By John Portch

“I knew it was a mountain,” said Johann van Graan, “but I didn’t know it was Everest.”

The South African, then with Munster, had agreed to become the Head Coach at struggling Bath in December 2021.

A few days later, he switched on the TV only to see Bath go 0-28 down after just 25 minutes of their Champions Cup tie with Leinster.

It prompted the Everest comment, as Van Graan told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“My oldest boy was worried,” he said onstage. “He almost broke into tears and he said ‘no, we can’t go to Bath’.”

Van Graan took the reins at Bath’s Recreation Ground six months later on 11 July 2022 and, over the next three years, led one of the most remarkable transformations in English rugby history.

By the end of the 2024-25 season, Bath had lifted three trophies: the European Challenge Cup, Premiership and Premiership Rugby Cup.

Here, we explore their ascendancy under Van Graan through the lens of transformational leadership theory, which was made popular in the mid-1980s by American scholar Bernard M Bass, an expert in leadership and organisational behaviour.

Transformational leadership theory has gained traction in the world of high performance in the subsequent four decades and, here, we take the four core dimensions of Bass’ model of transformational leadership (‘the four I’s’) and ponder how they define Van Graan’s work at Bath.

The four I’s of Bernard M Bass

1. Idealised influence

The transformational leader is admired for ‘walking the walk’. They embody qualities their followers want in their team.

In several respects, Van Graan is the embodiment of Bass’ idealised influence. He strives to be a role model of authenticity, fairness and purpose. By the same token, he is not merely a charismatic leader and does not see himself as a hero, even if he told himself at the start of his coaching career in 2023 to “back yourself because no one else will”.

“There’s a quote by Pep Guardiola,” said Van Graan. “‘This beast called football will eat you alive if you’re not always, always, always yourself’.”

Onstage, Van Graan repeatedly returns to the idea of authenticity; his views are sincerely held and he hints at the vulnerability expressed by the Manchester City Manager.

“It took me many years to figure out who I am first and then to become comfortable with that,” he continued.

This attitude has served Van Graan well in his nine years as a head coach working abroad, whether it was getting to grips with St Stephen’s Day rugby in Munster (“in South Africa on 26 December it’s the summer and you go on holiday”) or bracing himself to deal with Bath’s dire situation (“firstly, I had to understand the club’s issues”).

2. Inspirational motivation

Transformational leaders have the ability to inspire and motivate followers through fashioning and presenting a vision.

On his first day at Bath, Van Graan pinned a picture of the Allianz Stadium on the dressing room wall and said, “There’s no date attached to this, but we will get there”.

“I’m in,” said Bath hooker Tom Dunn in response, “but I’m not sure how we’re going to get there.”

It set the expectations suitably high and represented a compelling vision into which any rugby player could buy, not least a group with such raw potential.

For his part, Van Graan knew that performances and, later, the trophies would come when his team was bound by “connection, clarity and commitment”.

“One of the things we underestimate is what alignment truly looks like,” he continued. “I think we as coaches are sometimes scared of that word. We can never communicate enough. Do we really let people know what the standards look like? What the boundaries actually are? What are we actually going to attack?”

He also posed a question to the team’s leadership. “I asked ‘what does the club stand for?’ and nobody would give me an answer. I picked three words: ‘tough to beat’.” They made sense for a team at a low ebb.

“In a rugby context, most of us coaches go after the sexy stuff, but I think you have to go after the important stuff first. That’s defence, set pieces and managing your kicking game; ultimately, it’s a game where you have to go backwards to go forwards.”

Fast-forward three years, following that successful 2024-25 season, Van Graan turned to Dunn and said “we did this together”.

3. Intellectual stimulation

Transformational leaders challenge followers to be innovative, creative and open to new ideas.

Van Graan invited his players to challenge his thinking from day one.

With one player in particular, he played a game of ‘20 questions’. “I didn’t quite know how that was going to go,” he said. It led to a critique of the style Van Graan employed at Munster.

“His first question was ‘why did you kick so much at Munster?’ and I said ‘because we had the best lineout in the world’.”

Additionally, Van Graan runs an open-door policy. “You can make an appointment or knock on my door, come in, close the door, and in that way you can tell me anything. I won’t always agree with you but I will tell you exactly what I think.”

He will also listen. “We’ve all got two ears and one mouth,” he said, underlining the point.

“It’s very easy as a leader, specifically in a successful time, that you think it’s you. It’s not you. It’s the sum of all the others around you.”

Van Graan told the audience he has six mentors, one of whom is Frans Ludeke, whose coaching staff he joined in the mid-2000s at the Pretoria-based Bulls. In 2017, Van Graan flew to Tokyo to meet Ludeke and show him the presentation with which he hoped to win over the management at Munster where he had just applied to be head coach.

“Frans just said ‘you’re not going to get this job’. I asked why and he said ‘because it’s not you. You wrote on here what you think they want to hear. You’re not being yourself’.” Van Graan took the next 24 hours to rework his presentation and was ultimately successful in his candidacy. “I’m not saying it’s because of my presentation but Frans is someone who’s spoken into my life.”

4.Individualised consideration

Transformational leaders demonstrate concern for the needs and feelings of followers and help them fulfil their potential. They establish strong relationships and act as a supportive resource.

Van Graan, who recited a series of quotes during his time onstage, delivers a line from German philosopher Albert Schopenhauer: “talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”

“I’m in no way saying I’m a genius,” said Van Graan. “The point I want to make is people want to dream, people want to belong, so you’ve got to give people hope, whether it’s players or staff, you’ve got to be able to see something first and then bring people along with you.”

He hoped to pursue that dream by co-creating a “new culture” at Bath. “‘Culture’ is a word that gets used by so many people. For me, it’s embracing everybody in the group, setting clear boundaries as to what you want and who you are. I guess what I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what language you speak, the colour of your skin: everybody’s welcome at our club.”

This is particularly important when delivering bad news, such as telling a player their contract will not be renewed. In the past, he would make small talk. “Now, I walk in, shake your hand and say: ‘unfortunately, this will be your final season at the club’. I’ve become comfortable with the silence; and people respect that a lot more than not telling them.”

As part of Bath’s collective sense of trust, belonging and psychological safety, Van Graan encourages his players to take perspective. They led Northampton 21-18 with five minutes to go in the 2024 Premiership final and went on to lose 25-21. “We were six minutes from tasting greatness.” They walked out of Twickenham with their heads held high and, 12 months later, defeated Leicester Tigers 23-21 to win the 2025 final.

“We actually played a lot better in the final we lost than the final we won,” said Van Graan. “We haven’t reviewed the previous final at all. We spoke about how close we were but just moved on. The next journey had started.”

What to read next

Four Building Blocks of a Great Performance Environment

By John Portch

Strategy is the bridge between ambition and execution.

That is according to performance specialist Darren Shand, who made that very point during his presentation at a recent virtual roundtable.

“We’re all shooting for the stars, we’re all shooting for the trophies,” he said. “Ambition is very common to all in our environments, but execution is rare. Not everybody succeeds. Execution is where the magic is found.”

The New Zealand All Blacks, for whom Shand served as General Manager between 2004 and 2023, found that ‘magic’ more often than most. They won back-to-back World Cups in 2011 and 2015; they also spent ten years in that period as the top-ranked team in the world.

For opponents, the All Blacks were the benchmark; the most prized scalp in rugby union. As for the All Blacks themselves, their ambitions were so obvious that there was little need to spell them out in a nation where, as Shand explained, rugby is part of the “fabric”.

“That wasn’t the challenge for us,” he continued. “The challenge was that bridge; and I propose that strategy is the bridge between ambition and execution.”

The All Blacks’ strategy was rooted in their day-to-day actions, standards and habits; in other words, their behaviours. This was where their ambition truly mattered.

“Ambition is meaningless unless it changes behaviour; and strategy actually lives in behaviour, it doesn’t live in documents.”

Shand went on to share his three key principles for building an effective performance strategy.

1. Learning

Your strategy should evolve with your execution or, as Shand put it, “the question is not ‘is our strategy right?’ But ‘is our strategy still relevant?’”

“An effective performance strategy,” he argued, “should invest in the pillars that will move the needle the most.”

To illustrate his point, Shand described a hypothetical environment that promotes sleep as an important part of recovery as being more valuable than a “shiny new sleep gadget”.

He said: “Let’s build some non-negotiable recovery protocols across our group that we all buy into and that we build together. Let’s think about where we stay; we can have facilities onsite so that it’s really easy to create lots of options for people to participate in recovery; and let’s educate, let’s get players to understand the science behind it rather than just slapping something on someone to gather a whole lot of data.”

2. Alignment

While Shand was working with the All Blacks, alignment wasn’t an abstract concept, it was built into how the team worked week to week.

He described a typical example where coaches would lead the program in the days after a match and then, as the next match approached, the players would gradually assume control. It was a strategy that served them well.

“At the start of the week our players were still physically recovering,” said Shand. “The coaches lead at that point where we’re starting to build clarity; we’re trying to understand our next opponent and anything new that we’ve got to develop in our game for the next week. Our players physically can’t train too hard at that stage. There is 60 hours’ worth of recovery to get them back to close to 100% physically. So they’re just absorbing, they’re learning.”

Then the balance begins to tip the other way. “As the week builds, we want to shift their focus from clarity to intensity and we want them to start to test the things that we need come Saturday. At that point we start to hand that leadership role over to the players.”

It makes sense: it is the players on the field who will need to make decisions in the heat of the moment and so the coaches need to provide the environment for the players to test themselves.

“By the time we get to our final run before a match, it’s totally player-led as we strive for accuracy.”

Then, when the match starts, the players are “clear, light and bright” and everyone is on the same page.

3. Belonging

This is not a ‘soft’ cultural element but a key performance driver.

“Strategy only works when people feel they belong,” said Shand. “People protect what they feel they’re part of; people give more when they feel connected; people are willing to sacrifice when identity is shared.”

These ideas mirror the work of lawyer-turned-performance specialist Owen Eastwood, the author of the renowned book Belonging.

The team deliberately set out to understand their legacy, connecting every single player to all those who have represented the All Blacks since 1903. The players felt accountable to the past, present and the future. This influenced how they set about their work and, just as significantly, when the moment called for discipline, the playing group policed itself without recourse to coach intervention.

As Shand put it: “The group’s sense of belonging drove the behaviour; and behaviour delivered the strategy.”

He went on to explain that this will look different at senior level and at different stages of a talent pathway. “You don’t want them to be the same,” he added, “you want your young athletes heading towards your ambition, but you want to promote behaviours appropriate to that level and that stage of readiness.”

To do otherwise risks “taking away some of the belonging and identity that those teams need”.

In any case, it comes back to learning.

“Learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage,” said Shand.

The act of learning makes alignment possible and informs an individual’s sense of belonging to a collective.

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Too Often, the Person Is a Sticking Plaster for a Lack of Robust Systems and Processes

By John Portch

At Leaders Meet: Australia a pair of self-proclaimed “professional idiots” took to the stage.

The Shepmates – Australian identical twin brothers Archie and Miles Shepherd – have become internet stars due to their viral videos depicting their high-energy and comedic reinterpretations of dramatic moments of sports commentary.

“I’m not going to pretend like we probably should be offering you guys advice. You’re the best at what you guys do,” Miles told a room of Leaders Performance Institute members at Rivershed in Brisbane. “But hopefully we can inspire you guys, or you take something from our story.”

Their dedication to their art and their fans has taken them to places they never expected. “We’ve found ourselves in a pretty niche part of the internet,” said Archie.

On top of it all, the brothers’ obvious chemistry, as well as their ability to finish each other’s sentences, hinted at the theme of alignment that ran through both days down on the River Brisbane (and it’s a performance trend we’ve tracked for some time).

They were not alone. Others who took to the stage, including the Brisbane Lions, World Rugby and the Queensland Ambulance Service, spoke of their efforts to ensure everyone within their walls is on the same page.

Based on the insights shared onstage across both days, the Leaders Performance Institute highlights how alignment shows up in the work of high-performing teams in at least five ways.

1. Smart coaches who can manage up

In sporting terms, there has never been a better moment for the city of Brisbane, with the Lions defending their AFL premiership and the Broncos winning the NRL in 2025.

Lions Senior Coach Chris Fagan and Broncos Head Coach Michael Maguire have built winning machines in this corner of Queensland, and both were on hand to tell Leaders Performance Institute members how it was done.

Key to their approach is an ability to manage the executives within their organisations. As Fagan said, “I always said to myself, if I was going to be a head coach, that I would make sure I would manage up to that group of people.”

Over the past nine years, Fagan tried to dine once a week with Lions’ CEO Greg Matthews as well as the team’s senior-coach-turned-executive Leigh Matthews.

“It’s been incredibly invaluable because I’ve got two allies that have always been able to tell my story and tell the story of the team to those who needed to know it.”

Chris Fagan

Maguire has adopted a similar approach to prevent any noise or confusion emanating from above.

“When people above you understand the journey of where you’re going and what you’re trying to do then everyone is held to account because if they don’t agree upon things, get that flushed out… [and] if they don’t understand your goal they can sometimes make it up; and that’s why I say it always starts at the top.”

Michael Maguire

Chris Fagan (centre) in conversation with Michael Maguire (right) and moderator Rachel Vickery. Photo: Albert Perez

2. They seek ‘spine alignment’ too

While coaches can do what they can to ensure information is flowing in all directions, there is a role for both board members and heads of performance on the sports science side too.

Onstage, Peter Horne, the Performance Director at Rugby Australia, made the case for “spine alignment”, of which he said, “if we get true spine alignment of what we’re trying to achieve from a strategy, business and the deliverables [perspective] then we’re more likely to be able to execute.”

Crucially, as he admitted, it is not about agreement on every decision.

“I don’t always agree with the decisions, but ultimately if we all agree on the outcome where we’re heading, then we’re more likely to do that.”

Peter Horne

“For the spine to work, you need everyone operating at the right level,” said Brett Robinson, the Chair of World Rugby, who joined Horne for the session. He included himself in that assessment.

“You have to be trustworthy, empathetic, listen, communicate all the time and be systematic about it.”

Brett Robinson

Peter Horne (right) makes his point onstage with Brett Robinson (centre) and Leaders’ Laura McQueen. Photo: Albert Perez

3. They bring their frontline people onboard

Few individuals are as well placed to discuss the concept of a culture driven by a shared purpose than Dr Stephen Rashford, the Medical Director of the Queensland Ambulance Service.

He is proud of his team’s “no excuses” approach too. “When we do our audits, everyone’s in the room, and there’s no making fun of anyone, there’s no bullying. We have honest, open discussions because we all just want to get better.”

Critically, their culture starts with their paramedics.

“It actually starts as close to the patient as possible. If our ‘players’ don’t want to be involved, then there’s no point progressing because we actually need to get everyone bought-in.”

Dr Stephen Rashford

Dr Stephen Rashford mid presentation. Photo: Albert Perez

4. They have leaders who give their people psychological safety

Australian all-rounder Ellyse Perry is one of the greatest female cricketers of all time (then there’s her career as an international football player to consider). Her career has been underpinned by psychological safety. “When there’s a lot of support around that and real alignment on wanting to grow and improve, that makes a big difference,” she said.

“Consistency in leadership and how the vision and what you’re trying to achieve is conveyed [is so important]. People know what they get, they’re not guessing today how you’re going to respond to something.”

Ellyse Perry

“No matter the position you hold, you don’t know everything, so be open-minded to learning,” said Anna Meares, the double Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist who served as the Chef de Mission for the Australian Olympic Committee at the Paris Games. She spoke onstage alongside Perry and fellow Olympic gold medallist, the BMX cyclist Saya Sakakibara.

As Chef, Meares decided that open displays of vulnerability from early in the cycle would help to bring athletes and their coaches onboard.

“I had to go and learn from them because that information helps me set the environment and culture for when they come in.”

Anna Meares

Psychological safety is just as important in individual sports, as Sakakibara told the audience. The Red Bull athlete won gold in Paris but recounted the story of her awful crash three years earlier in Tokyo and how it encouraged her to start placing her trust in others.

“I started to rebuild my own support network and really started to believe in the systems rather than believing that I have to do everything.”

Saya Sakakibara

Anna Meares (second from left) makes her point to session moderator Fabio Serpiello in the company of Ellyse Perry (second from right) and Saya Sakakibara (first on the right). Photo: Albert Perez

5. They use process as a tool of alignment

In his presentation, Scott McLean, an associate professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, explained that leaders must be aware of how things are connected in the complex systems of sports performance.

“If you want to intervene somewhere, just be aware it’s likely there’s going to be impacts elsewhere in the system.”

Scott McLean 

Scott McLean from stage right. Photo: Albert Perez

Interventions should be governed by the performance need rather than results, according to James Thomas, the Performance Director at Warwickshire CCC, who made this case when he spoke onstage.

“I go back to the process; what we’re trying to do as a team, what we’re trying to do in the short term, what we’re trying to do for the longer term, and some of the trade-offs we’re going to face on that journey and realistic expectations  too.”

James Thomas

James Thomas onsite at Leaders Meet: Australia. Photo: Albert Perez

Where we’re going next

Leaders Meet: The Art of Strategy

By John Portch

Emily Scarratt’s joy was uncontained when England defeated Canada 33-13 to win the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in front of a full house at Twickenham.

The centre had just competed in her fifth tournament (a joint record in the women’s game), claimed her second winner’s medal, and helped to complete an 11-year quest to bring the World Cup trophy back to England. It was almost the perfect way to bow out after 17 years as an international, 115 caps and a world record 754 points.

Yet she had only played 19 minutes of England’s campaign – all as a second half substitute in the Red Roses’ opening pool match; a 69-7 defeat of the United States in Sunderland.

“I’ve definitely been part of environments before where that kind of non-playing player can become quite negative and toxic,” she told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“For a large part of my career, I was starting and therefore it’s very easy to say the right things and present in that way when you’re not under the stress of not being selected or not playing as much as you would like.”

Scarratt was joined onstage by England Head Coach John Mitchell, who in early February extended his contract until the 2029 World Cup and added Scarratt to his coaching staff.

The session moderator, Rachel Vickery, asked him what it meant to see Scarratt and her other non-playing teammates (known within the Red Roses setup as “pillar” players) celebrating with such vigour.

“I reflected that we actually hit the sweet spot with the culture,” said Mitchell. “Sometimes you don’t get that sweet spot and we might not get it again.”

Rachel Vickery (left) talks to John Mitchell (middle) and Emily Scarratt (right) onstage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit.

Here we reflect on what Mitchell and the Red Roses got right for 2025.

He spoke up when something wasn’t quite right

When Mitchell signed up to become England Head Coach in 2023, his remit was to win the World Cup. He was a coach with a proven track record in the men’s game who had now been handed the resources and the players to deliver the Women’s World Cup on home soil.

But in 2018 and 2022 England had lost World Cup finals they could, or perhaps should, have won.

“The leading question was how do we get done what we haven’t through the years?” said Mitchell.

It involved integrating young talent (eight players made their World Cup debuts against the US) and tactical tweaks (they had been too reliant on their maul). Both required an environment that enabled the best team on paper to prove they were the best team on grass.

To deliver on that front, Mitchell and the team’s leaders landed on three guiding values: ‘courage’, ‘take the handbrake off’ and ‘be all in’.

These values inspired England’s veterans and new internationals alike. “If the top person genuinely believes that culture is important it makes a difference,” said Scarratt. “Potentially in previous campaigns that hasn’t been the case and culture could get a little bit sidetracked or lost along the way.”

Mitchell even spoke up when he spied a shortcoming in the players’ well-meaning desire to ‘do it for the girls’.

“My thinking was that emphasis might be slightly calibrated towards ‘me’ – not intentionally – but how do I get the girls to calibrate towards ‘we’?” he said. “Because if I inspire you and I’m inspired by you, isn’t that more important, more inspiring to the person next to you? We get the job done and then our voice around our individual ‘why’ will be far greater.”

The cultural tweaking never stopped

“It’s very easy to just pick values, put them somewhere and hope that people live by them,” said Scarratt. “Our values were genuinely threaded through a lot of what we did, whether it was medical presenting or S&C presenting” and, when you witness that, “it’s very easy to buy-in”.

Mitchell held difficult conversations when necessary, but all players and staff, Scarratt said, were expected to speak up when necessary “to nip things in the bud before they became potentially bigger.”

At the suggestion of leadership consultant Patrick Marr, Mitchell would ask his player leadership group and support staff on the eve of each international camp to tell him “who’s going to pull the cart forward? Who’s going to sit on the cart? Who’s going to hold up the cart?”

After an hour he would “come back and I’d see two or three players, plus a couple of staff, where our priority needs to go,” he said, adding “we would then decide on who I would speak to and who they would speak to.” For every player or member of staff, there would be someone who could bridge that gap and “communicate around standards of behaviour”.

Mitchell even danced on TikTok when duty called

If you’re an England supporter, you may have seen the TikTok video of Mitchell dancing with his players.

“I needed to show vulnerability,” he said of such moments, which was not something he considered as a younger coach. “I had to do things that I probably don’t normally do and join in with the girls on certain things.”

Psychological safety may start with players or their head coach dancing in the dressing room, but it ultimately manifests on the pitch during tricky spells or in performance meetings when a staff member has the courage to raise a performance issue.

Mitchell knew he had to lead from the front. “Sometimes you’ve got to be the leader of those actions before somebody else does them.”

That said, his belief in the power of the head coach has been softened (and his self-awareness amplified) by three decades in the sport. “You learn through emotional intelligence that you don’t have to be absolute or right when making decisions. Just use your people. Listen to your people.”

John Mitchell and Emily Scarratt shake hands as their session draws to a close at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

The team talked about the pressure they felt

For the first time, England openly spoke about winning the World Cup. It served as a pressure valve and, again, gave voice to their values.

“It might sound a bit silly but we hadn’t done that before,” said Scarratt, implicitly acknowledging how awkward the group felt at first about such an “un-English” sentiment.

As the English media and public latched onto the team ahead of the US match, the pressure grew. The players trained poorly on one occasion but, instead of dismissing it, they discussed it openly.

“I think we did a really good job of dampening it down by not not speaking about it,” Scarratt added. “By actually putting it out there and allowing people to know that other people felt like that.”

And Mitchell’s words after England eased through the gears on the opening night set the tone. He said: “There’s bigger games coming where teams will put even more pressure on us, so let’s take confidence from what we’re building and stacking as we’re going along. Our game doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be effective, and that will win us the tournament.”

He was right and, looking to 2029, their goal is to win back-to-back World Cups, establish a legacy as one of women’s sports greatest teams, and to further grow the women’s game.

These lofty goals provoke three questions that Mitchell and England must answer: “What will earn the right? What will we keep and take forward with us? And then, thirdly, is what we what will we need to start again?”

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Meaning Does Not Guarantee Medals, But it Strengthens the Behaviours that Make Medals Possible

By Jamie Taylor

Most people in sports coaching have little interest in research.

Additionally, one of the key challenges in coaching is that there is a world of evidence that can help practice, but most do not know about it.

At Dublin City University we are trying to subvert that attitude through our online doctorate and MSc programmes, which are aimed specifically at coaches and practitioners in high performance sport.

We have a community of around 100 coaches and practitioners who appreciate the capacity for research to enhance both theirs and their organisation’s practice in ways that have long been transformational in, say, S&C or medical.

In many respects, coaching is a discipline apart, yet sports performance has long-been reliant on other domains to pick up and apply research. More research can and should be done.

Below, I explore – drawing on insights from students across the doctorate and MSc programmes – the common barriers in coaching, before making the case for evidence-informed research that can meaningfully support practice. The programmes are delivered by a team of practitioner-researchers, including Áine MacNamara, Dean Clark, Robin Taylor, Rosie Collins, Stephen Behan and myself.

The common barriers

As a coach, you should be weaving research into your practice – it should not be additional.

“Last Friday, we protected two hours for some internal professional development with a group of practitioners,” says Ian Costello, the General Manager of Munster Rugby. “There’s 20 reasons not to do it, but if it’s important, it’s protecting the time in your diary, no matter how busy you are.”

Ian believes the programme has opened up new career options, potentially even beyond professional rugby union. He has now got into the habit of writing in his diary in three colours: black for operational matters; green for strategic issues; and blue for learning and personal development.

“Someone gave me one of those multicoloured pens – I hate them because of my bad handwriting and these don’t help – but it’s brilliant for my diary,” he continues. “Learning and personal development can be anything from podcasts to light reading or heavy reading. It can be writing too – that was a good life skill and practical skill that a mentor shared with me.”

Additionally, coaches have not often been shown how to critically organise their thinking, even when they thought they were doing so.

Ian has been coaching for more than two decades, but still wouldn’t describe himself as the finished article.

“The first year broke me down in terms of questioning everything I know around critical thinking and reflective practice,” he says. “What the doctorate does is give you more structure to that process. It provides you with a more robust and applicable skillset to be accurate in research terms and then to think critically about the information you’re absorbing. As time goes on, you’re able to transfer that to your practice more readily and with a lot more clarity.”

He is not the only one to find the first year challenging. “It was quite confronting and shocking,” says Jamilon Mülders, the Performance Manager at the Royal Dutch Hockey Association. “You try to present where you’re coming from, what you have achieved, what you have done and why you have done things, and the staff at DCU will pose little questions like ‘where’s the evidence?’”

Jamilon has won Olympic and world championship medals as a coach, and yet, as he says, “I have to acknowledge that nine out of ten things we did worked for whatever reason at that stage, but there was no underlying theory, no evidence. There was nothing you could fall back on where you can explain it or also just make sure that you detect possible mistakes, issues, challenges, hurdles which might have happened or occurred in other areas.”

He sensed that something was absent. “I felt that something was missing in my personal education and growth,” he continues, further reflecting on that induction period at DCU.

Some coaches may never have set foot in an academic setting but, whether it’s our doctorate or MSc programme, we don’t need to simplify course material for coaches. We just need to make sure we are providing the right provocation.

“When we’re asked better questions it causes us to say ‘actually, I took that situation for granted, but I need to peel that back a little bit more’,” says Rachael Mulligan, the Athlete Support Manager at the Federation of Irish Sport. “It forces you to go ‘what is the best question to ask in order to get to a better outcome?’”

The most recent cohort of students on DCU’s professional doctorate and MSc programmes lines up for a group shot at DCU in Dublin.

The case for evidence-informed – not evidence-based – research

I hear all the time that ‘we need to quantify this’. It leads us to measure things that don’t really matter simply because we can count them.

There are different ways of seeing this and my view is that evidence should inform coaching, working alongside professional experience, theory, and context, rather than being treated as something on which coaching can be straightforwardly evidence-based.

“For anybody to be genuinely comfortable about their view of the world or their view on practice, it should be research-informed,” says Scott McNeill, the Head of Coach Development at the Premier League. “The risk and challenge of research is that sometimes things can go out of date very quickly. A body of research can be nearly out of date the day that it’s printed. So to keep that as a consistent and live way of engaging in practice would make sense to me, that suggestion that knowledge isn’t fixed, that these things keep evolving.”

“The first thing I said was my issue with research is I sometimes think researchers are almost in an ivory tower and very much removed from what goes on in the day-to-day field of performance sport,” says Rachael of the topic.

“That perception was completely quashed after a couple of weeks in the programme because there’s so much emphasis in terms of, yes, this is fantastic in the academia space, but how do we move this into real-life practice?”

“I used to always say I was evidence-based and a lot of coaches will pride themselves on that,” says Christoph Wyss, the Lead Physical Performance Coach at Red Bull. “But I think evidence-informed makes more sense because if a research paper comes out, being evidence-informed is taking that research, reading it, critiquing it, seeing what’s good and what’s not, and then applying that to your setting, because every setting is different.”

As he says, “with evidence-based you’re just transplanting it, doing exactly what they did, but then evidence-informed is more translating it.”

“There’s not necessarily one solution,” says Eilish Ward, the Head of Player Development at the Ladies Gaelic Football Association. “There’s no one way to learn anything or to gain experience or expertise.” The key for Eilish in her work is to ensure she and her colleagues are “making as informed decisions as possible when we’re designing learning activities” because “not everything from research may be transferable into a practical environment and, equally, every practical environment is going to be hugely different.”

“Being evidence-informed is probably more aligned with what we do on a day-to-day basis,” says Niall O’Regan, the Head of Education & Development at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). “It is something that has helped me to understand how to be authentic, how to be creative in adapting what the research is saying is to suit the needs and the context and the environment that you’re in.”

Plus, as Scott says, “people sniff you out pretty quickly whenever there’s a gap between what you’re saying and what might feel real to them. Our job as people that work in this space is to either translate the messaging in a more accessible way or to admit that there probably still is a gap.”

And therein lies the opportunity to ask better questions.

Research should never be far from practice

While the programmes can be intimidating for coaches, we’re here to help in any way we can because it is important that research is not too far from practice. When they are close, the research finds practical application.

“This was a part I enjoyed from day one because you could immediately see the practical implications and make an impact,” says Jamilon of his coaching in field hockey. “So if I were talking with S&Cs about load management around our training, my new way of approaching them and asking questions really helped me to have a clearer view on the team and the environment.”

In some cases, research can help to highlight the current inadequacies in a high performance programme.

Niall, for one, thinks differently these days about coach development structures at the FAI; and it feeds into his practice.

“There are some experienced coaches that have so much knowledge and so much expertise in their fields that they may not need to go systematically through a certain set of steps,” he says. “They may have the ability to effectively communicate, empower others or share knowledge in a way which doesn’t require them to go through a checklist. They can get to the end with the exact same learning and sometimes even more learning.”

Such an approach doesn’t necessarily sit right with the coach and it wouldn’t necessarily sit right with the coach developer. “There’s a grappling effect where those people probably feel like, ‘well, I’m being rigidly pushed into a checklist of things and being asked to do things that I naturally wouldn’t do myself’.”

It comes back to being research-informed. “The person in front of you is the actual start point, and then it’s up to us as the educators and developers to be able to link it into research. The practice comes first and then it’s a matter of layering in what research is out there that can inform the decisions that that person is making.”

If you would like to know more about the professional doctorate and MSc programmes at DCU please email Jamie Taylor at:

[email protected]

By John Portch

“I knew it was a mountain,” said Johann van Graan, “but I didn’t know it was Everest.”

The South African, then with Munster, had agreed to become the Head Coach at struggling Bath in December 2021.

A few days later, he switched on the TV only to see Bath go 0-28 down after just 25 minutes of their Champions Cup tie with Leinster.

It prompted the Everest comment, as Van Graan told an audience at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.

He eventually took the reins at Bath’s Recreation Ground in July 2022 and, over the next three years, led one of the most remarkable transformations in English rugby history.

In May, Bath lifted the European Challenge Cup, Premiership and Premiership Rugby Cup.

The tale of Van Graan’s ‘Rec Revolution’ set the tone for an international gathering of over 300 high-performance leaders to share knowledge, best practice and inspiration.

The agenda took its lead from our Trend Report in which more than 200 performance leaders from almost 40 sports told us how they expect the industry to develop in the years ahead.

Five trends stood out:

1. Alignment is now a competitive advantage
2. Leaders increasingly seek to empower and collaborate
3. Teams value resourcefulness over resources
4. Psychology will be a game-changer
5. Teams are engaging in a tech arms race

Van Graan is at the vanguard of several of these trends and, across both days, the Leaders Performance Institute delivered a range of guest speakers from organisations including England Rugby, the Royal Air Force, and the Haas F1 team to speak to each trend.

The following is a snapshot of what they said.

1. Alignment is now a competitive advantage

For evidence of the stock placed in being aligned, look no further than Bath’s transformation from a rabble to the best team in England in just three years.

Van Graan said: “I put up a picture of Twickenham on the very first day. I said ‘I can’t tell you how we’re going to get there, but we will get there.”

He wanted his playing group, coaches and other performance staff to coalesce around three values: connection, clarity and commitment. The trick was then bringing those to life.

“One of the things that we underestimate is what alignment really looks like. We can never communicate enough. Do we really let people know what standards actually look like, what we actually are, what are we actually going to attack?”

Johann van Graan

Bath Head Coach Johann van Graan in conversation with host Iain Brunnschweiler.

2. Leaders increasingly seek to empower and collaborate

John Mitchell offered another inspiring story from the world of rugby union.

In 2023, when he signed on as Head Coach of the England women’s national team, it was Mitchell’s first time coaching a women’s team.

The Red Roses had a genuine shot at winning the Women’s Rugby World Cup on home soil in 2025, but a talented team needed an experienced guiding hand.

The team delivered, with Mitchell receiving plaudits for his role as England secured their first world title in 11 years.

Two months on from that achievement, the audience found Mitchell (affectionately known to his peers as ‘Mitch’) in typically reflective mood alongside the recently retired Emily Scarratt, who was part of the Red Roses’ winning squad.

Sport (and rugby union) grows ever more complex and yet, after 30 years, Mitchell feels he has never been better equipped to coach.

“You don’t have the full scope,” he says of his early coaching days in the mid-90s. “You have strengths early on that are recognised but then also you sometimes don’t know the whole of yourself. So you take the time to understand the whole of yourself.”

He came to a critical understanding. “When I was younger, I was going to try and be right. Maybe I was trying to prove myself as a coach.”

“You don’t have to be absolute or right when making decisions. Just use your people. Listen to your people. They’ll give you information; and probably enough information – you don’t need it all – to be able to make decisions.”

John Mitchell

England Red Roses Head Coach John Mitchell shakes hands with former England fullback Emily Scarratt at the conclusion of their panel session.

Emma Keith built on the theme of empowerment in her presentation on officer training in the Royal Air Force.

“Cultures and environments can only grow when everybody takes accountability,” said the Commandant of the RAF’s Tedder Academy of Leadership. Keith, a group captain, is the first female to run RAF officer training.

“The standard you walk past is the standard that you accept. That can be poor infrastructure that you don’t report; it could be poor behaviour. If you walk past it, you’re saying it’s okay. And that’s a slow rot from within.”

Emma Keith

Group Captain Emma Keith talks to UK Sport’s Alex Stacey following her presentation on officer training in the Royal Air Force.

3. Teams are prioritising resourcefulness over resources

As Team Principal of MoneyGram Haas F1, Ayao Komatsu knows as well as anyone that his team is competing with better resourced and more illustrious teams.

The team has 375 staff members, which may sound like a lot, but it pales in comparison to the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren.

“If we cannot work together, if you’re not supporting each other, if you’re not aligned, we’ve got zero chance against organisations minimum three times our size,” said Komatsu, who had just flown in from the Brazilian Grand Prix in São Paulo where Haas’ Oliver Bearman achieved a creditable top-six finish the weekend before the summit.

“I know we have good people. It’s a matter of putting it together, giving them clear direction, and an organisational structure that promotes – forces – communication.”

Ayao Komatsu

Ayao Komatsu, the Team Principal of Haas F1, shares insights into life in the pitlane.

Similarly, albeit in vastly different circumstances, the Red Cross must make the most of its limited resources when emergencies strike.

Chris Davies, the Director of Crisis Response and Community Resilience at The British Red Cross, cited his team’s core operational process:

“First off, ensure that you’re not over-promising and under-delivering. So you know what resource you have and work with key partners to make sure that you know which resources are available to you so that you get that embedded into the planning; and then we’re really clear on the capabilities that we have. It’s the basic forms of: what capabilities do you have? What can you deploy and when? What’s your deployment times?”

Chris Davies

Chris Davies of the British Red Cross in full presentation mode.

4. Psychology will be a game-changer

The mental and behavioural side of performance was an ever-present topic on both days of the summit. Our guests discussed several elements:

The importance of individual expression and acceptance

“People need to be themselves. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what language you speak, the colour of your skin – everybody’s mum and dad loves them.”

Johann van Graan

Belonging as a contributor to wellbeing (and performance)

“There is potentially 40 women in a group and they’re all going to be quite different and they’re going to need something different, but nonetheless, they’re all as important as each other and need to be valued in the same way.”

Emily Scarratt

Psychological safety

“If you’re afraid of failure, nobody’s going to move. So you’ve got to give them a clear message that, ‘come on’, you’ve got to almost take yourself out of your comfort zone every day. If you haven’t taken yourself out of your comfort zone once a day, actually, I don’t think you’ve done your job.”

Ayao Komatsu

5. Teams are engaging in a tech arms race

Professor Tom Crick spoke in his capacity as Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

He presented on the growth of AI and continually stressed how important it is to keep “the human in the loop” regardless of whatever advances are coming.

To this end he offered Leaders Performance Institute members a series of recommendations.

You must be able to explain why you are using an AI tool…

“You can’t just say ‘the computer says so.’ There has to be some understanding and explainability, and there has to be trust.”

An AI tool should not replace your people…

“AI should not erode or disempower or remove agency for people within your domain. It should augment human capability, not replace it,” said Crick. He added: “It is about co-design, co-decisions and co-evolution as we go forwards – keeping humans embedded in the process.”

Don’t assume your AI tool is right…

“Don’t automatically trust the system. Always ask: is that the right data? Does that feel right? Can we verify and validate it another way?”

Tom Crick, the Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, answers questions from Leaders Performance Institute members.

Next stop for the Leaders Performance Institute

Leaders Meet: Australia

By John Portch

Working with England’s World Cup-winning Red Roses transformed John Mitchell as a coach, long before last weekend’s 33-13 defeat of Canada in the final.

“Most of my career has been in the men’s game,” he said in the aftermath. “It was the only reference I ever had. To get the opportunity to coach these girls you have got to observe and listen and find ways to make them tick.”

The bonds they have forged during his two-year tenure will last a lifetime. “To be associated with these girls, they are driven, they have changed my life, changed the way I think as well. All of those sorts of things are added bonuses. A trophy is one thing, a medal is another thing but actually the quality of the people you work with is the ultimate.”

Mitchell’s sentiments were reflected across several of the conversations we hosted for members of the Leaders Performance Institute in September, from coaching female athletes to a coach’s ability to adapt to their changing environment.

Here are some of the choicest cuts.

Performance anxiety or body anxiety?

Last month, we shone light on Rachel Vickery’s appearance onstage at the Women’s Sport Breakfast at our Sport Performance Summit in Philadelphia. Vickery, a high-performance specialist and former artistic gymnast, recounted a recurring issue from her time working as a physio. Young female athletes would occasionally be sent to her with what was assumed to be exercise-induced asthma. It turned out their breathing difficulties were often anxiety-induced.

“You could see the look of relief on their faces when I started talking about body image, self-esteem and self-worth,” she continued. “So I started a seminar series in 2008 for female athletes and their parents called Growing Up in Lycra around body image identity.”

The seminars were picked up by Swimming Queensland. “I project managed the transformation of these seminars into an education DVD resource that was sent to all female athletes, parents and coaches State-wide.” It was later turned into a national resource by Swimming Australia. “We got some former Olympians involved and that resource went to all of our female athletes, their coaches and their parents. That resource is still used today.”

The role of AI in learning

Vickery was back at the helm for a Leaders Virtual Roundtable discussing how Leaders Performance Institute members can make learning more effective within their teams.

AI was high on the agenda. “AI should be used to support the growth and creativity of staff as opposed to being used for shortcuts where people become lazy,” said one coach developer.

Overreliance on AI, as this coach pointed out above, can stifle creativity. The table also suggested a series of shortcomings in current generations of AI:

• The difficulty of transcribing and analysing multi-speaker environments where current AI tools struggle with accuracy.
• Intellectual property protection and choosing appropriate platforms for specific tasks.
• The inherent biases in AI-generated results.

The table then highlighted some potential solutions:

• Establish clear parameters, regardless of what platform you use. This is fundamental to a good outcome.
• Crosscheck across two or more platforms. “Take that conversation and throw it into another AI tool – you are now responsible for creating that intellectual tension,” as one coach said.
• Ask the AI engine to provide three to five counterarguments. Don’t accept the first answer at face value.
• Ask the AI engine to keep track of patterns over time. “This,” as one coach put it, “eliminates a lot of the fluff”.

Are you an adaptive leader? You’ll need these four skills…

Tim Cox, the Director & Lead for High Performance Research at Management Futures, led a Skills Sprint Session virtual roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members on the topic of adaptability.

It is a skill, as Cox explained, that was highly coveted by the coaches and practitioners who contributed to our Trend Report earlier this year.

Not that this is anything new. “It is well known that Charles Darwin did not talk about ‘the survival of the fittest’,” Cox continued, with reference to Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of the Species.

“The endpoint of Darwin’s research was that it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent of the species that survives, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Over the course of 25 minutes, Cox discussed traps that people can fall victim to in pursuit of better adaptability. He also brought into focus the qualities of adaptive leaders and the skills that can aid adaptation.

Cox discussed four skills:

1. They spot the need for change

“It is important to actually spot the need for change and not just continue doing what you’re doing.”

2. They are the grandmasters of their response.

“This speaks to calmness but it also speaks to the strategic element and scanning ahead in terms of the decisions that might need to be taken.”

3. They empower people to contribute to the adaptation response.

“This is about understanding ideas from both within and outside the team.”

4. They are adept at leading the change

“This is often where adaptation fails. It’s one thing to spot the change, it’s another to decide your response and empower people to put their mark on it.”

Read more about the qualities of adaptive leaders here.

‘Sports psychologists cannot just sit and wait for work to come in the door’

Darren Devaney, the Lead Performance Psychologist at Ulster Rugby, and Daniel Ransom, the Head of Psychology and Performance Lifestyle at the Manchester United Academy, co-hosted a virtual roundtable exploring how teams can better use psychology.

They discussed three requisite qualities in depth:

1. Zooming in and out

According to Devaney, the psychologist must “get away from the assumption that we work with the individual athlete only”. Instead, they should ask themselves “is my intervention best targeted at an individual or is this more systemic? And if I’m going to be here for the next five or six years, what’s the most useful way of spending one or two hours on this? Is it working with a head coach? Is it working with all the staff? Is it working with a group of players, or is it the one-to-one with the athlete?”

2. Vertical and horizontal influencing skills

Psychology is not just the work of the psychologist. “An hour spent with one individual athlete is very well spent,” said Devaney, “but an hour spent with somebody that upskills or shapes them”, such as a coach, brings your work into “exponential territory”. He continued: “it changes how they do their work with 20 or 25 people over the course of the week”.

Ransom added: “If we really want to embed and integrate psychology what we require is other people to take on our ideas and work in ways that are psychologically-informed.”

3. Skilful proactivity

“We can’t sit still and wait for work to walk in the door,” said Devaney. “I’ve often reflected that this organisation functioned for decades without me in the building, so if I’m not here, this place can keep going. I need to recognise the fact that it might not be every day the main thing that everybody’s thinking about, so how can I do that in a way that doesn’t produce scepticism or kickback?” Nevertheless, “you must be proactive in trying to have an impact.”

Ransom has advice for anyone encountering scepticism. “If people are ready for more in-depth and focused work, then let’s meet them there. If they’re not, and they’re at that sceptical end, how do we try and offer them something which is appropriate to the needs of what they might be open to? If we pitch that wrong and we try and go too hard or move too quickly with those people, I think you can get caught in a potential tug of war where we don’t really make much progress and people hold their position.” With skilful guidance, people can “see the value that other people have, and that can be a way of opening a few windows and doors to them.”

Find out more here.

An article brought to you in partnership with

By John Portch

The results of our Trend Report earlier this year were stark.

More than 80 per cent of respondents feel that psychology is ‘very important’ in the enhancement of human performance, yet 43 per cent also feel that psychology is the most ‘underserved’ area of human performance.

The discrepancy chimed with Darren Devaney. “It’s like people know they want it, but they’re not quite sure how to make it happen,” said the Lead Performance Psychologist at Ulster Rugby.

Devaney was co-presenting at the first session of a three-part Leaders Virtual Roundtable Learning Series in partnership with the Chartered Association of Sport & Exercise Science.

The series is entitled ‘How Do we Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’

His co-presenter Daniel Ransom, the Head of Psychology and Performance Lifestyle at the Manchester United Academy, offered his analysis of the report’s findings.

“What it perhaps highlights is the gap between research and application, as well as the immaturity of psychology as an applied discipline,” he said while also noting the appetite in the sports performance community for psychological services.

When session attendees, many of whom had a background in psychology, were invited to rate their own effectiveness, most answers were grouped in the middle.

“It probably just reflects that it’s not fixed,” said Ransom of the results. “That level of effectiveness will change throughout seasons or cycles, and, I guess we’re hoping to be at the top end but we know at times it’s going to move up and down a little bit.”

Over the course of an hour, the duo discussed the role of the psychologist and the ways they can develop and sustain their work in sporting environments.

The requirements of the psychologist

Together, Devaney and Ransom drew up a list of requisites for a practising psychologist in sport:

They then homed in on a selection:

Zooming in and out

According to Devaney, the psychologist must “get away from the assumption that we work with the individual athlete only”. Instead, they should ask themselves “is my intervention best targeted at an individual or is this more systemic? And if I’m going to be here for the next five or six years, what’s the most useful way of spending one or two hours on this? Is it working with a head coach? Is it working with all the staff? Is it working with a group of players, or is it the one-to-one with the athlete?”

Vertical and horizontal influencing skills

Psychology is not just the work of the psychologist. “An hour spent with one individual athlete is very well spent,” said Devaney, “but an hour spent with somebody that upskills or shapes them”, such as a coach, brings your work into “exponential territory”. He continued: “it changes how they do their work with 20 or 25 people over the course of the week”.

Ransom added: “If we really want to embed and integrate psychology what we require is other people to take on our ideas and work in ways that are psychologically-informed.”

Skilful proactivity

“We can’t sit still and wait for work to walk in the door,” said Devaney. “I’ve often reflected that this organisation functioned for decades without me in the building, so if I’m not here, this place can keep going. I need to recognise the fact that it might not be every day the main thing that everybody’s thinking about, so how can I do that in a way that doesn’t produce scepticism or kickback?” Nevertheless, “you must be proactive in trying to have an impact.”

Ransom has advice for anyone encountering scepticism. “If people are ready for more in-depth and focused work, then let’s meet them there. If they’re not, and they’re at that sceptical end, how do we try and offer them something which is appropriate to the needs of what they might be open to? If we pitch that wrong and we try and go too hard or move too quickly with those people, I think you can get caught in a potential tug of war where we don’t really make much progress and people hold their position.” With skilful guidance, people can “see the value that other people have, and that can be a way of opening a few windows and doors to them.”

The foundations

Devaney and Ransom set out four foundations:

1. Alignment & agreement with key stakeholders
2. Stakeholder mapping
3. Proactive strategic positioning
4. Where the service sits

Devaney argued that in professional sport at least, a psychologist’s job can be harder if the head coach is not one of those key stakeholders. “They can really shape what the role can be,” he said. “Like whose priorities do I need to be trying to align with? If I’m running into time demands, and we’re trying to figure out where and when I’m going to do work, who actually has the best steer on that?”

Whether you’re preparing for success today or down the line, the priority needs to be clear. But that’s not always the case. “It sounds pretty straightforward, but you’d be surprised how often those ideas can be misaligned,” said Ransom. “It makes it really difficult for you to work in an integrated, embedded way, with a long-term focus if other people are perhaps expecting immediate impact on individuals when you have a more systemic, broader focus.”

A psychologist’s positioning is not fixed. Ransom argued they must be “prepared to renegotiate the position time and time again”. He has had to “go through a process of having to establish, clarify and communicate boundaries in terms of what my role is.”

“The need to renegotiate is just so consistent,” added Devaney, “and I think there’s a bit of me sometimes that thinks that there’s an arrogance that if I’ve explained it once, everybody will get it and know it all the time and keep it at the forefront of their mind.”

The duo’s point about intentionally stepping away from being part of an MDT, to not be “boxed in”, raised a concern from one attendee about the potential negative impact on the sport psychologists as the conduit into clinical psychology. Ransom and Devaney took the point.

Ransom, who clarified that it was more about not being aligned to a single department of the MDT than not being a member per se. “As practitioners, we have to be flexible,” he said. “So there’d be times where, in my role, I would be positioned as part of an MDT. There’s times where I’d be positioned closer to some of the coaching staff.”

This takes skill, as Devaney said: “If I’m going to sit somewhat outside of the MDT and start to bring suggestions to them about how I can be supportive of their process, I’m going to have to do so very delicately and skilfully to get the impact that I want.”

Keep building

Both men had some advice for the table:

In reflecting, Devaney spoke of a personal experience: “The best question I’ve ever been asked by a head coach that I worked with was ‘what rooms and meetings do you need to be in to be able to be more effective in your job? Tell me, and I’ll make it happen’. That’s such an empowering position.

“He was basically offering an open invite to integrate what psychology is into the different practices of the organisation.”

Devaney also spoke about the importance of maintaining a shared lexicon, particularly in sports with regular athlete and staff turnover.

The finishing touches

Of the finishing touches, Ransom said: “If we think about the foundations through to the building blocks, which were more around the processes, the ways of working, the frameworks, then this bit is more around the actual skills of the practitioner and the key relationships that they have.”

“Here,” Ransom continued, “we’re talking about the importance of having skills beyond the classic ability to do individual one-to-one work, which people might associate with psychologists. So we have the ability to carry out discussions among teams of staff and hold those types of collaborative conversations, which is a skill in and of itself. Do we have the confidence and competence to sit with a team of experts and navigate a conversation in a way, which is encouraging different people to contribute, which is embedding or weaving in some psychology input into that without dominating that conversation?”

Session 2 of ‘How Do We Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’ is on 2 October. You can sign up to be part of this Learning Series here.

By John Portch

In October 2024, Harlequins ended a run of eight consecutive defeats to their London rivals Saracens.

Quins’ 17-10 victory at the Twickenham Stoop ended five years of frustration and marked a complete turnaround from the 2023-24 Premiership Rugby season when they conceded 90 points in losing both home and away to Saracens.

Stephan Lewies, the lock who captained Quins to their long-awaited victory, had also endured every one of those losses. The run was particularly galling given the relative parity between the teams during that period. Quins were themselves Premiership champions in 2021.

So what was different this time? “Coming off a record like that in your derby game, in a way you go looking for answers in the wrong places,” Lewies told an audience several weeks later at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“In the past, we’d review what’d gone wrong, and the coaches – who often feel pressure in a different way to the players – would go ‘let’s change this and let’s add that’ because Saracens are brilliant.”

It took eight reverses for Lewies and his team to work out why. “We’d always changed our tactics for Saracens,” he continued. “We would change how we structured our week.”

Quins, he explained, usually worked off an 80:20 game model where it is “80 per cent us and 20 per cent we change for the other team”. However, “we often went 50:50 against Saracens; training 50 per cent on us and 50 per cent on them.”

They did things differently ahead of the October 2024 match. Firstly, the players and coaches met independently before convening to discuss what was needed. The club had adopted a similar approach in their successful quest for the Premiership title in 2021. Their director of rugby [the de facto head coach] departed mid-season and the players worked with the remaining coaches to devise a winning formula after the club decided to wait until the off-season to appoint a replacement.

Once again it gave the team clarity in their convictions. “We said we’ve been constantly changing for this opposition because of the pressure that’s mounting on us,” said Lewies, “and we agreed that we should go back to what we do and just try to do that better.” That meant “doubling down” and going almost “90:10” in the week building up to the match. “That created clarity and alignment from the coaches to the players. And when the pressure came in this game, we could turn to something we’d done for the whole season, and basically for years, versus something new in a pressured moment.

“It’s much easier to stuff up something new under pressure versus something you’ve done for a long time because it’s already second nature.”

Stephan Lewies in conversation with Rachel Vickery onstage at the 2024 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval.

Lewies’ reflections chimed with session moderator Rachel Vickery, a high-performance specialist helping teams in the worlds of sport, business and the military perform under pressure.

“So much of pressure is what happens off the pitch. When you’re on the pitch that’s actually your comfort zone in many ways and so you’re more prepared for that,” she said.

“Many teams have a monkey on their back around a particular opponent and that can change how the game is approached, which adds a lot of pressure.”

Lewies agreed and felt that being process rather than results-driven was ultimately what led to the result that day.

“It gives you freedom on the pitch to just go out and play,” he said. “You know your prep is done. Go out and express yourself. When you have clarity and alignment with the coaches you’re not asking yourself on the pitch ‘what’s the coach thinking?’ whenever there’s a tough decision. You almost know the answer to the question before it happens because you’re totally aligned in what you want to achieve in the game and at different stages of the game.”

It is an attitude Lewies takes into difficult conversations, which he faced often during his four years as Quins captain. The key was to be well prepared and, more often than not, those conversations would not be as tough as anticipated.

“If you kick the can down the road it can become a bigger problem. It can be scary to have that tough conversation in the moment, but that’s where growth happens, in that adversity. You grow closer as people and as teams.”

He recounted the story of a teammate who once skipped training and was suspended. Lewies endorsed the punishment but was labelled a ‘Judas’ by the player in question. The pair eventually made up after a frank exchange of views when it was clear that Lewies would listen to what his teammate had to say. It stopped matters escalating further and, as Lewies happily explained, made their relationship stronger.

“Getting him back on board and understanding him was critical for us.”

It was in such moments that the bonds, self-belief and confidence were forged that would eventually see off Saracens.

“There is so much value in creating opportunities to collaborate.”

What to read next

How Do you Develop the Most Expert Coaching Workforce in World Football?

An article brought to you by

By John Portch

Talent identification is a small part of a much bigger puzzle.

“It is only a really small part,” said Dr Alex Roberts. “We need to make sure we’re putting those strong development environments around athletes because it doesn’t matter if we pick 100 per cent of the right athletes if we’re not putting them in the right environment.”

Roberts, the Talent Identification & Development Lead at the Queensland Academy of Sport [QAS], is speaking at the third and final session of ‘The Future of Performance Sport’, a three-part Virtual Roundtable series brought to you by the Leaders Performance Institute and Exercise & Sports Science Australia.  The focus for the concluding conversation was talent identification, development and management.

She was joined on the virtual stage by Darren Shand, the former Manager of the New Zealand All Blacks, who offered perspectives from the senior end.

Firstly, Roberts outlined talent identification and development at QAS.

QAS offers opportunities, but not guarantees

Above all else, you must provide young athletes with a good experience, which QAS seeks to do through its YouFor2032 talent identification programme. Their goal is to discover and develop athletes with the potential to achieve medal success at the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane. At the time of writing, approximately 6,000 young Queenslanders have entered the programme.

“We can’t guarantee that athletes are going to succeed,” said Roberts, “but we want to make sure that they’ve got every opportunity to find the sport that they could be successful in, and that they have the appropriate education and development that will allow them to succeed.”

They have adopted the ‘principle of sports orientation’

Youngsters’ skills will be assessed to enable placement in a sport they may not have tried. “We see if their skills, their backgrounds, their traits, might fit a different sport,” said Roberts. Once assigned to a sport, the athlete will enter a three-month confirmation phase where they will learn the fundamental skills and get to know their coaches.

The physical is the starting point

Without the right physical characteristics mindset counts for little. “If you’re 160cm [5′ 2″] tall, you’re probably not going to be a rower, no matter how badly you want it,” said Roberts. “We match physical traits to where people are genetically predisposed to have more success.”

QAS also looks for elite behaviours

During the three-month confirmation phase, QAS will look for evidence of the behavioural patterns that denote elite performers (“We look at things like: do they show up on time? Do they put the effort into their warm up and cool down? Do they bring a water bottle?”). QAS does not, however, undertake formal psychological profiling at any stage. “As far as we know, the evidence isn’t there to support specific psychological profiles for long-term success in sport, particularly within the age groups we’re working with.”

Social support underpins the QAS approach

Social support is particularly important when athletes progress to the more intense 12-month development phase. It is a critical element of balancing challenge and support. Roberts said: “When we do our athlete development camps, we bring all of the athletes from all the sports in at once, so they can get cross-sport friendships. They can see what other sports look like. They can see that it’s not just them that are going through this. They’ve got that in-built support network that they can lean on.”

Additionally, “if we’re picking an athlete in Cairns for beach volleyball, we will take a few athletes to make sure that there’s a training squad up there; that they’ve got some other friends that are learning the same sport, that are progressing through the same system.”

The role of sports scientists

The sports scientists of QAS serve as educators, not only of coaches on state or national programmes, but further down to the grassroots. For young athletes it is, as Roberts said, about “early education; not waiting until they are moving through the system”. As for coaches, “they are the ones who are face to face with these athletes at every stage of their development.” Therefore she and her colleagues will work with coaches at different levels of the pathway and make sure that “they have that clear and consistent messaging, making sure that they understand what it looks like for the athletes, making sure that they understand the value of athlete wellbeing.”

The YouFor2032 app

As Roberts explained, the YouFor2032 app is helping QAS to find talent across the state of Queensland. Youngsters can download the app and test themselves in a home setting, with in-built AI enabling them to do it alone. Roberts said: “You don’t need an expert to hold the phone and get the angles right. You don’t need someone to sit down and analyse the joint movements. It does all of that for us.” Results are sent to QAS, who then begin the initial screening.

The app means fewer missed athletes during regional visits. “If you miss out, it used to mean you had to wait until next year,” added Roberts. “The app is going to remove a lot of those barriers for people.”

It was then Shand’s turn to provide an insight into the All Blacks’ double Rugby World Cup-winning environment, of which he was part for 18 years.

The All Blacks detest the term ‘fit’

The All Blacks’ maxim ‘you join us, we don’t join you’ is as true today as it has ever been. Yes, the team prizes hard work, self-driven individuals, and a willingness to learn – these help to set the standards that all players must meet – but there is also room for individuality.

“One of the things that annoys me in environments is when people say ‘we just want to get people that fit in’. I detest that,” said Shand. “I’m not after fit. I want people that are going to add.” He believes that diversity of personality and the very idea of complex individuals are something to be embraced.

“Saying you want someone to fit is a cop-out. You’re not really aiming high enough. You’re certainly not aiming at the world-class level,” he continued. “I reflect back on some of the players that we had whose high end was unbelievable, but their bottom end was a real nightmare, but they just added so much richness to the guys that perhaps sat in the middle. Across team sports, particularly that richness and what they can offer in terms of growth, outweighs what can happen at the bottom end.”

They create a home on the road

The All Blacks spent much of their time on tour, including at four overseas Rugby World Cups during Shand’s tenure. They quickly realised the performance benefit to making camps in France, Britain or Japan feel as much like home as possible, which meant including families at opportune moments. The penny dropped for Shand at a training session on the eve of a World Cup quarter-final in Cardiff.

“We finished the session and all the kids ran out into the field, and I just looked at it, and I just saw something I hadn’t really noticed before: the connection and the energy. I said to myself: ‘this is why they play’.”

Non-playing All Blacks are heavily involved

The All Blacks value their non-playing squad members and, once selection decisions have been clearly and respectfully explained, ensure their continued involvement throughout a game week.

“It’s an opportunity for them to coach,” said Shand. “So there might be three of them playing for the same position, but only two play, with the third becoming a coach. We often get our greatest learnings when we coach. It’s an opportunity to share the leadership without the pressure; how can I lead some of the things off field to take the pressure off those preparing to go on field?

“It’s also an opportunity to be the opposition and to learn and help our guys prepare because, at the end of the day, you’re never going to outperform your preparation. So the preparation has to be your best.”

In the future

Athletes will…

Enjoy longer careers. “It’s great to see that your age is not as much of a barrier anymore, that we’re not burning athletes out as early. They’re not getting injured and having to retire early,” said Roberts.

Not specialise as early. “In most of our sports we’re starting to see athletes have that much longer trajectory, which means we can wait to specialise.”

Take further ownership of their career trajectory, striking a balance between individual and team goals. Practitioners must “keep bringing the frame back to what do we need on Saturday and how do we best embrace that,” said Shand.

Practitioners will need to…

Further adapt to athletes’ needs. “I see it more in the work I’m doing now with sports, that real drive for life beyond sport, particularly as influencers,” said Shand. “It’s just trying to find the right marriage and the right method for letting people do that, but also realising that when they come back inside the walls and they fit with the behaviours and non-negotiables that we want.”

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