How Coaching Kids' Hockey Helps Larry Robbins Oversee Glenview

(Bloomberg) -- Larry Robbins gives out “gag awards” to the kids he coaches in hockey, but not to employees at Glenview Capital Management.

“The kids are thicker-skinned than the hedge fund people,” said Robbins, Glenview’s founder and chief executive officer.

Instead, Robbins found another way to pass on coaches’ wisdom to the adults in his life: with milkshakes and foosball at a benefit for the Positive Coaching Alliance-New York City. Robbins, National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman and seven student-athletes were honored at the Feb. 1 event held in a middle-school gym in Manhattan.

The organization trains coaches, teachers and players to develop life skills and values through team sports. Jonathan Barry of Goldman Sachs and Glen Matsumoto of Actis are board members. Benefit guests included Patrick Raley of Goldman Sachs, and Bob Burns, Jesse Perrin and Curtis Tange of Glenview.

One PCA motto is “Better athletes, better people.” Another is, “Flushing mistakes.” The idea is that errors dwelled upon become “a time machine keeping you in the past,” said Jim Thompson, PCA’s founder. He encourages kids to create “mistake ritual that gets you to come back to the moment.”

Robbins was 10 when he experienced one of PCA’s key tenets: keeping the emotional tank filled. It happened when his hockey coach, handing out gag awards at the end of the year, gave Robbins a picture of a turtle along with an aphorism: “He may not be fast, but he gets the job done.”

His takeaway: Being the highest scorer or the fastest wasn’t all that mattered. Also, his coach had found a way to reframe a weakness. “That’s such a positive way to say you’re slow,” Robbins said.

Playing hockey as a kid taught Robbins “at least half” of what he’s needed to know to run Glenview, he said. Like hockey, hedge funds are “a team sport, not an individual passion,” he said.

When discussing investments, “we bring in about seven or eight people from our team,” Robbins said. “It’s not just me and another person in a corner isolated. We include partners and everyone who’s worked on it and has a perspective. We’re not a democracy. I have a little more votes than others, like a head coach executes, but we need all players on the field.”

Hockey has also shaped how he hires. Robbins said he looks for job candidates who have experience in group activities.

“It doesn’t have to be athletic, but the person who does solitary things, whether it’s running triathlons or being a voracious reader, tends not to have those bonding and team work experiences,” Robbins said. “We find that when they face adversity, or conflicts, or difficulty, that they may not have the experience to find the grit to overcome and persevere.”

Mind you, Robbins is still out to win.

“Hedge funds are a competitive sport, hockey is a competitive sport,” he said. “But along those lines, people don’t have good cultures because they win. They win because they have good cultures. That’s the message of PCA and the way I’ve experienced coaching and managing.”

Robbins doesn’t insist his employees play hockey. Instead, he works to build team spirit through philanthropic outings. Among them: a casino night for the KIPP Foundation, painting a school on a Saturday, working on a Robin Hood or Ira Sohn ideas conference, or the PCA event, which possibly had his favorite dress code: jeans and jerseys.

Robbins wore his Avalanche jersey, representing the teams his four eldest sons have played on. His youngest has skates, but isn’t allowed to wear them on the ice rink at home until he turns two.

Robbins, 48, owns a junior hockey organization, the Chicago Steel, and said owning an NHL team is something he dreams about for retirement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dan Reichl, Josh Friedman

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