By Luke Whitworth

How do you measure the intangibles of your coach development programmes in order to demonstrate their impact and effectiveness?

The challenge facing members of the Leaders Performance Institute is one of consistently showing a tangible return on investment in this space.

This pinch point provided the basis of a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable that enabled members to share their experiences with coach development practices; what has worked for them, elements that are showing promise, and ideas that warrant further discussion.

Below, we detail their main considerations and their attempts to answer that question of impact and effectiveness.

Factors to consider

• Do you fully understand the outcome you’re trying to achieve? If there is clarity then coach development can be explored from a variety of different perspectives. That could be coach development at a systemic level where you are measuring return on investment within a programme or sport. It could also be learning interventions for the individual. Whatever the focus, it’s important to have clarity.
• What are you actually measuring and how do you define ‘success’? Is it the growth of the coach or performance outcomes? As noted at the table, if you are too focused on performance outputs and performance it can mask what has and has not happened.
• Is your coach development work role-relevant? This question is pitched at the systemic level, with one member explaining that they are engaged in research that seeks to answer the question: ‘what is coaching expertise?’ It is important to understand how coaches can be supported both as an individual and within the context of their environment.
• Is there alignment between team performance and individual development? The table recognised the complexity around the needs of athletes and coaches which, in turn, makes it challenging to track and monitor impact effectively.
• What steps have you taken to help your coaches build self-awareness? Elements of the Australian Olympic system’s approach to coach development are built on establishing new ways of understanding ‘self’ and self-awareness.
• What does it mean to be a high performance coach? In the Australian Olympic system, athletes, staff and high performance managers were brought together to answer this very question as part of a research project. The purpose was to better understand what coaches need to be successful and then provide a coach development framework to more accurately track progress.

How are you currently measuring impact?

While the table offered differing methods, there was a consensus that the challenge of measuring the impact of coach development practices persists.

Storytelling: a counterpoint to data

One environment shared they are using mixed methods and a range of tools, structures and forms to gather information. The attendee also emphasised the importance of storytelling and the creation of narratives, which have been a big piece of understanding the impact. One of the frameworks they are utilising is the values creation framework, which comes out of the social learning space. The aim is to connect this to a ‘values’ story, created by the coach, that will complement other quantitative and qualitative sources of information. Another sport shared that they are focusing on stories of impact. They are still finding it challenging to show this clearly through numbers, but stories of shifts in behaviour or the practice of asking for feedback from others on how they feel as part of the environment the coach has created, have proven useful.

The athlete (and other staff): the missing part of the puzzle

The table looked at coaching impact through the lens of athlete – they are, after all, the beneficiaries of this coaching work. One member commented that athletes can often be a missing part of this puzzle. Similarly, it is important to collate input from others in the environment around the coach’s development journey. Solicit feedback from other staff members on the developmental differences they are seeing in the coach.

A coach’s needs analysis

Other simple methods for measurement include capturing, assessing and measuring against a coach’s needs analysis. Needs analyses often present baseline data to track across time. As part of your needs analysis, there is also an opportunity to understand what makes a particular coach tick. One environment took this idea forward by creating an ‘impact report’, which allowed them to reflect on the needs and what was delivered through subsequent interventions; identifying which had the most impact on the individual. This also provided excellent insight into how to continue to personalise learning opportunities. Another environment shared how they had trialled the use of pre- and post-mortems on specific areas of a coach’s development.

Mic’d up

In a more technical intervention, it has become common practice for coaches to be mic’d up or videoed as part of their development. The next phase being considered is the mic’ing up of the athletes to better understand what they are doing with the learning and coaching they are receiving.

Measuring confidence levels

Another environment shared how they have started to measure a confidence level pre-programme and then used feedback from different people to see where the individual is at during and post-programme. Interestingly, the coaches in this environment tend to feel confident on a topic pre-programme, then, as they get into the programme, that confidence dips as they begin to critically self-reflect, but then it builds back up through developmental support.

Future thinking

Is there a trick we are missing when measuring coach development?

Traditionally, the focus is on the individual, but coaches in elite sport seldom work in isolation. It is important to continue to take into consideration the wants and needs of the environment as well as the individual coach.

Therefore, is the next phase of coach development a better understanding of how we coach and develop teams and then working to establish what team development looks like when everyone is working collectively and effectively?

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“Every single person has their breaking point,” says Dr David Fletcher, the Professor of Human Performance & Health and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Sport, Health and Well-Being, at Loughborough University.

“It’s the same for all of us in our day-to-day lives with stressors and strains that we experience,” he continues. “It might be that a major life event occurs and as a consequence that’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back and we struggle as a consequence. It may be day-to-day stressors in the environment that build up over time.

“Psychologists call this ‘allostatic load’ and it’s where it can lead to burnout or, in a sporting context, overtraining.”

There is more to it than just teaching psychological skills or qualities. “That’s the starting point.”

Fletcher is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute for a series that looks at better understanding psychological resilience, how it can be developed, as well as any other considerations for coaches in sport.

In the third part of our interview, Fletcher discusses how the environment in which someone operates influences their resilience, which has implications for coaching practice.

Why is it important to balance challenge and support in developing resilience?

DF: Challenge is all about providing developmental feedback. It’s feedback telling you how you are going to develop over the next 12 months and the challenge is for you to be able to step up your game in this respect. And, of course, there could be physical goals, certain technical goals, nutritional goals, lifestyle goals, psychological skills training goals. There’s a whole raft of different things that go into challenging people; and in sport and high performance we tend to be quite good at that. The area that sometimes gets neglected is the idea of supporting people in order to meet those challenges and those demands. ‘So if you’re going to progress by this much in the next week or the next month towards this goal, what do we need to put in place to support you in order to do this?’

What can coaches be doing better?

DF: This is all about encouraging people; providing them with confidence and motivation. I mentioned developmental feedback, but the feedback we need here is motivational feedback. Instead of looking forwards, we’re saying ‘12 months ago, you were here now you here look at how you’ve progressed and here are the reasons why you’ve progressed over the last twelve months you did this better. You did this better. You perform well in this situation, in this context’. So it’s about bolstering people, bolstering their self-esteem, their confidence and motivation. It’s also about providing them with support around what they’ve done better and how they’re doing things better on different fronts.

Is there a role for other staff too?

DF: Absolutely. This is where you need to try and draw in your sports science and medicine team so that the sport support they get is bespoke to them as individuals particularly at elite levels of competition. So what are the fine-grained areas that you can work on that are bespoke and specific to you? It’s an area that can get neglected, particularly at the higher levels. The optimal development of resilience is very much contingent upon balancing challenge and support, the fluctuations between the two, and trying to get that balance right; and some of the research that we’ve done suggests the best coaches intuitively and instinctively have a really good feel not only on how to balance the two for an individual but how to balance challenge and support for all of the individuals in the team. So you can imagine, if you’ve got a squad of 20-30 players they’re coming in and out of training, they’ve got all sorts of things going on in their lives. It’s not just the stressors and demands associated with the sport. It’s things outside of the sport. So no psychologists in the world could monitor all of those stresses and demands on all of those different athletes and then modify and tweak an intervention. The best coaches have got that real instinctive sense of when to back off somebody, dial down the challenge, dial up the support and put the arm around them. Or maybe an individual is getting a bit complacent and they need to dial up the challenge in different ways.

Are there any specific types of training for resilience that involve manipulating the environment?

DF: It’s really extending this idea around challenge and support and looking at specific contexts. What are the specific types of stresses and strains that people need to perform under? The principles are the same whatever the sport. We’re still looking at how can we place individuals under or challenge them to perform under more pressure. The key to that is what can we do to support them to do that? So you’re asking more of the athletes but you’re also saying ‘in order to meet this demand here’s my advice, here’s some of the things that you can do to step up and meet that demand’; and that’s crucial for coaches to do. You don’t just throw them into a pressurised situation that that, first of all, is too pressurised and too extreme. We’ve seen some cases of that in the past over the last couple of decades where people have wildly misjudged that and what people are capable of. I might add to that as well situations when the pressure is completely irrelevant or unrealistic, such as in a boot camp. The stresses and the pressures can be completely irrelevant to what your athletes will face in competition. The environment has got to be progressively challenging and it’s got to be realistic to meet these demands, but also, as I emphasised before, you’ve got to support players and athletes in order to achieve this. So what are you underpinning this with in terms of psychological skills training around imagery, around preparation around planning, around nutritional development? All the things that can help them meet these demands within the context that they’re working.

Read our interview in full:

Part I – Is an Athlete Resilient or Merely Coping? Why it Is Important to Understand the Role of Psychological Resilience in Sustained Success

Part II – Psychological Resilience: Everyone Has a Trainability Bandwidth

Part IV – Why the Way you Think Impacts your Resilience

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

Ben Baroody is a big believer in psychologist Michael Gervais’ idea that the apex of well-being and performance is human flourishing.

“It means a lot to us,” he tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

“The aim and approach of all of our programs, processes, and our building blocks, is based on the foundation of the human psyche, the psychology of healthy minds and lives. And we try to take that evidence-based research and build it into baseball frameworks and development for the rest of the organization.”

As the Texas Rangers’ Director of Leadership & Organizational Development, Player Enrichment Programs & Mental Health says, the goal is to unlock player potential versus extracting performance.

“That’s what we’re striving towards. It’s an aspiration that’s ever-evolving,” he says,

Elsewhere in this episode, we cover:

• How the Rangers have been the ‘victims of buzzwords on a wall’ [10:30];
• The balance of challenge and support in the Rangers environment [23:00];
• How Ben’s development as a leader helped him to identify imbalances in his own life [30:15];
• Character development practices at the Rangers [37:30].

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By Rachel Woodland

With fewer than nine years until Australia hosts the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Brisbane, the Australian sports system has serious concerns about the representation of women in coaching. 

Research conducted by organisations including the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS] revealed that fewer than 10 per cent of the top 36 funded high performance sports were led by women head coaches. 

To cast the figures in even sharper relief, this is despite female athlete representation at recent Summer and Winter Olympics reaching over 50 per cent. 

This underrepresentation led directly to the Women in High Performance Coaching [WiHPC] Project. It began in October 2021 with the aim of fixing ‘the leaky pipeline’ – the wide range of factors that have drained the Australian system of talented female coaches. 

Two years later, the project published its Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Action Plan and timed its release to coincide with the AIS’s World Class to World Best conference. The Action Plan, in its own words, ‘consolidates 24 months of engagement, highlighting the experiences of women coaches and the need for change. More importantly, it reveals and connects the “bright spots” of opportunity to build momentum and create solutions for the women coaches of Australia.’ 

Upon its launch, the Leaders Performance Institute sat down with one of its co-authors, Michelle De Highden, the AIS’s High Performance Coach Development Senior Lead. 

She revealed that it’s “a snapshot of where the Australian system is at in this moment in time” and is far from complete. What the action plan does, De Highden adds, “is illustrate some things that you can do as an individual or an organisation to create changes for the women in your organisation and environment. It promotes collective responsibility”. 

De Highden explains that the ‘leaky pipeline’ concept has resonated with most. It is hard for women to get into the high performance coaching system, and if they do get in, they’re faced with enormous challenges, from parental leave struggles to poor behaviour and mistreatment, to the relentless lifestyle associated with high performance coaching.  

This leads to an opportunity for organisations to look at their own landscape and ask ‘where are our hidden talent pools?’ The high performance system must create opportunities to bring back talent that may have previously left. 

Looking more closely at the pipeline 

De Highden and her colleagues needed to understand the current landscape if adaptations and interventions were to have an impact. Working pods, including one mapping the women’s coaching pipeline – even though it’s organic and ever-changing – spoke with 24 different sports in pursuit of a contextual understanding. As she says, “it was important to answer questions such as where is the inflection point that you can target? How is the shape of the pipeline different for different sports and where does it narrow? What about women-only and traditionally female sports? Or sports that still haven’t had a woman head coach? There is no model and so there is a need to deeply understand the narratives of the women in your environment; and get some data. Some sports report on who coaches at competitions; they collect across as many areas as possible. The deep understanding piece is to know why women coaches are not getting in or staying.” 

There is no magic bullet, but the Action Plan identifies ‘toolkits’, which are high-level supports to drive implementation and change. De Highden says that the archetype toolkit, as an example, has resonated deeply. It has, according to the Action Plan, “been developed to assist organisations [and] deepen their understanding of culture, attitudes, and behaviours that their coaching staff are facing. The toolkit provides instructions and support for facilitating a workshop including archetype characters.” 

De Highden adds that it can be used to highlight narratives and facilitate storytelling. “Characters, with positive and negative impacts on women, created within and developed by women,” she says. “Individuals can then unpack themes with the group”. This process creates conversation, builds understanding and awareness, and takes the individual person out. When tested, it has had a significant impact – all based on real-life stories. Match the story to character and then have a conversation. The AIS is keen to work with researchers to test the concept further. 

Additionally, the WiHPC has made ten recommendations that ‘demand every sport, organisation and individual assumes the responsibility to act’. The recommendations come with a scorecard that invites organisations to mark themselves on areas such as: ‘Develop and implement a Women’s Talent Network’, ‘Implement a 12-month campaign to elevate the visibility of women coaches’, and ‘engage with researchers to support evidence-based interventions’. De Highden explains that organisations will report on the ten recommendations in 12 months’ time. She says: “These sports all need funding and collective buy-in, but everyone is aware there’s already good things happening, so these provide an opportunity to amplify what’s working”. 

The Action Plan highlights four strategic focus areas: 

1. Behavioural, cultural, environmental development supported by workshops, programs and audits. 
2. Systems that support diversity and what systems can do in this space. 
3. Developmental areas and strategies to support women in the system. 
4. Elevating visibility and storytelling and positive impact that is happening at a system and individual level. 

For all the talk of 12 months, there are, as De Highden illustrates some quick wins – there has to be to build momentum. For example, visibility and storytelling or the strategic use of marketing teams. “Photos of women coaching are an easy start”, she says. “We can raise the profile of the women who are coaching, celebrate the successes of the organisations who are doing it well, or showcase women wearing kit in high performance support roles. The engagement piece is the vehicle to share stories and 14 case studies have already been shared, including on parental leave. Other groups have been started. Some of these aren’t that difficult and cost no money. Everybody can do this”. 

Parental support and recruitment 

Navigating the lifestyle around high performance coaching is difficult regardless of gender, but even harder for women. There are opportunities. A parental leave toolkit is already being road-tested with the AIS. De Highden explains that all the toolkits included in the Action Plan will be iterated over time.  

There are, she says, two sports already keen to explore opportunities with the AIS, to learn about the realities of what’s useful for their staff. “Every organisation should have a policy and a plan, regardless of gender,” she observes, “but people don’t know where to look for a policy. It’s not transparent, and they don’t want to ask, as that leads to judgements. These need to be actionable, now.” 

Recruitment is another important area. Doing this well is central to everything else, including parental leave and part-time talent pool too. It has to be fair, equitable, and transparent. Organisations need to be clear on what they are looking for and, crucially, to recruit based on capability not on reputational, social, or experiential capital. Recruitment structures need to be robust and transparent. There is a ‘capability framework’ toolkit. These illustrate the characteristics of the most capable pathways coaches. It provides evidence to show that the framework is impactful. It is an important piece of work. 

De Highden details a case study at Golf Australia, who recently launched their Parental Support and Travel Program. At Squash Australia, one individual took parental leave and then job shared with their substitute once they returned. Sailing Australia wanted to recruit a retiring athlete after Tokyo who only wanted to commit to 80 per cent of the hours, so they found a complementary person for the other 20. “Recruitment, flexible arrangements, parental support, maternity return. It can work”. 

Learning and development 

The AIS runs an Experiential Learning Program. In August, it enabled 11 aspiring female coaches to gain international competition experience by attending upcoming major events. “Barriers to participation were removed,” says De Highden. There was a one-day workshop first, which was used to establish a plan for whilst on tour and what these coaches needed to learn. They were also taught reflective practices and offered mentorship and support. They were encouraged to ask themselves: what mechanisms are there to help you on and off tour? Consider your reputational capital and your ability to hold your own space in a challenging environment. What’s your role on tour, to help with the clarity of what your job is? De Highden adds: “coaches will then regroup to reflect on experiences from on tour, including an evaluation piece and discussion of what’s next. The AIS has secured funding to do it again in 2024. Not just for women, but with funding targeted to elevate opportunities”. 

For those looking to embark on a similar journey De Highden suggests that you take the time to talk to women coaches first. She says: “Listen, showcase, select top themes, focus on learning more about those while using narratives and storytelling as a framework to connect with the women. Celebrate their successes. Bring people in and keep them involved. The AIS used a complex-adaptive systems lens. There is no simple solution. Multiple things can be done to nudge the system at the organisational, interpersonal, systems, cultural level and, if you can nudge at all levels, you can make progress. If everyone takes one step, then we’ve made progress.  

“There is so much to do the question is often where do I start. The issue is bigger than just women high performance coaches. We know that there’s some things that need to be done well: understanding the DEI landscape, policies in place”. Self-assessment guides, for example, can be a useful tool. They cannot provide all the answers, but can help give an indication of where an organisation can start. “Reporting is important, and the AIS will have a 12-18 month visibility piece ready by the end of 2024, which will help the Australian sport system share more success stories of what’s working well.” 

De Highden says the AIS is looking for funding to research a framework for developing women’s talent. Opportunities come up but these come and go depending on funding. “Our aim is to create an 8-12 year framework in the developmental journey of a coach with opportunities for them throughout and proper evaluation”. 

Additionally, the Action Plan highlights 12 factors across the drivers of poor participation, the need for urgent calls to action to avoid broader system risks, and opportunities to leverage the bright spots. The AIS doesn’t want to lose oversight of them. Mentorship, allyship, sponsorship, networking are all important elements. 

Visibility in action 

De Highden cites several examples of sports and systems coming together to address their concerns. She says: “If organisations know it’s happening they can have conversations around what worked and make sure support is there too. It validates the experience through minimal financial support. Those with well-structured support can share best practices with other sports, for example netball with AFLW. Nothing can be forced, but this is the visibility piece in action”. 

This piece is not just about women coaches, as De Highden explains. She says: “If we can apply these toolkits, practices, and thinking of inclusive practice and belonging, everyone is welcome; there will be intersectionality across the board. It will impact the whole organisation”. 

Researchers who come to the AIS have previously said they are not sure what’s needed, but now they are ready. They need to work out what the piece looks like and conduct robust evaluations around the impact of these toolkits. The sporting system must forge internal alignment between community coaching and DEI – you need to do this even if it is hard to report on.  

You can benchmark to other industries. Qantas and Australian Television and Radio School, for example, both have fewer than 10 per cent of women in high profile roles. Then meet to discuss and share ideas. 

It is about deepening your understanding in pursuit of a more inclusive and sustainable sporting system. 

By John Portch

“I remember when I was a rider,” says Emma Trott. “I had a female coach, I hated it, I never wanted another female coach ever again – but here I am now sat here coaching.”

Trott, who has since stepped down as Women’s Junior Endurance Coach at British Cycling, was speaking at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium.

She had essentially just crossed the road, as British Cycling’s HQ happens to be a stone’s throw from the Etihad.

With a short journey behind her, she took to the stage where she spoke alongside Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Canada women’s field hockey team, about coaching provisions for female athletes.

“We’ve spoken about the importance of having female coaches within the organisation,” adds Trott.

The challenge of coaching teenagers continues to evolve. “I think social media is not helping. It [offers] instant gratification of their view; put a picture up and you get a like. Talking to my group, there’s been a massive boom across women’s sport. We’ve got riders turning pro younger and younger.

“That actually creates problems within the rest of the group because they think it’s normal that you should be turning pro at 17 years old but, actually, you still need to develop; and everyone’s developing at different stages. How do you get that across? Then, for me, it’s the parent piece as well. What are they saying? What are they hearing you saying?

“Teams are now set up specifically for the women. They may be connected to the men’s team just as women’s football teams are, but they’re not there to necessarily do the same thing as the men’s team. It’s about how we can get the best out of these people.”

Here, we explore Trott’s approach to coaching young female athletes as she set it out for Leaders Performance Institute members in Manchester.

Ensure their heads are in the right place

Firstly, as Trott explains, British Cycling must reconcile individual and team goals for its riders. She says: “When we’re working as a team obviously we’ve got one common goal and we need to be at the coaching session for that common goal, although everyone is working on different things behind the scenes. That’s where things will deviate. but we also need to make sure their heads are in the right place.

“That’s one of the key things for me, the emotions of the group. I work with 16, 17, 18-year-olds, which can be quite challenging at times; making sure their heads are in the right place at the right times. For riders it’s really hard because who are they? Where are they going?”

It is important for Trott and her riders to understand their mutually agreed commitments. “It means you’re effectively two people at major competitions,” she continues. “Because you are the coach that’s there for those guys, but you’re thinking three competitions ahead for the others.”

‘The others’ to whom she refers are those not selected for certain competitions. “The people at home still have their training and you’re messaging them to show them that they are just as important – because they are – and it might be that their goal isn’t the Worlds. It might be the Euros; and the Euros just happen to be after the Worlds. I always talk about ‘this is the plan, this is what we’re doing, this is why you haven’t been selected for X but you will be selected for Y. I think females work really well with that process.”

Nevertheless, she allows them to grieve when necessary. “I allow them to be upset for two or three days because that’s important. It’s important to express our emotions and allow that to happen. Once we’re over that then we can start the conversation about performance again.”

Tune into the environment, try truly listening

Trott feels that the skill of listening is often misunderstood and undervalued. “People don’t listen all the time,” she says. “We hear what we want to hear and [the reason] we hear what we want to hear is because we’ve already made a decision of how we’re going to impact something rather than listening to what is actually being said.

“And actually taking it deeper as well. It’s that question, isn’t it. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ ‘OK, what does that really mean?’ You really find out more [that way] and that’s the key thing for me. Females and males say a lot but I think you’ve got to dig a bit deeper to understand what the message really is.”

Trott and her colleagues use British Cycling training camps to connect with their riders, but as they are all based in different parts of the UK, they will also hosts regular online check-ins. Each presents its challenges and opportunities. Sometimes in camp the solution is to take a step back.

“The other thing is that I use my group. If you create the environment where they trust you, you build the strength of the group. If there is an issue happening I won’t rush straight to the cause or the person immediately. I would actually use one of my more senior riders, an 18-year-old, to get a snippet of what the problem is. I can them go to that person and use this myself and hopefully help them. The key thing is to listen. I don’t think we listen particularly well.”

It’s OK to fail – so enable clear, honest feedback

Failure presents a learning opportunity and that is never truer than at underage level. Trott will place a lot of trust in her riders as they develop as people and athletes and she promotes the idea that “it’s OK to get things wrong”. She says: “Them knowing that, it comes back to that environment where, if we’ve created the right environment, then they’re not failing – it’s a learning opportunity that then takes them to the next level.”

This learning goes hand in hand with leadership because, as Trott says, “Once I’ve sent them off on the bus it’s over to them.” Inevitably, leadership comes more naturally to some than others but each rider must be given the tools to develop their ability to lead. “If they don’t get the opportunity to [learn] then they won’t perform. They’ll never lead because they’ll be scared to lead, but once they realise they can do that they learn, they grow, not just in sport but in management, business, wherever they end up.”

Know when to cut athletes some slack

The conversation turned towards female-specific issues, such as the menstrual cycle and their impact on training schedules and competition. “It’s something I’m aware of,” says Trott, who recognises the challenge and admits she would not want to have five riders on the same menstrual cycle. “I remember having a conversation with a gym coach around this. If we move certain sessions and decrease certain parts at certain points it just makes the rider feel better.” It has changed the philosophy around a training session. “In essence, in that session, what we’re trying to achieve isn’t 100 percent what we’re trying to achieve but, from a mental stance, it’s actually better for the rider at that point.”

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“The greatest gains in S&C can be made in how you make yourself an integral part of the team,” says Johnny Parkes.

“You have to be out there with the team on a daily basis, you have to have those soft skills – I actually call them essential skills – we have to recognise that we have to make ourselves completely valuable to the team.”

Johnny, who was recently appointed Associate Head Coach of the men’s tennis program at the University of South Carolina’s men’s tennis program, is the third and final guest on this Keiser miniseries, which seeks to understand the world of S&C through a leadership lens.

He is both an S&C and a tennis coach out on the court and, in his dual role, is in no doubt about what it takes to develop the essential skills of which he speaks.

He adds: “That might mean going out there for extended periods of time, watching practices, going above and beyond and staying later after an S&C session because a guy needs to work on their hip mobility a little bit more as opposed to just shutting the practice down.”

Also during this episode, we discuss:

• • The distinct challenges of coaching youth and adult tennis players [2:30];
  • The need to give the player a voice and shape your coaching cues to them as an individual [7:00];
  • Johnny’s comfort in discussing performance topics outside of his domain [14:00];
  • Why the gamification of elite athlete training resembles a PE class [23:00].

Previous episode:

Emily Hall – Queensland Rugby League

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By Luke Whitworth

Our latest Performance Support Series explores the past, present, and future of talent development. This series of learning is being delivered by Dr Edd Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the English Premier League.

For the final session of the series, Vahid outlined the aims for those in attendance, as he continued to explore the ‘5 I’s’ model shared in session one. They were as followed:

• Introducing the notion of intervening upstream, inclusive environments and investment return as critical features of successful talent development models.
• Reflect on the evolution of the 5 I’s’ model.

Intervening upstream

At the beginning of this section, Vahid encouraged those on the call to keep this reflection question in mind – it was something he had used with his team at the Premier League to provoke thought and future thinking: ‘What is one prediction for the future of your sport in 2030? What are you or could you do differently now in response to this prediction?’ It’s important to protect time to have these conversations.

Below are some trends and evolutions in the world of football that could have the ability to influence the future of talent development in the sport:

• Tactical and technical evolution.
• Positional changes.
• Positional versatility.
• Systems of play.
• Increased passing and reduced crossing.
• The impact of heading.
• The technological evolution (Artificial Intelligence, VAR).

In session one of this series, the notion of intervening upstream was the part of the model that those in attendance felt they didn’t give enough to in their programme planning. This is what author Dan Heath refers to as ‘upstream thinking’ in his 2020 book entitled Upstream: Solving Problems Before they Happen. His central argument is that we should be striving to intervene ‘upstream’ rather than ‘downstream’. There are, however, a number of factors that get in the way of intervening upstream:

Problem blindness. This is the belief that negative outcomes are natural or inevitable. They are out of our control. When we’re blind to a problem, we treat it like the weather.

A lack of ownership. As Heath wrote: ‘What’s odd about upstream work is that, despite the enormous stakes, it’s often optional’. With downstream activity, the rescues, responses and reactions of the work are demanded of us. If the work is not chosen by someone, the underlying problem won’t get solved.

Tunnelling. When people are juggling a lot of problems, they give up trying to solve them all. They adopt tunnel vision. There is often so much to deal with in the here and now, it is difficult to step out and protect the time to be proactive in our approach. How intentional are you in taking some time to reflect on what it could look like and, therefore, what can we do in the current moment?

What about future-proofing and insights in football? Vahid shared that the Premier League Games Programme team engaged in an exercise around the future game. Here are some of the things they highlighted:

• An NBA-style shot clock due to a demand for attacking football.
• A different format to the game and how the current 90 minutes is structured.
• Increased physical development, which may have implications for later developers.
• The introduction of virtual realities.
• Evolving pitch line markings.
• Evolving competitions.
• Increasing use of technology.
• The impact of the players’ brands.
• Kick-ins to replace throw-ins.

Inclusive environments

The fourth ‘I’ as part of the talent development model focuses on the importance of creating and sustaining inclusive environments – environments where everyone can show up, everyone can be their best.

Vahid referred to the relationship between inclusion and psychological safety as a critical component. In Amy Edmondson’s 2018 book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, she cited the idea that: ‘a workplace that is truly characterised by inclusion and belonging is a psychologically safe workplace’.

This also stands true in the work of Google in their ‘Project Aristotle’ research looking into the highest performing teams at Google – the number one factor that distinguished those most effective teams was psychological safety.

These findings are complemented by Timothy Clark in his 2020 book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. Clark’s model suggests that the first stage of psychological safety is ‘inclusion safety’ – the feeling of being part of something and feeling included is critical. If you don’t get to that point on this particular scale, it precedes learner, contributor and challenger safety. Clark wrote that ‘inclusion safety is created and sustained through renewed admittance to the group and repeated indications of acceptance’.

Finally, we also referenced the work of Owen Eastwood around the power of ‘Belonging’. Owen shared insights from the New Zealand All Blacks’ environment on how they have been able to create a sense of belonging and inclusivity. Here are some standout observations:

• Cultural awareness – this often comes from individuals talking to their culture, heritage and beliefs they have formed.
• Belonging cues and rituals – a big emphasis on induction and transition.
• Player voice sessions – creating a space for player voices to be heard.
• Senior players’ roles – acknowledgement around the role of the senior player and the crucial role as a cultural guardian to support those progressing through.
• Connection to the identity story of the team – being able to understand the past, but also the challenge in the present so you don’t just retain the status quo, you look to strengthen it.

Return on investment

The best talent development environments pay attention to investment return and ensuring there is a return on investment in their programme.

What represents a successful return on investment in your environment? Below are some responses from the group which consisted of a variety of different sports:

• Players making it as professionals.
• College scholarships.
• Progression as people.
• International recognition.
• Retention and transition.
• Medals at major competitions.
• Improved value of assets.
• Lag indicators.

When we talk to return on investment, success will look different in every environment. It emphasises the importance on clarity of objectives, success and alignment.

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”. This is a quote from Albert Einstein and a good reminder that there are so many intangible elements of talent development environments that we can’t capture, but are significant in a young person’s development and journey.

Leading and legacy indicators are terms many of us have heard when thinking about the impact of talent development. A leading indicator would be examples of talent progressing through your pathway (e.g. being offered a scholarship or professional contract) which also have alignment with your organisational objectives. Coupled to this is legacy indicators, evidence that your programme has been effective.

Reducing return on investment to a singular output can often be unhelpful. It is important to take perspective in this conversation and engaging the different stakeholders in what success looks like for them, whether a player, parent, Director, Coach, Academy Director, Fans, CEO or others. Success in a talent development environment is multi-faceted and those that are leading in the space of talent development are ensuring there is alignment and clarity between key stakeholders, even if the markers of what success can look like are slightly different.

Finally, when thinking about return on investment, we also need to be thinking about influencing the narrative. There are a lot of potentially negative statistics out there around attrition in talent development, but it is often the reality. If we only measure the success of our programmes on these kinds of statistics, most environments are going to be classed as unsuccessful. Having a great range of success factors and the narrative that follows those is absolutely critical.

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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.

By John Portch

Hector Morales says that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Latin players can arrive at their academy in the Dominican Republic with “artificial confidence”.

“That’s what I call it. This confidence is just based on the people that are around you where you are,” says the Pirates’ Director of International Development. It is not uncommon for recruits from places such as Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and the Dominican Republic to be the best player on their youth or school team. In those surroundings, they may be the best.

“But then that competence dissipates and goes away as soon as you step up to another cohort, where there’s a group of people who play better than you; and this is the first time you’ve seen this so it’s a culture shock sometimes.

“One player said to me once ‘my uncle lied to me – he said I was the best he’s seen’. I said: ‘He didn’t lie to you – you’re probably the best he’s seen, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t better arms out there’. I always tell the players, ‘if it’s too easy for you now, then your competition’s not here’. You shouldn’t be saying to yourself ‘I’m the best’ you should be saying ‘where’s my competition at because they’re not here? Where are those people who are going to give me the run for my money?’

“We’re never that good. There’s always somebody out there who can change our perspective”.

Morales spoke at length about bridging the cultural and development gap between Latin players and US players in part one of our interview. He also spoke of the practices that underpin the club’s approach at their Dominican Summer League academy in El Toro. In this second and final part, he delves further into some of the limiting factors that can affect Latin players and how he and his colleagues seek to address those.

“I still think that the biggest challenges we face are unrealistic expectations that things can go fast, that’s it’s like highlights,” says Morales, echoing the observations of some youth coaches across the globe.

“They were raised on highlights, they don’t see the games any more. If you asked, I’m pretty sure in soccer it’s the same, if you ask them, ‘do you see the full length of the game so you can understand the game?’ They’ll tell you ‘No, I saw the goal. I saw this pass or this tackle or I saw the red card’. They’re used to the 15-second or 20-second bite and they expect that their development will be the same.

“If you’re thinking that things should be fast – and elite level performance takes time – then there’s an immediate disconnect on satisfaction and effort and other things because it’s taking so long and you think you’re not progressing the way you should be”.

Morales adds that while smartphones have transformed all of our lives (“they dictate our moods and what we do”) the younger generation are “even more comfortable communicating this way, which has taken a toll on the social aspect of things”.

Compounding these factors, in Morales’ view, is the role of these young players’ agents. “They are overly protected,” he says. “They want their agents to fight their battles for them. There’s no longer this coach conversation. It is now ‘I will have my agent reach out to you. My agent will talk to you now’. ‘I’m talking about development, I want to talk to you’. ‘Talk to my agent’.

“It’s that [lack of] nurturing, not being able to solve problems and deal with an adult, to reach a potential opportunity to do something differently. Those are very big limitations we’ve got to train our young athletes for and prepare them for. ‘If you’re expecting X then let’s have a conversation because we need to reframe your expectations’. It’s interesting and a good challenge to have, I believe, the more the realistic the expectations, the better for the kids in the competitive environment”.

Morales explains that the players’ parents or guardians remain influential in their children’s lives, but it is the ‘buscones’ – a Dominican term for local agents – who pedal young players to visiting major league scouts and often have the most influence on the player.

“When you ask the players who’s the person they trust the most, they’ll tell you that person. They’ll give you the name of that person. That’s still the case,” he says. “This is one of the key elements I’m focused on. Who does this person trust? What’s their ‘why’? It is constantly evolving but we’ve got to stay on top of that so we can help them and they can feel connected”.

The Dominican academy’s roster of mentors perform a significant role in this regard. A player is assigned a mentor at the academy who checks in regularly to discuss the player’s development.

“I normally select former players who have been through the stages the players are going to go through in transition,” says Morales. “So they’ve been there, understand the challenges of going to the next level. They can sell it through emotional and personal connective stories of what it was like for them to go through those transitions. And there are a lot of times where guys didn’t make it all the way through, or their career ended early or their talent got to a certain level, but they always dominated the mental game whether in college or if they played for the Pirates. They did everything they needed to do and they controlled everything they needed to control and they were engaged in trying to get better but their talent met its ceiling.

“The next requirement for a mentor is that they want to be in baseball or find a way to get a career in baseball. So they are here for two reasons: to mentor players and also open their own understanding of what the potential opportunities are out there for them so they can continue to have a career in the game”.

As we wrap up the interview, the Leaders Performance Institute asks Morales for his hopes for the future in baseball development in this part of the Americas.

“I still have a ways to go to get all the players to understand all the components that influence performance,” he says. “At the elite level, when you have a bunch of people whose talents are the same, there at elements of the head and heart that get in the way, there are elements of nutrition and recovery. I’m still struggling to get them to understand this because I’m breaking the paradigm of ‘I’m only being looked at because of my tools so far’”.

He elaborates on that last point. “No scout in any sport goes to a player and says ‘talk to me about your sleep, talk to me about your recovery strategies. How do you prepare? What are your routines to ensure that you are eating well?’ They’re just looking at their capacity to dribble the ball, their capacity to hit, how hard the arm can throw and move. They’re looking for the fundamental raw tools.

“So now I’m trying to get the player to go from ‘I was valued, paid and given a bonus before this one thing and now you’re telling me this is not the only thing that matters, that everything else in here matters so I can be the best athlete I can be’. So it takes time. You finally get a nutritionist in there last year and now these players are understanding how to assess themselves and the importance of having one-to-one sessions with a nutritionist. We’re talking about the mental game all the time and we do mindfulness practices twice or three times a week during camp so they can practise and study, so they can find the opportunity to be in the moment.

“Some still do it with hesitation. They say ‘I don’t need this’ and then until I get video and show them what happened with this particular play ‘I guess I wasn’t paying attention’, ‘oh, so those mindfulness things we talked about – you might need it, you might need to practise how to focus and be in the now and in the moment’. So how about giving that a try now that you have proof they do need it because multiple times in the field it’s proven that they cannot focus very well.

“It’s a battle. And the next stage of this is for them, once we’ve nailed this down, is for them to understand the analytics and the things that we know are important so they can begin to understand how to address those challenges and how to make changes and how to adapt. And one that’s always in the forefront for me is to ensure that they don’t go back home without any one to change what they have going forward, because the natural tendency over time as they go home for the off-season and they see their old coaches who say ‘that’s not what we used to do here. This is the way you used to it. Keep doing it this way’. Because they trust this person they show up back at the academy worse than when they left because we have moved them forward in development and now they have gone back to something that they were doing before because they didn’t have the tools to say ‘no, my team’s metric of success is this way and they taught me to do this and I’m going to continue to do it this way’. They’re too young to tell an adult figure with authority that they can’t use their advice.

“I want 80% of my guys to go home and say ‘no’”.

It takes time, but Morales, the Pirates and their young recruits are on the right path.

By John Portch

How difficult is it to cut a player who hits their ceiling in an academy setting?

“A lot of times it’s easy because they see it,” says Hector Morales, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Director of International Development.

Dr Morales, from his base in Florida, oversees the Pirates’ Dominican Summer League academy in El Toro in the Dominican Republic. With locals, the academy houses up to a hundred players from nations including Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia.

In keeping with elite sport, a significant number, around 30 players in this case, are released from the academy each year, but most of these youngsters, as Morales explains, expect it.

“These young men can look to the left and to the right. They see the writing on the wall, they see the talent of other players, they see they’re not getting as many opportunities on the field. Many of them welcome that conversation,” he says. “They don’t want to be the ones making the decision, they don’t want to come to you and tell you ‘I recognise where my career is and I don’t want to play no more’. They see it as a welcome relief to say ‘I was terminated, I did the best I could, it was out of my hands. My career is over and I can transition’.

“But still, research tells you that a career ending, whether it’s a college career or a professional career, the athletes go through the natural grieving process emotionally as if they’ve lost their best friend”.

This is an area where Morales feels US baseball has often let down Latin players. “At times, we forget to provide resources and services on the other end of a player’s career, for people who make it transactional – ‘I’m the GM and I’m going to make this transactional. I’m sorry your career has come to an end’ – there has to be a support system that is part of that process to ensure that the player has a plan and is moving and we’re setting them up for success. That’s one of the things that we do with international players. We find a way to have a final transition approach where we give them a resume, we teach them, we connect them with courses and trade courses and opportunities for them to make a life for themselves and their families after baseball”.

Setting people up for life

Players are recruited from Central and South America at the age of 16 and, typically, those with a future in the American game will spend three years at the Dominican academy before crossing the sea to Florida, home of Pirates’ domestic operations.

The Dominican academy hosts two teams – its Black and Gold teams – each with a manager and full coaching staff. There is also its fully-staffed Performance Center that caters for all the players’ high performance needs. It is designed to mirror the Pirates’ provisions for American players in Florida.

“We have eight classrooms where they can take their classes,” says Morales, who explains that the local players complete their secondary education under the ‘Nivel Medio’ system laid out by the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic. Players from Central and South America are enrolled in systems recognised in their homelands. “Our Senior Coordinator of Education manages where the players are assigned and what route they’ll take. We celebrate them all in one graduation at the end of every year. That’s the last event before we go into our off-season”. Additionally, all players take classes in English as a second language.

This has been a long time in the making and predates Morales’ employment at the Pirates, whom he joined in 2014 as a Spanish-speaking assistant to the Mental Skills Coordinator. His role expanded as he sought to address the shortcomings of the club’s induction program for young Latin players coming to play in the United States. Too often, these players would find themselves at a disadvantage, culturally and socially, in comparison to their American peers.

In 2015, Morales became the Director of the Pirates’ ‘Cultural Initiative’, which morphed into the Department of Cultural Readiness and, eventually, adopted its current moniker, the Department of International Development.

“The idea was to research the entire year and learn some of the things that we needed to do differently to ensure our players can transition and compete at this level and get cut only because of their talent. That was my personal goal,” he says.

“My personal goal was that they sent you home only because your skills reached their ceiling. The second goal I had, because I’m naturally an agreeable person, and I’m an underdog mindset kind of guy, it was that if any scout or anybody told you that the highest you will go would be Rookie ball, then you will be in a Double-A team threatening to take somebody’s job”.

What you can control

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Morales how academy staff work with players to bridge their developmental gaps. “The baseball skills are easier to find because we have more baseball coaches than anything else,” he says. “Let’s say a player is recognised for what we value, whether it’s some analytical aspect; spin rate or exit velocity, the fear that that player is not there. It’s a way to centralise our approach to a player.

“We try to connect all the resources around that player. ‘So right now, the primary need for this player has to do with him having more power to exit’. So the analysis is the strength & conditioning coaches analysing the effectiveness of the kinetic chain. ‘Is he using the body properly? Is his movement maximised for him to be able to generate that power? Or do we need to go to the gym and develop muscle mass? Or do we need to add more motor unit recruitment so he can just develop some natural strength because he doesn’t have that?’ If that’s the case then whatever work we have to do in the gym has to be connected with that need that we know is going to be the primary thing for them to move”.

The bigger challenges concern cognitive capacity as well as social and emotional learning, all of which are regularly assessed. “We’re talking about baseball IQ and all that,” adds Morales of cognitive capacity. “Can this player gather and receive information and process it right away or do they need to explain it to him multiple times? How does he problem-solve? Does he have strategies for problem-solving?”

As for social and emotional learning, questions asked can include: “How does he relate to others? How does he associate with the coach or the team? How does he respond to feedback? Those things are critical for us to identify and then be able to see based on the knowledge that we have from them and their family background if there were things that were not developed, that they were not exposed to in development?”

Morales cites the concept of concentration as an example to illustrate this at play. “People go to school and people go to college and they tend to have the capacity to be a little bit more focused because they were trained to do so. They were trained to read, they were trained to focus on a book or gaps in information for a long period of time to be able to gather and evaluate research. People who did not do that or did not go to school, they were not forced to focus on things that didn’t matter to them. They only focused on the things they wanted to focus on. Their capacity to be in the moment was diminished because they were not exposed to opportunities to develop that skill. So what do we do to help them improve that capacity and do better in their ability to focus? That’s just another of the many areas we look into for developmental gaps”.

It goes beyond raw ability. “Some people may say they’re better than you, although they’re not better than you in skill but they were able to be a better teammate because they understood social and emotional learning, they understood how to get information quickly so they could process something. He might have a better toolset but he has two other things that allow him to fit into a culture better and that can cost you an opportunity to reach your maximum potential, if you look at the big picture”.

The academy has four ‘controllables’ that guide all athletic development: preparation, attitude, concentration and effort. “Preparation is king,” says Morales. “In whatever we do, our head and our mind is free and anxieties are diminished; and it’s something that’s completely under your control. You can prepare the night before and have your stuff ready or you can run around at 5:30 in the morning after you overslept to try and put things together and be stressed out for the rest of the day. To me, that’s controllable.

“The second one is attitude, meaning how do they approach things? The way that they decide to tackle a task and approach it is going to have a great impact on how people see them and how it’s reflected.

“The third one is concentration, which is ability to be in the moment, the ability in the now. Being able to control your mind in the natural battle of fighting forward or going backwards.

“And lastly, it’s effort, which for me is defined by them showing up and giving you what they have at that moment. People will say at times ‘100%’ but in reality we’ll only be 100% at day one of training. After that, you’d never have 100% – what you have is what you have, so can you give me what you’ve got?

“I say ‘control what you can control’. And these things, no one else will influence them because your preparation, attitude, concentration and effort belong to you and you only. And if you can control those you give yourself a better chance to not have distractions”.

Self-assessment

Players are evaluated on a weekly basis and part of that process involves a self-assessment survey, which is sent to each player. “They evaluate their own week – ‘the things that went well in my week, the things I need to do better next week’ – to give themselves a goal. It’s an opportunity for them to close the door on the last week. That’s pretty much what we’re trying to do. And then, because we have access to  mentors and the mental performance coordinators, they go around and have one on one conversations to get clarity; ‘I saw your report and I saw your review. You did this and you also talked about getting better at this. What are you going to do get better? What are some of the strategies? Or I’ve noticed that you’ve had success in this area but I don’t think that’s the way the orientation defines success. How can we find a way to match the way they are looking at success with the way that you look at success?’ So there’s a lot of things you learn by getting into the mind of them and seeing how they are seeing themselves, how they are evaluating themselves”.

Are there other common characteristics in those who make it to the United States? “In general, what we see is connected to the desire to be better,” says Morales. “That’s one of the things you can’t teach the guys. Their ‘why’ is pretty well connected to who they want to be for their families, to who they want to be for their siblings, who they want to be for their communities.

“The ones that have the most intrinsic approaches and motivations are the ones that tend to do best with all the different challenges associated with a minor league career. In terms of their tools and their potential, it’s putting all those tools together and then, leaning to the expectations, I would say that there are more that come in from more solid structure families and the ones that come with lineage of other baseball people in their families, tend to have a little bit of a leg-up compared to some of the other ones because they know the game better, they understand and they’ve been around the game for a while.

“So guys from the Dominican that have dedicated their life to this, you can see right away that they’re more of a gamer; they understand the game a little more. Mexican players, for example, they go through school. They’re almost ready to graduate high school so their cognitive capacity is a little more advanced than some of the others. Venezuela used to be like that but it’s regressing a little. So I think from different places you’ll see some of those differences that helps them set themselves apart just based on the foundations that they were given”.