Jacqie Tran gave a presentation at the recent Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand pre-conference. Her presentation was titled
I thought this was a great topic to choose. It is an excellent way to share a learning journey and invite others to reflect on their practices.
I have been following Jacquie’s work for a number of years and see her as a very important voice in a community of practice that I hope might become a sport version of the R-Ladies movement.
R-Ladies is a diversity initiative that aims “to achieve proportionate representation by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering people of genders currently underrepresented in the R community”. I believe sport needs this too.
I have grabbed three slides from Jacquie’s presentation (in her delightful sketchnote style) to acknowledge the significance of the issues she was raising:
I have always thought that this sharing required social skills that historically have been described as ‘soft’ skills. In many sport science contexts, certainly in the foundation years of the discipline, these skills were disparaged. This is changing …
Which means we can start talking about:
Glueing needs some patience. I think it involves following, advocating, leading and sharing. In my qualitative research terms, it takes lots of time ‘being around‘ in sport contexts.
Jacquie and her generation have remarkable skills to contribute to this glue work. I trust that her open sharing of her ideas stimulates substantial conversations about the social synapses that make it possible to share insights with decision-makers that transform performance.
Photo Credit
Jacquie Tran (Jacquie Tran website)