We talk to the former international distance runner who has forged a career in successfully bringing teams together

Jackie Newton has extensive experience as a personal coach, team coach and as a leader of high performing teams. A former Great Britain international distance runner, she is currently the performance lead for Mountaineering Ireland (working on the high performance strategy for Olympic climbing) and a consultant to the Sport Ireland Institute where she leads the “Pursuit of Excellence Programme” for coaches working with athletes tracking to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane. 

The 60-year-old has a successful track record of creating strategic, operational and empowering systems for athletes, coaches and practitioners, and is skilled at building relationships based on support, trust and empathy. In addition to her existing roles, she has worked for national governing bodies including British Orienteering (National Talent Development Coach and Performance Manager), Athletics Northern Ireland (Director of Coaching and Athlete Development) and UK Athletics (Head of Coaching Development). Later this summer she will take up a new post as Sports Director at the Danish Athletics Federation.

Given the progress you’re making at Mountaineering Ireland, what attracted you to the position at Danish Athletics?

I’m very at home in athletics and I think the most fulfilled I’ve been in any role was with Athletics Northern Ireland. I had some very good staff and we were aligned in our own philosophies. We were very determined to make a difference and we got amazing results. 

Athletics is where I want to be, but I’ll be forever grateful for the job that came up in climbing. I’ve only had a year with them but I’ve been very well supported and I’ve learned a lot. It’s been exciting to be part of a new Olympic sport and I really wasn’t looking to move on, but it’s good to know I’ve made a difference. I’ve drawn on my experience and learnings from my role at Athletics Northern Ireland – I’ve put a pathway in place, the structures are in place, and the selection policies are done. That’s all gone down well.

My successor in Ireland is from climbing, but I think I was able to make those initial changes because I wasn’t from climbing and I wasn’t emotionally attached. I’ve ruffled a few feathers there, but the new person can now come in and run with it.

How did you first get into coaching?

I finished competing properly in the early 2000s and I went to work with PUMA as their Performance Running Manager (2002), but I always knew I wanted to coach.

As an athlete I had some good coaching influences myself, but I was also from a teaching background – I was a primary teacher throughout my running career – and during that time I started to coach the school’s cross country team. 

I picked up some talented athletes to coach individually who were heading towards their first international vests. I always knew I wanted to coach at a high level because it’s the performance level that I find so exciting. My own values in life are focused on hard work and commitment. I like to line things up, and as a performance athlete – in fact, right along the pathway – it’s those psychological skills that are required. I’ve always wanted to be the best I can be at everything I’ve ever done, so when you’ve got that mindset, and you’re quite competitive, I think you gravitate towards the performance level. 

I coached a few athletes who represented England and Wales. Ironically, there wasn’t a space for me to coach at my own club (Stockport Harriers) at the time because they were already very well catered for in terms of endurance coaches, so I went to Manchester University and I coached the team there until I went to Northern Ireland. 

I was also doing some coaching (national standard athletes) within my full-time job at British Orienteering, but when I moved from Talent Coach to Performance Manager I stepped away from the coaching aspect and I actually recruited coaches, so I was working with the coaches of the athletes rather than coaching directly myself.

How would you describe your own coaching style?

The coaches that coached me were extremely athlete-centred. They understood my motivation and did a really good job with me on the psychological aspects of performance like self-belief, as well as setting my training programme. 

I had a really good experience in terms of being treated as an individual and I think I carried that forward into my coaching. I‘ve always tried to really understand an athlete’s motivation or goal. Communication is also very important to me, so making sure we’re in agreement in terms of where we are and where we want to get to.

With team coaching, I’ll always get in touch with the personal coach and make sure that we all agree on the result we want. It’s almost like a contract: “What’s my role, and what can you expect from me? And what’s your role and what can I expect from you?”  It’s quite hard to sum up, but it’s about clarity. It’s also about respecting the personal coach, reinforcing the message and not giving conflicting advice. 

Do you feel that the skills you’ve developed as a personal coach have benefited you in your more strategic performance roles?

Absolutely, because you can have coaching conversations. You understand what the coach is telling you because you’re speaking the same language.

An example might be where we’ve set up a programme with a physiotherapist, a strength and conditioning coach, a physiologist, plus the coach and athlete (as a pair). An athlete might be injured and if the coach sees things differently to the physio – for example they might think the physio is being too cautious – I’m the person in the middle who is then working out how to get everyone on the same page. 

Because of my experience, I can see it from the coaches’ point of view, so it’s been really advantageous in that I can go to the physio, tell them what the coach thinks (and if I agree), and then ask them to explain their logic.

It comes down to my knowledge of the sport; I’ve got knowledge of being a performer and I’ve got knowledge of coaching and I can draw on that, so I feel confident in leading those conversations and finding the solutions.

Knowledge is key, but you’ve also mentioned your ability to build relationships based on support, trust and empathy. How important have those skills proven to be in practice?

When I started my first performance role in athletics (at Athletics Northern Ireland) I prioritised building trust and honesty and really understanding everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. We got to know each other very quickly, and once you’ve built that level of trust you can have very honest conversations.

The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games took place within a year of me starting the job. Going into a Games can be quite high pressure and you have to know where somebody is going to be really strong or where they might fall down. It works both ways, and the people working with me had to know me too; they had to know my strengths or where they might need to step up to support me.

We had a couple of training camps through the winter where we brought our long-list athletes and their coaches together, we agreed roles and we aligned our targets. 

The Commonwealth Games was our number one focus. I saw that as an opportunity. I thought that if we could do something really amazing at that point then we’d be off to a brilliant start and we would just keep building from there. 

It was about bringing the staff team together first, then bringing the coaches and athletes together, then the wider team – the physiotherapists, the strength and conditioning coaches – and making sure that everyone was on the same page, that everyone understood the targets, that everyone understood who was aiming for what and what needed to be done to get there, and it was successful (with one individual medal and four top eight positions). 

From there it was onwards and upwards, and we got better results again in Birmingham 2022.

As Head of Coaching Development at UK Athletics (2021-2023) you worked collaboratively with the Female Coaching Network (FCN) to create and deliver the Gender Equity in Coaching Plan which led to more female team coaches at major championships and more performance athletes working with female coaches. Has that progress continued? 

There hasn't been enough progress. I don't have the exact figures, but my understanding is that the Paris 2024 numbers don’t show an improvement; I think only around 13 per cent of coaches at the Games were female and that's shocking. Of course, it’s a much wider issue than just our sport – and it’s a social problem too – but, in sport, we should be doing more to overhaul the systems that continue to allow the under-representation of female coaches. 

There’s an unconscious bias within the system, I've felt it myself, and the way to address it is to put policies in place to ensure transparency in e.g., recruitment, support and reward of coaches. I had hoped to get this done before my role [with UKA] was made redundant – the FCN and I intended to put a system in place that would live on, no matter who was in the decision-making positions, but it didn't happen in time. The FCN still does an amazing job, though, and the conversations are still taking place. I’ve continued to work with them and I’ll be using the support they offer in my new role. 

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your coaching career/the best piece of advice you would pass on to new/aspiring coaches?

It’s the same as it is for athletes; it's not going to be a smooth and linear progression – there are lots of bumps in the road – but if you learn from mistakes, stay determined to reach your goals, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and pull in support from good people, you will get to where you want to be. The “good people” bit is important and I've reached out for more mentoring recently. If you have people in your life who support and challenge you as well as advocate for you, you make better decisions and progress.