Growing a winning mindset through narrative

 “Each day we fail is a day our competitors will regret.” Niki Lauda, Non-Executive Chairman of Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

I had the pleasure of listening to Nicole Bearne’s session at the Simply Communicate conference back in May. Nicole Bearne is the (now former) Head of Internal Comms for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team, and she’s been in the same industry, following the same leadership for 25 years. Imagine that? She’s worked with some of the world’s greatest driving champions, but her session was about how to build the high-performing teams behind those individuals.

I loved her intro, an example of a successful pitstop (a carefully choreographed moment in a race where 20 mechanics leap into action and change all four tyres on a car before sending it back out onto the track, ideally in 2 seconds.) Nicole explained that races can be won or lost in the pitstop – so it’s an incredibly intense and important flicker in time.

She went on to describe a particular past pitstop that went wrong (and that actually ended up being the longest pitstop in history at 43 hours +!) But the way the incident was communicated afterwards gave precious insight into the team’s culture – and proved critical for team moral.

In a live interview immediately after, Toto Wolf (the Team Principal) said:

“Days like today are the ones we learn from the most, but that doesn’t stop the experience from feeling awful… We will regroup and look back, as much as it hurts, to learn lessons and comeback stronger.”

In that piece of comms Toto:

-        Admits it was painful

-        Doesn’t blame individuals

-        Highlights a culture open to fail

-        Encourages a growth mindset

-        Sees failure as a learning opportunity

-        Wants to fix the problem not the person

World championships like Formula One are often attributed to individual stars – those we see driving the cars, who are without a doubt the people that have the ability to drive success. We see this in business too; Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Richard Branson.

James March, Professor Emeritus at Stanford school of business 2008 said: “History is not produced by the dramatic actions and postures of leaders, but by complex combinations of large numbers of small actions by unimportant people.”

Now of course Nicole immediately caveated that people are absolutely not unimportant – but the sentiment of this quote is great - everyone’s role is critical.

But why is teamwork so important?

In the book The Wisdom of Teams: Creating a High-Performing Organisation, Douglas Smith and Jon Katzenbach say:

-        Teams bring together complimentary skills and experience that exceed those of any individual on a team

-        This fact enables teams to respond to complex challenges in areas such as innovation, quality and customer service

-        In jointly developing clear goals and approaches, teams establish communications that support real time problem solving and initiative

-        Teams provide a social dimension that enhances the economic and administrative aspects of work

-        Teams have more fun.

Formula One cars are complex pieces of machinery, capable of doing speeds up to 225 MPH, cornering a G-Force of 6.5 into the corners (the same amount of G-Force that Apollo 11 astronauts were pulling when re-entering the earth’s atmosphere coming back from the moon.) Drivers pull those Gs every lap on a two hour race.

It takes a talented and diverse group of individuals to build a high-performing culture that operates seamlessly as one team. Behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One is a diverse mix of international specialists from 26 countries; they have factory / manufacturing, wind tunnel technicians, research and development, shift workers, a travelling race team, office-based, hybrid and fully remote team members based as far away as Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. Unless the whole team works together success cannot happen.

Leadership may provide the vision, said Nicole, but it’s the execution that counts. The team is only as good as last race, and each race is audited publicly for whole world to see and comment on. That’s a lot of performance pressure too!

Nicole went back to university a few years ago – she was interested in finding out more about the psychology behind what makes a high-performing team. And she started to pick up on key characteristics that came through across the board:

A high-performing team has:

-        Clearly defined and articulated goals and values

-        Empowered team members with a voice, that share responsibilities and outcomes

-        Open and honest communication

-        High levels of trust and psychological safety

-        The ability to respond rapidly to change in the internal and external environment.

And so Nicole set out to do just this. Some of the ways they do this now?

1)     Leadership meets in January every year to frame a clearly defined shared goal that unites everyone and gives the team direction. The IC team then ensures it has a clear line of sight for everybody – it’s translated clearly at all levels, cascaded into individual objectives and woven into key comms throughout the year. This gives: clarity, empowerment, responsibility and ownership to individuals.

2)     There are 14,500 components on a Formula One car and so it’s critical to know that if there’s a problem, it gets flagged and fixed. To encourage people to speak up when they spot something that isn’t right, the business uses that very successful comms model: See it, Say it, Fix it (also used by Nasa, London Underground etc).

3)     The foundation of open and honest comms starts with leadership, and them placing all their trust in team members. IF people feel trusted they’re more likely to reciprocate, and when comms is open and honest people are better able to understand situations and how best to respond.

4)     The team releases a regular drumbeat of comms throughout the season. During race season there are daily email updates from either the Technical Director or the Chief Strategist, and they lay out exactly what’s happening. Everyone is trusted to manage the sensitive information the emails contain, and the good, the bad and the ugly is included.

5)     People are encouraged to ask questions in whatever way they feel comfortable – putting a hand up in a meeting, sending a question in via Teams or email. No question is frowned upon and in fact, disrupters are encouraged! Colleagues are asked to speak candidly and tell inconvenient truths, but also to admit to mistakes.

It was abundently clear that Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team has created an environment where mistakes and failure are analysed and framed as a learning opportunity. They constantly think: what can we change to make sure this never happens again? And this growth mindset and learning culture is embedded and reinforced across all communication, starting with the leadership, who openly and honestly admit when they fail. Fail well and learn from it is the way they see it, and it’s clear to me that this is one of the many reasons their team is so successful. It’s also something a lot of businesses could learn from.