Few stories in the sports world are as inspiring as that of Team GB’s hockey team, led by Hollie Pearne-Webb. Known for their teamwork and determination, this remarkable team has shown the world what can be achieved when talented individuals unite under exceptional leadership.
Today, we're sharing an exclusive interview with Hollie, where she unveils the secrets behind her team's success and the power of collective effort.
This interview not only celebrates the triumphs of Team GB but also underscores a universal truth: with the right support and collaboration, anyone can achieve extraordinary things. This is a core philosophy we embrace in our Global MBA course, where we believe that the skills and insights from leaders like Hollie can empower our students to excel in their own careers.
As part of our Team GB partnership, online MBA students will have the unique opportunity to attend a guest talk led by Hollie herself. Her experiences will offer invaluable lessons in leadership, teamwork, and resilience.
We’ll be publishing this interview in two parts, so stay tuned on our blog for part two!
Hi, I'm Hollie Pearne-Webb, I'm the current England and GB women's Hockey Captain. I have been a GB hockey player and full-time athlete now for the past 12 years.
My career has gone from my first Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, where we won our first Olympic gold medal as Great Britain Women's Hockey; then following on from Rio, I then became captain and led the team to a bronze medal in Tokyo in 2021. I have just led my team to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games where I'm aiming to be this summer.
Alongside that, I studied an economics degree, then did a finance graduate scheme so worked in civil service for eight years. I did my exams and became a chartered accountant. It wasn't until I joined the hockey programme and had my first experience with a sports psychologist that I got to appreciate what really makes a winning team and a high-performance environment.
In psychometric profiling tools I was very much a blue brain; very numbers, facts, figures, there’s a right and wrong answer. I thought the more we trained, the better we would do. However, being part of that Rio Olympic cycle and witnessing what we did as a team was amazing. We went from crashing out at a World Cup in 2014 to coming second to bottom, and then managing to win Olympic gold 18 months later.
The difference was a new psychologist coming in. She helped us work on our visions, our values and behaviours, and how we were going to hold each other accountable. The trust we then developed and the high-performing environment we created; that was the difference. It was nothing to do with our technical abilities, because they'd been the same as they were 18 months before, at the World Cup.
For me, that was a turning point. I witnessed first-hand the effects that psychology and relationships and teams can have. And that's when I made my jump into people consulting, which is now where I work.
It's hugely important to assess social dynamics in a team, and how that relates to performance. As a team captain, I'm constantly looking for signals and signs of where people are, emotionally speaking. I’m also asking where the team is and how they're feeling. Because when we’re a happy team, generally we have better performances.
I’m looking for signals of people being frustrated, feeling like they're not being listened to, if there are kinks in the team, or relationships aren't where they need to be. We've definitely had times where this has been the case, and it has had led to periods of poor performance. So I'm looking for those signals and asking those questions.
We have a team who are all on the same page – and absolutely, we're all going to be tired. We're tired all the time. We play tired. We try and hide the amount of training that we do. Mentally and physically, we’re always really tired, so it's important to have that strong squad of 32 where one person can be feeling a bit better that day, and they really help pull the other person through.
And the team dynamics are at a place where you can help the other person through. We need that person to perform and pull them through the session, to achieve what we want to achieve.
When there are frustrations or issues happening, there's noise being created in the background, and it needs to be dealt with.
We would then – as players or as a whole group – have a conversation about that to put it to bed. Because those tiny things, however insignificant they may feel and seem, can massively impact how the group feels.
And since these issues can have such an impact, they ultimately affect results and performance on the pitch. I've witnessed this first-hand when team dynamics have not been great. That's when we've had our worst performances.
Building trust, positive behaviours and skills is a huge thing within our team. You may think that since we're a sports team, we spend most of our time on the pitch training. That's not the case. We spend a lot of our time in the cabin next to the pitch, having conversations as a team and as a squad.
So we're constantly trying to build our behaviours. One of the biggest things we started to do in 2014 was set our visions, values and behaviours. We've done that repeatedly throughout the cycles and years with new squads and new groups.
And the important part there is our behaviours and values in terms of how we want to be, and how we want to go about our business. As a squad ourselves, we set the behaviours and standards we're expecting of ourselves and one another. We have those conversations and they're written down, so we know how we expect one another to turn up. I think the behaviours that we’re expecting to see are important.
We also recently undertook this method (we did this pre-Tokyo as well) where we shared our “whys” with the group. That required a lot of self-reflection in terms of “why are we here,” “why do we do what we do”. What is that desire, that inner burning that makes us keep going every day?
In this method, you sit in a group with the whole team, but there’s a real sense of vulnerability in terms of opening up. The more you're willing to be vulnerable and open up, the more others in the group do, and the more you get out of it.
So there’s a shared sense of “I'm trusting you with this,” which then helps build that trust. It helps gain a deeper understanding of where your teammates have come from, and why they might behave in certain ways, because you're getting to know them on a deeper level.
We also make sure that we take time to socialise with each other. For example, when we’re training at Bisham, we have a meal together once a week as a team. One of our behaviour rules is ‘no phones at the table.’
We’ve set that rule because it's an opportunity to talk to one another on a human level, rather than being distracted on our phones, which can happen from time to time.
We also have regular socials in the calendar. So whether we're away at tournaments or at home training, we'll make sure that we also block time in the diary to do things together, away from the hockey pitch. Again, it involves building that element of trust and getting to know each other on a deeper level.
We have numerous other conversations as well – whether that's about our psychometric profiles, how we are on a good day or a bad day, or what we need from each other. Lots of conversations to build that element of trust within the group.
Feeling inspired by these expert insights on leadership? This is just a taster of what you’ll get by joining us as a student on our 100% online MBA course. To find out how we’ll help you develop outstanding leadership skills, explore our 100% online Global MBA course: