Psyched Up
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Competitive shelf building might not sound like the dream half-term activity for everyone - but judging by the expressions of the 13 young people who attended yesterday's Behind Every Kick Connect workshop on the relationship between psychology and sport at EY's giant offices in Canary Wharf, it was definitely the place to be.
As the saying goes, context is everything. This spot of DIY against the clock was sandwiched between two fantastic athlete-speakers who shared their triumphs and traumas in elite sports and explained how these experiences have helped them forge careers driving performance in the business world.
First up to share her story was Hollie Pearne-Webb. As she fired up the PowerPoint presentation, Hollie very coolly pulled two socks from her bag to pass around the table. Inside were the gold and bronze medals she'd won at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics as a no-nonsense defender for Team GB hockey. Hollie explained the humble beginnings of her path to Olympic glory. As a schoolgirl, she'd seen a poster at the local leisure centre asking for players to come and try the sport. She decided to go along, paying the £1 deposit required to borrow one of the club's sticks for the session. Her fearsome play led to selection for the England age group teams, but as she points out, raw talent wasn't her superpower. Hollie explained that of the U16 squad, she was perhaps the least naturally gifted. Instead, dedication and will to win drove her on. She was the only member of that youth team to go on and compete at the Rio Olympics with Team GB.
However, her success didn't follow a straight line. When Hollie first joined the senior ranks after London 2012, the team was at a crossroads. The expectation was they'd be in the mix at the 2014 World Cup. In reality, however, they tanked. A last-place finish at the tournament was only avoided via a penalty shootout win, and medal hopes for the Rio Olympics looked feint. That was until a new sports psychologist joined the squad. Hollie says she was sceptical at first and believed that the solution to the team's woes was to train harder, better, stronger, faster. But, slowly, the probing questions the psychologist asked began to shift her mindset.
It was a painful process, but the players came to realise they hadn't taken the time to get to know each other as people and, therefore, had felt unable to address the issues that were hindering their performance. The psychologist asked the squad members two questions: What does success look like for this team? And what are your values? For question one, the players settled on being the difference, inspiring the future and making history (spoiler alert, before 2016, Team GB women's hockey had never won gold) and for question 2, they agreed to take the leap (by doing things differently), bring the fire to every session, be humble and be one.
Hollie stressed to the engrossed young people that it was the team's shared vision, values and behaviours that made the difference between finishing second from last at the World Cup and clinching the gold just two years later at the Olympics. She wrapped up her story by asking the attendees to focus on identifying what they are working towards, what habits they are adopting to help them achieve their goals, and, most importantly, what their strengths are.
Having been suitably inspired, the young people were then split into two teams. Each was handed a bag containing planks of wood of various sizes that facilitator Shalina assured them could be constructed into the fiendish-looking shelf arrangement she'd flashed up on the screen. The considered and collaborative way both teams approached this challenge measured up well compared to groups from some of the biggest global brands Shalina has set this exercise for in the past. After the two teams succeeded in constructing the shelves, it was noticeable in the young people's reflections how many of the values and behaviours Hollie had highlighted in her story they recognised in their collective performance.
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After lunch, it was time for Sian Huxtable, a manager at EY, to share her story with the group. Sian's career in top-level sport took a different trajectory from Hollie's - but the lessons she learned along the way proved just as impactful.
Sian's athletic prowess at school was rewarded with a sports scholarship to a sixth-form college. Injury interrupted her training as a heptathlete, and Sian decided to explore other sporting opportunities. Through a talent identification scheme, she decided to give bobsleigh a go, where the power and speed she'd built on the athletics track could be transferred to the ice. Sian came to understand very early in life that skills developed in one area can be applied to create opportunities and fuel performance in another. Representing British Bobsleigh in competitions across Europe and North America, Sian began to rise up the ranks and achieve podium finishes. Her sights became firmly fixed on representing Team GB at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Regrettably, however, due to a sequence of events beyond Sian's control (and unrelated to her performance), the chance to fulfil this dream was taken away with no explanation as to why from those who had made the decision.
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Sian divulged to the young people that while it was a devastating blow at the time, she has learned far more from this experience than she did from any of her successes on the track. For Sian, resilience isn't just about getting back up and brushing disappointment aside. Instead, it's about sitting in your feelings and, once you're ready, finding the support you need to figure out what to do next. She has also come to recognise that while life will always throw curve balls your way, you can control how you respond to them - and that the most successful people are the most adaptable and curious.
In Sian's case, this meant switching from a history degree to studying sports science, which in turn led to her being awarded a scholarship to complete a Master's in sports ethics and integrity while undertaking EY's athletes' transition programme. Before wrapping up the day, Sian left the young people with four takeaways from her journey as a sportswoman that enabled her to transition into the corporate world: be authentic, be brave enough to speak truth to power, always recognise you do have choices and know that while life won't get easier, you will get stronger.
After such a fantastically insightful afternoon, it's little wonder that the words the young people chose to sum up how they felt as a result of attending the session were 'enlightened', 'motivated' and 'inspired'. They weren't the only ones!
