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By John Portch

“I think I’m in the best place I’ve been for a long, long time,” says West Ham United Manager David Moyes.

“I’m in the job because I want to be in the job, not because I need to be in the job.”

Moyes, who recently celebrated his 1,000 match as a manager, is enjoying a career renaissance at the London Stadium. He returned to West Ham in December 2019 with the Hammers in danger of relegation and worked to ensure their survival at the end of the Covid-hit 2019-20 season. It was the second time he had achieved that feat following an initial six-month stint in east London in 2017-18.

This time, he remained at the helm for the 2020-21 season and oversaw a transformation of the club – far quicker than anyone had anticipated – from brittle and perennially relegation-threatened to European contenders capable of posing opponents questions from front to back. In May, Moyes steered the club into the Uefa Europa League courtesy of a sixth-place Premier League finish – their highest since 2001.

A new three-year contract for Moyes followed in June and his team has carried their superb form into the current campaign. They sit atop of their Europa League group while again challenging at the upper echelons of the Premier League.

It is a remarkable turnaround for Moyes, who had endured a series of unsuccessful spells at Manchester United, Sunderland and Real Sociedad before again finding stability at West Ham. His reputation has not been as high in nearly a decade.

“I’m personally in a better place and managing in the way that I want to and I’m not having to be miserable because I’m losing games all the time!” he told the Leaders Performance Institute’s Jimmy Worrall in October. “I’ve actually got a team that’s winning.”

Moyes, who was labelled the ‘Moyesiah’ by West Ham supporters for his feats last season, instinctively understands that a manager is never more than a few bad results from being ridiculed, despite the elusive mix of talent and circumstance required to succeed at the highest levels of the sport.

“Winning makes a big difference and, in the sport we’re in, it really does change how you feel, how the media perceive you in all things. But I would hope that I would still be treated the same way if we were losing. We’re in a sport where there is winning and losing, not everyone can win. In fact, there’s very few people who can win. I really enjoy it. I don’t want to step away from it at the moment. I feel good and I hope it’s helping me manage and work better.”

What has changed? “If I’m being honest, I think I’ve changed a lot as well,” says Moyes, who did not manage between leaving West Ham in 2018 and returning to the club a little over a year later. At times during his hiatus he worked as a technical advisor with Uefa, a role he returned to during the delayed Euro 2020 tournament last summer.

“I was out of work, I was doing lots of stuff with Leaders, I was listening to people talking, I was listening to how people were building their clubs or what sports they were in. I did a lot of games for Uefa, I did a lot of speaking at conferences, and I think that, myself, I had to change.

“I said this in some of the conversations I’ve had with Leaders before that I felt communication has become even more important in modern day coaching and managing, whether that be to your players, your owners or the media. I think people do want to hear more and I think they want to see more positivity; the players need it as well.

“I felt as if I had to change a little bit and see if I could alter my approach. I’m not saying that’s the reason for any success, but I’m trying to remain positive in the job where, in recent years, it’s been quite difficult for me because there’s been a lot of negativity around me, around maybe some of the clubs I’ve been at. But overall, I’ve felt if I could be a bit more positive that would be a starting point, so I’ve tried to do that.”

Moyes then elaborates. “I probably looked closer to see how I’ve been doing things and checking if I thought they were right,” he says. “The majority of the things were right, all the basics, all the organisation, all the planning, but I had to look at things differently. I think my communication had to become better. I think that was the biggest thing I found with the players. I think there is a need for much more communication, but even the message you’re giving out to the media now. I felt as if I had to change from where I’ve come from.”

Moyes became player-coach of third-tier Preston North End in 1998 at the age of 34 and was a typically coach of that era: stern, aloof and sparing with praise. It was effective and he led Preston to the second tier in 2000, and later enjoyed a successful 11 years at Everton in the Premier League with largely the same approach. A generation of players has passed through the league since then and it feels like something of a bygone age – a fact not lost on Moyes.

“On days gone by, I think people would tell you, you wouldn’t come to the manager’s door very often,” he continues. “I’ve tried to be in and around the players as much as I can but keeping my distance because they have to understand that I’m still the manager. Nowadays, I’m talking to them more, about their daily lives, whether it be their families, what they’re up to, whether it be what their interests are.”

It might be a stretch to pin this as a direct reason for West Ham’s resurgence, but this approach has perhaps enabled Moyes to do his best work by helping to improve his general wellbeing. “It’s made me feel much better by having a positive outlook as well.”

The last point resonates in particular. “Sometimes people forget about the mental health of the leaders who probably have the decision-making responsibility,” says Moyes, who acknowledges that it is not easy for his players either. “The winning or losing means so much. Quite often, we can sit and listen to a radio show, which will be discussing if you’re getting the sack or not. And that, nowadays, for any other member of the public now would probably be seen as a mental health issue, but for sports coaches or managers, that’s seen as an open forum and it’s allowed to be spoken about. Most people’s lines of work would not be discussed because it would be seen as not right.”

Moyes has not been out of work for long periods during his 23-year coaching career but there have been occasional spells. What went through his mind during those times? “When you’re out of work, you can’t wait to get back in it. When you’re in work, quite often you’re saying ‘I wish I was out of it!’ because of the pressure and stress you get from it,” he says, adding that he can see more and more coaches opting for sabbaticals as a means of staving off burnout.

“Being out of work can sometimes be a good thing for managers. Pep [Guardiola] took a year out where he went to New York and did something different. I think you’ll see more of it. You’ll see some of the top managers really thinking now ‘I don’t want to be under this level of such stress every week and probably 10 or 11 months of the year I’m away from home every weekend or I’m working every weekend.’ So I do think you may see this in the next generation of managers where you might do a couple of years, and then take a year out and try and come back in again. For me, at the moment, I’m enjoying it.”

Few of Moyes’ contemporaries from his time at Preston and Everton are still operating at the highest levels of the game in England or abroad and the man himself believes that continuous learning has improved his chances when he has been out of work.

“Sometimes when you get this job you might think ‘I’ve got a job now, that’s set, I don’t need to look for anything new, I don’t need to hear what other people do’. I think you have to keep trying to find a way of learning. At the moment, I want to update all the football sessions I do; I’m trying to move them on, I’m trying to find other ways. I want to be able to test the players in as many of the football sessions as I can. I’ve got enough library material in my head to put on coaching sessions every day, but I want them to become new, fresh and updated and I’m always trying to challenge myself to find out what else I can do. But I think being out of work, I had to find ways of [working out] how you do that. When you’ve been near the top it’s difficult.

“You’ll know the people I’m going to talk about: David Brailsford, Gareth Southgate; so many of the people I get to hear from, so many great leaders, people who are great in different sports. It’s amazing how many tips you can get off of people and hear little things that complement [what you’re doing].

“I wouldn’t say I’m a great reader but I’ve picked up a couple of books and I’m picking things out of reading. Sometimes it can be enough to give you a little bit of motivation to say something or to encourage yourself to be ready.”

He mentions Guardiola again. “I heard Pep say he used the word ‘football thief’. I think we all have to be football thieves, I think we all need to steal a little bit from wherever you go.” He cites his work covering the Champions League and Euros for Uefa. “[That is] part of understanding what the new trends are and what’s up to date and where the goals are being scored from, what way teams are now lining up. The new flexibility that’s coming into football.

“If you want to stand still you can do so, but I want to try and move on and keep up with the best teams and coaches.”

Where does your team sit in its use of generalist and specialist approaches to high performance?

By John Portch

The topic formed the basis of an Elite Performance Partners Webinar in November last year and the question has increasingly been brought into focus during the pandemic as budgets have been slashed and staffing levels reduced.

Necessity has played its part in a trend that the Leaders Performance Institute is observing across elite sport, with one member sharing the insight, via a Community Group Call, that they are considering moving away from discipline-specific job titles to ‘performance staff’ who serve in support of the athlete and team performance.

What is a specialist-generalist?

One development that has gained momentum during the pandemic is the growth of the specialist-generalist. At their Webinar, EPP outlined a model that applies to experienced practitioners whose technical specialisms are ‘comb-shaped’ – their ‘major’ and ‘minors’, to use an analogy from the US university system – and for the breadth they bring in terms of experience and through their ‘softer’ skills. “Comb-shaped practitioners not only learn their trade but seek that strong understanding of other areas,” said Dave Slemen, a Founding Partner at EPP.

Specialist-generalists are well-placed to fill the gaps created in pandemic era performance environments – not that specialists are being or can be replaced – it is simply that the specialist-generalist model is perhaps the most efficient model in contemporary performance environments. As a corollary, it also offers the best way to develop leadership qualities within an organisation and therein lies the opportunity.

“You’re always going to have discreet functions,” said Bryce Cavanagh, the Football Association’s new Head of Performance, “but it’s when you start adding multiples within those functions that the generalist becomes more valuable, or you’ve got a constraint like financial or human resource, where you can only have one person in that space. The generalist becomes more valuable.”

There is also the fear that ‘generalist’ sounds derogatory. “The people who are the best are both,” said Slemen. “They might be a specialist-generalist because they’ve got an ability across more than one specialism, but it’s also when a person is able to interact with others, their emotional intelligence, their empathy – those are the sort of skills that will be seen as generalist but are arguably the most important and difficult skills to develop.”

How can coaches facilitate the generalists in their performance teams?

Emma Hayes, the Head Coach of Women’s Super League champions Chelsea FC Women, told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2019 how a coach can facilitate that generalist-specialist performance environment by modelling good behaviours and instilling an appetite for self-development.

“I often get asked how do you go from fifth in Europe to first in Europe or how do you go from being first to staying first? That evolution is a constant adapting process that may involve changes off the pitch with the staff as well as on the pitch with the personnel,” she said.

Generalists, as per the comb-shaped model, engage with other specialists through their working knowledge, and the head coach can lend a helping hand. “I think it’s about constantly upskilling and creating and promoting an environment that’s self-directional to the behaviours that you’re expecting from everybody in the environment,” added Hayes, “and I constantly remind people that your talent gets you to the dressing room door – it’s your behaviours that keep you in it. You’ve got to apply that to the staff too; they’ve got to be in a position to constantly raise the bar and find new levels, because as the players get better, the expectations get better and bigger. You have to be able to cope with those ever-growing demands by placing yourself at the forefront of the industry.”

At British Wheelchair Basketball, Performance Director Jayne Ellis spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute prior to this year’s Paralympic Games about the relationships between the men’s and women’s teams’ coaches, Haj Bhania and Simon Fisher, and their support staff, namely the analysts in this instance. She said: “The coaches will direct a lot of the work that the analyst is doing but they also have that relationship where the analyst can also put something on the table or use the data to challenge some of the perceptions or the conversation that is happening; and that is about building great teams that trust each other.”

Each stakeholder has their specialism but feels able to contribute to the collective because that is the environment that Ellis and her colleagues have sought to foster. “They can challenge each other but it’s done from a place of ‘we’re all just trying to be great at this’” she added. “There’s no agendas in this. I think the way that we’ve got that set works extremely well for us because there’s a close relationship between the analyst and the coaches. We’re really lucky to have that and you can see it in our performances.”

The performance conversations at British Wheelchair Basketball embody the distributed leadership style of Ulster Rugby Head Coach Dan McFarland. “I aspire to a distributed leadership style. I am at the mercy of confirmation bias here, but I don’t see hierarchical leadership as being sustainable,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2020. “I don’t see it as being effective, actually.”

It reads as a call to generalist-specialists. “One of the biggest drivers we have here, and I would have in my personal philosophy, is growth and also being able to enjoy your job. I think personal growth and autonomy go hand in hand with enjoying your job. I’ve always aspired to getting people to take on tasks that they can take responsibility for.”

How can generalists manage expectations?

For all this talk of delegation and empowerment, reduced staffing levels have, in some cases, seen programmes pared back but expectations of output remaining high. So while it has helped to view performance more collectively and to empower individuals in their roles, it is equally important to demonstrate your duty of care and appreciation of those same individuals. Both are prerequisites for developing trust.

Leaders such as Hayes and McFarland can set the tone and demonstrate their trust, but it is also wise for staff to set personal boundaries. “I call them ‘personal non-negotiables’, which for me are sleep and exercise; they are in my calendar, as are my meals,” Jen Fisher, Deloitte’s first-ever Chief Well-Being Officer, told an audience at Leaders Meet: Total High Performance last year.

“I communicate that to everybody and I encourage my team to communicate the same, because when we know each other’s non-negotiables we can support each other. We can set norms in our teams for what we want the team environment to be, for what we want the culture to be.

“Every team operates a little bit differently and, as a leader and as colleagues, really understanding, being open, really understanding what everybody’s needs are and figuring out what that looks like as a team. So it’s not going to look the same for the entire organisation, so it’s really about empowering people to figure things out for themselves, find it for themselves, communicate it.”

Download the latest Performance Special Report – Winning With Nutrition

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As the sun sets on our return to in-person events after a two year hiatus, for all of us at the Leaders Performance Institute, it’s fair to say that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces, and meeting some new ones too. With the knowledge shared, the new connections made, the conversations witnessed and the fun and drinks along the way, we’re already looking forward to our first event of 2022. We hope you are too!

Day one set the bar high and we looked to carry that energy and momentum into day two. We began with a deep dive into the performing arts, looking at talent development at the Royal Ballet School and Royal College of Music before exploring the theme of diversity, equality and inclusion with Brentford FC and British department store Selfridges. We then checked in with performance coach Owen Eastwood before turning our attention to extreme adventurer Adrian Hayes in the afternoon. Aspetar then had the honour of bringing down the curtain with a fascinating look at rehabilitation and recovery.

A big thank you from the Leaders Performance Institute team and our main partners Keiser, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and Aspetar, for joining us for two days of total high performance.

For those of you who couldn’t make it – or those wishing you refresh your memories – here are the key takeaways from day two.

Download Now

Full Day 2 programme:

Talent Factories: How the Performing Arts Develops & Nurtures World Class Talent

• Christopher Powney, Artistic Director, The Royal Ballet School
• Dr Terry Clark, Research Fellow for Performance Science, The Royal College of Music

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

• Owen Eastwood, Performance Coach and author of Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

Diverse & Inclusive Leadership: Exploring How Diverse Workplaces Positively Influence Organisational Performance

• Melisa Clottey, Chair of Diversity Board, Selfridges
• Shona Crooks, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Management Futures
• Kevin Yusuf, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Brentford FC

Lessons from Extreme Adventuring: Adaptability & Resilience in Adversity

• Adrian Hayes, adventurer, polar explorer and author

Rehabilitation & Recovery: The Latest Thinking to Support your Performance Strategy

• Jamal Al-Khanji, Chief Patent Experience Officer, Aspetar
• Khalid Al-Khelaifi, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Aspetar

Download Now

The Leaders Sport Performance Summit returned to Twickenham this week with Leaders Performance Institute members gathering in their multitudes to share insights and listen to some of sport’s most inspired practitioners.

We were also delighted to welcome you back in person and thought we’d kick things off with a performance flourish from Premiership champions Harlequins and how they have reconnected with their roots, we then segued into Thomas Frank’s sterling work at Premier League new boys Brentford FC, took a tour of performance environments at the San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Blue Jays, before ending the day with stories from two of Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s most esteemed Olympic and Paralympic coaches.

Whether you were there or not, we’ve unlocked the Key Takeaways from Day 1 for our Digest readers. If you’re a member, recordings of the sessions are being added to the Intelligence Hub as we speak

Download Now

Full Day 1 programme:

Quins Case Study: Leadership, Culture & Identity

• Billy Millard, Director of Rugby Performance, Harlequins
• Danny Care, Professional Rugby Player, Harlequins

Bee Together: Developing a High Performance Environment

• Thomas Frank, Head Coach, Brentford FC

Corridor Culture: Mirroring Team Culture in Physical Environments

• Phil Cullen, Director of Basketball Operations & Innovation, San Antonio Spurs
• Angus Mugford, Vice President of Performance, Toronto Blue Jays

Bringing Ideas to Life: Approaching and Executing Innovation

• John Bull, Director & Lead for High Performance Research, Management Futures

Gold Rush: Stories From Tokyo & the Evolution of Coach-Athlete Relationships

• Gary Brickley, Dame Sarah Storey’s Coach and Senior Lecturer, University of Brighton
• Kate Howey, Head Coach, British Judo

Download Now

A Leaders Performance Podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“Sometimes you can listen to advice and it might be wrong for you, so you’ve got to figure out what is good and what is bad for you – who’s your angel and who’s your devil,” says Asha Philip.

By John Portch

The British sprinter – a two-time Olympic 4x100m bronze medallist – is speaking to the Leaders Performance Podcast as part of the Keiser Athlete Optimisation series.

Asha won bronze with her teammates in Tokyo and talks about some of the steps that enabled her to go again after winning a medal in Rio in 2016.

Also on the conversational agenda are:

• The mental strength that defines elite sprinters [10:00];
• Asha’s need to be comfortable being uncomfortable [14:30];
• The importance of self-reflection and positive affirmations [15:30];
• Why she is increasingly taking care of her mental health [22:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

Leaders Performance Podcast – Leadership & Culture Special

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

By Dan Clements

We all have that leader we respect or that coach we enjoyed playing for but have you ever taken the time to sit back and think why that might be?

I will take a bet that amongst some other things, at some point they nurtured you, recognised your strengths and made you feel valued. Strengths-based thinking has had a lift in modern times within sport as more and more people seek to learn and find an edge in their practice or their organisation as a whole.

The exploits of world class coaches have been extensively documented and have offered a small window into the potential of such an approach. World class leaders such as Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, British & Irish Lions Head Coach Warren Gatland and Richmond Tigers supremo Damian Hardwick have offered an insight into the possibilities within coaching when your starting point in a relationship with a player or a group of individuals is their strengths and what they can do, not what they can’t.

Delving deeper, October’s National Rugby League Grand Final in Australia between perennial powerhouse Melbourne Storm and 2020’s highfliers the Penrith Panthers highlighted the potential for strengths-based thinking.

The modern coach is no doubt used to the pre-game interview, they are part and parcel of the territory and give the avid viewer a sneak peek into mindset and the thrill of the occasion. It was interesting to listen to master coach Craig Bellamy of the Melbourne Storm that weekend when 20 minutes prior to kick off he was asked ‘what will your final message to your team be?’. With the watching millions no doubt expecting a small insight into a rousing Churchillian speech, it was interesting to watch the multi-championship winning coach answer simply and clearly that he would remind his team of who they are representing, what they do well and what got them there.

Now just consider that for a second, what they do well and what got them there. It might only seem small, but when you consider the narrative in performance sport in the main is about negating the opposition or working out how to solve problems you start to become intrigued about the differences between a strengths-based approach or a deficit finding lens.

Strengths-based coaching or thinking is clearly not a new thing, however what this article and lifts the lid on is the subject of strengths-based change through the medium of coach learning.

It is a topic covered in even greater detail with my colleagues Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris in our  research paper titled Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System, which was published in September.

Performance leaders are acutely aware that coaches play a vital role in the change process within any organisation. Now this alone might jump out as an interesting point when you consider change. The old adage ‘the only constant is change’ may resonate, as time and time again leaders in any aspect of performance sport seek to find a way to enhance performance, but they must do it in a way that engages and collaborates with their people.

Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance

Change and people development has traditionally been approached as a top down ‘leader knows best’ scenario that leads to mixed results and ironically sometimes leads to even more change. What this article investigates is the potential for strengths-based change within performance sport, through the process of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry is an unashamedly positive change process borne out of the work of David Cooperrider, who sought to seek an alternative approach to the traditional ideas of change management.

Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance. When you consider this in relation to performance sport, it paints quite a compelling picture for organisations that are constantly looking to improve to stay ahead of their competition whilst working in a collaborative manner. Why is this any different to traditional change you may ask? Well, it has been suggested that society has many years of experience in problem solving and have gotten very good at it. On the flipside though, we have very little experience in looking for what works and finding new and innovative ways of doing more of the same.

What our recent research paper uncovers is that the power of positivity within appreciative inquiry could play an integral role in designing change interventions within sport. Working with 12 talent coaches, we sought to discover what they do well and what gives vitality to the group through a series of personal and collaborative tasks. Why do they coach, why here, and what gives them the most satisfaction as a group? This built into an investigation of strengths, what they do well, and what gives them pride.

Interestingly, by allowing them to start from a position of strength it encouraged the participants to be more open to change as well as the identification of areas for personal development. Positive thoughts and positive thinking led to critical dialogue that fostered collaboration. An important element of appreciative inquiry then asks the group to imagine a preferred ‘vision of the future’ or simply put, what would great look like for you? Asking participants to articulate and share this vision drove creativity and engagement, as the group were eager to share.

Finally, with a vision laid out the group designed a route map to get there. Leveraging their strengths, the coaches identified areas of practice that they could tangibly develop in a quest to achieve the identified goal. This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.

The positivity principle that lives at the core of the process is something that cannot be ignored. It led to a heightened state of collaboration amongst the coaches which is often seen as utopia in performance sport both on and off the pitch. Australian coaching legend Ric Charlesworth highlighted this in his book World’s Best when he shared that as a team ethos starts to become embedded within any culture it becomes infectious and redoubles itself when evident and drives team members on to ‘do more’. The results highlighted that the positivity within the process allowed the coaches to collaborate and uncover new ways of working, or quite simply, achieve the holy grail of ownership and buy in to the change process.

This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.

Now anyone that is responsible for people development or learning within their organisation would know that things are never that straightforward. Learning and specifically coach learning remains a complex endeavour as organisations seek methods that make it a meaningful and worthwhile process for the coach. Results here showed that this scenario was no different, with coaches getting lost in rhetoric and semantics within parts.

What appreciative inquiry and a strengths-based approach did show though, was that a positive lens within the process encouraged participants to ‘break through’ stumbling blocks that stalled the progression and identification of areas to concentrate efforts on. This positive lens asked the group to imagine ‘what next?’ and encouraged the design of a ‘route map’ for change.

More and more in high performing organisations we are seeking the next advantage or area of innovation. Could that answer lie internally, within our people? The final point to consider relates directly to strengths-based change, as we will all go through or lead a change process as some point within sport. Have you considered where your strengths may lie? Are you an expert who will lead from the front and struggle to capture learning or innovation? Or is there a way where we can collaborate with our people and innovate and learn along the way? Perhaps starting with a positive focus will encourage this.

Dan Clements is the Performance Coach Manager at Welsh Rugby Union.

Click here for access to Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System by Dan Clements, Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris.

By John Portch

The world of sport may be able to learn from hedge funds when it comes to the decision-making process behind hiring staff and managing athletes.

This is the view of Denise Shull, who first delves into the parallels. “At a hedge fund, chief investment officers oversee portfolio managers, who report to them on the performance of various stocks, currencies or options,” she tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “The relationship is akin to that between a head coach and their position coaches or coordinators.”

“These portfolio managers then take their assets and try to manage their relative strengths and how they fit together in much the same way as an offensive coordinator might work with his staff and the team’s offensive players.”

Shull is a Performance Coach who serves as the Principal of the ReThink Group, a New York-based human capital consultancy that leverages the neuroscience and psychoanalytical research into creating new levels of human performance.

“An NFL coach told me that the most important part of his job was picking the coaches that report to you him,” she adds.

“It’s like the process of picking stocks. Human coaches and financial instruments have characteristics and have historically behaved in a certain way. You’re predicting that they will behave in that same way when they blend into a coherent portfolio of strengths and weaknesses with the other people or stocks that you picked. If they are successful, then their success is your cumulative success.”

However, there tends to be a fundamental difference in the decision-making process as she sees it and therein lies the lesson for sport. “Someone who works for a hedge fund is always thinking: ‘what’s the risk of this choice versus the possible reward?’,” says Shull. “I don’t think too many head coaches are doing that when it comes to hiring their staff but I think it is something they could adopt. It’s an offsetting of strengths but maybe more importantly of weaknesses. Portfolio managers look at individual risk/reward and portfolio-level risk reward. “In sport, we tend to think positive. The assumption tends to be that everything will work out well. They don’t necessarily think about what the real risks are. They just focus on the reward. Or if they do think about the risk then they seldom talk about it.”

“The bias in sport is towards optimism whereas in a hedge fund, for the most part, the bias is towards pessimism; ‘this is the best decision we can make but let’s assume this is not going to work out’.

Confidence in your analysis

“Human beings,” continues Shull, “always make decisions based on their feelings of confidence. They think it’s their data but it’s actually the feelings about the data. How much belief and confidence do you have in the data and its implications? That’s why confidence is something you can analyze and work with in an intentional way. You can deconstruct for example the emotion of trust or the comfort in hiring a known person and ensure the hire is happening for the best risk/reward ratio.”

She explains that hedge fund managers use conviction, an intense form of confidence, as their cornerstone. “Conviction, at the end of the day, is an emotion. It’s a bodily experience with a physical sensation that gives meaning to a set of circumstances. You do all your work, you make all your predictions, you think about what the risk is, but you believe that your prediction of the future is most accurate.

“Conviction is the central piece of what they do and I spend a lot of time coaching them back to their convictions. The environment is fluid, things don’t turn out like you think they would turn out, just like in sports. The best place to make a decision from is not to react to the fact that everything is going wrong but to step back and ask what do we believe and how did we get here and what do we still believe, how have our beliefs changed? What do we have conviction in?

“If you make a reactionary decision it won’t necessarily work out that well. You react and have to react again. You ask yourself why didn’t I stick with my conviction? That’s a worse place, psychologically, to be in than making the wrong bet in the first place. You’ve got to find something that is your rock, that is your cornerstone, something that gives you a better platform from which to make a decision.

“It sounds easy in sport because there’s good and bad players and wins and losses; but the results in any given moment don’t tell the whole story and it’s the same in the hedge fund world.”

The difference is that the hedge fund world is very systematic in establishing its conviction. “In sport, I don’t think there’s much awareness that you can work with conviction – or confidence – as an entity. That you can come to understand your own patterns and you can become more adept at recognizing your intuition – your visceral intelligence – what’s a valid gut feeling and what’s impulsive? You can gain skills in understanding the data in your feelings – if you decide to.”

This is where she believes sport is missing out. “You can be structured and analytical in what you believe, how much confidence you have, and what happens when you start to lose confidence.”

Shull, who has done research with coaches in the NFL, says that football practitioners might have an opportunity in adapting the kind of  risk-reward culture found at hedge funds and other professional portfolio managers. “It’s taught in finance and is ingrained in the culture but people at hedge funds have no influence over their ‘players’; they have to sit back and wait for their stocks. In that sense, the coach has an influence that’s prevented them thinking in risk-reward terms; they can change the risk-reward parameters in a way that the hedge fund manager can’t.”

Shull cites an example of how this plays out at a hedge fund. “I bring a matrix to my clients where we develop a spectrum of confidence that’s specific to that organization. “It’s a 1-7 scale of confidence. Level 1 might be panicked or terrified and level 7 is some form of over-confidence. We take them through exercises where, as an organization, they think about levels 2-6 are, what words describe levels 2-6, then they always use that in their conversations.”

Then they have experience talking about their fears in an organizationally acceptable way. This is huge in macho-oriented cultures. It also makes it easier to say “I was a 5 and am a 2!!!” on that scale” instead of saying “I’m terrified!” After working together to develop a scale, they have a  structured way of thinking about their own psychology.”

Where does a manager or coach ideally want to be on this scale of confidence? “I think level 5 is an optimal or safe place to be – you’re confident but there is still some doubt. We will have taken them through the typical fears like fear of missing out, if they don’t buy that stock right now, and then there’s also personal fears about reputation or future careers. We’ll build this organized way to understand and communicate about their level of confidence.”

Emotions as a competitive edge

Shull explains that such an approach is transferable to the world of sport, although the Leaders Performance Institute points out the probable resistance she would encounter when exploring emotions.

Her response is ready: “That makes it a competitive edge – that’s the irony. If they have the courage to change their feelings about that. For all the searching for the infinitesimal edges that goes on in sport; all the money, resources, investment, for the tiniest edges. Here’s one that’s huge.”

Sport, as she points out, is learning to use psychologists to safeguard and maintain its athletes and staff’s mental health and wellbeing but feels that an improved understanding of emotions can take the mental aspect further. “Coaches don’t realize that they can work with their gut feeling or their confidence – or their lack thereof – in an organized and systematic way. Sport psychologists tend to take a cognitive approach to feelings also but the more you try to ignore emotions the more they’re going to come out in another, usually less productive, way.

“Everyone has to have confidence to make their risk decisions and confidence is an emotion. You can use it as an edge, to ground you, and make better decisions.

“What’s going to happen on the field next week is unknown, so if you have a grounding in what you believe and why you believe it gives you something that doesn’t change; it gives you something you can rely on; it gives you a more stable place to work from once you have honored the feeling as a source of information.

“Put simply, when hiring a coaching staff and players, there can be benefit to thinking in risk-reward terms. There’s an idea in the hedge fund world that if you manage the risk then the rewards take care of themselves.”

What is it going to take to win in 2020?

That is the focus of our latest Performance Special Report. Download The High Performance Manual: Winning in 2020, which features sports organisations as diverse as Red Bull, the Brisbane Lions and the Royal Military Academy discussing the pertinent topics across Leadership & Culture, Coaching & Development, Human Performance and Data & Innovation.

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By John Portch

“I’m not at ease when talking about myself,” says Arsène Wenger.

The Leaders Performance Institute has asked the former Manager of English Premier League side Arsenal about his management style. Many observers have drawn their own conclusions during the Frenchman’s three-decade coaching career but he has seldom been asked himself.

This is clearly a state of affairs that suits the man but, with his customary graciousness, Wenger delivers a candid response: “I am a person who is highly motivated but is also always unsatisfied; a bit of a perfectionist. That means I am an unhappy person who suffers a lot every day. A manager has an easy life when his team wins and has a nightmare when his team doesn’t win.” The wry smile that accompanies his reply, a trait familiar to many who have enjoyed the pleasure of Wenger’s company, befits a man who has experienced triumph and defeat across more than 1,700 matches as a manager in French, Japanese and English football. It also hints at his drive, determination and even his need to return to the dugout as soon as possible. Even as he faces more suffering he seeks the next challenge, and so Wenger, who left Arsenal in May, is poised to find fresh work, with a litany of potential suitors waiting in the wings.

All will be seeking to tap into the wisdom and intelligence of a genteel character, dubbed ‘Le Professeur’ for his calm and cerebral approach to management. In press conferences he will field all questions about the game and is equally at ease discussing current affairs, philosophy and fiscal policy – he read politics and economics at the University of Strasbourg’s Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences while still playing in the French lower leagues. Wenger also had an influential role in the design and construction of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, which opened in 2006. If this sets Wenger apart from most of his counterparts, his 22 years at the helm of Arsenal are unlikely to be superseded in the modern era. When Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 after 26 years at Manchester United, Wenger was described as football’s last ‘legacy manager’; a throwback to a bygone age. With Ferguson gone, Wenger’s tenure exceeded the other 19 Premier League coaches’ combined for those next five years; the average managerial tenure remains closer to 18 months in England.

Success helped to explain his staying power – there were three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups accrued during that time – but it was also the fluid attacking style of his best teams, playing a brand of football that wowed Arsenal fans and rivals alike, and his consistent ability to help young players reach their potential. Beyond France and Japan, it was a much more insular time for the English game, when the tabloid press led the enquiries of ‘Arsène who?’ and even the players Wenger inherited got in on the act. Memorably, Arsenal’s right-back at the time, Lee Dixon, soon to be a Wenger convert, commented that the bespectacled manager looked like a geography teacher, i.e. as far removed from the traditional image of the manager as could be. Most English onlookers were oblivious to his achievements, particularly those with AS Monaco, but were made to take notice as Wenger’s novel approach to nutrition, sports science and scouting helped to deliver a Premier League and FA Cup double in his first full season at Arsenal.

That was then, and now, during Wenger’s career hiatus, the Leaders Performance Institute presents his reflections – gleaned from three separate interviews in the past three years, including most recently at November’s Leaders P8 Summit in London – on a sport that has evolved around him. “I started to manage a football team at the top level at the age of 33 [AS Nancy in 1984]; then it was just me and the players,” he recalls. “Today, you have at least ten members of staff and you can’t do everything alone.”

The demands placed on young players today

The game evolved but so has Wenger. Another aspect of his longevity is what he calls the ‘stamina’ of his motivation. It is a point he has touched upon several times with the Leaders Performance Institute. He asks: “We are all motivated by different things but how big is our motivation to maintain a high level? We can produce ten out of ten on a Monday; can we do it again on Tuesday? Can we do it in six months? The stamina of motivation is a very overrated quality for all people who are successful in life. For me, and I might be wrong, in any job the first quality is the high level of stamina in motivation.” Wenger can see the motivation in himself, and says the modern manager has any number of psychological analysis tools at his disposal when assessing players, but the ‘little details in real life’ remain the most significant in his eyes. “I’ll always have an interview with the player and the parents; and the mother tells me more about the boy than any psychological analyses. When you have talented boy and I ask him: ‘When you’re on holiday do you play football?’ If he says ‘no, not so much’ I think to myself, my friend, you’ll never be a top level football player. But the mother complains he’s always out there with the ball after school, comes home too late, you think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ So these kind of details in everyday life are very important.”

Every major sport has become a world sport and selection is worldwide. When I grew up, you need to be best player in your area. Today, if you want to go to a big club, you need to be one of the best players in the world. I think that demands a special personality.

When Wenger talks about young players his tone remains positive, even as he cites the unique challenges presented by the elite European football landscape: the sport has never been more visible and accessible, with players routinely scrutinised across all forms of media in a manner that exceeds their predecessors. As well as the increasing physical demands, Wenger argues that it requires different personality traits too. “Maybe the demands on the personality are much higher today because the players are under so much stress and scrutiny,” he observes. “They cannot hide anywhere and everyone has an opinion about every player. The modern player must be resistant to that stress and be capable of dealing with the demands.” He continues: “Every major sport has become a world sport and selection is worldwide. When I grew up, you need to be best player in your area. Today, if you want to go to a big club, you need to be one of the best players in the world. I think that demands a special personality.” Wenger has broadly identified three types of personality within modern players: the perfectionist, the competitor, and those who seek approval. He runs us through each in turn, starting with the perfectionist – the character he sees most obviously reflected in himself: “This is the easiest to deal with for a manager – the guy who has to battle with himself. That means he has an interior demand to be as good as he can be. He’s an unsatisfied person who doesn’t care what you think about him. He has an idea of the game and wants to be as close as possible to perfection. This is the champion, the real champion. This is the guy who gives an interview 20 years later and still remembers that he should have headed a cross rather than volleying it. This is the ideal champion.”

Next is the competitor, which is a tougher proposition for the manager. “This is the guy who goes into the dressing room and says in a subconscious language, ‘My friends, I am better than all of you.’ It is the guy who needs to be better than others, everywhere he goes and in everything that he does. Once he’s the best and acknowledged as the best he can lose motivation, although the perfectionist never does.” These players differ from those who seek approval from their peers. “These people walk into the dressing room and want to be acknowledged that they are people of quality. They look for recognition from their teammates and want them to say, ‘Yes, we know you are a good player.’ They retain their motivation because the perceptions of others fluctuate.” How does Wenger decide which type of personality he is dealing with in each case? “Watching a player is the best revelation of character. We can hide our true intentions and I can be very polite and educated but when I go out onto the pitch and it matters to me I become who I really am.” He believes that personality is tied to position on the field. “We are made up of those who love to win and those who hate to lose, but there is a dominance in all of us. Those that hate to lose are more defenders, those that love to win tend to be creative. We’ve seen normal players who, when you put them in the right position, they become top players.” Examples in Wenger’s career are manifold: turning Emmanuel Petit, whom he worked with at Monaco and then signed for Arsenal, from a left-back into a dominant midfielder; he worked a similar trick with Thierry Henry, who Wenger, as Monaco Manager, debuted as a left winger – a position Henry maintained for the best part of the next five years – before the duo reunited at Arsenal. There Wenger indulged his earlier instinct to play Henry as a forward and he became one of the world’s deadliest marksmen. Also at Arsenal, but moving in the opposite direction, were Lauren and Kolo Touré, who were moved back from midfield to defensive roles with profound results. Wenger says: “There’s no better detector of personality than to watch a player who says, ‘Let me show you that I can win’ with his actions and you look how he plays. He becomes who he really is and not what he has learnt to be.”

“You do not see many smiles”

Our chat about personality types lends itself nicely to an exploration of player motivations at a time when, according to Wenger, the responsibility for performance increasingly falls on the club. “This is because of the quantity of investment,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “Football is so important these days and when a player doesn’t perform, the club has to answer ‘why?’ and therefore has to do more for the player.” That is not to say players are absolved of responsibility, if anything, their burden is greater than ever. “We can help people who want to be successful, a guy who has the right level of motivation,” says Wenger. “But even when a guy has the right level of motivation he can be handicapped by other things. More than ever, young players today are under high pressure from their families, their agents and their environment; the pressure is very high. I personally feel that in the academies, when a boy signs today at 16 years of age, he has to be successful; and something has been taken away because he comes home every day and his father asks ‘did you practise well? Were you good? What did the coach say?’ When I was 16 football was the reward for coming out of school but, for these kids, football is what school was before. It is the job. At 16 the pressure is there already and they do not feel the same happiness – you do not see many smiles.”

One of the problems is the inefficiency of the academy system in European football – the attrition rates would shame any other business sector and this problem is not unique to football. “In every academy perhaps 1% of people will play in the Premier League,” says Wenger, adding, “when we have 1% we are happy. This also means we produce unemployed people in big quantities at an early age and I think we have to rethink the whole process and redress the balance.” Wenger fears early specialisation and his time at Arsenal the club went to lengths to ensure a more rounded education and development programme for their undergraduates. “It is not better that this boy has a normal life but still gets the requisite hours of training?” he asks. “[Arsenal have] an agreement with the school, for example, and the player is in touch with those who play basketball, hockey or rugby; and he’s in touch with people who have a normal life.

I think the game is about winning, of course, but it’s also about something deeper; that shared vision of the game. [It’s about] the values the game brings to people, the emotions you can share at the top level. When the game is played, respect can be bigger than anything else.

The father figure

In April 2018, when Wenger announced his imminent departure from Arsenal, Cesc Fàbregas, who played for the Frenchman between 2003 and 2011, took to Instagram to praise his former coach. He wrote: “He had faith in me from day one and I owe him a lot, he was like a father figure to me who always pushed me to be the best. Arsène, you deserve all the respect and happiness in the world. #classact.” Fàbregas is not a lone voice in labelling Wenger a father figure and the man’s approach to leadership goes someway to explaining why. “I have an influence on the immediate result of the team but I also have a fantastic opportunity to influence people’s lives,” Wenger tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “When you think that a guy can come from nowhere, with a good attitude, and you help him to become somebody; I think it’s one of the proudest moments for any human being to help people become somebody.”

Wenger has long been known as one of the finest developers of talent in Europe. Liberian forward George Weah came to Europe on Wenger’s watch, and would go on to become Africa’s first Ballon d’Or winner [he now serves as President of his nation], while the Frenchman also gave career debuts to Lillian Thuram, David Trezeguet and the aforementioned Henry, all of whom went on to win the Fifa World Cup and Uefa European Championships with France. This record continued at Arsenal. A 21-year-old Patrick Vieira came to north London on Wenger’s recommendation in September 1996, just weeks before his compatriot joined as Manager. After a season treading water at AC Milan in Italy, Vieira was set on the path to greatness and shared in France’s success at the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championships. Henry also reunited with Wenger in 1999, after his own short spell in Italy at Juventus, and he would go on to become Arsenal’s record goalscorer. Wenger also gave a career debut to Ashley Cole, the finest English left-back of his generation.

Wenger put this process eloquently in his native French during a 2015 interview with L’Équipe. “I am only a guide,” he began, adding: “I enable others to express what they have within them. I didn’t create anything. I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man. I define myself as an optimist. My never-ending struggle in this business is to release what is beautiful in man. I can be described as naïve in that sense, but it allows me to believe; and I am often proven right.” Not always, as Wenger freely admits, but he tells the Leaders Performance Institute there is something greater at play. He says: “I think the game is about winning, of course, but it’s also about something deeper; that shared vision of the game. [It’s about] the values the game brings to people, the emotions you can share at the top level. When the game is played, respect can be bigger than anything else.” This serves to create those lasting bonds with his players. “I could meet a player 20 years later and we can still be on the same wavelength because we have a memory of something we shared together that was both sincere and of high quality. Daily training also has to be built on the pleasure of sharing the collective game.” In further comments that resonate given his recent departure from Arsenal, Wenger adds: “You also have the responsibility to make sure the clubs grows so that when you leave you can say, ‘Look, I’ve made a little way with this club. Today it’s much stronger than when I arrived.’”

Knowing when a young player is ready to play

For such results in developing talent and for his former charges to speak so highly of him, Wenger has gone to great lengths to earn their trust. In part this is due to the emphasis he places on co-creating values with his teams. “We are a group of people who create the culture,” he explains. “Before the start of the season we sit together and my coaching staff and I will ask the players ‘What do you think is important in the way we live together?’ and we then put that on paper. The values we think are important, which will include respect, communication, being on time, proper behaviour on the football pitch; we take those, put them together, and we create our own culture. Then it allows me to say: ‘Look guys, that’s us; that’s our identity’. If you don’t behave properly then I can say: ‘Look, you decided that. That’s not right; we’re not behaving like we decided to.” Wenger will hold players accountable but he won’t overburden them. “I must first show that I trust him, and one of the ways of doing that is not to talk too much and to just hand him the shirt on the Friday before the game. Then I must be brave enough to walk out there in front of 60,000 people and say: ‘Yes guys, I believe in this person and he’ll be strong enough to play.’” Picking a player when they are ready is the ultimate demonstration of trust. “Sometimes, more than any speech, if I say to a player: ‘I believe you’re a great player’ and he replies: ‘Yes, but why don’t you play me?’ The simplest way to give trust and confidence to somebody is to select them for big games.” How can he be certain that a young player is ready? “When he plays in training and the other players give them the ball.”

The loneliness of the decision-maker

The Leaders Performance Institute often asks general managers, coaches and team managers what their biggest mistakes were and invariably their response is rooted in the ego of their youth and inexperience. As Wenger tells us, he is no different in this regard: “When you’re 20 years old you think you possess all the necessary qualities to succeed in life but I’m in a position today where my ego doesn’t interfere; my pride doesn’t interfere in communication any more. Experience helps you to understand what is important and get rid of all the rubbish. That means I can tell a player his haircut is not so important when it comes to being a great football player and then I can give him what he really misses in his game; what will be important for him to have the chance to be successful. We have the tools and the experience to tell him what will be important.” That includes sports science, even if Wenger feels that the modern head coach can feel ‘invaded’ at times by reams and reams of data. “Every morning at Arsenal we’d have a staff meeting where you have medical people, mental people, fitness people and you prepare the day as everyone expresses an opinion; but it’s always the same. At the end of the day, you have to make a decision. The manager is the decision-maker.”

This is why the right staff are so important. “Science and data can bring more knowledge and precision about how to perform,” he adds. “As well I believe that the last word is the quality of the observation, the instinct, to knowing people individually and, therefore, I believe that artificial intelligence is an important tool. The modern manager has to pragmatically select the four or five most important datasets that can help produce success on the pitch.” For now, Wenger doesn’t know his next move but there will certainly be a move in 2019. “Life is moving, competition is moving, so don’t stand still. You always have to question yourself; what is the next step? Where do I go from here? Success can encourage you to stand still; you think it worked so you continue to do that. That is the best way to get lost.”

Something tells us that Wenger will find his way.