What Confident People Focus on Instead of Winning with Ballerina Isabella McGuire Mayes

Be honest: the high of a big win never lasts as long as you’d like. You nail the presentation, land the promotion, post something that takes off… and a week later, you’re already chasing the next one. Ballerina Isabella McGuire Mayes has found a steadier kind of confidence. And she found it in ballet, where perfection is always the goal, and every class ends the same way: imperfect. Isabella is a coach, a podcast host and the founder of ISABELLA, an online ballet platform for dancers of every age and level. After auditioning three times, she was accepted to Russia’s legendary Vaganova Academy at 15, the same school that produced Nureyev and Baryshnikov. She graduated top of her class and danced with two major Russian ballet companies before a string of serious injuries brought her home. Teaching, however, is what brought her back to ballet. Today, through ISABELLA, her podcast “A Dancer’s Mindset,” and intensives that sell out in minutes, she’s working to change the culture of ballet itself. In this conversation, Isabella shows me why ballet, an extreme example of perfectionism, might be the best place to learn where real confidence comes from. And her lessons reach far beyond the studio, into how we lead, coach, prioritize, and give feedback. In this episode you’ll learn: ➡️ Why confidence from winning comes in peaks and valleys (+ where the steady kind comes from)
 ➡️ The 75/25 rule for process vs. performance
 ➡️ How to give honest feedback that people can actually hear
 ➡️ Why confidence has to come before feedback can land ➡️ Why great coaches show you how (+ why most leaders stop at what)
 ➡️ What a 12-year-old Instagram star taught Isabella about our obsession with winning
 ➡️ Why Isabella took the prizes out of her ballet labs (+ what happened next) ➡️ What we lose when we prioritize outcomes over process 
 ➡️ The one question Isabella asks every student who’s lost sight of what matters Isabella may teach ballet, but her lessons are for all of us, on stage or off. Because confidence is built in first position, long before first place. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + To train with Isabella on her online ballet platform ISABELLA, head to: https://balletwithisabella.com Want to hear more from Isabella? Check out her podcast "A Dancer's Mindset": https://balletwithisabella.com/podcasts + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The 12-Year-Old Ballerina Who Feared Posting Her Failure 00:02:47 From Screaming Under the Piano to Russia's Most Prestigious Ballet Academy 00:09:35 The Athletic Brutality Behind Ballet's Effortless Beauty 00:18:53 Teaching Differently: The Coach, Not the Boss 00:20:17 "Are You Stupid?" Learning to Handle Criticism 00:21:50 The Teammate Approach: Teaching Process Over Perfection 00:25:13 The Problem With Outcome Obsession and Social Media 00:30:43 The Ballet Lab: Creating a Safe Space for Experimentation 00:32:47 Why Confident People Focus 75% on Process, Not Winning 00:39:58 The Competition Trap: Training One Variation While Forgetting Basic Technique 00:41:33 The Student Who Finally Understood What Inspiration Means 00:45:36 What Perfectionists Can Learn From Ballet 00:49:05 The John Wooden Philosophy: Train to Improve, Play to Win + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There was a scenario where this 12-year-old girl was a bit of an Instagram-starred ballerina. And she was competing in this competition, and she didn't win. And she said, crying to her mother, please don't post this on social media because I don't want my followers to know that I failed. And she's 12. That is what she's focusing on in terms of her success.

• 0:27Simon Sinek?

  My mind is bubbling because there's so many things happening here, right? Which is, we've become so obsessed with outcome, we've forgotten process.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 0:33Simon Sinek?

  We've become so obsessed with winning, we've forgotten improvement. Does self-confidence come from winning? It certainly appears that way. When we nail the presentation, get the promotion, post something that gets a ton of likes, we feel great. We feel strong for about a day, a week at most. But that feeling fades, which is why we need to chase the next win, the next dopamine hit. Whether it's social media, our careers, startup life, even the whole discussion about how AI can improve our lives, we're always talking about the outcome. In fact, we're obsessed with outcomes these days, so much so that it seems we've forgotten the value of the process.

• 1:18Simon Sinek?

  This is important because chasing wins can actually destroy our confidence. So to understand where confidence comes from, we have to learn to appreciate the process. That's why I wanted to talk to ballerina Isabella McGuire-Mayes. Yes, a ballerina. Ballerinas by nature are perfectionists. They will train their entire lives to strive for something that they know they'll never reach. No matter how good they get, every ballerina knows that every class, every rehearsal, every performance ends the same way: imperfect. They have no choice but to appreciate the process.

• 1:57Simon Sinek?

  At 15 years old, Isabella was the youngest British student ever to attend the legendary Wagonova Academy in Russia, the very same school that produced dancers like Nuryev and Borishnikov. Isabella graduated top of her class and danced for two major Russian companies. Today, through her online platform Isabella, her podcast A Dancer's Mindset, and her intensives that sell out in minutes, Isabella coaches dancers of every age and level not to worry about perfect, but to obsess about the process. Because she knows it's through the process that we build our confidence. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is A Bit of Optimism.

• 2:47Simon Sinek?

  There's two reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast. Some people know I'm a big dance fan and I followed you on the Instagram, which is how I found you. And what drew me to you was the way you teach and how you are so good at helping people build their confidence, which I think is a thing that people struggle with today. But we're coming at it from a quite different point of view because you are a ballerina. The other reason I wanted to bring you on is because I don't think people understand ballet. People are enamored by Olympic athletes.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:17Simon Sinek?

  And the sacrifices that Olympic athletes will make for their dream. They give up friends, they give up holidays, they're obsessed. It's a somewhat lonely experience. Ballet, I think, is the same, if not more. So let's start with your career.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:34Simon Sinek?

  Before we get into the way you teach.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:37Simon Sinek?

  What age did you start dancing?

• 3:38Speaker 00

  My mom put me into ballet when I was probably two as some form of babysitting initially. Like, let's just get her occupied. And I absolutely hated it. I screamed under the piano and protested. And it didn't work for my mom because she had to come and collect me regularly. So who knows how I ended up becoming a ballet dancer? And then, when I was nine years old, I got introduced to a Russian ballet coach in the UK because my regular Saturday ballet teacher thought I had talent. And she sort of recognized that she could only do so much with me and I needed to be passed on to someone who could take me further.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  And I had this lesson with this Russian ballet teacher initially, and it was the most terrifying experience I've ever had. She was slapping my feet, I was sweating more than I'd ever sweated in my life. And I cried afterwards and I said to my mom, I never want to see that woman ever again. I don't know what just happened. And then, something in me, two weeks later, said to my mom, you know what? Actually, I think I'd like to see her again. Because I realized that, well, if that's what ballet's about, the hard work, then I want to take this further and see what that's all about. And after that, I was seeing her every weekend on a Sunday.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  I was already in performing arts school in the week. And from there, I went to the Royal Ballet School. I tried once, I didn't get in, and I tried a second time and was accepted. I was still seeing my Russian coach on the weekend because I was very in love with Russian ballet and was always obsessed with the Vaganova Ballet Academy and always watching YouTube videos of the dancers in the studios.

• 5:28Simon Sinek?

  And for those who don't know, what makes that academy in Russia so special? Why is it such a big deal?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a big deal. And it was a big deal that I eventually went when I did. It's the home of many legendary ballet dancers, such as, if you know ballet at all, Nuryev, Borishnikov. They all came from there. And it's also the school where Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty was choreographed and set with Marius Petipa and Tchaikovsky in the same studio and in the same room where we train and do all our exams.

• 6:02Simon Sinek?

  So the actual studio, the choreographer, worked with Tchaikovsky?

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:06Simon Sinek?

  To make The Nutcracker and Swan Lake and all these?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yes, where you see it globally, all around the world.

• 6:10Simon Sinek?

  So this is a storied, a storied academy?

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Exactly. So it's known for creating legends, basically.

• 6:18Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  And so I always resonated with the dancers as well because I'm very tall. And in the UK, I was kind of out of the ordinary in terms of my, my shape and my physique. And I kept in contact with the Vaganova Academy because my Russian coach trained there. She was put on a train when she was nine years old from Tashkent and sent on her own to the academy. And she trained there till she was 17. You know, she's made of stone. And so I auditioned three times for the Vaganova Academy. I went when I was 13, and then I went when I was 14, and then I went when I was 15. And kind of begged them to let me in. And they said, no, foreigners can't handle it here. They always get injured. They can't handle it.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  And I said, please, I can handle it. Let me in. And they said, um, okay. And so I went and I ended up staying there for four years.

• 7:12Simon Sinek?

  So let's be crystal clear now.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:14Simon Sinek?

  A foreigner, a young English girl, getting into Vaganova at 15 years old, this is, this is a big deal.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a big deal. I was the, I think there was one other British person in the 70s or 80s, but they went for like the graduation year, I think, so the last year, which is usually the case with foreign students. They go in the final year as a bit of icing on the cake. So you're not really invested in by the teachers, you know? It's really just so you can say I graduated.

• 7:45Simon Sinek?

  Good for the resume.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah. But I wanted to be really trained there. I wanted to become one of them.

• 7:50Simon Sinek?

  It was in the newspaper, right?

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was in the newspapers and...

• 7:54Simon Sinek?

  Because you were so young getting into the school.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah.

• 7:57Simon Sinek?

  So you go to Russia, and you go through the school. Was it hard? Was it?

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:03Simon Sinek?

  Did they teach you like math and normal stuff too? Or is it just dance all the time?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  So the Russian students had academics, much like we had at the Royal Ballet School. We had academics in the morning.

• 8:13Simon Sinek?

  Because you have minimum schooling requirements as required by law.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, yeah, so we did our GCSEs and our... And actually, you know, my parents spoke to me about it because they said, you know, you could do online school. Like, we could try to get your A-levels whilst you're there. And we had a chat about it. And they're very open about the approach that I wanted to go down. And I said, look, I just don't think I can focus on these two very intense things at the same time. And I just said to them, look, if this doesn't go well, then I'll do my studies afterwards because you can. Whereas with ballet, this is the only time I have, and I need to devote absolutely everything to it. So as the foreign students, we had Russian language and some of them did online school.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  But apart from that, it was just day in, day out, the training every day. And obviously, initially very difficult. It's all in Russian. All the classes are in Russian. And so I got very good at watching and analyzing the teacher because they would show you wrong and then show you right. And often, I would be praised as, why is this English girl getting the corrections and you guys aren't? She doesn't even speak the language, which I think then helped me much later in what I do now in explaining things to people.

• 9:29Simon Sinek?

  And I want to be clear because I think a lot of people who are listening to us don't know ballet and what it takes. I would argue that more professional ballerinas, even amateur ballerinas, they're more athletes than artists. Some of them are artists. They love the artist tree. But this is an intense athletic pursuit.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:49Simon Sinek?

  And you can break a sweat just by standing because all your muscles are engaged so tightly. And you're on your toes, which is unnatural. Bloody feet is normal.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  I think it's all slightly unnatural.

• 10:05Simon Sinek?

  The whole thing is unnatural. All of ballet is unnatural. It's true. And what you see on the stage are smiles and everything easy. You know, I had the opportunity to watch a performance from the Wings of the New York City Ballet. And the best part about it was recognizing the artifice, which everybody's smiling and happy and joyous. And when they're on the stage and the minute they break the wings, the minute they come backstage, they're exhausted and in pain. And I don't think people realize the intensity of this athletic pursuit.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  No, and that's what makes it very different from sports. Because in sport, you can show the effort. You can, you can like take your deep breaths. You know, some of them make noise just before they do something. And it's almost like when you watch sport, you understand how difficult it is because the athlete shows how difficult it is.

• 10:50Simon Sinek?

  And if something hurts, they fall on the ground and.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Whereas with ballet, we train so hard to make it look so easy that you have no idea how difficult it is. Or when we run offstage, we're literally dying inside. You know, panting, sweating, maybe we're on painkillers from something. You know, you would just never know. But that's why we train from so young and train for eight hours a day.

• 11:19Simon Sinek?

  It's insane.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is insane, but it is an artistic pursuit as well. Because even when we, and this is why the Russian school as well was so amazing, because they are very in touch with their soul and their artistic depth and the way they move. And so when you learn a basic movement such as an arabesque in ballet, when you have your leg up at the back and your arms in front, they will help you understand how to do that in an artistic way. So it becomes not just a movement, but poetry at the same time. Because at the end of the day, we're not here to impress and get a score on something. We're here to make someone in the audience feel something. That's kind of the ultimate goal.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  And you can get very tied up in the technique of it because obviously you need to be good enough to make it look effortless. And that's why every year, if you're not up to par, they cut students every single year. You have to audition for the next year.

• 12:20Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:21Simon Sinek?

  So then, did you go on to dance for a company?

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Yes, so I danced in Russia, two different Russian companies. It's a common thing, once you've experienced this kind of passionate culture in Russia with ballet, even down to ordinary people go to the ballet. It's not just for the wealthy, which is often the case in Western culture.

• 12:41Simon Sinek?

  In the West, it's an elite art form.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:43Simon Sinek?

  Worse, it's an elitist art form.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah.

• 12:46Simon Sinek?

  The hoi polloi go to the ballet, but in Russia, it's.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Everyone goes to the ballet. Exactly. And you see a ballerina on the street and you're like a football star. And they say, oh, my goodness, it's Lopatkin or, you know, someone like this. And so it becomes very hard to leave. You know, once you're in that environment, almost nothing else lives up to it in terms of the passion. And so, again, another reason why I'm so passionate about sharing what I've experienced, because it's an experience like no other.

• 13:16Simon Sinek?

  Okay, now, now it gets interesting. Insecurity is built into the profession.

• 13:24Simon Sinek?

  From a young age, girls are put in tight clothes to look in mirrors while they're going through puberty, constantly comparing themselves and their bodies to each other. Teachers yelling at them because of their weight. At most, there's a high school education or high school equivalency. Very few college educations. They devote their life to this art form. And if it doesn't work out professionally, or if they get hurt.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:48Simon Sinek?

  And it ends their career, you get a career-ending injury, which is fairly common. There's very little to fall back on.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:54Simon Sinek?

  And so a lot of them become angry ballet teachers because there's nothing really else to do. The entire profession breeds insecurity and the teachers don't help. And I don't think people realize that. And there's insecurity in oneself because you know, like, that's the dirty secret, which is, I don't know what I'm going to do if this doesn't work out.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:14Simon Sinek?

  And they're young. Very often, they're professionals at 16, 17 years old. Wouldn't they have stars in their eyes and no sense of reality either?

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:22Simon Sinek?

  So why did you choose to leave if things were going well?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  I had gone through a couple of bad injuries and I'd recovered from them. It's funny, when you're training as a ballet dancer, I don't even think about the possibility that it might not work out. Like, it doesn't even enter my brain, you know, because you can't.

• 14:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, because then you'll play it safe.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, you'll play it safe and you're kind of inviting it all to go wrong. There's no time to even think that it won't, you won't have the confidence to deliver. And so, yes, I had had a couple of serious injuries. I'd fractured my back and I'd managed to get back to school. It was in my last year at Vaganova, my graduation year. I missed the first five months, went back, completed it. And then I had a bad hip injury and needed surgery for this one. I rehabbed really well, went back.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  I learned what it's like to be lonely through that period. And it was throughout that period, I went back to Russia and I entered a company, which was a new company because I thought I needed a fresh start, somewhere different to where I had been before. And the environment was not good for me. It was very depressing, very isolating. And I'd just spent a year rehabbing from my hip. And I was thinking, is this it? Is this what life is going to be like? Well, then I got injured by one of the guys there because it was very aggressive pas de deux work.

• 15:51Simon Sinek?

  Pas de deux means two dancers.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 15:53Simon Sinek?

  So aggressive meaning he's throwing you around a lot.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Throwing me around a lot and, and he squeezed.

• 15:57Simon Sinek?

  I'm just translating.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he injured my rib, so I kind of didn't break it, but I hurt it. And so I said to my mom, I'm going to come home and look after my rib. And she said, I know you. If you come home, you're not going to go back. And I was like, no, no, no, I'll go back, I promise. And then I never, I never went back again.

• 16:16Simon Sinek?

  And did you dance in the UK? Did you join a company in the UK?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  I haven't spoken about this that much, but I, I went really down. And I got very depressed when I came back because I'd worked literally a year to get over my surgery. I went back and it was almost like a switch had gone off from my desire to go back in an institution and be managed. And so I was in London for a while. I tried the freelance scene in London. And it was hard, you know, I'd come from, you could say, the Harvard of ballet, you know? And suddenly I had to take also part-time jobs here and there to sustain myself. And I was kind of like, what's going on?

• 17:01Simon Sinek?

  Why didn't you quit in that, in those dark times when, you know, you're back in England? You went from being a rock star on the street to now sort of doing gig work when you could get it. Why didn't you quit and just do something else?

• 17:14Speaker 00

  I thought about it. I thought about becoming an actress. Thought about doing what my parents do and becoming a journalist. But ballet is just so a part of my core.

• 17:23Simon Sinek?

  Is it an addiction?

• 17:26Speaker 00

  It's a passion.

• 17:27Simon Sinek?

  What's the difference? What's the difference? Serious question.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  I would say my heart wants it, you know? And I'm driven day in, day out by a soul connection. And it's not something I can even choose to do. It's something I, I have to do with my soul. And I had to find my love for ballet again. And I think it took six to eight months to really come back. And I started entering the scene more. And I thought, you know, maybe I can help others. And I want to see how that feels to help other people and help young dancers. Because they were very much looking up to me as well after what I had done and where I'd gone. It was still like really rare. And that's how it started for me.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  I then started helping young dancers and I realized I could really help them. And I had a way to instill confidence and explain movements to them to get the best results out of them. Because I had spent many, many hours practicing every night whilst at the academy. When I started teaching people, I realized, well, there's a way that I can carve out this career as well for myself that is so fulfilling now. I also have the opportunity to change the culture a little bit of ballet with the voice I have now.

• 18:51Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so now let's get into the teaching.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:53Simon Sinek?

  Because this is what I discovered about you.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:55Simon Sinek?

  On the Instagram. The way you teach is quite different.

• 19:00Simon Sinek?

  You came from this intense school. Say what you want about the way they teach, they get results. As you said, you know, Nuryev, Borishnikov, I mean.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  They know what they're doing.

• 19:12Simon Sinek?

  They know what they're doing. People who go through that school and become teachers teach the way that they were taught. I think that's fairly normal. We become our parents. What was it inside you that you chose to teach differently and develop your own way of teaching?

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yes, well, the best teachers I've had have this very nice balance of.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Blunt, genuine honesty with their feedback, but also they have a sense of humor with them as well. And although the Russians are very, very strict, they had a hugely wacky sense of humor. And it's also not for everybody. There were many occasions in the school, for example, I'll just tell a story where one of these older teachers, a male teacher, was watching my class. And he was then in this corridor, and the corridors in this school are massive. So he was right down the corridor. And he shouted from down the corridor, "England", like that. I was like, "That must be me." So I turned around and I was like, "Yes."

• 20:22Speaker 00

  And then he was like, "Are you stupid? Are you stupid?" And he like knocked on my head and did that because they do that all the time. Like, "Is there anything in there?" And I was like, "Um, I, I, maybe." And he said, you know, "I gave you a correction yesterday for this one exercise, and you applied it to that exercise, and you didn't apply it to anything else. Are you stupid?" You know, and I was like, "Yes, that was a very silly thing to do, got it." But I just loved it.

• 20:53Simon Sinek?

  That, if you, you can't do that in a Western school.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  You can't do that anywhere.

• 20:58Simon Sinek?

  You can't do that anywhere. But going back to insecurity and sort of self-confidence, like you could take that, but a lot of people can't. Or is it if you get into that school, you can take it?

• 21:07Speaker 00

  A lot of people can't take it. A lot of people leave.

• 21:11Simon Sinek?

  Teacher can't tell you you're stupid?

• 21:13Speaker 00

  No, no, they can't. But I knew also, number one, I was very grateful to be there. The fact I was even there was a miracle. I could easily separate the culture I'm from, and I understood the culture and also generation that they were from. This guy was like eighty years old.

• 21:31Simon Sinek?

  Okay. So you were able to create?

• 21:33Speaker 00

  I was able to separate and understand.

• 21:35Simon Sinek?

  You're able to, you're able to not take it personally?

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah, I had to.

• 21:40Simon Sinek?

  So how do you teach people not to take criticism personally? Because we live in a day and age where it seems that criticism is taken even more personally.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yes. So because I was able to separate myself, I could take the value in what they could give me, which was the very honest, genuine feedback and criticism, which is very important. You can't dance around, no pun intended, like the facts of what you need to work on. Because whereas in some institutions, it can feel like the teacher's up here and the student's down here. I resonate so much with like a tennis coach and a tennis player. I think you should be on the same level with your students and make it seem very much like we're a team doing this together. I'm here to get you to where you want to go as a teammate, rather than I'm telling you what to do, do it or else.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And that can be easily the scenarios in these institutions. And so I took the way I was taught, which was very open, very honest, very genuine, but I do it with a sense of encouragement and confidence building and more in the sense that I'm making you understand that you're capable of so much more than you realize. So let's get you there together.

• 22:57Simon Sinek?

  So let's leave Russia for a second.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:59Simon Sinek?

  Can you paint a picture for people who are listening? Can you paint a picture for how feedback or the teacher-student dynamic exists in the West? Give me a real life scenario of something specific you're working on with somebody and how it would traditionally go and how you're doing it.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Number one, I think, let's say we're working on a pirouette.

• 23:19Simon Sinek?

  So that's when you spin around.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  That's when we spin around.

• 23:22Simon Sinek?

  A spinny, a spinny thing.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Hopefully you don't fall over.

• 23:24Simon Sinek?

  Right, but so one spinny thing.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, one, no, at least three.

• 23:28Simon Sinek?

  Three spinny things.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  But in the, in the UK, it could be just a very soft approach, such as, "Okay, that's better." Or when you see there's still something to fix, we might move on from it already and say, "Okay, great, let's move on." Whereas in my case, I can't, and I feel like it's a disservice to not give everything you possibly can to that student in this moment. And so I would say, "Okay, you're doing this good, well done, but you're still not doing this. We need to do it one more time, and I want you to focus on getting that clean fifth position, which is when you land afterwards."

• 24:12Speaker 00

  And I'll say, "This time, focus on this, focus on this." And what I do that's different to other people is I very much tell them how to do it. So I don't mind spending five minutes more on something and telling them to think, "You need to think about lifting this arm up more or thinking about certain muscles." So they really understand the how behind the movement. Often in ballet schools and normal dropping classes, they'll say what the result needs to be. So they'll say, "You need to land in a clean fifth." Or "You need to turn out more." And you're just supposed to say, "Okay." You know, that's what it's like in any other scenario. Whereas what I do is I'll tell them how to actually make that happen.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Because I think if I can teach someone to understand how to do something, then they're more likely to be consistent with that movement. So they can then think in a certain way themselves. So when they go to do that movement again, they almost have the blueprint of things to think about to do it.

• 25:13Simon Sinek?

  So this is the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast, right? Because I think there is lessons to be learned here that go way beyond ballet. And this is one of my favorite things, which is how we learn things outside of, you know, our lane that we're in. And this is why even on this podcast, I have guests from all sort of walks of life because I think there's lessons to learn from everywhere.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:31Simon Sinek?

  And I think this is actually fairly common. I see it in schools, but I also see it in business, where somebody in a senior position, you know, the work isn't good enough. They say, "I need you to get to this," and they point to the goal.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:42Simon Sinek?

  And so you're not there yet. "I need you to work, I need, see if you can get here," right? And then walk away. And if it doesn't work, you say, "No, no, no, you're still not there yet." Now, I've seen it happen where somebody's confidence gets slowly chipped away at because you keep missing the goal. And even a well-intentioned, good leader is like, "No, no, no." Like even if they're patient, say, "You know, good job, way to go. You know, just a little further, see if you can get here." Like, I see it all the time. But what you're doing is stopping and slowing down.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 26:13Simon Sinek?

  And you said it yourself, you're becoming the coach, not the boss. And you're saying, "Okay, but you're being, but you're being honest. You're doing good work, but you missed the goal. Let's take a look at what you're doing, and let's work together to see where the technique or the way you're doing it, maybe I can help." And you have to have a willing participant who says, "Yes, show me."

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:34Simon Sinek?

  That's part of it as well. And then you work together, and then you go away, and then they try again. And that's what I wanted to capture here, which is this idea of even though you have stature, even though you have position, even though they'll do what you say, it's the idea of slowing down and breaking things down to help people get to where they're going, rather than just saying, good, giving them the feedback, pointing out the things and then walking away, but actually showing them

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:00Simon Sinek?

  how to do it, not just pointing out what's not working.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Definitely. I mean, me getting to the, the level I did in ballet was not what people expected of me to attain. Because throughout my whole training period, I was told, "You're not flexible enough, and you don't have enough turnout." And turnout, obviously.

• 27:19Simon Sinek?

  Is when your, your feet are, like a duck.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can spot us down the street. When we turn out, it's, it's the major thing in ballet.

• 27:27Simon Sinek?

  It's the thing, yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  It's the thing.

• 27:28Simon Sinek?

  It's the starting point.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  And so you don't have enough turnout, good luck.

• 27:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  But again, I was like, "Well, you're not telling me how to turn out."

• 27:36Simon Sinek?

  Right, you don't have enough turnout versus tell me how to turn out.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so me being quite stubborn and thinking, "Well, all I've got to do is try." Another thing I try to implement in my students is I've noticed a lot of people give up before they've even started. A lot of people put limitations on themselves before they've even tried. You know, when I give exercises out on my social media or something, someone says, "Well, it's all right for you. You know, you're really flexible." And I say, "Well, have you even tried? Have you even seen how far you can go? What if you start? You don't know how much you can improve."

• 28:11Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  And so I think there's a lesson there in, again, all walks of life. How do we know how far we can go if we don't even start the process and try?

• 28:23Simon Sinek?

  Which raises another interesting question, which is the question of risk.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:27Simon Sinek?

  And the question of risk, especially with a young, the young generation. And you work with a lot of young pre-professionals and you work with adults. When I was younger, if I tripped over in the cafeteria and my meal went everywhere, everyone would laugh, everyone would point. I would be humiliated. And maybe people would come up to me, make fun of me later that day. But give it a couple of days, everybody's moved on. And today, everybody's cameras are out.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 28:54Simon Sinek?

  And your tripping over in the cafeteria will now be memorialized on YouTube forever or Snapchat or wherever they're putting it, right? And so you cannot escape the sort of ups and downs of growing up or just being stupid, you know, tripping over and things. Now. I've heard that young people, if you go to a dance party or a club, they don't dance. Nobody dances. Everybody just stands around the dance floor because people are too afraid of dancing and somebody filming it and being humiliated and having that put on social media.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:28Simon Sinek?

  And so their risk tolerance for experimentation or just having fun has declined.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:36Simon Sinek?

  It's been replaced by fear.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely.

• 29:39Simon Sinek?

  And so you have a young generation coming up with a very low risk tolerance to try new things.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 29:44Simon Sinek?

  Or, as in your case, point and say, well, you can do it. I'm not even gonna try because that risk tolerance now affects everything in their lives.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  It's something I'm very passionate about, actually. The opportunities for young people, like in the ballet world, like if they wanna do a summer intensive, or there's a lot of focus on competing and competitions, even when students do summer courses or something that's supposed to be just fun for them, there's often scholarships at the end of it that are handed out. There's often some kind of prize that's handed out. And I very intentionally remove all of that when I do my pre-professional.

• 30:25Simon Sinek?

  No stakes.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  No stakes. Like, we're here to just get better as a group. And we're here to learn, like we do in pro ballet school. We're here to encourage you. We're here to make sure you leave more confident. I call my intensives for the kids, the ballet lab, like a laboratory.

• 30:43Simon Sinek?

  It's a place for experimentation.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz I want them to experiment. I want them to make mistakes. I want them to try something new that they haven't before. And it's kind of instilling in them that you can fall over in front of me. That's fine. Like, you don't need to impress me. We're here to work on this together. You don't need to prove anything to me. And they often leave feeling a lot more confident. And they often say it's the best intensive they've been to because they just feel like the focus is on learning and not winning.

• 31:16Simon Sinek?

  You pointed something out to me. We had a conversation off camera. A young ballerina who'll be showing off her stuff on Instagram.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, social media is a big thing for young students now. And it's a tricky thing because I find young students are chasing the skill of ballet now. So they like to post that they can do 20 pirouettes. And they get a lot of social validation. It can warp their sense of how good they actually are in the real world. You know, because a ballet school or a ballet director, they don't really care if you can do 20 pirouettes. They just wanna see that you are a nice dancer and you can do certain things in the ballet class. But it is a big problem in terms of the competition aspect as well.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  And there was a scenario, which I think I was chatting to you about, where this 12-year-old girl was a bit of an Instagram star ballerina. And she was competing in this competition and she didn't win. And she said to her mom, crying to her mother, please don't post this on social media because I don't want my followers to know that I haven't won. I don't want them to know that I failed. And she's 12. And it made me so concerned as well that that is what she's focusing on in terms of her success, both as a young girl and also as a prominent ballet student.

• 32:46Simon Sinek?

  Hmm. My mind is bubbling because it's, because there's so many things happening here, right? Which is, we've become so obsessed with outcome, we've forgotten process.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 32:55Simon Sinek?

  We've become so obsessed with winning, we've forgotten improvement.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's a slippery slope.

• 33:00Simon Sinek?

  And I've talked about this in terms of AI. AI is only an outcome machine, but there's no process. And so, sure, AI can write the letter, but you still don't know how to write. And sure, AI can help you resolve the conflict with your boss, your spouse, whatever, but you still don't know how to resolve conflict. It's, everything is about the goal, the goal, the goal, the goal. And we've forgotten about growth, improvement, experimentation, taking risks. All of these extremely human things are sort of being engineered out of us. And now you have this young ballerina who puts herself out as perfect. She's got a huge following on the Instagram because people are looking at her perfect turnout or her perfect 20 pirouettes.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  And especially in this dancer's case, the focus becomes on being better than somebody else. And that doesn't create a legendary artist. Like, sure, you might do well in this ballet competition, but are you gonna stand the test of time if that's your focus, is just being better than someone else? It should be about the process. You kind of have to figure out what works for you in terms of your, your chart on where you focus, the percentage of your work. Is it process half and performance half and half? Or is it mostly process and slightly more performance? For me, process was probably like 75% of it because then I found I was confident in my performance and it was a result of the process.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  But actually, you're correct. In that dancer, when I worked with them in a process scenario, I had to go right back to the beginning. There was so many problems, problems which, if you go to a pro ballet school, they would think, oh, you're going to take too much time for me to fix. And so she wouldn't do that well. And so, again, it goes back to like, why are you doing this in the first place? Why are you doing this ballet competition? Why are you trying to be better than someone else? Why did you start ballet? And I always ask students that because I think with the rise of competing and social media, which is different to sports, we're not supposed to be competing in ballet in the same way. They lose all sense of why they're doing it.

• 35:04Simon Sinek?

  I like this idea. Focus 75% on process and 25% on performance. And we're in a world that's largely 75% on performance and what process do I need to do to win versus improve?

• 35:16Speaker 00

  I mean, you can get very stuck in process.

• 35:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  And very, and overthink everything.

• 35:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Analysis paralysis.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Yes. And then not have enough confidence to perform. To a certain degree, you need to have this kind of periodic moment of being put on, you know, let's say, literally the stage or a scenario where you have to show your process of, show what you've worked on so that you can then see the result of what you've been churning all those hours over. But when all the focus is on performance, your process becomes performance. So you neglect all your fundamentals, everything else that needs to be ingrained, you know, laying the foundations of your house. You skip all of that.

• 35:58Simon Sinek?

  I mean, this is so true. I mean, you see people, there's great studio ballerinas. Like, they're fantastic in the studio, but they're too afraid to go on stage.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:05Simon Sinek?

  And, but I think it's very true in the real world too, which is, you know, somebody, they come up with any manner of excuses. I'm an introvert, or I'm uncomfortable in public places, or, you know, and they don't wanna present their work.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 36:16Simon Sinek?

  You know, they wanna do the work, they're good at their work, but they don't wanna present their work. So there's somebody who's good at process, but there is no performance, or they resist the performance for fear of humiliation. And then there's the opposite, which is the people who put me in, put me in. And you realize that they're sort of faking it sometimes, presenting other people's work sometimes, but if you peel the onion, there, it's a little bit of lying, hiding and faking.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 36:38Simon Sinek?

  And you're right, that a good leader pushes the person to perform, even though it makes them uncomfortable. And how you do that, it's not just, I need you to perform, I need you to do this presentation, I need you to be on stage, but let me show you the, the mechanics of, going back to the how you do it, slowing down and saying, okay, you've done great work, let me show you how to present your work.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. From my experience in ballet school, we're kind of seen like an army of students. And we're given all the same opportunities, let's say. But sometimes, for example, I'm not a naturally confident person. That's something I've really had to work on. I only felt confident when my process was intact, when I had enough process time, I could trust myself with performance. And so when a teacher didn't quite see that I needed more confidence building, she might push me 20 steps ahead than I'm ready for and say, we're gonna put you in this thing, sink or swim, which didn't work for me at all because it wasn't done in a, in a kind of nurturing way.

• 37:41Simon Sinek?

  This is the insight for me. This is why I wanted you on this episode. This is the insight that you've given me, which is, we're living in a world where the confidence that we get comes sporadically. You have a great performance, you win the race, you get the promotion, you get lots of adoration on Instagram or TikTok, you get lots of likes, that the feeling of confidence you get spikes in that moment. And you believe that you are confident until the win was last week. Everybody's moved on from your post. The competition is complete. And now you're left with just being you because, and you can't live off those past wins forever,

• 38:26Simon Sinek?

  you know, they last a little bit.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 38:28Simon Sinek?

  And then the confidence starts to go down. And so you desperately need another win, you desperately need another post that gets lots of likes, you desperately need another hit.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:38Simon Sinek?

  To get the confidence up again. And so we falsely believe that if I keep winning, or if I keep getting successful posts, or if I keep putting myself out there, then I will build my confidence. And it's really just this peaks and valleys of confidence.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:51Simon Sinek?

  Whereas, what you, what I'm learning from you is, if you focus 75% on process.

• 38:57Simon Sinek?

  The confidence you're building is innate. What you learn is that I'm really good. Like, look at my process. I'm rea- I lost the competition because they were better.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:07Simon Sinek?

  But I'm really good. I'm disappointed I lost the competition. It didn't go like I would like, but I'm really good. And the sense that the peaks and valleys of winning, though they still exist, you still get the hit when you win. The valley is not deep.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 39:22Simon Sinek?

  You get a little spike and then that comes down to a higher plateau.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:26Simon Sinek?

  And this is what I'm learning from you, which is winning feels good for everybody. But if you learn process, you learn technique, you work on your thing. Not only do you get good at the underlying skill set, and there's always going to be somebody better than you. And this idea of being the best, it's in a competition. It's only that day versus those people.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 39:46Simon Sinek?

  And somebody else might have gotten lucky.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:49Simon Sinek?

  That happens too.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:50Simon Sinek?

  This is for me, the insight. Focus on process and you build real confidence, not fake confidence or temporary confidence.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. You know, these students I'm mentioning, they do maybe six competitions a year and they train the same variations. So in ballet, we have these things called variations, which if you watched Swan Lake, there might be a two-minute dance in it that everyone knows. And so you train that for a competition. And so the panel will judge you on that kind of thing. And it will have like certain technical things in it. And so they'll be doing those movements for like six months out of the year, every single day rehearsing this variation. And so they'll look really good.

• 40:33Simon Sinek?

  Doing that one thing.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Doing that one thing. Ask them to do a standard ballet class and I'll be like, why can't you do a tendu?

• 40:40Simon Sinek?

  A tendu is a very, very, very, very, very basic technique. Putting, putting your foot forwards or sideways.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Just your legs are straight and you just send it out in a direction.

• 40:49Simon Sinek?

  That's it.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  And.

• 40:51Simon Sinek?

  So they can't even do the basics?

• 40:52Speaker 00

  No, and I have to go right back to the beginning with them. Like you said, because I focused and professional, I would say the real professionals focus on process. We know what we need to work on in terms of it's more a case of, oh, I've got to work on my confidence on stage rather than my actual skill of being on stage. The skill is there. I've laid it all down. Now it's just experience.

• 41:15Simon Sinek?

  You moved away from being a professional dancer yourself to becoming a teacher. You developed your own style of teaching. You hinted at it before, which is the joy you get from teaching that you didn't expect you would get. Can you tell me a specific story of a specific student that captures why it's all of this new challenge that you face is all worth it?

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So personally, I wish I had had more confidence in myself and had enjoyed the process more. It was very hard on myself. And it was quite recently, I had my summer intensive and I had an advanced group. And one of the students in there, who I've been in touch with a long time, coaching her on the side when she's not at school, because she goes to professional ballet school. And she's recently gone to a very, very prestigious school. And she was training with me and it was the first time I'd seen her after a while of her training in one of these very intense institutions. And I was watching her initially at the bar and she was making a few mistakes.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  And I could see her face like change every time she made an error. You could see the kind of inner dialogue she was telling herself, which was probably negative. Like, oh, you got that wrong or you're not good enough. And at one point, she, she left the class and went to the bathroom. And I was like, oh, she's having a hard time. She was also recovering from a, a bad injury as well. And I knew what she was going through.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  And during one of the combinations, I just went up to her as she was doing it. And I just gave her a look and I was like, listen, you've got this. You've come a really long way and you're ready. You're ready to go back. Cause she was going to go back to this school the next day after we'd finished. And her expression just like changed and she was like, you're right. And it was just this sense of if I can instill in somebody that they can trust themselves and they can trust that it's everything, all their hard work will pay off. And this is all part of the process. You don't need to be perfect right now. What is that?

• 43:30Speaker 00

  In ballet, we're kind of hardwired to expect perfection from ourselves right now. Like for that teacher in front of the room. And if we don't deliver, we're just not good enough. And what I try to instill in them is like, if you leave this room just slightly better than yesterday, then you're doing great. You don't need to be what your ideal is of perfection right now. And what I loved seeing with her was she was making mistakes, but she was laughing it off. And then she would try again and I would give her feedback. And instead of seeing the feedback as a kind of negative criticism, she was like, okay. And she did it again. After the intensive, she came up to me and said, now I know what inspiration is.

• 44:13Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  And now I know what that means.

• 44:17Simon Sinek?

  This is such an important insight, right? Cause we so often try and help people we care about, even well-intentioned leaders, build their skills. And yet it's hard for some people to hear feedback.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:32Simon Sinek?

  Even if it's well-intended, even if it's well-presented feedback. And we really have to work to help the people on our team build their confidence. This is the story you're telling. Cause when their confidence is built, they can hear the feedback. Where before you built her confidence back up, any feedback you gave, even it was honest, she took as criticism. She took as a spotlight on what she's doing wrong.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:56Simon Sinek?

  When you built her confidence, she took the criticism as feedback and I can work on that.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:03Simon Sinek?

  And she could laugh off mistakes rather than feeling devastated by mistakes, knowing that she's going back to this word. This is part of the process.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then the results be for themselves. She does better because she's more confident.

• 45:15Simon Sinek?

  Which builds her more confidence. And then it's a, it's a.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. And she's.

• 45:18Simon Sinek?

  Virtuous cycle.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Exactly. And she's more likely to have a mindset that lasts a career.

• 45:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  And beyond, yeah. Rather than one which will eventually batter you down and you'll quit because you'll have nothing left. And so that's ultimately what I'm doing.

• 45:35Simon Sinek?

  I love finding lessons in extreme examples because the lessons are more obvious.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:39Simon Sinek?

  And ballet for me is an important thing for people to study because it is an extreme example of perfectionism and people who are driven by perfection. And every dancer, all they do is try to achieve perfection. And every time they're in class, they're all going to say it was imperfect.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:56Simon Sinek?

  And it's, it's a group of perfectionists in a constant struggle to find perfection. And for anybody who suffers from perfectionism, anybody who struggles with, you know, any mistake they make is a blight on their identity.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 46:11Simon Sinek?

  I think you need to go take a ballet class with a teacher like you and understand process because you're in a room of people who it's always going to be imperfect. And for the ones that don't build their confidence, it, it'll destroy them on stage and off.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:26Simon Sinek?

  And for those that build their confidence, they'll have, successful careers or not, it's fine, but they'll have joy.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:32Simon Sinek?

  And they'll move on to whatever they do next and bring that with them. I'm being really serious. Anybody who's a recovering perfectionist or struggling perfectionist, go take some ballet classes because on day one, you will suck.

• 46:44Speaker 00

  It's humbling.

• 46:45Simon Sinek?

  It is. You, you don't even, you thought you know how to lift your leg up. You do not know how to lift your leg up, you know?

• 46:51Speaker 00

  No.

• 46:51Simon Sinek?

  You don't know how to do anything. You have to rewire your whole body.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Need to drop all ego.

• 46:56Simon Sinek?

  And the first time you make a movement that looks nice, that probably took weeks to get there, just one rinky-dink tendu that actually looks like a tendu. It, it, it's crazy.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  That's what keeps you going as well.

• 47:10Simon Sinek?

  That's what keeps you going. It is process. Take a class from a teacher like you, that it's not about banging a stick or saying you got it wrong or try again, but rather somebody who takes care to help you build your confidence and learn process rather than just movement.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And not an environment based on fear.

• 47:25Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Because that makes a very, very inconsistent results in a scared dancer. So if your process environment is circled around fear, then so are your performance. And you will have massive fear of failure.

• 47:43Simon Sinek?

  We've been talking about the students. What about the teachers? Cause you sometimes have the perfectionist who then gets promoted to be the boss.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 47:48Simon Sinek?

  So what happens in ballet when that perfectionist now is the teacher? That can't be good.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, I've had my fair share of, of teachers. The teachers are often, going back to these institutions again, they're under a lot of pressure. You know, from higher up, they have to deliver. They have to show that these students will become professional ballet dancers, you know? And unfortunately, that can bring this energy into the room. And unfortunately, those teachers can be quite toxic because they project a lot of their own insecurities onto the students. And so you then become fearful of, oh my God, I've got to not make the same mistake I made yesterday or I will be punished in some way. But also going back to the performance thing and the competing thing,

• 48:39Speaker 00

  a lot of teachers and schools make it about them. Like I want my school to have the reputation that my student won. And so it's not even about the student. And that's a big problem, I think. Why are we making it about your reputation? When actually it's about this 12-year-old who wants to become a ballerina one day?

• 48:58Simon Sinek?

  There's so many overlaps. We had Don Yeager on the podcast and he was the biographer of John Wooden. John Wooden was, was the winning most college basketball coach in history. And he, people couldn't understand how he kept winning. And his dirty secret was he didn't care about winning. His dirty secret was he cared about his players.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 49:20Simon Sinek?

  And all he wanted to do was have them improve. And all he wanted to do was focus on the process.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:27Simon Sinek?

  You play to win, but you don't train to win. You train to get better. And this is what people get wrong. Training, practice, class is not the place. You, you, nobody can train to win. You can only train to get the movement better, to get the play better.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 49:42Simon Sinek?

  That's the only thing you can do. And if you learn to perfect the play, if you learn to perfect the movement, when it's game day, you're more likely to win.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:51Simon Sinek?

  But you can't train to win. It doesn't exist. All he did was build their confidence. All he did was focus on process, process, process, process when they're in training.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:58Simon Sinek?

  Training was used to improve the, the movements.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:01Simon Sinek?

  And then game day is game day. We'll see what happens. Sometimes the other team plays better than us. And so there's so many overlaps in the best coaches in sports, the best leaders in business and in what you're doing, that you said this to me when we were off camera, ballet is a little bit behind. Like all ballet schools and teachers should be like you. You shouldn't be the standout. You shouldn't be on some podcast talking about what you're doing is special. You should just be one of many because this is how it should be.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:25Simon Sinek?

  By the way, I feel the same about leaders. This is how leadership should be. Like I shouldn't be on a podcast talking about leadership either.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 50:31Simon Sinek?

  It should be so normal that it's so unimpressive.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:34Simon Sinek?

  There's so much overlap because it's human beings.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, it feels very normal for me to teach in the way I do. And it's very strange that people don't teach in or lead in that way. But I think my generation taking over now is at a good place because we understand what it was like to be treated probably not so great in the studio. And we want to change that. And we also know what it's like for young people now and we want to instill confidence. So I do think there will be a change when we start to step into more leadership roles, like directing companies, directing schools.

• 51:15Simon Sinek?

  So good. So interesting. Thanks for coming on.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

• 51:19Simon Sinek?

  I really appreciate it. It's a lot of good stuff. As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to A Bit of Optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.