Excellence with Compassion; Guest - Andy Fee, Athletic Director UC San Diego

This episode focuses on pursuing excellence with compassion, a pillar of Competitive Kindness. Rob Clark hosts guest Andy Fee (Director of Athletics at UC San Diego).

Andy shares his insights on treating the people you lead as the main thing, not as merely instruments in a game. By leading with compassion, Andy offers advice on how people will buy into vision as trust is genuinely built. He also offers perspective on how intercollegiate athletics has outpaced its infrastructure and how this impacts where the future is going for college sports. And even throws in a Eminem reference.

The movement continues…

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Clark. What if the way you lead could change lives, not just results? We're building a movement, proving you can compete relentlessly for championships while elevating everyone around you. This is your competitive edge. Each episode will share stories and strategies to help you make an impact that lasts. So, if you're ready to win the right way, you're in the right place. Now let's get rolling.

Pursing Excellence with Compassion

0:47

Growing up in sports, I learned a lot about toughness. I learned about grit, I learned about resilience, I learned about being brave when things got hard, and staying strong when adversity hit. And those lessons have served me well throughout my life and career. But somewhere along the way, many of us picked up another message too. That toughness may mean being cruel to others. That strength means showing no emotion, or like Cobra Kai says, no mercy. That if you really want to win, compassion is something you should leave the door. To be honest, for a long time I thought compassion was a nice idea, but not necessarily a competitive advantage. It felt like something separate from performance, something more soft than strong. Then I began to seriously study leadership. I started reading the research, started paying attention to the best coaches and leaders I'd been around, and then what I discovered really surprised me. The science points out the exact opposite. Compassion isn't just simply a character trait, it's a leadership advantage. It changes how people respond to the challenge, how they learn, how they recover from setbacks, and ultimately how they perform. The more I studied it, the more I realized that compassion and excellence aren't competing values. In fact, they're complementary forces. So what exactly is compassion? Compassion is the ability to recognize when another person's struggling, emotionally connect with their experience, and then take intentional action that helps them move forward. It's awareness, connection, and action working together in real time. When people experience compassion from a leader, something important happens. They feel seen, they feel valued, they feel heard, and then they become more willing to engage in the difficult work required to grow. The neuroscience behind this is fascinating. When people feel threatened, criticized, isolated, or unsupported, the brain can shift into a fight, flight, or freeze response. Cortisol and adrenaline increase, and the brain focuses on protection rather than growth. In that state, people often become defensive, avoid challenges, or shut down altogether. But when people feel genuinely seen, supported, connected, the chemistry changes. Stress responses begin to decrease. Trust increases. Oxytocin and the other bonding neurochemicals help create a sense of safety. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for learning and decision making, creativity and self-regulation becomes more active. In simple terms, compassion helps people move forward from survival mode to learning mode. And that's where growth, resilience, and high performance thrive. So how do we practice compassion? Well it comes down to three simple actions. First, notice suffering. Pay attention. Look beyond the scoreboard, the KPI, the behavior, the result. See the person. Second, feel with others. Take a moment to understand what they may be experiencing. Connect before you correct. Third, respond to help. Take action. Have the conversation. Offer support, provide clarity, hold them accountable while helping them move forward. Notice, feel, respond. That's compassion and action. Years ago I saw this play out with a baseball student athlete who was struggling academically, athletically, and personally. He was caught cheating. Instead of angrily rebuking him, the coach, our academic integrity team, and I worked together to understand the struggle. We took time to understand what was happening, and found some challenges in his home life that led to him cutting corners. We then responded, not by lowering expectations, but by increasing support. More conversations, more encouragement, more accountability. Over time, that student athlete regained confidence, improved their performance, and eventually he became one of the leaders on the team. The standard never changed. The support did. And that's what competitive kindness is all about. It's believing that people matter and performance matters. That compassion and accountability belong together. And that excellence is most sustainable when it's built on genuine care for others. So here's my question for you. Who around you needs compassion right now? Who needs to be noticed? Who needs to be understood? And what action can you take this week to help? Because excellence matters. Winning matters. But when excellence is paired with compassion, we don't just build better teams, we build better people. And those are the cultures that leave a lasting legacy. Today's guest is

Guest: Andy Fee, Director of Athletics UC San Diego

6:10

Andy Fee, a highly respected leader in college athletics. Andy currently serves as a director of athletics at the University of California, San Diego. He previously served as an AD at Long Beach State University, leading teams to several national championships. He also served in leadership roles at Seattle University, the University of Washington, UC Santa Barbara, the University of San Diego, and Arizona State University. Throughout his career, Andy has built a reputation for elevating athletic departments through strategic vision, fundraising, championship success, conference transitions, and a relentless commitment to the student athlete experience. And perhaps most importantly, Andy is widely recognized for leading with authenticity, humility, and a people first approach while achieving high results at the highest levels of college athletics. Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast, Andy. Rob, thanks for having me on. I've had the privilege of working with you at Long Beach State. I've seen firsthand how you pursue excellence with kindness, and I know our listeners are going to benefit from learning from you today. With that being said, everyone has a story. What are one or two moments that have shaped who you are and how you lead? Yes, I guess moments, or maybe it's a combination of some moments. But I think one thing is when I reflect about growing up, a lot of us who we are is who we're around and those experiences. And for me, I think growing up in Dana Point, California, near the water was being around the water a lot and getting a sense of the power of water, power of the ocean, how sailboats sail across the ocean through storms. And so I think learning and watching life on the water has shaped a lot of my outlook on life. And that you need to be around people that you trust. And I think that's something that is instilled by those that we care about that care about us, is about interdependence. You're only as good as the people you're with. Another moment or something in my life, I think, is it's more of a theme. Maybe it's over 27 years. I guess I've been doing this 27 years now, which sounds crazy to me. But I've watched leaders who've treated people as instruments to achieve things, to achieve outcomes. And then I've also watched leaders who treated people as the main point, the reason for what we do. And so I think the ones who treated people as the point always seemed to win in the end. And that's really stuck with me. Along those lines, I observed during our time at Long Beach State Together that people genuinely connected with each other and to the mission under your leadership. And in today's environment, many leaders have this pressure to choose between relationships and results, yet you drive both. How do you approach building high-performing cultures where people also feel valued? Yeah, you know, as a leader, sometimes people see you as important, which kind of makes me laugh a lot when I think about who I am. But it's nice to be important, but it's probably more important to be nice. And I think those relationships and the results, I don't know if they're like intention. I think they're the same thing. So like when people feel genuinely valued, I believe that they'll work harder for you, they'll stay longer, they'll pull for one another, and that when you can do that, and I think we did that at Long Beach especially, and you were a big part of that, Rob, is that the culture becomes self-sustaining. And what I've learned is that it starts with being real. And that's we all say, or a lot of people say that, but it's something I truly believe in. People can smell inauthenticity right away, immediately. And especially coaches, student athletes, you have to actually care and not just perform performance caring, I guess I would call it. And you have to be consistent about it when things are really hard, because things get hard and it's not all always roses and daisies. And anyone can be great to work for when you're winning. It's what is it like to lead others through challenging times and then be part of something special? And speaking of some special moments, we had some special ones with national championships, and you've led national championship level programs. I've also seen how accessible and relational you are with coaches and student athletes. How intentional have you been about that? And where did that leadership approach come from? Yeah, I would say that I still aspire to be very intentional in that space and being accessible. I don't think a title means much if you're not connected to the people that are doing the actual work. Our coaches, just like all coaches, are under enormous pressure. Student athletes are navigating some of their most formative, challenging years of their lives. And if I'm not accessible to them, I don't think I'm actually doing my job. Where that came from or where it comes from, honestly, I think it's just probably a little bit, I think, how I'm wired. But it was also reinforced by watching what happens, like when athletic directors I've worked for or others become, for lack of a better word, bureaucrats. It becomes more performance than authentic work. And so I think it's easy to get lost in the plot if you don't remain accessible. If you become detached, which in some of these leadership jobs, it's easy to do. You're flying at a high altitude, you're working on these really big challenges and opportunities. But I think if you lose the plot, coaches stop trusting you if you're doing that type of work that's just not as connected. And student athletes, if they become an abstraction rather than a reality. And I never want to be seen as a title or an office. I have a job to do, I have to lead, provide vision, manage all those things, but I want to be seen as someone that cares and is working to put people in positions to succeed in life and sport. And along those lines, when you evaluate coaches and other leaders that you hire, what are the qualities beyond wins and losses that you look for? Yeah, I think one thing that I think has evolved over time for me is I guess they used the phrase truth tellers. Do coaches tell me the truth? And what I mean by that is if a coach can't give me bad news directly, then there's a problem. I need a coach that's gonna be real with me, that they're not gonna sugarcoat things with me, that they're gonna give me honest feedback, they're gonna give me information that I can use. Second is again, it's nothing that folks probably listening haven't heard before, but it's how do they treat people when no one's watching? As an athletic director, I think sometimes I don't think people realize how much watching athletic directors do. I watch everything, and I'm not so sure that people always see me watching everything, but I am. And so I watch how they interact with support staff. What does the locker room actually feel like? Are there players graduating and going on to good to do good things beyond just their sport? And then I think maybe the third thing for me is especially now, probably since COVID, is adaptability. And the college athletics landscape right now, it rewards people who can think on their feet, think in the moment, can think outside the box, and not just think about traditionally this is how we've done it. I want leaders who are curious, um, that they're honest, not defensive or territorial. But honestly, my chancellor, I was in a meeting with him last week and we were just talking globally in terms of leadership. And it's people have to think of the world in a different space. If we're strategizing for the future, and certainly there's things we don't know, the idea of a five-year plan nowadays is pretty unrealistic because we don't know certain things. But if we continually think back and go, this is how we attack a scholarship issue, or this is how we attack a funding issue, if we're thinking like it's 2019, we're probably gonna struggle. And again, you can see the programs out there that are cutting edge, they're thinking and developing new ideas. And so that's what I want from my coaches. I want them to push me because I'm gonna push them. But they need to be curious, they need to be problem solvers. Sometimes leading with kindness can get mischaracterized as soft and tough environments. In your experience, how can compassion actually strengthen accountability and performance? I tell people all the time, don't mistake kindness for weakness, right? I don't think kindness is a weakness at all. It's it's a strength. I think when people know that you genuinely care about them, they don't want to let you down. And I think that's much more powerful as a motivator than fear. To me, fear like probably makes people complain, right? Out of fear, they do something, they'll comply to something. But I think genuine investment in people makes them committed. And I think you can hold people more accountable when there's real trust. If someone knows I'm in their corner and I go to them with a hard conversation, I think they receive it differently than if they think I'm just managing them towards some outcome. And I think that's where accountability does land. I think when you have that relationship with somebody, uh, it doesn't create defensiveness. So, like to your point, I don't think like soft is the right word. If someone said kindness is softness or is soft, I do not believe in that. Because I think being demanding and caring aren't opposites. Like I tell people all the time, I tell our coaches, I tell our athletes, we should be demanding the very best from us. Like, demanding does not mean demeaning. There is a line that can be crossed from demanding to demeaning, but we should demand and hold people accountable. And we can do it in ways that's supportive and caring. You've had to make tough decisions that impact real people. During periods of transition or even conference realignment that you're working through at UC San Diego. How have you approached leading through uncertainty in a way that preserves trust, transparency, and compassion for people? Yeah, I we talk about this a lot here because we're only in our sixth year of Division I. In our sixth year, this will be this next year coming up, our seventh year will be our final year in the Big West. So we're in a pretty complex moment. We're leaving one conference, apparently, the West Coast conference in July of 2027 next summer. And so my managing the financial realities of what it costs to compete at this high level of Division I and the West Coast Conference, there's uncertainty and people can feel it. That that's part of the process. But what I try to do is be straight with people. Like I don't want to pretend that I have all the answers, but I can tell you what I do know and what I don't know. And then again, what we and what I'm working towards. And I do think people can handle hard truths, they can handle tough conversations. But I think what people have trouble with and maybe they can't handle or that they struggle with is when someone is managing around the truth. If I, as the athletic director, am managing without being transparent, without being truthful, they're gonna see it, they're gonna feel it. And that's where you can see a rift, maybe in your culture or an alignment. I think the other thing is being really specific about the vision of what we want to be and what we aspire to. Uncertainty is it becomes less scary when people feel like there's a destination, like a real destination and real leadership pointing towards it. We know where we're going. The path sometimes we're along the coast here in La Florida, sometimes there's a little fog, but we know where the direction is clear. But I think again, it's it's being really transparent with people. And this ties back into the earlier conversation around being accessible at Long Beach. And I'm sure you remember, and I try to get around as much as I can, managing by walking around. I don't want to darken doors. There's times where I'm gonna have to have a tough conversation. But if the only time I show up at someone's door is to have a tough conversation, those tough conversations, again, like what I was trying to say, is people can handle hard truths, but it has to come from a place where there's trust. And so leading through uncertainty, leading through challenging times, it's all through trust and relationships. You've worked at power four institutions, FCS level, and the non-football Division I schools too. Regarding the current and future state of college athletics, what are your greatest concerns? And how do you hope to impact this through your leadership? Yeah, we're we're we what was the old saying, may you live in interesting times, and we certainly live in interesting times here. And I think one of the things that's most challenging is probably the pace of change. I think the pace of change across our industry is outrunning the infrastructure. Uh, NIL, the house settlement, transfer portal, potential federal legislation, regulation. These things are all happening super fast. And our ecosystem is still catching up to it. So there's schools that are ahead of the curve, the Power Force schools, they have a lot more resources than a school like UC San Diego. And so we have challenges that they don't have, but they have challenges that we don't have. And so I think at the end of the day, what I concern about or what I'm concerned about is that we're building a model that's just somewhat increasingly indistinguishable from minor league professional sports in a way, but we don't have a professional sports infrastructure to support it. And I think if we focus on those types of things, that's where the student athlete experience can get lost. And here at UC San Diego, I think we have a real opportunity to show that you can build something excellent and amazing without abandoning what makes college athletics meaningful, which is the academic mission, the campus connection, and developing the whole person. And what I want is to be a part of demonstrating that's still possible, even in these challenging times. Years from now, and I mean years from now, when people are talking about your leadership, what do you hope they say about how they experienced being led by you? Uh tough question. I guess what I would say is that I made them better, I helped them be better, maybe not just at their job, but as leaders, better as people, better as moms, dads, siblings, whatever their family situation might be, and that they felt like it mattered that that the work that we were doing had real purpose, that we're hopefully changing lives, that our goal here, and I know most everybody listening, I think we're all trying to maybe use different words, but trying to cultivate leaders and champions in everything they do. So if someone who worked for me looks back and says, He was in my corner, he challenged me, and I'm a better leader because of that, that would be awesome. That would make me feel good. And I guess feel like I had an impact on other people's lives. Well, as somebody who worked for you, I can say absolutely. Absolutely, you've done that. You're awesome. We're now going to transition to a different section here. It's a fast and friendly five. So, Andy, I'm going to ask you five quick questions, no long pauses, just gut answers. You ready? I'm ready. Fire away. All right, number one, your go-to hype music, artist, or song when

Fast & Friendly Five

22:19

you need a boost. Okay. I would say lose yourself, MM. I think it's like just the ultimate underdog theme, and I always feel like I'm an underdog, so I would go with lose yourself. Awesome. Number two, your go-to movie when you need inspiration. Oh. It's going to be a sports movie. Who's yours? Who's yours? I just hickory high. I'm all about it. Love it. Gene Hackman. Awesome. Is Gene Hackman your favorite character in it too? Yeah, I love Gene Hackman. I'm a big coach guy. I love not that I love scholar athletes, but I love coaches and try to learn so much from coaches. So I love Gene in that role. Awesome. All right, number three. One or two books that have impacted who you are. One book that I read this year, uh Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Wadara. It's an amazing book. And if you haven't read it, definitely check out Unreasonable Hospitality. And then a classic that I read years ago, but uh is Bill Walsh, which is The Score Takes Care of Itself. Great book. All right. Number four, best leadership advice you've received. Best leadership advice came probably from Kai Snyder at uh years ago. He told me, take care of the people and the results take care of themselves. Awesome. Number five, who's a leader or coach who shaped you and why? So, coach, I've been around amazing coaches, but if I pick one and a coach that you worked with, I would say Alan Knipe, a men's volleyball coach at Long Beach State, multiple national championships. I think that guy could probably coach any sport. He's just amazing. And just watching how he built rosters, built teams, motivated people is pretty amazing. And then I think I just mentioned his name, Kai Snyder, who was my athletic director at USD. And I was there in a formative stage of my career in my late 20s, early 30s, when I was figuring out where I was going to go. I think from an athletic director standpoint, it would probably be Kai. Yeah, I still talk about Alan Nipes 1080-10 principal, almost weakly. Incredible coach. Hey Andy, you survived the fast and friendly five. Congratulations. Let's go. I love it. All right. We're coming to a close, but before we do, could you please offer some advice to our listeners on how to lead the right way? Yeah, I think uh what I would humbly suggest is we like that people around you are the focus and the real point of what you do and not

How to Lead the Right Way

24:57

just a means to an end or a specific outcome. Be honest even when it's uncomfortable. Be accessible even when you're busy. And remember that the relationships you that you build today are sometimes the only thing that will matter when things get hard, because things always get hard. So I think the results follow your culture, and the culture follows the leader. And I would humbly suggest that's where you should start. Awesome. Hey Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the Competitive Kindness Podcast. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in. If today's episode got you fired up, please check out the book Competitive Kindness Winning the Right Way. Available on Amazon. Join the competitive kindness movement by sharing this with your friends, family, and colleagues. Also, I would love to connect with you, so please share your thoughts or stories with me on LinkedIn or on X. My handle there is at Rob Clark10. Remember, dare to lead differently. Dare to be kind.