3 leadership lessons from The Playbook: A Coach's Rules for Life and 100 Humans Experiments from Netflix

The Playbook: A Coach's Rules for Life

The truest nature of a lie is the ability for the truth to catch up to it. However, outlier moments create just a sufficient atmosphere to make a truth of a lie.

Case 1: Patrick Mouratoglou x Serena Williams at the US Open final

Link to photo here

Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams' coach once lied to her during a match at the US Open final in 2014. “You’re terrific at the net,” Patrick said. Truth was, Patrick lied about Serena’s stats at the net, because he felt her confidence level was falling apart. Serena had lost 80% of attacks aimed at the net region. And because tennis players can find it difficult to put a number to their in-depth analysis while on the court, Patrick told her at half-time that she actually won 80% stats at the net.?

TL;DR, the lie became truth and it was sufficient to boost Serena’s confidence. She began to attack and converted more chances in the 2nd half.?

Lesson 1: A white lie can be a support hack that leaders can use to repurpose and revitalize their talents. Sports coaches apply this hack during pep talks. The condition attached is that the talent is having a bad at the office, and not being their true self.

Case 2: Patrick Mouratoglou x Irena Pavlovic?

Irena Pavlovic (a tennis Wizkid), and one of Patrick’s tennis stars began to lose too many matches. The losses got to her so much that she began to lose trust in her own abilities to actually serve and efficiently receive a ball. She started to tank the ball (intentionally lose the ball/ play without interest).?

Link https://alchetron.com/Irena-Pavlovic

She tanked the ball, game after game, and Patrick pondered on why Irena would train so hard for a match day, only to intentionally lose the ball. Patrick learned that Irena’s fear of losing her talent to a player more inferior made her tank and give up. Patrick sought to know how to make Irena Pavlovic stop tanking. His answer was to be vulnerable to Irena. Patrick would share experiences of great players who have passed through similar phases in their careers. He made Irena feel that she is not alone in their struggles.

However, several talents took the wrong turn, e.g. some of Patrick’s players whose winning ways got to their head and stopped training hard. Patrick admitted some mistakes he made on his journey as a tennis coach. He explained how he got emotional and scorned players who stopped putting in the work after a breeze of success. Patrick’s emotion has however led to his break-up with several talented players. He later learned that a great coach will not make decisions based on their emotions.

Lesson 2: A great coach will not make decisions based on momentary emotions. But they will take their time to think about the repercussion of their potential decisions on their team, academy, businesses, et cetera.

100 Humans: Life's Questions. Answered.

There were a couple of interesting episodes, but for this article, I will pick episode 5 - E05 Pain vs. Pleasure. Several experiments were conducted to weigh pleasurable rewards against painful penalties as the hosts explore the many ways negative and positive elements shape human reality. One of such experiments was “What works better? Criticism or Praise?”

16 randomly selected participants were asked to learn a new skill—the lost art of plate spinning—in two hours. They were distributed into two groups of 8, and they would perform their newly acquired plate-spinning skills on a stage.

Best performer

In the first round, Human #40, who was described by the narrator as “a natural-born plate spinner,” did a great job by getting 11 out of 15 points. But according to the rules, the judges had to criticize her, and they criticized her heavily. Her abilities were called to question.?

In the second round, she came back to the stage with less confidence and ended up scoring 10 points, one point less than the last time. Her fear of making mistakes was obvious.

Worst performer

Conversely, Human #15, did a poor job in the first round, getting only 2 out of 15 points. But the judges praised her, saying she did a “really good job,” adding that she had “a lot of potential.”?

Interestingly, in the second round, she improved significantly and ended with a score of 12 out of 15 points.

Link to photo

When a neuroscientist was interviewed on the experiment, he made it clear that the top performer's confidence got crushed to the point of criticism though she did the exercise perfectly. So she was tensed in round 2 - pressure to impress. Whereas, the poorest participant from round 1 got a pat on the back for obviously poor performance. It made her feel comfortable. No pressure at all, and she crushed it in round 2.

Considerations:

I felt the sample size for the experiment was too small. And it is worth noting that some humans thrive with criticism than praise. So the experiment may not have provided the best methodology for the context in which it sought answers.

Lesson 3:

a) Successful persons must learn how to handle praise and criticism, such that praises don’t get in their heads. And criticisms are handled with the belief that the criticising party probably seek the best of them or holds them in higher regard. Receiving praises and criticisms with gratitude is the harder part.

b) Great leaders understand that humans take feedback differently, and providing context to their feedback would do a lot of good in helping talents understand that their work was not looked down upon, but they were held to greater standards.

Pheew! That's about it. Those were my learnings from seeing those two documentaries, and I thought to share them with you. Leave a comment to let me know if you picked up a thing or two :)