166. Why Relying on Talent Alone Will Fail You

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: The game of life and the game of business can be quite challenging and difficult at times. But with clear intent, strong relationships, and a fair amount of practice, we can be successful. 

[00:00:13] My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. 

[00:00:25] Today, I'm really excited to speak with Andrew Luck. Andrew is a former NFL quarterback known for his exceptional leadership and strategic thinking on the field. Andrew is also a Stanford graduate with an undergraduate degree in architectural design and recently a master's degree in education.

[00:00:42] As quarterback for Stanford, Andrew led his team to multiple victories, and he continued this trend while playing professionally for the Indianapolis Colts, where he earned four Pro Bowl selections and the 2018 NFL Comeback Player of the Year award. 

[00:00:57] Andrew, thank you for joining us. It is a true pleasure to chat with you. I've watched many of your games here at Stanford and certainly on TV, many, many more. Thanks for joining us today. 

[00:01:06] Andrew Luck: Yeah, my pleasure. 

[00:01:07] Matt Abrahams: Should we get started?

[00:01:08] Andrew Luck: Please. 

[00:01:09] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. As a quarterback, clear communication is crucial with your teammates, your coaches, the press, and your fans. Are there specific strategies and tactics you've found help you communicate more effectively with clarity and accuracy when you're in those high stress situations?

[00:01:24] Andrew Luck: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think, uh, communicating with fans or the media is a lot different than communicating with teammates in game which is a lot different than communicating with coaches when you're in the room during the week preparing for a big game. 

[00:01:38] So with teammates, I think I learned clarity was really important. It was as much nonverbal as verbal. Walking in a professional locker room I had to earn veterans respect so they would listen to me. I mean that was a simple equation in my mind, so I gotta go build some equity. I got to show up every day. I have to show guys I'm holding up my end of the bargain so that when I ask you to, that you feel like there's a respect there, so I very much believed in that with my teammates. And the media was another interesting part. Difficult, certainly, to speak to the media two or three or four times a week.

[00:02:13] But I think also there's a level of accountability that you just have to eventually own when you speak publicly about your performance, your team's performance. I always felt that I needed to keep things about myself. I mean, pointing fingers was not going to be a good thing, especially not towards teammates. And try to be as authentic as possible. And I certainly didn't do it perfectly, but getting up there and not lying, it also helps. 

[00:02:38] Matt Abrahams: So something you said there that I think is really important for all of us to think about. The notion of establishing the equity that you have and that's work you have to do right away. And in some cases we can do that ahead of time in terms of how we set expectations for the meetings that we have or the conversations. But really, many of us go into these high stress situations thinking about what we want to say, not necessarily about the relationship we need to build in advance of it. And I think that's a really important point. 

[00:03:02] Andrew Luck: It's part of why I love team sports. 

[00:03:04] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. 

[00:03:05] Andrew Luck: The relationship is at the core of locker room culture. 

[00:03:09] Matt Abrahams: Right.

[00:03:09] Andrew Luck: Of going out there together. You internalize that very early on when you play team sports. I can't succeed without you, you can't succeed without me. We've got to put the work in. 

[00:03:19] Matt Abrahams: One of the things that I've always admired when I've watched you play is you seem to stay very calm. Many of us find ourselves in situations in our lives, our careers, where it's really intense around us. What do you do to stay calm? How do you center yourself? 

[00:03:31] Andrew Luck: Yeah, that's interesting that your observation is I stay calm. I can certainly look back and think of times I did not feel very calm. 

[00:03:38] Matt Abrahams: Right, right. 

[00:03:38] Andrew Luck: Come off the sidelines and throw a helmet down in frustration or let some emotion out. And I think one, as a player, I learned that it was okay to play emotionally. I enjoyed, that's part of what made sports fun, the highs and the lows. 

[00:03:53] Now, when you walk in the huddle and call a play, you've got to sort of become a clinician. It is business, you're on it, and the only way I learned to do that was to practice that. And I had fantastic coaches, starting with my dad and Pop Warner Football. Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw at Stanford, I had amazing coaches in the NFL. And we practiced those high pressure situations all the time. I think there's a romantic notion I held growing up, you know, that you rise to the occasion, you rise to these great moments. But I think you settle to the level of your training.

[00:04:21] I really internalized that at Stanford with how we practiced. I mean, practice had a sense of urgency, had pressure. There were stakes at practice. I mean, there was competitive. We learned to compete against each other. We learned the physio, you know, at least as a quarterback, I learned the physiological response. Can I control my breathing to call a play clearly succinctly with some level of positive affect to my teammates, so we have a collective belief we can go and get this fourth down or score a touchdown here, right? So I think practicing that and having some awareness of that this is what we're practicing for helped my growth, helped my career.

[00:04:59] Matt Abrahams: A lot of us think of practice as something that's a nice thing to do if we have the time, but don't purposely do it. I mean, if I've got a high stakes meeting where I'm trying to sell or present something, maybe it makes sense to practice with somebody and get some feedback. My hunch is you've spent many, many more hours in practice than you have in the actual game. 

[00:05:16] Andrew Luck: Absolutely. And frankly, I'm five years out or so now from playing. I miss practice, practice was fun. It was like a mini game. There's a great line from Marvin Harrison, a wide receiver, Hall of Famer, who I didn't play with. But he was on the Colts, you know, sort of my fandom of middle school, high school. And he said, I get paid to practice. I play a game for free, right? And I love that. 

[00:05:39] And when I think of the great quarterbacks that I grew up watching, like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, I mean, you hear stories about their intensity of practice and I wanted to embody that as well. 

[00:05:49] Matt Abrahams: That notion of being paid to practice is an interesting one. I think if all of us think about our jobs, the performance aspect. But it's really the pre work where we're earning our money and earning our keep. You've been praised for your leadership both on and off the field. How would you describe your leadership style, and what are some important qualities you see in effective leaders? 

[00:06:09] Andrew Luck: Um, certainly when you play the quarterback position, and this starts from Pop Warner football, I mean, eyes are on you. So you are given a leadership role, there's no way around it. Calling plays, you're telling people what to do. But it's not just enough to be given that role. You know, you have to earn it. I always thought I had to be the best teammate I could be before being a decent leader. I had to learn to, hey, you can't avoid certain levels of conflict.

[00:06:34] And yeah, you can come out the other side and both parties can be better. Um, and in the night, you know, I was profoundly impacted by my college coaches, Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw. And something Jim Harbaugh really, really helped me with is he empowered the quarterback. And he empowered the quarterback to have their own personality.

[00:06:54] I felt like I could go play with my personality and it didn't have to be a mirror image of what Jim Harbaugh was. So that had a profound impact on me. That's what I think about when I think of young quarterbacks and I volunteer coach in high school of making sure I'm not stamping my ego on who I think they should be, but empowering them.

[00:07:12] Matt Abrahams: I have to admit, I find it a little surprising that somebody who plays a highly competitive, combative game, if you will, uh, was conflict averse. Tell me a little bit more about that. And I'm very, 'cause I also am conflict averse, but I didn't play professional football. How did you manage that? How did you learn to lean into that?

[00:07:30] Andrew Luck: Part of what was fun about playing contact sports for me, like football or basketball and getting down there was that I could, I didn't have to be nice per se. It was okay to step on toes, it was okay to get there. It's okay to bring a level of intensity. So I do think sports helped me sort of identify, oh, I'm conflict averse a little, and you can work on it and you can grow on it. And you have to, I mean, you have to when you're on a team. 

[00:07:54] Matt Abrahams: You found, as somebody who is conflict averse, playing sports allowed you to actually explore being in conflict and seeing positive results. Maybe there's some other areas of our lives where we can practice that, get more comfortable. 

[00:08:06] Andrew Luck: Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Because we film everything now, because we have phones out, practice really needs to be a psychologically safe and physically safe space because you try stuff.

[00:08:16] Matt Abrahams: Right.

[00:08:16] Andrew Luck: And you fail, you look stupid. 

[00:08:19] Matt Abrahams: I see this personally in the work I do, I teach communication skills and I'm encouraging people to try new things to see what works and what doesn't. I like to joke that my class is like a high school chemistry class, where sometimes the experiments blow up and sometimes they don't, and you learn in either case, and you have to have that environment. Your decision to retire from the NFL in 2019 surprised a lot of fans and players alike. What was your thought process on how to communicate that? What was that process like? 

[00:08:45] Andrew Luck: Uh, I did not seal myself off in a vacuum. My girlfriend, now wife was very much involved, my family, my inner circle. And then when I decided to retire, we were going to have a press conference on a Sunday, and it wasn't going to be a celebratory press conference, right?

[00:08:58] This wasn't like a, you know, you've won a bunch of Super Bowls, and you're going off. But I knew I needed to write something down. So I wrote some stuff down, but word leaked out during the Saturday night preseason game, with about seven, eight minutes left to go. And, um, and so I felt, it was an odd feeling, I felt cameras turn to me and I, ooh, something's not, this is out.

[00:09:19] Thankfully, I need to go back to teammates. Friday evening and Saturday morning, I had spent time reaching out to the ten guys, eight to ten guys on the team that I'd played with for a long time and that I loved. And respected and felt very much tethered to, uh, with friendship and kinship and all that.

[00:09:42] And we sat and shared. And different guys in different ways, and other guys in other ways, and some we had a little more time, some we didn't. One of my teammates was involved through the whole process who knew, and others, and called some folks as well. But so when it, when the news broke Saturday night, I was grateful for two things 'cause it was a surprise. Grateful, one, that I had told my friends and teammates that I felt like they needed to know. 

[00:10:05] Two, I was grateful I had been working on this draft and sent it to the PR guy because I had a speech ready to go for the impromptu press conference at eleven PM on a Saturday night, in a T-shirt. And then the lesson I learned is, if the more people you tell, news like this gets out especially in a industry like the NFL. I mean, that's sort of a little bit behind the curtain of what that process was like. 

[00:10:26] Matt Abrahams: The decision sounds like it was very difficult to make. But it sounds like you did some things that were very wise. One, you spent some time thinking about it in advance, uh, in terms of what you might communicate and you reached out to others.

[00:10:37] I'm hearing a theme across all your answers that it's about connection. It's about relying on others. It's about relationships, connecting with others and I think that's really powerful. And a lot of us can think about that when we make career moves. Connecting with others we know, thinking about how we want to message it is really important.

[00:10:52] Um, congratulations are in order, you recently graduated with a master's degree in education. You came back to campus. What motivated you to return to education and return to Stanford? And share a little bit about what you studied and what maybe one or two takeaways you had. 

[00:11:09] Andrew Luck: I knew I wanted to challenge myself and learn. I certainly wanted to get back into an academic setting with cool people. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the role sports plays and how kids grow up in this country and how sports and K through 12 education intertwine, which in this country is a big deal. And I wanted to be around new people. You know, I'd been in locker rooms my whole life. I wanted to go see what class was like as a graduate student. And I needed my perspective to be challenged. 

[00:11:36] Matt Abrahams: So share with us an idea or two that you now think of differently having matriculated through a graduate program. 

[00:11:43] Andrew Luck: One, I have learned not to rush to judgment unless I feel like I am the expert, expert, but it's probably worth asking someone to do some research about things.

[00:11:52] Matt Abrahams: What do you see yourself doing? 

[00:11:53] Andrew Luck: Well, I keep helping Stanford with projects and, uh, you know, I think also the energy around college campuses is really fun. Get to learn from folks, there's interesting things going on and, uh, yeah. 

[00:12:04] Matt Abrahams: You are so right. I mean, part of the reason I love my job is just to be around really smart people engaging in really interesting ideas. As a coach, your job is to help your players be the best they can be at their sport, but also in their lives. How do you approach that dual task? And are there specific life lessons you try to inculcate in your students? 

[00:12:22] Andrew Luck: Yeah, that, and yeah, I mean, you know, I think one, it's fun to teach football. I think without being too explicit about the life lessons you learn, like showing up on time, showing up ready for practice, you need to do that to win the game, right?

[00:12:34] You need to practice with urgency. We talked about it, you and I. So some of those life lessons, communicating with players has been really interesting. Coaching is hard. I mean, shoot, coaching, freshman football. I got nervous calling plays. You know, I played in conference championship games and bowl games and I was nervous, you know, calling plays for these guys.

[00:12:52] And I felt it physiologically. And I messed up and, oh, I shouldn't have called that. I shouldn't have called that. Sit down and, you know, go through it. Okay, next time, learn from it. It's a lot of fun. You realize too, you know, you, you've got to let those kids be themselves. I view practice time and this time that they get on the field and the game time is almost sacred, they put their phones away. They're with each other for two hours, an hour and a half. They're struggling together. They're in conflict with each other and a minute later, they're collaborating with each other. Like it's a, you know, I think there are really powerful lessons that exist in there and frankly part of my at least my personal challenge is to start drawing those lessons out more.

[00:13:33] Matt Abrahams: As a father of two boys who played sports, there'd be times where you'd yell at the coach or say, that was a bad play. I just can't imagine a parent saying Andrew Luck made the wrong play. I just, I mean, but this notion of teaching life skills, especially to young boys. I mean, I think young people have challenges that I certainly never experienced today. But especially for young boys as they become young men to really help them in the way that you're doing is so critical because many of them are not going to go beyond high school sports, just the way it works.

[00:14:03] And to learn those skills, camaraderie, timeliness, how to communicate, how to have conflict productively, how to collaborate, how to have a relationship with another person in a meaningful way. Andrew, this has been a true pleasure to chat with you. 

[00:14:18] Before we end, I'd like to ask three questions of everybody I interview. Two are similar, and then one I create just for you. Are you up for that? 

[00:14:24] Andrew Luck: Please. 

[00:14:25] Matt Abrahams: You have always struck me as somebody who is very articulate. You communicate very efficiently, very effectively. Talk to me about where that came from. Is that something that existed in your family? Did you work on it? Is it just part of who you are? You communicate well. How did that come about?

[00:14:40] Andrew Luck: I grew up in an amazing household with a mom and dad that, you know, imbued with love and books, fun and sports. And my father had somewhat of a public role growing up as a sports executive. And I mean he played quarterback in the NFL and so he would take me around, and we'd be in the car and he'd call into a radio show to talk about the Houston Dynamo who he was running at the time or something else. Or I'd go to charity events and he was the MC so you learn from watching my dad, especially in the public communications sector. 

[00:15:10] And my mom is an incredibly empathic person, incredibly empathic woman. And there's a lot of care and a lot of tenderness from her. And so I learned a lot from both of them in separate ways. And when I think about training for a quarterback, like, I got I mean, no pun intended. I got lucky. My dad, like, the, you know, talking to the media. I was a kid growing up watching that. And when I, you know, there's commercials about you turning into your father. Like, oh god, I'm turning into my dad when I hear myself talk, but, uh, no, I, so I'm grateful for both of them. 

[00:15:43] Matt Abrahams: Let me ask you question number two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why, beyond your father? 

[00:15:47] Andrew Luck: Yeah, a communicator that I admire. You know, I was going through a tough time with injuries, uh, during a spell of my NFL career. And my physical therapist, ended up spending a lot of time with a Dutch man, uh, someone from the Netherlands named Willem Kramer and he was so direct. You know, and he was Dutch. So, you know, there's sort of a little bit of a meme about the Dutch. 

[00:16:06] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. 

[00:16:06] Andrew Luck: And direct and cut through the fluff. 

[00:16:08] Matt Abrahams: Right, right. 

[00:16:09] Andrew Luck: And leave zero room for ambiguity, and I needed that at that time. I did not like it often, but I needed to hear it. He helped me raise questions that I had about myself and it was okay to answer them. And it was okay if I didn't have the perfect answer. It was a safe place to have, a psychologically safe space, a direct communication, a listener. If he was wronged by me, he would share it. There was no sugarcoating it. And we celebrated victories together, you know, the full spectrum. And I really needed that at that, at that point in my life.

[00:16:40] Matt Abrahams: You are the first person in our hundred and fifty guests to name a physical therapist. We get poets, we get presidents. That's great. And it sounds like the directness in doing what was needed in those moments is what led you to select him. 

[00:16:55] Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:17:01] Andrew Luck: First of all, respect. 

[00:17:03] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. 

[00:17:03] Andrew Luck: Clarity. And I want to say reciprocity. 

[00:17:08] Matt Abrahams: Okay. 

[00:17:09] Andrew Luck: Yeah. 

[00:17:09] Matt Abrahams: So respect and clarity, clearly respect is a theme across many of the answers and ideas you shared. Clarity, I can imagine as somebody who did the work that you did being very clear. Reciprocity and listening, being receptive instead of, certainly makes a lot of sense. Often people see communication as a very directive thing, but I think to be a recipient and be in that moment and co create something is really powerful. 

[00:17:33] Andrew, this has been fantastic. Thank you for sharing your insights that come from a very different domain, but they directly apply to how we live our lives, how we manage our careers. It was a true pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for reminding us of the importance of relationships, the importance of connection and the importance of practice. 

[00:17:49] Andrew Luck: Oh, my honor. This was incredible. Thank you.

[00:17:56] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about leadership and coaching, please listen to episode 1 53 with Tara VanDerveer. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Riley, Aech Ashe, and me Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast company, please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:18:23] Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.