How to create a high performance culture | Andrew Sillitoe | TEDxRoyalTunbridgeWells

when I first heard I was will be speaking at Ted was about six weeks ago I immediately started typing my script and it's been an obsession ever since I don't know about the other speakers but and I was saying to my wife yesterday that it's not ready it just doesn't feel right you know you know something doesn't feel right don't worry it'd be fine you know this was yesterday right there's people in this room thinking that's not what we rehearsed on Wednesday and I said you don't get it this is Ted if this goes viral its career-defining I'll be the next simon Sinek you know and then I realized that I'd completely missed the point that I forgot my purpose in this and so I'm gonna flip the script I woke up I was my bike this morning I'm gonna talk about something different and I think we are losing our purpose in society you know purpose is about meaning in our life it's about staying engaged and you know when things are tough and it's about connection and I'd lost that connection with you is it become about me and not you yeah so um I'm going to talk about that for a bit I think whether you are an athlete or a teacher or a parent or running a business we cannot operate at our full potential without purpose now I was I was sharing this about six years ago in Canary Wharf with a group of traders now I'd tell you to picture the room it's 2009 and they're just starting their career in trading in the city okay so the crisis just hit and I'm in there I'm talking about purpose right and to be fair time they were getting into it I started to get the idea but there was this chap in the corner my I threw out whole session and he was just heckling me throughout the day this wasn't getting it in his words this is fluffy bollocks and this continued in the afternoon he said to me um he said Andrew you've been talking about purpose all day even talking about asking us why we do what we do what gets us out of bed every day he said what do you do what what gets you out of bed you know why do you do what you do what's your purpose which is a fair question to ask the person who's talking about purpose right and I need the answer because I reflected on it in the past and I said to him do you remember the rocky films do remember the Rocky films yeah Rocky v Tommy Gunn I said that's the worst I said I remember that film I remember watching it it was a Sunday night it was a it was 1993 March 21st I mean watching that film and Sundays in my house are pretty sad I woulda been out all day playing street hockey I'd have been at Safeway car parking tell me girls I still call it safe ways I didn't paying or dare to come home had a roasting of my family and we'd watch sport it have been cricket football golf or snooker one of those for depend on some a year and this tonight I was watching my dad love sporty was a baker my granddad was a baker and I always expected the business to be mine but when I was 11 my dad sold to business he sold it so that was kind of the end of that I still feel like a baker but he he said to be fair to me made a lot of money he moved into into construction and we had this wonderful we made big houses into materials we had this wonderful big house and we had a you know the fancy holidays two-port Avenue you know all that kind of mob bayar you know that nice stuff with this wonderful e type jag blue etype jag it's to sit on the drive but as quickly as he made all his money lost a lot it was the mid 80s and that's what happened in construction lost it in our lives change like that and on his Sunday night he um he came to the door and I was watching his film and he said to me I'm going to bed come on keep it down a hug and I said no no you've had a drink he said come give me a hug I said no no he went too but I didn't he went to bed that was last time I saw him he died of a heart attack aged 48 and I looked at this guy and I said do you know that 20% of people died in the early hours of a Monday morning brought on by the stress and anxiety and fear of facing work the next day I said I don't want happened to you or anybody that's why I do what I do let's shut him up I feel blessed to live in some beached whales actually cuz I grew up playing street hockey in somewhere else and I I got my first stick when I was 9 and it changed my life forever I was 9 years old I played other sports but I think you know Paul was talking about giving children opportunity you know 80% of young people young 14 year olds will become disengaged with sport 80% because they're looking for alternatives and we don't we're not offering it but I was lucky because I found street hockey and I went on this extraordinary journey with the Tunbridge Wells Street cruisers and we would play all over Europe we would drive out to Amsterdam Rotterdam we'd go out to disord off and play in these role hockey tournaments out there out into the mountains of Switzerland we even went off to Chicago to play in Chicago we had an amazing we're never very much money we have to save our pennies in fact we used to go to Europe we used to rent a transit van we used to put our hockey bags in the back and put mattresses on top so we'd go out and that would be our accommodation for the weekend and we were the first team believe it or not the first time as Royal Street cruisers was the first team in 95 to switch from traditional roller skates rollerblade you know courts to roll the blades because we thought it would give us a competitive advantage it was a disaster but what happened is that we you know people thought it was hilarious because the first taunt we played and we came last and this was in Switzerland and he one thought we were crazy for doing it they could understand why we'd made this this transition until of course we started winning and in 98 the talmud royal street cruisers beat the düsseldorf rams in the final of the championship now if you speak to the team and say you know tell me about your experience it's very rare that they'll talk about the winning you know winning is great it's it's a wonderful feeling winning but if you ask them they'll talk about the sacrifice they'll talk about the road trips obviously I can't tell you the stories because you know the rules they'll talk about the fact that we owned it that we shaped it it was ours we'd have a coach or a manager telling us where to be what to do it was all self directed by us and the following 10-15 years I played in 12 World Championships for Team Great Britain at inline hockey I played I was turned from America playing and and in 2010 I took on the head coaching job for Team Great Britain and I'd acquired a team that had lost in the quarterfinals of Paul be in the World Championships Paul bearer's is essentially like divisions too and Paul a is that the top eight countries in the world so sweet and Czech Republic Canada USA etc the top I sake countries that come across and so I noticed that they'd become a bit disengaged with playing for their country having lost to Australia and the quarterfinals the other 14 Paul B so I was going to go in there you know all guns blazing as head coach and I was going to create the exact the same culture as I might experience with the temperature street cruisers the problem is you cannot take one culture and put it on another it just doesn't work right and that was my experience so I had to rethink what I was doing with the team and and think about putting a different set of rules in and these are the five rules I'm going to share with you that I put in place but for me have helped create an environment where everybody can absolutely thrive and I think we all have a responsibility to create that type of type of environment so the first thing first thing we did with it with the deep Team GB is that they needed their own story they needed their own story not one that I was trying to force um our story happened over ten years it was organic you can't just recreate that but I had nine months before the world chairmanships and their story what they came up with was that they wanted to look act and feel like a pull a team to look acting for not to win the gold medal in Pool B but to look act and feel that was their vision for the team now I couldn't go in and say well if you want that you need to eat better you need to train harder because you still get resistance so I promised myself that I would not tell them to do anything and I would just ask them if that's what you want too cheap I would just asked in the questions there were some things I had to to put in place around strategy and how we play the game but I wanted them to come forward of everything for them to thrive and really own it like we had the other thing is I wanted the creators in the team in team Great Britain I didn't want to I didn't want fun followers are good for the ego they're not good for business right they're not good for sustaining change they're not good for creating high high performance culture so I wanted to create leaders and that's my cat so I say to be unity captain you need your assistant captains out there you need people who can influence change and we need to change the other thing is I promised that we would embrace failure absolutely embrace it because what I could see was a group of players who were paralyzed by the fear of failure and it was prevents them from playing at their full potential so we we said we'll embrace it embrace the unknown and when the street crews have switched to rollerblades it was a failure but we came back stronger me ended up winning and you know when you take a risk it's gonna go one of two ways isn't it you can have it's going to be a really good experience and you learn from it or it might mean knots a great experience and you learn from it right so either way it's a bonus the other thing is if you can do all of that then we could hold each other accountable we could look each other in the eye and feel absolutely trusted that we would do what we said we would do now the problems I'm seeing which is driving disengagement is that I see it in education I see it in businesses is that we are focused on that holding people accountable businesses are getting better and the reason why they're getting better because they realize it if you engage people if you help them find their purpose it means they're more productive they will be more engaged and that means more profit organizations like that in sports we're seeing athletes as a commodity which is driving personal greed and corporate greed and corruption as we've seen recently with FIFA because we're just focused on performance in schools we're seeing academic robots on a conveyor belt to something they don't know where they're going because that's what they're being told what to do because they've been held accountable what's this one that's a degrade send it back yeah it's not the system is not working and we need to rethink how we can create an environment where everybody can thrive feel inspired and operate at their full potential so I've shared my story with you I'd like you to think about what your story is and what you can do to help others thrive in this world thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 520,354

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Business, Psychology

Id: BAdeFHlhKi4

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2015