In partnership with

By Luke Whitworth

The focus of our inaugural Leaders Meet in Australasia centred on the theme of high performance environments.

Across the course of two days, we sought to break down this theme by watching a live environment in practice, exploring frameworks and perspectives on how to recruit talent for your environment, the power of teaming and how it drives collaboration and teamwork, and insights from different industries on how to design, shape and evolve environments.

Here are the key takeaways from the second day.

(Day 1 takeaways here.)

Session 1: The Cohesion of Teams – What Are The Secrets of Effective Collaboration?

Speaker: Benjamin Northey, Principal Conductor in Residence, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

• Building culture: in the context of an orchestra, the building of the culture has to come from the players – how are they driving that? It is a complex challenge for leaders to navigate.
• Proficiency: the proficiency of players to lead is a challenge – if we can create an environment where players or athletes take the lead in driving the internal culture, it can be harnessed in a much more powerful way.
• Group psychology: the psychology of the orchestra is the biggest challenge for conductors – understanding personalities, managing energy, focus and harnessing the collective will of the players. They all want it to be great but have all of their own ideas of how to get there.
• Communicate clearly: preparation happens incredibly fast, so there is pressure on the leader or conductor in this context to communicate the vision in a very clear way. Ben also talked about a leader having a point of focus that encourages clear alignment.
• Problem-solving: create an environment where there is self-correcting led by the players. Too often we see the leader listen or observe and start to provide solutions to the problem. In the orchestra, allow them to play, create a space for reflection as a group and in the second phase of rehearsal, you will see an impact straight away without the leading having to get involved.
• Collaboration begins with listening: encourage people to listen to each other and the real time processes of creation. The players have roles to play but they all need the creative intelligence to adjust that role themselves in the moment to the response of what they are hearing around them – the parts that unify them around us.
• Elite awareness: the cohesion of the orchestra is to find the understanding of not their own part, but the notes of others. The success of the group relies on connection, shared values and unified work. We are looking to generate elite awareness within the group.
• Creative intelligence: use your own creative intelligence. This concept is something that needs to be reinforced all the time or else it disempowers the innate creativity of the individual. The success of an orchestra relies on individual perspectives to work – ‘everyone is an artist’ is a piece of terminology that is used within the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Session 2: Change & Transition – How to Lead When There is a Shift in Behaviours

Speaker: Reb Rebele, Senior Research Fellow, The Wharton People Analytics initiative

• Consideration: how do you create sustained performance? Where does behavioural change sit within this?
• Behavioural science: studying how to get yourself or others to do something helpful – or to stop doing something harmful.
• Typical approach: when thinking about behaviour change, we collect all sorts of techniques and tools such as research and books. We collect nudges, techniques and hacks. In this toolkit we typically find something that works; rinse and repeat. However, contexts are different and it doesn’t tend to happen the same way.
• Tap into a goal that someone already has or a core value, connecting the behaviour change to that.
• Framework: am I trying to influence ‘temporary’ and ‘enduring’?

1. Temporary

• One-time behaviours.
• Context-specific behaviours (particular time and place).
• Short-term shifts (some kind of disruption – change of behaviours for a period of time before returning to some form of ‘normality’).
• Challenge for leaders: address the proximal cause – immediate goals, environment. 

2. Enduring

• Habit formation.
• Habit breaking.
• Personality change.
• Challenge for leaders: address the root cause (beliefs, values and identity). 

3. Motivated

• Existing desire (someone who comes to you for help)
• Aligned interests / values (clear link between the behaviour change and their goals).
• Challenge for leaders: reinforce current goals and values. 

4. Unmotivated

• Indifference (lack of interest – doesn’t see any reason to change).
• Aversion (active dislike / resistance to the behaviour change).
• Challenge for leaders: create new goals and values.

Bringing the Framework to Life

• How can I help someone to follow-through on that motivation in a particular instance? (Motivated x Temporary)
• How can I help someone be more consistent? (Motivated x Enduring)
• How can I help someone stretch outside their comfort zone? (Unmotivated x Temporary)
• How can I help someone achieve transformation? (Unmotivated x Enduring)

Session 3: Fostering Googleyness – How to Recruit & Retain for a World Class Culture

Speaker: Tova Angsuwat, Recruiting Lead, Google

• Google wanted to figure how to create the highest performing team – one of the hypotheses was if you bring the same people together with the same characteristics together, they would perform well. The second, bringing the best people in the organisation together. Neither yielded the results the organisation expected.
• Project Aristotle: great teams can be measured. Google’s research came up with five characteristics:

1. Psychological safety: comfortable to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. These teams challenged leaders, asked lots of questions and shared lots of things in meetings – it drove innovation and enhanced the ability to collaborate. As a leader, a good question to ask in a meeting or conversation is ‘what is something I might have missed?’
2. Dependability: getting things done on time to a high standard of excellence.
3. Structure and clarity: clear roles, plans and goals.
4. Meaning: work is personally important to team members.
5. Impact: their work matters and creates change.

Keys to defining culture:

• Mission, transparency and voice underpin the Google culture.
• Transparency: Google provides access to all of the information, even if you are an intern. Each Friday there was a TGIF with the founders where you can ask any question you like. This aspect of transparency is incredibly powerful. Can you push to be more transparent? It increases people engagement and buy-in to the organisation.
• You told us this, so we are doing that – a really powerful line for anyone to consider and use as a leader.
• Voice: how do you help everyone in the organisation an aspect of voice? Employee engagement surveys, opportunities for asking questions etc. Every time you do that, thank them for the feedback and share it back with them.

Tips for recruiting and retaining top talent

1. The most important skills to assess are not role-related: this can be very counterintuitive. Every person that is hired is interviewed against four attributes – role-related knowledge, problem-solving ability, leadership, and values fit.
2. Your greatest value proposition is meaning and purpose: sense of meaning and purpose is what people want from their jobs. What’s important to them and what can you offer?
3. Don’t hire people like you: who is going to complement you? In your teams, you need more of what isn’t there or who is going to add to you. Consider ‘culture add’ versus ‘culture fit’.
4. Share your ‘fungus’: as you think about retaining talent, you want to share what is going on within the organisation because they will see it when they do join.

Session 4: Inclusive Environments – Can High Performance Sport Create a Culture of Belonging?

Speaker: Matti Clements, Acting Director, Australian Institute of Sport

• Can ‘belonging’ drive a high performance culture?
• If belonging should be considered as a variable or aid of a high performance culture, how much time in a week do you spend actively prioritising it in your leadership role?
• Self-determination theory: autonomy, competence and belonging. This theory is about how an individual interacts with and depends on their social environment. It is based on the fundamental humanistic assumption we lean towards growth in ourselves.
• Autonomy: have some control over their lives and that they make choices they want to make.
• Competence: achievements, knowledge and skills – the need to build competence and mastery over the tasks that are important to them. We need to feel effective in the culture or environment we are in.
• Belonging: a sense of connectedness.
• Psychological research shows that cultures and environments that show these three needs, that people engage really deeply in the tasks and activities they are asked to commit to, thus enhancing performance. These organisations also have higher psychological health.
• ‘Belonging allows the individual to regulate and focus their attention on the things they need to thrive. It allows the individual to give more to something greater than their own personal needs.’

Takeaways from the development of strategy: belonging

• We often go to a small group of people – made a concerted effort to go wide and broad so everyone had an opportunity to contribute. Constantly asking who might think they don’t belong to this strategy and how do we get them in the room? Who is not represented and how do we make sure they get a voice?
• Check and challenge: scenarios were set up with questions such as ‘what won’t work?’ and ‘what’s the challenge?’ The purpose was creating connectedness to the process.
• Background work: very intentional on helping people to speak up and those that can dominate where spoken to around letting others speak up.

Vision & core values:

• Vision: We win well to inspire Australians.
• Core values: excellence / belonging / courage / connection.

HP 2032 and belonging levers:

• Connection to country.
• Inclusive design.
• Win well.

Session 5: The Application of Knowledge – Making Learning a Successful Process​

Speaker: Eddie Jones, Head Coach, Rugby Australia

• Levers to make a difference: you’ve got to have understanding of how you want to play and become automatic in that. Players can do it when there isn’t any pressure, but when the heat is on and being able to turn it on when it matters is a huge differentiator.
• Intent: when you are coaching with a team without long preparation periods, you have to get the intent right. Players will be given a framework with clarity, but then they have to think and work it out.
• Environment: give your athletes a good environment. The element that coaches do the worst is belonging – with the younger generation today, belonging is so important for them. Simple best practices such as shaping a room in a ‘U’ shape instead of rows to generate eye contact.
• New generation talent: the modern leader also needs to create an environment to generate skills they aren’t experiencing in society as easily anymore. They want a coach they can trust, who will push them to optimise themselves, but who is also loving.
• Be context-specific: be specific on taking learnings back to your teams to contextualise.
• Specificity of training: after travelling to meet the US Navy SEALs, a key takeaway from Eddie’s visit was the specificity of training towards the harshest moments of ‘the game’. We train our athletes to make the game easier. Free your players so you don’t just stick to tradition.
• Power of observation: as a coach, your greatest skill is your observation skills – your players have a pattern of behaviour, so you are looking for those changes. Good coaches observe behaviours and interactions.
• Modern head coaching: the role has become much more complex. In elite sport, staffing has doubled, larger playing squads both inside and outside of the environment – leaders need more assistance. Who is your critical friend and set of eyes to challenge what you are doing? If you are starting off as a young coach, keep an experienced coach close to you.
• Key learnings: quality of staff, don’t shortcut them or else you get caught. Recruit really well for your staff and have a criteria for what you need. Secondly, teams are much more dynamic than before, you have to be prepared to adapt really quickly.

Further reading:

Check out the takeaways from the first day here.

In partnership with

By Luke Whitworth

The focus of our inaugural Leaders Meet in Australasia centred on the theme of high performance environments.

Across the course of two days, we sought to break down this theme by watching a live environment in practice, exploring frameworks and perspectives on how to recruit talent for your environment, the power of teaming and how it drives collaboration and teamwork, and insights from different industries on how to design, shape and evolve environments.

Here are the key takeaways from the first day.

(Day 2 takeaways here.)

Session 1: Collingwood Training Observation

Speaker: Craig McRae, Senior Coach, Collingwood

• Profiling the current environment: upon Craig’s appointment, he asked both staff and players for one word to describe the environment – what came out was really clear, those in the building lacked connection. To drive alignment, the group came back to creating a set of fundamentals they could live by that was agreed as a collective.
• The aim: ‘to create an environment where we live side by side, acting like winners everyday.’

Magpies training observation questions:

For the first portion of the event, we watched the team train. Attendees were asked to note down observations around three core questions, the answers to which were then fed back to coaches. Those questions were:

1. What stood out?​
2. What impressed you?​
3. What do you think could be improved?

Feedback:

Question: what was the focus of the pre-training meeting?

• Players were asked to analyse and evaluate the specific play versus coaches telling them what is required for the play. The purpose was to build the capacity to adapt out on the oval. The coaches wanted the players to feel it in a live space instead of being inside. The coaches wanted to allow the players to see how their movements help to connect with others. A real aim from a staffing point of view is to create on-field coaches, so creating situations for them to think and solve problems is a key strategy of the team’s training methodology.

Question: how often do you do repeat the same drills?

• Collingwood has regular setup on Tuesdays, which is a down day in terms of GPS. A large focus goes into specific roles, with focus and intent. The team talk about the ‘why’ a lot, but an area of improvement for the coaches is how the drills flow and efficiency between them in the nature of their design. A question they are asking is how are you valuing the time versus the efficiency of the time?

Question: talk us through the senior coach and assistant coach relationships – how do you communicate, challenge and collaborate?

• Every day, organically. There is a lot of consistency in the vision and plan. In the AFL, as a league, there is a lot of like-mindedness in the sport – Craig shared that he was determined not to have that in the club, instead having a diverse coaching group. It was important to note that the robust discussions that coaching teams often strive for do not happen immediately – a good question to ask is ‘would you tell the coach or other coaches how you are feeling?’ The robust discussions around coaching are easy, but do you spend a lot of time with each other and others’ families in order to take it to the next level?

Question: how do you balance the winning mentality in the vision versus that mentality in training?

• Craig shared from prior experiences from winning organisations is that they smelled the same and had the same DNA. The behaviours that correlated to winning are consistent in other environments. Players and staff really felt as part of a team, there was a sense of belonging and value in the staff. We can’t guarantee winning, but we can control behaviours and mantras.

Question: what role or involvement in the training is by the leadership group?

• The coaching staff explained that they want them to solve problems, evaluate and come up with solutions. They do some background workshopping off the oval and are asked to come up with solutions on the field. The leadership group are also pushed in terms of leadership development to help lead themselves and others around them.

Session 2 – Performance in Practice: Part 1 – Building a High Performing Team (Selecting the Right Talent)

Speakers: Dave Slemen, Founder, EPP, and Anna Edwards, Managing Director, EPP

• It’s important to always come back to the idea that high performance is a collective endeavour.
• The quality of connections between people is as important as the quality of individual talents.
• With the above in mind, it’s crucial to ensure you have the best possible talent​ ​and​ ​ensuring the richness of connections between them.

Nine-Step framework:

1. Cultural fit
2. Communication
3. Character
4. Leadership & followership
5. Relationships
6. Strategy & planning
7. Philosophy
8. Sporting knowledge
9. Technical skills.

Communication:

• How, when and with whom are you communicating?​ ​Board or team? Or both? Internal or external?​ ​
• This is about understanding the different languages required by different situations​ ​
• Do you vary your style for different team members? What is the impact of your approach?

Character:

• Which of the five types of Emotional intelligence are required for a role?​ ​
• Do you over, or under, index on one or another?​ ​
• Do people need to relate to each other in a particular way?​ ​
• Is there a personality type missing from the team to balance it out?

Leadership / followership:

• Followership can be as important as leadership​.
• Sometimes being effective in a role means taking people on a journey with you​.
• Inspiring people to follow is a very different style to standing at the front and showing the way.

Relationships:

• High performance comes from creating effective relationships at different levels: the board, the media, owners and players​.
• Increasingly we see roles that require individuals to be able to form relationships quickly across boundaries to get things done​.
• The ability to play different roles, while staying true to yourself, is an increasingly important attribute in leaders at all levels​.
• Curiosity about others – their skills and abilities is key to success. This is how we can develop change at pace.

Strategy & planning:

• How people create change is important – do they dictate it or show by example?​ ​
• Are you / your team members strategists, implementers, or both?​ ​
• Do you have a methodology or a systematic and organised approach?
• Do you expect the same in others?

Philosophy:

• How do you know you belong?
• What creates a sense of belonging in your team?​ ​
• Is your job to establish a vision?
• Does the role need someone with a vision of how they want to play or what they want to create?​ ​
• Do you know what you stand for?
• And can you articulate it? Can others?​ ​
• How much flexibility is there on where you are going? How adaptable do you need to be?

Sporting knowledge:

• Is it important to know the sport? Why?​ ​Or is it better not to? Why?​ ​
• How can you translate knowledge from sport to sport? What’s unique, and what’s transferable? ​
• Who in your team can ask the stupid questions and challenge the ‘always done’?

Technical skills:

• The very specific ‘must haves’ usually found on a practitioner brief​.
• These could be financial acumen, medical skillset, youth development experience or qualifications​.
• Is specific applied knowledge required?

Traps & Opportunities: Getting the Right Talent in Your Environments

Speakers: Darren Burgess, Director, EPP, and Craig Duncan, Director, EPP

• What are the most common traps? Those that purely use gut feel. Existing networks can create a sense of safety, but also create groupthink. Not using process for how you go and think about talent development.
• Loyalty over competency: hiring people who are loyal and have your back. Even if they may be loyal, have you checked for competency? If you invest in new people and ideas, they may be more competent and have your back anyway.
• How much input do you get from athletes? The best environments seek that input.
• Not factoring in culture. How do you want people to respond in certain situations? If something goes wrong, what are the reactions you are looking for? Align to the profile of people you are looking to bring in.

Session 3 – Performance in Practice: Part 2 – Building a High Performing Team (Creating High Performing Teamwork)

Speaker: John Bull, Head of High Performance, Management Futures

• Leaders who create high performing teamwork instil a culture of collaboration, galvanising people across silos behind a shared purpose. They create an environment of psychological safety and trust, where people debate ideas and support each other.
• High performance is a collective endeavour – so how are you building a culture of teaming?

Four skills of effective collaboration:

1. Collaborative mindset:

• Build trust at pace.
• Act ‘as if’ it is there immediately.
• Give ‘belonging cues’.
• Reach across silos.
• Invest time and energy in building relationships.

2. Speaking up:

• Contribute – sharing knowledge, insights and ideas.
• Raising issues.
• Constructively challenging.

3. Listening up:

• Situational humility (open to what we don’t know).
• Proactively seek out and be open to other people’s insights and views.
• Lead with questions.

4. Situational awareness:

• Be aware of and take responsibility for how the team is performing.
• Help the team to make good use of time.
• Diamond thinking: what could we do (option generation)? What should we do? (Evaluate options and make a call.)

Six common inhibitors of effective teamwork:

1. Unequal contribution: who speaks is determined by personality and / or status.
2. Groupthink.
3. Tribal: we are naturally less open with people we see as part of a different group.
4. Lack of psychological safety: leading people to withhold their thoughts.
5. Fixed position.
6. Lack of strategic focus: we don’t use time effectively in meetings.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is the extent to which people feel that speaking up will be welcomed and not judged negatively.

The conversations we are not having will be some of the most important the neuroscience. When people feel social pain it compromises the brain’s ability to think by up to 30%.

Four types of psychological safety:

1. Inclusion safety: belonging, valued and safe to be myself.
2. Learner safety: I feel safe to show gaps in my knowledge and competence. Make mistakes and ask questions.
3. Contributor safety: I feel safe to share my ideas and be trusted.
4. Challenger safety: I feel safe to challenge status quo.

How can we increase psychological safety?

1. Put it all on the table.
2. Building trust and belonging.
3. Make it easy to speak up.
4. Model openness and honesty.
5. Praise it.
6. Challenge with skilled candour.

Creating conditions for high performing teamwork

1. Build buy-in to the value of teamwork

• Unite people behind a common goal which requires teamwork.​
• Share your vision of high performing teamwork​.
• Get clear on how teamwork can add value and what you’re looking for in terms of teaming behaviours, and share this with people​.
• Create some quick wins that show the value of teamwork​.
• Build momentum and buy-in by creating some quick win opportunities for effective teamwork to add value​.
• Use feedback to reinforce collaborative behaviour​.
• Praise it​. Challenge in a supportive way where you want more of it. (i.e. hold people to account on it).

2. Create the conditions for high quality interactions ​ – inside & outside of meetings

• Invest time in building trust and respect. Learning a bit about each other’s stories. Unique strengths each person brings.​
• Build psychological safety. To enable honest constructive debate, free flow of all ideas and people asking for help.​
• Agree a set of winning behaviours, you review against regularly. Building collective responsibility.​
• Review the effectiveness of your meetings​ Resolve any tensions quickly.

Further reading:

Check out the takeaways from the second day here.

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

At the Pac-12 Conference Media Day in the summer of 2021, UCLA football Head Coach Chip Kelly revealed his phrase: TBU – ‘true but useless’.

“If it’s true but useless,” he told the gathered media. “I don’t really share that with our team.”

The Leaders Performance Institute cites that moment when speaking to Brandon Stone, the Sports Science Coordinator at the Toronto Blue Jays. Coach Kelly was referring to a game that took place two years earlier – but could ‘true but useless’ apply to the application of sports science as a team?

“If you walk into a room as a sports scientist and you feel that you have to say ‘the rate of force development is at the 50 millisecond epoch’ or ‘you’ve got to start an assessment with the upper quarter YBT’ – if you always have to be that technical and you can’t generalize it or apply it– to me that isn’t science,” says Stone, who previously worked in Olympic and Paralympic sports, college sports, and with the military.

“We have to bring the lab to the field and make sure it answers questions that are relevant to the work our coaches do every day. If it can’t be applied, it isn’t useful.  I’m not going to get caught up in a term that would prevent me from connecting with coaches. If they use ‘workload’ and they don’t really mean work in joules, then use another term. It’s the same if they say ‘velocity’ and they mean ‘speed’. Instead of me getting hung up on that for six months I would rather connect with people and meet them where they are as that creates an opportunity to say: ‘when we say speed, then this is how we define it , and here’s  how we’re seeing it’. The faster we speak the same language the quicker we can begin impacting players together.”

Stone is proud of the manner in which the different departments of baseball operations, such as scouting and player development, are willing to collaborate with the sports science department. “I would say that we’re dot-connectors,” he continues. “We understand the ‘benchtop science’ aspects of physiology, neurobiology and biomechanics, but then we also have the ability to apply that in a field setting. I think that’s what the backbone of sports science should be, can be, and is, in certain instances.”

He has also noticed the wider trend towards generalists in sports science. “We need to have a bit of depth in each domain,” he says, which includes a breadth of ‘soft’ skills allied to a deep practitioner knowledge and, here, Stone sets out four factors for sports science practitioners to consider when developing trust in their craft.

1. It’s not what you say but how you say it

Stone argues that sports scientists have, at times, adopted the wrong approach when entering an organization. “We’re often coming into environments that have been there for a long period of time and, for me, it’s more about creating an environment of openness and a willingness to engage on both sides,” he says. “As long as we have a way we’re going to approach something internally that makes sense to everybody in the room – not just the scientists or the coaches – but it has to make sense to everybody and we work really hard with that. We’re going to make sure that the technology and verbiage we use fits that environment so that people don’t feel like they can’t connect and understand, because then they’re going to be unwilling to say anything. We’re going to be two ships passing in the night instead of getting on land together and making sure we’re taking the next step forward.”

2. Trust comes from listening

Meeting the coach where they’re at – and gaining their confidence in your work as a sports scientist means listening. Stone says: “We can fall into this trap where you think you’ve got to come in and prove your value. ‘I will try to show you how smart I am and show you all the gadgets I have.’ But if you’re in the organization they already value you at some level, right? In my opinion, what creates that confidence in our coaches is my ability to just listen. I want to learn from them regardless of their age, their years in the field or the game. What ends up happening is that they’ll say things that I also see or resonate with. We already mentioned the challenge of the verbiage, the language that is unique to that culture. The ability for the practitioner to learn fast is fundamental and the best way to do that is to listen. Just little things. You get a sense for what they’re describing, and you end up saying ‘Oh yeah, I see the same thing’. That common ground can gain confidence and trust can grow from there.”

3. The importance of repeatability and routine

When it comes to building confidence in a dataset, Stone stresses the importance of routine for everyone involved. “You want to have as much rigor as you can in the field, but there’s a razor’s edge of knowing I can’t control everything,” he says. “It’s not going to be a sterile lab environment, but if we can keep the same repeatable things every single day then we have a higher likelihood of that being reliable over time. Simple things – simple but not always easy – like monitoring. We’re going to monitor at the same time or at least in the same time block every day at certain times of the year, knowing that when we have to switch, then we’re not going to compare morning to afternoon data. Research would support it, anecdotal information that we have in-house would support that too. Working in the United States military, working in college athletics, I can’t remember one place where people didn’t like a schedule. So we’ve tried to leverage that so that what we do fits into their day. It’s not an extra thing that they have to do.”

4. What will deliver the most buy-in?

Pick the item that gains you the most buy-in. “That was the thing when we came in,” says Stone. “We picked the one thing that we were already doing that we could improve, and once we had that dialed in the other pieces could fall into place. Some coaches have that model for skill acquisition; ‘I’m going to start with one cue and one thing a day. We’re going to get really good at that and build upon that foundation.’ It’s the same thing with our scientific approach. Yes, it may not be perfect, and someone from an academic environment would come in and say ‘there’s seven things that aren’t right’. I would suggest that if we can fix one thing that helps three of those take care of themselves and I know that one thing can get more buy-in. I may have a lower confidence level on the validity and reliability of that data upfront, but I can also circle back with some key stakeholders and say early on ‘this is going to be a little bit rough but it gets us into our routines to know that these other three or four things are going to happen down the line.’ That’s what gives me more confidence now because those other things have started to snowball in a positive way where we’re getting to control those simple but not necessarily easy things.”

By Lorena Torres Ronda

Would a diverse environment be something beneficial for you or your organization?

Definitely yes – and it’s not just me saying it.

There is growing support from the scientific community as well as empirical evidence from a range of different fields that diverse work environments are more innovative, creative and rich in productivity.

As Chris Hirst points out in his book No Bullsh*t Leadership, ‘a 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in top quartile for ethnic and radical diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean… Diverse teams outperform those that aren’t.’

It often feels easier said than done, as creating or fostering a work environment rich in diversity requires that we know the sociological foundations of inclusion to really be successful in attaining an effective high performance environment. Firstly, let’s define and clarify some basic concepts.

Diversity means that “everybody is invited to the party” – you hire diversly, regardless of gender, race, skin colour, social background, physical ability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and so forth. But being invited to the party doesn’t automatically mean you feel seen, heard and valued – all characteristics of feeling included – but the ultimate feeling of inclusion is the feeling that you belong. ‘Belonging’ means that you are in an environment where you can be your authentic self and everybody accepts you as you are. In order to foster an environment of belonging, you need to treat people (and be treated) with equity, with fairness, where everybody is given what is necessary to achieve similar or the same results.

Treating people equally (equality) means treating everybody the same, and while it might sound counterintuitive, treating people as individuals – which often means treating them differently – and providing an environment of security and support, where there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity of the members in a certain group, is fair.

A final point on this topic, as I wrote elsewhere, if you were intentional in your efforts to hire, say, female or African American staff but it turns out that those individuals attended the same schools, learned from the same professors and mentors, went to the ‘same book clubs’, or people who surround themselves with people with the same ideas or who will support them in their ideas (people enjoy being reinforced in their own ideas!), probably won’t bring functional, cognitive diversity to a group, but superficial diversity.

Diversity can come from the traits listed above, but also importantly from deep-level diversity: personality, values, abilities or beliefs. These characteristics might be accompanied by challenges and biases that must be taken into account and managed when conflict emerges.

What helps to create an inclusive environment? What is needed? What is the correct strategic approach?

We don’t want it to be a box-ticking exercise. There is increasing awareness that we live in a professionally more globalized world. Today the geographical location is not a barrier, you can find an Australian in America, a European in South America, an American in Asia, and all possible combinations. Finding women in high performance is already more difficult, especially in certain jobs or leadership positions. Unfortunately, the promotion of inclusion of races, gender, sexual orientations or religions in a community traditionally dominated by white males is not a norm yet. And sometimes the driver of diversity is reduced to a box-checking exercise. But if we work in an organization that is going to bet on diversity and innovation, what helps to create those inclusive environments?

An inclusive environment promotes the idea that everybody is heard and we all have a voice. We listen and we learn; and in those conversations there is a room for productive disagreement and free exchange of ideas. But in order to facilitate this, it is imperative to create a trusting and safe place, be open to different approaches, and understand that different people feel safe in different ways.

One exercise one can do, before thinking about tools to approach diversity and create an inclusive environment, is to do an exercise in establishing your awareness of your unconscious bias. What does this mean? Influences from our background, cultural environment and personal experiences we might have can lead to subtle, even unintended (unconscious) judgments. But they are there, they are the product of learned associations, social and cultural conditions. Therefore, practicing being self-aware of those possible biases, and being aware of how our words and actions might affect others, or even raising awareness of others biases, is a first step towards creating an inclusive environment. ‘Practice being an advocate to encourage open, candid, and respectful conversation to develop relationships built on trust. An inclusive leader is self-reflective and attendant to the feelings of others. They’ve also “done the work” – they’ve attuned all manner of different intelligences (gender, cultural, generational) that helps them understand difference’ (ADP, 2022).

Gardenswartz & Rowe, Diverse Teams at Work (2nd Edition, SHRM, 2003). Internal Dimensions and External Dimensions are adapted from Marilyn Loden and Judy Rosener, Workforce America! (Business One Irwin, 1991).

Steps that can be taken to increase the number of female coaches and practitioners

I want to bring to the table something that has happen to me, when applying to a job or even when I had to hire people while working at an NBA franchise. To cite Chris Hirst again, ‘diversity is an undoubtedly desirable outcome, but when considering any individual hire or promotion, you have a duty, even moral responsibility, to hire the best possible person for the role, irrespective of who they are’. I have used almost the same exact words with my supervisor when expressing doubts about three candidates for a specific position, an argument that can be perceived as a less diverse team. On the one hand, we want the best candidate possible, and on the other hand, how are we ever going to get jobs that have been traditionally held by white males if we are never going to be given or give the first chance?! How do we know if a woman can be head coach in the NBA, or the performance director in a LaLiga team, if no one is given a chance to any women?! Of course we don’t have the experience – it’s almost impossible to obtain the experience! And the few that are sometimes afforded that opportunity face the pressure to excel, which is fair in itself, but are we being treated and evaluated as fairly as our male peers? How can we increase the number of female coaches or practitioners? Just give them the chance! And then, create an environment of fairness, and protect that environment, leaders, management, and staff. And the elephant in the room: remove those who are in the way and are the biggest barrier to change. Eliminate nostalgia from your organization. Make decisions to promote a diverse and inclusive workplace. Period.

How can teams better understand the atmosphere within teams – what data or feedback can you collect? Focus groups? One-to-ones?

I read the following in a book, and I thought ‘well, I wish my former supervisor, an apparent leadership expert, had read this sooner’. It read: ‘what you need to achieve change is for every member of your audience (AKA staff) to spend ABSOLUTELY NO TIME AT ALL thinking about how others need to change and to think only of the change they themselves will make’. I have experienced myself the huge damage that can be inflicted when people are given the opportunity to anonymously rate your colleagues. Rather than that, work to promote safe environments for having difficult conversations if needed. This enables everyone to be clear on what everybody else needs to do better.

Behavioral change happens when the individual grasps the need for them to change, and understands the benefit of that change. It is true that change is a challenge for most people; getting out of our comfort zone, the feeling of losing power or even fear of what might come, the feeling of being threatened by others’ success (huge in our sector!) – all are barriers to overcome on the path to future team success. Rather than allowing themselves to be inspired by others, some people puts barriers to new forms of thinking and behaving. If you are brave at heart, embrace the change rather than fear it. If you are able to adapt to challenging personalities, such as some players and coaches, why not be open to promoting diversity for the greater good of your team or your organization?

Lorena is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.

By John Portch

Phil Church is the Senior Professional Game Coach Development Lead at England Football Learning, which oversees the Football Association’s [FA] education pathways for youth and senior coach development and technical director development.

It was a role the Leaders Performance Institute asked him about in a recent edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“Our mission statement is probably a good place to start,” said Church, “and it’s to increase the number of English-qualified leaders, which is managers, coaches and technical directors, working at the highest levels of the game.”

We spoke at length about the FA’s suite of programmes and courses as it works towards fulfilling England Football Learning’s mission statement.

Attention then turns to Church’s strengths as a leader.

“Have you read the book Range?” he asks. The Leaders Performance Institute responds in affirmation having read David Epstein’s book in preparation for his presentation at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Atlanta.

Epstein makes the case for an extensive sampling period for all youngsters who play sport. To make his case he cites 18-time tennis grand slam champion Roger Federer, who played a range of sports in his youth and brought those skillsets from other sports to his game as a tennis player when he settled on a career in tennis.

“I think I’m the expert generalist,” says Church, who goes on to explain himself in greater detail.

What do you regard as your greatest strength?

PC: I think my greatest strength comes in two parts. It’s my experience throughout the last 25 years because it’s varied, and lots of people have varied experiences, so I think I know a lot of things about a lot of things. I started working in community football and I loved it; I had to work with key stakeholders, the youth offending teams. I ran an inclusion, employment and training programme for West Ham United. And that exposed me to some fantastic people, some brilliant work, and it wasn’t about football, it was about trying to help some young people get through some stuff. There was some brilliant stuff around that. I was at the PFA [Professional Footballers’ Association] as a coach developer, working for the players’ union, I’ve worked in clubs as the head of coaching and had work around the youth team and the senior game areas and now I’m leading a team at the FA. So my experience is a part of it. And then I think I have a good level of communication, so I think I can impart information and reason. I suppose communication and influence would probably be the part I’d link into that, where I think I can add impact.

What strength do you admire most in others?

PC: Resilience, I think. I use a quote quite often and I said it to my daughter a few weeks ago: ‘You’re only limited by courage, tenacity and vision’. And I believe that. There’s some brilliant people doing some amazing things and life throws lots of challenges at you and sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s good; and that tenacity is linked to the pitfalls you have and successes you have too – sometimes they are hard to deal with – so I think the level of resilience; some of the things that people go through, some of the stories of people who were in the Commonwealth Games or the Women’s Euros. Some of the journeys they’ve had and the way they’ve moved through those is fantastic.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

PC: Trust is at the heart of it. And ‘trust’ is just one word. But underneath the trust comes a whole layer of time, relationship-building, competence. And you get trust in different ways. You get trust from being good at something, you get trust from being consistent, behaving in certain ways all the time, you get trust from modelling good behaviour, you get trust from doing what you say you’ll do, which isn’t always as common as you might hope it would be in the world. So underneath trust, there’s so many facets that if you’ve got it, it’s strong. It’s easy to lose, and you can lose it really quickly. It takes a long time to get but it’s easy to lose quickly. But if you’ve got trust you can achieve lots of things with lots of people.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

PC: I’m always looking to learn from other people. I am very fortunate to be able to work with and alongside lots of fantastic people from diverse backgrounds, from different lenses, with different skillsets. Partly for me it’s intentional. So I’m driven by developing high performance, developing strong cultures, by helping to develop people, and within that space it allows me to get access to some unbelievable people who are doing some fantastic things. I’ve got that passion for developing and improving and I’ve got loads of people around me who I think are magnificent. Part of it is probably the self-reflection bit. So I’m around it a lot, I see it a lot, and I’m working out how I can apply part of that to myself is probably key.

Listen to the full interview with Phil Church below:

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By Luke Whitworth & Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

High Performance Environments – What the Research Is Telling Us

Performance Thinking: Understanding How you Learn, Unlearn and Deliver

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

Framing the topic

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

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

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

 Discussion points

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

Attendee takeaways

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

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

By John Portch

• Look for those individuals who can embody the values and cultural norms you are seeking to instil.

• Support your people and their families.

• When your culture can be clearly defined, it will become self-selecting.

Find those who know what it takes to win

In the early days of the Brooklyn Nets’ continuing rebuild under General Manager Sean Marks, he sought to bring in talents from organisations with a proven performance pedigree. The headliners were the likes of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, but it extended to the performance staff and beyond. As Marks told an audience at 2020’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Total High Performance Summit, the Nets needed to know what it takes to win. He said: “When you bring in the likes of Kyrie and Kevin, it was a matter of sitting down with them, learning what do they want to see, how do they want to grow. What do they need and what are they looking for in a successful operation?” Both were forthcoming. “Kevin said right off the bat ‘this organisation needs to have championship characteristics in everything we do’. That is one of our tenets here that we constantly talk about to this day, whether that’s how we scout, how we conduct our reports, conduct ourselves both on and off the court; and this goes for players and staff.”

Opine and share, disagree and commit

Cultural architects come in all guises and Marks has brought together a disparate group on and off the court. “I like the fact that I’m bringing in people whether it’s from baseball or all walks of life in terms of computer programmers; a group of coaches that are coming from a variety of different backgrounds too,” he said, mindful that it is these people who continue to shape the Nets’ culture. “Multiple have been head coaches before; some haven’t, some have been in developing systems, some have been key development coaches and some of the best in the business.” Marks sets himself up as Devil’s advocate and weighs up divergent views before deciding the best course of action. Everyone can have their say but they must respect his final decision. “The worst thing you can have is people behind closed doors saying ‘I wish I was involved’ or ‘I didn’t have a say in that decision’ or ‘man, I disagree with that decision’,” Marks added. “Nobody’s allowed to disagree once we’ve already committed. Once we’ve committed we’re all in and that’s the type of environment that I’d like to be part of.

We are family

Marks understands that the Nets’ culture is continuously being reshaped by the players and staff. He described them as the team’s “No 1 priority”. Moreover, people need to be free to focus on the day job knowing that their families and loved ones are provided for and supported while they are away. Marks said: “Right from the get-go we like to make them feel like they are family – like they are in the Brooklyn Nets family.” He acknowledges how much people have sacrificed to commit to the Brooklyn rebuild. “Nothing goes awry here. We wouldn’t want them left to their own devices; it’s a big city, it can be a little daunting. Where do you find a place to live, whether it’s nurseries or restaurants; you name it, but things are catered for [to] these players and staff so they come in here and they’re able to assimilate into Brooklyn and the Nets, hopefully as seamlessly as possible.”

Strong cultures are self-selecting

When a culture’s values and norms are defined, those who cannot conform tend to take themselves out of the equation. “You can’t have a metric system to say ‘this person is bought in and this person isn’t’,” said Marks. “Honestly, if you’ve built the right culture and continue to have the right people around it weeds itself out. I know that’s strange to say but I’ve had a few people over the course of the time here just say, ‘look, you guys are moving at a pace that I can’t handle. I’d love to say that I want to own this and be part of this, there’s great things ahead, but, to be honest, I’m not cut for this – you can do better’. When people come to me and say that, terrific, there’s better things on the horizon, whether it suits their families or their livelihoods, terrific. I don’t think I always need to be the one to say ‘I don’t think that person’s bought-in’ or ‘I don’t think they’re a high riser or a high flyer’.”

By Sarah Evans

• Wellbeing and resilience sit front and centre

• Communicate with care

• Plan, do, review

1. Be sure to understand and value the individual

There is a growing awareness across all sports that wellbeing and resilience play a key role in the achievement and sustainment of success. Dan Lewindon, Head of Performance Science and Medicine at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA], explained in our Virtual Leaders Meet in 2020, that in fact, wellbeing and resilience “sit front and centre in our discussions about our athletes and in our conversations with them.” It is critical to understand the individual as a whole, their abilities, their drivers, and take the time to understand their individual backgrounds and experiences that make them who they are. Lewindon also highlighted that individually tailoring the approach to each athlete is crucial and “our understanding of their context is key in building a relationship of trust and ultimately influence.”

2. Shape your environment and communication

There has been an explosion in specialism within sports science which has created the opportunity for dedicated expertise and diverse thinking in how you solve problems. However, Lewindon warned that this could lead to silo thinking and unnecessary noise. He explained how it is critical to filter these into a system that is clear and cohesive, with an integrated approach in a “structured and safe environment where stake holders and support staff can share their views and feel valued for doing so.” If this is done right it creates real clarity for the athlete, and reduces unnecessary noise and distraction. Lewindon also highlighted how imperative it is to communicate with care: “don’t use overly technical or medical language with the athletes, do what is best for them, not for you”. The trust that staff members create, the genuine connection they have with the athletes, and communication they use, can have a huge impact on the performance outcome.

3. Have a clear plan and processes

Lewindon stated how important it is to understand how to support the athlete, and how to shape the training environment and programme, in order to go after the priorities needed for performance. You must make it crystal clear to the athlete how everything aligns, be that testing, monitoring or training techniques. “It is important the athletes and coaches understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ this is going to impact their performance,” said Lewindon. This understanding then provides the confidence and clarity needed in order to push forwards. “The individual development plans that are successful are those which are genuinely owned by the athlete” he added. The athletes are part of the conversation, process and it is written in their language. Finally, the review process is critical, it is not something that you just make once and then never look at again. “Plan, do, review, regularly,” said Lewindon. It takes real time and effort to do, but it is crucial to take time to both look back and to plan ahead.

By Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

Selecting and Training Elite Performers in the Special Operations Command

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

How a Coach Can Begin to Improve their Communication Skills

Framing the topic

In this Member Case Study format of our Virtual Roundtables, Rachel Vickery, one of our Performance Advisors and expert in human behaviour and performance, spoke about communicating effectively in highly pressurised environments. Rachel specialises in working within high pressure, high stakes environments, and looks to understand what happens to high performers within these situations from the perspective of the human stress response, and how this shows up, and impacts performance.

One thing Vickery was keen to stress to start with, is that irrespective of the arena of performance, whether it be a team sport, individual, or not even sport-related, a common factor is the human stress response. It is primal, survival-driven, and we all have it.

Consequences of the human stress response on communication​

• Part of the natural stress response is humans become more withdrawn, defensive, ‘me’-focused, hear feedback as criticism or as an attack, blame orientated; ‘our stuff flies out sideways at others.​
• Body language will also change. Mammals in nature under threat make themselves look bigger to look more threatening, increase tension in face, neck and jaw, breathing lifts into upper chest. ​We do the same, and it is often subconscious.

​Your body language and ‘vibe’ will impact those around you  ​

• The strongest energy will determine the vibe. Sometimes that’s not a good thing. Teams will model the behaviour of coaches and leaders within the team, so it’s important to recognise the energy leaders in the team are giving out.
• Emotionally intelligent leaders need to set the energy through their communication.  Learn to control your state. g.sideline coach or coach’s box. Making the players feel calm, reassured and centred.
• It is important to understand the energy you as a leader bring to any interactions. If you are stressed, how does this present in your body language? If there is a breakdown in communication, think to yourself, ‘am I bringing something into this interaction?’
• Understand how you show up under pressure. Notice what is happening in your body, can you be aware of it and try to put things in place to adapt? Practise this in low threat / low pressure environments.​

Keep the performance critique to the hot wash  ​

• In the heat of the moment, verbal input needs to be forward-moving, using action-orientated language, not abusive or blaming.​ Criticism here is not helpful, the athlete is not thinking rationally and needs action orientated communication.
• After the game you can pull the performance apart and go into detail, because there is the time and space to do so.

The trust you need in the pressure moment is earned away from pressure  ​

• Are you someone who builds others up, brings out the best in them and sets them up for success?  ​
• Or do you let your ‘stuff’ fly out sideways at others?​
• If you are volatile and other’s don’t know how you are going to act, the athlete might anticipate your reaction and operate from a sense of fear rather than belonging. If they operate from a place of fear, they are more likely to tense up and make more mistakes.
• The athlete needs to know in that critical moment that you have their back to give them the freedom to perform to their best.

Self-communication​

• Self-talk needs to be true if it’s to be effective.  ​
• False self-talk undermines your confidence as your brain knows you’re lying.​ The self-talk needs to be accurate. If it is true and it is earnt that is when you will feel confident.
• If the self-talk is action-focused and forward-moving, that can be the most effective. One example from Dan Caine, Director of Special Teams for the US military was to ‘stay frosty’, meaning to stay calm, which is a great way of centring and focusing on the job at hand.

The main overarching point Vickery stressed was that in pressure moments, most people need to feel like someone has their back, that someone believes in them, and their performance is part of something bigger than themselves.​ If, as leaders you can instil this into the players and create that trust away from the pressure, you will be able to build a deep connection and work effectively under stress.

Attendee takeaways

• The importance of de-escalation techniques: body language and breathing.
• Grow your people as the person not just the performer. I also love the action-oriented language idea – it will keep me ‘present’.
• Continue to work on your own reactivity.
• The trust that you need is earned away from the pressure moment.
• Understanding that pressure is easily transferred, so have clear strategies to cope and de-escalate.
• Earning trust away from the pressure environment.
• Spend time to self-reflect but also within your group spend time to ensure alignment of message and reviewing current strategies.
• Immediate, calm and forward-moving talk.
• The strongest energy in the room is going to determine the vibe of the team – how can we leverage that as leaders?
• How to use your body language to calm and diffuse a reactive environment.
• Do the prep work around communication away from a high pressure context.
• How do you deal with the moments that catch you off guard? They often are the moments that can earn or lose respect and trust.
• Do we have consideration and agreement on the ‘vibe’ we want e.g. calm or high energy in the changing room?
• Once we’ve considered education and application of these strategies, how do we maintain it?
• Practise techniques with those close to you to see responses in order to develop your own communication and body language to have the positive impact you want.
• Build trust and know your people; being prepared helps in dealing with difficult situations. Self-awareness.
• How can I create opportunities for our staff teams to reflect and build self-awareness more regularly around their own energy and the impact of that on the groups they interact with?
• Self-talk needs to be true if it’s to be effective; building a barrier of confidence for ‘game-day’.

Man’s Search for Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust by Viktor Frankl

McFarland says: “This book really touched me emotionally and I read it at a time in my life where learning the importance of having a meaningful purpose and diving headlong into living that purpose was critical.”

Mindset: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential by Carol Dweck

McFarland says: “Understanding the basis of growth and learning as the willingness to challenge yourself and that that is a great thing.”

More on Mindset here.

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My philosophy of leadership by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison & Craig Walsh

McFarland says: “I am not sure that I am at all the kind of coach the great Bill Walsh was but I loved the detail and accountability he developed in the setting up of the 49ers machine.”

More on The Score Takes Care of Itself here.

Eleven Rings: The soul of success by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

McFarland says: “Phil Jackson totally understood how important context is to leadership. He demonstrates empathy in equal measure to strong decision making.”

More on Phil Jackson here.

Team of Teams: New rules of engagement for a complex world by General Stanley McChrystal

McFarland says: “McChrystal was able to see the need for change within the military operating systems in modern warfare. He implemented change from traditional military hierarchy to distributed leadership – this level of change in conceptual thinking is mind-blowing to me.”

More from the McChrystal Group here.