Staying the Distance: Gareth Southgate backs Yorkshire author's new book about sporting and business success

She tells The Yorkshire Post the discussion “was the final piece in the jigsaw” in cementing her determination to write a book about how learning from repeated sporting successes can show business leaders how they and their teams can build the “stamina” required for sustainable long-term performance.

Baker says that as someone who has “devoured” many leadership books, including plenty based on sporting principles, she felt there was a gap in the market when it came ones focused on the longer-term picture instead of immediate wins.

The result is her new book, Staying the Distance, which comes out this Thursday, March 30.

It opens, appropriately, with a foreword from England manager Gareth Southgate.

Southgate, a friend of Baker for several years since their sons became schoolmates in Yorkshire, became the fourth permanent manager of an England men’s team is as many years when he took charge in 2016 of a side in the doldrums. Seven years on, the team have become serial trophy contenders with Southgate winning particular praise for building a positive culture and a tightly-knit squad.

He writes in the foreword about the close alignment between the worlds of sport and business but wryly adds there are some obvious technical differences.

Southgate says: "Results are not judged quarterly, but sometimes three or four times a week and the dynamic of your ‘shareholders’ sitting in the stadium with a very vocal opinion is slightly different to the normal AGM. In either environment, management and, perhaps more pertinently, leadership has never been more challenging, more closely scrutinised and more vulnerable to rapid change.”

Baker says she was delighted Southgate agreed to write the foreword to her book.

"I have huge respect for Gareth and his leadership style. I think he has role modelled modern leadership in a way that has transcended sport.

"I have the good fortune of having worked with and alongside senior leaders from across sectors and I think the way that Gareth has gone about it, the qualities he's demonstrated, are just fabulous and really what's required now.

“There is no doubt that culture has been a very important element of the transformation that Gareth has brought about within England men's football.”

She says while players have openly discussed how they often did not wish to get selected for England, they now actively enjoy being part of the squad – showing how “culture can breed success”.

"The other thing that Gareth has done is seeing the person before the player. There is a tendency within some areas of sport and many areas of work life to see people at work as just their job, and not really take time to get behind that and understand them as individuals. I think that's something that Gareth has also worked really hard on. I've got immense respect for him.”

The book is structured around explaining stories of sporting success – and occasionally learning from failure – combined with case studies and exercises to show how the lessons can be applied in the corporate world.

In one chapter, it cites the story of how Chris Hoy was “hijacked by his own emotions” in a 2003 World Championship race and disregarded his carefully-crafted race plan to chase a faster start. After finishing fourth, Hoy reached out to sports psychologist Steve Peters and worked on accepting and “leveraging” his emotions – putting him on the path to becoming an 11-times World Champion and six-time Olympic Champion.

The book sets out how a mindset shift of seeing high-pressure situations as ‘challenges’ rather than ‘threats’ can benefit performance in sporting and corporate fields.

Baker says: “Emotions do still play a big part in the workplace and possibly the tendency to date has been to pretend that maybe emotions aren’t there, especially as you move more into leadership positions.

"I was really interested to look at what we have learnt from sport where it is high pressure and there is some brilliant learning and brilliant strategies about leveraging the power of your emotions. Rather than pretending we don’t feel emotions at work, we should try and use them.”

Another key aim of Baker’s was to include more stories about female athletes than typically appear in often “macho” sports-business leadership books.

Alongside the likes of athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill and cricketer Claire Taylor, Baker also includes lessons from the career of one of her sporting heroes – Steffi Graf.

Graf became one of the most successful tennis players of all time despite not having a reliable attacking backhand shot. She instead focused most of her practice on developing how to literally play to her strengths – including her footwork which allowed her to minimise the need for backhand shots.

Just as repeated practice of a particular sport or skill can improve performance, Baker believes using her book can help leaders achieve more.

"We’re all going to have a natural platform level – whether it is languages or hand-eye coordination or leadership skills. But if you have the desire to improve and the ability to put in the work and effort in a targeted way with the right help and support around you, then everybody can develop their leadership skills.”

Staying the Distance: The lessons from sport that business leaders have been missing by Catherine Baker is published by Bloomsbury on March 30. RRP £20.