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- Chantal Vallée: Vision at the core.
Chantal Vallée: Vision at the core.
Dare to win, the importance of vision, and more.
Paul Barnett
August 28, 2025
Welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.
Every month, we share new podcast episodes featuring interviews with Great Coaches from across the world of sports. Our interviews delve deep into the careers and leadership of our guests, seeking new insights to help us all lead our teams, communities and families better.
We also frequently share additional content and insight from our interviews across our social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Youtube, and TikTok. You can learn more about The Great Coaches, follow our channels and explore our website from our new Linktree page.
Staying Balanced With Chantal Vallée
It’s sometimes said that there’s a big difference between ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ knowledge, but basketball coach Chantal Vallée seems to seamlessly blend both. Having completed a master’s thesis on coaching leadership, she then took on the challenge of turning one of Canada’s worst performing university basketball teams into a team capable of winning five back-to-back championships.
In this week’s interview, Chantal joined us to talk about some of the fantastic things she has learned throughout her journey, such as the way that metaphor and visualisation can be used to bring life to goals, reducing nervous system stress and replacing it with renewed focus.
She also spoke about the need for flexibility in the way leadership traits are deployed, stressing that ‘balance’ may actually result in a lack of ability to connect with the different personalities that exist within your team — a fascinating insight that we perhaps haven’t really touched on before in our interviews.
Finally, I want to bring attention to what Chantal has to say on the importance of vision, which she identifies as a common denominator amongst Great Coaches. It’s this vision that is used to create a mental representation of the team’s future; by working backwards from that representation, leaders can create a plan that can be broken down to hit key performance indicators.
This was a brilliant interview that examined a number of ideas from unexpected perspectives, and I know that you’ll all take something useful from it.
Dare To Win
In this week’s podcast, you’ll hear us speaking to Chantal Vallée about her new book: Dare To Win. The book was released earlier this year, and is a fantastic amalgamation of Chantal’s education and practical leadership experience. You can find the book now on Amazon:
This Week’s Guest
Chantal Vallée | Copyright: Windsor Lancers
Chantal Vallée completed a masters thesis in coaching leadership before putting her knowledge into action by taking over one of the worst basketball programs at any Canadian university: the University of Windsor Lancers.
Over a period of 6 gruelling years, Chantal took the team “from worst to first”, leading them to win 5 consecutive Canadian National Championships.
Her new book, ‘Dare to Win’, is a fantastic insight into everything she has learned throughout the journey.
On Visionaries
In each issue of the Great Coaches newsletter we share a different short lesson on leadership, inspired by the insights and ideas shared by our podcast guests.
For this week’s interview, we were joined by Chantal Vallée who spoke about a common denominator that she has identified amongst the Great Coaches: vision.
Great leaders don’t just have an ‘idea’ of where they’re heading — they’ve spent time picturing the end goal, decided what they’re working towards, and then calculated the steps it will take for them to get there. There’s no algorithm or perfect plan for success, of course, but Great Coaches typically have visions that help guide them every step of the way.
This week, make some time to consider and establish your own vision for the future. Whether it’s reaching a certain profit goal or winning a specific championship, your end goal should be something challenging-yet-achievable. Once you have that, you’ll be able to work backwards and work out the way to reach it — make sure to listen to our podcast with Chantal to understand how that can be done.
You can also hear a bit about how visionaries become Great Coaches in this clip from our past lesson ‘On Serial Winning Coaches’.
Looking for more inspiration? Our workshops and events deliver the insights of the Great Coaches straight to your team. They’re also tailored to the topics and issues that most impact you and your organisation, helping to boost engagement and encourage your team members to develop and build on the skills necessary for success.
For more information, get in touch today: [email protected]
“At the very core of every great coach…is that they all have a vision. They start with the end in mind.”
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Becoming Unstoppable With Gilbert Enoka
As you will hopefully be aware, we released an additional podcast episode last week with mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka.
Gilbert has worked with some truly top teams over the years — from Chelsea FC to the New Zealand Silver Ferns — but most notably with the All Blacks, New Zealand’s world-famous rugby team.
Gilbert has been with the All Blacks for over 300 matches, watching them win back-to-back Rugby World Cups, 21 consecutive Bledisloe Cups, 3 Grand Slams, 8 Tri-Nations, and 9 Rugby Championships.
As you might expect, it was a fantastic interview and a great opportunity to delve into the successes of his career.
“Great coaches understand that it's personal before it's positional.”
On Athlete-Coach Partnerships
We’ve spoken with (and about) Bill Sweetenham before for our podcast. He’s a man with an amazing presence — the type that can have a whole room hanging on his every word — and he’s somewhat of a legend in both swimming and sports coaching as a whole.
For this paper, Bill joined forces with psychologist Dr Bruce Lawrie to investigate the partnership between athletes and coaches. It’s a brilliant read, and one that will no doubt appeal to those of you who enjoyed our recent episodes delving into how psychology can be put into practice within your leadership.
Challenge Yourself with the Macquarie MBA
This newsletter is brought to you by Macquarie University Business School’s MBA program. Designed to empower, challenge and transform, the Macquarie MBA gives you the business skills and knowledge you need to succeed in an evolving global economy.
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Find out more: https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-business-school/
