Self-development, difficult conversations and allyship were on the agenda for the latest Women’s High Performance Community call.
We spoke about self, or personal, development, as well as career development, and the place for each before turning our attention towards difficult conversations and allyship.
There is no doubting that those who joined the call are committed to their development. However, no one felt like they have a well-structured development plan that they simply were not following.
Currently, there’s a general sense that a lot of effort is driven by the individual – reflecting upon this, it’s potentially what those guiding us are told to do.
However, there is a request for more structure, confidence, time and opportunity from above to elevate the impact of our development.
It also came across from the call that many have big obvious blocks of learning, through courses or further education, but struggle to have a clear plan if those aren’t in place or if they are between courses. There are also those, who are doing a lot of learning simply by doing their job each day, which is where reflective tools and support from above can be powerful.
The Women’s Community suggested these five ideas as ways to make development as impactful as possible:
Other examples that we’ve seen work too:
Visits to different organisations – and having others visit you. This helps avoid echo chambers and benchmarks our practices against others. This becomes increasingly important if our only working experiences are in a single organisation.
Whole team development on specific skills. Having a whole team approach can help avoid siloed learning and contribute to learnings sticking.
It’s always good to remember that we need to leave space for stretch and being in uncomfortable positions. Again, these moments become more impactful if we can reflect on them and shape our development plans as a consequence. Finally, remember: some people’s development is focusing on saying no.
The Community once again spoke about the importance of our networks and brands to career development and shared the following reflections:
The Community then shared advice for when having difficult conversations:
Difficult conversations can take several forms – they do not necessary involved conflicts or saying no. There’s a range: it could be talking to a new person or even when you are taking steps to change the dynamics and the way things have always been done.
There are stories of female coaches in an otherwise male coaching team stepping out of their comfort zones because their approach to coaching is different. In one particular case, the female coach boosted her confidence by reminding herself that she’s adding to the discourse, providing different inputs and possibilities, and a platform for conversation.
We know that women are different, and that in sport women are often in a minority; so it would be easy to understand why we might doubt ourselves in these moments. However, we can retrain ourselves to not think in this way.
One additional approach that can help us is to have the conversation as part of a regular update session, so it’s not ‘singled out’ as having the need for a difficult conversation.
So what would we want an ally to support us with to enable us to be our most confident selves going into these conversations? These were some of the group’s suggestions:
15 May 2024
ArticlesDr Edd Vahid kicked off his latest Performance Support Series with a discussion of the traits that define cultures at the top of their game.
We have all asked ourselves this question at various times but Dr Edd Vahid and Management Futures decided to delve a little deeper.
In June 2022, the business and leadership consultancy commissioned Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the Premier League, to undertake a piece of research to discover the ‘secrets of culture’. Two years later, this project, titled ‘Cultural Hypothesis’, is on the cusp of publication.
Ahead of its release, Vahid is leading a three-part Performance Support Series at the Leaders Performance Institute that seeks to explore the enablers in high performing cultures.
The first session, which took place in early May, was a useful way of testing the importance and relevance of the four enablers highlighted by Vahid in the Cultural Hypothesis: purpose, psychological safety, belonging and cultural leadership.
Vahid explored each enabler in turn.
Most sustained high performing cultures have an inspiring purpose. Vahid referred to clothing brand Patagonia, which says ‘we’re in the business to save our home planet’ and its every action is driven by that purpose. This example calls to mind the work of Alex Hill who, in his book Centennials, suggests that organisations that have sustained success over a long period of time have a stable core and a disruptive edge. According to Hill, it is important that your purpose doesn’t fluctuate too much or disappear because its has the power to help your organisation shape society and enable you to effectively engage future talent.
Another aspect of ‘purpose’ is the idea of individual and organisational alignment. Those organisations that are tending to culture regularly are taking the time to consider how their purpose resonates at an individual and organisational level.
Questions to consider:
In The Fearless Organization, psychologist Amy Edmondson suggested that ‘making the environment safe for open communication about challenges, concerns and opportunities is one of the most important leadership responsibilities in the twenty-first century’.
The findings of Vahid’s ‘Cultural Hypothesis’ suggest that cultural leadership plays a fundamental role in an individual’s experience of psychological safety. In the session, he referred to Netflix, which has adapted its in-house feedback mechanisms to ‘lead with context and not control’ (concepts that are highly aligned and loosely coupled).
Questions to consider:
Owen Eastwood, in his seminal book Belonging, wrote that ‘our senses are primed to constantly seek information about belonging from our environment. We are hardwired to quickly and intuitively understand whether or not we are in a safe place with people we can trust’.
Organisational anthropologist Timothy Clark also highlights a bridge between psychological safety and belonging in suggesting that the first level of psychological safety is the idea of inclusion safety – you belong to something.
New Zealand Rugby provide a case study in this area, as the theme of belonging is central to their philosophy. They recognise the diversity of their playing groups. They invest in their inductions, and there’s some literature that highlights the importance of your sense of belonging on entry and the critical process of effective inductions to ensure from the very outset that you feel like you belong in your environment. There is a regular and considered approach to belonging cues and rituals that reinforce the idea that people belong, and that could be as simple as ensuring that people’s voices are heard.
Ultimately, we want to get people to a point of challenge. The most optimal environments where there is a high degree of psychological safety is where individuals feel comfortable to challenge.
A question to consider:
An inspiring purpose is essential, a psychologically safe environment is crucial, and a sense of belonging exists as a fundamental human need. Coupled with exceptional leadership, these elements distinguish cultures that thrive.
Leadership is presented as a crucial and critical part of Vahid’s ‘Cultural Hypothesis’. It feels central in that it is seen as a super enabler, that when you’ve got strong and aligned cultural leadership it will be a precursor, certainly to psychological safety and belonging.
Questions to consider:
The four traits of the ‘Cultural Hypothesis’ ranked by members
Vahid invited attendees to rank their current satisfaction with these enablers. This offers a snapshot of the state of play across elite sport, particularly in North America, Europe and Australasia:
Other reflections on culture
The ‘Iceberg Effect’
The discourse prompted a further question on the nature of ‘culture’. Vahid cited the work of psychologist Edgar Schein on the ‘Iceberg Effect’. Schein’s model likens culture to an iceberg: what we see (artifacts) is just a fraction of what lies beneath (espoused beliefs and assumptions). This is how that may look in a sports organisation:
Culture: a ‘group phenomenon’
The ‘Iceberg Effect’ chimes with the work of business academic Boris Groysberg who in 2018 co-wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review with Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J Yo-Jud Cheng. They defined culture as:
[1] ‘The Leaders Guide to Corporate Culture’, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2018
If you are interested in joining the second session of this Performance Support Series with Dr Edd Vahid on Thursday 6 June, sign up here.
13 May 2024
ArticlesThe Real Madrid Head Coach is the antidote to the systems-based, top-down coaching approach that is in vogue in some quarters.
The team’s Head Coach, Carlo Ancelotti, who recently signed a contract extension until 2026, has his own record to pursue: a victory over Borussia Dortmund in north-west London would see him claim his fifth Champions League title as a coach.
Last week Ancelotti also eclipsed Sir Alex Ferguson’s record when he coached a Champions League match for a record 203rd time. It comes after a weekend when he won a second La Liga title with Real.
The club paraded that trophy on an open-top bus through the streets of Madrid at the weekend, with Ancelotti living up to his ‘Don Carlo’ nickname by putting on his sunglasses and clenching a cigar between his teeth – a look he first rolled out during similar celebrations after winning the Champions League and La Liga double in 2022.
“I have a dream… to dance with Eduardo Camavinga,” he told the crowd on Sunday (12 May).
Ancelotti is the ultimate establishment figure, yet his relaxed, consensus-based approach to coaching is at odds with many of his contemporaries and marks him out as counter-cultural at the highest level.
What makes Ancelotti so successful? It’s certainly rooted in his zest for life; his love of people, good wine and fine food serve to break down barriers and forge connections. It speaks to his longevity too.
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute explores four of his finest traits.
It is hard to imagine too many of the world’s best football coaches bringing players in at the planning stage. While the final decision lies with Ancelotti, he will often ask the players for their opinion on the match strategy. He knows they will have a better understanding and feel a sense of accountability and buy-in if they’ve been involved in the decision-making process.
“Our biggest strength is that he finds a way to let a lot of the boys play with freedom, that we’re so kind of off the cuff.” Real’s Jude Bellingham told TNT last month. “As a man as well, he fills you with calmness and confidence.” Real have not always been a club noted for their calmness, nor has Madrid as a sporting market, but progress has been serene during his latest tenure.
“There are two types of managers: those that do nothing and those that do a lot of damage,” he said last week. “The game belongs to the players.”
This is a term we’ve used before to describe Ancelotti. It is impossible to pin a style on the only coach to have won national championships in five countries with five different clubs: Milan, Chelsea, Paris St-Germain, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid (across two spells). He has also worked with varying degrees of success at Reggiana, Parma, Juventus, Napoli and Everton.
Some of those spells are remembered more fondly in some quarters than others, but he has always stressed the importance of getting to know the characteristics of players, the culture, and traditions of a club.
Even if something has made him very successful at one club, he won’t just come in and impose that style on another. Ancelotti understands that there are many cultural differences from club to club and within different countries, and he has to adapt his style to get the best out of the players and team.
His time at Chelsea between 2009 and 2011 is a fine example. He discarded the 4-2-3-1 formation that served him so well at Milan for a 4-3-3 that propelled the Blues to the Premier League and FA Cup double in 2010.
“What I really loved about Carlo is his man-management, the way he adapted as well – because he had a way of coaching that probably didn’t suit English football,” John Terry, Ancelotti’s captain at Chelsea, told The Coaches’ Voice in 2020. “But he adapted very quickly when speaking to me, Frank [Lampard], Didier [Drogba].”
There are few coaches for whom it is so hard to find a bad word about them, but Ancelotti is popular with some of the sport’s biggest names.
“He had fun with us,” Cristiano Ronaldo told ESPN in 2015. The duo had won the Champions League together at Real a year earlier. “Mr Ancelotti was an unbelievable surprise. In the beginning, I thought he was more a tough person, more kind of arrogant, and it was the opposite.”
He protects his team from the stressors of elite football by masking the pressure he’s under. Ancelotti takes the situation – but not himself – seriously, and can often be found telling jokes in the changing room before a big game to help diffuse the tension.
Bellingham described a moment prior to the first leg of Real’s Champions League quarter-final with Manchester City. “Before the game, I caught him yawning and asked him ‘Boss, are you tired?’” Bellingham told TNT post-match. “He said ‘you need to go out and excite me’ – that’s the calmness and confidence he brings.”
Few coaches in European football are as equanimous as Ancelotti. He has enjoyed unprecedented success but has also been unceremoniously sacked on more than one occasion. Memorably, he was not Real’s first choice when he returned to Madrid in 2021.
‘[He] understands, probably better than anybody working in the most cut-throat businesses, the transient nature of employment in any talent-dependent industry,’ wrote Chris Brady, in Quiet Leadership, the 2016 book he co-authored with Ancelotti.
He is well aware of the concept of ‘energisers’ and ‘sappers’ too. ‘It is the energisers who are the reference points for everybody, including me,’ Ancelotti wrote in Quiet Leadership.
Ultimately, beyond the white noise, Ancelotti understands that football is not life and death, a point he made at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York.
“Football is the most important of the less important things in the world.”
As this session of the Leadership Skills Series demonstrated, we can all become better leaders by developing trusting relationships.
For the latest edition of our Leadership Skills Series, we explored the art of persuasion. All leaders in sport have the potential to influence others’ thoughts, feelings or actions through effective communication and interpersonal techniques.
The session highlighted four related areas of focus.
Trust is rightfully acknowledged as the cornerstone of effective leadership and the foundation of relationship-building. To unpack all of that we turned to the Trust Equation. It is a conceptual formula used to describe the components that build trust in professional and personal relationships. It’s often represented as: 
This is what each component means:
Credibility speaks to words and credentials. How authentic are we?
Reliability is the perception of a person’s integrity. Do you do what you say? Are your actions connected to your words?
Intimacy involves the feeling of safety or security when sharing information with someone. How safe or secure does the client or colleague feel in sharing with us?
Self-orientation reflects the degree to which a person’s focus is directed towards themselves as opposed to being focused on others. What are our motives? For our benefit or the benefit of others?
The higher the numerator (credibility, reliability, intimacy), the greater the trust. Conversely, the higher the self-orientation, the lower the trust. Ultimately, the equation serves as a mindful tool to enrich discussions, elevate trust levels, and deepen relationships within our teams.
When leading a team or a department, it matters how you are perceived by others. The ability to self-assess your personal status is another strategic tool wielded by seasoned leaders to convey confidence and authority. It includes an assessment of your:
Such elements can be ranked on a scale from 1 (‘low status’) to 10 (‘high status’) and, when done sincerely, this can be an invaluable guide for navigating various workplace scenarios and can even foster emotional intelligence, which is pivotal in forging genuine connections with athletes and team members. It can also facilitate the development of more impactful leadership skills that inspire and motivate with greater efficiency.
Flows of logic are the pathways our minds create to connect ideas and evidence to reach a reasoned conclusion. They are essential in critical thinking, problem-solving, and, of course, forming persuasive arguments. Flows of logic involve a sequence of statements or steps that follow one another in a rational and coherent manner. These frameworks can take three different forms, depending on your scenario:
These can be indispensable guides when constructing persuasive arguments. By grounding our narratives in these logical flows, we enhance storytelling capabilities and foster deeper connections with our teams. This pragmatic approach ensures proactive, relevant support while avoiding unnecessary complexity, thereby maintaining clarity and engagement, particularly in high-pressure situations where decisive leadership is paramount.
If you can put those three factors together then you can be better at delivering your message. Mindful communication is another tool upon which you can rely. This idea urges leaders to remain present and deliberate when communicating. It can help a person to:
The members in attendance discussed the success and failure of these elements in the context of people that ‘think to speak,’ and those that ‘speak to think’.
Here are some effective mantras to keep in mind:
Final reflections
As members reflected on the transformative potential of incorporating these persuasion techniques into their leadership repertoire, they described the following as essential steps towards mastering persuasiveness in your leadership approach:
In the final Leadership Skills Series Session of 2023, we focused on this increasingly essential skill, from the required mindset to the need to understand your boss.
It is a popular topic of conversation within the Leaders Performance Institute for those overseeing departments or who have direct lines into executive leadership or board level personnel.
Throughout this session we focused on some key concepts for managing up effectively, taking time to discuss and share best practices around:
Your mindset towards the relationship
Before exploring some of the practical examples of effectively managing up, we need to set the tone through ensuring the right mindset is in place to approach this. Leaning on the work of Richard Boston in The Boss Factor, we focused on four different mindsets you could engage with as part of the relationship and process of managing up.
Boston offers a useful framework to reflect on this mindset towards your relationship with your boss. The key insight from Boston’s framework is to consider the impact of this mindset on the relationship, notably your engagement, motivation and ability to manage up. These are the four mindsets on which we focused:
Understanding your boss
We previously explored your mindset towards your relationship with your boss. As an extension to this point, understand their drivers and pressures so you can both support them and understand their point of view will boost you ability to be collaborative in the conversations.
What can you consider about your boss or direct report which will support these conversations?
Understanding yourself
We’ve evaluated the drivers and pressures of the person you are managing up to. As part of this process we also need to increase our self-awareness around our trigger areas. Before engaging in these interactions, do you have a clear understanding of your own thoughts and feeling to the below?
Proactively develop the relationship
Finally, how can we proactively develop the relationship to make managing upwards effective and collaborative? Below are nine considerations for you to reflect upon:
21 Sep 2023
PodcastsIn our latest podcast we catch up with the individuals behind Serial Winning Coaches, Professors Cliff Mallett and Sergio Lara-Bercial as they discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches.
“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”
Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.
In an extended chat we delve into:
Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.
Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn
John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn
Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.
In his latest column, Iain Brunnschweiler explains that the best coaches keep their cool and understand the craft of human interactions.
It’s a scene we have all witnessed time and time again. The crowd get to see how passionate the manager is, how much they care about the team’s performance and how much this error hurts them personally. But as an executive sitting in the stands, paying the manager a huge salary, I would be asking myself just how effective they are being at their job in that moment?
In psychological terms, unless this display of anger is some form of ‘DiCaprio-esque’ acting skills from the manager in question, it means that they are emotionally deregulated. And when any human is emotionally deregulated, psychologists tell us that their ability to perform a number of high level tasks (such as taking in information and strategic decision-making) is massively impacted in a negative way.
Having stepped out of full-time work and into a world of consultancy, supporting a number of different organisations, it has given me time to reflect on my true beliefs, and aspects of performance development that I hold as truths.
One area that I keep circling back to, is the power of self-regulation.
Desirable adult behaviours
My observations of the best staff I have operated with is that they have worked out ways in which to self-regulate in the most pressurised moments. Now, this self-regulation takes numerous different forms based on the individual in question, but it is grounded in the fact that everyone needs personal strategies to stop themselves from essentially turning into a spoiled child when the going gets tough!
I have been extremely lucky to have worked alongside some of the industry’s top performance psychologists over the past two-and-a-half decades, both as a player and as a member of staff. My major learning from these leading members of the fraternity, is that they unlock introspection and retrospection in the people they are working with, in order to help the individual understand their own ‘personal best state’ to operate in. Then they help them work out their derailers, and identify when these derailers are likely to occur, in order to develop strategies to minimise the negative impact. It sounds simple! However, in reality this is a live process that can take years.
In youth development, one of my observations, present in football more than any of the other sports I have worked in, is that coaches can demonstrate levels of deregulation which are seemingly totally disproportionate to the age group of athlete they are working with. I have seen coaches of U9 teams screaming at 15-year-old trainee referees because they are certain that the ball went out. I’ve seen opposition coaching staff of U14 teams nearly coming to blows on the side of the pitch because the game is not going the way they envisaged it going. In the cold light of day, if you were to show these adults footage of themselves, especially alongside a GIF of a screaming child, their embarrassment levels would be high I have no doubt. In these cases, more work is needed in order to help them effectively self-regulate. Because, in my opinion, behaviour like this is letting down the children in their care. The role of a youth coach is to not only help the kids to learn the game, but also to be a role model of desirable adult behaviours.
Another observation is that it is not just the game itself that causes a non-desirable state in adult members of staff. I have seen many coaches lose sight of what is really at the heart of coaching – in my opinion this is genuinely attending to the children/people within your care in order to help facilitate their development in a skilful manner.
One of the reasons this occurs is the current audit-driven, process-oriented world in which we live. Coaches behave in insecure ways, sometimes unable to attend to the players in front of them because they are so nervous about what their boss thinks, or what is written down on their ‘curriculum’! As a wise man once said to me, the players ARE the curriculum. The thought that a bunch of middle-aged folk in tracksuits, can predefine the development needs of an entire squad every day of the year, by writing down a development curriculum before the season starts is once again, misguided at best.
The heart of coaching: guard rails, not train tracks
The best coaches (and I use that term in the broadest sense to include multiple ologies) I have worked with, are the ones who prioritise human interactions above all else. These elite practitioners are aware of the organisational documents, and will create environments that are guided by club principles, yet at the heart of their decision making is the child or adult in front of them at that moment. I heard a great analogy once, that development environments should have guard rails, rather than train tracks.
My interpretation of this is that it is really helpful to have broad principles and guidance (‘the way we do things around here’), but that it is genuinely unhelpful to have prescribed sessions that staff are forced to deliver. This normally just serves to deregulate or demotivate – two states that are certainly NOT optimal for performance development.
For those in charge of delivering performance and/or development environments, it would be worth considering the behaviours you are seeing from your staff teams. Are they operating in a manner which indicates that they feel psychologically safe enough to be themselves, within the broad principles of the organisation? Or are they nervously hoping that they are adhering to their boss, curriculum or audit’s demands, whilst compromising the athletes within they care?
When you’re reflecting on your own personal optimal performance state, it’s useful to consider what your derailers are, and what your strategies are. I am certainly NOT suggesting that we should not be passionate, and should not show that we care. But hopefully we can see fewer water bottles being volleyed, and fewer 15-year-old trainee referees being shouted at by the people who are supposed to be role models. I know that most athletes would prefer this.
Questions for the reader:
Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.
This recent Leadership Skills Series session asked what strategies we can use and to consider when we currently do our best analytical thinking.
Most people in high performance sport are operating in a volatile and complex landscape, so as part of this session, we explored common errors we make in our thinking and why, strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking, and identify opportunities to use more analytical thinking in our environments.
Before we delve into some of the detailed content and ideations, what do we mean by analytical thinking? Here is one definition: ‘It is our ability to collect information, analyse it and use those insights to solve problems and make decisions’.
System one & two thinking
To kick off the session, we leaned into the work of Nobel Prize winner (in Economic Sciences) Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Kahneman suggests that there are two types of analytical thinking. The first is the ‘fast thinking system’ or ‘system one thinking’ where our brains come up with automatic answers to things without a conscious effort. This mode of thinking is both efficient and effective in domains where we have deep expertise of experience. There are downsides, however. These lines of thinking are influenced by emotions and affected by biases which can lead to highly predictable mistakes. As humans we make a lot of errors in our thinking, but often those errors are predictable and it quickly becomes a case of how do we prevent these from happening again, or what to look out for.
To summarise system one thinking – it is automatic, intuitive, influenced by emotions and affected by biases; and so we can make predictable mistakes.
How does System two thinking differ from one? Kahneman defines this as the slow reasoning system which requires more effort and deliberation. We have a higher level of intention to stop and move into a space of deliberate thinking, it isn’t a case of the thinking just popping into your head, it takes energy and tends to be more complex. Analytical thinking is more aligned to system two thinking. There are downsides to this as well – it uses a lot of energy so there can be a tendency to delegate to system one.
To summarise system two thinking – it is effortful, deliberate, requires complex computation, it controls urges but can make you experience laziness and over-trusting system one.
Common errors in our thinking
As part of the session, we explored eight common errors that can affect thinking in our environments. It’s important to be aware of these as they will influence your ability to think analytically.
The first error is the law of small numbers. This error refers to the idea that we can get sucked into drawing conclusions using limited information – making small sample sizes to find a pattern when we shouldn’t. This is a good example of what Kahneman aligns system one thinking to.
The second error is confirmation bias. Often people pay attention to and seek evidence to support existing beliefs. This error is one of the most important to think about as our brain is setup to look for evidence to support the assumptions we already have and doesn’t look out for or seek counter evidence.
The third error is operating from an out-of-date mental map of the world. It’s quite a wordy one but it factors in the idea that we continue to keep acting as if the world we understand is still the same without challenging it. In high performance sport this can be a dangerous error in thinking, such is the fast-paced nature of the landscape.
The fourth error is unconscious bias about people and their potential. It is often perceived as black and white or either positive or negative. There are two other types of bias – projection and affinity. In considering unconscious bias, we often hear talk about negative bias, but not as much about the ‘halo effect’ which is where you recognise a characteristic you have seen before in high performance and you expect it to show up again. Projection bias incorrectly judges someone’s potential on the basis of current skills. Finally, affinity bias looks for the same qualities we have seen before. Arguably, this is one of the most common and well-known set of thinking errors.
Loss aversion is another error we see in thinking. It is where the fear of loss or losses is stronger than the desire for gains. There is a lot of research and evidence that suggests that humans will put more effort in avoiding a loss than getting a gain – the gain is undervalued.
The sixth error is status quo bias. This is the preference in maintaining assurance of current approaches and having an opposition to change. This is a dangerous game to be playing.
The penultimate thinking error as part of this section is the ‘bandwagon effect’. This line of thinking is a pull in wanting to adopt an approach because everyone else is doing it – the idea of conforming to thinking in a group and we will do what others do. This is a downside to analytical thinking. The real question we should be evaluating is whether there is evidence that what someone else is doing will work for us. Contexts are unique.
Finally, attribution error. This is defined by overestimating the impact of personality, character and underestimating the impact of the environment on behaviour. It’s very common that people can struggle in certain environments but thrive in others.
Improving analytical thinking
We’ve highlighted common errors in thinking, so how can we shift the dial and improve our ability to be more analytical? Before we explore some specific strategies, we discussed four tips to consider as part of this process:
What about strategies for improving the quality of our analytical thinking?
When thinking about your role as a leader or collectively how you operate as a team, the below are a set of strategies that can support analytical thinking in a positive way, in a number of different contexts.
The first strategy is ‘STOP moments’. Stand back, Take stock, Options, Proceed. It is also known as hot-debriefing during events and something that can be done in the moment. When thinking about ‘stand back’, this is taking more of a helicopter view of a situation or problem. ‘Take stock’ is the acquisition of data and analysing what is happening around that. ‘Options’ is as it sounds. Exploring options around what you can do differently. Finally ‘proceed’ is stepping back into the moment, taking action and assessing what impact your new approach has.
Debriefing. We would hope that many of us are already doing this to support their analytical thinking.
Another strategy is holding ideation sessions, also known as front foot innovation. There are traditionally two types of innovation: response which is where change needs to be imposed and proactive, which is much more disruptive and intentional in how to be innovative.
Improving cognitive diversity is another important strategy for analytical thinking. Seek out different perspectives, as so often we get multiple people with the same expertise approaching problems and questions.
Have you considered the idea of perspective shifting? This strategy looks at a situation from someone else’s perspective, putting yourself in their shoes, if you will. Often you will find that we look at problems and questions from our own contexts, which dovetails the thinking error of status quo bias.
Perspective taking underpins Edward de Bono’s main argument in his renowned 1985 book Six Thinking Hats. De Bono discussed two pairs of hats which allow us to reflect on our own particular preferences – the first is red and white, which refers to gut feel and intuition (red) and facts (white). What is your default and comfort when evaluating this first pair of hats and do you bring in enough of the other? When does the red or white hat have to be challenged? For the second pair of hats we have yellow and black. Yellow refers to being optimistic, assuming something is possible and thinking about the how. Black is of course the opposite – the constructive critic which is thinking through what could go wrong. Effective techniques that enable black hat thinking are pre-mortems and red-teaming. Pre-mortem is the assumption for a moment we will fail. From that perspective, it involves looking and identifying what is most likely to go wrong. Red-teaming is the idea of tasking some of the team with figuring out how to beat your strategy.
Finally, a really effective strategy for analytical thinking is root cause analysis. Many of us have heard of the ‘5 Whys’ which is a simplistic but effective method. Perhaps more impactful is the use of multiple cause diagrams which allow us to work from a challenge and identify the different causes that are having an impact.
Further considerations
As we have covered in this review of analytical thinking, it does take more time, deliberation and effort to do effectively. That is the nature of the beast in doing system two thinking well. In reflecting on the common errors and strategies above, ask yourself these questions:
31 Aug 2023
ArticlesVictoria Moore of Athletics Australia discusses her organisation’s approach ahead of the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
The Head of Performance Support & Solutions at Athletics Australia oversees athlete support for both the Olympic and Paralympic programs. When it comes to the latter, the first thing she says is that no two para athletes will have the same high support needs.
“It’s hard to know everything about everyone on the team and what might happen to them in different environments,” she continues. “So having a breadth of knowledge of a range of issues, any comorbidities and being able to adapt, is really important. That’s why I try to upskill people where possible and share knowledge and what I’ve learned.”
She spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute earlier this year as Athletics Australia prepared to take a team of 39 athletes to the 2023 Para Athletics World Championships, which took place in Paris in July. Australia would claim 14 medals: three golds, eight silvers and three bronzes. It was a haul that placed the nation eighteenth in the medals table.
A year from now, the 2024 Paralympic Games will also come to the French capital. This year’s worlds afforded Athletics Australia a rare opportunity to run tests in near identical conditions. “That doesn’t always happen, but when we can align then we try to align.”
Moore was a contributor to our Performance Special Report Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions. She also found time to discuss her role, which sees her work across both Olympic and Paralympic sport.
“You need to be specific about how you manage each team environment. I’m a connection point, joining the dots, and giving people as much information as I can to be able to support them to do their role effectively.”
Here, we highlight four lessons from Moore’s work meeting the needs of para athletes and how they may provide food for thought for the wider sporting world.
When Athletics Australia sends a team to a meet such as the Para Athletics World Championships, it is important for coaches to have both humility and a capacity to build rapport. Or, as Moore puts it, they must have the right amount of ‘awesomeness and awkwardness’. She says: “I have this thing about teams, it’s my ‘awesome and awkward’ theory. Generally, what it means is, when I put a team together, I’m quite considered in how I do it across performance support. The awkward and awesome theory is that people need to have the right amount of awesomeness with regards to technical capabilities but the right amount of awkwardness so that on a team they are able to fit well. So you can’t have a lot of peacocks. Whereas you might be able to have them in a daily training environment because they all go home at the end of the day, people need to be able to pick up the roles of others in camp environments. They need to be humble and they need to be able to build rapport quickly.”
Moore will not rely on prior experience alone when preparing to support para athletes at a major games. “I really need to understand the needs of the athletes that make up the team and then put support structures around them,” she says. “For a para team, that means anything from underlying medical conditions that require extra support to the skillsets of the staff that are going.” If there is a large contingent of athletes that compete in wheelchairs then it could be that Moore prioritises doctors or physios with expertise in pressure sore management, for example. “If there is a gap then I need to upskill the team so they can manage in those conditions.” This approach has led to numerous adaptations, such as the employment of performance psychologists with mental health training. Where limits on staff accreditation press upon Moore, she will work backwards with her team to enable them to cover as many bases as possible. “Our carers’ roles have evolved. We used to just take people who had good relationships with the athletes. Now we take very highly skilled occupational therapists who help manage the daily planning and can pivot towards other areas.” Support staff roles at a competition are defined by their necessary skillsets, which are determined by documenting athletes’ needs. “People are more accountable now and better able to deliver.”
Athlete assessments of need are better done away from home. “We always try to create camps where we can get these athletes away from their daily training environment so that we can truly understand what their needs are going to be away from home – it’s hard to know what those things are until you see them outside their home environments and away from their traditional support systems,” says Moore. The athletes themselves also need to experience being away. “They probably wouldn’t know [their true support needs] until they leave their home environment,” she adds. “We haven’t taken individual carers away with us. We don’t want to create a dependency. We’ll always make sure that we build rapport with the athlete and our support person. We also have to think of the needs of the whole team.”
When considering para sport support services, learning tends to come through a process of trial and error as much as through evidence-based practice or interventions. Therefore, it is important to capture knowledge gained in the field. “You can create efficiencies by synthesising information,” says Moore. The potential issue is that budgets will only stretch so far and requests for funding can come from all angles. Moore cannot risk support systems and processes becoming unwieldy and inefficient. She recommends a framework that enables the transition of knowledge from one cycle to the next (“an information dump”, as Moore herself puts it). “People want to be innovative but they tend to not know where the big rocks are in doing that. If you can have a person coordinate that, you can be efficient, you can understand themes, you can see what’s been done and not reinvent the wheel. Then you can help people to put in frameworks to begin to implement change.”
Victoria Moore was a contributor to our Special Report, titled Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions: a snapshot from Olympic, Paralympic and elite team sports. In addition to Athletics Australia, it features insights from Swimming Australia, the Lawn Tennis Association, Hockey Ireland and Welsh Rugby Union. Each has teams competing in major tournaments this year and all are bound to give you something to think about in your future projects.
6 Jul 2023
ArticlesLiam Broady’s coach David Sammel explains that as the groundwork has been laid beforehand, tournament tennis is all about building a player’s rhythm and confidence. To that end, there are a number of tools at a coach’s disposal.
The Leaders Performance Institute is on the phone to David Sammel, a tennis coach with more than 30 years of experience coaching men’s ATP Tour players.
This week, Sammel is at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in Wimbledon to coach Britain’s Liam Broady in both the gentlemen’s singles and doubles at The Championships.
We are speaking on Wednesday 5 July. It is the day after Broady’s first round defeat of Constant Lestienne and the day before he dispatched fourth seed and three-time grand slam finalist Casper Ruud. It was an ideal moment for Sammel to reflect on his development as a coach.
“I have different tools that I’ve developed over the years and I feel sad for those players in the past because there’s situations I look back on and I would have dealt with them differently now to how I did then,” he says. “But that’s part of the learning process as a coach and the other side of the coin is that I would hate to look back, even in five years’ time from now, and say I’m exactly the same as I was five years ago.”
Broady, the men’s world number 142, was due to play Ruud on the day of our conversation, but the rain put paid to that idea. Inclement weather is just one of a number of disruptions that players can routinely expect at a tournament.
“These days are tricky to manage because their stress and anxiety is there as the build-up to the match continues; and keeping someone in a holding pattern is not easy. The job almost shifts to keeping the player entertained in different ways and being light-hearted in practice,” adds Sammel.
“The work is really done beforehand and once you get into the tournament it’s just a bit of maintenance, a little bit of sharpening and keeping the player relaxed between matches. At majors it’s a little different because you always get a day off in between and, of course, like the rain at Wimbledon yesterday, we now get two days and, possibly, depending on how the weather is today, three days off.”
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute details five factors that underpin Sammel’s approach to coaching during a competition.
During a tournament, Broady will aim to rise at his usual time, whether he is playing or not. Routine is important, although practice times will depend on the availability of practice courts.
Nevertheless, the fundamentals should not change because a player is competing at the All England Club. “What I’ll say to players is the court is the same size, you’re playing against people you can play anywhere in the world, and it’s just a label that this is the best tennis tournament in the world. You need to go out there and play tennis – not Wimbledon. It’s trying to keep the head in a place that, at the end of the day, it is your job to play tennis – it is not to play different tennis because it’s Wimbledon. It’s to play the best tennis that you can put on the court on the day.”
That said, “You’re not ignoring the fact that this is something a little bit different, but you’re saying ‘this is why you’ve done all the work. You dream about these things as a kid and now you’re living it and that’s amazing’.”
Practice at a tournament is primarily to give players “a feel of the ball”, as Sammel explains. He speaks often about the need for players to find their “rhythm”. He says: “There’s nothing you really want to be working on unless there’s a couple of specifics because you’ve scouted the opponent and say something like ‘let me feed you a few balls, you’re going to get quite a few of these during the match’.
“The problems come if the player starts to miss a few balls and gets a little uptight – they feel the magic is disappearing.” The key in those moments is to talk the player “back down off the ledge”. “You’ve got to say ‘look, let’s have a drink. Relax. Let’s not think about this for a moment. Maybe let’s hit a few serves.’ And when you feel like they’re truly relaxed go back to it and hopefully they find some rhythm.
“On bad days, that’s when it’s important for the coach to be there and not show any stress and just be relaxed. That often calms a player. You also need to remind them that there’s nothing they’re going to face tomorrow that they haven’t faced before. They just need to go through your history and know that they’ve dealt with whatever adversity has been directed at them because that’s where real confidence comes from.” Confidence is key. “With great athletes, the difference is their belief and confidence to perform and bring a level no matter how they’re feeling.”
Sammel has learned to trust his instincts as a coach. “The one big thing that coaches are there for is feeling the moment and the timing of when you say things. Give very few messages, important key ones, and do not overload the player – when a player has too much to think about that really hurts their performance,” he says. It is also essential to read their body language. “When you’re talking to an athlete, you can tell in their eyes whether you are actually connecting and they’re hearing you or whether it’s just being blocked out. They’re nodding yes, they’re saying yes, but you know it’s not going in. That’s when you really need to change tack or understand that this is just not the right moment and then you’ve got to be looking out, pretty much all day, for the right moment when they’re open to having a different approach and you go again at trying to get your message across. That is one of the big things that comes from experience, that timing.”
He adds: “If you overload a player that’s going to kill them, but if you have an important message, you’ve got to find the right moment and know that it’s actually gone in. That can take two or three attempts but not in the same way; if you try to bulldoze a player with the same approach their resistance will grow stronger and then you’ve got no chance of getting the message in.”
Sammel stresses the need for “adult conversations”. He says: “When you’re in a good place, where you can go through a couple of things and you can see it’s going in and the player will ask a question like an adult, not like a victim.”
According to Sammel, a ‘victim’ would say thing such as: “‘I don’t know if I can do this’ or ‘what you’re asking is impossible right now’ or they’re dismissive. You know they have a worry, they have a stress and they’re trying to pretend that it’s not there. You have to try to have a conversation. ‘Look, let’s talk about whatever is bothering you, let’s get it out in the open, and that way we can deal with it before you go out there’. Because when a player has something bothering them, if they don’t take care of it before they go out there then you’re looking at disaster.”
Defeats are inevitable but there is always something a player can take into their next tournament and upsets, such as Broady’s defeat of Ruud, can happen.
“After a disappointment, the coach’s job is to immediately shed light on what the next step is for the player to progress and go forward,” says Sammel. “You need to be going to the next tournament with optimism. ‘If we put a couple of things right, we practise a couple of things and get a bit better at those, that makes you even tougher. Let’s take that to the next tournament and see what happens then’.
“I have a saying that I’ve used for over 20 years, which is ‘do the work and good things will happen – you just don’t know when’. I’ll say: ‘This major is over and obviously we were hoping for more, it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the next major. Let’s keep working and the good things will happen. It’s not our job really to know when because that’s the excitement of sport’.”
