Canoe slalom coach Gareth Wilson has hailed the Leading to Perform programme for helping him understand his “life purpose”.
Leading to Perform is one of UK Sport’s development programmes for leaders in the high-performance community, designed to enhance leadership potential within elite sporting roles. As a podium technical coach for Paddle UK, Wilson has been leaning on his experience in the programme to help gear his athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympics. And in full knowledge of the highs and lows that elite-level competition can bring, he admits that Leading to Perform has allowed him to completely change his perspective on his line of work.
“Being part of Leading to Perform helped me really start to understand myself, what my life purpose was, and what I really enjoyed about the things that I do,” he said.
“I think being part of a cohort of like-minded people who were both very, very challenging but also incredibly supportive allowed you to get under the skin of why you're there, of what your role is, but also who you are as a person.
“It really helped me flourish and really changed my perspective on the way I see things right now.”
Of all the experiences on the programme, there was one that particularly stuck out in Wilson’s mind - and while it may sound slightly bizarre, he insists that communicating with horses was an invaluable exercise in helping him connect with himself.
“The experience that was most valuable to me sounds really bizarre, but we went out and we learned to communicate with horses,” Wilson added. “It wasn't horse whispering, but it was something which was incredibly powerful.
“It was about learning, about connecting with yourself in order to be able to connect with somebody else or something else in that case.
“One of the most poignant lessons that I took from it was, through this model called the ‘I am’ model, trying to understand who we are and some of the masks that we wear and why we might wear them.
“For me, one of the things that I think about on a daily basis now is, ‘What mask am I wearing? Am I actually turning up as myself, or am I turning up as someone else?’
“I think I've probably done that for a long time, so that was a bit of an unlock moment for me.”
Something Wilson has experienced countless times as an elite level coach is selection, and all the drama that goes with it. While guiding his athletes to their sporting dreams can hardly be beaten, not everyone reaches the mountain top. Admitting that the hardships of selection have taken its toll on his mental health in the past, Wilson has learnt how to be there for his athletes, without taking on the emotional weight of others.
“It does take its toll, certainly in terms of how I separate my role from my personal life,” he said. “For a very long time, they have been the same thing. I have been just the coach.
“You really want to be there with the guys and the girls in these moments, whether they're amazing ones or really challenging ones, and how you let that emotion wash off you without taking it on is really, really challenging.
“I'd rather be able to kind of immerse myself in that space, to be there with them than to have a wall up in front of it and just be robotic.
“I'm not saying that I've nailed it by any stretch of the imagination, but my learning is how can I be there in that moment, but then still be me and not carry everybody else's emotion.”
Hear more from Gareth about his experience in the video here.
Learn more about Paddle UK on their website.