Why Eddie is getting tips from the woman who sat in a cell with a psychopathic murderer

THERE has been a new face in England’s camp that not many rugby fans would recognise. Dr Nashater Deu Solheim, a forensic psychologist, is more familiar with psychopaths and serial killers than rugby coaches.

She has travelled over from Norway to work with Eddie Jones and his coaching team on their communication skills. She is an expert in persuasion and influence, having previously sat in prison cells with dangerous inmates to carry out risk assessments on the likelihood of them killing again.

‘So picture this, I’m sitting in a maximum security prison cell with a man in his late 50s, who is a psychopath,’ she explained in a Ted Talk in 2020. ‘He’s been incarcerated for many years for killing three people. Two were his girlfriends, and one was his closest male friend.

‘I put myself in his shoes and thought about what it must be like to sit with somebody and have to share the details of your past and what you had done. And I stayed curious. I was showing empathy.

‘I wasn’t sympathising with him or condoning what he had done, because empathy is not agreement. It’s about understanding.

‘By showing empathy, I was able to get an understanding. Through several meetings over many months, I managed to figure out what had triggered those attacks to prevent them from happening again. And he was able to share with me some of the experiences he’d had that had led him up to those actions.

‘We call that psychological safety.’

Since working with high-risk individuals, Solheim has become a leadership mentor with clients ranging from PepsiCo to the Ministry of Defence.

Solheim joined up with the camp in Brighton this week to help improve the coaching set-up, while fellow psychologist Andrea Furst is working with the players.

Jones has been looking closely at the functioning of his coaching team going into the Six Nations, with each assistant playing the role of head coach for a day, in the event that some of the coaching team are struck down by Covid. ‘In leadership, we talk a lot about leaders needing to be authentic,’ added Solheim. ‘They need to show up as their true selves, they need to be more open, more vulnerable.

‘Those that were able to create psychological safety had teams that trusted each other, collaborated, shared and seem to have fun. They could even disagree and still keep going.

‘A second group of leaders didn’t manage to do that. I’ve seen some leaders using authenticity and being their real selves as an excuse for brutal honesty. The teams whispered behind closed doors. They didn’t have that trust between them and they were fearful of being negatively criticised by the leader or by each other.

‘Being authentic comes in many shapes and forms. Brutal authenticity kills conversations, kills connections, kills motivation and kills trust. Whereas being authentic with empathy, encourages openness, encourages conversation and builds trust.’