Helene Wilson Edit

Thu, 5/19 8:14AM • 34:06

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coach, people, helene, conversations, role, athletes, learning, high performing team, netball, understand, behaviors, talk, team, question, player, new zealand, reflect, person, captain, year

SPEAKERS

Helene Wilson, Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett 00:00

Helene Wilson. Good morning and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.

Helene Wilson 00:03

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Paul Barnett 00:06

I'm excited to hear an antipodean accent on the week, of course, where we had ANZAC day this week. So I hope wherever you were you celebrated or remembered in appropriate style.

Helene Wilson 00:16

Yeah, I unfortunately had COVID at the time, so I got to remember at home.

Paul Barnett 00:20

I'm sorry about that. Well, let's hope that we can move you away from the world of COVID with this interview about all things leadership as it relates to coaching. And Helene, I might just start by potentially just asking you, where are you in the world? If you could tell everybody, what have you been up to so far today?

Helene Wilson 00:37

Yeah, I live in New Zealand and Auckland, New Zealand. So feeling very grateful to be in a great place to live today. I've actually had a day off coaching today's my down day. So I've been mentoring some coaches today, which has been fun. That kind of fills up my energy bucket in planning my day. For tomorrow. I'm back on court preparing for our team to play on Monday night. Yeah. So right in the middle of competition at the moment?

Paul Barnett 01:03

Well, we appreciate you carving some time out for us. And perhaps I'll start actually, with great coaches, because I know that you've had experience with some pretty big ones across all the sports you've been involved with. And we'll we'll get to those different sports in the interview. But maybe an easy question to kick us off. Helene? What do you think the great coaches do differently that sets them apart?

Helene Wilson 01:24

I think all the great coaches that I've met in my coaching career as you meet individuals who are just really comfortable to be their authentic selves. And what I mean like by that is there's just no kind of cookie cutter method for what is a great coach. So they're really amazing people in their own right. And I think when you observe people who are authentic and themselves, they are not afraid to admit if they've made mistakes, they're not afraid to speak the truth. They bring people in and bring them in to do work together. And I think the other thing that I see in great coaches that I've met is they're really curious. So they're really interested in asking questions, and they treat people around them that they meet just as much as an expert as what they are. So they're always learning and curious about what it is that they could do differently to keep improving and being better. [PB1]

Paul Barnett 02:17

Helene, one of your early coaches told you and I hope I get this quote, right. If your legs could do what your brain understands, you'd be awesome. Can you tell us about the context of that quote, and perhaps what it meant to you at the time?

Helene Wilson 02:30

Yeah, at the time, I was still playing netball and, and I'd had a coach who was very experienced here in New Zealand coaching me, and a coach to a high performance level. And she had said that comment, I thought, Oh, she doesn't think I'm as good a player as what I need to be. But what I think she was saying to me at the time was you think really deeply about what you do. And you can play, I could always play all positions on court, well, or good, but I wasn't great. I didn't have that X factor talent. So when there was a problem, or things weren't working, I was that player on court that could adjust and mold to bring the team together to play good as a team unit. So what I took away from that when you reframe a comment that you're not quite sure what it means what I took away from that is, because I understood the game, the technical nature of the game, I could kind of lend my hand to almost every position on court, and I could give it a good go, but not a great go. That she was telling me that I had the thinking and the brains and I understood the the parts and how all the bits of the game come together. And then I could understand it, but I couldn't always do it. And so that comment kind of led me down the path of coaching because a coach doesn't need to be able to do what they're coaching, but they need to understand all the different parts and the dynamics of putting a performance together and tell[PB2]

Paul Barnett 03:52

me in a sport like netball, when you're coaching at a high performance level, and it's a representative team, how would you describe the role of the coach,

Helene Wilson 04:00

I think you're the conductor of the orchestra. If you want to use that analogy, you've got different departments and different areas of your orchestra. And as a head coach to get a high performing team really hammering, you need to be able to get all those moving parts or different instruments working in unison and harmony. So I really do think a lay coach is a facilitator. And your role is to bring the strengths and expertise and value of everybody, all the people in your team together and get us all working together on any given day. Helene, you[PB3]

Paul Barnett 04:34

talk a lot about honesty in your interviews. In the ones that I was researching and preparation for today. I found this quote now. I'd like to read it to you before I frame the question if I could, and you say if you shy away from the tough, honest conversation with yourself, you will struggle to step up to the next level. And it really got me thinking do you have any specific questions or frameworks that people listening could use to have better conversations with themselves?

Helene Wilson 05:00

Yeah, I think first of all, you've got to self reflect as a coach. So that's a skill. And if you don't have a process for self reflecting, then you're not going to grow your awareness around what you're doing as a coach, or could you be doing things better? But you got to be careful that self reflection isn't ruminating. So you're not just sitting on things and overthinking things, because that's not healthy either. So I always think to myself, What have I done in practice today? Why have I done it? What's working? What's not? So I have a process where I'm going over those things? And what have I noticed? Which is a really powerful question in what could I do differently? When I think about those questions, and when you you reflect in that way, at my post some more questions, too, but they're questions that you can put to your group or the people that are around you. And then you can lever off the support and expertise, you have to be better. If you're having a critical conversation, or a difficult conversation with someone else rather than yourself, I've always thought what's the stance that I need to take. So you can take a stance of advocating what you need to discuss an honest or critical conversation. But you can also take the stance of inquiry and inquiry with questions and questions are a great way to get people on the same level as you. So depending on what the outcome of what you're reflecting on yourself, what your contribution was to the situation, and then how you need to engage with someone else, you need to be really careful about the stance that you take to just bring that critical conversation and honest conversation to the forefront. [PB4]

I think as human beings as well, Action Learning, I'm a great advocate for the action learning cycle. So you have to do something first, and you have to reflect on it, you have to figure out what worked, what didn't What did I notice, and then you need to just tweak it a bit and go back out and give it another try. But within that action learning cycle, you also have to make sure you're getting quality feedback. And the quality feedback comes from the critical conversations that you have with the people around you. And critical conversations have robust pneus to them. They're not just telling you what you want to hear, they don't always sound nice or feel good. But if you have a mutual respect and trust within in what you do, I think that act of learning processes really critical.[PB5]

Paul Barnett 07:26

Helene over another good quote from you where you say, everyone hits a ceiling at some point in time, when talent isn't good enough. This is when you need to kick into self reflective thinking, work hard and really look at yourself and your contribution to be better. And you've just referenced a lot of that thinking in your last answer. But I wanted to take it a step further and ask, could you share a story that illustrates how you've applied this thinking, this philosophy on self reflection to your own development?

Helene Wilson 07:55

Yeah, I guess if I go back to my 2019 season with the Northern Mystics in the ANC championships here in New Zealand, we were the wooden spoon team. It was a nightmare season in so many ways. We had three Silver Ferns and the team at the time and two of them, I'd lost to injury we had late we had new people coming into the team different dynamics. So the season was quite disjointed for lots of different reasons. Watch as a coach, you can kind of make an excuse if you want to and blame. We didn't have the cattle to win the competition that year. But maybe we did. And maybe I just didn't put the program together or something happened throughout the year. So the end of that year, the self reflection was massive.

And first thing I think with that process, when you are coming out of not good results, you have to go back and make sure you get the right people around you that you are self reflecting through feedback that you get. So the process that we talk at the end of that year was the external feedback from the team and the players. But there was also feedback from someone independent as well. And then I made sure I had a mentor that when I reflected on all that information, I could sit down with them and kind of process it so that rather than getting consumed with the small things that happen and lots of the bad things that happen in a bad year, I could take the key rocks out of that year to try and learn from it and put it into the next year. So that learning from that year was the key information that I took forward and my planning, or my communication with my team with the way we recruited the team the next year. And it set us on a pathway a trajectory of improvement and learning. [PB6]

So I think when I self reflect, I always have that kind of quote in my mind. If it's a quote I'm not sure if this is exactly right that for learning to occur, you have to be open to mistakes and I think I made massive mistakes in 2019 as the head coach and critical moments like could have made a different decision. But what did I notice about the decisions that I made? What did I notice about the quality conversations that I had at the times when we were under pressure? And those were the things that drove the planning to do things slightly different than next year?

Paul Barnett 10:15

Are you being quite modest because of course, in 2021, the team go on to win the championship. And I guess it was that 2019 experience that fueled that result. But that 2021 premiership was the first in the 14 year history of the mystics franchise, was there anything different off the court, that season, or even on the court that drove this loop? You talk about action learning? So you went from learning in 2019? And then you get this great result? But what change? What was the manifestation of that reflection?

Helene Wilson 10:47

Yeah, I think 2021 result was built from 2019. So it took two years to get the fruits of the learnings from 2019. And I think when you do lose, or you hit the bottom, it really drives your learning. So I think there was a system shift in our system, both within how we did things, and we noted that we learnt the difference that we wanted to make both the management and the players was how do we drive our culture from into a performance a high performance culture? And what does that look like in cultures, this word that's bandied around in sport a lot.

But the reality is, as a culture is simply the behaviors of the people who own own and are part of the team. So we decided we really worked hard on 2021, what was the collective vision of the behaviors that were going to drive us to be high performing athletes and our high performing team for the season? That was the work I did with my captain and my management team, was the processes that were required on a weekly daily basis to get us there. So I think that was a major shift in 2021.[PB7]

But we had done some learning in 2019, and 2020, to get there.

And the other big thing that we did for 2021, was, we looked at what was our greatest resource, a simple question, if you were gonna put all your eggs in one basket, what was the basket that you were going to really invest in, and we decided that it was our people, and people are our greatest resource, because you hear everybody, we always want more money, we want more resources, you always need more and more and more in high performance to get the result that you want. But really, when you can't turn to those things, your people are your greatest resource. So I made a conscious decision to change our coaching structure in 2021. And I think I brought another coach into the structure, we had key roles in terms of skill set in terms of leading the high performance vision that we had for the team. But also, we added another coach into what was at the individual development that we needed of the athletes across our whole club. And I think the fact that we aligned what our game style look like. And we had three coaches across our system to really invest in that.

And we did that with our player leadership, that alignment between the player leadership and the coaching staff really drove that culture and that performance piece that we were after. So that was a really cool piece of work. And I think the thing that I'm really proud of to get us to that place is that everyone on our management and the player leadership within our group, we're all hands on and developing what that looked like. And so we were all felt like we were valued and something new and exciting that we did. [PB8]

Paul Barnett 13:38

So that whole idea of alignment, a new coach player leadership, this is a broad group. Now we're talking about and maybe 678 people. What did you learn about aligning people to a vision and behaviors through that process?

Helene Wilson 13:51

Yeah, I think the key thing is when you're trying to learn align people to a vision, they've got to be a part of the vision, they've got to understand, what is the vision? And what does that mean? And you need robust discussion and time together to really be clear on what that means. And then the next question, you need to ask yourself, well, what is everybody's role within that because, as you say, a group of seven or eight people are really hard to coordinate, like, you've got to work in almost many teams to get the group functioning. But if, if a mini team knows what the role is, and this is my job, to add to that vision, and this is how I'm going to add value, then magical things happen, that my role is the leader.

And all of that is every little mini team that we had to get on board into that vision. I had to keep connecting all the dots and making sure that everybody understood where the changes were where the shifts were when we were going a bit off track and maybe swimming out of our lane a little bit and we needed to get back in on a track. And my job was just keep going back to the big plan going back to the vision and re anchoring people in what have we said before what have we agreed that we've wanted to do so We've really been accountable to staying true to what we've decided when we all got together at the right at the very beginning.[PB9]

Paul Barnett 15:06

Helene, you talked also about behaviors in your answer there. Did you articulate them? And if so, would you be happy to share them?

Helene Wilson 15:13

Yeah, I don't think I'm not an advocate for roles to get the right behaviors, because we're human. And we make rules. And then roles are made to be broken. So we didn't have roles. But what we did had as we had basic principles of how we want it to function as a team. And I'll give you an example. So principle, as if we're going to talk about someone and our team, they're going to be in the room. So that principle really encourages direct conversations. So if I'm a player, and I might not be very happy with how my strength, my gym session, went that year, that week, I'm not going to go and talk to another player about that jam session, but I'm going to talk directly to the s&c and talk to him about what I need or what I'm feeling. And so the direct conversations happen. And when direct conversations happen, that's when the magic happens. And we can all get on the same page. So those sort of when you have principles, and those principles drives the expectation of behavior. And those principles are really, really sound and everyone knows what they are. When people do things that are outside of what you've agreed you can reference back to that principle of what you expect.[PB10]

Paul Barnett 16:25

Helene, you've worked as an advisor at high performance sport for New Zealand. And you've been there for a while now. And you've been involved in rugby sevens and the hockey teams as well. What have you discovered through that environment or that role? What have you discovered about the building blocks of high performing teams,

Helene Wilson 16:42

when you're in a high performing team, I think anything can be chucked at you. And it doesn't sway you off knowing the standard required to win, because high performance is about winning. And effectively high performance, the role of anyone on a high performance environment is out learning your position, you're on a timeline, the timeline doesn't change. Your job is to outline your position and get the performance at the standard required to one. That's what you're trying to do. high performing teams have a group of experts, but they come together and collaborate and approach making it happen in a coordinated way. And I think every high performance environment I've been in, it's a learning rich environment. It's a curious environment. I think people are really clear on their role as a leader and what their role is, in the athletes in the staff are all on the same page working towards a coordinated outcome or goal, a culture and culture working together. They're super, super important. And I think high performing teams have different mechanisms to have everybody's voice heard. So that while you may not do exactly what you think should be done, you have the opportunity to understand the difference between what agreement is and what alignment is to get to where you need to go. So there's always that alignment there to get to the standard of performance that's required[PB11] .

Paul Barnett 18:07

Helene in this interview, you've talked a few times about, you've used the word robust, you've used the word direct when it comes to conversations. Was there the person or event in your life that sharpened your appreciation for this type of communication?

Helene Wilson 18:23

Oh, absolutely. And I definitely hands down would thank my mentor Len Ganson, who is a master I consider her to be a master coach. She's coached this over fundz here in New Zealand. She's coached England, netball and she works as a coaching consultant for high performance sport New Zealand. I was lucky to meet her about 15 years ago. And I remember my first interaction with her I had applied for a New Zealand Secondary School coaching role and the applications they let me know that applications here today decided to reopen them up and, and put applications out. And obviously when that happens to you kind of thing. I'm obviously not good enough kind of thing. And I said it to were very naively at the time. And I remember her turning around and saying to me, you're not good enough. But why is that? And that's a really direct, what is it? And it made me go away and think I want to wait, oh my gosh, you know, I'm not good enough. Because you kind of ego. The ego gets a bit bruised. When you miss out on a role. You think you should get it and you don't. And I think the fact that she asked me that question made me curious at the time and I can remember multiple times as a mentor. She's supported me when I've needed her to support me when I've been really challenged and vulnerable as a coach. But when I've needed to be challenged because I'm making excuses or not really seeing the word between the cherries she's really challenged me to look at myself first. And thank Did I do the best job to prepare the athletes because at the end of the day, the way that athletes perform are a reflection of the orchestration of everything that you're doing as a whole Coach, so you can't change everybody and won everything all the time. But you can leave a growing learning success and shift and performance at all times as a coach, if you're aware and noticing what you're doing. So I'm very grateful for her for the robust conversations she's had with me. And there's been many of them over the years to help me be a better coach.[PB12]

Paul Barnett 20:22

I've never met Lynn, but I remember reading an article where she was described as the arson, venga of nipple coaching. So I can only appreciate that your answer even more now that I have put those two thoughts together. But Helene maybe take a sidestep actually, because in 2021, your captain for that season was Sulu, Fitzpatrick, and she's obviously a great leader in her own right. And it's been much written about her. But I would like to ask you, what qualities do you look for when you're choosing a captain,

Helene Wilson 20:50

I quite strongly think a captain's not a possession. It's rather a disposition like, what are the it's about the person. So if they see it as a position, that would be a red flag for me. So I look for the person and the disposition, they think it's a service, I really like service leadership and the concept of that. And what I mean by that is, when you're in leadership, you need to have a capacity to understand other people's worldviews, and how can you be serve the nature of the collective, the whole group to function. And I think, anyone in a leadership position and particularly a captain, they need to understand that their behaviors, their actions, the role of being a leader needs to be seen, and the behaviors what we're after. So obviously, you always look at that, and a person. So what are they doing? How do they behave? How do they act, role model behavior, you'd like people to talk about being role models, but I'm not talking about role models in the sense of being role models for young netballers, I'm talking about a role model that the high performance behaviors that we expect of them to perform at their very best, the captain is a role model for their peers in that space. So that's really, really important in to start with that, by doing that, they can then and they've got those things down pat, they can then be a service to the people around them. So I think that service looks like being a really strong communicator, you're prepared to serve the coach as much as you're prepared to serve the players. So you're prepared to give up your time and do those extra things, the work behind the scenes that no one else sees, that enables a group to function really, really effectively. And to be able to be that person, you have to be prepared to have robust conversations with the coach, you need to sit together aligned in a space where the respect is mutual for the worldview that you bring to the table, because Solo's view when she brings things to the table is different to mine, but I value that. So you've got to be confident enough to bring a different worldview to the table. And then I always wonder, in thinking about what influence can that person Brent for the good of the team, and that's another serving quality. So when solo talks, our players listen, they listen, because there's a deep respect for who she is as a person that in so she's got influence over the group, and she's got influence over me as well. And because I do respect her worldview, so those robust conversations I keep talking about, when you have those conversations with someone when you have mutual respect that brings trust. So you trust the worldview that they're bringing brings things to think about, you can discuss every view that you have, and then you can understand multiple perspectives, and get alignment of what's the best thing for the collective to move forward. [PB13]

And so I really think a captain plays that role of the person and between the management and the playing group a little bit. They are the person that understands both sides of the stories, most of the time, they're not the go between, that's not the role, but they can support the players and influence the players and the athlete group to step up and lead themselves. And that's the way I think that they should serve the team.

Paul Barnett 24:16

Lead. I have another great quote from you. And I'd like to read it if I could, before I phrased the question, you say, I have a responsibility to grow the players that I work with to increase their skill capacity, their physical movement, competency, and their understanding of the game. But for me, it's more than that. Although my vehicle is netball, and they're to grow them as people across the board. It's a lovely quote. And I think it really talks to your central philosophy as a coach and as a leader, but I wanted to flip the question around a little bit actually and ask you, have you ever received any resistance from your athletes when it comes to helping them grow as a person because I imagine for some people, there is a line and they do like to hold some of themselves back

Helene Wilson 24:59

100 years And I've had heaps of resistance, and I'm sure there's athletes around if they were listening to this podcast would go off Helene, you know, like, pushing the boundaries, and there has been resistance.

And I think when you want to grow a person, you need to get permission to go on that journey with them. And sports are a great vehicle for us all to grow. And often a coach and athlete are on a parallel journey of growth the whole time. So I think athletes that tend to come into my realm of my team and enjoy being on my team, understand that learning is a massive part. And as a person is first and foremost, I think when there is resistance to growing as a person, we have to just self check ourselves is our ego getting in our way. Because often when we don't want to go into that space, our ego might be protecting us from something. So resistance comes maybe where there is a lack of understanding or self awareness. So how do I get people to open up to a different viewpoint, understand that there's multiple ways of looking at things and I think there's many like sort of tricks of the trade, you can try and do that. But you do need to build a relationship with the person first. So there's a level of trust before you go into that, grind them as Hussan space. [PB14]

But I think one of the tricks of the trade is a coach. After years of coaching and trying to drive people to be better people, you can anticipate where things are gonna go potentially, when you see maybe a red flag in your environment. And so you might be able to frame up some of those conversations with this may happen in the future. But let's go on a learning journey together to figure out this. And so you can try and frame it so that ego or fear part of resistance doesn't get in the way.

The other thing I often do is, when we're growing as people, if we understand the process of learning, and what that looks like, you're more prepared to go into the space of being a little bit unsure, feeling a little bit vulnerable. So I often say there's a really easy sort of model, a simple, complex, simple. And sometimes when we think things are simple, and we don't want to grow as a person as because we don't know enough about it. But if we're prepared to jump over into the complex space, and go into the learning space where things feel uncertain, things feel hard, we're being pushed or poked a little bit, and you go into that complex space, and you're prepared to sit in that space with a coach, you can then come out the other side with a simple understanding of things again, because the learning experience in the actual doing of those complex things, and going through some of those hard conversations where you are posed to be to grow as a person, you just got, you know what to do next. [PB15]

The other thing is to grow as a person, you got to go into what I call the learning path, you've got to go into the pet, you've got to go into this space where things are hard things are difficult, or it takes 90 days to change a habit. So if you're in a bad habit, as a person, you've got to go in the Learning Path of doing something slightly differently for 90 days to try and get out of that bad habit or that habit that isn't helping you be your best self. So sometimes when you can use some of these sorts of models to sort of explain this is what's going to happen. Are you prepared to go on this journey with me? You can get acceptance, and then you've got a reference point to go back to when you hit the resistance to try and get people to kind of go okay, okay, I just said that. And then you make sure you give them lots of positive feedback along that journey. So when you see a small shift, and it needs to be a small shift, you let them know you've seen it, and then a light bulb might go off at some point, they go, Hey, I'm getting somewhere and then that hooked into the change. I mean,

Paul Barnett 28:51

if I could take you back and introduce you to that third form girl who was coaching for the first time, knowing what you know, now, what would you say to her,

Helene Wilson 29:02

I definitely would say coaching as an about you, you're not the center of attention, and you're not the Oracle of all information that stands up the front and tells everybody what to do. And I think every coach, if they were going to be really honest with themselves, quite often we get into coaching because we are comfortable being at the front end being in control of things. Coaching isn't about having control, even though a lot of us like to be in control. It's having some control and having been prepared to sometimes lead from behind and let people discover what they can do what their potential is. I think I would tell myself to be curious and not to be scared of what people think of me and not to be scared. If I'm doing something wrong. Keep being curious, and being interested in giving things a go and being innovative about what my thoughts are, even if they're different to what someone else has told me what to do or what I've seen someone else to do. And I think The third thing I'd say to myself is, you don't have to know everything. Because you never know everything. And I know that now as a coach, you don't know everything, and you never will, so So can use the information and the thinking from all the wonderful people you have around you to help you so that you're not alone on a journey on your own[PB16] .

Paul Barnett 30:19

Helene, it's your day off, and you've been very generous with your time. So maybe just one final question if I could. And this time, it's a quote from someone else. And it's when you were appointed and the chief executive. Helene, when you were appointed as the mystics coach, the chief executive Julia Patterson said, Helene's appointment presents a huge opportunity to link the whole North northern zone together in a program that creates a netball legacy for our area. No pressure, I guess we're near the word legacy go out. But I did want to finish by asking you in the distant distant future, when you do hang up the whistle, what's the legacy you hope you've left as a coach,

Helene Wilson 30:55

I always think a legacy for me is there, the environment, I go into a stronger, when I leave, it keeps getting better when I'm not there. And I've left it in a better place than when I found it. And what I mean by that is, it's really important to have a sustainable system that keeps creating great coaches, great athletes, who want to be at the mystics. So when I'm laid the mistakes, you know, people want to be at the Masters because it's a great club to be at. And I think success would look like I've left, and we're still a successful club, because these people from the northern zone wanting to represent the northern zone, they want to play for the mistakes, because it's the best club to be for. It's got a great culture, it's got great people. And so that's as simple as it is. So legacy isn't necessarily about winning year on year on year. But it's about having new people new blood, who keep coming in and keep wanting to come in. And success means that every two or three years, you may win the Premiership. So hopefully, we've started that when in 2021. And we will keep successfully bringing people in and becoming part of our club community. So that when I step away, the engine room just keeps on churning and keeps producing success.[PB17]

Paul Barnett 32:13

Can I challenge you on that? We haven't met before today that I feel like I know you through researching and listening to your answers today. I think there's something in there around direct conversations matched with you talk a lot about learning and curiosity, I think I think it's going to ignite something in people. And I just guess, but I think in the future, they might come back and reference these two things, when they talk to you if they're not already doing that. Because I know you've been coaching for a while now, too. So I don't know how that sits with you. But I think there's something around at elite level honesty, and curiosity that really sets you apart.

Helene Wilson 32:49

Oh, thank you very much. And honesty is a really tough one. We talk about a lot and high performance sport. And I can be bluntly, honest to you, Paul and say something, but it might not be very good for you at the end of the day. So what does honesty really mean in high performance? I think it is bringing your thoughts to the table as a person and bringing multiple people to the table and your thoughts with honesty. So that conversation and the curiosity and all the thinking as are on the table together. But at the end of the day, are we listening? Are we listening to what's been said? And is what been said? planting a seed of curiosity that may take you on a slightly different path. But that path with all of those multiple points of reference from the thinking may take you somewhere that you never knew was possible. And I guess that's what I really enjoy about being involved in sport. I see some great people great minds. And if you bring them all together, and honestly put your thoughts down on the table together, magical things can happen.[PB18]

Paul Barnett 33:50

Well, I think honesty, curiosity, and magic is probably a great place to finish. So Helene, thank you so much for your time today. I've loved this interview, and I thank you again for agreeing to do it.

Helene Wilson 34:01

No worries. Thank you for having me. And it's been fun talking to you. Yeah.