Career periodisation and how it can help all practitioners

Strength and conditioning coaches and sports scientists can often feel overwhelmed with how ultra competitive the industry is and what is expected of them. Josh Fletcher and Dan Howells have been supporters of the concept of “career periodisation” for some time and we wanted to get some insights into what its about and how practitioners can periodise their own careers as they do with their athletes training.

What is career periodisation?

Quite simply, career periodisation is breaking down the core competencies of your industry into smaller and more manageable chunks in order to map out your development.

We plan our athletes’ training and periodise their careers for them by looking in depth at macro-, meso- and micro-level elements of their program. But we don’t tend to do this for our own careers, nor in a deliberate and detailed manner.

The goal is to build the professional pathway that you want. Not by leaving it to chance, but by being intentional about your professional development; and, more specifically, where you place your three most precious resources; time, energy and money.

Our Career Periodisation Manual starts with helping a coach understand where they are on their journey currently, mapping themselves against a stage of career and the expectations of each type of role in a career path. Then it guides them through how to implement a plan of action from a macro to micro level. Sounds a lot, right? We go from big and scary, down to specific daily actions and have made a super simple and clear way to map out your professional journey.

We look at it as your “unfair professional advantage,” because you are consciously identifying where your gaps are against a core competency framework. From here you can create the self-awareness of where you are now, and the milestone goals you want to achieve for your future by creating your four year macro plan. Long term plans are nothing without a process-oriented plan of action, so the guide helps you break down the larger goals into annual goals and quarterly actions, which become a specific one year plan. The result is a 360 degree, systematic approach to your professional development.

What problem does career periodisation solve?

The concept of career periodisation was born from hearing people’s frustrations with not being where they wanted to be in their careers. There are probably points on this list that resonate with you. Repeatedly, we were hearing from coaches who were:

• Frustrated and overwhelmed by the competitiveness of the industry.
• Continually getting knocked back at interview, or not even getting short listed.
• Confused about where they wanted to be professionally.
• Not sure of the correct steps to take to reach their goals.
• Putting so much effort in, but not seeing the results.
• Constrained by time and money, and not wanting to waste either of them.

The most common issues we face as performance practitioners are not about getting from A to B. The issue is, if we don’t know what we need to be in the future, then how can we be sure we are moving in the right direction?

So its important to look at this problem from two perspectives. First, what stage are you at in your career? And second, where are your gaps in skillset or experience?

Your personal and professional needs and wants change as you get older. Another element of career periodisation is being realistic about your career stage. We break down our careers into four distinctive phases that have resonated with everyone we spoke to.

• Breaker
• Survivor
• Thriver
• Re-definer

When we talk about our development areas, sometimes we struggle to see what is most important, as we aren’t measuring ourselves against anything. Sometimes we want to be at a survivor stage without going through the needs of a breaker stage!

You also don’t want the first time you discover you have gaps in your knowledge and experience to be at an interview. An important pillar of career periodisation is conducting your own gap analysis based on a comprehensive core competency framework.

Career periodisation helps you see more clearly what is most important in the short term versus what can wait till a later date. Often, we are biased to focus on what we enjoy, or what is “on trend” as opposed to what will actually make a difference in our careers.

Where is the first place to start when it comes to career periodisation?

The process of career periodisation is simple, but not easy!

The first steps are about creating what we call “professional awareness.” This is clear knowledge and understanding of where you are right now and where your gaps are for the next step in your career. We use the stages of your career and S&C core competencies to support practitioners with this.

Once you are armed with a clear understanding of where you are, and have some rough ideas of what skills and competencies the next phase requires, you are ready to start plotting your career on your planners.

The goal is to reverse engineer based on what you know about what you want to do or definitely do not want to do. Put the big rocks in first and then back fill competency by competency using the early and late career examples.

The planners simplify the complex and create a clear and tangible action plan that moves from daily actions, with check points for accountability, and respects the notion that your development needs to be agile (i.e., flexible over time) in order to give you the space to be creative and evolve.

Young coaches can quickly get overwhelmed with the amount of information out there and there are so many gaps in knowledge. What would you recommend to manage this?

We know as much as anyone how difficult it can be to get that first step on the ladder. We recommend that developing practitioners invest in a mentor. Not just any mentor, but someone who has walked a path that resonates with you, who has a solid reputation and has consistent experience in supporting practitioners to develop as a practitioner consistently and holistically.

You need to interview your mentor and discover if they can solve your problems. You’ll be parting with your hard earned money, so find the right person and they’ll help save you time, energy and money. Many people struggle with the concept of parting with money or even time to spend with another coach, but these people with help you solve your problems faster. We see that those practitioners who climb the ladder quickest, are solving their career problems faster than their competition by investing in themselves and in others.

The other thing that practitioners can and should be doing is, of course, periodising their career. The anxiety of not knowing what to do and when in terms of your professional development is massively reduced when you have a solid plan with a robust process or someone else to guide you.

The practitioners who will really jump the queue with be the ones who combine a mentor with career periodisation. There is your unfair professional advantage all over again.

As with training, things change. How can practitioners be flexible with this approach?

We call this agile periodisation.

When we map out an Olympic athlete’s four year cycle, we have to adapt to changes in schedule, injury, competitions, form and anything in between. You build an agile plan, regularly and consistently update it, and keep an open mind to opportunities or threats that you may not have seen coming. This is no different for your career periodisation. It must remain agile, and to do that it must remain present in your everyday life.

Contrary to popular opinion, we don’t feel that you need to know 100% where you want to get to or who you want to work for. If you can create a solid foundation for yourself based on the core competencies of the industry, you should get further, quicker. We have nailed these down to the following areas:

• Experience and employment
• Professional development and industry skills
• Networking
• Professional reading
• Communication

By planning goals and actions against these key areas, you provide yourself guiding principles that will help keep your development linear while you explore your interests with curiosity.

What are the biggest mistakes you see young practitioners make and what advice would you give them to help?

We see a few trends becoming more and more prevalent among young practitioners:

• Spending a lot of time behind screens. Shut your laptop down and get out and coach, help out, run the water, put cones down. Just be a sponge and take every opportunity to get coaching experience.
• Young practitioners are missing some of the key soft skills that help get them on the ladder in the first place, because they aren’t taught these things at university as much as the technical skills. These are:
  • How to get a job. CV development, cover letter writing, interview techniques, networking and negotiating are all under appreciated and often neglected skills that have the power to differentiate you as a coach.
  • How to survive the first year in the job / industry. This is huge, and a fast track to burn out or not retaining roles. We are talking about how to create professional boundaries, how to look after yourself, how to communicate with the various stakeholders (hierarchy, head coach, athletes) during difficult situations and so on.
• Investing quantities of time and energy into their career with a poor development plan, or even no plan at all. This means that the things that really matter to getting that interview you want (essential skills or qualifications) are neglected, leaving practitioners behind their peers.

These are just a few of the issues we see, but they are all preventable through structured mentoring and career periodisation. The supply and demand balance is not in your favour as a young practitioner, so the big question is; What can you do to move the odds in your favour? We believe career periodisation is one simple way to help move the odds for yourself.

You can get hold of the Career Periodisation manual here (enter Sportsmith20 for 20% off).

Dan & Josh