Will Greenwood
‘For well-being, there is no perfect, only the pursuit of better’
Afriend in the Royal Marines tells a fascinating story about well-being. “There were six hours to go before my team and I moved out of our base at the start of a very unpredictable operation. We had confirmed our plans and checked our equipment. I wanted to check again, but was confronted by my Sergeant Major. ‘Sir’, he said, ‘I will do the checking. We will all depend on your decisions tomorrow, so make sure you get your f------ head down’.
“Over time we called this mindset ‘proper selfishness’, making sure we were all in good enough shape to serve the people who depended on us, and it has become a key principle for me ever since, as a leader, and as a parent.”
You may work in a culture where the leader feels they have to be first in, last out. You may feel that way yourself. I would argue that you cannot possibly lead others if you are not looking after yourself.
Elite athletes understand this. They know that the quality of their diet, sleep and training will impact their performance. In the workplace I am often struck by how poorly people look after themselves, and then how surprised they are when they feel tired, stressed or anxious.
I do not expect everyone to live like elite athletes, but I did want to share ideas I’ve been working on with Ben Fennell, CEO and founder of The Growth House, that might help your well-being.
1 Put your own oxygen mask on first
I think the Marines story is a great example of this. But you can take this thinking even further. Before worrying about anyone else you have to make sure that you are putting yourself in the best shape possible to perform.
With regard to my conditioning at international level, I realised that I was “playing” at it when a young Jonny Wilkinson turned up on the scene.
I came from a more Corinthian amateur era. I was working in the City, so my meals were never planned, training was never rigorous, water consumption was rarely mentioned. I “toyed” at fitness.
Then, alongside our fitness guru Dave Reddin and inspirational “new” generation players such as Wilkinson, we were dragged kicking and screaming in to the 21st century, we learnt about “self-care”.
2 Your brain needs training too
One of my favourite quotes is from the American philosopher Daniel Dennett. “What you can imagine depends on what you know.”
Jamie Roberts, the Wales and Lions international legend, who is also a qualified doctor, develops this thought further.
“From a professional sport and certainly a rugby perspective, sport is often about problem-solving,” he says.
“For each individual, the game is a cocktail of thousands of decisions and problem-solving dilemmas.
“If you believe that better people make better rugby players, and that knowledge is power, then the knowledgeable rugby player has no boundaries.”
3 Everybody hurts sometimes
We have to do a better job of removing the stigma around mental health. In sport we learnt some years ago that you need coaches for the body and for the head. “Showing a vulnerable side doesn’t come naturally to me,” says Olympic rowing champion Helen Glover, who won gold in the coxless pairs with Heather Stanning at both London 2012 and Rio 2016. “On the rowing team we had a sports psychologist, and I would reach out to him and share my thoughts and emotions freely.
“As soon as Heather and I learnt to share our emotions with each other, it stepped up our competitive ability to a whole new level. The more you understand somebody, the more you know what makes them tick and the more you can get the best out of each other.”
4 Let me tell you how to get the best and worst out of me
teams are in such a rush to get started that they skip what is a critical stage of team building and team well-being. You do not need to build a raft together or do a “trust fall” to learn about your colleagues, you just need to ask good questions, listen and learn. It is good for your well-being to know your team-mates really well, but it is also very good for them to know you.
I experienced this done well with the 2005 Lions squad. We had one week to hit the ground running before we landed in New Zealand. We were paired with players we did not know, and were asked to find out about each other. I found that the most revealing question was: “How do we get the best and worst out of you?”
You need to know the human being behind the athlete.
Alex Danson won an Olympic hockey gold medal in Rio, she also appeared 203 times for England and 103 times for Great Britain. When she was asked about the importance of sharing vulnerabilities and anxieties with team-mates, she said: “It allowed us to appreciate each other as individuals, respect that we are all different and see that what works for one wouldn’t necessarily work for the other. It allowed us to see each other at our best and our worst, and fundamentally we believed as a group this would make us stronger than any other team… and it did.”
The exercise of sharing what will bring out your best and worst is just as effective in a working environment. Figuring out how you like to work and what your expectations are of others should not be a quiz, so give your colleagues a chance.
5 There is no perfect, only the pursuit of better
You can be driven to distraction by the pursuit of perfection. It can be liberating to acknowledge that focusing on getting better is a more positive endeavour than seeking out perfection.
Nobody leads a life without setbacks or loss. We all go through tough times, we hopefully all enjoy some degree of happiness and success, too. If we can accept that both experiences are part of life’s rich tapestry then we might get some way to coping. There is no perfect, only the pursuit of better. As we face this global pandemic, I want to believe that there will be some positive legacy. We could tell our loved ones that we love them a little more often. We might consume less, and sweat the small stuff less.
We might enjoy a slightly simpler life that gives us all slightly more. If you are an NHS worker, a key worker, a parent, a chief executive or a captain of the local third XV, make sure you look after yourself, because if you don’t do that, you can’t possibly look after others. Stay safe people.