201. Ballpark to the Boardroom: How Alex Rodriguez Hits a Communication Home Run

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: In many ways, communication is like baseball. You take some swings, sometimes you hit it out of the park, and sometimes you strike out. But regardless, you learn something from that experience. 

[00:00:16] My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today we're doing something a little different. I'm partnering with my Stanford GSB colleague, Jeffrey Pfeffer, to interview the athlete turned entrepreneur. Alex Rodriguez, ARod. Jeff was a guest on Think Fast Talk Smart in episode 34. He teaches the super popular course, The Paths to Power. And he's the author of many books, including his latest, which is called Seven Rules of Power. Today, we'll be taking turns interviewing Alex, and you'll get to learn about him and from him from our two perspectives. 

[00:00:56] Let's meet Alex. Alex Rodriguez is the chairman and chief executive officer of ARod Corp. He is best known as one of the world's greatest athletes, a fourteen time Major League Baseball All Star and a 2009 World Series Champion with the New York Yankees. Alex is now an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx and leads a team of experts building high growth businesses. Welcome, Alex. Thank you for joining both Jeff and me for this tag team interview. Thanks for being here. 

[00:01:25] Alex Rodriguez: Thank you. I'm very excited. A little intimidated by both of you.

[00:01:27] Matt Abrahams: We are not very intimidating. Should we get started? 

[00:01:31] Alex Rodriguez: Sure. 

[00:01:32] Matt Abrahams: Okay. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what brings you to Stanford, brings you to campus. I know among your many jobs, you co teach a class at the GSB. Can you tell us a little bit about the class and what you hope the students learn from you? 

[00:01:43] Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, the class is called Strategic Pivoting. I co teach it with Allison Kluger. Believe it or not, it is our seventh year, and usually we have twenty-five to thirty students. And it's just been a marvelous experience. And like me, I'm sure like both of you, you've had some type of pivot, and we just try to make it strategic, and we use the framework of planting, scanning, and piloting, which I've done pretty much my whole life before coming to this class. So the fact that now I'm in class teaching our students and helping our students, it's been a lot of fun. 

[00:02:18] I think when you think about planting, you start thinking about what are your competitive advantages? What can you offer this particular space? How would my competitive powers or my even circle of competence be influenced in this particular place? And then you start scanning for opportunities. How scalable is it? Is this a good place for me to find the right people to collaborate with? And then pilots, I always feel pilots should be done small at the beginning. That way, if, if you falter or if you struggle, you can always lean back and try again, edit, cut, and then move forward. But that framework has been very popular with our students.

[00:02:55] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Thank you for giving us insight into what happens in the class. And I want to give a shout out to Allison. Both Jeff and I are friends with Allison. And those of you listening, Allison did a great episode with us on reputation and reputation management. 

[00:03:07] Jeffery Pfeffer: So one of the things I try to teach in my Paths to Power class is to get ready for what's next. Because I always tell my students it's, if you're flying in an airplane, you need to know where the emergency exits are before you need them. You need to know where the oxygen masks are before you need them. One of the things that I really admire about you is that, in fact, you did get yourself ready. It's interesting, some people will be fired unexpectedly, but if you're a professional athlete, you know that sooner or later, the athletic prowess will wane and you'll have to do something else. So talk to me about how you got ready for what came after your athletic career. 

[00:03:46] Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you. And maybe I'll start at the end. I mentor and spend a lot of time with tens and tens of athletes and former athletes. And they say that athletes die twice, when you retire, in real death. And I find that to be true, and I find a lot of athletes go through major depression, they go through divorces, and you can only play golf and fish so much. I think luckily for me, ever since I was ten years old, I always thought about my two B's, which were baseball and business. And I've always had a passion for baseball and a passion for numbers. So I've been thinking about life after baseball, before my rookie year.

[00:04:23] Matt Abrahams: And because of that you were able to see opportunities probably way before you were ready or others were thinking about it too.

[00:04:32] Alex Rodriguez: I think I was fortunate that because I was thinking about it so early on and I had a great passion for it, that I came at it from a prism of looking at opportunities different than perhaps other athletes. 

[00:04:43] Jeffery Pfeffer: What did you do to get yourself ready? 

[00:04:46] Alex Rodriguez: So, I've been a lifelong student, even though I didn't go the traditional college route because I was in the Major Leagues from Miami, drafted by Seattle in 1993 as the number one pick overall. And I was in the Major Leagues at eighteen. And I've always thought about opportunities to invest, opportunities to, to learn, to surround myself with much smarter people. I always saw it as an opportunity that was exciting. I think a lot of athletes looked at opportunities as fear and they ran the other way. And I think the best way you can do is educate yourself as much as possible, learn it, understand it, and start small. I didn't want to come out of the gates investing millions of dollars. A, I didn't have it, and B, I just thought it was imprudent. 

[00:05:30] Matt Abrahams: Many of your roles have found you in really high pressure, high stakes situations in a boardroom, on a baseball field. How do you work to stay calm and collected and communicate clearly when you're under that high stress?

[00:05:44] Alex Rodriguez: I've been lucky because I played almost twenty-five years of Major League Baseball. I played seven in Seattle, three in Texas, and then finally landed in New York for about twelve or thirteen years. And I've had over ten thousand at bats. And I'm a big believer in experience and pattern recognition. And what I've learned from watching a lot of athletes, they say when you come play for the Yankees, the pinstripes are heavy. And what they mean by that is the kitchen sometimes is too hot. And what I sensed was that a lot of people in the kitchen got hot, so did their temperature. 

[00:06:21] And they weren't able to control their emotions, and they weren't able to stay calm. And therefore they would make a lot of silly mistakes in what we call clutch time, the most important part of the game. And those who are great, like Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and many others, they have this rare ability to keep a very slow heartbeat when the stakes are highest. And I found the same thing is true with the Bob Igers of the world, or the Warren Buffets, or the Jamie Dimon's. They have that same ability, they're just not wearing pinstripes, they're wearing suits.

[00:06:55] Matt Abrahams: Right. Do you consciously do deep breathing or something to help slow that heart rate so you can be very present? Is there something physical you do or do you just, you're just at a place where you can think it and it happens? 

[00:07:06] Alex Rodriguez: Yeah. You know, post the pandemic I came out of it and I lost my ways, I got a little bit out of shape. I was working around the clock. So coming out of it, I focused basically from eight o'clock in the morning, I changed my routine from eight to noon, I was going to say that's my me time. That's the time where I train, I meditate, I do yoga, I maybe read a book, do some podcasting. And then I'm in the office every day from twelve to six when I'm home in Miami. And that's been a really wonderful formula. The reason why, it's allowed me to focus on the most important things at our company. And then it allowed me to delegate to the five senior members that report to me. And really trust my team, exactly what I wanted to do with the Yankees. We call it pass the baton to the next guy. I'm doing the same thing as the leader of our company today. 

[00:07:53] Jeffery Pfeffer: So one of the things that I've noticed about you, and I noticed about some other athletes in football as well, is that you have built an enormous and very effective presence on media, both TV, but also social media. How have you thought about doing that? What have you done strategically to make sure that everybody knows who Alex Rodriguez is? 

[00:08:14] Alex Rodriguez: I think it's important to be consistent with whatever you're doing. I also think it's important to be genuine and authentic. If you look at whether it's Joe Rogan or whoever platforms are winning today, they're ones that they're taking the broker out of the way, meaning the news, the media, they're going direct to the consumer. So I think that's really important that you can control your own message. And then two, I also think it allows you, I recently posted a young lady who was out of a job and won a Grammy, the other day. And it was a beautiful story. So you're able to highlight others that are doing beautiful things in the community, whether it's business, sports, or entertainment.

[00:08:51] Jeffery Pfeffer: What did you do to make sure that you got, you're on a bunch of baseball talk shows and all, how early did you begin? And what did you do to make sure that people would give you that kind of visibility? 

[00:09:03] Alex Rodriguez: I never really thought about life after baseball in media. That was one thing that I never thought about. But the one thing that I did have was I basically felt like I had my PhD in baseball. Because I've been watching three, four games per night ever since I was like ten years old. So I've been playing or watching or studying of some sort. And then the question becomes is, okay, you have the knowledge, but can you actually articulate it in a platform and say it in a concise, understandable, digestible entertainment way, where you're speaking to, I always think my target audience is a fourth or fifth grader that has never played baseball. And just make it very simple. And that's so far so good. 

[00:09:44] Matt Abrahams: I love hearing a few things that you've shared about you target an audience specifically. You think about that. You think about your message. Going back to your previous answer about how you calm down. I like that you have routine and there's a practice and you also talked about delegating. And it seems to me that you have a really interesting perspective on teaming and building teams. What advice would you have to a young leader or somebody who's new to the leadership role about what to look for and how to build a team, how to communicate within that team?

[00:10:12] Alex Rodriguez: We have a great partnership right here. The three of us would be great partners because A, you guys are way smarter than me. You have a lot more experience than me, but we all bring something a little bit different to the party. And we can all learn from each other. I just think sometimes it's a mistake if you get two scientists and there's only two in the room, they're only going to think one way. That's why I do believe that diversity is so important in how we select teams or board of advisors or board of governors. And that's why I think Allison Kluger and I are such great partners because, again, we come from, in a weird way, similar backgrounds from media. We're both bridge builders. We both like to inspire, teach, and learn. It's just wonderful. When you can surround yourself with great people, there is no better gift. 

[00:10:54] Jeffery Pfeffer: But one of the things you have to do if you're going to be able to do that is you have to let go of some of your ego. Because one of the things that I've seen among people is they think that they're better than anybody else at everything. And in order to do what you just described, which I think is amazing, you have to be willing to let go and to say, there are other people who know things that I don't know. And I'm sure you've seen some of your colleagues in baseball and outside of baseball who aren't able to do that. So what has permitted you to have what I would call appropriate modesty? 

[00:11:27] Alex Rodriguez: Well, Jeffrey, it would be silly for me to have you and Matt come to Yankee Stadium and teach me how to hit a breaking ball as smart as you guys are and athletic as you guys are. And it would be silly for me to come to GSB and try to teach you guys something. So I lead with a lot of listening. And I mean very intentional listening. There's a lot of great talkers. There's a lot of great starters. Not a lot of great listeners or closers. And if you're a real intentional listener, I think you become a better communicator. And the conversation becomes more fun when that person that's delivering an important message, that he has a captive audience. So I think one, you say ego, I think it's more insecurity, right? So I actually love throwing myself in a room where everyone else is smarter and I just get to go out and have great conversations and continue to in my educational journey. 

[00:12:23] Jeffery Pfeffer: I think intellectual curiosity is a key to success and you seem to have a lot of intellectual curiosity. Is that fair? 

[00:12:29] Alex Rodriguez: Very much. As a matter of fact, I have two prayers I say every morning. One, before my feet hit the ground, I say a prayer in usually about thirty seconds. And it revolves around two things. One is diminishing your ego and enhancing self awareness. So you want the ego to come down and self awareness to go up. What I found is when you win the world series in 2009, like we did with the Yankees and we beat the Phillies, those two kind of work backwards, right? Self awareness goes down, ego goes up. That's a formula for failure. So as a reminder, just really important to check the self awareness and the ego. 

[00:13:05] Matt Abrahams: I love that you're talking about self awareness and that you lead with listening. And I think that's really powerful. I can imagine you're in situations, either in the mentoring you do with athletes or the entrepreneurial businesses you run, that you have to give feedback and you have to give sometimes constructive, critical feedback. Do you have a philosophy or approach that you see working for you when you give that kind of feedback?

[00:13:29] Alex Rodriguez: I think first, Matt, you have to have trust because if you don't have trust, forget what the message you're saying. It doesn't matter how good the message is. If I feel like you're going to do it in a demeaning matter or not coming from love or a place to really help me, then the message is lost no matter how great the message is. I actually introduced this in my early days, I call it green, yellow, red, and we do this with all our team members at ARod Corp. And we do this either weekly or once per month, monthly. And basically what it is, you gamify the feedback, which means greens are all the things you're doing well, yellow are all the things you got to watch, not quite red, but they're not quite green. Be careful. And then red is things you should stop immediately. And what's fascinating is when members now, almost to every person, you know what they start with, give me the red. It's more of a game and you're doing it from love. You gamify it a little bit. When you can shift the paradigm on that, where people are actually looking forward to the constructive feedback. That's a winning formula. 

[00:14:29] Matt Abrahams: Let me do a follow up. Do you set an environment where they can give you that type of feedback as well? 

[00:14:34] Alex Rodriguez: Oh my gosh. I say all the time, all the time. 

[00:14:36] Matt Abrahams: How does that look? 

[00:14:37] Alex Rodriguez: Kelly Laferriere from my team, who's my chief business officer. She spent a long time at Disney and ESPN. She's a wonderful woman. Went to Georgetown. She did, uh, a little audio where she teed off on me. The other day, it was like five minutes of just, like, really tough love. And I loved it for it. And I said, you forgot the green. And maybe the yellow. And she goes, no, the yellow's that part and that part. I'm like, okay. But absolutely. I think that's one of the main things I bring from sports. I've had some great managers. Joe Torre, many, won four or five championships. Lou Piniella. These guys are great communicators. But they're also, they have an ability to inspire and motivate and their words are very powerful. 

[00:15:17] Jeffery Pfeffer: And nobody actually needs to know what they're doing right, you actually need to know what you're doing wrong.

[00:15:21] Alex Rodriguez: Right. 

[00:15:22] Jeffery Pfeffer: So that's a good kind of feedback. 

[00:15:24] Alex Rodriguez: Yeah. And by the way, Jeffrey, I disagree with that a little bit. I do think that, especially with highly talented people, they also need to know what they're doing right sometimes. I always say a player needs a pat, you know, on the back sometimes, say, hey, come on, keep it moving. Because it can't always be red or yellow. Sometimes you got to tell them that something really good is jumping off the page and to keep that up. 

[00:15:45] Jeffery Pfeffer: So, you of course had a setback with the banned substances scandal. It's interesting, I tell my students all the time that in almost every career, bad things happen. And the issue is not, are bad things going to happen? Because of course they will. The question is, how do you recover? How do you build resilience? So talk about that, how you came through that, how you built resilience to survive setbacks, not only in that, but in your business career, et cetera. I think resilience is really the key to success.

[00:16:15] Alex Rodriguez: Before I get into my low point, which was my darkest hour, for sure, an incredible learning experience for me. A little bit on failing. Because one of the great advantages of being a former baseball player is that I live in an industry that if you fail seventy percent of the time, you end up going to Cooperstown, which is the Hall of Fame. It's remarkable. Imagine if out of every seven, ten classes you guys teach, three of them are good. You guys would be fired, right? But for us, it's celebrated. So what I mean by that, I always tell people that I'm fifth all time in the history of the game. Fifth in the history of strikeouts. That means there's only four people in the history of mankind that have ever failed more than me.

[00:16:58] So I always tell my daughters that daddy has a PhD in failing, but I have a master's in getting back up. And I think that's the key to remember is how you get back up with the same energy and enthusiasm. So if you put that framework with my suspension, my PDs, which I served the longest suspension in Major League Baseball history for PD use, it took me a while to get here, but I think it was three things that I really am thankful for. Number one is you got to take full accountability. And this falls in the self awareness. Full accountability. And there's no excuses, there's no one to blame. There's only one person and you're looking at him in the mirror. And that's me. That's number one. 

[00:17:38] I think number two is that led me to over the last ten, eleven years being in therapy. And therapy was really important because it allowed me to turn the lens inward. And you got to understand that ever since I was fifteen years old, when they said Alex is the best fifteen year old in the country and is going to be the number one pick in two or three years to the time I got suspended, almost forty, I never heard the word no. So you build very little self awareness and the ego gets pretty inflated. So I think therapy has been an incredible byproduct, ironically, of my great mistake. And then messaging. 

[00:18:14] And this is what we do in Strategic Pivoting. But the messaging without the first two means very little, it's hollow. So I do think you gotta take accountability. You have to have whatever work you have to do in yourself. I did it via therapy, through a great therapist, it saved my life. And lessons learned have been unbelievable, which has now put me in a position here where I'm able to talk to the next generation of young men and women about my mistakes and hopefully they can avoid my mistakes. And then communication about what's next and, but you have to lead with the mistakes. And just address it right off the bat. 

[00:18:48] Matt Abrahams: Thank you, by the way, for opening up and being so candid and authentic. I'd like to talk a little bit about authenticity. You come off in a very authentic way. I believe it's very genuine. How do you think about authenticity in terms of the value it brings and it requires self awareness, as you've mentioned. I'm just curious your perspective on authenticity? 

[00:19:09] Alex Rodriguez: You know, it's ironic, Matt, that you're asking me about this because this is something that I really struggled for the first, I would say, twenty-five, thirty years of my life before therapy because I came across as very slippery. And not to make any excuses, but I grew up with a bunch of slippery people. You know, in the Latin culture, we say fake it till you make it. And my great mom, who's one of my heroes, who's almost ninety. I saw her working two jobs, getting up at three o'clock in the morning, uh, working at General Motors in New York City, and then serving tables at night, and I saw this incredible work ethic. But, uh, that was the good. The bad is, is like, you never got a lot of the truth from anybody.

[00:19:44] Once I got through my therapy, I started developing an ear for saying, boy, that person is really full of it. I was never able to hear that before. It was like a watershed moment for me that I'm like, oh, this is an incredible thing. It's like not being able to see and now I can see. Not being able to hear when somebody's full of it and now you hear it, which also includes self awareness of how I sounded. So, one of the things I do with a lot of my close friends is like, watch me here, Matt. I can become, I can be slippery here, so watch me. Make sure that I'm good here. And that type of back and forth coaching and mentoring has been a great tool for me. 

[00:20:18] Matt Abrahams: I think that's wonderful that you actually, one, are aware, but you also ask others to give you that feedback so you can make those changes in the future. And the fact that you have a sensitivity to, this might be a situation where I might have some inauthenticity. I think all of us can take a lesson from that to, one, raise our awareness, but, two, enlist the help of others to help us be better. Before we end, I ask all my guests three questions. One I make up for you and the rest are similar across everybody. You mentioned that you mentor athletes. I'm curious what's the number one thing you tend to focus with them on to help them post playing?

[00:20:56] Alex Rodriguez: I think the number one thing is to have a plan. I think second is take your time. You may be old for an athlete, maybe you're in your early thirties or mid thirties, but you're a child in business. And I always refer to two of my heroes, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. Charlie almost went to a hundred and Warren is well on his way. And to think about a guy like Warren Buffett, that he's made ninety-nine point five percent of his net worth after his fiftieth birthday, it's never too late. Your age is never a limit. But your mindset's the limit.

[00:21:30] So I always encourage athletes to take your time, surround yourself with great people. If you're playing basketball, if you had to wand who would be your top three, you'd probably say Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, LeBron James. Well think about business the same exact way. Go find the best people in the world and because you're an athlete, that's one of your competitive advantages. Go out there and ask questions and there's never a dumb question. Take a bunch of notes, review, follow up. And get your reps in.

[00:21:58] Matt Abrahams: So it's about mindset really in that focus. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:22:07] Alex Rodriguez: A few in the business world, I would say, uh, I really enjoy the way Bob Iger communicates. Obviously Warren's a legend. He's the smartest in every room he walks into. But yet you never hear him talking over anybody. Everyone's really understandable. Both of my daughters can understand Warren really well. That's a testament to him and his simplicity. And then Mary Erdoes, who's the CEO at JP Morgan, reports up to Jamie Dimon. She's the asset wealth management leader there. She's another wonderful communicator who is a superstar, but is also very genuine and likable and believable in her communicating skills. 

[00:22:45] Matt Abrahams: So I hear you saying that being relatable and being connected are what things you admire in leaders. My final question for you is what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:22:58] Alex Rodriguez: I think someone that, I would say, has their ten thousand hours on whatever they're talking about, right? Because you can't replace credibility. Someone who can speak passionately and clearly and don't speak in too many jargons and too many acronyms, like really give it to me like as simple as possible. And someone who can actually lead me to my next question. So there's a little bit of a revolver. Monologues are never fun. I much more have a dialogue. It's more dynamic, it's more commercial, it's more sellable, it's better for television. Keeping it tight, I also think is really important. I think a lot of communicators sometimes think about, what do I have to do to be a great communicator to sound smart? I think you should be asking, who am I talking to? Who am I communicating with, and what nuggets and value can I bring them? Because it's really about them, it's an unselfish act, it's not a selfish act, and that's a big difference. 

[00:23:55] Matt Abrahams: Seeing communication as an unselfish act, focus on others, absolutely the bottom line.

[00:24:00] Alex Rodriguez: Yes. 

[00:24:01] Matt Abrahams: I appreciate you joining us and sharing those nuggets as well as all of the other information you've shared. 

[00:24:07] Alex Rodriguez: Thank you. 

[00:24:10] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for this special Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast, episode with my colleague Jeffrey Pfeffer of Pfeffer On Power. Be sure to check it out. To learn more from famous athletes and coaches, please listen to episode 166 with Andrew Luck and episode 153 with Tara VanDerveer. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And check out FasterSmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, Ask Matt Anythings, and more at FasterSmarter.io/premium.