STORY TELLING IN SPORT 🏀⚾️⚽️

The most powerful thing I've seen in elite sport isn't an innovative training drill or a new game plan. It's a coach who can tell a story.

I've been lucky enough to work alongside may great coaches who understood this. Who could walk into a room, connect a player to something bigger than the game in front of them, and completely shift the energy. I've watched it change individuals. Whole clubs. The people in the stands.

With the Football World Cup beginning, stories are being told, whether doco's or recreations, and one that hit the point of the importance of storytelling was Dear England, more importantly the influence of Gareth Southgate as a coach on his playing group.

Southgate didn't fix England's talent problem. They had plenty of talent. He fixed the story the group had inherited. 55 years of penalty trauma, of expecting to lose when it mattered. He gave players permission to rewrite it.

And the expectation piece is what most environments get wrong. Expectation from fans, media, history doesn't land the same for every person in the room. For some it's fuel. For others it's paralysis. The best coaches I've been around know the difference, and build accordingly.

I'm trying to bring more story telling to my own coaching, not only in sport but in business, and the more I use it, the more you can see the positive impact it can have on behaviours...