Written by Dawn Sanders, Performance Coach
Dawn Sanders, Director of WinWell, is a trusted and respected Performance lifestyle. wellbeing, career and transition coach having worked in elite sport for over 20 years.
Social media is full of people telling you what to do for your wellbeing, and our feeds are filled with things that are supposedly good for us. Even though some of these messages are important and may resonate, others often fill us with guilt when expectations don’t match reality. Just because one piece of wellbeing advice works for someone doesn’t mean it will work for you.
To enable wellbeing to meet the needs of each individual, people need to be coached to unlock what it means for them and to help create sustainable change.
Defining performance wellbeing
In the Performance Wellbeing podcasts I have created, every person I’ve spoken to, regardless of their industry, says it is about exploring how individuals can thrive in high-pressure, high-performance, high-risk, and high-reward environments. It’s the sweet spot between life coaching, career coaching, transition coaching, relationship coaching, and personal development coaching. It involves influencing cultures, policies, and practices to enable people to thrive within their daily work environments.
Jen Coe, Performance Wellbeing Lead for the Barclays Women’s Super League and Championship, shared key insights here, saying, “Well-being is a non-negotiable pillar, core to every strategy in high-performance environments, not just for athletes but for the entire ecosystem around them."
Having worked in high-performance environments for over 20 years, I’ve learned that creating a safe space for people to bring their whole selves is crucial. A space free from judgment, where vulnerability isn’t a liability that threatens selection for competition, but rather a strength that fosters growth. Jen Coe goes on to say, “Psychological safety is critical, athletes and staff need spaces where they can speak up, ask for help, and thrive as their whole selves."
Performance wellbeing is about caring for every individual in an organization and being intentional and proactive in wellbeing conversations, training people on how to coach and facilitate these conversations or engaging with wellbeing coaches to be present in your culture. Wellbeing needs to be integrated into an individual’s performance planning processes and key performance indicators, holding as much significance as technical skills and helping people be accountable for their actions.
As Emma Deutsch, Director of Customer-Oriented Engineering, Test Operations, and DP Office at Nissan, outlines in this episode, this may need to be adapted depending on the needs of the people in your organisation: "If you want to promote wellbeing in your company, find something that resonates with people and makes them feel comfortable. We made a transformation when we gave people the data, the graphs showing the impact of psychological safety on people’s capabilities."
Moving from surviving to thriving
While Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are hugely important for those facing mental health challenges, it has often been wellbeing coaches in performance environments who signpost people to these programs. Some individuals aren’t sure if their challenges are acute enough to access an EAP or simply don’t know how to. Someone who takes on the responsibility as a wellbeing coach not only directs individuals toward these resources but also ensures accountability, helping them engage with support and reintegrating them back into the performance environment, regularly checking in on how they are doing and what they have learnt about themselves through their EAP support.
And as well as intended employee wellbeing benefits that are offered through companies, not everyone is able to access them freely or as proactively as they would like. For example, a full-time working parent who is also the main carer for their elderly relative has spoken about how they find it hard to access gym membership, a cycle-to-work offering, or after-work drinks.
Instead, through wellbeing coaching practices, it is about crafting individualised self-care plans that talk to those things that bring people energy and what takes it away, and enabling people to explore proactive ways to integrate this into their lives and, where possible, work.
Emma Deutsch takes this battery analogy one stage further to say, “I go to work with a full battery, and that battery goes down through the day, so I have to fill that battery at work. I have a couple of subjects that I work on that I weirdly love and motivate me, so I positively go out to find that to recharge myself."
Performance wellbeing is about shifting individuals from merely surviving to truly thriving. It’s about organisations, teams, and leaders being responsible and accountable for this shift to proactively establishing ways people can thrive. My personal ambition through my role as a Performance Wellbeing Coach and Consultant is to develop cultures and teams that have the aspiration to leave people in a better place than when they arrived.
It’s taking the All-Black mantra of ‘Leaving the jersey in a better place’ that one stage further with a mantra of ‘Leaving the person in a better place.’ This may not always be possible for every individual that comes into your team, but you can hand on heart say you’ve tried.
Jen Coe says, “It’s about leaving care patterns and care memories in the impact you have on people." And doing so can have a direct impact on attraction, retention, leadership development, wellbeing, and transitions, which an organisation can put into a business and financial model.
Emma Deutsch says, “You look after somebody, and it gets replayed 100 times back. So, if I can help someone, I will." Knowing that people will want to stay when they feel cared for and supported as people as well as professionals.
How to develop a performance wellbeing approach
I have tried to make the case about this being a need-to-have rather than a nice-to-have, because if this is a nice-to-have, it could soon be removed from a financial forecast when budgets get squeezed. But how do we integrate all of this into our teams and organisations?
By embedding performance wellbeing coaches into environments, or training managers and leaders with the skills to facilitate meaningful, holistic people conversations, and by shaping policies, practices, and cultures that foster a culture of care. By embracing the coaching principles and skills of creating psychologically safe places to be their true selves, deep listening, fostering equal partnerships, and recognising that individuals are resourceful enough to find their own answers through the great questions you ask, while helping people to be accountable for their actions, you can create a lasting impact on wellbeing and performance.
Through great wellbeing coaching conversations, individuals are provided with fantastic opportunities to develop personalised self-care plans. It helps them see and align to their individual strengths and values to live their daily lives and work by. It encourages people to create their "wheel of life," a simple but powerful visual tool that helps them identify key areas for growth, navigate challenges, and implement meaningful changes.
As a result, people not only feel empowered to take control of their personal and professional development, but also gain the confidence to move forward with clarity and purpose. It can provide a space for individuals to reflect on their autobiographical timeline, something that could be incorporated into an induction beyond the mandatory training, exploring their past experiences, recognising pivotal learning moments, and discovering how these insights shape their journey toward greater wellbeing and fulfilment, all because someone took the time to ask.
So, if you want to explore how WinWell can help you achieve these performance wellbeing ambitions and ensure the people in your care thrive too, please book a time with me at WinWell’s booking page to explore this further.
Read more from Dawn Sanders
Dawn Sanders, Performance Coach
Dawn Sanders is a leader in coaching the lifestyle, wellbeing, career development and transitions needs of elite performers having supported Great Britain's Olympic and Paralympic athletes for over 20 years. She is passionate about developing the person behind the performer to enable them to thrive in high pressure, high risk, high reward environments.
