{"id":8768,"date":"2021-08-05T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=8768"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:47","slug":"inside-the-institute-july-2021","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/inside-the-institute-july-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Institute – July 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 5 Aug 2021 <\/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

Inside the Institute – July 2021<\/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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What a month it has been for high performance sport \u2013 England’s men narrowly missed out in the Euros, Team GB have made a very solid start over in Tokyo, and the British & Irish Lions are battling it out with the world champions South Africa. It\u2019s fair to say here across the Leaders Performance Institute, we\u2019ve been busy too.<\/h4>\n
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By Luke Whitworth<\/h6>\n

Alongside our first physical day of learning for 18 months at Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments at St George\u2019s Park, we also had our usual learning discussions across our Communities of Practice, Virtual Roundtables and network connections, which have driven both quality discussion and lots of thought-provoking questions for all Leaders Performance Institute members.<\/p>\n

As always, with these varieties of learning opportunities, interactions and conversations brought together practitioners from across high performance to discuss their current challenges, immediate priorities through a number of different learning environments.<\/p>\n

So what really stood out to us in July? What were some of the themes of the minds of the industry\u2019s top thinkers and where do we need to get better? Here are some of the key takeaways.<\/p>\n

Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the first time in nearly 18 months, Leaders Performance Institute members were able to meet in person for a day of learning, on Thursday 22nd July, at the home of England Football, St George\u2019s Park, to explore the ever-fascinating topic of high performance environments. If you would like to read some of the top line takeaways, you can do so here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This day was designed to look at evidence-based research sitting behind the topic, an opportunity to observe a live environment in practice, explore the skills to influence this theme and finally to take a more in-depth look into an industry case study. In a day full of insight, here\u2019s the four factors that shone through most vividly:<\/p>\n

1. When thinking about high performance environments, it\u2019s important to consider the performance environment holistically, rather than considering specific variables in isolation.<\/p>\n

2. How are high performing organisations leveraging collaboration to influence their environment? Many ways: equal contribution, diversity of ideas and perspectives (if you want a good, creative discussion, get people to write down their thoughts first), seeing everyone as part of the same tribe, focus on shared interests, encourage people to speak up and challenge with skilled candour, staying open and curious about different views to our own, welcoming challenge and focusing on a few important conversations, and using a diamond structure.<\/p>\n

3. England men\u2019s rugby union Head Coach Eddie Jones shared an interesting perspective when asked about sustaining a high performance environment: \u201cwhenever you feel like you\u2019re almost there with your environment, break it, and then you\u2019ll have another period of growth. As soon as your team stops growing, your opposition catches up and overtakes. The skill is finding what area to break that\u2019s going to make the most difference\u201d.<\/p>\n

4. What did we observe and identify as important when watching a live environment in action? The importance of learning and debriefing opportunities post-task. Consider making your environment more player or athlete-led \u2013 ask for their opinions and thoughts before intervening as a coach. Ensure you are checking for understanding on a consistent basis. A final reminder, coaching session can often be very tidy and structured \u2013 it\u2019s important to integrate some chaos as competitive scenarios are not always perfectly designed and structured.<\/p>\n

Community Group calls:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across our Community Group conversations – which bring together Leaders Performance Institute Members with similar job functions and challenges – we focused on specific areas of interest raised by the attendees.<\/p>\n

Measuring success in talent development<\/strong><\/p>\n

The context for this discussion was the thinking that had been shared on the previous call: we judge success in terms of winning games, tournaments and competitions which isn\u2019t a bad thing but it does get in the way of the chief objective of developing players and athletes? How do clubs and organisations measure success of players and athletes within programmes? What are the outcomes and how do we measure those at different stages? We didn\u2019t have all the answers, but it raised some interesting thinking and further questions to explore:<\/p>\n