Mastering the Mind: Graham Winter on Psychological Resilience and Peak Performance

When you're thinking about your team, think about ADEP, Achieve, Develop, Enjoy, Partner, 'cause that's the type of conversation, that's the environment you're trying to create. What are the critical capabilities in this next 3 to 5 years? I think across the whole leadership cohort, given the nature of the workforce challenges that senior leaders are facing, the ability to be able to deal with uncertainty and the conflict that that creates.

So what would you recommend sort of the first thing that, for example, I could do and bring back to my workplace?

Wow. Well, I think the first one.

So, Graham, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to have you here today. I thought we'd jump right in, and if you wouldn't mind, just give me a brief synopsis of your career to date. And yeah, sure.

It's probably a little bit unusual. Started in organizational psychology with Coopers& Lybrand, but I was playing first-class cricket. I had an invitation to set up a sports psychology unit at an institute of sport because they wanted a psychologist who was playing sport at an elite level. So I tossed away the suit, put on the tracksuit, and spent a number of years doing sports psychology work. I was fortunate then to be appointed as the chief psychologist for the Australian Olympic team, but I also kept my interest in the organisational psych area. So around 2000, I was working for PwC in their strategic change group. And also doing the work with the Sydney Olympics. And then following on from that, my passion really became getting organisations to work as one. And really the last 15 years or so has been working with mostly large corporates, fairly complex organisations, helping the leaders to be able to find the best way to get their teams to work as one to deliver what it is that they want to deliver. And been a pretty broad range of organisations and many of them national and international.

Yeah, that's, as you say, a very varied career so far.

Bit of a mix.

Yeah. And all sort of obviously focused on performance and sort of team focus as one team. What would you say are the main differences between a sporting organisation and a professional sort of executive one?

I think there's probably 3 or 4. I mean, one is in sport, the outcome's more obvious and more immediate. Secondly, I think it's more complex in the workplace areas. A third would be feedback. In sport, there is what I'd call a feedback expectation. So you go into an elite sports environment and if you are not getting regular feedback and continual focus on growing, learning, getting better, then you leave because you don't have the coach and you don't have the program. Whereas I think in the corporate areas, we are much more shy about feedback and setting up that sort of feedback loop. So And I think that complexity, that somewhat absence of feedback, I would argue, I think makes it a little bit more, maybe a little slower to some extent to move through. But there are obvious differences as well that we could certainly explore too.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think from personal experience, certainly my old jobs, having almost 2 review periods a year, and that was all the feedback you were going to be given. So what do you think is the optimum cadence of feedback?

I actually think the actual perfect thing is to not use the word feedback. It's to just make regular learning and regular insights a part of your day-to-day work. Because I think what organisations tend to do, I mean, to be blunt, a lot of performance management systems are really just anxiety relievers for managers. As you say, I only have to have this conversation every 6 months. If you stop and think about at what pace do you need feedback or what pace do you need insights, the reality is now is you need them day in, day out. You need them in the event, in the moment. So to me, it's more about creating a culture of openness of insights and learning than it is thinking about more formalised feedback.

Yeah, that sounds interesting. It sounds like as well you need to change people's behaviours to align with that.

Well, I think one thing is to think about, I mean, if you think about Well, what do you mean by performance?

Yeah.

So in the business workplace, we'll often think performance is achievement and maybe a bit of development. We use a simple framework. The acronym's ADEP, achieve, develop, enjoy, partner. So if you think about that for a moment, put yourself into, think about your own career, the times when things have been working best for you. There'll be times when you're achieving meaningful outcomes, you're developing and growing, you're enjoying what you're doing and you're partnering. So that's almost your starting point for performance. So a leader, when you're thinking about your team, think about ADEP, Achieve, Develop, Enjoy, Partner, because that's the type of conversation, that's the environment you're trying to create. If you create an environment like that, you not only enhance motivation, you also reduce the chances of burnout. So that to me is one of the things that I think you can do immediately to, in a sense, bring a little bit of the sport high-performance, high-demand environment into business, just think about performance differently and then think about, are you having those conversations with your people on a regular basis and getting insights with each other about, are we achieving, are we developing, are we enjoying, are we partnering? Because each of those, if one of them's missing, you're not going to create a sustainable high-performance environment.

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Creating that ADEPT acronym and everything and what goes into that, what would you say would be an easy first step the leader can take?

One of the things I often do with the team, so assuming it's a team-based environment, is if we are physically in a workshop or in a meeting setting, we grab 4 sheets of flip chart, we stick achieve on one, develop, enjoy, and partner. and we debrief the last 90 days.

Okay.

What's worked well and where are the even better ifs? Where do we feel that we could have done better? And then we look at the next 90 days. What do we want to achieve? What do we want to get better at? Enjoy often is more about energy. So how do we keep our energy up? And then partnering. Where are those critical partnering relationships in the team and externally? Gives you a really good frame to be able to then have a good, I think, conversation. And we've introduced that into numerous large Australian organisations, defence and government and private sector. And I guess the continual message we get is, wow, these performance conversations don't actually have to be kind of status-based and formal.

Yeah.

It's about creating the environment in which we all can do better. And that can be practical and it can be pragmatic. It doesn't have to be this is a soft skill or this is how you create this alternative to performance conversations. No, it's common sense.

Yeah, no, I mean, that sounds fantastic. But once you've had those conversations, once you've gone through the framework and you've reviewed the last 90 days and everyone's agreed on the outcomes and what needs to happen, how do you then ensure that that is adhered to effectively?

Cadence.

Yeah, exactly. Cadence. Okay. Yeah.

So it's What's the operating rhythm? I'm often asked when I start working with a leadership team, what's the single most important thing for us to do? I mean, I guess my answer is get clear what your purpose is. But as soon as we're clear what that is, what's your operating rhythm? What's your cadence? How quickly do you learn? When do those insights occur? How do you set that environment up? The metaphor I'd use is a fleet of yachts. If I take, so we do quite a lot of defence industries, you've got a lot of lot of complexity in those industries. You try to get alignment between people, between teams, between leaders and so on. So what's the cadence at which you need to operate? Well, it's sort of like a fleet of yachts. You need to align, you need to collaborate and you need to learn. So how do you do that in that environment? I mean, for most leaders, if you set a default, if you're not having a regular catch-up at least every 30 days with your directs around each of those 4 elements of ADEPT, you're really playing a role as a coach in creating that sort of environment. But on the other hand, you need to make sure that you're not doing that too often as well. So cadence varies depending on the environment, but operating rhythm is absolutely critical, particularly when you're working in more adaptive environments. It's mission critical.

Yeah. When things change fast. Yeah. That's interesting. And having worked with executive teams across different industries, what would you say frustrates or what's lacking in their eyes in the upcoming leaders in their organization?

I think if there was one thing that stands out for me at the moment, it's the executives I talk with about their leadership cohorts. It's the inability of the next level to proactively deal with conflict.

Interesting.

And that can be conflicting priorities. It can be conflicts that then get escalated to the executive. And yeah, there's a mix of those things, but it's the ability to be able to deal with conflict. And I think if there's a— boy, what are the critical capabilities in this next 3 to 5 years? I think across the whole leadership cohort, given the nature of the workforce challenges, that senior leaders are facing, the nature of change, the turbulence that we're seeing, the ability to be able to deal with uncertainty and the conflict that that creates and the trade-offs that we have around priorities and so on. So I think it's that ability to be proactive around surfacing and resolving conflicts.

So Graeme, yeah, I mean, that sounds essential, frankly, moving forward in terms of conflict resolution and prioritisation. What would be, I guess, a quick fix or even looking sort of medium, long term? How should people go about improving that aspect of themselves?

I don't know there's a quick fix, Alex. I mean, I think one thing we're hearing a lot in the workplace now is psychological safety. And I think that's often being, how do I, well, let me be blunt. I've had 3 chief executives say to me in the last week, words effectively saying, I feel that psychological safety is being weaponized in our workplace.

Wow. Okay.

Now, what are they saying? I think what we've got is a fundamental misunderstanding about what psychological safety means. And in a sense, people saying if there's conflict, if this feels a bit uncomfortable, et cetera, then it's not a safe environment. If you jump back to the research for a moment, psychological safety is not discomfort. Psychological safety is a combination of social safety. I feel like I'm in an environment where I can express myself. where I can say what I think respectfully, where I can raise ideas, where I can experiment and so on. But equally, it's an environment where there is accountability, a set of performance standards, a set of norms, a set of values. So I think the first thing to do for the vast majority of organisations, and we're finding it as almost becoming issue number one for most of our clients at the moment, is getting a really clear cultural understanding in the organisation about what do we actually mean by that psychologically safe, constructive environment.

Yeah.

'Cause otherwise what you've got is you've got leaders avoiding having conversations on the one hand, you've got HR being positioned, I think sometimes unfairly and sometimes I think they buy in too hard to trying to protect the workforce rather than saying, no, no, we need to create a constructive environment in which we can work together, not work in conflict. 'Cause unfortunately the conflict becomes a cold conflict. It's a gap. You don't have the conversations. not psychologically safe and it's certainly not going to produce productivity either.

No, that's interesting. And obviously there's got to be— conflict's probably the wrong word— there's got to be friction of ideas and differences of opinion that has to be shared.

And how the leaders deal with that. I mean, I think in Toolkit for Turbulence, one of the things that we recognise when we— the research that we did there with 15 top Australian leaders, the thread that ran through that was this recognition from every single one of the leaders that the thing that's changed more than anything in their leadership approach is their own vulnerability. Now, it's an overused word, and I can assure many listeners are going, oh God, here we go, vulnerability. But yeah, talk to a good sports coach and they'll say vulnerability is you've got to be able to admit your own uncertainties, you've got to be able to admit your own mistakes, you've got to be able to, to, to put yourself out there and show some level of empathy and And show a bit of your emotion. So I think a lot of it is just the basic humanity of a senior leader to be able to create an environment where people go, gee, you're human, you're not perfect.

Yeah.

You've got worries, you've got concerns, but we're also up for something big here. We've got some great opportunities. And to me, it's creating that human environment. And if I go back to sport for a moment, that's what the really good teams are about. You feel comfortable and safe and confident to go big But equally, you know that you're accountable. You've got a set of standards and therefore you can challenge each other, you can support each other, and you know that in that environment that's going to happen.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, again, I guess being more vulnerable, that helps with everyone's story, its sense of understanding, everything else.

It does. And I think again, we've got a lot of these words rolling around at the moment, psychological safety, vulnerability, diversity, inclusion, and so on. And I think the danger is that there's almost a fear about having a clear conversation about what do we mean by each of these. And again, vulnerability, Brené Brown did some fabulous work on that. It's courage, it's the ability to lean into it. So I think what we need to do is recognize that to create that high-performance environment where your team works well, and where other teams work well. I don't know, maybe getting really simple. There's only one thing you need to be able to do more than anything else in a really adaptive turbulent environment. That's to be able to learn. You've got to be able to learn fast.

Yeah.

You don't learn fast if you are trying to make a good impression rather than being open and honest. If you feel that the status and the status is like you need to behave yourself. So leaders, you need to be really careful. You bring status into a room. Yeah, you bring that sort of pressure on people to make an impression and you also bring a bit of an expert mindset. So part of the leader's role is to dismantle some of that without dismantling the standard because we're still going world class in what we're doing.

Yeah, that's pretty powerful. I guess coming back to that point you made about sort of diversity inclusion versus performance, things like that, do you see a marked difference in, I guess, HR department and senior executives' response to that? And I guess, yeah, response and encapsulation.

Yeah, I do. I had a chief executive say to me just 2 days ago, I've got a fundamental problem. My HR department are, in her words, preoccupied with psychosocial risks and all of the elements related to that. I've got 3 operations leaders running large business operations who are feeling really frustrated that they're not really sure what they're supposed to do and what that means and what it doesn't mean. What sort of conversations can they have with their teams and so on? Look, I think most of these things are about ands. They're about being able to have psychological safety and accountability.

Sure.

They're about having candour on the one hand, but having a sense of care on the other. So I think it's really a case of HR, step up and make sure that you are a legitimate part of the business. That the business leaders see that you are and you recognise your role as a critical contributor to the business. And leaders recognise that your business 100% depends on your culture. And business leaders tend to be really good at— the language we often use is they're pretty good at restructuring. They're not so good at reculturing.

Yeah.

So I think it's just the two working in partnership with each other. Employees need those two to work in partnership with each other. But I think we've got to get clear what we mean by some of these things in organisations or we run the risk of having either or. And as we both know, the world's a bit too polarised on lefts and rights and either ors at the moment and it's not a good place to be.

No, indeed not. That's interesting. I guess coming back as well to what you were saying about the real important thing, especially in a complex turbulent environment, is the learning. where does the emphasis sit on the individual to learn versus the organisation to provide that support?

I guess we always know intrinsic motivation is always better. So I suppose there's an issue of recruiting people who are open to learn, et cetera, as well. But I'm a firm believer that having seen it in so many different settings that the leaders create the environment. So We go back to achieve, develop, enjoy, partner. Do the leaders create the environment in which learning happens? So I would say, again, if asked what's the single greatest weakness you see across Australian organisations, I'd say the inability to debrief. They think debriefing's something you do at the end of a project. When I look at, when we implement a one-team program, one of the critical things we're wanting to do is to build learning loops in. And I think organizations using pulse surveys and things like that, I think that's really helpful. But I think learning, yeah, it's the responsibility of the individual, but I think fundamentally it's the responsibility of the leaders to create because they create that cadence. If it's busy, busy, busy, we never pause, we only stop. I have leaders saying to me, I want my team to be better at dealing with conflicts. I want us to be quicker at making decisions. Okay, are we debriefing that? So what are the habits that if you're doing that now in 30 days, if we improved it, what would it look like? And how do we change that? What are the systems you've got in place now that reinforce the current status? Because so often it's almost like, I don't know, use a silly sport analogy. It's like the football coach says, bring the ball up the middle, and there's a fence in the middle of the ground. The players can't get up there. And for a lot of organizations, they've got performance management systems, they've got KPIs. They all drive individual performance, looking good, don't highlight mistakes or problems.

Yeah.

And then they say, I want a learning environment where we can move quickly. Creating the debriefing environment, single most important thing you can do as a leader. Create that environment in which you can do debriefs about task and debriefs about people.

Yeah. Okay. And that's almost after every interaction you're talking about there.

Just get used to it. Yeah. It's just like, how's this working? What's working for you? What's not working? What more can I do to set this up? What's one thing we could do differently? It's asking for insights.

Yes.

It's exactly where we started. It's not a feedback culture, it's an insight culture. And the NeuroLeadership Institute have done some fabulous research work and collated a lot of work around that, saying that the more you can build that environment of insight, the better.

Yeah.

So how do we normalize that? Well, one thing would be leaders thinking about, just think about, okay, in a conversation in a meeting, How much time did you spend speaking? How much time did you spend listening? And how much time did you spend asking questions? Yeah, a good coach is going to ask great questions. Really good leaders are going to be really good at summarizing and pulling that together and then transferring it into an action. In many ways, that's your role as a leader now. What have we learned? How do we move it forward? So you're making decisions, but in a sense, what you're doing is facilitating the decisions for your people rather than making them yourself.

Yeah. What's the trick of asking a good question?

Not answering it by saying, don't you think, or making it closed. But I think also knowing the context, being able to cut through. I mean, one of my favourites is when I'm sitting with a client and the client's telling me all the problems that are occurring, I will often just look them in the eye and say, and how are you complicit in that? And then go quiet. And they'll start to unpack the, yeah, there's some stuff you can do to improve here. There's some things that you can move on. So I think it's taking that individual responsibility, but I know it sounds really simple, but yeah, every high performance environment is an environment in which people can learn faster than the rate of change or faster than the demands that are coming at you.

Yeah.

I ask each business leader that's listening to this, how fast are your teams able to learn and adapt? And if they're not, and many aren't, then that's the environment you are creating. You are creating it. So how do you create that environment where you've got the clarity of intent on the one hand, but the openness to be able to learn quickly and move and make decisions on the other? And that's what I see the best leaders doing.

Yeah. So again, coming back to, as we were discussing earlier, that whole self-coaching aspect and being quite self-aware, being curious. Key traits.

Yeah. And it's an interesting balance of— I had a great conversation with an executive of a mining company just a couple of weeks ago and he just said to me, look, yeah, what do you think I can do? I know I need to engage my people differently. And I said to him, why don't you try this? Every interaction you have, go people first, task right behind. What do you mean by that? And I said, well, just think about every time you go into a meeting at the moment, every interaction I've seen with you, you go task first. There might be a hi, how are you? But you go straight to the task. You might check in on people a little bit later. How do you think it would be different for people if you started people first?

Yeah.

You just said, okay, everybody clear on what's important for us today? What do you want to get out of this? Any things that I can do to make sure that we've set the environment that we leave with really clear actions? So you're creating the people environment in which that can occur. So I think a really important little, almost simple ground rule is go people first, task right behind. Because the majority of leaders, not all, but the majority are likely to go task first, either because they're a little more task-oriented or they're busy. And if they're busy, they're going to go to task.

Yeah, that's true. I've seen it happen a few times.

Oh yeah. You watch a meeting. It's quite fascinating to— one of the models I quite like is, it's a very complex way. I won't get too complex, but there are 4 things that you can see people do in a meeting. Watch them. People can advocate or move or put a point of view. They can support somebody else's point of view. They can challenge, put an alternative if you like, or they can reflect. Watch most executive meetings. You'll see plenty of moving, maybe a bit of supporting, some challenging but not particularly constructive at times, and you'll see very, very little summarizing and reflecting. Single most important thing leaders can do, get better at reflecting. You'll create the learning environment. You can then help your team to close off things.

Yeah, that's some—

Again, you're creating the conversational environment. In sport, in a field game, it's the passing. In leadership, it's your conversations.

Yeah.

Think about your conversations. Think about how you curate those conversations. You want to have a tough decision and move through some tough decision-making. Are you setting up your meetings to have that? Or you just walk in like every other meeting? Get smarter about it. It's a high-demand environment. Treat it like a high-demand environment is, I think, really important.

That's right. Hey everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. If you're loving this podcast, please give us a 5-star review. And I guess those meetings are one-on-one as well as Sort of a boardroom setting.

Yeah. And of course the one-on-ones are ADEPT conversations.

Yes.

And then the question is, okay, so what's my role? What's my role as a leader? The best ones I see, I think, see themselves having pretty much 2 roles in that. Their role is to unlock potential, to unlock where are we going, what's the clarity, the vision and so on, and unblock. How do I help you to get to where we want to get to? What can I do? And I think it's, again, I'm going to encourage your listeners, just think about the leadership meetings they attend. How much of the time is spent unlocking potential and unblocking versus just sharing information on what's going on in the business? Good agile teams, adaptive leadership teams will spend 75% of their time in meetings unlocking and unblocking. Really important. But at the end, you've got to create the environment for that to happen. Yeah.

Now I love that sort of statement you had at the beginning. What do you want to get out of this meeting and how can I help you get there? I think that's very powerful.

Well, who owns the meeting? You want everybody and particularly the people who are going to leave the meeting to own it. One of the best ones I've ever seen, I was doing some work at Newmont Mining and I remember you never left a meeting at Newmont without, they called it the 3 Ws. The what are we going to do, who's going to do it and by when? And then of course when the next meeting started, how are we all doing? What's happened on their 3 Ws? So it created the loop. There's a cadence. It's simple. I think we'll get onto favourite quotes, I suspect, a little bit later. But yeah.

You have one now? That's all right.

Well, I seek the simplicity on the far side of complexity. Oliver Wendell Holmes. I just think that sometimes with a lot of the people stuff, we make it too complex. It's one of the beauties of working and having spent the time in the sport area. You take an Olympic team, you've got 900 people, you've got 27 sports. When it all boils down in every one of those environments, it's pretty simple. You're trying to create the environment in which success is as inevitable as possible. To do that, you need to create the environment in which your performers can perform. That's your role as a leader. Create that environment, curate that environment. And I think that's what I'd encourage leaders to think about with their meetings, their conversations. And many of the frameworks are very simple. They're natural. Yeah.

Flipping the view slightly, if you were looking up as an aspiring leader, how would that change in terms of trying to manage up? and manage your senior leader if they didn't follow that framework or that advice? How do you create your own environment and drive change?

Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting one because we know that from a neuroscience perspective, the greatest modifier of human behaviour is status. So it modifies intent. So in other words, if my boss is very not open, if my boss tends to use power and so on, then I tend to shut down. I'm going to manage impressions and so on. So look, I think, what can you do? If you're the individual, you try as much as you can to build that relationship. And I guess a performance psychologist, you couldn't actually have a conversation without saying you focus on what you can control, but you do.

Yeah.

When you coach, coaching somebody in that situation, you're asking them to go, I know that there's a number of things that are frustrating you here. There are a number of things you can't influence and shape, but there are some that you can that you haven't yet. What are those and what can you move? So what you do is you bring the horizon in for that person. The same as you talk to special military groups and they'll say, what do you do in high demand environments? Well, almost your best friend is a short-term goal. So yeah, what can I do today? What can I do in the next hour? What can I move forward? So I think it's trying to see where their agency is and seeing how they move forward. And Not trying to wish that somebody's going to personality change or whatever. It's not going to happen.

Yeah, exactly. Have to deal with what you got.

Exactly. Yeah.

I guess as a follow-on question, how do you think the upcoming leadership or the rising talent can better support their leaders?

I think a little bit about what we spoke about earlier. I think be proactive in bringing, I call it truism, but bringing solutions, not problems. But particularly recognizing that what your senior leaders are dealing with is a lot of complexity and a fair breadth. So be clear, be really clear and concise in your communication 'cause I know it drives executives nuts to get unclear communication. So read Jonathan Campbell's Hero's Journey and understand that stories are powerful.

Yeah.

So tell somebody, if you're going to get your boss's attention, go straight to what their need is and what the problem is and how you are the guide that can help to solve it and resolve it. I had a lovely conversation with a team Monday and we were having a nice open and honest conversation and just discussing with the leader of this team and it's quite a well-known Australian organisation that I won't name.

I won't push you.

But the lady that runs it tends to not be particularly good at handling bad news. So we were just bringing that out in the open and sort of just highlighting that her team can play a role in how they deal with that. Because if they're calm, if they're able to summarize what her concerns are and be able to give her a clear sense of action, but not immediate action, we can actually move very effectively. If they react, it just doesn't— doesn't work. They can either react and then they get busy doing stuff and they get frustrated, et cetera, as well. So senior leaders, yes, you do need to be aware of how you react to bad news. But I think the next level clarity of communication and being able to summarise things quickly and provide a clear sense of how we move forward, that's a skill that'll get them into an executive level.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

How to solve the problem. And this is what I recommend doing and this is what we think should be the answer. Providing options and bringing it together. Synthesising. Yeah, that's interesting. Thank you, Graham. Just in terms of— yeah, I think we were talking earlier about having a potential mental block. I know you linked that when we were speaking earlier to cricket and things like that, but I guess in the workplace as well, how do you find ways of overcoming that issue?

It's interesting. I mean, some writers say mental blocks don't exist.

Sorry, in what way?

Well, I think the suggestion is just sit there for a while and start writing and things will start emerging again. Interestingly, a lot of writers say ChatGPT is now a nice answer to that. But look, I think probably the word I would say is perspective. I think for most of the executives, Most executives I see, there's a number of things that will help them, I think, in the environment we're at the moment, but nothing more than perspective. So I think if you feel blocked in some way, then where can you get some alternative perspective from? Can it be from colleagues' ideas, from colleagues' questions? Can it be from reading or reviewing or looking at something differently? You've got to change your brainwave pattern basically if you get down to the neuroscience of it.

Right.

But I think perspective. And we all know, I'm sure you're the same. I have days where you go, gee, I'm just spinning the wheels. I'm not getting anywhere. I need to change my perspective. And it's that awareness of that. And then how do you do that? And ideally we all have a few people that we can kind of call up or text or whatever and say, just ask me 3 tough questions. Well, I'll get on with this or breakthrough or whatever. But change of view, change of perspective, I think is the key. Yeah.

And coming back, I guess, to feedback loops and that, and I guess reflective questions, do you believe as well in sort of negative feedback? Should it always be sort of linked to a positive side of things, or is actually sort of the brutal honest truth?

Yeah, I think there's always been this concept, hasn't there, of sandwiching your positive feedback. To me, that's a little bit of people first, tasks right behind. In the sport, I guess if I go back to sport, no one's considered it to be negative feedback if someone's given you some feedback that you can work on, that you're going to be better next week. But in the workplace, we tend to have that sort of, well, it's positive or it's negative.

Okay.

Again, if I'm working with a team over a period of time, we are trying to build an environment of insights. We want insights because our environment's changing. There are signals popping up. How do we make sure that we get those signals? So if I'm a leader and I'm having an impact on a on a group, on an individual. How do I learn about that? Well, unless we've got insight. So hence the sort of work I do with the team is we're having regular, very short, 5, 10-minute insight check-ins between executives. They are part of the cadence and they're, Alex, we've been working together for a little while. Just give me 2 things that I can do differently to create a more positive environment for this team and have a greater impact.

Yeah.

And one thing that I should keep doing. If you are having those conversations regularly, it's not negative. It's negative when you haven't had it and whoa, out of the blue comes this, okay. And of course that creates defensiveness. So yeah, normalise it as one of the very good sports coaches that I know well often says.

Yeah.

You create that normalising, but it's about your vulnerability to do it. If you're the leader, do it first.

Yes.

And create the environment where people see that you are very welcome, very welcoming and opening to those insights. They'll hurt a little. I mean, nobody gets up in the morning going, gee, I hope I get told 5 things that I haven't done well that I could do better.

Sure.

But wow, you think about where your biggest growth has come from and they're almost always those stuff-ups or that big insight. They're the things we're looking for.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, create the environment where you welcome them.

Yeah, it comes back to that vulnerability issue.

Yeah, it does. Yeah. So you can see how you're creating a human environment to be able to do brilliant work, to do fabulous work. I want to go back to the Olympics. That was exactly our role there. How do you create the environment in which success is almost inevitable? Well, you create an environment in which people feel very comfortable and confident and they feel a part of the team. So there's a commitment to the team. They feel that the people around them have their back and they're there to support and challenge them. And they want to see them see how good they can be, not how few mistakes they can make.

Was that a different focus from when you arrived?

No, I think that's always the elite coaches. I mean, you'll see some different coaching styles, but the elite coaches, the ones that survive over time, they get that balance right. It is, to use the terms we were using earlier, it's socially safe or psychologically safe and it's high accountability. They're fabulous environments to be in. You get an executive team ticking over like that, you get your leadership cohort ticking over like that, you can take on anything because you can learn together, you can challenge together. You're not frightened of that. There's performance standards and there's consequences. Of course there are. But you want to be in that environment because it's positive. I feel threatened. We often talk about almost 3 levels of threat. So threat sort of 1 is I feel motivated and stressed, but yep, this is good. 2 is I'm just feeling like I need to protect myself. And 3 is way too much. Your job as a leader is to create that level 1 threat environment. And how to do that? Well, yeah, we've talked about a few of those things, I think.

Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Graeme. That's interesting. And do you mind if I come back to the whole conflict resolution sort of issue and the patterns and just talk a little bit more about sort of how to improve one's practice of that?

Yeah.

So what would you recommend sort of the first thing that, for example, I could do and bring back to my workplace? Wow.

Well, I think the first one's awareness. Awareness of what is your work environment and what are the current sort of challenges and Current examples of conflict that's happening or not happening. So I'd be getting some perspective first and then thinking about it in terms of small habits that you can move forward. So if I put it maybe just in the sort of context of how we put teams together, I think that can often be helpful. That'd be useful. So we use a thing called a partnering quadrant. So the first part of the quadrant is what's important to us? So what's important to you? What's important to the team? The second is, what are your expectations of each other? What are your expectations for outcomes, for outputs, and for how we behave with each other? How do we communicate them with each other? What are our agreements around how we do that? And then what's the cadence? How do we continue to align and collaborate and learn? So I'd ask you to sort of in some respects think then about, okay, so Am I trying to partner with another team? Am I trying to partner with some individuals? If I was to test each of them, do they know what's important to me and do I know what's important to them? Secondly, do we have clarity about what our expectations are of each other? And then thirdly, have we got those into some form of cadence? And fourthly, are we able to have the conversation? And amongst all that, when we do work on team-to-team partnering across organizations, The single biggest predictor of success when we evaluate and research as the programs roll out is the regularity of one-on-one conversations between leaders.

Right.

So I guess my long-winded answer to you is pick a person or two, have a one-to-one conversation, use those 4 elements of the quadrant, chat what's important to each of you, what your expectations are, agree how you might deal with a friction point or two, And then catch up regularly. You're creating the loop, you're creating the environment. You'll find stuff will sort out. You'll learn it together. You don't need a psychologist to come back in regularly to sort it out.

So Graham, on this part of the podcast, we're sort of changing it up a little bit and I'm going to ask you a couple of questions which I think you've probably prepared a little bit for. But please do let us know your reasons why your answers. Firstly, without mentioning your own book, which we will mention in the show's notes, did you have a favourite book that's influenced you professionally or personally?

Yeah, I thought about this quite a bit. There were 2 that came to mind, but one was very early in my career, a book called Peak Performers: The New Heroes in Business, written by Charles Garfield. And it was the study of And it really was my first introduction to performance psychology. And he looked at the space programs in the US in the 1960s and how levels of motivation and productivity were amazing, off the scale. But then from 1969, once the moon landing had occurred onwards, they dropped away dramatically.

Right.

But not in every part of every organization. And what he did was study how is it that some parts stayed up? even though others had fallen away. I found that really fascinating. So I was going to say that, but if I could add a second one, I think Greg McKeown's Essentialism, which is a more recent book, that probably in working with executive teams is the single most important book I've read and referred to because I think that really helps you to cut through and get what is essential and how do I make the difficult trade-off conversations and difficult decisions. He's got some fabulous lines and fabulous concepts in that book.

Okay, that's interesting. And obviously that relates to what you're saying is sort of a skill that's all necessary in the next 5 years, which is that prioritisation.

Yeah, I think that's the issue. I mean, there's a couple of things he mentions. I mean, one is the one decision that makes 1,000, that strategic choice that it's been talked about in the podcast just very recently. I think that's really, really important. The other one I love is he talks about Yes, line up those things that are important to you. Then make a list of what are the problems if you don't do those, and then choose based on the problems you don't want to have. It's a fabulous— I have facilitated that exercise with a number of executive teams. It is fabulous because it causes them to really pull out the, well, why are we doing these things? Are we doing it to please the board? Are we doing it because we've got sunk investment? What is it? What problem don't we want to have? And it really, I think, helps them to make the tough calls. So I think essentialism, excellent.

Yeah, that's a great way to think about decision-making.

Yeah, that's great.

And do you have a favourite quote?

Well, I mentioned mine earlier, but I like Bruce Barton. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was was superior to circumstance. And I've used that quote myself. I've shared that with many teams over the years. And I think that sense of something inside of you superior to circumstance and that sense of confidence is the essence of high performance. It's that self-belief. So I love that quote.

That's fantastic. Yeah, thank you. If you're speaking to your younger self, is there any advice that you'd give yourself which you Yeah, don't get old.

Well, certainly keep staying fit.

Yeah.

Look, I think 2 things. One would be believe, believe in yourself. I remember a mentor of mine at one point saying, your biggest challenge is you're further up the road than you think you are. Just get your own self-confidence up that road. So I think, I think building that level of self-confidence in myself. And then I think secondly, probably the planning fallacy. Just slow down a little bit. Still have a sense of big goals, but just be a little more patient. Give yourself a little more time to pursue those goals. So probably a little bit of those 2 together.

Yeah. As a quick segue, how does one go about building confidence in a new job or a new industry or indeed an old one if you're being promoted, for example?

We talked about short-term goals earlier. Confidence does come a lot from success. I do find just grabbing a sheet of flip chart and getting a team to list up all the things that they've achieved, what they'll tend to do is say, yeah, but we haven't finished it. So I think it's breaking things down into smaller bite-sized pieces and just building a sense of I'm achieving it. I'll often ask leaders to create a bit of a spreadsheet. Doing some coaching with someone just a couple of days ago. Just give me a spreadsheet of the things that you have done over the last 3 or 4 years. Her memory tends to go to all the things she hasn't done and all the things she's done wrong, and she discounts the things she's achieved. So I think it's just building a level of more reality check that you're actually doing okay. It's just that perfectionism streak in you that wants to spot what you haven't quite got to yet.

Right.

Yeah.

That's a good start. Thank you. Thanks, Graeme. Before we move on to the rapid-fire questions, which I know you're looking forward to, is there anything else that you'd like to mention that we perhaps haven't covered today or that you think would be of value for our listeners?

Boy, we've covered an awful lot. And maybe just the one thing is we have covered a lot, but if you are listening and you're a leader and you're thinking, gee, I do want to make sure I create the right environment for my team, Don't try and do too much at once. Just pick 1 or 2 things. And I think for a lot of teams at the moment, it would be maybe the 2 things would be provide clarity, but not certainty. You can't provide certainty, but you can provide clarity. And then I think the second one would be show you care, show that level of care for them, and you'll find that it will be returned. So keep it simple. You can only change 1 or 2 things at the most. So just choose one or two things. As I said a moment ago, there's time to do it. That's what my younger self would've been told. Slow it down one at a time.

One thing or one or two things a year or just in general?

No, just at any one time. Habit change. I'm just doing some work with a government department at the moment that's energy and mining and they've got a big agenda and We're really just focusing on 3 things right across the whole agency. It's providing clarity, it's working as one team, and it's just making sure that ultimately it's making a difference, whatever we're doing. And you can translate that into a meeting, you can translate that into a conversation, you can translate it into a program. Are we clear? Are we collaborating and working as one team? And do we know what make a difference, mate? So I think part of your role as a leader is to interpret, and then interpret means keep it simple.

Right. Yeah. Thanks, Graeme. That's it. So I think we're going to now go towards the next part of the segment, if that's okay with you. So this will be a bit more—

Do I get to opt out?

Yeah, and you can definitely have a glass of water if you like. Thanks. It's funny, a lot of people get very nervous about these rapid-fire questions. I think they're worried we're going to—

It's multiple choice, so you can't be wrong. You can just give an answer and go, why did I say that?

Exactly.

Yeah.

We've had some quite amusing episodes where people have said the wrong choice.

In fact, they want it re-edited.

Yeah.

Yes. We haven't talked about leaders who have a high need for control, but we could cover that.

I feel like we've not even scratched the surface on most of the stuff.

Yeah, we've covered it. Yeah, but not— yeah.

So Graham, in this section, it's going to be a minute, no more. Um, it's just rapid-fire questions and see if we can set a record for questions answered. Are you ready?

Is there a few thousand dollars sort of on the prize at the end?

There's a drink after this.

Okay.

Right, sports or business?

Sports.

Player development or team success?

Team success.

Summer or Winter Olympics?

Summer.

Specialist or generalist?

Specialist.

Sleep-in or early riser?

Sleep-in.

Books or podcasts?

Podcasts.

Planning or action?

Action.

Beach vacation or mountain getaway?

Beach.

Summer or winter?

Summer.

Hmm. Um, marketing through social media or traditional channels?

Social media.

Cats or dogs?

Cats, believe it or not.

Phone calls or texts?

Texts.

Face-to-face or Zoom?

Face-to-face.

Passenger or driver?

Driver.

Staycation or adventure?

Adventure.

Cash or card?

Card, but I got cash yesterday for the first time in 6 months.

There you go. It's hard in Australia. And last one, still or sparkling?

Sparkling.

Good stuff. It wasn't so hard.

Yeah.

So Graham, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. And I feel, again, whilst we've covered a lot in breadth, we've barely scratched the surface on so much. And obviously you have such amazing experience in your career. Yeah, thank you so much for your time today.

Alex, thank you. You've been Delightful the way you've asked the questions. And I think the key thing we've talked about in the whole podcast is creating the environment in which other people can be at their best and you've done a great job. So thank you very much.

That's very kind of you. Thank you, Graham.

Thank you.

Hey, this is Alex. If you enjoyed the content so far and you want us to do more, if you want to hear more, click the subscribe button. It allows us to bring on more guests in the future. Thanks.