If you want to see a high‑performance team with compassion at its heart, there are regular 90-minute(-plus) masterclasses from the Lionesses free on UK screens at the moment. We’ve seen a few individual athletes start to role‑model self-compassion publicly over recent times, ranging from Simone Biles to Ben Stokes. Now we are seeing the power of compassion in team performance.
Compassion has not been a traditional hallmark of sport. With its UK roots in 19th-century British public schools and universities, modern sport developed as way of creating strong military leaders, training them in the resilience defined in those times by grit and a stiff upper lip. Fear and harsh criticism were essential to toughening up players and soldiers alike. The “tough guy” narrative was dramatised and reinforced by 20th-century media stereotypes and Hollywood’s heroes and became engrained into sport and society.
I’ve heard countless stories resembling the prevailing culture I found when I joined the Olympic rowing team in the mid-1990s. We were expected to suffer after mistakes or losses to show that we truly cared, and everyone believed coaches needed to be severe and unforgiving to get results. These approaches still exist. But an alternative approach with compassion at its core addresses dual aims of performance and wellbeing for those with greater ambitions.
This isn’t some fluffy, soft option which undermines hard work, as devotees of the earlier traditional sporting mindset might decry. Research across branches of psychology – behavioural, sports, positive and clinical – shows how compassion creates the strongest foundation for resilience and sustained performance under pressure whether in sport, the military, healthcare or business. Compassion taps into our biological hard-wiring. Rather than activating our threat system which evolved to help us survive way back, compassion helps us to feel (biologically) safe and protected, leaving us free to learn, connect with others and start exploring what we’re capable of.
The continuous need to improve performance has led top coaches from Carlo Ancelotti to Jürgen Klopp, Gareth Southgate to Sarina Wiegman to appreciate that high performance requires levels of support to match the level of challenge. When you provide that, players start thriving while striving to achieve more. Far from people getting away with less, you can push them harder if you also give them the support they need to succeed, avoiding mental and physical burnout.
The dictionary definition of compassion includes the recognition of another’s suffering and the desire to alleviate it. That connects easily to Wiegman’s natural response after Lauren James’s red card against Nigeria, pointing out how human it is to err, focusing on the learning opportunity and providing the support needed to do that without fear of reproach: “Unfortunately, in life and in football, you make mistakes and this is one of those moments, and she’ll get a hug from me.” The rest of the team responded similarly. How could judgment or criticism help her individual or their collective team performance? Fear, guilt and shame are performance-killers. But how many elite athletes experience that depth of support in moments of crisis and failure?
Compassion has been shown to decrease fear of failure and increase the likelihood of trying again when failure does happen. The ability to admit mistakes, embrace accountability for our actions and own the responsibility to make the necessary changes is the mindset needed in the search for improved performance. Dr Kristin Neff, the US psychologist and global compassion guru, found that compassion connects naturally with mastery-focused goals (ie constant improvement, continuous learning), rather than short-term result-focused goals (ie winning the next match). Sports psychologists were teaching me 20 years ago to focus on the process and become world class at improving if I wanted to maximise my chances of winning. The more help we can get to do this, the better the performance over the long term.
Rooted in compassion, a different coach-athlete relationship develops. Loughborough University’s Prof Sophia Jowett researches the performance and wellbeing opportunities that come from challenging traditional hierarchical, power‑based relationships. These create unhelpful competition, cliques, silence, risk-aversion, compliance, burnout, lack of feedback, fearfulness and stress. That sounds familiar if you’ve watched past England men’s football teams.
Jowett’s work shows the benefits of coach‑athlete relationships built on an equal footing, characterised by collaboration, alignment, engagement, risk-taking, regular feedback, initiative, creativity and confidence. It means coaches standing alongside their athletes, not opposite them, as Wiegman does so naturally. I’ve seen the Lionesses’ brilliant psychologist Dr Kate Hays develop that with coaches and athletes across her work with Boat Race crews, Olympic divers and now footballers.
What Southgate started when he immediately consoled the Colombia player who missed his penalty as England went through to the World Cup quarter-finals in 2018 – evoking an outpouring of positive responses and national admiration – is normal practice for the footballers at this World Cup. Chloe Kelly, for instance, consoled the Nigeria goalkeeper seconds after sealing victory with her powerful penalty. Showing compassion for opponents as well as teammates at this tournament sends a powerful message that “we are all in this together”, that we need each other to perform at an ever higher level, while all the time serving a greater shared purpose as global pioneers of women’s sport.
It returns to the original definition of competition from the Latin “competere” – to strive with, not against, others. These teams play with their heart and soul to win each game, yet know they are part of something much bigger, challenging social barriers, changing public perceptions of women’s sport and creating strong role models for young girls around the world.
At a time when society is rife with stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, discrimination and corruption, the Lionesses are bringing joy, responsibility, connection and integrity, founded on the bedrock of compassion. Yes, I include integrity even with James’s red card. Integrity isn’t about never doing anything wrong, it’s about owning up to it, being accountable, apologising and learning from it, supported by those around you.
Research from the Kings Fund advocates for more compassionate leaders in healthcare to enable colleagues to be open, non-blaming, supportive and innovative. This topic features increasingly in military leadership academies, headteacher conferences and business leadership programmes. If you don’t have time for a business school course or industry conference, then simply watch the Lionesses. Not just to see who scores, but to watch a live how-to human manual of compassion-based mindsets, behaviours and relationships in action.
Cath Bishop is a triple Olympian, leadership and culture coach, adviser to The True Athlete Project and author of The Long Win
