By John Portch

Iván Gil-Ortega, a former principal dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet, remembers his ballet teacher smoking in class.

“She used to ask us to hold her cigarette while she was lifting your leg and then putting you in the right position,” he told an audience at Leaders Meet: Australia in February.

“The pianist was smoking too,” he added, “and we were called names.”

Gil-Ortega, who is approaching two years as the Artistic Director of the Queensland Ballet, was responding to a question from moderator Keith Sharpe, the Head of Coaching & Leadership Development at British Cycling, on the cultural shifts that have occurred in education since Gil-Ortega himself was a student.

Though neither an advocate of smoking in class nor bullying children, he nevertheless believes that the teacher-student relationship has shifted “a little too much”.

His views are of interest because Gil-Ortega oversees an academy of more than 200 students who are aged anywhere between seven and 18 (the company also has a pre-professional programme currently made up of 16 students).

“I think we went from one extreme to the other and what I try to do is find that middle way.” Though his criticisms are never personal (“everything I do is to get the best outcome for them”) there can be a tension between Gil-Ortega and his students. He attributes this to expectation management. “They want to get there immediately and, when you do something like this, there is no way of avoiding the actual path you need to go down to get there.”

To Sharpe, it speaks of kindness. He said: “I’m a big believer that the next competitive advantage is kindness; and kindness wins. So the courage to trust, the willingness to listen, the openness to just succeed and learn together is really important. Kindness isn’t nice, is it? It’s not about just being nice. It’s being honest.”

Gil-Ortega concurred. “Something that I found when I got here is they kept on saying to me: ‘you’re very direct’ and I said, ‘no, there is no “very direct”. There is “direct” or “not direct”. I try to avoid the bullshit. I try to be honest with them so that they know what is expected; and the more honesty you can have with your dancers, with your team, in the long term, that’s the best outcome for them.”

The Queensland Ballet is, he believes, a good environment, “but it doesn’t mean that we’re all hugging and we love each other because we don’t. Let’s not forget: it’s a cutthroat job.”

You may not wish a fellow dancer harm, but the simple fact of the matter is that you are vying for their job. “So that’s your competition; you’re competing within your team.”

Nevertheless, “we have to have an environment where everybody can work and have opportunities.” It begins with honesty, which is rooted in care rather than cruelty. “I try to be honest because the more honest you can be then there is no false expectation.”

Over the course of 30 minutes, Gil-Ortega explained his efforts to help students navigate the cutthroat environment of a ballet academy.

Below, we pick out four factors that define his approach.

1. He tries to balance individual ambition with collective learning

“Every single dancer is thinking of themselves. They’re not thinking of the person next to them,” said Gil-Ortega. Yet ballet is still a collective endeavour and individual flair must serve the company. The principals rely upon the soloists, corps de ballet and junior dancers etc.

“Even if I have the best Romeo and the best Juliet, unless everyone else plays their part, you won’t see the performance,” he continued. “We’ve had great dancers where the company wasn’t really into the whole process. So it didn’t really matter how great they were because the show didn’t come up to that next level.”

Therefore, “if you’re giving feedback to someone, the person beside them needs to listen; it is not just personal feedback, it’s for everybody.” Nevertheless, this can be a difficult experience for students, which is why Gil-Ortega must be careful to balance challenge and support.

2. Psychological safety doesn’t mean lowering standards

Gil-Ortega asserts that ballet is “not a job and it’s not a hobby – it becomes a lifestyle”. He said: “The dancers are dancers from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed; and even in our sleep we’re dancers because you’re twitching, because your body is.” He tailed off while trying to find the right words to end his sentence. “I mean, it’s horrible.” And to top it off, ballet is a short career; and not the kind that can set you up for life through lucrative contracts or brand endorsements. “You come to a certain age towards the end of your 30s where you’re considered an old person and you just started.”

This is a world in which Gil-Ortega admits he risks offending some students. “But getting offended doesn’t mean that you’re right,” he said. His tone was strident, but the simple fact is that uncomfortable feedback is sometimes necessary to ensure progress.

As for finding that balance, his feedback is “never personal”. He seeks that aforementioned “middle way” that inspires development but does not bully or belittle. Self-directed learning is critical in this regard.

3. He encourages self-directed learning

“I’m always open to being proved wrong,” said Gil-Ortega, who stressed that dance students have the space to change perceptions through their own hard work and development. “I think they have a lot of ownership.”

The steps will always be the steps in ballet, but the dancer can bring a unique artistry to their performance, which is where the space for development exists.

He continued: “I think it’s important when people come to me and say ‘I’d like to do that role and I haven’t been tested’. That’s entirely up to you if you want to be in the room; there is always another skill or another way of movement that you can learn on your own. That’s why I give them the freedom to see if there is something you see that you want to do, you want to learn. I’m always up for it.”

The choreographer may hold a different view, but Gil-Ortega will “try to empower them by saying ‘okay, they might not see you there, but you can prove them wrong’.” As he sees it, the worst thing would be that they meekly do what they are told. “Yes, you have to conform because the creative way is like that; the choreographer has the choreography in their head, they use a certain dancer; but then make sure that when the next one comes you’ve gained some more knowledge, so maybe you’ll be chosen then.”

Furthermore, to reach the point where talent and musicality meet the requisite luck (“you have to be in the right place at the right time”) requires hours and hours of repetition. “It’s all about doing it over and over and over and over.” Oftentimes it also means moving on.

4. He also provides exit routes

“There are people in our academy, in our school, that I know they’ll never make it to the company,” said Gil-Ortega, “but they will be good for other companies. So on that path, I try to tell them before it’s too late.”

It does not mean they lack talent; some may be better suited to other dance forms. Gil-Ortega tries to do right by them by suggesting a new focus in a manner that preserves their confidence and opportunity.

“Last year, we had a dancer that really wanted to stay with us; and I said, ‘I do appreciate the energy and everything, but I think it would be better for you and your career due to your physicality of the way you move and the way you dance to go elsewhere’.”

He actively supports dancers making such transitions. “I have contacted other directors when I say, ‘I have these people here, I think they would work very well for you, for the kind of work you do’. I think it’s just making that path accessible.”

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How to Work with Younger Generations (and by that we Mean Athletes, Coaches and Staff Members)

By John Portch

When we talk about the next generation, it is not just athletes but coaches and other staff members too.

“I work primarily with staff on a day‑to‑day and they are very young,” said a senior sports scientist working in Major League Baseball.

“They’d be Generation Z; and I think there’s definitely a difference in terms of how I have had to learn to communicate with them and include them in various decisions and thoughts along the way — and I’ll be the first to say I fumbled royally multiple times at first.”

This individual – whose experience is far from unique – was speaking at a recent virtual roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members on the challenge of working with the next generation. Several in attendance spoke of the different beliefs, values and attitudes that can exist within a single environment.

Over the course of an hour, the table discussed how to better understand those generational differences in a way that meets the needs of all their young people.

The session host Luke Whitworth, the LPI’s Sport Performance Lead, challenged participants to move beyond generational stereotypes. He said: “If we’re going to manage these multi‑generational teams, it comes down to the leader’s ability to understand the behaviours, values and beliefs of younger people.”

A top-down approach, he argued, is not going to cut it; and he posed the table two questions:

1. How are we adapting and evolving our environments to meet those needs?
2. What do those environments need to look like?

The first question set up the second; and collectively the table alighted on five themes.

1. Pursue co-creation

The consensus is that athletes want to have a louder voice in their own development.

As an attendee who coaches at a Premier League academy said, even boys as young as 11 “continue to want instant information; they want more challenge; they want to know what’s next.”

He added:

“At the moment, we are searching for more autonomy and ownership from young players around some of their developmental needs. We’re sitting down with a young boy and having conversations around what are some of the things that you’re really good at; what would you like to achieve this year; what do you think you’re not so great at and could be working on.”

While the player is encouraged to express their views, they are still guided by their coaches.

“We will tell them: ‘whilst we understand that you feel you need to work on these developmental areas, there are definitely other areas that we need you to continue to work on.’”

In several cases, the priorities of younger staff members mirror young athletes’. A sports scientist from a different Premier League club said:

“The younger staff want quicker progression. They want to know what is happening for them to progress into more senior roles.”

A coach from the US system has observed similar ambitions in their context. He said:

“They won’t take ownership if they’re not included in the process.”

It’s a similar story in a military setting, as another attendee observed from their work:

“You have to be really intentional, really painfully deliberate with junior staff members to make sure that they’re engaged and they feel like they’re part of the process.”

2. Make sure individualisation is rooted in identity and purpose

In several key respects, individualisation underpins efforts to co-create the development plans alluded to above, but sometimes, as a player development manager in Major League Baseball pointed out, the players need a helping hand to prevent them from “climbing the wrong mountain”.

He said:

“Over the last year and a half, we’ve really tried to dive in on the first question. And I think our feedback loops have changed because of that. The four things that stood out at the beginning were reflection, ownership, collaboration and impatience – four things that we feel like our players really struggle with.”

As for the solution:

“We’ve started to dive more into identity and their North Star. Why do they do what they do? What are their values? How can we help them? And they’ve really opened up to us just in terms of who they are, where they’re going, what they want to do. And that’s opened the conversation to their actual on-field performance things that we want them to work on.”

3. Be comfortable with digital delivery

Younger generations are digital natives and teams would do well to lean into this.

The player development manager from above said:

“We’ve actually had our coaches start to record 10 to 15 minute videos, send them to players beforehand, and then the actual talk becomes them being able to reflect and digest the information.”

He is not alone, as another attendee from a US NGB explained of her organisation’s approach to identity:

I’m not a coach, I’m not in performance, I’m in operations, but our data analytics team started talking in a really structured way with our 13 to 15-year-old athletes here at the training centre. They ask them what’s their preferred game style, what kind of player they want to be, who they look up to, and have them sit down and make a video of it. And that has been a really cool exercise.

Meanwhile, at the aforementioned Premier League academy, independent video learning is the norm. The coach said:

“We record training sessions and games that go straight onto Hudl for young players to go and watch. They can engage in it however they want.”

4. Promote peer-to-peer learning

Peer-to-peer learning is also essential. Another academy manager, this time in the world of basketball, said:

“The players have discussions internally between themselves and they come back to us with a conclusion as a group.”

At this juncture, he explained it is important to work out who are the key influencers in the playing group.

“We are living in an era of influencers, TikTokers, YouTubers. So who is the guy who has the biggest influence here in our team? And he’s going to be charged with talking to us and delivering the message to the rest of the group.”

Once again, this peer-to-peer dynamic is just as relevant to staff. A programme lead in the US spoke of their ‘zillennial’ staff i.e. those who could reasonably be classed as older Generation Z and younger millennial.

He said:

“When we have to make a big departmental decision, everyone has to bring a piece of paper. They have to write their own ideas down first before they hear anyone else’s and then walk it through as a group. By the end of it, we all come to the agreement like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing as a team’. That way it’s everyone’s idea versus ‘that wasn’t my idea’.”

5. Re-evaluate staff reporting structures

A senior sports scientist at a Premier League club explained that his club restructured how staff members report to their line managers. He said:

“We added more layers in. Part of the reason for that was to allow some of the younger staff to get more regular feedback, more regular development. We’ve also tried to limit the number that any one clinician will line‑manage so that actually those conversations can happen more readily.”

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Four Questions those Working with the Next Generation Should Ask Themselves

By John Portch

The complex nature of skill acquisition was nicely summed up by Mo Bobat, the Director of Cricket at both Royal Challengers Bengaluru and London Spirit.

“It’s about how skills are practised within context, how they’re practised in an environment of graded exposure to challenge and pressure,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute when we caught up with him for our Trend Report.

“[It’s about] pressure-testing the skill, rehearsing it, with enough repetition for it to become and feel a little bit more instinctive and automatic. It’s also the right decision-making and execution and relationship with risk.”

The importance of skill acquisition is obvious when you spell it out, but often it is misunderstood or underappreciated.

Last month, we hosted the first of two virtual roundtables focused on the topic. The Leaders Performance Institute members present identified four common tensions and challenges:

1. Skill acquisition is multidisciplinary in nature: a weakness in terms of where it sits and where it resonates.
2. It is less visible and less tangible: it’s harder for coaches to see progress.
3. Training can be unrepresentative of competition: fail to capture competition demands and you fail to prepare your athletes.
4. Head coaches can feel threatened: they feel skill acquisition specialists are treading on their toes.

Coaches and practitioners have encountered each of these tensions in some shape or form and the solutions sit with everyone, not just those tasked with skill development.

Below, we bring you examples from the worlds of Formula 1, rugby union and netball that address those tensions that can hinder skill acquisition through a combination of environmental, structural and personal approaches.

More than Equal: the search for Formula 1’s first female world champion

More than Equal, which was co-founded in 2022 by former F1 driver David Coulthard and philanthropist Karel Komárek, is a global talent identification and development organisation that has set itself the task of finding and developing Formula 1’s first female world champion.

You can read more about the challenges that face any young female driver here. Skill acquisition is certainly part of it. “The idea of identifying talent based on building a whole profile of a driver, physiologically, cognitively, psychologically, that hasn’t really existed to date,” said Fran Longstaff, the Head of Research at More than Equal, at Leaders Meet: the Talent Journey in 2025. That goes for all drivers. “We don’t know what a racing car driver should be doing and look like at 16 versus 18.”

Such profiles – for male and female drivers – would be multidisciplinary in their scope, help make the vague tangible, and enable coaches to design training scenarios more representative of a racing environment.

More than Equal also commissioned two PhDs; one to research the impact of hormones on performance, particularly cognitive function; another to build “physiological, psychological, cognitive training and anthropometric profiles from drivers all the way from karting to F1.”

More than Equal, as Longstaff explained, is “building the road as we walk”. As more and more useful datapoints emerge, those different threads will have to be woven together to help paint pictures of progress (or stagnation) for each athlete.

England Rugby: how progress is tracked from talent pathways to the senior team

England Rugby’s coaches and performance personnel can call upon a range of objective and subjective datapoints. It is partially the role of individuals such as Kate Burke, the Lead Player Development Scientist, to draw them all together in a meaningful way.

“Everyone has a different role to play, from our coaches and medics to strength & conditioning and the psychologist. Having those people in the room to talk around everyone’s IDP is key,” Burke told the Leaders Performance Institute.

Rugby is a world where the outliers – those destined for great things and those who aren’t perhaps good enough – stick out.

Burke was particularly keen to help those who occupied the middle ground; neither outstanding nor struggling. “Typically, pathway staff have tended to spend time talking about the players that are doing well or the players who are not doing as well. How do we ensure that we are talking about the players who are just staying constant? What do they need for their development?” she continued.

“We’ve got a lot of data in this space, but the pathway especially is hugely context-driven around where the player is in a lot of areas – technically, tactically, psychologically and physically.”

Again, it’s a multidisciplinary concern; and if Burke and her colleagues can find the metrics that matter, there will be implications for training design.

“We also need to look at where they are, where they’re playing, what their playing programme looks like in order to monitor and plan for the player effectively.”

Leinster Rugby and the Northern Mystics: self-reflection for athletes and coaches alike

Longstaff, a chartered psychologist, and Burke, a sports scientist, illustrate the importance of the athlete experience in skill acquisition, but it is not always something that coaches clock.

Too often with coaches, as Simon Broughton explained, “everything’s been delivered, the meeting’s happened and then we’re straight outside.”

The Academy Manager at Leinster Rugby was speaking at Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching at Millfield School in 2024. “We don’t actually give the players the space to reflect.”

The implications for skill development can be significant. “Reflective practice helps with recall and then planning for what they want to get better at next.”

Reflective practice is vital for skill development; and it’s not just critical for athletes either.

Helene Wilson, during her time as Head Coach of the Northern Mystics netball team in New Zealand between 2017 and 2022, organised reflective sessions with her players and staff that enabled the group to reach a consensus (known as ‘wānanga’ in Māori).

“My orientation as head coach was always what do others know first rather than bringing my expertise to the table. I needed to be the last one talking in the room,” she told the audience at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance in 2023.

“It could look similar to a team meeting but it can take many forms and wānanga happens in many ways,” she continued. “I put a concept on the table, a picture of performance that I may see as a head coach, or someone else may put it there depending on who’s taking a lead that day, and the wānanga takes the form of questions, from multiple perspectives, and we keep going until we get some sense of alignment. It doesn’t come with any level of expertise or experience, it comes with everybody’s level and everybody contributes.”

Wilson had cultivated an environment where neither she nor anyone else in the Mystics setup felt threatened. They would also go on to win the ANZ premiership in 2021.

“My learning was to sit at the back and know that my knowledge was not sufficient; that the knowledge was in the room and I was there to sense the problem and the wānanga would sort out what that problem was.”

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‘Ultimately, Skill Is Technique Performed Under Pressure’

By John Portch

“Personally, I don’t believe in skills coaches.”

These are the words of Rory Teague, who notably spent a year and a half between 2016 and 2017 working as a skills coach under then England men’s rugby union Head Coach Eddie Jones.

A decade on, Teague serves as the Head Coach of French Pro D2 club AS Béziers Hérault and, as he tells the Leaders Performance Institute, would not copy Jones’ appointment in southern France.

“I wouldn’t myself employ a skills coach,” he says. “I think every coach who coaches an area of the game should be able to coach the skill of their area. ‘Skills coach’ as a term has become archaic as coaching has moved along.”

He feels that assigning skills coaches to coaching units risks diluting accountability. “When something breaks down, you’re not going to just look to the skills coach who’s sat in the room waiting for the moment to say ‘oh, that’s me’,” he continues.

“If the lineout doesn’t go well because of the throw, who’s responsible for that? Is it the lineout coach or the throwing coach that comes in once a week? I would prefer that my forward coach has understanding of the skill of throwing and takes responsibility for it.”

AS Béziers Hérault Head Coach Rory Teague. (Image: Rory Teague / LinkedIn)

Over the course of half an hour, Teague ponders the topic of skill acquisition from a coaching career spent as a skills coach, unit coach, and now a head coach.

Here are his six of his main considerations.

1. The difference between ‘skill’ and ‘technique’

“Ultimately, skill is technique performed under pressure,” says Teague, who has been influenced in his thinking by coaches including Rick Shuttleworth (a consultant at organisations including the Rugby Football Union and UK Sports Institute), Scott Wisemantel (Attack Coach at the NRL’s Paramatta Eels) and, of course, Jones (who is now in his second spell as Head Coach of the Japan men’s team).

“They were three incredible coaches who helped me along the way,” he adds. “They pushed me to go and find out what is ‘skill’; what is the difference between ‘technique’ and ‘skill’? Because there’s a big difference.” Skill, he suggests, is the ability to select, adapt and execute actions in a pressured context. There is little value in a player passing the ball ten metres to their teammate repeatedly at the end a training session. “They’re only working on their technique, because there’s no external cue for when they’re passing.”

It follows that skills in rugby develop as a consequence of an interaction between mechanics, cognition and match context. “If I stand in front of the player and they run towards me and I run towards them, they’re interacting with the environment i.e. me, them, and the distance – and then they’re performing the technique.”

There is also a psychological and emotional dynamic that goes beyond cognition and technical execution. All these elements can affect skill expression in a match situation.

“There’s no substitute for being in the saddle,” adds Teague. “Hot feedback in the moment can be so powerful because you’re living that moment with the player.” He will use the moment to talk them through a situation.

He will readily halt training sessions to allow kickers to practise too. “Get them to kick when their heartrate is up and their emotional state is variable rather than just doing 50 kicks at the end of the session – because that’s just technique.”

2. Implicit and explicit learning both matter

At the heart of discussions about skill acquisition is the dichotomy between information-processing approaches (skill acquisition as learning to plan and execute correct movements by processing information internally) and ecological approaches (skill acquisition as learning to perceive and act in context by interacting with the environment).

Teague is not a dogmatist, even if he leans towards the latter. “I like implicit coaching where the exercise and your questions give the player the feedback,” he says. “What exercises can you design whereby you don’t have to say anything, the player performs the act, and the exercise gives the player the feedback? If you look at, say, goal kicking or throwing, you want the player to self-regulate when they’re in the moment and feel the pressure.” He will look to ask a series of questions that “get the player to think about where they want the ball to end up, where they want the ball to go versus breaking it down too technically”. He will also be mindful of the timing too, both pre and post-match.

However, when it comes to explicit approaches, “it’s not that those guys you’re very direct with are not taking control of their own journey and development, they just need to be told.”

It comes down to knowing the individual athlete. “I’ve worked with some players where I’ve fluffed it up too much and asked too many questions and they just want you to go ‘tell me exactly what you want me to be doing, tell me exactly what I’m doing wrong, tell me exactly how I can get it better’. Whereas with others, you can ask ‘what do you think?’”

Skill acquisition requires the coach to understand what the best approach is and why. Additionally, while it may be ideal for the session design to act as the teacher, there will be times when the coach needs to check for understanding.

3. Ask yourself: what will help the player?

While it is important for players to be drawn towards training sessions, whether by coaches placing balls in their line of sight or by making sessions enjoyable, the guiding principle should be whatever will help the players in that moment.

“Do you want your players to think your coaching drills are really good or do you want players to think ‘you’ve taught me how to pass better’?” As ever, the answer “depends on where you are” with the players in question.

In any case, “sometimes you have to get through the reps and you can’t deviate away from repetition”. Teague says: “I’ve seen coaches try to do these fast exercises to appease players and sometimes they can be so complicated that the players don’t buy into it because of how complex it is.”

There will be times when a coaching intervention can harm a player’s development and Teague will consciously be less prescriptive as a game week develops. “As you get closer towards the game, you’re looking at confidence versus correction” because sometimes less is more.

4. The coach is only part of the player’s journey

Between 2022 and 2023, Teague worked as a forwards and backs coach with Racing 92 where he had the opportunity to coach Finn Russell, who is widely considered one of the best fly-halves in the world.

Teague reflects on that period and what he refers to as the “culture of extras”, which is the work that the world’s best players continue to do on their basic skillsets.

“Finn would ask to do some extras when he thought it was right for him,” says Teague, who explains that Russell’s experience guided their training interactions. “Sometimes he’d do them on his own, sometimes he’d ask a coach to be there to give him some feedback, sometimes he’d want a coach there just to keep him company.”

Teague has also worked at school and underage level where he employed a more directive approach but in an environment like England or Racing, “telling them what to do probably isn’t the most intelligent thing.”

Instead, “I think the more players take control of their own skill development, the more you as a coach just have to be part of that journey, not driving that journey for them.”

5. Be patient, it’s a journey

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Teague what he knows now that he wished he knew whilst working as a skills coach.

“Skill acquisition takes a lot more time than I thought,” he says, adding that it could take a season for a goal kicker to become 10% better. “I don’t know if patience is a skill, but I wish I understood more about the learning journey of the player in terms of skill; that each player can pick things up at different rates.”

It comes back to the player-coach relationship. “Players need to take responsibility around what they want to be working on; and that’s a shared process with the coach. Obviously, if there’s something the player has really not identified that they need to work on, and if the coach has to tell them, then so be it.”

Teague will decide when to intervene, when to step back, and when to change the task.

“If you’re clever in your design, you can keep pushing and changing the design incrementally as you see the player evolving and becoming better. Equally, you can take it backwards if the player isn’t getting it. So it’s that ability to move up and down the bandwidth of the learning journey where, ‘OK, I’ve set the start point here at three, I need to go back to one before I can move to four, five and six’.”

6. Data informs, it does not decide

When it comes to using data in skill development, Teague describes it as a question of “data versus feel”.

He says: “You can look at the number of passes per game, for example, but then I think you have to really sit down, watch the video, watch the technique, watch the context, look at the environment that they’re in at that moment in time in the game, conditions; there’s lots of different things.”

As ever data must inform judgement, not replace it; it must provide a meaningful talking point. “I think data can serve its purpose, but what we don’t want to do is go too much down the data route without looking at the individual data moments in the game.”

As a final question, the Leaders Performance Institute asks Teague what advice he has for coaches working in skill development.

“Go and find the theory behind skill acquisition. I think it will change you. It will change mindsets, definitely.”

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

By Richard Young PhD

High performance always comes with plans, systems and structure.

These hold the work together and give people a sense of direction, yet across numerous Olympic cycles and my work with teams in many countries, something deeper has shown up again and again. Repeat performers live by a small set of values that give their journey meaning, and that meaning becomes the story they return to when things get hard. Plans can organise a campaign, but meaning organises the person, and when the person is organised, behaviour aligns with purpose, decisions become cleaner, and responses under pressure strengthen.

Values are not abstract. They sit under the story people tell themselves about why the work matters. When performers are clear on their values, the story they live by gains weight and coherence. Meaning forms around those values, and behaviour follows the meaning. High performance at its core is high quality communication, and that communication begins with the internal dialogue that shapes how people approach their craft, their relationships and their response to the environment around them.

I learned this early in my work with an athlete who became a repeat performer. She spoke often about why she was doing the work, not in long speeches or motivational lines, but in a simple story grounded in a few clear values she believed in. Those values shaped how she behaved each day. She arrived ready because preparation mattered to her. She trained with intent because craft mattered to her. She kept close to people who steadied her because connection mattered to her. When she spoke with her coach she spoke with ownership because responsibility mattered to her. When we reviewed performance she measured herself against her values and her story rather than emotion or expectation. Her story filtered the noise and held her attention on what she could influence, and it stayed steady right through from her hardest performances to her best performances.

This pattern has repeated across many sports, campaigns and environments. The data I collect from repeat performers compared to the rest shows a consistent thread: they carry a story that fits their values and the meaning they bring to their journey, and they speak from that story in ways that guide their behaviour. Their story gives shape to their days and coherence to their choices. It grounds their relationships and helps them navigate difficulty. They are not waiting for meaning to arrive. They are building it and living inside it.

Those who are new or underperforming also care deeply and work hard, yet often do so without a clear set of values or a meaningful story that holds the work together. When values are unclear, meaning becomes vague, and when meaning is vague, behaviour loses structure. People get pulled by changing circumstances, shifting expectations and the noise around them. They work with effort but without consistent, clear direction, which slows their progress and creates friction in the system. This is not a comment on motivation or desire. It is a matter of clarity. Values anchor meaning. Meaning anchors story. Story anchors behaviour.

The power of distributed leadership

We know that the story in high performance environments is more than narrative. It is how people make sense of the path they are on and the role they play in it, and this is where distributed leadership becomes essential. In Amplify I wrote about leadership from the front, which is not the authority of the leader but the agency of the performer. When people are clear on their values and the meaning they bring, they contribute to the collective story of the team rather than waiting for the team to give them one. This alignment accelerates the group because each person brings their own clarity into the shared environment. When people are unclear, they wait for meaning to come from the outside, and that waiting creates misalignment and slows the group when pressure rises.

Distributed leadership grows when individuals write the story they want to live, then bring that story into the environment to help shape the story of the team. It is a form of contribution. It lifts the standard of communication. It clarifies the system. It allows people to act with confidence inside their role and in service of the whole. A team of people who know their own story and the story of the team has more alignment and more collective intelligence than a team with one story and many passive recipients. The power of meaning becomes a competitive advantage when everyone is an author rather than an audience.

One experience stands out to me from a world championships preparation phase. The team had come through a long training block. Performances were mixed, and the meetings were becoming heavier as the event approached. You could sense the pressure beginning to close in. To reset the group, we asked each athlete to tell the story of their season so far, not as a performance review but as an expression of the values they were trying to live and the meaning they brought to their work. One of the younger athletes spoke first. He said his season was about learning how to prepare in the right way and becoming someone who took responsibility for his craft. His values were clear. Growth. Responsibility. Trust. His story immediately shifted the tone in the room. Others followed with similar clarity. They spoke about identity, family, commitment, team and progress. Meaning returned to the group, and with meaning came direction. The environment lifted. And the team leaders connected the individual stories and values to the ambitious story of the team was creating together; people saw themselves first, then saw a clear and inspiring connection to the team story.  That shift carried through to their highest calibre performance due to their collective ability to respond and adapt under pressure.  They had triggered a conviction and belief in a story they had not experienced before.

Belonging: built from a shared sense of meaning

Meaning is one of the strongest levers of behaviour. When people know the values they stand on, their story gains structure. When their story has structure, their behaviour aligns in ways that support agency, transformation and performance. When teams share a sense of meaning built from individual values and stories, belonging grows. Belonging here is not sentiment. It is foundational to team performance.  It keeps the group connected when tension increases and when pressure and uncertainty lift; and helps people stay inside their ‘circle of importance’ rather than drift into the noise.

I often ask leaders and high performers a simple question: What is the story you want to be able to tell about yourself and this team or organisation at the end of this campaign, cycle or career? Their answer reveals their values, priorities and the meaning they bring to the work. It opens the door for the team to see the personal stories that sit underneath performance and the personal meanings that drive behaviour. Most importantly, it gives leaders the opportunity to connect these stories, deepen the shared meaning and align the group around something that feels true to everyone. This is where distributed leadership grows. When people speak from their own story, they lead from the front. They help shape the environment rather than wait for the environment to shape them.

The advantage of meaning follows a clear line. Values shape meaning. Meaning shapes story. Story shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes performance. When each person knows what they value, understands the meaning behind their work and brings that meaning into the collective story of the team, the group strengthens. Performance lifts. Cohesion deepens. The system grows more resilient because leadership is no longer held by a few. It is carried by many. When people wait for meaning to come from outside, the system slows. Alignment weakens because the stories underneath the work are not visible or connected. Teams are transformed when personal meaning becomes shared meaning.

Meaning does not guarantee medals, yet it strengthens the behaviours that make medals possible. It brings clarity to decisions, alignment to relationships and consistency to daily work. It supports cleaner communication and steadier responses when pressure rises. When meaning is present, people move with intent, and when people move with intent, performance grows.

Medals matter, but meaning matters most.

Richard Young is an internationally renowned performance advisor. He has been involved with 11 Olympics as an athlete, coach, researcher, technologist, and leader working across more than 50 sports and seven countries focused on sustained high performance. He has won international gold medals and coached world champions. He founded international performance programmes including, the Technology & Innovation programmes for Great Britain and New Zealand, and a Performance Knowledge & Learning programme for the New Zealand Olympic, Winter Olympic and Paralympic teams. Across seven Olympic cycles he has researched the differences between medallists and non-medallists, their coaches, support staff, leaders and the system they are in to unlock the keys that separate them from the rest.

More from Richard Young

The Three Literacies of Repeat Medal-Winning Systems

By John Portch

The Leaders Performance Institute recently had the opportunity to listen as some of the finest head coaches in the world talked shop.

Curiously, the technical and tactical elements of their work did not make the agenda. Instead, they spoke of belonging, connection and the need to put the person above the performer.

Those insights led neatly to this Leaders Virtual Roundtable where heads of performance, department leads and sports scientists gathered to discuss the theme of holistic athlete development.

First, we asked the virtual room to reflect on how athlete development plans have evolved; what has grown in prominence and where there has been the most evolution. Then we asked the table what feedback they have received from athletes on what they want to see more of in their development plans.

Together, they unearthed six trends in athlete development, which we present as they were shared during the discussion.

1. Greater athlete co-ownership of development plans

Athlete individual development plans are increasingly co-crafted by athletes themselves, as several members told us:

“Athletes want to be involved in what the plans look like, how we set them, how they engage in getting better on a daily basis. They want to be more autonomous.”

“We give our athletes a lot more ownership around their development plans. They set their own goals, which they then discuss with the coaches.”

The trick, as some members have found, is positioning these development plans within the broader team environment. A sports scientist who works with college athletes in the US said:

“It’s about getting them to think outside of themselves and go, ‘Okay, what’s our common purpose as a team?’ If we can get them to connect to that purpose as quickly as possible, we’ll progress the team culture because it’s coming from the athletes themselves.”

2. The performance disciplines are converging in athlete development

This convergence is to be expected in a world of holistic development. As one member, a sports scientist at a Premier League club, said:

“We view it as transdisciplinary, where every discipline is affecting the other disciplines. We ask ourselves how are we coming up with these programmes together rather than in separate disciplines?”

They then explained how that might look in practice:

“We want the things that the technical and tactical coaches are asking on the field to align with the athlete’s physical development work… we can be in their individual technical or tactical meetings and understand what the coaches are looking for.”

Additionally, some teams rely upon their psychologists to facilitate their increasingly transdisciplinary approaches. This is an example from Major League baseball:

“At our team, the high performance staff have benefited from incorporating our performance psychology group. They have used DISC assessments with players and staff. They shared the results between all so that there can be a mutual understanding of how each person communicates, interacts with people, learns, takes and responds to feedback.”

3. There is an increasing emphasis on mental health and mental performance

The table was unanimous on the question of mental health and mental skills. Here are some representative observations:

“Whether it’s generational or societal, across our young athletes there’s definitely more emphasis on mental wellbeing and a recognition that the world that they’re preparing for is changing all the time.”

“Most questions posed by athletes seeking help are social, emotional or mental – not technical or tactical.”

“Mental health and the importance of athlete wellbeing & engagement have really been front and centre in our high-performance training environments.”

4. There is also a growing emphasis on ‘social wellbeing’

Social wellbeing derives from the strength of an athlete’s relationships with their coaches, peers and extended friend and family circles. The support such networks provide is critical, but far from a given, as a team manager from the sailing world explained:

“How can we get them away from their sport and give them space to develop that social part and also learn from each other’s experiences as well?”

One attendee, who works with adolescent athletes in the UK, said:

“We’re working with coaches, parents, athletes, and high-performance teams to understand what social wellbeing looks like. We also surveyed our athletes on the aspects of social wellbeing that are important to them. We asked: do they have a network of positive social support that can help them find balance? Do their national teammates have shared values that they all work together to attain? Can they rely on their teammates to support them during difficult times? Are they able to maintain healthy relationships while competing as a member of the team? And do they contribute to their community in meaningful ways?”

5. Development plans increasingly go beyond performance too

This is where the holistic nature of modern athlete development models goes beyond the technical, tactical and physical, because performance issues often have causes away from the sport. The table offered a selection of responses:

“Our development model combines not just character development, but emotional intelligence, academic support, and lifestyle and mentorship alongside the athlete’s sport.”

“We must develop young athletes as people first and give them a foundation of a well-rounded identity outside of who they are as an athlete. Everything of who they are and how they see themselves in many cases to that point in their life has been tied to their athletic performance.”

These elements are not always easy to measure:

“There is a drive for increased data, quantifiable outputs, and a linked performance gain. But we keep this ground and space for what we feel is a greater, longer-term benefit through creating that community, the social connection, and so on.”

“It really comes down to the expected value of helping athletes and coaches be the best they can be; creating the best environments, creating the best team dynamics, and developing the person as a whole.”

6. More flexible programming

A little flexibility goes a long way, but it takes effort and intent, as the sailing team manager said:

“We’re looking at how we can be more supportive by offering some flexibility around our training programme, so we can support our athletes with commitments that they’ve got beyond their sport. Academic studies is a big one.”

By John Portch

“In terms of feedback, we’re quite basic creatures,” said Simon Eastwood. “We will react and respond instinctively to what we perceive as threat or reward.”

As Eastwood, the Head of Leadership Skills at Management Futures, explained, the wrong word, tone, timing or even body language from a coach can trigger a negative reaction when giving an athlete feedback.

Every Leaders Performance Institute  member attending this virtual roundtable has been there; and Eastwood, as host of the session, began by posing this question:

When giving feedback, what do you notice that people say or do, or that perhaps you might have said or done, that can trigger a negative response?

Members at the table raised some familiar themes, including:

• Poorly-chosen words.
• A judgemental tone and lack of curiosity.
• A lack of context for the feedback; incorrect or vague information.
• Failure to separate the person and the performance.
• When it’s driven by emotion (or, conversely, cold and detached).
• Poor timing.

Switching tack, Eastwood posed a second question:

What types of feedback help people to improve both quickly and positively?

The table suggested feedback that is:

• Supportive, non-judgemental.
• Respectful (perhaps the giver seeks permission first).
• Frequent and fast.
• Rooted in positive intent.
• Specific and evidence-based.

To help the members at the table strike that balance, Eastwood introduced them to the SCARF model.

The SCARF model

This framework, devised by neuroscientist David Rock, explains five domains that influence human social behaviour and motivation. SCARF stands for:

1. Status – our relative importance compared to others.
2. Certainty – our ability to predict the future.
3. Autonomy – our sense of control over events.
4. Relatedness – our sense of safety and connection with others.
5. Fairness – our perception that exchanges are fair and equitable.

“It’s a great tool for stepping back and assessing your team and thinking about what really makes them tick,” said Eastwood. “Crucially, it’s not about avoiding that feedback.”

He suggested that leaders should reward these needs through feedback, so people feel valued and motivated rather than threatened and, to illustrate his point, presented a table that set out what ‘threat’ and ‘reward’ may look like in each domain:

Eastwood then pivoted to his next question:

When giving positive feedback, which elements do you find most need to be reinforced?

The table responded across each domain:

Status

• “I am working with a couple of inexperienced analysts, so I’m conscious to praise them in public; addressing their status to build their confidence.”
• “Some of my team want acknowledgement and respect for their work.”

Certainty

• “People are looking for certainty because if you lose games, your job is on the line.”

Autonomy

• “Athletes who desire a sense of autonomy can be triggered by picky feedback and micromanagement.”

Relatedness

• “Some of my team are very strong on relationships. They really like me to notice or acknowledge the way that they support others or work in a team.”

Fairness

• “I know that I can be very easily triggered by what I might see as a lack of fairness.”

The Feedforward model

Eastwood then moved the conversation on to what leaders can do to help individuals improve future performance rather than dwell on past mistakes.

To that end, he introduced the table to executive coach Marshall Goldsmith’s Feedforward model.

While Eastwood admitted the term “can feel a little bit contrived as a title”, he feels it enables productive feedback conversations by placing the emphasis on the future:

As Eastwood explained, conversations that feedforward:

1. Move the focus from blame to growth:

Eastwood: “It doesn’t mean that you don’t address something that needs to be changed or improved, but it just means that rather than focus on what’s not gone well, you focus on what could go well next time.”

On the SCARF model: this means reduced risk of triggering status or fairness threats by avoiding blame.

2. Create autonomy and choice

Eastwood: “Instead of spending time looking back, the idea here is: how could you hold your position next time and still maintain the athlete-coach relationship?”

On the SCARF model: this supports athlete autonomy by inviting them to co-design solutions.

3. Encourage psychological safety

Eastwood: “It feels less threatening because it offers a range of possibilities. So you’re not really addressing what they’re not doing well, it’s just what they could do in the future.”

On the SCARF model: this reduces certainty and status threats by framing feedback as future-focused and constructive.

4. Work well for high performers

Eastwood: “They’re possibly looking out for more and asking ‘how I can be even better?’”

On the SCARF model: this taps into status and relatedness as motivating forces.

5. Promote conversation

Eastwood: “It comes across more of a coaching opportunity, and it has to develop focus, which shows care rather than telling off.”

On the SCARF model: it places an emphasis on relatedness and fairness.

Eastwood then posed a final question to the table:

The next time you give feedback, what will you do better?

Attendees provided a range of responses:

“I think I will ask my team to think about the way they would like to receive feedback as individuals.”

“Improve the speed at which we provide feedback. Do it more regularly and get to it quicker.”

“I want to encourage to speak to our coaches to think about these two models because they struggle to give good feedback to our young athletes.”

“I want to hold group feedback sessions where you present something you want to get feedback on.”

“With the athlete’s input, we can create a more individualised starting point that makes sense to them.”

To wrap things up, Eastwood suggested that attendees start making changes within seven days. He said: “They’re easy to have as a theory and they stay a theory until you actually actively use them.”

An article brought to you in partnership with

By John Portch

The role of the sports psychologist is evolving, as Dr David Fletcher, a Professor of Human Performance and Health at Loughborough University, explained.

“Just this last year I’ve had many more enquiries than I have had in the last 18 years around how my experience and background can help across the institution,” he said.

Once upon a time, it was primarily athletes who requested Fletcher’s time. Today it is just as likely to be a senior coach or performance director.

“Another space is the development of a multidisciplinary team,” he continued. “There’s also a demand for support getting people from technical expertise into leadership-type roles. The other space is working at board level around systems, structures and processes.”

Fletcher co-presented the second part of a Leaders Virtual Roundtable Learning series entitled ‘How Do we Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’

For all that the role of psychology in performance is expanding, there are enduring challenges.

Wider perceptions for one. “Coaches haven’t necessarily been able to spend the time to truly understand what it is that sports psychology can do,” said Dr Danielle Adams Norenberg, the Head of Psychology at the UK Sports Institute, who joined Fletcher on hosting duties.

“We are still seeing some differences in who is hired, how they’re hired, what support they’re getting.”

Over the course of an hour, the duo set out those challenges before exploring the key role that performance psychologists can play in providing improved coach education and systemic-level support.

Common challenges in sports psychology

Coaches broadly accept the ‘80:20’ idea, which posits that 20 percent of performance is psychological (even if people quibble with the exact balance). Yet relatively few organisations provide the necessary service support.

To compound matters, the psychologists themselves are often at a disadvantage due to:

• A lack of understanding or buy-in, which leads to inconsistent support. The enduring lack of buy-in or investment leaves psychologists being spread too thinly. “Sometimes they’re given too much to do in the mental health space and sometimes actually there are things they could be doing and they’re not,” said Adams Norenberg.
• Inadequate training / too few work placements. “Until we can get to that stage where you’re really embedded as part of your training it’s always going to be challenging,” said Fletcher.
• Psychologists who rely too much on a ‘philosophy’. “Personally, I think it’s really overplayed,” said Fletcher of the widely perceived need for a ‘philosophy’ as a psychologist, “and the development of relationships, trust, safety and communication skills is underplayed.”
• The fact that high performance sport is inherently unhealthy. One-to-one work can be undermined if the environment is not set up to support that individual.

While these challenges persist, perceptions are shifting. The next part of the conversation focused on the ways a psychologist can support coach development and other system-level elements.

The performance psychologist’s role in coach development

“It’s hard to separate the technical and tactical from psychological, mental decisions coaches have to make,” said a performance manager from the New Zealand system.

Fletcher corroborated this observation. “Without doubt I’ve been doing much more work with coaches than one-to-one sessions with athletes,” he said. However, he finds coach education programmes to be “extremely hit and miss” both within national governing bodies and professional environments.

“A national governing body of sport might have a pretty solid coach education to go through your level one, level two, to get out in the field. But then when you’re working at Olympic level, what support is there?”

Fletcher and Adams Norenberg then outlined the two areas where psychologists can ensure more hits than misses:

1. The development of the coach’s leadership skillset

A psychologist, as Fletcher explained, can help a coach to develop their “time management skills, body language, and communication skills” in the pursuit of better performance.

By the same token, psychologists have been instrumental in facilitating a shift from deficit-based to strengths-based coaching. Adams Norenberg said: “Even if planted within a very generic training session, athletes have the self-awareness, knowledge and autonomy to make the most out of their training session by focusing on developing their strengths.”

2. The development of their psychology skills

Psychology is another string in a coach’s bow. If they understand the types of pressures that athletes experience they can “choose a particular training session to not necessarily develop technique or tactical skills, but psychology skills.” She cited the example of the VR headsets used in training by Team Europe ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup. Some players simulated the spectator abuse they would endure at Bethpage Black; others used it not for pressure training but relaxation, such as the Norwegian Viktor Hovland, who recreated the fjords of his homeland.

A performance psychologist can also help to ensure your actions match your words

Adams Norenberg refers to individual psychology work (in the absence of a wider remit) as little more than “icing the collapsing cake”.

It is unnecessarily limiting, as Fletcher illustrated using this common scenario. “If you’re hired as a sports psyche to do lots of athlete one-to-one work, the athlete leaves the room or steps off the track after a training session that’s been supported by a performance psychologist only for some organisational communication to come out that takes away all of that work.”

The solution lies in “working with our leaders to try and help them see that psychology can support them in the alignment of decisions to values and can help them communicate those decisions in ways that that land in a way with athletes that they see and value the support”.

Performance psychology v clinical psychology

There has been a trend towards pathologising psychological issues, which causes clinical psychologists to misunderstand the day to day work of performance counterparts.

With this issue in mind, Adams Norenberg recently hosted a forum for the clinical psychologists in the UKSI’s referral network outlining what performance psychologists do. “I have worked more with the network to try and build up a better relationship and understanding of what the sports psychologist’s roles and skillset is.”

What to read next

‘Sports Psychologists Cannot Just Sit and Wait for Work to Come in the Door’

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.

By John Portch

“From assessing the mental models inside the sport or the system, you can tell if it is a learning organisation or not.”

So says a coach developer who has worked across the North American, European and Australasian systems during their career.

“Even how they conduct performance reviews, induct, exit – all of that tells you about their speed of learning.”

When we asked the sports performance community to speak to us about the factors that affect the quality of leadership in their organisations, the most common answer was ‘learning & development’.

Its prevalence as a topic in our Trend Report has obvious roots: the speed of learning, as this coach developer put it, can enable you to outthink your otherwise well-matched peers.

Last week, Rachel Vickery, a high-performance specialist helping teams in the worlds of sport, business and the military perform under pressure, led a virtual roundtable entitled ‘How are we making learning effective?’

The importance of the environment came up time and again, as did the athlete-coach relationship and coach education practices. The group also spoke about AI’s role in learning.

Here, we outline five common challenges and run through a list of potential solutions.

1. When the front office and coach are on different wavelengths

“I asked coaches in my community of practice to bring their current work frustrations. I expected a percentage of challenges and opportunities related to athletes but, without exception, every single frustration was system-related or management-related.”

This head coach, with extensive experience of team sports in Australia, perfectly captures the common misalignment between coaches and senior management. Often when it comes to learning – be it coach development or athlete-facing – everyone has different expectations and, therefore, support can be found wanting.

“We see it all the time in complex sporting environments: the overabundance of surveillance and support in the athlete community,” said one member of their experience working in the US Olympic and Paralympic system. “But if we were to look at that as being applied to the coach, we would very rarely see a similar level of support structure around them.”

Potential solutions:

• Stop thinking about competencies and start thinking about the demands of the coaching environment – you can only aid a coach’s development if you’re addressing their real-life challenges.
• Front office workshops. For some teams, voluntary workshops that teach non-performance staff how to work with coaches have been oversubscribed, such is their popularity and the perceived need.
• IDPs for executives? This suggestion won’t be for all organisations but could work in smaller, startup-like environments.

2. Learning does not always stick nor is it always relevant

“Coaching moments are critical. If the speed of learning isn’t fast enough, the moment is gone.”

These are the words of a coach developer who has worked across the globe and witnessed different ideas of how people learn. Coaches tend to prefer organic learning over structured IDPs, which is often at odds with the “business minds” in the front office. “Communicating up is definitely a different language than communicating with our coaches,” said a coach developer working in US baseball. “The language of our coaches is non-linear. They want their learning to be organic and they want a relationship with the coach developer.”

And it is not just coach development. Some teams are overwhelmed by data that doesn’t help them to answer key questions. Without that ability to parse the data for insights, it is difficult to learn.

Potential solutions:

• There must be space for both formal and informal learning. “The informal makes it happen,” said the coach developer above. “The formal means you can track change and pay attention to history.”
• Clarify your problems, implement your solutions and learn from the outcomes. This coach developer also devised a ‘speed of learning’ model based on these principles.
• Use tech tools, such as GoPro or microphones. “The coach has been able to reflect and go, ‘I didn’t notice that cue from an athlete’,” said a high performance manager who has witnessed the use of GoPro in Australian rules football.

3. The enduring generational gap between athletes and their coaches

“I feel like in elite sport, we’re so far behind modern pedagogy in high school environments. Coaches are struggling with getting their ideas across.”

It’s a line that says it all when it comes to the learning of younger athletes. It has an attendant impact on coach development. “Coaches are just not developing the way that we think they should at the rate that they should,” said the aforementioned high performance manager.

Potential solutions:

• Meet athletes where they’re at. Literally. It could be the training pitch, the dining room, other communal areas.
• Provide online learning modules. These are easily accessible anywhere, anytime – perfect for the ‘YouTube generation’.
• Use TikTok, Instagram etc. Short and snappy wins the day for coaches willing to step away from the traditional.
• Use older athletes as role models. They’ve been there, done that, and younger athletes will listen.
• Try to gamify performance. Let athletes see their data, let them challenge themselves and, if appropriate, enable them to compete with their peers.
• Promote athlete agency. One coach developer based in the US endorsed an athlete-led TEDx-style series.
• Trial shorter meetings. Reduce an hour-long session to 30 minutes; and make sure those sessions are interactive.

4. The limitations of current AI models

“AI should be used to support the growth and creativity of staff as opposed to being used for shortcuts where people become lazy.”

This is an issue that likely warrants its own roundtable discussion.

Overreliance on AI, as this coach pointed out above, can stifle creativity. The table also highlighted the shortcomings of current large language models:

• The difficulty of transcribing and analysing multi-speaker environments where current AI tools struggle for accuracy.
• Intellectual property protection can be lacking, while it can be hard to choose the appropriate platform for a specific task.
• The inherent biases in AI-generated results.

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”.

5. Confusion in coach development practices

“A coach developer is a curriculum director, a teacher, a consultant. But I don’t think there’s been a standard that’s been applied that captures all of the different ways in which the coach developer works.”

The issue described by this high performance manager illustrates how complex the role the coach developer has become. “On the top of them are the organisational goals and desires, and on the bottom the coach’s individual disposition,” they added.

Potential solutions:

• Map the demands of the role prior to the development programme. “Sometimes the learning is separate to the demands of the environment,” said a coach developer currently based in the New Zealand system.
• Provide clear job descriptions for coach developers. Of the balanced needs of the organisation and the individual, the high performance manager above said: “It’s up to the coach developer to determine the learning strategies that we’re going to deploy to help this individual coach navigate the complexity of those two environments.”
• But also be aware of the developing coaching landscape. Few insights illustrate the complexity of coach development as well as this observation from the coach developer working in baseball. “The role diversifies as the relationships increase,” they said. “Coach developers want it to be organic, and they want the relationship.”

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