Head Coach Jon Norfolk reveals why performance planning was perceived as the programme’s true competitive advantage going into the 2024 Games and beyond.
The ‘marginal gains’ philosophy of Sir Dave Brailsford, who served as British Cycling’s Performance Director between 2003 and 2014, was at the heart of this success throughout.
It was Brailsford’s “daily bread” said Jon Norfolk, the Head Coach at British Cycling, at last year’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.
British Cycling, long after Brailsford had departed, continued to focus on maximising the one percenters – and it worked.
“These were really exciting times for the organisation,” Norfolk continued. “We were quick, we were agile, we were really detailed.” There was, however, a price to pay.
“I think I’m going to call it a ‘cost’. I think a cost of that agility and that speed was that we were moving very quickly. I’m not sure at each point we understood genuinely what created that performance.”
By January 2020, Norfolk and his colleagues had identified that cost and decided that the solution lay in better performance planning. They hoped to implement a change in emphasis after the Tokyo Games but, when the worsening pandemic caused their postponement in March 2020, they could begin that process earlier than anticipated.
Here, we explore British Cycling’s motivations and their rationale for ripping up a way of operating that was working – and still worked – in favour of a new approach weighted in favour of collaborative performance planning.
What was wrong with the ‘marginal gains’ philosophy?
Three factors rendered the philosophy unfit for purpose, even as the team continued to be successful:
Why was performance planning British Cycling’s first port of call?
An internal audit revealed an inconsistent approach to planning across its numerous disciplines that too often did not harness the talent in the building. Some performance plans were good but too often people had little scope for influencing a rider’s plan because it was too protected. Sometimes the plans were downright unclear. “People were struggling to get their handprints on the plan, to make an impact, to improve the plan,” said Norfolk.
What needed to change?
A good performance plan will tell an athlete where they’re going and how to get there; coaches will use that plan to stretch their athletes and be bold in their approach; and, if the plan is clear, leaders will be able to ask how the plan is tracking and where they can support the athlete and the coach. If British Cycling gets that right then the sky’s the limit. Said Norfolk: “I want an environment where coaches can leverage their plan, stretch athletes, and aim for things they may not be able to reach; but as a consequence, we’ll get a lot further because we’ve set clear, brave and long-term targets.”
Was there any resistance?
Plenty. “It’s a really tricky thing to encourage someone to let go of something which has worked,” said Norfolk. Some coaches carried the plan in their head and found it difficult to communicate their thoughts to a multidisciplinary team; others felt threatened and exposed when laying a plan out on the table for others to check and challenge. For some coaches, it was, as Norfolk explained, a “stick”. On top of that, he explained that some environments, such as BMX, were seen as “plan-resistant” given their “free-form”, “pack-like” approach to performance. Any approach would need to consider the environment as well as the demands of the discipline.
What was the answer?
Turn that stick into a carrot. British Cycling chose to encourage performance plans that actively separate the coach from the performance outcome. It made sense. “We’ve all been in a spot where we’ve seen great coaching but the athlete hasn’t performed for a particular reason; and we’ve also seen athletes perform and it’s not really due to the coach,” said Norfolk.
If the coach is armed with a well-considered, clear and powerful plan, it will amplify their coaching. It also makes things easier on the senior management at British Cycling, who are juggling multiple individual performance plans at any given time. “The clearer your plan is, the more people can access it, the more people understand it, and the more people you’ll have back your plan.” It’s also a useful way of removing the biases of an individual in pursuit of a more compelling proposition. “When we’ve got 20 plans in front of us, we’ll back the clearest plan with resource and time.”
Have there been positive outcomes so far?
The proof will be in the pudding in Paris, but Norfolk cited some initial successes, including the greater clarity enjoyed by the British Cycling leadership team and coaches freely admitting to missteps in management meetings. Norfolk and his colleagues can now watch events and the planning is evident in the execution. “It’s not perfect, we’re not finished,” he said, “but it’s exciting because we’re learning, stretching and growing and we’ve got a systematic path towards great performance.”
10 Jun 2024
PodcastsEllie Maybury of Soccer Herformance discusses the obstacles that face females in high performance in the second episode of the latest People Behind the Tech series podcast. For all the issues, she remains optimistic about the steps that can be taken.
A Data & Innovation podcast brought to you in collaboration with
At least part of their success in claiming back to back World Cup titles in 2019 was attributed to the fact they could adjust individual training plans and nutrition based on the data.
Ellie Maybury was part of the USWNT backroom team that introduced this initiative and, more than half a decade on, tech support for female athletes doesn’t seem to have progressed as much as she’d have hoped. At least in soccer.
“A lot of the technology we have absorbed into the women’s game has come from the men’s game or men’s sports environments,” she tells the People Behind the Tech podcast.
“And maybe some of the processes and metrics that come with that get transferred as well.”
Maybury, who recently founded Soccer Herformance, a performance consultancy for female soccer players, is in the hotseat on episode two of this series.
She addressed the issues that hold back female high performance, from managing the lack of objective datapoints [4:50] and the importance of education for athletes who often misunderstand their own bodies through no fault of their own [26:20], to the need to take athletes on a journey while remaining honest about the limitations of research at the present time [17:00].
Check out episode one:
Paige Bueckers Proved Her ACL Injury Was Behind her at March Madness, but, as Andrea Hudy tells us, Questions Must Still Be Asked about the Injuries that Afflict Female Athletes
Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.
What gets measured gets done, but charting the impact of mental skills has proven particularly tricky for teams across the world of sport.
A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners
Such is the desire to show impact and return on investment, we are indeed measuring much of what can be measured.
Nevertheless, it can be difficult to measure the impact of areas such as coach development work or, as discussed in a recent Virtual Roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members, mental skills work.
A number of environments on the call were already in the process of measuring their mental skills work, some to a high success level, whereas others were closer to the start of their journey.
In any case, it is fair to say that there are no teams with all the answers, but here are some points to consider.
While it is easy to jump into the measuring process, it is important to first build some pre-requisites.
We can’t be trapped into the tendency to measure for measure’s sake. Have you defined and discussed what you are measuring and why? Is it and will it impact performance outcomes? On the roundtable, some members suggested positioning mental skills as a development tool to impact performance; it presents a more positive and forward-thinking narrative.
Make sure you are capturing the data and insights in a valid and reliable way. Also, make time to debrief and discuss results to understand how stake holders are interpreting data.
Does trust exist in the environment between staff, players and the coaches? When we think of the success of effective mental skills or sport psychology support, trust is a cornerstone of a well-functioning approach. Build up the trust before jumping into the measurement or else the data or insight you collate may lack purity. Involve the athletes early in the process as well – working with the athlete on a version of self-evaluation that can be trusted.
Additionally, how can you work through your coaches to get athlete buy-in while garnering their feedback on the athletes’ growth and improvement?
Separate the process from the outcome. There is a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in all evaluations of outcome or impact.
One member shared that they combine goal-setting information gleaned from their athletes and ‘progress’ notes within their athlete management system. As part of this process, there have group evaluations centred around athlete makeup twice a year.
Athletes need to have personalised baselines and, therefore, baseline profiling can enable teams to identify the individual’s unique characteristics. Athlete profiling can entail a battery of behavioural observations and group debriefs, which allow you to crowdsource your staff members’ insights into the key areas in which you are trying to measure impact. Psychometric tests may also prove a useful tool. A member at the roundtable outlined how their organisation has started to ask their coaches to provide feedback and rate their mental skills programme.
If you can identify patterns, then your programmes will be much easier to scale. An organisation at the roundtable, an environment with a large number of multisport athletes, has developed a custom in-house tool that enables them to highlight performance gaps, opportunities and focus areas.
While we all crave larger budgets, there are tangible steps you can take to make what you do have go much further.
In high performance sport, there is increasing pressure on expenditure and efficiency of resource, but innovating within a constrained budget isn’t about cutting costs indiscriminately, it’s about strategic allocation of resources.
The topic was discussed at length during a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable and has long been on the agenda for members of the Leaders Performance Institute.
Here, we draw on those discussions to bring you six ways to sustain innovation on a budget.
Prioritise initiatives that directly contribute to your mission and long-term success. You should evaluate existing projects and programmes rigorously. One programme whose members joined the roundtable spoke of the value of simple and consistent performance planning using a ‘plan, do, review’ approach. You can also set realistic timelines for identifying trends that enable you to cut through the white noise and better support internal decision making.
Evaluate your projects rigorously. An attendee at the roundtable explained they are looking into efficiencies around athlete monitoring and tracking. It speaks to the constant challenge of optimising the efficiency of data inputs, with several members highlighting the collaboration within their teams of different departments around data capture and assessment. It has led to a clearer way of leveraging information and influencing delivery across coaching and other elements of their programmes.
It calls to mind Richard Burden’s presentation at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance last September at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. “What can you do with information that you already have?” he asked an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members. From his position as Co-Head of Female Athlete Health & Performance at the UK Sports Institute [UKSI], he discussed the notion of rethinking existing evidence and spoke of the UKSI’s drive to centralise all blood screens across the British high performance system. It enabled that information to be used in a more informed and impactful way for Great Britain’s athletes.
You need to continuously monitor the impact of your innovation efforts. Use data to assess progress, adjust strategies, and reallocate resources as needed. This has been the approach in climbing, which is a new Olympic sport for Paris 2024. Budgets are small and creativity is a must. Representatives from the climbing world spoke on the roundtable about their key focus being the identification of impactful performance metrics and a more highly attuned understanding of the sport’s demands. It is important to identify projects that have the potential to create significant value or solve critical problems. The roundtable raised the question of coach development support, a “cornerstone enabler of our programme”, as one attendee put it, in environments where money is more constrained.
Similarly, an organisation in cricket on the roundtable spoke of the introduction of small-sided training matches. Though the training ground had to be modified, cricket is notorious for players in training environments inadvertently left standing around. By tweaking the design of training, players in that environment are better engaged.
Partner with other organisations, universities, or research institutions. Collaborative efforts can pool resources, share costs, and, ultimately, accelerate innovation. On the coach development question, an attendee at the roundtable spoke of collaborating with an academic institution with a speciality in that field. It requires less investment and all sides are reaping the rewards.
This approach has been of benefit to numerous organisations, including British Rowing, whom Burden spoke of during his presentation in Manchester. They worked with Manchester Metropolitan University and the UKSI to ask: how is the menstrual cycle influencing British Rowing’s ability to deliver training and what impact is it having on internal load, competition and the performance of athletes?
“It’s their question – it hasn’t come from research or a university – it’s come from the sport,” said Burden of the project. “We’re there to provide some of the research and innovation expertise to help them formulate the question and work out a path to answer it.”
This goes for so much more than innovation. You have to tap into the creativity of your coaches, athletes and staff – they will often have valuable insights and ideas. Several roundtable attendees, particularly at talent pathway level, explained how they have taken steps to better engage and support their athletes, enabling them to thrive.
It called to mind the recent efforts of the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA]. Last year, Kate-Warne Holland, the Under-14 girls’ captain at the LTA, told the Leaders Performance Institute that UK pandemic restrictions compelled them to host the majority of competitions in the midlands of England where all players and coaches could travel with relative convenience. The LTA has kept these tournaments due to their transformative performance and development benefits.
“They were so valuable and they were encouraging the private coaches to be there and coach on court,” said Warne-Holland. “It provided an opportunity for the coaches to develop the players right in front of them. So they weren’t on a balcony, watching four matches, and then going home and working on it. We allowed and encouraged them to sit on court so they were able to impact on the player immediately.”
And it’s not just athletes. Performance programmes can be so much more effective when the leaders understand their people’s motivations and how they are doing away from the practice facility. Innovations can emerge from all quarters through the right levels of challenge and support.
Instead of large-scale, resource-intensive projects, focus on failing cheaply in lower stakes environments and learning quickly. As a roundtable attendee suggested, you could have small cohorts of people testing and working on projects safe in the knowledge they have not been tasked with finding the ‘perfect’ solution prior to testing.
Head of High Performance Mike Anthony discusses Strategy 2025, which aims to deliver success on and off the field.
Robertson then, just as now, had yet to take charge of a match. His first opportunities will come against England in a two-Test series in July, shortly after conclusion of the club rugby season.
“He’s got nine days to prepare for two Tests against England and, obviously, they can start their planning now, but they won’t get those athletes till then,” said Anthony with the tone of a person well-versed in the public scrutiny that greets the All Blacks and the New Zealand women’s national team, the Black Ferns, at every turn in their homeland.
“There’s an expectation on our teams in black that they should win everything all the time.”
This idea was prominent in the minds of New Zealand Rugby when, in 2022, the organisation launched its Strategy 2025. Their aim is for the Black Ferns to retain the Women’s World Cup in 2025 and the All Blacks to continue building towards winning the 2027 World Cup. It’s world domination, but not at all costs.
“There’s an expectation that we will continue to win, so while that’s really important to us, the way we win is critical,” added Anthony.
Strategy 2025 is New Zealand Rugby’s post-pandemic reset and, as their website states, a ‘launch pad to be bold in reimagining rugby – to look at every aspect of the game and ensure it is enjoyable, sustainable and well-positioned for any futures challenges’.
Here, the Leaders Performance Institute sets out what that looks like in practice.
The Rugby Way
As part of Strategy 2025, New Zealand Rugby is promoting Te Ara Ranga Tira, which translates from Māori as ‘The Rugby Way’. Anthony said: “This is how we want to operate as an organisation, not just within New Zealand Rugby but in rugby across the country.”
The Rugby Way sets out four guiding principles that are not just about how the game is played on the field but how it is represented, managed and integrated into the community.
These all emphasise the importance of respect, unity, passion and fairness, which are fundamental to the spirit of rugby in New Zealand. Underneath those values are Strategy 2025’s four strategic pillars across the sport, namely:
Anthony largely focused on the first in Melbourne – winning with mana.
What is ‘winning with mana’?
Strategy 2025 promotes the notion of ‘thriving people, thriving game’; and mana is central to that aspiration. It is a Māori concept encompassing honour, status and spiritual power – and it can only be earned. “It’s something bestowed on you,” said Anthony. ‘Winning with mana’ means winning in a way that enhances the mana of all those involved through actions on and off the field. “We want to be ruthless on the field; we want to be a team that’s feared and respected. But also off the field, that’s the humility piece; how we’re perceived.”
‘Winning with mana’ tends to manifest itself in five ways in New Zealand Rugby:
New Zealand Rugby seeks to induct people in the right way while ensuring their connection to the team endures. Anthony cited the example of the New Zealand men’s rugby sevens, where the co-captains will routinely go out of their way to meet new young players – most just out of high school – at the airport. The other end of the cycle is just as important. Scott Robertson is set to lose players from his squad with more than 150 appearances between them. “How do you retain some of that DNA? What are some of the things you’re retaining in that environment?” Expect All Blacks and Black Ferns alumni to be part of the future picture.
While not all examples are so extreme or prominent, the All Blacks delivered on their commitment to their community following the flooding at Hawke’s Bay in February 2023. They participated in the clean-up efforts and provided both community and emotional support while raising public awareness.
While Anthony explained his view that true performance cultures are tough places in which to survive, there is a balance to be struck between learning, stimulation and fun. During a match week, the All Blacks’ schedule will be front-loaded, with intense work and analysis done on Mondays and Tuesdays, before giving way to opportunities to socialise, decompress and eat meals together ahead of the weekend.
Anthony explained that recruits to rugby in New Zealand are not necessarily “students of the game.” It is an increasingly common observation across other sports too. They will do as they are told without necessarily seeking out information. As such, New Zealand Rugby has worked to manufacture more organic learning environments. Anthony is full of praise for the Auckland-based Blues in Super Rugby, who reacted to their empty analysis suite by starting to put laptops in their café. “Players could grab a coffee and something to eat and sit around and you’d just start to talk about the game.”
A Rugby World Cup campaign can mean players spending up to ten weeks away from their loved ones. It is not conducive to stable home environments. New Zealand Rugby invites families into the team environment and sets out expectations and demands. The families can also feed back and, thanks to this process, they now spend a couple of nights inside the camp on each tour.
25 Apr 2024
ArticlesThe Australian Institute of Sport faced this very problem. Here’s what they did and how it impacted their wellbeing work with coaches.
In 2022, the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS] began to devise its High Performance 2032+ Sport Strategy. It launched at the end of that year and would align all peak bodies associated with Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games sports in a national high-performance strategy; more than 50 organisations united behind one vision, purpose and mission as Australia builds towards success at the 2032 Brisbane Games on home soil.
Yet six weeks into the development of the strategy, a cohort of Australian Paralympians, past, present and future, approached Matti Clements, the Executive General Manager of Performance at the AIS, and told her they would not commit to the strategy because they felt like an afterthought.
“Our system has been created around able-bodied athletes and they felt they were just a consideration once everything else had been done,” Clements told an audience at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “For them to belong to this, they needed to see themselves as part of the strategy, so we made a very considered commitment to them to ensure inclusive design for all our programmes and frameworks.”
Coaches and their wellbeing were another common afterthought. “Athletes are at the centre of high performance, but it’s coach-led and coach-informed,” said Clements. If Australia is to find, develop and retain their best talent, then coach wellbeing is a prerequisite to performance.
It’s a topic addressed by the system’s Win Well Pledge (a component of the 2032+ Strategy), which aims to create an inclusive and sustainable high-performance sporting system that prioritises both performance and wellbeing.
“Our vision is really simple: we win well to inspire Australians,” Clements added. “People think it’s a) expensive; b) hard work; c) someone else’s responsibility – it’s none of those things – if we can all commit to it, we can all achieve it.”
The AIS has adopted an “ecological” wellbeing model that considers four sets of challenges: the individual, organisational, interpersonal and the wider Australian system. Here, we look at each in turn through a coaching lens.
The individual
Whatever the situation, the AIS is there to help every individual. For example, Australian coaches concerned about their mental wellbeing can use the AIS Mental Health Referral Network. It is a national service where athletes, coaches and high performance support staff can see a mental health professional for free confidential support. It was launched in 2018 primarily for athletes but is increasingly used by coaches. That said, coaches do not necessarily need help with their mental health. It could be a single parent with two children or a coach that needs help to improve their diet, nutrition and lifestyle.
The organisation
National governing bodies are increasingly aware of issues for coaches at home, or indeed abroad. They tend to be away for 16-18 weeks a year and, to compound matters, long haul flights invariably await them. That typical scenario comes with a sense of guilt because families are being left behind but coaches are excited travel and compete. As part of the redress, the national governing bodies of Australian sport started to involve families in discussions around coaching schedules.
The interpersonal
Conversations and connection are everything. Too often Australia’s coaches speak of being ill-equipped to manage the pressures of their role or the isolation they experience. Now, the national governing bodies arrange for coaches to meet and share challenges and experiences in facilitated forums. Bill Davoren, the AIS High Performance Coach Development Manager, who joined Clements onstage to discuss their strategy, spoke of a coach at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, who came under intense media scrutiny following adverse results for her athlete (who nevertheless went on to claim gold). He said: “That coach spoke openly about the support that she got from others through the connections and experiences that she had.”
The system
The system is Australian and, on one hand, that means doing things in a “uniquely Australian way,” as Clements put it, which also means calling upon the nation’s rich Indigenous culture in an effort to emphasise sharing, vulnerability and support. She added: “We have the longest living culture in the world, yet we are white and middle-class and we do not utilise the knowledge of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers about passing on knowledge from generation to generation.”
The recent Women’s Sport Breakfast highlighted advances in the understanding of post-partum parenthood, the company policies that provide support, and opportunities to return to competition.
The Women’s Sport Breakfast at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London brought together a panel of guests well-versed in the historical experience of women working in elite sport and the choices that were often forced upon them when it came to the most personal of decisions.
Moderator Claire-Marie Roberts, a chartered psychologist who serves as the Head of Elite Development at the English Premier League, was joined onstage at the Kia Oval by Ros Cooke, a physiotherapist specialising in pelvic health who works with the UK Sports Institute and MSK Physiotherapy; Sarah Evans, a new mother, current Leaders employee, and former GB Hockey player who now represents Surbiton Hockey Club; and Lauren Forrow, the Head of Operations at GB Cycling, who is expecting her first child in the New Year.
For three quarters of an hour they explored parenthood, policies and return-to-play protocols in front of an audience of coaches and practitioners drawn from across the globe.
There was pride in what has been achieved thus far, and lessons learned in the process, but there is still a long way to go for the vast majority of sports. In fact, no one can rest on their laurels – everyone can continue to learn and do better.
Policies and guidance
In reflecting upon her time as an international player, Evans never felt she had the option of having a child and maintaining a place in the Great Britain squad – a situation perpetuated by a lack of role models. Several years later, she understands the importance of taking it slowly, looking after her pelvic health, and not expecting an immediate bounce back. Evans, who was accompanied onstage by her baby daughter, said her body has changed having been through a trauma, but she’s focusing on celebrating her body’s ability to grow and sustain life rather than being frustrated by it. She’s conscious that she has a good support system and has invested in the services of a pelvic health expert. Hockey, as she put it, lets her have something for herself and control her identity, as well as be a role model to her daughter.
The improved environment, even during the course of just one individual’s career, is noteworthy. Cooke explained the importance of the likes of UK Sport, the RFU [Rugby Football Union] and FIFPRO, football’s global players’ union, publishing their guidance and policies on maternity, especially in the post-partum period.
It’s uplifting to see sport moving to a more open dialogue and recognising that it’s not one-size-fits-all. Not only do different sports need different things, and have different funding pools, but each individual is affected in different ways too. The importance of this work has grown as we see an increasing trend for athletes to not delay motherhood, supported by such policies and guidance.
Help people to better understand being a parent
Cooke also reflected on her biggest learnings from working with athletes pre- and post-partum. Firstly, everyone needs space to understand their new role as a parent – this applies to men too. Secondly, where there is a lack of evidence, because people have been nervous to conduct research with pregnant people, this causes cognitive dissonance with athletes who crave certainty and timelines.
She highlighted how we’ve set ourselves up to expect what isn’t necessarily best for our bodies. There has typically been judgement of how quickly people return to sport, and celebrations of quick returns, but what is best for the long-term health of the body?
With her athletes, Cooke aims to share information on the risks of quick return, but in a supportive way. She is also working to integrate pelvic health support with all athletes and colleagues, making it more normal to do so. There’s an opportunity for people to gain so much from the experience of becoming a parent and it’s important to look after anyone going through this change. Cooke emphasised the importance of pelvic health as a normal bodily function for everyone, supporting sexual health, urination, and defecation; and she sees this being an area that will increase in importance for men too. It also has an impact, she added, on performance and plays a key role in how our bodies transmit force through the pelvic area. Not only that, but sub-optimal physical health can impact mental health and cause anxiety and depression, as well as impact social interactions.
Change the language around returning
Forrow revealed that GB Cycling approve of the guidance provided by UK Sport and can point to five riders who have returned to racing having given birth. She added that the behaviours illustrated within the guidance have been fundamental in establishing an athlete’s preferences upon their return. Forrow said that it’s important for practitioners to ask positive questions to help them better understand each individual’s experiences.
The team have worked on changing the language around returning, focusing not just on performance plans and structures, but on a happy, healthy mum and baby, as well as remembering the joys of riding. They talk about ‘exercise’ rather than ‘load’ or ‘training’, and refer to ‘milestones’ not ‘dates’ – it’s a process they hope will alleviate pressure.
Forrow sits on the senior leadership team [SLT] at GB Cycling and has witnessed the influence of the guidance at first hand, both as a leader and as an expectant mother herself. As she explained, it has been empowering for Forrow, learning so much about her body, and sharing that knowledge in a workplace sense, whilst hearing from others. People are GB Cycling’s first competitive advantage so helping people in every way will only increase that. It is also worth noting that GB Cycling have extended paternity leave.
Forrow’s first six months as an expectant mother were tough, so having the SLT role-model the value of well-being was powerful. In her case, this played out around the UCI Cycling World Championships, which took place in Glasgow in August. Her usual field-of-play role wasn’t possible, but where the team value and focus on staff development, the team told her “we got this” and the values and culture of GB Cycling allowed mum and baby to be put first.
There remains much work to be done and Forrow hopes that current statistics will change. At present, 80 percent of people don’t return to full-time work, 20 percent don’t return at all, 50 percent return to admin roles even if they were previously in a position of management.
Whilst personal preference is OK, hopefully the stats will tell a different story in the future.
Ask – don’t just assume
Roberts worked with an Olympic committee over ten years ago. At this time, athletes tried to meticulously plan and align their pregnancies with Olympic cycles, or to combine them with an injury. There were high levels of expectation, increased stereotyping, and high levels of pressure around how they felt they should approach pregnancy.
A decade later, Roberts’ topline advice for expecting mothers and those supporting them is to abandon expectations, put each individual at the centre, consult heavily, provide support in line with those consultants, be flexible, and help with changing mindsets to not having much certainty.
It remains a gamble and a risk to conceive during a career. However, whilst athletes previously delayed the choice as their organisations couldn’t provide the support, they can now return to the same level, and in some cases, even increase their levels of performance.
Nevertheless, expectations can be detrimental, and some women can’t return to the same level. Therefore it is imperative that we respect, support, and neither stereotype people nor make assumptions about them.
Seven practices we need to see more often:
28 Nov 2023
ArticlesIn our final Performance Support Series of 2023 we explored the distinction between goal harmony and team harmony and make the case for the latter being the more impactful.
Over the course of the three sessions, we are focusing on three core areas of this topic:
For the second part of this learning series, the focus is goal and team harmony, with specific attention paid to how you can create team alignment in order to influence team performance.
The desired outcomes of the session included:
Exploring team harmony
Team harmony requires contributions from everyone on the team in order to reach those goals. The best team goals are co-created by team members and are aligned with the larger organisational goals.
In high performance sport, numerous organisations and environments employ a ‘team harmony’ outlook as opposed to a ‘goal harmony’ approach. In this session, we highlighted some of the potential pitfalls with a team harmony approach and make the case for why goal harmony can be more impactful.
With a team harmony approach, we often witness a vague strategy, mission and vision. The consequence of this vagueness can lead to operating in silos and overall inconsistency in messaging and the operation of the team. Another side-effect of this vagueness is that resources aren’t applied efficiently and there can often be a climate of uncertainty due to a lack of trust.
Finally, we can also experience people in the environment being particularly pleasant with one another, but not undertaking constructive conflict around the direction of the programme. With an absence of constructive conflict, there can be a lack of commitment and, with a lack of commitment, we can experience levels of under-performance.
What’s the solution?
Now we have identified some of the possible pitfalls with a team harmony approach, what solution could give us the best possible outcomes?
A goal harmony approach can be that solution. It is vitally important to set a unifying, ultimate performance target that drives everything that you do. Does your team have this ultimate target? This target isn’t a vision, it is measurable and performance-based. When reflecting on this in the group conversations and, leaning on prior experiences, we often find that many efforts to create alignment to galvanise and focus team performance lack this clarity.
Steve Jobs famously spoke of the friction that is required in teams to generate high performance. It is the friction, discussions and disagreements around performance matters that keep you at the cutting edge and challenging the nature of the ultimate performance target.
In summarising this section, if we generate harmony and clarity around the goal, the friction that takes place sits around the requirements of the target and not the individuals involved as we have already established collective harmony and clarity. So what could goal harmony look like in practice?
Enhance team effectiveness with ‘What it Takes to Win’ planning
A well-known performance model is the ‘What it Takes to Win’ framework, which formed part of our discussions around how to enhance team effectiveness and to promote the notion of goal harmony over team harmony.
In the specific examples and experiences we engaged with in this session, the ‘What it Takes to Win’ concept was built on the premise of five key factors:
To pick up on the starting point of a ‘What it Takes to Win’ model, often the success of this approach lies in the practice of setting the target. The performance target should be a bridge to your vision, purpose, dream and goal. The target has to be in your control and engages all resources and team members. It also requires a clear deadline and ability to be measurable. Finally, for the performance target to be impactful, it often requires you to feel a bit uncomfortable.
28 Sep 2023
ArticlesMark Jarram of Loughborough University makes the case for systemisation in sport.
“They’re about people,” says Mark Jarram. “Sport is a relationship business and everything should be people-focused. It’s about a person over performer, whilst there will always be an element of perform-on-demand in sport. The purpose of KPIs is to keep people informed, keep them involved, interested and inspired.”
Jarram, the Head of Coaching & Performance Development for Sport at Loughborough University, is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute about the benefits of performance planning and how KPIs feed into the systemisation of performance.
“Things that get systemised get done,” he continues. “In the world of coaching and sport, there’s so much going on and there’s so many things to do and achieve. If you can find ways to systemise and automate certain things or certain interventions it means it will actually get done.”
In the first part of our interview, we discuss five benefits of taking the time to systemise a performance programme, from the performance planning of a head coach to the daily work of a practitioner.
“A lot of us in sport sometimes fall short of systematising the things that matter most,” says Jarram. “If you do a good job of keeping the main thing the main thing, it lends itself to achieving consistency.” Reviewing and closing feedback loops, or even the art of effective feedback is commonly the one thing that is not done or, wrongfully, often the first thing to leave out. Consistency is essential in the act of performance planning and, as Jarram explains, when there is a strategy in place, you can create the framework – the system – for your feedback interventions. “You’ll know that the intervention gets made rather than sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not relevant to have a feedback intervention but if you don’t systemise something then it’s less likely to be done and you may miss an opportunity for really good feedback.” Ultimately, “you’ve got to have something that’s manageable and repeatable otherwise there is no chance of it being effective. It’s got to add value.”
Jarram uses the example of an S&C coach to outline the benefits for coaches and practitioners alike. “What’s the S&C systemising?” he asks. “What are they tracking and what are their metrics? Is that systemised and automated? I guess it’s the same for all disciplines. What are they doing to create a form of measurement that can determine if they are making a difference. Systemisation can help to determine if we’re focusing on the right things and can create the opportunities for collaborative conversations.”
“Systemisation should prevent you from going astray and it should help make your workflows easier and bring efficiency,” says Jarram, with performance planning firmly in mind. “It allows – but doesn’t guarantee – the opportunity for complete clarity and building alignment amongst staff teams. Some of the best organisations and people I’ve been around hold clarity paramount. It contributes to the power of your purpose in that it promotes buy-in and supports your vision and mission. It allows the opportunity to ask ‘how can I contribute? What are my deliverables?’ and therefore lets you hold people accountable.” There is, he says, also an opportunity to establish what it takes to win. “There’s elements of that. Systemising helps us to confront brutal facts,” he adds. “There’s also an element of avoiding assumptions. Fewer assumptions will be made as you won’t be navigating blindly or be caught off guard. As humans, we hate being caught off guard – coaches, practitioners and athletes all do. How can we systemise something so that everyone is like ‘we know this is important and we know it’s coming’.”
Does a systemised approach to performance work better for bigger or smaller organisations? “It can be effective in both depending on the quality of the leader, quality of the conversations, quality of that aforementioned clarity,” says Jarram. A huge anchor for Jarram is “the quality of a conversation is determined by the quality of the question,” adding, “are we asking the right questions at the right times to complement performance, encourage development and provide collaboration, with the athletes at the forefront?” Even a programme with 60-plus athletes and those with a more intimate 10-plus can function efficiently if it is lead effectively. The experience of the coaches and practitioners is also significant. At Loughborough, which provides 64 sports, including 20 high performance programmes, there are sports with all full-time staff, others with part-time staff, some with placement students and a number with volunteers. “They all come with different expertise, they’re all at a different age and different stage of their journeys, so the maturity factor is real,” says Jarram. “We hear a lot about coaches wanting practitioners to know their sport really well. Do you have to be an expert in that sport to be an effective practitioner? Not necessarily as long as the practitioner is managed and led really well.”
Tensions surrounding the head coach are all but inevitable in performance planning. “At Loughborough, we’re trying to encourage coaches to take a needs-based approach – what are the needs of the team and the individual? Are you helping and supporting that rather than merely doing what you’re comfortable with? – that’s where there are frictions. Are they choosing the right style of play and the right systems and strategies to complement what it’s actually going to take to win?” Sometimes coaches can be wrong and sometimes what it takes changes mid-season or mid-cycle. “We’re saying ‘choose and commit to something based on the information you have and pursue it’. There should then be a review process because every sport evolves all the time. Did you misjudge what it takes to win in your league? What’s actually happening? What are other teams doing? Did you think you had a certain type of player in your team in pre-season and they turned out differently? You’ve got to pivot and adjust. It’s very natural to do and by systemising it we hope to shorten that timeline. Okay, let’s make sure we’re doing it when needed rather than later when it’s maybe too late.”
In part two, we will look at how Jarram and Loughborough support coaches in their performance planning.
23 Aug 2023
ArticlesIn the second half of a our two-part interview, physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt discusses behavioural nudges and the gamification of training.
But what can a practitioner do when an athlete doesn’t ask ‘why’?
“There’s a few options,” says Ben Rosenblatt, a physical performance coach who has worked with the England men’s football team, GB and England women’s hockey teams and Olympic Judoka amongst others.
“Do you know them well enough to understand why they don’t want to know? If it’s because they just want to get told, they’ve got trust, and they don’t want to know ‘why’, they just want to crack on with it and say ‘go on then, give us the programme’, I’ll commit to it, we’ll give it a crack, and then afterwards we can work out how well that worked.
“Do they not want to know ‘why’ because they’ve disengaged? If so, then you might just see them floating around a session or trying to disrupt others.
“The other one is that they’re just not that interested in physical conditioning and preparation because not everyone is. Most people take up sport or play high level sport not because they love doing press-ups and sit-ups, it’s because they love their sport.
“So you’ve got to try and understand the reason why they’ve disengaged and you’re also trying to find out, as a consequence, how they’re best going to receive information. So you can just ask some really simple questions to ascertain that. If it were you and me working together I’ll ask: ‘what’s the best way that we communicate with each other? What do you need from me? what’s important to you physically? what’s worked in the past?
“You might say: ‘I just need a programme and to crack on’. That’s absolutely fine and that’s what you’re going to get. But then we can also ask the athlete ‘can we review it every six weeks?’ This will give you both the opportunity to learn more about each other.”
This is the second part of our interview with Rosenblatt, who discussed behavioural mapping in the first instalment.
The conversation takes a turn into nudge theory, which is defined by Imperial College London as: ‘based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the choice architecture, one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals.’
“This is where you bleed into the gamification of training and environmental nudges to encourage people to engage in stuff they might not necessarily want to,” says Rosenblatt, who in 2021 visited the Behavioural Insights Team (commonly known as the ‘Nudge Unit’), which previously operated under the auspices of the UK Government but is now run independently. It has informed his approach, as have visits to University College London, the University of Bedfordshire, and the Design Museum in London.
Returning to nudge theory, Rosenblatt says: “The basic principle is called EAST, which is making things: easy, accessible, social and timely.
“If you can make anything align with any of those four things, if you can make something really easy to engage in, really accessible, so it’s at the right time and the right place, it’s part of the social environment and it’s timely, it’s at the time when they should be doing it, then you’ll absolutely get the behaviour change.”
He cites an example from his time with the England men’s football team. “One problem was how we get the players to go in the pool immediately after training on a particular day with the physical performance team. Using nudge principles we decided to nick the players trainers and put them in the pool area! This meant, to walk back to the hotel, they had to go to the pool first! We also put recovery shakes in there and scattered some balls and some inflatables in the pool. So when they went to get their trainers, it was easier to take a shake and then jump in the pool with their mates rather than leave! They ended up staying in for half an hour or so.
Gamification can be a useful tool in training environments. “If it’s a group that does want to engage a little bit more, like the hockey girls, then you do things like have a synchronised swimming competition. Again, if you’re saying we’re going to do a pool recovery session, then the players will come in knackered, they’ll go up and down the pool for 10 minutes and get out. If we say we’re having a synchronised swimming competition and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a routine, they’re in there for 40 minutes working out what the routine is, hanging around the pool to play afterwards etc. Those are ways you can get players that just aren’t interested or who don’t want to know. Rather than giving them full autonomy, you create an environmental nudge that means that they have to dive in there literally.
“There’s other ways of doing it. One other idea is to play with the schedule. OK, so let’s say you’re trying to introduce a new form of training to the group (like strength work). Rather than make the session an additional training session, make it part of the original training session. So if they’re coming into the gym before going onto the grass, start with a familiar warm up, something they’re comfortable with and then you introduce the new activity as a competition. If it’s aligned to something you want them to get better at and want them to improve at; because it’s a competition everyone’s automatically engaged in it.
“Again, this is more relevant to athletes who aren’t as engaged with their physical preparation. But if you do a familiar warm up and there’s some little competition then they’re automatically going to engage in it. If it’s aligned to the physical outcome that you want, then they’re going to improve! The best way I’ve found of organising competition for maximum engagement is 1 1v1 competition in a team v team scenario… essentially you stack up points for your team by winning individual competitions against your opponents.
“You can then start to make it fun. We had an ongoing jump squat competition throughout the Euros where the players would compete for boxing belts based on how fast they were moving the bar. Training intensity and enjoyment went through the roof! All the athletes have noticed is that they’ve had a bit of fun and they’ve enjoyed themselves whilst being really physical. But if you start stacking that up over a course of two, three, four or five weeks, you’ve got a really strong physical conditioning response there.”
Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.
Want to discuss environmental nudges with Ben?
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt
