By Luke Whitworth with additional reporting from John Portch

The question of measuring the impact of performance programmes has continually arisen in conversations across the Performance Institute membership during the last 18 months.

The time was ripe to explore the topic in a virtual roundtable where Leaders Performance Institute members could ask others how they measure impact as well as any other considerations that emerge as part of the process.

No one feels that they have cracked it but four key themes emerged that you may wish to consider – some before we even begin to measure.

1. Remember: quality questions underpin quality conversations

Are you creating opportunities for quality questioning? One environment within the discussions shared that the organisation is pushing everyone within it to ask candid questions. Quality questions underpin quality conversations. How are you driving this as a skill?

Asking good questions is also a powerful place to start to inform core areas for measuring impact, notably building to or working backwards from the end goal. Many organisations in the industry work off a ‘what it takes to win’ or ‘the demands of the event’ model. As a further thought for provocation, part of one discussion challenged the notion of ‘what even is impact for us in our context’? The key set of learnings from this theme is that before we begin jumping into measurement, are we clear on what it is we want to measure, why and does it align to the outcome we are seeking? Use great questions to help you get there.

2. Build a relationship map for your team

The notion of relationship mapping – charting the relationships of individuals and organisations – featured strongly within the conversations and was a takeaway that a number of those in the discussion were keen to explore further within their own environments. One organisation shared that they have trialled relationship mapping amongst the performance support team, specifically looking at groups who have been working together for an extended period of time, with embedded systems and processes to better understand how they are collaborating, approach problem-solving and, occasionally, compromise with one another. The purpose of this concept is to enable them to interrogate the contextual relationship that exists between the people within the team on a personal and professional level.

As an extension to the point above, another organisation on the call had shared that they have begun to measure the performance support team outside of results – measuring the team as a team. The feeling amongst the group was that effective collaboration is a key ingredient of the athlete’s development and thus, the end result. Focus on the process of how we operate as a staffing group. A final thought on this point is that often executives can place the emphasis on formal appraisals and quantitative insight, but the sweet spot lies in the working relationships between support team members.

3. Seek clarity and consistency

In the key takeaways at the end of the call, a popular response from the group was the insight of ‘consistency and efficiency over quantity of measurables.’ The objective of measuring impact is to track progress, benchmark and better understand fit to context. Aligning to the previous point around understanding what it is we need to measure, clarity around ‘what it takes to win’.

With clarity on measurements driven by the model, true interdisciplinary conversations can occur and alignment is present. These conversations need to be living, breathing and driving development every day, and include key ingredients such as outcome goals, performance goals, deliverables, adaptations and tactics (for getting there), as well as individual development plans of the athletes.

How intentional are your organisation in providing updates and debriefing opportunities around key measurements? One organisation shared the best practice they adapted from Pixar which was created to aid conversation and action points – departments are asked to present back, not only to validate ideas but to create a thinktank environment.

4. Make the most out of your surveys

Throughout the set of conversations, most organisations engage in surveying and appraisals to measure the impact of delivery, something which is standard practice in most environments. Around the table, the group looked to take thinking around surveying to another layer, in particularly highlighting how to make the most out of them as a tool.

Surveys, whether shared with athletes or staff are typically very quantitative rather than being more qualitative and asking of open questions. With the notion that quality questions underpin quality conversations, can we develop our use of surveying to provide more detail than just metrics? A great example of this from the athlete perspective is ‘did they achieve what they wanted to achieve?’ as a qualitative measurement.

Finally, the discussed that we are in the business of developing people as well as athletes. We should look to be proactive in measuring impact of wellbeing within the environment and taking accountability to make this a main stay of any programme impact.

The group takeaways and questions

At the end of the call, attendees were asked to share a reflection for future consideration:

• Relationship mapping within performance teams.
• How do we systematise our assessment of quality practice?
• Asking good questions – start with ‘what does it take to win in this sport’. Build from there.
• Consistency over quantity of measurements. Decide what aspects have the most impact and stick with measuring those rather than chasing new ones.
• Consistency and efficiency over quantity of measurables.
• Considering staff behaviours in measuring effectiveness.
• Consider an external ‘expert’ panel to cross-check and reference what we are doing.
• Whole programme performance planning with key deliverables given to all staff. Interdisciplinary meetings with clear discussion points related back to performance.
• Quality of questions in annual surveys, especially in relation to qualitative questions (we are too focused on quantitative data in surveys).
• How are we measuring the progress of the athlete along their individual development plan? Leaning into the intermediate versus expert research.
• How are we measuring staff performance or development in staff?

By John Portch

Where does the balance sit between the vision of an incoming leader and the needs of the people whom they lead?

“There’s factors in every culture that pre-exists the leader’s vision – that’s the thing that most people don’t want to admit,” says Jack Easterby.

The performance specialist, who most recently served as the Executive Vice President of Football Operations at the Houston Texans, is referring to the limitations that face a leader. “Sometimes that’s weather, sometimes that’s facilities and sometimes that’s the finances of the club,” he continues.

“If you set your vision based on ideal circumstances and you don’t consider major footprint factors, issues that have held things back in the past, then your vision will never find traction. The balance is: are you receiving from your people the risk factors or the inhibitors of the past and why they haven’t gotten to where they want to be? Are you receiving those and reincorporating them in your new vision? If you don’t do that then even the best vision is doomed to fail.”

This is the second part of the Leaders Performance Institute’s recent interview with Easterby. The first instalment focused on the questions a leader must ask their people. This one hones in on conflict management.

‘People are more attached to motives than ideas’

Easterby argues that a leader must move away from focusing on the origin of an idea to the process of implementation in as little time as possible. “You really don’t want to be stuck to one person’s idea ever. It may be a good idea that someone comes to you with, but you want to be able to create consensus,” he says.

“Everybody is going to have ideas, some are better than others, some will be more original than others like you can take it and put it in place and roll; some things you’ve got to change in a bunch in order for it to work.”

What approach does he take when two people come to him with conflicting ideas? “My first reaction is to ask myself: ‘can we jump into the “why” of both of those versus affirming one or the other?’ because if I can get to the why of those; ‘why do you think we should do B?’ And ‘why do you think we should do A?’ Then what I may be able to do is come up with idea C that incorporates the ‘why’ from both of them and we may actually be doing a different idea in the end.

“People are more attached to motives than they are to ideas. For example, if someone says ‘I want to do expense reports differently because I believe that it costs me too much time to do it this way’, the motive for me is to save time. They don’t really care if they have a debit card or they’re paying online or whatever; they’re really just saying ‘this costs me a lot of time’. You don’t just want to say that idea A is better than idea B, you want to get the motive from idea A, the motive from idea B, and then you want to say ‘how do we consider all of the motives behind these ideas before we implement it?’ ‘They might be saying idea A but they’re not saying that, what they mean is this’. You can then build consensus with idea C.

“You want to know the ‘why’ behind the idea because there’s a lot of time people make great suggestions and you listen to it and think the why behind it is right and pure, ‘let’s go with it’. There’s other times that people make suggestions and these people are tired and frustrated right now, they’re upset with their co-workers, they’ve got some things going on personally. I’ve got to make sure I filter that and ask more questions about the motive to see if that’s really where we should be going with this initiative or not.”

Always have a backup

What about those times when systems simply fail? “The number one thing when moving on from systems failure – this is something I wish I would have done better in Houston – is to recognise that system failure can’t be deflating for the entire team,” says Easterby, reflecting on the time he spent at the Texans between 2019 and 2022.

“No matter what the system is that’s not working, you need to be able to insulate yourself from operating poorly because that system didn’t work. So if something is going wrong in athletic training, if something is going wrong in operations, if something is going wrong with salary cap administration, all of those things have to be done in a way that if something goes wrong there’s another system that you can run temporarily or a backup philosophy that you can operate so that everybody is not looking and going ‘oh my goodness, we’ve failed’ because you can’t let the confidence of the entire group be attached to one system.

“I would say that one of the greatest things I experienced in New England, which was really cool, is that Coach Belichick often had multiple systems in play but the same initiative. So if it were an athletic training situation, he had a couple of different trainers who could do the same job just in case we needed to replace one or something happened. If it was a situation when we were travelling, he had multiple contingencies so that there wasn’t just one thing that threw us off and everyone felt deflated and the confidence of the team was lost because we didn’t execute.

“You never want any particular system to carry the entire confidence of the group. You want to have a lot of layers in there because a lot of things can go wrong in athletics and you’re naturally going to be on your heels some. So if you can create systems, lily pads that you need in case you need to jump from one to the other, that’s the way to do it.

“If the system does fail, the leader has got to be willing to say ‘hey, I didn’t do this right, I missed this, this factor I didn’t consider’; whatever it is, just confess that, because it’s going to open the gate. If you get into blame it’s going to disenfranchise people and they may turn their backs on you, you’re not going to have a chance to build the system back right.

“I like the idea of putting a few people in a committee and potentially starting a meeting structure to talk about why that system failed immediately. ‘Hey, these three people, you guys were really a part of that system. Let’s come to my office, let’s share, let’s get on the white board, let’s talk about why this didn’t work, because your “whys” are going to go right into your new system.’

“You’re going to be learning a lot about why something potentially didn’t work and that’s going to give you the keys to the new system when you’re building it. I like committees or actions that can give you some good feedback; ‘this is potentially where the tension point was and why we didn’t do a good job’ and then you begin to edit. Then I like sharing the results of those meetings publicly within the team. ‘This didn’t work, this is what we found, and here’s how we’ve been addressing those needs, and we’ll meet and implement this new system when it’s ready’.”

By John Portch

What is the best way to define and resolve a performance problem?

It is a topic that comes up with regularity at the Leaders Performance Institute and, here, we present the approach of British bobsledder Montell Douglas; Swimming Australia’s Head Coach Rohan Taylor, Wales women’s rugby union team Head Coach Ioan Cunningham; Jayne Ellis, currently a performance advisor with UK Sport; and actor Dom Simpson, who delivers a view from the world of the performing arts.

We distil their responses into five essential considerations.

1. How do your athletes approach goal-setting?

“I address my performance gaps through real, basic goal-setting. In the sense that there’s always a process,” says Montell Douglas, who competed for Great Britain in the two-person bobsleigh at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Previously, she competed for her nation in the 100m and 4x100m relay at the 2008 Summer Olympics, also in Beijing. In completing the switch she made British history. It was something she was aware of in the build-up to the Games and here she gives the Leaders Performance Institute an insight into the continuous conversation she had with herself.

“What does British history mean?” she continues. “I reverse-engineered the goal, looked back and said ‘this means I have to do X’. ‘But where am I now? Well, I’m right here and that means I have to do this’.

“One of the things was ‘what does my sport need? What do you require? Am I reflective of a history-making athlete?’ If not, then I’m making those little adjustments; ‘I need to gain four kilos by this date’, for example.”

Douglas interrogated herself constantly. “It enabled me to make clear targets and goals, with deadlines for all that was needed, because you have to be ready on 20 February 2022 [in the case of the Olympic bobsleigh]. You can’t be ready on 21 February 2022 – it’s too late.”

2. Engage your athletes in two-way conversations

The coaches have a role to play too. “It’s having a two-way conversation,” says Ioan Cunningham. “Footage is huge and we have individual development plans for players. So if our number nine [scrum half] needs to work on her pass off the base so that it’s quicker  and she needs to get the ball off the deck, that’ll be a performance plan for her.

“How does she get better? Link it to footage and then have constant catch-ups every week or two where you go ‘look, this is better – you can see it’s better. The ball is in the ten’s hands [fly half] much quicker’.

“The ten could then give her feedback as well and say ‘yes, the passing is much better, it’s faster and more accurate’; and then breaking that down to the drills she needs to do to make sure that it gets her passing better.”

Actor Dom Simpson, who stars as Elder Price in the West End production of The Book of Mormon in London, also prefers a two-way discussion in his work. “My agent always describes it as a ‘dance’,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “I can do one thing for a dance but the partners have to be working together to make that work.

“An issue, for example, could be my director coming to me and saying ‘this scene is not quite reading right. Maybe we can try this?’ and a lot of the time that works best when it’s a collaborative discussion – I don’t think anyone works best when it’s ‘do this and it’ll be better’ because unless I have an understanding of why that is it won’t feel like the best way to do it.”

3. Enable guided discovery to mutually desired outcomes

Simpson also explains that the best directors facilitate the actor’s path to the best agreed outcome. He says: “The best creatives that I’ve ever worked with, they allow that conversation to happen and they facilitate you finding the answer. They ask questions that make you find the answer that they just want to tell you anyway so that there’s a feeling of ‘we both got to it’, whereas the director might be saying ‘I knew that’s where we wanted to get to but I had to allow you to find that for it to feel real’. When we talk about the ‘truth’ in a scene, a lot of the time that’s how we get to the bottom of an issue.”

4. Where does your multidisciplinary team fit in?

Cunningham tells the Leaders Performance Institute of a hypothetical scenario involving an athlete. “A player may need more power in her lower legs, so that becomes a three-way conversation with the S&C coach,” he says. “[The player will say] ‘OK, if I do this, it’ll make me a better rugby player, it’ll make me more powerful, and it’ll get me picked’.”

The multidisciplinary approach was taken by Jayne Ellis and British Wheelchair Basketball during her time serving as the organisation’s Performance Director. Much like at Wales Rugby, performance questions were generally raised in an athlete’s individual development plan between the athlete themselves and the coach. “They determine what the objectives are and the rest of the staff will work around and towards those objectives,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2021.

Progress was tracked at fortnightly meetings for both the men’s and women’s teams. “That’s when we look at how everybody’s work programme is feeding into that athlete achieving that objective,” she continued. “Then there are different bits and pieces that we do with each practitioner in order to assess where they are with things and where they want to go. That all gets captured so that the player can see their development. Sometimes when you’re an athlete and you’re in the grind, you’re like ‘this is so difficult, I don’t feel like I’m progressing’ but then you’ve got this whole piece here, which helps you see that you are progressing and that’s why it’s important.”

5. Call upon your network and collective knowledge

At Swimming Australia, coaches and practitioners attend monthly meetings specific to their event or discipline in order to ensure everyone is on track. Head Coach Rohan Taylor will drop into those meetings and is always on hand to discuss performance issues with athletes and their coaches as he travels to the state hubs located across Australia.

“I’ll ask questions; [for example] ‘So you’re having trouble here? Have you spoken to somebody else?’ because I get to see everybody around the country. I might see a solution in Western Australia, in Perth, and I can say ‘have you connected with this person?’ I’m kind of guiding and advising them where to go.

“If I think they’re at a road block, I’d hope that they’ve already done that. That’s the system that’s set up. If not, I’d be saying ‘have you done that? Have you done this?’ I saw a good example this morning [concerning] an athlete who is struggling to absorb feedback around the communication on their skill development; the tasks. I just watched and I observed and I just said to the coach and the biomechanist ‘have you guys tried just letting him watch what it looks like when it’s done correctly by someone else and just letting him go and explore rather than giving him too much detail?’ ‘No, actually we haven’t’. ‘So maybe that’s their learning style?’

“It’s just me bringing what I see out there and asking them the questions.”

By Sarah Evans & Luke Whitworth

Recommended reading:

Leaders Performance Journal Building For Success

What Defines a Good Practice Facility?

‘”Training Facilities Are a Feeling” – you Can’t Say that to an Architect!’

Framing the topic

We often talk about environments within the Leaders Performance Institute, however within this topic-led virtual roundtable, we looked to extend these conversations into the physical space. We asked our members how their facilities were shaped and how they have evolved in order to contribute to the culture and environment they are trying to create.

We picked out four key points from our discussions:

1. Future-proofing the facility

• • Many sporting organisations have evolved and grown to include a women’s team, academy, first team and the corporate team. One of our members spoke about asking the question ‘how do we prepare for the building of the future’ and have thought about what the next 10 years could look like, thinking about what they can do now to support that future.
  • “We want to be the trend setters” – for many of our member teams, this is very important and so teams are spending lots of time in different spaces to get as many ideas as possible. The designs are often drawn, it takes a few years before the building is actually completed and so, by the time you move in, the building could be 3-4 years old and if you spend a decade in it, then the building is 10-15 years old and so that means they have to stay ahead of the curve.
  • Two of the key questions our members have been asking themselves is: ‘what’s true now that won’t change in 10 years? What needs to be consistent?’
  • Another way of future-proofing the facility, is thinking about what outcomes the team are seeking from the environment. Is it to enhance athletic performance? Is it to encourage more collaboration between staff? Are they hoping staff stay later at work? Identifying these outcomes can help the facility be more intentional and serve its purpose long term.

2. Make the space inclusive

• • Equity, Diversity and Inclusion work is becoming more engrained into high performance organisations, and making sure the facility is inclusive to everyone is something many of our teams are prioritising.
  • One of our members explained: “I’ve been working with the team for nine years. Back then, I was one of two women; now I’m one of 10 or 12 in the organisation.” Modifying the facilities in order to accommodate more female staff has been something many of our teams have had to adapt to.
  • Are the facilities inclusive for visually impaired athletes? Transgender athletes? Are they fully accessible for para-sports, as well as staff and visitors with accessibility needs? Some of these considerations are much easier to integrate into new builds, but how can they adapt current spaces to become more inclusive?
  • Are there places for new mothers to nurse? Is there childcare for parents?
  • For teams which have academies, the younger age groups are heavily influenced by parents, so how can the facilities be designed so that they’re more family-friendly, as parents are spending time around the space?

3. How does it make people feel?

• • Many people will forget things about a place or an environment, but people don’t forget how something makes them feel.
  • Everything in the facility has to have an intention, and the physical space has an opportunity to be a reflection of the club culture.
  • What’s the experience of being within that environment? How often are the questions asked to the athletes and how are they being asked? For the newest, youngest recruits versus the experience of the more veteran athlete who is perhaps at a different stage in their career; how are those questions integrated into the design of the physical space?
  • Are there any spaces where the athletes aren’t being watched? It becomes normalised as part of their workplace dynamic, but if they’re always being watched then they can never let their guard down to be themselves. So is there a possibility to create spaces in high performance environments where they have freedom to be themselves, or do they have to leave the facility to let go?
  • What are the performance outcomes of certain areas, and how can you impact this through the feel? For example within the dining area, if the outcome is to keep athletes there longer and increase engagement with nutrition, how can you create a relaxing space where they want to stay, rather than it feeling like a school canteen? The impact of plants and lighting, and making it feel more like a restaurant can have a big difference.

4. The flow of the facility

• • Understand the flow of the facility from a physical and psychological perspective. What’s the first thing you want them to do? Is a trophy cabinet the first thing you want to see every day? Actually, making a training ground feel like home and not have increased pressure all the time can have performance benefit.
  • Have the stadium be somewhere you intimidate the opposition, make them feel in awe, and provide as many home advantages for your team as possible. What is the entrance route for away teams at the stadium? Is it through a walkway filled with trophies and success or a bland hallway that doesn’t have an impact?

By John Portch

What makes for a great training facility? It is a question the Leaders Performance Institute posed to a series of athletes, coaches and practitioners, including Kate Warne-Holland, the Under-14s Girls Captain at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

“You have to bring the energy. Don’t come in if you’re not ready to come in,” she says.

“The players need to know exactly what the expectation level is of them and we have to challenge each other to bring the energy and the right attitude. When I ran my own environment as a coach, everybody in the team would have clear roles about where they would be that day; leading the session, assisting the session, hitting in the session. If, as a coach, you’re hitting in the session then you’re a player so you’d better behave like a player. You’re a real role model. Communication with the players in the session has to be pitched to what is in front of you that day.”

We spoke to individuals in American football, bobsleigh, rugby union, swimming, tennis, field hockey and athletics to glean their views on what makes a training or practice facility great. Here is what they told us.

Jack Easterby, NFL performance coach:

The flow is the number one thing. How does it flow and does that flow match the work flow of the operation? For example, I’ve had people walk into a locker room and it’s the first thing you see, which is great, but you’re spending more time in a meeting hall or in a study area than you are in the locker room. The second thing is unified technology. I think that technology creates behaviour. And so I think if you have a flow that’s really well done and you have unified technology around the building, it’s going to create the behaviours that are needed for the people inside.

Montell Douglas, British Olympic bobsledder and former Olympic sprinter:

The ideal is to have everything you need in one place. If you wanted to make the best athlete, you would give them everything you need in that realm to perform, but that’s rare. In transitioning into my newer sport, I realised that things aren’t always ideal and the best training facilities came from the times where I thought outside the box. A lot of times in my sport, I was training out of a garage with free weights. I would never imagine in sprinting that you could do that and still perform, but when you think about facilities, it’s not about the quality, although that’s hugely important. It’s always about: what is required and am I able to get the same desired outcome with what I have?

Ioan Cunningham, Head Coach, Wales senior women’s rugby union team:

The biggest thing for me is: how much does an environment help a player to learn? When you set up the environment, when they walk in, what triggers are there for them to learn? Is there signposting? And then out on the field it’s very similar. Is there an opportunity with us to get live feedback on a TV on the side of the field; ‘we’re just going to play this and then go and look at it’, ‘that was really good’ or ‘you didn’t run your line there properly’. We’re lucky we can do that at our level, but it’s also creating an environment where we will stop the session, give them 30 seconds to discuss it as a group, and then come back with two points. No more than two points. ‘How are you going to win the next minute?’ Those are the type of environments and learning environments – because learning leads to motivation, in my view. If you’re learning, you’re motivated. If you stop learning you become stale.

Rohan Taylor, Head Coach, Swimming Australia:

For me, there’s three really critical components that you look at across any high performance environment. These are almost non-negotiables. The facility needs to be accessible. Sometimes [swimmers] get kicked out of the pools or lane space, so we’ll secure access to facilities to be able to do the basics, the training. The second one is the coaching and the level of coaching expertise, not just elite coaches but the coaching group; I’m talking about the sports science. You need to have that and if it’s just one person they need to be really good, if it’s two people they need to work collaboratively together. And the third part is that you need that administrative support, that dry side support, to ensure those coaches are coaching, those athletes are training, and somebody’s supporting the structure around it. Whether it’s a large, professional football club or it’s a small swimming club, it needs those three components to be operating and working together. And if you take one away, it becomes a problem.

Kate Warne-Holland, Under-14s Girls Captain, LTA:

Hard work also has to be fun. I work with under-14s and there has to be enjoyment throughout the session, with the amount of volume and intensity the kids are undertaking. I think there also needs to be respect for the effort the players are putting in, respect for the parents, and the coaching staff. And walking in each morning to a nice, clean space. No litter, no balls everywhere, everything is nicely tidy and the baskets of balls are ready to go. Often the session will start at 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning. You don’t want to be walking in to a messy chaotic environment. After every single session we would quickly reflect at the end; assistant into lead, player into assistant, and then lead into player. I might say: ‘I thought you were really good at bringing the energy, you behave like a player, you had high expectations of the other person’. Each person says a couple of things and it just keeps everyone on their toes around the idea that ‘this is important and we care about the quality of the sessions’.

Lisa Jacob, High Performance Director, Hockey Ireland:

It’s a feeling of ‘home’ and I think it’s somewhere you walk into and it makes you elevate your thinking. It’s very hard to describe what that looks like and, at the moment, we’re in conversations with Sport Ireland around what we want the hockey facility to look like going forward. I’m pretty sure if we started off with ‘it’s a feeling’ – Jesus, the architects can’t work with that! It has to have the basics [such as pitches and gym facilities onsite or nearby], but the one critical thing that would differentiate it for me is what the team room is like. In some places you won’t have couches and bean bags or graduated steps where you can watch videos or movies, but a place where a team can actually make it their own and create what empowers them most [is important]. There are a couple of facilities that have got it right.

Victoria Moore, Head of Performance Support and Solutions, Athletics Australia:

I see resources of people as far more beneficial than resources such as equipment and or a building. I’ve seen athletes absolutely flourish when they’ve got people to help them make informed decisions. I think you can make a lot with the right people. That’s why I’ve put resources and dollars into investing into building people’s capacity. A nice building might look great, but you should invest in people and make them feel valued and that they belong; and that’s when you’re going to get the better outcomes.

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By Sarah Evans

Recommended reading:

What Are your Trade-Offs in the Quest for Success?

Leaders Performance Support Series: Making Wellbeing A Core Component Of Your Organisational Culture (Session 1)

Performance Perspectives: Balancing the Emotional and Rational in Performance Support

Framing the topic:

This was session two of our first Performance Support Series of the year, which focused on ‘The Performance Paradox’.  Across these sessions, which are led by our Performance Advisor and performance expert Dr Meg Popovic, the aim is to explore the trade-offs and considerations in the quest to win for staff, athletes, and their wider organisation. This series is centred around Transformational Learning Theory, which helps us to answer questions around how we learn to transform ourselves and the teams we co-create. There is one more session to follow.

Recap: the definition of ‘paradox’: ‘a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true’; ‘a statement, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities’.

Session themes:

• Embodied Wisdom
• Auto/Ethnography
• Process of Self-Understanding
• Expansion to our work with athletes
• Challenge to complete

Body/Disembodiment in High Performance – accessing the wisdom of the body.

We work in environments where the body is the conduit for excellence. The body is a tuned machine to create outcomes, and often we are individuals that serve the athletes or are service to tuning their bodies to greatness.

Sometimes our environments are so cut off from being in tune with the body, and in touch with the feelings of the body.

“Body awareness, as I understand it, has nothing to do with the technology of the body. It is not fitness or longevity that is at stake, although these may be by-products. What is at stake is the integration of body, soul and spirit” – Marion Woodman, psychoanalyst and author

Auto-Ethnography – a process and product, an opportunity to explore connections between culture and oneself. Personal experiences and the first-person voice is valued.

What would it be like as an ethnographer to interview your body? Meg explained a process she conducted during her PhD called ‘innerviews’ to explore the voice of the body. During this process she interviewed her right hip, and imagined if she was teaching her hip, what would she say about this character of the hip because it is often said that in the hip, secrets are held.

She gave the example that she would say that her hip is shy, introverted, private, not knowing what he is feeling with a blank facial expression. At every posture he is secretive and almost invisible, has depth and wisdom, and she needs to find a way to connect with him.

Meg then asked the members to have a go at thinking about a part of their body and she asked questions for them to consider to connect with their body in order to explore the inner voice.

Think about part of your body that has an ache or a pain:

1. State the area of the body.
2. Describe literally this body part, listing five things.
3. Think of the texture of the body part.
4. Describe this area as a weather system – what would the weather report be?
5. If you were to give it a voice, what would the voice sound like? What would the accent be?
6. Give that body part a name.
7. Think and connect with that body part – ask it: what do you need from me, or what do you need me to know?

Player-Led Leadership

Discussion points:

If we imagine more space for athletes to connect with their bodies,

1. What would it look like?
2. What would it feel like?
3. What would have to change?

Where can we create more space for the wisdom of the body to speak to us and for the athletes to access it?

“A soul flower finds its nourishment in the roots that go deepest into the dark rich mud” – Marion Woodman, psychoanalyst and author

A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

The meaning of ‘wellbeing’ in Australian sport has continually developed and the most marked development has been in the last five years.

“Traditionally, it centred around careers and education,” Matt Butterworth, Mental Health Manager at the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS], tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “There may have been some mental health support but nothing as formal and structured as a mental health service. Then there was a fundamental shift in how the AIS did things.”

One of the key milestones was the launch of the AIS’s Wellbeing & Engagement initiative in 2018. “The resulting services were a statement that we’re helping people to be the best athletes but we’re also helping them to develop into well-rounded people that can get on with their lives while they’re athletes. They’re also as well prepared as possible when they transition out,” Butterworth adds. “It’s not ‘you’re a high performance athlete and that’s it’, it’s more about ‘you’re a high performance athlete and we’re here to support you as an overall human being as well’.”

Within the theme of wellbeing, the AIS Mental Health Referral Network overseen by Butterworth operates as a national service where athletes, coaches and high performance support staff can see a mental health professional such as a psychologist for individual support that is confidential and at no cost to them. “The benefit of a national service is that you can operate at a larger scale to benefit more people across sports in terms of the resources we can build and offer in the mental health space. Then the sports themselves can choose to engage with the services they find useful.”

Here we explore where mental health sits in the wider picture for Australian athletes, coaches and practitioners.

Matt, where does the line sit between mental health and mental skills?

MB: There is a network of performance psychologists who are employed by individual sports  and they focus more on helping people with matters related to their performance on the field, on the track or in the pool. This is more mental skills-focussed. Our mental health services at the AIS focus less on performance or execution of a sporting skill, and more on helping people in managing wider aspects of their lives, such as their overall mood, relationships, and day to day functioning. The issues that my team assist with, such as anxiety difficulties, may be happening during an athlete’s performance but they’d also be occurring in other important areas of their lives such as during work, study, or with family and friends.

Can you truly balance wellbeing and performance?

MB: I think a balance can be achieved. The way I’ve heard others explain it really well is for people to be aware of what their priorities are and to spend most of their time doing things that are important to them. That’s the terminology that I think we’ll start using a bit more down here because usually when you say ‘lifestyle balance’ you see people roll their eyes and start turning away from you. If we’re aware of what our priorities are, the important things for us to be doing, the things to make life quite meaningful and enjoyable for us, then that’s a good way to be spending most of our time.

How can you address the common fear, that mental health services are only for making athletes feel better about poor performance?

MB: I think the people who choose to come into a high-performance system, whether they are athletes, coaches, or high performance support staff, like physios, dietitians etc. they probably self-select in that they are quite focused on performing and wanting to win. My perspective would be ‘what are the things we can do to help them move towards that?’ There are times when you have setbacks, there are times when you don’t win. If you can accept not necessarily feeling awesome, accept when things don’t go to plan, it is quite important to manage your emotions and figure out what you need to do to change the result or get a better result in the future. If that involves people feeling a bit better instead of being absolutely crushed and devastated every time that they have a set back or they don’t win an event, then I’m OK with that. I would say it’s more about the journey and the trend to where you’re heading rather than feeling devastated any time you lose. That’s not helpful either.

How are the mental health issues facing Australian athletes evolving?

MB: Typical presentation issues for us are anxiety and depression. That’s the same for pretty much most mental health services around the world and it’s not that different in sport. It is not necessarily a new issue but we’re becoming better at detecting more things. I think our system is now doing more work in the space of eating disorders. We’re becoming aware of just how common traumatic experiences are for people generally in life and that people in our system experience traumatic experiences too. So we’re starting to get better at how we might educate people around that, how we best provide services to support people. An athlete, coach or staff member can go and see a psychologist or mental health clinician for one-to-one support if they want. The Mental Health Referral Network has been operating since 2018 and referral rates are continuing to trend upwards. Generally, the people who access the service have difficulties  at the mild to moderate end rather than needing to go to hospital or anything like that, and I think that’s an indication that people feel less stigma and are more comfortable reaching out for support. We’ve evaluated our services in the last year too and our clients are telling us that our services are helping them to be more aware of what’s more important for mental health, and how to look after their mental health as well. We’re thinking about how we continue to make this sustainable and accessible for more people as well.

How can an athlete refer themselves?

MB: Athletes and other eligible people can refer themselves to the Mental Health Referral Network directly by calling or emailing us. They can also be referred to us by another person, typically this would be by an Athlete Wellbeing Manager in their sport, but we also get referrals on behalf of people such as family members, performance psychologists, coaches, doctors or other support staff. Anyone can make a referral on behalf of an eligible person.

What about the mental health of coaches?

MB: Any coach or high performance support staff member can access the Mental Health Referral Network. Our stakeholders told us back in 2019 that if we want a healthy system then we’ve got to look after as many parts of the system as possible – particularly the coaches and performance staff that work directly with athletes. Coaches play a crucial role in the wellbeing of athletes and the broader system. We know that the expectations and pressure on coaches are very high, their roles are multifaceted, and their job security can be low. This combination of factors can take a high toll on them and their families. With coaches in particular, there’s been a development at the AIS in the past two years of having a specific High Performance Coach Development team. They focus on how best to develop coaches in the Australian high performance system. Part of their work has  a wellbeing aspect as well. We liaise with their team about how they best get information about services available to them in front of the coaches that they’re working with.

Have you enjoyed much success?

MB: Yes, I think so. Independent research that we’ve commissioned over the last four years has told us  that mental health rates in our high performance system have been fairly stable across that time but access to our Mental Health Referral Network has continued to increase year on year. We take this as a positive sign that people are increasingly aware of the need to take care of their mental health and that they’re feeling more comfortable, and less stigmatised, to proactively reach out for support when they need it. A recent independent survey of people who’ve accessed the Mental Health Referral Network also told us that the service has helped them in managing their mental health, in some cases they said it had saved their life, and they want the service to continue to be available to them. We also know from this research that we’ve got work to do around building more awareness, continuing to have the right skills mix of professionals, and we’re about to do some work around how we keep the service sustainable into the future as demand continues to increase.

Do you feel these initiatives have built the credibility of the Mental Health Referral Network?

MB: Yes. The credibility of our programs such as the Mental Health Referral Network has been built by a number of factors. A key one which I think is a hallmark for any type of success has been having great leadership. My team and I have been fortunate to have excellent leadership sitting above us so that we could get on with the job of helping athletes, coaches and staff. There’s been many leaders who’ve assisted. Our current Acting Director of the AIS, Matti Clements, has been a leader at executive level and has really owned and driven the AIS’s approach to wellbeing over the last four years. I think it’s accurate to say that her vision and leadership has been transformative for our system. I think that other factors that have helped in building credibility is the authenticity and work ethic of the people providing mental health services to athletes, coaches and staff. The people involved have taken the approach that if we say we’re going to do something then they’ve worked really hard to deliver that for our stakeholders, whether that’s an individual athlete or a national sporting organisation or one of the organisations that runs the various games in terms of Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games.

What is next in the mental health space for the AIS?

MB: I think moving more into how we best support mental health at a systemic level, so the overall Australian sport system or the National Sporting Organisations (NSOs/NSODs) who are running their high performance programs but, at the same time, also needing to support the mental health and wellbeing of their athletes.

Does that research tend to back up what you thought in the first place?

MB: Yes, I think so in a number of areas. It’s also given us insights into particular issues we should be targeting more. The trauma space is one of those, the eating disorder space is another one as well, which is why in our Mental Health Referral Network we’ve done a lot of work to ensure professionals with those skillsets are available to help people in our system. Moving forward, we want to create pathways for people who experience more serious  mental health difficulties. While the rate is probably lower than we have in the broader community, we’ve  got some work that we need to do in that space around having good pathways.

A podcast brought to you by our Partners Elite Performance Partners

“I’ve spent a lot of time in professional sports and often been one, if not the only female, in those particular organisations,” says Matti Clements, the Acting Director of the Australian Institute of Sport.

Her observation is all too common in such a male-dominated industry with certain roles, such as psychology, often presumed to be a more natural fit for a female practitioner than, say, a strength & conditioning role.

Matti, for her part, is a psychologist by training but has served in a series of senior managerial roles – becoming a pioneer in the process – and has shifted perceived wisdoms in the fields of people, culture and wellbeing.

As such, she was an ideal guest for the latest edition of the Elite Performance Partners (EPP) Industry Insight Series Podcast where she spoke to Dave Slemen, EPP’s Founding Partner, about her career journey and her thoughts on the evolution of psychology and wellbeing in sport.

She continues: “Over time, I got a bit more comfortable with ‘what do I bring? Why am I here? So what is the role that I’m being asked to fill and how do I utilise my strengths in that role?’”

Over the course of the conversation, Matti also spoke about:

• How being a leader differs from working as a specialist [4:30];
• Parallels she sees between psychology and marketing [8:00];
• The current shift in thinking around coach wellbeing [20:00];
• Building cultures of psychological safety [28:00].

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

By John Portch

What are the fundamentals of a good practice facility? For the Toronto Blue Jays, who opened their Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Florida, in 2021, those fundamentals were summed up in an acronym that pulls together their values: CLEAR. It stands for collaboration, learning, empowerment, achieve and respect.

Each was explained by Angus Mugford, who served as the Jays’ Vice President of high Performance at the time. “We want to have a highly collaborative environment where different departments and people are close to each other,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2019. “The open spaces are more attractive for people who want to come together. It’s the same thing with the high performance offices and space. It’s together and unified and it’s also physically and metaphorically in the centre, so that the ease of communication and collaboration is right there, but it’s also a space for players and coaches and other staff can be together easily.

“‘Learning.’ You don’t have to be in a specific room to learn but we want to create some specific environments where learning is enhanced. One of the critiques other teams were telling us about were in auditoriums, how easy it was for guys on the back row to close their eyes and switch off like a movie theatre, so we’ve leaned towards more a business school lecture theatre, which is less about lecturing and more about having a pulpit in the middle and more of an inclusive, collaborative environment between whoever is leading the discussion and everybody who is in that audience.

“The E is ‘empowerment’ and that goes for staff and players. That people can take the initiative, that we want players to be at the centre of that ultimately. So creating spaces where people have the autonomy and ability to create discussions; open meeting rooms. When we toured Google, that was a really good takeaway, they have this idea of ‘collision spaces’; so creating spaces where people can organically meet.

“Then the A is for ‘achieve’. Not just winning but really just more about a process of excellence and really trying to be consistent and thoughtful about the details. I think with the details that we’re trying to get into with the design and setting up, we also realised that in this process of moving in we’re going to screw some things up. Or people are going to have even more ideas that we can think about until they’re actually in the space so I think that whole process of moving in, taking feedback, and saying what people need and want to make that space even more functional is going to be a priority once we do actually move into the space too.

“Finally, ‘respect’ is the R. Not just for each other and the team but our environment and our physical space is an element that can be a thread throughout our team.”

Here, we explore six more themes that define a good training environment.

1. Flow and efficiency

Efficiency is essential and that comes from frictionless circulation of athletes and staff. “You have everything on one level when it comes to training, preparation and recovery,” said Martin Buchheit of Paris St-Germain’s Ooredoo Training Center in 2019. Buchheit served as PSG’s Head of Performance between 2014 and 2020. He now serves as a high performance consultant with LOSC Lille in France’s Ligue 1. “Everything is central and everything is connected. From the locker room you enter straight into the mobility, stretching and warmup area, which is chronological as well. You get ready, you get changed, then you go for functional work. Afterwards, their recovery, the stretching and mobility area is connected to the locker room, the hydrotherapy area is connected to the locker room; it makes it very efficient to get those recovery routines straight after training.

Flow is also crucial to an aligned, interdisciplinary approach. “One of the things I’ve found historically is that people gravitate towards their own space,” said Mugford, who now serves as the Senior Vice President of Player Development & Performance at the New Jersey Devils. “The strength coaches may want to sit together and the trainers may want to sit together. People gravitate towards their own discipline and what we really want to make a commitment to doing is sharing that space so that we’re really maximising the collaboration. We’ve already made that shift over the past few years, but something as basic as that is really fundamental when we have affiliate staff and groups sitting together so that natural exchange happens as we’d like it to.”

2. Touchpoints for collaboration and creativity

The Jays’ upgrade made Mugford the ideal man to talk with Phil Cullen, the Senior Director of Basketball Operations & Organizational Development at the San Antonio Spurs, ahead of the team’s move to its $510m Human Performance Campus at The Rock at La Cantera, Texas. Cullen told an audience at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London that the facility will boast human-centred design characteristics that promote collaboration and creativity. “A lot of times it’s focused on the coaching element, which is extremely important, and player amenities, but how do you facilitate those casual collisions?” said Cullen. “The people that would be in your facility the most and have the most touchpoints are probably not who you think they are. For us, it was our equipment guy. Very often you’ll go back and the players are hanging out with the equipment guy. Why? Because they can just hang out. It’ll be the athletic trainer, it’ll be the guy who’s taping his ankles and helping the guy rehab.” This has been uppermost in the Spurs’ thinking, who have even installed TVs close to the ceiling of their current facility to help take players eyes away from their phones.

Cullen added: “How can we make sure we have the best possible experience so that we’re actually giving them opportunities in their career development; giving them all the resources they want to advance? So that when we go into the marketplace to recruit these guys to have elite talent in our building, we’re not only attracting elite basketball players and elite coaches, but also the staff around them. That’s where collaboration is key. For us, the human-centred design piece is really trying to break down those interactions and it starts when the players pull up into the facility; what’s that experience when they enter in, get out, walk into the parking lot? Who are they walking past when they go to the locker room?”

3. Create a pleasant work environment

Beyond upgraded modalities, modern practice facilities need to be appealing destinations and Art Horne, the Director of Organizational Growth & Team Development at the Boston Celtics, speaks with a sense of awe about the 40-foot glass windows that overlook the city of Boston at the Auerbach Center, which opened in 2018. “Natural light is a huge plus in Boston when it’s cold and dark,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute the following year. “It’s an inviting place,” added Jay Wessland, the Celtics’ Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, who sat next to Horne. “All that natural light and the city skyline; we needed a place that people are encouraged to go and work out in; that they didn’t think it was a chore.” Such considerations were uppermost in the minds of PSG, who plan to move into their Paris Saint-Germain Training Center later this year. The complex is to include the Club House, which the club’s official website says is: “Entirely glassed at ground-floor level to provide views out into the surrounding landscape and create an illusion of levitation. Inside, a shape entitled ‘The Blue Flight’ rises skywards, symbolising the ultimate goal of all of the Club’s athletes.”

4. If you’re building a new facility, be sure your architect listens

Cullen explained that San Antonio had an issue with the sports-focused architects whom they consulted. “They try to give you the best rendition of what they’ve just completed,” he said. “They’ll kind of tell you what you want rather than really listening to what you need.” The solution was to partner with an architect that had experience of other sectors. “All of us now are becoming small tech companies; the technology’s integrated in everything we do. Why aren’t we looking at technology companies and how they work to see how it can impact how we’ll work in the future?” The Spurs were left pondering aspects and thinking points they may not have otherwise considered.

5. Does your building have agility?

Training facilities need to allow for the preferences of head coaches and PSG’s Ooredoo Training Centre, even as it comes to the end of its life cycle, has that covered – quite literally. In line with numerous clubs in European football, PSG have a 45x14m tent, which covers a pitch of synthetic turf right next to one of their main training pitches. It is a useful tool for group work. “A lot of work can be done outside,” Buchheit explained. “A portion of the group can be training outside on the pitch and the other half can be doing some strength work or some other exercises in this area – they don’t need to go back inside to take their boots off and a coach can do rotations. It offers efficiency and it also offers flexibility; depending on the coach, we’ll be using the tent a lot or not. It’s about being able to allow all staff and coaches to run their programmes as they wish. The agility of the building today is a legacy of the different coaches who worked with us in the past and so these adaptations are the fruit of a collective process involving the current and past backroom staff.”

6. Future-proof your facility – leave some space free

It can be tempting to throw the kitchen sink at a new facility but the Spurs and Cullen are wary of doing so or being locked into one type of technology. “We’re trying to be intentional about not designing a space for one specific use because it can very quickly become a closet if it can’t be used for more than one thing,” he said. “By far the No 1 thing people tell us is make sure you have enough space. You may not have all the nice designs and be able to finish it all out, be able to brand it, be able to story-tell the way you want, but make sure you get the space because you want to future-proof and you can’t move around in it.”