This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Welcome to The Coaching Inn, I'm Claire Pedrick. It's really interesting because after listening to Ruth's interview with Keith and Juliet Johnson about couples coaching, it made me think about the spaces between us when we're working. So in one-to-one, there's me and the person that I'm coaching in the space between us. we were talking, Keith and Juliet were talking with Ruth about the different spaces in couples coaching.
And that made me think about group coaching and team coaching. And I was in conversation with my colleague, Kirsty Elderton, and she said, we need to talk to my husband, Andy Elderton, about football coaching and what he's learning that we might be able to apply in this space. So given that one of the really important things about coaching, I think, is letting people make their own meaning. Kirsty and Andy have kindly come today.
so that we can talk about football coaching and then you can make your own meaning in relation to working with groups and teams. So Andy and Kirsty, hello and welcome from Australia. Hello. Thank you, Claire. Just tell us a little bit about you, Kirsty, you go first. Tell us a bit about you. Thanks, Claire. Well, hello, I'm Kirsty Elderton.
am, well, living here in Melbourne from Yorkshire originally via London and have been coaching probably for about the last 10 years, both kind of formally doing one-to-one executive team coaching, those kinds of things, but also in my other job, which is as a principal in a management consultancy firm. So I lead a digital and design practice and do lots of project-based work in teams, both of our own staff and with our clients' people.
and have to put lots of attention into thinking about how to optimize those teams quickly so that we can deliver really great results for our clients. Brilliant, thank you. And Andy, you have a very different kind of job. Tell us about you. Yes. Yeah, so I originally obviously from North London, the better half of the UK.
And I used to juggle being a full-time electrical engineer with being a soccer coach, as they call it here, at an English championship club for nine years, where I worked in the professional club, Luton Town, where I worked with the elite players in the youth development pathway, helping them become hopefully professionals, which thankfully some of them did. Obviously coming to Australia, that changed significantly because there's no real professional structure here.
So I'm lucky enough to be working in the elite pathway in the youth section, club where I'm the technical director, where I look after the, I'm responsible for all 12 to 17 year olds players and coaches, around their development and education. And I also work as a first team assistant at an MPL club, which is the second tier of Australian football. with adults. and that's pretty much my full-time role in Australia, as well as looking after Kirsty's daily needs. That's teamwork too, right?
It's interesting, Andy, because as you say that, it feels as though you're really developing people for future careers in soccer, but it also feels as though you want your team to win. It's well, it's very different here because, you know, in the UK, when I was working, you know, that was very much a career path. You know, boys, work their way through the pathway. Like I did as a coach to be at the highest level they can be. I was lucky enough to work in the professional level.
And some of the boys that I worked with, I was lucky enough to be a very small part of their journey. And then they're playing in the premier league and playing for their country. you know, that, you know, that is a clear defined pathway. That's not quite here in Australia yet. We're a year away at least from the national second division. And so they're not really the pathway for them to professionals.
my job really is, this is about developing them to play the highest level of soccer they can be and for coaches to coach at the highest level they can be. But it is really about all around life skills and the experience they have of being part of a team and a club. And hopefully, that will lead to something further down the line, which is still shaping itself in Australia. Yeah, so you're growing people. Yeah, a little bit, but obviously at the adult level, then yes, you're right.
It's still about winning, keeping your job and getting three points on a Saturday. So Kirsty, you coach an organisation, so where do you notice the connections and the differences? that is a really good question, Claire. And as we were sort of preparing for this evening, one of the things that I was thinking about is over the last, gosh, we've been in Australia almost five years.
I reckon in that time I've probably worked with around about a hundred organizations and one of the main differences and it, it sounds, I don't mean it to sound flippant, but is that In sport, there is acknowledgement that coaches can optimize teams. I don't think I've yet met in an organization someone dedicated to coaching a team. It's often wrapped up in a management role or a project management role or some other variation of that.
But rarely, in fact, not at all have I met someone who is either an internal coach or an external coach whose sole purpose in life is to make that team perform. Which I think is really interesting when you think that, you know, sport is a system, our organizations, government, public sector services, they're all systems seeking to achieve a goal.
And yet sport seems to be much further ahead in acknowledging the potential for someone to not necessarily be involved in the content, but to hold the process, to optimize performance and really focus on helping people achieve whatever the goal is that you've set out to. So that's one thing kind of straight off the bat. That's interesting, isn't it?
Because it feels like that's another difference between the UK and Australia, because certainly Alan and Alex are team coaches for high performing teams. although as you say, they're not internal, they are external. So Andy, as you hear Kirsty talking about that, where are the connections for you with soccer? Well, the connections are, it's still about relationships and people interactions. You know, we're still looking, we still have them signed belief systems around honesty ethics.
What I've really learned from what Kirstie does is the listening aspect, which I don't think as coaches we're particularly good at. We love the sound of our own voices. We like to think we're always in, we're always imparting such, such pearls of wisdom, which is especially isn't, you know, he's always lost on children. And then I think the other similarity is that I've learned especially with the more work Kirstie does is, It's about the, for me, it's about our players and our coaches.
It's not about me. We've got a very player-centred approach, the way I take when I go into a club and I put structure together around the culture and the environment that I myself to work in and for the players and coaches to be part of. So yeah, there is a lot of similarities around that. Being yourself, trust, respect, all them kind of... you know, guides that we want to use in both of our worlds.
Yeah. So are you coaching the individual, the team or the space between them or any combination of that or something else? Indeed. Kirsty says like, especially with children, it's very much about coaching the individual. And adults? Adults is much more about the team. You know, there's definitely a clear distinction there.
And I think the clubs and the environments that I've thrived in more, and I think have thrived and parents seem to be happier, are in clubs and environments where it is player-centered, where you're looking at what's best for the child and the player, not what's best for the club, where I think at... at adult level, it is definitely about what's best for the club and what's best for the team success. And the measure of success for both is different.
That's really interesting, Andy. What does that look like? So if I came and watched you coaching kids versus coaching adults, what difference would I see? Well, we have individual player development plans, for example, for each individual player. So that would be, you know, the result on a Saturday, or game day Sundays for us, wouldn't be about winning the game. It would be, has Johnny worked on the thing that we've been working on all week?
Has Fred been working on the skill set that we've been looking at this week? Has he improved on his strength? Has he worked on his weakness? And so we'd be very much keyed around that, which is why, you know, we don't like parents to coach on the side on the weekend, because they're very much could be given information that's completely indirect. a conflict to what their coach is trying to educate them and to give them opportunities to learn.
So if we've been working on defending, for example, to keep it basic, know, it might be that player's job to try and win one tackle in the half, whereas their parent might be just telling them to run with the ball all the time or do something completely at odds with what their individual task is. And therefore when the coach comes off and we might have a tick-balled where it says, have you achieved your task today?
they're going to get very despondent because they haven't achieved their task because they were given the opportunity but their parents told them to do something different. So that's where the difference is. Where on a Saturday for the seniors, the results will be on end or, know, if you've won, everyone's happy. If you've lost, then it's the end of the world. It feels like, Kirsty, what do you think it feels like? Because I'm having a thinking about what it feels like.
What does that feel like organization wise, Kirsty, for you? I'm not sure if it's a feeling, Claire, but one of the things that I notice about the work that Andy does is, well, two things really, the feedback loops are so clear.
So there's no... there's no avoidance of looking at the feedback data and information and the collection of that information and the sharing of that information, whether it's what the coach has noticed on a Saturday morning or whether it's the really complicated kind of sports science statistical analysis that you see on the match of the day, that feedback is taken seriously, it's dealt with in a timely manner and those feedback loops are constant.
Whereas what I notice in organizations is that there can be a bit of a reluctance to either give feedback, share feedback, or look that feedback in the eye. And so that's one of the things I'm envious about about his work actually, because the clarity around those feedback loops is so impressive and the flow on effect of that you can see dictates performance.
The other thing that it sort of feels like to me is that There's something about the attitudes and beliefs of the coach and the environment that they create. And I think what Andy was saying is if it's play as a center, then it works well.
Whereas in organizations, there's all sorts of other agendas at play and creating the right environment for that team to perform can be really challenging if the manager, the leader, the coach of that team has other things happening that are influencing their ability to focus on the performance of the team. So they're the two things that kind of resonate out of that for me. I'm interested in your thoughts though, Claire.
I really like, Andy, what you said about developing people, because it feels like formation. So it almost felt like, as you were talking, that that youth coaching is about saying what are the skills and characteristics and values and what needs to be inside people to make them good players. And I absolutely agree with Kirsty and I'm just imagining what would it look like in organisations if feedback happened in the way you've just described.
And then my crazy question that you can feel free not to answer is If you ran your football coaching like organisations run, what would it look like? as in with erratic feedback? Well, let's not kid ourselves. I work for a number of in my five years that are very driven through a lot of ethnicity. So I've worked for a Greek club. I'm currently working for a Macedonian club and they've all got their own beliefs and systems and cultures. And all clubs in Australia are basket cases. all...
They're all very passionate. They've all got set beliefs. So for someone from the UK to come in and say, actually, I want to run your organization and your youth development more professionally with an Academy style structure. And we're going to put the child at the center and we're going to work to develop them. And I'm going to work with your coaches. It's met with a lot of resistance in a lot of cases. you know, and I've had coaches that don't really buy into it.
It's all about winning and working harder and all the old norms. So you can only really get if you get the buying, I suppose it's in any of our, wherever our fields are in coaching, you have to get trust from the players that you work with that this what you're doing is making the difference. You have to get ice get the trust from the board that they see that the work that I'm putting in as a benefit.
And luckily, the two main clubs I've worked with in my five years have seen quite quick results in the way that the environment that I've created has led for a better experience for the players, better experience for the parents.
And they've not really been that fussed about the results because as we know across youth football, the reasons that people take part in youth football, example, winning so low down on their list of priorities, it is about engagement and learning and playing the game and being with friends. winning so far down the list that as long as you can, you know, bring people on the journey with you, then it tends to work quite well. It's back to that core thing, isn't it, about developing people.
Kirstie, what for you is the difference between the sports coaching Andy does and the people coaching that you do? One of the things Claire, think is that, and Andy jump in here if I haven't got this quite right, but I think he's got a very clear philosophy and belief system and attitude towards his team and his players and how he wants them to play and what those results should look like.
Whereas I think in the... in the organizational coaching space, or even in one-to-one coaching, it's much more about, or for me at least, it's much more about helping them identify the results that they want and facilitating them towards it rather than me imposing something onto it. So that bit, I think, is quite different. And that's where I think internal and external coaches can have a little bit of a challenge.
because I think that external space provides a kind of a no agenda container safe space for that team coaching process to operate. Whereas internal coaches can sometimes come up against, you know, competing priorities, history within the organization, other small p politics stuff. So I think, I think that's one of the big differences for me. Is that, is that fair, Andy?
Yeah, I think we do get some of that political stuff, I think, and you know, I've had to, I don't like to think I impose because the one thing around the difference, I think between my environment and your environment, you know, my environment is everyone's got an opinion on football. Everyone has played it or watched it.
So, you know, the amount of parent conversations I have when I have meetings, which starts with the phrase, I'm not a coach, but, so everyone's got an opinion how it should be done. And I've learned being in Australia that, work with Australians now. So for me to come in and say, this is the way we do it in England and this is the best way in the world would be quite insulting and a bit naive really. So I've had to learn aspects of their culture and what makes an Australian an Australian.
And then, incorporate that into my philosophy. Kirsty's right, I do have a philosophy. I have a belief system in the way that I expect my players to behave or be told. I have a syllabus that I believe in and I believe improves development of players. I have a way of working with my coaches, the way I mentor them. And Kirsty's also right, what she said at a runabout, we use video feedback, we use, you know, written assessments. There's loads of that continual loop.
where we can review and evaluate and learn and go again. Video feedback, it's interesting, isn't it? Because in video feedback, of course, you're using real observable data. So Kirsty, you and I are running that training starting next week, aren't we? And that's one of the things that we're going to be really focusing on is real observable data and how do you offer that back? And of course, that's different when you're in the club and you can see the players playing all the time.
You've got some really cracking observable data. And I think one of the things I noticed, I don't know what you think, Kirsty, but you when we're coaching people in other organizations, we can't see what's happening. We can only deal with their self-reported data about what they think is happening. What are your thoughts on that, Kirsty? Yeah, I think you're right, Claire. that's maybe where this sort of internal coach have a bit more of an edge.
if they can maintain their objectivity to see and to notice. I do wonder though, if you apply a of a systems thinking hat to it, what happens in the organization and the way people behave, the outcomes that they achieve, the patterns that you see within organizations, whether they play out in the team and whether there are elements that you can. notice and observe. But I, yeah, it's a hypothesis.
Absolutely. And, and, and I think if Alan and Alex were here with us now, they'd have a lot to say about that. Because I think there's something about in team coaching, if you're coaching the team together, you can begin to see some of those spaces between Alan and I were laughing about it when we were having a chat yesterday and, and describing So I've moved to rural, though nowhere, it's beautiful. But when I drive to the local town, there's me in the car and the road.
And where Alan lives, he lives near Hyde Park Corner. When you drive, you've got all of those competing things. You've got buses and lorries and cars and bicycles and taxes and people who don't know what they're doing and don't know where they are and people who do know where they are.
And actually that's a good analogy, I think of the difference in organisations between one-to-one coaching and team coaching is that in team coaching, there's lots of data and you need to decide where to look in terms of the spaces between people like driving round Hyde Park corner, I think. Does that resonate with you organisationally? absolutely.
And if you think about, yeah, with that systems hat, if you think about all of the nodes or elements of an organization and all of the things that are happening, it's crowded, it's busy, and having that kind of instinct of where to focus is one thing, but instinct isn't really evidence, which is why that observable data and the data collected becomes so important. Otherwise you can get caught up in some self-fulfilling prophecies or believing your own, drinking your own kool-aid.
Is that the expression? That's very Australian, right? I don't know. It might be. So I was thinking about your question earlier, Claire, about what would football look like if it had the characteristics of an organization. And one of the things that I was thinking about was almost that football has two things.
It has really short-term goals, as in for the senior team win the next match, three points on the board, but it also has those longer term goals which are around finish in the top six of the table or whatever it might be. Whereas organizations tend to not have those short-term goals, certainly the organizations that I work with are working on kind of five strategies.
And I wonder what that would be like in soccer if you were to remove those both short-time and medium-term goals about the end of the season, how you would maintain the energy, the momentum, the enthusiasm, the commitment, all of those things that kind of make soccer interesting, you know, the tension points at the end of the season about who's promoted and who goes down. Well, if you took all of that away, how interesting would it be?
But yet that's what kind of organisations have to deal with on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Andy, what do you think? Well, I think football is very short term. Most people last very short period of time. So I've already been at three clubs in my five years. So you put things in place and then the board will decide to completely change their thinking at a different level and their finances will indicate a different thing and they'll want to change the whole structure.
So though you go in with an initial philosophy, even at youth level where we're going to try and make in the first year, 10 % of our juniors will be in our senior squad. And in five years time, 25 % of our senior squad will come from our youth development policy. I don't know anyone has actually managed to stick the five years out because everything's changing because everyone will come in. think they've got a better idea or they've seen something different.
in the world and that's going to be the new policy. So you know you can design, so I tend to design a philosophy and a structure that I believe that I can take with me wherever I go and hope somewhere I will end in a club that want to build a long-term strategy and see the end results. How interesting, flavour of the month. Kirsty does that ring bells with you flavour of the month? No, should it? Well, it's interesting.
think there are flavors of the month in organizations that there's a reference for, we do this kind of 360, or we do this kind of development, or we do this kind. Yeah, we're bringing his bring your dog to work week or employee experience that's about getting the the table tennis table in or whatever it is rather than something enduring. Yeah. The thing that really struck me as both of you were speaking is that as much as you say that it lasts as long as it lasts and then it doesn't.
There's also something about in soccer, the goals are public. So it's Presumably it's known in soccer that everybody wants to get into the top six or get promoted into the next league. And I imagine that that brings in some kind of public accountability, whereas I think that goals in organizations can be more hidden. So profit-making organizations, clearly you want to get more profit, but in not-for-profits and public sector organizations, are the goals public?
That's an interesting question that you're making me think. Kirsty. You would hope the goal is public. I mean, I do a lot of work with the public sector, both here in Australia and in the UK. you know, if you think about an organization like the NHS, how politicized it is, the external kind of mandate that politicians and leaders have been given to achieve X, Y or Z. versus the internal politics of that can make those goals really cloudy.
And that's why I think teams get pulled in all sorts of different directions, that piece around attitudes and beliefs. think, you know, in some ways the most valuable thing a team coach can do is align, is trying to align values and beliefs of the team. So they are at least pulling in one direction. Otherwise you get really stuck. Yeah, and as you were speaking, I'm thinking, yes, and any organization has many teams.
And the real question is, what's the meta thing that really helps everybody align in the same direction? Often, it's interesting, one of the questions that I ask when I'm asked to work with a team or with a leader is what other interventions are happening? Because unless you ask that directly, you often don't know and you often discover halfway through. that these four people are working with you, but the rest of the team are working with somebody else.
And I imagine football wise, Andy, that probably makes you go absolutely, ugh. Yeah, yeah, I'm working at a club at the moment where the strap line is many teams, one club. So that we, you know, we are many teams, but we're one club. So we should have, and we do have the same vision. We have the same beliefs. and we, we might achieve it differently because you know what, I'm the technical director and I work and educate the coaches within my organization. I don't want them to be robots of me.
I want them to have their own. unique traits that is the reason we employed them. But we still have to work within a set way because we all want to reach the same goal. And that success, measure of success, as you talked about, is actually still different even in football. So it might be winning, it might be playing excellently, it might be the players that are not very good at the game, just an improvement over a season.
might be that players have been retained and been offered a new contract because that's what I'm judged on. I'm judged and my coaches are judged on do all our young players want to still be at our club next year? Have we made them good enough to, because we have a grading system and we have a trial system. Do we want to offer contracts to all our players? So last year, for example, I think I was responsible for 106 children. We offered contracts all 106.
Now some of them moved away, but you know, the belief was that the systems we'd put in place allowed us to want to continue working with every one of them children. So that's our measure of, or my measure of success, rather than whether we win an individual, whether my under 13s win a title, it's very nice for them, but it's kind of irrelevant if all of that squad doesn't move on to become next year's under 14s. Setting your goals as the success of every individual. I love that.
Kirstie. Go on Andy, keep going. I was just going to say, although it's a team sport, is about individuals. That's why we talk about player centered because not every one of the squad, we have squads of 16 to 18 players. Not every one of them is going to make it into our senior environment. But to get to the next stage, they still have to perform individually and as a team.
and they have peer pressure and they have roles and responsibilities within teams and they all have individual goals and targets, but you're right, collectively they're a team and it's that balance between coaching a team and coaching individual that we have to get right every week. And what's your top tip on getting that right every week? The balance between coaching the team and coaching the individual. think it's about being honest with players.
think we have pillars of success that we use around respect and work ethic and stuff like that. And I think a lot of them are measurable. think that's the other thing. I think we go back to being able to show players their role and responsibility within a team, how that can add influences. think it's well known now, people are very much visual learners. The days of being able to sit in front of someone and just talk.
for 20 minutes, especially kids that have got a tension span of about 45 seconds. But if you show them a video of themselves and how they impact the team, then they could watch that for an hour. yeah, it's just, mean, it's me as a coach, developer, my coach is constantly learning and developing and being open to new ideas and philosophies. and the better we become, the better our players become and better our teams become and better our club becomes.
I'm just a bit gobsmacked by that because looking at listening to what you're saying through the kind of lens of organisations, imagine if you could show somebody a video of real data of them in their team, the amazing. Kirsty, as we come towards the end of this conversation, what has this set off in you? What insights have you had and what would you want to say to people coaching in organisations? I think there's two things that are resonating for me, Claire.
One is about clarity of goal and purpose and on two levels, both at the individual level and at the team level. And leaders that I've worked with who are really successful are really good at articulating those goals clearly, succinctly in ways that people can understand. So I think there's something about that clarity piece.
And the other one is, it sounds a bit cliche, but I just sort of want to go back to the feedback loops because there is so much data in organizations and information in organizations. But the organizations that struggle the most, I think, have poor feedback cultures and are nervous of engaging with feedback. just seems to be really self-defeating. And so I think if I was coaching, starting coaching a team tomorrow, think one of my questions would be is what data do you have already?
How are you accessing it? How are you accessing it? And how does it get shared? And how can we build on it? Because I think if you started to build that picture, it could be a really powerful input to the team coaching process. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And Andy, what are your final thoughts or insights as we begin to wrap up?
I think for me, whether it's an organisation or a team, I think we always have to be aware of the responsibility that we have as coaches and educators and how, you know, my job is basically to support and mentor other people. You know, as I think I made the comment earlier on, especially in working in youth development, it's about what's best for them. It's not what's best for me. It's not what's best always for the club. It's definitely not about the coaches showing me how great they are.
So it's about knowing why we're there. I think, Kirsty touched on that, Clary, I think anyone who works for me would know exactly what my philosophy is, what my beliefs are, what my... role, what my game models are, what my core beliefs are. And I think because of that, there's no gray areas. We know what's the right, my beliefs, what the right way is and what's acceptable to me and what I believe helps develop young players. That feels like a very good place to end.
It reminds me, and Kirsty, of that Brene Brown thing that says clear is kind, unclear is unkind. And I think we've all got something to learn from that, haven't we? Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Kirsty, for giving up your evening to have a conversation with me. you. Kirsty, if people want to find out more about coaching, work coaching with you, how do they contact you? Well, they can contact me via 3D coaching or they can email me at kirstie at simply coaching dot net.
anybody's interested in soccer coaching, they can also contact Andy via that email address. OK, brilliant. Thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for listening. Alan and I will be hosting drinks at the coaching in virtually at six o'clock. in the evening on the 18th of March for an hour to riff off some of the things that you're thinking about, about working with groups and teams from the podcasts that you're listening to.
So check out social media for the invites and there'll also be one on the Podbean information about this course. So drinks at the coaching in to talk about group and team coaching, six o'clock UK time on the 18th of March. Thank you, Andy and Kirsty. Thank you everyone for listening. I'm Claire Pedrick. Goodbye.