Where fierce collaboration meets winning team spirit

GB Snowsport’s Performance Director Kearnan Myall and Toby Sisson, Group Head of HR at McGill and Partners, discuss how to create a world-beating team spirit.

Britain’s skiers and snowboarders are now united behind a shared goal – to make the UK a top five snow sports nation. As a result, a new team spirit has emerged that has helped the country more than double its medal tally in Olympic disciplines over the past four years, compared to the previous Olympic cycle.

According to the leadership of GB Snowsport, they have underpinned this team cohesion by prioritising a culture of trust that has encouraged a collaborative, one-team approach. It has helped Britain compete successfully against the world’s greatest snow sports nations, such as Austria, Switzerland and the US.

Toby Sisson, Group Head of HR at McGill and Partners, says: “I think for any challenger brand, whether it’s GB Snowsport or McGill and Partners, the culture isn’t just part of the strategy. It has to be the strategy. When we’re up against larger, more established competitors, we can’t outspend them and, certainly in the beginning, we couldn’t point to years and years of delivery. So, we had to outthink and out manoeuvre them but, most importantly, we had to out collaborate them.”

He says that McGill and Partners has rallied everyone behind a single, compelling vision: to be a boutique firm with global reach that can challenge the status quo for the benefit of its clients and colleagues. The culture that supports this is based on the core pillars of trust, a one-team approach and putting people first.

1. A culture of trust

Trust is the single most important ingredient of GB Snowsport’s culture, according to the organisation’s leadership. It operates across 12 very different disciplines, meaning athletes might be training anywhere from the Alps to New Zealand at any given time. Although the team is often dispersed, everyone is trusted to manage their own training programme and work towards the team’s common goal in the way that is best for them.

Kearnan Myall, Performance Director of GB Snowsport and a former professional rugby player, explains: “The level of commitment that our athletes and coaches display is beyond anything I’ve witnessed. As an elite athlete you are fully committed to what you are doing.”

Similarly, at McGill and Partners, every colleague is an owner and many have invested their own money in the firm, which underlines their commitment to its success. It encourages a team spirit that is underpinned by the Contract of Trust, which sets out how the firm and its employees agree to work together. Everyone who joins the firm commits to this contract, which gives them the autonomy, support and resources they need to do their best work. There are no set working hours or working locations.

Sisson explains: “The classic employment relationship is about telling people what not to do. It’s all designed to deal with people who are bad actors in a firm. Our approach is to be different. We have sought to build a firm for the 99% of good colleagues, not to build one to ultimately deal with the 1% who don’t achieve or sustain the performance or behavioural standards that we are looking for.”

2. A one-team approach

Breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration is essential for organisations that want to create a strong team spirit. At GB Snowsport, key team members such as physios and strength coaches work across disciplines, and at events such as last year’s Freestyle World Championships in Switzerland, athletes book into the same hotels to socialise and support each other.

Myall explains: “My background is in rugby. I’ve worked in teams that have incredible team spirit, which just sort of appears out of nowhere, but it’s the individuals within that team that look after each other and support each other and have a shared, collective goal and drive. And then I’ve been involved in teams where there’s all the talent in the world, but there’s just something not quite right. It’s not quite gelling together.”

He adds: “This is one of the things that’s great about rugby. If you look at the All Blacks, for example, they talk about leaving the shirt in a better place than when you arrived. It makes it bigger than you as an individual. You’re not there to fulfil your goals and needs. You are part of something that has a long history and will have a long history afterwards.” He adds: “For any team or club, that type of team spirit is the foundation that everything else is built on.”

McGill and Partners recognises the benefit of breaking down silos within the organisation and operates a single profit and loss account, which encourages cross-pollination in the business. The cargo team, for example, can work seamlessly with the cyber risk team, ensuring clients can benefit from the expertise of both.

Sisson says: “Looking at team spirit and what brings people together for us, it’s actually the natural collaboration. We use the word collaboration a lot and it centres for most colleagues around the excitement of being part of a “build story”. Many of the people who have joined us have come because they’re excited about being part of a build story rather than just turning the handle in a large corporation.”

Myall tells the story of how GB Snowsport’s Head Coach drastically redirected his travel plans, diverting a homeward journey to ensure he was in Geneva to hand over a pair of skis to a coach arriving at the airport, before recommencing his travel home – the epitome of team spirit. On the McGill and Partners side, Sisson says that in the early days, potential candidates were asked how they felt about putting office furniture together. Whilst no one actually had to do that the aim was to identify how prepared people were to collaborate in any way necessary for the good of the team.

Team GB Snowsports facing snow mountains together

3. Putting people first

Maintaining a high-performing team means promoting the wellbeing of its individual members. Once GB Snowsport has identified the most talented athletes, says Myall, it invests in everything from tailored training programmes for the individual athletes and support while they are on tour or injured, to mindfulness courses designed to relieve the stresses of major competitions.

Similarly, McGill and Partners prioritises nurturing team members. The firm’s groundbreaking colleague value proposition includes not only uncapped holidays but also 12 months of paid maternity leave, six months of paid paternity leave and a six week fully paid sabbatical every five years. Everybody participates in a global discretionary bonus pool and receives a quarterly wellbeing allowance to spend on activities or equipment.

Sisson explains: “What has informed so much of what we've done is that we're very much a people first organisation. You know, I think we have always fundamentally believed that investing in our people's wellbeing, success and growth means that we really can provide exceptional client service and, in turn, business success, as the natural result.”

He adds: “People have busy lives and traditional nine-to-five didn’t necessarily work for everybody – and there’s the issue that it caused with diversity. We expect people to do the right thing by the clients and, more importantly, they’ve got to do the right things by their colleagues. And because everybody is in the same boat, it’s very much those around them that keep people honest. We hire people for their skills and, quite frankly, for their judgement. We trust them to manage their workload and we trust them to manage their responsibilities.”

The takeaway? Building high-performing teams in business isn’t all that different from building successful teams in sport. Trust, collaboration and taking care of the people who deliver that success are all essential ingredients to fuel a business capable of taking on industry giants.

Kearnan Myall

Performance Director, GB Snowsport

Toby Sisson

Group Head of HR at McGill and Partners