Stanford Water Polo Coach John Tanner: Training Champions for Life
Season 1 Episode 8
Great coaches train better people, not just better athletes.
Coach John Tanner (JT) is about to start his 29th season as the Stanford women’s water polo coach. On this episode of How We Future, JT and Lisa explore how coaching goes far beyond the pool. Over decades of leading championship teams, JT has developed a coaching style that focuses on resilience, communication skills, and the value of practice.
JT helps athletes become confident, empathetic, and thoughtful leaders. Whether it’s having his athletes make TED Talks for each other or facilitating weekly check-ins about how his team is feeling about their academics, JT prioritizes training methods that will help his students long after their athletic careers.
JT and Lisa discuss:
How high-pressure sports environments can cultivate empathy
Why JT integrates storytelling and reflection into his team’s daily routine
How intentional, consistent practice is crucial to navigating the highest-pressure moments
The mindset behind coaching for long-term growth, not just short-term victories
Ways to translate JT’s coaching strategies into personal or professional leadership practices
Leadership isn’t only forged in the workplace. It’s practiced every day in the ways we connect, communicate, and lift others.
Links from the show:
Coaching Citizens Athletes, Stanford Report Article
The Coaches Wore Cardinal, Stanford Magazine
The Right Call by Sally Jenkins (Lisa’s favorite book about sports and leadership)
See JT on Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Female Athlete Research Meeting (FARM)
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I’m Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
This week’s guest is John Tanner, head coach of the Stanford women’s water polo team and one of the most respected leaders in collegiate athletics. Since starting at Stanford 29 seasons ago, JT, as he’s known to both friends and players, has brought his teams to 10 NCAA championship wins while helping generations of athletes grow as competitors, teammates, and as leaders. In our conversation, JT shares the lessons that stick with his players long after their athletic careers.
He talks about coaching under pressure, leading with consistency, and the importance of preparing athletes not just for matches but for life. If you’ve ever wondered what championship culture looks like from the inside or how sports can teach us to face the future with resilience, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Let’s get into it with Coach John Tanner.
I am so excited today to be talking to one of my personal inspirations, Coach John Tanner, or JT, as he’s affectionately known to his players and fellow coaches and the water polo world more generally.
JT, thank you so much for being here with me and everyone today on the How We Future podcast.
John Tanner: My pleasure, Lisa. It’s great to be here with you.
Lisa: Well, JT, it’s so exciting to talk to you as you’re about to start your 29th season coaching the women’s water polo team at Stanford, and just have an extraordinary track record of not only producing 10 NCAA championships, many, many Olympians who have won many, many medals, hundreds of All-American All-Stars. You are doing something very special with this team. I’m thrilled to talk to you today about some of the choices you make in creating conditions for these athletes to be the best version of themselves.
There’s obviously something happening in your locker room and, of course, the pool. I will say just right off the bat, as an East Coaster, I barely know how to swim, let alone play water polo, which, for anyone who has watched water polo, is like just a marvel to see these athletes in the water trying to drown each other, but also trying to shoot the ball in the net. Maybe I’d love to start with just what got you into coaching women’s water polo to begin with.
JT: First of all, water polo is an entirely distinct sport from anything else. I think it provides the opportunity for developing the best possible teammates. It’s a team sport. It’s happening in the water, away from coaches, referees, anyone else who’s not actively participating in the actual game itself. It’s also really hard. You mentioned drowning. That is a very real risk or a fear. We feel it if somebody’s holding us underwater, which happens occasionally. Between that potential for panic and that real fear that goes on, and our sense of responsibility to our teammates and our distinct medium that we compete in, it is the greatest team sport of all.
I feel a bias toward team sports over individual. Don’t get me wrong, someone who’s playing golf, who’s having to solve problems on their own, has an amazing capacity to thrive in the world beyond that. In team sports, yes, I just feel like it’s the best conditions for developing teammates, developing great citizens. That was a big part of how I got into it. Honestly, I started coaching because I had hoped to become an Olympian myself. I made the US national team, but I was cut within about three weeks. I lasted not long at all, but I’d gotten myself pretty well-rooted into coaching.
For the first part of my career and 12 years as a Division I college coach, I was coaching men’s water polo and also men’s swimming at University of the Pacific. Coming to Stanford was my first experience coaching women’s water polo. That was my path. A very distinct sport, but one that I got into, hoping to pursue an Olympic dream that turned out was a pipe dream.
Lisa: Well, yes, and maybe an opportunity to say, “Hey, here’s a sport I still love. How else can I make an impact with it if it didn’t exactly reach your dream,” which I think is totally resonant with everything we’re trying to explore here on the How We Future podcast, which is how do you take the events that unfold and continue to turn it into something positive, something that maybe you didn’t initially expect, but really proactively even creating more impact. I had not thought about the pool creating that separation of conditions that really solidify a team.
That’s such a cool way to think about it. I will say that we got introduced by a fellow mutual friend and coach, Eric Reveno, who will also be a future guest on How We Future. He said, “You just have to meet JT. He’s exceptional, extraordinary.” He had me at hello. The real moment where I knew something super special was happening was when I had one of your students in one of my classes. She said, “Lisa, I’d love to take you out to coffee or just spend more time outside the classroom.” It was actually during COVID. I didn’t even realize she was a water polo player because during COVID, we’re all just seeing each other on these little boxes in Zoom.
I was so happy that when we were able to meet in person, we did. I said, “Tell me about your experience as a water polo player.” She said, “Playing for JT, and playing on the Stanford women’s water polo team, more than anything, it’s a masterclass in leadership development. This program has helped us become the best leaders we can be. And, not quite incidentally, along the way, we’re playing world-class water polo.” I had never heard of an athletic endeavor described that way. I was so intrigued. That led me on a journey to really dive into some of the details of how you do this.
This isn’t just you put up words, “We’re going to be developing teammates and citizens. Oh, and by the way, playing at the highest level water polo.” It’s in these micro decisions that you make. I wonder, again, going back to maybe from the beginning of your roots, sounds like you entered it as an athlete yourself. At what point did you say, “Wait a minute, I actually have the conditions here to do something so much more than just helping these athletes win games?”
JT: Well, there was a part of it that was always there. To be transparent, I wanted to be in academia. I wanted to be a college professor. I didn’t have that discipline to sustain the effort required to end up in that place. I always wanted to have an impact as an educator first. That was always on my mind. As my career evolved, it became clear that water polo, and I talked about it earlier, just being a distinct medium, it really is about self-determination. There are so many problems that happen during the course of a game. In any sport, period, there are so many decisions that have to be made in real time, but to then to have to communicate them across an entire team.
When you play water polo, you can’t hear a thing. There are a few voices that stand out, but it’s almost comical when people in the stands yell because it all just blends together. To be able to communicate what is happening really relies on leadership development within the team. These problems have to be solved quickly and in the pool. As much as on the deck, I think they are attuned to my voice and can respond, there are so many times where it’s non-verbal, it’s happening out of practice, out of rehearsal. I just feel like it lends itself to this kind of leadership development.
As it unfolds, it becomes easier for me to put these things together. When you’re talking about our future and how we envision our future, I envision my future being a faculty member in a position like you, but ended up where I am. It’s the same mentality, but it’s a different view of the future. Whereas for you, it may be a longer-term thing of where you want to land, a class you’re looking to develop. For me, it’s the urgency of the actual season. Every season is a lifetime. Every season is an opportunity to teach leadership in the new context of this team.
Lisa: I love that also because you’ve reimagined what does it mean to be an educator, not necessarily in the classroom, but through the practice time that you have and through the constraint of the seasons. I remember one time, JT, you were playing the NCAA Championship. It was so close. You got out, and they asked, “How did it go?” You said something like, “The women knew what to do in the pool.” It was the culmination of all of that practice, that real-time decision-making skills, dealing with complex information happening so quickly, that’s what they’ve been practicing for.
You were just honoring that they had earned this. It wasn’t because you were on the sidelines coaching them to do this or that, that the decision-making that was happening real-time was a result of all of the, I would argue, educational minutes. Even though you may not have been a professor in that way, I would say you actually spend more time with your players than any one faculty does. I just think that’s an extraordinary reframe of thinking about the power of coaches to change lives.
JT: It’s an authentic assessment that we have to go through on a daily basis. We have to get them to prove their learning in order to win. We can’t win at the end of the year if they haven’t mastered these communication skills and decision-making in real-time. We have confidence because we’ve designed these problems for them to encounter and overcome, so we’re confident at the end of the year that they have the skills they need to coalesce and to solve whatever problem might come along in real time. That’s all that confidence is, just that comfort with the uncertainty and the unknown and the unknowable of a game.
When I give that interview, people look at me and say, “Wow, you just look so calm,” but there’s an equanimity that you can develop when you’re looking at 10 years farther down the line and knowing that, okay, great, they solved these problems during the course of this water polo game. It’s a few thousand people who are watching that interview, but there could be a lot more people watching when they’re having to lead a big organization in a big moment down the line in their career. Knowing that I’ve done what I can or that we have done as a group what we can to help launch people toward those careers, it’s a lot easier to keep your focus beyond just the photos with the trophy.
Lisa: Absolutely. I think one of the unique things about your coaching that I want to get into a little bit is that you present your players with a diversity of experiences to develop that confidence in the unknown or in at least something novel to them. I want to be specific. One of the things I learned early was that you take precious minutes from being in the weight room or in the pool during practice time to have your players deliver TED Talks to each other.
This is actually getting them to present, literally present, not in the pool, not in the weight room, about a topic that’s not necessarily related to water polo as part of their practice of learning how to be a good teacher. Can you talk a little bit about that component of your training and why that’s so important?
JT: We’ve had times we’ve done it with faculty members or other visiting scholars in the room. That moment, I think, helps prepare them for championship moments in competition, but it also helps us develop an understanding of the journey they have traveled, the path they’ve traveled to get to Stanford. Help us understand the richness of their experience and more about their genius, because we all know about one another’s genius as athletes. It’s on display every day. To understand a person’s genius beyond that and to see a facet of them, we develop a much fuller appreciation for them as people.
It helps us just to step back. That perspective shift is a vital part of being a great athlete. The greatest athletes I’ve ever coached can make that perspective shift in real time. They seemingly can see the game and make decisions as if they’re gathering information from a drone above the pool from an angle where the referees are, where the coaches are, where all the other players are, so they can read intent in opposing players. That perspective shift is really valuable. Whether in the audience listening to those talks or preparing them and delivering them, those are vital skills.
Of course, storytelling is everything. They become really great storytellers during the course of their time there. Even when we have recruits come to campus, they will get up in front of the group and talk. Incoming freshmen, and to see them evolve over the years, is really a rewarding experience.
Lisa: I think it’s symbolic of so much of your values and what you do, JT, where so much of it is just in life, not even in water polo, but the pressure of the short-term performance. No, we can’t possibly take time away from shooting practice to go listen to a TED Talk. Here you are talking about this long-term perspective of helping these players become better learners, helping them develop a wider perspective and sense of how to look at things because they’re listening and they’re learning.
I’ve also heard you talk about the fact that when you become a teacher or responsible for teaching something, it helps you become a better learner. Therefore, you’re a better teammate. So much of this is steeped in a point of view that it’s not just about this week’s practice or today’s practice, but it’s developing over the long term.
JT: I think we win because we do it, not in spite of it. I don’t believe there’s a balancing act here. I think if it’s done in a way that helps to develop teammateship and maybe replicates that championship moment, we will all be more comfortable with fulfilling our tasks and with the environment that we’re going to incur.
Lisa: I have to ask, do you have, over years of doing this, any talks stick out with you, any favorites, something that you learned that, like, “Oh my gosh, I never knew that,” or “That was so surprising?”
JT: Yes. There are a lot of them that are like that, but some of them are as simple as bicycle mechanics and people telling a story about a bike accident that happened because their derailer froze or they had some issue with bike maintenance, and they’re out somewhere far away and had to figure it out. Bike maintenance is a big part of being a college student. Something as simple as that, but with the story connected to it that draws everyone in. We all have stories of bike failure during a school or a trip or at some point, we all have that common experience.
It can be something just as simple as that. We had another talk that had to do with human trafficking of a high school teammate. That was really stunning. The speaker was able to connect it back to a flyer in an airport bathroom because we had all just finished the trip, we’d gotten back, and we’ve all seen those flyers. To have that resonate personally with someone and be able to go back and tell that story was a really powerful experience and changed how we traveled, how we thought about a lens through which we view interactions with people.
Lisa: It’s so powerful to give space for people to let themselves be known, to take some risks, to share something vulnerable about themselves, particularly in a world where a lot of these players have just grown up with social media, trying to get them to perform and be perfect and connect in a certain way. Here you are opening up space for them to be fully seen and to share something. I imagine that it’s just profoundly powerful for all of them.
JT: Well, I think it induces a little fear initially, but it is pretty low stakes when it’s just our team. Kim Kruger, who was one of our assistants the last three years, also just raised the stakes on all of this by providing a lot of feedback and then requesting follow-up from them. They had to ask somebody else to watch and evaluate, give them feedback, share thoughts, and increase the stakes a little bit, but also the impact.
Lisa: You can imagine, obviously, your players don’t stay playing for Stanford forever, that, as you said, they go on to join organizations to be leaders. Having gone through this process, I imagine they’re that much more comfortable when they’re engaging in their first meeting and ultimately running teams themselves. They have this to pull on. It strikes me that one of the most powerful reframe we can all have in the How We Future, how do we go about this world that’s filled with more ambiguity and complexity, and uncertainty and disruption is being willing to shift your perspective of the finite game of winning and the infinite game of being a great teammate, a great citizen, a great leader regardless of your conditions. It strikes me, JT, that so much of what you do is giving them an opportunity to practice for that infinite game of life.
JT: There are several things, several responses to that. I think so many times, coaches are so committed to the process of winning and losing, and that self-evaluation rather than looking at it long-term. By looking at it long-term, you provide clarity that this is about you and your season as a team and about you and your four years, not about me, because I’m more interested in what happens later. I’m more interested in that call that I get from you about you being thrown into a really difficult position. How you fell back on things we had worked on as part of Stanford Women’s Water Polo.
We had one who talked about giving a going-away presentation and telling the story for a group of primarily male engineers in India. At age 26, having to give this speech that resonated with people. Beyond just the speaker series, we also asked them to get up in front of groups. It might be every time we’re together with family members, where they get up and tell a story that relates, maybe to their family. They’re constantly having to do that. It is a training that removes me from the immediacy of winning and the fact that I am thereby able to get them to understand that this is their mission, this is their journey.
They have crafted it, and they are living into it, and they are going to solve these problems in real-time in those championship moments, which makes it, I hope, a more powerful experience for them.
Lisa: It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about the future from Bob Johansen, who used to run the Institute for the Future, where he says, “The future will reward clarity but will punish certainty.” You don’t exactly know how this is going to unfold. You don’t, but that clarity of purpose, that clarity of values, that clarity of perspective, long-term being a good teammate, learning how to perform amid unexpected events, in the pool, out of the pool. I remember once, JT, coming back from one of your wins, there was a small welcome party when the bus pulled in.
We had red pom-poms, and we were cheering you on. The players, they were so confident and thoughtful in how they got off that bus and greeted their small but mighty fan base. I remember hearing, “Yes, we practiced that.” It just blew me away. I wonder if you remember that moment at all and what that was like.
JT: I remember hearing something about Jim Valvano and his famous speech in 1993 at the ESPY Awards. He had harkened back to the 1983 team that made him famous, and the story that at the beginning of the year, they actually practiced cutting down the nets. I would never, ever do that because to me, that is just going to the joy of actually winning, and it’s a fantasy rather than a reality of what is it like to be in that championship moment in the uncertainty, not the certainty of knowing how it ended up. It is a powerful thing to just immerse yourself in that moment of that championship game, that championship day, and feeling confident that you can solve anything.
The basket in that 1983 championship that won it, it ended up being sort of an alley-oop pass, but the shot was from straight on, and then it was a strange angle, and the technique used in it might be different from what they had done any other time during the year, but they were able to solve that problem. I absolutely agree. You want to have clarity about what that day will look like and what that big moment will look like, whether it’s that woman in India giving the going-away speech or somebody on that final play to win an NCAA championship.
Lisa: One of my favorite components of what you do in your program is something I’ve had the personal pleasure of joining a few times, and every time just fills me with pure awe and inspiration and wonder, which is your favorite faculty dinner. Can you talk a little bit about your favorite faculty dinner and some of the components involved?
JT: At the end of week one, we often will ask our students, “How are your classes going? What do you think of them?” They’ll give a quick summary of each class and talk about some facet of it, maybe a story of getting lost trying to find the classroom on the first day. The follow-up question is, “What are your professors’ names, and who do you like most in that group?” After week one, they can’t remember the prof’s name.
That’s concerning to me. We start with that and then look ahead to this favorite faculty dinner and start thinking, at the end of the year, you’re going to need to invite a faculty member, your favorite faculty member, and here you are, a freshman, who would it be right now if we move that dinner from April to October? Who is your favorite faculty member after week one? To get them now in week two, thinking, “I better know my prof’s names because I’m going to be quizzed on that, and I better start thinking about what it is I like about them, and maybe I’m going to need to start developing a relationship.”
Again, it’s the futuring of, at this dinner, you’re going to have a really nice dinner. It’s over in the sports cafe. It’s casual setting, and it’s a place where you’re really comfortable, but you’re going to need to get up in front of these world-class profs, and you’re going to need to talk about your relationship with this professor, what he or she has meant to you as a student and as a learner, and how they have inspired you. That process probably needs to start now.
I want them to engage more with their faculty because, really, I think a lot of our students, as they get through school, sure, there’s a lot of curriculum they need to cover, especially in technical classes, but there are also a lot who will choose their classes based on their profs. I know you have a huge following. Once somebody takes one class from you, they want to keep coming back and being around you. Even if it’s just coming to your office hours, they want to engage. That’s why you’re a perennial guest at our favorite faculty dinners.
We do end up having a lot of people that will be asked back each year by each successive class. Yes, it’s a gathering at the end of the year. It’s dinner, and it’s introductions where they talk not about where somebody got their PhD, what they did their dissertation in, but a little bit about what they’re doing in research, but how it has inspired each of our athletes as a learner, as a student, as a member of the Stanford community. It ends up being a really powerful experience, just the process of inviting people because they’re really nervous about how that’s going to go.
They get the slightest lack of response, maybe, and they don’t want to follow up. It makes them really nervous. Some of our most powerful moments at the favorite faculty dinner come from the repeated rejection. Somebody will be turned down two, three, four times, and we’ll tell them, “You got to have somebody. You’re going to have to introduce someone.” Then they just go ahead and take a long shot. Like inviting John Levin to come.
Lisa: That was amazing.
JT: He has been at the last two favorite faculty dinners, and this last time he sat throughout the whole thing. There are students up there talking about their favorite faculty member and just talking about how much of an impact that person has had on them as a student, as a person, and their development as a human being in front of Stanford’s president.
Lisa: It was extraordinary. It was like a full display of all these principles that you have in motion, where I didn’t realize that you set the expectations so early on for them to pay attention, to don’t just move through your classes transactionally. Start to think about the kinds of relationships you want to build. Start to think about the kind of connections and opportunities for personal development. One of the things I’ve certainly noticed over the years, particularly since COVID, when we all were behind the screens, disconnected, is how uncomfortable our younger leaders and learners are in reaching out just to build a relationship.
If there’s not a transactional thing that they have to do, they won’t do it. Yet some of the good stuff happens when you’re just reaching out to learn about someone else, to be curious. I am always blown away by the poise and the joy that your players have when they’re getting up there introducing their guest. They could be a Nobel laureate. They’ve authored multiple books, these professors. They get up there without notes, without their iPhone, and for 90 seconds, they’re delivering a personal introduction that would make you cry. The few times I’ve been there, I think like, “Is anyone recording this?
This has to be on my daily playback,” because it’s so heartfelt, and it’s clear they’ve put so much energy, and everybody benefits. It’s like we are lifting all boats. I loved seeing the president of Stanford there stay the whole time and get to experience at a very, very personal level, the impact of what these professors and how these professors have influenced these students at this personal level. I remember the opportunity to meet with your players after to give them some feedback on the impact that they created. I said, “What do you think he’s talking about at the board meeting?
Do you think he wants to talk about how difficult it is to be the president right now of a higher ed institution, or do you think he wants to talk about how cool it was that the water polo team got to welcome and talk about the personal impact that’s created on a daily basis?” It was extraordinary, and I think it really represents, JT, something that you haven’t shared, but I’d love for you to talk about, which is your overall purpose, the mission, if you will, of what you’re trying to instill into your players. I wonder if you could share that.
JT: Well, we’re trying to instill teammateship because really, that’s what it’s all about. Getting into Stanford is really an individual sport. We’re being assessed individually. We need to have people, hey, look at me, I will contribute a lot to your community, whether it’s the water polo community or the Stanford community. Much of it does feel like it is individually driven, but success at Stanford and after Stanford is a team sport. It’s absolutely collaborative. It is helping them make that transition and to launch them into that future. I want to go back to our speaker series and to the faculty dinner.
These are not one-off events, and as I’ve tried to clarify with the faculty dinner, that starts in Week 1 of the fall. It’s an ongoing thing, and the actual introductions that they do, it’s not the first time they’ve done them, and a couple of days before, they’ll be cold-called to present their introduction. These things aren’t happening accidentally, and there is a lot that goes into it. I think in the age of AI, there’s so much talk now about how do we get these kinds of assessments so that we can be confident that people are mastering things, that they are going through these cognitive changes that are impacting their development as human beings.
We’re assessing them constantly, we’re quizzing constantly, and that might be about tactics, or it might be about the introduction they’re going to be giving. It’s the same thing with when they give their speeches, their TED Talks. They’ve gotten up in front of groups over and over and over. It’s just by getting almost daily reps on all this, whether it’s summarizing how things went in practice, speaking in a timeout during a game simulation, whatever it might be. It’s always about the bigger picture, but starting with that outcome and then working backwards to what are the steps we’re going to need to move to that spot.
The biggest challenge is that while I see it as a class that we’re running, it’s not one quarter, it’s one season. It’s one full school year, and our season more or less mirrors the school year. Our first practice is the first day of school, and our championship game has traditionally been Mother’s Day, which is toward the end of the season, and the end of the school year. It’s also about the four years, and it’s about far beyond that. I feel like the fact that I’ve been here a long time doing this has helped me fail enough that I can more reliably set up a vision and help them craft how they want the season to go, and then fill in along the way.
Lisa: I’ve had a lot of conversations with your players after the faculty dinner. “What was it like to get up there to give the talk?” I’ll even say, “What was more nerve-wracking for you, giving the intro to the faculty dinner or playing in the championship of the NCAA?” Every hand went up to say that doing the intro for the favorite faculty dinner was way more stressful, way more anxiety-producing than playing in their championship game. I did hear that in the lead-up of the cold calling, there may have been some moments that didn’t quite go the way that they hoped to, but that’s all in the spirit of building resilience, building grit.
We talk about these words that matter, but you’re actually architecting opportunities for them to feel it, for them to grow, for them to recover, for them to learn from it in a safe way that still has consequences. It’s not getting up there and introducing the president. It’s not something that’s so extreme that our national security is going to falter if you don’t do it well, but you still feel some real nerves. I love that opportunity for them to practice the stuff that matters in life. I think so often we expect ourselves to be masters at something or brilliant at something without actually architecting that deliberate practice.
Then we put all this pressure on ourselves, and guess what? It doesn’t go well. Then we turn critical, like, “Oh, I guess I just don’t have it,” versus really architecting the season, the years, to ladder up to where we want to be. I just think that’s so important. The last thing I’ll say about this particular experience, as it sits within the overall toolkit or opportunities that you offer your players to grow, is that it’s not expensive. It’s not precious. You’re not requiring technology or something really fancy, or only unique to Stanford. You’re taking an evening, and you’re setting it as an opportunity to create connections within the sports cafe over a dinner.
I want to hammer home that point a little bit because I think so often we think like, ‘Oh, I don’t have the resources to do something special, or I don’t have the budget, or I don’t have the permission.” You invented this, and you used what was available to you in order to architect the special moment that I imagine your players will talk about until some of their very last days. I just wonder if you could share a little bit about how you see this opportunity or opportunity space to be available even when you don’t necessarily think it is.
JT: You mentioned it earlier about the feeling of things being life and death when they are. That is what is wonderful about athletics. It provides a life and death experience or a sense that it’s all or nothing and that everything is on the line. Then again, we’ll play again a week from now. Even if our season goes poorly or great, however it ends up, we’ll still get to do it again next year. We get these new leases on life, these new opportunities to start over. The urgency and that sense that this is a lifetime, this season is a lifetime. A week can even feel like a lifetime as you’re preparing for a big moment.
To then take the big moment and then work backwards from there and find those little opportunities to practice for that practice. Because really, even playing in a championship game or introducing your faculty member at our favorite faculty dinner is really just practice for something down the line. We will practice over and over and over for that practice. That, to me, is how you do things on a budget. That dinner, don’t get me wrong. I think there’s steak and shrimp.
Lisa: Oh, yes. It’s delish, yes.
JT: It adds up. It’s free to practice doing the intros. It’s free to talk about who one’s favorite faculty is in the moment. Some of them will give updates during the course of the year on who is your front runner, who are your top three, who do you think you’re going to invite this year. It creates a lot of conversation. It’s just that engagement and the integration of what we do in school and what we do in the pool that helps us understand one another better as teammates. It helps me connect with life across campus drive, so I don’t get stuck in my world because it’s easy to do that, especially when we’re in the middle of season.
The more that opens things up for me, it also allows me, and I think everyone on our team, to realize what a cool opportunity we are in the midst of experience. That appreciation, the gratitude for what we have, is a great reminder when all that’s on our mind is our power play tactics for a game coming up on the weekend.
Lisa: Learning from you, JT, I’ve developed this concept of playing optimistic offense. This notion that we can proactively create conditions and practice what it means to practice in order to shape the kinds of future we want to be a part of, we want to help lead, because it gives just an ongoing sense of agency that at every moment you can create something. At every moment, you’re capable of doing something that you didn’t even think that you were, not just individually but within a team. That sense of purpose not only gives us hope for what’s possible, it actually builds resilience.
It’s actually better than the defense, which is once you’re in a place that you have suffered a setback or something, you’re having to repair. You’re building in that sense of renewal at every time, like, “Hey, we have another game to play.” Again, you can rely on that you can get up and you can learn from it. I think that’s so powerful. I want to go back to something you said around this idea of each season is a lifetime and a new beginning. We are having this conversation just weeks before we kick off a new season. What are some things you think about in those early days to set the conditions for what the experience is going to be?
I’m so curious about how you do this, knowing that you have players that have been returning and coming back. You have Olympians that have performed at the highest level, and you have incoming freshmen, where this is the first time that they’ll be playing necessarily at this level with this group. I think that it’s so important when we think about the opportunity to really not just say inspiring words, but make choices that help people really understand what they’re doing. I’d love to hear some things that go through your mind around some of those early days as you’re connecting and building that psychological safety within your team.
JT: Well, we don’t start on day one. We’re doing things before that. It’s happening individually and in small groups. There’s a lot that goes on before we get to day one. Even though officially it launches the first day of school, there are things that are happening before that. One of the things that is evolving about college, athletics, and college in general is people are changing schools a lot more often. They’re joining new communities. We’re putting a lot of emphasis on onboarding. I think every organization, it’s a really vital part of it.
Younger people are switching jobs a lot more often. You’re joining new communities rapidly. There’s that element of let’s get started before we start. Then the most important thing early in the season is them sitting down and deciding as a team how they want the team to look and how they want it to feel to be a member of the team. Project ahead, how do you want this team to look and feel at the end of the year? Where do you want to end up? We’re not even really clear on where we’re starting, but we will have started before we start. Once we gather, everything has a purpose.
No gathering without a why. We’re constantly connecting with purpose. Focus on the onboarding. In 28 years, 29 years now, this will be the 29th freshman class that will help move in. We feel really strongly about being there from the beginning, actually, before the beginning of the women’s water polo season, that we’re there when they arrive. It’s an ongoing thing that starts before we start. I think now, even more than ever, that is a vital part of being a college coach.
Lisa: I think all of us can learn from the start before you start. Don’t hope for something magical to happen. Really think through those conditions. It’s something I coach a lot of executives on when they’re holding a big board meeting or conversation where they just try to get all the pieces in place. They’re like, well, something important is going to happen almost by magic, like facilitator pixie dust. To me, the design or mentality is, no, no, don’t leave that to chance. Design ahead of time.
Think about not just the mechanics of where you’re going to meet and how you’re going to meet, but the feeling, empathetic understanding of what has happened to any individual before they get into that meeting, before they get into your practice room, and to try to design it in a way that allows them to show up as their best full selves. In whatever context that is. For you, it’s learning how to be a great teammate, learning how to perform in the pool. For, I think, any leader or anyone working within a team, it’s setting their partner or the people in the room up for success by doing that work ahead of time.
That takes a lot of work. That was so much of what I wanted to cover with you today, JT. I want to end with something you just said about there’s no gathering without a purpose. There’s always a why. What I have heard you say about the bigger why of Stanford Women Water Polo is that you’re trying to inspire Stanford to inspire the world. The opportunity to be at Stanford, to work with these extraordinary athletes, these extraordinary leaders that, as you said, have done amazing individual things, to come together and experience what it looks like to actually come together, compete, and to be at that level, is just extraordinary.
I think it’s not just something that’s good for the water polo program, for the athletic program, for the Stanford community at large, and for the world. I just really want to end by saying thank you. Thank you for inspiring me to be the best version of myself, to think more deeply about the small choices I’m making, that ladder up to the bigger why, to the long-term perspective. It’s just such an honor to be in your orbit and to get to be in those stands cheering on your players each and every game, each and every season, and to learn myself while I’m watching them learn.
JT: Thank you, Lisa. You know I love coming to your world and being a part of it because even though I love when people come to watch our games, and the fact that we have faculty come is amazing, but for me, it’s incredible to be able to gather at the D School because that really is where global inspiration is happening. The proof of that is the people traveling from all over the world to be in that space. I feel blessed to be a part of it. I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to be a guest.
Lisa: Thank you again, JT. So much fun to talk this morning.
JT: My pleasure. Thank you, Lisa.
Lisa: Thank you for listening to this episode of How We Future with Coach John Tanner. I hope you’re as inspired as I am by his dedication to practice, building long-lasting leadership skills, and learning to be an effective teacher and teammate.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please make sure to rate it and comment on How We Future. It really makes a difference.
I hope you’ll tune in next time for more conversations on shaping the future optimistically, practically, and intentionally.
I’m Lisa Kay Solomon, and I hope you have a great week.