Navigating Change - The Leadership Lessons of Organized Sports with Dustin Lewis

Envision transforming youth sports with pro-level experiences, blending science, tech, and cultural tools to nurture our future leaders and young athletes.

What happens when the worlds of sports and leadership collide? That's the question we tackle in our chat with Dustin Lewis, President of HomefieldKC, on the Leadership Levers Podcast. It's a discussion rooted in core values like optimism, enthusiasm, and building a healthy organizational culture.

Dustin identifies the importance of clear communication, measurable KPI's and expectations as well as well-defined goals within any organization. He brings to light the hurdles leaders may face in driving cultural change, specifically due to varied expectations and offers  advice on overcoming these challenges, emphasized by his unofficial slogan, "Good always wins."

Join us on this insightful journey intertwining sports and leadership, brimming with useful tips for any leader aiming to inspire positive cultural change.

Learn more about HomefieldKC

Music Credit: True North Kansas

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, ceo of Connect2Metrics. At Connect2Metrics, we help organizations strengthen their culture, one action at a time. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Dustin Lewis, the President of HomefieldKC. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, dustin.

Dustin Lewis: 0:26

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

William Gladhart: 0:28

I thought we would start out by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself and your organization.

Dustin Lewis: 0:34

Yeah, I am a blessed guy who has spent the last 29 years of my career in sports, kind of across all recreational sports, competitive sports, fitness for the last, like I said, few decades now that it's going on. I played sports growing up. I was a collegiate basketball and baseball player, love sports, love everything about it and knew that from a very young age that I wanted to do this for a living. However, when I was 12, I envisioned that being playing at a big arena, stadium field somewhere. Fortunately or unfortunately, as I got older I knew that the playing part probably wasn't in the cards, but I really wanted to make a difference for athletes, young athletes, going through a process that I went through and really giving them support to get farther than I could get by having great support and using science, technology, using resources.

Dustin Lewis: 1:29

Once again, just a blessed guy, right place, right time, with a group that really had a great idea to take youth sports and take it to the next level of really that pathway or process of all.

Dustin Lewis: 1:41

Right, not every kid becomes a pro, but every pro was a kid and so learning from my own personal experience and then working with them close to the last three decades working with high school, college and professional athletes, really taking the guesswork out of hey, here's what a pro does and here's what they did when they were 12 and here's what they did when they were 14 and trying to make sure we're doing as much of the things that were really helpful and then really learning from that process as well as, like, all right, here's what I could have avoided if I would have known, and that's really the plan of home field is to give a pro experience for the athlete a pro experience, and support for coaches a pro experience and support for officials, a pro experience, really for the people that are funding it all, which is parents, and I don't think spectators and parents really have been able to get the experience that they would hope for, desire out of youth sports, with lots of factors that go into it. But really, hey, what if we put people in charge of designing youth sports facilities that design pro sports facilities? What will we do different? And really taking all of those things in my own personal experience and, once again, just the crossroads of experience, meeting with opportunity, right, and that's where we are today with where I'm standing.

William Gladhart: 3:03

So we will be discussing three questions today as a warm up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Dustin Lewis: 3:12

Yeah, I think, not just critical but essential. I think you can get by with things sometimes that aren't critical but essential. As far as having everyone having optimism, you have to be really careful with who your teammates you choose, because you want to have people that are skeptics, which is great, but you can't move things in a forward direction without genuine optimism, not fake optimism, not, hey, we feel that, really understanding that optimism. And then the second part, once again of that culture of enthusiasm, I think even sometimes to our kids. Today we almost make kids feel bad in their peer groups about being enthusiastic about anything. So we have to be a place and a culture that not only welcomes enthusiasm but cultivates it in really thoughtful, organic ways. Not fake enthusiasm, not fake optimism, but that culture of being intentional, of those two things, Gash, I feel like we can get a lot of great things that have happened with part of our culture if those two things are really the cornerstones.

William Gladhart: 4:12

Thanks for sharing that. I think this definitely rolls into our first question of what do you see as the biggest challenge leaders face and this could apply to coaches, this could apply to your own self, but when leaders face, when addressing cultural change within an organization, or maybe a specific example that you faced in your own organization?

Dustin Lewis: 4:31

I would say that the biggest challenge we have is expectation. So if you really are thoughtful at explaining and everyone is under the same definitions of expectations, I think it's really possible. But once again, as soon as expectations of what I think, feel or believe is different from somebody else, I feel, I think, I believe and we haven't come to a common ground of this is and the expectations are. An is not think, hope, believe, feel, but really like, hey, what is our intention, what is our value, what is our process? And I think once everyone understands that and understands expectations, once again, that's probably the biggest challenge. It's because everybody hears it slightly different, so we have to be really thoughtful and saying it over and over and, over and over again, so it can't get to a point where you said you thought I felt those things have to be removed and like we are an is, than are.

William Gladhart: 5:36

I really like that and I think that is a great piece of advice for leaders, simply because that clarity around communication, that clarity around your vision for your organization, that clarity for all your staff and as a leader, that has to keep coming from you repetitively all the time. So what do you think that leaders can do to address the challenge beyond kind of what we just touched on, this challenge, what they're facing, you know, or what they could have done?

Dustin Lewis: 6:03

I feel like if we measure thoughtfully, measure where we're at with people not necessarily always formal, but formal can be part of it but really measuring that, understanding, measuring the expectation that we put in clear, clear, concise KPIs right, hey, that's easy to measure, I know whether I'm reaching it or not, and then really reviewing it over and over until you know it's an easy agreement and it's an easy game plan and everybody can recite it quickly and confidently. I think, once again, those measureables of what I'm supposed to do, what I am doing and what I'm going to do, I think those are, those are a great way to avoid it.

William Gladhart: 6:46

I think that's some great insight, simply because I love that you're weaving in the, the communication, but you're also weaving in the terms of teams and the sports references, because 60% plus percent of leaders in today's businesses played organized youth sports at some time. So there had to be some tenets that came out of that that not only you're fostering at home field but also as a leader that you have learned over a lot of years of how to bring those to the forefront.

Dustin Lewis: 7:19

Yeah, and when we're dealing with people who are setting those expectations for kids and understand how powerful it is gosh, I mean that never changes throughout our lifetime. We all want to please, right? I mean I got into youth sports and playing sports because I want to please my dad, right, I want him to be proud, I want him to be enjoy it and really take pride in what I was doing. And I think us as part of an organization, part of a team, we still want that. We want mom and dad to be proud of and appreciate what we're doing.

William Gladhart: 7:53

Yeah, I love that. That's really cool. So you've shared some of the insights around the teamwork, the communication, and the building. Is there anything else you would like to share or add for any other leaders? Is there thinking about continuing to work in their organization, strengthen their culture, impact change we have?

Dustin Lewis: 8:11

We have an unofficial slogan around here that we've used for quite some time now, but the fact is, "good always wins. It always wins. So it might not win in the timeframe that you had hoped or expected it to, but if you're doing good right, and if that's where your decision making comes down to, are we doing good? And if the answer is yes, it's going to win. And so I think you can have great faith in knowing that, hey, it might not look in the short term like success. It might short term be painful, it might short term be uncomfortable, it might short term be have people have skepticism toward you, but really having that faith and foundation and like, once again, are we doing good? And if the answer is yes, then give it time, give it that patience of time to know that it's undefeated.

William Gladhart: 9:03

Dustin, thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you again for your insights.

Dustin Lewis: 9:08

Well, thank you for having me. This was great.

William Gladhart: 9:10

Thank you for joining the Leadership Levers podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes on our website at connect. The number two metricscom forward slash podcast Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture, one action at a time.