Mary

Een Nederlandse voetballer trainer in de Golf dat is niet zo raar. 

Maar een Nederlandse trainster aan het roer in Saoedi Arabie is dat wel.

Mary Kok Willemsen was eerder opleider via de FIFA maar nu dus als eindverantwoordelijke bij AL Ula vrouwen. Met succes!

the post from LinkIn by Mary Kok-Willemsen:

It was 7 weeks ago that I received a call from my Dutch collegue Jan Jaap Schmaal  to come to Saudi-Arabië and take over the headcoach role for Al Ula Women. It was 6 weeks to go with 1 league game and then into play offs. For promotion to the Saudi Premier League...

Join THEIR journey

Instead of having a preparation period where I would start with selecting, building staff and team and developing and presenting strategy:

I came in the middle of their journey.

Not bringing any staff, just myself. And it became an unfogettable journey!

Manage focus and Energy

So many lessons I learned from this interim role, a pressure cooker of 6 weeks!

For them a different leader, for me a different group of 26 players from Saudi, Brasilia, Croatia and Bosnië till Canada.

And a staff from Algery, Egypt, Jordan Saudi-Arabië and... me Holland.

You have to be able to analyse the needlemovers for your staff and team, you need to focus on choosing the priorities you want to impact and influence now.. And choose the ones that are important but not urgent for the result now.

And meanwhile you focus on the thermostate of High Performance Habits that guarantee sustainable succes.

Their lessons

This group and staff were amazing teachers. Welcoming me with an open heart and open mind. In the midst of the pressure for direct result, they trusted our process for focussing on progress. For putting themselves in a pressure cooker and get out of their comfortzone. We learned how to deal with pressure in a short period, we learned as a team how to move from fear to fail to the courage to show up with believe they would overcome pressure.

Culture(s)

With all different cultures in our staff and playergroup, 1 thing we had in common. To Embrace our different cultures off the field and commit to an unified High Performance culture on the field.

This team showed the incredible potential on an unified vision. 

Thanks Al Ula for this amazing 6 weeks of:

Passion

Perseverance

Progress

People centered leadership from everyone involved. 

Performance

Thanks for your confidence in welcoming me as your Coach on this unfogettable journey!

One Team. One Family: Al Ula!!!