SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hi there, welcome to Slice of Pi, where the Pi is the psychologically informed environment, and the mission is to understand what that looks like across varying domains, whether that's sport, business, the performing arts, education, leisure, anything really. In the case of today's guest, that might be as far ranging as high performance tennis to the oil and gas industry. This is the first episode after the mid-season break. If you haven't checked it out, I released a short 8-minute episode over the weekend pulling together themes and patterns from the first six episodes that's well worth checking out if you haven't done so already. This will be episode number seven, so including this, we have six left to come in season one. The feedback on the structure has been good, so in this one we'll continue with the halftime and full-time reviews, where effectively I go from being John Motson on the interviewer's mic to Gary Lineker back in the studio to reflect on what we've heard. As always, we'll go for about 25 to 30 minutes, pause for a half-time Lucas aid, and then continue with the rest of the episode and have another rewind and review at full time. On the podcast RSS feed, I tag the timestamps for these reflections, so depending on what platform you're listening to, you may be able to click and jump straight to these if this was of interest. And speaking of technical stuff, I'm getting better every week with the editing, noise reduction, equalisation, compression, and all that exciting stuff. In this episode, we'll probably hit the height of sound quality as my guest this week, Chris Suter, also runs his very own podcast where he's interviewed countless professional tennis players, thought leaders, as well as Judy Murray herself. Chris had all the kit, the diaphragm mic, the pop filter, the headphones, which was great. It made for a very quality episode in terms of audio, but I can have to report that as well as the quality sound, this was a quality conversation as well. So really excited to put this one out and see what you all think. The background to me being introduced to Chris was that I was really keen to interview a coach who has advanced in their field. So not only do they coach athletes and help shape that learning and performance environment, they may also operate from a level above that organisationally, so also coaching the coaches or operating at a systemic level where they get to help support multiple coaches and athletes within a system. Chris is the perfect guest for this. He's coached tennis for 27 years, he's a coach consultant for Tennis Scotland, as well as a performance tutor for the LTA, and as well as doing all this, he runs his own consultancy, the Service Box, his own podcast, the Tennis Journal, and is a project manager for the Judy Murray Foundation as well, aiming to bring tennis into rural and disadvantaged areas in Scotland. With someone as experienced and qualified as Chris, you can dip into almost any area of performance, well-being, organisations, coaching, athlete mentality, and he'll be comfortable talking eloquently and expertly about it all. This made for a fantastic, evolving conversation where we touch on consulting, whether it's tennis or oil and gas, the pros and cons to being an outsider who's been brought in to bring fresh ideas, the role of national governing bodies in facilitating performance environments, or how best to work with coaches and many, many more subjects besides. So that's enough preamble. Let's get into the conversation with Chris Suter.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

I am fantastic given the circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

You're fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Yeah, I uh live in an area of Scotland that normality is about as close to lockdown as as you could get. So this uh life, apart from the not travelling as much as I normally do, my life is exactly the same as normal. Okay, well that's good. Is it good? Uh well, it you know, I get moments of cabin fever, uh like anyone, I guess, but uh it's you know, with this COVID pandemic, it's maybe provided someone like myself more time to do different things within my roles. So uh I think there's a few silver linings in terms of uh being locked away and having lots of time in your hand.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, I've I've heard that quite a lot actually. This additional time to have a look at down your to-do list and maybe things that you've needed a bit more time to get going. Maybe some kind of creative pursuits.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Yeah. No, I start with a friend of mine from Canada. We've been talking for about five or six years about doing this online coaching show. All right. And uh we keep on, we've tried a couple of pilots over the last two or three years, but we thought, well, if we're not gonna do it now, we're never gonna do it. So yeah, we put our first show out last week, and already you're kind of thinking, oh God, that could really uh grow arms and legs. So yeah, it's it's definitely a time to stretch yourself and try things that you've been meaning to try for a few years.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Oh, it's great. Well, I'm glad there's, as you say, there's some silver linings happening at the moment in terms of the period we're going through. I've spent a lot of time on social media, like probably quite a lot of people. And one of the things I saw recently, I don't know whether you you saw this, was the the two Italian women playing tennis on their balconies. Yeah. Have you seen that video?

SPEAKER_03 5:51

I have. Uh I joked with uh the people that know me. It's like you couldn't do that in the village I live in because we were right beside the sea and the ball would never travel in a straight line. Yeah, just get blown off in all sorts of directions. So yeah, kudos to them.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

It's incredible, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Yeah, but again, it just shows you how creative people can be when they're when everything else is stripped away. You've got too so much time to think that you come up with uh all sorts of ideas.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yeah. Well, now look, thanks, Chris, for for coming on. It's much appreciated. Now, you're a man with, let's say, many balls in the air. You can try and get the first tennis pan in there nice and early. Lots of uh lots of balls in the air. Running your business, the service box, project managing for the Judy Murray Foundation, consulting for Tennis Scotland, performance coach, education tutor with the LTA. And you also find time to do a podcast yourself. So there's quite a few different hats you've got on there. For those listening, can you just take us on a kind of quick tour of your career up until this point and how you came to acquire all these different hats?

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Oh, a quick tour of my career. I don't know if that'll happen. But uh I I've been coaching now for 29 years, and the first 18 of them were traditional. I would say I was primarily a coach to tennis players, and I specialized in what people call performance coaching now, but that word didn't even exist when I started it. I just used to gravitate naturally towards players that competed. Uh, that was just you know where I got my kind of biggest buzz from. And I did that for about 18 years and did, you know, relatively well, work with uh quite a few uh decent juniors who went on to play what we call Tennis Europe and ITF events, which are kind of European and world-ranked events, uh, and then went on to play junior Grand Slams, tried their hand on the tennis tour and so on. So, but I would say my my focus was on what I would call player development in the in those junior days. And about 11, maybe 12 years ago, I decided to change tack a little bit, and I wanted to go into the world of coach education or coach development as I would prefer to call it. And I trained to become a tutor for the LTA, passed all the exams I needed to do, became a tutor on their certification courses, and that was kind of my entry point to like formal coach education. And my main kind of wish about 11, 12 years ago, wasn't to be a tutor of courses, it was to find a way of working day in and day out with coaches in the trenches, working with players, because for me that was the best of both worlds. I kind of got the it sounds a bit bad because I'm not I'm not uh dissing what some people do, but I 100% could not be full-time in coach education as most people perceive it. I I feel that it would take only six or seven months for me to lose touch and and lose the feel and the trends that are currently happening. And it also your anecdotes quickly get old, you know. That I've seen quite a lot of people that are 100% coach education and they're still talking about anecdotes from like 20 years ago. So I I feel you have to stay current uh all the time. So I I kind of that was my wish, but nothing like that existed. So I formed my company, the service box, and that was really just a way of me housing everything that I the different things that I did at that time, and I started this kind of crusade to find ways to to make those roles that I have now come to life. And that was really, yeah, honestly, about 10 years in the making because it didn't exist. So as you say, now I've become a consultant, which again back in the day I would have always thought was something I would never do, but it was the easiest way for me to work with multiple organisations and do the thing that I wanted to do. So uh a snapshot, Judy Murray Foundation. I'm the project manager and I essentially manage about four projects across Scotland where we are working in either socially deprived or disadvantaged areas and also rural areas. So essentially, where tennis doesn't normally exist, we take it and we kind of build a workforce out of the local community. So anyone from teachers, high school students, club volunteers, parents, uh other sports coaches, I I train them up to be able to deliver typically starter level tennis in their area to kind of create an appetite. And that's fantastically rewarding because well we can talk about that later, but it is incredibly rewarding doing that type of work because people don't even expect you to come in. Uh and through the LTA, I do a performance tutor role where I help deliver, maybe develop some of the content and uh do like assignment marking and so on. And with Tennis Scotland, I'm a coach consultant in the performance team. So again, I'm going out visiting coaches in the programs, helping them maybe manage their player development side of things a bit more, let's say neatly, for lack of a better word, and doing a lot of resource building for Tennis Scotland. So it's 29 years in the making, but it has literally taken about 10 or 11 years to make that vision come to fruition.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

And and I think you've done yourself a disservice at the start, probably only three, three and a half minutes to boil all of that 29 years down into.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

It's tough. I could have gone all day.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

You've done a great job of describing. I think you've filled up the hat rack. The hat rack is full of different hats, and we can see how you've acquired them. So we've started off kind of at the the coal face, if you will, of coaching, working with players one-to-one, some really good players that have gone on to play at a really high level. And from there, you've you've had this passion to to go more into the education side, the coach education side. However, that there seems to be a intention not to be, I suppose if it was a a parody cop show back in the day, you don't want to be stuck behind a desk.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Yeah, it's a good good analogy. Yeah, definitely. I think it's it's more the I I am overly analytical without a doubt. Uh and it can be a blessing and a curse, but the I'd just seen how the industry of coaches viewed certain coach educator or the the role of a coach educator. And for me there seemed to be a big divide, uh, and I was amazed. This this may take us down a different road, but I was uh astounded slash disgusted at how quickly I became labelled a coach educator. So I coached for 18 years and busted my gut to try and make a name for myself, and not that that was the the the goal, but that you know it took a long time to kind of uh earn your stripes as a coach. And within honestly, about a year of being a coach educator, it was almost like, yeah, that's what he does now. And I I I really was taken aback by that because I I almost it sounds bad, but I didn't want to be seen as that. I'm a coach at heart and I wanted to be uh working with coaches and players, and it was amazing how quickly people perceived that that's what I was doing.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, it's really interesting. And do you know what? I was gonna get into this a little bit later, but since it's come up now, let's let's dig into it now because I think this is super interesting, and I'm genuinely not trying to stir up trouble by asking this question because I'm genuinely interested. And in my marketing and advertising side of work, we have consultants come into the business world all the time, and truthfully, I find it hard as a practitioner of marketing not to get a little bit defensive about what I'm doing if I'm master changer or even just having it scrutinized, even though my rational brain is trying to turn off that emotive defense reaction. So, do you did you ever find that as a coach when you had tutors or educators working with you? And how mindful of that are you now in your move into that kind of elevated role?

SPEAKER_03 14:02

I've had a range of experiences being a consultant, and if I give you the let's say the full range of it, I'll give you a positive one to start with. And uh I don't think it's ironic, but some people might may perceive it to be. But about six years ago, I bizarrely made a move into the oil and gas industry. Now, that was one of these sliding doors moments where I coached a kid that played kind of good county level, and his dad said to me, Have you ever considered coaching in the corporate world? Now, at that time, my perception of it was all the team building, catch me when I fall, all that stuff. And I said, That's just not for me, it's a bit too gimmicky for me. And he went, No, no, I'm meaning like taking all the principles I'm hearing you say with my child, doing it in the corporate world. And I said, Well, look, I've never considered it, but you know, I'm open to ideas. And he connected me to his HR director for a global FTSE 100 oil company. And uh, I went there naively with a pad, thinking she's gonna tell me what I needed to do to get into that type of industry. And the first thing she said was, right, let's see how we could use you. And I'm like, started sweating. I was like, Oh my god. So, long story short, I I did a lot of work with their assessment centers where I would be a fly in the wall to start with, then compiled kind of reports on reflective questions, observations, kind of key, maybe some sowing the seed of a few ideas, and they implemented about 80% of what I said. So, for about three, four days a month for 18 months, I was working in the oil industry, and what really stood out was how open they were. Now, on reflection, I think it's because I didn't come from their industry, they were so open to the sports analogies, and I was no threat. I wasn't it wasn't like me coming in as an engineer from another company thinking telling people how they should assess other engineers, and that was the positive one, it was unbelievable. Now, if you then flip that, I remember going back to an organization and saying, look, you know, I think we need to re-evaluate how we assess our coaches because it's a bit archaic, it's limited, blah, blah, blah. And the lady in charge at the time of the department said, What do you like? Almost like, who do you think you are? You've only been tutoring at that point maybe five or six years. Wow. And I I was kind of really put on the back foot by this because it took I'm naturally quite shy and introvert by nature, and it takes me a while to find my voice in a certain group. So it took me maybe three or four years to gain the confidence to kind of speak up in front of the established tutors at this organization. And uh, she absolutely slammed me in front of everyone, just like, who do you think you are? Now, I had well at that point probably 22 years experience in tennis and she just shut me down. And in the oil industry, had zero seconds experience in oil and gas, and they took on 80% of what I suggested. So I completely get the whole thing of a consultant coming in, but I do also think it's about in what capacity, if there's a threat, then people tend to be a little bit resistant. And I suppose I've worked for those 29 years for myself. So if I want something done, I just do it. But within an organization, that's probably the biggest thing I find frustrating is that you go into an organization, it's hard to get things done because you've got all the lines of management, you've got all the kind of working groups that get put together, and it takes about 10 times longer to get anything done. But I suppose that's with if you combine that with my impatience to get things done, I can understand why there would be kickback from some people and teams.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, geez, that is interesting. There will be people listening to this who listen to that story around the the oil and gas and then and then the tennis one. And they'll really identify with that the freedom of going into certain environments without any skin in the game, and that kind of being a positive, and the people receiving you really positively because you're almost this impartial person or impartial observer. I suppose you also mentioned you're you're bringing a lot of excitement as well from a sporting background, which a lot of a lot of companies can can really get into as well. Um, but the other reason why I think it's really interesting is it to some extent it really grinds or grates against some of our theories in psychology, so social identity theory. In in general, we tend to favour in-group members. So you would think that people within tennis would want people with the tennis knowledge to do that work and oil and gas, oil and gas. But there's another, I think there's another part of this, and I hope I don't bastardise it. I've got Matt Slater potentially coming on the podcast. But I think there's a part where it's not always as clear as that, that we on in general tend to favour people within our group. But if there are certain people within our group that we don't think are representing our group effectively, then we can be quite aggressive against them, as much so as we would be from people outside of our tribe. And I wonder whether that's what kind of goes on within the consulting world is if we don't think that that person is their knowledge or their experience or what they've got to say chimes with what we believe, we then see them as not a proper member of our group. They've actually they're coming with information that we don't we don't agree with.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Definitely. I I don't know what it's like in other organizations because my world, apart from that oil and gas experience, has primarily been in tennis, but sporting organizations are habitually let's say institutionalized, and and you know, I I quite often say that the biggest barrier to progress is history. And a lot of the governing bodies of sports have a lot of history there. And I do, I almost think it's as simple as this that there are networks of people that have become almost either institutionalized or let's say you have a certain generation of staff members, that the next generation are through their contacts. You know, this is human nature, it's not a criticism, it's just I think what that does is over generations, it builds up almost anyone that challenges that is either met with extreme resistance or shot down. So it you know it's it's a tough one. I think it you know my gut tells me that sport most sporting governing bodies are the same. You know, I I do think it would be a fantastic piece of research for somebody to do to travel the world and meet with people within major sporting organizations and do some sort of case study on them. Because my feeling is that every coach in every country in the world criticizes the national governing body. We build up in tennis that nations like France and Spain are powerhouses. But if you go to France and you go to Spain and you hear the Spanish coaches and French coaches speaking about their national federations, they've very rarely got anything good to say about them. So I think there's a a lot of history and kind of institutionalization, if that's even a word, that has gone on. So anyone that threatens that is shot down in flames. Now, to flip that, I've got a lot of sympathy for federations because I work now within a couple and people talk about federations as if they are a person. So they'll say, Oh, the LTA is this. And I'm like, Well, the LTA isn't a person, you know, it's a it's made up of 325 staff members or whatever. So because of the history, they're quick to label uh in these uh organizations. So it's a tough nut to crack, I would say. But I think that there's a sweet spot there where we could accelerate the progress if people were more open to working with people from outside the organization.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

That was a bit of a ramble, but no, rambles, rambles and rabbit holes always always encouraged. Um Has there been has there been moments where you working with coaches, you've actually in instead of being seen as a threat, you actually have been kind of welcomed because they they are aware or they know of your long history in coaching yourself and therefore they kind of they know that you've been through that yourself?

SPEAKER_03 22:20

It's probably worth highlighting that the resistance has never come from the coaches. So if you know, if we're painting a picture for the listener, if we've got one side of the fence is the let's say the staff within an organization and the other side of the fence is the in the trench coaches, I very, very rarely, I can't even think of an example where I've had resistance from the coaches in the tr in the trenches. And the I think that's why I wanted to create that role, because I think of myself in many senses as a mediator, and I think that's the power that any company can have. If you've got let's say the expression used in tennis, and I don't like it, but the ivory tower. You've got the ivory tower where all the the the kind of budget is and the power uh exists, and you've got the trenches. A lot of people build up bitterness about that, and I and I think incorrectly in a lot of cases. So in my role, I can be the bridge between the two and actually see from both sides of the fence. So, like I said earlier, I actually have a degree of sympathy for national governing bodies and federations because they are perceived incorrectly in many situations. Uh so I actually act as almost a buffer between the two. So coaches very rarely because of what I said earlier, I'm very hands-on, a much better face-to-face with somebody, and I love working with people, and I think that hopefully comes across. So again, hardly any resistance in the trenches, shall we say?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah. So, with regards to being at that elevated level where you have more influence over potentially the environment with which coaches and performers can do their job, what are the bits at that level that are more accessible to change and have an influence over? And what are the the the elements that are maybe harder to change and you run up against maybe a bit of organizational friction?

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Um I think this is probably one of the areas I'm most sensitive about because I don't want to be perceived as someone coming in and telling them what to do. So that that's you know, historically, that's when there has been a lot of friction between coaches and and organizations. That you have somebody coming in with a template essentially saying, Can you just tick these boxes and then I'll I'll go. Or they even worse, you have uh situations where young people have been put into let's say minor management roles and they're going into experienced coaches programs who've been coaching probably as long as they've been alive and telling them what to do. And you go in with your ego and you tell people what to do that have been coaching for 25 years, uh, and it just causes major friction. So I suppose, in terms of elements, the the thing that I would try to do as much as possible with coaches is find out how they work, what resources they currently use, what they feel they want from me, uh, so that I don't get that resistance about, you know, oh, you just want me to take these boxes and leave. So I'm not sure if that answers the question or not, or if it takes us down a different road.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

No, let's lean into it even more. What what are the resources that you find that coaches tend to utilize the most, and therefore how are you used by the coaches, do you think, in the most common ways?

SPEAKER_03 25:56

I would say most common is planning, program, and goal setting. You know, it would be unfair of me to pigeonhole all coaches like this, but there are quite a large percentage of sports coaches that have gone into sports coaching because they are very hands-on, like the hitting, like the playing, like the kind of interaction and so on. Or it could have been they come from a high-level playing background, that's all they know. So they kind of go into coaching. So therefore, there are not many of them actually come with either any experience, training, or education on how to plan and program and goal setting. Now, I I I joke quite a lot, especially in these COVID times, about the irony being that all my geeky ways are finally paying dividends. Because for for many years, when I was on the what we'll call the junior tour coaching, I used to get called the professor by a lot of my mates. And that was because I was always planning, videoing, analysing, setting goals, evaluating goals, and so on. And people used to take the Mickey out of me for it because I wasn't, I'll use the sporting term, a jock. You know, I was much more from an educational side of things.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

And uh so that's probably what I bring or can offer to a typical coach who leads a program is how they can streamline their planning, make their goals a lot more rich and real and authentic. Uh, in fact, I'm doing a presentation on it tomorrow to a coach, so it's something it winds me up. You want to go down that road.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

But uh it wind it winds you up. No, we definitely talk about goal setting. It winds you up how goal setting can be used in in a bad way.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Yeah, it's well either it's not done or it's done very badly. Uh and now I get it because the whole premise is if you take a typical goal setting method, if you like, so you've got your outcome goal, your performance goal, your process goals. Yep. I think that a lot of coaches do that as a paper exercise. I don't see a lot of coaches transferring it to the actual training, teaching, and match play coaching course. So that's probably the the, you know, as a massive overview, my biggest gripe. Secondly, I think because there's not much work done on it in tennis world, it's left for people to kind of discover their own way. So, you know, without going off in too big a tangent, I think that the outcome goal is very obviously it could be extrinsically motivating to have a ranking of you know top 10 in the country or whatever. The performance goals are essentially what I believe happen on the match court, they're like they're like the bridge between the training court and the match court.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

And so we evaluate and analyze a lot from there, but the process goals are the thing that wind me up the most because if you take a typical example of let's say I want to increase my first serve percentage on serve in a match. So I want to get it from 50% to 65. So I I kind of do a pile of work on my serve, we break it down into all the different process goals, and you might say to a coach, what are you working on in terms of the process of the serve? Or we're trying to get the load of the legs to be a lot more uh a lot more explosive. And I'm like, right, okay, what else? And they're like, Well, that's the process goal. And I'm like, well, you need to have a huge bank of process goals to make this thing happen on the match court. So they're not living the day in, day out of everything that needs to be pieced together to make that performance happen on the court. They just write down one process, one performance, and one outcome. It should be on like a very base-heavy pyramid where the processes are huge. The performance might be two or three things on the match court and the outcome goal can be set in there. Which leads me down to the third thing on goal setting, which I'm almost changing my language about this now, which I would say the process is habit forming.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

That's that's really what we want to try and do. And if you go into research about habit forming, you know, all the tactics of it in terms of you know, almost don't ironically set too many goals, because that can be your it can be used as a destination, but quite often used as an excuse for not doing it. So if I give a silly example, if I want to keep fit and I set myself a goal of going to the gym three times a week and I can't do the first one, then I can't achieve that goal. So I tack I bail the the next two, you know. So uh habit forming for me is trying to do it every single day to a tiny degree until it becomes a natural process. So we could do an hour on this, but uh it's it's just something that I see a lot in the tennis world where they they pay homage to it, but they don't actually live it, they don't see the process through to the performance, to the outcome. It's just left a chance.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

So it's either not doing it or a tick box, or it's it's done, but it it loses a lot of the the accuracy and the nuance needed to actually make it useful.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Yeah, and and also if you go from a philosophical standpoint, if you ask, I did this at my first ever university lecture years and years ago, I asked this question of what is an effective tennis coach, or how do you know a tennis coach has been effective? Philosophically it's very difficult to answer because you'll never know what would have happened without the coaching intervention. So it you know, you you get a lot of coaches that will lay claim to have developed players to a whatever level. And if you wanted to be a bit of a yeah, so if you wanted to be a bit of a prat about it, you would say, well, how do you know that they wouldn't have achieved more without you? You know, so it's such a difficult thing to quantify. And the only philosophical point you can break it down to is if the athlete tells you that or feels or thinks that you're effective, then you are effective. But the key thing is that you know, we need to have a much better way of pointing the ship in the right direction and making sure that we stay on course, and because tennis, like most sports, is a rocky road, but you need to use it almost like the bumper bowling analogy is that the the work done around the goal setting is your bumper bowling, it keeps you on that straight line to get your strength.

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Right then, time for the halftime Lucas Aid, maybe a bag of jelly babies or orange slices if you're old school. It's a bumper episode this week, so feel free to pause here, pop the kettle on, or take a breather. For those of you willing to crack on, let's pause to reflect on what we've heard there. For me, there was an absolute Aladdin cave of implications and considerations for group membership and social identity theory type conversations. Can a lack of experience or membership in an in-group be a positive when coaching or consulting? Does this make you the friendly, impartial voice bringing inspiration from a different world versus consulting within your industry? Anecdotally speaking, I've seen businesses thoroughly enjoy people from sport coming in because it is exciting and something they may enjoy on a personal level. I've seen them engage deeply in the process, and depending on the nature of the work, which I'll touch on in a sec, there seems to be an expectation that the sport analogies might miss the mark from time to time, but that doesn't matter. The consultants are kind of given this leeway, where crossover nuggets to learn from are celebrated and enjoyed, but there's also a forgivingness for the bits that clearly don't apply. And I wonder whether it matters if you're a permanent member of staff, like a coach or a new manager coming in versus a consultant who's going to pop in and out. Will an outsider be seen as more non-threatening if they are bringing inspiration in from another domain, for example, sport? I also think the nature of the consultancy might make a difference. In my experience, I've always been welcomed into companies by all stakeholders when the nature is more inspiration. So you're kind of bringing in information in a take it or leave it style, bringing in innovation, examples, inspiration, thought starters, ideas from sport into business, versus specifically coming in to improve or make recommendations on how to do things better. Where those who are doing it already may see you as a threat, may see you as telling them how to do their job, or in classical management consulting, the fear that they might even be made redundant as part of cost savings or restructuring. In my psychology dissertation 14 years ago, I found that in social identity theory, in-group members that do not display the behaviours you feel should be representative of your group can be treated with as much contempt as outsiders. And I think this may partially explain why it's not as simple as getting buy-in because you're a tennis person. Hey, I'm a tennis person, we should all get on swimmingly and be happy families. If I'm bringing in new ideas and suggesting fundamental changes, this can be still seen as just as threatening. Also, when we talk about groups, they can be broad and get more and more specific. I've seen in business people hugely loyal to their immediate working team, but relatively apathetic about the wider organisation. In Chris's situation, we can see a kind of rush and dole situation with respect to the groups. I could be a tennis advocate and member of the wider group of tennis enthusiasts, but then I could be a Scottish tennis group member. I could be a Scottish tennis association member, and the groups can get smaller and smaller. So even when a consultant is also a respected member of the broader tennis community, they may not be granted automatic membership of the closer knit in group in the first instance. Anyway, I'm going to store up all these questions on social identity theory for a special group interview in a few weeks' time with Dr. Matt Slater, the author of Togetherness, and Chris Hartley from the University of Sterling, who are both much, much more qualified to discuss social identity theory and answer these questions, so look out for that one. That's enough half-time analysis for now. I hope you've enjoyed your cup of tea and a breather. In Tennis Lingo, it's time to change ends. So let's get back into the action with Chris Souter. Let's zoom back out now, big picture again.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Talked a lot about performance there. Is well-being something that is talked about a lot in tennis nowadays from an environmental perspective?

SPEAKER_03 36:34

It's starting to get there. I think it's uh on vogue, if you like. It's starting to become more and more commonplace for people to speak about it. In terms of organizations, I think there's still a way to go to put the infrastructure in there to support athletes in that sense. Uh my personal opinion is it should start with that. Uh, we we don't uh, you know, it's a popular phrase to say that you, you know, you don't coach tennis to people, you coach people tennis, you know, that kind of idea. But I I I think again it's one of these things that people throw out but they don't actually live it. It's so easy to get sidetracked by the kind of uh extrinsic stuff. So I think there needs to be a lot more done in terms of the genuine well-being of a player. And I think that the essence of that is you take this is where the performance world in particular struggles because they can't disassociate the performance, the competitor, if you like, from the well-being. You know, what I mean by that is let's say you say to someone, look, it would actually help you be a better competitor or performer if you actually detached your self-worth from the outcome. And they go, But no, you need to be single-minded, you need to be so obsessed about achieving and have the will to win and whatever they they find it really difficult to separate those two things. Whereas I think the best athletes that I've ever spent time around, they've got such a great sense of perspective and they're so humble and so caring about other people. But when they get on the court, they can completely change into that character of being a competitor. So I think that there's a ton of work to be done in that uh sphere in the tennis world.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Where do you think that comes from? Where do you think that viewpoint that in order to be successful and succeed, you have to have this kind of hundred percent mentality?

SPEAKER_03 38:22

I think again it comes from history that you know we hear so many stories about people that have said, you know, I had to become obsessed, I had to, you know, live it, it was everything I wanted. And I think these things are easy to say in hindsight. I'm always a bit cynical when uh people say I always knew that I wanted to be number one, I always knew I was gonna be number one. I think it they sensationalise it, maybe to make a good story, sell a book or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

And uh I think what happens is it's almost that idea of the kind of old school Russian mentality of take a hundred eggs, you throw them all against the one, one won't break, that's the one that will make it. And I think what happens in tennis a lot, because the parents quite rightly have a big say, is that you will get a lot of parents that are sold a dream by say a Richard Williams coming out saying that he knew from birth that Venus and Serena would be number one in the world.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

So what they do is they take their kid on that journey and they they destroy them, you know, they literally break them down because there's only a tiny, tiny percentage can make it. So I think historically the they kind of the stories are sensationalized, and I think a lot of people just believe that you have to be all in. But I think with research and sports science now, we're starting to become better at understanding that children need to have a well-rounded 360 sporting education as well as a bit of a social life and pure you know, fun and so on. So I think we're with education, I think we're gonna fight through it, but um, I think it's just pure history.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yeah, in behavioral economics, they'd call that the availability bias. So you've got a a very tiny pool of of stories that are then brought to the public's attention through mass media, yeah, and then people take that as a blueprint for success.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

100%.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Whereas there might be some other stories. I had Leon Lo Leon Lloyd from Switch the Play on last week, he was talking about athletes that have had dual careers or have done management degrees successfully, as well as winning world titles or representing the Lions. His mission is to take those stories and make them as famous. So we've got a nice, a nice balance there in terms of where people can turn to for their for their narratives.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Yeah, definitely. I think as you say that, it would be an interesting piece of research for somebody to look into people that have come from those sports where they need to do it. And there could be a slight irony there that it the amateur sports where they don't actually make money, uh they tend to have those dual lives. So they need to work to be able to pay for the training or or or live. And they actually maybe have a better perspective because they've got something else that they do, or they go to they can be an Olympic or potential Olympic grower and be at university. You know, it's not it's a very late specialization sport, so yeah, it would be interesting. But yeah, you're right, they store a tiny amount of stories get sensationalized, the majority buy into them, and therefore the majority actually don't make it, and uh we have a lot of broken tennis players.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

The other thing that you touched on there, which I think is quite interesting, we could talk about just for a a wee bit, is I think there was one side which is athletes being able to have their identity derived from multiple areas. So the the athlete, the family member, the person who's doing this other thing over here, whether it's studying or another or building a business or just a hobby, whatever. But there's you also touched upon having a distributed sporting skill set. And I think were you touching on the kind of the idea of kind of early versus late specialization there?

SPEAKER_03 42:03

Yeah, I think um you know there are some sports where there's no doubt about it, you have to specialise very early. So gymnastics comes to mind that a lot of the Olympic champions are teenagers, so yeah, um, but tennis 100%, we don't have to specialise early. Now, this gets lost in translation as well because people think that it you don't have to play it from an early age. I think it's an early adoption sport, if you like, you have to experience it from a young age, but it doesn't have to be your sole focus until maybe your early teens. And uh the 360 degree building of an athlete can come from other sports and also just give them a bit more of a healthy social life and kind of perspective on where they sit. Yeah, it's something I see. Tennis again comes back to those stories that people think they have to specialise from four, five, six years old. So I think they need my advice for any parent if you're listening to this and you're a parent, is to give your young child a well-rounded sporting and social uh life so that they gain all the experiences and benefits from every one of those sports and experiences socially. And then when they are ready, they can choose whether they want to specialise uh in one sport.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

I think that's a really good message and good soundbite for parents to take away. You can always spot the footballing tennis players, can't you? Because they are incredible at the tennis ball keepy ups.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Oh, it kills me because for the first time in my life, because of this COVID uh lockdown, I bought uh football since the first time since I've been probably eight or nine years old. And I thought, right, I'm trying to kind of keep fit every day, but I get bored doing the same stuff, so I'm trying to find a range of activities to do. So I thought, well, I'll do keepy ups. I saw Jamie Murray put a challenge on Instagram about doing a hundred keepy ups. And I thought, right, I'll do that. And I'm like, it's so difficult, it's a joke, and that's with a huge football. And these like Andy can do it unbelievably well with a tennis ball. So yeah, they're they are uh phenomenal with their eye foot coordination.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

I don't know whether I'm remembering this right, but I'm pretty sure when Goran Ivaniseovich won Wimbledon, he was a massive, I think it was Hydrick Split fan. And and as a reward for winning Wimbledon, they actually brought him on in the like the 90th minute or something as a substitute in an actual game.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

Yeah, he the my favourite memory of Goran Ivanisevich is him going back to his hometown or city in a helicopter and coming out of the helicopter and just being met by probably hundreds of thousands of people in in his town. And uh he just was so euphoric, I think he just stripped off. He just like started stripping outside this helicopter. But for me, I think he would be actually one player that I would use as an example because he obviously had reached what three Wimbledon finals and won it on his fourth, uh, or fourth and won it on his fifth, I can't remember. And uh he celebrated that win, like I believe players should celebrate big wins. And now you know, I know Andy's spoken a little bit about this, like the first time he won Wimbledon, it was just more of a relief that when he won it in 2016, he actually thought, I'm gonna enjoy this and throw a party and celebrate with the people that he cared about and so on. I I think it's a massive shame that we hear sporting superstars talking about their biggest achievements and quite often talking about it as being uh either a relief or a letdown. It's like they've trained all their life for this moment, and it actually they feel flat afterwards. And it is, I would say, more common than the opposite, which we talked about with Ian Ivan Izovic, where he had pure euphoria and joy. And I think what a shame to dedicate your life to something, have uh these huge goals built up in your mind, achieve one and not celebrate it and enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Yeah, completely agree. And I suppose there are a few moving parts that would that would play a role there if the win is just satisfying something that you believe is makes you good enough. This idea, you hear it a lot with defined you know with athletes, with athletes in one-to-one consultancy. If I can get to that level, then I'll be good enough. And it's almost putting your yeah, you're leveling your self-worth with an achievement. And then you can kind of, I suppose you can see how that would that might play out as a bit of a relief or a plateau. But there's also a bit something in there that we hear in biographical accounts, and there's a bit a bit of research on this in in psychology, how the unfortunate reality of elite sport is however you get to that occasion and however you value it, and however that's linked to your identity, when you follow a big win like that, we say this with Olympic gold medalists, is the period after is a natural loss anyway.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Because you're losing that training, you're losing that environment, you're losing that competition, that intensity, it kind of becomes a loss. And I suppose that's part of our role as support practitioners in elite sport is to help athletes kind of navigate this very natural oscillating ups and downs.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

Yeah, definitely. And and I think if you use a silly analogy of going on holiday, you know, I go on if uh if we can go on one nice family holiday a year, then we're lucky. So if we build up to that, we build up to it, and then you have that awful fall off the cliff at the end of it when you get back and you're like, right, that's it for another year. So it's life, you know, you you're gonna have highs and lows. And I think that we we could do a much better job in sports of preparing people for those things. And there's no doubt in my mind that one of the things that we we need to do better is removing that natural process that could lead to someone attaching their self-worth to being good at hitting a little yellow sphere over a net and inside a rectangle. It's doesn't m add up at all, but it happens because of the outcome orientation of the sport. So we have a massive, I think, duty of care to give our athletes and or the people that we work with that education right from the start. It's hard. And the biggest thing, as I said earlier on, is that whole piece of you need that will, that drive, that ruthless streak, you need all that. And I'm like, I just don't believe that. I just don't believe it. I don't think that anyone can convince me that when I step on the court, that me being a kind, giving, selfless person off the court means that I can't compete on the court. I just don't understand that logic at all.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Yeah, I suppose that where that drive is directed can be really important in the kind of the Albert Ellis REBT school of thought, anything around kind of I must win, I must get that trophy can be potentially quite harmful because you're setting really strict boundaries over what and what is not acceptable in terms of your life. Whereas focusing a drive and a foreign determination against something that is under your control, like when you wake up, how hard you work at training, how creative are you are in partnership with your coach in terms of planning out what you're doing and how you're going to better yourself, that feels like a lot more of a healthy and helpful funnel.

SPEAKER_03 49:16

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. To flip the word that I used earlier on, extrinsic, it for me it just all lies in intrinsic. So if you are motivated to better yourself, because that's quite often the question I get is if you don't attach yourself worth to that, then what do you attach it to? And I say two things uh how you are with others and how you are with yourself. So, you know, that whole cliche of you can't love someone else until you love yourself. That if you follow that to its nth degree, uh you can actually come up with lots of um ways that the athlete or the person at the center of this process can invest in themselves to become the best version of themselves, whether it be on the court, off the court, with others, and so on. And that is a never-ending journey. So that's why I think it's it's a shame they don't celebrate, because if you just view these occasions as milestones or indicators of progress or or form, whatever you want to use them for, then it's nice every now and again to go, all the work I put into myself has paid off against this other person, because that's all it is tennis, it's you against someone else or a team too. And uh let's let's enjoy that moment rather than actually feeling like it's actually a massive letdown. You know, imagine winning a grand slam and feeling like it was a letdown. It's just it blows my mind to think that people have experienced that, but it is actually a very common thing in tennis. So yeah, I think the the secret behind it is intrinsically being motivated to be the best version of yourself and also helping others, which is a massive, massive curveball for most people that I speak to in the performance tennis world, they just can't get their head around that one at all.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Helping others as being a a key, a key element.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

I think that you know, that whole thing of I'm very big on we raise the bar, we stand, we can kind of all help lift each other up. And I think that the world, well, you know, it's like a a thing I've said in in several of the talks I've done is if you had the power to just click your fingers and make everyone in the world kind to each other, then a lot of the issues that we have in the world would be solved. Now, it's a it's a very philosophical point, but I do believe it when I train coaches and I train with players, I refer to us all as a team. We're all there to help each other. There's no hierarchy. I'm quite often quoted as saying hierarchy is the root of all evil. Uh, I think that we need to all be helping each other to want the best for each other and psychologically on a tennis court, and I spoke about this to a podcast guest that I've got coming out in a couple of weeks, where in fact it might be out by the time this goes out, but uh his name is Dr. David Hamilton, and he was talking about how you could actually use sympathy as a strategy, psychological strategy for when you're competing in a tennis match. So that if you if you have the opposite where you're stressed because you you want to win so much, or you take it personally and you have a grudge against the opponent, you think they've cheated you, or whatever, then the counter of that is to actually feel sympathy for them and actually feel they're so desperate to try and win that they become uh this other version of themselves. And by feeling or thinking and feeling that you lower the stress in your own system, the cortisol kind of starts to dissipate, you become much more clear, the frontal cortex gets cleared up, you're much more process-focused, able to process things that are staring you right in the face, etc. etc. So I think the chat I've had in that sphere for me, if I take that into a typical tennis world, they're just they're borderline laughing. Because they're like, that's just Mickey Mouse woo-woo stuff that. But a hundred percent, the more time I chew this over, I really believe that w we could be more effective competitors if we actually wanted to the best for our opponents because it would decrease our stress and help us focus on the tactics.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

Very interesting. Very interesting that weirdly. Well, weirdly, I I worked with a couple of club tennis players in London last year, and as as you probably know, at certain level within the the kind of competitive world of tennis, you don't actually have line judges and and umpires, so you have to call your own lines. And one of the athletes was was trying to process the anger that comes with someone or the perception that someone else is cheating in terms of cheating their line calls. And the reframe that they decided to use in the end was when he thought of that opponent as being so desperate to beat him, that actually made him feel quite good about the level he was playing at. If he had respected that opponent and really wanted to beat him, thinking that that opponent was doing everything in their power and going beyond the rules in order to do that, that actually is a nice thing to think about. Definitely. But I think there's something else you you brought up there around not just being sympathetic with opponents, but being kind of gracious with others around us and thinking about others as well. There's a couple of things there that I suppose are going to be quite helpful. Number one, you know, we've evolved as social animals. So the more that we leave live our lives connected to others, doing goodwill for others and that coming back, the more that we're playing into our own biology and that has knock-on effects for for lots of different things, including our mental health. And the second thing is when you're living your life just about you, that's a really intense way to live. Just all of those thoughts about what am I doing? Am I good enough? What's that other person doing? If you have other pockets of your life where you can just free yourself up to think about others, to think about what you can do for them, that's a lot less of an intense way to live your life.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

And in the context of an elite athlete, the more you can give your brain that time off, you know, to go into down mode, that when you power up into on mode, whether that's a match or whatever, the more you've got to give, that more energy you've got, the less tired you are by living this kind of intense mental life.

SPEAKER_03 55:13

Yeah. It's uh I think we're now at a stage where sports science is so advanced that we're now finally understanding that rest is almost as important as the workout. And uh the I think the next stage for me is that people are thinking rest means not physically being active. I think you could actually still be physically active, but it's an it's more of a mental rest from what your everyday life is. But I remember uh working with a player about three, four years ago who was, let's say, an aspiring tennis pro and he was struggling mentally. Uh and again it was all you know, his whole self-worth was caught up in achieving this dream of his. And uh he said he wanted to do something that would take his mind off this crusade that he was on. And I said, Go volunteer at charity one morning a week. And uh he did that. He went to children's hospital and and just volunteered with some of the in the sick uh kids' unit. And he said it's the best thing he ever did because he just it put such a sense of perspective onto him in terms of these kids were sick and happy. You know, they were inevitably, unless they were really, really ill, they were actually perfectly happy with where they were and uh weren't feeling sorry for themselves. And here's he him traveling the world trying to make it as a tennis player, feeling sorry for himself because he's not moved up enough ranking points to achieve what he's made this goal for himself. And I think that rest and having a balanced lifestyle will help you achieve your goals a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

Yeah, that's really interesting. One of my supervisors, I've got two supervisors um within training as a sports psychologist, and one of them who's worked in multiple Olympic and Paralympic games, when he's working with athletes and their diaries and their calendars, he plugs in these rest periods as though they are training periods. So they go in the kind of performance diary, but they might say do nothing or pick up the phone to mum or write a letter or go and do something, go for a walk, do something else, or even sleep. And these are these rest periods are plugged in as though they are performance periods in the calendar and they're protected.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Definitely. They should almost like in the old-fashioned goal setting or annual planning, it's like you put your holidays in first, you put your exams in for kids second, and so on. I I would argue that you should put your rest in third. Obviously, you need to know how much you're working before you can do that. But I think rest and downtime is so important. Again, if you hear all the you know the the kind of marginal gains chat from the British cycling in terms of you know them travelling with their own pillows, them doing all everything they could to get the best night's sleep possible, then you know that that's where we're at. So it'll only get more, I think.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Okay. Well, look, we're getting towards the the end of the podcast episode now. Just to finish up, this is a a question that I've been asking the majority of people that come on the podcast. There's obviously no right answer, but it's super interesting to see the angles and the perspectives that people come at it with. And the question is what does that psychologically informed environment mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 58:15

What it means to me is that the person is first, and that we have that duty of care that we are thinking about the well-being of the person first, the development of them as a person alongside them as a tennis player. Yeah, that that's the first thought that comes to me, psychologically informed. Yeah, if you were if you actually were doing it as an educational piece, that's what you would be in I would be informing them of first and foremost. It's what I would say to a coach or a player is that I don't care what ranking you get to, I don't care whatever, what I care is you know, you that you're happy, you're healthy, that you're learning, you're developing. And everything, my kind of core philosophy in terms of player development, is around those four pillars. Are they happy? Are they healthy? Are they learning? Are they developing? And I'll use whatever tools I have and I'll evaluate consistently to make sure that we're not going off the wrong track because it's easy to do that, especially competitive sports. So yeah, I I that would be my answer, I think.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

I love it. So the psychologically informed environment, the pie for you is person is first, where duty of care is accounted for, putting well-being as a number one priority, and then having four pillars that underpin this of players and coaches, I'm assuming, being healthy, happy, healthy, learning and developing.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

Yeah, definitely. Coaches as well, because I think if the coach isn't happy, the player's not the player is like a parent child, isn't it? If the coach is not happy, the player picks it up. If the parent's not happy, the child picks it up. So I think we need to put more duty of care onto coaches because it's a very lonely industry.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

So another good message to take away. Thanks, Chris. Well, look, thank you again so much for coming on and and uh sharing your your insights and some of the stuff that you've learnt within the world of elite tennis and oil and gas as well. We didn't expect that beforehand. So absolutely love that story. Thanks for that. If people want to follow you online, you've I know you've got your your business and and your podcast as well. Where can people follow you and keep up to date with the stuff that you're doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:25

Uh probably the easiest places are on Facebook. I have a business page, The Service Box Limited, and uh plenty of folk on there. You can reach me through that uh on Twitter. I think I'm just at Chris Suter, K-R-I-S. And my business website is theservicebox.com, so you can email me through that as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

Great. And I'll I'll put all of those links in the description for the podcast as well. So make it very easy for people to find out where you are. So look, thanks so much, Chris. Pleasure. Um, really, really love that conversation and uh best of luck with everything through this period. Hopefully a bit of tennis playing on your balcony at some stage.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Well, on the I've got a pier. I live right beside a harbour, so I could do it peer-to-peer.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

Yeah. And we did we didn't even touch the some of the great work you're doing with the Judy Murray Foundation, which I'm sure could take the a whole of another podcast. But best of luck with all of that and and all the good that you're doing north of the border.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:20

Thank you very much.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Right then, if you are still listening, thanks again for savouring another slice of pie with me. What did we learn after the change of ends? Well, first of all, what a fantastically passionate, knowledgeable, and articulate bloke Chris is. Also, I absolutely have to shout out the use of the phrase Mickey Mouse woo-woo stuff, which I don't know whether that's a Scottish thing or a tennis thing or a Chris Suter thing. That absolutely had me in bits during the edit. So fair play to Chris, fantastic conversation, well articulated, and all of your experience and your insights really shone through there. There were loads of things I took away, the paper exercise trap that Chris mentioned, like goal setting, ticking a few boxes on paper to say that you've done it, but it not really being tied to the reality of your practice or your performance. Or the observation that when we are in organisations looking in from the outside at others, the grass can often look greener from the other side. But look a little closer, and these organisations, these federations, national governing bodies, or even companies may very well be experiencing the same challenges and pressures as you are. But really, I want to dwell on three things. Firstly, Chris explains at length how he works with others to help them improve. And the key word for me here is listening. Chris mentioned that first he finds out how they work, what resources they currently use, their challenges, how they approach tennis. And after all of this listening, only then does he engage in how he can help. And even then it's framed from their perspective first, so I heard the quote, I asked them how they can get the best from me. As Epictetus said 2000 years ago, we have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we speak. Secondly, following on from the Leon Lloyd conversation in episode 3 and in advance of next week's episode with Dr. Emma Vickers from TAT, it was interesting that the topic of identity and self-worth cropped up again. Chris mentioned this idea of detaching self-worth from the outcome, and Chris wants to challenge this popular notion in some circles that athletes need to be single-minded, so obsessed about achieving and having this ridiculous will to win. He says that the best athletes he's been around, as well as maybe having some of these characteristics, also have a great sense of perspective. They are so humble and also care a lot about other people. As part of this, we talked about how Tversky and Kahneman's availability bias or availability heuristic can kind of come into play here, that a cocktail of storytelling, narrative tweaking, and media exposure can give fame and exposure to stories that may very well be the exception to the rule. But because of the fame factor, parents or coaches or others may think that they are doing the right thing following in the footsteps of a Richard Williams, for example, but that was the Williams sister story. That's how they did it, and it might not be suitable for you or your child. And it can also run counter to lots of evidence we have in the sports sciences and psychologies. Parents may drive their kids to acquire tens of thousands of hours playing a single sport from a very young age when our literature suggests that for many sports, specialising later in the early teens might be more beneficial. Coaches may overobsess on winning medals and accolades, whilst our literature suggests that a more intrinsic enjoyment of the game and its processes predicts more lasting dedication and ironically may predict more of those intrinsic rewards as well. Clubs and organisations may drive their precious assets to only live and breathe their sport, whilst a growing body of case studies and literature suggests that having an identity and passions outside of sport or your main performance area can improve well-being and performance in the short term, whilst giving the performer more career choices in the long term. All of this is related to my last point of reflection because all of these factors may determine what type of relationship you have with your performance area, how it feeds into your identity, and therefore what it feels like when you achieve or when you win. Is it pure joy? Is it more of a relief? Could it even maybe be a letdown? Chris said it was a silly analogy, but his comparison to post-holiday blues actually chimes quite well with some of the literature around this. In a 2018 paper by Howes and Lucason entitled Post-Olympic Blues, they found that negative emotions and subsequent behaviours were interpreted to actually be a normal response to returning home following Olympic participation. I also found a paper from Australia entitled Life After Winning Gold Experiences of Australian Olympic Gold Medalists, where they found a number of negative emotions following the highs of the Olympics. Now, compared to tennis players, it is worth noting that the Olympic win may go hand in hand with retirement. Therefore, athletes in this situation may be experiencing multiple losses at the same time. They may be losing the experience of competing hard and being in that environment, achieving on that big stage, but also the loss of knowing that it may or will never happen again, magnified then by the challenge of working out what's next. Then there's also the famous tall poppy syndrome, a perceived tendency to discredit or disparage those who have achieved notable wealth or prominence in public life. This is something that many athletes in the public eye seem to experience and is illustrated starkly by some of Michael Jordan's experiences shown in Netflix's amazing basketball documentary, The Last Dance. Chris said outcome orientation of sport is one factor that we as practitioners, coaches, and support staff can help to address, encapsulated in his eloquent advice for athletes near the end there. Be motivated to be the best version of yourself and help others. Well, on that uplifting Chris Suttar sandbike there, that'll do for this week's slice of pie. Once more, thanks again for listening and catch you again next time.