82: Building Champions from the Inside Out w/ Hall of Fame Coach Sherri Coale

Becoming a champion isn’t about obsessing over the scoreboard. The real transformation happens in the small, intentional behaviors you choose every single day.

In this episode of The No Limit Leadership Podcast, legendary coach and bestselling author Sherri Coale reveals how she turned an unranked program into a perennial powerhouse and how those same habits can help you lead with clarity, purpose, and impact.

If you’ve ever wondered what it really takes to build a culture where people thrive, this conversation will give you a blueprint you can start applying right now.

In this episode, we explore:

✅ Why busyness is lonelier than solitude and how to reclaim your presence
✅ The rituals and practices that help leaders transition between roles with intention
✅ How to define behaviors, not just values, to create a championship culture
✅ Why self-care is the opposite of selfishness for high-impact leaders
✅ How to mentor up, across, and down to fuel your growth and fulfillment
✅ A fresh perspective on measuring success beyond external outcomes

Whether you lead a team, a business, or your family, you’ll walk away with practical strategies to lead yourself and others with purpose.

Listen now to learn how to build champions from the inside out.

Chapters

00:00 From Coaching to Writing: A Seamless Transition
03:48 The Importance of Intentionality in Leadership
06:43 Self-Care: The Key to Effective Leadership
09:55 The Myth of Selfishness in Leadership
12:58 Navigating Transitions: Finding Balance in Roles
15:40 The Dangers of Immediate Gratification
18:47 Building Resilience: The Long Game in Leadership
21:44 The Circle of Influence: Mentorship and Community
25:15 Finding Fulfillment in Leadership
26:00 The Process vs. Outcome Dilemma
29:29 Measuring Success Beyond Wins
34:31 Building a Winning Culture
36:57 The Importance of Clarity in Leadership
42:09 Modeling Character in Leadership
44:13 Rethinking Leadership Development
46:40 The Universal Themes of Striving

Links & Resources:

• Sherri Coale’s book The Compost File: Stories for the Strivers in Us All
• Connect with Sherri Coale

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Welcome to the No Limits Leadership podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton. I'm so excited to have Sherri Cole on the podcast today. She is a distinguished figure in women's basketball, renowned for her transformative 25 year tenure as the head coach for the University of Oklahoma's women's basketball team. Under her leadership, the Sooners achieved multiple big 12 championships, made three final four appearances, solidifying her legacy in the sport.

Beyond coaching, is a gifted writer and speaker sharing insights on leadership, teamwork, and personal growth. She has her first book, Rooted to Rise, and her brand new released book, The Compost File, where she reflects deeply in her commitment to storytelling and mentorship of others. Transitioning from the court to the page, Sherri continues to inspire through her words, experiences, offering valuable lessons on resilience and intentional living. Sherri, thanks for being on today.

Sherri Coale (00:47)
Hey, thank you so much, Sean. Appreciate it. I'm excited to have a conversation.

Sean Patton (00:51)
Yeah, me too. Maybe, our, I tried to do a pre-call interview before we do these. and I gotta say yours was so fun. I think we went like way over. kept talking. ⁓ it was a good time. ⁓ and I learned so much. So I'm excited for to share, know, your knowledge and wisdom, ⁓ you know, with that. So when you've had an incredible career, obviously starting in coaching and now a writing and leadership consulting.

Sherri Coale (01:01)
we did.

Sean Patton (01:18)
What was the biggest shift for you when you transitioned from coaching into your second career with writing and leadership consulting? What was that like?

Sherri Coale (01:26)
⁓ couple of different answers to that question. One being it was more seamless than I think I could have ever imagined. ⁓ I think part of that is because I didn't just stop coaching and then try to figure out what I wanted to do next. I stopped coaching to go do what I wanted to do next. So I wasn't running away from something. I was running towards something. And I think that makes a tremendous difference.

I had long carried around in my pocket a passion to write and just didn't have time to really explore it while I was doing that big, full, wonderful, totally time consuming job of being the head coach at the University of Oklahoma. And so I was excited about that new venture. The biggest difference has been, and this is kind of ironic, I was thinking about this as I was jogging yesterday.

As a head college basketball coach, you're on a platform that is so public and you're around people all the time. 24 seven people, people, people, whether it's your staff, whether it's your team, whether it's fans, whether it's donors, you're constantly around people. A writing life is the polar opposite of that. It is extremely private. It is me and this laptop in a chair in the backyard.

I'm moving around all the time trying to find a different way to shake those crystals loose inside my head. But it's just me and the words and my thoughts. that's entirely different than my previous life. I've found though, ironically, that the previous life that's full of people all the time is way lonelier than the private life that's full of a lot of personal time, one on...

⁓ with my laptop. And I think it has to do with, ⁓ the connection that you, you get with yourself when you write, you, you have a friend in yourself, you know, you have somebody to have that dialogue with it and a real dialogue, something of substance. And I think that's maybe, ⁓ the difference, not to say that I didn't have a lot of friends in coaching and don't have a lot of friends in coaching and didn't enjoy my staff and my team because I did, but it's busy. It's a lot of busyness going around and.

writing is the polar opposite of that. So that has been one big difference that I've noticed. However, the one thing I'm sure of in this new rhythm or season of life, whatever you want to call it, writing comes first, but I need interaction and energy from other people in order to write well. So I do a lot of public speaking. I do some leadership consulting. I say a lot. I do enough.

to keep my energy cup full. When I go out and speak, I interact with other people, energy is transferred, I get all kinds of thought stimulation and ideas, and I'm probably not gonna write about anything that happened while I was there, but something that happened while I was there will stimulate a thought that leads me to something to write about. And so I need that interaction with other humans, I need that connection, but I also need this quiet time to think and grapple with things and...

try to get clear on things and that makes me full. So I've found that really precarious balance, I think that we all kind of search for, whether you're introvert or extrovert, there's a little bit you need of both and finding that balance is what's important.

Sean Patton (04:47)
I agree. I think that, a lot of leaders one thing they maybe struggle with as they move up in an organization and feel free to disagree with me, but I've just found as you move up in an organization and more senior.

actually a smaller percentage of your time needs to be on the doing and more time on the thinking, right? Like that's hopefully you're, you're, you're, uh, strategizing and you're, you're thinking about what, what the, what the market's doing and the world's doing and where's it headed and, know, doing your analysis and do all the things so that the people below you, those tactical level people can focus on the doing, but that shift, you know, that shift that you did very intentionally.

can be hard for leaders as they move up an organization to give themselves the structure to do that. Based on your experiences, do you have any advice for those more senior leaders who are saying, I need to make time for some writing, for some deep thinking, some time for me because I feel like I'm just doing all the time. Have you found any strategies? What advice would you give them on trying to make that happen?

Sherri Coale (05:44)
There's such a tension there between it. It's kind of it's like this when I was a high school coach. You know, we don't make any money as high school coach. Zero money. My husband and I would go to dinner and we're like, OK, can we order that? No, we can't order that. We'll order this. Then as a head college coach, you make all kinds of money. You're out for dinner and you get ready to pay the check and they're like so and so got it so and so got it. And you're like, really? I needed that when I was high school coach not making any money. I don't need it now. I could pay for this. Not that you didn't appreciate it, but there's that great irony there of like really?

Well, the same thing happens for a leader in terms of you, get to this level where everybody needs or wants a piece of your time. Always. You are in high demand, whether it's an employee, a peer, a boss, ⁓ a client, whoever it is, some, there's always a need for your time. And yet in that position is when you need your alone time, your one-on-one time with yourself more than ever before. it's so there's that constant pull.

And I think the strategy would be intentionality. Number one, be very, very clear about your purpose. Know your purpose, know your core values and know the behaviors that represent those and revisit those regularly. And I don't mean like once a month or once a week. mean, like multiple times a day, check yourself. Is this behavior really in line with my values and my purpose? If not, then I need to shift a little here. Is this activity going to take me closer to my purpose or further away from my purpose?

that determines whether or not I do it. So your decisions about how you spend your time resonate or grow from that purpose, your purpose and your values and getting really, really clear about that. So intentionality, you know, being just as, as intentional about sitting down and writing for an hour or 30 minutes every morning as you are about drinking green juice or going on a run or getting in the gym or meeting with your

managers, whatever those things are that you deem to be important, that time to fill your cup and to get clear and be aligned is the most important time you'll spend. That might be reading, that might be talking to mentors, that might be meeting with your Fox Hill group, that might be a writing practice, which I highly suggest for clarification. There are any numbers of things, prayer time, meditation time, all kinds of things that feed your soul.

Because no doubt about it, the best leaders are the people who have the phyllis cup, their cup is most filled, the phyllis cup, their cup is most filled because they take the time to feed into themselves. And I just think that's, we get too busy sometimes when we're in the corner office, we get so busy trying to take care of everybody else and we forget to take care of ourselves.

Sean Patton (08:25)
What would you tell that leader who is in the place of feeling like when they do that, that that's selfish, or maybe, not even the leader in a business, right? A lot of the, the mother who, who has this passion project, but feels like, you know, taking time away from her kids is, ⁓ is the wrong thing to do, right? This selfish servant leader mindset almost.

gone to an extreme where they're, fighting their own mindset to make, make it, make that time be okay with, with their values and their identity.

Sherri Coale (08:57)
You know, I'm going to answer that question by telling you a real time story. I was in my thirties. I was the head coach at Oklahoma. had two small children, a son in elementary school, a little three year old daughter, toddling around. And I'm trying to build the program at Oklahoma at about a 10 to 12 Bennett drive from the arena to my house. And at the end of the day, one day, I remember it was one of those days where

Everybody wanted something yesterday. You know, every phone call was can I do this? Can I go there? Can I give this? Can I show up here? And I remember telling my secretary when I walked out the door, very melodramatically, by the way, just open a vein and just give it to him. Whatever. Yeah, slam the door. Just go out like all dramatic. And I get in my car and I think, all right, I'm going to I'm going get myself together on my drive home. Right. So I drive home and I drive into the driveway and my little three year old, my grandmother's here with the kids.

and my little three-year-old is drawing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. My son has his ball glove and his bat, and he's hitting the baseball in his ball glove. And, Mom, will you pitch to me? Will you pitch to me? Will you pitch to me? Let's go in the backyard. Will you pitch to me? And my daughter comes with the sidewalk chalk, wanting me to draw on the sidewalk. I remember just going, I'm going to change my clothes. And so I went in the house and I put on my running gear and I came out. And this is the days where I had a bright yellow Walkman, right? With the little.

Sean Patton (10:18)
⁓

Sherri Coale (10:18)
you know, the

Sean Patton (10:18)
yeah.

Sherri Coale (10:19)
earbuds and you carry the thing around. had the lanyard that's bright yellow. And I came out and I said, I'm not doing anything until I go for a run. And you know, my son is stunned and my daughter's bawling and I run down the driveway and I start down the street and I'm just bawling. I'm just weeping. And I make the block and I kind of get myself together and I feel guilty. I feel like I'm not being what I need to be for anybody at my job or at home.

I just, I'm feeling inept in every corner and then super selfish for having taken off on a run. And I make the block, I'm not gone for 20, 25 minutes. And I come back up the driveway and my daughter's laughing and running around drawing pictures with the sidewalk chalk. And Colton's in the backyard tossing a ball up and hitting it himself. And I just look around and my grandmother said, they were fine by the time you got to the end of the driveway. And I remember thinking then that

The very best thing I can do is take care of me so that I can take care of them. Because I had a completely different mindset after 20 minutes around the neighborhood. I was a much more present, involved mother for the next three hours before I put them to bed that night than I would have been had I jumped in and tried to do that with part of my head somewhere else immediately without taking that time.

And so it sort of became a mantra of mine. I was raised by the most giving women, my mother and my grandmother, that I never saw my mother buy a single thing for herself ever. My grandmother used to ask my grandfather, what do you want for dinner? And then fix it for him. And then here I am, like going off on a jog when I should be taking care of my children. But I remember it hitting me like a ton of bricks that...

that I can't take care of all the people that I'm responsible for taking care of if I don't take care of me. And so it's actually to answer your question, it's selfish not to do those intentional things because then you're not giving the best of yourself to the people who deserve that.

Sean Patton (12:22)
And the best version of yourself too. love that. And I want to point out another thing you mentioned, I think that's really powerful is I'm thinking transitions, right? Like you talked about, you were going straight from work into this mom mode.

And you like, needed that time for yourself. And you also needed like a structured way to transition from, you know, coach Sherri to, mom Sherri, right. And like having some sort of formal way to do that. know for myself, when I'm trying to, I really try to avoid task switching, but it's so hard. and trying to go from,

doing a podcast to, I have a coaching call after this to doing content, I do prospecting. And then I've got a, I've got a, you know, a conscious leadership group. It's all these different roles we play, but like, how can we find even five or 10 minutes to transition between the things and sort of like cleanse the palette, you know, like cleanse the mental palette.

Sherri Coale (13:17)
Yeah.

You know, sometimes it's as simple as that. If you ever go perfume shopping, they'll bring you cocoa beans in a little cup. You'll smell a perfume and then you breathe the cocoa beans and you're clear. And then you can go smell another one and you get the real idea of it. It's literally something as specific and tiny as that. I have a friend who, when he parks a car in his garage, he just closes his eyes and says, be there, be there wherever he is, be there. So he's getting ready to go in and now he's going to quit being a coach and he's going to.

be a father when he walks in the door. And so it's those little things that may not mean much to anybody else, but they're things that we subscribe for ourselves. I remember Jacque Vaughn, when he played at the University of Kansas, used to wear a rubber band on his wrist. And when he turned it over, he would just pop that rubber band on his wrist. It was his way of saying, get out of here, I'm moving on to the next play. I'm done with whatever happened, I'm moving on to the next play. So sometimes for us, as we transition from one role to the other,

taking one hat off and putting another hat on. It's as simple as a physical and verbal mantra. Maybe we snap our fingers, maybe we hit our chest, maybe we close our eyes, take a deep breath and say, there. Whatever it is, we come up with something that cleanses our palate to help us be completely present in the moment we're going into.

Sean Patton (14:30)
Hmm. You bring it back to my childhood there. I grew up, I think I told you, I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. So Jacque Vaughn in the nineties, man, that was, uh, those are my people. Uh, that's right. Rock shock. Yeah. I was, yeah, I was, I was, uh, I grew up in the field house before, you know, tickets were $400 a piece or whatever they are. We were up in the nosebleeds.

Sherri Coale (14:36)
God, shut up.

Uh-huh. My first trip,

we can relate on this. can just nerd out on being basketball fans for a second, but the first time I took a team from Oklahoma to Allen Fieldhouse, I went out on the court to find the place where, oh, and his name just escaped me. The player's tooth went into the court. It'll come back to me in a second, but there's actually, or was, a place that had, they never fixed it in the wood.

of his tooth that went into the court. They just varnished over it and I went straight to that to look for it. I found it.

Sean Patton (15:15)
That's it. mean, ⁓ both great, ⁓ well, great sports schools, please, especially basketball, KU, not so much in the football between Oklahoma and, and KU, but, ⁓ but yeah, the fog grew up in the fog, Allen field house and go into games and basketball camps and stuff like that was, was a big part of my, my youth. So that was a cool time. ⁓ now. Yes, we work with different leaders or, you know, maybe it's the same with players.

Sherri Coale (15:24)
yeah.

Sean Patton (15:39)
It seems to me that there's a lot of, wanting things this now, this immediate gratification. want to, I need to get to this next level. I need to, uh, I want, I want this, this thing to happen and I want it to happen like right away, like quick, quick success, right? We see the people on social media, uh, you know, there are 27 and in, know, in Dubai on their own private jet or whatever. And like we, why we, we want these now. And in our pre-call, talked about why it's a mistake for leaders to strive for.

or teams to strive for quick and immediate success. Why is that?

Sherri Coale (16:11)
Well, first of all, just say that for all young professionals, young athletes, whomever, this immediate gratification thing is not their fault. They've been raised on an immediate gratification microwave society. I mean, you get what you want like that. You order food, you get it that quickly. You want to know how tall... I mean, my husband and I do this all the time. We'll be watching an NBA game and go, how tall do you think that guy is? I don't know, in two seconds.

I know how tall that guy is because I look it up. It's, we used to have to go to the library, you know, or, or at least go get the dictionary out of the shelf and thumb to the word and alphabetical order and find it and look it up. And now within literally five seconds, you can have whatever you need. So we're trained at young brains are trained to want it now, want it now, what it now, but what really lasts are

things I always say, I used to say this to our players about motion offense, things that are important to know take time to learn. You don't get good at motion offense in a week. You just don't. You get good at it over a long time. But once you get good at it, it's really, really hard to defend. And it's really, really fun to play that way. But you don't know all that in a week or two weeks. What you know in a week or two weeks, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. This is ridiculous. And...

It's ugly and it's messy. And then over time, it turns into this thing that you can only get one way by pouring yourself into it over time. And I think, you you only need to talk to a married couple who's been together for 65 years to see that they got something that the rest of the world's missing out on. And that's only carved through intentionality over time. Investment pays off. I used to ask my players, what makes your heart sing? And a freshman would go,

like try to crawl under the couch because they didn't want to answer such a lofty question. Most of them would come back and say basketball and I go no no beyond basketball like what makes your heart sing and they when they ask for clarification my answer would always be what can you work really really hard at for a long time like two three hours where you should be exhausted when you're finished but instead of exhausted you have more energy than you did when you started. When you find that thing

that makes your heart sing. The hard stuff that you go through, the challenges give you juice and you don't get any of that. You don't get any of those byproducts in short-term gratification. You get a little bitty slice of this and that, but you don't ever get the depth that comes from pouring yourself into something for an extended period.

Sean Patton (18:45)
How does one build up the requisite fuel necessary to push through to achieve that big lofty goal or thing at the end?

Sherri Coale (18:57)
I think the recipe is a little bit different for everybody. And I think it all comes back to, you have to know who you are. You have to know yourself. You have to know what fills you up. You have to know what zaps you. You have to know what stimulates your thinking. You have to know what discourages you. And you have to orient what you do toward those things that are positive for you. And it might be different, you know, like we were talking earlier about.

being in a lot of people or being by yourself, introvert, extrovert, you have to know what that balance is. You have to be aware of that. But some key things that I think are pretty universal, regardless of what the balance of that looks like, are mentors. I think it's so important to be surrounded, to have, spend time with peers, people who are doing the job you're doing, like for a coach. You can talk to a lot of people, but it's not ever gonna feel

like it feels when you're talking to another coach. And I'm talking about a head coach who sits in the seat, who calls the timeouts, who carries the win or the loss on their shoulders, that person. That's nothing against assistant coaches. Assistant coaches should talk to assistant coaches, because they're sitting in the same seat and they're all frustrated with their head coach or their ability to do this or that. Head coaches talk to each other because nobody knows what you feel like except for you. You're doing that deal. Peers.

super important to share those experiences. And then to have a mentor, somebody who's already been there, who's already sat in that chair, who can give you the wisdom from experience. And then the third piece of that, I think, is to be a mentor to someone three steps behind you. Someone who's a few years removed, they're in that spot you were in, you know, six years ago, and you can help them because it's like the old adage, you don't ever know anything until you teach it. As your

into them, you're also pouring into you. And that's one thing I wish I had done a whole lot more of while I was coaching. Because I think it would have made me more grounded. I think it would have given me better perspective for the challenges of the days if I had had a young coach that I was helping get through. And of course I did have players and I would that were out coaching and I would talk to them, but no one on a regular basis where like every week or every two weeks.

We're having a powwow about how they can get better at what they do or how they can navigate changes and challenges that are facing them. So I think that circle of influence, that regular circle of influence, the people beside you, the people in front of you, the people behind you is a critical way to keep that tank full.

Sean Patton (21:31)
You know, it's so interesting. I own and also teach and do a Brazilian jujitsu, right? Like martial arts, grappling martial arts, right? And it's like human chess. It's very complex. And I often have this conversation with people where I say, ⁓ that. Jujitsu provides things for you that you need as a human being to feel whole that sort of modern, that modern society.

doesn't anymore. one of those things is funny is exactly what you just said, which is like, we're meant to, I believe, you know, it's, mean, science, not just I believe like we, ⁓

You know, grew up, or we evolved in groups, right? Like for most of our work, our existence as human beings, we lived in tribes of 150 people, right? And, and we had elders we looked up to that we learned, you know, eat that, don't eat that. This is how you hunt this thing. had peers that we had groups with. And then as we learned things, we had people to pour into. And, ⁓ so I just couldn't agree more or hardly. And I would just say, I think that what you just described is like,

I think when you find things that are fundamental to who we are as human beings and you align with that, that's when you experience this sense of fulfillment of like, yeah, this is what I should be doing. And what a beautiful way to do that in a very structured format of up, across and down.

Sherri Coale (22:52)
We have to be intentional about that. And again, that goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You get so busy that you think, I don't have time to do that. I hardly have time to take care of these players or this staff or these managers that I'm responsible for. How can I be responsible for somebody else? But what it gives back to you is like Jesus and the loaves and the fishes. It just multiplies. I mean, you just get better and better and better as a result of a give.

Sean Patton (23:17)
What you've written about and we had talked about this process over outcome mentality. Why do you think leaders struggle with this concept?

Sherri Coale (23:27)
Mostly because we get to keep our jobs if we win. I mean, seriously, a society rewards a business that makes the biggest profit. The coach that wins the most games, the politician that gets the most votes, there's a win associated with the outcome. And I think that's, it's one of those things that

Sean Patton (23:32)
You

Sherri Coale (23:50)
As individuals, we have to figure out what our measuring stick is. Let's get clear on societies. This is what it is. It measures fame, it measures power, or it values fame, it values power, it values financial success. The list is, that's true across the board. Doesn't matter what you're doing. Those things are pretty universal. As individuals, we have to decide what our measuring stick is. And if we're not clear on that,

Most of us who are trying to live in alignment are going to feel a great deal of tension and consternation because we're going to be trying to take care of our families and grow human beings and and teach. And sometimes those things don't necessarily line up to making the most money or having the most power or winning the most games. And so we have to be, you know, in the sport, in the sports world is super easy.

Sean, it's super easy. There's at the end of the division one women's basketball season, that's rapidly coming to a close. The tournament will happen in a week. When that NCA tournament is over, there's going to be one person that wins their last game. One coach that wins their last game. That's it. Everybody else, if winning your last game is how you measure success, everybody else is in trouble because there's only going to be one person that gets to do it.

And so that if that's all that you measure yourself by, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be part of what you measure yourself by because we have to make progress. We have to. That's, that's the kind of the point of it all is to make progress. But where we get where it gets really tricky is when comparison gets involved and it's my progress versus your progress and your progress versus her progress. And really it's our progress within whatever we're doing. And

So I think that measurement tool is, you have to get really clear about that. If it's to grow people, are we growing people? Can we see a palpable change in the people that we're responsible for? Are they better at this and better at that? And have they moved beyond this and are they challenging themselves here? There are ways to do that. And that becomes the internal measuring stick, which can't, it's not, people sometimes think it's real, you know, like unicorns and rainbows or something, and it's not.

It can be very, you can tally it. You can put a piece of paper down and make a list. Yes, I did, no, no, he didn't kind of thing. But you have to be very clear on what those things are that you want to measure. And then there's fulfillment, even if you're not the last guy standing at the end of a season.

Sean Patton (26:26)
Yeah, I love the measuring stick. You know, like what are you measuring and how does that matter? Because, ⁓ you know, also, right. Like you can, you don't control, as you mentioned, like outcome, right? It's like you could do. If you could do everything right. That's going to lead to long-term, let's say outcome success, but in this tournament, you know, the team across from you shows up.

And they're just, they're just better or they're just lucky or whatever happens, you know, like, you know, they've got an all star player that you just can't guard. Something happens where like you did everything right. And then you could still lose conversely, right? You could have a team. make a bunch of mistakes and you do a bunch of processes wrong. And the other team makes a bigger mistake and you end up winning the game. And so it's like outcome of the game. Is it necessarily, uh, I think it shouldn't, it informs to look back and be like, what is our process? How did we get here?

But you're sort of like leaving, if you have a measuring stick that is about external results that you don't control, you could be all over the place because you're not measuring things that you can affect, right? That make sense?

Sherri Coale (27:30)
I love the

fact that you use the word inform because I think that's the most important part of competition is we have to use the information that we glean from it to inform us about how we can continue to improve about where our gaps are, where the potholes are. When I was building the, I was, we were building the program at Oklahoma. We weren't good at all. I'm just saying that real softly. We were bad. And

We were playing in the Big 12 and the Big 12 was daunting. got Jody Conrad at Texas and Marsha Sharp at Texas Tech and Bill Finley at Iowa State and the list goes on and on. Marion Washington at Kansas. It was just full of these historic coaches who had loaded teams and we were just trying to build one from the ground up. It would have been crazy for us to try to determine our success based on the number of games that we won that season.

even the second season, maybe even the third. And I remember getting a note from someone who had come to our game, a fan, older woman who was going through chemotherapy. She wrote a letter that I got in my office. This was back before the days of when everybody just posted things on social somewhere where I never would have seen it. She actually put an envelope with an address and put a stamp on it and sent it to me.

I opened the letter and read it and she said that she had been to our game that week and that she was really, really struggling with their chemotherapies and that she hadn't had any energy to go anywhere or do anything. And she was starting to get kind of depressed and she made herself get in the car and come to our game. And when she walked to the car that night, she felt better than she had in weeks and we had lost the game. She said our determination, our unity, the way we fought.

The spirit we played with just infused her and she said she attacked the rest of her chemotherapies and she was moving forward and just wanted to thank our team for the way that she played. Well, that became the stick for our team. So after games, I would ask our guys, do you think the people who watched our game tonight walked to their car and decided that they were going to be a better version of themselves tomorrow? And if the answer to that question is yes, I don't care what the scoreboard says, we won.

And if the answer to that question is no, I don't care what the scoreboard said, we lost. So it was a way of playing that we had complete control over. It wasn't about, did the ball go in or not? It wasn't about, did the ref call an equal game? It wasn't about, did the other team have superior talent? It was just about a way that we performed. Did we play in an inspirational way that made people think, I want to, I want to be a better me tomorrow. And if we did that, we won, we won.

And what's crazy, Sean, and this I think is probably true across the board, outside the lines of sport, is when we played that way, we most often won. That's how it works.

Sean Patton (30:18)
Yeah. They're finding the right things to measure that that will eventually lead to long-term success. love that. And, know, you were in a position with that team that it's not uncommon. someone's being a leader in any type of organization long enough, you're going to be in that, you know, the new team, the transformation, trying to change a culture from, you know, in sports, just very easily, right. A losing to a winning culture.

Um, it's very, you know, like you said, it's kind of measuring wins and losses in business. You know, maybe that's, you know, a non-profitable to a profitable or whatever it might be, right? Like you're, trying to rebuild the team. So when you're looking at, you're a leader who is, do I shift, uh, culture to become a winning culture? Like what's step one? Where do you start?

Sherri Coale (31:04)
Well, I think clarity is where it all begins. You have to know where you are. You have to be speaking a language that everybody understands. I know in our early team meetings with our team, we would always talk about our core values. And you could put the word integrity up on a board. And if you've got 15 kids in a room, you might have 15 different definitions of the word integrity. It just depends upon their life experiences, depends on what they've been exposed to. And so getting really clear.

about with your people, whoever you lead, about what's most important, what are the non-negotiables, what is our purpose, what are our values that we're gonna live by, and then having multiple conversations about that and keeping those front of mind. It's such Yeoman's work. I mean, it's just, you have to do it and keep doing it. You don't do it. Like I remember when I was coaching high school,

A high school coach asked us, asked me at a scrimmage, a preseason scrimmage, if we had our defense in, and I remember thinking we have our defense in. I don't, I don't know. Cause we'll practice defense every day until the final game of the season. mean, well, there's no such thing as having our defense in cause defense is what we have to work on every single day. We're to do shell drill every single day. And.

I think being clear about your purpose and your values and your behaviors is an everyday thing. And people either think it's not that important or there are other things that are more important or hotter fires, louder noises. Or I've done this for two weeks. I know this stuff like the back of my hand. Well, the week that you forget thinking about it is the week that you get off track. So it's just that thing that has to be done with massive regularity.

And that massive regularity is what creates a culture that is airtight because everybody is breathing the same air. Again, you're creating an environment where people can do their best work. That's what you do when you lead an organization. You create an environment where people can do their best work. Well, if people are confused or if people are on different pages or if people aren't aware of each other, people don't know each other, people aren't connected to each other, they're not going to do their best work. So clarity is sort of the linchpin of all that.

Sean Patton (33:18)
So as you start to grow and you get clear, love how you keep coming back to this values purpose and then checking to make sure behaviors align. Right. I think that's such a great and simple model as, think almost all great models are.

Sherri Coale (33:25)
Sure.

How many of us, how many of us

though have worked where there's a mission statement on a poster on the wall and you have no idea what it is. You can't say it. You have no idea. You may have the general gist of it, but you can't say it. You don't know. And if they ask you what the core values are of your department, you might go, I don't know. It's in the handbook. Let me find the handbook. mean, what the reason a purpose and core values matter is because they derive behavior. Your actions are who you are.

You know, I used to tell our team culture is very simply a way we agree of behaving together. That's it. Behaving, acting. So we can say we're about unconditional love or integrity or hard work. But if we don't unconditionally love or act with integrity or work hard, doesn't matter what we say. We are what we do. And so where people get off track is they'll have this one great big meeting, you know, this big all day. Maybe it's a whole weekend meeting.

And they'll come up with this beautiful purpose statement, these values, and this looks great. And they'll put it on posters all over the building and it looks fantastic. And then they don't ever talk about what they're actually doing every single day and whether or not their actions and their decisions line up with that purpose and those values. And that's the dailiness of it. That's where people get off track. You got to do it every single day.

Sean Patton (34:48)
What I'm envisioning here is, you know, as a leader is clearly identifying, uh, purpose and values and then what behaviors for each individual support that, and then having, you know, that daily tracker on your weekly one to one sitting down and saying, okay, these are the behaviors that you didn't, you know, that meant you are going to, you know, have that mentee meeting, you know, with the people you coach. It means you are going to, you know, do, this extra

educational class, was whatever it was, did we or did we not, right? Do we do the behaviors that match that, but having that in a reoccurring formal sense to reinforce that cultural development. Is that what I'm hearing?

Sherri Coale (35:31)
Absolutely. I used to have a sign in my office that said teams get good at what we emphasize. And so, you know, I could say at the beginning of the year, we have to rebound to win a championship. And then if every day in practice, we're not doing a rebounding drill or I'm not getting the kid who's not boxing out or going after a rebound, we're not talking about the leading rebounder in a game or how many more rebounds we got than our opponent. We're not going to it's not going to be something that we tout as our best skill or what we're known for.

Because I'm not emphasizing it. And so, for example, one of our standards, we called them standards with our program, was gratitude. We are grateful. That's what we said. We are grateful. That was our standard. so gratitude meant if they got on the charter bus to go to meet the airplane, they said hello to the driver. And when they got off the bus, they said thank you to the driver. They showed gratitude. And every time someone didn't do that,

We talked to them about it afterward. It's that constancy. You can't just say this what we want you to do. And then when they don't do it, go, they're not doing it. You go and you have a conversation. We said this is important to us, that we're going to be grateful, that we're going to write a note to the scholarship donor who gives to our program regularly. We're going to say thank you to the manager when he hands us a water bottle. I'll never forget, my first signee was a kid named Felicia Whaley. She was from Slate in Texas.

She was unrecruited basically and we got her by the grace of God in the spring and she became an honorable mention All-American for us. But I would literally call timeouts when Felicia was tired, literally. That's the only reason that I would save them all for if she got tired, because she needed to play 40 minutes for us to have a chance to win in the early days. And no matter how dead dog tired she was, when she came off the court and a manager handed her a bottle of water, she said thank you. I never in four years.

heard her not say thank you to a manager for handing her a bottle of water or a towel. That's gratitude as a part of your culture. That's an embodiment of that.

Sean Patton (37:33)
This makes me think of, ⁓ you know, character development when it comes to leader development. Cause I have a firm belief that, you that character though is the backbone of becoming a leader, right? Becoming someone that others want to follow. And, ⁓ you know, sounds like in your program and, know, when I went to West point, the military, like that was, you know, it's all about that leader of care. And, and how do we, how does a business.

If you're a business leader, an organizational leader, how do we continue to develop character in our leaders?

Sherri Coale (38:09)
Well, first and foremost, it's to model it. I don't think any type of attention you pay to it, if you're not modeling it, is going to stick. So if the top of the top is modeling it, then I think you have to spend time on it. Like, I don't think you can tell people that these things are important. Now go figure out how to make them important in your life. You have to devote, whether it's training, whether it's time with...

bringing in speakers, whether it's programs, whether it's training your managers to lead those one-on-ones through those character development traits, et cetera. I think you have to put your money where your mouth is. If that's gonna be important to you. And I don't know a business in the world that doesn't get better when it's people that get better. I mean, that's just as the water rises, so do the boats, you know? So if you're a leader and you're pouring into your people and you're giving them

access to learning and you're giving them materials for learning and you're giving them time for learning and you're supporting their learning journey that that personal growth journey then you're telling them this is what's most important you i'm pointing to you and those people that are the recipients of that they become loyal fighting extraordinary

workers, employees, managers, leaders in their own right, because they're connected. You know how it feels when somebody tells you, I'm going to pour into you, or when someone takes the time to pour into you, you're like, ⁓ I love this person. I want to give this person the best of me. leaders who take the time to do that, though, again, at the front end, feels like, ⁓ there are other things we need to be doing. You can't afford not to do that. You just can't afford not to.

Sean Patton (39:54)
If you could change one thing about the way businesses develop leaders currently, what would it be?

Sherri Coale (39:58)
This is going to sound sort of contradictory based on some of the things that I do because I do some leadership development, but I think it gets really formulaic. I think that businesses start trying to throw a mold out there and, you know, this is what, here are the 10 steps to becoming a great leader. I don't think that that's, that's one of the reasons I

I write non-fiction that's not prescriptive. I don't know that there are 10 steps. I don't know that there aren't three keys. I don't know. Because I found in teaching kids that what worked with this one didn't necessarily work with that one. And I had a point guard that was good like this and a point guard that was good like that and a point guard that was good in this different way. So I don't know that there's a mold that you can throw out there or a manual you can toss to somebody and say, go get good at this.

a personal investment, which requires some vulnerability. It requires a commitment of time for sure. It requires curiosity and caring, those things that are very human, but back the performance experience. I just don't think you can, I think you have, you have to teach leadership based on who you're teaching it to. And I think it looks a little bit different all the time.

Sean Patton (41:21)
Why should somebody read the compost file?

Sherri Coale (41:23)
Because they want to live a little more fully. I think that the themes in the Compost File are universal. The chapter divisions have stories, the chapters have stories, but the divisions somewhat overlap because I think universal themes just do. Where does caring stop and love begins? I don't know. There's an overlap period right there. So there's some overlap there, but it's a collection of stories about

stuff that everybody goes through, loss, the accumulation of time, challenges, potholes. It's a, when I was, I'll just tell you this quick story. When I was going through the publishing process, the publisher asked me who the book was for. And I said, well, everybody. And she said, well, let's try to get a little more specific.

Is the book for women? And I said yes. And she said, is the book for men? And I said, yes. And she said, is the book for daughters? And I said, yes. Is the book for sons? You see where we're going with all this. finally, I said, it's a book for strivers. That's why it has the subtitle that it does, Stories for the Strivers in It's All. It's for anybody who always wants to be a little bit better as a mother, as a daughter, as

an employee as a coach, whatever it is, were you just itching to improve? And I think all of us have that in us somewhere. We have that striving gene. And this is just a collection of stories that help us slow down enough to realize how we could maybe gain an extra inch or two by just paying better attention. So it's a book of noticing me striving in my own life and not, not achieving, but

but reaching anyway, you know, the bar's a little bit too high, but I'm reaching anyway. And a lot of wisdom from my granddaughter watching her, you know, children are the best at teaching us. They're just full of wonder and awe. And she was an inspiration for a lot of the stories. So hopefully it's an easy read. It's a read where you don't have to start on page one and read through page 172. You just can pick it up and read whatever story falls in your lap. I got a little text message today.

from someone who picked up the book and just picked it up in the middle and read the story that was there. The story that was there is the title of it is The Missing Abyss. And it's a story about how I feel on my birthday when I lost now that I don't have my dad. And it's a story about my dad's birthday and my birthday. And the individual who sent me this text said, today is his dad's birthday. He picked up the compost file and just opened it to a random page to read the book. And he read the story called The Missing Abyss.

And that was like, okay, I'd like to sell, you know, 100,000 books, but if I don't, that's okay. I got that story. I got that experience right there with that guy. So that's, that's what I love about it is I think it's applicable to lots of different people at lots of different places in their lives.

Sean Patton (44:22)
Well, you'd be happy to, or maybe not, but happy to know that I was inspired by that. And I do have now in my, I have my compost file on my notes page now after our, after our pre-call interview. So I'm filling it up. So I've, took your idea and ran with it. So it's already on there. So, well, Sherri, this was awesome. I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope it's not our last, and I look forward to grabbing my own copy of the.

Sherri Coale (44:33)
Yay!

Love it. Thanks.

One will be in your mailbox, I promise. Thank you, Sean.

Sean Patton (44:49)
All right. Thank you. All

right. Take care.