On International Women’s Day, we reflect on the pivotal roles played by women across high performance sport.

By John Portch

From the front offices to the locker rooms via the psychologist’s couch, we bring you ten performance lessons from the Leaders Performance Institute vaults that continue to resonate today.

1. Athletes need to feel a sense of belonging

The WNBA is renowned for its advocacy of social justice issues and one of the its leading lights, the Seattle Storm, have been at the vanguard under CEO and President Alisha Valavanis. Backed by one of sports few all-female leadership groups in Force 10 Hoops LLC, the Storm has won three championships and made every effort to ensure the players find an inclusive, cohesive locker room where everyone is committed to representing the Storm’s vest.

“It starts with establishing personal relationships and building relationships on trust and connection so that players can share with us what their hopes are off the court,” said Valavanis, speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute in 2020. “There’s a real intentional effort to learn all about all of the individuals in our organisation and we certainly have conversations with players on how we can support them and make sure that everyone is clear what it means to be part of this organisation.”

2. Engage your athletes in their development

When athletes feel secure then you can empower them in both their personal development and the collective. “I’m a big believer in getting players to collaborate, present back, research, share with the group, present to the coaching group and vice versa,” said Jess Thirlby, the Head Coach of the England netball team on the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2020. “It’s a good way for me to check understanding from the group and it helps inform how to set direction and invest my energy when I hear the playing group back and they’ve demonstrated really sound understanding of themselves and the opposition and, not only that, but coming up with ways in which we’re going to pit strengths against their weaknesses.”

3. Make space in your schedule for independent development

Thirlby’s emphasis on empowerment is matched by Lucy Skilbeck, the Director of Actor Training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA]. “One of the things we’re looking at is how we can develop a more facilitative relationship with the student and how we make more space within the timetable for the student’s independent development,” she told a Leaders Performance Institute Webinar in 2021. “We’re also looking at how can we foster in them a greater sense of independence and understanding of themselves as artists and actors; as people who can make and create work as well as deliver other people’s work. Pedagogically, how do we work with them to facilitate the growth of their individuality rather than a monocultural process?”

4. Take a step back

Paula Dunn is the Head Coach of the Paralympic Programme at British Athletics. Ahead of the delayed Tokyo Games, where her team claimed 24 medals, she spoke of the perils of micromanaging. “I thought I had to be in charge, I had to be tough, I had to work the longest hours, I had to have all the answers,” she said. “It’s never good to have a decision made by one person, so I’ve tried to work with my team, understanding what their motivations are, and just being honest when I just don’t know something or if I’ve had issues.”

5. Is the athlete’s real competition the challenge of fulfilling their potential?

Anne Keothavong, the Captain of the Great Britain Fed Cup tennis team, is engaged in the development of the nation’s players and knows that no corners can be cut. As she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018, the challenges can differ from player to player. She said: “Every player represents a different case, depending on where they’re ranked and how old they are, how long they’ve been playing professionally, and what targets they need to hit. I’m not involved on a day to day basis but when I see them in a training or competition environment I’m looking out for whether they’re improving, consistently working on those goals, and the other things they want to focus on to help make them a better tennis player.”

6. Track athletic development through relevant tests

The best data can be linked to specific tests and Kate Weiss, the Director of Sports Science at the Seattle Mariners, walked viewers through a hypothetical process with a pitcher at our February Webinar. “When they come in, we’re going to test range of motion, we’re going to test movement capacity; how are they going to move in a general sense and a baseball-specific sense,” she says. “We’re going to look at the different components of strength, speed, power, we’re going to look at body composition. All these different things that we know contribute to and help support what they do on the field. Then what we’re going to do is look at the on-field data and link that back and go ‘OK, maybe there’s issues with their shoulder separation on the mound.’ We’re going to look through everything and go ‘OK, is it coming from a range of motion issue? Is it coming from just a movement capacity issue?’ Or if it’s not those things maybe it’s just a coaching issue that we have to work on and come up with specific drills.”

7. Data: spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back

“For data capture and analysis, we have a mantra at the EIS: ‘we should spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back’,” said Julia Wells, the Head of Performance Analysis at the English Institute of Sport. “That’s something that’s been rooted in us since the inception of our Performance Analysis team.” She and her team supported Great Britain’s athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Games and, as she told the Leaders Performance Institute in the aftermath, they prioritise harnessing the latest tech and relationships with the end users. “The software available now is immense,” she added. “There’s so much to choose from, which can be a challenge but we honed in on data visualisation and our ability to translate data into usable insights.”

8. Do not attempt to separate emotion from performance

Sports Psychologist Mia Stellberg feels attempting to shut down emotions is counterproductive for athletes. “The more they can understand emotions, they can explain and understand what they are feeling or how that feeling came to occur is the first step,” she told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2021. “We can never control anything that we are not aware of. So you need to be aware of your emotions, sometimes this is the most tricky part of my work, to talk about emotions to young guys at age 20 who just want to rule the world, play and win the title! Then the second step is understanding how that feeling occurs or what needs to happen before it pops up, so if we want to prevent negative feelings we have to understand what happens before it comes so that we can learn how to control, how to prevent.”

9. Embrace risk, expand comfort zones

Mental performance coach Véronique Richard, who has worked with Cirque du Soleil as well as a variety of sports organisations, attempts to cultivate ‘risk-friendly’ environments. “Risk needs to be part of your environment,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018. Richard strives to foster the conditions for enhanced skill development in the athletes and performance artists with whom she works. In short, she introduces an element of chaos. “By working through that mess, people actually increase their repertoires of thoughts and actions, which contributes to creativity,” she said. “First, I ask the athlete: ‘what are you avoiding not because you’re not skilled enough but because it makes you uncomfortable?’ There’s all sorts of things we don’t do because of discomfort; it can be technical, tactical psychological, emotional, personal, ego and then, as a leader, your role is to find the right stimuli to bring the person to explore discomfort and bring people to work in this zone of discomfort; and if you manage that successfully you actually expand their zone of comfort.”

10. Do your athletes know where to turn for help?

In 2019, the Australian Institute of Sport established its Career & Education Practitioner referral network, as Matti Clements, the acting CEO, explained in her former role as Deputy Director of Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement. “That is practitioners who can provide high level expertise on vocational pathways. It’s referral-in and we’ll cover the costs of all podium-plus-level athletes and coaches,” she told an audience at Leaders Meet: Wellbeing. The AIS also provides help for the athlete wellbeing & engagement managers with the provision of a personal development programme. “This is so that we can ensure a level of risk management and skillset across those people. What we’ve done is invite the whole system, including professional sports, into that education and we’re creating community practice hubs so that they can actually have some peer support; it’s led by us, but there’s peer support there.”

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Written summary here.

“A friend helped me to think about the difference between calling someone out and calling someone in,” says Dehra Harris, the Assistant Director of High Performance Operations at the Toronto Blue Jays.

“When you call someone out there are relationship stakes. I might fire you, I might do something at you; there’s going to be something happen versus if I’m calling you in, it can be very direct but I’ve removed the relationship stakes by saying at the beginning of the conversation: ‘I appreciate that you’re here, I see all the hard work.’”

Harris is moderating the latest Keiser Webinar and is joined by Duncan Simpson, the Director of Personal Development at IMG Academy, and Dusty Miller, the Head of People and Culture at British Fencing, as well as a host of Leaders Performance Institute members from across the globe.

The conversation covered a range of topics, including the importance of providing informal learning opportunities, meeting athletes where they are, and the value of applied learning.

Louis Cayer is one of the most experienced and decorated high performance coaches and coach educators in international men’s doubles tennis.

For the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast, Cayer joined Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch to discuss his work with the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

Also on the conversational agenda are:

• Why tennis coaching differs from most other sports [2:30];
• The evolution of the LTA’s coaching strategy [7:00];
• Why feedback has replaced the LTA’s culture of correction [15:00];
• Checking that processes and culture are still on track [25:10].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

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“A few years ago, there was a bigger emphasis on numbers and trying to hit specific targets and outcomes, whereas now, especially with those younger athletes, we spend more time talking about trying to show specific behaviours.”

Dan McPartlan, a Strength & Conditioning Coach with British Cycling, is reflecting on how his work with athletes continues to change in this latest episode of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Also on today’s show, we discuss:

• The human teaching tools of S&C [4:30];
• Reacting when an athlete has a bad day at the office [10:00];
• Building an athlete’s confidence in their own body [11:30];
• The elements of McPartlan’s work that continue to surprise him [16:10].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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

What is the best way to approach problem-solving in a team context heading into 2022?

By John Portch

Coaches and practitioners will have their own thoughts on the matter but an increasing number of teams are following the practices of the business world in empowering their athletes – their people – to find their own solutions.

With more people engaged in their own problem-solving, more options and, therefore, more creative solutions, are likely to emerge across a team.

In October, the Leaders Performance Institute hosted a Virtual Roundtable for members titled ‘Approaching Complex Problem-Solving’, which underlined the trend for allowing practitioners to develop as individuals by affording them the opportunity to problem-solve, reflect and refine their practice.

At one point, a participant highlighted their use of David J Snowden’s Cynefin Framework. The framework, which is based on concepts of knowledge management and organisational strategy, enables people to place situations into one of five domains: ‘complex’, ‘complicated’, ‘chaotic’, ‘obvious’ and ‘disorder’. Where your problem fits depends on assessing its cause-and-effect relationships.

Perhaps the most common situation in both the business world and sport is ‘complicated’, where a problem may have several suitable solutions, though the relationship between cause and effect is evident only to a limited number of individuals.

The Cynefin Framework recommends that complicated situations be assessed, then analysed with the help of experts before deciding on the best response using good practice. One caveat is that leaders can be over-reliant on experts in complicated situations when others may be able to provide creative solutions. This thinking is also central to beliefs in the value of cognitive diversity.

Moreover, people like to solve their own problems, as Kim Wylie, the Global Director of People Development at the online luxury fashion platform Farfetch, told an audience at Leaders Meet: Total High Performance in 2020.

“When people solve problems themselves, they get this nice little bump of dopamine, which is a positive legal high and people feel really good about themselves and it brings really positive energy to the group and to the individual,” she says. “The point here that’s really useful to make is that by solving other people’s problems for them, we’re robbing them of this opportunity to feel good.

“Even if, as a leader, you do know the answers to things as a manager or a coach, getting people to solve their own problems is a really good thing to do. Obviously not all of the time, you need to work out the right situation, but not being the problem-solver for everything; get people to solve their own problems – it will do them the world of good and bring some positive experience to what’s going on.”

This approach to problem-solving underpinned Jayne Ludlow’s work with the Wales women’s national team, whom she coached between 2014 and 2021. Both staff and players, she believes, have the capacity to find their own solutions.

“There’s lots of collaboration between staff and players or between the players themselves,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in April. “There was a focus within our national team camps to make sure the players could check their understanding with each other and our thought processes.”

Often, this was easier for the younger players coming into the national setup. “I’m not sure if this is because we were working with them as youngsters and we had a specific style and way of working,” said Ludlow, who also served as Wales’ under-17s and under-19s Manager. “If I think about the group of 17, 18 year olds I had with the seniors, in the last few camps, they’re growth mindset players. They want to step on the pitch and learn. It is OK if they make a mistake, they’ll adapt and they’ll learn from it.”

Why was it different for some of the older players? “That’s to do with the environments they’ve been in. How over many years and generations we weren’t coached that way. I hardly had any feedback and they were similar, whether they were in pro or semi-pro clubs. Then suddenly you were bringing them into our environment and every day they’d have a development area.

“You’d notice in presentations. The majority of our younger ones are very different in their approach. They look at training and games as a learning opportunity, whereas the older ones were still defensive in learning moments.”

How can you lower those defences? “My general approach to feedback is: goal, then highlight what you’ve done well, then highlight what the next step is to develop it. There’s the positive aspect but then there’s a development moment. With some players, I’d take a slightly different approach. It’s a bit of sandwich approach at times so there’s more positives than development; but then you’ve always got to be careful, do they actually take the development information from you?”

Ludlow observed that older players needed more support in her social constructivist approach to problem-solving. Often, it is a question of providing the right environment for athletes to feel safe to explore a problem in a safe environment with the attendant opportunities for collaboration and developing a shared language.

Matthew Mott, the Head Coach of the Australia women’s national cricket team came to a similar realisation after taking control in 2017, particularly during the post-match debriefs.

“I do think that’s probably the thing I’ve learnt the most with this team,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in January. He found an environment that diverged in significant ways from those found at the male teams where he had previously played and coached.

“I’ve come from a male environment where you tend to be able to just debrief the games straight after. They get quite emotional about the games and call it out for what it was.” He took this approach to the women’s team and, like coaches who work with both female and male teams, realised things needed to change. “Certainly, throughout our journey, we went into team meetings where it was basically only the coaching staff talking and I quickly realise that it wasn’t a safe space and players needed smaller groups.

“So we got into smaller groups and we gave them tasks to feed back into the main group to create that safe space. But it’s interesting that we’ve gone through that and we have that complete trust in each other that you can now say things without fear of upsetting people and looking at it objectively and dissecting the game for its good parts and the areas to improve.”

He admitted that it is still a work in progress but the difference these days is profound. “Now that we’re actually in our full group meetings, the players are the ones talking all the time now and coaches are directing and starting and facilitating but, essentially, the players are the ones talking about the game and I think that’s a great space.”

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Cynefin Framework

A Leaders Framework for Decision-Making

How Design Thinking Can Influence Decision-Making

What Google Can Teach Your Team About Problem-Solving

Framing the topic

Google’s Global Head of Creative Capability Kirk Vallis once said at one of our events that ‘creativity and problem solving is still one of the most underrated skills for leaders and the reality of creativity is that it is just about creating more options. And with more options you can make better decisions’.

You’d probably agree if you operate in high performance sport, with the complexity and agility required, that problem-solving is a pretty critical skill. For this virtual roundtable we wanted to chat about problem-solving and, more importantly, how we are thinking about it and approaching it.

Discussion points

1. When looking at the theme of problem-solving, where is your current thinking and what are some of the things you and your teams are trying to do to positively influence it?

• We are looking at how we get our practitioners to understand and grow in the problem-solving space through reflecting on how you deal with problems. As leaders, how do we facilitate someone understanding how they problem-solve, and how to extend that ability further?
• It’s important to understand the environments you are in and trying to put in place systems so that people can learn from their practical experiences. Our philosophy means we place an emphasis on the idea that the biggest learnings you are going to take are from your day-to-day experience, so reflecting on those is important.
• Understand what the problem really is and define it. Sometimes it can be difficult to identify what the actual issue is. Use quality questioning to define and tackle the problem. To dovetail this, have an environment where you can creatively brainstorm and have a safe space to experiment with ideas. Don’t jump to the end until you have been through the process.
• We have been utilising roundtables outside of specific disciplines – one of the big things with problem-solving in a discipline or particular department is that it can create a conflict with another discipline. The approach has to be collective.
• We’re also looking at the relationship between how we recruit and solve problems. There is a focus on recruiting and developing from within but we also want the balance of bringing in fresh perspectives to challenge current processes.
• We are working on bringing a coaching approach to our problem-solving across the organisation. A large number of staff have gone through some performance coach training so rather than solving problems for people we’re trying to coach people to solve the problems for themselves. This approach is more sustainable and people become better at resolving issues themselves – we’re finding people are starting to perform better in their roles as well with those ‘grow type’ questions.
• With good questioning focused on ‘growth’ it allows the individual to think more clearly and resolve it for themselves – they solve it the way they want to solve something rather than someone else solving it and imposing their way of doing it. We want to get ourselves in a position where people are coming to us with ideas and not problems.
• We talk about ‘grow conversations’ as formal coaching but there is also informal as well – you don’t have to sit down with someone in a one-to-one and talk at length about a problem. Consider the impact of ‘big chats (formal) and little chats (informal)’. When we see the ‘little chats’ going on, that’s when we know it’s becoming part of the culture.
• We are really looking for our people and staff to be empowered to guide conversations.
• It’s important to have a strategy to solving problems and there is a balance of the short-term in having quick wins around the problem, and then the longer-term approach.
• Ask yourself, do you have a safe space across your environment for people to bring and solve problems?
• We are taking a look into The Cynefin Framework – this is a framework to help understand problems and whether it might be is a clear problem with a solution, a complicated one that can have a complicated answer, or is it a complex problem? The framework considers ‘probing’, making sense of the space and then responding.
• Problems can mutate – if you are working within a team, everybody brings with them their own journey and information, and the influence within the group can change the outcomes.

2. What next? Where are the opportunities and ongoing challenges we are facing?

• There remains a huge opportunity around collaboration, particularly in situations where a problem maybe held by one person but affect other people. We need to continue to exploring ways to bring people together in the environment to share that problem and help to open the eyes of everyone. Often we don’t see the same issues with multiple disciplines.
• A consistent coaching approach is something that can add huge value. We use a very simple term called RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) approach to communication to ensure everyone is considering who they need to speak to regarding any issue.
• We can often underestimate what people would like to know and what they want to know about what you’re dealing with – often we hold problems in our own space because we potentially feel like others aren’t interested, but this tends to limit the options for solving a problem when you close off the collaboration.
• Another big opportunity we see if seeking out solutions from other areas of the organisation or business – people who might be dealing with different types of problems in different contexts and they could provide a different lens. What can we learn from a sales team in how they sell premium tickets or hospitality if we are struggling to sell places for coaching courses and accreditation as an example? We can often get groupthink around what we see and think.
• Try and take the emotion out of this process – if there is too much emotion, there is almost no way of resolving the problem.
• An improvement for us going forward is how we best distil inputs from the collaboration and ideas that are generated around problem-solving – how do we effectively evaluate the issues and really progress the extended ideas moving forward.
• Establish if the problem a global problem or is it unique to one particular individual or area? This drives you in a direction of how you solve the problem, whether it requires collaboration or just individual support. Probe around where the actual problem is and dig a bit further into that, so when the collaboration element comes in you can pick the relevant parts to move forward. When you come through the problem-solving process with the decision, have you then investigated those enough to decide and confirm what are the challenges? We’ve talked about the problem mutating. Coming up with a solution is good but have you fully attached yourself to the journey that it is the right one for all – is there clarity around how the solution will be embedded?
• An idea we’ve toyed with is the ‘day in the life of a discipline’. Provide an idea of what others go through in their working day so there is a more holistic understanding of how interactions and communications can work more efficiently around decision-making and problem-solving.
• Diversity in this process remains a huge opportunity to get a more rounded understanding of the problem through a multitude of lenses. It broadens the way your perspective when looking at a problem or issue.

Download the latest Performance Special Report – Winning With Nutrition

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“Sometimes you can listen to advice and it might be wrong for you, so you’ve got to figure out what is good and what is bad for you – who’s your angel and who’s your devil,” says Asha Philip.

By John Portch

The British sprinter – a two-time Olympic 4x100m bronze medallist – is speaking to the Leaders Performance Podcast as part of the Keiser Athlete Optimisation series.

Asha won bronze with her teammates in Tokyo and talks about some of the steps that enabled her to go again after winning a medal in Rio in 2016.

Also on the conversational agenda are:

• The mental strength that defines elite sprinters [10:00];
• Asha’s need to be comfortable being uncomfortable [14:30];
• The importance of self-reflection and positive affirmations [15:30];
• Why she is increasingly taking care of her mental health [22:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

Leaders Performance Podcast – Leadership & Culture Special

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

By John Portch

As a coach, you’ll almost certainly have your trusted assistants but do you call upon your wider performance staff as often as you might? Come to think of it, do you prioritise the views of your coaching assistants as much as you could?

While they may or may not share your intimate knowledge of the sport, it could be your experience, your technical expertise, that hinders your attempts to solve a performance problem.

That is the view of Kirk Vallis, Google’s Global Head of Creative Capability Development, and he shared it with the audience while speaking at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

Vallis, who was granted the freedom to choose his own job title, was at Twickenham Stadium to discuss the tech giant’s approach to disruption and creativity.

Far from being a wishy-washy concept, he explained that the World Economic Forum as listed ‘creativity’ as the third-most in-demand skill by 2020 (behind critical thinking and problem-solving). Creativity sat at No10 five years earlier and at No20 two years before that.

“Creativity is an underrated skill,” he suggests. “And creativity is just creating more options – with more options you can make better decisions.”

That is where your people can come in, as you are likely to already have the requisite expertise in the building. “We’re not lacking in knowledge or technology in the world,” declares Wired Founder Kevin Kelly from a presentation slide Vallis projects onto the screen, “we’re lacking the imagination for what to do with it!”

Vallis adds: “Those organisations that are most successful are those who use that expertise to do things a bit differently to everybody else – how do you outthink the pack by thinking differently?”

Here are five steps to help harness the talent in your building and, consequently, the creativity of your people.

1. Don’t be a slave to your success

While no one is questioning your knowledge, might your performance department suggest another way to think about a performance question? “We are slaves to our success,” says Vallis. “Our brilliance prevents us looking at things in a different way.” He proffers that it is about mindset, not skillset. “Technical expertise is overvalued – especially at the expense of being able to think differently.”

2. Create a positive relationship between success and failure

Vallis hits the audience with a stark fact: only one in four people feel they can be creative at work. “That’s a worry, especially for those of you who are leaders,” he tells the room. “Where are you sign-posting, role modelling, ‘big picture, little deeds’; where is it you’re giving people the ability to think differently or to fail? Where does failure live? I asked England rugby Head Coach Eddie Jones a couple of years ago and he said ‘Mondays’. ‘Mondays we’ll fail. We’ll try new stuff on Mondays – I don’t want to fail on a Friday when we’re trying to wriggle around execution – but on Mondays we fail loads.’” This is perfect: “Test the premise of your ideas, not the execution – do it fast and do it cheaply.”

3. Explore related worlds

In making this point about related worlds Vallis is speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute and our efforts to connect the great and the good of world sport. “Every challenge we face has been faced before in a different context,” he explains. His three-step process is 1) define the essence of your challenge 2) Explore a different world with the same issue and ‘steal with pride’ 3) Use as a stimulus for new ideas. “Value your loose connections.”

4. Break the rules

The instructions could not be simpler here: 1) List the roles or conventions 2) Choose one and break it 3) Use that as a stimulus for finding the best ideas.

5. Find expansive options for reductive decision-making

A greater variety of creative options is great – Vallis is staking his reputation on that very notion – but a decision must still be made. “Expansive options are good but not if nothing gets done,” he says. “We need to be reductive, analyse, judge and make decisions. How do we know we’ve got the best idea? You never will but you will gain confidence from the number of options considered.”

What is it going to take to win in 2020?

That is the focus of our latest Performance Special Report. Download The High Performance Manual: Winning in 2020, which features sports organisations as diverse as Red Bull, the Brisbane Lions and the Royal Military Academy discussing the pertinent topics across Leadership & Culture, Coaching & Development, Human Performance and Data & Innovation.

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