Encourage innovation in a safe and inclusive environment
Selfridges is the UK’s premier high-end department store chain and must continuously asks itself “how can we make a point of difference?” EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] is at the heart of their response to that question, as Melissa Clottey, the founding Chair of Selfridges’ Diversity Board, told an audience at the 2021 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. She explained that if you prioritise EDI, you are encouraging difference, which breeds innovation, which ultimately increases growth and impacts the companies bottom line. Innovation is critical, and having the thought process of “nothing is off the table, there are no right or wrong answers, all ideas are in, how do we collaborate together?”
Diversity of thought brings added impact and credibility
Clottey highlighted that Selfridges’ EDI strategy has given the organisation the framework by which to truly embed EDI into the DNA of the company. Twelve people from different parts of the company, ranging from retail to the head office, to whom ‘EDI’ meant something very different, came together to build their EDI strategy. It was this diversity of thought and experience from within the group that enabled their strategy to be so impactful. They came up with three pillars which cover ‘people, customer and product’ and, as Clottey admitted, “We wouldn’t have come up with such a wide-reaching strategy without that diversity of thought in the group.”
EDI is a collective responsibility
Clottey and the EDI group at Selfridges recognised that in order to truly embed EDI they would need buy-in from both the executive level and people ‘on the ground’. However, they believed that step one on their journey should be a bottom-up approach; to listen to their employees, understand what they need and want, and build their strategy from there. This being said, having support from the executive level has also been crucial, and every month they invite one executive member to sit in on their meeting and ask for a task from them. “We listen to the director, take on their advice, and build it into the strategy,” said Clottey. They introduced a ‘diversity squad’ to help drive engagement, and make sure it was always being pushed on the agenda, and fully embedded into the DNA of the company.
Cultural identities – how do you tell the story of yourself?
Clottey explained that a cultural identity is when you tell a story of yourself to others so “you can find similarities and celebrate your differences.” This was something that, though their links with Management Futures, a management consultancy specialising in business and leadership skills, Selfridges were able to roll out across the whole organisation. They allowed people the space to speak and be open, so they could share their lived experiences, “the things you wouldn’t necessarily think about someone based on their visual representation.” This allowed them to find connections with one another and improve that sense of inclusion and belonging.
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Recommended listening/reading
Keiser Podcast: How Leaders Can Overcome Resistance to Change
How to Create Energy in Athletes Performing Under Great Scrutiny
Framing the topic
This was session two of our new Performance Support Series, which focused on exploring the topic of ‘Making Wellbeing A Core Component Of Your Organisational Culture’, led by Dr Meg Popovic. In the last session, Meg explored culture, wellbeing and learning through an organisational / systems lens. In this session we delved into the ‘Team of Teams’ phase of Meg’s framework and the thinking of relational intelligence through subcultural understanding. There is one more session to follow, and across all of the sessions, we will look to explore three questions: how do you see? What do you see? How do you use what you see to make it better?
What is a ‘subculture’?
How does this work in high performance sport?
If you want to design a new role, and have it contribute to something you’re already doing, how do you know what is possible and how do you know it will work? Ask yourself, what is the outcome I / you / we want to seek?
Success in this is when the leader hits the mark on the programme or process of the subculture. Failure, or when it falls flat, is when you’ve missed something or missed the mark within the subculture.
Meg Popovic: ‘Today we become team of team ethnographers tasked with investigating staff subcultures using this framework’:
What is Relationship Systems Intelligence?
The ‘third entity’: Imagine each staff system is a living organism, a collection of parts.
Group exercise
Step 1: Pick TWO staff departments.
Step 2: Subcultural analysis. Explore subcultures of two sub groups, think about the following for each sub group.
The shadow
The framework that is dragged behind, that which is in the background, seen or unseen, acknowledged or not acknowledged, but there is gold in there too.
Part of the growth process is shining light on the dark parts, and not being ashamed of those dark parts or making them wrong, but instead bringing them in and integrating them. This can happen on an individual level or on a group level.
Step 3: Deeper subcultural work – ask the following questions for the same two sub groups.
Task before next session: Next Level Leadership – The Wellbeing 1%
Do one small thing for each department (or someone in the department) that honours who they are. Recall the dream behind the complaint, and think about what would connect with them. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture, just something small, but we all know we operate in a world where the 1 per cent matters. Bring back to our group later this month to celebrate with each other.
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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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“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:
John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn
Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.
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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.”
