On Prospect Evaluation, the Dangers of Perfectionism and Confidence in Communication

Over the past two years, The Daily Coach has conducted a range of interviews with coaches, executives and other leaders about what they look for in prospects beyond just talent, the dangers of perfectionism, and gaining confidence in communicating a message.

For this week’s Saturday Blueprint, we put together some of our favorite quotes on these subjects from our guests.

On prospect evaluations:

“If he has no measurables, no traits other than his tape is really good, you start creating these exceptions, and you have this team of exceptions. Exceptions get you fired. There’s only one Wes Welker. The stuff you’re comparing is not a real comparison.

Even the guys who have traits, we still want certain things we see on film like spacial awareness. It’s thinking outside the box and trusting your coaches. You are going to take some players a lot of people are saying are two stars, maybe three stars. I always tell guys we’re recruiting there’s a trait we feel we can develop.”

-Joey McGuire, Texas Tech football coach

“Evaluating talent physically was one thing, but the other part that nobody talks about with scouts is figuring out the makeup of players through interviews. In the fall, we’d meet with players and start asking questions. ‘Tell us about your family.’ ‘Do you love baseball?’

You started to figure out that the players who make the big leagues are, one, world-class athletes. Two, they love the game. If you didn’t feel the passion of, “I’m a competitor. I want to win. I love this game,” it gave you great doubts. I think that translates to business, too. What we do is hard. If you want to work in this industry, you have to be super passionate about it because it will beat you up, chew you up and spit you out.”

-Joshua Schaub, commissioner of the American Association of Professional Baseball

On why good enough is often better than perfect:

“If you're striving for perfection, you can screw everything up. What you want to do is make sure it's good enough and can push you forward.

In the operating room, if you make a stitch pattern, if it's good enough to hold everything together and to heal well, that's good enough. If you worry about, "The spacing between a couple of these stitches is just slightly off. I'm going to pull that one out so I can do it again” and then you tear tissue doing that, and you're trying to sew torn tissue, then pretty soon the whole anastomosis is falling apart. You did a total disservice by not realizing that good is good enough.”

-Dr. Mark Mugiishi, CEO of Hawaii Medical Service Association

“Nobody’s perfect, so as a practitioner, as a learner, as a teacher, we have to learn how to manage failure. It’s inevitable. To me, I like the idea of remember and forgive. What I mean by that is I think you have to do the intellectual work first before you can get to the emotional work of forgiving yourself.

My idea about approaching that I actually thought of from an ethical standpoint. I can justify ethically being an imperfect human being and starting with that reality. That gives you permission to do things that at times are imperfect and not shoot yourself because of how things went. You must have a strategy for dealing with that.

In my mind, it’s that you’re always going to learn from everything you do, not just things that didn’t go well. For many things, whether it’s swinging a baseball bat or performing surgery or general human interactions, you’re not going to get it right 100 percent of the time. You can hope all you want or prepare all you want to try to be as close as you can get, but we’re humans.”

-Dr. Curtis Tribble, University of Virginia Medical Center surgeon

On gaining confidence with your voice:

“I don’t know if there was ever a moment where I thought, “This is great!” I still have those emotions when I have to speak in front of people. But the repetition really helped me. The more you do something, the more you know you can do it. Even if I feel some nerves or am a little bit anxious, I know I can do it well…

It’s a powerful tool to be able to utilize, and it’s a wonderful strength to have because you can change how someone’s feeling about themselves, how they’re feeling about their circumstance, about where they are and where they can get. 

To be in a position where I can do that for other people is something I appreciate, and I don’t take the responsibility lightly. To be able to have people feel you when you’re speaking and be motivated by what you say, that’s an awesome feeling.”

-Kara Lawson, Duke women’s basketball coach

“When it comes to real communication, you better have a good message, and you better have one every day.

A lot of my time spent was in deep thought after games, before the next practice. What was I going to say tomorrow pre-practice, post-practice? What was I going to say in my pregame speech, at halftime, postgame? What was I going to say when I had to bring a player in individually and talk to him? What was my message going to be to my owner or to the community in the press about the team?

Communication comes with a message. You better have a good one, and you better think about it. If you can’t come up with a good one, then go take one from somebody else and figure out how to make it yours. We all do that…

The second point with communication is your tone of voice. Your tone of voice would probably be most important in how you talk to people, whether it’s with a real negative tone of voice, loud tone, accusatory, compassionate, or an empathetic tone of voice.

The last thing is your body language, how you’re moving, how you’re standing, what you’re wearing that day, how confident you are in that message. When I talk about temporary insanity, I’m moving my arms around. I’m throwing my fist into my palm of the other hand or something.

People will get the message through those three things, but you’ve got to have a message. You can’t just get up there and B.S. somebody because they’re not going to buy it. You have to be honest with them.”

-Pat Riley, Miami Heat president

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