The Making of a Leader
Tom Young's book The Making of a Leader explores what elite sport can teach us about leadership, management and performance. Tom takes us into the world of seven individuals operating and leading within a range of high performance sporting environments across the globe, sharing their insight and wisdom. As well as examining their routes to leadership, their drive, and their sense of purpose, the book provides some brilliant lessons that leaders everywhere can take across into their own worlds.
Tom has kindly taken the time out of his schedule to answer some of the big questions that we think will be particularly relevant to the Sport and Beyond network. We cover talent vs character, common goals, the relationship between short term goal setting and longer term direction, the primary role of values and behaviours, as well as the concept of a leadership philosophy. We also address the lack of gender diversity in Tom’s interviewees.
You address the issue of talent versus character in the book. Can you give us a bit of insight on this?
This was an area that really resonated with me. When you watch sport, you often hear commentators refer to ‘character’ as something an individual may or may not possess - they talk in a very fixed way. I wanted to go a little bit deeper and first understand what ‘character’ really means. I found some research by Professor Martin Seligman, who had broken down character into six ‘virtues’ and twenty four associated strengths. It was fascinating.
Talent alone is not enough, although it certainly helps. To get through the door at an elite sporting organisation talent is a prerequisite. We would be naïve to think any differently, but in high-stakes environments it is the interaction between grit, talent and character that impacts an individual’s development and growth. Michael Jordan’s famous quote ‘talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships’ certainly rings true. This is echoed by Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, who is quoted as saying ‘talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling’.
In an ideal world, the talent available to leaders would strike an appropriate balance with an individual’s character and leadership. In reality, this is no easy task and, as Stuart Lancaster describes, ‘it really is quite unique, utopia, to find someone who can do it all’. I was keen to explore what the leaders were looking for from their people and their take on the ‘talent versus character’ debate. It is an area that represents a constant balancing act.
Ashley Giles, then Performance Director at Lancashire County Cricket, described his thought process when selecting his captain, eventually opting for character over experience. In cricket, the captain decides the batting order, the bowlers for each over and where fielders are positioned. This decision-making and understanding of tactics and strategy, in conjunction with the lesser role played by coaches, means the role carries more direct responsibility than in other sports. Giles’ successful candidate, Tom Smith, had no real leadership experience but Giles saw him as ‘a fantastic character and one of our best players, respected by everyone, and you never heard a bad word said about him. You can bolt skills on to good people. You can’t do that without the right ingredients.’ While Smith might not have had the practical experience, in the loyal Lancastrian Giles saw the raw human ingredients of the on-field leadership he values.
The elements of talent and character are both considered by leaders when identifying and selecting their on-field leadership teams. Roberto Martínez looks for three main aspects: emotional stability, because a leader ‘cannot be emotionally unstable from one day to another’; understanding, ‘because it is a multicultural dressing room [with] different nationalities, different types of people and as a leader you cannot be narrow-minded’; and, finally, ‘you need to have really high standards’.
Martínez’s captain with Belgium was Vincent Kompany, the eminent central defender who spent most of his career at Manchester City, before taking on the dual role of player-manager at his first club, RSC Anderlecht. Kompany, who commands the respect of teammates and has a convenient habit of scoring crucial goals, has struggled with injury over the years, meaning he has not been fit to play as many games as Martínez would like. However, by all accounts he fits the bill perfectly in terms of the human qualities outlined here. Note that the words used by Martínez – emotion, understanding, standards – are a far cry from the stereotypical ‘motivational’ qualities we may have come to associate with on-field leadership of the past.
The qualities set out by Martínez and exemplified by Kompany are becoming increasingly sought after in a business setting too. In industry, there is a growing acknowledgement of the broad spectrum of effective leadership attributes. In my applied work, there appears to be a far-reaching desire to move away from ego-driven leadership and to develop traits such as emotional intelligence, resilience, trust and authenticity.
A major driver of high performance in a team, whether in sport or elsewhere, is a common goal. What did you discover about individual alignment to a common goal?
A leader really starts to see a shift in momentum when they are able to align their team goal(s) with the raft of individual drivers that a group of athletes will invariably possess. If you think of a team, one player will be driven by representing their local club, another wants to play for their country, one might want to make their family proud, and another might be driven by financial rewards. And that’s all OK. People are different. The sweet spot for a leader is when those individual athletes see that, by committing to the team goal, they will also move closer to their own individual motivations.
Individuals will ultimately hold different agendas and ambitions, often dictated by their respective levels of talent or desire. It is vital that a leader is aware of such contrasting motivations, as this information provides crucial leadership nuggets that can be tapped into over time. They might decide to challenge a player’s thinking and explore their personal drivers in more depth. However, in these situations a leader must put their own beliefs aside and avoid forcing their personal opinions on to the player. It is quite natural for us to believe that everyone should think like we do. This can be a challenging moment; a leader might not necessarily understand or agree with a certain reason or motivation, but the priority is to unite players behind a common group goal.
What did you learn about goal setting, and how it links in with longer term aims?
The leaders saw their role as more about setting direction than setting SMART goals in the traditional way. Sean Dyche talked in detail about how he wants his team to win, while Ashley Giles discussed the importance of setting challenging team goals amongst individual agendas. He links that process to his vision for the organisation. Effectively set goals can channel individual plans towards the wider mission:
“Teams who have a lot of fear and insecurity don’t set goals because they are scared of failure. You need to reassure teams that it is good to set these goals and that they are not always instantly attainable, but they should be big goals. What is the point of having medium goals? If you know where you want to go, you’ve got a chance of getting there. It is like having a satnav, otherwise you haven’t got a clue, you are just aimlessly heading into the distance. Even if you have that massive goal and you get 70 per cent towards it, you are doing all right. But if you don’t know you have got no chance, you are just cruising. Now, in terms of that vision and that goal, well, it needs to be something that joins everyone, to be a big team vision, because I am also a believer that there will be a lot of agendas, individual agendas, and that is fine.”
In the NFL, you have up to 60 players, all with different agendas and competing agendas. I asked Dan Quinn, then head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, how he goes about setting team goals. He looks to focus the team on specific ‘things that they can control that affect winning’. Ahead of the 2018 NFL season, those goals were to statistically be the best attacking team, to have the best turnover margin, to be the most poised team, and to display the right mindset in all situations they encounter. These aren’t simply outcome goals, for example, to win the Super Bowl. Of course that is a target, but it is the step-by-step goals, goals that can be constantly measured and evaluated throughout a season, on which Quinn focuses his attention.
When working with a client, I’ll start with big, stretchy goals, before drilling down to more focused and measurable process goals, which then link to daily habits and behaviours.
What insight did you gain around the primary role of values and behaviours in driving high performance?
This is another really interesting area. It is commonplace for an organisation to go through a workshop or seminar where they discuss and identify their values and behaviours. That’s a really good start, because it involves people in the conversation. However, there is a danger that, if not reinforced, they simply become words on a wall.
The leaders I spoke to took varying approaches to achieving this, but they all agreed on how important both values and behaviours are in creating a high performance environment. Ashley Giles took a formal approach, involving the players in a workshop. Sean Dyche, before discussing values, allowed the players to give their opinion on the culture via an anonymous questionnaire. He then looks to agree negotiables and non-negotiables with the group - and there are more negotiables than there are non-negotiables.
Gary Kirsten gave a particularly insightful example from his time as head coach of the Indian cricket team. By his own admission, his initial approach was naïve, delivering a formal presentation about culture, values and behaviours. It missed the mark with his highly talented group. His second approach was more successful. He decided to embody the values and the work ethic that he wanted to see, more so than anybody else. He carried bags, did extras, offered 121 coaching and won his players over by demonstrating the values he wanted to instil in them.
The initial conversation is important, but the constant reinforcement and revisiting of the desired behaviours and values is even more vital. As Dyche says, as the team evolves, ‘the players add detail, and we add layers each year, but the core values remain’.
In business terms, we must ensure we do not create values and behaviours and then simply talk about results and numbers. Bring the values and behaviours to the forefront of conversations and they are more likely to permeate through teams.
You write about leadership philosophy in the book. What does this mean to you and why is it important?
I always laugh at questions about leadership philosophy now. Not because it’s a silly question (it’s not), but because of Sean Dyche’s reaction when I posed it to him. He visibly recoiled when the word ‘philosophy’ was mentioned. His response is below:
‘It is still football. We are a football club. Using the word ’philosophy’, I mean it’s pseudo-intellect, isn’t it? It is putting yourself in a bracket of deep, guru-type thinking. That is the word philosophy in my head – life philosophy – and that’s when I go ‘no, no, hold on a minute’. I just think you have to be careful. The thing that annoys me: if you haven’t got a philosophy nowadays, you are almost deemed a dullard. How is that right? You can still be a really good planner and have ethos, culture, environment and all those words, but when you talk about philosophy . . . it is just a bit of a grand term for someone who is talking about football. It can be a little bit heavy for me.’
In a convex way, his dismissal of an overarching philosophy is a part of his own leadership philosophy, based on common sense, pragmatism, and relationships.
I think we do over-intellectualise sport at times. A lot of the leaders I spoke to have a real thirst for knowledge, they want to learn as much from business as we might from sport. It was interesting that, when I asked the question, some of the coaches spoke immediately about an on-field philosophy, as opposed to one focused on leadership. So, the term is still open for interpretation.
For me, a philosophy can be defined as a clear way of thinking about a specific role and is an extension of the leader’s personal values. A leadership philosophy comes under increased internal scrutiny when dealing with specific challenges. Stuart Lancaster described the role his own beliefs and values play when making high-profile decisions:
‘When I get faced with a decision about what direction to take, I often fall back to what I believe, what is my personal philosophy, where do I stand? And I am constantly checking and self-checking where I sit on one position or another and often it’s, maybe it’s from another manager or another sport, I am looking and thinking what would I do in that situation?’
In the volatile and dynamic environments where leaders operate, a clear philosophy can help guide them through the difficult decisions and tough calls that they invariably need to make. In the street and in the media, people are going to question their decisions, so a leader can take confidence from the fact that they have remained true to their beliefs and values.
Your interviewees are all male. Can you tell me why this is?
I’m glad you’ve asked this question. It’s something that I’ve grappled with and I actually considered including a statement in the book. The answer is two fold.
The first one is on me. When I started this piece of work, it was in the form of a piece of academic research, compulsory as part of my qualification to become a chartered psychologist. With that in mind, I maximised my contacts (and their contacts) to create an interview sample. The criteria was coaches who have managed in traditional team sport settings, and at the highest level. At that point, over four years ago, I just wanted to finish the research. Get the qualification and move on. The Making of a Leader didn’t exist. A conversation with Stuart Lancaster changed that when, having read the manuscript, he suggested it could be a book. At that point, I was keen to add some female viewpoints to the newly proposed book.
I reached out to some potential contributors but was unable to get a response. I then pressed ahead with the book and the result is what you see today. Looking back now, I should have pushed a little harder to gain a female perspective and, today, I’d probably have more luck, as a few people have since said ‘you should have asked me, I know them!’
I must also say that I think that the sample in ‘The Making of a Leader’ is, in many ways, representative of the sports leadership population, which is predominantly male. Over the last few years, we have seen more and more female leaders emerge, but they are still in the minority. With that in mind, I hope ‘The Making of a Leader’ can be seen as a small part of a bigger conversation.
Tom Young is a Performance Psychologist working in business and elite sport. Most recently he has been part of the coaching team to PGA Tour and Ryder Cup golfer Tommy Fleetwood and worked as a consultant to both the Belgian national team ahead of the World Cup in Russia, and the victorious European Ryder Cup team in Paris 2018. His book, ‘The Making of a Leader’ is out now, available on amazon and bookshops. Click here to order through Amazon.