Episode 65 · 17 November 2023 · 56:59
How to Unlock the Champion Mindset: Sports, Leadership, and Mental Health
How to Unlock the Champion Mindset: Sports, Leadership, and Mental Health
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Meet the champions: Pip Hare, Clarke & Carrie Carlisle, Shaughna Brown
What drives a champion mindset?
Clarke's story: recurrent depressive disorder and multiple suicide attempts
Three takeaways for leaders from Clarke & Carrie's experience
Adversity — you can't have a win without a few losses
Keeping ourselves mentally fit
Treating symptoms vs. looking at underlying causes
Translating sports communication to business meetings
Show notes
The Champion Mindset: What Elite Athletes Know About Leadership & Mental Health
Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) sit down with three elite athletes — former Premier League footballer Clarke Carlisle and his wife Carrie, England Rugby International Shaughna Brown, and single-handed ocean racing sailor Pip Hare — to unpack what it really takes to build a champion mindset.
From resilience and failure to communication styles and the reality of mental health in elite sport, this episode asks: what can leaders learn from people who perform under the highest pressure imaginable?
🏆 What We Learned
1. Failure is a huge part of success. Clarke's message is unambiguous: you have to fail to succeed. Pip's worst-ever race became a turning point — she acknowledged it, drew a line under it, and gave herself and her team permission to move on. The lesson for leaders: normalise failure as data, not disgrace.
2. Mental fitness is a daily practice. The athletes don't wait for a crisis to work on their mindset. They actively train their mental resilience the same way they train their bodies. Leanne's challenge to leaders: build psychological fitness into your routine before you need it.
3. Communication isn't one-size-fits-all. Shaughna advocates tailoring your communication to the individual, not enforcing equality through uniformity. What works for one team member may shut down another. Great leaders adapt.
4. Ask the real question. Not a blasé "how are you?" — but a genuine "how are you feeling?" Clarke and Carrie's honesty about their struggles shows why checking in properly can be a life-saving leadership habit.
💬 If You Do One Thing
Invest in your managers. Leanne's challenge to leaders is simple: your managers are the frontline of your culture. Give them the skills to have real conversations, spot the signs of struggle, and build psychological safety — because everything else flows from there.
🔗 More From This Episode
Follow Clarke & Carrie Carlisle:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clarke-carlisle-and-carrie-carlisle-765aa749
- Instagram: @clarkeandcarriecarlisle
Follow Shaughna Brown:
- Instagram: @shaunaghbrown
- Twitter: @shaunaghbrown
Follow Pip Hare:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pip-hare-ocean-racing-87901617
- Twitter: @piphareoceanracing
🎧 Listen Back to More Elite Athletes on Truth, Lies & Work
- Former Premier League Footballer, Ryan Briggs, chatting Financial Well-being → truthliesandwork.com
- 7-time Dublin GAA Winner, Bernard Brogan, on Founding PepTalk → truthliesandwork.com
- How Sports Psychology Coined The Superstar Effect → truthliesandwork.com
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Prior to 2017, 5 suicide attempts, you know, bring me to that point. And people say that, that, uh, men are poor communicators, or, or, you know, general society. We're not great communicators. My actions were screaming.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I am a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottYeah, um, science of people, an interesting one. When we talk about the mindset of sports people, of champions, a lot of people use that analogy to kind of link it to the workplace. We really want to dig into that. So we wanted to find out what separates champions from everyone else, and then what are the commonalities between champions and great leaders? So today we've got 3 bona fide champions that we want to introduce to you, and we want to really dig into the mindset that sets them apart from people like me who sit in my chair and don't really do anything.
Leanne ElliottWe do. We want to find out if great sports people and great leaders have anything in common. So we are joined by 3 incredible guests, dare I say celebrities.
Al ElliottI think you dare. I think you dare. The first one is a lady who's not only a professional sailing coach, uh, she's a regular writer for Yachting World. Back in 2013, she released a YouTube series called Sail Faster, Sail Safer. She is a seasoned competitor, having taken on the international yacht races like, and I'm gonna have a go at this, I think it's French, Transat Jacques Vabre. Apologies to any French-speaking people listening. And the Rolex Fastnet Race. She, this is basically just showcases how amazing she is, and she's at the highest, highest level. In 2017, she competed in the Three Peaks Yacht Race and completed it, came third, despite breaking her ankle 6 miles from the finish line. Pretty amazing stuff.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Al ElliottLet's go and meet the incredible Pip Hare. My name is Pip Hare. I am the CEO and skipper at Pip Hare Ocean Racing, which is Britain's premier ocean racing team.
Leanne ElliottOur next guest is an ex-Premiership footballer. This one's for you, Dad. He played for teams such as Blackpool and Queens Park Rangers. He's been awarded the title of Britain's Brainiest Footballer, and along with his wife Carrie Carlisle, has written a number one bestseller called Shut Up Alcohol. Carrie and Clark are mental health advocates who bravely share their own experiences with Clark's multiple suicide attempts. They boast clients such as Asda, HSBC, and the BBC. They travel the country obliterating the stigma that surrounds adverse mental health. Especially within the workplace. Clark has appeared on Match of the Day, Sky Sports, ITV Sports, and surely the pinnacle of both Clark and Carrie's media career, they are now on the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast. Welcome Carrie and Clark Carlisle.
Al ElliottClark Carlisle, um, just an arbitrarily, uh, selected Z-list ex-footballer who likes to chat rubbish. And this is my bestselling author wife. Number one, number one bestselling author wife. Our 3rd amazing guest has been a competitor her entire adult life, whether she's throwing hammers at the Commonwealth. I'm guessing that's sport rather than throwing at judges. She's representing England at rugby. She is a self-confessed winning addict. She's been a firefighter, a boxer, a gas engineer, an international speaker, a coach. She played for Harlequins, and she's also been nominated as Evening Standard's Most Influential Londoner.
Leanne ElliottThat's quite— there's a lot of them. There is.
Al ElliottThere are a few. There are a few, but she's the most influential. So despite starting to play rugby only at the age of 25, she went on to play for the 2019 Women's Six Nations, which they won with a grand slam. Don't follow rugby, but I might— I reckon a grand slam is a win and it's a good thing. I'm guessing it is. I'm the worst. I'm the worst person to be doing an episode on sports because I don't know anything about sports. She appeared in the Amazon Prime documentary No Woman, No Try. Not seen it yet, but I want to see it just on the title alone. Whoever came up with that, solid. Bravo. Absolutely brilliant. Welcome the amazing Shauna Brown. So my name's Shauna Brown. I currently play rugby for Harlequins, and I used to play rugby for England as well. I retired in December of 2023.
Leanne ElliottSo 3 incredible guests today, Shauna, Clark, and Carrie. We did meet at the Mad World Summit in October. October. If you want to learn more about that, go back a few episodes. We'll leave a link. Incredible event. Its sibling event, the Water Cooler, is coming up in April, so go check that out as well. But enough of that, we have a lot to get through. The main questions we'll be asking are: how does failure affect you when you're a champion? What are the signs that you're struggling? How does communication differ between the sports field and the workplace? place? And what can us leaders learn from the fight for equality in sports? And finally, of course, I think it goes without saying, we have to ask the question, what makes a great leader?
Al ElliottBut before we get into all of that, I wanted to really get into the mindset of each of our guests. I wanted to find out what made them want to compete. How do the sports differ? I know that Shauna's done individual and team sports. And what's it like having so much pressure to perform? Let's start with Pip Hare, our amazing sailor. When I got to my teens, when I started to do my A-levels, I kind of realized that I, I needed, I needed to be challenged. I needed adventure. I needed to be passionate. You know, I was desperately driven to see the world, but also see what I could do as a human being. And one day I was flicking through a sailing magazine and I came across the Vendée Globe race. which was, you know, single-handed non-stop around the world in a 60-foot boat. And I just looked at it and thought, that looks like the hardest thing a human being could even think about doing. You know, it's 4 months alone on your own in a boat that big. And I just thought, that's what I'm gonna do. I want to do that. Yeah, it took me 30 years, but I made it.
Leanne ElliottShauna has competed at international level in both individual and team sports, she's had to learn to embrace the differences.
Al ElliottActually, another thing that I was different in my initial club was ambition and ability. So I'd come from— I was an international athlete, competed at the Commonwealth Games, I've competed at World Juniors, World Youth Games, and I really like winning. I— there's no better joy in life than to win. In fact, there is better joy because there's happiness, but It is up there when you win, when you're good at something, the feeling, the endorphins, the hormones you release, you get, you're thinking, wow, this is great. But then you're around a set of people who are not there to win. They're there to have a good time. And, and I had to realise that that's okay. Um, you don't have to want to win everything. Competition obviously brings pressure, but it's important to understand yourself well enough to understand how you're going to deal with that pressure. You need to find your own ways to thrive in this kind of environment. With Pip, that manifests as a single-minded focus on solving problems. So you are in the moment, 100%, focused 100%, and it is one of the few times in my life where I have permission to be like that. No one expects anything else off of me, and I, I love what I do. There's always an opportunity to kind of make ground, to do better, to push yourself a little bit harder. And it's like when I'm on the water, because no one will help me or support me, I have to do every single thing, whether it's Yeah. rewiring electronics, whether it's downloading weather information, repairing sails, boat building, I have to do everything. I have to be the solution to every single problem, and I have to be the strategist that is going to get me to the finish. And it's like I just step out of my normal skin and I become the person that I always wanted to be my whole life. But You have to put me in that environment to make me step up in that way. I asked Pip that despite her brilliance, but she was magnanimous to kind of look down when I told her she was amazing, but despite her brilliance, does she ever feel that she's let herself down? I feel like I let myself down. I feel like I passed opportunities over, you know, I, I do. I, I just There's something inside me that just really believes that I have more to give, and I could— I just could be better. And I want to be better because I just feel so lucky to be a human being, and a human being where I am doing what I'm doing. I know I'm lucky. I mean, holy smoke, I am lucky. And, and the worst thing in my— in my opinion, the worst thing in the world is a wasted opportunity, because opportunities are the hardest things to come by.
Leanne ElliottHaving so much pressure to perform can start to take its toll. Here's Clark and Carrie to talk about their experience.
Al ElliottMy personal journey is of recurrent complex depressive disorder that led to multiple suicide attempts, um, and we share that, but most importantly, we share from both sides of that lived experience. So Carrie shares the impact that it had on her, Uh, and our family. And along that, you know, going along with the brutal honesty that we share around the journey, it's not a sensationalized, um, you know, conversation or delivery. We talk about the practical implications and the practical applications of what we've learned. That's so nice. Basically, we talk about all the stuff we did wrong, really, really wrong. We got it so wrong. We got it wrong when Clark was depressed. We got it wrong when Clark was suicidal, and we got it wrong more times. And then we got maybe like the ratio changed, like then we do one thing right and 3 things wrong. And we learned and we practiced and we got really good at getting it wrong and we didn't care. And then we got it right and now we're well.
Leanne ElliottI think there are, there are 3 really key takeaways there for me, and I think that all leaders should, should try and take with them too. First, even successful people can feel inadequate. You know, it's, it's not to say that success means 100% confidence all the time. Doesn't really work like that. Secondly, the superstar effect. You know, superstars can sometimes struggle in teams. The difference is superstars that thrive in teams are coachable. If you want to learn more about that, do go back to our episode, The Superstar Effect. We will leave a link in the show notes. And finally, I think, you know, Clark and Carrie talk so openly and candidly about their experiences, about the mistakes that they made. I think it really highlights the You know, the pressure to be the best can lead to adverse mental health.
Al ElliottRegular listeners will know that we used to be Samaritans in the UK. So if you are feeling, uh, distress or despair, then that's exactly what they're there for. You will find them in the phone book. Totally nonjudgmental, amazing service that we were part of for, very proudly part of for about 5 or 6 years. So as we've pointed out, with stress, pressure, competition comes adversity, comes failure. It's kind of natural.
Leanne ElliottIt is. So let's talk about adversity. You can't have a win without a few losses. How do professional sports people deal with this?
Al ElliottBack in the day when I was a kid, I went to a Tony Robbins event where I walked on fire. I'm sure you know them. Um, and, um, and despite kind of like there was a bit of cheesiness about it, he did say something quite profound. He said that success brings— it doesn't eliminate problems, it just brings a better quality problem to solve. However, they are still problems to solve. I wanted to know how Shauna dealt with adversity and failure.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThe biggest message I would always want to relay is that failure is a huge part of success. Like you have to fail again and again and again before you succeed and keep succeeding. And then you might get good at one area in your life, but then you're failing in 9 others. That's fine because like, let's concentrate on your super strength. Let's concentrate on what you're good at and we can work on the other stuff. In the background, but let's celebrate your super strength, celebrate what makes you special, what makes you unique. And not being— so in a sports setting, it's the easy one, is not being picked for a team. And there's been times where I haven't been— in my early days, like, I wasn't being picked for a club. And then going on to when I was an international, not being picked for England. And that's hard.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottBecause it was the first time, I remember the first time was 2021 autumns, and it was the first time I hadn't been picked fully fit and just not selected because I'm not good enough. And I had a conscious decision when the coach said to me, yeah, Shauna, like, you're not coming with us. I was like, right, don't really know what to do here because I've never been in this situation before. But he gave me a direct action, something to be better at on pitch.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al Elliottthat I could work on. And so I straight got in contact with my club and my club coaches and like, I need to get better at this. Like, let's go, I'm coming to training right now.
Leanne ElliottPip had a similar situation. She was so honest about how the failure made her feel, but she found that taking time to digest and accept the failure was cathartic, kind of like the 5 stages of grief.
Al ElliottIt's my last race, was the worst race I've ever had, ever. And, and we'd just done a massive refit on the boat, so we'd spent a significant amount of money upgrading the boat to big foils so we flew. You know, I've now got, you know, my boat now is kind of one of the top 20 performance ocean race boats in our class in the world. You know, it's such a huge investment that me and my team worked really hard to achieve. And I went out on my first race and just messed it all up through human error. Just— and I— it still hurts. I mean, it really, really hurts. I, I was just— I was ashamed, I was disappointed. Just, I felt like I'd let everyone down. I felt like maybe I'd pushed myself, finally pushed myself that step too far.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo the first thing kind of was just a process of acknowledgement. You know, I, I just had to draw a line under it. You know, I kind of, you know, acknowledged everything that had not gone well, um, and, and just kind of looked it in the face and just said, I can't change this now. This has happened. This is where I am. This is why I think it happened.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottNow I need to stop dwelling on it, and that's the hardest bit. And then actually, I gave me and my whole team a break. We were all exhausted, so everyone had a 2-week holiday, which was, you know, at my leisure to do because of the way we run the team, but it was definitely the right thing to do.
Leanne ElliottWe need to psychologically move on from the setbacks. That's how we are— we keep ourselves mentally fit. That's how we bounce back. That is literally the definition of resilience. But to move on, we do need to process the adversity. As Pip says, we need to process that change, that failure. The thing about sports is sports people have access to great coaches, and that is fundamental to success. And it's also a widely accepted and expected practice— sports people have coaches. And that's because coaches support people through more than just the technical aspects of the game or the sport. They also support sports people mentally, psychologically, socially. In the late 1990s, positive psychology burst onto the scene and was quickly picked up by the sports world. Why? Well, because positive psychology focuses on thriving, on being a champion. And when it comes to the science, positive psychology explores neuroplasticity So how can we retrain our brains to be more positive, more resilient? Positive psychology— if you want to know anything about it, check out a psychologist called Martin Seligman. He is the OG positive psychologist. He talks about learned optimism. You can learn to think like a champion. When you're reflecting on adversity, on adversity, when you're psychologically processing that challenge There's only really 4 things that you need to do. 1, look for the good in the situation. 2, seek the valuable lessons in the setback or difficulty. 3, if it's possible, explore solutions to the problem or adversity you're facing. And finally, think about your goals. Talk about your goals. Has the adversity changed them? Optimism is a key aspect of what we call psychological capital, which is basically our internal resources or the armor that we use to manage tough situations psychologically. Champions invest time and effort in building their psychological capital, and like any muscle, the stronger it gets, the more weight it can bear. Shauna knows that internalizing and processing failure is as important as internalizing and processing success. In other words, deal with failure and success in the same way.
Al ElliottEspecially in a team sport, it's someone's opinion and it's athletics. And for me, in throwing, you either make the distance or you don't. It's very black and white. You either throw the qualifying distance or you don't. You either come first, second, or third, or you don't. There's no opinion involved. But then you come to a lot of team sports, and even I think of like gymnastics or trampoline, and—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd that is about opinion. It is exactly that. It's someone's opinion. And in that moment in time, it was someone's opinion that I wasn't good enough to play in that position. And that can't— I couldn't let that dictate my value to myself in life because that person could be gone tomorrow. Someone else could come in and I could be exactly the same person and they decide that I'm good enough. But equally, even if someone is picking me, again, I can't I can't see that as a source of my happiness because the person who's picking me and making me happy could be gone tomorrow as well. So it's not letting somebody else's opinion reflect who you are and your value as a person, but actually what, what value is it within you? Pip found that dealing with adversity and learning how to deal with adversity in sports actually helped her when she started her business. And actually one of the interesting things that's happened to me is I've gone from kind of being a one-woman, um, sailing campaign to now being the CEO of a British-based team, um, and everything that that entails, which effectively is a business that manages, you know, staff, sponsors, you know, fairly extensive refit and maintenance programs around our boats. You know, driving the program forward, all of those sorts of things. And I never imagined myself as a business owner, but what I've learned about managing myself at sea has directly transferred over to running the business. And, and I think one of the skills that I've learned is an ability to recover from setbacks Very, very quickly because of the mindset that I learned on, on the boat. Recently, kind of, one of our sponsors made the decision not to continue with their contract, um, and I think as a business we were able to react to that very, very quickly. We were able to tailor our program, we were able to model what that looked like going forwards. We kind of almost straight way, change tack to, to kind of increase the fundraising area of our business and decrease the kind of, um, I guess the performance area to, to allow that balance and, and kind of turning all of that around really in a matter of weeks, um, or less because, you know, we knew we needed to react quickly. And I think that's that's been directly from my experience of a setback on the water. It's kind of like, okay, well, you cannot wallow in this. You can't wallow in it. This is what's happened. This is where you are now. Model it out. Move forward. Let's get this going again.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless.
Leanne ElliottSeamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well. It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about How to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys? I am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottSo we know at this point that great sports people and great leaders have a specific mindset and deal with adversity well. But like anything in life, balance is important. Positive thinking can become toxic if we try to blindly spin failures into something positive without internalizing that adversity, without processing that emotion. It does invalidate that experience that we've been to, what it is to be be human. And that can lead to trauma, it can lead to isolation, it can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Carrie talks about the signs they missed when Clark started having some dark thoughts.
Al ElliottI— Clark's a really good communicator, he's a super clever man, and in my totally unbiased opinion. And so I knew he was depressed. We're gonna take it back, probably— well, this is a cycle, but let's take it back to 2017, Clark's last suicide attempt. And I knew Clark was poorly, but I thought he was depressed because he was telling me he was depressed. And he was telling me so succinctly and like the whole world on the news and stuff that I thought he was telling me the whole story, but he was just telling me the bits he was comfortable with. So actually Clark was equally depressed and suicidal, but wasn't comfortable. So he just shut that bit off. And I was like, well, he's communicating, right? He's communicating all the time. No, he's not. He's being selective. So I got that wrong. I took his symptoms personally. Clark wanted to sleep all the time. Instead of addressing that, oh, this is a medical thing, I took it as this is a personal thing. This is a relationship thing. I took it personally and I didn't confront. I dismissed and justified. And stuff like he didn't wanna sit with me in the same room. He didn't wanna make eye contact. And of course then he disappeared and left me a suicide note. And that was when I had to start saying to myself, I can't handle this.
Leanne ElliottIn retrospect, Clark can see that treating the symptoms rather than looking at the possible underlying reasons can have catastrophic effects.
Al ElliottUm, for me on a personal level, you know, uh, prior to 2017, 5 suicide attempts, you know, bring me to that point. And people say that, that, uh, men are poor communicators or, or, you know, general society, we're not great communicators. My actions were screaming that there was something that warranted attention. But because I didn't know that there was something to be looking for, we dealt with each action individually as though that was the root of the problem. For example, um, you know, I was cyclically going on massive self-sabotage, self-destruct, um, benders, for want of a better word, you know, big drinking benders, 3, 4, 5 days going missing, turning my phone off. And we looked straight at the alcohol. Oh, alcohol's a problem. So I go to the clinic, I come out of there, I'm sober. But just because there's no alcohol anymore, it doesn't mean I'm not still exploding in these, you know, self-sabotage behaviors. Now, what I didn't know was that, that was me in a position of overwhelm where I couldn't manage the emotions that I was trying to suppress. And what I was doing was just expertly avoiding or distracting. So that's what all my maladaptive coping mechanisms and behaviors were, whether it was drinking or gambling or playing computer games, or like Carrie said, when I was in those deep throes of depression, it was hypersomnia. I'd sleep for 30 or 40 hours straight. But we'd look at me as though, you know, Clark, what are you doing these for? As opposed to looking at the symptoms and saying, oh, what are these showing us? There is a danger if you're not careful of assuming just because someone's happy, then everything is cool. You should probably ask them if they're okay. You can't be happy sometimes. You've gotta be your face like slapped arse and you've just gotta be angry. And even someone said to me, I said, Shauna, you're always happy. I said, whoa, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not always happy. And you know that 'cause I'm normally having a moan at you. And I go, oh yeah, I just, because when you're happy, you're really happy. So I sort of forget the other bits and I go, well, that's me. You've got, if you want me, you've gotta have the whole package. So, It's a strong part of our identity within our team is that it's about giving what you have that day, and that's okay. Luckily, these days, acknowledging you're not okay is actually becoming a lot more acceptable in the sports world, as Shauna explains. So, I think it's becoming more and more common that it's perfectly acceptable to speak to the sports psychologist. It's perfectly acceptable to discuss Your emotional, mental wellbeing, how a situation makes you feel, where even as a— and then again, the beauty of a team is that you have other people who can relate to what you're going through. With an individual sport, it is kind of hard to speak to people who have no idea what it's like to, you know, not make a distance, not make a team. But within rugby, you've got others who potentially not made a team with you, you've got others who are injured and get it, and it's a lot more—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottEvery day to just say to someone like, how are you feeling? Not a blasé, oh, how are you? And everyone goes, yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, right, you're right. Yeah, like none of that. Like you sit down one-to-one and you say like, where are you? Where are you today on a scale of 1 to 10? And at Quinns, we talk a lot about it's not about giving 100% every day, 100% of you every day. Actually, if you've only got 60% to give, Yeah. you give 100% of that 60%, acknowledging that you're not You can't be your whole self every day because it's not— it's not— for me, it's not possible. And if you are, and someone is happy, buzzing every single day, I would suggest there's other issues that they need to talk about because, uh, without being horrible, that ain't right.
Leanne ElliottClark and Carrie are so honest and open about their struggles. Carrie explains that there's a weird sort of paradox in the way we respond to individuals in crisis compared to those who may be showing early signs of struggling. What if we went a different way? What if we could help individuals feel valued, feel heard and supported before their struggles escalated to the point of crisis?
Al ElliottWe seem to be so nice about people after they kill themselves. We write lovely things about them and we remember them so fondly and we share, but we're not very nice about people when they're displaying these behaviors. If we could apply the same understanding and the same empathy and the same, look how much I love you. Look how much I appreciate you. Even though these symptoms are quite disruptive, let's be honest, they're quite disruptive. They're, they're emotive. They affect other people's lives. That's not being selfish. That is an alarm going off that we've got to deal with. One of the questions we get asked so much is, well, how, how do we spot who's ill without being hypervigilant? Because my God, I became hypervigilant. Like it was an Olympic sport. Worrying was like the only form of exercise I ever got. And I did it all of the time. So we don't want to go into hypervigilance, but how do we spot if somebody is suffering from adverse mental health? Not mental illness, we're not doctors, adverse mental health. And the catch-all is so simple. You treat every single person you meet like they may be suffering from adverse mental health. Because what's the— What's the alternative? The alternative, you wait until they get sick or you push them on until they do get sick because we all get there. Just treat everyone as if they might be suffering from an adverse mental health condition and you, you catch everyone. You open the door for that conversation, you know? Talking of having conversations, imagine coming from a sports world, particularly somewhere like sailing or rugby, where directness is what you need to be. You need to be straight to the point, and that's kind of the norm. Now you go into a business setting where you're leading people and they're filled with like a diverse communication style. Pip has learned a lot about communication, especially when she's in the dangerous environment of being on the sea in a boat traveling God knows how quickly. So she understands that it was— it's required to be direct and to be open when in communication. Yet she discovered that in the business world, sometimes that doesn't always work. When you expand, when you expand to a team both on the boat and in the business, You have to trust people. If you don't trust people, then it's never going to work. And for me, you know, that was a question of finding— it's not just about experience, it's about people who, who fit into the program with their own philosophy as well, you know, a shared philosophy. Um, and, and then kind of allowing— in the same way that I expect to be allowed to own my mistakes, I have to allow other people to do that as well. Um, and we got there in the end, but that was a difficult thing for me. Um, and then I think in terms of kind of leadership It, again, it's something that I've had to develop because on a boat, you have permission to be very straight with people. Yeah, there is no niceties almost. You know, when we are— when you have a, um, a well-tuned crew on a boat, you will just kind of say to people, you give them the knowledge they need to do the job well. So, you know, if I'm navigating, I'll just kind of say, 10 port, you know, up 5, trim the jib in. Direct, um, pieces, either requests or direct pieces of information, but with no fluff around. And because we're all working to the same goal, if something isn't quite right, you can say, that's not right, we need to do that, we need to do that. But everybody has a common goal, so it's accepted that you don't need the pleases and the thank yous. And I think we can't always translate that into the business world because it is a very direct way of speaking and, and can upset people. But I think what I try to do with each of my business conversations is almost kind of frame the objectives of a conversation before we go into it to allow a certain type of communication. It's kind of, I guess, managing expectations pre-conversation, or— but it's the same as on the boat. If everyone on the boat has the same goal, and that's to trim the sails well and sail the right course, then they accept a flow of information in a certain way.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd if you can kind of translate that to a business meeting, you know, sit down, this meeting is for this, this, this, and this, you know, we need to speak in this way, then actually that makes it a lot easier to, to be direct, but also to make sure that everybody has understood the conversation that you've had.
Leanne ElliottShauna agrees. She's against the idea of enforced equality. Instead, she advocates tailoring your communication out to the people you're talking to and the situation you're in.
Al ElliottWe don't treat people equally. And even with me, the main thing I noticed, because I used to say that, I used to say, treat people how you want to be treated and treat people equally. But I've sat through quite a few different sort of personality tests and understanding, getting to know teammates and getting to know how they, how they learn, how they operate, how to get the best out of other people. And actually, I realize if you've got a message, a work on for me on the pitch, and say it's around tackling, I need to tackle better. If a coach says to me, well, Shauna, you're pretty good at tackling, but sometimes if you could maybe sort of think about getting your foot in a bit, and I'm like, what are you trying to say? Spit it out, hurry up. And some people go, So what I need is, Shauna, your tackling's not good enough. Get your foot closer, get lower, hit harder. Cool, I'm done. If I then speak to other people the way I like to be spoken to, which is very direct, I was getting a bad reaction and people sort of crying or like being upset and sad. And then that'd get me angry. What are you crying for? I've just told you to hit lower and harder. What's the problem? And then that just spirals downhill. And then you sit through tests about your teammates and listen to how they need to learn. And actually, some people do need a different approach to how you get the same message across.
Leanne ElliottAnd in the modern workplace, ambiguity is so common.
Al ElliottWhat's difficult is ambiguity, isn't it? That's what people struggle with. And actually, you know, if, if we're all brave enough to have open, open verbal transactions, that come under the umbrella of, you know, no one, no one needs to get offended by this. We just need to talk about it so that we can do it in the right way moving forwards. That's something I actually quite enjoy because I like straightforward. And I guess it's about, you know, it's about respect maybe at the end of the day. And, and I think throughout my whole career, I've had to absolutely battle every single second of every single day to get where I am because I did not fit in, and I still don't fit in. I'm still an oddity. Um, and actually now, you know, I'm not only the female CEO of a sports team and an ocean racing skipper, But I'm going to be 50 next year, and, and then all of a sudden, you know, I don't fit in again either. So I, you know, if somebody feels like I'm, you know, making them feel like they don't fit in, I, I would never want to project that on someone, but I need to have an open conversation about it.
Leanne ElliottWomen's roles in traditionally male-dominated sports have often been underestimated. I saw a headline the other day that, you know, any year now we're going to have a a woman manager in Premier League men's football. It's kind of like, any year now, really. Shauna has helped massively with this inequity by appearing in No Woman, No Try on Amazon Prime, discussing how perceptions around women's participation in these sports has evolved. Here's what happened after the documentary aired.
Al ElliottOne of the most powerful things from the documentary afterwards was having men message me on social media saying, thank you. Like, thank you for being so honest. Thank you for having those conversations, because I either have a daughter who plays rugby, or I coach women's rugby, and I had no idea. Like, I've never even thought about what the girls need in a changing room. I've never even thought about what the sanitary situation is in a toilet and getting those changed.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottJust, there's so many issues around kit was a big one as well, and how it fits and how it makes you feel, and the difference between like the sense of belonging. And you think, oh, it's just a pair of shorts or it's just a t-shirt, but if you all of a sudden got your own kit and it fits, you just feel a sense of belonging. You're like, I'm actually not just classed as a small man.
Leanne ElliottPip also explained how the role of women in sailing has changed over the years.
Al ElliottAnd at that time, participation was less than 3% women. Um, they— it just wasn't something that they did. It was a very adventurous sport, considered extreme, very macho. Um, and I think that, you know, the general impression was that women couldn't possibly be strong enough or hard enough to take on Sailing across an ocean. And it's just taken a really long time to break down those barriers. And the really odd thing is that actually, as the boats have become more powerful, so it's given more opportunities for women to move into the sport because the boat I sail is Um, 60-foot long. The mast is 30 meters high. Um, at full, at full sail, um, the full sail cover is 600 square meters. So that's enough sail to cover 3 tennis courts. And because the boat is so big and so powerful, um, one person alone, it doesn't matter how big and strong you are, one person alone cannot possibly manage that boat by just muscling it around. So it becomes a lot more about technique, it becomes about brain, not brawn. And that has opened our sport up to allow women to compete. And we're one of the very few sports in the world where men and women compete on equal terms. Pip is so cool. And one of the things— and so single-minded as well. And one of the things that she told me about was that she found it quite difficult as a woman to break into the world of sailing. So she just basically created her own team. You know, it had been so difficult for me to break into professional sailing as a woman. And I suddenly realized one of the things I valued the most, you know, the way I got into it was just to create my own team. basically create my own team, raise my own funds. And if I've created my own team, then I can be the skipper of my own team and no one's going to kick me off. Um, and once I'd kind of done that and got out on the water, I actually realized one of the things I valued the most about that was being allowed to fail. And I think, I think that is the genuine definition of equality. It's allowing people to fail and own their failure, um, because it's so important. And, and, and, and I, you know, if I own my failure, then I'm now responsible for turning it around and, and doing something about it. And, and as, as much as it hurts and as much as I you know, I don't like looking at it. I also know that I'm the one that knows all the details, and I'm the one that can dig around in it. And that's a really powerful thing.
Leanne ElliottWhilst women in sports is thankfully becoming more mainstream, there is a long way to go. But, you know, we're making progress thanks to the likes of people like Pip and Shauna. But of course, the male sports environment also needs to evolve. Clarke found that that traditionally masculine environment of a Premiership football team wasn't always conducive to showing emotions.
Al ElliottSo, what I actively encourage people to do now is become consciously self-aware, especially of your thinking patterns and your thought processes. You know, um, have a look at dysfunctional thinking patterns. I think they're called cognitive distortions academically. They list somewhere between 9 and 12, depending on the source. Play bingo with these thinking patterns. You'll be amazed at how many of them you use by rote without even thinking about it. And until we take the time to understand what our thinking patterns are, but more importantly, how and why we came to thinking like that, you know, and for guys of my generation, we're talking about the—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThe generational and societal conditioning about what it is to be a man and the identity around masculinity. You know, it's back straight, head down, crack on, don't show emotion, you've got an answer for all problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I get to my first instance of significant trauma in my life, and my thought processes in that moment are that I have to have the answer. I don't share with anyone that there's a problem. I don't display any emotion. And that in, in and of itself is, is an incredibly detrimental thought process. I get through to 37, 38 years of age, and all of these thought cycles have gotten progressively more detrimental and dysfunctional. But because I've never shared them, I've no objectivity on it. They're my fact. Shauna goes on to explain that yes, it's great to ask people if they're okay, But you should actually hang around to find out what they say and find out what the answer is. And that comes down to relationships and understanding someone. And whether you're in a workplace or on a rugby pitch, it's very easy to just get caught up in the, oh, hi, Al. You okay? Yep. Okay. Good weekend?
Leanne ElliottYep.
Al ElliottOkay. Get on with work.
Leanne ElliottBye, Al.
Al ElliottSee you tomorrow. Okay. Hi, Al. You've had a good night?
Leanne ElliottYep.
Al ElliottOkay. And know nothing about each other. But what does take the effort is to speak. So, what's— tell me something great in your life at the moment, or tell me if there's one thing in your life that you could change, what would it be? Like, have a conversation with someone, get to know someone. And you think, oh, I can't be bothered because, you know, I've got 25 other teammates, or there's 50 people that work in this office. I can't possibly get to know all 50 of them. Get to know 5 of them, get to know 10 of them. And they, if they then get to know another 10 and they get to know another 10, all of a sudden you've got an office that understands each other. And someone, I don't know, might make the same mistake every week. And instead of just getting angry at them, like, how can you get that sheet wrong? Like, we do the same spreadsheet every week and you get it wrong. Like, what's wrong with you? Actually go, is there something I can do to help? Because I've noticed you get that wrong every week and we correct it every week.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottIs there anything I can do? Is there something that we can change as, as an office, as a community, as a team to make that easier for you? And I go, well, do you know what? I'm actually colorblind. And so I don't really know which box I'm ticking because it's all in colors. And so I wasn't sure if there was a space I could tell anyone. So I just guess and hope nobody noticed. And you go, oh, blimey, why didn't you just say? That's an easy fix. We can just make everything black and white or Whatever the fix is. So yeah, it's this power of relationships and getting to know people, and you then have an empathy for them when they mess up or get something wrong, or you just go, hmm, you just need a bit of help with that, and I can definitely help you. The commonality between sports and business is that great leaders make or break a team.
Leanne ElliottIf you do one thing, Al, if you do one thing, invest in your managers. I often challenge leaders that I work with. work with to think about the amount of time they're spending on the people aspect of their role. If you are a people manager, the majority of your time, shockingly, should be spent managing people, or at the very least, you know, 50% of your time, half of your time should be on managing your people. It is that cliché that, you know, you should be working on your business, not in it. And again, when it comes to sports, this is absolutely the case. Nobody would ever dream of doing it differently. You're never going to see, or you never saw, Alex Ferguson throwing on a football shirt and subbing in on the second half, did you? You know, Alex Ferguson, as much as it pains me as a Liverpool supporter, was a fabulous manager because he was the manager. You watched that David Beckham Netflix documentary recently, you would have noted that he didn't refer to him as Alex Ferguson, he referred to him as the manager. Alex Ferguson was extraordinary because he planned the long-term future of Man United. And that meant selling superstars like David Beckham when it was needed. And there are so many different examples, I think, in football— or sorry, in soccer for our American listeners— in soccer management. You take Carlo Ancelotti, less bullish than Alex Ferguson, equally effective. He is known as the quiet leader, and he's led teams like Real Madrid, AC Milan, Chelsea to huge, huge successes. His philosophy is actually Speak to your players, your workers, first and foremost as people. Pep Guardiola, Man City, bane of my life, great manager. You know, he made— he is the guy that literally made the fans, the dreams of all Man City fans come true. He has a similar philosophy. He kind of goes with the thought of, you know, I'm not dealing with footballers, I'm dealing with people. And then of course we have, you know, the greatest manager of the game currently, Jurgen Klopp. Um, he completely transformed the culture at Liverpool. He has created a team of champions who, let's be honest, a team that when we started winning had no right to be champions. They weren't good enough. But in 3 years, he led them to win the Champions League, the English Premier League, the FIFA Club World Cup, the FA Cup, the League Cup, amongst others. And his approach— he celebrates success as a collective. As a manager, he knows that his team's successes are his successes. So he knows that he can spend the majority of time on his team because if they do well, he'll do well. He's actually quoted to have said something I thought was really nice. He said, we all win for each other. What makes it— oh, that makes it more valuable, more worthy. If you have a bigger group to do it for, it feels better for yourself. Yeah, so many awesome lessons, and I think this is a really accessible place for for any accidental MD, accidental people leader, entrepreneur, to look at the lessons of great management and think about how to apply those principles, that philosophy, into your business. Leaders really do make or break a team. And going back to the football thing, that's why managers get sacked before players do. That's why players transfer out while the manager stays. It's all about the manager in sports. It's all about the manager.
Al ElliottYeah. And what Leanne says, which is, by the way, brilliant, what Leanne just said there is it seems it's all about the vision of the leader there. Like, take Gareth Southgate, who, um, by his own admission, is, is not, he's not got the strongest squad, but they still have the vision. They still have the cohesion and the leadership to do phenomenally well, better than I think we've done for years and probably scores of years. Shauna's worked under many leaders, and I want to know what she thought made a great leader. For me, a great leader is someone who understands their people, who has a relationship away from the professional bit. So for us, it's away from the pitch. For an office, it might be away from the office. If it's a, a person who works in the leisure centre, it's have a relationship away away from the leisure centre. And that's not to say you have to be best mates with everyone, you have to get along with everyone. Absolutely not. It's just to have an understanding, have an empathy for their lives and for them, and just make them feel good sometimes. And sometimes just give them good jobs. Give them jobs that they're really good at. So you can bring the person up and then you go, now here's a challenge as well. So yeah, a leader for me is someone who puts people first. And if you put people first, encourage them to be better, then performance targets soon get reached. And for us, you get better rugby players, you get better colleagues, you get better workplaces, and happy people make great workers, I've heard. There are so many things that leaders can learn from professional sports. And actually, it's no coincidence that a lot of our previous guests and experts have actually come from the sports world. For example, HubSpot's Kyle Denhoff, I think, was lacrosse in episode 23. Ryan Briggs, uh, the financial whiz, uh, he was a footballer for Chelsea, I think. Um, God, I hope I've got that right.
Leanne ElliottStarting the match.
Al ElliottOh God, that's probably the worst thing I could say, Brian. Sorry, but go back to episode 55. I told you I knew nothing about sports. Uh, Bernard Brogan, um, was a Gaelic footballer. Uh, go back to episode 48, listen to him and how he's just revolutionizing the world of culture. Kevin Dahlstrom is a professional rock climber. Episode 44. Susan and Rob going way back to episode 30 earlier this year, both professional sports people.
Leanne ElliottAnd of course, if you want to hear more about the psychology of sports people, go back to our episode with Ryan Sherman from Hogan Assessments. He talks them through some really cool examples, um, in the worlds of golf and chess.
Al ElliottYou'll find all those episodes on our website, or if in your app, just scroll back, you'll find them.
Leanne ElliottYeah, you will, you will. But also, you know, I think there's also a lot of things that the world of can learn from the world of work. And I think this is definitely things that are starting to be more part of the conversation. I think in terms of career progression, you know, we see a lot of sports people really struggle with their mental health once they retire at the age of 30-something, if they, you know, if they're late in their career. Yet we also see, you know, a lot of ex-sports people go into commentating or coaching or management or something else. I can't help but think that, you know, there needs to be more of a wraparound support for people who retire, either in terms of career progression or continuing to support the club that they've dedicated years to around their wellbeing. You know, it's kind of like they've been made redundant. You know, they're not, they're not needed anymore. We see a lot of wraparound support from organizations that will help people through that transition. Um, will support their well-being, will again support their career progression. I think there needs to be, needs to be something there perhaps for sports people to more effectively navigate what is a very, very difficult transition at an age that is very young in, in their lifespan, particularly when we think, you know, we're gonna start living until we're kind of 100. If you're retiring at 30, that's a lot of years you've got to find something to do. So I think that's one thing, and I'm sure this happens, but I think just, you know, in terms of the positive psychology, the coaching, the psychological and emotional support that sports people get, it's also just making sure that they're being told and advised and educated on how to apply these positive coping mechanisms, these positive strength, mental fitness building exercises into a world that is beyond sport. A world that's beyond football or rugby or whatever it is. Because if you can transfer that mindset, transfer those— that discipline and those coping mechanisms to the, in inverted commas, real world, you know, once you retire, then I think we would see a lot more resilience and a lot more sports people flourish and thrive post-career. So a really interesting episode there. I think some incredible sports people some incredible advice and cautionary tales around thinking like a champion. Um, I really enjoyed that one, Al.
Al ElliottYeah, me too. And I think we'll put all the links, particularly to, uh, Carrie-Anne Clark's book, which is amazing. I believe that Carrie, who's from— I don't say it— might be Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Sunderland. I know you get annoyed if I get them wrong, but with their lovely Geordie accent, then, uh, she narrates the book on Audible. So definitely Definitely go and check that out next week. Well, as we're approaching what you Americans say, or North Americans say, is the holiday season— what we proper British say is Christmas.
Leanne ElliottWe do, but I think that's problematic in these times, Al. Christmas, Christian holiday. I think the Americans had it right from the start.
Al ElliottDamn you Americans. But as we approach—
Leanne ElliottDon't say that very often, do we?
Al ElliottNo, we do not. No.
Leanne ElliottJoking, I'm joking.
Al ElliottWe just, we've just lost about 43% of our audience. But no, as, as we're approaching the holiday season, I know you've got Thanksgiving coming up, we have got obviously the lead-up to Christmas, we're gonna be spending more and more time in bars and restaurants.
Leanne ElliottAre we?
Al ElliottWe are. That's generally what we do, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottIt's not even that we personally are gonna— this is the last episode until January, we're gonna be spending our time in bars and restaurants. you so much. We'll see you in 2024.
Al ElliottMic drop. No, what I meant was generally as a population, as a populace, we'll be spending more time eating out, drinking out. And so I really wanted to find out what they— what the workplace culture was like in the hospitality industry. I started off in the hospitality industry in pub management. That's what was— was my degree was in pub management. I know that's a weird degree to do, but that's what I did. Um, and, uh, so we have got an amazing guest for you next week to tell us all about that.
Leanne ElliottYeah, we do. We have a special Thanksgiving-ish episode. I say ish because we'll try, but ultimately we're British and we might get some of the things wrong, but we'll try. So yeah, Thanksgiving-ish episode for our US listeners next week. We will be welcoming the Chief Administrative Officer of Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. I think you're really gonna like it.
Al ElliottDefinitely. So tune in next week. If you're not subscribed, click subscribe. Say goodbye, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottBye, Leanne.
Al ElliottBye-bye. Our 3rd competitor— she's not a competitor— on my first whistle. I'm such a knob. Okay, let's do that again.
Leanne ElliottThe pinnacle of bloat, both caught up with a little ba-ba.