Anthony Iapoce has worked with a range of players from all corners of the globe in his two-decades-plus as a professional baseball coach — and there’s a critical commonality he’s observed in those going through a slump.
“Usually, when a player is struggling, they become internally selfish because they're so concerned about getting out of whatever they're struggling with hitting wise or numbers wise,” said Iapoce, currently an assistant hitting coach with the Houston Astros.
The mentality isn’t necessarily malicious in intent, but it can have a deleterious effect on a player and ultimately a ballclub.
“You’re really trying to get them away from themselves, from self-sabotage,” Iapoce said. “We just try to get them back to the team. Like, what can you do for the team today?”
Iapoce’s emphasis on shifting focus from the individual amid hard times, and creating a larger cause around a collective effort, was one of the more valuable insights I took from interviews I conducted in January.
For this week’s Best of 7, I put together six other takeaways I had from my conversations with Iapoce and four-time national champion University of Minnesota Women’s Hockey Coach Brad Frost.
2. “Let it go”
Iapoce said the song from Frozen has been a key reminder for him in his career to quickly move on from disappointment.
That ability to get over a perceived injustice is particularly valuable at a level like Triple A where I would imagine it’s easy to feel overlooked, under-appreciated and downright cynical at points as players and coaches routinely come and go.
Iapoce said the ones who ultimately persevere, however, aren’t oblivious to the struggle but rather those who can instead make a quick mental shift and adapt.
“You have to let it go or else it's going to hold you down,” he said.
3. The corny mantras
As manager of the Toledo Mud Hens, Iapoce routinely repeated a couple of catchphrases to his players: “Never get offended” and “Take everything as a positive.”
“I always tell the players I'll never get offended by what you say,” Iapoce said. “I'm with you every day for 200 days. You can't get offended by what I say because we're in this together.”
It was important perspective, but I also liked that Iapoce said his players used to poke fun at him for his sayings. That, to me, was a clear indication that the mantras were resonating and that he was doing something right.
“I’ll walk past players in the locker room, and they’ll just be like, ‘Never get offended,’” Iapoce said. “That's kind of what you want.”
4. Is the risk worth it?
I was curious about Iapoce’s initial reluctance to share “Where Did it Start?” with some of the biggest names in baseball after he joined the Texas Rangers.
That doubt of whether cultural methods and larger strategies will translate to a more accomplished audience strikes me as common, but Iapoce’s decision to be vulnerable with his new team seemed to open new pathways to connect with players.
He offered what I felt was good advice to any leader debating whether to take a cultural chance with his/her team.
“The risk is definitely worth it if the intent is genuine and authentic,” he said.
5. Don’t show the sweat
I appreciated that Minnesota Women’s Hockey Coach Brad Frost said he was anxious in the days leading up to his team’s Elite Eight NCAA tournament game in 2012-13.
But Frost, to me, demonstrated real emotional intelligence by separating the negative possibilities that were running through his head from what he actually conveyed to his team.
“I could hardly eat that week,” he said. “I'm like, ‘Are we gonna be the team that goes 38-1?’”
“That was, for me as a coach, the most pressure that I've ever dealt with,” he added. “I just continued to talk about the excitement, the opportunity and the fact that we were prepared and ready.”
My takeaway was that in moments of intense pressure, very rarely will we go wrong with falling back on what’s already familiar.
6. You are what you emphasize
I found a lot of value in hearing Coach Frost mention how he outlined his program values in a first team meeting early in his career but didn’t really reinforce them as the season went on.
I think it’s incredibly common for coaches and leaders to think, “We covered that already” and move on to the next important agenda items.
But part of Frost’s evolution seemed to stem from a re-shifting of priorities and continuous reinforcement of what ultimately mattered most to him and his staff.
That, in turn, created a larger standard and expectation, allowing his program to focus more on what was actually in its control.
7. Confidence from the roots
We often hear cliches like “Confidence comes from our work” and “Competence breeds confidence,” and there’s certainly merit to these.
But I thought Iapoce’s larger point that not all struggles are overcome by investing more time and energy into the problem was well-taken.
Sometimes, restored faith comes from a simple, actionable nugget or, in the case of “Where Did it Start?”, reflecting on a time when we felt invincible.
Our foundation can offer valuable clues as to what’s actually possible.