Communicate With Purpose | Jen Mueller | The Sean Trace Show

I sat down with Jen Mueller on The Sean Trace Show, a veteran sports broadcaster and sideline reporter, and this conversation completely changed how I think about communication. 

What stood out to me is that great communicators don’t just react in the moment, they walk into every conversation with a clear objective and intention. From locker rooms to business settings, Jen broke down how vague communication creates friction, while being direct builds trust, clarity, and results. It made me reflect on how often we speak without really knowing what we want out of the interaction. 

How often do you enter a conversation with a clear outcome in mind?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It is truly about being very direct. And I see it happen most often when we lose and when somebody's committed an error, when somebody committed a penalty that cost you the chance to win, the guy that dropped the potential game-winning touchdown catch, right? Everybody knows what just happened. There's two things in sports. Number one, our objective is really clear. You are trying to win the game. Okay. In business, I would agree that we have objectives in conversation, but business leaders as a whole do not always do a good job of communicating what a win looks like. In sports, a win looks like scoring more points than the other team, right? Very basic, very obvious. If everybody's on the same page going in, meaning my entire team, my front office, my coaches, and the fans, now I am working from a different level of accountability. And when you are in those moments where you have to ask the question and there is a lot of emotion, it's way easier to go after that in a direct way. You can be kind and direct. Hey, why did you take that route on the ball? What got in the way of you making that catch? What would you do differently next time? I'm just asking you to take me through this. I'm asking you with very specific questions. Um, open-ended questions are quite possibly the worst advice you could ever get or give. And I think we miss that in business too. I am very specific. I am very direct because we all know what the objective was.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Welcome everybody back to the Sean Trace Show. I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Oh, well, I am a sports broadcaster. I am the sideliner reporter for the Seahawks. I spent 19 years on the Mariners television broadcast. And currently I spent a lot of time as a keynote speaker giving people practical tools to communicate more effectively.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

I love that. It's one of the things I had a um the I I had a I am exhausted right now because in the last six days I flew from Vietnam to Qatar to New York to Norfolk and from Norfolk back to Chicago because our flight was canceled because of the storms in New York. Yeah. Uh up to Chicago, back to Qatar, and then back to Vietnam in five days. And I am sore and achy, and I saw some really interesting things along the way. But one of them was an absolute breakdown in communication between this lady sitting next to me and the whole world around her. And it was interesting because um she sat there, lovely person. I got to meet them on the flight after I was able to find a solution to our inability to communicate. But she was German, her husband was German. They sat down. She said something to me very politely in the beginning. And I was like, I'm sorry, I do not speak German. And she was looking at me and then she gave me this really grumpy look, sat down, and was really upset. And I was just like, What did I do? I don't know what I did. And I sat there and finally I pulled out ChatGPT and I was like, you know, hi, my name's Sean. Sorry if I upset you guys anyway. She's like, Oh, and we were already like taken off. Uh luckily the plane had great Wi-Fi. And they were like, Oh, she just wanted the aisle seat because she didn't want the window, she wanted to be able to get up. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I totally would have given it up. It's a little bit late now. But later on, she was frustrated again because the person in front of her reclined back and she got, she didn't know how to say it's a bit far. So she started shaking the seat physically, and I was just like, oh, you can't do that. But it was because of an inability to communicate. And it's interesting that when we're not able to really clearly state things or communicate clearly, whether it be because of language or because of shy, whatever it might be, it limits us. And it leads to, you know, challenging feelings at times. How did you go down this path of being a great communicator?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Well, some of it is just the function of the job, right? I mean, it is my job to communicate with people for a living. But what being on broadcast TV teaches you and being behind the scenes for a number of years and writing scripts for other people, is how to do it in a really concise way and to minimize the holes that we have in communication. And so my brain is always running through the lens of conversations take place in seconds, not minutes, because that's how we would measure them in TV. And so if I only have a few seconds with you, how am I going to land a message, connect with you, make sure that you were at ease when we're doing this? I think the other part is when you interview people on live TV, you can see the look on their face when they are in panic mode, right? When they didn't understand the question, when they feel like they might disappoint you with an answer. And I want to make sure that people don't feel like that when they're talking to me. And so it's been years of thinking through the conversation. What did I miss? What would have made that a better interaction? What would have brought out the smile so that the fans could be engaged and the athlete that I'm talking to could actually drop their guard and tell me what they really wanted to say.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

I love that. I um I taught English for many years as a side hustle living in Asia. And it was interesting because one of my banes of my existence as an English teacher was the IELTS exam, because it's not how people speak. And it's like, so it was like this. My daughter, she came home and she's like, Dad, I did bad in my my English listening exam. And I was like, those are not made for like, and she's she's like me. We're very concise, we're very to the point. And like, this is like one of the challenges. Like when you do a listening exam, it's like, hi Timmy, let's go to the movie tonight. And like the girl's like, All right, what time should we go? Should we go at four or maybe five? But mom comes home at six. No, let's go at seven. And I was just like, no one talks like that, no one does that, you know? It's always direct and concise. And like one of the things that I was always working with, with my the people that I was working, you know, teaching to be more clear communicators was to be concise, to be more direct, because we don't have attention spans, you know, that last very long.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yes. And I would say a lot of us get into conversations and we're not really sure what the objective is. I think a lot of times we go into objective uh into conversations and we hope we stumble across the answer that we're looking for. And we phrase it in ways to minimize our disappointment if we don't get that right answer. So instead of just coming out and saying, Do you have time to meet with me at two o'clock today? I'd like to talk about a raise or a promotion. We just say, Do you think at some point we could have a conversation about maybe what my role looks like going forward? I didn't actually ask you a very direct question, and I gave you the opportunity to kick the can down the road because I might be disappointed when you say, actually, there's no money in the budget to talk about this, or there is no other role, right? We're trying to mitigate our own discomfort when what we need to do is figure out what the objective is, right? Why am I asking the question? What information do I need? And until we truly get more strategic and intentional, our conversations waste way more time and create way more drama than we realize during the course of the day.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I loved teaching business English specifically, because at the end of the day, a business conversation always has a clear goal and objective, whether it's to sell more products, to strengthen the relationship, to sell more products, or some other thing. But there's a clear goal and objective. And we don't realize that in everyday conversation, we have goals and objectives as well. But we're not always considering them, you know? And I wanted to ask you this because you've spent decades in locker rooms and on sidelines where like moments are emotional, fast, and high stakes. What have those environments taught you about communication that most business leaders, most people never experience?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

It is truly about being very direct. And I see it happen most often when we lose and when somebody's committed an error, when somebody committed a penalty that cost you the chance to win, the guy that dropped the potential game-winning touchdown catch, right? Everybody knows what just happened. There's two things in sports. Number one, our objective is really clear. You are trying to win the game. Okay. In business, I would agree that we have objectives in conversation, but business leaders as a whole do not always do a good job of communicating what a win looks like. In sports, a win looks like scoring more points than the other team, right? Very basic, very obvious. If everybody's on the same page going in, meaning my entire team, my front office, my coaches, and the fans, now I am working from a different level of accountability. And when you are in those moments where you have to ask the question and there is a lot of emotion, it's way easier to go after that in a direct way. You can be kind and direct. Hey, why did you take that route on the ball? What got in the way of you making that catch? What would you do differently next time? I'm just asking you to take me through this. I'm asking you with very specific questions. Um, open-ended questions are quite possibly the worst advice you could ever get or give. And I think we miss that in business too. I am very specific, I am very direct because we all know what the objective was.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

That's so interesting. Well, you know, it's interesting because I used to love, I remember once I was auditioning for this show. I don't even remember what it was, and they had the elevator pitch. And I it was the first time that I had come into an experience of like, what is an elevator pitch? And it's like, you've got 30 seconds, you know, like Shark Tank. You know, I love Shark Tank watching it because you get these people who it really is an elevator pitch moment where they're standing in front of someone who could change their lives. Yep. Do they have the ability to put it together in a way that is not just connected, meaningful, but actually gets the result they want. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

And I think we prepare for those conversations brilliantly, right? Like whether whether I prefer the storytelling of one founder over another, you know that they have gone in and prepared, right? They have crafted that, they have practiced that, but we overlook what's at stake in just the conversation that's right here. We overlook the whole small talk part of a conversation. And we think that it's useless, right? There's a lot of people that claim they refuse to engage in it. Well, it's only useless if you don't know what you're trying to get out of it. It's only useless if you follow a script that leads to a dead end, right? Like there's ways that you could make every single interaction more meaningful. We just have to look at what's at stake and realize where relationship starts. It starts with hello and it starts with small talk.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Did you see that video? Um, I believe it was last month. The quarterback, I I think it was in Buffalo, and the old lady, the lady was like, Hey, I hey, it like his face was pained and he looked stressed. And then she's like, I just want to say you did good. And she praised him. And like what happened, it was like it was not the normal type of conversation that you would expect in that moment. But what happened is you could visibly see the transformation and he relaxed. And after that, he was opening up and he was willing to talk about the situation. And it was really interesting because it might have been considered, well, that's not what you are supposed to do, but it worked.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah. And I think part of that, and and I I heard part of that exchange. I would agree, that is not that particular setting was not the time or place for that approach. Um, that is not how we would treat that as a member of the sports media. However, what was really important in that exchange is you recognize that there's a human being there, right? I love that. And I might not know what it feels like to lose a Super Bowl. Actually, I do know what it feels like. Like I have been on the sidelines when we have lost. It doesn't feel good. I don't know what it feels like to throw the interception that cost you the game, right? I don't know what it feels like to miss the tackle. I do, however, know what it feels like to screw up at work and to feel like I just let everybody down. And that's the thing when we start asking questions or engaging, you know, it's really easy to have our agenda in front of us, right? Especially when I need to talk to you about an outcome. It's my job, right? And I've got all these things that I need to talk to you about. If I just take a step back and say, wait a minute, how would I prefer somebody approach me? I'm feeling terrible. You can see that I'm feeling terrible. Could you just take into consideration that it's gonna take me a beat and that there's a way to approach that as a human being? You will get more out of me if you approach it as a human being. I think also in those moments, anytime we have those tough conversations and we're talking to somebody after they have lost or after they've come up short or they didn't get the part, right? Or they didn't meet the standards on their performance review. The win comes in the conversation, not the length of the answers. Right? The fact that any of my guys are willing to talk to me after a loss is a win. Now, I might want them to give me some really detailed, like, hey, this is what happened on this play and this coverage, and I would have done more often than not, they'll give me very short answers. And I have to not take that personally because you just had a really bad day at work. And the fact that you even are willing to talk to me, I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna know that that conversation looks different a week from now.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah. But that leads my to my next question because one of the things that I was thinking is like, you know, you have such short windows, you know, and you have to like when you're dealing with television, I mean, it is really a tight window. You do not have a lot of time. They're moving on to the next segment, they've got the next show coming up. You're known for delivering meaningful content in very short bursts. You know, what do people misunderstand about communicating clearly when time is limited?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

That you have to be off the cuff to be authentic and present. And that is not true. Everything you see on TV, even reality TV shows, are scripted. I know they are. They have multiple takes to get exactly what they need to say. It doesn't matter if it's labeled as reality or not, right? That's that's not actually reality. And people get very resistant to practicing a conversation ahead of time or to scripting out what they're going to say in this meeting. And the the reasoning is, well, I want to make sure that I am my authentic self and I'm in the moment and I'm present. And if you are trying to do all of these things on the fly, right? I get three sentences, which is 15 seconds. If I get 20 seconds, I'm closer to four sentences. But trying to do that on the fly while smiling, convincing you that I know what I'm talking about, listening to the cues that I'm going back to you. Also, somebody's trying to dump Gatorade on me. The fans are yelling, right? The leaf blowers going. If I'm trying to do all of these things, my brain is taxed and overloaded, and there's no way I'm showing up as my best self. And so everything that you see us do on TV, we have practiced to some degree. Might not be verbatim, but we know what we're gonna say because we don't have the chance to get it wrong. And I think the preparation piece is so important. It actually allows me to go off script, it allows me to react to things that I wasn't anticipating and know that I can still get right back on track and land the message that I had planned in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

That was one of the things I try to tell people that when I do a podcast, it's organized chaos. Like I have an outline, I have a structure that I try to stick to, but at the same time, you don't know where things are gonna go. You do not know where they're gonna end up. And your goal is to follow that flow, but at the same time, try to pull it back to whatever you're trying to do. And like granted, I have an hour. So, you know, but one of the things that I had to figure out was the power of asking the right questions. And this started leading me to dig deeper. And you know, you talk a lot about the power of asking better questions. What separates a good question from a great one?

SPEAKER_01 16:57

There is only one answer to the question. The person knows exactly what that answer is, and it's probably a little different than what they were planning to answer. Meaning this if I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna ask you questions about how you got started in your career. And people do this all the time, right? Informational interviews. Yeah. And the top question I get asked is, Well, how did you get started? And could you tell me what your career path looks like? If you ask me that question, I will give you the same answer that I have given every other person who has asked me that question, right? Because I that's that's the script. If you start with that, so start with the the first question that comes to mind and then see how you can turn it just a little bit. It's not about coming out of left field, it's about getting it just different enough. So instead of how did your career start, you might ask me when you think back to the beginning of the your career, is this where you thought you would end up? I'm gonna tell you a much different, much more compelling story. We used to do things uh with the Mariners players in spring training, and it was my job to come up with like a list of 20 questions. Now, here's the thing about spring training these guys um are interviewed multiple times a day for six weeks by people who are all trying to get them to tell a story. But you can't just sit down and say, tell me the story. You have to craft the question that leads to a story. So, one of my favorites, and I use this over and over again, right? It's an easy question. You know, Seattle is known for coffee. That's where I live. I covered the mariners. Um, so when did coffee become part of your daily routine? And when you ask the question that way, instead of what's your coffee order, your coffee order could be right one word, two words. But yeah, when did coffee become part of your daily routine? There's a story behind it. Even if you don't drink coffee, people have very strong opinions if they don't drink coffee and they'll tell you exactly why. And when they tell you what it is that they like how it all came to be, they will tell you what their coffee order is. Plus, you got a story and you got a chance to connect.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

I love that because it the chance to connect is is so valuable. You know, everyone has something that they're into that they top about, you know. I remember that there was this one thing where I knew this guy who was super guarded and it was working in Hollywood, and this guy was a super, you know, private person. But one day I was uh walking next to him on set and I saw him reading this book, and it was a book series that I loved. And I said, Dude, did you read this other one? He's like, You know this? You you uh you you you like enjoy this series as well? I'm like, I love it, man. And then and I did, and I connected with one of my favorite points in it, and he was just like, and we suddenly, this person who was absolute like wall was wide open, and it made me think um it was about being authentic, and I know that's overused, you know, term, but like many people think confidence is about being loud and polished, but sometimes there's that authenticity and that that clarity that comes through. But like I want to ask you this from what you've seen, what actually creates credibility, credibility, and trust when someone speaks? How do you build that bridge between you and the people that you're talking to?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

So if you're thinking about it in terms of how do I do that in a locker room, it is choosing how I'm gonna show up consistently. I have the opportunity to go in there and to network just a few seconds at a time, right? Like we do not schedule coffee meetings, happy hours, lunches together. Like that's not how it works when you're networking with players and building that relationship. But what I can do is make sure that I say hi. So every day I walk into a locker room, I get five people to say hi to me. That's it. Sometimes I'll just go stand in your general vicinity so that you get used to seeing me in the space. Sometimes it's not about what you say, it's do you show up with a smile on your face? Or is it just like a drag and you can tell, like, oh my gosh, this is like painful and pulling teeth, and I'm over here in the corner and please don't look at me. People pick up on your energy and they pick up on your consistency. And they're gonna listen. My guys that are new, they listen to how the veterans talk to me. They listen to how I approach conversations. And I think, you know, you can accomplish a lot of things in one interaction, but that trust and rapport, it is actually the consistency that you are willing to put in over time. And it doesn't take quite as long as you think. I know the reason that it's five hellos, by the way. I mean, it makes me feel good. It's a Really low bar of success, right? I get a little confidence boost, right? A little endorphin rush because everybody wants to be seen. Okay. But I also know that once I get to five hellos from the same person, now we're actually going to do an interview, especially if you're an introvert, right? Because a locker room is made up of introverts and extroverts. And just because you are a high performer does not mean that you like talking about your performance, right? And so you're trying to meet people where they are. And I am trying to measure very small interactions that I know that I can keep stacking so that they have reason to come back to me and trust that I'm going to be there and that I'm not going to change.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

I love that. Well, I wanted to ask you because, you know, sometimes you have to develop that trust into that because there are tough conversations to be had. And you've literally made a career out of talking to people right after wins and losses. You know, what's the biggest mistake people make when handling tough conversations at work or in life?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah, they back into the conversation. They think it's going to be easier if they sandwich it between two positives. They think it's going to be easier if I just soft pedal it a little bit and say something like, Sean, I know that this is out of character for you. And boy, you've had such great results before. And I know that Tuesday was an outlier for you. And I'm just, I'm just help me understand like how that went so wrong during this interview, right? The question is this what happened during that interview on Tuesday? Those guys know when they screwed up. We all know when we screw up. We know when we get called into the office or when there's a performance review, we know where we fell short. And it's probably eating away at you to some degree. It's like when, it's like when you were a kid and your parent would say, Oh, just wait until your dad gets home, or just wait until your mom gets home, and you're like, Oh my gosh, could we just get this over with, right? Well, they're thinking the same thing. And so when you have the tough conversations, first of all, reframe the idea of tough, right? It's not tough, it's the conversation that happens next. Because I don't need to add any emotion to it. But start with that and make it very direct. Because those guys, they just want to get that over with. They know what's coming. They are going to give you crappy answers right up until you ask them about the mess up. And then it's like, okay, I've done it, I've addressed it, we can move on. Now, what else would you like to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

I think that yeah, that's so interesting. I never thought about it that way because I I've never played professional sports, but I did play sports. And I did, I remember one specific game that I got in and I made the most epic of mistakes. And you are right. People do, they they they walk in circles around it instead of just saying, What'd you do there, man? What happened? And it's so much easier if you pull the band-aid off. I remember when I was a, you know, my daughter was younger, we were trying to get the tooth out. And, you know, and she was like, Yes, you know, it was oh, oh, the pain. And finally I did the string thing. I was just like, right, what's that? And it was out. Yeah. It was easy. It was done. But when you're trying to pull things out slowly, it can be painful. You know, and I want to ask you this though, because work doesn't speak for itself. You've you've you've said sports prove your work doesn't speak for itself. Why is that such a hard truth for people to accept, especially high performers?

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Because we are so used to looking at the final numbers as a measure of success, right? And it's true. Sports is a great example of how finite results are. You look at the final score of a game. There is no debating who scored more points or more runs or more goals, right? Like it's right there. You look at a win-loss record at the end of a season. There's no debating how many wins you had and how many losses, right? It's very black and white. But the numbers themselves, so there's a few different examples of this. Um, I can take a look at, let's just say the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, right? I can call up the box score from the Seahawks game. And I can see that the Seahawks scored first, that they held the lead for the entire game, that they were up nine-nothing at halftime, right? There's a lot of things I can see from the numbers. What you can't see is the fact that Jason Myers, our kicker, set a Super Bowl record with five made kicks in the game. That's a pretty impressive number. But if all you did was look at the numbers, you wouldn't have any idea. Um, when I actually go to look at career stats, we think that the athletes and the top performers always stand out as top performers. So why do people get passed over for all-star games and Pro Bowls? Why do you have snubs? You should never have a snub. There should never be a debate as to who's on the all-star team. And yet every single year we debate that. So if I was just looking at the numbers, I would say who has the most home runs, the best batting average, the best ERA. I would look at total tackles, I would look at total touchdowns, I would look at all of these things, but that's not how it works because there's a person behind that. And we're trying to measure the impact of the person, not just the numbers. If the numbers spoke for themselves, we would never have a debate over who was the greatest of all time. Right. So if you were looking at basketball and it was the conversation tends to be between Michael Jordan and LeBron James. You could get Kobe in there. It doesn't really matter which two players you wanted. All I'd have to do is add up the numbers. And whoever has the most of all of it wins. Except that there's the person who created the magic behind it. And I would say the same thing when it comes to favorite players. If all you were doing is cheering for the numbers, the productivity, the output, everybody would have the same favorite player. You would just look and see who was the best player in the league by the numbers. Except that's not how it works either. And so what I tell people when it comes to talking about their work, you can let your work speak for itself, but you are hoping that people read between the lines more than they are likely to do. And there is secret sauce in there, right? There's the stuff that didn't happen because you're so good at your job. You know, if you if you look at the best players in the game, get the fewest opportunities. Doesn't matter what sport it is. If you're a lockdown corner in the NFL, you will look at the box score at the end of the game and there's going to be zeros next to it. It looks like you did absolutely nothing. And somebody who doesn't know the game or know your position on the team would be like, well, what are we paying him all this money for? He's got not nothing. Like, well, he's so good that they put extra resources to make sure he didn't get anything. So he opened up opportunities for everybody else. If we don't talk about that, that gets mixed and lost in the mix too. So um, I would just say there's far more to anyone's success than what those final numbers are. Not that you shouldn't know your final numbers, you should know how to talk about them in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

There was this great book on leadership and successful teams. I believe it was called the Captain Code. I'm not sure on that, but one of the things that they pointed out was that the success of great teams was due to things that people didn't necessarily understand. Like you would see this successful team, and everyone's like, oh, that person's the star of the team. But what people didn't understand, it was like this guy over here might have been the moving force. And the numbers were not always there for that person, but they were the rock or they were the person that kind of anchored the team. Yeah. And, you know, it's not always the metrics, don't always tell the full story, you know? And the numbers are not always the end-all be-all of everything.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yeah. And when you look at culture, so there's a difference between looking at productivity and culture, right? And the Seahawks are a great example of this. And I keep coming back to it. Not only am I close to the team, but it really is a good framework for what a successful team and a uh awesome culture is. So the Seahawks have the best defense in the NFL by the numbers. That is not up for debate. They had so many contributors on defense that nobody actually looked like a standout. And nobody cared because the culture was so good, they just wanted to see success. It didn't matter who was getting success. I have covered teams where that does not always hold true. But the leaders of the team said, we are so connected, and you can tell because watch how we cheer each other on. And it's true. There's this, there's this idea of there's only so many plays to be made, right? There's this scarcity mindset. And I think we all encounter that at some points in time, right? If I'm not the one who's having success and somebody else's, that's gonna negatively affect me because now I'm not gonna get the next raise or promotion or opportunity. And what this Seahawks team did better than most of the ones that I have covered in 25 years was they were happy for whoever found success. And they were willing to sacrifice individual numbers for the collective good because they actually liked each other. And so if you go back and you watch any of those celebrations on both sides of the ball, what you'll see is culture comes through in these little ways. And I it's it won't always stay that way. But it's a pretty good start and it's a pretty good metric if you are looking for the health of the culture of the team that you're with.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

I love that. I love that because it's I I think that, you know, at the end of the day, most people want to succeed. Most people want to be part of winning teams. But we have this persistent, I don't know if I want to call it a lie, but belief that you have to shine individually and that everyone needs to see you to succeed, you know, me, me, me, me. You know, but yet at the same, the truth is, is the greatest times, the greatest teams, there was a degree of, you know, ego that was set aside so that people could do things together. They could accomplish great things together, you know? And so I love what you're saying there.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah. And I the word ego is interesting because they use that word a lot this year in the building. And they would say it in the context of there are no egos on this team, there's no egos on the coaching staff. The head coach is vulnerable with us and tells us what he's working on and asks for accountability on it. You know, no player thinks that they're bigger than the scheme. Um, it is. And let me be clear: every single high performer has an ego. I have an ego. You have an ego. Ego is important in getting to where you are. But being a good teammate, to your point, does require you to harness that in an individual way and to know when to put that aside and to have everybody come together as a team. I think that that is one of the underrated parts of teamwork. We think about teamwork as we're all working together to accomplish a goal. That is true. But there's a little bit more nuance to it for the teams that truly love each other and want to do the best so that everybody succeeds.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

I love that. Nuance is a great way to put it, but uh, there was something else. Uh as a father of a daughter, I had a question that came to mind, you know, with something that you you've spoken about. You've spent your career in environments where you had to earn trust quickly and repeatedly. Um you know, it I was the other day at one of my wife's events, and she is a famous singer, and someone asked me to give my opinion on something. I'm like, I don't necessarily have all of the tools to relate, but yet you come in and you go, here are my strategies, and you hold your ground with people that have very different experiences than you do. What strategies helped you hold your ground without becoming someone you weren't? That's so fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

I think it goes back to having a competitive mindset and not the competitiveness against somebody else, but my own version of success and competitiveness and what winning in the moment looked like for me. I was a high school football official for 10 years. I'm an all-American flagged football official going back to college. And what that lesson taught me. So there was plenty of people who did not want to see a woman on the field who didn't think I was capable of doing it. And there was a couple of things that happened during that experience. Number one, I realized that I needed to know that rule book inside and out and better than any guy that I officiated with, because I was going to be tested by coaches who wanted to see if I knew the rule and they were waiting to tell me I was wrong. So they would come and they would ask me for a rule interpretation or why was the flag thrown or whatever. And I would give them the answer. And then they would turn to the guy standing next to me and ask him the same question. Most of the time, like 99% of the time, the guy said the same thing that I just said. And in those moments, I learned I could either get really upset that you didn't believe me, or I could count it as a win that I knew what I was talking about. And there's so many things that I could have gotten mad about that just weren't worth my time and energy. And so when I looked at the situations I was in, I knew that if you had me officiating your game, or if I was covering your team and I was the only woman in that locker room or in that meeting room, I knew who they were gonna remember. They were gonna remember me because I looked different and I sounded different. And so you could look at that and go, well, that's a really lonely place to be, or you can flip that to your advantage and say, okay, I'm the one they're gonna remember. What are they gonna remember about me? Are they gonna remember that I was prepared? Are they gonna remember that I was combative? Are they going to remember that I studied or that I was kind or that I chose the moments that I wanted to speak up? Like there's a lot of power that you have in some of these individual moments. And so every time I was competing against myself, it was more about what impression did I just leave you with? Less about standing my ground to more of the look, I know that you're just waiting for me to give you something. It's either going to confirm what you think or it's gonna make you rethink the idea of having a woman working in sports. As long as I feel confident in how I presented myself, my idea, um, took part in that conversation, I'm good. I don't know if that exactly answers your question, but that was more of how I viewed it from the okay, I can't control everybody else, but if I can control me, then here's how I will feel best in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

I had um the reason that I brought up mine and the reason they asked my opinion was because my wife um always was talking about how, you know, when she goes to sing, she has to, it takes three hours to do her makeup. It takes, you know, and it's like it's it's like doing the hair. And I, and you know, and she was like, you know, you don't understand how challenging this is in my own way. You know, it's like it's not easy to do this, it's not easy to wear these clothes. And so we did a day in the life where one of my we went to, she sang with one of our good friends who was a drag queen, and I was like, he's like, All right, you get to see what your wife goes through for one day. And they did the makeup on me, they did everything. It was way harder than I thought. And like what cracked me up was like I was extremely uncomfortable. And I was extremely uncomfortable, but I still had to find a way to step up and to talk about things that were experienced. And what I found was that we have a certain level of shared experiences underneath the surface that we are trying to tap into, to communicate, to connect on. And I think that if we can do that, and one of the things that's powerful for me in that moment was I sat there and said, I don't have the answers. I know what my experience was today. And when I sat there, but you know, it wasn't always about speaking. In that moment, I had to do some listening too, you know. And I want to ask you about listening because listening is like a superpower in conversations, especially when you're working quick and you're working on the fly and you have to pay attention in a short period of time. What does real listening look like in these high pressure situations? How much is it like you're following your structure versus you're really trying to catch what they say?

SPEAKER_01 39:15

It is a combination of both. And it is about being curious. And I think this actually goes back to asking great questions. So when I'm doing a live walk-off interview, those questions are not being asked on the fly. I have scripted them out. I have determined, and I generally get three questions in a post-game interview. That's kind of all it is, unless they're super short and then I get four. But I know the flow of this quick conversation, I know what I'm gonna ask, and I truly am interested in the answer. I'm not just trying to fill time and fill space, like I wanna know. And when you ask that and you stand there and you're watching the reaction, like I am invested in what you say because I was curious about the answer. And so I think that that's part of it. How do you curate the conversation that's interesting? Where you're not just thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, get to the next one, right? Get to the next one. I just just get to the real answer I want is is like three questions down the line. I also think observations play into this more than people think. I'll script those questions. If something goes to your point earlier, right, if that conversation takes a left turn that I wasn't expecting, that's okay. I can ask a follow-up question, but I can also use the environment to my advantage, right? Boy, it looks like you're really soaking this moment in. Why did this game become emotional for you? And I'm not going to know that until I stand there on the field and watch the player with almost tears in his eyes. So I think that there's a lot of things that come into the listening piece. I think it's more of observation because you can tell in a reaction, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice. That's all part of the curiosity of where this conversation is going.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

I have a worker who's one of my favorite people. He is extremely socially awkward. And I and I love him for it. And he's he's great. And he has this one thing that he does. Uh, when he gets uncomfortable, he starts talking in like a Mickey Mouse voice, like, really? And like the end of the day, I said, You do know that you do this Mickey Mouse voice thing. And a couple of us turn there, he's like, dude, I had no idea that I did that. And he's like, You're like, Yeah, man, it's pretty fun. Like, it is who you are. But we noticed this pattern, and I said, But that's okay. I also understand though, now that when we start talking about topics that make you feel uncomfortable. So I'm watching this and seeing, you know, is there a pattern there? And he's like, Well, I just sometimes things make me feel uncomfortable because I grew up getting bullied for a lot of my opinions. And so we started to connect these dots and see that there was this pattern there. But it took me really not just listening, but observing the patterns that were going on. And when we can start to look at that, but you know, people think that listening is just this one-off quick thing, but yeah, it's more. You really have to dive in and be present with the person in front of you.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yes. And kind of fit the pieces together of the entire situation. It's rarely just a conversation, right? There, there's always something more that's going into it. Um, and I think that's what people, when people ask, so what does your day look like? My day is really pretty boring. I spend a lot of time online reading newspaper articles and articles about the teams that I cover. I go and I stand and I wait for people to be ready to talk to me, quite honestly, right? So you've got open availability, but you know, they're doing treatment and they're doing all of these things, and I'm waiting. But while you're waiting, and this is the hard thing to articulate that you're helping to do right now, you're not just standing there on your phone. You're standing there watching, you're standing there observing. You're you're standing there learning about the people around you in a different way. And you might not know how those pieces fit together in the moment. There's a number of things that happened Super Bowl week and during the Super Bowl, where you started to see all of these things and you're like, oh, that's why they were doing that. Oh, that reaction makes sense. Oh, I get this. Like it's all coming together, and now you've got a much bigger piece of what that interaction is. And yes, it takes time standing there feeling like you're doing nothing when you're actually doing a lot of um a lot of information gathering by reading the room.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

I love that you mentioned reading the room because that's something that I think so. Many people don't do enough of they they sit there and they they come in with an agenda, and the reality is sometimes you have to pivot, sometimes you have to look at where things are at and go, maybe I need to approach this differently because sometimes you have to find out reading the room is you have to look at where things are at and read the moment. So you're reading the person, you're you're you're observing them, but you're also the whole the room in as a whole. How do you go about really how do you go about reading rooms?

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Well, I I've spent a lot of time around my athletes. And so when it comes to reading a locker room, I can tell what's going on. And I always give them an opportunity to talk to me or to not talk to me. So that's number one. They don't have to do an interview with me. They have to be available to do an interview. But the first question I always ask is will you answer a few questions about today's game? And the answer is yes or no, especially if they don't seem as open as they were, right? Like it just that it seems like there's something that's a little bit out of character. You might have had a good game or a decent game, but something could have happened when the coach came in to talk to the team, or maybe you got a text message that something was wrong at home. It goes back to there's a human side of things, there's performance, and then there's the human side of what happens after that one. There is a definite energy in a room. I've been around a lot of people, and I think that's the other part of this. When you put yourself in position to be around people, you pick up on those cues way easier. And sometimes you can misread a room, which is again why you would ask a clarifying question, right? Ah, it looks like you might be a little distracted. Would you like for me to come back and try to catch you later today or tomorrow? Because me trying to force my agenda on somebody is not gonna help. It's not gonna lead to a productive conversation. Um, so I want to make sure that I get that right. Did I get and you might just say, oh gosh, no, no, no, I was just deep in my own thought. No, we're good to have the conversation right now. Or you might say, actually, tomorrow would be better. Could we do it tomorrow? There's nothing wrong with level setting things. We we step around, again, it's our own discomfort, right? I would say state the obvious. So if something does not go the way that you think and you're reading the room and you're like, this does not feel right, maybe it's a day where you just turn around and walk back on out. I generally don't have that option, right? If I read the room and something doesn't feel right, I still have to have a conversation. So I'm just gonna state the obvious, right? And I'm just gonna see if by level setting with my observation or, you know, kind of the vibe that I'm getting, am I getting the right vibe? Okay, now when would we like to have this conversation again? Instead of either trying to force your way in or um ignoring it altogether. The acknowledgement goes a long way towards a human being.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

I love that. I want to ask you this because not everyone leads a team or steps on a stage. Like, where do you see everyday moments where people unknowingly lead or lose influence based on how they communicate?

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Yeah, it is the way that you answer the question, how are you? It is the most pivotal moment in every single conversation, and we overlook it 95% of the time. And you don't have to lead a team to make this a true um moment for you to grasp and take advantage of. So we would normally follow a very traditional script for the how are you exchange, right? How are you? Good. How are you? Good. And then we sit there and we wait for somebody to say something interesting. That is your opening, though, to say whatever it is that you want. Now we default to the same two words, and I know that it's the same two words because I've done this with corporate audiences for almost 20 years. The two words that get used most often are good and fine. We do that because we were not given permission or a direction the conversation should go. Does that make sense? This is one of those an open-ended question actually creates confusion. I don't know what you want to know. And so I'm gonna take the safest route possible because I don't want to sit in a place of discomfort or overshare or talk about my family when what you meant was, you know, how was dinner last night or whatever this is, right? So we take the safe road. That's why it happens. But here's your moment of strategy. Answer the question and give me one more sentence as to why you are good, great, excellent, or awesome. It gives you a chance to lead in that moment, and I call them success statements because ideally you're pointing towards something that you want to talk about that you're proud of, or that you consider a success, which could be everything from I'm awesome, I really enjoyed the podcast conversation I taped today, to I am fantastic, my email inbox is finally at zero. It is not, it never will be. That's not my example. But whatever you tell people in that moment, you make it easier to have a conversation. You just made follow-up questions easy and obvious. You just introduced topics that you would be interested in talking about. You just advocated for yourself in a way, right? If I talk about being on a podcast episode, now I'm actually saying, oh, I have a position where people want to interview me. I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of what I can bring to the table in those conversations. Also, what was the podcast about? Who was it with? When is it out? Do you do this often? Now I'm leading into topics that I really do enjoy talking about and affects me as a business owner. Even if nobody asks me follow-up questions, I just utilized that as a little like tidbit on who I am and what I'm about. And you don't have to lead a team and you don't have to stand up in front of anybody and do that. You could do that with a barista, you could do that with the person who brings you your food, you could do that waiting at a bus stop. It's just a conversation skill that positions you a little bit differently and makes it easier for people to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

I love that. If someone listening today wanted to improve their communications starting this week, what's one small habit or shift that would make the biggest difference?

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Yeah, I think the how are you exchange makes the biggest difference. It makes you feel good. Now you have to practice it. And I would say that's the overarching right idea. Practicing something new is what we do in any phase of our life. We tend to skip over that in conversation. We think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it, we'll do it. That's a great idea. But until you actually practice saying the words out loud before you get to the conversation, you're probably not gonna be able to land that the way you would hope. So I would say get really strategic in how you answer how are you, because you know you're gonna get that question multiple times a day, and practice what you were gonna say ahead of time.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

I love that. If someone wants to find out more about you and what you do, where can they go and look for more about you?

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Well, the website is talksportytome.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Instagram, YouTube. Those are gonna be the best places. Talk sporty to me just across the board with all of them.