{"id":1340,"date":"2018-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/finding-the-optimum-point-of-safe-uncertainty-for-athletes\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:40","slug":"safe-uncertainty-1","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Optimum Point of ‘Safe Uncertainty’ for Athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Oct 23, 2018 <\/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

Finding the Optimum Point of ‘Safe Uncertainty’ for Athletes<\/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
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Category<\/div>\n Coaching & Development<\/a>, Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n
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David Jones of Saracens and Danny Kerry of GB Hockey tackled this conundrum at Leaders Meet Human Performance 2018.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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How safe is too safe when it comes to the sporting environment that surrounds athletes? Few doubt that the authoritarian approach of years past has little impact beyond short-term gain, but the trick is to stop it going too far the other way.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

\u201cYou want athletes to start from a safe base and then push themselves to further levels of challenge,\u201d David Jones, Psychology & Personal Development lead at Saracens told an audience at Leaders Meet: Human Performance earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Jones was echoed by Danny Kerry, the Head Coach of the Great Britain men\u2019s field hockey team, who joined him onstage<\/a>. Kerry said: \u201cYou try to find the optimum point of safe uncertainty – or psychological safety – across a wide range of athletes where enough people are going to experience an environment where they\u2019re feeling challenged and need to succeed; and the desire to not lose is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The risks are obvious to Kerry, who won gold with the Great Britain women\u2019s team at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. \u201cFor those who may switch off to an environment it cannot be too challenging to their sense of self.\u201d When you find that sweet spot there is a, \u201ctacit understanding in athletes that takes them to their understanding of where they can go; and that increases the bandwidth around safe uncertainty. People implicitly understand what this environment is like; it will be a challenge to your sense of self. Normalising and talking to that then raises the bar higher and allows people to go further and explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerry explained how that might happen in practice with reference to squad meetings around tacking a \u2018gnarly subject\u2019, as he puts it. \u201cThe best thing is often to talk about the subject then ask people to get into smaller groups to talk about it; then the psychological safety goes up; you sense of self is less threatened. When you report back the reporting becomes anonymised; it\u2019s not Danny Kerry feeding back, it\u2019s this group of people who start to report back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unintended consequence you have to consider: what you\u2019re doing is making it safe but perhaps perpetuating the idea that it\u2019s unsafe to talk in larger groups. You need to flex at times; and now we need to go from a group of three or four to a group of ten or even 30 and keep that tension. If we\u2019re going to reach our potential we are going to have to go there. So athletes knowing that, smelling it coming, that\u2019s where we\u2019re going, and taking them on the journey. That\u2019s something we work hard at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge at Saracens, who are one of Europe\u2019s most successful sides with three domestic championship and two European Champions Cup in the past five years, often revolves around the younger players. \u201cThey\u2019re still trying to figure things out,\u201d observed Jones. \u201cThey\u2019ll avoid situations in order to cover their identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I hold a session and ask some questions, you may need to ask a question many times before people get the meaning and you hear the answer and they handle it effectively. With our young lads we\u2019ll ask them what they fear and they\u2019ll give socially desirable answers; snakes or spiders. Then you get into it and they say \u2018I\u2019m actually pretty scared when we\u2019re doing the backs drills and I accidently line up next to a British Lions player and I know the standards they expect and I\u2019m a little unsure about what the play is\u2019; that\u2019s when avoidance kicks in; \u2018my calf is tight\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s helpful to think of things in number of conversations. I sometimes say to coaches this might be a 150-conversation problem; and when you think you were only going to have one, you wouldn\u2019t do that for fitness, but for some reason we\u2019ve decided psychology can do it like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cApproaching challenge needs to be coached; like cardio-vascular fitness, some may just have an ability to run, spend their off-season drinking, come back and nail it; there\u2019s no reason to expect they haven\u2019t got a hardiness in conversations around that area. Our environment needs to look at that properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be careful around the word \u2018safe\u2019 and \u2018safety\u2019 because it does imply a level of comfort and cosiness; that\u2019s not what it\u2019s meant to be, the safety is meant to be around the fact that we may not get on, we may not like each other, but we\u2019re going to stay in the room until we get there. You don\u2019t want it to be overly safe and you don\u2019t want it to be overly challenging; the balance is hard to figure out and it\u2019s an ongoing problem, what is the right amount of challenge, what is the right amount of support. Get either wrong and you could be failing someone.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouls aren\u2019t saved in bundles, you can go one at a time, it depends on how important you think that is; a lot of it is your belief in answering the question, what gets better and what gets you where you want to go, because there\u2019s enough people in sport who want to win and I think there\u2019s enough threat around the place that pushing on safety is a good line to go down because there\u2019s a decent amount of challenge around playing top level rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n

It ultimately comes back to the idea of winning and playing well. Kerry concludes: \u201cif you can connect the idea of winning and performance and why, that\u2019s probably your route in. Why is this important; and if it\u2019s more about winning than moral welfare, connecting that to why this is important to winning that may be the route in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Jones of Saracens and Danny Kerry of GB Hockey tackled this conundrum at Leaders Meet Human Performance 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1341,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[22,21],"pathway":[],"topic":[],"sport":[],"class_list":["post-1340","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coaching-development-performance","category-human-performance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFinding the Optimum Point of 'Safe Uncertainty' for Athletes - Performance Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding the Optimum Point of 'Safe Uncertainty' for Athletes - Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Jones of Saracens and Danny Kerry of GB Hockey tackled this conundrum at Leaders Meet Human Performance 2018.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-15T05:12:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/Insights-David-Jones-Danny-Kerry-Body-Copy-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"375\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/safe-uncertainty-1\/\",\"name\":\"Finding the Optimum Point of 'Safe Uncertainty' for Athletes - 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