Michael Keane’s Post

Incredible insights from Gareth Southgate and a stark reminder of how important it is to equip founders, entrepreneurs, professionals and athletes with the right tools to manage their psychology in high-performance environments. Key takeaways: - Mentality is everything - Drive matters - A constant desire to get better is essential - The ability to deal with mistakes or when things go wrong is vital - Knowing how to deal with success is just as important - Understanding ways to handle pressure is necessary As a founder, team leader or employee, can you perform at the highest level, day in and day out? Through lots of unknown variables? Through pressure? Through the opinions of naysayers and non-believers? Through consecutive bad quarters? Through failure? Through pessimistic macro environments? Through big changes? As the future of work continues to transform, as teams become more and more distributed, and as companies understand that the only thing that matters is how competent and kind their people are (not where they live or what their salary expectations are), high-performance will become a core value that companies seek, develop, mould and enable. High performance will apply to everyone. Thanks for sharing Steven Caulker 👌🏻 #embraceyourprocess

Some valuable insights here. The desire to continually improve fades with many highly talented players. Reaching a comfort zone can act as a self imposed glass ceiling for many players. Money, fame and success can erode an appetite to push on to the limits of a player's potential. Mindset is a vital factor here in affecting ongoing performance. However, do coaches and players themselves look at how this can be kept at optimal levels. Think Ronaldo, Tom Brady, Harry Kane, Daley Thompson and many more elite sports stars. It is possible to improve brain health and cognitive function and have better focus, mindset, resilience and to perform better through making better decisions, more quickly, more often. What is an extra few percentage points worth, in terms of elite performance for an elite performers? What marginal gains and competitive edge could be achieved? All these factors are game changers.

Some will say they shouldn’t have even got this far. Others will say they came agonisingly close. Both are probably correct. Whatever your view, I feel Gareth Southgate pulled off a masterstroke – against all the odds - again. It can be similar in business - no one seems to be satisfied. Everyone is criticising you. If you run your own business you have to do what you feel is right. Clearly you can be answerable to a board, to shareholders, but if you’re the CEO, you need to make the difficult decisions – and not be too concerned with the FLACK others will throw at you. You need to have a thick skin. To paint Southgate as a failure after four tournaments of outstanding success, is a tad unfair. But as in business, football can be unfair. Southgate is unlikely to be given the credit he deserves. And as a business leader, expecting credit for your actions can be a thankless task. www.johnstapleton.eu

This is essential reading for any rugby fan. Worryingly it is a picture of a financially distressed sport at the elite level, with few clubs (companies is a better description) that you would think “that’s where I’d put my money”. Debt, revenues, equity, salaries etc are in the many cases trending towards a tipping point. It is deeply concerning. As a self-confessed accounts geek (the truth really is in the detail), it’s not the end of the road yet, but unless something fundamental changes we’re on a very, very slippery slope. Andy Golding I really look forward to discussing this with you when we catch up next. Thank you and the team at Leonard Curtis for pulling this together. The analysis is simple to understand, well explained and clearly surfaces the basic business issues with the sport. I’ve done my own review of the lower leagues (btw, my analysis is definitely “amateur land” compared to this!), and it’s a mixed bag in National 1 & 2. The clubs at this level have been through the wringer, and largely have strong if hugley constrained financials. They don’t have massive brands to maintain, and seem to have the “cloth/pattern” balance better arranged - but there are enormous disparities in incomes. The sources of income are largely consistent and balanced. The restricted level of funding available to National 1 & 2 clubs does seem to constrain development and I would imagine this will have an impact over a longer period in terms of renewing facilities - in particular those 3/4gs on 10 year contracts with the RFU. What happens when the deal expires and you have to renew it? Back to the 2024 Prem report. Sensible business heads are required for a sustained period, not just the next bail out or asset sell off. On a personal note, good to see Gloucester is trending in the right direction, a reduction in salary costs, manageable debt and high average gates. I’ve seen the talent in the revitalised academy 1st hand and this bodes well for the next 5 years in terms of league position. Glos are the one to watch. Build strength and talent from within, manage the pennies carefully.

First England match down and we won.   Already there’s negative press about the team’s delivery and Southgate’s perhaps somewhat nervous inability to take decisions to sub players off sooner.   With a strong team and a decent manager, it’s a wonder why we all feel nervous when it comes to watching England play.   ⚽️ Could this feeling have been ingrained in us all for as long as we can remember due to the onslaught of post-match criticism?   ⚽️ If so, when anticipated fault-finding out-weighs any kind of positivity or praise, this leads to a rise in self-defence, self-protection, and inability to act as one normally would.   ⚽️ And if this is the impact it can have on us as mere spectators, then how the hell does this feel for Southgate and his team?!   The societal norm is for our squad to play, only for the press to tear apart both team strategy and physical performance.   Perhaps if this narrative changed, we would see the self-belief, confidence and decisive play that both team and manager are being so heavily criticised for not having? A part of having a growth mindset is about reflecting on where to improve whilst leveraging what did go well, so let’s also celebrate: ⭐️ Bellingham’s goal in less than 15 minutes play, relieving him of just some of the massive focus and pressure he’s been under! ⭐️ Pickford’s ability to keep a late equaliser at bay when we were almost home and dry! ⭐️ Ultimately a win! Stronger play in the first half, with lessons to learn moving forwards… → What are your thoughts on this? Did you enjoy the match? What do you think of the squad and their manager? Or are you here for the men in shorts? 😉 #mindset #confidence #motivation #encouragement #belief     ______________________________

Really interesting how the Peroni logo is driver facing and optimized for the halo camera--meaning it would be likelier to be seen more by the viewer and positioned for their pleasure, as well as the copious replays. Wondering why other sponsors don't consider the swap especially when we consider the rate of utilization of the in track cameras vs the halo or tv pod cameras. I get going for looks, but outside of seeing the car at a launch or in person, wouldn't it make more sense or a company to optimize for the tv viewer as they would be the sponsor's primary viewer via replays etc?

Great article by Knight Frank on Private Members Clubs, worth a read,

march 9, 2024. Mental health? this is an interesting video it could’ve been staged. It appears to be a rugby match in Scotland or Ireland or something like that because they got the green. There is a myth of the black Irish, there’s also a myth of the culture that was dominated by “woman”. Created by taking a rib DNA from the man - to give birth life and happiness to the creator. The age a story of the chicken and the egg who came first? Now, that doesn’t mean that traditional roles weren’t still handled. Biologically “we” deliver babies and then go hunt food. Men deliver the sperm which are generated unlimited quantities often to age 70 or more. Women are born with a certain number of eggs. We know that because they run out. So during the life of the man, we are imprinted with life experiences, and this is going to go directly end of the DNA of that sperm so many ways it is man that is the renewer of life because we can change the course of the future by the. it’s that we create while we’re living. This cannot happen with a woman so the idea of freezing sperm is is pretty pathetic. But mentally - Men and Women do not fit in those neat and tidy boxes, and in this particular case, you have a Male on the left, and what appears to be a happy go lucky Male on the right. Green Bay Packers QB - A. Rodgers… the finest ball handler that is under recognized. whenever there is an alpha, there’s an omega so there’s another quarterback that’s probably just as good is Aaron Rodgers. Is it to boyfriends watching a football match? Are they mates? And then what is the story of Jesus Christ? Not too many versions of this man being the stone statue, big arms, strongman - classical Roman Statue - Aryan and Atheist Greek God - Titan, Hercules, and other mythical figures of the past. The man on the left probably he’s unhappy that he doesn’t have a woman and the man on the right who knows? He seemed to lift a pretty good life. Maybe you just drank too much is a ball game and then crashed his car. So why do we want to limit this to some sort of discussion on “mental health”? The story of Jesus Christ is about rebirth, which we do not understand. The man on the right may be reincarnated in the man on the left we don’t know we really don’t know. To give the struggling man on the left something to think about.

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