By Rachel Woodland

The days of female athletes compromising their careers and prospects of motherhood – or both – are increasingly being consigned to the past.

The Women’s Sport Breakfast at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London brought together a panel of guests well-versed in the historical experience of women working in elite sport and the choices that were often forced upon them when it came to the most personal of decisions.

Moderator Claire-Marie Roberts, a chartered psychologist who serves as the Head of Elite Development at the English Premier League, was joined onstage at the Kia Oval by Ros Cooke, a physiotherapist specialising in pelvic health who works with the UK Sports Institute and MSK Physiotherapy; Sarah Evans, a new mother, current Leaders employee, and former GB Hockey player who now represents Surbiton Hockey Club; and Lauren Forrow, the Head of Operations at GB Cycling, who is expecting her first child in the New Year.

For three quarters of an hour they explored parenthood, policies and return-to-play protocols in front of an audience of coaches and practitioners drawn from across the globe.

There was pride in what has been achieved thus far, and lessons learned in the process, but there is still a long way to go for the vast majority of sports. In fact, no one can rest on their laurels – everyone can continue to learn and do better.

Policies and guidance

In reflecting upon her time as an international player, Evans never felt she had the option of having a child and maintaining a place in the Great Britain squad – a situation perpetuated by a lack of role models. Several years later, she understands the importance of taking it slowly, looking after her pelvic health, and not expecting an immediate bounce back. Evans, who was accompanied onstage by her baby daughter, said her body has changed having been through a trauma, but she’s focusing on celebrating her body’s ability to grow and sustain life rather than being frustrated by it. She’s conscious that she has a good support system and has invested in the services of a pelvic health expert. Hockey, as she put it, lets her have something for herself and control her identity, as well as be a role model to her daughter.

The improved environment, even during the course of just one individual’s career, is noteworthy. Cooke explained the importance of the likes of UK Sport, the RFU [Rugby Football Union] and FIFPRO, football’s global players’ union, publishing their guidance and policies on maternity, especially in the post-partum period.

It’s uplifting to see sport moving to a more open dialogue and recognising that it’s not one-size-fits-all. Not only do different sports need different things, and have different funding pools, but each individual is affected in different ways too. The importance of this work has grown as we see an increasing trend for athletes to not delay motherhood, supported by such policies and guidance.

Help people to better understand being a parent

Cooke also reflected on her biggest learnings from working with athletes pre- and post-partum. Firstly, everyone needs space to understand their new role as a parent – this applies to men too. Secondly, where there is a lack of evidence, because people have been nervous to conduct research with pregnant people, this causes cognitive dissonance with athletes who crave certainty and timelines.

She highlighted how we’ve set ourselves up to expect what isn’t necessarily best for our bodies. There has typically been judgement of how quickly people return to sport, and celebrations of quick returns, but what is best for the long-term health of the body?

With her athletes, Cooke aims to share information on the risks of quick return, but in a supportive way. She is also working to integrate pelvic health support with all athletes and colleagues, making it more normal to do so. There’s an opportunity for people to gain so much from the experience of becoming a parent and it’s important to look after anyone going through this change. Cooke emphasised the importance of pelvic health as a normal bodily function for everyone, supporting sexual health, urination, and defecation; and she sees this being an area that will increase in importance for men too. It also has an impact, she added, on performance and plays a key role in how our bodies transmit force through the pelvic area. Not only that, but sub-optimal physical health can impact mental health and cause anxiety and depression, as well as impact social interactions.

Change the language around returning

Forrow revealed that GB Cycling approve of the guidance provided by UK Sport and can point to five riders who have returned to racing having given birth. She added that the behaviours illustrated within the guidance have been fundamental in establishing an athlete’s preferences upon their return. Forrow said that it’s important for practitioners to ask positive questions to help them better understand each individual’s experiences.

The team have worked on changing the language around returning, focusing not just on performance plans and structures, but on a happy, healthy mum and baby, as well as remembering the joys of riding. They talk about ‘exercise’ rather than ‘load’ or ‘training’, and refer to ‘milestones’ not ‘dates’ – it’s a process they hope will alleviate pressure.

Forrow sits on the senior leadership team [SLT] at GB Cycling and has witnessed the influence of the guidance at first hand, both as a leader and as an expectant mother herself. As she explained, it has been empowering for Forrow, learning so much about her body, and sharing that knowledge in a workplace sense, whilst hearing from others. People are GB Cycling’s first competitive advantage so helping people in every way will only increase that. It is also worth noting that GB Cycling have extended paternity leave.

Forrow’s first six months as an expectant mother were tough, so having the SLT role-model the value of well-being was powerful. In her case, this played out around the UCI Cycling World Championships, which took place in Glasgow in August. Her usual field-of-play role wasn’t possible, but where the team value and focus on staff development, the team told her “we got this” and the values and culture of GB Cycling allowed mum and baby to be put first.

There remains much work to be done and Forrow hopes that current statistics will change. At present, 80 percent of people don’t return to full-time work, 20 percent don’t return at all, 50 percent return to admin roles even if they were previously in a position of management.

Whilst personal preference is OK, hopefully the stats will tell a different story in the future.

Ask – don’t just assume

Roberts worked with an Olympic committee over ten years ago. At this time, athletes tried to meticulously plan and align their pregnancies with Olympic cycles, or to combine them with an injury. There were high levels of expectation, increased stereotyping, and high levels of pressure around how they felt they should approach pregnancy.

A decade later, Roberts’ topline advice for expecting mothers and those supporting them is to abandon expectations, put each individual at the centre, consult heavily, provide support in line with those consultants, be flexible, and help with changing mindsets to not having much certainty.

It remains a gamble and a risk to conceive during a career. However, whilst athletes previously delayed the choice as their organisations couldn’t provide the support, they can now return to the same level, and in some cases, even increase their levels of performance.

Nevertheless, expectations can be detrimental, and some women can’t return to the same level. Therefore it is imperative that we respect, support, and neither stereotype people nor make assumptions about them.

Seven practices we need to see more often:

1. Physiotherapists need to better understand transitions and movements between performance levels and life stages. For example, as an athlete starts their menstrual cycle, then performing with a consistent, healthy menstrual cycle, then when pregnant and post-partum, as well as during the transition to peri-menopausal and menopausal. It is also key to help athletes maintain performance levels as their hormones change too.
2. Conversations with athletes. They know they can speak with no judgement or pressure. These conversations might happen with staff other than physios too.
3. Support and guidance for pregnant people, not just return-to-work or play.
4. Sharing of best practice.
5. People planning.
6. Support for unsuccessful pregnancies and baby loss.
7. Support for each individual so that there is elevation of diversity and a variety of support offered.

By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Performance Support virtual roundtable series of 2023, we are focusing our attention on the overarching topic of Performance Planning.

Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas of this topic:

1. Leading with purpose: the relationship between personal and professional purpose on shaping both organisational and team planning.
2. Goal harmony vs team harmony: how can you create team alignment to galvanise and focus your team’s performance?
3. Debriefing: implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

For the second part of this learning series, the focus is goal and team harmony, with specific attention paid to how you can create team alignment in order to influence team performance.

The desired outcomes of the session included:

• Reflecting upon your team’s effectiveness.
• Exploring a framework for team effectiveness.
• ‘Team target practice’.

Exploring team harmony

Team harmony requires contributions from everyone on the team in order to reach those goals. The best team goals are co-created by team members and are aligned with the larger organisational goals.

In high performance sport, numerous organisations and environments employ a ‘team harmony’ outlook as opposed to a ‘goal harmony’ approach. In this session, we highlighted some of the potential pitfalls with a team harmony approach and make the case for why goal harmony can be more impactful.

With a team harmony approach, we often witness a vague strategy, mission and vision. The consequence of this vagueness can lead to operating in silos and overall inconsistency in messaging and the operation of the team. Another side-effect of this vagueness is that resources aren’t applied efficiently and there can often be a climate of uncertainty due to a lack of trust.

Finally, we can also experience people in the environment being particularly pleasant with one another, but not undertaking constructive conflict around the direction of the programme. With an absence of constructive conflict, there can be a lack of commitment and, with a lack of commitment, we can experience levels of under-performance.

What’s the solution?

Now we have identified some of the possible pitfalls with a team harmony approach, what solution could give us the best possible outcomes?

A goal harmony approach can be that solution. It is vitally important to set a unifying, ultimate performance target that drives everything that you do. Does your team have this ultimate target? This target isn’t a vision, it is measurable and performance-based. When reflecting on this in the group conversations and, leaning on prior experiences, we often find that many efforts to create alignment to galvanise and focus team performance lack this clarity.

Steve Jobs famously spoke of the friction that is required in teams to generate high performance. It is the friction, discussions and disagreements around performance matters that keep you at the cutting edge and challenging the nature of the ultimate performance target.

In summarising this section, if we generate harmony and clarity around the goal, the friction that takes place sits around the requirements of the target and not the individuals involved as we have already established collective harmony and clarity. So what could goal harmony look like in practice?

Enhance team effectiveness with ‘What it Takes to Win’ planning

A well-known performance model is the ‘What it Takes to Win’ framework, which formed part of our discussions around how to enhance team effectiveness and to promote the notion of goal harmony over team harmony.

In the specific examples and experiences we engaged with in this session, the ‘What it Takes to Win’ concept was built on the premise of five key factors:

1. The performance target: we begin by setting the target first, in which the target is centred around what sits under the performance e.g. a specific time required, not a target of ‘to win a gold medal’.
2. Performance drivers & demands: what are the performance requirements and demands to reach the target?
3. Prioritise & decide: where and how are you allocating your resources?
4. Marginal gains: these are your 90-day plans where disciplines of teams are required to execute against specific tactics. Then they review them on a 90-day basis.
5. Results & review.

To pick up on the starting point of a ‘What it Takes to Win’ model, often the success of this approach lies in the practice of setting the target. The performance target should be a bridge to your vision, purpose, dream and goal. The target has to be in your control and engages all resources and team members. It also requires a clear deadline and ability to be measurable. Finally, for the performance target to be impactful, it often requires you to feel a bit uncomfortable.

An article brought to you by our Partners at the

By John Portch

The clinical and biological differences between male and female athletes are often discussed when it comes to injuries, but what about social and cultural considerations?

Female athletes suffer certain sports injuries more frequently than male athletes, but that should not be the case.

“It is important to consider biological differences between men and women when it comes to performance or injury outcomes, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle,” says Dr Victoria Downie, a performance scientist within the UK Sports Institute’s [UKSI] Performance Innovation Team. She is telling the Leaders Performance Institute about elements of her team’s research into female athlete injury occurrence.

“I started to explore how we as an institute could better understand all the factors which are impacting how women are training, competing and performing, how they feel, and their whole experience of being women in elite sport,” adds Downie, who has spent time immersed in different Olympic and Paralympic sports in order to better understand their challenges and opportunities. “It’s easy to underestimate the impact of simply spending time listening to athletes. That goes for men and women but perhaps more for female athletes who feel historically as if they haven’t had much of a voice.”

Female athlete health and wellbeing has long been a priority for the UKSI. In February, through the prestigious British Academy Innovation Fellowships scheme, the Institute partnered with the University of Nottingham to launch a research project calling upon former UK Sport-funded female athletes who have retired within the last five years. The purpose is to interview these former athletes and explore how women’s sporting environments – their social and cultural context when training and competing – influenced their experiences of both minor and major injuries.

“We asked women to talk about their experience of injury while doing their sport and all the factors that may have influenced that experience.”

The gendered environment

The research project is being led by Dr Stephanie Coen, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Nottingham. “You may be wondering what a geographer has to do with this type of work, but my speciality within Geography is Health Geography,” she tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

“Broadly, I’m interested in how our environments influence our health and, within that, my interest has been around gender differences in physical activity.”

In 2021, Coen published a paper with Joanne Parsons at the University of Manitoba and Sheree Bekker at the University of Bath entitled ‘Anterior cruciate ligament injury: towards a gendered environmental approach’.

“My foray into sport was prompted by my previous work on how environments, like the gym, shape the gendered nature of physical activity,” says Coen, who explains that her collaboration with Parsons and Bekker happened “by chance”. In 2017, she was approached by Parsons, a clinician, and four years later their paper with Bekker would provoke a response in the sports world “that exceeded our wildest expectations”.

One of the key elements of the paper was to challenge the focus on the clinical and biological in female athlete injury occurrence. “The current medical paradigm puts the focus of injury within the female body – menstrual cycles, anatomy, biomechanics, all of those things – whereas the gendered environmental approach asks us to take a wider lens. It’s not that the biological lens doesn’t matter, but the gendered environment approach asks us to think beyond the individual body to how we can change the gendered conditions of sport in ways that might reduce injury risk.”

The myth of the ‘ideal female athlete’

Female athlete ACL injuries provide an illustrative example of the impact of the gendered environment. Downie says: “When this is discussed in the media, there is talk about women having more ACL injuries because of their biomechanics, because whilst they’ve got their period, their muscles are a bit more relaxed.” She is not dismissive of those factors, but the UKSI has long sought to look beyond such internal factors.

“One example that’s come out of our work is that women in sport often talk about feeling as if they need to show they are strong or not complaining,” says Downie. “That is a factor that could be leading women to not report that they are feeling a niggle or they feel that they need to train through the niggle to show they are strong – ‘I don’t want to be the one that misses training today’ – and it could be a factor that delays their diagnosis.”

“This inherent belief is embedded in history. For example, women were only allowed to run the Olympic marathon for the first time in 1984. Before that, people thought women weren’t strong enough, weren’t brave enough. There has been a huge shift in these beliefs over the last 40 years, but it is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. These beliefs are still in play and through this work we are hoping to highlight these factors.”

There is also the challenge presented by what Coen and Downie call the perception of the “ideal female athlete.” “This is the kind of wider social norm that prescribes the social and physical qualities that the ‘ideal’ female athlete embodies,” says Coen. “That might seem abstract, but actually, in the women’s experiences, this kind of ideal really did function as a barrier to women feeling as if they could voice health and injury concerns because if they maybe asked too many questions, maybe they’re being too direct or too assertive and that might contravene the ideal of being soft, nice, polite and agreeable. The ideal of the female athlete can have quite a tangible material impact on the everyday experiences of women athletes with ramifications for how they went about tending health and injury concerns.”

The drive to better understand these concerns fuels the entire project. “It’s about understanding that these sorts of social norms and taken-for-granted ways of doing things become part and parcel of the sport environment,” adds Coen. “These social and cultural aspects are an untapped opportunity for reducing women’s injury risk. If we can make them visible, we can change them. And this puts us in a position to improve outcomes more widely for girls and women in sport.”

The research-to-practice gap

Coen’s academic work made her a natural fit for the UKSI. “We always look outside the Institute for people who are working outside of elite sport on areas that interest us,” says Downie. “We put together an application for a British Academy Innovation Fellowship and we won the award, which meant that we have Steph for the whole year.”

Coen has taken on the duties of interviewing the retired athletes who were encouraged to come forward for the project. “I feel so lucky and privileged to have this opportunity,” she says. “I went to my first Performance Innovation Team meeting in the spring and I’ve been blown away by the creativity and excitement in the room.

“When we published the gendered environmental approach to ACL injury it was a conceptual paper, an idea. By partnering with the UKSI and Vic we’ve been able to move this idea into something that can have a tangible impact for women in sport. That research-to-practice gap is something that often feels very wide in academia and I feel like in this work we’re actually closing this gap in real time.

“It shows there’s leadership at the UKSI that’s really trying to push forward in a substantial way for female athletes.”

Downie’s excitement is palpable with a Summer Olympics and Paralympics year approaching. “This work has not happened overnight,” she says. “We’re in a place now where we can share this and start to have some impact. Paris is less than a year away but we can see some tangible impact going into the next cycle.”

By Rachel Woodland

Not a member of the Women’s High Performance Community yet? Sign up here.

What goes into the development of a performance strategy for female athletes?

Judging by the responses during the October group calls of our Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group, the answers are manifold.

Nevertheless, the experiences of the female coaches and practitioners on the calls can be clustered into three main themes: structures and teams, data, and education.

Here, we delve into each in turn as discussed by the female coaches and practitioners from leagues, teams and organisations across the world who joined the October calls.

Structures and teams

We are at a point in time where not only are new roles are being created, but new teams and departments are being introduced too.

We’ve learnt that asking someone to add ‘the women’s side’ to their role isn’t fruitful. We also know that women’s sport demands its own coordination of research and management of research questions. This means that consideration is needed in planning out the departments, positions, and staff needed. In turn, further thoughts go towards SWOTs, goals and objectives, what type of people are needed, which processes are needed. We want to help these teams set up to operate for success.

Teams typically haven’t had many staff in place, especially not full-time staff, but now we’re able to add more people, we need to make sure people fit within our processes and visions. It should be a given that those being hired for women’s sports are receptive to wanting to understand and adapt their work to best suit women.

For Dr Sue Robson, the Healthy Women in High Performance Sport Programme Lead at High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ), it’s been important that her new role fits around what exists already, and that when putting a programme together,  we know the context and culture first. It takes time but find out why, and how, what exists already does, and its current value to the group. Understand your situation before making changes.

Those on the calls also heard about different bedrocks to strategies and what’s needed to make a programme work. For Robson, it’s Environment, which impacts Knowledge, which impacts Evaluation. The process can’t just be a tick-box exercise. It needs to understand reality and equip people for useful conversations. In evaluating, it is important to establish baselines and track progress so that efforts are in the right places.

For Angel City FC of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), it’s been understanding the head coach’s playing style and training philosophy, alongside the GM’s vision for the club. This includes deciding how performance is to be measured, and what’s needed as a foundation to this.

Additionally, we haven’t been able to escape the need for education as a part of strategies. More on that below. 

It’s a widely shared view that there is a lot of tasks anyone could be doing at any one time. Thus prioritisation and structuring a strategy requires an outlook across multiple timelines. HPSNZ are looking to three time lines. The immediate, and minimal viable product: how can they take what they’re doing now and make it better quickly? The short to mid-term, six to 12 months: which big topics would make a significant shift if changes are made? Long-term, 12 months and more: if we know more about this topic we could make a confident change. HPSNZ are exploring how to measure coach knowledge on female health as well as how to better understand tracking menstrual cycles so that they can build a self-learning environment for athletes.

The group also discussed how leagues, federations, governing bodies, institutes of sport, and clubs can collaborate better, with education, knowledge sharing, or support on adding value for athletes in differing environments at different stages of performance cycles. This is even more critical when new clubs and franchises are being created, and when resources are being increased for new roles, departments and teams. Particular examples shared and encountered recently are, the NWSL’s Medical Manual and UK Sport’s Pregnancy Guide, there was agreement that more could be done.

Data

Which information is collected when, and how often, are important questions that shape data collection procedures within a strategy.

In some environments, some current practices mean that athletes could go as long as two to four years before having an opportunity to flag a concern. The onboarding period is an important time, it will shape expectations and is a good chance to show care and precedence, as player profiles and individualised plans are built out. It’s also a time where you can signal that there are topics of importance beyond the menstrual cycle.

There’s also consideration to be given to how to time testing and research to fit with the competitive schedule, and to ensure compliance from the athletes, so that there is buy in from the majority, which will assist with the data making an impact. The basics need to be right if what we do know is to have a positive effect on the future.

Positioning data as a support for players, rather than a stick is important. Moreover, those in non-medical and science roles can be key to shaping a culture of compliance. Deciding as a collective which questions are important for impacting performance over time is also critical.

One extra hurdle for performance teams is around the application of research in elite environments. Current research isn’t always aimed at an elite or professional level; there then becomes a need to test in these environments before confirming an approach. This leaves a desire for applied and academic worlds to meet and collaborate further.

When it comes to informing strategies, a varied way of collecting data through conversations as well as surveys to let people share their lived experiences more naturally has proven successful. In general practice, conversations and trusting relationships help athletes bring up what’s important to them beyond the obvious topics for women. For example, urinary incontinence is the type of medical issue that can go under-reported.

Education

Education has emerged in conversations as another universal must-have for any strategy. It will shape the culture, and equip athletes to give better information, and enable athletes and staff to have better conversations. Nothing important is easy, as they say. There are questions around how best to deliver education and on what cadence so that it is effective and engaged with; enabling people to ask further questions and instigate continual education.

There is acknowledgement that education at a younger age will support athletes when they enter elite and professional environments, and that using parents can be an effective tactic. There’s also awareness that elite and professional organisations can support community education, perhaps in a way that traditional educational settings haven’t been able to. And ultimately, how do we measure education?

If you’re working with athletes who share spaces across genders, it’s important to give additional thought to the physical environment. Images should reflect the athletes, and not just be of men – representation matters. These little details can let girls and women know they’re front of mind too.

Who is your strategy for? Beyond education will it support staff as well as athletes? Ultimately, no one should suffer in silence. We want environments where athletes and staff feel equipped and safe to have useful conversations around their health, so that concerns can be raised and then acted upon.

Whilst there’s lots to be worked through, the overall sense we got from the conversations was excitement for the number of resources and the money being invested in high performance departments to support players, that will help the teams be more sustainable, and prevent turnover of staff. In turn, this will support people to build a culture and vision, and have people join departments knowing what to expect and how they can add value. There is a belief that people will be able to complete research over longer periods of time. There will be people in place to get clean data, decide on interventions, and to ultimately be able to be strategic with their high performance departments.

Finally, there will be a growing belief that this will be possible for an increasingly wide number of women’s teams and sports, following in the footsteps of some of the more mature sports and organisations.

By Luke Whitworth

In a recent Leaders Performance Institute virtual roundtable, we explored the work of Dan Heath in his book Upstream.

Heath’s central argument is that we should be striving to intervene ‘upstream’ rather than ‘downstream’. ‘Downstream’ actions react to problems once they’ve occurred and ‘upstream’ efforts aim to prevent those problems from happening. The premise of Heath’s work fed into our conversations in taking stock of the themes that are occupying downstream thinking, as well as supporting upstream thinking in how themes within high performance sport might evolve and how we best prepare for them.

There were three questions we explored as part of the group conversations:

• What topics, themes or challenges are currently forefront of your mind based on your specific role?
• Projecting ahead, what topics and themes do you think will be forefront of your mind in 2-3 years’ time? These could be potential problems for the future or opportunities.
• How do you think we can best prepare for those ‘upstream trends’?

Where are we?

With a variety of disciplines and sports on the call, it was interesting to first of all explore what topics, themes or challenge are currently forefront of mind for those that were on the call. There were a number of commonalities despite the differences in sport and discipline.

Influence of technology

It wasn’t a huge surprise to see that a topic and challenge on people’s minds at the moment is the influence of technology on different elements of the programme. A theme outlined in the groups was around how to best integrate innovation, notably data and analytics. The key question aligned to this was around how and what to push forward, to decide which has the best opportunity to influence the organisation as a whole. The influence of technology also came to the fore around someone leading player development programmes, specifically around implementing new tracking technology as part of their player development strategy to balance old-school habits and modern thinking. Finally, the elephant in the room – the influence of artificial intelligence. What should remain ‘human’ and what can be ‘machine’ was a question occupying thoughts from those on the call.

The performance environment

There were a lot of responses from within the group that fell into the bucket of the performance environment. A sub-theme centred around team dynamics and, in particular the challenge of creating a unified language and beliefs throughout the performance team. As an extension to this, another focus shared was the driving of standards and ways of working within the team. Interdisciplinary working was highlighted as both a challenge and area of focus by one of the environments on the call. Another complexity and consideration that aligned to this section was the ongoing need to navigate a landscape where athletes have a growing agency over the design of their performance setup and how performance support staff work around this evolution. Finally, health and wellbeing as a priority for both athletes and staff was something forefront of mind for participants on the call.

Staff development

To wrap up this first section, staff development was another overarching theme forefront of people’s minds. There are ongoing considerations around upward mobility, the organisation and planning of staff development and how we best balance innovation with evidence-based practice. There was also a nod to the importance of accountability around staff development and it actually having an impact back into the programme.

What’s next?

After we took time to reflect, it was time to project forward around what topics and themes we think we could be encountering and thinking about in two to three years’ time. This question yielded some really interesting perspectives – this could be an excellent list of considerations for upstream thinking and for high performance staff to engage in conversations around when back in their environments.

Doing more with less: with the cost of living continuing to rise, budgets are becoming tighter across organisations. How can we continue to innovate and continue to move forward in a resourceful way? Similarly, do perceived innovative practices actually make us better and do we need to be more cognisant of this when there is more pressure to be efficient with resources?

Workload management: relevant to both athletes and staff as the pressure and amount of competition continues to increase across all sport. We are seeing evolutions in technology, rule changes and yearly calendars for competitions which is something we need to more and more aware of.

Player empowerment: considerations around how athlete will use and control their data and information that is tracked. How can organisations be creative and separate themselves?

Interrupted competition: with some of the challenges being faced around the world, how might this impact the competitions we engage in? How will we work to build more agile sporting systems and support athletes to deal with these challenges?

Protecting the ecosystem: aligned nicely to some of the contemporary topics and challenges we are facing, how do we find the balance between the human system within our analysis and protect the ecosystem we are creating? There is a general feeling that we must not let the ‘machine’ completely take over the human system, as it has the potential to drastically alter our performance frameworks.

Change fatigue: the consideration of wellbeing in a constantly disrupted context that is high performance sport, especially where we are witnessing increasing amounts of change which impacts the physical and mental wellbeing of our people.

Creating opportunities: as educational standards are changing, how are we creating opportunities for younger professionals to enter and develop within the industry?

Artificial intelligence: even though many sporting environments are beginning to trial and embrace artificial intelligence, its influence is likely to remain a popular topic of conversations further down the line as we become better educated around the impact it can have on what we do. What might it mean for you and your team?

Preparing for what’s next

Now we have outlined eight future considerations, we shifted the conversation to how we can best prepare for these upstream trends. The idea of this question was to share best practices leveraged in the environments on the call that may positively impact how we prepare and project for future topics.

Be proactive rather than reactive

It sounds like a simple best practice but how intentional are we in being proactive to anticipating and committing to thinking upstream and engaging in how we are going to handle the ‘oh shit moments’? One attendee on the call shared how the team seek to have quarterly ‘what’s ahead’ meetings to create an intentional space to think in the longer-term. Do you have a person or a small team who are focused on trends and studying what’s happening in the sports world? Having people accountable and feeding information back into the organisation is important for the development of the ‘upstream culture’. It’s important to also not fall into the trap of just following trends – add context to your own world or environment even if some of the trends you are coming across are from the same sport.

Get out of your own bubble

We reflected on the importance of engaging in group conversations with people from different disciplines and sports to gain fresh perspectives on what they are seeing in their contexts. A member of the group shared how much buy-in and energy is created when there is mention of learning from different organisations in the industry, especially when there are commonalities and affirmation in terms of thinking. Finally, another simple but, if done well, powerful best practice: be aware of as much as possible – listen, make notes of patterns and spend time across as many people as possible so you are collating a diversity of perspectives and insights.

Collaborate

There was a general agreement that there is a need for increased collaboration – the world is getting smaller, therefore building collaborative partnerships that save time, aggregate resources and accelerate learning are of vital importance. Secondly, how are we helping our people thrive and feel empowered to think further upstream? It starts with investing heavily in good people and trusting individuals to work with autonomy and lead others in smaller groups – this approach will allow organisations to navigate many issues with more agility than traditional fixed organisational structures. Finally, one of the future trends was around the power of the athlete – look to be much more collaborative with them and work with them and, where relevant, their support network as opposed to fighting against it.

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“I think some of the key learnings in my career weren’t necessarily in the ‘what’ but more so in the ‘how’.”

Polly Bancroft serves as the Head of Women’s Football at WSL [Women’s Super League] club Manchester United. She is discussing her 18 years working in the women’s game, which have taken in roles at the Football Association, Brighton & Hove Albion and Uefa.

Of her experience working for Uefa, the European football confederation, which is headquartered in Nyon, Switzerland, Bancroft adds: “I think having experienced living in Switzerland and working across Europe with many different cultures, I think understanding different approaches to time, decision making, and hierarchy were just integral to my career.

“And I think learning to work with people from different backgrounds around sometimes very challenging topics but maintaining those relationships has been really important to me.”

Bancroft was speaking at a recent Keiser Webinar entitled Leading Women: Building Perception and Driving Opportunity. She was joined online by Nicky Ponsford, the Head of Women’s High Performance at World Rugby and, in front of a virtual audience drawn from coaches and practitioners from across the globe, the duo discussed the challenges of creating, scaling and sustaining a high performance infrastructure in women’s sport.

“I was lucky in my very first role that I had a line manager who always gave me the chance to learn and the chance to make mistakes. That’s something that I’ve tried to take with me throughout my journey,” Ponsford says of her time at the RFU [Rugby Football Union] where she served as Head of Performance for women – a role she filled for two decades as the game continued to grow exponentially.

“But I can’t do it all by myself. I need other people, need collaboration, need to work with others. [I learned] that politics are real in sport and that you have to learn how to work the politics.”

Bancroft and Ponsford, as leaders with female-focused leadership roles, are proof that steps are being taken in traditionally male-dominated sports, but neither is happy to rest on their laurels.

Here are six steps towards ensuring that progress is both scalable and sustainable.

1. Ensure women’s sport is discussed at the right level

During her time at the RFU, Ponsford oversaw the establishment of a women’s performance management group that was designed to have a “direct voice to the RFU management board.” It does not mean that the issues facing women’s rugby, from the transition to professionalism (ongoing since 2019) to the question of maternity leave, are instantly solved, but the right people are being asked the right questions. If you have men’s and women’s teams, it is important to grant both access to the necessary expertise or resource. “We’ve expanded our governance model in that we now have two different bodies overseeing women’s football at Manchester United,” says Bancroft. “We have a technical football board and a commercial working group as well. That falls under a women’s executive leadership team.” The intention is clear: “This new governance structure brings in members of the leadership team in legal, finance, communications, operations, football and marketing. We’ve got the key heads of football across the business that work on men’s, women’s, boys’ academy, girls’ academy and we’re using the very best expertise at the club and channelling it into the women’s game.”

2. Remember: women’s sport is not merely ‘mini men’s sport’

What is the right pathway for the female version of your sport? Equity does not mean that women’s and men’s sport should be treated the same way. The challenges are often different and female sport must take its own path if the girls and women involved are to thrive with the right support. For example, English rugby removed promotion and relegation from Women’s Premiership Rugby during Ponsford’s tenure at the RFU. “[Previously] everyone had the chance to get to the top, but in terms of driving standards and driving a league that we wanted to get to, it wasn’t going to work,” she says. “Pushing that through, getting what we needed for the women’s game, was really important.”

3. Do you have a performance framework for female athletes?

“Nicky and I come from male-dominated sports,” says Bancroft. “Here at Manchester United, the club have operated men’s football for over 145 years and the women’s team has been reborn and we’re now into our sixth season. So my approach has been to blend that knowledge and experience of that 145-year history with collaboration and the bespoke nature of the demands and requirements of the women’s game. One part of that is through developing our own performance framework. With myself and the Head Coach, Marc Skinner, we’ve worked on this framework that is around learning and embracing the journey that learning gives you.” The framework is then split into “feelings and operations”. Bancroft continues: “From a feeling perspective, we want people to feel energised, we want them to feel included, and we want them to feel playful.” The idea is to promote creativity on and off the field. In terms of operations, the club wants to equip players to manage themselves and communicate effectively. There is also an emphasis on “finding solutions” and “seeking ownership”. “We want players to identify challenges and find solutions. Similarly, in the staffing environment, there might be a certain challenge or blocker that we’re coming up against. Let’s not sit back and complain about it. Let’s try and work out some solutions.”

4. Provide safe methods for people to share ideas

What structures are in place in your environment to enable players, coaches and staff to take interpersonal risks? Ponsford argues that the creation of psychological safety goes hand in hand with developing a culture that encourages people to come forward with ideas. “While some may talk lots during meetings, there needs to be another mechanism for people to come forward, another time for people to share so that everybody has that opportunity,” she says. Ponsford has an open door policy so that “people can come forward with thoughts, people can come forward with ideas, and [know] that they get discussed, they get picked up, and they don’t get ignored.”

5. Increase opportunities for athletes and staff to build self-awareness

Manchester United use individual development plans for players and appraisals for staff to assist development, commit to goals and track progress. “We’re also really encouraging of staff and players to talk to their peers, talk to their friends about strengths and weaknesses. We also do different personality tests that can highlight certain blind spots, which I’ve found to be helpful personally,” says Bancroft. Some people at the club keep diaries, some meditate, and all players are encouraged to better understand their triggers and habits while also being accepting and kinder to themselves.

6. Normalise conversations around female athlete health

Bancroft explains that she and Manchester United have benefited from pioneering research into female athletes. She cites one report in particular, which was born from a collaboration between Dr Emma Ross of health and fitness consultancy the Well HQ and the WSL. It helped the club to shape their best practice. “We invited in some guest speakers, particularly around the menstrual cycle and the pelvic floor, we discussed kit options with our kit manufacturer, we’ve done some education with staff, we’ve done some education with players – I’ve learned some stuff about the menstrual cycle as well – it was a fascinating exercise to go through; that even as a woman I didn’t know everything there was yet about the cycle.” Such conversations need to be normalised.

By John Portch

In the first part of our interview, Mark Jarram, the Head of Performance & Coaching Development for sport at Loughborough University, set out the benefits of systemisation in high performance.

One such area where systemisation – the development of frameworks, procedures and protocols – comes into its own is in performance planning. It can be particularly useful for coaches setting out their strategy and tactics, although as Jarram explains, some are more receptive them others at first.

He says: “It’s often a challenge for coaches because they have so much to do and look after. They’ve got the athletes at the forefront, they’ve got to manage and develop staff and then, all of a sudden, you’re introducing systemisation.”

Some head coaches systematise elements of their programme in the natural course of their work. Others haven’t given it much thought. “Sometimes systemisation is a consequence [of being athlete and staff-focused],” Jarram continues, “and other times it can be quite overwhelming because, as a head coach, you’ve got so much to do, you’ve got so much data, you’ve got so many conversations happening. Systemisation can be a consequence or a threat.”

In the second part of our interview, Jarram discusses his work helping coaches to better plan for performance.

‘It’s less about the plan and more about the planning itself’

As Head of Performance & Coaching Development, Jarram works closely with the tenured coaches on campus and Loughborough’s Head of Performance Support. “My role is to help facilitate the growth of coaches on campus,” he says. “I spend a huge amount of time and investment helping coaches be comfortable with performance planning. It’s educating them on what the actual process is and then helping upskill them in order to create it.

“We often say it’s less about the plan and more about the planning itself – taking people on a journey and providing clarity. This is because the plan is inevitably going to change based on your recruitment, injuries, what’s actually happening in competition. It’s very natural for that to change and it should.

“My role is to help coaches to understand how to lead a review and why your performance plan has to be a living, breathing thing. How do you regularly review what’s going on? How do you make performance planning part of your interdisciplinary team conversations so that if you’re off track you can quickly get back on? There’s different levels of comfort and effectiveness amongst the staff, which is why it comes back to the quality of the leadership.”

Winning today vs development tomorrow

One problem for coaches, as Jarram explains, is that they can be easily overwhelmed by the data coming their way from different members of staff. “They can be having too many conversations or there is too much input and we’re asking them to do too much,” he says. “In a coach-led environment, 20% of their job is coaching, 80% of their job is managing people and the environment; leading, behaviour management, recruitment.

“Most of their passion is in the 20%, not for all, but the majority. They do it because they like making a difference, they like having a lifetime impact. But, at the end of the day, they also do it because they enjoy competing and they enjoy winning. Sometimes that creates a lot of friction. You have an element of winning today versus development for tomorrow.”

Performance planning is mandatory for coaches at Loughborough and the accountability that brings has the potential to create some friction. “So we’re asking: ‘what do you want to achieve and how do you want to achieve it? And then we’re going to have a conversation about it’. There’s an element of ‘oh’. Sometimes they’re a bit fearful because they know we’re going to hold them accountable, but they’re doing the same thing with their athletes and members of staff. It’s not different, really. We’re back to people management, behaviour management, all of those softer skills.”

The key is to enable coaches to make the performance plan their own. “We want to be athlete-centred, coach-led and performance-supported. With athletes being at the forefront, the performance plan is more about how do we serve the athletes best in order to win or in order to perform? Being a coach-led environment, they will have the empowerment to be the decision maker, so to speak, but they should be working as an interdisciplinary team so that everybody co-creates it and everybody contributes to it. Obviously that is determined by the quality of the coach, because we are in that coach-led environment. How comfortable are they at leading that and what’s their approach to leading it?

“The coaches have a lot of freedom and empowerment in their roles, but we’ve said performance planning is mandatory. So we’re going to systemise this, there’s going to be a formal sign-off, and it must involve this, this and this. However, do it however you want, make it fit your personality, make it fit your world, make it fit your context.

“All of our performance programmes have been created through this systemised approach but it’s still bespoke and relevant to each coach. I think that’s really important within this whole conversation.”

The trick is in making coaches see the value. “You’ve got to have something that’s manageable and repeatable – that’s also what we mean by systemisation –otherwise you’ve got no chance of it being effective. It’s ultimately got to add value and contribute to performance, otherwise what’s the point in having a plan?”

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

When Conor McGoldrick joined John Portch for this Keiser Podcast, he spoke of learning from other disciplines and how that happens in both an unstructured and structured way.

The Head of Strength & Conditioning at Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Center in Salzburg is describing the learning opportunity provided by the interdisciplinary work that goes on around the organisation’s 850-plus athletes across four football clubs, two hockey teams, and approximately 250 sporting disciplines.

“The unstructured way is almost like a child and you are learning just by being there from practitioners who are better [in their field] than you,” he says.

“Then there’s this more structured approach where you actively seek opportunities to observe and have questions asked of you; and I think with that understanding it makes that interdisciplinary work easier.”

Conor is the first guest on this three-part series looking at Strength & Conditioning through a leadership lens.

On the conversational agenda were:

• Athletes’ biggest S&C concerns [9:00];
• Knowing when to keep your counsel [12:15];
• The link between behaviours and success [21:50];
• The gamification of training [25:00].

John Portch LinkedIn | X

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

By John Portch

What is the true purpose of KPIs?

“They’re about people,” says Mark Jarram. “Sport is a relationship business and everything should be people-focused. It’s about a person over performer, whilst there will always be an element of perform-on-demand in sport. The purpose of KPIs is to keep people informed, keep them involved, interested and inspired.”

Jarram, the Head of Coaching & Performance Development for Sport at Loughborough University, is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute about the benefits of performance planning and how KPIs feed into the systemisation of performance.

“Things that get systemised get done,” he continues. “In the world of coaching and sport, there’s so much going on and there’s so many things to do and achieve. If you can find ways to systemise and automate certain things or certain interventions it means it will actually get done.”

In the first part of our interview, we discuss five benefits of taking the time to systemise a performance programme, from the performance planning of a head coach to the daily work of a practitioner.

1. You won’t miss out on feedback opportunities

“A lot of us in sport sometimes fall short of systematising the things that matter most,” says Jarram. “If you do a good job of keeping the main thing the main thing, it lends itself to achieving consistency.” Reviewing and closing feedback loops, or even the art of effective feedback is commonly the one thing that is not done or, wrongfully, often the first thing to leave out. Consistency is essential in the act of performance planning and, as Jarram explains, when there is a strategy in place, you can create the framework – the system – for your feedback interventions. “You’ll know that the intervention gets made rather than sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not relevant to have a feedback intervention but if you don’t systemise something then it’s less likely to be done and you may miss an opportunity for really good feedback.” Ultimately, “you’ve got to have something that’s manageable and repeatable otherwise there is no chance of it being effective. It’s got to add value.”

2. You can readily see if you’re actually making a difference

Jarram uses the example of an S&C coach to outline the benefits for coaches and practitioners alike. “What’s the S&C systemising?” he asks. “What are they tracking and what are their metrics? Is that systemised and automated? I guess it’s the same for all disciplines. What are they doing to create a form of measurement that can determine if they are making a difference. Systemisation can help to determine if we’re focusing on the right things and can create the opportunities for collaborative conversations.”

3. You’re less likely to be caught off guard

“Systemisation should prevent you from going astray and it should help make your workflows easier and bring efficiency,” says Jarram, with performance planning firmly in mind. “It allows – but doesn’t guarantee – the opportunity for complete clarity and building alignment amongst staff teams. Some of the best organisations and people I’ve been around hold clarity paramount. It contributes to the power of your purpose in that it promotes buy-in and supports your vision and mission. It allows the opportunity to ask ‘how can I contribute? What are my deliverables?’ and therefore lets you hold people accountable.” There is, he says, also an opportunity to establish what it takes to win. “There’s elements of that. Systemising helps us to confront brutal facts,” he adds. “There’s also an element of avoiding assumptions. Fewer assumptions will be made as you won’t be navigating blindly or be caught off guard. As humans, we hate being caught off guard – coaches, practitioners and athletes all do. How can we systemise something so that everyone is like ‘we know this is important and we know it’s coming’.”

4. It must be managed by a high quality leader

Does a systemised approach to performance work better for bigger or smaller organisations? “It can be effective in both depending on the quality of the leader, quality of the conversations, quality of that aforementioned clarity,” says Jarram. A huge anchor for Jarram is “the quality of a conversation is determined by the quality of the question,” adding, “are we asking the right questions at the right times to complement performance, encourage development and provide collaboration, with the athletes at the forefront?”  Even a programme with 60-plus athletes and those with a more intimate 10-plus can function efficiently if it is lead effectively. The experience of the coaches and practitioners is also significant. At Loughborough, which provides 64 sports, including 20 high performance programmes, there are sports with all full-time staff, others with part-time staff, some with placement students and a number with volunteers. “They all come with different expertise, they’re all at a different age and different stage of their journeys, so the maturity factor is real,” says Jarram. “We hear a lot about coaches wanting practitioners to know their sport really well. Do you have to be an expert in that sport to be an effective practitioner? Not necessarily as long as the practitioner is managed and led really well.”

5. Dealing with friction in an productive way

Tensions surrounding the head coach are all but inevitable in performance planning. “At Loughborough, we’re trying to encourage coaches to take a needs-based approach – what are the needs of the team and the individual? Are you helping and supporting that rather than merely doing what you’re comfortable with? – that’s where there are frictions. Are they choosing the right style of play and the right systems and strategies to complement what it’s actually going to take to win?” Sometimes coaches can be wrong and sometimes what it takes changes mid-season or mid-cycle. “We’re saying ‘choose and commit to something based on the information you have and pursue it’. There should then be a review process because every sport evolves all the time. Did you misjudge what it takes to win in your league? What’s actually happening? What are other teams doing? Did you think you had a certain type of player in your team in pre-season and they turned out differently? You’ve got to pivot and adjust. It’s very natural to do and by systemising it we hope to shorten that timeline. Okay, let’s make sure we’re doing it when needed rather than later when it’s maybe too late.”

In part two, we will look at how Jarram and Loughborough support coaches in their performance planning.

By Luke Whitworth

What are the main barriers we are witnessing in the quest to find the balance between short and long-term strategy?

Consequently, when thinking about these barriers, what solutions, approaches and changes are we looking to implement to find that balance? These were the two questions that formed part of the group conversations as part of our Virtual Roundtable discussions.

What are the major barriers we are experiencing?

To set the tone for our conversations and to ensure we were focusing more on solutions to our challenges around this topic, attendees were encouraged to share the main barriers to finding an effective balance for short and long-term strategy. As expected, there were a number of commonalities and we acknowledged the different contexts those on the call were operating in.

The need for week to week results and return on investment

As expected, the most popular response from the group was around the pressures, desires and expectations to win and see improvement quickly. Dovetailing this challenge was also the increased anxiety that can be experienced around ‘deemed success’ within certain roles and what the implications are if results don’t fall as we’d like. For those operating within the Olympic system, it was clear that there are pressures from funding partners to be seeing quicker return on investment which can also influence longer-term thinking. Outside of the final score or outcome, it was acknowledged that losses are not limited to just the end result – injuries or a lack of objective progress deters away from the long-term vision to a shorter-term, reactive mindset.  Finally on this point, it was referenced that many environments can experience unrealistic expectations on performance outcomes that create uncertainty and misalignment from the outset.

Organisational alignment

Another common challenge outlined by the group was the lack of alignment when it comes to discussions around short and longer-term thinking. What are we witnessing on an organisational level? There is an absence of individual role clarity aligned to long-term thinking, unlike the short-term. There is a natural expertise or discipline bias that exists in environments which can impact a unified approach to both the short and long-term, thus impacting the ability to collaborate effectively. Mindset. This was an interesting reflection that arose when exploring both questions, is the organisational mindset aligned when it comes to finding this balance? Do those in the environment have confidence in the approach and that match realistic expectations?

To conclude this second major barrier, the group also suggested that communication is often a core part of this process that requires more attention – what is the interpretation of short and long, where does one stop and start? Is there consistent communication and space provided to dedicate time to both short and long-term thinking? It is also clear that there are structural challenges when it comes to alignment – are those in departmental lead roles aligned in both day-to-day performance focuses, but also the horizon scanning for the programme?

Shifting the dial and finding a better balance

As part of the group conversations, we looked to lean on one another’s experiences around how we are looking to affect the barriers in a positive way and what approaches or best practices are having the most impact.

Balancing short and long-term strategy requires ‘bravery’

Be brave and be deliberate was one of the key reflections that came from the conversations. Why did the term bravery emerge in the conversations? It was aligned to the fact that some bravery in terms of decision making is important to commit to something we believe in for the future. An environment from the Olympic world outlined that they found it more useful talking about ’12-Year Statements of Intent’. When looking at funding submissions, there was a short-term strategy set in the context of a ’12-Year Statement of Intent’ – it encouraged thinking around what 12 years ahead actually looks like and each time there is a conversation around why we’re doing something in a particular way, it gives the collective something to roll back to. Thinking that amount of time ahead does take bravery, but it provides an opportunity to ensure that the short and long-term are connected rather than having tension with one another.

Creating dedicated space and time

It was interesting to hear that many environments aren’t intentional in creating opportunities and space to talk about the long-term. Often, we are finding that the long-term thinking is morphing into the day-to-day and we aren’t moving into ‘new spaces’ to explore new thinking and how to carry information forward. We can do better at connecting the two through a methodology such as ‘plan, do, review’ which can be an effective approach. If we can get this to work, it can help to connect the short with the long-term.

The groups also felt it was important to note that creating space and time for these conversations should be a systemised approach, it shouldn’t just be a one off – integrate this into how you operate. Deliberately, every three to four months, come together and look at what we said we were going to do in the short-term and review how is that connecting to the long-term.

It was also encouraged that we are deliberate in creating space for different mindsets, there are different mental states required to think in the long-term vs the short-term. One is more creative and the other is more action-orientated. One environment from the Olympic system shared that a scenario they have had this year is preparing for Paris 2024 and submitting funding around what the strategy may be. The team did some work around futurology and brought in an external facilitator from the University of Oxford who does scenario planning and future thinking work.

As part of your organisational strategy, it was also suggested that allocating resource and reward processes related to long-term thinking and not just short-term delivery help find a healthier balance – often most of our resources are aligned to short-term delivery.

Clear vision and values

Start with the end in mind and work backwards from where the long-term strategy is targeted at was another key suggestion – what are the milestones, targets and priorities to close the gaps? It requires time and effort to continue to keep the strategy alive with the behaviours that underpin them and not just seeking short-term success.

Many environments witness frequent change where progress around long-term thinking can be stifled – look at handover and inductions with a focus on the culture and vision of the organisation to provide an element of sustainability and alignment. Creating a vision is the start, particularly bringing to life the ‘how’ we get there is vital for clarity. Have respect for all the different departments and teams within the organisation that have different priorities.

Accountability

Finding a balance between short and long-term thinking requires a level of accountability within the environment. There is an importance placed on ongoing communication, buy-in from all involved and accountability to the long-term plan. Outside of individual accountability, there is also a need for ‘programme accountability’ to reviewing (week-to-week, month-to-month, cycle-to-cycle) in a fashion that links with the long-term vision and strategy.

Changing the mindset

We have already briefly alluded to the idea of mindset or the mental spaces required for these kinds of thinking. There is an importance in being deliberate and recognising the different mindset required to think in the short and long term – an intent, purpose and real desire to affect change in a positive manner. There was a great reflection in the discussion that most of the team meetings we experience are often focused on the things we are reacting to on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe we need to make an intentional shift to ensure we don’t get caught up in the reactive mindset.

We also discussed language. Make the long term strategy as a concept more exciting to talk about – long-term strategy can often sound quite uninteresting, so how can we change the language to galvanise a group and create excitement? There is sometimes a deterrent that the ‘long-term’ is so far in the future you can’t realistically consider it, whereas it should be exciting to think about the future.