Where does your team sit in its use of generalist and specialist approaches to high performance?

By John Portch

The topic formed the basis of an Elite Performance Partners Webinar in November last year and the question has increasingly been brought into focus during the pandemic as budgets have been slashed and staffing levels reduced.

Necessity has played its part in a trend that the Leaders Performance Institute is observing across elite sport, with one member sharing the insight, via a Community Group Call, that they are considering moving away from discipline-specific job titles to ‘performance staff’ who serve in support of the athlete and team performance.

What is a specialist-generalist?

One development that has gained momentum during the pandemic is the growth of the specialist-generalist. At their Webinar, EPP outlined a model that applies to experienced practitioners whose technical specialisms are ‘comb-shaped’ – their ‘major’ and ‘minors’, to use an analogy from the US university system – and for the breadth they bring in terms of experience and through their ‘softer’ skills. “Comb-shaped practitioners not only learn their trade but seek that strong understanding of other areas,” said Dave Slemen, a Founding Partner at EPP.

Specialist-generalists are well-placed to fill the gaps created in pandemic era performance environments – not that specialists are being or can be replaced – it is simply that the specialist-generalist model is perhaps the most efficient model in contemporary performance environments. As a corollary, it also offers the best way to develop leadership qualities within an organisation and therein lies the opportunity.

“You’re always going to have discreet functions,” said Bryce Cavanagh, the Football Association’s new Head of Performance, “but it’s when you start adding multiples within those functions that the generalist becomes more valuable, or you’ve got a constraint like financial or human resource, where you can only have one person in that space. The generalist becomes more valuable.”

There is also the fear that ‘generalist’ sounds derogatory. “The people who are the best are both,” said Slemen. “They might be a specialist-generalist because they’ve got an ability across more than one specialism, but it’s also when a person is able to interact with others, their emotional intelligence, their empathy – those are the sort of skills that will be seen as generalist but are arguably the most important and difficult skills to develop.”

How can coaches facilitate the generalists in their performance teams?

Emma Hayes, the Head Coach of Women’s Super League champions Chelsea FC Women, told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2019 how a coach can facilitate that generalist-specialist performance environment by modelling good behaviours and instilling an appetite for self-development.

“I often get asked how do you go from fifth in Europe to first in Europe or how do you go from being first to staying first? That evolution is a constant adapting process that may involve changes off the pitch with the staff as well as on the pitch with the personnel,” she said.

Generalists, as per the comb-shaped model, engage with other specialists through their working knowledge, and the head coach can lend a helping hand. “I think it’s about constantly upskilling and creating and promoting an environment that’s self-directional to the behaviours that you’re expecting from everybody in the environment,” added Hayes, “and I constantly remind people that your talent gets you to the dressing room door – it’s your behaviours that keep you in it. You’ve got to apply that to the staff too; they’ve got to be in a position to constantly raise the bar and find new levels, because as the players get better, the expectations get better and bigger. You have to be able to cope with those ever-growing demands by placing yourself at the forefront of the industry.”

At British Wheelchair Basketball, Performance Director Jayne Ellis spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute prior to this year’s Paralympic Games about the relationships between the men’s and women’s teams’ coaches, Haj Bhania and Simon Fisher, and their support staff, namely the analysts in this instance. She said: “The coaches will direct a lot of the work that the analyst is doing but they also have that relationship where the analyst can also put something on the table or use the data to challenge some of the perceptions or the conversation that is happening; and that is about building great teams that trust each other.”

Each stakeholder has their specialism but feels able to contribute to the collective because that is the environment that Ellis and her colleagues have sought to foster. “They can challenge each other but it’s done from a place of ‘we’re all just trying to be great at this’” she added. “There’s no agendas in this. I think the way that we’ve got that set works extremely well for us because there’s a close relationship between the analyst and the coaches. We’re really lucky to have that and you can see it in our performances.”

The performance conversations at British Wheelchair Basketball embody the distributed leadership style of Ulster Rugby Head Coach Dan McFarland. “I aspire to a distributed leadership style. I am at the mercy of confirmation bias here, but I don’t see hierarchical leadership as being sustainable,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2020. “I don’t see it as being effective, actually.”

It reads as a call to generalist-specialists. “One of the biggest drivers we have here, and I would have in my personal philosophy, is growth and also being able to enjoy your job. I think personal growth and autonomy go hand in hand with enjoying your job. I’ve always aspired to getting people to take on tasks that they can take responsibility for.”

How can generalists manage expectations?

For all this talk of delegation and empowerment, reduced staffing levels have, in some cases, seen programmes pared back but expectations of output remaining high. So while it has helped to view performance more collectively and to empower individuals in their roles, it is equally important to demonstrate your duty of care and appreciation of those same individuals. Both are prerequisites for developing trust.

Leaders such as Hayes and McFarland can set the tone and demonstrate their trust, but it is also wise for staff to set personal boundaries. “I call them ‘personal non-negotiables’, which for me are sleep and exercise; they are in my calendar, as are my meals,” Jen Fisher, Deloitte’s first-ever Chief Well-Being Officer, told an audience at Leaders Meet: Total High Performance last year.

“I communicate that to everybody and I encourage my team to communicate the same, because when we know each other’s non-negotiables we can support each other. We can set norms in our teams for what we want the team environment to be, for what we want the culture to be.

“Every team operates a little bit differently and, as a leader and as colleagues, really understanding, being open, really understanding what everybody’s needs are and figuring out what that looks like as a team. So it’s not going to look the same for the entire organisation, so it’s really about empowering people to figure things out for themselves, find it for themselves, communicate it.”

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As the sun sets on our return to in-person events after a two year hiatus, for all of us at the Leaders Performance Institute, it’s fair to say that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces, and meeting some new ones too. With the knowledge shared, the new connections made, the conversations witnessed and the fun and drinks along the way, we’re already looking forward to our first event of 2022. We hope you are too!

Day one set the bar high and we looked to carry that energy and momentum into day two. We began with a deep dive into the performing arts, looking at talent development at the Royal Ballet School and Royal College of Music before exploring the theme of diversity, equality and inclusion with Brentford FC and British department store Selfridges. We then checked in with performance coach Owen Eastwood before turning our attention to extreme adventurer Adrian Hayes in the afternoon. Aspetar then had the honour of bringing down the curtain with a fascinating look at rehabilitation and recovery.

A big thank you from the Leaders Performance Institute team and our main partners Keiser, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and Aspetar, for joining us for two days of total high performance.

For those of you who couldn’t make it – or those wishing you refresh your memories – here are the key takeaways from day two.

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Full Day 2 programme:

Talent Factories: How the Performing Arts Develops & Nurtures World Class Talent

• Christopher Powney, Artistic Director, The Royal Ballet School
• Dr Terry Clark, Research Fellow for Performance Science, The Royal College of Music

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

• Owen Eastwood, Performance Coach and author of Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness

Diverse & Inclusive Leadership: Exploring How Diverse Workplaces Positively Influence Organisational Performance

• Melisa Clottey, Chair of Diversity Board, Selfridges
• Shona Crooks, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Management Futures
• Kevin Yusuf, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Brentford FC

Lessons from Extreme Adventuring: Adaptability & Resilience in Adversity

• Adrian Hayes, adventurer, polar explorer and author

Rehabilitation & Recovery: The Latest Thinking to Support your Performance Strategy

• Jamal Al-Khanji, Chief Patent Experience Officer, Aspetar
• Khalid Al-Khelaifi, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Aspetar

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The Leaders Sport Performance Summit returned to Twickenham this week with Leaders Performance Institute members gathering in their multitudes to share insights and listen to some of sport’s most inspired practitioners.

We were also delighted to welcome you back in person and thought we’d kick things off with a performance flourish from Premiership champions Harlequins and how they have reconnected with their roots, we then segued into Thomas Frank’s sterling work at Premier League new boys Brentford FC, took a tour of performance environments at the San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Blue Jays, before ending the day with stories from two of Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s most esteemed Olympic and Paralympic coaches.

Whether you were there or not, we’ve unlocked the Key Takeaways from Day 1 for our Digest readers. If you’re a member, recordings of the sessions are being added to the Intelligence Hub as we speak

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Full Day 1 programme:

Quins Case Study: Leadership, Culture & Identity

• Billy Millard, Director of Rugby Performance, Harlequins
• Danny Care, Professional Rugby Player, Harlequins

Bee Together: Developing a High Performance Environment

• Thomas Frank, Head Coach, Brentford FC

Corridor Culture: Mirroring Team Culture in Physical Environments

• Phil Cullen, Director of Basketball Operations & Innovation, San Antonio Spurs
• Angus Mugford, Vice President of Performance, Toronto Blue Jays

Bringing Ideas to Life: Approaching and Executing Innovation

• John Bull, Director & Lead for High Performance Research, Management Futures

Gold Rush: Stories From Tokyo & the Evolution of Coach-Athlete Relationships

• Gary Brickley, Dame Sarah Storey’s Coach and Senior Lecturer, University of Brighton
• Kate Howey, Head Coach, British Judo

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What is the best way to approach problem-solving in a team context heading into 2022?

By John Portch

Coaches and practitioners will have their own thoughts on the matter but an increasing number of teams are following the practices of the business world in empowering their athletes – their people – to find their own solutions.

With more people engaged in their own problem-solving, more options and, therefore, more creative solutions, are likely to emerge across a team.

In October, the Leaders Performance Institute hosted a Virtual Roundtable for members titled ‘Approaching Complex Problem-Solving’, which underlined the trend for allowing practitioners to develop as individuals by affording them the opportunity to problem-solve, reflect and refine their practice.

At one point, a participant highlighted their use of David J Snowden’s Cynefin Framework. The framework, which is based on concepts of knowledge management and organisational strategy, enables people to place situations into one of five domains: ‘complex’, ‘complicated’, ‘chaotic’, ‘obvious’ and ‘disorder’. Where your problem fits depends on assessing its cause-and-effect relationships.

Perhaps the most common situation in both the business world and sport is ‘complicated’, where a problem may have several suitable solutions, though the relationship between cause and effect is evident only to a limited number of individuals.

The Cynefin Framework recommends that complicated situations be assessed, then analysed with the help of experts before deciding on the best response using good practice. One caveat is that leaders can be over-reliant on experts in complicated situations when others may be able to provide creative solutions. This thinking is also central to beliefs in the value of cognitive diversity.

Moreover, people like to solve their own problems, as Kim Wylie, the Global Director of People Development at the online luxury fashion platform Farfetch, told an audience at Leaders Meet: Total High Performance in 2020.

“When people solve problems themselves, they get this nice little bump of dopamine, which is a positive legal high and people feel really good about themselves and it brings really positive energy to the group and to the individual,” she says. “The point here that’s really useful to make is that by solving other people’s problems for them, we’re robbing them of this opportunity to feel good.

“Even if, as a leader, you do know the answers to things as a manager or a coach, getting people to solve their own problems is a really good thing to do. Obviously not all of the time, you need to work out the right situation, but not being the problem-solver for everything; get people to solve their own problems – it will do them the world of good and bring some positive experience to what’s going on.”

This approach to problem-solving underpinned Jayne Ludlow’s work with the Wales women’s national team, whom she coached between 2014 and 2021. Both staff and players, she believes, have the capacity to find their own solutions.

“There’s lots of collaboration between staff and players or between the players themselves,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in April. “There was a focus within our national team camps to make sure the players could check their understanding with each other and our thought processes.”

Often, this was easier for the younger players coming into the national setup. “I’m not sure if this is because we were working with them as youngsters and we had a specific style and way of working,” said Ludlow, who also served as Wales’ under-17s and under-19s Manager. “If I think about the group of 17, 18 year olds I had with the seniors, in the last few camps, they’re growth mindset players. They want to step on the pitch and learn. It is OK if they make a mistake, they’ll adapt and they’ll learn from it.”

Why was it different for some of the older players? “That’s to do with the environments they’ve been in. How over many years and generations we weren’t coached that way. I hardly had any feedback and they were similar, whether they were in pro or semi-pro clubs. Then suddenly you were bringing them into our environment and every day they’d have a development area.

“You’d notice in presentations. The majority of our younger ones are very different in their approach. They look at training and games as a learning opportunity, whereas the older ones were still defensive in learning moments.”

How can you lower those defences? “My general approach to feedback is: goal, then highlight what you’ve done well, then highlight what the next step is to develop it. There’s the positive aspect but then there’s a development moment. With some players, I’d take a slightly different approach. It’s a bit of sandwich approach at times so there’s more positives than development; but then you’ve always got to be careful, do they actually take the development information from you?”

Ludlow observed that older players needed more support in her social constructivist approach to problem-solving. Often, it is a question of providing the right environment for athletes to feel safe to explore a problem in a safe environment with the attendant opportunities for collaboration and developing a shared language.

Matthew Mott, the Head Coach of the Australia women’s national cricket team came to a similar realisation after taking control in 2017, particularly during the post-match debriefs.

“I do think that’s probably the thing I’ve learnt the most with this team,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in January. He found an environment that diverged in significant ways from those found at the male teams where he had previously played and coached.

“I’ve come from a male environment where you tend to be able to just debrief the games straight after. They get quite emotional about the games and call it out for what it was.” He took this approach to the women’s team and, like coaches who work with both female and male teams, realised things needed to change. “Certainly, throughout our journey, we went into team meetings where it was basically only the coaching staff talking and I quickly realise that it wasn’t a safe space and players needed smaller groups.

“So we got into smaller groups and we gave them tasks to feed back into the main group to create that safe space. But it’s interesting that we’ve gone through that and we have that complete trust in each other that you can now say things without fear of upsetting people and looking at it objectively and dissecting the game for its good parts and the areas to improve.”

He admitted that it is still a work in progress but the difference these days is profound. “Now that we’re actually in our full group meetings, the players are the ones talking all the time now and coaches are directing and starting and facilitating but, essentially, the players are the ones talking about the game and I think that’s a great space.”

Download the latest Performance Special Report – Winning With Nutrition

Long relegated to the side lines, nutrition is finally getting the attention it deserves when it comes to helping athletes achieve peak performance. Download our latest Special Report, produced in partnership with Science in Sport and featuring NBA champions the Milwaukee Bucks, the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and English Premier League club Aston Aston Villa.

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By John Portch

As Kairos CEO Andrew Trimble explains, athletes often risk missing out on vital information for the most prosaic of reasons.

“There could be something in a group chat that was buried under half a dozen different birthday messages,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

That missing information could be the details of a pitch the team is training on, the details of a medical appointment or a sponsor engagement.

Trimble, a former rugby player with 229 caps for Ulster and 70 caps for Ireland, explains that teams across all sports struggle with communication channels. “There are teams with 10-15 WhatsApp groups or – just as bad – they have one group for every single topic and there are numerous threads being discussed; and no one can understand everything,” he continues.

It sounds confusing. “Then there’s numerous screen grabs of whiteboards, which are obviously non-live. In some instances, an athlete has to walk into the medical room, pick up a marker and book an appointment that way, which is very strange in this day and age.”

Trimble, who retired from playing in 2018, heads up the Belfast-based Kairos, who have created a unified digital planning platform that enables better communication within sports organisations, from operations and management to coaching and performance. The platform was designed to be not only sport agnostic, but has tools to support every level from first team down through academies.

Kairos – a Greek term meaning ‘the decisive moment’ – enables teams, through their app and desktop-based platform, to solve problems by eradicating the distractions caused by multi-channel approaches. Trimble and Kairos Chief Operating Officer Gareth Quinn, who developed the first iteration of their platform in the mid-2010s, soon realised there was no suitable tool on the market. “We received strong validation that this is a problem that’s really worth solving,” says Trimble, who explains that Kairos is compatible with third party calendars such as Outlook and Google. “With our platform, it’s all very clear, there’s no clutter, all the athletes know where they need to be and there’s greater levels of accountability.”

Their platform is currently used by teams in the English Premier League, United Rugby Championship, Premiership Rugby and a series of teams across North America and South East Asia. Trimble points out that these teams may not just be suffering from a problem of unclear communication. “From a staff member’s perspective, it could be getting assurance that if you send something important to an athlete that it’s going to be delivered, received and understood and engaged with correctly,” he says.

“If it’s one place, then it doesn’t take up any cognitive load for the athlete. They can spend 100 per cent of their time thinking about performance. If that’s compromised in any way, if they have to scroll through their screen grabs or pictures of a PDF, and they have to scroll through their email for something else and look through their WhatsApp group to find a thread, then all of that is a distraction and all of that impacts on performance. Equally, if multiple departments are speaking different languages then you’re asking an athlete to be a goalkeeper with ten different goals to defend.

Trimble delves further into the issues that can exist within a single team. “Even within one department you can have three or four different behaviours,” he says. “Take a medical department. One medic may create a block of availability that allows athletes to book appointments, another medic may book that same slot of availability but then allocate slots to athletes, there may then be another medic who bypasses all availability and pushes bespoke events or appointments to players.

Kairos helps to solve such problems. “Athletes and staff get the assurance that everything is on the platform and they can see it. It’s all live. Any department that wants to communicate with the athlete will use the one platform. Ultimately, they’ve got one goal to defend and, if anything changes, they can see notifications, reminders or updates on their notification channel; it’s very clear and very easy for them to know where they have to be, what they have to do, what the requirements are, and then how to get the best out of themselves.”

The platform can also be adapted to the prevailing culture at a team. “There’s ownership on one end and management on the other, and every team lies somewhere on that spectrum, but it’s important that we can support everybody, whatever that team culture is or environment or what the expectation of the players is; either to tell them where to be or what to do, or to allow them to manage all that themselves. We’ve got tools to capture both behaviours.

“There’s a number of different ways that you can use our software and it’s important that we can work with a team and find a way that works best for them and gets them the best results and, ultimately, gets their athletes performing the best.”

On that note, Trimble says that Kairos is continually reiterating its platform. “Every conversation for us is about discovery, finding where the club is at, and deciding what their unique issues are and, nine times out of ten, we will have encountered something similar before and there will be a mechanism in place to be able to provide a solution in the software,” he says. “We can take them through that, but often there can be something unique and there’s learnings in that for us too. That could even just be a coach with a new way of thinking about the game, a new way of communicating, or a new operational procedure. We have to capture that development.”

This attitude points the way forward for the next 12 months. “The next phase we’re going to be working on is the integration with third parties, be that GPS providers, sleep data, or nutrition and diet.”

The feedback from Kairos’ ever-growing client base has been positive too. “They say it is unthinkable that they’d be able to go back to the way it was before,” says Trimble. “Professional athletes require a platform that treats them like they’re a valued professional and communicate in a way that gives them back time and takes away distractions.”

Recommended reading

Understanding Team Effectiveness at Google: Tips & Tools

Cynefin Framework

A Leaders Framework for Decision-Making

How Design Thinking Can Influence Decision-Making

What Google Can Teach Your Team About Problem-Solving

Framing the topic

Google’s Global Head of Creative Capability Kirk Vallis once said at one of our events that ‘creativity and problem solving is still one of the most underrated skills for leaders and the reality of creativity is that it is just about creating more options. And with more options you can make better decisions’.

You’d probably agree if you operate in high performance sport, with the complexity and agility required, that problem-solving is a pretty critical skill. For this virtual roundtable we wanted to chat about problem-solving and, more importantly, how we are thinking about it and approaching it.

Discussion points

1. When looking at the theme of problem-solving, where is your current thinking and what are some of the things you and your teams are trying to do to positively influence it?

• We are looking at how we get our practitioners to understand and grow in the problem-solving space through reflecting on how you deal with problems. As leaders, how do we facilitate someone understanding how they problem-solve, and how to extend that ability further?
• It’s important to understand the environments you are in and trying to put in place systems so that people can learn from their practical experiences. Our philosophy means we place an emphasis on the idea that the biggest learnings you are going to take are from your day-to-day experience, so reflecting on those is important.
• Understand what the problem really is and define it. Sometimes it can be difficult to identify what the actual issue is. Use quality questioning to define and tackle the problem. To dovetail this, have an environment where you can creatively brainstorm and have a safe space to experiment with ideas. Don’t jump to the end until you have been through the process.
• We have been utilising roundtables outside of specific disciplines – one of the big things with problem-solving in a discipline or particular department is that it can create a conflict with another discipline. The approach has to be collective.
• We’re also looking at the relationship between how we recruit and solve problems. There is a focus on recruiting and developing from within but we also want the balance of bringing in fresh perspectives to challenge current processes.
• We are working on bringing a coaching approach to our problem-solving across the organisation. A large number of staff have gone through some performance coach training so rather than solving problems for people we’re trying to coach people to solve the problems for themselves. This approach is more sustainable and people become better at resolving issues themselves – we’re finding people are starting to perform better in their roles as well with those ‘grow type’ questions.
• With good questioning focused on ‘growth’ it allows the individual to think more clearly and resolve it for themselves – they solve it the way they want to solve something rather than someone else solving it and imposing their way of doing it. We want to get ourselves in a position where people are coming to us with ideas and not problems.
• We talk about ‘grow conversations’ as formal coaching but there is also informal as well – you don’t have to sit down with someone in a one-to-one and talk at length about a problem. Consider the impact of ‘big chats (formal) and little chats (informal)’. When we see the ‘little chats’ going on, that’s when we know it’s becoming part of the culture.
• We are really looking for our people and staff to be empowered to guide conversations.
• It’s important to have a strategy to solving problems and there is a balance of the short-term in having quick wins around the problem, and then the longer-term approach.
• Ask yourself, do you have a safe space across your environment for people to bring and solve problems?
• We are taking a look into The Cynefin Framework – this is a framework to help understand problems and whether it might be is a clear problem with a solution, a complicated one that can have a complicated answer, or is it a complex problem? The framework considers ‘probing’, making sense of the space and then responding.
• Problems can mutate – if you are working within a team, everybody brings with them their own journey and information, and the influence within the group can change the outcomes.

2. What next? Where are the opportunities and ongoing challenges we are facing?

• There remains a huge opportunity around collaboration, particularly in situations where a problem maybe held by one person but affect other people. We need to continue to exploring ways to bring people together in the environment to share that problem and help to open the eyes of everyone. Often we don’t see the same issues with multiple disciplines.
• A consistent coaching approach is something that can add huge value. We use a very simple term called RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) approach to communication to ensure everyone is considering who they need to speak to regarding any issue.
• We can often underestimate what people would like to know and what they want to know about what you’re dealing with – often we hold problems in our own space because we potentially feel like others aren’t interested, but this tends to limit the options for solving a problem when you close off the collaboration.
• Another big opportunity we see if seeking out solutions from other areas of the organisation or business – people who might be dealing with different types of problems in different contexts and they could provide a different lens. What can we learn from a sales team in how they sell premium tickets or hospitality if we are struggling to sell places for coaching courses and accreditation as an example? We can often get groupthink around what we see and think.
• Try and take the emotion out of this process – if there is too much emotion, there is almost no way of resolving the problem.
• An improvement for us going forward is how we best distil inputs from the collaboration and ideas that are generated around problem-solving – how do we effectively evaluate the issues and really progress the extended ideas moving forward.
• Establish if the problem a global problem or is it unique to one particular individual or area? This drives you in a direction of how you solve the problem, whether it requires collaboration or just individual support. Probe around where the actual problem is and dig a bit further into that, so when the collaboration element comes in you can pick the relevant parts to move forward. When you come through the problem-solving process with the decision, have you then investigated those enough to decide and confirm what are the challenges? We’ve talked about the problem mutating. Coming up with a solution is good but have you fully attached yourself to the journey that it is the right one for all – is there clarity around how the solution will be embedded?
• An idea we’ve toyed with is the ‘day in the life of a discipline’. Provide an idea of what others go through in their working day so there is a more holistic understanding of how interactions and communications can work more efficiently around decision-making and problem-solving.
• Diversity in this process remains a huge opportunity to get a more rounded understanding of the problem through a multitude of lenses. It broadens the way your perspective when looking at a problem or issue.

Download the latest Performance Special Report – Winning With Nutrition

Long relegated to the side lines, nutrition is finally getting the attention it deserves when it comes to helping athletes achieve peak performance. Download our latest Special Report, produced in partnership with Science in Sport and featuring NBA champions the Milwaukee Bucks, the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and English Premier League club Aston Aston Villa.

Download Report

A Leaders Performance Podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“Sometimes you can listen to advice and it might be wrong for you, so you’ve got to figure out what is good and what is bad for you – who’s your angel and who’s your devil,” says Asha Philip.

By John Portch

The British sprinter – a two-time Olympic 4x100m bronze medallist – is speaking to the Leaders Performance Podcast as part of the Keiser Athlete Optimisation series.

Asha won bronze with her teammates in Tokyo and talks about some of the steps that enabled her to go again after winning a medal in Rio in 2016.

Also on the conversational agenda are:

• The mental strength that defines elite sprinters [10:00];
• Asha’s need to be comfortable being uncomfortable [14:30];
• The importance of self-reflection and positive affirmations [15:30];
• Why she is increasingly taking care of her mental health [22:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

Leaders Performance Podcast – Leadership & Culture Special

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By Dan Clements

We all have that leader we respect or that coach we enjoyed playing for but have you ever taken the time to sit back and think why that might be?

I will take a bet that amongst some other things, at some point they nurtured you, recognised your strengths and made you feel valued. Strengths-based thinking has had a lift in modern times within sport as more and more people seek to learn and find an edge in their practice or their organisation as a whole.

The exploits of world class coaches have been extensively documented and have offered a small window into the potential of such an approach. World class leaders such as Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, British & Irish Lions Head Coach Warren Gatland and Richmond Tigers supremo Damian Hardwick have offered an insight into the possibilities within coaching when your starting point in a relationship with a player or a group of individuals is their strengths and what they can do, not what they can’t.

Delving deeper, October’s National Rugby League Grand Final in Australia between perennial powerhouse Melbourne Storm and 2020’s highfliers the Penrith Panthers highlighted the potential for strengths-based thinking.

The modern coach is no doubt used to the pre-game interview, they are part and parcel of the territory and give the avid viewer a sneak peek into mindset and the thrill of the occasion. It was interesting to listen to master coach Craig Bellamy of the Melbourne Storm that weekend when 20 minutes prior to kick off he was asked ‘what will your final message to your team be?’. With the watching millions no doubt expecting a small insight into a rousing Churchillian speech, it was interesting to watch the multi-championship winning coach answer simply and clearly that he would remind his team of who they are representing, what they do well and what got them there.

Now just consider that for a second, what they do well and what got them there. It might only seem small, but when you consider the narrative in performance sport in the main is about negating the opposition or working out how to solve problems you start to become intrigued about the differences between a strengths-based approach or a deficit finding lens.

Strengths-based coaching or thinking is clearly not a new thing, however what this article and lifts the lid on is the subject of strengths-based change through the medium of coach learning.

It is a topic covered in even greater detail with my colleagues Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris in our  research paper titled Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System, which was published in September.

Performance leaders are acutely aware that coaches play a vital role in the change process within any organisation. Now this alone might jump out as an interesting point when you consider change. The old adage ‘the only constant is change’ may resonate, as time and time again leaders in any aspect of performance sport seek to find a way to enhance performance, but they must do it in a way that engages and collaborates with their people.

Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance

Change and people development has traditionally been approached as a top down ‘leader knows best’ scenario that leads to mixed results and ironically sometimes leads to even more change. What this article investigates is the potential for strengths-based change within performance sport, through the process of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry is an unashamedly positive change process borne out of the work of David Cooperrider, who sought to seek an alternative approach to the traditional ideas of change management.

Appreciative inquiry leverages on the strengths of individuals, organisations and cultures to drive and sustain change with an ultimate aim of enhanced performance. When you consider this in relation to performance sport, it paints quite a compelling picture for organisations that are constantly looking to improve to stay ahead of their competition whilst working in a collaborative manner. Why is this any different to traditional change you may ask? Well, it has been suggested that society has many years of experience in problem solving and have gotten very good at it. On the flipside though, we have very little experience in looking for what works and finding new and innovative ways of doing more of the same.

What our recent research paper uncovers is that the power of positivity within appreciative inquiry could play an integral role in designing change interventions within sport. Working with 12 talent coaches, we sought to discover what they do well and what gives vitality to the group through a series of personal and collaborative tasks. Why do they coach, why here, and what gives them the most satisfaction as a group? This built into an investigation of strengths, what they do well, and what gives them pride.

Interestingly, by allowing them to start from a position of strength it encouraged the participants to be more open to change as well as the identification of areas for personal development. Positive thoughts and positive thinking led to critical dialogue that fostered collaboration. An important element of appreciative inquiry then asks the group to imagine a preferred ‘vision of the future’ or simply put, what would great look like for you? Asking participants to articulate and share this vision drove creativity and engagement, as the group were eager to share.

Finally, with a vision laid out the group designed a route map to get there. Leveraging their strengths, the coaches identified areas of practice that they could tangibly develop in a quest to achieve the identified goal. This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.

The positivity principle that lives at the core of the process is something that cannot be ignored. It led to a heightened state of collaboration amongst the coaches which is often seen as utopia in performance sport both on and off the pitch. Australian coaching legend Ric Charlesworth highlighted this in his book World’s Best when he shared that as a team ethos starts to become embedded within any culture it becomes infectious and redoubles itself when evident and drives team members on to ‘do more’. The results highlighted that the positivity within the process allowed the coaches to collaborate and uncover new ways of working, or quite simply, achieve the holy grail of ownership and buy in to the change process.

This process highlighted the capacity within strengths-based change for innovation and collaboration as coaches worked together to build a framework for development.

Now anyone that is responsible for people development or learning within their organisation would know that things are never that straightforward. Learning and specifically coach learning remains a complex endeavour as organisations seek methods that make it a meaningful and worthwhile process for the coach. Results here showed that this scenario was no different, with coaches getting lost in rhetoric and semantics within parts.

What appreciative inquiry and a strengths-based approach did show though, was that a positive lens within the process encouraged participants to ‘break through’ stumbling blocks that stalled the progression and identification of areas to concentrate efforts on. This positive lens asked the group to imagine ‘what next?’ and encouraged the design of a ‘route map’ for change.

More and more in high performing organisations we are seeking the next advantage or area of innovation. Could that answer lie internally, within our people? The final point to consider relates directly to strengths-based change, as we will all go through or lead a change process as some point within sport. Have you considered where your strengths may lie? Are you an expert who will lead from the front and struggle to capture learning or innovation? Or is there a way where we can collaborate with our people and innovate and learn along the way? Perhaps starting with a positive focus will encourage this.

Dan Clements is the Performance Coach Manager at Welsh Rugby Union.

Click here for access to Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Propose Change within a National Talent Development System by Dan Clements, Kevin Morgan and Kerry Harris.