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, 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

By Dr Benjamin Kelly

In professional golf, where margins are razor-thin and pressure is immense, success hinges not just on physical prowess but on decision-making under duress.

While technical skill and conditioning are paramount, behavioural biases frequently derail even the most talented players. For leaders in sports, understanding these cognitive shortcuts and emotional responses is crucial for optimising athlete performance, coaching strategies, and mental resilience.

I believe that golf, much like financial markets, is fertile ground for behavioural finance – a field integrating psychology and economics to explain irrational decisions. While behavioural finance has profoundly reshaped our understanding of investment behaviour, its application to sports decision-making, particularly in golf, remains remarkably underexplored. This is a significant oversight, as the very same biases impacting trading decisions equally affect decision-making on the golf course.

By examining cognitive shortcuts and emotional responses that derail golfers, we uncover profound lessons applicable to high-pressure environments across sports and business.

My work with investors has consistently demonstrated that reducing ‘bad decisions’ incrementally improves investment returns. This same principle applies directly to golf: eliminating poor choices on the course directly translates to saving shots and enhancing performance.

Overcoming behavioural biases is notoriously difficult; our innate cognitive architecture makes us highly susceptible. Therefore, the optimal path to mitigation is not to fight the bias directly, but to create a step in the process that prevents us from succumbing to it. In trading, a simple yet powerful example is the stop-loss order – a pre-defined instruction to exit a position if it falls to a certain price, removing emotional discretion from a critical decision.

This methodology, involving structured interventions, is evolving for golfers of all abilities.

Below, I illustrate these points with compelling examples, including Robert MacIntyre’s dramatic final round at the 2025 BMW Championship, and propose actionable strategies for correction.

1. The pain of losing: loss aversion and the ‘choke’ phenomenon

Loss aversion describes our innate tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains; the psychological pain of a loss is often twice as powerful as the pleasure of a gain. In golf, this bias is a primary contributor to the dreaded ‘choke’ phenomenon, particularly when a player holds a significant lead. The shift from playing to win to playing not to lose is a classic manifestation. It leads to tentative play and costly errors.

Consider the ‘final day phenomenon’ in golf, where approximately two-thirds of leading players fail to convert their lead into a win on the final day of a tournament. This represents a conversion rate of roughly 33%. My work with investors has consistently shown that even a modest improvement in decision-making, leading to an increase in success rates from 33% to 45%, can yield material benefits. For a professional golfer, this translates directly into more career victories and significant financial gains. For investors, it means incrementally improved returns and enhanced portfolio performance. This isn’t a sudden decline in skill; it’s a psychological battle. A player leading a tournament, especially on the back nine, often shifts from an aggressive, winning mindset to a conservative, loss-averse one. Instead of continuing the attacking golf that built their lead, they focus on not making mistakes, which leads to tentative swings, reduced pace, and increased unforced errors. The fear of losing the lead becomes more potent than the desire to win. It paralyses their natural game.

Robert MacIntyre at the 2025 BMW Championship provides a vivid illustration. MacIntyre entered the final round with a commanding four-shot lead, having played exceptional golf through the first three rounds (carding 62, 64 and 68 for an average of 64.67 shots). However, in the final round, under immense pressure and with a significant lead to protect, he shot a 73 – eight shots worse than his average for the preceding rounds. This stark difference, which ultimately saw him lose the tournament to Scottie Scheffler, is a textbook example of loss aversion in action. The desire to protect the lead likely led to a more cautious, less assertive approach, resulting in a performance significantly below his demonstrated capability. His post-round comments when he expressed a desire to “smash up my golf clubs,” underscored the emotional toll of such a collapse, which was rooted in the psychological pain of losing what felt like an assured victory.

Correction strategy: process-oriented thinking and positive aggression

Mitigating loss aversion requires a conscious shift from outcome-oriented to process-oriented thinking. Golfers should:

• Concentrate solely on the mechanics and execution of the current shot. Treat each as an independent event rather than dwelling on the score or the implications of the outcome.
• Employ positive affirmations and visualise successful execution. This can help to counteract negative self-talk.
• Recognise that in situations where a conservative play is tempting but suboptimal (e.g., a short putt on a downhill slope), pre-committing to a firm, aggressive stroke can prevent the tentative actions often born of fear. For MacIntyre, a pre-defined strategy to maintain his aggressive, attacking style, regardless of his lead, might have yielded a different outcome.

My methodology, applied to investment, focuses on establishing clear, unemotional exit strategies to prevent such value traps, which directly improves returns by eliminating these ‘bad decisions’.

A victorious Scottie Scheffler shakes hands with Robert MacIntyre at the BMW Championship 2025 at Caves Valley Golf Club. (Photo: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images)

This translates to a pre-shot checklist that includes a deliberate assessment of risk vs reward. This ensures the chosen shot aligns with a pre-determined strategy rather than emotional impulse.

2. The illusion of control: overconfidence on the green

Overconfidence bias is the tendency to overestimate one’s abilities, knowledge, and the accuracy of one’s predictions. In golf, this often manifests as the infamous “hero shot” syndrome. Picture a golfer, slightly out of position after a wayward drive, facing a daunting carry over water or a dense thicket of trees to reach the green. A more prudent strategy might involve laying up, accepting a bogey or par. However, the overconfident golfer, convinced of their exceptional skill or believing this is their moment of glory, attempts the low-percentage, high-risk shot. The result is often disastrous: a ball splashed into the water, lost in the woods, or a double bogey that unravels a promising round.

Three-time major champion Pádraig Harrington has openly confessed that overconfidence cost him dearly at the 2025 Senior PGA Championship, particularly on a crucial 15th hole. Despite his vast experience, he felt his confidence and arrogance led him to an ill-advised approach shot, costing him a crucial hole. This mirrors countless amateur golfers who, after a few good shots, attempt to carry a 200-yard water hazard with a 3-wood, only to find their ball sinking to the bottom, convinced their recent success grants them an infallible touch. The allure of the ‘hero shot’ often blinds players to the higher probability of failure, driven by an inflated sense of their current capability.

Correction strategy: objective risk assessment and pre-shot routines

To counteract overconfidence, golfers must:

• Cultivate a rigorous pre-shot routine and an objective risk assessment process.
• Have a standardised sequence of actions before every shot – assessing the lie, wind, and distance; visualising the desired outcome; taking a practise swing; and committing to a target. This acts as a mental anchor, grounding the player in the present and preventing impulsive decisions.
• Objectively evaluate the probability of success versus the cost of failure, using data rather than gut feeling, can guide players towards higher-percentage shots, even if they appear less heroic.

My investor checklists include a mandatory step for a ‘devil’s advocate’ review of high-conviction trades, forcing a re-evaluation of assumptions. This translates to a ‘reality check’ step in their pre-shot routine, where they explicitly consider the worst-case scenario and whether the reward truly justifies the risk. This step prevents the overconfident ‘hero shot’.

Pádraig Harrington at the 2025 BMW PGA Championship. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

3. Seeing what we want to see: confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. On the golf course, this can lead to flawed self-assessment and persistent errors.

A golfer might believe their slice is due to an ‘outside-in’ swing path, and subsequently only notice instances where their swing appears to confirm this, ignoring other potential causes like an open clubface. This selective attention prevents them from accurately diagnosing and correcting the root cause of their swing fault. Similarly, a player might attribute a good shot to their skill and a bad shot to external factors (a bad bounce, a gust of wind), reinforcing a biased self-perception that hinders genuine improvement.

Correction strategy: objective data and external feedback

To address confirmation bias, golfers should:

• Actively seek disconfirming evidence and diverse perspectives.
• Use shot-tracking technology (e.g., Trackman, Shot Scope) as it provides objective data on performance, revealing patterns and weaknesses that subjective perception might overlook or rationalise away.
• Engage in open dialogue with a caddy or coach, actively soliciting their unbiased opinion on club selection, strategy, or swing mechanics, can challenge pre-conceived notions and lead to more accurate self-assessment.
• Conduct a disciplined post-shot review, where the outcome is analysed objectively without immediate attribution. This is also vital.

My investor checklists mandate seeking out and documenting opposing viewpoints before making a significant investment.

This means a ‘feedback loop’ step where they actively solicit input from their caddy or playing partners on their swing or strategy, or review objective data from launch monitors, rather than relying solely on their internal, potentially biased, assessment.

4. The power of first impressions: anchoring

Anchoring bias occurs when individuals rely too heavily on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) when making decisions, even if that information is irrelevant. In golf, this can lead to rigid decision-making that fails to adapt to changing conditions.

A common scenario involves a golfer fixating on the yardage provided by a sprinkler head or a course guide at the start of a hole. This initial yardage becomes an anchor, making it difficult to adjust for dynamic factors like wind changes, elevation shifts, or a different pin position that emerges during the round. A player might stubbornly stick to a club choice based on the initial anchor, even when conditions clearly dictate a different approach, leading to shots that are consistently long or short.

Correction strategy: dynamic assessment and multiple data points

Counteracting anchoring requires:

• Dynamic assessment and the consideration of multiple data points.
• Golfers should continuously reassess conditions before each shot, rather than relying solely on initial perceptions.
• This means actively checking wind direction and strength, re-evaluating pin positions, and considering the exact lie of the ball. Instead of just the yardage from the sprinkler head, factors like temperature, humidity, and recent performance with a particular club should inform the decision.
• Consciously hitting a “reset” button after a previous shot or hole, preventing that experience from anchoring subsequent decisions, is also crucial.

My investor checklists include a mandatory ‘re-anchor’ step, where all previous price points are deliberately ignored, and decisions are made solely on current fundamentals and future projections.

For golfers, this translates to a ‘situational awareness’ step in their routine, where they consciously disregard previous hole outcomes or initial yardage markers, and instead focus on a fresh, comprehensive assessment of all current variables before committing to a shot.

Robert MacIntyre at the 2025 BMW PGA Championship. (Photo: Jasper Wax/Getty Images)

Conclusion: cultivating mental discipline for peak performance

Behavioural biases are an inherent part of human cognition, but their impact on the golf course need not be detrimental.

By understanding how overconfidence, loss aversion, confirmation bias, and anchoring manifest, and by implementing structured strategies to counteract them, golfers can significantly enhance their decision-making capabilities. The journey to mastering the mental game of golf is one of continuous self-awareness, discipline, and a commitment to process over outcome.

Just as my work helps investors reduce the incidence of “bad decisions” to incrementally improve returns, applying these behavioural finance principles to golf can directly lead to saving shots and elevating performance. The critical insight is that overcoming biases is extremely difficult; our innate cognitive architecture makes us highly susceptible.

Therefore, the optimal path to mitigation is not to fight the bias directly, but to create a step in the process that prevents us from succumbing to it. This methodology, evolving from investment to the golf course, empowers athletes of all abilities to make optimal choices when it matters most.

For sports leaders, fostering an environment that encourages objective self-assessment, embraces data-driven insights, and champions structured routines will be key to developing athletes who not only possess exceptional physical talent but also the mental fortitude to make optimal decisions when it matters most.

This approach not only leads to more consistent performance but also a deeper, more rational engagement with the beautiful, challenging game of golf.

Dr Benjamin Kelly advises investors and professional athletes on decision making strategies in high stakes environments. If you would like to speak to Benjamin about his work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

Main Image: Getty Images / Mark Thompson

By Peter Hodgkinson

I am not a fan of Teams or Zoom.

Not only is it difficult to fully see someone’s body language, it also makes it near impossible to see a leaking water pipe at the front of an engine!

In my opinion, you need to be present in a high-performance environment.

I served as Head of Build at Mercedes between 2011 and 2019, an era when we won five driver’s and five constructor’s world championships. It was a period of unprecedented success for the team and for at least part of that time I worked out of a small, tired office in the middle of the team’s factory.

It was a terrible space. It had no natural light, the AC was incredibly bad, and the ceiling tiles were water-stained. Admittedly, I couldn’t see those tiles – or the worn-out carpet, come to think of it – as easily at 7:30am when six or seven people turned up for work and squeezed into a room that was more suitable for four.

I wasn’t sad when that office was finally knocked down as part of a factory refurbishment, but it had been a home away from home. For 20 years I’d spent more time there than I did at home.

Peter Hodgkinson holds the Formula 1 Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championship trophies in his ‘dreary’ former office at Mercedes HQ in Brackley, Northamptonshire.

This story (at least my schedule, if not the dreary office) probably sounds familiar to many of you. I was routinely on the road at 5:15am and did not leave until 6:30pm most evenings. Of course, I left my phone on just in case.

Such scenarios in high-performance are not going to change any time soon, but there are several things that you can do as a leader to protect yourself and your team from excessive workloads while still delivering the required work.

There are sure to be other things, but these five considerations make a good starting point.

1. Make the time to lead and be seen by your team – this is gold dust

I believe it was important to be seen and to say at least ‘good morning’ to as many of my team as possible. I wanted them to feel that I cared for them and I was interested in what they were working on and the issues that they faced; and it was another opportunity for information gathering.

When we were in the build period or working on a big update, I would try and get to work in time to talk to the nightshift in Build, Compbond, Inspection etc to get an understanding of the current status and get a head start thinking about what I had learnt. This floor walking – asking questions, providing challenge, learning about the current status and building relationships – as I said, I don’t think you can do this as effectively on Teams or Zoom.

2. Manage your workload so you have sufficient capacity to be able to lead in difficult moments

I’ve touched upon this before. I never tried to plan more than 30 percent of my day. Most days, meetings were added into my calendar which I needed to attend and, if I had a big gap, I would try and block it out for my work.

We think of work as writing plans, answering emails, attending meetings, doing things, etc but floor walking and talking to people is just as important and is part of the job. It might not feel like work as you have nothing physically to show for it, but it is so important as you are building relationships with your team which is an essential part of the trust equation.

As a leader, you cannot be chained to your desk doing work, looking at your feet and never lifting your head to talk to your team.

3. Think about achievement

Manage your job list by focusing on getting things done. But don’t just keep adding to the job list. Create movement.

Trying to have 70 percent of my day unplanned also meant that I had a pretty good chance of achieving the 30 percent that I did have planned, so I felt like I got stuff done and when I went home, I felt that I had achieved something.

This is important. We all like big, long job lists. It makes us feel valued, but if we just keep adding to them it is soul destroying, as you never feel like you have achieved anything. Try and get three things done each day, completed and finished. This is movement, placing a real mental focus on a task to get it completed. This is what I attempted to do from 6:00am to 8:00am each day. With the 30 percent rule, if there is a crisis that does require your full attention, then you should have some capacity to manage it without impacting too much of your day.

Dr Ceri Evans got me thinking about tasks in this way:

Name it: What is the technical task you are undertaking? Give it a name.

Time it: Add a deadline for when you are going to get this task completed. This adds pressure which gives us energy to perform.

Move it: Time to step in and perform. Complete or complain, it is your choice. Try three times a day for 15 minutes to focus on a task and get it completed. This is movement.

4. Keep building trust, don’t take it for granted

Trust is at the heart of any team’s performance. Trust is choosing to risk making something you value, vulnerable to another person’s actions. It happens in small moments when you have the opportunity to increase your trustworthiness.

For example, I tried to keep meetings to a minimum as I wanted to walk around and talk to people and follow up on issues. It was important to me to be connected to what was going on in the workshops and for the technicians to know that I cared deeply about what they were doing and the effort they were putting into their piece of the puzzle.

After clearing as many emails as possible, I would try and get out the door by 6:30pm and leave the Team Leaders to it. As I said, the phone was always on but, on the whole, it didn’t ring that much in the evenings or at night because the team knew what to do and what was required.

In short, they had my trust. I believe trust is made up of the following:

Reliability: You turn up at the same time every day, you deliver the work, you can be counted on in a crisis to be there. You are present.

Competent: You are knowledgeable and you know how to do the work to the best of your ability.

Relationship: You need to have a relationship with the people you are interacting with. Find out about what they like and dislike; be curious about them as a person.

5. Embrace the chaos – this will help your team to grow, improve and become more resilient

In F1, I tried to get to a position where 80 percent of what we did was planned and 20 percent was chaos. The chaos makes the job both challenging and fun. It’s one of the reasons you get out of bed in the morning.

When the chaos hits 40 or 50 percent, this is too much and it leads to overload and overwhelm. Cracks will start to show in the team’s behaviours and the quality of the work will decline.

As a leader, you need to manage this carefully and do everything in your power to protect your team as much as possible from the really impossible requests.

Peter Hodgkinson on the factory floor at Mercedes HQ in Brackley, Northamptonshire.

Sometimes you have to say ‘no’, but make sure you have other alternative options ready to present. You can’t just say ‘no’. There is a very fine line between protecting your team from excessive workload and delivering the required work to support the plan so if you do push back, make sure you can fully explain your concerns with facts, not just emotions.

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

“I tried planning out my days then I realised there was no point,” says Michael Italiano.

The Head of Athletic Performance at the Royal Sports Group is telling the Leaders Performance Institute about his first season working with the Rajasthan Royals in cricket’s most prestigious Twenty20 competition the India Premier League. The year was 2024.

“Every day was different,” he continues. “The IPL is so dynamic, there’s always something going on, whether it’s some sort of virus that’s hit the team or there’s some underlying niggling issue.” Throw in the compressed nature of the league (75 matches between mid-March and the end of May), plus the travel demands in a country the size of India, and minor problems can quickly escalate.

In Italiano’s first season, the Royals reached the play-offs and played 16 matches in just 62 days and travelled more than 10,000 km (6,214 miles) in fulfilling their schedule.

High player and coach turnover is baked into the format too. Ahead of the 2025 season, the Royals released 17 players and bought 14 in the IPL auction. Just six players were retained from 2024. Rahul Dravid was appointed Head Coach in the off-season and, 12 months on, has departed. His successor is yet to be appointed.

As for Italiano, during the course of an IPL campaign itself, he rises at 7am to prepare for the day ahead. He is often the first at the breakfast table and meets with his staff daily at 9:30am. The players tend to wake up at 10:30 or 11am and, during the course of the afternoon, they begin to trickle in for prehab, conditioning and recovery work before training begins at 6pm (to match the rhythm of the league’s evening-based playing schedule).

“It’s a pretty crazy tournament, I won’t lie,” says Italiano with a smile. “You spend the first two weeks back at home just catching up on sleep.”

Which is not to say that Italiano and his colleagues work without structure. Their morning meetings are designed to bring together the disparate elements of the performance team. “We run through any data and we run through all the players just to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

This intense schedule goes someway to explaining why our interview was necessarily postponed until the off-season. As we speak, it is mid-summer in the UK. Italiano has just completed a “review week” in London with his colleagues at the invitation of the Royal Sports Group’s majority owner Manoj Badale.

In a rare quiet moment, he tells the Leaders Performance Institute how he works to ensure everyone in the performance team is on the same page.

‘I felt like I was going back to school’

Italiano arrived in Jaipur having spent six years working as a high-performance coach for McLaren F1. He had no prior experience of cricket when he was appointed the Royal Sports Group’s first Head of Athletic Performance in 2023. “I had to get up to speed on bowling loads and the other physical demands of cricket,” he says. “I felt like I was going back to school.”

Performance systems, at least, can be transferrable. Italiano wanted to replicate the effective interdisciplinary communication he enjoyed at McLaren.

“We had 85 people travel to a race weekend and everyone is just so aligned and everyone knows what the driver’s saying in the press conference, everyone knows what the car upgrades are”.

It would not be the same in Jaipur. “That was something I noticed straight away at the Royal Sports Group: a very clear cultural sensitivity in the Asian culture where people feel they’re not allowed to make a mistake and, if you do, then you don’t say anything.”

Italiano felt an instant lack of trust, from both colleagues and sceptical players. “I felt I had a really low level of compliance on a personal level, which I wasn’t used to.”

Yet from day one he used his inexperience of cricket to build bridges. “I told them: ‘you know what, I don’t have the answers right now and I need you guys to help me because you’ve been in this culture and environment way longer than I have and so I’m sitting here asking you for help’; and that was a big shift in our team because I could see them thinking ‘oh wow, he’s asking for my help’ and it got the ball rolling.”

Honesty and transparency underpinned all of the good work Italiano’s performance team did in that first pre-season.

‘You should make it safe to fail, with the right intention’

Italiano admits he had a lot of ideas of how things could be improved, but also realised he couldn’t change too much in one go.

“I just went for feedback,” he says. “I spoke to all of the players, all of my staff, I spoke to my coaches. I collated themes and then I prioritised them based on impact and execution. So what’s the simplicity of the execution? How relevant is it now and can it be done at a feasible cost?”

He compiled a list of 12 “parameters”, some physical metrics, others more structural in nature, and “brought them across to the leaders for discussion”.

Together, they decided on three or four elements that could be implemented in the first six months and a further four to be implemented over the next 12 to 18 months. “You could almost say we unintentionally came up with a three-year strategy just based on trying to fine-tune how we operate.”

Sometimes the performance team will take risks. Italiano candidly reveals that their new interventions have enjoyed no more than a 50 per cent success rate. “It never turns out the way you think it’s going to turn out no matter how much input you have.” He cites cultural, environmental and performance-based reasons. However, as he says, “once the execution phase goes on, there’s always learnings.”

Under his stewardship the Royals embrace these lessons. “When certain elements didn’t work you’d go back to the drawing board and that happens in business all the time. I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of this role and you should make it safe to fail, with the right intention.”

‘You can’t be perky in every meeting’

Italiano admits he’s “not a big meetings guy”, but he finds the expanse of a cricket field to be ideal for both formal and informal check-ins.

“The walk around the ground is just pure gold,” he says of the deep conversations a lap of the ground can inspire. “When you’re at training there’s something about walking and looking out over the ground that brings a sense of openness rather than being across the table from someone, which at times can feel, maybe subconsciously, quite confronting.”

As for those 9:30am meetings, Italiano attempts to read the room. “I’m almost like ‘OK, who do I need to check-in with? Who do I need to bring more energy to? Who do I need to be more curious with? Maybe there was a player who has been off in training the last two days and I need to be more curious with them, their data and wellness scores.”

That curiosity is a must because he cannot see everything. In fact, ‘stay curious’ is one of a series of daily reminders that Italiano has noted on his personal “cheat sheet”. The others are ‘bring empathy’, ‘listen first’, ‘be self-aware’, ‘be transparent and vulnerable’, ‘bring my authentic self’, ‘check-in first’ and ‘do the one percent’.

All of these are important during the course of an IPL season. “It’s an emotional rollercoaster so, as you can imagine, we’re not all rocking up to every meeting perky. There’s about 75 meetings in 75 days and I can’t expect everyone to always be smiling and greeting me in the best place.”

The potential monotony is a risk that Italiano understands well. “When I feel there’s been a tense week, I may start a meeting by going around the room and asking ‘what pissed you off yesterday?’ and just let them go to town. You’d be surprised what they say.” Italiano will always help them if he can.

“Other times we’ll go the opposite way and I’ll say ‘let’s label something that we’re grateful for today’. We’ll also mix up the environment. One day we’ll meet by the pool, another day we might visit our favourite roasting coffee shop in Jaipur. That perks everyone up because they have amazing pistachio croissants.”

Additionally, Italiano gives each of his staff the opportunity to lead a meeting and set the agenda. “Why should I lead when we’re a team? I did that throughout last season and it kept us going. Those meetings were the best times of the day because we’re all like-minded and we have the same goals together.”

While the team strives for success on the field, Italiano is proud of how his performance team have acquitted themselves. “Rajasthan has a clear goal of being one of the leaders in high-performance in cricket,” he says. He retains the excitement that induced him to leave the world of F1.

What about his hopes when next season rolls around? “I’m most excited about sitting down with my staff and actually knuckling out career development pathways for our team.”

He mentions player data too. “How are we showing them data? Why are we tracking what we’re tracking? We haven’t nailed that flow yet but it’s one of our focuses this year. Also making sure that the players understand and buy into the importance of their data.”

Ultimately, his focus is on making the Royals’ performance programme be as good as it can be.

“I’ve had an interesting time in cricket so far, and if anyone has better answers, then I’m all ears.”

What to read next

Adaptability: ‘Change Is Everywhere and Leaders Must Respond All the Time. It’s No Small Ask’

Main Image: Paul Gilham / Getty Images

By Peter Hodgkinson

If Sir Lewis Hamilton took a risk when joining us at Mercedes in 2013, then his first proper day of testing at Jerez in southern Spain would have done little to assuage any lingering doubts.

Lewis’ rear brakes failed on his 16^th lap and he careered into a wall at turn six, which is known as ‘Dry Sack’ corner. He emerged from the wreckage unhurt but his car’s front wing assembly, front uprights and the floor were all damaged in the accident and we had no spares at the circuit. To compound matters we also needed to supply a fix for that rear brake failure.

As the Head of Build for Mercedes F1, I was one of the first to receive the bad news from the Race Team in my office back at our HQ in Brackley, Northamptonshire. Not long after I put down the phone, Aldo Costa, our Engineering Director, came to find out the status of available spares.

The crash had only just happened so I did not have all the answers. I told Aldo I would get back to him shortly. I said much the same to Rob Thomas, our COO, when he stopped by. It was not long before a stream of people came to my office looking for answers and a plan. It was a big moment and I could feel the pressure building. I told some to stand by and others to go and gather information.

Then I told everyone I was going to lunch.

I could see the shock on their faces. How can you eat at a time like this?

For my part, I needed to get out of my office. I normally ate lunch at my desk so my trip to the canteen was out of character. People could see that. I sat on my own and ate for 20 minutes but at the same time my mind was going flat out.

When I got back to my office I knew what we needed to do.

Mercedes teammates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in 2013. Photo: Clive Mason / Getty Images

I called everyone to gather around for a short meeting (no one else had moved). We figured out what we knew and what required answers then came up with a basic plan and assigned responsibilities. The Composite Build team looked after the floor and the front wing along with Compbond and the design team. Sub Assembly had to look after the front uprights that were still in the Machine Shop.

I went looking for what we didn’t know because we couldn’t afford any surprises. The Race Team in Jerez needed sufficient time to rebuild the car. I needed to know both the latest the private jet could depart from the airport in nearby Oxford and if a car floor would even fit through the door of the plane. We also booked extra vans to take parts to Jerez and assigned extra people to support repairs at the circuit.

Once we had timings, we were able to understand what we could achieve in the time available. I’d like to think everyone had clearly defined roles and knew their responsibilities. There were so many details to sort out and any one of those could have prevented the car from running the next day.

Instead of meetings – there simply wasn’t time – I walked a thousand miles around the factory gathering and communicating information, asking and answering questions. That communication was dynamic. It was mostly verbal but reinforced with an email when time permitted. I kept Rob and Aldo informed of progress. The late Barry James, who was our Composite Manufacturing Manager, and Darren Burton, our Ops Director, worked with their departments to ensure we got all the support required.

The car ran the next day. It was a true team effort. The damaged parts were returned from Jerez for inspection, repair and service and a fix was sent out for the rear brake issue. It was an amazing recovery from a difficult situation, but that is Formula 1.

So, what did I learn? These moments are important, as the way you react to them is what you will be measured by as a person and a leader. If you think back on your careers, you will have good and bad moments. Some will be short, others will be longer. It will not stay tough forever, it will get better, but nor will it stay under control. Something will happen.

It is important to think about your behaviours in good and bad moments.

Firstly, Lewis’ crash hit five pressure drivers:

1. High stakes: it was Lewis Hamilton’s first drive in a Mercedes and he crashes
2. Uncertainty: what spares were we missing and what else could prevent us from running?
3. Small margins: what if we inadvertently miss a part and the car cannot run tomorrow?
4. Fast change: the car was running and then it wasn’t. That’s a fast change.
5. Judgement: as Head of Build, I felt I would be judged on how I lead my team in this moment; how did I react as an individual and how did my team behave? This would be a reflection of me and my leadership in the part we played to get the car running again.

So, why I did I go to lunch?

I want to explain my rationale with reference to Dr Ceri Evans’ Red-Blue model, as set out in his 2020 book Perform Under Pressure. I cannot recommend it highly enough for a fuller, clinically-informed account of the principles of performance under pressure and how one can gain emotional control at the times when you need it most.

Ceri proposes a three-step model:

1. Step Back: recognise your current mental state and feelings
2. Step Up: reframe and move into a logical mental state
3. Step In: engage with clarity and confidence. Take v Wait

Here, I’ll explain how I approached each in turn after Lewis hit that wall.

The Step Back

I needed to go to lunch. I was under pressure and could feel it. I had to get out of my office and away from the noise. I realised that this was a flight response. I also realised I was under both internal and external pressure. My heartrate was up and you are trying to think of numerous things at the same time. Going to lunch allowed me to move from Step Back to Step Up. It gave me a moment to move away from the emotional response and start to come up with a mental plan of what we were going to do next.

The Step Up

You need to understand what is going on and start coming up with a plan for what you need to do and the desired outcome you seek.

In Step up mode, I was moving from Red mind to Blue mind. This requires a further explanation with a little help from Ceri, who describes two interacting mental systems:

• Red Brain: this operates in the present and is driven by emotion and feelings. It is associated with fight, fright or freeze responses.
• Blue Brain: this is driven by logic, analysis and control, which helps with clarity, planning and decision making.

Neither state is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. There must be a balance, as too much Red can make you impulsive, emotional and reactive, while too much Blue can leave you detached and hesitant.

In Step Up mode, I was moving from Red to Blue, from emotions and feelings to logic and planning. I allowed my Blue to dampen the Red. I now had an idea of a plan and what we needed to do and I remember very clearly feeling energised and ready to rock ’n’ roll.

The Step In

You have a plan to start tackling the issue, using the clarity of the Blue combined with the energy of the Red system. Trust you skillset, you are the best in the world at what you do.

We talked through the basic plan and off we went to face the challenges in front of us. During the course of that day, well into the evening, I remember going back to Step Back mode as something went wrong but this was quickly followed by Step Up (planning) and Step In (doing). Red/Blue, Decide and Do.

That day I was in a purple patch, balancing the Red and Blue.

How this impacted my behaviour

I knew that how I behaved and the language I used would impact the people working on this challenge. The pressure was on and one wrong word could trigger a shift back to a Red brain response, which we simply could not afford.

I also felt trusted by Aldo and Rob, who knew I would play my part to help resolve the issues along with the rest of the team. They didn’t interfere with what we were doing and allowed us to get on with the job. We made sure to regularly check-in with them both, providing updates and seeking their thoughts on something in those moments when we were stuck. It was classic Intent-Based Leadership in action.

This was one of many situations we faced weekly at MGP and no F1 team is any different.

You will be judged on how you respond and react to these moments. It is not about placing blame, it is about movement and making extraordinary things happen using the right mindset and behaviours.

Finally, there will always be lessons from these moments, so make the most of them. They are a great opportunity to improve as individuals, teams and organisations.

Lewis Hamilton, with Lotus driver Kimi Räikkönen and Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg on his tail at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. Photo: Ker Robertson / Getty Images

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.