Season 1 Episode 2 The PHIT Podcast Simon Jones – “The Coach’s Coach”.

Welcome to Season 1, Episode 2 of the PHIT podcast. This week’s special guest is Simon Jones. Simon is a former professional tennis player who now plays his trade in coach development in the football space. Simon counts among his clients, The Premier League and also Chelsea football club. 

The questions we asked Simon are in bold, and I have paraphrased and summarised Simon’s answers for the blog post, so you get the gist of his answers. You will need to listen to Podcast to get his answers in full.

It was a fascinating and exciting discussion with so many parallels between the world of sport and our technology-enabled business change, have a listen or a read, and I think you’ll agree?

• You can watch the Simon’s Podcast on our YouTube Channel
• The episode is available on most of the main Podcast platforms and you can listen on Anchor here

Tell me a little about what you do, your business, job role?

“I’m an ex-professional tennis player, who loved coaching and gravitated into focusing on high performing potential talent, coaching some of the top 100 players in the world, including winners of European and British junior titles”.

“The Governing Body (the LTA) then appointed me as National Coach with British teams subsequently winning world championships. I took on more leadership responsibility, ran National Academies, developed the highly prestigious Sports Training Village in Bath; then improved the LTA’s National Tennis Centre, Leading Performance Sport, Coach Education and then had five years on Executive team”.

After 31 years, he left and now is a private consultant. “My balls got bigger, and I moved into Football!”. I’m currently the Premier League’s coaching advisor. I help Chelsea Academy and Chelsea Women’s plus individual clients in other football clubs and NBA coaches in the USA”.

“The most important thing is the learning of the player that’s at the centre of everything. Putting the learner at the centre, understanding how best they can improve is the best advice to help coaches deliver”.

“The Coach developer is an emerging role in Sport…getting the best from the players is paramount, and hence much more focus is now on investing in making coaches better”.

Simon’s always been one for investing in his own development, and he believes passionately in learning. Reflecting on his career…” the periods when I wasn’t learning were the worst…those outside of my comfort zone were the more fulfilling ones”. [good advice for us all!]. He’s currently doing a diploma in Executive Coaching.

“Curiosity is the best feature of the best coaches I work with…you need to be a learner to be able to teach people about learning. Put yourself in the shoes of those you’re advising”.

How has the last year impacted your business?

“In sport… you’re either Training, Competing or Learning. Taking the training and competing out [because of lockdown restrictions] …therefore, you are learning. My Clients wanted to maintain that drive, didn’t want to furlough people, and I probably would not have made the wider contacts without such remote opportunity”.

“Clients needed to keep engagement (of young players) up…so the development of the google classroom, online evening sessions, creating communities on-screen, first-team players engaging with under 9’s all fuelled an explosion of activity. Fundamentally, we Digitalised our technical programme, upgraded the quality of resources introducing video – developing a library of digital resources. Currently, when planning a live away day, we realised some people haven’t even met their colleagues yet!”.

“Of course, there have been negative aspects, such as isolation, as people have struggled, and I do relate to [our] collective guilt as the world is suffering. However, I look for the positives, and it [the virtual world] has enabled us to reach those that are struggling quicker and better to provide support”.

How do “people” fit into your IT departments/business delivery model?

“Data is a huge part of everyday life in Sport. The size of one big football club is six times the size of the LTA. Driving proportionate, evidence-based decisions is a massive part”.

“The Coach of the future is always part of my advisory conversations, working out what future skills will be needed. One is to interpret and use data more in interventions. I had thought we’d worked out how to capture data, and it was about how we use it, but I’ve discovered that there are more data forms than I realised and the dive to capture is even more sophisticated”.

“For example, Coaching data…how often have you intervened with someone [group] on what they are working on, how did players respond to it”.

“We’re trying to work out how best to gather this intervention data and triangulate it, but fundamentally you take a session, log your data, compare it independently to a framework, compare to the player, find the picture, find the trends…and make a decision”.

“The more data sources, the better, Objective, Subjective and Triangulated. That [measuring coaching data] way of doing things is only going to get more sophisticated.”

Reflecting on the fact that different sports are different and at different stages [just like organisations]. “Cycling is a more scientific sport; they are highly advanced in their use of data. An open game sport [football, rugby] is perhaps harder to deal with. Baseball (perhaps like Cricket) is a little more fixed. So different sports apply data in different ways”.

Simon talked about A Glue player – i.e., someone who individually doesn’t score very high on the metrics, but the team plays well when he plays. 

[So, how much data do you need? How do you identify the glue player”?]

“Evidence, from Data, is what’s needed to persuade people. Knowing your audience is also vital. Generation Z are digital natives born in the digital world. Show them an infographic, and they are sold. When you’re working with that generation having the evidence is an excellent tool. However, a source of data is also the coach’s wisdom and experience. Even better is the triangulation of the data sources, take as many as possible, but don’t take any data at face value, be aware of your biases and opinions, ask why a lot, but generally, in sport, they haven’t got enough data as yet.

“For example, take High-definition data or Low-definition data. If a Player has played x mins, they might get injured. That’s the low definition. High definition is, what was opposition, who was he up against, what was the intensity of the game. All this is helping people make better decisions. The role of the coach [Business / IT Leader] is to get the best out of the information being provided from the multiple data sources they have access to”.

[the increase in data…is there an increasing stress factor of getting to grips with technology/data – is that increasing the mental stress, and how are people coping?] 

“It’s a changing world. It’s ongoing mental stress, but it is about balance. Ensure awareness of the issue, embrace it, note it can provide positive but recognise it can be intimidating. One of the biggest challenges is the multiple systems that exist – it’s easy to get used to one system when there are multiple ones, it’s much harder. Multiple platforms available is a source of stress. Try to align these platforms, get consistency, learn and master one thing”.

“Does system drive the processor? Does process drive the system? The process is making the system work. I try to help get the systems and processes that fit coaches working life. Start with the end in mind, [the user experience]…ultimately that’s to improve the performance of the players if your process doesn’t fit with that goal.”

What advice would you give your younger self or those starting or changing their career into the IT industry?

“When you’re younger, your more insecure, you don’t ask as much, you’re not as curious, as you get older you learn the value of curiosity and the value of vulnerability…so I wished I’d asked a lot more questions when I was younger.”

Tell me a fun fact about yourself that perhaps nobody else knows about you?

“My mother was an Olympic gymnast – I was a good sportsman, but get me on balance, and I’m completely ridiculous. I couldn’t get up 18 times when water skiing. I ripped my cruciate on the nursery ski slopes. I didn’t inherit my mother’s balance!”.

Key Takeaways

We think are the following are key takeaways from Simon’s interview

• Investing in your coaches and advisors
• The most important thing is the learning of the player, the unit, the team.
• The periods when I wasn’t learning were the worst…those outside of my comfort zone were the more fulfilling ones
• You need to be a learner to teach people about learning
• Curiosity is the best feature of the best coaches
• Driving evidence-based decisions is massive
• The more data sources the better, Objective, Subjective and Triangulated
• Blend Low Definition and High Definition Data with the Coaches wisdom and experience

You can watch the Simon’s Podcast on our YouTube Channel

The episode is available on most of the main Podcast platforms and you can listen on Anchor here

Other Episodes

Check out other episodes on our Putting the Human into Technology – Season One Page.

You can connect with and contact Simon on Linkedin