Lessons in success from Felix Baumgartner – The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Watching Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner standing on the capsule platform suspended below a paper thin balloon, moments before his leap from 128,100 feet above the New Mexico desert, I was filled with a mixture of emotions – admiration, anxiety, excitement and fear – willing him to succeed. I could barely breathe. I can’t imagine what he was feeling, though his words as he readied himself exuded a steady calmness:

About ten minutes later, after a four minute free-fall and successfully deploying his parachute, he landed safely in the New Mexico desert with a clutch of records to his name: Baumgartner had become the first skydiver to go faster than the speed of sound hitting Mach 1.24, reaching an estimated maximum velocity of 833.9mph (1,342km/h) hand he smashed the record for the highest ever free-fall of 24 miles (39km).

The millions like me who watched his death defying feat live on line must have breathed a collective sigh of relief and cheered, saluting Felix Baumgartner for his courage and achievement.

In the moment, it was all too easy to forget the years of planning that went into this venture – securing the funding, choosing the back up team, developing the balloon, capsule and spacesuit, to name just a few of the challenges.

Though what struck me as the spectacle unfolded was the detailed checklist that brought clarity, focus and dare I say it – routine and a sense of normality – to the proceedings. At mission control, Roswell airport, 200 miles south east of Albuquerque, retired US Air Force Col. and octogenarian Joe Kittinger, whose 50 year old records Baumgartner was attempting to break and who was acting as his radio link, calmly read step by step instructions to him. It was like eavesdropping on a relaxed conversation between work colleagues collaborating across a meeting table, with both men focused on the processs, not the outcome, until the moment when Baumgartner saluted and stepped into the unknown before successfully plummeting to earth.

Recently the Leadership Insights blog has focussed on the achievements of David Brailsford, Performance Director for Team GB Cycling and Team Principal for Team Sky Cycling. And while the link between Baumgartner and Brailsford may at first sight appear tenuous, on closer examination there are some parallels which may be relevant for us in our world:

• They had BHAG’s, as Jim Collins puts it – Big Hairy Audacious Goals
• They handpicked the team to achieve their goals
• They focussed on the process, not the outcome
• They were obsessed with the detail
• They achieved their goals

So as you step into the unknown this week, what will this inspire you and your team to achieve as a result? Post a reply, it will be great to hear from you.

Photo source on twitter: @lewiswhite92

Humility is a key characteristic of effective leaders like David Brailsford. What about you?

Richard Moore’s book ‘Sky’s the limit. Wiggins and Cavendish: the quest to conquer the Tour de France’ provides fascinating insights into the vision, values, ethos, plan and execution of Team Principal David Brailsford, who is also Performance Director for Team GB Cyling. Among the many lessons is one that resonates deeply with me and I’ll explain why, later in this piece.

In the quest to win the Tour de France ‘clean’ with a British team, Richard Moore describes Brailford’s ethos on several occasions in his book – that the team is there to support the cyclists. Team Sky’s coaches, psychologists, sports scientists, therapists, doctors, mechanics, nutritionists, chefs and administrators have one aim – to serve their needs:

“Our philosophy has always been about everybody trying to support the riders to be the best they can be.”  

“We – the coaching and support staff – are the minions. We’re there to help the riders. It’s all about the riders. They’re the kings and queens of their world.”

Brailsford is consistent with this message. In a BBC report in 2008, while talking about track cycling as opposed to road racing, he says:

“We put the riders in the middle; we’re just the minions around them giving them expert advice.” 

“We know our place in the whole team and that’s really important and everybody buys into that.” 

Now it’s one thing to say it. It’s another to actually do it. And to do it consistently, day in and day out requires humility – to take a modest or low view of one’s importance. It requires everyone to leave their ego at the door, so pay attention please, Premiership and England footballers. It’s interesting to note that FA Chairman David Bernstein is to bring in a code of conduct for England players. Perhaps humility will be one of the tenets of the code. We can but hope.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that David Brailsford’s humility and ‘minion’ approach resonates with me. When I joined Marks & Spencer as a management trainee in 1973, I was sent on a three week (yes three weeks!) induction programme with 35 other trainees. On the first morning, the Head of Training used an overhead projector to support his presentation. He drew out on a transparency – beamed onto a screen – a simplified structure of the business, starting with the Board of Directors, down through the executive and management layers to the shop floor sales staff. As he drew, he outlined the headcount for each layer and his diagram took the shape of a triangle – with a few people at the top, and many at the bottom. And then he did something that really surprised me. He turned the transparency round, so that it was an inverted triangle instead and said:

“We all exist to support the sales floor staff – we are all here to serve them, because they serve the customer. And without the customer, we don’t exist. Remember that.”

I’ve never forgotten it and carry that thought to this day. And some 35-40 years later, David Brailsford and his team who support the cyclists – whether on the track or the road – are achieving astonishing success following the same principle of humility.

Now compare that with your business or organisation. If you’re in a leadership position, who needs are you serving? Yours or those of the organisation?  If it works for Cycling, could it work for you?

In his book ‘Good to Great’, Jim Collins describes his model: the 5 levels of leadership, with one being the lowest and five the highest level. He describes level 5 leaders as having a curious combination of humility and iron-will determination. Doesn’t that describe David Brailsford? Now take a look in the mirror: does it describe you?

Post a reply and let me know what you think. It will be great to hear from you.

3 lessons leaders can learn from David Brailsford about the pursuit of team success

Episode four in Sky Atlantic’s recent series British Cycling: Road to Glory documented Team Sky’s bid to win the 2012 Tour de France and it proved fascinating as well as topical, coming as it did in the wake of stunning successes at London 2012 on the road as well as the velodrome.

On the surface, the programme explained the steps that were taken to support Bradley Wiggins in winning the Tour; though at a deeper level there were some valuable insights into Team Principal David Brailsford’s ethos that can be applied in pursuit of team success beyond sport and in particular in business. Below are three key lessons leaders can learn and apply in their world…

1. A commitment to learning and self-development. When David Brailsford was interviewed in his office/study, there were plenty of books on the shelves behind him that demonstrate that he is a man who looks outside the world of cycling for inspiration, knowledge and insight. For instance: Good to Great, by Jim Collins, Getting things done by David Allen, Leadership, by Rudolph Guiliani, The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons and on Leaders and Leadership by John Wooden and Steve Jamison to name but a few. He is clearly committed to raising his self-awareness and knowledge about what it takes to succeed by learning lessons from others.

Leadership lesson: what are you reading, watching and listening to, to inform you and raise your self-awareness in your role? 

2. An unambiguous, ambitious, compelling vision. According to Richard Moore’s book  ‘Sky’s the limit. Wiggins and Cavendish: the quest to conquer the Tour de France’, David Brailsford’s ambitious vision for a GB cyclist to win the Tour de France for the first time in the Tour’s history began to take shape in July 2007. More than that, Brailsford wanted to win it ‘clean’ and within the realms of ‘performance credibility’ (not on drugs) as Peter Keen, his predecessor at GB Cycling put it.  It’s important to put Brailsford’s vision into context. July 2007 was:

• The pre-banking crisis era: when investment was easier to attract for such a venture
• The doping era: the front page of France Soir (July 25, 2007) announced the death of the Tour, age 104 years old.
• Not the focus for elite GB cycling: lottery funding was focussed exclusively on track not road cycling.

Brailsford’s vision was clearly unambiguous and certainly ambitious. As he said in the Sky Atlantic tv documentary: “if we aim for the stars, we might hit the moon” and such a vision certainly attracted likeminded people.

Leadership lesson: what’s your vision? Is it ambitious? Unambiguous? Compelling?

3. Team interests before personal interests. What became apparent in Sky tv’s documenting of the unfolding story of the Tour was the way that egos were kept under control in pursuit of the team goal. Everyone on the team had a clear role and responsibility and that was to support Bradley Wiggins and maximise his chances of winning the Tour.

The best example was the way that talented cyclist Chris Froome put his own ambitions  on hold to support his team mate in pursuit of the stated and agreed team goal of winning the overall Tour. It may have been a struggle for Kenyan born Froome off camera or away from the media. However, in public and certainly in his actions on the course, his loyalty could not be doubted: “anyone in a team position has to make personal sacrifices for the sake of the team and that’s what’s we’ve been doing so far and it seems to be working for us. So why stop doing that?” he explained in the press conference after stage 11 of the Tour. 

Leadership lesson: are you/your colleagues putting team goals and interests first? If not, what’s stopping you? What will you do about that?

There are so many lessons leaders can learn from the way David Brailsford has achieved success in the velodrome and on the road over a sustained period of time against the odds and against fierce competition. What have you learned? What have you actioned? And if this blog post has inspired you to take action now, what will you do? Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.

Click here for my earlier blog piece on leadership lessons we can learn from David Brailsford.

 

 

As a leader, what’s your default position in pressure situations and does it serve you?

It is now commonly accepted that in pressure or danger situations, the amygdala – which is part of the limbic system or mammalian part of the brain – reacts emotionally in one of three ways. Typically we will:

• Fight
• Flee
• Freeze

…hence the expression – ‘fight or flight response’ – first coined by Walter Bradford Cannon, M.D. (1871–1945) an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School.

In humans, the fight response may be manifested in angry, argumentative behaviour and the flight response through social withdrawal, substance abuse and even television viewing.

Males and females tend to deal with stressful situations differently. Males are more likely to respond to an emergency situation with aggression (fight), while females are more likely to flee (flight) and turn to others for help, or attempt to defuse the situation.

As a leader when in stress situations, what do you typically do? Does it:

• Serve you?
• Your colleagues/team members?
• Your organisation?

…and if not, what can you do about it?

Paying attention to your typical or default response will raise your self-awareness, the foundation of more effective leadership. Become more aware of your shallower breathing, raised heart-rate, sweaty palms. Once you are more aware, you can begin to think more clearly and respond the situation more rationally as opposed to just reacting emotionally.

Assuming there is no immediate physical danger, pause, take a deep breath, count to ten, buy yourself time to process the situation in the neocortex, the rational part of your brain.

This raised awareness may encourage you to find a resolution to situations that is more collaborative, avoiding blame, judgement, recrimination and guilt, aggression or passivity. Assertive behaviour is likely to be the result.

For more on this subject, read Dr Steve Peters’ excellent and readable book ‘The Chimp Paradox’. His style is engaging and accessible with practical advice and insights. Dr Peters – engaged by British Cycling Performance Director, David Brailsford – is regarded as a key player in the sustained success of Team GB’s Cycling Team at the Olympic Games over the last 8 years and more recently of Team Sky on the road.

5 tips leaders can apply from the success of David Brailsford, Performance Director of British Cycling.

Late in the evening of Day 12 of the London 2012 Olympics, BBC tv’s Gary Lineker interviewed David Brailsford, Performance Director of British Cycling. Under his guidance he has led the British cycling team to numerous outstanding achievements at three successive Olympic Games – Athens, Beijing and now London 2012.

While Brailsford didn’t talk about his underlying strategy for this enduring success – the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ (inept questioning by Mr Lineker?) he did touch on his philosophy that the backroom team and coaches are there to support the athletes ‘to be the very best they can be so that they perform when it matters.’

So what does that support and the philosophy of marginal gains look like exactly?

What we do know is that he and his backroom team of more than 20 will examine every single detail right down to the pillows used by cyclists to sleep on and how they wash their hands. His appointment of Dr Steve Peters – described by Brailsford as ‘the best appointment I’ve ever made’ – has helped riders control the fears, anxieties and negative thoughts and that has been key. Our most successful cyclists such as Victoria Pendleton acknowledge his contribution too: ‘I don’t think I would have realised my potential without Steve.’

So whilst much of the philosophy and support is clearly shrouded in secrecy, there has been enough disclosure to help us apply lessons in our world. Here are 5 tips to help you take you/your team’s performance to the next level:

• Have you identified what success/the next level looks like for you/your team?

• How often do you sit with your team and review how you’re performing together – examining what’s working/not working? Too often I hear about leaders focussing on what is being done as opposed to how it’s being done.

• Have you identified with your team what the marginal gains are for the way you perform together?

• How often do you solicit feedback about your performance from your team – what’s working/not working about how you perform?

• Do you see your role as leader to direct or to support your team? What proportion do you use your ears to your mouth – are you asking/listening or focussing too much on telling?

If it’s working for team GB’s cycling team, what could it do for you to identify the marginal gains for you and your team?

What’s your experience? What do you think? Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.

Gary Lineker’s interview with David Brailsford can be found on the BBC iPlayer. Search in the Sport category for Day 12 of the Olympic Games. It’s in the evening clip – 19:00 to 22:00 at about 2 hours 50 mins in.