Pickleball, Leadership, and Intrinsic Motivation, Oh My!
By now you've heard about it, maybe even picked up a paddle, but you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports right now. I started playing, just as a small hobby to start, last summer. I never imagined that I’d be as obsessed as I am now – with my $200 racket and regular games 3x a week.
But of course, throughout my own rise as a pickleball player, I’ve seen the ways in which this sport, or trying something new in general, relates to leadership development.
So let’s break it down in under 20 minutes today so that you, too, can pick up a new hobby and become a better leader while you’re at it. Cheers!
On this episode you’ll hear…
How Chaili made time for a new hobby, why she chose pickleball, and how she got hooked
Why not making time for play is a disservice to your leadership and the necessity of thinking holistically
Five main drivers of intrinsic motivation and using them to start something new in your own life
Ready for more?
Listen in:
-
** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:01
By now you've heard about it, maybe even picked up a paddle. But you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports right now. And when it started as a sport your mom was playing on Thursday mornings, maybe you thought it was more a slower game for ex tennis players or retirees in general. But maybe you've recently seen a major league pickleball game on TV and thought, wait a minute. And then your favorite football player or YouTuber has posted about this as their current obsession. And now you're starting to get curious. Well, listen, that curiosity is step number one to why Pickleball is going to help your leadership. Are you ready for this? I've always said that this podcast is for leaders with the to do list a mile long. So the short and sweet episodes allow you to do some leadership development over a cup of coffee during what would otherwise be a slammed day. So how do you have time for a new hobby, right or a new sport? Honestly, I felt the same way. But then this past fall, kids went to school and my workload was more manageable. And so I ventured out onto a pickleball court with my mom, who was an avid pickleball player, and some friends from her league. And like any of you listening who have played pickleball you know what happened next, after I figured out the scoring system, and what the heck the rules of the kitchen were, I was hooked. And not just like play for fun on weekends hooked. It's a full blown bought a $200 paddle join two leagues, I play three days a week kind of hooked to the sport. But then I've started to see others picking it up and experiencing that same kind of commitment to the game like putting their phone down in the middle of the workday to go hard on the court for two hours or driving 45 minutes after work to make it to games on time when they haven't played an organized sport since college. And so I started thinking about what this pickleball obsession is actually doing to us and to our minds. And realize that there's some connection points here that we should talk about on the podcast today. So often leaders, well, mostly friends of mine will say I need a hobby, or I don't have anything that I do purely for fun. I don't know how to play. And honestly, that's such a disservice to your leadership. And so thinking about pickleball, here's why you need pickleball or any hobby really, it's because the outside space outside of your leadership Prime's your neurobiological state for being better in other areas of your life. It's why Patagonia lets employees at their headquarters in Ventura serve, and tech companies will give their employees that 15 or 20% time to explore passion projects, it's really time to start thinking holistically about your leadership development plan. And that includes play that includes a hobby that includes some fun. So by stepping out of our routine, and rhythm with an activity like pickleball, we actually up our drive and motivation across the board. So there's some science to this, we know that motivation is impacted by five intrinsic drivers. These are the pieces of the puzzle that when locked into place, move us to our best performance. Okay, so let's talk about these drivers so that you can kind of get a picture here of why I want to convince you to start playing pickleball. And it's not just because I want you to come hang out with me and play with me. But let's talk about these drivers. So the number one driver is curiosity, which is why most people are stepping out onto a pickleball court in general. They're wondering why everyone is raving about this, what's the big deal, right. And that level of curiosity amongst so many people, is why I realized there's more to the sporty trend. And it goes beyond just that first intrinsic driver of of getting curious and getting out there because then people are getting hooked and they keep coming back. So the second and third drivers have intrinsic motivation, or passion and purpose. Maybe you were an athlete before and so that passion hasn't been stirred up in a while because you haven't had space for a sport. And your purpose for pickleball or any movement hobby is likely you want to increase your energy, get out and do a workout or do something fun, right. But a key ingredient for increasing passion is public success. And this is positive attention from others. And when we have that social interaction, it releases chemicals into our brain that create feelings of trust and love. So I realized that this pickable obsession is really being translated into passion rather quickly because we're getting out there on a court with others and getting immediate feedback and attention. And so it's this loop right where we're getting that feedback immediately. Lee, it's increasing those chemicals in the brain that make us feel something for that passion. And then when we boil down purpose, which is linked with that, that's all about caring and connection, which is exactly what you find on the court with your partners, and your pickleball. Pals, your friends that you get out there with. So I play every week with a group of women, and I really enjoy being with them. And I totally feel FOMO if I have to miss a week, and I know they're all together playing. And so Pickleball is purpose really, for many has been community building, it's friendship, it's connection. And so it's increasing that intrinsic motivation, to continuing doing what you're doing and getting back out there. Because you're finding that curiosity, passion and purpose part of the puzzle when it comes to motivation in general. And so when you start to tether all of those things together with his game, you're headed in the right direction. But then you also have to add in other drivers of motivation, which are autonomy, the freedom to pursue that passion and purpose, and mastery, which is the path towards expertise, right? It's the process of becoming better. So those are the five pieces, right? Curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. And here's the thing, all five of those intrinsic drivers that push our motivation in any activity, what it's doing is sending dopamine into our system, and sometimes norepinephrine, and oxytocin. And when all of those intrinsic drivers are aligned and firing, and releasing those chemicals into our bodies and our brains, they're also lowering our cognitive load. This is the psychological weight of all the things we're thinking about at any one time. Right? By lowering cognitive load, we free up energy to focus and pay attention to what's right in front of us. I play pickleball on Tuesday nights with a leader who she has a really intense job, and she's there all day long, and then comes to pick a ball in the evenings. And when we play, she says that's her escape, that's her me time. And so she's really experiencing that state of being able to put her attention on what's right in front of her step outside of work away from stressors and find flow, which you've heard me talk about flow before on the podcast, you know that I'm a big fan of the work of me, hi, chicks, and Mihai, the positive psychology founder of flow. But it's central to doing things that we feel connected to, and being willing to face a challenge, because we know that we have the skill sets that we need to try and to be in the moment and engaging with what's right in front of us. So when we're regularly practicing walking through these intrinsic drivers, we're regularly plaque practicing lowering cognitive load, letting go of all of this stuff externally and focusing on what's right in front of us putting our attention into one space. When we're doing that, it's what Steven Kotler would call the full intrinsic stack, then we're actually deepening the neuro chemistry connections behind these feelings and our passion or pickleball obsession in this case, and that that obsession or passion grows even more. And we want to play again, we want to repeat the actions, we want to get better over time. So fostering the intrinsic stack. Those five drivers of intrinsic motivation is the process of getting our body and our brain to work better for us to lower anxiety and depression and connect to values that we believe in and to connect to meaningful values. So why should leaders play pickleball? Listen, it's not even about pickleball, actually, although I think you should, but it's about finding any rhythms that you can replicate on the path to peak performance, pushing yourself in an area. So that feeling of success. So that feeling of being connected to your values, and feeling passion and purpose and curiosity and having that drive becomes familiar. And then you can transfer that to another context. If you've heard Scott salesman's interviews here on the podcast, then, you know, he has spent significant time talking about the intersection of leadership development and high performance, the need for both as you grow as a whole leader. And we really believe that people need to be consistently working on that leadership mindset, and navigating the space where we are leaders who are also striving to be our best who are striving for optimal performance. So they say anyone can play pickleball but few can master the skills to be great at it. And that's why so many people are getting out on the court, right? It's a sport that anyone can pick up a paddle and get out there and play a little bit like ping pong. So is leadership any different? We all know leaders who have a title or we wonder how How they got to the place that they're at or the seat that they're in where they are right now. But have they really mastered the art of leadership? Or the commitment to guiding others towards their best selves at work? Right? We know that anyone really can step into a position of leadership, but have they mastered the art of leadership? So leaders? What is your pickleball? What is the thing that gives you autonomy and freedom to carve out time in your schedule and step into a space that inspires you, makes you curious challenges you makes you feel good. So that when you step back into the next problem solving moment with your team at work, you feel motivated and connected to yourself and at your psychological best to? And if an intrinsically motivated activity is not a part of your leadership development plan, then why not? What could it be? Let me recap. So you consider how you would connect pickle ball with the five drivers K? And or what could that thing be that you could connect to these five drivers of intrinsic motivation, the intrinsic stack. So number one, curiosity. Pickleball is a sport you've never played before. Unlikely with partners and people on the court outside of your typical sphere of connection. Two and Three, passion and purpose, maybe you were an athlete, or maybe you set a new year's resolution to play more or be more active, you might not have set out to be a pro football player. But most people can admit that a healthy dose of competition in a game mixed with physical activity makes us feel really good. It drives us it combines just enough passion and purpose to keep us going and trying for more autonomy. The fourth factor, this is the freedom to play because here's the thing. Pickleball is highly accessible, located in nearly every city in America right now. And you can find a decent paddle on Amazon. And you can go day or night. And there's challenged courts and you can walk up as an individual and meet people immediately and jump in and play. So there's some freedom and autonomy in the way we approach it in general. But that freedom and autonomy can really apply to a lot of different hobbies or sports or activities. And so be thinking, what you can choose what freedom and flexibility do you have in your schedule to make time for something. And the final piece is mastery. And this is a key one. So often we're in a loop at work where we're doing the same thing over and over and over again, because it's part of our job where we've been there a long time and where there's lots of change happening. And so we feel like we can't quite master what's in front of us. So it's kind of we're on two ends of the spectrum. But mastery is all about the challenge skills balance right with chicks and Mihai talks about for optimal flow. The challenge at hand is just a little bit above our skill set. So it stretches us to be just a little bit more than we thought we could be. And that balance is what we need to pull us into mastery to keep trying to keep showing up to push ourselves further harder into something new. So every time you play pickleball, you'll pick up a little more more knowledge of the game consistently get better. Maybe the first time you played, you didn't know how to land a third shot job. But now you're trying to execute it consistently. And you've upped the challenge level of your opponents to see those little changes that can fuel your brain's reward system, because it's a risk taking loop that's pumping more dopamine and sending you into a new flow, state every time you get out and play. And that's what we need for mastery across lots of areas in our life. So how can you connect with those five drivers? Leaders who are creating meaningful rhythms for individual growth that can be replicated, are in the practice of showing up as their best selves on the court and off? So pickleball might not be the quick fix to being the greatest leader in your organization. But how can you add pickleball or something like it into your schedule, to continue on your journey of growth, to figure out how you can get more motivated and to be your best self. Cheers