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 more inclusive approach is possible. It can be as simple as a belonging cue like coming over and sitting with a teammate at meetings (as a senior) through to asking for everyone’s views in team meetings. It starts with belonging. And we needing to understand that we have this not only a psychological but biological need to belong. Once we have a sense of belonging, our anxiety levels start to come down and our dopamine levels, oxytocin levels, you know this stuff better than me, Michael, they become imbalance and we get into this optimal state where we can go and compete from. So belonging is somewhere where we start from. For me, a critical factor of high-performing teams is this idea of a vision and they visualize it as deeply as an individual visualizes their own performance. Having a shared vision

Belonging : The Ancient Code of Togetherness: The Belonging : The Ancient Code of Togetherness: The

There’s only going to be one winner of a world cup. Or one winner of the NFL. And one Olympic gold medalist. And so a lot of my work is not just preparing people to be successful, it’s also helping them overcome the pain and suffering of not achieving their dreams and being disappointed. And I suppose the more I do this work, maybe I regard that as actually more important, I’ve spoken with athletes who have spoken to me, and then I’ve got them to talk to the team about what it feels like when they are suffering and not achieving their goals and their dreams. How does he help people move through disappointing outcomes?Humans need to belong, it is an element of performance. “We try to signal to players that this is a place where you belong. You are respected, this is a safe place, we want you to be yourself and express yourself.” In BELONGING Owen Eastwood reveals, for the first time, the ethos that has made him one of the most in-demand Performance Coaches in the world. Drawing on his own Maori ancestry, Owen weaves together insights from homo sapiens’ evolutionary story and our collective wisdom. He shines a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around the world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts and military. My father's death] was obviously very traumatic for [all three of his children]. I suppose we all had different ways of coping with it… from a very early stage I was very reflective of the fact that he was part-Māori and part-English and I felt like connecting with those cultures would connect me to him."

Owen Eastwood - Finding Mastery Owen Eastwood - Finding Mastery

Connecting to the future requires asking what the team’s vision is - what they are working towards and what the environment needs to enable and drive towards. To create this within a team, Owen borrows from New Zealand culture the "incredibly powerful idea" of whakapapa (a genealogical thread). For small business, their tribe may be defined at the start as the founders. Their mission is survival. Once their viability is established they then move on to making the enterprise sustainable over the medium term. As the business evolves, their definition of their tribe widens to include employees and customers. Once language emerged, Homo sapiens began congregating around the campfire to tell and share the Us story. This helped to promote our survival by keeping the group bonded together and aligned in the face of surrounding challenges. For 99 percent of human history we were hunter-gatherers and [people] had to feed the village and they only had each other. They had to organise each other, they had to create relationships of trust, they had to be really clear on what they were doing, they had to make sure they had the skills to achieve it, and they were really honed in on that. They also understood what made teams weak and avoided those things."The sun rose in the east and shone on our first ancestor. Here is our origin story. Just as happens with each passing day, the sun slowly moves down this unbreakable chain of people. Each of us will have our time in the sun. But the sun is always moving. Moving towards the west, where it will finally settle. When the sun shines on us we are alive, we are strong. For we have had passed down to us a culture that immerses us in deep belonging. We feel safe and respected. We share beliefs and a sense of identity with those around us and this anchors us. We share a purpose with them. We share a vision of the future. We fit in here. Rituals and traditions tie us together. The experiences and wisdom of those who walked in the light before our time are passed on to us. The author interweaves his own story and heritage into the book, and introduces us to the important idea of ‘whakapapa’. Eastwood defines this as, “When the sun is shining on us, we must be guardians of our tribe and of each other. This is how I have come to understand whakapapa.” 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. Studies show how storytelling ability enhances a leader’s influence and power through shifting the hormonal state of the group. —> I should find powerful storytellers like Orran and work closely with them.

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

This week’s conversation is with Owen Eastwood, a Performance Coach engaged by high profile teams around the world hunting for a competitive advantage through their culture. 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. 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. Owen places this concept at the core of his methods to maximise a team’s performance. 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. Youth suicide is a huge concern in Aotearoa and the world in general. If this book’s concept of belonging and the marvellous metaphor it uses to convey whakapapa could be taught to all children, surely fewer of our rangatahi (precious young) would question their place, their value, their purpose on Earth. And more people would understand their obligation to be 'good ancestors'.

In BELONGING Owen Eastwood reveals, for the first time, the ethos that has made him one of the most in-demand Performance Coaches in the world. Drawing on his own Maori ancestry, Owen weaves together insights from homo sapiens' evolutionary story and our collective wisdom. He shines a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around the world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts and military. Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ model says the base need for humans is physiological survival. The next level is safety, then our need for belonging. These are the three base needs. Once they are met, we move to the psychological need for esteem and then self-actualisation. A couple of months ago, Suzi sent me a copy of Owen Eastwood’s book, Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness. She thought it would give me insight into many things we talked about while we worked on her book. The book did a lot more than that. 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. The most important thing to me is that we go through the experience of joy or disappointment together. And the thing that will break my heart and make me look at myself and think I have failed is that, if either of those scenarios play out and we become a bunch of individuals. And we either become heroes and look at ourselves as some form of celebrity because we’re successful or alternatively, we splinter apart and go and suffer alone either of those situations. His cherished framework