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.

By John Portch

In October 2024, Harlequins ended a run of eight consecutive defeats to their London rivals Saracens.

Quins’ 17-10 victory at the Twickenham Stoop ended five years of frustration and marked a complete turnaround from the 2023-24 Premiership Rugby season when they conceded 90 points in losing both home and away to Saracens.

Stephan Lewies, the lock who captained Quins to their long-awaited victory, had also endured every one of those losses. The run was particularly galling given the relative parity between the teams during that period. Quins were themselves Premiership champions in 2021.

So what was different this time? “Coming off a record like that in your derby game, in a way you go looking for answers in the wrong places,” Lewies told an audience several weeks later at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“In the past, we’d review what’d gone wrong, and the coaches – who often feel pressure in a different way to the players – would go ‘let’s change this and let’s add that’ because Saracens are brilliant.”

It took eight reverses for Lewies and his team to work out why. “We’d always changed our tactics for Saracens,” he continued. “We would change how we structured our week.”

Quins, he explained, usually worked off an 80:20 game model where it is “80 per cent us and 20 per cent we change for the other team”. However, “we often went 50:50 against Saracens; training 50 per cent on us and 50 per cent on them.”

They did things differently ahead of the October 2024 match. Firstly, the players and coaches met independently before convening to discuss what was needed. The club had adopted a similar approach in their successful quest for the Premiership title in 2021. Their director of rugby [the de facto head coach] departed mid-season and the players worked with the remaining coaches to devise a winning formula after the club decided to wait until the off-season to appoint a replacement.

Once again it gave the team clarity in their convictions. “We said we’ve been constantly changing for this opposition because of the pressure that’s mounting on us,” said Lewies, “and we agreed that we should go back to what we do and just try to do that better.” That meant “doubling down” and going almost “90:10” in the week building up to the match. “That created clarity and alignment from the coaches to the players. And when the pressure came in this game, we could turn to something we’d done for the whole season, and basically for years, versus something new in a pressured moment.

“It’s much easier to stuff up something new under pressure versus something you’ve done for a long time because it’s already second nature.”

Stephan Lewies in conversation with Rachel Vickery onstage at the 2024 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval.

Lewies’ reflections chimed with session moderator Rachel Vickery, a high-performance specialist helping teams in the worlds of sport, business and the military perform under pressure.

“So much of pressure is what happens off the pitch. When you’re on the pitch that’s actually your comfort zone in many ways and so you’re more prepared for that,” she said.

“Many teams have a monkey on their back around a particular opponent and that can change how the game is approached, which adds a lot of pressure.”

Lewies agreed and felt that being process rather than results-driven was ultimately what led to the result that day.

“It gives you freedom on the pitch to just go out and play,” he said. “You know your prep is done. Go out and express yourself. When you have clarity and alignment with the coaches you’re not asking yourself on the pitch ‘what’s the coach thinking?’ whenever there’s a tough decision. You almost know the answer to the question before it happens because you’re totally aligned in what you want to achieve in the game and at different stages of the game.”

It is an attitude Lewies takes into difficult conversations, which he faced often during his four years as Quins captain. The key was to be well prepared and, more often than not, those conversations would not be as tough as anticipated.

“If you kick the can down the road it can become a bigger problem. It can be scary to have that tough conversation in the moment, but that’s where growth happens, in that adversity. You grow closer as people and as teams.”

He recounted the story of a teammate who once skipped training and was suspended. Lewies endorsed the punishment but was labelled a ‘Judas’ by the player in question. The pair eventually made up after a frank exchange of views when it was clear that Lewies would listen to what his teammate had to say. It stopped matters escalating further and, as Lewies happily explained, made their relationship stronger.

“Getting him back on board and understanding him was critical for us.”

It was in such moments that the bonds, self-belief and confidence were forged that would eventually see off Saracens.

“There is so much value in creating opportunities to collaborate.”

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By John Portch

On Sunday the Northern Superchargers Women lifted their first Hundred title following a match-winning performance from a player who had been in England for just two weeks.

All-rounder Nicola Carey hit an unbeaten 35 runs at Lord’s to help the Superchargers chase down the Southern Brave’s first innings total of 115 for six.

“The whole group is amazing, so it was so easy to come in the middle of the tournament,” said Carey on the field at Lord’s in the aftermath.

“A couple of weeks ago I was back home in Tasmania, doing a cold pre-season,” she added, “so to get the call-up first of all was pretty surprising and to finish the couple of weeks with a win, it couldn’t have gone better.”

Head Coach Lisa Keightley and captain Kate Cross have pulled out all the stops to foster an inclusive environment, to which Carey’s compatriot, Phoebe Litchfield, alluded.

“The Northern Superchargers are my favourite team to play for,” she said, “and it’s just been a blast.”

Their human touch was in further evidence as the team carried a life size cardboard cutout of their injured and absent teammate, Georgia Wareham, onto the podium, then going as far as to place a medal around the cardboard Wareham’s neck.

Add this all up and the Superchargers’ approach appears to be simple: put your people first and they will deliver upon their talent.

This was a recurring theme across the Leaders Performance Institute in August.

Here is a snapshot of what was said.

Psychological safety… or psychological confidence?

This question was raised in a recent  Leaders Virtual Roundtable that explored the balance between challenge and support for athletes.

Psychological safety has long been a performance buzz term, but a team in motorsport is taking it upon itself to reframe its terminology. Their wellbeing lead told the table: “We’re playing around with the idea of creating psychologically confident people. In meetings, we make sure that we give everybody a chance to speak up… there’s also got to be challenge, to get [people] to that psychologically confident point.”

Words clearly matter, as a performance support coach in British varsity sport pointed out. “The language we use when we’re talking to the athletes, it’s not a ‘challenge’, it’s not an ‘adversity’, it’s ‘exploration’, ‘playing’, ‘responsibility’.”

Try to cut through the noise around the athlete

Athletes increasingly ask for support beyond their sport and performance, which means everyone must be on the same page.

“Do you think the modern athlete has changed or has it always been like this, but as performance staff, have we failed to notice it?” asked Simon Rice, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers at our Sport Performance Summit in Philadelphia.

“We think it is 50:50 as there is no denying that they are more informed because of more information being available,” he adds, “but this does create noise.”

The remedy requires trust as players in the modern era tend to ask for an explanation more often. The Sixers talk to their players and they talk to them early as they seek to understand what’s important to them. “Do not shut things down right away, work with them to find solutions.”

There is, however, a limit. “It is important to have your non-negotiables so they know where the line is too.”

Team planning, individual focus

Patrick Mannix, the Sports Science Senior Manager at US Soccer, set the scene for a roundtable presentation that centred on performance planning in the international game, specifically the development of camp training plans for players who join up from their respective clubs in the US and beyond.

The players as individuals are at the heart of their planning, with sessions devised two weeks out once player arrival times are confirmed.

“We will design things from a team level, but then we also have to look at matters very closely at an individual level when we’re trying to safely integrate players into our national team environments,” said Mannix.

“Most of the time, we are dealing with tapering strategies and figuring out how can we optimize players’ readiness going into competition,” he continued. “So it’s often an exercise in fatigue management when they’re coming into our environment and not necessarily trying to drive fitness adaptations, but, on the flip side, we’re also there to potentially facilitate a lot of those long-term physiological adaptations that are occurring.

Alignment and the ‘multiplier effect’

True alignment delivers a multiplier effect, as John Bull told a roundtable of Leaders Performance Institute members last month.

In an ideal world, each stakeholder’s efforts would multiply the others. “One person’s talent is building on and adding,” says the Director & Lead for High Performance Research at Management Futures. “The multiplication becomes exponential.”

If teams are to achieve the multiplier effect, Bull highlighted five critical considerations:

1. Who?

Who are you trying to align and what different talents can you bring to bear on a problem? Be sure to involve all relevant parties, including those who may be excluded for fear that they will be distracted.

2. What are you trying to achieve and by when?

Misalignment often arises not from disagreement on the goal itself, but on the timeline and resources needed to achieve it.

3. Alignment on strategy i.e. the ‘how’

The distinction between strategy (high-level direction) and tactics (specific applications) is not always understood.

4. Ways of working

Alignment is an outcome of agreed processes of communication, collaboration and decision-making.

5. Vertical and horizontal dimensions

While vertical alignment (e.g. between board and coach) attracts a lot of focus,  horizontal alignment between departments or teams underpins a truly joined-up approach.

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Transparency, Empathy and Empowerment: Five Ways Teams Are Serving their People in 2025

By John Portch

Dan Jackson recounts a conversation he had with the analyst team at the Adelaide Crows during the AFL off-season earlier this year.

“There’s a team of six and I asked them what their job was,” the Crows’ General Manager of Player Development and Leadership tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

“Their response was along the lines of ‘we’re there to support the coaches’,” says Jackson, while admitting that this response isn’t wrong. “That is inherently what their job is. They’re looking at the data, they’re putting together PowerPoints. They’re also the ones plugging in all the computers at a game to make sure that the visuals are right. Everything for them is about getting the detail right in the background. If they weren’t there the wheels would fall off.”

Jackson did not find their answer wholly satisfactory. The analyst team’s relative invisibility to everyone else was part of the problem.

Connection to vision and mission

In the analysts’ response, there was no mention of Adelaide’s vision (“to earn the pride of South Australia”) or their mission (“sustained success, winning multiple premierships”).

Jackson reframed his question. He wanted to see if the group could align their work to the bigger picture. “I said: ‘how do you guys see your role? What’s your purpose as an analyst group to help us achieve that vision and mission?’”

A fear for Jackson was that if the analysts see their contribution as little more than background support then others will surely do the same.

First clarity, then alignment

“When you’ve given everyone clarity around what we are trying to achieve, how we’re going to go about it, and how I need you and you and your team to play your role in it – I think that’s what people would say when they feel like there’s alignment,” says Jackson.

The group’s second answer was a step in the right direction:

We help drive performance by supporting, innovating and getting the little details right, so that everyone else can work their job seamlessly.

They hinted at their sense of alignment and already sound more empowered.

“At great organisations, people feel like they have some autonomy to make decisions,” Jackson adds, “but it’s really hard to give that trust over as a leader if you haven’t provided clarity or aligned them to the strategy, the vision and the mission.”

Those three areas have been areas of intense focus for Jackson and his colleagues. The analysts, now emboldened by Jackson’s encouragement, went further:

We play a pivotal role in the team’s performance as we look to earn pride and win.

“Now they’re feeling strongly aligned to how they’re going to help us achieve the vision and the mission. I think that goes a long way to help engagement, retention or even decision making.”

It led to a wider conversation about their roles and contributions.

“One of our values is ‘courage’,” says Jackson, who asked the analysts what that looked like for them. They connected ‘courage’ to their need to balance innovation and risk-taking in their day-to-day work.

For us to get a competitive advantage in how we use the data, present our messaging and tell our stories, we might have to take a risk. For example, we might have to use some new AI platform to enhance our presentations. It may fail once or twice, but if it works really well then we can visualise data better and tell our story better.

Jackson now heard what he had sought. “A small department can be really empowered when they’re aligned to something that they understand of the big picture.”

That said, Jackson guards against any team getting too hung up on words when it’s actions that matter.

He observes that there’s little difference between the values one team puts on their wall and another.

“Around 80 per cent have ‘integrity’ as a value,” he says. “You’re guaranteed to have something like ‘commitment’, ‘hard work’, ‘dedication’ or ‘excellence’.

“Then there tends to be a mindset one. So we have ‘courage’, but it might be ‘ruthlessness’, ‘relentless’ or ‘belief’. Sometimes they have a fourth, which is more unique. It could be like ‘celebrate your authenticity’ but, inherently, every sporting organisation has the same face because there’s no real secret sauce of success.

“With the great teams, it’s not that their words are great: it’s the way they actually go about living, the behaviours that underpin it.”

Jackson has seen it time and again during his career. “I probably spend the least amount of time worrying about whatever words they’ve got,” he says. “Often, I don’t even bother changing them because if you want ‘connection’ or ‘unity’ or ‘team first’ or ‘family’, it doesn’t really matter. What I want to know is the behaviours you’re going to commit to, your system of accountability, and how you drive those behaviours.”

Dan Jackson also features in…

Performance Special Report – High Performance Unpacked

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but does that hold up in the world of elite sports performance?

“The issues I’ve seen here, they’re very rarely – almost never – [a result of] things getting missed,” Simon Rice, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers, tells Teamworks’ Director of Athlete Performance Andrew Trimble and Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch.

“Where we run into slight problems is everyone trying to do the right thing with really good intentions,” he continues, citing the hypothetical example of three practitioners on the Sixers’ Health & Performance group prescribing the same loading plan to an athlete and inadvertently tripling their load.

“It often comes back to communication and it comes back to this idea of fitting the puzzle pieces to fully support that player.”

It takes mutual understanding and trust between athlete and coach, as Simon touched upon in the recent Teamworks and Leaders Special Report, entitled High Performance Unpacked: Interconnected Performance Teams, and it was a theme he expanded upon in the first episode of our new three-part series.

Elsewhere, Simon also talks about the role of the performance director as a cultural leader [4:00]; the importance of establishing what’s best for the athlete right now [15:30]; the work of the Health & Performance group with external clinicians [34:00]; and how his team can give athletes confidence in their bodies through its joint decision model [55:00].

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

By John Portch

John F Kennedy’s 1962 visit to NASA is remembered chiefly for his conversation with the janitor.

The US President asked him what he did for NASA. “I’m helping to put a man on the Moon,” the janitor replied.

The Leaders Performance Institute is reminded of the moment by Edd Vahid.

“The janitor did not talk about his day-to-day tasks,” says the Premier League’s Head of Academy Football Operations, “but his contribution to the overall mission”.

This famous line resonates with Vahid and, in Leaders’ recent Trend Report, clarity and alignment were both cited as major influences on the quality of leadership by coaches and practitioners across the globe.

“We know that alignment often comes down to the clarity of expectations and that comes from a strong, unified purpose,” said Vahid, who noted that even well-meaning individuals can be drawn into silos without a guiding hand.

The report also revealed that sport is obsessed with the topic and, in the grand scheme of things, does alignment quite well: almost 50 per cent of respondents saw their teams as ‘somewhat aligned’.

“It’s worth noting that the figure sits at about 20 per cent in other sectors,” said John Bull, the Director & Lead for High Performance Research at Management Futures, in the report.

There is still room for improvement: only 12.6 per cent said their organisations are ‘well aligned’.

As Vahid explains, teams could start with the following.

Establish a regular and consistent theme

“Alignment is done best when it’s regular and not just your annual ‘here’s what we’re going after, see you again in 12 months’ time,” says Vahid. “It’s got to be constant. In every meeting there needs to be a regular and consistent theme that people are working towards and, importantly, they know their contribution.”

In 2024, Vahid published A Cultural Hypothesis, which explored the factors that enable a sustained culture of success. One element stood out as a ‘super enabler’ for Vahid: cultural leadership. The term acknowledges that leadership exists on three levels within an organisation:

1. Sponsors: those working at ownership or board level; they give permission to architects and guardians (who have a more active role) to deliver the culture. They are typically one or two people.
2. Architects: those responsible for the design of the culture, ensuring it is set up in a way that can allow people to thrive. They are typically a small number.
3. Guardians: the individuals on the ground, delivering daily, ensuring alignment to the articulated culture which they can translate to individuals working in that space. There can be multiple guardians.

The guardians, Vahid argues, are critical to alignment. “The reality is that if you’re a senior leader, you’re not going to be on the ground, you’re not going to be able to influence every different scenario – that’s where you need your guardians, your foot soldiers on the ground who are able to distil your message and ensure there is direct alignment to the organisation’s aims.”

NASA’s janitor was a cultural guardian in Vahid’s eyes.

Find the right repeatable words

“Language offers you the opportunity for shared understanding,” says Vahid, “and shared understanding is crucial in alignment, so people know what they’re going after. A leader might not necessarily use the word ‘alignment’, but they’ll be talking about their overall purpose.” NASA’s purpose was simple but powerful. “Your language must be repeatable and resonate with people.”

Vahid also says that high-performing organisations tend to have goals that transcend winning. “It’s important to get everyone behind it. Everyone must believe it is attainable, and it must drive them to want to get out of bed in the morning and come to work.”

What if there’s clarity, but still misalignment?

Vahid explains there could be a few factors at play, all of which point to the importance of feedback:

Staff development needs. If a staff member commits an error of execution, it is an opportunity to deliver developmental feedback. Vahid says: “Does everyone understand what we’re going after? If they do and they step outside of that, then feedback is warranted.”

Psychological safety. “It’s a buzz term,” says Vahid of the commonly used phrase, “but it’s crucial for people to feel they are in a feedback culture.” The leader must show that the intent of feedback is to help the individual to progress. “You’re taking time to give them feedback because you care,” he adds. “You’re then seeking to work with the individual to create that development.”

The leader’s behaviour. Leaders must also demonstrate their willingness to listen to feedback. “They need to provide ‘speak up’ signals,” says Vahid with reference to the work of psychologist Megan Reitz. “The leader needs the skill to understand the position they’re in and the power they carry in that dynamic.”

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By Luke Whitworth

“An unwillingness to adapt and evolve is one of the things that stifles great cultures – it stifles great coaches too,” said Dan Jackson.

The General Manager of Player Development & Leadership at the Adelaide Crows was speaking in The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport, our recent Trend Report.

The sentiment struck a chord with Jackson’s fellow contributor, Tim Cox of Management Futures.

“We work in sport and other sectors, and there is that feeling of stifling,” Cox told a recent leaders virtual roundtable. “The pace of change, the demands on us are increasing, and it can feel almost suffocating for leaders sometimes. What do we do here? How can we respond effectively?”

Cox, who co-hosted this Learning Series with the Leaders Performance Institute, hinted at the growing complexity of sport and the ever-increasing importance of being able to lead through complexity, which is the overarching theme of a three-part virtual roundtable series that seeks to help leaders develop the necessary skills.

To follow up, we shared five areas where complexity continues to grow in sport. Most if not all will be familiar to athletes, coaches and practitioners alike:

Adaptability: a vital skill

Session one explored the concept of adaptability and how leaders can increase the chance of an effective response from their teams. This came up in the Trend Report. The following also stood out from the report’s findings:

The Magnificent Seven: tips for leading in complexity

Cox distilled his thoughts on the topic into seven ‘magnificent’ areas. “Whether they’re magnificent or not, you’ll be able to make a call on it,” he said.

1. Rapid change can be a great leveller

In a world where change is constant, smaller or less-resourced teams can gain a competitive edge by being more agile.

• Mindset is important. Cox said: “We can respond to the disruptions that are there in our world, whether they be internal or external… there’s something to be said for going on the offensive wherever we can, when we’re able to actually disrupt things, certainly in a competition environment. Others are going to have to deal with the disruption that we’re bringing.”
• Resourcefulness beats resource. Cox shared the example of a fintech CEO with whom Management Futures work. “We’re working with the senior team and he was saying. ‘Do you know they’re doing my head in. They want the pace of change to slow down, they keep saying “we just need to pause, we just need to focus, we just need to do this”. And actually, they’re missing the point: our survival as a smaller player with fewer resources than others actually depends on disruption. It depends on us being really fast and being the drivers of disruption’.”

2. Prioritise time to analyse what is changing

“This is a simple one: it’s really prioritising time to actually analyse what is changing.”

• Internal and external scanning. “We have our senses, we’re hardwired to pick up on change and be aware of what’s going on within the environment, whether close to us or outside,” said Cox, with regards to such elements as team morale or performance trends, “but what are the mechanisms for systematically analysing how the wider environment is changing?” These could be shifts in policy, competition rules or tech advancements.
• What are your existing mechanisms? These matter. “There will be ways in which you’re doing that already. There may be player leadership groups who understand what’s changed within the squad. You may even have player liaison roles.”
• ‘Upstream’ thinking. Dan Heath’s book Upstream offers a provocation to people working in sport: it challenges us to stop reacting to problems and instead start preventing them. In sport, people pride themselves on being problem-solvers, but how often do we step back to ask why the problem exists in the first place?

3. Tap into collective wisdom at pace

As one participant said, “adaptive cultures are the ones where everybody has a voice. They can voice feedback, they can push back on ideas, and ultimately, that helps you get to the right idea.”

• Psychological safety. As Megan Reitz and John Higgins once argued in the Harvard Business Review, managers are more intimidating than they think. Cox cited then built on their point. “I’ve been in lots of environments where just a look from a senior player, just a look from a coach, or a manager, or someone in a senior position has stopped somebody from sharing an opinion that they might have had,” he said. “I’ve also been in environments where I’ve been able to call that out, to stop the conversation and ask ‘what’s just happened?’ and understand from the individual who was just about to share their opinion ‘what was it?’ Very often it is not what the person, the leader, or the senior coach, or the senior player thought it was going to be. It’s much more valuable and it often takes the conversation in a different direction.”

• The ‘diamond’ tool. Cox proposed the following series of questions as a way of ensuring teams hear from each and every member. It opens up the discourse and then closes it when a decision needs to be made:

4. Processes and mechanisms aligned to learn fast 

While tapping into collective wisdom is essential, it must be balanced with the ability to make decisions and act quickly. Yet while on-field decisions can be taken in minutes, “off the pitch,” as Cox said, “we can often be inordinately slow in adapting and responding to change.”

• What processes and systems help your team to align? Cox argued that we might marvel at the organisation and agility of a school of fish, but struggle to replicate such manoeuvres in our own workplaces. “The processes and mechanisms that we’ve got in place can help us to respond much more naturally and much more quickly over time. Whatever you’re using, how can we come together, make decisions, and adapt really quickly?”
• Teams often fear that hearing from everyone will slow down decision making. However, this simple matrix, which assesses effort and impact, can help you to arrive at swifter decisions:

The ideal choices are those that are high impact and low effort. These are the quick wins. Conversely, high effort and low impact choices should be avoided as they are distractions and drains on resource.

5. Long-term planning and agility in harmony

Agility requires action, even in the face of uncertainty. Not knowing everything shouldn’t prevent progress.

You can, however, take a structured approach by recruiting wisely, implementing training programmes and pivoting smartly. Teams, Cox suggested, can ask themselves “what are our skill gaps for now or where are we strong now? What are the skills we’re going to need to make this pivot?”

6. Correlation between debriefing and adaptability

“To adapt, we’ve got to learn,” said Cox with specific reference to the special forces, “and the better we are at debriefing, then the better we are at learning and then adapting.”

He explained that debriefing should be a deliberate, embedded practice. It’s not just about reviewing what happened – or when responding to a crisis – but extracting lessons to fuel future action.

7. Leadership change is a big source of disruption

“To what extent can we get these transitions right?” asked Cox. “Because obviously they have big organisational and team impacts, not just on the individuals close to them, they can filter down to the whole organisation.”

Who are your cultural guardians? Cultural guardians, as discussed by Dr Edd Vahid, are the individuals or mechanisms that ensure core values and practices are preserved during leadership changes. They are, as Cox explained, indispensable. “Any new leader is going to want to change things,” he said, “but what are the pieces that we need to absolutely hold on to? What is handed over to the leaders that we know to be true about this culture in this organisation?”

To sum up…

Looking ahead

This session was the first in a three-part series. Future discussions will explore:

Part 2: Inhibitors to adaptability – what gets in the way?

Part 3: Building a collective playbook for leading in complexity