Drew Mearns, Leading with Listening

For more than 20 years since retiring from the management of elite, professional athletes, Drew Mearns has helped parents, coaches, high school teams and club programs improve performance, attitudes, and college opportunities for young distance runners. Through proven principles, programs and practice strategies, Drew has developed and grown runners (including five of his own children) into some of the top youth and high school distance runners and teams in the country.

Maddie: When we've talked about teaching and leadership in the past, we've talked about how you approach teaching from a coaching perspective. Can you tell us your thoughts on that subject and your background in that work?

Drew: Of all the different things that I've done, from coaching and teaching, being an aggressive big-firm lawyer, being a sports agent and owner of a sports management company, becoming involved with Q-Link, and also working as the theology department chair of a top high school, sport has been a common piece and a constant part of my life. Sport for me is running - not only running as an athlete and being a part of an athletic family, but also running in high school and college and professionally at New York Athletic Club. This continued into my professional life when I coached and taught at the University of Kentucky as well as at the University of Virginia, where I was the first head coach of the women's program after Title IX. I've been a runner all my life. I now have a professional program in D.C., and a youth program here (in the Williamsburg area) called Growing Runners. I've always connected sport and the mind-body-spirit aspects of physical performance to the things I've either been studying, teaching, or professionally working on. Running has been a constant theme in my life.

I like to connect the things that I'm studying, learning about, reading, and teaching and apply them to areas of human physical performance. For example, you can connect people like Huxley, Gurdjieff, Sartre, or Emerson (to name a few), not because they were athletes or coaches, but because those principles apply to my coaching and the relationships I have with young runners and their parents. That has been a really interesting part of my life, integrating the various pieces. That is what connected me with the Spirituality and Sustainability Global Network, particularly the Rome-Assisi conference, which gave birth to the SSGN.

Maddie: How did you initially get connected with the group? 

Drew: A few years ago, I was invited by my friend Ken Kitatani to go to the most recent Rome-Assisi conference. I was actually born in Naples, Italy, and lived there with my parents and 7 younger sisters. At 10 years old, I went to an Italian school and learned the language. Later, when I was at Yale, I studied intensive Italian. When I graduated, I won a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Italy at the University of Bologna. The Italian government collapsed, and I never got to take advantage of that particular education opportunity. But because of my background, I've gotten to represent Italian clients, organize sports events in Rome, and was even at the first world championships in Rome in 1987. I loved my connection and my parent's connection with Italy and the fact that my sister and I were born there. My religious connection, having grown up in the Catholic church, and my love of Saint Francis, also connected me on a level. Ken, Joe Holland, and Elisabetta Ferrero allowed me to speak about sports and spirituality at a conference, so it was a unique thing, bringing that world to the group. There is so much I have learned from them.

Maddie: You're taking the world of the body and marrying it to the world of the mind. It's an interesting, important mix. Especially when it comes to running. Running is such a mind game. 

Drew: Running is a sport of life, a sort of lonely physical activity that you can practice by yourself. There are many pieces to it, not only the performance and health components, but the practice of spirituality within the sport is important, too.

Maddie: It's a very contemplative thing, the only physical sport where you're not thinking about the next move or strategy. It's full of repetition. 

Drew: That's kind of interesting, because, from the standpoint of coaching, it's not only the repetition. There are 3 'R' words I use in terms of athletes who are participating in the sport and desiring to improve themselves. The words relate to the future, the past, and the present, and I say it like this.

Everything we're doing today is a rehearsal - why am I doing this particular activity? That word is about looking forward, that everything we do today is preparing us for something down the road. The next word is reflection. I ask my kids or whoever is working with me to look back at what they did and what they learned from what they did. The most important of the 'R' words is relationship. My mantra is that "workouts don't work, relationships do". Nowadays, if you go online and search for information about how to improve your 5k time, you get 5 million answers. If workouts worked, then everybody would be fast.

What really happens is that I see something in an athlete, and because of our relationship of curiosity, openness, and acceptance (if a relationship is based on those things), that person hears, understands, and practices with much more effectiveness than if they just read and practiced a workout in a book. I love that part of what I do, and probably get so much more out of coaching than the kids who are coached by me.

Maddie: How would you explain your approach to combining sports and spirituality? 

Drew: It's not denominational, but it springs off the word relationship, which is the idea that relationships with each other, even relationships with your adversaries or competitors, are something to consider and use as energy that powers your performance. It's the question, where should I be paying my attention? For example, G.K. Chesterson, who wrote a special biography of Saint Francis, talked about Francis's ability to mix his thoughts with thanks. As a coach, I try to get my athletes to mix their thoughts with what they're doing physically and emotionally. It's the idea of combining things. When I was growing up, we didn't talk about that. We went out to run and tried to do what the coach told us. When it came to mental training, the truly gifted athletes probably developed it themselves or had an instinct for it. It wasn't as studied, taught, or worked on like it is now. In a race, there are certain things that an athlete should be thinking about at different times in that race. It's not how you feel - "this is hard, these guys are too good for me". It's another directive, like in Saint Francis's great gift of thinking about running after the beggar or doing it for somebody else. Early in a race, it might be focusing on the plan that you developed with your coach. Later in the race, it may be emotional, trying to win for your team, or doing the best you can do. It's never focusing on how bad you feel.

The idea of a coach is not authoritarian. It's a partner in performance, a support person. The word itself comes from the idea of a carriage that carries a person towards his or her goal. I think of myself as that kind of coach, someone who can support and help someone in what her goal might be, as opposed to what I want. I want to be somebody who listens more. 

Maddie: Thinking about growing up in running with different coaches, a lot of the models put fear in you to make you listen. Yours is one of inspirational leadership. It's even similar to religion, how many people believe or do because they're afraid of the wrath of god vs. wanting to enter into a transformational relationship. For a certain amount of time, being afraid can make you do something, but it's not lasting. 

Drew: It's the difference between an authoritarian and a co-active coach, one that says we're in this together. You're going to be out there on the track, but I'm going to support you in what YOU want. That means I should be listening more than telling.

In the sense of entelechy, inside of an acorn is an oak tree - if all the things around and all the relationships and all of nature can bring that out of him. If it's a runner that I see something in, that person knows deep inside that they have a place and a future, and I see and help to bring it out. I think that's what the best coaches, teachers, pastors, or even lovers do through their relationships.