The world’s best performance coach explains how he transforms teams

Owen Eastwood is the most in-demand team performance coach in the world

He’s earned that reputation by delivering break-through results with a diverse range of teams from Gareth Southgate’s England team and the England women’s team, to the senior leadership team of NATO. His former clients represent an elite range of teams who have gone on to achieve incredible victories. We wanted to understand how he did it.

What does he say? What does he ask?

Eastwood’s approach is consistent. By zooming out and pointing our fleeting contribution to legacy he urges teams to think about their ‘Us’ story. For me this suggests that what he’s actually doing is emphasising a powerful shared identity. In my mind I would see this as activating a visceral bond of community, he chooses to label it as ‘belonging’. That distinction ends up feeling semantic when presented with what his approach achieves.

This week on the podcast I’m joined by new co-hosts Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook as we talk to Owen and debate purpose, identity and belonging.

It’s a truly brilliant listen – I hope you can check it out.

Buy Belonging

Follow Owen on LinkedIn

Joe Lycett’s remarkable special – the last 20 minutes of this are astonishing viewing

Ellen on thinking about leaving work on time

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Daisley: [00:00:00] This is eat, sleep, work. Repeat a podcast about workplace culture, psychology, and life. I’m Bruce Daisy.

Ellen Scott: I’m Ellen Scott.

Matt Cook: I’m Matt Cook.

Bruce Daisley: Can you make people feel like their work matters to the extent that they end up working and acting in a way that feels more motivated and is more committed? Sometimes firms set about trying to create purpose.

Today’s guest I think, does something far more effective. Let’s think about purpose first. I wonder if either of you have ever worked in a company that has boasted about having a great purpose or talked a lot about purpose. What’s your, what’s your view of companies having purpose?

Ellen Scott: I have never worked anywhere that’s talked about purpose or having like a bigger story or anything like that, and I think.

I really wanted that. I really thought that it would be great if my bosses did talk about that, and we had a bigger kind of meaning to what we were [00:01:00] doing, and we were all working towards the same goals. But ultimately what I found is that actually I prefer just working with my own individual purpose and view it more as well, what are my goals?

What am I trying to get out of this? Rather than relying necessarily on the company’s overarching values.

Matt Cook: Yeah, the places I’ve worked didn’t have an explicit. Purpose in a quite visionary sense, but certainly many of the companies we work with as the Shift are all often trying to start with their purpose and thread that through.

But I think it is particularly interesting for this discussion, and especially Ellen, given that your newsletter is working on purpose, is kind of how much does that thread need to permeate into everyone’s day-to-day? And is it okay if the purpose is quite small? Does it need to be. Groundbreaking, we’re putting a rocket on the moon, or can you just find a smaller sense of purpose?

Bruce Daisley: Why don’t I give you [00:02:00] sort of, having worked in a couple of Silicon Valley companies, I’ve become deeply suspicious of this. So, so today we’re gonna be talking, uh, with Owen Eastwood, who’s written a book, which is partly about purpose, partly about other things. But every Silicon Valley firm kind of sees it as its rites of passage to suggest that somehow they’re changing the world.

And by the way, they’re just getting started. And it’s this idea that, you know, Google’s mission is to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible for all. And you see these little missions and purposes so far through businesses that I must admit, I’ve become a bit cynical about it really.

Ellen Scott: Yeah, I’m very much the same. It feels really dishonest. Like it’s lovely to say our company wants to do good and has this great meaning to it, but a lot of companies are just about making money. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just saying that openly, and I think that can be helpful for [00:03:00] some people because while some people really want their work to have massive meaning, a lot of people are just working because of money.

They want to earn enough to survive and do other things outside of work. So, yeah, I, I think I share your cynicism and skepticism on worrying that it’s just being a bit dishonest.

Matt Cook: I think we each wanna do something that’s meaningful.

Bruce Daisley: What’s it mean? What does that mean? What’s, what would be meaningful?

Matt Cook: Meaningful in that we understand why we are doing it, that it connects to something larger than just ourselves. And often that there’s a sense of mastery or development in why we’re doing it. But I don’t think that larger than ourselves has to be some visionary grand statement. It could just be a smaller purpose that the company’s looking at.

And I do think purpose does matter. I definitely think, certainly if we’re gonna be spending upwards of, you know, eight hours a day in a job, that [00:04:00] we should be finding something to connect that to. But I’m with Ellen. I don’t think it needs to be, I don’t think it has to be our passion. I don’t think it has to be the guiding light in our lives.

Ellen Scott: I think also a lot of times the purpose conversation can be used to cover up just bad working practices. Like I think you could be so distracted with, oh, but my work is really meaningful, that you accept working late all the time, or working really on healthy shifts or bad management. But because you feel like it’s purposeful and meaningful, you kind of let it slide and keep going with it.

So I think it can be quite dangerous to a point.

Bruce Daisley: Here’s an interesting thing, Ellen, you wrote this week brilliantly about the trying to reframe your ability to leave on time. And so often our inability to leave on time is a fearfulness of, yes, of course being judged, but also feeling like you’re failing a little bit.

Like kind of if you wanted it enough, you know, you always hear these [00:05:00] stories, you know, this actor was the first on set every day because he wanted it more like this. This sports person was the first. And you always hear these things which kind of associate how much you, you really wanna succeed with these, these sort of little signals of attachment.

And you know, purpose is often one of those things where for me it’s like, uh, well don’t you believe in this? And that’s why. I often am a bit cautious.

Matt Cook: I definitely agree with that. We see that quite a lot in jobs, which seem to be desirable often, you know, charity sector, often, things like that where it feels like you’re doing some good, for some reason almost, I think contradictory or ironically, are often the ones which are often lower paid, where the working conditions aren’t as good because, well, it’s a privilege to be here and certainly in terms of purpose can be used to.[00:06:00]

Try and say, you, you are outside the family. You know, family is another one. 10 years ago, five years ago, it was all about, you know, creating a family. I think hopefully most places have realized that actually that’s not necessarily a healthy dynamic to be creating.

Bruce Daisley: So, so let me give you a really bad metaphor and go with it.

’cause I think today’s guests takes us somewhere interesting. Based on this, did either of you watch the Joe Licit special on TV last Friday? Not

Ellen Scott: yet. I want

Bruce Daisley: to. Didn’t see it. So it’s an extraordinary piece of work that can’t help but make you feel like I want to be a better person. Right. An interesting thing, right?

So a narrative has landed and moved someone. Anyway, the, uh. The, the metaphor I have about what Owen has done is, I think I was chatting to both of you that it’s a bit like when someone writes a pop song that becomes the biggest pop song in the world. There’s, there’s something about whether it’s the, um, I was trying to think of the examples that I thought of the, I think the ones that I [00:07:00] mentioned, like Hozier

Matt Cook: just everywhere right now.

Bruce Daisley: Yeah. Hosier is everywhere again now, but when his Bring me to Church came out, oh my, it was, it was inescapable. And there’s some songs, some moments that Gotya song about 10 years ago. There’s some songs that just be transcend and become like the biggest song in the world. I think what Owen Eastwood has done has, he’s done a story version of that.

It’s it, he’s created a story that’s so compelling that people are swept away by it. As a result, you know, he’s gonna talk you through his. His own journey. You know, he’s a lawyer who now spends his time, his training is in law. He spends his time with executive teams, sports teams, movie teams, helping them construct something.

And I guess it’s not purpose where he is ended up, but he’s created a sense of all of us participating in something are in the middle of a story and we’re participants in the story. And if all cultures at their heart have got a desire to [00:08:00] achieve excellence, then I guess what he seems to be doing in his description, he’s asking people to.

Yes, channel their own ego, but in, in terms of pursuit of excellence, but also recognize that we achieve excellence collectively. And so for me, the fact he’s told this story that’s developed such legs and gone everywhere is a testament to trying to achieve maybe that purpose thing, but doing it in a really different way.

Matt Cook: And it is such an inspiring story the way he tells it. You can’t help but nod along and get excited. And yeah, I do like your framing of maybe less around purpose, but just focusing on belonging, which is something he talks about a lot and the collective element of it. Uh, one of the things whenever we are running workshops with our clients, such a valuable takeout, which often isn’t seen as an important input, is the time you spend at the start connecting and building that psychological safety and belonging.[00:09:00]

We’ll often sometimes have to convince. Teams to spend more time on it than they might think. ’cause they want to get through the different agenda items, the different learning objectives, and realize afterwards that such a valuable part of our time getting together was the one hour, the two hours we spent together at the start, just talking to each other and learning about each other.

Owen talks about the questions that the NATO leaders just ask each other about simple things like growing up, things like that. And we do similar things. Patrick Lencioni has a series of kind of connection questions. Where are you in the sibling order? What’s the strangest job you’ve had? And it’s really valuable when everyone is sat around together, especially if you’re doing this in person and realizing, I didn’t know that about you.

I had no idea. And some tension that might have been brewing over teams just dissipates instantly and it’s often overlooked and it’s such a valuable part of those sessions.

Bruce Daisley: [00:10:00] Ellen, I’m really taken with the fact that you said you’d love to work in somewhere that’s got some greater goal. And so what was your take when you heard Owen’s description of his approach?

Ellen Scott: I think I love Owen’s approach. I loved his book. I think it all sounds amazing. I just don’t know if it’s going to be a hundred percent realistic in all companies, in all industries. I also think my fear is that um, bosses are going to not actually read the book or listen to the story, but just see like the buzzword of belonging and go, okay, we’ll make our company like a family and everyone will overwork and do all of these things for us.

’cause we are so close and they belong. So that’s kind of my thing is I love it in concept, but, but when it actually comes down to it. I just worry that it’s gonna be used to cover up unhealthy, unhealthy things. But like you said, definitely in previous workplaces I felt like, oh, I wish [00:11:00] I knew what the vision was or what we are working towards.

I think the difficult thing with that is that sometimes those companies won’t really have a vision that’s that inspiring and it might just be, we are doing this to make profits for a certain person, and that’s gonna be really disappointing to hear

Matt Cook: one of the ways to activate it in. You know, you talked about, you know, does this apply to every type of company?

Is it realistic to think that you can talk about vision and purpose and credit center belonging? There’s a great example in Dan Cable’s book Alive at Work, where he talks about a call center in Delhi and the importance of self-expression. During the onboarding, so kind of going back to that connection point and building belonging.

When new hires in the call center were given the opportunity to introduce themselves in a way they wanted, and I think the prompt was when have [00:12:00] you? Being your best at work. When they were given that opportunity to essentially self-express, to create that connection, retention, increased performance went up, and I just thought it was a really nice, simple example that, you know, this work, this can work anyway.

You know, call center in Delhi or. To Owen’s, you know, football team. There are ways I think you can activate this.

Bruce Daisley: Yeah. The Dan Cable thing is, I think, um, the question is, uh, when were you doing your best work acting in a way you were born to act? So it really gives people the, the opportunity to be as, as unique and quirky as the one.

And there was a cleaning company called Method. They have something which, which they said they used to invite people to say what, um, we wanna make, we wanna keep method weird. So tell people how you are weird now. I think that’s the worst ever. The idea that you turn up in a job in your first week. You have to tell people how weird you are.

The Dan cable one, again, it, ’cause you’re all in an induction together. You’re all sort of in the same boat. You are showing, like you, you’re sort of [00:13:00] showing a soccer a bit. And, and so whereas saying it to a company full of people I, I think is odd. But both of them have got this same thing at the heart, I guess, haven’t they?

That that you’re trying to skip over the first date style awkwardness to get into something a bit more comfortable.

Matt Cook: Yeah, that method example is assuming quite a high level of psychological safety that you are coming in and able to be that vulnerable.

Bruce Daisley: And honestly, I had a, my old boss used to get people to do an impression.

He’d, he’d, uh, he used to say at the end of the first week, un warned, they had to come in and say what the impression of the company was before they joined, what the impression of the company was. Now they’d been here and then do an impression. All of them are appalling, all of the, like, see, but people used to say months later, do you remember that guy, that weird guy, his impression and like, it used to be a reason to, to, to confirm in your head why that guy had always been a bit weird.

Matt Cook: I think one of the best examples we use is. A boring fact [00:14:00] about you because you get put on the spot with, tell us something interesting about you. And you can’t even remember your middle name, but if someone just asks you, okay, you know, as an icebreaker way to get your voice in the room, what’s a boring thing about you?

I could list 10 right now. And actually it does sometimes give you an insight and it still helps to build that connection without forcing someone to dig into their uh, yeah, catalog of wins.

Ellen Scott: I like that a lot more. I think a lot of the tell us an interesting fact or do an impression has a very enforced, fun kind of vibe that I find very uncomfortable.

So anything that doesn’t do that, yeah, that will work a lot better. And I’m

Matt Cook: sure we’ll be hearing Bruce’s impression at the end of this episode.

Bruce Daisley: So let’s jump in. Let’s jump in to the interview with Performance Coach Owen Eastwood, and we’ll come back and chat afterwards. Owen, thank you so much for joining me.

I wonder if you could kick us off by just introducing who you are and what you do.

Owen Eastwood: Well, my name is Owen Eastwood. I’m a performance [00:15:00] coach originally from New Zealand. I’ve been living in the UK for a couple of decades now. Um, as a performance coach, my focus is on helping leaders really create an optimal environment for their people to be successful.

And I know that sounds a bit wide ranging, but as we’ll get into it, no doubt, it’s quite an intimate exercise to create an environment for everybody to thrive in. And, um, I’m, my background actually was as a lawyer for 15 years. I was an employment lawyer, so workplace relations, hr, that’s my game. Phil always felt strongly about that.

So it’s been very interesting just to transition from, from being a lawyer around the employment workplace to coaching in it, albeit, you know, in quite a few sort of, um, high performing environments.

Bruce Daisley: Because it’s such a dazzling trajectory, it’s, it’s impossible not to be a little bit starstruck, a little bit sort of, you know, spellbound by the te [00:16:00] In, in your book Belonging, you talk about the teams that you’ve helped and my goodness from, you know, aside from sort of parochial local interest of working with Gareth Southgate’s England team, but you’ve worked with international sports teams all around the world, and it’s impossible not to be starstruck by like how you found yourself in this place.

So talk us really briefly, and the trajectory that took you from being an employment lawyer to in, you know, rooms with some of the most respected teams in the world. How did, how did you make that hop from there to there? I could probably

Owen Eastwood: ask you the same question and maybe the, maybe the answers are similar.

The a a as a a lawyer, actually, I think what you really aspire to is to become a trusted advisor. You know, what I really loved as a lawyer wasn’t just, you know, problem solving and advising, but I really loved it when a client would reach out and [00:17:00] say, Hey, this is a little bit away from your expertise, but I really value a conversation with you.

This is something we’re struggling with. And as an employment lawyer, what happened is that quite often actually clients over time, once they got to know you, you built a relationship with each other. You’d been through some adversity. So there’s some trust there. They would say, look, this isn’t really a legal issue, but this is the thing that’s really holding us back right now.

Um, we’ve got some personalities, we’ve got some dynamics. We seem to be un incapable of sustaining our motivation. All of these type of comments and, you know, can I have a chat to you about it? And I’d spend time with them and over a course of probably a few years, they would then move a step further and say, look, you know, you seem to be talking a little bit of common sense here.

And we find this is an area where, you know, team dynamics in particular creating culture, very, very difficult to find good people who can talk in detail about the day-to-day stuff. Would you be happy to [00:18:00] maybe just get a little bit involved here? And so that’s how it really started. So I said, oh yeah, I’m passionate about it, I love it, I’m interested in it.

And then you have to front up a little bit. Once they ask, once they invite you into the sacred space of the team, then you need to come with a few ideas and um, obviously a lot of humility to immerse yourself in their reality. Um, and that’s how it really all started. And it’s word of mouth. You know, when I was a lawyer, we were told the best marketing you could possibly do is do a good job.

And same in, in this environment as a performance coach, it’s been exactly the same. You know, there hasn’t been much profile until the book came out and the England probably football team have been become very competitive. So that’s created profile. But other than that, it’s just all been word of mouth really.

Bruce Daisley: Right. Let’s take a step back before we go into some of the themes that you talk about. What does culture mean for you? You’ve mentioned culture there, so I guess at the heart of all of this stuff is culture and, um, what does it mean to [00:19:00] you?

Owen Eastwood: So one of the things about being a performance coach is that I’m completely unqualified for what I do.

You know, I studied law, I didn’t study anything sensible. So I’ve come at, at it from a very outside perspective. And one of the, to answer your question, one of the most powerful insights I got was very early days when I did a project with Manchester City, um, and City Football Group where. One of the psychologists mentioned an insight that 70% of human behavior is determined by whatever environment you are in.

That absolutely hit me between the eyes. ’cause I, I really did feel that my whole life, but no one had ever told me that I’d had, I’ve heard a lot about psychological models and these things, which I found a little bit complicated, but when someone said that the, I think it was English Institute of Sport, had done a meta study of a thousand studies and their insight was that 70% of human behavior determined by your environment, that is culture.

So what is that environment signaling to you? And [00:20:00] in all of my work, what we want to be is proactive and intentional about what that environment is signaling to our people. And we can get into that. But we wanna signal to them that this is a place they belong. This is a place where they’re included. This is a place which has a purpose.

This is a place which has a mission that we are working hard for right now. This is a, is a place which is worthy of you suppressing your self-interest to do something at a higher level. All of these things are what culture can be and our environment will signal it, not the words of a leader. So that’s where, that’s how I think about culture.

70%. That’s the first thing. As a leader, I’d wake up and think about.

Bruce Daisley: There’s an interesting thing, uh, what I love about your book, I was just saying to you beforehand is that, um, I think there’s always an enigma, I find when you hear experts who go into rooms and work, work with teams, ’cause you think, what do they say?

What do they do? What are the exercises? And what I love about belonging is you [00:21:00] pretty much, you don’t do it step by step, but you pretty much articulate what anyone might do to emulate some of the things that you do. You describe scenarios and things. And I guess before we go into some of the themes of that, um, it really strikes me, you kind of hit at it there, that successful culture appears like superficially to me to be about a celebration of the collective over the individual.

It seems to be about sort of the importance of recognizing, uh. Contribution to lineage, to legacy, to history, to like, um, to, to the, um, the group that we’re part of. And to some extent that means trying to reduce our focus on ourselves. You know, it’s about collective identity rather than individual identity.

Firstly, is that right? Because I guess in elite sport, individual con contributions still matters. Is it about the collective over the individual

Owen Eastwood: that that is a huge part of get, getting the best performance out of a team? Of [00:22:00] course. And w as an outsider, the sort of left field Kiwi lawyer being invited into these spaces for no really good reason.

Um, that, that, that allowed me to have an open mind. And one of the things that I’m grateful for was one of the things that, well, one of the things I found unsatisfying in my first few years as a performance coach is that I would, I met and worked with some, you know, really great psychologists, but invariably they would always.

Diagnose the team around individual personalities and personality profiling. And I always felt that is not the answer because I know in different environments I’m can be quite extroverted. I know in other environments I can be very introverted. I know in some environments I feel very anxious. Other environments, I just feel very relaxed.

And these have a profound effect on my behavior. So I didn’t like the idea that we have this sort of personality type that dictates our behavior in teams. And so one of the things that I did actually was I reached out to Robin Dunbar at Oxford University because I’d come across some of his [00:23:00] work as a evolutionary psychologist and just asked if I could possibly meet with him.

And he is a very kind man, and he agreed to, and he sat me down really. And we, he just asked me to explain what a dressing room looks like at, you know, an elite sport today. ’cause he, he, he didn’t know what it looked like. So I explained to him and he said, you haven’t really described anything much different than a tribe.

Or a group of kin, um, 60,000 years ago in our evolutionary story, the fundamentals are all the same really. And part of that absolutely is rather than having this interesting collection of individuals all pursuing their own self-interest, we have only ever been successful as a species because we’ve aligned ourselves and committed to something which is good for all of us.

And so to me, that is part of any good leadership and any good culture setting is that it’s clear that this is who we are, this is our sense of identity, that this is why we are doing something. [00:24:00] And if we are successful in the work that we are undertaking right now, this will be good, not only for us, but for others.

A very, very basic questions. But they actually come back to our evolutionary story and I don’t. I think anything has changed.

Bruce Daisley: Tell me this, um, how transferable do you believe that some of the themes that you talk about are between sport and. The man of modern business, you know, as, as you are going through those things there and, and as you’re going through stories in the book, I think it’s very easy to imagine that, you know, you’re with a Scotland rugby team and you can evoke a sense of history their, their, their ancestors being worriers and their, their ancestors fighting off the, the English and or, you know, you, you talk of South Africa and the transition they made from being, um, the spring box into the, the new United country.

And, and I can really see sort of lofty themes of purpose, [00:25:00] but if you’re down a, you are regional team for a washing powder company, are you able to evoke the same sense? Uh, how easy are, are the themes that you talk about to bridge into the mand of real life in a David Brent style office?

Owen Eastwood: Well, I think they’re completely transferrable.

You know, bearing in mind I spent 15 years in a law firm. I also spent two years on sabbatical at Saatchi and Saatchi. Um, I have three siblings. One is a plumber, uh, one is a copywriter and one is a line linesman, the electrical lines. They are all in real life environments. And actually, not only in writing the book, but in all the work that I do, I’m always thinking about them.

’cause I do not like the idea that, um, certain sports teams, for example, have worked at the Royal Ballet School as well, and they’ve worked with the leaders of nato, the, the command group there. I don’t like the idea that elite people get access to this very progressive way of thinking about [00:26:00] environment and culture, and everyone else misses out on it because they’re not as supposedly exciting.

I think these ideas are completely transferrable. Every human being has a need to belong. That need to belong hopefully exists for most people at home and with their friends. But for a lot of people doesn’t exist when they go into work. That is a recipe for not getting the best performance out of people.

People are able to share whether they’re clear on what’s being asked of them in an environment where they trust people around them, and particularly the leaders. That doesn’t matter what environment you’re in. So for every work environment people feel, um, highly energized and focused when they’ve got dopamine and oxytocin in their system, dopamine and releasing the pursuit of a goal, oxytocin released when you feel connected to the people around you.

Doesn’t matter what environment you’re in, from a school, from church, from home, from an elite environment to a normal working environment is exactly the [00:27:00] same. Our hormonal system doesn’t change at all. So one of the things that creates burnout is just far too much, much anxiety in this, in people’s hormonal state.

It becomes chronic anxiety. Well, that happens at elite level. Happens at every single level. Happens to the people who paid the least. So all of these principles are exactly the same. Of course, when it comes to storytelling in a book, some of these stories are a little bit more dramatic if you are the sports team, which is basically upholding the transition from apartheid to, uh, the rainbow nation, which we, we were with the pro.

Okay, so that’s a dramatization of, of the story, but for all of us, we have that need to belong and all of us, part of that need to belong is we need our leaders to explain this is who we are as a business, as a workplace. And often that is completely neglected. And, you know, maybe we can talk a bit more about that because yeah, you don’t have to represent your nation in order to have a good story about who we are and why it’s pretty cool to be here.

Bruce Daisley: This [00:28:00] seems sort of center, the center point of, of your approach and, um, the, the, the notion that maybe the first thing that a team needs to construct is our US story is the, the, the sense of who we are collectively and what we stand for. Talk me. So you walk into a room, you walk, I mean like the, the NATO room.

You walk into a room, how’d you kick off? What’s, what’s the stage? How’d you get that thing going and how’d you get that a story constructed?

Owen Eastwood: I suppose because I’ve come as an outsider, I don’t have a model or I don’t have, I’m not accredited to a certain way of doing things. I haven’t studied psychology.

I’ve really, really tried very hard to keep a very common sense approach to everything I do. And so if you wanna talk about the NATO example, I was very lucky to work with the three generals, the four star generals, so that they’re the highest generals in the world who run nato, the Supreme Commander for Europe, [00:29:00] the Deputy Supreme Commander in the chief of staff.

And so, you know, when you get briefed by all their consultants and you know, to, to, to work with them, that’s could be daunting I suppose. But once you get beyond that, you just look at where are they at right now. And what I’d found to use those guys as an example was that they have, each of them have about 16 staff that go everywhere with them.

So those three people only ever met with what. Three times 16 staff with them. So there was a complete lack of intimacy and, and a complete lack of an ability to build a relationship with each other. It was just going through an agenda. So when I was asked to work with them, the very first thing I did, which is I think just purely common sense is, and it took about three months to negotiate this, no staff would be present.

Wow. Would just be there. Those three. And what we did is we, you know, write about it in belonging. What we did is I just got them very simply, and it nothing very clever about it, is to share with them their actual story as a human being. [00:30:00] Where do you come from and what and how the hell did you get around this table?

And, you know, two of those three generals were in tears as they told their story to each other. And these are very impressive people and really top leaders. Um, but they’ve never actually had a space created. They’re too busy, which are probably all of your audience can relate to as well. We’re too busy to do this.

We’re too busy to get to know each other, to build a relationship, to actually build empathy with each other. It’s a, that, that is actually mad. So we, we create a whole day for it. And then they had lunch together and they invited me into the lunch for the three of them. But actually I said, you know, I’d have loved to have sat in there.

I actually said, no, I’m not gonna do it. You guys are just having a beautiful connection. I’ll just leave you to it. And I, and I walked past and they were laughing and that is quite a transformational thing to do. But isn’t that the most simple thing you could possibly do? Yeah. How many other leadership groups don’t actually invest the time to do that?

And so many things are possible. Once they actually get to know each other, [00:31:00] understand each other, and have built a relationship, then they can challenge each other. Then they can have safe conflict, then they can feel free to introduce new ideas. You know, all of those things are possible once we do that simple piece of work.

So my approach, anywhere I go, I don’t get intimidated simply because I have a very simple common sense approach and I’ve had enough experiences to know that, you know, these make an impact on the performance of teams.

Bruce Daisley: And so in that instance there, it’s just about creating a sense of us, but sometimes it’s more explicit.

You’ve, you sort of set about creating a shared narrative. You a shared version of how we talk about things. So, so that more explicit stage is, is that an important part of just the message passing into wider groups and, and into sort of wider parlance? What’s the objective of creating that, a story that you, you often set about doing?

Owen Eastwood: Well, I, I suppose if you, you know, allow me, I’ll probably have to go a little bit back into my own story to [00:32:00] explain my approach to this. And again, I’ve sort of emphasized here I’m, you know, the lack of qualification in my work, but. You know, we’re all qualified through our life experience. And, you know, when I was five my father passed away very suddenly.

And, um, you know, that was obviously quite a dramatic and, and very, very painful part of our life, which we still feel very deeply. Um, he was part half English and half Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. And when I got to 12, my siblings had sort of created their own story of who they were, their own identity.

But I, I hadn’t really, I I was a bit of a pissed off teenager. I was a bit, felt quite lonely a lot of the time, even though I was surrounded by people. And I think part of it was that I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, particularly my father was part of this powerful tribes of the English and the Maori, but I, I didn’t, ’cause he was an only child, I didn’t feel connected to either of those.

So I wrote a letter to the Maori tribe that we were part of and, [00:33:00] um, I just wrote to them and said, you know, my father was Harry Eastwood. My grandmother is Rose Eastwood. I think I’m a member of your tribe, NA Tahu. Do you know who I am? And they write this absolutely beautiful letter back to me saying, we know who you are and you belong here.

And not only that, they gave me a thousand years of my ancestors, every single name. And this is a people who didn’t have a written language until the missionaries arrived in 18 hundreds. This is all through ritual and oral history, et cetera. So all of a sudden, and I can still actually, as I’m saying it to you now, I feel it.

This euphoria I felt of feeling quite lost and lonely and not very important to someone who actually belonged somewhere and people had their arms around me. It was an incredible feeling and part of what I want to do with every team I work with now. But as part of that sort of, um, education about. You know that indigenous culture, one of the things I explained was this was this idea of whakapapa, W-H-A-K-A-P-A-P-A.

And they, they, as a 12-year-old, they just said to me, Owen, [00:34:00] you need to understand your place in the world. And this is really the backbone of all my coaching. And in fact, there’s been articles written around the, you know, thing of football team and this idea, um, I think The Guardian wrote a nice article about it.

Um, but the idea was that, Owen, you need to understand that you are just one person in a line of people with their arms interlocked with each other. That goes all the way back to the origin story. Whether it be whatever community you’re part of, could be a family, it could be a nation, could be a church, could be a school, could be a sports team, could be a business.

Whatever community you’re part of, you are just one person. That line of people. And your arms interlock with everybody who came before you, but also everybody that comes after you. And so the metaphor they used was the sun first shine on our origin story and slowly moves down this line of people revealing each of us in turn.

And the way they described great culture to me as a 12-year-old is what I really try and live now. And that is if you accept that as the frame of belonging to a community or [00:35:00] any group of people, then when the sun comes onto you, first of all, you need to be a guardian of what has come before. So the I, the idea of our identity, our purpose, our mission, what we, our standards, our values, our rituals and traditions, all of these things, you need to take this on.

Now, in order to have this transmission of culture, you need to do, you need to accept that you’re a guardian of these things. This is not all about you. Secondly, when the sun’s shining on you, you do not get to choose your moment. History will choose the moment for you, and you have to respond to whatever moment you are in.

So you need to have courage and step up. And it might be that generations before you had a wonderful, relaxed, pretty easy life. It might be that the history doesn’t give you that. But you just have to face up to that. And then thirdly, the sun will move from you at some point. So you need to understand that every single thing you do while the sun’s shining on you will create the conditions [00:36:00] for those who follow to be successful.

And then when you think about the sun shining on us, and with England football team, we’ve, we, we’ve talked in these ways, is that in effect every group of people where the sun shines, is creates its only chapter of the story. And you know, I think Harry Kane is, and, and other players have explicitly used that language as we want to write our own story when we go to a World Cup, when we go to the Euros.

And that’s the idea is that, and, and, and this is not a fairytale, we don’t just say, well we’ve, we’ve got this amazing story and we are amazing and better than people often actually when the sun shines on us. It could be in a family, it could be a business, could be a nation. Actually we’ve got troubled past.

We actually haven’t been a great version of who we could have been. Yeah, we’ve made some big mistakes, we’ve had a poor culture. We haven’t given everyone equal opportunities. We’ve excluded people. So it’s about facing up to the truth of the story, not creating a fairytale, but then having a massive focus on this is a chapter we want to write.[00:37:00]

And that requires a bit of visioning. But that, and if you look at it from a hormonal point of view, if you are able to frame, and this could be as you said before, any type of business, any, it might be that it’s not a spectacular and being very successful up to this point, that’s fine. But the question becomes what is the chapter that you are writing right now?

And I think any manager, any leader, is capable of articulating something motivational around that might not be gonna be the best in the world, but it might be that we’re gonna move from here up to here, and this is going to allow the people to follow us and take it up another level as well.

Bruce Daisley: I guess that’s it.

Any culture then, and any leadership needs to start with a principle of excellence. It’s like, you know, this group here, our job here is to be as good as we can be in this moment. And like establishing that the, the reason I’m, I’m so moved by the story. ’cause even though I read it actually, you saying it sort of has, um, even more impact.

Um, I presume you must tell that story to the groups that you work with to, [00:38:00] to help anchor them around. The idea because it’s, uh, in incredibly powerful, um, is, is the, is the challenge then that sometimes there hasn’t been this collective desire for excellence or there hasn’t been a sense, a collective sense.

And, and that’s the first thing you’re trying to instill.

Owen Eastwood: Absolutely. And you know, I actually, although I’m well known for working in those particularly sporting environments, um, I actually spend most of my time working with corporate leadership teams. And I love that because, you know, that was my life.

You know, I was a partner in a law firm. I can, I enjoyed that. I, I wasn’t very good at it, I don’t think when I look back on it. Um, but, you know, I’m motivated to help people in that space now. Yes. I mean, sometimes I’ve worked with a startup. We don’t have a story, but that, that is beautiful. I love those projects because we get to curate what the story will be, right to those who come after us, so we can have some amazing intent.

Rather than just trying to break even and, [00:39:00] and screw each other over and have a horrific working environment and then fix it two generations down, which some people’s mindset is a lot around that. We go, you know what? We’re gonna have an intention here. We’re gonna do this the right way. This is gonna be a place where people feel included, they belong, feel energized.

We’re gonna treat each other with respect, and that is going to cascade onto the, as the culture that’s passed down. So I, I really love that. But sometimes, and I, I’ve happened particularly in the corporate space, but also in sport, we actually have a pretty crappy history. It, it, we haven’t been very successful and actually we’ve had some poor leadership and actually our culture hasn’t been a safe place.

So, you know, I I, it is not uncommon to get invited to people who are in those situations and talk about it, but this is what it’s, I think is really quite beautiful about it. Is, is this beautiful idea of, is that we, we need to respect that and understand it. As I said, not try and build a fairytale, but then it becomes what are we gonna do?

[00:40:00] Whatever the standards, how low they have been, how poor we’ve, um, our achievements or whatever they are. Okay, we understand that, but what are we capable of when we get to write our own story while the sun’s shining on us? And I’ve yet to find any environment anywhere where people aren’t empowered and motivated by doing that.

Bruce Daisley: Oh, that’s interesting because I was, I was really that my next question was gonna be, when doesn’t this work? Is it, is it when there’s a lack of cohesiveness or a lack of, um, cooperation or trust? But you, you say that even with the context that broadly it generally works. What, what are the barriers to bringing the sense of sort of collectiveness?

Owen Eastwood: The barriers that I’ve experienced would be where there is not top. Down alignment. Um, I, I didn’t write about it in the book, but two years ago I was invited by Harlequins Rugby Club in London to, to help review where they were at. They were sort of a bit stuck towards the bottom of [00:41:00] the, the premiership.

And what I’d learn from previous experiences is, is if the coach was asking me, or the performance director was asking me, then what would probably happen is that I would come in, um, maybe, hopefully provide some good feedback and, and maybe some ideas for them for that individual in the organization. And then they would probably try and push some of that, and then it would ultimately get lost and whatever I wrote would be put in a draw somewhere and lost forever.

So when I was asked by Harlequins, I, I actually said, just based on my experience, definitely not my ego. I said, if we’re gonna do this. The ownership, the board, the CEO, the executive leadership team, the performance staff, the performance director, the, um, coaches, our players, Danny, Joe, Marla, uh, for example, they all need to, we all need to be in the same room [00:42:00] and talk about what we actually want to achieve here, and everyone buy into it.

And to their absolute credit, they said, okay. And they did that. And, you know, that was a big experience. And that, that was, uh, we were very, you know, I’m not gonna draw a direct line, but we end up having an incredible season and winning the premiership that season. And we’ve, but we’ve sustained ourselves as very competitive over the last couple of years as well.

So to me, that was only possible to answer your question because this wasn’t given to the HR director as an exercise. I suppose ’cause of the experiences I’ve got and maybe the profile I have now, I’m able to do that and not easy for some other people may be, but I insist that if we’re gonna do it, we all do it together and we have complete transparency and buy into it.

And when I’m updating people, I’m updating everybody and checking in with everybody. And I think that that is the only way to really create an incredible culture.

Bruce Daisley: Talk. Talk about what you walked into for the England men’s team then. So were [00:43:00] you brought in, how, how were you engaged and, and how did you set about working out what the challenge was?

Owen Eastwood: They under the Dan Ashworth, who’s now the sporting director at Newcastle United, they did a DNA project, which some people might recall. So they wanted to understand, you know, what they stood for and what they believed in, and then made sure that everybody in the country understood that. So they’re trying to build an identity around English football.

And it was quite interesting is that once I got started on that, the technical, tactical training, coaching sort of stuff was okay. But when it come to our identity from a cultural point of view and what made us different to Spain and France, they, they actually found it quite difficult to articulate that.

And a lot of the feedback from quite elite players was that, you know what, when Spain, when we just copy them in France, when we copy them, we don’t stand for anything. Both men’s and women’s, you know, elite players were saying that same thing. So they’d heard about my work through, you know, various, um, people I [00:44:00] suppose, and they invited me.

Can you sort of help guide us on this journey of articulating who we are and what we believe in and what we stand for? And this was to be across all the 14 national teams that the FA is responsible for men’s and women’s. Okay. So that’s where I was brought in. And so we created this sort of English sense of identity.

Um, and it’s not just a nice fluffy idea. There was a strategic objective to be the best team in the world by a certain milestone. So that was our goal. So it’s a performance goal, but in order to do that, we weren’t gonna go around copying everybody. We needed to really anchor ourselves and what we believed in both style of football, style of coaching, type of player, all of these things.

So I, I was extremely fortunate and, and, um, Roy Hodgson was a manager when this project started, but then there was a quick couple of changes and Gareth came in. And obviously that was awesome for me because he’s somebody who intuitively understands and believes in these things and wanted to build a culture where the players [00:45:00] didn’t feel lonely and isolated and anxious, but actually felt they belonged, felt included, felt they were part of something which had more meaning than just winning a football game.

And so we, yeah. Yeah, that has been an amazing six years just working with them, so we sort of, yeah, very fortunate. I think with a different manager, it might not have in any way created the same results.

Bruce Daisley: You talk a little bit about South Africa and a, a little bit elsewhere, where sometimes one of the critical things I think is that it appears that any sort of culture, any values, any sort of, um, shared purpose, so type sometimes can feel like it’s handed to teams or to organizations.

The, you know, the leaders have gone away. They’ve come up with the shared purpose. Here’s what it is, they’re going to give it to the team. And it seems like when you describe these things working well, they feel like democratic discussions where the purpose [00:46:00] is something that’s been defined by all of the participants and often being interrogated in real time by the participants of whether this really represents who we are.

I wonder if you could speak to that, that, that sense that for this stuff to work, it can’t be just handed to teams. It needs to feel like they own it.

Owen Eastwood: That’s a really perceptive question, I think. Um, so it’s a beautiful balance you want to achieve because if, if I’m a, if I’m a even a manager or a leader and I stand before my team and say, Hey, I’ve got a whiteboard here, let’s, um, let you, you tell me who we are, what we believe in, um, what we’re trying to do, what our purpose is.

If I was in that room, I’d be completely demotivated and I’d lose co lose confidence in my leader. I don’t want a leader who’s standing there asking us to describe who the hell we are and what we believe in and what we’re trying to do. So we don’t wanna go to that extreme, but then it doesn’t work as well if a leader just then reveals a whiteboard with [00:47:00] three bullet points and says, this is who we are.

Memorize it. This is what we’re doing. So my approach is, you know, and I’m not saying it’s right, it’s just my approach is I really, really would coach a leader. For when they have that space with their team, whether it’s a sports team in preseason or a, or a corporate team on an offsite, think very, very carefully and emotionally about the story you want to tell and tell the story.

Not a prescription or a bullet points or PowerPoint, but just tell the story. This is who we are. This is where we come from. These are the achievements that we should understand. These are the areas that maybe we’ve made mistakes or let ourselves down. And again, now this group of people, we’re gonna take the story forward.

We’re gonna write the next chapter. So we’re gonna spend some time thinking about that. So I think to answer your question, I think a leader should be intentional and story in [00:48:00] storytelling mode about these things. Who we are, our values, um, what are those traits that we particularly value here? And you gotta evidence them with good stories.

Um, so I think the leaders need to do all that, but then create a space for just for everybody to comment on that and, you know, excuse my language, but allow, give people a bullshit detector as well after you’ve shared that story. And it should be done very emotionally and probably using film. And that’s how we would do it.

Um, you know, and we want people to be moved. Then we give them a moment to breathe and then we ask them, invite them into the conversation. And ask ’em to comment on all of that. And, and again, if they can challenge anything they want, they can ask questions about it. Um, and then we move into a space of what are we, what’s the story that we are gonna create together?

Now? Do we take all of this with us? Does some of this need to be changed? Do we need to step up and do that? So, definitely, definitely not prescriptive, but not starting [00:49:00] from nothing, I suppose is what I’m saying. And, um, I think we’re all capable of it in any environment to do those things. E even as a parent, I feel like that’s a big part of what I do, is I try to explain to my children, um, the story of where our family has come from.

We’ve got quite an interesting, diverse family where, where they all come from, where their grandparents have come from, some of the adversity that they’ve overcome, all of these things. But ultimately the question doesn’t become, go and replicate it does it? The question becomes, what are you going to do when the opportunity and the sun’s shining on you?

Bruce Daisley: It’s really intriguing, uh, as you’re talking there, it, it strikes me that the candor that you set about trying to create amongst the NATO generals, three of them together, almost having the willingness amongst themselves to push back on each other, to challenge each other, to have like the, I guess, you know, if, if psychological safety is anything, it’s sort of that ability to tolerate conflict because, you know, um, it’s creating a space and you describe it there.

You know, like that [00:50:00] ability for people to call bullshit on something for, for, for them to say, look, you know, we are not just gonna turn up here and say the easy, nice to haves. Critically, you know, the, the NATO example illustrated it. It’s really easy to have psychological safety or comparatively easy to have psychological safety with smaller groups.

And as groups get bigger and bigger and bigger, that psychological safety is, is compromised. You know, we’re on a Zoom call. We don’t recognize everyone’s face. We, you know, we’re, we, we’re in an environment. So I wonder if at the heart of this stuff working well, it’s about recognizing core teams and, and sort of defining the small core inner group for it to work it, it needs to have a stronger core.

Do you have a perspective on that? About size, about how this

Owen Eastwood: stuff works best? Well, we’re, we’re definitely on the same page there. Like, this all comes back to the micro teams that actually work together and big organizations. And, you know, I’ve worked with Accenture, [00:51:00] 800,000 employees. So, you know, there is the idea that we’re all going to be clones of each other and, and we’re all gonna mimic one archetype as a complete nonsense.

And, you know, I talk about this, I was very grateful as well as a 12-year-old. The, the Maori tribe also taught me these two very basic concepts of tap TAPU and, and Noah in OA. And what they said to me was, and again I take this into all my coaching, is that what you, we all need to be clear on is what are the things that are tap, which means what are the things that are sacred here and what are the things that Noah.

Which means where are we free to express ourselves? And what they said, and this is thousands of years old, these cultures are saying is that human beings flourish when there’s, they’re imbalance between knowing what is sacred and also having an opportunity just to express themselves. So when we think about, I mean, we can think about England football.

We’ve got 14 national teams. We do not have one blueprint of culture that everyone has to do. But we do have what I would call tap or, [00:52:00] or we have defined what is sacred. So what we would say to all the leaders of those teams is, these are the things that you must do. This is a style of play that we believe in.

This is the way we wanna treat our people. This is how we feel about every individual having a right to belong. This is what we feel about everyone having a right to feel included and not excluded from the way we do things. Every competition should be articulated as a mission, which has a higher purpose.

So there’s a whole list of things that, uh, sacred to. Identity, but every leader and every team is free to bring them to life in their own way and to, and, and it’s not one way to, and same with someone like Accenture, 800,000 people. There are certain things that are sacred there, but there is not a prescription as to how a team in India might do it versus a team in London, New York, wherever.

And I think that is actually incredibly useful when I work with corporate teams. It’s just making sure the leadership themselves have articulated in [00:53:00] terms of us as a shared story, as a business, this is what we believe in. We want everyone in our, um, we employ to feel wellbeing and, and all those other principles, but you go and bring it to life in your own way.

Okay? But you have to do that. And we will, we will hold you accountable to that. But how you do it, we give you some freedom, some know, in order, in order to how you go about that.

Bruce Daisley: One of the things that comes out, and I guess there’s a, there’s a straight line between Robin Dunbar describing sort of pre-history or medieval groups of people gathering together, and the thing that helped them survive was being in a group and right through to the way that you described some of your interventions about people sitting around campfires at the end of sessions or, you know, out together with each other.

These, these, it’s impossible to escape the physicality of, of connection with people, people being in each other’s company and trusting each other and, and sort [00:54:00] of looking each into each other’s eyes. With that in mind, what’s your perspective on the way that the way that we work has evolved and do we need to have any things in mind with specific regards to the time that we build teams in a hybrid world?

Owen Eastwood: Well, I, I think hybrid working is not only a reality, it’s, it’s in, in most circumstances a really good thing. And you can build what I would call a very high performing culture in a hybrid model. So I’m not down on any of that at all. Obviously when we are physically together, there is a different connection.

I think everyone knows that there is a different hormonal state actually that you can achieve. But there’s all, you know, but it can be a great one. It also can be a pretty crappy one as well, but it is different. So what I saw probably during COVID, and I’ve seen it sustain since, is some really wonderful use of technology in terms of building a culture of not only of belonging, but [00:55:00] high performance.

So for example, if I think back to when I was a lawyer, we never really once had anyone explain the story of our firm. I learned a bit about it after I left 15 years outta curiosity. Actually, when I was there, I was too busy to think about it and, but no one ever told us this story. But what I saw during COVID was some leaders of businesses who actually got some of the team to go away and articulate in like a three or four minute video, this is who the hell we are.

This is where we’ve come from. And getting everybody metaphorically around the campfire on a Zoom call to share that, but then creating a space, um, straight afterwards for people to go into groups of three and groups of four, all done quite incredibly well technologically to start visualizing or what are we gonna do?

That’s a pretty cool thing to do, which people struggle to do in person to get everyone around, but you can actually do that technologically, also, technologically, um, a lot of people [00:56:00] develop the much stronger muscle for feedback conversations. In the busyness and you know, your mind’s all over the place in the office, and then you gotta get to this meeting and it can be really difficult and easy to cancel important conversations, for example.

But what I noticed is some leaders, and I’m, I’m not talking about sporty, I’m talking generally decided, you know what we will schedule in feedback, um, you know, once a month, 45 minute conversation. And that is again, tap sacred and we can do it online. It’s cool, you know, it’s a little bit different, but it’s still high value.

So that’s a great way of using technology. Technology as well. Um, I’ve done, you know, things with last year, I think with IBM and I think the beers and PepsiCo, et cetera, where they use technology and put everybody in groups of three or four just to actually share their own stories of. Of where they come from with each other [00:57:00] in that way, um, you know, problematic, doing it in person, particularly with people who are working in different countries.

Right. So I no, I’m, I’m, I think absolutely I’ve seen it. This can be done very, very well. We can build belonging, inclusion, clarity, great feedback, safe challenge. All of these key ingredients of high performing culture, we can do them using our online tools.

Bruce Daisley: In, interesting on what you said there. I was chatting to a therapist a couple of weeks ago and the therapist said there’s this observed conditioning therapy where online therapy people generally go into.

Self-revealing mode far quicker that it might in person, you might take four or five sessions to really get to the heart of the issue. And what they’re discovering about online therapy is that, I dunno whether it’s ’cause you’re just not presented with the physicality of someone in front of you. You, you go into a, a far early state of candor.

So it’s interesting there, there are clearly [00:58:00] elements of the technology that we’re not even recognizing enough yet. You

Owen Eastwood: know, so

Bruce Daisley: interesting what you say there.

Owen Eastwood: Fascinating. And I think like another example, which I really have enjoyed is we talk about values and sometimes people can go a little bit, oh God, here we go again.

I mean, I’d love to take people into some of these high performing teams and, and let them observe how values are so meaningful. They are part of the language. Every day they become. This guide rails for the type of person we want to be, let alone the type of team we want to be. Um, but one, something I’ve seen both in person and online, which I really love, is, and this is part of I, what I think an inclusive culture looks like, is that when a leader is able to talk about these are our corporate values or our team values, whichever that again, they don’t stand there and show a PowerPoint of eight bullet points about what they mean.

They do something very, very different. They say that these are the our values because this is what, [00:59:00] um, these are the traits we value in each other, and this place might not be in our competitors, but here we value these traits in each other. But what we’re going to do is we’re gonna go around our team and ask everybody just to articulate what that value means to them based on their own.

Sense of identity and life story. And I’ve given examples, you know where we did that with the South African cricket teams the first time we ever did that and have a Muslim player, Hashi Mala, who talks about one of our values was honesty. And he talked about the Koran and the prophet and how that informs how he thinks about what it is to have an honest relationship and honest conversations.

Then we literally moved on to the next player who was an Afrikaans player, the captain. He spoke about his father’s dishonesty when he was growing up and how that broke their family and how that he made a commitment that that is no way to treat people and no way to live your life. And then we, and then we asked the next person.

And so all of these things that can be done in person, but they can be very powerful as well online. And then we get people start to hardwire [01:00:00] these values as actually very personalized. But also people get to get a huge amount of insight into each other by just listening how they articulate these things and then know they become a standard that we can be held accountable as well.

Once we articulate what this value means to me, then we’ve given pe other people permission to challenge us when we fall below the line. On that.

Bruce Daisley: In that instance there then would, would, was the Muslim player, did he just propose honesty as one of his own values and it became a discussion? Or did you enter the room with, here are the four or five values of the South African cricket team?

What was the genesis?

Owen Eastwood: Well, we do, and again, I don’t believe, um, this is exclusive. I think this translates everywhere is, but with a small sports team, it’s a bit more physical. We get in a circle and we look at each other and we are looking at pure diversity. You know, the South African cricket team is the most diverse team in world sport.

And at any given day, out of their 11 [01:01:00] players, you’ll get six different ethnicities and religions. So we, uh, they are the best, um, personification for the count for the Rainbow Nation. So in that context, what we do is we, we, and the thing is, we’re explicit about this, Bruce, and this is where I feel like a lot of people in the corporate space are just so implicit about this.

We don’t waste time doing that. We are explicit about it. So we get in a circle and we look at each other and we say, we are looking at our strength, the diversity of this group. Everybody that comes here comes with their own belief system, their own values, and we respect them, and we want you to live those here.

But what makes a distinction between an interesting collection of individuals and a team is that we are bound together by something as a team. And so we have three values that are the team’s values. They’re notwithstanding your own belief system and your own story that you need to buy into [01:02:00] to be part of this team.

And we will help you live them. But they’re not negotiable, they’re sacred. And we, we, so honesty, resilience, adaptability with their three values, for example. Right. And, um, I, I think that is a pretty cool way of, of doing it. Yeah. So we’re not asking you to leave values at your doorstep or whatever. We, we, we smile at each other and we love it.

That’s the richness of the team. But as I said, to be a functional team where we are aligned and have a common language and common culture, there are certain things we need to buy into together that need to be sacred. Our purpose, why the hell are we doing this? Our mission, what is it we’re trying to do right now?

The values, how we’re going to go about this and how we’re going to hold each other to account. All of these things need to be. Um, ubiquitous. Wow.

Bruce Daisley: Tell me what, what are you working on now?

Owen Eastwood: Um, I’m working [01:03:00] on still happily helping, um, England football team. I’ve, uh, working with the European Rider Cup team this year.

We’ve got a big game, um, against the United States and Rome in five weeks time where we’ll be the quite heavy underdogs, but also with some pretty cool players. Um, so it’d be very interesting. So we, we, you know, Luke Donald’s invested a lot of time and effort into making sure that he creates the best environment he can during that one week of this team being together.

Um, I work with, I work with a global law firm, their leadership team. Um, I work with a global TV and film studio, or based in Los Angeles and London. So they’re, they’re all diverse environments and that’s what I enjoy about what I do. I don’t work exclusively with the team. I like to work with different teams and, you know, I know people like Gareth would say to me it’s, you know, it’s nice having people who can come in who are in real time helping people with real problems.

Just to come and sit down and get a bit of perspective on what the hell we are doing. ’cause you know, people are so into it, aren’t they? When you are fully [01:04:00] employed and you’re so committed to, to what you’re trying to achieve, it’s just nice to have someone from outside perspective who can share ideas about how other people are trying to solve similar problems.

And now I don’t want it to come across as, um, you know, I’ve got all the answers. I, I do feel probably the one principle I should really get across is that with England football, with the Royal Ballet School, other places, I often spend like three months just immersing myself before I open my mouth. Wow.

Um, with England football team, I, before I even gave them any of my, you know, sort of suggestions, I’d met England players going back to the 1958 World Cup all the way through. I, um, met with the media off the record to try and get their perspective on the team, what it looks like when it’s at its best and, and worst, and.

So I really, really believe context is absolutely everything. There isn’t one model. And so you’ve got to show the respect to the people you’re working with by really understanding, [01:05:00] you know, um, their context and the personalities involved. And then feeling like you’ve got the right time to share ideas.

Bruce Daisley: Tell me this, I’ve got so much value from, firstly, from reading your stuff and, and watching some of your stuff online, but the, the conversation today has taken it to another level. Whe when you are seeking inspiration, is there anything that you are reading or seeing at the moment? Really in closing really, but is there anything that you, you would put us recommend that we check out?

Owen Eastwood: Um, well, I’m always, I’m always learning. I’m always curious as to something I’m, which is very left field that maybe I haven’t thought about and others haven’t thought about before. Um, so I think one of the things I’m quite interested in understanding a lot better at the moment is I know MIT have a human dynamics lab and, and I know AI now is gonna take all this to another level, but if, if it is true that 80% of communication’s nonverbal, then I [01:06:00] think there’s a huge amount for all of us to learn about how do we really, and I, I don’t think we’ve got the answer to this yet, how do we really signal to other human beings.

Both as leaders and in environments. I think we’ve got a reasonable sense of it. Obviously tone, body language, words are important, but I’d like to get a better handle on that. I’d love to spend some time over there actually and really understanding where that’s at. But I imagine with AI accelerating the way it is is gonna be huge amount of research and insight into that.

I think that’s, that is important. But actually to be honest, I think the most important thing that I do is bring people back to very timeless ideas. You know, we have a need to belong. We have much more energy and focus if we believe our work is meaningful. So I want people to feel like what they’re doing right now is part of a mission, um, which is going to be benefit other people.

Um, wellbeing. The idea that [01:07:00] that’s sort of a bucket on the side of culture is absolute nonsense. High performance is only possible with fantastic energy, and that is only possible if people are well. People who are ill are sick. Will not have the energy to perform at their best. So I love the idea of bringing wellbeing and completely weaving it into performance.

It’s still that dichotomy, which I don’t, um, particularly enjoy, you know, and I enjoy when I go around and get invited to just sort of get rid of the distraction of technology management consultants strategy and actually spend a bit of time thinking about how did some of our leaders of the past, um, approach not only survival, but you know, creating conditions for people to thrive in.

’cause I still feel that those lessons are pretty timeless.

Bruce Daisley: Erin, I’ve loved the chat. I’m, I’m so grateful for your time. I love the fact that you are, uh, you’re interrupting your time with all these dazzling people to have a conversation with us, so I’m, I’m immensely grateful for that. Thank you so [01:08:00] much.

Owen Eastwood: Well, I’m very grateful to be on your podcast. I’ve been a fan right from the very start and, um, got a huge amount of respect for you.

Bruce Daisley: Thank you.

Thank you to Owen. I’m dazzled actually by this guy. This one guy has taken this thing and just developed such momentum around it. But I have to say, I was really, I was genuinely so moved by it. I was like, you know, I think him placing his own story of his own birth and, and, you know, losing his father, it had such emotion to it that I ended up just thinking.

I’m not sure I could tell that story. I, I couldn’t run those sessions with anywhere near that degree of authenticity. And so then as a result, I just thought, wow, there’s something unique. But maybe as Ellen said, I’m not sure this is easy to replicate for every business.

Ellen Scott: Yeah. I think when you have a story like that, it’s gonna work brilliantly, but a lot of businesses won’t have that.

It will be as kind of dollars and as uninspiring as this person just wants to make [01:09:00] money. So it’s, it’s difficult and it’s a shame that not everyone has the kind of amazing story that Owen has.

Matt Cook: One of the things I love about his story is he doesn’t have training in psychology. Very straightforward approach.

And on the face of it, it seems quite easy or straightforward when someone says, oh, that’s all you do. But actually. The way he’s able to talk about it and capture it. And I think often that’s the way, you know, the best teachers are able to take something really simple and explain it in a really exciting, interesting, novel way.

And I think that’s what he does brilliantly.

Bruce Daisley: Yeah, I can imagine being in a room and someone saying that and, and he’s described like people in tears, people I can, I can really vividly see it. I can see why people would phone him to do it. I guess go on Ellen. So let’s finish off. ’cause Matt, I hinted at right before the interview he said your, your blog is called Working on Purpose.

So just take us into a brief excursion of what you see as purpose then and how you think about it.

Ellen Scott: My view is that [01:10:00] it’s very individual. It’s not something that be, can be kind of prescribed to you from the top of where you’re working. And I think that the kind of double meaning of working on purpose slash with purpose is that it’s about being more strategic and more conscious about exactly what you want to get out of your job.

So it might be for some people that I want to have a job that feels really meaningful and that does good for other people. It might be, I want a job that earns me enough money that I can do things that feel me meaningful outside of work. Or it might be I want a job that gives me enough balance and time that I can do things that feel meaningful outside of work.

So I think it has to be a case of recognizing what. You actually want to get back from it. Um, whereas I think if your company is telling you this is the wider purpose, it’s not gonna work for everyone.

Bruce Daisley: I fully get that. I fully get that, and I fully agree to it. And, and look, look, there might be moments in time when you are swept away, but I’ve just been to a, a sort of, um, a young offender school.

I’ve just been [01:11:00] sort of like, and you can definitely see the people who are working in this place have got a really clear passion for what they’re doing. They’re doing something that’s not the easiest thing in the world. They’re really driven by amazing. You can definitely see that Bill, that they would discover that purpose themselves, though.

It’s not like you turn up is like, I wanna be a teacher and someone says, you’re doing this. So like, oh, okay. So to to my mind, whether it’s your individualistic thing or in a job purposely something, you can discover yourself, but you can’t be given. I think that’s the my feeling, right?

Matt Cook: I think you can also though have an organizational direction.

You’re heading in. Which can be inspiring, which can be visionary and really important to at least feel like you are heading in a positive direction. But I agree, certainly on an individual level, your purpose is tends to be something that you find yourself and almost how wonderful it would be. An organization’s purpose is to help facilitate the individual purposes of our people. That’d be lovely

Bruce Daisley: Thank you to Owen. Fantastic chat. You’ll find details of Owen and his book and everything he’s done in the show notes. And thank you to Ellen and Matt. We’ll be back next week. Thank you. Thanks.