It’s two for the price of one on this week’s podcast as I’m joined by two world-class operators. The first, Martin Buchheit, I have known and worked alongside in a Nike research and innovation group for the past five years. Until recently, he was head of performance at PSG FC, from the outside at least, one of the best jobs in football. Martin’s now working for Kitman labs, a company using analytics research to help sports teams find out what works and what doesn’t and also in a part time capacity at Lille Football Club and he’s also just released a book called EGOals, which talks about all things ego and really is an ego playbook for high performance workplaces.

His co-writer, George Perry, is my other guest. George has worked for the US Navy as an officer and now coaches in track and field in the United States and you’ll hear in this conversation how ego was integral to the ultimate path that George took with regard to his line of work.

Through their collective experiences they are authorities to talk about ego and we also discuss the stories and thoughts of many of the world-class practitioners that have also contributed to the book and that come from some of the most well know sports teams and organisations on the planet. I too was delighted to be able to contribute some of my experiences around ego, including my own, but we started the conversation with me asking them both of them how they would firstly describe what ego is.