Race Against Dementia

CLIENT: Race Against Dementia

INDUSTRY: Charity

FOCUS: Personal Leadership

DELIVERY: Virtual via E-Ignition

GUEST SPEAKERS: Duncan Bradley, CEO - McLaren Applied and

Peter Hodgkinson - Head of Employee Engagement, Mercedes F1

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Race Against Dementia (RAD) is the Charity founded by 3x Formula One World Champion, Sir Jackie Stewart OBE’s further to his wife’s diagnosis with Dementia and looks to add an “F1 attitude” into the research of the disease. The charity does this by funding postgraduate PHD Scientific Dementia Research Fellows at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, USA, University of Edinburgh, University College London and two universities in Australia. This project included collaboration with members from the McLaren and Mercedes Formula 1 teams.

At the time of announcing that Ignition Human Performance and Race Against Dementia would be working together, the charity's then CEO Dr Penny Moyle said

“This is an exciting time for RAD, as we have just opened up our applications to take on more research fellows with Alzheimer’s Research UK and have also recently agreed a partnership with Dementia Australia Research Foundation.

Teamwork is a hallmark of Formula 1 racing, and something we want to emulate in dementia research. Each of the RAD Fellows is based in a different university around the world, where they work with their ‘home team’ on different aspects of the dementia puzzle. Additionally, we are bringing them together as a virtual RAD team, with the shared objective of accelerating progress in dementia research. I have no doubt that by bringing in Ignition, they will help support this objective, training our fellows in team skills that can be applied to all the teams they work in and lead.”

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Done across three virtual sessions (across a range of different time zones!!), the main aim was to enable the Research Fellows to fully understand where they individually fitted into the RAD team, as well as being a member of their local Research team and develop their own personal leadership style using lessons and examples from the F1 grid. Joining us for the first session was Duncan Bradley, then CEO of McLaren Applied, the Applied Technologies wing of the McLaren Racing team, who was directly responsible for technical performance investments, partner development and human performance technologies for Bahrain McLaren World Tour Pro-Cycling Team to discuss "Building Leadership Techniques and Tools" and then how to apply them into their everyday work and interactions.

This was then followed up by a Teamwork session, looking at how to build a high-performance team and culture, with Peter Hodgkinson, Head of Employee Engagement from the Mercedes F1 team joining us to talk about how the 8 times Constructors Champions built a psychologically safe environment to ensure creatively and success.

This then built into the team discussing and deciding their own team values which they would agree to work towards.

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“It’s shocking to see that around 850,000 people in the UK alone are currently suffering from Dementia right now, with 1 in 3 people born today expected to develop it within their lifetime.

Whilst we can’t proclaim that Ignition is going to find the cure, as that isn’t our area of expertise, we can do our bit and support the RAD Research Fellows who can! We will look at how they work together and use the lessons from Formula 1 to become a High-Performance team and develop their own leadership styles.

As a fellow dyslexic, I have a huge respect for the work Sir Jackie Stewart has done over the years to innovate and make dyslexia more manageable day to day. Now this is completely different challenge, but you know when he puts his mind to something, like with his campaigns and endless work for safety within motorsport, change is going to happen, and it's now time for us to play our part and help make these horrible diseases a thing of the past.”

- Nick Butcher, Founder of Ignition Human Performance

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The charity's founder Sir Jackie Stewart OBE would later join Nick and fellow Formula One World Champion and co-founder of charity halow project - Damon Hill OBE for a virtual evening discussing "The Mindset of Champions", which raised money for both charities.

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"All my very best wishes and many thanks again for all your personal commitment"

- Sir Jackie Stewart OBE