Leaders in Sport and EPP: A New Partnership

A Shared Platform to Address the Performance Challenges of Today

Getting to speak with, meet with, and interview the best of the best in performance, day in and day out gives Dave and myself both a deep view of current issues and a broad understanding of shared challenges across sports, roles and environments. But we haven’t always had the forum in which to debate this insight with an informed and curious audience. Which is why, for 2020, we have created a partnership with the Leaders In Sport Performance Institute whose membership represents a unique platform to learn, share and develop together.

In Leaders we have found an organisation who share:

• our passion for performance
• our desire to aid growth – both individual and organisational
• our belief that different sports can learn together – and from each other
• a view of the importance of good leadership at every level

Where we complement each other though is in where and how we gain our insight.

• At EPP, we strategically advise elite clubs and organisations and speak with  individuals on a daily basis- from senior leaders to expert practitioners and their teams.  In doing so, we are able to bring together a myriad of different perspectives as they are formed, finding and shaping the common themes and understanding the truths that sit beneath them.
• Leaders In Sport, best known for their brilliantly attended events, regularly bring together performance leaders to share and debate reflections and thought leadership over a period of several days.

By combining these two views: the micro (collected into shared insights) and the macro (derived from individuals), we hope together to better address the performance challenges of the day.

Starting the debate earlier so we can debate deeper

Given our privileged position in the market and the insight we have access to, at EPP we are often able to spot the trends before they become current issues and so can raise them for debate earlier, hopefully bringing the most resonant to the fore for future events.

If 2019 was a year in which mental health featured highly on the agenda for conferences and panels, it was also one in which clubs increasingly looked to each other, and to us, for insight on how to organise themselves to best provide support in this area. In interviewing those at the top of their field, looking at other territories with different regulations and governance, and bringing together learnings from several sports, we have pulled out key themes around how to structure in order to provide the right support and care for all, not just why it is needed. We are looking forward to sharing some of this insight for others to add to, and for many to debate, for the good of all.

Broadening the debate by digging into the detail

Via a series of articles and podcasts shared via the Performance Institute channels, we intend to open up the debate around key themes, extending the learnings from Leaders’ events by together asking, and attempting to answer, the follow-up questions we all walk away with and picking up on the threads of conversation that inevitably arise in the corridors when highly engaged but ultimately different people, with different roles, different experience and different views, get together.

Where Leaders In Sport have always facilitated the conversation by hosting events and raising key themes, at EPP we hope to work with them to ground the theory in the detail, adding the insight of individuals to learnings shared at an event level.

Actioning the debate – what it means for your people?

Ultimately, thought leadership is hugely important to what we all do. But putting those learnings into action is crucial to success. Through our partnership with the Performance Institute, we intend to bring the debate to the structures and processes we use and understand what new learnings, new evidence and trends in other sports mean about the diverse groups of people organisations should hire, and the sorts of role that will help shape careers.

The Leaders In Sport events give access to people of all levels, ages and stages to great leadership thinking. Our partnership aims to develop the leader at every level and help all reach their potential, whatever and wherever that may be.

It goes without saying that it’s a partnership we are excited about and given that the debate generated is only ever as good as the people who take part, we’re looking forward to engaging with Performance Institute members from across the board.

Find out more about Leaders In Sport