By John Portch

“I know we have good people,” said Ayao Komatsu. “It’s a matter of putting it together, giving them clear direction, and an organisational structure that promotes – forces – communication.”

The Haas F1 Team Principal spoke onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London about his team’s efforts to compete with better resourced and more illustrious teams.

“If we cannot work together, if you’re not supporting each other, if you’re not aligned, we’ve got zero chance against organisations minimum three times our size.”

Komatsu’s words set the scene for a virtual roundtable in late February, where Institute members reflected on what makes a performance environment great.

They set out the barriers they face before discussing how they would approach those barriers if given a clean slate.

Off the back of that, we’ve identified four building blocks of great performance environments for your consideration.

Building block 1: psychological safety (the enabler)

When people feel psychologically safe they are better able to contribute to the collective. It also promotes shared ownership and breeds alignment.

A head of culture from the world of English rugby union said:

“One of the most important elements of a great culture is to be a place where people can be themselves and be comfortable being the type of people they are.”

Job security is a critical element. A coach at an English Premier League academy said:

“Once you’ve got your key people, the people that want to be on the bus, in their roles then it’s just trying to keep them in those roles and develop them to better influence environment and the athletes.”

As for the athletes, a practitioner working in the British sports system observed their growing participation as stakeholders:

“We’re seeing a big shift in environments where athletes have much bigger voice and are involved in a lot more decisions, conversations. They don’t want to be told what to do anymore. They want to feel involved; know why what’s happening is happening.”

She then explained that the athletes need to be met halfway so that the dressing room does not turn into a “complaints forum”:

“We’ve definitely found that when you give that space to the athletes, they then can take it a little bit too far. Sometimes they complain about everything. ‘We want to fix this, we want to fix that’. It’s not super constructive… how do we create those boundaries and expectations on also what that looks like and how can we keep it productive to the goals of the environment and what we want to do?”

Building block 2: empathetic leadership (the primary lever)

When leaders are attuned to their people and consistent in their conduct, it helps to create an environment in which psychological safety, ambition and learning can flourish.

This begins with the everyday signals leaders send; what they are prepared to tolerate and the elements they choose to reinforce. The head of culture working in English rugby union said:

“Make sure that the sort of organisation you want to be is mirrored by the behaviours you accept. So it’s all good and well talking about having a good place to be and a good culture, but if you accept behaviours that are not aligned with that place you want to be, it’s disingenuous and people see through it.”

Leaders also shape the environment through the stability they create. In certain sports, this is a rare commodity. As a coach working in the notoriously trigger‑happy world of elite football pointed out:

“Where there’s lots of turnover, people become naturally less and less inclined to think about long-term growth and development.”

Yet this long‑term lens is essential staff and athletes alike. The same coach added:

“When you’re dealing with a 21-year-old high potential player who arguably hasn’t had some of the development they should have at a younger age, there’s probably loads of room for growth in those players if you can foster the right environment. You should be looking for the corners and the spaces around the programme where development is achievable.”

Building block 3: opportunities for growth (the operational prerequisite)

The trick is in providing athletes, coaches and staff with opportunities to develop under your stewardship.

A mental performance coach working in youth tennis in the US highlighted the problem that academy coaches (and their players) may encounter in this regard:

“It’s always a balance: how we can help the athletes improve, whether through coaches or what we call ‘free play’ so they can learn skills and have fun while doing it. But also, we live in a culture where the parents or whomever just want to see results right away and maybe that’s not the best for long-term success and the athlete’s career. You can be good at 12 years old and winning a lot of tournaments and matches, but how you’re doing it right now might not be better suited down the line.”

In the face of short‑term pressure, leaders must give people clarity in direction, expectations and the team’s priorities. A head of health and wellbeing from the world of motorsport spoke of their experience of the value in having “mission clarity”:

“You can then make sure that you’re really clear on the ambition of where you want to get to, then build back from there.”

Building block 4: systems & processes (the delivery mechanism)

When you have safety and clarity, one can then put in place the necessary processes to deliver high performance.

The head of health and wellbeing in motorsport spoke of an environment where leaders emphasise the importance of structured, backward‑planned systems. He said:

“Where are we currently? Look at the gap; and then how do we go about setting some really clear priorities and a strategy that we can deliver that gets us closer to it?”

Elsewhere, a member working in the military highlighted how intentional routines and reflective spaces help his teams stay aligned:

“There is value in being very deliberate in thinking about our infrastructure. We have a couple of offsites each year to drill down and make sure we’re getting these things right; to find the right answer. I’ve been a part of a few different teams and the ones that function the best find a way to do that.”

What to read next

Too Often, the Person Is a Sticking Plaster for a Lack of Robust Systems and Processes

By John Portch

Andy Burns tells the Leaders Performance Institute an old story of a strength & conditioning coach who was betrayed by his own siloed thinking.

“He came up to me and said: ‘I think I should be promoted’,” says Burns, who today is a High Performance Manager with the New South Wales Institute of Sport.

At the time, which was several Olympic cycles ago, he oversaw the sports science and sports medicine programmes at a different organisation.

“I said: ‘Why do you think you should be promoted?’ He replied: ‘Well, because I can measure and articulate to you that the athletes are stronger, faster and fitter than they have ever been’.” The S&C coach quickly warmed to his theme. “‘The psychologist just sits and talks to them. How can they be a senior practitioner when I can clearly demonstrate that I’ve made them stronger?’”

Burns had a ready reply. “I said: ‘Let me ask you a question then. If we get to the Games and everybody hits a PB in the gym the week before we leave but everybody then goes out in the first round of the Games, have you done your job?’ His answer was ‘yes’. I said: ‘That’s the reason you’re not a senior – because you don’t understand how your part contributes to the whole’.”

In the intervening period, Burns has conducted extensive research on the topic of silos in sport and his work with the NSW Institute of Sport includes tackling those silos head on with a range of teams and sports.

Below, with Burns’ help, we explore the origins of silos and some practical steps teams can take to remove them.

What are some of the enduring barriers to interdisciplinary work?

Burns points to four common barriers in particular:

1. Worldview

Naturally, people approach challenges with different priorities. He says: “The worldviews of coaches, physiotherapists and psychologists are based on how they were trained, how they were developed; their education system.”

2. Language

Different disciplines have completely different terminology. Despite progress in bringing linguistic unity to this area, “we’re all still talking across each other to some degree,” says Burns.

3. Methods of communication

Burns’ work has highlighted tensions between, say, a coach who often prefers their information “quick and dirty” compared to a sports scientist who takes their time to produce a shiny (and not overly succinct) PowerPoint report. As he points out, a coach can rightly say: ‘if we run a test on Thursday night and you get back to me by Monday, I’ve already taken four more sessions and your information is out of date’.

4. Personal KPIs

“KPIs are a massive challenge as well,” says Burns. “How do we move everyone to an interdisciplinary way of working if everybody’s objectives are just in their single discipline?”

What does it take to get everyone pulling in the same direction?

Shared ownership of the outcome, which includes both the successes and the ‘pain’ of performance.

Burns is preparing a paper that focuses on the characteristics of cross-functional teams and spoke to 12 performance directors as part of that process.

Some of their responses were to be expected, but one performance director spoke of the idea that ‘shared hardship forges teams’. Burns asked him to expand. The PD cited the example of a six-week cricket tour where players, coaches and staff are away from their friends and families.

“As a leader, that makes you think: what environments can I create where people are going to have to endure difficult moments as a team and share some of that hardship?” says Burns in reflection.

It’s not an easy question to answer because, as he points out, it’s generally the coach’s head on the chopping block if things go wrong. Coaches also tend to take a more “24/7 approach” than most practitioners. (“This is one thing that coaches told me that stuck with me and I don’t yet have an answer for how they might meet in the middle,” says Burns).

Moreover, if a coach is sacked, “there might only be two or three more jobs in that country at that level. They might have to move country and they can’t really jump from being a soccer coach to a rugby coach either.”

How can leaders work towards shared accountability?

For Burns, it starts with a programme’s over-arching KPIs and its ‘what it takes to win’.

“You have to clearly articulate the performance requirement of the sport, map your athlete cohort against that, and then the coach’s idea of how they interpret what it takes to win,” he says. When the coach is clear in their philosophy and the performance team understand what contributes to performance and what is a discriminator, they can start to share the workload.

“You have all these activities that are linked to the coach’s philosophy and the KPIs.” From there, the team can determine who needs to take the lead in a project and when. So when an athlete is injured, for example, the first lead would be the doctor, who would eventually pass the athlete to the physio, followed by the S&C coach, then, finally, the head coach.

Shared personal KPIs can also help to address the performance need, particularly as they are so much more powerful than KPIs that sit within a single discipline.

Burns explains his rationale using the example of a collective KPI for an S&C coach and a dietitian. “They need to understand the project around tapering for performance while maintaining lean muscle mass,” he says. “Now we’re talking about interdisciplinary practice rather than multidisciplinary; and then you’re in a position where you’re opening up those silos and getting people to think collaboratively.”

Coaches can have very different philosophies on what it takes to win. How should those differences be taken into account?

“For performance support staff, influence starts with understanding the coach”, says Burns. “Different head coaches value different disciplines in different ways.” For example, one coach may want their psychologist on hand each day, while another coach may not prioritise psychology. Burns likens it to the “layers of an onion”. “A coach needs to know who’s in their core team and who can be brought in as and when needed.”

Whatever the case, “you’ve got to cater to the individual sport, the individual programme, preferences of the coach and needs of the athlete cohort.” That means the practitioner must “learn their preferences, pressures and language, even if it’s not how you would ideally work. Credibility is built by solving real performance problems first. Once you’ve demonstrated value and earned trust, you can help shape broader planning and strategy. In high-performance environments, impact comes before influence.”

Burns then recalls a workshop he ran for an Archery team. “The coach and I wrote the name of an athlete on a whiteboard, wrote the score they needed to hit, and then the coach wasn’t allowed to speak for 30 minutes.”

Over the course of that half-hour, the other staff members wrote on the board how they would help that archer bridge their current gap between winning a medal or not.

“At the end, the coach turns to me and says, ‘I had no idea they had all that information on the athlete and the sport’.”

The message to coaches is that a practitioner may know more about your sport than you think and that knowledge (combined with their domain knowledge) can be used to generate deeper insights.

Does it come down to role clarity?

“That’s probably too simplistic – ‘role clarity’ has this airy quality,” says Burns, who points to his research with his co-author Dave Collins.

“It’s not just role clarity because I can tell you what your job is, but you have to accept that this is the job, that you’re comfortable with what you need to do; and then you need the recognition, remuneration and reward for doing the actual job.” These three aspects, as he explains, aren’t often discussed.

How do leaders ensure everyone is delivering the same messages?

Through a ‘shared mental model’, which Burns describes as “a common internal understanding held across a team about goals, strategies, processes, roles, and what ‘good’ looks like”.

This tackles the pervasive risk of mixed messages undoing your good work.

Burns adds: “If the coach says this is going to be a hard session but the physio puts an arm around the athlete and tells them to go easy, then it’s a problem.”

Athletes are as human as anyone else and some will look for a way out, if possible, “but if the whole performance team is like ‘no, this is really important for you’ then the athlete has no escape. The language is the same and there’s a clear outcome in mind.”

It “10Xs” the impact, as Burns puts it. “Every interaction with an athlete becomes an intervention and they keep hearing the same message and getting more and more reinforcement that ‘this is why we’re doing these things’. That speeds up how fast you can move as an interdisciplinary team.”

A shared mental model is also important when plans have to be adapted.

What about coaches resistant to change?

“Coaches,” as Burns says, “just want their athletes to deliver, perform, be successful and grow as people. So if you can contribute to that and demonstrate that you as a member of staff can contribute to that formula, they’ll generally listen to you.”

The shift is equally important for coaches themselves. “Opening the door to different expertise is not a threat to authority, it’s an expansion of it. The best coaches invite practitioners to become students of their sport, integrating their knowledge into performance decisions.”

He shares another real-life example concerning a talented athlete who was under-performing. “The athlete thought they had to be lean going into a competition,” he continues. “He thought: ‘if I’m leaner, I’m lighter, I’m faster’ and the coach reinforced that narrative.” The performance team unearthed the fact that the athlete’s PB came when they were eight kilos heavier. With both the athlete and coach’s consent, they adapted the athlete’s programme to great effect.

That evidence-based intervention earned the trust of that coach. “It’s not sports science and medicine versus coaching. At its best, it becomes one collective identity: the coaching team, sharing responsibility for performance.”

Burns is also ready for any coach who claims that something that failed ten years ago still has no place in the performance equation.

“It is sometimes about a simple reframe, such as: ‘Yes it didn’t work then, but do you know how much technology has advanced in ten years?’ It might have been the athletes weren’t ready for that, or the practitioner didn’t understand it well enough. I’d say ‘you’re a different coach because you’ve got more experience, the athlete cohort is different, and the concept might have progressed after ten more years of research and experimentation’.”

And what can help practitioners?

Burns suggests that all practitioners are given opportunities to lead projects that extend beyond their domain.

He says: “In one of our endurance sports, the younger athletes don’t fully understand general race day preparations such as: how do you manage a taper? How do you prepare on the day? What does your warm-up need to look like? What kind of food do you need to take with you? These are some basic fundamentals but rather than do one-to-one interventions, we decided to create a curriculum of education for this group.”

It has led to a situation where the S&C coach, despite not delivering on nutrition, is leading that stream. The contrast with the S&C Burns mentioned earlier in our conversation could not be starker.

“I’m holding them accountable to educating these athletes and pulling in the right people as and when needed to deliver certain elements of it.”

What to read next

Do you Feel your Team Has Plenty of Clarity But Still Suffers from Misalignment?

Main Image: Getty Images/Fiona Goodall

By Peter Hodgkinson

I had the opportunity and privilege to be a part of the British challenge for the 37^th America’s Cup in 2024.

We achieved a number of national firsts: the first British team to win the Challenger Series, fending off some tough opponents; the first British team to contest the Match itself in 60 years; and the first British team to score points in the Match for 90 years.

There was no shame in eventually losing 7-2 to Team New Zealand, who claimed their third consecutive victory. We gave it a good go against the team our helmsman, Sir Ben Ainslie, described as “the best team ever”.

This is the story of how we put ourselves in contention.

Assembling a functioning team: the hard part

The INEOS Britannia Team was made up of two organisations: Athena Racing and Mercedes GP. It wasn’t always easy – it was a collision of two different workplace cultures – but the common goal bonded the two companies together and we got on with the job.

I learnt a lot about sailing and the maritime industry and while there are similarities to motorsport, where I have made a career for four decades, there are a number of big differences (that’s a topic best saved for another day).

One of the things I really enjoyed about working on the Cup was that we got to recruit a new Build Logistics Team. Basically the Build Logistics Team are parts chasers; in the Cup they looked after ‘goods in’, ‘stores’, stock checks, parts picking, moving parts through inspection, NDT (non-destructive testing), X ray etc. so it is a fluid and dynamic role with lots of pressure.

The team we recruited had very little or no experience in this type of role but we believed it was more important to have the right mindset, practical intelligence and energy than experience. In the Cup, we didn’t have all the structures, systems and processes in place that you have in an F1 team but we had enough to do the basics well, if we used what we had correctly.

I believe if you have relatively fewer parts then you need additional people to manage those parts as they become more critical. Therefore, we ended up with a team of seven people in Build Logistics, which seems a lot, but considering the workload, I think this was the correct number.

Almost all members of the team we assembled would be considered Gen Z, but I didn’t view them in such narrow terms. I didn’t put them in some kind of box with a label. To me they were a new team that we had to get moving as quickly as possible. This was the hard part.

‘Don’t lose any parts’… and ‘no surprises’

The team’s inexperience was difficult to manage at first but as they were all intelligent it didn’t take long to get them up and running. Don’t get me wrong: we had some very difficult moments and some very challenging conversations, but after a few months we started to see improvements and we were going in the right direction. The energy and passion this group displayed was not seen by the whole team as everyone was flat out, but I could see what they were achieving. I applied what I had learnt in my time in HR (I was Head of Employee Engagement at Mercedes F1 between 2019 and 2022) to this group using intent-based leadership and psychological safety.

I gave the Build Logistics team two simple rules: ‘don’t lose any parts’ and ‘no surprises’. Don’t lose parts almost goes without saying, but it was important to articulate as it gave them a mental priority for what they were responsible for. I wanted them to feel that every part was important because, if we lost something, then we could miss an important test or delay a development item hitting the water, therefore delaying the opportunity to learn.

We did lose some parts but also we did learn from this, and I like to think we didn’t blame the person, as the process (or lack of) allowed it to happen. In most cases during my career, the human being was acting as a sticking plaster due to the lack of a robust process or system.

I used ‘no surprises’ as a tool to try to build psychological safety. Surprises are for birthdays and Christmas, in my book. I wanted this young team under pressure to speak up. I wanted them to feel that it was wrong not to say something if they were concerned about a part or a process or were having a problem. I wanted to hear what they had to say, I was desperate to hear what they were thinking, and it was important that I responded productively when they did bring me bad news. As a Build Logistics Team, we needed to know now if there was an issue, as we simply didn’t have time or resources to bury bad news. We needed to hear their voices and, for me, ‘no surprises’ gave them permission to speak.

We had a daily meeting at 11:00am to go over the plan, projects and new parts – similar to what we did in F1 – and it took a while to truly hear everyone’s voice. I would say to them: ‘I woke up at 2:30am and thought about this, when you woke up last night, what did you think about?’ Sometimes nobody had much to say when I asked this question but on many occasions there was a little nugget of information that came to light.

If you are looking to build psychological safety in your team, try using ‘no surprises’. It gives your team permission to speak and it will help your team grow and develop as they feel they have a voice and will be respected for their contributions.

The 2% vs the 98%

Now this might be a bit controversial: one nugget I gave to the young Build Logistics Team on the America’s Cup was “you are only remembered for the 2% you get wrong, not the 98% you get right”.

If you are really honest and park up all the psychology for a moment, this is probably a pretty true statement.

I am sure plenty of cleverer people than me will disagree with this sentiment, but this is how I see it. It is a bit below the line, but it did focus my mind on my own performance. I believe we remember negative moments or threats to help protect ourselves in the future if we see this type of situation happening again, and therefore it remains fresh in our memories.

Others will have some good memories of some of the things we did but they will remember in detail our mistakes and the moments where we did not behave reliably or with competence. In other words, they lost trust in us. As human beings we will make mistakes, this is how we learn, grow and develop.

Intent-based leadership

Leaders of new young teams need to provide a lot of control and support in the early stages of the team’s development while the team members improve their competence and get aligned to the clarity of the intent. As the team’s competence and clarity increases, the amount of leadership control decreases. This is built on the intent-based leadership theory devised by retired United States Navy captain David Marquet.

This is a snapshot:

As a leader you are never quite sure what the people around you really think of you or if you have made a difference due to the pace of the world we live in. That said, a former member of the Mercedes F1 Build Logistics Team (and now a successful leader and manager in his own right) recently sent me one of the nicest bits of feedback I have ever received:

Your leadership allowed many young people to grow and now forms a lot of their own leadership and general teamwork skills. The biggest thing I always felt that made you different was your ability to allow others to make mistakes whilst catching them before it was at the detriment of the team. Without that, none of us would have learnt to be independent.

I think the key point from this is: I was catching the mistakes before they hit the 2% category while allowing the team to learn and become independent and responsible.

How is your team learning? Or are you telling them what to do so they don’t make mistakes? You don’t want their mistakes to reflect poorly on you and get you into that 2% category.

I hope this has given you something to think about. I am sure this may go against the grain for some of you but I suppose we can’t all agree on everything.

Peter Hodgkinson is a leadership and performance specialist skilled in helping high-performers become better at what they do. As an accomplished manager and mechanic, Peter has enjoyed almost three decades of success in elite sporting environments. His work in motorsport, as part of winning teams at Le Mans and Daytona, culminated in seven Formula 1 driver’s world championships won at Brawn and Mercedes, where he led car-building operations. Peter was Mercedes’ Head of Build during Lewis Hamilton’s era-defining run of six world titles. After a spell serving as Mercedes’ Head of Employee Engagement, Peter returned to the Factory Floor as Build Operations Manager for the INEOS Britannia sailing team when Mercedes supported their quest for the 37^th America’s Cup.

If you would like to speak to Peter, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

By John Portch

At Leaders Meet: Australia a pair of self-proclaimed “professional idiots” took to the stage.

The Shepmates – Australian identical twin brothers Archie and Miles Shepherd – have become internet stars due to their viral videos depicting their high-energy and comedic reinterpretations of dramatic moments of sports commentary.

“I’m not going to pretend like we probably should be offering you guys advice. You’re the best at what you guys do,” Miles told a room of Leaders Performance Institute members at Rivershed in Brisbane. “But hopefully we can inspire you guys, or you take something from our story.”

Their dedication to their art and their fans has taken them to places they never expected. “We’ve found ourselves in a pretty niche part of the internet,” said Archie.

On top of it all, the brothers’ obvious chemistry, as well as their ability to finish each other’s sentences, hinted at the theme of alignment that ran through both days down on the River Brisbane (and it’s a performance trend we’ve tracked for some time).

They were not alone. Others who took to the stage, including the Brisbane Lions, World Rugby and the Queensland Ambulance Service, spoke of their efforts to ensure everyone within their walls is on the same page.

Based on the insights shared onstage across both days, the Leaders Performance Institute highlights how alignment shows up in the work of high-performing teams in at least five ways.

1. Smart coaches who can manage up

In sporting terms, there has never been a better moment for the city of Brisbane, with the Lions defending their AFL premiership and the Broncos winning the NRL in 2025.

Lions Senior Coach Chris Fagan and Broncos Head Coach Michael Maguire have built winning machines in this corner of Queensland, and both were on hand to tell Leaders Performance Institute members how it was done.

Key to their approach is an ability to manage the executives within their organisations. As Fagan said, “I always said to myself, if I was going to be a head coach, that I would make sure I would manage up to that group of people.”

Over the past nine years, Fagan tried to dine once a week with Lions’ CEO Greg Matthews as well as the team’s senior-coach-turned-executive Leigh Matthews.

“It’s been incredibly invaluable because I’ve got two allies that have always been able to tell my story and tell the story of the team to those who needed to know it.”

Chris Fagan

Maguire has adopted a similar approach to prevent any noise or confusion emanating from above.

“When people above you understand the journey of where you’re going and what you’re trying to do then everyone is held to account because if they don’t agree upon things, get that flushed out… [and] if they don’t understand your goal they can sometimes make it up; and that’s why I say it always starts at the top.”

Michael Maguire

Chris Fagan (centre) in conversation with Michael Maguire (right) and moderator Rachel Vickery. Photo: Albert Perez

2. They seek ‘spine alignment’ too

While coaches can do what they can to ensure information is flowing in all directions, there is a role for both board members and heads of performance on the sports science side too.

Onstage, Peter Horne, the Performance Director at Rugby Australia, made the case for “spine alignment”, of which he said, “if we get true spine alignment of what we’re trying to achieve from a strategy, business and the deliverables [perspective] then we’re more likely to be able to execute.”

Crucially, as he admitted, it is not about agreement on every decision.

“I don’t always agree with the decisions, but ultimately if we all agree on the outcome where we’re heading, then we’re more likely to do that.”

Peter Horne

“For the spine to work, you need everyone operating at the right level,” said Brett Robinson, the Chair of World Rugby, who joined Horne for the session. He included himself in that assessment.

“You have to be trustworthy, empathetic, listen, communicate all the time and be systematic about it.”

Brett Robinson

Peter Horne (right) makes his point onstage with Brett Robinson (centre) and Leaders’ Laura McQueen. Photo: Albert Perez

3. They bring their frontline people onboard

Few individuals are as well placed to discuss the concept of a culture driven by a shared purpose than Dr Stephen Rashford, the Medical Director of the Queensland Ambulance Service.

He is proud of his team’s “no excuses” approach too. “When we do our audits, everyone’s in the room, and there’s no making fun of anyone, there’s no bullying. We have honest, open discussions because we all just want to get better.”

Critically, their culture starts with their paramedics.

“It actually starts as close to the patient as possible. If our ‘players’ don’t want to be involved, then there’s no point progressing because we actually need to get everyone bought-in.”

Dr Stephen Rashford

Dr Stephen Rashford mid presentation. Photo: Albert Perez

4. They have leaders who give their people psychological safety

Australian all-rounder Ellyse Perry is one of the greatest female cricketers of all time (then there’s her career as an international football player to consider). Her career has been underpinned by psychological safety. “When there’s a lot of support around that and real alignment on wanting to grow and improve, that makes a big difference,” she said.

“Consistency in leadership and how the vision and what you’re trying to achieve is conveyed [is so important]. People know what they get, they’re not guessing today how you’re going to respond to something.”

Ellyse Perry

“No matter the position you hold, you don’t know everything, so be open-minded to learning,” said Anna Meares, the double Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist who served as the Chef de Mission for the Australian Olympic Committee at the Paris Games. She spoke onstage alongside Perry and fellow Olympic gold medallist, the BMX cyclist Saya Sakakibara.

As Chef, Meares decided that open displays of vulnerability from early in the cycle would help to bring athletes and their coaches onboard.

“I had to go and learn from them because that information helps me set the environment and culture for when they come in.”

Anna Meares

Psychological safety is just as important in individual sports, as Sakakibara told the audience. The Red Bull athlete won gold in Paris but recounted the story of her awful crash three years earlier in Tokyo and how it encouraged her to start placing her trust in others.

“I started to rebuild my own support network and really started to believe in the systems rather than believing that I have to do everything.”

Saya Sakakibara

Anna Meares (second from left) makes her point to session moderator Fabio Serpiello in the company of Ellyse Perry (second from right) and Saya Sakakibara (first on the right). Photo: Albert Perez

5. They use process as a tool of alignment

In his presentation, Scott McLean, an associate professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, explained that leaders must be aware of how things are connected in the complex systems of sports performance.

“If you want to intervene somewhere, just be aware it’s likely there’s going to be impacts elsewhere in the system.”

Scott McLean 

Scott McLean from stage right. Photo: Albert Perez

Interventions should be governed by the performance need rather than results, according to James Thomas, the Performance Director at Warwickshire CCC, who made this case when he spoke onstage.

“I go back to the process; what we’re trying to do as a team, what we’re trying to do in the short term, what we’re trying to do for the longer term, and some of the trade-offs we’re going to face on that journey and realistic expectations  too.”

James Thomas

James Thomas onsite at Leaders Meet: Australia. Photo: Albert Perez

Where we’re going next

Leaders Meet: The Art of Strategy

By James Thomas

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

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

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

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

Lessons from the boxing ring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the boxing ring to the crease

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

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

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

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

Creating the space where performance can thrive

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why environment is a leadership choice, not a cultural outcome

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

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

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

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

Final reflections: build what outlasts you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

1. The athlete as a member of your interdisciplinary team

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

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

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

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

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

2. The continued rise of external clinicians and coaches

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

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

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

3. Better defined performance and clinical psychology

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. AI as a useful ‘sparring partner’

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He explained each in turn and their different elements.

1. Unifying focus

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

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

2. Quality of interaction

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

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

3. Quality of action

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

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

4. Shared responsibility

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

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

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

Again, he shared his thoughts on each:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Portch

“I knew it was a mountain,” said Johann van Graan, “but I didn’t know it was Everest.”

The South African, then with Munster, had agreed to become the Head Coach at struggling Bath in December 2021.

A few days later, he switched on the TV only to see Bath go 0-28 down after just 25 minutes of their Champions Cup tie with Leinster.

It prompted the Everest comment, as Van Graan told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.

He eventually took the reins at Bath’s Recreation Ground in July 2022 and, over the next three years, led one of the most remarkable transformations in English rugby history.

In May, Bath lifted the European Challenge Cup, Premiership and Premiership Rugby Cup.

The tale of Van Graan’s ‘Rec Revolution’ set the tone for an international gathering of over 300 high-performance leaders to share knowledge, best practice and inspiration.

The agenda took its lead from our Trend Report in which more than 200 performance leaders from almost 40 sports told us how they expect the industry to develop in the years ahead.

Five trends stood out:

1. Alignment is now a competitive advantage
2. Leaders increasingly seek to empower and collaborate
3. Teams value resourcefulness over resources
4. Psychology will be a game-changer
5. Teams are engaging in a tech arms race

Van Graan is at the vanguard of several of these trends and, across both days, the Leaders Performance Institute delivered a range of guest speakers from organisations including England Rugby, the Royal Air Force, and the Haas F1 team to speak to each trend.

The following is a snapshot of what they said.

1. Alignment is now a competitive advantage

For evidence of the stock placed in being aligned, look no further than Bath’s transformation from a rabble to the best team in England in just three years.

Van Graan said: “I put up a picture of Twickenham on the very first day. I said ‘I can’t tell you how we’re going to get there, but we will get there.”

He wanted his playing group, coaches and other performance staff to coalesce around three values: connection, clarity and commitment. The trick was then bringing those to life.

“One of the things that we underestimate is what alignment really looks like. We can never communicate enough. Do we really let people know what standards actually look like, what we actually are, what are we actually going to attack?”

Johann van Graan

Bath Head Coach Johann van Graan in conversation with host Iain Brunnschweiler.

2. Leaders increasingly seek to empower and collaborate

John Mitchell offered another inspiring story from the world of rugby union.

In 2023, when he signed on as Head Coach of the England women’s national team, it was Mitchell’s first time coaching a women’s team.

The Red Roses had a genuine shot at winning the Women’s Rugby World Cup on home soil in 2025, but a talented team needed an experienced guiding hand.

The team delivered, with Mitchell receiving plaudits for his role as England secured their first world title in 11 years.

Two months on from that achievement, the audience found Mitchell (affectionately known to his peers as ‘Mitch’) in typically reflective mood alongside the recently retired Emily Scarratt, who was part of the Red Roses’ winning squad.

Sport (and rugby union) grows ever more complex and yet, after 30 years, Mitchell feels he has never been better equipped to coach.

“You don’t have the full scope,” he says of his early coaching days in the mid-90s. “You have strengths early on that are recognised but then also you sometimes don’t know the whole of yourself. So you take the time to understand the whole of yourself.”

He came to a critical understanding. “When I was younger, I was going to try and be right. Maybe I was trying to prove myself as a coach.”

“You don’t have to be absolute or right when making decisions. Just use your people. Listen to your people. They’ll give you information; and probably enough information – you don’t need it all – to be able to make decisions.”

John Mitchell

England Red Roses Head Coach John Mitchell shakes hands with former England fullback Emily Scarratt at the conclusion of their panel session.

Emma Keith built on the theme of empowerment in her presentation on officer training in the Royal Air Force.

“Cultures and environments can only grow when everybody takes accountability,” said the Commandant of the RAF’s Tedder Academy of Leadership. Keith, a group captain, is the first female to run RAF officer training.

“The standard you walk past is the standard that you accept. That can be poor infrastructure that you don’t report; it could be poor behaviour. If you walk past it, you’re saying it’s okay. And that’s a slow rot from within.”

Emma Keith

Group Captain Emma Keith talks to UK Sport’s Alex Stacey following her presentation on officer training in the Royal Air Force.

3. Teams are prioritising resourcefulness over resources

As Team Principal of MoneyGram Haas F1, Ayao Komatsu knows as well as anyone that his team is competing with better resourced and more illustrious teams.

The team has 375 staff members, which may sound like a lot, but it pales in comparison to the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren.

“If we cannot work together, if you’re not supporting each other, if you’re not aligned, we’ve got zero chance against organisations minimum three times our size,” said Komatsu, who had just flown in from the Brazilian Grand Prix in São Paulo where Haas’ Oliver Bearman achieved a creditable top-six finish the weekend before the summit.

“I know we have good people. It’s a matter of putting it together, giving them clear direction, and an organisational structure that promotes – forces – communication.”

Ayao Komatsu

Ayao Komatsu, the Team Principal of Haas F1, shares insights into life in the pitlane.

Similarly, albeit in vastly different circumstances, the Red Cross must make the most of its limited resources when emergencies strike.

Chris Davies, the Director of Crisis Response and Community Resilience at The British Red Cross, cited his team’s core operational process:

“First off, ensure that you’re not over-promising and under-delivering. So you know what resource you have and work with key partners to make sure that you know which resources are available to you so that you get that embedded into the planning; and then we’re really clear on the capabilities that we have. It’s the basic forms of: what capabilities do you have? What can you deploy and when? What’s your deployment times?”

Chris Davies

Chris Davies of the British Red Cross in full presentation mode.

4. Psychology will be a game-changer

The mental and behavioural side of performance was an ever-present topic on both days of the summit. Our guests discussed several elements:

The importance of individual expression and acceptance

“People need to be themselves. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what language you speak, the colour of your skin – everybody’s mum and dad loves them.”

Johann van Graan

Belonging as a contributor to wellbeing (and performance)

“There is potentially 40 women in a group and they’re all going to be quite different and they’re going to need something different, but nonetheless, they’re all as important as each other and need to be valued in the same way.”

Emily Scarratt

Psychological safety

“If you’re afraid of failure, nobody’s going to move. So you’ve got to give them a clear message that, ‘come on’, you’ve got to almost take yourself out of your comfort zone every day. If you haven’t taken yourself out of your comfort zone once a day, actually, I don’t think you’ve done your job.”

Ayao Komatsu

5. Teams are engaging in a tech arms race

Professor Tom Crick spoke in his capacity as Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

He presented on the growth of AI and continually stressed how important it is to keep “the human in the loop” regardless of whatever advances are coming.

To this end he offered Leaders Performance Institute members a series of recommendations.

You must be able to explain why you are using an AI tool…

“You can’t just say ‘the computer says so.’ There has to be some understanding and explainability, and there has to be trust.”

An AI tool should not replace your people…

“AI should not erode or disempower or remove agency for people within your domain. It should augment human capability, not replace it,” said Crick. He added: “It is about co-design, co-decisions and co-evolution as we go forwards – keeping humans embedded in the process.”

Don’t assume your AI tool is right…

“Don’t automatically trust the system. Always ask: is that the right data? Does that feel right? Can we verify and validate it another way?”

Tom Crick, the Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, answers questions from Leaders Performance Institute members.

Next stop for the Leaders Performance Institute

Leaders Meet: Australia

Main Image: European Space Agency

By John Portch

Carole Mundell kicked off her presentation at the 2024 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London with a stunning montage.

The video depicted a range of space-faring feats performed by the European Space Agency [ESA] as it enjoyed its 50^th year.

Mundell, who is the Director of Science at the ESA , brought the room back to Earth again when outlining her efforts to bring together 23 European nations (more specifically their governments) in pursuit of the agency’s interstellar goals.

“Diplomacy is a contact sport,” said Mundell, who is a diplomatic veteran at this stage. She is responsible for a pan-European staff of over 45,000 people, with headquarters in five jurisdictions. You can also throw in the challenges posed by Brexit, the pandemic (when international diplomacy definitely was not a contact sport) and the war in Ukraine.

“The political churn at the moment is unprecedented,” she continued. “From one day to another, we don’t know whether our member state governments will continue to be governments or remain in place for another election.”

This volatility stands in contrast to ESA missions, all of which take decades to devise and tend to last longer than most political careers.

Then there’s the space-based challenges. In her time onstage, Mundell described a range of missions, from explorations of Jupiter’s moons to detailed observations to the surface of Mercury. All require incomprehensible precision.

Take the LISA [Laser Interferometer Space Antenna] mission. Its purpose is to detect gravitational waves in space; the ripples in space-time caused by cosmic events such as black hole collisions.

“They will have three spacecraft flying in convoy, with two and a half million kilometres between each spacecraft,” she said. “They will follow an Earth-Sun orbit and they will rotate and stay in that triangle.”

The lasers in question must be able to point with precision narrower than a proton.

““We’re going to measure the nature of space-time itself. It’s eye-watering technology.”

LISA measuring the properties of gravitational waves (Image: the European Space Agency)

Mundell has become adept at managing the external elements that could derail projects such as LISA. Thanks to her leadership, ESA’s creative and technical minds are able to do their best work in a climate of political uncertainty.

Psychological safety

In space, Mundell told us, things often go wrong. Take the Euclid mission, the purpose of which is to map the ‘dark’ universe. The lens of space telescope, which orbits the sun 1.5 million km from Earth, became contaminated by a strip of ice thinner than a strand of DNA. Mundell’s team had to find a way to defrost the ice without damaging the equipment’s sensitive optics.

Euclid begin its dark universe survey. (Image: European Space Agency)

But if you can reasonably anticipate microscopic space ice then you can devise a plan to defrost it.

“We did that last month,” she said almost matter-of-factly, but the ESA’s staff have built trust in their systems. “At a time of crisis, the first thing you do is check the process.” The system provides a layer of safety that goes beyond the interpersonal dynamics originally associated with the term ‘psychological safety’ (although these remain important; Mundell says: “Please create the best possible cultures you can. Please have the courage to really call out bad behaviour”).

“The cognitive safety comes from the fact that you know there is a process that you’ve all built together.”

This knowledge is also useful when navigating potential cultural differences present in a supranational organisation.

More creative, less expensive, more innovative

On her way to the Kia Oval, Mundell received news that one of an ESA contract negotiation was going backwards.

“My first instinct was to think of a solution,” she said. “And a very calm senior colleague said to me: ‘we don’t need to escalate this’. We don’t always need to go to the nuclear option.”

Such setbacks and budget cuts are par for the course. During his annual press briefing in January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion. It was €7.79 billion in 2024, but Germany, Italy and the UK reduced their contributions by a collective €430 million.

“We have to continually innovate and make things more creative, less expensive, but more innovative,” said Mundell, who explained that the ESA must design to cost. While there is room for creativity in day to day problem-solving, the process guides the action taken. “We have a whole quality assurance system where we set our objectives and we say ‘what will we do?’ ‘What did we say we’d do?’ ‘Did we do what we said?’”

Enduring purpose

The ESA was founded to enable European nations to explore the cosmos and further the continent’s knowledge and understanding. It’s an enduring purpose that continues to appeal. On 1 January this year, Slovenia became the 23^rd member state, with several others still in the queue to join.

“Our missions are lifetime generational missions,” said Mundell. “You’ll see that people will give a significant fraction of their lifetime to develop, design and fly these missions, and ultimately protect them, to deliver science back to society. Children in school today will use data from our missions.”

She explained that once every three years there is a council meeting of ESA members at a ministerial level to decide the agency’s budget for the next three-year cycle. She shared an image from the 2022 meeting in Paris. It was taken just before she joined:

The official portrait of ministers at the 2022 ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level. (Photo: Stephane Corvaja / European Space Agency)

“This is a photograph of inspiration,” she said. “These ministers come from all different political backgrounds, they were facing various different challenges at this time. There was cost of living crisis and obviously the war in Ukraine was pushing all sorts of problems across these member states, and yet they all came together and they agreed that space is important.”

Hear more from Carole Mundell

By Dr Benjamin Kelly

The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black provided a masterclass in how behavioural psychology determines team performance outcomes.

Whilst traditional analytics focused on individual statistics and course fit, the tournament results validated what behavioural economics could have predicted: personality compatibility matters more than raw talent in team formats.

As Europe secured a commanding 15-13 victory, several US pairings failed spectacularly despite strong individual credentials. These failures weren’t random—they were predictable through behavioural analysis. Equally important, Europe’s successful pairings demonstrated the power of complementary psychological profiles. Here’s how the science of decision-making under pressure explains both the failures and the successes.

Prospect Theory in action

Before examining specific pairings, it’s necessary to understand Prospect Theory, the Nobel Prize-winning framework developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The theory reveals that people feel losses approximately twice as intensely as equivalent gains, evaluate outcomes relative to expectations rather than in absolute terms, and shift their risk-taking behaviour depending on whether they’re protecting a lead (becoming conservative) or trying to recover from a deficit (becoming aggressive). Understanding these principles allows us to predict when players will make poor decisions, even when they’re emotionally calm and technically skilled.

The gold standard: Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal

The most legendary Ryder Cup partnership in history provides the perfect template for behavioural compatibility. Playing together 15 times between 1987 and 1993, Seve and Ollie won 11 points with a record of 11-2-2—the most successful pairing in Ryder Cup history.

Why they worked:

• Complementary leadership: Ballesteros (dominant/leader) + Olazábal (supportive/executor)
• Complementary pressure responses: Ballesteros (aggressive/risk-seeking) + Olazábal (steady/consistent)
• Complementary energy: Ballesteros (extrovert/generator) + Olazábal (introvert/stabiliser)
• Clear role definition: Ballesteros told Olazábal, “José, just play your golf and I will take care of the rest”

Ballesteros’ aggressive, risk-seeking approach was balanced by Olazábal’s steady precision. Different styles, unified purpose, perfect synergy.

At the 2025 Ryder Cup, Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood demonstrated the same principles, going 4-0 in their matches. McIlroy’s aggressive, expressive leadership paired perfectly with Fleetwood’s steady, supportive presence. It was a modern validation of the Ballesteros/Olazábal template.

The English-Morikawa disaster

The most glaring failure at the 2025 Ryder Cup was the Harris English and Collin Morikawa pairing, which DataGolf retrospectively ranked as the worst possible combination (132nd out of 132 pairings for Team USA).

They lost 5&4 to McIlroy/Fleetwood on Friday and lost 3&2 to the same pair on Saturday.

Behavioural analysis tells us that both players share problematic psychological profiles for team play.

These include:

• Introverted processors: Neither naturally communicates or generates energy
• Similar pressure responses: Both become conservative when stakes increase
• Analytical personalities: Both overthink rather than trust instincts
• Internal focus: Neither provides external motivation for their partner
• No leadership dynamic: Both are supportive personalities with no natural leader

When facing the aggressive, crowd-energised McIlroy/Fleetwood duo, they had no mechanism to generate counter-momentum or break negative cycles. Their conservative tendencies amplified each other, creating a downward spiral that traditional coaching couldn’t address.

The contrast with Ballesteros/Olazábal is stark: Where Ballesteros told Olazábal “I will take care of the rest,” English and Morikawa had no such clarity. Both waited for the other to lead.

Scheffler’s team format struggles: when strengths become weaknesses

Perhaps more surprising was Scottie Scheffler’s continued struggles in team formats. Despite being the world’s most dominant individual player, his Ryder Cup record tells a different story: 2-4-3 overall, 0-3 in foursomes.

The behavioural explanation is that Scheffler’s individual strengths become liabilities in team play.

More specifically:

• Control orientation: His need for complete control conflicts with shared decision-making
• Perfectionist mindset: Partner mistakes trigger frustration and tension
• Internal processing: His quiet confidence doesn’t translate to team energy
• Self-reliance: Dependency on partners creates anxiety rather than support

The same psychological traits that make him unbeatable individually (complete control, perfectionism, internal focus) become obstacles when success depends on partnership dynamics. His pairing with Russell Henley (both introverts, both analytical, no clear leadership dynamic) lost 5&3 to Jon Rahm and Sepp Straka, the match effectively over after the front nine.

These Ryder Cup results offer crucial insights for organisational team building:

1. Complementarity over similarity

Traditional thinking suggests pairing similar personalities for harmony. Behavioural economics shows the opposite: complementary traits create stronger partnerships. Successful teams need energy generators AND steady influences, communicators AND processors, leaders AND supporters.

Evidence: Ballesteros/Olazábal (complementary) = 11-2-2. English/Morikawa (similar) = 0-2.

2. Context changes everything

Individual excellence doesn’t guarantee team success. The psychological skills required for individual performance (self-reliance, internal focus, personal control) can become liabilities in collaborative environments. Leaders must assess team readiness separately from individual capability.

Evidence: Scheffler is world No1 individually but 2-4-3 in Ryder Cup team play.

3. Role clarity is essential

Every successful partnership has clear role definition: who leads, who supports, who generates energy, who provides stability. Without this clarity, decision-making becomes paralysed.

Evidence: Ballesteros told Olazábal “I will take care of the rest”—instant clarity. English/Morikawa had no such definition.

4. Pressure responses are predictable

How individuals respond to pressure in team settings follows predictable patterns. Some become more conservative (loss aversion), others more aggressive (risk-seeking), some internalise stress, others externalise it. Understanding these patterns allows for better team composition and intervention strategies.

The Prospect Theory twist

Interestingly, as the US fell further behind, Prospect Theory predicted they would become more risk-seeking (people take more risks when in the domain of losses). This psychological shift actually improved some performances in singles play, where individual risk-taking could be an advantage rather than a team liability.

Practical applications for leaders

Team formation:

• Assess personality compatibility, not just skill compatibility
• Ensure complementary rather than similar psychological profiles
• Define clear roles: who leads, who supports, who generates energy, who provides stability
• Consider context-specific team requirements

Performance optimisation:

• Recognise when individual strengths become team weaknesses
• Build relationships before high-pressure situations
• Develop context-specific training programmes
• Monitor team dynamics for early warning signs

Crisis management:

• Understand how teams respond differently to pressure than individuals
• Prepare intervention strategies for different psychological scenarios
• Use behavioural insights to predict and prevent failures
• Apply Prospect Theory to understand risk-taking shifts under pressure

Conclusion

The 2025 Ryder Cup demonstrated that in high-stakes team environments, behavioural compatibility often trumps individual talent. Whilst the US had superior individual players on paper, Europe’s better understanding of team psychology—whether intentional or intuitive—proved decisive.

The evidence is compelling: Ballesteros/Olazábal’s 11-2-2 record and McIlroy/Fleetwood’s 4-0 performance demonstrate the power of complementary psychological profiles. Conversely, English/Morikawa’s 0-2 disaster and Scheffler’s 2-4-3 record show the cost of ignoring behavioural compatibility.

For leaders in any field, the lesson is clear: team performance is not simply the sum of individual capabilities. It’s the product of psychological compatibility, complementary strengths, behavioural synergy under pressure, and clear role definition. Understanding these dynamics isn’t just useful, it’s essential for consistent high performance in team-based environments.

The most successful organisations will be those that apply behavioural economics principles to team formation, recognising that the science of human decision-making under pressure is as important as technical skill in determining outcomes.

Dr Benjamin Kelly is the Head of Behavioural Economics & Social Impact at Kavedon Kapital. If you would like to speak to Benjamin about his work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

What to read next

What Behavioural Finance Teaches us about (Bad) Decision Making in Golf