Unlocking Potential: How Todd Creneti Translates Sports Coaching to Business Success
Todd Creneti, a seasoned coach and leader, shares invaluable insights on the importance of being present and cultivating a strong team culture in both sports and business. Drawing from his extensive experience, Todd emphasizes that the key to success lies in helping others achieve their best, highlighting that a genuine commitment to personal and team growth can transform organizations. He discusses the differences between coaching millennials and Generation Z, noting that while the environment has changed, the core desires of young people remain the same: to find meaning and connection in their work. Todd's approach to leadership is rooted in fostering emotional intelligence, accountability, and selflessness among team members, which he believes leads to sustainable success. As he reflects on his journey, Todd underscores the profound impact of creating an inclusive culture where every individual feels seen and valued.
In this engaging conversation, Tod Creneti unveils the secrets from his coaching journey and reveals how those lessons apply to the business realm. He highlights the magic of being present, tailoring coaching styles for diverse generations, and cultivating vibrant organizational cultures. Creneti delves into the power of teamwork, selflessness, and the role of positive self-talk when the stakes are high. He also sheds light on Generation Z's unique traits and the need for inclusive spaces that nurture belonging. Ultimately, he shares his heartfelt mission to create a legacy of uplifting others and empowering them to chase their dreams.
Todd Creneti, with over three decades of coaching experience, shares profound insights on leadership and personal development rooted in his athletic background. His journey began on the sports field, where he honed his skills in building championship teams. This foundation has allowed him to transition seamlessly into the business world, where he applies his coaching philosophies to improve organizational culture and team dynamics. Creneti emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence and a growth mindset, particularly in times of transformation. He believes that being present in the moment is essential for both personal fulfillment and professional success, echoing the sentiment that anxiety often stems from being fixated on the future while depression is tied to the past. By fostering a culture of servant leadership and inclusivity, Creneti has helped numerous clients become high-performing teams, challenging each member to contribute their best work daily.
Takeaways:
- Being present in the moment can significantly improve your appreciation of life and opportunities.
- Coaching in sports and business requires translating lessons about teamwork and accountability effectively.
- The key to fostering an inclusive culture is to ensure everyone feels seen and valued.
- Successful coaching is not just about winning; it's about empowering individuals to reach their potential.
- Generational differences exist, but the core values of hard work and teamwork remain consistent.
- Positive self-talk is crucial for success in both sports and business environments.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
My guest today is Todd creneti.
Host:He spent 30 plus years as a leader and coach in various settings.
Host:While his path began on the athletic fields where he built championship teams in various sports, Todd has been applying his teaching and coaching skills in the business world for over a decade.
Host:Focused on helping teams of all kinds become the best.
Host:Todd has been able to translate the lessons he's learned on the field and into organizational psychology and continues to commit his growth as a professional.
Host:His approach to teaching and coaching is based on a deep understanding of how the human brain works, especially as it's facing transformation.
Host:While his coaching and training sessions cover much ground related to human behavior, his work frequently helps clients shift mindsets, improve emotional intelligence, and operationalize servant leadership.
Host:His clients have improved personal performance, rebuilt struggling cultures, created inclusive work environments that challenge each team member to bring their best work to the table every day.
Host:He is best known as a motivator.
Host:He's built a reputation on his honest and genuine approach.
Host:Helping others embrace adversity and achieve excellence remains his driving force in life.
Host:We welcome him to the podcast.
Host:Well, good morning my friend.
Host:How you doing today?
Todd Creneti:I'm fantastic.
Todd Creneti:Thank you for having me today.
Host:It's good to have you on.
Host:Looking forward to this conversation.
Todd Creneti:Likewise.
Host:I love to ask my guests this question.
Host:What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Todd Creneti:That's such a great question.
Todd Creneti:And you know, there have been so many pieces along the way.
Todd Creneti:You know, if I think about the different phases of my life, there are things that sort of were anchors for me at different times.
Todd Creneti:I think the piece that I am living with right now is something I picked up from a friend of mine in coaching and the idea of be where your feet are, the importance of being present in the moment.
Todd Creneti:I mean, I am 55, I am in a totally different phase in my life and so really trying to be present and soak up all the good things that are happening has been a really valuable piece of advice.
Todd Creneti:It is one I share quite often, but the other, the other one that I grew up with.
Todd Creneti:I grew up in a house where my parents were very involved in my development, the church was very involved in my development.
Todd Creneti:And just to be a person with faith and to be faithful at the same time, I think those have been guiding posts for me throughout my life.
Host:I love that that's so important.
Host:I saw somebody else talk about just being present because you can also be so far ahead in your or in your own head that you, you're not really there for the moment.
Host:You miss Those special moments because you're always thinking somewhere else down the road, your head somewhere else.
Todd Creneti:I saw this really interesting way to think about it.
Todd Creneti:They were, somebody was interviewing an 81 year old man and they said, you know, if you had one piece of advice for the younger generation, what would it be?
Todd Creneti:And while it hit at being present as the advice, the way he framed it was that as much as we talk about depression and anxiety in sort of 40 and under, and really it's a problem for people older than that as well, that anxiety is linked to being stuck in the future.
Todd Creneti:And that depression is often linked to being stuck in the past.
Todd Creneti:And therefore being in the present gives us the ability to really just feel the good things that are happening in that moment, even address the adversity that's happening in that moment and live into it.
Host:That is so true.
Host:I can think about just my life right now, thinking about things that are coming up in the next three months.
Host:So like 50 days, I'm like, why?
Host:It's like it's driving me insane.
Todd Creneti:Yeah.
Todd Creneti:Actually, our pastor in church reminded us that Monday was going to be this past Sunday.
Todd Creneti:So this, that Monday was going to be 100 days until Christmas.
Todd Creneti:And I just looked at my wife was like, I can't even, you know, and I love Christmas, but, you know, 100 days is still an awful long time.
Todd Creneti:And there's a lot of things that a lot of boxes to check before we get to tomorrow.
Todd Creneti:Forget about 100 days from now.
Host:Exactly.
Host:I'm curious, can you share with us how your journey began on that athletic field?
Todd Creneti:Sure.
Todd Creneti:So I'm a coach's kid.
Todd Creneti:I grew up on the sidelines and I had a dad who was a really well known high school football coach for 50 years.
Todd Creneti:Did a great job, had a lot of influence over the lives of the guys that he coached.
Todd Creneti:And I think he was an early adopter to the idea that he wanted to make sure his players knew that he loved them and he was there for them and he treated them like family.
Todd Creneti:So we had, you know, people coming and going from the house at different times or, you know, guys when I was young, stopping by on Thanksgiving around Christmas to see my dad and even bringing their kids back to meet my dad.
Todd Creneti:And so there are ways in which my venture into coaching, you know, started with my love of athletics.
Todd Creneti:I wanted to play and I wanted to play for as long as I could, but I was pretty sure that I knew as soon as I couldn't play anymore, I was going to want to coach and you sort of learn over time what it is that really drives you in whatever you choose to do.
Todd Creneti:And for me, in coaching, it was this desire to be a part of the lives of other people in such a way that I help them accomplish more than they might on their own.
Todd Creneti:And anybody who has ever been an athlete can tell you, you can go get a lift in.
Todd Creneti:You can get a run in.
Todd Creneti:Really pushing yourself when you're alone is much harder than having somebody there to hold you accountable, to encourage you, to lift you up or pick you, pick you up if things don't go quite right.
Todd Creneti:And so that.
Todd Creneti:That really became the sort of natural change for me or this pathway for me to move into the business world, because as my players, from the beginning of my career had grown up, had lives, gone to college, got married, had families, become business leaders, they would still call and say, hey, can I pick your brain about something?
Todd Creneti:And finally, one of my guys was like, why are you asking me?
Todd Creneti:And in particular, this was an organization that was struggling with the retention of millennials in the workplace.
Todd Creneti:And I was like, hey, I'm just curious, and this is a great conversation.
Todd Creneti:I dug in and did a bunch of research.
Todd Creneti:But he said, you know, Coach, you've coached these people for, you know, for a decade.
Todd Creneti:I feel like you know them better maybe than anybody else, and you've gotten great results out of them and commitment out of them.
Todd Creneti:And that sort of fascinated me.
Todd Creneti:I hadn't thought about that pathway into business, and I was itching to do some things differently.
Todd Creneti:And the second that I learned that I could take the things that we did on the field or the things that we taught in the locker room.
Todd Creneti:And I'm not talking X's and O's nearly as much as I am character development.
Todd Creneti:What it means to be a great teammate, what it means to be a supporter or a lover of other people.
Todd Creneti:As soon as I realized those traits were going to translate or those lessons were going to translate to the boardroom, to office space, I was all in.
Todd Creneti:And then, you know, as it often is, the right opportunities came at the right time.
Todd Creneti:You start sharing these ideas with other people, and all of a sudden, I'm teaching the same lessons I taught on the field for 30 years, but I'm teaching them to organizations, to businesses, to professionals, and it's a seamless transition.
Host:I'm curious.
Host:You mentioned something I kind of want to dig a little deeper into.
Host:As you've coached different generations over the years, what have you noticed that's different about how's Your coaching had to change to adapt to say, millennials versus Gen Z.
Todd Creneti:So this is one of my favorite conversations.
Todd Creneti:And actually somebody who coached me in high school did a podcast and he was, he's probably, probably 12 to 13 years older than me.
Todd Creneti:And he was asked the same question.
Todd Creneti:He's definitely seen as a tough, hardscrabble, old school guy.
Todd Creneti:And his response surprised me because it's the same as my response.
Todd Creneti:People haven't changed that much.
Todd Creneti:The environment in which they are raised has changed significantly.
Todd Creneti:If you take the hopes and dreams of the average 14 year old boy, for instance, who wants to make the high school football team and what that might mean, I don't think that has changed.
Todd Creneti:I think the world around them, how they're reinforced, what they consider to be worthy of the investment in time based on feedback, I think those things have changed.
Todd Creneti:And so what I would say is in any generation, you need to be prepared to speak their language.
Todd Creneti:When I was, when I was a high school football player, coaches were really the foundation of college football.
Todd Creneti:You wanted to go to Penn State and play for Joe Paterno, you want to go to Alabama and play for Bear Bryant, you can go right down the list and talk about all the great coaches and the great places.
Todd Creneti:And getting to one of those places was really an accomplishment.
Todd Creneti:Nowadays the recruiting space is completely player driven because there's opportunities for them to earn that weren't there before.
Todd Creneti:And so now you have these pillars.
Todd Creneti:These guys like Nick Saban, who retired last year in many ways because of these things, was finding himself having to do things and pursue players in a way that made him uncomfortable.
Todd Creneti:But the coaches now had to learn to speak the language that is relevant to these young people.
Todd Creneti:And in this moment, they have the influence, they have the power.
Todd Creneti:So you've got to be willing to speak to them.
Todd Creneti:And it's the same with music or clothing or whatever.
Todd Creneti:And it's fun to kind of play the old guy who doesn't really quite get it.
Todd Creneti:But keeping tabs on what's happening and what's meaningful to somebody who's 16 or 26 or 36, recognizing that their value set may be different based on their generation, I really feel it's the coach's responsibility.
Host:So how do you take that and transfer that to business?
Host:Because I love what you foundations.
Host:But what key things have you taken from your coaching to transfer into the business world?
Todd Creneti:Oh, I think the number one piece is can you be a good teammate?
Todd Creneti:As I was watching my kids move into the business world when I Say, my kids.
Todd Creneti:So I have two daughters, 20 and 22.
Todd Creneti:I have hundreds of kids I consider to be sons.
Todd Creneti:And so I talk about kids.
Todd Creneti:It's the whole group.
Todd Creneti:But as I watch my kids transition into the workforce, I know that in a lot of cases there are organizations seeking college athletes.
Todd Creneti:They love to recruit competitive athletes into their businesses because those athletes have learned something without signing up to learn it.
Todd Creneti:They didn't choose to become competitive as athletes because they want to learn how to be great teammates.
Todd Creneti:They want to learn how to be selfless, they want to learn how to be the hardest worker in the room.
Todd Creneti:Those were just the things that took for them to become successful.
Todd Creneti:And so if you take those traits and put them aside for a minute, and I walk into a business and I say to a CEO, hey, what do you need?
Todd Creneti:The first thing they say is, we need people who just come in here and work and they work because they want to be great at what they do.
Todd Creneti:They don't need to be prodded, they don't need to be over managed.
Todd Creneti:They just need a structure and an opportunity and they want to go.
Todd Creneti:Well, athletes have been doing that their entire lives, right?
Todd Creneti:So that's one of the things we take over.
Todd Creneti:To be really successful, you need to be driven, and not driven to excess, but driven to really be the kind of person that doesn't need to be checked on every 30 seconds.
Todd Creneti:Be the kind of person who's making a difference with every opportunity you get.
Todd Creneti:And then same thing, CEOs are looking for people who are team players who can take care of one another.
Todd Creneti:And so if you have an athlete who's been on a team their entire life, they understand that environment.
Todd Creneti:And they also understand when you move from one place to another, you don't go to the apex, right?
Todd Creneti:You have to start at the bottom and earn your way up.
Todd Creneti:And so those lessons, I would say, jump to the front.
Todd Creneti:You know, the ability to be selfless, to be organization oriented, you know, like team oriented as an athlete would be.
Todd Creneti:I think having those traits makes athletes a great fit in the workplace.
Todd Creneti:And because of that, we can extrapolate away these traits that make athletes successful in the workplace and not to be redundant again, to be selfless, to be great teammates, to be tireless workers, and to be people who really believe that their effort will drive their success.
Host:So I want to dig deeper because it's something you said I want to kind of talk to you about.
Host:So what about the CEO who's like Nick Saban, who's used to doing business a certain way.
Host:All of a sudden, now you got all these new workers coming into their workforce.
Host:How do you help them to learn to adapt to the situation of the new workers coming into the organization?
Todd Creneti:It is exactly why I'm in some of the opportunities that I am right now.
Todd Creneti:It's almost as if my role was not just CoachIt's translator, to help CEOs who are more senior understand how their values are similar to the incoming generations to the workplace and how they may be different.
Todd Creneti:And yet, even though they're different, they can still be aligned.
Todd Creneti:Because what we want to do is we want to create commonality.
Todd Creneti:I want to help the CEO see all the good things that exist within this generation.
Todd Creneti:One of the things I learned when I was reading up on Millennials years ago was that they were often criticized for not staying put and that they moved around a lot.
Todd Creneti:And yet, if you dig deeper and you look at the research, what's really being said there, what's coming out there, is they don't want to be a part of organizations that they don't feel are not.
Todd Creneti:They don't want to be a part of organizations that aren't making a difference in the world, and they don't want to do work that's not personally meaningful to them.
Todd Creneti:And so instead of a CEO who's 60 or 65 saying, oh, look at these people and just want to move around, say, no, you know what?
Todd Creneti:They're searching for meaning.
Todd Creneti:And if we can give them that kind of meaning and that kind of work environment that satisfies that need, they're never going to leave here, and we're going to be ahead of the game because we're not going to be stuck in this loop of losing people, having to retrain, et cetera, et cetera, that so many business.
Todd Creneti:Businesses struggle with.
Host:I love that.
Host:So tell me why you started foundational coaching, and tell me kind of, what are your organizational core values and core mission?
Todd Creneti:So foundation coaching really came out of a conversation at a wedding.
Todd Creneti:I knew that I wanted to begin to do some work outside of coaching that would provide some additional income.
Todd Creneti:A career educator.
Todd Creneti:My wife is a career educator.
Todd Creneti:I come from parents who are educators.
Todd Creneti:So I was pretty clear that this is not how you get rich.
Todd Creneti:But I also wanted to make sure that I was able to be prepared for things like college for my girls, retirement for my wife and I.
Todd Creneti:So I wanted to do work outside and originally thought that I would do that by doing some speaking, which is something that I love to do.
Todd Creneti:I was Sitting at a wedding, having a conversation very similar to what I just shared with you, sitting next to somebody at the, at the.
Todd Creneti:Oh, my gosh, after the wedding.
Todd Creneti:Help me out.
Todd Creneti:I've drawn a blank.
Todd Creneti:Okay.
Todd Creneti:Anyway, the event after the wedding, we all go to eat, dance.
Host:Oh, the reception.
Todd Creneti:Thank you, Keith.
Todd Creneti:Holy smokes, 55 is a joy.
Todd Creneti:So anyway, I go to the reception, I'm seated next to this gentleman, and he runs this huge business in the southeastern United States.
Todd Creneti:And he starts in with me on the, oh, I can't find good people.
Todd Creneti:And, you know, where do you find, you know, players you can count on?
Todd Creneti:Actually pointed to somebody who was on the dance floor who was in the wedding party.
Todd Creneti:I said, if you walk over and give your car to that kid, he'll be in your office tomorrow.
Todd Creneti:You'll be dying to hire him after an hour talking to him, and you'll never want him to go.
Todd Creneti:And so here we are, you know, 10 years later, and he's the vice president of sales for this company.
Todd Creneti:And we started to talk about the fact that it's not that people want different things, it's that they want to go about business in a different way that's more reflective of their values and, and what they believe is important.
Todd Creneti:And so he said to me, he said, you know, I have this really young leadership team.
Todd Creneti:Would you be interested in consulting and working with this team?
Todd Creneti:And I said, hey, short term thing, let's do it.
Todd Creneti:Ended up being a two and a half year engagement.
Todd Creneti:It was the most educating experience I've ever had because he and I saw each other on a Saturday.
Todd Creneti:On Sunday, he called me and said, I need you to send me a proposal.
Todd Creneti:So I immediately got on the phone with a friend of mine in Atlanta and said, I need consultant 101 in five minutes.
Todd Creneti:What do you got?
Todd Creneti:And set my proposal and started doing work with this company.
Todd Creneti:And that was really, Keith, where I could feel these sort of synergies between athletics and business come to life.
Todd Creneti:And it was an exciting time for me.
Todd Creneti:And so foundation coaching was born out of that opportunity I needed to have a business.
Todd Creneti:And the real core foundation of foundation coaching, not to use that word over and over again, is when you think about a house and what we build upon, we know that we need a firm foundation, a solid foundation, and we need to build from there.
Todd Creneti:It's not that unusual to find people who are either on the verge of success or experiencing some success, who are still struggling with some things personally, who still don't feel very settled and if you draw the lens back, you tend to see that there are probably some gaps in the foundation, some questions that went unanswered early on.
Todd Creneti:And so it seemed like to me an opportunity to go back and shore up those foundations to support the growth of those companies, those individuals.
Todd Creneti:And it was just, it just seemed to fit.
Todd Creneti:So the idea of a firm foundation and having what it takes to grow meaningfully from is where foundation coaching comes from.
Host:I love that I'm big into sports myself and love the psychological aspect of sports.
Host:I remember one time I was in a.
Host:We were bowling for the championship and the team we were bowling against got into one of my members, one of my team members, heads, and he, he just couldn't throw a strike.
Host:He was throwing a ball in the gutter.
Host:He just kept egging him on, egging him on.
Host:And I watched him psychologically break down this team member in the middle of a match.
Host:And so I wonder, how do you bring, you talk about organization psychology, how do you bring that into the workplace to help employers, workers understand there's a psychological part of the profession as well, not just a skill part of it.
Todd Creneti:Absolutely.
Todd Creneti:It's funny, when I think about the things I thought would be transferable to the workplace, I'm not sure that I was, I was not sure that positive self talk would be a need that is so prevalent and yet it is so positive self talk for an athlete is, and this is said by somebody, not me, much better than I would have said it.
Todd Creneti:So I will use that illustration.
Todd Creneti:If we all have this voice in the back of our head that questions us, that belittles us, that tells us what we are not, we can't afford to listen to that voice at any time.
Todd Creneti:But in particular in moments that are high pressure, that are big moments.
Todd Creneti:And so we need to understand how to talk to ourselves, not listen to ourselves.
Todd Creneti:We need to control the narrative.
Todd Creneti:So we create a narrative that tells us these are the things we know to be true about ourselves.
Todd Creneti:This is the work that I put in.
Todd Creneti:This is how I prepared.
Todd Creneti:This is how I've educated myself.
Todd Creneti:These are the experiences I've had along the way.
Todd Creneti:I'm ready for this moment.
Todd Creneti:No matter what somebody else says to me.
Todd Creneti:And in that moment where you're talking about somebody trying to get in the head of an opponent, which happens in sports settings and business settings all over the place, I want to be the person who's in control of the narrative.
Todd Creneti:I want to be the person who knows what's true and that's the message that I'm receiving.
Todd Creneti:And the rest of those messages are just falling on deaf ears.
Host:I love that.
Host:So tell me a little bit about one of your success stories of a team you work with that helped to rebuild a struggling culture.
Todd Creneti:There's a quick one, there's a long one.
Todd Creneti: n I first moved to Florida in: Todd Creneti:Petersburg.
Todd Creneti:It's one of my very, very favorite places that I've ever coached.
Todd Creneti:The kids, the relationships, they're just life changing.
Todd Creneti:But South St.
Todd Creneti:Petersburg at that time was, was struggling.
Todd Creneti:If you looked at the map of St.
Todd Creneti:Petersburg back then, Central Avenue decided a very predominantly white north from a very predominantly poor and underserved African American community.
Todd Creneti:And having grown up in Washington D.C.
Todd Creneti:i was felt drawn to that area.
Todd Creneti:And I was actually working as a full time youth minister and coaching on the side.
Todd Creneti:And so I want to go to South St.
Todd Creneti:Pete and do work.
Todd Creneti:And I found these kids at Lakewood High School who were.
Todd Creneti:To say that we were talented is to wildly understate how good this, this group of kids were, how talented they were.
Todd Creneti:But a lot of them had just, you know, heard the message over and over again, hey, you're never going to get out of St.
Todd Creneti:Pete.
Todd Creneti:Nobody makes it out of here.
Todd Creneti:Even the kids coming from strong two parent families, oh, this team's never going to be any good.
Todd Creneti:And so what I got to do was just install a system that allowed those kids to shine.
Todd Creneti:And I joke because I tell people all the time I could have pulled names out of a hat on Friday nights, okay, this is who gets the ball next.
Todd Creneti:And we don't want our games.
Todd Creneti:We were that talented.
Todd Creneti:But that was simply giving those kids an opportunity to shine.
Todd Creneti:And once they tasted success, they knew what they were capable of and they went on to do great things.
Todd Creneti:The more protracted experience that I had was the last place that I was a head coach at St.
Todd Creneti:Stephen's Episcopal School in Bradenton, Florida.
Todd Creneti:You know, when you're a young coach and I was, I wasn't 40 when I got hired at St.
Todd Creneti:Stephen's so, you know, still feeling like I'm on the younger side of my career.
Todd Creneti:You feel like if you're a good coach, you can fix any situation.
Todd Creneti:And all I knew about St.
Todd Creneti:Stephen's was they'd never had a winning season.
Todd Creneti:They had gone, I think, 3 and 7 and 2 and 8 in the two years prior to me getting there.
Todd Creneti:I'm like, great.
Todd Creneti:So we'll go and we'll turn this thing around.
Todd Creneti:Boom, we'll go and we went 09 my first year.
Todd Creneti:And you could have brought every bad team in from the state of Florida, we'd have gone 0, 90.
Todd Creneti:And then we lose the first five games of the second year.
Todd Creneti:But, you know, the, you know, the screw started to turn a little bit.
Todd Creneti:The last five games.
Todd Creneti:We finished the last five games 3 and 2.
Todd Creneti:But that means at the end of two years, we're what?
Todd Creneti:We're 3 and 16.
Todd Creneti:And what people couldn't see was that the culture had already changed, that we had taken a group of kids who weren't really football players, weren't all that experienced, and we give them things to do that we knew they could do.
Todd Creneti:We encourage them to love each other, to be selfless, to put other people first and meet the needs of their teammates.
Todd Creneti:One of the stories that comes up a lot is that I insisted they ate lunch together during the season every day.
Todd Creneti:So, you know, 24 football players sitting around a couple of tables because I knew that was something that they could do that would, that would build sort of this good energy in them.
Todd Creneti:And then after that season where we went 3 and 7, which was really the breakthrough, then it was 6 and 5, 8 and 3, 9 and 2.
Todd Creneti:And I think over the last few years we were something like 55 and 5 or something in that neighborhood.
Todd Creneti:And what changed really was, were two things.
Todd Creneti:Number one, the energy around the program changed because our players were talking about the experience they were having.
Todd Creneti:Even the kids who weren't playing on winning teams at the beginning, they were not only having fun, but they were being loved unconditionally and being held accountable.
Todd Creneti:Which are really, for me in a program are the, are the two ends, right?
Todd Creneti:They're the bookends that keep things together.
Todd Creneti:That unconditional love and that need for accountability that we all have.
Todd Creneti:And then as we started to have a little bit of success, you know what happens then?
Todd Creneti:Other people want to come be a part of that.
Todd Creneti:And the program grows and our success rises.
Todd Creneti:And we play in four state championship games in a four year stretch.
Todd Creneti:Lose the first and the last, win the two in the middle.
Todd Creneti:It was a really neat process to be a part of.
Todd Creneti:But I would point to the fact that I did the culture work at the beginning, then the kids picked up the culture work, and as soon as they were managing and driving the culture themselves, that's when things really started to change.
Host:When you talk about culture and you talked about situation where you had Kind of inclusive cultures.
Host:And you gave a couple things that you did specifically.
Host:But what other strategies have you used to create that environment where people feel like they have a sense of belonging in this culture?
Todd Creneti:Right.
Todd Creneti:So on any team, in any business, there are people that everybody knows about.
Todd Creneti:They are the standouts who hear their name called all the time, and there are people in the background who maybe just want to be a part of it.
Todd Creneti:Maybe they don't have the skill set to contribute in the same way, but they really, really want to be there, making sure that people are seen, making sure that people are acknowledged.
Todd Creneti:I steered away in a lot of ways from coaches using nicknames because I wanted kids to be called by their name.
Todd Creneti:Then once I knew everybody knew everybody's names, then the nickname was fine.
Todd Creneti:But I wanted to make sure kids knew they were.
Todd Creneti:They wanted.
Todd Creneti:I wanted them to know we knew who they were.
Todd Creneti:And then we also wanted to know what they were doing outside of school.
Todd Creneti:So part of our.
Todd Creneti:Part of our charge to our kids was to, you know, to really set the tone in the classroom, in the hallways, and outside the doors of our building.
Todd Creneti:So we wanted to make sure that our kids knew that we were going to be connected, and we were ready to apply that accountability beyond the football field as well.
Todd Creneti:And so those things really matter.
Todd Creneti:You've heard me say a couple of times that we believe in this idea that you've got to love the.
Todd Creneti:The player on your right and player on your left more than you love yourself, that we expect people to come and give the greatest effort they possibly can.
Todd Creneti:And, you know, when Carol Dweck wrote Mindset, she opened up the world to the idea of effort and what a powerful driver effort can be.
Todd Creneti:And while nobody can make you a certain size, certain weight, certain speed, we can all bring effort every day.
Todd Creneti:And the great thing about effort is, wherever I go in my life, effort can help be a driver of my success.
Todd Creneti:No matter what the room is, no matter what the situation is, effort can always make me stand out as I give all that I can.
Host:One thing about success is you attract a lot of people who want to be jump on, jump on the bandwagon.
Host:How do you maintain that good culture where people come?
Host:Maybe not because they who weren't part of the foundation of that culture changing, but now want to be on the.
Host:On the wagon as you start to have success.
Todd Creneti:It's funny, I can think of a few people from along the way who, once things got good, they wanted to be there and they didn't stay, and they Typically didn't stay because they didn't want to buy into the whole picture.
Todd Creneti:Even the school in St.
Todd Creneti:Stephen's is this wonderful small Episcopal day school in Bradenton, Florida, which is gorgeous.
Todd Creneti:We're on a little bayou.
Todd Creneti:Beautiful.
Todd Creneti:The campus is amazing, what, four or five miles from the Gulf of Mexico?
Todd Creneti:I mean, how bad could it be?
Todd Creneti:So there's any number of reasons you want to be there.
Todd Creneti:But it's also rigorously academic.
Todd Creneti:So we would make sure people knew that you're not coming, you're not ever coming to St.
Todd Creneti:Stephen's just to play football or to play lacrosse as a male or female or run driver.
Todd Creneti:You had to be in for the whole picture.
Todd Creneti:You had to want it all.
Todd Creneti:You wanted the discipline, you wanted the academics, you wanted the opportunity to compete.
Todd Creneti:And so along those lines, we knew that there would be people who were drawn to the program, who weren't buying the idea that selflessness was valuable.
Todd Creneti:They weren't going to buy that effort mattered every day.
Todd Creneti:And they weren't that interested in meeting the needs of other people.
Todd Creneti:Rather, they wanted to meet their own needs.
Todd Creneti:And what's fascinating to me is, and there's some rose colored glasses with me here, so forgive me, the people who left never seemed to do as well as we expected they would have.
Todd Creneti:They stayed.
Todd Creneti:And I think in a lot of ways, when our pursuits continue to be personal, we get to a place where we've alienated so many other people that we could have served and lifted up and encouraged, that we get to this place where since we've made it about us, it's just us.
Todd Creneti:And that's got to be a pretty lonely place to be.
Host:I love that.
Host:This made me think of something else as you were talking about this, this idea of people coming along maybe at the wrong, just because to be part of the party.
Host:So you've talked about the millennial generation.
Host:What do you notice about the group behind them, the Generation Z?
Host:Because I know that there's.
Host:They're still kind of just entering the workforce now.
Host:What characteristics are you seeing in this group that's coming up that's going to impact businesses and the world and leadership down the road?
Todd Creneti:So my sense is that they are born negotiators.
Todd Creneti:And I sort of chuckle when I say that because they've taken the idea from the millennials.
Todd Creneti:I believe this idea that they want their work to matter to the nth degree and that they're not prepared to invest in, buy into, be a part of something that they don't support and they don't feel like they need to apologize to anybody for that.
Todd Creneti:They don't need to be apologetic.
Todd Creneti:They can really wait for the right opportunities.
Todd Creneti:And yet they're also willing to do work that other generations aren't always willing to do.
Todd Creneti:You'll see some people in this generation bide their time and in positions that are familiar that they like, that might not be life changing until the right opportunity comes along.
Todd Creneti:And so there's a patience there.
Todd Creneti:And even as we've seen the change in other generations with things like home buying, you know, these generations are mapping the new normal.
Todd Creneti:And again, it's going to really be up to us and the generation above us to understand that as they become the driving force in society, that we learn to speak their language.
Todd Creneti:And if we're sitting around waiting for them to learn how to speak ours, it's going to be a long way.
Todd Creneti:And I don't see that as a bad thing.
Host:That's great.
Host:I love to ask my guests this question.
Host:This has been a phenomenal conversation.
Host:What do you want your legacy to be?
Todd Creneti:I want my legacy to be.
Todd Creneti:I want to think about how to say this right, that I helped elevate other people, that I lifted up other people, that at some point in my life, I found out pretty quickly that being all about me wasn't very interesting.
Todd Creneti:And I'll share a quick story if we have time.
Todd Creneti:The office I'm in, you can see there's a lot of memorabilia around.
Todd Creneti:And when we were decorating my office, it was my wife and I actually was Covid.
Todd Creneti:We had a lot of time on our hands like everybody else, and we were putting some things up on the wall.
Todd Creneti:And I had a box in my closet, and in that box were some plaques and things like that, awards that I had received for coaching.
Todd Creneti:And my wife's like, hey, where do you want to hang these?
Todd Creneti:I was like, no, they can go right back in the.
Todd Creneti:In the closet, in the box.
Todd Creneti:I'm fine.
Todd Creneti:I want to put up pictures of this kid, that kid, you know, all these different things.
Todd Creneti:And that's what's on the other walls, really, are photographs of the kids that I've coached and my own kids.
Todd Creneti:And she said, why?
Todd Creneti:And I sort of snapped because I was uncomfortable with the assertion I need to hang these things on the wall.
Todd Creneti:And so it took me a couple days to really wrap my brain around it.
Todd Creneti:I went back to her a couple days later and said, hey, let me walk you through what I was feeling in that moment.
Todd Creneti:I am not interested in my Own success.
Todd Creneti:While I want to be successful, I am not fascinated by my own success.
Todd Creneti:I am fascinated by the success of other people.
Todd Creneti:And if I can help somebody become successful and I can help them achieve something.
Todd Creneti:And in places like Lakewood High School, it might have been getting out of town and breaking the poverty cycle.
Todd Creneti:With kids from more affluent settings, it might be to engage their parents in such a way to build meaningful relationships and then have them with their own families moving forward.
Todd Creneti:Success looks like a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Todd Creneti:But if I can help people achieve the success about which they dream, then I feel like I'm doing something.
Todd Creneti:And I would say that's where I'd love for my legacy to it.
Host:That's a great legacy because you're like, it is about the people you poured into versus the plaques on your wall, the trophies in your cases, because when you're gone, those aren't there.
Todd Creneti:And it's important for me to say, too, Keith, that in doing that, I.
Todd Creneti:I've had more people pour into me than I could possibly count.
Todd Creneti:So I am the recipient of the same throughout my life.
Todd Creneti:Have been the recipient throughout my life.
Host:That's awesome.
Host:As we wrap this up, what key takeaways do you want to leave with the audience to encourage them or maybe a call to action for the audience?
Todd Creneti:You know, I would love to be living in a world where people took a minute to stop thinking about themselves and what they're wrestling with in the moment and scan the room wherever they are.
Todd Creneti:Are you sitting somewhere getting your oil changed?
Todd Creneti:Are you at work?
Todd Creneti:Are you at a family event to scan the room and see if there's somebody there whose need I'm able to meet?
Todd Creneti:Is there somebody that I can connect with today?
Todd Creneti:Even if it's just a lighthearted comment, if it's carrying something to their car for them, is there anything that I can be doing to help make somebody else feel a little bit better and lift them up?
Todd Creneti:Because we know from the psychology standpoint that there's benefit for us in that, too.
Todd Creneti:That gesture also lifts our own spirits.
Todd Creneti:And so when we're struggling in a moment or we feel overwhelmed, just to look around and see if there's somebody that I can connect with because it's going to elevate both of us.
Host:That's great.
Host:Where can people find you and follow you on social media?
Todd Creneti:So the easiest place to find me if you want to learn a little bit about me, is@toddcronetti.com it's great to have a weird name.
Todd Creneti:So T o D is C R E n e t I.com and I can be found on Facebook@todd Trinity.com and if you're more interested in the coaching side, I'm on Instagram and X coachcrenetti.
Host:Well, thanks so much, Todd, for coming on and sharing what you've done and what you've experienced and the stories that you share and the way you impact and pour into people's lives is encouraging because those are our generation of future, but also our present.
Host:And to the fact that you're helping them to be their better self, build better teams, build better organizations, is a lasting impact for the world.
Host:So thank you for what you do.
Todd Creneti:Fortunate to do it.
Todd Creneti:Thank you for letting me talk about it today.
