Winning Trust: What Championship Teams Teach Business Leaders

Hi everyone and welcome to Behind the Numbers with Dave Bookbinder. I am Dave Bookbinder. I'm known as a business valuation expert and best-selling author and this is the program where we go deeper to understand what really matters most in business. I thank you all for joining me.

So what can business leaders learn from championship teams, trust, culture, and performance and how do those lessons actually translate into measurable? Emmy award-winning broadcaster Joel Goldberg is here today to join me and share insights from nearly 30 years inside me covering World Series teams and studying what separates good teams from the great ones and how those lessons apply directly to business, leadership, culture, and long-term success. So welcome to Behind the Numbers.

Dave, good to be with you. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm really looking forward to this legit inside baseball conversation.

So I told the audience a little bit about you. I didn't mention that you're also an author of Small Ball Big Dreams and Small Ball Big Results. Why don't you tell the audience the rest of the story about who you are. Well, If we're going way back, and I won't go too long on this one, I go back to actually growing up not too far from where you were at in the Philadelphia area.

And I mentioned that only because I grew up a diehard sports fan and loved all Philadelphia teams with every bit of my life, really. And the only thing that I wanted to do more than play sports was broadcast sports, probably just because I realized I wasn't that good. And I mean there were there were signs when I was in first grade in South Jersey of of my teacher calling home complaining that I was disrupting class first grade class giving updates on the previous night's Philadelphia Phillies game and so there were early signs fast forward to getting out of college and and I ended up breaking into television local news and small markets climb the ranks and then over time ended up in Kansas City as the pre and post game show host on TV the in game reporter.

And I'm now in my 19th season with them and 32 years in TV. And along the way, I thought, you know, there are a lot of, and you alluded to this in the intro, there are a lot of lessons learned in sports, a lot of lessons, especially learned in baseball, I think more than any other sport, just because of the frequency of the sport and the failure that comes with it. And I thought, I think a lot of these lessons would translate to really any type of corporation. And so I started speaking and with that came podcasts and books and, and, and speaking to you here today, which, you know, I mean, that's a pretty big deal because now I, you know, you're just as I paid you to say it.

Yeah. Hold on. Let me read that line again for you. But now, you know, it's as a kid growing up, not too far from where you're at.

I, you know, I think the first, the first hope and dream was to play in the big leagues or something like that one day. And as I said, I pretty quickly realized that wasn't going to happen as most of us end up getting to that point. but I always wanted to talk about it. I knew that it would be the coolest job in the world.

I didn't know all the responsibility and everything else that would come with it. Yeah, really good stuff. I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I often use sports as metaphors and analogies for the successful team because it just lends itself so easily when you see successful in the field and you start to try to unpack it, not knowing all the things that go on behind the scenes necessarily. Baseball in particular, I mentioned in my first book, because you can't have a successful team with nine second basemen.

Everybody's got to have that characteristic. We're going to unpack all that here, but let me start with a little bit more in your background because you've covered literally thousands of games in major event. When did you first realize that there were deeper leadership lessons behind what you were with? Such a good question because I guess this is probably true of a lot of things in life along the journey, along the way, which is that I don't know if I remember an aha moment, that there was a day that I woke up or a buildup of, you know, you could share all this.

It really happened accidentally. And so the moment that I remember is announcing a high school holiday basketball tournament, which is not something I did a lot of at this point, but about nine years ago. So, you know, I would announce some college hockey games around the country or college basketball. In this case, I had the ask to go to Columbia, Missouri.

Where I live in Kansas City, uh, to, to announce a couple of basketball games. And at that point for me, I had my, and I just thought, yeah, that'd be something to do. It gets you out of the house. You're certainly not announcing something like that for the money.

And I went out to, to dinner afterwards with a friend of mine and his wife who lived in that area. And they asked me the question that everybody asks. I said, what, um, what do you be up to? Like, what do you do with all your free time?

It's not normal for most people to take six months off. I will say, you know, for the other six months a year, it's six to seven days a week. So I always say that I work a year's worth of work in six months, but I was bored for the other six. And I said, oh, not much, you know, games like this.

And I'm speaking to some lawn care and golf course association, blah, blah, blah, whatever next week. And they go, do you do a lot of that? I said, not really. I said, do you know you could start a business and actually speak about this?

And I thought does that exist because even that speech that I was doing was it was more like what I've always done like a local rotary club type of ask of hey we'll we'll we'll bring you on out and I mean we're not going to pay you but we'll we'll give you a nice chicken lunch and send you on your way and this one was paying me like pennies and so I just never thought of it as a business or anything that could be monetized because it was really something that that we did just to give back to the community and be involved.

And so it wasn't so much, Dave, about the message. It was more about, here's an update on the team. Here's where I've come from. Thanks for having me.

Any questions? And so now suddenly it was, wait, I can run this as a business? Well, what could I possibly bring of value? And this was the end of 2016 when this conversation came up.

The Kansas City Royals were just a little over a year removed from winning their first world championship in 30 years. Yes. Um, they, they are in 20, it had been the first in 29 years and I was blown away at the amount of lessons that were learned in that. I just never thought that there would be lessons that would translate to business, but in a smaller market.

And I think this is an important piece to it too. This could happen to anyone, anywhere, um, taking the path that I did, but there's something about the smaller market and the story of the quote unquote Cinderella and the Royals by the way, were expected to be good that year. They had won the pennant the year before. But the story still applies that when the small market, especially the way baseball is set up, when the small market ends up being the team that wins it all and not the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers, who I call the Amazons, the big tech companies of baseball, when the little guy can win that thing, there's inspiration there.

How did they do it? They didn't have the best players. They had good players. They didn't really have any superstars on that team.

They were the ultimate team and they built a phenomenal culture. And as I started the network, which was the advice I got until just start meeting people in the business community. And I, and I knew that most of those people, if there were Royals fans in Kansas city might know me, but I didn't know them. They might be the people that I waved to in the seats and they say, Hey, how's it going?

Good to see you. And now suddenly I'm going out to coffees with them and lunches with them and happy hours with them. And, and, and I'm listening a little bit and, you know, if I'm being honest, I'm hoping that maybe they'd hire me, but really, uh, I was just building network and connection. And the, the word that I heard more than anything was we want.

You know, culture, culture, culture, we want a stronger culture. And just to put a bow on this one, when I started in the year before I started in Kansas city, I was working in St. Louis and I traveled with the St. Louis Cardinals and a little bit of a lesser role than I've had in Kansas city.

And I remember going to Kansas City and knowing that there was a chance I could be moving there next year nobody else knew that for a bigger role and I remember talking to their GM and introducing myself to him came up with a reason of why I wanted to get a soundbite from him that was related to the St. Louis Cardinals but ultimately I just wanted to meet him because I thought I could be working with this guy next year and I remember saying to him you know what are your goals he was in his first full year and the Royals were terrible and he said I want to build a championship culture.

And I thought, okay, what does that mean? Well, when they ended up winning, what they raved about more was that we changed the culture. We turned the culture around here. And I thought, boy, what company wouldn't be interested in culture, whether they have it and want to continue it or get it better, or whether they're finding, they're looking for it.

And that was sort of the start of all of this and really is what started a second career. And I'm I'm not talking to you if I don't do that or anyone on podcasts like this, because I never thought along those lines. I was just thinking about sports without thinking. There are really interesting, interesting lessons every single day at the ballpark.

Yeah, and we talk a lot about building culture here. And my mission, as I think you know, is I'm trying to change the conversation about how people are pursuing an account. You are your most valuable asset and you build proper culture. You get a more engaged team of employees to create more value for your business and for success for your organization.

And one of the themes that comes up here is trust. And winning trust is at the center of your message. What does trust actually look like inside a championship organization? Yeah, I love this question.

Obviously, I mean, it's what I speak on, but I just think it's such a, and that was a development in the trajectory of my speaking business. About three years ago, I was working with a speaking coach that I'd hired and, you know, working virtually. And I loved it too, because she didn't know, and this isn't a knock, but she knew nothing about sports, which was great because I've said for a long time, it's not a sports speech. The sports fans in the audience and the baseball fans in the audience, whether they're Kansas City or not, are going to love it because it is, you know, pretty inside baseball, so to speak.

But the message really is for everyone and especially the non-baseball fan. I say especially the non-baseball fan only because if I lose them, you know, if there's someone coming to one of my events that's, I don't even like sports. I don't even want to go to this thing. Well, I got to speak their language too.

And who doesn't understand the importance of trust and culture, as I mentioned. But when I was working with the speaking coach, she said, you know, culture's pretty vague. It seems to me like in all of your speeches, the topic you talk about the most is trust. Let's build a speech and call it winning trust.

And so that's what I did. And I really think it's the secret ingredient to building a stronger culture. It's the secret ingredient to me. It is the ultimate small ball.

I talk about small ball in non-baseball terms being the little things that make you successful, that don't show up in the box score. And so in terms of baseball, in terms of business, in terms of life, it's really hard to win championships. It's really hard to be a successful team and sustain that if you don't have trust within your organization. And not just internally, externally as well.

And to add to that, Dave, I think we're all brought up learning our craft, perfecting our craft, right? Here's how to be a better accountant. Here's how to be a better doctor. Here's how to be a better broadcaster and a better journalist.

And this is the right way to ask questions. And, you know, this is, this is how to, to, to look at the camera and this is how to project your voice. And this is how to write. And this is how to, they never told me in journalism school, how to build trust.

Never came up. And so I, I love to tell people all the time that one, I'm not in the baseball business. I'm in the people business because we're all in the people business. And that's the common link to what I do and what everybody else does.

And the second piece to that is that if you're in the people business, you're in the trust business, because if you don't have trust, that people business is just a bunch of people. But if you have trust, you can do anything. And, and obviously you have to have the talent too. You know, this as well as I do in sports and business for that matter, that there are plenty of really good, super talented teams that don't end up winning.

And a lot of times it's because of the personalities and, you know, we can get, we, we, we can, the allure of the, the big name, the shiny object. The, you know, the big purchase, the home runs, so to speak in, in, in life and business, they're fun, but the little things are really what the, what are the secret sauce and that's the small ball, that's the trust. And so how many teams have you seen in or out of sports in the course of your life, Dave, that had more talent than others and never did anything with it.

And oftentimes it's because they're not, it's such a cliche thing to say because we say it all the time in sports. Um, and if it's said every day, it feels like it's, it's a cliche, but, um, you can't win unless you're all pulling on the same end of the rope. I mean, that's the one that we say all the time. And when you don't have trust, you're pulling in different directions.

I mean, you said it before too, you can't have nine second basements. So, um, to add to that any major league clubhouse, and I've been in them, you know, thousands of days of my life now. Have different positions, different personalities, different backgrounds, different languages. And when you can figure out how to cross all of those cultural differences and backgrounds and aspirations and personalities, when you can do that and earn the trust with them.

And oh, by the way, in sports and baseball, you got to do it every single year. I mean, I would argue that it's an ongoing thing every single day. But once you have all that trust and everything is built, now you lose these three guys and bring in these new five guys and who are the right people, who are the wrong people. I mean, this is a business discussion as well.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Anybody who's listening to this program who is a sports fan, that concept about the culture and the trust and why sometimes the most successful teams don't win at all really resonates. There's a lot of frustration. I can almost visualize the head nods are the only one.

But when you talk about the small ball stuff, and I talk about that too, Brene Brown talks about his little things, little interactions, like their day that build that trust. But when you talk about small ball, what are some of the small ball leaders that leaders are maybe overlooking day to day? You know, I think the biggest one right now, Dave, and maybe it's always been the case, but I'll argue why even more so now than ever, is just the ability to listen. And with that, the security to be vulnerable.

Those are two really big ones because we live in a world now, Where we're so inundated with instant gratification, we're distracted by the cell phones and all the devices and everything that comes with it, that we've lost the ability just to sit and listen. And this is important for leaders, it's true for people in sales, is that we've all become, maybe not all, but life has become so performative. And while we're doing all of that, we also have five other browsers or 10 other browsers opened up in our mind.

and we're not present very much. You find a leader that is actually willing to listen to his people, that is willing to actually be vulnerable enough at times to say, you know what? I don't know all the answers and I don't need to know all the answers, but I'd like to know what you think. And it's becoming harder and harder to do.

And I think it could be a game changer because when you do have that leader or you do have that group, you talk about building trust, or I talk about building trust. And one of the greatest ways for me to build trust is to ask questions and just listen and be there and not have moved on to the next thing. And I think that when you do that, you build greater cohesiveness within your organization, but also with your prospects or whoever it is in your profession that you're dealing with.

I mean, if I want to go out there and speak to someone and I'm building rapport with someone, And the best way that I'm going to be able to help them is by knowing what matters to them and what they need. And the most interested they're going to be in my services is when I acknowledge that and have some ideas for them. And so I just think that, you know, we, and I hear a lot of people, but, you know, Simon Sinek's a great one talking all the time about, you don't go on a first date and go for coffee or dinner or whatever, and ask somebody to marry you on the first date generally, but we've all, and this has been the case with sales missteps over the years, but we all want to get to the finish line.

Now. And that's always been the case, but it's more so right now. We are wired in the younger generation coming behind us, Dave, the younger generation is wired to have it with the snap of a finger because you're not going to wait for tomorrow because it's already done. Right.

I mean, you know, if you're, if you're a millennial and certainly a Gen Z, like I'll take for, for instance, my son who loves sports, I would say more than me, but he reminds me of me. He's in his early twenties and you know, his level of sports and interest in everything is what I used to be like. I've just, I've been in the business too long now that, that, you know, it's, it's worked for me the best work. And maybe we all grow up too.

And we don't, I know plenty of people our age that are still crazy about sports, but, um, the, but the, the point is, is that I don't really text him anything because it's always the response reply is always, I already know that. Well, why? Because everything is dinging on his phone and it's alerting him every single moment. Our brains, and this isn't just a younger generation thing, our brains have become rewired for everything to happen now and now and now.

And if you as a leader can slow things down and listen, that to me is the ultimate because now people feel like they matter. People feel like they're being heard. People feel like they have a voice in this. And so to me, I think that's the biggest thing.

Some of the best leaders that I've interviewed on my podcast and that I've talked to, I remember talking to a leader of a major insurance broker. And he takes over as the CEO of this company. I wrote about it in my first book. And he takes over as the CEO, first non-family member CEO.

And it's in the middle of a pandemic. And he basically just spent every single day meeting with people virtually one after the next, after the next, and just saying, if you were me, what would you do? And listening. And building that rapport that way.

So I think I would start there. And that's true for sports. That's true for business. That's true for any profession.

And I think that that's just a small thing that we can work on. No one's going to hang their hat on saying, I'm the world's best listener. But it goes a really long way. And that to me is the definition of small ball in non-baseball terms.

The little things that don't show up on the sales sheet or the stat sheet that make you successful. Yeah, and listening is so important because so often people are wired to not necessarily be listening to understand. They're listening to the speak next. Yes.

In sports and in business, there's adversity. Joel, teams go through losing streaks, as my market knows quite well at the moment. How do teams maintain that great culture that we're talking about when they're in the middle? Okay, I feel like not only have I lived this, from my perspective, by the way, not as someone that is going home with an 0 for 4, but I've lived this for so many years.

As the post-game show host, I can't tell you how many nights I've walked out. Boy, that feels like the same exact broken record game as yesterday and the day before and the day before and the day before. And now you know social media is blowing up and everybody's all upset and this fire the manager and what is wrong and these guys don't care and blah blah blah and on and on and that sometimes is during a good year you know and by the way you don't have to be in a market like philly for people to get like that it's amplified in philly for sure it's it's at a different level in a philly than then it would be you know in a place like kansas city but you know when you're losing you're losing.

And when you're winning, everything feels better and tastes better and on and on. And I've seen teams, and that to me is the beauty of baseball. Because in football, you could go through a whole season without having a losing streak. And I don't know what's a losing streak in football, two games, maybe three games, you know, until it's considered a streak.

I think in baseball, a streak to me is, is at least three, but maybe like more like four or five. And, and I've covered some really good teams. For instance, I think team, no, no, pardon me. 2006, the St.

Louis Cardinals, I covered them and they had three losing streaks that year of six or more games. I mean, three times they lost for a week at a time and they won the world series. That year, which tells me that they were able to turn the page, that they were able to grind through it. And this is why I really think that baseball is so much like life.

And there's a quote that I love to use from the late legendary Buck O'Neill of Negro Leagues fame. And Buck O'Neill would say, nothing better than baseball, it teaches all the lessons. Now, I never got to meet Buck. He lived in Kansas City and played for the Kansas City Monarchs, and he knew Jackie Robinson and then was a longtime Major League Baseball scout, the founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which I'm now a board member of.

I never met Buck, but I feel his spirit all the time because I'm so familiar with the museum and the history of the Negro Leagues. So I wish I could have asked him what he meant by that, but what I felt like nothing better than baseball teaches all the lessons for me means that baseball's every day. Whether you work five days a week, six days a week, seven days a week, it never stops. I mean, you're lucky if you get a chance to go on a week vacation or get away from it.

But for the most part, the grind of life and work never stop, and that's baseball. And so you can go 0 for 4 tonight, and you got to go back and do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And I mean, you know, I've covered a team just three years ago that lost 106 games. And the following year they went to the playoffs and so you know there's a mindset to it not accepting failure but understanding that failure is part of it and how do you learn from it and push through it and not just simple like okay well let me learn from my mistakes but do you have the mental fortitude to turn the page when things are at their worst and I heard something recently, you know, you talk about your hometown team and their struggles.

You know, I'm, as you and I are recording this right now, I'm on the road following an extra innings comeback win last night that a little over a week ago, I could not imagine that the Kansas City Royals had any ability to do ever because we were flying home on a Sunday night after a road trip where they'd lost all six schemes. And at that point, it was seven in a row. And they're coming home to face two teams that weren't as good. And they lost the next one, and it was eight in a row.

And fans are getting sick of it. And the Monday night game, when we got back, was the worst loss of the year, which I already thought the worst loss of the year had come four or five days ago, a day with rain delays and umpire illnesses and five, six-plus hours at the ballpark that finally ends and the offense opening up and they're going to come back and they're going to win this thing. And then they blow it in the ninth inning and they got to get on a plane and go to New York, a place that they never win at, and they get swept there too.

And it's like, boy, is this. And now as I'm sitting here talking to you, they've come off of back-to-back extra inning comebacks. They've won four in a row, five of the last six. And it's like, wait, this isn't even the same team, is it?

And so that's baseball. And I wanted to tell that long version of that story because everything changed over the course of one week. And it's like you look at the body language, you look at the results, and everything that wouldn't fall before suddenly is falling. And oftentimes it happens just because of one little fluke thing.

And I heard something, Dave, that I'd never heard before from one of our players last week after another host game with players sounding like there was a death in the family. And they understand it's not that big. But you could see the look on their face. And this player says, I think very smartly, he says, you know, we don't like this, but we've been here before.

We've all been through this. And it always works out, and it's going to be okay. We've failed like this before. We've had losing streaks like this before.

We've not been able to hit like this before until it ended, and then we were able to. So let's just understand that this is going to be okay. And sure enough, it broke, and it did. Doesn't guarantee they're going to win it all, but there was some comfort and understanding.

And another one, too, I talked to a player yesterday, and he had hit the dramatic walk-off home run on Sunday, And I said, and he's a veteran that's new to Kansas City. And I said, boy, you've done this on the biggest stage before. He and I, sorry, I'm getting too baseball detailed here, but he had hit a grand slam off Tarek Skubal, who right now is probably the, you know, best pitcher in the American league. He had homered off of Tarek Skubal grand slam in the playoffs.

So I said, I guess the fact that you've been in a moment bigger than that before made it probably a little bit easier to slow things down. He said, it's not that. It's all the times that I failed in that moment all the times that I didn't hit that home run or grand slam and it just freed me up to say you know what I survived that I was fine what's the worst thing that could happen to me so stop worrying about I need to do this and just understand that the worst thing that happens to me will be okay and it freed him up and he hit the home run and he ended up being the hero I think that there are a lot of lessons learned there yeah I love that And don't apologize for the baseball stories.

They're fascinating, and they're just super insightful. So as long as we're commiserating about local team sports, you know, my team, the Phillies, we've been struggling recently as we've been recording this. We've been off a crappy road trip. I think our starting pitchers can't get out of the fourth inning.

A lot of the guys have ERAs north of 10. Batting averages are below my weight. Just horrible. So, of course, they had to fire their manager because you can't fire all the players.

Talk to us a little bit about accountability in the world of baseball and leadership and how that impacts the team. Well, accountability is one of the pieces that I talk about with small ball. And, you know, one of my speeches, which is more culture than trust speech, I do an acronym of team, not all that original, but the T still is trust. The E is empathy.

The A is accountability. And just if you're keeping score, the M is meaning or purpose. But, you know, accountability, it does start with the manager or even above him. By the way, if you're listening to this and you are a baseball fan and you want to see what a team lacking everything we're talking about has or an organization, just look at what just happened in Boston right before Philadelphia fired their manager.

Boston fires theirs, a manager that's considered one of the best in the game. And just the way everything went down, players finding out on social media and just the whole thing was like a three-ring circus. And they have a lot of work to do. I think Boston, even with all their talent, because it feels to me as though they've got a lot of internal issues.

I'm not obviously close to what's going on in Philadelphia and I know you're not asking me to dissect it, but I was joking with you that they fire the manager and finally they win a game and play great baseball. You know, I think as well as I do, that it's not that. Maybe they get a little bit of a boost from a new voice. It's not even a new voice.

They knew Don Mattingly. He was already their bench coach. But I'm guessing, and I know Rob Thompson's highly respected, put aside, he sucks or he's the best or he should be fired. There's not a manager in baseball that doesn't have a portion of the fan base, whether small or large, that doesn't want that person fired.

So let's just put all that aside. what matters most when we talk about accountability is. How is that manager viewed in the clubhouse? And it doesn't have to be, we don't like him.

It has to be, will we fight for him? Will we go to battle, sports term there, for our manager? Or has he lost the room, as you might hear in sports? And I don't know if that was the case with Rob Thompson.

My guess is that maybe it had just run its course and it was time to make a move. They will be better, for me, less because of Don Mattingly. And that's not a knock on Don Mattingly. He's one of the most respected people in baseball.

And a new voice can help, but ultimately they're going to be what they're supposed to be. And that is a very, you know, sort of measured way of saying like, in the end, all this stuff, culture and everything matters, but you have to have the talent and they have the talent. And so what it tells me is that he just got off to a bad start and you will know better than me because you're living it as a fan and I'm, you know, I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to the Phillies.

But I just from the outside know that when you are a team that is predicted to contend for some type of a title, division title or playoff berth, and you start the way they did, you're going to bounce back at some point. The beauty of baseball is that over 162 games, there aren't massive surprises. Yes, the Royals were a surprise when they won the pennant in 2014. The surprise wasn't so much that they made the playoffs.

They've been knocking on the door. The surprise was the run that they made in the playoffs. Well, you get hot for two or three or four weeks and anything's possible. But the grind of baseball over the course of 162 games.

We'll rarely have any flukes making it. And so my point with the Phillies, and then I'll get to accountability, is that they're supposed to be better than they are. And unless there's some type of cancerous situation in there, you know, or some major injuries that have derailed the whole thing, they're going to ultimately end up being what they are. And so it's possible that if they get hot this week, as you and I are talking on top of the big win with Mattingly taking over, that yeah, there's a little bit of a boost from that, but maybe there's just a regression to the means.

and this is what they're supposed to be. And some of the bounces start to fall. And then I'll start to talk a little bit more of your world, I think, here, that in the end, the numbers will end up becoming what they are. And the worst part of April and the temptation in April for all of us, good or bad, is that these are the only numbers that we have.

And if you have the stretch the Phillies just had in July, you're talking about, boy, they're slipping out of a playoff berth. But right now, it's the season's over. And it's not. There's five months left.

And so I'll bring that back to accountability. If you have the right people holding each other accountable in the right way, there's a lot that you can do to help push out of this. You know, I talked before about losing streaks and a former manager of the Kansas City Royals, Ned Yost, who led them to their two pennants, used to say, and it's the best way to explain this when a team is struggling like the Phillies have, like the Royals have very similar records had in April, is that oftentimes in baseball, you go through a stretch where nothing really works out.

Or maybe everything does, but one thing sinks it every single day and you can't have good luck. And it's like a comedy of errors and you can't hit or you can't do this. He said that you know what you need to do to get out of it and you can't get out of it. He said, it's like a virus.

And I use this one a lot on the air and I always credit him for it. It's like a virus. You know, you're sick and you can take all the medicine you want to make it better, but it's got to run its course. And once it runs its course and you feel better, you exhale and you start to go and do it.

Now, if you have everything that I talked about before, the culture and the right people in place, now you can go and you're not fighting. And that was my point about Boston is I'm not sure what the accountability level is there right now. But I noticed something in Philly. I noticed Rob Thompson not leaving and being bitter.

And the Boston people that got fired deserve to be bitter. I don't even know if they are, but they deserve to be hurt and mad. I saw from Rob Thompson saying, I love this city, I love this organization, and I'll do whatever it takes. And they'll reassign him and put him somewhere else.

That to me tells me they have a good culture and a culture of accountability that he wants to still be a part of it. And so to me, accountability, when I talk about it is, I always like to say there's no I in team. And I always, you know, to the audience, there's no I in team. You know, they all know that.

I say, but there is an I in accountability. Literally, yes, there's an I in accountability. But to me, accountability is saying, I got you. I got your back.

And the best leaders that I've seen in the clubhouse will always take it for their guys. The superstar in a clubhouse that is willing to not throw his teammates under the bus and is willing to say, you know what, this one's on me, even when it's not. The accountability piece, and you listen to this subtly in post-game interviews, if you like sports in any sport, is the star or the player that when things go well, he says we, and when things go poorly, he says I. It's a subtle thing, but you'll notice it all the time.

I'll hear good pitchers all the time on a good day say we, and they'll usually mention the catcher's name. We were on the same page. We were throwing this. We made good pitches here.

What went wrong tonight? I just couldn't locate. I just couldn't do that. And that now is telling your teammates, this one's on me.

I got that. And when you have back to the pulling on the same rope, when you have 26 guys that are willing to take it, you know, real quick, I tell this one on stage sometimes, but we had a player named Eric Hosmer for all the kind of championship and glory years. And the cool part about Haas is he was the first player of the Royals drafted in my first year. I was 36 years old when they drafted him.

He was 18 out of high school, third pick in the draft, millions of dollars, best leader that I've ever covered. He's now 36 and retired and one of the members of our broadcast team. He's our rookie now as a broadcaster, so it's come full circle. I tell people all the time he's the best leader and the most accountable leader that I ever worked with.

We're in Tampa one year, and he gets picked off at first base, and it could have lost them the game. Thankfully, they came back to win. When all the media asked him after the game what happened, he said he just misread the pitcher, and he ruined a rally. And that was the third out and they were down by one and he could have lost the game for him and that's on him and he's glad his teammates bailed him out.

Later that night I was out for a drink with he and his family and I don't do a lot of that I leave guys alone and do their own thing but I was close with him and his family and they invited me for a drink at the hotel and, sitting around him, his mom, his dad, his brother, his uncle, and another teammate. And I'm off the clock. And somebody says, what happened on that play? And he said, I dove back in and got thrown out.

And the first base coach said to me, I gave you the wrong read on it. I gave you the wrong read on the pitcher. They call it a key. It's kind of like looking for a poker tell.

And whatever he told him was wrong. And it got him hung out. And nobody ever knew it except for his family. And imagine if you're the first base coach and the player says, I don't know.

I was just listening to my coach. this is like one of the stars and the voices of the team now the media goes straight to the first base coach and says what happened i just messed up and you know that one's on me nobody ever knew about it and if you're a player or a coach on that team and you're saying man our leader just took one for for the coach i'm gonna do that too that's accountability to me yeah really good story thank you for sharing that i want to be respectful of your time so one more thing to kind of bring this whole thing home for the folks in the audience who are leaders, business owners, what's one practical piece of advice that you've seen from inside championship teams, something that folks could act on immediately?

There's no, you know, there's no quick fix or anything like that. But I think, and this is more of a big picture thing, but you can still start doing immediately. And I see this in business all the time. I think create repeatable habits every single day that, help push the needle forward meaning that these players in all sports by the way are so process oriented and look the challenge ends up being is your process right but.

Find routine and habits that help build every single day that you stick to because the baseball players that are trying to reinvent the wheel, reinvent the swing, reinvent their delivery, do that every single day are very rarely going to find the answer. They're going to find a little bit of lightning in a bottle. And the best ones we talked about failure and slumps and struggles, the best ones keep going back and, you know, look, there's something about doing the same, you know, making the same mistake over and over again, again, in the definition of insanity, but having a rhythm and, and repeatable habits every single day to me.

You know, business, what it could just be something as simple as, um, I'm going to do this for five minutes a day, no matter what, you know, when things are going crazy or things are, you know, what, what can I do to help the business? Or, you know, for me, it's, it's five outreaches a day for my speaking business, five new connections a day on LinkedIn so that I feel like no matter what, on the worst days, I've still accomplished something, you know, retraining your brain to find victories in the small ball, so to speak.

And that, that to me the best players that I see just get back to it every single day. It doesn't mean they're not tweaking things, but I'm going to put this work in and do this thing every single day. Um, and that to me is something that I've taken from baseball. It's also something, you know, on the business side I've taken from, from James Clear who wrote atomic habits.

And now I've got a list of four to five habits that, that are non-negotiable every single morning before I get my day going. And so I, you know, I hope that helps a little bit. I mean, there are a million things, but I just think that these players, we say this in sports a lot, they are creatures of habit. And sometimes that comes with the fun little superstitious stories, the superstition stories.

And, you know, this guy always does this because, but more than that, it's that the routine, the routine oriented is, is what enables them to come back and perform good or bad every single day. Yeah. Really great advice. There's a muscle memory that comes with that too.

And as you alluded to earlier in the program, that comfort of knowing we've been here before and we're. Awesome conversation, Joel. I could go on another hour with you, but I can't do that to you. Tell the audience how they can find you, learn more about you and where they get your books, all that stuff.

Yeah, I mean, the books are certainly available on Amazon like most and you can certainly find them through my website as well. I think the easiest way to reach me is my website, which is joelgoldbergmedia.com and that'll have all the links and the ways and the books and the speeches and how to get a hold of me and the social media. Or if you're looking for a quick way to find me, LinkedIn, and search for Joel Goldberg and, you know, I'm pretty active on there.

So it should pop up pretty quickly and, you know, connect with me. I try to connect with everybody and send me a message saying that I heard you on behind the numbers. And that'll add a little bit of context to it as well. Yeah, that's awesome.

And before you go, I got to tell you that I do have one rabid fan in Kansas City. His name is Frank. And I told him that you were going to be a guest on the program. And he said, you are the real deal.

And he was super excited to hear that you were coming on the program. Well, Frank, I was going to say, tell Frank, but maybe he's, he's listening. So Frank, thank you for, for that. You know, it's, it's a lot of fun.

It's, it's, it's great to be able to do what I do because it is living the dream. But more than that now, it's, it's cool for me to be on podcasts like this. And I'm not just blowing smoke here because I know, you know, you and I talked maybe a month ago or something like that. And, and I know your preparation and I've been on plenty of others where the preparation is not there.

and so you want to pick and choose the ones that make sense. It's fun to talk about this stuff. It's fun to talk about this stuff beyond sports because who knows, maybe somebody's listening that gets a new idea or a new perspective or understands how to manage their failure and how to run a better team because of this. And so if the lessons that I get to learn, by the way, I have no idea what the lesson I learned last night was other than I lost it on the air last night in a way that I don't usually, I mean, I was laughing like a little school girl, But as is the case for a lot of teams, and I'll wrap it up with this, but our team, like a lot of others, dumps the Gatorade bucket after a win.

And I've been on the receiving end of that. I got to think as much as anybody in the country, just because of the frequency of how often I do those interviews. There's a joke there. Well, not when they lost 160.

Yeah, I understand. But having been in this role for so long, I have either been on the receiving end, whether forced by players, accidentally hit by players, or dancing out of the way at the last minute as the player gets it. And they don't usually do it on the road, but it was such a dramatic win last night that their star player, Bobby Witt Jr., who is generally considered one of the top three, four or five players in the world.

He hit a dramatic three-run home run in the 10th inning. While Salvador Perez, I'm giving some of this for Frank here if he's listening, but Salvador Perez, their future Hall of Fame catcher, who started dumping the bucket probably back in 2013 to the point where it became known in Kansas City as the Salvi Splash. And he doesn't even always dump the bucket anymore, and they still call it the Salvi Splash. And they don't usually do it on the road anymore, but he did last night because the drama of the win.

and I'm in the middle of interviewing Bobby with Jr. Who is one of the most stoic very serious total gentleman young kid 25 years old but, he doesn't laugh a whole lot. I'm very nice. Um, Salvi is coming like a freight train.

He's, you know, 260, 270 pounds, and I could see it behind Bobby. So I dance out of the way at the last second and Bobby being the elite shortstop athlete that he is ducks and the whole splash, which is going horizontal drills. I'm guessing she's 60 years old drills, the 60 year old security guard head to toe. And I look and the look on Salvador Perez's face was just shock.

And the look on Bobby's face, he is in tears laughing. And now the Salvi's going to hug the security guard and Bobby's shaking her hand and Salvi's sitting there saying, I'm glad it didn't hit the copper. I might've gone to jail tonight and I'm just losing my mind. And so I just bring this up saying like, you know, it's so much fun because you never know what you're going to experience when you go to the ballpark.

But last night I couldn't stop laughing because I'd never seen Bobby Wood Jr. Laughing so hard and we couldn't control ourselves because this poor security guard named Teresa had to wear the whole thing last night. And so who knows what's going to happen tonight? I don't know what the lesson in that is, but it was a lot of fun.

That's a great story. And I guess that's why they say that's baseball. Thank you all so much for joining us and sharing your insights. Really appreciate you being in the program.

Thanks, Dave. And thank you out there for listening to Behind the Numbers with Dave Bookbinder. I truly appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode, and I know that you did, please hit the subscribe button and kindly leave us a review.

As I said before, that stuff really does move the needle and helps the program. Until next time, I am Dave Bookbinder, reminding you that the numbers tell the story, but the people bring it to life. See you next time, gang. Take care.