17 Mar 2022
PodcastsChad Morrow, a command psychologist with the US Airforce, succinctly identifies the elephant in the room when it comes to multidisciplinary work.
“When you hire people who are usually at the top of their game and they’ve then got to slow down to work together,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “I think everyone says they want to do that but if they’ve never done it, I’m not sure they want to do that.”
He goes on to explain that healthcare professionals in the military can recoil when they understand that being embedded can come with limited support. In truth it is not always so different in elite sport.
In our discussion on the creation of holistic teams, we also touch upon:
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From the front offices to the locker rooms via the psychologist’s couch, we bring you ten performance lessons from the Leaders Performance Institute vaults that continue to resonate today.
1. Athletes need to feel a sense of belonging
The WNBA is renowned for its advocacy of social justice issues and one of the its leading lights, the Seattle Storm, have been at the vanguard under CEO and President Alisha Valavanis. Backed by one of sports few all-female leadership groups in Force 10 Hoops LLC, the Storm has won three championships and made every effort to ensure the players find an inclusive, cohesive locker room where everyone is committed to representing the Storm’s vest.
“It starts with establishing personal relationships and building relationships on trust and connection so that players can share with us what their hopes are off the court,” said Valavanis, speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute in 2020. “There’s a real intentional effort to learn all about all of the individuals in our organisation and we certainly have conversations with players on how we can support them and make sure that everyone is clear what it means to be part of this organisation.”
2. Engage your athletes in their development
When athletes feel secure then you can empower them in both their personal development and the collective. “I’m a big believer in getting players to collaborate, present back, research, share with the group, present to the coaching group and vice versa,” said Jess Thirlby, the Head Coach of the England netball team on the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2020. “It’s a good way for me to check understanding from the group and it helps inform how to set direction and invest my energy when I hear the playing group back and they’ve demonstrated really sound understanding of themselves and the opposition and, not only that, but coming up with ways in which we’re going to pit strengths against their weaknesses.”
3. Make space in your schedule for independent development
Thirlby’s emphasis on empowerment is matched by Lucy Skilbeck, the Director of Actor Training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA]. “One of the things we’re looking at is how we can develop a more facilitative relationship with the student and how we make more space within the timetable for the student’s independent development,” she told a Leaders Performance Institute Webinar in 2021. “We’re also looking at how can we foster in them a greater sense of independence and understanding of themselves as artists and actors; as people who can make and create work as well as deliver other people’s work. Pedagogically, how do we work with them to facilitate the growth of their individuality rather than a monocultural process?”
4. Take a step back
Paula Dunn is the Head Coach of the Paralympic Programme at British Athletics. Ahead of the delayed Tokyo Games, where her team claimed 24 medals, she spoke of the perils of micromanaging. “I thought I had to be in charge, I had to be tough, I had to work the longest hours, I had to have all the answers,” she said. “It’s never good to have a decision made by one person, so I’ve tried to work with my team, understanding what their motivations are, and just being honest when I just don’t know something or if I’ve had issues.”
5. Is the athlete’s real competition the challenge of fulfilling their potential?
Anne Keothavong, the Captain of the Great Britain Fed Cup tennis team, is engaged in the development of the nation’s players and knows that no corners can be cut. As she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018, the challenges can differ from player to player. She said: “Every player represents a different case, depending on where they’re ranked and how old they are, how long they’ve been playing professionally, and what targets they need to hit. I’m not involved on a day to day basis but when I see them in a training or competition environment I’m looking out for whether they’re improving, consistently working on those goals, and the other things they want to focus on to help make them a better tennis player.”
6. Track athletic development through relevant tests
The best data can be linked to specific tests and Kate Weiss, the Director of Sports Science at the Seattle Mariners, walked viewers through a hypothetical process with a pitcher at our February Webinar. “When they come in, we’re going to test range of motion, we’re going to test movement capacity; how are they going to move in a general sense and a baseball-specific sense,” she says. “We’re going to look at the different components of strength, speed, power, we’re going to look at body composition. All these different things that we know contribute to and help support what they do on the field. Then what we’re going to do is look at the on-field data and link that back and go ‘OK, maybe there’s issues with their shoulder separation on the mound.’ We’re going to look through everything and go ‘OK, is it coming from a range of motion issue? Is it coming from just a movement capacity issue?’ Or if it’s not those things maybe it’s just a coaching issue that we have to work on and come up with specific drills.”
7. Data: spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back
“For data capture and analysis, we have a mantra at the EIS: ‘we should spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back’,” said Julia Wells, the Head of Performance Analysis at the English Institute of Sport. “That’s something that’s been rooted in us since the inception of our Performance Analysis team.” She and her team supported Great Britain’s athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Games and, as she told the Leaders Performance Institute in the aftermath, they prioritise harnessing the latest tech and relationships with the end users. “The software available now is immense,” she added. “There’s so much to choose from, which can be a challenge but we honed in on data visualisation and our ability to translate data into usable insights.”
8. Do not attempt to separate emotion from performance
Sports Psychologist Mia Stellberg feels attempting to shut down emotions is counterproductive for athletes. “The more they can understand emotions, they can explain and understand what they are feeling or how that feeling came to occur is the first step,” she told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2021. “We can never control anything that we are not aware of. So you need to be aware of your emotions, sometimes this is the most tricky part of my work, to talk about emotions to young guys at age 20 who just want to rule the world, play and win the title! Then the second step is understanding how that feeling occurs or what needs to happen before it pops up, so if we want to prevent negative feelings we have to understand what happens before it comes so that we can learn how to control, how to prevent.”
9. Embrace risk, expand comfort zones
Mental performance coach Véronique Richard, who has worked with Cirque du Soleil as well as a variety of sports organisations, attempts to cultivate ‘risk-friendly’ environments. “Risk needs to be part of your environment,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018. Richard strives to foster the conditions for enhanced skill development in the athletes and performance artists with whom she works. In short, she introduces an element of chaos. “By working through that mess, people actually increase their repertoires of thoughts and actions, which contributes to creativity,” she said. “First, I ask the athlete: ‘what are you avoiding not because you’re not skilled enough but because it makes you uncomfortable?’ There’s all sorts of things we don’t do because of discomfort; it can be technical, tactical psychological, emotional, personal, ego and then, as a leader, your role is to find the right stimuli to bring the person to explore discomfort and bring people to work in this zone of discomfort; and if you manage that successfully you actually expand their zone of comfort.”
10. Do your athletes know where to turn for help?
In 2019, the Australian Institute of Sport established its Career & Education Practitioner referral network, as Matti Clements, the acting CEO, explained in her former role as Deputy Director of Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement. “That is practitioners who can provide high level expertise on vocational pathways. It’s referral-in and we’ll cover the costs of all podium-plus-level athletes and coaches,” she told an audience at Leaders Meet: Wellbeing. The AIS also provides help for the athlete wellbeing & engagement managers with the provision of a personal development programme. “This is so that we can ensure a level of risk management and skillset across those people. What we’ve done is invite the whole system, including professional sports, into that education and we’re creating community practice hubs so that they can actually have some peer support; it’s led by us, but there’s peer support there.”
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“When you call someone out there are relationship stakes. I might fire you, I might do something at you; there’s going to be something happen versus if I’m calling you in, it can be very direct but I’ve removed the relationship stakes by saying at the beginning of the conversation: ‘I appreciate that you’re here, I see all the hard work.’”
Harris is moderating the latest Keiser Webinar and is joined by Duncan Simpson, the Director of Personal Development at IMG Academy, and Dusty Miller, the Head of People and Culture at British Fencing, as well as a host of Leaders Performance Institute members from across the globe.
The conversation covered a range of topics, including the importance of providing informal learning opportunities, meeting athletes where they are, and the value of applied learning.
“That balance needs to be carefully managed otherwise the person can go down a whole spiral of interventions that might not always be appropriate,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.
Brickley is speaking just moments after appearing onstage at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Twickenham Stadium.
He acknowledges that athletes often have traits that set them apart. “Athletes work differently,” says Brickley, who is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton and an exercise physiologist. “They might not be well in a general sense but perform absolutely brilliantly. Then you may have a situation where you reduce their training and focus on their wellbeing. You can’t do one without the other.
“It’s a tough area and I don’t know if we’ve got the people trained up to the level needed at the moment.”
How does he see the scene developing in five years’ time? “To be honest, I think we’ll still be way off,” he says with a smile. “We’ve gotten better with things such as nutrition and we’ve moved away from those old-style bullying coaches that put athletes under pressure and we’ve weeded out a lot of the rough things that affect athletes, but there will still be challenges.”
The Leaders Performance Institute sat down with Brickley to briefly run through his reflections on the run-up to Tokyo, where Storey won three Paralympic gold medals, and his thoughts on coaching in general terms.
Gary, how do you seek to combine your coaching and academic knowledge within the performance environment?
GB: It works both ways, as what I learn from the athletes I can pass back to the students. I’m interested in nutrition, environmental physiology and training theory and there’s a lot that I’ve been able to pass on to my athletes. Say, for example, Sarah Storey is getting ready for the Tokyo Games and she wants to do some heat and altitude work. I’ll work out what’s the best procedure, we’ll try it out, I’ll get her feedback, and then take it forward to the next stage and see if we get some performance improvements.
What has been your biggest performance challenge of the last 12 months?
GB: Not going to events has been hard. I couldn’t go to Tokyo, I’d been to all the Games since 2000, it’s been remote coaching from home, which has been a challenge. There was no contact with families and that was pretty tough for athletes. You couldn’t win a gold medal and go and celebrate with your family. There were also athletes who contracted long Covid and did not make it to the Games. Tokyo, success-wise, was great for us but we never knew if it was going to happen until the last minute. Then you need to prepare for things to go wrong. For example, Tokyo was about preparing for the heat and then it poured down with torrential rain during one of the road races.
How important is the feeling of control for a coach?
GB: I give control to the athlete until I feel that something might be going wrong or not in the right direction. Then I would intervene. That could be an injury or it could be a piece of equipment that requires the right innovation team. I have coached in water polo, swimming, triathlon and elite cycling and there’s a process of continual learning and educating yourself, lifting different ideas from different sports. In the past, I’ve had some pretty dodgy coaches and you learn from their errors too.
In what ways do you check the learning and understanding of your athletes?
GB: Onstage, I mentioned being a decent filter as a coach and getting rid of the rubbish, whether that’s rubbish people that are trying to intervene with the athlete or rubbish ideas about the theory of a sport or how you recover. As a coach, I find myself filtering that out so that the athlete hasn’t got to deal with issues like that. They can focus on their race, on their recovery, and have a good, settled situation at home or on the track.
How do you ensure that everyone inside the building feels empowered to speak up and explore performance questions?
GB: I think we talk a lot about collaboration and multidisciplinary work. The coach needs to pull on a lot of different people at different times. Some people you may not talk to for two years, other people you might be talking to them on a daily basis. If you find that people are backing off a little bit you have to ask why they’re not contributing to the team. That could be the nutritionist who hasn’t felt that they’re needed because the person’s nutrition is fine. We’d ask them ‘can you find out a little bit more for us in this area?’ There are always performance questions and ways you can encourage people to feel a greater sense of ownership in their work.
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The Leaders Performance Institute explores what Jones thinks it takes to get a team ‘humming’ and presents five points for consideration.
“You start at midnight, then you’ve got 12 hours to get to midday,” he told an audience at August’s Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments. “By that time your team has to have evolved into a winning team.” Jones, like numerous head coaches in team sports, can feel the clock ticking.
“In Premier League football, you’ve probably got eight games to get to the high performance, in international rugby you’ve probably got two years. Generally, I think it takes a team three years to be really humming when you’ve got all the bits and pieces in place.”
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute explores what Jones thinks it takes to get a team ‘humming’ and presents five points for consideration.
1. The coach as a chemist
For Jones it starts with the leader’s vision for the team. A high performance environment must support that vision and the leader must be ready to tweak things when necessary. “You’ve got to work backwards,” he says. “Get the structure to support the vision, then you’ve got to get the right people and the right behaviours. You’re like a chemist, you’re pouring little bits and things in there, taking away, and every day you’ve got to check the temperature because every day you get closer to where you are at your best and you’re also a day closer to where you’re not at your best. The cycle of life is more exacerbated in the cycle of sport.”
2. Sports science as a key accelerator
Sports science practitioners, led by the vision, must work to ensure the most efficient application. “I think when sports science came in, they wanted to be Godzilla and beat their chests and show everyone how clever they were; and now they’ve worked out that they’re just part of the package,” says Jones with a smile. “They’ve got that understanding, they’re part of the package, they’re a key accelerator of sport but not a driver; their role has become clearer.” He retells the story of an episode ahead of England’s 2019 Rugby World Cup campaign. “The first four weeks we didn’t let the players wear GPS and the coaches were sweating,” he continues. “The coaches didn’t like it, the players didn’t like it. I just said ‘work out what a good session is’. So we did that and it took away that fixation with GPS.” Keen observers will have noted that GPS technology remained a vital tool in for England throughout the tournament and beyond. Jones simply wanted underline his point. “You’ve got to make sure you manage all of that and make sure it’s in the right direction for the team.”
3. Sports psychology is the future
Jones’ tone is bellicose but he readily admits to his reliance on the high performance team, including those working in performance psychology. He says: “I think the sports psychology area is the biggest growth area of the game of any sport at the moment. If you look at any team now, do they go into the game with the right attitude and how do you get them to be at the right attitude more often than not? If you can get your team with the necessary talent and the right attitude at the start of the game, then you can beat the average, you’re winning in your competition.
“How do you get that? I think the one block that’s got the most area to investigate is performance psychology. When I say that, I mean it’s everything: that’s the relationship when you’re sitting at the table with your staff, the relationship you have between the staff and the players, the players with each other.”
Relationships are crucial given the growth of multidisciplinary teams in high performance. “If you go back 20 years ago in rugby, a player would have to have in a team environment maybe four key relationships: the head coach, maybe the strength & conditioning coach, maybe the manager – maybe three – and now they’re expected to have maybe 15 key relationships. The ability to develop that area and make that really hum and be at the level you want it to be is the key thing.”
4. The forensic psychologist as a cultural architect
Jones continues with a joke: “I reckon now you almost need three psychologists on your team, if you’re a big team I reckon you need one for the players, who are working on their individual mindset, their own individual skills. You need one for the staff – then you probably need one for the sports psychologist!”
On a more serious note, he makes the case for teams hiring a forensic psychologist to help deliver an understanding of what makes people tick. “We’ve been working with this woman who’s a forensic psychologist. I’ve been lucky enough to coach for 30 years and, in the last three weeks, I’ve learnt more about how to be more engaged, more intentional in the way I speak to people.”
5. Guardiola and Klopp as model leaders
Jones has often stated his admiration for Manchester City Manager Coach Pep Guardiola and his Liverpool counterpart Jürgen Klopp, both of whom he thinks understand how to cajole players without letting standards slip and decline. He says: “They’re tough on standards, aren’t they? You see them during the game they’re yelling and screaming but when they come off the field they’re an engaged and loving father that’s embraced the players. Our ability to engage the players is one of the hard things.”
It stems from the high performance environment and the team’s original vision. “The ability to make people work hard and do the really difficult things is getting harder and you’ve got to explore every avenue of how you do that and that’s got to be through having the best psychology and having the best performance staff.”
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