pitch perfect: laura mcallister’s leadership lessons from football

When we established Heads Up— the informal meet-up for third sector leaders in Wales — Laura McAllister was on my wish list for future speakers. Laura is a leading academic, columnist and media commentator, a former chair of Sports Wales and a former Wales international football player and captain.

If you have met Laura, you will know her to be warm, wise, and the kind of person you could spend hours listening to. If you know Laura, you will also wonder how she fits it all in. 

Seeing her work, I had wondered whether she had some kind of wonder productivity app, or perhaps she had a professional entourage on a scale that rivals the Prince of Wales. Alas no. It’s a lot simpler than that: she applies what she has learnt in football, off the pitch.

One key strength of Laura’s is self-discipline. As a footballer, she had to fit a strict training regime around a new career in academia. Being structured about when she trained, what she ate, and when she worked allowed her to combine an academic career in Liverpool with her domestic and international footballing responsibilities in Cardiff. With a structure in place, Laura could focus on what matters: performance and winning.

But routine, purpose, and determined action day after day is only one half of Laura’s coin. The flip side is the importance of reflection. While Laura is clearly a goal-focused “doer” who sets challenging objectives for the future, she doesn’t constantly focus on ‘the next big thing’. A self-declared introvert, Laura spends some time reflecting on her losses and understanding what went wrong and what could have been better. She observed:

“you learn more from your defeats than your victories”

When I asked Laura to define leadership and her style, she hesitated. The reason is telling. Laura’s mind-set as a leader isn’t separate or different to her mind-set in her other roles in life. Like everyone, different character traits come to the fore depending on who she is with and what she is doing; but there is a consistency to her style regardless. Given she has continually pushed the bar in many of the things she has done, Laura is surprisingly unsurprising. You know what you will get from her: consistently calm, confident and clear. When I met her for the first time, I found this consistency almost intimidating. Now it is inspiring, but I was keen to further understand how Laura saw herself.

We spoke about gender, class and national identity, and how Laura had chosen to blaze a trail in two industries — sport and academia — that are not always famed for diversity and inclusion. Laura has written and spoken a lot on this topic and if you are interested in her thoughts, check out her podcast interview with Martin Shipton.

I was still left wondering whether she ever felt like she was faking it? Yes was her answer. Laura, like many of us has ‘suffered’ with impostor syndrome in the past. There was something almost re-assuring about hearing Laura talk about that. But, she was quick to point out, she no longer feels that way now. What has changed? Seemingly there was no “Big Bang” moment, more a gradual realisation that she had things covered. Laura the ‘impostor’ left the game a few seasons ago.

So who is left on the pitch? Hearing her talk, Laura sounds more comfortable than ever in her own skin. She knows she is good at what she does; she knows how to play to her strengths and avoid doing things which disinterest her or she is poor at. But for me, the big reveal was her admission that she now cares less about what other people think. Never overly emotionally yet always emotionally intelligent, Laura’s purpose in life is to get stuff done, not to make people like her. Ironically, it is a quality that makes me like her more.