Brad Eather (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Creative Business Podcast, the podcast exploring where creativity meets commerce. I'm your host, Brad Eather a marketing and communication specialist, helping businesses bring their strategic message to market. Remember to support us by subscribing wherever you are or go that step further and you can find me on LinkedIn. In business,
We often lean on sports metaphors to tell ourselves a story of what success should look like. But when the pressure is turned up, the reality of the arena is less poetic. When we look at high performance teams in a sport like rugby, the plan is only as good as your ability to hold your nerve while being physically dominated. Similarly,
In business, high performance might be perceived as an individual's ability to perform under pressure, but unless the unit as a whole is cohesive, can we really call that high performance? This is where we often start talking about success as business culture. Yet no matter how good a leader you are, things will always happen that are outside of your control.
It's in these moments of extreme pressure that you either need the grit to double down on a strategy or the humility to learn from what is no longer working and revisit the drawing board. However, the true challenge in these moments is bringing your people with you. So what are the real lessons that we can learn from high performance sporting teams and how can they be applied to business? My guest today understands the reality of this execution gap. Neil Tunnah
is the CEO of the Performance Change and a high performance sporting coach with over 25 years of experience building elite teams in professional sport and business. Today, we're going to unpack what high performance means in the context of business.
what makes a group of talented individuals a cohesive team and what lessons he's learned from sport that can be applied to your business. Please welcome to the show, Neil Tunnah.
Neil Tunnah (02:00)
Right, brilliant to be here. Thanks for having me as well. We've been trying to put this together for a while now, so it's exciting to be here now.
Brad Eather (02:07)
long time, I'm looking forward to the chat.
Neil, I've mentioned that you spend a lot of time in the high performance arena. In the business world, people often romanticize this idea of high performance as locker room speeches that motivate a team. What is the biggest misconception business leaders have about high performance environments? And where do you see that misconception manifest?
Neil Tunnah (02:34)
Yeah, that's great question. I went straight to this sort of any given Sunday speech as soon as you said that. Look, it's interesting. think, Brad, what I learned was it's quite individualised. athletes particularly need different things at different times. I probably learned the hard way when I first went in the professional game. I still thought a big part of that was the motivational side that had sort of served me
Particularly in the shoot shield man, I came through at second grade at Gordon. They're a wonderful bunch of human beings and I've touched on this with you before. The game side was quite easy with them so I focused probably more on that emotional attachment and getting them up for games and they responded really well. But when I went to the professional game it's completely different. You've got guys who are unbelievably motivated. You don't need to say anything to them and then there's other guys that might be first time pros that you're trying to...
not only teach how to be a pro but also teach them how to build their own motivation system so they come into a game ready. my biggest thing, I bang this drum consistently and religiously, it's about the individual. What does the individual need at that moment in time? So you tend to not see, if you were to put a camera in a changing room before a game for me, there's no enormous speeches.
There's probably more questions than anything if questions need to be asked, but it's letting them find the answers. Trusting them that when that whistle goes, they care as much about winning as anyone else. I think that part is really, really important as you trust the individuals that they want to be successful. No one goes out on a Saturday afternoon at any level of the game and crosses that white line and goes, yeah, I want to lose today. I think everyone wants to win. So then it gets down to the nitty gritty. How do you perform under extreme pressure? How do you help them develop?
the skills, the resilience, the grit, the ability to make decisions under pressure and then when they get it wrong, move on really quickly. So I think that became my focus more than the motivational side of things was how do I help the individual where they need to be helped right now. Sometimes it's doing nothing, mate, sometimes it's just letting them be.
Brad Eather (04:35)
I the world at the moment has unprecedented access into some of these environments when you think about Netflix and what they're doing. One of the things that I notice, especially watching the drive to survive kind of documentary, is how much emphasis is placed on everything around the individual, not just the...
not just the actual discipline of driving the car, but making sure everything around them, their sense of self, those kinds of things are so important. because what I want to try to do is I think the complexity here is there's the individual aspect and how leaders can actually bring the best out in people, but then still considering the team.
Neil Tunnah (05:16)
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (05:18)
Tell me about your experience
Neil Tunnah (05:19)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (05:19)
and getting the best out of individuals in those situations.
Neil Tunnah (05:23)
I think, again, it's the character, isn't it? I go all the way back to stage one, so you'll inherit some players and the same as business, you'll come into business as leader, you'll inherit some people, so it's how quickly do you get to know them and their wants and needs, but then you're always assessing for who's a team person and who's maybe an outlier to that as well. I think then it becomes about how do you thread the individual's wants and needs and drive and motivation and goals and where they want to go? How do you thread that through?
the performance model for the organization and respect it, but also then tie them into some, there needs to be standards and non-negotiables that we sort of flesh out and go, hey, listen, this is our performance model as a team. And this is how you fit with that. I think that process, whether it's through recruitment or whether it's through bringing the guys that are already there on the journey, think it's such a crucial, important part of the front end work is.
You've got to get them on that journey. So you've got to create clarity for them around, this is where we're going. This is the baseline for how we're going to do it. And this is where we need to work together to enhance that model. And I think that applies in business as well, Brad. We're doing some work with some brilliant businesses here in Adelaide just now, particularly in professional services. It's how do we simplify it? How do we make it? This is the team model. This is the organization model. How do we then thread that individual model through into that?
again there's lots of books and information out there around the sense of belonging now but if you can align an individual's wants and needs and performance model with the outcomes that you're trying to achieve as a business and still respect them. I think that's a really important part of what I've seen with some coaches when they fail is they try and create something rather than enhance something when it comes to individuals. think leadership is how do you recognize the strengths of someone and then plug them in, create an opportunity for them to plug them into a team model.
Brad Eather (07:12)
You mentioned the word coaching there and this is obviously a conversation about leadership, but within a sporting team, the idea of coaching is serving the player, right? The people in the team. What do you think leadership get wrong in the business setting when they think, you know, maybe they think that their role is decision-making and there isn't that clear chain of command down to a point where we get to a coaching level where we're actually focusing on the employees and how we can make them better.
Neil Tunnah (07:17)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
yeah, think you can have a really clear vision of where you're trying to go. I think that's the first thing is, like again, if I'm sitting with an exec team or a board in business, it's like, us where you're trying to get to. What's your vision for this? And it doesn't have to be 10 years long or, you know, it doesn't have to be pulled out over, know, extrapolated over a long period of time. You can actually drill down and write where do we want to be at the end of the year.
your business is here now, let's assess where it really is and then let's understand where you're trying to get to. And then what you get down from there is you can build a model for execution, an operational model if you like, that has influence from leadership, that has influence from middle management and then has influence from individuals. But it's really clear for the individual because I think this is something from being on a...
development session with Dave Rennie that really stuck with me when he was the Wallabies coach. He talked about clarity creates confidence. The challenge at ground level is clarity is different for you than it is for me and the way you communicate is different, the way you receive information is different. So therefore as the coach I have to be really skilled and understand and have a position that for you when you get the message when it's coming through so that it's clear enough that you can understand and connect to it. But also again, great coaches learn
help people understand how to enhance as well by being themselves as well. think that's a really important part of performance is I'm a massive proponent of strength-based modelling from an individual's perspective. I don't know anyone that played for their country at rugby because they focused on what they were poor at.
Brad Eather (09:16)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (09:18)
So I
think people get to the top of the game, the top of where they're going because they've got a really clear identity of what they're brilliant at. It doesn't mean they don't respect the things they need to work on that have to support that journey, but they're really clear on what they're good at and they find opportunities to do that more often. So I think that trickles all the way through business and I think as leaders in business, if we can identify what our people are really good at and get them doing more of that while still executing their role in the business, think that can be a performance multiplier.
Brad Eather (09:46)
Yeah.
I apologize to anyone out there that's not a rugby fanatic like me and Neil, but we're going to be throwing around some names here. I read Eddie Jones's book about leadership. And one of the things that stuck out to me as a coach that, you know, at this point, what, pretty much a 40 year career talks about how leadership styles have changed over the past 40 years and what was effective back in the day. I'm talking about early 2000.
Neil Tunnah (10:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brad Eather (10:17)
is very different to what's effective now and the cultural experiences of the youth coming through that program, his sort of ideas around why that's changed. I'm wondering in your definition, what makes an effective leader today?
Neil Tunnah (10:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the skill sets changed. If you were to look at Eddie coaching in 2000 versus now, it would have to be different to have that longevity in the game as society changes. I think you've got to be really agile as a leader. You've got to be willing to flex and change and grow and adapt. I think what becomes crucial
foundationally for a leader is you understand who you are and what you stand for. And then the skill is how you transfer that to other people. I remember being coached by some brilliant coaches, but they told me what to do and I went and did it. They never asked for my opinion, but I performed really well in that system and I've worked in businesses that are like that as well. I think the leaders today, you know,
Again, this is an Eddieism he talks about there's different types of leaders, there's connectors of people and there's people that driven by data and evidence. I think you've got to understand where you sit in a realm like that. Now I think it's more complex than just those two verticals. ⁓ I think it's a really good way to articulate it, but I you've got to understand where you sit on that spectrum if you like. then again, as a leader, play to your strengths, play to your strengths. Don't try and be...
Brad Eather (11:37)
Mmm.
Neil Tunnah (11:48)
This has burned me multiple times in professional environments, particularly going in day one and trying to be something that I thought people wanted me to be rather than being me. And I think as a leader now you've got to be really clear on who you are but you've also got to be really clear on the needs of the people. So you've got to meet their needs as much as you want to be yourself. So that's the complex part of it is I have to be myself but maybe change the skill set and how I deliver it for it to land with an individual.
Bring them in.
Brad Eather (12:17)
there's an element of humility involved when you when when you're a leader right you need to recognize when perhaps your approach isn't working
what are some of the things that come up time and time again, where that are triggers for a leader to recognize that maybe their personal approach, their style is actually now becoming the bottleneck of the system and they need to revisit.
Neil Tunnah (12:41)
So I think fundamentally a skill for a leader is self-awareness, therefore you've got to be really good at self-reflection. I think the other thing that I've learned to do rather is whether it's a business or whether it's sport is to when I first connect with the individual, again, like the last two teams that have been at sport and then the last four businesses I've worked with at the onboarding stage is how would you like us to interact is the question, the first question I asked.
Brad Eather (13:06)
Mm.
Neil Tunnah (13:06)
is
what do you want from me from an interaction perspective because that gives me a window into what they want and maybe need but it also provides me something to reflect upon as well. Am I delivering that or is when I deliver that, their behavior telling me that that's what they really want? So it becomes a reflection tool straight out the gates. You you've got to have a level of humility as well when you walk into a new organization that
I'm really comfortable with it. I don't have all the answers. I never have had all the answers. And I would hope that, again, we spoke about it before, if you went all the way back to Knox or Gordon, I never, I very rarely walked in and said, this is what we're without front-ending it with conversations around what you think we should do. How do you think that'll land in game for you? How do you think the team will respond to that if we implement that this week? And that's part of the journey of knowing what they need.
and then bringing them in like we spoke about before. I think the humility piece is absolutely crucial. I would always in an organisation, my first question, how do you want to work together? What do you need from me if we're going to work together? And that just gives you a benchmark straight out the gates.
Brad Eather (14:12)
Moving from the skills of leadership more to the tactics, I suppose. I'm sure this challenge is familiar to someone. You have an A player or someone who's incredibly good as an individual working, but when it comes down to aligning them with the overall objectives of the business, they might stray away.
What advice would you have for someone in that situation to manage that person from a coaching perspective? Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (14:39)
What's your feedback cadence? I had this conversation in meeting this morning, what's your feedback cadence? If our feedback cadence is 90 days, then you are going to walk into a feedback session, ask someone about something happened on day three, they're not even going to remember what it is. So if you want an environment in business that is underpinned by performance, therefore we're looking at things like continuous development and growth. When you come across, I would call them outliers again, that
you know, you make a decision to either employ someone or retain someone that is that person who is, let's say, let's say a sales team and they 200 % are target every year, but they're really challenging from a character perspective. You've got to, number one, you've to be seen to be dealing with that and interacting with it, or what you get is you start to get isolation in your team because the rest of the team see that there might be.
and I'll use this word quite deliberately, there may be some selfish behaviours that support them getting to that target and they're exceeding by 200 % but that's a crucial number for your numbers in the business. You've got to be seen to be coaching and trying to bring them in and trying to get a little bit of movement in terms of their character and the way they behave. We're not going to try and reprogram but the rest of the team needs to see that you're actually dealing with it as a leader as well otherwise you get this performance divide and what you'll get is a dipping performance from the rest of the team while this person's still performing high.
Your model again, I go back to the individual, the team and the organisation, you know, that has to be really clear from the top, transfer to the team and then transfer to individual. There's complexities because we're dealing with human beings at an individual level. You've got to have the courage to deal with it. That's number one as a leader, you've got to have the courage. So I go back to, you know, how do you build confidence? so I might be absolutely clunky at a feedback conversation day one. I'm not going to get better at it by not doing it again.
So I've got to walk towards and I've got to find some repetition in the skills. So I've got to have more of those conversations to build the confidence. the other thing, sports taught me this as well, you're going to get some egos that you have to deal with sometimes. It's what's your model for dealing with them. I had an athlete in the UK and it's a really interesting story. He played for his country, really, really good young talent. He just couldn't get aligned with the way we were trying to play.
but his view of himself, he was the best performer in the league. We moved him on after a season and I saw him three seasons later and he came up to me and he thanked me. I thought he was going to be super abrasive, super confrontational and he'd gone through this maturation period where he went, I understand why you did what you did as a club and an individual. I understand why you coached me the way you did. I didn't get on board. I was quite selfish, but what I learned from there...
what you taught me through that journey, I'm coming back and I'm saying, hey, thanks for putting me through that now because that's helped me be successful now. Which that requires a huge amount of humility, but an enormous amount of self-awareness, or people around you supporting the development of your self-awareness. So, it was quite humbling to have him come up and say that, but I mean, all the credit goes to him mate for going away and recognizing that he needs to make some change to get to where he wants
Brad Eather (17:44)
Yeah. I think we're like, in a sporting environment, it's all about high performance. That's where we're competing. In a business environment, I would say that high performance teams put you in the 1%, right? Like there's a lot of teams out there that in that situation that I just described where you've got an A player,
they would support that person and just let them continue what they're doing. And then on the opposite side of the spectrum, rather than coaching someone to improve them would just get rid of them or work or work them out of the business, right? ⁓ You only know, you only know what can be achieved from your past experience. So as a business leader, if your past experience is, you know, not investing in your people.
Neil Tunnah (18:20)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (18:33)
and creating that high performance culture. What do you think they're missing? Can you walk us through some like real examples of a business that maybe have just like taken that step and gone, you know what? We want to create a high performance culture. And from a business that hasn't experienced those results in the past, what that vision could look like.
Neil Tunnah (18:53)
Yeah, it's a really good question. I think, again, I want to be careful with the language high performance, and I'm happy to put myself out here because I think there is every man and the dog now running around in places like LinkedIn talking about being high performance experts. And I just don't think it's that simple. I think it's complex. And I think we talk about high performance in sport, and it's easy to measure because we've got lots of inputs that give us outputs that give us results.
Business is a little bit more complex because what's your definition of high performance in business? How does that relate to you? Because every business is different as well. So I had this discussion, I was at LIV Golf in Adelaide yesterday and I was driving home last night and I was in the car with my business partner Richard. We were actually having this discussion around what is high performance and he threw something at me that I thought was really, really important. In business...
Yeah, I would be looking at high performance as someone to someone's ability to execute the role consistently at a high level. Now that doesn't mean we don't talk about culture and continuous development, but as a start point, it could be, we could be talking about salesperson and administration person. We could be talking about tech, a data person in a tech business, a coder, someone that's an individual that, you know, we,
tend to look at high performances, those who are visibly excelling and climbing a ladder towards great success. I think we've got to look at these people, what I call individual contributors, and look at the way they're executing the role and they're performing the role and how they're integrating it in the business and standards, expectations, behaviours, all that kind of stuff. But are they executing the role at high level? And I think when we look at it that way, I can start to look at an individual and go, you're a high performer in our organisation and this is why.
And I think when you have those conversations, then elevate. People at an individual contributor level, whatever the role is, if you're having conversations around you're executing at really, really high level, you're meeting our standard and exceeding our standard, then they are high performance conversations. And I think we should be having more of those as well, because I think this is where we get into neuroscience and physiology. And the way we make people feel will drive motivation as well.
I think that's a really, really important part of leadership is the recognition of what's your performance model, what's Brad's performance model, what's Neil's performance model. They're all going to be different, but when they're executing what we need them to execute at a really high level and consistent with it, then that's high performance.
Brad Eather (21:22)
Run me through what the typical engagement of the performance chain, because from an outsider's perspective, I imagine that maybe you're going in and setting up communication chains, you're setting up those kinds of frameworks, but run me through what a typical engagement is with you.
Neil Tunnah (21:36)
It's changed for us in the last six months. It's good timing for this because if we had the podcast when we were meant to have it, and that was obviously down to me and my scheduling, then it would be a different conversation. But we've gone through a period of change here where we want to be a business that is so aligned with organizational strategy, therefore outcomes, that we can actually measure what we do. Therefore, our front end stage now is...
Brad Eather (21:38)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (22:04)
sort of really robust in whatever we do has to have a straight line back to outcome for the business. And look again, when I'm sitting in a C suite, so senior leaders, we have to tie that back to numbers. And sometimes it can become, the perception is it can be intangible. We've built a way inside our business with a lot of help from Tyler who runs the tech side of our business. He's based in the US. He's...
He's brought a real different thinking to us around data and systems and how we can connect human behavior and habit and psychology back into the delivery of results for the business. So our front end now is like a really simple and clear ability to go into business and look at performance gap. So we look at things like friction and potential.
and we start to try and close the gap. Friction slows people down ultimately, so people become slower in what they do, therefore there's more lag, therefore we get, I would say we never meet potential. So what we want to do is look at a friction score and then a potential score and then trying to close the gap on that. that output of that is it has an impact on the numbers. Now, the nitty-gritty of what we do, it's nuanced business to business, but what that...
early stage around the diagnostic or the investigation around friction allows us to position the work that we do in a place where it will have high impact and it won't necessarily take 12 months to start showing an impact. I'm not going to say it's going to have high impact day one but we'll start to move the needle because we've been very very targeted on the work that we're doing with people.
Brad Eather (23:42)
So after that, presumably you go and you're analyzing the gap of whatever the system is and then we get back to the strategy place. How do we execute the strategy? I know we've gone on a little bit of a tangent there, but I wanted to get an understanding of sort of obviously how you operate. I wanna move on to strategy and.
execution of strategy. I at the beginning of the podcast, I suggested that strategy is only as good as your ability to execute under pressure. I want to talk about leading people through a strategy, particularly when
Neil Tunnah (24:19)
Hmm.
Brad Eather (24:20)
you need to hold the threshold for a little bit. There's a moment there where we're not sure if this strategy is executing to the result that we want or under delivering. And we need to get through that plateau period and lead people through that period until we see the results that we want.
Neil Tunnah (24:38)
Yeah, yeah, it's again, it's a really interesting topic. I think strategically, what we've learned over time is there's lots and lots of businesses talk about strategy. It's the activation, the implementation of the operational side of that that probably falls away. I definitely think there's a move in the consulting world just now where, you know, I think historically, and I mean, I see a lot of this in LinkedIn just now as well. So it's interesting, but I've got a degree of.
curiosity around it rather than skepticism is probably the way I would put it. There's lots of consultants that have been out there, strategic consultants and people get a brilliant design of a strategy for their business and they've been invested and collaborated in the process of building it. But then how does it get implemented? And what we're learning and seeing from a business perspective is that it's the stereotypical, they invest a lot of money in it, then it goes in the top drawer because the people in the business have to go back to...
I've got to deliver the business here. So I think when you design a strategy, I think there's got to be an element of courage for change threaded through it as well. It's like, got us here won't get us there, therefore there has to be change in the way we behave, both organisationally and individually. So, again, this is a space that we are actively playing in and want to play more in. It's not only can we support the...
build of a strategy aligned with the direction that the business owners want to take it. It's then we can roll the sleeves up and get stuck into the operationalization, the implementation of that as well. There's a whole lot of concepts in it. This is again, sport teaches us, Brad. mean, I went, see when I rocked up in the UK, the strategy's changed every single week. And when I say every single week, that doesn't sound that surprising. But when you've got a line out menu,
with 40 options that is changing every week and it's changing for good tactical reason. That starts the relearning process all over again. So then you've got to go, right, well, how am I teaching? How am I learning? How can we look at doing that at speed? Because the learning part of it is, and I was at a rugby show the other day recently, mean, Matt Wilke hammered this home, learning is, it was a real reminder for me that learning is the,
taking on of new information, but it's only actually learning if you apply it. So I can sit and read a book and go, yeah, I've learned loads from that book, but the learning is then the contextualization of it. So how am going to use that? I think that's a really, really important part when we think about strategy as well, is if we're changing, we're having to learn how we're going to change because we see the value in it, it can take us to where we want to go. But then how are we making sure that we're taking the key components from that learning?
Brad Eather (27:12)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (27:36)
and then implementing them at the right time with the right people. And I think what you can do there is you can start to build motivation and movement and therefore a bit of momentum as you're going through that change process. But it takes an intensity of work. It takes an intensity of work from internal and what we're learning is an external makes a big difference to the speed that that moves at. That's where we want to be, that external is the operationalization of strategy as well. It all worked for us again.
biggest lever and again I've gone through this I've gone down a rabbit hole with a data on this recently is when you look at performance multipliers in business right you can talk about market you can talk about product you can talk about marketing you can talk about sales strategy you can talk about global politics all those kinds of things that influence business they are all externals that I would say you have low percentage control over
Brad Eather (28:28)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (28:29)
So the one lever that you have most influence and power over is people, because you have the opportunity to recruit them, train them, develop them, and sustain them. So if we're looking for performance multipliers where we should invest time and money in both strategically, but then the operationalization of that, I believe squarely it should be people. Because I look at that through the lens of a business leader and I'm going, well.
We have to compete with X number of businesses in the market, therefore that actually drives our pricing model. If we want to win business, it's competitive, that drives our pricing model. So how can I get our people to deliver what we do better than anyone else? What's our customer experience? What do we need to invest in our people to make sure that that experience, when businesses experience it with us, it's better than anyone else? And that's people lever. That's that people lever. So that investment and that is, I think it's a performance multiplier
Brad Eather (29:27)
I think...
That experience piece is probably integral to this conversation as well. I think that as a point of difference for a business, quite often we overlook the experience as being a point of difference. I imagine in the sporting realm as well, the experience of the playing group, the team, the environment that they've built around it, that experience, if everybody's happy, that kind of stuff is
is just as instrumental in moving a team. The outcome in that situation is winning the game and your fans are happy. Money for the club, that's your ROI. In the business setting, creating an experience and an environment for your people then transfers to the experience of your customers. And again, you've got the ROI.
Neil Tunnah (30:17)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (30:20)
I'm interested from your experiences in rugby. me a picture of what a positive environment looks like or a positive experience for players, fans, the whole business model.
Neil Tunnah (30:34)
I it's really interesting and again I'll put myself on the line a little bit here. I haven't worked in an organization in sport where it has been consistently right and what I mean by that is you see... I'll go back a stage here there's a little bit of a caveat because what you've got is you've got some... I'll call them alpha characters and then you've got some guys are really really good performers but they're sheep.
and they are consistently that. They follow, but then you've got some people that need to kick up the back sides periodically to keep them on task. Now, I think there's things in sporting environments, like I call it toxic accountability, so how do we...
The learning process becomes really important, right? At the front end of the week, your learning can be a little bit slower because there's a lot of new things, therefore your learning environment has to be really good, but it can be a little bit slower. But then when you get to game time, the learning has to be at breakneck speed. It doesn't stop though. And I speak to lots of coaches and business leaders as well that talk about the learning has to stop now and you have to start performing. Learning is fundamental to performance. It's just the speed that you process that learning and then reapply whatever you've learned in that moment, right? I think it becomes really, really important.
And the reason I'm sharing this is because if you go into an environment that doesn't understand that you have to set this space up for your people to plug into and be motivated to lean in, it only takes one or two small behaviors from a leader in the environment to shut people down. And when you shut people down, and I'll give an example, it could be as simple as putting a clip on a screen and going to a player, watch that.
It could be done with the greatest intention, but the player's not prepped to respond. The person's not prepped to respond. There are room for their peers in a way where they can identify, recognize, and then give you the answer. So, and again, I this conversation with a player in the UK just a couple of days ago. It's like, who are we asking the question for? So when we go into environments like that and we want to create environments where people are motivated to grow and improve every single day,
Who are we asking the questions for? What's their intention with that question? Is it to put people on the spot and think we're driving standards? Or is it to support them being at their best? And I'm a, and this, this may be, like I'm not in the game anymore. It could be fundamental to why I'm not really involved anymore, both from my perspective, but also the game's perspective. I don't believe that that gets performance out of people, man. I think that shuts people down and I want people to feel like they can contribute.
at all times. There's a brilliant clip of Tommy Turbo up at Manly Seagulls online on YouTube and there's a team meeting and everyone's quiet, it's just the coach. Turbo pretty much spits the dummy and says these are a waste of time unless we start contributing. And I think that's a really, really important message but I'm curious what's happened before that, that the players are coming in and they don't want to contribute.
Brad Eather (33:28)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (33:29)
So
I think when we're trying to create great environments where people want to be at their best, they want to plug into it, there's a whole load of stuff that Google did on this as well. I can't remember the name of the project, but buzzwords out there. Just psychological safety is really important. What does that mean? That means that people want to contribute. It's safe to contribute because they are valid, they're valuable, their opinions matter. It doesn't mean we always have to do something with the information they give us, but I think it's really important that we get back to their level and understand that.
they need the ability to express that whether that's publicly or it's in private we've got to an environment that supports that and that's what that's for me now is what a great environment is that people feel like they can and they want to contribute to the success. It's complex, it sounds simple, it's complex but as leaders I think we're responsible for creating that.
Brad Eather (34:18)
I went to a networking event recently and the idea of psychological safety came up and I was amazed. There's a room of, I don't know, 60 people. That's like...
pretty much the whole room recognized that psychological safety was a big thing for them. And I'd never really had that visceral experience. It had just been a buzzword for me before and then it really hit me and I was like, wow. Do you think there's a stigma around?
this idea of psychological safety. And obviously I speak to people like yourself that really drive home the importance of it. But I think there is still a stigma around that word and what that means for the environment that you're in.
Neil Tunnah (35:01)
I
think people think it's soft mate. In a nutshell I think people think it's soft. And I still think they're, again you look at the generations across business just now mate, you've got 65 year old C suites and you've got 18 year old people that are just coming into the business and they're so far apart in their understanding of generally what an environment needs for people to thrive.
You know, just interesting, think the perception is that it's soft and I think it's a performance multiplier, right? And that doesn't mean, like I'll go back to, you create this environment where it is, and we'll use the word safe, if the word safe is soft, fundamentally I'm, someone that thinks that, looking at them going, so you want your people to operate in a state of fear? Because let's,
let's bring a neuroscientist into the room and unpack what that really does to people. Now I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm not a psychologist. I've been really fortunate to be exposed to different environments. We've got Wendy in the US who I'm pretty close with, she's an MBA psychologist with the Bulls. We've got Dera who is from a child psychology and a neuroscience background, a catch up with this lady called Emily Kyle just outside of...
and she's from a physiology, psychology and neuroscience background. I know enough to know what happens to the brain when people are operating in a state of fear and your ability to learn and capacity to learn can drop to less than 10%. So if we go back to we want environments where people are continually challenged to grow and be at their best but we're trying to do that under fear we're giving them a less than 10 % chance of success. So think about that logically. So is it soft?
Because all I'm seeing is a massive impact on results. That's all I'm seeing is I'm going, if they're operating in that state, they've got no chance of helping us get results in this business. So as a leader, I'm going, if that's how they're operating under me, I need to find a way to change.
Brad Eather (36:59)
Yeah, that's a great answer.
Neil Tunnah (37:01)
Hope
all of it makes sense.
Brad Eather (37:03)
Yeah. the one last thing that I wanted to speak to you about before I want to have a quick discussion about creativity in sport, there's a very clear delineation between practice and play.
Neil Tunnah (37:12)
you
Brad Eather (37:20)
As a professional, you've spoken about high performers within the business context. how can you help an individual conceptualize when they're hitting the pitch to play when the difference between practice and performance actually occurs?
Neil Tunnah (37:38)
Yeah, that's a great question. I'll jump back in a bit with the brain here. I think we have moments in business where we feel pressure. So, and I'll give an example, I'm coming into a meeting here this morning with a room full of partners and a professional service business. Like I'm walking through the threshold of the door at that meeting. I'm the first person in the room, number one, so I've prepped and I'm going, right, I want to be there first, I want to be set up, I want to be ready. That's my preparation model.
I've given myself 25 minutes to sit. I've gone over it last night. I've got 25 minutes to actually sit and go through the structure of the meeting. And I've got a structure for the meeting, but I'm acutely aware that it could go off in different directions because we've got 10 people in the room. And that's cool. That's for me to accept and try and bring it back online and make sure we're getting direction. So I think that part is the, you you recognize or you can learn to recognize when you feel pressure.
Now there, when you reflect accurately, post that moment, you can then build a plan for how you address it in the future. So I have meetings with clients now and it's about continuation of workers. When in new work, I have to be at my best in those moments. So I've got a really clear and simple performance model for me that has nothing to do with how I execute a role. But I've got...
consistency around my training, I've got consistency around my nutrition, I've got consistency around my hydration, I've got, I use things like make sure my sleep's right, I use ice baths regularly. I do all the things, and was taught to do all the things that make me feel good more often than I don't feel good. So that came off the back of not looking after myself for a period of time in a sports environment. I came back here and I got...
coach and he coached me through what works for me. So I've got a really simple model that allows me to walk through the threshold of that door in the morning and go well I've prepped. I know I've done my prep, I know I've done the things that make me feel like I'm in a good place to represent myself in the business really well in this meeting and then you build confidence from that. I think sport taught me this again when you look at the way different athletes prepare.
think all that's transferable into business as well is how do I prepare for the big moments. If you go back to that learning cycle that I gave you as well, four days out from that my learning can be a little bit slower. So I've still got all my habits, my foundational habits, but my learning around what am I prepping, how can I position this, what do need to say, what questions do I need to ask. So that can happen a little bit slower. But then when I get in the meeting, I would call them my meta skills have to be read up, my listening has to be really good.
because when my listening is really good then I recognise the opportunity to ask great questions that then give us really valuable information or sometimes I reckon, hey I've got a story to tell you guys, you've said that I've actually got a story that's relative to that that's going to help us right now, do you mind if I tell that story? But that's the performance model that allows me to recognise what I'm walking into and predict it rather than always walking out and reflecting and going, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, I didn't prepare well.
There is a little interesting one here. I was at Liv Golf yesterday and we were on the 12th hole which is the water and tee. The Dechambos group came through and there's three absolute rock stars in this group. It's the best group of the day and we had a conversation. I think they all got sign-on fees for Liv in excess of 200 million. Two of them don't hit the green, one of them hits the green. And Richard, who's in our business.
Brad Eather (40:47)
Yeah.
Neil Tunnah (41:06)
turns to me and goes, jeez if I was LIV Golf and I'm paying them 200 million and they can't hit the green on this hole I'm having a performance conversation with them. Which is again, it's back to that like understanding yourself, what's your prep, what's your model and mate these guys they are the consummate professionals mate there is music absolutely banging, they're standing on the tee there's people throwing beer all over the tee as they're
Brad Eather (41:14)
you
Neil Tunnah (41:34)
just walk into the tee, there's dancing, there's everything from like professional dancers and it's just like there's distractions everywhere and they step up to the tee and they hit the ball and it's like there's nothing around them. Even though they haven't hit the green it's like there's nothing around them. I could go to their last five PGA Tour games as well where there's no distraction around them and they've probably hit the green on you know 50 % of those.
So it's not the distraction, their performance model is they've done everything in the background so that when they walk in at this moment they are laser focused on what they have to execute at that moment in time. I think if we build the self-awareness in Businessmate we can build those performance models as well. I'm ready to walk into this meeting and absolutely kill what I'm doing but I'm still humble enough that when the opportunity to learn is there I'm going to learn fast and I'm going to then use that to my advantage. I think all that transfers into Businessmate.
Brad Eather (42:29)
Yeah, nice. I'm just thinking, just, as soon as you said that, going up with a crowd of people and hitting a golf ball, I'm just imagining me shanking when there's just two people behind me watching.
Neil Tunnah (42:38)
But
I'm standing on the ladies' table with my trousers around my ankle because the ball hasn't gone past it. I'm just absolutely, like all the noise, the distractions, my ADHD goes absolutely bananas. There's no way I'm hitting the ball.
Brad Eather (42:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, nuts.
I'm really interested to hear your answer to this because when you think about the arts, sport and the arts, sports and creativity live on opposite sides of the spectrum. I don't think that's true, but I'd like to hear from you from your experience. What's your definition of creativity?
Neil Tunnah (43:13)
Yeah, great question. So I'll touch on people and then I'll come back to me. I think when you're a leader in a business or you're a in a team, I think you've got to understand that different brains are wired up differently and there's some people that have a naturally creative side to what they do and there's some people that are driven by numbers and evidence and they'll make decisions based on that. I think how you then bracket creativity for an individual becomes quite important because that person that's seeing that data and evidence and making decisions on that...
also sees what's missing at times and so when they see what's missing there's an argument that that's a creative response that can be hey this is missing so how are we going to solve that problem. So I think individuals are wired up differently when it comes to creativity and I think there's other people that may have, again I've worked with people with a butterfly, pass us and they get distracted and then they come back with this brilliant idea and drop it in the mix and that's creativity for them. So I think from a look at it through the leadership lens
How do we activate it, how do we nurture it, how do we grow it and encourage it without it slowing us down, without it stopping us moving towards a place where we're getting results or getting success while it's still about the individual. For me personally, I try to carve out some time because I get quite distracted and that's my personality and the way my brain's wired up so I have to be really intentional about the time that I'm sitting down and...
throwing ideas around.
So that creativity side, I have to be really intentional about what I'm carving out otherwise I end up spending, burning too much time on it. I was in Chicago at the end of last year for the All Blacks Ireland game and I grew up in a tiny town in the south of Scotland and there's another tiny town next to it and there's a guy that's in the All Blacks set up as a sports scientist at the moment. He grew up in...
Brad Eather (44:48)
Mm-hmm.
Neil Tunnah (45:00)
town called Kelso, which is just outside Kelso, which is next to Jebraw where I grew up. So I had a coffee with him and it was just around from the Old Axle Hotel, and it was absolutely brilliant. was pretty short and sweet, but he gave me some insight into their environment and they've got a big team of sort of sports scientists and data and physical prep mindset coaches, but they have meetings where they're actively encouraging creativity, so can you come up with something from what you've learned that we can do that might...
sort be a little bit different or change the needle. But Nick Gill, who leads the sports science department there, he's been there for a long, time. I think his question is always, does it change the scoreboard? Does it make us better? Is it impacting the results? So there's the encouragement of creativity, which is absolutely brilliant, because you've got all these brilliant brains. You know, why wouldn't you try and bring forward the thinking and get them to think differently and then bring it to the table?
He does a really good job of getting the crosshairs back on is it going to impact our ability to get results, which I think is a really neat framework for having that big open space. And he just comes in and goes, show me how it's going to impact the scoreboard. And if they can show, they'll explore it. If they unpack together that it's not going to impact the scoreboards, it doesn't get used. And everyone just understands that process. It's got to be able to affect the result. If it doesn't affect the result, then it's probably going to waste time for us.
which I thought was a process for creativity I thought was really really cool when you've got all those scientific brains in the room and then you still got that scientific creativity but bang we're keeping the train on the tracks by going hey is this moving to where we want
Brad Eather (46:39)
when I think about creativity in rugby, it's hard to go past South Africa. And you were talking about playing to your strengths. One of the greatest moments I think in rugby was the World Cup against France when, was it France or New Zealand? When they kicked the ball and took the scrum from the 22. That...
Neil Tunnah (46:41)
you
Mm.
Yeah.
Brad Eather (47:08)
A moment of innovation, something that essentially has taken the other team by surprise. They've never expecting this in the final minutes of the game. On the flip side, you watch South Africa try that, the lifting line out in the middle of the field. And that didn't play out nearly as effectively. But the team obviously is set up for innovation and I really...
Neil Tunnah (47:22)
Yep
Brad Eather (47:33)
I do admire them for innovating in those kind of spaces.
Neil Tunnah (47:37)
I mean it's brilliant and there's a whole debate around what's right and wrong there. know, the bomb squad bench, you six forwards, one back. You can't...
deny it, they are challenging the game right now in a way that it needs to be challenged and it hasn't been challenged in a long time. I think the brilliant thing with Razzy and what he's done there is they've got a really, really strong foundation and then they've gone to build off that foundation. You could watch them play now, they could go back to the way they played England and Japan and make that physical game, that just destroy team at scrums, take everything away from them. But equally, when you bring someone like Tony Brown in and his creativity and then understanding...
What they've got in South Africa is exceptional athletes. Exceptional athletes. The physical profile, the mental profile, it's like the perfect storm. he's created this environment where they're just so open to change and exploration. It's allowed them to add different layers to their game, which for me is absolutely brilliant because it's pushing the boundaries on the game.
Brad Eather (48:35)
Welcome to the business rugby creative podcast.
Neil Tunnah (48:39)
Yeah, over opinionated Scotsman. It's like,
what do I know? It's just opinion.
Brad Eather (48:46)
Neil,
thank you so much for joining us today. If people want to get in touch with you, where's the best place to find you?
Neil Tunnah (48:54)
Mate, LinkedIn, right now, LinkedIn, just jump on there. If someone wants to have a chat, shoot me a DM, mate. I love catching up with people and sort of, know, chewing the fat, seeing what everyone's up to and learning from people. So by all means, anyone that's listening, if they want to reach out, reach out there.
Brad Eather (49:13)
Awesome. Thanks for joining us everybody for this episode of Creative Business Podcast. If you've enjoyed the conversation, help us grow by subscribing wherever you are. And in the meantime, stay creative.
