In the first of a three-part virtual Learning Series, we explore why adaptability is becoming a crucial modern leadership skill.
The General Manager of Player Development & Leadership at the Adelaide Crows was speaking in The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport, our recent Trend Report.
The sentiment struck a chord with Jackson’s fellow contributor, Tim Cox of Management Futures.
“We work in sport and other sectors, and there is that feeling of stifling,” Cox told a recent leaders virtual roundtable. “The pace of change, the demands on us are increasing, and it can feel almost suffocating for leaders sometimes. What do we do here? How can we respond effectively?”
Cox, who co-hosted this Learning Series with the Leaders Performance Institute, hinted at the growing complexity of sport and the ever-increasing importance of being able to lead through complexity, which is the overarching theme of a three-part virtual roundtable series that seeks to help leaders develop the necessary skills.
To follow up, we shared five areas where complexity continues to grow in sport. Most if not all will be familiar to athletes, coaches and practitioners alike:
Adaptability: a vital skill
Session one explored the concept of adaptability and how leaders can increase the chance of an effective response from their teams. This came up in the Trend Report. The following also stood out from the report’s findings:
The Magnificent Seven: tips for leading in complexity
Cox distilled his thoughts on the topic into seven ‘magnificent’ areas. “Whether they’re magnificent or not, you’ll be able to make a call on it,” he said.
In a world where change is constant, smaller or less-resourced teams can gain a competitive edge by being more agile.
“This is a simple one: it’s really prioritising time to actually analyse what is changing.”
As one participant said, “adaptive cultures are the ones where everybody has a voice. They can voice feedback, they can push back on ideas, and ultimately, that helps you get to the right idea.”
While tapping into collective wisdom is essential, it must be balanced with the ability to make decisions and act quickly. Yet while on-field decisions can be taken in minutes, “off the pitch,” as Cox said, “we can often be inordinately slow in adapting and responding to change.”
The ideal choices are those that are high impact and low effort. These are the quick wins. Conversely, high effort and low impact choices should be avoided as they are distractions and drains on resource.
Agility requires action, even in the face of uncertainty. Not knowing everything shouldn’t prevent progress.
You can, however, take a structured approach by recruiting wisely, implementing training programmes and pivoting smartly. Teams, Cox suggested, can ask themselves “what are our skill gaps for now or where are we strong now? What are the skills we’re going to need to make this pivot?”
“To adapt, we’ve got to learn,” said Cox with specific reference to the special forces, “and the better we are at debriefing, then the better we are at learning and then adapting.”
He explained that debriefing should be a deliberate, embedded practice. It’s not just about reviewing what happened – or when responding to a crisis – but extracting lessons to fuel future action.
“To what extent can we get these transitions right?” asked Cox. “Because obviously they have big organisational and team impacts, not just on the individuals close to them, they can filter down to the whole organisation.”
Who are your cultural guardians? Cultural guardians, as discussed by Dr Edd Vahid, are the individuals or mechanisms that ensure core values and practices are preserved during leadership changes. They are, as Cox explained, indispensable. “Any new leader is going to want to change things,” he said, “but what are the pieces that we need to absolutely hold on to? What is handed over to the leaders that we know to be true about this culture in this organisation?”
To sum up…
Looking ahead
This session was the first in a three-part series. Future discussions will explore:
Part 2: Inhibitors to adaptability – what gets in the way?
Part 3: Building a collective playbook for leading in complexity
In a recent Leadership Skills Series Session, Jeff Pagliano of Management Futures set out a series of tools, including the trust equation, active listening and ‘flows of knowledge’.
“Influencing is often strictly correlated with the level of knowledge or technical insight we can offer in any given situation and our ability to communicate that knowledge effectively,” said Jeff Pagliano, a consultant with leadership specialists Management Futures.
“However, influencing we believe is much broader than this.”
Pagliano was hosting an ‘influencing skills’ session for Leaders Performance Institute members as part of our Leadership Skills Series.
“A lot of you are employed to lead or influence outcomes, not for your technical knowledge but for your ability to build trust, grasp complex ideas, think rationally, and motivate,” he continued.
“The best influencers are often those who listen carefully to the needs of those around them, ask the right questions, and then communicate a compelling vision. And this has as much to do with credibility as knowledge does and, interestingly, the further you go up in an organisation, the less useful your IQ, your technical knowledge, is and the more useful your EQ, your emotional intelligence.”
Over the course of an hour, Pagliano explained why your ability to build trust, actively listen, and communicate compellingly – areas in which we can all improve – underpins your ability to influence.
‘The trust equation’
To start, Pagliano presented the trust equation to the group:
He then explained his thoughts on each:
Trust =
Credibility: “This speaks to both words and credentials. People should be confident that you know what you’re talking about, but it may not be just about the content, it could be how you show up as well. Credibility is a blend of what you know and how you present yourself.”
+
Reliability: “You do what you say you’re going to do. Your actions are connected to your words and your follow through. One thing that’s interesting to note is that people will sometimes over-promise and under-deliver; and it’s a very natural instinct to do that because we naturally want to please or we want to show the best of ourselves but, actually, over the long term, this can really work against you.”
+
Intimacy: “If credibility and reliability are the sort of things that are quite concrete, intimacy is a little more ambiguous. It’s more to do with the sense you have that someone will be there for you, and you try to gauge how emotionally intelligent they are. You’re noticing how well they listen, how much they connect, how much warmth they have, how much understanding. It’s less concrete, but equally important.”
/
Self-orientation: “Anytime you are building trust you do have to have some self-orientation because in any kind of negotiation or where you’re looking to influence, it would feel suspicious if someone thought you were entirely magnanimous about everything and you had no vested interest in anything. It’s about getting the right amount and not letting it overwhelm the other three. That’s why you have the first three divided by self-orientation.”
When you’re focused on being more genuine and interested in the other human being good things are going to flow for that, opportunities flow from that, but if the opportunity is so prevalent in the conversation that you’re trying to jump on it constantly, the other person’s going to feel it.
Active listening
Pagliano then introduced the topic of ‘listening well’, which supports influencing in two specific ways.
“It helps the intimacy part of the trust equation and it gives you the context for a person’s point of view,” he said. “You’re more prepared when the time comes for you to share your knowledge and suggest a course of action.
“Active listening is when you’re not only tuned into what someone says but also what they feel and believe picking up on both their verbal and non-verbal communication is the foundation of intimacy and the antithesis of self-interest.”
He shared the following image to illustrate his point:
When you’re talking to someone you are hoping to influence it’s always useful to reflect on the goals of each conversation, both what you want and what the other person needs as a way to determine the best way to listen at the moment. And you may realise that a different mode or combinations of modes would be better.
Flows of knowledge
“If the trust equation is where it should be and you have been listening well, you have laid the groundwork to engage with the person you are trying to influence in conversation,” said Pagliano in taking the conversation further. “We have a great framework for you to use: it is called “flows of logic.” Pagliano cited former BBC presenter Stephanie Hughes in his explanation:
Pagliano explained their value, particularly in non-rehearsed, spontaneous conversations:
Past → Present → Future
“When you go through these phases of logic, it’s the middle word that is important. Like in the first one, if we just say, ‘in the past we did this’ and ‘then in the future, we’re going to do that’ and you don’t give any context for the present, it’s less powerful.”
Problem → Choices → Solution
“[To say] ‘here’s a problem or solution’ – that’s not an influencing tool – that’s just a command. To present choices shows your credibility.”
Argument → Evidence → Conclusion
“The third could happen when you’re pushing back at someone who’s come at you with a different opinion, and here this is where the middle word is important, because if you just say, ‘I believe this and here’s a conclusion’, it’s just an opinion. But if you add evidence, it becomes more than an opinion. It becomes a fact, and it becomes far more concrete. It’s much more objective because it’s based on evidence.”
You want to sound like you know what you’re talking about and you’re not floundering and, if there’s a logic to what you’re saying, the information is more easily understood and retained, so these serve a multitude of purposes.
The final factor: push and pull skills
Pagliano presented a final slide:
“Effective influencing is our ability to balance those push and pull skills,” he said.
“The ‘push’ would be that flow of logic. When you’re a subject matter expert and you’re trying to communicate your point of view in a way that moves the other to take a recommended course of action, those pull skills [build] that trust equation, the active listening, and it’s good to reflect where we need to focus more.
“Often, ‘push’ comes more naturally for people, and when we’re not on our A game, those of us who have a propensity to be more responsive can slip into passive; and those of us who are more assertive can slip into aggressive.”
Aggressive: go to responsive. Passive: go to assertive. And make sure you’re constantly aware of those push-pull dynamics.
What to read next
Performance Coach Ronan Conway believes that coaches can bring a fresh dimension to team gatherings and help teams tap into their inherent power by adding some facilitation principles and techniques to their skillset.
In recent years I worked with a coach of a football team. He’d regularly vent to me about players not speaking up in meetings, and how the group lacked leaders and energy. So I decided to sit at the back of some player meetings to observe the dynamic.
A clear pattern emerged. Standing at the top of the room, the coach would send waves of golden information and inspiration toward the players in the shape of tactics, opponent analysis, and game plans. His style was to direct, to instruct, and to hand players the answers – because that’s how he was coached, that’s what he excelled at; plus time was of the essence. The players’ role was simple: to listen and absorb.
My feedback was as follows:
“The coach needed to maintain his directive style as a solid foundation, and layer in skills to stimulate group discussion”
My suggestion was to maintain his directive style as a solid foundation, and layer in skills to stimulate group discussion – not to replace his approach, but to complement it.
In the following weeks after delivering his game plan, he practised popping the ball into the players’ court; inviting their thoughts and insight. Within weeks he facilitated a post-game review, opponent analysis, and culture session with the squad. To different degrees, the players played a key part in both sessions. These small shifts had profound results:
To get to this point, it required a big shift in attitude towards his group and his role. It called for him to swap his teacher cap for his facilitator cap.
“The change called for the coach to swap his teacher cap for his facilitator cap.”
Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Before facilitating any meeting, it helps to adopt a group-centred lens. To have a strong belief in the group’s inherent wisdom. When you look at your squad in front of you, you see an ocean of insight, inspiration and breakthroughs. You see teachers rather than students. You see answers in the room.
The transition from a teacher to a facilitator mindset can be tricky. Most coaches are experts in their field, and at times it can suit to simply tell players what they need to know. But as a facilitator it’s not about telling, rather it’s about being curious. It’s about fostering the right conditions for the group to unearth their own answers.
“The transition from teaching to facilitating is about fostering the right conditions for the group to unearth their own answers.”
For some this may require a loosening of the reins, but it doesn’t mean letting go of them. Your direction and leadership is still central, but you’re inviting your squad to step up with you from time to time. It’s important to say that certain players and squads certainly won’t have all the answers. In this case, at least they get to practise critical thinking and to put their own fingerprints on a discussion.
Steve Kerr, the Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors NBA-winning team, is a proponent of player-driven meetings. For Kerr, it’s not about “control”, rather “guiding” or “nudging players in the right direction”. That ‘nudging and guiding’ is the essence of facilitation.
Stimulating any form of response from a group is about moving energy. Moving energy can look like a smile, a nod, a raised hand. Maybe a word. Or a sentence. In time perhaps a rich, flowing discussion. We call this process, ‘getting the water flowing’.
Here are some facilitation tips to get your meetings flowing:
Show of hands: When faced with 30 blank faces, and the energy feels stuck, you can get the water trickling with a show of hands. ‘Hands up if you know’; ‘if you agree’; ‘who relates’; ‘if you’ve experienced this’. Each hand raised or not is a micro-investment in the meeting.
Open-ended questions: Clear open-ended questions are the keys for unlocking the treasure. They typically begin with ‘how’, ‘why’, or ‘what’, and generally elicit deeper insights than closed questions which give yes/no answers. The quality of the question will determine the quality of the response.
Intentional language: ‘The answers are in the room’: use language that reflects this mindset. You are not wondering if they have an answer, you know they do. Instead of ‘does anyone have an answer?’, try ‘who wants to go first/next?’.
Non-verbal communication: Facilitation isn’t just verbal. A nod or some steady eye contact can subtlety signal, ‘I want to hear from you’. You can lightly scan the room, naturally clocking different individuals throughout the meeting. At the very least, these ‘I see you’ moments will keep people checked-in and engaged.
Pair up: Speaking in front of an entire group is a big interpersonal risk to take. Pairing up to speak is a more manageable one. It gets all voices flowing; it builds safety; it serves as a stepping stone to a wider group conversation.
If your questions are met with silence, don’t sweat.
That liminal space between question and answer can be an intense time. When I started out facilitating in schools, most of my questions would hang in the air for what felt like minutes. Time sped up, as did my heart rate. I’d hold my breath. My brow got sweaty. ‘Someone. Please. Say. Something,’ my inner world yelled. The group shuffled awkwardly longing for the same. Until, finally, I’d move things along with a joke, or by answering my own question. Phew.
After enough moments like this, my relationship with silence changed. I found these moments to be a necessary and natural punctuation point; a chance for the room to slow down and to breathe. In the moments when I filled the silence, I wasn’t saving the group from the discomfort, I was in fact saving myself from my own discomfort. Rather than seeing silence as a void to be filled or feared, I started seeing it as a space for gold to be found. Granted not all silences lead to answers, but at least give the group time to gather their thoughts and muster up some courage.
‘Sitting in the silence’ is a useful practice in these moments. Meaning, allowing silence space – trusting it – and remaining as relaxed as possible.
“The more I trust myself to sit in the silence, the more the group trusts themselves to speak up.”
Here are two nuggets which help the process of sitting in the silence:
1. Trust the silence
When a group isn’t responding, a myriad of things can be happening for them. Quite often, they’re just not used to being asked. The silence is almost like a test to gauge ‘is this a token question or a genuine ask?’ In filling the silence, a lack of belief in oneself and the group is communicated. Being willing to ‘sit in the silence’, we signal a strong confidence in the group. You’re saying, ‘I know you know and I’m willing to wait’. It amazes me: the more I trust myself to ‘sit in the silence’, the more the group trusts themselves to speak up.
A connection-building workshop facilitated by Ronan Conway.
“The group needs to feel like you can hold yourself before they feel that you can hold them.”
2. Stay grounded
Sitting in the silence isn’t just about waiting it out, it’s about being as relaxed as you can. When we are on edge, stressed, or overly desperate for answers, groups are less willing to engage. The group needs to feel like you can hold yourself (stay calm, regulated, at ease) before they feel that you can hold them.
So before team meetings, or indeed when a wall of silence rises up, I’ll do the following to stay rooted and grounded:
Like a skill, facilitation takes time and deliberate practice. It may take time for everyone to adjust to the new rules of engagement, but once it starts flowing, the impacts can be transformative.
If you try this, I’d love to hear your experience of it.
Hopefully this article serves you and your team’s journey ⛰️
Ronan Conway is a performance coach who specialises in building cohesion and motivation in elite sports teams. He has worked with some of Ireland’s most successful teams, including the Ireland men’s rugby team, Dublin GAA’s five-in-a-row-winning men’s Gaelic football team and, currently, Leinster Rugby.
Ronan has honed his craft as a facilitator since 2012. He believes skilled facilitation can play a key role in empowering players and generating greater buy-in and belonging.
You can read more about Ronan’s work with elite teams here and here . Or you can visit his website at ronanconway.ie and find him on LinkedIn .
A recent Leadership Skills Series session provided some tools that all leaders and coaches can use with their athletes and colleagues alike.
That was the premise for this recent Leadership Skills Series session, where members of the Leaders Performance Institute were invited by our friends at Management Futures to explore:
There are two key principles:
What is ‘skilled candour’?
When we have explored this topic in the past, we referenced the term of ‘radical candour’, which coined by executive coach Kim Scott, who argues in her 2017 book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing your Humanity that leaders have a ‘moral imperative’ to step into difficult conversations and challenge with skill. This requires courage because it is simply easier to avoid such conversations.
Scott’s idea has influenced Management Futures, who fashioned their own concept: ‘skilled candour’, which underlines the skill behind the action.
On that note, psychological safety is essential so that people know that you are coming from a well-intended place. If there isn’t a belief that there is trust or positive intention, it may well trigger the ‘inner chimp’ (the primitive, emotional part of our brains, which is there to protect you but, in certain circumstances, can arouse feelings of defensiveness).
When the chimp has been triggered it’s unlikely that you will have a productive conversation.
The aim must be to create a sense of safety so we can be honest and speak directly:
Image: Management Futures
Ruinous empathy: this is where we say what needs to be said in a clear and direct way. When you want to spare someone’s short-term feelings, you don’t tell them something that they need to know. You care personally but fail to challenge them directly, with ruinous consequences.
Insincerity: when you neither care personally nor challenge directly. You offer insincere praise to a person’s face and criticise them harshly behind their back.
Aggressive: when you challenge someone directly, but don’t show you care about them personally. It’s praise that feels insincere and feedback that isn’t delivered kindly.
We asked the practitioners and coaches in attendance where they thought they sat on the skilled candour graph. A straw poll delivered a striking insight:
Ruinous empathy: 45%
Insincerity: 3%
Aggression: 12%
Skilled candour: 39%
There are five key skills to enable your preparation, delivery and summary of a courageous conversation.
The SBI feedback model
The Center for Creative Leadership’s SBI feedback model is a useful tool for both positive and constructive feedback. ‘SBI’ stands for ‘situation/standard’, ‘behaviour’ and ‘impact’.
Below is a simple example of what this could look like – the key is what we want to get straight to the point:
Situation/standard: To begin, we should guide the person to recall the exact time and place where the action we’re discussing occurred. The more specific we are, the better, as it will help them visualise their surroundings and actions at that moment. This provides the context for the feedback.
Example: ‘It’s really important in team meetings that everybody gets the chance to share their opinions and feels heard’.
Behaviour: Outline the specific actions or behaviours that prompted the feedback. As with the previous part, it’s must be as detailed as possible. We’ll achieve this by providing two key pieces of information:
Example: ‘I’ve noticed in the last couple of meetings that when people have come up with an idea you’ve immediately said something negative about it’.
Impact: We should highlight what we believe the impact of their actions was. This impact could pertain to you, the team or other individuals. As with the previous section, it needs to be detailed and is divided into two parts:
Example: ‘You’ve talked about why it’s not possible and the impact of that is that it’s draining the energy out of the room and stopping people speak up’.
What to read next
Head Coach Chris Fagan laid the foundations for the Brisbane Lions’ 2024 AFL Grand Final success with three big steps.
Their premiership success was not a bolt from the blue – they had reached the Grand Final a year earlier – but it was a far cry from the 18th place finish the Lions managed in 2017, which was Fagan’s first campaign at the helm.
He appeared at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London – just weeks after Brisbane narrowly lost the Grand Final to Collingwood.
There were no guarantees that they would make the decider again in 2024 but Fagan, who had his doubters in Australia, transmitted confidence from the Oval stage. “Last year [2022], we lost the preliminary final by 71 points. A lot of people said we wouldn’t recover from that,” he said. “This year, we made a Grand Final and lost it by four points. I said to the players, ‘we’re getting better, we’re getting closer. We’ve been the most successful team over the last few years. Be proud of that. The team we played in the Grand Final is older and more experienced, so that’ll be good for us.”
So it was to prove. But the focus here is those early years, when Fagan worked to turnaround a faltering team. It was only in year three, when the team jumped from 15th to 2nd in the AFL ladder, that his methods were vindicated by points and victories.
There were three factors that underpinned Fagan’s approach.
In 2017, Fagan arrived with his vision for a high performance culture. In outline it bore some familiar features:
But in order to deliver this through a strategic plan, Fagan needed everyone onside. It wouldn’t be easy in what had become a “poor bugger, me” environment. “I discovered that many of our players preferred to be in rehab than to be actually playing – it was safer there,” he said.
Over the course of four weeks he solicited the views of every player and member of staff. “I wanted to send a message to everyone at the club that they would be listened to, that it wasn’t just me coming in and telling them what was going to happen,” he added. “I wanted to find out what they thought the club needed to do to become better because they needed to be partners with me in the process. I think they appreciated that because they hadn’t had a process for a long time. They’d just been told what to do.”
This brought him trust and credibility during those first two seasons when there was barely a flicker of improvement in scoreboard terms.
Fagan is a big believer in high challenge, high support for players in pursuit of their goals. The challenges were plain to see in 2017, and the first measure of support came from Fagan himself. “I see myself as the chief energy and psychological safety officer,” he said onstage. “I want to build an environment where the players and staff feel trusted and motivated, because that certainly wasn’t the case when I turned up.”
Even as the poor results endured, the team’s morale did not falter. “You’d have said we were the happiest bunch of losers during the early years,” says Damien Austin, the club’s High Performance Manager. “We celebrated everything because we were such a young team.” That included winning quarters of games, strength gains or running PBs in training. “We were always striving for progression,” he continues. “And if there wasn’t progression there’s a reason why, and I think like any young kids today, you’ve got to take them on a journey.”
It chimes with Fagan’s emphasis on growth mindsets and, as a former teacher himself, the importance of learning day in day out. As ever in a Fagan team it comes with a human face. His list has a WhatsApp group chat called ‘Moments of greatness’ where players celebrate examples of their teammates setting new standards.
AFL veteran Luke Hodge joined the Lions’ journey for Fagan’s first two years. The new coach’s first big recruitment decision was to bring in the man he regarded as “the greatest captain to ever play the game” from Hawthorn, the club from which Fagan himself had joined Brisbane.
“He was well and truly at the end of his career,” said Fagan of the four-time premiership player. “But I just wanted somebody to come in and role model great leadership to a young group of players.”
Additionally, Fagan worked with leadership consultant Simon Fletcher to devise a leadership development programme for senior and emerging leaders. “The first thing he did was establish a trademark, which was a reference point for leadership.”
To this day the Lions’ trademark is built around the concepts of ‘brotherhood’, ‘heart’ and ‘selflessness’:
But Fagan knows as well as anyone that these are just words on a wall without the behaviours that drive and sustain these ideas. “The players come up with those and we drive it,” said Fagan of the Lions coaching staff.
“After a game, the players have to send me a text the day after and one of the things they need to rate is their compliance to the trademark for that game.” Usually, the better the result and performance, the higher the rate of compliance. It can go the other way when the team loses. In any case, “we have a vision of it being done well and we also show a vision of when it’s not so good”. Additionally, the Lions hand out a ‘brother of the week’ award, where players are invited to vote via WhatsApp for the player who best demonstrated the trademark behaviours that week.
In summary…
Fagan understands that if your environment is highly demanding then it must also be highly supportive. He has clear ideas on what motivates people that go back to his days as a teacher:
He said: “To be motivated, you have to have a clear purpose, that feeling that you’re improving, which I think our guys hadn’t felt for a long, long time. There is a desire to be listened to and to be a participant in your own growth and development; and that connection with teammates, staff and community.
“I put that model up as areas we would spend a lot of time on over the next few years, trying to grow our culture and team into a better place.”
What to read next
