Two Coaches & a Coffee
With nearly 60years of professional experience between them across the world in Premier League, International Rugby, AFL and consulting in a plethora of other sports and industries; two old bulls of the performance, injury prevention, and rehabilitation world: Darren Burgess and Jason Weber catch up over a brew and discuss all things Sports Performance.
Two Coaches & a Coffee
Becoming a High-Performance Manager Part 1
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Discover the art of transitioning from a specialist role to leading a high-performance department with insights inspired by the timeless wisdom of Sun Tzu. As Darren explores Europe, I take the reins to share personal experiences and practical advice on navigating this challenging professional journey. We begin with a deep dive into the importance of self-awareness, introspection, and defining your personal philosophy. Prepare yourself for a transformative process that sets a strong foundation for your new role by understanding your strengths and goals.
Next, we tackle the complexities of managing weaknesses, both personal and within team dynamics. Learn about the critical role of emotional intelligence and stress management in handling tough interpersonal relationships within sports teams. By understanding the nuances of physical tightness in athletes and the benefits of trigger point releases, you'll gain valuable insights into enhancing athletic performance and building strong team cohesion. Embrace the journey of identifying and addressing personal weaknesses to elevate your leadership and foster a more effective team environment.
Finally, we explore the core values that underpin successful leadership and the strategies to maintain a balanced work-life relationship. Drawing from real-life examples, we emphasize the significance of aligning personal and professional values while managing stress. Discover the keys to developing a robust technical training philosophy, inspired by Austin Kleon's "Steal Like an Artist," and the essential elements of creating a dynamic approach to high-performance sports. Embark on the path to becoming a high-performance manager by building an empathetic knowledge base and enhancing communication skills with fellow professionals. Join us as we lay the groundwork for your leadership journey, equipped with self-awareness, empathy, and effective communication.
SpeedSig Intro
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G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. In this episode we're back to one coach, darren's, after a very solid AFL season with the Adelaide Crows, is on leave and he's in Europe, so we're going it alone this week. Now what I planned was actually to share some responses to a lot of questions I've been asked recently. So what we're going to term the next couple of episodes is literally how to set up a high performance department. Now I'm looking at this from the perspective of young guys coaches female, male that are moving up from a specialist role, from strength and conditioning, from rehab, from physiotherapy, moving up to run the high-performance department. Now it's an incredibly daunting task first time out and it is really a genuine thing. Now, not every environment runs a HPM. Some are split, some have. Quite often we see in America we'll see the medical department and performance department quite separate. What I'm going to be referring to is what happens if you take the job over the top. That oversees everybody. It can be applied to specialist departments, without question, that are running a number of professionals within their group. But given that I've been asked this question so often recently, I figured you know what it's with Darren, not here. It's time for me to get on the soapbox and you know I can really just get in and share my thoughts with you and I'm sure when we, when he gets back, we can share Darren's or get his points of view. But what I would say is that, particularly I know a lot of people at the moment who are currently doing this role themselves or making this transition professionally. So they're the kind of people that have been asking.
Jason Weber:But I've been asked from many other perspectives as well. One recently I got asked in a general conversation was if I was going into a job, what are the really big rocks that I'd move All right, so without much information? That was the question and that really got me started on this thread, because I do feel quite strongly about how you would approach it. And, principally, I answered in the way I'm about to share with you, which is you have to start in a certain order. You can't just say, hey, this is what I'm going to go and do. I think moving into an environment where you take an agenda, specifically particularly if you've been at somewhere that was very successful and you're moving elsewhere I've seen this fail dismally, where I take those exact same things I was doing and I'm going to take them across this new environment. They're not that they were bad things bad, maybe technical. They're probably quite good, but I've seen them fail because it's a different environment, right, it's a different setup.
Jason Weber:So what I'm going to share with you now is some ideas about how we would, how I would, process this. Now you can take it or leave it, but I guess the idea is to share a concept of someone who's done it, someone who's thought about it a lot, someone who's reviewed his own performances in that space and reflected on how we might do it a different way. Now we'll probably look at my notes at the moment are probably going into about four general steps. So we're going to cover step one in this episode because we're going to stick with pretty much the half an hour thing as best I can. Who knows, I might get onto a flow and go right overboard, but I don't think so. So step one, all right. So step one of possibly four. I'm going to call it get your head right, right. So that's about you Take a step back. You've got the job. Take a step back, take a breath. This is about understanding you, and the reality probably is that in an interview process or going into the process. It's probably far better to be in a position where you do understand what you are so you can communicate it clearly. But nonetheless, we're at this point. You've got the job. I think the first step is to step back and ensure you review what you are Now.
Jason Weber:I don't mind a quote and I certainly like looking to history and understanding what other people have done, other leaders. A quote that I always like, which is quite common you hear it around business and sport by Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist general. He wrote in the Art of War, if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you need not worry about the result of 100 battles. Now I've probably changed that a little bit, particularly where I started with know yourself. I think in the actual quote he starts with know thy enemy, know thyself. But the point of that is that you need to know yourself and you need to know the enemy in terms of an engagement. Now, in this case, the enemy won't actually be someone we're going to fight. The enemy will be the environment we're moving into, but we're going to start with know yourself. So I think, as I've spoken about in many, many other forums, about technical training philosophy and we'll get to that in a moment.
Jason Weber:I think, in terms of knowing yourself, I think committing to writing things down to understand yourself is a worthwhile practice. I wouldn't have said that when I was younger, but I was naive and stupid. I'm probably less naive and moderately less stupid at present, but I think writing down and committing this is where I am, this is where I stand and this is where we're starting. I think the more you do it, the less you need to necessarily write. But I would say of being someone who has tried various website side hustles over the years my old site, oldbullfitnesscom, which will probably be going down very soon, but I used to blog on that quite a bit and the point with that was probably not dissimilar from this rather utilitarian, I do think, given the assistance I've received over the years, I think it's my responsibility to share that forward with other young coaches coming through and that's part of what this is. So the idea of committing to writing, and particularly when you commit to writing in public, that's another big thing. So I don't necessarily think these first parts we write down and share, but we might write some others. So I think there are some simple, simple questions you need to ask of yourself. Get to step two, when we're starting to know the lay of the land and the enemy, we're also going to use the same question. So, really simple.
Jason Weber:You could call it a SWOT analysis. But what are your strengths? What are you good at? You should understand the things you're really good at.
Jason Weber:One thing I would say of a leader and I believe this very, very honestly is that a leader should have a job. All right. So I don't. I'm not a fan of managers who have learnt to be managers and haven't actually done the job in any way, shape or form. Now, that's not to say we know in recent weeks in Australia the AFL title was won by a coach that never played. That's not the same thing. You can be in a position where you've learned to coach over many, many years which he did, coach Fagan and was able to become a great coach and win. That's a different thing.
Jason Weber:But I think, in terms of our profession, you have to have done something in the job. You have to have been a practitioner. My opinion you have to have been a strength and conditioning coach, a rehab physio, or a strength and conditioning physio, a physiotherapist in your own right. You have to have been a sports scientist deep, and I don't just mean Excel spreadsheets, I mean really working in it and understanding it, manipulating it something we'll get to again later and I've pontificated on before but you need to have had a job right and I think you need to have a specialty right.
Jason Weber:You will always see that in a hospital and I quite often reference learning hospitals in the way I structure, certainly my department that doctors that lead large departments and lead hospitals, let's say, where they're going to have multiple departments, they're not going to be a specialist in every one of those, but they're going to be a doctor and they're going to have specific skills in our area. I think you need to have that All right. So you really need to understand where your strengths lie. So your strengths are going to lie in your root profession, be they physio, be they S&C, whatever. But I do think and this is an honest thing that in that profession you should contribute in that area on a regular basis. So I'm not one for standing back and saying, well, I'm the leader of the department, I don't have to physically get on the tools. I still think you need to be in on the tools a bit, not a lot, but enough to contribute and enough to still keep your skills in. Because you still need to be a contributor, both at a work volume level, like how much work needs to be done during the day and we always need bodies, particularly in big sports but you need to keep your skills going and stay on top of things, not just theoretically but skill-wise.
Jason Weber:So there are instances, and as an example I would say my last handful of years in the AFL I didn't go in the gym as much as I used to. I used to be very, very hands-on. That's where I come from. Strength and conditioning. Be very, very hands-on, that's where I come from. Strength and conditioning that I would go in. But in my last handful of years I made up little other avenues. So I would have my senior strength and conditioning coach running the program, running everything. But I might take. In my last two years I took the three worst in the gym, not necessarily the ones who were the least strong in the gym, not necessarily the ones who are the least strong, but the worst at attending the gym, participating, completing necessary work, et cetera. So I took that as a special task and I think that's a really appropriate place. I think it helps your staff to see you in the gym and see you supporting and not just flicking things off. So that's one thing.
Jason Weber:Where's your strengths lay and how do you apply those strengths to your department? Weaknesses, right. The next obvious one what aren't I so good at? Some people are going to be better at recognising these things. Some people will not necessarily be great at it. I think there are a couple of areas. So if we start with kind of where we finished, so if my strengths are in strength and conditioning and late stage rehab, return to run then my weaknesses are going to be the converse. They're going to be in the physiotherapy, medical sector, maybe early stage rehab, maybe psychology, maybe nutrition, all of those spaces. So how do you come across those areas?
Jason Weber:And most importantly and we'll get to this a little bit later on is that you have to develop a concept and a philosophy around those areas, because you can't just be going in blind In order to lead people. You need to. I always think about leadership as people being in a dark space and you're the one who turns on the lamp and says righto, this is the way forward. Here we go and being able to unite people and lead them, based on the fact that you can actually contribute, is a big deal. Now I'm not going into leadership styles and all that. That's not relevant. That's probably a hard way to say it. It's not the front of my mind, the front of my thinking. To understand your style. There probably is some relevance to that. I certainly know my style and how I lead, but that's maybe if people are interested. Maybe that's one for another time and we'll see how long Darren's away for really. But weaknesses so obviously you've got technical weaknesses.
Jason Weber:There are other areas that you're going to need to learn and you're going to need to be good at to be honest, because it's very hard to lead people who genuinely think you don't know anything about what you're talking about. So it's really important to be across that and really the best way is to, I think, in the early parts of your career. So for people who are listening to this and not necessarily leading a department, if you're an S&C, you should be hanging out with the physios and learning, learning what they do. You don't have to do their jobs, you have to learn to a level of empathy with them. You're a physiotherapist. You should be learning what the S&C guys do. You should be learning what the S&C guys do, not just hanging out in the treatment room, but understand what are they doing.
Jason Weber:So when we're getting tight you know ITB, lateral hamstring, glute, med, et cetera why are we getting it? Well, we're getting it because of these reasons. Does that link to the GPS? Can we understand that loop? Same thing with treatment, strength and conditioning. Coaches need to understand that if we can do trigger point releases, very, very quick treatment, we can actually get better performance when we get athletes into the gym and on the field. So those trigger point releases are really, really important and understand how they work and where they might be applied, and understand the conditions upon which you might say, hey, we need to go and get this treated very, very quickly in order for us to move forward. And I've done that many, many times and again. The application of, or the linking of, physiotherapy and strength conditioning could be another subject for later on. We'll move on.
Jason Weber:I think the other part of weaknesses to really understand is when you go to work. You're going to have to work with coaches and football coaches and some of their very strong personalities. You need to understand things like confrontation, hard conversations. How are you with those things In confrontation? How do you handle it? Do you lose your cap and blow up? Do you shrink into your shell and don't say a word? Neither of those responses are probably ideal, but being able to understand how you deal with that, how can I make the adjustment? How do I keep my cool and not lose my shit, as it were? Equally, how do I take a deep breath for lack of a better term, again man up, which is not appropriate in these days, but it does make a point right. How do I muscle up and get in there and say what I need to say, say the thing that coaches need to hear, because they're not always right nor are we, for that matter but sometimes we've got to get that point across. So, understanding those weaknesses, you're interpersonal.
Jason Weber:Now, I think that's a bit different to your leadership styles, but how do we handle different people? So what are you going to do if you inherit a staff member and you can't get rid of them and you genuinely don't get on with them? How are you going to handle it? How are you going to handle it? How are you going to handle it if you're a physiotherapist and you're leading the department, but you've got a belligerent strength and conditioning coach, you need to understand strategies and tactics that you can utilize to get that person on site and bring them along. Now, if you've got no idea how to deal with different personalities like that, that becomes another whole conversation where we start to look at strategies for dealing with those people.
Jason Weber:Now there are lots of education tools out there and books written by people far more intelligent than me, but I think they're things that are really worth investigating because it won't come down being a successful HBM won't come down to whether you're technically good at your job. You need to be technically a good manager and you need to work with people. You need to understand how people work and there are certainly instances in the last handful of months where I've heard you know there's the HPM running Team XYZ and I get comments like this guy's got. Their emotional intelligence is very low. They don't work with people well, they micromanage, they don't let people get on with their jobs. They're crushing in the way they deal with things. Now I also heard that same story about a person who was extremely good technically, so the club that he was with loved him technically but didn't rate other elements of his leadership. So that's a shame, but that's something we can work on, something you can understand by understanding your weaknesses up front.
Jason Weber:Now the next one I'm going to say, which is somewhat related to weaknesses, but a little bit independent, and I'd like you to think of it independent, and that is how do you respond under stress? There's an old saying again, it's based on man, but it's not really. It's not what happens to a person that matters, it's what they do when it matters. All right, just think about that for a second. It's not what happens to a person that matters, it's what they do when it happens. So what's your action when it's stressful? What do you do? How do you respond? Now, again, there are lots of questionnaire-based tests you can do. I've done a few over the years and some of them I think are relatively helpful. Done a few over the years and some of them I think are relatively helpful. And I mean those things always cost a bomb because they're commercial machines, those type of tools, but they're worthwhile to investigate yourself If you come across the opportunity. I must say over the years I've taken many different questionnaires. When they get offered, I do them.
Jason Weber:You know you'd be as honest as you can and you get some learning out of it. You'll figure some things out. Not everything's right and nothing is strictly binary right or wrong in anything we do these days. You're going to have some things you agree with, some things you don't, some things you can learn. But I think how you handle stress is important because, as Darren and I have talked about in the podcast before, you know what happens when you lose those first four rounds. Right, you go to your first EPL team and you bomb the first four and you're the brand new HBM.
Jason Weber:What are you going to do? Are you going to curl up in a ball? Are you going to start to get really angry at people? Are you going to curl up in a ball? Are you going to start to get really angry at people? Are you going to control yourself? Where does it sit? Are you going to make changes? Are you going to stick with what you know?
Jason Weber:Hard to say all those things, but I think you need to start writing it down. How am I going to react? What have I done in the past when I've been in a stressful situation? Have I been in a stressful situation? How do I handle it and I would tack on to that, and not as an afterthought, but really something personal. You should look at it's a bigger job. How are you going to handle it at home?
Jason Weber:Most people going into HPM roles are probably a little bit older and they're probably in established relationships and they're probably at times have kids and dogs and fish and rabbits and all that sort of stuff and mortgages. It's a big deal and I won't tell you that I've done it perfectly over the years. Um, I think there's been. I've been clipped a couple of times by my wife and pulled into line and and that's that's fair. You marry a good, strong woman and they do that.
Jason Weber:But, understanding how you handle things, how do you handle stress? You know, I had a discussion today with a good friend and we were drinking coffee. My friend's dealing with a rather in sport, in our genre of work, dealing with a really, really particularly hard situation, and I just said to him one of the key bits is mate, don't take it home. Your wife does not deserve it. Don't bring it home to her. Leave it wherever you need to leave it, just don't bring it home. You know, be there for whatever she's dealing with, but don't bring the shit from work home, because what he's dealing with is absolute shit and there's nothing he can do about it. But and it's also not of his making but that's the situation and, having been in those things before, it's it's until you confront it. It's. It's a hard deal, but to younger people younger guys and girls coming through, really have a look at that. How do you handle stress? Don't bring it home. Number one Really really critical.
Jason Weber:Now, values. This is another one to look at yourself and I think this is worthwhile having a real good think about. What are your values Now? Guaranteed, at some point in your career you've been in a development session with a club, with a team where they get the external facilitator in and they come in and they draw charts and they speak in funny languages using things like paradigms and all that sort of stuff and pedagogies, words like that Not great fun, but they will start to say what are your values? There's, what are the club values? How do you do that? I mean, you know you can go through those processes, but I think it's really important for you.
Jason Weber:Now I will tell you as an entrepreneur, I've obviously I spruced the SpeedSig thing. That's my business. I've established values for my business and I won't work with people. I won't have people working with me in SpeedSig who do not align to my values and I will not work with teams who do not align to my values and I've drawn that line in the sand because I choose to work with those people. I've worked with some DUD individuals dud individuals over my years and I cannot. I do not want to waste my breath and my time on those people. We spend most of our time at work with people, not our family. So you want to be spending that time efficiently, not with people you don't like. So my company, speedsync's company values are honesty and creativity.
Jason Weber:Um, my company, speed sinks company values are honesty and creativity. Now I could probably expand them out a little bit. Um, I'm not going to on this podcast right now, but for um, efficacy, I really stuck with two. Honesty tells you a lot about a person, all right, and you can bring that. You can have root causes off to integrity and all that sort of thing, but honesty really is core to me. And creativity you cannot be a creative person unless you're in a good, happy place and you bring competency. You cannot be creative if you don't have skill. You have to be a competent professional to be able to create and see what the next step is. Create something out of nothing. You know I don't talk about it often, but I look at SpeedSync. I've brought something new to the market. It's something that still confuses a lot of people and I'm really sorry about that, but it is critical and I probably need to share some more case studies in that space. But the idea is, being creative like leadership is about being able to shine that light in the dark space and move in, expand our understanding. So what do you value?
Jason Weber:Now, on that one, I'm going to reference you to an incident that occurred in Australia. We had in our military, one of our military, our military academy. We had some pretty horrible what would you call them, sex rings and things going on, all sorts. Anyway, we had our chief of the army came out and made a fantastic speech. His name's a lieutenant lieutenant general, david morrison. Now I don't know whether he made this up, I've heard this in several other areas, but one of the core takeaways from his speech he said the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If that does not suit you, then get out. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Jason Weber:Now I've heard that, alternatively, by a great AFL coach say to me I'm not going to walk past that, whatever that thing, and do my shoes up. I'm not just going to do my shoes up on that one. He's saying exactly the same thing that I'm not going to stand here and duck my eyes and put my foot at my look, pretend I'm doing my shoes up to let that thing go by, the same as saying I'm not going to walk past that thing. That's not right. So I think, in establishing your standards and your values Sorry, what standards will you demand? Where's the wiggle room? Are you going to be rock solid? Are there things you get? Another great saying that I've again heard recently, or used recently myself, is is this the hill you want to die on? How hard are you going to fight? What are you prepared to give? Now, there are things you're going to give. How hard are you going to fight? What are you prepared to give? Now, there are things that you're going to give, things that you're not going to give.
Jason Weber:But I will say that, having worked in environments where discipline was an issue, I stuck to my guns hard, real hard Probably took two or three years to change over. And this past week I was on a call with one of my teams in the US and we weren't talking about speed sig. I got asked a lot about culture and changing culture, delivering them, and we talked a lot about that sense of entitlement from some athletes, particularly in big money programs in the US. They get a lot done for them, they get offered or given a lot, so they have a huge sense of entitlement and, I think, understanding. What are you going to do about that? What are the things you can set? What are the things you can establish to make that work? What are the things you can establish to make that work? And I think, if um, I'll draw one other quote from from david morris. Uh, david morrison's speech. He said every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our army and the environment in which we work. Now, obviously you don't have to be your army, but everyone is responsible for their culture and reputation. That means that everybody's a part of it. But I also think not. I think it also means absolutely rock solid that you need to live the standards you're talking about. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk Nobody likes a talker. So I think, being able to understand those things, your values Now I'm getting pretty close to my half hour but I want to wrap up, and none of this is an exhaustive list either, but I think it's a good starting point to challenge yourselves before you go into this role.
Jason Weber:Now, the last part I'm going to go with is technical philosophy. Now, I've talked a lot about this over the years. I think if you duck back, I want you to have a look. If you look at Two Coaches and a Coffee, season 2, episode 8. So, earlier this year, I had a good old talk about that. So I think, yeah, season 2, episode 8, crafting a Dynamic Training Philosophy for High-Performance Sport that. So I think, um, uh, yeah, season two, episode eight, crafting a dynamic training philosophy for high performance sport. Okay, 27 minutes and four seconds right on the buzzer.
Jason Weber:So talked a lot about how you develop your own philosophy and I think that is critical and I think when it comes back to that I said it before about, uh, you know that, that idea of having values and standards and competency right, you need to be competent at your job, and so that understanding of your philosophy. Now I'm just going to read something I pulled off my old bull website, which I wrote years ago. Bull website, which I wrote years ago. I would have written this somewhere around 2012, maybe even earlier, 10 or 11. But this is my basic philosophy back then and I don't think it's changed much and it's really as succinct as I could put it. So here we go Think before you act.
Jason Weber:Movement over muscle, skill before workload, quality over quantity, mobility balanced with stability, stability before strength, strength before speed, system capacity before system power, process over randomness, objective over subjective, process over randomness, objective over subjective, attitude over apathy, humility over ego, team before self, integrity above all. So there you go. A little bit poetic, but it means something. It still means something to me today, just as I read that. I don't know that there's anything particular that I would rush out and change there. I still believe all those things and they've stood the test of time. Now, I think the old adage of I see far because I stand on the shoulders of giants is true. I've probably learned a lot of that stuff from people over my journey and I encourage you to take those and figure them out for yourself, steal them, change them.
Jason Weber:I think I've spoken before about that author, austin Kleon, and his book Steal Like an Artist. That's what we do. We take ideas from other people. We morph them. There are very few really, really creative, new, absolutely original ideas in the world. They're all derivatives of something else, 100%. You look at music. Music is an incredible derivative and you can always trace back the people that they really listen to, the artists listen to.
Jason Weber:So I think developing a technical training, a philosophy for yourself, is super, super important. I think it comes, and that's just that was my strength and conditioning one I think you should have if you're a physio, you should have that. You should be able to communicate it really easily. I think on the other fronts, from a technical perspective, I think you should have a really strong philosophy on how you see sport. Now I have one which I'm going to share, which I don't I've developed over time. I don't even remember when it came to me, but the idea is that we want to be able to move between sports. So I've worked in rugby and AFL two mains and I've worked in soccer. Well, I've worked coach them directly. I have worked extensively in American football as well, but I've worked coach directly rugby, afl, soccer or football. But all three of those things conform to the same constructs and that gives me a philosophy I can bring forward to simplify things like monitoring systems.
Jason Weber:And what are we going to measure? There's three parts of every game and this is my philosophical approach. There's the strength contest. That is, when we're directly competing for the ball, which might only be a couple of seconds it might be longer in some sports, but we are on the ball. Now a strength example would be ball being crossed into the top of the box and you've got your center back in soccer competing in the air. I've got to jump, I've got to body strong to head that ball. That's a strength contest. I think the contested ball on the ground in the AFL, the ruck in an AFL contested Line out in rugby union scrum in rugby union, in American football, clearly there are contests, direct contests, all over the place, not just on the ball, but in American football you have the man-on-man contest at the scrimmage line. So that's one.
Jason Weber:The second part is the speed contest. Now, a speed contest is either going to be because you have the ball and you're trying to get it somewhere very fast, or you don't have the ball and you're really close and you're trying to get the dude with the ball right. So you're defending. There's an offense and a defensive side to it. So that includes and I say speed contest, but that includes everything explosive, that's change direction, rotational acceleration, running angles, running curves, all of that stuff. It means I'm near the ball and I'm doing something hard at either offense or defense, one of the two.
Jason Weber:Now the third part is transition. Most games have a transition component. Afl has big transition. You've got to move from one part of the field to the next. So you're moving from one strength contest, speed contest to the next. Where's the next one? Occurring Now in rugby and rugby league, same thing.
Jason Weber:I watched the rugby NRL grand final on the weekend between Melbourne Storm and Penrith Panthers. If you get a chance, if you don't know rugby league, that is one of the finest examples of the game that I think we've seen. Penrith Panthers won their fourth championship in a row, which is the equal of anybody, I believe, but in the modern era just unbelievable. So but their transition, their ability to be in a strength contest and then transition because they transitioned forward and backward in defence, was amazing. These guys were exhausted. But they're the three parts of the game. So I know that I can communicate that in rugby league, in soccer, in AFL, you can community. That works in, obviously, american football, but in American football there's really little transition. However, I have spoken, a couple of my teams play really up-tempo game styles so they're going to be doing high level reps per game and getting a lot of repetition. They do have to jog between reps and that's an important part because if you're transitioning, you are moving, your body is transitioning, you're running, you've got a condition for that. But that's the sort of contextual philosophies that you need to develop to make your communication to people, particularly coaching staff, just that much easier. Right, so we're nearly there.
Jason Weber:Last little bit is I want you to I think you need to in a big way. We talked about with weaknesses before. Obviously, if you're not a physiotherapist, you're an S&C person. You're going to need to understand. I think one of the most critical things you can do as a HBM is learn to speak physio and learn to speak doctor and learn to speak psychologist. I'm going to talk about when we get to coaches later on in another step. I always say we've got to learn to speak coach. In another step. I always say we've got to learn to speak. Coach. It's not their job to learn big words from sports science or strength conditioning and it's not our job to dumb things down. It's our job to make things consumable and in the same breath, I think, in order to communicate with people.
Jason Weber:Again it comes back to that competency. We have to understand what is the skill set of a physiotherapist, what do they do? And they're all different. They're not all the same by a long shot. Equally, they're same of S&C coaches. Some are far more adept at some things than others, but in the staff you have, what do they do? What are they really good at? How can I complement them? How can I help them? How can I develop learning strategies?
Jason Weber:I mean, everything we're doing in industry these days has to have an ongoing education component and quite often the leadership are required to facilitate that, not only facilitate it. In many cases drive the thing. So understanding where those people are at is absolutely crucial. But getting on that language, that's not just understanding weakness, that is. You need these skills Because in order to lead, you need to understand what these people do and understand them critically.
Jason Weber:So to wrap up, we're going to become a high performance manager. We're going to lead a department, be it a specialist department or a whole operation. The first step is we're going to know ourselves Really critical. We're going to take a deep breath. We're going to look at strengths, weaknesses, how do we handle stress, and our values. We want to ensure we've got a great technical philosophy that includes not just physiology but it's going to include how we look at the game and how we look at the sport and how we can communicate that. And then we're going to develop an empathetic body of knowledge with the professionals around us so that we can communicate to them.
Jason Weber:It's not their job to necessarily come to us. We've got to help them. I think that's where a good HBM can really dominate their environment and lead really well. So I hope this was a benefit. I hope there's people out there I mean, I know there's people out there going up in their careers, so I hope it was a benefit. Next couple of episodes I'm going to build on this. We've got at least another three steps to go, so I'll kind of make them short and sweet and try and get them fit in before a big old Darren comes back and stops me doing it. But yeah, if you've got any feedback, drop it on LinkedIn, but you guys have a great night.