Inside Out Culture
Cath Bishop and Colin Ellis - two people who have been at the heart of workplace culture for over 3 decades host a regular podcast that offers an insider’s view on culture and provides tangible actions that you can take on the outside.
As best-selling authors and consultants who work with cultures around the world, they not only talk about what's happening in the world of work right now, but also provide evidence and commentary to help you change the way you do things too.
From kindness to toxicity, from values to high-performance, Cath and Colin discuss a breadth of topics relevant to the way work gets done. Both are keen to help leaders, managers and colleagues gain competence and confidence to contribute more positively and proactively to their workplace environments.
Please do send in your questions for Cath and Colin to answer. You can email them at insideoutculture@gmail.com or message them on LinkedIn.
Sign up for the Culture Leaders Action Sheet: bit.ly/iocpmail
Instagram: @insideoutculture
Inside Out Culture
What to look out for in a summer of sport
The summer of 2024 has a plethora of large-scale sporting events. From the Tour de France in cycling, to the European Championships and Copa America in football, to the Olympics in Paris to name but a few!
Sporting teams and individuals will be looking to excel, so, on this week’s episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast, we are outlining what people should look out for - from a culture perspective - and talking about the conditions for sporting success!
Regardless of whether you're interested in sport or not, this episode will provide crucial insights into what ‘good culture' looks like.
---
Join us as we reveal strategies to close the gap and craft a workplace where values are not just spoken, but lived and breathed, paving the way for a more authentic and engaging organisational culture.
Instagram: @insideoutculture
Email your questions to: insideoutculture@gmail.com
Receive the Culture Leaders Action Sheet: bit.ly/iocpmail
Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look at insides of working culture and provide ideas, insights and actions for you to take on the outside. I'm Colin Ellis.
Cath:And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a different question or a different organization, and we'll use case studies, research and our own insights and experiences to help you change the way things get done in your world.
Colin:We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast and, as it's summer, as we're recording this in 2024, we are talking about what to look out for in a summer of sport, and there's plenty going on, Cath, at the minute.
Cath:My goodness, there is a lot, and actually we have quite a few conversations off the mic. So in between some of the podcasts we've recorded, we've been discussing oh did you notice this, coach? Did you see this happening in sport? And so we decided actually there's so much, there's so much richness that we'd actually create an episode around the summer of sports. So we've got Wimbledon, we're in the middle of the Euros and we've got the Olympics and the Paralympics coming up, Probably a few other things tucked in around the world as well. And what we wanted to do in this episode is sort of look behind what immediately gets shown on the TV to think about what else might we want to look out for? What can we learn? I'm always really avidly waiting for the interviews after events to kind of find out more about what's going on inside a team. I'm often sort of looking for the bits around the edges that don't get reported as much, to think about what's going on culturally. What are you looking forward to or what are you kind of watching at the moment?
Colin:Oh my God, I'm the same. I'm a team dynamic nerd. I always find myself on WhatsApp groups, particularly with my brothers, kind of defending decisions that have been made. I know we're in the middle of the Euros. We'll talk about England's latest performance, which was pretty underwhelming yesterday and, you know, during the group stages they weren't that great, and I would say it's about getting through. It's not about the best performance, it's about the performance you need to get through the group, and so I'm always looking for interviews, what people say. I'm looking at body language on the pitch, which is something I'm fascinated by. So anything related to culture and what it does is it enhances my enjoyment of the sport unless I'm watching Everton and my football team, because nothing enhances the enjoyment of that. So, yeah, so I mean let's start with England. So if you're not familiar with it, we won't go into too much detail about particular results.
Colin:But England, every tournament, carry the weight of the nation on their shoulders. There's an expectation, because they have good young players, that they're going to win stuff and they got through their group. But they really haven't played that well, but that's fine. Their job is to get out of the group. And then there was the first knockout game last night. So it was the last day of June and they were pretty poor. And then they equalized right at the day to send the game into extra time, and then they won't. So I'm, Cath, I'm you watched it right? I'm assuming the family is gathered around the table?
Cath:totally. I mean, I think you know anyone, uh sort of more people watch the, the euros or the world cup, don't they? Then they necessarily support the, the kind of premier league and we know a lot of people watch premier league as well. But it's something different when it's your nation, isn't it? And I'm a big fan of gareth southgate. I think he's done an amazing job. I think he's a very enlightened leader. I think he's very good at shaping culture. You can see he's really under pressure.
Cath:So there's something about this tournament that has seen the brilliant individuals yet to kind of click as a team. I feel really disappointed by the really negative kind of media and commentary that are just slating him and, to some extent, slating some of the footballers as well, and for me I think it's really fascinating. What is it that makes a particular group of brilliant individuals click in this circumstance and not in this circumstance? What are the things? There are so many uncontrollables around a team just because of the individuals. What's happened to them through the year? What's happened to them in their career, their own personal circumstances, the relationships within the group, when, of course, it's always changing Every tournament. You've got some older players and some younger ones coming in. So it's an ever-changing dynamic and for me I'm fascinated. So, rather than just start writing the obituary of Gareth Southgate, I'm thinking, wow, isn't this interesting? We know he's a really skilled leader. We know he's delivered the best results we've had in my lifetime. So that's half a century and he's struggling. Isn't that interesting? It shows you how difficult this is. It shows you how complex the alchemy is of getting a team to click. What are the things that aren't working?
Cath:And you know, certainly I think one of the things he did bring in was a certain freedom that previous teams you know the great individuals in the Beckham era you know they never delivered as a team and they seem to play under fear. Under fear. And one of the things that felt Gareth Southgate freed them up in the recent tournaments. When last time around they got to the finals of the Euros, quarterfinals of the World Cup I think the semifinals was it. Before that was, he seemed to give them a freedom and now they've lost that again and partly, I think that is raised expectations because they've done so well under him. But for me that's just fascinating, isn't it? Because what can he do to create, on this pressure cauldron, a way of helping them. Just, you know, come together and thrive.
Cath:I was really struck by sort of Julian Nagelsmann, the German coach, who's also fairly new in There've been some question marks over where the German team have been for some years and he said you know, 30% of coaching is tactics, 70% is social competence, and so that's what we're watching and we know that's complex, just as it's complex in all the organisations and workplaces we're in. So I really get tired of the quite hypocritical, uber-critical sort of media narrative. That's a bit outdated and I just want to be curious about what's going on. They obviously want to do well, they're obviously very impressive footballers at an incredible level, and yet isn't it difficult?
Colin:Yeah, it is. I think let's just park the English media to one side. English media when you're bad, they hate you and when you're good they love you. There's just no middle ground, and it's funny. I'm in the process of moving back to the UK and I'm not used to the adversarial nature of the media, or I'm sorry, I've forgotten what it was like living in australia. It's just not like this at all, and so I think the media will see it as their job to poke holes in in coaches that don't achieve, particularly when they've got a group of young players.
Colin:I don't know much about gareth southgate. I don't know him. I I I know from people who do know him that he's a lovely fella. I know that he puts a lot of time, thought and effort into culture, so for that he has my respect. I think what I've noticed as a fan and also as an observer of team culture is that his decision making perhaps wasn't as quick as it should have been. So yesterday was a case in point.
Colin:I think if I was managing a team and we were underperforming, you know and I always liken it back when I used to manage projects is we had a deadline to hit and we absolutely had to hit that deadline is. You know, sometimes you have to make the tough decisions, you know, and I remember replacing personnel on projects because they just weren't delivering, and that's what that's all I felt watching the game yesterday. I felt that he had the opportunity to change it, and I know he's a person that puts, he likes to give players the responsibility to respond and, and let's face it, he was saved by a moment of brilliance by one of england's best players in in um jude bellingham, and so I I think that was think that would be my only, not criticism, but my only, I suppose, observation is that he could have changed it earlier, and so I think some of the criticism that he's received for that is warranted. I mean, you know, the English media like to go on the attack regardless.
Cath:I think he simply can't win because if the results were great, they go oh so good. He trusts the players, that's right. He gives the team time to kind of get into the game. You know he doesn't mess them around and then when it isn't working, so you've got to change it, got to change it. I mean he said himself he was thinking of taking Drew Bellingham off. Last kind of brilliant Bicel kick, life-saving goal. So it's such tiny margins.
Cath:I think that the criticism suggests there is a right and a wrong and with so many variables out on the pitch and literally a split second changes things, I mean that's what makes the game interesting, that's why it's sport.
Cath:Otherwise we'd be able to predict they're a better team and so therefore they will win. It's because of that unpredictability that it's so compelling and yet all the time we seem to be wanting to say, oh, that shouldn't be the case. We should be able to deliver X, y, z. So I think that the sort of commentary and the criticism is it just doesn't really take account sometimes of the tiny margins, of what makes a team not work is also what can make them brilliant. And it's just such a tiny shift, a tiny click In a game where essentially it's a low scoring game. It's only one moment that could suddenly shift things, or a couple of moments because of the way football is set up. It gives the underdog a chance, it makes it quite difficult to dominate and we are at a level where all these teams are really good. They're playing for their countries and we've actually seen Germany struggle in games. We've seen France struggle in games.
Colin:There's no sort of acknowledgement.
Cath:Yeah, italy who won last time. So that also seems kind of odd to me. We should be celebrating, isn't it? How brilliant? It's such close margins. We're seeing the best at the top. Isn't it interesting how tight it is, how unpredictable it is? That's why it's so compelling, and yet that narrative just isn't played. There's some human right that England should be winning. They should be better, and if they're not, you know, I really get tired of commentary, really struggle with it, because I think it spoils the beauty of what sport represents and it also stops us from getting curious about what is going on. Why is it so difficult for people we know are brilliant to actually deliver in this moment? That's the beauty of elite sport is this kind of you're right on the edge of trying to do something against incredibly high standard, and we're going to see the same thing in the Olympics and Paralympics. It's tiny margins.
Colin:So that's our group therapy session for last night's England performance.
Cath:Yeah.
Colin:I want to talk about. I read a paper by Cruikshanks and Collins called Culture Change in Elite Performance, and so it's specifically related to sports. And again, you know, what we're trying to do here with this particular podcast is generate some curiosity around kind of culture. We're not trying to spoil it for you, by the way, all of a sudden you're going. Well, he didn't celebrate the goal, what does that say for culture? But here's some things that Cruikshanks and Collins found in their paper. Right, and they found that high-performing cultures prevail when the shared perception and action of elite team environment members, and there's these four things. So support sorry, support to sustain optimal performance persists across time in the face of variable results and you know that's what Cath was talking about there with regards to the England team and leads to consistent high performance Actually, it's three points, not four, sorry. Leads to consistent high performance. And so, when I read the paper, the nature of high performance is, it's evolutionary. However, what you need to do is to create something that supports sustained optimal performance. So this is the foundational nature of culture. Now, one of the best examples for me recently was the Ryder Cup, and the Ryder Cup, if you're not familiar with it, is golf, and so they did a lot of work. Luke Donald was the Ryder Cup, and the Ryder Cup, if you're not familiar with it, is golf, and so they did a lot of work. Luke Donald was the captain and they did a lot of work around culture before the tournament, and they attribute it to the success against the American team.
Colin:I read a really great interview with Rory McIlroy, who's one of Europe's best golfers, and he talked about the fact that the team was one of the best he's ever played on, even though golf is quite an individual sport. Yes, you're paired with other people, but it's quite individual. And he said one of the best bits of it. He said it was such a laugh with the other players. He said every night they used to have a dad joke left on the pillow and then they had to come and share their dad joke the next morning or whenever it was.
Colin:And he gave an example of one. If you're an american in the living room, what are you in the bathroom? And the answer is european, european, european. And so he said it's little things, you know it's a dad joke, he said, but it's little things like that. That all helped to build the team spirit. Now, cathy, you're someone who's performed in elite performance, obviously at the Olympics, so I'm really interested in kind of your take on what you've seen. Has it changed over the years? I mean, we were talking just off camera about the way that medal winners are treated differently, so I think they'd be great stories to share with listeners.
Cath:Yeah, so one of the interesting things about, uh, luke donald and and that european rider cup team is they work with owen eastwood, who is a brilliant performance coach, who puts huge and who gareth southgate and england team formerly worked with, and, uh, his whole approach is one of connection between athletes on a team and connecting them all to a greater purpose, like beyond winning. Why does winning matter? What does it represent? And actually, going briefly back to the England team, what I read the other day is they don't have a psychologist with them and they work with inspirational people from Pippa Grange to Owen Eastwood, and so I'm also thinking, hang on, there's been a really powerful part of the recipe that feels like it hasn't been invested in much, and I do wonder if that is part of what's going on. And that approach is about being part of a story as well, and that's how Southgate was starting to reframe what it meant to play for England and therefore free the players up, which, again, we're not seeing. And what Luke Donald was able to do is to create the conditions for these individuals to now feel part of a team. What does it mean? There's actually a beautiful YouTube video. It's just three minutes. We'll put the link to it, where Luke Donald takes you around the behind the scenes, how it's set up for them. There's nothing about winning. On the walls there are pictures of shared moments when they've come together in practice on previous occasions, in previous Ryder Cup's European team moments. So it's all of a team hugging at the end or a couple of players playing together and they have these pictures of Seve Ballesteros, who's a bit of a hero, and their representation of what it means to be a Ryder Cup player and have a wall with all the people who've ever played for the European Ryder Cup. That you're coming into this. So it's creating that sense of what you come into and that is now something that, across sport, lots of teams start to do.
Cath:There's this you know, when the athletes went to collect their team kit Adidas and you go. Now that's a big event we used to sort of turn up and use. You know, in a warehouse, pick up your kit, you get like literally a couple of suitcases full of t-shirts and your opening ceremony uniform, your closing ceremony uniform and your shorts and underwear and the top and a vest top and a bra top and you know you name it lots of stuff. It's a lovely part, it's a real privilege. But now they've turned that into a really special moment. So the athletes go and they go on a journey and the walls you know, we were just in a warehouse nothing really on the walls, maybe a couple of posters or something. But now it's.
Cath:You're part of this story and they have sort of athletes from the past. You know you're part of what's going to happen next and then there'll be a story kind of beyond you. So you feel that you're part of this ongoing story of Team GB and you're going to have your moment to play your contribution. But you're not just an athlete on your own now. You're part of something bigger and that's something that's been built out each time by the British Olympic Association, working with all of the sports to try and make it as somewhere you feel at home, somewhere you feel you belong.
Cath:So they always get into the Olympic Village ahead of the athletes arriving and troubleshoot. They take their own team of plumbers when they're in Rio. What might the problems be? Bed quality, bed mattresses, size of mattresses for your rowers and your basketball players. They think of all of these issues that come up in the past and they get in there ahead of time and sort them out. In fact there was a problem with plumbing in Rio. The Brits had sorted their stuff out and the Australians actually had to go and stay in hotels for a few days before they could come into the village. I mean, that's just disruption and at a time of immense pressure you want to minimise those disruptions that can really throw you off when you've got enough nerves kind of flooded around the system.
Cath:So there is a much greater emphasis on trying to create an experience in which an athlete is most likely to be able to go out there and give their absolute best performance and feel part of something bigger than themselves. You know, within each sports then there are, you know, sometimes there's a kind of shared team feeling as well. You know the rowing team will do their thing and you know you sort of connect. It looks a little bit different than different teams and one of the things that I hated that I hope they don't do anymore. You know you sort of connect. It looks a little bit different than different teams and one of the things that I hated that I hope they don't do anymore. In fact they won't do this year, because no one's getting on a plane, they're getting on the Eurostar was.
Cath:We used to have this thing that you'll go out together sort of on the plane, you know, just mixed up, and then you come back the medalists are in the first class and all the rest are in the back, and that's a real sort of sense, somehow, of being devalued. I think Of course we celebrate the medal winners. They've done brilliantly. But, you know, sometimes there's incredible performances that are done by other people who are in an event where the world record is broken or where they've overcome some incredible adversity and they've actually performed out of their skins and somehow we just sort of devalue that because it didn't come with the medal. You know, and actually when you arrive then at Heathrow one of the things you don't see on TV but if you sort of zoomed back behind the cameras, the cameras are sort of at the front step seeing the medalist come off and they take a picture. Meanwhile the rest of the plane is kind of coming out the back steps and then walking behind the journalist taking those photos, feeling a bit kind of like nobody cares about us.
Cath:You know, it doesn't matter, we've failed and I think we don't need to. You know, we don't need to sort of add that into rub, sort of rub salt into people's wounds. Of course you know the whole system is set up, but not everybody got a medal. You know what we want is to celebrate the story, celebrate everyone who's had you know their best performance and you know what Luck plays a role in this. Luck will fall well for some and less for others. There will be so many external factors you can't control and invent. That's what makes sports so interesting. So I think it's important that we don't have a sense of you personally are worth more as a human being because you won a medal and you didn't.
Cath:The strategy has shifted to talking about winning well rather than just winning. We don't want winning at all costs, but there's still a lot of murkiness about what that really means and there's still a lot of funding decisions that are made on the basis of medals. So I think sports are still really trying to find its way. What I think we should be looking for is the broader stories this summer in the Olympics. So look at actually what athletes have gone through to get to where they are and you know what does. What's the story they're going to leave with from this, uh, from this olympics and paralympics. Not just the medal. There's actually a human story behind it.
Colin:We can often learn a lot more for from yeah, I, I was fortunate enough to meet and and listen to uh arson venga, the former manager, arsenal manager, speak a few weeks ago actually, and he and he talked about the importance of creating and instilling in a team a performance culture. And he strikes me as someone who's always been ahead of his time. You know, he fundamentally changed English football with his real focus on diet and playing style and fitness, you know. And he said back then he said I was able to influence players, I was able to influence the club as a whole. He said, but it's not like that, so it's up to me to change, not to expect the world to change around me. And he said, you know, performance culture for him is one where the players turn up with their own story, share that and then ask, well, how can I get better with the people around me, how can I achieve my full potential and what changes do I need to make to get there? And so he, you know he outlined that in his book, his book, his biography, my life in in red and white, and he shared that and I and I really like that distinction.
Colin:You know, staying with football, manchester United were one of the, you know, kind of the most successful football teams in recent memory. And you know Alex Ferguson had a very you know United player. Talk about him. He said he was highly emotionally intelligent. You know he really took the time to build a relationship with players.
Colin:And Steve McLaren, the ex-assistant manager, you know he said in an interview. He said at some clubs you get players who think they've made it either because of a big transfer fee or they're highly talented, he said. But at Manchester United he said the manager and the other players would not stand for that and I think that for me, is what a kind of high performance kind of looks like. And you see this play out. You know the Chicago Bulls also a great example.
Colin:But you know that really stemmed from the manager who's written a great book called 11 Rings, phil Jackson, and every year he used to build the culture of the team. First he used to buy each player a book that he thought they would enjoy and then they all had to come back and talk about what they learned from the book. And the team set their own principles, but individually they had to be good, but also they had to work well as a team as well. And and that's something that you saw on the court. That's something you see on the pitch, where you don't need just one captain. You need a team of captains who take responsibility at the right time.
Cath:you can't have everyone as captain at the same time I like the that sense of focusing in on that character piece, on who are we as people, and for me, I just find that fascinating. You know, particularly when athletes are, you know when the competition isn't going their way, and you know. Same for the England team. I'm fascinated. How do they manage that? What are they thinking? What do they go back to? What behaviors come out at that point? I mean, one of the sort of interesting developing stories from the Euros is the Spanish team, who seemed to be firing on all cylinders Really impressive. So you know, again, I'm thinking, oh, what's going on there.
Cath:And a colleague and consultant in the culture space, jamie McPherson, a friend of mine. He was sort of been doing some research about Luis de la Fuente, who's the coach of the Spanish team, and he, interestingly, hasn't managed a big club but has come up managing the juniors, the under-19s team that won in 2015, the under-21s that won in 2019. So he knows a lot of these players really well and he has a really clear philosophy. And his philosophy is that a player's character and values are as important as form and talent. And he says what surprises me is that it seems exceptional, something that we should consider as natural. I prefer to work with good people, of course, great professionals, but also good people. He talks about this, that he wants a great group of people, a great human group, so I love this plays to my approach to focusing much more holistically on how sport is a mechanism for developing who we are together rather than a mechanism purely for winning a medal. Only one team can do that, but actually all of the teams can explore collectively what they're capable of and test themselves under pressure, and that's the beauty of the setting. And so I think having a coach like that sounds really quite inspirational, and I think it's been impressive to see the impact of that.
Cath:I mean, interestingly, southgate started off with that coming out of doing very well with junior teams as well, and that created some continuity and a sense of a common culture that these players were meeting at a younger age, and so you know what it means to be part of the England team or, in this case, with Luis de la Fuente. You know what it means to be part of the England team. Or, in this case, with Luis de la Fuente, you know what it means to be part of the Spanish team, and I think I do think that's so powerful. But it's not something you can sort of suddenly fix, like if something isn't going well and again you can't sort of in two days sort of suddenly change that. And you know that's the challenge, that culture is an infinite project, or I'm not sure project's the right word.
Cath:It's infinitely evolving, as we often talk about, and then it's put into this finite competitive situation and of course that's the challenge, isn't it? To sort of, oh well, if something isn't right in the culture, I can't necessarily change it. We have to think sort of longer term. So I think it's attracting some different coaching talent now into it, more thoughtful people like Arsene Wenger, like Gareth Southgate, like Luis de la Fuente.
Cath:And I think that also could apply into our workplaces, where we might think about how are we developing people in the workplace? Who are we becoming in the course of delivering this month's targets or this annual goal that we've been set? And I encourage leaders and managers to see that responsibility and opportunity to help people become better versions of themselves in the course of being part of your team and pursuing the goals that you're pursuing, because I think that's where we humanize the cultures we're in, that's where it gets really. You know, there's a bigger prize, a bigger opportunity, a bigger experience we can have and create in the environments that we're in experience we can have and create in the environments that we're in.
Colin:And I think it's important to remember all of the research. All of the research so Anderson 2011, cranenberg 2005, cuesta de Mduda, 2010,. All points to the fact that defined group culture significantly shapes member cognition, member behavior, member development, member well-being and member performance. And, as Cath rightly says, if it's going wrong, you can't just be like right, let's just bring everyone together. You know, one of the classic mistakes often that I read about is when players go on these SAS training camps and we think that that will immediately change performance.
Colin:Now, those things only help when the culture has already been defined. They don't actually define the culture in and of itself. And this is why, kind of you know, luke Donald, prior to the Ryder Cup, brought the team together. Pre-season is the perfect opportunity for football teams or, you know, baseball teams. Whatever your sport is, it's the perfect time to define culture, just like Phil Jackson did for the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers. So you can't immediately fix it, but what you can do is create the foundations ahead of time such that, when you need it, you can refer people back to what the agreement was, such that you generate that accountability all over again.
Cath:I think this is going to be really interesting with the Olympics this summer. We've got some really new events coming, or some events have just been in one Olympics and they're still sort of evolving. So you get some events that have been in literally centuries and now we've got breaking, we've got skateboarding, we've got sport climbing, we've got surfing.
Cath:That's actually out in Tahiti, in French Polynesia, and I think they often have quite different cultures from the more traditional sports that have been in for decades or centuries and I find that interesting to watch, to think also, you know, from one sport to another, how does the culture shift because of the history, because of you know the sort of traditions you might bring? And these are sports that haven't been shaped by being part of the Olympics, that often have not been shaped by winning medals at all. You see that with the Winter Olympics, some of those kind of the crazy, you know, extreme, the ones where they're doing tricks and all of that I can't remember what they're called now and some of those sort of what is it? Skiboarding oh, my goodness, I've lost it Snowboarding, snowboarding.
Colin:That's it.
Cath:You can tell I'm not a winter sports person. You can sort of see how they come from a culture where, like, taking a risk is what the sport is about, and it's better to have a go at something that's never been done before and risk winning the medal. It's better, though, to do that. That's what the sport is about, and they're cheering each other on and they're going wow, it's amazing, you attempted that, whether you land it or not, and it'd be interesting to see over time whether that sort of shifts, whether the medals, start to kind of creep in on their culture. But I often find some of those newer, younger sports have a really healthy perspective.
Cath:I was listening recently to Sky Brown, the kind of incredible British skateboarder who won a medal in Tokyo, and they were involved in qualifying.
Cath:She'd actually qualified and had a bit of an injury she was managing recently, but she went to do a competition to help her friend who's competing for Japan to qualify, because she wanted to make sure her friend was there, and I thought it was so interesting because it goes against this whole narrative of my goodness, you're helping another country, what is going on? But she's her friend, they train together, and I love that sometimes this sort of spirit of you know, actually we are part of something bigger, the sport that we do, that's bigger and that lasts well beyond. You know that community is there. For me, the rest of my life. That lasts beyond three minutes on the podium. Sure, we want to compete for that, we're happy to do that, we're competitive animals, but actually it's the community and the shared endeavor that comes first. So I think that's a really interesting thing to look out for with some of these new sports. How does the culture differ from some of the more traditional ones?
Colin:So, again, it's another podcast where I feel like I just keep talking. One final thing I will mention, because one of my friends once bemoaned the fact that he was watching a cricket match and he said why do they slap hands after every delivery? Why is it high five after every delivery? And that's an example of how the culture has shifted. Same with tennis, you know, when you see the doubles, they, you know, slap hands low five, whatever you want to call it. Again, all of these little dynamics, it's a real sign of how culture has really changed and a demonstration and Cath mentioned it just now of just how important connection is to the younger athletes, the younger sports. People have been brought up to expect different, and so it how important connection is to the younger athletes, the younger sports. Uh, people have been brought up to expect different, uh, and so it's fascinating.
Cath:So let's talk about the there was some research I think it was in beach volleyball, could have been basketball and I think it was beach volleyball where they again they, they kind of clap hands in between and they, they looked at the results of how often people were sort of high-fiving and connecting and how they did performance-wise and the teams that had greater connection, more hand slaps, did better.
Colin:Wow okay, I'm gonna get we'll.
Cath:We will dig them yeah, we'll try and look that out.
Colin:Yeah, yeah, yeah because that would be a really good one to share. All right, what are our three takeaways, kat?
Cath:So, yeah, actions, so it's a lovely one. Listen, observe, listen carefully to what the athletes and the teams talk about beyond the result. Yeah, so they're going to go. Yeah, we're happy we won or we're disappointed we didn't win. But then listen to what comes next. Listen carefully to what they talk about, because that gives you a sense of they really value and their character and how they're approaching it.
Colin:All right, so one thing to get curious about is look beyond the result. What do you notice about the team dynamics? Who's celebrating with who? How are they hand slapping? What are you seeing around the personalities? I always look out for those little interactions. How are people motivating each other? How are they holding each other to account? What do you notice about the culture from what you see in front of you? And then, lastly, Cath, what should we want people to uncover?
Cath:Yeah, so I mean building on that further. Yeah, what are the ways in which athletes and sports teams have developed their norms that are underpinning their performance? So what can you notice? What can you sort of uncover reading between the lines, or listening between what they say in interviews and things about how have they got to this place where they're able to bring their best performance under pressure. So what have they done to do that? Because often they will tell you that, but it might not be the thing the journalist or the interview is focusing on but uncover the ways in which athletes and sports teams have developed behavioural norms, values that underpin performance.
Colin:So what we've just done there is ruin sport for everybody.
Cath:So when they were just We've deepened it, we've deepened your experience, we've enriched this summer of a sport.
Colin:Yes, we have it's official.
Cath:You can spend time watching and studying it.
Colin:So get your notebooks out for England's next game, as well as your scarf. All right, Cath, great to talk about this fabulous subject. Thank you.
Cath:Brilliant Cheers. Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out.
Colin:Culture Podcast. Please remember to like, subscribe and, of course, share with others who you think may be interested.
