FOREWORD

IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, STANDING ON YOUR HANDS HOLDING A PERFECTLY STABLE HANDSTAND.

Imagine that is 10m above water and you are on the edge of a diving platform.  You are about to perform the exact same dive as your team mate, at the same time, and hit the water perfectly in unison.  Add to that the atmosphere that it’s an Olympic final, the largest crowd to date fall silent and you could hear a pin drop.

Get it right and that dive defines the rest of your career, maybe even your life.  Get it wrong and all manner of possible injuries could also significantly, negatively define the rest of your life.

Speak to any athlete, any sports man or woman, speak to any leader in business or any successful person in their field, and they would tell you that while that moment defines you, the years of preparation that go into that moment and every preceding moment is what truly defines you.  It is those preceding moments that create the opportunity that stands before you for you to grasp.

While diving is predominantly categorised as an “individual” sport, we are all part of wider teams.  At Olympic level this includes medics, physios, coaches, nutritionalists, personal trainers, to name a few.  At entry levels though most of us are members of a club, and we will form part of a team.  Do you remember during 2012 London Olympics when Tom Daly won his medal, and his team mates jumped into the pool to celebrate with him?  It is an iconic image that illustrates that even as individuals, we are part of a team or a club.

The success of club requires a number of factors to be in place that creates the environment where individuals can flourish and be the best that they can be.  Those elements are illustrated beautifully in Making Clubs Work.

Subsequent to **** I retired from competitive diving, and have been privileged to fulfil other roles in other teams, whether that be as coach or mentor, presenting on television, or working with a team of other speakers at a conference or seminar.

I didn’t realise until I sat down to analyse situations, but the principles that Brad covers are the very essence of what has been successful in the clubs i have enjoyed being a member of, and have been lacking in the clubs I did not enjoy being a part of.

Brad’s work in unpicking the complexity of what makes a club work successfully, and what can sabotage a club, and then to painstakingly piece it back together, is masterful.  He is obviously passionate about the subject, and his ability to convey what could be a complex conundrum in such a simple, fun, easy to understand way reflects Brad’s personality and his ability to make it easy for the reader to get the message and implement it to achieve success.