By John Portch

Emily Scarratt’s joy was uncontained when England defeated Canada 33-13 to win the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in front of a full house at Twickenham.

The centre had just competed in her fifth tournament (a joint record in the women’s game), claimed her second winner’s medal, and helped to complete an 11-year quest to bring the World Cup trophy back to England. It was almost the perfect way to bow out after 17 years as an international, 115 caps and a world record 754 points.

Yet she had only played 19 minutes of England’s campaign – all as a second half substitute in the Red Roses’ opening pool match; a 69-7 defeat of the United States in Sunderland.

“I’ve definitely been part of environments before where that kind of non-playing player can become quite negative and toxic,” she told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“For a large part of my career, I was starting and therefore it’s very easy to say the right things and present in that way when you’re not under the stress of not being selected or not playing as much as you would like.”

Scarratt was joined onstage by England Head Coach John Mitchell, who in early February extended his contract until the 2029 World Cup and added Scarratt to his coaching staff.

The session moderator, Rachel Vickery, asked him what it meant to see Scarratt and her other non-playing teammates (known within the Red Roses setup as “pillar” players) celebrating with such vigour.

“I reflected that we actually hit the sweet spot with the culture,” said Mitchell. “Sometimes you don’t get that sweet spot and we might not get it again.”

Rachel Vickery (left) talks to John Mitchell (middle) and Emily Scarratt (right) onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

Here we reflect on what Mitchell and the Red Roses got right for 2025.

He spoke up when something wasn’t quite right

When Mitchell signed up to become England Head Coach in 2023, his remit was to win the World Cup. He was a coach with a proven track record in the men’s game who had now been handed the resources and the players to deliver the Women’s World Cup on home soil.

But in 2018 and 2022 England had lost World Cup finals they could, or perhaps should, have won.

“The leading question was how do we get done what we haven’t through the years?” said Mitchell.

It involved integrating young talent (eight players made their World Cup debuts against the US) and tactical tweaks (they had been too reliant on their maul). Both required an environment that enabled the best team on paper to prove they were the best team on grass.

To deliver on that front, Mitchell and the team’s leaders landed on three guiding values: ‘courage’, ‘take the handbrake off’ and ‘be all in’.

These values inspired England’s veterans and new internationals alike. “If the top person genuinely believes that culture is important it makes a difference,” said Scarratt. “Potentially in previous campaigns that hasn’t been the case and culture could get a little bit sidetracked or lost along the way.”

Mitchell even spoke up when he spied a shortcoming in the players’ well-meaning desire to ‘do it for the girls’.

“My thinking was that emphasis might be slightly calibrated towards ‘me’ – not intentionally – but how do I get the girls to calibrate towards ‘we’?” he said. “Because if I inspire you and I’m inspired by you, isn’t that more important, more inspiring to the person next to you? We get the job done and then our voice around our individual ‘why’ will be far greater.”

The cultural tweaking never stopped

“It’s very easy to just pick values, put them somewhere and hope that people live by them,” said Scarratt. “Our values were genuinely threaded through a lot of what we did, whether it was medical presenting or S&C presenting” and, when you witness that, “it’s very easy to buy-in”.

Mitchell held difficult conversations when necessary, but all players and staff, Scarratt said, were expected to speak up when necessary “to nip things in the bud before they became potentially bigger.”

At the suggestion of leadership consultant Patrick Marr, Mitchell would ask his player leadership group and support staff on the eve of each international camp to tell him “who’s going to pull the cart forward? Who’s going to sit on the cart? Who’s going to hold up the cart?”

After an hour he would “come back and I’d see two or three players, plus a couple of staff, where our priority needs to go,” he said, adding “we would then decide on who I would speak to and who they would speak to.” For every player or member of staff, there would be someone who could bridge that gap and “communicate around standards of behaviour”.

Mitchell even danced on TikTok when duty called

If you’re an England supporter, you may have seen the TikTok video of Mitchell dancing with his players.

“I needed to show vulnerability,” he said of such moments, which was not something he considered as a younger coach. “I had to do things that I probably don’t normally do and join in with the girls on certain things.”

Psychological safety may start with players or their head coach dancing in the dressing room, but it ultimately manifests on the pitch during tricky spells or in performance meetings when a staff member has the courage to raise a performance issue.

Mitchell knew he had to lead from the front. “Sometimes you’ve got to be the leader of those actions before somebody else does them.”

That said, his belief in the power of the head coach has been softened (and his self-awareness amplified) by three decades in the sport. “You learn through emotional intelligence that you don’t have to be absolute or right when making decisions. Just use your people. Listen to your people.”

John Mitchell and Emily Scarratt shake hands as their session draws to a close at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

The team talked about the pressure they felt

For the first time, England openly spoke about winning the World Cup. It served as a pressure valve and, again, gave voice to their values.

“It might sound a bit silly but we hadn’t done that before,” said Scarratt, implicitly acknowledging how awkward the group felt at first about such an “un-English” sentiment.

As the English media and public latched onto the team ahead of the US match, the pressure grew. The players trained poorly on one occasion but, instead of dismissing it, they discussed it openly.

“I think we did a really good job of dampening it down by not not speaking about it,” Scarratt added. “By actually putting it out there and allowing people to know that other people felt like that.”

And Mitchell’s words after England eased through the gears on the opening night set the tone. He said: “There’s bigger games coming where teams will put even more pressure on us, so let’s take confidence from what we’re building and stacking as we’re going along. Our game doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be effective, and that will win us the tournament.”

He was right and, looking to 2029, their goal is to win back-to-back World Cups, establish a legacy as one of women’s sports greatest teams, and to further grow the women’s game.

These lofty goals provoke three questions that Mitchell and England must answer: “What will earn the right? What will we keep and take forward with us? And then, thirdly, is what we what will we need to start again?”

What to read next

Meaning Does Not Guarantee Medals, But it Strengthens the Behaviours that Make Medals Possible

By Richard Young PhD

High performance always comes with plans, systems and structure.

These hold the work together and give people a sense of direction, yet across numerous Olympic cycles and my work with teams in many countries, something deeper has shown up again and again. Repeat performers live by a small set of values that give their journey meaning, and that meaning becomes the story they return to when things get hard. Plans can organise a campaign, but meaning organises the person, and when the person is organised, behaviour aligns with purpose, decisions become cleaner, and responses under pressure strengthen.

Values are not abstract. They sit under the story people tell themselves about why the work matters. When performers are clear on their values, the story they live by gains weight and coherence. Meaning forms around those values, and behaviour follows the meaning. High performance at its core is high quality communication, and that communication begins with the internal dialogue that shapes how people approach their craft, their relationships and their response to the environment around them.

I learned this early in my work with an athlete who became a repeat performer. She spoke often about why she was doing the work, not in long speeches or motivational lines, but in a simple story grounded in a few clear values she believed in. Those values shaped how she behaved each day. She arrived ready because preparation mattered to her. She trained with intent because craft mattered to her. She kept close to people who steadied her because connection mattered to her. When she spoke with her coach she spoke with ownership because responsibility mattered to her. When we reviewed performance she measured herself against her values and her story rather than emotion or expectation. Her story filtered the noise and held her attention on what she could influence, and it stayed steady right through from her hardest performances to her best performances.

This pattern has repeated across many sports, campaigns and environments. The data I collect from repeat performers compared to the rest shows a consistent thread: they carry a story that fits their values and the meaning they bring to their journey, and they speak from that story in ways that guide their behaviour. Their story gives shape to their days and coherence to their choices. It grounds their relationships and helps them navigate difficulty. They are not waiting for meaning to arrive. They are building it and living inside it.

Those who are new or underperforming also care deeply and work hard, yet often do so without a clear set of values or a meaningful story that holds the work together. When values are unclear, meaning becomes vague, and when meaning is vague, behaviour loses structure. People get pulled by changing circumstances, shifting expectations and the noise around them. They work with effort but without consistent, clear direction, which slows their progress and creates friction in the system. This is not a comment on motivation or desire. It is a matter of clarity. Values anchor meaning. Meaning anchors story. Story anchors behaviour.

The power of distributed leadership

We know that the story in high performance environments is more than narrative. It is how people make sense of the path they are on and the role they play in it, and this is where distributed leadership becomes essential. In Amplify I wrote about leadership from the front, which is not the authority of the leader but the agency of the performer. When people are clear on their values and the meaning they bring, they contribute to the collective story of the team rather than waiting for the team to give them one. This alignment accelerates the group because each person brings their own clarity into the shared environment. When people are unclear, they wait for meaning to come from the outside, and that waiting creates misalignment and slows the group when pressure rises.

Distributed leadership grows when individuals write the story they want to live, then bring that story into the environment to help shape the story of the team. It is a form of contribution. It lifts the standard of communication. It clarifies the system. It allows people to act with confidence inside their role and in service of the whole. A team of people who know their own story and the story of the team has more alignment and more collective intelligence than a team with one story and many passive recipients. The power of meaning becomes a competitive advantage when everyone is an author rather than an audience.

One experience stands out to me from a world championships preparation phase. The team had come through a long training block. Performances were mixed, and the meetings were becoming heavier as the event approached. You could sense the pressure beginning to close in. To reset the group, we asked each athlete to tell the story of their season so far, not as a performance review but as an expression of the values they were trying to live and the meaning they brought to their work. One of the younger athletes spoke first. He said his season was about learning how to prepare in the right way and becoming someone who took responsibility for his craft. His values were clear. Growth. Responsibility. Trust. His story immediately shifted the tone in the room. Others followed with similar clarity. They spoke about identity, family, commitment, team and progress. Meaning returned to the group, and with meaning came direction. The environment lifted. And the team leaders connected the individual stories and values to the ambitious story of the team was creating together; people saw themselves first, then saw a clear and inspiring connection to the team story.  That shift carried through to their highest calibre performance due to their collective ability to respond and adapt under pressure.  They had triggered a conviction and belief in a story they had not experienced before.

Belonging: built from a shared sense of meaning

Meaning is one of the strongest levers of behaviour. When people know the values they stand on, their story gains structure. When their story has structure, their behaviour aligns in ways that support agency, transformation and performance. When teams share a sense of meaning built from individual values and stories, belonging grows. Belonging here is not sentiment. It is foundational to team performance.  It keeps the group connected when tension increases and when pressure and uncertainty lift; and helps people stay inside their ‘circle of importance’ rather than drift into the noise.

I often ask leaders and high performers a simple question: What is the story you want to be able to tell about yourself and this team or organisation at the end of this campaign, cycle or career? Their answer reveals their values, priorities and the meaning they bring to the work. It opens the door for the team to see the personal stories that sit underneath performance and the personal meanings that drive behaviour. Most importantly, it gives leaders the opportunity to connect these stories, deepen the shared meaning and align the group around something that feels true to everyone. This is where distributed leadership grows. When people speak from their own story, they lead from the front. They help shape the environment rather than wait for the environment to shape them.

The advantage of meaning follows a clear line. Values shape meaning. Meaning shapes story. Story shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes performance. When each person knows what they value, understands the meaning behind their work and brings that meaning into the collective story of the team, the group strengthens. Performance lifts. Cohesion deepens. The system grows more resilient because leadership is no longer held by a few. It is carried by many. When people wait for meaning to come from outside, the system slows. Alignment weakens because the stories underneath the work are not visible or connected. Teams are transformed when personal meaning becomes shared meaning.

Meaning does not guarantee medals, yet it strengthens the behaviours that make medals possible. It brings clarity to decisions, alignment to relationships and consistency to daily work. It supports cleaner communication and steadier responses when pressure rises. When meaning is present, people move with intent, and when people move with intent, performance grows.

Medals matter, but meaning matters most.

Richard Young is an internationally renowned performance advisor. He has been involved with 11 Olympics as an athlete, coach, researcher, technologist, and leader working across more than 50 sports and seven countries focused on sustained high performance. He has won international gold medals and coached world champions. He founded international performance programmes including, the Technology & Innovation programmes for Great Britain and New Zealand, and a Performance Knowledge & Learning programme for the New Zealand Olympic, Winter Olympic and Paralympic teams. Across seven Olympic cycles he has researched the differences between medallists and non-medallists, their coaches, support staff, leaders and the system they are in to unlock the keys that separate them from the rest.

More from Richard Young

The Three Literacies of Repeat Medal-Winning Systems

By John Portch

In January, Indiana became college football’s first first-time national champion in 29 years.

It was a lesson to all sleeping giants. Here was a team with the most losses in the sport’s history and, over the course of their 16-0 season, had compiled more wins than between 2020 and 2023 in total.

Indiana Head Coach Curt Cignetti spoke of a “paradigm shift” in the aftermath of the Hoosiers’ 27-21 defeat of Miami.

“People can cling to an old way of thinking, categorising teams as this or that or conferences as this or that or they can adjust to the new world, the shift in the power dynamic in college football today,” he said.

Cignetti was brought in ahead of the 2024 season and transformed the mindset of a team that had been treading water for decades.

“There’s got to be a lot of like-minded individuals who come together for a common purpose, and sometimes that belief has to be a little bit irrational,” said Indiana centre Pat Coogan.

“Especially in a place that hasn’t had success like Indiana. I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen the way this place has been characterised, and when Coach Cig got here, he believed, and he got people to believe. Sometimes people laughed at him and thought he was crazy, but that’s irrational belief. You’ve got to get people to buy-in and believe in the mission.”

With a host of senior players set to graduate, success may not be replicable in the short term, but Cignetti is ready for whatever comes next.

“Perfection is impossible to attain on a consistent basis,” he said. “But we’ll continue to take it one day at a time, one meeting at a time, one practice at a time, and just keep improving and committing to the process and showing up prepared, trying to put it on the field, and see where it takes us.”

It was a powerful message to kick off the year in sports performance and one that underlined the importance of the fundamentals while refusing to stand still.

Which brings us nicely to the happenings at the Leaders Performance Institute these past four weeks.

Insight of the month

‘What underpins successful teams across formats is not uniformity, but clarity of individual responsibility within a collective framework. Team performance does not replace individual accountability; it depends on it.’

In a guest column, James Thomas, the Performance Director at Warwickshire CCC, spoke about facilities being a secondary concern until the leaders had created the right environment to enable athletes, whether they’re the Olympic champions with whom he has worked or Premier League and Champions League-winning footballers, being paramount.

Read more about why high performance is not something leaders should demand. It is something they should enable.

Britain’s Anthony Joshua on his way to winning gold at the 2012 London Olympics. (Scott Heavey/Getty Images)

Surprising insight of the month

Did you know that Team GB built its own hub within the London Olympic Village in 2012. This was very much a “host nation benefit” as Paul Ford MBE called it in another popular guest column last month.

The Head of Sport at the British Olympic Association wrote:

When we finished in London we looked and thought: ‘it’s not home advantage necessarily, we just need to be more creative’.

It provoked a question: how do we create an optimal physical way of uniting the team within the Games environment? Part of it was using our Olympic Village residential space smarter. But you can’t expect this of the local organising committee to do on our behalf, since their brief is so vast. Instead, we decided to take it out of their hands. And for each of the subsequent Summer Olympics we have found an out-of-village space exclusively for our use.

Read more about their approach here.

Team GB flag bearers Helen Glover and Tom Daley pose for a selfie outside the residence of the British Ambassador to France ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Best advice

Leaders Performance Institute members across the globe strive to encourage learning throughout their teams and while it will always be an important feature of any successful team, you should not waste your time on the wrong people.

As performance specialist Iain Brunnschweiler explained at a Leaders Virtual Roundtable:

“There’s definitely some people who, you can try as hard as you like to get them to learn and I think we have to be cognisant of our own energy as someone who’s seeking to help. It’s a bit like athletes, isn’t it? If you’re up for it, I’ll give you 150% of my energy. If you’re not, after a period of time, I’ll just go, ‘look, you crack on’. So I think we have to be accepting of that.”

Over the course of an hour, Brunnschweiler and a band of LPI members noted ten strategies for more effective learning.

One you might have missed

Jamie Taylor of Dublin City University and the CoEx|Lab made the case for evidence-informed as opposed to evidence-based practice.

He enlisted the help of students from DCU’s online doctorate and MSc programmes, which are aimed specifically at coaches and practitioners in high performance sport.

One such student is Eilish Ward, the Head of Player Development at the Ladies Gaelic Football Association.

As she told Taylor, you can’t simply drop research on top of a sports programme. It must be used critically, in conjunction with a coach’s own research, and applied in an informed manner.

“There’s not necessarily one solution,” she said. “There’s no one way to learn anything or to gain experience or expertise.”

The key for Ward in her work is to ensure she and her colleagues are “making as informed decisions as possible when we’re designing learning activities” because “not everything from research may be transferable into a practical environment and, equally, every practical environment is going to be hugely different.”

Read more about DCU’s programmes here.

Quote of the month

“We have to become diplomats, high‑level development people who can manage such diverse groups. Somewhere along the line, we need to start creating those development opportunities for everybody who’s on this call.”

These are the attention-grabbing words of a performance director working in India who spelled out the challenges in talent identification and development.

He and a host of LPI members listed five of the most common trends (and five opportunities) in that space.

Good to know

Organisational values should be your carrot, not your stick.

That’s according to Emma Keith, a Royal Air Force Group Captain, is the Commandant of the Tedder Academy of Leadership at the RAF. In 2015 she became the first woman to run RAF Officer Training.

In her appearance at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, she spoke about how the RAF’s values, all contained within the prosaically titled Air Publication One document, had been used to browbeat good people.

“Actually 99% of my organisation are amazing, they really are, and I wanted a document that was aspirational for them, that they could believe in, that it was the organisation they wanted to be a part of. And we know from all the different behavioural models of change that it only happens when people want to change, not because it’s been forced on them.”

Again, the focus was learning strategies in an inspiring presentation.

The RAF’s Emma Keith onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. (Leaders)

What’s coming up for members

Virtual Learning

By James Thomas

High performance is often discussed in the language of infrastructure, usually referencing world-class facilities, cutting-edge technology, expanding support teams and marginal gains.

These things do matter. But after more than two decades working across Olympic and professional sport, I’ve come to believe that high performance is fundamentally an environmental challenge, not exclusively a technical one.

We don’t build winning teams or successful athletes by simply stacking programmes on top of talent. We build them by creating environments that consistently allow people to do their best work, make good decisions under pressure, and grow over time. When environments are working, performance becomes more repeatable, more resilient and ultimately more sustainable.

Whether it’s the four-year Olympic focus or the daily spotlight on professional sports. We are operating under constant scrutiny. The margins between competitors are small, the pressure is relentless, and the temptation to chase quick fixes is ever present. In that context, leaders are often drawn towards visible interventions, new structures, new roles, new technology (I know I have been), but the organisations that thrive over time are not those with the most impressive facilities or the biggest performance teams. They are those that are deliberate, consistent and disciplined about the environment they are continually trying to create, especially when results fluctuate.

Lessons from the boxing ring

One of the most formative experiences of my career came during my time as a performance director in Olympic boxing, in the build-up to and during the London 2012 Games.

Many of our world class boxers developed and trained in local boxing gyms, cramped spaces, ageing equipment, minimal to no recovery provision and little separation between training, admin and daily life. These were not purpose-built high-performance centres. They were community gyms, often operating with limited budgets and shared resources.

Yet within those walls, Olympic and world champions were forged.

What struck me most was not what those environments lacked, but what they possessed in abundance. There was deep trust between coaches and athletes. There was absolute clarity around standards and an expectation to commit. And there was a shared belief in the work being done, even when conditions were far from ideal.

That experience challenged a common assumption in high-performance sport; that performance requires elite surroundings. It reinforced a lesson I’ve returned to repeatedly across different sports and systems: facilities and equipment are only part of the environment. People, behaviours and belief are the real performance differentiators.

Boxing also exposes a truth that can sometimes become diluted in team sports: the individual performer has ultimate accountability for their career and performance.

On competition day, a boxer steps into the ring alone. There are no substitutions, no tactical timeouts and no teammates to absorb pressure. Preparation, decision-making and performance are owned entirely by the athlete. That reality creates a powerful mindset.

In the most effective boxing environments I worked in, athletes did not outsource responsibility to coaches, support staff or systems. They understood that support existed to enable performance, not to carry it. Behind each boxer sat a committed group of coaches, physios and performance practitioners, but the roles were clear. The system provided expertise, challenge, support and yes, at the highest level, impressive facilities. But responsibility for improvement always remained with the athlete.

This ownership created cultures where preparation was a non-negotiable, excuses given no airtime and standards were self-imposed rather than enforced. Accountability was not contractual; it was woven into its culture.

While boxing is an individual sport, this principle has resonated with me and translates directly into team environments, particularly in modern professional sport, where complexity is the norm.

From the boxing ring to the crease

In my current role as Performance Director in professional cricket, players operate across multiple formats within a condensed competitive window. From April to October, athletes move between the tactical patience of red-ball cricket, the intensity and speed of T20, and the unique demands of short-form franchise competition, both domestically and internationally.

Cricket is a team sport, but performance within it is highly individualised. Players are often selected for specific skillsets. Some are chosen for endurance and control, others for explosive impact. Some anchor innings, others finish them. Some lead with the ball, whilst others support in the field.

What underpins successful teams across formats is not uniformity, but clarity of individual responsibility within a collective framework. Team performance does not replace individual accountability; it depends on it.

The most effective environments make it clear why each player is selected, what excellence looks like in their role, and how their performance enables others. When players understand their contribution to the collective, alignment improves, decision-making accelerates, and pressure becomes more manageable. Easy to say, but this is hard to get right consistently, especially we often have large squads of players, all looking for 1^st team selection. Individual Player Development Plans (IDPs) have been a useful tool to frame season and multi-year goals and how selection decisions can be woven into the discussions, that would otherwise be difficult to frame in a progressive manner.

Creating the space where performance can thrive

One of the most common traps in high-performance team sport is mistaking intensity for effectiveness. I have seen this a lot across all the sporting environments I have worked in. Long hours, relentless training loads and constant meetings can create an illusion of commitment. But without alignment, they often produce fatigue rather than progress. Effort becomes noise rather than momentum and time away from the environment, whether that’s for rest or self-development can be viewed as falling short. I’m calling this out!

Strong environments focus relentlessly on alignment. They establish a shared performance language. Coaching, data and performance teams work from the same principles. And leaders are clear about what the organisation is optimising for at any given moment.

When alignment is strong, intensity becomes purposeful. When it isn’t, that intensity becomes exhausting and I’d suggest the high levels of burnout we are commonly seeing in our system is in part down to this.

The environments that consistently outperform are those where honest conversations are encouraged, mistakes are reviewed and owned, with feedback flowing in all directions. Psychological safety is often talked about and often debated, but for me, this does not mean lowering standards or avoiding difficult conversations. In fact, it enables those conversations to happen earlier and more productively.

‘No spark without friction’ is a phrase I am always drawn to and I think it’s highly relevant in this context.

When I think of environments I have been part of, that have enabled this openness and safety, it has often come from understanding the players and staff in a more meaningful way. Learning about people, their goals, their strengths and areas for development can often help with those difficult conversations and decisions.

Why environment is a leadership choice, not a cultural outcome

Leaders set the tone here. How they respond to bad news, selection tension or performance dips sends a powerful signal about what the environment truly values.

We are also living through an unprecedented expansion of data, analytics and technology in sport. Used well, these tools enhance decision-making. Used poorly, they overwhelm and it starts and ends with the people using those tools.

High-performance environments succeed when data clarifies rather than complicates decisions, supports coaching judgement rather than replacing it, and is translated into simple, actionable insight. The most effective systems invest as much in people and interpretation as they do in platforms and tools.

If high performance is an environment rather than a programme, leadership attention must shift accordingly. The question is no longer “What initiatives should we launch?” but “What conditions must we consistently create?”

Final reflections: build what outlasts you

From my experience across Olympic and professional sport, leaders who build sustainable high-performance environments focus on four priorities.

First, they set a clear long-term performance direction. Ambition without direction creates noise. Leaders must articulate what the organisation is trying to become, what type of performers and people it wants to develop, and how success will be defined beyond short-term results.

Second, they are explicit about the environment they are creating. Every organisation has an environment, whether intentional or accidental. High-performing leaders are deliberate about behaviours, standards and expectations. Culture does not need to be complicated, but it must be visible and consistently reinforced.

Third, they obsess over daily performance habits. Performance is built in small, repeatable behaviours, quality of preparation, clarity of communication, ownership of recovery and willingness to review and adapt. What leaders notice and reinforce signals what truly matters.

Finally, they recruit people who take responsibility and can grow. People are the environment. The strongest systems are built by individuals who take ownership of their impact, are open to developing their technical and leadership skills, and understand how their role contributes to a collective effort.

Across Olympic gyms and professional stadiums, one principle has remained constant for me: high performance improves when clarity of direction, accountability of action and care for people are aligned.

Facilities matter. Data matters. Structure matters. But environments win or lose on the quality of people, the standards they live by and the habits they repeat every day.

High performance is not something leaders should demand. It is something they should enable.

James Thomas is the Performance Director at Warwickshire County Cricket Club and one of sport’s leading high performance experts. If you wish to speak to James, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

By John Portch

“In this era where there’s so much data, there’s so many insights, there’s a risk we forget that human learning is a major part of how we progress.”

With those words host Iain Brunnschweiler, who runs the Focus Performance Consultancy, set the scene for a virtual roundtable discussion during which Leaders Performance Institute members shared the strategies that have facilitated better individual and organisational learning within their teams.

“There’s definitely something about learning being contagious,” he added in expectation. “If credible, valuable members of staff are going after things deliberately like you are, I’d hope that there’s some sort of contagion within your organisation.”

To start proceedings, Brunnschweiler outlined a four-part model of organisational learning. “This is an unpublished model,” he said of it. “This is the world according to me.”

Effective priming

“How can we deliberately set people up for learning? That’s something that I’ve increasingly considered,” said Brunnschweiler, who highlighted one-to-one conversations with staff members as a way to identify their aspirations and their motivations.

Appropriate stimulus

“How do we provide a stimulus to create thought in aspirational people?” In a previous role, Brunnschweiler implemented weekly 30-minute meetings with staff members. He also enlisted external speakers and asked individuals to present on a teaching project.

Sense-making (culture)

“If within your organisational culture there are people and spaces that allow you to have conversations, check and challenge your thinking, that is a really good way of helping the learning to land,” said Brunnschweiler, while emphasising the cultural dynamic.

Committing to action

“Often,” Brunnschweiler said, “the greatest risk here is that we have a brilliant conversation, and then we do nothing about it’. How do we commit to something that’s going to make some sort of change, whether it’s small or large?”

The group then shared ten strategies to encourage more effective individual and organisational learning:

1. Give staff members the freedom to explore learning

“If we want to happy or we want to have happy staff, we need to give them some freedom,” said a sports scientist working in the major US leagues. “And if we want them to be free, then we have to encourage them to be courageous and pursue what they want to have and what they want to do.”

Brunnschweiler said:

“A learning culture starts with recruitment… can we keep shifting that culture by recruiting naturally curious and hungry people and maintain momentum.”

 2. Hunger for learning must be role-modelled from the top

Often, staff members are eager to learn, as a psychologist working in the US college system observed, “but having leadership model this is so key”. Only then will staff members carve out the time, as he said:

“If your staff members don’t feel like they have the grace and space to allocate time in the day they’re going to say, ‘I have to do this,’ or ‘I have a meeting’ instead.”

3. Understand people’s motivations

If you can understand someone’s motivations or aspirations then you have an anchor for a conversation about their development. Brunnschweiler explained that it is important to focus on those who want to learn, not those who don’t. He said:

“Some people have little appetite for self-development. And I think we have to be cognisant of our own energy… and accepting of that fact.”

4. Create individual development plans for staff members

The aforementioned psychologist made a convincing case for staff IDPs. He said:

“We talk so much about player development plans, but do we truly have staff development plans, like, ‘here’s where you are, here’s where you can go, here are the gaps to be filled’?”

5. Place staff on secondments when possible

“We don’t put barriers in the way of our people going out on secondment,” said a director of cricket in the English game, where the season is not a 12-month schedule. This is, as Brunnschweiler observed, a cost-effective way of bringing IP back into the building. He said:

“How can we be resourceful? Can we create opportunities for people to visit places and return with knowledge without spending money?”

6. Find your critical friends

Sense-making can be difficult, but sometimes it just takes opening your phonebook. A call with a critical friend is what Brunnschweiler calls a “micro sense-making space”. He said:

“I’ve accrued a small network of people who, for example, when I’m driving, I just phone them up and I know they’ll challenge my thinking and that I’ll learn from that conversation.”

7. Learn from failures

“I’m far more interested in the failures,” said a physiotherapist at a globally renowned organisation. “When my team see me talk about failures, when things have gone wrong, that makes people listen a bit more; and I often think we should prep to fail. Are we ready to fail, so that if we fail, we can look back and say, ‘okay, we did everything we wanted to do?’” Brunnschweiler agreed, adding:

“It’s a good sign if you’ve lost and a staff team are reviewing and reflecting on it and they’re genuinely unpicking and they’re able to call each other out or go, ‘do you know what, I messed up today’. That is a real signature of a place that wants to get better.”

8. Importance of managerial vulnerability

Leaders can role-model learning, but they can also demonstrate vulnerability.

“If you can put your hands up and say, ‘I made a mistake’, that sets the culture, it sets the environment,” said a physiotherapist working in Australian sport. In building on that point, the physiotherapist from No 7 said:

“If we can guarantee that removal of blame, it will encourage us to talk about what we can learn.”

9. Job security

It sounds obvious, but managerial vulnerability goes hand in hand with job security.

“In a fast‑paced environment there is more chance of people getting sacked. I think this could be almost correlated to your hunger for learning,” said the physiotherapist based in Australia. “You might just sit there, be quiet, go insular, and just tick our day‑to‑day off – you don’t want to put your neck out there.” He has witnessed the impact of leaders reiterating that people’s jobs are safe.

“When you are told people aren’t just going to get sacked, it creates the environment for learning.”

10. Appoint a dedicated staff member for learning

“I’ve never worked somewhere that’s had a dedicated head of learning,” said an analyst working in Middle Eastern football. “It always falls on line managers and it’s hit and miss.” Brunnschweiler agreed and added:

“How does any organisation ensure that a PDR process is not just some tick-box exercise, but there’s genuine validity in what you’re going after, what you’re going to commit to, and then it’s followed up on?”

What to read next

Five Effective Learning Strategies at the Royal Air Force

By John Portch

Ayao Komatsu is a recurring presence on the popular Netflix series Drive to Survive.

Not that he watches it, as he told the audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

“When I’m doing my job, if I even for a moment think about what I say or how I behave or how I’m perceived by a TV audience, then I can’t do that job,” said the Team Principal of the Haas Formula One team.

Those inhibitions, he explained, “could be the difference between me making the right decision or not” during a race.

Not that Komatsu is unaware of the influence he has as a leader. Google his name and the images that spring up tend to depict him holding a microphone at a press conference or media engagement. In that sense, Komatsu’s onstage appearance in London – just days after November’s Brazilian Grand Prix and a 12-hour flight – is no different.

“When you’re doing a media session that is an opportunity for us to tell our story, who we are,” he added.

Who they are is Formula One’s smallest team, both in terms of staff size, budget and infrastructure, but with a hard-earned reputation for punching above their weight under Komatsu’s stewardship.

In the year prior to his elevation, Haas finished tenth out of ten, which was in keeping with their size but below the expectations of team owner Gene Haas.

Komatsu, who previously served as Haas’ Chief Race Engineer, took the reins from Gunther Steiner ahead of the 2024 World Championship and led the team to seventh in the Constructors’ Standings; in 2025, they finished eighth.

He puts it down to an organisational structure that “promotes and forces communication and helps people to get to know each other”. “If we cannot work together, we’re not supporting each other, if we’re not aligned, we’ve got zero chance against organisations that are a minimum three times, sometimes four times larger”.

Ayao Komatsu onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.

Over the course of 35 minutes, Komatsu set out what it takes to manage the pressure and expectations of building on Haas’ successes while keeping in touch with Formula One’s leading lights.

Komatsu understands that you can’t chase results under pressure

Chronic pressure eventually leads to diminished performance. Komatsu found this out to his cost at the 2025 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

“My mindset approaching the race was completely wrong,” he said. “I was really trying to force the result because I knew we should be scoring lots of points.”

Haas had spent considerable time and resource developing their car prior to Silverstone and knew that their drivers, Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon, could claim high finishes. Instead, the duo collided on the 43^rd lap and finished pointless.

“What happened was really instead of letting the race come to you, doing your best, focusing on yourself, you are just focused on the result.”

It was a rare misstep for a leader who tries to give his staff “breathing space” and “a chance to think more about what they do rather than chasing it, because that’s not sustainable”.

Nevertheless, he pushes people out of their comfort zone each day

Komatsu said: “Our people are not afraid of failure. If you’re afraid of failure, nobody’s going to move.”

The right balance of challenge and support can enhance both focus and motivation.

“You’ve got to give people a clear message that, ‘come on, you’ve got to take yourself out of your comfort zone every day’,” he added. This is Komatsu’s non-negotiable. “If you haven’t taken yourself out of your comfort zone once a day, actually, I don’t think you’ve done your job.”

Komatsu encourages calculated risks that build confidence

Whenever crisis strikes, Komatsu has a well-planned contingency to relieve collective stress.

One such occasion was at the first race of the 2025 season, in Melbourne, where the Haas cars just “did not function”. Ocon qualified in last position, while Bearman could not even set a qualifying time and was required to start the race from the pit lane.

“That was a really testing time,” said Komatsu. But the team had discussed this very possibility for the past four months. They knew the car would either fly, flop or achieve something in between. In the event, the car flopped.

Their response to that race weekend was governed by the new car regulations coming in for the 2026 season. Most teams began to focus on their 2026 cars not long after Melbourne. Haas, with their comparatively modest resources, had no choice but to develop their 2025 car further because, as Komatsu said, “one place in the Constructors’ Championship is worth millions”. “So to make next year’s budget work, with brand new regulations, you’ve got to keep spending money to develop the car.”

He is proud of what happened next. “We just got on with it,” he continued. “I gave the team a clear objective; what is not acceptable, what we need to achieve. I didn’t tell them how. I listened to them and they came up with the solution and took the risk.”

While the true outcome “will only be known in January or February”, the 2025 car did improve and so did the team’s standing.

“For me, more than that sporting result, more than the lap time we gained, the important thing is the confidence this gives the people of the organisation; it’s priceless.”

Ayao Komatsu and Esteban Ocon talk on the grid prior to the F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi at Yas Marina Circuit in December 2025.

He has also cultivated a ‘no blame’ culture

In removing the fear, providing breathing space, and giving people latitude to solve their own problems, Komatsu has cultivated a ‘no blame’ culture.

He took public responsibility for the collision at Silverstone but later spoke to Bearman and Econ about what went wrong. He let them air their grievances and decide the future rules of engagement when their cars are in close proximity mid-race.

“I said, ‘look, until the next race, we’ve got two weeks. Take your time, you put everything on the table and, by next week, can you come to an agreement? If you don’t come to an agreement, I’ll tell you what we need to do’,” said Komatsu while fully aware that neither driver wants to be told what to do by anyone else.

“The important thing here is that full transparency,” he added. “I don’t have any other agenda than wanting both of you to perform; the team to perform. I’m not biased towards one driver or the other, but then again, sometimes I have to make a decision that will disadvantage one of the drivers, but as long as this guy knows that I was making that decision purely based on the interest of the team, as long as you’ve got that respect and transparency, it’s fine.”

When Ocon signed with Haas ahead of the 2025 season, some external observers harboured reservations due to his supposedly difficult character. Komatsu, having worked with Ocon for more than a year, is having none of that.

“I knew that it’s got a lot to do with the respect between the team and the driver, transparency, and then providing that safe space. I was very confident that we could provide that environment.”

What to read next

Even the Best Tennis Players in the World Are Worse When the Stakes Rise – and it’s Not Just Down to Random Variance or Bad Luck

By John Portch

“Some of you will laugh out loud when I ask this,” says Rick Cost, the Director of Performance at Olympique Lyonnais, “but how do we deal with what Mother Nature gives us?”

Cost was speaking at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London where he was invited to share his views on injury prevention and rehab.

He explained that while planning is important for a director of performance, the human element ensures there will always need to be a degree of flexibility when providing sports science services to athletes.

As he said, there is no “magic sauce” when it comes to reconciling coaching intent, the training required, the athlete’s experience of that training, and making tweaks as required.

Nevertheless, Cost and his peers have to be cognisant of the trends currently shaping athlete development, which we have divided into five themes.

1. The athlete as a member of your interdisciplinary team

Athlete-centric development is long been in vogue but athlete-involved approaches are starting to gain traction.

“Our goal is to put the athlete in the centre and then we fit the jigsaw pieces around them,” said Simon Rice, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers, in our Teamworks Special Report.

Those jigsaw pieces – the technical, tactical, physical and cognitive – will depend on the individual, which has inspired a trend towards athlete-involved development, as Jack Nayler explained in the context of his work at Premier League Everton.

“I believe that a player-involved as opposed to player-centred approach is vital in developing this knowledge,” wrote Nayler, the club’s Head of Sports Science. “Although the difference is subtle, it is an important distinction to make. In a player-centred model, the team of practitioners, ologists and experts discuss the player and develop a plan, drawing on all their expertise. A player-involved model brings the player into that process, involving them in the decision making and design of their training.”

For Nayler, the benefit is clear. “The player needs respecting as a key member of the interdisciplinary team. Not only will this help to develop the player’s understanding of their body and the training process, but also their investment and trust in the programme. This is key in a sport such as football where the link between doing physical work and performance isn’t always immediately obvious and the talent pool is global.”

2. The continued rise of external clinicians and coaches

As high profile athletes continue to work with their own personal trainers, the sports scientists of the major leagues are doing everything to bring them into the fold.

“It’s about role clarity,” Rice told the Leaders Performance Institute. “If a player has an external strength coach or external physical therapist, you try to sit down with them and work out what the player’s programme is going to look like. So what access do they have? Are they going to be working out in our facility? Are they going to do it separately?”

It is increasingly common for group chats including the athlete, their personal coach, and the key members of a team’s high performance staff. “We want all the information in one place so at least we know what everyone else is doing, and then it allows me in my role to make sure we’re not doubling up on things,” added Rice. “Can we agree on what the goals are for this player, understanding that we may be trying to get there in different ways with different philosophies, but what are the key points that we can agree on and can we get the data in one place so we can all access it and share it? We’re trying to work together, not fight against what the other people are doing.”

3. Better defined performance and clinical psychology

The highest-performing teams will understand psychology’s role in preparing their athletes.

This is a problem for many. As mental skills specialist Aaron Walsh wrote, “In other areas of performance, we give a clear mandate of what we want to happen in the programme, there are regular checkpoints to ensure we are on track, and we review the work after the season. With the mental stuff [skills] we tend to find a person and just let them loose, we don’t follow best practice.”

Walsh argues that is important to define the scope of the work, establish a clear framework, and provide the right content so that the delivery lands.

Whether it’s performance psychology, mental skills or a clinical issue, all staff members are called upon to play their part, as Dr Lyndell Bruce of Deakin University told a Leaders Virtual Roundtable.

“It’s not a once-off conversation because they flagged on the wellbeing this week and then two weeks later they’re back in their normal range – we continue that conversation and check-in,” she said of her work at Deakin.

“Where pathways are regularly communicated, [it’s about] checking for understanding of do you know when to use it, how to use it, what the process is, destigmatising it through education, through raising awareness so it becomes a normal part of life,” said Emily Downes, the General Manager of Leadership & Wellbeing at High Performance Sport New Zealand. “It’s not something that you go and necessarily do when you’re at your worst. So how can you use all of these services proactively to keep you actually performing?”

4. AI as a useful ‘sparring partner’

However AI is used in athlete development, there are some fundamentals that are likely to hold true, as Maximilian Lankheit explained to the Leaders Performance Institute.

“If you don’t know the question, if you don’t know what you’re asking for, you’ll never get a good answer,” said the Senior Medical and Performance Manager at European Football Clubs, which is the representative body for Europe’s football clubs.

“People don’t know what they’re actually looking for. They’re trying to find something in the data that either validates their bias or whatever, but you need to know what you’re looking for.”

With that first question answered, Lankheit believes AI could be “a useful sparring partner that can make you more efficient” when it comes to areas such as devising periodisation protocols.

However, he preaches caution. “When it comes down to everybody’s individual work, I think it will make us much better, but the human sense-making is important.” He cited Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, who said: “I have AI myself: actual intelligence”.

“Without actual intelligence,” Lankheit added, “artificial intelligence doesn’t matter because we as the human users need to add the right context.”

By Dr Benjamin Kelly

When Barcelona paid £107 million for Antoine Griezmann in 2019, the club acquired a cognitive anchor that would influence team selection for years, regardless of performance.

When managers delay substitutions despite trailing, they’re exhibiting loss aversion. When entire industries pursue the same talent, driving compensation packages to irrational levels, they’re succumbing to herding behaviour.

Professional football provides a vivid laboratory for understanding managerial decision-making. The biases visible on the pitch are identical to those undermining leadership across every industry. The consequences are measured in billions of pounds of misallocated resources and missed strategic pivots.

Behavioural biases cost organisations far more than technical incompetence. Yet most leadership development ignores the psychological patterns that systematically undermine even the most talented executives. Understanding these five critical biases – and building processes to counteract them – is essential for effective leadership.

1. The sunk cost trap

Once an organisation invests heavily in a strategy, acquisition, or hire, the psychological pressure to justify that investment becomes overwhelming. Leaders consistently double down on failing initiatives simply because of what was already invested.

In football, expensive signings receive playing time despite poor performance. Nicolas Pépé (£72m), Philippe Coutinho (£142m), and Antoine Griezmann (£107m) continued starting despite underwhelming contributions because admitting the transfer was a mistake felt too painful.

In organisations, executives defend failing projects and persist with underperforming business units for the same reason.

The antidote:

Establish clear criteria for evaluating ongoing investments independent of what was spent. Ask: ‘If we were making this decision today, would we proceed?’ If the answer is ‘no’, the sunk cost is irrelevant.

2. Loss aversion: the paralysis of admitting error

Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good. This asymmetry creates a bias towards inaction even when action is optimal.

Managers wait too long to make substitutions or tactical changes. Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s Manchester United, down 2-0 to Liverpool at Old Trafford in 2021, waited until the 46th minute to make their first change, and until the 60th minute for meaningful tactical shifts. By then, Liverpool had scored three more goals.

Making early changes feels like admitting the initial plan failed. Waiting preserves the illusion of control and delays psychological pain. Meanwhile, the opposition exploits the unchanged approach.

In organisations, leaders persist with failing strategies far longer than optimal because changing course mid-year feels like admitting error.

The antidote:

Build pre-commitment devices. Decide in advance what triggers will prompt strategic changes (e.g. ‘if we’re losing at half time, we make two changes immediately’). Remove emotional bias from in-the-moment decisions.

3. Herding behaviour: following the crowd

Every summer, multiple football clubs pursue the same handful of players, driving prices to astronomical levels whilst equally talented alternatives are ignored. The 2023 pursuit of Brighton’s Moises Caicedo saw his valuation jump from £80m to £115m in days, not because his ability changed, but because two clubs (Chelsea and Liverpool) were competing for his services.

In executive recruitment, the same pattern repeats. When a particular executive becomes ‘hot’, multiple organisations suddenly pursue them, driving compensation packages to irrational levels.

The antidote:

Implement rigorous, independent evaluation processes before considering what competitors are doing. Be willing to hire exceptional talent that others have overlooked – this is where competitive advantage lives.

4. Confirmation bias: seeing what we want to see

Once an organisation commits to a decision, confirmation bias takes over. Leaders see what they want to see; concerns are explained away or ignored.

Alexis Sánchez at Manchester United provides a textbook example. Signed in 2018 on a contract worth £560,000 per week, Sánchez continued to start matches despite consistently poor performances because the club needed to justify the astronomical wages. Every decent performance was highlighted; poor form was explained as “still settling in”. The confirmation bias persisted for nearly two years before he was loaned out.

The antidote:

Before major decisions, actively seek disconfirming evidence. Assign someone to make the case against the decision. Force these counterarguments to be addressed explicitly.

5. Anchoring: trapped by first impressions

Leaders anchor to preferred approaches – formations, business models, management styles – that become reference points for all subsequent thinking. Even when circumstances demand different approaches, the anchor holds firm.

The Chelsea Manager between 2019 and 2021, Frank Lampard, remained committed to the 4-3-3 formation even when results suggested alternative systems might work better. As opponents adapted and key players aged, the system became less effective, yet the anchor made adaptation psychologically difficult.

The antidote:

Regularly challenge foundational assumptions. Ask: ‘If we were designing this from scratch today, would we design it this way?’ If the answer is ‘no’, the anchor is costing you.

Lessons for football coaches: building better decision-making processes

The best-run clubs implement systematic approaches:

1. Pre-commitment devices: Decide substitution triggers before the match. This removes emotional bias from in-the-moment decisions.
2. Separate process from outcome: Evaluate in-game decision-making independently of the final score. Did you make the right call at the right time, even if it didn’t work out?
3. Active disconfirmation: Before committing to a tactical approach or signing a player, assign an assistant to argue against it. Force these counterarguments to be addressed explicitly.
4. Decision journals and bias checklists: After each match, document key decisions and outcomes. I have created a football manager/coach behavioural bias checklist – a series of yes/no questions that identify which biases may have influenced decisions.

Each question links to one of the five key biases:

• Did you delay substitutions despite trailing? (Loss aversion.)
• Did you continue with a failing tactical approach? (Anchoring.)
• Did you select a player primarily because of their transfer fee? (Sunk cost.)
• Did you dismiss evidence that contradicted your pre-match plan? (Confirmation bias.)
• Did you pursue a player because other clubs were interested? (Herding.)

A ‘yes’ response flags that decision for deeper review. Over time, this checklist makes invisible biases visible, allowing managers to identify personal patterns and build awareness of when they’re most vulnerable to specific biases.

5. Cooling-off periods: Don’t make major tactical or personnel decisions immediately after wins or losses when emotions are highest. Wait 24-48 hours. Decision quality improves dramatically.
6. Objective performance metrics: Separate player performance from transfer fee. Track how often expensive signings play regardless of form. Make invisible biases visible through data.

Conclusion

The margins in elite organisations are razor-thin. A single strategic decision can mean the difference between market leadership and irrelevance. Yet organisations routinely leave value on the table because of psychological biases that are well-documented, predictable, and preventable.

The invisible opponent – our own cognitive biases – may be the most formidable challenge in leadership. But unlike external competition, this opponent can be beaten with awareness, process and discipline. The organisations that master this mental game won’t just avoid costly mistakes. They’ll outcompete rivals who remain blind to their own biases.

For football coaches, every decision is analysed, every outcome is measured, every mistake is scrutinised. By implementing systematic processes that counteract bias, coaches can improve decision-making quality, reduce costly errors and build more resilient organisations.

The mental game is the game. Everything else is just preparation.

Dr Benjamin Kelly advises investors and professional athletes on decision making strategies in high stakes environments. If you would like to speak to Benjamin about his work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

What to read next

Even the Best Tennis Players in the World Are Worse When the Stakes Rise – and it’s Not Just Down to Random Variance or Bad Luck

By John Portch

On behalf of the Leaders Performance Institute I would like to wish you all a very happy New Year.

Here at Leaders Towers we were delighted to enter 2026 with Lando Norris newly installed as the Formula 1 world champion.

Several of us hope it will be the first of several world titles for the Brit, but my colleagues and I were also struck by the manner in which his McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stella, spoke of Norris’ holistic development since finishing a distant second in 2024.

“He definitely learned a lot from last year’s mission, even though it didn’t go all the way to the last race,” said Stella in the aftermath. “There were some learning moments, like in Austria. That was tough.”

Stella referred to the moment when Norris collided with Max Verstappen as they vied for the lead at the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix. Norris would not finish the race; Verstappen claimed fifth position and a further ten points as he motored towards his fourth world championship. But Stella believed that something changed for Norris that day.

“I think Lando raised his self-image, along the lines of, ‘I can compete with Max’,” Stella added, warming to the topic.

“In my view, there was another important turning point this season: the way Lando responded to the difficulties at the start of the season. That was the beginning of a structured, holistic process that encompassed personal development, professional driving and racing craftsmanship. And I’m particularly pleased that Lando was able to capitalise on that because I haven’t seen anything like it in terms of the amount of work, the people involved and the speed of development.”

These utterances came just days after a Leaders Performance Institute Virtual Roundtable where members discussed holistic athlete development and alighted on some of the themes raised by Stella including athlete co-ownership, the convergence of performance disciplines, and the increasing emphasis placed on mental performance.

Members can read more here.

There was plenty more besides to engage our members’ during a busy December at the LPI.

Insight of the month:

“One of the things I see, certainly in the corporate world, is that people mistake ‘good’ for high performing. In my experience, genuine high-performing teamwork is much rarer than people would admit.

“We know what it feels like when a team is dysfunctional and something’s not working, but when a team is harmonious and there are fairly good relationships, people mistake that for being a high-performing team.”

The wise words of John Bull, the Head of High Performance at our friends Management Futures. Bull led a session looking at the elements that go into making a high performance team, from the building blocks needed to the human factors that can inhibit your progress.

Best advice:

“Listen to the system and the system will tell you what it needs. I think a large part of where culture can get derailed is where people don’t feel heard and valued.”

So said a performance support specialist from the Australian Olympic and Paralympic system at a virtual roundtable where members discussed how their team cultures are evolving.

They specifically referred to the potential resistance a leader may encounter from long-tenured staff or when dealing with rapid turnover. In any case, your people must feel you are listening to them.

Performer(s) of the month:

We’re within our rights to say Norris here, but December’s accolades go to Bluey Heeler and her friend Rusty.

The second half of that sentence may make little sense if you’re not familiar with the Australian children’s animated series Bluey, but one women’s international cricket team has inaugurated its ‘Rusty Award’ for the best teammate, a gong that is handed to a player at the end of every training camp or block.

“We used an episode to bring to life our ‘embrace change’ value,” said the team’s performance lead at the very same virtual roundtable.

Good to know:

Did you know there are four types of innovation?

That is according to renowned change management specialist Greg Satell and his model of innovation, which Professor Fabio Serpiello, the Director of Sport Strategy at Central Queensland University, shared during the second instalment of his three-part roundtable exploration of tech-supported innovation in sport:

Serpiello then shared his thoughts on each quadrant:

Basic research – a low understanding of both domain and problem: “We don’t really know what the problem is and we don’t really know in which field or area it happens.”

Disruptive innovation – a well-understood domain but poorly understood problem: “In this area you may need something like innovation labs or launch pads.”

Breakthrough innovation – a poorly understood domain but well-defined problem: “This is the reverse of disruptive innovation… the classic example of open innovation.”

Sustaining innovation – a well-understood domain and problem: “The most common form in sport [and often the subject of] continuous research, design thinking or road mapping.”

Members can read more here.

Startling fact of the month:

Serpiello was back at it in the third and final session of his series with further reflections on our 2025 Trend Report.

The report posed the question: do you have a process in place to make sure that the tech you implement is the right one?

Fewer than half of respondents said ‘yes’, with more than a third saying ‘no’. Curiously, nearly 20 percent said ‘I don’t know’.

“That’s a good chunk,” said Serpiello. “It is probably more interesting than the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ given that most of the people that responded are at the ‘head of’, ‘director of’ or ‘vice president of’ level.”

What followed was an exploration of what a thorough and considered process of procurement should include.

One you might have missed:

Jamie Taylor, an Assistant Professor in Elite Performance at Dublin City University [DCU], used a virtual roundtable to explain to members that coach development too often veers towards less direct practices.

“Similar to what we see in coaching, there has been a view that it’s inappropriate to offer more direct pedagogical approaches,” said Taylor. He believes this is a consequence of sport being influenced by executive coaching practices and adult learning theory. Yet coaching is not C-suite work.

Supported reflection and communities of practice can be useful, but there are limitations. “If the coach hasn’t got the knowledge to reflect, or the coach developer doesn’t have a strong pedagogical capacity, then it can end up being just a nice coffee and a nice chat.”

Read more about the challenge of raising coaches from merely ‘competent’ to genuinely ‘expert’ here.

Finally…

A photo record of the best bits of 2025 at the Leaders Performance Institute.

What’s coming up in January for members:

Check out your 2026 virtual learning calendar at:

Virtual Learning

By John Portch

John Bull began the final Leaders Virtual Roundtable of 2025 with a provocation.

“One of the things I see, certainly in the corporate world, is that people mistake ‘good’ for high performing,” said the Head of High Performance at Management Futures. “In my experience, genuine high-performing teamwork is much rarer than people would admit.

“We know what it feels like when a team is dysfunctional and something’s not working, but when a team is harmonious and there are fairly good relationships, people mistake that for being a high-performing team.”

He presented this distinction between dysfunction and high performing as different ends of a continuum:

“In order to get to the right-hand side of this continuum, high-performing teamwork requires people to lean into behaviours that don’t come naturally,” added Bull.

He then explained that there is also a risk in over-collaborating. “This is about quality not quantity. Our efforts to get more out of teamwork can sometimes slow down performance.”

There is also a distinction between working within a ‘stable team’ (e.g. a department within a high performance team) and teamwork across boundaries, between people who rarely work together or don’t see themselves as one team (e.g. business and performance functions).

The aviation industry, Bull said, excels at cross-boundary teamwork.

“If you think about when you have a critical incident while flying, you’ve often got people in the crew who don’t know each other. The crew must collaborate with air traffic control on the ground, and they won’t know them,” he continued. He explained that the industry has long valued listening and speaking up.

It has also placed an emphasis on ‘diamond thinking’, which looks like this:

“In aviation, when you have to solve an issue, as a rule of thumb, you should spend 50 percent of the time opening the diamond up,” he said. “You get a lot of input but you’re then clear on who’s going to make the final call. Some of us in the coaching space struggle with the balance between democracy and a leader making a decision. Diamond thinking allows for that.”

Bull then led the table into a discussion on his four building blocks of team performance:

He explained each in turn and their different elements.

1. Unifying focus

“If you don’t have clarity you can’t create any of the other conditions.”

• Goals that energise: “You can have clarity but if people don’t care about that clarity, it has no purpose.”
• Strategy: “How good are we at saying no to stuff and letting go of the nice-to-haves in order to keep focused on the things that are going to make a bigger difference?”
• Energy: “Your unifying focus is working when you have team meetings and there’s a buzz in the room and palpable engagement, energy and a collective desire to do something.”

2. Quality of interaction

“Trust enables us to lean into more uncomfortable conversations and have the real performance conversations in a way that doesn’t put those relationships at risk.”

• Belonging: “The extent to which people feel valued has a huge impact on how much of their talent they bring.”
• High trust: “Trust enables us to lean into more uncomfortable conversations and have the real performance conversations in a way that doesn’t put relationships at risk.”
• Open dialogue: “A key thing that gets in the way of open, candid dialogue is defensiveness.”
• Good use of time: “When we get together, are we focusing on the right things and do we use time well? Do we have really good open discussions and close those discussions down with clarity around what we’re going to do?”

3. Quality of action

“High-performing teamwork emerges when people go for the gap.”

• Disagree and commit: “This is the notion that once you’ve had an open discussion and everyone’s aired their view, you have a cultural principle that once we make a decision, everyone commits 100 percent to that decision.”
• Empowered to act: “One of the symptoms of over-collaboration is where people start to think they can’t do anything without checking with colleagues.”
• Coordinated action: “Sometimes we see our focus for building high-performing teamwork within really formal structures, but when you get it really working that happens organically.”
• Honest reviews: “These have two purposes. One is about accountability for action, but the even greater purpose is about driving learning. What’s our cadence and speed of learning from action?”

4. Shared responsibility

“It’s getting people to recognise that when the team’s not performing they should feel empowered to step in and say something about it and not just rely on the team leader.”

• Clearly defined behaviours: “Put energy into defining the norms of behaviour we want to build the culture around. The fewer, the better.”
• Collective ownership: “When really good teams have a meeting and the session’s been going on too long or there’s a lack of clarity, that can be called out by anyone in the team.”
• Peer feedback: “Unequal contribution is an issue… invite feedback.”
• ‘We over I’: “To what extent is the collective purpose of the team operating in people’s minds as opposed to their own function or own needs?”

As a follow on, Bull highlights six human factors that can serve to inhibit team performance:

Again, he shared his thoughts on each:

Unequal contribution: “We know from research that if you have a group or a team of eight people 70 percent of the contribution will come from two or three… Status and personality has more of an impact on who speaks than who knows stuff, and that should scare you as a team leader.”

Groupthink: “It’s a hardwired principle of how our brains work that we will conform to the thinking of the group if we don’t have a strong view… One of the best ways to combat groupthink is to get people to think individually before a group discussion.”

Low psychological safety: “Probably the biggest thing that kills team performance is a lack of psychological safety.”

Fixed position: “One of the things that hurts psychological safety the most is defensiveness, where people are in a fixed position. The way you deal with the fixed position that I’ve seen work best is to deal with it one-to-one.”

Tribal or siloed behaviour: “We’re wired as humans to be tribal and there are two types of tribal behaviour. One is where you are deliberately trying to beat the other. What is much more common is you’re not competing but you just don’t think about the other ‘tribe’ as much.”

Poor use of time: “Humans tend to be pretty bad at how we use time together in groups. A quick win is to get the team thinking about when we had our best team meeting, what was it about that, what’s getting in the way of it.”

Bull then returned to the themes of psychological safety and fixed positions when sharing and describing the three types of “thinking environments” in groups and teams as revealed by Management Futures’ research:

“The bottom two points are ineffective,” said Bull. “The definition of open dialogue is where people are saying what they think, but as soon as they’ve put their view out they’re inviting disagreement. It’s not about trying to win the argument, it’s about trying to get to a collective insight of what we know as a group. It’s very different to trying to influence colleagues.”

With time running out, Bull shared a final slide highlighting four key skills to encourage collaboration, with a series of questions for members to ponder: