What is our Critical Friend Scheme?

We’re piloting a Critical Friend Scheme that bridges the gap between mentoring and a trusted colleague, in connecting members to a high-performance peer to ask provocative questions and offer a different perspective in exploring performance challenges and priorities.

Why the Critical Friend Scheme?

High Performance sport is fast-paced and a lot of environments are facing similar challenges, so we wanted to create an opportunity for our members to have a relaxed and informal approach to mentoring, that focuses on helping you build trusted relationships with peers across high performance.

Building Trust

How can I be a Critical Friend?

How does the scheme work?

The Critical Friend Journey

Step 1: As a member of the Leaders Performance Institute, you are welcome to opt-in to be a part of the Critical Friend Scheme.

Step 2: After a 4 week period, you will be connected to your Critical Friend by a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

Step 3: We provide flexibility on how you can make the most of the scheme. We would advise using the first month as your first opportunity to connect with one another and encourage you to connect on a monthly basis to engage in conversation. If it suits both parties better once every other month, that can be agreed by the ‘friends.’

Step 4: It will be down to the ‘Critical Friends’ to coordinate their monthly catch ups themselves after the initial facilitation of connection has taken place.

Step 5: After a 3-month period, all ‘Critical Friends’ will be checked in on by the Leaders Performance Institute team to seek feedback.

Additional Information:

We see the similarities but this is not a mentoring programme. We would like to encourage people from different disciplines to connect and share, therefore it is not guaranteed that your Critical Friend will be in the same role as you.