By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you regard as your greatest strength?

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

What strength do you admire most in others?

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

What is the key to strong teamwork?

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

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

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

Listen to the full interview with Phil Church below:

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By Luke Whitworth & Sarah Evans

Recommended reading

High Performance Environments – What the Research Is Telling Us

Performance Thinking: Understanding How you Learn, Unlearn and Deliver

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

Framing the topic

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

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

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

 Discussion points

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

Attendee takeaways

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

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

By John Portch

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

• Support your people and their families.

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

Find those who know what it takes to win

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

Opine and share, disagree and commit

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

We are family

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

Strong cultures are self-selecting

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

By John Portch

Hope Powell describes a situation that sounds common enough across the football world.

“This is no disrespect to players, but they want to get there yesterday,” says the Manager of Women’s Super League [WSL] side Brighton & Hove Albion.

“I am always telling them it’s a long process, a marathon not a sprint, and you’re not going to go from one to ten in five minutes. They’re so used to getting everything now.”

She readily admits that after 15 years as Manager of the England women’s senior team, it has been a challenge for her at Brighton, where she was appointed in 2017. There is also considerable player turnover in the women’s game each off-season, which necessitates the development of in-house talent for all WSL sides.

“You have to move with the times, you have to stay current and fresh, you have to understand Generation Z,” Powell continues. “Club football is new to me. I know after five years in a club environment it seems long but it’s very new.” In her previous post, she would see players during national camps and international competitions. As a club manager, she sees them almost every day of the season. “That has been an eye-opener in the last five years and it’s made me look at myself as a manager and how I perform on a daily basis.”

That said, Powell admits her remit as Manager with England was not too dissimilar. “I’m responsible for the pathway of women’s football at Brighton and I did exactly the same with the FA [Football Association] and I really enjoy working with young players on the development side; working with different coaches and different teams.”

Powell, who previously spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute of her strengths as a coach and the leadership traits she most admires, here reflects on Brighton’s role in developing talent and ensuring players are prepared for the transitions they face.

Adapting to the players’ needs

Powell sees part of her role as a guide. She says: “Young players want it ‘now’ and obviously I don’t have all the answers – my job is to guide them to problem-solve.” Inevitably, her squad is made up of youthful talents seeking to make their mark in the sport and seasoned campaigners some of whom, in their early to mid-30s, are coming to the end of their playing careers.

“I have to adapt to their needs, their expectations, based on where they are in their career,” she continues, adding that players of all ages and experiences will ask why they may not be playing but that she will typically have more of those conversations with younger players. “The young players will say ‘I want to play’ and I’ll say ‘you’re not ready’.”

She describes an exercise in managing expectations. “Every young player thinks that they are good enough to play. They are good enough to play in terms of their talent, but I wonder if they don’t appreciate the demands at the highest level. Playing 90 minutes week-in and week-out is a challenge for any player. The on-pitch, the football bit, they just want to play, which is great. It’s more about the off-pitch considerations. The mental and physical demands of the game.”

Powell is aided in her efforts to support these transitions by her multidisciplinary team. “Their role is really important,” she says, “working with individuals and having conversations. We do a lot of one-to-ones with players, they will talk to our psychologist. We do a lot of analysis and we ask players to self-analyse and discuss their games. What they think they’re doing well, what they don’t think they are doing well, and just try to pull it all together.”

Often she will illustrate her points in a literal sense. “I’m very much drawing diagrams. ‘You’re here at the moment, now you’re in the middle bit of this development, you’re still developing, and we know at some point you will get to the point where you can excel and execute a task on a football pitch.’ I’m forever drawing pictures so that they can visualise what it is I’m trying to say; and I find myself having to do that, in a nice way, with some of the younger players because they’re good enough but not ready. That’s when the multidisciplinary team come into it as well.”

Formulations

Powell explains that her multidisciplinary team is led by her psychologist and clinical team. “We have – and this word is new to me – ‘formulations’,” she says, explaining that it is the multidisciplinary team that leads what is a player-focused process.

“We discuss the player from an on-pitch point of view. How they’re doing technically, tactically; are they playing well, are they in the team, are they not in the team – and the issues start coming when they’re not in the team or they’re young players.

“Psychologically, what’s the impact of that on the young player and how can we support them? Physically, where are they? They probably wouldn’t be able to last the 90 minutes; how can we support them physically to become better? It might be additional programmes for that player; it might be that they go and have one-to-one sessions with the psychologist and it might be that we sit down and do individual clips with that player.

“It’s very much engaging the multidisciplinary team from the outset, go through every player, have those formulations. They will meet every player, the player will meet every member of the multidisciplinary team, and then we just have conversations around the players all the time.”

‘You are not just a footballer’

Powell places considerable emphasis on her duty of care towards players. “I think that’s really important as their career can be over in a flash,” she says.

The club will provide player care from its academy through to the first-team and help players to find education and development opportunities. “We work to identify what their interests are, where we can help them, and sometimes we are able to help fund those opportunities.”

It is often a different conversation depending on the player and the stage of their career. Powell continues: “Most older players have got their path but it’s the younger players coming through who see the world of women’s football as it is now. They think: ‘wow, I can earn a good living here and I just want to be a footballer’. The older players have always done something else. The transition for the older players is probably OK but we still support them where we can. If they want to do education courses, like some of our players are doing a Masters, a degree, I’ll give them the time off to study if they need it, or to go to the university, whatever it is they need we will support them through that.

“The younger players coming through, I don’t let them get away with ‘just’ being a footballer – you  can’t have it. You have to do something else and then we try to find out what they like, how we can support them and get them on courses, even if they’re short courses, because your career could be over in a day. You get a bad injury and then that’s it, your career is over. But young players don’t think about that at all.”

Powell’s concern for her players is obvious and she is bemused about her reputation as “a little scary”, as she puts it. “I have quite a nice relationship with the players, but they don’t want to be seen as ‘teacher’s pet’ sometimes. It makes me laugh,” she says. “They can be quite emotional in our one-to-ones, and I care about the person. Before the football, it’s the person for me – football is absolutely second.”

By John Portch

When Rory Sloane spoke at Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership in June 2021, he delivered a curious insight into the make-up of the Adelaide Football Club’s player leadership group.

The club, which draws its five-player leadership group from a list of 45 decided to give youth a chance in 2020.

“Couple of guys who have been part of the leadership group over the previous four years stepped aside to let some of these young kids develop,” said Sloane.

Adelaide finished bottom of the AFL ladder in 2020 – a fact that left Sloane, as captain, “stung” – and decided to turn to youth to renew their fortunes. In this context, it made sense to empower some of the younger players on the list.

“We’ve still got a lot of leaders without titles,” he continued, “But yeah, five official leaders.”

Sloane is joined onstage by Jarrad Butler, the captain of Connacht Rugby, where their eight-strong leadership group takes responsibility for driving standards and behaviours. Together, they explore the creation of leadership groups at Adelaide and Connacht and the main dynamics involved.

Democracy

Leadership groups tend to be elected by athletes from amongst their peers and neither Adelaide nor Connacht are any different. “At the start of the year there was a questionnaire on who do you think leads by example on the field, who do you think is the best communicator, the guy that holds the most people to account,” said Butler of the process that saw Connacht’s eight-person group appointed for the 2020-2021 season. “We kind of ticked boxes that we thought [represented] values that we wanted to have as a group, as a team, who do you think best kind of ticks that box. And we tried to put a group together that then covers a whole lot of those bases, so we didn’t want just a whole bunch of guys that are all maybe very good at the same areas, so that was important.”

Regular meetings

“What we’ve been trying to do is catch up at least once a fortnight just to get on the same,” said Butler. “I think where we fell short, especially when the seasons for us dragged on, you kind of get caught just going through the motions a little bit and you forget to catch up. “We’ve have a meeting where we all get together and these guys aren’t really on the same page, and you’re seeing that come out in the performances as well and you’re like, well we haven’t got together in four weeks [so] no wonder we’re not on the same page at the moment. So we found one of the first challenges I guess was being diligent and actually catching up with each other, and again it’s one of those things where Andy Friend, our head coach, he was like ‘well it’s up to guys if you want to get together, we’re not going to chuck something in your diaries for you – either you do it or you don’t,’ and we learnt early that if you’re not going to do, then everything else starts slipping by the wayside as well.”

Learning dynamics

Butler explained that leadership groups also have a vital role in ensuring learning and development of understanding because there are times when a coach’s impact can be limited. “It’s one of those things where you’re in a meeting and you’re getting – you know, the defence coach comes up, the head coach, and they’re showing clips and clips and clips – it’s easy for things to get watered down,” said Butler, who discussed the balance of challenge and support with Sloane in more depth here. “For the main session, we [often] get one of the players, usually one of the leaders, early on they would do the review of the session, and they would come up with the clips. This year, it’s been a little harder to have these meetings with Covid, but still, coming up with clips and sending them out because we’ve found that when you’re getting told by your peers, when they’re highlighting something I think it holds more weight than when you’re getting it from a coach for whatever reason.”

Spread the load

Butler also makes the point that their duties extend beyond performance or rugby and it is important that the playing group does not allow a mere handful of individuals manage tasks for the group. “I think the main thing is that we all took on something that wasn’t rugby-related,” he said, “so it wasn’t falling on the same guys. So one guy would link up with the team manager on if there was any issue around travel or things like that, someone else would link up with the kitman, if there were any issues; and it would just mean that we haven’t had the same conversations with a whole bunch of people unnecessarily. So it helped kind of disperse that load as well, so it wasn’t falling on the same blokes. Because imagine, you know, there’s all those guys that are happy to do everything if you ask them to, but it’s not fair to them as well. So it’s all about lightening the load.”

By Luke Whitworth

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

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

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

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

1. Perform culture health checks

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

2. How do you use language?

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

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

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

4. Identify and evaluate pain points and disruptions

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

A Keiser Series Podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

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

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

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

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

He discusses those developments and also touches upon:

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

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By Luke Whitworth

Recommended reading

What Does Cultural Mapping Look Like at Ulster Rugby?

In an Era of Player Power, How Can you Protect your Team’s Culture and Vision?

High Performance Environments – What the Research Is Telling Us

How Winning Organizations Last 100 Years

Framing the topic

Across the Leaders Performance Institute network, the number one topic of interest is culture. Everyone is striving for a strong and high performing culture and it’s fair to say some are better placed than others to succeed around this. A couple of anecdotes from friends of the network ring true around the topic of culture:

• You have to really work at it.
• Those organisations that have sustained success over a long period of time, take culture incredibly seriously. Dan Coyle’s work in The Culture Code brings this to life in a stark away.

Across this virtual roundtable conversation, we explored the following question: knowing the importance of culture, how are peers in the group evaluating, reviewing and subsequently, evolving their culture across their respective organisations? Below is an account of best practices and considerations outlined by the group.

Discussion points

• Have a Culture Health Check Process: a couple of organisations on the call do an annual survey amongst athletes and staff to measure the strength of their culture. Another organisation from a different sport shared that they have introduced more frequent reviews and health checks, leveraging those every three months.
• Consider Subcultures: many of us work within larger organisations so there is an overarching organisational culture that surrounds us which we embody parts of, but there is also the challenge of implementing a coherent culture across different sub-groups. There is a balance to be found. Is one standard culture wise or is there value in providing some autonomy to those sub-groups? Are you evaluating both the wider organisational culture and the natural subcultures that are present in our environments?
• Measurement: there is some push and pull between the nuanced face-to-face, anecdotal evaluation and the data-orientated angle systems (culture health check). Does steering too far in one direction or the other have the potential to throw you off?
• Wrestling with Tension: we have to find the balance between wanting something concrete that is easy to understand (quantitative insight) around our culture and how relevant and useful that is versus the awareness and insight of the culture that occurs through sitting, listening and talking to people (qualitative). It’s critical to be aware of the tension between these two aspects in how we evaluate culture because it can be easy to jump to the measurable part of the evaluation and determine the health of the culture on that – be aware of what the data doesn’t show us. There is a gap between these two factors that is often present within organisations.
• Creating the Need for Change: there is value in using best practices such as culture health checks to create the space for facilitated conversations around culture. This is where the creation of actual need for change arises. How are you effectively doing that? The tool can never be as valuable as the conversation that is there to create – use this as a reference point.
• Expansion of Staff: the inclusion vs. exclusion membrane becomes a really important aspect of cultural influence. How are you celebrating with the expansion of staff to create that sense of inclusion and belonging?
• Feel It & See It: we often talk about a metric-based approach to culture, but often you can feel it and see it, making it difficult to define. ‘Whether it’s air for humans or water for fish, you notice it when it’s not there’. This builds on the point relating to the separation between measurement, implementation and action – if you are taking the temperature measurement, what are you doing in the second and third phases to move things on?
• Culture & Interaction: you need to invest in the direction you want the culture to move in, but if you don’t have the right level of interaction around it, the culture is dead. The challenges of the pandemic have naturally reduced the cultural interaction and engagement. How can you heighten the level of interaction?
• What is a Culture’s Openness to Change: this can be an interesting question to ask yourself when considering the evaluation of the culture. This can be an integral measure to understanding how robust the culture is. Change is one thing in life that is guaranteed, but there is tension that exists as people often don’t like it, so is there a growth mindset and adaptability that exists within the environment? What do you think you are losing if you are to engage in the change?
• Language: we can engage in measurements, but as mentioned earlier, you can also see it, feel it and, most importantly, hear it. Are your people and staff using the language that aligns to the culture we want to live by?
• Values: there is a sweet spot – there can be too many values and also that notion of being stuck on a wall without being truly lived – this is not doing the work of culture and bringing it to life is much harder.
• Pain Points & Disruptions: are you identifying and evaluating these, as they will have a direct impact on your culture? Wellbeing for employees in particular, not just mental and emotional but also financial. Mapping the pain points provides more opportunity to review and reflect.
• Focus Groups: how are you garnering feedback from those in the organisation who perhaps don’t get the same attention? Create focus groups to ensure you are providing opportunities for their voice to be heard. Bridge the gap between exclusion and inclusion.
• Mission, Values & Cornerstones: when we consider the evaluation of the ‘culture in practice’, are you also frequently taking the time to review and evolve the mission, values and cornerstones of the culture? Are they still relevant, has the environment evolved where something is more aligned to the culture? Doing this will allow you to stay more on the pulse of how the organisation is living and breathing.
• Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up: it’s important to review the context of how your culture is established. In many environments where practitioners are working with younger talent, it tends to be top-down. In other environments, bottom-up will be the direction. Because they are context-dependent, there will be different questions and measurements to consider, there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach to how you evaluate.

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relationships enable difficult conversations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Player power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In partnership with

By Matthew Stone

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

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

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

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

The neurobiology of creativity

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

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

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

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

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

How can we be more creative?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key takeaways

Creativity is trainable when we:

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

Questions from the audience

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

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

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

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

Session 2: Creativity & Collaboration Pt 2: Leading Innovation

Speaker: Tim Cox, Managing Director, Management Futures

Rivers of thought

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

Five key skills of innovation

1. Step change thinking

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

2. Ideal world

• In an ideal world what would be happening?

Assuming we can’t do that…

• How could we replicate that in another way?

3. Redefining or reframing the problem

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

4. Related world

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

5. Mind mapping

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

Group challenges

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

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

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

2. How do we bring continuity across different locations?

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

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

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

4. Cognitive training & evaluation within high performance

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

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

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

Innovation and collaboration at the New York Giants

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

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

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

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

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