23 R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Simple Act of Acknowledgement That Saves Lives

Coach Rodo tackles the life-altering importance of **Respect**—a cornerstone of his culture and coaching philosophy. Starting with a powerful personal story about being corrected for saying "What?" to his grandmother, Rodo discusses how respect has become dangerously transactional.

He challenges parents and coaches: **Respect is earned, but it must also be given.** Rodo shares his practice of thanking his athletes for their time and the critical lesson of allowing children to tell their side of the story to authoritative figures like teachers.

The most vital message is that **Acknowledgement is the highest form of respect**, especially between men in the community. Rodo explains why a simple "What's up, brother?" in passing is a crucial step to de-escalating tension, highlighting tragic stories of violence that began over perceived disrespect. The episode closes with a call for self-respect as the ultimate foundation.

#Respect #Acknowledgement #BlackCulture #CoachingAdvice #SelfRespect #WinningRegardless #Community #LifeLessons

(00:55) - The First Lesson: Getting hit for saying "What?" to Grandma.
(02:30) - Quitting & Disrespect: Why allowing kids to quit is disrespectful to their potential.
(04:40) - The Team Rule: How Rodo got his players to stop saying "What, Coach?"
(06:50) - Respect Must Be Given: Why coaches must thank players for their time.
(09:30) - The Church’s Role: How institutions lose respect when they stop serving the community.
(13:55) - Respecting Your Kids: Giving your child a chance to tell their side of the story to a teacher.
(18:00) - Acknowledgement: Why looking a brother in the eye and speaking is vital.
(20:30) - Disrespect Kills: Tragic stories of life sentences over minor bumps and perceived disrespect.
(24:45) - Final Challenge: **Self-Respect** as the foundation for respecting others.

Transcript

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T. like to be respectful because, you catch more flies with honey. Why can't we just respect each other? Because we brothers in the same spectrum. We fight in the same war. How disrespectful is that? disrespect is one of the easiest ways of getting yourself hurt in our culture. If I have to tell the young kids one thing, respect yourself. Hello everyone, I would like to welcome you to another edition of Coach Rodo's podcast, Winning Regardless. Today we're gonna talk about respect. know, respect is a big deal in our culture, know, meaning the black culture. And that's the only culture that I can really speak of. Even though I've been in this coaching realm, we've been around other cultures and we've seen how they handle respect. I can only speak on how we see respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. That's another one of those big words in our culture. I remember when I was a kid, you know, trying to learn what that word meant. And you took a lot of lumps, you know. The first one being when your name got called. And I'm sure once I say it, everybody already going to know, in our culture, already going to know what word it is. My name was called. And it was my grandmother. And I said, what? And I just got knocked out and didn't even know why. You know what mean? Because, you know, I was like four or five years old and I'm out playing and I'm thinking, you know, what grandma, you know, come here, you know, and pow, you know, it's like, you know, what happened? You don't answer the word, you know, you never say the word what is one of the most disrespectful words you can ever say to a grown up. That was my first real encounter with the word respect. As I got older, I kind of incorporated being respectful into my life because... I think that a lot of uh what goes on in our society with our kids is a lack of respect. And it's a lack of respect that has been taught. Like for me, I raised my boys, you know, you don't say what, you open up the door for a lady, you you hold the door for your elders, you know, you, if you can help them carry a grocery bag into the house, you do so. I mean, anything you can to show gratitude, which also can be shown as respect. And when I say gratitude, I mean in the sense of helping, know, being uh respectful. You know, that's something that, again, is lost in our culture, or not in our culture, but with our kids, you know. You think about when you were a kid coming up, you know, us who have kids and they're younger, did you, were you allowed to be? disrespectful to your parents to the point to where I see some parents allow their kids to be. mean, even in our culture, I've seen parents allow their kids to, you know, talk to them any kind of way or quit when they feel like it or, you know, do just obscene things that when we were a kid, we get clubbed for, you know, and I say quit because, you know, quitting to me is extremely disrespectful. And I see parents allowing their children to do so and don't understand it, quitting leads to a lot of other disrespectful things. When I had my basketball team, I had a lot of other cultural Caucasian kids on my team and they would answer their moms and dads, what? Like it wasn't nothing. And for the first few practices and things of that sort, it was okay. Not okay, but it was, I really didn't... couldn't, you know, didn't feel like I could say anything, but after it got so bad, it became an issue of, okay, well, I can't say anything, but I can do something about it. Get your behinds on the line. Every time I hear the word what comes out of anyone on this team, because they started addressing me as that, I would say their name, they would say, what coach? ah I'll talk to you in a second, you know, because again, it was, I hadn't, didn't have the rapport with those kids yet. And, you know, I have my kids there listening and they're like, dad, this mug is saying what to you? And if I say what do you, I might have to go get new teeth. And when my youngest son said that to me, when he told me that that's when I changed, because what was I showing him? I mean, even though he knew better, what was I really teaching him? That, you know, they get a pass and you don't? Yes, they do and you don't. But that's not, in that instance, that's not what we were talking about. I was basically going against what I had taught him. And from that point on, whenever I heard kids say the word what, whenever I called them, whenever their parents called them, we was all hit in the line to where I needed the other kids. to say to the kids who were making them run, hey, stop saying what. And after a while, the parents were like, he doesn't say what at home either. And they said it was like as if you're in the home, it no, it's he's now starting to understand how disrespectful that word is. That's a word that should never come out of a mouth of a child to a grownup. You know, when you talk about respect and it goes both ways, you know, that's the thing that we get messed up. I think the thing that we get messed up the most is not understanding that we also have to give respect. You know, I think these young men have lost respect from not getting respect, telling them, you know, talk when you talk, when you only speak when spoken to or how disrespectful is that because they might have something to say, you know, or, or. You know, don't be in the same room as grownups, you because that's how we came up. That was seen as disrespectful, you know. But why not? How are they going to learn? You know, how are they going to learn to maneuver things without hearing conversation, learning what conversation actually is amongst grown people? How do grown people speak to each other? And decipher whether it's respect or disrespectful in the conversation that's being had. We shut them out. know, again, as a coach, you know, I believe that we have to give the ultimate respect to our players if we want them to respect us. Me and my buddy, as I say all the time, we train this high school team down here and we get done. I thank them every time as a sign of respect for them giving me and my buddy that hour and a half of their time because it's not mandatory. You know, you can come if you want to, you know, you're gonna get better if you come, but you know, it's up to you if you want to come. you got something else you'd rather go do, by all means. But again, I feel so compelled to show them the respect of thanking them for allowing me to pass my knowledge of strength and agility and speed training to them because again, they didn't have to. They give me their undivided attention. They don't have to respect. I have to respect them because they give me so much respect. And that's the thing that, you know, we have to get away from expecting these kids to respect us just because we told them to. What have you done for this kid to respect you? Because remember, we were always taught respect is earned. It's never given. I know you all know that saying it's earned. It's never given. Yeah, but how do you go about earning that? How do you go about earning respect from a kid or a grownup or someone who's never met you? I can tell you how. It's all in the interaction. That very first interaction says it all. The very first interaction you have with that grownup or with that child. It's the tone in your voice. It's the way that you might say it. garners whether you're gonna get respect or not. We as spouses, you know, we talk to our spouses any kind of way and without really thinking about how the tone, how we said it or what we've said because we don't think that our spouse would ever think that I'm disrespecting them because I'm with them and I love them. been with them for so long that I would never disrespect. Well, we say disrespectful things when we sit back and we think about it. dang, that might have hurt their feelings. um I could have said that a different way. And that goes in the grown-up world, too. That goes as teachers. That goes as coaches. That goes as parents. That goes as friends. um How we talk to people. how we treat people goes a long ways towards getting respect because it's so easy to be disrespectful. And again, I think that what's going on with our kids is a lot of them feeling disrespectful. You remember when we was a kid, the church was off limits. And I grew up with some bad dudes, but the one thing they would never do is breaking the church because they had so much respect for the church. Well, I look back then, Those churches did a lot in our community. They had trick-or-treating joints. uh They had oh little dinners and stuff for the neighborhood kids. They put on all kinds of things. You show up to church this one Sunday, they bought the whole neighborhood ice cream, things of that sort. They don't do that stuff no more. So when we were kids, the church kind of earned our respect by... purchasing our respect. And then you got to know them and then the church became very respectful for what it did for you in the community. If you needed clothes, if you were a poor family and you knew, you know, that's the kind of church that I came from. I'm not a church guy, but my whole family is. And I went to church with them and I saw the things that church does for people that doesn't do that anymore. And if they do... You have to give something in order to get that. Whereas to, yeah, we knew we had to give tithe, you know, and that was some, but now it's a ridiculous way of asking for tithe. And, you know, we gave tithe because we saw, again, what the church was doing in the community. So the church needed to recoup that money back. So the parents, the aunts, the uncles, the friends, and nobody didn't, they didn't care about giving tithe because they knew. that church was helping the community. They knew that battered wives with their kids could come in here in this church and that husband or that boyfriend couldn't get nowhere near that door because none of them deacons was gonna let him in there. And if he tried to get in there, there was always one deacon in there that would break a neck. And they knew who that deacon was. Now, you know, as kids, these are things that we saw. the church garnered respect for the things that it did. for our neighborhood to keep the peace in our neighborhood. When we had shootings and violence in our neighborhood, the church was the first one to do marches. And, you know, like this is in Lansing, this is really what we saw coming up from our churches, you know, Friendship Baptist Church, know, Union Baptist Church. uh We had uh First Baptist Church. We had Ebenezer Baptist Church. You know, they all would, you know. They did a lot, you they would sponsor football teams, they would sponsor basketball teams, the kids who couldn't pay, you know, the church would put a collection together for this kid. He didn't even have to go to the church, but he was in the church's community. And in our day, the church believed that if I took care of the community, the community would take care of me. It's not that way anymore. Somehow, the church has become disrespected. And I believe it's because the church has disrespected these young kids. I believe that it's taught these young kids that. They have to give their selves to them, to the church, no matter what, without anything in return. And everything is transactional. You have to show these kids something. You have to show these kids respect. They break in churches now. There was a church I used to go to, kids broke in and stole all the brand new audio equipment. I'm talking about $10,000 to $20,000 worth of equipment. Whereas when we was a kid, we would have never dreamed of it. But then when I found out that that happened at that church, it happened to... all kinds of churches all over the country because the kids do not respect the church anymore. Because the people that run the church do not respect the kids. They don't respect the neighborhood. They're um requiring things that churches shouldn't require from these kids. kid wants to go and not feel a benefit of a teaching that they're getting. You know, our churches aren't doing anything to guard these kids' respect. And so when we talk about our kids not respecting the churches, our kids not respecting grownups, well, some of that is also what's being taught at home. You know, like, do you teach your kids to respect the teacher? Do you teach your kids to respect the coach? You know, I mean, when I was a kid, we were always, again, respect them. And our respect for teachers sometimes came out of penalty because I wasn't the only one. I can guarantee you whose teacher lied on them constantly. And because my dad came up the way that he came up, he believed everything that the teacher said. And if I said that the teacher was lying, I'm disrespecting the teacher. Well, that teacher's disrespecting me, lying on me. And as I got older, grown, had my own kids, first thing that I always said was, I know how I raise my kids in my home. And I know that I teach them to respect elders, the grownups, the authority. So whenever something would happen in school, I always gave them the respect of, okay son, your teacher said this is what happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, again, I knew my boys. So I would let the teacher tell me what the issue was whenever they called me up to the school to come up there. But the one thing that I would never do and I do it and I would never do is I would never not give my kid a chance to tell his side of the story. Whether it's in front of the teacher, whether it's at teacher parent teacher conferences, whether it's in front of the principal, my children always got the chance to tell their story because we did. And a couple of times, it tripped the teachers up because guess what? You're on Front Street now. You have to tell me about my son that I know. in front of my and his face and then you have to listen to his story right here in front of the both of in front of all three of us, have to sit here and you have to listen to his story. You cannot imagine the dynamic. You cannot imagine how. embarrassed some of the teachers were because again, they expected to be able to say, you know, things about my son or about other kids without repercussions because they believe that as a parent, I should not respect my children enough to give them the opportunity to tell me their side of the story. That's basically what it boils down to. That's respect to me. You know, it hasn't it's it's love also, but more than anything is respect because I'm allowing my children to speak their piece to the most authoritative figure in their life. So it built an expectation of, damn, if I show respect, then I should get respect back. And it also showed them what respect isn't. And they needed to see that as well. That's what our children needed to see also. That's a problem that we have with our young kids. We don't show them what respect looks like. Therefore, how can we expect them to respect? We go to a grocery store or somebody cut us off. We, you know, what's your kid sitting right there, you know, instead of, hey, you know, man, it happened. They probably in a rush. Maybe they didn't even see you. But right there, you've taught. disrespect is a way of getting anger out when it's only making you angrier because you continue to talk about it. My buddy, Von was on here. And it's funny because now I find myself doing his damn motto, which is give it what it's worth. I find myself now when I get cut off. Now, what the F is you doing? And da da da. No, I'm just like, you know, at the end of the day, what, how much time is it? Does this situation deserve? How much energy did this situation deserve? Does it deserve the respect of your anger that you're going to give it? And, you know, we as grownups are the teachers of respect. And I know they say a lot of it comes from, you know, learning it at home is done a third, but no, a lot of it comes from just being a decent person, man. You know what respect is. It's an innate, it's an innate feeling inside you because it's a decision. You can decide to be respectful and disrespectful. Me, myself, I like to be respectful because, you get more, you catch more flies with honey. You know, you become known as a person where pretty much everyone has respect for you because you've always shown them respect. You know, like the older guys at the Y, they like me because since I've been coming to the Y and seeing them for over 30 years, I've shown them nothing but the utmost respect. I don't think I haven't had some disrespectful moments because I have, but it was never to any of the ones that are there that hasn't shown me nothing but the utmost respect. And being around those type of guys when I was younger, coming up in locker rooms with older gentlemen and these are that sort. Man, I couldn't believe the respect that they showed me. Hey, what's up, Young Blood? That's respect. That's acknowledgement. Man, this is my dad's boy, old dude. I'm eight years old, nine years old in the locker room. And he's saying, what's up to me, Young Blood? Are you serious? And this dude is a big time football player here. This dude play basketball. This dude is a sports agent. And every time they see me, what's up, Young Blood? Look at Lil Marshall. Look at Lil Marshall. What's up, Rod? After a while, know, they... then they started knowing my name, you know, and it was a lot of them. So I had no, I had learned that that was their sign of showing me respect and acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is a sign of respect. And I like to acknowledge kids that I've coached. I even like to acknowledge the young men that I don't coach. because I respect them because they've given me no reason to not. And you never know by speaking to a kid that you don't know respectfully what you might do or what you might change within that kid. I got a friend of mine who's on here, my buddy Vic Ledbetter. He says the one thing that incenses him, which I never paid attention to until he brought it up was how we as black men disrespect each other and we don't even know each other. And you know what the gesture he said was? We look at each other in each other's eyes and we don't even say hello. We don't even give up, what's up my man, what's up bro? In passing, we gotta know each other to speak to each other. We gotta know each other to respect each other. Why can't we just respect each other? Because we brothers in the same spectrum. We fight in the same war. That taught me listening to him say that and me paying more attention. Like now I'm making a conscious effort when I walk by people, brothers, if they looking hard, I smile. What's up my brother? You know, walk by they might, they may say something or they might not. But the fact that a matter is, again, I'm I'm acknowledging you. So I'm showing you respect. You know, I respect you, my brother, and I know nothing about you, but I respect you enough to speak to you and say what's up, and say hi, whether you speak to me or not. Just know that you got my respect. Because people in my culture die over respect. They kill over respect. And they don't give a damn. I was listening to one guy talk about how he's got a partner in jail because a guy at a bar bumped into him. bumped into him, didn't have words with him, bumped into him and his boy turned around and looked at him and just had to give him the beating of his life and now he got 18 years in prison. Didn't kill him, but again, listen to my words, gave him the beating of his life because he felt disrespected by the guy bumping into him. Another guy, he was telling a story, hit one of his buddy's cars. buddy got upset. Whether than hey, your driver's license, get your insurance, this, that, and the third, because we're so... into our influences of the word respect and disrespect and what we feel is disrespect because of maybe the world that we're living in and the world that we're playing in that he just bombed a dude, bombed him eight times, rest of his life in prison over a car accident that probably could have been rectified with insurance and a ticket. Instead, it's life in prison because he felt disrespected because the guy cut him off and hit his car. That's how much that's my culture. That's why you have to be careful. That's why I believe that we should respect everyone. disrespect is one of the easiest ways of getting yourself hurt in our culture. And you might not even know that you And that's bad, that's sad, that's one of those things where we have to live with it, but we don't have to agree with it. And I don't, which is one of the reasons why I try my best when I walk past brothers to not mean mug. And it's not that I'm scared. Sometimes I can look at a brother and tell because I'm from that. If I look this brother in the eye, he's gonna be like a rabbit dog and think that I'm disrespecting him by that in itself because I can look at where he comes from. So I know if I'm gonna look at this brother, my first thing I'm gonna do is put a smile on him and be like, what's up my brother, how you doing man? I'm chilling man, on my way going, you know, but I am not a threat. And it's sad that we have to do those things to get over... the disrespect word to the respect to show that we're not a threat. And again, we see of avoiding disrespect by showing a little respect as being a punk. it's not me. It's to me it's not because would you rather be in jail or would you rather be living or would you have rather a cat does not respond because you say what's up to him? You know, I treat respect. That's one of the most highest values in life that you can have. Because I believe when you respect people, you garner respect. You walk into certain rooms and you get a certain level of respect. And I've been that person. I've walked in the rooms and garnered that respect. That was because I respect everybody in the room. I love to know people's names. I can coach kids. One week and know every kid name within the week Because that's a sign of respect How can I get you to respect me if I don't respect you if I call you? Hey kid? How disrespectful is that? You know because I remember these kids we came up they put your name across the top of your helmet So they would learn everybody's name. How respectful is that? because again Respect was high, highly taught when I was a kid. Sometimes it was taught the wrong way, but you still learn respect. And I never forget how I felt when I would go to other games and coaches that knew... of us and knew us coming up and they would say, yeah, you so-and-so. yeah, you Lonnie Marshall's son. yeah, you Idris Woods. You know, these are all of us, Keshe. You you Richard Robinson. know, you Eddie Robinson. know, y'all dads was, you know, big time coaches or y'all some big time players coming up pretty soon. You know, we didn't even know these guys. And the smile on our faces, because that was their way of showing us respect. And we didn't learn that till we got older. Acknowledgement is respect. I think that's what we have to now start teaching our kids, whether than telling them respect is how, you know, we treat people, which it is, but we have to add, you know, another ingredient to that sauce. And I think it's acknowledgement. Because at the end of the day, even those who feel respect, disrespected, it was just a matter of acknowledgement. Who knows? Maybe they had my man and my man whose buddy beat the dude up for bumping into him in the club. Maybe he had some words. He said they didn't. I don't know if maybe a man, my apologies or man, I'll buy you. I don't know. Who knows if that would have worked? But we're not taught many problem solving skills either in our community. But respect. can be used as a problem-solving skill. Sometimes respect can get you out of some stuff, because disrespect will get you in a lot of it. And again, I think as grown-ups, as we usher our new generation of young black males, young black athletes, even our young white athletes, our young white males. that we ingratiate into each other's culture. As they come into our culture, as we come into their culture, we have to respect them and teach them what respect is. And to do that is by respecting them, by the way that we talk to them, by the way that we teach them, by the way that we are around them. ah I think that will go a long way in ushering in this new generation of youth that we have coming in. whether it be women or males. We have to start teaching them to care more about themselves. You care more about yourself, you'll care more about the things around you. Respect yourself. If I have to tell the young kids one thing, respect yourself. Therefore, you will garner respect from others because if you respect yourself, you'll know how to respect others. And in turn, they will show you respect because if you have self-respect, there's nothing no one can take away from you. And you'll know that. And if I have anything that I want us as coaches, parents, or whoever is listening to remember is, acknowledgement and self-respect to these new kids that we're ushering in. We need to get them to get to that point to where we don't have the toxicity that we have going on in our society right now where we don't respect each other at all unless you agree with us. Whereas to not agree with each other is not disrespect. You just don't agree. But now it's told that if you don't agree, then I'm going to punish you and you're being disrespectful. That's not the case. So again, let's get back to teaching our kids respect and let's acknowledge them. Acknowledgement is respect. Once a kid is acknowledged, they have no choice but to smile at you because first of all, you know their name. It's a big deal. Then the respect comes right after that. I know from personal experience. So again, today's podcast is on respect and let's add acknowledgement to that when we're dealing with our youth. Thank you for tuning in to Coach Rattles' Winning Regardless podcast. You can find us anywhere. You listen to your favorite podcast. You have a wonderful day.