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From Rugby to Business: A Playbook For Growing Resilient Leaders and High Performance Cultures in Fintech

From Rugby to Business: A Playbook For Growing Resilient Leaders and High Performance Cultures in Fintech

Making the leap from elite sport to the business world is more common than you might think. For every athlete that stays in the sporting ecosystem there could well be 10 others that go into other industries, including business.

The reality is they are actually well suited to that environment.

From exceptional time management, resilience to extreme highs and lows and a pretty good working knowledge of data analysis, there are a surprising number of cross compatible skills. A 2023 study by Deloitte found that over 70% of corporate executives were former college athletes, and another study from 2023 found that 93% of female executives earning over $100,000 had sporting backgrounds.

Many industries would benefit from the insights of a former elite sportsperson and fintech is no different. It’s a space full of disruptive startups all fighting to survive but it’s also a space of immense growth and potential. Fintech founders and leaders will have had to weather a range of experiences that are not dissimilar to challenging for a league title, chasing a world record or competing in a competition.

As such we’re interested in what we can learn from those who have straddled both worlds.

James Stokes is just such an individual. A former professional rugby player for Premiership club London Irish, he is now Director of Development for The Performance Chain, a business consultancy, aiming to transform businesses using the tools and behaviours from elite sport. His career saw him play in all 6 tiers of rugby in this country, winning multiple league titles and playing at the top level for a number of seasons with London Irish, concluding with a stint for RFC Los Angeles.

By his own admission it’s not been an easy ride but has had periods of success. Covid-19 put a temporary halt to his career trajectory after making his way through the tiers to arrive in the Premiership but he was re-signed after the restart. Another big blow came when his former club London Irish went into administration in 2023. Without a club and once again scrambling for work, he ended up getting an opportunity across the pond for RFC Los Angeles, part of the US Major League Rugby. When this ended prematurely, he decided it was time to venture into the business world.

We had the chance to speak to him about his journey and how his experiences have impacted his outlook on life and business. He recognises the resilience he’s gained and many of the transferable skills that he’s had to pull on throughout his career. Some might have faltered given the challenges he’s faced, but he views things a little differently.

​​Leaving professional sport isn’t always easy. How have the skills gained in professional sport and the challenges associated with leaving, helped you in your career since?

Aiming to do the things you can control, and doing them well has always helped. If you focus on the granular, it usually adds up to the greater goal. You can get lost in your thoughts, but if you zone in on doing those individual behaviours really well, it adds up. So I’ve always been very focused on doing the simple things really well.

The other thing is goal setting. As athletes we set goals on a daily, weekly, yearly and seasonal basis. But we also constantly review those processes looking at how you can adapt and improve by regularly reviewing the way you function? Then there’s resilience. I’ve played in the top league, the Premiership, all the way to the 6th tier of English Rugby. So I’ve been in a lot of dressing rooms. I’ve seen some incredible performers but I’ve also seen incredible leaders, and team cultures and what they’re built on.

Managing loss and performance is also something you experience a lot when playing, so the ability to pick yourself back up again is important. One of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve received is, ‘You don’t get too high when you win, and you don’t get too low when you lose’. It’s normal to feel emotion when you go through something you care about but you can also see it as a great opportunity. I’m a big believer in opportunity always follows adversity.

I’m not saying that it’s the only way you can discover that, but it’s definitely put me in a good position to handle those obstacles and bumps in the road.

Why did you decide to do what you’re doing now with The Performance Chain and 24 Hour Leader?

The Performance Chain is essentially a leadership and organisational consultancy using elite sport behaviours to transform business and increase productivity.

I’ve seen the power of good leadership and the impact of bad leadership. When it’s done badly it can result in poor financial performance, poor work culture, and poor talent retention as well. So investing in leadership is one side of our business.

We also have The 24-hour Leader programme which is a comprehensive two year wellbeing programme both for individuals from multiple companies, and teams in individual business. Through this we educate and empower people on what we see as the 3 pillars of high performance: Leadership and Team Dynamics being two of them. Included in that is Energy Management: How are you fuelling yourself, how are you recovering, sleeping, hydrating? Where or who are you gaining energy from in the day?

Finally, is our Total Wellness pillar. We look at the emotional, the cognitive, the social, the physical and the financial support as well. Our aim is to transform lives from day one all the way to the end of the two-year programme. There’s a huge community aspect to it too, where you’re in an environment with high-performing people.

Progressing on your own is difficult but, to use an example from sport, if you see another athlete doing the extras, then you’re more likely to want to do those extras. That was my experience. Once upon a time, Jonny Wilkinson would be the only one doing more after training. In my last year of rugby, you’d be hard pressed to find a single player not doing extras. Simply sitting near a high-performer boosts your own performance.

Our 24-hour Leader programme is all about your journey. We’re not expecting people to come in from day one and become Navy SEALs or the Jonny Wilkinsons of the world. It’s about finding your own high-performance routine, and making incremental changes towards the greater goal.

How does what you do apply to an industry like Fintech, and why is it important that we have better leaders and better company culture?

A lot of what we do applies to Fintech whether it’s around innovation or building teams. Finding a shared vision and pulling the team together to work towards the greater goal.

A strong company culture is essential, and that comes through buy-in from both the employee and the employer. My experience is that if someone is empowered, really enjoying the process and is working hard, and rewarded for it, then it’s an amazing place to work and the results come. It goes back to working at the granular level again.

Fintech is obviously a customer-centric industry as well. So leaders need to foster a culture where employees prioritize the customer first. It’s obviously also a competitive market so you need resilience under pressure.

That’s a big part of what we’re looking to instill. There’s also the importance of diversity and inclusion as well. A thriving company culture is very reliant on those things. My experience of that is some of the best cultures that I’ve ever been a part of really encapsulate every person from around the world.

What are some of the challenges that modern companies are facing in our unique moment in history, both in terms of the people in the organisation and also the context they’re operating in?

Employee engagement and employee wellbeing are at an all-time low. Stress and burnout as well – I think about 42% of employees report feeling burnt out. The economy is losing trillions to Absenteeism as well as Presenteeism – [This is when an employee shows up to work but does not actually work or works less, due to sickness, stress etc]. I recently read a study where 97% of employers think they’re doing a really good job of managing their people, while 69% of employees say they’re experiencing bad managers. Simply put, the current state of workplace culture isn’t sustainable.

I’ve also spoken to a number of senior leaders who are facing difficulty with generational dynamics too, as the new generation comes through. But it comes back to the foundation of building a high performing team, which is trust. If you have trust between one generation and another, then it’s a lot easier to have tough conversations and cohesion.

Obviously, there’s also the AI topic. I’m no expert, but, more and more industries and companies are looking to integrate AI, which is having an impact on people. I know there’s been an enormous amount of redundancies across many industries. Add in economic instability, a certain presidential change… and you create the perfect storm of uncertainty. Regardless of what’s going on though – looking back across my career – in uncertain times, it’s important to do the things you can control, put your best foot forward, and do the basics really, really well.

Do you have any examples of how your programs have impacted organisations you’ve worked with?

We’re now three years old, and we’ve worked with some great companies. HSBC, SoundCloud, Zoom, and more. Our largest client, based in the US, did $10 billion in revenue in 2023, so an enormous company. We did an assessment process with them, and recognised that they were operating in silos. They didn’t have any operational team leadership development for over two years.

They had a fully remote workforce as well, and they suffered a decline in communication skills both internally and at the customer level, so we developed a six-month program with them. We started off with eight people, and after the first session, they came back and decided they were going to put around 250 people through the program. The change we saw from the business was incredible – their numbers of customers increased by 25% in six months, and they achieved a 35% in their employee net promoter score. We’re now working with them to help other areas of their business with performance issues.

We’re very data-driven, and just like the fintech industry, we’re very customer-centric, so we aim for a bespoke approach. Something that applies to one company won’t necessarily apply to others, so we tailor what we offer to get the best results.

Get in touch with James to find out more about The Performance Chain and The 24 Hour Leader programme, which includes learning from world class performance experts, including Wendy Borlabi, Director of Performance and Mental Health at the Chicago Bulls, Dehra Harris, Former Assistant Director of Performance at the Toronto Bluejays and Founder and CEO, Neil Tunnah.

James email is james@theperformancechain.com
You can also find him on Linkedin.

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