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Dunne: I get knocked down,€¦ · lenger, Kiko ‘La Sensacion’ Martinez, Bernard was knocked...
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B ernard Dunne, as a young man, found that he had a fond- ness for hit- ting people. For a long time, as one of the world’s best technical boxers, this was enough – but not quite enough to become a world champion. And it was a fail- ure during a defence of his European title that gave him that realisation. Against the Spanish chal- lenger, Kiko ‘La Sensacion’ Martinez, Bernard was knocked down in the first round, the fight being stopped after 86 seconds. “Technically, I was the best in the world. In people’s eyes, the day before Kiko came to Dublin I was the best thing since sliced bread - the day after I was washed up,” said Dunne to the Advant-edge at- tendees. “What Kiko made me realise was that my pro- gramme wasn’t right for me. I looked at my team and began looking strategically at how I trained. I changed my whole programme after that.” For Dunne, winning had led to complacency. After winning 13 amateur titles in Ireland and rising through the ranks as a professional to become European champion, becoming world champion would require a new way to reach the top. Focus on performance In 2017, Dunne was made high-performance director of the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA). As a team that had delivered 50 per cent of Ireland’s entire Olympic medal collection, it was a high-profile, high-pressure role. At the beginning, Dunne decided to give himself a purely watching brief for the first eight weeks or so – he stayed quiet for two. “ere wasn’t enough co- hesiveness within the team, nobody was communicating with each other and nobody had the athlete in the mid- dle of it all as the focus,” said Dunne. “We were still getting results on the international stage, but it was becoming clear that those medals were largely based on talent, not the team around the talent.” Operating in silos, infor- mation wasn’t being shared and athletes’ programmes had conflicting elements, such as one coach trying to build muscle mass with an athlete, while their nutritionist was designing a diet that wouldn’t support that goal. His next step was to cen- tralise communications into one single area. is allowed for conflicting information to be rooted out and dealt with, while also filtering it all through the common goal; improving the performance of the individual athlete. Suddenly, each individual athlete had their own indi- vidual teams around them, based on their own needs. No longer was an athlete go- ing to the nutritionists to get independent advice or work from a generic programme, the nutritionists were coming to the athlete and devising a plan based on their perfor- mance needs. e biggest challenge came from getting all stakeholders to buy into this change in culture. From a place where people tended to protect their own area of expertise, the cul- ture shifted into one where different teams worked to- gether based on the overall guiding mission - improving the athletes’ performance. Clarity of focus and messaging e IABA was founded in 1911 and has remained volun- teer-led during that time. As a country with an abundance of talent but limited resources, Dunne decided that a clari- ty of focus needed to be put around the top echelons of the sport in the country. In the last year, he has helped create the high-performance unit with- in the IABA, focused purely on the international stage. “When you take that con- trol away from volunteers, you generally get resistance to it,” said Dunne. “Managing that and getting buy-in from the association and other stake- holders was a real challenge. Communication was the key thing for me; that everybody understood what was going on.” With a singular mission (improved athletes’ perfor- mance), alongside a clarity of communication about roles (everybody knowing where they fit into the overall sys- tem), resistance was signifi- cantly lessened and the or- ganisation was able to move forward in a single direction, with the high-performance unit now being the tip of the spear. Sustainability of performance To mitigate against the dan- gers of a system become overly reliant on individu- als, Dunne has set in motion a system where an elite set of coaches under each key area of the IABA high-perfor- mance programme are being trained across the country. “If I was to lose one of the heads of our support teams, our programme would be in danger of collapse,” said Dunne. “Creating a sustain- able system of high-perfor- mance is crucial – this is the next step we’re taking right now.” Boxing clubs and poten- tial coaches were contacted throughout the country look- ing for people who wanted to work towards becoming a member of the high-per- formance unit, and there are currently 18 coaches being mentored and trained over a three-year period to become the next generation of unit leaders. This next generation of leaders are not only being trained in sports high-per- formance, but have also com- mitted to 12 CPD (continuing professional development) days that emphasise leader- ship skills such as communi- cation and conflict resolution. We go out to perform, not to win In March 2009, Bernard Dunne stepped into the Dublin ring to face Ricardo Cordoba for the world cham- pionship title. A little under 18 months previously in the same arena, he had been knocked down in the first round and the fight had been stopped. at setback put Dunne on the road to where he is now, and the lessons he’s learned along the way have given real insight into how teams should be built and directed. Using a clarity of mission, clearly communicating that and people’s roles within it, and creating a system where high-performance is sus- tained in both the people and the practices they implement, can lead to the very top. During the 11th round Cordoba hit the canvas and Bernard Dunne, lifted by his teammates on their shoulders, was declared world champion to the roaring Dublin crowd. is article was based on Ad- vant-edge session on high-per- formance teams delivered to IMI members by Bernard Dunne 30 Management matters: in association with IMI The Sunday Business Post July 1, 2018 Hugh Torpey ‘G reat leadership isn’t about what you accomplish yourself; it’s about what you inspire others to do.” - Lolly Daskal, Executive and Lead- ership Coach. e best leaders, like the best coaches, give those around them permission to succeed. Effective leaders see people as whole people who are inherently capable and use coaching skills to help team members improve their per- formance and develop their potential. As organisations are mov- ing away from annual perfor - mance reviews to providing more frequent discussions about development, it’s vital for leaders and managers to work with those around them to develop skills. Great leaders practise spe- cific, proven skills that result in effective coaching conver - sations that help team mem- bers develop, grow and reach their potential. ey have a coaching mindset that moves away from telling others what to do, to empowering others to discover solutions them- selves. e leader as coach Recent international research from the Human Capital In- stitute suggests that employ- ees want and appreciate this skill in their leaders. e study found that managers feel coaching skills are ‘not very important’ in today’s envi- ronment, but almost twice as many individual contributors disagree. e good news for busy leaders and managers is, ac- cording to a recent study by Gartner, that it’s less about the quantity of these con- versations and more about the quality. Surveying more than 7,000 managers and employees across different industries, Gartner found that high-per- formers are three times more prominent, where managers adopt a coaching style that explores employees’ skills, needs and interests; connects employees to others who may be able to help them develop; and empowers employees to find answers and solve prob- lems themselves. To understand how this works, let’s consider this sporting analogy: A profes- sional tennis player’s coach may be the most important person guiding the player’s development, but she may bring in other experts — for strength training, nutrition and specialised skills such as serves and backhands — instead of trying to teach ev- erything herself. Despite this, the coach re- mains deeply involved, iden- tifying expertise, facilitating introductions and monitoring progress. A shift in mindset To adopt this coaching style may require a shift in mind- set. Traditionally, being a leader has been about being directive and telling people what to do. Being a coach is more about asking the right questions, providing specific feedback, helping employees make a connection to others who can help them, and empowering employees to discover solu- tions themselves. Key coaching skills that can help leaders on their path to coaching include: n Listening: employees need to know their leaders care enough to listen to what they have to say and encourage them to share their opinions. Really listening to your em- ployees will help to build trust and a relationship that results in improved performance. n Questioning: be curious! Open-ended questions re- quire your employees to re- flect more deeply on their answers and to allow them to provide more information, understanding and feeling in their responses. n An appreciative approach: focus on identifying and doing more of what is already work- ing for your employees, rather than looking for problems and trying to fix them. Focusing on an employee’s core strengths will help both parties respond and react in a way that fosters positive change. Tanya Sheehan is an IMI associate on the IMI diploma in organisational development & transformation. Tanya works as a business psychologist in KinchLyons, is a certified trainer and accredited coach Have you ever been in a crowd of strangers on a train, or a plane, or in a lift, and thought to your- self, ‘if something cata- strophic happened here and now, would I stand out as a leader in this crowd? Would I be the first to get control of my emotions and act?’ What is it that drives someone to act before the crowd? We’ve all attend- ed large group seminars, master classes or town halls where the present- er asks for questions, or volunteers, and in all my years I’ve never seen ev- eryone step forward to volunteer their question or their active participa- tion. Indeed, when I’m running similar sessions myself (and depending on the ask), I sometimes have to let silence sit and tension build for what seems like an age, until someone volunteers. And in those moments you can almost hear big, thump- ing, adrenaline-pumped hearts beating as people contemplate the notion of stepping forward. ere are undoubtedly leaders in these audienc- es, but I can’t help feeling that many let the oppor- tunity to learn something pass for fear of the un- known? en someone steps forward and seated hearts slowly resume their resting rate, phew! e race to go first Leaders face their fear and go first. Leaders stand out from the crowd in mo- ments like this and they go first. e capacity to face your fear, to step outside your comfort zone is a fundamental virtue of leadership and it can be learned and developed. In his Harvard Business School Op Ed on April 24, 2017, Bill George, senior fellow at Harvard Busi- ness School, former chair and chief executive of Medtronic, and author of Discover Your True North, shares this perspective: “Over the past decade, I have worked with and studied more than 200 CEOs of major companies through board service, consulting and research as a member of Harvard Business School’s faculty. “I’ve found the defining characteristic of the best ones is courage to make bold moves that transform their businesses.” We need courage like that in our senior leaders, but we need it at all levels and across all of society. We may not all have the “legitimate power” of a chief executive to trans- form a business, but we can still be a leader and develop our leadership capacity by facing our fears and going first. For example: n If we expect to have feedback accepted by our team members then we should be the first to ask for feedback, and we should give everyone the opportunity to give us their feedback. n If we expect others to accept challenges in pursuit of better, more aligned decisions, then we as leaders should ask our team members to chal- lenge us and our thinking. n If we value authenticity then we must have the courage to be first to say what needs to be said to those that need to hear it, and in a way that encour- ages change. Getting into the discomfort zone ese few examples are ones that virtually every- one can act on, and even though they come with obvious discomfort for many of us, we all have the capacity to become more comfortable with discomfort and to live more of our lives outside our comfort zone. e capacity to reflect and to see discomfort as an opportunity for per- sonal growth is a critical mindset for leaders in today’s changing and un- predictable world. Part of the difficulty with stepping forward, or going first, may be that in that moment of con- templation, the learning we may gain from it isn’t obvious to us; but it’s pre- cisely that sort of moment that we need to face our fear and act like a leader. ese often-fleeting moments are moments of truth; so the next time you experience that flush of adrenaline while you are contemplating stepping forward, or speaking out, or acting where no one else seems ready, step into that zone of discomfort and just do it. “You will learn some- thing, you will learn more about who you truly are, and you will begin to live more comfortably out- side your comfort zone – where leaders live much of the time. Philip Mathews is an associ- ate faculty on the IMI Diplo- ma in Leadership. Mathews works as an executive coach, team coach and senior lead- ership team facilitator and keynote speaker Courage, the attribute that all leaders need to have Dunne: I get knocked down, and I get up again, and again Boxer Bernard Dunne on the blows and strategic changes that led him to leadership success Creating a sustainable system of high- performance is crucial Philip Mathews How identifying and enhancing potential in others is what truly defines those who lead Great leaders are great coaches Tennis coach Nick Bollettieri at work with youngsters in India Bernard Dunne, high-performace director at the IABA Picture: Inpho Tanya Sheehan
Transcript of Dunne: I get knocked down,€¦ · lenger, Kiko ‘La Sensacion’ Martinez, Bernard was knocked...
Be r n a r d Dunne, as a young man, found that he had a fond-ness for hit-ting people. For a long
time, as one of the world’s best technical boxers, this was enough – but not quite enough to become a world champion. And it was a fail-ure during a defence of his European title that gave him that realisation.
Against the Spanish chal-lenger, Kiko ‘La Sensacion’ Martinez, Bernard was knocked down in the first round, the fight being stopped after 86 seconds.
“Technically, I was the best in the world. In people’s eyes, the day before Kiko came to Dublin I was the best thing since sliced bread - the day after I was washed up,” said Dunne to the Advant-edge at-tendees. “What Kiko made me realise was that my pro-gramme wasn’t right for me. I looked at my team and began looking strategically at how I trained. I changed my whole programme after that.”
For Dunne, winning had led to complacency. After winning 13 amateur titles in Ireland and rising through the ranks as a professional to become European champion, becoming world champion would require a new way to reach the top.
Focus on performanceIn 2017, Dunne was made high-performance director of the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA). As a team that had delivered 50 per cent of Ireland’s entire Olympic medal collection, it was a high-profile, high-pressure role.
At the beginning, Dunne decided to give himself a purely watching brief for the first eight weeks or so – he stayed quiet for two.
“There wasn’t enough co-hesiveness within the team, nobody was communicating with each other and nobody had the athlete in the mid-dle of it all as the focus,” said Dunne. “We were still getting results on the international stage, but it was becoming clear that those medals were largely based on talent, not the team around the talent.”
Operating in silos, infor-mation wasn’t being shared and athletes’ programmes had conflicting elements, such as one coach trying to build muscle mass with an athlete, while their nutritionist was designing a diet that wouldn’t
support that goal. His next step was to cen-
tralise communications into one single area. This allowed for conflicting information to be rooted out and dealt with, while also filtering it all through the common goal; improving the performance of the individual athlete.
Suddenly, each individual athlete had their own indi-vidual teams around them, based on their own needs. No longer was an athlete go-ing to the nutritionists to get independent advice or work from a generic programme, the nutritionists were coming to the athlete and devising a plan based on their perfor-mance needs.
The biggest challenge came from getting all stakeholders to buy into this change in culture. From a place where people tended to protect their own area of expertise, the cul-ture shifted into one where different teams worked to-gether based on the overall guiding mission - improving the athletes’ performance.
Clarity of focus and messagingThe IABA was founded in 1911 and has remained volun-teer-led during that time. As a country with an abundance of talent but limited resources, Dunne decided that a clari-ty of focus needed to be put around the top echelons of the sport in the country. In the last
year, he has helped create the high-performance unit with-in the IABA, focused purely on the international stage.
“When you take that con-trol away from volunteers, you generally get resistance to it,” said Dunne. “Managing that and getting buy-in from the association and other stake-holders was a real challenge. Communication was the key thing for me; that everybody understood what was going on.”
With a singular mission (improved athletes’ perfor-mance), alongside a clarity of communication about roles (everybody knowing where they fit into the overall sys-tem), resistance was signifi-cantly lessened and the or-ganisation was able to move forward in a single direction, with the high-performance unit now being the tip of the spear.
Sustainability of performanceTo mitigate against the dan-gers of a system become overly reliant on individu-als, Dunne has set in motion a system where an elite set of coaches under each key area of the IABA high-perfor-mance programme are being trained across the country.
“If I was to lose one of the heads of our support teams, our programme would be in danger of collapse,” said Dunne. “Creating a sustain-
able system of high-perfor-mance is crucial – this is the next step we’re taking right now.”
Boxing clubs and poten-tial coaches were contacted throughout the country look-ing for people who wanted to work towards becoming a member of the high-per-formance unit, and there are currently 18 coaches being mentored and trained over a three-year period to become the next generation of unit leaders.
This next generation of leaders are not only being
trained in sports high-per-formance, but have also com-mitted to 12 CPD (continuing professional development) days that emphasise leader-ship skills such as communi-cation and conflict resolution.
We go out to perform, not to winIn March 2009, Bernard Dunne stepped into the Dublin ring to face Ricardo Cordoba for the world cham-pionship title.
A little under 18 months previously in the same arena, he had been knocked down in the first round and the fight had been stopped.
That setback put Dunne on the road to where he is now, and the lessons he’s learned along the way have given real insight into how teams should be built and directed.
Using a clarity of mission, clearly communicating that and people’s roles within it, and creating a system where high-performance is sus-tained in both the people and the practices they implement, can lead to the very top.
During the 11th round Cordoba hit the canvas and Bernard Dunne, lifted by his teammates on their shoulders, was declared world champion to the roaring Dublin crowd.
This article was based on Ad-vant-edge session on high-per-formance teams delivered to IMI members by Bernard Dunne
30 Management matters: in association with IMI The Sunday Business PostJuly 1, 2018
Hugh Torpey
‘Great leadership isn’t about what you accomplish yourself; it’s about what you
inspire others to do.” - Lolly Daskal, Executive and Lead-ership Coach.
The best leaders, like the best coaches, give those around them permission to
succeed. Effective leaders see people as whole people who are inherently capable and use coaching skills to help team members improve their per-formance and develop their potential.
As organisations are mov-ing away from annual perfor-mance reviews to providing more frequent discussions about development, it’s vital for leaders and managers to work with those around them to develop skills.
Great leaders practise spe-cific, proven skills that result in effective coaching conver-sations that help team mem-bers develop, grow and reach
their potential. They have a coaching mindset that moves away from telling others what to do, to empowering others to discover solutions them-selves.
The leader as coachRecent international research from the Human Capital In-stitute suggests that employ-ees want and appreciate this skill in their leaders. The study found that managers feel coaching skills are ‘not very important’ in today’s envi-ronment, but almost twice as many individual contributors disagree.
The good news for busy
leaders and managers is, ac-cording to a recent study by Gartner, that it’s less about the quantity of these con-versations and more about the quality.
Surveying more than 7,000 managers and employees
across different industries, Gartner found that high-per-formers are three times more prominent, where managers adopt a coaching style that explores employees’ skills, needs and interests; connects employees to others who may
be able to help them develop; and empowers employees to find answers and solve prob-lems themselves.
To understand how this works, let’s consider this sporting analogy: A profes-sional tennis player’s coach
may be the most important person guiding the player’s development, but she may bring in other experts — for strength training, nutrition and specialised skills such as serves and backhands — instead of trying to teach ev-erything herself.
Despite this, the coach re-mains deeply involved, iden-tifying expertise, facilitating introductions and monitoring progress.
A shift in mindsetTo adopt this coaching style may require a shift in mind-set. Traditionally, being a leader has been about being directive and telling people what to do.
Being a coach is more about asking the right questions, providing specific feedback, helping employees make a connection to others who can help them, and empowering employees to discover solu-tions themselves.
Key coaching skills that can help leaders on their path to coaching include:n Listening: employees need
to know their leaders care enough to listen to what they have to say and encourage them to share their opinions. Really listening to your em-ployees will help to build trust and a relationship that results in improved performance.n Questioning: be curious! Open-ended questions re-quire your employees to re-flect more deeply on their answers and to allow them to provide more information, understanding and feeling in their responses.n An appreciative approach: focus on identifying and doing more of what is already work-ing for your employees, rather than looking for problems and trying to fix them. Focusing on an employee’s core strengths will help both parties respond and react in a way that fosters positive change.
Tanya Sheehan is an IMI associate on the IMI diploma in organisational development & transformation. Tanya works as a business psychologist in KinchLyons, is a certified trainer and accredited coach
Have you ever been in a crowd of strangers on a train, or a plane, or in a lift, and thought to your-self, ‘if something cata-strophic happened here and now, would I stand out as a leader in this crowd? Would I be the first to get control of my emotions and act?’
What is it that drives someone to act before the crowd? We’ve all attend-ed large group seminars, master classes or town halls where the present-er asks for questions, or volunteers, and in all my years I’ve never seen ev-eryone step forward to volunteer their question or their active participa-tion.
Indeed, when I’m running similar sessions myself (and depending on the ask), I sometimes have to let silence sit and tension build for what seems like an age, until someone volunteers. And in those moments you can almost hear big, thump-ing, adrenaline-pumped hearts beating as people contemplate the notion of stepping forward.
There are undoubtedly leaders in these audienc-es, but I can’t help feeling that many let the oppor-tunity to learn something pass for fear of the un-known? Then someone steps forward and seated hearts slowly resume their resting rate, phew!
The race to go firstLeaders face their fear and go first. Leaders stand out from the crowd in mo-ments like this and they go first.
The capacity to face your fear, to step outside your comfort zone is a fundamental virtue of leadership and it can be learned and developed.
In his Harvard Business School Op Ed on April 24, 2017, Bill George, senior fellow at Harvard Busi-ness School, former chair and chief executive of Medtronic, and author of Discover Your True North, shares this perspective:
“Over the past decade, I have worked with and studied more than 200 CEOs of major companies through board service, consulting and research as a member of Harvard Business School’s faculty.
“I’ve found the defining characteristic of the best ones is courage to make bold moves that transform their businesses.”
We need courage like that in our senior leaders, but we need it at all levels and across all of society. We may not all have the “legitimate power” of a chief executive to trans-form a business, but we can still be a leader and develop our leadership capacity by facing our fears and going first.
For example:n If we expect to have feedback accepted by our team members then we should be the first to ask for feedback, and we should give everyone the opportunity to give us their feedback. n If we expect others to accept challenges in pursuit of better, more aligned decisions, then we as leaders should ask our team members to chal-lenge us and our thinking.n If we value authenticity then we must have the courage to be first to say what needs to be said to those that need to hear it, and in a way that encour-ages change.
Getting into the discomfort zoneThese few examples are ones that virtually every-one can act on, and even though they come with obvious discomfort for many of us, we all have the capacity to become more comfortable with discomfort and to live more of our lives outside our comfort zone.
The capacity to reflect and to see discomfort as an opportunity for per-sonal growth is a critical mindset for leaders in today’s changing and un-predictable world.
Part of the difficulty with stepping forward, or going first, may be that in that moment of con-templation, the learning we may gain from it isn’t obvious to us; but it’s pre-cisely that sort of moment that we need to face our fear and act like a leader.
These often-fleeting moments are moments of truth; so the next time you experience that flush of adrenaline while you are contemplating stepping forward, or speaking out, or acting where no one else seems ready, step into that zone of discomfort and just do it.
“You will learn some-thing, you will learn more about who you truly are, and you will begin to live more comfortably out-side your comfort zone – where leaders live much of the time.
Philip Mathews is an associ-ate faculty on the IMI Diplo-ma in Leadership. Mathews works as an executive coach, team coach and senior lead-ership team facilitator and keynote speaker
Courage, the attribute that all leaders need to have
Dunne: I get knocked down, and I get up again, and againBoxer Bernard Dunne on the blows and strategic changes that led him to leadership success
Creating a sustainable system of high-performance is crucial
Philip Mathews
How identifying and enhancing potential in others is what truly defines those who lead
Great leaders are great coaches
Tennis coach Nick Bollettieri at work with youngsters in India
Bernard Dunne,
high-performace
director at the IABA
Picture: Inpho
Tanya Sheehan
