{"id":25625,"date":"2024-05-16T11:21:50","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T11:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=25625"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:10:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:10:58","slug":"its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Remove the Barriers to Self-Development for Women in Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 16 May 2024 <\/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

It\u2019s Time to Remove the Barriers to Self-Development for Women in Sport<\/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>, Leadership & Culture<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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Self-development, difficult conversations and allyship were on the agenda for the latest Women\u2019s High Performance Community call.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By Rachel Woodland<\/h6>\n
For this month\u2019s Women\u2019s High Performance Community call we turned our attention to how we\u2019re approaching our self-development and any nuances that might emerge for women.<\/h6>\n

We spoke about self, or personal, development, as well as career development, and the place for each before turning our attention towards difficult conversations and allyship.<\/p>\n

There is no doubting that those who joined the call are committed to their development. However, no one felt like they have a well-structured development plan that they simply were not following.<\/p>\n

Currently, there\u2019s a general sense that a lot of effort is driven by the individual \u2013 reflecting upon this, it\u2019s potentially what those guiding us are told to do.<\/p>\n

However, there is a request for more structure, confidence, time and opportunity from above to elevate the impact of our development.<\/p>\n

It also came across from the call that many have big obvious blocks of learning, through courses or further education, but struggle to have a clear plan if those aren\u2019t in place or if they are between courses. There are also those, who are doing a lot of learning simply by doing their job each day, which is where reflective tools and support from above can be powerful.<\/p>\n

The Women\u2019s Community suggested these five ideas as ways to make development as impactful as possible:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. Protecting dedicated time for self-development.<\/li>\n
  2. Support from above \u2013 this might be in sense-checking plans, ways of bringing plans to life, sharing career options, identifying experience gaps and creating opportunities to address them.<\/li>\n
  3. A way to be kept accountable.<\/li>\n
  4. Collaboration \u2013 both in development alongside others as well as in sharing learnings.<\/li>\n
  5. Using a mentor.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Other examples that we\u2019ve seen work too:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Visits to different organisations \u2013 and having others visit you.<\/strong> This helps avoid echo chambers and benchmarks our practices against others. This becomes increasingly important if our only working experiences are in a single organisation.<\/p>\n

    Whole team development on specific skills.<\/strong> Having a whole team approach can help avoid siloed learning and contribute to learnings sticking.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s always good to remember that we need to leave space for stretch and being in uncomfortable positions.<\/strong> Again, these moments become more impactful if we can reflect on them and shape our development plans as a consequence. Finally, remember: some people\u2019s development is focusing on saying no.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The Community once again spoke about the importance of our networks and brands to career development and shared the following reflections:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    • Networks include both internal and external relationships.<\/li>\n
    • If your brand is a reflection of your authentic self, we need to know who we want to be and take time to reflect on that.<\/li>\n
    • If you know your personal brand it breeds the confidence to express ourselves and our thoughts as we meet new people and expand our networks.<\/li>\n
    • If you can better manage your own thoughts and how you think about yourself, it could help those that suffer from impostor syndrome<\/strong>. It could help quieten negative thoughts and be reflected in our behaviour.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      The Community then shared advice for when having difficult conversations:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Difficult conversations can take several forms<\/strong> \u2013 they do not necessary involved conflicts or saying no. There\u2019s a range: it could be talking to a new person or even when you are taking steps to change the dynamics and the way things have always been done.<\/p>\n

      There are stories of female coaches in an otherwise male coaching team stepping out of their comfort zones because their approach to coaching is different. In one particular case, the female coach boosted her confidence by reminding herself that she\u2019s adding to the discourse, providing different inputs and possibilities, and a platform for conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

      We know that women are different<\/strong>, and that in sport women are often in a minority; so it would be easy to understand why we might doubt ourselves in these moments. However, we can retrain ourselves to not think in this way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

      One additional approach that can help us is to have the conversation as part of a regular update session, so it’s not ‘singled out’<\/strong> as having the need for a difficult conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

      So what would we want an ally to support us with to enable us to be our most confident selves going into these conversations? These were some of the group\u2019s suggestions:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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      • An ally would get you to reflect on the makeup of your environment<\/strong>. Is it a genuinely safe space and environment to have honest and difficult conversations?<\/li>\n
      • If there is a deficiency in being able to have challenging conversations, an ally would recommend dedicated training and skill development <\/strong>to enable you to have courageous conversations. Similarly, scenario planning and training can bring these to life. An ally can be someone to practise these with and provide feedback.<\/li>\n
      • We’ve talked about the makeup of the environment. An ally would suggest that open and genuine space for women to talk will be impactful. <\/strong>Do these exist in your environments?<\/li>\n
      • In being able to enact positive change and have challenging conversations<\/strong>, being able to understand your stakeholders can be worthwhile, particularly in understanding the behaviours of those you wish to have conversations with.<\/li>\n
      • If you are an ally, we value vulnerability but also honest feedback<\/strong>, so there is no risk of overprotection.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\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":"","protected":false},"featured_media":25626,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[22,20],"pathway":[295],"topic":[309,334,360],"sport":[300],"class_list":["post-25625","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coaching-development-performance","category-leadership-culture-performance","pathway-leadership-development","topic-collaboration","topic-leadership-of-self","topic-prioritisation","sport-olympic-paralympic-sports"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s Time to Remove the Barriers to Self-Development for Women in Sport - 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\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It\u2019s Time to Remove the Barriers to Self-Development for Women in Sport - Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Performance Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-15T05:10:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/GettyImages-2149471516-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/GettyImages-2149471516-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/\",\"name\":\"It\u2019s Time to Remove the Barriers to Self-Development for Women in Sport - Performance Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/GettyImages-2149471516-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-05-16T11:21:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-15T05:10:58+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/its-time-to-remove-the-barriers-to-self-development-for-women-in-sport\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/GettyImages-2149471516-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/05\/GettyImages-2149471516-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1707,\"caption\":\"SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - APRIL 21: Briony Akle, coach of the Swifts stands for a moments silence with team mates during the round two Super Netball match between NSW Swifts and Melbourne Mavericks at Ken Rosewall Arena, on April 21, 2024, in Sydney, Australia. 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