Time to be honest about this whole Leadership concept in high performance sport – it is not working.
And why?
It’s not working because of the Accountability Myth: The Accountability Myth is the reason why the current Leadership models in High Performance Sport are failing (badly).
There is no one thing that you can do which will guarantee success: no single change which, in isolation will create and sustain a winning culture in high performance sport.
There are however a combination of things that you can do to increase the likelihood of success: “The Culture Combination”: 5 People and Positions You Must Get Right to Build a Winning High Performance Culture in Your Sporting Organisation.
Positive Drug Tests in sport.
What sort of idiot trains hard for months or even years then:
That’s just it: they are idiots. Well most of them are anyway. Some are misguided. Some are lazy. Some just made a genuine mistake.
Positive Drug Tests in Sport: 6 Types of Drug Cheats and How to Recognise them.
I am getting so sick of people talking about high performance environments, about following a process, about systems, about structures, about programs, about initiatives, about workshops and about strategies.
The name of the game is Winning – oops – there I said it.
Winning. Winning. Winning. There, I said it again.
That felt great. I’ll say it some more. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning.
That felt so good I’ll do it again. Winning!! Winning!!!! Winning!!!!!
The W Word: Winning.
So Great Britain has an outstanding high performance sports system.
Australia had one a few years ago…and they hope to have it again.
The “Eastern Block” had some brilliant high performance sports systems – systems which influenced the development of high performance sport all over the world in the three decades since.
The Chinese have a huge one driven by State money and a very large population.
The French are doing some great things in theirs.
The US has a strong high performance system driven through the College system.
South Korea, Japan and India are growing theirs. Canada is re-building theirs.
The South Americans will be working hard to make their high performance systems the best in the world now that Rio has been announced as the host city of the 2016 Olympic Games.
South Africa is building one on the back of the Football World Cup.
Seems like every nation in the world has to have three things – a flag, a carbon policy and a high performance sports system.
Here’s the thing…..none of them do what they are supposed to do….none of them actually produce winners.
Having visited more than 30 countries in four continents in the past few years and spent time with sports leaders, coaches, athletes, sponsors, sports scientists, sports academics, sports medicine practitioners, sports administrators, government funding agencies and other sports professionals in many of the world’s leading sports systems,five world wide trends in society
(and by extension in sport) have become very clear and are screaming so loud that they can no longer be ignored.
Ignore them at your peril.
The key to understanding why professional football teams win or lose is understanding who is most responsible for the team’s performance at any point in time. In this article, we suggest there are four key points in every football season where the primary responsibility for the performance of team can be clearly identified. Ultimately, the players must accept the responsibility for winning or losing the big games at the end of the season but it is the responsibility of the non-playing members of the team to make sure the players are ready: physically, mentally, technically and tactically to win when it matters.
I have been lucky to be involved in high performance sport for the best part of 20 years.
I have been very very fortunate to work with Olympic Gold Medalists, World Champions, World Record Holders, Premiership Title Winners, World Cup Winners…champion athletes, teams and coaches in many different sports and in several different countries.
Quite often, when I do professional speaking or training with corporate or sporting groups, someone in the audience will ask, “What do all the winners have in common” or “From your experience, what things do all the great athletes, teams and coaches do that makes them the best”.
There are indeed some things all the great ones have in common: The Top 20 Tips on Being the Best: 20 years of experience in 500 words!
Every now and again, a client will ask me to come up with a new way of doing something to help them achieve their performance goals.
In recent years, a real focus for me has been developing innovative talent identification, recruitment and retention strategies for professional sporting teams.
These next three posts will outline a concept called the Player Potential Profile – an integrated, practical approach to Talent Identification and Recruitment in High Performance Sport.
As the new decade starts, it is time to face the realities of the sports experience around the world.
The last decade, saw the most significant changes in society, in learning, in education, in technology and in social change that the world has experienced.
And, in general, sport has not kept pace with the extent or speed of the changes.
New Sport: Old Sport. The Decade of Client Focused Sport is Here.
There is a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea who have never seen modern technology, who could not even imagine using the latest electronic tools, who can not comprehend western society concepts of computing, social media, high speed Internet links, laser technology or satellite navigation.
This tribe, believes that the best way – the only way – the way everyone must adopt to cut down a tree is to make an axe by lashing a sharp rock to a piece of wood. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries….this tribe knows for certain that the only way to cut down a tree is to use a hand made stone ax.
And then, one day, through the forest, comes a man from the USA carrying a chain saw…….
Change in sporting organisations is critical. Success is a moving target. Sporting organisations who are successful have a culture which embraces continuous improvement and see change not as a threat but as a critical strategy for their sustainable growth and success. This article discusses change in sport and why it is so hard to do. It also suggests some strategies to ensure change becomes part of your organisation’s culture and becomes a key driver of your organisation’s success in the future.
