By John Portch

In April, the Rugby Football Union (RFU), Premiership Rugby, Premier 15s and Rugby Players’ Association published an Inclusion and Diversity Action Plan for the elite game.

Jatin Patel, the Inclusion and Diversity Director at the RFU, English rugby union’s governing body, since 2021, was one of a series of individuals who played an instrumental role in devising the Inclusion and Diversity Plan, which is a result of elite game research into racism and classism in the English game.

The project was given added impetus last year when the Newcastle Falcons’ centre Luther Burrell spoke publicly about his experiences of racism and class prejudice.

Patel published a LinkedIn post announcing the plan’s launch. “April went by in a flash. But what a month it was,” he wrote, going on to explain the notable achievements of his “small but mighty team (with a lot of help from our friends!)” managed during the month. In addition to the I&D Plan, they delivered ‘active bystander’ training to RFU Council members, contributed to panel discussions on pride, hate speech and racial equality, and hosted non-governmental bodies and equality, diversity & inclusion leads at Twickenham Stadium during an England women’s international match.

“There is always more to do. But at the heart of everything above is #collaboration. With other colleagues, with passionate leads within the game and with leaders beyond our own sport”.

Patel demonstrated his passion when he came downstairs to speak at the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the RFU headquarters in Twickenham Stadium.

He also found time to speak to the Leaders Performance Institute backstage.

What does your role look like on a day-to-day basis?

JP: My role as Inclusion and Diversity Director at the RFU involves looking at all elements of the game. Our strategy has four fundamental pillars and there is no hierarchy. The first I’ll speak about is employees and the board; so what is our organisation? How is it made up? How can we improve, attract, retain and progress diverse talent? The second pillar is around gameplay; community to professional rugby. How do we make the game more inclusive? How do we increase the diversity of players, coaches, officials and people working within the club environment? The third pillar is around our fans, followers and partners. Who are they? What is the content they’re consuming? How are we engaging them in rugby across England? And how are we working better with our partners to understand the efforts they’re making to diversify their own environments but also working with them to scale the impact we want to have and reach more communities? The final piece of that strategy is around our governance. Our volunteer leaders who are elected into positions such as our Council as constituency body reps. Who are they? How do we help them to be more inclusive leaders? And ultimately how do we diversify the talent pool coming into those positions for the future as well?

How does that look on a good day at the office?

JP: On a good day, that means people openly talking about issues around inclusion and diversity. And it might sound simplistic, but sometimes people avoiding talking about diversity because it’s too difficult or the fear of the unknown, certainly the fear of saying the wrong thing, which I can understand to some extent. But on a good day, what you’ll see is people having this conversation in a really open way, showing a bit of vulnerability, being open to the fact that they may not know something and ultimately asking for the guidance, advice and opinions and insights of people who may come from more diverse groups to help them to be better leaders, to make better decisions, to be more inclusive in the way they operate, to make sure that we’re sticking to our ambitions of being more inclusive and diverse.

What are the signs and clues you look for that show that diversity and inclusion is becoming embedded in the fabric of the organisation?

JP: The signs you look for are when leaders at the top of your organisation are building diversity and inclusion into their objectives and their agendas, which is very much the case at the RFU. I think you see it when you start to have clubs within the professional game talking about this on a more regular basis and that’s absolutely happening in rugby right now. Some of those discussions are difficult, but at the same time, talking about them openly and the challenges you are facing. Ultimately, the key indicator everyone’s looking for is: what is the diversity of people participating in the game of rugby? It’s hard to measure that because we haven’t always got the data we want but, ultimately, the day we can do that effectively and we can start to see progress, I guess that’s a really good sign that not only is the game changing to become more diverse, but people are staying in the game. Hopefully that leads to becoming more inclusive as well.

How do you deal with inevitable bumps in the road?

JP: Bumps are always going to occur in this space. It’s a steep learning curve for some. Others are a bit more advanced. There’s probably a big chunk of people in the middle that are still quite new to the inclusion and diversity space but get why it’s important. Bumps; you’ve got to kind of ride them. The more you build inclusion and diversity into your strategic objectives, your strategic thinking, into the commercial plans, the marketing plans you have, the communications plans you have, the performance strategies that you have, the more it becomes normalised and so the bumps become like any other bumps rather than a specific inclusion and diversity bump, one you become more used to riding rather than, at the moment because the fear of the unknown is more heightened. I tend to use bumps also as an opportunity to continue engaging on this topic with many of my colleagues as I possibly can. I think it’s sad to hear stories of discrimination in the game, but if you don’t learn something from them and how to be better as a result of them, it’s not only a missed opportunity, you’re failing the person that experienced that and you might be failing people in the future.

How do you balance long-term and short-term planning in your role?

JP: Balancing the long-term and short-term is probably the biggest challenge in the diversity and inclusion space. I think, depending on public pressure, people, particularly in different positions of influence and leadership, want to see their results overnight. For me, it’s about making sure that all the initiatives we do around the I&D agenda are regular, are digestible, that it can be tangible, not just about raising awareness but what can people do about it. All those short-term activities are designed to increase long-term change and hopefully improve not only the representation of diverse groups in rugby but also the number of inclusive leaders that exist within it as well. Ensuring you make that distinction is really important. Inclusivity, getting it right, and getting inclusive cultures, behaviour and decision-making in place will help diverse groups that are either in the sport today or you’re trying to get into the sport for the future, not only for the sense of belonging but also to flourish and be the best they can in an environment that is being considerate of them. Short-term versus long-term, one automatically leads to the other and it’s just making sure people have the patience and the confidence that they’re going on a journey that will ultimately introduce change.

How important is data in your role?

JP: Data is critical to my role. It’s not always the easiest thing to obtain around the diversity space, primarily because of regulatory issues and also explaining to people why asking for their diversity data is important to their own experience, but also helping the RFU understand the diversity of the game more effectively. It underpins all of the baselines that we have; we have a lot of KPIs and metrics we want to hit over time. Most of them are quite challenging but that’s a good thing. It helps us focus on the issue and we can regularly report on movements in programmes that we’ve got in place or just generally in terms of participation. In that sense, data underpins every good inclusion and diversity strategy and certainly underpins ours here at England Rugby.

Does data help you to identify gaps?

JP: I think it’s more about making sure I use data to demonstrate the impact that we’re having but also to give a picture of the lay of the land, particularly from a diversity perspective. I think it can be used effectively to persuade others as well of the importance of it. For example, participation in rugby is a really key challenge at all levels of the game and making sure that we present data were gaps exist that not only demonstrate the opportunity but also demonstrate the need to act on that. If we’re struggling to get more people engaging and participating in the game and the data says so, we then need to be using that to increase the number particularly from diverse groups going forward and seeing it as an opportunity rather than as an additional project.

By Luke Whitworth

The latest iteration of our Leadership Skills Series centred on the theme of managing ego and sought to explore thinking around managing our ego and recognising when it gets in our way. The session also discussed our responses to ego in others and handling egos within a team.

In kicking off this skills session, the group found it useful to revisit definitions of ego: ‘Ego is an individual’s sense of self-esteem or self-worth. The way someone views or perceives themselves – their self-awareness’.

Ego is a spectrum. It’s neither good nor bad per se, it’s a matter of degree or context. Positive aspects include confidence, security of identity and self-belief. Negative aspects are attributed to criticism of self and others, needing approval and the need to feel superior.

With the above in mind, here are some considerations for managing ego, individually and collectively.

Working with your ego

What are some of the ways you can keep your ego in check, healthy and appropriate?

• Support, develop and work with people who won’t feed your ego. Seek them out. Find smart people, with the confidence to speak up, to give you feedback and perspective on yourself and your contribution to the group effort.
• Take a moment to reflect on all the people who were part of making you successful.
• Thank people publicly for their contributions to what you’ve achieved. Humble leaders are often very forward in thanking and appreciating the role of others in their success.

Do you check in on your ego? The ‘Johari Window’ which is a framework for understanding conscious and unconscious bias that can help increase self-awareness and our understanding of others. There are four dimensions of self-knowledge around ego:

1. What we know about ourselves which everybody else knows. This is the ‘open window’ where it is a kind of public knowledge that everybody knows about.
2. What we personally privately know, but other people don’t know. The things we keep to ourselves.
3. The things we don’t know about ourselves but other people do know; ‘the blind spots’.
4. The hidden part of ourselves which we really don’t know and nobody else knows.

Finally, ask people that you trust. What do they know, think about you that you are not self-aware of? Self-disclosure and feedback is the kind of the golden recipe for getting insight into how our ego is manifesting itself, and whether it’s working well for us or not.

What the research says

A piece of research that explored problem players in sports teams with high, inappropriate ego highlights that you can experience the following consequences:

1. Cliques: sides being taken as opposed to having a whole team approach.
2. Reduced effort: people who see the high ego problem performer not being handled well.
3. Question authority: management may lose authority or credibility if high egos are able to have too much influence.
4. Drains energy: the energy it can take to manage high, inappropriate levels of ego in a team. Is your team a ‘radiator’ or a ‘drain’? Who is draining the energy?
5. Younger players impacted: a feeling of not being able to speak up or feeling intimidated.

Working with someone else’s ego

Three ways you as an individual can seek to keep it in check:

1. Be ‘adult to adult’ and assertive. You don’t have to take it just because they give it. For example using this type of language that is clear and direct ‘tell me three things you want. OK, here’s three things I want.’
2. Acknowledge their positive intentions. Whatever their behaviour, even if you don’t like it at some level, there is positive intention. This approach helps us be empathetic. What are they trying to do?
3. Capitalise on appetite for improvement – stretch them. Many high ego people want to succeed, which is something we can capitalise on.

Working with ego in teams

Three ways the team can seek to keep ego healthy:

1. Openly talk about ego. Look to use it as a force for good. We can start to come to a ‘deal’ within our team if we address and talk openly about it.
2. Contract from the outset. Team goals first and focus on purpose that can lead to positive psychological safety.
3. Set ambitious goals that can stretch.

By Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

Why the Key to Successful Leadership Is Now Influence, Not Authority

‘Where the Science Shifts Towards the Art of Coaching and High Performance Leadership’

Three Simple But Important Steps to Earning the Trust of your Athletes

Framing the topic

In our first Leadership Skills Series Session of 2023, we look at how our members can build skills to facilitate great conversations within their teams. We began the session by asking the members to think of times when they have had good and bad conversations. What made them this way? We then went into some stimulus, providing ten top tips in facilitating great conversations. These were aimed at not being some of the obvious things that everyone would think of straight away, but rather the nuances which can make a difference when handling a specific conversation.

1. Clarify your outcomes

• Getting your own mindset right before you begin a discussion.
• What do you want people to think, feel and do as a result of the discussion?
• How do you want to show up yourself, and how do you want to be perceived? What’s the impact you want to have on the discussion?

2. Specify outcomes for each agenda item

• For example: ‘Item 1, Project X – We’re looking for fresh ideas.’ This gives you a heading, which allows you to bring the conversation back if it drifts off.

3. Contract – the ‘future pace’ approach

• Let’s assume we are going to be successful, it is another part of getting your mindset right for the conversation.
• You might begin the discussion saying ‘Let’s imagine we have a great conversation here, I’d like you to put yourself on the edge of this conversation in your mind and look back, what did we do to make it successful?’.
• It is then important to get people to write this down, and have them commit to the behaviours they themselves have suggested.
• You are not imposing ground rules, but suggesting these come from the group themselves.

4. Build rapport – match pace and lead

• If you mismatch the group and get your energy and mood wrong, you are going to lose them right from the start.
• One example might be when we go into a group that has low energy, we might go in and try and lift the energy in the group and be a dynamic leader. This can tend to have the opposite effect, and what the group really want is for you to be alongside them energetically, for a while, so they know you’re with them – this is called ‘matching’.
• Going along with them for a while is then called ‘pacing’. Once you have been along with the group for a while at the same energetic and mood level, you can then start to lead on something more resourceful, and gradually build up the energy and the pace.

5. Sensory acuity and early intervention

• Paying attention to what is going on.
• It is better to get in early and deal with something before it gets too big to deal with.
• This is about spotting some of the small behaviours which might indicate that somebody is unhappy, disengaged or feeling in opposition to what is being discussed. It may be as small as a shake of a head, an eye movement, a whisper to someone. All of these things have meaning and are part of the group dynamic, and we need to be paying attention to even the minutia and intervening straight away.
• You can intervene by asking someone, ‘how are you doing in this conversation?’, ‘Is there something you wanted to say?’
• It is about making sure that we acknowledge behaviour early and address it as early as we possibly can.

6. Listen for the unspoken

• It is useful to assume what has not been said, it might be a feeling that has not been expressed, a tricky topic that’s too difficult to mention. The elephant in the room.
• Some of these things which aren’t given voice, are the agenda.
• You could say ‘I’ve noticed, nobody has said how they feel about this subject’ or ‘I notice, when we approach this subject the room gets a bit quiet, I’m just wondering what’s going on here?’
• Express it to the group, you may get it wrong, but more often than not, if you feel it and feel there is something not being said, you can do a lot for the group by bringing attention to it.

7. Offer a ‘clean’ summary

• This is about making people feel heard, and allowing people to reflect on what they have said.
• ‘Clean’ means summarising without putting our own thoughts or feelings in the summary. There is no judgement.
• Use their language and their terminologies, people then feel deeply heard and not judged or misunderstood.

8. Offer ‘BIFF’ Feedback

• BIFF: Behaviour, Impact, Feeling, Future.
• When giving feedback, begin by describing someone’s behaviour without judging or interpreting it. Simply describe literally what they have done.
• Then say what the impact of this behaviour is.
• Proceed to tell them how you then feel about this.
• Finally, agree what you will do about this going forward.

9. Acknowledge positive intention

• It is useful to assume that any behaviour anyone exhibits in a group at some level has a positive intention. It may not have a positive effect but behind it there is positive intention.
• If you acknowledge the positive intention it can allow the person to feel respected and can sometimes take the emotional sting out of what they are trying to say.

10. Silence is not commitment

• It might not even mean agreement, let alone commitment.
• It is good to check in with them, saying ‘you haven’t said anything about this, I just wanted to check your agreement with it?’

By Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

Make It Stick

Starting With Why

How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Framing the topic

In our final Leadership Skills Series Session of 2022, we look at how our members can enhance their influencing skills within their environments. We began the session by framing what influencing is and how we might be able to enhance these skills and be more effective with our communication. Influencing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s linked to who you are, your personal brand and how people feel about you. It is something that has to be nurtured and worked with over a period of time.

‘The key to successful leadership today is influence not authority’ – Kenneth Blanchard, American business consultant

What influencing meant to our members:

• People like to be treated and influenced in different manners. You can’t influence them when you’ve just met them, it takes time to build the relationship and trust.
• Empowering ideas in others alongside your own so they have added buy-in.
• Influence can create stronger buy in than telling someone to ‘do something because I said so’.
• Influence is a process of education.
• To influence can be to work to make the thing look like a good idea, so the team move to a position to want to do it.
• Enabling and empowering others to ‘do’, ‘act’, ‘change’.
• Influencing is an element of leadership, involving ‘moving people’.
• An emotional bank account with others – if that is in credit it is easier to do the moving and shifting.

What behaviours do we see from those that influence well?

• Clarity of purpose and values.
• Trust and relatedness is a feeling of positive influence.
• Listening and empowerment, they ask a lot of questions to get to understand you – empathy.
• They listen, they take in your opinions, they are objective. They state the inconvenient truths.
• People feel heard, valued, engaged.
• People feel trusted, empowered, and are invested in the outcomes.
• They have power without playing authority.

Outcome thinking:

Event + Response = Outcome

Focus on what you want to achieve and then, because of that, think about how you need to behave.

Wheel of Influence:

Pull behaviours

Responsive:

• Seeking to understand & explore the other person’s point of view.
• Explorative questioning.
• Staying open.

Passive:

• Giving in too soon.
• Feel ‘unworthy’/low status.
• Not challenging.

Push behaviours

Assertive:

• Sharing our perspective.
• Clear on what we want.
• Evidence-based persuasion.
• Giving effective feedback.

Aggressive:

• Aggressive/attacking.
• Refusing to listen.

How do we make our points ‘stick’?

1. Simplify – strip your message down to its core. Less is always more. What is the key message you want your audience to go away with?
2. Grab their attention by surprising the audiences expectations.
3. Make your communication more concrete and less abstract:
   • Use relevant examples/personal stories to bring your points to life.
   • Add weight and quantify your point with relevant and compelling facts.

Four Ps model – for getting people on board with the need for change, and giving confidence in our new direction.

1. Picture (what) – setting out a positive vision of success. The outcome we are determined to achieve.
2. Purpose (why) – explain the reason for it. What’s the problem we’re solving?
3. Plan (how) – a step by step plan as to how we are going to phase-in the change and support people – the aim here is to reassure people.
4. Part (who) – give individuals clarity on where they can best add value.

Thoughts and reflections from our members about the model:

• It helps in reviewing a current programme – picture what we want it to look like in three years’ time and how we get there.
• The model provides a logical flow of information.
• We discussed What (1) vs Why (2) and which should come first in the framework.
• One of the group suggested that the person and credibility of who is delivering the message is probably most important.
• It is not just a one-off pitch but how you weave some of the stuff into every conversation and interaction; keep them mindful of it and provide reminders.

By Luke Whitworth & Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

High Performance Environments – What the Research Is Telling Us

Performance Thinking: Understanding How you Learn, Unlearn and Deliver

Why Psychological Safety Paves the Way to Better Decision Making and Innovation

Framing the topic

Across this virtual roundtable conversation, we explored the ever-intriguing topic of collaboration, and in particular how to continue to foster and evolve it. Some of the key questions for exploration were around the barriers to collaboration, examples of good collaboration in practice, and where the areas of need are for impactful collaboration.

Session stimulus from James Morton, Professor of Exercise Metabolism, Liverpool John Moores University: Performance Collaboration: Winning Consistently… Together

• A performance culture of collaboration: three core concepts to this: alignment, continual improvement and reflective practice.
• Four pillars: taking these three concepts further, there are four key components to allow you to bring these concepts to life.
• Vision & mission: be bold, ambitious and inspirational. Create excitement. Over communicate.
• Strategy: be performance focused. The importance of having a knowledge-to-delivery framework. Behavioural change science.
• People: ‘Podium people’. Winning behaviours. A coaching mindset. Problem solvers. Front line operators.
• Delivery: Athlete (and staff) performance plans. Alignment of what, when and why. Consistently executing excellence.

 Discussion points

• Multidisciplinary vs interdisciplinary: ‘multidisciplinary’ can often encourage a sense of staying in your lane culture and collaboration, whereas ‘interdisciplinary’ is framed more as ‘come and get in our lane’. Do you do collective education across your different disciplines? A key component for collaboration is respect for others’ contributions. The best way to have a recognition for that is to spend time with one another, understand the value they bring and the challenges they have.
• Multidisciplinary vs interdisciplinary approaches: with a multidisciplinary approach, you can get so immersed in your work and what others need to achieve that they don’t look up – you can still perform well, but you can perform better with more foresight and longitude in their vision if there was more interdisciplinary activity.
• Shifts in approaches: in a number of environments, we can see the presence of both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Within the performance team it’s more interdisciplinary, but when you look outside of that group to departments such as coaching or front office, it can revert to being more multidisciplinary which makes it harder to collaborate.
• Finding common ground: as a best practice to drive more collaboration, we have focused on incorporating the athlete’s performance goals from a technical coaching perspective. This is the goal from the coaching staff in this instance – as performance staff this allows us to ask questions around how do we not just make this person better from a physical sense, but also specific to what that individual athlete needs?
• The need to collaborate: we push a lot and collaboration is a buzz word. There is a balance between forcing collaboration where it actually doesn’t need to take place and the real need for it. When staff want to be involved in areas that are perhaps a little outside their lanes, it’s often due to a lack of role clarity and not feeling valued in what they are doing.
• Amazon: they talk about not liking too much communication, teams often work independently and then come together at the end – this isn’t suggesting it’s the best model but it’s a different way of thinking about collaboration. If staff feel valued in their tasks, there isn’t as much of a need to look at what is happening elsewhere.
• Be intentional: when thinking about collaboration, think about when and why? Consider this as opposed to forcing collaboration in all areas where everybody is involved in everything – this can slow things down, make you less innovative and can prevent people from being heard.
• Strategic vs operational: there is the here and now to deliver immediate results but also longer-term thinking. In terms of strategic collaboration, the challenge is around when is that most important? Consider where the integration points and crossroads are to ensure you utilise the best information and people to promote progression.
• Clarity: role clarity is important, but also having a clear understanding of what collaboration actually is. What doe the behaviours look like for collaboration and what are we trying to get out of this? Collaboration can often get confused with teamwork – we hear the emphasis on ‘team’ all the time, but collaboration is really about problem-solving and decision-making – it’s not meeting for the sake of meeting.
• Role modelling: in most organisations, there are people we can point to who are champions of collaboration. Considering putting people who are good as facilitators of conversations and collaboration in roles that can help multiply this – model expectations.
• Barriers to collaboration: lack of trust, clarity, fixed mindset and defensiveness and siloed-thinking.
• Bringing it back to the athlete: it is crucial that everyone is aligned to the performance plan. Who do you need to work with consistently well day to day to develop the athlete?
• Alignment: make sure everyone is on the same page, having a vision and consistency across the board but then having subcultures who have their own ways of working, but it must still be aligned to the overall vision. Having this consistency then allows for individuals to enact it as they want and allow for individuality because at the core they are all aligned.
• Continuous challenge: one main challenge we can face in our environments is being reliant on other staff for key information. Time is also the most precious resource and this presents a challenge to ensuring that everyone is aligned. Meetings that promote collaboration are crucial.
• Scalability: everyone has great ideas but what is scalable? What are the key things we need to focus on?
• Communication is key: have we mapped and have a stronger understanding of how different people communicate?
• ‘Speed of trust’ tool: evaluating the competency and collaboration increases trust.
• Visualising others’ processes: valuing the accumulation effect of the sports science performance processes and getting everyone to see that as an example is important. One barrier is the sum of the people, and how to change behaviours – behavioural change science.
• Communicating value: using personal experience rather than always data can help influence people more effectively – understanding what will motivate them. One example was asking each discipline to explain how important water is to them – for nutrition hydration is key, for coaches water breaks are key times to give tactical coaching etc. Something so simple can bring together every discipline and show how they can work together and how many things impact them all.

Attendee takeaways

At the end of the roundtable discussions, attendees were asked to share one key reflection point or takeaway from the call that they would like to take back to their environment for further consideration:

• Treat every aspect of sport as a performance domain.
• The need to think more deeply around collaboration v individuality.
• Aligning collaboration with vision and mission.
• What are we worried will happen if we over communicate? We will over collaborate?
• Clarity of purpose to drive intentional collaboration.
• Exploring together, collectively what we all believe collaboration is and what it looks like in any given environment or situation – that helps to set expectations, behaviours and clarity of role.
• Focused and reflection of collaboration, don’t meet just to meet, ensure clarity of intent coming out of the meeting. Ensure collaboration on the front end for any messaging going to players. Conviction in the why and intent is essential. Align behaviours with values.
• How are we reviewing collaboration? How well are we defining the expectations? What is the level of consistency of the behaviours that contribute towards collaboration?

By John Portch

When Rory Sloane spoke at Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership in June 2021, he delivered a curious insight into the make-up of the Adelaide Football Club’s player leadership group.

The club, which draws its five-player leadership group from a list of 45 decided to give youth a chance in 2020.

“Couple of guys who have been part of the leadership group over the previous four years stepped aside to let some of these young kids develop,” said Sloane.

Adelaide finished bottom of the AFL ladder in 2020 – a fact that left Sloane, as captain, “stung” – and decided to turn to youth to renew their fortunes. In this context, it made sense to empower some of the younger players on the list.

“We’ve still got a lot of leaders without titles,” he continued, “But yeah, five official leaders.”

Sloane is joined onstage by Jarrad Butler, the captain of Connacht Rugby, where their eight-strong leadership group takes responsibility for driving standards and behaviours. Together, they explore the creation of leadership groups at Adelaide and Connacht and the main dynamics involved.

Democracy

Leadership groups tend to be elected by athletes from amongst their peers and neither Adelaide nor Connacht are any different. “At the start of the year there was a questionnaire on who do you think leads by example on the field, who do you think is the best communicator, the guy that holds the most people to account,” said Butler of the process that saw Connacht’s eight-person group appointed for the 2020-2021 season. “We kind of ticked boxes that we thought [represented] values that we wanted to have as a group, as a team, who do you think best kind of ticks that box. And we tried to put a group together that then covers a whole lot of those bases, so we didn’t want just a whole bunch of guys that are all maybe very good at the same areas, so that was important.”

Regular meetings

“What we’ve been trying to do is catch up at least once a fortnight just to get on the same,” said Butler. “I think where we fell short, especially when the seasons for us dragged on, you kind of get caught just going through the motions a little bit and you forget to catch up. “We’ve have a meeting where we all get together and these guys aren’t really on the same page, and you’re seeing that come out in the performances as well and you’re like, well we haven’t got together in four weeks [so] no wonder we’re not on the same page at the moment. So we found one of the first challenges I guess was being diligent and actually catching up with each other, and again it’s one of those things where Andy Friend, our head coach, he was like ‘well it’s up to guys if you want to get together, we’re not going to chuck something in your diaries for you – either you do it or you don’t,’ and we learnt early that if you’re not going to do, then everything else starts slipping by the wayside as well.”

Learning dynamics

Butler explained that leadership groups also have a vital role in ensuring learning and development of understanding because there are times when a coach’s impact can be limited. “It’s one of those things where you’re in a meeting and you’re getting – you know, the defence coach comes up, the head coach, and they’re showing clips and clips and clips – it’s easy for things to get watered down,” said Butler, who discussed the balance of challenge and support with Sloane in more depth here. “For the main session, we [often] get one of the players, usually one of the leaders, early on they would do the review of the session, and they would come up with the clips. This year, it’s been a little harder to have these meetings with Covid, but still, coming up with clips and sending them out because we’ve found that when you’re getting told by your peers, when they’re highlighting something I think it holds more weight than when you’re getting it from a coach for whatever reason.”

Spread the load

Butler also makes the point that their duties extend beyond performance or rugby and it is important that the playing group does not allow a mere handful of individuals manage tasks for the group. “I think the main thing is that we all took on something that wasn’t rugby-related,” he said, “so it wasn’t falling on the same guys. So one guy would link up with the team manager on if there was any issue around travel or things like that, someone else would link up with the kitman, if there were any issues; and it would just mean that we haven’t had the same conversations with a whole bunch of people unnecessarily. So it helped kind of disperse that load as well, so it wasn’t falling on the same blokes. Because imagine, you know, there’s all those guys that are happy to do everything if you ask them to, but it’s not fair to them as well. So it’s all about lightening the load.”

A Keiser Series Podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“There’s more evidence to support what we do but, at the same time, there’s more perspective, but certain things don’t change,” says Jimmy Wright.

“If you chase the science, if you purely chase the literature, and you forget about experience and what has traditionally delivered the results you might just miss the diamonds.”

Jimmy Wright, the Team Biokineticist at the Durban-based Sharks, who compete locally in the Currie Cup and internationally in the United Rugby Championship, is the first guest on the latest series of the Keiser Series Podcast.

Jimmy has been with the Sharks for 23 years – in fact he was the first individual to hold his position at a franchise in South Africa – and has seen both his role evolve as well as the needs of the game.

He discusses those developments and also touches upon:

• His belief in focusing on growth between Monday and Friday [14:30];
• The concept of ‘ubuntu’ and selflessness that informs his work [17:00];
• How his style as a leader developed from his background in track & field [20:00];
• The advice he would like to give his younger self [26:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By Luke Whitworth

Recommended reading

What Does Cultural Mapping Look Like at Ulster Rugby?

In an Era of Player Power, How Can you Protect your Team’s Culture and Vision?

High Performance Environments – What the Research Is Telling Us

How Winning Organizations Last 100 Years

Framing the topic

Across the Leaders Performance Institute network, the number one topic of interest is culture. Everyone is striving for a strong and high performing culture and it’s fair to say some are better placed than others to succeed around this. A couple of anecdotes from friends of the network ring true around the topic of culture:

• You have to really work at it.
• Those organisations that have sustained success over a long period of time, take culture incredibly seriously. Dan Coyle’s work in The Culture Code brings this to life in a stark away.

Across this virtual roundtable conversation, we explored the following question: knowing the importance of culture, how are peers in the group evaluating, reviewing and subsequently, evolving their culture across their respective organisations? Below is an account of best practices and considerations outlined by the group.

Discussion points

• Have a Culture Health Check Process: a couple of organisations on the call do an annual survey amongst athletes and staff to measure the strength of their culture. Another organisation from a different sport shared that they have introduced more frequent reviews and health checks, leveraging those every three months.
• Consider Subcultures: many of us work within larger organisations so there is an overarching organisational culture that surrounds us which we embody parts of, but there is also the challenge of implementing a coherent culture across different sub-groups. There is a balance to be found. Is one standard culture wise or is there value in providing some autonomy to those sub-groups? Are you evaluating both the wider organisational culture and the natural subcultures that are present in our environments?
• Measurement: there is some push and pull between the nuanced face-to-face, anecdotal evaluation and the data-orientated angle systems (culture health check). Does steering too far in one direction or the other have the potential to throw you off?
• Wrestling with Tension: we have to find the balance between wanting something concrete that is easy to understand (quantitative insight) around our culture and how relevant and useful that is versus the awareness and insight of the culture that occurs through sitting, listening and talking to people (qualitative). It’s critical to be aware of the tension between these two aspects in how we evaluate culture because it can be easy to jump to the measurable part of the evaluation and determine the health of the culture on that – be aware of what the data doesn’t show us. There is a gap between these two factors that is often present within organisations.
• Creating the Need for Change: there is value in using best practices such as culture health checks to create the space for facilitated conversations around culture. This is where the creation of actual need for change arises. How are you effectively doing that? The tool can never be as valuable as the conversation that is there to create – use this as a reference point.
• Expansion of Staff: the inclusion vs. exclusion membrane becomes a really important aspect of cultural influence. How are you celebrating with the expansion of staff to create that sense of inclusion and belonging?
• Feel It & See It: we often talk about a metric-based approach to culture, but often you can feel it and see it, making it difficult to define. ‘Whether it’s air for humans or water for fish, you notice it when it’s not there’. This builds on the point relating to the separation between measurement, implementation and action – if you are taking the temperature measurement, what are you doing in the second and third phases to move things on?
• Culture & Interaction: you need to invest in the direction you want the culture to move in, but if you don’t have the right level of interaction around it, the culture is dead. The challenges of the pandemic have naturally reduced the cultural interaction and engagement. How can you heighten the level of interaction?
• What is a Culture’s Openness to Change: this can be an interesting question to ask yourself when considering the evaluation of the culture. This can be an integral measure to understanding how robust the culture is. Change is one thing in life that is guaranteed, but there is tension that exists as people often don’t like it, so is there a growth mindset and adaptability that exists within the environment? What do you think you are losing if you are to engage in the change?
• Language: we can engage in measurements, but as mentioned earlier, you can also see it, feel it and, most importantly, hear it. Are your people and staff using the language that aligns to the culture we want to live by?
• Values: there is a sweet spot – there can be too many values and also that notion of being stuck on a wall without being truly lived – this is not doing the work of culture and bringing it to life is much harder.
• Pain Points & Disruptions: are you identifying and evaluating these, as they will have a direct impact on your culture? Wellbeing for employees in particular, not just mental and emotional but also financial. Mapping the pain points provides more opportunity to review and reflect.
• Focus Groups: how are you garnering feedback from those in the organisation who perhaps don’t get the same attention? Create focus groups to ensure you are providing opportunities for their voice to be heard. Bridge the gap between exclusion and inclusion.
• Mission, Values & Cornerstones: when we consider the evaluation of the ‘culture in practice’, are you also frequently taking the time to review and evolve the mission, values and cornerstones of the culture? Are they still relevant, has the environment evolved where something is more aligned to the culture? Doing this will allow you to stay more on the pulse of how the organisation is living and breathing.
• Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up: it’s important to review the context of how your culture is established. In many environments where practitioners are working with younger talent, it tends to be top-down. In other environments, bottom-up will be the direction. Because they are context-dependent, there will be different questions and measurements to consider, there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach to how you evaluate.

In partnership with

By Matthew Stone

The focus of our fourth Leaders Meet of 2022, which took place at the end of July at the NBPA in New York City, was how creativity and collaboration play a crucial role in high performance, and how failing to innovate in these areas will put organisations at risk of being left behind.

We heard two case studies from leaders in their field about what innovation and creativity means to them, and how to change the mindset to ensure it’s a priority on a daily basis.

Session 1: Creativity & Collaboration Pt 1: High Performance Innovation Under Pressure

Speaker: David Putrino, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation, Mount Sinai Health System

The neurobiology of creativity

• “Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context” – Jonathan Plucker, Ronald A Baghetto and Gayle Dow in ‘Why Isn’t Creativity More Important to Educational Psychologists? Potentials, Pitfalls, and Future Directions in Creativity Research’, published in Educational Psychologist, June 2004

• A creative organism is an adaptive organism. An adaptive organism survives. That is why we need creativity.

• Our brains have vast inhibitory networks that act as buffers between brain regions. If we didn’t have these networks in place, we would:
  • Smell colour
  • See sound
  • Hear flavours
  • Probably some other bad stuff…

• The theory of over-inclusivity states that creative minds don’t filter out all the random connections as much as non-creatives. This makes a creative brain able to think in ways that neurotypical ‘caged’ brains can’t.

• You can be creative in lots of different ways. We’re also not lateralised in the same way, so creativity can come from different places. You can work in a field/industry that you would assume is quite linear (e.g. accounting) but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be very creative individuals within that field/industry, too.

How can we be more creative?

• • Step 1: Place your brain in a learning state

• • • Salience: Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why does it matter?
    • Engagement and motivation: Engagement is the action of performing an assigned task. Intensity of engagement is your level of motivation.
    • Enjoyment: The extent to which someone is taking pleasure in an activity

• • Step 2: Expose yourself to novel and unfamiliar experiences

• • • Travel: Can increase creativity by up to 25%
    • Biophilic spaces: You are up to 15% more creative in biophilic space
    • Use psychedelics: Check with your doctor, and be controlled and responsible.

• • Step 3: Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. Build it into your life

• • • Our brains are designed for ‘in group’ / ‘out group’. Our brains want to lead us toward groups that look like us. This is the path of least resistance – In-group is “easier” for our brain than out-group. Inhibition remains intact
    • Diversity changes things: Deep relationships with someone from another country will lead to high levels of creativity
    • MBA students who dated fellow students from another culture had more creative work breakthroughs
    • Even ‘thinking’ about a deep relationship with someone from another culture will cause a temporary boost in creativity

Key takeaways

Creativity is trainable when we:

• Break routines
• Engage in tasks that open our mind to learning
• Place our brains in novel situations
• Surround ourselves with differing opinions and cultures

Questions from the audience

Is there a limit to how much creativity you can foster?

• There will be a limit due to internal processes and what works for them etc. Creativity is not a positive trait that everyone needs to have. If you are an athlete that needs consistency, you don’t necessarily want to change the routine by thinking and acting more creatively.
• You will become less creative as you age, because you will become more set in your ways. So it comes down to personality traits.

How can you foster creativity in an environment where motivation is low and there are time constraints?

• Firstly, you have to explore why motivation is low. Then it is important to get everyone re-engaged on the mission, and make it a collective goal across everyone in the room/team. On the flip side, if anyone that doesn’t want to do this, get out of the room/team. Then start collectively working towards the goal.

Session 2: Creativity & Collaboration Pt 2: Leading Innovation

Speaker: Tim Cox, Managing Director, Management Futures

Rivers of thought

• We accept the status quo as reality, and cease to challenge it. Ideas, knowledge and experience all make up the ‘river’
• Up to us to develop new streams of thought to continue to innovate

Five key skills of innovation

1. Step change thinking

• Set a very stretchy goal.
• How can we reach for that?
• x10?

2. Ideal world

• In an ideal world what would be happening?

Assuming we can’t do that…

• How could we replicate that in another way?

3. Redefining or reframing the problem

• How can I express this problem differently?
• How might we resolve this new problem?

4. Related world

• Stay open to insights from outside our sector.
• Who addressed similar challenges? How did they do it?
• How has nature resolved this?

5. Mind mapping

• Draw a map with the problem in the centre.
• What are all the different solutions we can generate?

Group challenges

For this section of the day, the group split into four groups to discuss four challenges posed by members of the audience. Below are some thoughts and takeaways of what was discussed.

1. How do we create interconnection amongst silos when individuals are routinely separated?

• Zooming isn’t the same as being in the same room – ensure you don’t approach both in the same way and adjust accordingly
• It’s important that everyone is on the same starting page – put time aside to prepare
• Geographic differences make things harder – work hard to overcome that barrier or make it easier to do so
• Volunteer your spare time to spend with the team
• Planning out self-development time for staff in the same way you would with players
• In an ideal world everyone would all be together, but they can’t also be, so take advantage of time in camp, spend time getting to know each other, and let the other bits play out
• Reframe as an opportunity rather than problem – revaluate collective values, prioritise being connected

2. How do we bring continuity across different locations?

• Ensure there is clarity of the ‘why’
• If rolling out initiatives and programmes without the ‘why’, there’ll be less buy-in, investment, and interest
• Project outcomes and desired outcomes need to be shared
• Provide a framework versus cookie cutter approach – then allow for flexibility and creativity within it
• Make sure you are setting the atmosphere and showing the ‘how’ when together – with tangible examples that they could attempt to replicate
• Provide support, guidance, check-ins regularly
• Be in the trenches with them. Show them you’re all on the same team and working towards the same goal
• Recognise the reality and embracing the subcultures. Train people to be able to provide guidance and leadership within these subcultures

3. How do you get people within a department to successfully buy into change when they are already performing very well in some areas?

• Prioritise building trust from the off
• Take a gradual approach and be patient
• Decide which processes you want to change. Then approach changes by overcoming small things, rather than wholesale changes
• Invert the question – what are you trying to solve for? – success is currently happening, but is it sustainable and repeatable? (Reframe the question)
• Consider John Kotter’s ‘8 step process for leading change’
• It is important to understand motivations of people involved and making sure you and they are aligned on goals
• Everyone is likely working towards a unified goal, but it is good to define it, and to talk about it often
• We shouldn’t think and assume that people don’t care
  • Peel back emotional response
• What are you onboarding people to? What’s your anchor? What do you want people to be measured by?
  • If you manoeuvre in the right way, you can implement guidelines without restricting intellectual freedom and individuality

4. Cognitive training & evaluation within high performance

• 10x approach – it can impact all elements of performance
• Differentiate between elite and developmental athletes
• Find benchmarks at elite level – take trainable factors to develop their level
• More stringent the closer you get to elite level – ensure you are prepared for that and have plans to approach it correctly
• Attributes – outcomes – confidence. e.g. focus, resilience, competence, awareness or handling pressure
• Cultural factors consist of psychological safety, resilience and performance fitness
• Skills that are workable – mindfulness, self talk etc.
• Sport specific skills – visual tracking, reaction time, DM ability
• Traits, outcomes, situational factors

Session 3: Creativity & Collaboration Pt. 3: Teamwork & Innovation in Practice

Speaker: Kevin Abrams, SVP of Football Operations & Strategy, New York Giants

Innovation and collaboration at the New York Giants

• Naturally in a big organization, there is a temptation for people to work in silos. In the past being innovative wasn’t a necessity, it was a by-product. But as time went on, the Giants have made sure that it is a priority and something that is considered.
• Innovation leadership is probably what has brought the departments together. That didn’t always exist, but the team is a much more sophisticated organization now because we started to encourage being proactive with innovation and creativity a long time ago. It takes time.
• There have been low points and high points during Abrams’ 23 years with the organization. In the lowest points, it was difficult for him personally as a leader because of the performances, and then nature of the performances. As a leader within the organization he has to take responsibility for that. It also means he has to ‘roll up his sleeves’ and make suggestions on how to innovate and implement new ideas to get out of a rut.

Barriers to innovation / ensuring staff and coaches are allowed to get into an innovative mindset

• Honestly, sometimes you luck into it. The Giants have tried to mandate innovation throughout the calendar and throughout the building, but when you mandate things, there is sometimes resistance and push-back, so it doesn’t always work. It has to be organic. People have to want to buy into an idea and a state of mind.
• If you start with a small initiative, get the buy-in, get people to believe in the project and the outcome, you’re on the right road. Then they start to want to innovate, and want to be in a positive, creative mindset more often.
• Set up the small wins, enjoy them, and celebrate them. Then build from there to bigger projects and bigger conversations.
• The status quo can be very comfortable, so we need to make sure that every day you have an element of discomfort, and you’re comfortable with that. It keeps people on their toes, as it’s easy for people to stay in a safe space. The Giants want to push people outside of that to achieve more and always strive to be better on a daily basis.

Ensuring staff are comfortable and feel at ease when new regimes/leadership starts

• The Giants want to ensure there is an ongoing conversation and ongoing feedback about how people are feeling. Whether that is regular check-ins, or something different, the important thing is that there is openness and a safe environment to share.
• It’s also important to ensure there is a feedback process and ongoing conversation when the times are bad/challenging, but it’s just as important to do so when times are good.

By John Portch

• Do you have cognitive diversity within your team and are diverse people given the opportunity to lead?

• Are you able to meet your athletes and coaches on an experiential and emotional level?

• Do not guess – talk to your people to find out where they can improve

Inclusion allows for credible diversity

Inclusivity creates the conditions for diversity to flourish within your ranks. In October 2017, USA Swimming named Lindsay Mintenko as the Managing Director of its national team. She was the first female to take the role, which was created in 1988, but the groundwork had been laid for the appointment of a woman. “It brought a change of thinking. A different way to think,” she told an audience at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “There had been three men in the role – all coaches – and so I was the first female athlete and so I bring a different perspective to the role.” At the time, Mintenko explained that just 6% of the United States’ elite swimming coaches were female, which was “awful”. She said: “We’re working hard and doing a lot of programmes and initiatives in USA Swimming to increase [opportunities] for our female coaches as they try to climb.” She cited the examples of Teri McKeever, who coached the US women’s team at the 2012 London Olympics, and Catherine Kase, who was the nation’s Head Coach for Open Water Swimming at the 2016 Rio Games and would go on to fill the same post at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games.

Find the same wavelength as your athletes

Diversity necessarily extends beyond gender, which in itself is no guarantee of cognitive diversity. Mintenko is a three-time Olympic medallist, including two golds, and a ten-time US national champion, which no previous managing director could claim. She said: “The ability to communicate with the athletes and be on the same wavelength as them [is significant]. I’ve been in their shoes and I’ve sat in the ready room and been in front of the blocks at the Olympic Games; and so [it is important] to be able to talk to them about what that looks like and how you feel and how you deal with that.” The athletes can feel that they are listened to within the USA Swimming environment. “I also feel I’m able to communicate and have more one-on-one conversations, not only with the athletes but with the coaches.”

Learning from lived experience

Mintenko’s pride in her ability to speak to coaches and athletes has been part of a wider development of openness within USA Swimming, which her appointment further supports. She explained that she is able to speak to coaches, ask what they want, and accept their feedback. This was essential following the 2016 Games, where the US topped the swimming medals table with 33, including 16 golds. The 2020 Games were the first in 20 years where the Americans travelled without serial winner Michael Phelps. A robust review was essential to retaining the United States’ winning ways. It lasted six months – much to Mintenko’s surprise – but a wealth of good information emerged. “One of the things we implemented straight away was instead of USA Swimming telling our coaches and athletes what we thought they need to do to be better, we changed it to being more individualised,” she said. “They told us what they needed to be better. We’re not with them every day, we don’t train in one location, everyone trains throughout the United States, and so we started to have a lot more conversations with our coaches and athletes, a lot more open communication.” Learning from that lived experience proved to be the making of USA Swimming’s mental health programme for athletes, which launched in 2019. “It was talked about in several sports and we hope to expand upon that as we go into the 2024 quad.”