Episode 6: Identity Eats Culture For Breakfast with Dr Ben Rosenblatt (England Football)

Welcome back. Our guest today is Dr Ben Rosenblatt. Ben has coached athletes to every Olympic Games since 2008, worked in Olympic gold medal winning teams and for the last seven years, led England football’s physical performance department as part of Gareth Southgate’s backroom team Most recently, he founded his own company, 292 performance, who provide high-performance support to high-performing individuals. In this episode, we discuss; - The 5 necessities for a high performing team - How Gareth Southgate’s leadership team successfully engineered culture change - His most memorable moments with the England Football team - Why, in his opinion, identity eats culture for breakfast You can expect to understand; - How to deeply motivate your people - How to successfully lead culture change - How to use failure as a competitive advantage - And how to create sustainable, high performance As always, if you enjoyed the episode and want to be the first to hear when new episodes drop, please like, rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. Most importantly, thank you for watching and listening. This podcast was created for you, and I hope you enjoy the episode. 00:00 Podcast intro 00:51 Guest intro 01:42 Ben’s story 04:30 What attracted him 05:33 His ‘why’ 06:28 Art vs science 10:06 Advice for new leaders 16:37 Winning Olympic gold 19:03 Importance of celebrating success 19:36 Integrating your vision, values and behaviours 21:08 Decentralised leadership & ownership 24:42 Importance of living your values 27:10 Owen Eastwood’s book ‘Belonging’ 27:30 Storytelling over slogans 29:07 Identity eats culture for breakfast 29:52 Pink inflatable unicorns & EAST 34:00 Gamifying development 34:43 5 necessities for high performing teams 39:00 Understanding your team’s needs 40:46 Best moments with England 43:03 Importance of small wins 46:00 First step in turning the ship around 48:28 Importance of awareness and desire for change 50:03 What underpins team’s actions 51:00 Successfully challenging status quo 54:44 The COM-B model of behaviour change 58:00 The issue with culture 58:50 The culture change trade-off 1:00:12 Aligning your mission & values with your identity 1:04:20 Detaching yourself from the outcome 1:07:16 Traits of the world’s best athletes 1:09:17 Mindfulness for sustainable success 1:13:20 Opportunity vs threat mindset 1:16:00 Traits of the world’s best leaders 1:16:58 Hiring vs developing mindset 1:21:23 Word association 1:23:45 Summary & insights 1:36:58 3 key takeaways