Episode 176: Interview with Demi Agaiby
Dr. Chelsea: Have you ever wanted to ask a mental performance coach what to do in a certain situation? Or maybe you have a dancer who's getting overly anxious before competition, or you're not sure how to get your dancers to be fully committed. I want to be a resource for you, a place to ask questions and get concrete advice.
So today, I'm going to talk about some common misconceptions and questions I get about commitment, accountability, punishment, all things team dynamics, and I decided to bring on a special guest who is a fellow mental performance consultant, so we could talk about it together. There are not many other consultants who understand dance and all the things that make dancers special to them and unique, but today I get to share a conversation between two former dancers who are now mental performance consultants.
Joining me today is Demi Agaiby, and we get to share all of our professional opinions and advice about tough love, understanding your emotions, team commitment, and how having a bad day doesn't mean you have an excuse to have a bad practice. And as you listen, I'd love for you to think about any questions that come to mind that you wish you could ask a mental performance coach, anything about team dynamics, motivation, or also mental skills like visualization, focus, self-talk, controlling your nerves. I’d love to be able to answer your questions directly. So you can email me or leave me a voice note at www.chelseapierotti.com/message.
You can click on the link in the show notes and just leave me a quick voice note off your phone. You can ask any questions that come up from today's episode or anything you'd like to ask. Again, leave a voice note at www.chelseapierotti.com/message, or email me your questions at hello@chelseapierotti.com. All those links are in the show notes: a quick click, and just let me know what's on your mind. I want to be able to answer your questions and be that source of support. I'd love to connect, so don't be shy. You can ask anonymously if you'd like but let us know how we can help. Okay, here we are with today's episode!
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[Motivational Music]
Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea, a former professional dancer and mental performance coach. I know what it feels like to be a passionate dance teacher who cares about your dancers, but you want to challenge them and help them be their best, and I also recognize that some traditions and teaching practices in the dance world are harmful. So I'm on a mission to change our dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers using positive mental skills.
When you understand how to help your dancers with their confidence, how to find their own motivation, work together as a team and more, your dancers will unlock new levels of competitive success and happiness. And it's not just about them; you deserve the same. So we'll talk about how dance teachers can use positive mental skills to be more confident, resilient, and motivated as well.
Be sure to hit “subscribe” wherever you listen to podcasts. There are new episodes every Thursday, and each week you'll hear from me and my guests with advice and actionable tips for building mental toughness, covering topics about mindset, motivation, resilience, and building a community. Passion for Dance is a show designed to help dance educators like you have a positive impact on every dancer you teach.
[Motivational Music]
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Dr. Chelsea: Hi, Demi! Good to see you.
Demi: Hi, Chelsea! Lovely to see you too.
Dr. Chelsea: I'm excited to talk since we get to be — you know, there's not a lot of us that do this work.
Demi: Oh gosh, this is just gonna be fun!
Dr. Chelsea: Good! Good deal.
Demi: Like, I mean, you know? Yeah, yeah. I was thinking, because this came up in a conversation just in passing about how — they were like, “Oh, if, you know, my athletes are not behaving or if they're not doing well, right, my initial thing is what can I do to almost reprimand them?” And it was like literally a conversation in passing, and when I was on my way here, I was like, ooh, that would be something lovely to talk about, the concept of tough love in sport. And I was like, this would be a great conversation to unpack with Chelsea!
Tough Love – 4:02
Dr. Chelsea: Yes! Let's talk tough love. I agree because I see it this time of year. We're recording this at the beginning of the season for most athletes, kind of early school season. And it's a lot of setting that culture and then the tendency to like, “What am I punishing? How do I punish? How do I get athletes to do what I want them to do?” and that, “Am I being too hard? Am I being too easy?” Yeah, it’s a big topic.
Demi: Yeah, the motivational buy-in where it's like, “How do I get the athletes to be bought into the process and not feel like it's a very transactional process?”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: And those are two very delicate things, like the motivational side and then also the reprimanding kind of side of things or punishment, right, if we use that word.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, right. Do you have an initial reaction to the word tough love? I feel like I have a reaction to it.
Demi: Yeah, do you have a visceral reaction to it?
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, kind of. I mean, I think it just gets overused and then it's used poorly. And so, when I think of tough love, I actually try to think of it the other way around, that it's love tough, that you have to earn the right to be tough. Like you have to care about them, and you have to have this investment and genuineness, and then you've earned the right. You build the relationship and then you've earned the right to be tough on them. But if you're tough first, expecting them to then respect and love you, that doesn't always work.
Demi: So you think of, like, the opposite.
Dr. Chelsea: And it's semantics, but that's what I think of, yeah.
Demi: I don't know why, but when I think of tough love, I think of, like, somebody who's just grinding their teeth and speaking through their teeth and are just like, “That's just the way it is.” It very much turns me off. Even in that word, I almost get scared.
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: I’m like, “Ooh.”
Dr. Chelsea: And people use tough love as an excuse to just be nasty. Yes. Yes, and maybe that's why, right, where they're like, “I’m doing this, you know, tough love, blah, blah, blah,” and it's like, well, is that actually effective, you know?
Or even — this is so funny. I was talking to one of my clients yesterday where she was saying that her coach was using examples of when she was an athlete way back when her age and was like, “Back in my day, we used to do this, this, and this.” And I was like, to me, that's like tough love where it's like, “First of all, it doesn't make sense.” And I'm like, “You're just comparing and trying to motivate us, but it's not productive and you're trying to make it seem like all this, ‘I'm doing this because I love you and because I care about you, but I'm not nearly as bad as the people that came before me,’” you know? That's my reaction.
Dr. Chelsea: I hear a lot of that too, right, where it's like, “Well, I had it so much harder than you and, I made it through, and I'm better for it,” and you probably — like I definitely grew up in that way, right, where it's a lot harsher. And yes, there are some lessons that come from that and there's some good, but it is not the only way, and I guess that's what always gets me. It's like, that doesn't have — technically, yes, it “works,” like you get people to work for you or you get people to put in effort, but out of fear or out of obligation, like you were talking. They're not going to have this intrinsic desire to work for you. They just are showing up because, like you said, transactional. “I just have to, so I don't get screamed at.”
And so yeah, it's that just because it used to be that way and it technically worked, I'm like, can't we know better and do better?
Demi: Yeah, right. Like that's not the only way. But then also like on the athlete side, right, like the receiving end, they're kind of like, “Okay?” It actually, I think, distances them mentally but then also, you know, emotionally. They're like, “You're trying to relate to me by doing this,” right? “I see what you're trying to do.” But then on the opposite end, it's actually not effective for them because they're kind of just like, “Okay, I get it, but I also don't, and now I'm, like, completely turned off.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Yeah, like I was gonna say, ask what you see in your athletes because, similarly, I see they shut down.
Demi: Yeah, yeah. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: It doesn't actually inspire them. They're like, “Nope, screw this. I don't want to be here anymore.”
Demi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I also get from the coach's perspective, or like you were saying, yes, back in the day it was different, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Demi: You know, back in the day this was a method that was, you know, used and whatever. It's like, so I validate the coaching side of things of I get where you're coming from and maybe things are different. And, I would say, how can we kind of honor your past while not maybe casting it onto the future generation or maybe having an implicit expectation of this is how it should be or something of that nature where I'm like, “Okay, validate. Yes, I hear you. And let's figure out a delivery that's a little bit more effective.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Yeah, because I see coaches go two directions. They come out of this, like we were saying, “This is how I grew up, and I'm better for it, and, you know, it works.” And then other coaches who have like, “Well, I grew up that way, and it was so awful. I can't do that to my athletes, and they go so far to be like there's no accountability or there's no structure because they're so worried about hurting their athletes. Yeah.
Demi: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So then what we fall into is that all-or-nothing kind of mentality or framework where it's like either I'm going to be super, super tough and have that tough love, or I'm going to be like very wishy-washy, no boundaries, and just kind of let them walk all over me out of fear.
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: Yeah.
Navigating Emotions – 9:49
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, and I'm seeing more and more of that in coaching. I work with a lot of coaches of female, high-school age that are scared to be that tough because they're worried about mental health, which I appreciate. Thankfully, we're having these conversations. That's great.
Demi: I know!
Dr. Chelsea: We're finally getting there.
Demi: I know.
Dr. Chelsea: But I think now there's this — we're conflating mental health and mental toughness.
Demi: Right.
Dr. Chelsea: And this sense that, you know, coaches are like, “I don't want to harm them,” yay, great, please don't. But that means — but that is not the same thing as mental toughness, right, where you can still instill mental toughness but protect their mental health, and I think that's the balance that we've lost.
Demi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I see it all the time. Not just with high school. I even was talking to coaches at the university level or an athletic director at the university level and she was like, “I feel like all of my coaches are just scared.” Like, for example, she was like, “You know, so-and-so is like, ‘I'm having anxiety,’” and the second that the coach hears that, they're like, “Okay, great. You do what you need,” right? But then you're missing out on training practice, whatever's happening where they just kind of hands off when they hear those buzzwords because they're just terrified —
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: — and don't want to cause harm. Again, like you were saying, great, we want that, right? We want to be aware, and I am seeing it more often now just because of the general awareness of it all like you were saying.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, to me I feel like it’s this we’ve shifted so far where the larger population feels like, “If I have any anxiety, something is wrong with me.”
Demi: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: And that’s just wrong. We all have anxiety, and you can take an evolutionary perspective on it: anxiety keeps you alive. Like, it's there for a reason, and I don't know if you saw Inside Out 2, but I'm totally celebrating Inside Out 2!
Demi: I'm so glad you said this, because literally my brain went to a question that I have for you.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay, we’ll unpack that in a second but yeah, that's like, to me, bringing my kids to see that and celebrating because it's saying anxiety is actually a very necessary part of our human experience, and we don't want it to take over, but we also are not trying to get it to go away.
Demi: Right.
Dr. Chelsea: And I think that's what we're missing is, like you said, athletes are like, “Oh my gosh, I'm nervous. I'm really anxious,” and then coaches are like, “Okay,” like you said, hands off. “Okay, go take a break.” It's like, but okay, are you clinically anxious, or are you a little nervous in a healthy way, and let's just manage this.
Demi: Right. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: And that's what I meant about mental health versus mental toughness, like clinically anxious and getting support versus mental toughness is just managing your emotions and understanding, “I'm nervous. I'm also excited. I'm also ready to do this,” and not letting that, some of those negative emotions, completely take over. Because they're not going to go away and that's not the goal.
Demi: Right. Yeah, no, the goal is to learn how to manage them, and I think that's where it gets dicey is the concept of, like, oh, anxiety is a state of being, right? I am anxious as opposed to I'm experiencing some anxiety and making it more of like a feeling or like an experience, right? That's so different than being like, “To my core, I am just anxious,” right? Like my identity just kind of like — and then because of that, you get stuck in this kind of freeze mode where you're like, “Well, this is just what I am. This is just who I am,” right? There's no really, you know, approach to change it, or it's like, you're just kind of stuck in freeze mode. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Right, and athletes are going to experience different levels of it, right? Some are naturally more anxious, some are naturally not. And for coaches, I think you find the ones who maybe they're a little bit more naturally anxious, or they're coming to you and expressing it more, even just the ones that are willing to tell you more that we get worried that it's like too much. And it's like but it may not be too much. It might be normal for them and they're still learning how to be a little uncomfortable, be a little nervous and like control that, step into the thing, whatever it is that's hard that's scaring them and knowing that you have support around you. You're okay. Let's do this.
Demi: Right.
Dr. Chelsea: Right? I think that loops back to tough love. Like, if I'm thinking about actually creating a love-tough environment that works, it is that, “I care about you, and I'm here for you, and I have your back, but in this environment, I'm going to push you out of your comfort zone.”
Demi: Right, right.
Dr. Chelsea: You can do both.
Demi: Right. Well, and then, you know, what are the expectations of that environment, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: If you're a part of this team, part of the expectation is that, you know, and maybe it's implicit and needs to be explicitly said, which maybe that's a conversation that the coaches have with athletes, but it's like, “Hey, in this space, part of my job as a coach is to push you to be uncomfortable, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: And part of your job as the athlete isn't to be perfect, isn't to kind of just approach things almost like numbing, in a numbing way. It's to put your best foot forward to try to be open, to be mindful, right, and having that openness and then just receiving. And I think that just clarifying the relationship of the coach and the athlete, in and of itself, can just be such just a relief.
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: It almost just opens things up a little bit.
Dr. Chelsea: It does. Well, I think that's exactly what's changed when I think about my generation of athlete and before that even, like, that you didn't talk about it. Nobody talked about any emotion. Like you suck it up and get it done.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: But now it's like we want to be careful of emotions, but we still don't want to talk about them, and then same with expectations. Like you said, the expectation is you just shut up and show up like it doesn't matter. But nobody ever said that. You just sort of learned it in the culture.
Demi: Yeah. Yeah.
Team Commitment – 15:41
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Which, so now for coaches today, they're like, “Well, this is how it's always been. Why don't they get it?” And we're like not doing that explicit conversation year after year.
Even if you have — you know, you're talking about a team situation where you have mostly returning athletes, you still explicitly talk about it. What does practice look like? What are these expectations? How hard are we going to push? Why are we doing that? Have the actual explicit conversations because I think we've lost that. Yeah.
Demi: Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Well, and I actually was just working with the team yesterday where we talked about, “What are you guys going to be about this year? This season, what is it all about,” right? And, you know, taking insight from the athletes that were there last season being like, “What was kind of the major things that you guys struggled with, whether that was in the environment, mentally, socially, whatever it was, right? And just being like, “Hey, let's call it out, point blank. You're coming into practice with–,” I think they said it was “– grit, respect, and reliability.” Those were the three. They were like, expectations, check, done. Right? These are non-negotiables. Obviously, like we talked about, you know, however full your tank is, you're gonna give that amount, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: You're not going to kind of be conditional in your, you know, commitment to that. You're gonna be like, “No, I'm gonna show up with what I have in that given moment, and I'm gonna do my best to demonstrate these three things.”
And so, I think even like clarifying that as a team and then also it was like this process where it was like what do you think is important in a team? What do you think? So we're pulling from the athletes themselves to be like, “You tell me what matters,” instead of the coach being like, “This is what matters.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: You know? There’s a buy-in there.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. The buy-in is big.
Demi: And then they're like, “Oh no,” and they had a little debate. They were like, “No, I think communication isn't as important as commitment,” and they talked about, for them as a team, they were like, “I think commitment is a little bit more relevant.” And, you know, that debate and that discussion, it was so fruitful because — yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: It’s huge. I know. I actually had one yesterday too that — and you probably do this as well — the next step, once they've talked about what they are of like, “Okay, so what's the action?”
Demi: Yes!
Dr. Chelsea: I think that's the thing behind what the coaches — well, again, we're having the actual conversation because you can say these value words that you care about being reliable. That's awesome. What does that look like? How do I know that my teammate is being reliable? What does this look like? And then that's how you set the practice standards, and that's how you set those expectations and what does this really look like?
And the team I was talking with yesterday had a similar kind of debate about stuff of finally landing on a word that they were like, you know, “This feels right. This is our value,” and we started talking about what that means and what it looks like, and they were kind of stuck.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: This is why we have to talk about it. Because you can talk the talk and feel the values and it feels fluffy and lovely. But until you're like, how do I show up that way? And then having that same kind of conversation of, like, once you know what the actions are, the expectations, how do you show that value? That's all great. But then also, if, like you said, you're not at 100% today or, you know, whatever's going on at school, life, is coming into play, you can acknowledge that and know that you're not at your best today, but it's not an excuse to not show up, like to not be full effort.
Demi: Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Chelsea: And I think that's where some of them are like we've taken the, be aware of your feelings, aware of how you feel so much that they're like, “Well, I had an off day, so I can kind of half it today.”
Demi: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: No, you had an off day, and you can acknowledge, you know, “I'm bringing baggage in. I don't feel great. I may not be as bubbly and positive as my team normally needs me today. So I'm going to acknowledge I'm not super bubbly and smiley right now. I apologize for that, but also I'm here and I'm going to do my job.” And it's like not an excuse to be lazy, essentially.
Demi: Yes. No, totally. Totally. Well, and so, kind of what we kind of — kind of the flow of it all is exactly what you're talking about where it was like unconditional commitment, right? Conditional commitment looks like, “Okay, if I had a bad day, or something irritated me, or somebody irritated me, right, then it's going to affect how I show up. It's going to affect my performance, blah, blah, blah.” As opposed to being like, “Even if somebody rubs me the wrong way, even if I don't get enough sleep, right, and I'm tired –,” so then the latter half is, “Even if those things happen, I will –,” and then you put that action or behavior and being very specific. And I find a lot of times, just that, calling themselves out on their own like BS of being like, “This is where my mind tends to go as it relates to commitment and whatnot and how I'm showing up and this is where I kind of need to reframe and be like, “Nope, even if those things happen.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right. “Even if,” I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: And when, like you said, when the athletes are the ones doing it, they are then empowered to hold each other accountable. So when we're thinking about this like tough love stuff where coaches are like, “How do I discipline them? How do I punish them when they're not following the rules?” And I was like, “Ideally, it's coming from within. It's creating that culture where the athletes are able to hold each other and say, ‘You know, you're not showing up today, and I'm not going to yell at you over it but we're not showing up today, what's up? Is something wrong? Do you want to talk after practice? Do I just need to be like in your face and hype right now. What do you need because I need you to show up.’”
Demi: Right. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: So not calling each other out for not doing the work, but calling each other up like, “It's not enough today, and we need you,” and like they can do for each other when they're the ones who have set the standards and have talked about them and explicitly understand them, rather than saying, “These are my rules, show up or you're out.”
Demi: Okay, this is so fascinating because every year I feel like I have a theme in what I'm really focusing on, and this past year definitely was mental toughness and the conversation that we're having about mental health and whatnot. And this year already what I've noticed, or this upcoming season, it's about effective communication amongst teammates. And so, like you're saying, where it's not calling out but calling up and being like, “Yo, like, I need you to do this thing. I hear you, I see you, but this is the situation.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: What I'm finding is that things get nasty.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, yeah.
Demi: Yeah, right? Especially when the competitive energy is up or there's comparison or whatever it is where it's like I've been noticing that that's a theme where everybody's like, “Yeah, my athletes are, um, kind of nasty to each other and kind of just being like, ‘You did that wrong,’ or ‘That was not the right thing,’ or, you know, like calling them out.” And so, I'm wondering what are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I see it, too. Because it's one thing where it's easy to do when we're in a good place, when it is, like, the night before a big event or you just didn't show up well at the event that night. Everybody's tired. It gets dark at 5:00 PM. You get in that phase of the seasons where it's really hard, then the nastiness comes out, right?
And so, I think talking about it up front of like, “It is going to happen, right?” Again, we're not going to get rid of any of this tension. It's how do we work through it, and not burying the problem, but knowing, like, if we have this nasty exchange, how does it get addressed tomorrow, so that it's not bleeding into every communication from there on. And that's what I see with a lot of them is, like, “This one person said one nasty thing to me, and they are dead to me.” I'm like, “That's not how this works.”
Demi: No, well, and then it trickles down and, you know, I mean, depending on the age, they're going to really latch on to that.
Dr. Chelsea: For sure.
Demi: You know? They're going to carry that with them the second that they step out of practice. That's going to be even something they talk about via social media, like they take it out of practice, that is going to be the thing that they kind of latch onto.
Yeah, I just think calling it out like you were saying of being like, “We're not always going to be the best of friends,” and I think that's something that I've had to kind of, again, say very point blank, explicitly to be like, “Are we here to be best friends? Are we here to be buddy buddy and to love each other? I'm not quite sure, right?” And just kind of like the expectations of the coach and the athlete, setting the expectation of the relationship between athlete to athlete and being like, “We're a team. This is what a team does,” right? “And it's okay that we're not best friends all the time.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: Because that's the emotional kind of part of it gets really intertwined, instead of being like, “So-and-so is speaking to me as a frustrated teammate.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: “So-and-so is speaking to me as a leader and is checking in on me.” Very different than, “So-and-so said this to me, and blah blah blah,” you know? That just spirals.
Dr. Chelsea: For sure, and especially when teams have actual real-life best friends on them, right?
Demi: Yes.
Dr. Chelsea: Then it gets really messy when, like, this person actually is your best friend outside of sport, and then in sport, there's a dynamic. One of you has a more technical role. One of you is a leader. You get different kinds of feedback from coaches. It just gets really, really gray and hard. And so, like you said, it's calling it out and validating, “This is hard. This kind of communication on this level of deep team connection is hard.”
The Different Hats Strategy – 25:26
But if you are best friends, you often can't call each other out and be accountable. And so, for people who are good friends, being able to, like you said, separate, like, “Right now I'm a teammate, and that's this role, and that's this hat. And then outside of this, we may go hang out as soon as practice is over, and I'm back to my best friends.” And I'll talk to athletes about it's very clear hats. Sometimes even visualizing a literal hat switch.
Demi: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: There's your student hat, and then that's over, and then you're in practice and you put that sport hat on, and this is who I am in this environment. This is my role here. This is how I show up here. When that hat is off, you can do something completely different. But your friends have to get that. They're like, “I am being different in sport. I'm supposed to be. That's my role here. That's what helps the team here,” right? Without letting it, like you said, carry where this one phrase, this one statement, in the locker — you know, bleeds into everything else you do.
Demi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and, I mean, I don't know. I'm sure you've heard this kind of saying, but leave your feelings at the door, that type of mindset.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Yep.
Demi: And obviously, we've kind of already talked about how that can be damaging and whatnot because it relates to mental health and whatnot, but it's almost a similar perspective where it's more identity based. And it's very interesting, right? Because we want to have a broad, holistic identity. We want to have multiple parts of our identity. And we also want to be very intentional about when we cross into those different parts of our identity.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Demi: Instead of it just being this one lump sum and being like, “Here I am. Human, all of my form,” just kind of going into things, right? And that's where the hat thing can be a helpful strategy because it's like, “Okay, I acknowledge that there are different parts of me. All of those parts of me are valid,” right? And in this very moment — I actually like to think about it as like, well, there's not really radios anymore, but like you're dialing on the radio, right? And sometimes you dial up something a little bit more intensely. But just because, you know — like, let's say you're going into practice, you're gonna dial up athlete. That's what your role is. Does that mean that friend is not as important? Well, maybe it's dialed halfway, right? Maybe family is dialed a little bit down, right? All of those things that are a part of your identity, you just dial up or dial down based on the environment, and then you're kind of equipped or prepared to enter that space being like, “Oh, this is what I'm supposed to do.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Because when you try to bring all of you to everything it never works, right? Because there are so many conflicting –. “I'm supposed to be this, but that's not how I can be here,” and that's where you have so many of those conflicts.
And the leave-it-at-the-door thing, I've gone back and forth on this forever. I have the same tense reaction to it.
Demi: Yes, same. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Because, again, it was aligned with the old school of just, “I don't want to hear it. Leave it. It has nothing to do with sport. Get it out,” which I understand, and all of my years as a coach there are plenty of times that I'm like, “I don't want to hear about this. Leave it over there and come in.”
Demi: I know. Yeah, and that's the frustrating part as a coach. Like, I hear you. [Laughs]
Dr. Chelsea: Right. It’s like I get that! Yeah.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: But we also don't need to go to a place where sport is therapy. It is not the time to fully disclose everything and to dump on your peers, on your coaches. So there’s this like has to be a middle ground where it's — to me I look at leaving it at the door as maybe coming in, communicating clearly if something's going on, being acknowledged for it, and then you let it go and, like you said, dial up that athlete side. So it's not that you're hiding or stuffing down, but you can come in and say, “I just had a nasty fight with my mom. I am in a mood, but I'm gonna take a deep breath and I'm here.” And then everybody knows, “Okay, she's having a day. Let's not overdo it, but also I can still expect you to come in and give full effort today,” and the athlete can do that. And so, it's like acknowledge and validate and then put it aside and get to work. That's how I try to see it now.
Demi: Oh, no, totally. And well, I think even on top of that, a helpful reframe in that moment is, you know, sport inherently is therapeutic. It's cathartic, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: So entering the space to be like, “I'm here. This process can be therapeutic for what I'm going through, but it's not necessarily therapy,” right?
Dr. Chelsea: Yes.
Demi: I can use this as an opportunity to just, you know, dial up a different side of me, you know, whatever it is, my aggression, my anger, my frustration, or even my disappointment. Whatever it is, this is an avenue in which I can kind of channel that, have it be cathartic, and that's a different process than therapy.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes. I love that because it is. Sport, I hope for most athletes it is — and coaches too, it is your happy place. It is the place where, “I get to be me! I get to –.” And then all the science, the physical and the endorphins and all that stuff is great. So use it as a place to express yourself or be yourself or get out whatever needs to get out physically. But yeah, it's not the place to process emotions in that way necessarily. It's like acknowledge it, and then you have to do the work to process and handle it later.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Considering a Team “Family” – 30:55
Demi: Okay, so on this note of team dynamics, team culture, I have a spicy question for you.
Dr. Chelsea: Please!
Demi: Because I know that this gets my feathers just puzzled a little, so I'm curious to hear your perspective. When teams or even organizations, like corporate organizations or workplaces, refer to one another as family.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Yep.
Demi: Nope.
Dr. Chelsea: Exactly. That's my reaction. “Nope.” And it is, again, really common. We hear sisterhood a lot if I work with, again, a lot of like female athletes, and first of all, there's the whole gender piece to that, that is an issue, but, to me, it's the family part is the bigger thing that, like we were just saying, family is and should be distinctly different from your other pursuits, your athletic pursuits, your work pursuits.
And, you know, some of the people I work with are some of my best friends who mean the world to me. But when we are working, we are working. And then it's the same idea. You’ve got to put that hat off, put this one on, and now we can go be social together. But they're different. And I think, to me, the danger is if your sport team is your family, you lose perspective on what is okay and how you talk to each other, how you treat each other, have expectations for each other, it just bleeds all the boundaries and makes it really challenging for athletes to communicate well with each other and with coaches and for everybody to express what's going on. For most people, if you think about your family, it doesn't matter how healthy your family is, there's weird family dynamics sometimes. And we don't need to map that onto a team.
Okay, that was my rant. What do you think?
Demi: Okay, so my perspective, very similar, is when you think of family and more, most circumstances, which there are circumstances in which there is maybe not a great connotation to the word family, right? And so, then you're putting onto this kind of, “Oh, family?” And it's like, “Well, I have a bad taste in my mouth about family. So you're saying that this is going to be like that,” right? So right away, it's not lining up. But then in another sense, family can also be like unconditional love, right, or unconditional regard. And specifically when it comes to teams and even with the workplace, to me, unconditional love or commitment, you don't fire family, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Demi: When you're in a workplace or even you're at an elite team, let's say you get fired, you get pulled from the team. That's not family, right? And then also, let's say you get cut, like maybe you're a returning member, you get cut from an audition. That's nasty. That's not family, right? That's sport, right?
And so, just like you were saying, the blurred boundaries of now it's just wishy-washy. But especially with that, where it's like, “Whoa, I could get rejected from my family.” Messy.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Messy, for sure. And it circles all back to your identity stuff, because we have identities wrapped up in our families, whether — whatever that looks like, right? Mother, daughter, sister, husband, you have a role in your family that evolves as you change and that is inherently challenging, right?
So that label shouldn't have anything to do with sport. Like, you are your own athlete, and it's better, like you said, to have those separate identities, and “This is who I am as an athlete. And this is who I am as a parent. And this is who I am as –.” You know, every piece of you is separate and makes up the whole, and that's what we need it to be. And when people mush that all together, like you were saying earlier about that emotion and identity, the whole of you tries, in all its intensity, at the same time, in every situation, it doesn't work. You have to be able to dial it up and down. And so, as an athlete, if this is supposed to be family, it's hard to know, like, “Well, how I show up for family looks different than how I show up at sport and what am I supposed to be?” And it's confusing.
Yeah, again, the sentiment, like we've been saying, I get what you're trying to do, what you're trying to say.
Demi: Yeah, no, and that's the thing where it's like I understand. I understand your intention behind it. You want to bring them together, right? So I guess if coaches are listening and they're like, “Okay, well then what else do I do?” you know? Let's kind of set some or give some ideas or strategies or methods that they can use to get the buy-in.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. I love it.
Demi: Of almost like, yes, like the same dynamic that they're looking for with a different word.
Dr. Chelsea: Right. I'm all for the right — like, that's the right spirit, right?
Demi: Yes, exactly.
Coach/Dancer Relationships – 35:56
Dr. Chelsea: So I guess I'll just tie it back to what we said before and say one of the first things is the athlete buy-in part on the culture. So everything we were talking about earlier. Have them talk about, “What do we stand for this year? Who are we? What values?” And lots of programs have program values or school values that are bigger, but it's like each season, each specific group of athletes, what do they care about and getting that from them.
You know that level of buy-in, like we talked about earlier, I think is one good tangible step.
Demi: Oh, totally. I would agree. Yeah, I think this develops over time, and this can be something that can be tricky initially to kind of set the pace for, but the relationship between coach and athlete being very intentional and deliberate where it's like you know coach cares about you, right? And there are so many ways in which you can kind of facilitate that, and, again, I think it takes time. And to a certain extent, there's a healthy, again, way to know, “Oh, coach cares about me. Coach is invested in my progress without relying on coach too much for motivation and whatnot,” which I'm sure you see is like a huge thing.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. It's that coach-athlete communication constantly, right? And one of the big things that helps that may be tangible for coaches is just sharing more information than you probably were used to as an athlete again. But being able to say, “I made this decision for this reason,” or “This is what's best for the team, and this is why,” or, “I hear all of you, and I know that, you know, the majority of you want this way, but this is why we have to do it differently.” And sometimes it's like, “Yep, you all want that? Cool, we're doing it your way.” But sharing information about your thought process and what's going on, and again, they don't deserve the background to everything. That can get too big, but one-on-one athlete relationships, especially.
You know, I had an athlete come up to me who wasn't selected to be a leader, and she was devastated and actually handled it really well. She was like, “I get it. It wasn't my turn to be a leader in this role, but I want to know why so I can be better next time.”
Demi: Right.
Dr. Chelsea: And I was like, “Oh, that is the best question ever,” and we had a wonderful conversation about why that I think that information sharing allowed the relationship to be stronger and, again, that healthy boundary of like, “I'm still coach, you're still athlete, I made a decision, and she respects it, but also I genuinely care about you and your development, so let's talk about how this is going to get better in the future.”
Demi: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: It's that genuine information and checking in.
Demi: Yeah, and I think, you know, as coaches, there's this protectiveness where it's like, “Well, I'm coach, and I made this decision, and you shouldn't need to know why. You should just listen to me.” Again, going back to like things from the past maybe that worked, right? And what I find, even in my coaching where it's — it's very interesting to me. As young as eight years old, they want to know why. They are curious to know the method behind the madness, right? And when you kind of don't — you know, obviously there's like this athlete, coach, the levels, and coach is supposed to be here, and athlete is supposed to be here. You know, once you kind of equal that a little bit, just for a second to be like, “Hey, let me meet you where you are. Let me give you a little piece of perspective,” right? When you do that, you actually, from the athlete perspective, gain a lot of respect from them, and right away it's, oh, you're not so high up in your coaching kind of mindset that you're willing enough to be like, “Hey, let me explain this to you,” right? And that is so powerful for an athlete.
Dr. Chelsea: So big. Well, and tying it back to what we were saying with the values and the actions, it's like if your athletes come up with that and they know the values and they know the actions, and then they're going to set goals of like, “Well, we really want to work on this element of our strength training or our stamina,” or they want some performance quality to change, then they can express that, and that's where your expertise as a coach, you can say, “Okay, I hear you. That's what you want to focus on. I'm going to do the work to know what's going to help us best, and then when I come implement it, this is where it came from. Remember when you told me you wanted that? That's why the strength training just changed.”
Demi: Yes. Right. Exactly.
Dr. Chelsea: And being able to — it’s still your expertise. It's still you're the one in charge. But you're like, “Remember when you said that? I heard you, and this is why we're doing that,” rather than just like, “We're changing up the workout today.” It's like that little 30 seconds of, “This is why.” Yeah.
Demi: Yeah. Intention. Sharing, peeling back the curtain, or, you know, just being like, “This is why we're doing things,” relationship building just goes through the roof. Yeah, and it brings them down to their level. Oh, there was something I was going to say on that, but it left my mind.
It's just so powerful when you kind of shed away the ego of the coach, right? And to be like, “We're in this together.” It's powerful.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, it is. And I think maybe that's the root of everything we're talking about with having a little bit of that desire for tough love, but wanting to balance how do I not hurt them, but I can keep pushing them. You can do that when you have a genuine relationship, which again is back to that communication. And so, I think that's the root of all of this, the tough love and the identity stuff and being who you are, but also it's not an excuse to be lazy. And if you're having that bad day, being able to have that solid relationship underneath, like you said, takes time, but you have to earn it and work on it with every athlete. And I think that's what's always so hard for coaches is it's however many athletes you have and figuring out how to ask, how to do that.
Demi: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: And I'll speak for myself as a coach. There were athletes I clicked with immediately, we had great relationships, and some that took me years to really kind of crack and figure out how to connect with them.
Demi: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Chelsea: But that's people, right? That's what this is, and finding how to create those solid relationships allows you to hold them accountable, to push them further than they think they can go, because that's a whole coach's job. “I believe in you more than you believe in you. So let's do this and let me push you more than that.”
Demi: Right. Yeah, and it all stems from the relationship trust, right? Like, I trust that you have my back and I trust that you're not just doing this out of a kind of sheer power situation, like a power dynamic. It's more of, like, no, there's intention behind this. There is, you know, there's thought put behind this, and it's because this is part of my role, and also I believe in you.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, love it. Yeah. Any last thoughts, advice that we haven't hit on that we should tie into this?
Coach-to-Coach Support – 43:07
Demi: Let's see. I think — and this is maybe a message for coaches — obviously like every coach has a different dynamic of their team. And I think sharing coach-to-coach is really helpful, even in the relationship-building process with your athletes because another coach might have an athlete that's very similar to yours, and they've cracked the code on theirs, right? And they've been like, “This is how I was able to really relate to them. This is how I was able to really kind of get down to their level and build that relationship,” and you can kind of be like, “Oh, I'm going to try that out,” right? Just that mentorship from coach to coach can be really powerful. Again, shedding that ego to be like, “I think I need a little bit of help here.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah.
Demi: But it's a strategy that coaches can use at any point in the season.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, that community is amazing. I was talking to another coach I work with that has a group thread with, like, five or six coaches that they are competitively against each other regularly at various levels, but they're all like, “That's not the point. We are only going to survive this job if we have people who get it, if we have people who you can talk to and be real with and strategize with and understand.” And it makes such a difference to not try to coach on an island, to build that community around you and find the people that you can, yeah, ask the questions, offer help where you have your expertise. Yeah, because so much of it we gain in experience, but even when you've done it a long time, there's going to be something new, some change that comes in.
And then every coach is different. So even when we talk about, “Here are the strategies,” how one coach approaches that strategy is going to look different than another. And there's not one right way to coach. And so, even just, I love hearing the perspective. When, you know, we might talk about a strategy and different coaches will take it different ways and they're all successful.
Demi: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: And so, not letting the comparison, I guess, get you as a coach either, right, where you can be inspired by that coach and vent to them or hear what their strengths are, but then also know that they might approach a problem different than you, and that's great, and it doesn't mean better, worse, right or wrong. Yeah.
Demi: Right, and I think going back to what we were talking about, even how we kind of establish the relationship between coach and athlete, you can establish a relationship coach to coach. To be like wait a second, what is their purpose? What is their intention? How can we support one another in a way that isn't necessarily competitive in a toxic way but competitive in a way, like, “How can we fuel one another, encourage one another?” And then taking, like you're saying, that golden nugget to be like, “Ooh, that's like a little gem. Let me see how I can kind of digest it for myself and see how the outcome actually kind of comes into play.” But that process is really powerful.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, that’s great, and I hope maybe that's how people will take this, take, you know, lots of the different advice, and you and I approach things similarly a lot, but have different ideas and that's great.
Demi: Yeah. Well, and that's what I love about this is we're saying the same thing or the same concepts, but it's a slightly different approach, right? The dial, like I said — I use a dial, you use a hat. And it's like, yeah, it's just little things like that where it just helps because even when I'm talking to an athlete, I might use the hat example and it might click for them, but another athlete would actually prefer the dial, right?
Dr. Chelsea: Right, and it's like, that's teaching 101, right? How many different ways can you talk about it? And coaching is the exact same. How many different ways can you explain the same thing?
Demi: Exactly.
Dr. Chelsea: So it's all helpful. So yeah, hopefully something in this stood out to people that you can go try something, go decide what you want to take moving forward. Yeah.
Demi: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Cool, okay! Thanks, Demi. That was really fun.
Demi: Thanks, Chelsea. Great talking with you.
Dr. Chelsea: You too. Bye!
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[Motivational Outro Music]
Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance! You can find all episode resources at www.chelseapierotti.com/podcast, and be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high-performance tips at @dr.chelsea.pierotti. This podcast is for passionate dance teachers and coaches who are ready to change the dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers. I'm Dr. Chelsea and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.
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