
For those who missed it, the Sport Leadership Sportif Conference took place this past week in Richmond, British Columbia. The three-day annual event is hosted by the Coaching Association of Canada, and this year we were proud to be both a sponsor and an exhibitor. It was Uplifter’s first-ever conference exhibition, and we couldn’t have been more thrilled with the connections and learnings from the event.
The mission of the event, according to the Coaching Association of Canada, was to grow resilience in our sport organizations, athletes and coaches.
“Our sport community must be resilient. Its success demands commitment, cooperation, and courage. Just as participants must overcome obstacles and recover from their setbacks in sport, so must we be resilient in the face of the challenges with our sport system. We can learn to be more resilient by learning from each other.”
And learn from each other we did. Over three days of inspiring speakers and breakout workshops, we met athletes and organizers from all walks of life, sports, backgrounds and abilities. Our key takeaway? Athletes are humans first. To grow resilience in the sport community, we need to refocus our values to be mindset-driven rather than performance-driven.
Who was there
We were very pleased with the diversity of roles at this event. Many attendees wore more than one hat — one person might be a club owner, a coach and a board member. The conference speaks to a wide range of sport leaders, from administrators to coaches, executives and sport researchers. We also met several new National Sport Organization representatives, Provincial and Territorial Sport Organization representatives, government officials and international sport representatives.
We also found time to meet with our clients Canada Snowboard, Cheer Canada, Cycling Canada, Cycling BC, Badminton Canada and more. A huge thank you to all our clients at the event for their support.
What we learned
While all the speakers and breakout leaders were impressive, the speaker who stood out most was Stephanie Dixon, who presented the Women in Sport Leadership Plenary on the last day. Stephanie is a 19-time Paralympic Games medallist and has won seven Parapan American Games medals in the pool, including six golds. Since retiring in 2010, she has coached swimming and advocated for disability rights with the Yukon Human Rights Commission, among many other accomplishments.
She spoke about the need to build resilient humans, not just resilient athletes, and about the danger of tying your self-worth too closely to performance. Any athlete will recognize this dark side of competing: the fear of failure and the damaged confidence that can follow a sub-par performance. Stephanie reminded the coaches and parents in the room of the high cost of valuing performance alone. Her own ethos as an athlete: “You are enough.”
This change in mindset applies to growing resilience in sport organizations too. How does your organization deal with a failure or a missed goal? The key is to foster a mindset that ties your value — as a person, athlete or employee — not to the end goal but to the experience. All we can do is focus on doing our best in the moment. So when bad days happen, as they do, we don’t define our worth by that one outcome.
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