The SME Stream

How do you build People & Culture capability when you're supporting more than 150 organisations, all with different structures, resources, challenges, and communities?
In this episode of HR Unlocked, Lisa Oakley sits down with Claire George, Acting Business Capability Manager at Sport New Zealand, to explore what it takes to strengthen leadership and people capability across the sports sector.
Rather than supporting one internal workforce, Claire and her team work across Sport New Zealand's partner organisations, helping lift capability in areas including governance, technology, change management, commercial capability, and People & Culture.
For Claire, relationships are fundamental. Sport New Zealand is also a funder of many of the organisations it supports, which means creating enough trust for leaders to openly share when things aren't going well is critical. When those relationships exist, Claire says there is an opportunity to do some powerful work.
The conversation explores the realities facing sporting organisations that don't have dedicated HR teams. In many cases, people responsibilities sit with a CEO, finance professional, or another leader alongside their existing role. Claire shares why the answer isn't adding more complexity, but making good people practices simple, practical, and easier to apply.
Lisa and Claire also unpack the unusual dynamic created when people care deeply about the organisation they work for. In sport, work can be closely connected to someone's identity, community, recreation, and personal relationships. That passion can create extraordinary engagement and commitment, but it can also make change more emotionally charged and make it harder for people to switch off.
Wellbeing and burnout are therefore important parts of the conversation, alongside the responsibility organisations and individuals have to create sustainable ways of working.
Claire also shares lessons from Sport New Zealand's leadership development programmes, including the importance of embedding te ao Māori rather than treating it as an add-on, creating genuinely diverse cohorts, and giving leaders opportunities to learn from one another.
Ultimately, this episode is a practical conversation about keeping People & Culture grounded in what organisations and people actually need: trusted relationships, good conversations, strong leadership, simple processes, and capability that prepares the sector for what's next.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
How Sport New Zealand supports People & Culture capability across more than 150 partner organisations

Why trusted relationships are essential when influencing without direct authority

How to decide when a sector-wide solution works and when an organisation needs tailored support

Why People & Culture needs to connect with organisational strategy

The realities of managing people without a dedicated HR function

Why HR should make doing the right thing easier, not more complicated

How good questions help diagnose the real people issue

Why relationships can be considered a synonym for leadership

Which fundamental HR processes smaller organisations need to get right

Why performance conversations matter for both high and lower performers

How People & Culture expertise can add value to senior leadership conversations

Why passion can be both a strength and a challenge in sporting organisations

How someone's work, identity, community, and personal life can become intertwined in sport

Why organisational change can become particularly emotionally charged in purpose-led environments

How boards can think more deliberately about CEO capability and recruitment

Why organisations shouldn't expect to find a leadership "unicorn"

How scaffolding capability around a leader can be more effective than expecting one person to do everything

Why collaboration between sporting organisations is a strength of the sector

How passion can contribute to burnout when people struggle to switch off

Why recovery sometimes requires doing something completely different from your work

How EAP and professional supervision can support people working in challenging roles

What Sport New Zealand has learned from its leadership development programmes

Why embedding te ao Māori strengthens leadership development

How the Puna leadership framework supports leadership capability

Why diversity within leadership cohorts creates richer learning

How changing expectations around work, technology, and volunteering could reshape the sports workforce

Why retaining capability within the sector can matter as much as retaining someone within one organisation

How AI and technology could free people to focus on more valuable human work

Why the future of People & Culture should involve greater simplicity, not greater complexity

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Relationships are fundamental to leadership. Being able to build trust, have real conversations, work through difficult issues, and understand what's happening for people is a genuine leadership capability.
People & Culture doesn't need to be complicated. Processes, policies, and systems should make it easier for people to do the right thing.
Context matters. The HR answer isn't automatically the right organisational answer.
Small organisations still need the fundamentals in place, particularly employment agreements and effective performance conversations.
Performance isn't only about addressing problems. Regular conversations help high performers stretch, develop, and avoid leaving capability untapped.
Passion is a major strength in sport, but it comes with leadership challenges. When someone's work is closely connected to their identity and community, change and conflict can become more personal.
Highly engaged people can still burn out. Leaders need to understand the difference between commitment and sustainable performance.
Organisations don't need leaders who can do everything. They need to understand what capability they need now, what can be developed, and what can be complemented by the wider leadership team or board.
Collaboration is a major strength of the sports sector. Organisations and leaders can build capability by sharing knowledge and learning from each other.
Te ao Māori can create a powerful foundation for leadership development when it is genuinely embedded rather than treated as an addition.
Technology should reduce the administrative burden and create more time for the human work that matters.
The more transactional work technology removes, the more valuable skills such as relationships, feedback, conflict management, curiosity, and good conversations become.
Future capability needs to be considered at a sector level. Someone moving from one sporting organisation to another doesn't necessarily mean capability has been lost.
People professionals need to understand the organisation before prescribing the solution. Bring your expertise, but be curious first.
ABOUT CLAIRE GEORGE
Claire George is Acting Business Capability Manager at Sport New Zealand, where her work focuses on strengthening organisational and people capability across the sports sector.
Working with more than 150 Sport New Zealand partner organisations, Claire supports capability development across People & Culture alongside a wider team working across areas including governance, technology, change management, and commercial capability.
Her work spans leadership development, organisational capability, wellbeing, performance, change, and helping organisations create practical people practices that work within the realities of their size and resources.
Claire is particularly passionate about relationships, building sustainable workplaces, developing strong leaders, and helping sporting organisations create environments where people feel connected, supported, and able to perform at their best.
WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS
Sport presents a unique People & Culture challenge.
Many organisations operate with small teams, limited resources, passionate volunteers, and no dedicated HR function, while the people working within them can have an unusually deep personal connection to the organisation, sport, and community.
That creates enormous potential, but also real challenges around leadership, change, wellbeing, performance, and burnout.
Claire's experience offers lessons that extend well beyond sport.
For HR professionals, CEOs, boards, business owners, and people leaders, this episode is a reminder that good People & Culture isn't about building more processes. It's about understanding context, creating trusted relationships, simplifying the fundamentals, having conversations early, and building the capability people will need for the future.
RESOURCES & LINKS
Sport New Zealand: https://sportnz.org.nz/
Connect with Claire George on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-george-a90713110/
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