Leadership Lessons from Elite Sports: Swimming Australia’s Path to Gold

Richard Taylor:
Welcome to the Executive Insights podcast. My name is Richard, and I just got to sit down with Jess Corones, the General Manager of Performance at Swimming Australia and the Olympic campaign. You would think that Olympic swimming was all about winning medals, and specifically gold medals, but there's a huge amount underneath in relation to processes, preparation, planning, and obviously people. All very important to business, as well. Listen to this fantastic episode, and enjoy.

The first thing I should say, as well, is congratulations for Paris.

Jess Corones:
Thank you. Yeah. It was amazing

Richard Taylor:
If I've got my numbers right, it was 19 total medals, seven golds, nine silvers, and three bronze?

Jess Corones:
7 or 8 medals, I think.

Richard Taylor:
Okay. Really? Okay.

Jess Corones:
Yeah. But seven gold is correct.

Richard Taylor:
Seven gold is correct. So my numbers were wrong, but the gold, that's the most important thing.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, I think it's... Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
And could you start off by giving me just a broad bit of context about your role, the macro picture of what you do for Swimming Australia?

Jess Corones:
My role's really, really broad at Swimming Australia. So I'm General Manager of Performance Support, and the Olympic campaign. And so, performance support basically is all of the people that are supporting the athletes and coaches. So all the sports scientists, the medical teams, working with the institutes of sport to make sure that the athletes and coaches have got what they need to deliver their programs.

And then, the Olympic campaign part is more around the design of the campaign. So, what's the environment going to look like? What kind of camps and competitions do we need to do to prepare for the Olympics? Obviously, we've got LA coming up in 2028, so I'm going to LA.

Richard Taylor:
Coming up. I love the way, it's just coming up, because there's so much preparation with it.

Jess Corones:
I know, I literally got off a plane from Paris Olympics, and now I'm going to LA-

Richard Taylor:
Straight into it.

Jess Corones:
... yeah, to start the planning for that. So yeah, that's a big process. The planning for an Olympics, it's not really just the year of, or the year before. It's probably a six-year process, in planning for an Olympic Games.

Richard Taylor:
And my assumption, my naive assumption was, that performance would've been just athletes. But you've obviously just given a much broader array of things to do there. So what's a typical day in your life look like?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, so that's a really good point. We actually do use that performance word with our whole team. So we want everyone to perform at their best. The athletes obviously, but we need our coaches performing, and our performance staff performing for the athletes and coaches.

So my days are really varied. Some mornings, obviously, I'm up early at the pool, which will be a sort of 5:00 AM, 5:30 start. And then it's into the office for meetings. And then, back to the pool in the afternoon. And that's generally like a 4:00 to 6:00, seven o'clock session, in the afternoon.

Richard Taylor:
Wow. So long days.

Jess Corones:
And then, moving around the country a lot.

Richard Taylor:
And it's not a small country, so.

Jess Corones:
No, yeah. The travel is quite extensive. And then there's generally a couple overseas trips a year. Normally in the Australian winter, which is that sort of June to August period, we're overseas racing.

Richard Taylor:
In your experience, what are some of the similarities or crossovers between your field and your world, and the business world? What are some of the things that the business world could learn from the sporting world?

Jess Corones:
We spend a lot of time in that planning and preparation phase, and that's what sets us up for success. And I think that's very transferable into business, in the way that you can do it.

We use design thinking philosophies in the way that we plan, as well, project work, which worked really well for us because high performance sport moves at a really high cadence. Swim meets, sometimes, are on once every four weeks, so you've got to be preparing all the time, and then you've got to reflect, and then refine your process and go again. That design thinking has worked really well for us in, also, trying to find what's the best solution. So how do we not just do what we've done because we always do it, where are we looking for solutions? Maybe we've got to go and talk to someone else, or look at a different sport.

We actually got, from Rugby Australia, I guess the foundation of the ideas or the concepts around how to set up our data structure. We had a whole lot of data that was really siloed. The data's important for coaches. If we could bring our data together, and democratize it, and get it into the hands of the coaches, we knew it would be really powerful. And we had to look everywhere. We looked at business, we looked at other sports, to find what was the best solution for us. Because there is only one Swimming Australia, and so it was about finding what was right for us. And so, making sure you've got that growth mindset, really go in with your eyes wide open and see what you can find in different industries, and bring them back into your industry.

Richard Taylor:
And so as general manager of performance, obviously performance is very important to you. So what is a habit or a trait that you yourself use?

Jess Corones:
To be honest, the key for performance is communication. And I really do think you can get in or out of that habit of communicating, but it's something that's really important, that you're staying in touch and understanding what the people need, and what's going on in their lives, to help them and support their performance.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah, brilliant. So open, clear. And I presume some of that is feedback, as well.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, feedback, a lot of listening. And then you're supporting, understanding, facilitating, helping them problem solve through different situations, whatever that might be. Sometimes we're problem solving things out of the pool, as well, so that we can improve what's going on in the pool. Because sometimes what's going on outside the pool, in their life, also outside of the pool can be impacting on that performance.

Richard Taylor:
In your field, how do you define success?

Jess Corones:
Success to me is about being flexible, adaptable. We often say that we don't want to talk about results, it's about process for us. So that's where the success sits for me, in the process. If we've got the process right, and we've been able to be agile and navigate that, and been adaptable, that's probably what success looks like to me. If we've been rigid, and haven't been flexible in some of our plans or processes, then I think we won't get the outcomes at the end of the day. But that process, although it seems quite mundane and routine, we spend four years planning and refining and practicing that process.

Richard Taylor:
And then, like you say, ready to be flexible as and when things change.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, you've got to be adaptable. The Olympics, for example, it's the most grueling sporting event in the world. It's the pinnacle of sport, but it's also probably the least high performance environment there is. Buses go missing, they get lost on the way. You get jammed onto buses with hundreds of people, so you can be late to your event. The sleeping environment in the village is definitely not a five-star hotel, it's more dormitory style. So yeah, teaching them that flexibility, I guess, and adaptability to be able to perform in all sorts of situations.

Richard Taylor:
And how do you cultivate that culture across the athletes, the coaches, the whole teams? So when you're not there, and those things go wrong, they can be adaptable. How do you cultivate that culture?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, it's just practice, and exposing them to different environments. As I said, preparing for the Olympics is not just a four-year process. They start it from a very young age. So we take them on training camps where we might do simulations, and sometimes we might organize things to go wrong when things are too perfectly planned, so that they're adaptable.

And we have a national event camp where we bring 120 of Australia's best swimmers in, and coaches, and we'll mix them all up in training groups. They do their individual squad camps. The coaches, every day, are designing their training sessions to have certain different elements that will address that, that will prepare them for the environment that they're going to go in. And I do the same with the performance support staff. We work with sports psychologists and other facilitators around how are we preparing ourselves as well, so that we can best support the athletes in that environment, as well. We need to be flexible. You need to be really self-aware,

There's that emotional contagion that can go on very, very quickly in a team environment. And in a high pressure environment, especially, you can see it spread like a bushfire. So you've got to be really self-aware. So we talk about it a lot, and that's part of going back to that communication. You've got to talk about it, you've got to keep working on it, because it never ends, and you've just got to keep it front of mind all the time.

Richard Taylor:
But that's a good point though. So you work for six years, and like you said, the process is more important than the outcomes because you can't control the outcome. You can only control the work that you put in initially, and that's the very same obviously in business, you're aiming for certain results, but you have to drive all the right process to get to those outcomes. But if an athlete doesn't get that, and you've got this culture of performance, and like you said, you're still going for that period of time, how do you manage that? What have you learnt from losing, the L word, unfortunately. Or failure?

Jess Corones:
Or failure, yeah.

Richard Taylor:
And how do you manage that across the team?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, look, it's always disappointing. First and foremost, obviously, for the athlete. And we've learnt you have to acknowledge it, you can't sweep it under the carpet. Because when they come out of the pool, they get thrust straight into media, you can't avoid that. It's compulsory. They go through about a hundred meter mixed zone of media, and then the next spot you come to is straight back into your team area, and you face, in front of 50 of your teammates. Even though there's a lot of people around them, it can feel quite isolating.

So just acknowledging that they did try their best is really important, that they did follow their process, and worked on that. And you've got to give them a little bit of time to deal with it, and then help them to sort of work through it.

Richard Taylor:
Preparing to win, but also then, what will you do if the outcome isn't the way that you think it should be?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. At an Olympics, a lot of the swimmers have multiple races. So although they need to have time to deal with each different performance, sometimes the highs can be just as draining as the lows. But how do we deal with it, give it its time, acknowledge it, but then quickly move on because you might have another race that night, if you're in a relay at the end of the night. Or you might have to come in the next morning, and back up really quickly. So it's definitely a skill set they work really hard on with their sports psychologists, and their coaches, around managing that emotion. We often say, "You kind of want to stay at about a seven or an eight. You don't want to be up at 10, and then down at two, the next day. And then up at 10, and up and down like that, you kind of need to be for the week sitting at a roundabout a seven."

And I think when you get to the end of an Olympic Games, or a major competition like, is why, it is quite mentally draining because you have had to spend a lot of energy managing your emotions, whether they be highs or lows through the week.

Richard Taylor:
So conversely, the highs obviously, when somebody wins, which is fantastic and all the adulation, et cetera. Does that become the bar? I mean, you say obviously you don't focus on the results, but you can't just say, "I'm going to focus on the process now," if you've already got a gold medal. Surely that changes the expectations of athletes. How do you manage that from a performance perspective?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, I think it does, but they're so well-trained that knowing, "I have to go back to process, again." "Great, you won, celebrate it, high-fives, fist bumps."

Richard Taylor:
"Get back in the pool."

Jess Corones:
Yeah. "We've got to start recovering now." Really, they probably have about 20 minutes to process it, and then they've got to get back in the pool and start getting their nutrition, hydration, recovery, on the massage table. They have to start winding down mentally, because they need to get to sleep as quick as they can that night, to get back ready again. So again, it's really those performance psychological skills that they learn over the years, as they go through different experiences. Obviously, the junior athletes, the pathways athletes, aren't quite as good at it. They're learning that skill set.

But the really great athletes, the Emma McKeon’s, the Kaylee McKeown's of the world. Mollie O'Callaghan's, Ariarne Titmus, that is what they are good at. Is really managing their emotion through those big weeks. An Olympic swim meet goes for nine days, so although they're doing sprint races, it's a long time to be emotionally controlled and manage it. And just keep going back to process, back to process. But giving them some time and some space, whether they're dealing with a performance that they weren't quite happy with, or dealing with the highs of winning.

But I mean, the athletes will do things like, they'll turn off social media, and they might have a different phone number that only their family and closest friends can contact. So they can manage the outside world a little bit like that as well, to try put themselves almost in a bubble, where it's just their performance team, their coach, their close family.

Richard Taylor:
All part of the process.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, or part, yeah.

Richard Taylor:
Or part of the planning and the process, to get to the right outcome.

Jess Corones:
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
And you mentioned a few of the, obviously really high performers there, and you've mentioned before. It's a big team.

As a leader yourself, and looking across that big organization, how do you go about identifying the kind of unique traits or skills, individuals, or maybe when you need to get close to someone, or nurture people. How do you as a leader identify that across people?

Jess Corones:
It's about spending time with them, and you've got to really get to know them as people. We do live in each other's pockets, essentially, when we're on training camps. We're in the same accommodation, and eating in the same dining halls, and sharing meals. So there's great opportunity there to sort of get to know each other.

And then we have structured sessions sometimes where we will actually, might sit down together and talk about it. "What are your stress points? How does stress show up for you?" So then we're each aware of how that shows up for each other. And then, if you see that in one of your colleagues or one of your peers, you can have a conversation with them. And say, "Are you okay? What's going on? Do you want to go get a coffee?" And try and bring them out of that environment. Even our performance support staff and our leadership team have performance plans.

My performance plan is I get up at six o'clock every morning, I go for a half hour walk before I turn up for the leadership meeting. And that's my process in just clearing my head-

Richard Taylor:
Clear your mind. Yep, yep.

Jess Corones:
... so that I've got clear thoughts going into that leadership meeting. But over the years, yeah, you get really familiar with each other and knowing what each other's pressure points are, and when stress will show for different individuals. And it's just about supporting each other through that.

Richard Taylor:
There's a model that was designed by Berkeley University about managing or building recovery into your day, or into your life, basically.

Jess Corones:
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
So it's a 3M framework it's called, and there's half an hour a day where you try and take those times. You've got the hour or two a week or a month where you get lunch with someone, and then once every quarter you should try and take half a day if you can, and remove yourself from that. So in business it's very much the same, you've got to find that time and that white space to clear your mind. How do the athletes do that? How do they find that space in the cauldron of the Olympics?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, it's difficult, but the Olympic Village actually has that designed into it. So it has breakout spaces, and the Australian Olympic Committee has some offsite locations that they set up in hotels, for example, where the athletes can go and meet their families, and have a coffee with their parents, and things like that. And again, it's all in that performance plan, and all part of the process. So knowing that we might have a really young athlete on the team, we will make sure and help and support them that they can connect with their family, because that's going to be really important for them.

Richard Taylor:
I was talking with Professor Harry Kramer not so long ago, who talks about values-based leadership. And the first principle of his values-based leadership is self-reflection. How important is that kind of trust connection and reflection between you and the athletes?

Jess Corones:
Massive. Yeah. I'm a huge believer in self-reflection. I think it's the only way you can keep improving, and get better, is you need to understand yourself. And to do that, you need to reflect. And that's maybe, some of that performance mindset I've picked up off the athletes is like, "How do you get better? You have to reflect and look at your past behaviors or performances to go, 'Okay, well, how am I going to improve that for next time?'"

Richard Taylor:
And what's your tips for self-reflection?

Jess Corones:
I've actually got a journal now, a leadership journal.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah?

Jess Corones:
And I'll often, when I've done, it might be a meeting or it might be a one-on-one conversation. I might go and write down, "Ooh, you kind of let yourself, you got a little bit emotional in that meeting." But I don't write like paragraphs, it might be just little things that are like, "Hey, next time, maybe this is how you could do it differently." Or, "Think about this." But yeah, I find journaling quite good for that self-reflection.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah, that's your process, to be able to remove yourself from the situation, and try and get them-

Jess Corones:
Yeah, to be honest, actually thinking about it now. I don't actually go back and read the journal.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah, okay.

Jess Corones:
But I write it down in there. So I guess, maybe one day, I will go back and read it. But I think just the process of coming away from the meeting, or the interaction, or whatever it might be. And then me thinking about it as I go to write it, and then writing it down, is that process for me. Getting it out, I guess.

Richard Taylor:
Cathartic release, sort of like. Yeah.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, rather than probably just ignoring it, and moving on to the next thing. I think everyone's busy, and that's really easy to do. I've actually found, with online meetings now, another thing since COVID. That that's quite challenging, is because you can get booked up in meetings just like back to back to back, and you hang up from one meeting and you jump straight on the next one. Whereas, pre-COVID, when you were having more face-to-face meetings, you would have travel time in between. And then I think in that travel time, you would think about what you just did in that last meeting, "Oh, yeah, that went well," or, "I need to connect this person with that." And then you start to think about the preparation for the next meeting. "Okay, who am I talking to? What do we need to discuss? What do we want to get out of this meeting?"

Whereas now, with online meetings, being back to back, you just don't get that time. So something I try to do, maybe not as successfully as I'd like to do. But try and put a like 15-minute gap in between my online meetings, so that I've got a little bit of time to just-

Richard Taylor:
Yep. Break it up.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, yeah.

Richard Taylor:
And for leaders who are looking to get high performance out of their teams, what are some of the tools or practices that you believe they should adopt, given your experience?

Jess Corones:
Yeah, one of the things I was told early on in my leadership career was, I was struggling with the team I was working with. But I went to our CEO at the time. I said, "I'm really struggling to get them to move in one direction." And she said to me, "You've got to spend time with your people." And at the time, I was too busy doing my own work, and focusing on myself and my job, and what I needed to do. And I wasn't spending enough time with my team. And I think that's really critical.

I think in business, and in sport, it's all about unlocking human potential. And you just want to get the best out of your people. For them, as well, for their satisfaction you want to see them reach their potential and that's really rewarding. But in order to do that, you have to understand your people. You have to know your people, what motivates them, what does success look like to them? Because my idea on what success looks like to them, and what motivates them, might be actually completely different to what they see as success and what motivates them. So yeah, it's definitely about spending time with your people and getting to know them.

Richard Taylor:
You're so right. And we're in a fascinating point in history, maybe, without getting too grand about it. But we've got all of this technology evolving rapidly around us, that's optimizing people, and making us more productive. But still, the most important thing is people.

Jess Corones:
Yeah.

Richard Taylor:
Sort of cultivating. And also, when you're an individual contributor in a team or a business, to your point, you're kind of focused on your thing. When you become the leader, it's not about you doing your thing anymore. Your thing is the people, and making them better than you, or raising them up as much as you can.

Jess Corones:
Yeah, definitely. It was something that probably took me a little while, working in high performance sport, I was really driven and self-motivated for performance outcomes. And what we were doing, and how was I contributing to that? And so when I moved more into leadership, it was something I had to learn to kind of let go of my own, maybe ego, and help others. Get the most out of them. And it was understanding the impact that I could have, versus just myself doing something, versus the impact I could have on a wider system and much more people if I helped others lift up in their roles, was really important. But it was definitely a challenge, I think. It didn't come easy.

In high performance sport, when you are working directly with an athlete, sometimes you see outcomes quite quickly. When you're in leadership, sometimes it takes a little longer, or you've got to look a little bit harder to see the wins, because the small wins are the things that will combine to make the big win. But when you're in those leadership positions, maybe because you're not there at the coalface, or you're not there on the pool deck seeing it every day as much, you've got to look a little bit harder. And I think, look a bit harder, but also listen. Listen to where people are really, when they're telling you that they're proud of something, is really important. Because it's quite easy to just go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and walk off. But it's important to give time, and listen to them when they're telling you they're proud of something, and they've achieved something.

Richard Taylor:
On that self-reflection piece, if you could go back in your career now and give yourself one bit of advice on something you should have approached differently, or changed, what would that be?

Jess Corones:
I think just to be, maybe a little bit kinder to myself. I took the approach that I wasn't always the smartest sports scientist, but I'll be the hardest working. And so I felt that I had to probably give more time, and work harder than everyone else, but I probably didn't give myself enough credit for the knowledge and experience that I did have.

And asking for help, I think, is a big one. Yes, it's very cliche and a lot of people talk about being vulnerable, but asking questions. Ask as many questions as you can to those around you. And then, just listening and seeing and observing how other people do things. But I think, yeah, the big thing, I reckon if I could go back and ask myself, give myself a piece of advice. It'd be, "Be a little bit easier on yourself. But then, yeah. Ask for help.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah, I think it's really important as part of leadership, A, is that humility to realize that you don't know everything, because we don't know everything. And get the right people around you who do know those things that you don't know, but also the willingness to say, "I don't know the answer. And I need help, or I need someone to find me this bit of information, et cetera." Because most people are a bit worried about exposing themselves-

Jess Corones:
Totally.

Richard Taylor:
... but that vulnerability is really important as leader.

Jess Corones:
Especially, I think, when you're first coming into leadership. Like when you're a junior leader or a developing leader, you're like, "Ooh. I have to have all the answers." And so, I think as you get more comfortable in leadership, you become more comfortable in your own skin to say, "I don't know, but I'll go and find out," or, "We'll find a solution together, let's work through this." But definitely that's part of that transition, is learning to say, "I don't know, but we'll find it out. We'll work it out together."

Richard Taylor:
What's next for you and Swimming Australia?

Jess Corones:
Well, the LA Olympics in 2028.

Richard Taylor:
Just around the corner.

Jess Corones:
Just around the corner. And then we've got a home Olympics in Brisbane, in 2032. But yeah, for me, it's about just continuing to grow the team. And when I talk about grow the team, it's growth in every area. Grow the team as people. We often have young athletes coming onto the team, and we've got a bunch of new young coaches coming through, and performance staff, so helping them grow and reach their potential.

And then, yeah, it's about exposing Swimming Australia. To inspire Australia through swimming.

Because there are so many different ways that you can do that, and swimming is such a fantastic sport. And we're so lucky, in Australia, they say swimming's in our DNA. So to work for the national team, in Australia, that's in our whole country's DNA, is absolutely amazing. And I think it's just about getting out into the communities, and sharing that message, and just continuing to help the athletes and the coaches be the best that they can be. And these kids, when they come into the high performance system, they're just kids. And they have these amazing dreams, and you just want to help them reach that potential. And there's absolutely nothing better than seeing it when they achieve their dream. It's the most unbelievable thing, to see them touch that wall and win that Olympic gold medal. And it doesn't happen for everyone, but when it does, all the hard work's paid off and you're just so happy for them.

Richard Taylor:
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I wish them and you all the success for the upcoming Olympics, and I hope many more gold medals to come. Although you're focusing on the process, of course.

Jess Corones:
Process.

Richard Taylor:
Process.

Jess Corones:
Thanks, Richard.

Richard Taylor:
But still, all the best, and thank you so much for joining us.

Jess Corones:
No, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Richard Taylor:
Thanks. Cheers, Jess.

Listen now

Listen now

Listen now