By John Portch

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

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

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

Inclusion allows for credible diversity

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

Find the same wavelength as your athletes

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

Learning from lived experience

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

By Sarah Evans

• Listen to those in your organisation / sport

• Understand how people feel

• Use data to prove a performance benefit

Data collection is key in understanding where you truly are

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

Using data to prove a performance benefit

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

Focus on inclusion before diversity

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

What to do when the data pool isn’t diverse

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

What the research is telling us about high performance environments

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

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

Three important aspects of effective high performing leadership

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

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

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

Developmental v motivational feedback

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

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

Attitudes, behaviours and capability

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

‘High performance cultures don’t just show up’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

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

• It requires intentional work on the part of leaders

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

Quick recap: what is psychological safety?

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

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

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

What does that look like in practice?

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

How can you help your teams to get better?

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

From failure to problem solving

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

Is there truly room for psychological safety in sport?

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

These are an excerpt of his reflections at the time:

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

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

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

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

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

By Sarah Evans

• Champions cannot stand still

• Understand your opponents

• Prepare for the future

Set targets, and redefine them

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

Use your opponents as motivation

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

The moment you become comfortable, its time to move on

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

Maintaining a ‘disruptive edge’

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

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

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

By Sarah Evans

• Understand your core values and stick to them

• Clarity and alignment from everyone is key

• Improvement requires change, and change requires action

A mixture of continuity and adaptation is key for sustained success

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

Success lies in planning

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

Improvement requires change

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

Fuelling the incessant demand for the new

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

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

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

How do you feel this space is evolving in sport?

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

By John Portch

The Leicester Tigers’ turnaround under Head Coach Steve Borthwick has been remarkable.

The team claimed a record ninth Gallagher Premiership title, defeating Saracens 15-12 at Twickenham Stadium in last weekend’s final, just two seasons after finishing eleventh.

Borthwick, who took the Tigers’ reins in 2020, led them to sixth in his first campaign and is a champion at the end of his second. It is an outcome he would have dreamed of when he spoke at Virtual Leaders Meet: Coach Development in April 2020, just weeks after confirming his new post.

“This is a great club that has lost its way and this is a fantastic challenge – and I love a challenge,” he told an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members drawn from across the globe. “I need to go in with a real, clear plan, what are we going to do? How are we going to go about it? But I’m also really clear that whilst I have my ideas – I’m going to give a clear direction of what we’re going to try and do, then you’re going to harness the skills of every one of the coaches, every one of the players – to make sure we find the best way of doing it.”

Those sentiments ring true two summers later. Borthwick’s humility has been a mainstay at Leicester and was evident during his appearance on the virtual Leaders stage, where he spoke of developing his craft as a coach, as well as creating experiential environments to support the development of his players through feedback and communication.

Here, we outline some of his reflections from that session supplemented by some insights from Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid, who serves as Assistant Academy Director at English Premier League club Southampton FC.

Find ways to challenge and support players

“The title of this session is ‘mastering the craft’ but I’m a million miles away from that.” Borthwick, who retired from playing in 2014 while already working as an assistant coach to Eddie Jones with the Japan men’s national team, learnt quickly that simply coaching from his experience as a player would leave him redundant. He said: “My coaching developed into one of trying to always understand the game; and the best coaches are the best players. I want to learn from them, observe them, see how they go about things; posing challenges to them and then observing how they deal with those challenges. How can I make some suggestions that help? How can I get players to learn from other players and what other coaches are around that I can learn from? The more you coach, the more you learn, the more you realise what you don’t know.”

Devise game-relevant practice sessions

A practice session has limited value if you haven’t made clear the principle that you’re working on or the context in which you’re trying to do it. “With England, in practice, we work off a checklist of things that ensure the context is clear,” said Borthwick, who coached England’s men’s forwards under Eddie Jones between 2015 and 2020. “Am I making that clear to the players? Am I putting them in situations that are game-relevant and am I asking them to adapt to situations that develop their skill and enables them to coach each other? Be very clear about the endpoint that you’re working towards.”

Be more interested in what you don’t know

A coach must be able to spot the gaps in their knowledge and skillsets and work to bridge those gaps. “I think there’s a big gap in my coaching background around teaching. When you’re a teacher trying to engage people who don’t want to be engaged, by comparison, I’ve got it easy, working with elite rugby players; I see that gap and I’m trying to educate myself,” said Borthwick.

How do you get the best out of your players in any given moment?

“How do you get a message to a player and get the best out of them? Everyone is different,” said Borthwick. “There is a time and place for absolutely everything; the skill of the coach is knowing when you recognise the right approach at any point in time. You’ve got to be absolutely clear what standards are expected, what your key objective is within any one session, and then understanding how you get the best out of each of the players.”

The power of self-reflection

Self-reflection is key. “How do you reflect at the end of each day or each session? Do you write it down? Do you have it on your computer? Do you have a journal or a diary?” asked Borthwick. “We all make mistakes but it’s how do we learn from them? You’ve got to continue to learn, understand the context of the day, that period in the season, that player and their life, and get the best out of them.”

The view from Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid:

Steve offers a number of clues as to why he and his Leicester Tigers team have enjoyed their recent successes. He appears invested in developing strong processes that apply to both his personal development and the team’s progression. The term ‘clear’ features multiple times in the transcript and is perhaps evidence of a desire to provide coaching and playing staff with the clarity required to perform. Providing a clear direction and detailed expectations, whilst at the same time embracing uncertainty and responding to individual needs, requires significant skill.

The humility and curiosity that underpins a commitment to personal development is also evident. Phil Jackson famously championed the value of a ‘beginner’s mind’ and this appears evident in Steve’s approach. Jackson reportedly said ‘in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few’. We often talk about learning representing a competitive advantage, and the article offers every indication that Steve role models this in an exemplary manner.

Whilst operating in a team environment, an emphasis on understanding and supporting individuals (players and staff) will remain a critical feature in the future of coaching. Reflecting on the opportunities to further understand individuals will likely present endless possibilities.

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“The first thing you need to ask is what does ‘resilience’ mean,” says Gareth Bloomfield.

The psychologist, who works with the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, explains that it comes from the Latin ‘resilio’, which means ‘to bounce back’.

“It’s the ability of individuals or a team to bounce back from adversity,” Bloomfield continues. “I guess in most sports, analogous scenarios would be about a team losing. How does the team bounce back from a loss or maybe a series of losses? That goes for an individual as well, so if we’re talking about a tennis player or a golfer, someone who plays their sport on their own, how do they bounce back from a series of performances where they do not feel that they best delivered?

“There are a number of things that go into baking the cake of psychological resilience and they’re not just psychological because there’s a huge overlap between physical and psychological. If, for example, I’m a tennis player carrying an injury, surely that’s going to have a psychological impact that affects what I’m capable of on the court.”

Bloomfield, who spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute in March about how leaders can overcome resistance to change, here lays out the ‘ingredients’ of the cake that make up psychological resilience and where coaches can have an impact.

The flour – sleep

Bloomfield has emphasised the importance of sleep on more than one occasion. For him, its impact on our physical and mental health cannot be overstated, and, in his analogy of the cake, sleep is the flour. “One of the things I would do from a mental health perspective, if somebody was suffering from mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression, one of the things I would look into is how much sleep do you get?” he says.

“It also affects our accuracy on a number of things: your ability to put a ball in the basket, your ability to hit a ball with a bat, strike a ball in the back of the net. Those are related to the quantity of sleep and the quality of sleep. It’s not just about quantity – it’s quality as well. A lot of the time, we’re not fully aware of the quality of sleep we get. Smartwatches are helping. Sleep is the flour in these ingredients of resilience.”

Leaders can educate athletes in the importance of sleep and, from there, the idea is that athletes will be able to take that knowledge, see its value, and monitor their own sleep. Bloomfield adds: “What you’re doing is priming them to make a decision. If you’re educating people, you’re educating them to make another decision later that they might not be conscious of. Educate them.”

The eggs – social support

The eggs of Bloomfield’s cake represent social support and its role as a factor in psychological resilience. “Isolation can happen with people around you,” he says. “We know that has a big effect on people’s performance as well.” The key for coaches is to “make sure that the team is cohesive and keep a check on relationships within the team.” A coach can go for regular check-ins with athletes to find how they are doing or identify any issues they may have both inside and beyond the team. “Not just one or two people – talk to many and make sure you get a good impression of what’s going on within the whole team,” adds Bloomfield.

Unique ingredients #1 – your goal-setting behaviours

Sleep and social support are universal but Bloomfield’s next ingredient, goal-setting, will look different depending on your team’s context. When it comes to goal-setting, there are some key questions to be asked. “How we set our goals or how our goals are set for us? Do you feel some sort of purpose? Do you feel like you’re making a difference in the goal that you’re striving towards? Because that then links in with the social aspect of it. Do you feel motivated towards that goal? Do you feel like you’ve got some sort of control over the goals that are being set or how you get towards them?

“You’ve got to make sure that as a leader people feel that they have the desired autonomy in the way that they reach those goals, that they know what goals they’re seeking to achieve.”

Support from coaches and peers is essential but it can also go back to the physical. “If you have an injury, that’s going to have an effect on other things, but you may have physical restrictions in terms of what you might be able to do.”

Unique ingredients #2 – your cognition and ability to learn

Bloomfield reveals that he was once an accomplished rower, but understood that his stature (he stands six-foot tall or “under six-foot without my trainers on”) prevented him from reaching an elite level. He tells the story to place further emphasis on the physical component of psychological resilience. He says: “my ability to be as good a rower as some of the rowers that are six-foot-eight, well, I’ve got a physical disadvantage and maybe my resilience, my capability to actually spring back, is then related to my physical ability to deal with the adversity. Lose and lose and lose and lose and lose again, well, I have to actually realise that my ability to spring back from this is physically restricted in some way.”

An individual may also be restricted in their ability to learn by factors beyond their control that impact their ability to process information in a cognitively sound fashion. “That’s fundamentally important because if you’ve got somebody who has a learning disability, then their ability to bounce back may be severely affected by the fact that they have a learning disability because they don’t necessarily remember what it is they need to do to be able to actually help themselves bounce back from the situation that they’re in,” adds Bloomfield.

Positive psychology – the science of hope

Bloomfield stresses that cognition is not just about one’s ability to learn but also one’s ability to talk to themselves in a way that generates persistence.

“And now we’re getting into the science of hope,” he says, “and that science of hope is how I talk to myself about myself personally. How I talk to myself about how permanent something is, and also about how something is pervasive.” He discusses the work of American psychologist Martin Seligman, who is considered one of the fathers of the movement of positive psychology. “This is psychology where we look at how do we get the best out of people and this is what I’m looking at in my research around psychological resilience,” continues Bloomfield.

“How do we get that little bit of extra out of people? One thing is training them to think in a slightly different way, so that when something goes wrong they don’t beat themselves up and when something is not how they want it to be they don’t think it’s always going to be like that and it affects everything else. This is something that we learn fairly early on in life.

“That cognition is really important because you can’t have a sportsperson like that. When they lose a match they can’t go ‘I’m an idiot. That happens every time. No matter what I do it’s going to go wrong.’ If they are doing that then we need to get inside their heads and change the cognitions that they have.”

Leaders, he explains, have a role in being optimistic in their words, actions and demeanour. “This is a recurring pattern for me, which is, to be a good leader you have to communicate optimism, because optimism equals persistence, and persistence is about winning the game, winning the war, whatever it is your business is. It’s an important aspect of what it is that you’re trying to achieve and persistence is resilience.”

By Lorena Torres Ronda

At the top level of high performance, there is constant pressure to achieve success.

In the pursuit of success, there is likely to be more than one ‘good’ performance plan. Success can be viewed through a number of different prisms, can be defined in very different ways, and can be achieved through a range of approaches.

Leadership styles can be formal (bestowed through job title or position) or more informal (such as the role of influencers) but it is the leader who sets the values and principles of work that will fundamentally mark the direction of the project. The vision for a project – and the path to success – will be determined by the leader.

The identity of that leader, or leaders, is significant. There are, for example, world-renowned teams whose organizational values outweigh the aura of the individual. These include the New Zealand All Blacks, the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs or, more recently, English Premier League champions Manchester City. They are known for being winners and have what is widely regarded as a ‘great culture’. Yes, they have or have had charismatic leaders, whether it’s players, coaches or managers, but there is no single individual on these teams who is bigger than the team and their pursuit of success.

Of late, however, there are certain organizations where leadership appears to be driven by an individual (often a star player). Are there serious repercussions to this approach in the present and future of these organizations?

Organizational leadership

Who sets the overall vision of an organization? That person should know today’s vision and understand where is it going. That sounds good in theory but, as noted above, this is an era where players have a lot of power – in some cases even more than the coach or the manager. In fact, there are some organizations who deliver the present and the destiny of the organization to the star, or franchise player, of the current moment. This can involve enlisting them to shape the vision and it can also include eliciting the ideas and opinions of the superstar in the construction and direction of the team, which remains paramount. Any team adopting this approach must do so with caution since it may negatively impact the direction of the organization and the individuals that collectively form the team. These people (from managers to interns) will be the ones that, at the end of the day, should promote and act according to the values on which the organization is based.

The leaders who hold the vision, present and future, are the ones responsible for creating and communicating this vision, conveying direction and meaning. Moreover, they also have the responsibility for building the structure of the team, creating the roles, responsibilities or points of interdependence. And, finally, motivating individuals so that they follow the vision (with shared vision, goals and objectives) and support the development of its staff members with a view to retaining talent within the organization (especially in a moment where staff members are willing to leave when working under conditions that do not allow for personal development, professional growth; where there can be a frustrating environment, egos, unnecessary pressure, inadequate remuneration for responsibilities and role, and the like).

Individual leadership

Leadership can derive from formal leadership – the leader’s title or position in the organization – but also from a charismatic personality. As a leader, one has to ask: what kind of leader do you want and hope to be? In management or director positions, dedicating time to others, planning and guiding will be a fundamental part of those roles; a work oriented to the development of others is also part of the mission. Therefore, in thinking about what characteristics are going to define you as a leader, it will be essential to have a base of coherence, that your thoughts, words and actions are on the line.

However, when a leader is at the service of others, a facilitator to accompany, direct, guide, etc., there must be a safe environment. Knowing who is ‘the boss’, meaning who will make the final decision (leadership or players) will be important in the process of building the entity’s vision and mission, for the short or long run.

Charismatic leaders can present themselves as true towers of strength, but it is difficult to succeed alone. Create a work team that makes you a better leader, a work team that helps you, advises you, provides perspective and supports and celebrates the moments of success with you. It is also important to let others lead. Natural-informal (non-formal) leaders can have a lot of influence on certain projects, and on people, as they can be very powerful. Detecting natural leaders, guiding them and at the same time giving them autonomy can be a formidable tool for a high performance program.

Strategic leadership

The mission, the vision and the core values should be above those of the individual, although they emanate from a visionary leader, and the management must ensure that the behaviors are in line with these. Defining who in the organization manages and leads the vision of where you are and where you are going should not be dependent on individuals, even if these individuals are strong promoters of the vision.

Now: where does the balance need to sit between meeting long-term goals (such as player development, injury prevention or the future of the organization) and the need to win ‘today’?

There is a trend across pro sports that organizations with less competitive pressure are capable of building projects with medium and long-term visions, working in safer areas, building from collaboration, guidance and delegation, managing egos, innovation, creativity and job security. Stability, trust, protection or support seems to allow talent to develop their tasks in a safer environment, with innovation and creativity and at the same time with room for improvement when things are not going in the right direction or aren’t working well. However, the moment the team begins to have ‘winning’ goals and pressure, or when it builds around a certain core of players, does something then happen? Are those environments more pressured by the umbrella of fear? Does this happen specifically in big markets? Is there a different culture depending on the market (small vs big) in the long term goals? Who is responsible for ensuring the environment that protects the identity of the organization?

In conclusion, it is worth reflecting on the words of renowned American investor Ray Dalio, who said: “An organization is a machine consisting in two major parts: culture and people.” He explained that you need to get the right culture and the right people, and for any organization to function well, “its work principles must be aligned with its members’ life principles”, so that the vision is clear, and the mission is shared.

By John Portch

Ulster Rugby have enjoyed a memorable 2021-21 campaign that could yet end their wait for a first major title since 2006.

The Irish side are due to travel to Cape Town to face the Stormers in the semi-finals of the United Rugby Championship this Saturday [11 June].

Whether the match, or indeed the competition, ends in a victory or a defeat, the Ulster Head Coach is ready to meet those two impostors just the same. He does, however, issue one caveat.

“I get more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

How long does it take him to calm down when his team have lost a match they should have won?

“It takes however long it takes us to analyse, frame in my own head what the reasons and the adaptations are, and then being able to pull those together with the people that are doing the same process in whatever area of the organisation they’re in,” McFarland continues.

“Once I’ve done all of that and had those conversations I’m normally back on track. Sometimes it takes longer because the answers are not as easy, but once we’ve pulled everyone together and we’re all single-minded in what we’re going to do – ‘done’. Move on. That’s why ‘every inch’ is the foundation of what we do. You can’t start coaching until you’ve got that sorted. If someone doesn’t try then there’s no point in me doing any coaching because I don’t know how they normally do it or how they would do it in a game. It’s pointless. Give me full effort then I can coach. Until we’ve done that you can’t do that. We’ll deal with effort first.”

McFarland delves into the art behind his coaching and his approaches to cultural mapping in the first part of our interview. In the second, he explores his strengths as a leader and comes to some candid conclusions.

What do you regard as your biggest strength?

I think my determination to win. I’m going to say that. It’s not fancy but I hate losing. In terms of big picture stuff, that motivates me to do what I do. And I’m certainly not great at a few things as well. I think the competitive nature of who I am really helps in terms of being the best that we can be. As I said, I am more upset when we’re not as good as I think we can be than if we lose. That’s a big driver for me. When the processes or standards become more important to you than the result, you’re going to get good results. I want to be the best at everything we do. Maybe that sounds wishy-washy. Or maybe it doesn’t.

What I’m going to add to one of my biggest strengths is understanding context. I have a background in psychology so I think that goes along with relating to people, so I’m able to put myself in other people’s shoes. I think that’s a really big strength in terms of interpersonal skills, to be able to have empathy and understand what people are going through. But I also feel I’m pretty good at understanding the context of organisations and where they stand emotionally, in terms of outside influences, in terms of their history, in terms of where they want to go. I would think that’s critical in terms of decision making because if you don’t understand the context of where Ulster were when I arrived or where we are at the end of this season, how on earth are we going to make any decisions on what to do next? It’s the same in your interpersonal skills. If I’m sat in the office here and chatting with one of the players and I don’t understand the context of where they are, how can I give them any advice or help them to answer questions that they have personally? That would be a strength of mine: understanding context on an organisational level but also being able to take the perspective of other people.

What strength do you admire most in others?

I reckon relating to people. The people that have really good interpersonal skills. It’s very admirable. I’m not an impersonal person, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I would be in the top ranks of interpersonal skills. It’s certainly something that I place at the very top of what I’m trying to do, of what I’m doing on a day to day basis. The people that can relate, we know the ones, there are not many of them. There are not many people that are ready to do that.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

Communication and clarity. You’ve got to have the individuals within it who are competent but clarity on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, what you’re trying to achieve, and then being able to communicate within those teams. Stanley McChrystal’s team of teams is a brilliant book. That dispersed leadership model opened my eyes to how really important jobs can be done without somebody having to pass down a message from Washington via so-and-so.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

I reckon relying on the feedback of the people that I work with. I’ve got really good people that I work with here and relying on them to provide me with the feedback from what they need from me, I think that’s pretty important.