The Leadership Guide

PRACTICE

THE LEADERSHIP GUIDE

LEADERSHIP

SUCCESS

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PREMIER LEAGUE

VISION

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

IF YOUR ACTIONS INSPIRE OTHERS TO DREAM MORE, LEARN MORE, DO MORE AND BECOME MORE, YOU ARE A LEADER”

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

The League Managers Association, St. George’s Park, National Football Centre, Newborough Road, Needwood, Burton upon Trent, DE13 9PD

The views and opinions expressed by contributors are their own and not necessarily those of the League Managers Association, its members, officers or employees. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Editor Alice Hoey alicehoey1@gmail.com

Publisher Jim Souter jim.souter@lmasecure.com

www.leaguemanagers.com

WWELCOME

RICHARD BEVAN

Chief Executive, LMA

elcome to the LMA Leadership Guide.

In the LMA’s membership there is a thirst and passion for education and personal development and an understanding that this continuous learning is essential not only to win and succeed in management, but to survive long enough to do so.

The LMA is dedicated to supporting and assisting coaches and managers on that learning journey and, to that end, has made a significant investment in its education and personal development arm, LMA Learning. Our extensive programme of learning opportunities, masterclasses, resources and one-on-one programmes has been carefully designed around our 360-degree model of football management: you, your team, the game, the industry.

This guide focuses on one of the central tenets of successful management, great leadership, and the topics within it fall into the first two of these areas – you and the team.

Leadership is about guiding people – towards your vision, plan and desired behaviours, towards greater knowledge and broader, better skills, and towards improvement in performance, mental as well as physical. You can’t make people do what you want. Instead, great leaders exert an influence, authority and authenticity that make their teams want to follow them, learn from them and with them, and strive to make them proud of their effort and progress.

But these qualities can only exist in a leader who first understands his own vision, plan and ethos, who knows where he wants to go and how to get there. Great leaders need good mental resilience and enough perspective and vision to push through the tough times in order to support and motivate their teams forward, learning from their mistakes and setbacks at every step.

But where do these abilities come from? Some will argue that incredible leaders are born with an innate talent, and some may indeed have a natural skill. For most of us, though, it is the result of continuous watching and learning and from lots and lots of practice. We hope that this guide – which includes contributions from some of the foremost thinkers in the leadership field - proves to be an invaluable resource on your eventful and hopefully long learning journey.

CHANGE YOUR OPINIONS, KEEP TO YOUR PRINCIPLES, CHANGE YOUR LEAVES, KEEP INTACT YOUR ROOTS” VICTOR HUGO

PREPARING TO MANAGE

EAT DRINK SLEEP FOOTBALL

The best, longest-serving managers all agree that:

>> Football management is their whole life

>> Learning and preparing to do the job is essential

>> Learning while on the job is essential

>> You have to stay in the race long enough to learn and become an excellent manager

72% OF MANAGERS SAY THEY CONSIDER THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GAME TO BE OBSESSIVE

ALMOST

40% OF FIRST-TIME MANAGERS MAKE IT BEYOND THE 75-GAME MARK

50% OF FIRST-TIME MANAGERS ARE DISMISSED AND DO NOT GET ANOTHER FOOTBALL MANAGEMENT ROLE

FIRST AND LAST CHANCE

Words: Howard Wilkinson, LMA Chairman

Nobody embarks on a career as high-pressure and results-oriented as football management without a genuine desire to compete and a belief that they can come out on top. But, as the LMA’s leadership and management model emphasises, in order to win and succeed you first have to survive.

For fledgling managers in particular, the early days in the job are critical. Thanks to the impatience and short-termism of today’s club owners, boards and the media, many coaches and managers now lose their jobs soon after landing them and many first-time managers never get another chance, in any capacity in the game.

So what can you do to ensure that your opportunity leads to a long career rather than a swift exit? Many people will glibly offer, “It’s easy, just win”, but as we all know, trophy winning first-timers come along once in a blue moon. There is no simple solution, but as with most complex and difficult jobs, those who fail to prepare should be prepared to fail.

In this section we focus on the important questions you should ask as you prepare to embark on your management journey. What motivates you? Are you fully aware of and ready for the challenges ahead? Do you know your strengths and weaknesses? What are your expectations of the role and your potential in it?

You’ll also need a thirst for knowledge and a desire to watch and learn from the best. Gaining on-the-job experience is invaluable, not only in helping you determine whether management is right for you, but in gaining inspiration from those who have survived long enough to share their wisdom. Watch how others motivate, lead and structure their work – what errors might you avoid making? What methods could you replicate? How would you cope with the crises that arise and how different are your philosophy and approaches?

You’ll need to do some groundwork before even accepting a job - agreeing salary, vision, realistic objectives, expectations, reporting lines and budgets with your boss. Determine what and how much control you will have and decide whether you find these terms acceptable.

Do your research too about the club, its history and culture, drawing on the hard facts as well as the opinions and experience of your contacts. Who are the key personnel, on and off the field, and what will they be like to work with?

Football managers pay dearly for their mistakes, first-timers more so, but with a realistic outlook, thorough research, a plan and the strength to stick to it, you will have a fighting chance of a second chance.

PHILOSOPHY AND ETHOS

Reflect on the great managers, past and present, and it’s clear that there are many different paths to success. What links them all, though, is the clarity of their values and beliefs.

Words: Howard Wilkinson, LMA Chairman

Whatever your role, it is your strongly held values and beliefs that will be the bedrock of your behaviour, and will shape how you interact with others and perform. Great leaders know and understand this. If a club could guarantee one thing from an incoming manager it would be that he promises to improve its team’s performance, year on year.

This is the hallmark of a great manager. Such continual improvement requires an ongoing, positive and permanent change in how the players think and, therefore, how they perform. Culture changes behaviour and great leaders have the ability to shape culture.

When Sir Alex Ferguson started at Manchester United, he set about building a culture that grew to be so strong and powerful you could almost smell it when you walked into the training complex at Carrington. At the very heart of his leadership and management ethos was a belief in the need to set

and expect very high standards; it ran through all aspects of his personal and professional life and was reflected in everything that he did. Like all the great managers, Sir Alex was a living example to his players.

He also fiercely believed that the team was bigger than any one person in that team; in an attacking style that became synonymous with the club; and, above all, a never-ever-give-up attitude. All of these strong beliefs were exemplified by the team, in particular their characteristic knack of snatching last-minute victories from the jaws of defeat. Players knew what their manager believed in. They also knew that whatever team he decided to select, no excuse would be tolerated once the game was underway.

BRINGING VISION TO LIFE

A manager’s passion and vision and their ability to turn that vision into reality are critical when trying to successfully implement any necessary changes. This demands a very clear view of the future you want to see; you must know exactly what you want to put in place, why and how. Arsène Wenger sums up this aspect of management very clearly, saying, “You must always manage the players at your club as if you are going to be there for the rest of your life, yet at the same time know that you may be sacked tomorrow. If you do not think like this, how will you build a team, create team spirit and develop a culture?” Great managers recognise that without this ability to constantly keep one eye on the horizon they will always get bogged down and limited by what is happening day to day.

That is not to say that leadership does not concern itself with the here and now. Great leaders are fully aware that the need to deal with problems and make decisions day by day lies at the very core of the job. On an ongoing basis they will be asking themselves some very fundamental questions about their players, teams and upcoming games.

A manager has the right to expect that his players live the right way, keep themselves fit, treat the profession and each other with respect, and that they use every minute of training wisely. For his part, his responsibility is to provide a framework that gives them the best chance to improve, perform and succeed, individually and collectively. There is no right way to play or style that fits all clubs and all people. However, it is essential that each manager has a very clear picture of the team and players he wants to develop, while always being prepared to adapt this ideal to what is possible and to the needs of each game.

INSPIRATIONAL

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, says Richard Nugent. But how do you articulate your vision?

Research over the past 30 years has clearly illustrated that the most important characteristics that followers want from their leaders are honesty and authenticity. In other words, they want to know what their leader stands for and to see that their actions and words match up.

For a vision to be powerful it must be aspirational, but completely unrealistic visions don’t engage the masses. People should look at a vision and say ‘it would be amazing to get there, but I’m not sure how we are going to.’

Time frame is also important. There isn’t a set rule for one year, three years or 10 years. Instead it should be a period of time or schedule that makes sense to the people who will be bringing it to life. In football, five years is a popular time frame, yet very few managers last that long in one job. What is most important is that whatever time is stipulated in your vision it must be right for your team or organisation and must be backed up with a robust plan.

Your vision should be inspiring in its language. In the simplest terms, its words must energise and engage. Whether you create your vision on your own or with a small leadership team, ensure that you have a plan to engage people in it and help them to make sense of it in their own minds and contexts. The more people you are able to involve in its initial creation and shaping, the more people you will have engaged from the outset.

There again, the strength of your belief and vision is key, because in order for such game-by-game adjustments to be effective you have to win the buy-in of the players, as a group and individually. How well you can do that will depend largely on how firmly you stand by your own ideas and approaches, how passionate you are about your chosen direction and how well you have communicated all of this to your team. José Mourinho is a master of this art.

While people often talk about a manager’s brand of football, without success it is very difficult to build a brand, but it can be done by those who remain true to their values and beliefs and have the determination and resilience to keep going. You cannot win every game, but you can and must win the hearts and minds of all those people who impact on your ability to survive, win and succeed.

STRATEGY AND GOALS

Once you have answered the important questions around why you want to manage and what beliefs and values will be your bedrock, it’s time to start making plans.

Words: Richard Nugent, TwentyOne Leadership

Strategy tends to be used as a blanket term for all manner of plans and approaches, so it’s useful for leaders to understand what it really means.

A simple definition of a strategy is a goal and a plan to deliver that goal. A goal or vision alone is not a strategy, nor is a single-line plan.

A good strategy will start with a strategic objective that is clear, specific and measurable. While your vision can provide a starting point, it will normally need to be distilled into something more commercial or quantifiable before it becomes your strategic objective.

Once you have your ultimate goal, attention turns to planning, but many leaders make the mistake of taking a direct route from their objective to how to deliver it. This process misses out a number of vital steps. First, the overall strategic objective must be broken down into a number of sub-objectives. For example, if the strategic objective in a business is to increase profit by

10 per cent, then there will be a number of factors relating to areas like marketing, process, service and more. These areas will all have their own sub-objectives, which again should be measurable and specific.

In all but the most simple strategies there are likely to be at least three layers of objectives, the combination of which will deliver the objective above it. Only when these are all in place should you begin to create the individual actions to deliver each sub-objective. For many, this robust approach is daunting, but with the right framework to follow it saves time in the long run and makes achieving your overall goal much more likely.

5 KEY CONSIDERATIONS CAN HELP:

1. Where and what are you now?

Before you can plan, you need an accurate and honest understanding of your team’s current status, core strengths and weaknesses, the culture of the organisation and how it stacks up against the competition.

2. What’s important?

What is your vision for the organisation and when do you envisage achieving this? Do you, for example, want to make sweeping changes or are you satisfied that the fundamentals are sound and simply need to grow and mature? Is there a rich heritage you would like to bring to the fore and are there new processes and approaches that could revitalise the club?

3. How will you get there?

What will your team need to pull out of the bag to address the key issues? What problems need to be ironed out and how? What strengths can you build on and how will you help your team cope with the changes?

4. Who, what, when?

How will you allocate your resources (time, talent and money) to address the priority issues and achieve your objectives? Who on your staff will help you to champion the changes and communicate your vision? What new technologies and expertise can you afford to implement, and how else might you implement your plan on your budget?

5. Reflect and review

Once the ball is rolling towards achieving your vision, it will not and should not stop. Regularly review your strategy and the processes towards reaching it, assess your progress and refine things where necessary.

PERFORMANCE PLANNING

Jeremy Snape takes us from strategic to tactical

Our ability to control an outcome (top of the pyramid) is limited and focusing on it creates fear of failure and stress. As we move down the pyramid, however, we provide the detail of how we deliver the level above. As this scales down, we end up with key processes or winning behaviours. This is where our performers bring our plans to life.

BUSINESS

Maximise market share in 2015 £1m sales

Get 20% uplift on core product sales

Set targets for teams and individuals within salesforce and break it down for each individual

Define strategy to hit short-term target

Focus on listening to clients and selling key product benefits

PERFORMANCE GOAL QUARTERLY GOAL MONTHLY GOAL

SPORT

Promotion

75 points

Get 20 more goals from new strikers and 10 clean sheets

Break season into blocks of games. Link goals, etc to targets

Define the strategy to win each game

Daily training and lifestyle choices align to goals DREAM REQUIRED

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

Understanding your own personal style of leadership is important. But great leaders also have a keen understanding of their substance.

Words: Steve Radcliffe, Steve Radcliffe Associates

Over 20 years of coaching leaders across sport and business, I’ve seen a wide variety of effective leadership styles, from the loud to the quiet, the intellectually sharp to the vaguely intuitive, from people who are very strong on relationships to those who are obsessed with results. The list goes on.

Often, however, style of leadership and management matters far less than whether or not that leadership has substance and depth; whether it is firmly grounded in beliefs and values. People who are all style but no substance are usually quick to spot.

The best leaders bring both their style and substance to the role, but what does that mean in practice? Ultimately, at the heart of leadership there are always just three jobs to be done – first, have ideas about the future you want to create; second, engage others so that they want to come with you on your journey; and third, work together to deliver that future.

While the challenges, the level of urgency, the people involved and numerous other variables differ according to the situation, these three jobs are always the same. There are countless ways that people over-complicate leadership, but in reality it comes down to those three simple steps: be clear on where you are headed, bring people with you and make it happen.

The best leaders are flexible in bringing their own unique style of leadership as well as their substance – their passion, motivation and skill sets - to these three aspects of leading to make sure each one is accomplished.

COMMON LEADERSHIP STYLES

Leader-member exchange – involves a tendency to exchange favours with individuals in the team, to build trust and gain influence.

Laissez faire – a somewhat hands-off style, with minimum direction, this relies on the competence and motivation of the team.

Situational leadership – leaders tend to have a dominant style, but research has found we would be more effective if we adjusted our styles to the situation and people we’re dealing with.

Strategic leadership – practised by some military forces and large corporations, this style focuses on the need to out-fox the competition.

Facilitative leadership – uses indirect means of communicating instructions and directions to help the group reach a consensus, rather than being directive.

Servant-leadership – focuses on putting the needs of the followers first, with emphasis on positive values such as trust, honesty and fairness.

Coaching – a leadership style for those who are natural teachers. The focus is on improving the knowledge and skills of others.

Autocratic – the emphasis here is on control and how much control should be given to members of the team.

VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE

There is no one style of leadership that will fit all situations, nor one right or wrong way, says Dr Sue Bridgewater

That there are many effective ways to lead is apparent from a quick mental run through of those we have come across in our lives who we consider to be great leaders. Compare those in football management who have had lengthy and successful management careers and they vary greatly in personality type and management style.

There is also no consensus in leadership theory and best practice about what makes the perfect leader. Some contextual studies, for example, suggest that success in a football context may be less about the leader and more about other factors, such as the availability of resources, having good players and the governance structures of the club, while those that focus on the transformational or visionary style of leaders place emphasis on the ability of individual leaders to motivate and inspire a set of followers towards a shared vision.

Other strands of research into leadership suggest that the best leadership style depends on the situation in which the leadership is taking place. If, for example, the task is routine or even fairly monotonous, such as running a training or fitness session, contextual schools of leadership such as that of House, in his “path-goal” model suggest that being one of the team and joining in might work better. More directive or more challenging leadership styles may be more effective in leading in complex, uncertain or challenging situations.

SET THE COMPASS

Deciding on your desired future is much more about your substance than your style. As a leader, you must be alive with ideas of where you want to be in the future - what you want to create or see in place. However, a distinctive quality of the effective leader is that the future they want is strongly connected to what they care about, what matters to them, their values and beliefs. This is what gives a leader substance and depth and also strengthens their resilience.

When you are aiming to create a future that doesn’t yet exist, you will undoubtedly face setbacks, upsets and disappointments along the way. All of this will provide ample excuse to give up or, failing that, to lose motivation and demotivate those around you and to weaken your resolve. The strong leader does not give up, because they are connected to their substance - why they put themselves forward to lead - and this gives them the inner strength to persevere, to find solutions and to carry their teams through whatever crisis ensues.

It is for this reason that, when I first meet a budding leader, the interactions are all about his or her substance - what matters to them and why they want to lead – to ensure that they are equipped to set out on their leadership journey.

STAY REAL

You’re only leading if people are following, but fortunately bringing people with you can be achieved using a huge range of leadership styles. I’ve seen it done successfully with the help of uplifting inspiration, a stirring call to arms, emotional appeal, clear intellectual argument, quietly, loudly, with a touch on the shoulder and a look in the eye.

What is key is that whatever style you use must flow from your substance; it must be the real you. Authenticity is fundamental to effective communication and engagement and the brain has a built-in authenticity meter, which can detect false personality, pretense or insincerity. Your leadership style must be a natural part of you, so while it is valuable to take inspiration from others, don’t waste time figuring out how to lead like someone else. Spend time thinking about what you’re like at your engaging best and practise being that way.

DELIVER

Finally, you must harness both your substance and style to enable those around you to deliver on your strategy. This might mean stepping out of your comfort zone when making big requests or speaking about poor performance. At times, it will involve showing people just how vital it is to achieve your goal and that you are determined to make it happen. And on other occasions it will mean adapting your style from boss to teacher in order to develop those around you.

All of this calls for emotional strength, which comes from being in touch with your substance, your dearly held beliefs and values.

Effective leading is about bringing yourself to any situation in a way that mobilises others to create a different future together. This will require you to first be connected to your substance and second to develop whatever styles are needed to get the job done, but that are always natural to you.

SETTING YOUR BAR

In the fickle world of football, success and failure are rarely too far apart and trying to meet everyone else’s expectations is a losing game. So where should managers set the bar on their own success and what should they do when they fail?

Words: Jeremy Snape, Sporting Edge

Given that everyone has different criteria for what constitutes success, it’s inevitable that someone, somewhere will always be disappointed in your performance. If your team wins a game, but only by playing less badly than the opposition, are they and you still a success? The fans may think so, but as the manager it’s likely that you will be disappointed that the players failed to execute your game plan or perform as you know they can.

Conversely, if they failed yet played exactly as you asked, applying the previous week’s training to the letter, will you feel the weight of failure on your shoulders or walk back through the tunnel with pride?

And worse, what if you lose your job? Almost half of all managers will change jobs during a season, most of them having been sacked and often due to

unrealistic expectations rather than poor management. Would you be able to walk away with your head held high?

DEFINING SUCCESS

In the face of such different and often contrasting perspectives on your performance, the most important criteria for your success must be your own. There is such a craving and focus on outcomes in society today that we are all either winners or losers, successes or failures. We must, therefore, establish clear and focused criteria for our own success, with measures of achievement that are obtainable and within our control.

Success is a personal thing and means something different to each individual. To legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, it meant: “peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming”. This involves taking risks, preparing well, committing to your decisions, learning new skills, listening to others and reflecting on improvements as part of the process.

A sense of achievement also comes from doing things your own way. As a leader you have to be strong, trust your instincts and back yourself to find the way to win. We tend to regret the risks we didn’t take because we played it safe – not having the courage to commit to a strategy we knew to be right or failing to have that difficult conversation are all pivotal moments in our success.

Because high performance is so dynamic, if we don’t catch things early we pay the price down the line. Great managers therefore define their performance not just by the points table, but by the way they tackle the everyday issues that underpin their success.

HIGHS AND LOWS

For some people, of course, performance isn’t decided weekly in the space of 90 minutes. Some people are slow-burners when it comes to success, while others achieve great things early in their careers and only experience the pain of failure later on.

Talent needs trauma to realise its long-term potential, so while you might score some wins early on, real success is judged over the longer term. For that you need to develop resilience, which comes from experiencing setbacks. Most champions fail numerous times as they gravitate towards mastery.

CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS

We will all have different ideas of what constitutes a champagne moment and what is the base standard that we must meet at all costs. However, there are some parameters by which all managers can judge themselves a success:

Treat your colleagues and team members with respect and empathy

Remain true to your core principles and philosophy

Have confidence in your strategy and stick to the plan

Be bold and do things your own way. No regrets

Learn from every mistake. Reflect and review

Take every opportunity to listen, learn and improve. No experiences pass you by

Lead by example through your hard work ethic and dedication to your goals

Disappointment is a natural reaction when things don’t go to plan, but how you deal with it can have a huge impact on the performance of those around you and on their perspective of and respect for you as a manager. Good managers don’t dwell on the mistakes, but instead embrace the lessons. They build reflection time into their performance cycle of ‘prepare, do and review’ to ensure that, regardless of whether they win or lose, they are always learning and developing. However, it’s important that any analysis is evidencebased and rational. Failure brings high emotion and we need to insulate ourselves from being defensive and emotional if we are to take anything constructive from the experience.

Indeed, demonstrating a changeless core of ambition and determination is a key characteristic of successful people. Irish former jockey AP McCoy talks about the high ‘physical and emotional pain threshold’ that multiple champions need and this is an essential requirement for managers too. While even the most talented people can find the going tough, the best are relentless in their pursuit of success.

MOVING ON

Unfortunately, mastering our emotions and moving on quickly from disappointment doesn’t come easily to us all, especially when we are young and

inexperienced. In fact, our brains are built to remember harmful or dangerous events better than happy ones in order that we might avoid them recurring.

We are primed for survival and safety, not high performance, so when we win we feel relief and when we lose it’s often much more emotional. The key is to fight this imbalance by judging ourselves by our pace of learning and celebrating our success more. This takes mental toughness and resilience, which research has found to improve with age.

Great leaders are often more skilled at controlling the inner voice and images that play in their minds. We all have a store of experiences, good and bad, so we need to choose to play back the positive ones. Think of a golfer teeing off next to water – if he recalls the previous times he sank the ball, he is more likely to repeat the mistake. Staying connected to the evidence of our helpful past experiences is key to staying optimistic and confident about the challenges ahead.

We all fail, sometimes despite immaculate preparation and after following the perfect plan. It’s one thing to be beaten by better opposition, but it’s much worse to know you let yourself down. Our focus, then, should be on knowing our own best game and delivering it when we need it most.

LEADERSHIP AND LEARNING ARE INDISPENSABLE TO EACH OTHER”

JOHN F KENNEDY

GOING SOMEWHERE

1ST 60 DAYS

HOWARD WILKINSON’S SURVIVAL TIPS

CONTROL – Ensure you have the control you need over operations you deem essential.

PLAN – Have a clear and understandable vision of where you want to take the club and how you will do that. Ensure there is buy-in from above before you take the job.

THE DRESSING ROOM – Every decision you make, however small, must be tested against its impact on the players.

COMMUNICATION – As quickly as possible the players need to gain a clear picture of who you are, what you value and believe in and your road map for the future.

THEY’RE WATCHING YOU – Make the right impression, because without the respect and trust of the players you will achieve nothing.

QUICK WINS – Immediate results aren’t always possible, so focus on your priority list of what can be achieved quickly and easily.

STAFF – Think carefully before changing staff to ensure the change brings improvement. A friend may help you feel right, but will he be right?

THE HONEYMOON – You will get one, however short, so take advantage of it while it lasts. Prepare to work 24/7 in those early days if you need to.

RESILIENT PEOPLE:

Perform up to 85% more effectively

50% less likely to suffer

anxiety and depression Have 20% lower risk of heart attack Can live up to 15 years longer

STEPS TO STAYING POWER:

>> Relax for 10mins each day using deepbreathing, mindfulness or meditation

>> Make time for regular exercise

>> Know your health numbers

>> Eat nutritious food that’s low in saturates and trans-fatty acids

>> Balance your proteins and carbs for slow, sustained energy release

>> Drink 8-10 glasses of water each day and monitor your hydration

IMPROVE, FASTER

Words: Steve Radcliffe

In football, the speed at which you develop - learning from experience and mistakes and gaining inspiration and knowledge from everything and everyone around you - can make the difference between a long career and one that fizzles out prematurely. Developing skills and knowledge quickly requires hard graft and determination, but also certain other fundamental characteristics.

As a leader, you are guaranteed to meet roadblocks, setbacks and upsets along the way and success and survival will hinge partly on how quickly you can get back to business, re-energise and continue your journey of learning and development. Mental resilience, therefore, is a key characteristic of leaders who learn fast and last long.

How quickly you bounce back will also depend partly on the people around you and the strength of your relationships with them. Chosen carefully, your support team will have a full portfolio of skills, compensating for any gaps in your own, and between you you’ll have a solid foundation on which to build your plans. Your support network can also provide valuable feedback, in particular on how your behaviour is impacting on those around you.

Communication skills must be honed throughout your development journey and, especially in the early days, the impact felt is not always the same as the impact intended. Without seeking feedback on how effectively we are communicating and performing in other areas of the job, we may miss opportunities to learn and grow.

Great leaders also look to maximise the rate of their growth through practice. If you want to improve at any skill, you need some basic ideas up front, guidance and feedback along the way and lots of practice. Leadership is no different. The best leaders see every meeting or interaction as an opportunity to practise being the leaders they want to be.

In this section, we examine some of the main leadership challenges that you will encounter in the early phase of your management journey, and the skills you will need to master quickly in order to survive in the job. You will need to identify which relationships matter most, begin to communicate your messages and plans up and down the chain of command and start to implement the changes at the heart of them. And, importantly, you will need to grow a thick skin and prepare to deal with disappointment and crisis, because neither will wait until you are settled and ready before hitting you for six.

THE RESILIENT LEADER

The setbacks and disappointments come hard and fast in management, but great leaders are mentally tough enough to move forward.

Words: Dr Philip Hopley, LPP Consulting

Pressure, stress and knock-backs are constants in the lives of all leaders, but nowhere more so than in the English football leagues, where the average tenure of dismissed managers hovers worryingly at just over a year across the game.

A manager’s longevity will depend on many factors, but foremost among them is their ability to perform effectively under pressure – pressure from owners, shareholders, fans, mass media, social media, players and from within. How well a leader can bounce back from disappointment affects their performance and that of their team, and also their health and wellbeing.

Although we tend to use the words ‘pressure’ and ‘stress’ interchangeably, they are not the same thing. While all leaders are exposed to pressure, some deal with it better and experience lower levels of stress than others. In the language of performance psychology, they are equipped with better resilience skills.

THE PRESSURE TEST

Before we can become effective managers of others we need to fully understand how to manage ourselves. We need to optimise our ability to cope with pressure, both predictable and unpredictable.

Psychologists define resilience as the ability to think clearly under pressure, know what to focus on and keep your response in proportion to the level of threat. Resilience also means being smart about how you recover from stressful periods and ensure that recovery is built into your routines in a sustainable way.

However, as with most of the skills we employ day-to-day as managers, resilience is not something many people are born with. They are gained and developed over time. Professionals who react well under pressure, such as Special Forces personnel, emergency service teams and A&E medical specialists, have acquired their resilience skills through many hours of practice, learning what to focus on and how to react – often through trial and error under supervision.

When resilient individuals such as these encounter adversity, their immediate thoughts are along the lines of: “This is manageable”, “It will probably go away quickly if we manage things appropriately”, “It is just one more situation” and “I can do something positive about this”. They don’t tend to think, as some of us might: “Oh my goodness, what’s happening?”, “This will end in disaster” or “I’m out of my depth, so the best thing to do is walk away”.

Resilient people learn to analyse their beliefs and emotions about failure carefully, and avoid describing failure as permanent, pervasive or out of their control — interpretations that undermine mental resilience.

SPOT THE SIGNS

Low resilience leads to:

Excessive sarcasm

Loss of mental clarity

More prone to distractions and mistakes

Being edgy and irritable

Not able to relax and sleep

Feeling tired all the time

Struggling to motivate yourself and others

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

The following can make us less resilient:

Excessive weight

Raised blood pressure

Sleep deprivation

Regular timezone changes

Social isolation

Desk-bound lifestyles

Constant stress and anxiety

Stimulant and alcohol misuse

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

The good news is that these resilient thinking and behaviour skills can be readily taught and small sustained changes in our thinking and behaviour can lead to significant benefits in health and performance. We can start to develop our mental resilience by focusing on four areas: thinking, perception, attitude and behaviour.

The foundation of resilience is the ability to think about your thinking. While we have some automatic reactions, such as the startle response, blinking and breathing, the vast majority of things that we do as human beings are driven by our thoughts and, more specifically, our thinking styles. Everything we do is controlled by the brain.

Under pressure, we start to think about things that could go wrong, how bad we feel the situation is, or how we believe that it is someone else’s fault that we are in this situation.

We often fail to recognise that it is not the situation itself, but rather our thoughts and perceptions that are driving our stress or anxiety. Therefore, becoming more aware of our thinking and improving our ability to change this is the most important factor in developing better performance under pressure.

MIND TRAPS

It is also important to be aware that what we see, think and hear is not always as it really is, because our minds constantly filter and interpret the truth for us. Common ‘mind traps’ include all-or-nothing thinking, where focusing on

total success or total failure means we forget about all the important little victories and improvements along the way. Personalisation is another mind trap, where we take all the blame when it goes wrong, so only ever take in negative information. Another is catastrophising, where we always focus on the worstcase scenarios.

These patterns of thinking are not helpful, because they either prolong or exaggerate the threat facing us or prevent us from solving the problem.

To overcome a mind trap you first need to become aware of how it can wrongly trigger stress and then learn how to diffuse it. Challenge unhelpful thoughts by asking: what makes me believe that the thought is true? Is the thought helpful? What is the best case, worst case and probable outcome?

Change your current thinking by asking: is there another way of looking at the situation? What would I tell my best friend if he or she was in exactly the same situation? And what do I choose to do next?

What is key is that we recognise our ability to choose our response to a stressful situation, rather than simply letting it happen to us. That means

IMPROVING OUR THINKING

Cognitive behavioural science is one useful method of teaching people to develop mental resilience. The focus is on four areas:

Thinking – what is actually going on when we think?

Perception – how accurate is our appraisal of events under pressure?

Attitude – do we react automatically to stressful situations or can we control our responses?

Behaviour – what exactly are we doing before, during and after stressful events?

This basic model of thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behaviours helps us to identify the common thinking errors that are happening automatically and to adjust them in such a way that we can reduce the pressure we experience in real time.

Research shows that working on these areas with small groups (10-15) in a one-day training programme with follow-on one-to-one coaching sessions can lead to significant improvements in personal resilience.

choosing to think differently about the pressures we face in life and looking at which behaviours we should change in order to reduce stress and perform well consistently.

APPLYING THE SKILLS

Having developed personal resilience, we then need to look at how these skills can be sustained, how they apply to high-performing teams and how leadership approaches and communication styles can impact positively and negatively on those we manage.

A team will be directly affected by their leader’s resilience, as they will observe their response to tough situations. Are they measured and positive in the face of errors, mistakes and setbacks? Do they demonstrate the ostrich manoeuvre or ‘fight or flight’ approach or simply take a calm, balanced look in the mirror? Have they got the integrity, honesty and guts to take responsibility for their role in negative outcomes? And how do they communicate with those around them who have underperformed?

Leaders should use their unique position to act as stress buffers, not stress amplifiers, to those around them and to lead by example. Ultimately, we all have a choice about how resilient we become and therefore how effective a person and leader we can be.

THE BENEFITS

Improved mindset for dealing with periods of uncertainty

Improved physical and psychological wellbeing

Improved mental fitness and resilience

Better task focus

Problem-solving focus and ability to think clearly under pressure

Improved performance

Increased ability to sustain performance during periods of high demand

Reduced likelihood of suffering from anxiety and depression

More effective immune system

Better sleep

Lower risk of heart attack

INFLUENCING CHANGE

To realise a vision and bring about improvements, managers will invariably need to make changes, sometimes far-reaching and at other times more subtle. The extent to which these changes are embraced and successfully implemented, however, depends largely on the leader’s skills in influence and persuasion. Words: Steve Martin

Many people believe that effective persuaders are simply born that way, blessed with an enviable knack of knowing exactly what to say to capture attention, win over cynics, sway the undecided and motivate others into action. And to a certain extent this may be true – some people are more persuasive than others. But such perceptions fail to paint the whole picture. Successful influence and persuasion is not just an art, it is also a science.

THE TOOLS OF INFLUENCE

There’s nothing new about the need to inspire people to embrace change and influence their decisions, choices and behaviours. Traditional attempts to influence change have centred on a toolkit that tries to change minds, usually through a combination of education, training, rewards and penalties. But over

the last few years, research has uncovered a universal set of principles that managers can use to become more successful agents of change. This approach leverages motivations deeply rooted in the people whose behaviours you are seeking to change.

What’s remarkable about these motivations is that, because they are so deeply ingrained in every one of us, much of the hard work is already done for the managers who wish to use them. In much the same way that the flipping of a switch doesn’t itself light the stadium, but instead launches a force stored within a system that does, managers can trigger these human motivations simply by making small shifts in their approaches that align to these universal principles.

RECIPROCITY

People feel obligated to return the form of behaviour first done for them, so astute managers don’t ask who can help them achieve a particular change, they ask who they can help first. By providing this help in meaningful and significant ways they create a healthy store of obligation that can be harvested in the future. Intangible gifts and help such as advice, encouragement, an attentive ear and a supportive shoulder can all be very effective.

Instead of asking his congregation for the normal contribution, a Yorkshire vicar named Richard Steel passed a plate of 50 £10 notes amongst his astonished congregation, inviting them to help themselves. He explained that they were free to invest the money in any way they saw fit. Six months later, his congregation repaid his faith and over £10,000 in cash. When asking their teams to make or take on board changes, managers should consider how they can benefit from the powerful act of being the first to give.

AUTHORITY

When faced with too many options or uncertain choices, people often determine the best course of action by following the advice of an authority. Research suggests that the most effective messengers of advice have expertise, trustworthiness and some similarity with their audiences, so managers should ensure they have communicated their credentials and expertise before making recommendations and proposals.

In one study, physiotherapists were able to increase the likelihood that patients would continue their exercise regimes at home if they placed their

MICHAEL JOHNSON, FORMER CEO OF CASTROL

It is essential to articulate a clear and unambiguous case for change, and to do so by engaging with the whole team rather than just telling people what is going to happen. Messages should be simple and easy to communicate through to every level.

Important, and often missing from organisations’ change management programmes, is to provide a light at the end of the tunnel. People need a reason to go through all the pain that comes with change, whether that be better career prospects or the chance to perform at a higher level.

The process for change must be transparent and clearly set out, as when people understand what is going to happen and can see that it is being done fairly they are far more likely to stick with it to the end. That is essential, because when people start jumping ship it can seriously destabilise the process and the organisation.

Communication and engagement are key here and people respect leaders who are prepared to take feedback face-to-face, to listen and adjust. While you don’t have to chop and change your plans at everyone’s request, by uniting the people who are most affected by the changes it can provide useful insight into how things could be done better.

Change is inevitable, but it needs to be managed carefully. Don’t wait until the ship is sinking before you fix the hole, but don’t change for change’s sake either.

medical diplomas prominently on the walls of their consultation rooms - a sign that they were experts whose advice should be followed.

CONSISTENCY

People are generally motivated to live up to their commitments and selfascribed traits, so the influential manager will make sure any proposals, recommendations and change programmes align with people’s beliefs or previous commitments. In one study, hotel guests were found to be significantly more likely to reuse their towels and linens if they were asked at check-in to tick a box confirming that they were environmentally friendly guests. Interestingly,

not only did they reuse their towels more often, they also participated in other associated pro-social changes. This suggests that managers who identify the right initial small commitments might benefit from other useful behavioural changes that are consistent with the ones they encouraged.

SCARCITY

People have a tendency to want more of the things they can have less of and to be persuaded by the thought of avoiding a loss more than by a gain. As a result, messages and campaigns designed to change the actions of others can be enhanced by pointing out what those people who fail to embrace the changes stand to lose.

In one study, for example, researchers found that they could more than double the number of homeowners willing to make changes to their energy consumption activities by focusing on how much money they would continue to lose if they failed to change, compared with how much money they would save if they did.

LIKING

Put simply, people prefer to say yes to those they like and who they believe to be similar to themselves. Social psychologists have long demonstrated that the need to affiliate with others is so powerful that even the most seemingly trivial similarities can create meaningful social bonds. When seeking to influence change, a shrewd manager will be sure to highlight the similarities that team members share with their idols or those who have already reached their goals.

SOCIAL PROOF

Especially when uncertain, people tend to follow the behaviour of many others around them. For example, we choose the busy restaurant over the quieter one and join in the Mexican wave when we see others doing so. Social proof can be a hugely useful tool for managers who wish to generate change, because rather than having to rely on their own powers of persuasion they can harness the power of others. Any proposal or appeal for change that is accompanied by evidence of what many others are doing (or have done) should be particularly effective. Those social proof messages that also point to what many similar others are doing should be especially persuasive.

CHANGE CHECKLIST

Test it – where possible, it can help to try out any changes on a small scale before rolling them out in full

Communicate your rationale – people need to know why they should go through the pain of change

Create a sense of urgency – engage everyone in your plan by communicating what will happen if you fail to change and the success that could come if you do

Break it down – work toward smaller, bitesize chunks of your change plan, with rewards on achieving each step

Monitor the situation – check periodically how well the change is being received and if there is anything you could do differently. Ask for feedback

But it is also important for managers to recognise that drawing attention to the regrettable frequency of undesirable behaviours can have an opposite and unintended effect. For example, people who wouldn’t ordinarily drop litter are more likely to do so if they see someone else littering. Managers, therefore, should focus people’s attention on those behaviours that are frequent and desirable and use those as the basis of any change campaign.

COMPLEX CHALLENGES

As with most tools, of course, what is crucial is not just learning how each tool works, but recognising when to use them and when not to. Not every principle will be appropriate in every situation. It is also worth remembering that implementing change is rarely straightforward or simple. Often it will involve a range of interweaving issues and challenges, requiring the deployment of multiple strategies over time. It is here that applying these principles systematically as a set of tools can be especially useful in constructing and honing effective and successful approaches.

Successful teams are made up of a group of professionals, each with a set of individual attributes and skills that in combination produce a sum greater than the component parts. The same can be said of these universal principles of persuasion. As a result they deserve inclusion on the team sheet of any manager wishing to effectively, efficiency and successfully manage and realise change.

CLOSE, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE

Being respected as the boss while also remaining close and connected with your players can be difficult, especially after the transition from pitch to dugout. We look at how to be a part of, yet apart from, the team; how to be the boss without being a dictator; and be a friend without losing your edge.

Words: Dr Sue Bridgewater, Liverpool University

One of the key characteristics of any leader is the ability to see the big picture and make important, sometimes difficult, strategic decisions. Developing and sharing with others a vision and a direction of travel towards agreed goals is essential in leadership.

In order to do this, you need a complete overview of the situation, something corporate strategy theory has referred to as ‘helicopter vision’ - the ability to zoom in and out between managing detail and standing above or apart from the day to day in order to get the complete picture. The idiomatic expression ‘to be able to see the wood from the trees’ captures well the need to be able to pick out what is really important in complex situations.

But to achieve this big picture vision may mean you need to stand above operational issues and keep a distance from individuals within the team, so

as not to be unduly swayed in ways that affect your ability to make important decisions well.

HEAD OVER HEART

This distance might also be necessary in order to keep a level of emotional detachment; to weigh up what needs to happen for the good of the team without the influence of personal feelings. For example, a football manager might need to drop someone from the team and for a young leader who has only recently made the transition from player to manager this individual might be a friend or former team-mate. As a manager, there may be occasions when you need to be proactive in retaining more distance from the team or take a more hands-off approach.

Sometimes, this distance is created by the team itself. Examples can be seen when people go from playing and being part of the team to being caretaker football managers - fast-tracked into leadership roles in a matter of days. One caretaker football manager explained to me how he had, as team captain, been involved in organising a social get-together for the players. When he was suddenly made caretaker manager he was unsure whether he should continue with the arrangements until it was made clear to him by the players, many of whom were his friends, that as manager he could organise the event, but would not be expected to attend.

It is clear from this kind of poacher-turned-gamekeeper situation that the manager cannot entirely be ‘one of the lads’. The role of leader requires respect, and while it is possible to gain this from within a group - as in the case of a team captain or player-manager - there are still situations in which joining in may make it harder to be objective and be perceived as the leader rather than just another team member. Boundaries become blurred.

THE FINAL WORD

What makes it more difficult for a football manager to lead from within the group is the need to make hard decisions. These are often hire and fire situations, but also include tough decisions on who is and isn’t in the first team. While it is never pleasant to break bad news, it’s the leader’s job to make a whole series of difficult decisions for the good of the team. These will inevitably mean disappointment for some individuals.

DRAW THE LINE

Finding the right balance between friend and boss can take time and practice, but following some simple tips can help.

Do:

Find enough space to be objective, whether by creating distance from the group or by using frameworks and other strategic tools to gain a bigger-picture view.

Think in ink. Capturing thoughts on paper, evaluating pros and cons and reflecting on previous experiences can all be good ways of standing above or outside of tricky situations.

Find ways of maintaining relationships with team members sufficiently to understand what they are thinking about and what matters to them.

If you’re part of a distributed leadership team, make sure that you delegate enough and give some leadership roles to the rest of the top team. Don’t do everything yourself.

Create a shared vision and buy-in to this vision.

Offer constructive feedback on why you made a decision that might upset a team member.

Don’t:

Expect to remain a member of a team in the same way as when you were a player or part of the group.

Be swayed by friendships or previous relationships. Don’t make the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.

Forget to be a human being and treat members of the team with disrespect.

The challenge is to achieve the vision and objectivity you need to lead without becoming so detached from the team that it reduces your ability to motivate and inspire. Leadership is not all to do with the leader, it also involves the compliance of followers.

One way to achieve this balance is to divide up the leadership role between a leadership team, rather than having one individual attempting to be all things to all people. This distributed leadership model can be seen quite frequently in football, with the assistant manager and first-team coach more able to join in with the day-to-day social exchanges and be closer to the players than the manager. More frequently, the leadership role is now also divided between a sporting director and a head coach.

A second method would be for the leader to adopt different styles for different tasks or on different occasions. They might, for example, present a team talk, but then remain at a distance from the group; they might meet with individual team members in one-to-one meetings or build rapport with individuals by sometimes joining in with training sessions. One football manager likened the leadership side of football management to being a horse whisperer –having to judge when to put an arm around someone and when to give feedback on a disappointing performance. Having the emotional intelligence to connect with and inspire in a one-to-one situation, as well as to create a shared vision for the team, is essential to successful leadership.

There is no simple equation for effective leadership, but the challenge is clear. Leaders must create the space and distance to stand above the dayto-day noise, set visions and judge progress towards goals. They must also engage with the team, create buy-in to those visions and motivate the team, as individuals and collectively.

WHY IT MATTERS

Misjudging how to interact with those in your team can have serious consequences for their performance and your success and longevity as a manager.

Too close:

Can lose objectivity

Be overly swayed by friendships or other emotional ties into making decisions for the wrong reasons

Appear to show favouritism rather than making decisions on merit

Lose respect of the group

Too distant:

Can fail to understand what motivates individuals

Can fail to connect when trying to inspire and create buy-in

Can appear out of touch with day-to-day realities

Can be disconnected or appear too absent

Can leave a power vacuum, which others step into to be unofficial leader figures

DEALING WITH A CRISIS

Like it or not, crises will happen; it’s not a question of if, but when. During a crisis is not the time to learn the skills required for its resolution. It is when good managers are able to execute a prepared plan of action.

Words: Dominic Irvine, Epiphanies

There is no such thing as a risk-free situation and the complexity of modern business and the role of the modern manager mean it isn’t always easy to mitigate against every risk. While prevention is better than cure, things will still go wrong and handling a crisis is something of a rite of passage for those seeking to make their way up the career ladder.

So when does a problem become a crisis? It happens at the point when time is fast running out; when your decisions and the speed at which you make them will have serious consequences. The time for hypothesising is over; it’s time to act, or in some cases choose not to. But how?

SLOW DOWN

The first thing to do in the heat of the moment is slow things right down, fighting the natural urge to rush in. The human brain is capable of thinking at

a phenomenal rate, much faster than we can act, and when crisis hits it’s time to gather your thoughts and regain control. Despite what people may claim, we can’t focus on two things at once, the classic example being reading a text while listening to someone speak. You’re either reading the text or listening, but not both. What happens is you switch rapidly from one to the other, giving neither sufficient attention. When dealing with a crisis, stop doing whatever else you are doing and focus on the issue at hand.

A friend of mine is a consultant paediatrician who sometimes, when on call, has to rush to an emergency at the hospital. He says that for most of the journey he will travel as quickly as possible, but in the last mile he slows right down. That slowing down gives him the time before arrival to calm down and clear his mind ready for what might face him. When he walks onto the ward he exudes a composure and control that positively impacts those around him.

IT’S ABOUT CONTROL

No doubt you’ve found yourself at an airport or train station and your plane or train is delayed. No-one is telling you what’s going on - how long the delay will be and why it has occurred – so you remain uncertain as to whether to find alternative means of getting where you want to go or to stick with your original plan. As time goes by and information remains scarce your frustration levels begin to increase. In short, you no longer feel in control of what’s happening and it starts to get to you.

Keeping your team members informed allows them to stay in control, which can prevent a problem from spiralling out of control. By helping them to understand what’s happening and what you propose to do about it, you will not only provide reassurance, but also enable them to take good decisions about what to do. As long ago as 1936, social psychologist Sherif identified that people like to be certain that what they are doing is the right thing and appropriate for the circumstance.

We were asked to help one organisation after news was leaked of a largescale redundancy. There was an outcry, a lot of very unhappy people and a great deal of uncertainty. Our job was to run a series of workshops with employees to help them get through the difficult period while they waited for news on whether they would be affected. We couldn’t give them an answer as to whether their

PRESSURE PROOF

Jeremy Snape advises working on short and long-term coping strategies to avoid descending into panic and allowing the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response to take over.

It is important to avoid catastrophising, when thoughts around an event and the potential consequences spiral out of control, impacting on the speed and quality of our decision making. Pressure is based on our perception, and if we link thoughts of failure to something catastrophic then we are in trouble. However, in reality, we can’t separate our thinking from our physiology, as both impact each other in a constant feedback loop. The challenge is to stop the loop of threat-laden messages between our heads and our hearts. We must stop these negative thinking chains before they speed out of control, and replace them with a practical solution.

Staying in the moment in order to regain control is a key coping strategy. Try:

Asking ‘what’s important now?’

Adopting a cue that will help to jolt you back to the present when you lose focus. The All Blacks use a number of these, such as looking at the stadium roof, wiping their brows or kicking the ground.

Centring and focusing on the breathing. Try 20 seconds of shallow chest-based breathing followed by 20 seconds of slow rhythmic belly breathing and you will feel the difference. This sends signals to your brain to turn off the threat response.

Plan ahead:

It’s important to prepare for every eventuality and considering the various ‘what ifs’ can help us to feel calm and in control in the event of crisis rather than relying on a purely emotional reaction.

Consider and then focus on the things you can control and influence and don’t waste time, energy and emotions on the things you can’t.

jobs were safe, but we could help them deal with the potential consequences. In so doing, we helped them take control of the situation, which in turn helped them feel better and continue to perform at their best.

In the same way, it’s essential to put those around you in control – your colleagues, boss and board. If your superiors feel uncertain about what you are doing – and especially if they are likely to face scrutiny from others - they will place demands on you in order to feel more in control. By communicating what’s happening and what you plan to do about it, you will provide reassurance as well as showing you understand what their fears or concerns may be about the situation. They will then feel more in control and will be more likely to give you the space you need to manage the issues.

TALK YOURSELF INTO IT

I remember checking my bike into the security compound at an Ironman triathlon the day before the race. I looked down the line of queuing athletes and felt utterly intimidated. They all looked so fit and so fast. It was really hot and I was worried about my tyres exploding so I bent down and let some air out of the valves. A few seconds later, all the way down the line people were doing the same thing. It was clear they were just as anxious and intimidated as me.

In challenging situations it’s as if we have two voices. One on the left shoulder telling us we are going to fail at whatever it is we are doing and one on the right shoulder telling us we can do this, we are skilled, competent, capable and well prepared. Choose to listen to the voice on the right shoulder and we feel much more confident and capable - and it shows in our non-verbal language. Listen to the voice on our left and we feel less able to cope - and that too shows in our non-verbal language.

As people believe our body language much more than the words we use, how we come across is critical in instilling confidence in others. Athletes develop a mantra that they repeat over and over to themselves to help them get into the right state of mind. Consider developing your own mantra for when a crisis hits.

SIMULATE SUCCESS

There is an obsession these days with processes and procedures. However, in all the major incidents I have examined or experienced, I have yet to hear of a manager reaching to the shelves to check on process in a moment of intense crisis.

An airline pilot does not reach for the manual when the engine fails. They know what to do because their training kicks in. A doctor in A&E does not flick through a textbook when confronted with a patient in a critical state, he or she knows what to do because they have trained hard for it.

Management is one of the few disciplines where we do not help people practise how to deal with a crisis. We rely on a manager’s experience to somehow see them through. If you can imagine the types of crises your organisation might face and you don’t practise for them then you need to consider whether this is an acceptable risk or good management.

Finally remember that the higher up in the organisation you are, the more you are paid to think and the less you are paid to do, and vice versa. In a crisis, sometimes the best thing you can do as a leader is stand back and direct the efforts of others. In this way you can keep an overall perspective of what’s going on, adjust your plan accordingly and make optimum use of the skilled team you have built around you. You can’t get an overview if you’re elbow deep in the crisis.

Create a personal dream team, whether from people at the LMA or within your club or personal life, and draw on this support network as a key source of perspective, objectivity and energy.

CRISIS CHECKLIST

Slow down and take time to regain composure and clear your mind

Focus on the matter in hand – don’t try to multi-task

Over-ride the physiological fight or flight response – stay in the moment

Trust in your training and experience

Provide a sense of control to those around you. Keep everyone informed and empowered

Harness the skills and experience of the team you have built around you

Draw confidence and support from your personal and professional network

MOTIVATING YOUR TEAM

Great leaders don’t just fire their players up to perform on match day, they keep them hungry for improvement and results, day in, day out.

Words: Tom Castley, Xactly

It is the manager’s job to motivate the culturally diverse individuals within their team and keep them focused and working towards set goals. In football, the ongoing objective is to win, but there will also be more ambitious longer-term rewards in your sights. However, keeping people motivated towards those goals can be difficult, especially when the occasions that determine success or failure are sporadic, distant or even unlikely.

A football match can be a highly motivating experience, but a bad result may also send morale into freefall. And what about the crucial period between matches, when managers need their players to be grafting hard and to stay mentally focused on the task in hand? Leaders need to find more effective and continuous means of motivating their players, based on feedback and a personalised approach.

To motivate your players, goals need to be broken down into controllable processes and activities that they can act on each day. Smaller, more strategic objectives are likely to include metrics such as possession, goals scored and assists, with data on each individual player and the team as a whole. They can also be tracked over time using professional statistical analysis. Players today relish such detail on their performance and are motivated by seeing evidence of where they are, how far they have come and what they need to do to achieve the goals you have set them.

It’s also worth remembering that the current generation of players and employees are tech-savvy and so, once goals are communicated to the team by managers, they can follow progress via their tablets and phones – and can be accessed anytime and anywhere, in the gym, at pitch-side or behind a desk. However you choose to communicate performance, doing so on an individual basis as well as team basis, and making it clear to each individual the role that they played in positive outcomes, however small, is essential.

INDIVIDUAL NEEDS

There are subtle differences between successfully motivating teams and individuals. High-performing teams are characterised by an alignment of goals,

KISSING THE BADGE

Intrinsic motivators include factors such as learning, improvement, a sense of belonging, being understood, having autonomy and the ability to contribute to something bigger than ourselves, says Jeremy Snape. Here, it’s important to recognise how good it feels to improve – whether that means finally mastering a new skill or just making solid progress towards a goal. Often, we are so blinded by the need to achieve outcomes that we fail to notice the growth spurts and give praise and recognition for them. Building a strong sense of pride and belonging in your team can also be a key driver of performance. In sport and business, we’ve become more fixated with the name on the back of the shirt than the heritage and values of the badge on the front, but this is a lost opportunity. Storytelling about what makes your team unique is a practical way to illustrate your team’s identity.

THE HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Abraham Maslow created a five-stage model of motivating factors and said that one must satisfy each lower level need before progressing onto the higher-level needs. Once these have been satisfied, one may be able to reach the highest level - self-actualisation.

Self-actualisation needs

Esteem needs

Love and belongingness needs

Safety needs

Biological and physiological needs

Realising personal potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences

Achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, respect from others

Friendship, intimacy, affection and love - from work group, family, friends, romantic relationships

Protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear

Air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep

deep trust between team members, clear communications that allow for disagreements and an understanding that no individual team member is more important than the team. Blanket incentive schemes or rewards can therefore help to fire up the team ethic, because only by working together as a team unit can individuals benefit from team rewards.

However, these kinds of rewards can appear de-personalised unless supported by something on a more individual level. As well as being armed with the right data, managers therefore need to get to know each player individually before they can decide how to incentivise them. Invest in your players as people and show an interest in their lives. Listen to them and take time to understand and latch onto what they are passionate about and what their personal motivators are.

External motivators, such as financial reward, prizes and media attention, drive people’s effort and performance to different degrees and everyone has their own individual internal or intrinsic motivating factors. For example, younger or newer employees may seek peer-to-peer recognition and so relish public approval of their work.

The more experienced players may want something deeper - wider recognition by the club or new responsibilities – and may find a public show of recognition embarrassing and even patronising. Instead, consider involving them in your decision-making process or put them in charge of social or teambuilding activities.

Other people are motivated primarily by a need to improve on their own performance and to prove something to themselves or to their managers. For them, a one-to-one chat and a heart-felt pat on the back may have far greater impact than any kind of tangible reward. By breaking down what individuals want, you can develop a strategy from the bottom up that will help you achieve team goals.

FEEDBACK AND ADVICE

Even if the results suggest you are doing well, a great leader never rests on his laurels. Seeking 360-degree feedback from trusted friends, colleagues and mentors is essential if you are to improve and develop.

Words: Stephen Fletcher, The Leaders Club

It’s lonely at the top, isn’t it? People looking to you, at you and for you.

If everything is going well then it’s wonderful; you can almost taste it.

But if not, you are on your own. So, who do you turn to when times are tough?

Who do you ask for advice when you’re not sure of the right direction to go in and who will be your sounding board when you need encouragement and support for a decision you’ve already made?

As a leader, you need to show authority and determination and you may be reluctant to admit to weaknesses or uncertainty, especially when you are working hard to prove yourself worthy in a new role. However, it is essential that you also understand that you can make better decisions and be a better leader by drawing on the expertise and experience of others. The continuous learning journey that we are all on relies upon the strength of our support networks and our ability to use them.

MENTORING

Having a mentor can be an invaluable way to gain:

Perspective

Innovation

A new network of contacts

New skills and knowledge, often specific to your chosen career

Experience or insight into a working environment

Being a mentor can help:

Develop core leadership and management skills, such as communication and coaching

Plan how to bridge an individual’s skills or knowledge gap

Develop talented individuals from inside the organisation

Implement a succession plan

Raise awareness of different styles and perspectives

Despite this, we don’t always know where to turn or how to make the most of feedback and advice. Many of us will avoid turning to colleagues or superiors for answers, even if they are the best equipped to provide them, for fear of showing ignorance or inexperience. Instead, it is often friends and family who are the first port of call. But what do they actually know and how relevant is their experience?

LISTEN UP

It’s important to remember when looking for help on a problem or for an opinion on a solution that anyone can give advice; it won’t always be sensible, sincere or applicable in your situation and you don’t have to follow it. Strength of character is needed to seek advice and support, but also to decide whether to follow or ignore it.

Try to identify, and avoid confiding in, people who are ‘yes men’. Instead seek people whose opinion and integrity you know and trust and who are more likely to give you an honest and constructive answer.

Give yourself time to digest advice and figure out whether or not you agree and should act on it. While your initial reaction to an opinion might be to go on

the defensive or dismiss it out of hand, given time it may start to make more sense. Vice versa, any kind, supportive words need just as much time to bed in. It’s easy to get carried away with the great feeling when someone supports everything you’re doing, but is that helpful? Are they just telling you what you want to hear?

Get a second, third and fourth opinion if you can, and go to people who will come at the issue from different angles or who can bring contrasting experiences to the table. Actively look to find opposing sides of the argument and ask independent parties who will have a fresh take on things.

There is real value to be found in being part of a network such as The Leaders Club, as you can draw on people with a range of experiences and from diverse backgrounds. Some who have commanded rather than led; those who have experienced military discipline and even danger or been responsible for the training and development of 250,000 staff. A learning and development director and someone who has led a murder enquiry with the utmost tact and diplomacy. What about someone who helped make a political party

HOW TO GIVE ADVICE

Don’t delay - If you’re giving someone advice based on a specific event, strike while the iron is hot. Wait too long and your words may come too late to help in their decision-making process.

Be direct and specific - Any uncertainty or haziness will water down your message and, worse, could seed doubts in the recipient’s mind.

Back it up - Studies show that people are more likely to take a view on board if they understand the reasoning behind it. Let them see where you’re coming from, why you feel the way you do and what experience you have on the matter.

Be sensitive - Think about how and when you are going to give advice, especially if the recipient hasn’t asked for it or if the topic is likely to ruffle feathers. Avoid times when either of you is rushed, under pressure or feeling particularly vulnerable, as it will affect how they take your words.

electable after years in the wilderness or a senior clergyman who is trying to bring pastoral leadership in an increasingly secular society? Drawing on the expertise of this kind of wide spectrum of leaders means you get the full picture before you decide for yourself.

Great leaders never stop learning, and while they can do that via structured training and education there is an essential practical side that comes from sharing with other leaders our experiences, opportunities, challenges and issues. It is about the ability to ask ‘what did you do when? What would you do if? How did you react to? Can I ask your advice? And has this happened to you?

While feedback is essential, we need more than a pat on the back or a metaphorical punch in the face. We need to tap into wider experience –something completely different, but in the end often strangely similar.

SPEAK CLEARLY, IF YOU SPEAK AT ALL; CARVE EVERY WORD BEFORE YOU LET IT FALL”

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

DEALING WITH MAVERICKS: A GAME PLAN

1 Get to know a maverick in their own environment. They may be more vulnerable than you think

2 Keep them informed, as mavericks hate to be the last ones to find out

3 Give them responsibility. Mavericks often carry influence so better that it’s a positive one

4 There’s a time and a place for battles – early and in private

5 Be specific. Concrete evidence and analysis moves the discussion from opinion to fact

6 Empathise. Use their name and relate things to their personal goals and aspirations

7 Straight-talking works. If they’re clear about the boundaries and penalties, there’s no excuse

8 Use ‘I’ not ‘you’ in conflict situations, so ‘I saw the incident’ not ‘why did you?’

9 Illustrate how their behaviour can negatively impact on the team

10 Watch for the tipping point when they take more from the team than they give

BAD MANAGERS

...deter 20% from accepting a job

...make HALF leave their job

WHAT HAMPERS TEAMWORK?

In ‘Five Disfunctions of a Team’ Patrick Lencioni identified:

>> A focus on status, ego and personal success before team success

>> Avoidance of accountability

>> Lack of commitment

>> Fear of conflict

>> Absence of trust

Colin Powell

THE MESSENGER

Words: Alice Hoey, Editor

It goes without saying that as a leader you need to be a great communicator, but don’t underestimate just how important and how broad those communication skills need to be. There’s a lot more to great leadership than simply speaking clearly, articulating your messages and having an open-doors policy.

A wide range of interpersonal skills will prove fundamental to your success as a manager - in winning the buy-in and trust of your team, and in developing and improving them as individuals and as a group. But more than that, you’ll need to leverage these skills to engage and win support from those outside of the dressing room - from your management team, the media, investors and supporters. This buy-in can be as important to your survival as anything else you achieve in the job.

From the moment you arrive at the training ground after accepting a new position, the players, members of your support staff, those above you in the chain of command and the media and supporters will be scrutinising what you say, what you don’t say, how you say it and even what your body is saying for you.

You will need to become adept at empathising with people in order to build trusting relationships with shared goals and commitment, and to put players’ performance into context. You will need to understand how to deal with often very different personality types and ensure that no one person takes more from the team than they give.

How will you encourage individuality and creativity while keeping everyone in step, and how can you engender a strong team unit, one that is united by a vision and driven by shared objectives? How and why should you adapt your leadership style and approach accordingly and, importantly, prepare to deal with conflict on and off the training ground? In this section we look for answers to some of these questions.

TEAM LEADERSHIP

Great teams can deliver far more than the sum of their parts, but to reach their potential they need a great leader.

Words: Mark Procter, Learning Curve

As a manager, you will have to select, engage and nurture teams both on and off the pitch. Your support team in particular will include individuals with specialist skills and knowledge, but how will you get the most out of them as a group and ensure they provide you with the best possible support?

Before we can start to answer these questions, we need to understand what a team is and what characteristics successful teams display. To use one definition, a team is “a group of individuals who share, and are committed to, a common purpose and objectives to which they hold themselves mutually accountable”.

For a group of people to be a team they need a strong sense of commonality of purpose. In other words, everyone is working towards the same thing and everyone holds themselves accountable for achieving it. Their common purpose drives and guides team activity.

Performing teams also have a high level of interdependence. The work of each person needs to be interlinked with the work of others if objectives

are to be met. This means they need to collaborate, jointly problem solve and communicate regularly.

Bruce Tuckman’s ‘forming, storming, norming and performing’ model outlines the stages of development that teams pass through to achieve high performance, and provides a useful starting point to enable leaders to consider the interventions needed to reach that ‘performing’ stage as quickly as possible.

FROM FORMING TO PERFORMING

In the ‘forming’ stage, the team is highly dependent on the leader for guidance and direction. The leader must therefore be prepared to answer lots of questions about the team’s purpose and external relationships. Processes, meanwhile, are often ignored.

GOT YOUR BACK

The backroom staff of a football club is its engine room, without which structure, discipline and productivity would grind to a halt and culture would fall apart. But what qualities should you look for in your support staff? Trust features high among the qualities that managers and leaders seek – trust that they can do the job with discretion and that they have the qualifications, experience and proactive attitude to deliver their workload without constant supervision and management.

“I don’t look over the shoulders of my team or tell them what to do, because I know that in their respective fields they know more than me,” says MK Dons manager Karl Robinson. “Providing them with that autonomy also helps them to perform at their best.”

It is also essential that members of the backroom team share the same beliefs and ambitions for the club and are in synch with how they will achieve their long-term objectives. MK Dons goalkeeping coach Paul Heald says: “We all believe in the same philosophy and, while each of us works in our own area, we fit together like a jigsaw. The manager knows what we can do and lets us get on with it. The result is that, should a situation arise that needs his urgent attention, he can be confident that we will all continue to deliver.”

During the ‘storming’ stage, decisions don’t come easily within the group, as team members vie for position in an attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members and their leader. It is important to note that some storming is a healthy part of the team development process, as if a team never storms it may indicate a reluctance to challenge one other. When this happens they may even make poor decisions. Team members may fall in line with decisions they know are poor for fear of losing their place or status in the group, something known as ‘groupthink’. However, what is important is that the team is focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationships and emotional issues.

By the time the team has reached the ‘norming’ stage, roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted and big decisions are made by group agreement. Smaller decisions may be delegated to individuals or small teams within the group. Commitment and unity is strong and the team may engage in fun and social activities. The team also discusses and develops its processes and working style.

In the ‘performing’ stage the team has a shared vision and is able to stand on its own feet with reduced participation from the leader. There is a focus on over-achieving goals, and the team makes most of the decisions against criteria agreed with the leader. The team requires delegated tasks and projects from the leader, but doesn’t need to be instructed or assisted.

IN PRACTICE

Of course, teams don’t follow these stages quite as easily in real life. They may get stuck in one stage such as storming or, having made it to norming, they may slip back into storming with a change of manager or team member, or when faced with a new and challenging task.

The GRIP model (see overleaf) is another useful tool, as it describes four important aspects that teams should consider to help them fulfil their potential: goals, roles, interactions and processes. Asking some key questions can help to diagnose what needs to happen in each of these areas to keep the team moving towards peak performance.

Working with your team to ensure clarity in these four areas will increase your chances of creating a performing team that is well respected, successful and, most importantly, where people work well together.

The model can also be useful in getting a team to talk about how they work together rather than just discussing what they are working on. However, this conversation needs to result in some kind of action: a decision on what the team needs to stop doing or start doing and what it is doing well and should continue doing.

For example, a team may decide it needs to start nominating a facilitator (or chairperson) for each meeting and follow its agenda more closely. Team members might agree they need to stop interrupting each other and start listening more, and that they should all continue to contribute good ideas.

Taking time out to discuss how the team works together, not just what it is working on is very important if you want them to support you and one another and reach their performance potential. Also, encourage team members to feed back to each other constructively, openly and honestly, as this develops trust. Trust is the foundation of effective team-working, as without it teams cannot engage in healthy disagreement. Without healthy disagreement the team will not realise its potential synergies, where the collective knowledge and skills in the team become greater than the sum of the individual parts.

HOW TO DELEGATE

As a manager you will be expected to be a master of many skills and carry many responsibilities, but that does not mean you shoulder the burden alone. Delegation is not an admission of ignorance, weakness or inability to cope. You have built a team of highly skilled and experienced individuals, so use them.

Be direct and clear about what you need someone to do

Don’t insist they do it your way and your way alone, without good reason. There may be an alternative method and you may learn something

Don’t expect people to read your mind. If your workload and stress get too much, let people know so they can help

Give guidance and direction so that the other party can learn while helping you

Be gracious and say thank you. Always let the other person know the outcome of any project they have helped you on so they can see where their hard work went

GET A GRIP Goals

Team members need a common understanding of the team’s goals. Ask:

What is it we need to achieve as a team and as individuals?

How do our individual objectives help us to achieve the team goals?

What is the organisation’s vision and mission?

What are our deliverables?

How will we measure success? Roles

Performing teams support each other and there’s clarity about people’s roles. This helps them be flexible and responsive. Ask: What roles exist in the team, in team meetings and on the job?

How do we ensure the expectations of each role are clear?

Who is responsible for what?

Is there duplication or overlap?

How do we organise ourselves and work together to achieve our goals? Interactions

Teams also need healthy and constructive interactions, within and beyond the team. Ask:

How will we support and challenge each other?

How will we deal with conflict?

How will we work with other teams?

How will we ensure everyone feels involved and listened to?

How do we feed back to each other? Processes

Teams need confidence and clarity about processes and procedures. Ask: Which of our processes work well and which don’t?

To what extent are our processes aligned to our goal?

How do we structure our decision-making and problem-solving processes?

How do we monitor and review progress?

How often do we need to meet and for what purpose?

What ground rules would it be useful to have within the team?

MANAGING STRONG INDIVIDUALS

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to people management. In every team is a mix of personality types and dealing with each in the right way can be a challenge.

Words: Jeremy Snape, Sporting Edge

If we were all the same, life would be very boring, but it would make the job of leadership a whole lot easier. In reality, every individual has their quirks and a competitive climate of pressure, pace and expectation often accentuates character traits even more.

Some people are easier to manage than others and some traits are potentially disruptive to team dynamics and behaviour. If a manager lacks the experience or the tools to manage these people quickly and effectively it can drain their time and energy and put the brakes on progress.

Managers need to get to know each of their team members – both those on the pitch and in their back-room staff – as individuals if they are to be able to manage them appropriately. Regular one-to-one interviews are important, and psychometric profiling such as the Myers Briggs, Insights-Discovery and Saville’s Wave profiling tools can help to identify core personality traits.

It is also useful to familiarise yourself with some common character types (albeit exaggerated here) that you might encounter in your team, why they behave the way they do and how you can best manage them.

THE MOANER

These people are so incredibly negative and pessimistic that they will argue that their glass is too small to be half empty. They are mood-hoovers, capable of sucking the life out of the office or dressing room, often without even saying anything; their long faces and feet dragging is enough to leave everyone feeling morose.

Often, these people have been in the organisation for a long time and they have learnt to be helpless; maybe they tried something 10 years ago and it wasn’t worth the effort, so they haven’t bothered again since.

The moaner wants two things, attention and company and with their negative statements they are trying to provoke a debate with themself at the centre. When the moaner has company it’s dangerous; they don’t want to be singled out for being the only bearer of bad news, so the negativity spreads and gathers momentum.

Because moaners need someone to listen to them - there is catharsis in feeling understood – it is best to hold back from agreeing with or apologising to them, as this is oxygen to their fire. If you are over-defensive in your response it will strengthen their case and they will restate their criticism more passionately. Think twice before taking them on in public, as they may say something that is difficult to ignore.

Moaners also love to exaggerate, so stick to the facts and ask them to write down specifics to help distil their arguments. If they have a gripe with someone else in the team, ask if they have spoken to them about the issue –often they won’t have, as they love unresolved complaints.

Once you have received their issues in writing, make a time to find solutions cooperatively and be realistic about what you want to change (if anything). If you say you will change something, follow through, as moaners thrive off empty promises.

BESPOKE LEADERSHIP

Managing people is actually about managing individuals, and to be most effective this must be done according to what suits them rather than you. Empathise and listen – understanding the context to someone’s behaviour is important if you are to respond constructively. Identify motivating factors – some people are driven by material gain, some relish public praise, while others are motivated by seeing evidence of improvement in their own performance. How do they like praise? A big show of appreciation or reward is not for everyone. Some people feel uncomfortable when singled out, whether for good or bad reasons. How do they learn best? Do they need detailed data on everything, to see instructions in writing or in visual form? Do they absorb information better alone or in groups?

THE INTROVERTED TECHNICIAN

Some interesting, yet often frustrating, people have deep expertise, but may initially seem unenthused by new projects or progress. They are not excited by your dreams and vision and feel uncomfortable with change. They may have witnessed failure before and so crave evidence, structure and process. These people were born to ask questions, so let them help to solve problems and get involved in some of the detail that you don’t have the time or inclination to.

Half-baked plans won’t wash for this group, so you’ll need to provide them with a detailed roadmap of where you are taking them, ideally with distances detailed. If security is their driver, involve them in your thought processes and problem solving to help satisfy their desire for answers. One common mistake is to assume that as these people often don’t get the airtime of their more extrovert peers that we should encourage them to speak in meetings or in front of the group. In fact, they might hate such exposure, as they value the satisfaction of doing things right over public accolades. A pat on the back and a word of appreciation goes a long way with these loyal servants. Keep giving them problems to solve and they will feel more secure and valued.

MR TOO-NICE GUY

Some people think that everyone needs to get along and that for that to happen everyone should agree with everything everyone says. This sweet profile can soon turn sickly, as the last thing you need when your decisions are under scrutiny is an echo chamber where they are cascaded without challenge. These people know how to play the game; they are the indestructible black boxes in a team crisis, but are too nice to blame.

Guided by relationships, they speak as much about family as getting the job done. This is a great profile to have in a team, as they can really help to balance the edginess of some more driven types, but be careful that the world doesn’t turn a light shade of grey; you need team mates not mates.

Focus people like this on getting the job done, with clear objectives and accountabilities to keep things sharp. While they will want to please everyone, they must understand that you are the leader and you set the tone. Use data and evidence to provide objective feedback, and ensure debate never feels personal, but instead remains about people working well together to hit the standards required.

Ultimately though, avoiding the problems that come with having too many nice guys on the team comes down to careful recruitment. Think about your team. Do you have lots of people nodding at you or were you brave enough to recruit challenging people?

THE MAVERICK

Many leaders see the mavericks as their biggest challenge; they must constantly try to ensure a balance between what they give and what they take. Every team has at least one; they tend to be our game winners, as they have a gift, a confidence and an extra gear that the rest of us can’t match. The problem is they know this and it can cause as many catastrophes as it does celebrations. They are confident performers who often have a warped view of their own importance, so conversations can become animated and volatile as they attempt to mark their territories. Busy leaders have a choice here – to courageously nip these minor discretions in the bud or choose the safe path and see how things go. Your instinct may be to keep mavericks at arm’s length, but as major social architects you need to bring them close.

Ego often gets a bad press, but we need these characters in our teams

because when the pressure is on we look to them to guide us to safety. Shane Warne’s views on this are simple: “Make them feel special, make them feel important and they will give you their best. Force them to do the team thing all the time, to keep quiet, and they will rebel.”

Mavericks may be more vulnerable than you think, their noise may be there to distract from their insecurities, so get to know them and support them as much as you can. Giving them responsibility is a good strategy; give them a heads up on new ideas so they can road-test them with the group. When it gets a bit tense, hit the issues early and in private, because mavericks have an image to uphold. Make the feedback about their impact on the team and about how good they could be, rather than opening up old wounds.

While the maverick may be the most challenging character type to manmanage, the biggest test as a leader will be managing all types in one team, without resorting to a time-saving blanket approach. There is only so much a leader can do; the rest we have to leave to the team, so recruiting on values and character as much as talent is essential. Think carefully about the mix of people you will have in the group. How might they interact in a positive and negative way with their team mates? What new behaviours might develop and will the improvement in performance outweigh any negatives from the new team dynamic?

Leaders need resilient, diverse and agile teams so that they can deliver results under pressure and recover quickly when things go wrong. We don’t want to be pegging our emotions to the highs and lows of results, but to the winning process of doing the right things in the right way.

TRY

Creating smaller teams within the squad or business team

This increases accountability and strengthens internal trust

Creating diverse groups of personalities, ages, cultures and skill levels, as this can help to fast-track learning and problem solving Encouraging groups to look at given tasks, such as preparing training, social activities, reviewing the last month’s performance or inducting new team members. It challenges team members to work together and think wider than just their own roles

TEACH AND INFLUENCE

Leaders must understand how different people learn. They must be adept at passing on knowledge and teaching new skills and enabling others to engage with what they’re doing.

Words: John Neal, Ashridge Business School

How do you measure learning and development? It’s somewhat of a Holy Grail and in the world of sports coaching the measures are crude and cruel. If you win, then you have done your job, but lose and after a few more chances you may well find yourself looking for another job. The need to learn and change fast and to help those around you do so is critical.

LOOK FOR MOTIVATION

One fundamental role of the coach is to establish why each individual member of their team has chosen to embark on what will be a physically and mentally challenging journey of learning and development. This is important because without the right motivation few people will make the personal sacrifices and commitment necessary for a sustained period of learning.

Great coaches don’t just seek out those motivations once, they update their understanding of people’s motivations as time and experiences move on. The road to success can be a rough one, so we must constantly update not only the ‘why’ but also the ‘what’ by responding to the needs of each individual, the team and the competitive environment in which we work.

Depth of learning takes effort, and mastering a skill requires hard work and commitment. Great coaches therefore create an environment where everybody knows why they are learning and what it will do for them. That means providing context and meaning to what they teach, rather than teaching knowledge or skills in isolation. Explaining and demonstrating how it will be used and why is essential.

PROFILING

Sport psychologists can have an important role in helping coaches to better understand the individuals they are coaching. A typical profile might look at the athlete’s current competence framework as well as competences desired of them. A benchmarking process then takes place to identify the areas in which greater learning is required and a personal learning plan is created with and by the athlete.

The profile should also look at the athlete’s preferred learning style (see below). Some may hate to read, others will engage and learn well via play, and others will want to study and digest the minute details. Whichever is best for each athlete is the way the learning should be delivered if you want your messages to be digested and retained.

EXAMPLE LEARNING STYLES

Reasoning – using intellectual challenges and real-life problems

Sound – involves discussions in pairs or groups, presentations and story-telling

Vision – using images, diagrams and flowcharts, workbooks, DVDs and videos

Physicality – involves movement, changing positions and acting out different scenarios

FIVE TO TRY

1. Strength-based learning

One positive approach used by coaches is to focus on an individual’s strengths in an attempt to turn them into super-strengths. Research and practical experience has shown that by focusing on strengths in this way you can bolster self-esteem and accelerate speed and depth of learning.

2. Learning groups

It often works well to encourage people with similar needs to work or train together in small groups. The opportunity to talk or debate with their peers, facilitated by the performance coach, can also provide a welcome break from a busy and tiring day.

3. Fun and games

The value of making learning enjoyable shouldn’t be underestimated. Learning is often deeper when the objectives are subtle and when the athlete has opportunities to practise a skill without any external pressure.

4. Whole part whole

This simple mantra is used by some coaches, referring to the breaking down of a skill into its constituent parts. Each element is developed and then progressively built into the bigger whole and practised until they all hang together. The end result is that the whole skill becomes automatic and can be used under pressure.

5. Boost confidence

Lack of self-belief can be a major hurdle to learning, so help your team to overcome this by making it clear what progress they’ve made. Try recapping or testing regularly on information and skills they’ve learned to demonstrate just how far they’ve come and, ultimately, what they’re capable of.

LISTEN TO ME

Influencing others is not the same as teaching, but it requires many of the same skills.

Innovate together – Listen and adapt to the ideas of your colleagues or team, and then build new ideas together. Establish common ground and show authenticity by asking for others’ views.

Exchange favours – Benjamin Franklin said, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Research has backed up this idea, showing that when someone has asked you for a favour you’re more likely to view them favourably. If you do something nice for someone they are also more likely to want to reciprocate.

Be a parrot – Show that you’re listening and digesting what someone is saying by using reflective listening, where you paraphrase and repeat back to them.

Mirror them – We often copy the body language of the person we’re talking to, but it is a tactic that can be employed more strategically. Mimicry has been shown to be a form of flattery and to have positive effects on how favourably and receptively the other person responds.

Frame it – Try to frame your ideas in the right light by using positive words rather than those with a negative connotation. For example, ‘challenging’ rather than ‘difficult’ and ‘good value’ rather than ‘cheap’. Start small – Research shows that once someone has agreed to one request they are more likely to do so again in the future. Get people’s support on the small things first before moving on to larger issues. Use names – How you refer to someone can have an impact on how receptive they are to your ideas and influence. Try calling them by their name or by a term such as ‘friend’ if you want to get to know them better, or use their most senior title if you want them to feel empowered. Show passion – Anyone can regurgitate facts, figures or instructions, but great coaches do so with passion and emotion. Be confident, credible and authentic, using clear, fluid speech.

TURN UP THE HEAT

A skill that can’t be delivered under pressure is of no use whatsoever, so it is essential to apply some pressure during the learning process. Too much, however, and we may tighten up and fail to display vision. Too little and the result can be a lack of commitment and positive action.

Pressure is all about perceptions – we all perceive situations as threats or challenges. Indeed, our stress responses can reach varying degrees and be prompted by different stimuli. With that in mind, a coach needs to understand each learner well enough to know how much pressure to apply and when, in order to deepen and hard-wire the learning. This applies equally to physical and mental learning.

THE KOLB LEARNING CYCLE

Concrete Experience (doing / having an experience)

Active Experimentation (planning / trying out what you have learned)

Reflective Observation (reviewing / reflecting on the experience)

Abstract Conceptualisation (concluding / learning from the experience)

THE COACHING CONVERSATION

Veterans of performance management conversations can probably recount the good, the bad and the ugly. But while understanding the science of how to do this is one thing, delivering effectively in a conversation is another, says Jeremy Snape.

Our biggest challenge here is that everyone likes to improve, but no-one likes to be criticised. Walking this perilous tightrope calls for leaders to focus more on the strategic needs of the organisation than the personal chemistry in the room. With so much pressure to deliver results, it’s easy for managers in football or finance to fall into the age-old trap of looking for what is going wrong rather than focusing on what is going right. There are several tools you can use in your performance management conversations to ensure you are driving performance rather than squashing it.

1. Start by considering the mindset and life position of the person you are managing. Maybe they recently had their first baby or have the financial burden of a new house. These are people, not just performers, so consider the bigger picture as you plan your approach.

2. Pick your spot and time, for some it might be a casual coffee at an airport lounge, for others it may require the gravitas of the boardroom. Select the venue that works, even if it’s their lounge.

3. Before you start, think about your desired outcome. Do you want this person to feel under pressure for their place on the team? Do you want them to feel appreciated or inspired to do something new in the months ahead? Make sure that message doesn’t get diluted.

4. Use objective data so that it doesn’t feel like just your opinion; this is about delivering the team’s objectives, not personal opinion. Whether it’s possession data or market trends, have the stats to hand.

5. Always use positive language, eg ‘your tackling this month has been strong and if we work on this it could be even stronger’ or ‘your client conversion rate has been good, I think we should focus on taking your technical knowledge to the next level’.

HOW NOT TO DO IT

Order players what to do

Persistent shouting and bad language to get messages across

Follow the coach’s learning agenda rather than the players’

Boring repetitive drills

Complex drills unrelated to the game, but learnt on coaching programmes

No questions

No listening

No engagement for the players

No experimentation or exploration

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

According to the Kolb Learning Cycle (see previous page), we continuously move through a pattern of gaining concrete experience of something, reflecting on it, making conclusions and learning from them, and then actively experimenting with that new skill or knowledge. However, in sport there is a tendency to scrimp on the important reflective stage of the process, where we need to follow up and embed the adaptation and learning. Top athletes complete a learning and reflection log every few days and use a simple three-step process: What happened? What did I learn? How can I apply it?

The world of learning in sport has many transferable ideas for the world of business - but the former has only one metric - to win. Unfortunately, winning in the short term comes with some dangerous and destructive behaviours, which can crush learning and destroy any chance at sustainability.

As a coach you can help your team by showing a commitment to continuous learning and improvement, by being curious, asking questions and listening well. Then go away and construct your own system, one that works for you in your environment and with each of your learners. Importantly, you will need to be a passionate, skilled and engaging communicator to stimulate your players to learn from you and to ensure your messages make a lasting impact.

MANAGING UPWARDS

Establishing strong working relationships with your manager, chairman and other superiors in your organisation requires considerable time and effort, but it can pay dividends, especially in times of crisis.

Words: Dominic Irvine, Epiphanies

When things are going well, we tend not to think too much about how we deal with those above us on the organisational food chain. It’s when the going gets a bit sticky that being able to manage upwards becomes a critical skill. How successful your working relationships with your manager, chairman and members of the board are will have a major impact on how effectively you can, together, prevent crises and reduce their impact when they arise. The time and effort you have invested in those relationships over time also often determines the level of support you will receive in your role –financial, logistical and emotional, in good times and bad.

But relationships cannot be expected to just work, they require hard graft. Even if you and the other party appear on the surface to be two peas in a pod, there is an art to managing upwards.

GIVE IT TIME

It is thought that humans have a finite amount of social capital, so the more people in our networks the less the social capital invested in each person. The University of Oxford anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar famously identified that we can maintain a social network of about 150 people –despite the number of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ you may have.

It is worth considering the potential benefits of strong working relationships with your superiors when prioritising how and when to use your valuable time. Strong relationships are built on face-to-face communication whenever possible, even if that means a Skype call rather than a phone call. The occasional email or phone call is often not enough. Ultimately, the better you know your boss the better you will be able to tailor your messages to get the most value from your time together.

Take time also to become familiar with how they like to operate, what they expect from those around them, what delights or irritates them day to day, and even the processes and means of communications they rely on. When interacting with those around them do they respect assertive people with strong opinions or prefer a milder-mannered and considered approach? Do they tend to make quick decisions and do they stand by them or have a tendency to U-turn? Understanding how they work and what styles of communication and leadership tick their boxes can help you manage their expectations and find ways to align your style of management with theirs.

FEED THEIR NEED

We all need to feel in control and when we feel that we have lost control we tend to slow things down until we have regained it. You can help your chief executive or chairman feel in control by establishing what they need to know and when, and making sure you provide that information in the manner they expect. Different people have different needs for information, in particular the amount, frequency and level of detail, so don’t swamp them - give them what they need.

As the manager you should also be unafraid to have an opinion on what the information you are giving them means and what the implications and options are. Try to flag any issues up rather than waiting for them to be discovered and take a ‘no-surprises’ approach, which means they should never find out bad news from anyone but you. Doing these sorts of things begins to inspire trust and helps

PITCHING IDEAS

Getting buy-in to an idea requires a compelling and clear link with business performance and emotional intelligence.

If that plan calls into question previous decisions made by your boss it will need to be sensitively pitched so as not to undermine their credibility. Never be afraid to say ‘no’, but be cognizant of the way you do so and how others will perceive this. Think about how you can say ‘no’ while still protecting the reputation and credibility of your superior. Constructive use of evidence in support of your position is a given.

build respect. With that comes the space to manage. Without it, your boss will ramp up the attention on what you are doing until they feel back in control.

Managing upwards is also about challenging, because it is your job to make the organisation and your team more effective and improve their performance.

PHILOSOPHY AND BRAND

You don’t have to be best friends with your boss in order to be productive, in fact you don’t even have to like each other, although it certainly helps. More important is that he or she respects and values the contribution you make and if this isn’t the case you will need to find a way to earn it, or consider moving on.

It is also important that you share a similar philosophy and ethos when it comes to the organisation, and this should have been an important factor in your appointment. You can work on this connection by attempting to understand what makes them tick – why did they choose this business and this position? What is their motivation for success and what does success and failure mean to them? What makes them happy, miserable and stressed? See the world through their eyes so you can communicate and strategise to best meet their expectations and needs.

It’s important to remember that while you won’t always have the same boss, how you manage upwards today can positively or negatively affect your future career prospects. The grapevine will ensure that any future employer is aware of who you are and how you behave, so think carefully about the type of impact you wish to make and be congruent of and authentic in how you behave, in line with your personal brand. If you want a reputation for being difficult to manage, go

ahead and throw your toys out of the pram. If you want to be known for passion and enthusiasm then be passionate and enthusiastic. If you wish to be seen as a consummate professional then behave as one. Take a considered evidencebased perspective on decisions and think about the broader picture as well as the detail in your deliberations.

DEALING WITH CONFLICT

Psychologists believe that conflict in some form or another is an inevitable consequence of living in social groups, but if not dealt with effectively it can hinder teamwork and performance.

Words: Dr Phil Hopley, LPP Consulting

While humans are blessed with the ability to communicate, albeit with varying degrees of success, we are also adept at disagreement, which creates infinite opportunities for conflict. This is further compounded by our propensity to misunderstand one another. We have all reacted in anger or irritation to something only to regret it once we’ve had time to reflect on the situation and think things through.

Conflict in your team can take many forms - everything from a clash of personalities or difference of opinion to one individual’s lack of respect or mistreatment of another – and some of the signs are more obvious than others. Conflict can be very open and visible - a heated verbal exchange, an unpleasant email exchange with third-parties copied in; or a meeting where individuals hold unshakeable and opposing views.

It can also, however, pass under the radar; some people cope with conflict by hiding their feelings, for example, while a team on the receiving end of excessive pressure might react by cutting itself off from the rest of the organisation.

In whatever form, if left to escalate, conflict can have a negative impact on the health, motivation, productivity and performance of those involved – both directly and indirectly – and even in extreme cases can lead to legal battles and reputational damage.

Resolution means finding mutually acceptable ways of settling differences and seeking positive outcomes, and external mediation, whereby a third-party comes between the sparring parties, is an increasingly popular tool in the workplace. The challenge for the leader is to manage any conflict quickly and professionally so that it has a positive rather than a negative impact on the work environment and those performing in it. But how?

ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND

First, it’s important to accept that conflict is part of leadership and is not a sign that you are doing a bad job. In fact, conflict-free work environments may be just as unhealthy as those where friction causes regular sparks. Don’t waste energy ruminating about it, and don’t feel bad that you feel bad about it. Just accept it for what it is; conflict is part of life.

As situations involving conflict are often high pressure, leaders need to be able to stay calm and focused if they are to deal with them in a rational and constructive manner. When our fight or flight response kicks in we move away from thinking strategically and towards an emotional response, which is far more likely to escalate conflict than settle it. You will, therefore, need to develop your psychological resilience in order to think clearly in the face of threats or challenges, and avoid knee-jerk reactions, even when provoked.

Understanding that different people see things differently can also help to reduce your emotional response to conflict. When you try to understand a situation from a different perspective it loosens the tight grip you have on a particular point of view and enables you to see that it may not be entirely accurate.

We see this, for example, when siblings argue and a row turns into a fight. When mum and dad intervene and the kids tell their sides of the story they are usually quite different. When emotions run high, and blame and denial (and the occasional fib) are thrown about, it’s easy to see how things can escalate.

HOW DO YOU REACT?

While there is no one right way to respond, individuals who always react with one style tend to be more prone to conflict-related difficulties. There are three common response styles to conflict:

Fight – You react in a challenging way, such as shouting or losing your temper

Flight – You avoid or ignore what’s going on in the hope that it will go away

Freeze – You have a passive, indecisive or ambivalent response, as you are shocked into inaction or simply don’t know how to react

Conflict is unpleasant and some might argue that grown men or women should be capable of thrashing things out on their own. However, sticking your head in the sand won’t make difficult interpersonal workplace problems disappear; in fact, they will almost always get worse. What’s more, leaders who routinely avoid conflict risk losing the respect of their colleagues, employees and seniors, and so often don’t last long in their jobs.

THINK LONG TERM

When there is discord or disagreement between team members, don’t view it as just a short-term blip. It’s important to consider any long-term effects that the conflict might have on the team and its performance and identify whether the conflict itself might be symptomatic of a longer-term problem.

As a manager you should be working towards your business goals with a clear strategy, so when something gets in the way don’t just drive ahead regardless, think strategically. Think about where you are going and how this challenge might affect your short, medium and long-term goals? If you are dealing with an internal difference of opinion, think about what lies behind it. Does it signify a lack of shared vision or common goals? Can the people involved in the conflict see how it impacts on the direction and strategy of the club? There is, after all, no point winning the battle but losing the war.

Success depends on maintaining consistently high team performance, especially through tough times, so times of conflict require you to unify your team. This is achieved better through fair resolution than harsh internal dispute. Think high level, weigh up the pros and cons of the different approaches and look for win/win outcomes quickly.

RISE TO THE CHALLENGE

Accept conflict as part of the job

Don’t take it personally – you have not failed as a leader

Stay calm and focused – react with your head not your heart

Don’t ignore the situation, it will only get worse

Think and plan your approach – pick the right time and place

Consider the long-term implications – causes and effects

Keep recorded evidence

Use your resources for support and advice

Tackle the issue, not the person

Listen – people are at their angriest and most challenging when they feel they are not being heard

Be aware of your body language – keep eye contact and don’t cross your arms

Make it clear what you can and can’t do – agree a plan of action

A MEASURED RESPONSE

Dealing effectively with conflict requires care and planning. Pick your time and place to tackle issues and think carefully before you speak. Plan what you will say, how you will say it and where.

In order to manage and negotiate effectively you will also need to start from a sound position and be reasonable at all times. Under pressure or facing a challenge it is human nature to fight fire with fire, but in many cases this will only lead to an escalation of the situation. Mediation requires at least some movement on both sides, so it is unproductive to adopt a rigid position from the start. As a leader you must be able to see the bigger picture, rise above and stay in control. If you simply pull rank, you may succeed in temporarily moving things your way, but this is unlikely to be sustainable.

It’s important also to consider using any in-house experts you have at your disposal. Human resources or other qualified professionals will be able to draw on a wealth of relevant expertise, will be familiar with in-house policies and protocols and have access to external support when needed. While it may not always be necessary to bring them in formally, they can prove invaluable as a sounding board and a source of balanced advice.

There will, unfortunately, be occasions when the conflict is simply too serious and disputes cannot be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. In this instance, it is essential that you have accurate contemporaneous records. Consider including a third party in meetings to take notes and ensure that during performance appraisals you are well prepared with documentary evidence to support any areas of concern that you plan on discussing. In the event of disciplinary or dismissal processes it is essential that you have detailed documentation and HR support is in place to reduce the risk of costly legal consequences.

DR PHILIP HOPLEY

Dr Philip Hopley is Managing Director and Consultant Psychiatrist at LPP Consulting and specialises in stress, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and drug and alcohol problems. He also consults to organisations on people performance and psychological health issues.

THE ORGANISATION

LPP Consulting provides a broad range of clinical services for individuals and organisations struggling with psychological health problems. The breadth of its team of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors and dieticians means clients see the best experts for their needs. LPP is also a leading provider of individual and corporate resilience services, working with business leaders, managers, front-line staff and sportspeople to improve their performance under pressure and ability to cope with setbacks. By optimising health and enhancing performance LPP delivers measurable benefits in sales, productivity, engagement, retention and absenteeism.

CONTACT

+44 20 3219 3080

+44 20 3219 3088 (F) enquiries@lppconsulting.org www.lppconsulting.org

LPP CONSULTING ARE LEADERS IN PEOPLE PERFORMANCE.

Our team of psychologists deliver world class evidence-based services across business and sport making a meaningful difference to the people we work with.

We are the go to trusted experts for health, resilience and performance enhancement. No-one does it better.

RESILIENCE TRAINING

We teach people how to perform effectively under pressure and how to bounce back quickly from setbacks.

PERFORMANCE COACHING

Our coaching applies the latest advances in cognitive neuroscience to help our clients optimise their work performance.

ASSESSMENT SERVICES

Cutting-edge and reliable tools and reporting for use in selection, development, health monitoring or team building projects.

CONSULTANCY

Expert advice to management teams on all aspects of health risk, resilience, wellbeing and performance of their people.

CLINICAL SERVICES

Our team of psychiatrists and psychologists provide the highest, quality assessment and treatments, fast.

If you would like to discuss in more detail how you might enhance the performance, wellbeing and resilience of your team, please contact:

JEREMY SNAPE

Jeremy Snape MSc, Founder of Sporting Edge, is a former international cricketer with a Master’s degree in Sport Psychology and is a non-executive director at the LMA. His analytical thinking and ability to simplify complex performance challenges into practical solutions has fuelled his reputation as a thought leader for high performance.

Also a key figure at Sporting Edge is Director Michael Caulfield MSc. Michael is one of the UK’s leading sport psychologists and has worked in professional sport for over 25 years. Drawing on his work in the Barclays Premier League and other professional sporting codes, he knows what is needed for high performance. Michael’s wealth of knowledge, energy and enthusiasm delivers a powerful impact every time.

THE ORGANISATION

Sporting Edge is a high-performance coaching company that fast tracks success by sharing the secrets of the winning mindset. Its fresh approach to coaching is powered by a digital library of exclusive video interviews with the world’s top coaches and athletes. These insights are blended with practical tools from performance psychology to drive results.

Talent is not enough. Following decades of investment in fitness and analysis, the mental game is undoubtedly the next frontier. Without the mental attributes of confidence, motivation and resilience, those at elite level have little chance of achieving and sustaining success. Sporting Edge has the solution and can deliver: confidential 1:1 coach and athlete support; inspiring team talks; coach education programmes; and cultural identity projects.

CONTACT

++44 (0) 1858 414214 info@sportingedge.com sportingedge.com

Twitter: @thesportingedge

Facebook: thesportingedge

Bring the Winning Mindset to your Club

Sporting Edge shares the practical techniques used by the world’s most successful sporting champions and their coaches to make you and your team more confident, resilient and successful.

Enquire about our inspiring presentations and exclusive video content today.

Visit www.sportingedge.com

STEVE RADCLIFFE

Steve Radcliffe is one of Europe’s most successful leadership coaches and the head of Steve Radcliffe Associates, which designs and delivers organisation-wide leadership and culture change programmes.

Steve is best known for his Future – Engage – Deliver leadership model, which The Times described as “the no-nonsense approach shaking up the world of leadership”. Over the last 20-plus years, he and his team have taken this approach to hundreds of chief executives, directors and their teams, in organisations as diverse as Boots, Unilever, GKN, First Direct, NSPCC, The National Trust, the National College of School Leadership and over 20 government departments.

For the last four years, his book of the approach, ‘Leadership Plain and Simple’, has been the number one book of the 80,000-plus offered by Amazon in a search for ‘leadership’. It is also the most highly recommended business book on Amazon UK ever, with more than 180 five-star reviews.

Steve grew up in Wigan, studied at Oxford University, joined Procter and Gamble, and rose to become a CEO before leaving to pursue a career as a leadership coach. He is featured on the Thinkers 50 site of the world’s top business thinkers.

High-profile clients have included Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service; Unilever chairman Niall Fitzgerald; Richard Baker, CEO of Alliance Boots; and Dame Fiona Reynolds, head of The National Trust. He recently co-led the world’s first leadership programme for aspiring football managers at St. George’s Park.

CONTACT

steveradcliffe.com steve@steveradcliffe.com

JOHN NEAL

As Director of the Sports Business programme at Ashridge Business School, John Neal teaches a range of topics, including leadership, team dynamics, coaching, change and personal performance. He is a performance coach who works with the potential of mind, body and spirit. He is also an exercise physiologist and performance psychologist and works throughout the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia, US and Australia. He is currently working with a number of professional sports organisations.

Prior to joining the full-time faculty at Ashridge, John was Fitness Director to Middlesex County Cricket Club, Director of The Middlesex Academy and an advisor to the England and West Indies Cricket Boards, MCC, Somerset County Cricket Club and the International Cricket Council. He has worked with teams at three World Cups across two sports and both genders. John is also the wellbeing advisor to the Royal Household.

John’s background is in business and elite sport; over the past 15 years he has set up and run his own chain of health clubs, combining this business with consulting and teaching in the public and private sectors. He has worked with elite international sports teams as a consultant psychologist, responsible for organisational dynamics and the individual performance of players and coaches.

THE ORGANISATION

Ashridge is one of the world’s leading business schools, with a reputation for world-class executive education and management development. Its activities include open and custom executive education programmes, graduate programmes, organisation consulting, virtual learning and applied research. Established 55 years ago, it has contributed to the success of thousands of individuals, teams and organisations by helping them to develop their leadership capabilities. Major business school rankings consistently place Ashridge among the best in the world, and it is also numbered amongst the one per cent of business schools worldwide that are triple accredited, holding AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditations.

CONTACT

ashridge.org.uk

DR SUE BRIDGEWATER

Head of Sport Research at Liverpool University, Dr Sue Bridgewater has a BA(Hons) in German with French from Durham University and an MBA and PhD from Warwick University. Since 2001, while working for Warwick Business School, Sue has helped the LMA and PFA to design and deliver football management education. She now directs the Diploma in Football Management on behalf of the LMA and provides the organisation with football manager statistics and research.

Sue has also conducted research into sport and football for the PFA, FA, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Sport England and several football clubs. A regular media contributor, Sue has written academic and practitioner journal articles in the areas of leadership, international business, marketing and sports marketing. In 2010 she published the books ‘Football Management’ and ‘Football Brands’, both Palgrave, and previously co-authored ‘International Marketing Relationships’ and ‘Innovation in Marketing’.

Sue is a member of the LMA Leadership and Personal Wellbeing Advisory Board and is on UEFA’s Research Grants and Awards panel. Away from football, Sue has delivered training for blue chip clients, including Philips, Nestle, KPMG, IBM, Ford, HSBC, Deloitte and Diageo, and her early career was spent in marketing and new product development with Unilever.

CONTACT

sue.bridgewater@liverpool.ac.uk www.liv.ac.uk/management

RICHARD NUGENT

Richard Nugent founded TwentyOne Leadership with the purpose of helping individuals and organisations to realise their leadership potential. His approach combines the latest research in the fields of leadership, personal development and change with over 10 years of experience of working with demanding clients to create lasting change. He specialises in executive leadership development around this and coaching emerging talent. He is the author of the best-selling book ‘Secrets of Confident People’ and is a renowned keynote speaker.

THE ORGANISATION

At TwentyOne Leadership, we believe that leadership capability is the competitive advantage in business and sport. Everything we do is designed to help our clients tap into this source of competitive advantage. We blend the best in leadership psychology, brain-friendly learning, neuroscience and high-performing teams to create powerful, impacting and unique experiences for our clients. Our clients tell us that after working with us they feel more confident and empowered to lead.

CONTACT

richard@twentyoneleadership.com twentyoneleadership.com

DOMINIC IRVINE

Dominic Irvine founded Epiphanies at the end of 2001. With an enviable reputation as an international speaker and facilitator, his areas of particular interest are innovation and individual and team performance.

THE ORGANISATION

Epiphanies is a boutique consultancy that provides learning development programmes in the areas of leadership and performance for blue chip companies across the world. Our team brings together maverick thinkers, leaderships gurus, international speakers and facilitators with a wide range of multi-national and multi-cultural expertise.

The organisation examines how ordinary people can do extraordinary things – breaking through limitations and enabling individuals, teams and organisations to excel beyond what might be considered reasonable.

Above all, our mission is to provide moments of insight or ‘epiphanies’ in everything we do. Asking “why?” is the first step in finding the assumptions that constrain performance. This means challenging assumptions, separating myths from the facts. Often this is the key that unlocks high performance.

Occasionally a solution requires something different. Something unexpected, unique and innovative. Creativity is in our DNA. We begin with the end in mind, by starting with the business outcome you want to achieve, then help you realise opportunities and solve problems.

The organisation’s solutions are underpinned by academic research combined with hands-on experience of working in small and large organisations.

CONTACT

the.team@epiphaniesllp.com t +44(0)1943 430164 www.epiphaniesllp.com

STEVE MARTIN

A Royal Society nominated author and expert in the field of influence, persuasion and behaviour change sciences, Steve Martin is Director of Influence at Work. He is co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International bestseller ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’, which to date has sold over half a million copies and has been translated into 25 languages.

A regular media commentator, Steve’s work has appeared in industry, business and national press, including The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal as well as on TV and radio.

His Persuasion column in British Airway’s in-flight magazine, Business Life, is read by over two million people every month and he is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review. He is a guest lecturer on executive programmes at the London Business School, University College London and the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

His latest book ‘The Small Big’ was voted The Times non-fiction book of the year 2014 and both Time and Fortune magazine rated it in their must read new business books.

THE ORGANISATION

Influence at Work is unique. Unlike organisations that deliver many kinds of skills training, it focuses only on influence and persuasion. Influence at Work is headed by two of the world’s most recognised names in the science and practice of influence - Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin. Influence at Work works with organisations all over the world delivering individually designed training services and consultancy. its international best-selling books have sold almost three million copies, both have been rated as ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business’ by the Harvard Business Review, are taught on executive programmes in Business Schools around the world and have attracted the interest of world leaders, policy makers, senior executives and business professionals.

CONTACT

www.influenceatwork.co.uk

steve@influenceatwork.co.uk

STEPHEN FLETCHER

Stephen Fletcher founded The Leaders Club in 2009. With a background in training and development going back to the early 1980s, he had seen on several occasions how, when finances are tough, the first casualty is the leadership and development budget.

Stephen developed from scratch Royal Insurance’s first IT training division, successfully taking this from start-up to a commercially successful venture. On its sale in 1991 he became founder MD of Interskill. In 1996 he started his own business, Broadskill, overseeing a successful sale to Bray Leino in 2008.

The huge challenges brought about by the banking crash and subsequent recession highlighted the lack of focus on leadership and development. It was out of this that he developed a new division centred around a database providing vital data to the NHS. BroadCare has now become virtually de facto across CCGs in NHS England. Simultaneously, he saw the opportunity to bring great minds together through the formation of The Leaders Club.

THE ORGANISATION

Now in its seventh year, TLC has an extraordinarily eclectic membership drawn, by invitation only, from businesses large and small, private and public, and embracing the military, the services, faiths, arts and third sector. Club members meet monthly under the Chatham House rule to allow freedom of speech and discussion.

CONTACT www.theleadersclub.org stephen.fletcher@theleadersclub.org

MARK PROCTER

Mark joined Learning Curve following a successful career in the IT and Telecommunications sectors and an MBA. For the last 15 years he has worked and consulted with managers from a wide range of organisations in the private, public and international sectors, improving their effectiveness and developing the leadership skills of their people.

Mark’s favourite questions are “Where are you going?” and “Why should anyone be led by you?” In finding the answer to these questions he helps organisations and their leaders to develop their business strategies and explore how they engage, empower and influence.

Mark is an Educator for Duke Corporate Education and an Associate at Warwick Business School where he has taught widely on Open (MBA & Diploma) and Executive Education programmes in the UK and internationally.

Mark has taught sessions on influencing skills, negotiation and leadership for football managers on the LMA and PFA Diploma in Football Management, which he has been involved with since 2002.

THE ORGANISATION

Learning Curve helps organisations address their business issues and achieve their goals by growing the capability of their people. Our client focused approach, along with many years’ experience in the design and delivery of training and development solutions will ensure you receive a high-quality solution specifically tailored to your needs. Learning Curve is a team of five managing partners, of which Mark is one, supported by a network of well-established associate consultants. We combine professionalism, energy and humour to all our client and delegate interactions.

TOM CASTLEY

Tom is a senior sales and marketing executive with a consistent multi-year track record of starting, growing and improving the profitability, performance and value of companies. He is adept at employing, motivating and leading complex cross-functional teams to obtain optimal revenue and profit results, and excels at building sales and marketing strategies that enable account executives to create relationships at board level. He is a charismatic leader and team builder with strong general management skills.

THE ORGANISATION

Xactly Corp is the market leader in on-demand sales performance management. The company’s SPM Suite of products, enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit and optimise sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository, and enable companies to leverage this business data, which is the lifeblood of sales performance management.

Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimise sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance, and maximise profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations and sales professionals across a variety of industries, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises.

CONTACT

xactlycorp.com

I

DON’T MEASURE A MAN’S SUCCESS BY HOW HIGH HE CLIMBS, BUT HOW HIGH HE BOUNCES WHEN HE

HITS THE BOTTOM”

GEORGE PATTON

INSIGHT

KNOWLEDGE LEADERSHIP