USA Women’s Foil:
the making of a high performing team.

Starting point.

In Fencing, Foil is a solo sport, but for the Olympics they also compete as a team of three, plus an alternate.

This was a talented group of athletes, but not a high performing team when we met them:

Deference to the two senior athletes, which created an ‘us and them’ atmosphere.
Hesitant / unwilling to speak up about issues.
Too reserved –lack of constructive feedback or challenge between athletes.

Phil Ferrar & Miles Henson with USA Women’s Foil top six athletes and team coach, Paris, January 2023

What we did.

Explored Team Dynamics and how each of them contributed to this.
To highlight the over-supply and under-supply of behavioural characteristics in the team.
By sharing this, it gave them ‘permission’ to talk to each other about each other
Helped them see ‘how to get the best out of each other’
Facilitated them creating a team charter - ‘how we do things around here from now on’

The result.

When People Academy were in Paris, January 2023, for the international championship. We met the team for the first time the night prior to the competition.

We could see there was work to be done in forging their individual talents and personalities into a formidable team. These athletes were used to competing with each other, and was a challenge to help them overcome their natural competitive inclinations and pull together as a team. We supported them following completion of the individual competition – following this they became a high performing team for the team competition.