Lessons From The Mat - A Commitment By Wrestling Canada To Shape A World-Leading Culture

Published July 24, 2019

As part of its commitment to create a high performing, safe and respectful environment for high performance athletes and coaches, Wrestling Canada (WCL) was inspired to look beyond the compliance requirements to map out an innovative way forward that reflected its core values of respect, excellence, integrity and passion. This blog shares what was learned at the onset of this journey and hopefully inspires other sport leaders to work through some of the current ‘safe sport’ limitations and challenges.

Living your Values

Lúcás O’Ceallacháin, the High-Performance Director for Wrestling Canada, came into the position in July 2018 with a mandate of giving athletes and coaches the tools and the support they required to be world leading. When a report was shared last November that identified the need to address the limitations of the current high-performance training and competition environment, WCL was intentional about carving out a way forward that was values-driven, coach lead, and athlete centered. To support this vision, Wrestling Canada worked with the Sport Law & Strategy Group (SLSG) to innovate an approach that would move beyond requirements and compliance towards a comprehensive and inspiring process that would:

• Increase the psychological safety and strengthen the social/ emotional relationship between athletes and coaches
• Create common language that would define expected behaviours through a renewed code of conduct
• Generate higher levels of trust so that athletes and coaches could deal with some of the stickier issues that get in the way of performance
• Inspire confidence to apply what was being learned
• Be guided by Wrestling Canada values and the shared love of wrestling

Gold Standard

Lúcás believes that they have begun the creation of a ‘gold standard’ for Wrestling Canada. “This approach has given us the confidence to be able to name the ‘distractions’ that get in the way of coaches and athletes who are deeply committed to achieving excellence. We were coming at this from a place of respect and resilience and moving away from a place of fear and compliance. Given that we recognize people as a fundamental pillar of our success, it is liberating for all of us to feel like we can speak about what might be limiting our potential and trusting that we are all committed to the same vision which is ‘podium performances.’”

Wrestling Canada worked with the Sport Law & Strategy Group to map out the process and through their partnership brought in other external supporters including Respect Group Inc. and Siobhan Richardson, co-founder of Intimacy Directors International. “We wanted to invest in a collaborative partnership to explore this aspect of fostering respectful environments and interactions,” shared Wayne McNeil, co-founder of Respect Group Inc. “As a B Corp, giving back to our sport partners is engrained in how we do things and we were inspired by Wrestling Canada’s vision.”

A workshop was designed in part to address some of the commitments made by the Safety-First Task Force, a committee of athletes, coaches and members of the wrestling community, to oversee Wrestling Canada’s safe sport efforts.  The workshop was specifically designed to clarify language, ensure shared understanding of consent related to physical contact, and create an inviting space for coaches and athletes to discuss distractions to a high performing culture. An important part of the process included reaching out to two of the national team coaches and their Mental Performance Consultant to gain their insights as well as members of the Safety-First National Task Force of WCL.

Workshop experience

The workshop was a three-hour peer to peer learning format that invited athletes and coaches to remember their love of wrestling and to focus on tapping into their emotional and social intelligences so they could more openly and proactively deal with distractions to performance. It was made clear that the workshop was a reflection of Wrestling Canada’s commitment to live its values and to support athletes and coaches in reaching their highest potential. Key concepts including trust, becoming centered, accepting the challenge, creating agreements, seeking permission, and welcoming diverse opinions were explored.  Co-facilitated by Dina Bell-Laroche and Siobhan Richardson, the inaugural workshop provided participants with a number of key discoveries and generated new ways of tackling old problems.  A survey was completed and some of the key findings from the workshop that athletes and coaches appreciated most included:

• Creating a safe environment to have these kind of conversations
• The opportunity to speak openly and frankly with each other and having coaches and athletes and WCL staff present was appreciated
• The group appreciated having an opportunity to speak about topics that focused on the emotional and social realms
• To have common language to share and discuss these uncomfortable topics
• Be clearer and intentional about the rituals I need to support my training and competition environments
• Be more confident in naming what I need to grow as an athlete and feel more comfortable naming and sharing them with my coach

Moving forward

The intention of the workshop was to help support athletes in becoming more self-aware and to move away from being unsure, afraid, or unaware towards a mindset of being open, resilient and confident. The key learnings for Wrestling Canada as part of this learning experience included:

1. Create a shared vision: When the organization uses its values to drive decisions, good things follow. Wrestling Canada made an early commitment to be guided by its core values, which included engaging the athletes and coaches in a longer-term vision of what it means to have a respectful and resilient culture. It is always easier to apply what you asked to co-create – so ensure that you involve them in the process of creating an inspiring vision.
2. Invest in ongoing learning opportunities: Make a commitment to invest in these kinds of learning experiences that support athletes and coaches in exploring social/emotional realms in a safe and interactive environment. A learning from this workshop is to provide athletes and coaches with Respect in Sport online training prior to doing this kind of workshop to ensure baseline knowledge is created.
3. Create shared language: As the sport community continues to wrestle with the topic of ‘safe sport’, Wrestling Canada has discovered the power in moving towards more inclusive and empowering language such as ‘coach and athlete agreements’, ‘accepting the challenge’ ‘ yes, and … or no, however’ and ‘asking for permission’ before attempting to initiate something new. Updating your sport’s Code of Conduct and ensuring that all participants are educated will help to demystify topics such as ‘consent’ and provide helpful boundaries on the role of touch to instruct, to ensure safety, and/or to offer emotional support. This then liberates the athletes and coaches to focus on having ‘real conversations’ on topics related to poor performance, loss of energy, reduced motivation, etc. in a healthier and more respectful manner, expanding their emotional intelligence as a result.
4. Honour the group’s wisdom: Through this process, we honoured and recognized the significant wisdom that resides within the group. By incorporating peer to peer learning formats in the development of the strategy, athletes and coaches are able to share ‘real life scenarios’ that make hypothetical situations unnecessary.
5. Recognize what we already do well and capture that: It’s important to acknowledge the good with the areas that need to be improved. In sport we have a tendency of always focusing on the areas that need improving without taking the time to acknowledge what is working exceptionally well. It’s important to do both.

We hope you are inspired by Wrestling Canada’s journey in cultivating a respectful and resilient culture to support its high-performance vision. If you want to learn more about this initiative, please contact Dina Bell-Laroche at DBL@sportlaw.ca or  Lúcás O’Ceallacháin at loceallachain@wrestling.ca or Wayne McNeil at wmcneil@respectgroupinc.com