By John Portch

What do athletes need – both male and female – to be in the right place to perform?

Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Canada women’s field hockey team, answered the question at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance.

He cites renowned coach developer Nigel Redman in his response. “Nigel uses this phrase: men have to battle in order to bond, so we have to have gone to battle first. ‘You’re a tough nut so I’ll be around your nonsense’ – sorry – you can see my biases playing out there. Whereas [as Redman says] women have to bond first before they battle.”

Kerry, who led Great Britain’s women to field hockey gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is at pains to tell the audience at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium that this yardstick should only be used in general terms and may even be an oversimplification. It is, however, illustrative of the dynamics of which a coach must be aware.

He continued: “If you spend time and energy to understand the dynamics that are playing out within high-performing female teams, if you spend the time and energy to talk to those things, spend the time and energy to build the relationships between those players so you can understand what particular perspectives individual athletes carry, why they think as they do, what their life experiences are, that level of trust in the relationship goes up significantly and then they will literally run through brick walls for you. If you don’t do that, as soon as the challenge and threat comes they can be [slow] to it.”

He then reflects on the transition he made from coaching Great Britain’s women to the men’s programme in 2018. “I tried that approach, if I’m blunt, with the men and it was effective to a degree, but if I had my time again I would probably put them into some form of battle or get them to understand each other in that environment along with some of this other work.”

Kerry, who was joined onstage by Emma Trott, the former Women’s Junior Endurance Coach at British Cycling, spoke at length about his personal development as a coach three decades into his career and the evolving demands of his players.

Here, we highlight four factors that shaped the coach that took the reins at Hockey Canada in March 2023.

1. His self-reflection in the heat of the moment

“I was the classic coach. All about hockey and very hard-nosed. Very cycle and task-oriented, Xs and Os,” said Kerry. However, as he said, when it came to people’s feelings and relationships, “I received some pretty blunt feedback then tried – and failed – to adjust”. He quickly realised he was doing himself a disservice. “I say I failed but it’s still not my sweet spot. So my big learning, whether it was male or female, was around how relationships develop as an entirety and with individual athletes.”

It led him to adapt his behaviour and the most notable example was his pitch-side presence during the penalty shootout that followed the draw in Great Britain’s gold medal match with the Netherlands in Rio. “I always positioned myself high; the reason for that was, one, I was task-focused and, two, athletes pick up on your anxiety as a coach and, being pitch side, that’s not a great thing. You don’t want to add to their anxiety as a coach, so actually being up high helps with that,” he continued. This time, however, he reflected and changed his custom. “I remember just thinking literally ‘what does this group need from me now as a coach and what doesn’t it need?’ And so at that point in time, my ability to ask myself that question at that most pressurised moment, probably of my career, was to self-regulate. All they need now is a ‘we’ve done this, we’ve rehearsed this, our processes, all good?’ Everyone nodded and off they went. I wouldn’t have been able to do that previously. It’s still a struggle, but that was a good example of being able to regulate yourself to then help the athlete be in the right place they need to be to perform.”

2. His ability to grasp the balance of team and individual needs

As a male coach in a female environment, Kerry is aware of the need to afford athletes personal space when it comes to issues such as the impact of the menstrual cycle on training history, volume and conditioning, particularly as there is still “some debate and ambiguity about what the science is saying”. While working with Great Britain’s women, he would defer to the team doctor in such matters. “It was led by our doctor, a person seen to be on the ‘outside’. We didn’t want athletes to think we were encroaching on something so personal to them. That needs to be handled with incredible skill.” He discussed it in terms of “managing the bell curve and deviations from the group”. “It’s not a science, it is a sense, it’s a craft. What is optimum for this group of athletes as a whole can mean that some people adapt ahead of the bell curve, others struggle because that’s not what they wish for themselves, but that’s an optimum for the entire group,” he said. “All facets of coaching, whether that’s sitting in a meeting discussing the players, whether that’s discussing how we push collectively as a team, whether that’s what we’re going after and how we’re going after it. It’s understanding that you’re trying to find an optimum for that particular team and then helping those people below the bell curve find their value in that, finding what works for them. That is the craft of coaching and, in my experience, that doesn’t get discussed in coach development.”

3. He works to understand the psycho-social dynamics of a group

Kerry was initially taken aback by the Canada women’s often literal interpretation of his instructions. “There’s a lot you can unpack there,” he said. “You can unpack it from the angle of gender, you can unpack it from the angle of your understanding of what’s going on. How are they feeling? Is there literal interpretation because they don’t want to get it wrong? Are they doing it because of the way they’ve been coached all of their life? Are they taking it literally because of the dynamic playing out within that female group? [They could ask themselves] Am I trying to do that because I’ve got a 200-cap athlete next to me?

“There’s a whole raft of psycho-social dynamics playing out there. So based on the experience I’d had, just talking to that very quickly; almost trying to create environments where [I’m asking] does it require me to talk to them? Does it require me to remove myself from that room and get them to sort it out themselves? Does it require me to use data, which involves the assistant coach of the programme leading that? Making these decisions as a head coach requires identifying some of these dynamics that are going on.”

Kerry warmed to the topic and added: “Quite often when people talk about performance, they’re talking about a very objective domain, whereas I think it’s more about these aspects. What is the greatest burden of that environment? What environment are you creating to ensure the most optimum versus the learning curve? What’s your impact on that? How can you create an environment between your athletes that allows them that peer to peer conversation that Emma was talking about? How quickly do you set those things up because they are, in my experience, the single greatest inhibitor to the team and the acquisition of skill?”

There have been occasions in the past where he wishes he could have coached female players differently. “If I had my time again, I would definitely approach it in a different way, but at the time, I didn’t have that experience having been in hyper-masculine environments.”

4. He embraces the coach’s role in developing leaders

Kerry believes that leadership skills are fundamental to performance. “You want people to lead even without the title,” he said. “[With Great Britain’s women] we had a discussion about that very early on talking about everyone has the capacity to lead in their own way that’s congruent to them. So if I were to summarise, normalising leadership as one of the fundamentals of performance is one of the key aspects of your job [as coach], so talking to that, raising awareness of what that is and how it can be done, part of that is raising self-awareness in the athletes, how they can influence others, is absolutely fundamental. It’s right up there with are you fit enough? In terms of female role models, I’d like to think the women’s hockey programme has some incredible female role models, someone like Kate [Richardson-Walsh] and others and now stepping into different domains whether that’s big business or sports. I’m very proud of that.”

He continued: “We have some stereotypical views of what it takes to lead, actually. Breaking that down and allowing these athletes to lead congruently to who they are is one of the things I’m most proud about. So Kate leads in a way that’s congruent to her, Alex [Danson] is a very different leader but still effective, and I’m now trying to do the same with field hockey Canada.

“There’s a moral dimension to having a team that’s well-led, there’s also a huge performance dimension to having a team that’s well-led and a depth and granularity to what leadership is. By the same token, whether we’re leading or following, we talk about that responsibility and what it means to follow well. The difference in my experience with male teams and female teams is the female teams seem to implicitly understand the importance and significance of that and really buy-in quite quickly”.

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

Lydia Bedford, the Head Coach of the Brentford men’s under-18s team has some firm coaching advice.

“There’s no shortcuts, even though everyone seems to want them these days,” she tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our friends at Keiser.

“Time on the grass, working in different environments, working under different people as leaders will help you to understand what it looks like for you.”

Bedford, who has also coached with underage women’s teams at the Football Association [FA], Leicester City Women in the WSL, and served as an assistant coach at Arsenal Women, talks enthusiastically about her first six months Brentford.

In her new role she is a pioneer. One of the few women coaches operating at the top level of the men’s game.

Elsewhere in this episode, she delves into the importance of her mentors, who include Mo Marley, the current Head Coach of England Women’s under-23s.

Bedford recalls a time at an FA training camp when, at Marley’s side, she encountered the senior women’s England squad. She says: “Every senior player that walked passed her gave Mo a hug and I was like ‘I want to be Mo, I want to have that impact’. But actually, the more I worked with Mo, whilst I love her to bits and still have tremendous respect for her, how Mo leads is not how Lydia leads.

“You learn loads of things, good and bad, from people that you work under and then you find your own way.”

Elsewhere on the agenda, Bedford spoke about:

• Her status as a pioneer in the men’s game [12:30];
• Facilitating challenge and support in an environment where results are less significant [17:00];
• Her relationship with her assistant Jon-Paul Pittman [30:00];
• Integrating players who are not used to academy environments [33:30].

Henry Breckenridge Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch Twitter | LinkedIn

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By Iain Brunnschweiler

An 8-year-old goalkeeper throws his hands up in the air and complains for the fifth time about a decision that the 14-year-old referee has made.

This demonstration of frustration is clear for all to see, despite his young age. To compound matters, the opposition coaches, having both prowled angrily around what passes for their technical area, pointing and shouting for the whole game, join in the protests against the teenager who is officiating the game, as a part of her development.

This was an actual scene that I witnessed last weekend in an under-9s grassroots game.

Behaviour can be contagious. It can spread like wildfire. And it isn’t restricted to those directly in contact with you, especially if you are in a position of hierarchical influence.

Now, I could write an article pointing out some of the clearly unhelpful adult behaviour that seems to emerge on the side lines of kid’s sport, however, for the moment I will leave that for the governing bodies to address. The area of interest to me here is the impact of role modelling.

There are two clear examples above of where individuals have been influenced by the role modelling of people of significance to them. The young goalkeeper will have seen and be mimicking the behaviours of one of the many keepers displaying this approach on TV. For the impressionable mind, that’s what goalkeepers do. They complain about every decision. They run directly at the referee when any decision is made. They shout and throw their arms in the air in disgust.

Secondly, the coaches on the side lines – probably two incredibly well-meaning parents who have committed their free time to support youth sport – are doing what they’ve seen on TV, or live from the stands. Standing up for the whole game, allowing the emotion (attached to the score line of the clearly very important under-9s match) to spill over into behaviours they would never normally enact within the bounds of normal life. Shouting at the children within their care, shouting at the child who is learning to referee, whilst being accountable for the experience for all of these impressionable young folk.

The point of real interest for me (and hopefully others who have the privilege and responsibility of being in a leadership role) is to consider which of our behaviours are contagious. How aware are we of the impact of our behaviour both directly upon others, and indirectly through the role modelling we demonstrate? What are the things we see in others around us that mimic our behaviour, and how comfortable are we about this? How can we raise awareness of these factors?

One great way is opening yourself up to feedback. I received some highly valuable feedback in the past from a colleague, about getting the best out of my team. She generously pointed out a specific behaviour (one of my preferences) that she didn’t think helped the team get in the appropriate state for a given meeting. It was brave of her to give me this feedback, and I valued it hugely. She skilfully raised awareness of a learned behaviour, and allowed me to consider how I responded. I committed that day to make a change.

Organisations will often commit to a set of values, sometimes written on the walls or company documents. In many cases the words ‘honesty’ or ‘integrity’ might appear. Yet how often are people within the organisation encouraged to provide genuinely honest feedback to leaders around the impact of their behaviours? How often do we ask how we make others feel at work? I’ve experienced some feedback-rich environments, and I’ve experienced some that felt very unsafe. The former was certainly far more enjoyable to work in, and far more productive for all. Once awareness has been raised, one still has to consider whether they will take action or not.

Some examples of contagious behaviour that I’ve seen are:

The workaholic. A key leader spends enormous lengths of time at the workplace. They are online even when they are home.

The standards monitor. A key leader is incredibly hot on standards of clothing, office space, and punctuality. They will regularly call out colleagues who are not achieving the leader’s expected level.

The time-giver. A key leader regularly is seen taking time to speak to colleagues, getting to know them.

The HIPPO. Within meetings, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion is always the decisive one. They shut down others in order to make the call, based on their perception.

The joker. A key leader is regularly seen making jokes and having fun within the work place.

The calming influence. A person of hierarchical position who demonstrates a calm, thoughtful and logical approach at times of pressurised decision-making.

The above are just a few examples of contagious behaviours, and I will let you decide to what extent you perceive these attributes to be helpful, or a hindrance, within the workplace. This will no doubt be relative to the context and the complexity of the organisation and the people surrounding the leader.

However, in my experience, the contagion is very clear and obvious. We see miniature versions of these behaviours permeating throughout the organisation. This becomes the culture.

One successful and overt strategy to utilise role modelling within the work place that I have seen has been the deployment of experienced professional players within an U-21s team. Southampton and Brighton & Hove Albion Football Clubs have very successfully deployed Ollie Lancashire and Gary Dicker respectively into player-coach roles. These players, both in their 30s have role modelled the behaviours, approaches and attributes that a consistently high performing player possesses, all at very close proximity to the club’s top youth talent. I’m sure there will be other examples of this within sport, military and business.

Behaviour can be contagious. I have, as most of us who are sporting parents, felt all of the emotions that come to the surface when a loved one is either doing well or doing badly in front of you. I have the urge to shout in support, to shout words of encouragement or at times words of despair. However, I remember watching a video that Arsenal FC pulled together where they interviewed young players about what they wanted to hear from their parents on the sidelines, and the messaging stuck with me. “I don’t want you shouting from the side of the pitch… I just like it when you clap when I’ve done something well” or words to that effect. I now have a strategy of holding my hands behind my back when I’m watching my kids, to remind me of this video. This physical act helps me. Hopefully my side line approach would be perceived as helpful role modelling to other parents who want the best for their kids.

Questions for leaders:

• How aware are you of your level of contagion?
• Who are the people most affected by your behaviour?
• How helpful is your most contagious behaviour to the cause or purpose of the organisation or department?
• What could you differently that might have a more positive impact?

So, if you are not happy with the behaviours you see in front of you, consider how you can act. As Ghandi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Role modelling has a huge impact. If it is contagious enough through a TV screen to affect an 8-year-old and a couple of adults at a kids match, imagine the power of this in person.

And, by the way, if you know an adult who behaves like this in kids sport then please pass this article onto them! As I’m 100% sure that coaching kids looks very different from coaching professionals.

Iain Brunnschweiler runs the Focus Performance Consultancy. He is a former professional cricketer, has authored two published books, and most recently was the Head of Technical Development at Southampton Football Club.

By John Portch

Does the thought of transformation scare you and your peers?

Removing the fear from performance was at the heart of this month’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London’s Kia Oval.

Over the course of two days, speakers from organisations including the England & Wales Cricket Board [ECB], the Football Association [FA], Australian Institute of Sport [AIS], Brisbane Lions, British Cycling and the National Health Service [NHS] continually returned to the theme of removing the fear factor from performance.

Here we present seven steps towards generating the clarity and purpose that fills people with energy, delivers alignment, and enables people to adhere to principles when challenged.

1. Eliminate negativity – be positive

When Rob Key, the Managing Director of Cricket at the ECB, took the reins in April 2022, the England men’s Test team was at its lowest ebb in decades. The team had lost its last five series when Key, alongside ECB Performance Director Mo Bobat and new Head Coach Brendon McCullum, decided to adopt an approach to performance rooted in positivity rather than negativity. England were accused of naivety – until the team started performing in fearless fashion. Critically, they stuck with it following setbacks and defeats across all formats of the game.

“English cricket has [historically] spent its entire time looking at the danger… my view is that we have so many talented players… it’s not a lack of talent, it’s the mentality of English cricket, especially county cricket, which is so conservative. That was my thing: we need to change the way we think about the game, the way that we do things, the mentality. It wasn’t about winning. There isn’t a person that doesn’t want to win… this informed every decision that Mo and I ended up making.”

Rob Key

2. Promote playfulness

Key readily admitted that he could have achieved very little in his first months without the counsel and support of Bobat. He needed Bobat onside – and free to speak without fear or reservations – if the ECB’s renewed emphasis on positivity was to deliver tangible outcomes. It was not mindless idealism.

“Rob immediately made me feel valued… and then I was going to give it my all. The thing that I enjoyed most from him, having worked with him for a year and a half, has been [the realisation] that I am at my best when I’m playful; and working with Rob encourages me to be playful and I think that enabled you to do not worry so much about the risk and the threat. And I think if you’re playful and you don’t take yourself too seriously what appears like a risky decision or brave decision to someone else just seems like the right thing to do.”

Mo Bobat

Bobat’s point was underlined by Lucy Pearson, the Director of Education at the FA, who has worked in both sporting and academic settings. Pearson explained that playfulness in the FA’s approach to education enhances skill acquisition and attainment for athletes and coaches alike.

“I think play and playfulness is really important if we’re going to achieve high performance in any area. How do you foster playfulness in your workplaces and challenge the seriousness that comes with the serious thing of high performance? Because we take ourselves too seriously at times. That doesn’t mean that everything’s hilarious – maybe it is – but it does mean that we adopted a slightly different approach.”

Lucy Pearson

3. Create safe spaces for failure

Positivity and playfulness count for little if every error is pounced upon. The fear factor would return in an instant. Chris Fagan realised this upon his appointment as the Brisbane Lions’ Senior Coach in 2017. He took over a team in turmoil and the results remained poor for the following two campaigns. Then Brisbane started winning and gradually became one of the finest teams in the AFL [Australian Football League]. Their grand final appearance in September showed how far they’d come.

“I told the players at the very start when we got together that we’re going to fail our way to the top and not to worry about that because it’s through your failures that you learn. These blokes were really frightened about failing and I had to take that fear out of it for them… [the concept of having a growth mindset] we’ve pretty much been doing that stuff for the last seven years.”

Chris Fagan

4. Have you prioritised your debriefing?

The OSAD [Observational Structured Assessment of Debriefing] tool is a useful way of reducing the fear factor in surgical operating theatres. It was based on studies in the UK, US and Australia and, not only does it allow for analytical objectivity and precision, its emergence has seen processes of debriefing brought into an environment where debriefs were unpopular with those who might benefit the most from self-reflection. As consultant emergency surgeon Sonal Arora told the Leaders audience, OSAD seeks to provide evidence-based performance debriefing so that surgeons and surgical teams can train “the gold medallist” rather than the “runner-up”. However, as she explained, such a system must be baked into the culture.

“People said to us… things like debriefing and feedback need to be part of the culture. People need ring-fenced time for this, it can’t just be an add-on, ad hoc that some people are doing well and other people are doing it off the cuff at the end of a game, at the end of an operation, and the end of the week. It actually needs to be given the time and the importance. And that comes from the top down, it’s not going to be down to the individual person in their organisation – we need to get buy-in from seniors… we looked at the components of the ideal debrief from looking at all of the literature, all of the interviews, gathering all the experts.”

Sonal Arora

5. Leave no one behind

The safe spaces and psychological safety stem from people feeling that they belong – something that was not true of the AIS. In 2022, the organisation was still developing its 2023+ performance strategy as the nation prepares for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games on home soil in Brisbane. Before the strategy launched, Matti Clements, the organisation’s Executive General Manager, was given a reality check by some of the nation’s Paralympians.

“[Some Paralympians] felt that they were an afterthought. Our system had been created around able-body and that they were just a consideration once everything else had been done. For them to belong to the strategy, they needed to see themselves as part of that strategy. So we made a very considered commitment to them to ensure all of our programmes, the frameworks, models etc. in the future had inclusive design as a basic fundamental principle, which would not only benefit them but broader cohorts in our system.”

Matti Clements

Similarly, Clements explained that Australia has the “longest living culture in the world yet we are white and middle class and do not utilise the knowledge of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers about passing on knowledge from generation to generation and getting better. We’ve made a commitment to do better at that.”

Her colleague Bill Davoren, the AIS’s Head of High Performance Coach Development, spoke of some of the progress being made.

“I’m very proud that I’ve got a gentleman in my team who comes from an indigenous background. He is a former Australian boxing coach, an amazing story. Was Australian military before he became a boxing coach and he went on to get a PhD in coaching theory and coaching methodology. He’s probably been my greatest teacher over the past three years. He’s talked to me a lot about the concept of yarning, sharing stories, sharing information, building connections.”

Bill Davoren

6. Empower your people

Inclusion is not just a nice-to-have or merely a moral imperative. Time and again studies have demonstrated that diverse teams produce better results. Remove the fear, make people feel welcome, and when they are empowered to input you’ll alight on a better performance strategy. The point was convincingly made by Jon Norfolk, the Head Coach of British Cycling, who explains that strategising cannot be the preserve of the few.

“The clearest plan wins… the clearer your plan is the more people can access it, the more people understand it, and the more people you’ll have to back your plan. I’ve seen situations where the plan is the product of the coach and it’s only the coach that’s inputted into it… if you have one person inputting into a plan you’ve got their biases baked into that plan. The more people that input the more that bias is neutralised. The clearer your plan is the more people can input into it and the better plan you get. The clearer the plan, the more impactful the plan.”

Jon Norfolk

7. Finally, win well

The AIS’s strategy for 2032 includes in its vision the need to ‘win well’. They embody the growing belief that wellbeing and performance are indivisible. Taking the idea further, wellbeing is critical to the elimination of fear.

“We believe wellbeing is fundamental to sustainable high performance success in our country and we wanted to make a commitment to our athletes, future and current, that we would do better. When all those leaders signed their commitment to standing behind Australia’s first-ever united strategy, they also committed to a win well pledge. As leaders of the system, they said: ‘we stand here and we’re going to commit to creating cultures that consider wellbeing at the core of all high performance programmes now and in the future and we believe it’s going to be a performance advantage.’”

Matti Clements

By Luke Whitworth

As part of our final Performance Support Series virtual roundtable series of 2023, we are focusing our attention on the overarching topic of performance planning.

Over the course of the three sessions, it is the intention to focus on three core areas as part of this topic:

• Leading with purpose: the relationship between personal and professional purpose on shaping organisational and team planning.
• Goal harmony vs team harmony: how can you create team alignment to galvanise and focus your team performance?
• Debriefing: implementing effective debriefing to create a learning culture in your team.

 The importance of leading with purpose

Leading with purpose was our first port of call and the aims of this particular session were to reflect on and share what we value and what our professional purpose is. Why is the notion of leading with  purpose important when considering Performance Planning? We are operating in both a complex world and landscape, such is the pace of high performance sport. This quote below from Ronald Heifetz et al (2009) in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership captures why this is important.

“When you understand your orienting purpose, you can understand and make day-to-day decisions in that larger context… When things get tough, you orienting purpose serves as a reminder to you and to others of the reasons you are seeking to lead change.”

Harry Kraemer (2011) supports this thinking by suggesting that ‘becoming the best kind of leader isn’t about emulating a role model or historic figure. Rather, the leadership must be rooted in who the leader is and what matters most to them. When the leader truly knows themselves and what they stand for, it is much easier to know what to do in any situation. It always comes down to doing the right thing and doing the best you can’.

Living and leading with purpose is so important in a complex world.

Engagement is driven by clarity of values

What makes us have a great day at work or engaging effectively with the environments we are in? Evidence from researchers Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner (2007) points to our engagement being driven by clarity of values, in particular alignment of organisational and personal values. Finding alignment in both values is a multiplier and developer of oxytocin. Do your personal and organisational values connect?

The late Steve Jobs talked of this dynamic – “I thought deeply about this. I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and as we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide, I can’t do that. I’d rather quit”.

The science of connection

How does purpose create trust and joy? As part of this next segment of the conversations, we explored why being clear on our ‘why’ creates a sense of wellbeing and joy.

Research by Paul J. Zak shows that having a sense of higher purpose stimulates oxytocin production – as does trust. Trust and purpose mutually reinforce each other, providing a mechanism for extended oxytocin release, which in turn produces happiness. Joy or engagement with others comes from doing purpose-driven work with a trusted team.

Are you connecting your values? Do you have a real sense of purpose? Does that give you joy? A simple but effective exercise for you and your teams to do is a ‘professional purpose statement’. Take the time to reflect or write down what that purpose is. Start with the words: ‘my professional purpose is to…’.

How to find purpose?

It can be challenging to find and define your purpose. To help guide this discovery, there are a few simple questions you can ask yourself or have members of your team reflect on themselves to identify core values and purpose:

• What are my strengths?
• What inspires me?
• What fills me with energy, accomplishment and passion?
• What impact do others say that you have?

In summarising session one as part of this series of learning, we leaned into the work of Hubert Joly, businessman and Harvard Business School faculty member, on five core principles of purpose leadership. Joly suggest that these five principles include the below:

1. Being clear about your purpose – how are you connecting to your company purpose?
2. Being clear about your role – not your job title.
3. Being clear about whom you serve.
4. Being driven by values.
5. Being authentic.

By Luke Whitworth

For the latest edition of our Leadership Skills Series, we delved into the skill of strengths-based development.

Which areas of skill should we focus our energy on? If you were to rank those skills on a scale of 1-5, the tendency is for individuals to focus on the weakest link and what is ‘holding you back’ from a development point of view. This is the traditional way of thinking about the development of skills.

Think about your own world, what is one strength that you know that you have? Secondly, what is one area that could hold you back? As part of the interaction on this particular session, we asked attendees to reflect on the time spent on their development based on whether they spend hours, days, week or they don’t spend time on their development because it is too hard or they don’t have time:

• Hours: 72%
• Days: 22%
• Weeks: 3%
• I Don’t Because It’s Too Hard: 3%

The consensus is that we invest time in developing the areas we are weakest at and the most popular response to this with 72% was that a large percentage of people dedicate hours to this focus of development.

A strengths-based approach

A Strengths-based approach (part of positive psychology) is based on the assumption that each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of their greatest strength. Research by Gallup over the last 22 years indicates that when we focus on strengths, productivity can increase by up to 40%.

How would your development look if you invested those hours, days or weeks into making your strengths super strengths, as opposed to focusing on weaker areas?

The notion of a strengths-based approach sits in the field of positive psychology which is a science of the positive aspects of human life such as happiness, wellbeing and flourishing. Psychologist Martin Seligman offers the definition that positive psychology is “the scientific study of optimal human functioning (that) aims to discover and promote the factors that allow individuals to thrive”.

When considering a strengths-based approach that sits within the space of positive psychology, it is important to outline the differences between positive psychology and traditional psychology which can be evaluated by two different types of modelling – disease and health:

Disease model (psychology)

• Focus on weaknesses
• Overcoming deficiencies
• Avoiding pain
• Running from unhappiness
• Getting to a neutral state

Health model (positive psychology)

• Focus on strengths
• Building resilience
• Fostering strengths
• Pursuing happiness
• Nurturing positivity

Dr Ilona Bonniwell stated that ‘psychology has more often than not emphasised the shortcomings of individuals as compared with their potential’. Seligman supports this point by stating that positive psychology ‘is the psychology of what is “right” with people. What are people doing when they are in ‘peak performance’ state, optimistic and positive?’

Identifying our strengths

How do you know that something is a strength to you?

• Something feels core to who you are as a person. It’s part of who you are. Your identity. It captures your uniqueness.
• It energises you when you use it.
• It more than likely comes quite naturally to you.
• You sometimes go into a ‘flow state’ when using it, losing track of time.
• Others might notice you using your strengths.

If you reflect and think about your teams, who in your teams are positive and thriving, and what is the potential for them if they actually unlock that even more? For those who aren’t perhaps thriving – what are their strengths? What are they not yet perhaps conscious and aware of? Actually, if we focused on those things, could they unlock their sense of self-belief and, therefore, their development?

The notion of realising your strengths forms a key component of positive psychology. In the literature, you will often come across the equation referring to Talent x Effort = Realised Strength. If we were to focus on the traditional model of psychology, we give maximum effort to the weakest components.

Developing strengths in others

Our roles as leaders is to help others be their best and we can use a strengths-based approach to do that. Gallup’s State of the Workplace report explored what happens when managers primarily focus on employees developing a weakness and employees developing strengths:

• Employees developing weaknesses: this led to a 20% chance of the employee being actively disengaged.
• Employees developing strengths: this led to a 1% chance of the employee being actively disengaged.

Creating opportunities for self-awareness in others feeds part of developing strengths in others. Are they aware of who they are when they are at their best, and how to do that? Do they have strong strategies to be that?

To explore the landscape of self-awareness, we ran another interactive poll to explore the awareness of those in your team. What are they more aware of?

• They are more aware of who they are when they are at their best? 32%
• They are more aware of who they are when they’re not at their best? 68%

The responses were overwhelming in suggesting that our team members are more aware of who they are when they’re not at their best (68%) as opposed to being at their best (32%).

Enhancing awareness of strengths

Who are we when we are at our best?

• ‘Peak’ performance state: our mind and body are in a state of congruence.
• Strategies to make the best of our strengths and resources: when you are in that peak performance state, how do you do it? How do you think, behave and communicate with yourself and others around you to get the best outcomes?
• Intention and attention: who do you intend to show up as and are you aware of that person?

The five concepts below recreate the Logical Levels of Change model devised by renowned thought leader Robert Dilts. The model identifies our experiences when we are at our best:

1. Identity: how you (and others) might describe you.
2. Beliefs & values: what is important to you. What you believe. The Values you navigate yourself by.
3. Capabilities & resources: your skills, talents, strengths and capabilities – the unique inner resources you draw upon.
4. Behaviours: your behaviours, habits, routines and communications – the things you do.
5. Environment: your environment and your impact on it.

What can unlock the awareness of strengths in ourselves and others? There are three ways that leaders and managers can do it. It is useful to ask yourselves the questions of what do we want our teams to experience and who do they need to be in order to experience that?

• Intention: to unlock that potential.
• Attention: what do we need to pay attention to?
• A coaching approach: how do we give ourselves the best chance? Countless studies show that a coaching approach sits in the highest performance of managers.

To support a coaching approach, we explored Professor Angus MacLeod’s Three Instruments of Coaching to provide us with some simple but effective tools in developing this approach:

1. Questions: focusing those questions on their strengths. Ask them, what is it that that you want and who do you want to be? If you want to develop that strength, where do you already have it?
2. Silence: coaching can often be about being silent and expecting them to have an answer because they have beliefs and desires. So what is it they want? And then who do they need to be to be able to get there?
3. Challenge: challenge them to explore who they are when they are at their best, and when you see it.

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By John Portch

How well are you serving your female athletes and what more could you be doing?

That was the question at the heart of Leaders Meet: Driving Step-Change in Female High Performance, our two-day event at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.

On day one, speakers from organisations including Hockey Canada, British Cycling, High Performance Sport New Zealand, Harlequins and the UK Sports Institute all answered that question in their own way.

This is a snapshot of their responses, four factors pulled from the discourse to illustrate that while female sport has come on leaps and bounds in a relatively short period of time, there is still a long way to go before female athletes, coaches and practitioners achieve parity with their male counterparts.

1. Coaches: are you doing enough of the right things?

Male and female athletes are more similar than they are different, but there are differences, such as in bonding dynamics or the need to ask ‘why?’ on the training pitch (this is a trait more widely noted in female athletes than male). The most astute coaches recognise this and adapt accordingly. Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Canada women’s field hockey team, has worked with male and female coaches and has, following considerable self-reflection, learned to tweak his approach to male and female cohorts. Emma Trott, an Academy Coach at British Cycling, has called upon her own experience as a rider to inform her work with Britain’s young prospects to develop her coaching style. Kerry and Trott arrived at the same conclusion: when trying to optimise athletes, it is the environment that gets the performance out and that comes down to the coach.

What they said

Danny Kerry on managing team vs individual dynamics:

“All facets of coaching [consist of] trying to find an optimum for that particular team and then helping people adapt to the bell curve, finding their value in that, finding what works for them in that is the real craft of coaching – and in my experience that doesn’t get discussed in coach development.”

Emma Trott on listening to athletes:

“People don’t listen all the time. We hear what we want to hear and we want to hear it because we’ve already made a decision in our head about how we’re going to impact something rather than listening to what is actually being said. It’s that question: ‘How are you?’ ‘Yeah, I’m fine’ – what does that really mean?”

Next steps

• Coaches need to be empathetic to the needs of female athletes and that often requires the coach to be mindful of their own conduct and adapt accordingly.
• The issues that arise from female biology are numerous and there can be limiting factors on performance. However, it is important to understand that gains can still be made when the athlete is not at 100%.
• The coach needs to understand what is required of them at any given point in time. Sometimes it will be heavy instruction, at other times they need only offer words of encouragement or a serene demeanour.

2. Is everyone on your team speaking up?

In 2017, Helene Wilson took the reins of a talented but under-achieving Northern Mystics side in the ANZ Premiership, the national netball league of New Zealand. Two years later, they finished bottom of the table but, in 2021, were crowned champions. Wilson, who worked concurrently as a mentor at High Performance Sport New Zealand [HPSNZ, where she works full-time today], realised that her playing group were skilled but their diverse backgrounds, rather than representing a strength, created division and hindered alignment in the pursuit of high performance. That needed to change.

What she said

Helene Wilson on the HPSNZ Te Hāpaitanga pilot programme [launched in 2019, it initially paired 12 emerging women coaches with experienced mentors, giving them guidance through workshops] and how it influenced her coaching at the Mystics:

“During this time the penny dropped for me. We were busy teaching the coaches about tikanga, the customary system of values and practices. I realised that space for ambiguity where we translate our different approaches and lenses to what really drives high performance was missing in my environment.”

Next steps

• Understand that everyone is a leader and leadership is defined by your actions and behaviours. Some have more responsibility in their role, but everyone has a role to play.
• Ensure that everyone feels included while also not fearing rejection, because they are the first to comply, first to be passive, and not speak up when you really need them to.
• Deploy yourself against a problem last. Lead from behind rather than from in front.

3. Removing the physiological barriers to participation

In the afternoon, Dr Nikki Brown, the Associate Professor in Female Health at St Mary’s University in London; Emma Brockwell, a specialist women’s health physiotherapist at PHYSIOMUM, a female pelvic health specialist clinic; and Dr Amal Hassan, the Women’s Team Doctor at Harlequins, took to the stage to explore issues in female physiology, from skill acquisition during the menstrual cycle, being able to show up as best you can, and the risks presented by fashion over function in the use of sports bras.

What they said

Nikki Brown on breast health:

“It’s important to recognise that breasts will impact participation. Half of school girls drop out of participation because of their breasts, with one in three adults seeing the breasts as a barrier to participation. Then there’s that performance aspect, with breast support, because [an athlete’s] breasts will move during activity, and it changes how they move, it changes their confidence, changes their breathing, changes their muscle activity and movement patterns.”

Amal Hassan on the impact of the menstrual cycle:

“Periods can be a barrier to participation, a perceived barrier to skill and technical development through a season, can have health implications that really impact their performance, and it can stop certain players from developing at crucial points.”

Emma Brockwell on issues related to female pelvic floor dysfunction:

“It’s understanding that pelvic floor dysfunction is not just in the perinatal population or the older population. In fact, it occurs in younger girls and female athletes.”

Next steps

• There is more work to be done in normalising the conversation around periods, breast health or other concerns. These terms cannot remain taboo.
• What is your ethical code? If you’re encouraging a practice you need to put in place a structure, decide who is leading the programme, who is driving the educational aspects, and who are your go-to people for answers.
• Teams with bigger budgets can fit out a sophisticated programme or offer bra-fitting assessments, but action could be as simple as putting up a bra-fitting poster in a changing room or on the back of the toilet door. Even little nudges can make a difference or spark a conversation about breast health issues.

4. Bridging the gap between innovation and research in women’s sport with practical application

The UK Sports Institute [UKSI] has a major aim: to develop a nationwide programme to advance the science, medicine and application of female athlete health and performance support. However, as Richard Burden, the Co-Lead of Female Athlete Health & Performance at the UKSI, explains, there is a gap between innovation and research and delivery in female high performance environments.

What he said

“When delivering education sessions you can’t assume that because you’re talking to female athletes they know about the menstrual cycle, they know about bra fit – they don’t all know about these things. Even when it comes to female coaches, you can’t assume they know how to prioritise for female athletes.”

Next steps

• It is important to find ways to increase the translation and applicability of research.
• You have to bring athletes and coaches on a journey through knowledge generation, education and the delivery of a programme.
• Ask yourselves: are we giving them a reason to engage? How can we be resourceful? How can we create more time? How can we improve practicality?

By John Portch

“The hardest thing with elite level para athletes is that you tend to gain experience and learning from mistakes,” says Victoria Moore. “Because you don’t have a large group of people to compare an athlete to.”

The Head of Performance Support & Solutions at Athletics Australia oversees athlete support for both the Olympic and Paralympic programs. When it comes to the latter, the first thing she says is that no two para athletes will have the same high support needs.

“It’s hard to know everything about everyone on the team and what might happen to them in different environments,” she continues. “So having a breadth of knowledge of a range of issues, any comorbidities and being able to adapt, is really important. That’s why I try to upskill people where possible and share knowledge and what I’ve learned.”

She spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute earlier this year as Athletics Australia prepared to take a team of 39 athletes to the 2023 Para Athletics World Championships, which took place in Paris in July. Australia would claim 14 medals: three golds, eight silvers and three bronzes. It was a haul that placed the nation eighteenth in the medals table.

A year from now, the 2024 Paralympic Games will also come to the French capital. This year’s worlds afforded Athletics Australia a rare opportunity to run tests in near identical conditions. “That doesn’t always happen, but when we can align then we try to align.”

Moore was a contributor to our Performance Special Report Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions. She also found time to discuss her role, which sees her work across both Olympic and Paralympic sport.

“You need to be specific about how you manage each team environment. I’m a connection point, joining the dots, and giving people as much information as I can to be able to support them to do their role effectively.”

Here, we highlight four lessons from Moore’s work meeting the needs of para athletes and how they may provide food for thought for the wider sporting world.

1. ‘You can’t have a lot of peacocks’

When Athletics Australia sends a team to a meet such as the Para Athletics World Championships, it is important for coaches to have both humility and a capacity to build rapport. Or, as Moore puts it, they must have the right amount of ‘awesomeness and awkwardness’. She says: “I have this thing about teams, it’s my ‘awesome and awkward’ theory. Generally, what it means is, when I put a team together, I’m quite considered in how I do it across performance support. The awkward and awesome theory is that people need to have the right amount of awesomeness with regards to technical capabilities but the right amount of awkwardness so that on a team they are able to fit well. So you can’t have a lot of peacocks. Whereas you might be able to have them in a daily training environment because they all go home at the end of the day, people need to be able to pick up the roles of others in camp environments. They need to be humble and they need to be able to build rapport quickly.”

2. Identify opportunities to upskill your support staff and blend complementary skillsets

Moore will not rely on prior experience alone when preparing to support para athletes at a major games. “I really need to understand the needs of the athletes that make up the team and then put support structures around them,” she says. “For a para team, that means anything from underlying medical conditions that require extra support to the skillsets of the staff that are going.” If there is a large contingent of athletes that compete in wheelchairs then it could be that Moore prioritises doctors or physios with expertise in pressure sore management, for example. “If there is a gap then I need to upskill the team so they can manage in those conditions.” This approach has led to numerous adaptations, such as the employment of performance psychologists with mental health training. Where limits on staff accreditation press upon Moore, she will work backwards with her team to enable them to cover as many bases as possible. “Our carers’ roles have evolved. We used to just take people who had good relationships with the athletes. Now we take very highly skilled occupational therapists who help manage the daily planning and can pivot towards other areas.” Support staff roles at a competition are defined by their necessary skillsets, which are determined by documenting athletes’ needs. “People are more accountable now and better able to deliver.”

3. Try to test athletes away from their home environments

Athlete assessments of need are better done away from home. “We always try to create camps where we can get these athletes away from their daily training environment so that we can truly understand what their needs are going to be away from home – it’s hard to know what those things are until you see them outside their home environments and away from their traditional support systems,” says Moore. The athletes themselves also need to experience being away. “They probably wouldn’t know [their true support needs] until they leave their home environment,” she adds. “We haven’t taken individual carers away with us. We don’t want to create a dependency. We’ll always make sure that we build rapport with the athlete and our support person. We also have to think of the needs of the whole team.”

4. Devise frameworks that capture the wisdom and knowledge of your team

When considering para sport support services, learning tends to come through a process of trial and error as much as through evidence-based practice or interventions. Therefore, it is important to capture knowledge gained in the field. “You can create efficiencies by synthesising information,” says Moore. The potential issue is that budgets will only stretch so far and requests for funding can come from all angles. Moore cannot risk support systems and processes becoming unwieldy and inefficient. She recommends a framework that enables the transition of knowledge from one cycle to the next (“an information dump”, as Moore herself puts it). “People want to be innovative but they tend to not know where the big rocks are in doing that. If you can have a person coordinate that, you can be efficient, you can understand themes, you can see what’s been done and not reinvent the wheel. Then you can help people to put in frameworks to begin to implement change.”

Victoria Moore was a contributor to our Special Report, titled Navigating Your Way Through Major Competitions: a snapshot from Olympic, Paralympic and elite team sports. In addition to Athletics Australia, it features insights from Swimming Australia, the Lawn Tennis Association, Hockey Ireland 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.

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By Luke Whitworth

In more recent times, buzzwords such as ‘belonging’, ‘experience’ and ‘connection’ have re-surfaced as key considerations for the design of your performance environment.

Friend of Leaders, the author Owen Eastwood, has often referred to a piece of research conducted within the UK Olympic system, which outlined that “70% of our behaviour is determined by what environment we’re in”.

So if we are to obtain the behaviours we seek, the look, feel, engagement and connection to and within the environment is crucial in making this a reality. As part of this Leaders Performance Institute member Virtual Roundtable, we sought to explore how those on the call are trying to drive engagement and connection to get the best out of others in their environment, and collectively, what we think are the most effective and impactful ways of doing this.

1. Being intentional

Before we think about best practices in bringing people together, the notion of engagement and connection requires intent. As part of the responses from the group on this particular roundtable around what is important to get right when looking to drive engagement and connection, a number of responses suggested that upfront work needs time and attention first and foremost.

What does engagement and connection look like for you in your environment? What is the definition of this and what sorts of behaviours and interactions do you want to see that aligns to this?

One attendee shared that the process of fostering engagement and connection takes time and needs patience. Don’t jump to conclusions if you aren’t seeing rapid changes in behaviour, stick to the process and give it the opportunity to cultivate in your environment.

2. Focus on individual relationships

Now we’ve appreciated the need to be intentional and have patience, we can look at some simple things that can have a positive impact of moving things in the right direction. The most common response from the group was placing an emphasis and focus on developing relationships with individuals in the environment. Simple, but effective. How often are you creating these opportunities for your people?

Ensure that individuals in the environment are connecting with one another on a one-to-one basis and not just in groups. It provides an opportunity to better understand someone, creates opportunities to listen and engage with intent and often is more comfortable for people than group settings.

Within many high performance sport environments, we often hear the challenges with the siloing of information or practice. A very simple way to prevent this from happening is building relationships and understanding of others, especially when operating in different disciplines. Linking back to point one about intentionality, many of these types of interactions happen organically, but we also shouldn’t be blinkered to the idea that not everyone engages in them organically.

3. Understanding others on a human level

A common phrase in the industry is the idea of knowing the person before the performer. This isn’t just in the context of athletes, and it absolutely extends to staff within the environment. Getting to know someone personally provides an opportunity to learn more about their purpose, ambitions, objectives and development needs. If we are able to support our people by combining ideas to develop their practice, that also tap into the core parts of their personality or purpose, we will likely witness a higher level of impact and buy-in. Plus, it drives a heightened sense of belonging and their place within the environment which we know is vitally important to get the best out of one another.

Specifically related to development needs, are you making sure you are taking that insight you are collating and providing opportunities for people? As leaders, authenticity and reliability are valuable traits, so it’s important to do what you say you’re going to do or taking the time to progress ideas and opportunities for people.

4. Organisational alignment

Taking the point above a step further, we also want to strive to connect our people to the values and larger goals of your organisation. The notion of higher purpose is powerful, and if we are able to outline common and shared goals within the organisation or environment, a strong chain of people, beliefs and understanding is created. One attendee on the call had suggested tapping into the concept of action learning in this process – action learning consists of insightful questioning and reflective listening, focusing on providing clarification, reflection and solution-orientation. Integrating your people into this process and the wider goals of the organisation seems simple, but many on the call still felt it’s an area for improvement.

5. Balancing structure and freedom

Allow people to be themselves but in a productive way. A final common response from the group around important considerations for engagement and connection, was finding a balance of structure to support staff and athletes to head in the right direction, and a sense of freedom that allows them to feel like they can be themselves in the environment.

It’s important to show your people you care, which is why finding the balance of structure and freedom is important. Often people don’t know what they don’t know, which is why some structure is effective – provide space to experiment with a bit of support wrapped around it.

By Rachel Woodland

In our second round of Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group calls, we discussed personal development both in terms of what this has looked like for members of the group and what it might look like in the future.  

Our US ‘call’ for this period was in fact a discussion that took place in person over breakfast at our Leaders Meet: People Development event in June at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.  

That morning we were joined by Shelby Baron, the Coordinator of Player & Coach Services at the United States Tennis Association and the Texas Rangers’ Senior Director of Baseball Operations, Michaelene Courtis, and Mental Performance Coordinator, Hannah Huesman. The trio explored the moments of progression in their careers; their experiences of what works as well as what else is needed.  

A month later, in July, the Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group came together to share their thoughts and experiences on the second call. 

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute picks out ten thinking points (networking and relationship building stand out for us) from across both conversations.  

1. Be sure to plan  

Several people mentioned planning their personal development better. This might be from a logistical point of view and when it makes sense to focus on development based on the seasonality of a role; at a time when full commitment can be given. Or planning what to spend time on in a more deliberate manner, be that based on current gaps or where someone would like to be in the future. We also discussed who might input into the planning aspect and the consensus was that seeking the input of others was key. It’s not all about what we need either: what do we want to learn? It is also important to have objectives and goals, which can be personal too.

2. Protect time for development…  

It sounds obvious, but the importance of protecting time for development, even when in amongst the weeds and firefighting, was a point clearly made. As leaders of others, how are we helping with this or role-modelling this? 

3. … and time and support for development in your role  

One way which helps ensure development happens is creating opportunities for development to take place organically through what’s needed from our roles. This might not always be people and leadership skills. At the breakfast in Texas, it was said that “in order to lead, you have to go and do it. Going out and doing the work is the best development you can have.” For this to be most successful and long-lasting we need to ensure that the right support is provided. For Hannah Huesman, one of the most valuable growth opportunities has been being the ‘middle person’. It challenges you to think about how to connect with people, collate information and deliver it to others.  

4. Put the person before the performer  

When planning our own development or supporting others, we have to be kind to ourselves, or to them, and put the person first; we can even demonstrate vulnerability. We should show genuine interest in them as a person. This will make sure the individual is at the centre. When supporting others, we shouldn’t take the responsibility of developing others lightly. We want to be there based on the experiences we have engaged in. That might be us being open with our own line managers, or as line managers encouraging those you line manage to discuss next moves, whether that’s inside or outside the current place of work.  

 5. Network and build relationships  

By far the most commonly mentioned successful – and desired – development tool has been networking and building relationships with others. This can be done in a deliberate manner. Whether that’s using networking for adding to our diversity of thought and understanding other people’s experiences by finding ways to connect with people who are not like ourselves. We tend to look for and find commonalities with people, but we should be aware that we can learn from anyone. It’s working for some to do this within their organisation as well as by speaking to those outside of our organisations by joining community groups, sharing current practices of your own. Some take consulting, or trustee, or non-executive roles, including those outside of sport.  

It’s common that people seek out differences, be that different sports, different levels within an organisation or different perspectives in terms of leadership execution and problem-solving; or in different areas of expertise within sport, new environments, and even in new tools emerging for communication. Others have sought out leadership positions that mean that they’ll be a leader of range of people.  

Whichever method people have chosen for networking and building relationships it’s in pursuit of the right spaces to connect, and to share stories and experiences. Sometimes it’s to deliberately seek differences and challenge thinking, other times it’s to normalise some of the challenges that are faced across sports, roles, and cultures; and it’s to also help us understand what is possible and know that others have done what we’re seeking to do. If you’re in a position that is less common, making yourself ‘available for networking’ could be powerful for others who aspire to follow in your footsteps.  

6. Consider relationship mapping  

To help make networking and relationship-building purposeful and focused, the act of relationship mapping can be a useful tool. In Texas, everyone in the discussion agreed on the importance of relationship mapping. Building these relationships creates an impact in the environment that makes a difference to performance.  

7. Try reciprocal mentorships or ‘reverse mentorships’  

Formalising this further, mentorships and reciprocal or reverse mentorships were discussed. They elevate collaboration between two people and provide more opportunity for quality learning. Some invest in personal coaches, be they specialists in leadership or from areas outside of sport. What people want from a mentorship will differ, but taking time to consider this for ourselves or those we support could prove fruitful. We spoke about the recent story of Debra Nelson, an educational assistant at sport and educational charity Football Beyond Borders, who recently reverse mentored Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at his request. 

8. Take risks  

A few community members said that being brave and taking risks was positively impacting their current development. Some of this meant putting themselves in new situations, reaching out to people they didn’t think would respond, or exploring new sports. Sometimes we might need it to be others that take risks on our behalf and support us as we find the confidence to shape a role that may have traditionally been a male-dominated space.   

9. Reflect  

Several members of the group mentioned being deliberate in reflection on their development, a good practice for ensuring learning. For example, 360-degree feedback might help with this, and kickstart the planning process again, ensuring some ‘bottom-up’ input to our journeys.

10. Look at the bigger picture  

And what can organisations be thinking about at a broader level? The following were suggested:  

• Sharing examples of women working in positions we might aspire to be in.  
• Providing spaces for women to engage with leaders and decision makers to support them in their understanding of the experiences women are facing, and then providing space for them to support changes.  
• Taking a step back, creating an environment where people feel safe enough to share their experiences.  
• Collecting data to support the experiences shared.  
• Taking ownership of developing those in positions of responsibility, so that part of their role becomes being great at developing people and planning for succession with diversity in mind.  
• Being willing to be challenged differently as and when there are more female leaders in your organisation.  
• As discussed in our last series of calls, evaluating current strategies to ensure an effective recruitment strategy that identifies and supports excellent people.  
• Considering that currently not many women athletes have vast levels of financial security when they retire from competing, so there’s a competitive advantage for organisations to develop and prepare players for that next phase in their careers.  

Ultimately, we were reminded to ask women first – don’t assume you know – and in general we should think about the individual needs of each person we’re working with and build a development plan from there.