On Thursday 3rd May Elite Performance Partners hosted the third and final event of their Leadership Forum series in partnership with Miramar Global Executive Search.

A selected group were invited to the exclusive event which focused on leadership, high performance and the importance of culture. They were joined by special guests to share their valuable insight in this area; Owen Eastwood, a world leading performance culture expert and acclaimed former South African fast bowler, Morne Morkel.

Owen Eastwood, a former lawyer, has worked with the world’s elite teams in different sports and organisations focusing on their performance culture and working with leaders to deliver it. His unique work has seen him collaborate with the likes the South African cricket team, Manchester City and Chelsea FC, the England football team, the Military Command Group of NATO, the Scotland rugby team, the executive leadership of a top investment bank and one of the world’s ‘big four’ accounting firms. The whole room was engaged by his storytelling, with several to share from his time working with those teams as well as anecdotes about his son’s rugby team.

Owen shared his approach that high performing teams are ‘vision driven’.  They convert their sense of purpose into a compelling vision – of what success looks like and how they can achieve it – which, in turn, drives the strategy and the design of the team culture.  Owen also explained his preference for driving high standards through compelling vision and connecting to a team’s authentic beliefs and heritage – as opposed to a ‘set of rules’.

Owen Eastwood and Morne       Morkel

This is one of the areas he concentrated on closely with the South African cricket team who he started working with in 2008. In March 2018, Morne Morkel became only the fifth South African bowler to reach 300 Test wickets before retiring from international cricket. He gave all the attendees at the Leadership Forum his own player’s perspective of how Owen’s work was put in practice and the powerful effect it’s had on the whole team. He said it connected people to their own challenges and the high-performance culture created a sustainable winning environment.

Changing the way organisations look at performance

David Slemen of Elite Performance Partners felt very passionate about this event as the content and information being discussed could potentially reframe the way a leadership team sees performance.

He commented: “We share the same philosophy as Owen and see the proactive design of the environment as key to success in creating a competitive advantage in team sports.”

Over the past five years Elite Performance Partners has grown and recognised not only what is best practice in recruitment but also best practice in high performance organisations. David added: “Whilst we have placed a number of strong candidates into sporting organisations there are a number of common challenges that teams, across different sports, wrestle with in order to be successful and a create a sustainable winning environment. Hopefully by running events like this we can encourage the development of best practice across the sports industry.”

If you’re interested to talk about team culture and how leaders can deliver it within their own organisation then contact EPP.