NEWS EXTRA 1
Be comfortable with being uncomfortable: Growth and leadership start when you step outside your comfort zone. Take the first step, lead from the front, and trust that others will follow.
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TAKEAWAYS FROM A RUGBY LEGEND 9
Maggie Alphonsi MBE, Women’s Rugby World Cup 2014 winner, and now a top commentator on the men’s and women’s game, offered a unique keynote perspective on leadership and daring to step outside of comfort zones.
and ultimately winning a World Cup. The point is not simply achieving a goal, but continually setting the next one.
There are no weaknesses — only underdone strengths: Focus on developing and celebrating the strengths you already have. Great leaders help the people around them recognise their strengths and realise their potential.
Set goals that move you forward: Alphonsi’s career was shaped by a series of goals: representing England, becoming one of the world’s best players,
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Leadership is about being visible: Becoming the first woman to be the face of an English men’s sporting event shows that leadership isn’t just about what you do — it’s about what others see you doing. Being visible creates role models and can give others permission to follow.
It’s not all about you: High- performing teams are built around a shared goal, not individual glory.
Understand people’s ‘why’: When people understand
why their teammates are doing what they do, it creates a much stronger emotional connection to the shared objective.
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The best teams are built on talent and connection: Genuinely high-performing teams come from understanding people’s individual drivers, motivations and stories, then connecting those personal motivations to a common goal.
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Don’t listen to the haters. Understand who you’re doing it for: Alphonsi receives negative, sexist and racist messages, but reminds herself that she is there to inspire people who want to follow or exceed her footsteps.
Failure isn’t always not getting the job, it can be not having the courage to try:
Going for the RFU President role, ultimately unsuccessfully, opened doors for Alphonsi and contributed to change, including a woman subsequently becoming president.
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There’s no movement without the first follower: Leadership isn’t always about being the person at the front. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is be the first person to stand alongside someone else, showing others that it is safe and worthwhile to follow.
IS SUSTAINABILITY OUT OF FASHION?
Giles Bradford, chair of the BMF’s sustainability working group, joined a panel of sustainability experts to explore the changing perception of sustainability within the merchant industry.
GILES BRADFORD, Bradford’s head of sustainability and chair of the stainability working group for the BMF, alongside a panel of experts from across the sector, set out to respond to the question; ‘is sustainability out of fashion?’ The panel consisted of Sabrina Passley, head of sustainability for Stark, Chris Sayers, head of property at national contractor the Bell Group UK and Gordon Brown, sustainability advisory panel chair at the Chartered Institute of Building.
A common misconception
The discussion centered around a fundamental misconception within the industry as to what the term sustainability refers to in the concept of business practices.
“Sustainability fundamentally cannot ever be out of fashion. It’s a foundational pillar.” Bradford explained. “It isn’t about measuring carbon, ESG language and compliance. They are not the definition of sustainability; they’re the signals of the pressures that are reshaping the environment in which we operate.
“Sustainability is about our ability to withstand shock, to adapt to structural change, and to keep creating value. It isn’t a strategy, it’s an outcome.
“Climate change, energy volatility, regulation, labour constraint, supply chain destruction, none of these arrive on our desk, labelled sustainability. They arrive as cost, risk, disruption, lost productivity, pressure on margin.
October 2026
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
“We need to start viewing sustainability not as a cost of compliance burden, but as the outcome of a business designed to survive against all those challenges. “When people say sustainability is out of fashion, what it really means is that businesses are tending to focus more on short term survival in a difficult market. But the pressure we are under is exactly why you want to lay the foundations to not just survive, but last.
“Sustainability is not a strategy we can afford to only adopt when the conditions allow it. It’s the outcome of how resilient our business model can be under pressure. “You don’t have to call it sustainability; call it resilience, productivity, efficiency, or simply good business. You need to make money, and that’s done by being able to adapt.
“When sustainability appears as a foundational pillar of the BMF’s strategy, it’s not there as an acknowledgement of current trends, it’s there because sustainability is our ability to withstand and overcome the forces that could derail business success, and I’d argue what greater purpose is there for a Trade Federation than to help you do that?” BMJ
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