Jen Coe is an HCPC Registered Sport Psychologist, Senior Lead for Workforce Development at the Football Association, and someone who has spent 25 years in sport from playground to podium. Before the FA she worked at UK Coaching supporting coaches across 13 high performance Olympic sports, and prior to that as Performance Wellbeing Lead in the WSL. She is a former international basketball player, and co-author of four books with the brilliant Amy Whitehead. Jen is a good friend and a former colleague at UK Coaching, where she inspired me every day.
Three Key Messages
1. Coach development is at its best when people feel safe to grow Jen's opening answer to the very first question, and honestly one of the best one-liners anyone has offered on this podcast. It sounds simple but it carries a lot of weight. Safety to grow isn't just about being nice or creating a comfortable environment. It's about clarity, intention, honest dialogue, and creating the conditions for people to be genuinely vulnerable without fear of what happens next.
2. Observation before intervention One of the most immediately stealable ideas in the conversation. Don't rush to fix. Sit with what you're seeing. Notice the tensions a coach is carrying before you decide what to do about them. Jen talks about the movement in a coaching relationship - how naming what's there, rather than glossing over it, is often what shifts things.
3. Model vulnerability, and mean it Jen's game-changing advice builds to a really important point. When leaders and coaches show up as the finished article - polished, certain, never wrong - they fill the room. There is literally no space for anyone else to contribute. But the moment you say I got that wrong, I'm not sure about this, what do you think, something opens up. Learning accelerates. People lean in. Jen's challenge to coaches is simple: start with one honest question at the end of a session, answer it yourself first, and hold the space for others to follow. When you model vulnerability, you give everyone else permission to be honest too.
Other Things Worth Knowing
The five dysfunctions of a team Jen introduces Patrick Lencioni's framework in the context of coach development. At the base - absence of trust. Then fear of conflict, leading to artificial harmony and meetings that go nowhere. Lack of commitment when debate is shallow. Avoidance of accountability when commitment is weak. And at the top - inattention to results when individual ego overtakes collective purpose.
Naming the tensions A really practical idea from Jen, deliberately naming the tensions a coach is carrying rather than talking around them. Performance versus politics. Development versus survival. These are real pressures coaches live with and pretending they're not there doesn't make them go away.
The books Jen co-authored four books with Dr Amy Whitehead - Myths of Sport Coaching, Myths of Sport Performance, Women Working in Sport, and a fourth title on the myths of sports and exercise psychology. All of them are accessible, challenging and built around the idea of checking and challenging the things that have been accepted as truth in sport for too long. Jen talks in the episode about curriculum being rewritten on the back of the first book and coaches globally reaching out to contributors. Browse all titles at the publisher's website below:
Sequoia Books: https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/
Get in Touch
Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/
Jen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-coe-1a308a49/
Sequoia Books: https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/
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