From an F1 team lead to a national rugby captain: what can sport teach us about motivation and achievement?

This year’s Formula 1 World Championship is about to reach a thrilling conclusion. Meanwhile, England’s rugby team has recently notched up its eighth straight victory over Australia.

Companies of any size can learn a lot from the most successful managers and captains in sport. Indeed, there are striking similarities between business and sport when it comes to creating a winning team as the new world of hybrid work increasingly becomes the norm.

Doing the little things better

Kaizen is a Japanese word that revolves around the idea of doing the little things better. Ultimately, it is about finding ways to continuously improve. It is one of the key principles behind how Japanese firm Nissan became one of the world’s biggest car manufacturers.

Every employee buys into the kaizen principle because there will come a stage in the life of any business or team when it becomes harder to make significant gains. A marginal gain in isolation makes no difference. Lots of incremental improvements, however, start to add up and create a competitive advantage.

And kaizen has become an influential concept in sport. It is often cited as one of the key reasons behind Britain becoming the dominant force in cycling. Former Team GB performance director Sir David Brailsford once said, “We searched for small improvements everywhere and found countless opportunities. Taken together, we felt they gave us a competitive advantage.”

“A No-Blame Culture”

Mercedes Team Principal, Toto Wolff, also preaches the gospel of kaizen.

In total, 1,300 people make up the Mercedes F1 team, including engineers, mechanics, technicians, analysts and all the people who work on building the cars that are driven by Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

Last year, Mercedes broke Ferrari’s record for consecutive F1 Constructors’ Championships with seven straight titles. So what is the key to the team’s enduring success?

“It’s about the marginal gains,” says Wolff. “It’s about putting everything together and not leaving one stone unturned, having a no-blame culture, empowering people, even when it’s difficult sometimes when you would rather control things.

“I think the strengths go very deep, values that are ingrained in the teams that you can’t put on a PowerPoint and say, ‘Now we are empowered.’”

Every member of staff at the Mercedes F1 HQ in England, 70 miles from London, has a car parking space. The same cannot be said for some of their rivals. It may sound trivial, but it’s about making everyone feel valued and motivated. It sets the tone and says something about the culture at Mercedes.

Everything at Mercedes is considered, from the coffee in the staff canteen through to flying pillows around the world so the team travelling from race to race can get a good night’s sleep.

Mercedes has created a set of conditions that gets the best out of every team member. An obvious example of how this can translate into the business world is when one thinks about the shift towards hybrid working.

Increasingly, more employees want the option of splitting their time between working from an HQ, home or from a local coworking space. They want a better work-life balance that will allow them to perform at their peak. And collectively, this enhanced productivity will significantly benefit businesses.

The importance of delegating

If an F1 team can be likened to be a large enterprise, then a rugby team is more akin to an SME.

Martin Johnson often tops the polls as rugby’s greatest captain. Certainly, he could make his presence felt with his 6ft 7in frame. But what makes a great leader in any environment is the ability to instil confidence and loyalty throughout the team while also commanding respect.

Great leaders also know how to delegate. In 2003, England won the Rugby World Cup beating Australia in a nerve-shredding final. Johnson rightly took a lot of the plaudits, but anyone who remembers that team knows it had leaders all over the pitch, in the scrum, in the lineout, in defence.

Players were given the freedom to express themselves. Johnson admitted there were times he was screaming for his players to take the safe option rather than go for a try, but his teammates made the right call.

England’s World Cup-winning coach, Sir Clive Woodward, later said of Johnson, “He led by example but he wasn’t a big ego man. Behind the scenes, he was always asking people, ‘What do you think?’ That’s a big quality of any leader – listening to other people and then making a decision.”

That is the sort of leader every business would love to have. 

And, again, it is easy to see how this relates to a work environment where people feel they have a voice, their opinion is valued and they don’t have to operate within a rigid structure.

Ultimately, when trying to build a high-performing, winning team in a hybrid world, it’s about creating the right work environment and culture that will allow your team to reach its full potential.

Find out how IWG can empower your team in the new world of hybrid work.