Performance, pressure and psychological safety in sport, with FIS expert Marcella Leonard MBE

A qualified social worker and Director of Leonard Consultancy and Associates, Marcella Leonard MBE has over 35 years’ experience across child, adult and public safeguarding, protection and risk assessment. Her work nationally and internationally spans the sports, arts, academia, religious, statutory, industry, charity and voluntary sectors, supporting both those who have been harmed and those responsible for care and leadership.

The Independent Chair of the Safeguarding Sport Strategic Group in Northern Ireland and an associate with Safe Sport International, Marcella brings a rare depth of insight to the complex relationship between performance, mental health and protection in sport. Since joining FIS as an external consultant in April 2024, Marcella has helped shape a proactive approach to mental health safeguarding in snow sports, including psychological awareness sessions for coaches and support around wellbeing and reporting concerns.

"Mental health safeguarding and psychological awareness are areas where there can be no half-measures. To address them properly, we need to work holistically and draw on specialist expertise," said FIS Integrity Director, Sarah Fussek.

And in this wide-ranging and insight-packed interview, Marcella explains why educating coaches is a fundamental starting point for athlete mental health, how coaching behavior can both intentionally and unintentionally cause harm, what parents should be aware of when their children enter development pathways, and how well-being and safeguarding are inseparable in creating safer sporting environments.

FIS: Why is educating coaches such a fundamental starting point for athlete mental health and psychological safety?
Marcella Leonard: I think it’s probably the most fundamental starting point because of the amount of time an athlete spends with a coach, often more than they spend with their family. Particularly when you’re looking at developmental pathways and elite athletes, they really trust that coach with every aspect of their life - diet, training, equipment and development.

That coach becomes the core person in their life; the person they trust to take them to the level they want to reach. The athlete needs to feel safe with them, psychologically and physically. Psychological safety is as critical to an athlete’s performance as what happens on the ski slopes, in the gym, or on the track, and that’s why we must start building psychological safety with coaches.

Is focusing on performance important when trying to bring coaches and parents on board?
Yes, because people can become very focused on performance and success, and then everything becomes about how you perform. What gets lost is the understanding that it takes a holistic person to perform well - someone who feels safe mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Physical performance is only a manifestation of a psychologically safe athlete who feels able to push their body, knowing they will be supported enough to recover. If an athlete doesn’t feel safe with the person they’re training with, they won’t recover properly, and that affects their ability to perform at their best.

Do some coaches “fall into” coaching roles without having enough training to create psychologically safe environments?
Yes, and this happens even in sports with significant funding. Coaches are often former elite athletes or were identified along a development pathway when they were younger. Coaching becomes the automatic next step, but they bring with them their own experiences of being coached.

If they were coached using psychological abuse - body shaming, negative messages, coercive or controlling behavior - but they also know that those tactics made them successful, they can often replicate that style believing it is the right approach for success. Just because one athlete performed well under those circumstances does not mean another will, and even if they do, it’s important to ask: at what cost?

That’s why coaching training must include psychological awareness. We shouldn’t have athletes moving into coaching roles without really good quality training that helps them understand psychological abuse and its impact, and there are many excellent examples of inclusive coaching career pathways already in place at national ski associations.

In terms of the psychological awareness sessions you have run with FIS, what do they aim to change in coaches’ day-to-day practice?
The key word is “awareness”. Many coaches are not aware of the impact of what they’re doing, and that goes back to intent. They often think their behavior is acceptable because it has produced results.

We’ve identified coaching styles that create a lot of fear, where athletes perform because they’re frightened of what will be said or what the consequences will be if they don’t. Through psychological awareness sessions, we help coaches see the impact of that approach. Performance may be there, but it’s underpinned by fear - fear of what will be said, fear of consequences - and that’s not positive for an athlete’s mental health or overall well-being.

We also recognize that coaching styles have changed. What was historically seen as acceptable - shame-based approaches like telling athletes they’re letting their team or their country down - is now recognized as harmful. Some coaches were brought up in that era and haven’t learned new ways of coaching, even though the sport has moved on, but the coaches who I've been involved with through the psychological awareness sessions have become more open in their ability to self-reflect - they’ve been really positive about the difference it has made to their approach.

Can you draw parallels between coaching and parenting?
Absolutely. In safeguarding work, we talk about intergenerational harm, where each generation passes down the same harmful attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. That happens in parenting, and it happens in sport.

Coaches may genuinely believe, “This is what it takes,” without intending to cause harm. But that belief can be passed down through generations of coaching, just as harmful parenting practices can be passed down through families.

What mental health pressures do athletes in development pathways face that parents should be aware of?
One of the first things parents need to recognize is whether it’s the child’s wish to follow the pathway, or the parents’. Parents need to genuinely listen, particularly if a young person under 18 is expressing concerns or saying they don’t want to continue.

Parents also need to look beyond performance. An athlete may be performing well, but at what cost? Signs such as weight loss, isolation, withdrawal, loneliness and personality changes all matter. Parents should ask whether success on the slopes is reflected in the rest of the child’s life, or whether they’re struggling socially, at school, or at home. Athletes should have a holistic life experience, not just sport.

How does pressure created by a family’s investment of time and money affect young athletes?
Parents often invest huge amounts of time and money, sometimes with other family members making sacrifices for that one child who might be doing well. In some cases, there’s the potential for income through sponsorship if a child succeeds. That creates enormous pressure, while success and performance and pathways can blind people to recognizing what is risky - and where there’s risky behavior it needs to be challenged.

If an athlete is being harmed along a pathway, do they feel able to tell their parents they want to stop? Not because they’re not good enough, but because they’re frightened or being abused? Some athletes stay in a sport because they feel responsible for their family, even though they don’t want to continue.

That can give a coach the message that their behavior is acceptable because the athlete stays, even when the athlete is staying out of fear. We need to be very wary of situations where athletes feel responsible for their parents’ expectations. The fundamental question must always be: is it safe to continue?

What can parents do differently to make their child or young adult feel safer?
Parents need to allow young people to make mistakes, have bad days, change their minds, and say, “I’m not OK with this.” They need permission to feel and express when they’re uncomfortable.

Parents should be present, not necessarily physically present at camps, but by making it clear to the coach and everybody surrounding that young or adult athlete that they do have a parental presence, that they’re in contact with and not isolated from their family. There must be open communication where concerns aren’t dismissed, and parents need to recognize changes in behavior, body image and social connection, even when performance looks good.

Plus, I think we often forget when you look at athletes in developmental pathways, that one of the last parts of the body to develop is the frontal lobe cortex. This is key to the skills of problem solving and complex decision-making and doesn’t finish developing until you’re in your mid-20s, but a lot of athletes at 16 or 17 already have to make some really complex life decisions.

And is this particular sport the one they even really want to do? Young athletes are so influenced by all the adults around them, and sometimes those adults don’t genuinely have the athletes’ interest at heart. And when you add the influence of social media into that mix, then young athletes are like sponges, they absorb all of this information and haven’t yet developed the tools to handle it.

Speaking of social media: how does it add to the pressure athletes young and old are under?
Back in my day when I was an adolescent, I might have put pressure on myself or had input from friends or family, but because we didn’t have mobile phones or social media, that circle was quite small. Nowadays, athletes face commentary far beyond their family and close friends: there’s now a circle of people who believe they’ve got the right to say something about you that’s become so wide it’s unmanageable.

You might have an athlete with a really supportive coach and parents, but they may have four or five trolls on their social media getting inside their head and making them feel they’re not good enough, that they don't look good, that they're not going to make the team or worse. That can be extremely damaging, and coaches and parents need to be alert to it. Harm doesn’t always happen in person; it can happen virtually.

In your opinion, how does mental well-being intersect with safeguarding?
Mental health and feeling safe mentally is the cornerstone of safeguarding. Safeguarding is about asking: do I feel safe in myself, and do I feel safe with other people? If you don’t feel psychologically safe, you’re vulnerable to exploitation.

People who cause harm exploit emotional well-being first. They isolate individuals, create fear, and make them reliant on the person harming them. That’s coercive control. If you don’t feel safe, you’re vulnerable, which is why mental well-being underpins safeguarding.

What support does FIS offer when concerns are raised?
FIS provides psychological awareness sessions for coaches both proactively and where concerns have been raised, allowing reflection and learning, even when there was no intent to harm. In the sessions we've made it clear to coaches about the importance of acting appropriately, that they hold a position of trust and influence which must not be exploited, and the need for them to understand athletes’ vulnerability in this dynamic.

For athletes, FIS is working with a more trauma-informed approach. When someone raises a safeguarding concern, experienced safeguarding professionals walk alongside them, so they feel supported.

Having multiple reporting avenues, including anonymous options, is important because many concerns come from fear, and the key message is that it must feel safe to raise a concern. Athletes need to know that they can raise a concern with FIS and be listened to, supported and safe from further harm.

Visit https://www.fis-ski.com/inside-fis/sport-integrity/safeguarding for FIS’s Snow Safe Policy and further Safeguarding resources.

To contact the FIS Safeguarding Officer, please email fussek@fis-ski.com

To report a suspected breach of any governance, ethics or integrity regulations or provisions of FIS, you can follow the link https://fis-integrityunit.integrityline.com, email FIS@email-fis.integrityline.com or call +44(0) 207 034 3403 to leave a confidential message. Any material reported will be treated in strict confidence.