Episode 75: Communicating with Intention to Grow High Performing Teams with Jay Hedley

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits. Along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered sales teams. Today we have Jay Headley with us from the coaching room. I haven't known Jay all that long, but I had a really interesting conversation with him a few weeks ago around what he's doing to help teams and individuals really get the best out of themselves. And normally when I hear this type of promotion on a business I go into fact checking. And something that I saw really quickly jump out with me from Jay was that he can absolutely walk the walk and has some experience with some really impactful teams and the results they achieve. But I won't spoil that. We'll talk about that in a moment. Jay himself, he is all about coaching high performance executives, leaders, athletes, sporting teams and coaches. So he really transcends across a number of areas and it's all about unleashing their full potential, which is his passion. So for him, these leaders for example, or teams, they're going to engage him to help them really make a difference in establishing what's going to help them go from where they are now to the difference that will make the difference for them. So that's all about seeing with clarity blind spots in their professional and their personal life that are potentially limiting where they can get from their potential. So for Jay, he's all about identifying the strength needed to challenge those structures that often maintain the status quo. So those things that are self limiting in terms of where you need to get to, which isn't easy but very rewarding and he spends a lot of time on CEOs with that. In terms of organizations, this is pretty impressive. Fiji Rugby 7's gold medal if you don't mind winning team in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The the Williams Racing Team KPMG Very Big Brand Globally Optus and the Department of Defence in Australia, which I suspect we can probably talk about generally, but nothing specifically. So, Jay, welcome to the Strongest Sales Teams podcast. Lovely to have you here today.

Thank you very much, Ben.

So we're going to talk about reaching your full potential today, how to do it, and some of your experiences with it. Before we start, would you mind sharing with us a little bit about what you do and in particular the coaching room and why you're successful at what you do.

So we're a developmental coaching and training organization and everything we do is grounded in developmental psychology. So understanding how human beings work from the inside out, how we grow and how we develop organically, and what stops that from occurring, what gets in the way? As Abraham Maslow said back in the 60s, a self actualizing human being isn't something with a whole bunch of stuff added, is a human being with nothing taken away. And so we are wired to fulfill our potential. We're wired that way. That's why we can overcome such traumas, pains, hurts, and become the very best version of ourselves despite those things, you know, just that they help us grow, actually, they help us become more fully human, as Maslow would say. So as an organization, we're about unlocking what stops human beings from growing and developing so that they can get back on track.

Great. I really like that. Because we can be taught everything we need in life, we can be given every opportunity in life, but at the end of the day, it's often mindset that can really get in the way of what we need to achieve. And mindset we can define super loosely. I'm always careful when I speak with someone like yourself who has so much more experience than me around the specificity of the words I use. But certainly for me, I really, truly believe in there is an approach to unlocking your potential that is beyond what you've learned simply from a book or a street smarts point of view and into the realms that you're looking at. So perhaps we could start with the Fiji Rugby Sevens team that won the gold medal in the 2020 Olympics. What was your experience like working with them and what do you think really changed over your journey?

So I predominantly worked with the coaches and the management staff. I did some player interventions and worked with some of the players from time to time. But most of the work was growing and developing. You know, the head coach's capacity to frame and create the kind of meaning that drove the levels of performance that he wanted to see and drove the behaviors that led to the performance. And so it's about quality, communicating. It's about understanding what it is you're saying and saying it with intentionality and purpose. And it's about understanding how to get the best out of a collective group of young men who are very, very committed but sometimes get themselves in the way of, you know, what it is they need to be thinking in order to be behaving the way they need to behave in order for the results to begin to really show up. So working with the management and helping them, the reason we take that approach is because the management has to have the authority. And so as you know, if I'm working with all the players directly and I'm doing that kind of work, then the authority comes back to me and it needs to be with them, not me. And so we like the, you know, coach the coaches to then, you know, really become more and more impactful, gain more authority and begin to lead, lead the players more effectively. And so a lot of that work was, you know, with the senior management and with the head coach and the coaching staff.

So I'm hearing communicating with intention to get a group of people to move to where their goals are. But the piece that levelled with me even more impactfully was that it's going to be far greater to that organization over the long term if you're working with the coaches who are then delivering that messaging and holding the team accountable, then when they're working directly with you. And I think that's a piece that's really relevant for sales leaders around developing your leadership skills. So you're not just relying on someone else to bring in the results for your team at Bodonian and yourselves. And what did you see change in that team over the time when you worked with them?

A far more integral approach which is really looking at building the kind of attitude, the kind of identity within the team. The culture of the team was something we worked on really shaping so that the team was committed to the behaviors that was going to take them to the top level and hold and maintain them at the top level. And then the systems and the processes that govern those behaviors that then begin to drive the kind of culture. And then the culture starts to take over and it begins to drive the attitude, it begins to drive the behaviors and it begins to drive the environment and everything heading in the same direction. And so what I saw really change was we laid down a plan or a vision for the team and the vision was a three legged approach. So the first was to bring in world class technical, tactical, physical and Bring in the very, very best of the best of technical rugby, tactical rugby, which is strategy and as well as, you know, physical growth and development of the players. Couple that with the very, very best culture that we could identify as necessary. And then the mental approach that really went with the culture that shaped the culture, and then the third component apart was to unlock the talent that existed within the team already. Fiji and flare in rugby is extraordinary. We wanted to build the structures around that to allow that flare to come into its own. But we needed to bring in structure, we needed to bring in systems, we needed to bring in processes, needed to bring in, you know, a really grounded mental approach of focusing on what they could control and having them let go of what they couldn't control. And, you know, it's formed a container that allowed then the order and the structure and the processes and the systems that surrounded the Fijian flair and let it flow. And so I don't think that had been done in high performance sport to that level before. I think previous coaches had probably spent a lot of time on unlocking and unleashing the flare, but not putting the structure and the systems around it that we put around it that really allowed that to come to the fore in a structured, formed way. And the kind of rugby we saw was just, you know, was unstoppable rugby.

Yeah, absolutely was. And there are so many parallels in terms of what you've just gone through to how we are leading in the corporate environment and specifically for our listeners in the sales world. But there's two in there that I really want to jump on that. The first one is around bringing in the best strategists, the best talent, and then unlocking that potential. I talk a lot around strategy, talent and energy with the teams I work with. Get your strategy on point, make sure your talent is trained to the level it needs to be, but also you have the right amount of talent in there. And then the energy, which is the culture that they're bringing, allows you to build that environment to succeed. And it's so funny. Such different realms of life, but very, very similar approaches. And then on top of that, the piece around bringing some structure to people who have flair in the natural way they go about their game and their lives is so similar to when we have sales hunters out there, people that are just so good at forming new relationships and getting out to bring new business into a business, but they often go rogue, as we'll say, and finding ways to set the playing field for them so that they don't run and Play a different sport or they don't jump onto the field next door or they don't go into overtime when perhaps we shouldn't be doing that. So critical in that sales environment. So I love how with that team, it's a very similar approach to making sure that they have structure to allow them to show their flair. So thank you, That's a fantastic story and well done for your time and your involvement with them. I bet you were really proud watching that when the gold medal came through.

Sure. We'll see if we can repeat it again in three weeks.

Well, at least you guys will be playing. I know some of the swimmers that are heading off there and there's talk about that they won't actually be able to get there. And look, this podcast is pre recorded. So by the time people are listening to this, we generally don't talk too much about time specific events, but you'll know the results, I suspect by the time this is out. What about the Williams F1 Racing team? How was your experience with them? Was it significantly different to that of the Fijian team?

No, I mean Formula one. I've never seen a pressure cooker like it. It is, you know, the ultimate form of high performance pressure. There's pressure on every aspect, on every component part of what they're doing, from the marketing to the corporate governance to the structure of, you know, how the cars are designed through to. I mean, you know, Williams has a thousand people working on two motor cars. It's extraordinary to think of a thousand people to support two motor cars that run, you know, 30 times a year. So the pressure is extraordinary. When it all comes down to the race, you know, there's no stone left unturned. And the pressure on the drivers is outrageous. So, you know, if you look at how diamonds are made, they're made under immense amount of pressure where, you know, basically coal is compacted and compacted over millions of years to form, through the pressure, a diamond. And that's how I see Formula one is the amount of pressure. It really just, you know, it blows peak staff, it blows people out the water if they're not ready for that kind of environment. It's 16 hours a day, seven days a week. It's intense. And so, you know, seeing that and being part of that has been spectacular and fabulous. And they're great human beings, they're responsive human beings, they're no nonsense human beings. And they get on with it. They get on with the things that matter. And so they're very, very clear on what their priorities are and they're very, very clear about how they push themselves and how they position themselves to get the best out of themselves.

Right. I can imagine that pressure a thousand people for 30 runs a year. Is there anything you took or you take from working with that organ that sales teams in particular can be looking to apply to themselves? Any similarities you see?

Well, I mean it's commitment and it's intentionality. If you are going to succeed in sales, you must be intentional and you must know what you're about and you must depersonalize and objectify the landscape in order to navigate it. That you can't afford to be making things personal because it's not about you. It's about your capacity to understand what a client requires and deliver that in a way that really works for them. It's actually a very client centric process. I find far too many salespeople talk way too much and they're not inquisitive enough. They're not actually wanting to understand the client. They're not actually wanting to understand whether or not they can actually help the client. And so what they're listening for is they're listening to present information. What they're not listening for is how might I be able to help if indeed I am able to help in this situation. You know, what are you doing, how are you doing it and how does what we're doing fit in and being okay with the fact that it may not fit in for that client, it may not be right for that client, but that's part of the investigation. And so really being very, very client centric, putting your client first, putting yourself in your client's shoes and seeking to understand themselves and their business is absolutely essential. And so, you know, this is like, this is what teams do in high performance racing is they seek to understand the driver, they seek to understand the car, they seek to understand the differences and they leave no stone unturned. It's full commitment, it's fully invested and it's very, very process centric. And so sales could learn a lot from a high performance team like Williams Racing as well.

No doubt every moment spent, particularly now in the changes in decision making post Covid, but every moment spent understanding what a customer needs and determining how you can best meet that saves 10. I say 10, but it's anecdotal, if not many, many more. At the other end of the process when you've built something that doesn't necessarily meet exactly what your customer needs, you might even only be five points off. But those five points just Drastically slow down everything, and they compromise the results that you get as a team. So I'm really glad to hear that because we've spent a huge amount of time with teams, particularly over the last 18 months, around the importance of really understanding the value you're gonna provide your customer according to what they want before we jump into that really heavy engagement process. So if we were to now jump out of those sporting examples and start to talk around your current customer base, what challenges are you seeing from your existing customer base around moving from where they are now to being a team that really delivers consistent high performance levels?

So, you know, understanding people is probably the most important aspect of any business. And investing in your people is absolutely critical. You know, we live in a world that is becoming more and more and more complex. You've only got to have some kind of a service, whether it's Internet, mobile phone, television, et cetera, any kind of service. Pick up the phone and speak to their customer care division, and you'll find an immediate amount of complexity that is just ridiculous to navigate. The world is becoming complex, and so your people need growth and development first and foremost in order to understand how to navigate that complexity. So investing in their growth, investing in their development, investing in their capacity to think through complexity with really high quality strategies is critical. And so, you know, the customers that we work with, Fiji Airways is a classic example, and that was the connection into Fiji Radby that got us into working with Fiji Rugby in the first place. We've been working with Fiji Airways now for about eight years. They've come from out of absolutely nowhere to become the 14th best airline in the world over that eight years. They would have been in the top 100 when we started working with them. You know, the reason that they are in the top 20 airlines in the world is because of the constant investment in their people's growth and development and giving them the tools to be able to navigate strategically the complexity that exists. Everything from our systems and processes right through to our people systems, HR systems, you know, plain networks. You know, it is so much complexity that their investment in growing their people's ability and capacity constantly, just continuous improvement has been absolutely second to none. And so, you know, the biggest issue that I think that businesses face today is the complexity of reality and it growing. And there are people needing to keep up with it by continuing to grow and develop themselves. So grow and develop their capacity to hold multiple perspectives in order to navigate that capacity to be able to think through things not only from a first, second, third or Fourth person, but a fifth person perspective is critical. And it takes, you know, to grow a culture that becomes adept at navigating that stuff takes time. It's taken Fiji Airways eight years to get where they are. So, you know, most of our customers have the same kind of problem. And I'm sure that the salespeople who follow you, Ben, are struggling with the same thing. The level of complexity around their product, around their services, around, you know, what's happening for their customers is just off.

The scale that adaptability and agility and thinking. In fact, I think we talk about AQ now as being another form of really important traits for people going forward. And that's that adaptability question. But we won't dive into that. I remember, I'm pretty sure it was Richard Branson. I remember reading one day a quote that said, train your people well enough so they can leave, but treat them well enough that they don't want to.

Sure.

And that's what I'm hearing from you is that long term investment into people's capability cannot be overstated and the impact it can have on your business also. So for me, I love that. So let's say you're a sales leader now and you're wanting to really supercharge growth over the next 12 months, and this is our last question before we let you go, is what would you be doing right now if you're that sales leader? Where would you be spending your some of your macro level time to really move the dial in the next 12 months?

Look at yourself. So you talk about AQ being adaptability quotient. We use AQ as an awareness quotient. And so an awareness quotient is becoming aware of how you are structuring your thinking in the moment is the most critical thing. And becoming aware of your cognitive biases allows you to get flexibility or adaptability in those biases is going to allow you to be a far better sales manager, a far better salesperson, a far better business person because you can get yourself out the way and yourself is what gets in the way, you know, in terms of stopping you from achieving your potential, your thinking patterns. People think from their thinking patterns and they communicate from their thinking patterns. So much so that they don't see that the people they're talking to have completely different thinking patterns. So you might be quite global in your thinking, quite generalist, and you're talking to someone who's quite detailed in their thinking. You need to adjust the way in which you're communicating from global to detail so that you can get influence with that person. Most people communicate from their preferences, not to other people's preferences. And in sales, that's a, that's a killer right there. So becoming aware of how you think and how that drives what you think is the critical element. And no change could occur without awareness. And so the very, very, very best thing or best advice that I could possibly give is, you know, work on. You work on getting to know and understanding you. Getting to work on your biases and how they get in the way and how they stop you from achieving high performance would be the critical aspect.

Excellent. That is fantastic advice. I think for anyone listening in any role, it's not about leveraging your strengths, but it's about positioning how the other party might take it. So I think that is a brilliant point to end today and I really enjoy these 25 minutes. It's really been focused around impactful ways that we can grow as teams, as leaders, as coaches. We've crossed quite a few areas and I've learned some new things about professional sport as well. So thank you very much. Jay Headley. Where can our listeners find you if they'd like to make contact with the coaching room or you directly?

You can Find me on LinkedIn under Jay Headley or you can find us@the coachingroom.com.

Excellent. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Jay. I'm very grateful for your time. Good luck for what's coming up in Paris shortly. I'll be watching closer attention than I would have previously. And for everyone listening, please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of VC sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.