By John Portch

Does the thought of transformation scare you and your peers?

Removing the fear from performance was at the heart of this month’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Kia Oval.

Over the course of two days, speakers from organisations including the England & Wales Cricket Board [ECB], the Football Association [FA], Australian Institute of Sport [AIS], Brisbane Lions, British Cycling and the National Health Service [NHS] continually returned to the theme of removing the fear factor from performance.

Here we present seven steps towards generating the clarity and purpose that fills people with energy, delivers alignment, and enables people to adhere to principles when challenged.

1. Eliminate negativity – be positive

When Rob Key, the Managing Director of Cricket at the ECB, took the reins in April 2022, the England men’s Test team was at its lowest ebb in decades. The team had lost its last five series when Key, alongside ECB Performance Director Mo Bobat and new Head Coach Brendon McCullum, decided to adopt an approach to performance rooted in positivity rather than negativity. England were accused of naivety – until the team started performing in fearless fashion. Critically, they stuck with it following setbacks and defeats across all formats of the game.

“English cricket has [historically] spent its entire time looking at the danger… my view is that we have so many talented players… it’s not a lack of talent, it’s the mentality of English cricket, especially county cricket, which is so conservative. That was my thing: we need to change the way we think about the game, the way that we do things, the mentality. It wasn’t about winning. There isn’t a person that doesn’t want to win… this informed every decision that Mo and I ended up making.”

Rob Key

2. Promote playfulness

Key readily admitted that he could have achieved very little in his first months without the counsel and support of Bobat. He needed Bobat onside – and free to speak without fear or reservations – if the ECB’s renewed emphasis on positivity was to deliver tangible outcomes. It was not mindless idealism.

“Rob immediately made me feel valued… and then I was going to give it my all. The thing that I enjoyed most from him, having worked with him for a year and a half, has been [the realisation] that I am at my best when I’m playful; and working with Rob encourages me to be playful and I think that enabled you to do not worry so much about the risk and the threat. And I think if you’re playful and you don’t take yourself too seriously what appears like a risky decision or brave decision to someone else just seems like the right thing to do.”

Mo Bobat

Bobat’s point was underlined by Lucy Pearson, the Director of Education at the FA, who has worked in both sporting and academic settings. Pearson explained that playfulness in the FA’s approach to education enhances skill acquisition and attainment for athletes and coaches alike.

“I think play and playfulness is really important if we’re going to achieve high performance in any area. How do you foster playfulness in your workplaces and challenge the seriousness that comes with the serious thing of high performance? Because we take ourselves too seriously at times. That doesn’t mean that everything’s hilarious – maybe it is – but it does mean that we adopted a slightly different approach.”

Lucy Pearson

3. Create safe spaces for failure

Positivity and playfulness count for little if every error is pounced upon. The fear factor would return in an instant. Chris Fagan realised this upon his appointment as the Brisbane Lions’ Senior Coach in 2017. He took over a team in turmoil and the results remained poor for the following two campaigns. Then Brisbane started winning and gradually became one of the finest teams in the AFL [Australian Football League]. Their grand final appearance in September showed how far they’d come.

“I told the players at the very start when we got together that we’re going to fail our way to the top and not to worry about that because it’s through your failures that you learn. These blokes were really frightened about failing and I had to take that fear out of it for them… [the concept of having a growth mindset] we’ve pretty much been doing that stuff for the last seven years.”

Chris Fagan

4. Have you prioritised your debriefing?

The OSAD [Observational Structured Assessment of Debriefing] tool is a useful way of reducing the fear factor in surgical operating theatres. It was based on studies in the UK, US and Australia and, not only does it allow for analytical objectivity and precision, its emergence has seen processes of debriefing brought into an environment where debriefs were unpopular with those who might benefit the most from self-reflection. As consultant emergency surgeon Sonal Arora told the Leaders audience, OSAD seeks to provide evidence-based performance debriefing so that surgeons and surgical teams can train “the gold medallist” rather than the “runner-up”. However, as she explained, such a system must be baked into the culture.

“People said to us… things like debriefing and feedback need to be part of the culture. People need ring-fenced time for this, it can’t just be an add-on, ad hoc that some people are doing well and other people are doing it off the cuff at the end of a game, at the end of an operation, and the end of the week. It actually needs to be given the time and the importance. And that comes from the top down, it’s not going to be down to the individual person in their organisation – we need to get buy-in from seniors… we looked at the components of the ideal debrief from looking at all of the literature, all of the interviews, gathering all the experts.”

Sonal Arora

5. Leave no one behind

The safe spaces and psychological safety stem from people feeling that they belong – something that was not true of the AIS. In 2022, the organisation was still developing its 2023+ performance strategy as the nation prepares for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games on home soil in Brisbane. Before the strategy launched, Matti Clements, the organisation’s Executive General Manager, was given a reality check by some of the nation’s Paralympians.

“[Some Paralympians] felt that they were an afterthought. Our system had been created around able-body and that they were just a consideration once everything else had been done. For them to belong to the strategy, they needed to see themselves as part of that strategy. So we made a very considered commitment to them to ensure all of our programmes, the frameworks, models etc. in the future had inclusive design as a basic fundamental principle, which would not only benefit them but broader cohorts in our system.”

Matti Clements

Similarly, Clements explained that Australia has the “longest living culture in the world yet we are white and middle class and do not utilise the knowledge of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers about passing on knowledge from generation to generation and getting better. We’ve made a commitment to do better at that.”

Her colleague Bill Davoren, the AIS’s Head of High Performance Coach Development, spoke of some of the progress being made.

“I’m very proud that I’ve got a gentleman in my team who comes from an indigenous background. He is a former Australian boxing coach, an amazing story. Was Australian military before he became a boxing coach and he went on to get a PhD in coaching theory and coaching methodology. He’s probably been my greatest teacher over the past three years. He’s talked to me a lot about the concept of yarning, sharing stories, sharing information, building connections.”

Bill Davoren

6. Empower your people

Inclusion is not just a nice-to-have or merely a moral imperative. Time and again studies have demonstrated that diverse teams produce better results. Remove the fear, make people feel welcome, and when they are empowered to input you’ll alight on a better performance strategy. The point was convincingly made by Jon Norfolk, the Head Coach of British Cycling, who explains that strategising cannot be the preserve of the few.

“The clearest plan wins… the clearer your plan is the more people can access it, the more people understand it, and the more people you’ll have to back your plan. I’ve seen situations where the plan is the product of the coach and it’s only the coach that’s inputted into it… if you have one person inputting into a plan you’ve got their biases baked into that plan. The more people that input the more that bias is neutralised. The clearer your plan is the more people can input into it and the better plan you get. The clearer the plan, the more impactful the plan.”

Jon Norfolk

7. Finally, win well

The AIS’s strategy for 2032 includes in its vision the need to ‘win well’. They embody the growing belief that wellbeing and performance are indivisible. Taking the idea further, wellbeing is critical to the elimination of fear.

“We believe wellbeing is fundamental to sustainable high performance success in our country and we wanted to make a commitment to our athletes, future and current, that we would do better. When all those leaders signed their commitment to standing behind Australia’s first-ever united strategy, they also committed to a win well pledge. As leaders of the system, they said: ‘we stand here and we’re going to commit to creating cultures that consider wellbeing at the core of all high performance programmes now and in the future and we believe it’s going to be a performance advantage.’”

Matti Clements

By Bobby L Scales II

One of my favorite questions when I talk to people is: what are you reading right now?

A while ago, I asked a friend, and his reply fascinated me. “I’m not reading anything new,” he said. “I’m going back through books I’ve read and I’m really trying to pick up on the things I missed before”.

The idea resonated with me. “Go back through the books, podcasts or articles you really felt you learnt from and relearn,” he continued. We all have a mountain of books or e-books that we dive into with both feet with the intention of learning or educating ourselves in one form or fashion. Even the most intelligent among us can’t catch, retain and process everything.

He is definitely onto something. I have found that when you return to a book, there will be things you want to brush up on but there is also going to be things you missed first time around because you were so engrossed in other ways. Much of this is due to the fact that whether it be six weeks or six months on, certainly there is some personal growth and development. With that in mind, things you either didn’t catch or glossed over will have a different meaning once you go back to it.

We should all make the time.

‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’

It is not just books or articles. With the forthcoming Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London in mind, you may have notes of previous conferences or conversations that hold even greater relevance today. You could probably even pick up the phone and reacquaint yourself with people you connected with at those conferences.

My first Leaders Sport Performance Summit was at London’s Emirates Stadium in November 2015. I appeared onstage during my tenure as Director of Player Development at the Los Angeles Angels alongside Stuart Worden, the Principal of the renowned BRIT School. We discussed talent development at length and I stayed on for both days and took notes from a number of other sessions.

I revisited those notes recently and it is funny to reflect on some of the things you write down. Events will happen in life and it will amplify certain elements that I won’t say didn’t apply back in 2015, but they can have a boatload more meaning eight years on.

There is research that people retain more learning when we write things down with pen and paper. I keep all my notes in one book I call ‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’. It sounds like a silly title but there are thoughts, quotes and notes from the different insights that fascinated me. I used to be an eBook reader but there is something different about having a hard copy book with a pen and highlighter at hand. Like many of you, I am sure, I’ll write notes in the margin or highlight certain passages. My shelves are full of annotated books.

As for my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I had it in hand at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2017 when I returned to the Sport Performance Summit, this time as a delegate. I flicked through my notes recently – I remember taking them sat next to Leaders’ Matthew Stone – and there were a couple of concepts that really hit home harder now than they did then just because of the circumstances in my life. I had left professional baseball for a position in private industry. While I was fairly certain what I was doing at the time wasn’t going to be it. I was at a crossroads professionally. In Chicago, Stuart Lancaster spoke about his own personal crossroads after having been sacked as Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team. Stuart’s presentation that day and the notes I took from it are still staples of my decision making tree to this day.  As we all know, when you work in professional athletics more often than not you are going to be sacked at some point… I was again. The first place I looked the last time was ‘The Book Of Intelligent Stuff-Chicago 2017’.

Don’t agree? Do more digging

That’s another thing about conferences. You will look around the auditorium and see people with their heads down taking notes. You are looking at them and thinking ‘should I be writing this down?’ Certain things just resonate with people at certain times.

In my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I’ve got three quote sections where I’ll write down things I hear on Instagram or Facebook, for example. If I’m listening to a podcast and a guests says something resonant, I’ll make a note on my desk or my phone and later add it to my book.

I will also note down things I disagree with. You owe it to yourself to learn why you disagree with a point and investigate it further. If you’re reading an article or a book and they say X, Y or Z, why do they feel that way? You take the emotion out of it and learn why a person feels that way or why they think this isn’t actually as important as we once thought it was. There could be some academic research behind it or some hard numbers. It is important to investigate why that person came to that conclusion and maybe decide that you need to change your position. We owe it to ourselves to think critically and challenge what we think and what others present. It can only make you sharper

All of that is part of the life-long learning process we should all be on.

By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Case Study virtual roundtable of 2023, we focused our attention on the theme of change management and, in particular, exploring experiences and approaches for doing this effectively from a position of leadership.

For the first part of the discussion, we heard from Bobby L Scales II, a former professional baseball player and front office executive, before engaging in some thoughts and experiences of our own around the topic.

This summary is split into two parts, the first, highlighting the insights from Scales, the second, the group’s thoughts on what they have seen work well when it comes to effective change. When considering the topic of organisational change, you will often here of the ’90 Days’ concept, which underpinned some of the experiences Scales shared with us in the first segment of the roundtable.

Win the people

Before we explored different elements and specific details for the ’90 Days’ approach to change, Scales shared that from day zero it is crucial to ‘win the people’ as part of this process. The leader or those involved need to show strong emotional intelligence through understanding contractual situations, team structure and roles. There is a need to be authentic. There must be clear intent around communication and decision-making. Finally, acting with integrity and communicating effectively are important elements to set the stall out successfully from the very outset.

First 30 Days – how did we get here?

Being clear on how you ‘win the people’ in Scales’ experiences is an important cornerstone of the effectiveness of the change process. Now this has been outlined, we can look towards three other key foundations: how did we get there, strategy formation and strategy implementation. In the first thirty days, we must think and reflect on the circumstances surrounding why you as a leader or team are there. Reflective questions you can explore include: what is broken? Are these challenges technical, tactical, cultural? What is needed to resolve what is broken? Is it a case of filling the cracks, re-modelling or tearing it down and starting afresh? Finally, what role do you as the leader play in fixing this?

First 60 Days – strategy formation

Using the first 30 days to evaluate the situation allows you to move into the next phase of the process, which Scales refers to as strategy formation and something you can do around the 60-day mark. This is where you develop your strategy, so what is important to get right? First and foremost, involve the stakeholders in the process as this gives you the insight and data to find out more about your people’s ideas, abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Secondly, by this stage we should have clarity on what needs fixing, so development of the technical and tactical items that you are going to feed into the strategy formation. Finally, developing and clearly outlining the roadmap of an action plan that is different to the previous regime that can generate collective buy-in and clear direction. As the leader initiating the change, clear and effective communication of the process, procedure and expectations are crucial; as are the formulation of key performance indicators that reflect the new direction to allow for measurement in defining and measuring the success of the process.

First 90 Days – strategy implementation

Finally, time for implementation and action. It often sounds easy but as Scales reiterated, it is far and away the most difficult stage of the process. What is important to look out for? He explained that it is natural for people to revert to what is comfortable. As the leader, you need to be aware of this to not stifle the action plan. To support this, ensure there are active reviews along the journey to provide opportunities to reflect and adjust if needs be. This stage is also going to be a key insight around personnel, and specifically if you have the correct people on the bus and if they are in the correct seats. Your active reviews will help provide key information around this – here is where you may have to make difficult decisions if certain individuals aren’t on the bus with you or if adjustments around roles need to take place.

Change management checklist

For the second part of this roundtable, we asked attendees when thinking about effective change management, what have you seen work really well? The idea for this segment of the call was to create a checklist of best practices and considerations based on the experiences of those on the call, complementing what Scales learned from his personal experience. All of the responses from the group could be categorised into: transparency, commitment to philosophy and core values and alignment.

Transparency

There were a number of responses that fed into the bucket of the importance of transparency. Having transparency with all decision-making and structural changes that are decided upon. The leader or group being personally or collectively transparent in sharing information about themselves, what they value, expectations of one another and clarity on what their leadership approach is. Being clear in the message, with transparent and outlined goals and roles for all involved, providing autonomy for people so they feel a part of the progression. Creating the conditions for empowerment with accountability, and even safe space opportunities to let people talk, ensuring they feel that empowerment in the first place. When change is done well, the leadership demonstrate vulnerability to ‘open up the room’ and accompany this with active seeking feedback throughout the change process. One participant shared the importance of tapping into the self-determination of employees, notably their competence (the recognition of skillsets), connection (building relationships) and choice (collating opinions and fostering  a sense of autonomy).

Commitment to philosophy and core values

A second core section for effective change as outlined by those on the call was a commitment to a philosophy and core values. Those that have seen change done effectively suggested that it is important for the leader or leadership to be themselves and intentional, displaying their core values as a person or collective. They outline clear expectations with a clear vision, but without judgement. They also have the ability to show what excellent looks like and galvanise an organisation around the philosophy and commitment to high standards.

Alignment

Finally, a word that you could expect to see when considering important elements of change management – alignment. Those who are effective change agents are able to co-develop the change with key stakeholders, creating a chain of clarity and alignment. They are skilled at being emotionally intelligent, so in getting to know those involved, are able to align tactics and strategies to best support them through the process. They are able to build strong relationships and trust with all involved, thus actively engaging them on the journey. As part of channelling alignment, consider asking your people for their suggested changes or ideas before suggesting yours to continue to develop their sense of empowerment. Finally, another effective strategy is finding out who the early adopters are or those who are the biggest influencers, seeking to generate alignment with them to continue positive momentum.

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A Gambling Harm Prevention Podcast brought to you by our Partners

“You can watch the room change from that lived experience approach,” says Marc Williams, a programme facilitator at gambling harm minimization consultancy EPIC Risk Management.

Marc, a former professional footballer who suffered the consequences of gambling harm, will speak to athletes and teams with a view to educating and informing them about the pitfalls and trigger associated with gambling harm.

“They can see what we’ve been through, where gambling took us, and from that they can really relate to it themselves and think ‘wow, this could be me’,” he tells John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Marc is joined by Rachael Jankowsky, the Head of Player Care & Well-Being at Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire, to discuss EPIC’s work with the club, which included Marc presenting in front of young players.

On today’s special episode, we discuss topics including:

• The beginnings of the Fire and EPIC’s collaboration [6:30];
• The difference between ‘textbook’ education and an in-person presentation [10:00];
• Marc and EPIC’s post-session support services [15:30];
• Overcoming the challenges of low base knowledge and the language barrier [18:30].

For those seeking more information on gambling harm prevention, check out EPIC Risk Management’s white paper review from February 2023.

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Performance Support Series virtual roundtable series of 2023, we are focusing our attention on the overarching topic of performance planning.

Over the course of the three sessions, it is the intention to focus on three core areas as part of this topic:

• Leading with purpose: the relationship between personal and professional purpose on shaping organisational and team planning.
• Goal harmony vs team harmony: how can you create team alignment to galvanise and focus your team performance?
• Debriefing: implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

 The importance of leading with purpose

Leading with purpose was our first port of call and the aims of this particular session were to reflect on and share what we value and what our professional purpose is. Why is the notion of leading with  purpose important when considering Performance Planning? We are operating in both a complex world and landscape, such is the pace of high performance sport. This quote below from Ronald Heifetz et al (2009) in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership captures why this is important.

“When you understand your orienting purpose, you can understand and make day-to-day decisions in that larger context… When things get tough, you orienting purpose serves as a reminder to you and to others of the reasons you are seeking to lead change.”

Harry Kraemer (2011) supports this thinking by suggesting that ‘becoming the best kind of leader isn’t about emulating a role model or historic figure. Rather, the leadership must be rooted in who the leader is and what matters most to them. When the leader truly knows themselves and what they stand for, it is much easier to know what to do in any situation. It always comes down to doing the right thing and doing the best you can’.

Living and leading with purpose is so important in a complex world.

Engagement is driven by clarity of values

What makes us have a great day at work or engaging effectively with the environments we are in? Evidence from researchers Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner (2007) points to our engagement being driven by clarity of values, in particular alignment of organisational and personal values. Finding alignment in both values is a multiplier and developer of oxytocin. Do your personal and organisational values connect?

The late Steve Jobs talked of this dynamic – “I thought deeply about this. I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and as we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide, I can’t do that. I’d rather quit”.

The science of connection

How does purpose create trust and joy? As part of this next segment of the conversations, we explored why being clear on our ‘why’ creates a sense of wellbeing and joy.

Research by Paul J. Zak shows that having a sense of higher purpose stimulates oxytocin production – as does trust. Trust and purpose mutually reinforce each other, providing a mechanism for extended oxytocin release, which in turn produces happiness. Joy or engagement with others comes from doing purpose-driven work with a trusted team.

Are you connecting your values? Do you have a real sense of purpose? Does that give you joy? A simple but effective exercise for you and your teams to do is a ‘professional purpose statement’. Take the time to reflect or write down what that purpose is. Start with the words: ‘my professional purpose is to…’.

How to find purpose?

It can be challenging to find and define your purpose. To help guide this discovery, there are a few simple questions you can ask yourself or have members of your team reflect on themselves to identify core values and purpose:

• What are my strengths?
• What inspires me?
• What fills me with energy, accomplishment and passion?
• What impact do others say that you have?

In summarising session one as part of this series of learning, we leaned into the work of Hubert Joly, businessman and Harvard Business School faculty member, on five core principles of purpose leadership. Joly suggest that these five principles include the below:

1. Being clear about your purpose – how are you connecting to your company purpose?
2. Being clear about your role – not your job title.
3. Being clear about whom you serve.
4. Being driven by values.
5. Being authentic.

By Iain Brunnschweiler

Your heartbeat is racing, and you’ve got a sick feeling in your stomach.

You are about to walk into a meeting with the rest of your leadership team and you know that you’ve got something to say to add value to the conversation. However, the dynamic in the room means that you already know that you will hold your tongue and won’t feel comfortable to say what you really think.

Sound familiar? If it doesn’t, then you’ve done extremely well to navigate a career thus far without this experience!

For the majority of us, this kind of feeling may have occurred a handful of times, or it may have occurred hundreds of times. You might be reading this thinking that this is exactly how you will be feeling either tomorrow, or later this week.

Seeking optimal

This situation surely cannot be optimal. It cannot be optimal for the individual who is suffering the anxiety-inducing thoughts, and it certainly cannot be optimal for the business who is deploying this group of people to work together.

Whether in business, music, sport or military, the ability for us to maximise the combined forces of those ‘in the room’ is absolutely paramount for success. And, more importantly, for the humans involved to feel comfortable enough to contribute and feel valued.

One of my key focus areas in recent years has been supporting people to work better together. In sports, a key objective has been to look at what is broadly termed ‘co-coaching’.

Co-coaching is the ability for multiple coaches to work together in the same coaching session. With growing support staffs, often in elite team sports today there will be two or three technical coaches, along with multiple other specialists such as strength & conditioning coaches, analysts, psychologists and physiotherapists. With all of these expert practitioners on the same field at the same time, the coordination of their roles and responsibilities is paramount. So, co-coaching could describe two coaches working together with the same squad, in the same session. Or it could be an entire support staff of seven or eight working together at the same time. This can get pretty complicated, and it is very easy for their to be a lack of role clarity, which results in a lack of impact on player development.

In my experience, there are three broad, fundamental qualities needed to co-coach effectively. They are:

1) Having an aligned purpose or intended outcome.

2) Having clarity on individuals roles in order to achieve the outcome.

3) Having a level of respect for the other members of the team and the contribution they are making.

The special sauce

As my old boss, the relentlessly successful Simon Timson (currently the Performance Director at Manchester City) once said to me, we need “no precious professional boundaries”. What the heck does that mean, I hear you cry!?

Well, I learned, and then experienced exactly what that meant during my time at England Cricket. We had a performance support team comprising technical coaches, an operations team, a physio, S&C coach, analyst, psychologist and education/welfare coaches. Similar teams will be present in many sports performance/development environments.

However, I have rarely experienced these teams operating anywhere near optimally together. And that’s where Simon’s wonderful phrase comes in.

For example, as the head coach of a national age group team, I embraced the view of the physio. This is not uncommon, he is a highly qualified technical expert in his field. However, it was not just his physio-medical view that I would be seeking. I would also genuinely embrace his view on the way a batter had approached an innings, or the field setting that we were going with during a youth international match. That’s what it means, that is what Simon meant. As a staff, we were aware that there was a high level of technical expertise in our own fields, but the special sauce was that we trusted each other to provide a view that wasn’t necessarily in our lane. The fast bowling coach could genuinely provide a view on the gym programme or the analyst discuss the education provision. This feeling that we had amongst us is rare. Too many times I have seen people being shut down because the leader in the room was not open to a level of cognitive diversity. Their mind was shut to the fact that someone deemed to be a non-technical coach might actually have value to add.

So what led this group to come to this place? I think there was one fundamental skill that we worked on, got better at, and evolved: listening.

It sounds simple, but how often do you REALLY listen to your colleagues? Listen to understand. Listen with all of your senses. Listen for the story behind the story, for the values or beliefs that might be guiding the narrative. To create and hold space for the contribution of others, as a leader, rather than to fill it with your own preconceived ideas or to confirm your own biases.

Listening is a whole lot harder than it sounds. Especially when the heat is on, and decisions need to be made. Listening takes energy and it takes attention. It is also really easy to hear what you want to hear rather than what is really being said. I have often asked a player “How was training today?” To which the answer is almost invariably “Good, thanks”! Only by asking a better question such as “What did you learn in training today?”, or “What made you think the most in training today?”, and then really listening carefully to the answer have I unlocked conversations with players that I never thought I would have.

So when you reflect on your own contribution to a team, or specifically a team meeting, please do consider the role you are playing. Are you causing anxiety in others, to the point at which they may not say the one thing that could be critical to success? Are you creating and holding the space to genuinely listen? Because if you aren’t, then you’ll almost certainly be making much worse decisions due to not having the full picture from all of the minds you’ve got in the team.

Questions for leaders:

• How aware are you of how members of your team are feeling in different meetings?
• To what extent do you embrace the thinking of someone who may not be a technical expert in that area? (Some call this a ‘naïve expert’)
• How much of your energy and skill are you protecting to genuinely listen?

Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.

By Luke Whitworth

For the latest edition of our Leadership Skills Series, we delved into the skill of strengths-based development.

Which areas of skill should we focus our energy on? If you were to rank those skills on a scale of 1-5, the tendency is for individuals to focus on the weakest link and what is ‘holding you back’ from a development point of view. This is the traditional way of thinking about the development of skills.

Think about your own world, what is one strength that you know that you have? Secondly, what is one area that could hold you back? As part of the interaction on this particular session, we asked attendees to reflect on the time spent on their development based on whether they spend hours, days, week or they don’t spend time on their development because it is too hard or they don’t have time:

• Hours: 72%
• Days: 22%
• Weeks: 3%
• I Don’t Because It’s Too Hard: 3%

The consensus is that we invest time in developing the areas we are weakest at and the most popular response to this with 72% was that a large percentage of people dedicate hours to this focus of development.

A strengths-based approach

A Strengths-based approach (part of positive psychology) is based on the assumption that each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of their greatest strength. Research by Gallup over the last 22 years indicates that when we focus on strengths, productivity can increase by up to 40%.

How would your development look if you invested those hours, days or weeks into making your strengths super strengths, as opposed to focusing on weaker areas?

The notion of a strengths-based approach sits in the field of positive psychology which is a science of the positive aspects of human life such as happiness, wellbeing and flourishing. Psychologist Martin Seligman offers the definition that positive psychology is “the scientific study of optimal human functioning (that) aims to discover and promote the factors that allow individuals to thrive”.

When considering a strengths-based approach that sits within the space of positive psychology, it is important to outline the differences between positive psychology and traditional psychology which can be evaluated by two different types of modelling – disease and health:

Disease model (psychology)

• Focus on weaknesses
• Overcoming deficiencies
• Avoiding pain
• Running from unhappiness
• Getting to a neutral state

Health model (positive psychology)

• Focus on strengths
• Building resilience
• Fostering strengths
• Pursuing happiness
• Nurturing positivity

Dr Ilona Bonniwell stated that ‘psychology has more often than not emphasised the shortcomings of individuals as compared with their potential’. Seligman supports this point by stating that positive psychology ‘is the psychology of what is “right” with people. What are people doing when they are in ‘peak performance’ state, optimistic and positive?’

Identifying our strengths

How do you know that something is a strength to you?

• Something feels core to who you are as a person. It’s part of who you are. Your identity. It captures your uniqueness.
• It energises you when you use it.
• It more than likely comes quite naturally to you.
• You sometimes go into a ‘flow state’ when using it, losing track of time.
• Others might notice you using your strengths.

If you reflect and think about your teams, who in your teams are positive and thriving, and what is the potential for them if they actually unlock that even more? For those who aren’t perhaps thriving – what are their strengths? What are they not yet perhaps conscious and aware of? Actually, if we focused on those things, could they unlock their sense of self-belief and, therefore, their development?

The notion of realising your strengths forms a key component of positive psychology. In the literature, you will often come across the equation referring to Talent x Effort = Realised Strength. If we were to focus on the traditional model of psychology, we give maximum effort to the weakest components.

Developing strengths in others

Our roles as leaders is to help others be their best and we can use a strengths-based approach to do that. Gallup’s State of the Workplace report explored what happens when managers primarily focus on employees developing a weakness and employees developing strengths:

• Employees developing weaknesses: this led to a 20% chance of the employee being actively disengaged.
• Employees developing strengths: this led to a 1% chance of the employee being actively disengaged.

Creating opportunities for self-awareness in others feeds part of developing strengths in others. Are they aware of who they are when they are at their best, and how to do that? Do they have strong strategies to be that?

To explore the landscape of self-awareness, we ran another interactive poll to explore the awareness of those in your team. What are they more aware of?

• They are more aware of who they are when they are at their best? 32%
• They are more aware of who they are when they’re not at their best? 68%

The responses were overwhelming in suggesting that our team members are more aware of who they are when they’re not at their best (68%) as opposed to being at their best (32%).

Enhancing awareness of strengths

Who are we when we are at our best?

• ‘Peak’ performance state: our mind and body are in a state of congruence.
• Strategies to make the best of our strengths and resources: when you are in that peak performance state, how do you do it? How do you think, behave and communicate with yourself and others around you to get the best outcomes?
• Intention and attention: who do you intend to show up as and are you aware of that person?

The five concepts below recreate the Logical Levels of Change model devised by renowned thought leader Robert Dilts. The model identifies our experiences when we are at our best:

1. Identity: how you (and others) might describe you.
2. Beliefs & values: what is important to you. What you believe. The Values you navigate yourself by.
3. Capabilities & resources: your skills, talents, strengths and capabilities – the unique inner resources you draw upon.
4. Behaviours: your behaviours, habits, routines and communications – the things you do.
5. Environment: your environment and your impact on it.

What can unlock the awareness of strengths in ourselves and others? There are three ways that leaders and managers can do it. It is useful to ask yourselves the questions of what do we want our teams to experience and who do they need to be in order to experience that?

• Intention: to unlock that potential.
• Attention: what do we need to pay attention to?
• A coaching approach: how do we give ourselves the best chance? Countless studies show that a coaching approach sits in the highest performance of managers.

To support a coaching approach, we explored Professor Angus MacLeod’s Three Instruments of Coaching to provide us with some simple but effective tools in developing this approach:

1. Questions: focusing those questions on their strengths. Ask them, what is it that that you want and who do you want to be? If you want to develop that strength, where do you already have it?
2. Silence: coaching can often be about being silent and expecting them to have an answer because they have beliefs and desires. So what is it they want? And then who do they need to be to be able to get there?
3. Challenge: challenge them to explore who they are when they are at their best, and when you see it.

By Bobby L Scales II

When organizational change is needed it usually means something has not gone well.

Results may have slipped, your culture may have drifted. Perhaps the market is telling you there’s something you need to improve upon.

Recognizing the need for change is one thing, coming into a new environment and selling that change to the team you have inherited is quite another.

We know change is difficult. Change can illicit feelings of fear and uncertainty and when those feelings arise, as humans we naturally go back to what is comfortable and safe. The problem is that more often than not what is comfortable and safe is exactly why the change is needed. Your team may feel isolated or alienated. Even when the change is 90% good, people are going to worry about the ‘bad’ 10% and how it inevitably affects them. The leader needs to create an environment where people are willing and able to embrace change.

Leading a team or organization through times of change is a heavy lift and there is no escaping that, but there are things a leader can do to give themselves the best chance during those first 90 days and beyond.

Below is the ‘30-60-90’ model I would follow if I were leading a team or department through a period of transition and development. For the uninitiated, the 30-60-90 model divides those first 90 days into three phases where you sequentially identify your team’s issues, formulate your strategy, and begin to execute your plans.

Know your personnel

Your first 30 days should be spent asking the people around you a ton of questions. You need to have an idea of what needs to change but, in those early days, you must get a proper gage of the temperature ‘in the room’. How are people feeling? What was the sentiment of the group previously? Allow them to ask questions of you. Find out about the ‘who’ first, then you can begin to ask questions about the ‘what’. It is important to ask what happened in the past and understand why things were done a certain way before. This will inform your ideas of where you need to go. It’s impossible to do the latter until you win the people first.

In my view, this is the most difficult phase during those first 90 days because you and your staff are learning and, oftentimes, you’ll have new personnel either in management or in the rank and file – or just an entirely new group on both sides – because something has not gone to plan. You are not changing for the sake of change: you’re changing because something needs to happen in order to grow whatever group you are part of.

It is crucial to know your personnel, as former NFL Head Coach Herm Edwards memorably put it, you need to learn who is in front of you and to whom you are talking. Staff members cannot be bucketed into broad categories as you solicit their feedback. You need to understand each and every person on your team as an individual to fully understand where they fit or if you need to move on.

Identify the right people, get them in the correct seats on the bus

One thing you’ll find with long-tenured individuals is that they can become stifled or bored, which does not alter the fact that they may have some great ideas stifled because there is no real pathway for advancement and bored because there have been ideas that have been put forward and for whatever reason haven’t gone anywhere. If you have a smart and sharp talent base, you need to afford staff members the space to run with those ideas. Another way to put it is that you need to make sure that your people are sat in the correct seats on the bus.

All people want to be challenged in their job. People want to feel they can master their job and excel in their role and grow into more. As a manager, that can mean being secure in the fact that you are not the smartest person in the room. Part of the first 30 days is understanding that and then folding that into your plan.

It also speaks to your authenticity as a leader. Yes, ‘authenticity’ is a buzzword these days but, when you’re creating an environment, people want to know you are real. You have to be yourself, you have to be honest, and you have to be up front. It goes hand in hand with your integrity. People need to understand that you’re still doing the right things when no one else is watching too.

With the right questions asked of the right people, we then turn our attention to days 31 to 60. This phase is about formulating your plan and how you’re going to put all the pieces into play. Towards the end of that period you need to tell your group: ‘this is what we’ve got here and these are the answers I got from you all. This is not me making this up because I was not part of this group before. Here’s how we got here, these are the answers I’ve gotten from you and this is the path forward as I see it for this group’. You have to lay out your vision and plan for innovating or iterating in your environment and, when you have buy-in, it alleviates a lot of those questions such as ‘what’s in it for me?’

Here’s what’s in it for you: a chance to grow your career that you didn’t have before because you were stifled. You were bored and now you have the opportunity to stretch your legs and run with it.

It is also a question of communication and there also needs to be an intentionality to your strategy. There are key people you should have identified inside your department that are your influencers, people whose words and actions carry weight. It is important to communicate effectively with and through those people.

Full steam ahead

By the time you reach day 61 you’re going full steam ahead as you put your plan in place and you let your people run with it.

Your plan must also be nimble. Having a process and a framework is important but if market factors change then you will need to have the space to amend your approach. In that scenario, you need to be honest and open. You need to communicate that message in a way that is supportive rather than aggressive. Again, it comes down to communication and being genuine in gathering people’s ideas about how to remedy the situation when things are not going according to plan.

It is amazing what you can ask people to do when they feel like they are part of a team and in the know.

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

How well are you serving your female athletes and what more could you be doing?

That was the question at the heart of Leaders Meet: Driving Step-Change in Female High Performance, our two-day event at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.

On day one, speakers from organisations including Hockey Canada, British Cycling, High Performance Sport New Zealand, Harlequins and the UK Sports Institute all answered that question in their own way.

This is a snapshot of their responses, four factors pulled from the discourse to illustrate that while female sport has come on leaps and bounds in a relatively short period of time, there is still a long way to go before female athletes, coaches and practitioners achieve parity with their male counterparts.

1. Coaches: are you doing enough of the right things?

Male and female athletes are more similar than they are different, but there are differences, such as in bonding dynamics or the need to ask ‘why?’ on the training pitch (this is a trait more widely noted in female athletes than male). The most astute coaches recognise this and adapt accordingly. Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Canada women’s field hockey team, has worked with male and female coaches and has, following considerable self-reflection, learned to tweak his approach to male and female cohorts. Emma Trott, an Academy Coach at British Cycling, has called upon her own experience as a rider to inform her work with Britain’s young prospects to develop her coaching style. Kerry and Trott arrived at the same conclusion: when trying to optimise athletes, it is the environment that gets the performance out and that comes down to the coach.

What they said

Danny Kerry on managing team vs individual dynamics:

“All facets of coaching [consist of] trying to find an optimum for that particular team and then helping people adapt to the bell curve, finding their value in that, finding what works for them in that is the real craft of coaching – and in my experience that doesn’t get discussed in coach development.”

Emma Trott on listening to athletes:

“People don’t listen all the time. We hear what we want to hear and we want to hear it because we’ve already made a decision in our head about how we’re going to impact something rather than listening to what is actually being said. It’s that question: ‘How are you?’ ‘Yeah, I’m fine’ – what does that really mean?”

Next steps

• Coaches need to be empathetic to the needs of female athletes and that often requires the coach to be mindful of their own conduct and adapt accordingly.
• The issues that arise from female biology are numerous and there can be limiting factors on performance. However, it is important to understand that gains can still be made when the athlete is not at 100%.
• The coach needs to understand what is required of them at any given point in time. Sometimes it will be heavy instruction, at other times they need only offer words of encouragement or a serene demeanour.

2. Is everyone on your team speaking up?

In 2017, Helene Wilson took the reins of a talented but under-achieving Northern Mystics side in the ANZ Premiership, the national netball league of New Zealand. Two years later, they finished bottom of the table but, in 2021, were crowned champions. Wilson, who worked concurrently as a mentor at High Performance Sport New Zealand [HPSNZ, where she works full-time today], realised that her playing group were skilled but their diverse backgrounds, rather than representing a strength, created division and hindered alignment in the pursuit of high performance. That needed to change.

What she said

Helene Wilson on the HPSNZ Te Hāpaitanga pilot programme [launched in 2019, it initially paired 12 emerging women coaches with experienced mentors, giving them guidance through workshops] and how it influenced her coaching at the Mystics:

“During this time the penny dropped for me. We were busy teaching the coaches about tikanga, the customary system of values and practices. I realised that space for ambiguity where we translate our different approaches and lenses to what really drives high performance was missing in my environment.”

Next steps

• Understand that everyone is a leader and leadership is defined by your actions and behaviours. Some have more responsibility in their role, but everyone has a role to play.
• Ensure that everyone feels included while also not fearing rejection, because they are the first to comply, first to be passive, and not speak up when you really need them to.
• Deploy yourself against a problem last. Lead from behind rather than from in front.

3. Removing the physiological barriers to participation

In the afternoon, Dr Nikki Brown, the Associate Professor in Female Health at St Mary’s University in London; Emma Brockwell, a specialist women’s health physiotherapist at PHYSIOMUM, a female pelvic health specialist clinic; and Dr Amal Hassan, the Women’s Team Doctor at Harlequins, took to the stage to explore issues in female physiology, from skill acquisition during the menstrual cycle, being able to show up as best you can, and the risks presented by fashion over function in the use of sports bras.

What they said

Nikki Brown on breast health:

“It’s important to recognise that breasts will impact participation. Half of school girls drop out of participation because of their breasts, with one in three adults seeing the breasts as a barrier to participation. Then there’s that performance aspect, with breast support, because [an athlete’s] breasts will move during activity, and it changes how they move, it changes their confidence, changes their breathing, changes their muscle activity and movement patterns.”

Amal Hassan on the impact of the menstrual cycle:

“Periods can be a barrier to participation, a perceived barrier to skill and technical development through a season, can have health implications that really impact their performance, and it can stop certain players from developing at crucial points.”

Emma Brockwell on issues related to female pelvic floor dysfunction:

“It’s understanding that pelvic floor dysfunction is not just in the perinatal population or the older population. In fact, it occurs in younger girls and female athletes.”

Next steps

• There is more work to be done in normalising the conversation around periods, breast health or other concerns. These terms cannot remain taboo.
• What is your ethical code? If you’re encouraging a practice you need to put in place a structure, decide who is leading the programme, who is driving the educational aspects, and who are your go-to people for answers.
• Teams with bigger budgets can fit out a sophisticated programme or offer bra-fitting assessments, but action could be as simple as putting up a bra-fitting poster in a changing room or on the back of the toilet door. Even little nudges can make a difference or spark a conversation about breast health issues.

4. Bridging the gap between innovation and research in women’s sport with practical application

The UK Sports Institute [UKSI] has a major aim: to develop a nationwide programme to advance the science, medicine and application of female athlete health and performance support. However, as Richard Burden, the Co-Lead of Female Athlete Health & Performance at the UKSI, explains, there is a gap between innovation and research and delivery in female high performance environments.

What he said

“When delivering education sessions you can’t assume that because you’re talking to female athletes they know about the menstrual cycle, they know about bra fit – they don’t all know about these things. Even when it comes to female coaches, you can’t assume they know how to prioritise for female athletes.”

Next steps

• It is important to find ways to increase the translation and applicability of research.
• You have to bring athletes and coaches on a journey through knowledge generation, education and the delivery of a programme.
• Ask yourselves: are we giving them a reason to engage? How can we be resourceful? How can we create more time? How can we improve practicality?

“Serial winning coaches don’t just want to get ahead – they want to stay ahead,” Professor Cliff Mallett tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”

Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.

In an extended chat we delve into:

• Why Serial Winning Coaches are the ‘outliers amongst outliers’ [7:00];
• How coaches should approach developing ‘care’ and ‘determination’ with their athletes [31:00];
• How Serial Winning Coaches can help us to inform the identification, recruitment and development of the next generation of coaches [39:30];
• Why coaching is about striving, surviving and thriving [45:00].

Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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