Staying the distance
Dame Kelly Holmes Trust trustee, Catherine Baker is Founder and Director of Sport and Beyond. She coaches senior leaders across all sectors, and has a passionate belief in the power of sport. As her new book ‘Staying the Distance’ launches this week, we catch up with her to talk about the synergies between the fantastic advice and guidance the book provides, taking lessons from the world of sport, and the work our athlete mentors do with young people.
What inspired you to write Staying the Distance, and what message do you hope readers will take away from it?
Leadership can be hard. It can certainly be relentless. The pandemic wreaked havoc on the well-being, health and sustained performance of many senior leaders. I was reading about this pretty much everywhere I turned, as well as seeing it at the coalface through the coaching I do. Yet strong leadership remains central to the performance of every single organisation. Business leaders are very familiar with drawing lessons from elite sport, particularly around teams, winning and high performance. But we’ve all been missing a trick. Day in, day out, sport has been showing us all along not only how to improve, perform and achieve, but how to do so on a sustained basis, consistently delivering results when it matters.
This book shines a light on these unseen lessons, and provides a clear and practical roadmap for how to deploy them in the leader’s own leadership practices.
You 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. Without giving the book away, can you highlight one or two of these lessons?
The two I’d like to point out relate to confidence, and discipline. Chapter One is titled ‘How to Find Your Confidence Sweet Spot.’ We all know the issues with low confidence and self-esteem: it can undermine your performance; keep you in your comfort zone; and prevent you from challenging and pushing yourself to improve. However, we also know that too much confidence brings its own issues with it: bombast; under-delivering; and preventing continued development and improvement on the basis ‘I’m good enough as I am.’ The Chapter takes a look at what sport has been showing us all along in terms of how to find that middle ground: a belief that you can deliver, with an awareness that none of us is the finished article, and we can always be better. Each chapter of the book starts with an athlete’s story, and I am delighted to start this first chapter of the book with a story around our President at the Trust, Dame Kelly. Kelly has regularly expressed the fact that one of the elements that was vital to her successful athletics career (and her winning of two Gold Medals at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004) was the fact that she spent a lot of her time in the early part of her career racing against men. Not only did this drive her performance, but it instilled in Kelly a familiarity with pushing herself with and against people who were better than her. Alongside improving her times, she believes this gave her confidence – and we know that confidence is vital for success in elite sport. Just as it is in life, and in leadership.
Chapter Five is titled ‘How to Bring the Required Discipline to the Table.’ I start the chapter with a quote from Alex Danson, leading goal scorer at the Rio Olympics in 2016 for the GB gold-medal winning women’s team. In it, Alex expresses her belief that it isn’t the most talented that are the most successful, but those you are prepared to put the most work in. Extraordinary people are not born, but made – by doing the simple things repeatedly. I think this is a vital message for today’s times, when it’s easy to imagine that ‘overnight success’ is the norm, without understanding the huge amount of effort and hard work that goes into success, whatever it is you want to achieve in life. As another accomplished female athlete, US Soccer player Alex Morgan once said:
“Keep working, even when no one is watching.”
You feature a significant number of female athletes, coaches and teams in the book. Why is this?
Back in the Spring of 2019 a photo made headlines, speaking as it did a thousand words. It was a photo of a table in a large Dublin bookshop. The table set out 30 books, with a sign saying ‘Sports writing at its Finest.’ None of the books were by female authors, and none of the books featured female athletes. And this wasn’t an isolated case.
Part of my motivation with this book was to redress this balance, and write a book which not only featured a large number of female athletes, coaches and teams, but which would appeal to women as well as men. I really hope I have achieved this. There are so many brilliant stories and case studies from women’s sport, and too many are ignored in books, journalism and tv (despite some of the great work being done by many in this space).
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, despite so many ups and downs; insight from some inspiring female coaches such as Mel Marshall (coach to the world’s fastest breast stroker, Adam Peaty) and Jane Figueiredo (coach to the Olympic Gold-medal winning diver Tom Daley); and stories from teams such as the Lionesses, London Pulse netball franchise, and GB Women’s hockey.
This isn’t to discount the value of, and place for, male stories and of course I am incredibly grateful to England Men’s Football Manager Gareth Southgate for providing the Foreword for the book. And I also feature a number of male athletes, coaches and teams in the book. But it’s definitely the case that there is more balance needed, and I hope this book can work towards this.
The values of teamwork and resilience are ones the Trust talk about with the young people we work with. What value do you think our athlete mentors can bring to the young people they support?
So many of the stories, and so much of the insight, I share in the book reinforce the fact that there really are some brilliant lessons that sport has been showing us all along. Athlete mentors have lived and breathed these lessons, day in day out. Being able to share these lessons with the young people they work with, and help the young people understand what underpins them, provides an amazing opportunity for the young people to really understand the mindset and behaviours that drive long-term, sustained success. Whether it be around how to sustain your motivation through the inevitable ups and downs, how to find the right level of confidence, how to prioritise your time, or how to leverage the power of your emotions, these, and others, are lessons that athletes are so familiar with as a result of their decision to dedicate their lives and focus their efforts on being the best they can be at their chosen sport.
Not everyone is a leader or might not aspire to be a leader? Are there still lessons people like this can take from your book?
Yes. The book is aimed at senior leaders (in whatever field they work in) because that is the group of people I spend most of my time supporting in my day job, and a group on whom there is always a huge amount of pressure, exacerbated then by the Pandemic. However, so much of the book is applicable to life in general. One of my favourite endorsements for the book comes from Debbie Wosskow OBD, Co-Founder of Allbright, a women’s networking community. Debbie wrote:
“Catherine’s book teaches us the important lessons that sports can teach us about life and leadership. It’s a must read.”
I loved seeing this as I believe that anyone, in whatever role and at whatever stage in their career, can take some immediate learnings from the book. As well as some learnings to store in the bank as they move on upwards in their career.
What attracted you to become a Trustee at the Trust?
The Trust hits a sweet spot for me in so many ways. The whole principle of learning from sport, and elite athletes, is core to what I do in my day job. The Trust emphasises how fundamental mindset and behaviours are to success, something which chimes perfectly with my beliefs. Having worked alongside the Trust for a number of years prior to becoming a Trustee, I had confidence that it was an organisation that not only delivered an incredibly important service, but also one that did so with commitment, appropriate rigour and understanding, and well-thought out outcomes and strategy. On top of all of this, Ben and his team are a great bunch with whom it’s always lovely to spend time.
The Trust’s programmes are focused on physical and mental wellbeing. How do you look after your mental health? Also what’s your sport / physical activity?
I love the fact that this has now become such a standard question. For me, walking is probably the most important factor in supporting my mental health. Whether that’s on my own, for some quiet thinking time, or with family or friends, I love the way it enables me to think through issues I’m dealing with, gain perspective on them, whilst breathing in the fresh air whilst doing so. My three sons, though pretty much having flown the nest, are also invaluable in reminding me of what’s important in life, as is my husband. I still wield a tennis racket every now and again, which I love, and regular running means I keep my body in good shape, which I know keeps my mind in good shape.
Staying the Distance is published by Bloomsbury Business on 30th March 2023 and showcases the much-needed leadership lessons that sport can teach us: how to improve, perform and achieve, in ways that are effective and sustainable. Catherine will be donating a significant proportion of the royalties for Staying the Distance to support the work of Dame Kelly Holmes Trust.