Building High-Performance Teams: Insights from Sports and Business with Jinns Kadwood

Fashion, like most businesses, is actually quite emotive. What I like and what you like and what someone else likes is completely different, but the emotion that you attach to what you wear is personal to you. So one of the things that I like to say and my wife likes to say to any of our clients and customers is, what do you want to feel? That emotion is actually quite important, and we then follow up with that. Saying anytime you feel down or upset or angry or sad, go to your closet, find the best outfit that you have, and put it on. Because I guarantee you, you will change very quickly.

Jins Cadwood, welcome to The Mentor List.

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Well, thank you for flying down. I know you've got an exciting wedding this weekend to get to, but thanks for coming and bracing the Melbourne weather.

I love coming down to Melbourne, it's beautiful. The food, the people, the culture, I love it.

That's great, great. And yeah, great to see you at one of our Sydney social events with Vivid just recently with Mentor List. So, Today's topic, cultivating high performance or high performance.

Yes.

So looking forward to sort of digging into this, Jins. I know you've had a probably a different path to here and looking forward to sort of digging into that. So maybe let's, let's go back because it'll give a bit of context to where this passion for high performance coaching, team dynamics, this obsession and passion comes through. So you're the head coach?

That's right. I started off in a completely different industry when I first came into, into the world, I guess. Football coaching. It's— I love playing football and I mean football in the sense of soccer. So to the other Australians—

To offend some or not offend some.

Not rugby or AFL or league, but football in the sense of soccer.

It is the world game. I agree.

But I loved it. I played it when I was younger. And then as I was going through my university, I realized I actually wasn't that good at playing the game. So what do you do? You go and start coaching instead, or doing something else in the sport. So I started coaching.

Yeah.

And I was coaching at a smaller club in Canberra, and then I met the technical director of the Football Association in Canberra, and he asked if I wanted to be one of the first to do a professional license. I said Of course, let me do that. And it was amazing. After doing the professional license, I was able to coach the high-performing team for the Australian Young Socceroos, the 14s, 15s, and 16 boys at the High Performance Academy down in Canberra.

Yep.

And that's where I learned everything around the difference between just an individual being great but a team being great and working as a high-performing team.

Would you be able to share what that is? Because I'd love to know.

Well, at the end of the day, it's, it's all about relationships with each other. It's all about creating a family. It's about creating a connection. Football teams and any sports teams are all about being with each other on a constant basis. So something about creating love and nurturing that relationship is, I think, the key element that makes a great team. And it's what's leading into my book that I'm currently writing, which is called Lead with Love. It's helping leaders and emerging leaders and teams understand how to use sporting and high-performing team tactics in the business and workspace.

So when you say sort of relationships and connection with each other, is this on the individual? So I mean If we take a team, or might be a squad, 11 are on the pitch and there's a couple others involved. Sorry if I—

No, that's perfect.

Yeah. But, uh, so let's, let's break down maybe relationships. So is this, you know, the attacker with the, the wing, or is this— what are you talking about, a collective relationship? What is— can we—

It's actually both. So it's both an individual's relationship to themselves and to everyone around them. But also the team's relationships to each other. So if I break it down into 2 areas, the individual's relationships to themselves covers everything from their relationship to physical— physicality, their mental health, their educa— their, their, um, their food and nutrition, their relationships to friends and family, their relationship to the environment around them. And then if I break it into the other area, the holistic relationship in the team, It's about knowing what everyone's roles are in the team.

Yeah.

Knowing the holistic goal for the team, whether it's for that day on a match or the whole season, and the relationship between themselves as a team and what we would typically call the back office staff, the sort of trainers, the physios, the admin, the nutritionists, and even the fans and the people in the community. They all play in with each other. So the The relationships that you have and cultivate between yourself and those around you are what creates success in my particular experiences.

Yeah, it's almost like a stakeholder matrix coming together is what I was thinking of when you were describing that. And the concept of know your role, we might pick that up a little later because I can see the direct linkage when you're on the field and you're in a position or role. And that may switch when you're 2, 3, 4, 5 runs down in an organization. Your proximity to the action or the customer feedback may be sort of slightly reduced. So, um, okay, so you're not a coach anymore.

No.

But that's sort of the thread or this high performance. So you're, you're working with, um, you know, the Australian Young Socceroos. And then how has that sort of, that skill helped you? And what, what was sort of the obvious things you noticed when you moved into sort of more of the, the business side of things?

Yeah, look, I think like sports, the business space has so many great analogies. You've got groups of people, you've got a common goal, you're all playing the same game, you're all training, you're all working together. There's a lot of aspects that I think translate quite comfortably. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for senior managers and leaders and executives, or even just general teams, to take what you can see in sports, which I think most people have a basic good understanding around, and applying that in a more day-to-day fashion. Everything from how do I communicate To my teammate, both non-verbal and verbal? How do I set and plan for that day or the week or the month or the quarter or the year? What are the strategic intents and questions that I should be asking? How do I use tactics versus strategy to get to the goal that we need? And I think there's a lot of aspects that sports can be applied into the workplace. So I started to use a lot of these over the different courses, different sort of careers and opportunities I've had, to see if that actually is true and holds true. And in my experiences, I think it does. And it's not just in my experiences, but in people that I've looked up to and read a lot around. I mentioned Bill Campbell. Bill Campbell is an amazing American football coach turned professional coach in the leadership and executive space.

Yeah.

And he coached amazing people such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs— name anyone in Silicon Valley essentially, and they would be touched by him in some sort of way from a coaching perspective. And a lot of the success that some of these big corporations and tech companies have, have alluded to come from the fact that a person has used sporting concepts and applying them in business makes it so much more palatable and easier to, to help the team grow as well.

Yep. And maybe, um, just to tease out talking about some of the similarities and what you can, you can take from sports, and one of the very obvious ones is sort of this feedback loop.

Yes.

Um, so maybe you could, um, you know, talking about performance, how, how does that relate into Or how have you seen that relating to performance?

Yeah, look, if, if I take my recent role at AgriDigital— AgriDigital is an Australian agritech business, one of the largest in the country. It does around 35-40% of Australian commodities on the platform and works with a lot of people around the country in both rural and non-rural areas. The team comes from a very technical team, which requires a lot of high-speed changes and innovation. Some of the senior engineers that I was able to work with, when I first met them, they didn't have a strong feedback loop on how the customer was perceiving the problem or the solutions that we were providing to them.

Yeah.

So the work was a bit off. It didn't really hit the mark, but at the same time kind of did. And I think that was more because the founders were really good at articulating what the problem space was.

Yeah.

But as the company needs to grow, the dependence on founders needs to be a lot less, and you need to enable so that the players on the field to do, to do it, to do what they're really good at. So one of the things I was able to institute was a, a culture where engineering and product employees and team members were working directly with the customer, whether it was in sales or whether it was in customer support or whether it was just going straight out to the field, like literally in the middle of New South Wales or Queensland or Victoria, and speaking to customers directly and just observing them and giving them the opportunity to see and observe what was actually happening.

Hmm.

So that feedback loop was now becoming a more daily practice, and you see that in sports. So in a football sense, or any, any sporting sense, you have training sessions. It could be daily, it could be every couple of days, but the idea of training sessions is really to give you the opportunity to practice what you've been practicing and being taught, and then watching that in some time— in some cases, most professionals Professional sports would have replays so you can actually see practices.

Yep.

You can see games from the previous weekend or races from the previous race, and you can fine-tune what was good and what was bad. And it's not about saying that was a terrible game, it was more about saying, well, what can you learn from that? What new information have you been able to, to obtain to make the next decision that you make Much, much more stronger.

And just, you mentioned there around players on the field, which I know we're sort of going to get into, and I can feel the themes sort of starting to emerge already. Um, but I mean, I imagine someone who's highly skilled in, you know, working through the code of whatever's sitting behind this agri-platform and someone out in the field— I'm envisaging, you know, someone that's moving wool, for example— chalk and cheese in terms of skill sets and probably the individuals that are running those roles. Um, yeah, that, that, that's quite, quite interesting. And so, so you're bringing that feedback in. I imagine that would have been quite revealing for an engineer to see someone using their, the something they've built. Um, yeah, any sort of, uh, examples or scenarios there where you, you're okay to share that?

Yeah, certainly.

Quite a contrast.

And this comes back to the concept of how your relationship to other people fits in.

Yep.

I think one of the strongest things I've heard many leaders and managers request or want to ask from their team is empathy. Empathy with the customer, empathy with the people around them. And when I saw this happen, it was beautiful. I had a front-end engineer go out into the real world What is that?

Sorry.

So a front-end engineer is the person that actually engineers and designs the interface that a user sees.

So what I'm seeing, whether it's on the phone or the tablet.

That's right.

Okay. Yep.

And it was interesting. I remember sitting in the office in Sydney and having a little smirk, and I said, um, interesting, why would you use that color palette? That's— it was a bright yellow, it was on white. And he's like, oh, it looks really beautiful. I love this. I'm like, it does look beautiful. But I don't know if our customer is going to be able to see that. And he's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, just think about where they are and physically using that phone. They're in the middle of the day outside where it's bright sunny. Yellow is probably one of the not preferable colors at that time of day. And he's like, oh, but I— it looks really good on my screen. I'm like, yeah, of course it does, but you're sitting in an air-conditioned office in Sydney.

Yeah.

So a couple of weeks later, we got him out onto the field in the middle of New South Wales, and he was watching the customers use the, the app. And he realized that every single second word was an explicit word saying, I can't see this, I can't see that. And then he quickly realized and had empathy to say, oh, while it looks beautiful in my screen, I'm not making it for me. I'm making this application for this person here who's standing on a 35-degree hot day outside on a blistering hot sun.

Swearing at his phone.

Swearing at his phone, and he just wants to get this, the, the grain into his truck. I'm probably going to make it a much darker color, and it might not be what I prefer, but it's what the actual customers prefer. So that spark of empathy was what was really beautiful to see, and you see that in sporting And you want to see that more in business as well, when our business teams can have that empathy for the customer or empathy for somebody else and realize what they're building is not for them, it's actually for the customer. So sitting within that customer's shoe and empathizing and understanding what they're going through is, I think, one of the most beautiful things any leader or manager could do.

And it's— we had Gavin Brown, who, um, also sort of professional coach, and he had a funny analogy that, um, I can't remember who he referenced, but it was a huge game and there was a winning side and it was a big, you know, a big battle. And at the end he was asked, you know, what, what do you think was the reason you won? And his answer was, which I found quite refreshing, he said, at the end of the game we had more points than the other team. So I thought, okay, And I kind of, maybe that's just a bit of context for this question. You know, high-performing teams, there's a lot that can go into that. And at the end of the day, you're either—

To the winners.

The scoreboard's there. It's very clear in sport and that feedback's there with the cycle of the game. In corporate and in business, maybe it's a little bit grayer. So how do you link sort of the end outcome And driving that into, I guess, you know, high performance, knowing that you're sort of— if we're indexing for relationships and connection, how does that translating into, you know, more scores or more runs or success, I guess?

Excellent question, and I've actually had this given to me several times over the last 5, 6 years. It's interesting because I like to challenge the notion that business have so many different competing priorities.

Yeah.

When if you break it down from a first principles approach, you quickly realize that a business has one, maybe two key things that they're really trying to achieve. But over time, everyone's specific nuances in how they interpret that becomes and grows to the top of the list. And I think that's the challenge leaders need to be focused on and high-performing teams need to be focused on. If you think about any football team, the reason why it's so clear about what the end outcome is, because everyone's galvanized around the outcome. It's, we need to win. It doesn't matter if we win by 1 goal or 10 goals. If you look at like a Formula 1 team, it's, we need to win. It doesn't matter if it's 1 second or half a second. That's all that matters.

Yeah.

It's a very clear thing to talk about. And the reason you can talk about it like that is you can, you know, the boundaries, you know where to say no. You know, and how you can empower people to say no. You can empower people to know where they need to work, and that empowerment is what makes great teams in sport amazing. The same philosophy applied in business can do the same, and I've witnessed that in my previous business, and I'm witnessing that now in my current business as we go into fashion. By saying no to the things we don't want to work on, we're highly focused on the success of what we can work on.

Yeah.

So my wife and I, who run our business together, we can fine-tune and really be acute to where we see success. And for our business in our fashion space right now, it's very highly focused on how do we empower women to look and feel amazing. And we've been asked so many times, oh, you've obviously got all the materials and the supply chain and everything to make men's outfits, but why don't you do that? Well, right now that's not our goal. Our goal is to get every single woman looking and feeling empowered and, and, and amazing. And there are so many other solutions that already cater for men, so go to those ones. They're perfect, they're great, they do amazing things. But because we're so fine-tuned we can easily say no. And that means every single person that walks into our business, we are very confident knowing that they are able to perform at their best. They're empowered to make decisions, and they know what the boundaries are. And I think doing the same thing in any business is what makes a great team even, even more great.

And just maybe drawing on that thread, empowering— we're meant to look and feel amazing. I'll probably leave that one for you as an expert or working in that field. But, um, I mean, if I take the, the wine example, and maybe we could illustrate that through, through your new business in fashion, um, I'm, I'm a fairly simple person and my palate's pretty simple. If I have a glass of wine, you know, I'll enjoy it. But if, if you come and you, you bring a, a bottle that you'd bring a story with and you tell tell me about the hill where the vines were and how beautiful the homestead was and the region and all this stuff, in my mind, it's like 10 times more enjoyable. So is that, does fashion have sort of parallels with that? Do you find that as well? So to look and you mentioned feel amazing. feel amazing, sort of what goes into that as an experience perspective? Because yeah, I'm just very curious about that.

It's a great question, and I always like to think of this as fashion, like most businesses, is actually quite emotive. What I like and what you like and what someone else likes is completely different, but the emotion that you attach to what you wear is personal to you. So one of the things that I like to say, and my wife likes to say, to any of our clients and customers is before you even come and see what we can help create for you, we ask you, what do you want to feel? How do you want to feel that? And where do you want to feel that? That emotion is actually quite important. And we then follow up with that, saying anytime you feel down or upset or angry or sad, go to your closet, find the best outfit that you have, and put it on. Because I guarantee you, you will change very quickly. And that ability to shift your mind shift mindset very quickly just because of what you're feeling. and wearing is what makes fashion beautiful, because it, it gives you and empowers you to do something great next.

Hmm.

So I think it does exist in fashion, just like it exists in everything else. And then when you put something on, that there's a story behind that as well. So like the outfit that I've got on right now, there's a story behind that was coming from a space of me being very anxious and not feeling great about my body, but then realizing there are certain tones and colors that actually work very well for me.

Hmm.

And then once I found that, the beauty and the empowerment that I was able to have permeates other people around me as well. I was literally walking down the streets here in Melbourne, I realized I was quite bright compared to the, the cloudy skies that was happening around me, and I had a lot of people look at me, you know, and it was beautiful to smile back at them and, and say hello and just have that engaging conversation. And all of a sudden, whether I may or may not know it, I'm hopefully giving them something that they feel great about, and I'm passing that emotion through.

Yeah.

And in business, you see that everywhere as well. So if you walk into a meeting grumpy, angry, that's going to permeate pretty quickly. But if you walk in very open and holistically happy and calm That's also going to permeate and you see that across your team.

That is so interesting and I bet you were getting, I mean, exceptionally dressed today.

Thank you.

And yeah, you're probably a lighter, your clothes are probably lighter than everybody here in Melbourne who's just battened down for the, in the blacks and the dark blues for the rainy day today. So, but yeah, I think you would have brought a bit of ray of sunshine for them that are looking at you. But that reciprocation, that is so Absolutely true. And I guess coming back to high performance, so you're running these teams, what's, what's your, what do you see your role as? Let's say you're the, the manager, you're in this team, and I know you've got a couple of examples you can draw on. What is your role and what do you think the expectation, or what's your expectation of the starting 11 and vice versa? Yeah.

There's actually 8 that I've written down.

Oh wow, so here we go.

Um, look, I think I'm glad I asked you that question though. Thank you. So I think every leader and every manager should cover all of these to create something high-performing, and you, and you can see that in every space. It starts with building trust. That's the number one thing. You want to build trust in the people around you and And, and into the people with you. And you can create that in multiple ways. Second is—

How do you know? Sorry, I know you want to get through the 8, but how do you know? What are some, what are some signs?

Telltale.

Yeah, yeah, that you have or haven't got trust.

So the biggest thing I've seen is the freedom to be honest. And I was just having a conversation with an old friend of mine. I said I loved working with my previous CEO because we had so much deep trust in each other. And that was done because I was so— I was easily able to talk to her very openly and very honestly about the good and the bad. It was never taken personal. It was always come— it was always taken with a, a view of how do we help go beyond that and solve for that problem. And I was never seen as a, oh, you've done something bad, let's now, um, I guess take care of that, like, yeah, issue for you. So it was very much a space of honesty. And I think when you can be honest with each other, you know that there's trust there because you know that the other person won't use that information in a nefarious or negative way against you.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can feel that very quickly and easily. The second will be having communication. And it's not just clear and open communication, it's just having communication, being able to honestly talk to each other. I always say to people in my life, if you can't communicate it, whether it's verbally or indirectly or written, pause and say that to the person. I always say to my friends and to colleagues, Hmm, I don't know how to communicate this to you right now, but this is what I'm thinking. Or I'll paraphrase, I don't know if these are the exact words that perfectly describe what I'm thinking or feeling or ideating about, so just run with it. So I, I sort of lead in with a bit of context, and what that gives me is a bit of a tactical strategy, a tactical tip to To buy some time and also to create that space. Because I think a lot of people get nervous and anxious to say, oh, I don't know how to say this thing, so they don't say it at all. But I'd rather say, look, I'm verbally telling you right now that I probably don't know how to say this clearly, so take the words that come out of my mouth with a grain of salt, but help me articulate it further. So it enables the other person to come and interact.

And it won't trigger, and then you can Retract quite easily from that position. Very okay, interesting. Keep going.

The third is collaboration. I think it's paramount for any successful and great team to have the ability to collaborate and think of innovative ways to solve a problem. You never see a football team or a Formula 1 team or a tennis squad just doing it on their own. Teams need to figure out and collaborate with each other The 4th thing is continuous learning. For me, every day is learning. Me walking into fashion, I've never done fashion in my life, but being able to learn and understand and apply the skills I've learned over the last 20 years into this new industry makes me feel great because I'm now learning and continuously applying those, those skills. The 5th, emotional intelligence, EQ. I, I do not underestimate this particular one because at the end of the day, every business is people, and people are emotive people. Everyone's got emotions that are real and sometimes hidden, and being able to understand that and read the room, read the person, understand the situation, and just have that empathy is paramount.

Hmm.

The 6th is performance measurement. Every great team measures performance, whether that's how many goals you've run, goals you've scored, meters you've run, or in a business context, how many meetings you've run that have resulted in decisions, how many code check-ins you've done, how many times the product has been delivered and put into the hands of the people. Everything from operations to strategy needs to be performance managed. And that's not to say it— see it as a negative thing. It's just to help you know what the next step is, to help you get leading and lagging indicators of where to go next. Um, the number 8th— or the 8th— oh, sorry, the 7th thing I've got listed is coachability. I think great teams and great people are coachable. As in, I want to learn, I want to be better, I want to do the next best thing. A great team doesn't have people that don't want to be there. They all collectively want to be coached to be the best versions of themselves. Same thing happens in business. You don't want to have people in your team that don't want to be coached, that don't want to be growing into the next, next best version of themselves. And the final thing that I think constitutes a high-performing team is they think first principles. And what do I mean by that is they break down conversations and problems to the most raw aspects of the problem.

That's what you did before.

That's right. So I think being in a position where you can go through any problem and talk about its core hard-hitting questions And breaking it down to that aspect makes it easier for anyone to really hone in and focus on the outcome. So the objective is again clear, and I think first principle strategies helped, uh, help do that.

And how do you— so yeah, just on that one, like with— we like to sort of— well, maybe I like to overcomplicate things, uh, as an example. So how do you get to the core of it sometimes when you just Lost in the noise of something. I know it's a bit hypothetical, so maybe you've got an example which might help illustrate it, but to get to that clarity. So, you know, you mentioned before, and you, this was sort of the model in action in some ways, but you mentioned, you know, business has one or two or a couple of key things, um, which, yeah, it makes sense despite all the noise. So how do you get that Clarity when you don't have it.

Have you come across the author and speaker Simon Sinek?

Yes.

I love his core first sort of structure, which is ask— lead with why, right? And if you keep asking the question why, why, why, why, why, it starts to break down the core of what you're doing, why you're doing something. So if I was to ask myself around Why am I making luxury suits? Well, I'm making luxury suits because I want to help women feel great, look great, and have a symbol to showcase that they're going, leveling up in, in whatever they're doing in life. Why do I care about that? Well, over time I've seen how the injustices and inequality of men and women over the last 200-300 years has now been surfacing. And now women are getting into a position where more opportunities have been created, more positions of power are being created, and decisions are being made that help and enable more women. That's an amazing outcome. Why do I care about that? Well, I've experienced in my whole life situations where I've seen my mother and other big important women in my life have those injustices. put against them, and I didn't like that. And that doesn't feel good. It doesn't— it's not— doesn't sit well with me. I believe that true equality comes when you empower everyone. Well, why do I care about that? Well, I think that helps create a world that creates peace and harmony and beauty and love and everything that works in a space that you want to live. That's the life I want to live, and that's the final why. Well, why do I want that? Well, I don't want a life where it's negative and painful and, you know, inequal between each other. I want to have a great life, loving, and a space where we all can thrive. So when you start breaking it all down and just asking that why question, I think it becomes very clear. And you can see that in business as well. I remember, I remember a great example where I was speaking to our product marketing team And they're like, oh, let's go create this. I'm like, okay, why do you want to run that particular campaign? And they said, oh, it kind of looks good. I'm like, okay, well, why does it look good? And then we just kept on going and going and going until we broke it down and they realized that what they were doing was actually something personal. Like, it was, it was more for their personal gain. It wasn't aligning to the actual outcome of the business. for the customer. So when they started to strip that away, like, oh, actually it's not for the customer, this is for me, this is my personal goal, it didn't align with what the, the company goal was. So then they were able to go back quickly and, and change that and say, how do we actually get something that aligns to the customer's outcome?

That's interesting because I sort of felt you were getting closer to your own why before when you started with why am I in luxury? And you went through the whys. I think you got to about the 3rd why, and it sort of felt like you were coming closer to some innate driver in yourself.

Yeah, and that's true. Um, but what was a— what we were able to quickly identify with the product marketing team at the time was their first why was actually, oh, it's because I wanted to do this. Yeah, it's like, oh, that's not— that's not the lead. That shouldn't be the leading why. The first why should be because The strategy of the business is X. And why do you care about the strategy of the business? Well, I care about the strategy of the business because I joined this business to do X, Y, and Z. Well, why did you join this business to do X, Y, and Z? Well, I believe in this cause or this value or this thing. So yes, it does innately come back to you, but that should be the 5th and 6th core why.

And that might be the ultimate driver.

Yes, that's the ultimate driver. It's to help you become the best version of yourself.

Yeah. Because I imagine if we kept going, there would be, you sort of talked about those opportunities where there was, you know, it wasn't equal and stuff. And then if we keep going through that, potentially there's something with you and then you're, you're sort of righting your own wrong through the art. I know that's, I'm going up there. Using that as a vehicle to fulfill your own, I can't even talk. But like if you're getting it back down to why, why, why, why, why, and then it's okay, this is because why? 'Cause there was something that's happened to myself or something I've experienced. And then as you sort of unwrap that and then that's why you're in luxury.

Yeah.

So I think that's quite refreshing to be able to get down. So the 5, I said 5 Whys, it sounds like Simon Sinek's taken the Toyota Production System 5 Whys and sort of rebadged it, which is great. This is what happens. But yeah, okay, so that's really powerful.

Yeah.

And I've seen that work. They implemented that in Telstra around the 5 Whys around, and I've seen the transformative It just gets it back to the core. So thank you for sharing that. I'll have to try that next time I'm lost in limbo and I'm trying to work out what's going on. Why am I doing this? How do I make a decision? And that should help bring it back to, as you say, first principles. So going back through your, through your 8, the 7th one was coachability. And I find this one an interesting one. You might ask someone, you know, is there any coaching that goes on in your business? And they might say yes or no. I've seen examples through the mastermind sessions around where people were getting exceptional results in this is a great coaching culture, and it was really brought into a conscious sort of environment where it's like, uh, gents, we're going to talk about— this is going to be a coaching conversation. And then there would be a conversation, and then both would walk out of that interaction knowing that this This is a coaching environment and that sort of thing. So going back to sort of high performance and how conscious or obvious are, are you in coaching a team, or are you to the side, little tweaks, mice showing?

That's a good— that's good. I think there's a differentiation between management and coaching and mentoring.

Great, let's go there.

So management Is in the word. You're managing the team, you're managing the people, you're helping them get to the objectives or the KPIs. Mentoring is listening on a more, I would say, inactive or non— what's the word? Uh, I'm trying to think of a word. It's gone blank.

It's like you can do your, um, your special power where you throw it out. This is what I'm thinking. This might not be the word.

I'm thinking of the, uh, Non-obvious words like the— it's like infrequent.

Irregular or irregular?

Irregular is good. Okay, let's use that. So mentoring is like an informal, irregular strategy, right? You're meeting them or meeting the individual once every couple of months, maybe a month.

Yeah.

And just kind of helping them understand a situation. Coaching is actively observing somebody or a team and asking them questions. And if I look at a football team, the coach doesn't tell you to kick the ball on the left or the right. It tells you, how can I get you to get the ball from A to B? I need you to do that within 3 seconds. But I need you to figure that out because everyone can do that in a slightly different nuanced way. And the reason why you clearly articulate the objective and not tell them what to do is you want them to be making decisions on the field. And a coach in a, in a business sense needs to do the same. I'm not going to walk into an executive team or a management team and tell them what to do, but I am going to sit on the sidelines and watch them and say, did you know how, how are you interacting with these 2 people? Or what made you want to do that? And asked a lot of questions to help them think about the situation. I'm essentially an observer from the outside, kind of like a, like a sports coach. I can see the field, I can see everyone that's there, I can see them playing, I can see them interacting, but I'm asking the CEO or the executive Why did you say that? Why did you make that decision? You said the strategy 2 days ago was XYZ. Are you still confident that you're working toward that strategy? So as a coach, I'm actively participating in watching and observing the team. And to do that, it needs to be frequent enough. I usually like to coach on a weekly basis or a daily basis. If I'm in the actual team, I'm coaching on a daily basis. Yeah, I'm watching, I'm observing, I'm seeing, and I'm picking out every single little nuance that a person says or does.

And now you're talking about a team in a business, aren't you?

That's right, yes.

Yep. So weekly— and when you say I'm coaching every week, what is that? Are you one-on-one with someone going—

Yeah, so for me, coaching is everything you do, right? It's how you interact with somebody, it's the conversations you have, it's the emails, it's the one-on-ones that you do, it's the group sessions, the meetings, it's the, it's the opportunity you as a leader have to see your team do the work or do the behaviors you want them to, to excel in.

Yeah.

And that should be observed every single day, that should be observed every single week, that shouldn't be reserved for one one-on-one every, every month.

Yeah.

That should be a very frequent observation. The same happens in football. A football coach doesn't watch their team once a month. They're seeing them every single day and observing and saying, oh, this, this, this player is running a bit slow, or this player is doing a great decision-making on the field. The same thing happens in business.

Yeah.

I'm watching my engineers or product people or marketers or customer success staff on a daily basis and asking them questions. Why did you do that? What was the reasoning behind this? What was the context for that call there? And it gives them the opportunity to replay, recall, and then practice again.

Fantastic. And I can just sort of see how this, that style of, I was gonna say style of management, but I know you're breaking it into management, mentoring, and coaching, but the Australian market to sort of generalize is very much about influence as opposed to maybe an American, which is a lot more directive and Authoritative. So I could see how this would resonate in that stereotypical kind of environment where we stereotypically respond well, speaking on the averages there. So, so, Jins, I feel like I should ask you if I haven't asked you any questions, given that the answer to that question had 8 clearly articulated components to it. So on the flight down this morning, was there sort of a question that you'd also said, okay, Dave needs to ask me about this? So it's a chance to maybe ask your own or answer your own question?

Yeah, I think, I think it would be around the qualities that, or examples that make a good team, a great team work. And what do I mean by that? I was actually reminiscing about a specific football team, the Barcelona football team, and there was a goal that they played, they scored maybe 2 or 3 seasons ago. And I don't know if you know the players, but there was a player called Messi, one of the greatest players in football. He scored the goal, but the way that the goal got scored was a perfect execution example of how the entire team knew every single player on the field. They had this innate symbiotic communication going through. And what was happening was The player on the left wing was running up with the ball. He then crossed the ball across the goal, goal square or goal mouth, and 2 other forward attacking players who were in front of Messi— the first player faked getting the ball to try and attract the first defender. The second player also faked trying to kick the ball to take a shot. again drawing the 2nd and 3rd defenders to leave the space and completely open space for Messi, who was standing about 3 or 4 meters behind them all, to just come right in and tap the ball straight in. For that to happen, you've got to think there's 4 players involved in that move, directly in that move, that when the ball got passed in, the first 2 knew that Messi was behind them instinctively and very, very acutely.

Yeah.

But Messi also knew that that's exactly what they would probably do in that situation. The decision that was made by the 2 players that left the ball was to leave the ball, not to kick it, not to play at it, but to draw the defender in to create the space.

Yeah.

That was amazing because it was one of those really good examples where when every single player was on the same, on the same sheet. They were all thinking about the same thing. They all knew where everyone's positions were. And by the way, these 2 forward players, at the time they faked the, the positions, they were facing towards the goal. So Messi was behind them, so they would have had to have looked over a few moments beforehand.

Right.

But that level and symbiotic aspect of how that game how that goal was scored blows my mind to this day because it requires so much cohesion and so much collaboration and so much communication, so much trust in each other. Every single aspect that I've listed down before, I thought to myself, how cool would that be to see that happen in, in a business sense? And I've seen it happen in business sense, but I've seen other people do it as well. And it's just, I don't know, it's just beautiful to think about, like, how to how that could work in a business sense as well.

Well, it's a great, great eloquent example. And yeah, I mean, FC Barcelona is certainly one of the high-performing teams of all time, and including people like Messi, and probably the 2 that left it were big names in their own rights too. So for them to put aside the individual ego for the benefit of the team, and then for Messi to just have a layup, yeah, beautiful example. Thank you. Okay, Jins, I've got a couple of short answer questions. I know you've brought down some reading for the flight. Maybe Qantas turned off the Wi-Fi for you. But, um, is there a— and maybe is there a quote or a favorite saying that— I know you've mentioned a few big names like Simon Sinek, etc., but something that sort of, you, um, you know, draws you in, or, um, you know, maybe relative to sort of high-performing teams that you want to share? Yeah.

Yeah, this is actually not a quote written down anywhere. Um, it's not in a book. Oh, actually, sorry, it isn't— it isn't a book, but it's in my personal journal. Um, and my mum wrote it down, and this was as I was leaving the home. So I left home at 17, and she wrote down— and I always remember this— necessity is the mother of innovation. And I love that quote because It really brings you down to asking, what is the core situation that I'm in? And how do I creatively think about a way out of that problem? And I think that's a very beautiful quote because from my mother's perspective, being an immigrant into Australia, there wasn't a lot that she had to work with. So, necessity really created a lifestyle of innovation for her where she had to think outside of the box to solve problems. How do you raise kids? How do you grow a life? How do you purchase a house? How do you live healthy and happy? And she came with essentially nothing to be able to do that.

Yeah.

And both my mum and dad did that. And I've thought to myself for so long, that's such a great way to think about any problem because you're in a situation where The only thing you can really control is yourself and the actions you do. So you can't always say, oh, I'll wait for the other person to do that. Yeah, you can, but the action you can probably possibly do in that situation is maybe talk or communicate or clearly articulate a situation. I love that quote. I, I always—

It, it just transcends. I mean, um, you know, we in a lot of our mastermind sessions, there's this sort of idea around change transformation. There's a lot of it going on and, you know, whether it's new markets or getting the business into a different shape, there's always this sort of this need and how do you draw that into a necessity? How do you even, how do you create, you know, don't waste a good crisis or how do you create a burning platform or fabricate a need or in sort of going back to your quote, this sort of necessity. I really like that. Your mother also clearly—

Look, I'm sure she's picked I picked it up from somewhere else and I probably should do some research and figure out where that quote comes from.

She can claim it.

I'm giving it to her at the moment.

So, and no, I imagine, you know, as an entrepreneur, you've been across a few different businesses. I imagine there are a few times where necessity came in and hopefully that did help you with some creative innovation. It's also interesting too because, you know, when different companies in different parts of their life cycle, and you've probably been more at this, the front end of late, which is the innovative growth, exciting part where there are no shackles. It's all about being innovative. Companies that are maybe in single-digit decline and sort of that necessity is starting to creep into to innovate and change and excel. Yeah, great quote, sorry.

That's great, I love it, yeah.

So, Chins, favorite book. I can see you've got the book there, and I think you might have mentioned it before, but maybe if you just share—

Yes.

Share the book, and then maybe more importantly, why you've chosen that one.

Well, yeah, this is one of my favorite books. I've got a few others I didn't bring along, but Trillion Dollar Coach, written by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle. And it's about one of Silicon Valley's best football coaches turned leadership coaches, uh, Bill Campbell. He passed in 2016, but he coached nearly the best of the best of Silicon Valley. And even at his funeral, all the best CEOs and founders and tech entrepreneurs were all in the same place at the same time, which is very rare, I guess. Why I love it is it shows how a person that came from the sporting space was able to take the knowledge and the structures and the frameworks and apply it into their business space. Which for me personally feels like nearly an autobiography in the sense— not as great as Bill in any way, but I love being able to see that there was a person that has done this and thought well ahead of his time, and I'm now able to do the same and apply the same concepts from sports into business. And it was funny, I, I— this book was given to me by my previous CEO, and I think she saw everything that she read in this book in me. And I love that because that it shows that she saw the actual coaching aspect that I was able to do in the business.

Yeah.

And saw that I could also provide the same sort of skills and capabilities back to others in In, in the business sense. So I love that book. Um, the other book that I absolutely love, and it's a very short and excellent book, is The War on Art. I don't know if you ever read that book.

Sounds familiar.

But, but The War on Art really is all about breaking down the barriers that prevent your creativity. I love that book because it's one of those situations or books that When I'm feeling stuck or I put a barrier up or some sort of resistance, I read that book to then go, oh yeah, I have everything in my mind, I have the capabilities, I have the skills, and there is a way out. And there always is a solution to something. It's just about unlocking creativity. And for me, not coming from a traditional creative mindset or world. I'm not a poet or an artist or a musician or a designer. I'm an engineer. I'm very much thinking structures. But even in structured situations, you can be creative of how that can be engineered. So I love that book. It's a book that my wife shared with me when we first met, and it's in our library of reading Every couple of months when we feel down or we feel stuck, we just pull that book out. It's about 100 pages. It's very small.

Oh, great.

Very small book, like physically that is. Um, it's a good, good— you'll read in about an hour.

Wow, smash through it. Okay, great. Thank you. Well, 2 for 1 there. Yeah, appreciate that. Um, I did have one other question too, which I'll sneak in at the end if you're all good with that.

Yeah, sure.

Um, and just any, any advice to maybe your younger self? that you'd want to share?

Learn to say no earlier. I think I was a people pleaser in my sort of 20s and my early career. I just said yes to everything, and there's good in that, especially in your younger years. I think there is good in that, but in hindsight, I think there was a lot of opportunities that would have been much stronger in the way I executed them if I had said no to a lot of other things. And what I mean by that is distractions or no to certain areas in life that I wish I'd gone back and said, ah, instead of spending time on that, I could have spent time more on this area. So I think just learning to say no is still something that I'm learning and applying in my own day-to-day life. But I definitely would love if that came to me a lot earlier in life. So yeah.

Yeah. And I've seen that example as well and it's been articulated in a way that saying no is being respectful to the other individual. And one of our CEOs sort of working with was saying that, you know, when somebody comes to me with a business case or an idea and, you know, I don't really like it or, you know, I don't think it's a good idea, if I don't say no and provide, tell them why no, then it's, I'm not going to make a decision on it, then they're still thinking, oh, there's a chance that it might be a yes, or there's still all this activity. But by saying no, it closes it off. There's feedback given, and then they move— people can move on. So it reduces work, I think, uh, was where he was going with that.

I think it creates clarity.

Yes.

And for me, that's what it does. It creates clarity for me. It gives me the opportunity to put my energy and focus on what I believe is important to my particular point in time. And it doesn't lead me off in sort of like a red herring approach. I'm not chasing something else that I don't need to chase.

Yep.

If someone else wants to do it, great, go, go do that. But like, for me, it's not, it's not important.

Bringing you back to, uh, this first principles clarity sort of space, which, um, Yeah, I wish I was living in your brain sometimes. And maybe just as an observation, Jin, so throughout this interview you have been exceptionally calm. There's no nervous tics, there's no wiggling. I mean, maybe that's all on my side of the fence, but, um, is this just something you take for granted that you're not aware of, or do you— have you been working at this? Because there is a calming nature that you have, and I'm sure it's coming through, through the microphone. But, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because you're sort of all about coaching, and I imagine that I'd be coachable after sort of your presence. So is that something you've worked on, or is that something you're consciously— anything you can share in that sort of area where we could maybe be be a bit more— people would be more accepting of our coaching and taking on a bit more of your mannerisms and demeanors? Long question, sorry.

I love it. It's, it's a very good question. Um, would you believe that maybe a decade ago that I was not as calm as I am today? And it's because I wasn't present. And I think Truly being present in the moment, being focused on the other person and their relationship with you and the intent and the tone, is a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing because I'm not worried about anyone else outside this room right now. I'm just worried about us and the conversation. I think it's so easy to be distracted. So the tip I always like to probably to remind myself with is when you're with somebody, be with them. And there is nothing more important in the world at the time than the conversation or the moment you're sharing, because you don't get that time ever, ever again. So you've, you've made an active decision to come into the space, whether it's, you know, now at the podcast, if I'm having coffee with a friend. catching up with my parents, I'm making an active decision to be there. So be there. And that was something that during my 20s I just did not, did not do a lot of. And as I was going into my late 30s now, it's very clear to me that these relationships are very important and to have respect and the space for each other. So I'm glad that I came across calm to you.

Absolutely.

I wanted to make sure this, this space that we have together today is as nice and calming as possible and just was like, well, thank you.

I'm not sure I contributed to that. No, you did.

Of course you did.

Um, so there, uh, yeah, so that was just more of an observation to sort of round, round out, uh, today's conversation. I do have sort of 60 seconds of rapid-fire questions which I'm gonna throw at you. Um, all right, ready to roll?

Yes, hit me.

Okay. Coach or tech leader?

Coach.

Morning workouts or evening workouts?

Definitely morning.

Remote team, in person?

In person.

Strategy or tactics?

Strategy.

Team building retreats or daily check-ins?

Oh, that's a tough one. Both are so great. Um, I'm gonna do team building retreats.

Got it. Innovation or proven methods?

Proven methods.

Profit or growth?

Oh, that's also a good one. Uh, profits.

High energy meetings or calm discussions?

Calm discussions.

Digital tools or face-to-face communication?

Face-to-face.

Individual achievement or team success?

Team success.

Formal training or hands-on experience?

Hands-on experience.

Tech startups or established corps?

I love tech startups.

Mentoring or coaching?

Uh, coaching.

Work-life balance or work-life integration?

Work-life integration.

Competitive sports or collaborative sports?

Well, what's the difference between a competitive—

I don't know, I only asked the question, I don't know the answers.

Collaborative sports.

Sounds good to me. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Jens, for your time today.

That's good.

And it was really fantastic to have a sort of calming conversation. I can really see how you could position— how you've made me coachable in some ways. If you told me to, you know, I feel like you've got a nature which naturally sets you up, and obviously it's something you've developed and worked on, so congratulations. And we didn't sort of get too much into sort of some of your entrepreneurial successes. We sort of scratched the service with, um, some of the new stuff you're doing in luxury brands. But I think maybe there's another podcast in it. But, uh, really appreciate the conversation today. Thank you for being so generous with all your experiences.

No, thank you so much. It's been absolutely beautiful and wonderful to be here.

Awesome.

Thanks, gents. Thanks.