By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Performance Support virtual roundtable series of 2023, we are focusing our attention on the overarching topic of Performance Planning.

Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas as part of this topic:

• Leading with purpose: the relationship between personal and professional purpose on shaping organisational and team planning.
• Goal harmony vs. team harmony: how can you create team alignment to galvanise and focus your team performance?
• Debriefing: implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

For the final part of this learning series, the focus of the content and conversations centred around implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

Outcomes of the session included:

• Reflecting on how your teams and organisations learn through reflection.
• Learning about principles for practical debriefing.
• Exploring pitfalls and success factors for debriefing.

Debriefing as a critical component of a high performing organisation

In setting the scene for this virtual roundtable, we leaned into the work of Arie De Geus, who was one of the early thinkers in the space of systems thinking and how we can learn and ally new learning to create a competitive advantage. De Geus was quoted as saying that ‘the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors’. Effective debriefing forms a key role in creating a true learning organisation and allowing you to use learning as a source of competitive advantage.

Combining the work of De Geus, Peter Senge in his work for The Fifth Discipline suggests that the highest performing organisations consistently learn and put systems in place where they are able to extract information and collective intelligence. When thinking about the topic of debriefing, there are often questions considered around to how we should do it and when. Answering these questions and systematising will support a shift towards a culture of learning.

Before we move into exploring specific elements of debriefing, we also explored the difference between traditional organisations and those who are termed learning organisations.

Senge defined organisations as where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. Pedlar provides a definition of a learning organisation as being able to facilitate learning of all its members with the aim of continuously transforming itself.

How are we currently implementing debriefing?

Reflecting on how we are currently implementing debriefing provided an opportunity for those on the call to share their experiences of this process in their environment. There were some differences in responses to how debriefing is leveraged.

• Informal post-session debriefs which are followed by more formal debriefs at a later date.
• Weekly reviews that take place before the performance outcome.
• Integration of a yearly debriefing opportunity alongside some unstructured but regular conversations.
• There were some differences in how debriefing takes place with athletes and how it operates with coaches. It was mentioned more than once that athletes get it daily in a very structured way but from a coaching capacity, they tend to be more casual on a daily basis but extended formally on a quarterly basis.
• A combination of debriefs or reviews of planning which are immediate (review of the week). Some are quarterly planning and others annually to review the original plan.

As part of this conversation, there were some interesting reflections on the nature of debriefing in some of our environments. A point was made around debriefs or reviews leading to us slipping into planning or a solution mindset. We can experience tangents and not effectively staying on the task of the debrief – effective debriefing requires intent and discipline.

There were also some reflections on debriefing tending to focus on the eventuality of a negative outcome such as a defeat, as opposed to when we win. Participants on the call shared that in the debriefing process, often there is a lack of action, something that other members of the team or players pick up on. Actions are crucial for buy-in – it is easy to review and reflect, but to generate actual change is where the impact of a debrief comes in.

Skills for effective debriefing

We’ve discussed the importance of debriefing and how it is currently being implemented in our environments, but it is also important to consider the skills required for debriefing to be effective. When the question of what skills are required were put to the group, these are some of the responses that followed:

• A case of not just focusing on weaknesses or things to improve, but celebrating what went well (even if it didn’t fully succeed in outcome).
• Questioning to draw out areas of improvement rather than always telling people what is wrong.
• Involving all and integrating all departments into the meeting that contribute to performance.
• Listening skills.
• Emotional regulation and understanding emotions. Positive communication and collaboration.
• The skill of facilitation.

For effective debriefing, having a framework or system in place will elevate its impact. We discussed a simple framework that can be used by anyone as a benchmark:

Planning for action. Planning for the debrief is important, particularly how the debriefs will happen and the skills required to make them effective. Often it is easy for debriefs to become emotional – a process in pre-planning helps to keep things on track.

Action. This is the doing part.

Reflection. How do you reflect accurately, especially in an emotionally charged environment, whether positive or negative? Reflection is a key still to aid questioning and listening.

Relating back into action. Take the learning and do something with it. If you do not do this, it is a waste of time. Debriefing is about initiating change and continuous improvement.

To summarise this section, having the ability to reflect, appraise and reappraise is considered a cornerstone of lifelong learning and performance.

Challenges in debriefing

The group highlighted a number of challenges that are associated with debriefing. The idea was to identify what often gets in the way of being good at debriefing, allowing us to evaluate how we currently approach debriefing. There were six key challenges highlighted that we should be aware of.

• A lack of process.
• Gaps in the skill of self-reflecting.
• Lack of skills in respectfully challenging others.
• Outcome bias. Debriefs can often be swayed by the outcome.
• Debriefing when it goes wrong not when it goes right.

To summarise

The influence of debriefing is a topic often talked about within the Leaders Performance Institute. We all know the importance of it but there is a feeling that there remains vast room for improvement in how to do it effectively. As we rounded off this virtual roundtable, we reflected on some of the key considerations and opportunities for debriefing, to ensure you engage in it more effectively in your environment.

It’s worth noting that debriefing is free, yet presents a fantastic opportunity for continuous improvement without financial resource. With any sort of debriefing, using a process to embed and plan out debriefing is a positive first step in its impact. Remove outcome bias and instead focus on the learning, decision-making and impact areas – outcome bias will sway the quality of the debrief. Be sensitive of time and, where you can, engage in debriefs immediately after the performance. Keep them short and to the point. Gather as many facts as possible first, allowing you to be dispassionate and objective. As an observation, watch for people proving vs. challenging themselves. Reflection skills are powerful so ensure you practise them to elevate the quality of the debrief. Finally, keep a journal and a log of the key learnings from the process.

By Iain Brunnschweiler

An 8-year-old goalkeeper throws his hands up in the air and complains for the fifth time about a decision that the 14-year-old referee has made.

This demonstration of frustration is clear for all to see, despite his young age. To compound matters, the opposition coaches, having both prowled angrily around what passes for their technical area, pointing and shouting for the whole game, join in the protests against the teenager who is officiating the game, as a part of her development.

This was an actual scene that I witnessed last weekend in an under-9s grassroots game.

Behaviour can be contagious. It can spread like wildfire. And it isn’t restricted to those directly in contact with you, especially if you are in a position of hierarchical influence.

Now, I could write an article pointing out some of the clearly unhelpful adult behaviour that seems to emerge on the side lines of kid’s sport, however, for the moment I will leave that for the governing bodies to address. The area of interest to me here is the impact of role modelling.

There are two clear examples above of where individuals have been influenced by the role modelling of people of significance to them. The young goalkeeper will have seen and be mimicking the behaviours of one of the many keepers displaying this approach on TV. For the impressionable mind, that’s what goalkeepers do. They complain about every decision. They run directly at the referee when any decision is made. They shout and throw their arms in the air in disgust.

Secondly, the coaches on the side lines – probably two incredibly well-meaning parents who have committed their free time to support youth sport – are doing what they’ve seen on TV, or live from the stands. Standing up for the whole game, allowing the emotion (attached to the score line of the clearly very important under-9s match) to spill over into behaviours they would never normally enact within the bounds of normal life. Shouting at the children within their care, shouting at the child who is learning to referee, whilst being accountable for the experience for all of these impressionable young folk.

The point of real interest for me (and hopefully others who have the privilege and responsibility of being in a leadership role) is to consider which of our behaviours are contagious. How aware are we of the impact of our behaviour both directly upon others, and indirectly through the role modelling we demonstrate? What are the things we see in others around us that mimic our behaviour, and how comfortable are we about this? How can we raise awareness of these factors?

One great way is opening yourself up to feedback. I received some highly valuable feedback in the past from a colleague, about getting the best out of my team. She generously pointed out a specific behaviour (one of my preferences) that she didn’t think helped the team get in the appropriate state for a given meeting. It was brave of her to give me this feedback, and I valued it hugely. She skilfully raised awareness of a learned behaviour, and allowed me to consider how I responded. I committed that day to make a change.

Organisations will often commit to a set of values, sometimes written on the walls or company documents. In many cases the words ‘honesty’ or ‘integrity’ might appear. Yet how often are people within the organisation encouraged to provide genuinely honest feedback to leaders around the impact of their behaviours? How often do we ask how we make others feel at work? I’ve experienced some feedback-rich environments, and I’ve experienced some that felt very unsafe. The former was certainly far more enjoyable to work in, and far more productive for all. Once awareness has been raised, one still has to consider whether they will take action or not.

Some examples of contagious behaviour that I’ve seen are:

The workaholic. A key leader spends enormous lengths of time at the workplace. They are online even when they are home.

The standards monitor. A key leader is incredibly hot on standards of clothing, office space, and punctuality. They will regularly call out colleagues who are not achieving the leader’s expected level.

The time-giver. A key leader regularly is seen taking time to speak to colleagues, getting to know them.

The HIPPO. Within meetings, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion is always the decisive one. They shut down others in order to make the call, based on their perception.

The joker. A key leader is regularly seen making jokes and having fun within the work place.

The calming influence. A person of hierarchical position who demonstrates a calm, thoughtful and logical approach at times of pressurised decision-making.

The above are just a few examples of contagious behaviours, and I will let you decide to what extent you perceive these attributes to be helpful, or a hindrance, within the workplace. This will no doubt be relative to the context and the complexity of the organisation and the people surrounding the leader.

However, in my experience, the contagion is very clear and obvious. We see miniature versions of these behaviours permeating throughout the organisation. This becomes the culture.

One successful and overt strategy to utilise role modelling within the work place that I have seen has been the deployment of experienced professional players within an U-21s team. Southampton and Brighton & Hove Albion Football Clubs have very successfully deployed Ollie Lancashire and Gary Dicker respectively into player-coach roles. These players, both in their 30s have role modelled the behaviours, approaches and attributes that a consistently high performing player possesses, all at very close proximity to the club’s top youth talent. I’m sure there will be other examples of this within sport, military and business.

Behaviour can be contagious. I have, as most of us who are sporting parents, felt all of the emotions that come to the surface when a loved one is either doing well or doing badly in front of you. I have the urge to shout in support, to shout words of encouragement or at times words of despair. However, I remember watching a video that Arsenal FC pulled together where they interviewed young players about what they wanted to hear from their parents on the sidelines, and the messaging stuck with me. “I don’t want you shouting from the side of the pitch… I just like it when you clap when I’ve done something well” or words to that effect. I now have a strategy of holding my hands behind my back when I’m watching my kids, to remind me of this video. This physical act helps me. Hopefully my side line approach would be perceived as helpful role modelling to other parents who want the best for their kids.

Questions for leaders:

• How aware are you of your level of contagion?
• Who are the people most affected by your behaviour?
• How helpful is your most contagious behaviour to the cause or purpose of the organisation or department?
• What could you differently that might have a more positive impact?

So, if you are not happy with the behaviours you see in front of you, consider how you can act. As Ghandi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Role modelling has a huge impact. If it is contagious enough through a TV screen to affect an 8-year-old and a couple of adults at a kids match, imagine the power of this in person.

And, by the way, if you know an adult who behaves like this in kids sport then please pass this article onto them! As I’m 100% sure that coaching kids looks very different from coaching professionals.

Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.

By Bobby L Scales II

One of my favorite questions when I talk to people is: what are you reading right now?

A while ago, I asked a friend, and his reply fascinated me. “I’m not reading anything new,” he said. “I’m going back through books I’ve read and I’m really trying to pick up on the things I missed before”.

The idea resonated with me. “Go back through the books, podcasts or articles you really felt you learnt from and relearn,” he continued. We all have a mountain of books or e-books that we dive into with both feet with the intention of learning or educating ourselves in one form or fashion. Even the most intelligent among us can’t catch, retain and process everything.

He is definitely onto something. I have found that when you return to a book, there will be things you want to brush up on but there is also going to be things you missed first time around because you were so engrossed in other ways. Much of this is due to the fact that whether it be six weeks or six months on, certainly there is some personal growth and development. With that in mind, things you either didn’t catch or glossed over will have a different meaning once you go back to it.

We should all make the time.

‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’

It is not just books or articles. With the forthcoming Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London in mind, you may have notes of previous conferences or conversations that hold even greater relevance today. You could probably even pick up the phone and reacquaint yourself with people you connected with at those conferences.

My first Leaders Sport Performance Summit was at London’s Emirates Stadium in November 2015. I appeared onstage during my tenure as Director of Player Development at the Los Angeles Angels alongside Stuart Worden, the Principal of the renowned BRIT School. We discussed talent development at length and I stayed on for both days and took notes from a number of other sessions.

I revisited those notes recently and it is funny to reflect on some of the things you write down. Events will happen in life and it will amplify certain elements that I won’t say didn’t apply back in 2015, but they can have a boatload more meaning eight years on.

There is research that people retain more learning when we write things down with pen and paper. I keep all my notes in one book I call ‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’. It sounds like a silly title but there are thoughts, quotes and notes from the different insights that fascinated me. I used to be an eBook reader but there is something different about having a hard copy book with a pen and highlighter at hand. Like many of you, I am sure, I’ll write notes in the margin or highlight certain passages. My shelves are full of annotated books.

As for my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I had it in hand at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2017 when I returned to the Sport Performance Summit, this time as a delegate. I flicked through my notes recently – I remember taking them sat next to Leaders’ Matthew Stone – and there were a couple of concepts that really hit home harder now than they did then just because of the circumstances in my life. I had left professional baseball for a position in private industry. While I was fairly certain what I was doing at the time wasn’t going to be it. I was at a crossroads professionally. In Chicago, Stuart Lancaster spoke about his own personal crossroads after having been sacked as Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team. Stuart’s presentation that day and the notes I took from it are still staples of my decision making tree to this day.  As we all know, when you work in professional athletics more often than not you are going to be sacked at some point… I was again. The first place I looked the last time was ‘The Book Of Intelligent Stuff-Chicago 2017’.

Don’t agree? Do more digging

That’s another thing about conferences. You will look around the auditorium and see people with their heads down taking notes. You are looking at them and thinking ‘should I be writing this down?’ Certain things just resonate with people at certain times.

In my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I’ve got three quote sections where I’ll write down things I hear on Instagram or Facebook, for example. If I’m listening to a podcast and a guests says something resonant, I’ll make a note on my desk or my phone and later add it to my book.

I will also note down things I disagree with. You owe it to yourself to learn why you disagree with a point and investigate it further. If you’re reading an article or a book and they say X, Y or Z, why do they feel that way? You take the emotion out of it and learn why a person feels that way or why they think this isn’t actually as important as we once thought it was. There could be some academic research behind it or some hard numbers. It is important to investigate why that person came to that conclusion and maybe decide that you need to change your position. We owe it to ourselves to think critically and challenge what we think and what others present. It can only make you sharper

All of that is part of the life-long learning process we should all be on.

“Serial winning coaches don’t just want to get ahead – they want to stay ahead,” Professor Cliff Mallett tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”

Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.

In an extended chat we delve into:

• Why Serial Winning Coaches are the ‘outliers amongst outliers’ [7:00];
• How coaches should approach developing ‘care’ and ‘determination’ with their athletes [31:00];
• How Serial Winning Coaches can help us to inform the identification, recruitment and development of the next generation of coaches [39:30];
• Why coaching is about striving, surviving and thriving [45:00].

Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By Iain Brunnschweiler

A football manager on the side of the pitch, volleys the water bottles and screams in disbelief as one of his players makes a passing error on the field.

It’s a scene we have all witnessed time and time again. The crowd get to see how passionate the manager is, how much they care about the team’s performance and how much this error hurts them personally. But as an executive sitting in the stands, paying the manager a huge salary, I would be asking myself just how effective they are being at their job in that moment?

In psychological terms, unless this display of anger is some form of ‘DiCaprio-esque’ acting skills from the manager in question, it means that they are emotionally deregulated. And when any human is emotionally deregulated, psychologists tell us that their ability to perform a number of high level tasks (such as taking in information and strategic decision-making) is massively impacted in a negative way.

Having stepped out of full-time work and into a world of consultancy, supporting a number of different organisations, it has given me time to reflect on my true beliefs, and aspects of performance development that I hold as truths.

One area that I keep circling back to, is the power of self-regulation.

Desirable adult behaviours

My observations of the best staff I have operated with is that they have worked out ways in which to self-regulate in the most pressurised moments. Now, this self-regulation takes numerous different forms based on the individual in question, but it is grounded in the fact that everyone needs personal strategies to stop themselves from essentially turning into a spoiled child when the going gets tough!

I have been extremely lucky to have worked alongside some of the industry’s top performance psychologists over the past two-and-a-half decades, both as a player and as a member of staff. My major learning from these leading members of the fraternity, is that they unlock introspection and retrospection in the people they are working with, in order to help the individual understand their own ‘personal best state’ to operate in. Then they help them work out their derailers, and identify when these derailers are likely to occur, in order to develop strategies to minimise the negative impact. It sounds simple! However, in reality this is a live process that can take years.

In youth development, one of my observations, present in football more than any of the other sports I have worked in, is that coaches can demonstrate levels of deregulation which are seemingly totally disproportionate to the age group of athlete they are working with. I have seen coaches of U9 teams screaming at 15-year-old trainee referees because they are certain that the ball went out. I’ve seen opposition coaching staff of U14 teams nearly coming to blows on the side of the pitch because the game is not going the way they envisaged it going. In the cold light of day, if you were to show these adults footage of themselves, especially alongside a GIF of a screaming child, their embarrassment levels would be high I have no doubt. In these cases, more work is needed in order to help them effectively self-regulate. Because, in my opinion, behaviour like this is letting down the children in their care. The role of a youth coach is to not only help the kids to learn the game, but also to be a role model of desirable adult behaviours.

Another observation is that it is not just the game itself that causes a non-desirable state in adult members of staff. I have seen many coaches lose sight of what is really at the heart of coaching – in my opinion this is genuinely attending to the children/people within your care in order to help facilitate their development in a skilful manner.

One of the reasons this occurs is the current audit-driven, process-oriented world in which we live. Coaches behave in insecure ways, sometimes unable to attend to the players in front of them because they are so nervous about what their boss thinks, or what is written down on their ‘curriculum’! As a wise man once said to me, the players ARE the curriculum. The thought that a bunch of middle-aged folk in tracksuits, can predefine the development needs of an entire squad every day of the year, by writing down a development curriculum before the season starts is once again, misguided at best.

The heart of coaching: guard rails, not train tracks

The best coaches (and I use that term in the broadest sense to include multiple ologies) I have worked with, are the ones who prioritise human interactions above all else. These elite practitioners are aware of the organisational documents, and will create environments that are guided by club principles, yet at the heart of their decision making is the child or adult in front of them at that moment. I heard a great analogy once, that development environments should have guard rails, rather than train tracks.

My interpretation of this is that it is really helpful to have broad principles and guidance (‘the way we do things around here’), but that it is genuinely unhelpful to have prescribed sessions that staff are forced to deliver. This normally just serves to deregulate or demotivate – two states that are certainly NOT optimal for performance development.

For those in charge of delivering performance and/or development environments, it would be worth considering the behaviours you are seeing from your staff teams. Are they operating in a manner which indicates that they feel psychologically safe enough to be themselves, within the broad principles of the organisation? Or are they nervously hoping that they are adhering to their boss, curriculum or audit’s demands, whilst compromising the athletes within they care?

When you’re reflecting on your own personal optimal performance state, it’s useful to consider what your derailers are, and what your strategies are. I am certainly NOT suggesting that we should not be passionate, and should not show that we care. But hopefully we can see fewer water bottles being volleyed, and fewer 15-year-old trainee referees being shouted at by the people who are supposed to be role models. I know that most athletes would prefer this.

Questions for the reader:

• What derails you?
• How do you know when you’ve been derailed, and what/who can help you regulate yourself?
• What are the potential negatives of operating in a deregulated state, whether this is in business, sport or any other environment?

Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.

By Graham Turner PhD

People that think sport is easy don’t know the amount of time and effort you have to put in #f***ingopenyoureyes

Tweet from an athlete featured in The Young Athlete’s Perspective

In my book The Young Athlete’s Perspective, six young athletes share their talent development stories, reveal what it is really like to be a young person in a sports talent development programme and share what they think, but dare not say.

The book provides valuable insights into key topics and issues, such as:

• How to support young athletes to progress in the sport that is right for them.
• How a positive talent development experience relies upon personalised and holistic athlete development.
• How to guide the young athlete through competing physical demands and psychological challenges.
• Why optimal athlete and coach collaboration relies upon a genuine relationship and authentic communication.
• How autonomy, connectedness and a sense of competence are critical to a young athlete’s motivation.
• How to teach the young athlete to become the best learner.

The key to becoming the best learner – self-regulation                                                                                        

In this article, I have focused on self-regulation and its role in enabling young athletes to become better learners.

To be successful, young athletes must be proactive, independent, resourceful, and persistent. Self-regulation is the process by which an athlete continuously monitors progress towards their goals, evaluates outcomes and redirects unsuccessful efforts. Key to this process is the individual’s awareness of and knowledge about their own thinking (metacognition). Each athlete must be behaviourally proactive in their own learning process and learn to be self-aware, problem-focused and goal-oriented. Higher-level athletes learn to self-regulate by exerting greater control over their feelings, thoughts and actions during three distinct phases:

• Forethought – the processes and beliefs that occur before the effort to learn is initiated.
• Performance – the process of behaviour that effects planned execution.
• Self-reflection – the processes that occur after each learning effort.

Through the use of direct quotes, the book explores the developmental journeys of these young athletes and provides examples of how young people demonstrate initiative, take responsibility, and optimise learning by:

Seeking out specific environments

At the end of this season I think I am going to move to ######… Yes, it is a much better team.

Rowan

Creating specific structures

Time management is the only way I’ll ever get anything done otherwise I end up just leaving it. But if I set myself out what I need to do every day, then I’ll get it done and it’s fine.

Eboni

Implementing consistent processes

I use my diary a lot, the goal setting is really helpful, you just need to keep doing that, that’s how you are going to improve as a player.

Steve

The level of learning achieved by an athlete will vary depending upon the level of their self-regulatory skill. Young athletes’ accounts of engagement with adults within the talent development environment demonstrate how being listened to and understood positively impacts this process.

Yes, they are much better, much better coaches, yes. They have one on one conversations with you about things, like what they want you to do next game or how the last game went, and they seem like they care a bit more and they are actually happy that we have done well.

Steve

And athletes who successfully self-regulate eventually become distinguished by their sensitivity to the social context and a proficiency in the ability to recognise how an adult may,

Help learning

Author: Do you think he (your Athletics Coach) stepped it up as well?  You said, “I’m serious.”  And suddenly he’s thought, oh right…

George: Yeah, definitely.  Yeah as soon as he saw I was making decisions to focus on it a lot more, he’s given me a lot more time and he’s given me a lot more focus.

Or hinder learning

I didn’t feel like I got anything out of it. The coaches weren’t very helpful they kind of told you what to do but weren’t very good at correcting the stuff that you had wrong.

Steve

The young people in this book have revealed that for them, the essence of being in a sports talent development programme is hard work. Each young person details an individual set of contextualised circumstances that has subsequently influenced the extent to which they have been able to take control of their own learning. Individual stories depict how the behaviour of different adults teaches young athletes how to act and how for the young person, their interpretation of and response to this is key to their talent development experience.

I spoke to my coach recently and said well I don’t really see the point in doing it anymore if I’m not going to get any further so then we had a talk and she said I need to improve my fitness, which I did, and I needed to get to the next step and need to go through regional for another half a year, so I can get moved up to the next level.

So now she has moved me up again, so I am half in regional and half in the local Academy.

Eboni

The self-regulated learner incorporates self-motivational beliefs with task strategies (plans and methods) to develop and apply self-regulation processes and is influenced reciprocally by the results of those efforts.

Positive collaboration

When the young person is motivated to find solutions to the challenges they face the key to positive collaboration is dependent upon the adult’s ability to create conditions that promote engagement. The narratives of the young athletes in this book demonstrate how for them, the experience of talent development extends far beyond the time spent in training and competition and can come to influence every area of their life. This existence requires the young person to live in a reality where the expectation is that they are continually striving to improve performance, and so for as long as they commit to meet this demand they must constantly search for ways to positively influence individual progress.

The Young Athlete’s Perspective is available now from all good booksellers.

Graham works for the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) as a systems leader, supporting sports to establish world’s best High Performance Pathways that identify, develop, support and progress talented athletes to achieve medal winning performances. He has previously worked at organisations including Wolverhampton Wanderers, Gymnastics Australia and Leeds Beckett University. He holds a PhD in Talent Development in Sport.

By Luke Whitworth

For the latest edition of our Leadership Skills Series, we delved into the skill of analytical thinking.

Most people in high performance sport are operating in a volatile and complex landscape, so as part of this session, we explored common errors we make in our thinking and why, strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking, and identify opportunities to use more analytical thinking in our environments.

Before we delve into some of the detailed content and ideations, what do we mean by analytical thinking? Here is one definition: ‘It is our ability to collect information, analyse it and use those insights to solve problems and make decisions’.

System one & two thinking

To kick off the session, we leaned into the work of Nobel Prize winner (in Economic Sciences) Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Kahneman suggests that there are two types of analytical thinking. The first is the ‘fast thinking system’ or ‘system one thinking’ where our brains come up with automatic answers to things without a conscious effort. This mode of thinking is both efficient and effective in domains where we have deep expertise of experience. There are downsides, however. These lines of thinking are influenced by emotions and affected by biases which can lead to highly predictable mistakes. As humans we make a lot of errors in our thinking, but often those errors are predictable and it quickly becomes a case of how do we prevent these from happening again, or what to look out for.

To summarise system one thinking – it is automatic, intuitive, influenced by emotions and affected by biases; and so we can make predictable mistakes.

How does System two thinking differ from one? Kahneman defines this as the slow reasoning system which requires more effort and deliberation. We have a higher level of intention to stop and move into a space of deliberate thinking, it isn’t a case of the thinking just popping into your head, it takes energy and tends to be more complex. Analytical thinking is more aligned to system two thinking. There are downsides to this as well – it uses a lot of energy so there can be a tendency to delegate to system one.

To summarise system two thinking – it is effortful, deliberate, requires complex computation, it controls urges but can make you experience laziness and over-trusting system one.

Common errors in our thinking

As part of the session, we explored eight common errors that can affect thinking in our environments. It’s important to be aware of these as they will influence your ability to think analytically.

The first error is the law of small numbers. This error refers to the idea that we can get sucked into drawing conclusions using limited information – making small sample sizes to find a pattern when we shouldn’t. This is a good example of what Kahneman aligns system one thinking to.

The second error is confirmation bias. Often people pay attention to and seek evidence to support existing beliefs. This error is one of the most important to think about as our brain is setup to look for evidence to support the assumptions we already have and doesn’t look out for or seek counter evidence.

The third error is operating from an out-of-date mental map of the world. It’s quite a wordy one but it factors in the idea that we continue to keep acting as if the world we understand is still the same without challenging it. In high performance sport this can be a dangerous error in thinking, such is the fast-paced nature of the landscape.

The fourth error is unconscious bias about people and their potential. It is often perceived as black and white or either positive or negative. There are two other types of bias – projection and affinity. In considering unconscious bias, we often hear talk about negative bias, but not as much about the ‘halo effect’ which is where you recognise a characteristic you have seen before in high performance and you expect it to show up again. Projection bias incorrectly judges someone’s potential on the basis of current skills. Finally, affinity bias looks for the same qualities we have seen before. Arguably, this is one of the most common and well-known set of thinking errors.

Loss aversion is another error we see in thinking. It is where the fear of loss or losses is stronger than the desire for gains. There is a lot of research and evidence that suggests that humans will put more effort in avoiding a loss than getting a gain – the gain is undervalued.

The sixth error is status quo bias. This is the preference in maintaining assurance of current approaches and having an opposition to change. This is a dangerous game to be playing.

The penultimate thinking error as part of this section is the ‘bandwagon effect’. This line of thinking is a pull in wanting to adopt an approach because everyone else is doing it – the idea of conforming to thinking in a group and we will do what others do. This is a downside to analytical thinking. The real question we should be evaluating is whether there is evidence that what someone else is doing will work for us. Contexts are unique.

Finally, attribution error. This is defined by overestimating the impact of personality, character and underestimating the impact of the environment on behaviour. It’s very common that people can struggle in certain environments but thrive in others.

Improving analytical thinking

We’ve highlighted common errors in thinking, so how can we shift the dial and improve our ability to be more analytical? Before we explore some specific strategies, we discussed four tips to consider as part of this process:

1. Save your critical thinking for things that really matter.
2. Do it when your mind is fresh to avoid decision fatigue.
3. Leave emotions in check.
4. Invite challenge from others. We can spot errors in other people’s thinking much easier than we can spot our own.

What about strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking?

When thinking about your role as a leader or collectively how you operate as a team, the below are a set of strategies that can support analytical thinking in a positive way, in a number of different contexts.

The first strategy is ‘STOP moments’. Stand back, Take stock, Options, Proceed. It is also known as hot-debriefing during events and something that can be done in the moment. When thinking about ‘stand back’, this is taking more of a helicopter view of a situation or problem. ‘Take stock’ is the acquisition of data and analysing what is happening around that. ‘Options’ is as it sounds. Exploring options around what you can do differently. Finally ‘proceed’ is stepping back into the moment, taking action and assessing what impact your new approach has.

Debriefing. We would hope that many of us are already doing this to support their analytical thinking.

Another strategy is holding ideation sessions, also known as front foot innovation. There are traditionally two types of innovation: response which is where change needs to be imposed and proactive, which is much more disruptive and intentional in how to be innovative.

Improving cognitive diversity is another important strategy for analytical thinking. Seek out different perspectives, as so often we get multiple people with the same expertise approaching problems and questions.

Have you considered the idea of perspective shifting? This strategy looks at a situation from someone else’s perspective, putting yourself in their shoes, if you will. Often you will find that we look at problems and questions from our own contexts, which dovetails the thinking error of status quo bias.

Perspective taking underpins Edward de Bono’s main argument in his renowned 1985 book Six Thinking Hats. De Bono discussed two pairs of hats which allow us to reflect on our own particular preferences – the first is red and white, which refers to gut feel and intuition (red) and facts (white). What is your default and comfort when evaluating this first pair of hats and do you bring in enough of the other? When does the red or white hat have to be challenged? For the second pair of hats we have yellow and black. Yellow refers to being optimistic, assuming something is possible and thinking about the how. Black is of course the opposite – the constructive critic which is thinking through what could go wrong. Effective techniques that enable black hat thinking are pre-mortems and red-teaming. Pre-mortem is the assumption for a moment we will fail. From that perspective, it involves looking and identifying what is most likely to go wrong. Red-teaming is the idea of tasking some of the team with figuring out how to beat your strategy.

Finally, a really effective strategy for analytical thinking is root cause analysis. Many of us have heard of the ‘5 Whys’ which is a simplistic but effective method. Perhaps more impactful is the use of multiple cause diagrams which allow us to work from a challenge and identify the different causes that are having an impact.

Further considerations

As we have covered in this review of analytical thinking, it does take more time, deliberation and effort to do effectively. That is the nature of the beast in doing system two thinking well. In reflecting on the common errors and strategies above, ask yourself these questions:

• When do you currently do your best analytical thinking as an environment?
• What strategies could you make more use of?
• When and how could you introduce more analytical thinking?

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The rise of Toulouse FC has been both fast and meticulously planned.

Le Téfécé were Ligue 2 champions in 2022 and, last season, won the Coupe de France – their first major trophy in 66 years.

Toulouse also finished 13^th in their first season back in Ligue 1 – well clear of the relegation zone. Not that Damien Comolli, the club’s President since 2020, is resting on this laurels.

“Everyone said ‘well done on staying up’ but we’re not interested in staying up – we never mentioned staying up – we said we want to finish as high as possible,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“There are games that we feel we should have won and could have won. We lacked this cutting edge, this winning mentality at times, we should have got more points, we should have finished higher than 13^th in the table.”

Damien Comolli has overseen the Toulouse’s resurgence under new owners RedBird Capital Partners, but he couldn’t have done it without his ‘truth teller’, the club’s Head of Strategy & Culture, Selinay Gürgenç Comolli, and Julien Demeaux, Toulouse’s Head of Data.

Both Selinay and Julien joined Damien for this episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

The theme is Toulouse’s upwards trajectory and what it is going to take to help establish the club at the vanguard of European football.

On today’s agenda:

• How Damien is working to prevent Toulouse being a ‘one-season-wonder’ [9:00];
• His view on the importance of having a ‘truth teller’ in Selinay [12:30];
• Selinay on the importance of the club’s strategic committee [22:00];
• Julien on the comparative immaturity of data usage in football [32:00].

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John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By John Portch

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Rohan Taylor how he stays in touch with his instincts as a coach.

“I’m on that journey, to be honest,” says the Head Coach of Swimming Australia. “I’m very comfortable now, today, to say it’s my number one skillset that I think I have to keep front and centre. I see instinct and intuition as a collection of knowledge and experience that touches me on the head and says ‘have you seen this before?’ so I need to stop and listen and tap into it.”

Taylor explains that he welcomes data but that he “won’t let it override what I feel”. “When I made the most successful moves or the most successful decisions or things that I’ve done really well, it’s been driven by my instincts with information informing me,” he continues.

It is not just decision-making around Swimming Australia’s programming either. “In a room when I’m talking to a group of people, I’m looking around to see is there a connection happening here and I rely on my instincts to tell me where to pivot if it’s not.

“My instincts tell me ‘you’re probably not hitting the mark’. I rely on them heavily and I’m very confident in them. And if I make a mistake, I make a mistake. It doesn’t faze me. I learn from that and it’s all about continual improvement for me.”

Taylor, who is currently with the Australian Dolphins at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, was a major contributor to our March Special Report Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions. Here, he reflects on his style as a leader and where he can continue to improve and develop.

Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

What is the key to getting the big decisions right and managing them effectively?

RT: I’m always a big believer that I’ve got to surround myself with people smarter than me and build that trust. Getting a big decision right is speaking to the right people to tell me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear; getting the right feedback. Because you can go to people and say ‘yeah, that’s the way to go’ but then they’ll ask questions and make me think a little bit more. So I’ve vetted my decision-making with trusted people around me. I think that’s a really important part. But for the piece I’m doing, is I’m trying to influence a greater number of people. Now I can’t go and have those conversations with everybody. So what I do is, those people around me are my influencers, they’re the ones that if they agree, the likelihood is that everybody else will follow along because they trust them even if they don’t trust me. So my decision making is making sure I spend the time informing and collaborating with the right people and then we’ll move forward together and be aligned; and if I don’t do that I usually find myself having to eventually do that anyway. So if I make a unilateral decision, I likely have to follow up by going back to those people to bring them onboard. So I spend the time talking to them before I go out and do that.

Is that when you feel at your most confident and in command?

RT: Absolutely, because you know you’ve got buy-in from the right people. Also, the thing is that I’m quite comfortable to make flexible moves on the go, but I’ll do it through the right people who will influence me, but it’s a two-way street. I’m very confident in saying ‘hey, here’s the direction’ but I’m also confident that if there’s a need to move one way or another that I’ve got people around me who will help me to make that adjustment if I need to. And they trust me.

How carefully do you choose your words? What can you say to an athlete? What do you prefer not to say?

RT: In this day and age you’ve got to be very careful. That’s the challenge and that’s the learning that all of us in leadership; and the coaches, who are leaders in their own right, are having to check their language, their feedback, because it’s a different world we live in now, from the point of view of sensitivity. For me, it’s the level of trust with the person you’re giving feedback to has a lot to do with it as well. Even then, I err on the side of caution more than anything. There’s times I’d like to say ‘pull your head in, you’re being a dickhead’ and although I want them to hear that, but I have to deliver it a different way. I think about what I feel like saying, and then I think ‘OK, I’m going to walk away and re-frame this and is there a message I need to try to deliver and then work it out?’ It takes a lot longer, to answer your question! You’ve got to take time to deliver things if you want to be impactful. At times it’s exhausting, to be honest.

How do you ensure you are protecting your own time and mental resources?

RT: Well, I moved where I’m living now. I moved 400m from the beach on the Sunshine Coast. I relocated for environmental reasons and that was absolutely a targeted move for my family. At some point today, I’ll be in the surf having a swim or go out on a jetski. I’ll go and play and that’s giving me to have that hour to myself or with my wife or walk or whatever. That’s simplistic me. I have targeted times where I just lock in on things and I’ve learned to disconnect now; I’m better at that. So I either physically remove myself or put myself in a different space or I go and read a book or something – usually I’m reading books about leadership so I’m not really getting out of that space! But I am actually refreshing my mind around re-engaging in that learning. I go and watch my girls do sport and that’s always a great little release. So I think I’ve got the balance right. The big thing for me is the balance is not about 50% this or 50% that, it’s 100% this and 100% that. So if I’m going out for an hour to spend on the jetski and go wave-jumping or surfing, I’m 100% into that. I’m not going out there thinking about something else. That’s to me is balance. That’s utopia to get to that point. Then I feel that I’ll be fine.

By Luke Whitworth

The session objectives were to explore what we mean by ‘secure base’ and how it affects performance, reflect on how effectively we act as a secure base for the talent around us and in considering our teams, how to develop our skills as a ‘secure base leader’.

Within the session, we leant on the work of American psychologist George Kohlrieser, who has identified nine key characteristics of secure base leaders.

What is secure base leadership?

In the words of British psychologist John Bowlby, a secure base is a person, or at its best a collective environment, from which we draw inspiration, security and self-confidence to push the boundaries and perform at our best. A parent that provides a secure base creates a healthy, well-rounded child who can take risks, be separate and independent. As an extension to the work of Bowlby, Kohlrieser suggests that a secure base involves creating a collective environment in which we draw inspiration, security and self-confidence.

‘Secure base leadership’ is a term coined by Kohlrieser to describe the qualities and skills common to leaders who are exceptional in their ability to act as a catalyst to people performing at their best. In his book Dare to Care, Kohlrieser suggests that we need to care personally and in a genuine way to enable people to take risks and push forward in any aspect of life.

We will explore the specific characteristics that arose from the research below, but Kohlrieser suggests that secure base leadership is the ability to bring challenge and support together. Challenge on its own, isn’t enough to push someone forward. First and foremost, a secure base needs to be provided.

Nine characteristics of a secure base leader

Kohlrieser suggests thar we need all nine of the characteristics.

1. Remains calm, composed and grounded: without this, the other eight characteristics will be unable to fall into place. The ability to be a ‘safe harbour in a storm’, to not overreact to things going on around you and by being dependable.
2. Accepts and values the individual: you need to genuinely care and step away from judgements that we tend to make. See the person for who they are and valuing them for who they are. Amy Edmondson’s work makes this point really clear around the importance of inclusion safety. This point is a huge bridge to building trust in others and able to create a gap between the person and the problems or issues they may have.
3. See the potential in the individual: it is our role as leaders to identify that talent and potential, and communicate it. It is not always apparent to people what others can see. Gives people space to see themselves as others see them.
4. Use listening, dialogue and inquiry: listening to understand and be curious, not just to respond. Use open questions to find out more, but step away from ‘why’.
5. Create bull’s eye transactions by using targeted words and gestures: responding to what we hear. Bull’s eye transactions get us to pause first and identify what we need to pay attention to.
6. Direct the mind’s eye and focus on the positive: inviting people to be able to see what might or could be, and engaging them in looking forward to the future.
7. Encourage risk, provides opportunities and challenges to stretch: dare to care. Encouraging others to take risks through knowing, caring and trusting.
8. Inspires through intrinsic motivation, focuses on learning not blame: a sense of tuning into yourself to inspire intrinsic motivation and encourage on learning and reflection.
9. Signals accessibility, are believed to be accessible anywhere, anytime: the sense of being available and that others know you are there for them.

Mapping your team by challenge and support

What do others feel about your current level of challenge and support? To bring some of the research to life, there is a simple tool we can all use as leaders to map out the current landscape of your teams, as it pertains to the levels of challenge and support you are currently giving them as a leader. Similarly, you can also ask others how they feel about the challenge and support provided.

Challenge relates to the performance pressure people feel. The aim is to make this positive; people buy-in to the goal and standards challenging them. Support is the extent to which people feel they have the support they need.