Leaders Performance Podcast

The Leaders Performance Institute

Cutting-edge insight, unconventional thinking, tips, blueprints and leadership lessons from elite performance practitioners around the world. Produced by the Leaders Performance Institute.

  1. 27 JUN

    Teamworks Podcast: Bianca Rech, FC Bayern Munich

    When Bianca Rech shares a decision with FC Bayern’s players, she knows instantly how it has landed. “You feel it,” says the Director of Bayern’s women’s programme. “You already know when you look at their faces. You’re like ‘I think she doesn’t like it’, ‘yeah, she likes it’ and ‘she needs a bit of proof’. It’s like sometimes I see myself sitting on the other side.” The ‘other side’, as Bianca tells Teamworks’ Andrew Trimble and Leaders’ John Portch, refers to her transition from a Germany international and Frauen-Bundesliga regular to a senior leader of the German champions, whom she represented on the pitch for four years. “It’s so much harder now when you sit on that side now,” she adds, reflecting on how she used to feel as a player. “I see myself sitting on the other side, like, ‘oh, maybe I have to talk to them again’.” In this third and final episode of our special series with Teamworks, Bianca touched upon several of the major themes that emerged from our recent Special Report High Performance Unpacked: interconnected performance teams. She spoke of her role in helping to transform the Bayern culture on and off the pitch [37:00]; keeping the athlete at the centre of the performance jigsaw [14:30]; the importance of sports psychology [31:00]; and the thoughtful integration of technology [21:00]. Listen and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform. Episode One: Simon Rice, the Philadelphia 76ers Episode Two: Miranda Menaspà, the Australian Institute of Sport

    46 min

  2. 12 JUN

    Teamworks Podcast: Simon Rice, Philadelphia 76ers

    They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but does that hold up in the world of elite sports performance? “The issues I’ve seen here, they’re very rarely – almost never – [a result of] things getting missed,” Simon Rice, the Vice President of Athlete Care at the Philadelphia 76ers, tells Teamworks’ Director of Athlete Performance Andrew Trimble and Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch. “Where we run into slight problems is everyone trying to do the right thing with really good intentions,” he continues, citing the hypothetical example of three practitioners on the Sixers' Health & Performance group prescribing the same loading plan to an athlete and inadvertently tripling their load. “It often comes back to communication and it comes back to this idea of fitting the puzzle pieces to fully support that player.” It takes mutual understanding and trust between athlete and coach, as Simon touched upon in the recent Teamworks and Leaders Special Report, entitled High Performance Unpacked: Interconnected Performance Teams, and it was a theme he expanded upon in the first episode of our new three-part series. Elsewhere, Simon also talks about the role of the performance director as a cultural leader [4:00]; the importance of establishing what’s best for the athlete right now [15:30]; the work of the Health & Performance group with external clinicians [34:00]; and how his team can give athletes confidence in their bodies through its joint decision model [55:00]. Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    1h 2m

  3. 19/12/2024

    Lachlan Penfold, Melbourne Storm

    Lachlan Penfold’s time at the Golden State Warriors was eye-opening in numerous ways. Chief amongst them was his realisation that joy is crucial in a high performance environment. “Joy in a professional sport? That’s a bit strange,” thought Penfold, but it was one of the team’s trademarks and no-one embodied it better than their Head Coach Steve Kerr and illustrious point guard Steph Curry. “The player that embodies it better than anyone in world sport is Steph Curry in terms of just the absolute joy he gets from playing the game, from training the game,” Penfold continues, “not only from his perspective, but from seeing his teammates have success and do great things, the joy that he gets really invigorates a sporting team.” It has fed into his work with the Melbourne Storm, who reached the NRL grand final in October. No doubt they’ll go again in 2025, inspired by the family environment described so vividly by Penfold [10:00]. We also spoke about his approach to training and recovery [17:30] and the importance of individualised work [22:30]. Last up, we discussed the year ahead [28:10]. Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    32 min

  4. 18/12/2024

    Flo Laing, Scotland Rugby

    Flo Laing does not miss a beat in explaining what she’s most excited about heading into 2025. “It’s got to be the World Cup,” says Scotland women’s Lead Physiotherapist. The competition will be hosted across the border in England and starts in August. Laing says it has been the Scotland team’s “north star” for several years. During the course of our conversation – the second of three in this Keiser podcast series – we spoke about her work in women’s rugby at a time where the sport is starting to capture the public’s imagination and performance standards are rising faster than ever for the women players who compete [4:00]. Elsewhere, Laing discusses her leadership style, which is very much about putting people at ease [18:00]; she also talks about the most pressing issues in female athlete health [28:40]; as well as the transferable skills she’s learned from her time working for Sport Scotland [12:30]. Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    36 min

  5. 17/12/2024

    Duncan French, UFC

    Duncan French, the Senior Vice President of the UFC Performance Institute, is describing the aftermath of a bout. “If an athlete has gone through the fight pretty well and won, then it might be a very simple kind of cool down in one of the back rooms in the locker room and just do some light work to bring themselves back down again,” he says of the victor. “If an athlete’s had a pretty significant amount of trouble, that’s a very different strategy.” Mixed martial arts is, as he adds, “a sport of consequences”. It’s all in a day’s work for French, who oversees the UFC’s Performance Institutes based in Las Vegas, Shanghai and, most recently, Mexico City. There have been some teething troubles with the Mexican facility [4:40], but French took it all in his stride, as he tells us in the first of this three-part Keiser Series Podcast focused on some of the challenges faced and lessons learned by members of the Leaders Performance Institute during 2024. French also discussed his evolving leadership style [6:20]; the personalisation of fight preparation plans [19:30]; and his use of data to inform those strategies [28:30]. Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    41 min

  6. 15/12/2024

    Dan Jackson, Adelaide Crows

    Dan Jackson is the General Manager of Player Development & Leadership at the Adelaide Football Club, but he is quick to dispel any notions that he is a guru. “I can’t teach leadership,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast. “I can help unlock what’s already in there.” On that note, he is certain that leaders are not born. “Leadership is 100 per cent made, but it’s made from a very young age.” Beyond the origins of leadership, Dan spoke to Henry Breckenridge and John Portch about the importance of prioritising others [10:40]. “Great sustainable teams are built in environments where everyone’s looking to help someone else out,” he adds. “When you fill someone else's bucket, it fills yours.” Also on the agenda were the importance of humour and enjoyment [22:00]; the argument against ‘refreezing’ culture [48:30]; and the practical steps that help leaders to manage team operations [32:00]. Henry Breckenridge LinkedIn John Portch LinkedIn Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    58 min

  7. 12/12/2024

    Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Yael Averbuch West and Stephen Smith

    Kitman Labs ensured Bayer Leverkusen knew what it took to win the German Bundesliga. They demonstrated to Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Leverkusen’s Head of Medical, the optimal range of player availability to top the table during a meet in Dublin, four or five years before Die Werkself actually won the title. “I kept this data; and last year we did it,” Dr Dittmar told the Kitman Labs podcast with evident pride. It turns out the data scanned almost perfectly across the numbers posted by the club during their unbeaten title-winning campaign. “They found out what we need from the medical point of view, from player availability, and it was perfect – the data predicted what would happen in the future.” It demonstrated the value of clean, consistent datasets – something that has given Leverkusen an edge over more celebrated rivals – and something that Yael Averbuch West is trying to build in her role as GM at 2023 NWSL champions Gotham City. “We’re still in the data collection stage in the women’s game,” she tells the podcast, while also explaining that the work to bridge that gap is well underway in this corner of New York City. In the third and final episode of this series, West and Dr Dittmar are joined by Kitman Labs Founder Stephen Smith to discuss how data strategies can help teams in their quest for greatness. Elsewhere, the trio discuss a range of topics, including why learnings tend to emerge as data collection grows ever more sophisticated [17:30]; the importance of a centralised system for consistency [24:15]; the balance between using data to unearth ‘hidden gems’ and jumping on something misleading [33:00]. Episode one is available here and episode two is available here.

    58 min

  8. 09/12/2024

    Arianna Criscione, Sarah Smith & Stephen Smith

    You may have a great performance structure for your men’s team, but simply cutting and pasting that to your women’s team does them a disservice. That is the view of Arianna Criscione, the Head of Football Operations at Mercury/13 and Como Women. “It’s not enough,” she tells this Kitman Labs podcast. She explains that there are a range of services, from nutrition to psychology, that need to be tailored to women players. Criscione continues: “You also have to have access to medical [support], but a lot of clubs don’t have access to a gynaecologist, which is a major part of the female body and really needs to be addressed a lot more.” Dentistry is another area of oft-neglected consideration. “If you have an off-bite, that can actually affect your structure and how you’re running, which could cause injury.” It is, as Sarah Smith says, about “making sure that we have a good foundation of support around our athletes.” Smith, who is the Director of Medical and Performance at Angel City FC in the NWSL, joins the conversation alongside Stephen Smith, the Founder of Kitman Labs. In addition to discussing holistic female player development [10:45], the trio delve into bridging the gap in data and understanding in women’s football [15:45]; how talent identification is evolving [20:15]; as well as the existing disparities in data collection [28:10] from club to club and league to league. This is episode two of a three-part series. Please go back and check out episode one, where the Leaders Performance Institute and Stephen Smith spoke to Paul Prescott of the International Football Group and Morten Larsen of Danish Superliga side Aarhus discussing talent pathways in the Premier League and beyond. Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

    45 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.8
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Cutting-edge insight, unconventional thinking, tips, blueprints and leadership lessons from elite performance practitioners around the world. Produced by the Leaders Performance Institute.

Information

  • Creator
    The Leaders Performance Institute
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2025
  • Episodes
    163
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Leaders Performance Podcast
  • Show Website
    Leaders Performance Podcast