If you want to see a high‑performance team with compassion at its heart, there are regular 90-minute(-plus) masterclasses from the Lionesses free on UK screens at the moment. We’ve seen a few individual athletes start to role‑model self-compassion publicly over recent times, ranging from Simone Biles to Ben Stokes. Now we are seeing the power of compassion in team performance.
Compassion has not been a traditional hallmark of sport. With its UK roots in 19th-century British public schools and universities, modern sport developed as way of creating strong military leaders, training them in the resilience defined in those times by grit and a stiff upper lip. Fear and harsh criticism were essential to toughening up players and soldiers alike. The “tough guy” narrative was dramatised and reinforced by 20th-century media stereotypes and Hollywood’s heroes and became engrained into sport and society.
