Two Coaches & a Coffee

Leadership, High Performance, and Innovation Insights

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 22

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Ever wondered how top-down leadership can sculpt an environment for elite performance, whether on the field or in the military? Join me, Jason Webber, on One Coach and a Coffee as I recount my recent consulting adventures with a military group and my exciting engagements with multiple football teams, including an upcoming session with Liverpool's women's team. You'll hear about the critical influence of leadership on culture and high standards, drawing fascinating parallels between sports teams and special forces units. This episode is packed with insights on how attention to detail and maintaining high expectations are pivotal for achieving excellence.

Career development has drastically evolved since the 1980s. I walk you through this evolution, stressing the importance of continuous learning and goal-setting in high-performance management. We discuss the necessity of mastering specialized fields like medical and nutritional sciences to lead a multidisciplinary team effectively. Moreover, I highlight the vital role of inspiring confidence and showcasing reliability to reduce risk for potential employers. This chapter emphasizes that true ambition must be aligned with proactive steps to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills for a successful career in high-performance management.

Finally, get inspired by the importance of innovation and clear problem-solving in academic and entrepreneurial pursuits. Learn why young innovators and PhD students should focus on specific, well-defined problems instead of broad topics. I draw compelling parallels between entrepreneurship and research, emphasizing the importance of coding and statistical analysis in tackling complex issues, particularly in military and sports science contexts. Leadership, especially when higher-ups fall short, and the development of essential skills before ascending to leadership positions, is also discussed. Tune in to understand how a proactive and inquisitive approach in sports science can elevate performance and close informational gaps, as demonstrated by my work with SpeedSig.

SpeedSig Intro

Sponsored by SPEEDSIG.com

Jason Weber:

Hi, I'm Jason Webber and welcome to One Coach and a Coffee. As you might know from last week, unfortunately Darren and I have really been conflicted with time. His program with the Adelaide Crows and the AFL and my program, which has been overseas for the last five weeks, have really made things difficult. So in the absence of Darren Wright at the moment, what I'm going to do is just reflect on a bit of what I've been doing for the past handful of weeks. So I guess from an update perspective, viewers would know that I do some work. I consult to a military group from a scientific perspective. I've been doing that for a bunch of weeks and that included writing a lot of software. But also in the last week and a bit I've been in the UK, obviously promoting SpeedSig and launching up here. We've got our UK server up and going, but meeting with anyone and everyone a bunch of EPL teams, championship teams, league One teams. I'll actually get to meet with my first women's team next week. We had a women's team operating in the US but some leadership challenges there Certainly didn't get that to last as long as I would have liked. But we're going to meet with Liverpool women's team on Monday and their leadership and talk through what SpeedSig can do and how we might be able to implement it there and how it could help their program. So the objective is not to harp on about SpeedSig particularly, but what I am going to do is talk about a couple of key things and observations that have really come through from both environments in the last couple of weeks. I'm going to start with one of the things I just mentioned there leadership.

Jason Weber:

So, without question, the term that's come to mind and really really hit home yesterday is the top-down leadership that, even when I walk into environments and I've been privileged, because of what I'm doing, to be invited into some of the most extraordinary performance environments in the UK and, given that I've seen quite a bit in the US and I mean there are only two environments I've seen a lot in Australia. I haven't seen much else in Europe or South America, so forth, but between those three Australia, uk and the US some of the facilities that I'm seeing are absolutely unbelievable. Unbelievable, and that's one thing right, and I often say you know, it's not about the building, it's the people. And you can get great performance in a tin shed, right, if you've got good people operating. Obviously, all the little nuances, the equipment, the facilities, the TVs on the wall, all those things can help and can be part of things, but you've got to have the right people.

Jason Weber:

So, looking at that, you look at that top-down leadership what impacts the way an environment operates? And it really does come down from the top and I've seen a couple of examples the last few days where there's the leadership in a sporting team that comes from a ceo and the direction that they might take. A lot of that being business, but certainly one of the environments I saw yesterday just the creativity around how they were going to create different spaces and not just performance. Other areas, areas around the business, like when you've got a facility that has 21 fields, you guys are going to become very good at groundskeeping and so being able to generate and facilitate elite performance in that area is one of the things that I saw this week. But then you tie that back into the elite performance the staff that I saw at the same facility and how unbelievable they were pushing in the right direction to try and get the highest level of performance. So when I put the SpeedSig thing down, they reviewed hard, they asked some great questions. They were really in digging in to. Is this viable for our environment?

Jason Weber:

So that top-down leadership impacts the entire environment. But you can see it around the building that we were in yesterday and I don't really want to name the team specifically so I'll keep it general but you saw it in every element the way the meal rooms were set up, the way staff were operating, the way people acted to one another, the politeness, the respect that you saw. It was genuinely environment-wide. It wasn't just the sporting team. Now, I was there for a relatively short period, so do you see the good and the bad? Who knows? But it was very impressive to see, whereas there are other things that I've seen in recent times where that detail's not there, when the leadership from the top is a bit messy and maybe the environments have made attempts to make change by bringing in more experienced staff to try and tidy things up.

Jason Weber:

But I think, if I then go to my military experiences of recent, I have the pleasure in that space of working with a lot of very, very experienced, extraordinarily experienced special forces operators very, very experienced, extraordinarily experienced special forces operators. Now I'm not particularly interested in telling stories about what they do, but one of the critical things that you see in those type of guys is what I would call redundant leadership. So they all know what for lack of a better term what the mission is. This is what we have to achieve, and if the top guy's not there, the rest of them step up and they know the direction we've got to take. So they're very good at filling in the gaps.

Jason Weber:

And when I can bring it back to a sporting environment, I then see people waiting to be led right. You see young staff and some staff aren't that young, to be very honest. There's staff that are saying well, I want to be the head strength and conditioning coach. Well, there's responsibilities that have to come with that, that are environmental, that get your space right, get your equipment cleaned up. When something's broken, fix it. Don't leave it lying around. There are details like that that impact players, because players are going to respond to the environment they're in, they're going to lift to what's around them. Vince Lombardi famously said. The famous NFL coach famously talked about the fact that men like to be pushed. I don't recall the exact quote, but something about men, in their heart of hearts, like to be given a line. They like to be pushed. They'll challenge the line, but they want to be pushed. And I think when you're looking at a team environment sports where you're trying to bring in people that might be coming from different cultures, they might be coming from different knowledge bases. They might be coming from different cultures. They might be coming from different knowledge bases, they might be coming from different socioeconomic grounds. You've got to get standards set. So, without putting on a big speech, walk in the door and what you see is what you get. This is what you're going to be confronted with Now, if I reflect on my US experiences, I've seen some facilities and there's one facility in particular I saw earlier this year which had just changed leadership and the leadership who came in one of them in particular senior guy was is a senior beast.

Jason Weber:

He's been around a long time. But you know the first thing they did they cleaned the gym. They gutted it, not throughout equipment, but they got things off the floor, hung them up, cleaned all the machines down like, detailed them so that when the players come in they can see hey, this is what's going to be expected of me. Now, if you talk to military guys, they'll always say look at a soldier's rifle, the way they maintain their rifle and their weapon will reflect that soldier.

Jason Weber:

So when you look at our performance environments, I think that for people who are out there, people who are aspiring to leadership I hear all the time I want to be a high-performance manager. All right, what does that mean? You've got to try and influence culture of people. You've got to lead a culture. What is it going to be? Is it going to be, yeah, yeah, rough enough is good enough, or are we actually on it? Where's the line stand for you? And it's not just about facilities. It's going to be about the way you appear, the way you carry yourself, the way you act to others, all of those features.

Jason Weber:

So I think, with those people who are aspiring to leadership roles, I think before you get to leadership roles, you should be starting to write down and analyze these things of yourself. Do I convey these elements? I mean, I can speak to experience of a young guy who worked for me for many, many years and now runs his own team, a high performance manager. I would easily say that from almost the day I met him, he was establishing himself to go and lead a team because just the way he carried himself, his intent, his attention to detail at all times. It was just always lifting the standard of those around him, me included. Again, redundant leadership, it takes more than just one, and so I think he stepped into leadership easily.

Jason Weber:

But that would be a reflection then on people who are aspiring to leadership to say get yourself ready, be ready, understand what are the things you're going to do, the actions you're going to take, not just, hey, I'm going to tell people I'm the boss, not wear the badge, I'm the leader. How are you going to act? How are you going to deal with people day to day? How are you going to deal with them when you're in a bad mood, all of those things? So then, if I take that and go a little bit, step a bit further to another number of conversations I've had this week the idea of ambition and action. So, what's your ambition? Oh, I want to be a high performance manager. Okay, and okay, that's fine. What are you doing about it? Now, I just used that as a leadership piece. So I'm going to leave the leadership piece alone for the moment, but I'm going to go down a more technical path and say well, if your ambition is to be a high-performance manager, what do you need to know to do that. From a technical perspective, we've covered leadership, so what does it look like? What does your continuing professional development look like Now?

Jason Weber:

I come from a long time back. I started my career in the 80s, so there was nobody, there were very few people I could look up to. Most of the people I looked up to were not I was not engaged with, I didn't know them. They were overseas. You would read articles, you would, back in the day, go and buy VHS and you'd pour over these videos of just how people did things and how they spoke and how they communicated and what they knew.

Jason Weber:

Nowadays you're a lot more, you're more connected with people. Those facilities are available. So what do you need to do? What do you need to do to technically be the best? So I mean, I think, the idea of writing your goal down, actually physically writing it down, and then, on an annual basis, you reflecting on and writing down what you've actually done. Now I know for a fact, with representative bodies like ESSA in Australia, you're supposed to do that put down your continuing development points.

Jason Weber:

Now, personally, I hate that sort of thing, but I will say, even if I didn't write it down, as a professional, as a person, I am driven like a madman to be better at what I do and arguably I'll never be good enough for myself. That's my personality personality flaw, probably. But the idea is that I always want to be better. And I can tell you now, with SpeedSig, I am petrified going into meetings every, every day wondering if I'm good enough, and you put in more and more work to make it as perfect as possible. So I presented yesterday, and I'm starting to present now, much more of my level two work, and again, not promoting this, but it's the concept. The idea is that my level two presentations now are much deeper, more. They've got our new research in it, which will be published soon, um, and a lot more structured detail about how we operate and how we can impact performance, rehab, all the rest of it.

Jason Weber:

And I made a comment yesterday. I said I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry, I'm belting you, I'm bashing you with detailed scientific statistics, modeling, bits and pieces. But I said you've got to understand that I've got to go to that detail. I've got to go to that length in order to ensure that my product is viable and that people can trust in it at the highest level. So I am driven to that. But I think, if you take that message and put it into my career, if I'm driven to get to a high performance manager, what do I need to know?

Jason Weber:

And I had a conversation with a guy the other day and we were talking S&C coach. So S&C coach, how do you become a high performance manager? I said, well, who do you need to manage? Well, you need to manage everyone medically. I said can you read MRIs? No, never looked at one. I know what one looks like on a wall, but I couldn't read one. So I said how then are you going to be in a position to lead medical staff if you don't understand their language? So, straight away, without going too much further, there is a perfect example of what do you need to know. You need to learn that language so you can communicate with people, so you can help them go forward. You don't have to know all of their detail. You're going to have to have skills of your own, which, in that case, come from strength and conditioning, but you need to understand the requirements going forward.

Jason Weber:

Technically, am I good enough? Am I good enough at my job to be able to lead others in that space? So if I'm good enough to head up a strength and conditioning department, am I good enough? Where am I learning? What's my next thing? So if I'm going to lead others, how do I know? Do you know what masseurs do? Do you know what a dietician does? Do you know what the doctor does? Blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Jason Weber:

I met a doctor yesterday who was very humble, almost asleep, in our meeting these small children. But he said at the end of my presentation he said like unbelievable, unbelievable. He said most of it over my head. He said this is not what I do, but I get 100% what you're doing, but the detail is just too much for me. So he doesn't need to know the detail, but he needs to trust. He needs to know that when his head of rehab presents him with information, saying this is where a player's at we know he's already seen that the detail's ticked off the same becomes addressing your ambition. How much detail have you ticked off? How much detail? And I will tell you one thing about getting jobs.

Jason Weber:

One of the things with getting a job is about inspiring confidence in those who are hiring you. They want to reduce risk that's probably a better way to put it. They don't want risk. Nobody wants to risk. We've just hired this new person and we don't want risk. So we want to know how good you are and how long you've been doing it and how consistent this thing is. How regular are you going to be? And I don't mean going to the bathroom, I mean how regular are you at performance, elite standard, all of that type of thing, culture Can you bring those things and do you bring them every day? And is there a point at which that stops? So getting a job is about reducing risk. Getting people to go. This thing is a lay down. It's not even worth debating. This person is so qualified and so appropriate for this position. So, again, just float back to that idea. What do you want to be and what are you doing about it? Because too often I'm seeing people going yeah, I want to be this, but I haven't done anything. It's just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, and I think you can make a great start for yourself Now.

Jason Weber:

Being a high-performance manager is not for everybody, that's okay. No one's saying that you have to push to the ends of the earth. You may find yourself in a strength and conditioning role that becomes rehab, that goes back again, and you're very happy and content and fulfilled in that role. There's nothing wrong with that. But understand, if you want to put your hand up, put it up properly, because it's nothing worse than people saying, well, I want to be, you know, a leader in this department, but they do nothing. They do nothing. So there's my talk on they do nothing. So there's my talk on ambition and action. I'll twist that one more little step, because the next one I'm going to talk about is something I've talked about for you hear me with darren periodically get on my horse about it and that's sports science.

Jason Weber:

All right, there are a lot of people, excuse me, around the world now who are the head of sports science. I'm the director of sports science, I'm this, I'm that. Okay, so what do you do? I do the GPS. That's not sports science. That's not sports science. You need to be in a position where not only are you listening to the questions that are being asked around you maybe not directly to you but you understand what the environment, what are the people in the environment looking for, what don't they know? What answers do they need, but then being able to generate your own questions, your own inquisitive drive to find out that, hey, I can see things happening in this environment. If I could answer X, y and Z, that would really help, and to be able to feed that back. Being proactive, being able to ask a question and figure out the methodology to determine an answer, that's science. Sport science is not downloading GPS and putting it into a bugger. That is not sport science, not in any way, shape or form. Sport scientists have got to start thinking, got to start offering their environment something proactive.

Jason Weber:

All right, I got asked the other day if I were to go into a role at a particular environment what would be the first thing I'd do, amongst probably a handful of things I'd do very early on, but one of the very early on things I'd do would be do a forensic analysis of the whole joint. I would get every piece of data available and we would mash it together and find out, squeeze the lemon for every pattern we can find. Now, as much as it could be me doing it, it wouldn't be me doing it, it would be my sports scientist. Go and find me what we can connect the dots on here, what relates to their injuries, what relates to their winning, what relates All of those type of things. Now my expectation would be if you're going to wear the scientist badge, you need to understand, like I said before, the question and how to look for the answers. The answers aren't going to manifest and just pop up and hit you in the head. You're going to have to build something, build a model, build a pipeline, build something to process all that information. Now this heads down the path of coding. If it does, it does. I don't really care whether you can code or can't code, but can you figure out the answers?

Jason Weber:

Now I see a lot of bright people doing a lot of bright things, which I really enjoy. I'm very excited to see young people given I'm an old man young people busting to a new idea, going in a different direction at something. If I see one more PhD student hear from them saying oh, I'm doing a load monitoring or a fatigue monitoring PhD. Oh, tell me about what you're doing. And this is me regurgitating something from somebody I had dinner with the other night. Who will know this when he hears it? All right, what's your PhD about? Oh, it's about fatigue. All right, what aspect particularly? Oh, I'm just reading the research at the moment and looking for ideas. That's not. That's that's looking for an easy path somewhere.

Jason Weber:

Developing a question for a PhD which is a really that's the. That should be the sharpest end of the research edge you ever pursue has got to be about genuinely solving the problem and, given that I'm now well and truly an entrepreneur, I think it's not a dissimilar journey. What is the problem? Everything you do in entrepreneurship? I did a course. What is the problem? Everything you do in entrepreneurism?

Jason Weber:

I did a course, a fantastic course, at Curtin University, accelerate, absolutely fantastic. I'd be dead without it, dead in the water. But I did a course there at Curtin, accelerate, and I got badgered all the time Badgered, badgered, badgered. What's the problem? What are you solving? Be very, very clear. They are absolutely correct, absolutely correct, and I think a PhD is exactly the same thing. What's the problem? What are you solving? You could frame it slightly differently. What's the question? What don't we know? And what are you figuring out? Not just some ethereal, oh fatigue. It's not good enough. It's got to be hard, strong and straight at it. So I mean, I really challenge the PhD students out there to do more. I met a young guy this morning who is going he's sort of branching from the S&C path towards rehab and really working in and and, like some of the stuff I've been doing, I said, man, you got one choice Go and learn to code. It's not that hard, but you need to start to the.

Jason Weber:

Coding is just a tool. It gives you the ability to then go and do the statistics, go and do the work that identifies the patterns right and answers the questions. And I really don't care how nerdy or geeky that appears to be, but I think the journey I've experienced in the last seven to five five to seven years probably seven years now of really getting into statistics such that I can answer questions, so when I don't know something about the environment I'm in, I can answer it. A lot of the work I do in the military space, a lot, a vast majority of it, is analyzing data, analyzing patterns. Is there something we can see about the question we have? Can we answer it in that space With that tool or that drill or that task or whatever it is? Can we answer the question we're looking for or can we contribute something to that answer? And you can only do it by analysis. So, quick review I think leadership from the top down cannot be overemphasized.

Jason Weber:

So at times you'll find yourself in your career I did for a while where I had to try and lead up because what was above me was a mess. And you try to lead up and it's very, very emotionally and physically demanding doing that stuff because you're trying to influence all the time someone who really, really is not probably suited to what they're doing. But ensuring that your part of top-down works, that the way you speak, the way you look, the way you present the intellect you bring, is critical. What do you need to have those things? It's better to know them and work on them before you get to a leadership position. Same concept with those aspiring to leadership is build those skills, identify them. Not everybody's good at everything. Nobody's good at everything. Everybody's got weak spots. Figure out what they are and try and work on them. Build your skills if you genuinely aspire to go further on.

Jason Weber:

And there's no question in my mind, none with respect to this that there are generations within sporting staffs. At 55 now, it would appear I'm starting to be on the outer in terms of a team position. I've got other friends of a similar age who are finding similar things. It is what it is. People want younger people. So if you're the younger one coming through, you need to make the most of your time, because your time is going to be finite. This doesn't go on for 30, 40 years. You don't get a gold watch at the end of this and go, hey, that's my career done. You're going to need to work and work and work and work. So might as well start doing it now. And then, the last bit, just in review, is our sports science brethren Getting after it, lifting our game One of the things I say about SpeedSig quite often.

Jason Weber:

Why did I build it? Because I didn't think we were good enough, we being strength and conditioning coaches. We weren't doing our job well enough because we didn't have all the information that we need. Now SpeedSig fulfills a small gap of that. I'm not suggesting that I've suddenly filled every bit of knowledge, but the idea is that if you can have the information that's critical to your performance, we can do the job better.

Jason Weber:

But sitting around and saying, well, we couldn't do it any better because we didn't know the old saying we didn't know what we didn't know Well, that's just stupid. I think we need to be inquisitive, we need to be driving. Sports science needs to be driving. Your experiences need to drive you. What are the questions? What do I need that will make my job better?

Jason Weber:

I had a great entrepreneurial conversation the other day. A guy was talking about being a CEO. Now, if you're the CEO, what are the things that you do? Charge per hour that you could charge somebody else, or pay somebody else less money to get done, administration tasks, whatever. You've got to figure those things out so you can get them done and move it forward as quickly as possible. Same thing within our journey. If I can get things done within my job that make me do it better, get more information. From a sports science perspective, we can do our job better because we're gonna. We need you support in that space. We need to get more information. So be inquisitive.

Jason Weber:

So, a lot of soapbox for me today, but in the absence of the great Darren Burgess and we do miss him we do miss him a lot. Yeah, we push on. I hope this was of value to you. There is every chance that we'll be doing this again next week. I'll probably be doing it from Ireland. I'm currently in the greater UK at the moment, but unless I can find Darren in our schedule, you might get another blurb from me next week, so I hope everyone gets something out of this, even if you get one thing, but it really is today's been a lot about figuring out what you're going to do and actually doing something about it, not just saying, hey, there's my next thing. So good luck, enjoy. I hope you got something out of it and we'll do our very best to be back next week. Thanks a lot.