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By John Portch

“I would probably be so bold as to suggest that any Olympic or professional coach should work with a para athlete or try to get close to a para programme,” said Neasa Russell, the Sports Director at Paralympics Ireland.

“It blows your head in terms of the constraints you would have normally – probably unconsciously – worked with because you’ve been doing the same pattern, training and programmes all the time.”

Russell, who will also serve as Team Ireland’s Chef de Mission at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, speaks from both sides having also worked with non-disabled athletes in her previous roles at Rowing Ireland, British Rowing and the English Institute of Sport (now UK Sports Institute).

She was speaking in late August at a Keiser Virtual Roundtable, which was attended by high performance coaches and practitioners from across the world. The aim of the session was to explore the space for innovation and adaptation in a para sport environment while providing some food for thought for those working in non-disabled sport.

“[When coaching para athletes] you have to really rethink and relearn a lot of what you would have presumed or assumed,” she told the host, Keiser’s Gabe Derman. “You need to work off the needs of the athlete and be really creative.”

Russell explained what it is like to work at Paralympics Ireland before taking her place in a series of breakout discussions with the coaches in attendance. The group emerged from those conversations with the consensus view that the growing ability to innovate and effectively adapt in para sport is a consequence of improved investment, which itself is a sign of greater social acceptance and sporting credibility for para sport in the wider world.

The sporting landscape, they agreed, is still not equitable, but well-intentioned organisations are beginning to meet the unique challenges presented by para athletes with creativity, innovation and adaptability.

Here are five factors lifted from the conversation to consider when meeting the challenge of providing individualised, holistic athlete programming in para sport.

1. Innovation craves the correct conditions

Ultimately, para sport is just another branch of your sport. As one coach noted, if para sports were the sole focus at sports organisations then there would be fewer of the issues of limited funding, research and resources that crop up continuously. In that regard, it resembles the general women’s sporting landscape, which has also been neglected from a coaching, medical and sports science perspective. Those of you with para teams: how accommodating is your organisation of para athletes? If you need to ramp things up it is crucial to bring your team’s decision-makers onboard. When the conditions are favourable for para sports programmes, one can look to make the strategic changes that promote innovation or adaptability. Locating a seat for para sport at the top table of high performance often requires a push and will not happen without advocates who are willing to back up their words and intentions.

2. Consider how your innovations and adaptations are captured

Russell argued that the athlete-coach dyad in para sport requires an even greater degree of trust than in non-disabled sport. This is due to the challenge presented by an athlete’s unique impairment. For example, a para athlete may not be able to see their coach or engage in video analysis. Or they may not have movement in their lower limbs and it is therefore incumbent on the coach to help tweak their movement patterns. Such situations require both curiosity and humility on the part of the coach as they seek to understand their athlete’s day-to-day preferences. Does the athlete, for instance, want you to offer your help or not? A coach can best develop an understanding of how an impairment impacts the training programme of an athlete by learning in real time. There is no textbook to follow. Any wisdom or experience gleaned from the successful implementation of innovations and adaptions tends to be shared anecdotally from coach to coach. This is, as one participant pointed out, a ‘legacy’ of the lack of investment and sports science research in para sport.

3. Where is the ‘richness and craft’ in your coaching?

There was a consensus at the roundtable that, in comparing non-disabled and para sport, the performance principles are approximately “80% the same”. However, in para sport, there is an even greater need for individualised and holistic support, as no two athletes will have the exact same impairment. It may come down to modalities or prosthetics but could just as easily come down to other physiological factors. For example, an athlete of short stature will generate lactate especially quickly, which has implications for their recovery protocols. Athletes with spinal cord injuries will have problems with their thermal regulation, especially in outdoor sports where they need to be mindful of managing their cooling strategies. The pinch points may also come in the athlete’s daily living. You may want your athlete to go directly home after training but if they are visually impaired – and therefore unable to drive themselves – they may require buses or even taxis to make their commute. Or if an athlete takes substantial time to prepare a meal because of their impairment then you may wish to ensure they have meals already prepared for post-training in order to help them optimise their recovery. You need to bake such factors into your training programmes. These are just some of the “nuances” a coach must navigate with what Russell termed “richness and craft”.

4. Do your athletes understand what it takes to compete, let alone win?

It is notoriously difficult to establish ‘what it takes to win’ in para sport given the wealth of classifications and range of impairments even in linear sports. However, before considering podium potential, it is important to ask: is your athlete at home on the international stage? It can be difficult for some nations to provide para athletes with the requisite level of competition ahead of a major games. How can you as a coach expose your athletes to international standards? That transition can be managed with better coach and performance support packages. A national Paralympic committee in attendance said they are hosting ‘pathway to Paris’ workshops for their athletes who have either limited international experience or a low training age. These sessions can be remedial at times, but are nevertheless invaluable to that nation’s para athletes.

5. Adopting an ecological approach to recruitment

Talent pools can be shallow in para sport and there are likely to be further disparities between disciplines. National governing bodies have a number of factors to consider when seeking to innovate around recruitment. They include where you recruit your athletes and the best approach to take. A national Paralympic committee at the roundtable said they had adopted a place-based approach in working with its national governing bodies. This means they are working to understand the issues, interconnections and relationships within those para sporting environments in order to coordinate action and investment. There are, as they explained, numerous moving parts and “well tests” (data acquisition tests) that enable athletes and coaches to see what works for them and what doesn’t.

Mark Gannon, the CEO of UK Coaching, feels that it is about time that coaches were perceived as people too.

UK Coaching is an association that connects and supports approximately 180,000 coaches from grassroots to elite level through its UK Coaching Club.

“Coaching is all about the right environment,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “So we’ve got psychologists, nutritionists, that sort of athlete support personnel that we wrap around the athlete and I think what we need to start thinking about now is that coaches are people too and how do we wrap the same sort of support, differently, around the coach?

“If you work for a financial organisation, you’ve got a head of culture or people or HR, and there’s certain things in place in your work environment. Well, that shouldn’t be any different in our sector, maybe in our sector there’s a bit of catching up to do.

“It’s twee, but people are your greatest asset and the more that we can look after people and the more we can make the environment the right environment, the more people are going to succeed.”

Ahead of UK Mental Health Awareness Week, which runs 15-19 May, Henry and John caught up with Mark, who discussed how teams and organisations can better help their coaches. He also touches upon:

• The notion that we all tread a fine line when it comes to our mental wellbeing [9:00];
• The perennial question of job security and its impact on coaches [10:30];
• UK Coaching’s work with partners to help identify changes of behaviour in coaches [18:00];
• How coaches can protect their own wellbeing [25:00].

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By Sarah Evans

Recommended Reading:

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Coaching Mastery & Creating Environments for Talent to Flourish

Framing the topic:

Our first Member Case Study of the year provided an opportunity for Michelle De Highden and Bill Davoren from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) to delve deeper into a case study of the coach development practices that are having the most impact across the Australian Institute system.

The session explored:

• The AIS’s key operating principles.
• Their ‘how’.
• The impact of AIS coach development practices so far.
• How they work to shine a lens on experiential, social learning.

This was followed by:

• Breakout discussions for attendees.
• A ‘what we have learned’ feedback opportunity after the breakouts.

Michelle and Bill began with a outline of the AIS’s key operating principles:

• Respect the challenge of coaching.
• Understand the context of the National Sporting Organisations (NSOs).
• Value engagement.
• Seek collaboration.
• Pursue alignment.
• Think bespoke and creative solutions.
• Underpin with evidence-based thinking.
• Commitment to social and experiential learning.
• Consider system outcomes.
• Design thinking methodology.

Next came an explanation of the AIS’s ‘how’:

They seek to enhance coach capability through the following approaches:

• Develop and lead.
• Integrate and organise.
• Consult and collaborate.
• Design, create and deliver.

How the AIS shines a lens on experiential, social learning:

• Design features in their programmes are consistent with research showing that most coaches tend to favour informal approaches to learning.
• Social structures that enable meaningful interactions to take place are a core feature.
• Better outcomes are typically achieved when programmes are continually shaped by the inputs of people for whom the solutions are being sought.

Four examples of coach development programmes implemented so far:

1. Head Coach Summit Programme:

• Targets the development and learning of our best coaches.
• Adopted a learner-centred approach.
• Considers different perspectives and ways of thinking.
• Examines real world experiences.
• Hosts fortnightly, virtual, small group facilitated discussions.
• Held a two-day summit in Alice Springs last September for the first cohort.

2. Generation 32 Coach Programme:

• A national programme for 31 coaches, 20 of whom are women.
• Includes the Queensland Australian Sport Programme (24 coaches, 13 women).
• Coaches complete two-year full-time/Part-time employment with the NSO and National Institute Network partner.
• Provides mentoring.
• Hosts AIS-led learning labs (16 across the two years).
• Works with the principle that success leaves clues.

3. High Performance Coach Mentorship Programme (Pilot)

• This programme is a direct response. The No 1 requested opportunity is mentoring from both more experienced and less experienced coaches.
• Two pilot programmes: AIS Programme (11 mentors, 13 mentees); Athletics Programme (10 mentors, 26 mentees).
• Enables pre-programming training, programme guides, financial support and ongoing support from programme managers.
• Places the emphasis on developing non-hierarchical support networks among coaches.
• Facilitates the skill development of mentor and mentee coaches.

4. National Coach Network

• Network of Australian High Performance coaches.
• Facilitate networking, learning and engagement with one another.
• Formal and informal learning opportunities.
• Newsletters and regular webinars – world-class coaches.
• Future: face-to-face learning events.
• Reach: 300+ network members.

These were the two discussion points attendees were encouraged to answer in their breakout conversations:

• What is currently occurring in your coach development space? Is there a fundamental philosophy/approach?
• What is the impact of this learning programme? And how do you know?

The following emerged as learnings:

• It’s a big job!
• Collaboration is key.
• Different lenses are vital.
• There’s no one way to do things.
• Relationship-building is important.
• NSO engagement is fundamental.
• Performance directors are absolutely crucial to coach development.
• The inability to resource coach development adequately can be an issue.
• There is a need for a future-focused approach to programming.
• A social and experiential learning approach is favoured by coaches and learners alike.
• Coaches are under increased scrutiny, which can take its toll.
• People can feel undervalued and confused without proper support.
• High performance, athlete voice and wellbeing are connected.
• Coach wellbeing should be a priority.
• A periodised approach to coach development is sensible.
• Prioritise impact over quantity.
• There is momentum to be harnessed in the high performance environment.

Questions and key takeaways from our members:

• How do we utilise athlete feedback in evidence of a coach’s growth and the development impact?
• It is important to have a shared understanding of key operating principles / guidelines for how coaches align.
• In Australia, there is an Aboriginal culture of story sharing and elders passing on information, yet in our world we let wisdom leave the building too easily.
• One attendee liked the behavioural traits that were listed for being part of coach development group. Helps people bring a similar mindset to the task.
• A pool of mentors from across the sport sector can really help to impact on coaches, coach developers, performance psych, mentors etc. it broadens the impact and support.
• Independent analysis of impact is essential. We can’t ‘mark our own homework’.
• Checking that the athlete and coach are on the same page.
• Exploring at the idea of experiential and social learning and how best to connect like-minded people.
• One attendee said: “in our breakout room we discussed the importance of mentoring – how we utilise that and measure impact. From Bill’s initial brief I personally really enjoyed the thought that had gone into engaging culture, and understanding the bespoke needs of teams and coaches”.
• One attendee liked the phrase ‘library book’ approach – making it more bespoke.
• There is value in having someone independent to come into to your programme and work with the coaches on specific areas such as communication.
• Look for more opportunities to bring coaches together – use various forms of bait.
• How can we leverage the idea of ‘custodians of knowledge’ to support our more experienced and skilled coaching staff to pass on knowledge to other coaches across our pathway?
• Can we identify coaches earlier who really want to go on the long journey?
• It is important to agree who owns coach development when the system is looking to lead, enabling people to be most effective on the front line of coaching in the sport.

By John Portch

Carl Gombrich argues that you are an expert because of your interdisciplinarity, not in spite of it.

It was with this idea in mind – plus what he perceives as the British school and university system’s inability to cater for more than narrow academic subjects – that he founded the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) alongside Chris Persson and Ed Fidoe in 2017.

Gombrich, who serves as the school’s Academic Lead and Head of Teaching and Learning, is a living embodiment of interdisciplinarity. He is a professor with degrees in mathematics, physics and philosophy. On top of that, he used to be a professional opera singer. Before co-founding the LIS, in 2010, he set up the UK’s first Bachelor of Arts and Science degree at University College London (UCL).

He broached the topic of interdisciplinary learning and knowledge at the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London but, before taking to the stage, he sat down with the Leaders Performance Institute to give us a flavour of what to expect.

“Interdisciplinary learning is learning in which you combine the skills, knowledge and methods from more than one discipline,” he says. He then cites the hypothetical example of a coder with an intimate understanding of graphics and art being good at data visualisation. “Those two things don’t generally go together but you can combine them comfortably these days and be a very go-to person. There are so many combinations. I had one student on a programme I set up studying genetics and law because she’s very interested in going into the legal aspect of genetic engineering.”

Essentially, interdisciplinarity combines knowledge in new and useful ways, which is a handy skill to have in sport, as Gombrich would point out onstage. Sport, he accepted, is highly specialised, but environments do change and people must draw on new knowledge to be able to adapt and grow. An interdisciplinary approach also leads to an increased menu of options and, therefore, more creative approaches to problem-solving.

However, while there are tangible benefits to interdisciplinary learning and knowledge, Gombrich feels that systemic problems in the British education system, to name but one example, present an obstacle to realising society’s collective potential. “Our school system and university system are not set up for this at all,” he continues. He believes they are beset by what he calls “legacy thinking”. “So my life for the last 12 years is opening the door for students who want interdisciplinary learning and knowledge; and the great joy has been seeing how successful they’ve been as a result.”

Addressing real world problems

Is interdisciplinarity as simple as trying to analyse and understand gaps in skillsets and complementing those with expertise from elsewhere or is it something more holistic?

“I think it’s been a spectrum. It’s not black and white. But what I’ve been amazed about in my career in the last ten years is how students find the gaps,” says Gombrich.

This is where he believes legacy thinking presents an obstacle. “There are so many new areas which are more complex and require more combinations than old academic subjects will really allow for,” he adds.

“I think the reason the thing I did at UCL was a success is because I had a boss and a boss’ boss who allowed me the space, within an established institution, to do that. [For] most institutions – not just universities, anywhere – you’ve got to look at the incentives of people. What are people incentivised to do? Academics in their academic subjects are incentivised to be brilliant at that one very narrow academic subject. Because of the way the degrees are structured, they’re incentivised to get students who are only really very good or interested in that subject.”

Schools, he argues, are no different given the distinctions they emphasise between science and humanities. “You need a sympathetic manager who’s honestly going to knock a few heads together sometimes and say, ‘we totally respect what you do in your area, but there’s more to life than just your area and can we help students learn enough of your area to do well, but also combine it with other things?’.”

He returns to the story of the law student who studied genetics. “The pushback might be straightaway from the lawyers like, ‘Oh, well that person’s only half a lawyer’ or ‘that person’s only half a genetics engineer’, but you say they’re more than double – the unique lawyer who knows about genetics.

“Actually a student of mine has a great way of saying this. He’s working in AI and law, another fantastic combination where there’s such a need for people that can speak to both audiences, and he says it’s pretty hard to be the top 1% of anything – it’s really, really hard. But it’s not that difficult to be the top 10% of two or three things, and if you see that as a multiplier you become the top .1%, or 1 in 1000, in that new unique area.

“There are these areas open to you if you just keep your eyes and ears open.”

Strikingly, the LIS teaches no subjects. This is because the school does not believe in traditional categories of education that it feels no longer reflect the world today. “We just teach through real world problems, so students will study something like sustainability in equality and we’ll teach them methods – so basically research methods. It could be quantitative methods around statistics, it could be graphical methods, it could be social science methods. How to design a survey, how to conduct an interview. And we don’t say, ‘oh this is economics’ or ‘this is sociology’ or ‘this is physics’ – we just teach them tools to go out and to tackle that problem. So this is the big step that we’ve made – it’s very radical. I think it’s very hard for people to shift their mindset.”

It sounds like they are teaching students an entirely new way to learn. “Absolutely, 100%, that a big meta of all this. One of the quotes I say from a student of mine is about how being on our programme she was almost forced, as she puts it in a beautiful way, to: ‘foster a burning curiosity about things’. And that’s kind of a teacher’s holy grail, because if you can take someone from thinking that learning is just kind of receiving knowledge passively, perhaps regurgitating it through an exam, and then have them thinking, ‘I’m just curious, I want to know, I want to learn!’ then they’re kind of made for life, really. They can, in this modern world retool, retrain, have three or four careers and that’s really nice to hear.”

How does the LIS track progress without exams? “One of the defining features of interdisciplinarity is trying to reflect the real world more. In the real world there are no exams. There’s things you do, there’s feedback and, if you’re a good learner and you’re lucky to get feedback, you should learn from that experience. That’s what learning is: trial, error and feedback, and iteration and improvement.”

The LIS prefers real life projects. “For example, in the first year, our students worked with 13 separate individual external organisations on a sustainability consultancy report. These were only first years and it was quite scary for them coming from school and all the traditions of school, but the [clients] were genuine external clients, people interested in doing a startup around waste management or in education, looking at schools, school architecture, all sorts of different things. And our students were asked to use the knowledge they got from our programme to write this report for them. So there is a real emphasis to try and make the assessments as real as possible.

“The other answer to that is a bit more theoretical, but I think it’s worth trying to answer it – how do you assess interdisciplinarity? How can you say you’ve done a good job combining genetics and law? That is much harder to do because you’re coming from a space where we know what law looks like, we know what genetics looks like [but] we don’t really know what someone who’s really good at that combination looks like. But that’s the sort of challenge we should like as educationalists and we are working on that. We’ve got various ways of looking at how students have synthesised knowledge together, how they’ve integrated it. We’ve looked at quite a few meta things like how they’ve framed the problem, how they’ve been critical of the various different perspectives. We talk a lot about taking perspectives on a problem, having evidence that you’ve taken more than one perspective. So there are quite a lot of these meta tools, but it’s interesting actually, in setting up a new uni, a lot of the kind of standard regulatory phraseology just doesn’t work because it says, ‘demonstrate that you’re better at this discipline in this way’, but we don’t want one discipline, we want them to take different perspectives and synthesise them in new ways.”

The balance between ‘synthesis’ and ‘analysis’ lies at the heart of the discussion between traditional methods of education and interdisciplinary learning. “In education, we’re very good at analysis because we know what it looks like to break something down into bitesize pieces and then be critical about it. Or if you get something right and we can give that a mark, we’ve got a checklist about that.

“We don’t really know what good synthesis looks like, because almost by definition synthesis gives you novelty, it gives you newness – someone’s done something cool and combined these two things that you’ve never seen before. How are you supposed to go to your mark sheet, to the regulator, or even to the student sometimes, and say ‘this is really good’?

“I said to my students at UCL that I’m going to reserve the top marks for those of you who surprise me in a good way. And what’s the students’ first question? ‘How can I surprise you, Carl?’ And it’s like ‘just stop and think about it for a moment.’ And that’s the twist you need. Of course certainly some students are scared of it, some even resent it because they think, ‘no, if I do everything correctly I should be able to get the top grade.’ And you want to say ‘no, you do everything correctly – that’s cool, you’re a B.’

“You’re never going to be outstanding, you’re never going to change people’s minds really, or create something, unless there’s a whole bit above doing everything correctly which we reserve for that synthesis, that novelty and that productive, creative approach”.

Specialist-generalists

How interdisciplinary learning and knowledge may best apply to sports is in the continuing debate around specialists and generalists in high performance.

Gombrich is a believer in the theory of interactional expertise, which was devised by a professor of social sciences called Harry Collins, who defined the concept as: ‘the ability to converse expertly about a practical skill or expertise, but without being able to practise it, learned through linguistic socialisation among the practitioners.’ The opposite is contributory expertise, which is possessed, quite simply, by experts in their field.

“There’s an entire huge class of people in the knowledge who use their linguistic interactional expertise in really valuable ways,” says Gombrich. “Now the challenge for this is people think this means that if you can bullshit your way you’re good, you’re doing a good job. And Collins said this isn’t about bullshit, it’s about leadership – can you understand someone’s point of view and their objectives without being them? Without being a marketeer or being an accountant, can you really understand what makes them tick, what they care about, what their main concepts are in their discipline? Can you advocate for something without being an expert in that area?”

Interactional experts, as he would tell the audience, have the ability to ask penetrating questions, play devil’s advocate, translate accurately from one expert to another and negotiate in unfamiliar circumstances. This means they are good at taking perspective, translating between sectors and brokering, showing empathy, being creative and demonstrating leadership.

But how should a team be constituted? “There are quite a lot of these meta questions,” says Gombrich. “Can you find the right narrow experts that are willing to open up and listen to other perspectives? Or, and there’s a risk here, do you say you’re not going to have experts like that because they just can’t integrate? So you’re going to have a whole bunch of people who are open-minded, but is there a kind of groupthink in open-mindedness? So there’s a kind of asymmetry with this, you see. The open-minded person has to, in a sense, include the close-minded person in their discussions; and interdisciplinarians are always trying to do that, kind of widening the ambit of inclusivity. A close-minded person just says, ‘oh, I just don’t consider you, you’re out of my spectrum’. But that, in a way, makes their life a bit easier. There’s just one track. But I think in an interdisciplinary team you can’t afford to do that. So you need to include difficult people who might challenge you, and some of the very, very difficult people might not even be willing to be in the conversation with you.

“We have two very high level guiding principles at LIS for our students and I guess they apply everywhere because we’re about tackling complex problems. One is that you need to pursue multiple perspectives and the other is you need to think in terms of networks and relationships. Now how this works for teams in sport I’m not quite sure, there must be a way, but often when solving a problem these days it’s best if you’re humble enough to know that you don’t know the answer but someone in your network does. And if you can pick up the phone to them and get 20 minutes with them they might give you that nugget which you didn’t get before.”

Gombrich concludes with a quote from former US President Harry Truman. “He said: ‘it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit’.

“Humility is a theme across all this. Humility of knowledge, humility of learning, humility of reaching out to people and admitting you don’t know.”

By John Portch

“The coach has to almost become a diplomat with various stakeholders,” says Ben Robertson, the National Wellbeing Manager at Tennis Australia.

“We’re Tennis Australia employees but some of these kids will return to a private coach. So there’s a lot of communication between our coaches and their private coaches.”

Robertson has joined his colleague Nicole Kriz, the National Lead of Tours, Camps, College and Wellbeing at Tennis Australia, to discuss the Wellbeing and Life Skills Programs that the organisation provides for its young players. They speak to the Leaders Performance Institute from a hotel in France where they are on tour with a group of 13 and 14-year-old players from Australia.

The duo spoke at great length about the benefits for its young players, who are provided with life skills and regulation and self-awareness tools that will serve them well in their lives beyond the tennis court.

But what about the coaches? Kriz says: “The question for us is: how do we assist the coaches to deliver the content as best and as broadly as we can?”

Educating the coaches

The coach buy-in has been essential for Tennis Australia, where coaches serve as another medium between the players, the parents and their private coaches at home. “We’re developing the whole person by giving them this range of activities but we need to be able to map that back and formalise it,” says Robertson. “Culturally, good coaches have always got this, we’re just trying to formalise the program in some respects.”

There are challenges, however. “If the kids are with you, and we say: ‘this is part of your role. You need to find time each day to have those ad hoc conversations that happen, but then you need to do some formal things and you need to put the assessment in’ – that’s a challenge. Not to upskill the staff but giving them a process that they have to follow through. I think that’s in all sports. Like in other sports, if I’m a backs coach I can say ‘I’m only responsible for the backs and Nic’s responsible for the forwards and you’re responsible for the mids’. But it’s not like that. Sport’s changed now. It’s all based on relationships and there’s more to coaching than going out and hitting a tennis ball.”

“I think it’s the understanding that coaching has moved from the on-court to off-court and then how do we create a program so that the quality of delivery is consistent,” adds Kriz.

“The quality of how you coach or Nic coaches is going to be completely different,” says Robertson. “That’s why we’ve written the program because you need to have some foundation elements that you need to tick off. You might have a good relationship with some of the kids and they’re onboard straight away because they love what you do, they love the relationships. Whereas if I come in and I haven’t got a great relationship they’ll ask ‘why are we doing this?’ The quality of the delivery is going to vary. We’re aware of that. It’s like school teaching. It’s going to vary from class to class. The actual foundation of what we need to get done and what we need to put in, that’s the program. And how it’s delivered is going to be different for every person.”

As with players and parents, there is also a need for staff to understand that a development tour for players of 13 or 14 years of age is exactly that. Kriz says: “It’s an education piece for the coaches too because we’ve got 12 coaches on this trip and we’re trying to educate them and say ‘this is not about performance, guys. You’re not judged as coaches depending on if the kids are winning or losing’. It is needed because a lot of coaches, when they get to this level, they think that they need to get a result and the reality is that it’s not always going to happen on this tour. You’re actually developing these kids for the next tour – this tour is for the results on the next tour. Otherwise the coaches are building up that anxiety within them and they’re putting that pressure inadvertently on the kids, not meaning to, but then it starts to get a little more demanding on the kids. If you throw your kid into the tournament at the start of the week without any tools to manage their new situation and just go ‘work it out, sink or swim’ you’re not going to have a good result.”

Both Kriz and Robertson speak about the challenges of adherence. “We’ve had athletes and coaches starting at seven o’clock in the morning and the last matches have been finishing at 10 o’clock at night and for a young kid that’s pretty rough,” says Kriz. “By the time it’s 10:30, they need to be in bed but they’ve been at the court all day. Yesterday was their first afternoon off and they’re like ‘can we do the spreadsheets tomorrow because we’re tired?’ So it’s that adherence in terms of what’s your priority here, what do you need to get done irrespective of your ‘I want or I feel or I do or not like it’? So it’s trying to educate them in that regard. Where is the best time? Where is the best place? And how do you prioritise that along with your on-court and off-court component?

“Tennis is one of the only sports where your match can finish past midnight. On his way to winning the US Open in September, Carlos Alcaraz finished his quarter-final match at 3am, with his fourth round match extending past 2am. While this is a long way down the track for our younger athletes, we must proactively teach them the skills to be able to cope with the inherent demands of professional tennis.”

There will also be times when coaches need a break. Robertson says: “My role is that I’ll go from tour to tour and the first thing I’ll do is see how the staff are and go, ‘right, have a night off, I’ll take the kids out for dinner because it’s good for me to connect with them anyway and see what they’re like’ and it gives the staff the night off just to check in with family properly, not just the five-minute phone call between getting on the bus and being at the court, having some rest, watching Netflix, whatever it might be that they need. There’s the formal program for the kids, but there’s also an acute awareness for the staff to help each other.”

By Luke Whitworth

The field of coach development has continued to grow in importance across high performance environments in recent years, perhaps enhanced further by the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, where support structures for coaches were just as important as those for athletes. For coach developers specifically, there remains a focus on how performance environments are evolving and what that means for coaching practice.

A recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable on ‘coaching the coaches’ brought together coaches, coach developers and other discipline leads who were keen to learn more about current focuses associated with coach developments. Together we sought to explore best practices and practical ideas around how to support coaches and, here, the Leaders Performance Institute identifies three practices to consider with your teams.

1. Learning networks

Coaching at the elite level in particular can be a lonely existence. To provide coaches with more support, organisations are beginning to ask coaches, as part of their development journeys, to review and design specific learning networks. This creates an awareness of who they speak to the most and who and where do they go to for new knowledge around a particular section of performance.

Coach developers are seeking to map what these networks look like and subsequently align them to personal development plans. As a coach developer, ask yourself: are there any gaps and how do we plug them? A nice term highlighted on the call was that we want to encourage a ‘seascape of learning’. As a coach you navigate your own journey, as opposed to just being told what you need to do. People are there to support you navigate the journey but not there to be directive. The role of the coach developer is to raise awareness of different things they want to look at themselves, or potential blind spots.

2. Creating transparency around development focuses

We often talk about the importance of multidisciplinary teams having clarity and understanding of the individual development plans of athletes – what about extending this further to creating transparency around the development plans or coaches and other high performance staff? For coaches in particular, it’s important to show vulnerability and invite feedback from athletes.

A couple of examples were shared on the call where coaches have put their individual development plans up on the wall next to the athletes, allowing for the athletes to also input on what the focuses of the coaches are. If we want to create a culture of genuine feedback on coaching create space for the athletes to understand what the focuses are, make it a two-way process so that the development plans aren’t sitting separately.

3. Coaching cells

The notion of coaching cells is not a new phenomenon for a number of organisations, but they can be an impactful and productive way of creating opportunities and space for coaches to converge in both a formal and informal way. Coaching cells are small groups of coaches who get together and take it in turns within the group to present either a coaching challenge, a topic of interest or opportunity they see.

The purpose of the cell is to create a cross-pollination of ideas and space to share ideas and solutions. Aside from the opportunity to have impactful and important discussions around coaching practice, coaching cells are a powerful intervention in developing relationships between coaches.

There are some organisations across high performance sport who have taken the notion of coaching cells a step further, placing more emphasis on the concept of interdisciplinarity in sharing best practice and insight across disciplines. Cells have been designed to include a coach, nutritionist, sports scientist, athletic performance specialist and psychologist – this intervention aids the knowledge development and appreciation of how different disciplines influence and can support one another.

By Luke Whitworth

Recommended reading

Coach Development: Special Report

10 Considerations For Your Coach Development Pathways

Framing the topic

The field of coach development continues to grow at a fast pace. We are in a space where the value of coach support is becoming more apparent and important across high performance environments. In this roundtable, we looked to explore and hear about the focuses of others around how they are focusing on developing their coaches.

Discussion points

1. How others are thinking about evolutions and trends in the field of coach development.
2. What have been some of those interventions and how have they been utilised in practice?

• Learning networks: creating an awareness of who they speak to the most, who and where they go to for new knowledge. Mapping this, and aligning it to their personal development plan – are there any gaps? This ties into the key area of focus within the coach development strategy of having self-directive learners driven by their individual development plan.
• Individual development plans: plans are becoming more individualised, driven by the coaches themselves. Some organisations using software such as Hive Learning to try and make them as live as possible. They can invite multiple people into their personal individual plan group and documents/videos to be uploaded, chat function available, which all leads to further actions and development.
• Application & sense-making: now things are all about application and sense-making, how can you learn from other sports, and work in small groups practically, rather than just listening to someone tell you what to do. We’ve seen a shift in topics, wellbeing and care of coaches is now much higher on the agenda than it ever was before.
• Seascape of learning: as a coach you navigate your own journey, as opposed to just being told what you need to do. People are there to support you navigating the journey but not there to be directive. The role of the coach developer is to raise awareness of different things they want to look at themselves, or potential blind spots.
• Impact: how do we truly know if we’re having an impact? Shifted reporting from quantitative to qualitative. Explore the narrative that comes out of those conversations – where does the coach feel that they’ve moved around their personal efficacy etc? The value of storytelling is important within this. Another powerful approach is asking the athletes themselves for feedback.
• How often do you review the development plans? What are we actually doing already, and what are we looking to develop on top of that?
• Online reflection: consider this framework which covers four areas: craft, self, people and culture. Underneath those areas the coach can work with a coach mentor and evaluate where they are currently at; they then choose two priorities for the next six months.
• Feedback: seek this from the athletes, but also parent feedback and communication for the younger athletes.
• Vulnerability: key from coaches to invite feedback from athletes. There have been examples where coaches have put their individual development plans up on the wall next to athletes to allow the athletes to also input to it. It takes a brave coach to do it, but if you want genuine feedback on your coaching (behaviours, impact and communication) create space for the athletes to understand what the focuses are – make it a two-way process so that the development plans aren’t sitting separately.
• Leveraging athlete management systems: typically these systems are utilised by sports science and other specific disciplines within your environment. Is there an opportunity for coaches to better utilise this to help inform how they design sessions, but also how they interact with the athlete?
• Becoming more interdisciplinary: many of us are striving to become more interdisciplinary, to blur the edges and share practice across disciplines. When thinking about coach development, this presents a huge opportunity in terms of how we nurture interdisciplinarity and skillsets to accompany that. It’s harder to impact this style when being reactive, but if we can be proactive in advance using other disciplines and departments to support that journey. It’s also important to state that many practitioners are referred to as ‘coaches’ so this doesn’t just relate to sport-specific coaches who are more accustomed to the technical and tactical elements of their sport.
• ‘Sticky interventions’: we often hear that coaches want to talk to other coaches about coaching, but they come back to the challenge of time. We’ve got to find sticky and intentional interventions such as coaching collaborations and ‘coaching cells as a direction of travel to encourage this.
• Coaching cells: this has proven to be a powerful intervention for the cross-pollination of ideas. Cells are small groups of coaches who get together and take it in turns within the group to present one or two coaching problems that are going on – it provides a space to spitball ideas and solutions. Cells are also a great way of developing relationships away from just being focused on challenging questions associated to coaching practice.
• Focus on intentional growth: when thinking about coach development, it can be easy to just ‘ do stuff’ to be seen to be active in developing our coaches. We want there to be intentional growth, less is more. Don’t go broad and shallow, go narrow and deep with some topics and focuses.
• Creating momentum: typically coaches will have check-ins around their individual development plans throughout the course of a year. How are others continuing to create momentum away from these reviews and check-ins? Time is prioritised each week aligned to elements of coaches individual development plans. One environment leverages an annual coach retreat, where coaches are taken off site to either be together or spend time with other coaches. The question really is ‘where are we segmenting the time to actually work on these things?’
• DORA: Do. Observe. Reflect. Adjust. Allow your coaches to explore using that framework – one of the environments on the call is using an internal website where all player development plans are housed. The coaches will review these, but it has extended to the coaches and individual staff to have the conversations around their own practice, and in turn how are those objectives align to the players plans.
• Evidencing growth: how do we find ways to evidence that coaches are getting better? It could be something as simple as getting feedback from the athletes.
• Coach motivation: this is a good question to start with – where are they trying to get to? Coaches often don’t know what they don’t know, which is why we have seen the power of interventions like mentoring and learning networks to provide learning experiences at different times during their journey.
• Coach wellbeing: we’ve seen developments in the athlete space when it comes to wellbeing but we are still yet to see it really move forward in coaching. There is so much pressure in coaching, so how are we creating those safe spaces? In terms of the coach development journey, where does the wellbeing support and education for coaches come?

By Sarah Evans

• Harness the athlete’s internal drive, create a realistic vision.

• Encourage your athlete to be their own best coach.

• Create a belief that no matter what happens your athlete will rise from setbacks.

Cultivate a clear vision

Cameron McCormick, who has coached an array of PGA and LPGA players, has been Spieth’s coach since the latter was a 12-year-old dreaming of winning golf’s most prestigious major, the Masters. He saw in Spieth “the drive and determination that fuels the necessary ability to do work,” as he told the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York, and worked to support Spieth’s goal of winning the Masters for almost a decade. Spieth possessed what McCormick called the “internal drive that sees a future reality,” making the link between Spieth’s drive and vision of the future. The youngster set his goal very high from a young age and, with the right support, was able to chase his Masters dream without being afraid to aim high. In 2015, aged 21, Spieth became the youngest player to win at Augusta since a 19-year-old Tiger Woods in 1997.

Self-belief and resilience

McCormick explained that one key way of being able to bounce back from a defeat or bad performance is “a self-belief that no matter what happens I will rise again”. He emphasised the critical importance of self-talk, and “signal-to-noise management”, whereby the noise that exists has a decided advantage, i.e. taking in the jeers from Augusta or playing forward negative situations in your mind versus the signal that you want to control. “Be a creator of the scene in your mind, not a viewer of what you are experiencing,” he said. McCormick is able to measure this with the athletes by reframing the scenario and creating perspective. It is a centring process, and needs to be repeated and cultivated consistently over time.

He then spoke about the round briefings he has with Spieth and how he uses these as an opportunity to “pump his tyres” and how Spieth is then able to build his self-belief. It is all about the principle of reinforcement, the more you think about and talk about something happening, you increase the probability of it taking place, which works, of course, both positively and negatively. Therefore, playing a highlight reel, remembering your strengths and building positive self-talk before competition is paramount.

The Three C’s – Collect, Correlate, Correct

McCormick‘s goal, although it seems counterintuitive, is to make himself redundant to the athlete. He fosters a sense of self sufficiency amongst the players, and sets out to educate them on how to be their own best coach. McCormick only wanted his players to come back to him when they really needed his help. He calls this process the three C’s: collect the clues, attribute a correlation or causation, then close the loop with a correction. This ability for the athletes to figure it out themselves and “dig it out of the dirt” is critical when their contact time is at a minimum.

Get buy-in from key influences

Athletes rely upon a good support system and McCormick understands how important it is to filter his core coaching messages through the key influences in an athlete’s life. Done well, those messages will resonate beyond the coaching session itself. McCormick called it “the rule of 168”. There are 168 hours in a week and he might only get one hour with an athlete. “Therefore that hour needs to be high octane and have longevity over a week or two-week period so when they come back, you’re not in the same place,” he said.

By Sarah Evans

Framing the topic

This was session one of our three-part Performance Support Series focusing on the overarching theme of talent development, with the title ‘Synchronising Player & Coach Development’. Across these sessions, which are being hosted by Edd Vahid, Assistant Academy Director at English Premier League club Southampton FC, the aim is to understand the challenges faced during transitions for talent, whether this be players or coaches, and explore a number of interventions to positively influence this in your environments.

Understanding the challenge

• When we say ‘challenge’ within this session, it means the transition of players through the pathway from academy to seniors.
• First and foremost its crucial to understand what these challenges are in relation to transition.
• The challenge of transition is at the heart of most sporting visions.
  • UK Sport – ‘Keep winning and winning well’ places a requirement on young athletes to have an impact on the senior stage.
  • Southampton – ‘Be the Number One Player Developer in Football’

 Aims of the session

1. Provoke thinking on player/athlete transitions
2. Create space(s) to reflect on existing approaches and challenges
3. Explore the utility of several sense-making models
4. Encourage a commitment to action

Discussion points

How effectively is your club / organisation facilitating the transition of an talented academy player to first-team player? Or in turn, how are you facilitating the transition of talent coaches within your environment?

Pre-Mortem: Your highest potential academy player / coach does not transition into the first team / elite environment. What would have contributed to this outcome?

• Opportunity: pathway, lack of bumps in the road, long-term injury.
• Competition: insufficient game time, too much expectation, mentality.
• Assessment: coaches decisions, selector bias, positional decisions.
• Differences between professional sport and Olympic sport, and individual vs team sports.
• Pressure to win games now, focuses on short term rather than a longer term developmental outlook.

Performance = Potential – Interference (Timothy Gallwey)

The reality of transitions is that they’re a zero sum game, meaning that if someone makes the step up into the senior team, someone else will move out of that space.

Challenges in creating effective transitions

• Recognising the landscape or ecosystem you operate in.
• The tension that exists between the first team environment, which naturally prioritises a shorter term focus, than a development environment that has a longer term outlook and possibly greater stability.
• Trust and Empathy: the heart of talent development work is trying to influence the trust that the senior staff have.
• Vision: the aligned vision between the first team and academy. Club’s vision led by board must have buy-in across the organisation.
• Individualised element: everyone’s pathway is so different, so it’s important to create a system that acknowledges that individuality.
• Ensuring there are aligned processes between the various stages of the pathway.

Sense Making Models : Pierre Bourdieu – Habitus, Field, Capital

• Habitus: ‘The Individual’, a product of their history, influenced by a multitude of factors. Their history will influence how they perceive, how they think and ultimately how they behave moving forwards. Are we preparing these individuals to be a ‘fish in water’ in the senior teams?
• Field: e.g. The training complex. A social arena where people compete for resources and demonstrate their power. The new ‘field’ establishes the ‘rules of the game’ and the individual must adapt if they want to succeed. This could be their attitude at training, their image, where they sit in the changing room etc. How well are we preparing them to make a good first impression?
• Capital: The currency that is going to influence success – physical qualities, cultural qualities, reputation you come with.

How well do we know our players’ Habitus? Their History?

How well do we understand the Field, and the Capital required to succeed?

Task: What are the key influences on the First Team ‘Field’? For example, the pressure to win on Saturday?

70% of behaviour is determined by our environment. Therefore if most behaviour is understandable then we need to understand where the behaviour comes from.

Understanding the landscape – O’Sullivan, Bespomoshchnov and Mallett (2021)

• Microsystem: the immediate environment – e.g. an individual playing in the academy.
• Mesosystem: the interconnection of settings – e.g. interconnection of academy and senior team. Things that can influence this are the managerial tenure, which in football on average is 18 months, financial incentives, and the average age of players in the senior team.
• Exosystem: the broader context – e.g. the Premier League, with many players being brought in from overseas, player contract length, and the transfer spend of the club.
• Macrosystem: cultural elements – e.g. the role of the media and social media.

In summary:

1. Successful transitions are critical to our talent development aspirations.
2. Understanding the transition challenge precedes intervention.
3. The transition challenge is influenced by factors that exist on multiple levels.

“There’s a tension there that exists between knowing what you’re going to cover and responding to the humans that are in front of you,” said Iain Brunnschweiler, the Head of Technical Development at English Premier League club Southampton FC.

“We’ve tried to evolve a curriculum, a player development framework, that manages that tension. We want to cover specific topics and we also want to coach the player that’s in front of us.”

Brunnschweiler was speaking onstage at Leaders Meet: Coach & Player Development on the 24 March at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, where he was joined by England Netball Head Coach Jess Thirlby to discuss the progress being made in coach and player development.

During the session, which was moderated by Dan Clements, the Performance Coach Manager at Wales Rugby Union, the duo discussed:

• Why curriculums need to be carefully implemented [3:00];
• The value in playbooks and the implications for creativity [12:00];
• The most meaningful learning experiences they provide [16:00];
• Finding work-life balance [24:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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