At a recent virtual roundtable, members of the Leaders Performance Institute discussed one of sport’s most pressing challenges.
So wrote Arie de Geus in the Harvard Business Review in 1988 while serving as the Head of Strategic Planning at Shell.
This idea was amplified by systems scientist Peter Senge in his seminal 1990 book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation.
They both emphasise the idea that learning is not a mere ‘nice to have’; it should be woven into your environment and enable your people to strive for continuous improvement.
They also discuss a problem that persists nearly four decades later: that learning in numerous organisations is inconsistent, unstructured, individualised and event-based.
This idea set the premise for a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable where members convened to chat through their challenges in this area and potential solutions.
“In some quarters, we get caught up on a single event; you go to a conference or someone comes into your environment and we see that as a learning moment,” said Luke Whitworth, the Sport Performance Team Lead at the Leaders Performance Institute. “Whereas it’s really what we’re going to talk about today, which is how we embed this in what we’re doing.”
Firstly, he shared a selection of eight primers for the session ahead:
The table then conferred on the areas where learning currently breaks down in their systems and the challenges that prevent the creation of effective and impactful learning cultures. They raised a selection of common themes:
Time pressure and competing priorities
This was the most common challenge at the table. The struggle was succinctly captured by three attendees who have all worked in Major League Baseball. “The breakdown is typically the perception that I don’t have time for this,” said one. “The to‑do lists take precedent over the to‑be list.”
“You’re just constantly on to the next day and there’s not a ton of time to pause and reflect,” added another.
“Coaches think learning is getting in the way of getting the job done,” observed the third.
A lack of (the practice of) reflection
This is intertwined with the lack of time.
“The reflection piece is where we see a breakdown a lot,” said the Director of Player Development at an MLB club. “They probably don’t allow themselves enough time to review and reflect,” added an L&D manager at a British sporting organisation.
There is no consensus over “when is the right time to do all of this teaching and learning and, therefore, we simply don’t do it,” said a coaching lead at a British university.
Basic performance pressure
“There is a need for performance in the now rather than the development piece over time,” said a coach working in English football. “The managers are under real pressure.”
That coach was not alone. “The environment praises immediate results,” said another coach from the world of MLB. “There’s this pressure to produce over learning.”
This has engendered fixed mindsets when it comes to learning. “This is how we’ve always done it,” said the coach in English football citing a typical excuse.
A lack of clarity
As the Director of Player Development in MLB explained, “our group really wants to learn but is trying to be a jack of all trades and master of none.”
“It probably confuses coaches,” said the manager working at a British sporting organisation. “What do they want to be learning?”
As a consequence, that learning often happens in silos.
A lack of role modelling from leaders
“If leadership is not only supporting but modelling this, others then feel like they can take the time,” said the NCAA performance specialist, who explained that learning may be on the agenda of the lower ranks but “it stagnates at those middle tier leadership positions.”
Another leader based at a British university asked both the table and himself: “Are we doing enough as a manager to drive that thinking and priority?”
Poor quality teaching or coaching
“A lot of coaches are either overdoing the teaching so there’s not any learning taking place or there are too many missed opportunities for the teaching and learning,” said the head of coaching at a British university. “It’s also changing the perception of the teacher; I’m doing it to you versus facilitating learning.”
Then there is the question of timing. “Do you jump in straight away? Do you wait till the end of the session and reflect? Do you wait till the next day and do some teaching and learning?”
Then Whitworth invited the table to share what they need to do to make learning a competitive advantage in their organisation. As before, there were some common themes:
Space for ‘failure’ and ‘messy’ learning
“Learning is messy,” said a coach working for the NBA. “Learning is not ‘you learn it, you go and execute it, and everything’s beautiful’. If we don’t allow the space for mistakes then learning won’t happen.”
And, as an individual working in MLB, said, “it’s going to be messy, it’s not going to be pretty and we have to be okay with that.”
There also needs to be a shift in tone and content from negative to positive, as another coach working with the NBA noted. “A coach will highlight, ‘okay, you did this wrong’, but there is not too much focus on what you can improve.”
Psychological safety is further built through clear scaffolding. “If I’m dedicating time, how does it apply? How can I put it into play? How does it connect to my role?” asked a performance specialist working at a US college.
Crucially, messy does not mean unplanned. “We need to be more intentional in planning it,” said a nutritionist based at a British university. He was supported by a colleague who added that we need to “put it front and centre in objectives and appraisal meetings.”
Leaders that role model learning behaviours
“You’ve got to create that psychological safety,” said the Director of Player Development in MLB. “It goes back to modelling.”
“Do we give it time?” said the nutritionist. “Do we prioritise it in conversations and in meetings and in one-to-ones? Do we celebrate it when it’s done well? Do we hold people accountable when it’s not done?”
Embedded learning
“What about consistency and integration?” asked a performance specialist from an NCAA college. “Is learning aligned with the daily fabric of the organisation? It cannot be those one-offs. We’ve all been to those workshops, and it gives you a little energy boost, but what’s the lasting impact? What’s the follow up? How do we actually put it into play?”
Self-directed learning
“How can people take accountability for themselves and identify where they need to go?” asked a coach working in the NBA. “How can you create those spaces for self-reflection or guided discovery for them to self-assess against the framework or anything else; to use a reflection-type tool to think about those things so that they can then identify and take ownership themselves?”
Facilitated learning
“Are we really coaching if we’re not teaching or are we just hosting sessions?” asked the coaching lead. “There is that skill of being the facilitator of learning rather than just being the teacher.”
Collective learning
As De Geus and Senge argue, organisations achieve sustained advantage when individuals learn faster together. A performance expert working at a US college echoed their thoughts, noting that “the competitive advantages are the creativity, the collaboration, innovation, and the consistency.”
This reflects Senge’s concept of collective intelligence, where the quality of thinking across the group exceeds that of any one individual. Collaboration enables better shared thinking, faster learning cycles and better decisions, which ultimately allows organisations to adapt more quickly than their competitors.
Balance the short, medium and long term
“What do you need to change now and where can you take a longer view?” It was an important question, that was posed by a coach working in the NBA. “I think it’s being comfortable with the different timelines and knowing what the objective is and then being able to work through that with your staff and in your one-to-ones.”
What to read next
You Don’t Arrive Strategic: How Leaders Grow Into their Role
AS Béziers Hérault Head Coach Rory Teague ponders the question of skill acquisition and delivers his six considerations.
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.”
What to read next
How Do you Develop the Most Expert Coaching Workforce in World Football?
As Jamie Taylor of Dublin City University and the CoEx|Lab explains, the university’s master’s and doctorate programmes are designed to help coaches and other high-performance practitioners embed research into their daily practice – a habit that is sometimes overlooked in sport.
Additionally, one of the key challenges in coaching is that there is a world of evidence that can help practice, but most do not know about it.
At Dublin City University we are trying to subvert that attitude through our online doctorate and MSc programmes, which are aimed specifically at coaches and practitioners in high performance sport.
We have a community of around 100 coaches and practitioners who appreciate the capacity for research to enhance both theirs and their organisation’s practice in ways that have long been transformational in, say, S&C or medical.
In many respects, coaching is a discipline apart, yet sports performance has long-been reliant on other domains to pick up and apply research. More research can and should be done.
Below, I explore – drawing on insights from students across the doctorate and MSc programmes – the common barriers in coaching, before making the case for evidence-informed research that can meaningfully support practice. The programmes are delivered by a team of practitioner-researchers, including Áine MacNamara, Dean Clark, Robin Taylor, Rosie Collins, Stephen Behan and myself.
The common barriers
As a coach, you should be weaving research into your practice – it should not be additional.
“Last Friday, we protected two hours for some internal professional development with a group of practitioners,” says Ian Costello, the General Manager of Munster Rugby. “There’s 20 reasons not to do it, but if it’s important, it’s protecting the time in your diary, no matter how busy you are.”
Ian believes the programme has opened up new career options, potentially even beyond professional rugby union. He has now got into the habit of writing in his diary in three colours: black for operational matters; green for strategic issues; and blue for learning and personal development.
“Someone gave me one of those multicoloured pens – I hate them because of my bad handwriting and these don’t help – but it’s brilliant for my diary,” he continues. “Learning and personal development can be anything from podcasts to light reading or heavy reading. It can be writing too – that was a good life skill and practical skill that a mentor shared with me.”
Additionally, coaches have not often been shown how to critically organise their thinking, even when they thought they were doing so.
Ian has been coaching for more than two decades, but still wouldn’t describe himself as the finished article.
“The first year broke me down in terms of questioning everything I know around critical thinking and reflective practice,” he says. “What the doctorate does is give you more structure to that process. It provides you with a more robust and applicable skillset to be accurate in research terms and then to think critically about the information you’re absorbing. As time goes on, you’re able to transfer that to your practice more readily and with a lot more clarity.”
He is not the only one to find the first year challenging. “It was quite confronting and shocking,” says Jamilon Mülders, the Performance Manager at the Royal Dutch Hockey Association. “You try to present where you’re coming from, what you have achieved, what you have done and why you have done things, and the staff at DCU will pose little questions like ‘where’s the evidence?’”
Jamilon has won Olympic and world championship medals as a coach, and yet, as he says, “I have to acknowledge that nine out of ten things we did worked for whatever reason at that stage, but there was no underlying theory, no evidence. There was nothing you could fall back on where you can explain it or also just make sure that you detect possible mistakes, issues, challenges, hurdles which might have happened or occurred in other areas.”
He sensed that something was absent. “I felt that something was missing in my personal education and growth,” he continues, further reflecting on that induction period at DCU.
Some coaches may never have set foot in an academic setting but, whether it’s our doctorate or MSc programme, we don’t need to simplify course material for coaches. We just need to make sure we are providing the right provocation.
“When we’re asked better questions it causes us to say ‘actually, I took that situation for granted, but I need to peel that back a little bit more’,” says Rachael Mulligan, the Athlete Support Manager at the Federation of Irish Sport. “It forces you to go ‘what is the best question to ask in order to get to a better outcome?’”
The most recent cohort of students on DCU’s professional doctorate and MSc programmes lines up for a group shot at DCU in Dublin.
The case for evidence-informed – not evidence-based – research
I hear all the time that ‘we need to quantify this’. It leads us to measure things that don’t really matter simply because we can count them.
There are different ways of seeing this and my view is that evidence should inform coaching, working alongside professional experience, theory, and context, rather than being treated as something on which coaching can be straightforwardly evidence-based.
“For anybody to be genuinely comfortable about their view of the world or their view on practice, it should be research-informed,” says Scott McNeill, the Head of Coach Development at the Premier League. “The risk and challenge of research is that sometimes things can go out of date very quickly. A body of research can be nearly out of date the day that it’s printed. So to keep that as a consistent and live way of engaging in practice would make sense to me, that suggestion that knowledge isn’t fixed, that these things keep evolving.”
“The first thing I said was my issue with research is I sometimes think researchers are almost in an ivory tower and very much removed from what goes on in the day-to-day field of performance sport,” says Rachael of the topic.
“That perception was completely quashed after a couple of weeks in the programme because there’s so much emphasis in terms of, yes, this is fantastic in the academia space, but how do we move this into real-life practice?”
“I used to always say I was evidence-based and a lot of coaches will pride themselves on that,” says Christoph Wyss, the Lead Physical Performance Coach at Red Bull. “But I think evidence-informed makes more sense because if a research paper comes out, being evidence-informed is taking that research, reading it, critiquing it, seeing what’s good and what’s not, and then applying that to your setting, because every setting is different.”
As he says, “with evidence-based you’re just transplanting it, doing exactly what they did, but then evidence-informed is more translating it.”
“There’s not necessarily one solution,” says Eilish Ward, the Head of Player Development at the Ladies Gaelic Football Association. “There’s no one way to learn anything or to gain experience or expertise.” The key for Eilish in her work is to ensure she and her colleagues are “making as informed decisions as possible when we’re designing learning activities” because “not everything from research may be transferable into a practical environment and, equally, every practical environment is going to be hugely different.”
“Being evidence-informed is probably more aligned with what we do on a day-to-day basis,” says Niall O’Regan, the Head of Education & Development at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). “It is something that has helped me to understand how to be authentic, how to be creative in adapting what the research is saying is to suit the needs and the context and the environment that you’re in.”
Plus, as Scott says, “people sniff you out pretty quickly whenever there’s a gap between what you’re saying and what might feel real to them. Our job as people that work in this space is to either translate the messaging in a more accessible way or to admit that there probably still is a gap.”
And therein lies the opportunity to ask better questions.
Research should never be far from practice
While the programmes can be intimidating for coaches, we’re here to help in any way we can because it is important that research is not too far from practice. When they are close, the research finds practical application.
“This was a part I enjoyed from day one because you could immediately see the practical implications and make an impact,” says Jamilon of his coaching in field hockey. “So if I were talking with S&Cs about load management around our training, my new way of approaching them and asking questions really helped me to have a clearer view on the team and the environment.”
In some cases, research can help to highlight the current inadequacies in a high performance programme.
Niall, for one, thinks differently these days about coach development structures at the FAI; and it feeds into his practice.
“There are some experienced coaches that have so much knowledge and so much expertise in their fields that they may not need to go systematically through a certain set of steps,” he says. “They may have the ability to effectively communicate, empower others or share knowledge in a way which doesn’t require them to go through a checklist. They can get to the end with the exact same learning and sometimes even more learning.”
Such an approach doesn’t necessarily sit right with the coach and it wouldn’t necessarily sit right with the coach developer. “There’s a grappling effect where those people probably feel like, ‘well, I’m being rigidly pushed into a checklist of things and being asked to do things that I naturally wouldn’t do myself’.”
It comes back to being research-informed. “The person in front of you is the actual start point, and then it’s up to us as the educators and developers to be able to link it into research. The practice comes first and then it’s a matter of layering in what research is out there that can inform the decisions that that person is making.”
If you would like to know more about the professional doctorate and MSc programmes at DCU please email Jamie Taylor at:
Team culture, coach development and cartoons loomed large as we wrapped up 2025.
Here at Leaders Towers we were delighted to enter 2026 with Lando Norris newly installed as the Formula 1 world champion.
Several of us hope it will be the first of several world titles for the Brit, but my colleagues and I were also struck by the manner in which his McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stella, spoke of Norris’ holistic development since finishing a distant second in 2024.
“He definitely learned a lot from last year’s mission, even though it didn’t go all the way to the last race,” said Stella in the aftermath. “There were some learning moments, like in Austria. That was tough.”
Stella referred to the moment when Norris collided with Max Verstappen as they vied for the lead at the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix. Norris would not finish the race; Verstappen claimed fifth position and a further ten points as he motored towards his fourth world championship. But Stella believed that something changed for Norris that day.
“I think Lando raised his self-image, along the lines of, ‘I can compete with Max’,” Stella added, warming to the topic.
“In my view, there was another important turning point this season: the way Lando responded to the difficulties at the start of the season. That was the beginning of a structured, holistic process that encompassed personal development, professional driving and racing craftsmanship. And I’m particularly pleased that Lando was able to capitalise on that because I haven’t seen anything like it in terms of the amount of work, the people involved and the speed of development.”
These utterances came just days after a Leaders Performance Institute Virtual Roundtable where members discussed holistic athlete development and alighted on some of the themes raised by Stella including athlete co-ownership, the convergence of performance disciplines, and the increasing emphasis placed on mental performance.
Members can read more here.
There was plenty more besides to engage our members’ during a busy December at the LPI.
Insight of the month:
“One of the things I see, certainly in the corporate world, is that people mistake ‘good’ for high performing. In my experience, genuine high-performing teamwork is much rarer than people would admit.
“We know what it feels like when a team is dysfunctional and something’s not working, but when a team is harmonious and there are fairly good relationships, people mistake that for being a high-performing team.”
The wise words of John Bull, the Head of High Performance at our friends Management Futures. Bull led a session looking at the elements that go into making a high performance team, from the building blocks needed to the human factors that can inhibit your progress.
Best advice:
“Listen to the system and the system will tell you what it needs. I think a large part of where culture can get derailed is where people don’t feel heard and valued.”
So said a performance support specialist from the Australian Olympic and Paralympic system at a virtual roundtable where members discussed how their team cultures are evolving.
They specifically referred to the potential resistance a leader may encounter from long-tenured staff or when dealing with rapid turnover. In any case, your people must feel you are listening to them.
Performer(s) of the month:
We’re within our rights to say Norris here, but December’s accolades go to Bluey Heeler and her friend Rusty.
The second half of that sentence may make little sense if you’re not familiar with the Australian children’s animated series Bluey, but one women’s international cricket team has inaugurated its ‘Rusty Award’ for the best teammate, a gong that is handed to a player at the end of every training camp or block.
“We used an episode to bring to life our ‘embrace change’ value,” said the team’s performance lead at the very same virtual roundtable.
Good to know:
Did you know there are four types of innovation?
That is according to renowned change management specialist Greg Satell and his model of innovation, which Professor Fabio Serpiello, the Director of Sport Strategy at Central Queensland University, shared during the second instalment of his three-part roundtable exploration of tech-supported innovation in sport:
Serpiello then shared his thoughts on each quadrant:
Basic research – a low understanding of both domain and problem: “We don’t really know what the problem is and we don’t really know in which field or area it happens.”
Disruptive innovation – a well-understood domain but poorly understood problem: “In this area you may need something like innovation labs or launch pads.”
Breakthrough innovation – a poorly understood domain but well-defined problem: “This is the reverse of disruptive innovation… the classic example of open innovation.”
Sustaining innovation – a well-understood domain and problem: “The most common form in sport [and often the subject of] continuous research, design thinking or road mapping.”
Members can read more here.
Startling fact of the month:
Serpiello was back at it in the third and final session of his series with further reflections on our 2025 Trend Report.
The report posed the question: do you have a process in place to make sure that the tech you implement is the right one?
Fewer than half of respondents said ‘yes’, with more than a third saying ‘no’. Curiously, nearly 20 percent said ‘I don’t know’.
“That’s a good chunk,” said Serpiello. “It is probably more interesting than the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ given that most of the people that responded are at the ‘head of’, ‘director of’ or ‘vice president of’ level.”
What followed was an exploration of what a thorough and considered process of procurement should include.
One you might have missed:
Jamie Taylor, an Assistant Professor in Elite Performance at Dublin City University [DCU], used a virtual roundtable to explain to members that coach development too often veers towards less direct practices.
“Similar to what we see in coaching, there has been a view that it’s inappropriate to offer more direct pedagogical approaches,” said Taylor. He believes this is a consequence of sport being influenced by executive coaching practices and adult learning theory. Yet coaching is not C-suite work.
Supported reflection and communities of practice can be useful, but there are limitations. “If the coach hasn’t got the knowledge to reflect, or the coach developer doesn’t have a strong pedagogical capacity, then it can end up being just a nice coffee and a nice chat.”
Read more about the challenge of raising coaches from merely ‘competent’ to genuinely ‘expert’ here.
Finally…
A photo record of the best bits of 2025 at the Leaders Performance Institute.
What’s coming up in January for members:
Check out your 2026 virtual learning calendar at:
In a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, DCU’s Jamie Taylor led a discussion on the elements that hold back coach development practices.
That is according to Jamie Taylor, who described the state of play.
He said: “It’s unclear how we help coaches to get better and it’s even less clear what methods of coach development are appropriate.”
Then, he added, “it’s very difficult to be able to evaluate and review coach learning.”
Taylor, an Assistant Professor in Elite Performance at Dublin City University [DCU], had set the stage for his virtual roundtable presentation, which explored all facets of the coach development challenge that faces organisations across the world of sport.
Competent or expert?
Taylor, using the graphic below, outlined the tasks (on the left-hand side) that a coach developer needs to be able to fulfil in their role and the questions that each task provokes (on the right): 
Too often, organisations do not adequately answer these questions.
The Premier League, for one, were struggling when they turned to Taylor and DCU three years ago.
“At the time, the Premier League thought they had a competent academy coaching workforce, but they weren’t happy with just ‘good enough’,” he said.
Together, they worked to identify the qualities of coaches deemed ‘expert’ as part of their Coaching Expertise Project. They co-developed a coach profiling tool to help academy coaches on that pathway from competence to expertise.
“The tool itself is around a half a day’s worth of different simulations that the coach can go through. It presents them with various difficult scenarios,” Taylor continued. “At the end, it generates a profile that says, ‘here’s where a coach might be strong, here’s where a coach might be weaker’.”
The project has yielded demonstrable outcomes. “Coach developers are reporting that it’s much easier to understand what a coach needs and be able to direct them and say, ‘here’s the time we’ve got and this is how we might use this time to influence and enhance your practice’.”
There are, however, still unknowns. “When evaluating and reviewing coach learning and development, we are still unsure what ‘better’ is.”
The project continues and coaches are tracked in their progress.
The ‘messy’ middle
Good coach development work combines both more direct and less direct approaches.
Taylor believes a thorough approach would look something like this:
In reality, however, coach development too often veers towards less direct approaches.
“Similar to what we see in coaching, there has been a view that it’s inappropriate to offer more direct pedagogical approaches,” Taylor continued. He believes this is a consequence of sport being influenced by executive coaching practices and adult learning theory. Yet coaching is not C-suite work.
Supported reflection and communities of practice can be useful, but there are limitations. “If the coach hasn’t got the knowledge to reflect, or the coach developer doesn’t have a strong pedagogical capacity, then it can end up being just a nice coffee and a nice chat.”
Between the more direct and less direct approaches illustrated above is what Taylor calls “the messy middle”.
“We haven’t often seen approaches like cognitive apprenticeship, where somebody’s needs are identified, understood, and they’re given tasks that are just beyond their current ability. We haven’t got into directed reading and listening, mostly because lots of the available resources aren’t necessarily coaching-focused. Nor have we paid lots of attention to the ability to generate feedback rather than offer more supported reflection.”
‘The things we might do to generate competence don’t always promote expertise’
As the Premier League and DCU observed, the things that coach developers can do to generate competence do not always lead to expertise.
The notion of ‘best practice’ is a prime example.
“When we say ‘best practice’, I think we’re essentially saying ‘if we do it like this most of the time, it will be better rather than worse’,” said Taylor. “This tends to be more observable. I can see somebody doing ‘this’ and what I’m going to do is encourage somebody to repeat this ‘best practice’. This can be done through auditing processes; it can be done through more directive approaches; and it is significantly easier to leverage and promote than expertise.
“Now, expertise could be associated with good practice, but ultimately that means understanding intentions and context, and it requires us to probe and promote adaptability for coaches; for them to be able to respond to changing contexts. And I see these two things in tension with each other. Lots of the things that we might do to generate competence often don’t promote expertise.”
Taylor then illustrated this point of difference:
The middle domain – skill acquisition – came to the fore in Taylor’s work last year when the Dublin Gaelic Athletic Association enlisted his support in a coach development capacity.
At the start of his secondment he leant towards expertise, but when three coaches announced their intention to move on at the end of the season he pivoted towards supporting them in skill acquisition for athletes, specifically the planning of sessions and whether performance metrics were being met.
All three elements are key to coach development work, both “systemically and individually”.
Taylor’s hope is that “over the long term, we’re going to start progressing towards a broader and wider reach for coach development practice.”
What to read next
How Do you Develop the Most Expert Coaching Workforce in World Football?
As Jamie Taylor tells us, the Premier League-sponsored Coaching Expertise Project is challenging assumptions and establishing new standards.
Main Image: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
Yes, a head coach could be an expert, but that team might also be blessed with a highly expert foundation phase coach or an expert professional development phase coach. Each faces different demands and their work as coaches is inevitably different, but each can be expert.
My colleagues and I have been influenced by the adaptive skill model of Paul Ward and his colleagues. We see coaching expertise as the ability for someone to form intentions in their coaching practice and then flexibly and adaptively work towards those intentions – or change those intentions based on the changing context.
This idea is at the heart of the Coaching Expertise Project, which is an ongoing collaboration between the Premier League and Dublin City University and Insight Foundation Ireland. The project was launched in 2023 as part of the Premier League’s efforts to cement its reputation as world-leading in coach development practice.
Most of our data was collected by Mike Ashford, a postdoctoral researcher at the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, while at the Premier League, Scott McNeill, the Head of Coach Development, and Danny Newcombe, the Senior Coach Development Manager, have driven the work from their side.
Scott and Danny’s roles have been to ensure the Coaching Expertise Project is anchored in the real demands of coaching practice and closely aligned to both academy and first team environments. They have worked with clubs to identify expert coaches across phases and to shape the project so that it reflects the realities of their day-to-day work. This is important for them because their ambition is to impact the full coaching pathway, supporting ongoing development not only in academies but also in first team settings. More broadly, their main intention is to contribute to the wider football system by enhancing the skill and expertise of both coaches and coach developers. The Premier League sees this as part of a bigger picture as they work alongside their professional game partners.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
At the outset, we identified six coaches per phase across the Premier League, each working at a different development phase in their club’s academy. These coaches were selected from amongst their peers – the only effective means by which we can say one coach is better than another – and invited to undertake an extensive research journey.
Through this process we seek to better identify and understand the coaching demands at different levels. If we can understand those demands then we can be better at identifying expert coaches and helping coaches to reach an expert level.
The coaches involved in the project love it too. They’re constantly trying to find opportunities to learn and develop and it has supported their efforts to step into deep, reflective practice.
And so in shifting that focus from mere competence to true expertise, the Coaching Expertise Project has challenged long-held assumptions and is establishing new industry standards.
The issue with traditional coach development plans
Too often in coach development practice there has been a tendency to focus on coaching behaviour. That’s antithetical to what expertise is because, by definition, expertise is about flexibility, decision-making, and changes to practice that are, frankly, not very observable.
The risk in focusing on behaviour and attempting to change coach behaviour is that we end up reproducing what’s already there.
If there is too much focus on behaviours there is also too much focus on the coach and not their environment. This creates coach development plans divorced from demands. It is important to ask: is a coach development plan based on the demands of practice or on a series of generic capacities that cannot be tracked?
Our project is focused on the interaction between the coach and their context because we cannot identify expertise unless we understand the interaction between a coach and the demands of their role. We’ve identified a series of coaching demands – six or seven per phase – then mapped out the cues and strategies that expert coaches use to navigate those demands. It’s not a list of qualities that says ‘every good coach does this’. The demands are consistent but the coaches are different, and they navigate those demands in reasonably unique ways.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
What ‘expert’ looks like
The Coaching Expertise Project has used this fresh understanding of the demands and coaching context to build a profiling tool that we want to embed in coach development at the Premier League.
It will inform a needs analysis for each coach because we can better understand good practice and the development status of the coach in question.
Capacities are still important. Entry level coaches will still need to show that they’re good enough to enter a role, but the Premier League’s ambitions extend beyond that starting point.
We’re going to be able to provide recommendations for coaches on the different demands of their roles and how they might work to develop themselves against these demands. Ultimately, we hope it’s going to become embedded into coach development practices across Premier League academies and in the daily life of an academy coach.
People have also asked me if we’ve simplified anything for coaches. The answer is no. You’d never say ‘how do you simplify this for a sports scientist or psychologist?’ because we have higher expectations of those professions. Coaches are some of the most expert practitioners in any field so it’s less important that it’s simplified and more that it’s valid and useful for coaches, that it can be integrated into their workflows.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
Evolution not revolution
This remains a fruitful area for research. There are fewer than ten studies that have used expertise as a lens to understand coaching practice – and two of those studies have been mine.
The Premier League remains committed to the ongoing development of coaches across both academy and first team settings. The central intention of the project is to contribute to the wider football system by enhancing the skill and expertise of coaches and coach developers alike. By doing so, we aim to strengthen the overall quality of coaching and create development environments where the very best practitioners can continue to grow and positively impact the game.
We hope that this will eventually have an impact in the wider sporting world, but we are promoting an evolution rather than revolution, and if we can recognise the very best coaches and we’re better able to develop coaches towards expertise, it’ll see those coaches rewarded for good practice and then ultimately every player, when they walk into a club, is on the receiving end of high quality coaching practice.
Dr Jamie Taylor
Jamie is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health and Human Performance at Dublin City University, with a focus on coaching, coach development and coaching research. As a researcher, he supports practitioners on DCU’s MSc and professional doctorate programmes and collaborates with high-performance sports organisations including the Premier League, GAA, IRFU, and Premiership Rugby. As a coach developer, he has worked across a range of high-performance environments. Alongside his academic and development work, Jamie coaches rugby union at Leicester Tigers.
If you would like to speak to Jamie Taylor, Scott McNeill or Danny Newcombe about their work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.
