{"id":28395,"date":"2024-11-26T12:30:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T12:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=28395"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:10:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:10:50","slug":"six-steps-for-turning-setbacks-into-springboards","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/six-steps-for-turning-setbacks-into-springboards\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Steps for Turning Setbacks into Springboards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 26 Nov 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

Six Steps for Turning Setbacks into Springboards<\/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 Leadership & Culture<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/six-steps-for-turning-setbacks-into-springboards\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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What we learned about turning underperformance into success at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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An article brought to you by our Event Partners
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
How do you turn your setbacks into springboards?<\/h6>\n

A rich seam of answers ran through both days of this month\u2019s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Kia Oval in London.<\/p>\n

We listened to speakers from various sports organisations discuss their responses to setbacks. Teams including Chelsea, Racing 92, Harlequins and the Sydney Swans laid it all on the table. Several explained how they managed to turn things around.<\/p>\n

Stephan Lewies, for example, captained a Quins team to victory over Saracens in October; their 17-10 win ending a miserable run of eight consecutive defeats to their Premiership rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing off a record like that,\u201d said the South African lock, \u201cyou often look for answers in the wrong place.\u201d Lewies explained that season after season Quins would change their usual approach when facing Saracens. This season they stuck to their guns and it paid off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the pressure came on in this game, [we turned to] something we\u2019d done for the whole season, for years previously, versus something new in the pressured moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kudos to Quins, but neither they nor anyone in sport has dealt with the difficulty of landing a probe on Mercury or the conundrum of trying to thaw a microscopic strand of ice on the lens of a space telescope 1.5 million km from Earth.<\/p>\n

For Carole Mundell, the Director of Science at the European Space Agency [ESA], such stories represent another day at the office. Crisis after celestial crisis is routinely averted on Mundell\u2019s watch by some of the brightest minds in astrophysics.<\/p>\n

Of ESA\u2019s triumphant run-in with the intrusive ice, she said: \u201cData gives you information. Information gives you knowledge. Knowledge only gives you insight and wisdom for action if you really understand what it\u2019s telling you and how to interpret it with your own experience on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mundell feared impostor syndrome when stepping onto the Oval stage but her words instantly resonated with an audience of coaches and practitioners.<\/p>\n

They also lead us nicely back to our original question: how do you turn setbacks into springboards? We bring you six interrelated smart tips from across both days of the summit.<\/p>\n

1. Find the right skills to help you in a crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n

How does it feel to be under the cosh in your role? What tools do you lack in those moments? Carole Mundell has allowed herself to be shaped both by the crises she\u2019s confronted and the organisation she leads. Instinctively, she\u2019s a creative scientist, a physicist with the urge to investigate independently. Yet her work at ESA requires her to think like an engineer and commit to the team; these newly acquired skills have proven crucial in moments of crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m learning to think like an engineer. All of ESA\u2019s structures and processes and how we operate comes from the mind of an engineer\u2026 We have a whole quality assurance system where we set our objectives and we say \u2018what will we do?\u2019 \u2018What did we say we\u2019d do?\u2019 \u2018Did we do what we said?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Carole Mundell<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n
2. <\/strong>Seek key allies above you<\/strong><\/p>\n
Racing 92 were treading water in France\u2019s Top 14 league when they appointed Stuart Lancaster as Director of Rugby. Lancaster, whose tenure began in 2023, was hired to transform their fortunes, but faced considerable obstacles. Language was one, culture another; he also knew he\u2019d be working under his predecessor, Laurent Travers. Nevertheless, Lancaster felt that he was \u201cpushing on an open door\u201d thanks to the quality of his coaching work with England (2011-2015) and, in particular, Leinster (2016-2023).<\/p>\n
The big question he asked himself was: should he tiptoe in or smash down the door? As Racing\u2019s revival required more than a cosmetic makeover, he opted for the latter. With the help of his French coaching staff, Lancaster introduced a new working week, a new playbook, and called time on Racing\u2019s long lunch culture. He could disregard those who labelled him an ignorant \u2018Anglo-Saxon\u2019 thanks to the relationships he forged with Travers and the Racing board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent a lot of time prior to the players arriving getting [the management] to understand my vision, my philosophy and what I wanted to achieve; not taking away the DNA of Racing and trying to replace it with Leinster, but trying to merge the lessons I\u2019d learned with England, the lessons I\u2019d learned from Leinster, and then bringing that structure and detail to a French environment.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Stuart Lancaster<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n
3. Who are your key influencers?<\/strong><\/p>\n
The Sydney Swans had to dust themselves off following their 2022 AFL Grand Final defeat. John Longmire, who this week stepped down as the Swans\u2019 Senior Coach, led them back to the Grand Final again this year. Since leaving London, he has handed the reins to his assistant Dean Cox, who will renew the team\u2019s fight for a first flag since 2012. The factors that propel a team one season will not necessarily apply the next, but Cox is sure to emulate Longmire in learning and applying the lessons from another painful defeat. In dealing with setbacks, Longmire always leaned heavily on the key influencers in his \u201cecosystem\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ecosystem includes your team, the board, the CEO, your fans. Your playing group and staff are a living, breathing organism, the whole thing, and it needs to keep moving and shifting. I\u2019ve got certain long-held beliefs close to my heart, but also within that [have] the flexibility to shift and understand that the best cultures are the ones that keep moving and keep adjusting to the ecosystem. Understand the good influencers in your group, the ones that can help you with that.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
John Longmire<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n
4. Don\u2019t be afraid to let the wrong people walk away<\/strong><\/p>\n
When Chelsea won the Champions League in 2021, the club would not have expected to slump to a 12th<\/sup>-place finish in the Premier League just two years later. Nor would they have predicted the organisation narrowly avoiding oblivion and a subsequent change of ownership. Bryce Cavanagh was hired as Performance Director in the summer of 2023 and, while he has long been considered one of the best in the business, an arduous task awaited him.<\/p>\n
He admitted his presence created a sense of risk and vulnerability in some quarters, but he was fair in setting out his stall. Some relished the challenge of staying to help build a fresh performance strategy (a work in progress, he admitted), but others sought roles elsewhere. Cavanagh was willing to let them go.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, we talked and defined where we were going, what we wanted, the behaviours that we needed, then the performance strategy. We had to really define where we wanted to go and what we wanted the bus to look like because then people ended up self-selecting.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Bryce Cavanagh<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n
5. Have the difficult conversations quickly<\/strong><\/p>\n
As captain of Harlequins, Stephan Lewies regularly faces difficult conversations. They are of added importance when the chips are down and tempers are frayed. Time and again, as Lewies explained, he has been able to plot a path out of disharmony by being proactive, acting fast and ultimately putting the team first. A leader should also strive to understand multiple points of view without leaping to conclusions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the main goal in any tough conversation: you turn a negative into a positive that we can use going forward\u2026 When we [avoid] a tough conversation, the problem just becomes bigger and bigger\u2026 walking away from that conversation is the easy option, but stepping into that space is so important.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Stephan Lewies<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n
6. Prioritise your stress and emotional responses<\/strong><\/p>\n
Success and failure both present psychological and emotional challenges. In 2021, the UK Sports Institute introduced its \u2018Performance Decompression\u2019 tool to help athletes and support staff transition back to daily life following intense competition periods. The tool consists of four phases: first there\u2019s the post-event \u2018hot debrief\u2019 followed by \u2018time zero\u2019, which, as the UKSI website explains, focuses on ‘restorative care in a soothing place’; then it\u2019s \u2018process the emotion\u2019 and, finally, a \u2018performance debrief\u2019.<\/p>\n
The tool can be used anywhere. British 1,500m runner Jake Wightman, for example, chose a sofa in a Twickenham caf\u00e9 to unpick his underperformance at the Tokyo Olympics. A year later he was world champion and, while there was much more to it, psychologist Sarah Cecil believes the tool helped Wightman to plot his comeback. She and the UKSI\u2019s Head of Performance Psychology, Danielle Adams Norenburg, are also happy to teach their tool to any individual or organisation who may find it useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of this process, Jake had made sense of the experience, he was able to tell his story about where he was, and he was also able to process all the emotions that surrounded his performance and the lead-up to his performance\u2026 I don\u2019t need to tell people in the room that lots of factors contribute to performance\u2026 but in the same position, with 300m to go, Jake had what he needed to run fast enough to be world champion.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
Sarah Cecil<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n<\/p>\n                                <\/div>\n                            \n                            \n                            \n                                                    <\/div>\n                                        
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