By Luke Whitworth

How efficient is your multidisciplinary team?

The chances are that for all your fine work fostering a collaborative multidisciplinary team there are challenges you still face daily.

At a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, we encouraged members to reflect on areas where there is room for improvement and areas where they have made real inroads.

Some responses, such as limited time, busy schedules and the decentralised nature of some programmes were raised by members time and again but, below, we focus on communal challenges.

Common issues that prevent efficient collaboration

Misalignment of needs, expectations and responsibilities: such issues still endure, as evidenced by the number of members who mentioned the lack of alignment within departments and teams. One mentioned a lack of role clarity and, in turn, knowing with they should collaborate or bring into the conversation at the right times. Some cited the challenge of matching the expectations of individual staff and the collective needs of the team. Others noted situations where there are competing objectives and priorities.

Expertise bias: a Leaders member cited ‘discipline protectionism’, which resonated with most attendees. There are enduring examples of intellectual arrogance from some disciplines or an expertise bias that impacts communication, information sharing and can reduce general curiosity. These are all collaboration killers.

Team makeup: there are several elements here. Firstly, when team members are hired in at different stages there is a natural impact on the functionality of the team. There are also different personalities and communication preferences. Several attendees also noted that some environments are geared towards individuals highlighting their own impact and values as opposed to the greater good of the team.

Other considerations: the leader’s ego; a lack of psychological safety; finding the space and time for reflection; a lack of understanding about what optimal multidisciplinary work looks like.

Potential pathways to better collaboration

Centralised communication: can lead to a higher quality of comms between all stakeholders. Perhaps you can profile your team members and better communicate agreed expectations.

Consistent data capturing: when multiple departments are capturing data consistently, instead of sporadically, it can create more alignment around communication and collaboration with other disciplines.

Humble leadership: the leader or leadership team must be humble enough to accept when change or re-organisation is required. They need the humility to step back, evaluate their approach as a leader, as well as the situation, and enact change. This is where clearly defined needs and a common understanding are useful.

Clear standard operating procedures: a well-functioning system promotes better asynchronous information sharing. If you can outline standard operating procedures for communication between platforms it can prevent key information and messages being missed.

Team structure and role clarity: as a team leader, it’s worth considering the effectiveness of your onboarding and offboarding approach to minimise the impact. Diversity of thought is also essential, but it’s worth considering how to feed this into the design and operation of the team. One roundtable attendee suggested hiring an independent auditor to help outline role clarity, the sharing of best practices and, in general, promoting leadership – in essence, they act as a critical friend. Additionally, discipline or team leaders can create networks within their teams to enable such sharing. Another member explained that they have adopted a ‘team of teams’ approach e.g. a structure based on a ‘constellation’ of smaller teams that work together closely. It has yielded some positive results. Finally, in an effort to encourage a team-first approach, consider how you profile team members and communication of expectations.

What’s missing and what are the further opportunities?

Support for new leaders

How are you supporting new leaders in your teams? Often we see those in technical expertise or ‘tactician’ roles move up to a leadership position but lack the requisite skills to lead effectively. The role inevitably changes, so what are you or we doing to help them ‘lead’ their teams and embed true collaboration?

Robust and thoughtful feedback

Be intentional in creating a robust and thoughtful feedback mechanism that allows for variations of approach. Detailed feedback can support team learning on a consistent and ongoing basis. True, it can be a challenge, but therein lies the opportunity.

Psychological safety and empowerment

How can we better empower people more effectively to take targeted risks within their roles, whilst still feeling safe and secure? There needs to be a team-wide understanding of what psychological safety means and what it looks like in your environment.

By Rachel Woodland, Sarah Evans and Lottie Wright

• Use the critical moments to reinforce your culture.

• Expansion franchises must recruit staff who want to be challenged and challenge themselves to be the best they can be.

• Challenge yourself as a leader to have a diverse staff, so that when you are recruiting female athletes, lifestyle and protecting the longevity of their career can be just as important considerations as pay.

There has never been a better time for women’s sport in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In March, Bay FC began their inaugural NWSL campaign to great fanfare.

The club was co-founded by former US women’s national team stars Brandi Chastain, Aly Wagner, Danielle Slayton and Leslie Osborne, who propelled the project from an ambitious idea to a grand reality.

They hired Lucy Rushton as General Manager. Rushton, who was the second woman to serve as GM in MLS when she joined DC United in 2021, spoke at this month’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Red Bull in Santa Monica.

Rushton is no stranger to the Leaders stage having also spoken during her time at Atlanta United, whom she joined following excellent spells with Watford, Reading and the Football Association in her native England.

She sat next to another trail blazer, Ohemaa Nyanin, the newly appointed GM of WNBA expansion franchise the Golden State Valkyries, who will join the league in 2025.

Nyanin, a Ghanian-American, had been with the New York Liberty for five years, most recently as Assistant GM, jumped at the chance to bring further basketball prestige to this corner of southern California. She previously served as Assistant Director of the US women’s national team and helped Team USA to Olympic gold in 2016 and World Cup gold in 2018.

The duo delivered insights into how they are shaping the cultures of their nascent organisations; how they’re working or planning on working with their athletes; how they’ve chosen to lead; how they’re supporting their staff; as well as how they’re changing the sporting landscape.

Owners must establish the culture and values

The Bay culture was clear well before Rushton had even accepted her position: everything is about the people, from the staff to the players. The owners want everyone to be B-A-Y. That is:

Brave – the ownership want the franchise to be bold in the industry, pushing boundaries, breaking barriers by being innovative.

Accountable – the staff turn up everyday and are responsible for their actions and drive, and push themselves forward.

You – Bay FC also celebrate themselves as individuals and bring their true authentic selves to work every day.

The three concepts have helped shape the mindset each day and give the staff and players something tangible to hold onto. The organisation’s vision is to be a global sport franchise at the head of innovation and change.

How can these be measured? For Rushton, “it’s the feeling when you go to bed or wake up and how you feel about going to work the next day or that morning”. She believes the staff feel good and know they can influence what is happening; they know it’s a positive environment and everyone is striving for the same things.

Women’s sport should not simply replicate men’s sport

Rushton’s experience of men’s football taught her a valuable lesson. “Coming into a women’s franchise, it’s so important that we understand and appreciate the difference to men’s sport and don’t try and replicate it,” she said. The club has been intentional on that since day one and strives to be people-first, player-centric, and celebrates and promotes good female health.

With Bay midway through their first season, Rushton reflected on how the staff live the values every day. They all want to work hard, but care, kindness, and mutual support are just as critical for an expansion team. You need people who want to be there, who have the grit to go through the ups and downs, but support each other when you might not have the same resources as the teams that are 5 or 10 years old.

“How we approach training everyday and present ourselves to the players gives them energy,” she continued. “Which in turn the players buy into and end up energised and galvanised.” The key is how you present yourself and how you turn up and how you live by the standards that have been set, and the biggest factor is togetherness and collaboration of all departments.

Measure success through environment and collective wellbeing

Nyanin left a household name in the New York Liberty, but her goal is not to merely recreate that team in the Bay Area. Nor does she simply want to recreate the Golden State Warriors (Valkyries co-owner Joe Lacob is also the majority owner of the Warriors). Nyanin wants the Golden State Valkyries to stand alone.

She needs to find people that are interested in a vision of winning championships, in alignment with the ownership group. Success will ultimately be measured in trophies. They are the first WNBA expansion team since 2008, so Nyanin is considering what it looks like to build a successful organisation. She said: “We need to find individuals who are interested in being challenged every day, leaning into the team. Do you want to come to work everyday, and serve the athletes everyday in a way that provides for an innovative space, that provides for us to do what we know we can do, and how quickly can we get there?”

With this question in mind, Nyanin reflected on the qualities she seeks out as the Valkyries hire and write job descriptions. “Being an expansion team means you have to be entrepreneurial. By embracing the unknown can you be empathetic too,” she added.

Rushton asked Nyanin about measuring success from a cultural perspective rather than through championships. In response Nyanin said it is about the climate of the people that come in the door. “When we ask how you are doing they might say ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m good’, but if you say ‘how are you doing in the terms of a climate?’; so ‘sunny, or ‘cloudy’, or ‘rainy’ – it adds depth. A way of measuring success is how we can collectively come up with our non-results-based success criteria, how do we make it such so that everyone is sunny?”

For Nyanin, ‘sunny’ doesn’t mean super excited, or super extroverted – you can be introverted but still be sunny. Success is ultimately defined by how the Golden State Valkyries create their own definitions of safety in the workplace; it stems from executives to coordinators, to players, and even changing the way agents and external stakeholders engage with the organisation.

A culture born of diversity

We all know the saying about the best-laid plans, so Rushton and Nyanin spoke of the importance of allowing culture to shape itself. For Rushton, the critical moments are when things haven’t gone to plan. “How you react to things not going to plan is how you create culture. Actions taken in those moments show the players and staff what’s acceptable and what’s not,” she said.

Some decisions have been made that may have impacted performance outcomes but certainly reinforced their culture and values. They might have been a “nightmare” at times, but they’re critical. The backing of the ownership and the Head Coach, Albertin Montoya, helped give Rushton the confidence to go ahead. Showing the group that the leaders are aligned was powerful and gave them the confidence that it was the right thing to do and that the leaders had each others’ backs.

For Nyanin, it is important to give newly-hired executives their own blank slate to contribute to the masterpiece. She said: “If everyone has a different background, you have to listen to their ideas as they’re all coming from different spaces. So it’s still being architected from all different walks and types of cultural differences.”

This means that it’s important to Nyanin to have each executive bring their own unique experience. Through these different experiences and backgrounds the culture develops. This will bring challenges and added work, as you have forces leaders out of their comfort zones. It also means that you have to be willing to think differently.

“It’s like explaining basketball to children, who all ask ‘why?’ People from different backgrounds are going to ask why do we need to execute things this way, and will ask good questions, and bring contributions beyond asking ‘why?’”

In return, Nyanin believes that the athlete will benefit, especially the female athlete who comes with different complexities. “If your own staff can challenge you and ask you why before the athlete does, then you’re giving the athlete a space for them to feel safe to be elite at their sport.”

Athlete care is paramount

What about their appeal to female players? Bay spoke with the potential recruits about player-centricity of club and how they were going to elevate player care. From starting from a blank slate, they were able to accelerate mechanisms that can help with impacting the salary cap through player housing for example. The club emphasised treating them like the athlete they are in comparison to some of their poor experiences in other environments.

In Rushton’s experience, the priorities are very different to male athletes, where pay often dictates the direction of negotiations. With females, it’s about living standards and how the organisation will elongate their career. It’s important to give them confidence in the staff who would give them the best care, medical treatment, and infrastructure. Rushton is proud that, as far as she knows, the players have no complaints about the level of care and how the organisation treats them as female athletes.

On a day to day basis it boils down to two things in her mind. Firstly, helping them be in the best position they can be for the longest time possible and, secondly, to help them live a nice lifestyle outside of football.

This focus on player care resonated with Nyanin, who was pleasantly surprised at the rapid expansion of the NWSL given her own experience of the WNBA. Bringing it back to athlete experience is hugely important because, in WNBA, athlete experience tends to focus on ‘how you do get elite talent to come through?’ Nyanin explained that longevity in the sport is different, although is it changing, because the majority of the athletes play six months in the WNBA and then go and play overseas where the conditions are often worse, but they’re getting paid more money. “Understanding the motivations of the athlete prior to them coming to your organisation and engaging in your space is important,” she said.

Attracting elite practitioners from male sport

How might top level practitioners be attracted from historically better-funded male sports? Both Nyanin and Rushton believe that efforts must be based on the vision, culture and concepts the organisations trying to build.

For the Valkyries, as Nyanin explained, the vision is to “build the best, to be the most elite, to build a space where people feel they’re being heard and their ideas being executed in a way that results in excellence. Why wouldn’t you want to come? How can I create an environment for you to thrive, and how can we do that together?”

Rushton agreed. She said: “it shouldn’t be about the gender. It does matter though – many wouldn’t be right for women’s sport. I want to make you the best practitioner in what you do, and give you the platform to excel in your specialisation.”

New franchises means recruiting for those who are willing to challenge themselves and go outside the box with their thinking. It becomes about finding the people who are comfortable with the associated risk in order to better themselves. Rushton believes they have to “believe that they can go there and make a difference.” Rushton also observed that, “a lot of males would find it refreshing to come to a female athlete team because it’s a totally different environment, with totally different feeling and vibe.”

For Rushton herself, when she moved from men’s to women’s football there were two main factors that drew her in:

1. Knowing what the owner was striving for, and it being incredibly ambitious, and the level of care and his values as a person. She said it’s rare to find someone that ambitious but be about the process and the care that is shown in achieving it.
2. Giving back to the game and being a role model. When Rushton was younger the women’s game didn’t have the opportunities; and for many years she was the sole women working in the footballing environments that she was in. Now she can show there’s a pathway to make it a profession and a career. All the staff are in positions where they can help the youth see bigger prospects for the future within sports and the women’s game.

How fans contribute to a team culture

There remains another crucial component of a team culture: the fans.

The final moments of the session were used to discuss how both Nyanin and Rushton, and their organisations, are forging connections with their fans. As Nyanin said, fans expect communications, but there are times when you can’t share with them. This is a dilemma considering that the fans are also investing in the franchise and so they deserve communication. It becomes about finding the balance around what to do when things aren’t going well. Working on being honest in their communications so that the fans understand that the leaders and everybody involved is working to solve any issues.

Similarly, Rushton and Bay have been deliberate in how they present the organisation to the fans. The Business Operations team at Bay go to the fans and ask them to bring the energy and passion; to be part of their story. They seek to empower the fans and have them be part of the journey. Bay have gone out to the community, had fans come and watch training, and prioritised outward action in the build-up to launch. People now want to be a part of their journey.

Rushton spoke of how Bay deliberately tell the stories of their players. This means that people become invested in the emotional side of who the player is, so if the team lose a game, the fans are more invested in the person than the result. The outcome is one of which she is proud and the Valkyries hope to emulate. “The fans have fallen in love with the team, despite the record.”

Results will surely follow but, here and now, both women are intent on proving that new women’s sports teams are not only viable but can thrive.

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Queens Park Rangers’ season went poorly for more than four months, with the League Championship club sitting squarely in the relegation zone deep into January.

QPR soon turned its season around, however, after a change in leadership. The club won 10 times and added five draws over its final 19 matches to secure its spot in the second tier of English football another season. Most estimates suggest that relegation from the Championship to League One is a financial hit of more than $10 million (£7.9 million).

Right around the time of that upset over Leicester, QPR onboarded a new AI-powered predictive modeling tool, Gemini Sports Analytics, to make optimal use of the massive datasets they’ve compiled. Gemini is a “force multiplier,” CEO Jake Schuster has said, by simplifying the process of building machine learning algorithms catered to each club’s specific needs.

“What I really liked about Gemini was they didn’t have an ego in trying to solve every problem,” QPR Director of Performance Ben Williams said. “They created a tool where you can solve your own problems.”

Around the time of QPR’s on-field nadir, CEO Lee Hoos retired from that role, while remaining as chairman, and hired Christian Nourry as the new chief executive. Nourry was 26 and a managing partner at Retexo Intelligence, a data analytics and advisory business that worked with Real Madrid CF, AS Roma and the Mexican national team. (He became the youngest CEO in English soccer, with one European executive describing Nourry as “the Lionel Messi of the football business world,” according to the Independent.)

Nourry wanted to implement market-leading solutions to upgrade the club’s tech stack. QPR asked itself, according to Williams, “Are we able to interrogate that data optimally, to forge outcomes that are positive for the long-term future of the football club? Our answer to that was ‘no.’” That prompted the search that led the club to Gemini.

The very thesis of Gemini is to empower analysts, coaches or “anyone with a dataset,” as Williams put it, to take action with data. He noted that it can be used for everything from tactical match plans to traffic probabilities on bus trips to road matches.

Founded by Schuster, a longtime sport scientist, Gemini leverages the tech infrastructure of cloud and AI partners Snowflake, DataRobot and Databricks with data sources such as StatsBomb, SportRadar, Genius Sports, Sports Info Solutions, SkillCorner and Infinite Athlete.

As an example of what’s possible, Shuster explained that Gemini users can apply clustering algorithms to match stats and tracking data to create passing trees to identify how opponents like to create scoring chances of their own or concede them to others.

“The early lift was certainly centered around pre-match and post-match reports,” Schuster said. “So, opposition analysis — how do we approach this game? And then, post-match, what happened and what are the implications for future events? A big part of the early work with them was helping them automate those reports. And then the next step was approaching the summer transfer window.”

But it also remains an area of exploration, as QPR onboards more staff members over time.

“The power comes from our curiosity,” Williams said. “We’re in a phase of play and learn and discovery.”

Other Gemini clients include the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, the SEC’s Texas A&M and Italian soccer club Parma Calcio, which just claimed a Serie B title to earn promotion back to Serie A. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company also raised two investment rounds north of $3 million in the past year. There are now 27 sports franchise owners either directly invested in Gemini or through recent round-leading investor Will Ventures. QPR’s owners individually own minority stakes in two MLS clubs (LAFC and FC Cincinnati) as well as MLB’s Cincinnati Reds.

That financial backing has led to Gemini’s first customer success hire, former Arizona Diamondbacks Director of Operations Sam Eaton, and a budget allocation to hire a CTO, a role Schuster is actively recruiting. The company is also in the testing phase of some new generative AI features it hopes to roll out soon.

“The whole idea behind going with this tool was we can be really broad in our thought process of what we think helps our performance,” Williams said, “rather than be penned in by somebody else’s thought process of what is important to performance because they’ve created a tool that solves a problem that they once had.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

An article brought to you by our Event Partners

By the Leaders Performance Institute team

John F Kennedy’s ‘we choose to go to the moon’ speech remains a masterclass in political rhetoric.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” said the US President at Rice University on 12 September 1962.

Those words, undiminished by six decades of distance, might have become a monument to presidential hubris had NASA’s Apollo program failed to land Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Instead, Kennedy’s vision galvanised his nation and, allied to federal resource, gave the program the impetus it needed.

NASA’s ‘moonshot’ has since become a byword for ingenious and audacious projects that showcase adaptive growth. That is: being adaptable in the face of change and challenges, continuously striving for growth and improvement, learning from your experiences and making strategic decisions that drive progress and innovation.

Moonshots were a theme of the recent Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Red Bull in Santa Monica, with Jennifer Allum, who is part of the leadership team at Alphabet’s X, The Moonshot Factory, taking to the stage to discuss an environment where audacity is a prerequisite.

It was a marvellous start to proceedings on the morning of day one but, in truth, other themes discussed across both days, from talent and creativity to strategic thinking and resilience, just as readily point to adaptive growth.

Here, inspired by the worlds of sport, the arts and academia, we touch upon seven factors that can help to fuel your own moonshot, whether you’re taking your first small step, sustaining your early momentum, or looking to make a giant leap.

1. Fearlessness in the face of failure

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen observed that large, established organisations do not always take advantage of potentially disruptive technologies and trends, while newer and less-established organisations often do. In his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma, he explores the tension between sustaining existing products and embracing disruptive innovations.

Allum discussed the concept onstage in front of an audience where ‘failure’ is a common bedfellow. She understands that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, could easily fall prey to the Innovator’s Dilemma. So while X, The Moonshot Factory performs an instrumental role in delivering ‘moonshot technologies that make the world a radically better place’, there are myriad failures that pile high on their factory floor – and Alphabet wouldn’t have it any other way because they perceive failure as a learning opportunity rather than a threat.

Allum’s top tips for avoiding the Innovator’s Dilemma:

• Aim for 10x not 10% – use ‘bad idea brainstorms’; practise the behaviours of audacious thinking; put everything on the table.
• Be scrappy, test early – reject the social norm of refining; find the quickest way to learn that you’re on the wrong path; have a thick skin and be OK with people thinking you’re wrong and weird.
• Build-in different perspectives – recruit for a growth mindset (high humility, high audacity; people who take risks in their own lives; who think differently and challenge the way problems are solved).
• Reframe failure as learning – you can’t solve for success, so track what you do, as failures will support future ideas.

“We reward project shutoffs, dispassionate assessments, and intellectual honesty.”

Jennifer Allum, leadership team, X, The Moonshot Factory

2. Swerve common pitfalls

Long-established teams can all do better, but what of those just starting out, particularly in women’s sport? How can a beginner’s zeal be channelled into establishing a stable, long-term concern? Those are two of the questions currently facing NSWL expansion team Bay FC and their WNBA counterparts the Golden State Valkyries.

It is an exciting time for women’s sport but there are pitfalls to be avoided:

• It’s important to understand and appreciate the differences between men’s and women’s sport – don’t look to replicate the approach. Bay have, for example, intentionally fashioned a culture that is people-first, player-centric and focused on player health.
• What skills are required in expansion environments? An entrepreneurial mindset, for one. Embrace the unknown and have empathy.
• There will be critical moments in the early days, but this is where you can shape the culture. Find moments to demonstrate what is both acceptable and unacceptable.

“Our culture and values are aligned to the name of our team. We want people to be Brave, Accountable and You; underpinned by the idea of bringing your authentic self everyday.”

Lucy Rushton, General Manager, Bay FC

“I am a believer in asking people how they are feeling in terms of a particular climate: are you sunny, happy or cloudy? It’s a simple way to help measure your culture.”

Ohemaa Nyanin, General Manager, Golden State Valkyries

3. Conditions where creativity can thrive

Is yours a creative learning environment? Either way, you’d do well to listen to the Westside School of Ballet (LA’s most successful public ballet school) and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music – what can such schools teach the world of sport about the creation of learning environments that encourage improvisation, experimentation and intrinsic motivation?

It begins with a love for the art form and a welcoming ecosystem that allows the freedom to explore:

• Open yourself to the notion of ‘winning’ in other ways; you need to allow failure to happen and experimentation to take place so that young people can find different moments in their work.
• How can you shift your environment to create more challenge and failure, but communicate it in a way, that nurtures solution-minded individuals who can respond to what’s thrown at them in the context of competition?
• Can you say you understand your young athletes’ intrinsic motivations? If you don’t, it can leave a lot of creative potential on the table.
• At UCLA, they do not speak about ‘working’ music – they talk about ‘play’.

“We want to foster a love of the art form rather than fear.”

Adrian Blake Mitchell, Associate Executive Director, Westside School of Ballet

“We work on improvisation to get to more fundamental questions – what am I trying to convey? What story is being told?”

Eileen Strempel, Dean, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

4. Leaders skilled at optimising their energy

As a leader, strategic thinking is in your remit, but do you ever include protecting your energy as part of the equation? “An organisation can’t outpace its leaders,” said author Holly Ransom onstage in Santa Monica. “So there’s nothing more important than working on ourselves as leaders.”

How to show up each day:

• Manage your energy, not your time; and build-in moments of ‘micro recovery’ to support yourself in the moments that matter. We spend too much time in ‘up-regulation’ and we need to find ways to down-regulate’.
• Make sure your highest energy moments of the day align with your most important tasks so that your return on energy is optimised.
• Who in your corner is your supporter, sage, sponsor and sparring partner?
• Remember: you are the Chief Role Model Officer in your team – make sure you live and talk about the things that help people lead themselves in ways that manage their energy.

“Are the habits that you’re leading with still serving you, your career, role and impact?”

Holly Ransom, author, The Leading Edge

5. Collective resilience

No matter your level of success or the smoothness of your systems, high performance can exact a large toll if your stakeholders are not resilient. As Red Bull US CEO Chris Hunt explained, a leader’s first job is to engender trust amongst their team. There’s no instant solution – you have to advocate for people and stand up for your values time and again.

How can people in high performance develop their resilience?

• Celebrate examples of resilience within the team.
• You have to manage your personal and collective fear of tactical failure; allowing for the ability to test and learn from the failings and, simultaneously, build resilience. Look for dynamic interruption and get better at absorbing it.
• Leadership is not changing, but the context is. What has traditionally grounded teams in the past will still help them now.

“Marginal gains come from resilience, and victory comes from marginal gains time and again.”

Chris Hunt, CEO Red Bull US, Red Bull

6. Clutch performers

As a big wave surfer, Red Bull’s Ian Walsh is well-placed to discuss performance under pressure. He took to the stage to discuss the strategies that serve him well out on the surf.

Pressure points:

• Understand how your body reacts when under duress both in sport and beyond. From there you can maintain control.
• When your work requires you to continually return to moments of risk and pressure you have to ensure that your ambitions, drive, hunger and desire outweigh your fear of failure or injury.
• At Red Bull, Walsh and his teammates catalogue their good and bad experiences in the moments of pressure and risk – these help to create a lifetime of understanding that can be used the next time they encounter both.

“Pressure is a valuable condition for performing at your highest level.”

Ian Walsh, big wave surfer, Red Bull

7. The role of tech in decision making

Technology at its best can inform your decision making and, as Fabio Serpiello, a professor at the University of Central Queensland, told the audience at Red Bull, there are steps you can take to ensure you’re using the right technology and datasets.

Ensure you’re staying on top of tech innovations:

• Is the technology helping us to make better decisions or requiring us to make more decisions? It can be overwhelming so be sure your tech is in service of the former.
• The future lies in the ability to read and interpret context; personalise recommendations and make decisions easier.
• Consider using the Cynefin Framework.  This is a conceptual tool used in the field of leadership and decision-making. It was created by management consultant Dave Snowden in 1999 during his tenure at IBM Global Services. The word ‘cynefin’ comes from Welsh and means ‘habitat’ or ‘haunt’.

“Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean impact. We often forget about impact because of the overwhelming amount of consumer tech.”

Fabio Serpiello, Director, Sports Strategy, University of Central Queensland

By John Portch

A personal declaration by three-time Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes has been a valuable performance education tool at the Brisbane Lions’ Springfield Central training ground.

The players and staff stand in awe of the Kansas City Chiefs quarterbacks’ postseason exploits, but Google images of a topless Mahomes with a less-than-perfectly-chiselled figure provide conversation-starters on training, performance and nutrition.

“He’s considered the GOAT at the moment and he’s basically got a ‘dad bod’,” said Damien Austin, picking up on the term Mahomes has used to describe his own appearance. As a three-time Super Bowl MVP, Mahomes is clearly doing the right things, and Austin, who is Brisbane’s High Performance Manager, was simply illustrating how highly attuned his athletes are to the demands of their own high performance.

“We educate the players about acute-chronic workload,” he told an audience at February’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Melbourne’s Glasshouse. “They know about injury management, they know about their programmes and why we do what we do.”

Brisbane are one of the best teams in the AFL; and a premiership, their first since 2003, is a realistic target. It’s a far cry from the mess Austin inherited when he first walked through the door in November 2015. He came from the Sydney Swans with a remit to revamp Brisbane’s high performance setup, but it would prove to be easier said than done. “I came to the harsh reality that we were very different.”

Brisbane rock: not all it’s cracked up to be

In 2016, Chris Fagan was appointed Brisbane’s Senior Coach. He initially focused on the physical, technical, tactical and psychological elements that could give him the biggest bang for his buck.

The team also decided to fake it until they made it; “stealing” ideas from individuals and teams, including Usain Bolt, Eluid Kipchoge and the San Antonio Spurs. Austin said: “These people reminded the players what some teams did and we mirrored [their actions and philosophies] until we could develop our own.”

They even brought a large rock to Springfield Central so that the players could ‘pound the rock’ in the manner talked about at Gregg Popovich’s Spurs, where a rock takes pride of place at the entrance to their practice facility. It brings to life the Spurs’ belief that it is not the final strike that cracks the rock but the hundred blows that came before.

While it makes for a stirring scene in San Antonio, Brisbane’s rock did not hold up its end of the bargain. “Every now and then the players would have a crack at it but the rock wasn’t hard – it kept breaking – we had to get another rock!”

On the field, the team continued to lose most weekends. “We called ourselves ‘the happiest bunch of losers’.” While Fagan’s first two years were characterised by turbulence and continued turnover, the atmosphere gradually improved because the people that stayed (or joined) believed in the direction of travel.

The team had long since resolved that at least no one would outwork them. It was their founding philosophy. Players were pushed out of their comfort zones (Brisbane introduced 3K time trials when 1K or 2K were the league norm) but given all the necessary support to prepare. Additionally, no other team had to train in the oppressive heat of the Brisbane summer (routinely reaching 29˚C/84˚F) but the local climate was reframed as a performance advantage.

The team also began to measure everything they could. “I’ve never been in a programme where strength results or running results from the general running session were put up in team meetings so much,” said Austin.

Little victories were celebrated along the way. “If a rookie player benched 60 kilos for the first time it was a pretty big deal.” The players enjoyed their progress. “It could not be us just harping on and on [otherwise] those early losses could have taken their toll.” Instead, as results turned, it led to a firm bond between the players, many of whom are locals who happily spend their downtime together.

Eight years on from teaming up with Fagan, Austin defines high performance very differently. “In the early days we would say ‘let’s do the basics and get as many gains as we can to attract younger players and hopefully they perform later down the track’. Now we’re looking for the finer edge. How we can improve our weaknesses? If you were to play us, how would you as an opposition coach or stats department play against us? Years ago we would not have looked at that.”

Best foot forward

Under Fagan, Brisbane have become known for their growth mindset and fearless approach. The staff have worked continuously to remove the fear of failure, with sessions that demanded players kick off their weaker foot being a prime example. Such efforts underlined that this was a psychologically safe environment. “Those sessions weren’t pretty, but there was an acceptance that you’re going to fail; but don’t be fearful of it. Learn from it,” said Austin, who also explained that players now routinely run their own training sessions and both give and receive performance feedback. “Leadership is not about being the best. Leadership is about making everyone else better.”

Nevertheless, for all their progress, Brisbane’s major defeats have been frustrating. These include semi-final losses in 2019 and 2021 and preliminary final reverses in 2020 and 2022. They bounced back to make the Grand Final at the MCG in 2023 but their narrow defeat to Collingwood that afternoon still rankles and they are determined to make amends. They have put their belief in a 24/7 approach to high performance to bridge that four-point gap. “You need to live it, endure it, deliver it. You need to do everything off the field, look at how you manage it; be involved and make the best out of it.”

Patrick Mahomes would no doubt approve.

By Luke Whitworth

There is a firm link between strong cultural leadership and sustained excellence.

Those leaders can be athletes, such as England captain Harry Kane, who will lead the Three Lions in their Euro 2024 campaign. Or Breanna Stewart, the New York native who returned home in 2022 and led the Liberty to the 2023 WNBA Finals; bagging the league’s MVP in the process.

Kane and Stewart are the embodiment of local heroes who have done well, particularly if you include Kane’s remarkable spell at Tottenham Hotspur.

Then there are coaches who represent an expression of the systems that enable their programmes to excel. On that front, one can point to Kane’s international manager, Gareth Southgate, who has overseen England’s most successful spell since the mid-1960s.

Cultural leaders, however, need not be so high profile. They operate at all levels of an organisation, independent of job title or seniority. Do you recognise the cultural leaders in your team? What steps can you be a better cultural leader?

Cultural leadership – the super enabler

The link between leadership and sustained success is the centrepiece of a research project run by Edd Vahid, the Head of Football Academy Operations at the Premier League.

In June 2022, the business and leadership consultancy commissioned Vahid to undertake a piece of research to discover the ‘secrets of culture’. Two years later, this project, titled ‘Cultural Hypothesis’, is on the cusp of publication.

Ahead of its release, Vahid is leading a three-part Performance Support Series at the Leaders Performance Institute that seeks to explore the enablers in high performing cultures.

The first session, which took place in early May, was a useful way of testing the importance and relevance of the four enablers highlighted by Vahid in the Cultural Hypothesis: purpose, psychological safety, belonging and cultural leadership.

The second, which took place in early June, homed in on cultural leadership, specifically how leaders might change or sustain a culture. The concept is, as Vahid described, a “super enabler” for your sense of purpose, belonging or even psychological safety.

Culture should be an accelerator and energiser

In the session, Vahid observed that organisations are increasingly deliberate and intentional about culture because they see it as a competitive advantage. It is not a one-time annual event – it’s a regular part of ongoing conversations.

This is lost on some organisations, as Jon R Katzenbach, Illona Steffen and Caroline Kronley wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2012:

‘All too often, leaders see cultural initiatives as a last resort. By the time they get around to culture, they’re convinced that a comprehensive overhaul of the culture is the only way to overcome the company’s resistance to major change. Culture thus becomes an excuse and a diversion rather than an accelerator and energiser’.

Four ways to get to grips with your culture

To understand culture you need keen observation and data collection. Vahid proposed several useful tools:

1. The OODA Loop Framework.

During the Korean War, John Boyd, an American military strategist and fighter pilot, devised the OODA Loop as a decision-making process designed to emphasise adaptation and agility in four stages:

• Observation: collect data from various sources.
• Orientation: data is filtered, analysed and enriched.
• Decision: selecting actionable insights for the best response.
• Action: action is taken and the loop begins anew.

Organisations can apply the OODA Loop to assess and respond effectively to cultural dynamics.

2. Cultural health checks

Vahid also pointed to other efforts to collect data around culture, such as UK Sport’s ‘cultural health check’ or retail giant Selfridges using data to better understand their most culturally-stressed communities.

3. Critical incident reviews

Vahid also stressed the importance of critical incident reviews to help observe culture during specific moments such as exits, inductions, wins and losses.

4. The Sigmoid Curve

Teams can also find their place on the Sigmoid Curve, a common model for tracking organisational growth and decline. At each stage, expectations can change, which affects what we see, hear and feel.

Five Steps Towards Cultural leadership

Vahid explored five steps that can help a team to develop cultural leaders.

1. Start with acknowledging the connection between leadership and culture: the literature largely points in this direction, with leaders having a fundamental role in supporting the change management process. As Donald and Charles Sull wrote in the MIT Sloane Management Review in 2022: ‘A lack of leadership investment was, by far, the most important obstacle to closing the gap between cultural aspirations and current reality.’
2. Identify aligned leaders: from there is important to ‘identify leaders who align with the target culture’ as Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J Yo-Jud Cheng wrote in the Harvard Business Reviewin 2018.
3. Honour your existing culture: you can too quickly go from point A to point B without taking a moment to understand what the existing culture looks like. Katzenbach, Steffen and Kronley noted that existing cultural strength should be acknowledged.
4. Build a guiding coalition: identify key individuals and consider diversity within your leadership groups. You should build what thought leader John Kotter calls a ‘guiding coalition’.
5. Understand the levels of cultural leadership: Vahid’s research reveals that cultural leadership operates on three levels:

• • Sponsors: senior individuals critical for manifesting the desired culture.
  • Architects: these are responsible for designing cultural initiatives.
  • Guardians: everyone contributes to safeguarding the culture to varying extents.

By Luke Whitworth

May was the month where Emma Hayes signed off at Chelsea Women with a fifth consecutive WSL title, Red Bull’s reigning world champion Max Verstappen extended his lead in the Formula 1 World Championship, and Tadej Pogačar won his second Grand Tour at the Giro d’Italia.

Those three, different as they are, share a reputation for sustained high performance and, as such, represent the profile we had in mind as we picked May to launch of our latest Performance Support Series.

That series – which has two sessions still to run at the time of writing – was just one of the opportunities on offer to Leaders Performance Institute members through their membership during the course of the month.

There was much more besides and The Debrief is designed to keep you on the pulse of contemporary thinking across the high performance space. Do check out some of our upcoming events and virtual learning sessions to help you to connect, learn and share with your fellow members from across the globe.

Four interconnected cultural enablers

We have all asked ourselves this question at various times but Dr Edd Vahid and Management Futures decided to delve a little deeper.

In June 2022, the business and leadership consultancy commissioned Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the Premier League, to undertake a piece of research to discover the ‘secrets of culture’. Two years later, this project, titled ‘Cultural Hypothesis’, is on the cusp of publication.

Ahead of its release, Vahid is leading a three-part Performance Support Series at the Leaders Performance Institute that seeks to explore the enablers in high performing cultures.

The first session, which took place in early May, was a useful way of testing the importance and relevance of the four interconnected enablers highlighted by Vahid in the Cultural Hypothesis: purpose, psychological safety, belonging and cultural leadership.

Vahid explored each enabler in turn.

1. Cultural leadership. It is seen as a super enabler. When you’ve got strong and aligned cultural leadership it will be a precursor to psychological safety and belonging.

Questions for you to consider in your organisations:

• Who are your cultural guardians?
• How are you supporting the development of your guardians?

2. Psychological safety. This was prominent in Vahid’s findings. Author Amy Edmondson in her book, The Fearless Organization, suggests that ‘making the environment safe for open communication about challenges, concerns and opportunities is one of the most important leadership responsibilities in the twenty-first century’. She also highlighted the importance and relationship between cultural leadership and effective psychological safety.

Questions for you to consider in your organisations:

• What are you doing to build safety?
• How do you respond to mistakes in your environment?

3. Purpose. Most high performing cultures have an inspiring purpose. Vahid referred to clothing brand Patagonia, which says ‘we’re in the business to save our home planet’ and its every action is driven by that purpose. Those organisations that are attending to culture regularly are taking the time to check-in on their purpose; what it means for the organisation and the individuals within.

Questions for you to consider in your organisations:

• Does your organisation have an inspiring purpose?
• How closely aligned are an individual(s) and organisational purpose?

4. Belonging. Ultimately, we want to get people to a point of challenge, but that doesn’t always happen by accident. The In his book Belonging, Owen Eastwood wrote that ‘our senses are primed to constantly seek information about belonging from our environment. We are hardwired to quickly and intuitively understand whether or not we are in a safe place with people we can trust’. Most optimal environments where there is a high degree of psychological safety is where individuals feel comfortable to challenge.

A question for you to consider in your organisations:

• What belonging cues are evident in your environment?

Achieving communication nirvana

Win, lose or draw, teams are constantly in transition and, as such, they need different things from their leaders at each stage in their development.

This can be tricky because you can’t shortcut the development of rapport, belonging and trust – all are critical to team development and effective transitions – and yet teams and leaders still face pressure to perform now.

That comes down to good communication, as discussed in a recent Leadership Skills Series session.

In fact, it is worth exploring five levels of communication as experienced in a team setting. It is useful to think of the following as a pyramid. Teams begin at No 1 and work towards No 5, with increasing exposure to risk, vulnerability and criticism at each level.

1. Basic ritual: this is a safe place to start. When sharing basic rituals, we are weighing each other up and there is an unconscious measuring process going on.
2. Sharing information: the next layer up is when there is a confidence and trust to begin to share information. This might be personal information or progress and insights on internal projects.
3. Exchanging ideas and opinions: now we want to know what people really think. This is where the risk factor in teams can be increased. The asking of opinions and ideas. There may be an exposure to risk and a need to be bolder.
4. Free expression of feelings: some teams never really get to this stage. This can be a drag on potential when you can’t share feelings and there is a lot of energy wasted. There can be an atmosphere of tension.
5. Unspoken rapport: this is the nirvana. The stage where things happen and others know how to respond.

Five fundamentals when measuring the impact of your mental skills work

In the modern landscape of high performance sport, we often here the phrase ‘everything that is managed is measured’.

Such is the desire to show impact and return on investment, we are indeed measuring much of what can be measured.

Nevertheless, it can be difficult to measure the impact of areas such as coach development work or, as discussed in a recent Virtual Roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members, mental skills work.

While it is tempting to jump into the measuring process, it is important to first build some pre-requisites.

1. Have you defined and discussed what are we actually measuring and why? We can’t be trapped into the tendency to measure for measure’s sake.
2. Does trust exist in the environment between staff, players and the coaches? When we think of the success of effective mental skills or sport psychology support, trust is a cornerstone of a well-functioning approach.
3. Additionally, how can you work through your coaches to get athlete buy-in while garnering their feedback on the athletes’ growth and improvement?
4. Are your data and insights valid and reliable?
5. How regularly and intently are you debriefing? As part of the process, make time to debrief and discuss results to understand how stakeholders are interpreting data.

By Luke Whitworth

Win, lose or draw, teams are constantly in transition and, as such, they need different things from their leaders at each stage in their development.

This can be tricky because you can’t shortcut the development of rapport, belonging and trust – all are critical to team development and effective transitions – and yet teams and leaders still face pressure to perform now.

This topic was at the heart of a recent Leadership Skill Series session, which was attended by Leaders Performance Institute members. All in attendance agreed that for a team to reach its full potential, every individual needs to have a sense that their team has invested in them and they need to be invested in the team too. Everyone needs to buy-in.

What steps can you take to reach that point?

Five levels of communication in teams

Before we delve into the five key transitions for teams, it is worth exploring five levels of communication as experienced in a team setting. It is useful to think of this as a pyramid. Teams begin at No 1 and work towards No 5, with increasing exposure to risk, vulnerability and criticism at each level.

1. Basic ritual: this is a safe place to start. When sharing basic rituals, we are weighing each other up and there is an unconscious measuring process going on.
2. Sharing information: the next layer up is when there is a confidence and trust to begin to share information. This might be personal information or progress and insights on internal projects.
3. Exchanging ideas and opinions: now we want to know what people really think. This is where the risk factor in teams can be increased. The asking of opinions and ideas. There may be an exposure to risk and a need to be bolder.
4. Free expression of feelings: some teams never really get to this stage. This can be a drag on potential when you can’t share feelings and there is a lot of energy wasted. There can be an atmosphere of tension.
5. Unspoken rapport: this is the nirvana. The stage where things happen and others know how to respond.

With these in mind, let’s get into those transitions.

There are five key transition scenarios experienced by teams:

1. The forming of a new team.
2. Onboarding new team members.
3. Joining an established team as a new leader.
4. Responding to (inevitable) disappointments and setbacks.
5. Responding to success.

These transitions can be both expected and unexpected. Dynamic team environments require adaptability, resilience and a commitment to continuous growth. By navigating these transition points with purpose and intention, teams can cultivate an environment of collaboration, innovation and excellence that propels them towards their collective aspirations.

1. The forming of a new team

Start off by building rapport fast. Don’t wait for trust to arrive. In any team development approach, you need to spend a significant amount of time upfront developing rapport and trust before you are ready to do anything else. You can measure this by assessing where everyone is at in the five levels of communication (see above).

Learn quickly about others’ strengths, weaknesses and working styles. Seek to understand from each individual what are they hoping to bring to the team.

Give people a sense of contribution and that everyone has a part to play. As the leader, set a clear, simple vision and specify what part each person has to play in this.

Clarify ‘the rules’ of the team and consider the creation of a team charter around standards, behaviours and values. Remember to involve the team in creating the charter because if there is that ownership, you tend to find the team set higher standards than the leader would, and that in turn raises the bar.

2. Onboarding a new team member

It can be easy to assume that it is the old team plus an additional person. This isn’t the case. When a new person joins or one leaves, this influences the team dynamic. As a leader, you need to be cognisant of this and be prepared to revert to the bottom of the communication pyramid (see above) at first to build back up again with group alignment.

It sounds simple but help create opportunities for the new person to introduce themselves, get to know others and have a sense of belonging in the team.

Closely aligned to this, invite individuals to contribute straight away to heighten that sense of belonging, as well as emphasising their strengths and how they can contribute both individually and across the team.

Beware of the ‘magic helper’ syndrome. There is a tendency in teams for a piling up of jobs the new person can take on. We don’t want to put a heavy load on straight away and hope they are the ‘magic person’ who will solve all the problems. Onboarding cleanly and intentionally is important.

3. Joining an established team as a leader

This is arguably one of the more trickier transitions, but one that is also very common.

Beware of ‘Year Zero’ syndrome. As a new leader coming in, show respect to the past. Don’t be dismissive of the past. Some colleagues may have worked there for a long time and have fond memories of the previous leader or team dynamic. Naturally, it will change but it’s important not to disrespect it.

Seek to build rapport. Some social time is useful for the team to learn who you are. The more they know about you the more they are likely to open up about themselves. The leader must support their team in having access to informal networks as well as formal ones.

Arrange one-to-ones as well as team meetings. Develop the relationship.

Allow for some ‘mourning’ of the previous leader. You can’t embrace the new without letting go of the past.

Give people your picture of the future. Give the purpose behind how you see the picture, why you are doing what you are doing. Outline broad plan of action. Be very clear on giving each person in your team clarity about the part they play so they feel connected to the vision.

4. Responding to (inevitable) disappointment

It’s important to acknowledge disappointments. Don’t shy away from it. Process it as a team. We discuss the use of visual methods such as timeline reviews to show the wider picture and journey.

Review the lessons learned from the disappointment and use these to inform the resetting of the team’s vision and goals. As part of the review process, don’t lose sight of what is still good and what you do well.

As a leader, offer and show thanks to the team. The rapport and relationship within the team will be crucial to getting back on track.

5. Responding to success

Success is also a significant transition point in teams. It’s a culmination of the great work the team has done, but also a chance to reflect on what next and how to get better.

Ensure you celebrate the success to enhance team cohesion. At the same time, stay humble as the likelihood is that other teams or the competition will have learned from your success.

Just as you should give thanks in disappointment, the same goes for responding to success. Similarly, conducting a lessons-learned review after winning is just as important as when you don’t win.

A very simple but powerful question a leader can ask their team is ‘what percentage of our potential have we actually reached?’ The answer is rarely 100%, therefore it creates an opportunity to engage in high quality conversation around what next and how we improve again.

And when transition messages are unwelcome…

Vulnerability is powerful, especially in candidly telling the team anything that you don’t know.

Don’t act the victim and be aware of your communication to your team.

Be emotionally open and honest, admitting to any discomfort, but also express honest positive emotion.

It doesn’t all have to be perceived negatively. Point out any potential advantages of the transition.

Similarly, emphasise what will stay the same through the transition. We know human beings don’t like change, so this should bring about some comfort.

Create a clear ‘call to action’ with next steps specified to outline the roadmap to moving forwards.

By Rachel Woodland

For this month’s Women’s High Performance Community call we turned our attention to how we’re approaching our self-development and any nuances that might emerge for women.

We spoke about self, or personal, development, as well as career development, and the place for each before turning our attention towards difficult conversations and allyship.

There is no doubting that those who joined the call are committed to their development. However, no one felt like they have a well-structured development plan that they simply were not following.

Currently, there’s a general sense that a lot of effort is driven by the individual – reflecting upon this, it’s potentially what those guiding us are told to do.

However, there is a request for more structure, confidence, time and opportunity from above to elevate the impact of our development.

It also came across from the call that many have big obvious blocks of learning, through courses or further education, but struggle to have a clear plan if those aren’t in place or if they are between courses. There are also those, who are doing a lot of learning simply by doing their job each day, which is where reflective tools and support from above can be powerful.

The Women’s Community suggested these five ideas as ways to make development as impactful as possible: 

1. Protecting dedicated time for self-development.
2. Support from above – this might be in sense-checking plans, ways of bringing plans to life, sharing career options, identifying experience gaps and creating opportunities to address them.
3. A way to be kept accountable.
4. Collaboration – both in development alongside others as well as in sharing learnings.
5. Using a mentor.

Other examples that we’ve seen work too: 

Visits to different organisations – and having others visit you. This helps avoid echo chambers and benchmarks our practices against others. This becomes increasingly important if our only working experiences are in a single organisation.

Whole team development on specific skills. Having a whole team approach can help avoid siloed learning and contribute to learnings sticking.

It’s always good to remember that we need to leave space for stretch and being in uncomfortable positions. Again, these moments become more impactful if we can reflect on them and shape our development plans as a consequence. Finally, remember: some people’s development is focusing on saying no.

The Community once again spoke about the importance of our networks and brands to career development and shared the following reflections:

• Networks include both internal and external relationships.
• If your brand is a reflection of your authentic self, we need to know who we want to be and take time to reflect on that.
• If you know your personal brand it breeds the confidence to express ourselves and our thoughts as we meet new people and expand our networks.
• If you can better manage your own thoughts and how you think about yourself, it could help those that suffer from impostor syndrome. It could help quieten negative thoughts and be reflected in our behaviour.

The Community then shared advice for when having difficult conversations:

Difficult conversations can take several forms – they do not necessary involved conflicts or saying no. There’s a range: it could be talking to a new person or even when you are taking steps to change the dynamics and the way things have always been done.

There are stories of female coaches in an otherwise male coaching team stepping out of their comfort zones because their approach to coaching is different. In one particular case, the female coach boosted her confidence by reminding herself that she’s adding to the discourse, providing different inputs and possibilities, and a platform for conversation.

We know that women are different, and that in sport women are often in a minority; so it would be easy to understand why we might doubt ourselves in these moments. However, we can retrain ourselves to not think in this way.

One additional approach that can help us is to have the conversation as part of a regular update session, so it’s not ‘singled out’ as having the need for a difficult conversation.

So what would we want an ally to support us with to enable us to be our most confident selves going into these conversations? These were some of the group’s suggestions: 

• An ally would get you to reflect on the makeup of your environment. Is it a genuinely safe space and environment to have honest and difficult conversations?
• If there is a deficiency in being able to have challenging conversations, an ally would recommend dedicated training and skill development to enable you to have courageous conversations. Similarly, scenario planning and training can bring these to life. An ally can be someone to practise these with and provide feedback.
• We’ve talked about the makeup of the environment. An ally would suggest that open and genuine space for women to talk will be impactful. Do these exist in your environments?
• In being able to enact positive change and have challenging conversations, being able to understand your stakeholders can be worthwhile, particularly in understanding the behaviours of those you wish to have conversations with.
• If you are an ally, we value vulnerability but also honest feedback, so there is no risk of overprotection.

By Luke Whitworth

What traits characterise a sustainable high performance culture?

We have all asked ourselves this question at various times but Dr Edd Vahid and Management Futures decided to delve a little deeper.

In June 2022, the business and leadership consultancy commissioned Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the Premier League, to undertake a piece of research to discover the ‘secrets of culture’. Two years later, this project, titled ‘Cultural Hypothesis’, is on the cusp of publication.

Ahead of its release, Vahid is leading a three-part Performance Support Series at the Leaders Performance Institute that seeks to explore the enablers in high performing cultures.

The first session, which took place in early May, was a useful way of testing the importance and relevance of the four enablers highlighted by Vahid in the Cultural Hypothesis: purpose, psychological safety, belonging and cultural leadership.

Vahid explored each enabler in turn.

1. Purpose

Most sustained high performing cultures have an inspiring purpose. Vahid referred to clothing brand Patagonia, which says ‘we’re in the business to save our home planet’ and its every action is driven by that purpose. This example calls to mind the work of Alex Hill who, in his book Centennials, suggests that organisations that have sustained success over a long period of time have a stable core and a disruptive edge. According to Hill, it is important that your purpose doesn’t fluctuate too much or disappear because its has the power to help your organisation shape society and enable you to effectively engage future talent.

Another aspect of ‘purpose’ is the idea of individual and organisational alignment. Those organisations that are tending to culture regularly are taking the time to consider how their purpose resonates at an individual and organisational level.

Questions to consider:

• Does your organisation have an inspiring purpose?
• How closely aligned are your people’s sense of individual purpose and your organisation’s?

2. Psychological safety

In The Fearless Organization, psychologist Amy Edmondson suggested that ‘making the environment safe for open communication about challenges, concerns and opportunities is one of the most important leadership responsibilities in the twenty-first century’.

The findings of Vahid’s ‘Cultural Hypothesis’ suggest that cultural leadership plays a fundamental role in an individual’s experience of psychological safety. In the session, he referred to Netflix, which has adapted its in-house feedback mechanisms to ‘lead with context and not control’ (concepts that are highly aligned and loosely coupled).

Questions to consider:

• What are you doing to build safety?
• How do you respond to mistakes in your environment?

3. Belonging

Owen Eastwood, in his seminal book Belonging, wrote that ‘our senses are primed to constantly seek information about belonging from our environment. We are hardwired to quickly and intuitively understand whether or not we are in a safe place with people we can trust’.

Organisational anthropologist Timothy Clark also highlights a bridge between psychological safety and belonging in suggesting that the first level of psychological safety is the idea of inclusion safety – you belong to something.

New Zealand Rugby provide a case study in this area, as the theme of belonging is central to their philosophy. They recognise the diversity of their playing groups. They invest in their inductions, and there’s some literature that highlights the importance of your sense of belonging on entry and the critical process of effective inductions to ensure from the very outset that you feel like you belong in your environment. There is a regular and considered approach to belonging cues and rituals that reinforce the idea that people belong, and that could be as simple as ensuring that people’s voices are heard.

Ultimately, we want to get people to a point of challenge. The most optimal environments where there is a high degree of psychological safety is where individuals feel comfortable to challenge.

A question to consider:

• What belonging cues are evident in your environment?

4. Cultural leadership

An inspiring purpose is essential, a psychologically safe environment is crucial, and a sense of belonging exists as a fundamental human need. Coupled with exceptional leadership, these elements distinguish cultures that thrive.

Leadership is presented as a crucial and critical part of Vahid’s ‘Cultural Hypothesis’. It feels central in that it is seen as a super enabler, that when you’ve got strong and aligned cultural leadership it will be a precursor, certainly to psychological safety and belonging.

Questions to consider:

• Who are your cultural guardians?
• How are you supporting the development of your guardians?

The four traits of the ‘Cultural Hypothesis’ ranked by members

Vahid invited attendees to rank their current satisfaction with these enablers. This offers a snapshot of the state of play across elite sport, particularly in North America, Europe and Australasia:

1. Purpose
2. Belonging
3. Cultural leadership
4. Psychological safety

Other reflections on culture

The ‘Iceberg Effect’

The discourse prompted a further question on the nature of ‘culture’. Vahid cited the work of psychologist Edgar Schein on the ‘Iceberg Effect’. Schein’s model likens culture to an iceberg: what we see (artifacts) is just a fraction of what lies beneath (espoused beliefs and assumptions). This is how that may look in a sports organisation:

• What we see: policies, systems and processes.
• What we say: ideals, goals, values and aspirations.
• What we believe: underlying assumptions.

Culture: a ‘group phenomenon’

The ‘Iceberg Effect’ chimes with the work of business academic Boris Groysberg who in 2018 co-wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review with Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J Yo-Jud Cheng. They defined culture as:

• Shared: it is a group phenomenon. It is a product of the interaction between multiple people.
• Pervasive: it exists on multiple levels.
• Enduring: it is resistant to change.
• Implicit: it possesses a ‘silent’ language.[1]

[1] ‘The Leaders Guide to Corporate Culture’, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2018

If you are interested in joining the second session of this Performance Support Series with Dr Edd Vahid on Thursday 6 June, sign up here.