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 for our latest conversation about healthy human sport.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Today we're going to spend some time exploring risk management and how we believe leading volunteering, coaching and competing needs to modernize its approaches to minimize unnecessary risks. And before we jump in today, I'm curious, Steve, what's coming across your desk this week?
[00:00:50] Speaker A: I always like this part of our podcast, Dina, because I get to look at my calendar and say, what's happened this week? And what I want to talk about today is yesterday I received three phone calls from the same organization with respect to a disciplinary matter, and there was confusion with respect to what policy they were utilizing to implement discipline. And, of course, the respondent, the defendant in the case, was very policy driven and asking a lot of questions about trying to understand how the sanction was applied, how the remedy was determined, when it was of the view that the policy wasn't followed. So having good policy, understanding your policy, implementing the policy, communicating the policy is really fundamental. And everybody who's heard me speak over the last 20 years knows my favorite question is, what does your policy say? So I just reiterates the importance of policy development, the communication, the implementation, the understanding. And that, of course, ties very well into our topic today of risk management, how it really provides a path to end up with a proper solution. What's new with you?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Well, I think what I'm going to talk about, it has to do with risk management. And at first glance, we might not see it as that. It's about grief and loss, actually. And I'm privileged today. Later on today, I'm going to be hosting a webinar with the IOC and not the sport IOC. It's actually the Institute on Coaching, which is a global platform for professional coaches like me, leadership coaches, executive coaches, et cetera. And what I've noticed, Steve, is, you know me, I like to maybe blaze new trails on topics that really matter to me. And this topic of grief and loss, I feel fundamentally ought to be a required form of practice for parents and for coaches and for athletes and children. And when you learn this new language, it's a really healthy way for us to understand why we get attached to certain people, to certain experiences, to places and relationships. And when we understand that form of attachment, we create new rituals. So, for instance, with a team I worked with, they were gutted after their coach left, and he left on a high and understanding that they never had a chance to say thank you, to express gratitude, to close off that experience. So by the time the new coach was identified and selected, there was a lot of work that that coach had to do to earn the trust. And it wasn't necessarily because the athletes had anything against him, it was because they were grieving. And so understanding that and then putting a ritual in place and putting a practice in place was really helpful and healthy for them. And the same is true for after the big loss, right? Do we really understand that everybody copes differently? And so providing that kind of literacy makes my heart sing. And I'm really delighted that I'll be having an opportunity to equip coaches like me with the fundamental literacy, so that when we're supporting our clients and or cultures, we can also be aware of the subtleness often that arises when things come to an end.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: I like the part, Dina, about the coach leaving and the players and maybe even the parents not having an opportunity to grieve. And that segues into what we're talking about today being risk management. And one of the simple mechanisms of managing risk is identifying it and then trying to manage it.
You have a little bit of experience dealing with risk in your career. I wonder if you want to talk about what you know about risk. How did you get involved in it?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's such a great question. And I think, Steve, I'll share the story with you and our listeners because it really comes back for me. My intention around bringing a risk management lens to the Canadian sport community traces back 1718 years. My husband's a pilot, and I remember reading a little newsletter that he had and the caption or the tagline read something like this we don't have enough time in our lifetime to make all the mistakes ourselves, so we better learn from others. And that is, fundamentally, risk management is our capacity to pause, to assess our environment, to understand what are the so called threats and opportunities that may be available to us. And I loved what you said earlier around being able to go back into our policy statement, which it's a way to mitigate risks, it's a way for us to understand complexity and to help create a sense of consistency right around our decision making. It's also a proactive way for us to, as you said earlier, to communicate what are the expectations, and we're going to hopefully avoid these risks if we do this. And so for me, my love affair with all things risk management really was cemented because at the time, I was trying to promote an ethic of leadership called management by values. And it was really hard to convince sport leaders to really double down on this new form of leadership, which is written about in research and what led me to do my masters on this topic. So what I did find was easier, Steve, is having a risk based conversation because we know it takes three instances of positivity to counter one instance of negativity. That's how we're wired, right? So if we are afraid of what's underneath the bed, so to speak, we're going to spend all kinds of time focusing on that. If we are trying to soar or we're really excited about something, we don't spend a lot of mindful time thinking about what's uplifting us. And there's science, the neuroscience, around fight, flight, freeze, faint, right? So I would say that 17 years of managing dozens and dozens and dozens of organizations through their risk management practice has convinced me that if we do the hard work first, which is identify and define a core set of values, we communicate those expectations around values, we're going to see a reduction in risk.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: I was thinking, Dina, about my evolution in understanding risk management and really started in law school.
I got a part time job with a law firm doing research, little small projects to try and understand the law and how it worked. And I remember having a conversation with one of the principal lawyers there and saying, what if I make a mistake? What if I give bad advice? This is going to have an impact on somebody's corporation career, not for profit. And that's a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. And the conversation we had was, well, do your best, try and figure out the right answer. Take your time to make sure you get the right answer and be confident in the answer that you provide.
And that's a skill I've been working on for 20 years and continually trying to do that almost on a daily basis when you mentioned it's about things that aren't there. And a lot of times when we talk about the things that I do on the law side, contract reviews, complaint management bylaws, it's not always looking about what's there, it's looking about what's not there. In a contract, a termination clause is paramount. Understanding an indemnity clause is paramount. Ensuring there's proper insurance coverage is paramount. Sometimes those sections aren't even there, and we have to recognize that those need to go in. So it's always not necessarily always about what's there, but it's not there. And I like that you said that. How do you think, Dina, the current sports is? How is risk being implemented in the current system?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Well, a couple of things, Steve. I would say now there's a greater affinity, maybe appreciation for incorporating what we would say are leading risk management practices. I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the leadership of the Canadian Center for Ethics and Sports, an MSO that we were often in close allyship with because of the nature of our mutual values and also the interest that we have in really elevating the sector. So I would offer the CCS's project, right, the risk management project that we have facilitators that are trained to host these sessions, that is equipping the decision makers primarily of NSOs, but we also do work with PSOs, with the capacity, as you said earlier, to think about risk. So the process to do that, the simple process, is to pause and then to assess the environment. So in risk parlance, we need to identify what are the risks? And I like to say, what are the risks that are keeping you up at night? And there's another side to that coin, right? What are the risks that are keeping me up at night? What are the opportunities that we want to leverage but we can't because we're too busy putting out fires? And so being able to understand both sides of that. So the risk identification phases is really critical. What are the things that we know and see and we want to anticipate and prevent these bad things from happening. That requires our capacity to press pause, though. First, to do that, I always tell.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Clients the same thing as you've just alluded to, and I've even advocated for them to write it down on their board agenda. Pause. Take a break, take a moment, think about it. What's the impact? How's this going to play out? And I agree with you. We're always so hurried in a rush to make decisions because we have 38 things to decide on the agenda. But one of my key points of risk management is to stop, breathe, think. I always use this trivial example, Dina. If you and I were taking some kids on a trip to the zoo and we spent 9 seconds thinking about what could go wrong anaphylactic, bee stings, lose a kid, and we could probably come up in about another 9 seconds the responses to that to say, okay, let's bring an EpiPen. Let's make sure all the kids have partners. You stay in the front of the line, I'll stay in the back of the like it's really that simple. It's just the pause is hard.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: I love that, Steve, because we tend to react in sport, right? Our fast twitch muscles, so to speak, are really finely tuned. So we've promoted a philosophy of let's react rather than respond. And in leadership development, we train, we train the brain to respond. And then our reaction time can still be really fast. But if we pause, even a micro pause can help us better discern what's the right action here. So we need to identify the risks, as you've said, and I love that you incorporate that on the agenda. That's one of our good risk management practices. The second thing we do when we're grappling with a decision and I often see if this feels true for you, Steve, when we advise directors of organizations, right, or know we're all vulnerable to group think. This is why we recommend diversity of boards is so mission critical. It's the smart thing to do, and it's the right thing to do. It's also the smart risk management thing to do. Because if all of you are thinking in the same vein, there's a risk there we need to better understand. Like, hold on, if we're all seeing the same thing, those should be fewer not examples of everyday thinking, right? I see you laughing.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Well, I'm laughing because I'm going to my favorite board member, Al, who would always ask, Why? Every motion that came forward, al would say, Why? And it would create conversation. Exactly what we're talking about here today. Why? What are the risks? What are the outcomes? What are the things we can control? And he did it very respectfully. I love Al. I think he was a great board member. He made me laugh a lot.
But for sure remember the fact that he would ask why all the time. And I think that's important to what we're speaking about today.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: I love that. So we can call him Al. You can call me Al.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: That's his real name, too. But we'll let people figure that out, who he is.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: So, Al, if you're listening, we love you. We love that you are asking why, and it's all about how we ask the question. But to your point, Steve, we need to train people to ask these questions. And the boards need to see that the rest of the people, right, they're out the door agreeing to something, and then there's someone on the board. And I often ask this question, have you ever been in a situation where you're sitting around the table, everybody agrees except you? Don't you see the world differently? And if you're the only woman or a person of color, you're like, I don't feel comfortable raising my hand because I don't want to be othered I don't want to be different than the rest of the group. So that's why diversity and a minimum, we would argue 40%, right, of any one gender. Now, it's the new standard, and we've been asking for that for a while. So being able to raise your hand and say, okay, folks, I know we're all well, most of us are in agreement here. I would like us to pause and just ask ourselves, what are the risks associated with this decision and what are the risks if we don't do this so we can have a better appreciation? The second test is to ask ourselves, how does this decision reflect our values? I have a whole shelf full of evidence to be able to substantiate there's integrity and alignment, because those values, likely, Steve, have been co developed, co created with your community or people that have been elected to represent your community. And so if you've done that hard work first and you've created that shared language which drives culture, then you can defend or explain or provide a rationale for your decision. So now we have more robust decision making. The final thing that I well, there's two other steps, but I'll pause after this. Next one is, in what ways are you going to communicate this decision to your membership who needs to know what, by when, how and why. And if we do that, we're going to mitigate the risk, probably not eliminate it, because people are prone to behave badly, right? We call it PBB, so at least that three part test allows us, and I'll talk more about the fourth one in a moment. But what are your thoughts on that kind of little simple math equation to minimize risk?
[00:15:32] Speaker A: I like the simplicity, Dina, of things. And in sport, I think we need to try and keep it simple because we don't have enough time, we don't have enough people. We need to make things simple. And if you ask those three questions, what I like is, again, we identify what can go wrong. Applying your values will actually provide you probably an answer. Does that decision align with our values? And I've had several conversations over the course of my career where we talk about eligibility or transfers or residency rules, and at the end of the day, I kind of ask the question rhetorically to say, aren't we in the business of having people participate in sport? And why do we keep creating barriers that may prevent people from playing in sport? If you want to drive your kid dina an hour and a half to go play soccer or baseball or basketball, I believe that should be your choice, particularly when we talk about youth amateur sport. So I think when you start aligning values and you're looking at the outcome of the decision that we're making and it prevents people from participating or doesn't align with the goals and objectives that we have, that's going to give you direction. And I always recognize you said we might not make everybody happy. And I agree. And one of my new sayings is, in addition to follow your policy is to say we are not everything for everybody. It's just not possible. We're too thin on the volunteer side, the staff side, the funding side, to be everything for everybody. So I think it's okay to say we're not going to be that for you, and hopefully you can find what you're looking for somewhere else. But we need to communicate that if people are looking for a high performance program and, you know, you want to be recreational, that has to be communicated. I was talking to a club the other day where they had advertised AA team, a high performance team, and then after the team was selected, they said, oh, we're moving down to House league. So you had parents and athletes who expected to play at a certain level and of course, didn't get to play at that level because of a decision made within the organization. I don't know all the reasons why it happened, but of course, that communication wasn't very clear and the outcome was not a very good one.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: I think it's Guns N'Roses that has a song, and I can't remember the name of the song, but it starts with what we have is a failure to communicate, right?
[00:17:50] Speaker A: I love the fact that Guns N'Roses just popped into our podcast.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Well, who knows, right? We have a pinball machine with Guns N'Roses.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: So it comes down to smart and integral decision making needs to be centered on our foundational statements, right? Who we are, who we're here to serve, and what we believe in most. And if we ground our decisions in that way. And this is where, when I was teaching risk management, I try and make it fun, and maybe they're in short order these days, but I would talk about the reasonable person, because the litmus test in the court of law right around trying to avoid the likelihood that if you are sued that you will be found negligent. It's a pretty rigorous test, eh, Steve? To actually prove negligence. Do you want to maybe share? What do you have to prove?
[00:18:37] Speaker A: It's a four part test. So one is, do I have a duty of care? Do I have a responsibility to that individual? Of course, when we talk about sport, the coach athlete relationship, there's a duty of care there, the organization participant, there's a duty of care there. The second part is the one to which we have the most control over. And that's, did we breach our standard of care? And as you've alluded to, how do we define that standard of care? And there's multiple factors. We look at trends in the industry, case law, common sense policies, written rules. The way I like to describe it is we find a line. And the question is how high is that line or how low is that line? And that's the area that we have control over. There are actually people who have been severely injured, which of course is a horrible, horrible thing to have happen in sport. But organizations were found not to be negligent because they had done everything reasonable to provide a safe environment for that individual, for that participant.
Number three is, is there actual damage? Is there something that can be compensated with financial gain? And the fourth one is there correlation between the breach and the damage? So usually in sport, we focus on, do we have a duty to that person? And can we control that standard of care to create a safe environment?
[00:19:53] Speaker B: That's so helpful, Steve. And so when people understand this, one of the things that we explore when we're practicing and teaching risk management is what is your tolerance for risk? Right? Because we might tolerate a very high or high level risk, because the reward, what's driving us to achieve this desired result is worth it. But we're not going in blind. We're actually going in eyes wide open, right? So we're being thoughtful. We've put together some research, we've looked at evidence and leading practice. We understand social expectations as well as legal and moral expectations. So we've done all of this hard work and we've said, you know what? We're going to tolerate this risk, even though it might be a high to very high level risk. And we're going to put in all these mitigation factors, right, to help reduce the likelihood that someone's going to get injured, that we're going to lose big money, that we're going to not fulfill our duty of care. So for our listeners, hopefully you understand there's a stepwise process to help us make better decisions that reflect our values. Now, I promised I would talk about the fourth little, let's call it the secret ingredients in this little mixture called better risk management. And that's how do we know, how are we monitoring and evaluating the extent to which we manage this risk in alignment with our values? So if we are not paying attention to the pulse of the people, right? If we aren't asking really good questions some of the stuff that you just talked about if we don't have a means, for instance, through which we can actually connect to the lived experience of our people, we are exposing ourselves, especially in today's world, around unsafe practices and maltreatment. We are at risk. And here's what I would offer on this. I think we are mainly at risk because we in sport are beholden kind of like invisible handcuffs to the policies and the procedures, the informal rules of the pool, if you will, to the culture that we've inherited. And those rules that were designed and crafted mainly in the 20th century are leftovers. And they kind of feel like, if you could imagine al dente spaghetti, I've used this before, and you throw it on the wall. Many of the policies, right? You have a fun story, Steve, where you talk about a client that had like 629 policies and you brought it down to a manageable, I don't know, 30.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And one of the pre podcast questions we had put together was, what are things that we could do to help reduce or eliminate those risks? And I love consistency, I love sharing of knowledge. And that example you just brought up was we were asked by a client to do policy, streamlining their policies, and the first thing we did was an inventory across the sector. So we had researched the NSO and the twelve PTOs, and had over 600 separate policies across that sports sector, which of course is crazy.
And through years of work, they've been able to do it together with their PTOs and their NSO, and have knocked it down to, I think, 19. Now, not all of them are pan Canadian because of provincial and territorial legislation and different reasons why each province or territory would need their own version, but it's a lot simpler. And in the work that we continue to do with them, you can hear the conversations where BC is talking to Ontario and Ontario is talking to nova Scotia because they have the same policy structure and can gain some experience. So I just love the idea of trying to minimize the level of work for staff and volunteers. And we talk about this all the time, Dina, about sports, working in silos and not communicating and not sharing information and resources. And one of the great things that I've loved being on the Hope Tour is that one of the key messages that we're getting out of this, out of our tour, is that people want help, they want to share, they don't want to recreate the wheel. And I'm a big advocate for that. So if there are ways that we can share risk strategies and policy development and how your organization, Dina, dealt with something that mine is now facing, I think, really, that's a fundamental factor in reducing and eliminating risk.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really helpful, Steve. And I would know, just piggybacking off what you shared if you were to ask me, what are some of the mother of all risks right now? I would say I don't like looking at the presenting risks or the symptoms. I like to actually dig a little bit and understand what gave rise to this presenting risk. So for me, and I've written about this for several years now, the mother of all risk that is preventing sport from living up to its full potential is the system itself.
This system that was designed in the 70s by really smart people in preparation for the 76 Olympics. First of all, they never said that this was going to be the only system forever and ever, and they didn't anticipate a new model of delivery. Right? So it's a volunteer led system. And with the churning in and out of these well intentioned volunteers, who many of them will say they're in over their heads, they don't have the knowledge, the time, the interest to be making these significant decisions. They just want to help kids have a fun time. And so the system itself needs the modernization. And until we address these big macro systemic risks, we're going to still stay stuck. And as I've said, we're going to be playing a game of whackamole. So as you and I start to wind down our conversation, maybe it would be helpful for people to hear a bit of a summary. So please make sure you have a risk management policy inside that policy. It will guide you through what is the process we would use to identify the risk, to assess the risk, to treat the risk, to communicate the risk, and then to monitor the risk. Right. So this five point kind of stepped is entrenched in research. It's evidence based. And what happens is people feel more confident, and when I feel more confident, I can be more competent. So this stepwise approach is documented in your policy, and then the process you use you started us off with that, Steve. You get it. On your agenda, right? You educate all of your decision makers, including your coaches, on the same process of identifying risks and then assessing them, communicating things, proactively, monitoring. And if we do that, we're going to see a reduction in risk, right? So if we can ensure that we do those two things, and then I would say another leading practice, it is for me, an expectation of a 21st century organization is we capture those risks in what we call a risk register. And those risk registers is a matrix, basically a very simple matrix that walks us through. Here are all the risks that we've identified. Here's where we've ranked them from low, medium high to very high. Here's our current measures, all the things we're doing to mitigate this risk. And then we give space to people, hopefully a diverse group of people, to brainstorm what additional measures could we take to help eliminate or minimize the risk? So if we do that and we present this in the connection of our values, I think we're going to see much better decisions and we're going to see happier people as a result.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: I think also an important one last step there, Dina, is share it, share that risk registry, share your policy, share your process, because you are not alone in going through everything that your club is facing. It has happened before. It is very rare that something new comes across the sport system. You also quickly, Dina, alluded to the 1976 Olympics. As you know, I was there at the parade in a stroller.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: You were like, what? Two?
[00:28:04] Speaker A: I was one.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: I love that. So there you have it, folks. Hopefully risk management made easier, right? And what we share here always is evidence informed. It is also practical.
This is what I love about hanging out with you, Steve. We can meet up in the 30,000 level of discussion and discovery. And I love that you always bring it down to a practical level, because as a lawyer, you see what happens when people don't make things practical, right? So it's not so nebulous. And risk management as a practice helps us sort through all those 50 shades of gray and makes our commitments really well known. It also helps us uncover these unhealthy assumptions that can contribute to biases that we hold that are often invisible to us. So thank you so much, Steve, for this really engaging conversation. We love to make risk management fun. If you want to learn more, we've linked a few blogs and learning opportunities in the episode. Notes below on how you can manage risks amidst an outdated sports system.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: As always, to have your say in sporttopia, email us at hello at sportlaw. CA or on social media at sportlaw. CA to let us know what you want to hear next. Stay tuned for the next episode.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Thanks, Steve.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Bye, Dina.
