A Focus on Leadership
Wednesday 06 February 2013
This year 27 students in focus clubs were invited to take part in the first ever Saints Leadership Programme. The students were all either in leadership positions within their sports clubs currently, or had demonstrated leadership potential. The clubs represented were tennis, football, rugby, water polo, ultimate, fencing and golf.
The aim of the programme was to further the Saints Sports Team’s vision of sporting excellence by creating culture change within the focus clubs through the leadership of students. The programme consisted of 6 core workshops, delivered over semester 1, by staff from CAPOD and the Saints Sports team. Topics included, Leadership Styles, Fixed V Growth Mindsets, Motivational Climate, Culture Change and Thinking Styles.
In addition to the workshops, participants completed a number of practical tasks – everything from creating personal development plans to discussing culture change steps with Directors of Sport, and completing leadership diagnostics and profiling tools.
Programme Coordinator, Cat Wilson, spoke about the impact of the programme: “The students who took part fed back that they enjoyed taking part in the programme, have consciously thought about their leadership style, consider themselves more of a leader since taking part, and have crucially made changes to their behaviour as a result.
“The focus clubs’ Directors of Sport have also witnessed these behavioural changes, highlighting examples of participants taking the lead in training, inspiring the team, setting and achieving short-term club goals and role-modelling more professional standards.”
The programme will run again next academic year, hopefully featuring contributions from many of this year’s participants. Any students from focus clubs who are interested in taking part from September 2013 should speak to their Director of Sport.
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