{"id":8946,"date":"2021-11-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=8946"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:43","slug":"revolutionizing-how-elite-teams-communicate-in-a-high-performance-environment","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/revolutionizing-how-elite-teams-communicate-in-a-high-performance-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolutionizing How Elite Teams Communicate in a High Performance Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 1 Nov 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

Revolutionizing How Elite Teams Communicate in a High Performance Environment<\/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\/revolutionizing-how-elite-teams-communicate-in-a-high-performance-environment\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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By John Portch<\/span><\/h4>\n

As Kairos CEO Andrew Trimble explains, athletes often risk missing out on vital information for the most prosaic of reasons.<\/h4>\n

\u201cThere could be something in a group chat that was buried under half a dozen different birthday messages,\u201d he tells the Leaders Performance Institute.<\/p>\n

That missing information could be the details of a pitch the team is training on, the details of a medical appointment or a sponsor engagement.<\/p>\n

Trimble, a former rugby player with 229 caps for Ulster and 70 caps for Ireland, explains that teams across all sports struggle with communication channels. \u201cThere are teams with 10-15 WhatsApp groups or \u2013 just as bad \u2013 they have one group for every single topic and there are numerous threads being discussed; and no one can understand everything,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n

It sounds confusing. \u201cThen there\u2019s numerous screen grabs of whiteboards, which are obviously non-live. In some instances, an athlete has to walk into the medical room, pick up a marker and book an appointment that way, which is very strange in this day and age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trimble, who retired from playing in 2018, heads up the Belfast-based Kairos, who have created a unified digital planning platform that enables better communication within sports organisations, from operations and management to coaching and performance. The platform was designed to be not only sport agnostic, but has tools to support every level from first team down through academies.<\/p>\n

Kairos \u2013 a Greek term meaning \u2018the decisive moment\u2019 \u2013 enables teams, through their app and desktop-based platform, to solve problems by eradicating the distractions caused by multi-channel approaches. Trimble and Kairos Chief Operating Officer Gareth Quinn, who developed the first iteration of their platform in the mid-2010s, soon realised there was no suitable tool on the market. \u201cWe received strong validation that this is a problem that\u2019s really worth solving,\u201d says Trimble, who explains that Kairos is compatible with third party calendars such as Outlook and Google. \u201cWith our platform, it\u2019s all very clear, there\u2019s no clutter, all the athletes know where they need to be and there\u2019s greater levels of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Their platform is currently used by teams in the English Premier League, United Rugby Championship, Premiership Rugby and a series of teams across North America and South East Asia. Trimble points out that these teams may not just be suffering from a problem of unclear communication. \u201cFrom a staff member\u2019s perspective, it could be getting assurance that if you send something important to an athlete that it\u2019s going to be delivered, received and understood and engaged with correctly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s one place, then it doesn\u2019t take up any cognitive load for the athlete. They can spend 100 per cent of their time thinking about performance. If that\u2019s compromised in any way, if they have to scroll through their screen grabs or pictures of a PDF, and they have to scroll through their email for something else and look through their WhatsApp group to find a thread, then all of that is a distraction and all of that impacts on performance. Equally, if multiple departments are speaking different languages then you\u2019re asking an athlete to be a goalkeeper with ten different goals to defend.<\/p>\n

Trimble delves further into the issues that can exist within a single team. \u201cEven within one department you can have three or four different behaviours,\u201d he says. \u201cTake a medical department. One medic may create a block of availability that allows athletes to book appointments, another medic may book that same slot of availability but then allocate slots to athletes, there may then be another medic who bypasses all availability and pushes bespoke events or appointments to players.<\/p>\n

Kairos helps to solve such problems. \u201cAthletes and staff get the assurance that everything is on the platform and they can see it. It\u2019s all live. Any department that wants to communicate with the athlete will use the one platform. Ultimately, they\u2019ve got one goal to defend and, if anything changes, they can see notifications, reminders or updates on their notification channel; it\u2019s very clear and very easy for them to know where they have to be, what they have to do, what the requirements are, and then how to get the best out of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The platform can also be adapted to the prevailing culture at a team. \u201cThere\u2019s ownership on one end and management on the other, and every team lies somewhere on that spectrum, but it\u2019s important that we can support everybody, whatever that team culture is or environment or what the expectation of the players is; either to tell them where to be or what to do, or to allow them to manage all that themselves. We\u2019ve got tools to capture both behaviours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a number of different ways that you can use our software and it\u2019s important that we can work with a team and find a way that works best for them and gets them the best results and, ultimately, gets their athletes performing the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

On that note, Trimble says that Kairos is continually reiterating its platform. \u201cEvery conversation for us is about discovery, finding where the club is at, and deciding what their unique issues are and, nine times out of ten, we will have encountered something similar before and there will be a mechanism in place to be able to provide a solution in the software,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can take them through that, but often there can be something unique and there\u2019s learnings in that for us too. That could even just be a coach with a new way of thinking about the game, a new way of communicating, or a new operational procedure. We have to capture that development.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This attitude points the way forward for the next 12 months. \u201cThe next phase we\u2019re going to be working on is the integration with third parties, be that GPS providers, sleep data, or nutrition and diet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The feedback from Kairos\u2019 ever-growing client base has been positive too. \u201cThey say it is unthinkable that they\u2019d be able to go back to the way it was before,\u201d says Trimble. \u201cProfessional athletes require a platform that treats them like they\u2019re a valued professional and communicate in a way that gives them back time and takes away distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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