Justin Hughes writes on issues relating to team and organisational performance. A former Red Arrows pilot, he is now Managing Director of Mission Excellence, a consultancy which exists to be the first-choice partner for organisations genuinely committed to high performance. ​Justin previously spent 12 years as an RAF fighter pilot and is a renowned speaker on performance and risk and has presented alongside Richard Branson and Kofi Annan. He can be found on Twitter at @JustinMissionEx.

An inappropriate interview question

Imagine being in an interview and being asked: ‘Can you tell me about any childhood trauma you experienced?’

Uncomfortable? Deeply inappropriate? Irrelevant?

The first two are almost certainly true, the last possibly less so…

The case for being inappropriate…

Sir Bradley Wiggins, Britain’s most successful ever Olympian, as measured by total number of medals (eight, including five gold), had a difficult relationship with his father, who left his family when Wiggins was two. 

They were briefly in contact again in Wiggins’ late teens, but Bradley quickly became disillusioned with his father’s life choices and contact ceased. When Wiggins Sr died in 2008, Bradley did not attend the funeral.  One of Wiggins’ coaches was once heard to say:

To prioritise leadership over functional skills is an intellectual leap of faith. Return on investment will not be seen this quarter and maybe not this year.

‘To be a professional cyclist, you need to be able to hold your hand in the fire; Brad could always hold his hand in the fire longer than anyone else.’

Could that be related to his childhood? Is there even a connection?

Some time ago, a friend of mine, who is a leading doctor in elite sport, described to me a hypothesis he had seen presented. The presenter, highly respected in his own right, had conducted an extensive analysis to try and identify common factors in serial winners at the highest levels of sport.

He found that two criteria came up many times:

• Significant childhood trauma during the pivotal pre-teen years
• Crossed paths with a top-flight coach whilst still a teenager

And then last Saturday, Matthew Parris presented a hypothesis in the The Times under the title: ‘Broken childhoods can be a spur to greatness.’

Evidence presented included Edward Lear, Carl Jung, Rudyard Kipling, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Coco Chanel.

I reproduce Parris’ closing words here:

‘There are trees in Australia whose seeds will not germinate unless scorched in a fire, cracking what encases the kernel. What we mean by ‘genius’ is that kernel, what we mean by ‘greatness’ is too various to be captured in words, yet the terms have meaning and rarely mean less than striking out beyond the familiar.  For this, I contend, something first has to break.’

So what?

As a natural cynic of arguments subject to significant confirmation bias and hidden assumptions, I accept that the case presented above is hardly watertight.

It ignores other many other factors, the role of chance and the inherent danger in retrospective attribution of cause and effect. But there is a case, of which I have only scratched the surface of the evidence.  Something has to produce the drive, the desire to win or please, the need to receive external validation… not everybody has it. 

What are the lessons for those responsible for identifying talent? Make trauma mandatory for infants?  Select against that criterion? This self-evident nonsense indicates the nature of the problem.

Skills, intellect and, to some extent, even emotional intelligence, can be measured.

I know of no psychometric or test, perhaps other than the extreme selection processes used by special forces, which measures the ‘will to win’.  However, Churchill identified this as the single most important factor in a general (many of whom he fired). 

Focus on what you can actually assess and influence

So what is the lesson? Back to the hitherto ignored second factor above – meeting the coach.

I am presenting here, my own hypothesis that whilst it is interesting and potentially useful to attempt to identify the sources of success, the mental drive and resilience of high performers are difficult, if not impossible, to pre-select against.

Leadership potential is the criterion against which recruitment, selection, development and promotion should take place.

But it is unequivocally possible for good leaders to unlock potential, to build the teams and organisations which provide the breeding grounds for high performance, from which the high performers themselves will naturally emerge.

Leadership potential is the criterion against which recruitment, selection, development and promotion should take place. 

To prioritise leadership over functional skills is an intellectual leap of faith. Return on investment will not be seen this quarter and maybe not this year.

If you focus primarily on skills, execution and short-term outcomes, you will get managers and competence.  These factors will always be essential building blocks.

However, if you want high performance, you need the people who can build the breeding grounds and to put an additional and equal, if not greater, focus on values, behaviour and ‘cultural fit’, from day one of the career management journey.

Leadership development might be a leap of faith, but the returns can be exponential.

And in contrast to the impossible task of trying to pre-select the future serial winner, you can actually do something about this one.

The Business of Excellence, by Justin Hughes, is now available to order at Bloomsbury Publishing.