In Conversation with Catherine Baker

The Trust were honoured to hold an inspirational evening last night listening to Dame Kelly Holmes Trust Trustee, Catherine Baker in conversation with Commonwealth Gold medallist Adam Whitehead. Catherine shared snippets from her new book ‘Staying the Distance’ which has recently been published and they discussed their learnings from the world of sport and business.

Westfield Health CEO Dave Capper introducting Catherine Baker and Adam Whitehead.

There were a huge number of topics discussed in the evening including the importance of developing a growth mindset, how to find your confidence sweet spot and why making time for consolidation is essential for leaders. Catherine spoke about what often separates the good from the great is that they fall in love with the process and not the outcome, which is how athletes manage to compete in several Olympics, as they love the process of constantly improving and feel they can keep getting better.  As Catherine said:

Catherine Baker

“Sport has known about a growth mindset long before it was even called a growth mindset. If you believe that you can do something, you have a desire to do so, and you follow a sensible process, you are going to improve and develop. That is how you find your confidence sweet spot.”

The book talk about learning lessons from sport that aren’t just around high performance, but about improving, performing and achieving, but how to do so on a sustained, consistent basis.  In Staying the Distance, you will hear about Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill’s superpower; what motivated the incredible Venus and Serena Williams to continue their tennis careers for so long, as well as insight from some inspiring female coaches such as Mel Marshall, coach to the world’s fastest breaststroke swimmer Adam Peaty.

It was wonderful to see so many people in the audience from the city of Sheffield, we hope you all took something from the evening and special thanks to those who bought a copy of the book. It’s currently available in all good book shops and via this link.

Many thanks to and Dave Capper and Hope Zelly from Westfield Health for hosting this fabulous event on the rooftop terrace of their building, a perfect setting for such an occasion. We’d of course like to say a huge thank you to Catherine Baker, who has very kindly donated the profits from the book to Dame Kelly Holmes Trust.