Creating an Us story involves immersing yourself in three dimensions of an Us story: the past, present and future.

Owen Eastwood | LinkedIn Owen Eastwood | LinkedIn

Some highly-regarded sports coaches are obsessed with tactics and selection but don't put enough emphasis on how to get the best out of people once they've brought the team together, Owen says. Our ancestors deeply understood our primal need to belong, and now we’re beginning to see psychology and nueroscience begin to gather the proof for their instinct. A visual, shared vision: Eastwood proposes that visualisation can be a powerful tool; imaginging a successful future and believing in it. This can also become a literal vision, with displays, videos, and other visuals being utilised to constantly remind the team of how they belong, and the story they are part of. It’s vital to get input from others so that the vision is genuinely shared. This culminates in his description of a beautiful project he worked on with Ford as part of their desire to galvanise their Le Mans 24 team. Don’t worry. There won’t be a quiz on this. Besides, the entire book fleshes out the spiritual idea with practical meanings and examples. What takes the more than a book about a spiritual idea is the way Eastwood uses whakapapa to improve the performance of teams. As he says, “Beyond kin, whakapapa frames our connection to any group we belong to.” Our basic human wiring is the same as our hunter gatherer forbearers. We have the same primal needs to belong to a group that has a shared purpose and shared values that drive performance. Those were necessary to survival for our ancestors.

Belonging is never a state that is permanently achieved. It is something we continually monitor and evaluate" Culture never stands still. Every day it shifts. How we deal with new stations redefines who we really are and how we really do things. When new people come into the environment and others leave, the dynamic changes. One of the great risks in sustaining a strong culture is where there is a transition between leaders.

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness by Owen Eastwood Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness by Owen Eastwood

Players for a team, for example, may be given their national team shirts and asked to write on them what it personally meant to play for that team. This visual activity is effective.We may become more aggressive, though we are likely to target that at those people who owe perceive as having lowered status than us. Eastwood says that ability to form groups is an essential human trait. Great teams harness the belonging idea. Belonging confers safety, whether it’s psychological safety or the safety from physical danger. Belonging provides a shared purpose and vision. And belonging establishes values and norms of the group that influence the behavior of group members. And for the 'Mundie on Monday' newsletter - featuring three of the best Life Lessons from three years and more than 150 of these conversations - head to simonmundie.com

Owen Eastwood - Finding Mastery Owen Eastwood - Finding Mastery

An understanding of the environment and its impact on people is more important than charisma and passion. Plus clarity of thinking. “Humans flourish in environments where the leadership is consistent and composed; they don’t tend to thrive in environments where there are wild mood swings and inconsistency of behaviour.” In a family, that signifies your life, in a sports team the time you get to wear the shirt. “When the sun is shining on you you have an obligation to make the tribe stronger, and ultimately what you achieve when the sun is shining on you is going to be your legacy, the memory that people will hold of you in the future.” Finally, a huge thanks to my sponsors, Puresport. Their range of CBD and Nootropics supplements have had a significant impact on how I sleep, manage stress, and focus throughout the day. I can’t recommend them enough.Whakapapa. You belong here.Whakapapa is a Maori idea which embodies our universal human need to belong. It represents a powerful spiritual belief - that each of us is part of an unbroken and unbreakable chain of people who share a sacred identity and culture.Owen Eastwood places this concept at the core of his methods to maximise a team's performance. In this book he reveals, for the first time, the ethos that has made him one of the most in-demand Performance Coaches in the world.In Belonging, Owen weaves together insights from homo sapiens' evolutionary story and ancestral wisdom. He shines a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around our world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts and military.Aspects of Owen's unique approach include: finding your identity story; defining a shared purpose; visioning future success; sharing ownership with others; understanding the 'silent dance' that plays out in groups; setting the conditions to unleash talent; and converting our diversity into a competitive advantage. A copy of Eastwood's new book, Belonging , was given to every England player when they reported for duty at the European Championships' - Telegraph

Belonging: The Ancient Code - Yumpu Full[PDF]⚡Download⚡ Belonging: The Ancient Code - Yumpu

An interesting read on high-performance cultures with a solid set of principles built on primal instincts rather than MBA speak. Loses its focus for the final third of the book where it begins to feel slightly rushed but a very interested read nonetheless. To create this within a team, Owen borrows from New Zealand culture the "incredibly powerful idea" of whakapapa (a genealogical thread). Where the book comes into its own is when describing how to create an identity within a team and then working out the clarity of the behavioural norms that guide members’ interactions with one another. It emphasises my own view that nobody wants their leader’s personal beliefs forced upon them. And that co-designing culture has far more lasting potential on a team's levels of performance. Whakapapa points a finger at us and tells us, you will not be judged by your money or celebrity or sense of self pride . . . you will be judged by what you did for our tribe. When the sun is shining on us, we must be guardians of our tribe and of each other. All well and good. But if you work in a corporate, you can’t manufacture a sense of tradition can you? Indeed you at best might see your current position as transitory and your boss themselves may have only been in place for a matter of months.Why would you turn a blind eye to such a valuable lessons within our Us story? When a culture’s resilience is questioned through a mistake or malpractice, the story must be “carved into the walls” so that our descendants can learn from them. Constantly people who exhibit talent are told they're amazing, they're great, they are given celebrity status, they're given lots of money… so everything is telling them 'you are important, it's all about you' and we know if we want to get the best out of a team that is potentially dangerous for us. Working with the NATO Command Group, Eastwood invoked whakapapa to reflect on previous NATO Command Groups, looking at the challenges they faced when the sun shone on them and the legacies they ultimately left. They then previewed their own legacy as the sixteenth leadership team and articulated this in writing with a whakapapa legacy statement. Before the Industrial Revolution we mostly worked with family members and people we knew. We often performed a variety of tasks. There was no such thing as “work life balance” because life was whole. In building teams, leaders need to understand that people are highly tuned to receive the story of Us. Herein lies an opportunity for leaders to connect with and influence teams at a deeper level. Great leaders widen the Us story so that every person in their group feels a genuine sense of belonging.