Speakers:

Lorraine Brown, Head of Performance, GB Climbing

Rob Pountney, Chief Operating Officer, Breaking GB

Moderator: 

Edd Vahid, Head of Academy Football Operations, The Premier League

At the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium, we heard from Lorraine and Rob who have been at the forefront of two new sports, and how they preparing for Olympics whilst staying true to the culture of their sports.

• We have had a cultural shift in climbing from participation to performance.
• We have to make sure the pathway is really clear, and look at ways to identify how to add value on a daily basis.
• You have to stay true to your own sport, it is easy to think you have to be like the other sports who have been well established. Keep the roots and culture of the sport whilst making the transition to Olympic sport and the increasing demands it brings.
• What does talent look like? Once we have talent, how do we help them progress? How do we create the experiences to help them fulfil their potential?
• Lots of athletes coming from other sports, migrate to climbing for its culture. How can we still be an outlet for other athletes who want to try something different?
• Breaking is about pushing the individual boundaries of your own creation which makes the training environment very challenging.
• The idea of making sure it is fun has to be top of the pile. We don’t have the fear of change right now, we are trying to find the way the sport should look based on the culture of the sport. We have the freedom to make bold decisions.
• Every day we have to accept the different behaviours from our athletes, they are more independent and have more control over their schedules. Coaches and team managers have to work with the athletes whilst embracing the individuality and creativity of the athletes.
• How do we maintain that cultural element but also raise the standard and expectation and develop the right environments for athletes and coaches to thrive in.

Speakers:

Andrea Furst, Sport Psychologist, England Rugby and Surrey County Cricket Club

Helen Richardson-Walsh, Performance & Culture Coach, Tottenham Hotspur FC

At the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium, we had a peer-to-peer interview between Andrea Furst and Helen Richardson-Walsh, who worked together as psychologist and athlete to win Rio 2016 Olympic Hockey Gold for Great Britain. The pair talked us through how they were able to create a winning team environment and the importance of the role psychology can play in performance.

• Fostering trust between the psychologist and athlete is key. The athlete trusting that they are having a confidential conversation has such a positive impact.
• Allowing the players to sit down and set the culture helped to get player buy-in straight away, and it was credit to the head coach to allow that to be the starting point.
• When your vision is ‘winning’ it can leave you with a very empty feeling or feel very disappointed even if you’re on the podium. There is something more than just winning.
• The biggest thing a head coach can do with regards to culture work is give it time. To have the whole staff and players group involved and integrate it into every day behaviours.
• ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ It is about what can you do on the hockey pitch, but also who can you be off it. To be role models for women in sport, to stand up for what you believe and use your voice for good.

GB Women’s Hockey Vision:

• Be the Difference; Create History; Inspire the Future.
• The vision, values and behaviours make you accountable. The language was everything everyone had bought into and would use regularly. You knew what was expected of yourself and of one another.

Individual mindset: Knowing your ‘A Game’

• It is so important for every individual to understand their performance mindset before they go out to play and take responsibility for this.
• Knowing this allows you to understand how to be consistent.
• This is a skill and it can be learned.
• You then share your A game with the rest of the team, and the team understand you better plus they know how they can help you to stay on your A game. It is for a team work on; and it normalises it.
• If it matters to the head coach, it matters to the athletes. The head coach sets the tone, if they disregard psychology or integrate it, it filters through to the players and makes a huge difference.

A session brought to you by our Partners

Speakers:

Joel Shinofield, Managing Director, Sport Development, USA Swimming

Jatin Patel, Head of Inclusion & Diversity, Rugby Football Union

Moderator:

Shona Crooks, Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Management Futures

We kicked off the second day of the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium with Joel Shinofield and Jatin Patel delving into how they are able to weave Inclusion & Diversity work into the fabric of their organisations.

Inclusion:

• Be inclusive first, and be really intentional with it. You want to foster an environment where people can be themselves and contribute.
• You need to ensure that when you bring in diverse talent, you have to provide them with the support to ensure they thrive.
• If you understand inclusion better, it will make engaging with diverse groups much easier.

What are you doing to make your organisations inclusive?

• Bystander training – how do we get teams to have more effective conversations and have the confidence to speak up? How do you ask better questions of each other?
• You have to invest in it. USA Swimming have a grant programme for clubs to move into new facilities. If you are able to access to the sport in your community, you are much more likely to be involved in the sport.
• Water has been an incredibly divisive tool in American history – pools were off limits to black families, so we have to acknowledge that first and intentionally increase greater access. We have to look at the ways in which we have excluded people to then help us find ways to include them.
• Rugby United – primarily aimed at black and Asian communities. England Rugby first looked at insights from these communities, their engagement, positive and negative experiences and tailor the approach to the specific communities. Ultimately it is about how we bring that cultural awareness into the broader game of rugby.
• Education is key, how to take responsibility of how to be more inclusive.
• On each of our teams there is someone who has DEI training. It is therefore woven into our coach development programmes. You have to make it part of your fabric.
• It is a strategic imperative as well as an outcome and output. ‘Drip drip’ it, don’t just have milestone big events, have it woven into every day and make sure it is pushed on the agenda constantly.
• Cognitive diversity starts with inclusion – how are you welcoming people in with new ways of thinking into your organisation?
  • Weekly department meetings, anyone can put something on the agenda, no matter your role.
  • How we approach specific groups where we know we haven’t done enough with in the past – there is a big gap in female coaching at the moment. Therefore we need a better pathway for young female coaches.
  • Data is crucial to understand how you haven’t served communities in the past so you can change it.
• Talk about it! Make it part of your everyday thoughts and conversations.

By John Portch, with additional reporting by Luke Whitworth and Matthew Stone

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 14 November at Twickenham Stadium in London. A behind-closed-doors event, the account that follows is a general one and aimed at presenting the lessons learned from the conversation.

1. Continuing to evolve as a leader

Some of the participants have held senior roles for more than five years and we keen to ask the others: how they ensure their continued development and while continuing to win both individually and collectively.

Key points:

• Some leaders have the charisma to project their presence and aura around an environment and when their invest themselves in others they can have a positive impact on the collective.
• Emotional regulation is essential, particularly around the big games. Normalise conversations about the pressure that big games bring, use them to renew the focus on your processes.
• Could you even ask athletes, past and present, what they wanted or want from a coach?

2. The next generation athlete

Does the current generation of young athletes love sports? There are several valid reasons why in current high performance systems they may not, but what steps can we take to ensure their continued development and adaptability?

Key points:

• Have you considered your physical environment? If it reinforces a sense of hierarchy or implies that there is a pecking order then younger athletes may be more reticent and your coaching efforts may be ineffective.
• Consider the language you use to encourage learning. Making sure the words and terminology do not dictate.
• Provide young athletes with the space to self-analyse and self-reflect. With skilful questioning, the coach can encourage enthusiasm in an athlete’s development.

3. The art and science of coaching

The perennial question about the art and science of coaching takes on further layers with the development of sports science and data science – where does the balance sit in modern sport?

Key points:

• In some ways there’s no change. Data and science informs and should not constrain. Take curated, quantitative data and tell stories in a qualitative style.
• Do the sports and data scientists on your staff complement your coaching style? Knowledge is one thing, but you must fill positions with the right person helping to build the right mindset.
• Avoid language such as ‘we’ve always done it this way’.

4. Long-term development in a short-term world

You can win and plan to win at the same time but it is not easy to find a balance in a world where results and outcomes are all too often the focus. There are, however, some steps that leaders can take.

Key points:

• Scenario-based training designed to upskill athletes can be useful when there are time constraints, while post-match debriefs are a useful way of planning the training week ahead.
• Can you pit your academy talents against your senior players? The latter will always be the focus ahead of the weekend, but younger prospects can benefit from the intensity.
• Clarity in desired behaviours, a clear philosophy and consistent language all help engender alignment around how you play, how you coach, and how you support athletes.

5. Managing expectations from top to bottom

Knowing what it takes to win is essential but success can create a lot of white noise, particularly for younger athletes who may not fully understand how they were able to scale the summit.  How can you manage expectations at all levels?

Key points:

• It comes back to behaviours. With senior players driving the processes within a playing group, there is room for humility and continued development.
• Psychological safety – safe interpersonal spaces – are useful for enabling athletes to explore their boundaries and risk low-cost failures for further high reward.
• A coach can manage the narrative and take athletes on a journey where a fleeting success is not the destination.

Participants

Sir Andrew Strauss, Chair, England & Wales Cricket Board

Craig McRae, Senior Coach, Collingwood FC

Damien Comolli, President, Toulouse FC

Emma Hayes, Manager, Chelsea Women FC

Jess Thirlby, Head Coach, England Netball

Mike Anthony, Head of High Performance, New Zealand Rugby

Phil Cullen, Senior Director of Basketball Operations & Organizational Development, San Antonio Spurs

Sara Symington, Head of Olympic & Paralympic Programmes, British Cycling

Simon Timson, Performance Director, Manchester City

Stuart Lancaster, Senior Coach, Leinster Rugby

Trent Robinson, Head Coach, Sydney Roosters

Speaker: Craig McRae, Senior Coach, Collingwood FC

Moderator: Roger Kneebone, Director of Surgical Education, Imperial College London

The third session of the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium saw Roger pick Craig’s brain around his approach to coaching, how he works with his athletes, and the importance of coach wellbeing.

• Sport is often about survival, and you move from survival mode to living mode, then back to survival mode towards the end of your career.
• We often learn winning behaviours through losing. There is a formula to losing just as there is a formula to winning.
• When you experience something, you then build a level of comfort. So the more you can experience an environment the more you are comfortable in the pressure. Life is about experiences and putting yourself in positions to learn and grow.
• “I don’t actually like the term ‘mastery’ as it alludes to being full and I feel far from full. I’m always learning and wanting to grow,” explained McRae. “I never want to put a ceiling onto what I want to achieve, I learn things from different opportunities, and life takes you in different directions.”
• Craig explained the importance of planting seeds for future careers whilst he was still competing. When it came time to retire, it was then obvious where his passions lay and because of this preparation, it was obvious to him that it was in coaching.
• How do you go from being a master in playing to transitioning to being more of a novice in coaching?

“Having a mentor is key. I would video every session, so I could watch it back and reflect, and constantly look to get better. As coaches we review the game a lot but we very rarely review ourselves and the processes behind the programme.”

• Handling pressure is about the ability to be just present and be at ease with the moment. The inexperienced vs the experienced player is all about managing the moment. Execute and repeat the behaviour so that when you are under pressure, you don’t actually have to think about it, muscle memory takes over and you are able to execute.
• Our ability to stay in the moment and execute the next moment is critical. It’s like a windscreen wiper, you will make mistakes in games and then you have to be present to execute the next moment, wash away the mistakes and fix it for the next one.
• “We have a winners’ mentality – on a Monday morning you won’t know whether we have won or lost, we repeat the same processes over and over and stick to these, not changing things because we have won or lost. If you repeat those behaviours long enough they will be there when you need them.”
• “I don’t like players lying down at the end of the game, you have to do the same processes and go again. We lost but we’re not losers, we get up shake their hands, and get ready for the next game.”
• There are two kinds of pressure to consider: the impact of a mistake, and the impact that the mistake can have on you.
• You can be a winner even if you lose. You can learn from the experience and improve. It is perilously easy to lose that sense of who you are, and having a mentor and the support you need is crucially important.
• McRae highlighted that it’s so important to play in a grateful state. It’s so important to keep that fun element of play and gratitude towards performing.

Speakers:

James King, Author of Accelerating Excellence: The Principles that Drive Elite Performance

Greg Newman, Chief Executive, ONYX Capital Group

For this session at the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Twickenham Stadium, we heard from James King about his lessons from the world of trading and how they apply to high performance.

Ambition, talent and effort dictate success in every field. Performance is never a coincidence, and it always aligns with a specific set of principles.

There are four mechanisms, each of which contain principles to help our rate of progress. No one can predict success, but if you align yourself with more of these principles you stack the odds in your favour.

1. Perform from your sweet spot. To excel you need to pursue goals that align with your strengths, interests and values.

Three questions you have to ask yourself:

1. What are your strengths?
2. What are your interests?
3. What are your values?

We need move away from ‘you can be anything you want to be’, towards, ‘you can be more of who you really are’.

2. Acquiring Skill. Instead of the time spent training, it’s the time spent training under specific conditions:

1. Focus on the foundations
2. Learning by doing
3. It’s on you
4. You need challenge to change
5. Training must be specific
6. Create uncertainty
7. Variability

3. Emotional Control. To perform when it counts is the measure of elite performance. Luckily this is a skill, and like any skill with the right training you can optimise it.

4. Innovate to stay ahead of the rest. Danger is becoming a one-hit-wonder, how do you keep improving?

James then welcomed Greg Newman on stage to discuss how he was able to utilise these principles in practice.

• Negative feedback is crucial, and you have to be told when you need to do something better.
• This culture is described as Radical Transparency. Within this, accountability is huge. Everything is being said to make you and therefore the team better.
• It’s not ego, you have to have belief. It takes the ego to believe, but it takes deep humility to understand that everything is about learning.
• We have a formulaic approach to goal-setting, being objective about the obstacles you are going to face and how you are going to overcome them.
• North Star approach – you have to set a North Star and have it seemingly unachievable. Every time someone has a break through, it shifts the expectations of everyone else. The perception of potential then shifts.

By Sarah Evans

After a brilliant first day of insights and learning at Twickenham Stadium, we were very excited to get Day 2 of our Sport Performance Summit underway. The agenda included sessions from Andrea Furst, Sport Psychologist at England Rugby, Rob Pountney, Chief Operating Officer at Breaking GB, and Kay Cossington, Head of Women’s Technical at the FA to name just a few.

Session 1: From Grassroots to Elite: Inclusion at Every Stage brought to you by Science in Sport  

Speakers:

Joel Shinofield, Managing Director, Sport Development, USA Swimming

Jatin Patel, Head of Inclusion & Diversity, Rugby Football Union

Moderator:

Shona Crooks, Head of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Management Futures

We kicked off Day 2 with an extremely insightful session where Joel Shinofield and Jatin Patel delved deeper into how they are able to weave Inclusion and Diversity work into the fabric of their organisations.

Inclusion:

• Be inclusive first, and be really intentional with it. You want to foster an environment where people can be themselves and contribute.
• You need to ensure that when you bring in diverse talent, you have to provide them with the support to ensure they thrive.
• If you understand inclusion better, it will make engaging with diverse groups much easier.

What are you doing to make your organisations inclusive?

• Bystander training – how do we get teams to have more effective conversations and have the confidence to speak up? How do you ask better questions of each other?
• You have to invest in it. USA Swimming have a grant programme for clubs to move into new facilities. If you are able to access to the sport in your community, you are much more likely to be involved in the sport.
• Water has been an incredibly divisive tool in American history – pools were off limits to black families, so we have to acknowledge that first and intentionally increase greater access. We have to look at the ways in which we have excluded people to then help us find ways to include them.
• Rugby United – primarily aimed at black and Asian communities. England Rugby first looked at insights from these communities, their engagement, positive and negative experiences and tailor the approach to the specific communities. Ultimately it is about how we bring that cultural awareness into the broader game of rugby.
• Education is key, how to take responsibility of how to be more inclusive.
• On each of our teams there is someone who has DEI training. It is therefore woven into our coach development programmes. You have to make it part of your fabric.
• It is a strategic imperative as well as an outcome and output. ‘Drip drip’ it, don’t just have milestone big events, have it woven into every day and make sure it is pushed on the agenda constantly.
• Cognitive diversity starts with inclusion – how are you welcoming people in with new ways of thinking into your organisation?
  • Weekly department meetings, anyone can put something on the agenda, no matter your role.
  • How we approach specific groups where we know we haven’t done enough with in the past – there is a big gap in female coaching at the moment. Therefore we need a better pathway for young female coaches.
  • Data is crucial to understand how you haven’t served communities in the past so you can change it.
• Talk about it! Make it part of your everyday thoughts and conversations.

Session 2: Psychology and Purpose: Creating a Thriving Team Environment

Speakers:

Andrea Furst, Sport Psychologist, England Rugby and Surrey County Cricket Club

Helen Richardson-Walsh, Performance & Culture Coach, Tottenham Hotspur FC

For session two, we had a peer to peer interview between Andrea Furst and Helen Richardson-Walsh, who worked together as psychologist and athlete to win Rio 2016 Olympic Hockey Gold for Great Britain. The pair talked us through how they were able to create a winning team environment and the importance of the role psychology can play in performance.

• Fostering trust between the psychologist and athlete is key. The athlete trusting that they are having a confidential conversation has such a positive impact.
• Allowing the players to sit down and set the culture helped to get player buy-in straight away, and it was credit to the head coach to allow that to be the starting point.
• When your vision is ‘winning’ it can leave you with a very empty feeling or feel very disappointed even if you’re on the podium. There is something more than just winning.
• The biggest thing a head coach can do with regards to culture work is give it time. To have the whole staff and players group involved and integrate it into every day behaviours.
• ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ It is about what can you do on the hockey pitch, but also who can you be off it. To be role models for women in sport, to stand up for what you believe and use your voice for good.

GB Women’s Hockey Vision:

• Be the Difference; Create History; Inspire the Future.
• The vision, values and behaviours make you accountable. The language was everything everyone had bought into and would use regularly. You knew what was expected of yourself and of one another.

Individual mindset: Knowing your ‘A Game’

• It is so important for every individual to understand their performance mindset before they go out to play and take responsibility for this.
• Knowing this allows you to understand how to be consistent.
• This is a skill and it can be learned.
• You then share your A game with the rest of the team, and the team understand you better plus they know how they can help you to stay on your A game. It is for a team work on; and it normalises it.
• If it matters to the head coach, it matters to the athletes. The head coach sets the tone, if they disregard psychology or integrate it, it filters through to the players and makes a huge difference.

Session 3: When Sport Meets Culture: Lessons from the New Sports

Speakers:

Lorraine Brown, Head of Performance, GB Climbing

Rob Pountney, Chief Operating Officer, Breaking GB

Moderator: 

Edd Vahid, Head of Academy Football Operations, The Premier League

The final session before the lunch break, we heard from Lorraine and Rob who have been at the forefront of two new sports, and how they preparing for Olympics whilst staying true to the culture of their sports.

• We have had a cultural shift in climbing from participation to performance.
• We have to make sure the pathway is really clear, and look at ways to identify how to add value on a daily basis.
• You have to stay true to your own sport, it is easy to think you have to be like the other sports who have been well established. Keep the roots and culture of the sport whilst making the transition to Olympic sport and the increasing demands it brings.
• What does talent look like? Once we have talent, how do we help them progress? How do we create the experiences to help them fulfil their potential?
• Lots of athletes coming from other sports, migrate to climbing for its culture. How can we still be an outlet for other athletes who want to try something different?
• Breaking is about pushing the individual boundaries of your own creation which makes the training environment very challenging.
• The idea of making sure it is fun has to be top of the pile. We don’t have the fear of change right now, we are trying to find the way the sport should look based on the culture of the sport. We have the freedom to make bold decisions.
• Every day we have to accept the different behaviours from our athletes, they are more independent and have more control over their schedules. Coaches and team managers have to work with the athletes whilst embracing the individuality and creativity of the athletes.
• How do we maintain that cultural element but also raise the standard and expectation and develop the right environments for athletes and coaches to thrive in.

Session 4: Culture and Collaboration: Learning Through an Interdisciplinary System

Speaker: Carl Gombrich, Academic Lead & Head of Teaching & Learning, London Interdisciplinary School

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

In this session we heard from Carl about why interdisciplinary education is so important, rethinking expertise, and finally Interactional expertise.

Interdisciplinarity:

• Combining knowledge in new and useful ways.
• An explosion in the combinatorial space of ideas.
• Yet we don’t have the educational processes to support this. We often are taught in a very rigid, traditional way.
• It is a battle against specialisation.

• UCL Founded the first BASc (Bachelor of Arts And Science). This equipped the students with a very wide skillset, prepared for innovation in the workplace and a burning curiosity to understand all processes and independent thinking. Have unique combinations of knowledge.

• You are an expert because of your interdisciplinarity, not in spite of it.
• Sport is highly specialised, but the environments do change. Unless you are constantly drawing on new knowledge you won’t be able to adapt and grow.
• The value in going broad when you’re young.

Interactional Expertise:

• The ability to :
  • Ask penetrating questions
  • Play devil’s advocate or just advocate
• Translate accurately from one expert to another
• Sell
• Negotiate in unfamiliar areas
• Make jokes

Relationship to Interdisciplinarity:

• Perspective taking
• Translating between sectors
• Brokering
• Empathy
• Team Leading
• Creative approaches

Session 5: Case Study: England Lionesses

Speaker: Kay Cossington, Head of Women’s Technical, The FA

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

The final session of the day was one not to miss. We heard from Kay Cossington who took us through what it took to win European Gold.

Where the journey began:

• Huge investment of finances and people into women’s football. However, they grew so big so soon with little direction on where to go and how to get there.
• To get people to understand that the women’s and men’s game are different was the first big step over a major hurdle.
• Created Women’s Technical Division of the FA.
• Implemented the first Women’s technical strategy and became a blueprint for success within the women’s development teams.

Building their own Identity:

• ‘Find A Way’
• Courage
• Grounded

• However, they found that they then began working in silos. Very quickly they recognised that they had to collaborate and used the phrase ‘football first’.
• Had a curiosity of what made the best in class, and how they were able to close the gap.
• Final piece of the puzzle was to appoint the right leadership.

New Women’s Strategy:

1. Identify the Purpose: Inspire positive change
2. Performance Requirements: Elements required for success
3. Identify the gaps: England in relation to other nations
4. Performance Plan: Football first initiative
5. Understand & Deliver: All staff are aligned

• Be Different
• Take Risks
• Be Brave

“Play for the little girl inside of you who dreamt of being here one day” – Sarina Wiegman’s team talk ahead of the European Final.

By Sarah Evans

We were delighted to be back at Twickenham Stadium for our Sport Performance Summit for two days of insights, learning and connecting. Day one saw us hear from Britain’s fastest woman, Dina Asher-Smith, Head Coach at Collingwood FC, Craig McRae, and the Director of Football at the Premier League, Neil Saunders, to name just a few.

Session 1: The Lessons I Learned: Rebuilding After Setbacks, brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser  

Speaker: Dina Asher-Smith, Team GB Olympian

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

To kick off the two days of insights, we had the incredible Dina Asher-Smith talking us through her journey as an athlete and how she overcame some of the setbacks she faced along the way.

• “When you run really fast, it’s then expected you can do that all the time” – Dina had to find a way to run fast that was sustainable, and not having to then take time off after each really fast time.
• Her biggest challenge was getting a support team in place, and how efficiently that team worked. Especially managing this team as a young athlete, and how to effectively communicate with them and get the best out of everyone in the team was a huge challenge. People management is becoming a key skill for the modern athlete.
• Coming back from the disappointment of the Tokyo Olympics, Dina explained she only felt like herself after the 200m at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon. “I didn’t feel in touch with my normal aggressive self until almost a year after the Olympics.”
• Covid postponing the Olympics actually helped Dina. She explained she was able to optimise and make things better with the year delay. Having the time to rest, reset and build again was needed.
• Her Olympic semi-final post-race interview was very emotional. Dina highlighted that she had an injury going into the games and nearly pulled out. She was even in a wheelchair only four weeks before the games started. She had only been in spikes for seven days pre-Olympics and still nearly made an Olympic final.
• Dina explained that, “Tokyo shaped me so much”. She has been a big supporter of sports psychology. “I think at the elite level it is 80% mental. It comes down to mental resilience, mental toughness in that moment and who wants it more.”
• “The Oregon World Championships 2022 is my proudest achievement in terms of hard work. Psychologically I had never had to overcome so much to just be myself on that start line. Getting over the disappointment of Tokyo, plus enduring such a traumatic time as a family with my grandma being so ill, I had a disconnect between being physically fit and your emotional state. I’m an emotional runner and it takes a lot out of you. I was scared that if I ultimately let go of all my emotions, I would cry and I didn’t want to do that again. But actually, unless I broke down the emotions, understand them and go into my feelings, I would have broken down and not been successful.”
• You have to use these experiences to make you stronger, to grow and move on. “I have a new appreciation for the psychological power of sprinting.”
• Visibility is important for female sportswomen. It is important to be seen in certain spaces to help drive change.
• “I don’t think about legacy. I just think about ‘without limits’ on track and off track. I remember hearing ‘can’t’ all the time, but I think ‘why not?’ I see myself as someone who can open door for other people. I need to make sure I am not the last sports women to walk into certain rooms.”

Session 2: Accelerating Excellence: Elite Performance in the World of Trading

Speakers:

James King, Author of Accelerating Excellence: The Principles that Drive Elite Performance

Greg Newman, Chief Executive, ONYX Capital Group

For the second session of the day we heard from James King about his lessons from the world of trading and how they apply to high performance.

Ambition, talent and effort dictate success in every field. Performance is never a coincidence, and it always aligns with a specific set of principles.

There are four mechanisms, each of which contain principles to help our rate of progress. No one can predict success, but if you align yourself with more of these principles you stack the odds in your favour.

1. Perform from your sweet spot. To excel you need to pursue goals that align with your strengths, interests and values.

Three questions you have to ask yourself:

1. What are your strengths?
2. What are your interests?
3. What are your values?

We need move away from ‘you can be anything you want to be’, towards, ‘you can be more of who you really are’.

2. Acquiring Skill. Instead of the time spent training, it’s the time spent training under specific conditions:

1. Focus on the foundations
2. Learning by doing
3. It’s on you
4. You need challenge to change
5. Training must be specific
6. Create uncertainty
7. Variability

3. Emotional Control. To perform when it counts is the measure of elite performance. Luckily this is a skill, and like any skill with the right training you can optimise it.

4. Innovate to stay ahead of the rest. Danger is becoming a one-hit-wonder, how do you keep improving?

James then welcomed Greg Newman on stage to discuss how he was able to utilise these principles in practice.

• Negative feedback is crucial, and you have to be told when you need to do something better.
• This culture is described as Radical Transparency. Within this, accountability is huge. Everything is being said to make you and therefore the team better.
• It’s not ego, you have to have belief. It takes the ego to believe, but it takes deep humility to understand that everything is about learning.
• We have a formulaic approach to goal-setting, being objective about the obstacles you are going to face and how you are going to overcome them.
• North Star approach – you have to set a North Star and have it seemingly unachievable. Every time someone has a break through, it shifts the expectations of everyone else. The perception of potential then shifts.

Session 3: Coaching Conversation: Coaching Mastery & Creating Environments for Talent to Flourish

Speaker: Craig McRae, Senior Coach, Collingwood FC

Moderator: Roger Kneebone, Director of Surgical Education, Imperial College London

The third session saw Roger pick Craig’s brain around his approach to coaching, how he works with his athletes, and the importance of coach wellbeing.

• Sport is often about survival, and you move from survival mode to living mode, then back to survival mode towards the end of your career.
• We often learn winning behaviours through losing. There is a formula to losing just as there is a formula to winning.
• When you experience something, you then build a level of comfort. So the more you can experience an environment the more you are comfortable in the pressure. Life is about experiences and putting yourself in positions to learn and grow.
• “I don’t actually like the term ‘mastery’ as it alludes to being full and I feel far from full. I’m always learning and wanting to grow,” explained McRae. “I never want to put a ceiling onto what I want to achieve, I learn things from different opportunities, and life takes you in different directions.”
• Craig explained the importance of planting seeds for future careers whilst he was still competing. When it came time to retire, it was then obvious where his passions lay and because of this preparation, it was obvious to him that it was in coaching.
• How do you go from being a master in playing to transitioning to being more of a novice in coaching?

“Having a mentor is key. I would video every session, so I could watch it back and reflect, and constantly look to get better. As coaches we review the game a lot but we very rarely review ourselves and the processes behind the programme.”

• Handling pressure is about the ability to be just present and be at ease with the moment. The inexperienced vs the experienced player is all about managing the moment. Execute and repeat the behaviour so that when you are under pressure, you don’t actually have to think about it, muscle memory takes over and you are able to execute.
• Our ability to stay in the moment and execute the next moment is critical. It’s like a windscreen wiper, you will make mistakes in games and then you have to be present to execute the next moment, wash away the mistakes and fix it for the next one.
• “We have a winners’ mentality – on a Monday morning you won’t know whether we have won or lost, we repeat the same processes over and over and stick to these, not changing things because we have won or lost. If you repeat those behaviours long enough they will be there when you need them.”
• “I don’t like players lying down at the end of the game, you have to do the same processes and go again. We lost but we’re not losers, we get up shake their hands, and get ready for the next game.”
• There are two kinds of pressure to consider: the impact of a mistake, and the impact that the mistake can have on you.
• You can be a winner even if you lose. You can learn from the experience and improve. It is perilously easy to lose that sense of who you are, and having a mentor and the support you need is crucially important.
• McRae highlighted that it’s so important to play in a grateful state. It’s so important to keep that fun element of play and gratitude towards performing.

Session 4: Case Study: The Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan brought to you by VEO

Speaker: Neil Saunders, Director of Football, Premier League

After the lunch break, Neil Saunders took us through the Premier League’s Elite Performance Plan, it’s successes and how the Premier League will carry this into the plan’s second reiteration to further develop the pipeline of talented players in English football.

10 years of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP):

• The Best Football – How the Premier League drives success. Our virtuous circle:

• The Best Football
• Drives interest
• Generates value
• Revenue distributed responsibly

• The best football needs the best players, coaches and match officials.

• EPPP Elite Player Performance Plan
• ECP Elite Coaching Plan
• ERDP Elite Refereeing Development Plan

• Different managers bring about cognitive diversity within the Premier League and helping to drive the game forwards. What makes our league so successful is it’s diversity. We want to attract managers and players from across the world but also focus on our home grown talent.
• The EPPP was launched with the aim to develop more and better home grown players. Increasing the quality, improving the pathway and changing the narrative.

Elite Player Performance Plan:

Vision: To produce more and better home grown players

Mission: The development of a world-leading academy system

Focus areas:

• Players
• Staff
• Environment

Critical Success Factors (Goals)

• Increase number and quality of home grown players.
• Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance.
• Create more time for players to play and be coached.
• Positively influence strategic investment into the Academy System.
• Improve coaching provision.
• Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development.

The perception before the EPPP was that we didn’t have any high quality youth players. There was a milestone moment of age group teams winning major competitions, and at these three tournaments our players won player of the tournament across the board. The narrative had shifted from we are lacking talent, to we have some of the best talent in the world. These players are now playing en mass in the Premier League and thriving in that environment.

What has the EPPP achieved?

• Number & quality of players – young English players ranked first in market value, number of minutes in UEFA competitions, and independent assessments of player quality.
• More time to play and be coached – a 52% increase in the number of coaching hours.
• Coaching provision – 3x increase in the number of full-time coaches.
• Gains in all aspect of development – 55k fitness tests delivered over the PL and Category 1 clubs.
• Strategic investment – 1.94bn of central and club investment into the academy system across the pyramid.
• Measurement and quality assurance – a new professional game-owned audit and assessment established.
• Acknowledging that what the world looked like 10 years ago is very different to today, so we are always looking to develop our plan.

The Strategy for the Academy System:

• Creating an unrivalled development environment.
• Supporting young people who are aspiring footballers to maximise their potential on and off the pitch.
• Developing this through elite player development and personal growth.

We care most about:

• More and better players
• A life-enriching experience
• The health of our game

Our building blocks:

• Talent ID
• Player Pathway
• Duty of Care
• Workforce Development
• Government & Quality Assurance
• Innovation & Insights

Reflections:

• It takes years to become an overnight success.
• Celebrate achievements to demonstrate progress.
• People Development – the ripple effect.
• Diversity & Inclusion as a competitive advantage.
• Beat the Sigmoid Curve – how do you go again?
• Stay resilient and focus on the end goal.

Session 5: Athlete Meets Actor: Practice, Performance & Cross Industry Learnings

Speakers:

Montell Douglas, Athlete, Team GB

Dom Simpson, Actor, The Book of Mormon

Moderator: Jeanette Kwakye

To round the day off, we had a fascinating discussion between Montell and Dom where they delved into the challenges of having to adapt to ever changing environments, consistency within high performance and over coming setbacks.

• Dom explained that “Yes, you are an actor, but your job is an auditioner, you are always looking for the next job”. At times it can feel like knock back after knock back. You have to have self-belief and self-determination and also a love for it.
• You have to learn from your setbacks. No matter how much you prepare, sometimes there are the uncontrollable factors. You are not defined for that one performance. You can always learn, set new goals and go again, whatever that now looks like.
• Determination and desire to always do my best and give my all put me in good stead for what was to come. Be the best you can be, don’t settle for mediocracy. All you can do is focus on you, explained Dom.
• Because of the strain of performing eight shows in six days, there is a high physical strain (1300 calories burnt per show) you have to take ownership of your prep/recovery otherwise you wouldn’t be able to sustain it. Self-awareness of what your body/mind needs is therefore crucial.
• Montell – a history-maker going from Summer to Winter Olympics. There is transferability of skills from athletics to bobsleigh, yes, but there are also so many huge differences. Going from an individual sport where you are completely in control of your performance to a team sport, where you are depending on one another. There are completely different physical demands from the different sports, mentally being on tour for five or six months of the year in freezing conditions, contrasting from the heat of the Beijing Olympics, and to be able to perform in those differing environments is a big challenge.
• Another huge challenge with bobsleigh was balancing having to have a job whilst competing to help fund yourself and still to perform at the highest level. Understanding how to best prepare yourself, for Montell this meant reducing the volume but keeping it at the highest quality.
• Adaptability is key. It is a daily challenge. Dom explained how as an understudy it was difficult to balance how to stay in physical shape whilst not needed for the show vs getting called up mid-show and being prepared to go in that moment, physically and mentally. This was a huge learning curve.
• It is about consistency. What’s important now? Montell explained her acronym, W.I.N – this is all I can do today – this is still going to have an impact to my performance, if that’s only 40% of your best available today then that is the best you can do today so that can still be banked. That 40% is your 100% that day. Managing your own expectations around your training and performance and what is best for you in the long run.
• Breaking it down to manageable chunks, the song, the scene, the act, the show, the week etc, and not focusing on the end goal is critical for this consistency, Dom highlighted. We are doing the right thing if we’re looking at the processes, and breaking them down.
• Having mental resilience around setbacks is key. Yes at the time it feels like the biggest thing in the world, but you have to step back, say we can’t change it, so how can we learn from that? How can I better myself next time, in the knowledge I have done everything I can to get the best out of that situation?

By Sarah Evans

• A hero must write their own story

• We transform through making mistakes

• It is about the team, not about you

A hero must be active not reactive

“We all subconsciously believe that the world happens to us rather than we shape our world”, Meg LeFauve, co-writer of Pixar’s Inside Out, explained at our Sport Performance Summit in LA back in 2016. She built on this to say that the hero must write their own story. Heroes that we truly connect with, LeFauve stated, “have to want something deeply, they have to have a spark of something – determination, courage or grit which drives them on.” However, she also explained that they always have a flaw and a mask. The flaw is not always a negative, but actually through the story the hero comes to understand their flaw and transforms it into a strength. We all have multiple sides to our identities and our mask is what we present to the world, however, underneath that is our vulnerability, and through storytelling we can uncover this mask and be comfortable with our vulnerabilities.

Obstacles are a way of cracking open a belief system

LeFauve highlighted that as children we all create our own belief systems about how we think the world works and who we think we are within that world. These belief systems are designed to keep us safe. However, “often the very belief system that saves you as a child, will kill you as an adult”. LeFauve added that we often out grow these belief systems or they no longer service us. This is where obstacles come in. “We use obstacles to crack open a belief system” LeFauve said, and explained that they’re used to check-in where you are, what you know or don’t know and what you are good at or not good at. “We transform by making mistakes and by failing”. The brain learns and changes by experience and that is why it is so important to be open to failing. As LeFauve said so eloquently, “failure is the tool of transformation.”

You have to become comfortable with vulnerability if you want deep change

Within storytelling, LeFauve explained that “the antagonist is someone who helps the protagonist to transform.” Within sport, this could manifest as an injury, a setback or a coach challenging the athlete, to help them overcome obstacles and “push through the vulnerability to get through it and grow,” she said. It often occurs when the hero is at their lowest point, stripped back, and it is a death moment. “If you want deep change, there has to be a death moment, it is the death of their old belief, their old self, who they thought they were,” she continued. It is all about thinking that this experience is here for a reason, and understanding what it is helping you to learn. LeFauve talks about shifting the context to you being at the centre, you are choosing to be here and to turn up every day. Any day you can choose not to be here, so what are you here for?

Create an environment where there is no judgement when you fail

LeFauve explained that within storytelling, there is no judgement when they give negative feedback or mistakes are made, they always think “what did that give us? What did you discover in doing that?” This then takes the judgement out and most importantly the pressure of identity out of it. It is not a reflection on your intelligence or creativity, it is not about you. “It is about the movie and giving to the process because everyone is invested in the movie” she said. This is so important within high performance sport too, and ultimately you want everyone to be fighting for the team, not for themselves. It is about the team, not about you as an individual, and everyone doing their best for the team will inevitably be the best route towards success.

The Big Interview brought to you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

The Leaders Performance Institute asks Joe Montemurro how coaching in both the English and the Italian languages has influenced the way he thinks about football.

“It hasn’t changed my ideas and the way I think about the game, it’s probably more how I deliver the message,” says the Head Coach of Juventus Women.

Montemurro has more than two decades of coaching experience under his belt, including successful spells at Melbourne City in his native Australia and at Arsenal Women in the English Women’s Super League.

Then, in the summer of 2021, he jumped at the chance to take the reins at Juventus Women in Turin, Italy. It offered Montemurro a return to his family’s homeland, a place where he has deep roots and a strong affinity.

“It was just the right job at the right time, I felt, with family here, my ability to culturally understand the day to day aspects of living in Italy, which was important. And like I’m an Arsenal fan I’m a Juventus fan too, so it’s another string to the bow.”

Learning the landscape

How has going from Arsenal to Juventus changed how Montemurro coaches? “I’ve coached in English and Italian since my arrival, probably some days more in Italian. It’s finding that happy balance,” he says. “So while my ideas haven’t really changed there’s a lot more design, even in my training session structure, as it might get lost in translation so it’s better that I show it on the park. It’s probably even made me better as a coach because I’ve been a lot more detailed and a lot more thorough in terms of organising the sessions so that everyone understands them and feels they can be part of it. I can adapt if I see something is not working. It’s obviously harder with the communication scenario but it’s probably made me grow as I’ve been more detailed in making sure we’ve got all the options covered.”

Bringing clarity to his communication has been Montemurro’s most obvious coaching challenge, particularly given the high level of existing understanding amongst his largely Italian playing group. “Their base education is quite astonishing,” he says, “and there seems to be a lot more focus on structure, on tactics, and ideas of the team.”

He explains that there are cultural contrasts too, such as in the ways that Italian players express their passion compared with their Australian or English counterparts. But, as he says: “In the end, the leader has to be clever in ensuring the messages are clear and translated in a balanced and sincere way.”

There are also differences in the work culture. “The culture is very hierarchical. There’s the head coach and the assistant coach and you sort of have to go through a process to get to me, which hasn’t sat well with me – I open the door to my office so you can come in all the time – they’re very hierarchical and respectful, which I think comes from the typical Italian family setup.

“The other thing that’s quite interesting is that I am one for saying if you’ve finished your job you should go home and get out of here because obviously football isn’t a nine to five job. But a lot of them would stay to simply show me that they’re here and I’ve tried to change that.”

Montemurro is also honing his ability to manage upwards. “I wanted to learn the political landscape of football in Italy and that of Juventus. I need to know who the people are who will get things done. It’s understanding the mechanisms of the way it works politically,” he says. “But I haven’t changed my style or ideas, it’s just having that understanding of where things fit in, and where things are, and understanding historically where we’ve come from so we don’t make those mistakes again or so we can use those things for the betterment of the group.”

Instilling belief

Juventus Women was founded in 2017 and has won Serie A in each of its five season’s competing in Italy’s top tier, including an unbeaten campaign last season. The next step is maintaining that dominance at home as the teams around Juve strengthen as well as competing and making further inroads in the Uefa Women’s Champions League.

The club’s Sporting Director, Stefano Braghin, saw Montemurro, whom he met when Juventus played a practice match with Arsenal during their WSL title-winning 2018-19 season, as a missing piece of the jigsaw.

“It’s a different project here” says Montemurro, who spent four years at Arsenal. “Juventus is a project of growth in Europe, but it’s also a project of growth in Italy. Yeah, the club still wants to maintain that level in Serie A, but now it needs to be doing what it needs to do in Europe.”

He also wants to play a role in the growth of Italian women’s football, the top tier of which is fully professional for the first time during this 2022-23 season. “I want to create something that a lot of clubs can use as a template to say ‘this is how we will grow and get better so the game grows’.”

Last term, Montemurro’s team dominated at home and emerged from a tough group in the Champions League that contained English champions Chelsea and German side Wolfsburg, both of whom would go on to claim their respective domestic titles last season. Juventus drew at home to the Germans and claimed a famous victory in Wolfsburg. They also held Chelsea to a goalless draw in London, another eye-catching result that would help to secure their route to the quarter-finals.

Eventual champions Lyon would eliminate Juve over two legs but it was a creditable campaign, especially given that Juve shook off an early defeat to Chelsea in Turin to progress from the group.

At the outset, however, Montemurro noticed an inferiority complex in his players. It may have been born from the collective memory of heavy defeats in the past. “My players just felt inferior,” he says. “It was just ‘we’re not good enough, we’re inferior, we’re just not to that level’. Slowly it was just about helping them to believe. I would say, ‘you are at that level, you can do the same. There will be games that you lose and games where you win, that’s just how it is, but the reality is that we did it on the park’.

“We did it every day on the park and what I would do is, in the introduction of the way we wanted to play, the things we wanted to do, I would just show them, ‘you’ve done it. You’ve played out from the back. We’ve created these goal-scoring opportunities’ and it reignited the idea that ‘you are Juventus, most of you are playing for your national team, why are you so scared of Chelsea or Wolfsburg? They are in the same position as you’. I made them believe, ‘hey, we’re going to go out there, we’re going to play our style of football; the style’s going to be important for gauging where we’re at and you’ll see that you can be competitive with the likes of Lyon, Wolfsburg and Chelsea’.”

It remains a work in progress but he can see the difference, even in training. “In pre-season, just to give you a simple example, just doing rondos. When I got here last year that ball’s going out and people couldn’t even put two passes together; a simple 5 v 2 or 4 v 2 in a square. Now it’s second nature like they’re drinking a coffee. They’ve seen it themselves, they’ve seen the improvement, technically, tactically, but also mindset and believe going into these games.

“The good thing about it is that Serie A this year will be very competitive. Inter have invested, Roma have invested, Milan have invested, they’ve all brought in some big players. So we’re going to be up against it.” It is going to make Juve’s life harder at home but, as he admits, it will also force Montemurro and his players to ensure they are good enough to stay ahead of the pack. “It has to go that way.”

Balancing challenge and support

Montemurro explains that the strong links between Juventus’ academy and its first team have smoothed the transition of his younger players into their first-team environment. There are, however, steps he can take as Head Coach to ease that process even further.

“The first thing to do is to give them the opportunity to make mistakes,” he says. “So it’s OK that you made a mistake, you can make errors. That’s fine. They shouldn’t feel overawed. So get them to find a level of comfort to be who they are, that’s the first thing.

“The second thing is that it takes a bit of time to get used to the high tempo rhythm. The rhythm and intensity is just a little bit higher and that’s when they start to shine. Once they get used to the tempo and the rhythm of the way we do things, then usually they can relax and start to play. So one of the first things I told them is that it’s going to take time to get used to the tempo and you can make mistakes.

“The third thing is then getting used to the attention to detail, whether they’re in the gym or on the park because maybe in youth or academy level they were able to get away with things, the attention to detail is very important whether you’re doing a squat in the gym or you need to receive the ball so that the next pass is quick. That attention to detail is difficult and the problem is they focus so much on the detail that they probably make more errors because they’re not up to the tempo. It works hand in hand. You’ve got to assess it in a realistic time frame. If you expect young kids to come in and kill it straight away it doesn’t work like that. It’s about understanding where they’re at. It’s an exciting time for young players because there’s a lot happening and there’s a lot of talented players out there.”

How does he get to the bottom of what makes them tick? “That’s the job of the leader and coach, to find out what triggers them – what are the words or the phrases or the visuals that they need? The funny thing is that it sort of happens organically by just going up to a player and asking, ‘how did you find it?’ Some of them will say ‘yeah good, no problems’ and you know they’re the ones that you probably have to back off and give them more visual info. And during a session, you might go and ask a player ‘how did it go?’ and it’ll start a discussion with you and you work out, ‘OK, maybe I’d better show her some visuals, we’d better just get down to the heart of a couple of bits and pieces’.

“I think that’s one of the most important jobs in modern sports leadership. Just to understand what communication level is needed to affect the player and what they want. They’re all different. Some are on the pitch learners, some of them just don’t get it and need visuals on the computer screen drawn, some of them don’t even want to be spoken to.”

The growth of the women’s game has seen the demands on the players away from the pitch increase concurrently. “We’ve got all these things now which, unfortunately or fortunately – I’m not sure where to go with that one – is starting to take precedent, starting to take focus off what our core work is and that’s why there’s this return to football. ‘Is that related to the way we want to do things? That’s not related to the way we want to do things. Let’s park that and get back to what we need to do’. It’s a difficult one because we don’t know where all this other stuff is going.”

Nevertheless, Montemurro wants Juventus to be in the vanguard. “I hope the game continues to innovate, I hope we coaches continue to innovate, be creative and challenge each other and I want to be challenged by coaches, I want to be challenged by everyone around me, and I hope we keep challenging each other instead of being a little more guarded about what we do.”