Building Leadership Community

The Best Leaders Don't Build Teams. They Build Trust.

• Coach Dora Mendez

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0:00 | 12:48

How do you build a high-performing team when everyone brings different strengths, backgrounds, and lived experiences? ⚽✨

In this special bonus mini-episode of the Building Leadership Community podcast, Coach Dora Mendez sits down with her sister, fight and intimacy director Rocío Mendez, to unpack the ultimate leadership lessons from the FIFA World Cup.

Using the global stage of the World Cup as a starting point, this warm and grounding conversation expands into a vital truth: the best leaders don't just build teams—they build trust. Drawing from her career in professional theater, Rocío shares how elite team dynamics, psychological safety, and self-care directly translate to a healthy workplace culture.

Connect with Our Guest:

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • Collaborative Leadership: Why diverse teams consistently outperform those built on conformity.
  • Adapting to Individual Strengths: How effective leaders coach the unique individual rather than forcing everyone into the same box.
  • Self-Care as a Responsibility: Why wellness is a non-negotiable leadership discipline, not an afterthought.
  • Trust and Psychological Safety: The blueprint for creating team confidence, ease, and high performance.
  • Sports & Stage Lessons: What corporate leaders can learn from world-class athletes and theatrical performers.

Watch the Video Version:

⏱️ Episode Chapters

  • 00:00 - Welcome & A World Cup Perspective
  • 01:04 - Family, Leadership & Community
  • 01:46 - Why Diverse Teams Perform Better
  • 03:48 - The Beauty of Different Strengths
  • 04:40 - Self-Care Is Part of Leadership
  • 07:06 - Leading People, Not Just Roles
  • 07:30 - Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses
  • 08:13 - Collaboration in Practice
  • 10:00 - Creating Confidence Through Leadership
  • 11:38 - Final Reflections & Thanks

🌱 About Building Leadership Community Podcast

This podcast exists to enrich People, Culture, Wellness, and Joy. We moderate deep, honest, and culturally high-impact conversations, offering a safe space for professional leaders and allies seeking career advancement, executive presence, and sustainable, human-centered leadership. You don’t have to mask your true identity to grow—you just need the right conversations, the right perspective, and a supportive community.

Let's Stay Connected!

Support Our Community:

If this conversation brought a sense of encouragement or a new perspective to your leadership journey, please take a moment to follow the podcast, leave a warm review, and share this episode with a colleague who might need a little inspiration today.

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Visit: https://CoachDoraMendez.com/podcast

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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Building Leadership Community Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Dora Mendez. I want to bring on this episode, it has been a little different, and we've aligned it with a FIFA World Cup theme. So we thought we reached out to the rest of the family to get their reflections on leadership. And if you are watching us on video right now, take a quick second to like this video, hit the subscribe button, and ring that ring notification bell so you never miss our weekly leadership strategy breakdown. And if you're listening on your favorite audio podcast platform, whether that's Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else, go ahead and hit the follow button right now. But most importantly, if this story brought a smile to your face, share this episode with someone who might need a little bit of inspiration today. Roll credits. Hello and welcome to Building Leadership Community and I'm your host, Dora Mendez. I am the founder and CEO of Coach Door LLC. I guess we'll be entrepreneurs, my Facebook members, and community leaders at my social and it can be lonely at all, but it doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me back. And I'm so proud of Mateo and Naomi being like, this is what we're gonna do. Look, they're ready, smart and getting their juices flowing, which is really exciting. Probably inspiration from their mom and their dad, which is amazing. And I think this is really cool. I mean, the World Cup is here. I used to follow it way more in the past than I do now. But one thing that I loved about it was just showing up at places and how many people got together to like represent or look forward to different countries playing and rooting for whatever team that they're rooting for. But I think what's really fun and interesting about the World Cup is that these teams, even though they represent specific countries, they come from all over the place. You know, they're recruited. They're, you know, maybe they are from there. But um, and you sort of have to do a wide search for these athletes because um, yeah, someone could have gone to like college, university, or whatever to play the sport, but you never know. There's maybe that kid who never got those same opportunities who could play even better than that person who was training all their life just because their instincts were better and stuff like that. So looking for all those kinds of people everywhere around the world globally, to bring them together to get the best team that you possibly can to represent whatever team that they're going for. And I think that's um kind of one of the beauties of diversity is that like you never know who's gonna bring that touch to a team to really make it spark, um, to make them come together and like suddenly like heighten themselves because all these players are coming together with different experience, lived experience, different training, and um playing this phenomenal game that's a really hard game to play, frankly. And then being able, this is the World Cup, right? It's like global. So it's also like everyone in the world coming in together to watch these teams and see who kicks whose butt.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and so I love to because like your role is so uh for context for listeners and our viewers who didn't get a chance to see your episode, they should definitely should check it out. Um your job is so physical as a fight and intimacy director for the theater. And so I would love to get some like insight about the physicality, I mean the mental and the physical preparation it takes to lead in a in a you know in a collaborative atmosphere. You you it's something that you have, that you do, um, and you're very disciplined at it, like taking care of your your mind, body, and spirit. Um, do you have any insights and reflections to share with our audience and viewers uh about what it takes to really um lead a collaborative effort that is very physical, that that can be um draining to your energy?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I think there's several ways to go about it. And of course, self-care is number one, right? Like if I can't be show up as a full self, how can I even show up for other people, right? So of course, self-care is a hundred percent important to me. So yes, that does include working out, eating right, sleeping as much as I can. All the like I think typical human things we all need, uh going to therapy, um, just uh staying on my oh, continuing to learn, continuing education. I always try to, um, whether it's a class or a seminar or a workshop or a book, like always also try to keep up to date with my industry and what's going on. Um and that's like sort of the self-re reflection part, what I need to do to just try to be um my best self as as much as I can when I show up to work. And then I think the collaboration part or when I walk into a room, it's really remembering that I do have diverse backgrounds that I'm working with physically. So there's people who I've worked with who are into the room who are like martial artists, and there are people who have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever. And it's really my job to um see where the strengths and weaknesses are and like focus on those strengths to make them look as good as they can for the role that they're doing, right? It's really my job to be like, you know what, let's shift and move it this way so this person could look really good at what they're doing, and that whatever character they're playing, they are that character. Um, so that's where it gets a little bit creative, and that's also where it gets collaborative because I have to ask those people, like, okay, does it feel better going to the right or to the left? Right. You know, like what is it that feels good in your body? What feels natural? What are you doing naturally in your body so that this could look natural? Because the way my body moves is not the same way anybody else's body moves on the planet. It's just my individual thing. So I have to trust the instinct of the actors, I have to trust the instinct of the director, and then I also have to trust my instincts of like what looks good and what makes these people look um as close and as strong and competent as their character is supposed to. Um, and it's really it all depends. It's hit or miss, you know, because I literally work with so many people in all the different projects, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

I I've run across Well, I love to hear, you know, I you know, Rocio, I love to hear what you're working on. And I know this episode is about the World Cup and the reflections and the lessons we learned from it, but I always would love to hear like, is there a new show? You know, because I I believe that we're gonna have a bigger audience, listeners and viewers, because we have a World Cup episode. I really do believe that. And I think that is there anything you'd like for new people to our podcast to know about um about you and what's coming up for you in um 2026?

SPEAKER_00

Um, well, the biggest thing right now is at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there is a new um musical. It's a dance thriller musical, and it is the um musical adaptation of the film Black Swan. And it is really, really fantastic. It is a fabulous, fantastic show, and it really is like a thriller, which I've never seen on stage personally. Um, and it's it was a very, very cool experience, and that was another example of a collaborative experience where you know I really wanted to, because there's a lot of intimacy in it, and I wanted to make sure that the actors felt super confident and were super specific in what they were doing, um, so there were no accidents, you know what I mean? Um, so that is a great show that's playing now. Um, and it's there, I believe, until July 15th. It just got extended twice. So that's how popular the show is. So run and get your ticket. And then, of course, as you know, um, but and some of your listeners and hopefully future listeners will now know that I am the resident intimacy director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. So I'm here all year round. Um, and we're about to open three shows next weekend, which is Taming of the Shrew, um Henry 4 Part One, which has a bunch of fights, it's so fun, and Emma. So those are the shows going on here now at OSF. There's there's more shows here. We typically do nine to 11 shows per season, and all of those run until October. Um, yeah, so that's what's current in my life now.

SPEAKER_01

So you're you're no stranger to welcoming um guests and tourists because people travel from all over to visit um your Shakespeare festival, which we did a couple of years ago with the children, and we loved it. It was beautiful. And uh I want to thank you again for joining us on this very special episode um of the Building Leadership Community Podcast, uh, sharing your reflections on the lessons we can learn about diversity and collaboration and balancing people's strength and uh the self-care and discipline that it takes when you're when you're doing a job that's very physical. Um uh like those athletes, like those elite athletes. Right. Uh so thank you so much, Rocio. Love you. I love you too, sister. Have a good one. You've been listening to Building Leadership Community. Watch on YouTube at CoachDora and listen wherever you get your podcast. Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube at Coach Dora and visit me on the web at coachdoramendez.com. Hosted by me at DoraMendez. Produced by Dora Mendez and Dylan Matters. Editing Samuel Dylan Matters.