Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve indigot sport Law. Leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to jump into our latest conversation about Healthy human Sport. Today we're welcoming Loren Bret to Sportopia to talk about her experiences as a leadership coach and in particular, the incredible work she's doing with the Nova profile.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Thanks, Steve.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Loren is a member of the Sport Law team and a certified professional leadership coach. She's got nearly 2500 hours of coaching under her belt. So we are in the presence of one of Canadian Sport's most experienced leadership coaches. We'll let Loren tell you a bit more about herself in a few minutes. But Loren, so great to have you here.
[00:01:09] Speaker D: Thank you, Steve.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Before we jump in, what's coming across your desk this week?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: I'm trying to decide on what to talk about this week, but I've decided to talk about conflict, and not conflict that we hear reasonably within board meetings or decisions that are being made or people are influencing decisions because it's going to benefit themselves or their child or whatever the case may be. I want to talk about it internally within Sport Law. We, for the last 30 years have always said that we want to work on behalf of organizations to help move them forward from point A to point B. And unfortunately, a lot of the work that we do is moving Sport from point A to point A. And just this morning, I had a conversation with one of the other lawyers in our shop and we had a conversation about representing a sport organization against another sport organization.
And I think that's something that we've decided internally. That's not where we want to be as we don't see that necessarily moving sport forward. So I think in situations like that, we will be declaring a conflict. Likely we have worked with probably both organizations in the past anyway, but choosing a side just doesn't feel right. And that's why we have made some of those internal rules that unfortunately are starting to come to fruition.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I can feel the tension there and maybe that's probably something that we might chat with Loren about, because if parties agree that we will be hired to serve both parties'interest in a conversation around values and risks and relationship, both Loren and I have been doing that kind of work. Steve, you and the other lawyers might call it mediation. Loren and I call it an opportunity to have a coaching that that's a great segue for Loren when we decide that we're going to bring her into the conversation around some of the great work that she's doing. What I have been thinking about and playing with is actually I've been asked to do a keynote for a client and the audience is pretty much 90% volunteers, because, as you know, in community sport, 90% to 95% of leadership is volunteer driven. So I'm excited. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to be having this keynote. And the client said, no PowerPoint. We just want you talking kind of like what you and Steve are doing on Sportopia.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: I'm laughing, Dina, because in 20 years of working in the sports sector, publicly speaking, probably 50 to 100 times a year, being a keynote scares the bejesus out of me to try and be inspirational, motivational. I do think I'd rather talk about bylaws. Go figure.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Well, having just spent a couple of weeks with you, I can say that your stories are actually inspiring. So we'll let our audience be a judge. I did want to share three kind of key messages that I'm sharing with people when I'm asked to do these keynotes. And the first is to live your values, to understand what your values are, to define them. And you can do this personally. You can also do this as a culture. And if you do that and you engage your people in a conversation around what matters most, you're going to find that you're investing in these thriving cultures. The second key message is to be adaptable, to maintain relevance. So that means what got us here isn't what we need necessarily to get us to where we're going to go. So can we flex our open, curious mind so that we can be more adaptable to the changing landscape? And the third is fostering healthy cultures. Cultures that create a sense of belonging, cultures that are attentive to the psychological and physical safety needs of its membership, and cultures that are painting a picture of what it means to thrive. And if we can do that, my sense is that people are going to be able to continue to work through this transition that we're all in in Canadian sport with our souls intact. So there you have it from me. I'm just so thrilled, Steve, that we've welcomed Loren to this conversation about healthy human sport, and in particular, what it means to lead and compete and coach in the 21st century. So, Loren, for our listeners that don't have the privilege of knowing you, tell us more about you.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: Thank you, Dina.
Yeah, so, as you mentioned briefly in my bio yeah, I do have a background in sport. I am a former National Team member in the sport of rhythmic gymnastics many years ago, and was also National Team coach in rhythmic gymnastics. So I really have the lens of what it means to be an athlete at a high level and also as a coach and the complexities that coaches face. I also have the privilege of working in an organization outside of sport where I managed operations and also was the executive director for many years, in fact, a few decades. And this organization went through some trying times, and in fact, a traumatic experience happened. And so I was brought in to help navigate that time and bring some stability.
What I discovered is that the organization.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: Had lost its way.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: They didn't have a meaningful mission or vision statement. They didn't have any values that were articulated. And so I got to work determining what those were. I guess I tell you this because I have a lot of compassion for leaders and coaches in sport because I have first hand knowledge of the complexities that they face. And now I'm absolutely thrilled to be back working in the sporting world. I left it over 20 years ago, in a way, turned my back on it. And that's really because I didn't have the leadership capacity inside me to face what I was facing. And I felt overwhelmed, I felt anxious. I felt like this purposeful mission that I had for myself and the athletes that I was coaching wasn't being realized because I wasn't satisfied and really bumping up a system that was not in alignment with my values, turning my back on sport. But then now coming back with some new knowledge after working in the business world for a long time and being able to have an impact in a bigger way in a sector that's really.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Hurting right now, that's a good segue. Loren, I'm curious to know how you would describe the work you do and how it can support the sport community as a leadership coach. Of course, I'm going to discuss shortly some of the work we've done together, but I wonder, from a high level perspective, you could inform our listeners what you want to work on, what excites you, how you think you can support the sport system.
[00:08:18] Speaker D: Yeah, well, first of all, I believe that everybody needs a coach, and this is a newer concept. I mean, coaching really came from the world of sport, and the business world stole this concept and adopted it decades ago, and it's really instilled in their ecosystem. And so when you become a new leader or you start to manage people, you're immediately given a coach maybe upwards of a year, and then you're given training sessions about how to manage people and how to navigate this world of leadership. But sport hasn't done that. That's what really excites me. It really is a newer concept, and people are just waking up to this concept. So I do everything from one on one coaching. So if a leader comes in or an organization would like to get one of their leaders some coaching, then I do one on one coaching and helping them really elevate their game. I work with teams, so doing team coaching and group coaching, but I don't coach about the X's and O's, right? So when I talk about coaching, it's not about the X's and O's. It's about the human factor. It's about developing humans. Right.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Because what got us here, you both.
[00:09:22] Speaker D: Say this All The Time. What got us here is not going to get us to where we want to go next. Right? And the sports system as we know it right now is crumbling. And a new way is trying to emerge.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: And it's painful.
[00:09:35] Speaker D: We don't know what it's going to look like down the road. All we know is, like, we're in that messy middle of change right now, and it feels really painful right now. It feels like for many people that we're just kind of bushwhacking in the wilderness. We don't know what that looks like. So we're really in uncharted territory here at Sport Law. We know and understand what's needed and what the new way is and helping navigate people down that road so they don't feel so alone and they don't have to figure it out on their own.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: So I really feel like 21st century.
[00:10:08] Speaker D: Sport is calling for a new style of leadership, and we have to go beyond that leader from the front.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:14] Speaker D: And certainly that command and control style. It's not cutting it.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: It's partial, right?
[00:10:20] Speaker D: It sometimes is needed. And it's not about letting go. Know completely of that. Because sometimes we need that, right? But it's partial. So there's more that's needed and that's know, the work that Dean and I are doing is excavating one of those beautiful qualities that are inside of you as a human being so that you can be more multidimensional as a leader. And so leaders need to know who they are. They need to know what their strengths are so they can play to them. They also need to understand their limitations. Right? How they get in their own way. Understand that and be more mindful of their impact.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Thanks, Steve.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: It's like Loren was with us in Pei. Because what you just shared, I spoke to In Pei. And if we play with this analogy of being in stormy seas right now because you introduce we need to navigate this complexity and this transition that is needed and long overdue. So let's normalize that for our listeners and sport leaders. And when we can find language to describe a lived experience, it helps us settle down. When you can give theories or concepts to people, they're like, oh, okay.
That feels helpful. So I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that and for us to also be open to some of what you're sharing. Loren and what I'm really excited about is if we describe the system as being in this transition, I use the analogy of being brackish. Waters we're not freshwater, and we're not salt water. We're somewhere in the middle, and it can be kind of scary. And the sea creatures that live in saltwater. When they come into these brackish waters, they have to lose or say goodbye to that identity. And I think that's in part, what we're reckoning with. So one of the things that we wanted to share with our listeners a tool, an instrument of change. What you and I know to be so helpful, a bit of a map encompass right? To help us navigate both our inner world, but also give us a sense of the internal operating systems of the coaches and the leaders and the athletes we are here to serve. And what we have found as coaches at Sport Law is that when we use an instrument, we can help people access that sense of self, and then the quality of their presence can start to I'm curious, Loren, there's four coaches at Sport Law that do this work extensively.
What is your sense of the Nova profile and maybe some stories that you want to share about the impact that you've seen this tool have on others?
[00:12:58] Speaker D: I believe that we need to be resourcing people, so I use that as a verb. We not only need to be given the resources, but we need to be resourcing people. And Nova is one of these resources that people can tap into to really help them elevate their ability to be in this system. Dina, when I met you in 2017, all you talked about was the Nova, and I didn't get it right. And then I took the Nova and you did my debrief, and I was blown away. But then I got certified and began offering it to sport organizations, and wow, I see the positive impact it can have and the remarkable insights that people and teams are having. And I also want to quantify this too. So I'm certified, as are you, Dina, and a number of the different psychometric assessment tools. And oftentimes I don't know if this is true for you, Dina, but oftentimes when we talk about a psychometric tool, eyes roll and people are like, oh, my God, not another one. And I kind of don't put me in a box. Yeah, exactly. It is not about putting you a box. But here's where a lot of leadership development programs fail, or organizations who choose to do a psychometric tool and administer it to their employees or the coaches or whoever is, they give them the tool, the result, they kind of wave at them and say, have a read and be better. But where we take a hard stand in the Nova, which is, don't waste your time if that's what you're going to do, because it is a waste of time and money and put your resources elsewhere. But where we take a hard stand.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Is that there must be either a.
[00:14:30] Speaker D: One on one debrief afterwards, a coaching conversation for 90 minutes minimum, or we do a group debrief. So we've done both of those. So it's a psychometric self awareness tool that helps you discover your unique leadership, right? And it gives you information about your behavioral preferences, personal motivations, your leadership style, your communication style. And it really has you start to have a conversation differently yourself first, right? And then with others. But the beauty of the Nova is that it really illuminates our strengths so that we really see them as the gifts that they are and celebrate that and live them even more fully. And it also invites us to face and kind of, I say, rumble with some of the more uncomfortable truths about ourselves, right? So it's really about creating that awareness of ourselves, but also of others and.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Their way, and then moving about our.
[00:15:22] Speaker D: Days and our decisions and our responses to our external circumstances in a really conscious way. Really. I mean, there's so many stories that I can share about how we've been utilizing the Nova profile. So it's good for individuals, it's also awesome for teams. And really, when we're talking about teams, it could be a team that wants.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: To go from good to great or.
[00:15:45] Speaker D: A team that are feeling like they're stuck or not getting along.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:49] Speaker D: There might be some conflict as well. I've been working with senior leadership of NSOs. We've been working with PTSOs of sport organizations. There's some really exciting work I've been doing the last year. And Dina, you know, this is my jam, right? So working with coaches and then when I get an opportunity to be working with coaches and the athletes, like, bringing them together to have different types of conversations, I just feel like that's like, a golden opportunity. In the last couple of months, I've been working with a lot of university teams, sport teams, and interestingly enough, a lot of who's coming forward are women's sport teams, right? So I worked with a women's hockey team at the university level, so there was five coaches and six team captains, right? And there had been some conflict in the previous year, and they wanted to find some ways to navigate that conflict differently and to communicate better. And so they all received their Nova, and they all did a one on one debrief with me. And then we had a few group learning sessions, virtually, and really, they had some beautiful insights about one another, and they started to have conversations about how they could navigate their world differently. I had another team where there was three coaches and 22 athletes, and I went and I saw them. So that the previous one I was talking about was done virtually, which is absolutely fine. The other team that I worked with more recently, I went and did they all got their Nova profile. They didn't get a one on one debrief, but I did a group debrief, and I did it in person. It was so much fun. And I just find this generation of 20 to 30 year olds, they're just lapping this up. They absolutely love it. They're craving it. And to have the coaches and the athletes be really vulnerable with one another.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: About what's hard for them, where they.
[00:17:34] Speaker D: Find it really challenging to communicate, is really eye opening for them. So that's kind of the context of some of the work that I'm doing with teams.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: I like the fact, Loren, that you've identified my generation. I really appreciate that. 20 to 30 year old. So shout out to you for doing that.
[00:17:53] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Your knees would say otherwise.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Steve yeah, no argument there.
[00:17:58] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Loren, I'm curious. As you know, at Sport Law, we provide a lot of services to the sport community, and the lawyers get asked routinely to try and resolve complaints. And there's some that have come along where you just follow your gut and recognize that a lawyer probably is not going to help the system. It's probably going to make it worse, make the problem worse. But we need to have somebody who's able to facilitate conversation. And I have been turning to you the last couple of years to take on those roles, to bring in your soft spoken voice and try and make multiple parties sing Kumbaya. So I wonder how you've been able to make that work. How does the Nova fit into that? And I think you're batting 100% with the files I've given you to resolve those issues that's a little bit better.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Than the lawyer side of the house.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: It's been a long time. Dean we can't count that high conversation with loren.
[00:18:58] Speaker D: Yeah. So we've developed a process.
I call it courageous conversations. And it's where there might be a couple of individuals who are at ODS with one another, and they just can't see their way through it. And the club or the board or whoever doesn't know how to handle it. Simply, people don't have the skill. We're not taught this in school. And so recently, I was working with a club where there was a coach and an athlete that weren't getting along, and it escalated to the point where the coach filed a formal complaint against the athlete. It went through the whole complaint process, and at the end of the day, it came back that there was no bullying, harassment. It's just that the athlete needed to control their emotions.
So then the club didn't know what to do because they still have two individuals who are going to potentially be interacting with one another, even though they tried to keep them apart by not the athlete couldn't be there when that coach was coaching another team anyway. It was just silly and messy. When I heard that, I thought to myself, really?
[00:20:09] Speaker C: That's what you're going to do?
[00:20:10] Speaker D: Is you're going to be, like, hiding around corners to see if the other person is in the room.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Like high school. Loren like going back into high school, don't you?
[00:20:17] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So I met with the coach first. The coach was the one who put in the complaint, and I discovered that she's very rule driven and she was new to the club. Not a new coach, but new to the club. And she wanted to do a really good job, and she wanted to ensure that she was following the rules. And here comes this athlete who's got very specific goals in mind for what he wanted and how he saw things, unfortunately, the team that he was to be. And it was a recreational athlete, but who had big aspirations. And so, anyway, what I discovered very quickly was there was a misalignment of value. So here's this coach who's very rule driven. These are the rules, and you must follow the rules. And then in comes an athlete who's got different expectations, a different way of being is very direct, and, like, this is my way. Nothing wrong with this. But it was like they were talking a different language. And even though they hadn't done the Nova, I could bring in this concept like, oh. So it sounds to me like this is what's really important to you. And she was like, yes. And then when I spoke with the athlete, I spent some time with him as well. And I said, It sounds to me like this is what's really important with you. And it sounds to me like there's a misalignment of expectations and values. And they're both like, wow, yes. So in those conversations, I got them prepared and ready to come together for a group conversation. But one of the things that I ask both of them and I ask them very similar questions, and one of the questions is, what will you take.
[00:21:49] Speaker C: Responsibility for in the dysfunction of this relationship?
And one might expect that the person.
[00:21:57] Speaker D: Who put in the complaint was not taking responsibility, but what was beautiful, because I'd coached her along the way and asked her some really powerful questions, she totally took some beautiful well, I could have explained the rules better. We could, as a club, onboard athletes in a different way and make it really clear the expectations of this program.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Versus where they see themselves going so.
[00:22:18] Speaker D: That there can be a level setting. But I think if I didn't have that knowledge of the Nova inside of me, and then I could bring it to them, when we came together, there was a lot of vulnerability.
And this is also someone who was not from Canada originally, is from a South American country. He just said, we don't do this stuff in my country, but this is really cool. I'm so grateful to have had this goes you know, in my country, we just basically write people off. And both of them said that they felt really seen, heard and valued. They got exactly what they wanted out of it. And I heard the next weekend they came together and at a social event and were laughing and smiling. And basically my goal was to get the two to be able to be in a room together in a way that they both felt like they had deeper sense of trust of one another.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:09] Speaker D: So there's so many applications to this novo dina and I have run the Sport Leaders retreat. This is an amazing opportunity for people who want to really take the learning deeper. And so we've done it with sport administrators, we've also done it with sport coaches. I am looking to run this program again in the fall, and it's going to be a hybrid, but the Nova is the foundation, and it really opens up people to possibilities, gives them language to navigate their world differently. And when they do that, life becomes so much easier. Honestly, it really does.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: It's so exciting. It feels loren one of the things that we share with our clients and leadership is if you're going to bring someone new into your culture and our culture is our way of being together, right. It's the traditions, the rituals, the language, the behaviors we tolerate. And so one of the nicest gifts when you're welcoming someone onboarding them, as you said, if we can get a sense of their internal way of being and accelerate the deepening of connections, we're going to work better together. We're going to recruit people who want to experience some of that culture. And so no wonder sport is kind of grappling right now with being in this transition, because all of the tools that we've been normalizing and made available aren't the kind of tools and the practices and the education that we need to really up level our game. So I'm grateful to you for that and for bringing this up. The other thing I wanted to comment on when you were talking about your two stories, one of the things that I'd love our listeners to know is those coaches knew to reach out to sport law and have these conversations and make a request for the Nova because they themselves had been through the Nova. So this rippling out is occurring. Steve which is exciting, because do you want to spend money doing all this.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: Reactive work, or do you want to.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Spend money investing in intentionally in curating these healthy alliances, which mean that we grow the capacity for people to be with tension. And we know here that sport is an incubator to allow people to fulfill their highest dreams. And so they're going to have to learn how to become resilient, how to receive constructive feedback that isn't soul destroying. It's actually soul inspiring. If the coaches that are tasked with providing feedback have never received training in how to provide feedback in that kind of way, if they don't understand the internal operating system of self first and other, then why are we expecting anything different? Right? I'm so encouraged every time we have this kind of conversations because I have borne witness to the impact this can have and how a singular conversation can change the mindset and heartset of people. So as we move forward, loren, I'm curious. Do you have any coaching trends or things that you've been tracking that you would love our community here to know and maybe learn from.
[00:26:34] Speaker D: Yeah, there's a couple of things. One of the workshops that I did recently was around well being.
And in particular, this group that I.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Was talking to was a group of coaches.
[00:26:49] Speaker D: And so we talked about this idea of coach well being. We talk a lot about athlete well being and their mental health. But there's this what I call the forgotten frontier, which is the coach. And so we need to be thinking about how we can resource our coaches in such a way so that they can be there. And also our leaders as well. There was a femtorship program that we created. And I had one of the leaders who told me that the greatest gift of the program was the Nova and understanding why she was so depleted, she was run out of gas. And then what happened from then because she had run out of gas and she became resentful and angry and irritated. So that shows up on the field of play. Right? And so what the Nova showed her, in fact, and it was glaring to her how much she said yes to everything that came her way. She had no boundaries. So having this one conversation with me, we mind for the stories that she was telling herself about why she needed to say yes. And then from there, it was clear she was really inspired to practice creating healthier boundaries and testing her theories about saying yes and no, her relationship to no. Right. So when I talked to her recently, she said she was in a much better place, feeling more inspired and more engaged in her role. I mean, there is a danger, a risk that we're going to be losing people because they are pissed off, because they are tired, because they don't see a way through.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: Right?
[00:28:20] Speaker D: So we need to be talking about the well being of the people working inside sport in order to keep more people in.
[00:28:26] Speaker C: I guess the other thing that I've.
[00:28:29] Speaker D: Been doing a lot of, and this is one of the trends that is really supporting people, and it's called designing the team alliance. So working with people to create, I call them social contracts or agreements, and they're co created.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: Like, how do we agree we're going to be together?
[00:28:47] Speaker D: Who are we going to be together? How do we agree we're going to be together when things get challenging or hard? And once we mind for that and everybody's involved in co creating that. And what happens is people take co responsibility, they take co ownership. And so an example is I worked.
[00:29:03] Speaker C: With a team a year ago and.
[00:29:05] Speaker D: They were a bunch of PTSOs of a single sport, and we spent a lot of time designing their alliance. I met them again just two weekends ago and I asked them, how's it going, what's changed, what's different? And I actually took them through the agreements. That they had from the previous year. What was really beautiful is like, wow, they noticed things had changed. People are taking more ownership. People are speaking up more. Right? So it created an atmosphere of trust. They're also we're holding one another accountable for their behaviors, right? So it's a really beautiful process. I've been doing that between coaches and athletes. And so both the coaches and the athletes are creating their alliances and their contracts with one another. That's an amazing trend that I'm seeing that people are really loving. I mean, coaching and managing by values. It's always the thing that we go back to and can't talk about it enough. It's the anchor that we all need to be stepping into.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: But I think what happens is organizations.
[00:30:08] Speaker D: And people get stuck. They're like, oh, these are our five values, but they don't know what to do with them. So helping people understand how to actually bring them alive, how to speak to them often, how to make decisions through the lens of your values. And once you start to do that and we really need allies in these organizations to really take the helm and start to bring people on board to this whole idea just doesn't happen by accident. It happens with intention. So the other thing that I have.
[00:30:38] Speaker C: Been thinking a lot about is the.
[00:30:40] Speaker D: Short game that we play in sport. And we have to be playing a.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Longer game because there's a danger if we don't think about the long game, we don't think about the impact of our actions now and how they play.
[00:30:57] Speaker D: Out in the human in the long.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Term, like, long after sport is over.
[00:31:01] Speaker D: There's a great book that I've been reading. I haven't read the whole thing, full disclosure, but it's called The Long Win. And it talks about this, right? And so our system and the system's kind of win at all cost mentality, it's really costing us and has been costing us for a long time. And what we're seeing now, we've been complaining about people like, well, that was 30 years ago. Now you're complaining about it. Now it's just like, well, people are just waking up to their trauma that they've received in the system. The problem is we've got people who.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: Grew up in a toxic, harmful environment.
[00:31:35] Speaker D: And now are leading and coaching. They're continuing to bring some of those. And even know as a coach, I vowed I would never coach the way I was coached, and yet I still brought some of the ideology with me. And it wasn't until someone would question, lorraine, why do you have a scale in your bag? What's that for? It it was a psychologist, father of an athlete that I had, and I was embarrassed.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: And I thought to myself, I need to examine that. I need to look at that.
[00:32:02] Speaker D: Right? But this is what we need to be doing, and we've normalized. So much of what we're doing in sports. So I think we really need to play a longer game and think about what are the long term implications of current sports systems. I want to really be challenging people to think deeper about what does success mean? What does it mean to win beyond medals, what is a new definition of winning?
[00:32:28] Speaker A: I love the way you've explained, Loren, how you can support healthy human sport. As you know, a lot of our work or the lawyer's work is reactive. And I think a lot of the work that you and Deanna are doing is proactive. And I really hope in some respects that you put the lawyers out of business, which means things are going extremely well. So I want to thank you for coming on today's show and sharing your insights on how you can support healthy human sport in Canada and beyond. Any last words?
[00:32:57] Speaker C: Dina well, what I would offer a.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Couple of things, Steve. There's always one little nugget or two. One of the trends that I think will be really interesting for us to be grappling with is AI this artificial intelligence and ways in which we can benefit more intentionally to support who I believe is our frontline workers. It's the coaches, right? The millions of coaches in communities that are serving little minds and before they're athletes, they're children. So we really need to be mindful of that. And I also want to give a nod to one of our sports sector allies and friends, the Coaching Association of Canada, that does and has been doing significant work for upwards of three and a half decades in the socialization and the coaching education realm to ensure that the coaches have the knowledge and the capacity to be able to meet the needs of 21st century athletes. And anything that we're doing here is complementary, we believe, to this foundational training that is being offered and required through the CAC. So I think one of the things that we'll be wanting to acknowledge is the need for the system, the sector as a whole, to modernize its practices so that we avoid causing harm. And more importantly, we start to really leverage this gem that we call sport so that the hearts and minds and bodies of young people that come through the system, 99% of them, which will end their high performance careers in communities across the country, that they walk away from their experience in sport with beautiful memories like you've talked about. Steve, right. Your experience in sport, feeling grateful for having had this experience and wanting to then give back in a future.
So that's what I would offer as parting comments that there's a lot of reasons to be maybe grateful for the good work that we're doing here. And the leadership coaches at Sport Law are excited to collaborate and partner with organizational leaders that want more, that want to invest in themselves, to become more aware and want to embed in these cultures of belonging more intentionality. As Loren said, because I'll leave you with this, we will move in the direction that we are being rewarded. So alongside mapping out our values and putting in place strategies to live them and engaging in practices to ensure healthy human sport for the different people that are swimming in our ecosystem, we must reward more than just money and medals. We have to start to reward the morals, the ways in which we are interfacing with each other. And when we elevate sport to a triple bottom line, I think we're going to see better quality results, sustainability, and we're going to see a decrease in the number of people that are calling you Steve, with crisis as their middle name. So that would be my last two cent.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Thanks, Dina, for sharing. As always, we've linked a few blogs and additional information about the Nova profile in the episode notes below, where you can learn more about Loren's work. Thanks again, Loren, for sharing your time today with us. And thank you to our listeners. We are so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you and to elevate sport.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: To have your say in Sportopia, email us at hello at sportlaw CA or on social media at sportlaw CA. To let us know what you want to hear about next, please let us know. So stay tuned for the next episode, and until then, have a wonderful day.
