By Luke Whitworth & Henry Breckenridge

The topic of team culture continues to dominate member conversations across the Leaders Performance Institute. Yet relatively few teams have proven able to sustain a successful culture over a prolonged period of time.

There are a wealth of barriers that work against the creation of strong and positive cultures in high performance.

However, there are also enablers that have served members well in their teams.

This split was in evidence during a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable when we asked attending members to rate their organisations’ cultures on a scale of 1 (‘very weak’) to 5 (‘very strong’).

While 43% considered their team’s culture ‘strong or very strong’, 14% perceived their culture as ‘weak’, with a further 43% suggesting their team’s culture was ‘neither strong nor weak’.

There is plenty of room for the weak to improve and for the strong to get better too.

Here we explore how to best build, sustain and renew your team culture.

Before we get into that, let’s look at the main barriers.

Poor results. The inevitable starting point. Negative results can lead to a blame culture and, in some of the worst cases, the beginning of a downward spiral. Even teams with good intentions can stall. One attendee said: “we have strong expectations at the start of the season, but as soon as the season starts, there’s lots of grey areas and we find it difficult to upload our expectations and we end up going off in silos.”

Differences of opinion. If there is minimal alignment or collective belief in what matters between the senior representatives of your team then it can be a killer for culture, especially if results begin to go south.

Unconstructive / non-existent feedback. Blame culture is one thing, ultra criticism another, but several members admitted they can struggle to glean feedback from younger generations of athletes in particular. This hinders their team’s efforts to create an environment that is about more than just winning.

A lack of psychological safety. While also recognised as an enabler (see below), is psychological safety truly attainable in a high-performance (and therefore high-risk) environment? The jury is still out for some people in sport.

With these barriers in mind, let’s turn to the positive influences on team culture.

Clarity and alignment: these are by-products of environments that have been able to define, manage and model their expectations – essentially those that take the building, sustaining and reviewing of culture seriously. Get this right and it helps to provide a framework for constructive feedback that extends beyond culture to performance. Moreover, if the performance side of your team has meaningful interaction with the business side (and vice versa), it can enable the different groups to see how their work impacts others and it provides the foundations for wider cultural alignment.

Celebrate positive behaviours: no, this is not a silver bullet but it can work wonders as part of an intentional and consistent approach. “It’s about giving it more than lip-service,” noted one member. “It’s about calling it out when people aren’t meeting expectations but also celebrating culture in action.” Crucially, this practice is not results-based. It separates the desired behaviours from the performance outcome.

Storytelling: this is a useful tool for instilling purpose, inducting new athletes, and enabling periodic cultural resets. There is a tendency to fall into the trap of not renewing your culture at the end of a natural cycle and basing your work on the assumption that everyone knows where they need to be. Yet sport is transient in nature and the central cast is continually changing. Meet that challenge by giving your athletes, old and new, the opportunity to write the next chapter of your story. Storytelling can build connections and help people to explain where they see themselves and how they want to be known both individually and collectively.

Let’s wrap up with some key questions to ask yourself:

Who are your cultural leaders? They need not be your head coach – in fact they may be the wrong person – it is important to identify and empower your cultural architects, whoever they may be. They will be able to ensure you are consistently celebrating positive behaviours.

Are you hiring the right people? One attendee shared they would rather have the “right” person doing the job not quite as well than the “wrong” person having the skill and competency but continuously undermining the collective.

Do your people feel they belong? Belonging is a significant enabler and comes from psychological safety, where individuals feel safe to take interpersonal risks. These dynamics play out differently in each environment. How it looks in your environment is for you to determine. One attendee, for example, suggested that female athletes need to feel they belong in order to play well, while male athletes need to play well in order to feel like they belong.

By John Portch

Hope Powell, the First-Team Manager at Women’s Super League [WSL] side Brighton & Hove Albion, has been coaching for almost 25 years.

What makes her a better coach now than she was when she was first appointed England Women’s Head Coach in 1998 – the first full-time appointment to the position – or, say, when she led England to the final of the 2009 European Championships?

“I don’t know that I’m better,” is her candid response. “I’m not saying I’m any better. I think I’m different, I don’t always get it right.” There are times when she admits that she can be intolerant in her interactions with players. “I’m having to adapt myself,” she continues. “I am still learning the art of management and I think it’s important that you keep learning because the game evolves, people evolve, their experiences are different.”

When Powell took the England reins, women’s football in the country was still largely amateur. The players she led to consecutive World Cup quarter-finals in 2007 and 2011 all held other jobs. Now, thanks in no small part to the work Powell did during her 15 years at the Football Association [FA], she is in charge of a fully professional Brighton. She joined the club in 2017.

Here, Powell, who also serves as mentor working with the FA, Premier League, Uefa, and Fifa, reflects on her qualities as a leader and discusses the leadership traits she admires most.

Hope, what do you regard as your biggest strength as a manager?

I think being honest and supportive with staff. I’m sure if you were to ask any member of my staff if they feel supported I think they’d say ‘yes’. I’m fair, honest and supportive. I see being honest as a strength; ‘this is what I think, and I’m saying it how it is’.

What strength do you admire most in others?

Honesty. Being authentic.

What do you mean by ‘authentic’?

I know it has nothing to do with the delivery, but my experience has been interesting. A lot of coaches are copy-cat coaches. They’ll watch you deliver a session and write everything you do down and then just go out and copy what you’ve done without perhaps understanding, without putting some context to it. I’ll ask them ‘if it doesn’t work how are you going to change it? How are you going to be creative?’ I’ve had a lot of that in my career. ‘Hope, have you got any sessions that you can give me?’ No, I can’t give you anything. That’s not coaching. Put yourself out there, design your sessions, have a go, if it doesn’t work, tweak it and do something else. I think authenticity is a big one for me. The coaches of the future, in any sport, will need to be creative, authentic, and be students of their sport; understanding the nuances of their game.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

Strong teamwork is all believing in the vision. All on the same page. I think if everyone buys into that and the team buys into that, it brings that togetherness and that togetherness means that you want to work for your team, your teammates. It’s having that. ‘This is where we want to be, do we all believe in it? Yes we do. Let’s all work in one direction and if we all believe in it collectively then we’re more likely to support each other and work harder for each other and do anything for each other.’ That for me is what teamwork is. Everyone believes in what you’re trying to achieve and everyone wants it because everyone is prepared to work together.

You’re Brighton’s First-Team Manager but you’re not the keeper of the club’s vision.

No, the owner [Tony Bloom] sets the vision for both teams: the men top ten, the women top four; and our job is to try and deliver that with the resources he puts at our disposal. It’s a collective. He set the vision but we’ve all gone ‘great, let’s go for it. Why not?’ And I go: ‘top four? Why not top one?’ That’s good because it gives you some direction. Is it just about staying in the league? The first year I was there, of course it was, because we were new to the WSL. The owner is a fan of the club and as soon as he decided he wanted to make progress in the women’s game he said ‘this is where I want this club to go’ and we said ‘great’ and, for me, it was telling him ‘this is what I think it will take’. We have ownership of that and he’s been very supportive.

Do you enjoy regular conversations with the Brighton board?

We have a men’s board and a women’s board, which is great. I have to present to the board annually. We have a Technical Director [David Weir] who has that direct link with the board. It’s kind of a one-club concept, one-club vision for the men and the women, so you feel heavily involved. And my job as the First-Team Manager is to ensure the team delivers that on and off the pitch, which is a great responsibility and a huge one. It’s what I’m used to. It’s what I like doing.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

It’s a challenge to bring in the right players and the right staff at a club like ours; and there is always some turnover at the end of the season. But the right players and the right staff make your job so much easier. We’re in a recruitment phase at the moment and we just want to get better and perform better. That’s the idea.

By Sarah Evans

• Pushing the players hard every day is not sustainable

• Open, honest and respectful conversations are crucial for successful culture

• Player empowerment is important but the coach must take ultimate responsibility

High performance environments are all about balance

Clubs and people are often judged heavily on whether they win or lose, and of course winning is every team’s goal, but the context for each team, and opportunities they might have are so different, explained Chris Scott, Senior Coach of the Geelong Cats in the Australian Football League, at our Sport Performance Summit in Charlotte back in 2020. “We focus in too much on standards, it’s important, but only one part of the high performance environment” stated Scott when delving deeper into what makes a successful team environment. He emphasised that if you only look to drive standards in training, then you miss out on some other crucial aspects which make up a winning team such as psychological safety, wellbeing and most importantly enjoying playing the sport. “You need to be really clear on when to push, but it needs to be balanced off with the work outside of those hard periods,” he added. If the players are dreading turning up to training every day, you’re not going to get the best out of them, and pushing them hard constantly, is an unsustainable model.

When to prioritise the future over short-term success

One of Scott’s biggest strengths is his ability to collaborate with a large group of staff and players. This skill is crucial when dealing with a wide range of players, with many being only 17 years old, to those in their mid-30s approaching the end of their careers. Being able to provide messaging and alignment for that broad spectrum of players is a key attribute for a successful coach. One of Scott’s first priorities was to “embrace change, and transition young players into the team.” However, when bringing in youth, you need to have older players move on, and managing those transitions can be very challenging. Scott emphasised that it is crucial to articulate that plan to the wider squad and make it very clear to the older players “they weren’t just going to be thrown on the scrap heap.” It is so important to give the older players the respect they deserve and manage the transition effectively, so the team can be successful both in the short and long term. How this transition is managed also has a huge effect on the mid-range players, and their perception of how they will be treated when they come towards the end of their careers. So having these conversations in a really open, honest and respectful way is key.

When to empower the players and when to use your expertise as a coach

Player empowerment as a concept has grown more and more popular as a coaching method, and numerous teams see great success when it is adopted. However, Scott explains that how and when you empower your players can be crucial, and also how the context of your own environments play a big role in this. “Fundamentally I work for the players as a coach, so what they believe is best for their performance is of paramount importance,” said Scott. But, he caveated this with saying that ultimately the coach needs to take the final responsibility and had to set the overall principles by which the team is aligned. It also depends on the make up of the team. If you have a squad who are very individual and you give too much responsibility to the whole squad, the result will be people pulling in different directions and no cohesion. Scott explained that the most effective way to marry player empowerment with cohesion was to “make sure the views of the most influential players are congruent to the ways the senior leadership want to lead the club”. Finally, understanding when to empower the players and ask for their feedback and when to take the lead and use your own expertise as a coach is critical to success.

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“The first thing you need to ask is what does ‘resilience’ mean,” says Gareth Bloomfield.

The psychologist, who works with the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, explains that it comes from the Latin ‘resilio’, which means ‘to bounce back’.

“It’s the ability of individuals or a team to bounce back from adversity,” Bloomfield continues. “I guess in most sports, analogous scenarios would be about a team losing. How does the team bounce back from a loss or maybe a series of losses? That goes for an individual as well, so if we’re talking about a tennis player or a golfer, someone who plays their sport on their own, how do they bounce back from a series of performances where they do not feel that they best delivered?

“There are a number of things that go into baking the cake of psychological resilience and they’re not just psychological because there’s a huge overlap between physical and psychological. If, for example, I’m a tennis player carrying an injury, surely that’s going to have a psychological impact that affects what I’m capable of on the court.”

Bloomfield, who spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute in March about how leaders can overcome resistance to change, here lays out the ‘ingredients’ of the cake that make up psychological resilience and where coaches can have an impact.

The flour – sleep

Bloomfield has emphasised the importance of sleep on more than one occasion. For him, its impact on our physical and mental health cannot be overstated, and, in his analogy of the cake, sleep is the flour. “One of the things I would do from a mental health perspective, if somebody was suffering from mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression, one of the things I would look into is how much sleep do you get?” he says.

“It also affects our accuracy on a number of things: your ability to put a ball in the basket, your ability to hit a ball with a bat, strike a ball in the back of the net. Those are related to the quantity of sleep and the quality of sleep. It’s not just about quantity – it’s quality as well. A lot of the time, we’re not fully aware of the quality of sleep we get. Smartwatches are helping. Sleep is the flour in these ingredients of resilience.”

Leaders can educate athletes in the importance of sleep and, from there, the idea is that athletes will be able to take that knowledge, see its value, and monitor their own sleep. Bloomfield adds: “What you’re doing is priming them to make a decision. If you’re educating people, you’re educating them to make another decision later that they might not be conscious of. Educate them.”

The eggs – social support

The eggs of Bloomfield’s cake represent social support and its role as a factor in psychological resilience. “Isolation can happen with people around you,” he says. “We know that has a big effect on people’s performance as well.” The key for coaches is to “make sure that the team is cohesive and keep a check on relationships within the team.” A coach can go for regular check-ins with athletes to find how they are doing or identify any issues they may have both inside and beyond the team. “Not just one or two people – talk to many and make sure you get a good impression of what’s going on within the whole team,” adds Bloomfield.

Unique ingredients #1 – your goal-setting behaviours

Sleep and social support are universal but Bloomfield’s next ingredient, goal-setting, will look different depending on your team’s context. When it comes to goal-setting, there are some key questions to be asked. “How we set our goals or how our goals are set for us? Do you feel some sort of purpose? Do you feel like you’re making a difference in the goal that you’re striving towards? Because that then links in with the social aspect of it. Do you feel motivated towards that goal? Do you feel like you’ve got some sort of control over the goals that are being set or how you get towards them?

“You’ve got to make sure that as a leader people feel that they have the desired autonomy in the way that they reach those goals, that they know what goals they’re seeking to achieve.”

Support from coaches and peers is essential but it can also go back to the physical. “If you have an injury, that’s going to have an effect on other things, but you may have physical restrictions in terms of what you might be able to do.”

Unique ingredients #2 – your cognition and ability to learn

Bloomfield reveals that he was once an accomplished rower, but understood that his stature (he stands six-foot tall or “under six-foot without my trainers on”) prevented him from reaching an elite level. He tells the story to place further emphasis on the physical component of psychological resilience. He says: “my ability to be as good a rower as some of the rowers that are six-foot-eight, well, I’ve got a physical disadvantage and maybe my resilience, my capability to actually spring back, is then related to my physical ability to deal with the adversity. Lose and lose and lose and lose and lose again, well, I have to actually realise that my ability to spring back from this is physically restricted in some way.”

An individual may also be restricted in their ability to learn by factors beyond their control that impact their ability to process information in a cognitively sound fashion. “That’s fundamentally important because if you’ve got somebody who has a learning disability, then their ability to bounce back may be severely affected by the fact that they have a learning disability because they don’t necessarily remember what it is they need to do to be able to actually help themselves bounce back from the situation that they’re in,” adds Bloomfield.

Positive psychology – the science of hope

Bloomfield stresses that cognition is not just about one’s ability to learn but also one’s ability to talk to themselves in a way that generates persistence.

“And now we’re getting into the science of hope,” he says, “and that science of hope is how I talk to myself about myself personally. How I talk to myself about how permanent something is, and also about how something is pervasive.” He discusses the work of American psychologist Martin Seligman, who is considered one of the fathers of the movement of positive psychology. “This is psychology where we look at how do we get the best out of people and this is what I’m looking at in my research around psychological resilience,” continues Bloomfield.

“How do we get that little bit of extra out of people? One thing is training them to think in a slightly different way, so that when something goes wrong they don’t beat themselves up and when something is not how they want it to be they don’t think it’s always going to be like that and it affects everything else. This is something that we learn fairly early on in life.

“That cognition is really important because you can’t have a sportsperson like that. When they lose a match they can’t go ‘I’m an idiot. That happens every time. No matter what I do it’s going to go wrong.’ If they are doing that then we need to get inside their heads and change the cognitions that they have.”

Leaders, he explains, have a role in being optimistic in their words, actions and demeanour. “This is a recurring pattern for me, which is, to be a good leader you have to communicate optimism, because optimism equals persistence, and persistence is about winning the game, winning the war, whatever it is your business is. It’s an important aspect of what it is that you’re trying to achieve and persistence is resilience.”

By John Portch

Ulster Rugby have enjoyed a memorable 2021-21 campaign that could yet end their wait for a first major title since 2006.

The Irish side are due to travel to Cape Town to face the Stormers in the semi-finals of the United Rugby Championship this Saturday [11 June].

Whether the match, or indeed the competition, ends in a victory or a defeat, the Ulster Head Coach is ready to meet those two impostors just the same. He does, however, issue one caveat.

“I get more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

How long does it take him to calm down when his team have lost a match they should have won?

“It takes however long it takes us to analyse, frame in my own head what the reasons and the adaptations are, and then being able to pull those together with the people that are doing the same process in whatever area of the organisation they’re in,” McFarland continues.

“Once I’ve done all of that and had those conversations I’m normally back on track. Sometimes it takes longer because the answers are not as easy, but once we’ve pulled everyone together and we’re all single-minded in what we’re going to do – ‘done’. Move on. That’s why ‘every inch’ is the foundation of what we do. You can’t start coaching until you’ve got that sorted. If someone doesn’t try then there’s no point in me doing any coaching because I don’t know how they normally do it or how they would do it in a game. It’s pointless. Give me full effort then I can coach. Until we’ve done that you can’t do that. We’ll deal with effort first.”

McFarland delves into the art behind his coaching and his approaches to cultural mapping in the first part of our interview. In the second, he explores his strengths as a leader and comes to some candid conclusions.

What do you regard as your biggest strength?

I think my determination to win. I’m going to say that. It’s not fancy but I hate losing. In terms of big picture stuff, that motivates me to do what I do. And I’m certainly not great at a few things as well. I think the competitive nature of who I am really helps in terms of being the best that we can be. As I said, I am more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose. That’s a big driver for me. When the processes or standards become more important to you than the result, you’re going to get good results. I want to be the best at everything we do. Maybe that sounds wishy-washy. Or maybe it doesn’t.

What I’m going to add to one of my biggest strengths is understanding context. I have a background in psychology so I think that goes along with relating to people, so I’m able to put myself in other people’s shoes. I think that’s a really big strength in terms of interpersonal skills, to be able to have empathy and understand what people are going through. But I also feel I’m pretty good at understanding the context of organisations and where they stand emotionally, in terms of outside influences, in terms of their history, in terms of where they want to go. I would think that’s critical in terms of decision making because if you don’t understand the context of where Ulster were when I arrived or where we are at the end of this season, how on earth are we going to make any decisions on what to do next? It’s the same in your interpersonal skills. If I’m sat in the office here and chatting with one of the players and I don’t understand the context of where they are, how can I give them any advice or help them to answer questions that they have personally? That would be a strength of mine: understanding context on an organisational level but also being able to take the perspective of other people.

What strength do you admire most in others?

I reckon relating to people. The people that have really good interpersonal skills. It’s very admirable. I’m not an impersonal person, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I would be in the top ranks of interpersonal skills. It’s certainly something that I place at the very top of what I’m trying to do, of what I’m doing on a day to day basis. The people that can relate, we know the ones, there are not many of them. There are not many people that are ready to do that.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

Communication and clarity. You’ve got to have the individuals within it who are competent but clarity on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, what you’re trying to achieve, and then being able to communicate within those teams. Stanley McChrystal’s team of teams is a brilliant book. That dispersed leadership model opened my eyes to how really important jobs can be done without somebody having to pass down a message from Washington via so-and-so.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

I reckon relying on the feedback of the people that I work with. I’ve got really good people that I work with here and relying on them to provide me with the feedback from what they need from me, I think that’s pretty important.