By John Portch with additional reporting from Joe Lemire

David Dunne believes the nature of the multidisciplinary team in sport is rapidly evolving.

“We expect a nutritionist, coaches, S&C, psych and physio – that’s what we consider a multidisciplinary team,” he told the People Behind the Tech Podcast in April.

“However, now [a multidisciplinary team includes] behavioural psychology, UX [user experience design], UI [user interface design], data science, software engineering, performance science. It’s a whole other world that has opened up new possibilities that we didn’t know were there as a practitioner.”

Dunne, who is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hexis, an AI-powered predictive nutrition service for elite athletes, has made an almost full transition from high performance sport. He previously served as Head of Nutrition at English Premiership rugby club Harlequins and still works in a similar capacity with Ryder Cup Team Europe.

While his assessment of tech’s role in high performance is unsurprising, his views on those “possibilities” now open to practitioners provide some food for thought – and not only for nutritionists or dietitians.

“What we’re going to see is the evolution of the hybrid practitioner,” he continued.

What are the implications for you and your team? Below, we set out a HYBRID framework to illustrate the concept.

H – Haste – “[Going] back to Quins, you spend a lot of time behind the laptop,” said Dunne. “You got bogged down in a spreadsheet. It’s tedious.” However, a hybrid practitioner will “use tech for tasks that can be algorithmically delivered at scale.”

Y – Yield – this can mean being receptive to others; and a hybrid practitioner “uses technology for what it’s good at” while people can focus on what they’re best at, which is “being human”. As Dunne explained: “Humans are good at building relationships, learning how to have conversations, and listening to people and actually helping them change their behaviours and change their beliefs about certain consequences or their own abilities over time.”

B – Balance – Dunne’s Co-Founder at Hexis is Sam Impey. “A brilliant scientist,” as Dunne said. “A far greater academic than I’ll ever be.” Nevertheless, Dunne is aware of his own assets. “My personal strengths have always been on the coaching side – put me in any locker room, put me in any team setting, I love to have conversations, I love to listen.” In truth, a successful practitioner needs both sets of traits. As Dunne put it, “let’s call it practitioner tacit knowledge and actually the application on the frontline.” The best example of this in Hexis’ work is how their app has been influenced by the COM-B model, which is a framework for understanding and changing behaviour – both key factors in performance nutrition. For a behaviour to occur, a person must have the capability, opportunity and motivation to perform it. Practitioners aiming to change behaviour should therefore target one or more of these components.

R – Roadmap – practitioners are too often constrained by tech being restricted to trackers. “It’s retrospective”, said Dunne, specifically of nutrition trackers. But with predictive AI entering the market, the role of the practitioner is likely to be more forward-facing. “We always need to know [and] we always want to help them know what to do next,” he added. This is particularly important in light of Hexis-sponsored research suggesting that most athletes are ‘confirmation seekers’, meaning they want to lead on “making the decision but then they want something to help verify that they’re going in the right direction.” A hybrid practitioner can cater to this need.

I – IT / MI – “I think what we’re going to see more of is a more highly-skilled human practitioner with a lot more software skills and [skills such as] motivational interviewing [MI] on the frontline, and then technology systems that ensure a standard of care across the whole organisation, 24/7, 365 days a year,” said Dunne. Key to that is reducing the “noise” around the athlete. With the right plans and structures, the hybrid practitioner can “deliver impactful value to the athlete.”

D – Data – with apps such as Hexis allowing for data integration – their collaboration with training app TrainingPeaks is a prime example – there is the opportunity for practitioners to make better use of existing data rather than merely seeking the next thing. With the right blend of skills, the hybrid practitioner is well-placed to ask: what can we do with the information we already have?

Listen to the full interview with David Dunne below:

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By Joe Lemire

The WNBA has signed a landmark deal with Genius Sports for use of its Second Spectrum optical tracking cameras, becoming the first women’s pro sports league in the US to have access to 3D player and ball data.

This multi-year, league-wide agreement with Second Spectrum marks the latest milestone in the rapid growth of the WNBA and could signal a new era of personnel decisions, game strategy and sports science for the teams. The NBA’s analytics revolution followed the installation of its first league-wide optical tracking system back in 2013. And such 3D tracking underpins so many modern fan engagement activations — everything from MLB’s 3D Gameday to ESPN’s Big City Greens NHL game and the Toy Story NFL game.

“Our teams are obviously very enthusiastic about this and that the league is making the investment on behalf of the teams,” WNBA Head of League Operations Bethany Donaphin said. “It’s really a statement to the importance of developing our basketball technology capabilities as the league continues to grow and as the game continues to evolve.”

One of the key criteria for the WNBA system was that ability to collect the raw x-y-z tracking data as well as being able to generate an “end-to-end suite of analytics,” added NBA VP Tom Ryan, who oversees technology initiatives. Such second-level metrics include assessing quality of shots and advanced defensive proficiency evaluations.

“Probably the most exciting thing about the deal for us is that this the first time, to our knowledge, that a women’s pro sports league is going to have this level of tracking and analytics,” Second Spectrum Chief Commercial Officer Mike D’Auria said. “We’re going to take the cutting-edge technology, not just from the tracking side, but going through the analytics, data and software that is the cornerstone of NBA workflows. We’re excited to level up the women’s game, which is something we’ve wanted to do for ages.”

This follows a major digital transformation from the WNBA before the 2023 season in which the league rebuilt its app and website following a $75 million infusion of capital. That enabled the W to assemble its own in-house digital team to better serve its fans. That group will now have considerably more data to power leaderboards, highlights and immersive experiences.

Ryan noted the value in finding a partner who will “be able to evolve with the WNBA. It’s at an incredible inflection point as a property. The first phase is really about advancing the game and the core product, but then over time, we’re obviously going to want to innovate the fan experience and add a new media element.”

“What people are starting to discover — hopefully more and more — is how elite our athletes are, how talented they are, how really skilled they are,” Donaphin said, “and I think it’ll be impactful to be able to tell stories around that with data supporting it.

Some of the media tools will need to be negotiated directly with each broadcaster in the coming months. Genius and Second Spectrum have a stable of AR and other visualizations tools that they’ve used in, for example, NFL coverage on CBS and NFL+.

“I really think some of the data information and graphics can really start to accentuate the women’s game in a different way and give a unique look and feel to the game,” D’Auria said, namechecking the potential of analyzing Caitlin Clark’s shooting in a new way.

“The WNBA is growing so much, which means they have a lot of new fans coming to them,” he added. “What we hope is that we can really help that process of driving new fans.”

Second Spectrum was the longtime provider of NBA tracking data until that deal concluded prior to this season, although it remains a provider of basketball analytics and broadcast augmentation for the league. The WNBA first tested tracking data at the inaugural Commissioner’s Cup in 2021 when it leveraged a combination of Kinexon sensors and Hawk-Eye cameras.

Soon after that game, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert shared her vision for tracking data in a keynote conversation with SBJ Tech.

“It’s really important to provide that to teams and players about workload and stuff like that, but it’s important also to integrate some of that data into broadcast to make it very interesting — and then integrate it into a second screen experience,” she said at the time, discussing the value in “finding ways to engage fans differently.”

On Tuesday, she reaffirmed that value proposition in a statement, saying, “Technology continues to fundamentally change the sports landscape. Deploying state-of-the-art optical tracking technology through Genius Sports will deliver rich data to our teams that they can leverage to enhance player performance while informing in-game strategy and enable a new wave of insights and media elements for fans.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

A Data & Innovation podcast brought to you in collaboration with

David Dunne describes a perennial problem for practitioners in elite sports.

“There’s a fundamental mismatch between what practitioners can deliver and what athletes actually want and desire,” he told Joe Lemire and John Portch on the People Behind the Tech podcast.

“So we pivoted towards the COM-B model.”

During this episode we spoke at length about Hexis’ continued growth following a successful seed round, technology’s ability to influence the evolution of the practitioner, and the fundamental union of academic rigour and those so-called softer skills.

COM-B was a major part of that conversation. It has been integral to Hexis’ growth. The company used it in tandem with elements of design thinking which, as Dunne explains, stems from his time working for teams including Harlequins and Ryder Cup Team Europe.

The model is a framework for understanding and changing behaviour. It was developed by Susan Michie, Maartje van Stralen and Robert West in 2011. The model posits that behaviour (B) is a result of an interaction between three components:

Capability (C): this refers to an individual’s psychological and physical capacity to engage in the activity. It includes having the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.

Opportunity (O): this encompasses all the factors outside the individual that make the behaviour possible, including social and physical environmental factors.

Motivation (M): this includes the brain processes that direct behaviour, such as habits, emotional responses, decision-making and analytical thinking.

Listen to the full conversation:

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Main image: Movetru

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Our Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports. If you’d like to be considered for this series, tell us about your mission.

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World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Real-time biomechanics for on-field and on-court injury mitigation.”

Company: Movetru

Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Year founded: 2020

Website/App: https://www.movetru.io/

Funding round to date: “Angel, plus UK government funded.”

Who are your investors? “Movetru’s notable investors include: Jack Butler, entrepreneur, CMO, CFO; Mary McKenna, UK & EU Angel Investor of the Year; Rob Hargrove, VP of R&D; Andrea Sinclair, UK Angel Investor of the Year; and Alastair Moore, PhD, a serial entrepreneur with a focus in AI.”

Are you looking for more investment? “Yes, we are in discussions with athlete investors and VCs.”

Tell us about yourself, founder & CEO Naomi McGregor: “In pursuit of a ballet career at 14 years old, I injured my knee. It took three years and eight different specialists to finally diagnose. At this time, I was told I should never dance again and that my injury was completely preventable. After this, I pursued a degree in engineering. During my Master’s in product design engineering from Queen’s University in Belfast, I put forward the idea of a device to prevent injury. This allowed me to combine my frustration of injury, passion for dance and knowledge of engineering into my dissertation. After graduating as a First Class Masters in engineering scholar, I went full-time into the development of Movetru. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, I was excited to begin the adventure of entrepreneurship. Since then, I’ve learned how to grow a team, raise over half a million in government funding and raise angel investment.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “I am the solo Founder of Movetru. However, I am fortunate to have a fantastic team supporting me, along with invaluable guidance from incredible advisors and the backing of the best angel investors. While I may be the sole Founder on paper, the collaborative efforts of this talented group have been instrumental in bringing Movetru to where it is today.”

How does your product work? “Movetru is a wearable technology for real-time biomechanics for injury mitigation and performance improvements. This is done through smart activewear that allows the athlete to understand their movement quality from anywhere through their smartphone. Information is given to athletes, coaches and medical staff with an automated data pipeline. This means no additional data analysis is required. Movetru provides athletes the ability to understand improvements on injury rehabilitation and performance.”

What problem is your company solving? “As I’ve seen from my own experience, preventable injuries are all too common. They are caused by inadequate training, poor movement quality, overloading and lack of personalized training techniques. This results in both physical and psychological harm, along with financial burdens and long-term health implications. In the U.S. alone, $20 billion is lost due to sports-related injuries in U.S. high school and collegiate levels, and 33% of professional athlete salaries are lost due to injuries. Movetru targets preventable injuries to reduce this burden and keep athletes where they belong — on the field. One hundred participants have taken part in product trials to date. These focused specifically on injuries in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). We found that the participants who suffered an ACL rupture and received rehabilitation plans had better biomechanics compared to those who did not. This highlights injury can be reduced with improved biomechanics and early intervention.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Movetru is a SaaS-based platform offering two subscription models, differing between team sports and individual athletes. A beta launch this year will target individual athletes and teams across collegiate and professional leagues.”

Image: Movetru

How are you marketing your product? “We’re marketing our product by engaging directly with beta users across NCAA, leagues and amateur sports teams, ensuring we develop a product they love. Our emphasis has been on early user conversations, rather than heavy marketing. As we expand, I’m excited to broaden our athlete base and welcome athlete ambassadors to join the Movetru team.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “We plan to scale by expanding across the NCAA and leagues while onboarding exceptional athlete ambassadors along the way. Additionally, as we continue to grow, we already have plans to develop a consumer version of our product to democratize information for athletes at all levels.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “Currently, teams are required to use multiple devices, or attend biomechanics laboratories, with time-consuming data analysis. These include motion capture, force plates and computer vision. However, Movetru will be the first of its kind within the wearable technology market, encapsulating the capabilities of these existing products and integrating them into one product. Competitor products are limited in their ecological validity, as they are confined to laboratory analysis only. Movetru takes this one step further and provides useful insights and athlete profiling from on-field performance.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “Female athletes are often overlooked in the male-dominated research area of sports technology. Female physiology, body structure and movement characteristics are under-researched and therefore not implemented sufficiently. Movetru seeks to counteract this injustice and our technology has been designed with all bodies in mind. Female athletes have been considered in every stage of design and development to ensure optimum performance and usability. Movetru is set apart with our multidisciplinary team of engineers, all-star athletes, textile designers, biomechanics specialists and psychologists. Together with our expert board of advisors, we are wholeheartedly committed to making a difference with our custom technology. Movetru will provide live on-field analysis with proprietary data algorithms that transform raw data into a biomechanical model representative of the user.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “The team is preparing for our beta launch in 2024. This comes as a result of our 100 athlete trials in Movetru’s Innovation Lab. We tested with participants who suffered ACL injuries, as well as control subjects to conduct thorough ACL research. On-court studies have also taken place with several sports teams to ensure ecological validity. We will also be closing a seed raise this year.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By Luke Whitworth

There has been plenty happening but, before we look back, let’s look forward.

Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching, an in-person member event, is just around the corner so, if you haven’t already, do check it out and register to join us at Millfield School in Somerset. We have some excellent topics on the agenda, including pedagogy & andragogy, non-directive coaching, coaching neurodivergent athletes, the language of coaching, complexity science and much more besides.

The day will be most relevant to anyone working with athletes on a day-to-day basis, whether in a first team environment or within the pathway. There’s just a couple of weeks left to register so don’t miss out.

Our Debriefs are designed to set you up for success. We’ll keep you on the pulse of contemporary thinking across the high performance space and provide members with the inspiration to engage with the variety of opportunities on offer through their membership. Do check out some of our upcoming events and virtual learning sessions to connect, learn and share with fellow members from across the globe.

And now, let’s reflect on the pressing performance issues of the day.

Virtual roundtables

March was a busy month for roundtables. From topic-led conversations around Sustaining Team Culture and the Influence of AI on Performance Programmes, to a Leadership Skills session focused on Building Persuasion and, last but definitely not least, part two in our series of learning around Wellbeing and what is having the most impact.

These are the insights that resonated with us most.

The potential impact of AI

We identified some of the enablers and outlined some of the key questions we still have around the technology.

So, where do we think AI can have a positive impact on our programmes?

1. Greater efficiencies: AI can be used to speed up processes and automate insights, such as in the case of scouting reports or player tracking. It can also help streamline workflows.
2. Deeper insights: there has long been a wealth of data in sport but often far more limited means of interpreting the numbers. AI can pick up that slack and even potentially unearth insights we haven’t yet considered.
3. Enhanced injury prevention & rehabilitation: we think AI can support athlete monitoring and overall health monitoring to better inform decision-making around training loads, future scheduling, and athlete development programmes.
4. A better tactical and on-field understanding: AI can simulate fixtures and help to deliver a better understanding of how to beat opponents with the most effective tactics, which can then be shared with coaching staff as they build a gameplan.

All sounds good, doesn’t it? However, we still have some questions that need answering. Have you explored and come up with answers to these in your environments?

1. How do we make AI work? An obvious question, but there’s no consensus. It leads to further lines of enquiry: who do we need to engage to make this work in terms of disciplines, personnel, and how will their perspectives be used to educate the collective? Who are your big AI stakeholders? AI mapping, one member noted, can be a valuable tool. What type of expertise do you need? There is some uncertainty over who might be the best profile of person to help with the internal development of AI use.
2. How do we set the right foundations? Have you implemented the correct data privacy and cyber security processes? How do you intend to educate your athletes and staff around its use? One attendee spoke of the need for a working definition of ‘intelligence’. Clarity is essential for effective interdisciplinary collaboration.
3. What could AI change? One of the most common issues is the ‘role replacement v role enhancement’ debate. How will the skillsets of roles in your environment evolve as the technology begins to take affect? One member suggested that the analyst’s role may shift from collation and interpretation to communication. Coaches will need to be provided with data literacy skills too. Teams will also need to be mindful of not losing the subjective human element, which demands human interaction rather than machine learning alone.
4. How do we measure the quality of data? How clean is your data? It’s a crucial question to answer when making data-informed decisions. If there are any issues then you will need to get your house in order first.

Why persuasion is an important skill in modern day leadership

How can you master the art of persuasion? We have some tips for you. Having good ideas is not enough. In order to change thinking and enact change, we need to be able to persuade people.

The Trust Equation

The equation is a conceptual formula used to describe how to build and elevate trust. To go into a big more detail, Credibility speaks to words and credentials and simply put, how authentic are we? Reliability is the perception of someone’s integrity,  are your actions connected to your words? Are you credible in how you present yourself? Intimacy refers to the feeling of safety or security in the sharing of information and how safe and secure others feel in sharing with us. Finally, Self-Orientation reflects an individuals focus and where it is directed – is it towards themselves or others?

Essential steps in mastering persuasiveness

There was lots of gold in this skills session but as we reflected on the essential steps to impact the notion of persuasion well, there were four steps to reflect on in developing your persuasion muscle:

1. Embrace feedback and recognise areas for improvement in your own field.
2. The consistent practice and conscious application of persuasion techniques – they help to refine your leadership over time.
3. There are easy, everyday wins that elevate persuasion skills, from how you position yourself, the level of status you reflect, to how you convey a logical thought pattern.
4. Just as athletes relentlessly refine their techniques and strategies to achieve peak performance, leaders must adopt a mindset of continuous improvement and adaptability to persuasiveness.

Additional reporting by Lottie Wright

Something a little different…

As many of you will know, we at the Leaders Performance Institute pride ourselves in exploring the world of high performance outside of the elite sporting context. With this in mind, we wanted to push your attention to some golden insights from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and their Director of Actor Training. To read more on their approach to elevating performance here and also how they’ve worked to redesign their curriculum here.

Skilbeck shared with us five factors that underpin their process to developing their talent. Are yours similar?

1. Breaking the constraints of habits: these habits have developed from earliest infancy, whether physical, mental, imagination or emotional. RADA believes these can impair an actor’s work.
2. Expanding an actor’s performance capacity: as a follow on from the above, actor training aims to break habits and expand technical, emotional and imaginative capacity. Lucy shared that what they’re training is how to be a human being and how to embody human experience in imaginary circumstance.
3. Managing fears and trauma: breaking habits can be a difficult process and can potentially being up fears or trauma from past experiences. RADA works with a psychologist who hosts sessions with students on resilience early in their training, that is both psych education and giving them strategies for managing what might be potentially overwhelming traumas. The psychologist is also working with the teaching faculty to develop trauma-informed teaching spaces and practices so that teachers know how to respond and the material is less likely to provoke overwhelming responses for students.
4. Reflective practice: RADA works with students on taking the observer position so that they can create some space from the sensation and the experience of the release. Students are encouraged to keep reflective journals.
5. Embracing failure: RADA talks a lot about embracing failure because they’re encouraging people to not to try and get it right and to allow failure to be part of one’s creative practice. Lucy shared that you can’t have a creative practice if you’re not willing to fail. You can only have a complacent practice because you’ll only try the things that you know will succeed.

Additional reporting by John Portch

Community groups

In March, our Performance Support & Science community group took centre stage.

With 2024 bringing new projects and streams of work, we looked into the pressing questions and topics that are currently occupying the minds of those in this group.

Some of these will look familiar. How are you trying to approach some of these issues in your environment?

Sustaining staff health & energy

A few different people as part of the group discussion alluded to the topic of staff energy and sustainability, from the lens of the performance support and coaching team. Some of the spin off questions referred to how do we best integrate support and what does that look like, particularly due to the intensity of competition and in some environments, where there is uncertainty.

AI is coming, so how do we prepare?

Firstly, we’d recommend revisiting some of the bullet points above on what came out of the conversations of this topic in one of our roundtables. A lot of performance teams are evaluating it’s possible impact and the input it could have into our worlds. Will you be an early or late adopter and do you have a clear strategy in place to ensure there is clarity and preparation for how you will use it when that day comes?

Are you collaborating with external practitioners?

Arguably the most common response from the group when it came to current challenges. Such is the nature of modern day elite sport, performance support networks around our athletes are growing, including independent specialists who are not employed by the organisation. The crux of the conversation was, if we are to work with them, how do we do it best? Or do we not look to collaborate with them at all?

Balancing long-term planning and short-term delivery

This is a constant battle for performance support teams, such is the nature of the work that takes place in this field. The group brought to the table the question of how others are finding the balance to ensure they are moving at the ‘pace of performance’ in the day-to-day environment, but a nod to the future exists when it comes longer-term programme planning. We also discussed how to keep senior and experienced staff growing as it can be very easy to slip back into the short-term mindset, thus stifling longer-term development opportunities.

By John Portch

“With everybody, we start at the ground floor,” said Lucy Skilbeck.

The Director of Actor Training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA] is speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute for a two-part interview.

The first focused on the teachers, the second instalment hones in on the students themselves, those coming in on the ‘ground floor’. RADA enrols a talented cohort of 28 acting students each year and works for three years to raise their ceiling.

“What we identify is the talent and the potential for growth, development and passion,” Skilbeck continued. “They are all talented, there’s no question, and they have all done really interesting things before they’ve come to RADA. What the training does is expand the instrument.”

Here, we explore the five most important factors underpinning that process.

1. Breaking the constraints of habits

This is the key point. Skilbeck, who also spoke at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, believes that that everyone, including actors is constrained by their habits. “All of which we have developed from earliest infancy,” she said. “These are vocal and physical habits, mental habits, habits of the imagination, and emotional habits.” They can impair an actor’s work. “In other words, you can’t embody someone with an enormous emotional range, that has to go on an enormous emotional journey, if you’re habitually protective of your emotions and not [able] to go to anger, to distress, to passion, then you can’t take the character there either.” The students’ talents are, as Skilbeck explained, “held within whatever the constraints of their own habits”.

2. Expanding an actor’s performance capacity

RADA’s actor training aims to break those habits and expand the acting students’ technical, emotional and imaginative capacity. “Really, what we’re training is how to be a human being and how to embody human experience in imaginary circumstances,” said Skilbeck, adding, “the only way I think that can be done is through the expansion of the self so that there’s access to the vulnerability that allows people to be open and exposed in a way that acting is asking them to do.” There are potential consequences of this approach to training, namely raising fears and psychological trauma.

3. Managing fears and trauma

Skilbeck admitted there is an element of risk in encouraging students to be vulnerable. As such, RADA offers its Student Wellbeing Service through its Student and Academic Services department. The service consists of two main teams: their Disability Service and, of particular interest in a discussion of habits, their Counselling Service. Skilbeck acknowledges that breaking habits can be a difficult process and can potentially being up fears or trauma from past experiences. “We work with a psychologist who hosts sessions with students on resilience early in their training,” she said. “It is both psych ed and giving them strategies for managing what might be potentially overwhelming traumas.” The psychologist is also working with the teaching faculty to develop trauma-informed teaching spaces and practices so that teachers know how to respond and the material is less likely to provoke overwhelming responses for students. “The challenge, which I’m sure is found everywhere, is that people don’t always know what traumas they’ve had until they begin to surface some kind of emotional content that has potentially not surfaced for a while,” Skilbeck continued. “There’s no way we can prevent that entirely, but we do have as many structures around us as we feel we’re able to at the moment. We’re constantly questioning and trying to develop those structures to create those spaces that feel sufficiently secure for the students.”

4. Reflective practice

Reflective practice is another key component of expanding capacity. “In reflective practice, I work with students on taking the observer position so that they can create some space from the sensation, the experience of the release, as much as possible,” said Skilbeck. It is a useful means for acting students to “develop the skills” to reflect on their progress and development and RADA also encourages its students to keep reflective journals. As discussed in part one, RADA reins in formal feedback for the most part in years one and two. A recent course review suggested that even more time be carved out for self-reflection. That can be easier said than done. “That’s like the $64,000 question,” said Skilbeck, who explained that RADA has cleared the calendars for three hours on Thursday afternoons for first and second-year students. She noted that much of the curriculum contributes to the development of independent practice but “we haven’t tied that together sufficiently for students to come out the other way end going ‘I’m really clear on what my skills for independence practice are’.” To this end, RADA has been exploring a second-year project for self-led work. The goal is “to make sure students are confident in their understanding of what ultimately becomes the capacity to create, devise and lead on their own project work and production work, if they so choose to do.”

5. Embracing failure

Just as Skilbeck believes teachers will get things wrong in their practice, so will students – and this is to be embraced. “This is something we talk about a lot because we’re encouraging people to not to try and get it right and to allow failure to be part of one’s creative practice,” she said. “You can’t have a creative practice if you’re not willing to fail. You can only have a complacent practice because you’ll only try the things that you know will succeed. To have a creative practice you have to be willing to accept a degree of failure – and I think that goes for all of us – those trying to lead, run and develop courses as well as those who are participating on them.”

Further reading:

‘At RADA we Want Teachers to Follow the Students as Well as Guide them’

By John Portch

When the pandemic spread in 2020, it brought challenges for all. In the case of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA] a number of those challenges endure.

RADA no longer relies upon online classes as it did in 2020 and 2021, but, as Lucy Skilbeck, their Director of Actor Training, explained in a recent interview, “we have made changes not only to the curriculum but how we consider the curriculum and some of our approaches to teaching.”

One such change was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew in prominence during that first year of the pandemic as systemic inequalities became evident in the higher infection and mortality rates in globe majority communities in the US, UK and beyond. Compounding matters was the succession of highly publicised, racially-motivated, tragic incidents involving Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

The student body at RADA felt moved to speak up. “The students began to question our processes, some of our approaches, and some of our choices of material,” Skilbeck told the Leaders Performance Institute.

As the pandemic pushed everything online, Skilbeck’s students were working on three Restoration-era texts (plays written in England, Scotland and Ireland between 1660 and 1710). While this era was a time of revival in the dramatic arts – theatres had been closed for 18 years under Puritan rule prior to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy – there is a problematic link between Restoration drama and the Atlantic slave trade. RADA students raised the probability that some patrons of the Restoration-era arts benefited directly from the sale of enslaved African people for labour.

“One group chose to continue doing the Restoration project,” Skilbeck continued. “Two groups said they didn’t want to continue working with that material, so we made adaptations on the spot.”

Four years later, RADA continues to teach Restoration material (“that’s one of the reasons students come to RADA”) but has added a contextual evaluation of all texts – not just the Restoration era – for students and RADA project leaders.

“One of the big changes is how we contextualise how we discuss, how we critically examine and reflect on what the challenges are with any of the material we’re using.

“We’ve got more work to do, no question, but students are now saying they feel confident doing the work because the conversations can happen, are happening, are considered. That was the really big piece we weren’t doing before. We weren’t considering the impact of that work on globe majority students separately to the impact on white students.

“We were informally trying to make sure that was a consideration. Now we’ve made that a formal commitment.”

As Skilbeck once said during a Leaders webinar in 2021: “At RADA, we want teachers to follow the students as well as guide them”.

Contextual evaluation in the wake of Black Lives Matter is but one example of how this plays out at RADA. We discuss the others in the first of a two-part interview with Skilbeck. In the second, we focus on student development.

Listen to learners – they’ll tell you what they need

The Leaders Performance Institute asked Skilbeck to explain the dynamic of RADA tutors both following and guiding their students.

“The rationale is that the best teachers are the ones who are continually learning and who can be in a learner’s or a beginner’s mind,” she said. “In order to do that, one has to be willing to learn from the people we are teaching; and we will continually learn from the students because they are bringing the world now as it is for young people.

“That comes with them distinctly each year – and it changes year on year, as the world does – and so there’s a lot of learning to be done by listening to the students, by engaging with the students, by allowing students to educate us on what the world is for them and what they need in a learning environment.”

It does not mean Skilbeck and her colleagues always get it right. “Like all human activity, it is imperfect,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like things really develop and grow and, as a result, we move towards something more progressive; and sometimes it feels like they don’t. I don’t think there’s any way around that.”

Allow for meaningful engagement and contributions

It is tempting to view a dramatic production as akin to a team strategy or gameplan. There are parallels and both are ensemble activities. At RADA, it is another area where project leaders – managers of educational programmes, theatrical productions, or development initiatives – bring people together.

“Speaking as a director, which is my professional background, one of the roles of the director and the rehearsal process is to bring everybody into the same world so that everybody is in the play at the same time. That can sometimes be a struggle because there might be people with very strong ideas in one direction and others having strong ideas in another.”

The key is allowing cast members to contribute meaningfully. “A way we would begin to do that is close, detailed work on the story we want to tell collectively, because any play has an infinite number of possible interpretations, stories or emphases contained within it; and any production has to make a choice that it’s going to tell a particular part of that story.”

RADA uses ‘yes and’ work as it “develops the capacity to be ‘in response to’; so one is being reactive rather than generating one’s own action. A lot of that is built through gradually training people’s capacity to be working within an ensemble rather than standing to the side of an ensemble.

“A big part of what we do is trying to bring people to that place where they go ‘I can be here in a way that serves you’ and we talk about that quite explicitly.”

No right answer

At RADA, first and second-year acting students are no longer marked. “One of the big things we have to do early and throughout the training is really try and undo – it’s a really harsh way of putting it – some of the damage that the traditional school system does,” said Skilbeck, who was quick to explain that she is supportive of numerous elements of the scholastic system.

It is, however, a challenge for students. “We’re saying there isn’t a right answer – we’re not asking for the right answer,” she continued. Instead, “what we’re looking for is a much more holistic development of the whole person because that’s what an actor needs. Not ‘yes, I can’.

“I want them to have the capacity to interpret material but it doesn’t have to be the way that I would do it. What we want to do is develop their capacity to learn and to grow themselves and, therefore, be able to recognise and experience their own growth and development.”

Further reading:

Five Ways RADA Is Raising the Performance Ceiling of its Acting Students

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“I think burnout is a runaway cousin of wellbeing,” said Dr Meg Popovic.

Last week, she hosted the second session of her three-part Performance Support Series for Leaders Performance Institute members entitled ‘Wellbeing – What’s Having the Most Impact?’ The focus for session two – by popular demand – was burnout: what it is and how one can prevent and manage it in sport.

The session began with a straw poll where Popovic asked attendees: what are the main sources of stress in your workplace? The results, which were collated in real time, were illustrative. The most common answer was work-life balance; second was workload; third was people and the workplace culture; and fourth was a lack of job security.

The results allude to a range of problems, and yet these stresses – which can lead to burnout – have been rarely discussed in elite sporting contexts.

“There is very little to nothing written about staff burnout in high performance sport, Olympic and professional sport,” added Popovic, who is the Senior Professional Sports Manager for North America at EPIC Global Solutions, the world’s leading independent gambling harm minimisation consultancy and a valued Partner of the Leaders Performance Institute.

“In sport, I think burnout is sometimes quite hidden or it just looks different in every person and you don’t know what to do to help.”

Over the course of an hour, she led a discussion on understanding burnout and its early warning signs before turning to stress management and the importance of supportive environments.

The five phases of burnout

Burnout is, as Popovic said, “a state where the employee feels exhausted emotionally and physically”. It is “often the outcome of feeling stress or frustration for a prolonged time” and “burnout can cause significant physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual damage to people”.

While sport is distinct from traditional workplaces, with unique time-sensitivity and performance pressures, Popovic distilled the stages of employee burnout into five phases that resonated with those members in attendance. They were:

1. The honeymoon phase: characterised by enthusiasm, high productivity, feeling invincible, and an individual being hyper-focused on tasks.
2. The onset of stress: there are early signs of fatigue and reduced performance.
3. Chronic stress: the individual is struggling to cope, suffers from persistent anxiety and detachment.
4. Burnout: an individual experiences emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced efficacy and disengagement.
5. Habitual burnout: left untreated, burnout can lead to chronic health issues and emotional numbness.

The early warning signs of burnout

Popovic explained that phases two and three of employee burnout – the onset of stress and chronic stress – are preceded by a series of early warnings signs that we can all become attuned to recognising. They are:

Higher sensitivity – an individual feels or seems more sensitive than usual.

Reduced job performance – there may be signs that they are not able to perform tasks effectively.

Extreme thinking – an individual may become reliant on food, drugs, alcohol or gambling to cope.

Popovic conducted a second straw poll and, troublingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, attendees indicated that anywhere between 15% and 80% of the colleagues with whom they interact are currently experiencing burnout, in their view.

Preventing burnout strategy #1: navigating the stress cycle

Popovic presented two perspectives on preventing burnout. Firstly, that of Drs Emily and Amelia Nagoski as posited in their 2019 book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. They argue that we should recognise stress as a natural response to challenging situations. There are inevitable stressors and people will experience both physiological and emotional responses.

In Burnout, they suggest that individuals must go through the full cycle of experiencing and articulating stress in their bodies to effectively manage it. By acknowledging and addressing stress, one can navigate through the cycle and emerge on the other side with improved resilience and wellbeing.

As Popovic explained, the Nagoskis recommend:

1. Physical activity: regular exercise helps release stress from the body. Engage in activities like walking, jogging, or yoga.
2. Laughter: create moments of genuine laughter. As Popovic said, belly laughs can be therapeutic.
3. Crying: allow yourself to express emotions through crying. It’s a healthy release.
4. Physical affection: seek and give physical affection. Hugs, handshakes, or even petting a dog can help. The Nagoskis encourage people to build themselves a “bubble of love”.
5. Deep breathing: practise deep, intentional breaths to calm the nervous system. The Nagoskis see the practice of mindfulness as an important component of building emotional resilience. They also advocate for journalling.

In making their case, the Nagoskis highlight the distinction between ‘stressors’ – external situations or circumstances that trigger stress – and ‘stress’ itself, which they refer to as the internalisation of stress within your body. This process encompasses how your body responds to stressors and is a manifestation of the physiological and emotional impact of stress on an individual’s wellbeing.

All in all, the Nagoskis’ perspective is underpinned by a sense of compassion. They encourage people to understand the societal pressures and obstacles that contribute to burnout.

Preventing burnout strategy #2: the demand-control-support model

The second view posited by Popovic was organisational psychologist Dr Adam Grant’s ‘demand-control-support’ model. Grant said:

‘Demand’ involves making structural changes, which includes lightening a person’s load or redistributing tasks. He also feels that an organisation should address overtime and expectations of a person’s availability.

‘Control’ includes empowering people to set their own goals, equipping them with the skills needed to handle difficult situations, and giving them the freedom to work flexibly.

‘Support’ operates at a more systemic level. Leaders should foster an environment where requesting and receiving help is easy and it is, in fact, normal to seek assistance and discuss challenges.

Additionally, Grant emphasises the importance of celebrating small wins and tracking daily progress to help address burnout. He also advocates for redesigning job roles as part of an effort to foster supportive cultures.

Further reading:

Four Ways to Better Balance Winning and Wellbeing

If you are interested in joining the third session of this Performance Support Series with Dr Meg Popovic on Tuesday 30 April, sign up here.

Main Image courtesy of Circular

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

Our Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports.

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World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Circular is a pioneering organization in smart ring technology with the mission of revolutionizing personal health by transforming complex data into actionable insights through an innovative and easy-to-wear device.”

Company: Circular

Location: Paris, France

Year founded: 2019

Website/App: www.circular.xyz; Apple app; Google Play app

Funding round to date: “In 2020, Circular began crowdfunding and utilized Kickstarter and Indiegogo. On Kickstarter, over 1,500 investors pledged approximately $380,000. Similarly, on Indiegogo, we raised $405,000 from just around 1,800 backers.”

Who are your investors? “Circular has a team of strategic and medical investors, including professional athletes, renowned doctors, and medical professionals.”

Are you looking for more investment? “Circular will be looking to grow its funding further over the next 18 months.”

Tell us about yourself, co-founder & CEO Amaury Kosman: “I’ve always been captivated by the intricate dance of technology and human well-being. After years of research and development, driven by a desire to enhance daily health management, Circular came to life. It was a melding of personal passion and professional pursuit, aiming to revolutionize how we interact with our own health metrics. My journey to CEO was fueled by this singular vision: to create a seamless, intuitive and deeply personal health monitoring experience. Noticing a gap in the market for user-friendly health-tracking devices, I dedicated years to developing the Circular ring. I realized other devices were not understood by ordinary consumers, not even by top-level athletes. By talking to a lot of health professionals and professional sports coaches and using my own experience and that of consumers, I was able to understand and create a product that would be of a professional standard but could be used by everyone. To solve this issue, I thought that creating wearables that are centered around an AI wellness assistant to humanize and teach consumers how to use the data would be a revolution. It was hard to create the product during COVID, especially after we’d succeeded in gaining the trust of consumers following Kickstarter. We had several production problems and had to bounce back several times. This would have killed a lot of companies of our size, but with our determination we always managed to find solutions. Today, we’re still working 12 hours a day, but we’re seeing the fruits of our labor take shape, and there’s still plenty of room for improvement.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “Circular’s CTO and co-founder Adiasa Suharno. Circular’s COO and Co-Founder Laurent Bsalis. In total, 15 experienced team members make up a diverse and multicultural group who share the same passion for developing the next generation of wearable devices to improve human capabilities.”

How does your product/platform work? “Circular Ring Slim is the thinnest, lightest and most intuitive smart ring in the world and the first to incorporate haptic navigation and alerts. Paired with Kira+, Circular’s powerful AI wellness assistant, the sleek Circular Ring Slim assesses seven biometrics and 142 derived markers 24/7 to help people sleep better and live healthier lives.”

The Circular Pro ring features changeable shells for easy customization. (Image: Circular)

What problem is your company solving? “Most smart rings are heavy and bulky, while the Circular Ring Slim eliminates both of those problems. By creating a thin and lightweight ring, the Slim can be worn at all times which increases accuracy in sleep and activity analysis. It also solves the problem of complicated and difficult to understand data by simplifying it and making it more comprehensible to the everyday user.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Circular Ring Slim is priced at $275 and includes access to the app without any subscription fee. Our target customer is an individual who wants to live a healthier life but doesn’t understand the metrics or doesn’t want to understand the metrics. In a survey we conducted, 35% of people who bought Circular’s original smart ring said they did not own another wearable device. Circular is targeting an untapped market of people who are interested in a wearable device but need to be convinced that there is a product that can do the work for them.”

How are you marketing your product? “Circular’s marketing strategy is mainly digital oriented, focusing on the unique strengths and innovative features of the Circular Ring. Circular markets the Circular Ring Slim as an accessible and user-friendly health monitoring devices designed for everyday individuals, not just for professionals or biohackers. Our emphasis is on simplicity and ease of use, ensuring that anyone can understand and benefit from its advanced biometric tracking capabilities.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “We try to double our volume every year. Currently, we’ve realized only 30% of our ultimate vision, with numerous enhancements and innovative features in the pipeline. In the near future, there will be an app update with new features around wellness and empowerment. Additionally, new medical features as well as products and services are on the horizon. Circular will also make strategic partnerships with wellness-oriented companies and celebrities.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “Smart rings are an emerging market and there are several competitors. Main competitors are Oura Ring, Movano Ring Evie, Ultrahuman Ring Air, Ringconn and boAt Ring. Samsung and Apple are currently developing smart rings, but there is no credible timeline on the release dates. Circular has many key differentiators both in hardware and software. As mentioned before, it is the slimmest and lightest smart ring among its competitors. It has haptic feedback, which allows the users to get additional features around wellness for example tapping anywhere on the surface to stop vibrations linked to an alarm or timer, guided breathing sessions or vital alerts. In terms of software, most of the major differences are within the Circular app. The app simplifies complex metrics and makes meaningful recommendations through Kira, a personal wellness AI assistant. No other competitor contains an AI feature that provides personalized advice. Circular has also gamified the app, offering users the ability to earn online coins and rewards to unlock new features in the app. Additionally, while most competitors record and track health metrics every five to 30 minutes, Circular records metrics every two minutes, which offers increased granularity in the data.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “Circular’s unfair advantage lies in a mix of everything but is in the majority of our Vision and team. Circular has utility and design patents and has trained its own algorithm. We have created and own everything, from hardware to software, and have a dedicated team which makes us very versatile, flexible, and quick in development to reach our vision, which is completely different from the others.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “Launching soon will be our first medical features.”

What are the values that are core to your brand? “The core values of Circular’s brand are accessibility, data privacy and a commitment to advancing personal health through technology. Circular’s goal is to develop and create a multi-feature wearable ring to improve physical and mental performances of the users through unique and intelligent recommendations. The long-term goal is to provide the ultimate accessory that will be essential to the way we sleep, live and work. Circular’s multicultural team believes in the power of assisted technology and wearable devices, but often had the feeling that their true powers have not been unleashed completely. The wish was to create a device that would rather assist users in making good decisions and responding to their body signals in a healthier way rather than just something that would simply tell them how good or bad they are doing. As Circular is also in the fashion industry, the team strives to manufacture a piece of art, not only a technological advancement. The interchangeable outer-shells on the Pro model allow you to adapt the look of your ring to every moment of your life.”

What does success ultimately look like for your company? “Success for Circular is defined by widespread adoption of the Circular Ring Slim, leading to a significant positive impact on users’ health and well-being, and establishing Circular as a key innovator in the personal health technology space.”

What should investors or customers know about you — the person, your life experiences — that shows they can believe in you? “As the driving force behind Circular and my two co-founders, our journey reflects a profound dedication to health technology and innovation. My two co-founders and I started with no initial capital four years ago, and despite these humble beginnings, we have achieved remarkable progress. Launching Circular amidst the COVID-19 pandemic presented extraordinary challenges for a hardware company like ours, yet we overcame numerous obstacles that could have easily derailed our project. Our resilience and unyielding commitment have brought us this far, and there’s still much more we aspire to achieve. Currently, we’ve realized only 30% of our ultimate vision, with numerous enhancements and innovative features in the pipeline. This journey, marked by perseverance, is a testament to my unwavering commitment to transforming personal health technology and I hope this narrative instills confidence in my vision and capability to revolutionize the health tech landscape.”

Which demographics and sports is Circular enjoying its most success within? “Ordinary people who learn wellness prevention and monitoring thanks to Circular. And who find in it a passion/way of life and then explore biohacking further than just Circular to improve their quality of life in the parallels they have chosen to enhance.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.