The Game Changers
In this award-winning podcast Sue Anstiss talks to trailblazers in women sport. These are the individuals who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. Along with openly sharing their historic careers, what drives them and how they’ve dealt with tough challenges, each episode explores key issues for equality in sport and beyond.
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The Game Changers
Pippa Grange: Understanding the role of fear and how to combat it
This episode of the Game Changers was previously released on June 15, 2021.
Dr Pippa Grange is a highly sought-after, influential sports psychologist and a culture coach working across elite sports and business internationally.
In this episode, Pippa talks about family turmoil growing up, her formative years travelling and working in Australia, her first reaction to the job offer with England Football and the media spotlight she faced in the aftermath of the 2017 World Cup.
Within football, Pippa has worked to change the culture of a sport historically steeped in bravado and hyper-masculinity. She has recently written an incredible book, "Fear Less: How to Win at Life without Losing Yourself" to address fear, understanding the role it plays in your life and how to combat it.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello and welcome to the Game Changers, the podcast where you'll hear from extraordinary, trailblazing women in sport. I'm your host, sue Anstiss, and I'd like to start by thanking Barclays for their ongoing support of the Game Changers. There are a few brands across the world who are doing more for women's sport. Right now. Barclay is a title sponsor of the Women's Super League and they also back the FA in the fantastic work it does to ensure that every school girl across the country will have the chance to play football by 2024.
Sue Anstiss:I'm really excited to introduce my guest today, Dr Pippa Grange. Pippa is an influential sports psychologist and a culture coach working across elite sports and business internationally. She believes relationships are at the heart of everything and the antidote to fear. As head of people and team Development at the Football Association, Pippa worked closely with the England team for the World Cup in 2018. And, although she's very humble in accepting any praise, her presence was clearly transformational in changing the culture of the team and helping the players to build their confidence. Pippa is now part of a senior leadership team for the global Right to Dream group, working on cultural strategy. Pippa's worked across the world in a range of sports, from swimming and rugby through to Australian rules, football and soccer. She's also the author of an extraordinary book that I loved Fear Less how to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself. I had heard that Pippa had faced some real challenges growing up, so I asked her to tell me about life at home.
Pippa Grange:Well, I grew up in Yorkshire in a place called Harrogate in North Yorkshire and my early childhood was awesome, amazing. You know I had a really close loving relationship with my mum and my nan especially. Mum was a single mum. When she had me she was 19. You know, I remember that very fondly. She got married when I was five, subsequently had three brothers and sisters. That sort of early years up to being 12 or so were really nice, like a regular English childhood. I look back fondly. But things disintegrated. My stepfather was an alcoholic and their marriage disintegrated and it was really a struggle. She was a single mom with four kids, no resources, working all the time.
Pippa Grange:I was a kind of a pseudo parent from the age of 12 for my siblings. Where I look back now, I had really a whole heap of responsibility that a teenager wouldn't normally have and she got into a subsequent relationship later probably she would reflect, I think, when she was, you know, already overwhelmed and at the end of a tether and she got into a relationship which was violent and that unraveled everything for us. So, you know, through that sort of period in the lead up to me being 16, she was, you know, in this violent relationship and he lived in the home with us and sort of any person who's grown up with violence in the home and where there's been alcoholism and you know the layers of trauma that that lays down for a young person and in fact for the mum, the parent. You know it's very complex stuff. But what you feel as a teenager is angry and abandoned and confused. And you know, I think what happened for me at that point was I just became fierce and bold, but in a way that was about rejecting the status quo and being sort of determined to forge my own path and I was sort of generally annoyed with life, you know, and it served as a reasonable motivator for survival at that point of time. But you know I've learned subsequently that that's not the best place to place that sort of energy. It was a mess and I left home at 16, couch surfed for a bit, was sort of officially homeless for a little bit, and I thought, well, this isn't going to work out. Officially homeless for a little bit and I thought, well, this isn't going to work out. So I always had some kind of push in me, some sort of really resistance to getting stuck, I think, which maybe that came from the kind of childhood I'd had Found a bedsit eventually and I had five jobs, one full-time and four part-time jobs. That kind of went from 6am till midnight. Just, I think, with a determination that this wasn't going to be the way it was.
Pippa Grange:Even though I had no idea of direction, something in me always was pulled back to the education. I'm a real natural learner, I am curious as a human being and I was pulled back to education and I went to college in York, no idea what I wanted to do, but I'd gone and done a BTEC in leisure or something which was probably about the easiest option for me in front of me at that point in time and I didn't have a sense of myself for whether I was really capable or intelligent at much. I just felt this sort of fire of emotion in me and determination to move. But in that course I met a brilliant teacher who was a really interesting woman and she convinced me over the course of a couple of years that I was smart and that I could definitely go to university and that was a radical idea for me. It's like what you know, as if nobody in my family had ever been to university and it just wasn't anything I'd thought about, but I got excited by it.
Pippa Grange:She helped me apply to various universities and Loughborough accepted me and it was, like you know, the world had opened up. I thought that I thought that arrived at that point. Then I started that journey at Loughborough University where you know you're living living in residences and I was completely immersed in different kinds of people than I'd ever met, with different views about how life might work out. I really found some anchors. I found basketball, which I played there. I found study, which I really enjoyed, and I found a bunch of mates that you know were and still are anchors for me through that journey and I guess I started to grow up about that time, but you know, long journey from there to fully growing up, I think.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? And I guess, to get to university from, uh, as you say, that kind of BTEC approach and into and somewhere like Loughborough I'm obviously a graduate myself, so a massive fan of I should ask you, what hall were you in? Actually, what hall were you in, um, evelyn Richards? Oh yeah, I was a Faraday girl, but that's amazing that, I guess, that transition then and into sports. So how did you end up then from, actually, what did you study at Loughborough?
Pippa Grange:and then how did you end up, I guess, moving on into getting out to Australia, what was that, that process, um, I studied, uh, sports science, which I had no idea what it was when I went um, but it sounded really interesting sports science and social science, with an emphasis on the psychology. So I did a joint honours um and you know I think back to that now, given that I had no idea really that the step into that was pretty over-optimistic for me, unfortunately. You know I was well suited to it. But you know I really like that blend of the sport science and the social science because I've always been interested in what sport does for us and who we are while we're in it. So it really worked nicely, and that was my first taste of sports psychology too. So I did that.
Pippa Grange:I graduated and did the obligatory year travel and I was going with a girlfriend who I played basketball with and she couldn't go because her father was retrenched and so she had to pull out. And so I had this choice am I going on my own or am I not going? And so I went on my own. But that was really formative to travel on your own and be terrified half the time and really find a different view of the world in other places as well. So when I came back I ended up working in a basketball netball volleyball centre that was a commercial venture up in Reddishness, stockport.
Pippa Grange:Oh, wow, yeah, that a basketball friend had put me in touch with the opportunity there and you know I was the person who was charged with filling the centre with people charged with filling the centre with people. So it's kind of like a, you know, a sport development role programme role, first gig after travelling, and it was fun and it was an Australian company. And after about a year there was an opportunity to go and do the same thing in Adelaide in Australia, with a new centre that was opening and I was like, yes, please. So that's how I ended up in Australia with a new centre that was opening and I was like, yes, please. So that's how I ended up in Australia. And then, you know, one year led to another and another and then I built a life there and, you know, picked up some more study and and sort of found my way into sports psychology and the doctoral studies, eventually in Melbourne. So so, yeah, that was my entry point to Australia.
Sue Anstiss:Excellent, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that first role of working with football players in Aussie rules, I guess Australian men from the outset, especially Aussie rules players not well known for talking about feelings and perhaps showing vulnerable sides. So how do you even begin to change the culture of a sport that's perhaps founded almost on that hyper slightly unhealthy but hyper masculinity? So what was your process in working in that environment?
Pippa Grange:Yeah, I mean there was sort of a couple of threads to it. The first job I had in football was with the AFL Players Association, so it was kind of the organisation that was known as the support structure for players and for their off-field life, for the conditions of their employment but also for their off-field life. So you know we tackled things like depression, drug policy and what people understood about addiction. We tackled things like well-being in the sport and transitions and and that kind of thing. So it was a great position to stand in front of a group of Aussie Rules players and talk because it was something that was about their future, their well-being, what was advantageous for them. So I think it was easy because I was players association, yeah.
Pippa Grange:But you know you would walk into a room of 40 something guys with arms folded looking at you like what is she talking about? Many times. But I think I had conviction about what I was talking about. And the other thing I know for sure working with many, many young male athletes over time is that the way they are in the room talking one-on-one is very different to the way they are in the group and the locker room, as they say. So I always found that when they got through the door and you had a very human, trusting conversation with them, that they didn't bring bravado and machismo and all the rest that they wanted to talk about stuff. They might not show that publicly. That took much longer to break down some of those, um, hyper masculine stereotypes.
Pippa Grange:But you know the truth of the matter is especially around mental health that people are hurting. So we use the angle often of what would you want this to be for your mate who's sitting next to you? If you don't feel comfortable talking about it yourself, can you talk about it for him? Yeah, yeah. And so, because there's a very strong sort of sense of mateship and you know teamship among Australian teams I think probably true of all teams. So you know that was the angle in, and actually I, you know, with the exception of a few rules, I always felt quite well respected and regarded in those environments with the players. I've had my experiences with the institutions and you know the organizations that have been more ostracizing or lonelier as a woman, lonelier as a woman, but generally the machismo among the players. You know they're young people with really solid intentions most of the time and not necessarily the tools to communicate. So once you get under that and you stay confident, I think it gives them an opportunity to be who they actually are.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? I know when we say the name, dr Pippa Grange, many people think of you as the person that came in and transformed the attitude of the England football team and helped them to eventually win that penalty shootouts. But you didn't bite their hands off at the offer of a role or the first approach. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why that was really?
Pippa Grange:a little bit about that and why that was really Well. I was in LA at the time, you know, as I built my own business, I worked with sports clients and business clients and one of my business clients had asked me to come work internally in their organization for a couple of years which ended up being three years to help them build people and culture work you know, bring the psychology to the people and culture work, which was fun. And I ended up in LA doing that. So I was kind of in that and I was starting to get a bit itchy about well, what's next? You know, and missing that. You know it's deeply intensive in sort of corporate life and businesses different spot and I was thinking I do miss it a bit. But at the same time I felt quite relieved to be out of it for a minute because it's sports intense too.
Pippa Grange:And I had a call from Dave Sleman at Elite Performance Partners saying you know we have a client who's interested in a psychologist. We didn't say the client, but work with a very high name, a big name brand, you know, to change culture and to work on the psychology. And and I said to him at the time, I'm not really interested in a hands-on psych job, you know, pitch side, pool side, anymore. I felt like I'd done that kind of thing and it's it's a particular lifestyle, you know, to be on camps or at games all the time and I kind of felt like I wasn't. That's not where I was, but I kept talking to him and you know, as we got further and further and he sort of, you know, we're at a position where he could tell me who the client was and he told me the FA in England and my immediate impression was like, oh God, no, that sounds awful because it had such a terrible external reputation. There'd been some really great work done by people like Dan Ashworth and Dave Reddin and a number of others around the place Matt Crocker that had done good work on restructuring and revisioning what it could look like and they had a really strong understanding about the missing piece in culture and people.
Pippa Grange:So you know, I kind of got swayed into it and then I came to the assessment centre, which was felt like it was about four weeks long, two days long and very intense. But I just had fun with it and I met Gareth, the coach, and you know, when I started the role, the idea was that I would run the department, not be personally within a team, the department not be personally within a team. But it was no end of November 2017 by the time I started, because I was relocating and we just didn't have time to bring somebody else in before prep camp for world cup. So, so I wasn't ever supposed to be that psych. I was supposed to be running the department with that psych working with me. So I stepped stepped into the breach, so to speak, and I think because Gareth's open-minded me. So I stepped stepped into the breach, so to speak, and I think because Gareth's open-minded, because so much good work had already been done. Owen Eastwood had been in there doing some fantastic work on identity and Lane Four had been in there doing some sort of foundational work, you know. So it was ripe, really, to make some decent shifts and go much deeper on on sort of. You know what are the conditions for winning? Not how do you take a penalty kick Actually, that's the smallest slice of the work but what are the conditions required for eight weeks on the road to be winning, you know, and to keep everybody in a state where they could win. You know, that was the work and I look back at that now and the external world imagines this kind of guru out the front doing some kind of mind trickery to help somebody take penalties. It's the tiniest piece, but I did a lot of work with the coach and the staff group and I did a lot of work to keep the conditions possible for the way it transpired and to bring different energies into camp. So you know, I felt really weird at the end of that because the media had made a hero out of me, which is a difficult thing to experience within an elite sport anyway, because tall poppies don't go well and I was new and I felt really awkward about that and I think it did create some tension.
Sue Anstiss:I never said a word through the whole thing um, I tried to get you on the podcast, I think, and that it was like there's a definite no from the FA yeah, there was a definite no from the FA, but there was a no from me too.
Pippa Grange:I still felt very new in the environment, very rookie, and I felt like I'd had a window and it had gone really well, but I knew I hadn't created all of that.
Pippa Grange:But the story that the media wants is a hero, yeah, so I became it and it was.
Pippa Grange:It was a bit weird actually and and I felt very reluctant, but I also felt really rewarded that we'd been able to have some conversations that had never been had and tackle some subjects about who we were and what that badge meant, that hadn't been had for a long time or that had been contemporized, and they really needed to be contemporized for the young people who are in that team now.
Pippa Grange:So the work was enjoyable with team and then, you know, after the world cup, I was still with the team because we still hadn't found that right person to come in and running the department across 16 teams, across men's and women's, and I had a you know, at one point there was, I think there was 11 psychs or culture coaches working with us, which was really awesome for a period of time of departments that sort of brought it more into data evidence, traditional sort of pitch psych and you know, well-being and less away from that thing that I feel like over 25 years I've been developing as niche around you know, redefining and success and winning and attitudes about winning and mental freedom. So I kind of felt, okay, I don't want to go further up this ladder, this is. I respect what they're doing and I've really I really felt fortunate to have that opportunity, but my ladders may be up a different wall, yeah, so.
Sue Anstiss:So yeah, I took my leave at that point and jumped over to write, to dream and when you look back now, do you feel that that culture you help create has been retained? It's obviously harder to see that externally. Do you feel that that culture you helped create has been retained? It's obviously harder to see that externally, but do you feel the teams and people department doesn't exist anymore and things have changed? Change, but what do you feel?
Pippa Grange:um, you're right, it's too hard to to sort of comment on it from outside. I'm I'm still, you know, regularly in touch with the people who are in there. There's some brilliant people working in that at st george's park, and I have the greatest respect for them. But I think that the focus has changed a bit away from that work. But I hope that some of it's retained and you know, things have their own momentum. So it's taken its own personality and evolved its own way in good ways. And some of the same people are there, so a lot of the same people are there. So I'm sure there's rich stuff that emerged while I was there with those people that still retain. So it's not something I did. That was a blueprint. That's the way Things have their own legs and they grow their own way. But you know, it's part of being a catalyst or a spark for a way of seeing things, maybe Excellent.
Sue Anstiss:You've written this incredible book, fearless how to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself, and I genuinely feel it might have changed my life 55. I bought so many copies for friends and for my daughters and family and things as well. So, uh, you open with a really strong statement. What have I told you? Your life was run by fear. So can you talk to us, I guess, without giving that away, the whole book, but a little bit around about that premise yeah, well, firstly, thank you.
Pippa Grange:I'm really pleased it's it's meant something to you and that was the whole point of writing it. I think that we underestimate the role that fear plays in our lives, in our psychology. You know, there are I sort of distinguish types of fear. I talk about in the moment fear, um, which you know we're all familiar with, that shows up and gives us a adrenaline prickle down the knees and, you know, in the back of the neck kind of thing that we all experience one way or another on an occasional or regular basis. That's one thing. But I think that there is another kind of fear that has become so culturally enmeshed in our psychology and that's the fear of not being good enough, and I think that's pervasive in all of our lives on a very regular basis. So we have this fear is very natural, we don't want to be without it. What we need to do is make sure that the amount, the dose, you know, is right, it's not a poisonous dose to our psychology. So hence, fearless, not fearless. So you know, I think it does run all over lives. It's there and prevalent and needed, but it's culturally high volume in lots of our institutions, our environments, our relationships, our sense of ourself.
Pippa Grange:I describe it in the book as being a bit sneaky. You know it doesn't always show up and be really immediately visible as fear. It might show up as envy or jealousy, might show up as perfectionism and the need to control. It might show up as a preference to stay small and separate and not be revealed. You know so there's lots of different sort of twists and turns it takes and I think when we look at how we experience ourselves in life and you see it from that angle, fear is really prevalent and my objective isn't to help people get rid of it or just soothe it and quieten it and turn away. It's to actually really understand how it's showing up in your life and what it's costing you, what each fear journey is costing you, and then what you might do to think about replacing it with something that's stronger or more hopeful for you.
Sue Anstiss:And that process. Was there a moment in time when you realised the impact that fear can have on lives, or is that something that you've accrued over your time of working with teams and sports and so on?
Pippa Grange:yeah, kind of a bit like the, the sort of you know the thing I was saying before about the there is no silver bullet, template or understanding or moment. There are things that show up for you, that really illuminate what you kind of know in your gut. But for me it was accumulation of examples over many years and when I was in Australia maybe about 10 years ago a bit longer now I started to notice that the people I was working with, whether they were sort of boardroom or change room, they had the same patterning of fear of not being good enough. Even those people who were you or I would look in and go. That's a massively successful winner, but the experience of their success still was coloured by that fear of not being good enough. And you know, I started to realise that it was actually stealing everybody's joy in sport or in winning. So it's a it's a pattern that accrued over a long time for me and I thought that's maybe the thing to work on.
Sue Anstiss:I'm fascinated by so many of your methods and you kind of give some fantastic examples throughout the book, and one I was really intrigued with is that triple h exercise. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Pippa Grange:Yeah, it was first devised in Atlanta Falcons NFL. I think it was Mike Smith and John Gordon who'd sort of devised this or tried this out. And the idea of it is how do you play for your team if you don't know your team? Right. And it's the idea of intimacy which, you know, we've kind of made intimacy far too narrow in our understanding it's just something that happens between you know partners or lovers or deep friends, right. But intimacy is basically it just means showing up as you, authentically as you, without the mask on, and being vulnerable enough to do that. And it's a big deal. And I personally feel and they felt, that if you can bring intimacy into a team and people can actually know each other at some level, you are going to really have so much more opportunity to have the kind of bond that works on the pitch.
Pippa Grange:So Triple H is standing up in front of the group and telling a story of a hero, a highlight and a hardship from your own life. And in Richmond Tigers that I talk about in the book, you know it can be, they tell all sorts. It leaves the imagination to the individual. You say you know, if you told me you're three, they're going to be very different to the next person. So it's very personal, you know. And so it's very personal, you know.
Pippa Grange:I've seen people who are the bravest, toughest individuals out in the field and who would be bold enough to say what they thought about anything you know in a social setting. But talking about themselves and those three H's was took them into such a vulnerable zone and they'd sort of, you know, rather poke their eye out than stand in front of other people and talk. But even though they were terrified, I didn't do it, shane McCurry did it, who came after me as a dear friend. He came after me at Richmond Tigers.
Pippa Grange:But you know, the train of that thinking around intimacy and bringing that into the team sort of had a long tail and when they stood up and told those stories they were horrified and terrified for weeks beforehand. But absolutely every time, you know, 40 other people in the room would go and give them a hug and just say we love you afterwards and feel respect and endearment and notice the person's courage in being vulnerable, which for me is just such a massive, underrated bridge to performance. So it really shifts things, I think, when you can bring that kind of intimacy into a team. Most times we don't. We're way too performative. We manage the impression we make very tightly.
Sue Anstiss:And is that something that you then take into the business environment?
Pippa Grange:100%, Okay, interesting yeah yeah, definitely the ability to have real conversations, rather than carefully craft your words to get a result, which means you're always in performance. It's always theatre, you know, and you never actually get to that stuff. That is the real performance. Unlock whether that's bond, team alignment, unlocking somebody's creativity or willingness to take the risks to solve a problem in a different way. You know that it needs intimacy, intimacy and some kind of safety. You know Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety is brilliant around that, but you know, I think she doesn't use the word, but I think when she's explaining it, she's also talking about the ability to freely express who you are. And for me, when you do that with another person, you and I are doing it right now. Right? That's intimacy.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, it's so powerful, isn't it? And does that come? I guess you need to get the players on board to share that, but clearly on a hierarchical basis. It's about getting the buy-in from that. It's the structure of a senior management and team, and where does where does the blockage occur for you when you go into an environment to create that everywhere?
Pippa Grange:everybody's always terrified of it.
Pippa Grange:You know, they might think it's a great idea, but you know, um, in organized if I give an example of an organization that I've worked with doing something similar, you know, um, I always ask the boss to go first.
Pippa Grange:You know, um.
Pippa Grange:So you know that person showing up without their power armor on, even if they're much loved and well liked and don't think that they use power in a negative way, the idea of being the boss and the performance that goes with being the boss, is really hard for them to take the armor off and say you know, I want to tell you about my grandma or I want to tell you about when I really had a hard time, but it unlocks something huge.
Pippa Grange:But I start at the top and ask the boss first, and so then that gives a natural permission and an encouragement, you know, but it really needs some strong facilitation to do it well. And then the emotional energy that comes through it. Even if you're in the kind of hyper-masculine environment that you talked about before, where there's a lot of closed body posture and eyes down kind of thing, I absolutely know that they're going to put their arm around somebody in the corridor afterwards or say that was brave mate, I wouldn't have done that, or whatever it is. You know that it starts a momentum of energy towards something much more useful.
Sue Anstiss:Absolutely fascinating, isn't it? You've been in sport for so much of your working life and it's uh, that discipline that is so focused on outcome, so results and the scoreboard, and and it's easy to see how athletes put so much of their worth into the results that they create. So how do you begin to to break down that for them and create that, that change in in what sport's about for them?
Pippa Grange:I think that it's an exploration. It's not that I bring a new way of looking at it. What I try and do is create the conditions for them to look at what feels right. You know, because, again, it's not my template, it's not my idea, it's just it's what I've tried to do with the book too. It's like how can I provoke your thought about what actually feels right for you or better, stronger for you, and what is the cost of your journey if you're doing it differently, in a way that you don't want to? So so I think you know I try and create conditions to discuss or to explore or to play Play is massively underrated or to connect, you know, and sometimes it's really subtle.
Pippa Grange:It's not just like, okay, there's going to be a big scary meeting, everybody in a circle, and we're going to have to reveal ourselves and talk about our mothers. You know, it's like it's too terrifying. So you can do it much more subtly than that. The Triple H is a really great example, but, as I said, there'd been a big run up to that. It wasn't like day one, everybody in, yeah, yeah, it's like I'd be horrified doing that. So I think you have to just continually think about what conditions and environments and culture am I creating? Are we creating on daily? That is, um helping people be freer mentally, psychologically, because that's the stuff and is there a different approach for different sports?
Sue Anstiss:so you've worked across, uh, you know Aussie rules and rugby league and swimming and so on, and also different genders. Is that? Do you find it different working with female teams to male teams?
Pippa Grange:I think if you ask about individuals, female athletes versus male athletes, I see quite a lot of difference in emotional tone perhaps, or men sometimes feeling that they have to be more performative and kind of reluctant when it comes to sharing emotions. But in teams female teams too often in my view share the norms of that sort of performative keep it all in you know, talk about it when we're out of sight, don't say what you really feel and mean, because you don't want to be seen as weak or less or less committed or whatever else. So I still find that there's still quite a single archetype of how to be in a team, and that's something I'd really love to see change over the coming years that there can be more individuality and emotional freedom for people in teams. It doesn't have to look a certain way.
Sue Anstiss:I think we're a bit stuck in a template of how it looks and you talked about a huge amount of the work that you've done in the past, but you exposed bullying culture at Australian swimming back in 2012, and that's certainly something we've been hearing more about recently. In sports like gymnastics and athletics and then some para sports. In the GB team too, we talk about that kind of myth that fear is the best motivator, which is certainly something that we see in sport. So how do you feel coaches can get the most from their athletes without that need to intimidate them or the belief that they need to intimidate?
Pippa Grange:them? Yeah, great question. It is a myth, isn't it? It's a sticky one. I mean, if you think about the premise of the book fear is always with us. We don't need to add more. You will bring your own if you are the performer right. It's actually more about channeling it in a useful way.
Pippa Grange:I think what happens is that the coach feels fear and transmits it, passes it on, because that sort of need to feel like all the edges are tucked in and everything's going to be controlled and and you know they need to push that person towards their goal, is just a, an underestimation or a. I've used the term lazy before and that's probably not quite right. It's a under explored way of doing it. So fear will lift your game for the next 15 minutes, let's say because of effort. But actually there's so much cost psychological and physiological cost of elevated fear. It just doesn't work as the motivator. Everything from narrowed vision, from changed physiology, from a dump of cortisol which is going to have an effect half an hour after that to. You know the anxiety and the and the track running in the back of your mind about don't mess up which, this bucket of attention that you have to apply to the task in front of you, whether it's a penalty kick or you know the next phase of a game or whatever else, the bucket of attention you have to apply is narrowed because half of it's spent on don't stuff up and also the experience is awful.
Pippa Grange:So what somebody is trying to do when they do that is make sure that the person's focused, make sure that a person is bringing right effort, that they are applying their talent to the task. There are different ways of doing that that are about discipline, which is very relevant, and focus and attention and confidence. Fear does not lift confidence, it takes it in the opposite direction. So I think, yes, we've got many examples of somebody getting a, as they say in Australia, a halftime spray from the coach and it resulting in something, but most of the time that's out of effort and then momentum. The momentum of the game might shift or change and it's you know we see that as the way, but there's a lot of luck in that. I think the more precise or skilled way of doing that is driving attention, discipline and confidence. So I just find it very limited as a ledger of cost-benefit. It usually doesn't stack up and it feels rubbish.
Sue Anstiss:I guess there's so much fascinating in the book, but I did find that the physiological effect of fear and the decision-making and all those elements was quite extraordinary to read and understand about that. So do you think sports and coaches are beginning to understand that? Are things changing in attitudes? Books like yours obviously will help that and spread the word, but do you feel we're in a more positive place in terms of the way we coach athletes?
Pippa Grange:Yeah, I think there's some amazing progress happening in that and, like any other sort of big psychological shift, it takes a bit of time, it takes a bit of courage to keep experimenting. But I see some very cool things that inspire me or lift me, especially where women are coaching, that are different, and that willingness to step in and say I don't really work like that, so why would other human beings work like that? That's why in the book I talk about, see face replace, so like you have to really stop a bit longer and see what's going on for you and see where fear is kicking around in the corners and actually, yeah, I am a bit, you know that is anxiety speaking in me. That is a fear of not being good enough. And then what's it costing? And then, you know, bringing that into the room. So it's a male example.
Pippa Grange:But Steve Kerr as Golden State Warriors, I really love his coaching methodology and philosophy because, you know, their values include joy and compassion too. You know, I think that he really coaches the human being, not just the tactics or the game. And if we really think about how human beings operate, then this stuff is. It's a journey Like how do we grow, how do we open up, how do we step into a bit more vulnerability for performance? It's not an either or proposition. I think people think if I'm vulnerable, I'm going to do all the soft stuff, I'm going to lose. Focus on the win. You know, my sort of central message is no, it's about method. The win is there for the taking. It will still involve blood, sweat and tears. It will still involve all the grit and all the work. It will still involve all the grit and all the work, but the tone is what we need to change and fear is in the tone.
Sue Anstiss:Excellent, excellent. So much of your work has been undoing years of athletes focused on results and judging their sense of worth by their achievements in a pitch or in a pool. But with right to dream, it seems you're helping athletes to shape their sport in a very different way right from the start, from the outset.
Pippa Grange:So I'd love you to tell me a bit more about right to dream and your your work with the organization too yeah, I mean, I think the sort of central part of the model for right to dream is that there is a the triangle of learning or development is football development, educational or academic development, and character, which, as a young person, matures into sort of a pro player that becomes purpose, character and purpose. How do you want the things that you know about yourself, your own identity, to drive how you act in the world and especially how you act in the world for others? You know life outside your own window. So the model from 10 years old, when a kid joins one of our academies, especially our residential academies, which at the moment is in Ghana and will soon be in Egypt, is that that triangle is the basis of the learning.
Pippa Grange:I don't want to over-romanticise it because they're also young people who are aspiring to pro football and they will move into or very sort of high-end education in the US or the UK.
Pippa Grange:So they enter what we inverted commas call elite environments where there is masses of this kind of structure and orientation to outcome. So we have to prepare them for that as well. But you know, so those aspects of resilience and discipline and self-belief and self-focus, all those things really matter. But we hope that we also give them a rounded sense of who they are as a human being. And you know they live in a multiverse, as we say, not just a single universe of. I am only a success if I play pro football for 10 years. You know, how else do you bring richness and success into your life, for you and for others? How are you part of the world outside of performance? So that's kind of a big piece of it and we're expanding at the moment and trying to take that sort of redefined idea of excellence to other places for people to experiment and explore with as well.
Sue Anstiss:What's your?
Pippa Grange:role with Right to Dream. I'm Chief Culture Officer, so in another organisation, that's just. You know it's on the executive. Excellent, excellent.
Sue Anstiss:As we've alluded to, many perceptions of leadership are associated with more traditionally male attributes, such as authority and dominance, and yet we're seeing amazing women like Jacinda Ardern in a very different way, leading with compassion and respect and that authentic area that we talked about earlier. So what advice would you give to women who are taking on leadership roles now around the attributes that they adopt?
Pippa Grange:I mean, Jacinda Ardern is a great example because for me it's about what is her, and she has got swathes of authority. If you think about what she got done in her first term with the first terrorist attack on new zealand, soil and covid and you know, achieved massive things with influence and authority. She didn't just show up with compassion, right, she had those other things. Dominance, I think, is the one that we can kick to the curb that. You know. Ideas of dominance and comparison are the draining, exhausting, not very useful things that are part of leadership, that we have to conquer and dominate the other. Yeah, but I think that Jacinda Ardern, or you know, we might look at closer to home, and Emma Hayes as a coach as well. I mean, she's got authority, she's got credibility. I would do what she told me and it's not just because she shows up with charisma and compassion, it's an and it's what you add from that original, classic, kind of outdated archetype how do you bring those other things? But I think that orientation for any leader is if you start by thinking about what am I trying to achieve and who am I trying to achieve it with and for, and go back to the human, the human perspective and think what moves the human, and most of the time it is not going to be those hardcore things about dominance and comparison. They're short-lived, like fear, like like the idea of a fearful halftime talk.
Pippa Grange:It's leadership attributes that are deep resilience, persistence, compassion, open-mindedness, like can I hear my leader learning? Can I hear my leader listening? Can I see flex in them. When we think about, sometimes I think when we talk about resilience as a leadership factor, we're still thinking about toughness. Can they bounce back? It's just one aspect. When I think resilience, I'm thinking the difference between toughness, which is like a concrete block, immovable, no flex, and a flexible sheet of steel, which is resilience, like can it bend and come back, can it take a different shape if the environment or the context needs it, you know, or is it rigid, hard, tough, immovable, no give in it. I think they're the things for contemporary leadership that are just really high value. It's fascinating.
Sue Anstiss:And I guess, just finally. Clearly, you've had amazing success career-wise, and the book's had huge success too. But what's next in terms of your personal ambitions for the future?
Pippa Grange:I would like to. I've spent sort of 25 years in sport and you know, the reality is that the majority of my emphasis has been working in male teams, and I would like to have a broader conversation. I would like to see how we can curate and create a different archetype for women working in sport, but also for men, who might embrace more of the feminine and, you know, get rid of some of the old sort of stuck tough archetype that we've just been talking about. So that's important to me and I'd really like us to broaden out and be a bit more imaginative about this idea of winning and success and what that looks like. So you know, there's parts of that that I hope to be able to do through the role with Right to Dream, but there's also parts of it that are being able to contribute a little bit to a broader conversation about who we are and how we live.
Sue Anstiss:Wow, what an incredible woman. It's clear to see why Pip has had such an enormous impact across her life. I loved hearing about Pip's link to Loughborough University. Other trailblazing guests on this podcast who studied or lectured there include football legend Jill Scott, british Paralympic champion Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, head of women's football at the FA, dame Sue Campbell and the CEO of the Youth Sport Trust, ali Oliver.
Sue Anstiss:If you'd like to know more about the other work I do, including the Women's Sport Collective, a network for all women working in sport, please visit fearlesswomencouk.
Sue Anstiss:This is also where you can find out more about all my incredible guests from this and the previous series, and you can also listen to the podcast from the website too. You can also sign up to Changing the Game, our free weekly newsletter that highlights all the latest developments in the world of women's sport. Thanks again to Barclays for their kind support of the Game Changers, to Sam Walker, our executive producer, rory Ouskery on sound production and Kate Hannan behind the scenes making sure everything runs smoothly. Next week, in the final episode of this series, I'm so excited to talk to Laura Woods, recently voted the SJA Sports Presenter of the Year. Laura is a regular on Sky Sports and the host of Talk Sports' flagship Sports Breakfast, one of the most listened to shows in the UK, laura talks very openly about her journey from being a runner at Sky Sports in 2009, working her way up through the broadcasting ladder in production before moving in front of the camera.
Sue Anstiss:Laura's outgoing nature and her unflappable personality make her one of the most in-demand sports presenters right now it's like walking down a road with a load of potholes and sometimes you can skip over them and sometimes they completely suck you up. I find the kind of get back in the kitchen comments, I find those they're. They annoy me a little bit, but then sometimes I'm kind of like well, that's such an old joke and if you haven't come up with anything new for the last however many years, I feel sorry for you. If your opinion of a woman is genuinely that she needs to stay in the kitchen, you haven't evolved either. Like what are you doing? The Game Changers?
Sue Anstiss:Fearless women in sport.
