By Luke Whitworth

A fundamental aspect of sustaining success over a long period of time is the strength of an organisation’s culture.

Research by Alex Hill and the Centre for High Performance into how successful organisations can outperform their peers for more than 100 years, highlights a number of common characteristics between industry-leading organisations such as the New Zealand All Blacks, NASA, the Royal College of Art, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. If you are interested in hearing from two leaders of organisations who were part of this study – Eton College and the Royal College of Art – you can view this session from the 2018 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

Besides the number of characteristics that these organisations have, simply put, they all take culture incredibly seriously. They work at it. They constantly review. They are always evolving, but with a number of cornerstones that remain foundations of how they operate.

As part of an intriguing set of conversations between Leaders Performance Institute members, the group discussed some of their thoughts around how they think about cultural evaluation.

1. Perform culture health checks

How often are you proactively measuring the strength of your culture? A number of organisations look to review and evaluate on an annual basis, but should they be more frequent? Some participants on the call suggest a review every three months is a powerful way of taking the pulse of the environment. On this theme, be mindful of the tension between what the data suggest, versus the awareness and insight of the culture that occurs through sitting, listening and talking to people. It can be easy to jump to the measurable part of the evaluation and determine the health of the culture on that – be aware of what the data doesn’t show us.

2. How do you use language?

Language is a powerful notion, particularly when there is clear alignment and consistency around how your people communicate the mission, values and behaviours. We can engage in measurements to evaluate culture, but you can also see it, feel it and, most importantly, hear it. Are your athletes and staff using the language that aligns to the culture we want to live by? If not, it suggests there is some work to be done to create wider organisational alignment.

3. What is your culture’s openness to change?

Change is one thing in life that is guaranteed, none more so than in high performance sport where we experience fast-paced and ever-evolving environments. As human beings, we are wired to not like change. A question to consider when analysing your culture is ‘how open are we to change?’ because it will inevitably come. It can be an integral measure in understanding how robust the culture is. To evolve and improve, we need that growth mindset and willingness to be adaptable within the environment. Have you ever questioned your peers and asked them of your environment, ‘what do you think we are losing or would lose if we were to engage in change?’ This is a simple but effective way of highlighting what is working in the environment – try to keep these components and grow in other areas.

4. Identify and evaluate pain points and disruptions

Every environment experienced disruption and the emergence of pain points. Are you identifying and evaluating what these are, as they will have a direct impact on your culture? As society evolves, it’s important to be on the pulse of what this might mean for your specific environment and those operating within that. Mapping the pain points provides more opportunity to review and reflect as to whether you are providing that level of support and shaping the environment to optimise the performance of your people. Consider garnering feedback through the use of focus groups, and perhaps seek feedback from those in the organisation who you don’t hear from as much.

A Keiser Series Podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

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

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

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

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

He discusses those developments and also touches upon:

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

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By 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 John Portch

Hope Powell, the First-Team Manager at Women’s Super League [WSL] side Brighton & Hove Albion, has been coaching for almost 25 years.

What makes her a better coach now than she was when she was first appointed England Women’s Head Coach in 1998 – the first full-time appointment to the position – or, say, when she led England to the final of the 2009 European Championships?

“I don’t know that I’m better,” is her candid response. “I’m not saying I’m any better. I think I’m different, I don’t always get it right.” There are times when she admits that she can be intolerant in her interactions with players. “I’m having to adapt myself,” she continues. “I am still learning the art of management and I think it’s important that you keep learning because the game evolves, people evolve, their experiences are different.”

When Powell took the England reins, women’s football in the country was still largely amateur. The players she led to consecutive World Cup quarter-finals in 2007 and 2011 all held other jobs. Now, thanks in no small part to the work Powell did during her 15 years at the Football Association [FA], she is in charge of a fully professional Brighton. She joined the club in 2017.

Here, Powell, who also serves as mentor working with the FA, Premier League, Uefa, and Fifa, reflects on her qualities as a leader and discusses the leadership traits she admires most.

Hope, what do you regard as your biggest strength as a manager?

I think being honest and supportive with staff. I’m sure if you were to ask any member of my staff if they feel supported I think they’d say ‘yes’. I’m fair, honest and supportive. I see being honest as a strength; ‘this is what I think, and I’m saying it how it is’.

What strength do you admire most in others?

Honesty. Being authentic.

What do you mean by ‘authentic’?

I know it has nothing to do with the delivery, but my experience has been interesting. A lot of coaches are copy-cat coaches. They’ll watch you deliver a session and write everything you do down and then just go out and copy what you’ve done without perhaps understanding, without putting some context to it. I’ll ask them ‘if it doesn’t work how are you going to change it? How are you going to be creative?’ I’ve had a lot of that in my career. ‘Hope, have you got any sessions that you can give me?’ No, I can’t give you anything. That’s not coaching. Put yourself out there, design your sessions, have a go, if it doesn’t work, tweak it and do something else. I think authenticity is a big one for me. The coaches of the future, in any sport, will need to be creative, authentic, and be students of their sport; understanding the nuances of their game.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

Strong teamwork is all believing in the vision. All on the same page. I think if everyone buys into that and the team buys into that, it brings that togetherness and that togetherness means that you want to work for your team, your teammates. It’s having that. ‘This is where we want to be, do we all believe in it? Yes we do. Let’s all work in one direction and if we all believe in it collectively then we’re more likely to support each other and work harder for each other and do anything for each other.’ That for me is what teamwork is. Everyone believes in what you’re trying to achieve and everyone wants it because everyone is prepared to work together.

You’re Brighton’s First-Team Manager but you’re not the keeper of the club’s vision.

No, the owner [Tony Bloom] sets the vision for both teams: the men top ten, the women top four; and our job is to try and deliver that with the resources he puts at our disposal. It’s a collective. He set the vision but we’ve all gone ‘great, let’s go for it. Why not?’ And I go: ‘top four? Why not top one?’ That’s good because it gives you some direction. Is it just about staying in the league? The first year I was there, of course it was, because we were new to the WSL. The owner is a fan of the club and as soon as he decided he wanted to make progress in the women’s game he said ‘this is where I want this club to go’ and we said ‘great’ and, for me, it was telling him ‘this is what I think it will take’. We have ownership of that and he’s been very supportive.

Do you enjoy regular conversations with the Brighton board?

We have a men’s board and a women’s board, which is great. I have to present to the board annually. We have a Technical Director [David Weir] who has that direct link with the board. It’s kind of a one-club concept, one-club vision for the men and the women, so you feel heavily involved. And my job as the First-Team Manager is to ensure the team delivers that on and off the pitch, which is a great responsibility and a huge one. It’s what I’m used to. It’s what I like doing.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

It’s a challenge to bring in the right players and the right staff at a club like ours; and there is always some turnover at the end of the season. But the right players and the right staff make your job so much easier. We’re in a recruitment phase at the moment and we just want to get better and perform better. That’s the idea.

By John Portch

• How do you check and challenge yourself that the message received is the message perceived?

• Developmental or motivational feedback – what does each of your athletes require today?

• What can you do to ensure the collective efficacy of your team?

What the research is telling us about high performance environments

David Fletcher, who is the Senior Lecturer in Performance Psychology and Management at Loughborough University and a Leaders Performance Advisor, shared a high performance model with an audience at Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments in 2021. In making his presentation, Fletcher drew on varies studies, including the 2009 white paper by Graham Jones, Mark Gittens and Lew Hardy titled ‘Creating an environment where high performance is inevitable and sustainable: The high performance environment model’. That paper formed the basis of Fletcher’s onstage exploration of leadership, performance enablers, and people within a high performance model.

He said: “Although I don’t think it provides the definitive answer, what I do think it does is provide a nice starting point.”

Three important aspects of effective high performing leadership

“What does effective high performing leadership look like within a high performance environment?” asked Fletcher.  Jones, Gittens and Hardy identified three main considerations for leaders:

1. Establishing the team’s vision then role modelling and communicating that to followers.
2. Challenging their followers to make their contribution to fulfilling the vision.
3. The leader must support their followers in making their contribution.

“They argued that it wasn’t enough to be good in two of these three areas,” said Fletcher. “In fact, it could be catastrophic if you’re only good at vision and challenge but no support. It’s going to be a relentless environment where burnout is going to prevail.” He also mentions the important distinction between what coaches perceive they give their athletes and the message the athlete receives and perceives. “There needs to be checks and balances in place to let leaders be aware of how they’re providing support across the high performance environment.”

Developmental v motivational feedback

Part of a leader’s role, as Fletcher said, is to provide environmental enablers that offer the support for people to operate in a high performance environment. The research points to the importance of information [feedback, clarity, support], instruments [tools, frameworks], and incentives [meet the athlete’s need for competency, autonomy and relatedness].

Fletcher honed in on the difference between developmental and motivational feedback. “Developmental feedback is the type of feedback that says ‘you are here. In order for us to be here, this is what needs to happen’,” he said. “But the other type of feedback you get under social support is motivational feedback; and motivational feedback is slightly different. ‘This is where you were, this is where you now are. Look how far you’ve come over the last six months.’ The best leaders are able to balance the motivational and developmental support appropriately for different individuals within the performance environment. It’s where the science shifts towards the art of coaching and high performance leadership.”

Attitudes, behaviours and capability

The research discussed by Fletcher also highlighted the traits needed by those operating in ever less hierarchical high performance environments. It identified three buckets. Firstly, the question of attitudes, from trust in one’s leader to organisational commitment via collective efficacy and job satisfaction. Secondly, Fletcher delved into the necessary behaviours, including being helpful, engaging enthusiastically and volunteering when possible. The third bucket was capability, specifically the ability of people to support talent development, provide emotional intelligence and develop mental toughness.

‘High performance cultures don’t just show up’

We asked Leaders Performance Advisor Rachel Vickery to reflect on Fletcher’s findings and to share her thoughts on the move away from hierarchical models and the ways that leaders can make a distributed model work for their high performance teams.

Rachel, how common is a dispersed/distributed leadership model in high performance sport these days?

We are increasingly seeing organisations and teams embracing more of a distributed leadership approach, even if they don’t identify with that model by name. We are seeing teams collaborate on things like values, and more importantly how these values are ‘lived into’ in an individual’s role. For example, ‘courage’, ‘integrity’ or ‘excellence’ will be expressed differently by front office staff, compared with board members, or coaches, or athletes or support staff. This sort of approach empowers each individual of a team, irrespective of their role, to take ownership of creating a high performance environment in their area and as it feeds into the collective organisation; rather than defaulting to expecting that it is someone else’s job, or a subconscious belief that a high performance culture just shows up. And we are seeing more individuals within an organisation understanding the importance of modelling high performance culture, leading by example and holding others accountable to agreed standards by having courage to have difficult conversations.

What tips do you have for leaders seeking to make a distributed model work? Any pitfalls to avoid?

The three points identified by Jones, Gittens and Hardy in the article above still hold, and as David wisely points out, it’s essential to include all three. Regular open and transparent communication ensures the model constantly evolves, rather than being a discussion at the beginning of a season that fades into the background once the daily grind kicks in.

Developing a high performance environment is everyone’s responsibility, so leading and interacting with others in a way they understand their individual and collective value to the shared goal is essential for ongoing buy-in. Perhaps this model evolves more organically in team-based sports, where many different roles interact daily under the same roof. Olympic and individual sports where people might be spread around the country require more intentional focus on implementing these steps for the model to work, but the effort is worth it.

Avoiding pitfalls revolve around ensuring as a leader that you are living by example, not paying lip service to it or just telling others to do so. It’s not uncommon in organisations with a poor culture to hear coaches, boards or support staff harshly criticising athletes for not having an excellence mindset, integrity or willingness to do the one percenters; yet not living the same in their role. That’s about the fastest way to undermine respect and a high performance culture! And remembering that people will follow the strongest energy in the room (or team, or on the field), which is great when that energy aligns with high performance traits; but destructive if the strongest, most influential energy is toxic. So it is important to call out toxic personalities or actions quickly.

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

• Psychological safety is the biggest difference between the top and lowest performing teams

• It requires intentional work on the part of leaders

• Is it ‘failure’ or simply a problem to solve?

Quick recap: what is psychological safety?

Amy Edmondson, an organisational behavioural scientist, coined the term ‘team psychological safety’. She defined it as: “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” When Google announced the results of its Project Aristotle, which sought to understand the characteristics of effective teams. Psychological safety was identified as the biggest factor. The others were ‘dependability’, ‘clarity,’ ‘impact’ and ‘meaning’. But psychological safety stood out.

“This is a little bit of a clinical-sounding term but this is the best one we have to describe this sense of ability to take interpersonal risks in a work setting,” said Abeer Dubey, Google’s Director of People Analytics, who led Project Aristotle. Dubey was speaking to an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members at 2021’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Total High Performance.

He continued: “We have all been in a situation where somebody senior in an organisation or the hierarchy suggested something and we may or may not agree with that; or some acronym has been thrown out there in a team meeting. Are we in a culture where we feel comfortable raising our hands either in terms of pushing back on a decision made by a senior leader or asking a question that may seem like a stupid question in the context of the meeting?

What does that look like in practice?

Dubey painted a picture of psychological safety at Google. “Teams that were good at doing this had that safe environment where people took small interpersonal risks on a day to day basis,” he said. “They will jump or chime in. This wasn’t just something about feeling good. We could actually see a direct impact on our revenue performance, especially in our sales team.” Teams that feel safe are more effective. “Through this comes this process of learning quickly and this translates into a direct impact,” he added.

How can you help your teams to get better?

Google instigated its gTeams programme, which was designed to help the organisation improve across the key characteristics identified in effective teams by Project Aristotle. Of gTeams, Dubey said: “It’s very difficult to even bring up a topic like psychological safety unless you have a term for it. If there’s no formal construct for that then these things can easily go unnoticed, so I think an explicit practice of going through this type of review is something that can help thousands of companies.”

From failure to problem solving

For astute leaders, there is the potential for failures to become problem-solving exercises for teams to coalesce around. Dubey cites the ‘pre-mortems’ carried out by the Google X innovation lab under its CEO Astro Teller. “He got the senior members of his team and he said ‘OK, imagine if we had actually failed in a project,’” said Dubey. “If you think about today and what’s working, people always get in defensive mode. He said: ‘OK, think about it yourself. If we had failed, what could we have done better?’ And it completely changed the dynamic where the thing that could have been defensive became like a problem-solving exercise and everyone came together. He calls this exercise a ‘pre-mortem’, which is where you imagine that you have already failed and this is what we could have done about it. That’s the kind of thing we ask people to think about. Small things in a day to day setting that can have a huge impact.”

Is there truly room for psychological safety in sport?

In 2021, we published a Special Report that reflected on psychological safety’s journey towards being acknowledged as a competitive edge in sport and, in bringing those pages to life, we spoke to Leaders Performance Advisor, David Fletcher, the Senior Lecturer in Performance Psychology and Management at Loughborough University.

These are an excerpt of his reflections at the time:

“What I think will be very interesting looking at the next five years, is the whole wellbeing and welfare movement in elite sport because that’s definitely gaining momentum and traction, with good reason. How do we sit that alongside the demands for high performance and wanting to win? That’s not going to go away either. The best athletes and the best coaches are going to have a real need to win.

“We’ve seen in the past, whether it be Lance Armstrong or Michael Jordan, this burning desire to succeed at all costs, spills over. There’s a real recognition in elite sport that that does happen and has happened.

“The question now is how can we manage that will to win at all costs? I’m not sure you can do that in people who really want to win; like the people who are training for an Olympic gold medal. They’re totally single-minded. It’s not necessarily about taking the edge off that, it’s about juggling that to a point where it’s not winning at all costs – it’s winning hopefully without other costs.

“That’s where I hope psychological safety will play a role within that, where it becomes a more sophisticated culture and climate where we can strive to excel, we can strive to win, but not at the cost of cheating, bullying, abuse, fear of failure.

“It’s very easy for me to say it but it’s a lot harder in the cutthroat nature of elite sport. When you start losing people’s jobs and positions are on the line; that’s when this really gets put to the test.”

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.