Leadership Theory in Practice

LEADERSHIP THEORY IN PRACTICE

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PREMIER LEAGUE

THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO DO THINGS AND MANY WAYS TO SUCCEED. IF THERE WAS A SINGLE WINNING FORMULA, EVERYONE WOULD USE IT.” MICHAEL LAUDRUP

Leadership Theory, in Practice

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

Editor Alice Hoey alicehoey1@gmail.com

www.leaguemanagers.com

Publisher Jim Souter Jim.Souter@leaguemanagers.com

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.

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Editorial Contributors from the LMA Wayne Allison, Mark Farthing, Sue McKellar, Gabriella Ward

Art Editor Ian Cherry Ian.Cherry@leaguemanagers.com

CONTENTS 06

WELCOME

08

LEADERSHIP THEORY FUNCTIONS

10 16

DEFINING LEADERSHIP FUNDAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING

26

FROM PAPER TO PERFORMANCE

28 36 42 48

STRATEGY HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURES COMMUNICATING WITH THE TEAM LEADING MULTICULTURAL TEAMS

54

TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS

56 62 70 74 80 86 92 98

EMBRACING CHANGE MOTIVATION - FROM THE INSIDE OUT EMPATHETIC LEADERSHIP SOCIAL BOUNDARIES PERSUASION AND INFLUENCE BUILDING AND MAINTAINING TRUST ONE-TO-ONE CONVERSATIONS FEEDBACK

104

THE CONTRIBUTORS

5

Leadership Theory, in Practice

INTRODUCTION

RICHARD BEVAN LMA Chief Executive

6

Introduction

W

elcome to the latest in the LMA’s series of Personal Development Guides and our second guide focusing on leadership.

Our Personal Development Guides are designed to provide vocationally relevant insight based on the key pillars of the LMA Personal Development Model, including Health and Wellbeing, Career Development and Leadership. The guides are an important resource of the LMA Institute of Leadership and High Performance, which exists to support the development of managers and coaches in professional football, throughout their careers.

This guide explores various theories, techniques and tools, specifically in relation to leadership. It covers areas such as culture, communication, inclusion, influence and decision making, with the objective of providing insights that will equip managers and leaders to develop their teams, enhance collective performance and cope with the challenges inherent in modern leadership.

We hope that this guide, which includes contributions from the LMA team of experts from football, elite sport, education and other leadership disciplines, proves to be an invaluable resource as you navigate your leadership journey.

We would like to thank our editor, Alice Hoey, for her continued commitment to the LMA’s publications, and our excellent contributors Dr. Wayne Allison, Prof.

Sue Bridgewater, Dr. Andy Cale, Simon Drane, Tim Foster MBE, Steve Johnson, Steve Martin, Jeremy Snape and Dr. Brian Marien.

We would also like to thank our Institute partners, most notably the Premier League, whose support allows us to continue to develop our member services.

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX YOU NEED INSTINCT AS A XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX MANAGER, BUT YOU NEED XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX EXPERIENCE TO BACK UP XXXXXXXXXXX” THE INSTINCT.” NAME FABIOHERE CAPELLO

LEADERSHIP CHAPTER THEORY HEADLINE FUNCTIONS 10 00 00 16 00 00 00

DEFINING LEADERSHIP XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX FUNDAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Leadership Theory Functions

DEFINING LEADERSHIP Leadership is so multi-faceted that, while we can recognise certain elements of it, no single definition completely and adequately sums it up.

Words: Tim Foster MBE

W

e each have our own ideas around what leadership is, and the experts have over many years failed to come up with a definitive definition.

More important, though, than searching for such a definition is to be able to recognise effective leadership when we see it, and to understand how we can become effective leaders ourselves.

While they may have failed to agree on what leadership is, the experts have succeeded in coming up with a wealth of theories and models to help us lead more effectively. These fall into three schools of thought: personal, contextual and behavioural. While these theories have their limitations, their principles can help us to understand what effective leadership really is.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

PERSONAL Theories around personal characteristics centre on the notion that there are some innate traits and skills that predispose us to be leaders. These are often described within the ‘big 5’ personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability, but in terms of leadership may also include emotional intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability.

While these personal characteristics are easy to measure, the theory itself is somewhat outdated and limited in scope. There’s evidence that when someone possesses these traits they are more likely to be perceived by others as a leader, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be an effective one.

CONTEXTUAL Contextual leadership theory says that leadership is defined by what leaders do rather than who they are. Leaders adapt their style according to the context, the situational stress, their own ability, and the competence and commitment of those following them. Leaders also choose between task behaviours (get the job done, directive) and relationship behaviours (personal, supportive) in order to lead.

These theories are practical and easy to conceptualise, but difficult to measure. It’s worth noting also that such theories tend to imply that effective leadership is high task and high relationship, which is not always possible or true.

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Leadership Theory Functions

BEHAVIOURAL Behavioural leadership theory states that leadership is a relationship between the leader and his or her followers. The leader adapts their behaviour according to the followers’ needs and motives, and in order to empower and inspire them.

This school of thought is the basis of a number of popular leadership approaches, including Transformational, Servant, Authentic and Sacrificial Leadership. Behavioural leadership theory is intuitive, but one criticism is that it is so broad in concept that it is difficult to define, measure and determine what leadership is.

13

Leadership Theory, in Practice

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? To understand what leadership is we also need to know what it is not. A common mistake is to confuse leadership and management. While the two disciplines have elements in common, they require different skillsets, as shown on the right. Both leadership and management are essential for a team to succeed. Neither is more important than the other.

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Leadership Theory Functions

MANAGEMENT

V

LEADERSHIP

The process of planning,

An interactive relationship where

decision making, organising

somebody influences another to

and being in control of things

achieve a common goal

to achieve a common goal People Goals Influence Success Order

v

Change

Stability

v

Creativity

Oversee

v

Inspire

Accomplishment

v

Achievement

Consistency

v

Movement

Planning

v

Establishing direction

Organising

v

Aligning

Allocating

v

Communicating

Assigning

v

Team building

Achieving

v

Motivating

Incentivising

v

Empowering

Solving

v

Inspiring

Formal position, assigned

Formal or informal position,

power

assigned or emergent power

Scope of management defined

Scope of leadership can extend

within a group or team

beyond a defined group or team

Get the job done Managers are people who do things right

Do what we should do Leaders are people who do the right thing

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Leadership Theory Functions

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP Ultimately, effective leadership results from a combination of the leader’s personal characteristics, the context they are working in, and the followers whom they are leading (which then determines their behaviour).

Words: Tim Foster MBE

T

o be most effective, you need to understand yourself, your situation and your followers. Overleaf are some of the elements that constitute effective leadership, and which can help us to achieve it. However, it is important to remember that none of these can be taken in isolation. Each factor is linked to the other. Therefore, an effective leader needs to be aware and take account of their natural preferences and personality factors, the situation that they are working in, and the behaviour that will inspire their followers in order to achieve their common goal.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

UNDERSTAND YOURSELF Fundamental to effective leadership is first understanding who you are and what your natural or preferred state is. Where are the strengths and weaknesses in your leadership make-up?

It is important to understand your personality and how you are perceived as a leader. Keep in mind that leadership is not always assigned by positions of authority; it emerges and is available to anyone. Identify what your leadership strengths might be, through psychometric profiling or personality tests, or simply by asking people’s opinions (questionnaire 1, on page 22, may help here).

Identify an area of your personality where you are less strong and consciously ‘turn up the volume’ on that. After all, it is not what you are or how you feel that matters most, it is how you are viewed by others. Don’t try to change too many aspects of your performance at once, nor to go from zero to 11; it’s important to remain true to yourself and small changes can have a big impact.

UNDERSTAND YOUR FOLLOWERS Work at identifying what form of leadership behaviour will best inspire and empower those following you. That means also being cognisant of how your leadership is received, because it is that perceived behaviour that provokes a reaction in them. The simplest and easiest way of understanding your followers, what they require and how they perceive your leadership behaviour is to ask them.

Leadership behaviours can be either power behaviours or attractive behaviours, and an effective leader will shift and change between them according to their relationship with the follower. The table opposite lists the positive and negative behaviours that fall into each category.

Each behaviour’s effectiveness will depend on the followers’ perception of that behaviour. What might be seen as confident leadership to some, may be arrogant to others, while what might be collaborating to one may be indecisive to another.

A common mistake is to be too power oriented to those below us in position, while being too attractive in behaviour to those above us. This often leads to a negative perception of our leadership behaviour.

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Leadership Theory Functions

POSITIVE

NEGATIVE

POWER BEHAVIOURS

ATTRACTIVE BEHAVIOURS

Dynamic Charismatic Confident Commanding Competent Expert Articulate Influential Easy to listen to

Passive Quiet Deferential Collaborating Nice Easy to talk to Great teammate/mentor

Intimidating Aggressive Arrogant Off-putting Cold Not relational Disagreeable

Weak Passive Lacking in confidence Not enough gravitas Too much detail Indecisive Too many qualifiers

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION The task to be achieved; the structure of the job; level of situational stress; level of outside support; your own experience; the experience of the follower(s), personality, ability, and motivation – these all have an influence on which leadership style will be most effective.

Be flexible and try to recognise whether the situation would benefit from a task approach (goal achievement) or whether a more relationship approach (human and supportive) would be appropriate.

Completing questionnaire 2, on pg 24, may help you to understand your natural leadership style.

20

Strongly Agree

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

3

Conscientiousness: I get the job done, am rigorous and thorough

1

2

3

4

5

4

Emotional Stability: I am calm, positive and emotionally consistent

1

2

3

4

5

5

Openness to Experience: I am creative and willing to try new ideas

1

2

3

4

5

6

Emotional Intelligence: I understand others’ emotions

1

2

3

4

5

7

Self-Confidence: I trust my own quality and ability

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

8

9

22

Agreeableness: I am kind, cooperative and considerate

Agree

2

Extraverted: I am outgoing and connect easily with others

Neutral

1

Disagree

QUESTIONNAIRE 1.

Complete this questionnaire and rate yourself on the scale. You can also ask your colleagues and co-workers to fill it out on your behalf to see how they perceive you.

Strongly Disagree

Leadership Theory, in Practice

Determination: I have a firmness of purpose and certainty Integrity: I am honest and principled

Leadership Theory Functions

10

11

12

13

14

Sociability: I willingly and proactively in engage with others Articulate: I communicate effectively with others Empathetic: I understand and share the feelings of others Diligent: I am hardworking and persistent Balanced: I am stable and predictable in my mood state

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

15

Flexible: I am open to, and listen to, new ideas

1

2

3

4

5

16

Perceptive: I am insightful and discerning of others

1

2

3

4

5

17

Self-assured: I am secure in myself and free of doubts

1

2

3

4

5

18

Persistent: I stay fixed on the goals over a prolonged period

1

2

3

4

5

19

Trustworthy: I can be relied upon, and am authentic and truthful

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

20

Friendly: I have a kind and pleasant manner

23

Leadership Theory, in Practice

24

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly Agree

QUESTIONNAIRE 2.

Complete this questionnaire and rate yourself on the scale. You can also ask your colleagues and co-workers to fill it out on your behalf to see how they perceive you.

1

Encourages inter-group atmosphere and relations

1

2

3

4

5

2

Promotes group members to produce quality work

1

2

3

4

5

3

Is willing to show emotions and feelings

1

2

3

4

5

4

Communicates clear expectations for group members

1

2

3

4

5

5

Is flexible in decision making

1

2

3

4

5

6

Creates a plan of action

1

2

3

4

5

7

Is empathetic to others

1

2

3

4

5

8

Clearly defines their own role within the group

1

2

3

4

5

9

Regularly communicates with all members of the group

1

2

3

4

5

10

Gives all individuals within the group a clear role responsibility

1

2

3

4

5

11

Demonstrates stable and predictable behaviour to the group

1

2

3

4

5

12

Creates a plan of action

1

2

3

4

5

Leadership Theory Functions

13

Is fair and even-handed to all members of the group

1

2

3

4

5

14

Clearly communicates their own ideas

1

2

3

4

5

15

Is open to others’ ideas

1

2

3

4

5

16

Gives suggestions about how to solve problems

1

2

3

4

5

17

Makes members of the group feel comfortable

1

2

3

4

5

18

Establishes standards of performance

1

2

3

4

5

19

Is friendly with members of the group

1

2

3

4

5

20

Communicates tasks for group members

1

2

3

4

5

Add up the responses of the odd-numbered questions.

This is your relationship score.

Add up the responses of the even-numbered questions.

This is your task score.

10 – 24 25 – 29 30 - 34 35 – 39 40 - 44 45 – 50

Very Low Low Moderately Low Moderately High High Very High

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX IT’S AN ONGOING PROCESS XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX IF YOU STOP THINKING THAT XXXXXXXXXXX” YOU CAN LEARN THEN YOU NAME ARE INHERE BIG TROUBLE.” ALAN PARDEW

FROM CHAPTER PAPER TO HEADLINE PERFORMANCE 28 00 00 36 00 42 00 48 00

STRATEGY XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX CULTURES HIGH-PERFORMANCE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXWITH THE TEAM COMMUNICATING XXXXXXXXXXXXXX LEADING MULTICULTURAL TEAMS XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

From Paper To Performance

STRATEGY Your strategy is like a roadmap which, if prepared carefully, will get you safely to your desired destination. Leaders must ensure there is sufficient detail and clarity, as well as realistic timescales and targets to give momentum and motivation.

Words: Jeremy Snape

T

he first challenge for a leader when setting team strategy is ensuring there is a clear, unambiguous address in the Sat Nav. There should only be one strategy for each issue or goal; you can’t expect to reach many destinations with just one set of directions. While there may well be diversions and setbacks along the way, it is this end point, this long-term vision, that will unify everyone in the team and keep things moving in the right direction.

Before you can start to refine your strategy, you need to be able to visualise that end goal in HD and technicolour. You then need to be able to speak about it in a way that lets your team feel, smell and taste the success that’s to come.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

BREAKING IT DOWN Of course, while becoming a world champion or market leader sounds inspirational, big ambitions are by no means enough. As James Clear wrote in ‘Atomic Habits’, our performance doesn’t levitate to the level of our aspirations, it falls to the level of our daily habits.

An Olympian with the dream of becoming world champion has all the motivation they need, but their control over whether or not it will happen in four years’ time is minimal. Planning is essential in turning that vision into a reality. Condensing the athlete’s dream down into a performance goal, say 9.6 seconds for the 100m, makes it tangible rather than emotional. We can then consider what principles and processes - what tactical, technical, physical and psychological drivers - will help to deliver that outcome (see the diagram opposite).

These divisional goals can be broken down further, so in the case of the physical element, we’d find strength, power, flexibility and endurance being key components to maximise physical preparation. Strength can be broken down further still into its core components, so you might end up with weight training, plyometric drills, protein-rich meal plans and recovery phases all playing their part in the athlete’s daily and weekly schedule.

The end result is a daily plan of gold-medal-winning habits and behaviours, which while being no guarantee of a podium finish will give the athlete their best chance of success.

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/chapter title here - edit on master page

DREAM GOAL

MOTIVATION

DIVISION GOALS

CONTROL

PERFORMANCE GOAL

MONTHLY GOALS DAILY PROCESSES

31

Leadership Theory, in Practice

ROLES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES Now that we’ve broken down ‘winning’ into visible behaviours and controllable processes we need to set each functional unit or team within the team specific goals and targets. The back four’s goal, for example, becomes the clean sheet and the behaviours that relate to this working as a connected unit, great communication, and technical excellence around tackles. Their individual roles will flex in line with each opposition’s game plan and the leader needs to hold them and the working unit accountable for how they execute this. What’s key is that everyone knows their role and how it contributes to the overall goal, and understands how the different working units are interdependent.

But while managers need to communicate the overall mission or intent, they should do so without dictating or micromanaging its execution. Asking players for their ideas on how a process or a quarterly target might be improved or achieved more quickly is likely to galvanise them and unlock their potential more effectively than if you simply instructed them.

MIND THE GAPS Rarely, if ever, will you get the chance to create a dream team from scratch and to have everything in your favour; you will always be compromised by technology, resources or talent. Your strategy should therefore aim to balance the strengths and resources you have available in the short term with your plan to bridge any gaps in the medium term.

High performance is a dynamic state and managers in sport and business are constantly shifting their focus between their long-term strategic intent and their short-term execution. You need to ensure you have the right people to take the next step up and that you’ve considered what that next stage of the journey will demand of you, financially, technically and from a leadership perspective. This may feel like building the car while it’s driving, but ambitious organisations have no time to dwell on their past success or wallow in their mistakes, they are looking up and out, and refining their plans as they go.

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From Paper To Performance

LEARNING AND ADAPTING Often what characterises the highest-performing teams is their ability to learn faster than their rivals. They are curious, willing to be imperfect and they reflect and review their performance objectively. As a result, they are more able to reach their potential.

As a leader, it’s important to ensure your strategy isn’t so focused on chasing outcomes that you forget to check your effectiveness. Stephen Covey described this as stopping to ‘sharpen the saw’ instead of relentlessly attacking a tree with a blunt instrument. Shankley’s 90-day cycle was a great example of a manager stopping to check their bearings and correct their course back to true north. In a world that’s spinning faster than ever, a monthly review might be the modern equivalent.

In essence, a good strategy considers not only what you need in order to reach your end point, but also what you need to stop doing. The aim should be to drive continual improvement in your team and become not just older, but wiser.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

STRATEGY ESSENTIALS Be realistic – about your end goal as well as the targets you set along the way.

Form a strategy team – having a group of people around you with different experience and perspectives will help to ensure your planning is realistic and sufficiently detailed.

Inspire - communicate your vision regularly, with conviction and passion, linking short-term goals regularly back to your long-term objective.

Build layers of detail – break down your objective to practical actions on an individual and group level.

Clarify roles – ensure everyone is clear on their part in realising your vision, and how they fit into the bigger picture.

Set goals and rewards – incentivise people to reach each milestone and reward each small step forward.

Reflect and review – monitor progress along the way to ensure you are on track, and be prepared to adapt your plans if need be.

Balance short and long-term plans – ensure you have one eye on future needs and that you have the necessary resources and talent.

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From Paper To Performance

35

From Paper To Performance

HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURES Changing the culture of an organisation or team isn’t quick or easy, but it can be achieved under great leadership.

Words: Dr Brian Marien

H

umans are, by nature, profoundly social animals, and when we have a common goal or purpose that resonates at a deep level we are collaborative, cohesive, affiliative and supportive. This is the foundation of a solid team culture. As Nieztsche said, “if you can find a why, you can work out almost any how”.

While the leader can start out with their own set of values and principles around which everything else gravitates, to really change the culture you need to get everyone on side and united. That means talking to people about what really matters to them and looking for common themes.

37

Leadership Theory, in Practice

Active listening is essential here, because we each only ever see things through our own distorted personal lens and our perspective on things may be very different to those around us. Canvassing the opinions of team members and staff doesn’t mean assuming that everyone’s opinion is equal or that one person’s strongly held opinion matters more than another’s. It simply means that, by listening to many voices and perspectives, you are able to pull together a sense of what the culture is currently like and in what direction you might take it.

DEVELOPING CULTURAL NORMS Much research has been carried out into ‘social conformity’ and we know that, as humans, we are very much influenced by what we call ‘social norms’ or ‘display rules’. In other words, we tend towards doing what other people in the group are doing; we are far more Homo imitans than Homo sapiens. This has huge relevance for those leading and communicating with teams.

As a leader, it’s very important to be aware of what culture you are creating; what are the current cultural norms and what do you want them to be? Your own influence is paramount because you set the tone from the top; how you behave and what you respect and value will, over time, be imitated by those within the group.

For example, we know that when one person is kind to another, that person in turn is much more likely to be kind to the next person they interact with, and so on. This is known as ‘social cascade’ or ‘contagion’. Likewise, if you ridicule or criticise people around you, they are more likely to feel that it’s acceptable to treat others in a similar way. People may not be aware of these attitudes and behaviours, but they become embedded, normal and accepted as ‘what we do around here’.

38

From Paper To Performance

WALK THE TALK Leaders, therefore, have an incredibly important role in setting the standards for what is acceptable, and this is done not just verbally, but by leading by example.

Perhaps even more important, then, is that you enforce that culture, calling out those behaviours that don’t fit with the social norms that everyone has signed up to, and rewarding those behaviours that do. Having rules, but failing to stand by them is actually more damaging than not having them at all, because it degrades respect for you as the leader and the changes that you want to implement. Many organisations are poor in this regard; they talk the talk, but don’t walk the talk.

TRUST AND RECIPROCITY Building trust and reciprocity among the group is especially important for any healthy team culture. While certain groups of people nourish our spirits, enliven us, make us feel safe and empower us, when we’re around others we’re more wary of sharing and may feel that we can’t entirely trust them.

There’s robust data to show that trust is a key performance indicator in how collaborative, cohesive and supportive a team is. It is also important in protecting against the development of mental health problems, such as posttraumatic stress disorder.

One of the biggest challenges for the leader, therefore, is to build trust and reciprocity within the team environment. While this can take time, one of the most effective ways to achieve it is, again, through active listening. This is where you show the other person that they have your undivided attention and are genuinely trying to understand where they are coming from and how you can support them best. People are incredibly astute and can tell when you’re listening to them and when you’re not.

39

Leadership Theory, in Practice

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Finally, within the performance parameters that you have agreed with the group, there still needs to be room for some creativity and autonomy, and indeed great leaders encourage a culture of innovation and freedom of thought. Studies have shown that for us to give our best effort we need to be allowed to do things for ourselves, under our own steam.

From a neurological point of view, it has been shown that when learning is uncomfortable, unpredictable and the brain is left with something to think about we lay down stronger connections that survive better under pressure.

Great leaders will therefore aim to stimulate their players intellectually, giving them the ability, freedom and responsibility to come up with their own ideas and solutions, to play what’s in front of them rather than sticking like glue to a predetermined algorithm. This may mean pushing people out of their comfort zones in terms of the theory behind their game, but most will relish the challenge.

Players who develop in this kind of culture are likely to improve faster and become more adaptable in the application of their skills and knowledge.

40

From Paper To Performance

RAISING THE BAR In any elite performance environment, the expectations and standards at the heart of the team’s culture will be very high. That doesn’t, however, mean the leader is pushing for perfection. The bar should be set at such a height that it is challenging but achievable, stretching people to achieve more and in different ways, without the goal ever feeling totally out of reach. It should be raised gradually, the culture of the team being to aim for constant improvement and development.

If targets are too high or you impose a culture of perfectionism on the group it may demoralise them and result in the development of a very fixed mindset, whereby they view their performance as either fantastic or terrible.

Perfectionism, whether internal, social or imposed by a tiger coach, mother or father, can lead to poor mental health and performance anxiety, where people fear making a mistake so greatly that they will procrastinate or choke at key moments.

It takes time to change and embed a culture, and this can be especially difficult for a leader operating in an industry where there is such pressure to get results in the short term. However, when people can see why you’re trying to make the change and where you’re trying to get to they will support it. Then, once your desired standards and behaviours begin to emerge and spread within the organisation, things will really gain momentum.

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From Paper To Performance

COMMUNICATING WITH THE TEAM Each time you address your players or staff as a group you have the opportunity to motivate, unify, provide direction and build a collaborative mindset.

Words: Dr Brian Marien

C

ommunicating your messages effectively to a group requires a different set of skills to those used when talking with individual members.

Whereas in a one-to-one you can personalise the content and delivery of what you’re saying to each individual, when addressing the team your communication needs to be relevant and emotive to the group as a whole. This means being especially cognisant of the culture, expectations and social norms that you have embedded within the organisation.

43

Leadership Theory, in Practice

While some of the aims of your communication will be the same as when speaking with people individually – to motivate, encourage and support, for example – others will become even more important when addressing the group.

You have the opportunity to unite your team members around a shared goal or vision, to improve cohesion, reenforce the team culture and encourage the development of a positive growth mindset.

HEARTS OVER HEADS While there are undoubtedly skills to communicating with a team, to a large extent it is the groundwork you have laid down as a leader that will determine how successful you are in the moment. That’s because we tend to really listen to those people who we respect and trust, and who have already demonstrated honesty, authenticity and transparency. Therefore, while you may have prepared a big, grand speech to deliver to the team, it will only really captivate and pull them in if you have already won their trust and respect.

When it comes to delivering your messages, however, first and foremost as a leader you need to be consistent, in terms of authenticity and the culture you have established for the team or organisation. If what you say to the group in the changing room or at the training ground doesn’t reflect your messages and character up to that point, nobody will be listening. We pick up on inauthenticity very quickly.

Our brains also respond in a far deeper way to emotions than to facts, and this is something great leaders are skilled at harnessing. Storytelling is a particularly powerful way of getting people to engage with the content of your messages.

In one famous study, a neuroscientist placed electrodes onto the heads of a group of people to measure their brain activity while he spoke to them.

He found that when he talked in a very general way the brain patterns of the participants were very different from one another, but when he began to tell them a story they quickly synchronised and took on a similar pattern.

Good leaders are therefore adept at using similes and metaphors in their communications, telling stories and bringing their messages to life.

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From Paper To Performance

ALL FOR ONE While within any group you will have a huge diversity of personalities, preferences, levels of performance and needs, you have the power to unify them by focusing on your common purpose. It is essential that you ensure everyone understands what they are there for – the ‘why’ before the ‘what’.

Try to identify why they are there and what are the things that bind the team members together, the social glue. While this process starts with one-to-one conversations, it should continue via your group communication.

Once everyone is united in that understanding, they are much more likely to go the extra mile for one another, to trust and support each other, and they will respond as a group more positively to what you are asking of them.

When addressing a group, everything should be focused on the team rather than individuals, the idea of moving forward and succeeding together. The presence of big egos in the team and the media’s habit of holding individuals up as heroes is counterproductive in building team cohesion. It is the leader’s job to instill the concept that the team is more important than any one person, however good they may be.

With this in mind, when discussing performance in a group context, it is important to focus only on the team’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. It may be tempting to single out individuals and hold their behaviour or performance up as a shining example, and there may be value in this, but there is also a risk that you will alienate and diminish other team members.

Most of us have favourites, often without realising it, and we’ll tend to pick these people out more often than their peers. However, it is normally the latter who are most likely to be in need of our encouragement, support, coaching and mentoring.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

A POSITIVE GROUP MINDSET Remember that the aim should always be improvement, not perfection, and the language you use in your group communications needs to reflect this.

Perfectionism can lead to performance anxiety, stress, poor mental health and an increased chance of choking at key moments, because you fear making a mistake to such an extent that you procrastinate, avoid or overcompensate, and so sabotage your own performance.

As a leader you need to be very careful not to impose your own perfectionism onto the team by demeaning or criticising people for mistakes when speaking to the group. While there are people who respond positively to criticism, most people feel diminished by it and it can lead to individuals developing very self-limiting and binary beliefs about their abilities – i.e, I’m either great or rubbish. Through positive and motivational communication with the team, meanwhile, the leader has the opportunity to engender cognitive flexibility, whereby players know they can develop and improve.

What’s more, when you are critical of someone or are rude to them, especially in front of their peers, it encodes in the brain in such a way that when they think of you it is associated with negative things. You are likely to lose their collaboration, their discretionary effort and their support, and it undermines their capacity to perform. Conversely, when you say something nice to someone or treat them kindly the opposite is true. The attitude of the group and their level of respect for you can therefore be influenced heavily by your words.

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From Paper To Performance

TALKING TO THE TEAM - 6 TO TRY: Think about the team’s culture or the one you are trying to embed – how can you: Reflect and draw on those values and behaviours in your communication.

Be consistent with your previous messages and behaviour, and authentic.

Engage and unite team members by adding elements of storytelling to your communications.

Talk about mutually agreed team goals and vision, the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’.

Focus on team strengths and opportunities for improvement, and avoid singling people out.

Emphasise the need for constant team improvement and development, but not perfection.

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From Paper To Performance

LEADING MULTICULTURAL TEAMS Bringing out the best in a multicultural team requires an open-minded and adaptable leader, committed to understanding each individual and finding common ground.

Words: Jeremy Snape

T

oday’s workplaces are becoming ever more diverse and dynamic, and recent events may even accelerate the trend. If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything it’s how easy and beneficial it is to collaborate with people all over the world.

When harnessed, diversity in the workplace can generate a competitive advantage. Research by McKinsey found that companies with the highest racial and ethnic diversity were 35 per cent more likely to have higher returns than low-diversity rivals. Diverse teams have different experiences, perspectives and ideas that can help them solve complex problems.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE However, ensuring that members from different cultural backgrounds are able to fulfil their potential as a high-performing team requires a skilled leader with a high level of awareness. In my work, I’ve spoken with England Rugby’s Eddie Jones about his experiences of managing multicultural teams.

Before Jones began working with Japan, he researched the Samurai culture to help shape his plans early on and set expectations around the team’s shared culture. He discovered, for example, that loyalty, hard work and trust were central to the Japanese culture. Other core traits, such as attitudes around punctuality, he uncovered on the job. Whereas his local players would arrive 10 minutes before each meeting, those of New Zealand, Samoan and Australian heritage would turn up with just a few minutes to spare.

Professor Tammy Erickson, London Business School, shared with me her experience of delivering the same presentation in two different countries, recounting how when giving it in Germany she was told it needed to be very precise, concise and direct. A few weeks later, when presenting the same work in Italy, she was advised to tell colourful stories, to talk about family and take a while to get to the point.

There’s evidence that the way different cultures deal with conflict is also very different. In The Culture Map, Professor Erin Mayer plotted each national culture against two axes, one showing how emotionally expressive or reserved they tend to be and the other how confrontational they are. According to her research, Italian, Spanish and French cultures display quite opposite characteristics to Korean, Japanese and Swedish. Cultural background may, therefore, influence how players or staff respond to a situation, and explain why some players quietly retreat while their peers gesticulate and shout.

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From Paper To Performance

AN OPEN-MINDED APPROACH As leaders, it is helpful to seek to understand the cultural norms of each subset of our teams and then flex and adapt our style to accommodate both our and their expectations. However, we need to be very careful not to pigeonhole people. We must stay curious and be aware of own unconscious biases and preconceptions. By constantly challenging the assumptions that we hold about certain nationalities, age groups, genders and personality types, and raising our awareness and understanding we stand the best chance of taking advantage of the many benefits of multicultural teams.

While this awareness might not ultimately change the behaviours that you expect from the group as a whole, it’s important to try to understand each individual and read the social chemistry of the group before laying down strict codes of behaviour or expectations.

Regular one-to-one conversations will help you to gain this awareness of your players while ensuring that they, in turn, understand their roles, and what’s expected of them, on and off the field. Clarity is key when communicating with any player or member of the support staff, but especially so when there is the chance of misunderstanding or misinterpretation due to cultural or linguistic differences.

Having specialist interpreters or another player or staff member of the same nationality to hand is important in ensuring your strong messages are not lost in translation. However, as the manager, being able to say something yourself to a player in their language, even if just a few words, helps to build a strong foundation. This may mean seeking specialist advice or coaching or using a language learning app. Keeping a notebook of common football terms in different languages can also be useful.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

THE BIG PICTURE Good leaders know that in order to get the best out of individual team members they need to treat them as individuals, with their own motivations, perspectives, goals and needs. Furthermore, they recognise that it is just this individuality that brings richness and longevity to the team’s performance.

Yet any work developing the individual has to be set against a backdrop of the team and its vision, objectives and needs. Striking a balance between respecting and supporting the individuality of team members and ensuring they all gel together is essential for any leader, but perhaps even more so when dealing with multicultural teams. That’s because without a shared purpose and mutual respect, cultural differences feel more pronounced and cliques are more likely form. In the absence of strong team unity, people may seek to feel they belong through other ties, such as cultural origin or background, and personal agendas may begin to overshadow team ones.

I saw how powerful a unifying goal can be when I supported the South African cricket team as they climbed to the top of the world rankings in Test cricket. After being crowned, their motivation fell away because the team members, from seven different cultures, lost their shared goal. We used an African philosophy called Ubuntu, which states that ‘we are defined by the impact we have on others’ to re-inspire and reunite the team. The idea was that if they stood together as a representation of the Rainbow Nation they could give hope to every culture across South Africa; they could unite rather than divide. The players embraced this philosophy and worked together to build relationships inside and outside the team that would transcend their individual differences. They stayed at the number one spot for four years running.

Ultimately, this is what managing diverse teams is about. It’s about understanding, respecting and working with individuals’ differences, and finding ways to galvanise everyone as a group through a strong team identity based on shared sacrifice and purpose.

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From Paper To Performance

CHECKLIST: Regularly communicate your team objectives, linking individual goals back to these.

Communicate clearly a powerful team vision, which every individual regardless of background can engage with.

Do background research so you are aware of cultural norms and common attributes, but be careful not to form preconceptions.

Use translators and players who speak the same language to ensure your messages get across clearly.

Make an effort to learn key words and phrases to show you respect and value their culture and language.

Be prepared to adapt to different styles of communication.

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YOU CAN’T EVER ALLOW YOURSELF TO BECOME COMPLACENT. IF YOU EVER THINK YOU’VE CRACKED IT YOU’LL COME UNSTUCK.” CHRIS WILDER

TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS 56 62 70 74 80 86 92 98

EMBRACING CHANGE MOTIVATION - FROM THE INSIDE OUT EMPATHETIC LEADERSHIP SOCIAL BOUNDARIES PERSUASION AND INFLUENCE BUILDING AND MAINTAINING TRUST ONE-TO-ONE CONVERSATIONS FEEDBACK

Techniques and Tools

EMBRACING CHANGE Faced with change, in whatever form, leaders must be change agents, taking on three specific roles and performing a series of key tasks.

Words: Tim Foster MBE

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erformance in sport is improving all the time, brought about by improved application of tactics, techniques, genetics, science and technology, and social change, among other things. Failure to embrace and manage these forces of change leads to inertia and relative regression. In other words, in four or five years’ time it is likely to take something more, or different, to win a medal or a trophy.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

SOURCES OF RESISTANCE Change can be planned or unplanned, controlled or uncontrolled, continuous or discontinuous, embraced or resisted, and there will be times when the existing, and previously successful, ways of doing things have to be broken up in order to transition to something new and even more effective.

Whatever form it takes, though, change is always more effectively dealt with when it is embraced and managed. In order for a leader to implement and reap the benefits of change, they must be a change agent who understands the forces and factors involved and the roles that they must play. That means first understanding the common sources of resistance to change.

Structural inertia It is often difficult to change how one part of an organisation works without others being affected, things like stability, organisation and resources, and this can lead to people feeling a loss of control. Unless these knock-on changes are managed successfully there can be little incentive to change anything.

Individuals People develop and become comfortable through habits, and changing these is often difficult. People need security (to varying degrees) so may be concerned about their ability to perform new tasks. We also have an innate fear of the unknown because our ability to process information relies on us selecting what is relevant and ignoring what challenges our existing perception. Individuals not only need to see the benefits of change, but also be convinced that there is a need for change, and that the change will positively benefit them.

Power, relationships and politics There is also often resistance from existing groups who see change as a threat to their authority and the role that they have enjoyed previously. Giving more authority or resources to some may be viewed as removing power or authority from others. Even if individuals want to change, group norms and inertia can act as a constraint. Understanding the existing environment, building commitment and support from key stakeholders, and creating a movement and will to change are needed to address this.

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Techniques and Tools

THREE KEY ROLES In order to navigate these resistive forces, an effective change agent needs to fulfil three roles: architect, influencer and broker.

Architect As an architect, the leader must create rules and plans, controlling the implementation process. They must develop structures and policies, set goals for the organisation and analyse and assess the changes that are being made.

An architect also educates his or her team members so that they can see the logic behind the changes.

Influencer It is essential to create a culture that is empowering and inclusive. In the role of influencer, the leader must encourage team members to participate, and communicate to and with them to promote a sense of fairness and inclusion. An influencer uses their character and personality to get buy-in from members of the team and organisation, inspiring others to follow and making them want to change.

Broker A broker creates networks, building support and commitment. They enlist allies and select people who are more open to the changes they are making, while removing or disempowering those that are not. In this role, the leader must play the political game and create a movement for change.

While most people will favour or recognise one or two of these change agent roles, to achieve a successful change implementation, it is important to understand and perform all of the different elements. If you are unable to do this, it’s important to work with someone who can help to fill the gaps.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

IMPLEMENTING CHANGE In order to make effective changes, it is not only important to recognise the role that a leader must play, but also to consider the steps necessary in making and maintaining change. That means unfreezing the existing system, moving to the preferred state, and then refreezing to make the changes permanent.

Each of these steps requires you as the change agent – fulfilling the roles of architect, influencer and broker - to perform a series of key tasks within the change process.

1 2 3 60

Understand Analyse the existing system and what has worked before; diagnose problems and areas of necessary improvement; canvas the opinions of others and engage them in the process; identify key stakeholders and necessary allies. Determine whether the change that is necessary can be incremental (continuous) or more fundamental (requires breaking the current way of doing things in order to implement the new system).

Establish Create a sense of urgency in order to initiate momentum; create a timescale and plan of action; and establish a personal, operational and strategic network that can be used when needed.

Envisage Create a clear vision that gives definite guidance, goals and motivation.

Determine the critical tasks necessary to actuate the vision and communicate the vision widely. Assess where political support and resistance will come from and how best to politick – create a politick plan.

Techniques and Tools

4 5 6 7 8

Review Reassess the impact of the adjusted goal and critical tasks on the alignment within the organisation.

Motivate Empower others to act, adapt and buy into the new vision. Actively nudge stakeholders towards the goal. Hold others involved in the process to account.

Act Implement the plan. Create a new culture that embraces the change and establish the new culture as the norm. Form a coalition that provides support and added impetus to the implementation effort.

Consolidate Gain momentum and use it to consolidate gains and improvements.

Celebrate short-term wins, so that individuals can see the immediate benefits of the changes that they have made. Use political will to institutionalise the new system and embed the new ideas.

Revisit Reassess the alignment of the organisation (have all the pieces fitted together as planned?) and adjust if necessary. In effect, implementation is not a fixed process, so constant adjustment, alignment and improvement is necessary.

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Techniques and Tools

MOTIVATION – FROM THE INSIDE OUT While many leaders will be used to the carrot or stick method of motivation, other models exist that may provide a better chance of success in the short, medium and long term.

Words: Steve Johnson

F

or many leaders in football and elsewhere, the dominant motivational approach is often based on simple rewards or punishments, the idea of the carrot or the stick. Legendary psychologist Harry Levinson once called this the Great Jackass Fallacy. He thought that most leaders unconsciously bought into this model, whereby those following them must be controlled or manipulated in some way in order to follow instructions. The common thread is that the motivational driver comes externally.

Motivation can be defined simply as a force that compels someone to do something, and it has typically tended to be viewed in terms of a continuum between low and high levels, so a player might be described as being highly motivated or lacking motivation. Psychologists, however, prefer to describe motivation in terms of quality and attempt to understand where it comes from and how sustainable it is.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY Modern views of motivation see it as a continuum from low to high quality, where the low quality relates more to external controls, rewards or pressure.

High-quality motivation comes from within and involves a personal sense of agency, mastery and more basic psychological needs being satisfied (see below).

LOW QUALITY

HIGH QUALITY

AMOTIVATION

EXTERNAL PRESSURE

INTERNAL PRESSURE

PERSONAL VALUES

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Going through

Controlled by

Controlled

Personal

Playing is

the motions

rewards or

or driven by

values and

inherently

punishments

expectations

goals are

satisfying and

of others and/

self-satisfying

improvement

or own ego

but the

is its own

environment is

reward

not optimal

Low-quality motivation (extrinsic motivation) is associated with lower effort levels, lower levels of engagement, lower levels of learning and lower levels of trust and performance. By contrast, high-quality motivation (intrinsic motivation) is associated with higher effort levels, higher levels of engagement, high levels of discretionary effort, greater levels of learning, trust and performance. These research findings have been found across many industries and sectors, including elite sport.

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Techniques and Tools

SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY In motivation psychology, Self-determination Theory is the best known and most widely supported theory of motivation that incorporates the principles of intrinsic motivation and has well-established applications in elite sport.

Researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci describe how satisfying three basic human psychological needs leads to more intrinsic motivation. These three basic needs are: • The need for autonomy - to have choice over one’s actions and experiences such that one’s behaviours are in alignment with one’s authentic interests and values.

• The need for competence - to feel effective and capable of task mastery.

• The need for relatedness - to be accepted by others as well as care for others and feel cared for by them.

When managers and coaches are able to help individuals and teams meet these three basic psychological needs players are more engaged with the aspirations of the coaching staff and their teammates. Players are also more likely to focus on what they can do to improve personally, and will be more open to feedback about improvement and performance.

Strong basic psychological need satisfaction directly predicts trust in the organisation, quality of leadership, feelings of security and overall playing satisfaction. Not surprisingly, when basic psychological needs are met it also predicts a positive passion and higher levels of organisational commitment.

Creating a self-determined culture can have many positive impacts on a club’s culture.

However, managers need to be aware that when coaching staff and players’ basic psychological needs go unmet, or worse are thwarted, there is a risk that it will lead to poor performance. Unmet basic psychological needs can lead to coaching staff and player staff disengagement and a reduction in the discretionary effort that is necessary for peak performance.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

CREATING SELF-DETERMINED CULTURES Creating a self-determined culture begins with the relationship of the manager or head coach with his or her coaching staff. Important in this is to provide your staff with autonomy. People want to feel ownership and volition in their work, so it’s important to allow staff to make decisions and not try to control everything and everybody. Taking the time to communicate to staff why their work is meaningful and important and allowing them the freedom to get on with their job will foster greater commitment.

Even when tasks have to be done, if you provide a rationale and some choice in how the tasks are completed, your staff member’s autonomy needs can be met even when the tasks are not enjoyable. Autonomy is not the same as freedom or independence. We can feel we have our own power if we understand and endorse the value of our work, even if that work is prescribed by others.

Another basic human need is to feel effective, to grow and to be successful.

People want to feel that they can succeed at their daily tasks, applying their resources, skills and expertise. They also want to be stretched within their ‘zone of proximal development’ – not too much challenge, not too little, but just right.

To help build this sense of mastery and competence, coaching staff will benefit if they see a path forward that includes new challenges and responsibilities and allows them to anticipate growth in their work. In addition, it’s important to set clear goals with your staff and ensure each has a personal improvement plan which includes at least some formal learning. Don’t be threatened by the development needs or aspirations of your staff; instead challenge them to grow and develop for the good of the club or organisation.

It’s important also to help staff feel like they belong and matter. Relatedness is our basic need to feel we belong and matter to others. Make your staff feel respected, valued and included and provide opportunities to connect at all levels of the organisation. When managers work to support the needs of their staff, they are making an investment in the organisation and a positive contribution to organisational culture.

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Techniques and Tools

COACHING STAFF ACTIONS TOWARD PLAYERS When it comes to actions supporting self-determined cultures, what matters is the actions of many, not just a few. The manager and all coaching staff need to be onboard and have a shared understanding of their approach and why it matters. Otherwise, players will see and feel inconsistency and this will undermine trust and basic psychological need fulfilment.

The actions of the leader and staff (as outlined in the box overleaf) will support a self-determined culture, but only if all coaching staff consistently commit to behaving in a way that encourages autonomy, competence and relatedness.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

COACHING STAFF ACTIONS

LIKELY PLAYER RESPONSES

Autonomy focused Maximising opportunity for choice

Feeling like their input matters

Promoting and valuing initiative and decision making by players

Showing initiative and independence

Providing meaningful rationale for decisions presented in a non-controlling way

Feeling there is a more authentic relationship

Defining success in terms of personal and group improvement

Understanding success in terms of improvement and progression

Competence focused

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Supporting players in setting personal goals (football and non-football)

Creating perceptions of personal autonomy and mastery

Promoting internal competition not as a ranking mechanism but as a chance to stretch each other and improve

Gaining inspiration from other people’s success

Providing positive, task-related, personally relevant feedback about improvement

Perception that coaching staff are making the team and individuals better players

Praising effort and hard work over ability

Feeling that effort and progression is recognised and valued

Encouraging players to take risks to learn and improve

Seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn

Encouraging players to seek feedback

Perception that learning and improving is valued

Techniques and Tools

Relatedness focused Taking the time to get to know all players as people first

Feeling understood and cared about

Valuing and caring about all players as people

Feeling valued and trusted

Encouraging players to get to know others’ culture, story and heritage

Feeling like all players are included and that their lives matter

Demonstrating empathy and acknowledging perspectives of players

Feeling that the coaching staff value connection between themselves and players

Building a sense of community (belonging)

Feeling connected to something bigger than oneself

Being honest with players and not avoiding difficult conversations or topics

Feeling like one knows where one stands

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Techniques and Tools

EMPATHETIC LEADERSHIP While traditionally viewed as a ‘soft’ skill, empathy is anything but. It is now recognised as a core leadership skill and a better predictor of success than capability.

Words: Simon Drane

E

mpathy has received a lot of attention in various performance arenas in recent times, especially in terms of its influence and importance in leadership and high performance. However, as is often the case with hot topics, everyone seems to have a different understanding of what empathy actually means.

Empathy is an essential component of emotional intelligence, which is, in its simplest form, the ability to be aware of, regulate and control your emotions while being able to develop relationships with others to notice and help them empathetically.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman goes further with his definition of empathy, saying it, “means having the ability or willingness to understand and reflect back the feelings of another.”

So, empathy is most definitely for the benefit of others, and is a skill that can be developed over time, but it is not about fixing a problem for someone.

Instead, it is about enabling you to connect with them.

However, while in its simplest form empathy is connecting with others, this needs to happen at a deeper level than just remembering the names of their children. A critical differentiator is that someone empathetic is able to shift their perspective to that of another person.

Most of us try to do this, but the majority fail, because we fall into the trap of thinking about how we would feel in the other person’s shoes. This is not empathy, this is sympathy. Empathy is truly understanding how they feel in their situation, and it can only be achieved if you possess the following two core skills: PRESENT LISTENING A hostage negotiator described present listening as, “listening like a life depends on it”, which in his situation it often did. For the rest of us, think about what happens during important conversations with your staff or team members – how often are you slightly distracted, perhaps by the notification of an email or by thoughts about the meeting you have lined up later that day, or simply by the rumbling of your stomach?

Even minor distractions such as these will prevent you from being completely ‘present’ in the ‘now’ with the other person, and this has a dramatic effect on the level of empathy that you are able to show them.

As a leader, it’s essential to take action to improve your focus and your present listening in such situations. That means really valuing the conversations you have with people, managing your diary so that you have enough time to plan, prepare and mentally get ready for them, and have the intent to really connect and listen to them.

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Techniques and Tools

GET THEM TALKING The second skill is about getting someone to talk to you and then keeping them talking. While this might sound like common sense, in my experience people are not terribly good at it. This is often because we have an overwhelming desire to help others, and this drives us to try to provide a solution or to say something to make the other person feel better.

This is not empathy either. Empathy is acknowledging, understanding and being there with that person. Ultimately, you need to get to the ‘why’ and for that to happen it needs to be them that does the talking, not you.

Use open-ended questions to encourage the other person to open up, work through issues and ideas themselves and elaborate. Rather than joining in, try to sit on your own ideas, proposals or solutions to allow the other person to keep talking. Ensure, also, that you challenge any personal biases you might have of the other person. We have a tendency to fall back too much on such unconscious biases when we don’t have sufficient information to work with. Your job, therefore, is to fill those gaps by encouraging open, honest communication, rather than relying on your assumptions.

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Techniques and Tools

SOCIAL BOUNDARIES Understanding how the brain assesses and responds to risk can help us to create less stressful environments and improve both our performance and that of the team.

Words: Steve Johnson

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ost people think that the brain’s primary job is to think, but this is one of the great fallacies of modern science and sport psychology. In fact, the brain’s primary function is to manage the body’s ‘allostatic load’, which can be thought of as the ‘weight’ that the environment requires you to carry and the body’s capacity to anticipate and predict it and to respond accordingly. The brain must ensure that the burden isn’t too great on the neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic systems, which together determine whether we are able to adapt successfully to stress or develop a far more negative and damaging response.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

STRESS TRIGGERS Stressful environments are created when we sense a risk or threat, including situations where we feel we can’t trust someone else or don’t feel psychologically and emotionally safe. Elite coaches and managers should therefore try to avoid creating situations and demonstrating behaviours that diminish trust and increase stress in their team members.

These include having periods of prolonged uncertainty without an end date (our brains like routines, because they make predictions easier), making changes without explaining the logic behind them, and breaking promises. If, for example, you tell a player they will start a match but don’t follow through, it sends mixed and confusing messages.

Because of our hard-wired social nature, breaking the psychological contract (the unspoken rules about trust and fairness) with one team member also has the potential to impact negatively on other team members. As well as regulating your own body’s budget, you regulate each other’s and this co-regulation has measurable effects, with changes in one person’s body often prompting changes in another’s. When one team member feels highly stressed or feels that trust has been breached, other members of the group, particularly those close to the aggrieved person, pick up the same stressors or feelings.

Another behaviour to be cognisant of as a leader is yelling at others, particularly in front of their peers, as this is likely to activate their fight, flee of freeze response. Losing your temper too regularly will also lose its impact after a while, potentially damaging your credibility with those around you. Using physical intimidation, when one person holds power over another, is also best avoided, as it tends to cause the receiving party to internalise their natural response. Over time this can lead to excessive worry or even anxiety.

Meanwhile, constant fault picking, making general negative comments that provide little opportunity for improvement or correction, and putting doubts into people’s heads about aspects of their coaching or game, can all create negative self-perceptions and lead to people questioning their abilities.

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Techniques and Tools

PSYCHOLOGICALLY SAFE ENVIRONMENTS Within a trusting and psychologically safe environment, players are better able to override their biological defence mechanisms and create the social connections that are so important for teamwork, co-operation and performance. In such environments, their brains are better able to manage their allostatic loads, so they are more likely to perform at their best. There are two types of trust to consider here: cognitive and emotional.

Cognitive trust Cognitive trust is grounded in the belief that people are reliable and dependable and are able to collaborate for the good of the team and club. It can be established fairly quickly by demonstrating skills, competence and reliability.

An important way to foster cognitive trust is to ensure you keep your promises, thus maintaining the psychological contract between you and your team members. Often, when the psychological contract is broken, people’s discretionary effort diminishes quickly.

Avoiding rash emotional decisions, and being aware of the negative impact that decisions might have on people and their ability to connect with loved ones or trusted friends is also key.

Emotional trust Emotional trust takes longer to develop and is grounded in the belief that others care for us and are concerned about us. The best way to create this trust, and to develop deep personal connections, is to listen to people with genuine empathy and interest. Eye contact and facial gestures are also key when interacting with others, as is physical proximity. Oxytocin (a neurochemical that makes us feel good) is released when we are close to others who make us feel safe.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

Calm voices and friendly, familiar faces signal to the brain that an environment is psychologically safe; another reason why having a high turnover of staff can be problematic.

When it comes to evaluating your performance as an elite coach or manager, it’s natural to focus primarily on what is visible, measurable and familiar assembling a competent roster, training and conditioning techniques, player and team skill development, injury prevention and rehabilitation, player selection and match tactics. These are, of course, vitally important to success. However, often the key to managerial performance relies not only on what is visible or familiar, but what is inside our human biological systems.

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Techniques and Tools

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Techniques and Tools

PERSUASION & INFLUENCE The ability to influence and persuade others, skillfully and tactfully, is crucial for managers and coaches.

Words: Steve Martin

W

hile some people appear to have an inherent ability to engage and win over others, influence opinions and shape actions, these are skills we can all improve with practice and an awareness of some key principles.

Behavioural scientists have found that there are seven universal ‘shortcuts’ to influencing others, each of them appealing to our deeprooted human motivations. By using one or more of these scientific principles ethically and effectively you can improve the chances that your requests, ideas and points of view will be heard and acted upon.

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Leadership Theory, in Practice

GIVE FIRST When a friend invites us to their house for dinner or remembers our birthday with a card, we feel obliged to return the favour. Similarly, a sample given at the supermarket or a free trial of a new mobile app often leads to a purchase.

This is the principle of reciprocity in action, the social rule that says people are obliged to give back to others what they have first received. It is universal across all societies and cultures.

A crucial, yet frequently overlooked, feature of the reciprocity principle concerns the order of the exchange; it is the person who gives first that activates its power. This powerful, psychological compulsion to return favours means that, to be an effective persuader, one must first be an effective giver.

Proactively helping others in meaningful ways creates a network of obligation that boosts the chances that those we have helped will in turn help us, should we ever need it. For example, if a journalist is especially supportive and sympathetic when reporting your recent run of bad results, it might be because they feel a sense of obligation on account of your willingness to share openly with them in the past.

SHOW THAT YOU KNOW When deciding on the right course of action, we frequently take shortcuts in an attempt to navigate through the demands of modern life. One of these shortcuts is to follow the advice an expert. Experts carry remarkable persuasive power in our society and research shows that the most persuasive authorities have both expertise and trustworthiness. Visible signs of expertise, be they certificates on walls or the clothes we wear, can subtly influence onlookers’ perceptions. For example, studies found that physiotherapists who prominently displayed their diplomas measured 30 per cent greater compliance to the fitness and exercise regimes that they recommended than those whose expertise was not on show.

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SEEK PUBLIC COMMITMENTS Studies show that people’s future behaviour is often consistent with commitments they have made voluntarily and publicly in the past. For example, visitors to a gym were asked whether they backed a ‘use water responsibly’ campaign being promoted at the club. For those who did, half were asked to sign their name to signal their support. These same people subsequently spent significantly less time in the shower following their work out.

The consistency principle can be particularly helpful when job seeking. If you are ever contacted about, or shortlisted for, a new opening it can be beneficial to enquire of the reasons why they contacted you. If you do this early in the exchange the recruiter is likely to respond by publicly stating, and therefore committing to, their own voluntary reasons for considering you a suitable candidate. They are subsequently more likely to be consistent with those commitments.

APPEAL TO LOSS People typically want more of the things they can have less of and place a greater value on things that are dwindling in availability, or difficult to acquire.

Research shows there is one type of ‘scarcity’ that is particularly persuasive loss aversion. This is where we naturally weigh losses about twice as heavily as gains, hence why it feels more painful to lose £50 than it feels joyful to win the same amount.

Appealing to loss can be an especially good persuasion strategy when you need someone to take action. When researchers from the University of California provided homeowners with an estimate of how much money they could save each year if they carried out a series of simple energy efficiencies, hardly anyone actioned their advice. When it was communicated to another group as how much they would lose, rather than save, twice as many were spurred to action.

It might be helpful to experiment with different gain and loss-based messages when encouraging players to adopt new ideas and practices.

Focusing their attention on what they could lose in the future by not following advice may make a big difference.

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USE PEOPLE POWER The social proof principle says that when seeking to make a decision, particularly where no single, reliable and objective answer exists, we tend to follow what the people most like us are doing. Therefore, rather than relying on our own personal powers of persuasion, we can seek to engage the vastly more powerful and persuasive impact of others’ actions. In other words, if you want to persuade someone to take a particular course of action, point to the many others like them who are already doing what you are recommending.

It is, however, important to be aware when using the social proof principle that it has the potential to backfire. For example, if you attempt to reduce tardiness by communicating that some players are always late for training, the result might be that people think ‘if lots of others are late, it won’t matter so much if I am too’.

SHOW YOU LIKE THEM It’s well known that we prefer to be persuaded and are more likely to say ‘yes’ to people we like, but actually we’re even more likely to be persuaded by people who like us. This makes sense, because while there’s no objective reason why we should be convinced by someone simply because we like them, there is a very important reason why we might want to follow the advice of someone who we know likes us. People who like us typically have our best interests at heart.

When starting a new role or bringing in new players, rather than finding ways to get others to like you, look for likable characteristics in those you are managing and find ways to communicate your liking.

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NOT YOU AND ME, BUT WE Although it’s true that people prefer to be persuaded by those who they share something in common with and who like them, there is something else that they are likely to favour - a shared identity. This ‘unity’ is not about simple commonalities, but about the labels that individuals use to define themselves and their groups. They include race, ethnicity, nationality and family, as well as political and team affiliations. Consequently, if you signal the existence of a unity between you and an individual or group who you are seeking to convince, it may boost your influence over them.

The presence of an already existing unity, like family or nationality, provides any communicator with an obvious and likely effective tactic. However, where such a link isn’t available, there are other options. Research shows it is, in general, far more effective to ask an individual or group for advice, than for feedback or help. This is because asking for advice puts people in a cooperative state of mind, which stimulates a linking of their identity with another’s. In contrast, asking for feedback or help places people in an introspective mindset.

Like many of the persuasion principles outlined here, a subtle change in the words used or when you use them can have a significant impact on your powers of persuasion.

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BUILDING & MAINTAINING TRUST While trust alone won’t always result in elevated performance, without it success is very hard to attain. Three key elements can help you to foster trusting relationships.

Words: Steve Martin

T

rust is a crucial ingredient in any human relationship. It influences the manner in which we relate to one another and serves to indicate the quality of personal relationships. Nearly every human activity that requires us to engage with others is dependent upon trust, and without it it is impossible to build productive collaborations, enter into romantic relationships or foster prosperous economic exchanges.

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Trust can be categorised in two ways: competence-based trust and integrity-based trust. Competence-based trust concerns one person’s confidence in another’s abilities and is primarily based on what is known about their past. Their historical performance acts as a proxy to how much they can be relied upon to perform in the future. In a nod to the term assigned to cricket and rugby players who can be relied upon to consistently catch the ball, we call these people a ‘safe pair of hands’.

Integrity-based trust, meanwhile, is a form of trust that requires us to have faith that someone will honour their word and abide by virtuous social rules and norms, even when temptations to violate them arise. Although these two types of trust are different, one thing binds them, confidence. At its core, trust is how confident we feel in our ability to predict the future actions of someone else.

Trust, therefore, is a leap of faith, a belief that an individual or team won’t let us down. Trust is fragile, hard to attain, easily squandered and entirely subjective.

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THE THREE Cs When looking to build and maintain trust, a trio of factors can help: Contact, Consistency and Contrition.

Contact In general, we are predisposed to trust others. This is because groups, be they families, teams, organisations, communities or even whole societies, typically operate more productively and more efficiently when the individuals within them trust each other and cooperate.

The starting point for any interaction is contact and this is crucial to trust, because it activates what behavioural scientists call a ‘social exchange’.

Researchers at Stanford Business School have shown how the activating of social exchanges through early and frequent contact can aid trust building.

Their studies found managers who initiated, maintained and encouraged social exchanges with their co-workers were not only rated the most productive managers; they were considered the most trustworthy too. As the frequency of these social exchanges increased, so did a variety of other tangible and intangible benefits, like collaboration and performance.

There’s a neat lesson here - propagating trust requires a lot more than mandatory exchanges at training sessions. True trust comes through repeated contact. Other research shows that long-term trust is especially likely to be forged when early and successful social exchanges are undertaken during particularly stressful times and situations.

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Consistency Given that trust is our prediction about how someone else will behave, the only place we can look reliably to make that prediction is the past. For that reason, consistency - defined as the steadiness of beliefs, attitudes and actions over time - is at the heart of who we perceive to be trustworthy. When we know that someone has behaved consistently in the past it increases our confidence that they will remain consistent in the future. This is why the setting of concrete goals, the maintaining of habits and rituals and the resistance of temptations to deviate from them is key to building trust with others. It also explains why trust can take time to develop and grow.

It’s worth noting that, when it comes to building and maintaining trust, it is the consistency of action rather than the telling of truth that is important.

There is a common misperception that trust and truth reside on the same side of a coin, but they are not the same. Truth is fact based and objective, while trust is relationship based and softer. This might explain why some leaders (particularly in politics) can outwardly lie and yet maintain their trustworthiness, at least amongst their supporters. It is also important to recognise that, while consistency is key to trustworthiness, it can cease to become effective if it crosses over into a dogged persistence. Hence the importance of the third factor when building and maintaining trust, contrition.

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Contrition Sometimes our plans and ideas can become derailed and how we deal with these situations can impact heavily on our trust. There is a place for offering justifications and excuses for why things went wrong, or even an outright denial. But research shows that appropriate use of contrition - defined as the readiness to admit an error or fault - can also provide a welcome boost to trustworthiness, even though it may cause a temporary dent to your reputation.

Contrition helps to re-establish a social connection. It can be open and heartfelt, or carefully hedged with a justification or an excuse. Studies have found that people tend to be more willing to believe those who take responsibility for an error or fault and trust them more in the future than those who point the finger elsewhere.

That doesn’t negate the potential risks. A manager may be admired for their contrition and openness, but criticised for their complicity in failure, and repeated apologies suggest ineptness. Where contrition is needed, however, remember these three guiding principles: do it quickly, do it sincerely, and communicate how things will be different in the future.

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ONE-TO-ONE CONVERSATIONS A good conversation requires effective questioning, active listening and, perhaps most important of all, careful planning and preparation.

Words: Dr Andy Cale

G

reat leaders prepare for a conversation much as they would for a job interview – they think about who they are speaking with and what they want to achieve, and they collate all the information and evidence they might need to provide context and to respond.

Preparation is essential in enabling you to structure your one-toone conversation, ensure it is productive and minimise the chance of conflict.

Planning starts with considering the purpose of the conversation, the outcome you would like to achieve, the back story and who it is you’re speaking with. The other person will be far more likely to engage with the conversation if they understand its purpose and how that fits into both their situation and the bigger picture.

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It is important in your preparation to gather enough evidence to support the points that you want to make and to ensure you can respond to any pushbacks from the other person.

As it’s more difficult to dispute facts and figures – they are not your opinion or the opinion of the person you’re talking with - they can help to take the emotion out of the situation and allow everyone to look at things more rationally. The less time you’ve had to prepare, therefore, the higher the chances of the conversation becoming tricky or confrontational. Indeed, if you sense in advance that it could be a difficult conversation, it may help to have other people present who can corroborate your evidence or provide other perspectives.

Skilled leaders also think about what the key turning points in the conversation might be and ensure they have the relevant information and evidence available so they can respond, whichever way the conversation goes.

While you can’t predict exactly what will happen, planning for various possible scenarios will help you to respond more calmly and constructively.

The key is to have a framework for the conversation, but be ready to come off that and go off script in order to respond to what the other person has said. That might include asking some follow up questions or asking them to clarify something or explain it in a different way.

EMOTIONAL SKILLS Regardless of your careful planning, you can never entirely predict what emotional reaction the other person will have to what you’re saying. Great leaders, therefore, use their emotional intelligence skills – their awareness of their own emotions going into the conversation and those of the other person – to read the situation as it develops and respond appropriately.

Active, reflective listening is essential for this and is crucial for any really effective one-to-one conversation. Until you can understand where the other person is coming from and how they perceive things, you won’t be able to demonstrate empathy and ask the right questions.

Skilled questioning, in particular where you invite the other person to come to their own conclusions and suggest their own solutions, is very effective,

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because it empowers the other person and means they’re more likely to show motivation and commitment in actioning what has been said. However, it’s important to remember that such questioning only works if you’re sure the other person is capable of coming up with the answers.

CLEAR NEXT STEPS It’s important to remember that just because you are leading a conversation doesn’t mean you have to do all of the talking. Effective conversations are a two-way process whereby you question and invite a response from the other person as well as sharing your own vision, beliefs and messages. You need to be self-aware and confident enough in yourself to be able to sell those ideas with passion, emotion and accuracy.

Great leaders are adept at centring the conversation on the individual they are talking with, while still positioning it within the broader context of the team or organisation. That’s powerful for the individual because they feel part of something bigger. Goal clarity is especially important here. They should come out of the conversation feeling inspired and energised, knowing that you trust them, and clear about what their next steps are.

As the leader, it’s important to call an end to the conversation by thanking the other person for their time and arranging to follow up the next day. After you’ve had time to reflect, and perhaps also gather more information, you can speak again to go over what was said or agreed.

This follow-up procedure is almost as important as the conversation itself, because it enables you to ensure there’s no room for misunderstanding. Skilfully done, it can also give you the chance to encourage them to think about other things that came up during the meeting.

Effective one-to-one conversations don’t happen by accident, they take careful preparation and require leaders who are authentic, inspirational, confident, trustworthy, honest and considerate. What’s more, such leaders embrace these conversations as opportunities to challenge, empower and inspire.

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CHECKLIST: Be clear about the ‘why’ – communicate what it is for and what you want to achieve from it to the other person.

Choose your time and place carefully - think about privacy, and how relaxed or professional it needs to feel, and allow enough time that you are not rushed.

Be careful with off-the-cuff one-to-ones – while these may be unavoidable it is sometimes better to buy yourself time to plan and prepare.

Be passionate – be prepared to share your experiences, views and emotions.

Information and evidence – have everything to hand to back up your messages and respond to the other person.

Make it about them – they should feel that they are the centre of attention, while understanding their place in the bigger puzzle.

Use active listening – understand the other person’s perspective. Use questioning to dig deeper.

Ask the right questions – they will engage and commit more deeply if they have identified the problems and solutions rather than being told.

Monitor emotions – if things get too fraught, consider postponing.

People are less likely to listen or be rational when emotional, so it’s difficult to achieve a productive outcome.

Follow up – make sure they have taken away the right messages and know what next steps to take.

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FEEDBACK Delivering feedback in a way that is productive and non-threatening is a skill that takes time and practice to master.

Words: Simon Drane

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he benefits of good feedback are considerable and well proven, and become especially apparent when you consider what happens when feedback is absent. With no information or point of reference it becomes impossible to judge accurately your performance and progress, or to gauge where you are in relation to your end goal. You are also in the dark on what you’ve done well and should repeat, and what you should do differently, less often, or cease doing altogether.

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Given that there are no end of benefits to receiving good feedback, you would think that people’s response to receiving it would be entirely positive.

However, the opposite tends to be true; the barriers often go up, because it is perceived as a threat to the recipient’s ego and self-esteem.

What’s important for leaders when providing feedback, therefore, is to do so in such a way that it doesn’t activate this primitive threat response. In part, this comes from regularity, and making it part of the team’s culture. When given often enough, feedback becomes the norm, so is no longer feared.

INCREASE FEEDBACK FREQUENCY Given that performance is happening and can be influenced day to day, feedback should be ongoing and regular. Team members have the best chance to change or rectify what they are doing if their performance is constantly reviewed and relayed to them. Delivering feedback little and often like this also enables you to nip any issues in the bud more easily.

Overloading a piece of feedback can leave the other person with too much to think about and may result in them feeling overwhelmed or even demoralised.

POSITIVE AND FUTURE FOCUSED As humans we crave improvement, but are predisposed to listen out for negatives. Therefore, to increase the likelihood of your feedback really being heard and received as intended, it’s important to ensure that the content is largely motivational.

With any area of performance that needs to be improved or changed, it’s best to look forwards at what can be changed rather than backwards at any shortcomings. It should focus on what it is that the individual does well that they could do more of or suggest a different approach. ‘I know you can do even better than that tomorrow’ will be far more effective as feedback than ‘what you did this morning was poor’.

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PERSONALISE IT The challenge for the leader may be to deliver this motivation-focused feedback as authentically as possible in a way that really hits home. To increase the likelihood of your feedback being heard and digested, it’s important that it is behavioural, specific and delivered in the first person.

If you present information as something ‘a member of the team told me’ it becomes far more difficult for you to support or substantiate it when challenged by the recipient. It is also likely that rather than continuing to listen to the content of your feedback they’ll be wondering who it was who commented on their performance.

PRACTISE AND IMPROVE It is not only those on the receiving end that tend to shy away from feedback; many leaders avoid giving it as often as they should. One of the most cited reasons for this is the fear of a negative reaction, and the potential ensuing breakdown in relations.

When these fears arise it is important to challenge the assumptions you are making about your team members, and think about how you might help them perceive and respond to the feedback in a positive way. Ultimately, giving succinct, direct and specific feedback will always lead to better outcomes than trying to soften the blow by downplaying its significance or avoiding it altogether.

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EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK – 4 TO TRY: Normalise it - aim that feedback becomes a fundamental and expected part of everyday life for the team.

Remember the why - when planning what you want to say and how to say it, think about the outcome you hope to achieve, namely specific improvements in their performance or behaviour.

Stick to the facts – back it up by evidence, where possible, and don’t resort to hearsay, emotions or personal opinions.

Don’t exaggerate - terms such as ‘always’, ‘all’ and ‘never’ tend to make things sound final and unchangeable.

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GUIDE CONTRIBUTORS SIMON DRANE In a career spanning almost two decades, Sport Psychologist Simon Drane has a track record in applying psychological principles to enable elite athletes and business professionals to enhance their performance, reach their goals and achieve their ambitions.

Drane has held positions at the highest level of Olympic Sport, including Head of Psychology for British Athletics and Lead Psychologist at The English Institute of Sport. He is also very experienced in successfully transferring this knowledge across to business executives in a range of sectors.

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JEREMY SNAPE Jeremy 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.

Jeremy is a founder of Sporting Edge, 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.

Sporting Edge 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

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DR ANDY CALE Dr Andy Cale is one of the UK’s most experienced coach educators and author of Advances in Coach Education and Development, which discusses the latest developments in the field from the particular perspective of The FA. Dr Cale has worked in football and education for over 25 years and brings a unique combination of high-level practical experience (as a UEFA Pro Licence coach) and coach education, with a strong academic foundation.

He has enjoyed a career with organisations including Sheffield United as a sports psychologist, The FA as Head of Player Development and Research, and The New Saints as a manager in the Champions League. He was appointed Senior Football Manager for Qatar 2022, but returned to England to settle in Worcester, where he is now employed at the University of Worcester as Director of Coaching.

CONTACT a.cale@worc.ac.uk

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STEVE JOHNSON Wellbeing Science Institute CEO Steve Johnson is one of Australia’s leading whole-person wellbeing experts. A qualified and registered psychologist, Johnson consults with leading organisations in elite sport, defence, government and corporate sectors. He is the current Wellbeing Advisor to the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia, the Soldier Recovery Centre at the Gallipoli Barracks, Brisbane, and to the Australian Cricketers’ Association.

Johnson developed the world’s first Elite Athlete Wellbeing Management qualification for people who work with elite athletes. The Wellbeing Science Institute has trained over 300 Athlete Wellbeing Specialists and recently conducted the course at Loughborough University in the UK. Johnson spent over a decade working as a senior executive with leading global organisations across a range of sectors in Australia, UAE, Europe and the US. He spent seven years as a University Lecturer, was the course author of Australia’s first undergraduate sport psychology degree and was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School’s Post Graduate Leadership Programme in Boston, US. CONTACT steve@wellbeingscienceinstitute.com

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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.

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

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TIM FOSTER Tim has competed and coached in six Olympics, three as an athlete in the national rowing team (1987–2000). As an athlete he won a total of nine World Championship and two Olympic medals, only twice in 14 years failing to medal.

After winning a gold medal as part of the Coxless Four at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Tim retired from international rowing and transferred straight into coaching. He coached the GB Team from 2001 to 2006 and was Head Coach of the Swiss National Rowing Team from 2007 to 2012, successfully transitioning the Swiss into their most successful period for 20 years, including Olympic success.

Since 2012, Tim has focused on translating his skills to business. He has mentored businesses and individuals across many sectors, including financial, legal and professional services. Clients have ranged from FTSE 100 companies to over 300 start-ups, which Tim has mentored through their early years.

Tim is an expert on Leadership, teamwork and change management. He runs his own consultancy business and works with both the Saïd Business School and Oxford Brookes University, as well as advising football managers in their personal and career development, as part of his role as the Head of Performance for the LMA. Tim.Foster@leaguemanagers.com

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DR BRIAN MARIEN Brian is a co-founder and director of the Positive Group, a specialist learning provider dedicated to improving the health, wellbeing and performance of individuals and organisations through applied psychology and neuroscience.

Brian trained in medicine, gained a Masters in Health Psychology from Surrey University, and went on to train in cognitive and behavioural psychology at Kings College, London.

Over the past 10 years Brian has worked collaboratively with a team of highly experienced psychologists at the Positive Group, drawing on the latest advances in neuroscience, cognitive, behavioural, social and occupational psychology to create a range of programmes specifically designed to improve psychological fitness and performance.

Clients include Accenture, Google, Grant Thornton, Goldman Sachs, Shell, KPMG, IBM, JP Morgan, Latham and Watkins, Amgen, Oxford University, Clifford Chance, Ernst and Young, Foreign Office, NHS Trusts, and the BBC. Positive is now working with over 30 schools and several universities raising awareness of the importance of psychological health and delivering an evidence-based approach to embed sustainable, adaptive behavioural change. Brian has been a visiting lecturer on the MSc Health Psychology Course at Surrey University and a visiting lecturer on the Programme for Human Resource Management, Organisational Behaviour at the Department of Organisational Psychology, School of Business, Birkbeck College and the MSc Oncology Course, Institute of Cancer Research.

He worked as Medical Advisor on psychological health and wellbeing to NHS Sussex. He has written numerous articles, taught and lectured widely on evidence-based techniques for improving psychological health.

CONTACT www.positivegroup.org brian.marien@positivegroup.org

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