{"id":35652,"date":"2026-07-23T09:43:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=35652"},"modified":"2026-07-23T09:43:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:43:24","slug":"i-dont-see-my-job-as-leading-on-the-expertise","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-dont-see-my-job-as-leading-on-the-expertise\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Don\u2019t See my Job as Leading on the Expertise\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 23 Jul 2026 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u2018I Don\u2019t See my Job as Leading on the Expertise\u2019<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-dont-see-my-job-as-leading-on-the-expertise\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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Ian Costello, the GM of Munster Rugby, explains his approach to leading a rugby and performance team full of domain experts.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
Ian Costello, the General Manager of Munster Rugby, has loved being back on the grass this summer with the province\u2019s women\u2019s team.<\/h6>\n

\u201cMatt Brown, the Head Coach, enjoyed putting me through a rigorous interview process,\u201d he tells the Leaders Performance Institute with a smile.<\/p>\n

Costello\u2019s appointment to his current post in 2025 came after more than two decades working as a coach in various capacities, including academy coach, defence coach and head coach. \u201cThis is the least I\u2019ve been on the grass in the last 20 years,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love many elements of this role. I love the complexity and how challenging it is, how all the different parts of the performance system are interconnected. It\u2019s like having multiple plates spinning and making decisions on which plates to leave alone to keep spinning and which ones to take down and put under the microscope. Then deciding on any necessary interventions, putting the plate back on and keep it spinning.\u201d<\/p>\n

We would say that\u2019s easier said than done, but it actually sounds pretty hard. Costello agrees. \u201cThere\u2019s this quote: every time you say \u2018yes\u2019 to something, you\u2019re saying \u2018no\u2019 to something else. You\u2019ve just got to make sure you\u2019ve got the energy and the headspace to provide the appropriate level of support that your performance team need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, with Costello\u2019s help, we pose five questions that all leaders should be able to answer.<\/p>\n

1. Are you the lead expert or creating the conditions in which expertise flourishes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see my job as leading on the expertise,\u201d says Costello. \u201cI see it around leading on the system and trying to create the conditions where that expertise can flourish; where it\u2019s aligned, where it\u2019s connected, where it\u2019s integrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a collective, Munster are working towards what he calls their \u2018North Star\u2019 (the shared objective of producing winning performances). It\u2019s a phrase Costello enjoys using. \u201cMy role is to get the best people in the building, support and challenge appropriately, and create the best conditions for them and the team to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is not there to delve heavily into the coaching, sports science or medical decisions but to build and oversee a system that enables domain experts to succeed together. \u201cHow can we be greater than the sum of our interconnected parts?\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Do you keep the most important thing the most important thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That North Star is essential for Costello when ensuring that the domain experts on the team are all pulling in the same direction, even if they advocate for different courses of action.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is to ensure that we have a shared understanding on what our purpose is and what our direction of travel is,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve identified what\u2019s the most important elements for performance. We align our energy, our resources, our focus towards that and protect that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key questions are: \u201cDo we provide a clear direction on what it takes to win? And do we keep the most important things the most important?\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Have you built enough trust that people will challenge you and each other?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Costello must \u201cunderstand the demands and pressures of a person\u2019s role, understand their personality and character, how they cope and the support they need\u201d if he is to establish deep, meaningful connections and relationships with his colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to reach the point where you\u2019re comfortable having difficult conversations where tension is normal,\u201d he says. He refers to it as \u201ctask conflict, not relationship conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know it\u2019s all about what makes a team or individuals better, which gives you that necessary and healthy tension in a high-performance environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Costello wants to be \u201cvisible and connected\u201d to his team. He ensures he\u2019s \u201casking good questions and trying to demonstrate a real interest in their role and how it contributes to the team\u2019s performance.\u201d He likens it to providing a soundboard. \u201cThey have to bounce things off you or, depending on the area, maybe I\u2019ll provide some suggestions\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is, he says, \u201can iterative process that takes place over time and is based on developing relationships and trust\u201d. To be fully accountable to that process, Costello needs to be \u201cclose enough to understand the detail, the context and the situation, but far enough back to see the patterns and the trends\u201d so that he can \u201cunderstand the important signals versus if they\u2019re just noise\u201d.<\/p>\n

4. Do your decision-making processes reduce bias and improve judgement, or simply amplify the loudest voice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s opinion and input is valued and none of us are smarter than all of us,\u201d says Costello, who emphasises robust processes and strong frameworks when it comes to decision making.<\/p>\n

Yet a decision-making framework can only be as good as the information provided, which is why psychological safety is critical.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to build a culture or environment where people have the safety to speak up, offer their opinion, and it\u2019s genuinely welcomed,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

Again, everyone has to be \u201creally sure on what that North Star is so that if people have certain biases they\u2019re brought to the surface with really good conversations\u201d.<\/p>\n

That is not to say that there isn\u2019t a decision-making hierarchy. \u201cYou have to have real clarity over who owns a decision because if there\u2019s six or seven people involved, not everyone\u2019s input carries the same weight; it depends on what decision needs to be made and the risk-reward associated with that decision, which will depend on a range of factors.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Are your people connected, aligned and integrated?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Costello wants to avoid silos at all costs. \u201cMy role isn\u2019t around specific expertise. It\u2019s around how we connect, align and integrate that expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sees this idea reflected in the work of Richard Young, whose writing on performance systems has influenced his thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cRichard Young talks about robust and resilient systems,\u201d says Costello, taking up the theme, \u201cand a robust system is where all the parts are strong independently; and while that\u2019s good, if they\u2019re robust and<\/em> resilient, it means they\u2019re strong independently and their interconnectedness is strong too.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Munster, Costello emphasises the importance of integrated working practice. \u201cWe encourage individual departments to be excellent, but stress that the quality of integrated work between departments can potentially have the biggest impact on elements of team performance,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He highlights the club\u2019s cross-departmental collaborative projects, which bring together specialists around shared performance objectives. \u201cAn excellent example of this at Munster is how the medical team and the athletic performance team collaborated around changes to the systems around injury prevention. This had a significant impact on player availability for the season; a factor considered to have a strong correlation with success in high-performance sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Three Literacies of Repeat Medal-Winning Systems<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n