Sport, Leadership and Social Change Webinar Series
Join us for this interactive webinar series as we critically examine how leadership, communication, and sport intersect to influence our culture and impact social change. Sport has been a platform for addressing crises of power, gender, and race, not to mention a global pandemic, and has brought into focus a need for change. Political, cultural, humanitarian, and health pressures have challenged the sports community to rethink the role and power of sport within society. Each episode will aim to shed light on the ways sport…
The Culture Coach
When leading the culture building of your team, organization or community, floating your initiatives, plans, and strategy with an outside expert can ensure success. We offer Culture Coaching to organizational leaders by providing an experienced perspective, evidence based tools and strategies, research processes, a theoretically grounded rationale for your choices, and a clear path for enacting or facilitating change.
When we gamble with the integrity of sport, we risk losing the values it offers
When sport leaders place winning or money at the centre of sport, a “win at all costs” mentality prevails, rationalizing and indirectly promoting behaviours like cheating, inequity and corruption — and the costs are well-documented.
Compromising on sport values creates cultural fractures, contradictions and incongruities across sport, which then undermine public trust and the participation that comes with it.
Tired Mom Runs
Women in Sport Vlogs by Marjanna Rakai – a discussion about gender equity in sport to honour National Women and Girls in Sport Day.
Hockey Canada’s issues go beyond a few bad apples — the entire system needs to be re-engineered
By Dr. Jennifer Walinga More than a few bad apples Psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s “Lucifer Effect” contends that, when dealing with abuse, it’s not just a matter of removing a few “bad apples” — often, the whole barrel is spoiled. The entire barrel-making system must be re-engineered to produce only the finest barrels to hold and preserve apples with integrity. Sport safeguarding advocates argue that, while efforts like the recently announced Future of Sport in Canada Commission may address systemic issues by re-engineering sport leadership and governance structures, the…
To change for the better, Canadian sport needs leadership from the bottom up
https://theconversation.com/to-change-for-the-better-canadian-sport-needs-leadership-from-the-bottom-up-202482 Canadian sport has been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years. National sporting bodies that govern bobsleigh and skeleton, alpine skiing, water polo, boxing, gymnastics, artistic swimming, soccer, hockey, rugby and rowing have all faced major criticism for abuse, neglect and discrimination. University sport teams have also faced their share of scandals including Lethbridge, St. Francis Xavier, Windsor, Victoria and Guelph. And amateur clubs aren’t immune either. Athletes often recount how, at the very least, sport built their character and at the very most, saved their lives. But currently, Canadian sport itself needs rebuilding. Imbalance of power Efforts are underway to clean up sport in…
(Re)building cultural integrity in sport: The mechanics, tools and blueprint for change
https://sirc.ca/blog/rebuilding-cultural-integrity-in-sport/ Sport is the most watched, celebrated, supported, and engaging social endeavour in the world (Hulteen et coll., 2017). Sport is inherently emotionally and narratively captivating, embodying and upholding principles of positive and sustainable human, social, and environmental development. But the potential for sport to do good for participants and society more broadly relies on sport cultures and environments that centre participants and uphold positive social values. Cultural change is not as difficult as we may believe, and we all have the power to shift and…
The challenges of shifting to a safer sport culture: High performance coach and administrator perspectives
https://sirc.ca/blog/challenges-safe-sport-culture/
Linking Arms Against Power Imbalance and Abuse in Sport: Rowing Canada Aviron
Members of Rowing Canada Aviron including former board members, clubs, universities, provinces, associations, and national team athletes and alumni recently mobilized their collective voice and rights to enact change across their national sport organization. After a series of abuse and negligence claims beginning in 2017 and exposed in Rubin Thomlinson’s Independent Review, 3 directors of the RCA Board resigned citing values misalignment. Twenty-one member clubs and universities (20% of the membership) acted in accordance with Canada’s Not for Profit Act to requisition a special meeting…
Podcast: Mental Health for Performance
“The real leading factor are the core values of commitment to each other and discipline and a culture of respect, of authenticity really sharing who you are, being who you are, but also managing and respecting the diversity of the group. And that was central to our philosophy that no one person is more important than another. And that’s just shaped my whole theory around leadership.” – Dr. Jennifer Walinga https://drtoogood.com/podcast/jennifer-walinga/ If you are here to learn about leadership, teamwork and success from the inside…
Winning Well, Not at all Costs: Why Canada Urgently Needs a New Vision for Sport
Athletes from almost every national sport organization in Canada are rising up in hurt and anger to denounce toxic cultures of abuse, negligence and discrimination. Athletics, artistic swimming, gymnastics, rugby, bobsled, hockey, soccer and rowing are banding together to demand a respectful, healthy and inclusive sport system for all. Athletes from all over the country are calling on sport leaders to make a systemic change. While I am encouraged that Canada’s sport minister, Pascale St-Onge, is mandating that sporting organizations follow the new independent third-party auditing process and explore better oversight frameworks, it’s not enough. As an athlete and sport researcher, I…
Blog Post: Safer Sport is not Boring Sport: Challenging The Myth of Machismo in Sport
There is nothing better than a great tackle! The intensity, power, and aggression is thrilling! The Safesport movement, on the surface, seems to threaten this intensity. Some interpret a safer sport environment as boring, more careful, less intense, a sanitized version of sport that focuses on ‘participation ribbons’ for all. What the Safesport movement also seems to reveal is our infatuation with violence and our assumption that violence is a necessary element of sport. Some sport leaders argue that violence is an acceptable norm in…
Fear, Failure and F*cking Up: Victoria’s F*ck Up Night
Victoria ‘f**kup’ event shines a light on failure Victoria event helps to remove the stigma and isolation from screwing up NINA GROSSMAN Feb. 27, 2019 4:30 p.m. ENTERTAINMENT LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT F**kup Nights shines a light on failure, helping the speaker and the audience learn from screw-ups. (From left to right: Richard Eaton (speaker), Ian Chisholm (Co-founder), Jennifer Walinga (speaker), Jim Hayhurst (Co-founder) and Ken Wylie (speaker)).
Blog Post: Dickheads Allowed: Why we Cling to the Coach-Centric Model of Sport Leadership
“Why is there such a pervasive problem in elite sport with serious misconduct by coaches?” asks John Hoberman, sports historian at U Texas in the film Broken Trust, “and this is overwhelmingly a male population.” Hoberman ponders how “many coaches have found it necessary to establish authoritarian relationships with their athletes…that this young person has to be molded and shaped and brainwashed… and enter into what is often a dangerously dependent relationship with the coach, who, in any number of cases is just going to…
Blog Post: Sport: Investment or Cost?
I’ve often struggled with the characterization of elite athletes making ‘sacrifices’ to represent their country or reach a pinnacle in sport. Articles that discuss what an athlete ‘gives up’ to succeed, misconstrue investment with cost. Personally, I did not feel that training and competing for Canada was a sacrifice. I did not feel that I was ‘putting my life on hold’. I certainly did not believe that sport was ‘costing me’ anything. Rowing for Canada in the 80’s and 90’s was a gift, an education,…
Building a Club Culture of Thriving, Not Just Surviving (Row BC Webinar)
Club and Professional Development Workshops Wednesday April 29 2020 @2:00 pm Collaborate Webinar Link HERE Running and sustaining a club can be exhausting and unrelenting. The same, aging group of volunteers raise their hands for an increasing number of tasks. The work is complex, and the maintenance never ends. Rowing as a sport can also be exhausting, relentless and unforgiving. Injury and/or burnout are common outcomes. For club leaders, coaches, and rowers alike, it is important to learn how to ‘thrive’ not just ‘survive’ in…
Building a Culture of “Winning with Benefits”, not Winning at all Costs (Rowing BC webinar)
ROWING BC CLUB DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS WEDNESDAY APRIL 15 2020 @2:00 PM DR. JEN WALINGA WEBINAR RECORDING LINK HERE Too often, winning can become the only focus in sport at the expense of other important goals and values. It is also easy to believe that we have to resort to a ‘win at all costs’ mentality in order to achieve gold medals. However, winning and more is possible, and more probable, without resorting to harmful practices in sport. During this interactive workshop you will: Explore the…
