It was my birthday last weekend, and I don’t like them that much.
I feel guilty writing that when there’s plenty to be grateful for, but I want to be honest. “Yeah, I’m alright” could be a lie around my birthdays, my kids’ birthdays and especially New Year. All of those moments create internal stocktakes, and I’ve rarely been able to take them lightly. I typically ask myself big questions about my own “performance in life”, and those questions rarely come with easy answers.
Now, that reflective state has always come naturally to me. I’d consider myself an introverted, deep thinker, who is in a permanent state of “how can I improve?”. It’s probably teetering on prohibitive, but secretly I’d rather have it than not.
What I’ve worked out is that unpointed reflection is my problem. The right question can either release the shackles, or makes the big question look like a stupid one to have been carrying around.
I remember in my early 20s at Catapult, I was given the opportunity to work with an executive coach, Gwen Byrom. Gwen would ask me questions that would both knock me for six and then permit me to sprint again, rather than drunkenly tip-toe around mines that I’d dropped in front of myself. She still does! Gwen made me realise the art of coaching, and appreciate how vulnerability can exist in business and sport.
Then a few years ago, through the joys of parenthood, I got lucky again and met a fellow Dad up here in our small Yorkshire village — Chance Marshall. He happens to be a creative psychotherapist who asked me questions I’d never been asked before over a flat white in our local coffee shop. The type of questions that make me feel 6-years-old again, or make tears roll down my face before I can get a single word out.
What’s all this got to do with sport? I am hopeful a lot.
Through all the reflection, I’ve been sharpening what I care about and what I want to commit my next decade to. It’s not perfect, but it’s a version of this…
I want to help sports organisations become places where talented people can actually be good at their jobs. To make culture, leadership and alignment matter as much in sport as how recent the last win was, or the strength of the next starting line-up.
Because the pattern never changes. Enormous rigour applied to what’s easy to measure: xG, training loads, recruitment models, MRIs. Almost none applied to what decides whether any of it lands, or how well people make decisions together.
We are quick to audit the things we can measure easily, while we hope about the human.
That gap is the work I’m excited about and enjoying. It’s what I do at Bloom Sports, helping sports organisations hire the right people and advising on where to focus their efforts. It’s what Sportsmith is for, helping performance experts navigate the chaos of elite sport.
So I’m giving it a name, and commitment.
Sport is Human. One question a week, aimed at inspiring more conversation and connection in elite sport and beyond. The types of questions Gwen and Chance would ask me, but built for the sporting setting. Questions you can sit with on a drive home, or drop into a staff meeting when you’re brave enough to hear the answer.
Question 1
What did we promise to do differently this season that’s already slipping?
Not just the ones you’d put in a board update but the small and niggly ones. The thing agreed in pre-season or your post-season review. Something that’s quietly gone back to how it always was.
On your own: answer it before you talk yourself out of the first thing that came to mind.
With your team: everyone writes it down before anyone speaks. Then read them out.
See you tomorrow.