#279 Allan Steele - Reflections on Coaching and Leadership at the Elite Level

I’m delighted to speak with Allan Steele this week. Allan has held many positions in football including Director of Football, Technical Lead, Academy Manager in the Premier League and pro-licence coach.  Allan was Director of Football at Forest Green Rovers Football Club. Previously he held roles at Brentford Football Club – as B Team Technical Lead and Assistant Coach, and as Education and Welfare Manager and Academy Coach. Allan and I discuss his coaching and leadership experiences and approaches having worked across three different footballing cultures.

I’m delighted to speak with coach educator and coach, Dr Noel Dempsey this week. Noel is a Senior Lecturer at the University Campus of Football Business (UCFB). UCFB is dedicated to the delivery of ground-breaking undergraduate degree programmes in the football and sports industry. Noel is a UEFA A Licence coach and has coached in range of settings, including grassroots, academy, non-league. Noel previously coached at Manchester City Football Club, The English FA for 4 years and Burnley Football Club. We discuss a range of coaching topics and Noel shares his experiences as a coach and coach developer.  

I speak with Olivia Bramley and Dr Laura Healy in this episode. Olivia is a PhD student at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) with an interest in positive sporting environments and experiences. Olivia completed her BSc in Sports and Exercise Science at Nottingham Trent University where she was also Women's Football Club President, Women's Football Media and Communications Officer and Women's Football First team player. Olivia has just returned to the UK to play for the Women’s Championship Team, Durham. Laura is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. Her research explores how to optimise goal pursuit in sport and physical activity for individuals and teams. This has included examining how the motivation underpinning goal striving can impact upon the self-regulation of goals and well-being. Recently, Laura has researched in areas associated with elite performance environments, including the role of personality in elite coach-athlete relationships, resilience, psychological safety and fear of failure in a national sport governing body, and the experience of release from professional football academies. We discuss a paper led by Olivia and co-authored by Laura and Dr Mustafa Sarkar which examines the mental health within sub-elite women’s sport.  You can find the paper here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1612197X.2024.2311752

I’m delighted to speak with Sarah Green this week. Sarah is a UEFA A Licence Coach, coach developer and MSc student who is passionate about developing people. Sarah is Performance Coach Developer at England Netball where she works with coaches in the performance pathway (Roses Academy & Franchise Pathways) providing individualised support to develop their coaching practice and behaviours. Sarah also supports potential performance coaches through a coach development programme. Sarah is also Head of Performance at Derby County Women’s Football Club Previously, Sarah worked at The FA for 11 years. She was part of The FA Tesco Skills Programme which was a pioneering programme for 5-11-year olds delivering specialist National Curriculum football-based education. Sarah then progressed to Regional PE and Coaching in Education Manager in the East Midlands working with The Premier League to support professional football clubs with their coach development.

I’m delighted to speak with Jon Mackey this week. Jon is High Performance Director for Canoeing Ireland – managing the Olympic programme across two Olympic sports: canoe slalom and canoe sprint. Jon is also national coach for ring sports (all full contact disciplines) and lead of the coach development program. Jon’s interests revolve around research in coaching, skill acquisition and decision making, exercise science, physiology and leadership. He has a master’s degree in Coaching and Performance Science and is currently studying a Doctoral degree in Elite Performance in Sport at Dublin City University.   Jon and I discuss a range of topics around coaching including helping competitors to learn more effectively; using communication tools to help athletes acquire skill; and preparing competitors to perform under pressure.

I’m delighted to speak with David Horrocks this week. David is a coach educator and formerly head of R and D and part of the senior management at Manchester United Football Club. Over the years, David has engaged with many organisations such as British Cycling, Borussia Dortmund, The DFB, Milwaukee Bucks, Cricket Australia, London School of Contemporary Dance, Red Bull, and Inter Miami among others. David is also a consultant to Findel Education, Veo Technologies, Carleton University Canada, and Inspire Sports and is currently running an employee health and wellbeing program for up to 6000 workers with Cadent Gas in conjunction with Whoop technologies. The early part of David’s career was spent in the corporate and government services world in technology. David has also led a paper “Preparation, structured deliberate practice and decision making in elite level football. The case study of Gary Neville (Manchester United FC and England)” and it’s this paper we discuss.

I’m delighted to speak with Katie Crawford this week. Katie and I discuss how coaches can facilitate teamwork within their teams.   Katie is a PhD student at the University of Bath. As part of Katie’s PhD research, she led a paper entitled “Coaching teamwork: Team sport athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions of how coaches facilitate teamwork” along with Dr Rachel Arnold, Carly McKay and Dr Desmond McEwan. The study explored how team sport coaches might facilitate teamwork within their teams. The study was based on interviews with coaches and athletes and identified how coaches utilize the following factors to promote teamwork: team selection, roles, coach-athlete relationships, athlete-to-athlete support, favouritism, tactical systems, athlete leadership, and internal competition.

I’m delighted to speak with Josh Frost this week. Josh is a PhD research student at The University of Melbourne. His research is also affiliated with the Elite Sports and Mental Health Centre at Orygen, a not-for-profit Youth Mental Health Centre located in Melbourne. The centre conducts research with athletes, coaches and high-performance support staff to find ways to better support elite athletes. In this episode Josh and I discuss a paper he led entitled “The Mental Health of Elite-Level Coaches: A Systematic Scoping Review” which examined the current body of evidence to explore what is known about the mental health of elite-level coaches (i.e. wellbeing and mental ill-health), the risk and protective factors that influence coach mental health, and the relationship between mental health and coaching effectiveness.

I’m delighted to speak with Karin Hägglund this week. Karin is a Former Swedish National team coach and National team athlete in karate. She is a five-time Swedish champion and three-time Nordic karate champion. Karin now researches how we can maintain well-being and health while performing at a high level over time. She is a PhD-student in Sustainable High-performance Coaching at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. Karin is former editor and writer for the magazine FLOW published by the Swedish Sports Psychology Association and was a board member of the Swedish Sports Psychology Association. Karin and I discuss a paper she led entitled “Starting a Conversation about Vulnerability in Elite Sport”. The paper provides practitioners with resources based on insights from high-performance coaches to enable conversations about vulnerability in sport. The aim is that practitioners will use these resources to stimulate reflection and dialogue about vulnerability, which may lower thresholds for help-seeking and foster sustainability in sport organisations.

I’m delighted to speak with Jen Harris this week. Jen is an expert in the field of parenting in youth sport. As the mother of a child athlete Jen was struck how little help there is for parents and decided to help change this. She undertook a Masters degree in Sport Psychology, the focus of which was parenting in youth sport. For her dissertation she created the Super-P Approach; an easy to teach parental communication style which can significantly reduce worry levels in child athletes. Jen is now completing her PhD at The University of Edinburgh to extend the research into her Super-P Approach. Jen has also launched a business, Raising Happy Champs, which offers workshops and an extensive e-learning program to parents of children involved in competitive sport. Jen teaches parents sport psychology principals and how to apply them to improve their child’s experience of sport. In this episode we speak about Jen’s experiences as a sport parent and we discuss the results of a study Jen undertook along with Prof Dave Collins and Dr Christine Nash entitled “Let’s Hear It From the Kids! Examining the Experiences, Views, and Needs of Highly Committed Children Involved in Youth Sport”.