0:00

department in a clubhouse, from the training

0:02

room, strength room, the batting

0:04

cage, to the field, everyone

0:06

has a job to do and that's to make

0:08

you the best possible player you can be

0:10

to help this team win. Eric

0:20

Hosmer here, Justin Sua. Justin Sua

0:22

is the Process and Development

0:24

Coach of Major League Baseball. Obviously

0:26

Sua throughout the league, throughout

0:28

Major League Baseball, and not only

0:30

baseball sports, all athletes

0:32

know about you, all athletes always talk

0:34

about you. So we have to find

0:36

a way you and I both

0:38

passionate about leadership, about process, about

0:40

the culture of teams and teams

0:42

getting that, that all in

0:44

team mentality back. So you and

0:46

I here to explain some more stuff, but

0:48

I will let you, the coach, the

0:51

guru, explain everything and what this is we

0:53

got going on here. All right, sounds

0:55

good. But yeah, first, no gurus here and

0:57

the guys who know me know that

0:59

I have more questions than answers. But

1:01

a lot of times people

1:03

ask, what exactly is a

1:05

process coach, a performance advisor?

1:07

And essentially, it's discussing and

1:09

creating systems around the intangibles.

1:12

You've been doing this for so long.

1:14

Major league baseball players, we talk about

1:16

confidence and focus and slowing the game

1:18

down and not writing the highs and

1:20

the lows. But then the question

1:22

becomes, OK, How do you do those

1:24

things? And how do you quantify

1:27

those things? And so instead

1:29

of getting wrapped up and bogged

1:31

down by how to put a

1:33

number on it and analytics around

1:35

it, we talk about, what does

1:37

it look like? How do you do it? All

1:39

right, how does Moose do it? All right, how

1:41

does Tautis do it? How does Blake Snell do

1:43

it? And I like to pull the best athletes

1:45

in the world and see how they do

1:47

it. create a system around it

1:49

and then have them repeat it. And

1:51

so we talk about culture and

1:53

leadership and confidence. And so I look

1:55

forward to this conversation with you

1:57

on some of these topics because they're

1:59

topics that are always discussed. And

2:01

one of them is this

2:04

thing around culture. You

2:06

always hear coaches and players talking about,

2:08

we have a great culture. Championship football

2:10

teams, basketball teams, baseball teams. One thing

2:12

about you, as many of us know,

2:14

is you are a culture guy. You

2:16

tend to be a glue guy. First

2:18

of all, in your opinion, what is

2:20

culture on a team? And what

2:22

is a player's role in

2:24

creating and maintaining and protecting

2:26

culture? Yeah, absolutely. And

2:29

we're going to start this. Obviously, these

2:31

questions are super loaded. We can go

2:33

professional level all the way down to

2:35

the amateur side. But having just been

2:37

done with the professional side, we're starting

2:39

there. And for me, like you said

2:41

before, each situation, each team is so

2:44

different from the next one. There's no

2:46

message that this is culture. This is

2:48

what it's supposed to look like. For

2:50

me, that answer can change from team

2:52

to team, city to city. Because for

2:54

me, culture starts from the top. that

2:57

starts from the top of the organization

2:59

whoever's running the organization making the big

3:01

time decisions because you want to get

3:03

everybody in that organization pulling on the

3:05

same rope the same goal and that's

3:07

to win a championship and you need

3:09

to know whoever's running all these departments

3:12

below you has that common goal of

3:14

winning the championship now for me. Culture

3:16

for the organization is based off of

3:18

action. What has this organization done the

3:20

last couple of years? If their message,

3:22

so to speak, that cookie cutter thing

3:24

that we're kind of getting away from

3:27

is a certain thing, but the actions

3:29

don't really line up to that. To

3:31

me, that's already a very hard start

3:33

on how to build a culture, because

3:35

if the actions don't line up with

3:37

the message, professional players are smarter than

3:40

anybody on the planet. They sense that

3:42

out right away. You know that more

3:44

than anybody. i completely agree and

3:46

i love what you said how it

3:48

starts at the top uh there's a

3:50

quote that i love from james cleary

3:52

says environment is the invisible hand that

3:54

shapes behavior we've actually talked about that

3:56

in some previous episodes and the environment

3:59

the culture a lot of times is

4:01

what dictates how people behave culture at

4:03

the end of the day comes down

4:05

to in simple terms How do we

4:07

do things around here? When we show

4:09

up to the clubhouse, how do we

4:11

respond to adversity? What's our

4:13

communication? Like what does that look

4:15

like? How close can we get to the

4:17

coaching staff or not? What is our stance

4:19

on analytics and how open we can be?

4:21

And I think that's really important to understand

4:23

is how do we do what we do?

4:26

And we have a lot of players who

4:28

go into new teams and immediately you're assessing,

4:30

okay, how do we do things? Where do

4:32

I park? How do I

4:34

treat people? And like you said, major

4:36

league baseball players, anyone actually at

4:38

any level is always watching the environment

4:40

to see how am I supposed

4:42

to act. So my question to you

4:44

is, as a player, let's just

4:47

say as a leader, as a leader

4:49

in the clubhouse, what is the

4:51

players role in setting the team culture?

4:54

Yes, I love that. So for me, you

4:56

have to identify the leaders of the players

4:58

the players leaders in the clubhouse because

5:00

sometimes the most important message is player to

5:02

player and i think now what i've

5:04

noticed in a new leadership kind of uh...

5:06

a new way of leading that a

5:08

lot of these older guys that you know

5:10

kind of played came up when i

5:12

came up ended up becoming veterans when i

5:14

became veterans have switched that style of

5:17

the leadership because before baseball there was so

5:19

much unknown if you were a young

5:21

guy coming up you had to figure all

5:23

these things out on your own. I

5:25

had to get to the stadium before the

5:27

first bus. Nobody told me that. That

5:29

was something I had to learn the hard

5:31

way of showing up late one day

5:33

and then obviously, hey, you need to be

5:35

here this amount of time before stretch,

5:37

this before the bus, whatever. I

5:40

think how that's flipped now is the leaders

5:42

of the team have now made themselves

5:44

available to the younger guys, to the newer

5:46

guys. So for me, if we on

5:48

the Kansas City team, on the San Diego

5:50

teams, if we get a new player,

5:52

be a trade or a new guy that's

5:54

going to make the team young guy

5:56

from the minor league system. I'm going up

5:58

to him right away. And I'm saying,

6:00

hey, listen, man, this is our culture here.

6:02

This is how we prepare. This is

6:04

how we get ready to go. There's a

6:06

flow about how things go around here.

6:08

Every department in a clubhouse from the training

6:10

room, strength room, the batting cage

6:12

to the field, everyone has a job to

6:14

do. And that's to make you the best

6:16

possible player you can be to help this

6:18

team win. So in each department, you got

6:20

to understand there's a flow of how things

6:22

go. If you're a young guy, you need

6:24

to be there early. Get all your stuff

6:26

done in the training room. That's your activation

6:28

stuff. But it's also on the trainers to

6:30

know, hey, whoever the head trainer

6:32

is, I need to get the young

6:34

guys in here. I need to make the

6:36

training room available for the last possible

6:39

time. for that veteran leader to come in

6:41

and have that availability, because usually it

6:43

goes training room activation to strengthen conditioning, to

6:45

really getting into those warmups and getting

6:47

your lift in and then going to do

6:49

your field work, whether it's your cage

6:51

work, your pregame or your early work pregame

6:54

routine, defensively, and then to practice. So

6:56

that's how the flow goes. And for me,

6:58

being an older guy, I want to

7:00

go up to these guys right away and

7:02

let them know. So now that they

7:04

have the message and now when they do

7:06

stuff wrong, it's like, listen, buddy, we

7:09

told you this we kind of explain this

7:11

to you so that's kind of how

7:13

i think a new style of leadership has

7:15

slowly became a thing in in baseball

7:17

for sure i i like that you said

7:19

that because it aligns with even like

7:21

the brain science they say that mirror neurons

7:23

activate motor neurons essentially it's kind of

7:26

like this when you see someone yawn It

7:28

makes you wanna yawn. When you see

7:30

someone laugh, it makes you wanna laugh. And

7:32

so we have these mirror neurons in

7:34

our brain that are watching how people act.

7:36

And it will send a signal to

7:38

us on this is how we should be

7:41

acting. And I like what you're saying

7:43

is because the young players are looking at

7:45

the older players, they're taking their cues,

7:47

their behavior cues from the older players, from

7:49

the vets, from the best players to

7:51

see how we should act. What you're saying

7:53

is in addition to setting the

7:56

example we should also communicate with them

7:58

and say hey this is your role

8:00

this is why we do what we

8:02

do and to have that conversation to

8:04

accelerate the process and I actually love

8:06

that as well because at the end

8:08

of the day when everyone is pulling

8:10

from the same end of the rope

8:12

the faster the better and the more

8:14

you're going to be able to Accelerate

8:17

this winning process and the culture

8:19

will begin to catalyze and and and

8:21

and and Lincoln glue together faster.

8:23

I love that you said that and

8:25

sometimes it's it's difficult. I remember

8:27

one time sitting in the dugout and

8:29

a player young player didn't run

8:31

out a hard 90 out of the

8:33

box didn't didn't run it out.

8:35

The vet on the team walks up

8:37

to me, he sits down next

8:39

to me, and he goes, all right,

8:41

Sua, let's help me

8:44

deliver this difficult message. And

8:46

I said, what are you talking about? He goes,

8:48

he didn't run a hard 90. I need

8:50

to have a conversation. Let's role play.

8:52

Let's talk about it. We had that conversation. And

8:55

then he goes, OK, I need to talk

8:57

to him after the game. Well, he couldn't

8:59

wait till after the game. He actually talked

9:02

to him after that inning, took him into

9:04

the tunnel, had that conversation, and

9:06

later that player appreciated that and said, hey,

9:08

thank you for standing me up like that. I

9:10

appreciate it. He didn't do it in public.

9:12

Nobody else knew about it. But it was neat

9:14

to see that, hey, I couldn't wait. I

9:16

needed to communicate with that to him in the

9:18

moment. It sounds like that's what you're saying.

9:20

You've got to be willing to have those conversations.

9:23

Absolutely. to have

9:25

that communication, that's, I don't

9:27

know, like you said, before the blow

9:29

up, right? Before it gets to the

9:31

point where it's like, dude, we've had

9:33

two or three conversations and you still

9:35

continue to do this the wrong way,

9:37

then sometimes you got to get people's

9:39

attention in a different way. So that's

9:41

where it's like, hey, man, why is

9:43

this guy blowing me up out of

9:45

nowhere versus no, man, we've already had

9:47

this conversation two to three times, but

9:49

at the same time, so you have

9:51

to count on so many people throughout

9:53

the organization because each department you gotta

9:55

understand and trust that each department is

9:57

doing this flow like we say so

9:59

to speak and they're holding that true

10:01

they're holding the players accountable to that

10:03

because if this is the conversation in

10:06

the dugout on the bus, that stuff's happening

10:08

in the clubhouse out of order, messing up

10:10

that flow. We're already behind the eight ball

10:12

because we're playing major league baseball. We're playing

10:14

a major league sport. And if we're going

10:16

out there trying to compete at the highest

10:18

level and that stuff is affecting our preparation,

10:20

that's a problem right there. So with that

10:22

being said, the training staff have to know

10:24

that. So if one day one of the

10:26

younger guys go in there and they're a

10:28

little late, it's like, hey, man, come on,

10:30

man, let's get here a little earlier. This

10:32

is a little rush today. get her earlier

10:34

so we got time to really get you

10:36

healthy, focus on what we need to get

10:38

on and then boom. For me as a

10:40

leader in the clubhouse, if

10:42

stuff got to the manager, stuff like

10:44

that, that's where we failed as leaders

10:46

of our departments because as the players,

10:48

as the head trainer, as the strength

10:50

coach, that stuff that shouldn't get to

10:52

that level because that's your department and

10:54

you got to make sure it's flowing

10:56

the way it should be so you

10:58

guys can only focus on winning a

11:00

game that night. what i love about

11:02

that is part of culture if you

11:04

want excellence culture you want an excellent

11:06

culture there's a standard of high competence

11:08

that it sounds like you're saying everybody

11:10

needs to have yes the players are

11:13

going to play the players win ball

11:15

games it's always about the players and

11:17

in order to support the players the

11:19

best We can. You're saying

11:21

that part of the culture needs to

11:23

be that there needs to be a

11:25

high level of competence and excellence expected

11:27

from every single person who touches the

11:29

player, every department. You better be

11:31

on your P's and Q's and cross your T's

11:33

and dot your I's because if we're expecting

11:35

the players to be at the highest level, you

11:37

as well in whatever role you play need

11:39

to be at that level as well. You