The big gold medal. That’s what Great Britain’s Olympic hockey player Helen Richardson-Walsh and her team wanted – and after 17 years of trying, that’s what she got. She took to the stage at our September 2019 Leaders Forum to explain how her team created the culture for success. Molly Raycraft reports.
When the GB women’s hockey team stepped onto the podium at the Rio Olympics in 2016, they had tears in their eyes. They’d just become Britain’s first all-female hockey team to win an Olympic gold medal and as they hugged and celebrated their victory, they couldn’t have felt more close to one another.
But that wasn’t always the reality. “We weren’t all best friends in the team, far from it. There were arguments and niggles, even at the Olympic games,” says Helen Richardson-Walsh, the team’s midfielder.
Helen believes that it wasn’t until the team was able to manage its differences that it became capable of that gold standard. They – like many others – had to work hard to become more unified, embracing and respecting the differencing between them. But once they had, it made their win all the more rewarding.
Here, Helen explains the steps they took and how you can do the same for your marketing team.
1. Have a joint team vision
During the 2012 London Olympics, team GB aligned itself around a collective purpose — to win the gold. “It allowed us to make things black and white,” explains Helen. “We hadn’t given ourselves permission to strive so high, or believe we were capable of gold, but when you know you’re aiming for that, it sets the limits higher.”
This empowered the hockey players to work harder, regardless of whether they would be chosen in the final cut. The approach paid off — although they didn’t win gold just yet. Instead, the team achieved its personal best of a bronze medal.
After London, the team’s coach changed, sending the players into disarray. “We went from being the most selfless team to the most selfish team I’d ever been in,” Helen explains.
It ultimately cost them the World Cup and highlighted how imperative the role of culture is in a team’s success. So they brought their old coach back and improved their approach to again aim for gold at the Rio Olympics.
Despite winning the bronze medal at London, the fear of failure had been so immense that some players couldn’t even talk about winning gold. Helen recognised that they needed to change. “The difference between London and Rio was that we were too nice, we needed to bring a bit of bite, we needed to talk about [winning] and bring it into our culture,” she explains.
This time, the team created a wider, more empowering shared vision: “We are one team. We are winners. Be alive,” it read. Alongside it, the team drew up a statement of actions it felt they all needed to abide by if they were going to achieve their goal. These included accepting differences, talking, sharing, and creating a sense of belonging.
Winning tip: Decide collectively with your team what your goal should be. Then work with them to outline the behaviours that will help you achieve it.
2. Stamp out fires
One of the actions on the team’s collective statement proved to be particularly important, that was an agreement to stamp out negativity and friction — or as Helen calls it, ‘to stamp out fires’. “If you don’t, they’ll turn into wildfires,” she explains.
Three matches into the Rio Olympic games, and this behaviour was tested. The team was in the dining hall, as Helen relayed, when she overheard a junior player complaining about their lack of pitch time to another. “The player they were complaining to had a choice, to fuel the flame or stamp out the fire,” she says.
Thankfully, that team member decided to stamp it out by explaining that they were one team, and that individual pitch time wasn’t what they were about. Helen credits this to the deeply ingrained behaviours the team had decided to adopt at the start of their training for Rio.
“It’s such a simple thing,” she says. “But actually it’s so hard to do peer-to-peer. It has a knock-on effect.”
Winning tip: Nip grievances in the bud by talking. If you know one of your team members could be unhappy about a decision, don’t leave it to fester.
3. Understand your influence
As one of the more senior players, Helen had influence over the team. But it wasn’t until her coach pointed it out that she recognised how her behaviour could affect others.
“Sometimes I would roll out of bed and just didn’t feel it and would be moody, snappy and a bit withdrawn. Understanding how I affect those around me when I’m like that was massive for me,” she says.
Wake up calls like this allowed the team members to really understand their strengths and weaknesses — so they could play to their advantages. Team GB achieved this in three ways:
The team spent two days with the Royal Marines. Helen laughingly describes it as the worst two days of her life but admitted it significantly improved trust and leadership. “Thrown out of your comfort zone and put under pressure, that’s when you really know yourself,” she says.
A space was created for talking and sharing. Through regular meetings and buddy groups, the team was able to encourage each other to talk about what it thought its strengths and weaknesses were, as well as share the skills they valued in other players.
Personality profiling. The team underwent personality profiling to start conversations about their differences. By understanding how each player worked, they were able to approach that person in the right way. “It helped accept differences,” confirms Helen.
Winning tip: Ensure everyone understands the value they’re bringing to your team. Consider conducting personality profiling so you know how to approach and work with individual team members to their full potential.
