that group work, they will ask individuals to volunteer to give biographical stories about where they grew up. If you take a sport like football, soccer, you’ve got, especially in the Premiership, in England, you’ve got players from literally every country in the world, all coming together in sports. And these athletes know nothing about each other’s backgrounds. So just sharing a story about where they’ve come from, what they went through to get where they are, what their parents did for them, things like that, the more they don’t accelerate, it’s more like a family, then isn’t it? If you know the story of the other, then you’re more likely to want to play to each other. And so that’s one thing they do is share back biographical stories, they also did little things like that have small groups of athletes with juice with conversation cubes with real questions. So just to inspire a conversation of anything, so people start bringing their ideas and, and then it gives the athletes the opportunity to see how each of them react to different subjects. And so just increasing the knowledge of other athletes. And they also like to encourage families meeting each other as well. So one of the rugby concepts spoke to have a crash training ground, for example. And they have things like yoga classes and different things for the wives of athletes, so that they all end up knowing each other and it becomes a more cohesive group like that.
Maria Ross 18:46
I love that. And those are great ideas you can apply to any working group. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about empathic accuracy. You mentioned this in your work. Talk to us about what that term means? And what are the implications of it?
Dr. Peter Sear 19:02
Yes. So it goes back to what I was saying, I suppose about knowing the individual well enough to empathize accurately with. So if you don’t know somebody, then you’re more likely probably to put your own world unto this is that thing about? We say that empathy is walking in somebody else’s shoes, but it’s nice about being that person in their shins for a moment. And I think the more you know, somebody that the easier you can get that right. And I know a lot of organizations in all industries use things like psychometric testing to get to know to understand how they should communicate with people now, but a lot of the coaches I’m speaking to that said that nothing beats really getting to know people on a human level. You know, that’s the real way you can understand somebody and empathize with them. It’s not by the form they’re filled in. So through that ethic accuracy, then you can start to judge how a player might perform in certain situations whether they’re good under pressure, for example, if there’s penalties at the end of the game, who do you will lift up Ah Do other certain players that just won’t respond well to that situation. You can also it gives you a little bit of help with, how do you think they could have progressed in the guidance? Well, that potential, but also because just by reading their body language as well adds to that information. So during the game, so some players naturally look, they know spools naturally look tired. But if you know them, well, it’s just their running style or something like that. So that boy, you know, somebody that more accurately could empathize with them.
Maria Ross 20:31
I love that. Now, one of the concepts I know I’ve been very interested in researching, and I’m hearing from leaders is making sure that empathy is not just a one way street, many leaders are feeling very pressured these days. And those especially that want to be empathic leaders are doing so much work. And yet, they don’t feel like their teams or their employees feel like it’s a two way street. Like, it’s only the leaders responsibility to be empathetic, and not that the empathy needs to be a two way street. So how can you build empathy to go in both directions? So for example, in sport, you can have a very empathetic style with your coach, you’ve talked about ways to build empathy among the team themselves, how can you, quote unquote, teach empathy, so that even team members, players athletes, can have empathy for their leaders as well.
Dr. Peter Sear 21:26
I think empathy is contagious. So I think just by setting the example, other people don’t be more empathic to them, than when athletes see how head coaches treat their colleagues, then they understand how empathic they are, as well. It’s not just about how they treat them. But I think one of the ways they can do it is I was given a lot of examples of when athletes are going through particularly bad times and their personal life and some of that, and if the coach has been through something similar themselves and shares that experience, advises them based on that, then I think that increases trust and probably empathy starts to go the other way as well. Right?
Maria Ross 22:03
Is that an issue that you find in sport, where it’s, the players are sort of like, I’m the player, you need to be empathetic. But I don’t have to show empathy towards others or towards you as my coach? Yeah,
Dr. Peter Sear 22:15
I think one of the things that’s confused that lady as well is that the bigger athletes become in the media, you start to the area is getting blurred. With Who are they really committed to are they’re committed now to their own brand more than they are to the club and the leader? Are they committed to the sport as a whole, or they’re committed to their international career, but not their club career? So there’s a variety of things. But I had leaders, for example, telling me about when an athlete might have done particularly well in the game, but the team lost the athlete and goes home and posts on social media. Did you see how good I was today? And then the rest of the team besides the coach, have you seen what they’ve just posted on here? You know, what does that say, you know, and so it disrupts the harmony of the group. And so it’s really important for coaches to explain to athletes, the damage that can be done through those things. But as I say, it’s, it’s difficult because a lot of athletes, athletes are more worried about how much money they can earn out their own brand, which is often as much as they will gain PayPal and their clubs.
Maria Ross 23:21
Yeah, it is definitely a challenge. And I think it’s now the role of leaders in the modern era, to model and teach empathy to their teams, that’s actually a requirement of the job now. And that has to start with self awareness of their own empathy, and shoring up their own empathic skills before they can model and teach it to others. But I’ve often heard this from from different leaders of, you know, I’m trying so hard to be empathetic to my team, but I’m getting nothing back. I’m getting just entitlement back.
Dr. Peter Sear 23:55
For the athletes in the lot sports as well to be empathic towards their fans. If the fans say the way they behave, and you know, their whole lives are recorded in the media so heavily, they’ll then they’ll send builds them and that creates disharmony as well.
Maria Ross 24:09
Right. Right. And the correlation of that with the corporate world as customers or clients. Yeah, understanding that you actually don’t have you don’t have sport and you don’t have business without that stakeholder group.
Dr. Peter Sear 24:22
Yeah. And it’s not just about disrespecting the fans. In a sport like soccer or football, each club has, has got certain things that are distinct about it. Like there might be a certain playing style that the fans expect, or a certain way of behaving, they’ve come to expect just through their own club story. And they want their continued and if they see an athlete coming in, who goes against that culture, and then it doesn’t fit their group. So it’s really important for the athlete to understand the fan base, as well as their head coach and their colleagues.
Maria Ross 24:58
As we close out, I just Want to ask with your research? And the work that you do? Is there one common thread of successful empathic coaches or leaders that you see over and over and over again?
25:12
What do you mean by common thread,
Maria Ross 25:15
some common trait among them, that helps them be more empathetic?
Dr. Peter Sear 25:21
Yeah, I think I may have mentioned in the beginning, but it’s not only that sport leadership has changed is that it’s attracting a different kind of leader. So I had an ice hockey coach, for example, say to me, that, if the sport was as it was 20 years ago, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in now, because the role just wouldn’t have suited the sort of person that he is. And he went on to tell me what is important to him. And, you know, the things that are more important to him than trophies, like he gave me an example of that of a young player that you had with him, who had some ability, but he could see that the biggest problem with him was that he just didn’t have the ability to motivate himself to work hard. And so him and the other coach worked with him on this and got him to work hard. And what he did is spread through the rest of his life. So ended up working really hard, and his schoolwork, he became a doctor, got married, didn’t have a career in sport in the end, but he said, when he sees that person now, now successfully, his life has come. He feels, you know, that gives him more of a buzz that actually winning a trophy. I think that sort of symbolizes the kind of coaches we’re seeing, have success these days, because that way of leading may seem like it’s focused on other things other than trophies, but it actually brings the success.
Maria Ross 26:42
Right, right. It follows. And it sounds like from what you’re saying, you see a thread of people willing to mentor other people are willing to look for opportunities to mentor versus just coach and win games.
26:55
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Maria Ross 26:57
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that’s fascinating. Well, thank you so much, Peter, for sharing these insights with us today, we are gonna have all your links in the show notes. But for folks who are on the move listening to this podcast, where’s the best place they can get in touch with you?
Dr. Peter Sear 27:10
Well, the best thing to do is to buy my book, obviously, I think leadership lessons will explore. I’m also all empathic minds to all and I’m under my name on Twitter, etc. So anyone find me there on LinkedIn.
Maria Ross 27:24
Wonderful. And once again, we’ll have all those links in the show notes. But thank you so much for your time today.
27:30
Really enjoyed it. Thank
Maria Ross 27:31
you. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard you know what to do, please rate and review and share this episode with a friend or a colleague. Until next time, please remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
