Why winning doesn't always equal success

Valorie Kondos Field knows a lot about winning. As the longtime coach of the UCLA women's gymnastics team, she won championship after championship and has been widely acclaimed for her leadership. In this inspiring, brutally honest and, at times, gut-wrenching talk, she shares the secret to her success. Hint: it has nothing to do with "winning."

OK, I have a question for all of us.

You ready?

Is all winning success?

(Murmurs)

Oh.

(Laughter)

Whoa. OK.

I am the recently retired head coach

of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team,

a position that I held for 29 years.

(Applause)

Thank you.

And during my tenure,

I experienced a lot of winning.

I led our team to seven
National Championships,

I was inducted into
the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame

and I was even voted
the Coach of the Century

by the Pac-12 Conference.

(Applause)

Winning is really, really,

like, really, really fun.

(Laughter)

But I am here to share my insight:

winning does not always equal success.

All across America and around the world,

we have a crisis

in the win-at-all-cost cultures

that we have created.

In our schools,

in our businesses, in politics,

winning at all cost
has become acceptable.

As a society,

we honor the people
at the top of the pyramid.

We effusively applaud those people who win
championships and elections and awards.

But sadly, quite often,

those same people
are leaving their institutions

as damaged human beings.

Sadly, with straight A's,

kids are leaving school damaged.

With awards and medals,

athletes often leave their teams damaged,

emotionally, mentally,
not just physically.

And with huge profits, employees
often leave their companies damaged.

We have become so hyperfocused
on that end result,

and when the end result is a win,

the human component of how we got there

often gets swept under the proverbial rug,

and so does the damage.

So I'm calling for a time-out.

Time-out.

We need to redefine success.

Real success is developing
champions in life for our world,

win or lose.

(Applause)

Real success is developing
champions in life,

not for your team,

not for your business

and, I'm sad to tell you, not even
for your Christmas card bragging rights.

Sorry.

So how do we do this?

First of all, you may be able
to dictate your way to a win,

but you can't dictate your way to success.

Let me take you back to 1990,
when I was first appointed the head coach

of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team.

And I would like to share with you
that I've never done gymnastics.

I grew up in the world of ballet.

I have never done a cartwheel,

and I couldn't teach you
how to do a proper cartwheel.

(Laughter)

It's sadly true.

And I knew nothing about
how to develop a team culture.

The best I could do was mimic
other coaches who had won.

And so I became tough-talking,

tough-minded, relentless,

unsympathetic,

bullish, unempathetic

and oftentimes downright mean.

I acted like a head coach

whose only thought
was to figure out how to win.

My first few seasons as a head coach

were abysmal,

and after putting up with
my brash coaching style for a few years,

our team asked me for a team meeting.

Well, I love team meetings,

so I said, "Yay!
Let's have a team meeting."

And for two solid hours,

they gave me examples of how my arrogance
was hurtful and demeaning.

Yeah, not yay.

They explained to me

that they wanted to be supported,

not belittled.

They wanted to be
coached up, not torn down.

They wanted to be motivated,

not pressured or bullied.

That was my time-out,

and I chose to change.

Being a dogmatic dictator

may produce compliant,
good little soldiers,

but it doesn't develop champions in life.

It is so much easier, in any walk of life,

to dictate and give orders

than to actually figure out
how to motivate someone

to want to be better.

And the reason is -- we all know this --

motivation takes a really long time

to take root.

But when it does,

it is character-building

and life-altering.

I realized that I needed
to fortify our student-athletes

as whole human beings,

not just athletes who won.

So success for me shifted

from only focusing on winning

to developing my coaching philosophy,

which is developing champions
in life through sport.

And I knew if I did this well enough,

that champion mentality would translate
to the competition floor.

And it did.

The key ingredient was to develop trust

through patience,

respectful honesty

and accountability --

all of the ingredients
that go into tough love.

Speaking of tough love,

Katelyn Ohashi is
a perfect example of this.

You may have all seen her floor routine.

It has had over 150 million views.

And the consensus is,
her performance is pure joy.

However, when Katelyn came to UCLA,
she was broken in body, mind and spirit.

She had grown up in a stereotypical,
very high-level athletic world,

and she was damaged.

So when Katelyn came
to UCLA her freshman year,

she found her inner rebel quite well,

to the point where she was
no longer able to do gymnastics

at the level at which she was recruited.

And I will never forget

a team meeting we had
halfway through her freshman season.

We were in there with the team,
the coaching staff, the support staff,

sports psychologist,

and Katelyn very clearly
and unapologetically said,

"I just don't want to be great again."

I felt like I got sucker punched.

My first thought was,

"Then why the heck am I
going to honor your scholarship?"

It was a really snarky thought,
and thankfully I didn't say it out loud,

because then I had clarity.

Katelyn didn't hate gymnastics.

Katelyn hated everything
associated with being great.

Katelyn didn't want to be a winner,

because winning at all cost
had cost her her joy.

My job was to figure out
how to motivate her

to want to be great again,

by helping her redefine success.

My enthusiasm for that challenge
turned into determination

when one day Katelyn
looked me in the eye and said,

"Ms. Val, I just want you to know,

everything you tell me to do,
I do the exact opposite."

(Laughter)

Yeah, it was like, yeah, Katelyn,
challenge accepted. OK.

(Laughter)

And further proof that dictating
was not going to win.

So I embarked on
the painfully slow process

of building trust

and proving to her that first and foremost

I cared about her as a whole human being.

Part of my strategy was to only talk
to Katelyn about gymnastics in the gym.

Outside of the gym,
we talked about everything else:

school, boys, families,
friends, hobbies.

I encouraged her to find things
outside of her sport that brought her joy.

And it was so cool

to see the process of Katelyn Ohashi
literally blossom before our eyes.

And through that process,

she rediscovered her self-love

and self-worth.

And slowly, she was able to bring that joy

back to her gymnastics.

She went on to earn
the NCAA title on floor,

and she helped our team win
our seventh NCAA championship in 2018.

So --

Thank you.

(Applause)

So let's think about
the Katelyn Ohashis in your life.

Let's think about those people
under your care and your guidance.

What are you telling your kids
on the car ride home?

That car ride home

has much more impact than you know.

Are you focusing on the end result,

or are you excited to use that time

to help your child
develop into a champion?

It's very simple:

you will know you're focusing
on the end result

if you ask questions about the end result.

"Did you win?"

"How many points did you score?"

"Did you get an A?"

If you truly are motivated about helping
your child develop into a champion,

you will ask questions
about the experience

and the process,

like, "What did you learn today?"

"Did you help a teammate?"

And, my favorite question,

"Did you figure out how to have fun
at working really, really hard?"

And then the key is to be very still

and listen to their response.

I believe that one of the greatest gifts
we can give another human being

is to silence our minds

from the need to be right

or the need to formulate
the appropriate response

and truly listen

when someone else is talking.

And in silencing our minds,

we actually hear our own fears
and inadequacies,

which can help us formulate our response

with more clarity and empathy.

Kyla Ross, another one of our gymnasts,

is one of the greatest gymnasts
in the history of the sport.

She's the only athlete
to have earned the trifecta:

she's a national champion,

a world champion

and an Olympic champion.

She's also not one for small talk,

so I was a bit surprised one day
when she came to my office,

sat on the couch

and just started talking --

first about her major,

then about graduate school

and then about everything else
that seemed to pop into her mind.

My inner voice whispered to me

that something was on her mind,

and if I was still

and gave her enough time,

it would come out.

And it did.

It was the first time that Kyla
had shared with anyone

that she had been
sexually abused by Larry Nassar,

the former USA Gymnastics team doctor,

who was later convicted
of being a serial child molester.

Kyla came forward

and joined the army

of Nassar survivors

who shared their stories

and used their voices

to invoke positive change for our world.

I felt it was extremely
important at that time

to provide a safe space
for Kyla and our team.

And so I chose to talk about this
in a few team meetings.

Later that year, we won
the national championship,

and after we did, Kyla came up to me
and shared with me the fact

that she felt one reason that we'd won

was because we had addressed
the elephant in the room,

the tragedy that had
not only rocked the world

but that had liberated the truths
and the memories in herself

and in so many of her friends

and her peers.

As Kyla said,

"Ms. Val, I literally felt myself
walk taller as the season went on,

and when I walked onto that
championship floor, I felt invincible."

Simply --

(Applause)

Simply because she had been heard.

As parents, as coaches,

as leaders,

we can no longer lead from a place

where winning is
our only metric of success,

where our ego sits center stage,

because it has been proven

that that process produces
broken human beings.

And I emphatically know

that it is absolutely possible

to produce and train champions in life

in every single walk of life

without compromising the human spirit.

(Applause)

It starts with defining success

for yourself and those under your care

and then consistently

self-examining whether your actions
are in alignment with your goals.

We are all coaches in some capacity.

We all have a collective responsibility

to develop champions
in life for our world.

That is what real success looks like,

and in the world of athletics,

that is what we call a win-win.

Thank you.

(Applause)