By John Portch

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

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

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

What the research is telling us about high performance environments

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

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

Three important aspects of effective high performing leadership

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

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

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

Developmental v motivational feedback

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

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

Attitudes, behaviours and capability

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

‘High performance cultures don’t just show up’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By John Portch

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

• It requires intentional work on the part of leaders

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

Quick recap: what is psychological safety?

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

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

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

What does that look like in practice?

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

How can you help your teams to get better?

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

From failure to problem solving

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

Is there truly room for psychological safety in sport?

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

These are an excerpt of his reflections at the time:

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

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

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

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

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

By Sarah Evans

• Understand your core values and stick to them

• Clarity and alignment from everyone is key

• Improvement requires change, and change requires action

A mixture of continuity and adaptation is key for sustained success

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

Success lies in planning

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

Improvement requires change

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

Fuelling the incessant demand for the new

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

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

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

How do you feel this space is evolving in sport?

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

By John Portch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find ways to challenge and support players

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

Devise game-relevant practice sessions

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

Be more interested in what you don’t know

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

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

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

The power of self-reflection

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

The view from Leaders Performance Advisor Edd Vahid:

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

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

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

By Sarah Evans

• Reconnect with your roots.

• Align to a bigger purpose.

• Empower and trust the athletes to make decisions.

Reconnect the playing group with the club’s history

Quins were languishing in sixth place in the Premiership in January 2021 and were without a head coaching figure. Six months later, their player-led squad were champions and this season reached the semi-finals again. The club’s Head of Rugby Performance Billy Millard took the reins and would hand control back to the playing group. Before that, he needed to restore confidence and re-establish a sense of purpose. He understood the need for the team to go back to their roots, to understand their history and culture. “Quins have always been entertainers, that’s why we’re ‘the Jesters’, and we had to tap back into that,” Millard told an audience at the 2021 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. The team created a clear vision which underpins everything they do, and means they are all aligned and striving for a greater purpose. They understand their history and what it means to play for Quins – it is more than just winning and the team is worth more than any individual. It is everyone’s responsibility to bring success to the club, everyone has their part to play, and therefore the sense of a team is embedded and felt even stronger.

Foster a sense of belonging

As soon as you understand and buy into the vision, values and culture, you are part of the Quins family and part of a legacy of Quins players who want to keep this culture alive, explained Danny Care, the Quins and England international scrum-half, who spoke onstage with Millard. Every player is there to bring Quins success, and to do that every individual must give 100% for the good of the team. “One of the key reasons we were successful, was having 45 players fighting for the same goal”, explained Care. It was a whole squad effort, not just the 23 playing at the weekend. Each player also has the freedom to be themselves, and is not put in a box, they are accepted and allowed to express themselves as they are aligned to the higher purpose, and belong to the group. Enjoying the process and feeling part of something bigger is often more fulfilling than simply winning, and Care stated emphatically that winning at Quins, where he has played since he was 19, “was the proudest moment of my career”. It is the sense of winning with your team who have been pulling towards the same goal for a higher purpose that adds to the achievement and success.

Trust, respect and empowerment

The staff value demonstrated that they valued the players’ opinions by asking them to take ownership of the programme and how they wanted to act within it. “I’ve never known an environment where we’ve felt more empowered because we were asked questions,” Care said. The players are empowered to think about what will get the best out of them, what they want, the most crucial piece being that their input is listened to and therefore they feel respected and trusted. This allows the players to feel valued but also in turn holds them accountable to their actions and decisions. The players must be able to understand what gets the best out of themselves as individuals and as a team. The support staff are also listened to and empowered to make decisions on the running of the programme. “Everyone was accountable and empowered and they really enjoyed it,” explained Millard. They are given autonomy and their expertise is listened to, therefore further increasing their feeling of being trusted and respected.

Have a family-first approach to people

Care emphasised the importance of making each individual feel seen as a human and not just an athlete or part of a machine. They took a family-first approach, knowing that whilst, yes, rugby and winning is important, people have lives outside of this and family is everything. Millard gave a brilliant example of one player’s mother being unwell during the week of the most important game of the season. The coaching staff and team’s response was “family comes first, just go,” says Millard. The player came back for the weekend and played exceptionally well – he had been understood and cared for as a human. Care highlighted from a players perspective, that decision from the coaching staff “filtered through the rest of the squad, and we feel empowered, trusted and listened to.”

Operating from a sense of belief not fear

The player-led approach to training and taking ownership breeds a sense of confidence that you have done everything in your power to prepare correctly. Confidence that the game plan is the best way for you to be successful, and trusting the processes in order to achieve your outcome goal. This is critical mid game when things might not be going your way, “by sticking to what we believe, what we’ve trained” explained Care. Having a unified approach is the best approach for success, and players not going off script trying to solve the problem individually.  If you lose, which any team is bound to do, believing and trusting in the team’s process and not panicking. This is embedded from the owners and filters down the club giving everyone confidence that their position isn’t under threat from one or two negative results. Operating on a sense of belief and confidence rather than fear. Belief in the individual’s ability but also that of everyone around them.

By Lorena Torres Ronda

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

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

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

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

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

Organizational leadership

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

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

Individual leadership

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

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

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

Strategic leadership

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

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

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

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

By Sarah Evans

Real Madrid Head Coach Carlo Ancelotti is the first coach to have won each of Europe’s five major leagues.

On Saturday, he will also attempt to win the Uefa Champions League for the fourth time as a coach (to go with the two he won as a player with AC Milan). His track record is all the more remarkable given his longevity. The La Liga title he won with Real earlier this month comes 18 years after his Serie A triumph with Milan.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute explores five attributes that explain why Ancelotti is still at the top of his game.

1. Ever the democrat

Ancelotti states that his leadership style stems from his character. He is a democrat that doesn’t like to simply impose his way of being on others. “My style is not to impose,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2015. It is a belief to which he holds firm. “I would like to convince the players of what they are doing”. He believes that this way of operating earns him the buy-in of the players, which means they are more likely to get behind him and give their all, rather than if things were simply forced upon them. This approach also makes the players accountable. Ancelotti will often ask the players tactical questions and opinions on the match strategy, knowing that they will understand the strategy more if they’ve been involved in the decision-making process. He wants the environment to be that of adult to adult, and allows players and staff to have opinions, feel valued, and help in designing both the vision and the strategy of the team.

2. Process over outcome

Win or lose on Saturday, Ancelotti always analyses his methods systematically, and if his team have lost but knows he couldn’t have done anything else to change it, then he is able to compartmentalise the defeat. It is this process, rather than outcome, focus which makes him so consistent. Perhaps his most notable loss was the 2005 Champions League Final against Liverpool in Istanbul. His team at the time, Milan, were leading 3-0 at half-time, but Liverpool pulled off one of the most historic comebacks in football history and eventually won the match on penalties. However, Ancelotti was seen chatting cheerily in the bar later that night. He believed his team had played well and so didn’t dwell on the defeat.

3. A cultural chameleon

Ancelotti – who has coached some of Europe’s most illustrious teams, including Milan, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid (across two spells) – stresses the importance of getting to know the characteristics of players, the culture and traditions of a club, and then integrates his leadership style within that. Even if something has made him very successful at one club, he won’t just come in and assert that style on another. Ancelotti understands that there are many cultural differences from club to club and within different countries, and he has to adapt his style to get the best out of the players and team he is currently at.

4. Humility and professionalism

He has won almost everything as player and coach, yet he still wants to listen to what you have to say. People enjoy talking to him, he values what they say and that helps him build relationships with the athletes. He is the ultimate professional and has an unquestionable desire to win, which makes him so well-respected. He protects the team from the stressors of elite football by not showing the pressure he’s under. He takes the situation – but not himself – seriously, and can often be found telling jokes in the changing rooms before a big game to help diffuse the pressure.

5. A refreshing sense of perspective

Ancelotti has a strong sense of the big picture. He has the ability to take daily updates of physical, mental and emotional energy levels of people and align them with the group’s daily needs, as well as the team’s overall season objectives. By ‘staying in the moment’ with individuals, he is able to prepare for and think about the bigger picture. As he said: “football is the most important of the less important things in the world.”

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The team behind the team

This year (2022) marks the 20th Anniversary of the English Institute of Sport (EIS). We were formed in 2002 and have grown significantly over those 20 years to become a world leader in sports science, medicine, innovation and technology.

Our primary objective is to provide the outstanding support that will enable sports and athletes to excel, both on and off the field of play. We achieve that by working in close partnership with sports and our other stakeholders. While this report will focus on the EIS’s work, we could not operate or deliver any of the services you will read about without the support and partnership of the sports we work with and multiple other organisations. We are grateful to all our partners for their collaboration and feedback which helps us to learn and improve the services we offer.

After our formation in 2002, the EIS has continued to grow and add new services to our portfolio, meeting the growing needs of the high performance system. After Rio 2016, where the EIS contributed towards 93% of medals won by GB athletes, we created a world-first Athlete Health team, as well as taking on responsibility for a dedicated Performance Innovation team. By the time the Tokyo Games came around, we were proud to be working with 40 different Olympic and Paralympic sports, as well as sending more than 100 of our people to the Games as part of the official support teams for Team GB and ParalympicsGB.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a recent example of how well the EIS adapts to handle challenging situations; our medical teams worked extensively with sports to produce Return to Training guidance, enabled athletes to continue heat training by installing individual heat tents at sites across the country and administered more than 500 Covid tests to athletes.

We are committed to putting people at the heart of extraordinary performance and none of our success as an organisation would be possible without our 350-strong expert team. Our people work tirelessly behind the scenes to problem solve and innovate, often working as part of, or as an extension to, a sport’s personnel. I am delighted that through the course of this Special Report, you will hear from a number of that team, some of whom have been with the EIS for over 15 years!

I am immensely proud to lead this great organisation as we look to another 20 years of outstanding support. I hope you enjoy reading about our teams, projects and successes, as well as hearing from some of our much-respected colleagues from the world of high performance sport.

Matt Archibald, CEO, English Institute of Sport

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By John Portch

One thing is clear: diversity is a competitive edge and EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] is an area where all teams can be doing better.

Kevin Yusuf Coleman, the former Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Brentford FC [now the Diversity & Inclusion Lead at the BBC Studios], is speaking at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. The English Premier League club have been noted for their work in delivering upon their EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] goals.

At the top of the conversation, he highlights the findings of some research conducted by management consultancy firm McKinsey. “If you’re in the top quartile of gender and ethnicity you’re about 25-30 percent [more profitable],” says Yusuf Coleman. “Just in terms of pure cash, if you’re a more diverse and inclusive organisation you do better, as well as it being the right thing to do.”

In this chapter, through Yusuf Coleman’s words, we highlight four factors to consider when trying to promote equality, diversity and inclusion.

1. EDI must be intrinsic

Yusuf Coleman emphasises that EDI must be part of your cultural identity, not just some add-on, which is all too common. “I’ve spent most of my life in sport trying to justify why EDI was a good idea and it was really refreshing to come to an organisation where it was already front and centre,” he says of a club situated in one of London’s most diverse areas. “It was already one of our two biggest priorities and it was more how we do it than why.

“It makes logical sense for us to have an understanding of having an inclusive environment for staff to work in, an inclusive offer for our fans and players and wider communities. It makes perfect business sense as well as being the right thing to do.”

2. Accountability is key

As Yusuf Coleman says, every staff appraisal at Brentford includes a section on EDI accountability. “If everyone is accountable then they will make it relevant to them.” Equally, your staff and athletes can play a fundamental role in bringing EDI to life. “You never design a programme, or anything that’s supposed to help any particular community without them being part of it.”

EDI can also be tracked. “It has to be something physically practical that you can measure so it means something to everyone, otherwise it is a slogan and when the next CEO comes in there will be another slogan and another acronym.”

Yusuf Coleman recalls his time as Equality & Diversity Manager at the Football Association [FA]. “We had monthly poll surveys where you had lots of questions around inclusion and belonging and you looked at how much people strongly believed in them or slightly believed in them and how that changed every month. And actually, over a period of two years, you saw the change in how people feel about the organisation. You have to be clever about things you normally can’t measure and it can feel like fluffy clouds, but you have to find a way to try and measure them.”

3. Create experiential learning opportunities for staff

“EDI, to really get it, you have to understand it and feel it,” says Yusuf Coleman. “People from diverse communities, from under-represented communities who might have experienced discrimination, for example, will understand it more because of life experience. And if you’re from the majority, if you’re a white middle-aged man like me, you don’t have those experiences to inform you.”

Experiential learning is a crucial tool. “We all talk about the ‘70:20:10 rule’ where if you experience something it’s much more impactful, especially around EDI,” he continues.

During his time at the FA, Yusuf Coleman arranged for a staff visit to the Neasden Temple, which is about 2km from Wembley Stadium but not a place most staff had visited. “[It’s about] being creative and helping people to experience diversity and inclusion for themselves is going to be more impactful than paying for corporate trainer a lot of money to come in with a white board for a few hours.”

4. You never succeed at EDI

Yusuf Coleman clear on that point. “You never succeed at EDI – no one is ever successful,” he says, adding that organisations should revisit their EDI strategy every two to three years. “You might be more ambitious in three years’ time or you might revisit the same thing. Never think of it as something you’re going to achieve. It’s ‘are our indicators good? Are we ahead of society? Are we leading society? Can we be seen as good practice or are we flagging behind?’ That’s really your only two litmus tests. As businesses, you don’t have to be more diverse than society, you don’t have to hit every target, one thing that’s really key is being humble and knowing where you are.”

By John Portch

The Leaders Performance Institute approached Dan McFarland, the Head Coach of Ulster Rugby, to broach the topic of change and he is happy to oblige.

“I quite like talking about these kind of things because it helps me to formulate my thinking and, at the end, I’ll have a clearer picture of how I think about things,” he says.

“What is ‘change’ in and of itself?” he continues. “Firstly, ‘change’ is someone who says ‘this isn’t working, things are terrible, and we need to change’. But change is also growth. If you’re an organisation that wants to grow, develop and learn – by definition that is ‘change’.

“How you conceptualise change and how you use it is interesting, because if you include the idea that ‘growth is change’ then there’s always a need for change, isn’t there? At least in anything that’s competitive. It is important not to box change as merely something that happens to a failing organisation or somebody who’s in trouble. Then it’s just a degree in change and, I suppose, recognising the degree of change is interesting.”

McFarland has been a coach since his retirement from playing in 2006. He took an assistant coaching role with his club, Connacht Rugby, upon hanging up his boots at the west of Ireland club. His first stint in Ireland came to a close when he joined Gregor Townsend’s coaching staff at the Glasgow Warriors in 2015 and he later joined Townsend’s coaching ticket when he took the reins of the Scotland men’s national team in 2017. Ulster came calling and McFarland took his first senior head coaching position with Ulster in April 2018.

He is a firm believer in the need to identify a “lodestone” – a foundation – when effecting change. In explanation he retells the story of his initial trek back across the Irish Sea from Connacht to Glasgow. “I was looking for change, but I needed something I was already strong in, something that was relevant to me, something that was going to hold the continuity from one place to the next; bridging that gap of change. For me, it was personal development and that needed to bridge the change of place, environment, and people I was working with. I needed that continuity and that was also part of the change.”

Continuity, as McFarland argues, is essential for players and staff. “The idea of flipping everything on its head, to me, is not great, unless you want something totally new, in which case it doesn’t come under the term ‘change’. When I arrived in Ulster, they were looking for change but I also recognised the things that were going well at the time. ‘What are the things that work here? What things are important? They might not be visible at the time, but that lodestone is generally always there; and if you can attach yourself to that and use that as a foundation, then it’s much easier to gain buy-in from the people who supply the continuity.

“People are trying hard; they’re working hard and doing good things. They just might not be going in the right direction, processes might not be efficient – but there is good stuff going on in places.”

Repurposing, systems, culture and people

McFarland explains that lodestones, as he describes them, at a rugby club can take numerous forms. He says: “It could be purpose, it could be systems, it could be individual people within that organisation. It could be lots of different things.”

He distils the focus when embarking upon change into four categories: repurposing, systems, culture and people. “Repurposing is a huge thing. People have got to have a purpose and, as I say, it may already be there,” he adds. “Creating clarity around that purpose can help. After you’ve done that, you can then look at the kinds of people that are there and how they fit within that purpose. You can look at the kinds of systems and whether they’re efficient and fit for purpose. Then, obviously, the big byword is the cultural stuff. Does that row in behind the people and fit with the systems and the purpose? That’s how I would look at it.”

At Ulster, how did he know where to look first and how does he know where to continue looking? “When I’m making assessments of things like that, I’ll do a stage of cultural mapping. That’s a huge part in the change. It’s understanding where people are. What do they understand about the organisation? From within but also without. Cultural mapping consists of conversations between people within the organisation, but it also consists of media sweeps. That was one of the big things coming into Ulster: doing a big media sweep and understanding what the perceptions of the organisation were at the time – because they weren’t good. People say ‘I don’t want to look at the outside, it doesn’t matter what they think’. You could pretend that the people within your organisation aren’t influenced by what people are saying on the outside, but that’s so naïve. They are influenced by external factors, they make a big impression. Our individual identities are built on not only what we think of ourselves but what other people project onto us. It’s just fact and how you deal with those things is really important.

“That’s why systems analysis and the functionality of the departments within the organisation, communication lines and the performance is important. You’ve got to look at the performance of the systems and what they’re actually putting out, in our case, on the pitch. And then, as I say, with the repurposing, you’ve got to look at organisational aims.”

In his case, is there an actual map? “In a sense it does look like a map,” says McFarland. “My cultural map consists of maybe three or four slides of feedback, mainly from players and sports staff who have answered certain questions. Things like ‘stop’, ‘start’, ‘keep going’; those kind of questions. How you want to be perceived, how you think you’re perceived. It takes quite a lot of time to get that data in and it was quite a lot of effort for people.” Casting his mind back to 2018, he recalls that people did, however, put in that effort, even before he’d started as Ulster Head Coach.

“I spend a lot of time analysing that and taking themes from those answers. You have to look at the language and break out the important parts or the thematic pieces that go across a number of people and then I build those into little maps. I have those on my PowerPoint sheet; you start to get clusters of themes. Some things bridge the gap between those and I’m looking for the kinds of things that are important to the people within the organisation; what they think they’re doing well now and what they really want to do.

“That’s the big thing: what do they want to do? What do they want to be like? That basically built our cultural values. Once I’d put that together I was able to feed that back to them and say, ‘look guys’. A lot of it is bridging gaps, now that I’m thinking about it.”

Fighting for every inch

The process of environment evaluation is continual and McFarland describes an important lodestone from his early days at the Kingspan Stadium. “The first thing that we did here three years ago was culturally to implement the idea of ‘fighting for every inch’. What did it look like? What is important? How are we going to train that? How are we going to measure that? If we could have that as a foundation, we knew we could look at lots of other things and try and work on those over a period of time. But that needed to be in place because I didn’t want to be worrying about that in a year and a half’s time. I didn’t want to be coming back to that and saying ‘we need to concentrate on this, concentrate on that’. Not in any big detail – we’re always looking at it – but we didn’t want it to be the main thing, we didn’t want to have to adjust that; it is what it is. That helps, that ability to have something within your structure that you can rely on so there are other areas you can look at.”

Over the past three years or so, McFarland and Ulster have also placed an emphasis on learning and growth, given the increasingly youthful profile of the playing group, as well as promotion the collective sense of belonging and togetherness.

The men’s Six Nations international rugby tournament, which takes place annually between February and March, often represents an ideal time to think about making the longer-term changes that complement the need to win today, as McFarland explains. “It’s about this time of the year, maybe later, that I’ll start to think about next year,” he says. “Where do we need to go? Where do we need to evolve? Where do we need to change? Then it will start with little conversations with the guys that are interested in that kind of thing. We’ll start putting together ideas of where we want to go next year. There’s quite a lot of planning and preparation that will go into that big shift and changes.”

McFarland also warns against being distracted by superfluous detail. “There is a lot of fluff around the edge of the feedback that we receive and it is just noise,” he says. “Once you’ve got your key things in place, your decision-making has to be based around bridging those gaps. It might be a gap in the competitive nature of training or the competitive nature of selection. If that was a cultural gap, you’ll need to focus on that. So you can’t focus around ideas such as lunch should be half an hour earlier – that’s just noise. Focus on the things that are really going to make a difference and find ways to mechanise them.”

The head coach as salesperson

“Once you’ve got your cultural map, you’ve got to be able to sell the changes you are bringing in,” says McFarland. “I’m certainly not the author of that change – the author is the process. That’s part of my job: selling the idea of the repurposing, or at least giving clarity around the purpose. Understanding the cultural things that they’ve brought to the surface and making them clear; and helping people to mechanise those things is very important. Often spotting the kinds of behaviours that are important to that change, that are going to bridge that gap, and then highlighting them. Those are all parts of selling it and mechanising it.”

He also has become more adept at creating thinking space and allowing people to do their jobs. “Growth is much richer if we’re all part of it and it’s a networking process. The interactions of people across departments, between coaches and players, between players and players, is much richer. I could stand in front of the room and say: ‘this is exactly what we’re going to do in this area, you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that’. That’s probably more efficient, but your growth over time is not as rich, you don’t get the benefits from guys who are on the ground and their information and their ability to adapt in the moment. There are times when you need to stand in front of people and say ‘this is what it’s about, guys. This is where we’re going, this is what we’re doing.’ But there’s also the necessity to create the space where people can grow into that. Potentially my job is to just pull all of that together and to give clarity so that we’re all on the same page.”

As the facilitator, McFarland also feels he must role model change. “Let’s say you want to create a learning environment,” he says. “You’ve got to model that. If that’s me, I’ve got to be seen to be willing to be wrong and adapt, I’ve also got to be seen to be doing things that are helping my own individual growth, I’ve got to be seen to be celebrating things where people are developing. Then once you’ve modelled those you’ve got to be able to mechanise those. There’s got to be room in the actual programme for doing that kind of stuff. It could be individual development programmes that are up and running and actually have things that you do, there’s got to be time in the schedule for development of certain things or skills, but there’s also got to be time in the programme for sports staff to be able to have personal development. Then finally, you’ve got to be able to measure that; you’ve got to be able to look at your programme and say ‘have we actually created development? Have we developed as a staff, as a group? Have we developed as players? Have we developed as individuals?’ Modelling, mechanising and measurement are pretty key to that.

Some of his colleagues and players naturally fall into the role of cultural architects. “Not everybody is interested in innovation, the idea, certainly on a cultural level, of really getting invested, but some people are. A lot of people are. They want to and they’re motivated to do that. That’s a huge thing. Finding the people within your organisation who are interested in that side of things. I’ve got a chunk of people here who are really interested in that kind of thing, developing us as a group and who we are. The organisation leans on them heavily; and the conversations that happen between myself and them and within themselves as a group are instrumental in what we do and how we grow ourselves. Ultimately, an organisation is effectively a group of people. There are buildings here but the buildings are pretty static, the thing that evolves is us as a group of people and the network of our brains and our thoughts.”