By John Portch

There are echoes of coaching eras past in the way Adrian Blake Mitchell describes his ballet schooling at St Petersburg’s renowned Vaganova Academy.

“My teacher was extremely intimidating and that’s how he got good work out of us,” he told an audience at June’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Red Bull.

Mitchell teaches at the highly regarded Westside Ballet School, which is just across the road from Red Bull on Stewart Street in Santa Monica.

“Our training approach is really very much about fostering their love of the art form,” he continued. Rather than teaching from fear or intimidation, this “results in better artists, kinder and healthier people at the end of it”.

Those words chimed with Leaders Performance Institute members at the summit, where Mitchell spoke alongside Eileen Strempel, the Inaugural Dean at the prestigious Herb Alpert School of Music, at UCLA.

Here, we pick out four lessons in how the performing arts nurture their young talent.

1. The teachers must engender a sense of playfulness in students

If a love of art is essential, then it follows that the teacher – or coach – has to fit the bill just as much as any prospective student. “We’re also hiring teachers and thinking about the ecosystem,” said Strempel. The Herb Alpert offers a range of courses from musicology and ethnomusicology to composition and conducting. “What energies are those faculty bringing into our school?” She explained her belief that a love of art stems from playfulness. “We don’t actually talk about ‘working’ in music – we play music – and retaining that sense of play is absolutely integral.” The key is to foster an environment where the students are “playing with and inspired by each other”.

2. Individual development is about finding ‘other ways to win’

Ballet and music, much like sport, are ensemble activities and the risk is that the development of the individual can be overlooked. The Westside and Herb Alpert counter this by surfacing a student’s intrinsic motivation. Strempel said: “The solution to a problem might be X or Y, but we try to bring more profound questions such as ‘what is this piece of music about? What am I trying to convey? What am I bringing to this piece as an artist?’”

It speaks to what Mitchell called “winning in other ways”. He said: “This ties into the idea of improvisation and allowing us to experiment and find different moments in our work that can create success.”

3. They provoke failure

From the coach’s perspective, individual progress is about trying to develop solution-minded individuals who can adapt, adjust and improvise on the fly. This can lead to increased rates of failure, which the Westside readily accepts. “Sometimes when I’m really pushing my students we will repeat a variation three or four times without a break; no corrections,” said Mitchell. It provokes a level of fatigue akin to a performance but in a lower-stakes setting. “It’s important for that experience to be out of the way for them.”

At the Herb Alpert, teachers might introduce violin students to one of the two Stradivarius violins in their possession. Such is the difference in sound, colour, breadth and depth that it takes even an accomplished player six months to get to grips with the vintage instrument. Or if a student has been practising in the western symphonic orchestral tradition the school might introduce them to the completely different world of Afro Latin jazz. “The challenge is finding ways to expand the range of possibilities that allows an individual to extend themselves,” said Strempel.

4. They connect that failure with motivation and resilience

The Herb Alpert’s approach to creating a caring and nurturing environment does much to foster resilience but, as Strempel explained, it also comes back to a student’s intrinsic motivation. “If you keep it on the level of ‘I just want a great performance’ or ‘I just want to win the game’ that leaves so much creative potential on the table,” she said, being sure to include a sporting analogy. “You have to tap into intrinsic motivation to do that right, whether it’s because you want to give back to your community or because you’ve got something you want to say. It’s not about being a better musician, dancer or athlete but being a better human being”.

By John Portch

Few people, if any, have a definitive answer when it comes to the role of psychosocial skills in talent development.

Nevertheless, the Leaders Performance Institute decided to raise the topic with two distinguished individuals: Kit Wise, the Dean of the School of Art, Design and Social Context at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology [RMIT], and Budi Miller, the Co-Artistic Director at the Melbourne-based Theatre of Others.

Both took to the stage at Melbourne’s Glasshouse in February to discuss their approaches to talent development as well as managing challenges as they emerge.

Here, we explore Wise’s work with art and design students at RMIT, where he readily admits his role is to “damage their minds just enough”.

Inspiration, aspiration, expectation

Wise’s philosophy of talent development in art and design is configured to help students further develop mental and social skills such as cognitive reframing, goal-setting, self-talk, and the coping skills needed to move beyond expertise into the realms of creative productivity or eminence[1].

It boils down to three things:

1. Inspiration: he wants to ignite a passion in students and give them the drive to create something “beautiful or wonderful”. He said: “I will lead with that because that’s the one that’s the most exciting. It’s the most fun. It’s the most liberating. Inspiration is what gives people that fire in their belly that allows you to do something.”
2. Aspiration: this involves a student understanding the ‘why’ behind their actions, with a focus on values and purpose. Artists are not as selfish as sometimes perceived, according to Wise. “They want to make the world a more beautiful place, or a more just or fair place, and that aspiration, that value base is really important.”
3. Expectation: Wise will encourage students to have fun and think deeply, while holding them accountable through what he calls “productive tension”. He said: “it’s about raising your expectations progressively as people become creative.”

Risk-taking and raising expectations

Wise argues that risk-taking – another psychosocial skill – is a crucial part of an artist’s creative process and he sees certain parallels between the worlds of art, design and sport. “Risk is fundamental,” he said. “It’s how you innovate, it’s how you come up with something that hasn’t been done before.” Risk-taking is an accompaniment to traits such as openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity and an ability to move beyond one’s earlier ideas with courage[2].

Wise wants artists to step out of their comfort zones and dare to do something different or unexpected. That includes deliberately setting out to break the rules. “There’s a quote from Picasso – a very problematic figure for me – who said: ‘good artists copy. Great artists steal’. What he means by that is that good artists imitate; great artists take all the knowledge and experience of others and repurpose it.” Risk is about challenging people and pushing them to achieve more than they thought they could. It is also about raising expectations progressively as people become creative.

Navigating RMIT’s ‘critiquing culture’

Risk is about transformation and change; moving people, impacting them and changing their thinking. With this is mind, Wise advocates for a “critiquing culture” that enables students to develop their mental skills, including, mastering anxiety and distractions, tactful self-promotion, and knowing how to play the game[3]. “Almost by definition, it sounds like an attack. Of course, it’s how you challenge and grow and do that damaging I talked about.” He has developed a culture at RMIT, defined by its shared language, trust and a series of team dynamics that create a safe environment that breeds confidence and gives everyone in the room a voice.

All that said, it is not a comfort zone, which raises its own challenge. “Empathy has to be central,” said Wise. “So the role of care alongside risk. I guess it’s a bit like flow state where you have the pain end of the spectrum and the comfort end of the spectrum; and you’re pushing things up towards the pain as much as you can.” He draws the line by setting ground rules for interpersonal conduct and, as a tutor, a simple but important reading of the room for social cues. Still, it can be close to the bone. “I’m on record saying that ‘every art student should cry once’,” added Wise. “It’s about transformation, it’s about change. If they hadn’t experienced something that really does move them or impact them or change their thinking, I haven’t done my job – that’s [on me to do] that in a caring as well as risky way.”

Fun and playfulness

For all the talk of tears, there is fun and playfulness inherent in this process of talent development. On one hand, that means being embodied and engaging in what one wants to do, whether that’s painting or playing sport. “Pleasure is part of that process,” said Wise. On the other hand, there is fun in risk-taking. “That transgression: it’s rule-breaking; it’s another word for innovation and creativity. You can’t do that rule breaking if you’re in a body that’s rule-bound.”

[1] Olszewski-Kubilius P, Subotnik RF, Davis LC, Worrell FC. Benchmarking Psychosocial Skills Important for Talent Development. New Dir Child Adolesc Dev. 2019 Nov;2019(168):161-176. doi: 10.1002/cad.20318. Epub 2019 Oct 29. PMID: 31663255.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

By Henry Breckenridge

Ciarán Frawley’s nerveless penalty for Leinster took the Champions Cup final to extra-time last weekend.

Their opponents, Toulouse, would win 31-22 at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but Frawley’s contribution at fly-half had echoes of his illustrious former teammate, Jonny Sexton, who retired last year.

Both Frawley and Sexton are graduates of Leinster’s esteemed academy, which has propelled the club to the elite of European rugby.

A remarkable 90 per cent of Leinster’s squad was born in Ireland or born to Irish parents abroad, as Simon Broughton, Leinster’s Academy Manager, told the audience at April’s Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching at Millfield School. More remarkable still, Leinster provides the backbone of Ireland’s national team, which is currently ranked second in the world of men’s rugby.

Broughton was joined by Huw Jennings, the Head of Football Development at English Premier League club Fulham. The south-west London club enjoy Category One status under the Elite Player Performance Plan and have long been renowned for the calibre of players to pass through their doors. It stretches from Johnny Haynes and World Cup-winner George Cohen in the 1950s to more recent graduates such as Moussa Dembélé, Ryan and Steven Sessegnon and Harvey Elliot.

Bridging the gap between academy and senior level is uppermost in the minds of both academies, but it is not the be-all and end-all.

“We have to have an effective end result for everyone that comes through the programme,” said Jennings, who built his reputation for youth development at Southampton in the early 2000s. “For some, that might be an early exit, but as long as they’ve had an experience they’ve benefited from, learnt from and, hopefully, enjoyed, then that’s a decent return.”

Below, we pick out six reasons why Leinster and Fulham are doing better than most.

1. Holistic development

Both Leinster and Fulham prepare their players for a well-rounded future. Academic study tends to motivate young athletes intellectually and helps them deal with challenges, setbacks and even injuries. Leinster recruit players for their academy at aged 17-20 from clubs across the 12 counties of their province. They have adopted a ‘dual career’ model, where players pursue their studies alongside their rugby. Approximately seven or eight players are selected each year to join Leinster’s senior squad, which means the others must have something else to fall back on.

This is perhaps even more important at Fulham, whose academy recruits players at a much younger age (9 and upwards), with even fewer players making the grade as professional footballers. The club partner with sixth forms such as Raynes Park High School and Ark Globe Academy, both in south London, where older academy players can pursue A-Levels or BTEC qualifications.

2. Nurturing environments

Leinster and Fulham both engineer their environments to facilitate learning and development. Broughton, an experienced player and coach, was appointed Leinster’s Academy Manager in 2021 and has been instrumental in leading the programme at their Ken Wall Centre of Excellence, which opened in 2019. They place an emphasis on teamwork, commitment, integrity, and communication.

The Fulham Academy, which has been led by Jennings since 2008, promotes individual growth within a high-performance setting. Players receive personalised attention, focusing on technical skills, physical conditioning and mental resilience.

Additionally, all players at Fulham, from the younger Foundation Phase up to under-23s, adhere to the academy’s core values, which are known as the 3Hs: honesty, humility and hard work. The club also seeks out diversity in its players and staff to help ensure that their academy better reflects modern society.

3. A self-driven culture

Staff provide support at both clubs, but players are expected to take charge of their own development. Inspired by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Leinster use the phrase ‘the athletes are at work’ as one of their underlying principles. It’s up to the player to put in the work and the team around the athlete will provide them with the tools they need. The club uses blended learning to appeal to the modern academy player in 2024, which means an array of videos, music, open conversations, and presentations to inspire creativity in their players.

At Fulham, Jennings and his colleagues say it is crucial for players to be able to manage their disappointment. They also believe the players that do this best can make the most of the opportunities that come their way. They increasingly find that those perceived to be high-achievers early in their academy journey find it hard to be high-achievers at the end of that journey. “The question to ask yourself is which players can deal with disappointment and, frankly, who can’t,” Jennings told the audience at Millfield.

However, he also emphasised the importance of academy coaches reflecting on their own practice. “We have to adapt to the athlete – not the other way around,” he added. “It’s about learning, it’s about understanding. It’s not referring to it as ‘back in the day’ – it’s about understanding where the athlete is in their journey so that we can relate to them.”

4. Proximal role modelling

There are 60 players in the Leinster building everyday, 20 of whom are in their academy. It enables Broughton and his colleagues to use what they call “proximal role-modelling”. Once upon a time, academy players used their own changing room, whereas now they are fully integrated into the squad. They are able to observe pro athletes each day both on the training pitch and in meetings. “It helps to accelerate their learning and development,” said Broughton, who also spoke of the value in the informal conversations that take place en route to and from the training pitch.

5. Honest conversations

Too often, staff in academy settings put off frank conversations about an athlete’s progress. That is not the case at Fulham. Difficult conversations need to be on the agenda from the off and, according to Jennings, “everything should be couched in positive language – but not at the expense of leaving out the critical message.”

6. Parental involvement

Both clubs increasingly bring parents into the fold, fully acknowledging the role of family in the development of young athletes. For their part, Fulham recognise that young athletes are staying closer to their parental unit than in previous generations. It can be a challenge, as Jennings readily admitted, but the club tries to think of it as a learner who has just passed their driving test. “The parent is invited into the car but they’re not driving the vehicle. It’s not about exclusion: if the individual wants family members included, the club have to manage that,” he said.

By Henry Breckenridge

What is ‘neurodivergence’?

The term ‘neurodivergence’ can often be perceived to be a blocker in sport, but as Dr Julie White, Head of Learning Support at Millfield School, put it to our members at Leaders Meet: Teaching & Coaching, “neurodivergence is when there are differences from the ‘neurotypical’ as opposed to perceived weaknesses”.

In fact, neurodiverse learners have been known to display high levels of perseverance and demonstrate transferrable resilience into the classroom. They embody the words of Harvey Blume, who was one of the first journalist to cover neurodivergence. In 1998, in the Atlantic, he wrote:

Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. Who can say what form of wiring will be best at any given moment?

You may be familiar or have heard of neurodivergence through familiarity with such terms as dyslexia, dyspraxia (cognitive learning and gross motor skills), autism (speech, communication and language processing), ADHD (social, emotional and mental health difficulties). But, a lot of the time, the signs and symptoms of these conditions are hidden or less obvious for coaches to pick up on.

It’s critical for coaches and practitioners to have a baseline understanding to ensure they know a) what to look out for; and b) how the various conditions affect decision-making and subsequent performance.  

White breaks down one of the core neurodiverse challenges into two areas related to speed of thinking and recall:

1. Processing speed: individuals who struggle to think on their feet. 
2. Working memory: individuals who struggle to remember verbal instruction. 

Many neurodivergent people will have a weakness in one or both of these areas, regardless of their label.

It’s easiest to think about it as a bucket.

For most of us: information comes in the top, there’s a steady flow. It’s being processed in the middle section at a good speed, and it comes out of ‘the tap’. 

But if your processing speed is slow, your ‘tap’ lets out a lot less water. The info comes in at a fair speed, the bucket fills up very quickly, it can’t drain quickly enough and so it overflows. That’s what happens in young people’s brains where they can’t take in any more information, and they feel overwhelmed. 

On the field/pitch/training, you might see this as: 

• Athletes having difficulty in remembering info from one session to the next.
• Pupils having difficulty sequencing and with routines due to co-ordination difficulties.
• Athletes drifting or being easily distracted as focus is affected.
• Athletes struggling to multi-task (and end up freezing).
• Individuals often having little or no concept of time/urgency.
• Athletes becoming very tired mentally more quickly than others. 

As a coach, you need to… 

Pay attention to the language you use and the quantity of information you give:  

• Keep it chronological: keep it on order in accordance of the process. So, “first do X and then do Y”. Get rid of superfluous language (avoid metaphors). 
• Avoid overwhelming your athlete: limit to three instructions (or less).
• Limit distractions where possible: think of where and how – establish eye contact to ensure you have the player’s attention.
• Tone of voice and audience: Be direct, use short sentences. Translating info into the player’s long-term memory will be more challenging, so be patient.
• Organisation: key dates; planning ahead; prioritising.
• Concept checking: check ‘what have you understood?’ Repeating it will allow you to understand if the recipient has got it. Incorporate show and tell (visual and verbal).

You have to make adaptations. We’re not all the same. It’s about equity and giving them equal access.

Dr Julie White, Head of Learning Support, Millfield School

Coaching checklist

Don’t assume you know the full picture – many players will not acknowledge that they have a difficulty, because:

• They have never been given appropriate support before.
• They be unaware they have difficulties.
• They don’t wany any attention.

A coach should:

• Be an emotionally available adult.
• Break down instructions and check for understanding.
• Use the vocabulary the athlete uses when they’re talking about their own neurodivergence. Avoid abstract phrases such as ‘we need more intensity’. Otherwise, it’s conceptual.
• Remember that athletes may not recall the information long enough to apply it – this is not wilful behaviour and they’re not intending to be rude.
• Find the time to get to know your athlete better. Think ‘I’d love to spend a day in your head’.

By John Portch

“With everybody, we start at the ground floor,” said Lucy Skilbeck.

The Director of Actor Training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA] is speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute for a two-part interview.

The first focused on the teachers, the second instalment hones in on the students themselves, those coming in on the ‘ground floor’. RADA enrols a talented cohort of 28 acting students each year and works for three years to raise their ceiling.

“What we identify is the talent and the potential for growth, development and passion,” Skilbeck continued. “They are all talented, there’s no question, and they have all done really interesting things before they’ve come to RADA. What the training does is expand the instrument.”

Here, we explore the five most important factors underpinning that process.

1. Breaking the constraints of habits

This is the key point. Skilbeck, who also spoke at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, believes that that everyone, including actors is constrained by their habits. “All of which we have developed from earliest infancy,” she said. “These are vocal and physical habits, mental habits, habits of the imagination, and emotional habits.” They can impair an actor’s work. “In other words, you can’t embody someone with an enormous emotional range, that has to go on an enormous emotional journey, if you’re habitually protective of your emotions and not [able] to go to anger, to distress, to passion, then you can’t take the character there either.” The students’ talents are, as Skilbeck explained, “held within whatever the constraints of their own habits”.

2. Expanding an actor’s performance capacity

RADA’s actor training aims to break those habits and expand the acting students’ technical, emotional and imaginative capacity. “Really, what we’re training is how to be a human being and how to embody human experience in imaginary circumstances,” said Skilbeck, adding, “the only way I think that can be done is through the expansion of the self so that there’s access to the vulnerability that allows people to be open and exposed in a way that acting is asking them to do.” There are potential consequences of this approach to training, namely raising fears and psychological trauma.

3. Managing fears and trauma

Skilbeck admitted there is an element of risk in encouraging students to be vulnerable. As such, RADA offers its Student Wellbeing Service through its Student and Academic Services department. The service consists of two main teams: their Disability Service and, of particular interest in a discussion of habits, their Counselling Service. Skilbeck acknowledges that breaking habits can be a difficult process and can potentially being up fears or trauma from past experiences. “We work with a psychologist who hosts sessions with students on resilience early in their training,” she said. “It is both psych ed and giving them strategies for managing what might be potentially overwhelming traumas.” The psychologist is also working with the teaching faculty to develop trauma-informed teaching spaces and practices so that teachers know how to respond and the material is less likely to provoke overwhelming responses for students. “The challenge, which I’m sure is found everywhere, is that people don’t always know what traumas they’ve had until they begin to surface some kind of emotional content that has potentially not surfaced for a while,” Skilbeck continued. “There’s no way we can prevent that entirely, but we do have as many structures around us as we feel we’re able to at the moment. We’re constantly questioning and trying to develop those structures to create those spaces that feel sufficiently secure for the students.”

4. Reflective practice

Reflective practice is another key component of expanding capacity. “In reflective practice, I work with students on taking the observer position so that they can create some space from the sensation, the experience of the release, as much as possible,” said Skilbeck. It is a useful means for acting students to “develop the skills” to reflect on their progress and development and RADA also encourages its students to keep reflective journals. As discussed in part one, RADA reins in formal feedback for the most part in years one and two. A recent course review suggested that even more time be carved out for self-reflection. That can be easier said than done. “That’s like the $64,000 question,” said Skilbeck, who explained that RADA has cleared the calendars for three hours on Thursday afternoons for first and second-year students. She noted that much of the curriculum contributes to the development of independent practice but “we haven’t tied that together sufficiently for students to come out the other way end going ‘I’m really clear on what my skills for independence practice are’.” To this end, RADA has been exploring a second-year project for self-led work. The goal is “to make sure students are confident in their understanding of what ultimately becomes the capacity to create, devise and lead on their own project work and production work, if they so choose to do.”

5. Embracing failure

Just as Skilbeck believes teachers will get things wrong in their practice, so will students – and this is to be embraced. “This is something we talk about a lot because we’re encouraging people to not to try and get it right and to allow failure to be part of one’s creative practice,” she said. “You can’t have a creative practice if you’re not willing to fail. You can only have a complacent practice because you’ll only try the things that you know will succeed. To have a creative practice you have to be willing to accept a degree of failure – and I think that goes for all of us – those trying to lead, run and develop courses as well as those who are participating on them.”

Further reading:

‘At RADA we Want Teachers to Follow the Students as Well as Guide them’

By John Portch

When the pandemic spread in 2020, it brought challenges for all. In the case of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA] a number of those challenges endure.

RADA no longer relies upon online classes as it did in 2020 and 2021, but, as Lucy Skilbeck, their Director of Actor Training, explained in a recent interview, “we have made changes not only to the curriculum but how we consider the curriculum and some of our approaches to teaching.”

One such change was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew in prominence during that first year of the pandemic as systemic inequalities became evident in the higher infection and mortality rates in globe majority communities in the US, UK and beyond. Compounding matters was the succession of highly publicised, racially-motivated, tragic incidents involving Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

The student body at RADA felt moved to speak up. “The students began to question our processes, some of our approaches, and some of our choices of material,” Skilbeck told the Leaders Performance Institute.

As the pandemic pushed everything online, Skilbeck’s students were working on three Restoration-era texts (plays written in England, Scotland and Ireland between 1660 and 1710). While this era was a time of revival in the dramatic arts – theatres had been closed for 18 years under Puritan rule prior to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy – there is a problematic link between Restoration drama and the Atlantic slave trade. RADA students raised the probability that some patrons of the Restoration-era arts benefited directly from the sale of enslaved African people for labour.

“One group chose to continue doing the Restoration project,” Skilbeck continued. “Two groups said they didn’t want to continue working with that material, so we made adaptations on the spot.”

Four years later, RADA continues to teach Restoration material (“that’s one of the reasons students come to RADA”) but has added a contextual evaluation of all texts – not just the Restoration era – for students and RADA project leaders.

“One of the big changes is how we contextualise how we discuss, how we critically examine and reflect on what the challenges are with any of the material we’re using.

“We’ve got more work to do, no question, but students are now saying they feel confident doing the work because the conversations can happen, are happening, are considered. That was the really big piece we weren’t doing before. We weren’t considering the impact of that work on globe majority students separately to the impact on white students.

“We were informally trying to make sure that was a consideration. Now we’ve made that a formal commitment.”

As Skilbeck once said during a Leaders webinar in 2021: “At RADA, we want teachers to follow the students as well as guide them”.

Contextual evaluation in the wake of Black Lives Matter is but one example of how this plays out at RADA. We discuss the others in the first of a two-part interview with Skilbeck. In the second, we focus on student development.

Listen to learners – they’ll tell you what they need

The Leaders Performance Institute asked Skilbeck to explain the dynamic of RADA tutors both following and guiding their students.

“The rationale is that the best teachers are the ones who are continually learning and who can be in a learner’s or a beginner’s mind,” she said. “In order to do that, one has to be willing to learn from the people we are teaching; and we will continually learn from the students because they are bringing the world now as it is for young people.

“That comes with them distinctly each year – and it changes year on year, as the world does – and so there’s a lot of learning to be done by listening to the students, by engaging with the students, by allowing students to educate us on what the world is for them and what they need in a learning environment.”

It does not mean Skilbeck and her colleagues always get it right. “Like all human activity, it is imperfect,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like things really develop and grow and, as a result, we move towards something more progressive; and sometimes it feels like they don’t. I don’t think there’s any way around that.”

Allow for meaningful engagement and contributions

It is tempting to view a dramatic production as akin to a team strategy or gameplan. There are parallels and both are ensemble activities. At RADA, it is another area where project leaders – managers of educational programmes, theatrical productions, or development initiatives – bring people together.

“Speaking as a director, which is my professional background, one of the roles of the director and the rehearsal process is to bring everybody into the same world so that everybody is in the play at the same time. That can sometimes be a struggle because there might be people with very strong ideas in one direction and others having strong ideas in another.”

The key is allowing cast members to contribute meaningfully. “A way we would begin to do that is close, detailed work on the story we want to tell collectively, because any play has an infinite number of possible interpretations, stories or emphases contained within it; and any production has to make a choice that it’s going to tell a particular part of that story.”

RADA uses ‘yes and’ work as it “develops the capacity to be ‘in response to’; so one is being reactive rather than generating one’s own action. A lot of that is built through gradually training people’s capacity to be working within an ensemble rather than standing to the side of an ensemble.

“A big part of what we do is trying to bring people to that place where they go ‘I can be here in a way that serves you’ and we talk about that quite explicitly.”

No right answer

At RADA, first and second-year acting students are no longer marked. “One of the big things we have to do early and throughout the training is really try and undo – it’s a really harsh way of putting it – some of the damage that the traditional school system does,” said Skilbeck, who was quick to explain that she is supportive of numerous elements of the scholastic system.

It is, however, a challenge for students. “We’re saying there isn’t a right answer – we’re not asking for the right answer,” she continued. Instead, “what we’re looking for is a much more holistic development of the whole person because that’s what an actor needs. Not ‘yes, I can’.

“I want them to have the capacity to interpret material but it doesn’t have to be the way that I would do it. What we want to do is develop their capacity to learn and to grow themselves and, therefore, be able to recognise and experience their own growth and development.”

Further reading:

Five Ways RADA Is Raising the Performance Ceiling of its Acting Students

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

Ben Baroody is a big believer in psychologist Michael Gervais’ idea that the apex of well-being and performance is human flourishing.

“It means a lot to us,” he tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

“The aim and approach of all of our programs, processes, and our building blocks, is based on the foundation of the human psyche, the psychology of healthy minds and lives. And we try to take that evidence-based research and build it into baseball frameworks and development for the rest of the organization.”

As the Texas Rangers’ Director of Leadership & Organizational Development, Player Enrichment Programs & Mental Health says, the goal is to unlock player potential versus extracting performance.

“That’s what we’re striving towards. It’s an aspiration that’s ever-evolving,” he says,

Elsewhere in this episode, we cover:

• How the Rangers have been the ‘victims of buzzwords on a wall’ [10:30];
• The balance of challenge and support in the Rangers environment [23:00];
• How Ben’s development as a leader helped him to identify imbalances in his own life [30:15];
• Character development practices at the Rangers [37:30].

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John Portch LinkedIn | X

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

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

The first point that Amal Hassan, the Team Doctor at Harlequins Women, makes is that periods impact athletes in several ways.

“What I’ve learned supporting rugby players,” she began, “is that periods can be a barrier to participation in the first place, a perceived barrier to skill and technical development through a season, can have health implications that really impact their performance, and it possibly keeps players from developing at really crucial points.”

Hassan was speaking as part of a panel discussion on the physiology of the female athlete at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium. She spoke alongside pelvic health physiotherapist Emma Brockley and Dr Nicola Brown, an Associate Professor in Female Health & Performance at St Mary’s University.

Session moderator Claire-Marie Roberts, who has just been appointed Performance Director at English Championship club Coventry City, homed in on Hassan’s reference to skill acquisition.

“A training season won’t discriminate,” said Hassan in response. “You’ll be needed to train on any given day of your menstrual cycle, if you’re off contraception, for example. So you need to be able to show up the best you can. However, at certain points in certain individuals, it may be that their menstrual cycle fades, where the symptoms or dysfunction they experience may actually be medical and the impact on their ability to train, to show up as the person they want to be to their coaches and the staff they’re working with, and, on game day, you can imagine how that might translate.

“That’s not to say that every day is going to be a different flavour of menstrual cycle dysfunction for an athlete, but there might be really key points in, say, a season or a cycle where they have to be absolutely present and engaged in their training for their skill acquisition to develop at the pace we want it to. If you can imagine not thinking about this component and the effect it has on athletes’ development, we’re just expecting them to be able to cope as long as we control for medical, load and other aspects of sports science, but we don’t consider this other very important aspect that is across the board for all of our female players if they’re off contraception, then we’re missing a trick.

“And what I find interesting is if you ask athletes if they think it’s impacted their skill development, they might say yes and more often than I would expect.”

Hassan noted that it is important to separate menstrual dysfunction and symptoms. “Symptoms could be normal,” she continued. “What we don’t understand fully is what is a normal menstrual cycle for an athlete or not. We’re good at delineating that from their perspective; I can tell you what’s pathology or not according to a certain criteria, but we don’t actually know what’s normal for an athlete. So it could be normal that you do expect symptoms and that’s not dysfunction. That’s just part and parcel of your menstrual cycle.”

In this article, Hassan, who has also worked in ballet, reflects on the support that all teams and organisations can provide for athletes as well as the implications for those female athletes playing collision sports.

Note: Hassan’s responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

The importance of menstrual tracking…

If you’ve got the resources, tracking is important. And that might be tracking done by your sports science team with the consent of the athletes. In the absence of those resources and that expertise in-house, that might look like the athletes receiving some education and taking it upon themselves to track their menstrual cycles. Ultimately, I believe this should be player-led or athlete-led so that an athlete can come to you with any concerns, but what you want to do is you want to pick up any patterns. It’s going to differ between athletes. It might be that you can pick up some really important trends in sleep dysfunction, in cravings, in core recovery, in back pain in certain parts of the cycle, otherwise it can start working proactively against a team, which is there to support an athlete ahead of time so that it doesn’t become a reactive approach. It becomes very proactive and built into a programme.

The gold standard in supporting athletes with their menstrual cycle…

I don’t think we’ve necessarily reached it anywhere and explored the full capabilities. It must span medical and performance because you might pick up some medical issues but it’s very much aligned with your performance programme or your sport. The gold standard within your team will look like setting out everyone’s roles and responsibilities, in a team environment tracking across the team, getting buy-in from individual athletes, collecting as much data as possible so that you can be accurate about your planning. Now, that might be impractical even in some elite settings in women’s sport but where there’s full professionalisation, athletes are full-time, you’ve got the staff resource to do it.

Steps that all teams can take…

It’s important to recognise where you don’t necessarily have the expertise in-house. So some sports may have doctors as part of their teams, they might be full-time, they might not be, they might be junior doctors in their training, or they may be consultants, they may be consultants in orthopaedics but have no medical training in terms of gyno health or endocrinology. So it’s really important to understand where you’re at and that if you don’t have that expertise in-house you have onward referral pathways in place for any pathology that you pick up. In the middle, you’ve got the option, for example to use a platform like Fittr Coach and be able to access that with the resources that you have; your performance medicine team might be able to do the tracking, involve the athletes in collecting the data, and you can try to pick up any patterns there. At the other end of the spectrum, athletes can use a free app to track their periods, check their cycles are regular, keep a diary of any issues, any symptoms, try and relate that to training, to any recovery, nutrition, their psychology. It can get quite complicated but if you just have a structure around it and you do it every day it becomes simple. You will then want to signpost to that individual’s GP if there are any issues. Obviously a GP is not going to be experienced or qualified at discussing performance but there are quite a few resources available for athletes to read or podcasts to listen to. It’s not going to do any harm for them to consider that the menstrual cycle might be a component in planning their training or their recovery.

The ethical considerations…

If you’re encouraging a practice, there’s got to be a structure around it. So who’s leading on that? Who’s driving the education? Who’s the go-to person for questions and answers? I think you have to be really intentional in the rollout of teamwide services or strategies like this. Everything needs to really be in place so that you don’t come across issues by surprise. I think you could have this problem even within an environment that has a great structure. Ultimately, the big one is supplements. A lot of athletes will think about particular supplements that might help them with symptoms, with recovery, and they just need to make sure they’re not breaching anti-doping guidelines; and that you are encouraging across the board, you’ve got nutritionists, doctors, etc. open communication about anything they want to try. We do want to empower athletes to be the best they can be but just within the realms of safety.

On athletes approaching pregnancy and birth…

This is a space that’s continuing to develop and that development should aid and increase the confidence within the performance medical team and within athletes in approaching training through pregnancy, continuing to be part of your sport during your pregnancy and then return, post-natal, post-partum. If you think about it from a framework perspective, it’s really important that pillars that include HR and contractual factors, the players’ wishes, their psychology during pregnancy, the skillset and experience within your team managing that athlete, your protocols, your emergency action plans from a medical perspective, your forward planning and programming from a rehabilitative perspective towards return-to-play and the facilitation of preparing for birth and the early post-natal phase, which is a really crucial period of time in any woman’s life, are proactively managed. It can seem really overwhelming if you’ve never done it before and I would encourage any institution who has never done it before to not wait until it does happen; to be proactive in building policies and protocols ahead of time and developing the skillset you have in-house, so that you are ready when it does happen, because it eventually will. If you think of the period of life where an athlete’s fertility is peaking, it’s merging with the performance time in their careers generally.

The impact of a collision sport on menstrual dysfunction and symptoms…

What we tend to see in sports that are typically endurance sports or aesthetic disciplines like ballet is that greater maturation is at risk of being delayed because of the energy demands and the chasing of an aesthetic goal from a physique perspective. So in those sports you might see there is a delay that might impact bone health, they might go on to be at risk of stress fractures, broadly speaking. In rugby, what you have to consider is the load, the impact of stress on the endocrine system, and then you’ll swing more towards menstrual dysfunction and symptoms and poor under-recovery impacting their endocrine system. What you also tend to see, and this is really anecdotal from my perspective, having worked in ballet and having worked in rugby, what we see in ballet is a lack of periods and amenorrhea as a risk. What we see in rugby is you’re more likely to be struggling with something like PCOS [polycystic ovary syndrome]. With PCOS, you see higher androgen levels, that will translate into some sport-enhancing metrics in terms of how strong you are potentially. And this is not proven, this is just anecdotal, with that what you get is more menstrual symptoms relating to the hormonal imbalance. So I think it’s down to really understanding our sport. We don’t have that data, we need to understand across the board what the typical issues girls and then women playing senior rugby are struggling with and I guess it’s a call to action for research. I can just rely on my own anecdotal experience at my club. It needs more effort across the board.

By Luke Whitworth

Our latest Performance Support Series explores the past, present, and future of talent development. This series of learning is being delivered by Dr Edd Vahid, the Head of Academy Football Operations at the English Premier League.

For the final session of the series, Vahid outlined the aims for those in attendance, as he continued to explore the ‘5 I’s’ model shared in session one. They were as followed:

• Introducing the notion of intervening upstream, inclusive environments and investment return as critical features of successful talent development models.
• Reflect on the evolution of the 5 I’s’ model.

Intervening upstream

At the beginning of this section, Vahid encouraged those on the call to keep this reflection question in mind – it was something he had used with his team at the Premier League to provoke thought and future thinking: ‘What is one prediction for the future of your sport in 2030? What are you or could you do differently now in response to this prediction?’ It’s important to protect time to have these conversations.

Below are some trends and evolutions in the world of football that could have the ability to influence the future of talent development in the sport:

• Tactical and technical evolution.
• Positional changes.
• Positional versatility.
• Systems of play.
• Increased passing and reduced crossing.
• The impact of heading.
• The technological evolution (Artificial Intelligence, VAR).

In session one of this series, the notion of intervening upstream was the part of the model that those in attendance felt they didn’t give enough to in their programme planning. This is what author Dan Heath refers to as ‘upstream thinking’ in his 2020 book entitled Upstream: Solving Problems Before they Happen. His central argument is that we should be striving to intervene ‘upstream’ rather than ‘downstream’. There are, however, a number of factors that get in the way of intervening upstream:

Problem blindness. This is the belief that negative outcomes are natural or inevitable. They are out of our control. When we’re blind to a problem, we treat it like the weather.

A lack of ownership. As Heath wrote: ‘What’s odd about upstream work is that, despite the enormous stakes, it’s often optional’. With downstream activity, the rescues, responses and reactions of the work are demanded of us. If the work is not chosen by someone, the underlying problem won’t get solved.

Tunnelling. When people are juggling a lot of problems, they give up trying to solve them all. They adopt tunnel vision. There is often so much to deal with in the here and now, it is difficult to step out and protect the time to be proactive in our approach. How intentional are you in taking some time to reflect on what it could look like and, therefore, what can we do in the current moment?

What about future-proofing and insights in football? Vahid shared that the Premier League Games Programme team engaged in an exercise around the future game. Here are some of the things they highlighted:

• An NBA-style shot clock due to a demand for attacking football.
• A different format to the game and how the current 90 minutes is structured.
• Increased physical development, which may have implications for later developers.
• The introduction of virtual realities.
• Evolving pitch line markings.
• Evolving competitions.
• Increasing use of technology.
• The impact of the players’ brands.
• Kick-ins to replace throw-ins.

Inclusive environments

The fourth ‘I’ as part of the talent development model focuses on the importance of creating and sustaining inclusive environments – environments where everyone can show up, everyone can be their best.

Vahid referred to the relationship between inclusion and psychological safety as a critical component. In Amy Edmondson’s 2018 book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, she cited the idea that: ‘a workplace that is truly characterised by inclusion and belonging is a psychologically safe workplace’.

This also stands true in the work of Google in their ‘Project Aristotle’ research looking into the highest performing teams at Google – the number one factor that distinguished those most effective teams was psychological safety.

These findings are complemented by Timothy Clark in his 2020 book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation. Clark’s model suggests that the first stage of psychological safety is ‘inclusion safety’ – the feeling of being part of something and feeling included is critical. If you don’t get to that point on this particular scale, it precedes learner, contributor and challenger safety. Clark wrote that ‘inclusion safety is created and sustained through renewed admittance to the group and repeated indications of acceptance’.

Finally, we also referenced the work of Owen Eastwood around the power of ‘Belonging’. Owen shared insights from the New Zealand All Blacks’ environment on how they have been able to create a sense of belonging and inclusivity. Here are some standout observations:

• Cultural awareness – this often comes from individuals talking to their culture, heritage and beliefs they have formed.
• Belonging cues and rituals – a big emphasis on induction and transition.
• Player voice sessions – creating a space for player voices to be heard.
• Senior players’ roles – acknowledgement around the role of the senior player and the crucial role as a cultural guardian to support those progressing through.
• Connection to the identity story of the team – being able to understand the past, but also the challenge in the present so you don’t just retain the status quo, you look to strengthen it.

Return on investment

The best talent development environments pay attention to investment return and ensuring there is a return on investment in their programme.

What represents a successful return on investment in your environment? Below are some responses from the group which consisted of a variety of different sports:

• Players making it as professionals.
• College scholarships.
• Progression as people.
• International recognition.
• Retention and transition.
• Medals at major competitions.
• Improved value of assets.
• Lag indicators.

When we talk to return on investment, success will look different in every environment. It emphasises the importance on clarity of objectives, success and alignment.

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”. This is a quote from Albert Einstein and a good reminder that there are so many intangible elements of talent development environments that we can’t capture, but are significant in a young person’s development and journey.

Leading and legacy indicators are terms many of us have heard when thinking about the impact of talent development. A leading indicator would be examples of talent progressing through your pathway (e.g. being offered a scholarship or professional contract) which also have alignment with your organisational objectives. Coupled to this is legacy indicators, evidence that your programme has been effective.

Reducing return on investment to a singular output can often be unhelpful. It is important to take perspective in this conversation and engaging the different stakeholders in what success looks like for them, whether a player, parent, Director, Coach, Academy Director, Fans, CEO or others. Success in a talent development environment is multi-faceted and those that are leading in the space of talent development are ensuring there is alignment and clarity between key stakeholders, even if the markers of what success can look like are slightly different.

Finally, when thinking about return on investment, we also need to be thinking about influencing the narrative. There are a lot of potentially negative statistics out there around attrition in talent development, but it is often the reality. If we only measure the success of our programmes on these kinds of statistics, most environments are going to be classed as unsuccessful. Having a great range of success factors and the narrative that follows those is absolutely critical.