A racing start: Sir Dave Brailsford

Ahead of his appearance at our Annual Conference, Sir Dave Brailsford speaks to Elen Lewis about getting the best out of people and why bold leadership is about recognising it's not about you.

What can marketers learn from sportsmen and women about pushing boundaries?
The obvious answer to that would be around the ambitious targets and goals that sportspeople set themselves. We shoot for stars and get to the moon.  That's part and parcel of pushing yourself and getting the best out of your talent. But there are also some learnings in terms of performance management and how to get best out of individuals and figure out how to win. The day-to-day management of talent and getting people to push themselves and inspire to greater things is interesting. Then there's the folklore in sport where individuals put their own aspirations to one side for the benefit of the team. We see that in every walk of life and in sport it's expected and held up in high regard. So it's that element of self sacrifice...

What advice can you offer to marketers looking to inspire their teams?
First, look at each individual and understand their level of internal drive and commitment to a goal. What does success look like to them? Is that aligned with your business goal?  Regardless of talent, if they're not aligned with the goal then it's not going to work. Put yourself in their shoes - what's important to them?  When we say things like, ' we just need to be professional', it doesn't work. What works is genuinely facilitating that human drive and building off the back of it.
Second, sit back and think about how humans operate, and what circumstances allow us to get the best out of ourselves. I'm a big fan of going for progression not perfection. At the top end of sport we're looking for perfect performance but we're humans, everybody is faulty. This means that a drive towards perfect performance is a daunting task. If you ask an elite athlete: 'Do you think you can progress?' People will put their hands up and say, ' Yes'.
Think in terms of progression in small steps rather than big and hitting perfection straightaway. I'm a big believer in the power of small wins. On a day-to-day basis what boosts people in terms of motivation? Identify those small wins and recognise the motivational power of every day progress whether you're training for the Tour de France or a Junior Regional Time Trial. The more we understand the notion of progression the better we can manage.  It builds belief. And the most powerful force is the belief that you can improve. If you sincerely believe you can improve, you will...

What one moment did you push yourself and/or members or your team so hard that you thought it might backfire?
I've got a lot of energy and I push hard. I clearly articulate the standard of excellence and performance that I'd like people to achieve, and once I've done that, I educate people and support them to achieve that level. At times I know I can really push hard. And I have to be careful. We overload people at great peril.
In the world of sport we use this concept of 'periodisation'. This is where you train and overload your body and then back off. This means it's not a straightforward linear approach. So a lot of the time, that pushing and pulling back again is the way to do it. We look at our season, the annual flow of work, the times when we need to be on it, and genuine times when we can back off.
Over time I've learnt about that and become more confident. I used to think I was helping them and driving them but you can only push them so far before they resent it.

What does bold leadership look like?
Bold leadership requires great ambition and high energy but your feet need to be on the ground. It can't simply be about crazy goals and ideas - they need to be attainable, even if they are a big stretch.
I'm the type of person that if I'm standing on the edge of river, I'll dip my toe in and quickly decide if I'm going to dive in and then I'll swim fast to make sure it works. Other people might keep checking the temperature.
Bold leadership is also about recognising that it's not about you. I'm just a minion, a facilitator in this process. I've never won a bike race. I'm reliant on other people supporting the riders who can win. I can't reach success myself. The thing we're judged on, winning bike races - that I can't do. So I'm setting the direction and making people feel secure, I'm putting focus on performance and giving clear direction. This is not about me, but about sharing wisdom, solving problems, offering emotional support and reward, managing teams.

What's the best way of pushing somebody's potential?
Find out what's driving that individual and then use a carrot and not a stick. I don't believe in the stick at all.
I like people to understand responsibility and accountability. Once we've decided what the goal is then it's massively important to start at the end. We analyse what winning looks like and then what it's going to take to win a particular event. Then we do a current audit and establish a gap and work out the right interventions to progress from A to B.
The challenge comes from the individual - on day three, something happens, their wife gets sick, life gets in the way... A great coach and athlete's relationship allows the individual to be as compliant as possible to the original training plan. It's about trying to help that person navigate through all the work and the suffering to achieve that goal.
It's not linear but fundamentally successful people take responsibility to own their growth and that's important too.

What advice would you give your 17-year-old self?
I think I would say, take your time to find out what motivates people and what they're trying to achieve and then help facilitate their drive...When I was younger I thought it was about pushing them, I was more controlling.

How do you want to be remembered?
I took it seriously and I worked very hard. I wasn't scared of trying new things and I was willing to innovate. I had an impact on sport.

What's the best advice you've ever received?
Trying to make people happy. When you're pushing very hard for performance it can become intense and serious, a real 'hot house' environment. So having happy and content people is a good thing in its own right.

If you hadn't been in sport, what would you have done?
I think hopefully something in the outdoor world, something to do with mountains or perhaps education. I've always been really interested in psychology, performance and sports science.

What are you reading?
I read a lot of books. There's a pile on my desk. They include:
Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson
Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
Football for Life by Simon Cooper
The Winning Behaviours by Dave Ormesher
How to Run a Government by Michael Barber
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
The Golden Mine Effect by Rasmus Ankersen
John Wooden on Leadership
Winners and how they succeed by Alastair Campbell