staying the distance
“As a business leader I recognise we can learn a lot from sport. Staying the Distance sets out 13 lessons in a clear and powerful way.”
WHY SHOULD WE BE READING IT?
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. However 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.
“Catherine’s book demonstrates the important lessons that sports can teach us about life and leadership. It’s a must-read.”
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“Catherine successfully weaves together her own extensive experiences and those of some of the great leadership experts out there into a very engaging book. A great read with real takeaways for aspiring and experienced leaders alike.”
“There are so many invaluable lessons to be learned from the world of elite sports – Staying the Distance takes many of the best ones and shows exactly how they can, and deserve to be, incorporated into business life.”
“Fascinating and insightful. Drawing on her incredible depth and breadth of knowledge about sport and leadership, Catherine Baker reveals the deeper leadership lessons that lie within sport if we look beneath the shiny surface. Ensuring we see beyond superficial motivational clichés, this book offers leaders an in-depth tour of some vital and overlooked leadership insights from sport.”
HOW DID THE BOOK COME ABOUT?
A train journey. The Pandemic. And an idea that had been germinating…
Let’s start with the pandemic. The pandemic exposed and amplified many issues that had already been growing among too many senior leaders. Working at a pace that was not sustainable. Burning out. Not bringing their best performance to the table in a way that ensured they could do so day after day after day. Not only was this being highlighted by so much of the leadership and business news and media, this was something I was seeing at the coalface through my work coaching senior leaders. It was also clear that leaders were wrestling with the issue of how to get the best out of those they led in a sustainable and long-term way, again exacerbated by fall-outs from the Pandemic such as the Great Resignation. For a long-time I had been reading pretty much every book that came out on leadership, and always read with particular interest those that drew lessons from sport. Why? Because I know with absolute clarity, from all the work I do and all the experiences I have been privileged to have, that sport can teach us some brilliant lessons on leadership. However, I was also frustrated. Frustrated because so many of these books just focused on high performance. On winning. And I felt that we were all missing a trick. There was so much more that sport had to teach us, on what were becoming even more important areas: those which would help leaders understand how to improve, perform and achieve over the long-term. In a way that was sustainable. And how to get the best out of those they led in a similar way.
Which brings us to the train journey: towards the end of the first lock-down, when travel was allowed, I was on a train down from York, where I live, to London. I overheard a conversation between two women, both clearly leaders in their organisations. They were discussing how relentless the recent period had been, how it was clearly not going to be sustainable, and how it had made them reflect on long-term, sustained performance, and what goes into it. This was the catalyst for me. I sat there and thought of all the stories, advice and insight I could give them. But they didn’t need me to interrupt their conversation, and besides, they were only two people.
Which brings us to the idea that had been germinating…When I was interviewed for my training contract at Magic Circle Law Firm Linklaters, and they asked me why I wanted to be a lawyer, I said it was because I wanted to help people. Not the best answer to give in an interview with a global leading commercial law firm, but somehow I still got the job. As, 16 years later, I moved into my second career, focusing on leadership and mindset, I realised that in essence I was still essentially doing the same thing: helping people. And that whilst through coaching I could help a certain number of people directly, I only had so many hours in the day. And that due to the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic, so many leaders needed help and support. I had already worked out my Mission: To inspire belief and enable progress. And writing a book that distilled down the great but previously unseen lessons from sport on long-term, sustained performance, in a way that was so accessible and practical that leaders could literally pick it up as needed, seemed the right way forward.