Liz Nicholl: On netball’s Olympic ambition
SA: Hello and welcome to The Gamechangers podcast where you’ll hear from trailblazing fearless women in sport. I’m Sue Anstiss, a Founding Trustee of the Women’s Sport Trust Charity and the Founder and CEO of Promote PR, one of Britain’s leading sports PR agencies. In this episode you’ll hear from Liz Nicholl CBE, one of the most powerful figures in British sport. Liz has been CEO at UK Sport for the last 9 years, overseeing Team GB’s unparalleled success at London 2012 and the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics. This Summer stepped down from that role after 20 years at UK Sport and she’s now President of the International Netball Federation. As always, it was a real privilege to head back to UK Sport’s offices in London to meet with Liz. I began by asking her whether sport had been a part of her life growing up.
LN: I grew up in a big family, seven children and I grew up playing football and cricket in the local park with my brothers. My father was very keen on sport, he was a local primary school teacher and he used to lead the school teams and so we always had balls and bats around the house. So I just loved sport right from the very start.
SA: Were there any girls’ teams playing cricket or football at the time at all?
LN: No, none at all and so I envy the young women of today that have the opportunity to play football and cricket now but in my day I remember people saying, that’s the girl who can play football, or that’s the girl that can play cricket. I was a bit of an oddity but I just loved it. And then later on those ball skills just translated into netball for me.
SA: Was your dad as supportive as your playing sport as he was with your brothers?
LN: Oh yes, I was the most interested member of the family in sport so my father was very encouraging so we didn’t have a lot of money when we were young but if I needed a pair of spikes then I knew that I could have that but we didn’t ask, I didn’t ask for anything else. And we didn’t go on holiday but if I needed a piece of sporting equipment I knew that I’d be able to have that.
SA: And do you remember any high-profile female sports and athletes at the time that inspired you at all?
LN: I think I got most of my inspiration about achieving in sport through knowing that were local individuals who actually, for example, played netball for Wales. And it just made me think, well if somebody from my own hometown can do it then why not me? So I think the inspiration was local but I did remember the Lynn Davies’ and the Dame Mary Peters that actually were just amazing sports people that I was really interested in seeing their achievements at the very highest level.
SA: So you mentioned netball there, so when did you first start playing netball?
LN: When I went to Grammar School at the age of 11. I didn’t really know what netball was before that. But I loved it because it’s about running, catching, throwing and that’s what I’d been doing in the local park with my brothers. So I took to it really, really easily and through those early years in school I was always playing for the team of the year above. I felt as if I was progressing, I felt as if I was good at something.
SA: And was there a point at which you realised that you were very good, that you were on a pathway?
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LN: I suppose also we had a teacher, a couple of teachers that in their time played netball for Wales. And again when you’re in contact, when these are real people, that you know, then you do start to think, well why not? So I always did have an ambition to play. The point at which I thought that maybe I could do this and play netball for Wales was when I was leaving Cardiff, going to university in Nottingham to study chemistry actually, a teacher from a local school who said to me, don’t lose touch with Welsh Netball. I listened, I reflected on that and I thought, I think she thinks I could play netball for Wales one day.
And so I’ve always said to people since, if somebody you respect thinks you can do it, you probably can. So just go for it. And so when I went off to university, I did keep in contact and I went back to Welsh trials and I was selected and played in the World Championship in 1975 – selected in ’74, went in ’75 to New Zealand for the World Championship – and it was just amazing to see sport at that national and international level for the first time.
SA: You mentioned that you studied chemistry at Nottingham University. So why not sport? You had a massive passion for sport, did you consider going into teaching like your father?
LN: Well I always wanted to work in sport, I loved sport and I always wanted to work in sport but I didn’t know how to work in sport, because the sporting industry wasn’t very visible at that point in time. So I studied chemistry because I was capable. I definitely did not want to be a teacher because my three eldest sisters were teachers and one of my brothers was a teacher and I wanted to do something different.
So, no I definitely didn’t want to teach but in order to get a qualification in sport I did a post graduate Certificate in Education in chemistry and games so I went from Nottingham University chemistry to a year at Leicester for a post graduate Certificate in Education to enable me to have something, a sporting qualification of some sort. So I did teach just for six months.
And then I taught chemistry and sport and then I went to Loughborough to do a Master’s in recreation management because that was the qualification that was going to enable me then to move into the sporting industry.
SA: I realised that you’d been to Loughborough, I hadn’t realised you’d done the transition. Baroness Sue Campbell coached you at Loughborough as well. I guess was she an inspiration to you?
LN: Massive and actually the Baroness Sue Campbell coached me, when I was 18 with the British Universities Netball Team and she lived in Nottingham. And there I was at Nottingham University and the coach to the British Universities Team was local and that was just a massive co-incidence and opportunity. So she has always been fantastic, she was an amazing coach. She was the only coach that ever wrote to me to tell me what my strengths were and what I needed to work on and I’ve probably still got that letter to this very day.
SA: And on leaving Loughborough then, what was your first role in sport?
LN: My first role in sport was I was the general secretary of the Women’s into University Athletic Board. Which was called Wibab at the time and it was the female equivalent of the – they had a Universities Athletic Union – so it was Women’s into University Sport. I was the general secretary so I was the boss and actually managed the co ordination of sporting competition across universities in England and Wales. So it was a fantastic, to just go from being a student into a leadership role where I had to establish a head office and recruit staff and manage that responsibility. And I did that job for two years and then what was really interesting is that quite rightly the time was right for the men’s organisations, women’s organisations to merge. And so I was offered the Number 2 role in that joined organisation and I decided not to accept it. I thought, well I’ve enjoyed being the leader and I don’t want to be the Number 2 doing the same job I’d been doing, but not be responsible. So, I decided to accept redundancy. And see what opportunities might emerge.
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And then the role as the first fully paid director, it was called at the time, equivalent of Chief Executive of England Netball came up and I applied for it and got it . And so if I’d not taken that decision to just see where my future might take me then I might not have been alert to that opportunity there was with England netball. And that was a transformational opportunity for me.
SA: And then you stayed in post for 16 years?
LN: Well I was in post for two years and then I became pregnant and so I resigned at that point in time because my husband also changed his job so we moved back to Wales. And then he changed his job and came back to the south east and coincidentally, fairly soon after we got back to the south east, the role of the CEO of England Netball came up again. So from ‘82-‘86 I was a mum and in ’86 I was reappointed as the CEO. Which was a brave decision for netball to take.
Actually it was a brave decision for me to apply ‘cos I thought I’d done a job for two years and if I had been rejected then I’d have just been disillusioned about what I thought about my ability but it was great. I was really delighted to be appointed again in ’86. And then I was there until ’89. So my 16-year stint was in two parts.
SA: And were you concerned when you took that four years out about your future career and progression?
LN: So my husband worked in the sporting industry as well so I did find it quite difficult that he was actually actively involved in the sporting industry and there I was being a mum. But I took on voluntary work in that time so I was very involved with Welsh Netball again, so I kept my hand in with the sport, I kept myself busy and I knew that I wanted to get back in to work but I didn’t dream that the same job would come up again. And it was the one job that I wouldn’t hesitate to take. I didn’t hesitate to take on because I loved it so much.
SA: And had the organisation changed in the time from when you’d been in the first post and you came back six years later?
LN: Not hugely but I wouldn’t have felt the change anyway because I was still involved with netball. The changes I think happened, I was obviously very involved in them from that point onwards.
SA: And what were the biggest changes and challenges as a CEO of an NGB?
LN: Well, typical of the challenges of governing bodies today. So first of all I do remember the work that we did to develop a very clear strategy. Too, the increase in participation, improving performance and providing quality support That was the core focus of the organisation. We were making sort of really good progress as a sport. It became a Commonwealth sport for the first time in ’98, that was a big moment.
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We had the World Netball Championship, I was Championship Director in ’95, so that was another big moment. So, on my journey, I think there were these critical points that actually kept me really motivated because the sport was progressing strategically, in governance terms, with the World Netball Championship, a real opportunity, Commonwealth Games, real opportunity and then National Lottery funding coming on board around that time of the ’98 Commonwealth Games. So there were these big things that kept me there to the point when in ’99 I was ready to think about my next move.
SA: And on to UK Sport. What was your initial role at UK Sport?
LN: I was appointed as Director of Performance at UK Sport in 1999. I didn’t really know what the job would entail when I took it up.
SA: Was it a new role?
LN: It was a new role yes. I found it quite an easy transition because I had been the Chief Executive of a governing body that had received Lottery funding just in those couple of years beforehand. I was credible in terms of the way I could relate to governing bodies that I was now working with, albeit they were Olympic and Paralympic sports. But I felt comfortable there because in the preceding years I’d also taken on other responsibilities – multi-sport responsibilities with the Commonwealth Games Council for England and the Central Council of Physical Recreation at the time it was called – now the SRA.
So I had multi-sport experience. I had Lottery experience, I had CEO experience and so I could relate to the CEOs and the performance directors that I was then engaging with, as we were starting to grow this system to develop more opportunities for more athletes to achieve at the very highest level in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
SA: And did you always think that you may one day become CEO when you came in as director?
LN: Yes. But not a lot of people know this but at the time that I applied for the Director of Performance role, I was encouraged by the agency that was recruiting to also put my name forward for the CEO role at the time. So actually I had my hat in the ring for the CEO role and the Director of Performance. I didn’t get the CEO role at that point in time but having been encouraged to think about it could have been possible, then I always had at the back of my mind I would love to be the CEO of UK Sport. Fantastic time to come on board in ’99, to see it through Sydney and Athens and Beijing. But soon in the early 2003, late 2003 I became the acting CEO, so I did an 18-month period as acting CEO.
And that was a really interesting time because I learned a lot from that. I learned a heck of a lot from that because then I wasn’t appointed. But I did 18 months as acting CEO and I thought that I was doing, I didn’t back-fill as well as I might have done to cover my performance responsibility so I was trying to do two roles and what happens then is that instead of leading, you are managing and I was definitely managing and not leading. And so when John Steel was appointed in 2005, I could see the difference between a leader and a manager when John came in. He was a great leader of this organisation. I went back to my Director of Performance role, and the Baroness I had to break this news to who was Chair at the time and I was really disappointed in myself. But on reflection, it didn’t take me long to reflect and think, but I’ve got a fantastic role, Director of Performance at UK Sport. It’s not a hardship to go back to concentrate more, because I’d still been doing much of that work to concentrate more on this huge opportunity. And of course the London bid was in process at that point in time and then of course in 2005 the bid was won on the 6th July 2005 and it was a transformational moment for British sport and there I was, a Director of Performance at UK Sport.
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SA: And when did you become CEO?
LN: I became the CEO in 2010, so John was CEO from 2005 to 2010 and so I reapplied at that point in time.
SA: Which was a brave thing to do in a way?
LN: My only hesitation was many of the panel members that were going to appoint in 2010 were, some of them were the same as had rejected me in 2005. And actually I put in that I was quite late with my application and the reason that I applied is that I’d always wanted to do it and I thought, if somebody better than me gets it, I am absolutely fine with that but if somebody that I don’t respect gets it, then I wouldn’t be happy so I must put myself forward.
And there was a funny scenario in which Tim Hollingsworth who is now CEO of Sport England, went on to become the CEO of the British Paralympic Association, he was a close colleague here at the time, and he won’t mind me saying that I had encourage him to apply for the job as the CEO. I said I’m not going for it Tim, I’ll support you Tim and I think you should put your hat in the ring, it would be great to have a great internal candidate.
And then I had to break the news to him very late in the day, I’m sorry Tim, I’ve actually decided to put my hat in the ring and we’ve had good laughs about that since but I was absolutely delighted. Especially the timing of it in 2010 to be the CEO of this organisation through 2012 was just an extraordinary privilege.
SA: And what kind of leader are you would you say?
LN: Well I’ve grown as a leader. The great thing about leading this organisation that really has kept me all those years sort of hooked to it is its values as an organisation. And I say to people now, if your own values align with the values of the organisation it’s a powerful mix. So our values at UK Sport are commitment to excellence, working together and openness and integrity. I very quickly thought, well how do I relate to that?
And commitment to excellence, so my father was a teacher, my mother was a midwife. I always felt as if I had to make them proud and I had 5 older brothers and sisters I wanted to be better than them so I was very competitive. So I was always committed to being the best I could be, at whatever I was doing. And then the working together was if you grow up with a sport like netball and it was always team sports for me, you are naturally a team player and so you can’t achieve anything on your own. And then the openness and integrity probably goes back to being brought up in a Catholic family as a youngster. I’d go to confession and confess. So telling the truth was always an absolute part of me. And so doing the right thing, no matter how hard it is, which I think is actually about integrity is just a fundamental part of who I am and how I operate. And so I hope if you asked the team at UK Sport how I lead, I hope they would say that they can see the values play out in the way that I operate. I’ve had to learn. Coaching is a really important skill as a leader. I don’t think I’m a natural coach because of the chemistry background. More of a problem-solver, sort of I can find the answers so I’ve had to learn to moderate that and actually learn to ask the right questions and coach but it wasn’t something that came naturally to me as a leader. And I think that sense of team is strong at UK Sport and work hard but have fun as well.
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SA: One of my later questions was that UK Sport is renowned really for its internal culture and the employees, and I wonder - you’ve explained both in terms of your role as a leader there - is there anything about recruitment and training – I really feel that with all the people that we’ve worked with here, do you feel that they emit those same values?
LN: Yes, we talk a lot about our values here at UK Sport and one of the interesting things we’ve done over the last 18 months or so is to – and some of this perhaps going back to the consequences of the issues that were felt externally within the system, the criticisms of potentially a ‘win at all cost’ attitude and behavioural challenges that were being made quite public in terms of individuals’ relationships with athletes. So what UK Sport is excellent at is if there’s a challenge, let’s find a solution to it.
Move quickly to resolving it, accepting it, analysing it and resolving it. And so what’s being created to support the system is a culture health check process which has been developed by the team. What we’ve always said is, whatever we expect of the sports we have to expect of ourselves. So equally we’ve conducted a culture health check internally which is about what people are seeing, hearing and feeling, what the team are seeing, hearing and feeling and what they think we are good at and what things could be improved. It’s seen as an organisation with amazing privilege to have the responsibilities we have that are so significant in terms of helping athletes be the very best they possibly can be.
SA: As CEO you’ve had extraordinary success in terms of delivering almost precisely what you’ve predicted in terms of medal counts with record performances in London, Sochi and Rio. Can you tell us a little bit about that process of the prediction, how that evolved?
LN: So we’ve always taken the approach when we predict an outcome at an Olympic Games or a Paralympic Games, it has to be real. It has to come from the sum of the possibilities in each of the sports. So the discussion with sports began way back in 2006 on the start of the journey to 2012. What’s that range of possibility that each and every sport could achieve? And let’s invest in that range of possibility and so the range is the bottom number is the number below which we’d all be disappointed if that sport didn’t achieve that number.
And the top of the range is if everything went well on the day for every athlete’s really got that performance potential then that’s the number of medals that that sport could produce. UK Sport invests in that medal range of possibility – there’s no guarantees in performance sport but there are possibilities - and then the sum of that total range makes up the range of possibility of the outcome for Team GB and Paralympics GB at the Games.
And so those possibilities are reviewed annually so that the range then gets tighter and as we move towards the Games, just prior to the actual Games itself, within a month or so of the Games, then the actual range of possibility is announced.
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What’s informed that since 2012 has been the more forensic approach that the team takes, and the sports are taking to analysing that performance potential. So there is a sport analytics team here at UK Sport and since 2012 the team has been helping sports be more competent in terms of analysing the potential of individual athletes. Tracking athletes. Athlete performance data is freely available – it’s very easy to do that if you can gather that data and analyse that data. And that’s an example, what I’ve seen here at UK Sport in the period since I started is in each 4-year period is a big step up in some way, shape or form. In the period up until 2004 it was just about supporting more athletes and more sports.
2004-2008 it was actually really focusing on performance reviews and management through a mission 2012 process we called that and building on that to 2012. Post 2012 it was sport analytics and actually being more forensic. 2016 to now, big focus on culture.
SA: 863 medals have been won by British athletes in the Summer and Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games during your tenure. Now you’ve left, are you able to tell us have you any favourites there or is it a bit like your children and you’re not allowed to say who your favourites are?
LN: There are so many and you know each and every one is just incredibly special. So if I’m reflecting back on my career with UK Sport and I’m thinking of first of all getting the job, amazing. Coming into this organisation and being able to create a team. Actually going to my first Games in 2000 and seeing Paralympic sport for the first time and actually I remember sitting in the swimming pool, I was just blown away in terms of how amazing Paralympic sport is and what can be achieved. 2005 being in the middle of Trafalgar Square when that bid was won and I did a radio interview prior to the announcement and the interviewer said, Can you just pretend we’ve won and actually just react? So I just made up that I’d just did whatever I could and I had a little transistor radio and an ear piece in my ear and I went back into the middle of the crowd with my colleagues waiting for this announcement.
And you know there’s the time delay sometimes and it comes through at different times, well it came into my ear piece that we’d won prior to it coming onto the big screen and so I jumped in the air for a split second before anybody else and I felt these eyes looking at me and then everybody else jumped in the air. So that is the funniest … and I just remember thinking, I was asked to pretend but you can never replicate those emotions. It was absolutely amazing and people were crying and it was just a fantastic moment for British sport.
And then I move on then to 2006 when we had an amazing decision of government to announce a significant increase of funds which would enable us to see this journey through to 2012 which was a real vote of confidence in us as an organisation, and so the responsibilities we had then were not just for the next Games but it was for the period right up to 2012.
SA: And how much was that increase in funding at the time?
LN: We asked for up to £300m. We got £200m but £200m extra was a big, big uplift. It showed how important this was to the government at the time. And then 2008, ‘cos we’d won 28 medals, talk Olympic, but the progress on the Paras, paralleled this. So 28 medals in Sydney.
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Thirty medals in Athens. Forty-seven medals in Beijing. That uplift was just amazing and it was within the range of possibility, we knew that, but to have achieved that in Beijing just showed that by working together, by really focusing our support and with the athletes now having had a long period of actually being supported, to be able to train full-time. But then we knew the system was working. And then of course the journey to 2012 when I was CEO during the 2012 Games was an amazing, about 65 Olympic Medals and 120 Paralympic Medals and every one of those was very special.
And you could feel the impact on the nation. And then to go on from there to better that in Rio. It was quite interesting ‘cos straight after London 2012 everybody had worked together for a common cause because suddenly there was a massive platform, so our discussions here were about how do we keep the system together now? Because that London focus, we are moving through it now. And so it was a brave decision to announce very quickly that we would aim to do what no nation had done before and win more medals at the next Games.
But the aim was actually to just keep everybody together, keep everybody on it. Let’s not lose this collective working and sharing across sports that we had facilitated with sports helping each other. Because the collective result was almost more important than the results of the individual sports. And so we did keep that together than to 2016 and so that was very special to be in Rio in 2016.
SA: Fantastic. Beautiful summary of the exciting moments of your time here. You alluded a little bit, there’s been some criticism of UK Sport all or nothing funding system in the past and whether that emphasis on winning for some sports meant they neglected their duty of care. Do you think UK Sport now has the right balance between delivering those medals and athlete welfare?
LN: In performance sport, athletes learn from their victories and they learn from their defeats so there’s always something to learn from issues when they arise and from negative experience. So I would say it was difficult at the time when issues that were evident in the sport, and it started really with British Cycling and it was very difficult, very public and it was predominantly about the behaviour of an individual but it was reflecting badly on the whole system.
The immediate reaction is to feel really, really frustrated that in fact an individual hasn’t handled their responsibilities well, that an athlete had been adversely affected by that and then to feel a bit defensive about the system because we’ve got is a system of 1000 athletes and probably the same number of people working right across sport, so a huge number of massively committed and passionate people doing fantastically amazing great work on behalf of the athletes to enable them to succeed.
And for individual issues, and each one is significant, and important and needs to be addressed, to reflect badly on the whole system I thought at the time was unfair and as an individual you immediately start to feel a bit defensive, you feel the need to be a bit defensive. But then when you think about it, you do learn, everybody learns from things that don’t go, you learn more from things that don’t go right because you stop and reflect. And so it felt difficult until we were very clear as an organisation exactly what needed to be happening here. So there were a list of six things that we were going to immediately do and we agreed and we announced we would do it.
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First of all, we would appoint a Head of Sport Integrity here at UK Sport . We would establish policies and guidance so that in fact sports and individuals within sports could manage their responsibilities, had a framework for managing their responsibilities better. We would invest more in the British Athletes Commission to strengthen up that organisation, so that if athletes did have issues they had somewhere to go to be able to voice those before they escalate into even more difficult circumstances.
We would invest more in people development. We had done a lot of leadership development here at UK Sport. Had we focused enough on the cultural aspects of that? Probably not so we would add more substance to our people development work. We would look at, at UK Sport we have an individual that had responsibility for performance advisers, oversight of say abut five/six sports. We’d look at how that case management operated to see whether we could gather more intelligence and spot some issues. We would create this culture health check which has been an amazingly successful piece of work.
Really drawing out what staff and athletes see, hear and feel about the culture in their own organisations. What could be better and where there are issues and how they might be resolved. And then just really talking more, beyond the walls of UK Sport about values and behaviours and how important that is. But fundamentally I do think this is down to good leadership in each and every sport. And I think that it’s been a bit of a wake-up call. Leaders at every level in sport are respected responsibilities within our own organisations.
I’ve always felt very strongly about is it’s important not to blur the edges of responsibilities and accountabilities and for individuals to accept their individual, and for organisations to accept their responsibilities and their accountabilities and be clear about that. Because only by having that clarity can you then be clear about who is responsible for resolving this particular issue.
In retrospect I’m really glad those issues became very public because if they hadn’t become very public, we wouldn’t have known about them and more might have been occurring in any organisation. But we also wouldn’t have actually felt compelled to take the actions we’ve taken since. We would have got to culture at some point in time, we might not have got to it in this cycle.
SA: It must be very tough for you as the face of the organisation to face criticism for that or the sports feeling hard done by and issues around cuts in funding. You always appear incredibly calm and reasoned in media interviews but do those negative comments affect you personally?
LN: When there are limited funds then there are some winners and there’s some losers. And it’s really hard for those sports that actually miss out on that funding. It doesn’t affect me personally in so far as I know that those decisions are right, they’re strategically right for this organisation to make, so the criticism doesn’t affect me but I do feel for the sports that miss out. I understand how difficult it is for a leader in those sports to have to manage the significant reduction in the income that they then have available to run their organisations and support their athletes.
And I understand why that criticism, because they have a responsibility to their sport to criticise the organisation that’s made a decision not to invest in them. So I don’t take it personally. I understand why they speak out and speak so emotionally about the impact. I’ve always felt very confident the decisions we made at UK Sport are the right decisions to achieve the outcome that we are charged with striving to achieve.
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SA: I’ve been very fortunate this summer, I was at a few events where you received a standing ovation which must have been a very wonderful and emotional experience. So what’s been the hardest point for you leaving an organisation where you are clearly so loved and respected and you’ve had such amazing success?
LN: I announced that I was standing down last November and I’d been thinking about it for some time. Predominantly because I really do need to spend more time with the family. This job is all absorbing and if you’re not actually working it’s going on in the head all the time. Watching sport it’s always with a different eye on it. It’s not sport for enjoyment, it’s sport for what does this mean? So I’ve thought for some time I need to find the right time to step down from UK Sport and there had been moments on this journey when I’ve thought, okay I think it probably should be next year.
And then something would happen but I always wanted to leave this organisation in a good place. It had to be the right time. I wanted to know that the people around me were settled before I stepped out and then coincidentally the International Netball Federation Presidency role was coming up and I was encouraged to think about applying for that. But my priority was to make sure UK Sport was in a good place at the time that I did step out.
SA: You obviously are now President at the International Netball Federation. So what does that role entail for you?
LN: Well the President’s role of an International Federation is like being the Chair of any organisation. It’s a real privilege to be going back into that role in the sport that I think made me who I am today is something I feel it’s right to give back to that sport. Because if I hadn’t had all those years of experience of being CEO of England Netball I would not have got this job at UK Sport and I would not have enjoyed such an amazing period working with the colleagues that I have worked with. So it’s an organisation, there are around 20 million people that are playing netball around the world. There are about 100 countries playing netball around the world but probably only about 50-something that are full-on affiliated members.
And it’s a great sport, predominantly for women and it can provide other women like I had with leadership opportunities and grow their confidence to enable them to succeed in life and many other different ways. So, it is a job in an organisation that is very rich in people resource but it’s poor in financial resource. That could be my challenge to try to generate more income, to really propel or fast track some of the work that we know that can be achieved through the sport of netball internationally.
SA: And obviously Olympic inclusion has long been an ambition for netball. My youngest daughter often says why is walking an Olympic sport and netball’s not … a family of netballers you can tell can’t you? What do you feel it will take to make that happen?
LN: It’s certainly an ambition, formally it’s an ambition of the organisation, of the International Netball Federation so it has to be an ambition of me as the President. I think it’s important for me to be pragmatic about this. There is a range of criteria that the IOC uses to make its decisions about what sports are included and what sports aren’t and a lot of that is about eyeballs on the sport and its potential to attract spectators or engage people in the sport.
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So my advice to the netball family is let’s concentrate on those factors that are important to the IOC but good for netball anyway because there is no guarantees here. There is more movement towards individual sports where many more countries than the countries that compete in netball are able to compete and more urban sports. So it’s important to keep an eye on the criteria that the IOC is using, look at those elements. What’s great for netball anyway? Let’s see if we can not be distracted by it but really develop the sport for the sport’s sake. And we’ll be in a good place and if it happens, it happens.
SA: Being primarily a sport for women it’s obviously something that makes netball completely unique. You’ve talked about those leadership opportunities for women too. Would opening it out to include more men in the game risk the very DNA of the sport would you say?
LN: It’s interesting, I don’t think it’s a risk. There are men involved in sport, there are men playing the sport, there are men that are umpires, there are men that are Chairs, administrators. I think it’s an inevitability. I don’t think it’s a threat, I don’t think it’s a risk, I think it’s an opportunity. I think it’s inevitability, it’s just a matter of time yeah.
SA: Whilst we have some remarkable women currently in really senior roles in women’s sport and the balance of boards is definitely improving, there still seems to be a long way to go in terms of women in performance roles. So why do you think we still have so few elite female coaches and performance directors?
LN: That would be one of my disappointments. I haven’t been able to crack that one. But we do know more about why. Because over recent, each Autumn there’s a World Class Performance Conference where 400 people from the performance sporting industry get together for a conference that UK Sport organises and delivers. And over a couple of those conferences I actually invited the women attendees to actually gather together and just have a conversation about how they feel about the opportunities that they have. What might be the blockers to that. So there are a number of things that I heard from those women that actually can help inform an approach to potentially unlocking that.
One, is they wanted to see more role-models of women that have succeeded in achieving significant roles in performance sport. Secondly, they wanted more networking opportunities to be co ordinated to enable them to have those discussions and share their experiences with other women in similar circumstances. Thirdly there was a view that in fact some of the appointment panels, selection panels, were male dominated and actually could that be addressed? And so that, there’s a People Development Team at UK Sport that is now looking at that and looking at the whole recruitment process.
SA: That feels quite fundamental.
LN: Yes it is and also fundamental that there are some leaders that can be used by UK Sport to, for example, insist that a senior management team has got to have a female member on the senior management team in some way, shape or form. And then so the last one was actually was about the culture of the organisations. And what I was hearing from the women is they wanted more of a developmental culture embedded into their environments as opposed to a managing and doing culture. This is what we see in performance sport, there’s a hell of a lot to do , committed people out there doing it but they wanted more of a developmental culture to be embedded. And I think that’s what the culture health checks are picking up in terms of what you’re seeing, hearing and feeling and what you want more of and what are the opportunities to grow while in role and develop to be able to progress. The lifestyle bit was more about the flexibility. So why not have job-share roles? Or creche provision which many employers are thinking about and some provide now. So we’ve gathered that information, we know why, now it’s a matter of what can we at UK Sport do to support addressing some of those things? And what must the sports themselves actually really take responsibility for?
SA: And is there an ambition, a number target or time that you’re looking to?
LN: Not at this point in time but I think that’s where this will head. What’s interesting is that for the first time over recent months, what the people development team has done here is mapped out the complete picture of all the people that are in these roles in the various organisations. So now for the first time we’ve been able to very easily see the makeup of the senior management teams, in performance senior management teams in each of the sports so you can see where, for example, where there are women and where there aren’t women.
But we’ve never actually looked at it. Never had that picture before but we have also a Head of Talent role in that people development team who is looking at where is the talent in the system? Where are the opportunities? How do we actually move talent around the system? So there’s a lot more work now, strategically being managed by the people development team here to oversee the staffing structure picture.
SA: Fascinating, that next level of making the system …
LN: Yeah, and you need that data. You need those facts and stats before you can actually say, so what are the solutions? What are the actions we can take to actually make the positive change here? I’d be really interested to see what that looks like in 4 years’ time, 8 years’ time.
SA: I was going to ask you around your experience and whether being a woman in your role in the sector has had a negative impact. It doesn’t feel that you have been disadvantaged by being a woman through your career
LN: No, I haven’t been disadvantaged by being a woman but I explained my background of working with the Women’s into University Athletic Board and then netball, a woman’s organisation. So when I put my hat in the ring to actually join UK Sport, I personally had a doubt about whether I could work with organisations that were more male dominated. So I don’t think there was an obstacle actually on the recruitment side of it, it was a personal sort of, just a lingering doubt, can I make this step into this world?
Because I’d been working so long in women’s sport. And as soon as I had stepped over that threshold and into the role I thought, why on earth did I even think that it was a problem because it wasn’t and it never has been? So, no I’ve never encountered any problems at all. I’m very comfortable in the roles that I’ve had here and very accepted and thankfully quite respected.
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SA: Finally some advice for younger women entering the sector now, perhaps coming in where you were at 24,25, those early stages. Are there any gems of advice you would offer to those on their career path?
LN: One thing I would say, don’t hold yourself back. Nobody is the finished article for any job they apply for so go for it, absolutely go for it. Don’t make the decision of the selection panel for them, let them make that decision. First thing is just go for it, believe in yourself, go for it. I think generally the biggest challenge with women is actually feeling you’ve got to be the finished article for a job you apply for and you never are. You never, ever are and I’ve been learning on the job ever since I started my career and it’s turned out okay.
SA: I’m incredibly grateful to Liz for meeting with me and sharing so many amazing memories from her time at UK Sport. We wish her well in her new role with the International Netball Federation and here’s hoping that the sport might one day make it into the Olympics.