#4: Permission to feel. How emotional intelligence is key to High Performance with Dai Rees

Dai Rees is former rugby player at Newbridge, Swansea, Newport & Cross Keys and made the transition after retiring from injury into a successful career as coach. Some of his rugby coaching highlights include a number of head coach positions at Wales Representative level including Wales 7s, U19, 20, 21s and Wales Women. He then spent around a decade in Hong Kong coaching and was the Chief Rugby Operations officer and general manager for high performance.

Now back in the UK he has been working as a teacher in a private school as well as building on his vast experience as a mentor and high performance coach. He has very recently made the decision to finish his full time role at his school and jump with two feet into following his passion for authentic leadership, personal development, mentoring and coaching.

In this conversation we talk about Dai's learning and experience of over 40 years involved in the game of rugby. We go pretty deep into his revelations around his own early struggles with managing his emotions and how his exploration into emotional intelligence has revolutionised his approach to leadership, coaching and teaching. He talks about the importance of learning, especially as we enter later life and recommends the book 'A permission to feel' by Marc Brackett to anyone who wants to take a first step into learning about their emotions. He also touches on some of the ideas of masculinity in the book 'Backbone' by David Wagner and in our discussion we talk a little bit around how men especially find it hard to express emotions. One final recommendation from Dai to the teachers and coaches out there was the book 'Inside out coaching' by Joe Ehrmann which he says has helped him implement some of his experience with emotional intelligence into the High Performance environments he has managed in recent years. 

I am sure you will enjoy this slightly longer but more in depth conversation with someone with such a rich experience in the game. Huge gratitude to Dai for sharing with us today, you can find him on LinkedIn here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dai-rees-56297223

Finally, The Post Rugby Podcast would like to invite you to our Free Facebook Group - The Post Rugby Community to connect with other rugby players (current and retired) and like minded people to continue your journey to a happier and healthier life post rugby. 

The time for raising awareness for improved physical and mental health in the game of rugby is over and the time for taking action is here! I hope you found some inspiration listening to this podcast but please be encouraged to take action today but trying some of things the guest talks about or joining the community and getting involved in the next challenge or programme. See you next time :)