High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 685: Coaches Are Performers Too: Building High-Performance Cultures with Dr. Richard Thelwell

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

In this powerful episode, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with internationally respected sport psychologist Dr. Richard Thelwell to explore the psychology behind high-performance coaching. Drawing on decades of research and applied practice, Dr. Thelwell shares why coaches must see themselves as performers and how their emotional intelligence, communication, and self-awareness directly shape athlete performance and team culture. Richard is a Professor of Applied Sport Psychology and currently serves as the Executive Dean at the University of Portsmouth. He’s a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and his groundbreaking research has helped shape how we understand the coach-athlete relationship, emotional intelligence in sport, and how coaches thrive under pressure.  You’ll learn: Why the coach-athlete relationship is central to consistent performance The surprising impact of nonverbal cues on athlete engagement and confidence How coaches can manage pressure, burnout, and organizational volatility Why rest is a psychological skill—and how coaches can develop a rest strategy Practical strategies to help coaches stay composed, reflective, and effective under pressure Dr. Thelwell also offers insights from his research on coach stress, organizational change, and the powerful role of emotional regulation. Whether you're on the sideline or in the boardroom, this conversation will help you lead with more purpose, presence, and performance. HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE LISTEN TO OUR CONFIDENCE FOR ATHLETES FREE WEBINAR CONNECT WITH RICHARD HERE  MENTIONED RESEARCH DOCUMENT (Psychology of Rest in Athletes) REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.    

Welcome back to the High Performance Mindset podcast. This is your host, Dr. Syndra Kamboff, and thank you so much for joining me here today for episode 685. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by a true leader in the field of applied sports psychology and high performance coaching, and that is Dr. Richard Thwell.

Richard is a professor of applied sports psychology and currently serves as the executive dean at the University of Portsmouth. He's a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society and his groundbreaking research has helped shape how we understand the coach-athlete relationship. He also has done research on emotional intelligence in sport and how coaches thrive under pressure. So whether you're a coach, a leader, or a high performer yourself, I know you're going to take away so much from our conversation. Before I turn it over to our conversation or my conversation with Richard, I also wanted to share with you that we just recorded a live webinar on how to build confidence within athletes. Where we talk about really what confidence is, how confidence can be fragile, and provide practical strategies to help grow confidence in athletes.

So whether, again, you are a leader, a coach yourself, or a high performer, you can learn a lot about confidence from this webinar. You can head over to confidenceforathletes.com. You'll love the practical strategies. Without further ado, let's bring on Richard. Thank you for joining me on the High Performance Mindset podcast today. Today we have Dr. Richard Thelwell on the podcast. I'm so excited that you're here. I've read so much of your research and your work. So it's just a delight to have you on the podcast today, Richard. Thanks very much,

Cinder. And of course, it's always a lovely opportunity to kind of share some ideas, some experiences. I hope that people who listen to this will take advantage of some of the things that we're about to discuss and share. Absolutely. They will. That's why they're listening. And so let's just start. Today our focus is really going to be on high performance coaching and creating high performance cultures for leaders. And I'm curious on why you

just think people should keep listening. Why is high performance coaching really important? Will Barron Well, for me, this goes back to about 20 years ago, I spent a huge amount of time working as a psychologist with athletes. One day I have this real vivid memory of a coach just having a conversation with me and saying, can I have a word with you please in private? I thought, oh, here we go. Something's happened within the team. One of the athletes has done something, but it was about them.

And because we're in an evidence-based profession, the first thing I was curious about was, well, what is the literature telling me about how I might provide support for this high-performance coach? No, all the pressures that they're under. It's not just about team selection. It's about the quality of the coaching, quality of the training sessions, managing upwards, managing downwards, managing sideways, working with agents, sponsors, chief executives. And the role of a high performance coach is, it's got so many aspects to it. And for me,

it was an area that was just not explored. There were one or two articles about it that I could refer to. But what I hope that listeners are able to get here is actually we've probably missed a step. Yes, we do a lot of work with athletes, but I probably spend the majority of my time now working with those people who try to create the environment for the athletes. High performance coaching might be the actual athletic coaches themselves, but it might also extend to the science and the medicine team that wrap around. We work as specialists within a multidisciplinary team, but each of those individuals has to perform. I suppose the key thing that I'm trying to work on with a lot of my clients now is the coach is a performer and how can we enhance their performance.

And so that's kind of what got me really intrigued and that triggered a lot of my research interests and and right up to this very day it what really underpins my my applied practice. Love it. When I asked you that question, that's the first thing that came into my mind as well is like that coaches are performers. And the second thing that came into my mind is how their energy is contagious. And we know, you know, they can put a lot of pressure on athletes in moments where maybe athletes don't want or need the pressure and

they really are the source of culture and energy. So maybe just to find Dr. Richard, what do you mean by high performance coaching in today's sport environment? Richard Pesci I think if we look at the performance environment, it's about being able to engage with your performers and those who are alongside you and also above you to hopefully bring about some kind of consistency in terms of what it is you're trying to achieve. Now, the purist, I suppose, will say, well, it's about points, it's about wins. Of course, we can't escape that. But I think from my perspective, it's about trying to create a consistency in terms of

behaviors, the consistency in terms of things like communication, consistency in terms of how the coaches actually manage themselves. So what kind of psychological strategies might they employ? How do they bring about that consistency? Because the world of high performance or elite sports, there are so many changing facets. There are so many unpredictables. We often say about be prepared for the unpredictable But how can you do that? Well, I suppose the only way you can do it in many respects from the coaches with whom I've spoken to and with whom I've worked

is to try and have some kind of rational approach and consistent approach to the varying and quite wide ranging situations that they find themselves in. Kierstin So if you had to give coaches some practical tools or elements to high performance coach athlete relationships, what would you share with them and how to develop that and why that is important to have a strong coach athlete relationship? Yeah, thank you. My goodness, how do I pick out a couple? I think there are so many. Of course, it will depend upon the kind of sport. It might depend upon whether it's an individual sport or whether

it's a team sport, the kind of access that the athletes have to their coach. So again, it might be a sport, for example, based on the water. If you think about sailors compared to, I don't know, the soccer player, the basketballer, compared to the tennis player, the golfer, the relationships could be very, very different. But I think that probably the headline thing that I would probably speak to most people about would be, what is the message that you're giving to them? I don't just mean the verbal message, it's the non-verbal message. If I go back to a lot of the early work we did, there were some pretty cool things that

we found out within some of the studies about how effective the coaches think that they are. Coaches within this one particular study were very, very aware that they were experiencing stress. They were very aware that their athletes were picking up on the fact that they were stressed. That then also influenced the behaviors that the athletes had to the coaches, i.e. they weren't going to come near them. They weren't going to approach them. They weren't going to engage within the coaching. That brought about a real big question mark for me about how effective i.e. was a coach.

These were coaches operating at a world level, a real top level professional level. And they were aware that they were portraying this image that was hindering their effectiveness, but they weren't always prepared to do something about it. On the flip side, we had another study which was looking at the athlete's perception. So we kind of had the two sides of the story, but both of them were saying, well, if my coach is outwardly showing that they are not approachable, they're not effective. And our number one job, or the coach's number one job, I suppose, is to try to be effective. You're trying to affect some kind of change, change in behaviour, change in performance,

but not just a short-lived change. You're looking at trying to bring about a longer-term change in behaviour. But if your athletes aren't going to come near you, if they're not going to engage with you, how competent are you? So my number one thing I would say to a coach is, how reflective are you? Do you know how you come across? How many times have you watched yourself on a video? Or how many times have you seen a recording and you think, well, if I was the athlete, I wouldn't go anywhere near you. Or actually you're the kind of coach that I'd really want to embrace. Because, you know, in the work, if you look at a lot of research around self-presentation and body language,

it's incredibly telling. How aware are we in terms of the messages that we give? You might be a wonderful coach. You might have all of the skills, loads of different tools to use, but if the door's not being opened by the athlete, you're never going to be able to show those things off. So I suppose that's kind of one thing. And then there was a lovely study a while back. It was on sports psychologists actually, but it was around kind of practicing what you preach. So do coaches actually practice what they preach? Are they controlled? Are they emotionally aware? I often think, you know, you often hear the rousing teen talk or the last speech that a coach might give. Have they imagined that? Have they prepared it? Have they rehearsed it? Have they engaged in that kind of self-talk dialogue? Many people

who do presenting often run through that first thing in their mind and they see what's going on and they rehearse maybe just the first line just to start and then everything takes over naturally but do they actually engage in that and the same with kind of goal setting what can they achieve? When they go into a training session what is their goal because a lot of coaches will probably talk about goals that they set for their athletes but what about the goals they set for themselves? You know, I want to make sure I communicate with whoever, however many times within a training session. I want to make sure that I use instructional or motivational type language. So what kind of strategies are they utilizing? Because they're the very things they're asking their athletes to do. So there's probably my top two.

How do you present yourselves? Are you aware of it? And then what kind of strategies are you using to try to maintain some kind of consistency within kind of lewd energy, emotional stability. Yeah, let's unpack that. And as you were asking this question about, you know, how do you present yourself and how do you, how do athletes describe you? I was thinking about high performance cultures that I'm a part of as their mental performance

coach. And I was thinking about this one football team that I help support. And I think the athletes would say, coach really cares about me. And I know performance is important. You know, like, and then I was thinking a lot about my son's high school track team. And I have two boys that run track.

And I think I would, how I would describe it as a parent, which maybe would be different than how they would describe it as an athlete, but I think they'd also say Coaches really care about me and I have to perform well, you know Or like and performance matters and so I'm I'm just kind of curious when you think about coaches that are very effective what are typically the messages that they That their coaches would describe them as? Yeah, and that's a good question.

I've probably seen a whole variety of relationships, but those that have probably been, I want to say the healthiest and healthy because of the quality of interaction, but also the result of the interaction of those that you kind of just described there where coaches who are firm but fair. So the fairness being about they will be able to listen to feedback. They will be able to take on different ideas. They will be receptive. They will be supportive to their athletes and also their staff. Because we're talking here about high performance, you would normally have a team of staff who are working with you. Now, that in itself can create its own issues, especially when results might not be going as you might wish. But coaches who affirm it,

they're able to make decisions. So I suppose that's a quality in any leader though, being able to take on board information, but also be prepared to own the decision. And the payback from the athlete side is, well, okay, we're going to do everything we can here. Yes, whether we like it or not in elite sport results, other currency. whether we like it or not in elite sport results are the currency. There are different ways of reaching that end result. I have witnessed in my experiences great, you probably say athletic success, but incredibly short-lived athletic success because the relationships between all of the key stakeholders haven't been there to be able to overcome some of the times when performance hasn't been good or hasn't matched up to expectations.

The way you've got a healthy relationship, that's more likely in my experiences and also from from the research that we see to enable people to have longer-term relationships and also successful ones. And you said something about you know helping coaches think about how they present themselves, where they are of that. And then the second thing you said is what are the strategies, what do they implement to be consistently, you know, that way?

What are, and this kind of gets at my next question for you, you know, based on the research, what are two or three strategies you'd recommend for coaches looking to elevate, you know, the psychological impact that they can have on their athletes? Well, I think first is very much the use of some psychological strategies. A lot of high performance coaches, and again, this is a bit of a generalization, have also been athletes themselves. It's true.

I'm not saying that is a precursor as for, and I'm not saying that if they were athletes, they were always successful. But the charges are, given what we often see, that they may well have been athlete performers in their own right. Therefore, they've probably got a bit of an insight athlete performers in their own right. Therefore, they've probably got a bit of an insight to some of those particular strategies. So can they use the strategies? Do they use the strategies? Do they invest time in developing those strategies? Because we know psychological skills, they're skills which can take time to develop. They're not going to just come overnight. And if we're talking about performance, coaches should approach their performance like

an athlete would approach theirs, the musician would approach theirs, someone in theater would approach their performance. They're performing. So how do they go about being able to address those particular things? But further to that, what about the preparation? What about the reflection post performance? So the whole package is, I don't think you can kind of drop one segment. It has to be all of it in terms of being able to perform at that particular level. But the other thing is how are they escaping as well? Because we often hear about high performance coaches who become burnt out because they're just working stupid hours every single day. Of

course, that is going to be necessary at times, but when they have downtime, is it downtime? We often hear about marital breakups or relationship troubles for high-performance coaches because they're away from home for long periods of time or they don't get to see their children or they might not be able to command healthy relationships because they're never around people for very long. The world of elite sport is contractually highly variable. You might be in a particular organization for a year, maybe the next one for a couple of years, the next one for a few months. So when they have downtime, are they really getting that downtime? And I think that that's where we need to re-energize. We need to make sure that we actually fill our batteries up again to be able to perform at the level we want to.

If we were talking to athletes, if they had empty batteries, they wouldn't have a chance. When I was thinking about Dr. Richard, as I was thinking about, you know, coaches, they need to have the mentality that they're high performance athlete too. And so you think about, you know, athletes, we would say you need recovery, you need good eating habits, good sleeping habits to perform at your best. But then, you know, as professionals or as leaders, we say, well, sir, you know, we could eat whatever we want. Or if we're working 16 hour days or 12 hour days, you know, we just kind of keep grinding. And I think

about how this idea that grit isn't grind, you know, like how grit is defined by Angela Duckworth is like passion and perseverance for your very long term goals. It's not like grinding, you know, and I think a lot of high performance coaches can just grind, grind, grind, and not take care of themselves. Yeah, one of my favorite papers that I've read over the last few years has been around the psychology of rest.

Oh, I love it. And it really does reinforce so many, it's called rest for a reason. Oh yeah, that's great. I'm going to make sure I link it in the show notes and you could send it to me. Do you know how I can find it? Yeah, it's published in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology. It's a couple of years old but in the back of the article, there are some really interesting strategies about how people can develop their rest strategy. And it's something that I've taken and I've used with so many individuals, not just in

the sporting environment. And I'll also go as far as saying I've used it myself in terms of the work that I do because there's a psychology underpinning rest and I think it's really really beneficial. That's awesome, very super helpful. Hi this is Cinder Campoff and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker.

Visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. And so, you know, I know your work has been around like burnout and stress and pressure that coaches can experience. What have you learned about what the best coaches do to manage themselves under pressure? And how do you think that influences their teams? Excuse me. Yeah, I think the first thing that most coaches have highlighted is their acknowledgement that they do get stressed. They haven't tried to push it away as though it's a non-entity.

That appreciation that they're in a role where things are going to be incredibly challenging at times where they're going to have some really difficult questions. They're going to be under the microscope from the media. They're going to be asked why the player who costs millions isn't performing as well as they should. They're going to be asked about their selection, why there are so many injuries. But acknowledging those particular things, it's a huge hurdle for some individuals. They're not the performer, the athlete performer who can perform, go home. Now the coach's job extends, as we said earlier on, well beyond that.

So the acknowledgement is key. And for me, I focus a lot of my practice on rational, emotive, behavioral therapy. So that rational approach to their thinking and understanding what they think and how that's going to affect their potential emotional ups and downs and how that then affects their behaviours is something that I've really worked on with a number of individuals. So number one, acknowledge that it's going to be difficult, but don't you shy away from it. They've made a decision to become a high- performance coach. They know what comes with it. And they go in with their eyes wide, eyes very wide open. So let's be prepared. Let's embrace all of those different challenges. So after that, um, that another strategy would be around, well, what we said earlier on about using some of

the psychological strategies. Yes. Um, so understanding how they might respond, going through some of the what if scenarios, being prepared to stand by their decisions. Um, but also acknowledging that there are many things that they can't do anything about. It goes back to one of the very first pieces of work we did in the area in 2008. Again, it was a study with a number of elite level coaches. We just simply asked them to discuss the different types of stresses that they experience. And there were around about 180 different stresses that were cited.

Wow. But you could pretty much split them 50-50. 50% were associated with performance. You could split that 50% into 25-25. Performance about the athlete and then performance about themselves. They were actually aware that they were a performer. Then the other 50% were around organisational factors. That they are going to get stressed because of leadership related issues or the environmental related issues. The fact that training facilities might not be as they would want. The fact that contract situations might not be as they are. The fact that they're going to be away from home for

long periods of time. The fact that they do have other coaches working with them and support members who are potentially after their job as well. All of these things go into this huge melting pot where high-performance coaches are experiencing so many potential stresses. Now, if we try and focus our attention onto every single one of them, we'd never get anything done. We try and focus our attention onto every single one of them. We'd never get anything done and we'd be burnt out before we'd started. It would be an incredibly unattractive job for everybody. Acknowledging that they're there, but then also accepting, well, what can I control? What can I do something about? What are the things that I can't do anything about? That kind of rational thinking and acceptance,

I found to be really powerful for so many coaches. Sometimes it's misinterpreted because they say, oh, we're just going to shut the outside world off and then that creates a different persona, a different presentation. Then that might trigger off alternative issues. presentation, then that might trigger off alternative issues. But I think that those who have a calmness about how they respond can often be very, very successful. That is really powerful, you just said, because you acknowledged that stress comes in so many different ways for coaches. 50% performance, 50% organizational, and then within that performance

it could be the stressing about what the athletes are going to do or what they're going to personally, how they're going to perform. And I think that just emphasizes the importance of how coaches are performers. And I was thinking about some of the practical tools in my book Beyond Grit, and there's a section that I write about about pressure, and I used Henry Weisinger's work on why we feel pressure, and he shares, he's a psychologist, and he says we experience pressure for three reasons. Because the outcome is important to us, because the outcome is uncertain, and three, we feel judged by the outcome, which basically, the outcome is the consistency

between all those three statements. And I think that's also helpful kinda based on what you said is because the outcome is something we can't control. You know, we can't always control the weather or the opponent or kind of what you said about the field conditions. You know, we can't always control the outcome too and I think that's helpful for coaches to recognize because there's so many things in coaching and in sport that they can't control. Yeah, very much so. And in so many sports, you've got your development coaches and then you've got your performance coaches. And some might argue that they are one and the same,

but in a number of sports, you might have the kind of the academy coach who is doing incredibly well, then they get moved up to a performance environment and it's a very, very different beast. Um, and some coaches kind of think, well, you know, the ideal is for me to work with a first team or the professional team, whatever it might be, but they might actually be an unbelievably brilliant development coach because they understand, I don't know, developmental characteristics of 16 to 19 year olds and they understand the bigger picture and they're great with their communication. But put them in a performance environment where they're under the microscope of TV cameras,

or they're doing press interviews all the time, or they're having to respond to sponsors or the owners. It can be an incredibly different ballgame. Sometimes you have to say to these coaches, be careful what you wish for here, because what you think you might be wanting is maybe not in your skill set. So again, that's where that harsh reality of reflecting about what skills do I have, what am I prepared for, am I aware as to what might be the other side of the line if I decide to go for it. And that's not to say that I'll tell people not to do it. That's not my job. It's about enabling people to

kind of understand and kind of grow within themselves to appreciate what they might be letting themselves in for. And of course, if they've got the right skills to be able to achieve what it is they're striving for. So you mentioned just different psychological skills so far, you know, that are important for coaches to use. And I'm curious if it's, you know, psychological skills to cope with stress and pressure or to perform to their potential as coaches. What are maybe two or three psychological skills that you found that coaches have used to really help them perform at their best when it matters most to them? Yeah well again there's always debate about what's a

skill, what's a strategy, and those kind of things. I'll deviate from those for now. Okay. That's a high theoretical conversation you can have afterwards. Too, right. But I think the primary skill that so many of them will talk about is, and it often said, I remember watching Dangle do so many things. Oh, I love him. He's my mentor. Kind of my hero in the world of sports psychology. It's true. Yeah, me too.

But he used to speak about teaching people how to breathe. It's always stuck with me. And calm, rhythmical breathing. Before you say anything, before you do anything, are you in a controlled mindset? And if you're in a controlled mindset, that's probably because you've calmed yourself down. Absolutely. So, I would typically always go back to, don't rush into anything.

It's okay to pause, take a breath and think about what is just about to come out of your mouth because we know that so many relationships can be, well, cut to shreds because people haven't given themselves a chance to prepare what they're about to say. So I think that that would be absolutely number one on my list, teaching people how to breathe, which sounds absurd, but we know what we mean. And then I suppose with that, you're able to then show a calmness. So when you're communicating with people, if I'm talking to you now and you're my athlete and I'm hopefully able to portray a calm, relaxed or controlled persona, then the way in which my words are going to come out, I would hope would be more receptive to you rather than if I'm in a ball of anger or frustration.

The way that I communicate is not going to land. So breathing, because that brings about so many other things. The other thing that for me links into that very closely is in relation to what we spoke about a little bit before we commence this about emotional intelligence. Knowing how your athletes or the people you're working with, knowing how you can communicate with them. Have they actually done a bit of work behind the scenes to know the best way to liaise, communicate, interact generally. Are they someone who likes an arm around them? Are they someone who would actually not appreciate you getting too close to them? Do they like just factual information? Do they like being told very straight? Or do they like something to be short and sharp and sweet, but then with a follow-up later on down the line where they've had a chance to

maybe reflect upon what's happened. So another skill for the coach, I suppose, and this won't be saying anything new, is knowing the people with whom you're working. The thing that's a challenge is taking the time to do it. And how do you get that information? And one little thing that I introduced at an organization that I worked with a while back was when we had a new intake of players into this particular academy, we talked about, tell us about some of your best performances, tell us about why it was a good performance, what strategies you used. There was a load of performance stuff but there was also a little block on this sheet that said, tell us something about

you that no one else knows because the coaches are going to have this information. The coaches need to know about you as a person. What is your whole identity? So I wanted to try and give the coaches some additional information. And of course it was with the athletes' permission because they wrote it. I wanted the coaches to know a little bit more about the person because it made them understand they weren't just, you know, a player from a particular sport. They have an identity. They have a broader identity. And I think that that was a really important trigger and the coaches

commented on the powerful nature with how that enabled them to start conversations. And then of course, that's the report. That's the development of the relationship. That's so powerful and helpful, you know, and I'm thinking about the power of breathing, like you just mentioned, and how that is so important to just be in control of yourself. And I think about how confidence can be so fragile. You know, Dr. Thilwell, we just did a study on confidence. We're launching it in about four weeks and we're calling it the 2025

National Research Study on Confidence. And we looked at lots of different variables. We found actually athletes were more confident than non-athletes in all markers of confidence. And we also found that Gen Zers, so Gen Zers are defined as ages 18 to 29, significantly were lower compared to all generations in confidence. And this is the most astonishing finding or one of the most

astonishing findings in the study is we found one in two Gen Zers think that they are frequently or often not enough. And so that just it's really surprising. And I was thinking about that study as I was listening to you and thinking about how coaches can really make or break an athlete's confidence and particularly if they're not in control of their own behavior and their own emotions and they might lash out or get angry at an athlete and how that could negatively impact their confidence. What are your thoughts on how coaches impact athletes' confidence and what they could do to make sure that they're really mindful about that?

Yeah, you just triggered a whole load of other stuff in my mind there as well about things that might come to in a second. But the whole issue of confidence is absolutely critical for me. What we typically know is that a confident athlete has a much better chance of performing well than a non-confident athlete. My drop. Yeah, my drop. So the thing I'll be saying to the coaches, who, and if we kind of cut the chase on it, who is going to keep you in a job?

Your athletes. If your athletes are performing well, you are more likely to remain in employment. So you want to make sure that your athletes are as confident as possible, that they have as little confused and conflicting information as possible. You need to make sure that your relationships are as good as they can be because a good relationship will again generally bring about greater confidence because that has so many telltales associated with it. But anything that a coach can do to enhance confidence, whether it's in terms of the structure of a training session, whether it's the mode of transport to a game, whether it's the timing

in which selection is made, or whether it's the feedback that's provided, the communication during performance, the body language that's presented, the types of messages, the tone of messages, the amount of messages. Anything that the coach can do to maintain confidence is absolutely critical because the reality is confidence is going to help performance. That's going to keep the coach in a job. The thing that you mentioned earlier on about the Gen Z is there's some really interesting work on generational diversity. And that's something that again, I'm sure there'll be a number of coaches listening

to this who might be thinking, well, yeah, when I was growing up, mobile phones or cells were not a thing. We didn't have the internet. Or social media. No. But now, from say, let's just say for the last 25 years, most kids have grown up with a mobile phone attached to their ear. The internet's been at the fingertips. It's a very, very different world to what we grew up in. I had a coach a few years back who banned mobile phones from the changing rooms. It created absolute hysteria within a number of players because they had the fear of missing out. They were thinking, what

might have happened on my social media feeds? I haven't seen my phone for two hours. And for us, that might seem absolutely crazy that they can't do without a phone. But for that generation, it's something very, very different. So again, it comes back to the confidence aspect and the comfort that athletes might feel within the presence of their coaches, which hopefully is going to enable them to perform better. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything a coach can do to bring about enhanced performance and enhanced relationships, then that surely

has to be a positive thing. I love it. You've given us so much practical tools and just like the reason why we need to really consider the culture and how we need to show up as our best selves as a high performance coach. Dr. Richard, what have I not asked you when you think about your research? And I know it's so broad over the last decades, but is there a particular study I haven't asked you about or a particular topic that

you think would be really helpful for high performance coaches who are listening right now? I don't think so. I mean, well, one of the, one of the areas that, you know, we, we haven't talked about, uh, and it hasn't really been, been right to kind of go into it is, is organizational change. Um, yourself and many of the listeners might be aware of, uh, someone called Chris Wagstaff. Uh, Chris is a good colleague, a good friend of

mine over here in England. We've done some work together on the volatility of elite sport environments and how organisations change. I think if nothing else, it really does reinforce think if nothing else, it really does reinforce the somewhat sad story that high performance coaching is incredibly volatile. It's incredibly dynamic and length of tenure can be fairly short. So the key thing for me is, well, how can we prepare people so that when they go into those environments, they are as best prepared as possible, but also that they have appropriate expectations? And I think for me that's something that pretty much underpins all of the work that we do. Do you have one or two thoughts or suggestions that coaches should consider related to that research you've done?

Yeah, and I think, well, the first one is kind of doing your homework and knowing the kind of organisation that you're going to go and work in. You know, what's gone before you. And like we'd probably say in any kind of employment environment, when you go for an interview, it's a two-way process. Yes, you might be applying for a job, so they're interviewing you, but you're also interviewing them. Have you done your homework before you've gone in there? Then I suppose the other aspect around organisational change is being prepared for that dynamic world. Things might seem brilliant, but that doesn't mean there's going to be longevity to it. I think that again reinforces the expectation.

I suppose that's my R-E-B-T coming out again. In terms of trying to be rational, trying to be emotionally stable, trying to have considered behaviors so that you give yourself the best chance, but if things don't go according to plan, then at least it's not hugely disruptive. Dr. Thoel, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I just want to take a moment just to honor you for all of the incredible research that you've done on high performance coaching and emotional intelligence and just your origin story of why you started to really study coaches.

What's the number of publications you have at this point? Is it over hundreds? Correct? It's around about that, yeah. But I've had the opportunity to work with some, well, some lovely co-authors as well along the way, a number of whom I've become very close to in terms of friendship. And I suppose that reinforces everything we're talking about, the importance of relationships. Yeah. I just want to honor you for the impact that you've made in the field of sport and performance psychology because I know you've done just so much incredible research in this

area. So I just want to say thank you for that. And I want to do my best to kind of summarize what we talked about today, which is not easy, but I loved what you talked about at the beginning of just helping coaches think about what's the message that you're giving to your athletes and how can you be present and self-aware and understand and notice yourself,

but then be consistent with your mood and your energy. You know, approachability was a word that you used and just being able to practice what you preach as a coach. I appreciate what you said about burnout and how athletes are performers too. And this idea of like burnout, the psychology of burnout or the psychology of rest is what you talked about. And I thought that was so helpful to really think about how, you know, that there is a psychology of rest and to help you think about how you are taking care of yourself. Because I think coaching is such a high paced environment. And so, you know, coaches might not think about how can they take a step back.

I love what we talked about stress and pressure and how the data you said is like there's 180 different stressors that coaches experience, but 50% of them are performance related, 50% of them are organizational related, which I think is just helpful for coaches to recognize they're not alone and what they're experiencing might be very similar to other coaches.

So just the importance of taking a breath and using the breathing to calm down and to really be mindful of how you're growing confidence in athletes. And then what you said about the confident athlete has a better chance of performing well than the non-confident athlete. And so as a coach thinking about what you might do to grow confidence or decrease confidence without even realizing it, how can people reach out to you and learn more about your work and read some of

your research articles? Yeah, well, I'm based at the University of Portsmouth, which is in England. So you can kind of get me online. I'm also the editor inchief of the case studies in what is currently sport and exercise psychology, but soon to be case studies in sport and performance psychology. So watch out for an editorial coming out there as well. So if people have case work that they might wish to submit then please obviously do so. But yeah, people can reach out email or on the University of Portsmouth website. That'd be cool. KS Awesome. And I will put it in the show notes as well. So wherever you're listening, if you just want to scroll down, you'll find Dr. Richard's research and links there as

well as a way to contact him. So thank you so much for being on. It was really fun to talk to an expert on how coaches can really be even more high performing. So I appreciate you and your work and your time today and your wisdom. My absolute pleasure. Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Syndra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for

high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Syndra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See mindset each week. So again you can add over to Dr. Syndra that's drcindra.com. See you next week!