By Graham Turner PhD

People that think sport is easy don’t know the amount of time and effort you have to put in #f***ingopenyoureyes

Tweet from an athlete featured in The Young Athlete’s Perspective

In my book The Young Athlete’s Perspective, six young athletes share their talent development stories, reveal what it is really like to be a young person in a sports talent development programme and share what they think, but dare not say.

The book provides valuable insights into key topics and issues, such as:

• How to support young athletes to progress in the sport that is right for them.
• How a positive talent development experience relies upon personalised and holistic athlete development.
• How to guide the young athlete through competing physical demands and psychological challenges.
• Why optimal athlete and coach collaboration relies upon a genuine relationship and authentic communication.
• How autonomy, connectedness and a sense of competence are critical to a young athlete’s motivation.
• How to teach the young athlete to become the best learner.

The key to becoming the best learner – self-regulation                                                                                        

In this article, I have focused on self-regulation and its role in enabling young athletes to become better learners.

To be successful, young athletes must be proactive, independent, resourceful, and persistent. Self-regulation is the process by which an athlete continuously monitors progress towards their goals, evaluates outcomes and redirects unsuccessful efforts. Key to this process is the individual’s awareness of and knowledge about their own thinking (metacognition). Each athlete must be behaviourally proactive in their own learning process and learn to be self-aware, problem-focused and goal-oriented. Higher-level athletes learn to self-regulate by exerting greater control over their feelings, thoughts and actions during three distinct phases:

• Forethought – the processes and beliefs that occur before the effort to learn is initiated.
• Performance – the process of behaviour that effects planned execution.
• Self-reflection – the processes that occur after each learning effort.

Through the use of direct quotes, the book explores the developmental journeys of these young athletes and provides examples of how young people demonstrate initiative, take responsibility, and optimise learning by:

Seeking out specific environments

At the end of this season I think I am going to move to ######… Yes, it is a much better team.

Rowan

Creating specific structures

Time management is the only way I’ll ever get anything done otherwise I end up just leaving it. But if I set myself out what I need to do every day, then I’ll get it done and it’s fine.

Eboni

Implementing consistent processes

I use my diary a lot, the goal setting is really helpful, you just need to keep doing that, that’s how you are going to improve as a player.

Steve

The level of learning achieved by an athlete will vary depending upon the level of their self-regulatory skill. Young athletes’ accounts of engagement with adults within the talent development environment demonstrate how being listened to and understood positively impacts this process.

Yes, they are much better, much better coaches, yes. They have one on one conversations with you about things, like what they want you to do next game or how the last game went, and they seem like they care a bit more and they are actually happy that we have done well.

Steve

And athletes who successfully self-regulate eventually become distinguished by their sensitivity to the social context and a proficiency in the ability to recognise how an adult may,

Help learning

Author: Do you think he (your Athletics Coach) stepped it up as well?  You said, “I’m serious.”  And suddenly he’s thought, oh right…

George: Yeah, definitely.  Yeah as soon as he saw I was making decisions to focus on it a lot more, he’s given me a lot more time and he’s given me a lot more focus.

Or hinder learning

I didn’t feel like I got anything out of it. The coaches weren’t very helpful they kind of told you what to do but weren’t very good at correcting the stuff that you had wrong.

Steve

The young people in this book have revealed that for them, the essence of being in a sports talent development programme is hard work. Each young person details an individual set of contextualised circumstances that has subsequently influenced the extent to which they have been able to take control of their own learning. Individual stories depict how the behaviour of different adults teaches young athletes how to act and how for the young person, their interpretation of and response to this is key to their talent development experience.

I spoke to my coach recently and said well I don’t really see the point in doing it anymore if I’m not going to get any further so then we had a talk and she said I need to improve my fitness, which I did, and I needed to get to the next step and need to go through regional for another half a year, so I can get moved up to the next level.

So now she has moved me up again, so I am half in regional and half in the local Academy.

Eboni

The self-regulated learner incorporates self-motivational beliefs with task strategies (plans and methods) to develop and apply self-regulation processes and is influenced reciprocally by the results of those efforts.

Positive collaboration

When the young person is motivated to find solutions to the challenges they face the key to positive collaboration is dependent upon the adult’s ability to create conditions that promote engagement. The narratives of the young athletes in this book demonstrate how for them, the experience of talent development extends far beyond the time spent in training and competition and can come to influence every area of their life. This existence requires the young person to live in a reality where the expectation is that they are continually striving to improve performance, and so for as long as they commit to meet this demand they must constantly search for ways to positively influence individual progress.

The Young Athlete’s Perspective is available now from all good booksellers.

Graham works for the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) as a systems leader, supporting sports to establish world’s best High Performance Pathways that identify, develop, support and progress talented athletes to achieve medal winning performances. He has previously worked at organisations including Wolverhampton Wanderers, Gymnastics Australia and Leeds Beckett University. He holds a PhD in Talent Development in Sport.

By John Portch

“The hardest thing with elite level para athletes is that you tend to gain experience and learning from mistakes,” says Victoria Moore. “Because you don’t have a large group of people to compare an athlete to.”

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.

1. ‘You can’t have a lot of peacocks’

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.”

2. Identify opportunities to upskill your support staff and blend complementary skillsets

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.”

3. Try to test athletes away from their home environments

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.”

4. Devise frameworks that capture the wisdom and knowledge of your 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.

Download Report

By Luke Whitworth

In more recent times, buzzwords such as ‘belonging’, ‘experience’ and ‘connection’ have re-surfaced as key considerations for the design of your performance environment.

Friend of Leaders, the author Owen Eastwood, has often referred to a piece of research conducted within the UK Olympic system, which outlined that “70% of our behaviour is determined by what environment we’re in”.

So if we are to obtain the behaviours we seek, the look, feel, engagement and connection to and within the environment is crucial in making this a reality. As part of this Leaders Performance Institute member Virtual Roundtable, we sought to explore how those on the call are trying to drive engagement and connection to get the best out of others in their environment, and collectively, what we think are the most effective and impactful ways of doing this.

1. Being intentional

Before we think about best practices in bringing people together, the notion of engagement and connection requires intent. As part of the responses from the group on this particular roundtable around what is important to get right when looking to drive engagement and connection, a number of responses suggested that upfront work needs time and attention first and foremost.

What does engagement and connection look like for you in your environment? What is the definition of this and what sorts of behaviours and interactions do you want to see that aligns to this?

One attendee shared that the process of fostering engagement and connection takes time and needs patience. Don’t jump to conclusions if you aren’t seeing rapid changes in behaviour, stick to the process and give it the opportunity to cultivate in your environment.

2. Focus on individual relationships

Now we’ve appreciated the need to be intentional and have patience, we can look at some simple things that can have a positive impact of moving things in the right direction. The most common response from the group was placing an emphasis and focus on developing relationships with individuals in the environment. Simple, but effective. How often are you creating these opportunities for your people?

Ensure that individuals in the environment are connecting with one another on a one-to-one basis and not just in groups. It provides an opportunity to better understand someone, creates opportunities to listen and engage with intent and often is more comfortable for people than group settings.

Within many high performance sport environments, we often hear the challenges with the siloing of information or practice. A very simple way to prevent this from happening is building relationships and understanding of others, especially when operating in different disciplines. Linking back to point one about intentionality, many of these types of interactions happen organically, but we also shouldn’t be blinkered to the idea that not everyone engages in them organically.

3. Understanding others on a human level

A common phrase in the industry is the idea of knowing the person before the performer. This isn’t just in the context of athletes, and it absolutely extends to staff within the environment. Getting to know someone personally provides an opportunity to learn more about their purpose, ambitions, objectives and development needs. If we are able to support our people by combining ideas to develop their practice, that also tap into the core parts of their personality or purpose, we will likely witness a higher level of impact and buy-in. Plus, it drives a heightened sense of belonging and their place within the environment which we know is vitally important to get the best out of one another.

Specifically related to development needs, are you making sure you are taking that insight you are collating and providing opportunities for people? As leaders, authenticity and reliability are valuable traits, so it’s important to do what you say you’re going to do or taking the time to progress ideas and opportunities for people.

4. Organisational alignment

Taking the point above a step further, we also want to strive to connect our people to the values and larger goals of your organisation. The notion of higher purpose is powerful, and if we are able to outline common and shared goals within the organisation or environment, a strong chain of people, beliefs and understanding is created. One attendee on the call had suggested tapping into the concept of action learning in this process – action learning consists of insightful questioning and reflective listening, focusing on providing clarification, reflection and solution-orientation. Integrating your people into this process and the wider goals of the organisation seems simple, but many on the call still felt it’s an area for improvement.

5. Balancing structure and freedom

Allow people to be themselves but in a productive way. A final common response from the group around important considerations for engagement and connection, was finding a balance of structure to support staff and athletes to head in the right direction, and a sense of freedom that allows them to feel like they can be themselves in the environment.

It’s important to show your people you care, which is why finding the balance of structure and freedom is important. Often people don’t know what they don’t know, which is why some structure is effective – provide space to experiment with a bit of support wrapped around it.

By Iain Brunnschweiler

Picture the scene: it is day one of the men’s Ashes, the biennial Test cricket series contested between England and Australia, with the famous cricket ground at Edgbaston in Birmingham bathed in glorious June sunshine. The moment is set. This is one of the most historic, most competitive and highest pressure sporting events of the year.

Zak Crawley, England’s 25-year-old opening batsman, could have been forgiven for feeling the pressure. At the time, his batting average was much lower than one would historically hope for an international batsman, and a bumper crowd awaited the first ball from Australia’s captain Pat Cummins. Yet Crawley crashed the ball through the off side for four runs, with one of the most dominant shots you could ever see, to spark an eruption of rapturous applause from the crowd.

This was different. What proceeded to unfold over the next six hours or so was without doubt one of the most scintillating days of Test cricket you could ever see. England played with a freedom and a joie de vivre uncommonly seen in elite sport. Joe Root made an impeccable unbeaten hundred, including some outrageous shots, against some of the best bowlers in the world, and all delivered with the biggest of smiles on his face.

The England men’s cricket team produced some quite remarkable, yet publicly divisive, performances against the Australians this summer in a series that was drawn 2-2. The media labelled it ‘BazBall’ (a phrase which Coach, Brendon McCullum, and captain, Ben Stokes, refute), however, it is clear to me that there is significantly more behind England’s approach than simply smiling and smashing it. There has clearly been a process of strategic thought, some well-considered internal communications and an integration between those in dark trousers at executive level (Managing Director and Performance Director) with those in the white trousers on the pitch.

In my experience in elite sport, seeking genuine alignment of philosophy, leading into strategy and ultimately performance, is like searching for a unicorn. Every organisation will have a VMOST [Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics] or similar, but how often is the MD really singing off the same page as the practitioner on the grass? How often when the going really gets tough, do we see players overtly playing for themselves and their own agenda, rather than that of the team and the organisation? Unfortunately it is all too common for misalignment to occur somewhere along the chain of command.

What can other sports, and businesses learn from the approach that England have adopted? I believe there are three headline areas:

• Strategic alignment 
• Performance psychology 
• Change management 

Let’s consider these one by one.

Strategic alignment 

England have consistently provided the media with a stated intention: they want to entertain. They have seen that this format of cricket (Test cricket is played in whites with games often lasting five days) has witnessed declining attendances in most of the world. England have strategically aligned themselves, from the Managing Director, Rob Key and Performance Director, Mo Bobat, through to the Coach (McCullum) and team captain (Stokes). They have taken the responsibility to seek to have a bigger purpose than just winning a game or a series – they are inspiring a nation and inspiring an audience with a specific style of play. Of course, they are doing everything they can to win every game, but at the heart of things, this is about something bigger. This is about keeping this format of the game alive by playing a brand of cricket that will entertain, regardless of the result. Not every team in the world has the resources at their disposal to deliver this super attacking approach – with the likes of Stokes, Root and younger players Crawley and Harry Brook, offset with the experienced bowling attack spearheaded by Jimmy Anderson and the now-retired Stuart Broad.

It was clear to me, that even when things got tough, losing the first two matches of the series against England’s ultimate enemy, that every player was clear on the strategy, and they did not deviate. Despite incredible levels of scrutiny and challenge from high profile media personnel, they were trusted from the upper echelons of Key and Bobat, and provided the psychological safety to be themselves.

Did the Aussies have genuine strategic alignment too? Currently the best team in the world, with many of the world’s best players, they are an outstanding unit. However, at times it looked like they were not sure whether to try to match England’s uber-positive tactics, or to maintain a more traditional approach and seek to grind their opposition down. I listened to a podcast recently where one of the phrases used was that the Australians were ‘fighting fire with water’!

Questions to ask yourself: 

• How aligned is your organisation both philosophically and strategically? 
• What is the ‘bigger purpose’ that might get more out of your team? 

Performance psychology 

England believe that players are at their best when they focus on their strengths. McCullum and Stokes have facilitated a psychologically safe environment whereby every player is encouraged to understand their strengths (just like when Crawley played his imperious cover drive) and then to deploy them with 100% commitment. Under the immense heat of battle, it is incredibly easy to become within yourself and therefore more risk averse. This leads to missed opportunities and can easily swing the momentum back in the opposition’s favour. We saw England batsmen and bowlers attacking the game with such a refreshing and entertaining approach that it seemed infectious. It also is very apparent that the players are enjoying their sport! Typified in many ways by pace bowler Mark Wood. Not only capable of bowling at extreme speeds (he hit a top speed of 96mph!), but falling over, joking around both on and off the pitch and generally demonstrating a level of joy that is normally reserved for the under-10s team. How often have we seen bland, almost robotic performances in sport…pre-defined patterns of play dictated by control-freak managers and directors. This is normally caused by personal insecurity and our ‘audit-driven’ approach to simplify the complex for a spreadsheet or boardroom. This England team are encouraged to do the opposite. To seize the moment and to play the game as they see it, with a personal plan focusing on what they individually do best. Genuine leadership and belief from the top, that the individual skills within the troops need to be unleashed. Rare indeed.

Questions to ask yourself:

• How well do you and your staff know your strengths? 
• To what extent does your environment encourage every individual to play to their strengths and enjoy their role? 

Change management 

England are administering a change programme. Any of us who have operated in more senior roles will no doubt be very accustomed to the challenges that come with delivering change within an organisation, let alone promoting it to the outside world. This normally comes with doubters, as change is hard. One of my observations during this period of time, has been how the commentators and media (mainly the ex-players in their 50s and 60s) have struggled to comprehend England’s approach. ‘It’s just not cricket!’ they have cried, ‘Why would you play such high risk shots, surely you would be better off getting out defending it!?’ or ‘Why would you choose to declare at that point!?’ This to me is like the member of staff who has been at an organisation for a long time, struggling to get their heads around a new approach. However, by the conclusion of the series, I think even the stalwarts are finally starting to understand. England DO care about winning, they just care more about entertaining a global audience with a brand of cricket that will inspire a future generation. They have consistently explained this to everyone who will listen, and the penny seems to finally be dropping. Change is difficult, but with an inspiring vision, consistent communication and a core of early adopters it is possible.

Questions to ask yourself:

• When leading on change, how are you going to deal with the doubters? 
• To what extent have you considered your messaging your vision to all stakeholders through the change programme? 

In summary, I was absolutely captivated by this summer’s Ashes series. The viewing figures released by Sky Sports in the UK, and the levels of social media engagement, also indicate that England are achieving their lofty goal of having a higher purpose. Most importantly to me personally, my two kids aged 10 and 7 have been captured by the entertainment. They wanted to watch the highlights every morning, and then run out into the garden to emulate their heroes, Ben Stokes, Joe Root or Mark Wood. This is a new era for the game, an exciting one, and one which I believe we can all take learning from.

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.

By John Portch

There is a consensus across sport that teams at their best are defined by a series of recognisable characteristics.

They include the ability to have honest and open conversations, an emphasis on behaviours that build trust, and a belief in the collective before the individual.

As with much of performance, they are often easier said than done but most teams understand their importance and continue to work towards those qualities in their daily work and habits.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute lifts some insights from our vaults that we hope can help you to plot a course with your teams. We are not saying that all the athletes and coaches in the examples cited below have nailed it, but their approaches may help you to stay on track.

‘Great cultures are built on connection’

Adelaide Crows midfielder Rory Sloane served as team captain between 2019 (when he was co-captain alongside Taylor Walker) to 2022 and, with time, learned the skills to handle difficult conversations in a way that put his teammates at ease.

Sloane had fewer concerns about his on-field captaincy than he did his off-field abilities. “Off-field stuff has always been my challenge absolutely – that’s something that I’ve always had to work on massively over the years,” he told an audience at Virtual Leaders Meet: Evolution of Leadership in 2021. “I wasn’t someone that loved confrontation at all, and that’s where I worked really hard over the years just on my relationships with people to be able to then have those conversations.”

He cited the influence of renowned American leadership specialist Brené Brown. “There was something she said: ‘Sit next to someone when you’re having those conversations rather than across’; because I reckon I used to always come across very aggressively, so sitting next to someone was something that really helped me just have those conversations.”

Sloane’s development as a leader was aided by Dan Jackson, who was appointed the Crows’ Leadership Development Manager in 2020. “We’ve spent a lot of time talking about connection, and it’s a theme I keep seeing across elite sport, and also across corporate organisations – great cultures are built on connection,” said Jackson.

Another with a keen sense of the importance of connection was three-time World Series winner and 10-time MLB All-Star David Ortiz.

During this 20-year career in the US, the Dominican helped to transform the fortunes of the Boston Red Sox. During that time, he came across innumerable prospects in Spring Training, each hoping to play alongside a man who would enter the MLB Hall of Fame in 2022 in his first year of eligibility.

One such hopeful was Leaders Performance Advisor Bobby Scales, who joined the Red Sox’s Spring Training at Fort Meyers in Florida in 2007. Having been handed the number 76 (“an awful number”) Scales knew he needed to do everything in his power to impress Manager Terry Francona and the Red Sox’s decision-makers.

“I would arrive at 5:30am for the workouts that typically didn’t get started until 9am because you never know what might happen. Lift, eat, sort equipment, adjust to any changes, whatever needed to be done,” wrote Scales in 2002. “I remember the third or fourth day of camp at about 5:50am. I had just changed into shorts and a t-shirt and, out of the weight room having finished his workout, comes ‘Big Papi’.

“‘Hey, what you doing here? It’s too early,’ he said in a deep voice with a heavy Dominican accent.

“‘Papi’, I said, while pointing to the #76, ‘man, unless you’re early they forget about you!’ Part of me was kidding, part of me was dead serious. His answer was something that I’ll never forget.

“‘Nah, you get invited to this camp, you have a chance to help us win a World Series and we gonna do that. Get your bat… let’s go hit!’

“He didn’t know me from the next guy but I was in that clubhouse and I had the same uniform on. At this point of his career he had been a three time All-Star, a World Series champion and a World Series Most Valuable Player. At 6am he was changing his shirt post-gym workout and heading to the batting cage.

“With his actions he was saying ‘we win things around here, this is how we work and you’re part of it’. This was his routine and he was going to do this whether I was in the building or not. I happened to be there so this was his opportunity to show me the culture in the building without saying a word. Leaders such as ‘Big Papi’ act with intention because they have a vision of where they see themselves and their club and a clear plan of how they can get there.”

‘Without connection, it falls short’

James Thomas, who currently serves as Director of Performance Services at Manchester City, told the Leaders Performance Institute how he worked to engender trust in the coaches with whom he has worked as a performance director.

“Unless you spend the time to build the connection with somebody I’ve often found it falls a little bit short,” said Thomas in 2022 while still serving as Performance Director at British Gymnastics.

“I’ve always taken the time to stand next to a coach during training, watch, ask questions, be inquisitive, and give them a sense that I’m interested rather than coming in and make a big change. It might not need a big change, but unless you talk to people and find out, you’ll never really know. It’s probably quite simple, but I just stand, watch and ask questions and try to be humble. I’ve come in, I’m not going to fix everything for anybody, but I’ll happily try and help. But I need to know about what you feel, what you think the issues are, and what you think doesn’t need fixing. What you think is great and really sacred to the sport, what needs to be maintained for the next few years.”

Sometimes, it is not even the head coach who is the prime source of the information needed – a point to which Leaders Performance Advisor Meg Popovic, who previously worked with the Toronto Maple Leafs, makes with reference to equipment staff.

“They’re always connected to the pulse of the players,” she wrote in 2022. “These staff team members know the make, model, year, brand, variability, and functionality of every piece of equipment a player uses or wish to try out. They understand the engineering, while finding delight in the new trends in the market that have the potential to improve performance and evolve the sport. They are applied-historians of the industry and the trusted mechanics whom players rely on to tune up, repair, and remodel themselves as living, breathing, sporting machines.”

They are vital and often put themselves out in long and arduous shifts and, Popovic recommends that coaches demonstrate their appreciation on a regular basis.

“This group wants to be (and should be) acknowledged personally for their long hours and often difficult, unseen efforts,” she continued. “A thank you, a coffee, or helping hand could quickly relieve resentment and amplify the energy flowing in this very important staff group.  Also, as they are of the giving-type, asking equipment staff how they’re doing could go a long way as their innate way of relationship is to be in the service of everyone else’s needs, requests, and demands.”

Such traits can have a profound impact, although they take some work. “Anyone involved in elite sport knows that you can’t get to the elite level without systems,” said Jackson. “I mean building in routines that become habits and then those habits just become natural.”

By Luke Whitworth with additional reporting from John Portch

What is the current state of play in the space of performance analysis? To help us explore this question, we sought to understand some of the current challenges leaders in this space are facing and, similarly, what they feel are some of the untapped opportunities in how performance analysis can continue to be a valuable resource to performance outcomes.

Current challenges

When analysing the responses from the group, as expected there were some commonalities in current challenges.

Collaborating with other disciplines

The most common was the ability to collaborate and work with other disciplines, whether this be with individuals operating within technical, tactical or physical domains. Specific to some of the responses, was the relationship between performance analysis and coaching as well as the under-appreciation of physical data in some regions. Reflections from different sports alluded to the fact that coaches are at different stages in their understanding and utilisation of performance analysis, so it can be challenging to work in an optimal and collaborative way. There was an appreciation that many coaches work in subjective terms, so adding context to objective data and information is important to meet the coaches where they are at. Finally as it pertains to collaborating with other disciplines, a further challenge shared was working to keep all parties happy with what is collected and presented considering resource, timelines and what is needed to be prioritised within the programme.

Clearly defined processes

In evaluating the challenges, there were a number of responses that aligned to processes and ways of working. Clearly defining the role and purpose of the department was one that featured. Secondly, information siloes was another popular response and is likely to be a by-product of the challenge already outlined above. Finding out what is most important in terms of data collection and analysis also featured, suggesting that in some programmes there isn’t perhaps that clarity around the role and purpose of the department in alignment to the overall performance model. As a final thought on this overarching theme, the group suggested that there is a need to have space for strategic thinking to continue to evolve processes and answer questions around the future trends or direction of their respective sports.

Working with the modern day athlete

There was an appreciation that the modern day athlete has some differences in how they operate and obtain information compared to more mature athletes. We come onto some potential solutions for this later on, but it was clear to see that those participating in this particular roundtable are thinking about ways to better connect, educate and present information to their athletes. The key question around this is how and what is having the most impact?

Collation vs analysis

We are in a data tsunami was one of the comments on the call and it’s fair to say that’s a pretty accurate representation of where high performance sport is with performance related data and information. Some of the specific challenges that sit within this bucket included: the split between video analysis and data analysis. Data is more ‘buzzy’ at the moment but video can’t be forgotten as it continues to be a key method of analysis. One participant shared that we are in danger of doing more collating and not enough in-depth analysis. This chimes with the notion of knowing what is important to the programme and then being able to use data in actionable ways to support that.

What are some interventions or best practices to support these challenges?

Collaborating with different disciplines

To ensure the group left the roundtable with some best practice ideas, we had discussions around how some of these challenges were solved or being worked on. A simple suggestion that has had a positive impact was removing the notion of analysts being sat in one office, grouped together and instead integrating them in the same operating spaces as the coaches.

A couple of organisations on the call alluded to how they have renamed departments, one of those being to a Coaching & Analysis department, combining both disciplines. Analysts are an extension of the coaches, but one particular team are encouraging their coaches to become analysts in their own way. There was a consensus that the days of separate departments are gone.

Alignment is something teams have worked at to encourage collaboration between disciplines. Many organisations use a ‘what it takes to win model’ which is the performance backwards approach – something akin to this is a good way of aligning everyone to an end goal. In facilitating this type of model, ensure everyone is given access to others’ information and data. Often, departments can be too protective and it’s damaging to clarity and decision-making. Make the information readily available for all.

Be intentional around the development of non-technical skills with staff. If practitioners are talking and engaging in informal conversations, there will be a better understanding of the problems and questions being asked.

Finally, one environment on the call shared how one of the analysts has developed an interactive report where all disciplines feed into it for the team’s monthly meeting. Disciplines having to input into this report gives ownership and during discussions, it has allowed for more objective viewpoints as opposed to emotional ones that can sometimes arise.

Working with the modern athlete

This process can be influenced before you even interact with the athlete. The group discussed the importance of looking at the recruitment of analysts. It was suggested that individuals that have some experience in a teaching or pedagogical context is advantageous to supporting the interaction with the athletes. We need to look beyond just looking at the technical skillset of being an analyst, but other skills that will help deliver the technical element of the work. The ability to deliver information to people is what separates the good analysts from the best ones.

We will often experience athletes wanting information laid out in black and white, hence the importance of quality non-technical skills. Get to know the players so they feel more comfortable in being challenged. Insights profiling of the players has also seen positive outcomes to better understand learning preferences and styles.

Finally, athletes tend to spend the most time communicating and working with the coaches. Working through the coaches is a simple way to convey and communicate messages. It is also worth bearing in mind that your best players may not have the best physical stats.

Collation vs analysis

To prevent over-collating and under-analysing, it’s important to instil clear processes so that when you are in the height of the season, distraction is reduced. Focus on getting processes well defined in the pre-season so you can almost ‘set and forget’ and work on an automation scale.

If the data we are collating is not informing decisions or aligning to the outcomes of our model, there is no point collating or keeping existing information. It is important to pause and review whether the data is genuinely helping us to make decisions.

Finally, there was an appreciation that there is curiosity around what we don’t know, which is a parallel stream we should be thinking about, but it shouldn’t be the performance analyst’s role to explore this. This is where specialist expertise from data scientists to find the hidden messages and investigate largest data sets is better associated.

Opportunities in the future

Below is some insight from the group around what they see as being opportunities for the practice of performance analysis.

• How do we make our analysis more predictive instead of being ‘objective historians’?
• Have you thought about your domain through a different lens i.e. a coach thinking like an analyst and vice versa? That will help filter the available information and help you to reach the decision point.
• A recalibration from being over-reliant on objective data and a higher level of integration around the human element.
• Moving into a space where we are creating our own data and not having to stick to the traditional ways of data collation.
• Continuing to be innovative and creative in how we work in an interdisciplinary way.
• Balancing the science with the art of coaching and observation.
• Guiding technology rather than being guided by it.
• What do collaborative opportunities with other sports look like around sharing of processes and approaches?
• Learning from other environments, notably the business world and big data technology organisations.
• In some sports, access to data in-game is becoming more readily available which has the ability to influence coaching and in-game decision making. How do we maximise these developments?
• The field of performance analysis continues to grow, meaning there are students and younger practitioners looking for opportunities. How can we facilitate this better or collaborate with institutions delivering education?
• The development of technology allowing for easier insights into big datasets.

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“When a club as big as Racing come to you and say ‘we want you, there is no plan B, you’re our No 1 man’ then it helps persuade you”.

Stuart Lancaster, the new Director of Rugby at Racing 92, agreed to join the Parisian club last September while enjoying his seventh season as Senior Coach at Leinster. It meant a fresh challenge for the man who also coached England at the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Says Lancaster: “For the first time, really, my head was turned a little bit by the opportunity to try something new in a different country, in a different competition, the Top 14, and to try and build something as successful as Leinster but in a completely different context”.

He discusses his move at length in today’s episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser. During the conversation with Henry and John, he also touches upon:

• His efforts to sell change to the existing players and staff at Racing [9:40];
• Why he will need to be more hands-on in year one than he has been at Leinster [19:30];
• His belief in the enduring value of coaching [25:20];
• His relationship with Dallas Cowboys Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn [36:30].

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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

By John Portch, with additional reporting by Luke Whitworth

The Leaders Think Tank is at once a network and a knowledge platform.

It is designed to connect people with responsibility for performance at the highest levels of world sport with each other and the ideas that have served their peers best. The top jobs in elite sport are often lonely places and always comprise unique challenges. The following is a record of the Think Tank meeting that took place on 7 June at Global Life Field in Arlington, Texas. A behind-closed-doors event, the account that follows is a general one and aimed at presenting the lessons learned from the conversation.

Attendees

General Manager, Texas Rangers

Assistant General Manager, Texas Rangers

General Manager, Dallas Mavericks

General Manager, Houston Texans

Chief Executive Officer, San Antonio Spurs

Mental performance can be enhanced

In viewing mental performance as separate from mental health, the group explored the means and ways that cognitive capacity and skill acquisition can be enhanced in athletes. We value our team’s high IQ athletes but what can we do to develop the IQ of those less gifted individuals?

Key points:

• Cognition testing has its place and there is sure to be space for AI in developing accurate profiles of what denotes a high aptitude athlete. There are also likely to be implications for athlete resilience and perseverance. In any case, growth mindsets are preferable.
• Of equal importance is your environment. Skills such as resilience can be taught if you provide a nurturing but challenging space. To that end, teams can do more to understand the roots of their players, from prior performance to habits and personal history.
• Are your scouts asking the right questions? Unified systems, processes and values can provide the necessary criteria on which to base decisions around trades and draft picks.

Holistic athlete development

The consensus was that holistic approaches to player development provide a competitive advantage – if they are implemented effectively. How can teams remove the barriers to effective implementation?

Key points:

• Hire a development coach and have them work with players in your building every day. Their work in non-technical skill development is crucial and can become a key focus of your off-season too.
• Are the departments and working units in your team set up to support programming for your athletes? Collective clarity is essential and that comes from the clear communication of step by step processes and pathways to growth.
• As much as we may seek to create blueprints for athletes it is important to accept that they cannot realistically excel in every facet of their sport. The primary focus should be on enhancing the positives.

Balancing short term and long term aims

Sustained success may be your aim – and that takes careful planning – but what if there is the window of opportunity to win now? Can the short and long term truly be balanced?

Key points:

• Consider a two-year window. It enables future gazing but doesn’t lend itself to irrational decision making. Equally, athletes will come and go, teams will evolve, but if you can anchor yourself to a series of core values then you give yourself the best chance to sustain your successes.
• Involve your head coach in the more strategic elements of your programming. If you can take them out of their day to day, you can give them a flavour of your long-term vision and the means by which you work to realise that vision.
• Don’t push your chips in too quickly. Be fair in your assessment of where you are as a team. A generational talent can just as easily derail as propel you without careful management.

The importance of cultural fit

Bound up with the idea of balancing your short and long term visions is your level of commitment to your organisational values. If there is a superstar talent in your ranks who is a poor cultural fit, what should you do?

Key points:

• Be prepared to walk away. Be wary of anyone misaligned to your culture and values. Be prepared to hold yourself accountable down the line.
• If you take the plunge on a mercurial talent, ask if your decision is warranted. For example, does the individual need you as much as you need them? When all things are considered, they may well flourish in your environment despite being disruptive elsewhere.
• Identify the key storytellers in your organisation and let them influence, educate and inform through the power of stories about your history and values.

Specialist or generalist?

Often, a general manager can feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none. How can the leader best help when they don’t have the wisdom, expertise and vision to understand what the gold standard is in a specific domain?

Key points:

• Empower your employees to make decisions based on their expertise and afford them development opportunities.
• As a leader, you must be prepared to engage people through adroit questioning that cuts to the nub of an issue. In skilled hands, you can lead your team to the right answers.
• Don’t be overly swayed by data. Find a balance of eyes, ears and numbers. With the right alignment the leader can be confident in their decision making.

By John Portch

• Why is change required at your organisation? There must be a solid rationale.

• Have you given your people have sufficient motivation to make the required change?

• As a leader, you must be prepared to role-model the desired change too.

What is ‘change’ in your context?

It’s a simple but important question: “What is ‘change’ in and of itself?” asked Dan McFarland, the Head Coach of Ulster Rugby, when talking to the Leaders Performance Institute in 2022. “Firstly, ‘change’ is someone who says ‘this isn’t working, things are terrible, and we need to change’. But change is also growth. If you’re an organisation that wants to grow, develop and learn – by definition that is ‘change’.

“How you conceptualise change and how you use it is interesting, because if you include the idea that ‘growth is change’ then there’s always a need for change, isn’t there? At least in anything that’s competitive. It is important not to box change as merely something that happens to a failing organisation or somebody who’s in trouble. Then it’s just a degree in change and, I suppose, recognising the degree of change is interesting.”

Tim Davie, the Director-General of the BBC, referred to change as a “narrative around jeopardy” when speaking at the 2021 Leaders Sport Business Summit in London. He said: “That’s a pretentious way of phrasing it but people are naturally resistant in well-established organisations. Sometimes, you really need to really believe there is an issue of jeopardy [but] many people in the organisation say ‘we were OK for 99 years, we’ve done alright.’”

What’s timeless in your organisation? And what’s not?

The BBC was on the cusp of its centenary year when Davie spoke onstage. “My personal view is that, first thing, a successful reform comes from a real understanding of history, strength, respect of tradition, really understanding where an organisation comes from, what its core purposes are. What things are valid that are not attached to technology that are timeless?” he told the audience. Davie makes the distinction between what is “important and timeless” and what is not. “I think some people defend their territory or in their silo saying ‘that is something that’s absolutely sacred’. ‘It isn’t. What’s sacred is this’,” he added.

Is the motivation there?

In 2011, behavioural scientists at University College London developed the COM-B framework for behavioural change. It is a diagnostic tool to assess whether the organisation or individual possess the capability (C), opportunity (O) and motivation (M) to perform the desired behaviour. When you have each, it is often the perfect recipe for change but, as Gareth Bloomfield, a psychologist at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2022, there can be a multitude of things that affect an individual’s motivation. “Do you believe you can do it? Do you believe it’s going to be useful? Most people when they’re given new direction about what they need to do, most people just say ‘that sounds easy, I can do that’ but do they fundamentally believe that it’s going to be useful to the team?” said Bloomfield. “If they don’t understand what the Leader’s vision is, what the leadership team are trying to get to, then maybe there’s a gap there in terms of my motivation because I don’t really understand why it’s going to be useful. Do I fully appreciate the consequences of doing it and not doing it? This becomes an important part of motivation, which is, most of the time, if I’m going about a behaviour that is counter-productive, I’m not necessarily that aware of it because the counter-productive elements of it are long-term.”

The leader must role model change and chart development

McFarland viewed himself as a role model of change at Ulster. “Let’s say you want to create a learning environment,” he said. “You’ve got to model that. If that’s me, I’ve got to be seen to be willing to be wrong and adapt, I’ve also got to be seen to be doing things that are helping my own individual growth, I’ve got to be seen to be celebrating things where people are developing. Then once you’ve modelled those you’ve got to be able to mechanise those. There’s got to be room in the actual programme for doing that kind of stuff. It could be individual development programmes that are up and running and actually have things that you do, there’s got to be time in the schedule for development of certain things or skills, but there’s also got to be time in the programme for sports staff to be able to have personal development. Then, finally, you’ve got to be able to measure that; you’ve got to be able to look at your programme and say ‘have we actually created development? Have we developed as a staff, as a group? Have we developed as players? Have we developed as individuals?’ Modelling, mechanising and measurement are pretty key to that.”