Humphrey Walters: building winning teams is a game of inches

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15 June 2012, 12.15pm
By Trista Smith

Humphrey regaled the crowd this morning with tales from his experiences working with the likes of the England Rugby team and Chelsea football club, and the 11 months he spent sailing around the world in the BT Global Yacht Challenge.

Amid the laughter brought on from his tales of mishap and adventure at sea, Humphrey touched on a similar theme to that of Sue Campbell at the start of the conference – his job is seeking out examples of world-class performance, and applying it to his work with athletes and others looking to build winning teams.

He spoke with great humility, and great joy. We can’t recreate the warm spirit of his talk here, so we will instead note just some of the key factors for success he shared with the audience:

  • Have the courage to say when it’s time to move on, move early and decrease the time you spend being unhappy or complacent
  • As soon as you think you’re safe, you’re not – you have to keep moving forward
  • Building winning teams is simple, but it’s never easy
  • Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently
  • Great to be smart, never assume another person is stupid
  • Don’t take yourself too seriously
  • Make the environment special and you’ll get quality behaviour – quality starts with the working and living environment
  • Surround yourself with what your business is all about – badges, emblems, images
  • Getting better never stops – world class performance moves all the time
  • Leadership is crucial – but “followership” is twice as important
  • On a yacht, the skipper has to trust his crew enough to leave the ship with in their hands or he’d never sleep
  • If we’re predictable, the opposition knows exactly what we are about – train for unpredictability.

He added that conferences like this are brilliant because they show how much knowledge people have between them, and allow them to share and benefit from each other.

Humphrey closed with a video of footage from England’s victory in the Rugby World Cup, a final comment on the triumphs that can be achieved with a winning team.