By David Clancy, Richard Kosturczak & Ronan Conway

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’

African proverb

Cohesion is an invisible thread that binds high-performing teams together.

Without it, even the most skilled groups falter. As Peter Guber, the CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and Co-Owner of the Golden State Warriors, LA Dodgers and LA FC said, “Without social cohesion, the human race wouldn’t be here. We’re not formidable enough to survive without the tactics, rules, and strategies that allow people to work together.” This principle is as true in modern business organisations and elite sports as it was in our evolutionary history.

High-performing teams aren’t just thrown together without thinking. They are intentionally built through careful design, clear communication, and shared goals. It’s about finding the blend where roles, responsibilities, and diverse perspectives align, allowing every individual to leverage their strengths for the benefit of the collective.

So, how do we achieve that cohesion, especially in environments where team members may not fit neatly into traditional roles? How do we ensure that the whole team operates as a cohesive unit, even when differing opinions and reporting lines exist?

Finding the sweet spot

Cohesive working requires creating an environment where finding the sweet spot means aligning team members’ roles and responsibilities in a way that meets both organisational goals and individual capabilities. It’s about meeting in the middle – ensuring that while everyone contributes their unique expertise, they also respect the collective objective.

Leaders play a pivotal role in facilitating these moments of alignment, ensuring that when opinions or methods differ, the focus stays on finding the most effective solution, rather than reinforcing silos, judgements or personal agendas. In this sense, cohesion is about not just collaboration, but collaboration that works toward shared objectives, adapting as needed to meet challenges in real time.

The building blocks

The foundation of a cohesive team lies in four critical elements:

1. Clear roles: Every member of the team should have a well-defined role, even if that role isn’t conventional or part of a traditional organisational chart. The key is to align the individual’s expertise with their contributions to the team’s goals, ensuring everyone knows what they’re responsible for – and how they contribute to the big picture.
2. Adaptability: In a dynamic environment, roles may shift depending on the context or challenge at hand. Leaders must ensure that team members are flexible and willing to step outside their comfort zones, taking on responsibilities that might not align with typical job titles.
3. Trust: Open lines of communication are mission critical for a team to gel. Trust allows for honest dialogue and ensures that differing opinions or approaches are respected, not dismissed.
4. Decision-making model: A clearly articulated framework for decision-making provides structure and coherence, thus ensuring that everyone understands not just what decisions need to be made, but who is responsible for making them, and how they are executed.

These building blocks allow for cohesion even in complex or unconventional team structures.

Identifiers of high cohesion

How a team clicks: does it work in harmony? Knowing where to look is essential for identifying how well a team is functioning together. Here are some concepts to look at for indexing this sense of ‘teamwork’.

• Role clarity: Are team members clear on their own responsibilities and those of others?
• Conflict resolution: How well does the team resolve differences in opinion, methods or strategy?
• Collaborative decision-making: Are decisions made through collective input, even when the final call rests with one person?
• Mutual accountability: Do team members hold themselves and each other accountable for delivering on expectations?

These markers are crucial for evaluating is a team functioning as a tight unit. You could use these identifiers as a means for tracking and measuring how well the team is doing.

When these indicators are robust, the team’s ability to perform at a high level is elevated.

Ensuring that everyone is on the right bus – and in the right seat on that bus

Ensuring that people have the right roles and responsibilities in a team isn’t as simple as matching a title to a task. Often, it requires rethinking traditional organisational designs. Instead of relying on predefined job descriptions, high-performing teams focus on matching skills, expertise, and interest to the actual needs and musts of a team. This flexibility ensures that individuals are positioned to succeed, even if their role falls outside a traditional org chart.

The best approach is to identify the key outcomes the team needs to achieve and then allocate responsibilities based on who is best suited to drive those outcomes. It’s not uncommon for someone to hold responsibilities that cross functional boundaries, but as long as clarity exists, cohesion can still thrive.

The goal is not to fill predefined slots but to build a dynamic, flexible system that adapts to the needs of the moment, such is the demands of elite sport.

Good on paper vs good in reality

It’s easy to assume that a team looks perfect on paper – each role clearly defined, each person seemingly in the right position. But the reality is often far more nuanced. Good on paper might mean that organisational charts, roles, and responsibilities are technically correct, but it doesn’t account for the personal dynamics, communication styles, or agility of the individuals involved.

Good in reality, on the other hand, refers to teams that function well in practice, in the training room, on the field – when it counts, when pressure comes. This requires fluidity, acknowledging that roles may overlap, opinions may diverge, and people may need to step outside of their ‘assigned’ lanes to help the team succeed. Cohesion in the real world demands malleability, trust, and a willingness to change when necessary.

Managing differing opinions

It’s quite common for teams to have two people with different opinions or views reporting to different leaders. This could be shaped by the individual’s personality predisposition, such as are they more Type A and Type B, for example. These differing views, opinions and traits can create friction – but in high-performing teams, this diversity of thought is seen as a strength, something to be amplified, if positioned well. It pushes the team toward innovation and deeper problem-solving. The key is to ensure that these differing opinions don’t lead to disjointed decision-making and fragmentation.

This is where a decision-making model becomes critical. Leaders should establish processes that guide how decisions are made, who gets the final say, and how differing viewpoints are resolved. For instance, a performance director may not need to make the final call on a return to play decision, but having the A-Z flow will make this decision ‘cleaner’. Each professional stays within their expertise, but they collaborate through a framework that aligns with the team’s overarching goals, such as getting the player back on the pitch after an injury.

Overseeing the decision

Who oversees the decision-making model depends on the structure of the team, but it’s crucial that not every decision needs to reach the top. In well-functioning, cohesive teams, there are levels of authority and autonomy, allowing for faster and more efficient decision-making. Sometimes, well-oiled departments have decentralised command structures, often seen in the military. For example, a doctor doesn’t need the performance director’s approval to prescribe treatment, but the doctor and the PD must work within an established system that ensures consistency and alignment with the team’s overall strategy and vision from a sporting director.

The model should be overseen by those who understand both the day-to-day operational needs and the bigger picture. One needs to be able to zoom in, but also out. This is often a middle ground between front-line team members and senior leadership; this ensures that decisions are informed, timely, and strategic.

Cohesion reading

As a leader, you have likely accumulated a bank of time in teams and groups, from school, university, your organisation, etc. Thus, you have experienced a wide spectrum of people dynamics, cultures and environments. Think of the moments where something felt ‘off’. The energy seemed blunted. People were preoccupied with relational issues, toxic rhetoric, or disgruntlements. In these environments, the task at hand sometimes became secondary. On the flip side, when a team felt closer, it felt ‘right’. In these moments, energy flows… it bends… it adapts like a river. People are locked in, focused on the team vision. Why? Because these relationships are grounded on bone-deep trust and mutual respect.

Call it intuition. Gut feel. Emotional intelligence. This is how you gauge how cohesive a team feels, like a barometer for linkages.

The next time you walk into a team meeting or the changing room, allow yourself a moment to take a reading of the room. Pause and step back. Take a breath. Watch your people. Track their body language and eye contact. How do they greet each other and interact? Listen in. Note the intonation, the laughter, the silence. This is all data.

Is the energy flowing or is it stuck? Notice what you are picking up. Trust it. Take note.

Connection is a separator of great teams

If role clarity, conflict resolution, collaborative decision-making and mutual accountability are the bricks in the house, connection is the cement that binds it all. The quality of our team interactions is heightened when we feel psychologically safe with others, valued and respected. We remain open and engaged and are less likely to shut down or retreat into a corner.

So, how do we foster this connection more?

The elite coaches and managers take no chances in this area. Connection must be intentional. It is not something that one assumes will happen in a performance café or at a team-building Christmas party per se. Just as time is allocated in the weights room to build muscle, elite teams dedicate time to strengthen the collective muscle. This can be bridged by facilitating conversations with individuals to enable them to take stock and interact on a meaningful level. In doing so, they reinforce their connections between teammates, the jersey, their why, legacy and their higher purpose.

A great example of this deliberative connection-building comes from Europe’s Ryder Cup win in 2023 at the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club. Post victory, Rory McIlroy reflected on when his team started to take shape, under the leadership of Luke Donald, their team captain at the time, and European Captain for the 2025 Ryder Cup. On a practice trip in the lead-up to the tournament, putting greens, driving ranges and tactics boards were swapped for an ‘amazing experience’ around a fire pit. The team reflected on topics like ‘why they love the Ryder Cup so much’, and ‘having parents that sacrificed a lot for them’. This moment helped galvanise the European team.

Now to The Last Dance. In 1998, Phil Jackson, the Head Coach of the Chicago Bulls, gathered Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and co. He asked them to write about what their Bulls team meant to them before each player read aloud to the group. After they all had their turn, Jackson symbolically lit the tin cup filled with papers on fire, and all the Bulls watched on and felt more connected. “One of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen”, said current Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors and former Chicago Bull, Steve Kerr. The rest is history.

Final thoughts

Building cohesion and connection is about far more than getting the right people in the right roles – it’s about finding that sweet spot where collaboration thrives, even when team structures or opinions don’t fit the mould.

The successful teams of the past, whether this is Manchester United Football Club under Sir Alex Ferguson, the All Blacks of 2011 to 2015, or the Red Sox after they broke the curse, they all built strong foundations of trust, clear communication, and adaptable roles.

Teams can become great, making decisions that are informed by a diverse range of perspectives yet aligned toward shared goals. By implementing robust decision-making systems and processes, and fostering environments where flexibility, connection and trust are prioritised, high-performing teams can unlock their full potential…navigating complexity with confidence, and a higher sense of team.

David Clancy is a Learning and Development Consultant at the Houston Texans and Director at The Nxt Level Group. He is also the Editor of Essential Skills for Physiotherapists: A Personal and Professional Development Framework, which is available now from Elsevier.

Richard Kosturczak is a Market Specialist at The Nxt Level Group and Specialist Physiotherapist.

Ronan Conway is a Team Connection Facilitator, who has worked with teams including the Ireland men’s rugby team and Dublin GAA, Ireland’s most decorated Gaelic football team.

If you would like to speak to David, Richard and Ronan, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Springbok Analytics, which uses AI to turn MRI scans into 3D musculature analyses, has created its first sport-specific database with more than 100 NBA players.

A graduate of the NBA Launchpad, Springbok Analytics has been scanning players for more than three years and has grown its team partner list to 10. To date, performance and medical staffs had used the product to detect muscle asymmetries and fatty infiltrations into the tissue, both of which can be early signs of injury risk.

But teams didn’t gain value from Springbok’s normative database because, even though there is a large proportion of elite athletes to go along with recreational competitors, most NBA players are outliers for their height and ability.

Utah Jazz Director of Performance Science Barnett Frank said the new NBA database “allows us to really be a little more strategic with our information.”

“One of the biggest challenges I have in the space is always getting asked, ‘Well, what does that mean for an NBA player?’” he added. “There’s 450 of them. When we’re comparing them to the general research or what’s out there in the population, it’s really hard to make any specific conclusions for them. So knowing that it’s NBA-specific for us, that really gives me a little more juice, for lack of a better term.”

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.

By Luke Whitworth

‘Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.’

This powerful quote from the legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson rings as true today as it did in his 1995 book Sacred Hoops.

Trust is a fundamental component of team cohesion – a topic that formed the basis of August’s Leadership Skills Series session for Leaders Performance Institute members.

That session features prominently in this month’s Debrief but, before we get into it, we wanted to thank those of you who have already completed our Future Trends in High Performance survey.

As members of our Institute and community, we’d love for as many of you as possible to complete the survey and, in doing so, gain access to the insights we unearth. You can complete the survey here.

Without any further ado, let’s reflect on some of the key moments for members at the Leaders Performance Institute.

Growing cohesion, quickly

‘Cohesion’ is defined by Gain Line Analytics as ‘the level of understanding between the component parts of a team system’.

Gain Line – who have worked with elite teams in business and sport for the past decade – contributed to last month’s Leadership Skills Series session, which explored the dynamics of team cohesion and the datapoints that can help you to build that cohesion at speed.

They express their findings through an equation: Skill x Cohesion = Capability. They suggest that even if a team has highly skilled individuals, their overall capability will be limited if they lack cohesion. Conversely, a team with lesser skill levels but high cohesion can outperform more skilled but less cohesive teams.

Leaders Performance Institute members were invited to share ways in which they feel cohesion can improve performance. They suggested:

• Knowledge of strengths.
• Communication.
• Willingness to accept challenge from each other.
• Empowerment.
• Shared understanding of strategy.

What works when growing cohesion at pace? Here are five recommendations:

1. Create a strong sense of belonging

Send strong belonging cues from the outset and develop your inclusive leadership skills. In fostering belonging, allow people to share their personal story and cultural background, widening your ‘us’ story to encompass everyone’s unique background. It’s important to not overlook the past, so look at connecting the team to its heritage. Shine a light on key moments and individuals from which we can draw inspiration or lessons. Finally, ensure you create a shared vision together for the legacy this generation want to leave behind.

2. Acknowledge shared responsibility for building high trust relationships

Relationship mapping is a practical way to reflect on your relationships with other members of your team and encourages shared responsibility. Base your score on how well you know each other, your openness to each other’s thinking, and the quality of your collaborations. Where are you areas for opportunity to elevate trust or relationships?

3. Teaming skills: speaking, listening and psychological safety

The fastest way to improve collaboration is to get individuals to think about their part in the process and getting good at the balance between speaking and listening within the group. Are people speaking up? Do we have that level of psychological safety? Are they listening?

4. The use of ‘getting to know each other’ questions

Skilled questioning can be powerful in developing relationships and cohesion. What are some examples of ‘getting to know each other’ questions? Here are some examples:

• Can you think of something challenging you’ve achieved which you’re proud of?
• A behaviour you would like to change, which you recognise can frustrate others?
• A strength you’d like to make more use of in your role or in life?
• What is something you admire in others that you’d like to make a strength of yours?
• What is something that has helped shape who you are today? Share how it has shaped you.

5. Increase knowledge of your ‘A-Game’ strengths and weaknesses

What do your athletes and staff do when they are on their ‘A-Game’? When you are bringing you’re A-Game, what is it that they are bringing too? Knowing this allows everyone in the team to know what they are looking for – then the team has a collective responsibility. Equally, when you are not on your A-Game, what do you see?

Addressing the challenges surrounding performance analysis in high performance environments

Nearly three-quarters of practitioners believe that their organisations could be better at using data to make decisions.

That is according to a straw poll of attendees at a recent Virtual Roundtable hosted by the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences [BASES] and the Leaders Performance Institute.

We have collaborated with BASES on a three-part series called Advances in Performance Analysis. We then kicked things off with a first session titled ‘The Influence of Performance Analysis on Organisational Strategy’.

Leading the conversation were Natasha Patel, the Director of Sporting Analytics at US Soccer, and Simon Wilson, the Director of Football at League 1 side Stockport County.

They began by leading a discussion of the biggest challenges facing people who use data analysis in sport. There were four that stood out:

1. Integration: it is difficult to set up efficient datasets that allow different data points to intertwine. One attendee referenced performance analysis and skill acquisition as particular sticking points. The sheer volume of metrics collected can lead to a lack of clarity and inability to prioritise.
2. Communication of data: data should tell a story but, at present, it is hard to visualise and communicate to athletes in a way that ensures data or analysis is understood and actionable.
3. Buy-in: as one attendee observed, those in charge of the budget occasionally lack the understanding around the value of performance analysis so won’t invest in it or see value in other disciplines. Similarly, head coaches often call the shots but do they truly buy-in? There is also the question of how you measure impact. Departments are being encouraged to demonstrate the influence of their work.
4. Data management: it is a time-consuming process to regularly assess data quality, validity and reliability – time many simply don’t have. A participant observed how one can get stuck in a mindset of data collection versus the type of analysis that can truly have a performance impact. In fact, knowledge translation is another sticking point, particularly given the general lack of education around performance analysis.

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

BreakAway Data, creator of an athlete-centric data passport app, is expanding its capabilities to include secure access to electronic medical records.

The new product, BreakAway Pro, aggregates health information from all practitioners — all clubs, national teams, private consultants — through an athlete’s career where it can be displayed and compared against game stats, tracking data and training workload. It is available for all interested leagues and unions, with a custom-build for a first, unnamed partner almost complete.

Since launch, BreakAway has secured deals with the NFLPA, NWSLPA, WNBPA and Athletes Unlimited, among others. Its founders, Dave Anderson and Steve Gera, regularly heard from agents, athletes, investors and other stakeholders that adding EMR capabilities would be a helpful addition to the product.

“We didn’t know we needed to move this mountain in order to give all athletes access to their data, but this was the key piece and the key thing that was missing in sports that we’ve now got,” Anderson said, adding that the topline benefit of this fingertip retrieval is ensuring that what “costs them time, money and effort are now guaranteed and done quickly and swiftly.”

While the data infrastructure was largely in place, meeting the standards for EMR access required significant outlay from BreakAway — a 2023 SBJ 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech company honoree — to add higher levels of insurance, meet HIPAA compliance and build maximum digital security, including a revamp of its AWS storage. Anderson estimated that this project consumed about 75% of the company’s time, money and effort for most of the past year.

Athletes register using multi-factor authentication that is verified by government ID, and all records are stored in a secure server, with none of the information stored locally on a mobile device. Users can manage settings over who has access to what information, toggling permissions on and off as they change teams or seek additional opinions.

“Players have been advocating for better access to their data for a long time, and BreakAway was the first company to build a product specifically tailored for players,” Meghann Burke, NWSLPA Executive Director, wrote to SBJ. “They have set a new standard for what, how, and when information should be delivered. It’s no surprise that they continue to innovate in the digital space, providing players with functional and accessible data solutions.”

Anderson, who had a six-year career as an NFL wide receiver, recounted his own experience attending NFLPA-backed health and wellness testing at the Cleveland Clinic. When he returned to the same facility three years later for an additional checkup, the computer systems had changed, and the doctor couldn’t easily see his past records. Anderson had to bring his own paper copies, making him think, “There’s got to be a better way to do this.”

While that’s an acute pain point in elite sports, it’s also an issue for everyday people who change medical practices.

“We’re the first company that is daring enough to take it on. We built this for players, and let’s see how it works because this really doesn’t even exist in the normal world,” Anderson said. “It’s a huge build, and something hopefully that resonates well beyond just sports.”

Intelligence within the app helps provide context and comparisons to normative datasets. Visual tagging of joints and muscles is one of several ways to filter the information a user is searching for. BreakAway Pro also is agnostic to other EMR providers and supports all types of medical imaging as well.

“We heard from enough leagues and we heard from enough people that we were like, ‘All right, let’s just go all in. Let’s bet the farm on our company on this,’” Anderson said. “We claim to be the athlete data company and to have the app where they put all their information, and if this is the most important piece of information that they want, what are we doing here? It is the core piece that ties everything together.”

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.

By John Portch

Gregg Popovich confounds contemporary thinking on how a leader should conduct themselves in modern-day elite sport.

The San Antonio Spurs’ Head Coach, a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, is known as an disciplinarian; and he might also be regarded as an anachronism were it not for the fact that he is revered for creating – and sustaining – one of the most harmonious cultures in elite sport.

Some might say Coach Pop’s gruff demeanour and willingness to yell at players would be sub-optimal in any other environment, especially with a roster full of Gen Z players, but his focus on the people and the environment afford him all the leeway he needs to express himself at the Spurs.

Coach Pop, the alchemist

Popovich, having served as an assistant coach at the Spurs between 1988 and 1992, returned to San Antonio as Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations and General Manager in 1994. He added the head coaching role early in the 1996-7 NBA season

He would in time relinquish his other responsibilities but there was no guarantee that Popovich could make a successful step out of the front office, particularly as his coaching resume amounted to little at that stage.

“He said, ‘hey, I want to do this and I probably have one crack at it’,” said Phil Cullen, the Spurs’ Senior Director of Organizational Development & Basketball Operations. Cullen did not join the Spurs until 2016, but this story, like so many featuring Popovich, has long since entered Spurs folklore.

“Pop said, ‘I want to do this and I want to do this with the people I want to be around’.”

This desire shaped the Spurs’ famous ‘pound the rock’ ethos, with its emphasis on persistence, patience and resilience. It helped to create an environment where a previously inconspicuous franchise could claim five NBA Championships between 1999 and 2014.

Cullen, speaking at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Melbourne’s Glasshouse in February, talked at length about the Spurs’ culture, which has been emulated across the globe, albeit with varying degrees of success.

Look a little closer at those other teams and it seems that some have been seduced by ‘pound the rock’ without paying full attention to San Antonio’s unique alchemy.

Not a Spur?

Good people are very important to San Antonio. As Cullen explained, their scouting template includes a check box labelled ‘Not a Spur’. It is a short-hand way of saying that a player lacks some of the team’s character-based values such as integrity, accountability or humility. “It’s very difficult to uncheck that box,” added Cullen. “We have to understand that when we do that there’s a reason why.” They do not always get it right, as he admitted, but their success rate is admirable.

All the same, many teams in the NBA and beyond, have adopted a similar approach, so there must be more to the Spurs success story than any notions of character.

Popovich himself is certainly a major factor, particularly at a time when the Spurs have the NBA’s youngest roster, with an average age of 23.52.

“Right now, we’re probably a coach-led team because of the youthfulness of the roster,” said Cullen. “Ideally, you’d have players that are actually holding each other accountable.” That is the end-game but, in the meantime, “the coach is having to manage the game, not coach the game – there’s a big difference.”

So coachable players are important, as is the coach; there are also key environmental factors at play.

Community, casual collisions and fine dining

The primary environmental factor is food. Cullen shared an image of the cafeteria at the Spurs’ new $72 million Victory Capital Performance Center practice facility, which opened in 2023. “This is the most important room in the building,” he said.

Popovich places a premium on team meals; the players’ families are regularly invited to eat with the team and staff . Cullen said: “There is nothing better than sitting across the table from somebody else from a different culture, with a different set of experiences, and just being able to share a meal together. Food and drink is very important to us.”

Mealtimes, they believe, help to develop mutual empathy and promote selflessness. “This job is hard and if it’s going to be all about you, you’re probably not going to reach your max potential,” said Cullen. “We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves – it can’t just be about you.”

Cullen played a significant role in the design of the facility and was influenced by Popovich’s words of advice when the project was green-lighted. “He goes: ‘I’ve got two things for you: protect the culture and protect the people’.” It confirmed Cullen’s belief in human-centred design. “I may never have the conversation directly with the player, but what we can do is design the space so that Coach can have that conversation with that player,” he said, explaining that players spend more time at the new practice facility than they did at the old one. “It’s shocking as you’ll go in there today and the players will be sitting there next to an equipment manager, next to the travel guide, next to your lead physio; and they’re just hanging out.”

Life beyond basketball

Beyond mealtimes, Popovich promotes a wide range of extracurricular learning opportunities. Cullen recounted the time ahead of a road game at the Washington Wizards in 2018 when Popovich took the team to the US Supreme Court. There are numerous examples on his watch of similar site visits and non-basketball focused discussions, with topics ranging from US federal law and international politics to same-sex marriage and social justice.

Again, these are issues far bigger than the individual or the sport of basketball. “It’s so easy to be insulated when you’re a professional athlete,” said RC Buford, the former San Antonio General Manager (2002-2019) and current CEO, in Dan Coyle’s 2018 book The Culture Code. “Pop uses these moments to connect us. He loves that we come from so many different places. That could pull us apart, but he makes sure that everybody feels connected and engaged to something bigger.”

Coyle also explained that Popovich relies on three types of belonging cue and ‘toggles’ between each in an effort to say ‘this is a safe place to give effort’. Those cues involve:

1. Personal and up close connections: in practice and in warm-ups, Popovich will rove and get almost nose to nose with a player or coach. Such moments, as Coyle wrote, translate as ‘I care about you’.
2. Performance feedback: Popovich will offer a continuous stream of feedback from ‘the middle distance’ in both practice and games. This translates as ‘We have high standards here.’
3. The big-picture perspective: as Coyle put it, ‘Life is bigger than basketball’. The team meals, coffee conversations and history lessons are testament to the Spurs’ belief in this approach.

It led to Coyle conclude: ‘Popovich’s yelling works, in part, because it is not just yelling. It is delivered along with a suite of other cues that affirm and strengthen the fabric of the relationships [at the Spurs].’

Consider this the next time you see Popovich raise his voice.

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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

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Harjiv Singh, a performance and development scientist at the Orlando Magic, is another example of a practitioner who suffered their own debilitating injuries.

Hot on the heels of Andrea Hudy, who recounted her own story of ACL troubles in episode one, Harjiv told the tale of a pickup basketball game that ended with him tearing his ACL and meniscus while also suffering an avulsion fracture.

The 16 months of rehab stoked an interest in sports science that not only led him to the NBA but, since January, roles at the Grand Rapids Rise women’s volleyball team, as Director of Performance Science, and the University of Michigan, where Harjiv teaches out of the Human Performance and Sports Science Center.

John Portch and Joe Lemire could not have wished for a more engaging guest on this finale to this People Behing the Tech podcast series, where Harjiv delved into the sports science principles that define his work.

He also shared his thoughts on training drill design [15:39] and the transferability in competition – a relatively new area of enquiry. “It could be as simple as, in basketball, you’re putting a defender in front of you,” he says. “But it can also be as complex as the angle and the approach of that defender, the people in the vicinity of the athlete, where the athlete is starting from, their position on the court. And that’s merely the introductory part of this.”

Then there’s his thoughts on the “neglected” cognitive component to ACL injuries [6:41]; the need to know your audience when visualizing data [27:38]; and his ability to ask applied questions in the lab at Michigan.

Check out episode two:

Five Years on from the USWNT Introducing Menstrual Cycle Tracking, Sports Science for Female Athletes Remains Under-Developed. So What Can Athletes and Practitioners Do about it?

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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.

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Paige Bueckers’ stellar performances at this year’s March Madness proved that her ACL injury is long behind her.

She returned to action in November 2023 after 15 months out and drove UConn all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Behind the scenes, Andrea Hudy, the Director of Sports Performance (Women’s Basketball) at UConn, was critical to Bueckers’ convalescence and is working (while pursuing a PhD) to ensure there are fewer such occurrences in the future.

“My passion is trying to understand why people get hurt or the story behind their injuries and keep them strong and resilient for what’s unexpected or the challenges ahead,” she tells The People Behind the Tech podcast.

Andrea speaks from her own experience of injury as a varsity volleyball player. Indeed, when anyone says she “played without an ACL” for six years – as Andrea told Joe Lemire and John Portch – it makes you sit up and take notice.

In the first episode of this new series, we discuss the questions that still need to be asked about female injury occurrence rates [18:00]. We also touch upon Andrea’s career in college athletics, which took in tenures at Texas and Kansas before she returned to UConn three years ago for her second spell [8:40]. Then, we broach her willingness to experiment with new technologies while concurrently seeking better insights from existing datasets [11:40]. Finally, she tells us why she can occasionally see herself as a modern, real-life Icarus [26:30] and much more besides.

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By Joe Lemire

The WNBA has signed a landmark deal with Genius Sports for use of its Second Spectrum optical tracking cameras, becoming the first women’s pro sports league in the US to have access to 3D player and ball data.

This multi-year, league-wide agreement with Second Spectrum marks the latest milestone in the rapid growth of the WNBA and could signal a new era of personnel decisions, game strategy and sports science for the teams. The NBA’s analytics revolution followed the installation of its first league-wide optical tracking system back in 2013. And such 3D tracking underpins so many modern fan engagement activations — everything from MLB’s 3D Gameday to ESPN’s Big City Greens NHL game and the Toy Story NFL game.

“Our teams are obviously very enthusiastic about this and that the league is making the investment on behalf of the teams,” WNBA Head of League Operations Bethany Donaphin said. “It’s really a statement to the importance of developing our basketball technology capabilities as the league continues to grow and as the game continues to evolve.”

One of the key criteria for the WNBA system was that ability to collect the raw x-y-z tracking data as well as being able to generate an “end-to-end suite of analytics,” added NBA VP Tom Ryan, who oversees technology initiatives. Such second-level metrics include assessing quality of shots and advanced defensive proficiency evaluations.

“Probably the most exciting thing about the deal for us is that this the first time, to our knowledge, that a women’s pro sports league is going to have this level of tracking and analytics,” Second Spectrum Chief Commercial Officer Mike D’Auria said. “We’re going to take the cutting-edge technology, not just from the tracking side, but going through the analytics, data and software that is the cornerstone of NBA workflows. We’re excited to level up the women’s game, which is something we’ve wanted to do for ages.”

This follows a major digital transformation from the WNBA before the 2023 season in which the league rebuilt its app and website following a $75 million infusion of capital. That enabled the W to assemble its own in-house digital team to better serve its fans. That group will now have considerably more data to power leaderboards, highlights and immersive experiences.

Ryan noted the value in finding a partner who will “be able to evolve with the WNBA. It’s at an incredible inflection point as a property. The first phase is really about advancing the game and the core product, but then over time, we’re obviously going to want to innovate the fan experience and add a new media element.”

“What people are starting to discover — hopefully more and more — is how elite our athletes are, how talented they are, how really skilled they are,” Donaphin said, “and I think it’ll be impactful to be able to tell stories around that with data supporting it.

Some of the media tools will need to be negotiated directly with each broadcaster in the coming months. Genius and Second Spectrum have a stable of AR and other visualizations tools that they’ve used in, for example, NFL coverage on CBS and NFL+.

“I really think some of the data information and graphics can really start to accentuate the women’s game in a different way and give a unique look and feel to the game,” D’Auria said, namechecking the potential of analyzing Caitlin Clark’s shooting in a new way.

“The WNBA is growing so much, which means they have a lot of new fans coming to them,” he added. “What we hope is that we can really help that process of driving new fans.”

Second Spectrum was the longtime provider of NBA tracking data until that deal concluded prior to this season, although it remains a provider of basketball analytics and broadcast augmentation for the league. The WNBA first tested tracking data at the inaugural Commissioner’s Cup in 2021 when it leveraged a combination of Kinexon sensors and Hawk-Eye cameras.

Soon after that game, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert shared her vision for tracking data in a keynote conversation with SBJ Tech.

“It’s really important to provide that to teams and players about workload and stuff like that, but it’s important also to integrate some of that data into broadcast to make it very interesting — and then integrate it into a second screen experience,” she said at the time, discussing the value in “finding ways to engage fans differently.”

On Tuesday, she reaffirmed that value proposition in a statement, saying, “Technology continues to fundamentally change the sports landscape. Deploying state-of-the-art optical tracking technology through Genius Sports will deliver rich data to our teams that they can leverage to enhance player performance while informing in-game strategy and enable a new wave of insights and media elements for fans.”

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.