By John Portch

Jarrad Butler, the flanker who captains United Championship Side Connacht Rugby in western Ireland, recalls the time when, as a young professional, his senior teammates left him “rattled”.

He was on the cusp of his 21^st birthday, in 2012, when he joined the Queensland Reds on a short-term contract to help cover for a recent spate of injuries.

Leadership was not on his mind at the time. “When I was at the Reds, early doors, it was kind of hard to say because when you’re just fresh out of school and you’re just kind of getting in there you don’t really see what’s going on behind-the-scenes as much,” Butler told an audience at Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership in June 2021. “You don’t really see the conversations that are being had, you just kind of see what’s happening on the field, and I’m just wondering around trying to do my job, do it really well.”

The Reds had won the Super Rugby title the previous season and the training sessions were an eye-opener for the young Butler. “I remember some guys that were maybe my age now getting into me about something that I might’ve done on the training field and just how much that rattled me a little bit as well,” he continued.

“It’s one of those things where I reflect on it and [tell myself]: ‘actually, I think I did the right thing there, but what could I have done better?’ and then maybe have a conversation after the training session and kind of tease out what happened and get a positive from it.

Butler tries to bring this dynamic to his interactions as Connacht captain, a role he has held since 2018. “It’s one of those things where you don’t really notice at the time until you’re reflecting on it,” he added.

The scenario is familiar to session moderator Dan Jackson, the Leadership Development Manager at the AFL’s Adelaide Football Club. Of Adelaide, he said: “We talk about this model of care and candour, if you criticise people all the time and you’re just ruthless, then, yeah, you’re driving standards but people eventually are just going to turn a shoulder on you because they know that there’s no love there, but [after] showing that care and making sure there’s a standard of love, then you can be as candid as you need, because then it’s a gift rather than a slap.”

Two years later, in 2014, Butler joined the Canberra-based Brumbies, where he briefly played alongside the team’s captain, Ben Mowen. Butler described Mowen as a mentor, someone who was able to drive standards, while also being able to put the proverbial arm around a player’s shoulder.

“He just kind of nailed it somewhere in the middle,” said Butler. “I think that first and foremost, is he was just a really good guy, as he was someone that would come down to Canberra and he would help you move into your place and he would want to have a coffee with you, and, you know, that’s crazy when you’re 21 years old, you’re the new guy there and you have this guy wanting to genuinely meet you and be a friend.

“But then when he got onto the field, he was an animal and he was ruthless on the field, performed at a consistently high level. So being able to find that balance there I think was the most interesting for me, and seeing that there’s not just one way to skin a cat.”

Relationships enable difficult conversations

Joining Butler and Jackson is Adelaide captain and midfielder Rory Sloane. At the time, Sloane was in his third season as captain (including one as joint-captain alongside Taylor Walker) as the Crows embarked on a rebuilding project to restore the club to AFL prominence.

Sloane had fewer concerns about his on-field captaincy than he did his off-field abilities. “Off-field stuff has always been my challenge absolutely – that’s something that I’ve always had to work on massively over the years,” he said. “I wasn’t someone that loved confrontation at all, and that’s where I worked really hard over the years just on my relationships with people to be able to then have those conversations.”

He cites the influence of renowned American leadership specialist Brené Brown. “There was something she said: ‘Sit next to someone when you’re having those conversations rather than across’; because I reckon I used to always come across very aggressively, so sitting next to someone was something that really helped me just have those conversations.”

It is an attitude that Jackson promotes around the Crows’ enviroment. “We’ve spent a lot of time talking about connection, and it’s a theme I keep seeing across elite sport, and also across corporate organisations – great cultures are built on connection,” he said.

Sloane readily admitted that results were not good enough at the time, and the Crows remain a work in progress (Sloane himself suffered an ACL injury in April), but he explained to the virtual audience that it was important to get things back on track through building those team bonds.

“We finished on the bottom of the ladder last year [2020], for the first time at the club and, in my first year as captain that stung massively,” he said. “And we got some feedback from guys in our football club, in our leadership, where we [felt we had] lost our way, our identity as a football club, where everyone used to know that we trained hard and we had this ruthless edge as a footy club.”

The players convened, in their own free time during the off-season – Covid restrictions at the time prevented interstate and overseas travel – and trained three or four times per week. It consisted of activities such as practice games, Pilates, and boxing sessions. “We look for opportunities to be together,” he continued. “It’s everything that comes into that connection whether it be [socialising] or something as simple as [listening to] music.”

Jackson sheepishly commended Sloane for his work on himself as a leader, for accepting that he did not automatically know how to manage difficult conversations with teammates. “You’re humble in this space, Rory, and I know you keep accounts of when you’ve chatted to your teammates – and you’re not running an Excel spreadsheet – but you’re checking in with guys you haven’t checked in with in a while, just calling or sending a text and making sure they know that you care so that you can have those hard conversations.”

Butler is of a similar mindset and drew parallels between his time at the Brumbies and his current tenure at Connacht, where he arrived in 2017. Both are clubs based in relatively remote parts of the country, with smaller populations, and founded by their respective federations as ‘development’ teams – a home for players who were not as highly sought after by other teams but who retained significant potential. Yet the Brumbies are Australia’s most successful team in Super Rugby and Connacht were a particularly tough proposition for most opponents long before their 2015-16 PRO12 title.

He said: “You’re usually a bit further away from your family, you get better connection with each other just off the bat because you’re all there for the same reason – you’re there because you’re trying to prove people wrong. Maybe you have a little chip on your shoulder; and I’ve found that being on the other side of that, when you actually know somebody you get a better connection with them. It makes it easier to have those hard conversations.”

Player power

Both Butler and Sloane speak of leadership groups drawn from their playing groups. In Connacht’s case, it consisted of eight players; in Adelaide’s, five. Beyond their responsibilities for driving standards and behaviours, theirs is a vital role in ensuring learning and development of understanding because there are times when a coach’s impact can be limited.

“It’s one of those things where you’re in a meeting and you’re getting – you know, the defence coach comes up, the head coach, and they’re showing clips and clips and clips – it’s easy for things to get watered down,” said Butler.

“For the main session, we [often] get one of the players, usually one of the leaders, early on they would do the review of the session, and they would come up with the clips. This year, it’s been a little harder to have these meetings with Covid, but still, coming up with clips and sending them out because we’ve found that when you’re getting told by your peers, when they’re highlighting something I think it holds more weight than when you’re getting it from a coach for whatever reason.”

The impact of your peers can be multifaceted, as Sloane illustrated when discussing the culture that was developing under Adelaide’s Senior Coach Matthew Nicks, who took the team’s reins in 2020. “His whole philosophy around football is: how can you help someone else there?” said Sloane. “And that’s not just around football, that’s around life as well, and I think that’s the biggest shift in mentality I’ve seen in our players.”

Jackson encouraged the team to celebrate those moments of selflessness, which quickly became part of the Adelaide routine. “It’s literally nothing special,” said Sloane. “We’ve had a couple of sessions this year and, at the end of the year, we might recognise a few guys for what they’ve done to prioritise someone else. It literally just became something that’s picked up by other players now, and we’ve noticed it, and I think it’s something that’s starting to become infectious.

“I’ve spoken to DJ [Jackson] about this, [and the important thing] is actually to just reward someone for something that you’ve seen and making sure you’re still instilling those habits, because, yeah, if it goes unnoticed then at times it may not become engrained, so that’s something that I think goes down incredibly well.”

He asked Jackson to elaborate and the Adelaide Leadership Development Manager provided an apt summary.

“Anyone involved in elite sport knows that you can’t get to the elite level without systems,” he said. “I mean building in routines that become habits and then those habits just become natural, and that’s something that you guys are leading impeccably as a team.”

In partnership with

By Matthew Stone

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

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

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

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

The neurobiology of creativity

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

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

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

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

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

How can we be more creative?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key takeaways

Creativity is trainable when we:

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

Questions from the audience

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

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

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

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

Session 2: Creativity & Collaboration Pt 2: Leading Innovation

Speaker: Tim Cox, Managing Director, Management Futures

Rivers of thought

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

Five key skills of innovation

1. Step change thinking

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

2. Ideal world

• In an ideal world what would be happening?

Assuming we can’t do that…

• How could we replicate that in another way?

3. Redefining or reframing the problem

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

4. Related world

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

5. Mind mapping

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

Group challenges

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

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

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

2. How do we bring continuity across different locations?

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

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

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

4. Cognitive training & evaluation within high performance

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

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

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

Innovation and collaboration at the New York Giants

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

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

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

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

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

Inclusion allows for credible diversity

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

Find the same wavelength as your athletes

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

Learning from lived experience

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

By Sarah Evans

• Listen to those in your organisation / sport

• Understand how people feel

• Use data to prove a performance benefit

Data collection is key in understanding where you truly are

In order to build an ED&I strategy it is critical to truly understand where you currently are and what measures need to be brought in. This was something that was brought up time and time again by our members, and is the starting point for influencing ED&I in many high performing environments. One Premier League Football club emphasised the importance of having focus groups, so they could understand how people within their team were feeling and how they could support them further. They also conducted exit interviews which helped them to really understand unconscious biases. Data collection also isn’t just something you do to start the ED&I strategy, you need to constantly check and assess how you are tracking. The same Premier League club explained how they conduct annual surveys but also they break down the data from the survey by area and demographic so they have the most in-depth data and can be really targeted with their actions moving forwards.

Using data to prove a performance benefit

Within tennis, one organisation conducted some research which identified that within the performance coaches, only 12% were female. In the first instance the data was able to give them an accurate picture of the landscape of coaching, but then they thought, ‘what is the performance benefit of having a diverse coaching staff?’ They then conducted further research and interviewed every female player who passed through their doors in the last 20 years and found that 72% of them were strongly influenced by a female mentor. By collecting this data, they had evidence proving the performance benefit of a diverse workforce and this evidence actually helped secure more funding for the organisation.

Focus on inclusion before diversity

One insight which several teams, including those in cricket and football, highlighted was that attracting diverse talent means nothing if you don’t have an inclusive culture. The teams explained that through utilising data and gathering feedback, they found that the diverse talent that they were trying so hard to attract, would often leave soon after arriving because the environment wasn’t inclusive. Therefore, if teams and organisations can work in the first instance to understand how to foster an inclusive environment where everyone feels comfortable to be their authentic selves, when they then diversify, they are more likely to maintain a diverse workforce and get the best out of everyone.

What to do when the data pool isn’t diverse

One interesting challenge highlighted by a leading UK governing body, was how to utilise data collection when traditionally data has been from the same groups, and posing the question ‘does collecting this type of data help?’ It is a challenge to understand what data need to be collected and how to effectively utilise that information. However, they again explained that they are engaging in focus groups to help better understand what data would be beneficial for the sport, and how best to use it moving forwards.

By Sarah Evans

• Champions cannot stand still

• Understand your opponents

• Prepare for the future

Set targets, and redefine them

It is widely known that setting targets is key in order to achieve, however, Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team, stressed the importance of redefining these targets in order to ensure longevity of success, when we spoke with him back in 2016. Mercedes had just won back to back F1 drivers’ and constructors’ world championships. They have since gone on to claim a further five drivers’ and six constructors’ titles. Wolff explained that at the start of each season, all of the senior staff members take 48 hours offsite together to redefine their objectives. He said: “we look at our values, our mission and our visions, we look at the functionality of the organisation and we come out with a list of objectives for the coming season, both personal and team objectives.” Wolff highlighted that underpinning this was the necessity to manage their talent and reinvent the organisation without destroying what they already have today. “What we try to achieve now is to maintain our status as the team to beat,” he continued.

Use your opponents as motivation

Wolff instils a philosophy amongst the senior leaders and filters it through the organization, that they must focus on their counter parts in opposing teams and ensure they are out performing them. “Each of us has an opposite number at Ferrari or Red Bull and if each of us does a better job than our opposite number then the collective result is going to be better,” said Wolff. He provided an anecdote about how one of his senior managers has taken this philosophy one step further. “One of our senior managers has a picture of his opposite number from a rival team stuck to the wall next to his desk. Every time he looks up from his desk he faces a big A4 printout… and he knows exactly who he needs to beat and already has the strategy to get there because the target is set.”

The moment you become comfortable, its time to move on

Wolff is focused on succession planning for the next generation of senior management and is constantly looking ahead. He asks: “How do you see the next generation of leaders after yourself? You have great coaches and leaders in the team now but what happens in five years?” Wolff believes that teams should build capability beyond their leaders, because the goal is for the team to continue to succeed once they’ve moved on. “Your legacy should be a structure that rolls. The wheel turns because you have built that capability,” he stated. Good senior leaders understand their time will come to move on to another position. It is something that’s very difficult especially if you’ve got a good role, you are well paid and you are having success. Wolff added: “you want to hold onto it, you want to stay there in that comfortable place. But the moment it becomes a comfortable place, it’s time for someone else to take over.”

Maintaining a ‘disruptive edge’

Here, Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid, the Assistant Academy Director at Premier League club Southampton, shares his thoughts on Wolff’s approach at Mercedes:

The approach Toto Wolff describes in the article reminds me of the insights Radically Traditional disclosed following their research into organisations who have enjoyed sustained success. Specifically, the seven organisations (including the All Blacks and NASA) were distinguished by the headline features of a stable core and disruptive edge. The commitment to regular reviews appears to provide Toto and his team the opportunity to celebrate and maintain their unique features (i.e., a stable core) whilst inviting opportunities for innovation (i.e., a disruptive edge).

Protecting time in a fast-paced and dynamic environment to conduct reviews and develop succession plans is vital. In my experience, a comprehensive review can often generate new and exciting work streams that help extend an individual’s comfort zone, whilst simultaneously strengthening staff succession plans.

By Sarah Evans

• Understand your core values and stick to them

• Clarity and alignment from everyone is key

• Improvement requires change, and change requires action

A mixture of continuity and adaptation is key for sustained success

Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Principal of the INEOS Grenadiers (formerly Team Sky and Team INEOS), shared with our audience at the 2017 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, how Team Sky first operated and how they became one of the most dominant teams in world cycling. “You can’t be a selection of people doing something in isolation, you have to have certain values and continuity to have sustained success over years and years,” said Brailsford. Right at the inception of Team Sky, the staff sat together and asked ‘what do we want to be about?’ and they realised that in order to succeed they needed to be able to adapt to the ever changing environment but also needed a few anchors and values to stick to through thick and thin. Team Sky, Brailsford added, had a line as a symbol for the team, and it signified continuity, but as he explained, “you’re never dealing with the same problem, it changes all the time and you have to recognise that and adapt.”

Success lies in planning

Everyone in sport, and life, knows that planning is a crucial part of success, with the old saying, ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’. However, Brailsford highlights that it isn’t the plan itself that is critical, it’s the planning process, and that “it is the discussions that are crucial.” He expects every one of his staff to have a professional opinion, as he always looks to work from the consensus, and only when this isn’t possible, will he arbitrate. It is important they always understand why, the power is in those discussions, and the team have all been involved in the creation of the plan. This planning is for the overall strategy, but also goes into the minute detail for every rider. “The more you have clarity and alignment, it isn’t that hard to deliver the performance, it’s when there isn’t clarity and alignment and you take a one-size-fits-all approach to every rider, it fails,” stated Brailsford.

Improvement requires change

It is one thing being successful, but a much harder task to be able to sustain that over many years. “If you do the same thing you’re going to go backwards,” explained Brailsford, “all of your competition will be looking to beat you and to improve, so you can’t just do what you did to be successful the first time round, you have to adapt and continually improve. Brailsford stated that the “difference between good and great is someone who does something.” Change requires action, and the people who win and make a difference are the people who do. “The people in Team Sky can be bothered to do the things that maybe people in other teams can’t be bothered to do, and that makes the difference,” said Brailsford. “Improvement requires change, but the problem is not all change equals improvement.” It can be very tempting to change things for change’s sake, so you have to be deliberate about it. You have to understand what interventions are going to give you the greatest reward and do a couple each season. “Being excellent at the simple things is the key to winning,” highlighted Brailsford. If you start to do too much with things which occur on the periphery, you miss the basics, which will be a disaster. You need small scale actionable improvements over time – the ‘marginal gains’ which Brailsford has become so well known for. Finally, he added: “It is all about action, talk about it and do it. It might not work, but at least you know. We don’t wait, we’re first.”

Fuelling the incessant demand for the new

The Leaders Performance Institute reviewed the session in tandem with Leaders Performance Advisor David Fletcher, the Senior Lecturer in Performance Psychology at Loughborough University, who shared his views on the topic of sustained success.

David, do Dave Brailsford’s words still ring true?

A universal truth apparent throughout Dave’s comments is that sport at the highest level is characterised by fierce competition and winning by small margins. Underpinning success in elite sport is the ability to continually raise performance to higher levels. In essence, those who are able to enhance performance sooner, to a greater extent, and/or on a more sustainable basis than the opposition are victorious. This results in goals and standards moving onwards and upwards, which in turn fuels an incessant demand to find new means and methods to stay ahead of the performance curve. It is clear that, as a leader in elite sport, Dave is – and has to be – very focused on what it takes to attain and sustain the highest levels of performance in elite cycling.

How do you feel this space is evolving in sport?

There are two things that I think are particularly fascinating about the innovation required to stay ahead of the performance curve in elite sport. The first is how best to harmonise the latest advances in sports science and medicine together with the art of high-performance coaching whilst remaining sensitive to the uniqueness of every training and competition context. I believe that the best leaders and teams are those who are able to work together to capitalise on each other’s strengthens whilst developing areas for improvement, regardless of whether they are the ‘simple basics’, ‘marginal gains’, or more sophisticated technologically-based advances – it all counts toward staying at the top. The second area relates to the increasing awareness that winning should not come at all costs. Following concerns about the price that some athletes are willing to pay in their pursuit of excellence and about the lengths that some coaches will go to drive their teams toward victory, there is a recognition and desire to find more ethical ways of attaining and sustaining high performance whilst maintaining and enhancing wellbeing. As a consequence, striving for high performance and holistic health has rightly become the focus of most modern day leaders and coaches in elite sport.

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

• Pushing the players hard every day is not sustainable

• Open, honest and respectful conversations are crucial for successful culture

• Player empowerment is important but the coach must take ultimate responsibility

High performance environments are all about balance

Clubs and people are often judged heavily on whether they win or lose, and of course winning is every team’s goal, but the context for each team, and opportunities they might have are so different, explained Chris Scott, Senior Coach of the Geelong Cats in the Australian Football League, at our Sport Performance Summit in Charlotte back in 2020. “We focus in too much on standards, it’s important, but only one part of the high performance environment” stated Scott when delving deeper into what makes a successful team environment. He emphasised that if you only look to drive standards in training, then you miss out on some other crucial aspects which make up a winning team such as psychological safety, wellbeing and most importantly enjoying playing the sport. “You need to be really clear on when to push, but it needs to be balanced off with the work outside of those hard periods,” he added. If the players are dreading turning up to training every day, you’re not going to get the best out of them, and pushing them hard constantly, is an unsustainable model.

When to prioritise the future over short-term success

One of Scott’s biggest strengths is his ability to collaborate with a large group of staff and players. This skill is crucial when dealing with a wide range of players, with many being only 17 years old, to those in their mid-30s approaching the end of their careers. Being able to provide messaging and alignment for that broad spectrum of players is a key attribute for a successful coach. One of Scott’s first priorities was to “embrace change, and transition young players into the team.” However, when bringing in youth, you need to have older players move on, and managing those transitions can be very challenging. Scott emphasised that it is crucial to articulate that plan to the wider squad and make it very clear to the older players “they weren’t just going to be thrown on the scrap heap.” It is so important to give the older players the respect they deserve and manage the transition effectively, so the team can be successful both in the short and long term. How this transition is managed also has a huge effect on the mid-range players, and their perception of how they will be treated when they come towards the end of their careers. So having these conversations in a really open, honest and respectful way is key.

When to empower the players and when to use your expertise as a coach

Player empowerment as a concept has grown more and more popular as a coaching method, and numerous teams see great success when it is adopted. However, Scott explains that how and when you empower your players can be crucial, and also how the context of your own environments play a big role in this. “Fundamentally I work for the players as a coach, so what they believe is best for their performance is of paramount importance,” said Scott. But, he caveated this with saying that ultimately the coach needs to take the final responsibility and had to set the overall principles by which the team is aligned. It also depends on the make up of the team. If you have a squad who are very individual and you give too much responsibility to the whole squad, the result will be people pulling in different directions and no cohesion. Scott explained that the most effective way to marry player empowerment with cohesion was to “make sure the views of the most influential players are congruent to the ways the senior leadership want to lead the club”. Finally, understanding when to empower the players and ask for their feedback and when to take the lead and use your own expertise as a coach is critical to success.

By Sarah Evans

• Reconnect with your roots.

• Align to a bigger purpose.

• Empower and trust the athletes to make decisions.

Reconnect the playing group with the club’s history

Quins were languishing in sixth place in the Premiership in January 2021 and were without a head coaching figure. Six months later, their player-led squad were champions and this season reached the semi-finals again. The club’s Head of Rugby Performance Billy Millard took the reins and would hand control back to the playing group. Before that, he needed to restore confidence and re-establish a sense of purpose. He understood the need for the team to go back to their roots, to understand their history and culture. “Quins have always been entertainers, that’s why we’re ‘the Jesters’, and we had to tap back into that,” Millard told an audience at the 2021 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. The team created a clear vision which underpins everything they do, and means they are all aligned and striving for a greater purpose. They understand their history and what it means to play for Quins – it is more than just winning and the team is worth more than any individual. It is everyone’s responsibility to bring success to the club, everyone has their part to play, and therefore the sense of a team is embedded and felt even stronger.

Foster a sense of belonging

As soon as you understand and buy into the vision, values and culture, you are part of the Quins family and part of a legacy of Quins players who want to keep this culture alive, explained Danny Care, the Quins and England international scrum-half, who spoke onstage with Millard. Every player is there to bring Quins success, and to do that every individual must give 100% for the good of the team. “One of the key reasons we were successful, was having 45 players fighting for the same goal”, explained Care. It was a whole squad effort, not just the 23 playing at the weekend. Each player also has the freedom to be themselves, and is not put in a box, they are accepted and allowed to express themselves as they are aligned to the higher purpose, and belong to the group. Enjoying the process and feeling part of something bigger is often more fulfilling than simply winning, and Care stated emphatically that winning at Quins, where he has played since he was 19, “was the proudest moment of my career”. It is the sense of winning with your team who have been pulling towards the same goal for a higher purpose that adds to the achievement and success.

Trust, respect and empowerment

The staff value demonstrated that they valued the players’ opinions by asking them to take ownership of the programme and how they wanted to act within it. “I’ve never known an environment where we’ve felt more empowered because we were asked questions,” Care said. The players are empowered to think about what will get the best out of them, what they want, the most crucial piece being that their input is listened to and therefore they feel respected and trusted. This allows the players to feel valued but also in turn holds them accountable to their actions and decisions. The players must be able to understand what gets the best out of themselves as individuals and as a team. The support staff are also listened to and empowered to make decisions on the running of the programme. “Everyone was accountable and empowered and they really enjoyed it,” explained Millard. They are given autonomy and their expertise is listened to, therefore further increasing their feeling of being trusted and respected.

Have a family-first approach to people

Care emphasised the importance of making each individual feel seen as a human and not just an athlete or part of a machine. They took a family-first approach, knowing that whilst, yes, rugby and winning is important, people have lives outside of this and family is everything. Millard gave a brilliant example of one player’s mother being unwell during the week of the most important game of the season. The coaching staff and team’s response was “family comes first, just go,” says Millard. The player came back for the weekend and played exceptionally well – he had been understood and cared for as a human. Care highlighted from a players perspective, that decision from the coaching staff “filtered through the rest of the squad, and we feel empowered, trusted and listened to.”

Operating from a sense of belief not fear

The player-led approach to training and taking ownership breeds a sense of confidence that you have done everything in your power to prepare correctly. Confidence that the game plan is the best way for you to be successful, and trusting the processes in order to achieve your outcome goal. This is critical mid game when things might not be going your way, “by sticking to what we believe, what we’ve trained” explained Care. Having a unified approach is the best approach for success, and players not going off script trying to solve the problem individually.  If you lose, which any team is bound to do, believing and trusting in the team’s process and not panicking. This is embedded from the owners and filters down the club giving everyone confidence that their position isn’t under threat from one or two negative results. Operating on a sense of belief and confidence rather than fear. Belief in the individual’s ability but also that of everyone around them.

By Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

What Does Deloitte Think Makes an Inclusive Leader?

Four Factors when Making Diversity Work for your Team

How Inclusivity Unlocks Innovation and Performance at Selfridges

Framing the topic

A topic which has come up a number of times as an area of focus or improvement for many of the teams in our membership is how to create more inclusive environments, especially in high performance sport. In this topic-led virtual roundtable we had a great conversation about what many of our members were currently doing to promote ED&I [equality, diversity & inclusion] within their environments and areas which they were finding challenging.

Key areas of interest identified by the group:

• Being able to attract diverse talent
• Exploring the performance benefits of diverse workforces
• Understanding the barriers that may exist
• Working with data as a starting point

 Discussion points:

1. What are you currently doing to promote ED&I within your organisations

• We currently have 12 work streams working on ED&I to remove the structural and cultural barriers that exist in the pathway with regards to Talent ID, Scouting, education, finances, and the transition between different groups.
• Collecting data in the first instance is key. Understanding the feeling around the club and how to create an inclusive culture. We ran surveys, and were able to break them down by area and demographic. We could understand what areas need training around inclusivity. We conducted exit interviews, and we were able to understand unconscious biases.
• We have introduced ‘Community Challenge Champions’ to connect the formal pathways with the informal. This allows us to expand the pathway and reach clubs where our scouts wouldn’t normally go, or where they wouldn’t introduce kids to the pathway.
• Having inclusion as the basis is key. If you can become more inclusive, diversity is a consequence. Whereas, if you start with diversity, we found it actually made it more divisive and grouped people too much. Understanding what you need to create and develop an inclusive culture – you can have the diversity but if the inclusion isn’t there, you won’t keep your diverse talent.
• We’ve partnered with colleges we wouldn’t have partnered with in the past, and have sponsored students where they would not have previously got funding. We have a Student of the Year programme for engineering projects where the winner gets a two-week work experience placement and funding towards their studies. This provides an opportunity for people who wouldn’t have got a chance before, people we wouldn’t have seen before, providing a wider and broader talent pool. We also offer people who have been displaced at work to come in for a 12-month ‘academy’ placement and give them an opportunity. It has been highly successful and we wouldn’t have recruited people from these backgrounds previously. We converted at a rate of 48%, our interns converted at 33%, and the transition of graduates to permanent roles was at 75%.
• We have a Women in Engineering programme and a Diversity and Inclusion group led by our employees. We have brought in females from motorsport to talk about their struggles. We’ve redesigned our internal communication and included an international calendar with religious holidays and key dates. We want to be able to break down myths and help to understand religions and what impact that has on people, what we can do to support them.
• We identified that only 12% of coaches were female, and so thought ‘well, why do we need females?’ We conducted interviews to prove the performance benefit of diverse coaching and leadership and 72% of the women interviewed were strongly influenced by a female mentor. Therefore we proved there was a need for more female coaches as a performance gain and this evidence was key in securing more funding for diverse coaching.
• Learning from the lived experiences of underrepresented players or coaches has been a really powerful way of growing and developing in this space. We believe it is ‘learning not training’. Often people’s thought is ‘we need training in this’ but actually we first need to learn about it. Using lived experience can have a bigger impact than just going through paid training.
• Diversity of thinking is also crucial and we often get someone in from outside of our department to join sport-specific meetings to provide a different set of eyes and see if there is anything we might have missed through our own lens.

2. What are the challenges or barriers that you are facing?

• The biggest challenge we have is attracting diverse talent to the club. Being able to attract a more diverse applicant pool at the first job level is a key work-on area.
• Having the confidence to make decisions without being in fear of making decisions, and getting something wrong.
• We have found it hard with the dataset that we currently have based on how we collect that data. If the pool of data isn’t diverse, does it help? We are using focus groups to help clarify the position and better understand where thinking is going. What data do you collect and how do you use it?
• We are very conscious of trying to solve a problem we’re not experiencing – ‘don’t mark our own homework’. We need people who are genuinely going through these challenges to help us understand them better rather than just assuming we know them. The risk is that we treat EDI as one thing rather than unpacking what it really is, and why you are going about a specific area. It is not a box-ticking exercise, we need to be strategic in what we go after and why.
• Being ‘colour blind’ – the notion that this might be a negative because you can’t see the discrimination because you don’t discriminate. We need to talk to those being discriminated against to understand what it is like for them. It’s often not overt racism, but white normative, and we almost reinforce it by talking about the ‘other’, and so being guarded against that.
• Women’s coaching scholarship programme – we want to change perceptions that these things are in place because they don’t get the opportunities that men do. It’s not just about increasing diversity, it’s about giving people opportunities that others don’t get. The challenge is changing the perceptions of people who believe that if the makeup of a coaching team is 50:50 male, female, that was because you planned it that way from a scheme, not because they were the best for the job.