SWC edit
Sat, Dec 16, 2023 4:37PM • 57:12
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaches, people, work, idea, cliff, sport, coaching, sergio, team, constantly, good, care, interview, change, athletes, research, talk, love, environment, challenge
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Sergio, Cliff, David Turner
Paul Barnett 00:00
Professor Sergio and Professor cliff and Dr. David of course, can I welcome you all back to the great coach's podcast.
00:08
Thank you.
Paul Barnett 00:09
Very excited to have you here tonight. You've just written a fantastic new book called Learning from serial winning coaches. And David and I are going to be interviewing you about what you've learned and uncovered tonight. But before we begin, as I always start, Sergio, could you go first and tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today.
Sergio 00:33
So I am in Manchester in the beautiful city of Manchester get a little bit dark and rainy. But it's still beautiful. And these mornings are still pretty early here. I've just been preparing my session for tonight. I like to get up early and prepare my session before they get going. And just trying to tidy up my inbox, which looks like a bomb site. So that's been my body.
Paul Barnett 00:57
And yeah, and Cliff, you're in a different part of the world.
Cliff 01:01
Yes, I live in Brisbane, which is in Queensland and sunny part of Australia. I've spent the day at my university University of Queensland doing some academic work like appraising fellow staff members, and wading through a number of emails and doing a bit of editing.
Paul Barnett 01:21
Well, thank you both for joining us today to talk about your terrific new book, which I think there are a lot of coaches and leaders listening to this too, who are going to run out and get it. David, I'm going to hand over to you to kick off the interview.
David Turner 01:37
Lovely to virtually meet you guys. You've both written extensively on sports coaching. So I wonder why they interest you so much. Perhaps you could answer that cliff?
Cliff 01:48
Yeah, look, I guess I'm a strong advocate for sport. And as a young person, I played a lot of sport, I enjoyed it. I was reasonably good at it, not a superstar, but played a lot of sports. So I became a phys ed teacher and part of that role you, you do some coaching, I thought it was okay at it. I also realized how hard it was, and engaging a whole range of sports and people. But I think my personal experiences both as a coach and then getting into coach education and development has really sort of spurred me to pursue a deeper understanding of coaches and their work and how we might assess the quality of their work. Because I think I'm very wedded to an advocate for the value proposition of sport, that sport is a wonderful space in which we can develop young people and contribute back to society. And so how can we help coaches or central actors in that context to actually shape an environment or allow other people to thrive? And in my journey, particularly the last 20 years, I've just met some wonderful people who were scholars in this space, and you learn so much from each other, which has been really rewarding.
David Turner 03:01
That's a lovely answer. And it's almost like looking in the mirror, because that's very much my career as well. Sergio, is there any difference with yours? But I know, for instance, that you describe yourself as a practitioner? Who does research for instance, I think you value that that practical side, right?
Sergio 03:17
Yeah. And I think that's, I came into academia quite late, if you will. And, and my reason for coming into academia or having an interest in, let's call it coaching science, to call it something right, is because I wanted to be a better coach, initially, it was a really a very selfish reason, initially. And as time went by, really, there was a transformation, a bit like Cliff was saying about actually be great to support other people as I got older. Because I started coaching really early. I was 21, when I started coaching, and I've done nearly 30 years of coaching. And you realize, well, at some point, he stops being about you. And you think, well, I've got some life experience and also some academic experience to try and support other people. Maybe give them the helping hand that I didn't have what I was trying to do to become a coach. And so he's been that going from it was about me trying to get better, to actually thinking it'd be great to support other people to, to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve in coaching and, and then, surrounding all of that. I've always been really curious. I just love finding out more about people and reading and yeah, I can't get enough, especially in this in this area around coaching and relationships and not only coaching I think there's another few, I always say to Cliff, I love learning more about film directors and orchestra conductors, because they're all doing the same thing really. And leading teams into these kinds of things that it's just the I just want to know more about how they go about it.
David Turner 04:55
That's really interesting. So before I hand over to Paul, I think just to summarize the Sometimes the journey can be from being relatively selfish to relatively selfless. And we we've all ended up in the same space of coaching the coaches, which is what I do, day to day as well. Okay, really interesting. And I'm sure we'll revisit some of that later over to Paul,
Paul Barnett 05:15
to try to pick up on this idea of you being an academic and a coach. And I'd like to ask you, after studying all of these serial winning coaches, as you guys describe them in your work, how has it changed the way that you coach?
Sergio 05:34
How their research into 17 of the worlds serial winning coaches found magic recipe of success, however they did find some common traits which they explain in the podcast.
A great deal or is become. And sometimes I think he's a bit of pathological really, because I kind of constantly check myself against the research really a little bit.
But whenever we present the research to other people, we always say, look, there is no recipe here, you know, not know, every coach, you know, I know, the 17 coaches that we work with, they were all different. We try to identify some common traits, but they will different than the way they go about things. Maybe a slightly different, right. So I always say, look in when you hear me telling you about all these things, there might be things that are you already, you're already doing these things, things that are not you just yet, but you would like to watch them and things that you don't want to know about. Because it's not you, it doesn't fit with you who you are or your environment, right. [PB1]
So if I look at it that way, in terms of the thing that I already was, or I think I am, I've always been really diligent and hardworking and curious and studious, right. So so that's something that it was nice to know that these people are like that as well. And the that I wasn't like, and I always blame it on my Spanish heritage, emotional control, not my strength.
And I think it's one of those things that again, you know, we were one of the biggest findings of our we research with, these guys are pretty stable. And I thought that I had improvements to make in that space, let's let's put it that way, both on and off the pitch really, and becoming more resilient to failure and perhaps becoming more open minded. I think, because I started coaching really early, after I knew it all. I mean, over the last few years really is typical rate, the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. And becoming comfortable with that it's been important. And that was kind of a lesson from the CVR witness, wanting to know as much as you can, but also becoming comfortable with not knowing everything. And so that's been one thing. The other thing for me, the the of the work life balance, it's a relative work life balance. Because you're doing a lot of things, right. And then you know, in, I'm not coaching full time, but I'm teaching and doing the research and trying to raise a family and, and coaching. It's a lot and just trying to find ways to make it work. But you have to make it work. You can't really neglect any any particular area because then that becomes a crack. And that's where we're, you know how things fall apart really so.
And then finally, I don't know I'm rambling a little bit, but for me was just liberating, especially in the sense of these guys that have won so much. They still felt insecure. We even talked about this idea of the cereal insecurity. Despite winning all these, they still doubt themselves. They still they have a grounded self belief based on what they've done and how hard they work. But there's always an element of reasonable self doubt. And that's okay, you know, and I felt that was liberating. Like if this guy can, it is super coaches can doubt themselves. I can feel a bit uneasy about things and that's okay. That's part of the whole process. So yeah, that's, that's how it's affected me.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 09:03
might come back to self doubt later on. But I'll hand over to David because I know he wants to drill into sort of the philosophical standpoint.
David Turner 09:14
So your research which I love, by the way, I need to say that straight away, found that serial winning coaches practices were anchored upon a very clear philosophical standpoint. So cliff, could you explain for our listeners, what the key parts and functions are of a coaching philosophy?
Cliff 09:30
Yeah, it's um, it's fishing area. Coaches articulating their philosophy and how you get it that I think is interesting because it's easy to go to the internet and look up all the famous people and what they said and then sort of cut and paste and go yeah, this is who I am.
You know, so I guess the great coaches are able to tell a story about their coaching practice where actually highlights one of the key values and principles upon which they at Bastyr coaching, and for me a clear philosophy provides coaches with a framework for how you go about your work, and ensuring the quality of that work. And frameworks like that a philosophical framework gives you clarity of vision and purpose which these people have, especially when you're faced with dilemmas, dilemmas really test you in terms of how you go about rational decision making. So you need to be clear about what those principles are. And don't assume, too, that these coaches, when they started their careers had clarity of vision and purpose, and the philosophy that they learned over time what that is, and that's the journey we all have to go on. But these coaches were visionaries, like what was was amazing was that they were thinking eight to 10 years ahead. And having that clarity of what's required to win into Olympic cycles ahead and understand that them as leading coaches are actually influencing the trends of their sport and little changes, right puts them in a really great position, but they have such clarity of where they're going, and how they're going to get there. And that's why I think those those coaches who have clarity of their, why they do what they do want those principles are, I think, a really, really important.[PB3]
David Turner 11:23
Yeah, it's really interesting. But I think something that really interests me is the extent to which coaches change over time, because they can change the game like, like Guadiana changes that game, he goes to Costa Bayern Munich and changes the way German football played. But he also changes himself in that process. So can you talk a little bit about how coaches develop their philosophy over time and how flexible that philosophy can be, because I always think of it as like an anchor with a ship, and the ship right to the tide. But
Cliff 11:53
I think there's philosophies about how you coach. And there's the philosophies about how you understand the sport that you do, coach. And I think that's what's more valuable is going to be understanding the ebbs and flows of the sport. And the context, what probably doesn't change too much over time, once you have clarity of who you are, as a person, and what really is important in terms of your values, that shapes how you go about how you understand yourself, and how you work with other people. And how do you get other people to work together?
David Turner 12:28
Yeah, big challenges. Either of you, because I think this is gonna play a big role in in philosophy and change over time. What did you find about the role that self reflection plays with the coaches that you interviewed?
Sergio 12:45
It it's a big role. And I mean, we found that not many of them had, like a set process of self reflection, where they're gonna sit down and reflect on themselves. I mean, they did a lot of the reflection with the team's debriefing, briefing and debriefing before before and after games competitions. They didn't really in terms of reflecting on their own practice on, you know, on their own, they didn't seem to have a lot of mechanisms to do that, or like set processes to do that.
However, they were very introspective, and very reflective by nature. And they were constantly questioning themselves to the point that, you know, going back to the ADL, their work life balance, they had to find ways to stop doing that. So a lot of them talked about, I need to find a hobby, I need to find something else to do, because I'm constantly thinking about it. So although it wasn't like they didn't, we didn't get a lot of examples of people writing journals or anything like that, or having a set. If you want a mentor to discuss things with officially, they were doing that constantly. And they had a lot of critical friends as well, people that they could go to and discuss things with them. And so it didn't immediately look like a systematic way of reflecting. But he was constantly that they weren't constantly doing it one way or another.
David Turner 14:15
Yeah, I think what's interesting, I've been immersed in your reading your work and listen about your work for a few quite a few weeks now. And this process of change and reflection, a phrase that came to mind for me was relentless, becoming there relentlessly becoming someone in something different, and changing the game and processes glyphosate, which I think is fascinating. I'm gonna hand over to Paul, but just before I do, because I think he's going to ask a question about connections. And just to sort of observe something that Cliff said about philosophies. I love the stories about Alex Ferguson in his office, he had that picture of the 11 guys on the girder when they were building the the skyscrapers in New York and he used to point to it and select people. That's teamwork. 11 people, and the other thing used to do Carrington, when overtraining, he would stop training and say right look at that. And it was the geese flying over in the V, one would take over the front and everyone would ever rest. And so I think there's interesting things that, as Cliff said, tell us about who you are and who you become. And as a coach, who you've discovered that you are such,
Paul Barnett 15:16
I just would like to continue on talking about teams if we could. And one of the things that fascinates me in your research and more broadly, with teams in society is the way that the pandemic impacted connection within the group, groups everywhere, teams everywhere. And I'm interested to hear what you found, in your research, were the key things that could be done to drive better connection within a group.
Sergio 15:45
That's the million dollar question, right? Because when when a team is connected, that they're more likely to, to achieve right? Not only from our research, but this describe your research out there around the ADL, there's a number of things that for me are really, really important. First, do we have a common purpose? Have we really defined what we what we want to achieve together? You know, what's our why, right? Why are we doing this? And that's really important. And I think they like Cliff was saying, for example, David was given the example of worldview like that clarity of vision that provides that common purpose is really important, I think. I think these coaches really were able to provide that that path, you know, one of the coaches talked about, he knew the destination, and he knew the motorway that took him there. And he got everybody on that motorway. And he knew that sometimes they would have to maybe take a diversion to fix a flat tire or put some petrol in the car or wherever. But they knew where the motorway was. So the idea of common purpose, common vision, knowing where you're going is important. [PB4]
And I think at the same time, these companies were able to create an environment of genuine care, where everybody feel cared for. And, you know, within the constraints of professional sports, don't get me wrong, there's no escaping the fact that if we're talking about football, for example, you can only play 11 people. So you're gonna have you pretty much firing half the team every weekend, okay, and you have to cope with that, but how building relationships from the coach to the players, and helping the players build those relationships contributes to dealing with all the, with all the bad moments that you're gonna go through, because he's, he can escape those bad moments.
And a couple of other things really, within, I think connection and accountability are very much related. And we found that these coaches were constantly keeping people accountable even themselves. And that creates a culture where it's not, it's not a blame culture, because a blame culture and an accountability culture is different. Okay? Blaming to put people on the spot, to name and shame is different to just keeping people accountable. And, and I think these guys able to get everybody to hold each other accountable, not just not just from them. So to me, too, those are some of the things that come across. And And finally, the idea of respecting the individual within the team. I know we always talk about this No, I in team. I think these guys talk about something different. And again, from my own experience, as a coach, there's multiple eyes is how do you get those eyes to work together, he's respecting everybody for who they are ensuring that everybody understands their role and their responsibility, how they contribute to the whole, I think we don't spend enough time on that. I always think in team sports, sometimes we take it for granted a little bit. And the individual gets lost in the team. And, again, it's one of those things that if I look at things that I can improve, that's one always top of my list, how do I really take care of the individual within the huge mass that is a team of 50 people, right? In football 30 people? I coach basketball, so I think with about 15 to 17 people? Yeah. That's that's what we saw. Yes.[PB5]
Cliff 19:14
Can I just add that? I think the great coaches come to the understanding very early in their careers that they're in the people business. And you often hear people are rhetorical in that way. But their actions don't suggest that they're just to pursue excellence, but they forget they're actually dealing with people. And I think these people actually know they're in the people business. They promote the sense of care that underpins trust that actually promotes adaptive relationships between people. And that then actually allows you to push the envelope. The people who try to push the envelope before they get that foundational care, and when surgery is talking care. It's mutual care. So it's mutual trust, right? The the athletes are caring for the coach as much as the coach is caring for the athletes. And that individual and collective care works by the understand we at the at the individual level are also the group level, whether it's a squad athletics or swimming, or whether it's a team. And I think it emphasizes that I think the capacity of these these coaches as leaders to focus on here, there's a bit of me in this, but my focus is actually on how do I make us special? How do I promote the sense of we, but in that way, yeah, there was a bit of me, and that's okay. And that's why that self compassion and that, that self care, but also other people providing care for you, allows you to create an environment where people do fall adaptive relationships, and a greenhouse where people can thrive.[PB6]
David Turner 20:57
Another thing that came out of your work that really fascinated me was the demands on the high performance coach, to not only deal with his athletes, but to deal with the interdisciplinary team. And it was a very modern challenge, but really, again, demands of May demands, heightened interpersonal skills, and demands really sensitive things like crossing boundaries into other areas of expertise, where you go from being a relative expert to being a relative novice. And there's been some really interesting work on this, using venga trainers, frameworks. I think there's some really interesting things going on there. Sorry, Paul, you're gonna say something? No,
Paul Barnett 21:35
I was gonna say, I'm the non prac Adamic. In the interview tonight, but care has been the number one thing I've found through with my corporate hat on through the 200 interviews for 200 plus interviews, if you'd asked me, when I started this to give you my top 10 leadership words, care wouldn't have made the list. But now, it's, it's the number one word that I hear most frequently from, from the people I've interviewed. And it's really challenged the way that I think about leadership. And I think I've fundamentally changed as a result of that learning not, you know, all changes is, takes time to bed in but I feel that change within myself. So it's a very powerful idea.
Cliff 22:24
I think one of the really good outcomes of the research and the capacities that we've had to share the information about these journeys of these people, is that our favorite two word sentences, context matters. So it's understanding what does care look like? Or what care could look like in need for you in your context? And how do you know actually, somebody cares about you? What does that actually because that's a feeling you feel cared for you? That's hard to articulate. But so it's a sense you have that's quite intangible. But it actually shapes then the relationship you have with other people. And that care. Going back to David's point about, you know, we've got to shift the discourse away from the head coach, to actually the coaching team, and that's starting to happen. But you have to take responsibility as these people did for everyone in your setting. You know, and sometimes, you know, the problem we have a little bit, I think, with modern coaching is that they stick they stick in the lane. But actually, we need coaches to challenge biomechanics. You know, that's what I love doing when I was a coach was like, You're challenging them, and they're challenging you, that dialogue and those those challenges, the necessary for you to grow. But if coaches don't know the language of science, they don't know the language of medicine, they don't really know the language of psychology, and how to get the best out of everyone. And how you actually do work as an interdisciplinary team, you're not going to have the success and these people, overall, were able to harness the collective.
Sergio 24:04
Well, I was gonna say, I think, with two things, really, one, one sort of catchphrase that I've been using for a few years is the idea of connection before correction. You know, the, you can really teach people before you've connected with them before they trust you before they know you care. And you can expand that to any area of life really. So I think we need to spend a lot more time building the connection before we tried to do the correction. I think that and that's one of the things that I'm trying to live by, in my current coaching in my teaching, even with my kids, you know, with my own kids. [PB7]
And the other thing that for me is significant about these coaches is well we're looking at here is how to win sustainably because anyone can win once, winning repeatedly and creating an environment where people can see to stay in that performance for years, and only the athletes, they support the yourself as a coach. That's a different matter. Because I think that that's what's really that's where the, that's where the big trick is here is how can we be sustainable in our success. And without that foundation of care, and that foundation of trust, I think it's impossible to build on the foundation of self care as well. It's impossible to sustain success for that long if, if all that is not in place, because I mean, we've seen coaches that have one once or twice, and then they disappear, because no one wants to work with them anymore. So I think, to me, that's really significant about these guys is that building for the future as well, it's not just all about today, they have that sort of 2020 vision of I'm doing things today, and also for the future and keeping everybody in that in that optimal mode that allows us to be sustained, sustainable beauty.
David Turner 25:56
That's really interesting. I'm gonna take us down a different rabbit hole. You emphasize in your book that serial winning coaches, and their developmental journeys are unique, and idiosyncratic, although you mostly provide common themes and characteristics, because you're, you're trying to put all that together. Could each of you maybe tell us a little bit about the outliers within the outliers, the unusual cases, the Mavericks, within yourself? Well, maybe cliffie, could kick us off with
Cliff 26:23
all of that. And broadly, because Sergio did more of the interviews than I did. But I think that one of the things we tried to get across was, firstly, these are outliers amongst outliers. So a lot of people have been able to not a lot, a few people get to coach, prevent national team to league titles and gold medalists. So these certainly were outliers about amongst outliers. But the interesting thing is that we're all probably hard working. An interesting question around that then as well, why are we so hard working, but there were a couple of these Syrah winning coaches, actually, who was self reported, not hard working. And the same with their athletes reporting. You know, we sent a message that you need to be fluid and responsive to a dynamic environment to be effective and know how to execute when these coaching moments emerge. But not everyone's as flexible as other people. So the surgery is that analogy before about, you know, you know, where you're going and you get your you pick the right highway, not everyone deviates and comes back on, some people just keep going. So whilst there was a trend with some of these things, not everyone. Not everyone sort of followed that trend. And the other one was a major motivator. Motivational drive for these coaches was a redemptive theme around atonement, to atone for, where I didn't succeed somewhere else. But that's not always the case. That's, that's not the main driver for everyone. So the key with all of that is well, what are the drivers? And then how do we get you to be more understanding of those drivers for you? And how that shapes then how you an actual, your practice? Yeah,
David Turner 28:12
I think if I'm right, you looked at personality profiles, you established that these coaches in Syria winning coaches were emotionally stable, socially competent, hard working. But what I found really interesting, you also said that on some of the other scales and dimensions there, they weren't necessarily empathetic. They weren't necessarily curious, which is really interesting. Because you'd expect those qualities to be there in situ as well as the other ones. So yeah, I've just find it. I've always loved Maverick talent, and surgery at all that teams, one of my favorite coaches, Dave Sexton, used to say every great team needs its mixture of soldiers and artists. And I love that. And I just like the unusual story sometimes. So one of your coaches, if I'm right, didn't have a background in playing sport, at any height at any level, at all, virtually. So I found that interesting. Well done. If you got any comments on that.
Sergio 29:07
Yeah, well, I'm gonna come back to you when I don't know who said this. But I read that book a while back in defining these two types of people that you need in a group, they talk about you, every group needs their rockstars and they're rock solid. And that really stuck with me. And then I history really, you know, highly functional groups will have those two, because you need both in terms of the the journeys and so yeah, there were there were a couple of them that hadn't really played at a high level, either because they realized really early that they weren't good enough. And they said, Well, I still want to be I love the sport so that my only the only way to continue being linked to the sport is through coaching. So from from 1617 years of age, fully committed to to becoming a coach, not having the player not having At a high level, but really having made up for that, because by the time they were 35, they had been coding for 20 years already. And they were really, you know, still the students of the game. But we had some some interesting, diverse journeys, right when like, for example, one, one of the coaches, after he finished as a as an athlete, he disappeared from the sport for 10 years, and when set up his own business and do the things, and then he was actually when I came back to the sport, all the skills, I had to be a good coach I picked up from from setting up my own business and running my own business. But then you got the other extreme where we have these other coach, super successful coach, like one of the winning guests. In Europe, in his sport, were at 31. He was the team captain for the national team, he was a national team captain, they were just about to jump on the plane to go to the Europeans. And he gets a phone call from his own club saying, look, we've lost the head coach, we want you to head coach next year. But the condition is that you have to jump off that plane, not go to the Europeans and become the coach today. And anyone like, Yeah, that's fine. He didn't go to the Europeans was the national team captain just went back on the plane and said to his teammates, I'm sorry, guys, I'm good look at the Europeans. And that's it. And he took a massive gamble, or some other coaches that when they started coaching, instead of going straight into the high level, they actually purposefully decided to coach at the lower level, to really have space and time to develop their craft, away from the limelight. So everybody found their own path. And if I can say something, I think they all took risks, I think they are good with risk. There are some they're not outrageous risks, although some of them might be calculated risk. But they don't really risk averse. These guys, we found them to be quite brave in the decisions they make.
Paul Barnett 32:09
The GAO Could I follow up and go from the coaches to the teams they lead? And some of your research looks into the pillars that go into what you describe as a high performing culture. In fact, you identify five pillars, could you tell us about those?
Sergio 32:29
Yeah, I mean, one way or another, we've kind of probably touched on on all of them. But again, I don't think any of this is rocket science, what's really rocket science is being able to do it consistently. Like, for example, high expectations and highs expecting high standards from everybody, like really not taking second best. That's not rocket science. But actually, to develop a system where there's constant accountability for that to happen and the expectations are there is significantly difficult. And linked to that.
The second pillar was leaving no stone unturned, really, what can we do to improve our performance and just constantly looking for different ways to get a niche video either from on the personal side of things, and the tactical side of things on the equipment side of things, we're constantly looking for ways to get an edge.
Third point was really around the idea of developing an environment that is a training environment that is really challenging. Where we're constantly raising the bar, the moment we there was a really good passage in the in the word yellow book that I was showing you before, where after they win the Premier League for the first time in 2018, with what you're within 10 minutes of winning the game, he's already talking to his assistant coaches about next year, we have to do these these that are not or we're not going to win again. And they went on to win it twice in a row, right. But that idea of constantly raising the bar, either in training or from one year to the next.
And interestingly for me, because sometimes the literature around motivation talks about internal competition being a negative thing. In this case, at these level internal competition is part of the game. And it just drives people is how you manage that internal competition, how to generate it. But again, anecdotally, what not from the research, but also then listening to a lot of athletes and the best teams are constantly challenging each other. And in a way, they have two players in the same position that can constantly challenge each other, to make each other better to keep each other on their toes. [PB8]
The fourth pillar, and Cliff mentioned before is the idea of the greenhouse effect, where we are creating an environment that is stable, dependable, while challenging, that creates that greenhouse effects that leads to people blossoming within that status, stability and dependability.
And the fifth pillar, which I was terrible at when I was doing national teams is the, the idea of being able to manage upwards and influence the people above you. Coaches are relatively comfortable managing down to players managing across to the support team and the assistant coaches. But we're not always that good managing the people that really make the decisions that have a massive impact on on your performance, the performance director, the club owner. And these guys, these guys took that to heart, they they really wanted to get ahead of the curve, and they were constantly trying to influence the people above them. Because like I say, These people are making really important decisions that can completely derail your your best laid plans. So those were the five,
David Turner 35:51
Cliff, you make so many useful recommendations for future recruitment, development, and the ongoing support of High Performance Coaching talent. So I just thought we would ask you what practical applications in coach education and development have been implemented as a result of this, or in the pipeline as a result of this work?
Cliff 36:07
I think there's a significant delay in time between ideas and suggestions. And actually, behavior change. So I think we're very modest about potential behavior change, but I think we talk about it's a classic wicked problem, you know, identifying, recruiting and developing people, you know, there's no right or wrong answers. And some answers are better than others, or better ways of going about it. But you never really know how people take on board your ideas, and you might, they might play with those ideas, we're hopeful that people will think about some of the ways were suggesting, and they might have some adaptations of those ideas, or they might have completely different ideas, but we actually want people to actually think more deeply about the whole process, both in terms of identifying and recruiting and employing, but also how we go about developing the next generation of young people who want to be coaches. Because it's, um, I think one of the things we came to was that we don't give people the tools to actually help themselves.
So you know, you spoke before about answered with the self leadership. You know, coaches have to be self leaders. But we don't give them the tools like an a psych test. Let's do a personality trait test. And they will tell you who you are, like the mission computer spits out a little formula, and this is who you are, how do we actually give coaches and people the tools to be able to have some autonomy around making sense of who they are? Because actually, only they know how how the language they use actually describes who they are. And it's difficult sometimes to put into particular language, how you describe who you are and what you do. So I think, how do we successfully give people the tools to help themselves know themselves? And and how do we use some of those tools, perhaps then to better understand the people we work with? And I think that we're all in a racing, competitive sport about how do we learn deeper and faster than the opposition. And part of that for coaches, soon as you start working, the clock started, it's ticking. You've got to go about business, like Sergio said before about observing and, and getting some information getting to know people. But the clock started. You know, you've got to have a very efficient means and effective means of getting to know people. And when we interview coaches for a job, there's an assumption that they're already an expert, we actually have to change that belief system, so that bosses and board members who employ leaders have an understanding, they're not there yet. All of these coaches had this notion of striving and becoming, I'm striving to be the best I can be. And I'm always becoming because they weren't not there yet. They knew that they could get better. There was always ways you can tweak, tweak things. So how do we get people who employ and evaluate the quality of coaching coaches to understand that our job is we employ them? They're not experts yet, but they may never be. I don't consider myself to be an expert, but I think I'm moving in that direction. I might get there. I might not. But how do we get them to be supported in that role? Because it's messy. It's very messy.
David Turner 39:41
Yeah, absolutely. I'm reminded of John Buchanan's quote, which is, I don't want to be called an expert. I want to be called someone who's got some expertise, which is as a coach developer, myself, the freedom messages I took away from your work, which were nicely reinforced for me, was we got to help people to know them. selves, as you said, but we've got to help them to know their evolving self, their changing self. And then the two things for high performance coaches that we've already mentioned, is that we need to give them some tools to cope effectively with interdisciplinary working and managing up on the micro politics.
Paul Barnett 40:16
It's a fascinating idea, I was invited recently to come along and talk to a group of executive coaches about what I've learned from all the research and what I said three things I talked about the focus they had on people culture and their own performance. And I was sort of reflecting on the fact that the people I've interviewed, they focus on their performance, they reflect they think they write their philosophy in a way that I don't think corporate leaders do. And I've got this great video, you know, where they talk about reflection, but not ruminating. They're able to reflect action move on. So they've got these debriefs cycle that works really well. And I think it's a very rich area for learning for people that earnings, you know, to be able to capture that and move on. But it's not about my thoughts. It's about you to learn it professors. And what I'd like to do before I hand over to David, for the final question is just both of you, if I could just ask you for just, I want to talk about leadership qualities that you've identified in serial winning coaches. But if I could just ask you three words, or three qualities that you've noticed in these people. And perhaps cliff, if I could ask you to go first.
Cliff 41:36
Well, as you know, in leadership that intelligence is seen to be a key quality that seems to be consistent across that, that effective or great leaders. But it's also not whether you are intelligent, or whether people think you are. So I think in this case, too, I think people have a trust.
So often we talk about trust, we talked about in terms of integrity, and honesty. But athletes want to know that they can trust you to be a performer in your own right, to be able to help shake their confidence for them to perform when they need to in the big gig. So I think that you need to have, you need to be smart. And we know there's multiple intelligences. But I think these people are very, very good at being fluid in terms of the way they think they challenge their thinking. They're very fluid in the way they use their emotions to enhance performance or to remain calm in the case of the storm. And that then sort of influences then how they think about behaving. And we spoke about social intelligence, I would think is actually more important than emotional intelligence. I think Sergio and I like me saying that, because it's his his own challenges as a coach. But the great coaches, and I think the great people, they notice things, they see things, it's the little thing says there's a shift in behavior, it's a minut thing. But it's not only do they notice it, they actually notice it to inform their actions. And for me, social intelligence is a quality that these people are continually getting better at. [PB9]
So we say to athletes and team sports. What are you seeing in front of you? What's your perceptual field? What's the same for coaches? What are you seeing and not seeing it? When you're in the trenches? Too much, you don't see things? So where do you even position yourself? And then when you do position yourself to be able to see some of these things? What are you seeing? And what are you not seeing? It's important to see.
Sergio 43:44
I mean, if I go back to that, one of the when we looked at the what allows, you know, what allows these coaches to do the things that they do, we talked about cognitive and emotional and emotional flexibility. And, to me, again, going back to the question of how is this influenced you? I have to say that at times, I haven't been very flexible in my past. And I'm trying to learn to be more flexible, because this idea of being you need to be super adaptable is such a dynamic environment from from dealing with people to resolve that you can control to injuries to this million things happening that unless you have a high level of adaptability and, and like like Cliff was saying to notice things, and then adapt your behavior to match the needs of the situation or the individual. We talked about these coaches and they described themselves as chameleons, okay, where they're constantly changing the color to match the situation really. So that adaptability and being able to going back to the idea of being a performer, what performance is needed from you today, in this particular moment, what do they need? need from you? Do they need you to be the funny guy today? Do they need you to be the tough guy today? Do they need you to be the super caring guy today? Do they need you to be the supreme tactician today? What do they need from you today? I think that that's important. And then the other thing for me is they have been resilient. I think these guys just have an understanding that, you know, these businesses stuff is not easy. And it's okay, we're gonna have bad moments. And, again, realize that, in a way, when things when the proverbial hits the fan, okay, you got two choices, you can bring people down with you, or bring them back up with you. And I think they they choose to, to bring people up with them. They realize that if you are the first person to go down, you bring everybody down with you. And it's the opposite. They just really have a credibility. They talked about keeping that flat tone, you know, not not going too high when you weigh in and not going too low when you lose sustain as flat as you can to keep people on that on that level. Level Level. Yeah, state with. Yeah. Those are the things that really come to mind when when you have to boil it down to a few words.
David Turner 46:27
Okay, I love the story that I heard Sergio tell that Pep Guardiola wouldn't have made a cup of the time that you got this sample of soon winning coaches together. So that reminds us, doesn't it that we need to reappraise and revisit coaching performance periodically. You know, I also thought, Sergio, because you're a basketball coach. I wondered if John Wooden would have made the cut, because you guys want the people who've been successful across contexts and John Wooden tend to stay where he was. But you can answer that if you want. But I'll ask you someone else in a second. Imagine there's a simple project, then learning from serial winning coaches to this time, it's personal, what you're doing differently. And why could I start with Cliff maybe?
Cliff 47:07
Well, it's, well, firstly, I do like the title. So thanks. I think he read the second book. No surgeon might have been. But we've actually, initially we started with 14 coaches, and that's morphed into 17. There are people like there's an Australian coach now that I'd love to interview but I have interviewed that coach before, along similar lines. But again, to include these people into the data set would be really helpful. So I think it's important to think about continuing the research. One thing that we would both do, which was a response, I think that Sergio got when he knocked on the door, and the coach's wife answered the door, but his initial 14 were all male. She said, Are you here to interview my summer, or my winter husband? And it's one of those things when you design something, you go like, Oh, dammit, why didn't we interview their wives, we interviewed their athletes, right? Because we thought they would give us another perspective. But a lot of coaches communicate the challenges of everyday coaching in their home environment, that their wives and their partners are the people who are very giving them rational advice and supporting them in the home environment. So to get their perspective, I think would be great. But also think that as society continues to be transformed, and there's the rise of technology, there's more women coaches, it's more recognition of women playing professional sport, I think we've got to keep evolving in how we shape these sorts of projects. Actually, I am held hopeful, though, that key qualities like care, a mutual trust, and doing things to help others would still permeate a lot of the findings, but certainly, the other thing I think that we can get out is that as you know, when you research and you ask some question, it begs other questions. So we hope in the book, that we asked some of those big questions still and how you knew on so before surgery is talking about you know, you want to be a chameleon, but you've got to be stable. So which is it? Like, how do you do that dance between being stable and dependable, now act, but actually, I'm going to be fluid. But that it is a dance because there's always got these potentially what could be interpreted as competing tensions, there could actually compromise how they view you as a coach and as a person. So I think there are a couple of things are getting some anecdotes like your sound like pips got in the book, to get some deeper case studies would be great. It'd be great to be able to go to these people's environments and actually You see them in action for three months? I suppose you've got some funding for us to do that. We're very, very grateful to perform that role.
David Turner 50:11
Okay, brilliant. I think you'd definitely get a sense of work life balance from the partners, right?
Sergio 50:19
Relatively relative,
David Turner 50:20
relative? Yes, relative. We're talking about big questions. About a week ago, I'd become so immersed in learning from Syria winning coaches, materials that I was walking in. And I had this lightbulb moment of wow, what does this tell us about humanity, rather than thinking about humankind, rather than being human? So I know, it's a big question. And we probably have another hour on that. But I've got some thoughts. But anyway, I know you, you said you were going to think about it. Sergio. So either of you really? What about this? Tell us about humanity your work?
Sergio 50:56
At top question, I wouldn't when I saw your email with that question, my mind went in major directions. So I'm going to have a go and Cliff, please chip in whenever first realization really is that about humanity, we're all humans, we're all people. And even these super achievers, and the athletes they work with, they're still people. And we can really escape that. And actually, he's not escaping, that is the we have to harness that. There are people and the more we created the environment where, where everybody feels cared for. And everybody feels that they can trust each other. A bit, really. So to me that that's because I always joke, I have a slide that I use in my presentations, where I have a Count Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West. Because that's that's where I was expecting these people to be right? Yes. Ruthless, like when at all cost all about me. And we found something completely different. We didn't find the Count Dracula, or the Wicked Witch of the West, we found people doing extraordinary things with extraordinary people. And an idea of people this is really important to me. And I'm going to have a go and another one. And then I literally have Patty's, hey, related to this idea of, of people, and one of the stories that I tell the students and also presenting the words, the idea, you may have heard the fable of the north wind, and the sun. Okay, so the North Wind and the Sun, were looking at this traveler coming down the road, and they had a bet with each other. The Traveler was carrying wearing a cloak, heavy coat, right. And they said, let's see which one of us is stronger, and can remove the code from from the traveler, right. So the north wind started blowing really hard and made it really cold and rain and lightning. And all that did, obviously it was the traveller just home go to the code even more, right. Whereas the sun just shone and made it really warm, and naturally, the cold came off. So for me, that's the idea of as a coach, we can be really like the north wind. But really, we want to sustainably get performance and people to do what they want to do. Nothing beats warmth. And we have to have, there might be times when we have to be quite straight. But with that foundation of warmth. We call in the book, the idea of the carrying determination, if the courage is not there, no amount of determination is gonna get the job done. So I let leave until you
Cliff 53:36
have a very good start. So, David, great question. And for us, this is a really good example of how we want people to play with our findings. What does it mean for you in your context? And what does it mean for some of the bigger picture stuff? So I think there's one conversation might be around the value proposition of sport. You know, and I think we often talk about and my investment in sport and wanting to do this sort of work, is because I believe in the potential of sport, you know, but as we know, half the research says sports a good thing. And the other half says it's not a good thing. Because people have differential experiences with sport. But sports got the potential to shape and reshape, or transform society. And we often talk about and Paul there about corporate and business to sport and how they learned from sport. Now sport learns from corporate and business, but actually see there's potential here for sport to actually reshape and transform society, rather than the other way around, rather than actually being a microcosm of, of the broader society. So how might we shift to becoming a more caring society? Because as we all know, in western modern Western democracies, there's an increasing focus on me is increasing, focusing on it's all about me, and I judge my successive, I've got more than somebody else. So it's about ego, it's about status. And that goes back when you talk about humanity and humankind that before we actually had land ownership, people work together. And then ever since then there's been an erosion of that to people competing with each other. So it's okay to compete with each other. But can we do for the collective good, as opposed to now I've got more than someone else. And that's what we found with these coaches. They have this balance, there's sometimes that again, it's a bit of a dance between care and challenge. But I think a clearer and clearer message from me out of the book was really good people, good citizens can actually be highly successful. You don't have to be an asshole to be a great coach. And that goes back to Dracula. And I've seen I've seen that slide so many times, but it's true. You can be a really good person, a good citizen and be highly successful. They're not binary. Right? They're actually high challenge and high care is achievable. And these coaches have demonstrated that, and what can other industries learn from that? And what can we learn as democracies or attempts to be democratic? How do we actually inform societal shifts in this way, so getting this message out? And if we can do that in other contexts, they're the good stories we want to tell. They're not always what the media wants to tell, right? Because it's not as sensational. But we want to get these sort of good stories out to actually promote the importance of becoming a good person.
Paul Barnett 56:38
I think the idea of high care and high challenge being possible, and becoming a good person is a pretty good place for us to finish. Gentlemen, it's been an absolute masterclass. Tonight, I feel like you've condensed years and years and years of study into the interview. But I hope that we can twist your arm to get you back on to talk about many of the other fascinating elements you've talked about tonight. But thank you all very much for joining us.
57:07
Yeah, thank you very much.
Sergio 57:10
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.