By Luke Whitworth

The generational gap in sport applies to athletes and coaches, but the term just as readily applies to coaching and performance staffs.

It provokes a question that was explored in a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable: how can senior leaders work to create an environment where different generations can co-exist?

Beyond age, different generations have unique sets of beliefs, values and attitudes, which has implications for their work and the ways they work with others.

The challenge lies in finding the common ground. First, let’s take a look at the general characteristics of different generations:

• Baby Boomers (c. 1944-1960): This generation often faces challenges in bridging the beliefs, values and attitudes gap with younger generations. These differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts.
• Gen X (c. 1961-1980): This generation shares some similarities with younger generations, such as a culture of immediacy (an expectation for quick responses and rapid results). However, they also value group solidarity, which can differ from the more individualistic approach of younger generations.
• Gen Y / Millennials (c. 1981-2000): Known for their respect for diversity and a desire to acquire new skills, this generation often has a low commitment to organisations. They seek to be valued and acknowledge.
• Gen Z (c. 2001-Present): Digital natives; this generation is collaborative, creative, and values honest feedback. They are often impatient and overstimulated, which requires a novel approach to engagement and communication.

By the same token, there are obvious similarities, as the table noted.

“We don’t want to put people into boxes,” said one participant. “We don’t want to make assumptions of groups of people that make you, as a leader, behave in a certain way that’s not appropriate for that person.”

• A desire for immediacy: younger generations share Generation X’s liking for quick responses and immediate results.
• Everyone values teamwork: the supposed Generation X trait of valuing teamwork is visible in today’s athletes, even if they lean towards more individual characteristics.
• Flexible work environments: many staff members, regardless of their generation, seek flexibility in their roles.
• A liking for feedback: both older and younger generations value feedback, especially when it is honest and transparent. The differences emerge in frequency and manner.

Five key considerations for leaders

Going back to the generational differences, and knowing what we know, the virtual table explored five leadership considerations:

1. Respect and dialogue: leaders should foster an environment of mutual respect, collaboration and open dialogue.
2. Understanding the world of work: Leaders need to understand the evolving rules of the world of work and learn from experience to identify and explore common interests.
3. Inclusive work environments: Creating inclusive work environments that perceive differences as a source of improvement is crucial. This involves leaning into diversity as a strength rather than a challenge.
4. Reconciling interests and expectations: Leaders should focus on reconciling the interests and expectations of different generations by finding commonalities and leveraging them to foster co-existence. They should encourage continuous learning and adaptation.
5. Distinct generational traits: Recognise that there has never been such a distinction in traits between generations as there is now, and use this understanding to inform your leadership strategies.

Practical strategies

In the quest for better collaboration and alignment, several participants spoke of practical strategies in their environments.

Try to understand people’s experiences and intentions

One environment, in preparation for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, is asking its athletes and coaches a series of questions as they seek to bridge the generational gaps.

“We’ve been getting athletes into a room and asking: ‘how are you experiencing this environment?’” said the attendee who shared the story. “We ask ‘do you feel like you’re developing?’ And ‘do you feel like you’re successful?’ along with ‘is your wellbeing looked after?’” They ask coaches: “’What is your intention in terms of the environment or the experience that you’re trying to create for athletes?’”

There have been some positive outcomes. “This insight has led to some activities that coaches and athletes can engage in to bridge that gap and make it more likely that people are collaborating efficiently and effectively on the path to get that goal.”

Invite people to share their story

One participant working in the British system spoke of their organisation’s ‘life stories’ project. “We get somebody to share their life story. The benefits are clear: “it highlights the different things that people have experienced, that have contributed to where they are in their life right now. It really helps people to see others’ journeys; and it really connects people because they understand somebody a little bit more.”

Launch a ‘cultural reboot’

It can be difficult to cultivate a unified culture when you are working in the service of ten sports, each with their own culture. One participant, who works for a British university renowned for its sporting heritage, spoke of the school’s efforts to develop that unified culture through an ongoing “cultural reboot”.

They are “asking the student-athletes, and even the academics who may not be involved in terms of sport delivery, but have regular communication and contact with a lot of our students, what they think the culture is of the sports programmes.”

Reverse mentoring

Implementing reverse mentoring and buddy systems can help bridge generational gaps. For example, younger employees can mentor senior staff on digital tools, while senior staff can share their experience and knowledge.

Establish ‘cells’ based on common interests

Some interests are cross-generational – a fact to which one Premier League club is leaning. This club, as your correspondent told the virtual table, identified common interests among their staff and encouraged them to form small groups (cells) to collaborate, share ideas, and learn from each other. These groups would meet regularly to discuss their interests and progress.

By Luke Whitworth

David Beckham was one of the first athletes in sport to be described as a ‘cultural architect’.

The label was used by sports psychologist Willi Railo, who worked as a consultant in the early 2000s for Sven-Göran Eriksson, the England men’s national team Manager at the time.

“He has grown to become a cultural architect,” said Railo of then England captain Beckham in a BBC documentary titled The England Patient, which was broadcast ahead of the 2002 Fifa World Cup.

“[Beckham] has today a very great influence on the attitudes of the other players and he is thinking along the same lines as Sven-Göran Eriksson. So he’s a very good tool for Sven.”

According to Railo, cultural architects are “people that are able to change the mind-set of other people. They’re able to break barriers, they have visions, they are self-confident and they are able to transfer their own self-confidence to a group of people”.

Present day cultural architects include figures such as the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi, Australia men’s cricket captain Pat Cummins, and Chelsea Women captain Millie Bright. The list is endless when you dig down.

Your cultural architects can be coaches or staff members too. They can be anyone who pays enormous attention to culture. Critically, while they are not always the most senior leader, they do have to have the ear of those leading.

The idea that cultural architects can emanate from anywhere gave real impetus to a recent Leadership Skills Series session, where members of the Leaders Performance Institute explored various interventions and the value of adopting a strengths-based approach to building culture.

Current cultural goals

What established goals do you have in your organisations that relate to your wider organisational culture?

One of the trends we’re noticing when it comes to cultural leadership is a focus on one specific aspect of culture at a time. The participants in the session identified a series of culture-strengthening goals that, if achieved, would deliver a competitive advantage:

• Collaboration across functions
• Continuous improvement
• Innovation and creativity
• Belonging, identity and wellbeing
• Psychological safety
• Use of data to inform decisions

When you align behind a goal, progress can be swift.

The six levers needed to lead a cultural change

In the session, we revisited six key levers for leading cultural change.

1. Make the key principles ‘sticky’

A message needs to be heard at least six times for a person to take it in and, if the principles are ‘sticky’, they naturally become easier to remember. Consider your straplines or strategy: do they meet that level of ‘stickiness’? A good example from the Olympic world is the question: ‘will it make the boat go faster?’ Another is the All Blacks’ ‘leave the jersey in a better place’.

2. Role models

This is the classic example of ‘words on the wall’ versus living the values. If the leaders and cultural leaders really model those behaviours, it’s what people will experience and lead by. Research in the field of inclusive leadership shows that leaders can influence the people, the athletes, the organisation around them by up to 70 per cent with their behaviours.

3. Culture conversations

A team must constantly review their organisation and culture and reflect on their current status. Ask yourself: where are our gaps? Where are our strengths? How can we improve? You can use a system rating scale from 1-4 to guide some of these insights. These system rating scales create an opportunity for those culture conversations to emerge and they provide an insight into the health of the culture at a specific moment in time.

4. Develop skills and processes to support intent

Take psychological safety: it is important to enable people to speak up. If you provide such opportunities it supports the intent to make positive change.

5. Feedback

Feedback is critical, yet people do not always deliver skilful feedback. Too often it can feel personal, it provokes defensiveness and is ultimately counterproductive. It is better to create a feedback loop and a culture of ‘skilled candour’ (a twist on Kim Scott’s ‘radical candour’) so that people are able to deliver feedback in a skilful manner.

6. Get the right people on the bus

When engaging in culture change, do you have the right people in your environment? It may come to a time when you have to make a decision about who needs to be on the bus – and who doesn’t.

The power of AI (appreciative inquiry)

Appreciative inquiry is a social constructivist-informed model that seeks to engage people in self-determined change. The model, which was devised in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, is inherently positive. It focuses on discovering and amplifying the best of what already exists (individually and collectively) within a system or organisation. It stands in contrast to most change models, which tend to identify problems and seek to fix them.

What are some of the benefits of appreciative inquiry?

The model:

• Leverages existing strengths, requiring less change and new learning.
• Creates positive energy, building confidence and pride.
• Taps the experience of those on the frontline and fosters ownership for performance.

How we do it:

• Identify and share examples where you have been at your best and forensically unpick those.
• Identify behaviours that stand out and challenge people to be specific.
• Maintain disciplined focus on positive examples.

Here are some reflective questions you can use within your environments when considering what aspects of your culture you want to develop:

• Think of at least one example of where you have seen this behaviour at its best in your culture. A subsequent coaching question could then be: ‘what stands out from these examples?’ The key is to be specific.
• Think of an individual who exemplifies this behaviour in your culture. Here’s an additional coaching question: what specifically do they do? Summarise key behaviours and standards from your discussion within a ‘we are at our best when we…’ framework.

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By the Leaders Performance Institute team

Collingwood captain Darcy Moore once compared preparing to play Australian rules football to spinning plates.

“There are parts of your game going well at a particular time and other parts of your game that are not going well,” he told Fox’s Face to Face in 2023.

“You’re trying to improve these things without sacrificing the things you’re doing well.”

He and Collingwood span those plates with alacrity during the 2023 season, his first as captain: they won the AFL Grand Final. Today, they remain one of the league’s finest teams; and Moore has been praised for his leadership abilities both on and off the field. It was to great acclaim that we welcomed him to the stage at the 2025 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at The Glasshouse in Melbourne.

“Good player leadership is organic and comes from natural respect based on competency, status and character in alignment to the team’s values,” he told an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members.

In addition to Moore, across two insight-laden days, we hosted a range of speakers from organisations including Melbourne FC, Leinster Rugby, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Royal Australian Air Force. The overarching theme was the approaches one can adopt to give performers the best chance of success.

There were six approaches that stood out.

1. Prioritise the athlete-coach relationship

The athlete-coach relationship is pivotal, whether it’s a long-tenured coach setting up a new leader for success or, conversely, a senior athlete taking steps to put a new coach at ease.

Craig McRae, the Senior Coach at Collingwood, demonstrated the former with his public endorsement following Darcy Moore’s appointment as captain in 2023. “Be yourself, forge your own journey, and take a swerve at what that needs to be,” he told Moore. “Lead from the front and lead your way.”

Across town a year later, Rebekah Stott, a hugely experienced New Zealand international defender with more than 100 A-League appearances under her belt, went out of her way as captain of Melbourne City FC to ensure incoming Manager, Michael Matricciani, felt at home.

“From day one when I signed for the club, from the first conversations I’ve had, she’s only welcomed me with open arms,” said Matricciani. “She’s been a great support and she’s an excellent leader off the pitch.”

Neither Moore nor Stott, who spoke onstage together, believe they’re the finished article. Both spoke of their need to work on confronting teammates and having difficult conversations. In that regard, it helps when the on-field leader feels both comfortable and supported.

“It is every player in the team’s job to lead in their own way, however they can do that.”

Rebekah Stott, Melbourne City FC

“What makes a good coach? The coach knowing their players, having good relationships and understanding what they need – this sets you up for success. They also let talented people around them do their jobs. This is particularly important when the pressure comes and you need to remember that everyone is there for a reason.”

Darcy Moore, Collingwood FC

2. Build trust at pace and communicate with care

Moore and Stott’s concern with confronting people in emotionally charged environments is a daily feature of life at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where Brian Le serves as Director of Palliative Care at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. “Preparation is really important,” he said. “I formulate what needs to be spoken about and what my agenda is. But once with the patient, I adjust to what I’m hearing and the clues I’ve picked up in relation to their context.”

Timing is critical too. “Not addressing the situation has its own cost,” said Le, adding that delays are regrettable when the patient likely knows that an emotionally-wrought conversation is coming anyway.

“When I started to apply what I had learnt, as I’ve matured in my career, I’ve realised it’s not about me but the person I’m looking after. My job is to apply what I know to help the person, listen more and let them lead more – it’s more effective than leading with knowledge and expertise.”

Brian Le, Royal Melbourne Hospital

3. Balance disruption and stability

Data-informed decision-making is preferable, but where does the balance sit between objective and subjective sources? Additionally, what of the balance between disruption and stability? The topic was tackled by Kate Hore, the captain of AFLW team Melbourne FC, who spoke alongside Marcus Wagner, the club’s Chief Innovation Officer & General Manager of Football Operations. The Demons have been using Teamworks Performance as they look to strike that balance.

“You can get a flag from your monitoring that helps a discussion, but the impact really comes from your relationship with the athletes,” said Wagner. “Baseline information helps, but understanding the person is most important.”

When you understand the person, you can ask the right questions (either in-person or via questionnaires) and, if something needs to change based on something that happened in training, staff can swiftly make adaptations (supported by data).

As for the balance between disruption and stability. “It’s fine balance,” added Wagner. “You need to ensure you don’t lose your identity by going too far either way. How we measure is by looking at overall performance internally and externally, how we communicate, and the quality of our data.”

“I really like the idea of having a dropdown [list] of someone you may want to speak to as a follow on from completing [the team’s wellness questionnaires]. [As a player] you may value speaking to a different person each time depending on how you are feeling.”

Kate Hore, Melbourne FC

4. Give a platform to ‘terrible ideas’

Approximately 95 per cent of Nobel Prize-winning scientists emanate from the same cluster of labs or have enjoyed the proximal influence of past winners. Why? It is their higher minimum standards or greater openness to new (and often bad) ideas?

David Burt, the Director of Entrepreneurship at the University of New South Wales, delivered a presentation in which he lauded the value of exploring ‘terrible ideas’. His rationale was sound: it reduces the negative emotions that can cloud creativity and reduces the impact of power dynamics in a team environment.

He recommends an ‘accountability loop’:

• Build
• Measure
• Learn

“Terrible ideas allow you to develop new skills and meet different people in the process. There is a surprising amount of value in implementing a little bit of resource in them to drive another layer of growth.”

David Burt, University of New South Wales

5. Sustained excellence does not happen by accident

What must we do to sustain excellence? That was at the centre of Dave Walker’s appearance at the summit. The former naval pilot, who works for the Royal Australian Air Force, spoke of PBED:

• Plan
• Brief
• Execute
• Debrief

PBED, he explained, is a continuous improvement process to table improved error recognition, error reduction or correction, which enables the creation of efficiencies that lead to improved performance. It is an essential tool in an environment where students must learn quickly.

“It’s the quality of interaction in each event that ultimately turns a team of experts into an expert team,” said Walker. “We often find that members do not know how to work or operate as a team – just following a framework does not make a team.”

“We must give people the ‘how’ – it is not enough to say ‘this is what you have to do’ – people will learn at a higher rate when you give them the ‘how’.”

David Walker, Royal Australian Air Force

6. Proximal role modelling for the next generation

Leinster Rugby, one of Europe’s most prominent teams, has a squad that is 86 per cent homegrown – what is the secret to finding and nurturing supreme talent in your region? As Simon Broughton, the Academy Manager at Leinster, explained, the team benefits from a group that has played and developed together in the youth ranks. They have travelled, won and lost as a collective. “So many experiences that strengthens their connection,” said Broughton.

The club has adopted a variety of approaches, including proximal role modelling, which sees younger players spend 80 per cent of their time integrated with older players. Proximal role modelling is “integrated organically into different aspects of their training week, from walking the pitches, to session design, and into analysis rooms.”

Leinster have also latched onto the ‘goldilocks principle’ as 33 per cent of their players are neurodivergent. “This has led to changes in how messages are delivered,” Broughton added. “There are slides, but also video and walkthroughs, and time for reconnecting and breaking mental circuits.”

“We use proximal role modelling so that less experienced players have social interactions with more experienced players. [This is] to create an environment where learning and development can take place without a coach or a member of staff.”

Simon Broughton, Leinster Rugby

By John Portch

Some say young athletes are not as single-minded and dedicated to their craft as earlier generations.

That is not necessarily true, but young athletes today do tend to have more autonomy and wider horizons.

If they decide they do not want to be on this pathway or that programme, others will welcome them with open arms. Even if an athlete does commit to your programme: are you providing the wellbeing, learning and social support they increasingly demand?

This generational shift – and the challenges it poses coaches and staff – set the terms for a virtual roundtable titled ‘What Are our Athletes Telling us?’ where we invited members of the Leaders Performance Institute from across the globe to answer four questions:

• What are we learning from conversations with athletes?
• Are there trends in the type of support they need?
• What topics interest young athletes?
• How are we adapting our environments to meet their needs?

Their responses pointed to four trends in the athlete-coach-team dynamic.

1. Athletes are increasingly expressing their desire for belonging and connection

Teams should consider the psychosocial elements of an athlete’s development. Emerging athletes wish for meaningful experiences and want a sense of belonging and connection. “It’s about where are they enjoying themselves the most and where they see the opportunities,” said one participant, who spoke of Australia’s women’s rugby sevens.

The programme takes teams of emerging athletes on tour to far flung places. Therein lies the opportunity for community-based activities where players will meet locals, in circumstances often far removed from their own and, in contributing to social and environmental causes, continue to develop a more rounded perspective of their own lives and development.

This builds on the fine work being done in Australia to develop the “whole athlete”, as one participant with knowledge of the environment explained. The Australian system, they said, has prioritised mental health support for Olympic and Paralympic athletes at the behest of the athletes themselves.

2. Athletes crave individual – and team – development

The desire of younger athletes for belonging and connection comes with a paradoxical demand for more personalised training and attention. This has implications for the time coaches spend on team dynamics in an era where the power has shifted to the athlete. “Staff and coaches are more vulnerable,” said one participant, who pondered where the balance needs to sit. “Give the athletes a voice and a choice, give them ownership, have the consultation, but there is a line too.”

Another participant with experience of coaching in European football, highlighted that individual work will mean different things to different people and can be dependent on team selection. They argued that there is room for better management of expectations and, more broadly, a consensus for coaches and athletes alike on what constitutes ‘individual’ training.

3. Athletes want a formal voice in decision-making

Athletes want to have a say in decisions that affect them. A participant working at the Premier League spoke of their members’ club captains being increasingly forthright in their views on league-sponsored initiatives.

They said there need to be clear systems and processes for engaging athletes and ensuring their feedback is considered, with the caveat that any outcomes may be unclear or unformed, depending on the complexity of the issue.

To this latter point, another participant spoke of the athlete advisory committee with whom they work. “We’re trying to provide agency and elevate that athlete voice, which in a lot of ways is really valuable and adds a lot of benefit,” they said. “But there’s risk associated with that. You are letting the ‘good’ in with the ‘bad’ to an extent depending on what topic it relates to, particularly in terms of managing expectations.”

4. Athletes want to explore opportunities beyond the sporting arena

One participant noted that athlete care roles have developed from being “concierge-style to far more hands-on”. That might include helping young overseas athletes settle in a new country with their close family or it might mean supporting leadership development, media skills training, or helping athletes to explore other professional opportunities beyond their sporting careers.

The Australian sports system, for example, is getting better at providing educational and career opportunities of the kind that enable athletes to be more “job-ready”.

However, it is not just those athletes in (typically) lower-income Olympic and Paralympic sports seeking wider professional development: LinkedIn has seen an exponential increase in major league athletes using its platform. As one participant noted, this interest in business and entrepreneurship is not a surprise given the levels of disposable income available to some athletes. It invites the question: how might teams and leagues support players in these endeavours?

By John Portch

Kansas City Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid may be the best in the business, but he is not a one-man coaching ticket.

Reid’s celebrated right-hand men, including Offensive Coordinator Matt Nagy and Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, are in demand for newly vacant head coaching roles elsewhere now that the NFL regular season has concluded.

Time will tell whether Nagy or Spagnuolo can assemble winning rosters of the kind that delivered the Chiefs back-to-back Super Bowls (with a third still on the cards), but they will have a better chance of ticking all the right boxes if they can surround themselves with the right people.

On that note, the question of team dynamics sits at the heart of The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey and Robin Dunbar. The trio has spent decades observing the worlds of academia, business, and government as they look to better understand the workings of high-performing teams.

“We wrote this book because we were fascinated with the question: what is it that makes a group of people more than the sum of their parts?” said Camilleri when addressing the audience at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

“In our world, the unit of identification is most often the individual – if you think about how we hire, how we promote,” she continued. “Very rarely is the focus the team.”

Camilleri and her co-authors redress that balance in The Social Brain and here we explore how leaders can amplify the collective in the pursuit of better decision making.

‘The rocket fuel for performance impact and innovation’

The Social Brain applies theories of evolutionary biology to groups of high performers.

“We’ve been interested in what doesn’t change,” said Camilleri of this lens of enquiry. “When humans are part of small groups they can take advantage of their collective intelligence as well as a sense of safety, reciprocity and shared obligation.”

Camilleri, Rockey and Dunbar devised their ‘Thrive Model’, which sets out six foundational conditions for high-performing teams that consider social health (in addition to physical and mental health) as a prerequisite of wellbeing.

Onstage, Rockey defined these conditions as “the rocket fuel for performance impact and innovation.”

From The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, and Robin Dunbar.

What do the numbers in the circle mean?

As Rockey explained, it is important for leaders to know where to focus their energy most effectively.

“All of us have the same amount of time in a day and we use it differently, but what doesn’t change for each individual in this room is how many relationships that we can have at any given time,” she said. Our brains are only so big, “so we can’t have endless relationships”.

She used Dunbar’s number, which was devised by her co-author in the 1990s, to illustrate her point:

Dunbar’s number has long been influential across several fields, from government and administration to business and academia.

Five, 15 or 150 people? Performance improves when you match team density, size, and space to the task at hand

For decisions made at speed, you’ll count on five people.

Five is the number of intimate relationships a person can have. Rockey said: “These are the relationships that protect us, make us thrive, and ensure that we go through life in a joyful way. They protect us from ill-health and from some of the psychological challenges that we might have from feeling insecure.” They, of course, occur in intimate spaces.

For more complex decisions, you’ll count on 15 people (including your original five).

The ‘pain’ comes when you look to insert new thinking into complex decision making in a group space. “We spend about 60 per cent of our social time with just 15 people,” said Rockey. “With the 15 in the workplace, they would have built long-term relationships and loyalty to you over time – that’s how we work as humans – so breaking up those people to bring in new thinking is painful.”

According to Dunbar, the upper limit on the number of social relationships we can enjoy is 150

Dunbar suggests that people can have no more than 150 social relationships at any one time. “It’s a very stable number across all societies and cultures,” said Rockey.

From The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, and Robin Dunbar.

Camilleri and Rockey wrapped up their presentation by offering nine ‘social hacks’ for building relationships swiftly:

From The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, and Robin Dunbar.

Rockey then homed in on five…

Synchrony: “Sport has done this brilliantly. The perception of pain is reduced when we’re doing something together. When you’re running with a partner it feels less painful.”

Laughing together: “A fantastic way of finding a group”.

Engaging with strangers: “When we have conversations with people we don’t know, it has a positive effect on us – I encourage you to meet people that you don’t know today.”

Giving and receiving kindness: “A New York-based study saw that when young people were able to engage with strangers and be helpful to them, they saw an uptick in their mental health.”

Eating together: “There’s something very magical about breaking bread together. You have about 30 minutes when you’re having food together in which you have a sense of wellbeing and positive vibes towards your dining partners. So if you want to do something difficult, eat with your group first and then go to the difficult meeting.”

The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, and Robin Dunbar is available now from Penguin.

By John Portch

John Longmire stood down as Senior Coach of the Sydney Swans in November – fewer than two weeks after his onstage appearance at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

Having fashioned a reputation as one of the finest coaches in the league during his 14 seasons in charge, Longmire has taken a new position as the Swans’ Executive Director for Club Performance. He handed the coaching reins to his assistant, Dean Cox, as the club’s succession plan swung into action.

“I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that maybe it’s time,” Longmire told his players in a moving farewell speech. He had first discussed the idea of stepping away with the team’s management 18 months earlier and returned to the topic midway through the 2024 AFL season.

Longmire’s 333^rd and last game in charge turned out to be October’s Grand Final, which Sydney lost to Brisbane. Overall, he took the Swans to four Grand Finals and won one flag, in 2012.

The Swans’ list and performance infrastructure are the envy of most in the league. In fact, few departing coaches ever leave their successor a team in such good shape.

This may have been on Longmire’s mind at the Kia Oval – a ground where, as a 16-year-old back in 1987, he played in an infamous exhibition game for North Melbourne against Carlton.

“It was labelled the ‘Battle of Britain’,” he said while directing Leaders Performance Institute members towards the YouTube highlights. Those that click through can expect a litany of violent fouls.

“It was my first game, and I was absolutely petrified,” he said with a smile.

Longmire then returned to his time as Senior Coach and we’ve picked out four nuggets of wisdom.

1. Don’t become set in your ways

Injury put paid to Longmire’s playing career in 1999 (he won the AFL flag in his final game for North Melbourne) and, three years later, he became an assistant to Sydney’s then Senior Coach, Paul Roos.

Longmire was 31 years old at the time – still young enough to be a contemporary of the players he was now coaching. By 2024, both he and the sport had changed.

“The older we get, the further we get from that age demographic,” he said, “and the more rigid, the more set we can become in our ways and our beliefs – that’s the real danger.”

Longmire consciously moved with the times, but his wisdom would have counted for little if his players did not pay attention. “I know what it takes for a successful organisation to stay competitive,” he continued, “but I am the one that has to bend and move.”

One example was his gradual shift from focusing on the team’s leadership group to spending more time with the younger players. Longmire would watch and listen to them without judgement and, when necessary, “bring them back to where you know high performance teams like to operate.”

2. Find your truthtellers

“The best cultures are the ones that keep moving and adjusting to the ecosystem,” said Longmire, who emphasised the coach’s role in that process.

“I walk amongst our playing group during our warm-ups and that’s a case of sensing the mood, working out who’s talking to who and what they’re talking about.”

He also leaned heavily on his most empathetic players (“those that don’t just walk past your office – they walk in and say: ‘how are you going, coach?’”). The relationships he shared with those players were “ever more valuable” because they were his best eyes and ears in the changing room.

“Make sure you water those relationships because they’re the ones that will keep you in a job.”

3. You’re not bulletproof – don’t try to be

For all his stature as a coach, Longmire was keen to remain “connected and relatable” to his players and staff. As he said onstage in London, “the coach is no longer looked upon as being bulletproof” whatever their standing may be within the game.

His final speech to the players and staff as Senior Coach attested to that belief. He weaved in personal stories and his voice cracked at times. He wiped away tears too.

It called to mind the weekly ‘storytelling’ sessions that Longmire made a key feature of the Swans’ environment. He told the Leaders audience that players and staff share stories or complete a series of tasks for discussion each week. Recent examples included writing ‘a letter to your 16-year-old self’. These sessions are popular with players and staff alike.

“Sometimes it’s a photo of something that mattered to you and quite often there’s tears involved,” he said. “The way I looked upon coaching 25 years ago is completely different now – these 18, 19, 20-year-olds need to be able to relate to you. If you can show that you’re human, you get a lot more back.”

4. Look beyond winning and losing

Winning cannot be everything, even for a proven winner.

“If we measure ourselves on the ultimate success, there’s a lot of years of being unhappy,” said Longmire. A coach must find other factors, such as the personal development of players or staff. He said it is critical to have more in the ‘plus’ column than the ‘negative’.

“Identify, enjoy, and celebrate those moments. And make sure you get joy out of the journey.”

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Flo Laing does not miss a beat in explaining what she’s most excited about heading into 2025.

“It’s got to be the World Cup,” says Scotland women’s Lead Physiotherapist.

The competition will be hosted across the border in England and starts in August. Laing says it has been the Scotland team’s “north star” for several years.

During the course of our conversation – the second of three in this Keiser podcast series – we spoke about her work in women’s rugby at a time where the sport is starting to capture the public’s imagination and performance standards are rising faster than ever for the women players who compete [4:00].

Elsewhere, Laing discusses her leadership style, which is very much about putting people at ease [18:00]; she also talks about the most pressing issues in female athlete health [28:40]; as well as the transferable skills she’s learned from her time working for Sport Scotland [12:30].

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

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Dan Jackson is the General Manager of Player Development & Leadership at the Adelaide Football Club, but he is quick to dispel any notions that he is a guru.

“I can’t teach leadership,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “I can help unlock what’s already in there.”

On that note, he is certain that leaders are not born. “Leadership is 100 per cent made, but it’s made from a very young age.”

Beyond the origins of leadership, Dan spoke to Henry Breckenridge and John Portch about the importance of prioritising others [10:40]. “Great sustainable teams are built in environments where everyone’s looking to help someone else out,” he adds. “When you fill someone else’s bucket, it fills yours.”

Also on the agenda were the importance of humour and enjoyment [22:00]; the argument against ‘refreezing’ culture [48:30]; and the practical steps that help leaders to manage team operations [32:00].

Henry Breckenridge | LinkedIn

John Portch | LinkedIn

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By John Portch

How do you turn your setbacks into springboards?

A rich seam of answers ran through both days of this month’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.

We listened to speakers from various sports organisations discuss their responses to setbacks. Teams including Chelsea, Racing 92, Harlequins and the Sydney Swans laid it all on the table. Several explained how they managed to turn things around.

Stephan Lewies, for example, captained a Quins team to victory over Saracens in October; their 17-10 win ending a miserable run of eight consecutive defeats to their Premiership rivals.

“Coming off a record like that,” said the South African lock, “you often look for answers in the wrong place.” Lewies explained that season after season Quins would change their usual approach when facing Saracens. This season they stuck to their guns and it paid off.

“When the pressure came on in this game, [we turned to] something we’d done for the whole season, for years previously, versus something new in the pressured moment.”

Kudos to Quins, but neither they nor anyone in sport has dealt with the difficulty of landing a probe on Mercury or the conundrum of trying to thaw a microscopic strand of ice on the lens of a space telescope 1.5 million km from Earth.

For Carole Mundell, the Director of Science at the European Space Agency [ESA], such stories represent another day at the office. Crisis after celestial crisis is routinely averted on Mundell’s watch by some of the brightest minds in astrophysics.

Of ESA’s triumphant run-in with the intrusive ice, she said: “Data gives you information. Information gives you knowledge. Knowledge only gives you insight and wisdom for action if you really understand what it’s telling you and how to interpret it with your own experience on top of that.”

Mundell feared impostor syndrome when stepping onto the Oval stage but her words instantly resonated with an audience of coaches and practitioners.

They also lead us nicely back to our original question: how do you turn setbacks into springboards? We bring you six interrelated smart tips from across both days of the summit.

1. Find the right skills to help you in a crisis

How does it feel to be under the cosh in your role? What tools do you lack in those moments? Carole Mundell has allowed herself to be shaped both by the crises she’s confronted and the organisation she leads. Instinctively, she’s a creative scientist, a physicist with the urge to investigate independently. Yet her work at ESA requires her to think like an engineer and commit to the team; these newly acquired skills have proven crucial in moments of crisis.

“I’m learning to think like an engineer. All of ESA’s structures and processes and how we operate comes from the mind of an engineer… We have a whole quality assurance system where we set our objectives and we say ‘what will we do?’ ‘What did we say we’d do?’ ‘Did we do what we said?’”

Carole Mundell

2. Seek key allies above you

Racing 92 were treading water in France’s Top 14 league when they appointed Stuart Lancaster as Director of Rugby. Lancaster, whose tenure began in 2023, was hired to transform their fortunes, but faced considerable obstacles. Language was one, culture another; he also knew he’d be working under his predecessor, Laurent Travers. Nevertheless, Lancaster felt that he was “pushing on an open door” thanks to the quality of his coaching work with England (2011-2015) and, in particular, Leinster (2016-2023).

The big question he asked himself was: should he tiptoe in or smash down the door? As Racing’s revival required more than a cosmetic makeover, he opted for the latter. With the help of his French coaching staff, Lancaster introduced a new working week, a new playbook, and called time on Racing’s long lunch culture. He could disregard those who labelled him an ignorant ‘Anglo-Saxon’ thanks to the relationships he forged with Travers and the Racing board.

“I spent a lot of time prior to the players arriving getting [the management] to understand my vision, my philosophy and what I wanted to achieve; not taking away the DNA of Racing and trying to replace it with Leinster, but trying to merge the lessons I’d learned with England, the lessons I’d learned from Leinster, and then bringing that structure and detail to a French environment.”

Stuart Lancaster

3. Who are your key influencers?

The Sydney Swans had to dust themselves off following their 2022 AFL Grand Final defeat. John Longmire, who this week stepped down as the Swans’ Senior Coach, led them back to the Grand Final again this year. Since leaving London, he has handed the reins to his assistant Dean Cox, who will renew the team’s fight for a first flag since 2012. The factors that propel a team one season will not necessarily apply the next, but Cox is sure to emulate Longmire in learning and applying the lessons from another painful defeat. In dealing with setbacks, Longmire always leaned heavily on the key influencers in his “ecosystem”.

“The ecosystem includes your team, the board, the CEO, your fans. Your playing group and staff are a living, breathing organism, the whole thing, and it needs to keep moving and shifting. I’ve got certain long-held beliefs close to my heart, but also within that [have] the flexibility to shift and understand that the best cultures are the ones that keep moving and keep adjusting to the ecosystem. Understand the good influencers in your group, the ones that can help you with that.”

John Longmire

4. Don’t be afraid to let the wrong people walk away

When Chelsea won the Champions League in 2021, the club would not have expected to slump to a 12^th-place finish in the Premier League just two years later. Nor would they have predicted the organisation narrowly avoiding oblivion and a subsequent change of ownership. Bryce Cavanagh was hired as Performance Director in the summer of 2023 and, while he has long been considered one of the best in the business, an arduous task awaited him.

He admitted his presence created a sense of risk and vulnerability in some quarters, but he was fair in setting out his stall. Some relished the challenge of staying to help build a fresh performance strategy (a work in progress, he admitted), but others sought roles elsewhere. Cavanagh was willing to let them go.

“First of all, we talked and defined where we were going, what we wanted, the behaviours that we needed, then the performance strategy. We had to really define where we wanted to go and what we wanted the bus to look like because then people ended up self-selecting.”

Bryce Cavanagh

5. Have the difficult conversations quickly

As captain of Harlequins, Stephan Lewies regularly faces difficult conversations. They are of added importance when the chips are down and tempers are frayed. Time and again, as Lewies explained, he has been able to plot a path out of disharmony by being proactive, acting fast and ultimately putting the team first. A leader should also strive to understand multiple points of view without leaping to conclusions.

“That’s the main goal in any tough conversation: you turn a negative into a positive that we can use going forward… When we [avoid] a tough conversation, the problem just becomes bigger and bigger… walking away from that conversation is the easy option, but stepping into that space is so important.”

Stephan Lewies

6. Prioritise your stress and emotional responses

Success and failure both present psychological and emotional challenges. In 2021, the UK Sports Institute introduced its ‘Performance Decompression’ tool to help athletes and support staff transition back to daily life following intense competition periods. The tool consists of four phases: first there’s the post-event ‘hot debrief’ followed by ‘time zero’, which, as the UKSI website explains, focuses on ‘restorative care in a soothing place’; then it’s ‘process the emotion’ and, finally, a ‘performance debrief’.

The tool can be used anywhere. British 1,500m runner Jake Wightman, for example, chose a sofa in a Twickenham café to unpick his underperformance at the Tokyo Olympics. A year later he was world champion and, while there was much more to it, psychologist Sarah Cecil believes the tool helped Wightman to plot his comeback. She and the UKSI’s Head of Performance Psychology, Danielle Adams Norenburg, are also happy to teach their tool to any individual or organisation who may find it useful.

“By the end of this process, Jake had made sense of the experience, he was able to tell his story about where he was, and he was also able to process all the emotions that surrounded his performance and the lead-up to his performance… I don’t need to tell people in the room that lots of factors contribute to performance… but in the same position, with 300m to go, Jake had what he needed to run fast enough to be world champion.”

Sarah Cecil

By John Portch

“Are you doing what you want to be doing?” David Clancy asked his audience.

Clancy, a learning and development consultant with the Houston Texans and Director at The Nxt Level Group, was speaking at the October launch of his new book Essential Skills for Physiotherapists: a Personal and Professional Development Framework at London’s Tate Modern Gallery.

“Maybe this day will make you think a little bit more into that question,” he continued.

The gallery’s East Room, with its panoramic views of London, is a suitable backdrop for some of the brightest minds in sports science and medicine. Each of them knows there’s more to their success than talent.

“When we’re in college, we’re taught the technical, clinical, hard skills, but it’s the soft skills that make a difference,” said Clancy.

Essential Skills is an effort to address that reality, bringing together as it does experts who, in some cases, had never previously met in order to collaborate. “That’s the beauty of the book because it shows we can all get better together.”

The book’s proceeds will go to Children’s Health Ireland [CHI], a cause dear to Clancy and his family given the care they have provided to his four-year-old daughter Grace. “This way I can help people like my daughter and her friends.”

Clancy then introduced his roster of speakers – friends, collaborators and mentors – all of whom had wisdom to share.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute picks out five thinking points to help you reflect on Clancy’s original question: are you doing what you want to be doing?

1. Define the behaviours that will take you from potential to peak

First onstage was James Kerr, the author of the renowned Legacy, who detailed the lessons leaders can take from New Zealand’s All Blacks.

He explained that the right behaviours are the real “force multiplier”. Good behaviours, whether you’re an athlete, coach or practitioner, will “take you from potential to peak more consistently”.

For the All Blacks, that may mean ‘sweeping the sheds’ but how does that look in your environment? What will enable you to show up more often and apply the right behaviours?

2. Seek to understand, find common ground

Behaviours shouldn’t be separated from your values, but how comfortable are you calling out poor behaviours? Any discomfort you feel may be amplified if you’re a woman trying to progress in a male-dominated environment.

Alicia Tang, the Head of Academy Medicine & Physical Performance at Derby County, recognises this “internal battle” well enough and believes the first step is to speak to the relevant stakeholders. “Seek to understand, find common ground, and then work on the resolution,” she said during the second session.

This view is shared by business consultant Michelle Carney, who said, “If you meet people where they are, you’ll find the right people”. They will not only be colleagues but allies.

“I think it’s definitely empowering when you have those people around you,” says Ashar Magoba, the Lead Academy Physiotherapist at Charlton Athletic, who is also starting to work with the club’s first team. “Perhaps those people can see something in you that you don’t quite yet see yet.”

3. Take a look over the fence

Where do you look for insights and inspiration? Jack McCaffrey, a six-time All-Ireland Senior Football champion with Dublin GAA, enjoys himself in his day job as a paediatric doctor at CHI at Temple Street in Dublin. “I get to hang out with kids all day; and kids are just great,” he told performance coach Ronan Conway during their fireside chat in session three.

In some ways, McCaffrey’s medical career is a sanctuary from his Gaelic football (particularly following a bad result). One could say the players of the strictly amateur Gaelic games in Ireland have a natural separation between the athlete and person that can often be lost in professional sports.

During his intercounty career, McCaffrey’s work also gave him lessons to take back to the Dublin panel, where the training environment was, to all intents and purposes, a professional setting.

“Most of my learning of dealing with high-pressure situations has come from work,” he said. “How to remain cool, how to have feedback loops, how to make sure you’re sticking to algorithms.”

4. Find the information in your trauma

In sport, we continually speak of ‘controlling the controllables’ and yet 95% of human brain activity is subconscious. It is a troubling thought for life coach Mark Whittle, the Founder of the Take Flight performance consultancy, as he told us during the fourth session.

His presentation returned to the question of behaviours, which he said are governed by both our drive towards pleasure and wish to avoid pain. Tied up in that avoidance of pain is fear, which can be born of trauma.

Consider a setback you’ve suffered: how can you learn from that event and respond appropriately? “What can you make it mean?” Whittle asked the audience.

5. Identify your gaps

It takes humility to recognise what it takes to excel in a new role. In the final session, Jeff Konin and Trevor Bates warn of the Peter Principle. The concept, devised by psychologist Laurence J Peter, states that people tend to be promoted to their ‘level of respective incompetence’. Think of the supreme technician who, upon promotion, finds themselves overwhelmed as a manager tasked for the first time with leading people.

For Konin, the important thing is finding your ‘where’ when looking five or ten years into the future. “What skills do you need that you don’t currently possess?” said the Clinical Professor from Florida International University.

Similarly, Bates may be the President & CEO of Mercy College in Ohio, but he has no problem with being the “pupil”. He said: “I might be the one who moves a programme forward, but intellectually I might be a pupil in that space.”

Essential Skills for Physiotherapists: a Personal and Professional Development Framework is available now from Elsevier.