Leaders Performance Podcast: Recent Episodes

The Leaders Performance Institute

Cutting-edge insight, unconventional thinking, tips, blueprints and leadership lessons from elite performance practitioners around the world. Produced by the Leaders Performance Institute.

When Bianca Rech shares a decision with FC Bayern’s players, she knows instantly how it has landed.

“You feel it,” says the Director of Bayern’s women’s programme. “You already know when you look at their faces. You’re like ‘I think she doesn’t like it’, ‘yeah, she likes it’ and ‘she needs a bit of proof’. It’s like sometimes I see myself sitting on the other side.”

The ‘other side’, as Bianca tells Teamworks’ Andrew Trimble and Leaders’ John Portch, refers to her transition from a Germany international and Frauen-Bundesliga regular to a senior leader of the German champions, whom she represented on the pitch for four years.

“It’s so much harder now when you sit on that side now,” she adds, reflecting on how she used to feel as a player. “I see myself sitting on the other side, like, ‘oh, maybe I have to talk to them again’.”

In this third and final episode of our special series with Teamworks, Bianca touched upon several of the major themes that emerged from our recent Special Report High Performance Unpacked: interconnected performance teams.

She spoke of her role in helping to transform the Bayern culture on and off the pitch [37:00]; keeping the athlete at the centre of the performance jigsaw [14:30]; the importance of sports psychology [31:00]; and the thoughtful integration of technology [21:00].

Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Episode One: Simon Rice, the Philadelphia 76ers

Episode Two: Miranda Menaspà, the Australian Institute of Sport

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but does that hold up in the world of elite sports performance?

“The issues I’ve seen here, they’re very rarely – almost never – [a result of] things getting missed,” Simon Rice, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers, tells Teamworks’ Director of Athlete Performance Andrew Trimble and Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch.

“Where we run into slight problems is everyone trying to do the right thing with really good intentions,” he continues, citing the hypothetical example of three practitioners on the Sixers' Health & Performance group prescribing the same loading plan to an athlete and inadvertently tripling their load.

“It often comes back to communication and it comes back to this idea of fitting the puzzle pieces to fully support that player.”

It takes mutual understanding and trust between athlete and coach, as Simon touched upon in the recent Teamworks and Leaders Special Report, entitled High Performance Unpacked: Interconnected Performance Teams, and it was a theme he expanded upon in the first episode of our new three-part series.

Elsewhere, Simon also talks about the role of the performance director as a cultural leader [4:00]; the importance of establishing what’s best for the athlete right now [15:30]; the work of the Health & Performance group with external clinicians [34:00]; and how his team can give athletes confidence in their bodies through its joint decision model [55:00].

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Lachlan Penfold’s time at the Golden State Warriors was eye-opening in numerous ways.

Chief amongst them was his realisation that joy is crucial in a high performance environment.

“Joy in a professional sport? That’s a bit strange,” thought Penfold, but it was one of the team’s trademarks and no-one embodied it better than their Head Coach Steve Kerr and illustrious point guard Steph Curry.

“The player that embodies it better than anyone in world sport is Steph Curry in terms of just the absolute joy he gets from playing the game, from training the game,” Penfold continues, “not only from his perspective, but from seeing his teammates have success and do great things, the joy that he gets really invigorates a sporting team.”

It has fed into his work with the Melbourne Storm, who reached the NRL grand final in October. No doubt they’ll go again in 2025, inspired by the family environment described so vividly by Penfold [10:00].

We also spoke about his approach to training and recovery [17:30] and the importance of individualised work [22:30]. Last up, we discussed the year ahead [28:10].

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Flo Laing does not miss a beat in explaining what she’s most excited about heading into 2025.

“It’s got to be the World Cup,” says Scotland women’s Lead Physiotherapist.

The competition will be hosted across the border in England and starts in August. Laing says it has been the Scotland team’s “north star” for several years.

During the course of our conversation – the second of three in this Keiser podcast series – we spoke about her work in women’s rugby at a time where the sport is starting to capture the public’s imagination and performance standards are rising faster than ever for the women players who compete [4:00].

Elsewhere, Laing discusses her leadership style, which is very much about putting people at ease [18:00]; she also talks about the most pressing issues in female athlete health [28:40]; as well as the transferable skills she’s learned from her time working for Sport Scotland [12:30].

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Duncan French, the Senior Vice President of the UFC Performance Institute, is describing the aftermath of a bout.

“If an athlete has gone through the fight pretty well and won, then it might be a very simple kind of cool down in one of the back rooms in the locker room and just do some light work to bring themselves back down again,” he says of the victor.

“If an athlete’s had a pretty significant amount of trouble, that’s a very different strategy.”

Mixed martial arts is, as he adds, “a sport of consequences”.

It’s all in a day’s work for French, who oversees the UFC’s Performance Institutes based in Las Vegas, Shanghai and, most recently, Mexico City.

There have been some teething troubles with the Mexican facility [4:40], but French took it all in his stride, as he tells us in the first of this three-part Keiser Series Podcast focused on some of the challenges faced and lessons learned by members of the Leaders Performance Institute during 2024.

French also discussed his evolving leadership style [6:20]; the personalisation of fight preparation plans [19:30]; and his use of data to inform those strategies [28:30].

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Dan Jackson is the General Manager of Player Development & Leadership at the Adelaide Football Club, but he is quick to dispel any notions that he is a guru.

“I can’t teach leadership,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “I can help unlock what’s already in there.”

On that note, he is certain that leaders are not born. “Leadership is 100 per cent made, but it’s made from a very young age.”

Beyond the origins of leadership, Dan spoke to Henry Breckenridge and John Portch about the importance of prioritising others [10:40]. “Great sustainable teams are built in environments where everyone’s looking to help someone else out,” he adds. “When you fill someone else's bucket, it fills yours.”

Also on the agenda were the importance of humour and enjoyment [22:00]; the argument against ‘refreezing’ culture [48:30]; and the practical steps that help leaders to manage team operations [32:00].

Henry Breckenridge LinkedIn

John Portch LinkedIn

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Kitman Labs ensured Bayer Leverkusen knew what it took to win the German Bundesliga.

They demonstrated to Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Leverkusen’s Head of Medical, the optimal range of player availability to top the table during a meet in Dublin, four or five years before Die Werkself actually won the title.

“I kept this data; and last year we did it,” Dr Dittmar told the Kitman Labs podcast with evident pride. It turns out the data scanned almost perfectly across the numbers posted by the club during their unbeaten title-winning campaign.

“They found out what we need from the medical point of view, from player availability, and it was perfect – the data predicted what would happen in the future.”

It demonstrated the value of clean, consistent datasets – something that has given Leverkusen an edge over more celebrated rivals – and something that Yael Averbuch West is trying to build in her role as GM at 2023 NWSL champions Gotham City.

“We’re still in the data collection stage in the women’s game,” she tells the podcast, while also explaining that the work to bridge that gap is well underway in this corner of New York City.

In the third and final episode of this series, West and Dr Dittmar are joined by Kitman Labs Founder Stephen Smith to discuss how data strategies can help teams in their quest for greatness.

Elsewhere, the trio discuss a range of topics, including why learnings tend to emerge as data collection grows ever more sophisticated [17:30]; the importance of a centralised system for consistency [24:15]; the balance between using data to unearth ‘hidden gems’ and jumping on something misleading [33:00].

Episode one is available here and episode two is available here.

You may have a great performance structure for your men’s team, but simply cutting and pasting that to your women’s team does them a disservice.

That is the view of Arianna Criscione, the Head of Football Operations at Mercury/13 and Como Women. “It’s not enough,” she tells this Kitman Labs podcast. She explains that there are a range of services, from nutrition to psychology, that need to be tailored to women players.

Criscione continues: “You also have to have access to medical [support], but a lot of clubs don’t have access to a gynaecologist, which is a major part of the female body and really needs to be addressed a lot more.”

Dentistry is another area of oft-neglected consideration. “If you have an off-bite, that can actually affect your structure and how you’re running, which could cause injury.”

It is, as Sarah Smith says, about “making sure that we have a good foundation of support around our athletes.” Smith, who is the Director of Medical and Performance at Angel City FC in the NWSL, joins the conversation alongside Stephen Smith, the Founder of Kitman Labs.

In addition to discussing holistic female player development [10:45], the trio delve into bridging the gap in data and understanding in women’s football [15:45]; how talent identification is evolving [20:15]; as well as the existing disparities in data collection [28:10] from club to club and league to league.

This is episode two of a three-part series. Please go back and check out episode one, where the Leaders Performance Institute and Stephen Smith spoke to Paul Prescott of the International Football Group and Morten Larsen of Danish Superliga side Aarhus discussing talent pathways in the Premier League and beyond.

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More than 77 per cent of professional contracts in the Premier League and EFL are held by homegrown players.

It wasn’t always thus. “English clubs were basically funding talent development models in Spain or in Brazil because English talent wasn’t seen to be at the same level as players from those countries,” Paul Prescott, the Managing Director of the International Football Group, told this Kitman Labs podcast.

That situation persisted until recently and is starting to change in part due to the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan [EPPP] in 2012.

“We are seeing that some of the decisions that were made maybe 10-12 years ago are beginning to bear fruit,” added Prescott, who was joined by Morten Larsen, the Head of Methodology & Development at Danish Superliga club Arhus, and Stephen Smith, the Founder of Kitman Labs.

Aarhus share the Premier League’s emphasis on talent development, albeit in different circumstances as Larsen explains [5:30].

“Denmark is a small country and the league is a small league,” he says.

“So there’s only one thing we can do to compete with the other clubs in Europe.”

Elsewhere, Smith sets out the differences in approach between leagues and clubs [16:25]; Larsen explains the impact of data on decision-making processes in the Aarhus academy [24:10]; and Prescott ponders whether EPPP was an outcome or a catalyst [36:30].

The 2024 StatsBomb Conference took place at Old Trafford in Manchester in October and the Leaders Performance Institute was in attendance.

We spoke to the great and the good of the football analytics world, including three people speaking that day, about their thoughts on data & analytics in football, from recruitment and time management to analysis and AI.

Coming up for you, we have:

Liam Henshaw, a Data Analyst & First Team Scout with Hearts, who discusses his efforts to balance two roles at the Scottish Premiership club, and the constant need for context in application.

Will Thomson, a Data Analyst with Hudl StatsBomb, whose research is guided by the nuances of football.

Sam Gregory, the Director of Data Analytics at US Soccer, whose senior teams are preparing for World Cups in 2026 and 2027, including an edition on home soil in the men’s competition.

Simon Farrant, Director of Strategic Growth – Sports Data & Officiating, at Deltatre, who spoke about recruitment in the context of game models and team strategies, where compelling stories are a must.

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Predictably, when Sport Wales formed its Female Health & Performance team, some asked why there was no male equivalent.

The truth is that male physiology and psychology has long been viewed as the default across sport.

“For so many years we haven’t thought about females as being different,” says Esther Goldsmith, who works for Sport Wales, on the latest episode of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“When you think about it, it doesn’t make sense because it’s obvious we’re different.”

This lack of understanding or consideration makes one ponder just how much potential is being left on the table by female athletes. The menstrual cycle, for example, was seen as a taboo and was historically not taken into consideration when female athletes trained, performed or recovered.

In seeking to redress that imbalance, Sport Wales is empowering female Welsh athletes from the grassroots through to podium potential with the support they need to succeed.

“We’re just trying to open up some of those conversations and improve the comfort and awareness of the athlete in order to help,” says Dr Natalie Brown, who works alongside Goldsmith.

Both spoke of Sport Wales’ efforts to normalise conversations about a whole range of female health issues (10:00) including pelvic floor health and stress incontinence (36:00), while busting common myths along the way (21:00).

Goldsmith and Brown also discuss the importance of encouraging behavioural change through meeting the athlete where they are in their beliefs and values (15:00); helping coaches with any potential discomfort as they learn and become aware of the needs of their athletes (31:00); as well as the question of sports bras in a market without universal standards (26:00).

They offer useful tips for any sports organisation regardless of their budget or level of resource but the important thing is to start having the conversation. Now.

More from Sport Wales:

How Sport Wales Is Enabling Female Athletes to Succeed on the World Stage

‘Female-Specific Considerations Should Be Part of Normal Practice’

Female Athlete Health: Five Top Tips When Discussing the Menstrual Cycle and Other Issues

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Alex Hill has spent 13 years studying organisations that have out-performed their peers for over 100 years, including the All Blacks, Eton College and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The result is his book Centennials: The 12 Habits of Great, Enduring Organisations.

“If you want society to support you long term, your impact has to be much broader than just creating role models,” he continues. “Why don't you take the learning from being at the cutting edge of mental and physical performance and share that?”

Hill believes that the British national governing bodies competing at the Olympic and Paralympic Games could feed those lessons back into the community in the form of a “spin-offs division” similar to that of NASA (another centennial).

“This spin-offs division [could be] designed to take that learning and feed it into all of society so that the whole of our country develops.”

It is just one idea Hill shares during the course of a conversation full of advice for sporting organisations. He spoke of the New Zealand All Blacks and their readiness to embrace failure [40:20]; finding smarter ways to attract money and talent [10:45]; and why a diverse talent pool can make an organisation more relevant to a broader swathe of society [17:15].

Henry Breckenridge X | LinkedIn

John Portch X | LinkedIn

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“I’ve been told I give really good hugs.”

So says Lindsay Mintenko, the Managing Director of USA Swimming’s National Team, in the second episode of this new series of the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

“Just being able to sit with an athlete; sometimes you don’t even have to talk,” she continues, “it’s just so they know you are there.”

It is difficult to imagine many of her predecessors demonstrating such empathy with athletes whether they’re a multi-medal winner like Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky or a swimmer who came agonisingly close in some of sport’s most competitive trials. The top-two finishers are guaranteed a spot on the roster; those in third – who would likely medal with other nations – are almost certain to miss out.

“After the trials, our main job is to make sure our athletes are focused on Paris, but we don’t always take a step back and look at those who came third by a hundredth of a second. That’s a tough place to be; so we really need to make sure that we do a better job of looking out for those athletes afterwards.”

It is perhaps no surprise that USA Swimming is currently the only national governing body in the US to have an in-house licensed clinician on staff.

This has happened on the watch of Lindsay, a two-time Olympic gold medallist in the 4x200m freestyle.

She is the first former athlete and first woman to serve as Team USA’s Managing Director, but as she tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch, it is not about her but serving her athletes and their coaches.

Lindsay also spoke about her role being analogous to that of a general manager in the major leagues [8:00] and the importance of providing a challenging but safe environment [17:40].

Elsewhere, she elaborates on the importance of providing mental health support for her athletes [29:50] and explains how her swimming career began when as a six-year-old Lindsay fell out of a tree [5:30].

Henry Breckenridge X | LinkedIn

John Portch X | LinkedIn

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Michael Bourne has a sports science background, so it is no surprise that he places a premium on critical thinking.

“It is core to me,” the Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] tells the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

Critical thinking is a skill that also served him well in roles at UK Sport and the England & Wales Cricket Board amongst others before he took the reins at the LTA in October 2020 (with Covid restrictions still in place).

“But,” he cautions, “leadership for me is about change and progress, and you can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught.”

It starts with taking stock. “As a leader, make sure that you are ensuring everybody else is confronting those brutal facts and you've got to be ahead of that,” he says, adding that he too must be open to feedback.

“It should be unacceptable in a high-performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.”

In the first episode of this new series, Michael explains his mission-driven and people-centred approach to helping produce British tennis players with the means to compete with the world’s best [33:10].

During the conversation, we also touch upon the challenges the LTA faces and the benchmarks set [8:30]; his belief in the unique qualities of British tennis [14:30]; why the flow of information cannot be taken for granted at the LTA [38:30]; and the enduring power of the Lion King to move him [49:30].

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John Portch X | LinkedIn

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Harjiv Singh, a performance and development scientist at the Orlando Magic, is another example of a practitioner who suffered their own debilitating injuries.

Hot on the heels of Andrea Hudy, who recounted her own story of ACL troubles in episode one, Harjiv told the tale of a pickup basketball game that ended with him tearing his ACL and meniscus while also suffering an avulsion fracture.

The 16 months of rehab stoked an interest in sports science that not only led him to the NBA but, since January, roles at the Grand Rapids Rise women’s volleyball team, as Director of Performance Science, and the University of Michigan, where Harjiv teaches out of the Human Performance and Sports Science Center.

John Portch and Joe Lemire could not have wished for a more engaging guest on this finale to this People Behing the Tech podcast series, where Harjiv delved into the sports science principles that define his work.

He also shared his thoughts on training drill design [15:39] and the transferability in competition – a relatively new area of enquiry. “It could be as simple as, in basketball, you’re putting a defender in front of you,” he says. “But it can also be as complex as the angle and the approach of that defender, the people in the vicinity of the athlete, where the athlete is starting from, their position on the court. And that’s merely the introductory part of this.”

Then there’s his thoughts on the “neglected” cognitive component to ACL injuries [6:41]; the need to know your audience when visualizing data [27:38]; and his ability to ask applied questions in the lab at Michigan.

Check out episode two:

Five Years on from the USWNT Introducing Menstrual Cycle Tracking, Sports Science for Female Athletes Remains Under-Developed. So What Can Athletes and Practitioners Do about it?

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When the US women’s national soccer team started tracking their menstrual cycles, it was seen as groundbreaking.

At least part of their success in claiming back to back World Cup titles in 2019 was attributed to the fact they could adjust individual training plans and nutrition based on the data.

Ellie Maybury was part of the USWNT backroom team that introduced this initiative and, more than half a decade on, tech support for female athletes doesn’t seem to have progressed as much as she’d have hoped. At least in soccer.

“A lot of the technology we have absorbed into the women’s game has come from the men’s game or men’s sports environments,” she tells the People Behind the Tech podcast.

“And maybe some of the processes and metrics that come with that get transferred as well.”

Maybury, who recently founded Soccer Herformance, a performance consultancy for female soccer players, is in the hotseat on episode two of this series.

She addressed the issues that hold back female high performance, from managing the lack of objective datapoints [4:50] and the importance of education for athletes who often misunderstand their own bodies through no fault of their own [26:20], to the need to take athletes on a journey while remaining honest about the limitations of research at the present time [17:00].

Check out episode one:

Paige Bueckers Proved Her ACL Injury Was Behind her at March Madness, but, as Andrea Hudy tells us, Questions Must Still Be Asked about the Injuries that Afflict Female Athletes

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Paige Bueckers’ stellar performances at this year’s March Madness proved that her ACL injury is long behind her.

She returned to action in November 2023 after 15 months out and drove UConn all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Behind the scenes, Andrea Hudy, the Director of Sports Performance (Women's Basketball) at UConn, was critical to Bueckers’ convalescence and is working (while pursuing a PhD) to ensure there are fewer such occurrences in the future.

“My passion is trying to understand why people get hurt or the story behind their injuries and keep them strong and resilient for what’s unexpected or the challenges ahead,” she tells The People Behind the Tech podcast.

Andrea speaks from her own experience of injury as a varsity volleyball player. Indeed, when anyone says she “played without an ACL” for six years – as Andrea tells Joe Lemire and John Portch – it makes you sit up and take notice.

In the first episode of this new series, we discuss the questions that still need to be asked about female injury occurrence rates [18:00]. We also touch upon Andrea’s career in college athletics, which took in tenures at Texas and Kansas before she returned to UConn three years ago for her second spell [8:40]. Then, we broach her willingness to experiment with new technologies while concurrently seeking better insights from existing datasets [11:40]. Finally, she tells us why she can occasionally see herself as a modern, real-life Icarus [26:30] and much more besides.

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David Dunne describes a perennial problem for practitioners in elite sports.

“There’s a fundamental mismatch between what practitioners can deliver and what athletes actually want and desire,” he told Joe Lemire and John Portch on the People Behind the Tech podcast.

“So we pivoted towards the COM-B model.”

During this episode we spoke at length about Hexis’ continued growth following a successful seed round, technology’s ability to influence the evolution of the practitioner, and the fundamental union of academic rigour and those so-called softer skills.

COM-B was a major part of that conversation. It has been integral to Hexis’ growth. The company used it in tandem with elements of design thinking which, as Dunne explains, stems from his time working for teams including Harlequins and Ryder Cup Team Europe.

The model is a framework for understanding and changing behaviour. It was developed by Susan Michie, Maartje van Stralen and Robert West in 2011. The model posits that behaviour (B) is a result of an interaction between three components:

Capability (C): this refers to an individual’s psychological and physical capacity to engage in the activity. It includes having the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.

Opportunity (O): this encompasses all the factors outside the individual that make the behaviour possible, including social and physical environmental factors.

Motivation (M): this includes the brain processes that direct behaviour, such as habits, emotional responses, decision-making and analytical thinking.

Listen to the full conversation.

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“Everything is based upon the game for us,” said Ryan Alexander.

“Understanding how the physical demands and fitness is going to be interpreted on the field as it is going to relate to the technical and tactical execution of a certain style of play.”

Alexander, the Director of Sports Science at Atlanta United, was speaking to John Portch and Joe Lemire on the People Behind the Tech podcast ahead of the new MLS season, which began in late February.

He also spoke about the club’s groundbreaking work with i-Brain Tech, a neurofitness training aid that has transformed their skills and cognitive training and led to players having “higher levels of conversations with their technical coaches."

Elsewhere, Alexander explored:

Finding the level of confidence in the data to challenge or support [9:30];
Knowing when to take calculated risks with players [18:00];
How i-Brain has been integrated into the players’ training plans [27:00];
His efforts to meet players and coaches at their 'level' when it comes to data [35:30].

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At November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Oval in London, a coach was overheard saying: ‘I have a team looking at AI but I have no idea what they do’.

Gary McCoy is the CEO of Peak AI, which has been shortlisted in Sports Business Journals' list of the 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies of 2023.

Peak AI uses psycholinguistics to enhance performance and Gary has a firm view on that coach’s comment.

“If you don’t know what they do, go and lead them because they probably don’t know what they’re doing either,” he tells Joe and John on the latest edition of The People Behind the Tech podcast.

“Artificial intelligence and data, as a general staple in sports, needs guidance,” he continues, “it needs transactional guidance to evolve the athlete.”

Gary spoke at length about the need for coaches to fully engage with AI and also dipped into a range of areas, including:

Preventing the injuries that may be a consequence of practitioners “asking the wrong questions” [20:00];
The need for the sports industry to develop a collective ethos for using AI [23:00];
The significance of an athlete’s cognitive load on their ability to train and perform [30:30];
Why analysts who better understand performance will better understand how data transacts [46:50].

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John Portch LinkedIn | X

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Ben Baroody is a big believer in psychologist Michael Gervais’ idea that the apex of well-being and performance is human flourishing.

“It means a lot to us,” he tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

“The aim and approach of all of our programs, processes, and our building blocks, is based on the foundation of the human psyche, the psychology of healthy minds and lives. And we try to take that evidence-based research and build it into baseball frameworks and development for the rest of the organization.”

As the Texas Rangers’ Director of Leadership & Organizational Development, Player Enrichment Programs & Mental Health says, the goal is to unlock potential versus extracting performance.

“That’s what we’re striving towards. It’s an aspiration that’s ever-evolving,” he says,

Elsewhere in this episode, we cover:

How the Rangers have been the ‘victims of buzzwords on a wall’ [10:30];
The balance of challenge and support in the Rangers environment [23:00];
How Ben’s development as a leader helped him to identify imbalances in his own life [30:15];
Character development practices at the Rangers [37:30].

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John Portch LinkedIn | X

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“How do we design tech and tech solutions to almost combat [other] tech solutions and distractions?”

The question is posed by Brian Cunniffe of the UK Sports Institute [UKSI], who is Joe Lemire and John Portch’s first guest on The People Behind the Tech podcast for 2024.

Brian, a performance lead at the UKSI who works primarily in canoeing and who also served as the British and Irish Lions’ sports scientist on tours of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, is discussing the power in gamifying training, particularly for younger athletes.

“There’s a slight irony in there but how do we bring it back to the stuff that matters, not just for players but for staff as well?” he continues.

“How do we help coaches on a journey to understand not just the stuff that players have completed but maybe some of the decisions that we need to take on a journey and learn from that so that we’re not replicating or duplicating and can be more efficient with our time?”

Elsewhere, Brian delves into:

The reasons why he is not driven to be a domain expert [6:00];
The mismatch of the tacit knowledge of coaching and the newer objective of monitoring athletes [13:00];
The under-appreciated importance of design thinking and bringing people on a journey [18:00];
The performance promise contained in epigenetics [31:00].

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John Portch LinkedIn | X

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Lydia Bedford, the Head Coach of the Brentford men’s under-18s team has some firm coaching advice.

“There’s no shortcuts, even though everyone seems to want them these days,” she tells Henry Breckenridge and John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our friends at Keiser.

“Time on the grass, working in different environments, working under different people as leaders will help you to understand what it looks like for you.”

Bedford, who has also coached with underage women’s teams at the Football Association [FA], Leicester City Women in the WSL, and served as an assistant coach at Arsenal Women, talks enthusiastically about her first six months Brentford.

In her new role she is a pioneer. One of the few women coaches operating at the top level of the men's game.

Elsewhere in this episode, she delves into the importance of her mentors, who include Mo Marley, the current Head Coach of England Women’s under-23s.

Bedford recalls a time at an FA training camp when, at Marley’s side, she encountered the senior women’s England squad. She says: “Every senior player that walked passed her gave Mo a hug and I was like ‘I want to be Mo, I want to have that impact’. But actually, the more I worked with Mo, whilst I love her to bits and still have tremendous respect for her, how Mo leads is not how Lydia leads.

“You learn loads of things, good and bad, from people that you work under and then you find your own way.”

Elsewhere on the agenda, Bedford spoke about:

Her status as a pioneer in the men’s game [12:30];
Facilitating challenge and support in an environment where results are less significant [17:00];
Her relationship with her assistant Jon-Paul Pittman [30:00];
Integrating players who are not used to academy environments [33:30].

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Zendler speaks to Joe Lemire and John Portch about her work with Rimkus and the NBA and NBPA’s Wearables Validation Program.

“It was scary at the start. It was this white space of do we want this to happen? Can you make it happen?” says Jess Zendler.

The Program Manager of the NBA and NBPA’s Wearables Validation Program is discussing her first steps in the role with Joe and John on the People Behind the Tech podcast.

“Academic-type folks, we don’t like to set thresholds that exist for pass-fail,” she continues, as she explained the process of speaking to players and coaches and taking in all the relevant research.

“We want this to be rigorous, we want the players to have confidence in these devices, we know they’re generally hesitant to wear them and there is pushback.”

Zendler also spoke of balancing the need for commercial viability with real-world application, which chimes with her role as a sports science consultant with Rimkus, a worldwide leader in technical consulting and forensic engineering.

During the course of the conversation, we also discussed:

The process for approving devices on the Wearables Validation Program [12:30];
The challenge of bringing research to life in sport [17:10];
The Wearables Validation Program’s relationship with the NBA and Players Association [21:00];
Jessica’s role in creating the vision for the increasingly used Quality Assessment Framework for sports technology [28:10].

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Dr Daniel Laby is talking to John Portch and Joe Lemire about his vision training with Liverpool and England star Trent Alexander-Arnold in 2021.

He says: “If the question is: ‘are you worse than you should be for your sport?’ And knowing what each sport needs, if you have that information you can say how someone needs to train.”

Red Bull commissioned the project having been impressed by Dr Laby’s consultancy work in the NFL and his burgeoning collection of World Series rings having worked for three decades in MLB.

“So if Trent did well, which he did in certain areas [I would say], ‘Trent, you did great. We don’t have to give you glasses’ but if [instead I said] ‘Trent, your ability to monitor multiple targets at the same time isn’t what it needs to be compared to what it should be for someone on average of your level, we have to train that’; and that’s what we did with Trent.”

Dr Laby tells The People Behind the Tech podcast that the first goal is to help athletes to correct to the required level for their sport, which will differ depending on the discipline.

This was just one aspect touched upon during the conversation. Others include:

The potential drawbacks of refractive surgery for athletes in some sports [8:00];
His work with Manny Ramírez and the 2004 Boston Red Sox [16:00];
Balancing research and practice in his work [22:00];
The potential for using virtual and augmented reality in vision testing [36:00].

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“The greatest gains in S&C can be made in how you make yourself an integral part of the team,” says Johnny Parkes.

“You have to be out there with the team on a daily basis, you have to have those soft skills – I actually call them essential skills – we have to recognise that we have to make ourselves completely valuable to the team.”

Johnny, who was recently appointed Associate Head Coach of the men’s tennis program at the University of South Carolina’s men’s tennis program, is the third and final guest on this Keiser miniseries, which seeks to understand the world of S&C through a leadership lens.

He is both an S&C and a tennis coach out on the court and, in his dual role, is in no doubt about what it takes to develop the essential skills of which he speaks.

He adds: “That might mean going out there for extended periods of time, watching practices, going above and beyond and staying later after an S&C session because a guy needs to work on their hip mobility a little bit more as opposed to just shutting the practice down.”

Also during this episode, we discuss:

The distinct challenges of coaching youth and adult tennis players [2:30];
The need to give the player a voice and shape your coaching cues to them as an individual [7:00];
Johnny’s comfort in discussing performance topics outside of his domain [14:00];
Why the gamification of elite athlete training resembles a PE class [23:00].

Previous episode:

Emily Hall – Queensland Rugby League

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“You can watch the room change from that lived experience approach,” says Marc Williams, a programme facilitator at gambling harm minimization consultancy EPIC Risk Management.

Marc, a former professional footballer who suffered the consequences of gambling harm, will speak to athletes and teams with a view to educating and informing them about the pitfalls and trigger associated with gambling harm.

“They can see what we’ve been through, where gambling took us, and from that they can really relate to it themselves and think ‘wow, this could be me’,” he tells John Portch on the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Marc is joined by Rachael Jankowsky, the Head of Player Care & Well-Being at Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire, to discuss EPIC’s work with the club, which included Marc presenting in front of young players.

On today’s special episode, we discuss topics including:

The beginnings of the Fire and EPIC’s collaboration [6:30];
The difference between ‘textbook’ education and an in-person presentation [10:00];
Marc and EPIC’s post-session support services [15:30];
Overcoming the challenges of low base knowledge and the language barrier [18:30].

For those seeking more information on gambling harm prevention, check out EPIC Risk Management’s white paper review from February 2023.

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Emily Hall enjoys building relationships with athletes as it enables her to better support them and, from time to time, when necessary, call them out.

“You have to be able to read your athletes and know your athletes,” says the Strength & Conditioning Coach, who works with various women’s teams at Queensland Rugby League, including the U19s.

“[You need to] have those relationships with your athletes so you can say the right thing or make the right call in those situations,” she tells this Keiser Series Podcast.

In episode two of this series, we speak to Hall, a proud Wiradjuri woman, about topics including:

Helping young athletes to juggle sport and other commitments [7:40];
Enabling athletes to develop a sense of responsibility and autonomy [10:00];
Why it is important for an S&C to show up at 100% even when athletes are flagging [16:00];
Supporting athletes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds [21:00].

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When Conor McGoldrick joined John Portch for this Keiser Podcast, he spoke of learning from other disciplines and how that happens in both an unstructured and structured way.

The Head of Strength & Conditioning at Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Center in Salzburg is describing the learning opportunity provided by the interdisciplinary work that goes on around the organisation’s 850-plus athletes across four football clubs, two hockey teams, and approximately 250 sporting disciplines.

“The unstructured way is almost like a child and you are learning just by being there from practitioners who are better [in their field] than you,” he says.

“Then there’s this more structured approach where you actively seek opportunities to observe and have questions asked of you; and I think with that understanding it makes that interdisciplinary work easier.”

Conor is the first guest on this three-part series looking at Strength & Conditioning through a leadership lens.

On the conversational agenda were:

Athletes’ biggest S&C concerns [9:00];
Knowing when to keep your counsel [12:15];
The link between behaviours and success [21:50];
The gamification of training [25:00].

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Joe Rogowski has seen the NBA from all sides.

He spent two years as an S&C at the Orlando Magic, a further six years as Director of Science & Research at the Houston Rockets, before spending almost nine years at the National Basketball Players Association [NBPA].

Since 2022, he has served as Chief Medical Director of the National Basketball Retired Players Association [NBRPA], a non-profit organization comprised of former professional basketball players of the NBA, ABA, Harlem Globetrotters, and WNBA.

Rogowski was at the NBPA in 2015, the year the league introduced its wearables committee and his views were informed by his time in Orlando and Houston.

As he tells Joe Lemire and John Portch, he worked with players wary of wearables as well as those mor willing “guinea pigs”, as they refers to them, such as retired Magic point guard Jameer Nelson.

Rogowski would ask himself of the latest devices: “Is it practical? Is it something that you can wear in a practice? Is this something that I can consistently do? Or is this a one-time thing and you collect the data and move on?

“I had plenty of those devices that actually changed how I think about training these guys or how I’d help them with recovery. But it is a sale because, with the players, you only have so many asks.”

Rogowski recalls those moments working with players as well as:

The holistic management of load in the NBA [13:30];
Knowing what to say – and what not to say – to players [21:20];
His interest in cardiology and its importance for athletes, both current and retired [27:00];
His role at the Sports Tech Research Network [31:20].

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“Serial winning coaches don’t just want to get ahead – they want to stay ahead,” Professor Cliff Mallett tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“But they know that staying ahead means having healthy relationships of mutual trust and care with the people that they work with.”

Cliff and his colleague Sergio Lara-Bercial join Henry Breckenridge and John Portch for this episode to discuss their new book Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination.

In an extended chat we delve into:

Why Serial Winning Coaches are the ‘outliers amongst outliers’ [7:00];
How coaches should approach developing ‘care’ and ‘determination’ with their athletes [31:00];
How Serial Winning Coaches can help us to inform the identification, recruitment and development of the next generation of coaches [39:30];
Why coaching is about striving, surviving and thriving [45:00].

Learning from Serial Winning Coaches: Caring Determination is published by Routledge.

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Collier Madaleno recalls the story of a defensive lineman that had put on weight during the pandemic when college football was brought to a halt.

“He used that next year to really focus on nutrition,” she tells Joe and John. “[He] got down and dropped his body fat percentage by 7%, lost 45 lbs [20.4kg], and he was a first-round draft pick.

“He just did such a good job at buying in and it made him a faster, more explosive person. He never lost any muscle mass, which meant he was really focusing in on eating enough of just the right things so that we were able to retain that muscle and focus on losing that fat.”

Collier’s pride is palpable. “It’s so much fun to see them buy-in and then say ‘C, I feel so much better in practice’. ‘C, I didn’t know I could have this much energy’. It’s probably the most rewarding part of my job.”

In this edition of The People Behind the Tech podcast, Collier lifts the lid on her work as the Director of Performance Nutrition at the Georgia Bulldogs, who retained the NCAA national championship in January.

During the course of the conversation, we covered:

How student-athletes are introduced to performance nutrition on campus [6:00];
The importance of team leaders buying into her work [11:00];
The question of recovery and inflammation [21:00];
How Collier keeps current in her work [22:30].

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The rise of Toulouse FC has been both fast and meticulously planned.

Le Téfécé were Ligue 2 champions in 2022 and, last season, won the Coupe de France – their first major trophy in 66 years.

Toulouse also finished 13th in their first season back in Ligue 1 – well clear of the relegation zone. Not that Damien Comolli, the club’s President since 2020, is resting on this laurels.

“Everyone said ‘well done on staying up’ but we’re not interested in staying up – we never mentioned staying up – we said we want to finish as high as possible,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“There are games that we feel we should have won and could have won. We lacked this cutting edge, this winning mentality at times, we should have got more points, we should have finished higher than 13th in the table.”

Damien Comolli has overseen the Toulouse’s resurgence under new owners RedBird Capital Partners, but he couldn’t have done it without his ‘truth teller’, the club’s Head of Strategy & Culture, Selinay Gürgenç Comolli, and Julien Demeaux, Toulouse’s Head of Data.

Both Selinay and Julien joined Damien for this episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

The theme is Toulouse’s upwards trajectory and what it is going to take to help establish the club at the vanguard of European football.

On today’s agenda:

Damien on the importance of having a ‘truth teller’
How he is working to prevent Toulouse being a ‘one-season-wonder’
Selinay on the importance of the club’s strategic committee
Julien on the comparative immaturity of data usage in football

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“When a club as big as Racing come to you and say ‘we want you, there is no plan B, you’re our No 1 man’ then it helps persuade you”.

Stuart Lancaster, the new Director of Rugby at Racing 92, agreed to join the Parisian club last September while enjoying his seventh season as Senior Coach at Leinster. It meant a fresh challenge for the man who also coached England at the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Says Lancaster: “For the first time, really, my head was turned a little bit by the opportunity to try something new in a different country, in a different competition, the Top 14, and to try and build something as successful as Leinster but in a completely different context”.

He discusses his move at length in today’s episode, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser. During the conversation, we also touch upon:

His efforts to sell change to the existing players and staff at Racing [9:40];
Why he will need to be more hands-on in year one than he has been at Leinster [19:30];
His belief in the enduring value of coaching [25:20];
His relationship with Dallas Cowboys Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn [36:30].

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“With technology now, we’re starting to understand movement in a way that we didn’t really understand before,” Keke Lyles tells Joe Lemire and John Portch.

The Director of Performance at Uplift Labs was on the pod to discuss how the company’s AI can reduce injury risk in athletes.

There is no better candidate to delve into injury prevention and mitigation than the man credited with saving Steph Curry’s ankle.

We made a whistlestop tour of his work at the Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks and, of course, the Golden State Warriors.

Also on the agenda were:

How the stress of a season can affect movement quality, tissue quality, and rage of motion [14:00];
The often misunderstood elements of load management [17:00];
Keke’s jump from the world of sport into the tech space [31:20];
Why he believes the next performance frontier will be in player development [34:30].

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Mark Gannon, the CEO of UK Coaching, feels that it is about time that coaches were perceived as people too.

UK Coaching is an association that connects and supports approximately 180,000 coaches from grassroots to elite level through its UK Coaching Club.

“Coaching is all about the right environment,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “So we’ve got psychologists, nutritionists, that sort of athlete support personnel that we wrap around the athlete and I think what we need to start thinking about now is that coaches are people too and how do we wrap the same sort of support, differently, around the coach?

“If you work for a financial organisation, you’ve got a head of culture or people or HR, and there’s certain things in place in your work environment. Well, that shouldn’t be any different in our sector, maybe in our sector there’s a bit of catching up to do.

“It’s twee, but people are your greatest asset and the more that we can look after people and the more we can make the environment the right environment, the more people are going to succeed.”

Ahead of UK Mental Health Awareness Week, which runs 15-19 May, Henry and John caught up with Mark, who discussed how teams and organisations can better help their coaches. He also touches upon:

The notion that we all tread a fine line when it comes to our mental wellbeing [9:00];
The perennial question of job security and its impact on coaches [10:30];
UK Coaching’s work with partners to help identify changes of behaviour in coaches [18:00];
How coaches can protect their own wellbeing [25:00].

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“When I took over the Head Physician job at the New England Patriots, I saw a very unique opportunity to provide medical leadership at the next level,” says Dr Matthew Provencher.

“Fortunately, we had a great coach in Bill Belichick, great ownership in the Krafts, Jonathan and Robert, and I really talked to them around the facility about providing a competitive medical advantage and how we would do that.”

Provencher, who served as the Patriots’ Medical Director between 2013 and 2016 – earning a Super Bowl ring in 2014 – is the latest guest of John Portch and Joe Lemire's on the People Behind the Tech podcast, which is brought to you by the Leaders Performance Institute and SBJ Tech.

Provencher is one of the foremost orthopaedic surgeons in the world and has treated elite athletes from across the globe at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado.

In a wide-ranging chat, we also explored:

His time in the Navy and his work developing US Special Ops’ Tactical Athlete Program [5:00];
Working with multidisciplinary staffs at sports teams [13:30];
How useful the use of tech and data have been in providing medical care for athletes [20:40];
How the nature of injury occurrences have evolved in recent years [28:30].

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“Student-athletes in the United States are four times more likely than the average college student to have a gambling problem.”

It’s a startling revelation from Mike Huber, an advisor with our Partners at EPIC Risk Management, on this Gambling Harm Prevention edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“Taking it a step further,” he continues, “we ask the question in our sessions ‘why do you think that is?’ And the reasons that come up from a lived experienced perspective, a research basis, are the personality traits of an athlete. The competitiveness, the ego. Sometimes it’s injuries when they have downtime.”

The reasons why athletes gamble – in the US and beyond – are manifold, as we discussed during this episode, where Mike was joined by Ben McGregor, EPIC's Director of Sports Partnerships.

Over the course of our conversation with Mike and Ben, we covered:

The reasons why gambling harm is often misunderstood in sport [7:30];
How EPIC helps people from understanding the issue to offering help [18:00];
The importance of supporting staff members in gambling harm prevention [20:30];
Using interventions to limit the impact of gambling harm [31:30].

For those seeking more information on gambling harm prevention, check out EPIC Risk Management’s white paper review from February 2023.

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Scott Hann recalls the euphoria and the relief of watching his charge, the artist gymnastics gold medallist Max Whitlock, claim two golds and a bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“Then, all of a sudden, you get home and you’re hoovering the floor in your living room and it just hit me. What was it all for? What’s happened?” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Whitlock, who won a further gold at the delayed Tokyo Games to make it six Olympic medals in total (he won two bronzes at London 2012), recently went public with his mental health struggles and, here, Scott explains that his mental health has also suffered as a consequence of his work.

“After the Olympics, nobody’s holding you on a pedestal, no one’s coming around and helping you with anything now. It’s done and you’re on your own. It was really hard.”

Scott’s efforts to safeguard his mental health is just one of several topics on the agenda, which is today brough to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

Also up for discussion are:

What makes an Olympic champion athlete ‘coachable’ [6:30];
Dealing with big decisions that went wrong in major competitions [23:40];
Where he goes for self-development as a coach [30:00];
His role as a technical advisor with British Gymnastics [33:00].

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"The conversation has grown," says MT Eisner, "but curiouser and curiouser: has the conversation grown because I'm in that circle or has the conversation genuinely grown?"

The US Applied Performance Specialist Manager at Kitman Labs would like to think it's the latter. "Within Kitman, we talk about it consistently, within the other organisations that we’re helping [we ask] ‘how can we assist with this?’" she continues.

"We had this organisation want to now start tracking menstrual cycles, starting to do X, Y and Z with their athletes. 'Who else is doing this? What conversations are you having? Who can we tap into?' and so forth."

In addition to the increasing focus on female athletes - and the development of female practitioners - our conversation also covered:

How MT would test new female-focused performance ideas on herself in the first instance [7:30];
Why she says 'the grass isn't always greener - it's fake' in sports performance [21:00];
Sitting down with practitioners to develop workflows [24:00];
The future of training science and equipment science [36:00].

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Daniel Guzman believes that genetics plus training equals performance.

“Our genetics are just a code that says ‘here’s how your genetics express here whether that’s cardiovascular or it’s cellular or it’s your body composition or whatever it might be and here’s how we need to influence your environment’,” he tells Joe Lemire and John Portch on the People Behind the Tech Podcast.

“‘Environment’ being how do you train? How do you recover? What stresses do you have in your life? All of that stuff influences our genetics.

Although our genetics never change, they can be expressed on or off. Kind of like a dimmer switch at any point.”

After more than a decade as a performance coach, taking in roles at the LA Galaxy, US Soccer and LAFC, Daniel joined 3x4 Genetics as the Head of Enterprise Sales in late 2022.

The Seattle-based startup believes its ability to analyze a person’s genes, whether they are an athlete or not, enables them to recommend lifestyle changes. In the case of athletes using its Genefit program, that might mean diet, training, recovery or other forms of preparation.

He envisages a time when elite teams routinely call upon a geneticist to inform their performance.

During our conversation, Daniel also discussed:

His use of data in athlete programming and why it’s always part of the bigger picture (10:30);
What an athlete might learn about themselves when undergoing gene analysis (23:00);
The unique way that Genefit integrates physiological and genetic data (29:00);
How 3x4 Genetics uses feedback from athletes and coaches (36:30).

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As Lorena Torres Ronda explains, there is a big difference between say the NBA and international tournament play in basketball.

She has experienced both, including a spell as Performance Director at the Philadelphia 76ers and, most recently, as Performance Coordinator at the Spanish Basketball Federation, a role she has held for two years.

Lorena is also a Performance Advisor for the Leaders Performance Institute and, as such, we were delighted to welcome her to deliver an instalment in our Performance Perspectives series, where she reflected on her contribution to Spain’s success at the 2022 men’s FIBA EuroBasket Championships; their fourth triumph.

Hers was a dual role during those three weeks in September that combined S&C work with player load monitoring. It was vital that she prioritise, as she tells the podcast.

“Of course, you see things and my mind is like, ‘we could do this or that’ and ‘it would be good to improve speed or agility’ – that’s my emotional side,” she says. “My rational side knows that in three weeks you’re not going to improve tremendously in certain qualities because physiologically you don’t have time.”

Elsewhere in this episode, she discusses:

The development of Spain’s feedback system;
Harnessing the legacy of the nation’s basketball history;
Preparing for the worst during a tournament;
How the performance staff connected to the team’s vision.

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“My staff is, by far, way more educated, smarter than me. They all have these niches that they’re really good at,” says Brandon McDaniel.

“When I need to be able to understand something, when I need to be able to communicate something, when I need to be able to have that conversation with our front office or coaching staff, whoever that might be, they’re the ones that I’m going to in order to get that information.”

McDaniel is the Vice President of Player Performance at the LA Dodgers and the first guest on the People Behind the Tech Podcast, a new collaboration between SBJ Tech and the Leaders Performance Institute.

During the course of the episode, he also talks to SBJ’s Joe Lemire and Leaders’ John Portch about topics, including:

The tech he uses in his own life [1:00];
How he seeks to test, trial and implement tech in a team environment [10:00];
Exploiting ‘windows of opportunity’ in athlete monitoring [16:00];
How analytics departments can play a role in scouting and development [29:00].

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“I’ve spent a lot of time in professional sports and often been one, if not the only female, in those particular organisations,” says Matti Clements, the Acting Director of the Australian Institute of Sport.

Her observation is all too common in such a male-dominated industry with certain roles, such as psychology, often presumed to be a more natural fit for a female practitioner than, say, a strength & conditioning role.

Matti, for her part, is a psychologist by training but has served in a series of senior managerial roles – becoming a pioneer in the process – and has shifted perceived wisdoms in the fields of people, culture and wellbeing.

As such, she was an ideal guest for the latest edition of the Elite Performance Partners (EPP) Industry Insight Series Podcast where she spoke to Dave Slemen, EPP’s Founding Partner, about her career journey and her thoughts on the evolution of psychology and wellbeing in sport.

She continues: “Over time, I got a bit more comfortable with ‘what do I bring? Why am I here? So what is the role that I’m being asked to fill and how do I utilise my strengths in that role?’”

Over the course of the conversation, Matti also spoke about:

How being a leader differs from working as a specialist [4:30];
Parallels she sees between psychology and marketing [8:00];
The current shift in thinking around coach wellbeing [20:00];
Building cultures of psychological safety [28:00].

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“I often talk about the difference between fixing broken and creating awesome,” Rachel Vickery tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

The performance coach, who guides and supports high performers to excel, lead and thrive in high pressure and high stakes environments, is discussing the importance of preparing athletes for the high pressure scenarios they face in competition.

“You don’t need a ‘get out of jail card’ in the first place if you haven’t ended up in jail in the first place," she continues.

“Performance under pressure is less about what happens in the moment of pressure, it’s more about ‘what have you done?’ everywhere else that’s led you into that moment.”

In the course of our chat, Rachel, a former gymnast who works across the worlds of sport, military and medicine, to name a few, explores:

The importance of helping athletes to build buffer and front-loading strategies to deal with human stress responses [6:00];
The need for awareness and understanding of those stress responses so that athletes don’t feel they are ‘going crazy [13:00];
The role of imposter syndrome in feeding arousal states during competition [23:00];
Why it is necessary to aim for excellence rather than perfection [28:00].

Check out Rachel's website here.

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High performers in both sport and business tend to overcomplicate things, on the other hand, they cannot just assume they can go it alone.

Dan Lawrence, the Head of Performance at Matchroom Boxing, watched his former boxer, the now-retired George Groves, learned this in real time.

“Yes, he had a team. He had myself, a conditioning coach, we had his head coach at the time,” Lawrence tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “He was steering the ship at that time, whereas I don’t think that was the right way to go.”

In fact, “you have to have a cohesive team working with one sole goal”.

Here, Lawrence discusses his work in combat sports while also touching upon:

The reasons why people over-complicate human performance [6:00];
The differences in working with boxers and footballers [10:00];
Working smarter, not harder [13:00];
How the role of the S&C is evolving [23:00].

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“Innovation isn’t about what we know; and defining it would be challenging everything we know,” says Ben Williams.

“One thing I do believe is: to harvest a culture of innovation we need human engagement and we need collaboration.”

Williams, who serves as the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team’s Integrated Performance Lead and the Ineos Britannia sailing team’s Head of Human Performance, is our very special guest on this Science in Sport Industry Insight Series podcast.

He sat down with SiS Director of Performance Solutions, James Morton, to discuss his varied professional background and the approach to innovation he has cultivated in each of his roles in sport and beyond.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

The need to normalise ‘silly’ questions inside your organisation [12:30];
Why the America’s Cup could be sport’s most unique performance challenge [15:00];
His transition into cycling (combining his work in sailing) [19:00];
Whether the next gains will be made in ‘training science’ or ‘equipment science’ [23:30].

James Morton LinkedIn | Twitter

Ben Williams: Twitter | LinkedIn

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“The most important thing when stepping up from being an individual contributor to being responsible in a management position is that it’s not about you any more,” Max Lankheit, the San Jose Earthquakes’ Director of High Performance, tells EPP’s Founding Partner Dave Slemen.

The duo are discussing the traits needed when stepping into a leadership position for the first time.

“The important thing that people need to understand, in my opinion, is that you can only hunt one rabbit at a time,” adds Lankheit.

“So either you can work on your skills or help others work on their skills.”

Max, a former youth athlete and acting student, talks to Dave at EPP about his non-linear journey to the top of elite sport amongst other topics.

EPP are a performance consultancy and search firm highly regarded across sport and, for this episode, Dave poses the questions that cover:

The non-sporting elements of Max’s background [2:30];
Why the stigma around ‘manipulation’ is undeserved [10:00];
The importance of the environment in helping people to thrive and reach their potential [25:00];
The difference between purpose and values, vision and objectives [35:20].

Dave Slemen Twitter | LinkedIn

Max Lankheit LinkedIn

Former England, Lions and Saracens lock George Kruis played at two Rugby World Cups, won three European Cups and four English Premierships during a distinguished playing career.

Those 14 years spent at the thick end of the game have imbued him with a number of skills as he now turns his attention full-time to his CBD and wellness venture, Fourfive, which he co-founded with former Saracens teammate Dom Day in 2018.

Fourfive is the official wellness provider to a number of sports organisations and is going from strength to strength, yet Kruis saw himself at a disadvantage for all his talents away from the pitch.

“Most people who start a company, their background will be in finance, it will be marketing, it might be in product development, it won’t necessarily be in your ability to catch a ball in the lineout,” he tells the Leaders Performance podcast.

Kruis hung up his boots in June having ended his playing career with the Saitama Wild Knights in Japan and came into the Leaders studio to discuss how he prepared for his post-playing career while still at the top of his game.

During the course of our chat we discuss:

Why Saracens’ approach to player care was transformative [4:30];
How ‘tough love’ has gradually been replaced by ‘calculated culture’ [11:20];
What English rugby does well and what could be done better to prepare transitioning players [28:00];
His advice for current players [30:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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“You’ve got to listen to these young people,” says Rod Ellingworth.

“A lot of experienced people have been through life but they’re not perhaps listening to these young people enough. You’ve got to listen to their ambitions and, when they say things, there’s a lot in there. And if you ask the right questions, open questions, getting into the guts of it really, really getting under their skin about how they want to go from A to B, I think you can learn a lot from people.

“Try to follow people’s ambitions and dreams. And as long as you’ve got the programme and the space, you can keep working with people, because the talent will come through.”

Ellingworth is a former cyclist who now oversees talent identification at the Ineos Grenadiers and, in this latest edition of the Science in Sport Industry Insight series, he sits down in conversation with his former colleague James Morton, the Director of Performance Solutions at SiS.

Both men spent five year working together under Ineos’ previous guise, Team Sky, and here they delve into advice for talent spotters as well as:

Why it is important to ‘throw grenades’ at young riders when it comes to developing their resilience [14:00];
Geraint Thomas’ champion mindset [16:00];
The importance of creating programmes that excite youngsters [18:30];
Misconceptions around fuelling and weight loss [26:30]

James Morton LinkedIn | Twitter

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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Former middle-distance runner Pippa Woolven was not aware that she was suffering from RED-S – relative energy deficiency in sport – until well afterwards such was the lack of general understanding of the condition at the time.

“It took several years to recover and the scars of that experience will forever remain,” she tells the Leaders Performance Podcast of her experiences of RED-S while competing in the US college system in the 2010s.

“I’m lucky enough to say I’m in a healthy place now and I hope to help other people avoid the same pitfalls.”

Woolven is the Founder, CEO and Director of Project RED-S, an initiative formed by a group of athletes, parents and partners whose lives had been impacted by a condition that is still relatively unknown and misunderstood.

Joining the conversation was James Morton, the Director of Performance Solutions at Science in Sport, who was part of a research project that revealed some time ago that just one in 23 of England’s Lionesses squad were consuming the correct quantities of carbohydrate.

The duo discuss the reasons why athletes succumb to RED-S and the ways in which the condition can be both treated and prevented.

They also touch upon:

The causes of low energy availability [7:00];
Team culture and the role of coaches in preventing RED-S [16:00];
The role of parents in educating young athletes [24:00];
How athletes can support team-mates in their fuelling [27:30].

Pippa Woolven LinkedIn | Twitter

James Morton LinkedIn | Twitter

Sarah Evans LinkedIn | Twitter

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“Our mission statement is probably a good place to start,” says Phil Church, “and it’s to increase the number of English-qualified leaders, which is managers, coaches and technical directors, working at the highest levels of the game.”

Church is the Senior Professional Game Coach Development Lead at England Football Learning, which oversees the Football Association’s [FA] education pathways for youth and senior coach development and technical director development.

He joined the Leaders Performance Podcast to discuss the FA’s suite of programmes and courses as it works towards fulfilling England Football Learning’s mission statement.

Within that discussion we also touch upon:

The selection process for the courses [8:00];
Talent mapping with a view to adding support and value for learners [12:00];
Programmes for graduates to continue their CPD and to meet the needs of the game [17:40];
Why diversity and inclusion still needs attention at the FA [28:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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“There’s more evidence to support what we do but, at the same time, there’s more perspective, but certain things don’t change,” says Jimmy Wright.

“If you chase the science, if you purely chase the literature, and you forget about experience and what has traditionally delivered the results you might just miss the diamonds.”

Jimmy Wright, the Team Biokineticist at the Durban-based Sharks, who compete locally in the Currie Cup and internationally in the United Rugby Championship, is the first guest on the latest series of the Keiser Series Podcast.

Jimmy has been with the Sharks for 23 years – in fact he was the first individual to hold his position at a franchise in South Africa – and has seen both his role evolve as well as the needs of the game.

He discusses those developments and also touches upon:

His belief in focusing on growth between Monday and Friday [14:30];
The concept of ‘ubuntu’ and selflessness that informs his work [17:00];
How his style as a leader developed from his background in track & field [20:00];
The advice he would like to give his younger self [26:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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“I think sport teaches us so many of our great life skills such as teamwork, becoming leaders and overcoming adversity. And I think mentoring is inherent within sport,” says Jessica Battaglia.

The United States Tennis Association’s Senior Manager of Operations, Programming & Events has come onto the show to discuss the organisation’s Coach Mentoring Program, particularly in light of the fact that just 25% of tennis coaches in the US are female. The USTA and Jessica are seeking to redress the balance.

The discussion was supplemented by co-host Sarah Evans, the Leaders Performance Institute’s Senior Community & Account Executive. Sarah is a former Great Britain hockey international who benefited from female mentorship during her career and who now serves as a sports mentor herself.

The conversation covered:

The importance of mentorship and support systems for women in sport [4:00];
The distinction between mentoring and coaching [10:40];
Efforts to turn the tide in providing opportunities for women in sport [19:40];
The value of female perspectives in high performance environments [23:30].

Sarah Evans LinkedIn | Twitter

John Portch LinkedIn | Twitter

“Folks coming into the organisation, whatever their career aspirations may be or their vision of leadership, we want to help them find that, whatever is genuine and authentic to them.”

Ben Baroody, the Director of Leadership Development & Mental Performance at the Texas Rangers of Major League baseball, is discussing career and leadership development opportunities at the club in this latest edition of the Elite Performance Partners Industry [EPP] Insight Series.

EPP are a performance consultancy and search firm highly regarded across sport and, for this episode, EPP’s Founding Partner Dave Slemen and Managing Partner Anna Edwards posed the questions to Ben, who spoke of the Rangers’ processes and practices that enable the advancement of players and staff alike.

Also on the agenda were:

How Ben and the Rangers make time for those leadership and career development opportunities [8:30];
The club’s efforts to set people up to succeed by creating a development space [10:30];
‘Soft’ skills and the Rangers’ ability to track the development of players and staff [23:00];
The renewed emphasis on the mental side of performance in the training environment [29:20].

Dave Slemen Twitter | LinkedIn

Anna Edwards LinkedIn

“We want to be able to sustain excellence and in order to do that you have to move very precisely,” says John Wagle.

“It’s more so about connecting with people at the right time, having the right information, listening first, serving their needs, and then nudging towards whatever the process needs to look like.”

Wagle, who has just left his role as the Kansas City Royals’ Director-Performance Science/Player Development, reflected on his four years working in the clubhouse in the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

Knowing when to listen and when to implement change [4:30];
Learning how to learn – then learning how to lead [10:30];
The challenge of integrating technology in player development [16:45];
Why John says that players challenge him on a regular basis [21:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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“There’s a tension there that exists between knowing what you’re going to cover and responding to the humans that are in front of you,” said Iain Brunnschweiler, the Head of Technical Development at English Premier League club Southampton FC.

“We’ve tried to evolve a curriculum, a player development framework, that manages that tension. We want to cover specific topics and we also want to coach the player that’s in front of us.”

Brunnschweiler was speaking onstage at Leaders Meet: Coach & Player Development on the 24 March at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, where he was joined by England Netball Head Coach Jess Thirlby to discuss the progress being made in coach and player development.

During the session, which was moderated by Dan Clements, the Performance Coach Manager at Wales Rugby Union, the duo discussed:

Why curriculums need to be carefully implemented [3:00];
The value in playbooks and the implications for creativity [12:00];
The most meaningful learning experiences they provide [16:00];
Finding work-life balance [24:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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Larry Lauer, a Mental Skills Specialist with the United States Tennis Association [USTA], has seen where things have gone wrong in the past.

“Maybe too much mental training in the past has been ‘here’s a few ideas – throw them up against the wall and see what sticks’,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Larry has come on to discuss how the USTA has embedded mental skills training in its coaching programs and delve into:

How mental skills feeds into the technical and tactical elements of tennis [9:00];
The importance of social learning between juniors and older players [20:40];
Bringing mental skills to life and tracking progress [24:00];
How the role of the mental skills coach will evolve [34:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

“I always say: everyone is always excited for someone else to change,” says Jeremy Bettle, with a wry smile. “It’s always difficult when you have to deliver that to the person who has to change.”

The Performance Director at MLS champions New York City FC is the first guest on the Science in Sport Industry Insight podcast series, where he joins the Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch and Science in Sport’s Director of Performance Solutions James Morton to discuss his first season at the club, which culminated in that championship.

Bettle spoke to the pair about his arrival in the Big Apple, with Morton sharing from his own experiences of working with seven-time Tour de France winners Team Sky/INEOS Grenadiers and in English Premier League football.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

Why Bettle feels he has not always handled change management well in the past [4:00];
The difference between comfort and complacency in winning teams [14:00];
The reasons why people management are often at the centre of innovation [20:00];
Why enjoyment should be a practitioner’s personal priority [22:00];
Reflective practice and how different questions can change mindsets [29:00].

James Morton: Twitter | LinkedIn

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

"How do we make it more difficult for people to do what they've always done?"

This question is posed by psychologist and former Leaders speaker Gareth Bloomfield in this edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

Bloomfield, who works with the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, explores the topic of behavioural change at length and delves into:

Understanding how the brain works when making decisions [4:20];
What we already know about human behaviour [6:30];
How leaders should approach behavioural change [8:00];
Tips for overcoming the typical barriers to change [16:00].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Chad Morrow, a command psychologist with the US Airforce, succinctly identifies the elephant in the room when it comes to multidisciplinary work.

“When you hire people who are usually at the top of their game and they’ve then got to slow down to work together,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “I think everyone says they want to do that but if they’ve never done it, I’m not sure they want to do that.”

He goes on to explain that healthcare professionals in the military can recoil when they understand that being embedded can come with limited support. In truth it is not always so different in elite sport.

In our discussion on the creation of holistic teams, we also touch upon:

Why we need to teach practitioners to talk about ROI [13:00];
A typical job analysis in the military [16:30];
How data emanating from your shop floor can be a crucial leadership assessment tool [23:00];
The pitfalls to avoid in setting up transition processes for service personnel [29:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Leaders Performance Institute member Joelie Chisholm has achieved some of her best performances following heavy training sessions and puts it down to her emotional load being low.

“My biggest impact on performance, and therefore recovery, is definitely mental,” she tells the Leaders Performance Podcast of her extracurricular ultrarunning exploits.

The Chair of GB Climbing’s Competition and Performance Group is an avid sportsperson whose experience spans several disciplines and informs her thinking on this ever-important question.

Also on the agenda were:

The need to be present when competing [5:15];
Why she feels being in the zone is a precursor to a flow state [27:00];
Protective factors and stressors in building her resilience [31:45];
The battle between her ‘inner critic’ and her ‘inner coach’ [30:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Louis Cayer is one of the most experienced and decorated high performance coaches and coach educators in international men's doubles tennis.

For the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast, Cayer joined Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch to discuss his work with the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

Also on the conversational agenda are:

Why tennis coaching differs from most other sports [2:30];
The evolution of the LTA's coaching strategy [7:00];
Why feedback has replaced the LTA's culture of correction [15:00];
Checking that processes and culture are still on track [25:10].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"A few years ago, there was a bigger emphasis on numbers and trying to hit specific targets and outcomes, whereas now, especially with those younger athletes, we spend more time talking about trying to show specific behaviours."

Dan McPartlan, a Strength & Conditioning Coach with British Cycling, is reflecting on how his work with athletes continues to change in this latest episode of the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Also on today's show, we discuss:

The human teaching tools of S&C [4:30];
Reacting when an athlete has a bad day at the office [10:00];
Building an athlete's confidence in their own body [11:30];
The elements of McPartlan's work that continue to surprise him [16:10].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your

chosen podcast platform.

“I moved across from working in sport and soon realised that the same experiences and beliefs which had benefitted me in that environment may actually be to my detriment in this, so I’ve had to re-learn a lot of things and question a lot of my original pre-conceptions.”

Henry Cheetham, a Physical Preparation Consultant currently leading the physical strand of a human performance program within the Ministry of Defence, made the transition from the world of sport four years ago and tells the Leaders Performance Institute that he is still learning each and every day.

On the conversational agenda today are:

The need to be both brave and humble when providing physical programming in the military [5:30];
The importance of developing self-sufficiency and autonomy in operators [8:30];
His observation that recovery habits are growing across society [14:00];
Why most injuries in the military are personal training-related [20:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"I love it when athletes ask these questions," says Johnny Parkes. "I want them informed, I want them to know exactly why we're doing what we're doing and how we're going to do it because then I get more quality information and feedback from them."

Parkes, the Assistant Head of Strength & Conditioning for the Tennis Program at IMG Academy in Florida, is the latest guest on the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

Coming up on today's show, we discuss:

Giving athletes a clearer perception of training and its transfer to performance [6:30];
The link between self-respect and performance goals [14:00];
The importance of athlete self-reflection at the end of the season [24:00];
Why there are more injuries than ever despite ever more injury prevention programs [25:50].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

British Olympic medallist talks as part of the Leaders Athlete Optimisation Series.

"If an athlete's shocked or surprised with a selection or de-selection, then I haven't really done my job well."

Paula Dunn, the Paralympics Head Coach at British Athletics, is discussing her approach to difficult conversations with the Leaders Performance Podcast. "I should have been in contact with that person, having open conversation and understanding where they are, if they have any issues."

In the latest edition of the podcast, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser, Dunn is joined by:

Aston Villa Manager Dean Smith discussing his development as a leader and the scalability of culture [from 3:00];
Performance psychologist Michael Caulfield reflecting on his role as host of the recent Virtual Leaders Meet: the Evolution of Leadership and the qualities of modern leaders [from 14:00];
British Athletics' Paralympics Head Coach Paula Dunn talking about the vulnerability of the leader and her approach to decision making [24:25].

Further listening:

Leaders Performance Podcast - Coaching & Development Special

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

“The tech environment and our understanding about learning and development has changed, but I don’t think that changes the reality of what we are doing to support how people may learn just yet.”

These are the words of Dr Scott Drawer, the Director of Sport at Millfield School in Somerset.

Dr Drawer is just one of the voices that has stood out in recent months in the Leaders Performance Institute’s efforts to explore the topic of coaching & development.

In this latest edition of the podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser, we invite some of our most esteemed contributors to return and offer further reflections on their experiences.

Coming up today you will hear from:

Dr Edd Vahid, the Academy Manager at Southampton FC, discussing the identification and development of youthful potential [from 2:20];
Lucy Skilbeck, the Director of Actor Train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, who explores the Academy’s curriculum and pedagogy [from 12:00];
Dr Scott Drawer, the Director of Sport at Millfield School, explaining why he feels the fundamentals of the teacher-coach relationship have not shifted [from 21:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Michael Cheika

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Michael Cheika, the renowned rugby coach who was recently appointed Head Coach of the Lebanon men's rugby league team, explains that providing a safe environment for athletes is a good starting point when addressing social issues.

"One of the huge things with coaching and leading is creating a balanced environment for players to perform in," he tells co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera. "Not ignoring anything and not going over the top; understanding exactly where the balance is."

The management of social issues for the greater good of the team is just one of the questions posed on this edition of At Home With Leaders, which is brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser.

Also on the agenda were:

The potentially overlooked importance of tactical skill acquisition [17:00];
Balancing tactical structure with the need for creativity within a gameplan [20:00];
Why it is important for a team to clarify what is meant by 'risk taking' in competition [25:30];
Cheika's recent switch from rugby union to rugby league [29:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Jill Ellis

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"What are we trying to achieve and why?" asks Mo Bobat, the Performance Director of the England & Wales Cricket Board. "In essence we're all problem-solvers and there's enough research out there to suggest that homogenisation of thought and ideas probably isn't a great way to problem-solve."

Bobat is steadfast in his belief that teams with broad in skillsets and experiences are the best-equipped to tackle performance problems.

He explored the power of diverse thinking in this latest episode of the Leaders State of Play Series, which is brought to you today by Elite Performance Partners [EPP], a search, selection and advisory firm working across elite sport and specialising in performance.

Bobat, who in November hosted our EPP Webinar exploring the rise of the specialist-generalist in sports performance, was joined in conversation by Leaders' Matthew Stone and EPP Founding Partner Dave Slemen. The trio delved into:

Practical steps teams can take to break down silos [3:00];
Setting the optimum conditions for people to succeed [9:00];
The importance of hiring staff that complement your existing team [17:00];
Identifying 'impact areas' when building a performance strategy and the tools and tactics for achieving measurable impact [27:00];
Embracing the individuality of your people by forging social connections [34:00].

Dave Slemen: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

The Leaders State of Play Series - Owen Eastwood

Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"When you go through change," says Jill Ellis, "a lot of it is continuing to talk about culture and the team-first environment you create, but it’s also about building in strategies to make this team feel that every single person is important and every single person matters." The two-time Fifa Women's World Cup-winning coach - who also won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2019 Leaders Sports Awards - appeared on the latest edition of At Home With Leaders, where she delves into the transition that the US women's national team [USWNT] undertook between the 2015 and 2019 tournaments.

Ellis, who currently serves as the Development Director of US Soccer, also talked to co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera about topics that included:

Establishing a higher purpose with the USWNT [7:30];
How knowing your team sets the tone for its evolution [16:30];
Identifying and using the strengths of her support staff [19:30];
Her approach to risk-taking at both college and international level [29:00];
Setting the narrative, roles and expectations of both players and staff during periods of transition [31:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Terry Francona

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"I want to enjoy walking into a building and I don't want a situation where people sit on the same table to only eat with people of a similar status," says Nigel Pearson. The renowned football manager, whose former clubs include Leicester [twice], Hull and, most recently, Watford, is discussing the environment he strives to create for athletes and staff alike when he enters a club.

Pearson, who is between projects, found the time to reflect on coaching the modern athlete for the Leaders State of Play Series.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

His reasons why clarity in communication requires an understanding of the players' needs [7:00];
The reality that while you cannot force connections with younger players, compassion and empathy go a long way [9:30];
Providing safe spaces where players can live shared values and behaviours [16:30];
Having an open door policy as a manager but being economical with information [23:30].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

The Leaders State of Play Series – Owen Eastwood

Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Brought to you by our Main Partners Keiser. "I don't think I have any perspective or balance," says Terry Francona. "People have asked me before and I don't think I have any. I'm not sure any coach has." The Cleveland Indians Manager is talking to At Home With Leaders about balancing the needs of a team with your personal needs.

"Every year it gets harder. I come home and it takes me longer to recharge," adds Francona, who has also expressed his gratitude to the Indians for fulfilling their duty of care with such commitment when he took ill earlier this year.

He is recovering well and there seems little doubt that Francona will recharge long before Spring Training and likely far sooner given his hunger and enthusiasm throughout this chat.

Francona, now three decades into a coaching career that has taken in two World Series triumphs in Boston, spoke in a similarly honest vein when discussing:

The Indians' efforts preparing coaching staff in newer roles in uncertain times [14:00];
Managing the expectations of players [24:30];
Risk-taking and creativity on an MLB field [28:00];
Players speaking up on social issues [31:00];
Staying fresh and continuing to evolve as a manager [33:30].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Alex Goode

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"There was a meta study that suggests that 70 percent of an individual’s behaviour is determined by whatever environment they are in,” says Owen Eastwood. “That was the moment I could see it and that was the first verification of that truth.”

Eastwood a performance coach who has profiled a variety of elite teams including the New Zealand All Blacks and Seattle Seahawks, and worked the England men’s national football team.

In a wide-ranging chat, Eastwood talks to co-hosts Matthew Stone and Luke Whitworth about why the fundamentals of what makes effective teams haven't changed since human beings were hunter-gatherers 60,000 years ago.

Also on the agenda were:

Why our ancestors' insights into group dynamics are as relevant as ever [5:30];
How an environment can disable your team strategy and vision if you’re not careful [15:00];
The need to identify stories that create archetypes of the people you want your teams to be [20:00];
Why genuine diversity stems from an environment of trust, leaders prepared to be vulnerable, and the comfort people feel in order to express ideas [34:00];
A quickfire round of questions [38:30].

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Luke Whitworth: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

The Leaders State of Play Series - Stuart Worden

Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Alex Goode is one of the most decorated players in English rugby union. The Saracens’ fullback - the 2019 European Player of the Year - has won three European Champions Cups and five English Premiership titles with the north London side and amassed more than 300 appearances across 12 years.

Goode, who was also man of the match in Sarries’ recent Champions Cup defeat of Leinster, gave co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera an insight into the mindset of a repeat champion.

“I think lesser teams rely on the crowd, teams that I don’t respect that much,” he says of those who might be struggling to come to terms with empty pandemic-era stadia.

“For me, that’s a pick and choose mentality - that’s something I would hate to the part of at my club. At Saracens we have always talked about never being a ‘pick and choose’ team.”

But it was not always that way at the club, as he describes in a candid conversation that covers:

How that Saracens playing culture has evolved with each success [13:00];
Assessing new players and what they bring to the dressing room [19:00];
His reflections on his self-development through the years [24:00];
Managing anxiety in the build-up to big matches [29:30];
The question of motivations and from where they originate [32:30].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Gersson Rosas

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

“In adversity, young people usually have the answers,” says Stuart Worden. “They’re amazing, they’re extraordinary - if the conditions for their creativity are there for them.”

Worden is the Principal of the world-renowned BRIT School, a creative arts and technology school based in south London. Its alumni include artists Amy Winehouse, Adele and Hollywood actor Tom Holland.

Unsurprisingly, the school has been a continuing source of inspiration across high performance sport, with teams and organisations looking to tap into their wisdom around the creation of learning environments and nurturing creativity.

Worden himself appeared onstage at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London and was the ideal first guest in the Leaders State of Play Series.

Speaking to co-hosts Matthew Stone and Michael Caulfield, Worden also offered his musings on:

Kindness and why it brings both a sense of adventure and courage help to develop young people [7:00];
Why the most striking characteristic of young learners is their fragility [14:00];
The mistakes that can be made in judging talented young people [27:00];
Encouraging young people to take risks and not be afraid to fail [33:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Danny Kerry

Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

What can the NBA's No1 draft pick expect when they arrive at the Minnesota Timberwolves? "One of our goals and focuses in our organisation is not only making players the best they can be but the best people they can be," says President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas.

"That involves things that are not only near and dear to their heart but getting to know who those individuals are, being passionate, about their craft and their game is incredibly important."

Rosas, who spoke to At Home With Leaders co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera, also discussed:

Why he thinks the Wolves must reflect their wider community [9:30];
How the team will build upon their 'franchise cornerstones' Karl-Anthony Towns and D'Angelo Russell [21:30];
The team's ongoing process of cultural evaluation [25:30];
Rosas' meetings with the team's prospective new owners [28:30].

At Home With Leaders is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser. Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Danny Kerry

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"Since Rio I've been asking myself do the athletes coming into the squad have a different set of values and attitudes and do I have the skills to adjust to that?" Danny Kerry, who has served as the Head Coach of the Great Britain and England men's hockey teams since 2018, is pondering the ways that athletes have evolved and whether he, as a coach, has the skillset to work with a new cohort.

He asks himself that question a lot, he tells At Home With Leaders, and while he suggests that he has not always connected with athletes, Kerry has coached at international level for 23 years, with his crowning glory being the gold medal he won as Head Coach with the Great Britain women's team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In conversation with co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, Kerry also reflects on:

Why the lockdown proved to be a 'gift' for Kerry and his staff ahead of the postponed Tokyo Games [5:30];
Tweaking his training programme to engender resilience and self-efficacy in players [15:00];
How he helps his players to find fulfilment beyond winning out on the field [22:00];
The power of a 'self-selecting culture' and developing a 'depth of leadership' [24:30].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Gregor Townsend

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Gregor Townsend, the Head Coach of the Scotland men’s national rugby union team, is in reflective mood as he talks to At Home With Leaders.

Direct from his home in the Scottish borders, Townsend explains how both he and his players came to terms with the sport’s shutdown in Scotland and the steps taken to ensure his players were ready to return to play at the end of August.

In a remarkably candid conversation he also delves into:

Why players will become increasingly self-sufficient post-lockdown [7:00];
How the role of the coach is evolving [14:00];
His reflections on Scotland’s 2019 Rugby World Cup [15:30];
How he implements the lessons learned along the way [29:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Conor O'Shea

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"The decisions you're making now, in four, eight or 12 years' time people are going to be benefiting or suffering from - and it won't be you," says Conor O'Shea. "You have to make the right decisions for you now, for the future, rather than the right decisions for you now, selfishly."

The Director of Performance Rugby at the Rugby Football Union [RFU] is talking about the organisation's efforts to mitigate the disruption caused by the pandemic at levels of the game.

It was just one of the topics on the agenda as the Irishman caught up with co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Also up for discussion were:

The communication and provisions around player welfare [8:30];
How coaches and staff will evolve as the game develops [12:00];
Setting out the most efficient way to operate in the next phase the return to play [17:30];
The head coach of the future [23:30].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Kevin Abrams

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Kevin Abrams says the New York Giants are even more agile and adaptable as an organisation than he realised. The Giants Assistant General Manager spoke to At Home With Leaders co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera of his pride in the staff during the pandemic.

"We're very good at change and it's good to know that we can do it and it's good to remind everyone that we can do this on the regular."

Also on the conversational agenda were:

The NFL's return to play, with bubbles not an option [8:30];
Winning the pandemic amongst the NFL teams [13:30];
How leadership structures are changing at the Giants [17:30];
The impact of the potential suspensions in college football [25:00];
How behavioural science can be used in an NFL context [34:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - John Thorrington

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"I hear people bemoan the fact that we've all gone soft," says Mark Warburton, the Manager of Queens Park Rangers. "No we haven't." Warburton is tackling the pressing question of managing Generation Z athletes and quickly comes to their defence.

"We've just adapted as a society and it's the dinosaurs who don't change who will be left behind."

Gen Z was just one of the topics in a broad discussion as the QPR Manager sat down with Leaders Founder and CEO Jimmy Worrall on the eve of Rangers' pre-season.

Also on the agenda were:

The unintended consequences of sport's lockdown [6:00];
Why support staffs are too often 'top heavy' in the modern game [11:30];
Warburton's approach to risk and reward as informed by his former career as a trader [20:30];
His thoughts on the future of football below the top tier [26:30].

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - John Thorrington

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"While I don't want to be a miser and not enjoy the success we've had, but success can also be a wolf in sheep's clothing," says John Thorrington. Los Angeles FC's Executive Vice President of Soccer Operations and General Manager is speaking to At Home With Leaders just days after his team's exit from the MLS is Back Tournament quarter-finals.

The three-year-old franchise has made progress on Thorrington's watch but he is not about to rest on his laurels, particularly with the team still hoping to be involved in the quarter-finals of the suspended Concacaf Champions League.

Today's episode is which is brought to by our sponsors Football Manager, the global hit football simulation game.

Also up for discussion with co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera were:

Thorrington's musings on how sport will operate differently post-pandemic [7:00];
Life inside the MLS bubble in Orlando, Florida [16:30];
Los Angeles scenario planning for the return to home markets [30:30];
What teams can learn this pandemic-imposed discipline [33:30].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Ben Cherington

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Ben Cherington, the GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates, is keen to stress the sense of urgency felt by all Major League Baseball teams ahead of the truncated 2020 season. The reasons are manifold: instead of 162 regular season games there will be just 60, which gives greater weight to every result; the trade deadline has been pushed back four weeks until August 31; and 16 teams will make the playoffs compared to the traditional ten, which is more than 50% as Cherington points out.

"That definitely changes the calculus for teams in terms of expectations," he tells At Home With Leaders, "and it may change their decision-making."

Also on the conversational agenda with co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera were:

Beginning the Pirates's shift to a player-centric culture upon his appointment in November [5:00];
Using technology to assist knowledge transfer across the clubhouse and front office [14:00];
Sense checking progress both on and off the field [19:20];
How teams can reflect their city or town and the implications for performance [27:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Damien Comolli

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Damien Comolli has just been appointed as President of French Ligue 2 side Toulouse.

The Frenchman quickly acknowledged the challenges presented both by the pandemic and the club's recent relegation from Ligue 1, but his focus is more on the opportunities at hand as he leads the rebuilding project under Toulouse's new owners RedBird Capital Partners.

Comolli's excitement is palpable throughout his appearance on At Home With Leaders, which is brought to you today by our sponsors Football Manager, the global hit football simulation game.

Also up for discussion with co-hosts Matthew Stone and Steve Gera were:

Comolli's plans for his first 90 days [7:00];
How he will ensure this project is a success [14:00];
The ways in which European football operations will likely change due to Covid-19 [22:30];
His fears for European football in the years ahead [28:00];
His optimism around knowledge-sharing in the sports performance community [35:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Sir Andrew Strauss

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“Winning is not a good thing to think of as a goal,” says former England cricket captain Sir Andrew Strauss. “Look,” he clarifies, “you have to win - in high performance sport you can’t go too long without winning and remain in position. Winning has to be a focus - but it’s got to be part of something bigger.”

Strauss, who chairs the ECB cricket committee, is speaking of the moment that his England team, in 2011, reached No1 in the ICC Test team world rankings and the accompanying sense of anticlimax.

It is an issue he discusses during this episode of At Home With Leaders with co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Strauss also chats about:

His time as Director of Cricket at the ECB between 2015 and 2018 [15:30];
Why leadership can be lonely [26:30];
Coping with criticism and media scrutiny [28:00];
Setting up the Ruth Strauss Foundation in honour of his late wife, whom he lost to lung cancer [33:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Chris Powell

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In September last year, Chris Powell joined Gareth Southgate's coaching staff at the England men's national football team. Powell's appointment was part of the Football Association's Elite Coach Placement Programme, which sought to place black, Asian and other minority ethnic coaches at various stages of the national player pathway.

It is a position he discusses at length in this episode of At Home With Leaders, which is brought to you today by our sponsors Football Manager, the global hit football simulation game.

The role also meant Powell, who played more that 760 senior matches before embarking on his coaching career a decade ago, had to spend his 50th birthday at an England training camp. "Normally I'd be planning a party or having a big meal with my family," he explains, "but I preferred this, to be honest!"

Powell spoke to co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Also on the agenda were:

How the shutdown might have changed him as a coach [5:00];
The evolving outlook of the modern player [14:00];
Why Gareth Southgate welcomes being challenged at training [20:00];
The capacity for footballers to effect change in society and the implications for their performance [28:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Simon Timson

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“‘Right, here’s our opportunity: ten years’ innovation in ten weeks’.” That was the challenge Scott Lloyd, the Chief Executive of the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA], set to Simon Timson, the LTA’s Performance Director, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve been looking more inwardly than outwardly,” Timson tells At Home With Leaders. “What are all the things we can do to give all our players a competitive advantage?”

It’s a question he answers at considerable length with co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

Timson also discussed:

His personal reflections during tennis’ shutdown [11:30];
Why he feels players are going to become increasingly autonomous as we emerge from the pandemic [18:30];
His theory that some sports could be set back two decades in terms of athlete support [21:30];
The reasons he places such an emphasis on organisational alignment [37:30];
His imminent appointment as the new Performance Director at English Premier League Manchester City [40:30].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Rick Spielman

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Rick Spielman recalls watching the television reports that followed the killing of George Floyd. "I remember sitting there with my wife watching the news as it happens and we both have tears coming down our eyes," says the Minnesota Vikings General Manager.

"She looks over to me and she says, 'honey, that could have been one of our children.'"

Spielman and his wife have adopted six African-American children. "As a white father raising African-American kids, I truly have to ask myself how do I explain this and why does this continue to go on?"

The Minneapolis-based Vikings' US Bank Stadium is less than three miles from the spot where Floyd died and, as Spielman tells At Home With Leaders, he recognises the team's obligation to serve its community, fight racism, and defend fundamental human rights.

"With all the adversity, not only with the pandemic, but the social injustice: what can we do to help, what part can we play with our platform to try and make change?" he tells co-hosts Jimmy Worrall, the Founder and CEO of Leaders, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

The agenda for today's chat includes:

The Vikings' Social Justice Committee for players and coaches [6:00];
Spielman's efforts to organise a draft process during a pandemic [12:00];
Steps taken to integrate and teach the Vikings' rookies [18:30];
How the organisation will adapt its scouting operations for the fall [27:30];
How recent world events have changed Spielman's decision-making process [32:00].

Jimmy Worrall: Twitter | LinkedIn

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Emma Hayes

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"I always felt in my own heart that I was going to be a big driver of women's football - I'd made that decision," says Chelsea Head Coach Emma Hayes. "When you're a driver of anything, I focus on what I can do, not what I can't do; I'll focus on what I have, not what I don't have, and I'll focus what I want not what I don't want."

Today's episode is brought to you by our sponsors Football Manager, the global hit football simulation game, and was recorded shortly before Chelsea were awarded the WSL title.

Hayes spoke to co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC, and went into great depth about how her attitudes towards coaching, leadership and motherhood have changed during sports' shutdown.

Also up for discussion were:

The guilt she has felt during the lockdown about her ability to cope relatively well [11:30];
Why coach education has long failed the women's game in England [21:00];
Chelsea's work with UK charity Refuge, which supports women and children experiencing domestic abuse [32:00];
The importance of mental health awareness in sport and beyond [35:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Dean Smith

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Dean Smith joined the At Home With Leaders Podcast during what was due to have been the final week of the English Premier League season.

Instead, Smith and Aston Villa, where he serves as manager, have not played since 9 March amidst the ongoing spread of the coronavirus pandemic and, like the rest of us, he has been confined to home.

There is still no return date set for the English top flight but this enforced downtime has presented Smith with unprecedented opportunities, including this appearance on At Home With Leaders, which is brought to you today by our sponsors Football Manager, the global hit football simulation game.

"This season is still going, we've got 10 games left to play," says Smith of his first season as a Premier League Manager. "There's a lot of things to learn and learn from." He has gone back and reviewed each Villa match, which is something he wouldn't normally do, in the pursuit of insights. "I've managed to do a video review with every player, which during the season is something I would never get the chance to do."

Smith spoke to co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC [where Caulfield worked alongside Smith], Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Also on the table for discussion were:

The ways in which Smith has evolved as a coach [11:00];
His ability to maintain emotional regulation at crucial moments [17:00];
Balancing gut instinct and data [20:30];
Building relationships with players, coaches and staff [22:00];
Why being challenged is good for his leadership skills [26:30].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Kyle Dubas

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"Though I have been in this role for nearly two years," says Kyle Dubas, "I still think having this time in the last six weeks has allowed me to reflect on the fact that we have a long way to go to get where I think we can in terms of our environment each day and how that impacts on our performance and the mindset of our people." Dubas, the General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs since 2018, makes it clear that the team - one of the most storied in NHL history - remains a work in progress.

As the resurgent Leafs continue their work towards winning a first Stanley Cup since 1967, Dubas took time to speak to our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

Dubas also discussed:

How the Leafs are using the break to bridge the gap to the likes of Tampa Bay and Boston [8:30];
His observations on how the culture of the organisation has developed during his time at the helm [13:00];
How hockey is evolving beyond its conservative reputation [24:00];
Coping with the pressure of being storied club and a big market team [29:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Stuart Lancaster

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"We're all in this enforced plateau period but I think it can be a really good thing," says Stuart Lancaster. The Leinster Senior Coach is talking online amidst the "towels and rubbish" of his son's student house in Leeds - a move forced by the meagre WiFi available at the main Lancaster residence.

Whether or not this parental jibe is justified, we're in no position to say, but if anyone was going to use the enforced downtime for self-reflection it was likely to be Lancaster.

"Someone once told me," he says, "your journey as a leader starts on an upward curve and there comes a moment when you plateau as a leader, then you take that 'time out', then you grow again and move on."

Lancaster is speaking to co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

How the structure of the global game will change in rugby union [6:30];
The importance of the leader getting down to the gym floor [15:00];
The four tenets of Lancaster's leadership philosophy and why confidence grows from competence [16:30];
The rationale behind making changes before they are necessary [22:30].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Thomas Dimitroff

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Thomas Dimitroff readily admits that he found this year's NFL Draft to be a challenging experience.

With remote working currently a necessity due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Atlanta Falcons' General Manager, found his focus being drawn elsewhere.

"Normally, with a month and a half to go I am locked-in; I'm so focused on my evaluation of players - rarely am I reaching out to people within football operations," he explains.

"I'm interacting but they know to steer clear of me because I'm getting ready. I spent a lot more time trying to be a leader in certain ways outside of evaluating for our upcoming draft. That was complicated and it really tugged at a lot of areas within my focus.

Thomas is talking on the latest edition of At Home With Leaders, which is brought to you today by our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

From his home near Atlanta, Thomas also touches upon:

The reasons why a true work-life balance is a competitive edge in the modern NFL [9:00];
Why adaptability and selflessness were important traits when the team started its 2019 campaign 1-7 [20:00];
His efforts to ensure draftees such as AJ Terrell are suitable talent and character fits [26:00];
How the onboarding process has changed in the NFL [31:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Sir Dave Brailsford

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“Everyone is using biomechanics every day,” says Cat Shin, the Biomechanics Project Lead at the English Institute of Sport [EIS]. “If you’re looking at, say, technique or injury prevention, you’re looking at biomechanics, whether you call it that or not.” It is an essential field in this multidisciplinary era: “a biomechanist is part-physicist, part-data scientist, part-performance analyst, part-S&C, part-physio, part-coach. Or put another way, all of those roles are part-biomechanists.” Shin, who joined the EIS in her newly-created role in 2018, also delves into: - Her department’s efforts to deliver biomechanics support to those EIS sports where it is not embedded [4:00]; - Understanding the individual athlete and challenging long-held beliefs in the pursuit of optimal performance [12:00]; - The impact of language on your effectiveness as a biomechanist and the importance of pilot testing [21:00]; - How those receptive sports are adapting their philosophies to include evidence-based technical models [24:00]. Further listening: At Home With Leaders - Sir Dave Brailsford

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Sir Dave Brailsford and Team INEOS may be handling sports coronavirus-enforced shutdown better than most sports organisations.

"As a team, we don't have a facility base," the INEOS Team Principal begins in explanation. "We go to a race, we work together, and then we have to work very much geographically dispersed; a lot of the time it's conference calls, Zoom calls - the way that everyone is working at the minute is familiar to us... we're not racing, but it feels like a ramped-up business-as-usual to us."

Nevertheless, Brailsford provided some typically thought-provoking insights during his appearance on At Home With Leaders, where he spoke to co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

Up for discussion were:

Team INEOS' three-stage approach to managing its organisation during the pandemic [6:00];
Brushing off the envy of rivals and fellow competitors [23:00];
Environmental factors that impact on what he terms the 'discretionary' aspects of performance [29:00];
How his recent illness changed his perspective on work and life [37:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Sean Marks

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“All the people here, over the past four years, like me, have left a really good job,” says Sean Marks.

“They had to sacrifice something to come here, whether it was the vision, the Nets, myself, ownership, whatever it is. [Those individuals] have ownership in everything they do. Our day to day activities do not revolve around one person. It’s a complete collaboration and I don’t have to remind them of that.”

Marks, who became General Manager of the Nets in 2016, has overseen the franchise’s return to prominence since arriving from the San Antonio Spurs where he served as Assistant GM.

Excitement is building around Brooklyn and the team’s ‘people-first’ approach to culture. It’s something Marks discusses with considerable pride on the latest edition of At Home With Leaders, our new minseries of podcasts brought to you today by our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

From his home in Connecticut, Mark also walks us through:

Why the NBA shutdown represents an opportunity to think a little differently [9:00];
The importance of being able to have fun in the performance space and the need for people to ‘get over themselves’ [18:00];
How star trades such as Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant play a fundamental role in the ongoing development of the Nets’ culture [23:00];
The need to challenge and evaluate the status quo each and every day [26:00];
Why Marks can spot future executives in his team and why he invests in their development even if they ultimately move on [29:30].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Sean Dyche

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“You get on that hamster wheel and you never quite get off and look around,” says Sean Dyche of the typical lifestyle of a Premier League manager.

These are, however, far from normal times in pandemic Britain and Dyche, the third-longest-serving manager in English football, took time from his schedule - a combination of club commitments and household chores - to speak to At Home With Leaders co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

From his home in Northampton, Dyche delved into:

Why the Premier League shutdown has afforded such a welcome period of reflection and relaxation [6:30];
His view that support mechanisms for players have gone too far in English academies [16:00];
The levels of stress that have ‘flooded’ into the game in the modern era [20:30];
How the motivations of young players have shifted since playing football became like a job [24:00];
Keeping staff and players fresh while maintaining your key core values [31:00].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Sam Walker

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"It's hard for great leaders to get the credit they deserve because, by definition, if they do their job well then nothing happens." Journalist and author, Sam Walker, is musing on the notion of leadership at this time of global crisis.

"There's a perception that leadership is what you do in a crisis; how you respond," he continues. "But we forget that leadership by its purest definition is what you do when there is no crisis; between crises, it's what you do in terms of planning for the next one.

"There's an argument that a crisis, especially one on this level, is a failure of leadership."

Walker, who is the author of The Captain Class and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal is the latest guest in our new minseries of podcasts brought to you today by our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

Walker, direct from his home in Long Island, New York, also discusses:

Why he feels we have forgotten what competent leadership looks like [4:30];
Leaders such as Jung Eun-kyeong and Anthony Fauci, who have grown as leaders during the pandemic despite not conforming to our conventional view of leaders [8:00];
The qualities that make deputies, such as Fauci, become so revered at this time of crisis [18:00];
Why the idea of rivalries in sport will be unhelpful as we emerge from the pandemic [25:30];
Whether or not leaders will learn humility in the future and be less prone to bombast [33:00].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Eddie Jones

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to the latest episode in our occasional series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Keiser. In this latest episode, Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch caught up with Ryan Van Asten. Van Asten is the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach of the NHL's Calgary Flames.

On his watch, the Flames have established the league's best third period record, one of the best overtime records, and one of the teams who have lost the fewest gamedays through injury.

It comes from the team's excellent training culture, which sees buy-in to strength & conditioning programmes from across the playing group

Also up for discussion were:

Van Asten's career path to date [4:40];
Conversations with coaches and feedback on training loads [9:20];
In-season programming, both on and off the road [13:00];
Knowing, as an S&C coach, when to 'get out of your own way' [20:30].

Previous Episode:

Leaders Performance Podcast - Mia Stellberg, Sports Psychologist

For nearly four decades, Keiser has influenced the training of athletes, fitness enthusiasts and rehabilitation experts worldwide with better fitness products that unite both components of human performance: the force you produce, and the speed at which you produce it.

More than 80% of the top professional sports teams in the world now train on Keiser machines, including every baseball team in the major leagues, the soccer champions of nine countries, several American football champions and countless Olympians.

They’re joined by everyone from NASA to Navy SEALs, medical experts and rehabilitation specialists, and major gyms like LA Fitness.

Eddie Jones, the Head Coach of the England men's rugby union team, is a firm admirer of Liverpool FC's Jürgen Klopp.

"I watch Klopp coach and he definitely adds something to his team," says Jones, who regularly cites other leaders whom he finds inspirational both in sport and beyond.

"When he's out there at Liverpool's home ground, [the players and supporters] want someone energetic; someone who understands the psyche of that team."

Jones pauses to reflect on his leadership style and the importance of personal energy in the second episode of our new minseries of podcasts brought to you today by our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders' Senior Product Manager, and sports psychologist and consultant Michael Caulfield, whose clients include Brentford FC, Northampton Saints RFC and Hampshire CCC.

At Home With Leaders brings you a wealth of guests drawn from across sports performance to explore how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

From the temporary office he has set up in a Tokyo hotel, Jones discussed topics including:

Why he is trying to improve his communication skills during sport's shutdown [2:45];
Judging the balance between retaining control as a leader and giving people autonomy [6:55];
Why the shutdown represents a chance to reinvent significant elements of rugby [10:56];

-The dangers for young coaches who ignore their intuition [21:45];

What books he is currently reading and also what he is watching on Netflix [26:05].

Michael Caulfield: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

At Home With Leaders - Mark Shapiro

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Performance psychologist Mia Stellberg works with some of the finest teams in esports, having made the transition from Olympic sport back in 2016.

She explains that the parallels between both performance domains in terms of the psychological demands are manifold, from the relative immaturity of young performers to the stress and self-esteem issues that come with the constant need to perform and win.

In this edition, Stellberg draws out the lessons for those working in traditional sports by:

Discussing the how the psychologist plays a vital role in educating esport coaches around human relations [6:20];
Suggesting some practical ways that coaches can work with athletes who come into the academies of sport far earlier than those who embark upon careers in esports [12:40];
Describing how the psychologist can be embedded in the team, on occasion as the 'good cop' to the coach’s 'bad cop' [15:20];
Explaining why the sports world at large would do well to embrace the power of emotions as opposed to viewing them as weaknesses [24:15];
Outlining why advocates of psychological support services may be at an advantage in the talent recruitment space [32:10].

Further listening:

Mark Shapiro, President & CEO, Toronto Blue Jays

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Major League Baseball remains shutdown but Mark Shapiro spies opportunities for growth and self-improvement right across the Toronto Blue Jays. “We’re going to have to increase our level of open-mindedness and the way we connect with fans,” says the Blue Jays’ President and CEO. “The way we think about our game and the way we actually play and produce our game - the path back is likely to be a long one.”

Shapiro is the first guest on a new miniseries of podcasts brought to you by our co-hosts Matthew Stone, Leaders’ Senior Product Manager, and Steve Gera, the CEO of Gains Group, which helps some of sport’s greatest teams and athletes maximise the value of their data and technology.

The duo will bring you a slate of guests drawn from across sports performance to discuss how they are adapting to the new normal, attempting to thrive and contribute to the eventual reboot of the sports performance landscape.

From the comfort of his home office and standing desk, Shapiro talks about:

Ongoing scenario-planning at the Blue Jays [5:00];
The unintended consequences of the MLB shutdown [9:00];
Why the Blue Jays are prioritising mental health and wellbeing for all athletes and staff [15:40];
Knowing how to check the organisation’s cultural health [22:00];
Why the potential of the team’s new practice facility still remains unknown [25:20].

Steve Gera: Twitter | LinkedIn

Matthew Stone: Twitter | LinkedIn

Further listening:

Jess Thirlby, Head Coach, England Netball

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

"Even before my playing career concluded, I'd already started my coaching journey," says England Netball Roses Head Coach Jess Thirlby.

She continues: "a) I wanted to share my knowledge and b) I really wanted to explore the game; I was fascinated with how many ways you could play the game, coach the game, and go about imparting that knowledge in others and really helping other people to reach their potential."

Thirlby, who has coached across the domestic and international game for almost two decades, now has the chance to do that with the Roses, as she leads the Commonwealth champions' defence of their gold medal at the Birmingham Games on home soil in 2022.

In a wide-ranging conversation with the Leaders Performance Podcast, she also discusses:

A holistic approach to coaching in the modern game [19:30];
Setting her hopes and expectations for the Roses before taking the coaching reins [27:00];
The debriefing process after a major competition [42:30];
Future-proofing the coach in netball [53:00].

Further listening:

Andy Friend, Head Coach, Connacht Rugby

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

For the best part of a year we have endeavoured to bring you human performance experts across the world discussing best practice, the role of performance data, and what the future of athlete and intelligence management systems might look like. In this episode, we spoke to Tommy Powers, the strength & conditioning consultant at the NHL's Arizona Coyotes.

He also heads up his own performance centre called Empowers Performance, where he works to formulate programmes for individual athletes from youth to pro level.

On the conversational agenda were:

His journey from playing NCAA hockey to strength coaching [1:40];
How hockey has evolved during his time in the NHL in terms of tech and S&C [4:20];
His work integrating Kinduct technologies and other products into his own performance centre [12:15];
What the future looks like in the marriage between hockey and technology [17:40].

Regardless of whether you’re a coach just trying to track and train your athletes or a performance director leading multiple staff and juggling a variety of data sources, Kinduct’s athlete intelligence and management systems will help you better understand your athletes to drive improved performance.

Kinduct’s broad range of tools allows you to consolidate various athlete data sources, analyze that information for actionable insights, collaborate on programming across multiple departments or locations, and deliver that plan through a variety of athlete-facing engagement solutions.

Find out what hundreds of elite sport organizations already know and let Kinduct help provide you with the right information, with the right tools, at the right time, to help inform your decisions.

For more information, check out kinduct.com.

The Leaders Performance Podcast returns with Andy Friend, the Head Coach of Connacht Rugby. The Canberra native has been coaching for more than two decades across three continents, building the sort of resume that enticed Connacht to charge Friend with sustaining their recent success.

Having been forced to retire prematurely due to injury, Friend stayed in the sport as a skills coach and assistant, first with the Waratahs, then with the Brumbies, where he developed a relationship with Head Coach Eddie Jones. He went with Jones to the Australia men's national team before striking out as a head coach in his own right at Harlequins in 2005.

He returned to the Brumbies as Head Coach in 2008 before spending four years coaching in Japan at the Canon Eagles [2012-14] and Suntory Sungoliath [2014-16].

Friend then coached for two years with the Australia men's sevens before Connacht came calling in 2018 and handed him a remit of sustain the success that led them to the top table of European rugby.

On the conversational agenda were:

His transition from being a skills coach/assistant to a head coach [5.35];
Providing Development opportunities for his staff [14:00];
Optimising learning environments [20:10];
The balance between data and coaching intuition in rugby union [28:30];
His biggest lessons at Connacht so far [29:55].

Further listening:

Sir Dave Brailsford

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to the fourth in a new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Kinduct. Over the course of this series you'll hear from human performance experts across the world discussing best practice, the role of performance data, and what the future of athlete and intelligence management systems might look like.

Episode 1 with Kevin Forbes, Enterprise Product Manager at Kinduct, is available here.

Episode 2 with Brandon McDaniel, Head of Strength & Conditioning at the LA Dodgers, is available here.

Episode 3 with Josh Walker, the Co-Founder and President of the Sports Innovation Lab, is available here.

In this episode we spoke to Dave Anderson, the Chief Digital Officer, and Steve Gera, the Chief Executive, of the Gains Group consultancy.

They were an ideal pair with whom to discuss Athlete Management Systems, both their evolution and where teams can look for a competitive edge.

Also on the agenda were:

Building strategies around using data [2:00];
How Anderson and Gera will work with a team to solve issues [13:22];
Why they are still learning [19:06];
The future of Athlete Management Systems [20:20].

Regardless of whether you’re a coach just trying to track and train your athletes or a performance director leading multiple staff and juggling a variety of data sources, Kinduct’s athlete intelligence and management systems will help you better understand your athletes to drive improved performance.

Kinduct’s broad range of tools allows you to consolidate various athlete data sources, analyze that information for actionable insights, collaborate on programming across multiple departments or locations, and deliver that plan through a variety of athlete-facing engagement solutions.

Find out what hundreds of elite sport organizations already know and let Kinduct help provide you with the right information, with the right tools, at the right time, to help inform your decisions.

For more information, check out kinduct.com.

The Leaders Performance Podcast brought to you in association with our supporters at

"First of all, whether it be with the Tigers or the Rockets, it's always been a food-first approach."

The Leaders Performance Podcast has asked Javair Gillett, who serves as the Director of Athletic Performance at the NBA's Houston Rockets, how he works to educate their playing group around their use of supplements.

"NSF has been instrumental," he continues. "I brought that over from baseball." Gillett spent 14 years with the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball before moving on to the Rockets, where he has spent the past six seasons. NSF Certified for Sport® supplements are mandated throughout MLB but Gillett brought it with him to the NBA.

"I want to protect the athlete and I also need to protect my staff and the organisation."

Over the course of a wide-ranging chat about S&C practices, we covered:

Building S&C programs in both MLB and the NBA [2:34];
The challenge of getting athlete buy-in [5:11];
Why baseball players are particularly willing to buy into supplements [7:06];
Gillett's views that modern NBA players are not prepped for load in live play [13:28];
Advice he'd offer to aspiring S&C coaches [16:29].

Contact Javair Gillett @javairgillett

Previous Episode:

Leaders Performance Podcast: Sir Dave Brailsford

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Eliud Kipchoge ran into the record books in shattering the two-hour barrier for the marathon on 12 October.

Beyond the Kenyan’s brilliance, the mastermind of the operation was Sir Dave Brailsford, the Principal of Team Ineos cycling, who served as CEO on the Ineos 1:59 Challenge, spent five months leading a project that proved a triumph of human performance, science and technology.

In a Leaders Performance Podcast exclusive, Brailsford goes public with the details of how a large and disparate team came together to break boundaries in distance running. First, he explains how he worked to bring together the engagement and publicity elements of the Ineos 1:59 Challenge with the performance question at the heart of the project.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

How the Ineos 1:59 Challenge differed from Nike and Kipchoge’s unsuccessful Breaking2 project in 2017 [ from 9:20];
The steps taken once it was decided that Vienna’s Prater Park would make for the best venue [from 17:00];
Brailsford’s work to get everyone on the team pulling in the same direction [from 26:50];
The execution of the run by Kipchoge and Co. [from 32:50];
What success meant to Brailsford and the future of marathon running [from 39:00].

Further Listening:

Ep 50: Simon Wheatley

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

“We’ve used tennis as the platform but really this is a book for sports parents, sports coaches. It’s for athletes who really want to understand how they can create a much more successful life as well as be a successful athlete.”

Simon Wheatley recently co-authored with Keith Humphrey a book called The Sweet Spot: Unleashing Potential in Tennis Coaches, Players & Parents.

It is going down a treat in the tennis community and he recently spoke to the Leaders Performance Institute about their reasons for writing what is effectively a coaching manual and the ways in which it could prove to be valuable tool elsewhere in elite sport.

Over the course of the conversation Wheatley discusses:

The ‘magic of three’ as a development trio of athlete, coach and parents [from 3:00];
The four main types of learning style and their coaching implications [15:00];
Single, double and triple-loop learning [20:00];
Creating contracts of agreement between players, coaches and parents [35:00];
Push and pull behaviours in coaching [41:00];

Further listening:

Behind the Scenes at Leaders – London, 2019

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Burnley manager Sean Dyche | Chelsea manager Emma Hayes | Google's creativity guru Kirk Vallis | Internationally renowned storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy.

The latest edition of the Leaders Sport Performance Podcast comes from behind the scenes at Twickenham, the home of England Rugby, and, for the first time this year, the flagship London edition of the Leaders Sport Performance Podcast.

On the conversational agenda:

The Leaders Performance Institute's Matthew Stone and Luke Whitworth reflect on two days of high impact learning and idea-sharing with event host and performance psychologist Michael Caulfield;
Sean Dyche and Emma Hayes (conversation, recorded pitchside at a noisy Twickenham Stadium, starts at 11:57) , managers of Premier League side Burnley and Women's Super League side Chelsea respectively, share their views on evolving a communication style to fit the different expectations and mindsets of younger players, and the pros and cons of opening up for documentary filmmakers;
Google's Global Head of Creative Capability Development Kirk Vallis (conversation starts at 27.38) explains why a creative mindset is so important for organisations and individuals looking to learn and grow; and shares his tips on how to build creative capability in yourself and in your teams;
Internationally renowned storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy (conversation starts at 46.51) delivers meaning through the art of telling stories; she explains why it's the most effective form of coaching, and how to do it like a professional.

The Leaders Performance Podcast brought to you in association with our supporters at NSF Certified for Sport®

“By some we’re viewed as a world leader and by many we’re viewed as a model program – something to base their own programs on.”

Jon Coyles, the Vice President of Drug, Health & Safety Programs at Major League Baseball speaks with considerable pride at the status of MLB’s anti-doping program, which is one of the most stringent and transparent in sport.

Coyles is joined in conversation by Bob Lenaghan, Assistant General Counsel at the MLBPA, who work in conjunction with MLB to deliver a program that supports, educates and protects ballplayers when using supplements. The duo delve into the characteristics that define their anti-doping program.

Also on the agenda were:

How MLB and the MLBPA work with NSF Certified for Sport® to reduce the risk and offer support to players [16:00];
The ways that athletes can reduce the risk of consuming contaminated products [20:30];
Advice that Coyles and Lenaghan would give to other professional sports [24:15];
Where anti-doping is going in the next 5-10 years [27:00]

Previous Episode:

Leaders Performance Podcast: Jonathan Harding

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to the third in a new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Kinduct. Over the course of this series you'll hear from human performance experts across the world discussing best practice, the role of performance data, and what the future of athlete and intelligence management systems might look like.

Episode 1 with Kevin Forbes, Enterprise Product Manager at Kinduct, is available here.

Episode 2 with Brandon McDaniel, Head of Strength & Conditioning at the LA Dodgers, is available here.

For this episode, we spoke to Josh Walker, the Co-Founder and President of the Sports Innovation Lab, identifies and evaluates the technology products and services that will power the future of sports.

Walker spoke about the need for sports tech to speak to the end user, as well as the challenge of education and informing coaching staff of its value.

Also on the agenda were:

Why Moneyball is not just for the pros these days [3:15];
How data is helping drive the specialisation of performance [6:13];
The challenge of bring sports tech to new leagues [10:17];
Some of the surprises in sports tech that Walker has encountered on his journey with the Sports Innovation Lab [15:23].

Regardless of whether you’re a coach just trying to track and train your athletes or a performance director leading multiple staff and juggling a variety of data sources, Kinduct’s athlete intelligence and management systems will help you better understand your athletes to drive improved performance.

Kinduct’s broad range of tools allows you to consolidate various athlete data sources, analyze that information for actionable insights, collaborate on programming across multiple departments or locations, and deliver that plan through a variety of athlete-facing engagement solutions.

Find out what hundreds of elite sport organizations already know and let Kinduct help provide you with the right information, with the right tools, at the right time, to help inform your decisions.

For more information, check out kinduct.com.

We start the latest edition of the Leaders Performance podcast by asking author Jonathan Harding about the meaning behind the title of his latest book, Mensch: Beyond the Cones. “It’s the German word for a ‘person’ or ‘human’; it’s also a word in German that can be used out of aggravation or frustration – you’d say ‘mensch: come on!’,” he replies.

“It can also mean being a ‘good person’. That’s not a German word in that sense, that’s a Yiddish word. So there’s a quite lot of variation behind it and I thought it best summed up what I was trying to do with the book, and ultimately that was to explain or shed some light, through the stories of a number of different coaches, on how coaching needs to return to more human values, particularly in football, because I think we’ve forgotten."

German-developed coaches are some of the most valued in European football but, if the nation's production line of coaches, not to mention playing talent, is to continue in the same vein, then the human element cannot be overlooked.

As Harding adds: “Part of all sport is that these are just people, whether they’re coaches, players, members of staff – everybody in the game needs to be viewed and remembered as humans and I think that’s something I was really keen to put across.”

He does so through the eyes of some of Germany's most respected coaches, who have been part of the overhaul that saw a moribund German football team rise from its inauspicious performance at Euro 2000 to world champions in 2014. Some bold decisions in terms of player and coach development were made along the way and, following the team's exit at the group stages of the 2018 World Cup, Harding argues that similarly affirmative action is needed once again.

Coming up you’ll also hear Harding, who works as a football correspondent in Germany, discuss:

The German Fußball-Lehrer coaching qualification [4:37];
That post-Euro 2000 reset in German player and coach development that that ultimately led the men to success at the 2014 Fifa World Cup [9:28];
Why coaching appointments are too often made using the wrong criteria [12:30];
The work of Helmut Groß, Ralf Rangnick and Ralph Hasenhüttl during their time working together at RB Leipzig [15:17];
What went wrong for Germany at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the lessons to be learnt [25:38].

Previous Episode:

Leaders Performance Podcast: Behind the Scenes at LSPS Atlanta

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to an exclusive behind the scenes episode recorded at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit at Atlanta’s state-of-the-art Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The two-day event between 25 and 26 June attracted Leaders Performance Institute members from far and wide, who heard from esteemed speakers including Mark Shapiro of the Toronto Blue Jays, Nyaka NiiLampti - VP of Wellness and Clinical Services at the NFL - and New York Times-bestselling author David Epstein.

We also had people on the ground going behind the scenes to catch up with a selection of the speakers and moderators who made the two days such an emphatic success.

You’ll hear from:

Thomas Dimitroff, General Manager of the Atlanta Falcons, who discussed his approach to hiring and firing, as well as the coffee performance lessons he gets from Sir Dave Brailsford [2:19];

Andy Friend, Head Coach of Connacht Rugby, on the theme of people development as well as his thoughts on some of this favourite sessions across the two days [18:14];

Brad Sheehan, Managing Director of Flight Safety at Delta Air Lines, delves into the aviation industry’s mantra of continuous improvement and ‘healthy scepticism’ [25:40];

Angus Mugford [Toronto Blue Jays], performance consultant Peter Vint, Steve Gera [Gains Group] and Leaders’ very own Luke Whitworth and Matthew Stone on their reflections on both days of the summit [40:04].

Previous Episode:

The Kinduct Athlete Management Series Podcast - Episode 2: Brandon McDaniel

Listen to Brandon above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to the second in a new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Kinduct. Over the course of this series you'll hear from human performance experts across the world discussing best practice, the role of performance data, and what the future of athlete and intelligence management systems might look like. Episode 1 with Kevin Forbes, Enterprise Product Manager at Kinduct, is available here.

For this episode, we sat down with Brandon McDaniel, the Head of Strength & Conditioning at the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He talked about the evolution of athlete management systems during his time in MLB and how he works to fill performance gaps for the athletes on the Dodgers' roster.

We also discussed:

How the Dodgers came into their own as a performance staff, evolving beyond mere spreadsheets in their use of data [3:00];
The importance of consolidating workflows if you are to work as an effective interdisciplinary team [6:30];
How technology is allowing the Dodgers to ask new and different performance questions [9:40];
The development of S&C protocols with the advent of data [16:00];
Surprises in his role and why staff members need to think like a player [18:50].

Regardless of whether you’re a coach just trying to track and train your athletes or a performance director leading multiple staff and juggling a variety of data sources, Kinduct’s athlete intelligence and management systems will help you better understand your athletes to drive improved performance.

Kinduct’s broad range of tools allows you to consolidate various athlete data sources, analyze that information for actionable insights, collaborate on programming across multiple departments or locations, and deliver that plan through a variety of athlete-facing engagement solutions.

Find out what hundreds of elite sport organizations already know and let Kinduct help provide you with the right information, with the right tools, at the right time, to help inform your decisions.

For more information, check out kinduct.com

The sense across a day of insight at the City Football Academy in Manchester was of a topic – wellbeing in elite sport – finally reaching a tipping point into the main discourse.

Themes covered ranged from developing performance environments and the fulfilment duties of care, to resilience and mental health. Leaders Performance Institute members both gleaned and shared knowledge in equal measure at a fitting venue that brought together elite sports practitioners from across the globe. The key insights can be found here – if you are a Leaders Performance Institute member.

Throughout the day, we caught up with a number of speakers and moderators to gain a sense of what insights they were taking from the day.

You will hear from:

David Fletcher, Director of Performance Psychology & Management at Loughborough University, on notions of assessing and developing resilience and where the balance is to be struck between challenge and support [3:00];

Simon Kemp, Medical Services Director at the Rugby Football Union, discussing steps that enable both athletes and staff to thrive and flourish in a high performance environment [17:00];

Matti Clements, Deputy Director of Athlete Wellbeing & Engagement at the Australian Institute of Sport, on building out the fundamentals and adopting a startup mentality when it comes to wellbeing [26:00];

John Bull, Head of High Performance at Management Futures, discussing his initial thoughts on the day’s proceedings, which he viewed from his position as compere [34:30].

Previous Episode:

Ep 43: Brad Stulberg, author of Peak Performance

Listen to Brad above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Passion is an important consideration for athletes and coaches alike but how do you harness that passion while also avoiding burnout? That is one of the major questions addressed by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness in their latest book The Passion Paradox. “This book is about learning to control your passions so that it doesn’t control you,” explains Stulberg in this exclusive interview with the Leaders Performance Podcast.

“And if you can control your passion then it might be the most powerful force not only for performance but a good, fulfilling life. If you have passion and you can’t control it, it’s a slippery slope to something that looks more like addiction.”

In a tightly-packed agenda Stulberg also delves into:

Why his views on the subject put him at odds with Jon Bon Jovi [3:30];
How coaches can help athletes find harmonious rather than obsessive passion [10:30];
Prevention vs promotion mindsets and the fear of failure [15:30];
The misconceptions around meditation and mindfulness [23:00];
How athletes can control narratives, which quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies [26:40].

Previous Episode:

Ep 42: An Encore from the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Las Vegas.

Listen to the round-up above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Welcome to the first in a new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Kinduct. Over the next few months you'll hear from human performance experts across the world discussing best practice, the role of performance data, and what the future of athlete and intelligence management systems might look like.

In this first episode of the Kinduct Athlete Management Series we sat down with Kevin Forbes, the Enterprise Product Manager at Kinduct.

He tells us of some of the ways that data can be used to make athletes faster, stronger and healthier.

Also on the conversational agenda were:

How athlete tracking solutions have changed our understanding of the nuances of sport [1:10];
The benefits of a consistent approach to training and recovery programs [6:30];
Athlete ownership of data and the question of organizational access [12:20];
The need for tech solutions to reflect and respect a team's culture [21:19].

Welcome to the second episode in our new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Keiser. In this second episode, Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch caught up with Aaron Wellman.

Aaron is the Strength & Conditioning Coach of the New York Giants.

His arrival at the Giants saw him overhaul the team’s offseason and in-season training regimens and the result was a significant decrease in season-ending injuries suffered by Giants’ players.

The team’s practice facility in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is fully stocked with Keiser equipment.

Coming up, you’ll hear Aaron delve into the goals of his S&C program and the importance of conveying a clear message.

Also up for discussion were:

The absence of absolutes in S&C beyond pure physics - athletes are people, not machines [3:30];
Aaron’s desire for players to ask ‘why?’ [4:00];
Mitigating the time constraints and inability to build chronic workloads in the NFL [12:10];
The difference between designing regimens for student-athletes and professional football players [16:10];
Why the timing of an NFL bye week can have a significant impact on performance [22:20].

Previous Episode:

The Keiser Series Podcast: Episode 1 – Jimmy Pritchard

Welcome to the first in a new series of podcasts from the Leaders Performance Institute and our partners Keiser. Over the next few months you’ll hear from human performance experts from around the world, discussing best practice, the role of technology and what the future of training and rehabilitation might look like.

In this first episode we sat down with Jimmy Pritchard, who is Director of Strength and Conditioning at the the renowned Ski & Snowboard Club Vail in Colorado.

He discusses the club's recently affiliation with US Ski & Snowboard and the variety of champion athletes it has hosted, including Lindsay Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin as well as Sidney Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins.

Also on the agenda were:

Pritchard's typical working week [7:50];
The energy systems of winter sports athletes [11:10];
The importance of understanding training age [12:22];
The use of internal and external cueing in S&C [15:40];
Pritchard's biggest lesson in S&C [20:15].

What was your key takeaway from the Leaders Performance Institute's first visit to the desert? With best practice insights from fields as diverse as World Series Poker, haute cuisine and the US Air Force. It is safe to say there was something on the menu for everyone at the UFC's Las Vegas Performance Institute and we could not have picked a more fitting venue.

The curtain came down and members of the Leaders Performance Institute repaired to the VENUE for a well-earned drink and the opportunity to compare notes. Our own notes can be found here.

At the same time, the LPI's very own Luke Whitworth and Matthew Stone, with Coronas in hand, caught up with several attendees to gauge their reaction to what they had just seen and heard.

And you will hear from:

Ian Yates, Head of the National Performance Pathway at the Lawn Tennis Association, on why labels such as 'objective' and 'subjective' in high performance do not tell half the story [6:30];
Peter Vint, our compere for the day, who contemplates why sport is too often ill-equipped mentally, emotionally and psychologically to help its athletes [16:30];
Bryan Burnstein & Paul McGinlay, both of Cirque du Soleil, who feel organisations can do more to understand the motivations and journeys of athletes and high performers [26:50].

Previous Episode:

Ep 41: Duncan French, UFC

Listen to the round-up above and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Mark Warburton, the former Manager of Nottingham Forest, Glasgow Rangers and Brentford, is recounting the tale of a recent job interview for the benefit of the Leaders Performance Institute. "I went for this interview and they asked me what my first 30 days in the job would look like," he says incredulously. "Someone had said it to me jokingly two weeks earlier; 'forget the 100 days it's the one month'."

In one small anecdote Warburton, who also served as Technical Director during his time at Brentford, sums up the cut-throat nature of elite British football, as well as his desire to return to the fray.

Warburton was delivering some sessions on executive leadership development to a group of Qatari professionals working on delivery for the 2020 Fifa World Cup in Qatar and he references these sessions throughout this wide-ranging interview.

It was in a moment of downtime at the conclusion of day where he ran us through his unique journey from the world of finance and the trading floor to the training pitch, which has established his reputation as one of the smartest operators in the British game.

He also spoke about:

His 24-year finance career and why he ultimately returned to football [3:30];
The evolving role of the technical director in British football [17:00];
Managing powerful and idiosyncratic owners [19:30];
His time handling the pressure and scrutiny that came with the manager's role at Rangers [36:00]
Managing the media and 'taking the bullets for the board' [39:00]

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Duncan French, UFC

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"The way the fight is being won is changing - strike rates are up, knockouts are down and results by decision have gone up." So says Duncan French of the UFC and the world of mixed martial arts. The Vice President of Performance at the UFC explains that what it takes to win in the UFC - so comprehensively benchmarked in this recent report - continues to evolve in a sport that has been professional for just 25 years. That is why the opening of the $14 million UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas has enabled French and his colleagues to stay on top in such a dynamic environment.

He says: "What we hope to do is pull back the layers of how you succeed; what are the determinants of performance that underpin success in mixed martial arts competition and how do we reverse engineer that to build out our programming strategies, our injury prevention or regeneration strategies to minimise risk; and how do we take and distribute that on a global scale?"

Amid this excitement, we are heading to UFC's Performance Institute in Vegas for the West Coast Edition of our 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit. French is also on the bill - something touched upon towards the end of our conversation - but in addition to the goings on behind the walls of the institute, listeners will also hear French discuss:

His role as VP enables him to direct the UFC's performance vision, philosophy and strategy [2.00];
Running an athlete-centred, facility-enabled, coach-led, and data-driven model [14.50];
How the layout of the UFC Performance Institute influences performance [24.30];
The opening of the UFC's Shanghai Performance Institute later this year [33.20].

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EP 39: Mubarak Malik, New York Knicks

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Mubarak Malik believes the New York Knicks are just a few steps from achieving something special in the NBA.

The Leaders Performance Podcast spoke to the Knicks' Director of Performance ahead of the NBA Global Game in London where the Knicks faced the Washington Wizards at the O2 Arena.

The result may not have been to Malik's liking that evening, with the nominal hosts claiming a 101-100 victory, but he was in good spirits and spoke candidly about his five years in New York, as well as his time at the Pittsburgh Pirates and EXOS.

Malik laid out how his role has evolved from focusing on strength & conditioning in the weight room to leveraging all the resources at hand to create robust players capable of facing an 82-game regular season, while ensuring players adopt the habits befitting a professional in the NBA.

There was a clear sense that while the team is enduring a difficult season on the court but everyone, from President Steve Mills and the front office down through the roster and basketball operations staff is working to put in place the high performance systems that will enable the Knicks to return to the NBA Playoffs.

Malik also spoke about:

Building a philosophy of winning with a 'beginner's mind' [3:48];
Working with young players and finding opportunities to teach them good habits [7:57];
Measuring performance and establishing performance systems in chaotic environments such as sport and the military [9:30];
How earning the trust and respect of his peers and understanding the NBA mentality has been a steep learning curve [24:45];
The Knicks' approach to wellbeing and creating safe spaces for athletes [41:16].

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EP 38: Aaron Williamon, Royal College of Music

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What role does science have in creating great art? This is the question that the Centre for Performance [CPS] Science at the Royal College of Music [RCM] continually attempts to answer and it was with this in mind that we sat down with Aaron Williamon, Professor of Performance Science at the RCM, for the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast. Williamon, who spoke onstage at the 2018 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in November, invited us into his office to discuss how the RCM is seeking to redefine musical performance by taking a holistic approach to talent development that takes into consideration both the physical and mental aspects of performance. He says: "The objective is pushed along by trying to get people to practice their performing, to learn in the spotlight."

Also on the agenda were:

The constant redefinition of the upper limits of human intellectual and motor capability [10:55];
The physical and psychological performance stressors that can impact on performance [15:25];
Environmental and interpersonal catalysts that influence a performer's path to greatness [19:43];
The distributed interactive performance simulations offered by the CPS [30:08];
Why the greats are able to balance personal conviction with audience expectations [48:29];

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Ep 37: Behind the Curtain at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit

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That's a wrap for the latest Leaders Sport Performance Summit at London's Kia Oval. The great and the good of world sport and performance gathered in south London to share best practice insights behind leadership and culture, data & analytics as well as human performance.

Weaving in and out of the corridors were the Leaders Performance Institute's David Cushnan and James Emmett, who joined us on loan from our sister podcast, the Leaders Sport Business Podcast. The duo rounded up a retinue of speakers, delegates and one very special competition winner who hear their instant take on the events spanning both days.

In this special edition you will hear from:

Tom Markham, Head of Strategic Business Development at Sports Interactive, who opens up on Football Manager's status as a 'breath of fresh air in a world of vested interests' (listen from 3:37);
Anne Keovathong, Great Britain Fed Cup Captain, who discusses the advent of data-driven decision making in tennis (listen from 12:11);
Craig Ranson, Director of Athlete Health at the English Institute of Sport, who takes us through the organisation's strategic focus on mental health and wellbeing initiatives (listen from 18:09);
Sam Robertson, Head of Research & Innovation at the Western Bulldogs, who spoke onstage and doubled up as a judge for the inaugural Innovation Lab in association with Formula E (listen from 33:39);
Miky Tamir, Chair and Co-Founder of Track160 - our very first winners at the Innovation Lab - who outlines the Israeli startup's history and hopes for the future (listen from 38:22);
Simon Timson, Performance Director at the LTA, who reveals the most rewarding aspects of his work (listen from 44:28);
Véronique Richard, a Mental Performance consultant who sometimes works with Cirque du Soleil, wraps things up with some reflections on her speaking slot and the importance of risk-friendly environments across elite performance (listen from 50:00).

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Ep 36: Mike Brey & Matt Painter

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Mike Brey, the Head Coach of the Notre Dame men's basketball team, remembers the time a player came into his office and closed the door. Most of the time, he says, a player who shuts the door is about to divulge some misdemeanour from the night before. Not this time. "This player said, 'Coach, I really think you're selling us short' - he flat out called me out," recalled Brey onstage at the 2017 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Chicago. Brey had publicly spoken of reaching the NCAA tournament but the player thought their ambitions should be grander. The grin on his face throughout this retelling indicates that any consternation on his part was short-lived. In fact, as he says, "this was good stuff right here." There is a nod of approval from Matt Painter, Head Coach of the Purdue men's basketball team, who spoke alongside Brey. The 'good stuff' in question was this demonstration of a team-first ethic and players empowered to take responsibility on behalf of their teammates. A younger, less confident Brey may have been immediately placed on the defensive but instead the team rallied to go deep in the Big East.

"I'm all about you if you're all about us," Painter tells potential recruits. Beyond the promotion of the team above all else, the duo also discussed:

The importance of older players in setting the tone of the locker room;
Why parents needs to be weaned off the college and the coaches;
Why healthy cultures are found in environments where people are willing to challenge each other;
The value of video sessions as a sanctuary where strength in adversity can be nurtured;
Why coaches need to be wary of players leading a team in the wrong direction.

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Eric Ernst

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"I'd drawn out a plan of how I was going to be doing things but in reality it's been very different - I've adapted." Eric Ernst joined Formula E as its Head of Technology in March and soon had to throw his plans out of the window. He says: "Things I thought would be straightforward are really hard and things that I thought would be impossible have already been done." It has been a challenge but one he has got his head around ahead of what promises to be Formula E's most exciting season so far. Ernst, who came to Leaders HQ for this in-depth interview, delved into the differences between working at the Volvo Ocean Race, where he was previously employed, and the fast-paced world of motorsport where races cross continents in a matter of weeks. Also up for discussion that morning were:

Formula E's efforts to balance innovation with a retention of strategic elements in races;
Setting priorities within the technology department;
The value of working groups when it comes to problem-solving;
The core values he sets up above all others.

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Paul McGinley

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"So many times I crossed the finish line before I knew I'd won." Paul McGinley is reflecting on his illustrious career on golf's European Tour which reached its zenith when he led Team Europe to victory in the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. That feat alone was enough to hold an audience of successful business leaders in rapt attention at the 2015 Leaders Sport Business Summit in New York. Over the course of 30 or so minutes McGinley revealed some of the analytical mind that marked him out as the ideal person to lead the Europeans who were, by then, overwhelming favourites to win their eighth Ryder Cup in ten editions. The Dubliner had tasted victory in golf's transatlantic showpiece on three occasions as a player and, upon his appointment as Captain in 2012, immediately set about the challenges that go with leading a team of supremely talented individuals. The two-year run up allowed him to meet with each of his prospective players as the field was whittled down from a field of 50 to 12, which was essential given that the week of the competition would be the first time he'd have each member of the team in the same room. As well as the extensive travelling, McGinley also spoke about:

His reasons for using Sir Alex Ferguson as a sounding board;
How he approached the particular challenge of the Gleneagles course;
Why data was of value but needed to be used sparingly;
The importance of clarity and consistency in the messages being delivered;
The need to allow the world's best players to be themselves;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Howie Roseman & Michael Reschke

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The Philadelphia Eagles' EVP of Football Operations Howie Roseman beamed with pride in February as he watched his team lift the Vince Lombardi Trophy at the end of Super Bowl LII. It marked the culmination of 18 years working in the Eagles front office but this Thursday, as Philadelphia hosts the Atlanta Falcons in this season's curtain-raiser, the team goes again. No doubt the foundations have been built upon since that frosty February evening in Minneapolis but here we take a look back at some of the work that went into the Eagles' triumph. Roseman was joined onstage at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London by Michael Reschke, who is Head of Sport at VfB Stuttgart but at the time of recording was Sporting Director at German Bundesliga champions FC Bayern Munich. The duo talked building and sustaining a winning culture and ably compared and contrasted approaches on both sides of the Atlantic. Other items on the agenda included:

The importance of service to the organisation above individual recognition;
Reschke's working relationship with then Bayern Head Coach Pep Guardiola (now at Manchester City);
Developing an understanding of what the best players look like and using that template to shape your organisational vision;
The need to develop youth coaches if talent pathways are to remain bountiful;
Helping players deal with the high expectations placed on their young shoulders.

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Gareth Townsend

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"The hardest thing as a coach is to watch and say nothing," says Gareth Townsend. Surrey County Cricket Club's Academy Director oversees one of the finest youth development pathways in English sport and has got used to his alumni filling the ranks of the England men's national team. That said, he has learnt how to speak and when to speak with the youngsters that fill the academy from the age of nine through to 17. Townsend continues: "There's a huge amount of resource put into the support network for these players; that's great, it works, and it's needed and functions at the highest level with the top sides in the sport, but you don't want to take away the independence of players making decisions on their own." It's a fine line but Surrey have learn to toe it adroitly. Over the course of a morning at Leaders HQ we discuss how Townsend and his colleagues work to balance the art and science of coaching with the vision and purpose established at a club founded in 1845. Other topics committed to podcast during our chat included:

Early specialisation and the reasons Surrey discourage this practice;
The club's three-phase feedback process;
Why the best players are the best learners in a multidisciplinary era;
How Townsend and his colleagues' relationships change as academy players mature;
The club's move away from group psychology sessions to individual.

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Neil Black

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"I was like a headless chicken at first," says Neil Black. The Performance Director of British Athletics is reflecting on his first days in a role he took in 2012 shortly after Team GB enjoyed a hugely successful Olympic and Paralympic Games on home soil in London. The nation would proceed to accrue even more medals at the 2016 Games in Rio, with the track & field team picking up an additional medal. Black and his staff are clearly doing something right and here we dig down into his personal journey from club athlete to head of one of athletics' most prestigious programmes. As ever, it is as much about people as it is about strategy. Other items on the table for conversation include: * The evolution of the role of performance director within British Athletics; * British Athletics' Performance Plan Systems during a four-year Olympic and Paralympic cycle; * How the performance director's role changes as a major competition approaches. * The learnings from the Rio Olympics and how they are applied going forward; * The power balance between athletes and / or coaches and performance staffs;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Shaun Huls & Phil Coles

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“It is important to learn the ‘end state’ for the coach,” says Shaun Huls. “It is not about my numbers.” The Director of High Performance at the Philadelphia Eagles, winners of Super Bowl LII, was speaking onstage at the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York. Huls sat alongside Phil Coles, who is the Head of the Athletic Department at the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, as they delved into the important impact a high performance department can have on injury prevention and rehab at an organisation - once the coach and the management understand their value. Other topics up for discussion included:

The lessons Huls learnt from working with US Navy SEALs and those Coles brought from his time in Australian rugby and the English Premier League;
The nation that injuries most often stem from the actions of coaches and athletes themselves;
Overcoming the resistance of coaching staffs with extensive experience in any given sport;
The dangers of ‘mission creep’ for high performance staffs;
The use of data in modern sport;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Scott Hann & Jo Cole

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If you worry about your efforts to deliver actionable feedback in a manner that resonates with your athletes then you are not alone. Scott Hann ran us through his work coaching double Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Max Whitlock at the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. He was joined onstage by Jo Cole, the Head of Strings at the Royal Academy of Music, to compare and contrast with her approach to the music students who enter its fabled halls. The duo agreed that a student or athlete’s receptiveness to feedback hinges upon the relationship with the tutor or coach, which inevitably is a question of trust. They also felt that it is not only the student or athlete who evolves as a consequence, but the coach too, who must be aware of their charge’s ever-developing needs. Other topics on the agenda that morning included:

Teaching people to know themselves intimately as a performer;
The reality that performers often know there’s a problem but not what it might be;
Intentional feedback;
The creation of a safe learning space;
Filtering feedback for positive information, not the coach’s personal taste;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Alex Hill

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“You can see the eyes light up when people see similar challenges elsewhere,” says Alex Hill, Co-Founder & Director, Centre for High Performance. Hill was speaking at the conclusion of the Leaders Meet: Human Performance summit at Williams F1 HQ last week where the great and the good of the Leaders Performance Institute gathered to hear insights from worlds as diverse as motorsport and neurosurgery.

Hill has also been involved with our Leadership Development Days, where he raised the concept of centennial organisations: those which have stood the test of time and warded off their competition over the course of a century. The seven that made up his recent study included the Royal College of Art, NASA and the New Zealand All Blacks - diverse in their operations but bearing some remarkable similarities in what Hill terms ‘radically traditional qualities’.

He also touches upon:

-Why successful organisations have a stable core (purpose) and a disruptive edge;

-The risks of letting arrogance impair learning;

-The value of nervousness and openness;

-Why stewardship can be more valuable than leadership;

-His observation that the most successful companies are often intentionally inefficient;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Rob Vickerman

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“When an athlete transfers into the world beyond sport, they’re stepping out of the bubble; you have your life mapped out for you… athletes are transferring to a world where that doesn’t happen.” And with that observation Rob Vickerman, the ex-captain of England Sevens and a Premiership Fifteens player of 11 years, summed up the problem that faces all retiring athletes.

Retirement is just one of the transitions that rugby players may face during their careers - some of the others are discussed in greater depth here - and Vickerman himself was forced to retire at just 29 following a serious neck injury and numerous concussions. Since then he has gone on to found workathlete, a health and wellbeing consultancy taking messages from sport and theory to implement into business. He also has a first class degree in Leadership and Management, and post graduate qualifications in Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology.

The basis of our conversation is the Transition Talks Vickerman delivers as an Alumni Representative for the Rugby Players’ Association [RPA]. His work also takes in various schools and rugby teams and today he touches upon areas such as:

-The five fundamental areas of wellbeing;

-The importance of learning through kinesthetics [learning by doing] for the modern player;

-Positive psychological interventions that he or coaches can make;

-Developing skillsets beyond rugby;

-The differences in working with team and individual athletes;

Twitter: @robvickerman

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Mitigating Risk

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What are some of the external influences that can affect your decision-making? This was the question at the heart of this exploration of risk mitigation, suitable preparation, and approaches to failure, which went down a treat at the 2016 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York. Speaking that day were the former US Air Force Pararescueman Douglas Kechijian and New York Times-bestselling author Adam Alter, who is the Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department. Staff Sgt. Kechijian, who has since retired from the role, has been called upon to jump into the some of the most volatile combat zones in the world, provide medical care, and perform extrications - all while leading a highly-trained team of professionals. His is a world of known unknowns, which has formed the basis of much of Alter's research into risk assessment and strategic awareness at moments of heightened arousal.

The duo were join onstage at Manhattan's Times Center by regular Leaders Performance Institute moderator Dehra Harris, who is Assistant Professor of Child Psychiatry and Director of Wellness and High Performance for Graduate Medical Education at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, commented and contributed throughout to a conversation that also touched upon:

Absence/presence, the ‘liberation of latent energy’, and the reasons why sportspeople would do well to focus on no more than a few opponents at any one time;
The importance of checklists in mitigating human error
Empathy and the impact of positive peer pressure
The impact of hierarchies and the importance of humility
Gender differences in the experience of failure

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Decision-Making Under Pressure

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The finest Leaders panels bring together the great and the good from sport and beyond and this session from the 2015 Leaders Performance Summit in London was a classic of the genre. Moderated by Professor Vincent Walsh, England and Saracens full-back Alex Goode told the tale of decision-making from the sporting angle and was complemented by Wing Commander Martin Higgins, head of the RAF’s Red Arrows, and Greg Davies, who was at that time the Head of Behavioural Finance at Barclays Banks.

Each faces pressure in their roles and it has the potential to impact upon their decision-making if they are unable to face it head on and over the course of the afternoon they each explained the steps they can take to avoid the worst – while also touching upon their procedures at those moments when things go wrong.

Also on the agenda was:

Accepting mistakes in training as a grounding for continuous improvement;
The importance of establishing a set of principles and rules in performance;
The role of self-criticism;
The potential for stress to shorten time and emotional horizons;
The importance of saying ‘the unthinkable’;

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Leaders Performance Podcast: Matt Hale & Edd Vahid, Southampton FC Academy

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What goes on behind the scenes at one of English football’s best youth academies? Despite the struggles of the first team this Premier League season, Southampton FC are widely admired for their investment in youth development and not only is their first team specked with self-produced talent but their handiwork is evident across the English top flight as well as the England men’s national team as it heads into this summer’s Fifa World Cup in Russia.

Back in February, the Leaders Performance Podcast was invited to the inner sanctum to chat to Southampton’s Academy Manager, Matt Hale, and his colleague Edd Vahid, who is the Head of Coaching and Learning at the Academy. The pair described the set-up at their Staplewood Campus on England’s south coast before explaining what qualities they seek in recruits between the ages of eight and 23.

Also on the agenda that morning were:

The creation of a vision and purpose in young recruits;

The Southampton Way and being a 24-hour professional;

Preparing young players for high intensity environments;

Southampton’s provision of education and skills programmes;

Why the club regularly refines its academy process;

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Ep 23: Leaders Performance Podcast: Chris Weidman & Ray Longo

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Chris Weidman and Ray Longo were warmly received by the auditorium when they turned up at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York. At the time, Weidman was the unbeaten reigning UFC middleweight world champion – his coach Longo’s second UFC champion, following as he did in the footsteps of Matt Serra.

Weidman’s fortunes have fluctuated since that afternoon at the Times Center in Manhattan – a time when the UFC was still outlawed in his and Longo’s native New York. However, what he laid out that day, at the top of his game, was a blueprint for how to handle the moments of often brutal violence and adversity that mixed martial arts can inflict upon its participants. After all, here was a four-time NCAA All-Star Wrestler, hailing from Hofstra, who won nothing at school. Weidman’s mixed martial arts was going to be different: “I decided to be the hard-working guy – hard work and preparation bred confidence; and I stopped losing.”

Beyond Weidman’s Damascene conversion on the mats of the NCAA, you’ll also hear from him and Longo on:

-Dealing with the crossroads presented by Hurricane Sandy, which devastated his home, in 2012.

-Longo’s ‘trifecta’ that leads to the perfect alchemy between a champion and their coach.

-Weidman’s efforts to prove his doubters wrong; using their barbs as fuel.

-Why even as UFC world champion he felt he ‘knew nothing’

-Handling the balance of process versus outcome when athletes and coaches often live and die by their results.

Previous Episode:

Ep 22 Leaders Performance Podcast: The Mindset of a Chess Grandmaster, Safe Spaces for Learning, and the Importance of Soft Skills

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The Leaders Performance Podcast touched down this week with a cargo hold full of insight from the recent Leaders Sports Performance Summit in LA on 16th and 17th March. Want to understand the mindset of a chess Grand Master? Ever considered the notion of 'open vulnerability' when it comes to your athletes? Do you have your finger on the pulse when it comes to trends to look out for the performance space? Either way, you're sure to find some useful nuggets embedded in our round-up of another superb event on the West Coast.

Here, elite performance practitioners offer tips, divulge their blueprints and reveal the crucial cogs that enable them to be their best in the pursuit of success.

You'll hear from:

-Hikaru Nakamura, chess Grand Master, talks match preparation, decision-making, and developing the mindset to deal with those rare defeats

-Brandon Gardner, Stage Director & Improv Teacher, Upright Citizens Brigade, discusses measuring progress with new teams, creating safe spaces for learning, and turning negatives into positives

-Jenny Milnes, High Performance Specialist, Red Bull, chats about the importance of soft skills, the genius of coaches who put their athletes first, the onstage brilliance of Jeanne Holm, who spoke at the end of the second day, and the growing importance of esports

-Steve Gera, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Gains Group, debriefs the two days, the unique qualities that LA as a city brings to the Summit, as well as the biggest trends to watch out for in tech and the performance space over the next year

-John Baker, Mental Skills Coordinator, Chicago Cubs & Dehra Harris, Director of Wellness & High Performance, Washington University, contemplate evolving styles of leadership, keeping people happy and challenged, and the importance of ‘open vulnerability’

-Bryan Burnstein, Head of Performance Science, Cirque du Soleil, talks about the organisation’s upcoming performance summit, the commonality of the challenges around high performance, and the growing importance of performance services

Previous Episode:

Ep 21 Leaders Performance Podcast: Andy Flower & John Longmire

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“You need to be yourself – with skill.” Andy Flower borrowed that phrase from the lexicon of leadership consultants Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones but here, onstage at the 2014 Leaders Sport Performance in London, he delved far deeper into his own approach to authenticity. Flower, who at the time had just finished a highly successful stint as Head Coach of the England men’s cricket team, was joined by John Longmire, who is still the Head Coach of the AFL’s Sydney Swans.

The pair chatted at length about leading high performance organisations and pulling together the different strands that enable their players to be the best they can be. Other topics covered that day included:

Harnessing the hunger for continuous improvement
The importance of mentors in your senior playing group
Enabling players to focus on a simple range of performance factors
Avoiding the creation of a dependency culture
Experiential vs classroom-based learning

It’s good to talk. That is the premise behind the Rugby Players’ Association’s (RPA) Lift The Weight campaign. Launched in February 2017 to help fight the stigma surrounding mental health issues, Lift The Weight promotes the idea that it is OK to not be OK; that if a player has a mental health problem there is help available – and it is almost certain that your fellow professionals will have experienced something similar. The campaign is headed up by Caroline Guthrie, Senior Personal Development Manager at the RPA, who talked John Portch through the confidential counselling and various other services available to its membership of 700 players and a further 400 ex-professionals. Topics touched upon include:

-Lift The Weight’s efforts to cultivate a culture of openness.

-The importance of using former players to share their experience of mental health issues.

-The importance of storytelling and providing opportunities for individuals to connect with others.

-RPA Transition Weekends and the emotional impact of big changes in a player’s life.

-Educating players to recognise the symptoms and signs of depression or addictive behaviours.

For more information on Lift The Weight check out: https://therpa.co.uk/lifttheweight/

“High performers are in extraordinary situations but often they are ordinary people and that transition does certain things,” says forensic psychiatrist Ceri Evans. At the 2014 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London, Evans, a former soccer player who has worked with the World Cup-winning New Zealand All Blacks and now works with English Premier League club Arsenal, was joined onstage by David Priestley, who already worked for Arsenal as Head of Psychology & Personal Development.

The duo talked extensively about their work in sport helping to prepare athletes for the mental rigours of performance at the very top, providing some examples of practical interventions along the way. Other topics on the agenda at the Emirates Stadium that day included:

-The importance of the coach in creating a culture of humanity.

-Why character isn’t enough in high performance.

-The problem of making assumptions about people’s ability to cope with pressure.

-Why both positive and negative thinking can be distorting.

The Surrey County Cricket Club duo were the latest guests on the Leaders Performance Podcast. Gareth Batty is a veteran spin bowler with over 500 county appearances to his name who has also represented England on a number of occasions. Arun Harinath is a top-order batsman with over ten years’ experience playing at the top level. Both men are starting to think about their post-playing careers. Join us as we take a look at the plans of two athletes preparing for life after sport.

Batty has enjoyed over 20 years at the top of the English game and has only recently been thinking about what his future holds beyond playing, while Harinath, whose position has often been more tenuous, has regularly considered his options since the first time he strapped on his pads as a professional. We discuss their plans with particular regard to:

-How provisions have evolved for cricketers and the work of the Professional Cricketers’ Association.

-Striking a balance between thinking of your future and honing the skills needed for the here and now.

-Seeking work experience opportunities with third parties such as the club sponsors.

-The transferable skills that all athletes will have.

-An athlete’s ability to reinvent themselves long before they retire.

Why second-in-command is sometimes best.

The mere mention of consiglieri conjures up images of The Godfather but beyond Hollywood the roles of the assistants – the No2s – are essential to any leader and organisation. This formed the central tenet of Richard Hytner’s 2015 book Consiglieri: Leading From the Shadows, which he discussed onstage at the 2015 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. For the book, he interviewed a wealth of seconds-in-command across the worlds of sport, business and politics in order to establish why in his view, second can sometimes be best.

Here, we dip into the Leaders Performance Institute archives to bring you Hytner’s session. Then serving as Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, he was well-placed to delve into the reasons why second-in-command can sometimes be best providing there is a strong dynamic between the No1 and the No2.

Hytner illustrates his point by explaining:

-Why ‘seconds’ matter to the ‘firsts’.

-The need to appreciate charismatic leaders.

-The honour and contentment to be found as a No2.

-The importance of generating emotions, as well as liberating, educating and anchoring leaders.

What does a Director of Player Personnel actually do in the NBA? Austin Ainge, who can point to that job title in his role at the Boston Celtics, is unsure. It differs from team to team but what Ainge knows for sure is that he is tasked with assembling the roster and keeping tabs on a database of hundreds of players across the globe. He is also one of the few performance staff working in elite sport who can say that their boss is their father, with the Celtics' General Manager being Danny Ainge. Together they have assembled one of the finest rosters in the NBA. Last week saw Boston take on the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA London Global Game and it was a prime opportunity for the Leaders Performance Institute to sit down with Ainge for an exclusive chat to discuss his role and the place of data and analytics in basketball. He also touches upon:

-The makeup of the Celtics' scouting department

-The inevitable arguments with colleagues and his father, Boston GM Danny Ainge

-Working with national federations in Europe to ensure a pipeline of talent to the NBA

-The balance between objectivity and subjectivity in analytics

-Why his work cannot be judged instantly

What separates the best from the rest in sport? Neuroscience tells us that it is elite athletes’ anticipation and decision-making skills. Strength & conditioning, medicine, and nutrition may be staples of performance set-ups these days but the penny is beginning to drop when it comes to the importance of cognitive skills.

For the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast, we spoke to sports science and technology writer Amit Katwala, author of The Athletic Brain: How Neuroscience is Revolutionising Sport and Can Help You Perform Better. He emphasises that the brain is trainable and it is within the capability of all to identify which cognitive skills are most important in their discipline and adapt their training programmes to make them more efficient.

Further topics on the day included:

-The importance of studying the very best athletes

-Neuroplasticity and the opportunities it presents for young athletes

-The concept of flow in performance

-Why athletes choke under pressure

To learn more about neuroscience in sport read The Athletic Brain: How Neuroscience is Revolutionising Sport and Can Help You Perform Better. Widely available from Simon & Schuster.

Twitter: @amitkatwala

Where and how does Sir Dave Brailsford define the thin line between good and great? How do you overcome imposter syndrome? Why should you learn to cherish nerves? What have psychopaths got to do with elite sporting performance?

All these questions and more are answered in the latest instalment of the Leaders Performance Podcast, which features a series of interviews recorded backstage at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London in early November.

You'll hear from:

Sir Dave Brailsford: the Team Sky Principal discusses the thin line between winning and losing, and what a 'chapter' mindset can do for you
Stuart Goldsmith: the stand-up comedian and host of the Comedian's Comedian podcast reveals his secret to tackling imposter syndrome and pontificates on the concept of 'flow'
Dr Kevin Dutton: the University of Oxford Research Psychologist delves into the links between psychopathy and elite performance
Dr Dehra Harris: the communications specialist from the University of Washington's medicine department talks cohesion, teamwork and emotional intelligence

Join us as we take a step inside the Royal Ballet. So what can sport learn from these ‘artistic athletes’ and the way they train to perform? To get to the bottom of it we return to this session from the Leaders Performance Summit in London in 2014. Kevin O’Hare, Director of the Royal Ballet, takes to the stage alongside Greg Retter, the Clinical Director of Royal Ballet Healthcare.

Jarle Aambø was moderating and began by delving into the Royal Ballet’s efforts to distinguish its artistic output from the Bolshoi and the Paris City Ballet, to name but two esteemed counterparts. Both men explain why they want to be able to say that the ballet superstars of the world are knocking on their door.

Further topics on the day included:

-Reinvention and innovation.

-Expanding the working life of the Royal Ballet’s dancers.

-The use of data and technology to enhance performance.

-The importance of a pragmatic approach that places the dancers at the centre.

-Leadership at the Royal Ballet.

What can sport learn from behavioural finance? The field challenges the traditional assumption that individuals are rational and always make the optimum decision when confronted with choices. In fact, behavioural economics tells us that people are irrational and are driven by their emotions, which serves to undermine their decision-making. As in sport, sound decision-making is essential in the world of economics and behavioural finance seeks to provide practical solutions.

Our Lead Writer John Portch is joined by behavioural economist Dr Benjamin Kelly and Dr Clive Reeves, a strategy specialist who works across a range of elite sports, to discuss the most common biases that can afflict a sports team at coaching and front office level.

The main biases Dr Kelly identifies are:

Outcome bias
Anchoring
Sunk cost accounting
Regret
Over-confidence

He and Dr Reeves delve into each bias and explain why teams should prevent emotions hindering the big decisions.

How do you take talent from good to great to world-class? It’s a question we posed across a broad cross section of elite coaches, teachers and instructors in this fascinating session from the 2015 Leaders Performance Summit in New York. On stage that afternoon were:

-Dr Dehra Harris, Medical Director & Asst. Professor Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis

-Lt Col Jeff Orr, F-16 Pilot Instructor at the US Air Force

-Risa Steinberg, Faculty and Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School

-David Marsh, Head Coach of the US women’s Olympic team at the 2016 Games

Moderator Steve Gera got the ball rolling with the question of taking talent along the journey to world-class and managed to elicit four very different answers that provoked deep reflection from each.

Further topics that afternoon included:

-The science of [coaching] interventions.

-Recalibrating goals with students.

-Ways to become a better coach.

-Fighting a loss of coaching confidence.

What are the priorities for a first-time General Manager in the NFL? That was the question on everyone's lips when Les Snead, GM of the LA Rams, took to the stage alongside Tom Telesco, his counterpart at the San Diego Chargers at the Leaders Performance Summit in LA in 2016.

Moderator Steve Gera kicked things off by posing a question about the biggest surprises for two scouts taking the front office reins and Telesco sums up his first NFL Draft as a 'seat of his pants' experience. Also on the agenda were the qualities they look for in other scouts and why Snead refers to his staff as his 'basketball team'.

Further topics on the day included:

-The growing importance of data in scouting. -The challenge of evaluating staff in areas beyond your personal expertise. -Where Snead and Telesco go to learn beyond football. -Their biggest mistakes as GMs. -Their 'Michael Jordan' moments.

Today we’re cranking open the Leaders vault to bring you this colourful session from the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London in 2014.

Sitting in the hot seats that day were world-renowned chef Raymond Blanc and his friend, the influential restauranteur, Diego Masciaga.

Moderator Chris Parker is spot on when he draws the parallels between the world of elite sport and the duo’s need for consistent excellence day after day. On the menu were the question of respect when building a high performance culture, their efforts to continue harnessing their passion several decades into their chosen vocations, and why it is incumbent on leaders to continue inspiring their staff.

Further topics covered on the day included:

-Developing the ability to pass on your vision to others. -Why arrogance in performance is acceptable. -The importance of demonstrating emotional intelligence. -Managing up and down. -Why listening is a critical success factor.

For the latest edition of the Leaders Performance podcast we delve into the archives to bring you this session from the 2013 Leaders Performance Summit in New York. We welcomed New York Giants Owner and President John Mara and General Manager Jerry Reese onstage to discuss the creation of a winning culture that led to Super Bowl success in 2007 and 2011.

This warmly received session, moderated by Rick Horrow, is ripe for revisiting, particularly as the team continues to bed-in new Head Coach Ben McAdoo, who went 11-5 in his first season. NFL observers feel that the Giants have an excellent chance of pushing for the playoffs again in 2017 and their efforts, aided as they are by one of the league’s best defences, will be rooted in the strength of their culture.

Further topics covered on the day included:

-Why you can never presume to have all the answers -The value of having a few ‘alley cats’ or maverick talents in your team -The Giants’ journey from instability to the Super Bowl -Micromanagement vs macromanagement -Why Mara’s mum was not afraid to put her son in his place

The Leaders Performance Podcast lands with a payload of insight from the recent Leaders Sports Performance Summit in LA on 11th March.

Elite performance practitioners share their tips, reveal their blueprints, and detail the ingredients that have served them best in creating a recipe for success.

In this edition: - Andy Walshe, Head of High Performance at Red Bull, talks America's Cup Sailing, exploding vehicles, and the future of Red Bull's eSports programme - Sam Walker, Wall Street Journal veteran and author of new book the Captain Class, talks Donald Trump as leadership material, captaincy traits, and why the best leaders don't often seem like the most obvious ones - Alex van Pelt, QB Coach at the Green Bay Packers, on Aaron Rodgers' incredible ability to relax into a trivia quiz - Travis Preston, Dean of the School of Theater and Artistic Director at the California Institute of Arts, on motivating star performers and taking the pressure out of the need to perform - Clay Helton, Head Coach of the USC Trojans football team, on engagining with young players and how to deliver bitesize, impactful lessons to increasingly distracted minds – Prof Dehra Harris, Medical Director of the Standardized Patient Program at Washington University

Alastair Campbell is a journalist, author, strategist, communications expert and sports fan. One of if not THE architect of New Labour, Campbell is best known for his work as director of communications and strategy and Downing Street Press Secretary for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Needless to say, politics feature quite prominently in our conversation but the prime focus was on his book, published in 2015, Winners and how they succeed, which plots how sportsmen and managers excel, how entrepreneurs thrive, and how a positive, winning mindset is something we all, as individuals, can develop.

Some questions covered:

Are we living in a vacuum of political leadership?
Is Donald Trump a winner, or one of life’s big losers?
How do you make a crisis work for you?
What’s the difference between stress and pressure?
How can you play to your reputation to ensure you win before you’ve even done anything?

The book is a fantastic run through the techniques, principles, machinations and quirks of some of the most prominent figures in sport, politics and business – many of whom Campbell interviewed for the book. And we start with an explanation of the founding principle of the book, and of what Campbell believes is essential for success in almost any field: defining and working to your OST – objective, strategy and tactics.

The Leaders Performance Podcast lands with a goldmine of insight from the recent Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London on 8th and 9th November. Elite performance practitioners share their tips, reveal their blueprints, and detail the ingredients that have served them best in creating a recipe for success.

In this edition:

- Prof Dehra Harris, Medical Director of the Standardized Patient Program at Washington University, talks feedback: getting it, giving it and how to do it best.

Simon Timson, the former UK Sport Director of Performance, now in a similar role at the LTA, on the futurology study that has anticipated what it will take to gain an edge in 2024.
British Cycling Head Coach Iain Dyer on Team GB's landmark success at Rio 2016, marginal gains' peas to getting the basics right's steak, and peaking for the key targets.

Also featuring:

- Eni Aluko, Chelsea and England striker

- Dennis Keiser, Founder of fitness equipment giant Keiser Corporation

Dr Mohammed Al Sayrafi, General Manager of the Qatar Anti-Doping Lab
Mikael Silvestre, former France international soccer player, and current Sports Director at Stade Rennais

To join the Leaders Performance Institute, visit www.leadersinsport.com today.

Our brains use stories to understand our lives and overcome problems, and to get past these problems, we have to change the story. For an athlete who has experienced a setback, there is an opportunity to take hold and tell a new story of resilience and come back and be the hero.

In this session from the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in LA earlier in 2016, Meg LeFauve, co-writer of Pixar's acclaimed Inside Out movie, talks to Washington University's Dehra Harris about what makes a compelling story, what a hero needs to overcome their obstacles, and how we translate this into the stories of grit to help our athletes.

SAP has been the official cloud and analytics partner of the Women's Tennis Association since August 2013. Over that time, it the technology giant has developed the most sophisticated performance data platform in world tennis.

The WTA has worked with its sponsor to integrate the new technology into the fabric of the game itself. The women's game allowed in-game coaching breaks before SAP came onboard, but since the deal was signed, the tour has gone a step further and permitted coaches to come on court with tablet computers to strategise, mid-game, with their athletes.

On a two-stop jaunt to Eastbourne and Wimbledon earlier this year, the Leaders Performance Institute caught up with Jenni Lewis, global sponsorship technology lead at SAP, to find out what the system is all about, and then Tennis Australia head of women's coaching Nicole Pratt, to find out how it's being implemented out on the court.

Ed Hoffman is Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA. He explained exactly what that means in a session at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York in June.

Over 30 years at NASA, Hoffman has known many a smart person make many a dumb mistake. An organisational psychologist, his job has been to instil a culture of effective communication across a large and complicated organisation, ensuring that dumb mistakes don't lead to catastrophic failure.

"If you don't talk about mistakes," Hoffman explains, "you get failures."

The Leaders Performance Podcast lands with a goldmine of insight from the recent Leaders Sports Performance Summit in New York. Elite performance practitioners share their tips, reveal their blueprints, and detail the ingredients that have served them best in creating a recipe for success.

In this edition:

Rick Spielman, GM at the Minnesota Vikings, and Thomas Dimitroff, GM at the Atlanta Falcons, talk motivation, talent ID, how to learn from failure, and the importance of wide and constant learning
Cameron McCormick, coach to multi-Major-winning golfer Jordan Spieth, explains how to use traumatic performance experiences as growth opportunities, outlines Spieth's 'noise management' techniques, and reveals why he sees himself as the 'Swiss Army knife' of coaching
Ed Hoffman, Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA, explains just exactly what it is a Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA does, and how NASA keeps high-performing individuals engaged and aligned to the mission
Anson Dorrance, Head Coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels women's soccer team, examines the different techniques needed to motivate groups of women and groups of men

Also featuring:

Prof Dehra Harris, Medical Director of the Standardized Patient Program at Washington University
Dr Adam Weir, Clinical Lead at the Aspetar Sports Groin Pain Centre
Darrin Pelkey, VP Sales, North America for Keiser Corporation

To join the Leaders Performance Institute, visit www.leadersinsport.com today.