Tough Girl Podcast Catherine Baker - Rethink Your Potential. Author - Staying the Distance: The lessons from sport that business leaders have been missing. How to improve, perform and achieve, in ways that are effective and sustainable.
An ex city-lawyer whose first qualification was as a tennis coach, and whose first love has always been sport, Catherine has spent the second half of her career combining her twin passions of sport and leadership through her business, Sport and Beyond Ltd.
Catherine brings a unique perspective to the mindset and approaches that deliver exceptional and sustained performance. She has had the privilege of working with many of our elite athletes and coaches, as well as a large number of the leading CEOs in the sports sector and elsewhere. She maintains strong links to the legal sector both through coaching senior lawyers, and through her role as Chair of O Shaped, an organisation aimed at making the legal profession better. Catherine is also a Trustee on the Board of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust.
About The Book:
Staying the Distance showcases the much-needed leadership lessons that sport can teach us: how to improve, perform and achieve, in ways that are effective and sustainable.
Leadership can be hard. It can certainly be relentless. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the well-being, health and sustained performance of many senior leaders, and yet strong leadership remains central to the performance of every single organization.
Business leaders are very familiar with drawing lessons from elite sport, particularly around teams, leadership and high performance. But we have all been missing a trick. Day in, day out, sport has been showing us not only how to improve, perform and achieve, but how to do so on a sustained basis, consistently delivering results when it matters. This book shines a light on these unseen lessons, and provides a clear and practical roadmap for how to deploy them in the reader's own leadership practices.
With Catherine Baker's unique view into world-class sport and top-level business, and with insights from top performers in both worlds, this book provides a fresh and dynamic take on how - consistently and over the long term - to bring out the best in yourself, and in those you lead.
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Show Notes
- Who is Catherine?
- Having a varied work life from tennis coach to corporate lawyer
- Working as a leadership and mindset coach
- Mother of 3 sons
- Being sporty from a young age and being labelled as a tomboy
- Being a twin and the twin relationship
- Being 1 of 2 girls in an all boys school
- Going to boarding school at 8
- Playing both tennis and hockey
- Going down the route of becoming a lawyer
- Trying to balance work and hockey training
- How team sports took a back seat to work
- Being on secondment in Singapore for 5 months
- Having a set of core principles and how they developed
- Wanting to make most of the opportunities
- Recognising her privilege
- Practical tips for taking advantage of those opportunities
- The importance of having really clear goals
- Getting the idea for her new book - Staying the Distance: The lessons from sport that business leaders have been missing
- Working out her own personal mission
- Balancing career, family and sports
- Wanting to do everything to the best of her ability
- You can do anything, but you can't do everything
- Who is the book for?
- The Huddle - a free resource to help you strategise, motivate and perform.
- Thoughts on decision making - going with your gut, your emotions, or values….
- Confirmation bias
- Why it's sensible to give yourself time to make decisions
- Deciding to do the The Great North Swim
- Dealing with setbacks and failure
- Chapter 2 - How to leave behind fear
- How to connect with Catherine
- Final words of advice - "Success really is a team sport, so think carefully about who you have around you."
Social Media
Website: sportandbeyond.co.uk
Twitter: @sportandbeyond1
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/catherinehbaker/
Book: Staying the Distance: The lessons from sport that business leaders have been missing