{"id":12505,"date":"2022-09-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=12505"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:29","slug":"i-think-im-an-expert-generalist","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-think-im-an-expert-generalist\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Think I\u2019m an Expert Generalist\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n\t
\n\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\t
\n \n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n 13 Sep 2022 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u2018I Think I\u2019m an Expert Generalist\u2019<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
Category<\/div>\n Leadership & Culture<\/a> <\/div>\n
\n
Share<\/div>\n Facebook<\/a>\n Twitter<\/a>\n Email<\/a>\n Copy Link<\/a>\n
https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-think-im-an-expert-generalist\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Phil Church of the Football Association discusses his greatest strengths as a leader.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

\n

By John Portch<\/h6>\n
Phil Church is the Senior Professional Game Coach Development Lead at England Football Learning, which oversees the Football Association\u2019s [FA] education pathways for youth and senior coach development and technical director development.<\/h6>\n

It was a role the Leaders Performance Institute asked him about in a recent edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mission statement is probably a good place to start,\u201d said Church, \u201cand it\u2019s to increase the number of English-qualified leaders, which is managers, coaches and technical directors, working at the highest levels of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

We spoke at length about the FA\u2019s suite of programmes and courses as it works towards fulfilling England Football Learning\u2019s mission statement.<\/p>\n

Attention then turns to Church\u2019s strengths as a leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you read the book Range<\/em>?\u201d he asks. The Leaders Performance Institute responds in affirmation having read David Epstein\u2019s book in preparation for his presentation at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Atlanta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Epstein makes the case for an extensive sampling period for all youngsters who play sport. To make his case he cites 18-time tennis grand slam champion Roger Federer, who played a range of sports in his youth and brought those skillsets from other sports to his game as a tennis player when he settled on a career in tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m the expert generalist,\u201d says Church, who goes on to explain himself in greater detail.<\/p>\n

What do you regard as your greatest strength?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PC:<\/strong> I think my greatest strength comes in two parts. It\u2019s my experience throughout the last 25 years because it\u2019s varied, and lots of people have varied experiences, so I think I know a lot of things about a lot of things. I started working in community football and I loved it; I had to work with key stakeholders, the youth offending teams. I ran an inclusion, employment and training programme for West Ham United. And that exposed me to some fantastic people, some brilliant work, and it wasn\u2019t about football, it was about trying to help some young people get through some stuff. There was some brilliant stuff around that. I was at the PFA [Professional Footballers\u2019 Association] as a coach developer, working for the players\u2019 union, I\u2019ve worked in clubs as the head of coaching and had work around the youth team and the senior game areas and now I\u2019m leading a team at the FA. So my experience is a part of it. And then I think I have a good level of communication, so I think I can impart information and reason. I suppose communication and influence would probably be the part I\u2019d link into that, where I think I can add impact.<\/p>\n

What strength do you admire most in others?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PC:<\/strong> Resilience, I think. I use a quote quite often and I said it to my daughter a few weeks ago: \u2018You\u2019re only limited by courage, tenacity and vision\u2019. And I believe that. There\u2019s some brilliant people doing some amazing things and life throws lots of challenges at you and sometimes it\u2019s hard and sometimes it\u2019s good; and that tenacity is linked to the pitfalls you have and successes you have too \u2013 sometimes they are hard to deal with \u2013 so I think the level of resilience; some of the things that people go through, some of the stories of people who were in the Commonwealth Games or the Women\u2019s Euros. Some of the journeys they\u2019ve had and the way they\u2019ve moved through those is fantastic.<\/p>\n

What is the key to strong teamwork?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PC:<\/strong> Trust is at the heart of it. And \u2018trust\u2019 is just one word. But underneath the trust comes a whole layer of time, relationship-building, competence. And you get trust in different ways. You get trust from being good at something, you get trust from being consistent, behaving in certain ways all the time, you get trust from modelling good behaviour, you get trust from doing what you say you\u2019ll do, which isn\u2019t always as common as you might hope it would be in the world. So underneath trust, there\u2019s so many facets that if you\u2019ve got it, it\u2019s strong. It\u2019s easy to lose, and you can lose it really quickly. It takes a long time to get but it\u2019s easy to lose quickly. But if you\u2019ve got trust you can achieve lots of things with lots of people.<\/p>\n

How will you look to get stronger in your role?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PC:<\/strong> I\u2019m always looking to learn from other people. I am very fortunate to be able to work with and alongside lots of fantastic people from diverse backgrounds, from different lenses, with different skillsets. Partly for me it\u2019s intentional. So I\u2019m driven by developing high performance, developing strong cultures, by helping to develop people, and within that space it allows me to get access to some unbelievable people who are doing some fantastic things. I\u2019ve got that passion for developing and improving and I\u2019ve got loads of people around me who I think are magnificent. Part of it is probably the self-reflection bit. So I\u2019m around it a lot, I see it a lot, and I\u2019m working out how I can apply part of that to myself is probably key.<\/p>\n

Listen to the full interview with Phil Church below:<\/em><\/p>\n