By Ronan Conway

Facilitated meetings: direction to dialogue

In recent years I worked with a coach of a football team. He’d regularly vent to me about players not speaking up in meetings, and how the group lacked leaders and energy. So I decided to sit at the back of some player meetings to observe the dynamic.

A clear pattern emerged. Standing at the top of the room, the coach would send waves of golden information and inspiration toward the players in the shape of tactics, opponent analysis, and game plans. His style was to direct, to instruct, and to hand players the answers – because that’s how he was coached, that’s what he excelled at; plus time was of the essence. The players’ role was simple: to listen and absorb.

My feedback was as follows:

• His messaging and delivery was very strong. However, energy flow felt too one-directional. Some players appeared to be disempowered and disengaged.
• Players needed more space to process, understand, and integrate the info.
• There was hundreds of years of combined experience in the room, bubbling away right beneath the surface. The players seemed hungry to share it, but until now, the invitation hadn’t been strong enough.

“The coach needed to maintain his directive style as a solid foundation, and layer in skills to stimulate group discussion”

My suggestion was to maintain his directive style as a solid foundation, and layer in skills to stimulate group discussion – not to replace his approach, but to complement it.

In the following weeks after delivering his game plan, he practised popping the ball into the players’ court; inviting their thoughts and insight. Within weeks he facilitated a post-game review, opponent analysis, and culture session with the squad. To different degrees, the players played a key part in both sessions. These small shifts had profound results:

1. Players stood taller – they felt trusted, valued and respected.
2. With more skin in the game, they took greater ownership of it.
3. Learning deepened. ‘Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.’
4. Meetings took on a more focused, empowered energy.
5. Quiet voices grew louder and leaders emerged.

To get to this point, it required a big shift in attitude towards his group and his role. It called for him to swap his teacher cap for his facilitator cap.

“The change called for the coach to swap his teacher cap for his facilitator cap.”

Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Facilitator mindset: the answers are in the room

Before facilitating any meeting, it helps to adopt a group-centred lens. To have a strong belief in the group’s inherent wisdom. When you look at your squad in front of you, you see an ocean of insight, inspiration and breakthroughs. You see teachers rather than students. You see answers in the room.

The transition from a teacher to a facilitator mindset can be tricky. Most coaches are experts in their field, and at times it can suit to simply tell players what they need to know. But as a facilitator it’s not about telling, rather it’s about being curious. It’s about fostering the right conditions for the group to unearth their own answers.

“The transition from teaching to facilitating is about fostering the right conditions for the group to unearth their own answers.”

For some this may require a loosening of the reins, but it doesn’t mean letting go of them. Your direction and leadership is still central, but you’re inviting your squad to step up with you from time to time. It’s important to say that certain players and squads certainly won’t have all the answers. In this case, at least they get to practise critical thinking and to put their own fingerprints on a discussion.

Steve Kerr, the Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors NBA-winning team, is a proponent of player-driven meetings. For Kerr, it’s not about “control”, rather “guiding” or “nudging players in the right direction”. That ‘nudging and guiding’ is the essence of facilitation.

Facilitator toolbox: get the water flowing

Stimulating any form of response from a group is about moving energy. Moving energy can look like a smile, a nod, a raised hand. Maybe a word. Or a sentence. In time perhaps a rich, flowing discussion. We call this process, ‘getting the water flowing’.

Here are some facilitation tips to get your meetings flowing:

Show of hands: When faced with 30 blank faces, and the energy feels stuck, you can get the water trickling with a show of hands. ‘Hands up if you know’; ‘if you agree’; ‘who relates’; ‘if you’ve experienced this’. Each hand raised or not is a micro-investment in the meeting.

Open-ended questions: Clear open-ended questions are the keys for unlocking the treasure. They typically begin with ‘how’, ‘why’, or ‘what’, and generally elicit deeper insights than closed questions which give yes/no answers. The quality of the question will determine the quality of the response.

Intentional language: ‘The answers are in the room’: use language that reflects this mindset. You are not wondering if they have an answer, you know they do. Instead of ‘does anyone have an answer?’, try ‘who wants to go first/next?’.

Non-verbal communication: Facilitation isn’t just verbal. A nod or some steady eye contact can subtlety signal, ‘I want to hear from you’. You can lightly scan the room, naturally clocking different individuals throughout the meeting. At the very least, these ‘I see you’ moments will keep people checked-in and engaged.

Pair up: Speaking in front of an entire group is a big interpersonal risk to take. Pairing up to speak is a more manageable one. It gets all voices flowing; it builds safety; it serves as a stepping stone to a wider group conversation.

If your questions are met with silence, don’t sweat.

Sit in the silence: silence is the absence of words, not the absence of communication

That liminal space between question and answer can be an intense time. When I started out facilitating in schools, most of my questions would hang in the air for what felt like minutes. Time sped up, as did my heart rate. I’d hold my breath. My brow got sweaty. ‘Someone. Please. Say. Something,’ my inner world yelled. The group shuffled awkwardly longing for the same. Until, finally, I’d move things along with a joke, or by answering my own question. Phew.

After enough moments like this, my relationship with silence changed. I found these moments to be a necessary and natural punctuation point; a chance for the room to slow down and to breathe. In the moments when I filled the silence, I wasn’t saving the group from the discomfort, I was in fact saving myself from my own discomfort. Rather than seeing silence as a void to be filled or feared, I started seeing it as a space for gold to be found. Granted not all silences lead to answers, but at least give the group time to gather their thoughts and muster up some courage.

‘Sitting in the silence’ is a useful practice in these moments. Meaning, allowing silence space – trusting it – and remaining as relaxed as possible.

“The more I trust myself to sit in the silence, the more the group trusts themselves to speak up.”

Here are two nuggets which help the process of sitting in the silence:

1. Trust the silence

When a group isn’t responding, a myriad of things can be happening for them. Quite often, they’re just not used to being asked. The silence is almost like a test to gauge ‘is this a token question or a genuine ask?’ In filling the silence, a lack of belief in oneself and the group is communicated. Being willing to ‘sit in the silence’, we signal a strong confidence in the group. You’re saying, ‘I know you know and I’m willing to wait’. It amazes me: the more I trust myself to ‘sit in the silence’, the more the group trusts themselves to speak up.

A connection-building workshop facilitated by Ronan Conway.

“The group needs to feel like you can hold yourself before they feel that you can hold them.”

2. Stay grounded

Sitting in the silence isn’t just about waiting it out, it’s about being as relaxed as you can. When we are on edge, stressed, or overly desperate for answers, groups are less willing to engage. The group needs to feel like you can hold yourself (stay calm, regulated, at ease) before they feel that you can hold them.

So before team meetings, or indeed when a wall of silence rises up, I’ll do the following to stay rooted and grounded:

1. Take long, slow breaths, noticing the journey from inhale to exhale.
2. I’ll anchor myself, visualising my roots growing into the floor.
3. I’ll lightly scan the room. I’ll even smile.

Like a skill, facilitation takes time and deliberate practice. It may take time for everyone to adjust to the new rules of engagement, but once it starts flowing, the impacts can be transformative.

Here is a suggestion for an upcoming meeting 💡

1. Look at your calendar and earmark an upcoming team meeting to practise.
2. Identify one subject you’d like your team to explore, discuss or understand.
3. Decide if you’d like the team to fully drive the meeting, or you’d simply like their input.
4. Either way, have one clearly defined question for discussion (e.g. where are we living our values at the moment?)
5. Put on your facilitator cap and use the above skills to get the water flowing. Notice how the players respond. Notice your own inner responses.
6. If silence arises, stay grounded, trust the group. The answers are in the room.

If you try this, I’d love to hear your experience of it.

Hopefully this article serves you and your team’s journey ⛰️

Ronan Conway is a performance coach who specialises in building cohesion and motivation in elite sports teams. He has worked with some of Ireland’s most successful teams, including the Ireland men’s rugby team, Dublin GAA’s five-in-a-row-winning men’s Gaelic football team and, currently, Leinster Rugby.

Ronan has honed his craft as a facilitator since 2012. He believes skilled facilitation can play a key role in empowering players and generating greater buy-in and belonging.

You can read more about Ronan’s work with elite teams here  and here  . Or you can visit his website at ronanconway.ie    and find him on LinkedIn  .

By John Portch

“The most successful teams change when they are on top,” said Dr Scott Drawer at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

Drawer had just completed his first season as the Performance Director of the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team – a team with whom he enjoyed immense success in their previous incarnation as Team Sky between 2016 and 2018.

In recent seasons, the Grenadiers’ success has tailed off. Drawer’s return is part of the team’s attempt to restore their lustre.

“You look for these elements of when the team was super strong and maybe some of the changes needed at that time didn’t necessarily happen,” he added in reflection.

Drawer was speaking with Chelsea’s Director of Performance Bryce Cavanagh, who also inherited a team treading water in 2023.

“Our situation is probably slightly different as they’ve been through so much turmoil,” said Cavanagh of Chelsea, who underwent a change of ownership in extraordinary circumstances in 2022. It marked the end of an era in which Chelsea’s successes underlined a shift away from the traditional powerhouses of English football.

Back in 2003, Chelsea were disruptors in their field. The same could be said of Team Sky in the 2010s when they transformed road cycling through their innovative approach to performance.

Both have since retreated into the pack, with Cavanagh admitting that entrepreneurial spirit was lacking in Chelsea’s performance department when he arrived. “There was probably a scenario where the change is seen as a threat,” he said. While there was a desire and willingness from the club’s new owners to deliver change, “people saw that as a risk that created vulnerability in their roles.”

The challenge is clear, but Cavanagh combined with Drawer to offer five tips to performance directors charged with restoring the good times.

1. Look for ‘clarity, competence and community’

Cavanagh, who in addition to the more traditional elements of his role has been tasked with a “cultural reboot”, immediately set his stall out at Chelsea with his stated desire for ‘clarity, competence and community’.

He asked two questions as he began to address the clarity piece:

• Do people have clarity around the goal that they have to perform and how it interacts with everyone else?
• In what structure are people operating?

Cavanagh also sought to understand the competence of the system (not individuals) with further questions:

• Are we delivering what we’re meant to be delivering and to what standard? Is it really best in class?
• If someone comes to visit, what would they see?
• Is what we’re doing what we’re meant to be doing? And is it at the level someone else is doing?

Additionally, Cavanagh’s conception of community is as an outcome of the values, behaviours and definitions agreed by the collective.

“We had to really define where we wanted to go and what the bus looked like because then people ended up self-selecting,” he said.

2. Set standards… slowly but surely

Do not assume that high performance standards are a given across the board. Variations are common and a performance director must be prepared to ask, as Cavanagh did, “what are the things that you walk past? That you are willing to accept?”

Many have been tempted to emulate revered environments such as the New Zealand All Blacks’, but that wasn’t necessarily going to help Cavanagh at Chelsea in the summer of 2023.

“I tend to look at it like an election where you’ve just got to get the majority, and if the majority starts to [behave a certain way], that’s the culture that end up in power and every vote that gets laid is slowly going towards that,” he said.

“We weren’t the All Blacks. They’ve laid down their votes over 100 years and any new person who walks into that environment knows what’s accepted. Our environment wasn’t like that, so we’ve had to slowly and surely create it. We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way.”

3. Pay attention to your people

Drawer craved data insights that demonstrated how the sport of road cycling had developed in his six years away from the sport, but he also takes time to speak to his people – the ones working on the front line.

“Lots of staff wanted to share opinions, ideas or anecdotes in meetings around ‘the sport’s changed, it’s a bit like this’,” said Drawer, who welcomed their views. “Data and evidence is just as much people sharing opinions, ideas and observations as it is studies into how our team may be training, changes in racing patterns, probabilities.” He is “building this wealth of understanding and insight around what’s going on.”

4. Celebrate successes, however small

Cavanagh freely admits that his instinct is to go for the performance gap, but he has had to check himself because he has seen the value in celebrating wins, however small.

That goes for his department, but it also goes for the players. “Every player in our club now has an individual development plan at a first team level,” he said. “They work on that every day that they come into the club, which is quite unique.” When targets are hit, whether in the gym or on the pitch, it is a cause for celebration.

5. Decide the stories you tell about yourselves

No sports organisation can control what people say and think, but they can influence the internal narrative. And the more positive it is the better.

“This is more of an entrepreneurial time for us,” said Drawer. “We have adopted a startup mentality and will say ‘let’s try stuff. If it doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen?’ Because we’re not where we want to be at the moment and I think that’s just beginning to happen.

“Hopefully when the season starts we come out fighting in a very different way. We’ve spoken about it last year, but the idea of feeling that you can never crack it is the mentality that we need.”

What to read next

With Practice, Anyone Can Lead a Courageous Conversation… and ‘Skilled Candour’ Can Help

By John Portch

The Leaders Performance Institute’s forthcoming trends report reveals that nearly a quarter of the coaches and practitioners surveyed believe that psychology presents the biggest performance opportunity of the next five years – more than twice the figure that cited AI.

Yet 43 per cent also believe psychology to be the most under-served area of human performance.

There is a nagging sense in the sports performance community that while psychology has been in sport for decades, team have never fully integrated psychological services as part of their performance offering.

A desire for such integration lies at the heart FC Bayern Munich’s Department for Learning & Development, which was established for youth players at the FC Bayern Campus in July 2024.

The department’s first Head of Learning & Development, Christian Luthardt, is a psychologist by trade who now oversees areas including education, safeguarding and sports psychology at the 30-hectare site in north Munich.

His department is one of three (the other two are the Department of Football and the Department of Administration) that answer to Bayern’s Director of Youth Development, Jochen Sauer.

“Of course, we were all working together before July, there was a lot of mutual support, but hopefully are efforts are now integrated,” says Luthardt, who was the Campus’ only psychologist when he joined at its inception in 2017. Today he leads a team of two full-time and two part-time psychologists.

The work of the collective is informed by the club’s mission, which, as Luthardt explains, is “to create autonomous, resilient and ‘switched-on’ players who are open to new experiences, who are learners, intrinsically motivated, and who enjoy their journey.”

In delivering on their mission, Bayern have three areas of focus. The Department of Learning & Development will feed into each:

1. The player’s journey

Luthardt and his department are on hand from the moment a player is approached. “We try to psychologically inform the process of scouting,” says Luthardt. The club talks to players and parents, and when they are interested in recruiting the youngster, they will conduct a psychosocial interview. Campus staff members will travel to “see the family and get a feel for the player’s environment and the challenges that will accompany their transition if they move into our residence”. When players leave, they are not instantly discarded. “We have an off-boarding and aftercare process too,” says Luthardt. “It is about putting the human being first.”

2. The creation of a learning environment

“Learning environments need to be psychologically safe and healthy,” says Luthardt. Much of the work in this area is done by the team’s psychologists in conjunction with the coaches. “We are fortunate that we have a really good coaching group that want to support the players and reflect on the way they relate to the players and the kind of climate they create within their training environment.” As Luthardt explains, that might mean starting with feedback or it may mean giving the player a question on which to self-reflect. The aim is to “help players to feel that they are totally appreciated and accepted independently of their sporting performances, where they feel a sense of belonging.” Luthardt and his colleagues ultimately want the Campus to feel like a home from home. “It’s difficult, but we want to create a family atmosphere within the walls of our building.”

Such are the demands on the players’ time that Luthardt’s department has also created digital learning resources that enable players to learn on their own time in an autonomous fashion that complements their technical, tactical and physical development.

3. Life skills

From Under-11 to Under-15, Luthardt and his colleagues will deliver 30-minute workshops every two or three weeks rooted in “social projects”. He says: “Every team has a different kind of social project where they go and get some experience outside the football bubble.”

Schedules can be tight, but Bayern want players that are “not just not mentally ill, but actually flourishing and enjoying their journey”. The club wants to see “young people who, wherever they go, will be curious to learn and to also not see themselves just as football players.”

‘We now know our priorities’

One of Luthardt’s colleagues, a sports psychologist, joined the Campus from the world of aviation. “He came with some principles from aviation and one of which is ‘take off is optional but landing is mandatory’,” says Luthardt. “Previously, we had a lot of initiatives and projects and sometimes we wouldn’t land them properly because priorities changed.” Now, “there is a clear objective of what ‘done’ looks like at the end.”

Long gone are the days where three different practitioners would ask a coach to find time for a workshop in the same week because they hadn’t spoken to each other first. “We are now clear on what we are doing and with what age group, what are focus should be and where we will place our priorities.” At Under-12, for example, the focus may be on safeguarding topics or education around social media. It will be differ depending on the cohort and different people will take the lead.

“It will always be a question of ‘can we work together on this?’ Before July there were some processes where five people felt responsible and the project would not advance because no-one felt fully accountable for that process.”

Now, the Department of Learning & Development, as a multidisciplinary team, know who leads what. “We know where our priorities are, who needs to be consulted [in other departments], who needs to be informed, and who needs to be part of the project.

“Every person in our department knows, say, the five areas for which they have responsibility and this is what ‘done’ looks like.”

Catch Christian Luthardt speaking on 24 April at…

Leaders Meet: The Talent Journey

Interview by John Portch

“I think football clubs are able to recruit better talent in the market than they were before.”

So says Rodrigo Picchioni, the Head of Football Analytics at Clube Atlético Mineiro in Brazil.

He explains his observation to the Leaders Performance Institute. “Firstly, we are able to compete with financial companies for good analytics personnel,” he says. “The second thing is that we are shifting to more cross-functional integrated approaches within clubs.

“Traditionally, we have always been isolated departments. You had your analysis department, scouting, coaching, sports science – and while these still exist – it’s more and more common to see the integrated approaches of a central analysis department that encompasses numerous different practices in a single space.” That space is often represented by a research department of the type made famous by Premier League champions Manchester City, as well as the likes of Liverpool, Brighton and Brentford.

Numerous clubs across the globe have followed suit in the past decade or so.

Here, Picchioni, in his own words, ponders how the role of the analyst is evolving and how coaches and other staff may best use their analysis and research departments to their advantage.

There is a growing demand for hybrid practitioners… that is professionals who can make the translation between data and practice. That means they can bridge the traditional with novel practices. This also means we are starting to see domain experts with data literacy, whether that be in boardrooms or in coaching staff.

When owners, board members and executives are more comfortable receiving inputs from data departments, it enables analysts to step away from being just a product requested towards more proactive initiatives.

I increasingly act as a project manager… it is not only about research and development but also about process optimisation and automation. This goes back to what I said before about the analytics department as a group within the club.

The art of communicating insights is a constant exercise and there are different approaches. One example is the limitation approach where we force ourselves to go to the core of what’s really important and can’t be missed. We always want to make sure that what the coach tells us is key for them is the first thing they see in every report.

If you can demonstrate operational value, then automate, that will free up your time for research… at Atlético Mineiro, we have four key products that need to be running smoothly: player identification, player analysis, match analysis and team analysis. They are repeatable in terms of usability by coaches and scouts each week.

The next logical thing is to automate them because, by automating them, we are generating time for the department to tackle long research projects – and these longer projects will only make sense if they aid decision-making and improve the core products. They can take longer to generate an output and that’s fine because the day-to-day running is automated.

Analysts should be teachers… it is our task to improve the data literacy of our colleagues, to be patient in our explanations, so that we are taking part in their data education. Then their approach is likely be more scientific.

In the past, I’ve been against the practice of changing the language for the user because it leaves room for misinterpretation of the evidence that you are providing. However, I do think there is space for adapting the language as long as you make sure in a report or visualisation what is ‘inside’ this new term that you’ve created.

As for the future… it is likely that most clubs now have at least one analytics-dedicated staff member.

Once the success stories start to become more and more common, it’s almost like you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not investing in research and analytics.

What to read next

Rodrigo Picchioni also features in…

Performance Special Report – High Performance Unpacked

By Iain Brunnschweiler

Within many of the highest performing football academies in the UK, the average 12-13 year-old is subjected to a level of monitoring – actually, let’s call it surveillance – that is tantamount to being a person of significant interest to the national security agencies!

Whilst this is well-intended, imagine having your every output filmed, your individual footage analysed and, in many cases, your every performance graded, your distance and speed outputs tracked using high tech GPS systems, and every weight you lift being measured and monitored. Every six weeks your bosses (your parents) are brought in for a performance review and update, with figures discussed and plans updated.

Just pause for a moment and consider: how might this make you feel if you were in their shoes?

Clearly, there are some significant positives. Youth development, when delivered effectively, will always include some form of monitoring and review processes that allow coaches, support staff and those investing in the system to gain an insight into how their efforts are trending from a player development perspective. Video footage, match grades and player reviews can be a hugely useful tool in providing feedback to all stakeholders.

But imagine if this level of scrutiny was the norm in your adult working environment. My sense is that this would bring up different emotions for different readers. For some, this would excite them with the level of professionalism involved; precise numbers and figures indicating an elite performance environment. For others, this could evoke feelings of anxiety and possibly fear, considering the level of scrutiny being applied.

Mastery and joy

Academy in football in the UK is a major business. Huge amounts of money are being spent in order to unearth the ‘next big thing’ and I’m certain that these dynamics will drive some potentially unhelpful adult behaviours.

I’ve also seen some incredible efforts. At a recent visit to a Premier League club, I witnessed some absolutely brilliant work from the U9-U10 lead coach. She has brought in music, dancing, and a sense of childlike joy to the footballing environment – the group even had a pumpkin carving night! – whilst also encouraging the players to engage in 1v1 battles and high levels of competition. She encourages a sense of joy as they enhance their mastery of the ball.

This highly skilful coach has positioned herself as an appropriate resource to the young people in her care, sensing that they probably don’t need any additional pressure than is already present simply by engaging with academy football. I did not get such a sense of surveillance at this place compared to others and I suspect it will yield better talent development outcomes.

I am aware that in some industries there is rigorous monitoring of time on task and productivity. I have, however, been fortunate to have operated predominantly in roles where I had guidance from senior leaders and a level of autonomy that allows me to deliver my role in my own personal manner.

This autonomy was not simply given without direction. My manager ensured that I was clear on the overarching mission that we were all in it for, as well as my part of the puzzle. I was the recipient of weekly or fortnightly catchups where progress in my area was discussed in a manner which felt safe to me, whilst also holding me to account.

However, this has not always been the case. I have also experienced at close hand senior leaders seemingly ruling with fear and overt scrutiny, rather than an appropriate level of challenge and support. My experience of this was that it was much more unhelpful than helpful. It caused anxiety in many and actually resulted in the more stubborn folk still doing things the way they wanted, when out of sight!

Surveillance shows up in many different ways. The French philosopher Michel Foucault studied the impact of how surveillance is used to control society. His 1975 book Discipline and Punish built on the theory of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s ‘panopticon’ as a metaphor for how power circulates through the use of surveillance, but it also talks to the positive impact upon self-discipline. (I recommend an internet search if you want to know more.)

The right balance of challenge and support

I wonder what the level of surveillance is within your environment. To what extent have you considered the consequences (intended or otherwise) of this subtle force on those within your care and guidance?

How does surveillance, and indeed pressure of any kind, show up in your environment?

For any of us who have read some research around optimal performance states, one is likely to agree that having a level of perceived pressure is probably useful, but too much can be challenging or even catastrophic to an individual or individuals. Think of the ‘inverted-U’ theory in the Yerkes-Dodson law, which is beautifully simple and has stuck with me since my undergraduate degree many, many years ago.

Of course, this subject talks to some complex topics and provokes several questions for leaders:

• What sort of environment are you seeking to facilitate?
• What are the performance outputs that are required from different individuals and teams in order to meet your organisational goals?
• How do you want the people within your organisation to feel when they show up for work?
• Have you created the space with other leaders in your organisation to have these conversations and agree what it is you are going after, and why?

Your answers may lead to consider how much surveillance might be helpful and how much deliberate pressure you apply.

As the proud father of a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old who both love playing football, I am not convinced that the level of surveillance I have described above would be optimal for them. I watch the joy in their faces when they play sport, as well as the moments of intense anger, sadness and frustration when things don’t go their way.

I approach my role as a parent to sit alongside them on this rollercoaster, seeking to be a resource rather than an added pressure. I love seeing them explore what is possible, rather than playing with a level of scrutiny and fear that might constrain them.

There is a time for extremely high levels of observation, monitoring and professionalism, but let’s consider when this might be appropriate… both for children and adults.

Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and previously served as the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.

What to read next

Performance Special Report – High Performance Unpacked

By John Portch & Luke Whitworth

More than a quarter of practitioners believe their organisation’s psychological services are having next to no impact. Little more than 10 per cent say their provisions are having a ‘positive’ impact. No-one at all described their services as having a ‘very positive’ impact. 

This is all according to a straw poll of Leaders Performance Institute members during a recent Virtual Roundtable. 

“I’m not surprised,” said Angus Mugford, the former Senior Vice President of Player Development & Performance at the New Jersey Devils. “I would be curious to ask the group what kind of services and provisions you have because the thing that always jumps out when you mention sports psychology or psychological services is that it means different things to every stakeholder.” 

That’s the first problem. “You’re often setting your services up for failure.” 

Mugford was joined by Rich Hampson, the Head of Psychology on the men’s side at the Football Association, to discuss why psychological services are not set up to succeed and to propose some ideas for redressing the balance. 

Better developmental pathways for psychologists 

Sometimes, through no fault of their own, psychologists are ill-prepared for careers in sports performance and, when things go wrong, Hampson feels they can be scapegoated for structural failures elsewhere. “It’s almost like they’re going from reception [kindergarten] into year one of school,” he said. 

There should be better pathways for aspiring practitioners once they walk through the door. “The first thing you’d want is close supervision, guidance, the opportunity to observe and be observed in your practice,” Hampson continued. “There’s a lot to be desired in terms of the number of touchpoints in those first two years of applied practice and the kind of supervision that should go alongside that.” 

It is not hard to see why problems can mount without true accountability. “It is leaving practitioners with a load of uncertainty or potentially false confidence.” Or rather than focusing on their practice and its impact, they are potentially more focused on navigating the political landscape – “the things that keep them in a job”. 

Mugford, while serving as President of the Association of Applied Sports Psychology [AASP], oversaw the development of a certification pathway for mental performance consultants. However, there are few internship opportunities on offer in both professional and US college sports. “The system has not caught up with the pathway yet,” he said, adding, “there’s also a difference in the way the clinical pathway is creating and fostering development versus the mental skills pathway.”

Teams must establish what is required of their psychological services 

A team’s psychological services are a common point of misalignment. “If you think of the people that drive a job search, even just the definition. Let’s say we have a GM, head coach and director player of development talking about sports psychology, I’d be willing to bet each of their definitions and perspectives are different,” says Mugford. 

Hampson has observed this in job adverts. “You know they’re saying ‘we’re not sure’ because the job description lists key responsibilities and includes vague psychology words,” he said. “It’ll probably be ‘help with mental health’ and then something about ‘wellbeing’, then ‘athlete performance’ and ‘coach performance’.” 

For leaders tempted to type those words, he has some advice. “Consider: what is this helping us to achieve?” If it’s still unclear, you might instruct a consultant to complete an assessment. “What is going to make the biggest impact here in the short to medium term? Let’s go after that. If nothing else, you’re then clear on what success looks like and you’re actually clear on the skillset you need – it will help your hiring process to be more specific. It’s not because they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This person might be the best fit here, but they may not fit what we’re going after here.” 

For Mugford, it is critical to decide who is running the hiring process and who to ask for their input. In his time at AASP, he developed a decision-making tree (see image below) to help provide clarity when developing a performance programme: 

Mugford said: “What information do you need to gather and seek? [After using a decision-making framework] I often find there might be a search and interview process that organisations sometimes put on hold because they realise they have now got a different decision to make.” 

Embed psychology as another performance service 

“High-profile sports environments are unforgiving,” said Mugford. “It’s like you put someone in a room and, if they fail, their credibility and trust may be done.” Psychologists have fallen into this trap in the absence of a proper induction. 

He argued that it is on key stakeholders to manage inductions and help the psychologist to build trust, particularly in environments where they might be unaware of social or sports norms. “It can create havoc and a longer pathway to building relationships,” he added. “The onboarding process can really minimise the downside and accelerate the positives. We underestimate that window.” 

The work can be hard and lonely, as Hampson explained. A psychologist might be spread thin due to budgetary reasons or because their role is too broad and ill-defined. “It’s always really hard to be in the helicopter and going ‘what is psychology trying to achieve here?’ and simultaneously be on the ground driving things forward while being a really good practitioner.” 

For Hampson, the solution is a leader able to set the direction, to bring in people with the right skillsets and develop them against established markers. Then, the psychologist “can deliver with the guidance of the person above them”.

That structure is critical, as Mugford explained. “Organisations will often over-index on fit, personality and EQ, whereas building a team or programme, even language that sticks for a culture, that goes beyond an individual’s preference or training is something for teams to think about.”

Find ways to track, test and refine your psychology work 

Some people in sport openly lament the perceived lack of metrics in psychology. This frustrates Hampson: “I see psych fall down because it’s not defined well enough early enough.” However, if you are clear at the beginning, “90 per cent of it can be tracked. The broader you are, the less defined you are, it’s harder to ask: ‘is this actually having impact?’” 

Benchmarking tends to be an area where sport excels, but not when it comes to psychological services. Hampson said: “I think sports should be more confident in going ‘if we’re clear on what we’re doing, more often than not, we’ll be able to give you an indicator here, whether that has done what we want it to do’; and then, like any science experiment, if your first intervention doesn’t lead to the outcome that you want, it gives you a real good platform to go ‘OK, why did that not work? And what do we need to adapt and change?’  

“I think that’s really hard to do in a really objective way when you’re not setting that in the first place.”

What to read next

Sports Science Research: the Strengths, Weaknesses and Opportunities

By John Portch & Luke Whitworth

“I very rarely see organisations that are genuinely working towards the same goal.”

Alignment is perhaps more crucial than ever in high performance, yet as this practitioner noted, it is absent too often.

They were speaking at a Leaders Virtual Roundtable that dug into the topic.

“We’ve got a large team of staff, whether that’s coaches, practitioners, athletes, and that starting point of knowing where you’re going or what you’re aiming for is really important,” said one attendee who works for a Premier League team. “Then we build a strategy around that. So what we’re looking to do and the type of things we’re trying to do – and the things we’re not going to try and do.”

“I think the point of making it intentional is a huge one for us,” said another participant who works in the NWSL. “That’s been a huge emphasis with us as a staff this year – just making sure that we are all aligned and all on the same page.”

It takes time and effort and, over the course of the conversation, the participants shared their experiences and offered some best practice tips to help you and your team.

Alignment starts at the top

The consensus was that alignment flows from the top of an organisation. The table said that senior leaders must articulate an organisation’s goals and consistently reinforce them.

“Ownership has come in and been very clear about the goal of the club,” said the practitioner from the NWSL. “We want to be a leading global sports franchise, not just within the soccer space, not just within the women’s football space.” It is a lofty aspiration but all staff members understand the aim.

Find the low-hanging fruit

Next is identifying the obstacles, “the low-hanging fruit”, which means “each department approaching the general structure of practice by identifying what’s important and then identifying how you’re going to measure those things,” as a participant working in Major League Baseball explained. “Then you break that down into its subcomponents and figure out how you’re going to identify where the lowest-hanging fruit is to then solve those problems.”

Frequent check-ins

Find opportunities to check against your team’s objectives. As one attendee said of their team’s meetings, “we started with the end goal for the end of the season and how we are going to break that up.”

It requires “crystal clarity,” as another attendee put it. They said: “do we reduce the amount of interpretation, and then on the back of that, how are we checking for understanding?” It cannot just be a case of the leader “broadcasting” messages of expectation or definitions. “What’s actually being heard and understood? How frequently do we check that?”

Develop a common lexicon

Words are critical in ensuring that athletes are presented with a united front. “That comes with knowing what are the goals, the mission, the vision of the club,” said the same attendee, “and then all being able to speak from a common language.”

“It’s in how we use strategy and try and bring it to life,” said another attendee. “I’ve seen staff buy-in, not only in one-to-one meetings or annual reviews, but day to day. They are using the language that exists in our strategy – we’re talking the same way, and we’re trying to achieve the same things.”

Let staff shape how your vision comes to life

As a leader, it is also critical to understand staff motivations and aspirations. “There’s so many compartmentalised pieces to some environments,” said one attendee with knowledge of the British sports system. “How do we actually align where there are different motivations and aspirations?”

“If you get buy-in from people and input from day one, I always find that more impactful,” offered one participant. When people are invested it leads to smarter ideas and strategies – and everyone understands how they can help to achieve them.

Make accountability the norm

Each department must articulate their goals within the bigger picture. One attendee said: “We all have a vision of what each department is working towards and who’s going to be responsible for those elements.” A team can also ask, “‘this is what this department is working on – is that getting us to where we want to go?’”

Where your values are on the wall, they can serve as a useful conversation-starter. One attendee, who works as a director of performance, spoke of approaching a staff member “standing in front of our strategy and saying, ‘where’s the work you’re doing? Where does it fit in our strategy? The acid test is they say, ‘oh, yeah, I work on this, and I know I contribute to that’. If they can’t do it then that’s on me, because we haven’t made it really clear where their work fits.”

Where there’s progress, you can celebrate the wins. “People get the chance to be appreciated. ‘OK, this is what you’re working on, this is how it’s going’” said the participant from a club in the NWSL, “and we can celebrate the victories where we’ve started to move the needle towards that ultimate goal.”

Be agile in your programmes

Alignment is not fixed, it requires constant revisiting. As one attendee said, “when we start to add more staff and the structure sometimes becomes redundant” as reporting lines change. The risk is “you have people who are tied to titles and roles that may not function anymore.”

Therefore, it is important to move beyond grand gestures of alignment and place emphasis on those day to day interactions. “The behaviour layer”, as one attendee phrased it. “‘If we do this well, we would see this, this and this’. So now you actually have things to hold people to or, if they are demonstrating it, celebrate it. ‘Great! Let’s have more of that’. If they’re falling short, ‘let’s have a conversation. Why aren’t we seeing some of that? It’s taking it from the grand gesture to the day to day: ‘demonstrate it, live it, breathe it’.”

By Luke Whitworth

David Beckham was one of the first athletes in sport to be described as a ‘cultural architect’.

The label was used by sports psychologist Willi Railo, who worked as a consultant in the early 2000s for Sven-Göran Eriksson, the England men’s national team Manager at the time.

“He has grown to become a cultural architect,” said Railo of then England captain Beckham in a BBC documentary titled The England Patient, which was broadcast ahead of the 2002 Fifa World Cup.

“[Beckham] has today a very great influence on the attitudes of the other players and he is thinking along the same lines as Sven-Göran Eriksson. So he’s a very good tool for Sven.”

According to Railo, cultural architects are “people that are able to change the mind-set of other people. They’re able to break barriers, they have visions, they are self-confident and they are able to transfer their own self-confidence to a group of people”.

Present day cultural architects include figures such as the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi, Australia men’s cricket captain Pat Cummins, and Chelsea Women captain Millie Bright. The list is endless when you dig down.

Your cultural architects can be coaches or staff members too. They can be anyone who pays enormous attention to culture. Critically, while they are not always the most senior leader, they do have to have the ear of those leading.

The idea that cultural architects can emanate from anywhere gave real impetus to a recent Leadership Skills Series session, where members of the Leaders Performance Institute explored various interventions and the value of adopting a strengths-based approach to building culture.

Current cultural goals

What established goals do you have in your organisations that relate to your wider organisational culture?

One of the trends we’re noticing when it comes to cultural leadership is a focus on one specific aspect of culture at a time. The participants in the session identified a series of culture-strengthening goals that, if achieved, would deliver a competitive advantage:

• Collaboration across functions
• Continuous improvement
• Innovation and creativity
• Belonging, identity and wellbeing
• Psychological safety
• Use of data to inform decisions

When you align behind a goal, progress can be swift.

The six levers needed to lead a cultural change

In the session, we revisited six key levers for leading cultural change.

1. Make the key principles ‘sticky’

A message needs to be heard at least six times for a person to take it in and, if the principles are ‘sticky’, they naturally become easier to remember. Consider your straplines or strategy: do they meet that level of ‘stickiness’? A good example from the Olympic world is the question: ‘will it make the boat go faster?’ Another is the All Blacks’ ‘leave the jersey in a better place’.

2. Role models

This is the classic example of ‘words on the wall’ versus living the values. If the leaders and cultural leaders really model those behaviours, it’s what people will experience and lead by. Research in the field of inclusive leadership shows that leaders can influence the people, the athletes, the organisation around them by up to 70 per cent with their behaviours.

3. Culture conversations

A team must constantly review their organisation and culture and reflect on their current status. Ask yourself: where are our gaps? Where are our strengths? How can we improve? You can use a system rating scale from 1-4 to guide some of these insights. These system rating scales create an opportunity for those culture conversations to emerge and they provide an insight into the health of the culture at a specific moment in time.

4. Develop skills and processes to support intent

Take psychological safety: it is important to enable people to speak up. If you provide such opportunities it supports the intent to make positive change.

5. Feedback

Feedback is critical, yet people do not always deliver skilful feedback. Too often it can feel personal, it provokes defensiveness and is ultimately counterproductive. It is better to create a feedback loop and a culture of ‘skilled candour’ (a twist on Kim Scott’s ‘radical candour’) so that people are able to deliver feedback in a skilful manner.

6. Get the right people on the bus

When engaging in culture change, do you have the right people in your environment? It may come to a time when you have to make a decision about who needs to be on the bus – and who doesn’t.

The power of AI (appreciative inquiry)

Appreciative inquiry is a social constructivist-informed model that seeks to engage people in self-determined change. The model, which was devised in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, is inherently positive. It focuses on discovering and amplifying the best of what already exists (individually and collectively) within a system or organisation. It stands in contrast to most change models, which tend to identify problems and seek to fix them.

What are some of the benefits of appreciative inquiry?

The model:

• Leverages existing strengths, requiring less change and new learning.
• Creates positive energy, building confidence and pride.
• Taps the experience of those on the frontline and fosters ownership for performance.

How we do it:

• Identify and share examples where you have been at your best and forensically unpick those.
• Identify behaviours that stand out and challenge people to be specific.
• Maintain disciplined focus on positive examples.

Here are some reflective questions you can use within your environments when considering what aspects of your culture you want to develop:

• Think of at least one example of where you have seen this behaviour at its best in your culture. A subsequent coaching question could then be: ‘what stands out from these examples?’ The key is to be specific.
• Think of an individual who exemplifies this behaviour in your culture. Here’s an additional coaching question: what specifically do they do? Summarise key behaviours and standards from your discussion within a ‘we are at our best when we…’ framework.

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By the Leaders Performance Institute team

Collingwood captain Darcy Moore once compared preparing to play Australian rules football to spinning plates.

“There are parts of your game going well at a particular time and other parts of your game that are not going well,” he told Fox’s Face to Face in 2023.

“You’re trying to improve these things without sacrificing the things you’re doing well.”

He and Collingwood span those plates with alacrity during the 2023 season, his first as captain: they won the AFL Grand Final. Today, they remain one of the league’s finest teams; and Moore has been praised for his leadership abilities both on and off the field. It was to great acclaim that we welcomed him to the stage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at The Glasshouse in Melbourne.

“Good player leadership is organic and comes from natural respect based on competency, status and character in alignment to the team’s values,” he told an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members.

In addition to Moore, across two insight-laden days, we hosted a range of speakers from organisations including Melbourne FC, Leinster Rugby, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Royal Australian Air Force. The overarching theme was the approaches one can adopt to give performers the best chance of success.

There were six approaches that stood out.

1. Prioritise the athlete-coach relationship

The athlete-coach relationship is pivotal, whether it’s a long-tenured coach setting up a new leader for success or, conversely, a senior athlete taking steps to put a new coach at ease.

Craig McRae, the Senior Coach at Collingwood, demonstrated the former with his public endorsement following Darcy Moore’s appointment as captain in 2023. “Be yourself, forge your own journey, and take a swerve at what that needs to be,” he told Moore. “Lead from the front and lead your way.”

Across town a year later, Rebekah Stott, a hugely experienced New Zealand international defender with more than 100 A-League appearances under her belt, went out of her way as captain of Melbourne City FC to ensure incoming Manager, Michael Matricciani, felt at home.

“From day one when I signed for the club, from the first conversations I’ve had, she’s only welcomed me with open arms,” said Matricciani. “She’s been a great support and she’s an excellent leader off the pitch.”

Neither Moore nor Stott, who spoke onstage together, believe they’re the finished article. Both spoke of their need to work on confronting teammates and having difficult conversations. In that regard, it helps when the on-field leader feels both comfortable and supported.

“It is every player in the team’s job to lead in their own way, however they can do that.”

Rebekah Stott, Melbourne City FC

“What makes a good coach? The coach knowing their players, having good relationships and understanding what they need – this sets you up for success. They also let talented people around them do their jobs. This is particularly important when the pressure comes and you need to remember that everyone is there for a reason.”

Darcy Moore, Collingwood FC

2. Build trust at pace and communicate with care

Moore and Stott’s concern with confronting people in emotionally charged environments is a daily feature of life at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where Brian Le serves as Director of Palliative Care at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. “Preparation is really important,” he said. “I formulate what needs to be spoken about and what my agenda is. But once with the patient, I adjust to what I’m hearing and the clues I’ve picked up in relation to their context.”

Timing is critical too. “Not addressing the situation has its own cost,” said Le, adding that delays are regrettable when the patient likely knows that an emotionally-wrought conversation is coming anyway.

“When I started to apply what I had learnt, as I’ve matured in my career, I’ve realised it’s not about me but the person I’m looking after. My job is to apply what I know to help the person, listen more and let them lead more – it’s more effective than leading with knowledge and expertise.”

Brian Le, Royal Melbourne Hospital

3. Balance disruption and stability

Data-informed decision-making is preferable, but where does the balance sit between objective and subjective sources? Additionally, what of the balance between disruption and stability? The topic was tackled by Kate Hore, the captain of AFLW team Melbourne FC, who spoke alongside Marcus Wagner, the club’s Chief Innovation Officer & General Manager of Football Operations. The Demons have been using Teamworks Performance as they look to strike that balance.

“You can get a flag from your monitoring that helps a discussion, but the impact really comes from your relationship with the athletes,” said Wagner. “Baseline information helps, but understanding the person is most important.”

When you understand the person, you can ask the right questions (either in-person or via questionnaires) and, if something needs to change based on something that happened in training, staff can swiftly make adaptations (supported by data).

As for the balance between disruption and stability. “It’s fine balance,” added Wagner. “You need to ensure you don’t lose your identity by going too far either way. How we measure is by looking at overall performance internally and externally, how we communicate, and the quality of our data.”

“I really like the idea of having a dropdown [list] of someone you may want to speak to as a follow on from completing [the team’s wellness questionnaires]. [As a player] you may value speaking to a different person each time depending on how you are feeling.”

Kate Hore, Melbourne FC

4. Give a platform to ‘terrible ideas’

Approximately 95 per cent of Nobel Prize-winning scientists emanate from the same cluster of labs or have enjoyed the proximal influence of past winners. Why? It is their higher minimum standards or greater openness to new (and often bad) ideas?

David Burt, the Director of Entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales, delivered a presentation in which he lauded the value of exploring ‘terrible ideas’. His rationale was sound: it reduces the negative emotions that can cloud creativity and reduces the impact of power dynamics in a team environment.

He recommends an ‘accountability loop’:

• Build
• Measure
• Learn

“Terrible ideas allow you to develop new skills and meet different people in the process. There is a surprising amount of value in implementing a little bit of resource in them to drive another layer of growth.”

David Burt, University of New South Wales

5. Sustained excellence does not happen by accident

What must we do to sustain excellence? That was at the centre of Dave Walker’s appearance at the summit. The former naval pilot, who works for the Royal Australian Air Force, spoke of PBED:

• Plan
• Brief
• Execute
• Debrief

PBED, he explained, is a continuous improvement process to table improved error recognition, error reduction or correction, which enables the creation of efficiencies that lead to improved performance. It is an essential tool in an environment where students must learn quickly.

“It’s the quality of interaction in each event that ultimately turns a team of experts into an expert team,” said Walker. “We often find that members do not know how to work or operate as a team – just following a framework does not make a team.”

“We must give people the ‘how’ – it is not enough to say ‘this is what you have to do’ – people will learn at a higher rate when you give them the ‘how’.”

David Walker, Royal Australian Air Force

6. Proximal role modelling for the next generation

Leinster Rugby, one of Europe’s most prominent teams, has a squad that is 86 per cent homegrown – what is the secret to finding and nurturing supreme talent in your region? As Simon Broughton, the Academy Manager at Leinster, explained, the team benefits from a group that has played and developed together in the youth ranks. They have travelled, won and lost as a collective. “So many experiences that strengthens their connection,” said Broughton.

The club has adopted a variety of approaches, including proximal role modelling, which sees younger players spend 80 per cent of their time integrated with older players. Proximal role modelling is “integrated organically into different aspects of their training week, from walking the pitches, to session design, and into analysis rooms.”

Leinster have also latched onto the ‘goldilocks principle’ as 33 per cent of their players are neurodivergent. “This has led to changes in how messages are delivered,” Broughton added. “There are slides, but also video and walkthroughs, and time for reconnecting and breaking mental circuits.”

“We use proximal role modelling so that less experienced players have social interactions with more experienced players. [This is] to create an environment where learning and development can take place without a coach or a member of staff.”

Simon Broughton, Leinster Rugby