Leadership Principles that Build a Winning Culture: Chris Hanks, Colorado Mesa Baseball | Ep. 117

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with Chris Hanks, head coach of the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks in Grand Junction, Colorado, for the first session of Baseball Forward Live — a focused-topic format that closes with a live Q&A. Hanks has led Colorado Mesa since 1999, winning three national coach of the year awards, 1,164 games, and 21 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships, sending 43 players to professional baseball, and building the winningest NCAA Division II program of 2010–2019.

Hanks returns after Ep. 109 to go deeper on one subject: the leadership principles that build a winning culture. The session is organized around three parts — out-team, out-compete, and sustain success — followed by audience questions on presence, confidence, recruiting, and how new players learn the program's standards.

The highlights:

• Why Colorado Mesa assumes every opponent is more talented, and what that does for a team
• The 1980 Miracle on Ice and a set of cassette tapes that shaped Hanks's thinking about winning
• What it means to "feel" a player, on the recruiting trail and in the dugout
• "The magic's in the dirt": why there are no shortcuts to good habits
• A five-minute plan for building confidence, including distanced self-talk
• Why programs stop winning, and how to handle the "attaboy"
• Q&A: playing big, if-then plans, the traits of top players, and "We don't do that here"

Out-Team: Making Two Plus Two Equal Five

Out-teaming starts with respect. Colorado Mesa's default assumption is that whoever it plays on a given day is more gifted and more talented. If that is true, the team cannot rely on pitching, hitting, or fielding alone; it has to rely on how its relationships multiply into strength, resiliency, persistence, and toughness. Hanks says the worst mindset he sees in young players is showing up expecting to win because they are better. The opponent always gets a vote, so a team should assume it will cast a strong one.

"If you ask our guys what two plus two equals, they'll say five. Not because they're bad at math, but because we want that synergy. We want to make our nine guys feel like 10 or 11 or maybe 12."

The idea grew from years of studying what wins — including games where Colorado Mesa was outmanned, and games where it had more talent and still struggled. At 13, Hanks bought a cassette program called The Making of a Champion. At 12, he watched the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets, and he still studies Herb Brooks's approach today. The goal is not to win every game, which is unrealistic, but to compete every time and be a problem every time.

Out-team comes first because individual success follows team success. Even golf and tennis champions win with caddies, coaches, and support staff behind them. Hanks borrows the military term "force multiplier" to describe what a real team can create.

Recruiting for Feel and Presence

On the recruiting trail, Hanks wants to see a player in his real environment, when he does not know a coach is watching: how he gets on and off the field, the pride and energy he plays his position with, and how he treats teammates. Colorado Mesa uses the word feel constantly. Beyond the home run or the strikeout, does a player have presence? Does he stand out?

He tells his catchers that when a game ends, everyone in the stands should know who the best catcher was — the best leader, with the most energy and focus. Messages like that set expectations, and people rise to expectations that are reachable but stretch them a little. Hanks adds a caution: quieter, steadier players can be just as impactful. They may take more looks, or a conversation with a coach who knows them well.

The Magic's in the Dirt

Hanks is not worried about other programs copying Colorado Mesa, because the hard part is the day-to-day messaging, systems, and conversations that no one sees from the outside. Even a great system, like Bill Belichick's with the Patriots, only works if it is executed daily, including the small corrections when things go off course. He sees players searching online for the newest slider grip or hitting drill and brings them back to the basics.

"Guys, you can try all that stuff, but there really aren't any magic bullets. The magic is in the dirt."

If you want to run fast, sprint. If you want to throw hard, play catch and throw hard. The standard is excellence rather than perfection: doing the best you can every day with whatever you have.

Out-Compete: Presence, Focus, and Intent

Out-competing begins with the individual. It means being willful, focused, and carrying great presence — the energy and confidence a person puts out into the world. From the opposing dugout, Hanks can feel it when a pitcher is fighting hard, with focus, intent, and conviction. He points to the end of a recent televised tennis match, where the winner was so locked in he asked for another ball after match point.

Colorado Mesa defines competing through three lenses: what it looks like, acts like, and feels like, with describers under each. Presence can be built, partly through posture. On a team, the best part is that when one player falters, the others are there to lift him up.

Building Confidence and Controlling the Second Thought

Asked for a five-minute talk on confidence, Hanks starts with discipline: knowing you did the work, with a high level of focus, even in short sessions. Next comes internal messaging. Saying "I can do this" helps, but research on distanced self-talk suggests "You can do this" works even better, because it feels like being coached by someone you respect. He also recommends a memory bank of moments when you were at your best, to revisit before an at-bat, a sales pitch, or a podcast. Handling success matters too; Colorado Mesa calls it handling the "attaboy." And confidence will always be attacked.

Hanks separates talking to yourself from listening to yourself. No one controls the first thought, but there is a gap before the second and third — what he calls the attitude read — where a person can decide to shift. Talking is easier to control because it is out loud; listening happens inside your head.

Sustain Success: Keep Doing What Wins

Sustaining success comes down to the attitudes, actions, and behaviors that win, turned into repeatable systems: how ground balls are taken, how bullpens and hitting are practiced, for how long, and at what intensity.

"I think the biggest thing people do when they stop having success is they stop employing the behaviors that allowed them to be successful in the first place."

Some of that comes from being seduced by success and believing the compliments. Winning regularly also puts a target on a team's back, and opponents with nothing to lose play loose. Hanks's answer is to turn the target around and never let an opponent dictate the level of preparation. He also believes presence, especially when a team is being beaten, can become contagious. The real magic comes when the team takes over leadership for itself and the program sustains even when the leaders are not present.

The Fun and the Grind of 1,164 Wins

The most rewarding part of the journey has been watching players bounce back, come from behind, and improve. The hardest has been the grind of staying the course through long seasons and tough losses. Losing the 2014 national championship game in 12 innings as the home team took Hanks a year and a half to get over; losing the 2019 title game 3–1 took a few months. His lesson is not to put too much weight on one game or one season. He estimates 15–20% of any game is luck — good hops, calls, wind, the sun — comparing it to the two green squares on a roulette wheel. What remains is simple: if you won't beat yourself, it is hard for anyone else to beat you.

From the Live Q&A

Leadership for young players: Do what you say you're going to do and make your word be gold. Actions speak louder than words, and you can only lead people to the level of discipline you have.

Fake it till you make it? To a degree, yes. Colorado Mesa tells players to play big: chin up, chest out, hustle, and show an unshakable presence. Posture can produce a better feeling, and that can lead to earned confidence. Teammates say "play big" to a player who just struck out as a reminder that looking beaten does not help anyone.

If-then plans: Players can decide in advance how they will respond to failure. If I strike out, then I will do this, so I don't carry it to shortstop. If I give up a home run, I'll step off, get a new ball, and focus on the next hitter. It is not preparing to fail; it is preparing to handle failure.

Traits of his top players: Great focus, great work ethic, and a genuine love of practice. Hanks can often guess which of a few pitchers is throwing when he hears a glove popping outside his office window on a day off.

What stands out when recruiting: A hop in the step and fire in the belly — genuine joy, not overdoing it. It shows most in a hot travel-ball tournament, in a team's fourth or fifth game, when a player is still running to his position and running out ground balls. The best players give off extreme confidence, and they move on quickly when a call goes against them.

Why baseball? Hanks spent his first five years at Colorado Mesa as an assistant coach in both football and baseball, and the head baseball job was the first great opportunity. He credits a former Mesa defensive coordinator, a coach he believed could win in any sport, for showing him that coaching comes down to how you interact with and teach people.

"We Don't Do That Here"

Freshmen and transfers meet with the staff as a group as soon as they arrive, then individually. The message is clear: this is who we are, and this is what you are joining. Returning players carry it from there. Hanks recently heard one tell a teammate in the clubhouse, "We don't do that here." It was not a confrontation or a call-out, just a statement of the standard, and it is part of why the program has little trouble getting players to buy in.

The same idea explains why good players slip. A pitcher who is rolling in the spring may quietly drop his stretching and arm-care routine once the season gets long, and a couple of subpar outings follow. The work that caused the success has to continue.

A Final Word: Act

Hanks closes with a challenge that applies well beyond baseball.

"Everything you have is already inside you. You just need to act. You can't just always wait till you're ready, because you'll never be ready. Once you begin to act, you will then start getting ready."

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:36 — Introducing Chris Hanks and the first session of Baseball Forward Live
• 5:21 — Out-team: assume every opponent is more talented
• 9:23 — Where the mindset came from, from cassette tapes to the Miracle on Ice
• 12:56 — Recruiting: seeing a player's feel and presence
• 19:38 — Secret sauce? "The magic's in the dirt"
• 23:57 — Out-compete: presence, focus, and intent
• 28:35 — A five-minute talk on building confidence
• 33:03 — Talking to yourself versus listening to yourself
• 35:52 — Sustain success: keep doing what wins
• 42:06 — The most fun and the hardest parts of 1,164 wins
• 45:53 — Q&A: leadership advice for young players
• 47:31 — Fake it till you make it, and playing big
• 49:42 — Maintaining presence through the lows with if-then plans
• 52:29 — Three traits his top players share
• 53:58 — What makes a player stand out when recruiting
• 58:34 — Why baseball and not football
• 1:00:37 — Acclimating freshmen and transfers: "We don't do that here"
• 1:05:12 — Final word: act before you feel ready

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Chris Hanks is the head baseball coach of the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks. Find more from Coach Hanks at coachchrishanks.com and on X at @30Skipper. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.