Can You Guarantee Winning in High Performance Sport?

By Wayne Goldsmith | In High Performance Sport

3d puppet, carrying bags with dollars in the c...

Yes you can!

Without doubt, the biggest impediment to success in all sporting teams involve leadership, personalities and politics.

When clients ask me to come in and undertake a review of their high performance programs, they usually begin with a “brief”.

The brief gives me an idea of the scope of the review, what the outcomes will be, what specific areas they would like me to look at and time-frames for completion. And time and time again, in spite of the brief outlining that the clients perceive that the problems with the team revolve around money, recruitment, player depth, coaching, sports science and injury management, the solutions to their high performance problems very often reside in leadership (or a lack of it), personality issues and political conflicts.

Here are the five assumptions I have developed to underpin the process of reviewing and then enhancing high performance programs in sport:

  1. Money is unlikely to be the real problem;
  2. Most people don’t really understand the two core concepts in high performance sport – a. how to create and sustain a high performance environment and b. how to create and sustain a winning culture;
  3. People are unlikely to reveal the real truth – mainly because most of the time they don’t know what it is;
  4. People will blame things and other people for a lack of performance before they are prepared to look honestly at their own performance – ego extinguishes excellence;
  5. A fish rots from the head - most of the problems in sporting organisations are due to poor leadership, a lack of vision and the inability of the leaders (be that the Board, the Executive Management team or the Head Coach) to see beyond leadership, personality and political issues.

It never ceases to amaze me. People will claim they are all about high performance, that they understand how to create and sustain a high performance environment, spend lots of money on recruitment, facilities, equipment, sports science, sports medicine and all the “tricks of the trade” but fail to look honestly, clearly, sincerely and professionally at the most influential high performance “tricks” of all - leadership, personalities and politics.

And why? Human nature! Buying an instant, quick fix solution is always easier than creating and growing a more difficult, long term solution from within.

It is easy to think “if we were fitter we would win more games” and then go buy better training equipment.

It is easy to think “if we had some better players we would win more games” then go on a recruitment spending spree.

It is easy to think “if we had a better recovery program, we would win more games”, then build a recovery centre.

It is not easy to think,”the best way for us to win more games is to consistently embrace excellence in everything we do, to work hard and to our full potential every day, to manage relationships with honesty and openess and to lead with integrity, humility, courage, vision and passion without succumbing to the limitations of personality conflicts and political squabbles”.

Here’s a common scenario.

The team has great facilities. They have excellent players. They have professional, well trained, experienced staff. They have a strong coaching team. But they are not winning – why?

They will tell the press and the fans,“we are in a rebuilding phase” or “we are focusing on the future” or some other such rubbish.

In reality the only thing they are “re-building” is a bull%&@ story that they think will keep the media, the fans and their sponsors happy while they hope things improve.

Imagine you had a Formula One Car with the latest in engineering, technology, fuel, tyres, braking and a world class support team: the best of the best equipment, facilities and people. And it didn’t perform. Who is responsible? The team manager, the driver and the (lack of) cohesion between the various performance areas.

And here’s the good news….fixing leadership, personality and political problems costs nothing, takes very little time but is worth everything.

Here are five tips for solving most problems in high performance sporting organisations;

  1. Build and grow solutions to performance problems from within; don’t look to buy solutions from outside;
  2. Focus on people – their potential, their leadership abilities, their motivation, their talent first – then worry about everything else;
  3. Accept that money is rarely the real problem: money only solves problems when you have real, practical, effective solutions to spend it on – and that means innovative, creative and intelligent leadership;
  4. Personality and political problems in high performance sporting organisations are like open wounds. Do not allow them to fester and hope they will get better by themselves. Diagnose them quickly and then treat them immediately, aggressively and consistently until they heal;
  5. Don’t just look at the parts – look at the “whole” - regardless of the skills, experience and knowledge of individuals in the team, it is their ability and desire to work collaboratively and cohesively as a high performance team that  makes the difference.

And – um – call me if you get stuck!

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

Related posts:

April 27, 2010

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Comments are closed.