SUSTAINABLE HIGH PERFORMANCE

SPORT AND PERFORMANCE PSYCHOLOGY

Be Your Best When It Counts

Are you an athlete or performer interested in being at your best when the pressure is on?

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Are you a coach wanting to learn more about how to bring out the best in your athletes?

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The best teams perform beyond the "sum of their parts."  Is yours in need of a boost?

Sport and performance psychology involves educating coaches, athletes, parents, exercisers, dancers, and performers of all stripes about the psychological aspects of their sport or activity, and to provide bespoke strategies for performance improvement and enjoyment.

As an experienced and high level sport psychologist with over 20 years' experience, I work to facilitate optimal performance as well as wholehearted involvement and enjoyment in sport and performance domains.

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Here are some ways in which I can help:

• Enhancing energy management in training and competition

• Overcoming debilitating performance anxiety

• Competition preparation

• Setting effective goals that change behaviour

• Visualisation skill development

• Enhancing positive and productive self talk

• Harnessing the power of thought and emotion

• Increasing resilience in the face of set-backs or failure

• Improving focus and attention during competition and training

• Understanding "the zone"and how to get there

• Overcoming fear of failure or success 

• Injury and rehabilitation management

• Understanding and harnessing fear

• Improving communication with team-mates and coaches

• Enhancing team cohesion

• Increasing and retaining motivation

• Preventing burnout and over-training

• Dealing effectively with de-selection and retirement from sport

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PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING

Guidance.  Support.  Healing.

Do you want to live a happier, healthier and more productive life?  Are you interested in a life that is more aligned with your core values?  Are you wanting to adopt better lifestyle habits?

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Are you struggling with life circumstances or with a mental health issue?

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As a psychologist, I use evidence-based techniques to help my clients explore what's important and help them to construct and live the life they want.   I do this by providing a supportive, objective, and non-judgemental environment that allows clients to talk openly and honestly.  I see myself less as a leader, and more as a helpful partner on the journey.  My role is to listen wholeheartedly, help to clarify thinking, and ask the questions that open up new ways of thinking and feeling.

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I have extensive experience working with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

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My therapeutic modalities include Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as well as mindfulness-based therapies.  

HELPING FEMALE PERFORMERS THRIVE

Building Strength and Skills to Empower and Succeed

News Flash: women's brains are wired differently from men's brains.   Women are hard-wired to think more interpersonally, experience emotions differently, to seek consultation and collaboration, and exhibit different leadership qualities than men often do.   We are biologically impacted by developmental events such as child-birth and menopause which can literally change how we think and feel.  In the past, these differences and changes were at times regarded as weaknesses, and women were coached to be more like men.  Research into gender differences, the world of work, and my experience working with female performers has informed my approach.  Rather than necessarily defaulting to a "male model," it is important to first understand and validate female clients on their own terms and work with their unique strengths while also learning state-of-art skills for navigating complex or biased work environments.  

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Here are some areas in which I can help

(mind you, men can benefit from this help and guidance, too!):

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• Building and demonstrating self belief

• Enhancing resilience through self-compassion

• Increasing your organisational visibility

• Communicating with confidence

• Leveraging emotional intelligence

• Building a network for support, mentoring, and sponsorship

• Negotiating for what you want

• Thriving in the midst of conflict and strong emotion

• Setting effective career goals and how to go after them

• Becoming a more authentic performer, manager, or leader

TEAM BUILDING AND EVENT FACILITATION

Better than the Sum of Our Parts

TEAM BUILDING

Is your team working together or are you a collection of individuals each doing their own thing?

Does your team know what its purpose is and where it's supposed to be going?

Does everyone on your team have a clear role to play and are they happy to play it?

Does your team thrive or fold under pressure?

Are you happy with your team's culture and ways of operating? 

If you are unsure or not happy with your answers to any of these questions, I can help.  I have worked with high performance sport teams in the elite sport and know what it takes for a group to become a team.  I work with coaches and management to understand the current team dynamics and co-create goals for team building efforts. 

Facilitated team building initiatives include:

• Getting to know each other to perform better

• Overcoming communication barriers

• Culture - what is it and how do we create ours?

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PRESENTATIONS AND EVENT FACILITATION

For performers of all stripes, I have delivered a variety of educational workshops and presentations on fundamental aspects of performance psychology that teach and provide opportunities to build skills for more optimal functioning in sport, work, or life.  Past topics include:

• How to thrive, not fold under pressure

• Effective goal-setting that leads to productive behaviour change

• Emotional intelligence, collaboration, and communication skills

• Energy management

• Courage and Confidence: Two sides of the same coin

• Growing personal resilience in the face of setbacks and failure

• Enhancing focus and concentration​

• ​Working with anxiety

• Buying "insurance" - planning for performance contingencies​

• Implementing performance routines and event management​

• Optimising sleep and recovery

• Staying present and thriving under pressure

• Developing resilient environments

• Maximising coach-athlete or manager - employee relationships

• Understanding and leveraging the neuroscience underpinning the performing brain

• Mindfulness: A training, performance, and life game-changer

• Developing self-awareness and reflection abilities in performance contextsts

LEADERSHIP/MANAGEMENT COACHING

Professional and Personal Success

I came to coaching with the realization that a great deal of my work as a psychologist with elite performers fell more into the realm of unlocking optimal potential than it did with psychotherapy.  Success on the world stage of sport goes well beyond physical prowess.   Truly elite athletes learn how to train consistently, effectively, and efficiently, cultivate a strong yet flexible mindset, and develop the ability to rise to the occasion when it counts, particularly at high pressure events such as the Olympics.  It was my job to partner with athletes and coaches to increase their chances for mental success in ways that served them, from the mundanity of daily training, through the painstaking preparation for benchmark events, and on to the final bell or whistle of the competition.  I have found that there is much that transfers from performance in elite sport to thriving in high stress professional and corporate environments and that the same strategies that work for high performing athletes can work for you.

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As a coach, I craft in partnership with you an individualized process that seeks to discover and unlock your capability to achieve short- and long-term personal or professional goals.  While there are learnings from my expertise and experience that will guide my coaching, most of the actual work and behaviour change is done by working with you so you identify and structure robust goals, think outside of the box to discover new ways of thinking and looking at the issues at hand, learn new skills, and craft an action plan for change and growth that you execute.

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Here are some common scenarios that I can assist with:

You have put in the work, get the outcomes, but remain invisible to decision makers in management.

You are a transition point in your career but are not sure how to ascend to the next level.

You underperform relative to what you are capable of in high pressure situations.

You find it hard to get along with some people but don't know why or how to overcome it.

Advancement requires an assessment and you don't know how to study effectively enough to pass.

You have difficulties performance managing your staff.

You seem to always be working but have trouble identifying or selling what you actually accomplished.