Hi Reader

At the end of a long conversation last week, a volunteer leader asked me the question I hear more than any other.

“You were in sport a long time. What could we learn from it?”

It’s a fair question. I think people hope for something about dressing-room speeches, or how great teams build a winning “culture”. The honest answer is far less glamorous, and sport isn’t an à la carte menu. The bits that make interesting documentaries rest on the bits that don’t.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, Shortform.

In the majority of professional set-ups, players fill in a short questionnaire most mornings. Questions of the variety How did you sleep, how sore are you, how’s your mood, how stressed do you feel? They input a score of one to five on each. It takes less than a minute.

I spent a long time selling the expensive end of performance monitoring to professional sports teams & organisations. Yet when researchers pulled together the evidence on tracking how athletes respond to training, those one-to-five answers did a better job than most of the technology. I still find that interesting, if slightly uncomfortable.

Any coach could write those questions. The skill is in asking them often enough that every player has a baseline, so the comparison is with himself last week rather than with the lad beside him. A three on its own means little. A three from someone who’s been a five all month is a conversation. And the player has to see something change because he answered honestly, or he soon stops bothering.

None of it asks whether a player is good enough. Everyone knows that already. It asks whether he can get at it today.

With a lot of volunteer-led organisations, the equivalent happens once a year, if at all. It’s usually a survey, and usually some version of “Is your workload manageable?” That’s not for want of caring. But a capable person has only one answer to that question, and one answer a year gives you no baseline. You often only find out a chairperson or committee leader is struggling when they stand down.

The fix needs no technology. Ask smaller, and ask more often. As a starter here’s something, or variant on the same, that you could ask every month:

Capable people who’d never admit they’re struggling will happily tell you they’ve been avoiding ringing the treasurer or someone on the committee with a challenging personality. A call put off for a week is normal. The same call or conversations still not had for 4-6 weeks is worth sitting down & chatting over; best of all, you’re having that conversation while there’s still time to do something about it and before it hastens a departure.

Sport spent a fortune on technology before it learned that.

That’s more or less what I told him. I’m not sure it was the answer he’d hoped for.

My line of work is helping volunteer-led or dependent organisations keep the people who hold them together. It starts with confidential conversations that show where the pressure is landing, early enough to act on it. If recruiting or keeping volunteer leaders is a live issue for you, just reply to this newsletter and drop an email to paul@theleaders.coach

Another Newsletter you might find useful....

INNER GAME NOTES BY NICOLAS ULLAH A weekly letter on the inner game of pressure — for executives and athletes who want mental discipline, not hacks. Written by a CBH practitioner with an MSc in Psychology who works with elite athletes. Subscribe​

Thank you for being part of this community. The work on better personal performance is something you have to do alone. But you don't have to do it on your own. Onward and Upward, Paul ​https://www.paulclarke.ie​ Connect with me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulclarkeperform/​

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Beechmount Vale, Navan, Meath C15
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