A man for all seasons

Humphrey Walters inspires both corporate and sporting teams alike to achieve world beating, inspirational performances. Steven Myatt meets a man at the top of his game. - Arbuthnot Latham Private Life Magazine Spring 2010 - www.arbuthnotlatham.co.uk

It’s not an easy job, putting a label on Humphrey Walters. He lectures on motivation, but there’s a lot more to the man than that. He’s an author, but that’s just another top of his professional iceberg. He speaks on leadership and team building in schools and other educational institutions, but he’s far more than an educator.

He is perhaps best known as a creator of teams; be they in the sporting world or in business. With wide commercial experience to his credit, Humphrey has taken business principles into sport and says that there are many parallel’s to be made between the two worlds. There are, he says, two important differences though; ‘A business team is inherently stable. You have a boss and an accepted hierarchy and though there will always be office politics, it’s not usual to be trying to oust your team mate. Members of a business team tend to toe the line, and you have to introduce an element of your instability and uncertainty. You have to tell them to go and do the job - which will involve taking risks’.

“A sporting team in exactly the opposite: it’s inherently unstable by definition. Substitutes are people watching those on the pitch, certain that they could do a better job. With a sporting team you have instability and you have to deal with it”

Humphrey makes the points that being a team player doesn’t mean everyone confirming to a lowest common denominator. Every team needs mavericks, he says if everyone is too concencered about being team member than no one does anything out of the ordinary for fear of upsetting the other team members. All teams, be they sportsmen and women in business teams need what we know these days as a mission statement. “People will fight for a right but they will die for cause,” he says. “Many mission statements you see are completely vacuous. There has to be real emotion.” Humphrey worked closely with the England Rugby team which won the world cup in 2003, and in sitting in a pub in Devon – he told Clive Woodward (now Sir Clive Woodward, of course) that theirs should be “it is our duty to inspire the nation.” “I wrote that on a beer mat – and thats what we did. Even if you aren’t a rugby fan I bet you remember winning the World Cup... and probably where you were when they did. We left a legacy of excellence.”

In 1996/97 he sailed around the world on the yacht Ocean Rover in the BT Global Challenge. “What I found on that trip is that while leadership is very important, ‘followership’ is always twice as important. “He explains “Team members have to have a code of behaviour and to look after each other to make everything work. And you have to have agreed that you’re going to support the leader. You may disagree with the boss’s decisions but you have to disagree agreeably. If you want great Leadership then you have to demonstrate good Followership.”

In 2005 Sir Anthony Bamford, head of JCB, called in Humphrey to create a team for their assault on a land speed record the following year. It was a record attempt with a difference: JCB’s earth movers are powered by diesel engines, and Sir Anthony wanted to use one of their motors to establish a -new record for diesel –engineed vehicles.

“JCB really is like a big family,” Humphrey says, “and what Sir Anthony wanted to do was inspires his own work force. It wasn’t necessarily about selling more diggers; it was about company pride.” He said to me “I want to show my people how good they are.” The engines power was taken from 170 bhp to around 750 bhp and it hit an average speed of 350.092mph (563.418kph) at Bonneville Salt Flats on August 23 rd 2006. “We had five different groups of people and my job was to bring them all together and make sure that everyone knew what everyone else was doing, and why. It was essential that before we even started everyone really got to know each other and understood their strengths”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Humphrey is himself a dedicated sportsman – he plays rugby, squash, and cricket and had run more than thirty marathons – and firmly believes the benefit of sport.

Some eight years ago, Humphrey meets Peter Keech from Arbuthnot Latham’s Exeter office at a supper party held by a mutual friend’s house near his home in Devon. “I was stuck in the bureaucracy of a big bank,” Humphrey recalls “And every time I wanted to do something it took about six weeks to get a decision. I’ve never not paid a bill and never lived beyond my means, but they treat me like that.”

Humphrey was impressed that Peter didn’t try to over-sell himself or push him to move bank; he merely suggested that he might like to drop by and have a chat. Humphrey hadn’t heard of Arbuthnot Latham but was impressed enough to take matters further.

“So far as the bank is concerned, they key thing for me is speed – because that equals trust,” he says; “I can ring someone up and get fast decision. The paper work comes later. That’s priceless”

In coming to Arbuthnot Latham wasn’t looking for banker, I was looking for a relationship; someone who would understand where I was coming from, and who could give me the answers I was looking for. It’s what I call the ‘Winning Zone’ – I need people who are capable of doing things that other people haven’t even thought about.