Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief is a much needed, compelling, practical guide to a creative world of coaching, with confidence at its heart.

It reimagines a way of coaching with confidence and self-belief at the very heart of all we do: highly creative, deeply rewarding and leading to beyond belief results. It explores how we create assured spaces for our coaching to flow, the sometimes rocky paths to trust and how to help those we coach prepare for their daunting challenges: confident coaches, confidence in the coach and coaching for confidence. And everything changes: how we think of and support motivation, resilience, creativity and much more.

Drawing on the inner stories of coaches and coached, endurance sports coach Mike Porteous brings to life a vision of coaching at its best, in essence coach and coached finding an easy fluency, wholly attuned mind and body to self and others and a depth of meaningful connections. A coaching book like no other.

Mike Porteous is the founder and Director of sports coaching business ZigZag Alive and founder of Confidence-Centred Coaching: a resource for coaches across all sports with an interest in confidence and self-belief. A highly qualified coach who has represented his country as a triathlete, he is now a coach mentor for British Triathlon.

Cath competed in rowing at 3 Olympic Games, winning World Championships gold in 2003 and Olympic silver in Athens 2004. As a diplomat for the British Foreign Office for 12 years, Cath specialized in policy and negotiations on conflict issues, with postings to Bosnia and Iraq. Cath now works as a leadership and culture consultant, executive coach, speaker, facilitator and author.

Cath is a member of the Executive Education faculty at the Judge Business School, Cambridge University. She works with leaders across business, education, and sport to develop high performing teams, resilient and inclusive environments, sustainable performance and cultures where people can thrive. Her approach is one that both challenges and supports leaders to think differently and adopt a human-centred approach.

As well as her coaching and consultancy work, Cath is an Independent Advisor to British Gymnastics on cultural reform and writes on topics relating to culture in sport for The Guardian. Cath is also a Trustee of Love Rowing, British Rowing’s charitable foundation that raises funds for projects to increase access to rowing and an Advisor to The True Athlete Project, a non-profit organization which provides holistic development programmes in sport. Cath is a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta and Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the University of Wales.