I’ve been thinking about what it is that professional players really want. I’ve boiled it down to three things. They want to WIN. They also want to IMPROVE. They all want to ENJOY their daily environment. I don’t know many athletes (and coaches for that fact) that don’t want all three. If the professional athletes demand this, then surely coaches of all levels should be thinking about how fill all three of these buckets! In a recent podcast episode with Richard Bell, Richard spoke about the notion that in the film industry, you can only have 2 of Good, Cheap and Fast, never all three! By looking at the lens of the athlete, maybe we should only recruit athletes that offer at least 2 (of 3) of Helping the team Win, Striving to Improve their ability and bring JOY to the environment. I can accept the athlete that helps us win and is positive in the overall environment, but doesn’t care about getting better. I can manage the athlete that helps us win and works to improve but is an “energy vampire” around the group. I can be patient with the athlete that is developing whilst adds joy, but doesn’t have great impact on the teams overall performance. I CANNOT recruit any athlete that only wins (but detracts from everything else), or is the clown (brings laughter but nothing else), or only a developing athletes (doesn’t help win or brings joy to the environment. Food for thought….

Sir Clive Woodward is an incredible coach whom I have spoken about before. A new concept he has developed is what he calls the ‘3D Learning method’ that aims to identify, capture and act on lessons learned. The three Ds are simple: Discover, Distil and Do. “They are all key to developing a great team through learning: Discover what’s working, and what’s not; Distil that down to a few key points; and then Do: really go hard on getting the execution right.” Plan, simplify to inform and then act/execute. #coaching #strive

The idea that by writing out your ideas in depth (tested on logic) as opposed to just bullet points (half-baked idea), the depth and clarity of your thinking will pay greater dividends. Individuals also have more creative and varied ideas than groups. But they also have more bad ideas. So you will need to flush out the bad ideas first. To use brainwriting with a group, to tease out the best ideas in great depth, start by asking everyone in your group to write down their ideas. Then individually ask them to share them with the group. The group will give feedback on the suitability of each idea and suggest which ideas should be taken forward in the process (filter towards quality). Combining the power of individuals creativity with the strength of collectedness that groups provide. This works best if people do not know whose idea is whose, so elect a narrator, to present the ideas as neutrally as possible to the group. The next steps would be more brain writing on the idea(s) and allocation of next steps, delegation of tasks and timelines. Take the wisdom of crowds to make the ideas with higher potential succeed and unlock the potential in the whole group, not just from not the loudest individual, most enthusiastic speaker or the boss that has the most compelling ideas always. #dothework #strive

A study was conducted on ‘repeat Olympic Gold medallists’ and the standout marker between those champions in different games to just one-off winners, was a commonality to experiencing trauma. There is a paper titled “The Rocky Road to the Top – Why Talent Needs Trauma, by Collins & MacNamara that is worth reading. In short, it backs up the notion that those sustained high performers have experienced a form of trauma. “These high levels of life challenge are shown to have a direct correlation to senior success”. ”low points resulted in self reported ‘turning points’ resulting in a re-focusing and increased effort from the participants” The ability of athletes to develop grit, resilience, perseverance and high emotional intelligence (EQ) is critical in this high performance journey. So if experiencing trauma is a potential key, is it possible to artificially create controlled challenges and failures throughout the talent development pathway? I’ve seen many pathways as too linear and smooth for athletes to reach a ‘relative top’. I believe it’s important for program leads and coaches to micro-dose athletes with individual challenge points to ensure they accumulate multiple deliberate experiences (positive as well as negative) on their journey up the pathway. #overcomingtrauma #strive