What Leaders Performance Institute members said in a recent Virtual Roundtable around the challenges and possible solutions to finding a balance between short and long-term strategy.
Consequently, when thinking about these barriers, what solutions, approaches and changes are we looking to implement to find that balance? These were the two questions that formed part of the group conversations as part of our Virtual Roundtable discussions.
What are the major barriers we are experiencing?
To set the tone for our conversations and to ensure we were focusing more on solutions to our challenges around this topic, attendees were encouraged to share the main barriers to finding an effective balance for short and long-term strategy. As expected, there were a number of commonalities and we acknowledged the different contexts those on the call were operating in.
The need for week to week results and return on investment
As expected, the most popular response from the group was around the pressures, desires and expectations to win and see improvement quickly. Dovetailing this challenge was also the increased anxiety that can be experienced around ‘deemed success’ within certain roles and what the implications are if results don’t fall as we’d like. For those operating within the Olympic system, it was clear that there are pressures from funding partners to be seeing quicker return on investment which can also influence longer-term thinking. Outside of the final score or outcome, it was acknowledged that losses are not limited to just the end result – injuries or a lack of objective progress deters away from the long-term vision to a shorter-term, reactive mindset. Finally on this point, it was referenced that many environments can experience unrealistic expectations on performance outcomes that create uncertainty and misalignment from the outset.
Organisational alignment
Another common challenge outlined by the group was the lack of alignment when it comes to discussions around short and longer-term thinking. What are we witnessing on an organisational level? There is an absence of individual role clarity aligned to long-term thinking, unlike the short-term. There is a natural expertise or discipline bias that exists in environments which can impact a unified approach to both the short and long-term, thus impacting the ability to collaborate effectively. Mindset. This was an interesting reflection that arose when exploring both questions, is the organisational mindset aligned when it comes to finding this balance? Do those in the environment have confidence in the approach and that match realistic expectations?
To conclude this second major barrier, the group also suggested that communication is often a core part of this process that requires more attention – what is the interpretation of short and long, where does one stop and start? Is there consistent communication and space provided to dedicate time to both short and long-term thinking? It is also clear that there are structural challenges when it comes to alignment – are those in departmental lead roles aligned in both day-to-day performance focuses, but also the horizon scanning for the programme?
Shifting the dial and finding a better balance
As part of the group conversations, we looked to lean on one another’s experiences around how we are looking to affect the barriers in a positive way and what approaches or best practices are having the most impact.
Balancing short and long-term strategy requires ‘bravery’
Be brave and be deliberate was one of the key reflections that came from the conversations. Why did the term bravery emerge in the conversations? It was aligned to the fact that some bravery in terms of decision making is important to commit to something we believe in for the future. An environment from the Olympic world outlined that they found it more useful talking about ’12-Year Statements of Intent’. When looking at funding submissions, there was a short-term strategy set in the context of a ’12-Year Statement of Intent’ – it encouraged thinking around what 12 years ahead actually looks like and each time there is a conversation around why we’re doing something in a particular way, it gives the collective something to roll back to. Thinking that amount of time ahead does take bravery, but it provides an opportunity to ensure that the short and long-term are connected rather than having tension with one another.
Creating dedicated space and time
It was interesting to hear that many environments aren’t intentional in creating opportunities and space to talk about the long-term. Often, we are finding that the long-term thinking is morphing into the day-to-day and we aren’t moving into ‘new spaces’ to explore new thinking and how to carry information forward. We can do better at connecting the two through a methodology such as ‘plan, do, review’ which can be an effective approach. If we can get this to work, it can help to connect the short with the long-term.
The groups also felt it was important to note that creating space and time for these conversations should be a systemised approach, it shouldn’t just be a one off – integrate this into how you operate. Deliberately, every three to four months, come together and look at what we said we were going to do in the short-term and review how is that connecting to the long-term.
It was also encouraged that we are deliberate in creating space for different mindsets, there are different mental states required to think in the long-term vs the short-term. One is more creative and the other is more action-orientated. One environment from the Olympic system shared that a scenario they have had this year is preparing for Paris 2024 and submitting funding around what the strategy may be. The team did some work around futurology and brought in an external facilitator from the University of Oxford who does scenario planning and future thinking work.
As part of your organisational strategy, it was also suggested that allocating resource and reward processes related to long-term thinking and not just short-term delivery help find a healthier balance – often most of our resources are aligned to short-term delivery.
Clear vision and values
Start with the end in mind and work backwards from where the long-term strategy is targeted at was another key suggestion – what are the milestones, targets and priorities to close the gaps? It requires time and effort to continue to keep the strategy alive with the behaviours that underpin them and not just seeking short-term success.
Many environments witness frequent change where progress around long-term thinking can be stifled – look at handover and inductions with a focus on the culture and vision of the organisation to provide an element of sustainability and alignment. Creating a vision is the start, particularly bringing to life the ‘how’ we get there is vital for clarity. Have respect for all the different departments and teams within the organisation that have different priorities.
Accountability
Finding a balance between short and long-term thinking requires a level of accountability within the environment. There is an importance placed on ongoing communication, buy-in from all involved and accountability to the long-term plan. Outside of individual accountability, there is also a need for ‘programme accountability’ to reviewing (week-to-week, month-to-month, cycle-to-cycle) in a fashion that links with the long-term vision and strategy.
Changing the mindset
We have already briefly alluded to the idea of mindset or the mental spaces required for these kinds of thinking. There is an importance in being deliberate and recognising the different mindset required to think in the short and long term – an intent, purpose and real desire to affect change in a positive manner. There was a great reflection in the discussion that most of the team meetings we experience are often focused on the things we are reacting to on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe we need to make an intentional shift to ensure we don’t get caught up in the reactive mindset.
We also discussed language. Make the long term strategy as a concept more exciting to talk about – long-term strategy can often sound quite uninteresting, so how can we change the language to galvanise a group and create excitement? There is sometimes a deterrent that the ‘long-term’ is so far in the future you can’t realistically consider it, whereas it should be exciting to think about the future.
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
In the first instalment of our two-part interview, physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt considers the benefits of behaviour mapping a programme.
“My starting point is that no one is trying to do it,” says physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt.
“As a high performance athlete, everyone’s got the intent to go and win. No one turns up to training every day thinking ‘I’m going to be difficult today’. You can turn up and say ‘I don’t really fancy it’ because that’s what humans do, but no one has the intention to be bad.”
Rosenblatt was the Lead Men’s Physical Performance Coach at the Football Association between 2016 and 2023 and was part of Gareth Southgate’s staff at two Fifa World Cups and one Uefa European Championships. He has worked across a series of sports and has worked at both the English Institute of Sport (now UK Sports Institute) and the British Olympic Association.
In the first part of our interview, Rosenblatt makes the case for a framework that enables a practitioner to bridge performance gaps.
‘Things didn’t match up’
Rosenblatt explains that his approach when entering a programme has evolved, although his principles remain unchanged. He says: “It is a case of identifying what the team’s ambitions are, seeing how resonant they are with what they’re trying to achieve, and then identifying the behaviours that should be in place to deliver that.”
He recalls an example from an Olympic sport where those two were misaligned. “One team wanted to be the best in the world and the most physically dominant,” Rosenblatt continues. “For me, those things didn’t match up, particularly when I spoke to the athletes and coaches and heard a different narrative.
“When I dug into it with the athletes and coaches and asked ‘what are the hallmarks and successful traits of teams you think are going to enable you to win and how are we going to do it?’ Then I quickly realised that their ambitions around being physically fittest and the most dominant were probably not the thing that was going to help us win in the Olympics.”
A gold medal-winning performance did not require a well-executed 30-15 intermittent fitness test or bleep test. “There were problems with basic things like stability and robustness and just being able to train frequently enough. We can go and chase all the sexy stuff, which physical conditioning coaches really want to do like speed and agility, strength and power, but what we really need to do is keep the players playing consistently and increasing volume and intensity for their sport-specific training because that’s what will make them a better team.”
‘How does that individual learn?’
Why might a team fall into a poor behavioural pattern in the first place?
“It typically comes from a gap in capabilities, knowledge, skills and experience,” says Rosenblatt. “It can also be their opportunity, so the social environment they’re in; and then their motivation.”
He explains that a coach’s understanding of athlete motivation may be flawed. “A coach might say ‘they just don’t want it enough’ or ‘they just don’t know enough’ then you can end up in a fight with an athlete who says ‘what are you talking about? I’m doing everything I can’ or you can try to bamboozle them with knowledge that they don’t really know how to receive,” he continues.
“An example might be: ‘I’m going to give you some detailed information about why strength training is important’ and they’re like ‘I don’t really care’ or ‘I don’t have the framework to understand what you’re telling me’. You’ve got to identify where those gaps in behaviours and opportunities are. So if it is around knowledge, skills and experience, then you’ve got to ask the question ‘how do they learn? How does that individual learn? How do they best receive and retain information?’
“That might be different as a head coach compared to a young athlete or even a seasoned athlete. They’re going to learn and experience physical training differently. They’re also different generations; they’re going to have different social values placed on them as well. Understanding the individual and how they learn and receive knowledge is really important.”
‘Not everyone had seen Rocky’
Rosenblatt’s understanding came from a growing appreciation of motivation science, which he had previously overlooked.
The penny dropped prior to the 2016 Rio Olympics, when he worked concurrently with GB judokas and women’s field hockey players. Whilst the Judokas wanted to receive a training programme and be told what to do, this approach didn’t work with the women’s hockey team.
“I tried to understand the motivational science behind it,” he says. “I assumed my generation, my background, I was brought up in a boxing gym and I assumed everyone had watched Rocky and that’s what kind of motivation meant to everyone else. But actually, it’s about the athlete needing to have autonomy and feel like they’re making a decision; is there a connection between the work they’re currently doing and what they’re aspiring to achieve and do they feel like they’re getting better?
“So if you really want to make sure an athlete is motivated to commit to the programme and commit to certain behaviours that are different to the ones they’re currently engaging in, is there a connection between what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to achieve? The tangible – can they see it? Have they had a choice in the path that they’re taking?
“They might not have the skills and experience to write the programme or to take all the direction, but there still has to be a choice somewhere along the line. ‘Do you want to train at 3 or 3:30?’ If there’s some level of choice it makes people feel more connected to it.
“The other one is progression. Do they actually feel they’re getting better and it’s achieving the things they’re really interested in? I think that was the biggest mistake I made with the hockey group when I came in.
“That comes back to helping the players connect and recognise what’s important to the things they’re trying to achieve. I think that’s always a tricky one when people start introducing strength training, in particular, into team sports or any kind of training for athletes.
“I’ve certainly had that experience in football. There’s a big disconnect between lifting weights and performance. Particularly when the first thing you experience when you lift weights for the first time is that you get sore and you can’t move for two or three days. There’s a real disconnect with that. So I think you’ve got to recognise the experience that the athlete is actually living. That’s really important. Also, work out the different solutions and strategies that are available for that player at that particular time.”
Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.
Want to discuss performance behaviours with Ben?
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt
The latest Leaders Performance Institute members Virtual Roundtable focused on the use of internal athlete management systems (AMS) and, in particular, the challenges around maximising its usage and the solutions that are having the most impact.
From the conversations on the call, it has become abundantly clear that multiple challenges remain, there is still a gap around how to actually maximise the systems to their fullest potential, but on the flip side, there are some effective solutions taking place across the industry to shift the dial. For the first segment of the call, we laid out on the table the key challenges everyone is facing.
Barriers to effective utilisation
The speed and functionality of the system continues to provide nagging daily challenges that can slow down work streams – ‘we are reverting back to pencil and paper pretty quickly’.
Within organisations there are different levels of knowledge and competency around data processes and the utilisation of the AMS. The lack of knowledge alignment is creating challenges to the efficiency of processes and communication across departments. This will feed into the solutions section as well, but there isn’t often orientation around what actually needs be collated and why – there are many different viewpoints so too much data is being collated which is making it hard to connect effectively with the athletes.
This point links closely to the one prior. There is a lot of inputting of inaccurate data or missing data. As one of the participants on the call summed up ‘if you are putting garbage in you will get garbage out’.
One of the most popular challenges shared in the groups was the lack of integration between different platforms which are utilised by different performance departments. It is creating more work, data overload and not a clear picture for athlete development. Many environments are also finding that certain systems are very rigid and are instead looking to develop their own internal systems which are tailored to their specific needs – one member of the group shared that service providers and vendors are trying to provide solutions we don’t need.
As we know, one of the main reasons for data collation and analysis is to improve performance outcomes for athletes. Some of the organisations on the call shared that there still remains a gap in the athlete’s literacy and general buy-in about the systems. If we are unable to get the athletes onboard, it makes it incredibly challenging to initiate any kind of changes in behaviour.
Solutions and considerations to elevate effectiveness
Considering the complexity and ‘rabbit holes’ we can find ourselves heading down with athlete management systems, the conversation was a gentle reminder to ensure you continue to do the basics right. Capture the data effectively, consistently and accurately. There are important questions to regroup on around what’s important to capture, how is the information shared, how is it visualised and what does it mean? Start at a place of simplicity and importance.
We are witnessing an increase in different stakeholder involvement around performance: players, parents, other departments, executives etc. Be intentional in figuring out how to connect with them around the data. Ensure it is user-friendly, digestible, colourful if it needs to be – we should be striving to tell stories and create emotion around this so it elevates the engagement with the information.
Education is perhaps one of the most crucial elements in elevating the effectiveness of your systems. We need to strive to get everyone on the same page and focus time and effort on the ‘human elements’ of working with data to elevate understanding.
From an athlete perspective, educate them on ‘the why’ and work on engaging them so there is no secrecy, no fear, but complete transparency. Recruitment: one organisation on the call who have recently transitioned AMS provider shared the success they had around being intent on hiring people who were incredibly proficient with the new system and who could help the team build it out to maximise its effectiveness, as opposed to trying to uptrain existing staff which would prove to be incredibly time consuming. When athletes believe that something will support their performance, they start to take ownership of the conversation and it leads to those casual collisions we desire.
Another simple solution that has witnessed some impactful results has been a shared message from senior leadership to outline expectations when it comes to the utilisation of the AMS – ‘we are doing this. We’re investing a lot of money and everybody will be using it, it’s not an option’. A top-down message to bring everyone to a level playing field of understanding is a simple step to creating clarity and alignment.
It’s fair to say that everyone on the call is craving a one-size-fits-all system that integrates everything that all departments and stakeholders want – the reality is that it is going to be incredibly challenging to do this. Not trying to have a one-size-fits-all will take away a lot of stress. Instead, try focusing on building a database that can house what’s critical and then having your individual platforms that are specific to the day-to-day tasks.
Linking to point four above, a clear expectation from everyone to maintain high standards around data hygiene. It’s a simple solution but how many organisations can safely say their data hygiene is perfect?
Group reflections and insights
That question faced the Ireland women’s hockey team when they claimed silver at the 2018 World Cup and, in the intervening period, the team continues to develop its ability to challenge for medals in the future.
The team went into the tournament ranked 16 in the world and few observers expected them to put together a run that saw them oust India, whom they also beat in the pool phase, and Spain via penalty shootouts.
Ireland lost the final 6-0 to the Netherlands but in claiming silver earned their first-ever World Cup medal.
Lisa Jacob, who currently serves as High Performance Director across the women’s and men’s programmes at Hockey Ireland, a role into which she stepped in September 2022, watched that success from afar and reflects on its impact in the second part of her interview with the Leaders Performance Institute.
“The impact it had is kind of two sides to the same coin,” says Jacob, who previously spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute about her own career path.
“On one side, you’ve had success and you have realised your potential to mix it with the best when it matters most. Then, on the other side of it, that implicitly created an expectation that when it comes to another major tournament or the next one, they would be in the mix for medals again.
“In reality, the team have been in that ranking zone between eighth to fourteenth; and eighth is probably a jump when they won the medal based on the points, but in reality, Ireland’s current ranking of 13 is probably accurate enough. You’re fighting in that 10-14 space,” she continues.
At the 2022 World Cup, co-hosted by Spain and the Netherlands, Ireland were unable to progress beyond the pool phase. “In some ways, it’s illogical to think that you win the silver medal and all of a sudden you’re in the top two nations in the world, but I think some part of that created an expectation in the player group that they should be doing X, Y or Z afterwards and I’m not sure that it supported them to be their best,” says Jacob in reflection.
“It’s taken quite a few years to work through that; and part of that has been realising consistently ten games out of ten where they actually sit in the world rankings. But what I think is great is the combination of some really experienced old heads who were at the World Cup and have achieved that success. They know it’s possible and how they did it in terms of replicating it, but you also have people who were coming in and haven’t got that so they just have to work hard to mix it with these other nations when they’re playing them.”
Jacob explains that a sense of enjoyment has been essential. “The majority of the girls know that if everything gets too serious and too intense that it doesn’t facilitate their best performance. The group is probably 70% new so what might have worked for those guys who won the medal and what now works for the overall balance of the current group might be different.”
The power of people
Jacob, who contributed to the Leaders Performance Institute’s recent Special Report, Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions, describes the importance of the work done at home in Ireland, particularly given the programme’s tight budgets.
“It might not be as glamourous as going away to play Argentina, but it’s really about making the home-based activity really count, being clear about what you want to get out of your training blocks,” she says.
Home-based work also provides the players and staff with opportunities for team-building through constructive engagement and feedback. “It’s something that Ireland have always been excellent at,” adds Jacob. “It’s making sure that you have really good people involved and not just good professionals. And we’ll find a way to go the extra mile. There’s always a bit of good humour despite whatever adversity or situation you end up in. The programme is in a good place now and what I would say is that the athletes and staff, when they travel, it’s not that they’re in five-star hotels, but they’re in very good places. It’s a far cry from having no money.
“What’s really good is that you end up in a position where things aren’t perfect and nearly every time you travel or go to a competition, you have situations where a bus doesn’t turn up or the food they planned it for that time but, actually that’s Irish time, not Spanish time or whatever. I think the power of people to deal with those things in a really good way is something we’ve been good at in Hockey Ireland.”
The programme’s work in the field of performance psychology has also been instrumental in fostering an open team culture. Says Jacob: “The group that are there now, the team is much younger. There’s been quite a lot of transition since that 2018 World Cup and, thankfully, there are still some of the players who are there; so you have some connection to the possibility of succeeding at that level but you also have a lot of people who aren’t connected to it and in some ways have no baggage either because as much as the lows come with baggage the highs also shift expectations, it does a lot of things to you. What’s good now is the people and the culture, the psychology, the directness of dealing with the things that really impact performance that are not really the first ten things that go on the page but are things that make the biggest difference to the players and staff.”
Jacob admits that providing a smooth integration for younger players is a work in progress. “One of the things I’m taking a look at is how we’re aligned from pathway to senior and how we actually support people to transition; and that’s in lots of different spaces but obviously that development squad to senior transition is key.
“What works really well in the women’s programme is that there’s normally like a squad of 30 and, every year, between five and eight of those would be development squad athletes. So they would do the majority of their training with the seniors but they wouldn’t have any expectations around selection or whatever but they’d still have access to all the team’s support staff. They’re in a lot of the team meetings, they’re in all of the databases. There is real integration, but the next step for us, even though they’re embedded in the team, is to be more personalised about how we push them individually to transition really well.”
Cohesion and connection
Jacob explains that physical preparation no longer provides the performance edge it might once have, as the world-leading teams are all so finely-tuned. However, “Ireland has always been a nation where that kind of passion comes out in physicality. The first thing is making sure that that box is ticked because I think it underpins a lot.”
Beyond conditioning, Ireland’s focus for 2023 – a year in which there are a series of qualifying tournaments for the 2024 Paris Olympics, including the EuroHockey Championships in August – is set pieces, particularly penalty corners.
“There’d be a huge amount of opportunity that comes from penalty corners,” says Jacob. “Reflecting on the last two years in the women’s programme, they’ve had a lot of opportunity but the conversion rate hasn’t been high enough in those key games to get over the line. I think it’s the smallest thing that will make the biggest difference; if you do nothing else, this is what we’re looking at.
“The last thing for me is the cohesion and the connection within the squad. It’s not necessarily a gender thing, it’s not specific to women, but that feel factor within the group and that belief of possibility and being on-track, seeing progress, and, I suppose, confidence in a sense. They’re going in the right direction. You can be ticking all the boxes but if that one is missing then there’s probably a bit of an empty shell ready to perform.
“That doesn’t just come from being positive about everything; I think really reflecting upon things genuinely and authentically, and having hard conversations about what we’re going to do about it and all that kind of stuff, breeds a sense of confidence that we’re doing the right things, we’re having the right conversations and this will bring us to where we’re trying to get to.”
That place may not be the podium in Paris. “Bearing in mind that the profile of the team is younger and in transition, you’ve probably got a large cohort of that group peaking more closely to 2028 than 2024,” says Jacob.
If Ireland’s women or men are to reach the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, they will have to navigate a path through field hockey’s most competitive continent.
“Part of what’s so great about being in Europe, even though it’s arguably the toughest continent to be playing hockey in, is that you have a very good measure of where you stand. If you look at the world rankings and the European rankings at the same time, you’ll always have four Europeans in the top six in the world; so how are you mixing it with those groups? Are you getting close to them? Are you breaking into that top four in Europe?
“We’re playing those nations all the way through the pathway from under-16s. So in Ireland, although we’re planning for our peak to be at senior level rather than the Germans who win everything at under-18s or whatever, how are we making those gains relatively speaking from where we were four or six years ago? It’s also important just as a signpost to go ‘yeah, we’re on track or we’re doing really well or whatever’ but, yeah, it’s mission critical to get into that top six.”
Lisa Jacob is a contributor to our latest Special Report, titled Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions: a snapshot from Olympic, Paralympic and elite team sports. In addition to Hockey Ireland, it features insights from Swimming Australia, the Lawn Tennis Association, Athletics Australia and Welsh Rugby Union. Each has teams competing in major tournaments this year, and all are bound to give you something to think about in your future projects.
What Leaders Performance Institute members said in a recent Virtual Roundtable about maximising the impact of your programmes.
The time was ripe to explore the topic in a virtual roundtable where Leaders Performance Institute members could ask others how they measure impact as well as any other considerations that emerge as part of the process.
No one feels that they have cracked it but four key themes emerged that you may wish to consider – some before we even begin to measure.
Are you creating opportunities for quality questioning? One environment within the discussions shared that the organisation is pushing everyone within it to ask candid questions. Quality questions underpin quality conversations. How are you driving this as a skill?
Asking good questions is also a powerful place to start to inform core areas for measuring impact, notably building to or working backwards from the end goal. Many organisations in the industry work off a ‘what it takes to win’ or ‘the demands of the event’ model. As a further thought for provocation, part of one discussion challenged the notion of ‘what even is impact for us in our context’? The key set of learnings from this theme is that before we begin jumping into measurement, are we clear on what it is we want to measure, why and does it align to the outcome we are seeking? Use great questions to help you get there.
The notion of relationship mapping – charting the relationships of individuals and organisations – featured strongly within the conversations and was a takeaway that a number of those in the discussion were keen to explore further within their own environments. One organisation shared that they have trialled relationship mapping amongst the performance support team, specifically looking at groups who have been working together for an extended period of time, with embedded systems and processes to better understand how they are collaborating, approach problem-solving and, occasionally, compromise with one another. The purpose of this concept is to enable them to interrogate the contextual relationship that exists between the people within the team on a personal and professional level.
As an extension to the point above, another organisation on the call had shared that they have begun to measure the performance support team outside of results – measuring the team as a team. The feeling amongst the group was that effective collaboration is a key ingredient of the athlete’s development and thus, the end result. Focus on the process of how we operate as a staffing group. A final thought on this point is that often executives can place the emphasis on formal appraisals and quantitative insight, but the sweet spot lies in the working relationships between support team members.
In the key takeaways at the end of the call, a popular response from the group was the insight of ‘consistency and efficiency over quantity of measurables.’ The objective of measuring impact is to track progress, benchmark and better understand fit to context. Aligning to the previous point around understanding what it is we need to measure, clarity around ‘what it takes to win’.
With clarity on measurements driven by the model, true interdisciplinary conversations can occur and alignment is present. These conversations need to be living, breathing and driving development every day, and include key ingredients such as outcome goals, performance goals, deliverables, adaptations and tactics (for getting there), as well as individual development plans of the athletes.
How intentional are your organisation in providing updates and debriefing opportunities around key measurements? One organisation shared the best practice they adapted from Pixar which was created to aid conversation and action points – departments are asked to present back, not only to validate ideas but to create a thinktank environment.
Throughout the set of conversations, most organisations engage in surveying and appraisals to measure the impact of delivery, something which is standard practice in most environments. Around the table, the group looked to take thinking around surveying to another layer, in particularly highlighting how to make the most out of them as a tool.
Surveys, whether shared with athletes or staff are typically very quantitative rather than being more qualitative and asking of open questions. With the notion that quality questions underpin quality conversations, can we develop our use of surveying to provide more detail than just metrics? A great example of this from the athlete perspective is ‘did they achieve what they wanted to achieve?’ as a qualitative measurement.
Finally, the discussed that we are in the business of developing people as well as athletes. We should look to be proactive in measuring impact of wellbeing within the environment and taking accountability to make this a main stay of any programme impact.
The group takeaways and questions
At the end of the call, attendees were asked to share a reflection for future consideration:
The performance specialist discusses the resolution of conflicting ideas and managing the fallout when things go wrong in high performance.
“There’s factors in every culture that pre-exists the leader’s vision – that’s the thing that most people don’t want to admit,” says Jack Easterby.
The performance specialist, who most recently served as the Executive Vice President of Football Operations at the Houston Texans, is referring to the limitations that face a leader. “Sometimes that’s weather, sometimes that’s facilities and sometimes that’s the finances of the club,” he continues.
“If you set your vision based on ideal circumstances and you don’t consider major footprint factors, issues that have held things back in the past, then your vision will never find traction. The balance is: are you receiving from your people the risk factors or the inhibitors of the past and why they haven’t gotten to where they want to be? Are you receiving those and reincorporating them in your new vision? If you don’t do that then even the best vision is doomed to fail.”
This is the second part of the Leaders Performance Institute’s recent interview with Easterby. The first instalment focused on the questions a leader must ask their people. This one hones in on conflict management.
‘People are more attached to motives than ideas’
Easterby argues that a leader must move away from focusing on the origin of an idea to the process of implementation in as little time as possible. “You really don’t want to be stuck to one person’s idea ever. It may be a good idea that someone comes to you with, but you want to be able to create consensus,” he says.
“Everybody is going to have ideas, some are better than others, some will be more original than others like you can take it and put it in place and roll; some things you’ve got to change in a bunch in order for it to work.”
What approach does he take when two people come to him with conflicting ideas? “My first reaction is to ask myself: ‘can we jump into the “why” of both of those versus affirming one or the other?’ because if I can get to the why of those; ‘why do you think we should do B?’ And ‘why do you think we should do A?’ Then what I may be able to do is come up with idea C that incorporates the ‘why’ from both of them and we may actually be doing a different idea in the end.
“People are more attached to motives than they are to ideas. For example, if someone says ‘I want to do expense reports differently because I believe that it costs me too much time to do it this way’, the motive for me is to save time. They don’t really care if they have a debit card or they’re paying online or whatever; they’re really just saying ‘this costs me a lot of time’. You don’t just want to say that idea A is better than idea B, you want to get the motive from idea A, the motive from idea B, and then you want to say ‘how do we consider all of the motives behind these ideas before we implement it?’ ‘They might be saying idea A but they’re not saying that, what they mean is this’. You can then build consensus with idea C.
“You want to know the ‘why’ behind the idea because there’s a lot of time people make great suggestions and you listen to it and think the why behind it is right and pure, ‘let’s go with it’. There’s other times that people make suggestions and these people are tired and frustrated right now, they’re upset with their co-workers, they’ve got some things going on personally. I’ve got to make sure I filter that and ask more questions about the motive to see if that’s really where we should be going with this initiative or not.”
Always have a backup
What about those times when systems simply fail? “The number one thing when moving on from systems failure – this is something I wish I would have done better in Houston – is to recognise that system failure can’t be deflating for the entire team,” says Easterby, reflecting on the time he spent at the Texans between 2019 and 2022.
“No matter what the system is that’s not working, you need to be able to insulate yourself from operating poorly because that system didn’t work. So if something is going wrong in athletic training, if something is going wrong in operations, if something is going wrong with salary cap administration, all of those things have to be done in a way that if something goes wrong there’s another system that you can run temporarily or a backup philosophy that you can operate so that everybody is not looking and going ‘oh my goodness, we’ve failed’ because you can’t let the confidence of the entire group be attached to one system.
“I would say that one of the greatest things I experienced in New England, which was really cool, is that Coach Belichick often had multiple systems in play but the same initiative. So if it were an athletic training situation, he had a couple of different trainers who could do the same job just in case we needed to replace one or something happened. If it was a situation when we were travelling, he had multiple contingencies so that there wasn’t just one thing that threw us off and everyone felt deflated and the confidence of the team was lost because we didn’t execute.
“You never want any particular system to carry the entire confidence of the group. You want to have a lot of layers in there because a lot of things can go wrong in athletics and you’re naturally going to be on your heels some. So if you can create systems, lily pads that you need in case you need to jump from one to the other, that’s the way to do it.
“If the system does fail, the leader has got to be willing to say ‘hey, I didn’t do this right, I missed this, this factor I didn’t consider’; whatever it is, just confess that, because it’s going to open the gate. If you get into blame it’s going to disenfranchise people and they may turn their backs on you, you’re not going to have a chance to build the system back right.
“I like the idea of putting a few people in a committee and potentially starting a meeting structure to talk about why that system failed immediately. ‘Hey, these three people, you guys were really a part of that system. Let’s come to my office, let’s share, let’s get on the white board, let’s talk about why this didn’t work, because your “whys” are going to go right into your new system.’
“You’re going to be learning a lot about why something potentially didn’t work and that’s going to give you the keys to the new system when you’re building it. I like committees or actions that can give you some good feedback; ‘this is potentially where the tension point was and why we didn’t do a good job’ and then you begin to edit. Then I like sharing the results of those meetings publicly within the team. ‘This didn’t work, this is what we found, and here’s how we’ve been addressing those needs, and we’ll meet and implement this new system when it’s ready’.”
Are you ready to take your team on tour? Or are you adequately prepared for your next major competition? In answering those questions we seek to give you something to ponder in this Performance Special Report, brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser. In this pages, we explore how training camps can be used to capitalise on a team’s collective knowledge and how trips can be used to develop a team’s sense of belonging. We also turn our lens to contingency planning on tour and the considerations that make for a smart debrief afterwards.
Complete this form to access your free copy of Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions, which features insights from Swimming Australia, the Lawn Tennis Association, Wales Rugby, Athletics Australia and Hockey Ireland. Each has teams competing in major tournaments this year, and all are bound to give you something to think about in your future projects.
Victoria Moore
Head of Performance Support & Solutions
Athletics Australia
Views from GB Bobsleigh, Swimming Australia, Wales Rugby, UK Sport and London’s West End theatre.
It is a topic that comes up with regularity at the Leaders Performance Institute and, here, we present the approach of British bobsledder Montell Douglas; Swimming Australia’s Head Coach Rohan Taylor, Wales women’s rugby union team Head Coach Ioan Cunningham; Jayne Ellis, currently a performance advisor with UK Sport; and actor Dom Simpson, who delivers a view from the world of the performing arts.
We distil their responses into five essential considerations.
“I address my performance gaps through real, basic goal-setting. In the sense that there’s always a process,” says Montell Douglas, who competed for Great Britain in the two-person bobsleigh at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Previously, she competed for her nation in the 100m and 4x100m relay at the 2008 Summer Olympics, also in Beijing. In completing the switch she made British history. It was something she was aware of in the build-up to the Games and here she gives the Leaders Performance Institute an insight into the continuous conversation she had with herself.
“What does British history mean?” she continues. “I reverse-engineered the goal, looked back and said ‘this means I have to do X’. ‘But where am I now? Well, I’m right here and that means I have to do this’.
“One of the things was ‘what does my sport need? What do you require? Am I reflective of a history-making athlete?’ If not, then I’m making those little adjustments; ‘I need to gain four kilos by this date’, for example.”
Douglas interrogated herself constantly. “It enabled me to make clear targets and goals, with deadlines for all that was needed, because you have to be ready on 20 February 2022 [in the case of the Olympic bobsleigh]. You can’t be ready on 21 February 2022 – it’s too late.”
The coaches have a role to play too. “It’s having a two-way conversation,” says Ioan Cunningham. “Footage is huge and we have individual development plans for players. So if our number nine [scrum half] needs to work on her pass off the base so that it’s quicker and she needs to get the ball off the deck, that’ll be a performance plan for her.
“How does she get better? Link it to footage and then have constant catch-ups every week or two where you go ‘look, this is better – you can see it’s better. The ball is in the ten’s hands [fly half] much quicker’.
“The ten could then give her feedback as well and say ‘yes, the passing is much better, it’s faster and more accurate’; and then breaking that down to the drills she needs to do to make sure that it gets her passing better.”
Actor Dom Simpson, who stars as Elder Price in the West End production of The Book of Mormon in London, also prefers a two-way discussion in his work. “My agent always describes it as a ‘dance’,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “I can do one thing for a dance but the partners have to be working together to make that work.
“An issue, for example, could be my director coming to me and saying ‘this scene is not quite reading right. Maybe we can try this?’ and a lot of the time that works best when it’s a collaborative discussion – I don’t think anyone works best when it’s ‘do this and it’ll be better’ because unless I have an understanding of why that is it won’t feel like the best way to do it.”
Simpson also explains that the best directors facilitate the actor’s path to the best agreed outcome. He says: “The best creatives that I’ve ever worked with, they allow that conversation to happen and they facilitate you finding the answer. They ask questions that make you find the answer that they just want to tell you anyway so that there’s a feeling of ‘we both got to it’, whereas the director might be saying ‘I knew that’s where we wanted to get to but I had to allow you to find that for it to feel real’. When we talk about the ‘truth’ in a scene, a lot of the time that’s how we get to the bottom of an issue.”
Cunningham tells the Leaders Performance Institute of a hypothetical scenario involving an athlete. “A player may need more power in her lower legs, so that becomes a three-way conversation with the S&C coach,” he says. “[The player will say] ‘OK, if I do this, it’ll make me a better rugby player, it’ll make me more powerful, and it’ll get me picked’.”
The multidisciplinary approach was taken by Jayne Ellis and British Wheelchair Basketball during her time serving as the organisation’s Performance Director. Much like at Wales Rugby, performance questions were generally raised in an athlete’s individual development plan between the athlete themselves and the coach. “They determine what the objectives are and the rest of the staff will work around and towards those objectives,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2021.
Progress was tracked at fortnightly meetings for both the men’s and women’s teams. “That’s when we look at how everybody’s work programme is feeding into that athlete achieving that objective,” she continued. “Then there are different bits and pieces that we do with each practitioner in order to assess where they are with things and where they want to go. That all gets captured so that the player can see their development. Sometimes when you’re an athlete and you’re in the grind, you’re like ‘this is so difficult, I don’t feel like I’m progressing’ but then you’ve got this whole piece here, which helps you see that you are progressing and that’s why it’s important.”
At Swimming Australia, coaches and practitioners attend monthly meetings specific to their event or discipline in order to ensure everyone is on track. Head Coach Rohan Taylor will drop into those meetings and is always on hand to discuss performance issues with athletes and their coaches as he travels to the state hubs located across Australia.
“I’ll ask questions; [for example] ‘So you’re having trouble here? Have you spoken to somebody else?’ because I get to see everybody around the country. I might see a solution in Western Australia, in Perth, and I can say ‘have you connected with this person?’ I’m kind of guiding and advising them where to go.
“If I think they’re at a road block, I’d hope that they’ve already done that. That’s the system that’s set up. If not, I’d be saying ‘have you done that? Have you done this?’ I saw a good example this morning [concerning] an athlete who is struggling to absorb feedback around the communication on their skill development; the tasks. I just watched and I observed and I just said to the coach and the biomechanist ‘have you guys tried just letting him watch what it looks like when it’s done correctly by someone else and just letting him go and explore rather than giving him too much detail?’ ‘No, actually we haven’t’. ‘So maybe that’s their learning style?’
“It’s just me bringing what I see out there and asking them the questions.”
Leaders Performance Advisor Meg Popovic continues her three-part Performance Support Series titled ‘The Performance Paradox’.
A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners
Recommended reading:
What Are your Trade-Offs in the Quest for Success?
Performance Perspectives: Balancing the Emotional and Rational in Performance Support
Framing the topic:
This was session two of our first Performance Support Series of the year, which focused on ‘The Performance Paradox’. Across these sessions, which are led by our Performance Advisor and performance expert Dr Meg Popovic, the aim is to explore the trade-offs and considerations in the quest to win for staff, athletes, and their wider organisation. This series is centred around Transformational Learning Theory, which helps us to answer questions around how we learn to transform ourselves and the teams we co-create. There is one more session to follow.
Recap: the definition of ‘paradox’: ‘a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true’; ‘a statement, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities’.
Session themes:
Body/Disembodiment in High Performance – accessing the wisdom of the body.
We work in environments where the body is the conduit for excellence. The body is a tuned machine to create outcomes, and often we are individuals that serve the athletes or are service to tuning their bodies to greatness.
Sometimes our environments are so cut off from being in tune with the body, and in touch with the feelings of the body.
“Body awareness, as I understand it, has nothing to do with the technology of the body. It is not fitness or longevity that is at stake, although these may be by-products. What is at stake is the integration of body, soul and spirit” – Marion Woodman, psychoanalyst and author
Auto-Ethnography – a process and product, an opportunity to explore connections between culture and oneself. Personal experiences and the first-person voice is valued.
What would it be like as an ethnographer to interview your body? Meg explained a process she conducted during her PhD called ‘innerviews’ to explore the voice of the body. During this process she interviewed her right hip, and imagined if she was teaching her hip, what would she say about this character of the hip because it is often said that in the hip, secrets are held.
She gave the example that she would say that her hip is shy, introverted, private, not knowing what he is feeling with a blank facial expression. At every posture he is secretive and almost invisible, has depth and wisdom, and she needs to find a way to connect with him.
Meg then asked the members to have a go at thinking about a part of their body and she asked questions for them to consider to connect with their body in order to explore the inner voice.
Think about part of your body that has an ache or a pain:
Player-Led Leadership
Discussion points:
If we imagine more space for athletes to connect with their bodies,
Where can we create more space for the wisdom of the body to speak to us and for the athletes to access it?
“A soul flower finds its nourishment in the roots that go deepest into the dark rich mud” – Marion Woodman, psychoanalyst and author
