23 Jan 2024
ArticlesMembers of the Leaders Performance Institute answered this question from their own experience and shared responses ranging from environmental renewal to the power of positive storytelling.
The notion of ‘belonging’ can be simply defined as ‘a sense of connectedness to others and what you are doing’. The Cambridge English Dictionary extends the definition of belonging to ‘a feeling of being happy or comfortable as part of a particular group and having a good relationship with the other members of the group because they welcome you and accept you’.
Psychology research shows that in cultures and environments that show autonomy, competence and belonging, individuals will elevate their engage in tasks and activities they are asked to commit to.
It’s clear from both the literature and lived experiences of the group that creating belonging is a powerful tool for a harmonious and high-functioning environment. The aim of this particular roundtable was to share best practices and examples of how we are trying to foster belonging in our environments.
It starts at the induction stage
In one of the breakout groups, they reinforced the idea that the process of creating positive belonging starts at the induction or onboarding phase and how important it is to dedicate time and intent towards this process to set the right tone. The work to create belonging continues week on week during this onboarding phase, with the acknowledgement and value that an individual or individuals bring to the team. From a team perspective, it is an opportunity to acknowledge the variety and diversity of backgrounds, skills and views of those in the department or organisation from the outset.
In summarising this first point, there was an excellent reflection that how we make people or an individual feel is the most important thing. Every interaction matters and what you do is about making them feel the way you want them to feel.
Setting the stall out around the culture
There were a number of reflections on how to give your environment the best opportunity for positive belonging. Identify the values and culture expected of individuals within your environment, and perhaps most importantly, find practical ways to instil them. Is everyone in the environment crystal clear on what the behaviours and expectations are? If you have this in place, there can be collective accountability. Similarly, it is important to be consistent in positively reinforcing, noticing and celebrating positive examples of those behaviours.
A couple of people on the call also suggested that coach buy-in is really crucial in this process. If the head coach buys into the values then the majority of people in the environment tend to follow, such is the influence the head coach carries.
In setting yourselves up for success, create opportunities for athletes, coaches and staff to convene and build the culture together. Creating opportunities for discussion on values and behaviours supports the idea of creating a sense of belonging. It is widely acknowledged that engagement, contribution and a love for what you do leads to a sense of belonging, therefore lies the challenge in ensuring we are bringing this to life.
Finally, there was a discussion around language and its importance. There was a fantastic phrase shared on the call that ‘above-the-line language is powerful, but below-the-line language is powerless’. There is a responsibility to own the standards of the language.
The power of storytelling
A common response from the group around effective ways to instil belonging was utilising the power of story. Find the story that connects to the people that you’re working with, whilst recognising the significant cultural differences that exist in the environment. The story that you use must align with the culture. One environment on the call shared how they leant on metaphor in creating an overarching theme that is reframed every year.
Story also presents the opportunity to connect those across the backroom staff, athlete population and other forward-facing roles. There was a suggestion this should also extend to family members of those involved, bringing them into the culture and environment, knowing the importance of the environment off the field. Do they feel that sense of belonging as well?
Finally, we also discussed the impact story can have around connecting individuals to the cultural environment of the country that you are in. It also presents the opportunity to embrace the culture that individual is bringing into the environment.
Create opportunities for shared experiences & collective input
Responses from the group indicate that every interaction matters and it is important to be mindful of that. Therefore, how are you intentionally creating opportunities for shared experiences and opportunities for collective input from different stakeholders?
A simple initiative to instil is celebrating ‘the good’ when done well and highlighting small wins and successes.
Encourage active listening and understanding of everyone’s opinions – providing a space and opportunity for everyone to have a voice in key decisions is found to be an effective way of supporting belonging in an environment. To ensure the above is both effective and a success, organisational leaders require an openness and receptivity to ensure the environment is designed to be safe.
There were also a number of reflections around the power of ‘inclusive initiatives and rituals’ that bring people together. Finally on this point: are you formally capturing information from the stakeholders in your environment in a consistent way? This is a simple tactic to remain on the pulse of the environment, ensure those in the organisation have a chance to provide feedback and contribute to decision-making and the state of play on the culture.
Providing space to better understand the ‘whole person’
One of the final key buckets of discussion around instilling a sense of belonging in your environment was formal and informal opportunities to better understand the whole person. We should strive to provide space to celebrate authenticity and our true selves. Does your environment provide an opportunity for employees to breathe and express themselves?
A foundation stone of the High Performance Strategy in the Australian Olympic System is the athlete’s voice. The idea is to provide opportunities to understand one’s journey, both as an athlete and as a person. The self-determination theory concept is something that is really key in this piece and its relatedness to belonging. Creating opportunities to understand the whole person allows for further insight around ones intrinsic motivation and the opportunity for honest, open conversations within the environment.
Final reflections
At our Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments event in Melbourne back in 2023, we ran an Open Spaces session on this exact topic. The aim of the session was to allow the audience on the day to share stories, experiences and perspectives on belonging. Five things came through strongly from those in the room that day around what we can do to enhance belonging in our environment.
We asked Hockey Canada Head Coach Danny Kerry who has worked with both during his 30-year coaching career and highlight four factors in his personal development.
He cites renowned coach developer Nigel Redman in his response. “Nigel uses this phrase: men have to battle in order to bond, so we have to have gone to battle first. ‘You’re a tough nut so I’ll be around your nonsense’ – sorry – you can see my biases playing out there. Whereas [as Redman says] women have to bond first before they battle.”
Kerry, who led Great Britain’s women to field hockey gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is at pains to tell the audience at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium that this yardstick should only be used in general terms and may even be an oversimplification. It is, however, illustrative of the dynamics of which a coach must be aware.
He continued: “If you spend time and energy to understand the dynamics that are playing out within high-performing female teams, if you spend the time and energy to talk to those things, spend the time and energy to build the relationships between those players so you can understand what particular perspectives individual athletes carry, why they think as they do, what their life experiences are, that level of trust in the relationship goes up significantly and then they will literally run through brick walls for you. If you don’t do that, as soon as the challenge and threat comes they can be [slow] to it.”
He then reflects on the transition he made from coaching Great Britain’s women to the men’s programme in 2018. “I tried that approach, if I’m blunt, with the men and it was effective to a degree, but if I had my time again I would probably put them into some form of battle or get them to understand each other in that environment along with some of this other work.”
Kerry, who was joined onstage by Emma Trott, the former Women’s Junior Endurance Coach at British Cycling, spoke at length about his personal development as a coach three decades into his career and the evolving demands of his players.
Here, we highlight four factors that shaped the coach that took the reins at Hockey Canada in March 2023.
“I was the classic coach. All about hockey and very hard-nosed. Very cycle and task-oriented, Xs and Os,” said Kerry. However, as he said, when it came to people’s feelings and relationships, “I received some pretty blunt feedback then tried – and failed – to adjust”. He quickly realised he was doing himself a disservice. “I say I failed but it’s still not my sweet spot. So my big learning, whether it was male or female, was around how relationships develop as an entirety and with individual athletes.”
It led him to adapt his behaviour and the most notable example was his pitch-side presence during the penalty shootout that followed the draw in Great Britain’s gold medal match with the Netherlands in Rio. “I always positioned myself high; the reason for that was, one, I was task-focused and, two, athletes pick up on your anxiety as a coach and, being pitch side, that’s not a great thing. You don’t want to add to their anxiety as a coach, so actually being up high helps with that,” he continued. This time, however, he reflected and changed his custom. “I remember just thinking literally ‘what does this group need from me now as a coach and what doesn’t it need?’ And so at that point in time, my ability to ask myself that question at that most pressurised moment, probably of my career, was to self-regulate. All they need now is a ‘we’ve done this, we’ve rehearsed this, our processes, all good?’ Everyone nodded and off they went. I wouldn’t have been able to do that previously. It’s still a struggle, but that was a good example of being able to regulate yourself to then help the athlete be in the right place they need to be to perform.”
As a male coach in a female environment, Kerry is aware of the need to afford athletes personal space when it comes to issues such as the impact of the menstrual cycle on training history, volume and conditioning, particularly as there is still “some debate and ambiguity about what the science is saying”. While working with Great Britain’s women, he would defer to the team doctor in such matters. “It was led by our doctor, a person seen to be on the ‘outside’. We didn’t want athletes to think we were encroaching on something so personal to them. That needs to be handled with incredible skill.” He discussed it in terms of “managing the bell curve and deviations from the group”. “It’s not a science, it is a sense, it’s a craft. What is optimum for this group of athletes as a whole can mean that some people adapt ahead of the bell curve, others struggle because that’s not what they wish for themselves, but that’s an optimum for the entire group,” he said. “All facets of coaching, whether that’s sitting in a meeting discussing the players, whether that’s discussing how we push collectively as a team, whether that’s what we’re going after and how we’re going after it. It’s understanding that you’re trying to find an optimum for that particular team and then helping those people below the bell curve find their value in that, finding what works for them. That is the craft of coaching and, in my experience, that doesn’t get discussed in coach development.”
Kerry was initially taken aback by the Canada women’s often literal interpretation of his instructions. “There’s a lot you can unpack there,” he said. “You can unpack it from the angle of gender, you can unpack it from the angle of your understanding of what’s going on. How are they feeling? Is there literal interpretation because they don’t want to get it wrong? Are they doing it because of the way they’ve been coached all of their life? Are they taking it literally because of the dynamic playing out within that female group? [They could ask themselves] Am I trying to do that because I’ve got a 200-cap athlete next to me?
“There’s a whole raft of psycho-social dynamics playing out there. So based on the experience I’d had, just talking to that very quickly; almost trying to create environments where [I’m asking] does it require me to talk to them? Does it require me to remove myself from that room and get them to sort it out themselves? Does it require me to use data, which involves the assistant coach of the programme leading that? Making these decisions as a head coach requires identifying some of these dynamics that are going on.”
Kerry warmed to the topic and added: “Quite often when people talk about performance, they’re talking about a very objective domain, whereas I think it’s more about these aspects. What is the greatest burden of that environment? What environment are you creating to ensure the most optimum versus the learning curve? What’s your impact on that? How can you create an environment between your athletes that allows them that peer to peer conversation that Emma was talking about? How quickly do you set those things up because they are, in my experience, the single greatest inhibitor to the team and the acquisition of skill?”
There have been occasions in the past where he wishes he could have coached female players differently. “If I had my time again, I would definitely approach it in a different way, but at the time, I didn’t have that experience having been in hyper-masculine environments.”
Kerry believes that leadership skills are fundamental to performance. “You want people to lead even without the title,” he said. “[With Great Britain’s women] we had a discussion about that very early on talking about everyone has the capacity to lead in their own way that’s congruent to them. So if I were to summarise, normalising leadership as one of the fundamentals of performance is one of the key aspects of your job [as coach], so talking to that, raising awareness of what that is and how it can be done, part of that is raising self-awareness in the athletes, how they can influence others, is absolutely fundamental. It’s right up there with are you fit enough? In terms of female role models, I’d like to think the women’s hockey programme has some incredible female role models, someone like Kate [Richardson-Walsh] and others and now stepping into different domains whether that’s big business or sports. I’m very proud of that.”
He continued: “We have some stereotypical views of what it takes to lead, actually. Breaking that down and allowing these athletes to lead congruently to who they are is one of the things I’m most proud about. So Kate leads in a way that’s congruent to her, Alex [Danson] is a very different leader but still effective, and I’m now trying to do the same with field hockey Canada.
“There’s a moral dimension to having a team that’s well-led, there’s also a huge performance dimension to having a team that’s well-led and a depth and granularity to what leadership is. By the same token, whether we’re leading or following, we talk about that responsibility and what it means to follow well. The difference in my experience with male teams and female teams is the female teams seem to implicitly understand the importance and significance of that and really buy-in quite quickly”.
In the final instalment of this Performance Support Series we explored ways that we can all improve when it comes to debriefing performance.
Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas as part of this topic:
For the final part of this learning series, the focus of the content and conversations centred around implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.
Outcomes of the session included:
Debriefing as a critical component of a high performing organisation
In setting the scene for this virtual roundtable, we leaned into the work of Arie De Geus, who was one of the early thinkers in the space of systems thinking and how we can learn and ally new learning to create a competitive advantage. De Geus was quoted as saying that ‘the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors’. Effective debriefing forms a key role in creating a true learning organisation and allowing you to use learning as a source of competitive advantage.
Combining the work of De Geus, Peter Senge in his work for The Fifth Discipline suggests that the highest performing organisations consistently learn and put systems in place where they are able to extract information and collective intelligence. When thinking about the topic of debriefing, there are often questions considered around to how we should do it and when. Answering these questions and systematising will support a shift towards a culture of learning.
Before we move into exploring specific elements of debriefing, we also explored the difference between traditional organisations and those who are termed learning organisations.
Senge defined organisations as where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. Pedlar provides a definition of a learning organisation as being able to facilitate learning of all its members with the aim of continuously transforming itself.
How are we currently implementing debriefing?
Reflecting on how we are currently implementing debriefing provided an opportunity for those on the call to share their experiences of this process in their environment. There were some differences in responses to how debriefing is leveraged.
As part of this conversation, there were some interesting reflections on the nature of debriefing in some of our environments. A point was made around debriefs or reviews leading to us slipping into planning or a solution mindset. We can experience tangents and not effectively staying on the task of the debrief – effective debriefing requires intent and discipline.
There were also some reflections on debriefing tending to focus on the eventuality of a negative outcome such as a defeat, as opposed to when we win. Participants on the call shared that in the debriefing process, often there is a lack of action, something that other members of the team or players pick up on. Actions are crucial for buy-in – it is easy to review and reflect, but to generate actual change is where the impact of a debrief comes in.
Skills for effective debriefing
We’ve discussed the importance of debriefing and how it is currently being implemented in our environments, but it is also important to consider the skills required for debriefing to be effective. When the question of what skills are required were put to the group, these are some of the responses that followed:
For effective debriefing, having a framework or system in place will elevate its impact. We discussed a simple framework that can be used by anyone as a benchmark:
Planning for action. Planning for the debrief is important, particularly how the debriefs will happen and the skills required to make them effective. Often it is easy for debriefs to become emotional – a process in pre-planning helps to keep things on track.
Action. This is the doing part.
Reflection. How do you reflect accurately, especially in an emotionally charged environment, whether positive or negative? Reflection is a key still to aid questioning and listening.
Relating back into action. Take the learning and do something with it. If you do not do this, it is a waste of time. Debriefing is about initiating change and continuous improvement.
To summarise this section, having the ability to reflect, appraise and reappraise is considered a cornerstone of lifelong learning and performance.
Challenges in debriefing
The group highlighted a number of challenges that are associated with debriefing. The idea was to identify what often gets in the way of being good at debriefing, allowing us to evaluate how we currently approach debriefing. There were six key challenges highlighted that we should be aware of.
To summarise
The influence of debriefing is a topic often talked about within the Leaders Performance Institute. We all know the importance of it but there is a feeling that there remains vast room for improvement in how to do it effectively. As we rounded off this virtual roundtable, we reflected on some of the key considerations and opportunities for debriefing, to ensure you engage in it more effectively in your environment.
It’s worth noting that debriefing is free, yet presents a fantastic opportunity for continuous improvement without financial resource. With any sort of debriefing, using a process to embed and plan out debriefing is a positive first step in its impact. Remove outcome bias and instead focus on the learning, decision-making and impact areas – outcome bias will sway the quality of the debrief. Be sensitive of time and, where you can, engage in debriefs immediately after the performance. Keep them short and to the point. Gather as many facts as possible first, allowing you to be dispassionate and objective. As an observation, watch for people proving vs. challenging themselves. Reflection skills are powerful so ensure you practise them to elevate the quality of the debrief. Finally, keep a journal and a log of the key learnings from the process.
21 Sep 2023
PodcastsIn our latest podcast we catch up with the individuals behind Serial Winning Coaches, Professors Cliff Mallett and Sergio Lara-Bercial as they discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches.
“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”
Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.
In an extended chat we delve into:
Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.
Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn
John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn
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In his latest column, Iain Brunnschweiler explains that the best coaches keep their cool and understand the craft of human interactions.
It’s a scene we have all witnessed time and time again. The crowd get to see how passionate the manager is, how much they care about the team’s performance and how much this error hurts them personally. But as an executive sitting in the stands, paying the manager a huge salary, I would be asking myself just how effective they are being at their job in that moment?
In psychological terms, unless this display of anger is some form of ‘DiCaprio-esque’ acting skills from the manager in question, it means that they are emotionally deregulated. And when any human is emotionally deregulated, psychologists tell us that their ability to perform a number of high level tasks (such as taking in information and strategic decision-making) is massively impacted in a negative way.
Having stepped out of full-time work and into a world of consultancy, supporting a number of different organisations, it has given me time to reflect on my true beliefs, and aspects of performance development that I hold as truths.
One area that I keep circling back to, is the power of self-regulation.
Desirable adult behaviours
My observations of the best staff I have operated with is that they have worked out ways in which to self-regulate in the most pressurised moments. Now, this self-regulation takes numerous different forms based on the individual in question, but it is grounded in the fact that everyone needs personal strategies to stop themselves from essentially turning into a spoiled child when the going gets tough!
I have been extremely lucky to have worked alongside some of the industry’s top performance psychologists over the past two-and-a-half decades, both as a player and as a member of staff. My major learning from these leading members of the fraternity, is that they unlock introspection and retrospection in the people they are working with, in order to help the individual understand their own ‘personal best state’ to operate in. Then they help them work out their derailers, and identify when these derailers are likely to occur, in order to develop strategies to minimise the negative impact. It sounds simple! However, in reality this is a live process that can take years.
In youth development, one of my observations, present in football more than any of the other sports I have worked in, is that coaches can demonstrate levels of deregulation which are seemingly totally disproportionate to the age group of athlete they are working with. I have seen coaches of U9 teams screaming at 15-year-old trainee referees because they are certain that the ball went out. I’ve seen opposition coaching staff of U14 teams nearly coming to blows on the side of the pitch because the game is not going the way they envisaged it going. In the cold light of day, if you were to show these adults footage of themselves, especially alongside a GIF of a screaming child, their embarrassment levels would be high I have no doubt. In these cases, more work is needed in order to help them effectively self-regulate. Because, in my opinion, behaviour like this is letting down the children in their care. The role of a youth coach is to not only help the kids to learn the game, but also to be a role model of desirable adult behaviours.
Another observation is that it is not just the game itself that causes a non-desirable state in adult members of staff. I have seen many coaches lose sight of what is really at the heart of coaching – in my opinion this is genuinely attending to the children/people within your care in order to help facilitate their development in a skilful manner.
One of the reasons this occurs is the current audit-driven, process-oriented world in which we live. Coaches behave in insecure ways, sometimes unable to attend to the players in front of them because they are so nervous about what their boss thinks, or what is written down on their ‘curriculum’! As a wise man once said to me, the players ARE the curriculum. The thought that a bunch of middle-aged folk in tracksuits, can predefine the development needs of an entire squad every day of the year, by writing down a development curriculum before the season starts is once again, misguided at best.
The heart of coaching: guard rails, not train tracks
The best coaches (and I use that term in the broadest sense to include multiple ologies) I have worked with, are the ones who prioritise human interactions above all else. These elite practitioners are aware of the organisational documents, and will create environments that are guided by club principles, yet at the heart of their decision making is the child or adult in front of them at that moment. I heard a great analogy once, that development environments should have guard rails, rather than train tracks.
My interpretation of this is that it is really helpful to have broad principles and guidance (‘the way we do things around here’), but that it is genuinely unhelpful to have prescribed sessions that staff are forced to deliver. This normally just serves to deregulate or demotivate – two states that are certainly NOT optimal for performance development.
For those in charge of delivering performance and/or development environments, it would be worth considering the behaviours you are seeing from your staff teams. Are they operating in a manner which indicates that they feel psychologically safe enough to be themselves, within the broad principles of the organisation? Or are they nervously hoping that they are adhering to their boss, curriculum or audit’s demands, whilst compromising the athletes within they care?
When you’re reflecting on your own personal optimal performance state, it’s useful to consider what your derailers are, and what your strategies are. I am certainly NOT suggesting that we should not be passionate, and should not show that we care. But hopefully we can see fewer water bottles being volleyed, and fewer 15-year-old trainee referees being shouted at by the people who are supposed to be role models. I know that most athletes would prefer this.
Questions for the reader:
Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.
This recent Leadership Skills Series session asked what strategies we can use and to consider when we currently do our best analytical thinking.
Most people in high performance sport are operating in a volatile and complex landscape, so as part of this session, we explored common errors we make in our thinking and why, strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking, and identify opportunities to use more analytical thinking in our environments.
Before we delve into some of the detailed content and ideations, what do we mean by analytical thinking? Here is one definition: ‘It is our ability to collect information, analyse it and use those insights to solve problems and make decisions’.
System one & two thinking
To kick off the session, we leaned into the work of Nobel Prize winner (in Economic Sciences) Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Kahneman suggests that there are two types of analytical thinking. The first is the ‘fast thinking system’ or ‘system one thinking’ where our brains come up with automatic answers to things without a conscious effort. This mode of thinking is both efficient and effective in domains where we have deep expertise of experience. There are downsides, however. These lines of thinking are influenced by emotions and affected by biases which can lead to highly predictable mistakes. As humans we make a lot of errors in our thinking, but often those errors are predictable and it quickly becomes a case of how do we prevent these from happening again, or what to look out for.
To summarise system one thinking – it is automatic, intuitive, influenced by emotions and affected by biases; and so we can make predictable mistakes.
How does System two thinking differ from one? Kahneman defines this as the slow reasoning system which requires more effort and deliberation. We have a higher level of intention to stop and move into a space of deliberate thinking, it isn’t a case of the thinking just popping into your head, it takes energy and tends to be more complex. Analytical thinking is more aligned to system two thinking. There are downsides to this as well – it uses a lot of energy so there can be a tendency to delegate to system one.
To summarise system two thinking – it is effortful, deliberate, requires complex computation, it controls urges but can make you experience laziness and over-trusting system one.
Common errors in our thinking
As part of the session, we explored eight common errors that can affect thinking in our environments. It’s important to be aware of these as they will influence your ability to think analytically.
The first error is the law of small numbers. This error refers to the idea that we can get sucked into drawing conclusions using limited information – making small sample sizes to find a pattern when we shouldn’t. This is a good example of what Kahneman aligns system one thinking to.
The second error is confirmation bias. Often people pay attention to and seek evidence to support existing beliefs. This error is one of the most important to think about as our brain is setup to look for evidence to support the assumptions we already have and doesn’t look out for or seek counter evidence.
The third error is operating from an out-of-date mental map of the world. It’s quite a wordy one but it factors in the idea that we continue to keep acting as if the world we understand is still the same without challenging it. In high performance sport this can be a dangerous error in thinking, such is the fast-paced nature of the landscape.
The fourth error is unconscious bias about people and their potential. It is often perceived as black and white or either positive or negative. There are two other types of bias – projection and affinity. In considering unconscious bias, we often hear talk about negative bias, but not as much about the ‘halo effect’ which is where you recognise a characteristic you have seen before in high performance and you expect it to show up again. Projection bias incorrectly judges someone’s potential on the basis of current skills. Finally, affinity bias looks for the same qualities we have seen before. Arguably, this is one of the most common and well-known set of thinking errors.
Loss aversion is another error we see in thinking. It is where the fear of loss or losses is stronger than the desire for gains. There is a lot of research and evidence that suggests that humans will put more effort in avoiding a loss than getting a gain – the gain is undervalued.
The sixth error is status quo bias. This is the preference in maintaining assurance of current approaches and having an opposition to change. This is a dangerous game to be playing.
The penultimate thinking error as part of this section is the ‘bandwagon effect’. This line of thinking is a pull in wanting to adopt an approach because everyone else is doing it – the idea of conforming to thinking in a group and we will do what others do. This is a downside to analytical thinking. The real question we should be evaluating is whether there is evidence that what someone else is doing will work for us. Contexts are unique.
Finally, attribution error. This is defined by overestimating the impact of personality, character and underestimating the impact of the environment on behaviour. It’s very common that people can struggle in certain environments but thrive in others.
Improving analytical thinking
We’ve highlighted common errors in thinking, so how can we shift the dial and improve our ability to be more analytical? Before we explore some specific strategies, we discussed four tips to consider as part of this process:
What about strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking?
When thinking about your role as a leader or collectively how you operate as a team, the below are a set of strategies that can support analytical thinking in a positive way, in a number of different contexts.
The first strategy is ‘STOP moments’. Stand back, Take stock, Options, Proceed. It is also known as hot-debriefing during events and something that can be done in the moment. When thinking about ‘stand back’, this is taking more of a helicopter view of a situation or problem. ‘Take stock’ is the acquisition of data and analysing what is happening around that. ‘Options’ is as it sounds. Exploring options around what you can do differently. Finally ‘proceed’ is stepping back into the moment, taking action and assessing what impact your new approach has.
Debriefing. We would hope that many of us are already doing this to support their analytical thinking.
Another strategy is holding ideation sessions, also known as front foot innovation. There are traditionally two types of innovation: response which is where change needs to be imposed and proactive, which is much more disruptive and intentional in how to be innovative.
Improving cognitive diversity is another important strategy for analytical thinking. Seek out different perspectives, as so often we get multiple people with the same expertise approaching problems and questions.
Have you considered the idea of perspective shifting? This strategy looks at a situation from someone else’s perspective, putting yourself in their shoes, if you will. Often you will find that we look at problems and questions from our own contexts, which dovetails the thinking error of status quo bias.
Perspective taking underpins Edward de Bono’s main argument in his renowned 1985 book Six Thinking Hats. De Bono discussed two pairs of hats which allow us to reflect on our own particular preferences – the first is red and white, which refers to gut feel and intuition (red) and facts (white). What is your default and comfort when evaluating this first pair of hats and do you bring in enough of the other? When does the red or white hat have to be challenged? For the second pair of hats we have yellow and black. Yellow refers to being optimistic, assuming something is possible and thinking about the how. Black is of course the opposite – the constructive critic which is thinking through what could go wrong. Effective techniques that enable black hat thinking are pre-mortems and red-teaming. Pre-mortem is the assumption for a moment we will fail. From that perspective, it involves looking and identifying what is most likely to go wrong. Red-teaming is the idea of tasking some of the team with figuring out how to beat your strategy.
Finally, a really effective strategy for analytical thinking is root cause analysis. Many of us have heard of the ‘5 Whys’ which is a simplistic but effective method. Perhaps more impactful is the use of multiple cause diagrams which allow us to work from a challenge and identify the different causes that are having an impact.
Further considerations
As we have covered in this review of analytical thinking, it does take more time, deliberation and effort to do effectively. That is the nature of the beast in doing system two thinking well. In reflecting on the common errors and strategies above, ask yourself these questions:
The club’s President joins the Leaders Performance Podcast alongside Selinay Gürgenç Comolli and Julien Demeaux.
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Le Téfécé were Ligue 2 champions in 2022 and, last season, won the Coupe de France – their first major trophy in 66 years.
Toulouse also finished 13th in their first season back in Ligue 1 – well clear of the relegation zone. Not that Damien Comolli, the club’s President since 2020, is resting on this laurels.
“Everyone said ‘well done on staying up’ but we’re not interested in staying up – we never mentioned staying up – we said we want to finish as high as possible,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.
“There are games that we feel we should have won and could have won. We lacked this cutting edge, this winning mentality at times, we should have got more points, we should have finished higher than 13th in the table.”
Damien Comolli has overseen the Toulouse’s resurgence under new owners RedBird Capital Partners, but he couldn’t have done it without his ‘truth teller’, the club’s Head of Strategy & Culture, Selinay Gürgenç Comolli, and Julien Demeaux, Toulouse’s Head of Data.
Both Selinay and Julien joined Damien for this episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.
The theme is Toulouse’s upwards trajectory and what it is going to take to help establish the club at the vanguard of European football.
On today’s agenda:
Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn
John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn
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What Leaders Performance Institute members said in a recent Virtual Roundtable about the state of play in the field of performance analysis.
Current challenges
When analysing the responses from the group, as expected there were some commonalities in current challenges.
Collaborating with other disciplines
The most common was the ability to collaborate and work with other disciplines, whether this be with individuals operating within technical, tactical or physical domains. Specific to some of the responses, was the relationship between performance analysis and coaching as well as the under-appreciation of physical data in some regions. Reflections from different sports alluded to the fact that coaches are at different stages in their understanding and utilisation of performance analysis, so it can be challenging to work in an optimal and collaborative way. There was an appreciation that many coaches work in subjective terms, so adding context to objective data and information is important to meet the coaches where they are at. Finally as it pertains to collaborating with other disciplines, a further challenge shared was working to keep all parties happy with what is collected and presented considering resource, timelines and what is needed to be prioritised within the programme.
Clearly defined processes
In evaluating the challenges, there were a number of responses that aligned to processes and ways of working. Clearly defining the role and purpose of the department was one that featured. Secondly, information siloes was another popular response and is likely to be a by-product of the challenge already outlined above. Finding out what is most important in terms of data collection and analysis also featured, suggesting that in some programmes there isn’t perhaps that clarity around the role and purpose of the department in alignment to the overall performance model. As a final thought on this overarching theme, the group suggested that there is a need to have space for strategic thinking to continue to evolve processes and answer questions around the future trends or direction of their respective sports.
Working with the modern day athlete
There was an appreciation that the modern day athlete has some differences in how they operate and obtain information compared to more mature athletes. We come onto some potential solutions for this later on, but it was clear to see that those participating in this particular roundtable are thinking about ways to better connect, educate and present information to their athletes. The key question around this is how and what is having the most impact?
Collation vs analysis
We are in a data tsunami was one of the comments on the call and it’s fair to say that’s a pretty accurate representation of where high performance sport is with performance related data and information. Some of the specific challenges that sit within this bucket included: the split between video analysis and data analysis. Data is more ‘buzzy’ at the moment but video can’t be forgotten as it continues to be a key method of analysis. One participant shared that we are in danger of doing more collating and not enough in-depth analysis. This chimes with the notion of knowing what is important to the programme and then being able to use data in actionable ways to support that.
What are some interventions or best practices to support these challenges?
Collaborating with different disciplines
To ensure the group left the roundtable with some best practice ideas, we had discussions around how some of these challenges were solved or being worked on. A simple suggestion that has had a positive impact was removing the notion of analysts being sat in one office, grouped together and instead integrating them in the same operating spaces as the coaches.
A couple of organisations on the call alluded to how they have renamed departments, one of those being to a Coaching & Analysis department, combining both disciplines. Analysts are an extension of the coaches, but one particular team are encouraging their coaches to become analysts in their own way. There was a consensus that the days of separate departments are gone.
Alignment is something teams have worked at to encourage collaboration between disciplines. Many organisations use a ‘what it takes to win model’ which is the performance backwards approach – something akin to this is a good way of aligning everyone to an end goal. In facilitating this type of model, ensure everyone is given access to others’ information and data. Often, departments can be too protective and it’s damaging to clarity and decision-making. Make the information readily available for all.
Be intentional around the development of non-technical skills with staff. If practitioners are talking and engaging in informal conversations, there will be a better understanding of the problems and questions being asked.
Finally, one environment on the call shared how one of the analysts has developed an interactive report where all disciplines feed into it for the team’s monthly meeting. Disciplines having to input into this report gives ownership and during discussions, it has allowed for more objective viewpoints as opposed to emotional ones that can sometimes arise.
Working with the modern athlete
This process can be influenced before you even interact with the athlete. The group discussed the importance of looking at the recruitment of analysts. It was suggested that individuals that have some experience in a teaching or pedagogical context is advantageous to supporting the interaction with the athletes. We need to look beyond just looking at the technical skillset of being an analyst, but other skills that will help deliver the technical element of the work. The ability to deliver information to people is what separates the good analysts from the best ones.
We will often experience athletes wanting information laid out in black and white, hence the importance of quality non-technical skills. Get to know the players so they feel more comfortable in being challenged. Insights profiling of the players has also seen positive outcomes to better understand learning preferences and styles.
Finally, athletes tend to spend the most time communicating and working with the coaches. Working through the coaches is a simple way to convey and communicate messages. It is also worth bearing in mind that your best players may not have the best physical stats.
Collation vs analysis
To prevent over-collating and under-analysing, it’s important to instil clear processes so that when you are in the height of the season, distraction is reduced. Focus on getting processes well defined in the pre-season so you can almost ‘set and forget’ and work on an automation scale.
If the data we are collating is not informing decisions or aligning to the outcomes of our model, there is no point collating or keeping existing information. It is important to pause and review whether the data is genuinely helping us to make decisions.
Finally, there was an appreciation that there is curiosity around what we don’t know, which is a parallel stream we should be thinking about, but it shouldn’t be the performance analyst’s role to explore this. This is where specialist expertise from data scientists to find the hidden messages and investigate largest data sets is better associated.
Opportunities in the future
Below is some insight from the group around what they see as being opportunities for the practice of performance analysis.
20 Jul 2023
ArticlesRohan Taylor, the Head Coach of Swimming Australia, discusses his instincts, managing his energy and choosing his words carefully.
“I’m on that journey, to be honest,” says the Head Coach of Swimming Australia. “I’m very comfortable now, today, to say it’s my number one skillset that I think I have to keep front and centre. I see instinct and intuition as a collection of knowledge and experience that touches me on the head and says ‘have you seen this before?’ so I need to stop and listen and tap into it.”
Taylor explains that he welcomes data but that he “won’t let it override what I feel”. “When I made the most successful moves or the most successful decisions or things that I’ve done really well, it’s been driven by my instincts with information informing me,” he continues.
It is not just decision-making around Swimming Australia’s programming either. “In a room when I’m talking to a group of people, I’m looking around to see is there a connection happening here and I rely on my instincts to tell me where to pivot if it’s not.
“My instincts tell me ‘you’re probably not hitting the mark’. I rely on them heavily and I’m very confident in them. And if I make a mistake, I make a mistake. It doesn’t faze me. I learn from that and it’s all about continual improvement for me.”
Taylor, who is currently with the Australian Dolphins at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, was a major contributor to our March Special Report Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions. Here, he reflects on his style as a leader and where he can continue to improve and develop.
Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
What is the key to getting the big decisions right and managing them effectively?
RT: I’m always a big believer that I’ve got to surround myself with people smarter than me and build that trust. Getting a big decision right is speaking to the right people to tell me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear; getting the right feedback. Because you can go to people and say ‘yeah, that’s the way to go’ but then they’ll ask questions and make me think a little bit more. So I’ve vetted my decision-making with trusted people around me. I think that’s a really important part. But for the piece I’m doing, is I’m trying to influence a greater number of people. Now I can’t go and have those conversations with everybody. So what I do is, those people around me are my influencers, they’re the ones that if they agree, the likelihood is that everybody else will follow along because they trust them even if they don’t trust me. So my decision making is making sure I spend the time informing and collaborating with the right people and then we’ll move forward together and be aligned; and if I don’t do that I usually find myself having to eventually do that anyway. So if I make a unilateral decision, I likely have to follow up by going back to those people to bring them onboard. So I spend the time talking to them before I go out and do that.
Is that when you feel at your most confident and in command?
RT: Absolutely, because you know you’ve got buy-in from the right people. Also, the thing is that I’m quite comfortable to make flexible moves on the go, but I’ll do it through the right people who will influence me, but it’s a two-way street. I’m very confident in saying ‘hey, here’s the direction’ but I’m also confident that if there’s a need to move one way or another that I’ve got people around me who will help me to make that adjustment if I need to. And they trust me.
How carefully do you choose your words? What can you say to an athlete? What do you prefer not to say?
RT: In this day and age you’ve got to be very careful. That’s the challenge and that’s the learning that all of us in leadership; and the coaches, who are leaders in their own right, are having to check their language, their feedback, because it’s a different world we live in now, from the point of view of sensitivity. For me, it’s the level of trust with the person you’re giving feedback to has a lot to do with it as well. Even then, I err on the side of caution more than anything. There’s times I’d like to say ‘pull your head in, you’re being a dickhead’ and although I want them to hear that, but I have to deliver it a different way. I think about what I feel like saying, and then I think ‘OK, I’m going to walk away and re-frame this and is there a message I need to try to deliver and then work it out?’ It takes a lot longer, to answer your question! You’ve got to take time to deliver things if you want to be impactful. At times it’s exhausting, to be honest.
How do you ensure you are protecting your own time and mental resources?
RT: Well, I moved where I’m living now. I moved 400m from the beach on the Sunshine Coast. I relocated for environmental reasons and that was absolutely a targeted move for my family. At some point today, I’ll be in the surf having a swim or go out on a jetski. I’ll go and play and that’s giving me to have that hour to myself or with my wife or walk or whatever. That’s simplistic me. I have targeted times where I just lock in on things and I’ve learned to disconnect now; I’m better at that. So I either physically remove myself or put myself in a different space or I go and read a book or something – usually I’m reading books about leadership so I’m not really getting out of that space! But I am actually refreshing my mind around re-engaging in that learning. I go and watch my girls do sport and that’s always a great little release. So I think I’ve got the balance right. The big thing for me is the balance is not about 50% this or 50% that, it’s 100% this and 100% that. So if I’m going out for an hour to spend on the jetski and go wave-jumping or surfing, I’m 100% into that. I’m not going out there thinking about something else. That’s to me is balance. That’s utopia to get to that point. Then I feel that I’ll be fine.
6 Jul 2023
ArticlesLiam Broady’s coach David Sammel explains that as the groundwork has been laid beforehand, tournament tennis is all about building a player’s rhythm and confidence. To that end, there are a number of tools at a coach’s disposal.
The Leaders Performance Institute is on the phone to David Sammel, a tennis coach with more than 30 years of experience coaching men’s ATP Tour players.
This week, Sammel is at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in Wimbledon to coach Britain’s Liam Broady in both the gentlemen’s singles and doubles at The Championships.
We are speaking on Wednesday 5 July. It is the day after Broady’s first round defeat of Constant Lestienne and the day before he dispatched fourth seed and three-time grand slam finalist Casper Ruud. It was an ideal moment for Sammel to reflect on his development as a coach.
“I have different tools that I’ve developed over the years and I feel sad for those players in the past because there’s situations I look back on and I would have dealt with them differently now to how I did then,” he says. “But that’s part of the learning process as a coach and the other side of the coin is that I would hate to look back, even in five years’ time from now, and say I’m exactly the same as I was five years ago.”
Broady, the men’s world number 142, was due to play Ruud on the day of our conversation, but the rain put paid to that idea. Inclement weather is just one of a number of disruptions that players can routinely expect at a tournament.
“These days are tricky to manage because their stress and anxiety is there as the build-up to the match continues; and keeping someone in a holding pattern is not easy. The job almost shifts to keeping the player entertained in different ways and being light-hearted in practice,” adds Sammel.
“The work is really done beforehand and once you get into the tournament it’s just a bit of maintenance, a little bit of sharpening and keeping the player relaxed between matches. At majors it’s a little different because you always get a day off in between and, of course, like the rain at Wimbledon yesterday, we now get two days and, possibly, depending on how the weather is today, three days off.”
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute details five factors that underpin Sammel’s approach to coaching during a competition.
During a tournament, Broady will aim to rise at his usual time, whether he is playing or not. Routine is important, although practice times will depend on the availability of practice courts.
Nevertheless, the fundamentals should not change because a player is competing at the All England Club. “What I’ll say to players is the court is the same size, you’re playing against people you can play anywhere in the world, and it’s just a label that this is the best tennis tournament in the world. You need to go out there and play tennis – not Wimbledon. It’s trying to keep the head in a place that, at the end of the day, it is your job to play tennis – it is not to play different tennis because it’s Wimbledon. It’s to play the best tennis that you can put on the court on the day.”
That said, “You’re not ignoring the fact that this is something a little bit different, but you’re saying ‘this is why you’ve done all the work. You dream about these things as a kid and now you’re living it and that’s amazing’.”
Practice at a tournament is primarily to give players “a feel of the ball”, as Sammel explains. He speaks often about the need for players to find their “rhythm”. He says: “There’s nothing you really want to be working on unless there’s a couple of specifics because you’ve scouted the opponent and say something like ‘let me feed you a few balls, you’re going to get quite a few of these during the match’.
“The problems come if the player starts to miss a few balls and gets a little uptight – they feel the magic is disappearing.” The key in those moments is to talk the player “back down off the ledge”. “You’ve got to say ‘look, let’s have a drink. Relax. Let’s not think about this for a moment. Maybe let’s hit a few serves.’ And when you feel like they’re truly relaxed go back to it and hopefully they find some rhythm.
“On bad days, that’s when it’s important for the coach to be there and not show any stress and just be relaxed. That often calms a player. You also need to remind them that there’s nothing they’re going to face tomorrow that they haven’t faced before. They just need to go through your history and know that they’ve dealt with whatever adversity has been directed at them because that’s where real confidence comes from.” Confidence is key. “With great athletes, the difference is their belief and confidence to perform and bring a level no matter how they’re feeling.”
Sammel has learned to trust his instincts as a coach. “The one big thing that coaches are there for is feeling the moment and the timing of when you say things. Give very few messages, important key ones, and do not overload the player – when a player has too much to think about that really hurts their performance,” he says. It is also essential to read their body language. “When you’re talking to an athlete, you can tell in their eyes whether you are actually connecting and they’re hearing you or whether it’s just being blocked out. They’re nodding yes, they’re saying yes, but you know it’s not going in. That’s when you really need to change tack or understand that this is just not the right moment and then you’ve got to be looking out, pretty much all day, for the right moment when they’re open to having a different approach and you go again at trying to get your message across. That is one of the big things that comes from experience, that timing.”
He adds: “If you overload a player that’s going to kill them, but if you have an important message, you’ve got to find the right moment and know that it’s actually gone in. That can take two or three attempts but not in the same way; if you try to bulldoze a player with the same approach their resistance will grow stronger and then you’ve got no chance of getting the message in.”
Sammel stresses the need for “adult conversations”. He says: “When you’re in a good place, where you can go through a couple of things and you can see it’s going in and the player will ask a question like an adult, not like a victim.”
According to Sammel, a ‘victim’ would say thing such as: “‘I don’t know if I can do this’ or ‘what you’re asking is impossible right now’ or they’re dismissive. You know they have a worry, they have a stress and they’re trying to pretend that it’s not there. You have to try to have a conversation. ‘Look, let’s talk about whatever is bothering you, let’s get it out in the open, and that way we can deal with it before you go out there’. Because when a player has something bothering them, if they don’t take care of it before they go out there then you’re looking at disaster.”
Defeats are inevitable but there is always something a player can take into their next tournament and upsets, such as Broady’s defeat of Ruud, can happen.
“After a disappointment, the coach’s job is to immediately shed light on what the next step is for the player to progress and go forward,” says Sammel. “You need to be going to the next tournament with optimism. ‘If we put a couple of things right, we practise a couple of things and get a bit better at those, that makes you even tougher. Let’s take that to the next tournament and see what happens then’.
“I have a saying that I’ve used for over 20 years, which is ‘do the work and good things will happen – you just don’t know when’. I’ll say: ‘This major is over and obviously we were hoping for more, it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the next major. Let’s keep working and the good things will happen. It’s not our job really to know when because that’s the excitement of sport’.”
