‘The Hall’ is the single greatest individual award that can be bestowed upon anyone in American professional baseball. The numbers he amassed over 20 seasons in Major League Baseball place him among the greats, and the joy of watching ‘Big Papi’ stride to the plate with bad intentions for opposing pitchers satisfied millions over the course of his career.
People will debate his greatest contribution to the game and if you pick up any one of the hundreds of articles written about him you will read that his personality and natural ability to lead are even larger than his physical stature.
I learned all this in person at Spring Training in 2007, when the impact he had on a certain 29-year-old journeyman minor league player kickstarted my journey in leadership.
Reaching your leadership ceiling
I am a big believer that leaders can be born but they can also be made in the sense that even if people have natural ‘born leader’ qualities the true height of that ability can’t be realized unless they continue to learn, train and exercise those abilities. Everyone is born with what I call a ‘leadership ceiling’. Whether that person reaches their leadership ceiling or not is dependent on a multitude of factors, such as, how influential can that person’s leadership be in a multitude of environments? Does a person have the requisite skill set to lead in any environment and most importantly can they activate those skillsets when it matters most? The best leaders on the planet exhibit a few crucial qualities regardless of who they lead.
At the Boston Red Sox’s Spring Training camp in late February 2007, I carried my bags into their clubhouse in Fort Meyers, Florida, and began to learn that Ortiz had those qualities in spades. I was heading into my seventh season as a professional, with my third club, and had yet to crack a Major League roster. Honestly, with my 30th birthday coming in October, I was questioning my time in professional sport.
Nevertheless, Spring Training can be a tremendous opportunity for younger guys or journeyman like me to make an impression on the coaches and decision makers. The second I walked into that clubhouse the place was different. There was a feeling of calm, easiness and focus on the task at hand: winning the World Series. This team was laser-focused on doing just that. This team was different too in that it was a very veteran clubhouse, including Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez, Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo, Curt Schilling and, of course, ‘Big Papi’.
The origins of Ortiz’s nickname are rooted in American baseball culture. The most senior Latin leader in the clubhouse is referred to as ‘papi’, which loosely translated from Spanish means ‘daddy’. Major League teams and their affiliates will have rosters filled with players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia and Curacao. They are signed between the age of 16 and 18 and usually start their careers in club-operated academies in the ‘DR’. The best will progress to the US where these young men are asked to learn a foreign language, assimilate to another culture and, oh yeah, play ball at a high level! On the flip side, you have a group of young American players who are yet to be exposed to Latin players.
What we know about human behavior tells us that people tend to assimilate in groups of similar people. Clubhouse culture in baseball is no different. In each of these groups – white guys from the West Coast, black guys, Northeast guys, Southern guys, the Latin guys – leaders tend to emerge from within these groups and, usually, these guys are comfortable enough in their own skin to bridge the gaps and pull people together. For the Latin players, the role of the ‘papi’ is crucial. With that moniker comes responsibility and, often, this man is not just the leader of the Latin players but a bridge to the coaching staff and everyone else on the team.
Intentionality and integrity
At Fort Meyers, I was assigned the number 76 – an awful number. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter but we all know it’s terrible. I would arrive at 5:30am for the workouts that typically didn’t get started until 9am because you never know what might happen. Lift, eat, sort equipment, adjust to any changes, whatever needed to be done. I remember the third or fourth day of camp at about 5:50am. I had just changed into shorts and a t-shirt and, out of the weight room having finished his workout, comes ‘Big Papi’.
‘Hey, what you doing here? It’s too early,’ he said in a deep voice with a heavy Dominican accent.
‘Papi’, I said, while pointing to the #76, ‘man, unless you’re early they forget about you!’ Part of me was kidding, part of me was dead serious. His answer was something that I’ll never forget.
‘Nah, you get invited to this camp, you have a chance to help us win a World Series and we gonna do that. Get your bat… let’s go hit!” He didn’t know me from the next guy but I was in that clubhouse and I had the same uniform on. At this point of his career he had been a three time all-star, a World Series champion and a World Series Most Valuable Player. At 6am he was changing his shirt post-gym workout and heading to the batting cage.
With his actions he was saying ‘we win things around here, this is how we work and you’re part of it’. This was his routine and he was going to do this whether I was in the building or not. I happened to be there so this was his opportunity to show me the culture in the building without saying a word. Leaders such as ‘Big Papi’ act with intention because they have a vision of where they see themselves and their club and a clear plan of how they can get there.
It spoke to his accountability too. Accountability and integrity are essential and connected, as it’s very easy to call for accountability in those you are leading. Holding people to account for their preparation, performance or work is easy – holding yourself to those same standards signals integrity. What are you doing when no one is watching you? Are you holding yourself to the same standard that you expect from those you lead? In world sport today, managers, coaches, or technical directors have a vision of what they want that culture to be but ultimately it must be player-led.
Communication and personal connection
It was 6:10am and I was sat in the batting cage with Big Papi, and Wily Mo Pena (a massive prospect at the time for Boston) taking turns. While Manny and Wily Mo would hit, Papi and I were in deep conversation about all number of things. He’d ask: where are you from? Where have you played? Are you married? Do you have kids?
When he hit, I watched him work through his hitting routine, how professional it was, how detailed and demanding he was of himself, how he watched Ramirez work (Manny is a legend himself). After I had my turn he asked me questions about my approach and the things I thought about when I was at the plate: did I like hitting left-handed or right-handed better? He was asking me about my baseball journey, how I ended up signing with Boston? Where did I feel most comfortable playing defensively? How did I believe I could help the club? What did the administration tell me about the opportunity I had in the organization?
Papi wanted to know who he was working with. He wanted to know what I was about. His approach in asking me these questions made me want to answer them without hesitation. Additionally, this was a two-way street. I didn’t know him, I just knew what I saw on TV. This was my opportunity to find out, besides talent, what made this guy tick. What was his journey to this point? One of the core beliefs I have in leadership and people development is the player resides within the man: if you want direct access to the player you better know the human first. He had an innate understanding that people’s talents, whatever they are, shine the brightest when there is a level of comfort in the environment.
That day the #76 felt important – like I really did have a chance to impact this club. Remember, this is 2007 and we weren’t talking about psychological safety then, but that’s exactly what it was. There was an easiness about him that was contagious. I hit early with that group the next ten days and every day was just like this. We got into real conversations, and it was incredible.
The ability for leaders to connect with everyone is vital to that person reaching their leadership ceiling or simply just having leadership qualities. ‘Big Papi’ went all out.
Authenticity
About two weeks into camp, the exhibition games against other teams start and the biggest beneficiaries of these early opportunities are guys just like myself. And I played terrific.
Early one morning I was in the cafeteria and in comes ‘Papi’. ‘Oye [Spanish for ‘listen’], I see you, you playing your ass off,’ he says. He grabs a bowl of oatmeal and takes a seat next to me. ‘There is a guy in this clubhouse that come up for one game – one series to help us win the division.’ I remember sitting in my locker later that day thinking this guy is unbelievable. The level of professionalism in his preparation. The respect he garnered not just from his play but also by how he treated his teammates, coaches and support staff. Most importantly, he was REAL!!!
There is a saying in baseball: ‘just remember, you can’t fool the clubhouse’. People know when you are real and people know when you are phony. When you are in a leadership position and you are an imposter in any way, you will lose the group.
Later in camp, the big boys were playing five to six innings and then the subs entered the game. We were playing the New York Mets and I replaced Ramirez in the sixth. When those guys get out of the game, they get whatever recovery they need from the physio team, shower, then leave. Well in the top of the seventh inning I was playing left field and Lastings Milledge hit an absolute rocket down the line near the corner. I took off full speed, located the baseball and laid flat out to make the best catch of my entire 14-year professional career.
At the end of the inning, I ran into the dugout and waiting on me at the top step in street clothes was ‘Big Papi’. He was watching the rest of the game as he was doing his recovery with the physio staff. When I’d made the catch he’d ran outside and was waiting for me at the top step. ‘Oye, that was unbelievable! I’m telling you, you gonna help us win something!’ When he’d first said that to me almost a month earlier, I’m sure he said that to put me at ease in the beginning of camp. Now, I had played well and he noticed. I believe in that moment he really believed ‘this guy really might be able to help us.’
Well, he wasn’t kidding the Boston Red Sox won something in 2007: the World Series and, believe it or not, they did it without me! I spent the entire season at Pawtucket, the Triple A affiliate. I had one of my best seasons as a professional and I never got called up. The younger version of me was crestfallen that I didn’t get promoted to the majors that year. The version that is writing this piece realizes the intellectual currency that I took from that experience. What I got was a six-week case study on what high level leadership really looked like up close.
Leaders connect on a personal level with those they lead. Leaders are vulnerable and transparent, understanding that authenticity in relationships is central to culture creation. Leaders realize they will accomplish nothing by themselves, and they need the contribution of everyone in the operation. Leaders make everyone in the operation feel like their contribution to the group is important. Leaders set the tone for what the standard is in the organization. Leaders do all these things and do so in different styles – we will cover that in later posts.
David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz is a three-time World Series champion, a legend of the sport and now a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I’m not going to pretend that I know him because I don’t. We don’t talk and I don’t have his number. Here is what I do know: Papi has influenced countless lives by modeling what real leadership looks like. For me, that makes him a Hall of Fame leader.
Bobby is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.
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By John Portch
“And the sense of leading or inspiring others to do things they don’t necessarily think they can do.”
Miller is speaking at our latest Keiser Webinar, which was titled ‘Developing the Person and the Practitioner’. He is joined by Duncan Simpson, the Director of Personal Development at IMG Academy and moderator Dehra Harris, who serves as Assistant Director of High Performance Operations at the Toronto Blue Jays.
The trio explored people development on a personal and professional level; what is done well, and what could be done better.
Scaffold your development as you scale
You are perhaps never at a better time to restructure than when you have reached a low ebb. Miller explains that British Fencing currently has just one podium athlete but that he, in his role as Head of People & Culture, is working with the wider team to build elite foundations ahead of the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. He says: “[We want to] create an environment where people learn from whatever lens they’re viewing the programme through – be it a coach, be it an umpire, be it a parent or stakeholder in the journey – we’re building those world class foundations to grow and scaffolding the learning as we go through without having too much expectation placed on the individual athletes.”
The IMG Academy, which is based in Bradenton, Florida, serves 1,300 student-athletes across eight different sports, and employs over 800 staff. It is more advanced than British Fencing in its efforts to scale and support development but, as Simpson explains, there is a constant process of breaking down the silos that form between subject matter experts. For him, the key lies in its structure where the four facets of student-athlete life – school, campus life, sports and athletic & personal development – are given an almost equal footing. “How organisations are structured actually plays a massive role in the processes and how we see collaboration.”
The power of informal learning opportunities
Structures are important but culture also has a role to play and this informs the thinking around the Toronto Blue Jays’ new training facility, as Harris explains. “If we only meet separately then it doesn’t work,” she says of the staff based at the 65-acre Player Development Complex, which opened in Dunedin, Florida, in February 2021. “Having times where we’re socially together across disciplines helped and not just jumping into meeting structure but having five minutes of shooting the breeze where everybody’s just talking as humans. We recognised that we needed to shift from this relentless productivity of Zoom.”
Performance staff and coaches are also brought together through what Harris calls ‘intentional collisions’, a process that is also popular at Google. She says: “Strength & conditioning sitting down with hitting, we’re going through a bunch of players, we’re looking through an S&C lens and a hitting lens and we’re talking about a specific hitting goal. That’s a place where we’re anchoring a goal but maybe bringing people who aren’t always in the same room together.”
Do with not to the learner
“I need to have a ‘see, feel, hear’ sense of what’s going on so that I can, with the rest of the team, support [the athlete’s] learning in a way commensurate and at a tempo which is good for them,” says Miller. “Hearing, and feeling, and sensing what’s going on with the learner and how we build the learning around them in their context is really important.”
He sums it up with a pithy aphorism: “do with not to the learner.”
At IMG Academy, Simpson tells the virtual audience that learning is divided into three buckets: what the individual prefers to improve in, what they’re required to improve in, and where they are actually improving. He says: “It’s getting an understanding of those three elements. The actual development part is ‘maybe I can have a little impact there’, but it’s also getting them to understand that, ‘yes, you want to develop in this area and that’s fantastic but we can have multiple areas that we’re passionate about but your role may have evolved and changed, or the demands have changed, and you’re required to improve in this area.’”
The open conversation around those three elements, which can be scaled from the individual to the wider team, are the starting point for goal setting each year.
Comfortable being uncomfortable (and curious)
Miller wants people at British Fencing to be comfortable being uncomfortable and, for the audience, draws on his experience serving aboard a nuclear submarine in the Royal Navy. “When people join a submarine they’re walking into a learning environment, which is a high performance learning environment,” he says of an experience he and his shipmates called the ‘fourth dimension’.
“The importance of that is regardless of where you are hierarchically, when you walk into a submarine for the first time you are a learner and the philosophy and the culture inside that submarine is that we need you to be the best version of yourself as soon as possible because you might walk past an incident and you need to know how to deal with it because you’re the first person there. You can’t rely on a subject matter expert to come and bale you out, as it were. That sense of learning, that sense of curiosity, is inculcated in every fabric of every human interaction inside a nuclear submarine.
“Everybody takes responsibility for their individual learning but also their collective learning.”
It is an attitude he has taken into his post-military career with England Rugby, the English Institute of Sport and now British Fencing. “If we can help people to flex their curiosity muscle and encourage people to ask really insightful questions and be curious and want to develop themselves, where we get to is a sense where ‘it’s OK to ask a good question. It’s fine. It’s OK to not have the answer.’ But what we’re encouraging is the ability to be hungry for that learning.”
Making learners feel safe
Harris, who previously worked with medical students, recalls a time when she experienced a safety shift when delivering feedback. “A friend helped me to think about the difference between calling someone out and calling someone in,” she says. “When you call someone out there are relationship stakes. I might fire you, I might do something at you; there’s going to be something happen versus if I’m calling you in, it can be very direct but I’ve removed the relationship stakes by saying at the beginning of the conversation: ‘I appreciate that you’re here, I see all the hard work.’ This is potentially a difficult conversation but there are no stakes. This is us being honest about what is happening. I have to give difficult feedback but I want you to be very clear that we’re working on whatever I say.”
In addressing the question of belonging and psychological safety, Simpson cites American entrepreneur Charlie Munger. “He always talks about how much he underestimates the power of incentives,” he says. “When I sit down with individuals, I may have this picture of how great it is to work here, and we’re all pushing in the same direction, but I also need to understand the individual’s incentives. Why do they come to work, what are they here to do, what are they motivated by?”
Time is another factor, says Miller, who stresses the importance of trust and rapport. “Also with the learner, it’s giving them attainable goals in the short-term so that they feel success for themselves. Harris concurs, adding: “Succeeding is cooler than only failing.”
Tracking growth and development
The panel agree that evaluating learning can be difficult and Miller uses the Kirkpatrick Model, which is widely used for evaluating training and learning programmes, to explain why he feels he has fallen short at times.
“Organisations that plan big learning and development programmes often stop at the reactionary phase, the foundation phase i.e. ‘how did it feel? What was the learning like?’” he says. “The next level to that is how you are transferring that knowledge into your context. Then Kirkpatrick will suggest, actually, it’s a bit deeper than that because it’s how are you applying it? This takes time. Where we want to get to is how has it behaviourally made a difference to the organisation?
“When I think about learning programmes now, I think about how I’m going to evaluate it in the first six to eight weeks after the experience; what does the transfer of knowledge into the context look like? I plan that, six weeks out to three months. Three months out is how they’re applying it in their context and then, finally, in a year’s time, if we review and reflect on that learning experience for those individuals, what does that look like and how does it change the human behaviours inside the organisation?”
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The Performance Director of MLS champions New York City FC is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute and Elite Performance Partners [EPP] about his own experience as both a practitioner and a leader.
“In my first leadership roles,” Bettle continues, “I really thought having the best strategy or having the best ideas, that was what was going to make me a great leader, that people would just hear my idea and say ‘this is brilliant! Let’s do it!’ And you very quickly realise that it’s all about the people that you’re going to be leading.”
Bettle speaks from his experience leading performance divisions at teams including the Anaheim Ducks and Toronto Maple Leafs. “Yes, you have to have a strategy but the other side of it is that you need to have empathy for what people are going through, their sense of threat from your new system, and the humility you must have to go into a new environment and take it all in. There’s a huge component of leadership you almost don’t realise until you’re in the job already. Hopefully you ride that storm out where you last and get to take that next step.”
The Leaders Performance Institute and EPP’s Dave Slemen and Anna Edwards are also joined by Darren Burgess, the High Performance Manager of the Adelaide Crows who also leads EPP’s search offering in Australia, and James Thomas, the Performance Director at British Gymnastics.
Although the trio offer three different perspectives from three different sports, systems and countries, they hit on the numerous performance principles that EPP, a performance consultancy and search firm, discuss with their clients on a daily basis. One such principle being the need to ensure people are developing a range of ‘human skills’ over and above their technical competence in order to prepare for leadership. Here are some of the other key considerations they identify for performance directors going into new roles.
Cultivating high performance habits
The environment is uppermost in the minds of all three, playing to EPP’s belief that culture and strategy hold equal weight in an organisation – like two strands of a DNA helix, with strong leadership binding the two together and enabling the team to retain its core structure when pressure is inevitably applied. “You don’t have to get it perfectly to succeed at all because talent will probably beat that, but where talent is equal, the environment becomes really important,” says Burgess, who has led high performance teams in the English Premier League at Liverpool and Arsenal, as well as in his native Australia, where he helped Melbourne to win the AFL Grand Final last year.
The dynamics are not quite the same in Olympic sport but the need for a clear performance vision is paramount, as Thomas explains. “I’ve always described culture as turning expectation and beliefs into behaviours, and then behaviours into daily performance habits,” says Thomas, who has previously worked with British Judo, Welsh Boxing and Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby. “The people I’ve seen be successful have had consistently high performance habits in an environment that allows people to express those habits daily, to allow them to be reinforced and celebrated in training and competition.”
It takes time to reach that point, as Bettle points out. “People need to be open-minded and have humility, both me coming into an environment and the people there,” he says. “In a positive environment, there’s a lot of work done to prepare for your entry, but that isn’t always the case and staff can have no clue as to what’s expected and why we’re making a change. You have to spend a significant amount of time on the front end just letting the staff know exactly what the new org chart looks like.” Even when you get there, leaders need to remind their teams of the culture they are trying to build on a daily basis, EPP’s Dave Slemen adds.
Stop, look and listen
That said, it is important not to rush. “I think the most important thing that I’ve done is taking some time to not do anything,” says Bettle. “Really just observing the current culture, the current systems; really taking it all in before you actually start plugging your system into it.” He admits it is an error he has made in the past. “You go in too quick and you’ve got a system that you want to drop on this new culture and you miss things that are being done really well. You lose sight of the fact that this is a big change management project, and so people can’t change as fast as you would like them to if you just go in on day one and start to change systems and processes and reporting lines.
“For 60 days, you should observe and plug in little pieces where you can, and then once you’ve done that evaluation, you can plug in your system to really complement the things that are being done really well; and you can give them small pieces to change over time, and look at it as more of a long-term project than ‘at day one you’ve got to come in and produce results’.”
Burgess concurs: “People need to feel safe and they need to feel appreciated, and they need to feel that just because there’s change that doesn’t mean there will be wholesale change, and that’s a tough balance because, in a lot of clubs, in a lot of situations, you’re brought in for a reason, and they know that and you know that and the players know that, so there is a delicate balance there you have to find.”
The performance director role must begin to engender trust. “Unless you spend the time to build the connection with somebody I’ve often found it falls a little bit short,” says Thomas, who understands the importance of giving his staff a sense of psychological safety. “I’ve always taken the time to stand next to a coach during training, watch, ask questions, be inquisitive, and give them a sense that I’m interested rather than coming in and make a big change. It might not need a big change, but unless you talk to people and find out, you’ll never really know. It’s probably quite simple, but I just stand, watch and ask questions and try to be humble. I’ve come in, I’m not going to fix everything for anybody, but I’ll happily try and help. But I need to know about what you feel, what you think the issues are, and what you think doesn’t need fixing. What you think is great and really sacred to the sport, what needs to be maintained for the next few years.” Burgess points out you also need to speak up when it’s required, which fits with the definition of psychological safety held by EPP. “It’s not just about creating an environment in which everyone can speak up and be heard, it’s about creating one where you have an obligation to if you think something is wrong,” adds Slemen.
Thomas’ inclusive approach proved useful as British Gymnastics devised its plan for the 2024 Paris Olympics. “By the time we’d launched our plan, which was just before Tokyo, everybody had seen it and heard the words, heard the language, and heard the ideas of change, so it felt quite normal,” he says. “It felt like people took and breath and just said ‘onto the next four years’. There’s a few changes and I’m sure people will have to work through that, but we’d taken on such a journey and evolved the team quite early on. There was actually a big sense of togetherness rather than a secret thing that was cooked up in a boardroom that no one had ever seen and all of a sudden now you were putting it on them.”
The importance of a criteria-based approach
As Bettle says: “You want to be clear about your standards and how people are going to be held accountable and, within that, being as supportive as you can.”
To that end, Burgess has adopted a criteria-based approach. “I tend to give the staff a practical job description and say ‘there’s your practical day to day responsibilities’ and then there’s a real clear expectation and they can be as little as ‘you’re putting out the cones for the warm-up’ to as extensive as ‘you’re responsible for delivering the training analysis to the coach’, he says. “Whether that’s a physio, doctor, psychologist, a performance analyst, they all have their practical job description and therefore they know what they’re going to be held accountable for, and that tends to be a little bit more specific and practical than a human resources-designed job description. That’s helped a lot. It’s helped us to get people aligned in what they’re doing, it’s also created its own issues when people fall short because it’s only mine and it’s not HR’s, but within our staff context it works quite well.” Which is perhaps why he’s such a good fit for EPP, who take a similar criteria-based approach to their hires, taking time upfront to ensure all are aligned on the key priorities for any role and why they are hiring, rather than getting blinded by names of prospective candidates or silverware.
For Thomas, it is a question of impact. “I’ll say, ‘where do you, as an analyst, as a physiotherapist, show impact? Can you talk me through where you impacted on performance?’” he says. “And then we move away from KPIs and job descriptions to actually showing me or telling me a story about where they impacted and connect to the team going after world championships and winning four medals; the nutritionist can tell me a story of the six weeks before and you get a real sense that somebody really can give you a great story of where they’re adding value; or if someone can’t quite describe that to you that’s where I start to think where are they? Where are they working? Where are they impacting? Moving forward, is this an area that we might want to change?”
Find your authentic voice
Authenticity is important and, in Edwards’ view, the most important leadership trait, alongside vulnerability. “It’s just what is right for me and what allows me to be my best, draw from my experiences, inspire others, but in a way that suits me,” says Thomas. “I’m not a stand on top of a desk and beat my chest person, I try to inspire through relationships, caring about people, good strategy, but actually allowing other people to feel empowered to do it. So for me it’s been learning about myself, trust myself, but do it the way it feels right for me.”
For his part, Burgess initially noted down the qualities he liked and disliked in his leaders. “I would just come back and check those quite often,” he says. “The big one for me, in every organisation, was that I barely got feedback and that might be a conversation on the pitch or more formalised feedback and those things are really important because most of the staff are just craving some sort of information on how they’re doing.”
Mentors and blind spots
Thomas found a mentor early in his career. “I wanted someone to challenge me outside of the gymnastics space,” he says. “It was a safe space where someone could really push me, get me asking the right questions, and give me feedback about how I was doing and how I was coming across.”
It’s something that I always quite pleased on, my ability to make tough decisions, and someone held the mirror back at me and said ‘you’re great at making tough decisions, but do you have tough conversations before that?’ That’s something different. Making a tough decision and just doing it, that’s one thing, but actually telling people beforehand or getting their views beforehand and having those tough conversations, that was a little bit of a blind spot for me and maybe I’m shying away from the tough discussion but then going straight to the tough decision. That’s something I’ve learnt, that they go hand in hand, but they’re two very different skills.
The importance of mentors came out as a key theme in Slemen’s dissertation for the Executive MBA he completed last summer. In interviewing ten of the UK’s top performance leaders, he found all had leant on mentors throughout their careers, and most highlighted it as the most pressing factor in their success.
Thomas advocates the same for his team. “It was something probably two years in that I pushed really hard with my senior team; ‘get yourself a mentor, get someone who can support you outside of the work environment’. It’s been a massive success for gymnastics in terms of the growth I’ve seen in my team and them enjoying more leadership responsibility. A lot of that has been in seeking feedback from other members of the team.”
Quarterly 360-feedback is now part of British Gymnastics’ programme and Thomas relies upon it. “They might not even be involved in performance, it might be PR or marketing or finance, but tell me how I’m doing, tell me how I’m coming across, what grates on you that I do that I’m not aware of, that I need to think about, where my blind spots are that I’m just not aware of day to day; and it’s that ability to reflect based on other people’s feedback has been really important.”
Bettle agrees. “I’ve worked with a mentor and coach for some time now and I think that that process of self-reflection has been one of the most important things in my career, certainly transitioning into leadership, just general self-awareness, self-reflection and getting to know yourself better, getting to know what my defaults are and what my blind spots are has been really important coming into environments as we try to increase diversity within an organisation; and you just know that you’ve got blind spots that you’ve got no way of knowing how other people are really thinking unless you’re really seeking it out.” Having seen the importance of such guidance in the careers of many of the leaders they work with, Edwards has undertaken a Master’s in Mentoring & Coaching, allowing EPP to offer this as an additional service to those with whom they work.
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“A few years ago, there was a bigger emphasis on numbers and trying to hit specific targets and outcomes, whereas now, especially with those younger athletes, we spend more time talking about trying to show specific behaviours.”
Dan McPartlan, a Strength & Conditioning Coach with British Cycling, is reflecting on how his work with athletes continues to change in this latest episode of the Leaders Performance Podcast.
Also on today’s show, we discuss:
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“When you invest in a new job you feel that you have to do everything but, as I’m getting older, I don’t want to have to do everything,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute’s Jimmy Worrall.
The conversation took place in August just as West Ham and Moyes had made a promising start to the current Premier League season. The Scot was still basking in the glow of West Ham’s highest finish since 2001 and their first qualification for European football since 2006. As December arrives, they are again challenging at the top of the table.
At the time of his appointment in December 2019, however, delegation was not a priority. The club was mired in relegation trouble and Moyes’ remit was for a swift turnaround. “I think to get things up and running you need to have your hands on everything. You need to try and get all departments pulling in the right direction,” he continues.
Just three months later, the pandemic brought the 2019-20 Premier League season to a standstill. Moyes relished the opportunity to work closely with his playing group during the enforced hiatus. “We were on the pitch every day and, in a way, I think it helped me,” he says. “It certainly helped the team because I got the chance to do individual work with them every day. We were only allowed one member of staff and that was me at the time. The more I saw it, the more important I thought the individual work was. The players were probably having a closer relationship with the manager and the coaches as well.”
While positive results tend to produce a better atmosphere, and soft skills alone will never produce results, it is clear that Moyes’ players are both happy and receptive to his ideas. “I’ve played in teams here that have fought relegation and been mid-table, but in the last two seasons, what the manager has built for us, and what we’ve bought into as players, has been amazing,” West Ham midfielder Declan Rice told a press conference in September.
Rice, who represented England at the delayed Euro 2020 this summer, reported back for West Ham duty earlier than requested and has maintained his superb form in claret and blue. “It’s a place where you wake up in the morning and you look forward to going in and having breakfast with the lads. You look forward to having a laugh and you look forward to training.”
Rice’s words resonate with Dave Slemen, Founding Partner at Elite Performance Partners [EPP], a performance consultancy and search firm working across elite sport. Slemen says: “Tapping into why players love football and keeping it fun is such an underrated quality in a coach. So much pressure is put on players externally – if you can make it fun, it releases the stress so players are only in that state during games, when it matters.”
Nor has there been unrest from those fringe players with limited game time. Moyes has made every effort to ensure they feel included. “It’s like a big family,” added Rice. “I think the gaffer said it before, we’re all like a bunch of kids. Honestly, it’s such a great place to be around at the moment. With the results and how well we’re doing, that makes it that bit more special.”
“Winning makes a big difference and, in the sport we’re in, it really does change how you feel, how the media perceive you in all things,” Moyes previously told the Leaders Performance Institute. “But I would hope that I would still be treated the same way if we were losing.”
Changing perceptions
Moyes has been more directly involved in player transfers than during his first spell with West Ham. A number of his signings have sparkled including, in January 2020, Tomáš Souček [initially on loan] and Jarrod Bowen. They, along with many who made up the squad Moyes inherited, did their bit to stave off relegation that season.
“Getting a couple of players right was really important for me because suddenly we changed the dynamics, the mentality of the club,” says Moyes of his first weeks back in charge. “Yeah, the manager’s got a lot to do with it but, ultimately, it’s the players. Whether you buy them, whether they’re already in the building, you need them to be the ones to do it for you and, fortunately, we got a couple of players in the January window not by massive design, not by massive scouting networks and watching them for 20-30 games; a bit of simple work, looking at a few stats and you hit the jackpot. Now and again, you hope to be lucky and a couple of Januarys ago I was, we got these boys in.”
First-Team Coach Kevin Nolan – a former West Ham player and the coach with perhaps the strongest links to the playing group – has spoken of the club’s growing preference for younger players with a point to prove. “We can’t match the financial side of a lot of clubs but we can match it by hard work and determination,” he told the Athletic in May. “People will want to come here and work hard and not be seen as a club where players look to finish their careers, or come and enjoy a year in London. That’s not what this club is about. The gaffer wants to make this club better day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year.”
Moyes has also taken a keen interest in the fortunes of West Ham’s youth and under-23s teams, regularly attending matches home and away when his schedule permits. He also tells Worrall of the importance of getting to know the grounds and kitchen staff at West Ham’s Rush Green training ground. “I hope in some ways to start to build the club and show people that you’re trying to build a better and brighter future for all the people who are involved in the club.”
This approach is crucial for alignment. “The team is bigger than just the players,” adds Slemen. “We believe alignment can have a big impact on the behaviours of the group and its sense of identity. It can bring people closer together, especially when things get tough.”
Perhaps this is all circumstantial. Moyes is wary of trying to pinpoint empirical evidence in a conversation of his successes and shies away from attributing his success to any particular cause, but he does highlight the organisational stability and job security he currently enjoys. His tenure has long surpassed his six-month spell in 2017-18 when he first helped West Ham to retain their Premier League status. “Getting the chance to feel that you’ve got a bit of time I think gives you the feeling that there’s stability, you can get a bit of power and you can start to make decisions that you think are correct. I think when you feel as if you’re on a short lead you find that you have to do things quickly, you’re maybe making rash decisions.
“I’ve got to say, though, when we came back in here at West Ham this time, I felt under pressure that we would have to make quick decisions. We had to stay in the Premier League.” Results were required and, when they came, he gained a little more latitude. “Sometimes, people will get jobs that are already nicely prepared for you, all nicely packaged up for you to be a success.” Most managerial appointments, however, follow a poor run of results. The incoming manager is required to firefight. “Quite often the job is that you have to correct things, put things back, and try to start again.”
Moyes is also keenly aware that he, like any manager or head coach, is just a few bad results away from being pilloried. He is familiar with both ends of the spectrum. He built his coaching credentials at third-tier Preston North End, where he began as a player-manager in 1998, and led them to promotion to the second tier in 2000. He further burnished his reputation during an 11-year spell in the Premier League at Everton. Less fondly regarded are his spells at Manchester United, Real Sociedad and Sunderland, which seem like a distant memory at this stage.
He has always backed his ability as a coach, but understands that he had to continue learning and relearning the art of coaching. “To become a better leader, you need good people and staff around you,” he says. “It’s vitally important.” Each of Moyes’ first-team coaches – the aforementioned Nolan, Billy McKinley, Paul Nevin and Stuart Pearce – have been managers in their own right. “Even leaders need to be told ‘well done’ now and again because the leaders make the decisions and, quite often, the decisions are not right. It’s not a bad thing to have people around you to say ‘well done, you’ve done a good job today’.”
“No one gets there on their own – no one,” says Slemen. “You need to be both challenged and supported in any coaching role, this is especially true of the head coach. You would hope they are having the biggest impact so need the most help to get it right. In fact, 55 percent of CEOs in FTSE 100 have executive coaches and it wouldn’t surprise me if that will be the next trend at the top of the game.”
Moyes says: “We’ll all have bad days, it might not go right, but I think that’s when you need the support even more so than when you’re winning. We can be very isolated, very lonely. Yes, you have staff to help you but you still need good mentors in the background, good people that you think you could speak to about something you’ve got a concern about; people who if you’ve got a decision that you’re torn between could maybe clear it for you. I think to have one or two people around you who can help you with that is really key when you’re in the top level in elite sports.”
Slemen suggests that Moyes is onto something. “Everyone needs help – both coaches and mentors – people to talk you through what you do but also people who have been there before that can relate specifically to the challenges you are going through,” he says, adding that during his recent MBA dissertation he interviewed ten elite sports leaders and found that their only common trait was their use of coaches and mentors at different stages of their journey.
East London calling
Moyes famously coined the phrase ‘people’s club’ at his first press conference as Everton Manager in 2002 having been inspired by the Everton jerseys he saw on the streets of Liverpool as he drove to that first media engagement. His inference being that Liverpool Football Club did not seem to be as highly represented amongst the local populace. The sentiment was warmly received at Goodison Park.
He feels West Ham, surrounded by illustrious London neighbours, can occupy a similar space in the east of the city. “I think it’s an area that needs its football team and I think, for so long, we’ve been behind it. I want us to have a new young support, I want us to have new methods of trying to attract more supporters, but I think the biggest attraction to supporters is winning, especially to young supporters. A lot of the dads who maybe want to bring their sons or daughters to the game might have been West Ham supporters but might not feel there’s been enough success to warrant getting a season ticket or coming to the games. But I think, at the moment, there’s quite an exciting young team at West Ham and some really nice young players and the team’s going well.”
Like Merseyside, he also sees east London as a hotbed of young talent. “I’d love to have 30 or 40 scouts all around the East End of London because that was the way we done it at Everton and we pulled up an awful lot of good players at that time.”
Worrall wraps things up by pointing out that Moyes seems to be smiling on the touchline these days. “I’m very much the realist and I still am – but I felt as if the realist bit is not working anymore,” says Moyes, explaining that he has to be softer with the truth. “I find some of it really hard because I only want to speak the truth. Sometimes nowadays it’s very difficult to do that, but these are the things we do as we get older and we learn a bit better.”
Moyes may be a realist but he is also an optimist. “I hope that the best period of my management is still to come, even though I’ve had some pretty good periods. I’m hoping that this period might see me doing even better than I’ve done before.”
