Four-time World Champion With The Insight That Unlocked It All

Mark Sorenson won two world championships by the age of seventeen. But at twenty, despite playing the best tournament of his life, his team lost the final. That heartbreak led to an insight: it doesn’t matter how spectacular you are if you can’t make the people around you better as well.

Mark is one of only two New Zealanders to win world softball titles as both a player and a coach — four golds with the Black Sox, including the only three-peat in the history of the men's game, then World Coach of the Year after taking them back to gold in 2017.

This conversation is almost none of that. It's about what happened in between: the years he tried to lift his team by policing them, and the shift that finally made them follow.

We talk:

- The difference between having the title and having people follow you

- Why Mark told his own daughter she would never win a trophy while he was coaching

- How to hold high standards without humiliating anyone

- Being liked versus respected

- The honesty gap between team spirit and high performance culture

- Why rules without reason carry less weight

- When delegating a hard conversation is the strongest thing a leader can do