I recently interviewed broadcasting legend Lesley Visser on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a trailblazer in the world of journalism and broadcasting. Lesley Visser is the only sportscaster in history who has covered the final four of the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Triple Crown, Monday Night Football, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Figure Skating Championships, and the U.S. Open on network television. Among her many firsts, Lesley is the first woman to report from a Super Bowl sideline, the first woman on Monday Night Football, the first female analyst in both radio and television and the first woman to receive the Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. Lesley, thank you for joining us.

Lesley: You too, Adam. I hear that and I think, who was that person?

Adam: Listeners are about to find out. You grew up in the suburbs of Boston and you were deeply passionate about sports from a very early age. When you were 10, you decided that you wanted to become a sports writer. even though it was the 1960s and there weren't any female sports writers. Can you take listeners back to those days, those early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Lesley: Sure. Thanks for asking. I think I love sports the way other kids love dance or music. I started going to Fenway Park when I was about eight years old, and learned to score the double play six to four to three. And I truly had a passion for it. And I also think growing up in Boston, we didn't always live there. My family moved 11 times, which was great for following sports because wherever you lived, you had new teams. But I think you're born to your teams. And for me, growing up in Boston was really important because just to give you an idea, The Celtics did not lose the NBA title until I was in high school. 

And I wasn't even living there then. But you grew up with a team ethic. That's what the Celtics taught you. The Patriots were sort of these vagabonds. They would play at Harvard or BU or BC because there were college games then that were important. The broadcasts that we would get when I was a kid were the giant broadcasts with Al G. Rigatus, and Kirk Gowdy. They would come into New England So it really was a Celtic and a Red Sox town. So the Red Sox gave you humility and the Celtics gave you pride.

Adam: I can relate to that. I'm an Angels fan. I'm a Lakers fan. Get a lot of humility as an Angels fan. Used to get championships from the Lakers, although the last few years, more humility as well.

Lesley: Oh, we have no humility when it comes to NBA because as you know, we now have 18 banners to your 17. But I will tell you that, I mean, there's pretty much nothing I haven't covered, but the great Al Michaels, who I did Monday Night Football with, World Series, Triple Crown. And one of his favorite broadcasts is such a heartbreaker for you because it was the 86 ALCS. And everyone just talks about how the Red Sox went on. They had all the drama and trauma with the Mets. But of course, Angel fans had such trauma in the ALCS.

Adam: So, Lesley, I actually really enjoy interviewing Yankee fans because the Yankees are one of the few teams that the Angels have done really well against in the postseason. But for Red Sox fans, that's a totally different story. You guys unfortunately have a long story history of beating us pretty badly in the postseason, in 1986 and then Every post-season since, I went to the Angels-Red Sox game in Anaheim when the Red Sox beat the Angels to take the series on the way to winning the World Series. So, it's unfortunately a topic that I'd rather not spend the rest of this podcast going into, but I'm sure you would.

Lesley: Would you take Ohtani over Trout or judge for the MVP? Otani… That's such a sore spot that you don't even want to talk about it.

Adam: I will say this, Ohtani is far and away the best player of our generation, the best player that I've ever seen. And unfortunate that the Angels didn't retain him, but privileged to have the opportunity to watch him very, very closely for many years. But not to take anything away from Mike Trout, who's not only an incredible baseball player, but an incredible person for everyone to look up to, the kind of person who we should all aspire to be like.

Lesley: You mentioned about Ohtani. I do think, and I keep this list in my head, that there are some people that you have to make the effort to see in person, that you shouldn't just know them from a box score or seeing on a game. I mean, to me, when I grew up with Bill Russell, watching Bill Russell, so that was an enormous privilege. But I think you should have seen Larry Bird. You should have seen Michael Jordan. If you could have caught Michael Phelps in some race in person, Otani is someone I still haven't seen Messi, although now he's playing in South Florida, so I hope to, but I've always sort of kept that list in my head. 

I love seeing Brett Favre in person. Lawrence Taylor was my favorite NFL player of all time. So, I think there's something about when you see greatness, or it could be coaching. I got to know John Wooden just a little bit, but everything he said, he wanted to run to the corner and write it down. Be quick, but don't hurry. Like that is so important. Or I've learned so much from Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino. And I took John Madden's bus with him for five years.

Adam: What makes the greats great? Let's start with the players. What makes the greatest players so great?

Lesley: I think Ted Williams maybe put it the best. Someone asked him, Oh, you're such a natural boy. You hit the curve ball. You're such a natural. And he said, yeah, that and a thousand swings a day.

Adam: Yeah.

Lesley: So, they're committed. They're committed mentally. Now their health. When I started covering sports, health was not a major issue for them, but they're committed in all ways. And they believe themselves to be the best and they are not afraid of the challenge. They welcome the challenge. They want the ball at the end of the game.

Adam: And Ted Williams was before my time, although as a kid, I watched my fair share of Ted Williams footage and read a lot of books about Ted Williams. And David Halberstam, my favorite writer of all time, wrote a great book on Ted Williams. Thinking about Shohei, who you mentioned, something that stands out about Shohei, continual focus on self-improvement, and continual focus on getting better isn't focused on being the best today, but is focused on what he can do to become better tomorrow. And it's that work ethic, it's that dedication, it's what you do behind the scenes, it's who you are when the lights are off that dictates how you perform when the lights are on.

Lesley: Yeah, who was that Supreme Court Justice, not Oliver Wendell Holmes, but one of them said, the character is who you are when you're not in public. But I do think that sports, it really is a great teacher, or maybe because I've spent my whole life in it, but there are actual principles of being successful at sports. And one of them is you have to accept loss. When I speak, which like you is quite a bit, I always say that in my business, there are three non-negotiables and I get them from watching athletes. 

Number one, you have to have passion. If you don't have passion, you'll be angry, you'll be disappointed. Why did someone else get that assignment? Secondly, you have to have knowledge because knowledge gives you confidence. For one thing, I was always the first woman, but I knew how to diagram a safety blitz. And John Madden used to tell me 90% of guys out there are bluffing. They couldn't diagram a safety blitz. So, you have to have knowledge because that will give you confidence in the workplace. 

And to your point, the third element you have to have been stamina, because that Ferris wheel is going to go up and then it's going to come down. And I love that about baseball players, that if they get on base three times out of ten, that's massive. So, they have to learn to deal with failure every time that the play is new for them. And what's going to happen? I know what I want to do, but sometimes they aren't able to do it. So that's part of growth in life is you must have that stamina that the Ferris wheel isn't always going to be at the top.

Adam: I love that. And you mentioned that in so many ways, you were the first, you not only broke into an industry and rose within an industry that everyone wants to work in, that is incredibly competitive, but you did it at a time when you were the first. It was all male. How?

Lesley: I did have those three elements. I had passion. I'd followed sports. I didn't know about stamina then, but I wanted to be really good at choosing to be a sports writer. I didn't think television at first. And I won a Carnegie Foundation grant in 1973 or 74. It was open to only 20 women in America who wanted to go into jobs that were 90 percent male. And a woman from Johns Hopkins got it for ophthalmology. A woman from Michigan got it for archaeology. I went to Boston College and I got it for sports writing. And I went to the Boston Globe, which I don't know how many of your listeners. 

Probably this is too far back. But we were the twenty-seven Yankees. Every single writer in the globe sports was the best at his position. So, it was Bud Collins on tennis. It was Peter Gammons on baseball. It was Bob Ryan on basketball. It was Will McDonough on football. Like I would go to Wimbledon and I'd say, hi, I'm Lesley Visser from the Boston Globe. I work with Bud Collins. And it's like the heavens would open. People who never talked to anybody, Jan Tiriac, Anastasi, they'd be like, what do you want? What do you need? So I had, in your program, I had mentors from the get-go. 

And I asked much more than I spoke. I really tried. There was a great writer, Red Smith, the first sports writer to win a Pulitzer. And he used to pick a young writer every year at the Kentucky Derby to walk the infield with him. It wasn't corporate then. So it was like an honor if Red Smith tapped you to walk the infield. And we were walking along and he said, Lesley, I have one piece of advice for you for your entire career. Make a memory. And that's what I did. I can picture the Super Bowl finals. I can picture the World Series. I can picture being at Wimbledon. I can picture what those mentors told me and the way that they said it.

Adam: I love that advice. Make a memory.

Lesley: Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of scar tissue, but I always had an attitude of gratitude. I mean, when I started as the first woman to cover the NFL as a beat for the Boston Globe in the mid-70s, of course, there were no ladies’ rooms. So, the Patriots, who were not the gold standard Patriots then, got the ball right first and 10 on their own 20. And I would think, can I go down the press elevator across the field to the one public ladies’ room and come back before they punted? And because they were usually three and out, I was like Usain Bolt. I looked at it like, are you kidding? This is a childhood dream. And. The Boston Globe helped me. The Carnegie Foundation helped me. People were giving me opportunities all over the place. And all I wanted to do was to deliver on the promise.

Adam: You're painting a picture for listeners, literally no ladies’ rooms. And for much of your career, you were literally the only woman in the room. And by virtue of your gender, you were different than everyone else. can't deny that, how did you develop a level of comfort in your own skin to feel okay about being different, to embrace being different? And how can anyone who feels different in some way develop that comfort in their own skin to be at their best, to bring their best, most authentic self to the table every day?

Lesley: A few things. That's a great question. For me, my passion outweighed the hurdles. I accepted the hurdles as part of getting to the finish line. And I mean, I'll never be at a finish line, but all of that passion and willingness to do the work. It helped me and I had a sense of humor. In Boston, if you don't have a sense of humor, don't take the floor. That's kind of how we are. But I felt, I remember once there were a couple of black players for the Patriots, Sugar Bear Hamilton in particular, and he would let me go over to his house. Now this is in the time of eight-millimeter film. And he would hang a sheet in his house and he would go over the defense with me, right? This is like 1976. And he'd say the Patriots had switched from a 3-4 to a 4-3. And it was the other way around. They went to a 3-4 with the four linebackers. 

And he would sit up there with like a pointer, like a ruler, and say, OK, this is the responsibility of this linebacker. And one time, so then maybe there'd be three or four African-Americans and myself. And one time I said, why are you guys so great to me? And one of them said because we know what it's like to be the only one. So, I think you have to be open. You have to extend yourself to make connections and say, okay, I'm different, but inside I have the same passion that you do.

Adam: I love that. Be open, be yourself, be authentic. Don't be afraid. Don't worry about how other people are going to receive you for being you. At the end of the day, everyone is different in some way. You were different because you were a woman in an all-male industry, but the people you were with were different because they had a different skin color at a time when that was different. 

Having a sense of humor, being self-deprecating, something that I've talked about with so many of the most successful leaders across so many different areas of leadership, former governors, former military leaders, the power of self-deprecation, using self-deprecating humor as a way to connect with the people around you. Something that you shared, which you said is almost a throwaway line. I'll never be at the finish line, but that's so powerful.

Lesley: And now, okay, I'll share a really embarrassing story for your listeners. And then will you share one?

Adam: Of course. Yes, I will do that.

Lesley: Well, often, like if I tell this one, people say, oh my God, I have nothing like that. But nonetheless, I will go. Okay, so I went from the Boston Globe, which I covered everything that television covered. I'd done Super Bowls and NBA finals and Final Four and tennis. So now I go to CBS and my very first assignment was the iconic Lakers Celtic final like it wasn't big enough in 1984. But the next year I was doing the U.S. Open, the tennis final, and there was a player from Prague named Hana Mandlikova. I don't know if your listeners know, but the OVA, Sharapova, Navratilova, that just means daughter of. Martina's father is Navratil. So, this was Hana Mandlikova. She was a great young player from Prague. And that summer she went from like nowhere. She actually won the U.S. Open. 

So now here I am, I'm not nervous enough. I had no television experience. And now I go right to the network where there were only really three ESPN was starting, but CBS was the big boys in town. So right at the U.S. Open. And Brent Musburger, then our great host, through it, said, well, let's go to Lesley Visser, who's out with Hana Mandlikova. 

So, I said, Hana, you were ranked 55th in the world only a few weeks ago. Now you're fifth. To what do you attribute the great rise in the rankings? And Hana says to me, with her thick Czech accent, I might add, Hana says to me, well, I think it is my new couch. So, I thought, I don't know, maybe she's sleeping better or something. So, I say, on network television, oh, did you get some new furniture? And she says, don't be ridiculous. Billie Jean King, my new couch. Pretty bad. Pretty bad. Brent's head hit the table. They played it every year at the seminar. I remember the time, Lesley. I mean, you can survive it. Okay, now it's your turn to share something.

Adam: But you owned it. And it's about owning it. When you make a mistake, owning the mistakes that you make.

Lesley: Is that for you to stall for time thinking?

Adam: No, I can tell you I have so many different examples.

Lesley: But just only one.

Adam: I'll give you one just because we're recording a podcast right now. And I'm thinking about podcasting. I did an interview with one of the most successful military leaders of our day. This was in my early days of recording Thirty Minute Mentors and my equipment wasn't working right now. You and I are recording this podcast and I'm about to hit record and it's not working. And I was incredibly embarrassed because here I am with this podcast, taking time from one of the most successful military leaders and I can't even do something as basic as getting my equipment to work. 

And what's even more embarrassing about that is that isn't the first time that that happened. That happened once before. I did an interview with the CEO of Gold's Gym, a great guy, Adam Zaitsev. Adam was one of my first guests on Thirty Minute Mentors. And when I was interviewing Adam, same thing interviewed him and couldn't figure out how to get the equipment to work. Adam, I will never forget this. 

And I've told him this over the years. I'm incredibly grateful to him for this. He was essentially my it guy. He helped me figure out how to get my equipment to work. And he said, well, you could do this. You could do that. Adam's actually today, the CIO of LA Fitness. So, talk about an overqualified it guy for a podcast.

Lesley: But you know what, you were probably so generous toward him. And the other thing that I've learned in this business is that you're a team. When you go out to do something, I might be in front of the camera, but it's a cameraman. As you said, you have engineers, you have other people. He was generous enough to help you. I remember once, as you remember, Barry Sanders did not do many interviews. Matter of fact, I went back once, he was from Wichita, and I went back once to interview his parents. And they owned like a mom-and-pop shop. And his Heisman trophy was on the top shelf, like above a bag of cotton balls. You know, it was just like there was Barry Sanders Heisman. So one day he agreed to me in the old Silverdome that he would go up and down the field with me and talk about what happened on that yard line or how he had to remember Barry's style or for your listeners who don't remember.

Adam: Absolutely. Barry Sanders was the Shohei of running backs. Lesley, you've been covering football for longer than anyone. Have you seen anyone who you could compare to Barry Sanders?

Lesley: Yeah, the great Gail Sayers was pretty special. But a good soldier knows history, by the way. So I was always the youngest, but I was expected to know, you know, what went on.

Adam: But so Barry, Lesley, like I know Gail Sayers, I know Jim Brown, but I didn't grow up watching I've watched footage of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, but that's different than growing up watching Barry Bonds and saying, this guy is someone who I've never seen before because you're watching someone day in, day out, Mark McGuire. When you see someone up close, as you brought up right at the beginning of our conversation, when you see someone in person and then when you see someone on television day in and day out, it's a totally different experience than catching clips of them.

Lesley: I'll finish my Barry Sanders story, but I think that Barry Bonds might've had the prettiest swing after Ted Williams. His swing was poetry.

Adam: Picture perfect. Although you could put Ken Griffey Jr. in that same category.

Lesley: Yeah, really. But so Barry agreed to do this. We walked up and down the Silverdome field when he'd say on this play, I had to run back. Remember, he'd run back 15 yards and then forward 30. And okay, so we do it. This is like a prize winner. He was so candid and comfortable. And we got in the truck to go back to the airport. And the audio guy had forgotten to put it on the audio. So I realized then we're a team. It could have been that I was unprepared, that I had nothing to ask Barry Sanders, or it could have been the photographer, the camera guy. His wasn't working. And that's something that you really also have to learn, that you are part of a team. And I always say this. I was, as you, I think, mentioned, I was the first woman enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I said in every interview, nobody landed on Normandy by himself, that I have had people teach me like Dick Enberg or like John Madden or a coach or Rick Pitino, and you're not doing it by yourself.

Adam: I love that. You've mentioned so many of the great coaches right there. What do you believe makes a great coach? What do you believe makes a great leader? What can anyone do to become a great leader?

Lesley: I think you have to be a good listener and you have to want to get better, even though, like I said before, you're going to get scar tissue. It's not going to be a mental or physical free ride. And I remember I was Rick Pitino's beat writer for the Boston Globe when he was at Boston University and I was 20 and he was 21. They had pull-out wooden bleachers. I mean, the guy's been to seven final fours now. to national championships, and they had pull-out bleachers, and we would count the people who were going to the games. And it'd be like 49, 50, and I'd say, no, Rick, that guy went out to get popcorn, so we can't count him twice. I mean, nobody was at these games. 

But he would have them doing things that were creative, that were visionary. He was the first guy really to employ the three-point shot when it became available. He took Providence and Nowhere Team to the Final Four. So I think leaders have vision and they know what to do with the people around them. They can identify and they have to do it fairly quickly. I mean, you figure like a coach, he only has those kids at that time for four years now, maybe one. So you have to identify quickly what the potential of this kid or what can I unlock or what is he bringing to this team that is useful to us moving forward.

Adam: really important theme. The most successful leaders are laser-focused on unlocking what makes every single person around them great. The best leaders understand that every single person on their team has something about them that makes them special, makes them different, makes them unique, and coaches every person on their team a little bit differently. There are certain strategies, certain tactics that will work well universally. But at the end of the day, every player, every person needs to be coached and needs to be managed a little bit differently. 

I did an interview with a Hall of Fame hockey player, Chris Ponder, and something that he told me is that he was a guy who understood what to do. He didn't want someone screaming at him. He didn't want someone telling him, you need to do this, you need to do that. He was self-motivated. He just wanted to go out there and do his thing. But he had other teammates who needed someone to push them or someone to cajole them, pat them on the back. We all need to be managed a little bit differently. And the best leaders understand that and understand how to adapt accordingly.

Lesley: Well, the greatest example I've ever seen of that was Bill Parcells, who, of course, his disciple was. Bill Belichick, and they both had the same idea, do your job. But within that, they each understood, still Bill, I don't know if he'll go back to coaching, maybe, but they understood the dynamic of what you're talking about, that people are different, they grow up differently, they have different emotions, and the best example was that Bill Parcells would always say before a game, this bus leaves at 10 a.m. unless LT's a little late. I love Delty. He changed the game, as Bill Russell did, controlling a rebound. As you know, I'm a Bobby Orr guy, but Orr from behind the net, he turned defense into offense. And I guess on your side of the ledger, Wayne Gretzky, who was equally great, I just think not better than Orr.

Adam: The great one.

Lesley: The great one. He was beautiful to watch.

Adam: You've brought back memories involving so many of the all-time greats you've covered. the biggest events across all of the biggest sports in the biggest moments. How can anyone be at their very best in those high-stakes, high-pressure moments?

Lesley: Oh, I had plenty of nerves, you know, along the way, but we had a great producer. I was the first woman on Monday night football. It was with Dan Deardorff and Elle Michaels and Frank Gifford. And I was really nervous. I mean, I've never had a time in my career that I wasn't a first so that I've always not been able to get really comfortable. I guess, like, going up to the plate, I'm used to that, okay, this is a new situation. But we had a great producer on Monday Night Football, and he said to me, Lesley, you got the job, now do the job. And I thought that's right. I mean, I started covering high school football at the Boston Globe. taking me from there to be on the 50-yard line of the Super Bowl. And so I think you have to know that it's not an illusion as you're getting better opportunities than you've earned them. If there's some other aspect of it, then you have to get over that because you have the opportunity and you just must reach inside yourself. 

And you have to say, what am I really doing here? What's my goal here? Like I would never go to interview anybody. with sort of waiting for them to do it. I would know how to either be casual with them or funny or talk about something else to get them into the slipstream of where I wanted to go. They're all methods you interview for a living. Also, there are all kinds of methods, but you're trying to get someplace and you must have that destination in your mind.

Adam: In your experience, What are the keys to effective communication and what can anyone do to become a better communicator?

Lesley: I think use details because you know how many times you talk to someone and you could substitute any person for the answer they're giving. Well, we take it one day at a time. Well, sometimes it's not the athlete's fault. It's the person asking the question. I think if you ask a boring question, it's like a jukebox. They're going to push B12 for the boring answer. So, I always put a lot of responsibility on myself that I would either have had a casual conversation on the field before the game, although that's a pretty intense place, then maybe that's something you can use after the game. 

Or that, I don't know, I had so many unusual opportunities. CBS actually sent me to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is One of the great stories of the last two centuries. And I remember thinking, I am going to, as Red Smith advised, I'm going to make a memory and I'm going to do this really well. And I mean, of course, we had Dan Rather and all the news people, but my little slice of it was going to be how would sports change in East Germany once the reunification happened. 

And for those who remember, do you remember Katarina Witt? I don't know if you do. She won two gold medals. She was the beautiful face of socialism. She was just a gorgeous skater and beautiful, long brown hair and kind of looked like an Irish actress that you might fall in love with. And she lived in East Germany. But of course, she traveled in the West to compete. But I got to go through Checkpoint Charlie. I got to be at the Brandenburg Gate. I saw people. These are the memories I made. I saw people with nothing on their backs coming from Dresden and Potsdam just to get through the Brandenburg Gate and taste freedom.

Adam: Lesley, there's a lot there and we can spend hours and hours on this topic, but a couple of things that I'm taking away from not only what you just shared, but from this entire conversation. two key elements to effective communication, preparation and passion. If you're passionate about what you're communicating about, if you're passionate about who you're communicating to, if you're passionate in general, you're going to be a much more effective communicator.

Lesley: Yeah, I think the great poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, which Mike Krzyzewski and I shared and talked about it that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, nothing great can be accomplished without enthusiasm.

Adam: I love that. Lesley, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Lesley: Well, for me, what worked was that idea of make every at-bat a quality at-bat. Like sometimes people look too far ahead. Like when I got assigned a high school game in Boston, maybe I'd have to take the ferry right to Martha's venue. We're playing Nantucket, the smallest division. I wasn't thinking, okay. And someday I'm going to be the first woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I just said, you know what? I'm going to honor these fishermen's sons and cover the hell out of this game. So, I think you can have a larger plan. Don't take the elevator, take the stairs.

Adam: I love that advice. Focus on every at-bat. Not only focus on every day but focus on every moment. Be there, be present. Recognize that to get to where you want to be, you have to show up every single day and give it your very best. It's those little steps that ultimately lead to that one big step.

Lesley: And be a teammate. You aren't going to get to the World Series by yourself. You're not going to play in the Super Bowl by yourself. Even tennis now, they have a team around them and now they're allowed to be coached during the event. But tennis and golf are just so difficult because they're singular. And that's a different makeup, I think, of a person. But for the most part, I think being a good winner, is a good loser. What is it that Rudyard Kipling at Wimbledon? That's the thought that they all see before they go on to center court. treat both those imposters just the same.

Adam: Lesley, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Lesley: Thank you, Adam. It was really a joy. You've got it going. Thank you, Adam.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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