By John Portch

When we talk about the next generation, it is not just athletes but coaches and other staff members too.

“I work primarily with staff on a day‑to‑day and they are very young,” said a senior sports scientist working in Major League Baseball.

“They’d be Generation Z; and I think there’s definitely a difference in terms of how I have had to learn to communicate with them and include them in various decisions and thoughts along the way — and I’ll be the first to say I fumbled royally multiple times at first.”

This individual – whose experience is far from unique – was speaking at a recent virtual roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members on the challenge of working with the next generation. Several in attendance spoke of the different beliefs, values and attitudes that can exist within a single environment.

Over the course of an hour, the table discussed how to better understand those generational differences in a way that meets the needs of all their young people.

The session host Luke Whitworth, the LPI’s Sport Performance Lead, challenged participants to move beyond generational stereotypes. He said: “If we’re going to manage these multi‑generational teams, it comes down to the leader’s ability to understand the behaviours, values and beliefs of younger people.”

A top-down approach, he argued, is not going to cut it; and he posed the table two questions:

1. How are we adapting and evolving our environments to meet those needs?
2. What do those environments need to look like?

The first question set up the second; and collectively the table alighted on five themes.

1. Pursue co-creation

The consensus is that athletes want to have a louder voice in their own development.

As an attendee who coaches at a Premier League academy said, even boys as young as 11 “continue to want instant information; they want more challenge; they want to know what’s next.”

He added:

“At the moment, we are searching for more autonomy and ownership from young players around some of their developmental needs. We’re sitting down with a young boy and having conversations around what are some of the things that you’re really good at; what would you like to achieve this year; what do you think you’re not so great at and could be working on.”

While the player is encouraged to express their views, they are still guided by their coaches.

“We will tell them: ‘whilst we understand that you feel you need to work on these developmental areas, there are definitely other areas that we need you to continue to work on.’”

In several cases, the priorities of younger staff members mirror young athletes’. A sports scientist from a different Premier League club said:

“The younger staff want quicker progression. They want to know what is happening for them to progress into more senior roles.”

A coach from the US system has observed similar ambitions in their context. He said:

“They won’t take ownership if they’re not included in the process.”

It’s a similar story in a military setting, as another attendee observed from their work:

“You have to be really intentional, really painfully deliberate with junior staff members to make sure that they’re engaged and they feel like they’re part of the process.”

2. Make sure individualisation is rooted in identity and purpose

In several key respects, individualisation underpins efforts to co-create the development plans alluded to above, but sometimes, as a player development manager in Major League Baseball pointed out, the players need a helping hand to prevent them from “climbing the wrong mountain”.

He said:

“Over the last year and a half, we’ve really tried to dive in on the first question. And I think our feedback loops have changed because of that. The four things that stood out at the beginning were reflection, ownership, collaboration and impatience – four things that we feel like our players really struggle with.”

As for the solution:

“We’ve started to dive more into identity and their North Star. Why do they do what they do? What are their values? How can we help them? And they’ve really opened up to us just in terms of who they are, where they’re going, what they want to do. And that’s opened the conversation to their actual on-field performance things that we want them to work on.”

3. Be comfortable with digital delivery

Younger generations are digital natives and teams would do well to lean into this.

The player development manager from above said:

“We’ve actually had our coaches start to record 10 to 15 minute videos, send them to players beforehand, and then the actual talk becomes them being able to reflect and digest the information.”

He is not alone, as another attendee from a US NGB explained of her organisation’s approach to identity:

I’m not a coach, I’m not in performance, I’m in operations, but our data analytics team started talking in a really structured way with our 13 to 15-year-old athletes here at the training centre. They ask them what’s their preferred game style, what kind of player they want to be, who they look up to, and have them sit down and make a video of it. And that has been a really cool exercise.

Meanwhile, at the aforementioned Premier League academy, independent video learning is the norm. The coach said:

“We record training sessions and games that go straight onto Hudl for young players to go and watch. They can engage in it however they want.”

4. Promote peer-to-peer learning

Peer-to-peer learning is also essential. Another academy manager, this time in the world of basketball, said:

“The players have discussions internally between themselves and they come back to us with a conclusion as a group.”

At this juncture, he explained it is important to work out who are the key influencers in the playing group.

“We are living in an era of influencers, TikTokers, YouTubers. So who is the guy who has the biggest influence here in our team? And he’s going to be charged with talking to us and delivering the message to the rest of the group.”

Once again, this peer-to-peer dynamic is just as relevant to staff. A programme lead in the US spoke of their ‘zillennial’ staff i.e. those who could reasonably be classed as older Generation Z and younger millennial.

He said:

“When we have to make a big departmental decision, everyone has to bring a piece of paper. They have to write their own ideas down first before they hear anyone else’s and then walk it through as a group. By the end of it, we all come to the agreement like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing as a team’. That way it’s everyone’s idea versus ‘that wasn’t my idea’.”

5. Re-evaluate staff reporting structures

A senior sports scientist at a Premier League club explained that his club restructured how staff members report to their line managers. He said:

“We added more layers in. Part of the reason for that was to allow some of the younger staff to get more regular feedback, more regular development. We’ve also tried to limit the number that any one clinician will line‑manage so that actually those conversations can happen more readily.”

What to read next

Four Questions those Working with the Next Generation Should Ask Themselves

By John Portch

Back-to-Back Masters winner Rory McIlroy shared his preparation strategy in the aftermath of his second triumph at Augusta National.

“I joked last week that this place feels like my home course,” he said. “I haven’t played anywhere else in the last two or three weeks really. I felt prepared in that way. I felt prepared that wherever I hit it on the golf course, I sort of know what to do. I know where to miss. I’m pretty comfortable with all the shots around the greens.”

McIlroy, a six-time major winner, disregarded other PGA Tour events and even chose to ignore a back injury that had been hampering his performance. At one point he even carded a score of 29 on the front nine at Augusta.

“It’s a good blueprint,” he continued. “I’m not going to take three weeks off before every major, but to get to the major venues early, do your preparation, play. And not just play and look at things, but actually play. Go out there with one ball, shoot a score and try to do it that way.”

McIlroy’s successful strategy came not long after our Leaders Meet: the Art of Strategy event at Lord’s Cricket Ground, where a range of guests, including Olympic gold medallist Tabby Stoecker and Lawn Tennis Association Performance Director Michael Bourne discussed how to build, stress-test and execute an effective performance strategy.

We know McIlroy wasn’t there because he was in Georgia, but he, much like yourselves, can check out the chief insights here.

And now on to other happenings at the Leaders Performance Institute in April.

Quote of the month:

Personally, I don’t believe in skills coaches.

These are the words of Rory Teague, who notably spent a year and a half between 2016 and 2017 working as a skills coach under then England men’s rugby union Head Coach Eddie Jones.

A decade on, Teague serves as the Head Coach of French Pro D2 club AS Béziers Hérault and, as he tells the Leaders Performance Institute, would not copy Jones’ appointment in southern France.

“I wouldn’t myself employ a skills coach,” he says. “I think every coach who coaches an area of the game should be able to coach the skill of their area. ‘Skills coach’ as a term has become archaic as coaching has moved along.”

Read the full story here.

We also addressed some of the common tensions, challenges and opportunities in skill acquisition here.

Insight of the month:

British military operations are primed to perform when personnel do not have even 60% of the desired information at hand.

As Aneaka Reay-Kemp, the Lead Military Intelligence Specialist at the UK Ministry of Defence, told the audience at Leaders Meet: the Art of Strategy, they are trained, as she said, to be “comfortable being uncomfortable”.

Rank, she argued, has limited bearing. In fact, the British military has taken steps to reduce the influence of its own hierarchies in moments of uncertainty. She said:

It doesn’t matter what’s on that person’s chest, it doesn’t matter their background, they still bring value no matter how junior they are. So for me, I find that when you’re operating in an environment where you don’t have all the information, understanding your people, understanding their capability, what they bring to the party can help save someone’s life.

Reay-Kemp was one of six guests who brought the day’s proceedings to life.

Shock of the month:

We often hear informally of ‘bad’ environments, but we don’t necessarily expect them to be amongst those considered the very best.

Yet that was the experience of Alexander Campbell, the former principal dancer at the Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet when he attended the Royal Ballet School in the early 2000s.

“I struggled so much that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to continue pursuing a career in ballet,” he said.

He had arrived from his native Sydney mid-term, which didn’t help him to settle, but it was also down to the type of prescriptive teaching that routinely irks younger generations today.

“We weren’t really encouraged to step out of our lane. It was like, ‘you know the steps, you focus on this, and we’ll worry about everything else,’” he added.

When reflecting on that time for Leaders members, he said it was “such a missed opportunity.”

His turn-of-the-century experience as a ballet student shows that the need for teachers to meet their students halfway is not new. Two decades later, talent environments in performing arts, and in sport, must be designed to engage a cohort that wants to know ‘why?’

Campbell, now the Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Dance, shared his full story here.

Good to know:

What’s the difference between a ‘change’ and a ‘transition’?

A ‘change’ is simply that, but a ‘transition’ refers to the human adaptation required in the face of change.

That is according to John Bull, the Head of High Performance at Management Futures, who posed this question at a virtual roundtable for members of the Leaders Performance Institute where the topic of the day was ‘what makes change stick?’

In simple terms, as Bull explained, change initiatives fail not because the change itself is wrong but because the human transition is misunderstood, ignored or rushed.

“The object of change is quite straightforward; transition can be super complicated,” he said, “and what we tend to do in organisations is not pay nearly enough attention to managing transition. We forget about that.”

To help the virtual room in this regard, he introduced attendees the three phases of transition:

Bull brought these three phases of transition to life by describing how he went through each in response to a postponed work project:

The key thing about stage one is I am still really frustrated and annoyed with certain individuals that have led to that happening. Now, I would say on one level, that’s really understandable. It’s a significant project that we were really excited about; but here’s the key point: it is useless and doesn’t help me one bit. So all the energy that I’m investing in the frustration is not going into the adapting; and what I should be spending much more time on is focusing on what do we need to do to adapt now that change has happened.

Finally…

Four common causes of tension between business and performance… and four opportunities for increased collaboration.

Coming up for Leaders Performance Institute members

The Sport Performance Summit New York

By John Portch

In November 2024, Dr Brett Robinson became the first southern hemisphere Chair of World Rugby, the international governing body of rugby union.

Robinson, a former Wallabies international-turned-sports scientist and C-suite executive, beat France’s Abdelatif Benazzi by 27 votes to 25 in the second round of the election held by World Rugby’s Executive Council.

His narrow majority meant he succeeded Sir Bill Beaumont without a honeymoon period. Yet his achievements thus far, chiefly the implementation of World Rugby’s Impact Beyond 25 programme and building consensus around new laws of the game, have been commendable.

“I’m really proud of where we’ve got to as a game because, when I came into the role, we were fractured and divided,” he told an audience at Leaders Meet: Australia in Brisbane in February.

There were factions within the World Rugby Council that could be divided into England and the Celtic nations on one side with the French and Latin nations on the other. Robinson, as an Australian, said he was “coming into a gunfight between the Celts, the English and the French.”

For all that, in September 2025, the 17th World Rugby General Assembly had endorsed Impact Beyond 25, its five-to-seven-year strategy for developing and promoting the world game heading into the men’s Rugby World Cup in 2027 and Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2029 (both to be hosted in Australia) with the 2028 Olympic Games in LA sandwiched in between.

So what changed? Below, we explore Robinson’s approach to calming rugby’s internal strife.

Brett Robinson (centre) onstage at Leaders Meet: Australia with Rugby Australia’s Director of High Performance Peter Horne and Leaders’ Managing Director Laura McQueen. (Photo: Albert Perez / The Leaders Performance Institute.)

Firstly, he didn’t shy away from the problem

As Robinson explained, “some countries were incredibly frustrated; they wanted to revolt and blow everything up.” Others were about “organisationally working with the change and not being too destructive”.

Almost half of the 52 members of the World Rugby Council voted for Benazzi as Chair. Robinson, who will serve a four-year term, did not shy away from that fact. “We’ve got differences of opinion, we’ve got some challenges, and there’ll be some people that were disappointed after the election,” he said in the aftermath.

In December 2025, he expanded on his thoughts as a guest on the Rugby Unity Podcast. “The system upon which World Rugby is built has been in place for 30 years,” he said. “We have systems that simply don’t work and prevent us from reacting with the necessary speed.” It is worth remembering that he made those observations after Impact Beyond 25 had been launched.

Onstage in Brisbane, he further outlined an enduring sticking point: that France and England account for approximately 70% of the revenue generated in rugby union. This had led to political as well as economic tensions across the different factions; and the question was how World Rugby could engage and incentivise the other unions to align in pursuit of a more equitable distribution.

He ensured World Rugby’s new strategy was a collective endeavour

The Impact Beyond 25 strategy was unanimously ratified just days before the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup final, which saw a crowd of 82,957 watch England beat Canada 33-13 at Twickenham.

The timing could not have been better. England 2025 was the most well-attended Women’s World Cup ever. World Rugby’s unions gave their blessing to a global impact plan that, in the international governing body’s own words, ‘is built around three core themes of profile and participation, careers and gender equity, and capability and expertise with the mission of inspiring more women and girls to get into rugby on and off the field of play.’

Most importantly, it bore the fingerprints of all those involved in its creation.

“It’s really important that, in my role, I bring the game together and we agree on what shared success looks like and we pursue it together,” Robinson told Rugby Unity.

He expanded on those comments in Brisbane. “We’ve built a collective plan where we’re all engaged, we’re all incentivised, and we’re all a part of that journey,” he said, adding that the plan includes taking All Blacks and Wallabies Test matches to the United States. Such moves “will help build the fandom that ultimately will drive the commercial outcomes and [increase rugby union’s] market share”.

He accounted for local complexity

“We are not going to do everything from Dublin,” he told the Brisbane audience, name-checking World Rugby’s base and then pointing to the man sat beside him onstage, his former World Rugby colleague Peter Horne, who now serves as Director of High Performance at Rugby Australia.

“What we do is only as good as what he [Horne] can deliver and vice versa.”

In some places, such as Australia and England, Robinson said, “we have an Anglo-Saxon way of governing; we’ve got strong boundaries around the role of the chair, the board, the CEO, the executive. In other parts of the world, they have very different ideas of the president or the chair being an executive authority.”

He cited the example of Argentine Gus Pichot, the former Vice-Chair of World Rugby. “He’s not the chair and he’s not on the board of the Argentine Rugby Union, but he is making every decision coming out of it; and so I have to work with that, acknowledging that I need to keep his chair informed and his CEO informed; but if Gus doesn’t agree with it, it doesn’t happen. And I could say, ‘well, that’s just a crazy way of governing’, but I can’t change it, so I have to work with it. The French are the same; Florian Grill is their president. He’s not the CEO, but he operates as an executive chair.”

On that last note, Robinson said: “I spent a lot of time before Christmas with the French in Paris. I’m going back there in a couple of weeks’ time.” These meetings have proven invaluable. “You have to work really hard to genuinely display that you’re listening and supporting, and they don’t necessarily say ‘yes, yes, yes’, but actually they can see the ‘why’.”

World Rugby is now reaping the rewards of his efforts. “Having the French and the Argentinians now with us, and rebuilding the relationship with the Celts and the English, was probably the biggest challenge that I faced; and now we’re there, we need to push on and deliver.”

He won’t rest on his laurels

“You’ve got to be systematic; from my experience, if you go randomly into anything like this, you are more likely to fail than not,” said Robinson. “You have to set up a proper process.”

He listed the necessary personal qualities of a chairperson: trustworthiness, empathy, and emotional intelligence. He balanced these against an ability to act and make tough decisions. All are essential in a world where alignment is predicated on retaining the trust of the individuals involved in the process.

Robinson then explained that the executive board of World Rugby had just undergone a review. He said: “I’ve been running a process over Christmas where we have a 360 on our behaviours; I’m getting a 360 on me. We’re having a discussion about board effectiveness; how that relates to the implementation of our strategy. We have some blind spots and weaknesses on our board, and we have succession plans that are coming. So those things are really important because it all rots from the head.”

What to read next

Why Change Only Sticks when you Lead your People Through the Transition

By John Portch

“There are no sides”

So said RC Buford, the CEO of the San Antonio Spurs, when recently asked how the NBA team reconciles the commercial and basketball branches of their organisation.

“We’re all on one side,” he added for emphasis.

It is true of the Spurs, where in addition to serving as Spurs CEO, Buford also serves as President of the team’s parent company Spurs Sports & Entertainment.

“There are basketball units that are part of a team and there are business units that are part of a team; and if they’re not working together, neither is going to work.”

It is true of the NBA and the wider sporting world beyond as denser competition schedules, rising commercial pressure and increased performance expectations dissolve the boundaries between business and performance.

Not that all teams have got a handle on this (the Spurs themselves say they have some way to go), which is why the Leaders Performance Institute recently hosted a virtual roundtable for members to identify the common tensions in this area, the biggest opportunities, and the initiatives that have promoted greater alignment and collaboration.

The member comments below have all been lifted from the Slido interactive questionnaire that accompanied the virtual discussion.

Four common sources for the tensions that exist between business and performance

1. The perception of competing agendas

The idea persists that commercial success and performance success are not only mutually exclusive, but actively competing.

‘Is this taking them away from the day job?’ – it’s a common question posed by coaches when their athletes are engaged in commercially focused activities.

The same contributor spoke of the battle for use of facility space by highlighting the ever-present dichotomy of ‘commercial vs performance’.

Another attendee pointed to ‘incentive misalignment’ while another cited a common concern: ‘Do I or my programme get that money or is it going elsewhere in the organisation?’

2. Limited exposure to other units

Business and performance units too often work in silos.

‘They do not understand each other or do not prioritise time to understand each other,’ wrote one attendee, capturing the experience of most practitioners and coaches at the virtual table. ‘Sometimes there may be a lack of understanding of each other’s priorities or needs,’ added another.

Nor does it help that ‘people are often changing organisations and working at larger scale or stakes than previously experienced’.

3. The idea that people don’t necessarily resist alignment, they simply don’t understand what it entails

Since ‘there’s a lack of communication or understanding on what the priority really is’,  as one member suggested, it is not surprising that there is a ‘lack of awareness of opportunities to engage or collaborate’.

Inevitably, ‘sometimes one interest is given precedent over the other’ and, on a daily basis, stakeholders are left asking ‘what’s for external and what’s for internal?’ when it comes to business practices.

4. Individual roles that become ambiguous at cross-department level

There is too often a ‘lack of clarity on individuals’ roles with regards to performance or the organisation’ and that aforementioned tension between external and internal interests has given rise to the perception that ‘business is outward‑facing and performance inward‑facing’.

Four opportunities for increased collaboration

1. Be ahead of the game

Collaboration tends to be an afterthought; and this inertia comes at a cost, as one attendee noted:

‘Some of our best work [in both business and performance] is done with paying clients and externals vs doing it for ourselves – that’s wrong and needs to shift.’

‘Involve performance earlier in the process,’ wrote one member; ‘build shared metrics so both sides are measuring success the same way,’ added another.

2. Find ways to better leverage your team’s efforts

Units are invariably working for the collective good, but this is not always recognised or celebrated collectively.

‘There needs to be better capture of the actual activity that’s going on to use in multiple ways,’ said one member with both commercial and performance interests in mind.

Such a collective approach ‘would also help impact awareness, understanding and people being able to use comms and talk about it more effectively.’

3. Promote decision clarity (and discourage ‘heroes’)

It is best for all if stakeholders can ‘clarify decision rights’, as there tends to be one person who is best-placed to make a judgement in each of a team’s units.

This need not undermine efforts at cross-collaboration. As one member noted, stakeholders must ‘focus on the “80%” and providing consistent delivery’.

Nor should people over-extend themselves to plug gaps. ‘Hero behaviour during tentpole moments creates panic,’ wrote another member.

4. Understand that relationships come first

‘Take time to build the relationships and trust first,’ wrote one attendee. This can help create a ‘greater sense of community beyond the organisation,’ added another.

One member suggested that teams ask themselves: ‘How can our communication be clear and consistent?’

Three approaches that have worked:

1. The creation of cross-functional teams

The table noted the value in having:

• ‘Embedded individuals and the pairing of roles across functions’
• ‘Performance folk always visible in operational and business stand‑up meetings’
• ‘Cross‑department working groups, communities of practice and think tanks’

2. Shared ownership and accountability

One member wrote that commercial and performance operations can flourish ‘when everyone sees the value of what’s being done’.

There should be ‘joint ownership of outcomes and metrics between both sides’.

3. A continuous effort to maintain alignment

No one has fully cracked this and it is incumbent on all to make an effort.

A member recommended ‘genuine and honest perspective-taking of other departments’ before adding that we need to ‘be careful of biases and assumptions’.

Another suggested using ‘tools like SWOT to help people understand what to protect, address, leverage and manage’.

What to read next

Business or Basketball? Here’s Why the San Antonio Spurs See Little Distinction

Main Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

By John Portch

“I tend to think of a strategy as a bridge between where you are and where you’re dreaming of getting to,” said Michael Bourne.

“In order to build the right bridge, you need to understand those two things.”

Bourne, the Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA], was the first to speak at Leaders Meet: the Art of Strategy, which took place at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London in late March.

Members of the Leaders Performance Institute travelled from far and wide for a day that challenged assumptions and provoked some of the sharpest minds in the sports industry to rethink how strategies emerge in high-performance environments.

Bourne was joined on the bill by Milano Cortina mixed skeleton gold medallist, Tabby Stoecker, and speakers from organisations including the Football Association, luxury retailer Selfridges, and the UK Ministry of Defence. Together, they explored how strategies are built, stress-tested and executed by the best in the business.

Below is a snapshot of the day’s proceedings; five fresh insights to help strengthen your own planning and execution.

1. A strategy starts with a brutally honest discussion

Bourne joined the LTA in 2018, when they were two years into their ten-year performance strategy designed to tackle the lack of players coming through the British tennis system.

Yes, Andy Murray had won three majors in recent memory, but the sense was that this was “despite the system, not because of it”.

“In essence, between 2016 and 2017, the organisation undertook a diagnosis of the situation,” said Bourne, “and they came up with a number of different issues”.

This diagnosis, which included a lack of coherent pathways, limited programmes for talent ID, and resources spread too thinly, enabled the LTA to have a long, hard look at itself without pointing fingers at individuals. It lowered stakeholder defensiveness and provided the foundations for what they needed to do next.

Bourne was not present for the diagnosis, but he was recruited shortly after to ensure the LTA adopted the right approach and a coordinated set of actions. But they could not jump ahead. As he said:

I believe that you have to have that first element of the diagnosis and your guiding policy right first.

Michael Bourne, Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association, spoke first and set out the hard truths confronting British Tennis back in the mid-2010s. Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

2. Your strategy must be co-created

At luxury retailer Selfridges, Head of DEI, Recruitment & Onboarding, Sharlene John, faced the challenge of trying to tie her work to commercial outcomes while challenging the idea that DEI is “fluffy” and irrelevant.

The result was Selfridges’ award-winning DEI and culture strategy Open to the World. On John’s watch (she joined Selfridges in 2021), female leadership within the organisation has grown from 32% to almost 70%; Selfridges is also an industry leader in ethnic representation.

Open to the World flourished because of John’s efforts to ensure it was a co-created initiative from the start. She said:

Before we even put pen to paper, it was going out and speaking to my teams, but also my leaders, to understand what does DEI or culture mean to you? And where there was that missing voice, it was bringing people into the room. So not just relying on those senior leaders where we don’t have representation, it was ‘OK, we’ll go down a layer’… I was talking to people across our business with a headcount of around three and a half thousand… We’ve got stores in Manchester, Birmingham, a tech suite in Leicester, and then the flagship in London. I went to every site speaking to people from grade 2, which is our junior role, up to our grade 7, which is exec positions, to understand what Open to the World actually means to them.

Sharlene John, the Head of DEI, Recruitment & Onboarding at Selfridges, describes her organisation’s award-winning Open to the World inclusion programme, which was built by a plurality of stakeholders. Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

3. Evaluation (and re-evaluation) is continuous

“If you don’t get it right when you’re there in the moment, doing a review process at the end is worthless.”

So said Paul Ford, the former Head of Sport at the British Olympic Association [BOA] who recently joined English Championship side Norwich City as Performance Director. He spoke alongside Tabby Stoecker, the mixed team skeleton gold medallist at the Milano Cortina Games alongside her teammate Matt Weston.

When it comes to in-the-moment tweaks, Ford has a point. The BOA must work with national governing bodies, coaches and athletes continuously throughout a four-year cycle. “It’s making sure that we are doing it hand in hand with our sports as frequently as possible,” Ford added.

A macro ‘plan-do-review’ alone is not adequate. Of competition time itself, he said:

It’s on a daily cycle during delivery mode at a Games. [We ask] what are you planning for this day? What are we doing this day? How has this day gone? Because if you don’t make the most of that experience in the moment, it’s not going to happen for another four years.

Stoecker benefited from this approach, as demonstrated by her success. She said:

There wasn’t just the review of that specific race, but also ‘what are you taking from this that you’re going to change or carry forward for three years’ time, two years’ time, six months’ time?’… you can get quite swept up in what you’re doing and you have these extreme highs and lows. So I think staying focused, and when you’re then doing that and being so process-driven, the results just come.

British Olympic gold medallist Tabby Stoecker is deep in conversation with Paul Ford, the former Head of Sport at the British Olympic Association, as they discuss Team GB’s strategic approach to Olympic cycles and, more specifically, Stoecker’s path to gold in the mixed skeleton at the Milano Cortina Games. Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

4. Be ready to act on incomplete information

You and your team may enjoy clarity and alignment of purpose, but optimal operating conditions are likely to be elusive whatever your efforts.

With this in mind, Aneaka Reay-Kemp, the Lead Military Intelligence Specialist at the UK Ministry of Defence, told the audience how British military operations are primed to perform when personnel do not have even 60% of the desired information. They are trained, as she said, to be “comfortable being uncomfortable”.

Rank, she argued, has limited bearing. In fact, the British military has taken steps to reduce the influence of its own hierarchies in moments of uncertainty. She said:

It doesn’t matter what’s on that person’s chest, it doesn’t matter their background, they still bring value no matter how junior they are. So for me, I find that when you’re operating in an environment where you don’t have all the information, understanding your people, understanding their capability, what they bring to the party can help save someone’s life.

Aneaka Reay-Kemp, the Lead Military Intelligence Specialist at the UK Ministry of Defence (centre), in conversation with moderator Iain Brunnschweiler (left) and Football Association Head of Strategic Development & Operations, Paul Cleal (right) as she explained what it takes for military personnel to act with incomplete information. Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

5. What are you ready to discard?

New initiatives, new processes and new ways of thinking are great, but what are you prepared to discard?

“One of the things about strategy is making choices,” says Paul Cleal, who spoke alongside Reay-Kemp in his capacity as Head of Strategic Development & Operations at the Football Association. “If you’re trying to change something, it almost always involves stopping doing something else.”

However, as he has experienced, this is often easier said than done. “If things involve stopping doing something for the new thing you need, a lot of organisations struggle with that.”

Evidence, he explained, is critical in making those choices:

When I walked in three years ago, my job was not to throw things in the bin and do them differently. It was to ask: is what we’re doing now meeting the strategic aims and to what extent do we need to get closer to our strategic aims and what is it we can change?

Paul Cleal, the Head of Strategic Development & Operations at the Football Association, explains why it’s important to discard programmes and processes when they no longer serve the collective. Image: Robert Obreja / Leaders Performance Institute

See you at the Sport Performance Summit in New York?

The Sport Performance Summit New York

By John Portch

“What does good change leadership look like?”

John Bull, the Head of High Performance at Management Futures, poses this question at a virtual roundtable for members of the Leaders Performance Institute where the topic of the day was ‘what makes change stick?’

To set up the conversation, he looked at the twin elements that enable sustained change (people taking ownership of the change and the idea of change itself as a habit) before identifying some of the common sources of resistance.

“There are times where we will resist change, we’ll engage less quickly in it, even when we have to; or we waste energy in how we’re responding to change,” said Bull. “But we also have to understand resistance from others and what that requires of us as leaders.”

People, he explained, resist change for two primary reasons: loss (what they perceive they are losing) and uncertainty or ambiguity. It is not enough for a leader to merely sell the change.

He continued: “If we’re just pushing change and we haven’t understood what people perceive they’re losing, then we run the danger of increasing the resistance rather than decreasing it. By understanding where the resistance is coming from and being able to address that, we’re in a much better position to be able to lead it.”

A ‘change’ or a ‘transition’?

In simple terms, as Bull explained, change initiatives fail not because the change itself is wrong but because the human transition is misunderstood, ignored or rushed.

He illustrated this distinction between ‘change’ and ‘transition’ with a slide:

“The object of change is quite straightforward; transition can be super complicated,” he said, “and what we tend to do in organisations is not pay nearly enough attention to managing transition. We forget about that.”

To help the virtual room in this regard, he introduced attendees the three phases of transition:

These are an adaptation of the ‘unfreeze-change-refreeze’ model of German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin, who drew attention to the emotional and behavioural elements of change. Modern scholars, including William Bridges (whom Bull also namechecks), place an emphasis on the personal dynamic.

Bull brought these three phases of transition to life by describing how he went through each in response to a postponed work project:

The key thing about stage one is I am still really frustrated and annoyed with certain individuals that have led to that happening. Now, I would say on one level, that’s really understandable. It’s a significant project that we were really excited about; but here’s the key point: it is useless and doesn’t help me one bit. So all the energy that I’m investing in the frustration is not going into the adapting; and what I should be spending much more time on is focusing on what do we need to do to adapt now that change has happened.

With the behavioural elements of transition established, Bull then set out what neuroscience tell us about human resistance to change, with reference to the SCARF model.

This framework, devised by neuroscientist David Rock, sets out five domains that influence human social behaviour and motivation. ‘SCARF’ stands for ‘Status-Certainty-Autonomy-Relatedness (Relationships)-Fairness’. Bull explained each in turn:

Depending on their circumstances, people can either feel threatened or rewarded in each of these domains.

“I’m not constantly thinking about the SCARF model,” said Bull. “I use it when I get a response from a client that surprises me; then I’ll go back to the SCARF model and go ‘what might I be missing?’ But it’s also a really good model when you’re thinking about how to frame and communicate the change. Because each of these can give a negative hit, but you can also think about ‘how do I promote this change? How do I sell this change in a way that it highlights how it might increase status? How might it increase autonomy?’

He then returned to the three phases of transition and set out the possible traps to be avoided for both individuals and leaders:

Bull emphasised that these traps reflect predictable human responses when transition is not adroitly led rather than poor intent or capability; and, if anything, leaders often respond with the wrong behaviour at the wrong stage.

He then pivoted towards organisational psychology, specifically the idea of change-curves.

People can respond both positively and negatively to change and these reactions can be plotted on a ‘change curve’. First, he showed the virtual table an example of a negative response to change:

Bull explained the line of trajectory through his own negative experience of discovering that a restaurant in Bath had stopped serving his favourite pizza.

• Initial disbelief/minimising: “My first response was I thought the waiter was wrong. I genuinely just thought the waiter was new and didn’t know.”
• Frustration once the reality hit: “At some point, it dawns on me that the waiter is not wrong and I’m wrong. I do not feel anger but I do have some frustration.”
• Getting mentally stuck on what’s been lost: “What my mind keeps going back to is what I want.”
• Gradual adjustment and acceptance: “I grow up a little bit. I try something on the menu and it’s good.”

He added: “I just want to make the point: you don’t move linearly through each stage. I think of it more as water sloshing through a container. You will be partly in stage one, partly in stage two. So even though I’m intellectually trying to figure out what am I going to have on the menu, I’m still partly in frustration.”

Bull then shares an example of a positive change curve:

He noted that positive change:

• Still involves transition: he gives examples of a promotion, getting married or having children.
• Still includes disillusionment: a new job may come with unexpected pressure, increased responsibility or moments of self-doubt.
• Is usually quicker and shallower: the emotional low point is less deep and people regain confidence and stability more quickly than with negative change.

Next, Bull summarised what people need from their leaders at each phase of transition:

To wrap up his presentation, Bull suggested the ‘Four Ps’ model as a communications tool for members to use in their teams when leading change. It can help hold the process together and ease the psychological demands of transition:

He said: “This isn’t new content, but it’s a new way of presenting it; it tends to be one of the things people remember six months, 12 months later.”

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Rec Revolution: Does Transformational Leadership Theory Explain Bath Rugby’s Resurgence?

By John Portch

“In high-performance organisations, we rarely lose because we lack expertise – we lose when that expertise isn’t effectively integrated.”

With these words Dr Robin Thorpe, who has worked across multiple elite high-performance environments, kicked off his recent virtual roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members. The theme of the day was how teams and organisations can overcome silos born of structural issues with fresh skills and a new mindset.

“We tend to think of the human factors first,” Thorpe tells the Leaders Performance Institute off the back of his presentation, “but once you start to analyse the situation more deeply and begin to reflect, there are likely to be structural factors within an organisation.”

“Across my roles,” he continues, “the most effective environments weren’t necessarily those with the most expertise, but those where systems were deliberately designed to integrate that expertise.”

In rare high-performance environments where excellence is paired with humility, collaboration emerges naturally, as individuals are both confident in their expertise and open to the perspectives of others. This reflects principles from social psychology where low ego threat and high psychological safety enable collective intelligence to outperform individual capability.

So a leader in sport may encounter defensive or withdrawing behaviours, but their roots are often linked to underlying structural factors.

Below, aided by Thorpe’s reflections from a career spanning nearly two decades in both European and North American sport, we run through three of the most common structural factors behind the formation of silos and some of the steps that organisations can take before they become damaging.

1. Specialisation and silos

Outcome:

In the late 2000s, as Thorpe explains, there was an acceleration across the world of sport in the emergence of different performance departments, from sports science and physiotherapy to medical and psychology. In numerous settings, “it led to dichotomy-type frameworks, such as ‘performance and training’, ‘medical and rehab’ or ‘injured and non-injured’. These were structural in nature and encouraged departments to each add their own KPIs, language and processes.” It ultimately led to misaligned and fragmented outcomes, which were often in competition.

Insight:

Specialisation improves expertise but also increases the need for deliberate integration. Therefore, it is important to be clear on the shared outcomes/priorities. How do you ‘nest’ short‑term priorities within longer‑term objectives ? Thorpe says: “We have to be clear on our objective and purpose. What are we here to do? For example, are we here to improve athlete education around certain topics? Is there a more psychological outcome? Is there a technical skill priority? And it doesn’t mean that these priorities are isolated, it just means that maybe a certain member of the team takes more of a lead in ensuring that everything fits together and the greater team work toward a shared outcome.” When done well, this doesn’t just improve collaboration, it directly enhances decision-making quality and performance outcomes.

In practice, this requires leaders to actively design how disciplines connect, rather than assuming collaboration will occur naturally.

This can lead to a much more nuanced (but outcome-focused) approach. Thorpe cites a hypothetical example: if a high-performance team is looking to stimulate quad hypertrophy in an athlete, it will certainly involve the S&C specialist and dietitian, but if the athlete is experiencing challenges with their eating behaviours, there will be opportunity for the psychologist or a mental performance/health specialist to integrate, considering the success of the outcome is heavily influenced by increasing certain nutrient intake. Shared outcomes enable that interdisciplinary conversation. “It can influence outcomes in ways not immediately apparent when viewing the performance challenge in isolation.”

Review your setbacks. “It’s really important to regularly review situations where outcomes weren’t aligned or why an outcome wasn’t achieved or there might have been a communication issue.” The first port of call should not be the human at the foundational layer.

Repeat your purpose. It sounds simple but it is critical to be “very deliberate and very repetitive in a positive, coaching way in reminding staff how to architect collaboration. Consistently discussing purpose, priorities and outcomes for athlete results, whether informally or sometimes more formally in team meetings, can be effective”.

Provide open spaces. “I think we should start to really think about facility architecture and ensuring that we’re creating and positively manipulating traffic footfall and healthy collisions within a space to help reduce silo-forming.” Thorpe admits the best-designed building won’t solve every performance issue, “but it can play a role in minimising some of the downstream effects”

2. Authority-centred structures

Outcome:

Expertise is present but true influence depends on the hierarchy.

Thorpe recalls an experience from earlier in his career. “It was a highly coach-led, centralised structure,” he says. “We could put in place strong systems and processes, but ultimately, they needed to align with the direction and philosophy of the key stakeholder. This is not unique to that environment. In these settings, ensuring that all perspectives are heard and integrated can be challenging, and individuals or departments may naturally gravitate towards protecting their areas of expertise.”

Insight:

Expertise only improves outcomes when structures allow it to influence decisions. Teams should consider establishing…

Clear decision-making rights. Thorpe suggests that a high-performance team creates a mechanism that integrates interdisciplinary input before it reaches the coach or key stakeholders. He speaks of the “decision-making engine” that operates beneath leadership level.

He says: “Do we have clarity on who holds decision-making responsibility? Is information fragmented, or is it presented in a clear and accessible way that enables everyone to operate with a shared, objective understanding?”

When this is happening 24/7, “More information feeds into this decision-making engine,” he continues, using the example of a health and performance leader reporting on an athlete. “It allows them to communicate clearly, concisely and with confidence to key stakeholders.” These clear decision rights reduce upward lobbying and prevent the coach from becoming the bottleneck for every decision. This also prevents people competing for the attention of the leader. When this is embedded effectively, leaders are no longer the bottleneck, they are enabled by the system.

The role of leadership is not to centralise decisions, but to ensure the system consistently produces high-quality decisions.

3. Misaligned incentives

Outcome:

Departments optimise locally rather than collectively.

This often creates more problems. “Increasing volumes of data, when not clearly aligned to purpose, can unintentionally contribute to siloed thinking.” says Thorpe, adding that it can lead to opinion-selected data points that increases the risk of emotions trumping objectivity.

The highest-performing environments align incentives in a way that balances risk, performance, and availability, rather than allowing one metric to dominate.

It reminds him of Charles Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. The renowned English economist may not have had sports science in mind when he uttered those words, but they resonated with the virtual roundtable when Thorpe shared them.

When incentives are misaligned, collaboration becomes negotiation. The solution lies in…

Shared KPIs. This is linked to the shared outcomes discussed above. Thorpe cites a hypothetical example of a medical team delivering on player availability. He says: “If the team availability percentage is the North Star then it risks bringing about a more conservative approach to solely keeping players available.”

It raises both a moral quandary and a performance issue. “Performance departments tend to want to push players and to maximise human performance. In doing so, you acknowledge that there may be some potential collateral damage and injuries along the way. Medical teams often use player availability as a key indicator of success, while performance teams focus on driving adaptation and physical development, highlighting the importance of aligning these perspectives around shared outcomes specific to the collective objectives of the team or players.”

Intentional system design. It comes back to the ‘decision-making engine’ and clear decision-making rights. “It creates a shared language using correct, up-to-date, appropriate objectivity. Using appropriate data collection measures often reduces the influence of opinions and subjective inputs.”

Ultimately, organisations that address these structural barriers see improvements not just in collaboration, but in decision speed, clarity, and performance outcomes.

As high-performance environments continue to evolve, the challenge is not removing silos, but designing systems that integrate expertise to consistently deliver performance.

To wrap up proceedings, Thorpe posed four questions that practitioners can ask themselves:

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Breaking Silos: Why the Answer Lies in Creating a Sense of Shared Ownership in Performance

By John Portch

In 2019, the San Antonio Spurs’ General Manager, RC Buford, transitioned to a dual role as CEO of the team and President of its parent company, Spurs Sports & Entertainment.

Six years on, he is uniquely placed to discuss the continuing convergence of performance and business in a world of denser competition schedules, rising commercial pressures and heightened performance expectations.

What is his view having seen it from both sides?

“There are no sides,” Buford tells the Leaders Performance Institute on Teams. “We’re all on one side.” He speaks with a conviction that it could never be any other way.

“There are basketball units that are part of a team and there are business units that are part of a team; and if they’re not working together, neither is going to work,” he continues.

“It’s a dynamic that we’ve seen come closer together over the years,” says Phil Cullen, the Spurs’ Senior Director of Organizational Development & Basketball Operations, who joins Buford on the call.

The conversation takes place just weeks after Forbes valued the Spurs franchise at $4.4 billion, which is a 14% increase in just 12 months. According to the Forbes report, the franchise’s revenue in 2025 was $401 million and their operating income was $151 million.

While these figures are healthy for a US mid-market franchise, Cullen and his colleagues are perennially aware of the NBA’s debt-capacity rules, which influence investment in basketball operations.

“That debt capacity could impact how you build your roster,” he says before going on to outline how the Spurs’ basketball units can also support their business efforts. “We try to get ahead of things as much as we can.”

They try to capture media requests in the pre-season, which, as Cullen explains, allows the team to focus on their basketball when it matters most. Any other outcome is unthinkable for Buford.

He says: “We’re all one team and it becomes siloed when we differentiate ourselves.”

An aligned overall strategy is a necessity. “For us to be successful, we have to be focused on championship teams, impact in the community, and financial strength,” Buford adds. Each unit at the Spurs will have its own key initiatives, which he calls “big bets”. “We’ve all got to entertain those big bets to find success in our units”.

We spend the next 30 minutes with Buford and Cullen discussing what gives these big bets their greatest chance of success.

One team, one strategy

Of his transition to Spurs CEO, Buford says that while he doesn’t claim to know much about business, “I hope I know a thing or two about building teams”.

“I oversee business and basketball – I don’t oversee just one – and I try to be a resource to the people, the experts in those fields,” he says.

These experts sit in cross-functional teams. “You build collaborative teams that have impact and influence on the operation of the organisation.” When partnership deals are negotiated, for example, the partnership team includes representatives from the brand, impact and basketball units. “Through all the partnerships we’re building, the goal is to include each of these areas in a way that they can all be successful.”

Cullen illustrates the point further by offering the example of technology partners, which are needed by both basketball and business units. He says: “A lot of our conversations have been more inclusive of saying, ‘how can we maximise this opportunity with this partner?’ And part of that is the onboarding piece with those partners. It comes from creating these cross-functional teams to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to have a voice into how to maximise these partnerships.”

“But that doesn’t mean everybody in the whole place has to use a partner,” adds Buford. “It doesn’t mean everybody’s required to use it if it doesn’t fit the form or fashion that people need to do their work.”

Put the right people in place

In 2023, the Spurs hired Kaleb Thornhill as VP of Player Development & Organizational Growth.

“He also sits on the partnership team,” says Cullen of Thornhill, who is tasked with supporting player development away from the court. His role is about “understanding their interests; understanding how they want to show up in the community; the things they want to get behind. That was a strategic hire within the last five years that is probably different than most teams.”

Collectively, the Spurs will facilitate media requests during suitable periods and work with the players to deliver on their community-focused efforts such as visiting schools, community hubs and other public spaces.

Player partnerships are another focus, particularly with a playing cohort that invests time and money in their personal brand in a manner that was an anathema to Spurs players of an earlier generation such as Tim Duncan, who resolutely guarded his privacy.

“I can’t speak to others, but in our group there are people branding themselves differently than they did in the past; and they may want more engagement; but it’s not keeping them from any kind of partner relationship, it’s protecting their time,” says Buford. “You have to have a voice that understands what their time is and they must be engaged in the strategy behind the recruitment of partners.”

Cultivate relationships

The Spurs’ Victory Capital Performance Centre (also known as ‘The Rock at La Cantera’) opened its doors in 2023 as the Spurs’ new practice facility and new home of the team’s basketball operations. (Cullen is also heavily involved in Project Marvel, which will see the Spurs move to a new arena in downtown San Antonio in 2032.)

At The Rock at La Cantera, one of the chief architectural considerations, as Cullen explains, was to design an environment that promoted professional relationships.

“The communication piece has to be built on connection and the casual conversations, casual collisions, that we have throughout our workday, whether it’s at our training facility or down at the arena,” he says.

“It’s really important that you develop that sense of relationship, that others can bounce ideas off you and there’s a good, shared understanding of the starting point.”

While the business and basketball ops units work in different locations (“you don’t want everybody in everybody’s business,” says Buford), all units will come together at various times for strategic planning.

“A lot of sessions happen in August and September for the next season, but our sponsorship renewals are actually happening now,” Cullen adds. “We’ve been brought in on the front office to speak in engagements to get ahead and be included in these conversations and some of those pitches.”

The reasons are obvious. “Get the people in partnerships to understand that just because somebody will pay to be a part of an organisation, it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for player health,” says Buford. “Just because we can sell an energy drink or sell something doesn’t mean we’re going to do it. So it’s getting them to understand by communicating that.”

“Our organisation has put a lot of resources around our players, their wellbeing and their sense of belonging,” says Cullen. “But we’re also being super careful with the people we’re putting around our players as well.”

As the conversation draws to a close, both Buford and Cullen underline the fact that the Spurs have not solved the conundrum of cross-functional alignment.

Nevertheless, they clearly have a lesson or two to deliver of their own. The Leaders Performance Institute asks Buford what leaders seeking to bring together performance and business operations should be asking themselves.

His reply is instant: “How can I be helpful for you to accomplish what you want? Because, ultimately, if you do well, we’ll all do well.”

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People in Sport Often Roll their Eyes at the Word ‘Strategy’, but I’ve Found that Planning Provides Direction, Connection and Continuity in a Pressured and Volatile World

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Building block 1: psychological safety (the enabler)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Building block 2: empathetic leadership (the primary lever)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are some of the enduring barriers to interdisciplinary work?

Burns points to four common barriers in particular:

1. Worldview

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

2. Language

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

3. Methods of communication

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

4. Personal KPIs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can leaders work towards shared accountability?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does it come down to role clarity?

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

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

How do leaders ensure everyone is delivering the same messages?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about coaches resistant to change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what can help practitioners?

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

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

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

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

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