Governance Bites #110: leadership in sports governance, with Professor Lesley Ferkins

In this episode, Mark Banicevich talks to Professor Lesley Ferkins about leadership in sport governance. Lesley starts by talking about how Professor Keith Grint (Emeritus Professor at Warwick University) talks about leadership. They discuss healthy board dynamics, and collaborative decision making, they key characteristics of an effective board enacting collaborative leadership, and how boards ensure that individual directors contribute effectively. Mark asks how collective leadership at the board level can influence organisation culture, the specific skills required of the board chair, and the division of roles between the chair and the CEO. Lesley also shares advice for chairs of sports organisations. 
Professor Lesley Ferkins is Professor of Sport Leadership & Governance, AUT Sports Performance Research Institute NZ. She has over 25yrs experience as an academic in sport management. Prior to academia, Lesley held senior leadership roles in sport & recreation as Executive Director for national and regional entities in NZ. Lesley is currently Professor at AUT and former Director of the AUT Sports Performance Research Institute NZ (SPRINZ). Before joining AUT in 2015, Lesley was Associate Professor at Unitec (and formerly Program Director), senior lecturer at Deakin, Melbourne, and Postgraduate Head in Sport & Recreation at AUT. Her teaching spans postgraduate and undergraduate courses in sport leadership and governance, strategic sport management, sport organisation, and work integrated learning.
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Transcript

0:02

Tēnā koutou katoa, ngā mihi nui [Greetings to you all, many thanks], Mark, for inviting me to this podcast. Ko Lesley Ferkins tōku ingoa, so my name is Lesley Ferkins, and I am a professor in sport leadership and governance for AUT University [Auckland University of Technology]. I have the absolute privilege of being based up at AUT Millennium, which feels like I'm situated in the heartbeat of the New Zealand sport sector, while also being able to carry out some pretty cool research in something that means a great deal to me, which is sport leadership and governance. I mostly inhabit national sport organisations [NSOs] and the work that they do in the context of their boards. Hi, welcome to Governance Bites. My name is Mark Banicevich. As you just heard, I have the pleasure again of spending time with Professor Lesley Ferkins. Lesley, thank you very much again for your time. I really appreciate it. This topic is about leadership and sports governance, which not really a conversation for today, but how do you get a career in playing sport really is a really cool thing to do, right. You've got a complete academic career in sport that's really cool. And tied it into something as interesting as governance. I want to start with a question around leadership. You put me on to some of the work by Emeritus Professor Keith Grint from Warwick University and his work in leadership. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, yeah, yeah, so never met him, but I'd love to one day. Yeah, one of my favourite authors because what he says, and it's just really stuck with me and it's a really helpful way to understand it. He wants to put the ship back into leadership being a bit of a nautical and moana [ocean] based country, you know, that sort of really appeals to me and I think many of us. And what that means is he really speaks to the idea that leadership kind of has been conflated into thinking about the leader, and in fact it perhaps goes best when there's a much more expanded way of looking at leadership. So that leadership isn't just about the person in charge or the individual leader. That it actually takes, you know, a range of people and contributions to create leadership. So, you know, there's a difference between leader and leadership. So I often now really, you know, use his metaphor, putting the ship back into leadership to help understand the collective nature of leadership. Which fits very well with boards of directors, right? Because while you have a chair, you are a collective body making decisions, so having that concept of leadership that is more collective is really more appropriate. Yeah, it's very cool because I mean, you know, naturally you would think that boards, you know, would pick up on the collective nature of their decision-making and that maxim, you know, first among equals. I was actually reading[Lord] Jeffrey Archer's book last night, it's called "First Among Equals", it's a pretty good read. And yeah, that's kind of what it is. But I think in many respects as governance, you know, sometimes governance can be quite focused on risk, policy, law, finance, and it's really grown up from those disciplines, certainly academically and also in practice, you know, that there's a kind of emphasis on those elements. The monitoring role of the board. Sometimes we forget a little bit about the people dynamics side of it, which is the idea of putting leadership into governance, so bringing in the psychology and sociology and the dynamics. It's the soft skills, as we often talk about right. And the soft skills stuff. As opposed to the hard skills. Yeah, absolutely. A reason that's very, an interesting topic for me because, you know, my background is in the hard skills and these soft areas are far more challenging and very interesting. What are the most effective mechanisms for developing and maintaining healthy board dynamics, including managing conflict and fostering open communication? Yeah, so I mean, I think the first thing is to kind of, you know, acknowledge and understand the significance and importance of that. You know, often we do want to just get on with the outcomes and do the mahi [work] and look at the finances and look at the risk and so on, and all those super important things, but sometimes skipping over the need to establish the group and the team and the ways of working together. And, you know, in the experience that I've had, the experiences that I've had over 30 years of working in sport organisations, being on boards of national sport organisations and working closely in research projects which help to grow and develop board performance and board dynamics, you know, we often if we pay attention to those things, I mean, it's kind of one of those things that we all know but don't necessarily prioritise. If we pay attention to the elements and to the dynamics and the ways that we work together and the relationship from the get-go, then we can go fast later. And so, you know, another maxim, go slow a bit at first to do that and set those platforms so that you can go fast later. It's that formation of the team and those sorts of dynamics that we're talking about. Yeah. Ultimately, one of the things I think, as you're suggesting, we kind of forget often is that every enterprise is about a collection of people trying to get somewhere. And so establishing those strong relationships of trust and cooperation first is really, really important. Yeah, yeah, and it's critical. And you know, we do know this stuff. We do know this stuff as human beings, we're social beings. Yeah. We all, you know, we absolutely buy into this. But yeah, the context of sport that I work in, and then the NSO [national sports organisations] boards that I work with, it is pretty evident that we need more focus in developing the collective leadership approaches of those groups. And yeah, one of the great projects that I'm involved in — I think you've had a podcast with Martin Snedden[episodes 100 and 104]. Yes, it's an amazing project. Yeah, so we are involved in creating a chairs collective, which is bringing together all of the National Sport Organisation chairs, or some of the larger organisations — 45 of them across New Zealand — along with regional sports trust chairs to, first of all, create a community of practice, to share from each other and share the collective wisdom that that group brings. But really, our focus in that group — we've covered a whole range of different topics — but Martin and I consistently emphasise and recognise the value of the collective leadership approach of the board, the people dynamics, the facilitation that's needed in those board contexts. And we're working with chairs of those NSOs to grow those skills. And I would also say that, you know, it doesn't necessarily come naturally, albeit there are some amazing chairs, you know, of NSOs, and you know, heartfelt thanks to the volunteers that contribute their time and their skills and capabilities in those roles — up to 20 hours a week, often. But, you know, often they've come from perhaps a corporate environment. They are, you know, highly skilled in legal, accounting, financial, which is fantastic, and they behave as CEOs [Chief Executive Officers], which is fantastic. But there are some nuances in the sport context, of which, you know, the non-profit and voluntary nature is one of them. Yes, yes. But also, you know, the idea of the collective leadership approach, and that you can't perhaps just act as a CEO with lots of resources to get stuff done — that you need to perhaps just spend a bit of time doing the

go slow stuff: 7:46

building the dynamics, building the relationships, building the facilitative approaches in order to then launch your board into a high-performing board. Particularly, as you say, so much of sport is volunteer-based, and a CEO who's used to employing staff and telling them what to do has to be a little bit more careful with that. Yeah, there's a little bit of that, without, you know, assuming all CEOs are like that. And also — yeah, true, true — but you know, not necessarily in a dictatorial way. But ultimately, as a CEO, you can ask somebody to do something and expect it to be done. That's right, that's right. Whereas a volunteer — "Well, actually, I was busy with my"family last weekend." Yeah, that's right. So it's working around that. Yeah. The other aspect of what you said — you talked about how many of these NSOs have chairs who have the hard skills from having a background — I would say that, having come from a minority sport, that's the lucky NSOs. You know, some of the other ones are just the people who have kind of agreed to stick their hand up, are often the people that end up in those positions and are very passionate about the sport or the activity, and don't necessarily have the governance skills that are necessary. So you've got those that are led by hard-skills people; you've got those that are led by willing volunteers — that are another skill set again — and hopefully Martin's programme, the programme you're working on with him, will be able to expand over time into other sports outside of those top. Yeah, absolutely. And I would like to also call out the support that Sport New Zealand has been offering to that programme. It is an independent group, but it's very well supported by Sport New Zealand and Julie Hood, in her role as the lead governance consultant at Sport New Zealand. And there, I hope that, you know, there's certainly the need, and I think there could be the intent to continue to grow. It's the last four years — we've just completed four years of that programme — we've called it the pilot period, and we're hoping that it can continue and expand, and also not only, you know, into smaller sports but also with emerging chairs, or people that are new to governance and want to grow into the chair's role — so creating that succession. And there's also the regional sport stuff — I know Martin is now starting to work with Aktive in the Auckland region as well. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunity here. Yeah, yeah. And a small pool of people that are involved. Yeah, yeah. So I hope you can. And I might just add that, you know, again, the huge need that we see in the work that we do with this room full of people three times a year — and Martin does more of the sessions — is the need to grow and develop the facilitative leadership skills of the chair, and the ability to create a high-performing board which has a collective contribution. You know, it sounds easy, or you know, well, it sounds like a no-brainer, but that is the work before us, and that is the high need. On that theme, what are the key characteristics of a sports board that successfully enables that collective leadership? Yeah, so I think that, first of all, it's the work of the chair as a facilitative chair. You know, it's also a bit of — in many of us — to kind of want to put your knowledge out there. And as a CEO or a high-performing, you know, corporate person, you know you've got a lot of wisdom to share, you've got a lot of things to say. But one of the things you need to do as a chair is, of course, zip it, - Yes. - and sit back and facilitate the contribution of others. And so that would be the first thing I would say is the really tuned-in nature of a facilitative chair. And tuned-in means speaking less, asking more, ensuring that there's this contribution from all around the room, and that each person feels sufficiently, you know, - Empowered. - yeah. Enabled to be able to lean in and make that contribution. Yes. And yeah, it's, you know, it's a deft thing to do, and it takes emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and the ability to zip it yourself. Yeah, right, right. How does collective leadership at the board level influence the broader leadership culture throughout the organisation? Yeah, yeah, that's such a good question, because that is the other thing that we're absolutely noticing in both the practice work that we do but also in the research projects that we enact. And yeah, another one of those maxims, that, you know, the board sets the tone for the organisation, - Yes. - and it absolutely does. And so yeah, if the board is operating in a collective way, with true facilitative leadership coming from the chair, then that's going to filter through to, and with, the CE [CEO]. It'll filter through in terms of the relationship with the CE and the idea of power-sharing between those

two entities: 12:40

the board and the CE. And then, of course, that will filter in through the organisation with the management team — if the sport is lucky to have a management team or an SLT [senior leadership team] . But the other way that it will — and every sport has this, almost — the other way that it filters is the behaviour that the national board or the national organisation — its behaviour with the other entities in its system. So the regional entities or the clubs, - Yes. - and the idea of sharing and collaborating in the governance context, rather than being the top-down NSO and, you know, - Yeah. - a more of a hierarchical approach to the way that the NSO governs. Yes, I think it's an area that we might want to try and explore in another conversation, around how you essentially develop strategy in an organisation that's particularly got that federal-type structure. Indeed. An interesting topic in itself. To what extent do traditional models of board operation need to evolve to meet the changing demands of modern sports governance? Yeah, yeah, another question we could spend an entire podcast on. Models of board, yeah, gosh, there's so much stuff coming at boards at the moment. You know, from integrity to diversity and inclusion, to sports that are really, you know, needing to fully evolve themselves into transition from something they've been, to something they need to be into the future to survive. Yes. But I suppose the main one would be — if I'm just going to call out one aspect — is, yeah, the way that the national body — I'm talking about, you know, national boards and NSOs — works with its system and its regional entities, which is the collaborative governance piece. We talked about last time [episode 105]. Yes, yeah, yeah, and the collaborative governance. So, you know, I mean, if I was to call out kind of one 64-zillion-dollar question in terms of how a board might need to evolve in the way that it works and functions, it would be in terms of its relationships and collaboration with its system partners and entities. Right. If we can get that humming, then, yeah. You've got a really good foundation to work with. Indeed. Yeah, absolutely. What specific skills and attributes are essential for the board chair? You've mentioned facilitation as being a key one. Are there any other skills that — if you're looking to appoint a chair, if you're in a board and you're choosing your chair — what are the things that you really want? Yes. So, you know, a while back, one of my other favourite authors has been Daniel Goldman — and another woman, Julia Middleton, as well — has lots of resources about what I'm about to say, which is emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. So some time ago — I don't know, 20, 30 years ago — Daniel Goldman kind of popularised the idea of the need for emotional intelligence in leadership. And up until that point, I guess we'd been kind of thinking — I don't know — but, you know, there was an emphasis. Finance, law, and. Yeah, yeah. Hard skills. But also high IQ [intelligence quotient]. Yes. You know, the smartest guy in the room will be the leader. Right. And Daniel Goldman said, “Well, yeah, great to"have IQ, but you know what? Actually, the great leaders are the ones that"can tune into the emotional element,” and that we shouldn't put emotions aside. We need to recognise emotions and work with them. So he created this lovely kind of model of thinking about how we manage our emotions, and that is, first of all, acknowledge them. That's, you know, critical. You know, as a professional, we've been taught to put them aside, but, you know, hang on a minute, they drive everything. Yes. Secondly, think about your own emotional kind of triggers, and understand yourself in terms of your own emotional positioning. And then recognise how you might moderate and filter that. And then, after that, tune in to the others, which is about building empathy and understanding the other and the relational side of it. So, you know, the leaders — and therefore chairs — that can really not just pay lip service to that, but can really do some work around that themselves, and then also others, and building a truly emotionally solid relationship with those around the board — I would call out as one of the key attributes of the chair. And then that's evolved also into cultural intelligence, and understanding not just, you know, someone else who might be similar to you, but understanding and appreciating those that are in the boardroom who are quite different — who come from a different socio-economic, age bracket, cultural bracket, and have a completely different worldview to you. And quite often a very different communication style, too, right. Indeed. Makes it a real challenge to work with quite often. Yeah, absolutely. How does the chair balance the need to guide the board with the importance of allowing for open discussion and drawing information from the board? You know, this trying to zip it, as you said before, and listen, but also trying to make sure that the board's going in the right direction and staying on track? Yeah, it's such — it's a deft, absolutely a deft skill and, you know, it's called facilitation skills. And I mean, I think it's one of the most critical skills, you know, in the workplace we can all have, right. Which is, which kind of plays into the idea of collective leadership, which is about empowering and working with others to make a — so that we can all make a contribution into the leadership space and not just relying on one person to, you know, tell and guide and direct, and others just to follow. That we all have a role in kind of making that contribution into the leadership space. I mean, you know, think of the sports field, right. Think of the Black Ferns about to play Canada on Saturday and, of course, the All Blacks — you know, think of the way that they all need to make sure they're playing their role on the field and making a contribution for the team to hum. It's not, you know, it's not rocket science — we kind of see it all the time — but it is incredibly difficult to enact in a workplace board situation when there's, you know, all kinds of challenging material to cover. So yeah, that's the work of the chair — is to facilitate that. Which comes back to what you said before about the chair not necessarily having to be the smartest person in the room, because they're not the person that comes up with all the answers. They're the person with the emotional intelligence and the facilitation skills to draw the right answers out of the rest of the room. Absolutely. Yeah, right. Absolutely, absolutely. How can the board and the chief executive establish clear and effective division of responsibilities while also fostering the right relationship and communication and so forth? Yeah, yeah, so you know, that's sort of recognised as one of the key attributes of a high-performing board — is that relationship between the chair and the CE. And I would also sort of call out the idea of the — you know, there's sort of two entities here. So the chair is the first among equals — so, you know, the facilitative leader of the board. Yes. And then there's the CE, who's the other entity, who kind of is responsible for the operational, organisational downward. So there's two entities sitting side by side. And the work that we do and some of the outcomes that we've tried to surface in our studies around high-performing NSO boards is the idea that, you know, some of the best boards have this power-sharing relationship happening. So it's not the tail wagging the dog, it's not the CE knowing, you know, so much of the information, the board just being volunteers and coming to rubber stamp. And we — you know, we have seen an era of NSO boards sort of going through that. It is a board that is truly understanding of the workings of the organisation — not doing, but certainly being across some of the important operational details. You know, it's not an arbitrary line between strategic and operational. Yes. The board needs to know some of the operational elements in order to be, you know, truly able to ask the right questions - Yeah, absolutely - from a strategic point of view. So yeah, the idea of the two entities having their own power and influence but recognising the need to share that — both from the CE's point of view, who has enormous power because of information, and from the board's point of view, which has enormous power because of the oversight role and the, you know, performance management role of the CE. But yeah, you know, sharing that influence and power, sitting side by side — seeing it in that way, so the board isn't the boss of the CE all the time. Sometimes they need to be — when it's performance, you know, they do need to appoint and manage performance. But in other cases, they wear a different hat — they share, in collaboration, a power relationship with the CE. That's a, yeah, really thoughtful explanation. Thank you. How does the shared leadership dynamic between the board and the chief executive impact the organisation's: one, its overall governance; and two, its strategic direction? So yeah, I think, you know, again, the board sets the tone for how these things can work. And a slight aside — you might need to remind me of the question, because I'm going to go down a slight aside here. Okay. Which I'm very excited about in terms of a new progression around a focus for our research, which is the CE's role in governance. So, you know, traditionally the CE — you know, the board's responsible for governance, the CE is responsible for the operational management of the organisation, and the CE turns up to help the board, you know, or give the board the information. But, you know, if you see it differently — and this is the topic of a PhD coming — and so, if you see it differently, you know, then the CE actually has a critical role in playing into governance of the organisation. Not typically, you know, understood as such — again, the board, you know, is called out as the governing entity. But yeah, this is the idea of the power-sharing relationship. Both those two entities have a critical role to play in effective governance-building. The CE actually needs to definitely understand the governing role, as well. And yeah, not to — again, tail wagging the dog idea — treat the board as a rubber stamper. You know, that would be to not really realise the true potential of a board and all the skills that sit around that table. You know, the idea of the rubber-stamping board. I don't think you really deviated from the question at all, did you? That was great. Didn't I? No. Thank you. I've got one final question for you. What advice would you give to the chair of a sports organisation? Yeah, so I would call out — I would call out the preciousness of the sport sector. And many chairs in NSOs and boards across sport, you know, kind of know this — although those that don't, you know, ones that have come from the corporate environment — and, you know, hallelujah, thank goodness we have people interested in coming from the corporate environment to sport to offer their free time — highly paid skills in another context, coming to offer their free time into sport. You know, the lawyers, the accountants, the corporate people — it's fantastic, and I'm continually amazed at the contribution that we, you know — the contribution nature of people that volunteer their time onto sport boards. But, you know, sport is such a unique and special context. I've spent my, you know, career and life kind of committed to it, if you like— the organised sports system. And it's, you know, it's a unique combination of nonprofit, voluntary participation, community, and then all at the same time, it's also commercial and professional and - High performance. - high-performance. Yes. And it's a fishbowl— so, you know, all eyes on you. No, such limited resource, expected to do so many things with such limited resource and all eyes on you in that combination of things. And yeah, I think appreciating and understanding the special nature — but the strapped nature — of the sports sector would be kind of one of my first pieces of advice from a chair. And hopefully the chairs that are in our NSOs have been on boards for a little while — of NSOs — and they've come to understand the difficult nature of a voluntary-based system that is expected to be professional and commercial, but doesn't have the resources to behave in that way. Yes. And to kind of just really appreciate and understand that — and perhaps to, you know, right-size the expectation of the strategic priorities for and with the CEO. Great. Lesley, thank you very much for your time. It's been a topic that I've got to dig into a little bit more deeply, so I really appreciate you sharing that overview to help me identify where my gaps are, and where to dig further. So thank you. Awesome, cheers. I'll speak to you again soon and we'll see you next episode. Ngā mihi nui [thank you very much]. Thank you for watching this episode of Governance Bites. We have more episodes on YouTube and your favourite podcast channel where I interview directors and experts on various topics relating to boards of directors and governance. We'd love to see you back, and please like, subscribe and share the videos and podcasts.