Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird on leading great teams and moving on (transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Megan Rapinoe: It's like sports gives you this one singular lens, which everything can go through. Like, am I eating healthy or not? Am I working hard or not? Am I doing it or not? 

Sue Bird: It's a North Star and a purpose that guides everything and you never have to question it. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. 

Sue Bird: And you know what's gonna help you get to where you're trying to go or not.

And every decision is kind of made. But then now that North Star's gone. Just poof.

Adam Grant: Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

My guests today are Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird, my favorite power couple in sports. Megan is one of the greatest soccer players of all time. She was named the best player in the world by FIFA, co-captained the national team, and won Olympic Gold and the World Cup. 

Sue is one of the greatest basketball players ever. She was a 13- time All Star and won five Olympic gold medals and four WNBA championships. Megan and Sue host the podcast A Touch More. After admiring their illustrious careers for many years, I was excited to talk with them about what fuels excellence and how to know when to move on. It turns out they're enjoying their retirement.

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. Whoa. What is this? For like Macy's Day parades, things that just like got all the strings cut. Woah! That's Sue and I walking around New York, "whoa!" But we're really skilled. We're skilled floating devices. 

Adam Grant: I met up with Megan and Sue in person in New York City for this conversation. I've met both of them multiple times, but always separately, and hadn't seen Megan since before Covid. 

Megan Rapinoe: It's like you're one of the people I feel like I know in the world. 'Cause I just like see you a lot or hear you a lot. But then, yeah, it's only really the second time. 

Adam Grant: Very sorry, Megan. 

Megan Rapinoe: I know, it's terrible. 

Sue Bird: Well at least you didn't screenshot one of Adam's posts and send it back to him. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. That's tough.

Sue Bird: Instead of your sister. Look at this guy. And I was like, this is really, I'm like, you should read this, Jen. And she was like, oh, I think you sent this to the wrong... Yeah. Yeah, I did. 

Adam Grant: People should do that every once in a while just so the person whose content you're sharing knows that it resonated.

Along with studying work teams, I've spent a lot of time studying sports teams. Megan and Sue are experts on that world, and the parallels are fascinating.

Megan Rapinoe: There's so many different kinds of leadership and hierarchies happening within the team, within different age groups of, of the team, and sports teams are so finicky. It's just like one drop of blood in the water and you're dead. Like you lose the, the whisper of whatever it is. And it could be there like, you've been there for 10 years or you've been there for 10 minutes, and if you lose it or shit's going sideways, it, it just gets weird real quick. 

Adam Grant: Sue, you're nodding and smiling. Why? Is, this is not just soccer? No, basketball's the same way? 

Sue Bird: That's an accurate description I think of any team sport. Yes, elite team sports, but honestly that exists all the time. It's all happening simultaneous and there's a lot of blurry lines on certain aspects. Not in a bad way necessarily, it's kind of just how that ecosystem works. Sometimes the coach is the boss, sometimes the captain, right, has a larger voice and all this fluidness is happening throughout. There's this element of substitute teacher, like how you felt when it was a substitute teacher. That is how it can feel for the athlete, for the team, when somebody new comes in. You're kind of like, am I gonna listen to this authority? Like, well, who is this person? There's just like something about that group where you're just really protective of your, your culture, and so you're kind of like, all right, what's going on over here? Like, what's this guy about to say? And you have to earn that. 

Megan Rapinoe: I mean, looking back, I wish I would've had the same eagerness to be vulnerable and be in an uncomfortable position. I don't think I could even like think about that or was not even in that mode at that time. Some of the younger players had expressed that they don't feel like they had space to talk or there was like space for them and I was like, "well, that's bullshit." I was like, "just come on!" Basically, I'm like, we have the most like open and progressive environment there is. Like, okay, you have to step into the space also, if you want the space. It's actually like comical looking back, just thinking where I was personally and what I had just gone through, where the team had just been in our fight with equal pay, I feel like in so many ways, me personally and the team like had to wear this armor all the time, like no matter what. And with the younger players. I think sometimes it's like we were trying to educate them and to like bring them in and then at times it was just like, we're doing this and it's gonna be better for you. But yeah, there probably was not very much space. 

Adam Grant: I'm so curious about what made you rethink your position on that?

Megan Rapinoe: I think just a little bit of age and time and space. I think like just my own growth and being in therapy and like understanding myself better. I always thought during that time, the World Cup in particular and the president tweeting at me by name and at the team, and just generally I felt like very unfazed by it, but then also knew, yeah, that can't be right. I was protecting myself and you know, from the Federation and from the public and kneeling and President Trump and all of it. I was almost like play acting a really strong, confident person. And not that I'm not those things, but I think now looking back, it was probably like, okay, I feel like I have to be like this for the team and I'm doing my best to take care of them and to be a good leader, whatever that means.

And I think now I'm like, okay, what was actually going on there? 

Sue Bird: You were also rewarded for it.

Megan Rapinoe: And very rewarded for it. 

Sue Bird: So yeah, that's only gonna... 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah, very much so. I think I, like, can be a little bit of a bulldozer at times, even if it's like for the right reasons or for, you know, for, for reasons, my intention is good. A bulldoze is still a bulldoze, so I was probably doing a lot of that at the time. 

Adam Grant: This is, is such a common dynamic with leaders. Part of it is you rise in power and status, but you still feel like the same person. You don't realize that other people are now much more intimidated than they were before.

Sue Bird: I was thinking that this entire time, the intimidation part of it. Like your younger teammates, how you didn't see yourself the way they probably saw you in that moment. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah, yeah. And we were like, Hey you guys, if you had anything to say, just like speak up more. 3, 2, 1. Okay, moving on. 

Adam Grant: Yeah, exactly.

Megan Rapinoe: Nobody has anything to say? Great. 

Adam Grant: And the other, the other piece of this that I run into all the time is leaders saying, well, what do you mean? Like, of course people have a voice. I want to hear whatever their ideas and concerns are. I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't matter if you think they have a voice. What matters is, is if they think they have a voice. And I think that perspective taking is really hard in part because like, junior people really wanna impress you. They look up to you. You, some of the younger players on the team have literally grown up watching you. And wanting to be you one day. And so the idea that they might say anything that could suggest there's anything you could do to be a better leader or a better teammate or a better player. Like, how could I do that? That's not my place. She's my hero. 

Megan Rapinoe: I am, I would say, not a, a natural leader in the sense of like making sure everyone else is okay. I think I'm just more selfish and more like, not in a negative way, but more self-focused. 

Adam Grant: I would've said task focused. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. Task focused or I, I think self-focused sometimes. I'm working on slowing down. 

Adam Grant: That speaks volumes right there, Sue. 

Megan Rapinoe: I'm working on slowing down so I can actually integrate not only my own perspective, but other people's perspective, but I, I'm not natural in that way. 

Adam Grant: I can't believe we've gone this long and I haven't dropped a study yet, but here we go.

So Scott DeRue and Sue Ashford wrote a paper that I loved on what they called, um, claiming and granting leadership. The claiming dynamic is like, Hey, I see myself as a leader. I want to take on this role. But then it also has to be granted by others that they accept that you're a leader in order to follow you. And I think that very often the disconnect is somebody claims leadership, and the followers are like, Nope, we do not respect you. We do not wanna follow you. And I think you had the opposite dynamic, which is people were granting you leadership and you didn't wanna claim it. 

Megan Rapinoe: Hmm. Yeah. It was a lot of responsibility, especially at that time after the World Cup and after my life totally just changed. I think I was tired and also like had so much on my plate and maybe felt a little bit, I don't think it was conscious, but like maybe felt that that was there. So I was like, oh my God, if I do this, I have to like take it on or something. That's really interesting.

Adam Grant: Sue, where do you come down on this? 

Sue Bird: Honestly, my first thought was you do it in fashion. You wore sunglasses, the whole team wore sunglasses on the parade. Like you would do it in these other ways. So I was kind of thinking like, oh, interesting that you were hesitant in the, in the soccer way for lack of a better, yeah.

Adam Grant: Trend setting is different though, from leading a team, isn't it? 

Sue Bird: Oh yeah. Definitely way less pressure, way less stakes, the whole thing. Yeah. But I just, I had that thought where I was like, oh, you do naturally do it in these other ways. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. It's that some people may have wanted a different kind of culture than we had, so they were saying like, oh, we don't need to be all this and that and friends and have the same whatever. We can just show up and play. But maybe it was the kind of culture that we had that was not working for people. 

Adam Grant: This raises a question for me that you two are uniquely qualified to answer. I've been curious for a long time about whether culture matters more in some contexts than others, so soccer versus basketball.

I have a hypothesis, I don't wanna tell you yet what it is. Where do you think culture is more powerful? 

Megan Rapinoe: I think it's soccer. Soccer's less prescribed and literally less plays and whatever. There's a lot of work for the team that needs to be done that just is mostly just like running and doing all this shitty stuff that never gets rewarded ever because like you're never gonna score.

There's so few rewards. 

Sue Bird: A lot of sacrificial things happen there. 

Megan Rapinoe: A lot of sacrificial. Yeah.

Adam Grant: Hazing?

Sue Bird: Sacrificial runs. No, no, no, no, no. Not hazing. Yeah, sacrificial runs. Sacrificial runs is like where they'll sprint, God, I don't even know. 70 yards yard, 50 yards, whatever. Not rewarded. 

Megan Rapinoe: For the explicit purpose of...

Sue Bird: Somebody else.

Megan Rapinoe: Just somebody else. Like in basketball you could like, you know, get some baskets or you can like, you know, shoot a little bit, like everybody gets a little bit of the fun stuff. Sometimes in soccer there's some players that just don't get the fun stuff and it's less prescribed. 

Sue Bird: Defenders? No, kidding.

Yeah. I actually agree with you. But where I went with basketball was it's a smaller team. And so when I hear stories of like football teams, especially in college, 'cause we're talking like 80 people, and how like an offensive player might not even know a defensive player's name. And how there must be some disconnect in terms of the culture where you have to just be okay with that. And in basketball, one person's different, you notice it immediately. One thing's off, you notice. It's a smaller group, but I hear what you're saying in terms of the play, but then I might even actually just kind of take the other side on that as well. It's like everybody's so important to each thing happening at all times, that you have to be connected.

I mean, often in basketball they use a saying of like, be on a string. Like the five of us have to be like connected at all times in some way. Involved or not, shooting or not. So I might argue basketball. 

Adam Grant: I was thinking about some of the research on, um, weak link versus strong link sports. Do you know that, that lingo? The basic idea is that in weak link sports, you're only as good as your worst player.

And in strong link sports, you're as good as your best player. And normally soccer is described as more weak link. 

Sue Bird: Weak link, yeah. 

Adam Grant: And basketball is strong link. 

Sue Bird: Strong link. Absolutely.

Adam Grant: In basketball, if you, if you have somebody who's not either very skilled or very bought into the culture, your star can compensate for that.

In soccer, you're kind of screwed. 

Sue Bird: Oh yeah. I noticed that when they have their FIFA breaks during the NWSL season and their best players are leaving to go play for the national team and their season continues, we would never survive that. You could never take just one great player off a basketball team for a month and come back to a season and that team functioned or survived it.

And that's what the WNBA takes a break for the Olympics. We have to. 

Adam Grant: This also reminds me of some work. Chen and Gar did this in, in basketball and then Colleen Stewart in hockey, where if you're a star player gets injured, it's usually about 15 to 20 games. The team gets worse, you temporarily regress, the star comes back, and you've actually made a leap forward.

Sue Bird: Star players are essentially bandaids, right? Like they cover up all the boo boos and the blemishes that are happening. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. I mean, it's really what they are. 

Sue Bird: Yep. So now that bandaid is gone, you're exposed, and now you have to like heal it. You have to figure out how to play without it. It's like exposure therapy at that point. You're gonna get thrown in the fire and you gotta do it. So when they come back, you're just better at all the things. 

Adam Grant: It, it makes me wanna say like, to a bunch of star players, you are really like an overly expensive bandaid. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. You're just a gauze pad. Mainly. 

Sue Bird: They kind of are, yeah. The ultimate bailout. Yeah. They just bail you out. 

Megan Rapinoe: I think there's something too, to the, the psychology of the other players. Like it's so weird at times being an elite professional athlete because of the hierarchy that always exists. At times you're like, I'm literally one of like basically zero people in the world who can actually do this, and yet I feel like I'm failing or I'm not the best, or there's people that are very clearly better. But it's like you take the top of the hierarchy out, the best player, now all these other players are like, they have the space to maybe step into freedom. I mean, it happens all the time. I feel like I see this on Instagram, of like just a whatever NBA player or WNBA player going to like their local like LA Fitness or like local gym and just being Michael Jordan. The worst player on a pro team is by far the best player anywhere else in the entire world. So maybe there's something to that of just like them getting to spread their wings a little bit or something. 

Adam Grant: I think we've all seen teams that punch above their weight, and we look at them and we're like, that team shouldn't be any good. And we've also seen teams that do the opposite, which I think is less interesting and usually easier to explain. I just wonder, what are the other ingredients that you wouldn't have thought of until you were in these teams that matter? 

Megan Rapinoe: I feel like through my entire career, you know, great players, role players, best players, whatever. Some were amazing, some were super professional, some weren't. Some tried their hardest every day. Some were selfless. Like you just run the gamut on every type of player. But when your star player is a good teammate and sets that type of culture, what's anybody else gonna say? When Sue Bird or Diana Taurasi, or Steph Curry, or whoever it may be does all the shit that the other players are gonna be asked to do? I think that is just a game changer. It also says something about their self-awareness and their humility. I mean, just the concept of star player is just weird too. Like what makes one over another? 

Adam Grant: Is it though? 

Megan Rapinoe: It is, and then it's like...

Adam Grant: We can see the differences when they play, and you can see it in their stats, right?

Megan Rapinoe: For sure. But then like the, the...

Sue Bird: I think it's more awkward to ignore it. 

Megan Rapinoe: It's more awkward to ignore it. I agree. But then it's like the outsized media attention and all of it. It does need to point down on kind of one player, like, you know, it's not gonna be spread all over. So it's kind of an awkward existence for a star player anyways. But when they have those types of qualities, it encourages and sort of sets the standard for everybody else. 

Adam Grant: Did you see that chart that was going around on the internet? It was at the end of Caitlyn Clark's, um, last year at Iowa. And it was basically points by assist, like x and Y axis. And all the players were clustered. And then like Caitlyn Clark was this outlier dot in the very top right. 

Megan Rapinoe: Mm-hmm. I remember. 

Adam Grant: You look at that, and how could you say it's weird to have stars? 

Megan Rapinoe: They are undoubtedly there. In a team where you're all doing the same stuff every day, you're all going to practice, you're all like rolling outta bed.

Everybody is normal. And then one person is like not normal, but they wanna be normal. You know? But then they can't really, so it's like the lack of acknowledgement is.

Sue Bird: No, I think it's awkward. 

Megan Rapinoe: Way more awkward. It depends on how the star player acts too. If they're like an asshole, then that's just like not gonna go well, it's gonna be resentful.

Sue Bird: You have to have an understanding, an awareness. I think it does have to be acknowledged in whatever way works for that team and that coach from a culture standpoint, that there are star players, and those people have to do what they have to do and they, and that they might be treated a little different.

We all kind of understand that. It can be unspoken, that aspect of it. But what also needs to exist simultaneously is that the players who aren't need to understand and feel their appreciation and that they are appreciated. 

Because I think when, and this exact example I used, and I'm sure you've experienced this, when there's, you know, on a basketball team in the WNBA, there's 12 players, right?

When the coach comes in, after that player had like two points in one rebound and they start hyping them up, to like, in this attempt to, to keep them close, to make them feel, but everybody knows, it's like, oh, you're going, you're doing too much. Just leave that player alone right now. I get you're trying to reach her, but that's not the way to do it.

And I think it can never happen in that moment. It has to have happened prior. That has to have been set in their culture, like what we appreciate. And a lot of times it isn't stats. And if you can set that, then everybody can like prosper. 

Adam Grant: Yeah. 

Sue Bird: And they can, they can come every day to work, even if they're not the star player.

Yeah. And like, man, I'm gonna take two charges today 'cause that's what I do. And I know the team needs that. And not everybody feels that way on teams. And the teams that I feel like I've been on that have kind of gone down into the dumps, it's usually because the, the supporting cast, if you will, isn't bought in in that way.

Adam Grant: I rescind what I said about the awkwardness of recognizing stars. 'Cause I think this is a really important point. It reminds me of, um, what Christie Rogers called, um, earned respect versus owed respect. There's this owed respect dynamic on a team where you want everyone to be treated equally as a human being.

And then there's an earned respect element where certain people, by virtue of their skills and contributions, are going to be elevated above the group. And the tension between those two things can be really complicated. I think that's Megan, what you were talking about when you said like, okay, off the field or off the court, we're all the same, but then all of a sudden we play and we're not. I've seen coaches do that. I've also seen leaders and managers do this where yeah, they're trying to motivate somebody and it's just not credible. Like the, the person has not earned it. 

Sue Bird: Makes you feel worse. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. It makes you feel worse. 

Sue Bird: You walk out like, Ugh, I just got thrown a bone. 

Adam Grant: You're like a charity case. 

Sue Bird: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly how you feel. 

Megan Rapinoe: And then it's just like disrespectful. As that player, you're like, well thanks. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. You lose them even more. 

Megan Rapinoe: Thanks so much. I scored two points. Like yeah, we all know that's not amazing. 

Adam Grant: I wanna talk about something that I think athletes have to deal with that pretty much everybody else struggles with and postpones as long as possible, which is like letting go.

I, I think one of the, the cruelest, um, but also healthiest aspects of being an elite athlete is you have to retire. Probably earlier than a lot of people want to. As a psychologist, I, I think about how many people in other fields end up falling in this escalation of commitment trap where they're, they're like, but, but I invested myself in this and it's my identity and it's what I'm good at. And they just, they can't, like they can't cut themselves loose. Being forced to do this in some ways, like, builds a life skill, but it's not easy and it also makes me really sad. Like, I wanna watch my favorite athletes play forever. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: I, I will always root for the oldest athlete on the field or the court.

I'd love to hear a little bit about how you both approach that decision. Sue, to start with you, like a lot of people called you the GOAT of the WNBA, and I imagine at some point it becomes really hard to then say, I can't play at the level I once did. But you were so good that like you could probably have played more years and still been a very strong player in the league, maybe a version of what we're watching LeBron go through.

Uh, how did you think about that? Does that, and is that accurate? 

Sue Bird: Yes, but because of one reason, that is both because of my position and how I played the game, but also how I played the game is part of who I am and this like skill to adapt. I never would've been able to say this as I was playing, but now that I am going into my third year of retirement, I can zoom out and be like, if I had to pick one attribute, right?

 It's not the shooting and the dribbling, all that stuff, like what's my one attribute? Yeah, there's some leadership stuff, reading the room kind of a thing. It's my ability to adapt. Physically, mentally, emotionally, like quickly. Different teams, different people, different games, different countries, you name it.

Being a point guard also allowed me to play a long time. I didn't go from having to average 20 points to being effective to now if that drops to 15, where's my value? I was able to play at a very high level for a very long time because of, of both of those things. And I feel great about that 'cause I know that was a skill that I had to really hone.

I mean, it, it even comes down to if you get granular about surgeries that I had, I had to very quickly become a different player. 'cause now I'm limited in this way that I wasn't prior. So I do think that played a role in all of my, my longevity- ness. 

Adam Grant: How did you decide it was time to walk away? 

Sue Bird: I knew I wasn't the player that I was 5 years before, 10 years before. Candace Parker and I have joked about this. You're still out there and you're still effective. In my final year, um, we got to the Western Conference. It's not really called that, but essentially like a Western Conference finals, right? We win the series, we go to the WNBA finals. And. I'm a big part of that. I'm playing a huge role in that. But what I know is that all these players that are 22, 25, 27, they think this is me.

They think this version is me, and it's not. And then, so even though I'm out there and I'm playing and I'm doing all the things, I know I'm not that version. And so there's like a little bit of a mourning that I think in the last four years of my career, I, I, I have simultaneous to still being successful.

And then on top of that, it does just get a little bit harder, right? A little bit harder to get out of bed. The motivation changes. But I think more than anything it was like, oh, like I can't be myself, what I know to be myself. So even though I'm effective, the, I know. And so I knew it was time. 

Adam Grant: Sounds like there was an identity element and an image component. You don't want other players to look at you and see like the Wizards version of Michael Jordan. 

Sue Bird: Exactly. 

Adam Grant: But also you, you had a sense of who you are and what you, you want to add, and you didn't feel like you could live up to that. 

Sue Bird: I would say the last like five or six years of my career, again, more so because of some of the surgeries and injuries that I had.

I used to joke, I was like, I'm at a point where I'm not trying to beat Father Time. I'm just trying to tie him. I'm just trying to like, stay where I am. I'm not trying to go up, I don't wanna go down, obviously. I'm just trying to stay. And you know, it just gets to a point where I could sense it was catching up.

I knew that that knock on the door, Father Time was right behind it. And, and, and I was starting to feel that as well. So it was like, yes, could I have played a year or two more? Sure. But for what? To look even worse? I don't know. 

Adam Grant: Megan, I remember someone saying, like no matter what else happens to Megan Rapinoe, she can play until she's 80 because like, the weighted corner kick she can do is so rare and so valuable.

Like she gets to choose at some point. Yeah, like in a walker, subbed in just to do the corner kick. Like that's another unique source of longevity. So how did you think this through? 

Megan Rapinoe: At some point there comes to, to what Sue was saying, like, can, can you do it or not really? Like in soccer, like, can I run the required distance at the required speed or not?

And it was becoming very difficult. There was a, a physical mortality that just exists, and I felt this at the end. If you can't lose yourself in the play, because you know that you're not at the level that you know that you can be at or was at at one time, it's like you've already tasted it. You have that knowledge.

If you know you can't get there, you're just thinking. Like you're just in your head, you're not in your flow state, you're not in the zone, you're not playing. And then it all just becomes really hard. Because then it's like, if I was 28, I'd be busting your ass, but like, I'm not, and you're busting my ass.

Like, and now it's like, what am I hanging onto? Not only do I not wanna look terrible, but like, what am I really hanging onto? You can't outrun it. Then it becomes like a sort of inward negative self talker. It did for me like, well, you can't do this. Your body can't do that. And then it's like, I've actually had a really great long career that I'm very proud of.

I literally played it as long as I can. I think tearing my Achilles in my final three minutes of play is like, okay, we're done here. You know what? 

Adam Grant: You pushed the limits. 

Megan Rapinoe: We're done. We get it. We're leaving. 

Adam Grant: I, it's funny. That part is not funny at all, but. 

Megan Rapinoe: Kind of. I mean, you have to laugh. It's tragic, but. 

Adam Grant: I guess, plus time, yes. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: Never thought about, am I still in a flow state doing this, as an indicator of is it time to move on? But that makes so much sense that like this, this sort of, this process of evaluating like I'm not as good as I once was or as I wanna be, would jolt you outta that flow state and then make the game less fun.

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like you get like little flashes of it. And that's addicting. And that is like, ooh, that high is good. And, but they're, they're at the end. They're flashes if that. 

Sue Bird: And what I noticed in those flashes was that those were games where I didn't grade myself on my 28-year-old scale.

I went into the game actually thinking like, you're retiring. Just go have fun and then I, I would end up ultimately playing better. But then what happens is sometimes you do play poorly and then you start judging yourself on this old scale. And getting caught in that trap is where I didn't have as much fun.

It's not easy to shed like what was. 

Adam Grant: So going through this process of abandoning the game that you were the best in the world at that defined so much of your life, has that made it easier to walk away from other things? 

Megan Rapinoe: No.

Adam Grant: Doh!

Megan Rapinoe: I think eventually it will. I don't know if I'm there. 

Sue Bird: Yeah, we haven't experienced it.

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. I've been retired a year and a little bit now. It has been like the hardest time in my life, really, for so many reasons. I'm having to do something that I never had to do before. Being an athlete, it's so prescribed. It's so amazing because you're like doing your passion and you're getting paid for it and it's your mission and it's your purpose and you're physically active and you're in community with other people and and and and. And we were at a very high level, so there's like praise and self-worth and like adulation, all of it.

And now you're just like, we just have to like figure out what life is? I mean, this is crazy. This is crazy. I feel like I'm like building those skills now, in real time. 

Sue Bird: Yeah, I think it's very hard. Yeah. I actually, the more I think about it, I haven't really faced that just yet. I do find that what I'm doing a lot in my retirement with some of like the new things, new ventures, new businesses, whatever it is, is I am reverting back to sports a lot.

Let's say one of us was trying to add a new move, right? You know you're gonna be terrible at the start. You know you're gonna be embarrassed, likely you're gonna face embarrassment because you're so bad at it. And you also know that you gotta keep showing up. And every day there's a marginal gain and you're totally bought into that. So much so that you don't even really notice the embarrassment. And you're totally okay with the fact that you're fucking up left and right and it's just a part of it. And ultimately what happens, you get it, you get the move down and you're great at it. And sometimes in these new things, I am finding I wanna be great right away and I have to like remind myself of no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works. And that I feel like is a skill that I'm so thankful that I learned in sports that I'm taking with me now. For sure. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. I haven't been bad at something that I'm spending a lot of time and effort on in a really long time. Maybe ever, and I'm like, well, this is terrible.

How does anyone even fight through this? I don't wanna be doing this, but, so we're doing it. 

Sue Bird: It shows up in podcasting. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sue Bird: Like, we wanna be great. The first time we do, we sit down to record one of our pods. We don't wanna mess up once, I don't know about you, but if I have to be like, Hey, I'm, I just wanna do that over, I feel an embarrassment.

Adam Grant: Really? The whole point of podcasting is you get infinite do-overs. 

Megan Rapinoe: I know. But we didn't even know that. 

Sue Bird: We didn't know that. 

Megan Rapinoe: We didn't even know that in the beginning. We weren't even doing that, we weren't even like... 

Sue Bird: We're live performers. 

Adam Grant: You're trying to do the TED Talk. 

Sue Bird: Mm-hmm. We're, yes. Mm-hmm. And so I was feeling like, yeah, like, oh God, I'm really sorry. Could we do this again? 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. It's so funny. 

Sue Bird: And now I'm like, oh, of course you have to do that. Yeah. Nobody's nailed it on the first take. 

Megan Rapinoe: They say it's a death of sorts, but it's just, um, it's more like a, just a total reorientation of everything.

It has been cool. I, I think, you know, one sort of like silver lining or one real positive is like uncovering and almost like discovering the things that are translatable. 'Cause people always say, oh, athletes have so many skills. And you ask an athlete and we're like, well, what are they? You know, we have no idea.

Sue Bird: Play well with others?

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. Or like teamwork? So it, it has been cool to see those just sort of organically sprout up. 

Adam Grant: I, I think for me, the clearest one is the craving of like, objective independent feedback. 

Megan Rapinoe: Oh my God. 

Adam Grant: And wanting to know how well you're doing. So many people I know who were not athletes, like would rather believe they're great than find out that they weren't.

And I have never met a serious athlete who isn't the opposite. Like, you know what? Like I, the first thing is I have to know how my performance was. Actually how it was. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. I'm like, were you, were you just, I'm just in our last production meeting. Were you inside my head? Yeah. In our world, if you're not getting feedback, there's a problem.

If the coach isn't yelling at you, then you're like, oh, I'm actually, that's a bad sign. So it's, speaking of disorienting. 

Adam Grant: Extremely. 

Sue Bird: I mean, no feedback is wild to me. 

Adam Grant: Every dive, in practice, I would come out of the water and I would ask my coach for a score, and I would know exactly where I stood and then how far I was from my goals and what I needed to work on.

And I felt like I was like walking into a black hole when, when that was gone. I'm like, wait, why won't you tell me how good that was? Why won't you give me notes on how I can do better? What's going on here? 

Sue Bird: I'm not gonna put you on this spot. What do I, how do I describe it? I'm like, go ahead. 

Megan Rapinoe: Sue describes it as like doing a bunch of threes, shooting threes, working on a three.

But you can never see if it goes in or not. 

Adam Grant: Exactly!

Sue Bird: It's like I, one day I woke up and I was like, what? 

Megan Rapinoe: I feel like that's a great, great analogy. 

Sue Bird: And every time I shoot, yeah. Nobody, I never get to see if it goes in or not. 

Adam Grant: That's such a great description of it.

Sue Bird: Yeah, it, yeah. I was like, feel what that would feel like. Yeah. Film? Are you gonna show me on film? Because if you don't know, the coaches will show you. 

Adam Grant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, I think obviously there's such a thing as being, you know, too attached to metrics, and the quantified self movement to me is like, is a slightly strange and silly thing, but like, it's so hard to like to have objective quality indicators in most other walks of life. And so like it is easy for a lot of people to walk around thinking they're excelling when they're not. 

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah. They're like, I'm doing great. 

Adam Grant: Yeah. 

Megan Rapinoe: Because I said so. Yeah. It's wild. 

Adam Grant: As a diver, even being part of a swim team, I really, I miss caring so much about something that I knew at the end of the day didn't really matter.

Which is a, a sort of paradox, right? Like I, my whole life was organized around it for six years, but at the end of the day, I knew that if I had a bad meet or I didn't hit my goals, nothing bad was gonna happen. And it was sort of, it was sort of liberating, like to, to care about something at that level. 

You, you were both performing and competing on a much bigger scale where a lot of like, like the stock market drops when we lose like an Olympic gold medal match. So you, you had to live with bigger consequences. But I wonder if you can relate it all to that feeling of, I care about this thing a lot and it's the most important thing in my life, but like in the grand scheme of things, it's not like I am a physician and if I do my job poorly, someone's gonna die.

Sue Bird: I think you should talk about when you approach a penalty kick. 

Megan Rapinoe: Like, I obviously practiced all the time. We practiced them nonstop. I was very good at them. I worked very hard at them. They're like free goals, so hello. And I always just said to myself like, what's the worst thing? The worst thing that could happen was I miss my penalty and we like lost the World Cup. Like, I miss my final penalty. Um, which I ended up missing my final penalty for the US which is just so funny. I have like these two really dark and tragic endings in my career. I still say this now. I was like, you guys, we're not saving anybody's life here. Like we are playing sports. And that is very meaningful for a lot of different reasons on and off the field and court, but it's like.

This is not the most important thing in life, but there is something special about choosing it and being involved in it and like giving your all to it that is like deeply meaningful, I think. 

Sue Bird: I always found that when I was able to flip the pressure from, you're supposed to do this to, wow, it would be amazing if you did it, I won four championships and somebody eventually will win five. There's actually one individual who did. But in terms of like same team, same franchise. I'm one of just a very few, so I'm a wild success. I played 21 seasons. That is so much losing. And I've lost in every way possible, and I'm very aware of that.

I feel like in these tougher moments, I have this combination of zooming out and being like, you're not even supposed to be here, kind of a thing, and you're, you're kind of pulling from it and recalling without even realizing it, and I think that's how you're able to show up to your next big penalty kick.

Adam Grant: I think it's time for a lightning round. Worst advice on success you've ever gotten? 

Megan Rapinoe: Probably like you just need to work harder. I'm like, everyone here is working really hard, like nobody's here or not working hard, so like we're gonna need some other kind of way to frame this. 

Adam Grant: Something you've changed your mind about recently.

Sue Bird: I'm definitely rethinking on how to have impact and how to not change other people's minds, but maybe like have a conversation in a way that can broaden both mine and theirs. 

Adam Grant: What's the question you have for me? 

Sue Bird: How do you pull the studies so fast? 

Adam Grant: It's in the job description. That's like asking how do you make the three.

Sue Bird: Really? 

Adam Grant: Yeah. 

Sue Bird: The recall, so, okay. 

Megan Rapinoe: What's like the, the like, number one quality you would want leaders to have? 

Adam Grant: For me, leadership, even more than competence, is about character. So what I want leaders to have is generosity and humility, I think would be my top two. I think if you put your mission above your ego and you put your desire to be better above your desire to look good, you end up doing right by the people you serve.

Sue Bird: I've always found the coaches that have had the most success, you knew it wasn't about them and the minute they made it about them is when it just all went down the drain. Yeah, and I don't even mean the winning and the losing. Even just a small decision, like what time practice is gonna be. If they made that more about their life, their schedule, their whatever, they lost us.

Megan Rapinoe: Yeah, you could always, you could always tell. 

Adam Grant: I wanna talk a little bit about the, the, the present and future of women's sports. Um, Sue, uh, we've talked about before, something that I just think is grossly unfair, which is you are one generation too early. I, I think about the attention and frankly, also the, like, the money that goes to a Caitlyn Clark now.

And if you had just been born a little later, that would be you. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: How do you feel about that? 

Sue Bird: It's something that I, I think about, not often, but when I do have moments where a large part of me when I watch women's sports right now is so excited. I used to publicly joke about, I hope in 10 years there's A WNBA player making a million dollars, and I'm the disgruntled old person.

I've like joked about that, and so it's actually happening. So on some level... 

Adam Grant: You, you helped to build it. 

Sue Bird: Totally, fulfilled. And then yeah, of course. In private moments it's like, man, why did my parents meet when they met? There's somebody 20 years older than I am that is probably like, oh, if I was 20 years younger, I could have had X, Y, and Z.

I think that's just kind of how life goes. So it's really about, I don't know, when it stings and it hurts, just kind of letting it sting and hurt, but also having like a zoomed out version of my fingerprints are on this. I played a role and also I'm still in this ecosystem, so the fact that it's booming does allow me to have a post playing career, in other ways. There's something to talk about. So it's like one of those things we have to understand all of these truths that are happening at the same time and just some are gonna rear their heads at different moments. 

Megan Rapinoe: There's like an erasure by way of lack of knowledge that I think happens, especially for you guys, that I think is probably the hardest part. 

Adam Grant: I remember as a, as a kid, like at the, at the peak of Reggie Miller's career, hearing an announcer say he's not even the best player in his family. And I was like, what? And there, there's no internet then, right? Yeah. How do I get the answer? Eventually discovering Cheryl Miller.

Like, how have I never even heard of his sister? 

Sue Bird: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: How many other players do we not even know of? 

Sue Bird: Oh yeah, absolutely. I actually, I gotta give a quick shout to, uh, Jenny Busak. She's currently, um, an assistant coach for the Indiana Pacers. She was, uh, a head coach with the Seattle Storm for a period of time, an assistant even longer.

And the one thing she used to do in our, in our practices, in our drills, instead of saying, Hey guys, we're gonna do this because LeBron James does it. Oh, Steph Curry does this drill, or Michael Jordan, she'll be like, oh, this is something I know Cynthia Cooper does. This is something I know Lisa Leslie does, and try to start to instill that history into all of us.

Not many people do that, though. 

Adam Grant: I think women's soccer has been visible and successful for a while in the US. I think that, that tennis is, is probably on a similar plane. Like, basketball, it's taken some time. It's now ascendent. Why does this have to happen sport by sport? 

Megan Rapinoe: Uh, million dollar question. Yeah.

People do not realize how much negativity they have heard about women's sports for so long. They don't even realize how poisoned their well is, to use Kate Fagan's great article she wrote in ESPN a number of years ago about the WNBA. Like it, for that reason, it takes people so long to change their own totally unconscious perception about women's sports and the ratings are, and I'm like, well, if nobody puts it on tv, nobody can fucking watch it. You know? There's decisions being made all the time. So I think there's so much of that in the ether. 

Sue Bird: You're talking about a business, right, that has been invested in, that has corporate sponsorship, that has, you know, has had the chance to grow. And then you're talking about the WNBA, which it never did. 

Adam Grant: I'm excited to see the progress, and it's amazing to me that our son wants to watch the WNBA and wants to watch like the US Women's National Team. 

Sue Bird: Absolutely. It's exciting. 

Adam Grant: This was a lot of fun. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. That was fun. 

Megan Rapinoe: Love this. 

Adam Grant: Thank you again. 

Sue Bird: Thank you.

Megan Rapinoe: Thank you for having us. This was a delight. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. 

Adam Grant: ReThinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective. And this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley Ma and Aja Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin.

Original music by Hans Dale Sue and Allison Leighton Brown. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Hai Lash, Banban Cheng, Julia Dickerson, Tansica Sunkamaneevongse, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. 

The first thing is I was really surprised when the two of you ended up together. I'm curious. I'm sure you're curious. Yeah. 

Sue Bird: Um, is it, 'cause I'm a Libra and she's a cancer. Cancer. 

Adam Grant: Right. Do, do not get me started on astrology. 

Sue Bird: Yeah. Okay.