This interview took place at our Campbell Academy Business Course where Colin asked Sara Symington, a speaker on the course, to join him to discuss her presentation during the Leadership module on the course.
Sara has as an extraordinary story, her latest job is the Performance Director for the England netball team, she was ultimately responsible for England Netball's massive success, winning the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.
We asked her to speak on the Business Course to try and inspire some boring, old, pathetic, getting fat dentists into achieving something other than mediocrity. So, what we thought we'd do is shamelessly try to tag onto Sarah’s fame and have this chat.
“So, Sara, today we were talking about leadership, and your experiences of leadership. How did you think it went with the Business Course delegates?
Well, hopefully well. Whatever industry, whatever business you work in, it is ultimately about getting the best out of people, to perform and be the best they possibly can be on the day or at a given point in time. I hope that by giving and sharing some stories of the last three and a half years, even if it’s only 1% of what I said, that they can use it and take it back into their everyday practice and use it differently or learn from it.
The England Netball story was massively inspiring. I can't say that I've been a lifelong netball fan, that would be wrong, I was actually a Basketball player so Netball was the enemy. We chatted previously about the success so I knew you were going to Australia for the games, so I told my kids about it who also got involved. The inspiration of the success in such a minority sport should be searched and read about, people should encourage their daughters into Netball now because it’s such an accessible sport.
It absolutely is, in terms of our membership numbers but also just access to the sport is incredible. Also, it's the team working as well. Netball is a team sport which I'd say, often, females are more attracted to rather than individual playing sports. You can see it through some of the products that we've got as England netball, it caters for all ages and stages.
Is there a walk-in netball programme?
Yes, there is.
That's amazing because it suits people like me with broken knees because they’re too old. So, it's very inclusive?
Really inclusive”.
Find out more in Part II of Sara’s interview coming soon.
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