Why winning doesn't always equal success | Valorie Kondos Field (re-release)

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
With the FIFA World Cup in full swing, winning is definitely on a lot of minds right now. But Valorie Kondos Field, one of the most decorated coaches in the history of Collegiate Gymnastics, wants us to rethink that.

**Valorie Kondos Field** (0:23)
All across America and around the world, we have a crisis in the win-at-all-cost cultures that we have created in our schools, in our businesses, in politics. Winning at all cost has become acceptable.

**Elise Hu** (0:40)
Valorie knows a lot about winning. While head coach of the Women's Gymnastics Team at UCLA, she led them to seven national championships. But in her talk from 2019, she shares what she actually had to unlearn in order to get there.
And the secret to her success, it turns out, had nothing to do with winning. Or at least not in the way one might think.

**Valorie Kondos Field** (1:01)
Time out.
We need to redefine success. Real success is developing champions in life for our world, win or lose.

**Elise Hu** (1:14)
Her talk is coming up right after a short break. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Valorie Kondos Field** (1:29)
OK, I have a question for all of us. You ready? Is all winning success? Oh.
Oh, OK. I am the recently retired head coach of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team, a position that I held for 29 years. Thank you. And during my tenure, I experienced a lot of winning. I led our team to seven national championships. I was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame, and I was even voted the coach of the century by the Pac-12 Conference.
Winning is really, really, like really, really fun.
But I am here to share my insight. Winning does not always equal success. All across America and around the world, we have a crisis in the win-at-all-cost cultures that we have created. In our schools, in our businesses, in politics, winning at all costs has become acceptable. As a society, we honor the people at the top of the pyramid. We effusively applaud those people who win championships and elections and awards. But sadly, quite often, those same people are leaving their institutions as damaged human beings. Sadly, with straight A's, kids are leaving school damaged. With awards and medals, athletes often leave their teams damaged, emotionally, mentally, not just physically. And with huge profits, employees often leave their companies damaged. We have become so hyper-focused on that end result, and when the end result is a win, the human component of how we got there often gets swept under the proverbial rug, and so does the damage. So, I'm calling for a timeout. Timeout. We need to redefine success. Real success is developing champions in life for our world. Win or lose.
Real success is developing champions in life. Not for your team, not for your business, and I'm sad to tell you, not even for your Christmas card bragging rights. Sorry. So how do we do this? First of all, you may be able to dictate your way to a win, but you can't dictate your way to success. Let me take you back to 1990, when I was first appointed the head coach of the UCLA Women's Gymnastics Team. And I would like to share with you that I've never done gymnastics. I grew up in the world of ballet. I have never done a cartwheel, and I couldn't teach you how to do a proper cartwheel. It's sadly true. And I knew nothing about how to develop a team culture. The best I could do was mimic other coaches who had won. And so I became tough talking, tough-minded, relentless, unsympathetic, bullish, unempathetic and oftentimes downright mean. I acted like a head coach whose only thought was to figure out how to win.
My first few seasons as a head coach were abysmal. And after putting up with my brash coaching style for a few years, our team asked me for a team meeting. Well, I love team meetings, so I said, Yay, let's have a team meeting. And for two solid hours, they gave me examples of how my arrogance was hurtful and demeaning. Yeah, not yay. They explained to me that they wanted to be supported, not belittled. They wanted to be coached up, not torn down. They wanted to be motivated, not pressured or bullied. That was my time out, and I chose to change. Being a dogmatic dictator may produce compliant, good little soldiers, but it doesn't develop champions in life. It is so much easier in any walk of life to dictate and give orders, than to actually figure out how to motivate someone to want to be better. And the reason is, we all know this, motivation takes a really long time to take root. But when it does, it is character building and life altering. I realized that I needed to fortify our student athletes as whole human beings, not just athletes who won. So success for me shifted from only focusing on winning to developing my coaching philosophy, which is developing champions in life through sport. And I knew if I did this well enough, that champion mentality would translate to the competition floor, and it did. And the key ingredient was to develop trust through patience, respectful honesty and accountability. All of the ingredients that go into tough love. Speaking of tough love, Caitlin Ohashi is a perfect example of this. You may have all seen her floor routine. It has had over 150 million views. And the consensus is, her performance is pure joy. However, when Caitlin came to UCLA, she was broken in body, mind and spirit. She had grown up in a stereotypical, very high-level, athletic world. And she was damaged. So when Caitlin came to UCLA her freshman year, she found her inner rebel quite well, to the point where she was no longer able to do gymnastics at the level at which she was recruited. And I will never forget a team meeting we had halfway through her freshman season. We were in there with the team, the coaching staff, the support staff, sports ecologist, and Caitlin very clearly and unapologetically said, I just don't want to be great again.