A Head of Coaching on the Premier League’s Elite Heads of Coaching programme shared a leadership success with me this morning - shoutout to the brilliant Dan Reece! Dan’s created a process to build on strong coach performance at his club and I’m looking forward to reviewing the impact with him.

His approach came from a brief conversation about a psychological tool - the Support and Challenge Matrix. In essence, for growth, we need appropriate levels of support and challenge, and great leaders assess and adjust the balance as needed. In football there is definitely a need to balance the positive AND the demanding to sustain excellence.

Interestingly, the Support and Challenge matrix is at the heart of developments in elite sport to address broader welfare and cultural issues. Sports psychologist Mustafa Sarkar has researched ‘unrelenting environments versus facilitative environments’ and their effects on individual and team resilience. Let me know if you want more information about these ideas – they fit so closely with the work I do on culture change.

Anyway, Dan has turned our conversation into a practical action plan to support a facilitative environment and shift a culture and it was great to hear about it.