Self-development, difficult conversations and allyship were on the agenda for the latest Women’s High Performance Community call.
We spoke about self, or personal, development, as well as career development, and the place for each before turning our attention towards difficult conversations and allyship.
There is no doubting that those who joined the call are committed to their development. However, no one felt like they have a well-structured development plan that they simply were not following.
Currently, there’s a general sense that a lot of effort is driven by the individual – reflecting upon this, it’s potentially what those guiding us are told to do.
However, there is a request for more structure, confidence, time and opportunity from above to elevate the impact of our development.
It also came across from the call that many have big obvious blocks of learning, through courses or further education, but struggle to have a clear plan if those aren’t in place or if they are between courses. There are also those, who are doing a lot of learning simply by doing their job each day, which is where reflective tools and support from above can be powerful.
The Women’s Community suggested these five ideas as ways to make development as impactful as possible:
Other examples that we’ve seen work too:
Visits to different organisations – and having others visit you. This helps avoid echo chambers and benchmarks our practices against others. This becomes increasingly important if our only working experiences are in a single organisation.
Whole team development on specific skills. Having a whole team approach can help avoid siloed learning and contribute to learnings sticking.
It’s always good to remember that we need to leave space for stretch and being in uncomfortable positions. Again, these moments become more impactful if we can reflect on them and shape our development plans as a consequence. Finally, remember: some people’s development is focusing on saying no.
The Community once again spoke about the importance of our networks and brands to career development and shared the following reflections:
The Community then shared advice for when having difficult conversations:
Difficult conversations can take several forms – they do not necessary involved conflicts or saying no. There’s a range: it could be talking to a new person or even when you are taking steps to change the dynamics and the way things have always been done.
There are stories of female coaches in an otherwise male coaching team stepping out of their comfort zones because their approach to coaching is different. In one particular case, the female coach boosted her confidence by reminding herself that she’s adding to the discourse, providing different inputs and possibilities, and a platform for conversation.
We know that women are different, and that in sport women are often in a minority; so it would be easy to understand why we might doubt ourselves in these moments. However, we can retrain ourselves to not think in this way.
One additional approach that can help us is to have the conversation as part of a regular update session, so it’s not ‘singled out’ as having the need for a difficult conversation.
So what would we want an ally to support us with to enable us to be our most confident selves going into these conversations? These were some of the group’s suggestions:
13 May 2024
ArticlesThe Real Madrid Head Coach is the antidote to the systems-based, top-down coaching approach that is in vogue in some quarters.
The team’s Head Coach, Carlo Ancelotti, who recently signed a contract extension until 2026, has his own record to pursue: a victory over Borussia Dortmund in north-west London would see him claim his fifth Champions League title as a coach.
Last week Ancelotti also eclipsed Sir Alex Ferguson’s record when he coached a Champions League match for a record 203rd time. It comes after a weekend when he won a second La Liga title with Real.
The club paraded that trophy on an open-top bus through the streets of Madrid at the weekend, with Ancelotti living up to his ‘Don Carlo’ nickname by putting on his sunglasses and clenching a cigar between his teeth – a look he first rolled out during similar celebrations after winning the Champions League and La Liga double in 2022.
“I have a dream… to dance with Eduardo Camavinga,” he told the crowd on Sunday (12 May).
Ancelotti is the ultimate establishment figure, yet his relaxed, consensus-based approach to coaching is at odds with many of his contemporaries and marks him out as counter-cultural at the highest level.
What makes Ancelotti so successful? It’s certainly rooted in his zest for life; his love of people, good wine and fine food serve to break down barriers and forge connections. It speaks to his longevity too.
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute explores four of his finest traits.
It is hard to imagine too many of the world’s best football coaches bringing players in at the planning stage. While the final decision lies with Ancelotti, he will often ask the players for their opinion on the match strategy. He knows they will have a better understanding and feel a sense of accountability and buy-in if they’ve been involved in the decision-making process.
“Our biggest strength is that he finds a way to let a lot of the boys play with freedom, that we’re so kind of off the cuff.” Real’s Jude Bellingham told TNT last month. “As a man as well, he fills you with calmness and confidence.” Real have not always been a club noted for their calmness, nor has Madrid as a sporting market, but progress has been serene during his latest tenure.
“There are two types of managers: those that do nothing and those that do a lot of damage,” he said last week. “The game belongs to the players.”
This is a term we’ve used before to describe Ancelotti. It is impossible to pin a style on the only coach to have won national championships in five countries with five different clubs: Milan, Chelsea, Paris St-Germain, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid (across two spells). He has also worked with varying degrees of success at Reggiana, Parma, Juventus, Napoli and Everton.
Some of those spells are remembered more fondly in some quarters than others, but he has always stressed the importance of getting to know the characteristics of players, the culture, and traditions of a club.
Even if something has made him very successful at one club, he won’t just come in and impose that style on another. Ancelotti understands that there are many cultural differences from club to club and within different countries, and he has to adapt his style to get the best out of the players and team.
His time at Chelsea between 2009 and 2011 is a fine example. He discarded the 4-2-3-1 formation that served him so well at Milan for a 4-3-3 that propelled the Blues to the Premier League and FA Cup double in 2010.
“What I really loved about Carlo is his man-management, the way he adapted as well – because he had a way of coaching that probably didn’t suit English football,” John Terry, Ancelotti’s captain at Chelsea, told The Coaches’ Voice in 2020. “But he adapted very quickly when speaking to me, Frank [Lampard], Didier [Drogba].”
There are few coaches for whom it is so hard to find a bad word about them, but Ancelotti is popular with some of the sport’s biggest names.
“He had fun with us,” Cristiano Ronaldo told ESPN in 2015. The duo had won the Champions League together at Real a year earlier. “Mr Ancelotti was an unbelievable surprise. In the beginning, I thought he was more a tough person, more kind of arrogant, and it was the opposite.”
He protects his team from the stressors of elite football by masking the pressure he’s under. Ancelotti takes the situation – but not himself – seriously, and can often be found telling jokes in the changing room before a big game to help diffuse the tension.
Bellingham described a moment prior to the first leg of Real’s Champions League quarter-final with Manchester City. “Before the game, I caught him yawning and asked him ‘Boss, are you tired?’” Bellingham told TNT post-match. “He said ‘you need to go out and excite me’ – that’s the calmness and confidence he brings.”
Few coaches in European football are as equanimous as Ancelotti. He has enjoyed unprecedented success but has also been unceremoniously sacked on more than one occasion. Memorably, he was not Real’s first choice when he returned to Madrid in 2021.
‘[He] understands, probably better than anybody working in the most cut-throat businesses, the transient nature of employment in any talent-dependent industry,’ wrote Chris Brady, in Quiet Leadership, the 2016 book he co-authored with Ancelotti.
He is well aware of the concept of ‘energisers’ and ‘sappers’ too. ‘It is the energisers who are the reference points for everybody, including me,’ Ancelotti wrote in Quiet Leadership.
Ultimately, beyond the white noise, Ancelotti understands that football is not life and death, a point he made at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York.
“Football is the most important of the less important things in the world.”
In the final part of our interview, Dr David Fletcher discusses the importance of building helpful thought patterns and developing the correct habits.
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Their mindset is a good starting point, says Dr David Fletcher. “If you can train the psychological aspect and manipulate the environment, the way to check that you’re getting it right is that you’ve got athletes walking into training and competition situations with a challenge mindset,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.
“In other words, they perceive the demands as an opportunity to perform, an opportunity for growth, an opportunity for learning, as opposed to a threat to their ambitions where they end up in a panic-stricken state,” he continues. “That’s your acid test of whether your resilience training is working.”
Fletcher, who is the Professor of Human Performance & Health and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Sport, Health and Well-Being, at Loughborough University, has little time for toxic positivity – the pressure to display positive emotions to the suppression of all else – “we’re not robots or machines,” he says. “What we’re looking for is the majority of the time they’re stepping into arenas where they’re up for the challenge and they see it as an opportunity.”
There is an element of metacognition in the way that the best athletes harness challenging circumstances to their advantage. “I don’t want to go into too much jargon, but resilient athletes enter a higher level of functioning,” says Fletcher. “Hopefully your initial emotions are ones of excitement, you’re up for it, but if you are a little bit more anxious and uncertain, there’s another stage of cognitive processing where you evaluate that emotion and the best athletes can give themselves a safety net. You’re not sure on the initial context and you’ve got a bit of anxiety running through you, but you’re still able to interpret this negative emotion in a positive way. This is a skill that we’ve seen in some of the world’s best athletes. They’re able to say ‘well, actually I’ve been anxious before, the anxiety is going to help me drive through pain’ or ‘the anxiety is actually going to help me focus more on what I need to focus on’. Whereas a lesser athlete, when they have some of those negative emotions come in, they will then spiral into an unhelpful thought pattern.”
Fletcher has been talking to the Leaders Performance Institute for a series that looks at how psychological resilience can be developed, the influence of the environment, as well as any other considerations for coaches in sport.
In the fourth and final part of our interview, Fletcher discusses the reframing of unhelpful thought patterns with a view to developing athlete resilience in an environment that successfully balances challenge and support.
What types of thinking patterns prevent the development of resilience?
David Fletcher: There’s a host of different things athletes can tell themselves. For example, ‘if I mess this up this is going to be the end of my career’ or trying to second guess what the crowd is thinking. ‘What are people in the crowd thinking of me? or ‘what will my parents think?’ or ‘what are my teammates thinking?’ There’s all sorts of traps and distractions from optimal thinking patterns that will get in the way of being resilient in the moment
What steps can athletes take to prevent these unhelpful thought patterns hindering their performance?
DF: People need to stay in the present. That’s the first thing. So don’t think about the previous point if it’s a tennis match; or if you think ‘what if I win this competition? How much money will I earn?’ You need to stay relatively positive, focusing on what you need to do versus what you need to avoid doing. What are some of the key tactics I need to focus on staying relatively positive? As soon as you get distracted from those things then some of these more unhelpful thinking patterns can creep in. We do a lot of work around developing habits of behaviour in order to reengage at different times. Again, take a tennis player, for example, the idea of resetting between each point. The obvious one is when you hit the ball into the net and you’re dwelling upon that, but even if you hit great shots you have still got to reset for the next point. It helps to go through a physical behavioural pattern where you might turn your back on the opponent, you may look down at your racket and straighten some of the strings, using that as a cue to restraighten some of the thoughts in your mind and refocus on the next point as opposed to dwelling on the previous point, which would be something that could compromise your resilience.
How can athletes build the correct habits?
DF: A lot of it is around putting together everything that we’ve discussed. So starting with basic fundamental psychological skills training about learning how to better set goals, not just focusing on outcome goals but also incorporating into the process performance goals and, most importantly, getting the balance right between those factors and practising imagery techniques and developing those. Then bringing these into training contexts and situations where we optimise that challenge and support over time. You’re merging the two together to try and harness that psychological development and then you’re trying to bring that all together under a challenge mindset over time.
Does that go beyond competitive situations?
DF: This is an important point to emphasise when we’re talking about the development of resilience. It’s not just about that moment in competition. It’s about handling everything else that goes with elite level sport. There’s a broader consideration around training camps and lifestyle. For example, you’ve got a holding camp then you go into the Olympic environment. So how do you train for all of those types of things? I’ve attended meetings about the distractions present at the Olympics. Coaches discussed how we can train our athletes not to be distracted by some of those things and we’re also doing what’s called ‘what-if’ scenario planning. So what are some of the challenges and stressors that our athletes have encountered previously within the Olympic Village? One example is an athlete getting on a bus that took him to the wrong venue. Social media has also become an issue for a lot of top level athletes. So again, it adds some novel dimension to this idea of resilience.
As we wrap up, do you have any final thoughts?
DF: There’s a lot being written and said about resilience, with plenty of research available, but it’s another thing to develop on the ground. It is fundamentally reliant on relationships. The first thing you should do is hire a skilled psychologist and ensure they have the support of coaches, performance directors and the broader leadership and management within your organisation. Otherwise there is only so much they can achieve in teaching psychological skills and strategies. Perhaps the environment is wrong, say there’s too much challenge and not enough support, where the psychologist cannot input effectively. Or the other way around. There’s too much support and not enough challenge and the environment’s too comfortable. Then you’re never going to create and coach truly resilient athletes when it comes to the moment of competition. You need buy-in. It’s going to be a collective effort of working together to help craft that environment to help the athletes perform together. Some of the other considerations are around trying to monitor the environment and really understand the players and the support staff on an individual level because you do want to be able to assess and monitor whether you’re having an impact and, if you’re not, what you need to do accordingly. If you’re not monitoring things effectively then that can be a challenge too.
Read our interview in full:
Part II – Psychological Resilience: Everyone Has a Trainability Bandwidth
Part III – How the Training Environment Can Influence an Athlete’s Resilience
Bobby Scales lays out areas where sports routinely fall down when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Inevitably, the player makes a poor play in a game or practice and their coach, typically an American, will need to correct the mistake.
The coach finds that the player will not look them in the eye and feels disrespected because, in American culture, you are taught from a young age to look a senior person in the eye and you say ‘yes sir’, ‘yes ma’am’, ‘no sir’, ‘no ma’am’.
By contrast, in Latin culture, you do not look your elders in the eye when they are correcting you.
There is a mutual misunderstanding that does little for team unity and does nothing to further the cause of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Teams are increasingly aware of this. When I worked at the Los Angeles Angels, we considered it important to take American coaches to the Dominican Republic, to let them immerse themselves in the culture at the academy and work with the players. We wanted them to understand what life looks like in the Dominican; to better understand how these young men grow up.
Equally, Latin American players need to be afforded the grace to learn the social norms of the United States.
This mutual understanding is the key to weaving the fabric of team unity and success.
So how can we better embrace diversity, equity and inclusion? Here are four thoughts.
1. Don’t be afraid of the conversation
No team is perfect and we could all be doing more to further the cause. But are you ready to have the conversation? It may sound obvious but people are often too afraid of the conversation for fear of saying something wrong or fear of being canceled. The benefits of diverse teams are clear in the world of business and sports has started to take note. But would you be comfortable or promoting, say, a female coach in a male-dominated environment? Is it within your gift to go against the grain and make what may be a counterintuitive appointment? To reach that point, a leader must construct an environment where people understand that players, coaches and practitioners are here because they are the best possible person to be in their position. I would rather lose with players that have a growth mindset – and I don’t think you’re going to win with players that have a fixed mindset anyway. There’s not a player on earth worth their salt who does not want to get better. They will listen to an individual if they have cultivated a relationship. For a complete culture, you need to have coaches and staff members that are aware of this, who feel supported.
2. Don’t get bogged down in the obvious differences
I am a 46-year-old black man and I could be sitting in a front office next another 46-year-old black man, but we could have grown up in different circumstances and, as such, we will bring different experiences to the table. As important as ethnic, religious and gender diversity are, they may not necessarily lead to diversity of thought – cognitive diversity. Someone in your team may have grown up on a council estate in a tough part of London and another may have grown up in Beverley Hills, California, and had people who worked in their house and they’ve never made their bed. Perfect: LEAN INTO IT! People from different walks of life, socio-economic backgrounds, and different cultures will come to a problem on the table in a different way. Perspectives – different perspectives – are exactly what I, as a leader, want. This allows for constructive dissent, which is where the best outcomes lie. When you have people who are willing to disagree with each other you will have a richer conversation. It’s then up to the leader to pull those opinions together, form a consensus, and move forward with an outcome or a solution that is beneficial to the team.
3. Identify the individuals in your team who are underserved
You have to cultivate relationships – they are way more important than the X’s and O’s, tactics or data. As well-known American football coach Herman Edwards once said: YYP – Know Your Personnel. A leader must know how to access them even if it isn’t the leader directly. Maybe it’s an assistant coach or a practitioner on your staff who has built a trusting relationship with the player. Again, lean into that. There is a certain truth to the idea that the physio knows everything that’s going on. I’m a big believer in authenticity and people will reveal themselves to you if your environment is one of support, warmth and truth.
4. Find opportunities to learn… then teach people!
Do you celebrate cultural milestones and holidays? You should, because they represent an opportunity to teach people from other cultures about that culture. For example, if there is a Muslim player in your mostly non-Muslim team, and you’re playing during Ramadan, there is an opportunity to educate your other players and coaching staff on what that means for that player and their faith. A crucial point to make: before even reaching that point of cultural exchange you yourself as a coach or executive are going to need to get stuck in and commit to proper research for yourself – you cannot teach that which you yourself do not know. Manage this process well – within an environment of support, warmth and truth – and you’ve brought your team closer together.
In the final virtual roundtable of 2023, Leaders Performance Institute members identified five trends they expect to occupy their attention in the next 12 months.
Are there any industry trends that may impact you this year? If you reflect on the themes that are coming through strongly, what are you seeing in your environment and how do we best prepare for these possible eventualities?
There were some excellent points made around the importance of being proactive with the topics and trends below. It’s clear we know that these trends are on the horizon as we are indeed talking about them, so what can we be doing now so we aren’t as reactive when they inevitably do arise?
Before we delve into some of the big themes to consider for next year, below are a handful that came to the fore in the same roundtable format from this time last year:
In summarising all of the responses and suggestions from the group for expectant themes in 2024, it became clear from the input that there were five areas that came through particularly strongly. Here, we reflect on each in turn.
1. Athlete life skills and development needs
The first theme of conversation centred around life skills and developing performance behaviours for this generation of athletes. Reflections from the conversation stated there is a continued need for young athletes in their teenage years specifically to gain more support and develop specific tools to deal with the pressures of life but also the experience of developing and competing in elite sport. Some environments are discussing how to invest in their performance support teams, focusing more resource towards wellbeing and psychology to set athletes up well with the skillsets to cope better through their athletic journey.
As the conversations developed, a big point of discussion was around athlete readiness and in some instances, being more disciplined in not rushing them through the pathway. As the high performance spectrum, we can be premature in the assumption that athletes meeting performance benchmarks are automatically ready to move but in many examples we see struggles in coping with this transition. To this end, there is often a lack of clarity for the athletes of who turn to or how to handle challenging moments. In the modern athlete, the group believed that life skills are more limited than generations before, so a shift to a more bespoke model of support is being employed to increase the quality and control the speed of the transition.
One of the organisations, as part of the group discussions, shared some insights they gained from a brain scientist speaking to their staff and the knowledge that brain development isn’t concluded until the age of 25, so we must continue to consider skill development and coping mechanisms beyond teenage years. The final reflection on this point is that young people in this day and age are generally more values-driven and have access to information and schools of thought much earlier in their lives – there is less acceptance to just follow orders and demands, therefore how we consider shaping athlete support should be collaborative to generate optimal buy-in.
2. The use and influence of artificial intelligence
When thinking about the potential of artificial intelligence, where do we start and stop? This was a question suggested in the conversations around how to critically think about the possibilities artificial intelligence can provide – we need to ensure there are clear boundaries. There is a nervousness around how quickly the technology is moving. Although we agreed that artificial intelligence and machine learning can improve efficiency and help identify blind spots, there is a cautiousness not to de-humanise performance programmes and to keep using a human touch.
A number of organisations on the call have begun using artificial intelligence for opposition analysis, leveraging matching statistics to predict winning performance indicators. If we are to fully utilise the ability the technology gives us, getting the basis of your data infrastructure right is critical before leveraging these sources and innovations to get the best output.
In predicting ahead and assuming a large amount of sporting organisations will utilise artificial intelligence, we briefly discussed the skillset of the analyst in the future. If artificial intelligence can speed up some of the traditional processes overseen by analysts, is there a shift more towards the communication and presentation of the data as opposed to the data collation phase of the process?
3. The growth of women’s sport
A trend that many of you won’t be surprised to see was the exciting developments around women’s sport. Although these developments are hugely positive, there is some nervousness around the trajectory and speed of the growth, in particular the challenges these can pose. It was shared that there is some uncertainty around wages, transfer fees if relevant in that sport, facilities and player support services and what ‘good’ or the ‘right’ approach looks like.
There was an extended conversation around support services for players and in particular what are the optimal performance frameworks for women athletes. To this point, a lot of thinking and structuring has mirrored the men’s game, despite there being clear differences in the profile of the athletes.
In reflecting on some women’s sport in Australia, one participant explained there is still a large number of teams sharing staff between women’s and men’s programmes. There isn’t enough staff on the ground with the relevant expertise for the setup to be conducive to a real high performance environment. The sports haven’t kept up from a staff and expertise point of view, versus the demand of women athletes making the sport and professional career.
Finally, we discussed the paucity of women coaches across elite sport. There is a lack of mentorship for women athletes, especially within the pathway and we are still in a position where there is a higher percentage of men coaching women athletes. There is also an apparent education gap which also needs addressing to better understand the experiences and requirements of women athletes.
4. Storytelling around athletes and staff
A really fascinating thread of discussion covered the theme of storytelling and how content creation which can often be witnessed more so on the business operations side of an organisation is beginning to align closer to ongoings across performance operations. There is an increasing appetite for athlete content and sport is seen as an untapped genre for this. With a thirst for learning more about the ongoings of modern athletes, this naturally brings in stories from the lenses of those supporting the athletes – coaches and performance staff as an example. Staff are stepping more into the limelight because of this trend.
What are some of the potential implications of this? From the athlete lens, there will be queries around whether they should engage in it or not. The impact on performance staff will naturally increase and more people will be aware of the team behind the team. There could be the opportunity for those digesting the content to understand the pressures that come with supporting athletes, but also from the positive viewpoint, provide a connection opportunity to show the pathway for working in high performance sport. If there are more eyes on our athletes, what could that mean for us?
5. Upskilling coaches in the use of data
We are experiencing a wave of younger coaches transitioning into our environments who are digital natives or technology-savvy individuals. There is a gap with some coaches who are less certain around the use and experience of technology and performance metrics. The real trend of discussion here centred around thinking more explicitly around data visualisation to help coaches resonate with the right points to inform their coaching. Many environments are working on using less data but more impactful visuals to support decision-making, which is all a part of bringing coaches and other performance disciplines on the journey where it is only a very small percentage of their worlds.
We’ve highlighted those that generated most conversation within the group discussions, but there were other trends shared at the outset of the call which can be seen below:
We asked Hockey Canada Head Coach Danny Kerry who has worked with both during his 30-year coaching career and highlight four factors in his personal development.
He cites renowned coach developer Nigel Redman in his response. “Nigel uses this phrase: men have to battle in order to bond, so we have to have gone to battle first. ‘You’re a tough nut so I’ll be around your nonsense’ – sorry – you can see my biases playing out there. Whereas [as Redman says] women have to bond first before they battle.”
Kerry, who led Great Britain’s women to field hockey gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is at pains to tell the audience at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium that this yardstick should only be used in general terms and may even be an oversimplification. It is, however, illustrative of the dynamics of which a coach must be aware.
He continued: “If you spend time and energy to understand the dynamics that are playing out within high-performing female teams, if you spend the time and energy to talk to those things, spend the time and energy to build the relationships between those players so you can understand what particular perspectives individual athletes carry, why they think as they do, what their life experiences are, that level of trust in the relationship goes up significantly and then they will literally run through brick walls for you. If you don’t do that, as soon as the challenge and threat comes they can be [slow] to it.”
He then reflects on the transition he made from coaching Great Britain’s women to the men’s programme in 2018. “I tried that approach, if I’m blunt, with the men and it was effective to a degree, but if I had my time again I would probably put them into some form of battle or get them to understand each other in that environment along with some of this other work.”
Kerry, who was joined onstage by Emma Trott, the former Women’s Junior Endurance Coach at British Cycling, spoke at length about his personal development as a coach three decades into his career and the evolving demands of his players.
Here, we highlight four factors that shaped the coach that took the reins at Hockey Canada in March 2023.
“I was the classic coach. All about hockey and very hard-nosed. Very cycle and task-oriented, Xs and Os,” said Kerry. However, as he said, when it came to people’s feelings and relationships, “I received some pretty blunt feedback then tried – and failed – to adjust”. He quickly realised he was doing himself a disservice. “I say I failed but it’s still not my sweet spot. So my big learning, whether it was male or female, was around how relationships develop as an entirety and with individual athletes.”
It led him to adapt his behaviour and the most notable example was his pitch-side presence during the penalty shootout that followed the draw in Great Britain’s gold medal match with the Netherlands in Rio. “I always positioned myself high; the reason for that was, one, I was task-focused and, two, athletes pick up on your anxiety as a coach and, being pitch side, that’s not a great thing. You don’t want to add to their anxiety as a coach, so actually being up high helps with that,” he continued. This time, however, he reflected and changed his custom. “I remember just thinking literally ‘what does this group need from me now as a coach and what doesn’t it need?’ And so at that point in time, my ability to ask myself that question at that most pressurised moment, probably of my career, was to self-regulate. All they need now is a ‘we’ve done this, we’ve rehearsed this, our processes, all good?’ Everyone nodded and off they went. I wouldn’t have been able to do that previously. It’s still a struggle, but that was a good example of being able to regulate yourself to then help the athlete be in the right place they need to be to perform.”
As a male coach in a female environment, Kerry is aware of the need to afford athletes personal space when it comes to issues such as the impact of the menstrual cycle on training history, volume and conditioning, particularly as there is still “some debate and ambiguity about what the science is saying”. While working with Great Britain’s women, he would defer to the team doctor in such matters. “It was led by our doctor, a person seen to be on the ‘outside’. We didn’t want athletes to think we were encroaching on something so personal to them. That needs to be handled with incredible skill.” He discussed it in terms of “managing the bell curve and deviations from the group”. “It’s not a science, it is a sense, it’s a craft. What is optimum for this group of athletes as a whole can mean that some people adapt ahead of the bell curve, others struggle because that’s not what they wish for themselves, but that’s an optimum for the entire group,” he said. “All facets of coaching, whether that’s sitting in a meeting discussing the players, whether that’s discussing how we push collectively as a team, whether that’s what we’re going after and how we’re going after it. It’s understanding that you’re trying to find an optimum for that particular team and then helping those people below the bell curve find their value in that, finding what works for them. That is the craft of coaching and, in my experience, that doesn’t get discussed in coach development.”
Kerry was initially taken aback by the Canada women’s often literal interpretation of his instructions. “There’s a lot you can unpack there,” he said. “You can unpack it from the angle of gender, you can unpack it from the angle of your understanding of what’s going on. How are they feeling? Is there literal interpretation because they don’t want to get it wrong? Are they doing it because of the way they’ve been coached all of their life? Are they taking it literally because of the dynamic playing out within that female group? [They could ask themselves] Am I trying to do that because I’ve got a 200-cap athlete next to me?
“There’s a whole raft of psycho-social dynamics playing out there. So based on the experience I’d had, just talking to that very quickly; almost trying to create environments where [I’m asking] does it require me to talk to them? Does it require me to remove myself from that room and get them to sort it out themselves? Does it require me to use data, which involves the assistant coach of the programme leading that? Making these decisions as a head coach requires identifying some of these dynamics that are going on.”
Kerry warmed to the topic and added: “Quite often when people talk about performance, they’re talking about a very objective domain, whereas I think it’s more about these aspects. What is the greatest burden of that environment? What environment are you creating to ensure the most optimum versus the learning curve? What’s your impact on that? How can you create an environment between your athletes that allows them that peer to peer conversation that Emma was talking about? How quickly do you set those things up because they are, in my experience, the single greatest inhibitor to the team and the acquisition of skill?”
There have been occasions in the past where he wishes he could have coached female players differently. “If I had my time again, I would definitely approach it in a different way, but at the time, I didn’t have that experience having been in hyper-masculine environments.”
Kerry believes that leadership skills are fundamental to performance. “You want people to lead even without the title,” he said. “[With Great Britain’s women] we had a discussion about that very early on talking about everyone has the capacity to lead in their own way that’s congruent to them. So if I were to summarise, normalising leadership as one of the fundamentals of performance is one of the key aspects of your job [as coach], so talking to that, raising awareness of what that is and how it can be done, part of that is raising self-awareness in the athletes, how they can influence others, is absolutely fundamental. It’s right up there with are you fit enough? In terms of female role models, I’d like to think the women’s hockey programme has some incredible female role models, someone like Kate [Richardson-Walsh] and others and now stepping into different domains whether that’s big business or sports. I’m very proud of that.”
He continued: “We have some stereotypical views of what it takes to lead, actually. Breaking that down and allowing these athletes to lead congruently to who they are is one of the things I’m most proud about. So Kate leads in a way that’s congruent to her, Alex [Danson] is a very different leader but still effective, and I’m now trying to do the same with field hockey Canada.
“There’s a moral dimension to having a team that’s well-led, there’s also a huge performance dimension to having a team that’s well-led and a depth and granularity to what leadership is. By the same token, whether we’re leading or following, we talk about that responsibility and what it means to follow well. The difference in my experience with male teams and female teams is the female teams seem to implicitly understand the importance and significance of that and really buy-in quite quickly”.
In the final instalment of this Performance Support Series we explored ways that we can all improve when it comes to debriefing performance.
Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas as part of this topic:
For the final part of this learning series, the focus of the content and conversations centred around implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.
Outcomes of the session included:
Debriefing as a critical component of a high performing organisation
In setting the scene for this virtual roundtable, we leaned into the work of Arie De Geus, who was one of the early thinkers in the space of systems thinking and how we can learn and ally new learning to create a competitive advantage. De Geus was quoted as saying that ‘the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors’. Effective debriefing forms a key role in creating a true learning organisation and allowing you to use learning as a source of competitive advantage.
Combining the work of De Geus, Peter Senge in his work for The Fifth Discipline suggests that the highest performing organisations consistently learn and put systems in place where they are able to extract information and collective intelligence. When thinking about the topic of debriefing, there are often questions considered around to how we should do it and when. Answering these questions and systematising will support a shift towards a culture of learning.
Before we move into exploring specific elements of debriefing, we also explored the difference between traditional organisations and those who are termed learning organisations.
Senge defined organisations as where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. Pedlar provides a definition of a learning organisation as being able to facilitate learning of all its members with the aim of continuously transforming itself.
How are we currently implementing debriefing?
Reflecting on how we are currently implementing debriefing provided an opportunity for those on the call to share their experiences of this process in their environment. There were some differences in responses to how debriefing is leveraged.
As part of this conversation, there were some interesting reflections on the nature of debriefing in some of our environments. A point was made around debriefs or reviews leading to us slipping into planning or a solution mindset. We can experience tangents and not effectively staying on the task of the debrief – effective debriefing requires intent and discipline.
There were also some reflections on debriefing tending to focus on the eventuality of a negative outcome such as a defeat, as opposed to when we win. Participants on the call shared that in the debriefing process, often there is a lack of action, something that other members of the team or players pick up on. Actions are crucial for buy-in – it is easy to review and reflect, but to generate actual change is where the impact of a debrief comes in.
Skills for effective debriefing
We’ve discussed the importance of debriefing and how it is currently being implemented in our environments, but it is also important to consider the skills required for debriefing to be effective. When the question of what skills are required were put to the group, these are some of the responses that followed:
For effective debriefing, having a framework or system in place will elevate its impact. We discussed a simple framework that can be used by anyone as a benchmark:
Planning for action. Planning for the debrief is important, particularly how the debriefs will happen and the skills required to make them effective. Often it is easy for debriefs to become emotional – a process in pre-planning helps to keep things on track.
Action. This is the doing part.
Reflection. How do you reflect accurately, especially in an emotionally charged environment, whether positive or negative? Reflection is a key still to aid questioning and listening.
Relating back into action. Take the learning and do something with it. If you do not do this, it is a waste of time. Debriefing is about initiating change and continuous improvement.
To summarise this section, having the ability to reflect, appraise and reappraise is considered a cornerstone of lifelong learning and performance.
Challenges in debriefing
The group highlighted a number of challenges that are associated with debriefing. The idea was to identify what often gets in the way of being good at debriefing, allowing us to evaluate how we currently approach debriefing. There were six key challenges highlighted that we should be aware of.
To summarise
The influence of debriefing is a topic often talked about within the Leaders Performance Institute. We all know the importance of it but there is a feeling that there remains vast room for improvement in how to do it effectively. As we rounded off this virtual roundtable, we reflected on some of the key considerations and opportunities for debriefing, to ensure you engage in it more effectively in your environment.
It’s worth noting that debriefing is free, yet presents a fantastic opportunity for continuous improvement without financial resource. With any sort of debriefing, using a process to embed and plan out debriefing is a positive first step in its impact. Remove outcome bias and instead focus on the learning, decision-making and impact areas – outcome bias will sway the quality of the debrief. Be sensitive of time and, where you can, engage in debriefs immediately after the performance. Keep them short and to the point. Gather as many facts as possible first, allowing you to be dispassionate and objective. As an observation, watch for people proving vs. challenging themselves. Reflection skills are powerful so ensure you practise them to elevate the quality of the debrief. Finally, keep a journal and a log of the key learnings from the process.
Iain Brunnschweiler explores the impact of our behaviour upon others and asks where we as leaders may have a more positive influence.
This demonstration of frustration is clear for all to see, despite his young age. To compound matters, the opposition coaches, having both prowled angrily around what passes for their technical area, pointing and shouting for the whole game, join in the protests against the teenager who is officiating the game, as a part of her development.
This was an actual scene that I witnessed last weekend in an under-9s grassroots game.
Behaviour can be contagious. It can spread like wildfire. And it isn’t restricted to those directly in contact with you, especially if you are in a position of hierarchical influence.
Now, I could write an article pointing out some of the clearly unhelpful adult behaviour that seems to emerge on the side lines of kid’s sport, however, for the moment I will leave that for the governing bodies to address. The area of interest to me here is the impact of role modelling.
There are two clear examples above of where individuals have been influenced by the role modelling of people of significance to them. The young goalkeeper will have seen and be mimicking the behaviours of one of the many keepers displaying this approach on TV. For the impressionable mind, that’s what goalkeepers do. They complain about every decision. They run directly at the referee when any decision is made. They shout and throw their arms in the air in disgust.
Secondly, the coaches on the side lines – probably two incredibly well-meaning parents who have committed their free time to support youth sport – are doing what they’ve seen on TV, or live from the stands. Standing up for the whole game, allowing the emotion (attached to the score line of the clearly very important under-9s match) to spill over into behaviours they would never normally enact within the bounds of normal life. Shouting at the children within their care, shouting at the child who is learning to referee, whilst being accountable for the experience for all of these impressionable young folk.
The point of real interest for me (and hopefully others who have the privilege and responsibility of being in a leadership role) is to consider which of our behaviours are contagious. How aware are we of the impact of our behaviour both directly upon others, and indirectly through the role modelling we demonstrate? What are the things we see in others around us that mimic our behaviour, and how comfortable are we about this? How can we raise awareness of these factors?
One great way is opening yourself up to feedback. I received some highly valuable feedback in the past from a colleague, about getting the best out of my team. She generously pointed out a specific behaviour (one of my preferences) that she didn’t think helped the team get in the appropriate state for a given meeting. It was brave of her to give me this feedback, and I valued it hugely. She skilfully raised awareness of a learned behaviour, and allowed me to consider how I responded. I committed that day to make a change.
Organisations will often commit to a set of values, sometimes written on the walls or company documents. In many cases the words ‘honesty’ or ‘integrity’ might appear. Yet how often are people within the organisation encouraged to provide genuinely honest feedback to leaders around the impact of their behaviours? How often do we ask how we make others feel at work? I’ve experienced some feedback-rich environments, and I’ve experienced some that felt very unsafe. The former was certainly far more enjoyable to work in, and far more productive for all. Once awareness has been raised, one still has to consider whether they will take action or not.
Some examples of contagious behaviour that I’ve seen are:
The workaholic. A key leader spends enormous lengths of time at the workplace. They are online even when they are home.
The standards monitor. A key leader is incredibly hot on standards of clothing, office space, and punctuality. They will regularly call out colleagues who are not achieving the leader’s expected level.
The time-giver. A key leader regularly is seen taking time to speak to colleagues, getting to know them.
The HIPPO. Within meetings, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion is always the decisive one. They shut down others in order to make the call, based on their perception.
The joker. A key leader is regularly seen making jokes and having fun within the work place.
The calming influence. A person of hierarchical position who demonstrates a calm, thoughtful and logical approach at times of pressurised decision-making.
The above are just a few examples of contagious behaviours, and I will let you decide to what extent you perceive these attributes to be helpful, or a hindrance, within the workplace. This will no doubt be relative to the context and the complexity of the organisation and the people surrounding the leader.
However, in my experience, the contagion is very clear and obvious. We see miniature versions of these behaviours permeating throughout the organisation. This becomes the culture.
One successful and overt strategy to utilise role modelling within the work place that I have seen has been the deployment of experienced professional players within an U-21s team. Southampton and Brighton & Hove Albion Football Clubs have very successfully deployed Ollie Lancashire and Gary Dicker respectively into player-coach roles. These players, both in their 30s have role modelled the behaviours, approaches and attributes that a consistently high performing player possesses, all at very close proximity to the club’s top youth talent. I’m sure there will be other examples of this within sport, military and business.
Behaviour can be contagious. I have, as most of us who are sporting parents, felt all of the emotions that come to the surface when a loved one is either doing well or doing badly in front of you. I have the urge to shout in support, to shout words of encouragement or at times words of despair. However, I remember watching a video that Arsenal FC pulled together where they interviewed young players about what they wanted to hear from their parents on the sidelines, and the messaging stuck with me. “I don’t want you shouting from the side of the pitch… I just like it when you clap when I’ve done something well” or words to that effect. I now have a strategy of holding my hands behind my back when I’m watching my kids, to remind me of this video. This physical act helps me. Hopefully my side line approach would be perceived as helpful role modelling to other parents who want the best for their kids.
Questions for leaders:
So, if you are not happy with the behaviours you see in front of you, consider how you can act. As Ghandi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Role modelling has a huge impact. If it is contagious enough through a TV screen to affect an 8-year-old and a couple of adults at a kids match, imagine the power of this in person.
And, by the way, if you know an adult who behaves like this in kids sport then please pass this article onto them! As I’m 100% sure that coaching kids looks very different from coaching professionals.
Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.
13 Nov 2023
ArticlesLeaders Performance Advisor Bobby Scales explains why he always returns to his old notes in his ‘Book of Intelligent Stuff’.
A while ago, I asked a friend, and his reply fascinated me. “I’m not reading anything new,” he said. “I’m going back through books I’ve read and I’m really trying to pick up on the things I missed before”.
The idea resonated with me. “Go back through the books, podcasts or articles you really felt you learnt from and relearn,” he continued. We all have a mountain of books or e-books that we dive into with both feet with the intention of learning or educating ourselves in one form or fashion. Even the most intelligent among us can’t catch, retain and process everything.
He is definitely onto something. I have found that when you return to a book, there will be things you want to brush up on but there is also going to be things you missed first time around because you were so engrossed in other ways. Much of this is due to the fact that whether it be six weeks or six months on, certainly there is some personal growth and development. With that in mind, things you either didn’t catch or glossed over will have a different meaning once you go back to it.
We should all make the time.
‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’
It is not just books or articles. With the forthcoming Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London in mind, you may have notes of previous conferences or conversations that hold even greater relevance today. You could probably even pick up the phone and reacquaint yourself with people you connected with at those conferences.
My first Leaders Sport Performance Summit was at London’s Emirates Stadium in November 2015. I appeared onstage during my tenure as Director of Player Development at the Los Angeles Angels alongside Stuart Worden, the Principal of the renowned BRIT School. We discussed talent development at length and I stayed on for both days and took notes from a number of other sessions.
I revisited those notes recently and it is funny to reflect on some of the things you write down. Events will happen in life and it will amplify certain elements that I won’t say didn’t apply back in 2015, but they can have a boatload more meaning eight years on.
There is research that people retain more learning when we write things down with pen and paper. I keep all my notes in one book I call ‘The Book of Intelligent Stuff’. It sounds like a silly title but there are thoughts, quotes and notes from the different insights that fascinated me. I used to be an eBook reader but there is something different about having a hard copy book with a pen and highlighter at hand. Like many of you, I am sure, I’ll write notes in the margin or highlight certain passages. My shelves are full of annotated books.
As for my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I had it in hand at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2017 when I returned to the Sport Performance Summit, this time as a delegate. I flicked through my notes recently – I remember taking them sat next to Leaders’ Matthew Stone – and there were a couple of concepts that really hit home harder now than they did then just because of the circumstances in my life. I had left professional baseball for a position in private industry. While I was fairly certain what I was doing at the time wasn’t going to be it. I was at a crossroads professionally. In Chicago, Stuart Lancaster spoke about his own personal crossroads after having been sacked as Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team. Stuart’s presentation that day and the notes I took from it are still staples of my decision making tree to this day. As we all know, when you work in professional athletics more often than not you are going to be sacked at some point… I was again. The first place I looked the last time was ‘The Book Of Intelligent Stuff-Chicago 2017’.
Don’t agree? Do more digging
That’s another thing about conferences. You will look around the auditorium and see people with their heads down taking notes. You are looking at them and thinking ‘should I be writing this down?’ Certain things just resonate with people at certain times.
In my Book of Intelligent Stuff, I’ve got three quote sections where I’ll write down things I hear on Instagram or Facebook, for example. If I’m listening to a podcast and a guests says something resonant, I’ll make a note on my desk or my phone and later add it to my book.
I will also note down things I disagree with. You owe it to yourself to learn why you disagree with a point and investigate it further. If you’re reading an article or a book and they say X, Y or Z, why do they feel that way? You take the emotion out of it and learn why a person feels that way or why they think this isn’t actually as important as we once thought it was. There could be some academic research behind it or some hard numbers. It is important to investigate why that person came to that conclusion and maybe decide that you need to change your position. We owe it to ourselves to think critically and challenge what we think and what others present. It can only make you sharper
All of that is part of the life-long learning process we should all be on.
21 Sep 2023
PodcastsIn our latest podcast we catch up with the individuals behind Serial Winning Coaches, Professors Cliff Mallett and Sergio Lara-Bercial as they discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches.
“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”
Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.
In an extended chat we delve into:
Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.
Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn
John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn
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