Baseball Thrives on Healthy Conflict 

You have all seen it on social media. Baseball industry leader X puts something out into the digital world, and baseball contrarian Y disagrees.  

From there, baseball industry leader X rebuttals baseball contrarian Y, then baseball contrarian Y goes on the defense and attacks baseball industry leader X. Finally, the conversation ends with a few explicit exchanges.  

This is not helpful for growth in the sport, and at times, people can negate someone's experience in the baseball world over factual evidence extracted from research. Instead, we need to learn how to have a healthy conflict for growth, either electronically or organizationally, when sharing new ideas.  

I WAS HIRED BASED ON A DISAGREEMENT I HAD WITH MY FUTURE BOSS

For 9 years, I worked in Major League Baseball and was asked by the front offices I worked for to refrain from social media other than posting on food and family.  

Absolutely no baseball information and absolutely no pictures of anything work-related. But now, working for a leading baseball technology company that focuses on throwing arm health and performance, I have the opportunity to share my experiences, educate, and develop new ways of thinking about athletic performance, athlete wellness, scouting, and more.  

I mainly use Linkedin as there are lots of coaches, sports medicine officials, and researchers, and for my first baseball-related post, I received a reply in complete opposition to what I had thought would be a universally accepted communication.  

To make things even more intricate, my contrarian was none other than Scott Emerson, Oakland A's Pitching Coach Emeritus and someone who has tremendous experience in the sport.

I'll come back to how I handled the message, but first, you need some background to know how I was prepared. 

MAKE HEALTHY CONFLICT AN ESSENTIAL PART OF YOUR TEAM

My leadership experience was shaped by having healthy conflict, and it awarded me a job at the Major League Level. I was interviewed by Brady Anderson, VP of Baseball Operations for the Baltimore Orioles, who asked me one question on a phone call.  

He said, "What is your feeling about Olympic lifting for baseball players?"

I wanted to impress him by dispelling my knowledge and physics calculations on the effect of gravity, redirection force, appropriate weighting based on velocity that may not promote the improvement of strength, complications with the catch on power cleans, shear stress of the lumbar spine during hang cleans, the dangers of elbow and wrist contractures if the athlete does not have the mobility to hold the barbell in the front rack position, and so on.

I might have gone on for 10 minutes before he could chime in.  

He listened to everything I said and responded by telling me that when he played, Olympic lifting was a major part of his programming, and he had trained baseball players with Olympic lifting techniques for more than 10 years and had never had one single injury to date.  

He then gave me his viewpoint, and it was a back and forth for another 90 minutes with disagreement. Needless to say, I left the phone call feeling that I would not get the job due to "philosophical differences."  

To my surprise, an email was sent to me from the Director of Travel Administration requesting my attendance at Camden Yards for a formal interview the next day. So, in a nutshell, healthy conflict was the main reason I was hired, because I thought differently and didn't just agree because of the status of my future boss.  

STEPS TO INITIATE HEALTHY CONFLICT

As I moved into directorship, I took that experience and lived it to the fullest. It was essential that all our ideas, either my staff's or mine, needed to have holes poked in them. As it comes to advances in sports performance, a wrong decision or an inability to consider a black swan event could be catastrophic, hurt athletes, and cost jobs.  

We had a lot of good ideas each offseason, but no more than 1 or 2 made it to the competitive year. We made good decisions based on conflict, and it required the following:

1. Listening completely to what each stakeholder said, including taking written notes

2. Legitimizing communications with data or previous experience (not allowed to disagree for the sake of disagreeing)

3. Avoidance of power dynamics (myself leading the department with others following orders, not imposing my status upon them and influencing their thought process)

4. Not allowing meetings after meetings. If you didn't speak your mind during the meeting, you were not allowed to voice your opinion afterward. 

BACK TO SCOTT

Now fast forward to Scott...

The first thing I wanted to show him is that I was listening to him and able to rephrase what he said and find ways to integrate his concepts with my own. My communication was focused on velocity enhancement, and his communication refuted it and had more perspective on pitchability.  

The second thing I had to do was remove any power dynamics for the conversation, myself being a biomechanics expert, and acknowledge his coaching experience of over 20 years. The third thing that was most important in communication was that I followed up privately and asked if we could have a conversation.  

Out of that exchange came a breakthrough in my life and for our company in having Scott agree to be on our podcast which is featured in this newsletter

What I love about Scott is that he knows how to communicate with athletes of all levels. He has heuristics, simple rules, and uncomplicated language that directly influences results.  

He works with athletes of all levels, which sharpens his coaching acumen. If he can communicate with little kids, he will be effective. I love when he says that he doesn't work for his pitching staff, and they don't work for him, but they work together to get the most out of each other.  

He, himself, in that statement, removes power dynamics and encourages collaboration. He talks about putting in the time, taking in each moment, learning from people, taking one step at a time, and has packaged that in player development, which continues at the Major League level.

When you listen to the podcast, you will hear a quote from him that should be burned into everyone's mind in the game.  

Scott says, "I am not old school. I am not new school. I am in school."  

He has done so much, and his personal stories are outstanding. But, he also speaks the truth, 

Scott said, "Our goal is to go out and make the best possible pitchers we can. We do not need Minor League throwers, we need Major League pitchers. Take your velo and make it useful, and hit your spots as results are the only thing that matter."

I subscribe to his camp that accuracy will win out for future performance and health. While velocity attracts attention, you need to have command and hit the bullseye at least 65% of the time to be exceptional.  

After the podcast, we hung around and told more stories, but in the conversation, Scott said to us, "I respect your product, but it doesn't guarantee success." 

It was at that moment that the history of our ArmCare changed. We took Scott's advice and released our Bulletproof Arm Moneyback Guarantee.

To sum up this edition of Strength in Numbers, work hard to appreciate the viewpoints of others. It is true that if you don't stand for something, you will fall for everything, but you are the one to make conflict healthy, so take your position and ego out of it and really try to figure out how a difference of opinion fits with your way of thinking.  

If you don't, the next time you think about writing, "Go F$%^ Yourself," you might miss out on a world-changing experience and a great person to join your network with the same intentions you have in advancing the game of baseball. 

As always, reach out if you have any questions for me, and never shy away from a differing opinion. If you don't agree with something mentioned in this newsletter, reach out!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Ryan 

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