‘If you want to get the best out of people, it’s how you use good questions to get them to find their own solutions’
Being empathetic, having insight into people, is a huge strength if you want to coach and get the best out of them
Baroness Sue
A TOP coach who has championed women in sports and football has appeared on a podcast to talk about her varied career and how to be a good leader.
Baroness Sue Campbell was the first female coach to work at Loughborough University and is the director of women’s football at the Football Association (FA).
She spoke to actor Warwick Davis on the Figureheads podcast about her experiences leading and training people, and the key lessons she has learnt over the years.
Her confidence to lead became apparent from a young age, becoming head girl at school and then senior student at PE college, but she said you can build the confidence of others by encouraging them when they do well and showing them how to do better.
She spoke about a helpful tip she received from one of the other coaches when she joined Loughborough University: “He said, When the game starts, who makes the decisions? I said, Well, the players do. He said, And when do they practise that? And it was like a penny dropping in my head.
“If you want to grow people, you’re not just growing them in terms of skills and techniques, you’re growing them in thinking.
“And if you want people to develop thinking skills, you’ve got to give them room to think, which means you’ve also got to give them room to make mistakes.
“And when they make those mistakes, to work through it with them, to have a look at what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and to have another go.”
Another key aspect of effective leadership she pointed to is showing empathy for those you are coaching.
The baroness said: “Being empathetic, understanding people, having insight into people, is a huge strength if you want to coach and get the best out of them.
“We want our businesses to be successful and if we’re not careful, we get driven by a bottom line, but that bottom line is produced by people, and it’s those people that we need to invest our time and our coaching and our support in, if we want to improve that bottom line.
“Because work is a big part of our lives, but it is only part of our lives.”
Presenter Mr Davis said in response that it’s much easier to work with a director who understands what it’s like to be an actor on set, pointing to the example of American director, Ron Howard, who started out as an actor.
Asked whether she had ever made a decision as a leader to be popular, Baronness Campbell said she has always tried to be “authentic” and to act with integrity, doing what’s best for her team.
She gave the example of the decision to move the FA Women’s Super League to full-time professional:
“There were clubs there who had put an enormous amount of time and love into the women’s game, who weren’t going to be able to make that jump into the professional world, simply because of money.
“They met with me and they would have seen me at that point as someone who was unfeeling, uncaring, changing the women’s game, taking away a lifetime of effort from them.
“I met them all and they told me what they thought of me. They had a right to do that. If I had been sitting where they were, I probably would have been equally upset.
“I said, Look, I understand your frustration and your anger, but my job is to do what is right for the women’s game. It isn’t making me popular. And if I don’t do this, the women’s game in this country won’t move forward.”
She spoke about when you join an organisation as a leader, you have to spend time understanding the culture before you can effectively change things.
When she became chairwoman of UK Sport in 2003, she would wander around with a cup of coffee and ask people the three key questions: what do you do, what could you do and what is stopping you?
During her stint with UK Sport, she presided over Team GB and ParalympicGB’s performance at London 2012. Returning to her time at Loughborough, Baroness Campbell said the best advice she has ever been given was from Jimmy Greenworth, a rugby coach there.
She said: “He was the guy who really helped me understand that if you want to coach, if you want to get the best out of people, it isn’t what you tell them, it’s how you use good questions to get them to find their own solutions.
“He did it in such a brilliant way he embedded it in my thought process so deeply, it has stayed with me throughout my career.”
Baroness Campbell received a DBE in the 2020 New Year Honours list for her services to sport.