166. Why Relying on Talent Alone Will Fail You

The game of life and the game of business can be quite challenging and difficult at times. But with clear intent, strong relationships, and a fair amount of practice, we can be successful. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I'm really excited to speak with Andrew Luck.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Should we get started?

Please.

Excellent. As a quarterback, clear communication is crucial with your teammates, your coaches, the press, and your fans. Are there specific strategies and tactics you've found help you communicate more effectively with clarity and accuracy when you're in those high stress situations?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think, uh, communicating with fans or the media is a lot different than communicating with teammates in game which is a lot different than communicating with coaches when you're in the room during the week preparing for a big game. So with teammates, I think I learned clarity was really important. It was as much nonverbal as verbal. Walking in a professional locker room I had to earn veterans respect so they would listen to me.

So something you said there that I think is really important for all of us to think about. The notion of establishing the equity that you have and that's work you have to do right away. And in some cases we can do that ahead of time in terms of how we set expectations for the meetings that we have or the conversations. But really, many of us go into these high stress situations thinking about what we want to say, not necessarily about the relationship we need to build in advance of it.

It's part of why I love team sports.

Yeah.

The relationship is at the core of locker room culture.

Right.

Of going out there together. You internalize that very early on when you play team sports. I can't succeed without you, you can't succeed without me. We've got to put the work in.

One of the things that I've always admired when I've watched you play is you seem to stay very calm. Many of us find ourselves in situations in our lives, our careers, where it's really intense around us. What do you do to stay calm? How do you center yourself?

Yeah, that's interesting that your observation is I stay calm. I can certainly look back and think of times I did not feel very calm.

Right, right.

Come off the sidelines and throw a helmet down in frustration or let some emotion out. And I think one, as a player, I learned that it was okay to play emotionally. I enjoyed, that's part of what made sports fun, the highs and the lows. Now, when you walk in the huddle and call a play, you've got to sort of become a clinician. It is business, you're on it, and the only way I learned to do that was to practice that. And I had fantastic coaches, starting with my dad and Pop Warner Football.

A lot of us think of practice as something that's a nice thing to do if we have the time, but don't purposely do it. I mean, if I've got a high stakes meeting where I'm trying to sell or present something, maybe it makes sense to practice with somebody and get some feedback. My hunch is you've spent many, many more hours in practice than you have in the actual game.

Absolutely. And frankly, I'm five years out or so now from playing. I miss practice, practice was fun. It was like a mini game. There's a great line from Marvin Harrison, a wide receiver, Hall of Famer, who I didn't play with. But he was on the Colts, you know, sort of my fandom of middle school, high school. And he said, I get paid to practice. I play a game for free, right? And I love that.

That notion of being paid to practice is an interesting one. I think if all of us think about our jobs, the performance aspect. But it's really the pre work where we're earning our money and earning our keep. You've been praised for your leadership both on and off the field. How would you describe your leadership style, and what are some important qualities you see in effective leaders?

Um, certainly when you play the quarterback position, and this starts from Pop Warner football, I mean, eyes are on you. So you are given a leadership role, there's no way around it. Calling plays, you're telling people what to do. But it's not just enough to be given that role. You know, you have to earn it. I always thought I had to be the best teammate I could be before being a decent leader. I had to learn to, hey, you can't avoid certain levels of conflict.

I have to admit, I find it a little surprising that somebody who plays a highly competitive, combative game, if you will, uh, was conflict averse. Tell me a little bit more about that. And I'm very, 'cause I also am conflict averse, but I didn't play professional football. How did you manage that? How did you learn to lean into that?

Part of what was fun about playing contact sports for me, like football or basketball and getting down there was that I could, I didn't have to be nice per se. It was okay to step on toes, it was okay to get there. It's okay to bring a level of intensity. So I do think sports helped me sort of identify, oh, I'm conflict averse a little, and you can work on it and you can grow on it. And you have to, I mean, you have to when you're on a team.

You found, as somebody who is conflict averse, playing sports allowed you to actually explore being in conflict and seeing positive results. Maybe there's some other areas of our lives where we can practice that, get more comfortable.

Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Because we film everything now, because we have phones out, practice really needs to be a psychologically safe and physically safe space because you try stuff.

Right.

And you fail, you look stupid.

I see this personally in the work I do I teach communication skills and I'm encouraging people to try new things to see what works and what doesn't. I like to joke that my class is like a high school chemistry class, where sometimes the experiments blow up and sometimes they don't, and you learn in either case, and you have to have that environment Your decision to retire from the NFL in 2019 surprised a lot of fans and players alike. What was your thought process on how to communicate that?

Uh, I did not seal myself off in a vacuum. My girlfriend, now wife was very much involved, my family, my inner circle. And then when I decided to retire, we were going to have a press conference on a Sunday, and it wasn't going to be a celebratory press conference, right? This wasn't like a, you know, you've won a bunch of Super Bowls, and you're going off. But I knew I needed to write something down.

The decision sounds like it was very difficult to make. But it sounds like you did some things that were very wise. One, you spent some time thinking about it in advance, uh, in terms of what you might communicate and you reached out to others. I'm hearing a theme across all your answers that it's about connection. It's about relying on others. It's about relationships, connecting with others and I think that's really powerful. And a lot of us can think about that when we make career moves.

I knew I wanted to challenge myself and learn. I certainly wanted to get back into an academic setting with cool people. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the role sports plays and how kids grow up in this country and how sports and K through 12 education intertwine, which in this country is a big deal. And I wanted to be around new people. You know, I'd been in locker rooms my whole life. I wanted to go see what class was like as a graduate student.

So share with us an idea or two that you now think of differently having matriculated through a graduate program.

One, I have learned not to rush to judgment unless I feel like I am the expert, expert, but it's probably worth asking someone to do some research about things.

What do you see yourself doing?

Well, I keep helping Stanford with projects and, uh, you know, I think also the energy around college campuses is really fun. Get to learn from folks, there's interesting things going on and, uh, yeah.

You are so right. I mean, part of the reason I love my job is just to be around really smart people engaging in really interesting ideas. As a coach, your job is to help your players be the best they can be at their sport, but also in their lives. How do you approach that dual task? And are there specific life lessons you try to inculcate in your students?

Yeah, that, and yeah, I mean, you know, I think one, it's fun to teach football. I think without being too explicit about the life lessons you learn, like showing up on time, showing up ready for practice, you need to do that to win the game, right? You need to practice with urgency. We talked about it, you and I. So some of those life lessons, communicating with players has been really interesting. Coaching is hard. I mean, shoot, coaching, freshman football. I got nervous calling plays.

As a father of two boys who played sports, there'd be times where you'd yell at the coach or say, that was a bad play. I just can't imagine a parent saying Andrew Luck made the wrong play. I just, I mean, but this notion of teaching life skills, especially to young boys. I mean, I think young people have challenges that I certainly never experienced today.

Please.

You have always struck me as somebody who is very articulate. You communicate very efficiently, very effectively. Talk to me about where that came from. Is that something that existed in your family? Did you work on it? Is it just part of who you are? You communicate well. How did that come about?

I grew up in an amazing household with a mom and dad that, you know, imbued with love and books, fun and sports. And my father had somewhat of a public role growing up as a sports executive. And I mean he played quarterback in the NFL and so he would take me around, and we'd be in the car and he'd call into a radio show to talk about the Houston Dynamo who he was running at the time or something else.

Let me ask you question number two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why, beyond your father?

Yeah, a communicator that I admire. You know, I was going through a tough time with injuries, uh, during a spell of my NFL career. And my physical therapist, ended up spending a lot of time with a Dutch man, uh, someone from the Netherlands named Willem Kramer and he was so direct. You know, and he was Dutch. So, you know, there's sort of a little bit of a meme about the Dutch.

Yeah.

And direct and cut through the fluff.

Right, right.

And leave zero room for ambiguity, and I needed that at that time. I did not like it often, but I needed to hear it. He helped me raise questions that I had about myself and it was okay to answer them. And it was okay if I didn't have the perfect answer. It was a safe place to have, a psychologically safe space, a direct communication, a listener. If he was wronged by me, he would share it. There was no sugarcoating it. And we celebrated victories together, you know, the full spectrum.

You are the first person in our hundred and fifty guests to name a physical therapist. We get poets, we get presidents. That's great. And it sounds like the directness in doing what was needed in those moments is what led you to select him. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

First of all, respect.

Yeah.

Clarity. And I want to say reciprocity.

Okay.

Yeah.

So respect and clarity, clearly respect is a theme across many of the answers and ideas you shared. Clarity, I can imagine as somebody who did the work that you did being very clear. Reciprocity and listening, being receptive instead of, certainly makes a lot of sense. Often people see communication as a very directive thing, but I think to be a recipient and be in that moment and co create something is really powerful. Andrew, this has been fantastic.

Oh, my honor. This was incredible. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about leadership and coaching, please listen to episode 1 53 with Tara VanDerveer. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Riley, Aech Ashe, and me Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast company, please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us.