There’s No ‘I’ in Podcast

This episode Sean and Mark chat to Mark's colleague and co-artistic director of Waterloo Community Theatre about, amongst other things, making sure young people's voices are heard, the fear and excitement of the plan being no plan, and how that leads to a balance between freedom and guided discovery.

They also talk teenage rebellion (Anna's as well as their groups) the importance and value of self reflection, and how it can be useful to have a messy person around.

This week Sean and Mark join Alex Tofalides, international fencer and founder of Inspion Sports, to discuss taking a sport from the elite level right back to grassroots and working across all levels.  They talk about how 100% preparation applies as a rule no matter what level you are at, and how goals that you set should be based on things you can control.

To kick off the fifth series Sean and Mark talk to Matt Wood, founder of the hugely popular RunThrough running events and the GW Active Agency.  

They talk building a community at the grassroots, and building a business with the lessons that it taught. They also talk about hiring the right people for the job, and then letting them do their job, doing the hard yards early and the necessity to go back into the trenches snd get stuck in with the day-to-day no matter where you are in the company.

In this Milestone episode Sean and Mark talk teams with Peter Cauwelier, founder and Chief Team Connector of Team as One and author if The Untapped Team Advantage.  In their chat they cover some of Peter's foundations of sustained team performance. They get into connections as the core components of great teams and maintaining those connections through practise, how team building does not get the focus it deserves  and what makes up team psychological safety.

They also dip into Belbin as a tool to communicate better as a team and Action Learning, a facilitated tool for practising teamwork.

Sean and Mark push the boundaries this week by going live and streaming the episode to the world while they recorded it. No guest this week (because who wants to screw it up in front of someone important) so they discuss needing a break, the Superbowl, who gets to make the decisions, and Sean helps Mark unpick a situation where teamwork just didn't happen.

In this week's episode, Sean and Mark sit down with Educational Leadership trainer and founder of GRJ Education, Gareth Johnson. Gareth talks them through the journey required to get to running their own business, resisting the call to follow the expected path and heading into the unknown with no fear.

Along the way, they talk rugby, brass bands and what happens when you are called to choose between them.

In this week's episode Sean and Mark talk to Stephen Feeney of The Invictus project. Stephen coaches high performance athletes in self awareness and emotional intelligence as tools for consistency in elite performance.  They discuss taking the focus away form outcomes and onto the 'how', challenging how you make decisions and learning how to learn from others.

Happy New Year everyone!

Sean and Mark return without a guest to talk lockdown whatever-point-oh and how annoying it is when getting back into the swing of things gets interrupted.  They also discuss mindset being more important than tools when working remotely, and the risk of working from home meaning working all the time.

Revisiting this inspirational chat with James Aidoo of Innerscope, Sean and Mark learn about James' work with students and teachers on applied emotional intelligence and self-leadership.

They discuss reflective leadership and how we should be practicing what we preach when it comes to resilience, the challenge and privilege of serving your local community and balancing high support along with high challenge.

Sean and Mark get dramatic this week with their chat to Matt King-Sayce, a Head of Drama at a top independent school.  They talk about leading organisations through change, the power of saying yes by default and seeing where it takes you, and leading with humanity.

They also get drama specific about building spaces where risks can be taken, the importance now more than ever of the arts for wellbeing, and (in a flashback to the Danny Townsend episode) when your mum tells you to do something, you do it!

We're back, and in this weeks episode Sean and Mark talk to Danny Thomson, Director of Sport at a top independent school in the North West of the UK about the importance of getting the right people in the right places, coaching across the language barrier and how culture comes from the entire community around a team.

He also lays down his three essential elements to leadership, and what it's like when you're the coach's kid.

Welcome, new listeners! Mark and Sean return to their chat with football coach Dominic Walsh about his experiences across all levels of football from grassroots up to an elite academy.  They discuss the importance of being authentic as a coach and how behaviour rather than values truly shows who you are as a leader or member of a team.  An anecdote about building resilience in young academy players is a real treat, with Dom being chased around by an old PE teacher a close second.

This episode was our most popular early episode, so worth checking out again.

Sean and Mark sit down to chat with back-to-back A-League champions Sydney FC's CEO (and Sean's old boss) Danny Townsend.  Danny talks the boys through what it takes to build a business from 2 staff to 2000, and what lessons he has taken from that experience into running an A-League Football Club.  Along the way they talk about the importance of showing up, backing your people to do things their way, and the benefits of doing what your mother tells you!

Danny also shares the importance of celebrating your successes, running a club-first organisation, and being transparent with your fans.  He even throws in a bit of Sean Gallagher teasing for good measure.

Sean and Mark follow up last week's COVID centred chat with another conversation that touches on how people and business are weathering 2020 as they talk to Jamie Anderson, Head of Marketing and Communications for Diversity Travel, a specialist travel agency focusing on humanitarian and educational corporate travel.  Jamie goes in deep on his wealth of experience working with some of Britain's biggest and toughest brands covering how team dynamics work with outside agencies, how we can take advantage of the way we all think differently, and how to motivate teams remotely in an industry rendered almost non-existent by COVID 19.

All of this, in-between way too many travel puns!  It is their half-term holiday after all.

This week, Mark and Sean talk to Andy Edmeads, Venue Manager for Camberley Theatre about fostering a culture of mucking in and cracking on, making fewer assumptions about how your team are feeling, and what happens when you have to pivot to becoming community support workers when a pandemic hits.

Sean and Mark revisit their lockdown interview with Cara McCartney, Director at Netball at a top independent school about her role , balancing inclusion and excellence, why it can be valuable to sit on the bench and how important Netball has been throughout her life, on the court and off.

With the return of schools and clubs to (some version of) their training schedules, the guys thought it worth dipping back into the archives to get some inspiration on getting back into the swing of a programme.

Sean and Mark talk to Gemma Leigh Roberts, Chartered Organisational Psychologist and founder of The Resilience Edge about (unsurprisingly) resilience, but also risk and failure, decision making, and how we can use perspective to build our resilience.

Today Mark and Sean have the privilege of speaking to Team GB Paralympic Sitting Volleyball Captain Rob Richardson.  They talk building teams out of strangers, 'taking the message' when you are being screamed at on the pitch and how important awareness of Paralympic sport is for future generations.